The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) recently adopted changes to its Book of Church Order (BCO) that specify that an elder “should conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in his descriptions of himself, and in his convictions, character, and conduct” (BCO 8-2). Similarly, deacons are to be conspicuous for “conforming to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in their descriptions of themselves and in their convictions, character, and conduct” (9-3).

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) recently adopted changes to its Book of Church Order (BCO) that specify that an elder “should conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in his descriptions of himself, and in his convictions, character, and conduct” (BCO 8-2). Similarly, deacons are to be conspicuous for “conforming to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in their descriptions of themselves and in their convictions, character, and conduct” (9-3). It may be fairly asked what this means, as the phrases “chastity” and “sexual purity” occur nowhere else in the BCO. To understand the terms we are therefore compelled to consider their use in the other elements of our constitution, the Westminster Confession and Larger and Shorter Catechisms (BCO Preface III).
In considering this it is helpful to consider the original overture (O23) from Mississippi Valley Presbytery that urged the modification of BCO 8-2 and 9-3. In its “whereas” statements, O23 plainly states “the preservation of chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior in oneself is an indispensable duty and qualification for office (1 Tim.3:2; Titus 1:5-9)” and that “any expression of sexual attraction or sexual intimacy that is not directed toward the fulfillment of a lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is contrary to nature and to nature’s God” (50th General Assembly Minutes, pp. 1022-24). In so doing it cites Larger Catechism (LC) Question 139, which says “all unnatural lusts” are “sins forbidden” by the seventh commandment, as are “all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections.” The positive duty enjoined by said commandment is “chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior” (LC 138), i.e., exactly what O23 said in its whereas statement above. From this we see that “chaste” and “sexually pure” are matters of the heart and mind as well as of the body, and that they are opposed not only to immoral deeds, but to the lust that provokes such deeds, both in general and in the case of “unclean” and “unnatural” lusts in particular.
Now let us suppose that a man comes before one of our presbyteries seeking ordination, but that he, by his own admission, experiences what he calls “same-sex attraction.” Our constitution knows nothing of such terminology, and in its framework such attraction is an unclean and unnatural lust that is against the law of God. It is not merely a temptation, weakness, or potential moral liability, but one of those “sins forbidden” that LC 139 mentions. A man who experiences it is therefore not chaste or pure “in his convictions, character, and conduct,” nor in his “imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections.” For character and conduct bear an internal form in our hearts before they show themselves as outward deeds – “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt. 15:19, emphases mine) – and a man who experiences unnatural lusts is therefore awry in his internal character and the conduct and affections of his heart and mind. Failing to meet the constitution’s requirements for his character and conduct, and possibly his convictions and self-description as well,[1] such a man ought to be deemed disqualified and be denied office among us when examined by presbytery.
Why This Matters
The immediate reason this matters is that I have correspondence which states that even some of those who are opposed to the errors of Revoice cannot see where our constitution forbids office to men who experience the lust in question, even those who have a public reputation as such. As can be seen above, our constitution requires chastity in thought and affections as well as in external behavior, hence someone who experiences unclean and unnatural lust is to be accounted unchaste in mind and therefore unfit per its provisions. Internal consistency and a faithful testimony to the egregiousness of the lust in question also require such a position. In the rules of discipline relating to the trial of teaching elders we read:
When a minister, pending a trial, shall make confession, if the matter be base and flagitious, such as drunkenness, uncleanness, or crimes of a greater nature, however penitent he may appear to the satisfaction of all, the court shall without delay impose definite suspension or depose him from the ministry.
We believe that a sin involving uncleanness is so heinous that even a minister who confesses it and seems to be sincerely repentant of the offense must be immediately suspended or removed from the ministry. Now if a man who has many years of fruitful labor and faithful service must nonetheless, on account of a single act of uncleanness, be suspended from the ministry, why should a man who is yet untested but admits to persistent unclean lusts not be deemed to be prohibited from ministerial office? Will anyone dare say that it is because there is a difference between lust in one’s own heart and acting upon such lust in external deeds? But what then is the meaning of this teaching of our Lord:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matt. 5:27-30)
Is it not that lust is to be deprecated just as strongly in the thoughts of the heart or in the gaze as in the physical deed? For if that were not so, how is it that he says to tear out one’s eye lest it cause one to sin and be damned? How could he say to take the same radical preventive action toward both the hand that does the deed and the eye that desires it unless both were equally culpable? But as it is with adulterous lust, so it is with unnatural lust to that which God condemns by euphemism (Lev. 18:22). It is the sinful root, whereas the deed is the sinful fruit; yet both are sinful and therefore at odds with chastity and purity, hence why LC139 cites Matt. 5:28 (and the aforementioned Matt. 15:19) as proof for its statement that God forbids “all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections” in the seventh commandment.[2]
I must also point out that what our catechisms and older translations of scripture call “uncleanness” is what modern translations usually render as “impurity,” the Greek akatharsía that appears in verses such as Col. 3:5 and Rom. 1:24 that are in LC139’s scripture proofs for such concepts as “unnatural lusts” (Rom. 1:24) and “unclean imaginations, etc.” (Col. 3:5). In short, where an older work refers to something as ‘unclean” in the matter of sexual morality we can usually refer to it as ‘impure;’ and I trust that it needs no elaboration that what is impure, whether “imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections” or actual deeds, is the opposite of the “sexual purity” that our constitution requires. (For that matter, “chastity” and “sexual purity” are synonyms, the Online Etymology Dictionary giving the following definition of chastity: “c. 1200, chastete, ‘sexual purity’ (as defined by the Church), including but not limited to virginity or celibacy, from Old French chastete ‘chastity, purity’ (12c., Modern French chasteté), from Latin castitatem (nominative castitas) ‘purity, chastity.’”)
All of which is to say that our constitution, when considered in its entirety, regards a man who experiences unnatural and unclean lusts as being internally unchaste and impure, and therefore disqualified for the offices of elder and deacon. The question that now arises is whether our presbyters will have the determination to enforce this which they have sworn to approve (BCO 21-5 and 24-6, Q.3) in the case of not only prospective but also current officeholders. Further, whether any current officeholders who find themselves disqualified by these provisions will fulfill their promise of “subjection to your brethren in the Lord” (BCO 21-5, Q. 4; 24-6, Q. 5) by complying with their removal from office, or else willingly resign it of their own initiative.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] If he regards his lust as being the result of an immutable sexual orientation, he is mistaken in his convictions, regarding his desires along worldly lines as a result of a fixed constituent part of man (sexuality/orientation), rather than as a result of the moral condition of his heart, mind, and will (which are susceptible to improvement as a result of sanctification). And if he has a public reputation as such because he regularly discusses it with others or refers to himself as experiencing such lust – especially if he refers to himself with the blasphemous affixing of the world’s term for a violator of Lev. 18:22 with what Acts 11:26 calls a member of our faith – then he does not conform to BCO 8-2’s requirement that he be chaste in his descriptions of himself, for he describes himself by his unchaste lusts.
[2] But does this not contradict James 1:14-15 (“each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death”)? For James suggests a distinction is to be drawn between the desire that produces temptation and the sin that results when temptation has been yielded to, which suggests that if one resists the temptation he is therefore guiltless of sin. That is a correct distinction in one sense, but sin has multiple senses in scripture, sometimes referring to actual wrong deeds that we perform, and in other cases referring to the principle of anti-God lawlessness that resides within us that animates such actual transgressions.
Thayer’s Lexicon says that in James 1:15 “sin” refers to a “committed or resultant sin” “generally,” i.e., that it refers not to the principle of sin but to actual transgression, but without specifying the sin committed. In other words, the phrase “lying is a sin” is an example of the particular actual (“committed or resultant”) sin of lying, whereas “our sins offend God” represents actual sins in a general sense, without classifying them. James 1:15 falls in the latter category, which means the sin it talks about is actual, committed transgression of God’s law, not the evil impulse that precedes it. The desire he speaks of in 1:14, however, is sin in this latter sense, as the Greek epithymía it speaks of is inordinate desire (or “lust,” which is how many translations such as the KJV and NAS render it). In short, the evil desire or lust of James 1:14 is sin in principle, and it produces the temptation to commit actual sins in deed. Both the lust that tempts and the actual sin one is tempted to commit are sin, but in these two different senses, so that one can be guiltless of actual sin (if he resists the temptation) but still have within himself the principle of sin (lust) that produces the temptation.

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If you believe a response is justified, let your first aim be to vindicate Christ’s honor, not that of yourself or your preferred candidate, party, or position. It is he who is most wronged when his forums are turned from a concern with his will to earthly affairs which distract from his redemptive kingly reign in the hearts of his people. This means that the main point should be objecting to others being political, not per se how they were political, and that bringing reasons why one might disagree is foremost a means to that end.

In a previous article I wrote about discussing politics in Christian forums, doing so in the abstract and in reference to a rather obscure example; and in so doing I was compelled to violate the very principles I announced. Space prevented further consideration, but there is more to be said, as some correspondents thought that I did not give the subject sufficient treatment. One said that I had said what not to do, but not what to do; an all too frequent problem in popular Christian ethics, to be sure. Another correspondent thought I had almost argued that we are to be silent in the face of the evils that afflict our nation, and before people who have no qualms being political to our harm. It was felt that I had so much made the faith a matter of spiritual concern as to have no bearing on our lives as temporal citizens. Those are serious objections, and I am pleased my correspondents brought them, for I am dependent on such correspondence to know how my thoughts are perceived by others. And how I intend them and how they are actually perceived do not always align, so for a few clarifications.
By a Christian forum, I meant any forum whose stated purpose is to advance the knowledge of Christ, be that forum ecclesiastical or parachurch in nature. I except personal blogs, podcasts, and other more informal things that claim to consider other things besides questions of our faith. By politics I meant the civil (legal, administrative) affairs of civil polities, that is, governments and their citizens. I did not mean ecclesiastical politics, nor comments on civil affairs that are moral in character.
Romans 13 tells us how to interact with civil authorities, which has some effect on our politics. Is a minister who expounds the meaning of that passage being political? Not in the sense that I meant. He is giving doctrinal and moral instruction, and doing so that believers may act in a manner that is conducive to peace, does not invite persecution, and is a testimony to the life in Christ that will hopefully commend it to unbelievers. He declares it for the benefit of the church and for unbelievers as neighbors; it is not an act in partisan political competition. That is different from saying ‘vote for candidate A’ from the pulpit. That would be political and inappropriate. Again, by ‘politics’ I meant a direct involvement in civil affairs – advocating this law or that party – not something that has an indirect effect on it, and whose main character and purpose is moral/doctrinal/faith-related.
I also left exceptions for when we are directly attacked and for moral matters in which there is a clear Christian position. If there is a sickness outbreak and casinos are left open but churches closed by law, an obvious injustice that makes claims of public health so much hypocrisy, by all means protest as Christians, both to the authorities and in Christian forums. And in matters in which there is a clear Christian position, I see no wrong in it being published in Christian outlets or from the pulpit. Murder is wrong, for example, and dueling involves such, hence we have historically opposed dueling. More contemporary examples would be infanticide, abortion, euthanasia, etc.
That exception, while appropriate, also invites the question of ‘who decides what is a matter with a clear Christian position?’ Assuming we agree on principles, who is to say whether an agreed principle requires a given application? We all agree the shedding of innocent blood (Prov. 6:17) is wrong. And I think we all agree that commends denouncing dueling, for dueling is indefensible, a matter of personal pride when insulted rather than public or private justice. There is a clear link between principle and application there.
What about when that link is not clear, when things are a matter of tradeoffs between imperfect options that carry both good and bad consequences? There is a clear Christian position on dueling. There is not a clear Christian position on form of government (representative v. monarchical), type of economy (agrarian v. industrial), or many of the particulars of criminal justice (how the courts work, policing tactics, etc.). Our faith has principles that can be brought to bear on that last question, such as that punishment should be proportionate to offenses punished (Ex. 21:23-25), corruption guarded against (23:8), trials fair with suitable evidentiary procedures (Deut. 19:15), etc. But how we implement those principles might vary, especially where our circumstances differ.
I think the legislature should not prescribe the particulars of law enforcement’s defensive tactics (i.e., how they physically restrain combative suspects), and that such questions are best answered by the people who actually have to use said techniques against wrongdoers who are trying to beat them unconscious or flee, rather than by office-dwelling politicians who have never faced such circumstances. The state where I live disagrees, forbidding certain holds to be employed in the restraint of suspects (SC Code 23-1-250). I think that’s mistaken, but I do not conclude that the legislators who profess faith who voted for said law are therefore to be accounted false professors of our faith. It’s a civil disagreement, not a question of orthodoxy or sincerity in the faith, and while it presumably has an effect on how well police are able to do their jobs, I don’t see where it would be appropriate to the mission of this outlet for me to write an extended article arguing why SC Code 23-1-250 should be abolished.
In saying this I touch another thing which some people felt I did not give sufficient consideration before, which is that I take it for granted that it is permissible for believers to engage in politics in general, and in other forums besides the church and Christian outlets. I shouldn’t write an article critiquing SC 23-1-250 for The Aquila Report or ask my local session to petition the state legislature to repeal it. But I can write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper doing so, or can write the head of the state house’s public safety committee to urge him to vote for its repeal. Again, I objected to politics in Christian forums, not Christians in political forums. Most of my action on this is private (direct correspondence), rather than public, but I am somewhat politically engaged myself, though one might not know it from my public writing at this outlet.
But I believe in respecting the proper time and place for such things, and Christian forums are not the right time or place. Political forums (or other means of political action) are. That was the substance of my previous argument, that bringing civil politics into Christian forums represented an intrusion where they do not belong, a trammeling the proper boundaries between faith-based outlets and civil-political ones in which the faith-based was made political much more than the political was sanctified.
(Before proceeding, let me point out that this is not limited to politics, and that many other matters do not belong in Christian forums: this is not the place to advance a critique of this or that school of art, recommend rule changes to college basketball, interject literary criticism, share recipes for chess pie, or otherwise intrude artistic, athletic, entertainment, scientific, or various other matters that distract from Christ’s gospel. Those are all fine things, in their proper place—and this isn’t it.)
Now granting that there are exceptions for moral matters and for when we are directly assailed, and granting that Christian liberty and Christ’s lordship over the rest of our lives permit us to be political in the proper forums, there does arise a further, rather rankling question: what do you do when other people drag politics into Christian forums? May you defend your own position if you disagree, lest people mistake the published opinion for the Christian one? I believe the answer is yes, but with some hefty caveats.
One, there is a time for all things (Eccl. 3), so it is sometimes best to let a matter pass without criticism, even when you think it is wrong. “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense” (Prov. 19:11); “love covers all offenses” (10:12); and “the beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out” (17:14). If you believe the person who did it is a brother, it may be best, for sake of concord, to forebear his wrong in being political (and perhaps being wrong politically too) in a Christian forum (Gal. 5:15).
Two, if you believe a response is justified, let your first aim be to vindicate Christ’s honor, not that of yourself or your preferred candidate, party, or position. It is he who is most wronged when his forums are turned from a concern with his will to earthly affairs which distract from his redemptive kingly reign in the hearts of his people. This means that the main point should be objecting to others being political, not per se how they were political, and that bringing reasons why one might disagree is foremost a means to that end.
Three, recognize that once you engage politically it is easy to get carried away with it. When a Presbyterian elder implied that evangelicals who support Israel were selling their souls, I sought to rebut the slander, both of God’s people and of the Israeli people. In so doing I was compelled to consider technical questions like the blast area of 500 lb. bombs. It doesn’t take too much of that before your initial purpose gets lost in the weeds. Just as reading theology (especially polemics) ought to be abetted by a larger portion of scripture, prayer, and the other means of grace, so also should a political disagreement lead you back to God, lest it loom too large in your mind.
Four, while vindicating Christ’s honor ought to be our main concern, we do have the right to vindicate our own rights. It is best to respect the conscience of the weaker brother where we can (Rom. 14), but it is possible that our interlocutor is not a brother but a sly false teacher trying to subvert the faith to worldly purposes; and even where we think he is sincere (or can’t tell), it is not right for someone else to say that being a believer requires adhering to a debatable position. If a teetotaler says that our faith requires both personal abstention from alcoholic beverages as well as petitioning the government to prohibit them, I reserve the right to disagree, especially when he twists scripture (‘Jesus made grape juice, not wine’), implicitly slanders me for disagreeing, or says things in Jesus’s name that are simply ridiculous and false (‘beer is the devil’s brew,’ which openly contradicts 1 Tim. 4:4-5).
Five, those who are right ought to take the moral high ground and keep above mudslinging. Strong words are one thing; personal nastiness quite another. Even when we call a spade a spade we ought to be as honorable and charitable as we can.
The moral is: be slow to fight (Jas. 1:19), avoid it when you can, and disagree in a measured way that is balanced by other concerns. That said, there is a need for people to insist that politics be kept out of Christian forums at present, for intrusions are frequent and many of those that do it seem oblivious to what they are doing. There is behind this a matter of great import which I have not the space to consider here and that deserves its own treatment, namely that what appears to be only political is at root a clash between competing, all-encompassing worldviews. But a consideration of that requires a future article. Till then render unto Caesar, but not where you ought to render only unto God.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

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Rome has repented nothing since 1517 and has only changed tactics in attempting to bring us under her tyranny. As with the Anglicans in 1977, so with many evangelicals today. These men have forgotten that false teachers come in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15); that bad company ruins good morals (1 Cor. 15:33); that Rome and the East have buried the gospel in human tradition (Matt. 15:1-6) and idolatry; that God curses those that alter the gospel (Gal. 1:6-9); and so many other things that we might say unto them: “about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” (Heb. 5:12).

I have before me a recently recovered sermon by Martyn Lloyd Jones from 1977, titled “The Sword and the Song.” Speaking before the British Evangelical Council, he addressed then recent developments among evangelicals in Britain. Regrettably, they sound remarkably like trends among some professing evangelicals today, albeit ones that are by no means limited to Britain. I recommend you listen to the entire sermon at the MLJ Trust and ponder its similarity to present circumstances.
He says, for example, that at the Evangelical Anglican Congress in April, 1977, there was a man who declared that the Reformation was the greatest tragedy in the history of the church (32:40). Similar things have been said recently. In 2018 Regent College, which describes itself as “both evangelical and orthodox,” saw its then J.I. Packer Professor of Theology, Hans Boersma,[1] state, “I think the Reformation is not something to celebrate but is primarily something that we should lament—that it is primarily a tragedy.”
Elsewhere Lloyd Jones quotes the then bishop of Leicester saying that “throughout the first 40 or 50 years of my life, one was accustomed to a fairly sharp divide between the evangelical and the catholic movements in our church,” but that “during these recent years these lines of demarcation have become blurred” (34:20). That also sounds familiar. In the Center for Classical Theology’s magazine Credo, one can read things like the following.
In a book review of Piercing the Clouds: Lectio Divina and Preparation for Ministry (which book is part of a Romanist press’s “Catholic Theological Formation Series”), the reviewer says:
The contributors argue not only that historical-grammatical and devotional readings of Scripture can happen together but that they should happen. Especially in the spiritual formation of budding Catholic priests. Drawing on the writings of the early church, medieval monks, and Pope Benedict XVI, they offer six essays building their case. . . there is plenty within these pages to be relevant for seminarians across ecclesial boundaries. (emphasis mine)
The reviewer, a member of a non-denominational church in Tennessee, sees no problem with Protestants using a book that is explicitly meant for training Roman priests to train their own seminarians. He later links the two explicitly, saying “what the church needs today are Catholic priests—and Protestant clergy—who are molded by exegetically-informed lectio.”[2] Err, no, we don’t need any Roman priests, so-called, and every man who serves in that capacity should promptly repent and begin to serve God in truth, laying aside the falsehoods of that communion to unite with God’s people as they are gathered in the churches of the Reformation.
But to my point here, that which was the case in the 1970s Anglican church is also the case more generally now. Credo is primarily run by Baptists associated with Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Yet they have no qualms commending books that draw on writings by monks or the pope, nor in giving a platform to people like Boersma – whom they awarded with their “best theological retrieval” book award for 2023 – or members of Roman orders like the Dominicans (as here), nor, for that matter, women who are ordained in Protestant denominations renowned rather for their apostasy and decline than for any virtue, such as Jennifer McNutt of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. McNutt is also a professor at Wheaton College’s School of Biblical and Theological Studies, whose self-profession of evangelical faith needs no elaboration, but which is similarly suspect, not least since they employ two women professors who are also ordained in the Anglican Church in North America, one of whom seems to harbor some Romish sentiments about Mary (see my article here for an elaboration). Again, as in Lloyd Jones’s day, the “lines of demarcation seem to have become blurred.”
Or again, Lloyd Jones says that there was a difference in notions of scripture’s nature and authority in 1977 in comparison to the past, that people were arguing:
It’s not enough to have a translation in English, they say, of the Hebrew and the Greek. Oh no, you must have much more. You must know the cultural milieu, the cultural setting in which the scriptures were written. And they actually go so far as to say this, that you cannot understand the scriptures unless you know something about this cultural setting. Indeed, one of the leaders of this school on the continent of Europe has actually said this, that it is virtually impossible for any men to understand even the New Testament today, because we can never put ourselves into the cultural position and the thought forms of the people of the first century. (40:18)
That sounds like the need to ‘contextualize’ everything some people among us espouse, and reminds me of N.T. Wright’s argument that our previous perspective on Paul (esp. viz. justification) is wrong because we fail to understand the framework of his thought. Lloyd Jones helpfully contrasts this with “what the reformers called the perspicuity of the scriptures” (41:52), and notes that its logical outcome is a complete reliance on the perspective of scholars. In that vein he elsewhere notes the shift in notions about authority:
There has been this great change in the attitude of evangelicals. Towards what? Well, towards tradition. Not only scripture, but tradition. The old position of the Roman Catholic Church that you don’t merely assert the supremacy of the scriptures only, not sola scriptura, [but] tradition also as defined by them. (25:29)
These days it seems that every time one turns about he is being assailed with talk of “The Great Tradition.” There is a contemporary movement of what is called theological retrieval or ressourcement, and outlets like Credo and its associated contributors are at the center of it in the evangelical world. This movement says that this “Great Tradition” (which they always capitalize) that we ought to retrieve includes the ancient creeds and confessions, the catholic doctrine which the church has always believed, and that it provides the necessary framework to properly understand said creeds and confessions, and to be faithful adherents to the faith.
I have written about this elsewhere, including how the thing has its origin with Rome and her contemporary ecumenism, of how it includes Platonism, and of how it leads people to make some bizarre claims (regarding the aforementioned, Rome-sympathizing Boersma as Reformed; arguing that the Eastern communions’ notion of ‘deification’ is native to Reformed theology). It has also led to the present obsession with Aquinas, an idolater, whose fanatical partisans have portrayed him and the scholastics more generally in glowing terms as essential to reviving contemporary theology. Boersma actually has a chapter called “No Plato, No Scripture” in his book Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew, and Credo used the same formula to say “no Plato, no Augustine” in the introduction to its issue on Platonism:
Perceiving the philosophical truth within Platonism, the Great Tradition believed Platonism’s metaphysical commitments could serve Christianity. Consider Augustine, for example, whose conversion to Christianity may have been an impossibility apart from Platonism.
Their broad argument is that the “Great Tradition” is necessary to understand both scripture and the confessions and to escape the stifling intellectual climate of ‘modernity’ that skews our understanding of everything. Enter Craig Carter, whose Substack is called “The Great Tradition” and who is producing a trilogy of “Great Tradition” books, the second of which won the best “Theological Studies” book award from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Journal in 2021. At Creedo he has an article, “The Metaphysics Behind the Reformed Confessions,” that argues this way, speaking of “recovering the riches of seventeenth-century continental and English pastors and theologians who utilized the metaphysics of the Great Tradition to do theology and write and expound the great confessions of Protestantism.”
Compare Lloyd Jones again: “tradition, as defined by them.” Yet this is what leading contemporary Protestant theologians are enamored of just now. Just the other day Credo posted a video titled “Why we love the Bible (and read it with the Great Tradition).” They say that to read scripture for oneself apart from this tradition is to be a ‘biblicist,’ their favorite bogeyman. They say that to be a biblicist is to become a sectarian separated from the church, to risk becoming anti-intellectual and falling into all manner of heresy like anti-Trinitarian and Socinian errors. And so the guardrail to prevent that, on their view, is this “Great Tradition.”
Now I do not consider myself a biblicist, nor propose to enter fully into that debate, but I do say that this bears a frightful similarity to what Lloyd Jones observed in his own day. Leading Protestant theologians are taking their intellectual cues from Rome and falling all over themselves to hobnob with her scholars. Look at what he said of some of the evangelical Anglicans in 1977 on this point:
They’re actually proclaiming and boasting of the fact that their attitude to the Roman church and the Greek Orthodox church and the Russian Orthodox church has undergone an entire change. (32:20)
And:
We are not prepared to recognize all who call themselves Christians as being Christians. This is what these people are doing. They assume that if a man says, I am a Christian and he belongs to a church, it doesn’t matter what he believes, doesn’t matter what he denies. (45:05)
And again, reading what was said by one of its leaders at the birth of the United Reformed Church:[3]
This is a congregationalist speaking, a successor of the men ejected in 1662.[4] “No one,” he says, “who was present at the inauguration of the United Reformed Church in Westminster Abbey is likely to forget the moment when the archbishop of Canterbury, the [Roman] cardinal archbishop of Westminster, and the moderator of the Free Church Federal Council pledged themselves to pursue together that fuller unity of which the URC was a small foretaste.” (17:20)
Union among Protestants was just the first step in a larger movement for union among all professing believers, hence why the leaders of the Anglicans and English Romanists were present.
A similar ecumenical strain marks certain corners of the contemporary Protestant theological academy. They frequently commend members of Rome and the East and give them platforms and awards. Lewis Ayres, professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in England, has lectured at Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando. Credo editor Matthew Barrett’s The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church bears on its jacket the good words of the Roman professor Matthew Levering, a central figure in the ressourcement movement, who says Barrett’s “argument may offer promising ecumenical potential.” Imagine that, a book on the Reformation, and the Romans themselves laud it and say it offers “ecumenical potential”![5] In closing, we might well ask with Lloyd Jones:
What has produced this change? Is there something new? Has there been some new discovery? The answer is, there is nothing new at all. There has been no new discovery.
So it is with us. Rome has repented nothing since 1517 and has only changed tactics in attempting to bring us under her tyranny. As with the Anglicans in 1977, so with many evangelicals today. These men have forgotten that false teachers come in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15); that bad company ruins good morals (1 Cor. 15:33); that Rome and the East have buried the gospel in human tradition (Matt. 15:1-6) and idolatry; that God curses those that alter the gospel (Gal. 1:6-9);[6] and so many other things that we might say unto them: “about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” (Heb. 5:12). Heartbreaking, all of it, and we should pray God will grant repentance (2 Tim. 2:25) and raise up witnesses (Matt. 9:35-38), lest he remove the church from our lands (Rev. 2:5) and give us over to unbelief and falsehood (2 Thess 2:11) in punishment for such compromise with the false teaching of Rome and the East (Rev. 2:14-16; 20-23).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
[1] Boersma is ordained in the Anglican Church in North America
[2] This is a slight reworking of what I have written elsewhere on this topic: https://tomhervey.substack.com/p/across-the-tiber-and-into-the-cloister#_ftn1
[3] Not to be mistaken with the more recent United Reformed Churches in North America, which bears a more consistently Reformed character, having largely formed out of the Christian Reformed Church in response to scripturally unfaithful developments in her midst in the 1990s.
[4] A reference to the Great Ejection of 1662, in which 2,000 Puritans were cast from their pulpits by the English government.
[5] Boersma similarly honored J.I. Packer as “a great Puritan,” not because, like the original Puritans, he worked for a pure doctrine, worship, and church that was purified of Romish and other errors, but because of his “ecumenical conviction” that “drove him to irenic dialogue with Catholics and Orthodox in the 1990s” and  recognized such as  “fellow Christians who upheld the church’s Great Tradition.”
[6] As many do when they say things like “the gospel is indispensable for addressing the complex social, cultural, and political challenges facing the nation,” thus contradicting Jesus’ claim that his “kingdom is not of this world” (Jn. 18:36). If his kingdom is not of this world, how could the gospel of that kingdom be concerned with worldly cares like political and social challenges? Only if one distorts the meaning of that gospel and the nature of that kingdom can it be so.

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Another problem with dragging politics into Christian forums is its effect on other believers. If political claim A is presented in Christian forum B, it implies that A is the Christian position. Other believers who disagree are implied to be anti- or unchristian for differing, put in the difficult position of arguing against the implied ‘Christian’ position, and reduced to being political themselves to defend the legitimacy of Christians adhering to their own position. It is unfair to them, in other words, and would seem to violate the thrust of Romans 14’s ethical principles as applied to citizenship and political involvement.

C.S. Lewis once said that there is an advantage in believers “comparing notes,” that is, not always presuming to teach in an authoritative manner but sharing their experiences so that their audience may ponder how they match their own.[1] Consider this article to be in that vein. The contemporary world is full of blessings. And while I think they outnumber difficulties for most of us most of the time, life at its best in this world still retains plentiful causes of suffering and frustration.
Of the many irksome things in the contemporary world, one of the most irksome is the dragging of politics into Christian forums. Before proceeding further, let me state that: a) this is nothing new, as much of the history of the church has also been the history of Christendom, with its mingling of Christian faith (of wildly varying degrees of sincerity and accuracy) with all other elements of life in this world; b) this phenomenon of dragging politics into faith is an easy – dare I say, natural – thing to do, one which most of us have succumbed to at some point, and one which is probably the majority position among believers; and c) in discussing it I do not say that it ipso facto proves those that do it are hypocrites or false professors of faith. But though common historically and contemporaneously, and though not necessarily discrediting one’s faith claims, it is wrong.
One, it misdirects such forums from their proper purpose of declaring eternal, spiritual truths about Christ Jesus and sets their focus on the temporal affairs of this world. God says:
Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:1b-3).
He then goes on to tell us to kill those passions (“covetousness” and “anger, wrath, malice, slander”) which politics brings out, both by its nature and by the intentions of its practitioners (vv. 5-9).
But politics would have us walk by sight, not faith (comp. 2 Cor. 5:7), by the grievances we do see rather than the promises of God we await. It would have us trust our own understanding (comp. Prov. 3:5-6; Jer. 17:5), seeking the advantage of earthly kingdoms – which belong to Satan (Matt. 4:8-9) – that will soon perish, instead of Christ’s kingdom, which “is not of this world” (Jn. 18:36) and is that “better country” (Heb. 11:16) that endures forever (“of his kingdom there will be no end,” Lk. 1:33). Christ said being weighed down with the cares of this life chokes out his word in our hearts (Matt. 13:22), that same word which we are elsewhere told is the seed of our faith and our new birth in Christ (1 Pet. 1:23). Pray tell, what is politics, if not a preoccupation with the cares of this life?
Politics is the enemy of faith and piety, and in many people it drives out the Christian form of both: once wed politics and piety and politics becomes your piety. Thus also with faith. This process of politics subverting faith is dangerous because it is subtle and frequently effective, which is why there are multitudes of professing believers and churches that loudly declare all manner of political causes, often in Christian terminology, all while not declaring Jesus’ basic message of “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17) as he intended.
Again, meshing politics and faith does not always end there, and there are many people who stumble into the error without losing a sincere faith; but many people have made shipwreck of their faith by sailing rather for earthly shores than setting their minds on Christ’s kingdom. There is in fact an immense difficulty on this point, that of distinguishing between false teachers who make the faith political to subvert it, and sincere believers who are simply caught up in a common if mistaken trend (as is frequent, Gal. 2:11-14), and whose political preoccupations are straw that will be consumed in judgment while they themselves are yet saved (1 Cor. 3:9-15). The best thing, then, is to assiduously avoid politics except where it has a clear moral element (e.g., abortion) or a clear effect on our faith (e.g., a law forbidding its exercise). Key word ‘clear’: there are some people who regard everything as having a moral element. Of such people I have nothing to say except that God will deal with them as he sees fit, and hopefully bring many to repentance.[2]
Another problem with dragging politics into Christian forums is its effect on other believers. If political claim A is presented in Christian forum B, it implies that A is the Christian position. Other believers who disagree are implied to be anti- or unchristian for differing, put in the difficult position of arguing against the implied ‘Christian’ position, and reduced to being political themselves to defend the legitimacy of Christians adhering to their own position. It is unfair to them, in other words, and would seem to violate the thrust of Romans 14’s ethical principles as applied to citizenship and political involvement.
Consider an example. In a recent Gospelbound podcast, Collin Hansen interviewed Allen Guelzo about the state of American democracy, doing so in reference to Guelzo’s new book Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment. They can hold what historical and political opinions they please, and I do not here impugn the sincerity of their faith. But it is wrong to drag those opinions into a Christian forum or imply they have anything to do with the gospel.
Lay aside the enormous impropriety of referring to anything other than the Christian faith as “our faith” in a Christian forum, and consider that the views they mention are ones about which we might differ in good conscience. No one who reads Proverbs can doubt that it is permissible to be a Christian monarchist (16:10-15). No one who reads the Pentateuch or Judges fairly can deny that, as shown by their depraved deeds and the consequences thereof, the voice of the people at large is often not – most emphatically NOT – the voice of God, and that they show their unfitness to rule themselves (Ex. 32:25; Jdgs. 21:25). Viewed from the other direction, it is legitimate to believe in a hierarchical, oligarchical, or representative government of some sort (Ex. 18:13-26; Acts 6:3).[3] An allegiance to democracy is not a part of being a believer, in other words.
I don’t doubt that Hansen and Guelzo would agree with me on that point. But what kind of message do they send to believers living under despotism, or to novice believers here? Does it not imply that the faith has a political angle, that a Christian should be concerned about democracy? Could someone in such circumstances receive grace to sustain or edify in the face of struggles? In many cases no: all this talk about Lincoln would be quite alien and meaningless to him – whether a foreigner or a typically ambivalent-to-history American – and he would go away from a podcast named after the gospel (at the website of a group named after the gospel) unfed, associating the gospel with American history and politics and not the things of the Spirit and Christ’s kingdom.
Or again, one can differ about the historical claims. I know local Presbyterians who would say, and that in high dudgeon, that all of the talk about democracy is mistaken because our national government was intentionally framed as a republic, not a democracy. There is good evidence for that view. James Madison, the so-called “father of the constitution,” says in Federalist No. X that “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths” and contrasts them with “a republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”[4] He later spoke of the erroneous “confounding of a republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasoning drawn from the nature of the latter.” As for whether Lincoln is to be lauded as the savior of our traditional form of government, one suspects those Presbyterian “neo-Confederates” I pondered in my last article would demur on the ground that he presided over a war that destroyed one national, eleven state, and many hundreds of local governments that were popularly-elected.
Such difference of opinion on historical interpretation and proper political system is why it is irksome to hear Hansen say (about 42:27) “I’m gonna make my students here at Beeson Divinity School listen to this podcast to help them understand why I teach Abraham Lincoln in a course designed to train pastors,” and that he ranks Lincoln’s second inaugural address as one of “the two greatest works of public theology in American history.” There is indeed a further problem, one which bears consideration as an example of how fascination with a past political figure can bear mistaken notions in the present.
Guelzo admits (44:08) that Lincoln read Scripture as moral literature and culturally-relevant, not as inspired revelation: “he did not embrace a particular revelation, the authority of the Bible for himself personally, he recognized that it was authority, an authority in his time, and so he will in fact quote it.” Or again, “he will read it as he read Shakespeare, as something that will teach him important lessons.” If he didn’t personally regard it as authoritative – and Guelzo says Lincoln “doesn’t read it in the sense that a believer will read the Bible” – then why would he quote it at all, unless it be that he used it for pragmatic reasons as a bit of civil religion?
One might then conclude that his second inaugural address was not good public theology, but actually willful hypocrisy, the saying of what he didn’t personally believe because he knew it would be well received and politically advantageous. Pardon me, but isn’t it of the essence of one form of profanity when something is converted from its use as a sacred thing devoted to God’s service and instead employed in the common affairs of men? By Guelzo’s telling, that is what Lincoln did with Holy Scripture; it is, indeed, pretty much all he did with it publicly.
And yet we are to laud him in Christian forums and commend his “public theology” brilliance to pastors in training? Is that what it means to be “gospelbound”? The thing seems terribly naïve, a foray in hero-worship that creates a hero where there is none from a Christian standpoint—for misusing scripture for worldly purposes is wicked.
Now you will notice that my example here is rather obscure and academic: I have used it for that reason so that I might not have to attempt to make my point by a consideration of current electoral contests or by other points of political controversy. But my arguments stand, both in regards to it and to other, more immediately pressing and popular matters of politics. It is wrong to use a Christian forum, be it ecclesiastical or parachurch, for political purposes.
Doing so might roil few people’s blood, as with my example, but it might also so much discomfit others as to drive them from one’s church. Again, even defending against someone else’s political claims, as I have sometimes done, is difficult owing to its tendency to distract from a proper focus on Christ. And so, as I finish ‘sharing my notes,’ I ask: do we wish our faith to be a refuge from worldly woe? If yes, then can we agree that it is best to keep it free of non-essential things about which we can and will disagree?
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] “A Slip of the Tongue,” p. 184 of The Weight of Glory
[2] It is tempting to see a similarity of such people to the Pharisees, because, like that mistaken group, they find a matter of intense moral and spiritual consequence in the most mundane of everyday affairs.
[3] My argument in citing Acts 6 (the election of the first deacons) is one from the greater to the lesser: if representative government is good for the church of God that endures forever, will it not suffice for temporal nations? But I recognize that some peoples are not fit for representative government at some times and need to be ruled from above by a strong government.
[4] Granting that the franchise was widened between the constitution’s adoption and Lincoln’s day, the adherents of this view would say the nation was still (then and now) a republic, not a democracy.
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As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did.

What is a neo-Confederate, and why is their presence among us a problem? Such were my thoughts on reading Mrs. Nancy French’s statement to the Deseret Times that her family left their Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation because it was “brimming with neo-Confederates,” at least some of whom confronted her at communion. If she means by that (as I have read elsewhere), that people were harassing her for adopting an Ethiopian, then I say ‘shame on you’ to such people; and well might they ponder Numbers 12[1] and fear lest God’s wrath burn similarly against them.
But then if that is what is meant, where is the neo-Confederate angle? Why not simply say ‘racist?’ Hateful prejudice is by no means limited to neo-Confederates (whomever they are), and without an elaboration on who they are it is not clear why it should be regarded as an inherent trait of them at all, much less the essential one. (Then too, I should like to hear the perspective of the alleged ‘neo-Confederates,’ for fairness’ sake, and find myself very doubtful that a church would allow its members to cause a racist scene during communion without promptly imposing strict discipline.)
The Sunday after I read her remarks I worshipped at a PCA church with a Confederate flag above a gravestone in its churchyard, a church which is also working to establish closer relations with a nearby black church and which supports missions to the Cherokee. I have also worshipped at a church with parishioners who had the Confederate flag as their front license tag, and which has supported church plants among the local Latin population, as well as the first Indian-American plant in Fairfax Co., Virginia, and which has had interns from such places as Taiwan, China, and Brazil. At some points all of its interns have been foreigners or of non-European descent, and there are people there with adopted Ethiopian kids. I have had some interesting conversation about some of the writing of R. L. Dabney (a former Confederate officer) with one of the elders, and I know a man there who has portraits of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on his walls, and with whom the phrase “unreconstructed Southerner” is the highest praise; yet when I watched the film Hidden Figures with him, he was appalled at the mistreatment the main characters received on account of racial hatred.
I’ll hazard that such people would qualify as ‘neo-Confederate’ to people like Mrs. French, if only because they retain reverence for their forebears who lived and fought in the Confederacy, and yet I know of no evidence of prejudice on their parts, and such evidence as exists points the other way. Racism is not an inherent part of honoring the Confederacy, for one can honor those who were part of it without approving all that they did. One can reverence one’s ancestors out of instinctual loyalty, simply because they are one’s forebears; and one can at the same time be critical of their behavior and distinguish between those deeds which are good and worthy of emulation, and those which are sinful and ought to be shunned.
Such an attitude of primal acceptance of the person with a critical position toward his deeds is thoroughly Christian. It is a commonplace of our faith that we distinguish between people and their behavior, that we love the sinner and hate the sin. It is on that point in regard to this matter of ‘neo-Confederates’ that one perceives one of the matters in which many common evangelicals have a radically different perspective than the influential set among us.
On this matter the perspective of our famous people is largely that of the influential people in American society at large. That is, the late Confederacy is regarded as a thing so heinous that all positive regard for it ought to be purged from the present. There is a prominent campaign at present to whitewash history of the Confederacy and the Old South, and to engage in damnatio memoriae against those individuals who were in any way involved with them by driving the honor of them from both church and society. In civil society monuments are removed from courthouse grounds, the names of army bases changed, and companies and entertainers drop all reference to the South because of its (now long past) association with slavery. In the church similar things happen: First Presbyterian Columbia, South Carolina removes James Henley Thornwell’s name from its library, the Gospel Coalition publishes articles saying “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause,” and Mrs. French laments neo-Confederates among us, and in so doing tacitly assumes people will understand that tolerating such neo-Confederates is a moral fault so severe as to justify leaving one’s church on account of it.
The message is clear: slavery was a sin so enormous and corrosive as to taint all who came into contact with it so long as time endures, and to commend their condemnation by people today. It is a sort of social/historical version of the legal concept of attainder by ‘corruption of blood,’ that judgment in which the heirs of a criminal were forever denied their inheritance because of his crimes. Well might we call this contemporary phenomenon ‘social attainder of corruption of civil institution,’ wherein a society that allows a sinful thing thereby transfers all the guilt of it to all its citizens in perpetuity. There are some who have been caught in this movement of historical cleansing who do not go so far as that, but I have read people write as if there were no Christians in the South before the abolition of slavery, some small antislavery sects like Quakers and converted natives and slaves excepted. I have heard people argue that the theoretical approval of slavery ipso facto proves the individuals who did so are hypocrites,[2] and that anyone’s willing participation in a society that allowed it works a corruption by guilt of association that ought to make them persona non grata. Their sole standard for judging the sincerity of past believers is not any scriptural virtue like the presence of faith or good works, but where they stand viz. slavery or other questions of ‘racial justice.’
As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did. I honor my Virginia ancestors of the 1860s because it is a natural, proper human impulse, and because I recognize that I would not exist without them. But in so doing I simultaneously regret their sins and think that losing the war was God’s just punishment on the South for its sins associated with slavery. This approach that recognizes that human sin means all people and societies have glaring faults and does not think in simple black-and-white terms of ‘reject or condemn’ on the basis of a single present litmus test is no doubt offensive to those that want to exult themselves cheaply by hating a class whom it is fashionable to hate. But it is the right approach, and the only one that allows us to actually to study and learn from history rather than merely engaging in a hamartiography that looks to the past only to find something to condemn in the present. And it is the only approach that prevents us being caught up in a spirit of social revolution that seeks to wholly divorce us from the past, the spirit of the French Revolution that says ‘the past was wholly bad, let’s start afresh with Year One.’[3]
There is another respect in which I find her disapproval of ‘neo-Confederates’ rather curious, and that is the cultural and historical disconnect that it betrays. The lady lives in Tennessee, which was a Confederate state, and which currently regards “Robert E. Lee Day,” “Confederate Decoration Day,”  and “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day” as official state “days of special observance” that are to be observed “with appropriate ceremonies expressive of the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of such dates” (Tennessee Code 15-2-101). The PCA itself is a direct descendant of the now-defunct Presbyterian Church in the United States, which first formed as the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America in 1861.
For the lady to express bewilderment that people in a church descended from the Confederate presbyterian church in a former Confederate state would retain some reverence for the Confederacy is curious indeed. It is as if she took up residence in New England and joined a congregationalist church that dated to the 1600s, only to remark one day that she was amazed at how blue-blooded, Yankee, and puritanical the people were there.[4] One feels that the locals might justly ask, ‘Pray tell, madam, what kind of people did you think you would find here?’
But all of this does not have the emotional disappointment that is inflicted when we consider that Mrs. French has publicly argued for more civility in these polarized times in which we live. Her recent book (co-written with Curtis Chang), The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics, is based on a curriculum produced by Chang, Russell Moore, and her husband David that “helps reframe our political identify away from the ‘what’ of political positions and towards the ‘how’ of being centered on Jesus.” I will not generally appraise that effort now, though Aaron Renn has some interesting thoughts on it here (spoiler: the project is bankrolled by leftist infidels).
I do however find it a bit much to swallow when someone argues for civility in some forums and then exposes fellow professing believers to public opprobrium in others—all the more where that argument for civility occurs as part of an alliance with people who wish to fundamentally alter (and thereby destroy) our faith, the unbelieving financiers Renn mentions. By opprobrium I do not mean criticism, but that dismissal with a word that appears in the Deseret Times. She takes it for granted that everyone knows that being ‘neo-Confederate’ is wrong and that such people can be summarily dismissed to a newspaper belonging to the Mormon communion, which communion is, on the view of orthodoxy, heretical. (Which fact Mrs. French acknowledges.)[5]
Being unfamiliar with the particulars, I do not discount that Mrs. French may have been mistreated at her PCA church;[6] if so, shame on those who did so, and they ought to repent. But I do think that casually dismissing such people before heretics[7] is the wrong response, especially where it occurs in an interview in which she is otherwise praised for being gracious to opponents and when she otherwise argues for respect in spite of disagreement. And in all this we see that division of perspective that appears between the influential set and the commoners, and which is so much troubling evangelical churches just now. I happen to agree with Mrs. French on certain points – I long ago sickened at ‘do you support Trump?’ being the litmus test of acceptability by both sides – and I am far from thinking that contemporary affairs can be fully understood in an ‘elites vs. the people’ framework or that either faction is wholly right or wrong. But they are definitely distinct groups with distinct and sometimes clashing perspectives, as is shown here, groups that ae sometimes unable or unwilling to understand each other. And while I understand why the elites disapprove certain trends in contemporary Christendom, I wish they would not respond by moving left into the territory of the inexplicable, the hobnobbing with enemies of righteousness and truth[8] and soliciting money from infidels; especially when this is done while claiming to be the true, unmoving guardians of conservative politics and Christian faith.[9]
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
[1] This chapter recounts how Moses’s brother and sister Aaron and Miriam “spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (v. 1), and were subsequently rebuked by God (v. 8), with Miriam also being stricken by leprosy in punishment (vv. 10-15). Cush is the historic term for Ethiopia in scripture, hence they were angry he had married an Ethiopian. I.e., God who punished them for their ethnic prejudice in their day is apt to do likewise with those who hold a similar attitude in our day regarding adoptees of Ethiopians.
[2] Hardly anything new. The songwriter “Stephen Foster enlivened abolitionist meetings by denouncing churches that did not censure slavery unequivocally as ‘combinations of thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and murderers,’” saying “the Methodist Church was ‘more corrupt than any house of ill fame in New York.’” The Mind of the Master Class by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, p. 485
[3] Hence Herman Bavinck speaks of the sin of inconstancy being “manifested in the antihistorical sense—in the perpetual reconstruction of history that tears people from their own history, from tradition, from the inheritance of previous generations. The result is a loss of piety and a severing of the bonds of the past (revolution) in exchange for subjective, self-pleasing egocentricity and individualism” (Reformed Ethics, Vol. I, p. 126). The revolutionary ‘cleanse the past’ spirit is especially a mark of collectivist political parties like socialists and Communists, and so it seems as if this contradicts Bavinck’s talk of it ending in individualism. The answer (if I can anticipate Bavinck’s thought) is that the political/cultural effort to dispense with the past by collectivist parties ends in the individuals affected being deprived of a larger heritage and therefore, nature abhorring a vacuum, turning their interests inward to self-seeking (the section on inconstancy occurs in a larger section on “sins that take pleasure in form” beginning on p. 124). The observations of Dutch historian Groen van Prinsterer (an influence on Bavinck) on the nature of revolutionary ideas in his Unbelief and Revolution are immensely helpful on this point, and anyone wishing to make sense of contemporary trends is recommended to peruse them, as has been argued by others.
[4] Given the current state of New England society, I fear that in such a case this puritanical streak would be rather social than theological in nature, the zeal for certain leftist causes rather than that of Christ.
[5] In her book Ghosted, p. 123
[6] She mentions people writing her church saying she and Mr. French were closet Mormons for supporting Mitt Romney and asking the church to disciple them, though I cannot tell if this was while she was in the PCA. Ibid.
[7] It is noteworthy that one of the supporters of the After Party project is the Trinity Forum, in which David French and Russell Moore serve as fellows, and which has elsewhere presented Mormons as Christians, notably in its report “Christianity, Pluralism, and Public Life in the United States: Insights from Christian Leaders” (p. 52), something it extends to members of the Roman communion and the (alas) unfaithful Episcopal Church as well.
[8] Russell Moore and David French both appear in atheist Rob Reiner’s documentary God and Country.
[9] E.g. at about 2:40 here, where Joe Scarborough claims it was not for the most part Mrs. French who moved, but her critics, a point on which see largely agrees.
As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did.

What is a neo-Confederate, and why is their presence among us a problem? Such were my thoughts on reading Mrs. Nancy French’s statement to the Deseret Times that her family left their Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation because it was “brimming with neo-Confederates,” at least some of whom confronted her at communion. If she means by that (as I have read elsewhere), that people were harassing her for adopting an Ethiopian, then I say ‘shame on you’ to such people; and well might they ponder Numbers 12[1] and fear lest God’s wrath burn similarly against them.
But then if that is what is meant, where is the neo-Confederate angle? Why not simply say ‘racist?’ Hateful prejudice is by no means limited to neo-Confederates (whomever they are), and without an elaboration on who they are it is not clear why it should be regarded as an inherent trait of them at all, much less the essential one. (Then too, I should like to hear the perspective of the alleged ‘neo-Confederates,’ for fairness’ sake, and find myself very doubtful that a church would allow its members to cause a racist scene during communion without promptly imposing strict discipline.)
The Sunday after I read her remarks I worshipped at a PCA church with a Confederate flag above a gravestone in its churchyard, a church which is also working to establish closer relations with a nearby black church and which supports missions to the Cherokee. I have also worshipped at a church with parishioners who had the Confederate flag as their front license tag, and which has supported church plants among the local Latin population, as well as the first Indian-American plant in Fairfax Co., Virginia, and which has had interns from such places as Taiwan, China, and Brazil. At some points all of its interns have been foreigners or of non-European descent, and there are people there with adopted Ethiopian kids. I have had some interesting conversation about some of the writing of R. L. Dabney (a former Confederate officer) with one of the elders, and I know a man there who has portraits of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on his walls, and with whom the phrase “unreconstructed Southerner” is the highest praise; yet when I watched the film Hidden Figures with him, he was appalled at the mistreatment the main characters received on account of racial hatred.
I’ll hazard that such people would qualify as ‘neo-Confederate’ to people like Mrs. French, if only because they retain reverence for their forebears who lived and fought in the Confederacy, and yet I know of no evidence of prejudice on their parts, and such evidence as exists points the other way. Racism is not an inherent part of honoring the Confederacy, for one can honor those who were part of it without approving all that they did. One can reverence one’s ancestors out of instinctual loyalty, simply because they are one’s forebears; and one can at the same time be critical of their behavior and distinguish between those deeds which are good and worthy of emulation, and those which are sinful and ought to be shunned.
Such an attitude of primal acceptance of the person with a critical position toward his deeds is thoroughly Christian. It is a commonplace of our faith that we distinguish between people and their behavior, that we love the sinner and hate the sin. It is on that point in regard to this matter of ‘neo-Confederates’ that one perceives one of the matters in which many common evangelicals have a radically different perspective than the influential set among us.
On this matter the perspective of our famous people is largely that of the influential people in American society at large. That is, the late Confederacy is regarded as a thing so heinous that all positive regard for it ought to be purged from the present. There is a prominent campaign at present to whitewash history of the Confederacy and the Old South, and to engage in damnatio memoriae against those individuals who were in any way involved with them by driving the honor of them from both church and society. In civil society monuments are removed from courthouse grounds, the names of army bases changed, and companies and entertainers drop all reference to the South because of its (now long past) association with slavery. In the church similar things happen: First Presbyterian Columbia, South Carolina removes James Henley Thornwell’s name from its library, the Gospel Coalition publishes articles saying “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause,” and Mrs. French laments neo-Confederates among us, and in so doing tacitly assumes people will understand that tolerating such neo-Confederates is a moral fault so severe as to justify leaving one’s church on account of it.
The message is clear: slavery was a sin so enormous and corrosive as to taint all who came into contact with it so long as time endures, and to commend their condemnation by people today. It is a sort of social/historical version of the legal concept of attainder by ‘corruption of blood,’ that judgment in which the heirs of a criminal were forever denied their inheritance because of his crimes. Well might we call this contemporary phenomenon ‘social attainder of corruption of civil institution,’ wherein a society that allows a sinful thing thereby transfers all the guilt of it to all its citizens in perpetuity. There are some who have been caught in this movement of historical cleansing who do not go so far as that, but I have read people write as if there were no Christians in the South before the abolition of slavery, some small antislavery sects like Quakers and converted natives and slaves excepted. I have heard people argue that the theoretical approval of slavery ipso facto proves the individuals who did so are hypocrites,[2] and that anyone’s willing participation in a society that allowed it works a corruption by guilt of association that ought to make them persona non grata. Their sole standard for judging the sincerity of past believers is not any scriptural virtue like the presence of faith or good works, but where they stand viz. slavery or other questions of ‘racial justice.’
As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did. I honor my Virginia ancestors of the 1860s because it is a natural, proper human impulse, and because I recognize that I would not exist without them. But in so doing I simultaneously regret their sins and think that losing the war was God’s just punishment on the South for its sins associated with slavery. This approach that recognizes that human sin means all people and societies have glaring faults and does not think in simple black-and-white terms of ‘reject or condemn’ on the basis of a single present litmus test is no doubt offensive to those that want to exult themselves cheaply by hating a class whom it is fashionable to hate. But it is the right approach, and the only one that allows us to actually to study and learn from history rather than merely engaging in a hamartiography that looks to the past only to find something to condemn in the present. And it is the only approach that prevents us being caught up in a spirit of social revolution that seeks to wholly divorce us from the past, the spirit of the French Revolution that says ‘the past was wholly bad, let’s start afresh with Year One.’[3]
There is another respect in which I find her disapproval of ‘neo-Confederates’ rather curious, and that is the cultural and historical disconnect that it betrays. The lady lives in Tennessee, which was a Confederate state, and which currently regards “Robert E. Lee Day,” “Confederate Decoration Day,”  and “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day” as official state “days of special observance” that are to be observed “with appropriate ceremonies expressive of the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of such dates” (Tennessee Code 15-2-101). The PCA itself is a direct descendant of the now-defunct Presbyterian Church in the United States, which first formed as the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America in 1861.
For the lady to express bewilderment that people in a church descended from the Confederate presbyterian church in a former Confederate state would retain some reverence for the Confederacy is curious indeed. It is as if she took up residence in New England and joined a congregationalist church that dated to the 1600s, only to remark one day that she was amazed at how blue-blooded, Yankee, and puritanical the people were there.[4] One feels that the locals might justly ask, ‘Pray tell, madam, what kind of people did you think you would find here?’
But all of this does not have the emotional disappointment that is inflicted when we consider that Mrs. French has publicly argued for more civility in these polarized times in which we live. Her recent book (co-written with Curtis Chang), The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics, is based on a curriculum produced by Chang, Russell Moore, and her husband David that “helps reframe our political identify away from the ‘what’ of political positions and towards the ‘how’ of being centered on Jesus.” I will not generally appraise that effort now, though Aaron Renn has some interesting thoughts on it here (spoiler: the project is bankrolled by leftist infidels).
I do however find it a bit much to swallow when someone argues for civility in some forums and then exposes fellow professing believers to public opprobrium in others—all the more where that argument for civility occurs as part of an alliance with people who wish to fundamentally alter (and thereby destroy) our faith, the unbelieving financiers Renn mentions. By opprobrium I do not mean criticism, but that dismissal with a word that appears in the Deseret Times. She takes it for granted that everyone knows that being ‘neo-Confederate’ is wrong and that such people can be summarily dismissed to a newspaper belonging to the Mormon communion, which communion is, on the view of orthodoxy, heretical. (Which fact Mrs. French acknowledges.)[5]
Being unfamiliar with the particulars, I do not discount that Mrs. French may have been mistreated at her PCA church;[6] if so, shame on those who did so, and they ought to repent. But I do think that casually dismissing such people before heretics[7] is the wrong response, especially where it occurs in an interview in which she is otherwise praised for being gracious to opponents and when she otherwise argues for respect in spite of disagreement. And in all this we see that division of perspective that appears between the influential set and the commoners, and which is so much troubling evangelical churches just now. I happen to agree with Mrs. French on certain points – I long ago sickened at ‘do you support Trump?’ being the litmus test of acceptability by both sides – and I am far from thinking that contemporary affairs can be fully understood in an ‘elites vs. the people’ framework or that either faction is wholly right or wrong. But they are definitely distinct groups with distinct and sometimes clashing perspectives, as is shown here, groups that ae sometimes unable or unwilling to understand each other. And while I understand why the elites disapprove certain trends in contemporary Christendom, I wish they would not respond by moving left into the territory of the inexplicable, the hobnobbing with enemies of righteousness and truth[8] and soliciting money from infidels; especially when this is done while claiming to be the true, unmoving guardians of conservative politics and Christian faith.[9]
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] This chapter recounts how Moses’s brother and sister Aaron and Miriam “spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (v. 1), and were subsequently rebuked by God (v. 8), with Miriam also being stricken by leprosy in punishment (vv. 10-15). Cush is the historic term for Ethiopia in scripture, hence they were angry he had married an Ethiopian. I.e., God who punished them for their ethnic prejudice in their day is apt to do likewise with those who hold a similar attitude in our day regarding adoptees of Ethiopians.
[2] Hardly anything new. The songwriter “Stephen Foster enlivened abolitionist meetings by denouncing churches that did not censure slavery unequivocally as ‘combinations of thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and murderers,’” saying “the Methodist Church was ‘more corrupt than any house of ill fame in New York.’” The Mind of the Master Class by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, p. 485
[3] Hence Herman Bavinck speaks of the sin of inconstancy being “manifested in the antihistorical sense—in the perpetual reconstruction of history that tears people from their own history, from tradition, from the inheritance of previous generations. The result is a loss of piety and a severing of the bonds of the past (revolution) in exchange for subjective, self-pleasing egocentricity and individualism” (Reformed Ethics, Vol. I, p. 126). The revolutionary ‘cleanse the past’ spirit is especially a mark of collectivist political parties like socialists and Communists, and so it seems as if this contradicts Bavinck’s talk of it ending in individualism. The answer (if I can anticipate Bavinck’s thought) is that the political/cultural effort to dispense with the past by collectivist parties ends in the individuals affected being deprived of a larger heritage and therefore, nature abhorring a vacuum, turning their interests inward to self-seeking (the section on inconstancy occurs in a larger section on “sins that take pleasure in form” beginning on p. 124). The observations of Dutch historian Groen van Prinsterer (an influence on Bavinck) on the nature of revolutionary ideas in his Unbelief and Revolution are immensely helpful on this point, and anyone wishing to make sense of contemporary trends is recommended to peruse them, as has been argued by others.
[4] Given the current state of New England society, I fear that in such a case this puritanical streak would be rather social than theological in nature, the zeal for certain leftist causes rather than that of Christ.
[5] In her book Ghosted, p. 123
[6] She mentions people writing her church saying she and Mr. French were closet Mormons for supporting Mitt Romney and asking the church to disciple them, though I cannot tell if this was while she was in the PCA. Ibid.
[7] It is noteworthy that one of the supporters of the After Party project is the Trinity Forum, in which David French and Russell Moore serve as fellows, and which has elsewhere presented Mormons as Christians, notably in its report “Christianity, Pluralism, and Public Life in the United States: Insights from Christian Leaders” (p. 52), something it extends to members of the Roman communion and the (alas) unfaithful Episcopal Church as well.
[8] Russell Moore and David French both appear in atheist Rob Reiner’s documentary God and Country.
[9] E.g. at about 2:40 here, where Joe Scarborough claims it was not for the most part Mrs. French who moved, but her critics, a point on which see largely agrees.
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Then too, it seems doubtful whether that is a reliable theory of the relation of one’s physical activities to one’s propensity for political violence. Maybe the challenge of weightlifting would have been an outlet for the young man’s anger and aggression, sure; but maybe it would have just made him a bulkier attempted assassin.

I have before me American Reformer’s Colin Redemer’s tweet of a picture of the attempted assassin of Mr. Trump, accompanied by the comment that “to help prevent tragedies like this in the future the USA must immediately implement mandatory weight training for all school boys five days per week.”[1] I confess, such a thing lays my brain prostrate. For as it is actually presented, the “traged[y] like this” referred to is not the late assassination attempt, but rather the assailant’s young countenance, what with its pale complexion, large glasses, and unimposing appearance. It is a strange notion that thinks weightlifting will improve such things. I’m not aware that deadlifts improve one’s eyesight such that glasses are no longer necessary, nor that, say, squats change one’s native skin tone or facial structure.
But perhaps it is not the young man’s appearance to which our tweeter objected. Perhaps it was his character. Perhaps Redemer thinks that weightlifting would have left him with a better character that would not have attempted to commit political murder. Maybe; but if that is what was meant, it was most emphatically not expressed well.
Then too, it seems doubtful whether that is a reliable theory of the relation of one’s physical activities to one’s propensity for political violence. Maybe the challenge of weightlifting would have been an outlet for the young man’s anger and aggression, sure; but maybe it would have just made him a bulkier attempted assassin. That is a theory of exercise science, political science, and psychology of which we shall have to remain ignorant. And whether or no it may prove useful in the case of other young men, I somehow doubt that schools across the country are going to mandate weightlifting because of the opinions of the director of education at American Reformer.
Further things come to mind. One is that the tweet above is an uncharitable thing to say even of a dead evildoer. Another is that, if what was objected to was the would-be assassin’s perceived lack of masculinity – as seems implied by the inclusion of his admittedly rather unflattering yearbook photo – then such an objection is nonsense. That young man did not lack masculine character. Indeed, he seems to have had an overabundance of it, far more than the average man of any political stripe—or girth. Attempting to murder a former president is not an act of cowardice, but requires an immense courage that is willing to face almost certain death. Nor did he lack conviction. He was so convinced of the correctness of his opinions and of Mr. Trump’s danger to our republic that he was willing to kill for them.
The evil of his case was that his masculine traits were misdirected to a wicked end and left unrestrained by a well-informed conscience. His courage was an evil courage, like that of Atilla the Hun, and his conviction was an evil conviction, like that of John Brown. Granting that weightlifting might dissipate many ill tendencies, it still does not provide positive moral instruction. And in this case the young man was in want of a thorough acquaintance with the command “you shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13).
But this is all beating about for needles and cones in a pine forest. Which is to say that it is a preoccupation with things that have a very prescient point, but which pale in importance in comparison to that larger thing of which they are a part. That larger thing here is the question of how someone who is so adamant about a renewal of robust, Protestant thought could make such a ridiculous and uncharitable statement as that tweet above. Redemer was previously vice president at the Davenant Institute, whose intellectual character is plain, and his main literary efforts until now have been in such things as editing poetry for Davenant’s journal Ad Fontes and modernizing Thomas Traherne’s works. There is quite a difference between that and being so obsessed with the benefits of weightlifting as to demand it for all schoolboys.
It seems the answer is that the two things are different manifestations of the same impulse, that the desire for intellectual rigor manifests in the work of editing and writing, and that a desire for physical vigor comes out in the promotion of physical strength. Both proceed from the same basic desire to be vigorous, disciplined, powerful, influential—in a word, a man. Surely there is not evil but good in those things taken separately, or even, in a certain way, together.[2] To want to have a sound grasp of the truth and a healthy, disciplined, useful mind and body that can benefit others is reasonable, surely.
But as seen in that tweet that has inspired this piece, the desire to be such things is not merely personal but is projected upon others as well. It is elevated into a universal ideal that is to be forced onto others via governmental power, as in Redemer’s desired mandatory weightlifting for schoolboys.  That policy would give the state effective ownership of schoolboys’ bodies, to abet the frightful influence they already have over their minds. It would enlarge the state’s tyranny to be over the whole person, and tell such boys that their bodies are not their own but belong to the state, because they have no right to be weak or undisciplined, and so they don’t grow up to be violent political zealots. He’s advocating for a position in which the state takes preeminence over the individual, in other words.
And it is that which bothers me about this, and about many of the people going about talking about masculinity and Christendom and all that. They object to much in our current government and culture and talk a great deal about liberty, not because they are committed to liberty as such, but because they have their own version of what state and society should be, and because they want to use the levers of power to bring it about. They do not object to the status quo because they believe individuals should conduct themselves (including in questions of exercise) as they deem best in accordance with their own values and circumstances and consciences. They object to it because they have their own ideals that they intend to shove on everyone else in all walks of life. And one of those things they want to force on others is their own view of manhood, a view that is narrow and mistaken, and that does not give sufficient consideration to the variety of masculinity God has providentially ordained for his sons.  (I won’t belabor that point now, but suffice it to say that I see no reason to think that God intends all of us to read Traherne and Protestant social theory, or to lift weights, or to be paragons of mental and physical achievement otherwise.)
Now let’s draw this idea of Redemer’s closer and make it more personal. Imagine the young men whom you know who look like the late gunman. Would you truly want them to be forced to take weightlifting courses because the local school board or the Department of Education mandated it? Would you like to have to explain to your son that the reason that he and millions of other boys like him have to lift weights is because this one guy on one occasion tried to kill one former president a couple of years after he graduated high school? Would you like to have to explain why our society so values the lives of the handful of men who are former presidents that we are prepared to make tens of millions of boys make a major change to their way of living for their ostensible safety? Or why our society is so utterly scared of young men becoming assassins that we think they should have to take mandatory physical education classes to hopefully prevent it? Would you like to try to explain why the government in the self-professed ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ is so paranoid and has such powers? Or again, if the tragedy lamented is not the late gunman’s deeds but his broader character, that society has determined young men have no right to be weak, or unmasculine, or to fail to meet a certain aesthetic appearance, and is therefore mandating they meet its standards for them?
For that matter, other questions arise. If Redemer is correct that boys lifting weights is right and necessary, and schools decline to mandate such a thing, is it then incumbent upon parents to do so? One imagines that would make for an interesting kitchen table conversation.
Dad: ‘Son, you’re going to start lifting weights.’
Son: ‘Why? I don’t like lifting.’
Dad: ‘Because I’m afraid you’re going to try to kill a former president if you don’t. Also, you owe it to everyone – us, yourself, the rest of the family, church, state, and society – to not be weak. It’s your masculine duty.
That son might be forgiven for rejoining that there are other ways he could be a loving and useful person. And if he was of an historical turn of mind, he might know as well that Luther and Calvin and many others of the great men of faith were not imposing, hang-about-the-weight-room types.
But this is all dealing in hypotheticals (however pertinent). To conclude more decisively, let it be said that when someone has gotten to the point where he is so worried about the daily exercise activities of multitudes of schoolboys whom he does not know that he wishes to express his will upon them via sweeping government fiat, we are well outside the realm of New Testament thought, with its “bodily training is just slightly beneficial, but godliness is beneficial for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:8, NASB), and are very far into an arrogant presumption that thinks it has the right and the duty to worry itself with the affairs of others. Such a thing ignores the other-worldly character of our faith, and the liberty all believers have been granted in Christ to live to him as they see fit (Rom. 14; 1 Cor. 9). And when people begin to mesh civil and spiritual so readily, and to develop such a meddlesome spirit in Christ’s name, the rest of us who live in accordance with scripture-informed conscience rather than social vision might be forgiven for feeling rather irritated at that state of affairs, and well might we fear lest such a view proves more destructive to our faith and the church’s well-being and influence than many of our express enemies—especially when it expends itself in excesses as that statement which I have considered here.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
[1] Viewable at Mere Orthodoxy here, where I first encountered it.
[2] Less the desire for power and influence, which is often perilous.
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I write to you in reference to reports that you are on the cusp of receiving Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis, Missouri into your fold, along with her leadership, including her senior pastor, Greg Johnson. Before taking such action, I earnestly implore you to ponder the following four points as they reflect upon Dr. Johnson’s fitness for office among you:

[Author’s preface: Much of the material recounted here is sinful and morally-corrosive, and as I do not wish to lead you into sin even in opposing wrong (Lk. 17:1-2), I strongly counsel you to prayerfully consider whether it is advantageous for you to read what follows at all. I emphatically request that women, the young, new believers, and those especially tempted to sexual immorality refrain from reading this; and as for those who do proceed, I urge you, in the spirit of Gal. 6:1, to keep close watch on yourself lest you too be tempted, and to counteract this with a large course of holy exercises, as the reading of scripture, prayer, meditation, and wholesome fellowship.]
Dear Brothers:
I am a member of a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and write to you in reference to reports that you are on the cusp of receiving Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis, Missouri into your fold, along with her leadership, including her senior pastor, Greg Johnson. Before taking such action, I earnestly implore you to ponder the following four points as they reflect upon Dr. Johnson’s fitness for office among you:

One, in an article published at the website Living Out on August 19th, 2021, Johnson subtitled one of his sections “The human propensity to f*** things up,” and elaborated:

As Francis Spufford writes, it’s ‘the human propensity to f*** things up’ that best points to the fact that Christianity still makes profound emotional sense.
Sanitized cursing is still wrong, not least since a repentant curser such as myself (and practically everyone over the age of childhood) can clearly tell what is meant. What is sinful is the opposite of what is holy, and it is the latter that God requires of all his people, but especially those who would shepherd others. Our Lord said that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt. 12:34), the digital corollary of which is that it is out of the heart that the fingers type.
Actually, writing something is worse, since one can speak from fatigue or momentary emotion, but one who writes what is sinful has the opportunity to ponder whether it is appropriate to publish before doing so—and in this case saw fit to proceed. I would never write such a thing in an email at work, and would fear for my job if I did. And yet it can be used in an article professing to teach Christ’s faith? Such things “ought not to be” (Jas. 3:10).
In fact, there is a further problem with it, for Johnson quotes here what is a formal concept with Spufford, his alternative to the orthodox doctrine of sin. Spufford is an utter heretic whose point in the book quoted is that the faith cannot be known, but still makes “surprising emotional sense.”[1] (See footnote for examples of his heresies.) That is a radically different faith from the historic one taught in Scripture, yet Johnson willfully appealed to Spufford and his teaching, what is no small fault.

Regrettably, Johnson’s unclean language appears elsewhere. In his 2021 book Still Time to Care, he writes the following, but before recounting it, I reiterate my prefatory warning and strongly counsel any readers who have no immediate role in his acceptance to skip it, for it is sorely filthy and does not tend to one’s edification.

Beginning on page 169 he has a section called “Teenage Greek Boys and the Men They Melted,” in which he ‘contextualizes’ pederasty and says things like “what can a woman do when her husband has skin silkier than hers and can snare more men?” (quoting Ovid). On p. 171 he quotes a homoerotic Greek drinking song and comments “my, how those Greek men melted.” The correspondent who brought this to my attention says that Johnson even makes a hypothetical introduction at one point that runs “Hi I’m Greg, I am a Christian and I want to build my life on receiving as much sex as I can from men, with me in the passive role,” though he neglected to mention where and I have much too high a respect for my soul to go looking for it.
Such statements are disgusting and reprehensible, and they openly violate God’s commands in Ephesians 5:3-4:
Sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
Indeed, I’m not sure I should even have published them here; but as you are considering him for office among you, you ought to know the true character of the man, as shown in statements such as this; for “the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil” (Matt. 12:35). Again, he knowingly chose to make such graphic sodomy jokes in the name of arguing for Christian compassion. True compassion never involves such open rebellion against God’s commands, and never clothes itself in filth (1 Cor. 13:6).

Johnson’s church allowed its property be used for the “Transluminate” festival in 2020, which event was a “celebration of transgender, agender, non-binary, genderqueer, and genderfluid artists” and included a play about “a human [who] wants to transform into another species.” Using God’s property to give material aid to the open celebration of debauchery is as brazen a rebellion against him as when the Israelites worshipped idols in the temple. It is not evangelism, outreach, or any form of Christian ministry, but aiding and abetting those sins to which God gives people over as judgment (Rom. 1:18-32). God says it is an abomination when people adopt the dress of the opposite sex (Deut. 22:5)—shall we deem it less evil when they permanently disfigure themselves in attempting to adopt the physique of the opposite sex? Yet that was what “Transluminate” encouraged, and far from calling its participants to repentance without ensnaring their church in sin, Memorial’s leadership gladly gave their property for Transluminate’s use. People who do such things clearly have no fear of God, else they should tremble lest that wrath which he so often poured upon the Israelites (e.g., Eze. 8-9) should come also upon us.
Johnson has not hesitated to casually slander those that disagree with him. Consider this tweet:

Laying aside the severe twisting of Gal. 2 to his own purposes in that, accusing people who disapprove one’s actions of being gospel-denying false teachers, and thereby bringing upon them the fierce condemnation of the New Testament (e.g., “for them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved,” 2 Pet. 2:17) is a grievous slander indeed, worthy rather of Satan, the great accuser of the brethren, than of one claiming to be a grace-bearing emissary of Christ.
Now God says, “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses” (1 Tim. 5:19). I have given you four lines of evidence, all public, and most drawn from his own words. I’m not aware that he has repented the statements or deeds mentioned above, but even if he has, they are so numerous and of such a severe nature as to disqualify him from office. I therefore earnestly implore you not to accept this man into office among you, nor to accept that church or its other elders which standfast to him and participate in his sins.
Be wise and learn from our experience in the PCA. This man’s late tenure among us was fraught with strife, and he nearly splintered the denomination. Our Lord says to “beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” and that we “will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:15-16). Singlehandedly embroiling the largest non-apostate Presbyterian denomination in the country in years of strife and nearly splitting it is a rotten fruit, wouldn’t you say? Should you then open the gate to the pasture to such a man, and employ him in the government of the sheep and the evaluation of future shepherds? I am hopeful that God’s grace will enable you to ponder this matter aright, but if you will not listen to my warning here but instead stiffen your necks, imagining that any of the transgressions I have mentioned above is excusable or, worse still, mistaking it for Christian ministry, then I fear for you, that this word draws nigh against you: “it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God” (1 Pet. 4:17).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] He says at one point that “it is a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions [i.e. “of the Creed”] that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don’t have the feelings because I have assented to the ideas.” He subsequently says “my belief is made of, built up from, sustained by emotions like that. That’s what makes it real.” He also quotes the Quran approvingly and espouses a sort of agnosticism, saying “I don’t know that any of it is true. (And neither do you, and neither does Professor Dawkins, and neither does anybody. It isn’t the kind of thing you can know. It isn’t a knowable item.)” He disparages the intellect in favor of the emotions, saying “emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn’t checkable against the physical universe.” These and further errors (inc. blasphemy and what appears to be pantheism and denials of God’s sovereignty, providence, and miracles) occur in a three page section (pp.19-21) in which he recounts feeling good listening to Mozart in a cafe after he had been up all night arguing with his wife because he committed adultery—hardly the right circumstances under which to formulate theological doctrine. (To say the very least . . .) But Johnson did not hesitate to quote him without qualification.
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The church’s independence is inferred from the nature of its early operations, its instructions from Christ and the apostles, and from its unique nature as God’s chosen people on Earth. At no point did Christ or his disciples ever say anything to the effect of ‘and when you select elders to rule your churches, remember to consult with the local rabbis and pagan priests as to whom to select, and be sure to allow the local Roman magistrate to select at least one.’ That the church would select its officers from its own midst (Acts 1:21-26; 6:1-6) and according to its own divinely-given criteria (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Tit. 1:6-9) is taken for granted.

In a previous article I asserted that the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)’s internal affairs are none of the business of political entities, whether parties or the formers of opinion. A correspondent wrote to the effect that my defense of the church’s independence was so strong as to suggest that she may go about acting as if she is above all criticism. He sets against my assertion of the church’s independence a commitment to transparency, fearing lest the church hold its privacy so highly that she effectively isolate herself from the public view entirely, and in so doing foster a climate in which she might be tempted to cover her inevitable faults.
Such a leap from what I actually said in arguing that the church’s internal matters be kept internal to its perceived implications is a bit much of a transmogrification to my mind, but fearing lest others should similarly misunderstand, I present the following clarifications of the church’s independence.

The church’s independence is not absolute (Mk. 12:17). Her property insurance company can require her to maintain working smoke detectors. The government can require her to obey legitimate laws (e.g., respecting building codes), provided said laws are evenly applied and not a pretext for discrimination. Her ministers and members are not immune from criminal or civil liability. That last point seems strange, but priestly (or clerical) immunity has historically been a grievous evil and a nuisance to civil harmony. The church is subordinate to the state in those matters like civil justice and order in which God has ordained the state to be an earthly authority (Rom. 13:1-7).
The church’s independence is negative, not positive. That independence means freedom from undue command or interference by others, not power over them. This sets it against the errors of both Erastianism (the belief that the government of both church and state belongs to the civil ruler [magistrate]) and the historic belief of the papists that the state is properly subordinate to the church.[1]
The church’s independence is a part of ‘sphere sovereignty.’ The church has no right to command the state or to take its proper sphere of responsibilities to itself. It may not appoint its officers to the offices of the state or exercise the functions of the government such as raising taxes, making war, granting patents, coining money, etc. But neither may the state appoint the church’s leaders, establish or alter her constitution, conduct her affairs, or otherwise intrude upon her sphere of authority and responsibility. And neither government nor church should deign to undertake the responsibilities of the family, except where it freely consents to either to act in loco parentis (e.g., in education).[2]
The church’s independence includes privacy and confidentiality, but does not mean it is a secret club or a cult free from all outside observation. There are occasions where others may forcibly inquire into our affairs (e.g., fire warden inspections), and there are cases where we should voluntarily share them: if First Pres. Anytown’s pastor is charged with a sex crime, the church would do well to publicly acknowledge the offense and state what it is doing to redress the wrong and prevent future occurrences. Actually much of our activity (worship services, works of mercy, outreach) is or ought to be public, except where persecution mandates secrecy. As my correspondent rightly noted, we are to let our light shine before men (Matt. 5:16). But as all human life requires a measure of privacy, so also does that of the church. Its internal government and affairs are often not hidden from public view, but there are occasions where they are; and even when they are not, it does not follow that outsiders may freely comment on them as if they are their own business. This reservation of privacy is by no means unique to the church: most companies are far more confidential in their business operations than we.
The church’s independence means she governs herself and has a right to be free from unwarranted interference by others. The church selects her own officers, runs her own agencies and programs, raises her own revenue, and handles her own administrative and judicial affairs. If Calvary Presbytery ordains Mr. Prolix to the office of teaching elder and the state house passes a resolution demanding the rescission of his ordination, the church’s independence is thereby infringed; but it would be similarly infringed if a private entity (as a company, chamber of commerce, or think tank) made similar protest of Mr. Prolix’s ordination.
The church’s independence is imperfectly realized. Many are ignorant of the doctrine or malign or modify it. Many deny it in part or whole, or adhere to it selectively. This doctrine, though important and immensely helpful, is not accounted a matter of orthodoxy. Faithful believers (as those in established churches) who do not adhere to it are not to be deemed heretics. In this world truth appears in fits as its rays break through sin’s dark clouds.
The church’s independence is inferred from the nature of its early operations, its instructions from Christ and the apostles, and from its unique nature as God’s chosen people on Earth. At no point did Christ or his disciples ever say anything to the effect of ‘and when you select elders to rule your churches, remember to consult with the local rabbis and pagan priests as to whom to select, and be sure to allow the local Roman magistrate to select at least one.’ That the church would select its officers from its own midst (Acts 1:21-26; 6:1-6) and according to its own divinely-given criteria (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Tit. 1:6-9) is taken for granted. And when outsiders presumed to command the church contrary to God’s will they were openly resisted as having no right to do so (Acts 4:13-20; 5:27-29). So also does Christ’s statement to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mk. 12:17) presuppose different spheres of God-given authority and responsibility, of which one is represented in the church, which is God’s institution for ruling and teaching his people (Eph. 4:11-16). When some of the Corinthians brought disputes before the civil magistrates (1 Cor. 6), Paul rebuked them on the ground that the church will judge the world and angels at the Last Day, and he ends his argument by saying (v. 3) that if they are to be fit to make such momentous judgments, “how much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” The obvious corollary would be that the world/unbelievers judging the Corinthians would be an inversion of the proper order, even now when the Corinthians’ final conformity to Christ’s image (and accompanying fitness to judge in righteousness) is not yet complete. And if unbelievers are not to even judge disputes between individual believers, how much less should they have any say in the government of the entire church itself. It is therefore to be accounted independent viz. such outside entities, and as responsible for its own government, answering only to God.

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] See the end of p. 448 and the beginning of 449 of William Cunningham’s Historical Theology at Monergism here.
[2] How many spheres of responsibility and authority there are is a question I do not answer here. One might argue society is a fourth sphere alongside family, church, and state.

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There may be considerable overlap between the American political right and the Christian church in moral values, especially in matters like abortion, sexual morality, euthanasia, and the like. But at the end of the day we serve Christ, not any party or social movement; for such things are temporal and of human origin, and therefore are never free of sin, whereas God’s kingdom which the church represents (albeit imperfectly) endures forever and is of his Spirit.

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) saw controversy recently due to David French’s invitation to participate in an upcoming General Assembly seminar. That immediate controversy I elide here, for prudence commends dropping the matter with the Administrative Committee’s decision to cancel the entire seminar as unhelpful. But controversies are often helpful in revealing auxiliary matters of import, some of which are arguably more important than the immediate controversy itself.
One such matter in the recent controversy that merits comment is the readiness with which our church’s affairs were discussed in political organs. The affairs of the PCA are ecclesiastical in nature, not related to the wider culture and its civil politics. They are, in short, none of the business of outlets such as The Federalist, and their commenting on them (as here) is blamable on various grounds.
If the people doing so are members of our church, then they are violating the principle that our affairs should not be discussed before unbelievers. In cases of apparent fault we are to handle our affairs internally:
When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? . . . So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? (1 Cor. 6:1, 4-6)
Discussing our affairs in outlets concerned primarily with culture and politics exposes us to ridicule by unbelievers (no doubt a large readership of such outlets), who are only too ready to find apparent confirmation for their unbelief. We shouldn’t be giving infidels occasion to justify their unbelief, and so no believer should discuss the church’s affairs in an outlet that does not have an explicit, credible Christian character.
If the people doing so are not members of our church, then they are prying where they have no business and doing us a real disservice. Ask yourself, dear reader, what someone who reads an outlet like The Federalist is likely to think about us when he reads a statement like this:
If the PCA knew this [i.e., various concerns about French] and invited him anyway, shame on them. And if they somehow didn’t know because their heads are buried that far in the sand — unlikely, especially considering the PCA’s leftward decline, but I repeat myself — double shame.
Probably he will think that we are a feckless institution of questionable honesty that has compromised with the wider culture and which is not, as such, worthy of a serious consideration as a reliable moral authority. Whatever its intentions, that article exposed us to opprobrium that has proved unjustified given that the event was promptly canceled after an enormous backlash from many in the denomination (inc. some whole presbyteries). But the harm to our reputation has already been sown in many minds, for the taint of “leftward decline” is not easily shed in many quarters of the very sensitive and reactionary conservative movement in this country, and no one is better for that harm to our reputation—except Satan, who is keen on discrediting faithful churches, of which the PCA is full.
Now I assert all this because the church has a spiritual, other-worldly character, and because her independence on that point is transgressed when outsiders discuss our affairs in their own forums. The PCA is not a wing of any party or platform, and when a political publication of any stripe meddles in our affairs they are implying they have some legitimate concern in them, that we should hold their line and only approve things that they approve. Nonsense. We shall determine whom we associate with or not, and on the basis of our own moral-doctrinal and ecclesiastical criteria, not those of any political movement.
In brief, if you’re a believer and reading this, please do not discuss church affairs in non-Christian forums, and repent if you have been in the habit of doing so. And recognize that when politicians or journalists discuss our internal affairs, they are disregarding the true nature of the church and infringing upon her independence. They are implying that we are somehow allied with or subordinate to them, a part of their ‘base,’ and that as such they have a legitimate interest in our affairs. They don’t, and even if their concerns are understandable or their values are largely the same as ours, there is still wrong in them directly commenting upon our doings or exposing us to ridicule.
Now this is prescient especially because it serves to rebut a mistaken impression that many people have that this ‘spirituality of the church’ I have asserted here is simply a convenient fiction.[1] There are people who say that the ‘spirituality of the church’ is just a dodge to justify a sinful status quo, a thing behind which the church shelters lest she offend the powerful. In the 1800s this allegedly meant the Southern churches refused to denounce domestic slavery as an institution, for fear lest they so offend the planter aristocracy as to be rendered of no account.[2] Today it purportedly means the church declines to support various ‘social justice’ causes which are associated with the political left because of various selfish concerns.
But actually the church’s spiritual independence means that she is to be aloof not merely from leftwing causes, but also from being a direct subservient entity of the political right. Even where the right is in the right, it is not proper for her to act like she can use the church as a subordinate, nor for the church to allow herself to be regarded as such. This is so because the church is Christ’s institutional embassy on Earth. Her loyalty is to him alone, and only to any other thing insofar as he commands it. (E.g., he commands us to honor and pay taxes even to pagan empires like Rome, Rom. 13:1-7, for this is in the best interests of his people.)
An ambassador can only serve the interests of his lawful sovereign, doing otherwise being rank disloyalty. He does not take the part of any faction of the foreign country where he serves, and only involves himself in the affairs of that place with a view toward advancing his sovereign’s interests, and at his explicit instruction. Believers are spiritual sojourners and pilgrims in every earthly nation they inhabit (Heb. 11:13; 1 Pet. 2:11-12), and in all places they are Christ’s representatives, beholden to do his will and not that of others.
There may be considerable overlap between the American political right and the Christian church in moral values, especially in matters like abortion, sexual morality, euthanasia, and the like. But at the end of the day we serve Christ, not any party or social movement; for such things are temporal and of human origin, and therefore are never free of sin, whereas God’s kingdom which the church represents (albeit imperfectly) endures forever and is of his Spirit (Dan. 2:36-45; Rom. 14:15; Heb. 12:28). Then too, from a practical standpoint, political movements so much emphasize the things of this life as to drive out concern for eternity and Christ’s kingdom (Matt. 13:22), which has not come in its fullness (Lk. 17:20-21) and is not a thing of this world (Jn. 18:36). Once wed politics and piety and politics becomes your piety.
For that reason the church must resist at every turn all people who attempt to meddle in her affairs. Our Lord is a jealous God (Deut. 4:24; 5:9) who will share his glory with no other (Isa. 42:8), and who declined to intervene in domestic squabbles (Lk. 12:13-14) or outrages (13:1), but instead found in them occasions to instruct people morally (12:15-21) and to urge them to repent (13:2-5). As his embassy on Earth, his church must take care lest the politics of this life cause her to forget her mission and her loyalty to him. That means she must insist on her right to be free of the interference of those who would have us do their bidding, just as Christ refused all overtures that mistakenly regarded him as an earthly king (Jn. 6:15) or interfered with his redemptive mission (7:1-14).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] Some idea of the doctrine of the church’s spiritual nature and independence can be gleaned in my article here.
[2] Keyword “as an institution.” The churches did defend slavery in theory, and appealed to scripture in so doing. But there is a difference between defending slavery in theory and doing so as it was actually practiced. The churches also criticized Southern slavery as it was actually practiced, as Eugene Genovese recounts in his A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White South, though we could naturally wish they had done so much more effectively than was actually the case.

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There is a twofold error in commending Aquinas: the immediate one being that he is an idolater, and the secondary one being it involves an implicit following of Rome’s lead, commending works by her members, and keeping a measure of company with her. Dominicans have been employed by Credo as teachers, and scarcely an issue passes without that magazine including articles or interviews with members of that communion, or commending works by them. Such following Rome’s lead is wrong because Rome has not repented those errors of doctrine and practice that sparked the Reformation, and has in some cases stiffened her neck and made herself yet worse.

What if I told you, dear reader, that prominent members of the Protestant theological academy are enamored by someone whose writings commend the practice of idolatry? Scripture is clear that someone who promotes idolatry is a false teacher (Rev. 2:14, 20; comp. Num. 25:1-2; 31:16), and that such false teachers are wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15), who come disguised as angels of light (2 Cor. 11:14-15), and whose company ruins the good doctrine of those who associate with them (1 Cor. 15:33; comp. Prov. 13:20). It is clear as well that such people are known by their deeds (Matt. 7:16-20) and that their words betray the state of their hearts (12:33-37); that they have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9; Eph. 5:5); and that they are not to be entertained for even a moment when their false teaching becomes known (Deut. 13:6-8). As such you would, I hope, recognize that such a teacher’s admirers were wrong to approve him, and in so doing had lost their sense and spoken unworthily of their positions and of their task of guarding and propagating sound doctrine (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim. 4:16; Tit. 1:9; 2 Jn. 8-9).
Alas, my hypothetical situation is actually the case at present. Here are two quotes from a currently-popular teacher promoting the worship of images of Christ:
The same reverence should be shown to Christ’s image as to Christ Himself.
The Apostles, led by the inward instinct of the Holy Ghost, handed down to the churches certain instructions which they did not put in writing . . . among these traditions is the worship of Christ’s image.
And two promoting the worship of the cross:
In each way it is worshiped with the same adoration as Christ, viz. the adoration of “latria.” And for this reason also we speak to the cross and pray to it, as to the Crucified Himself.
By reason of the contact of Christ’s limbs we worship not only the cross, but all that belongs to Christ. Wherefore Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iv, 11): “The precious wood, as having been sanctified by the contact of His holy body and blood, should be meetly worshiped; as also His nails, His lance, and His sacred dwelling-places, such as the manger, the cave and so forth.
That is idolatry, the giving of the worship due only to God to a material object (Ex. 20:3-5; Lev. 26:1). God says to “flee from idolatry” (1 Cor. 10:14), and “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater” (5:11). So evil is idolatry that he commanded the ancient Israelites to execute anyone who so much as suggested it (Deut. 13:1-11). (The application of that principle for us in the present is avoidance, as shown in the verses quoted above: violence is not part of the new covenant in Christ [Jn. 18:36], and our warfare is spiritual, not carnal [2 Cor. 10:3-4].) Viewed from another angle, the proper role of God’s shepherds includes warning his sheep to avoid such people (Acts 20:28-31; Col. 1:28), as the Apostles did in their epistles cited above.
Yet that is not what some of our professors – many of whom are ordained as pastors as well – have been doing. They have forgotten the very concept of false teachers, and the commands that they are to be avoided (2 Jn. 10) and warned against, as well as that the sheep are easily led astray by such false teachers, whose cunning and ability to deceive are terrible (Matt. 24:11, 25). They have gone along with an intellectual fad and commended others do likewise, and have held forth a certain ancient false teacher as someone who should be ‘retrieved’ for today and read gladly.
The name of that teacher is Thomas Aquinas, and well might we ask such men what Paul asked the Galatians (3:1): “who has bewitched you?” An idolater is ipso facto not a representative of God, but has come forth to deceive. We may ask further: why have you allowed yourselves to be led astray, and for what cause do your ears itch (2 Tim. 4:3) so? Have you forgotten God’s pronouncement that “blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers” (Ps. 1:1)? Are idolaters no longer in the foremost ranks of the wicked, that you take one so eagerly as your master and guide, and even name a system of thought (“Thomism”) after him?
Ah, but someone will say that in many matters he adhered to the truth and explained it well. Even if this were so – and it is a point which is not here conceded – have you forgotten that sound doctrine that is abetted by falsehood or that issues as errant practice is useless? For “even the demons believe” (Jas.2:19), and yet they have no qualms using their sound knowledge to deceive the unwary all that much better. I hope, however, that you have not so much forgotten yourself, dear reader, and that you have kept discernment and good sense about you in these matters (Prov. 14:8; Matt. 24:4; 1 Thess. 5:21; 1 Jn. 4:1).
And to answer that question with which I began my rhetorical digression above, the present fascination with Aquinas is largely driven by a certain faction in the Roman communion. To be sure, such figures as R.C. Sproul, Norman Geisler, and John Gerstner – whose Protestant bona fides and general helpfulness speak for themselves – were quite approving of the study of Aquinas, but they have either passed, or else their works were of a previous generation. Gerstner’s article trying to claim Aquinas as a proto-Protestant came out in 1994, part of a larger issue about him, while Geisler’s Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal appeared in 1991.
Today’s movement to popularize Aquinas is largely a creature of Romanists, such men as Matthew Levering, Thomas Joseph White, and Reinhard Hütter.
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