No captain would knowingly go near submerged reefs and no farmer would permit space to be taken up by a fruitless tree. Yet that is precisely what the theological academy has been doing for some time now. It has been pointing us to Barth, the impenitent adulterer; to Yoder, the abuser of women; to a bevy of Germans who seem to have never met an orthodox doctrine they did not see fit to change; and now to Aquinas, the idolater. On behalf of many of the sheep in the pews permit me to say to this idea of returning to scholasticism and Aquinas – ‘no thank you.’

Previously we considered Craig Carter’s recommended revival of scholasticism. Now we finish our consideration of his claims and offer a rejoinder. He says “I am convinced that we need to recover and revitalize scholastic realism if we are to recover and revitalize classical orthodoxy after the disasters of the last two centuries.” He says this because he believes that in order to return Nicene Trinitarian and Chalcedonian Christological orthodoxy to “the forefront of Christian dogmatics again” means “we are going to need to go back to the last period in history when Enlightenment rationalism and naturalism had not yet corrupted Christian theology.” On his view that is “the period of post-Reformation scholasticism.” He believes one of the strengths of this period was its “catholicity, that is, its deep roots in the best of medieval scholasticism and the early church fathers.” He believes that the reformers anti-scholastic rhetoric “should be understood as directed against” “late medieval voluntarism and nominalism” and asserts that “many of the best Protestant theologians” employed Thomistic theology “extensively and with profit,” and, after some further elaboration on this point, says that this is where “we find the metaphysical and dogmatic foundations of Reformed scholasticism, or as one could also put it, classic reformed theology.”
One, “Reformed scholasticism” is not a synonym for “classic reformed theology.” There is much that is Reformed that is not scholastic: indeed, criticism of scholasticism was strong among some theologians of the period. Hence John Owen could say:
Some learn their Divinity out of the late, and Modern Schools, both in the Reformed and Papall Church; in both which a Science is proposed under that name, consisting in a farrago of Credible Propositions, asserted in termes suited unto that Philosophy that is variously predominant in them. What a kind of Theology this hath produced in the Papacy, Agricola, Erasmus, Vives, Jansenius, with innumerable other Learned men of your own, have sufficiently declared. And that it hath any better success in the Reformed Churches, many things which I shall not now instance in, give me cause to doubt.[1] 
Two, as for Protestant scholasticism’s catholicity consisting of its “deep roots” in the medieval scholastics and the early church fathers, consider what Owen says as he continues the section above:
Some boast they learn their divinity from the Fathers, and say they do not depart from their sense and idiom of expression in what they believe and profess . . . While men are thus pre-engaged, it will be very hard to prevail with them to think that the greatest part of their divinity is such that Christian religion, either as to the matter, or at least as to that mode wherein they have imbibed it, is little or not at all concerned in it; nor will it be easy to persuade them that it is a mystery laid up in the Scripture; and all true divinity a wisdom in the knowledge of that mystery.[2]
Modern paraphrase: ‘Some people are so enamored by their study of the early church fathers, some of whom made serious errors, that it is nearly impossible to get them to realize that a true knowledge and service of Christ has little if anything to do with their vain studies; true knowledge of Christ that is pleasing to him is found in understanding scripture’s testimony about him correctly (comp. Eph. 3:1-6).’ Such remarks, including as they do the ‘Reformed scholastics,’ do not seem limited to “late medieval voluntarism and nominalism.”
Three, on the Protestant view theology has been ruined by many others besides Enlightenment philosophers: Rome, various early heretics, and many of the scholastics have done so too. Hence Owen elsewhere says:
I could wish he [Fiat Lux’s author] would take a course to stop the mouths of some of his own Church, and those no small ones neither, who have declared them to the world, to be a pack of egregious Sophisters, neither good Philosophers, nor any Divines at all; men who seem not to have had the least reverence of God, nor much regard to the Truth in any of their Disputations, but were wholly influenced by a vain Re­putation of Subtility [cunning], desire of Conquest, of leading and denominating Parties, and that in a Barbarous Science, barbarously expressed, untill they had driven all Learning and Divinity almost out of the World.[3]
If that is a fair appraisal of scholasticism, then it seems Prof. Carter would have us discard Enlightenment rationalism by going back to something equally bad.
Four, why not return to non-scholastic Reformed theology, or better yet, to scripture? We confess that it is sufficient and perspicuous, “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It will not suffice to combat aberrant theology on its own terms, for our own thought does not carry with it that power which scripture has. Consider its testimony of itself – “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12) – or what God says of it: “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29) and “it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose” (Isa. 55:11).
If we are serious about reforming theology we must recognize that such an undertaking cannot be performed by merely human learning, no matter how polished or extensive: God himself must work reformation in the study of the knowledge about him, and if he does so it will only be because we humbly submit ourselves to his word and look rather to it and to his mercy than to our own learning. In the words of Isaiah, “to the teaching and to the testimony!” (8:20) – naught else will suffice to impart a true knowledge of God, and any who attempts to renovate theological studies will find he is building upon a house of sand if he does not ground his efforts on God’s own revelation of himself.
Five, it is not scholasticism that we fear, but God, who will judge us if we yield to the excesses of any merely human school of thought. We do not wish to be like those people whom Paul would say “have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions (1 Tim. 1:6-7). If a given school leads us into sin – as scholasticism does at sundry points, not least in Aquinas’ teaching that it is proper to worship the cross – then we ought to keep aloof from it.
Six, if scholasticism is the method of the schools, i.e., academic theological study, then it must be admitted that there already is a modern strain of it that predominates theology at present. This contemporary scholasticism operates by the same methods as secular research: it will study anything to find formative influences, not merely for cautionary or polemic purposes; it requires its proponents to participate in its system and receive doctorates by researching internal technical matters related to theology itself (e.g., “God’s Being-in-Reconciliation: The Theo-Ontological Basis of the Unity and Diversity of the Doctrine of the Atonement in the Theology of Karl Barth”[4]) rather than “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15); it discusses its materials in a detached, unemotional spirit utterly unlike the urgency and emotional fervor one finds in the prophets and our Lord; it makes inquiry its guiding principle rather than faith; it studies its own number with greater zeal than scripture, thus elevating secondary sources above primary; and by its love of esoteric terminology it has made theology a pursuit of an initiated few rather than a service to the church and her people.
The consequences of such an approach are apparent. Compare the following two passages.
[N]ot a few of the advocates of philosophic studies, when turning their minds recently to the practical reform of philosophy, aimed and aim at restoring the renowned teaching of Thomas Aquinas and winning it back to its ancient beauty.
And
Since they thought Thomas was one of the most brilliant theologians the church has produced, they did not hesitate to benefit from him in innumerable ways—from his epistemology to metaphysic, from his Christology to ethics.
One passage is from Credo’s Aquinas issue, the other from Aeterni Patris, the encyclical commending Thomism. If your ideas about whom it is appropriate to study put you in the same position as the pope – whose office Protestants have historically confessed to be antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3-4) – then you have adopted the wrong practical position. There are grounds of agreement between us and Rome, especially regarding Christology and theology proper; but the question of adopting one of her own number as a positive source of our own thinking is not one of them.
If it be objected that Rome advises studying sources that we also use let it be rejoined that though she uses them they are not properly her own as are those things that have arisen within her midst during the time of her corruption. Some things in the early fathers have parallels in Rome’s thought, such as Augustine’s ecclesiological ideas, but it is hard to see where any of the early fathers is Roman after the fashion of the medieval scholastics: their position before a long process of corruption, even one they in some cases inadvertently started, means that they are fundamentally different from those who arose later after that process had advanced very far.
In summary, we should not return to scholasticism. To do so would entail exposing ourselves to the bad as well as the good in it; and while theologians like Prof. Carter may be able to take an eclectic approach in which they keep certain teachings while discarding others, it must be remembered that most of the church’s members are not theologians. Members sometimes have much difficulty distinguishing between false and true doctrine. It is a predicament best avoided where possible.
Also, we already have a contemporary scholasticism by which we have been ill-served, not least since it has spread this idea among us, that there is something useful to be learned in practically everyone. That is contrary to scripture. It does not deal with false teaching in a detached manner as do our contemporary theologians. On its view false teaching arises because of the bad character of those that teach it. It does not take a nuanced approach to them, trying to retain the good while shedding the bad; rather it says that people who teach false doctrine constitute a class that is to be avoided. Jude 12-13 says that:
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
No captain would knowingly go near submerged reefs and no farmer would permit space to be taken up by a fruitless tree. Yet that is precisely what the theological academy has been doing for some time now. It has been pointing us to Barth, the impenitent adulterer; to Yoder, the abuser of women; to a bevy of Germans who seem to have never met an orthodox doctrine they did not see fit to change; and now to Aquinas, the idolater. On behalf of many of the sheep in the pews permit me to say to this idea of returning to scholasticism and Aquinas – ‘no thank you.’
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] Vindication of Animadversions Upon Fiat Lux, 212-13
[2] Ibid., 213. Spelling, punctuation, and diction somewhat modernized. Original available here: https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/A53737
[3] Animadversions Upon Fiat Lux, 122-23
[4] The Ph. D. thesis of Adam Johnson, professor at Biola.
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The suggestion that we should learn from the representatives of a communion that still binds men’s consciences and misleads them with false doctrine is highly objectionable. Such men are members of a communion that has spent most of the last 500 years saying that believing Protestant doctrine is damning sin, has regarded it as within its power and duty to curse Protestants for such ‘error’ by its anathemas, and that has readily abetted such spiritual coercion with physical persecution of the cruelest types when and where it has been within its power to do so.

There exists a certain method of argumentation in which someone who disputes a given position does not argue against it but instead implies that the position’s proponents are motivated by fear. Thus, for example, someone who thinks it imprudent to allow large numbers of immigrants into one’s nation is apt to be dismissed as a xenophobe, as if doubting the wisdom of allowing large numbers of foreigners to spontaneously immigrate without careful assimilation is some sort of clinical condition.
Craig Carter, in an article at Credo, does not go so far; though from a Christian perspective he arguably does worse by quoting Karl Barth’s statement that “fear of scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet.” Scripture gives certain criteria for how to identify false teachers. Some are methodological—false teachers are fond of “relying on their dreams,” Jude tells us (v.8)—while others have to do with their moral character, and with the nature and effects of their teaching (“you will recognize them by their fruits,” Matt. 7:20). Prof. Carter admits in his article that Barth’s teaching was sorely mistaken at sundry points and bore ill consequences. Indeed, he says that the last two centuries (which include Barth) were “disasters” and “among the most forgettable in the two-millennium history of Christian theology,” and that after them there is a need to “recover and revitalize classical orthodoxy”.
More importantly, by the standards of scripture Karl Barth was a false teacher himself. Such people are characterized by “sensuality” (2 Pet. 2:2) and “have eyes full of adultery” (v.14). It just so happens that Karl Barth maintained a long affair with his assistant, even having her move into his house over his wife’s protests and maintaining the relationship against the stern disapproval of his mother, her rebukes (“What’s the point of the very sharpest theology if it suffers shipwreck in your own home?”) going unheeded.[1] (Comp. Prov. 1:8; 6:20; 30:17; 31:1.) You may be forgiven, dear reader, if you are inclined to think that Barth’s opinions about the nature of false prophets are therefore about as authoritative and useful as a pronouncement from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe on prudent monetary policies.
Turning to Prof. Carter’s essay we find a long analysis of Barth’s thought as it relates to various trends in theology after the Enlightenment, including concepts taken from Schleirmacher and Kant. I make no comment on the accuracy of this analysis as such. It may be a faultless exercise in historical and theological analysis that traces the development of Barth’s thought with perfect accuracy. That is an academic question which I do not presume to address here.
I must confess that the analysis seems somewhat oddly formed, however. The title of the section is, “Barth’s Rejection of the Scholastic Doctrine of Election,” yet in the second sentence we read that Barth “was particularly critical of the reformed doctrine of election” (emphasis mine), which suggests that “reformed” and “scholastic” are synonyms, when in fact they are not. Also, this section is not merely about Barth’s rejection of election (be it Reformed or scholastic), but about his fundamental metaphysical framework and its sources, and of how it lead him to a more apparently Christocentric but in fact still anthropocentric theology; and in fact discussion of his method, sources, etc. makes up the larger part of it, hence it seems somewhat misnamed. Something like “Barth’s Rejection of Common Scholastic Metaphysics” would seem a more accurate title given the actual content.
Elsewhere in the section Prof. Carter does speak of “the scholastic doctrine of election.” In one case he presents it as a question and follows it with a sentence about how, though Barth engaged “with Protestant scholastic theology, he never felt it was possible to take on board its metaphysical framework.” The second case is after he discusses the Thomistic proof for God’s existence and before he begins the next section with a discussion of a recent “Thomistic Ressourcement movement.” It is therefore unclear what he means by “the scholastic doctrine of election.” It would seem it means something along the lines of ‘Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of election as it was received and developed by the later Protestant Scholastics, especially those that were Reformed,’ but this is not certain given Prof. Carter’s failure to define it more clearly.
This notwithstanding, Prof. Carter is right in his broad assertions. The last couple of centuries in Protestant theology were not merely strained but, as he asserts, disastrous. Philosophy did indeed wreak havoc on theology in a variety of ways, the application of its concepts to divinity causing strange developments that came at the expense of historic orthodoxy. Barth too was sorely mistaken in his thinking and would have done far better to return to more reliable sources and to break free from the erroneous concepts which formed so much of his thought.
But where Prof. Carter is right in diagnosing the problem, we must differ in his suggested solution and in the argument he pursues. He begins the next section with the statement that we must “reject nineteenth century historicism and the flawed metaphysical assumptions on which it rests” and mentions four people in the Thomistic Ressourcement movement who “are providing the impetus for doing this.” All four authors are members of the papal communion, as was Thomas, yet Prof. Carter does not hesitate to say that “confessional Protestants need to learn from them,” as if there are not other sources that might give one good grounds to reject historicism.
The suggestion that we should learn from the representatives of a communion that still binds men’s consciences and misleads them with false doctrine is highly objectionable. Such men are members of a communion that has spent most of the last 500 years saying that believing Protestant doctrine is damning sin, has regarded it as within its power and duty to curse Protestants for such ‘error’ by its anathemas, and that has readily abetted such spiritual coercion with physical persecution of the cruelest types when and where it has been within its power to do so. Theirs is a communion that believes, further, that it is infallible in its official pronouncements, so that it can never confess it has erred in past or repent its sins, and which has in some ways taken a strange twist since about Vatican II and now asserts that, while all previous pronouncements declaring Protestant beliefs anathema still stand, nonetheless they can also be regarded as estranged brothers who are really members of Rome because of an implicit but unknown desire to be part of her. Contemporary Rome says that the canons of Trent, which curse us unambiguously, are still in force as infallible declarations of the truth about our beliefs; it also says that we (or at least some of us) are really members of itself, but that we are just ignorant of that fact and mistaken when we refuse formal participation with her.
It does this because on its view nothing – be it scripture, tradition, or previous church councils or papal pronouncements – means anything other than what the present church says it means. ‘The church is the official interpreter’ of all such things, so that Trent’s anathemas meant ‘those who believe thus are doomed to hell’ up until about Vatican II, but have since apparently come to mean something along the lines of ‘those poor, silly Protestants are mistaken, but we should pity them for they mean well and we hope for them to come to their senses.’ What anything means, in short, is what Rome finds it advantageous to mean at any given time, an obvious violation of “let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matt. 5:37 NKJV). Such double-tongued tendencies are no less reprehensible in an institution than in an individual, and the discerning reader should recognize what they reveal about the Roman communion. And yet many Protestant theologians, as Prof. Carter here, have no qualms about commending members of such a communion as reliable teachers.[2]
Prof. Carter then moves quickly to his point: because of the failure of Barthianism “the time has come to re-visit scholasticism.” Prior to this he had just spent over 1,200 words describing how Barth had allowed philosophy to ruin his theology — and his response is to return to another movement that was conspicuous for allowing philosophy to dominate theology!
Perhaps it will be objected that the historic understanding of scholasticism as melding theology and philosophy is wrong. But why then did Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical in which he declared Thomas’ excellence and recommended his restoration to a place of preeminence, speak of “that philosophy which the Scholastic teachers have been accustomed carefully and prudently to make use of even in theological disputations,” and say that “since it is the proper and special office of the Scholastic theologians to bind together by the fastest chain human and divine science, surely the theology in which they excelled would not have gained such honor . . .  if they had made use of a lame and imperfect or vain philosophy”?[3] Unless we wish to say that Leo did not understand the method of his own favored school, his testimony seems an accurate description of the nature of scholasticism, and it is abetted by John Owen, who described the scholastics as “the men, who out of a mixture of Philosophy, Traditions, and Scripture, all corrupted and perverted, have hammered that faith which was afterwards confirmed under so many Anathemaes at Trent.”[4]
For his part Prof. Carter asserts that the “rediscovery of the value of the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas does not necessarily lead back to Roman Catholic theology” and that it “can just as well lead us back to the post-Reformation, Protestant scholasticism.”  Perhaps; but in practice it often does lead to Rome, a road which even a president of the evangelical theological society has traveled.[5] Also, it is a somewhat strange method that would go to Thomas in order to wind up in the Protestant scholastics. Why not just read the Protestant scholastics themselves, especially if they are, as Prof. Carter asserts, “the sources of the classical expressions of the Reformed faith that would emerge over the next two centuries”?[6]
He asks “who is afraid of scholasticism?” but does not directly answer his own question, states “nobody should be afraid of it,” and answers with a strange disquisition on John Webster’s contribution to a book called The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or Wisdom of God. Note the movement. He starts with a question about a broad school of thought and transitions to a technical question about a single scholastic concept in a single recent theologian. An odd movement, surely.
There follows a brief account of the late career of the English theologian John Webster, the relevance of which to the question of evangelical readers embracing scholasticism is not at all clear. ‘Because a single Anglican theologian in recent memory moved in an opposite direction from Barth and ended by studying Protestant scholastics appreciatively, therefore evangelicals should read Aquinas seriously’ is a strange argument, but it seems to be the one Prof. Carter makes here. As for the rest of his suggestions, we will consider them and offer a rejoinder in the second and final part of this series.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/when-karl-met-lollo-the-origins-and-consequences-of-karl-barths-relationship-with-charlotte-von-kirschbaum/CB5E82941743160C1BAE527870883C7A#fn26
[2] Any discussion of Rome’s beliefs is difficult owing to the wide array of beliefs and practices that exist within her. My statements here are an attempt to take Rome at its official word and at the practical consequences of the principles of her polity. They do not deny that in practice many individuals and groups within Rome might differ in their opinions: hence I recently found a Roman laywoman calling Pope Francis the antichrist, which is really impermissible by Rome’s belief that the laity form the ‘listening church’ whose duty it is to obey and uncritically assent to the clergy (or ‘teaching church’), at whose head is the pope.
[3] Aeterni Patris
[4] Animadversions on Fiat Lux, 122
[5] Francis Beckwith
[6] There are some practical difficulties, however, since many of them have not been translated out of Latin.
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In summary, the recent enthusiasm that many Protestants have shown for Thomas is a mistake. The church has not been well-served by its eminent men lavishing praise upon an idolater and commending him to her members. There are many among us, especially young men, who are zealous to learn all that they might about the things of God, but who are impressionable and have not the prudence to discern between good and bad in the study of God. To commend an idolater to them is at best irresponsible; and if any of them stumble into the vanity of scholasticism or the pitfalls of Romanism on account of it….

Aquinas taught the propriety of worshipping images of Christ (“the same reverence should be shown to Christ’s image as to Christ Himself”)[1] and 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”).[2] Scripture teaches that worshipping images is idolatry and wholly forbidden: “You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 26:1; comp. 19:4; Ex. 20:4, 23; 34:17; Ps. 97:7; Isa. 42:17; 44:9-20; Jer. 10:1-16). It teaches further that even lawful things can be used for idolatry (2 Kgs. 18:4), and that no tolerance is to be given to those that propagate such practices but that they are to be summarily rejected as false teachers:
If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people (Deut. 13:6-9).
That commandment was given to Israel as a civil law, but the principle contained in it – namely, that idolatry is so evil that it must be stamped out at its first appearance – applies to the church as well, though we are to apply it differently by rejecting idolaters and refusing their company rather than using physical force against them (2 Cor. 6:16-17). Elsewhere both Paul (“my beloved, flee from idolatry,” 1 Cor. 10:14) and John (“Little children, keep yourselves from idols,” 1 Jn. 5:21) teach believers to have nothing to do with idolatry and those that promote it in the church, and in the letters to the churches at Pergamum and Thyatira the ascended Lord rebukes them for tolerating idolaters in their midst and threatens divine judgment upon them for this failing (Rev. 2:14-16; 20-23).
Scripture therefore mandates we reject Aquinas entirely, not merely in part, for one should not attempt to learn the true knowledge of God from an idolater and false teacher. Why would we peruse such a person when God has raised up such an abundance of faithful lights? What is there in Aquinas that cannot be gotten elsewhere? Why pass over a purer theologian’s work for that of an idolater? And why not regard Scripture itself as sufficient? For in this matter there is an implicit denial of that precious doctrine even if it is explicitly professed by Aquinas’ admirers. If Scripture is truly sufficient for all that we need to know unto the salvation of our souls – and if our souls, guided by the Spirit, are competent to understand Scripture aright – then it is not apparent what benefit we might gain from Aquinas. No one who desires the waters of life should depart from their source in order to partake of them as diluted and poisoned by a secondary agent.
In summary, the recent enthusiasm that many Protestants have shown for Thomas is a mistake. The church has not been well-served by its eminent men lavishing praise upon an idolater and commending him to her members. There are many among us, especially young men, who are zealous to learn all that they might about the things of God, but who are impressionable and have not the prudence to discern between good and bad in the study of God. To commend an idolater to them is at best irresponsible; and if any of them stumble into the vanity of scholasticism or the pitfalls of Romanism on account of it, it may prove that it will be a source of woe unto those that have caused their novice brothers to stumble therein (Lk. 17:1-2). Nor is this possibility an idle speculation: it is common knowledge that reading Aquinas played a large part in Francis Beckwith, the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, converting to Rome in 2007. (And such is his fondness for Aquinas that he has continued to attempt to propagate his teachings among us, notably with his 2019 book Never Doubt Thomas).
Dear reader, do not allow yourself to be caught up in the madness of the Aquinas craze. Let the Spirit instruct you in his Word with all humility, prayerfulness, and trembling (Eph. 6:18; Phil. 2:12-13; Jude 20), and do not allow a discontent spirit to arise within your breast that will set your ears to itching (2 Tim. 4:3) and your mind to wandering after sophistry and vain speculation (2 Tim. 2:14-19; Tit. 3:9-11). If you wish to know God in truth (Jn. 17:3) you do not need this:
The Philosopher in the Book of Predicaments (Categor. vi) reckons disposition and habit as the first species of quality. Now Simplicius, in his Commentary on the Predicaments, explains the difference of these species as follows. He says “that some qualities are natural, and are in their subject in virtue of its nature, and are always there: but some are adventitious, being caused from without, and these can be lost. Now the latter,” i.e. those which are adventitious, “are habits and dispositions, differing in the point of being easily or difficultly lost. As to natural qualities, some regard a thing in the point of its being in a state of potentiality; and thus we have the second species of quality: while others regard a thing which is in act; and this either deeply rooted therein or only on its surface. If deeply rooted, we have the third species of quality: if on the surface, we have the fourth species of quality, as shape, and form which is the shape of an animated being.”[3]
In fact, such eye-splitting, mind-numbing prose may well prove a stumbling block even apart from its speculative content. Let it not be said of you that you are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7) or that you have departed into vain speculation. Rather, “see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8) and that you “let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things [inc. idolatry, v.5] the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6). “Hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught” (Tit. 1:9), and “if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness” (1 Tim. 6:3) – that is, if (among other things) anyone is inclined to imagine that idolatry is anything other than a catastrophic sin with eternal consequences (1 Cor. 6:9; Rev. 22:15) – be sure to reject such a bad example (1 Tim. 6:4; comp. 2 Tim. 3:5) and to be content with the Scriptures which God has given us to know his will in all things. You will probably be reviled as an anti-intellectual, sectarian biblicist, but this is nothing (for reviling is a part of the Christian life, Matt. 5:11-12; comp. 2 Tim. 3:12), as it is better to keep from bad influences and please God than to have the good favor of society, the church, or the academy at the price of regarding favorably an idolater.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.
[1] Summa Theologica III, Q. 25, A.3
[2] Ibid., Q. 25, A.4
[3] Summa Theologica IaIIae, Q. 49, Art. 2. This is the beginning of Aquinas’s answer to the question “whether habit is a distinct species of quality?” and in the next sentence after this he contradicts what has been quoted here.

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In other words, faith justifies, and the various “other saving graces” that accompany it come into view in sanctification with its operation of the Spirit in which he “infuses grace” per Larger Catechism Q. 77. It is not an accurate summary to say that there is an infused habit of faith that is first passive in justification but then subsequently active in sanctification, when the confessions appealed to actually distinguish between the saving grace of justifying faith (Q. 72) and the other saving graces that accompany it (Q. 73; Conf. 11.2).

Credo, the organ of the movement to normalize scholasticism among evangelicals, has pursued an interesting career as of late. When it has not been praising the alleged glories of Platonism, giving space to people who regard the Reformation as a tragedy to be lamented, or interviewing the presidents of organizations whose faculty and contributors include female pastors, it has found time to cast aspersions at contemporary evangelicals for “cutting ourselves off from Thomas” and suffering, as a consequence, “from a theology that looks more modern than orthodox.”
Of particular interest is an article by J.V. Fesko asserting that the acceptance of Thomas Aquinas is a sort of litmus test for whether one may be deemed a bona fide Protestant. To be told that we are under obligation to embrace any Romanist in order to be considered Protestant is intriguing enough, but to hear that we must do so concerning the preeminent medieval scholastic and the man whom Protestants have historically understood to be among the foremost expositors of those ideas which so corrupted the Western church that she fell into that ‘Babylonian captivity’ from whence part of Christendom escaped only with great suffering – well, that makes for quite a large pill to swallow. To think that those who have justified our murder[1] and commended the religious veneration of images of Christ and of his cross[2] should be rejected as false teachers is, on Prof. Fesko’s view, only enough to make us “self-professed Protestants,” and such assertions are only so much “noisy din” and engaging in “cancel culture theology.”
Central to Prof. Fesko’s assertions is his belief that previous generations of Protestants employed a “nuanced approach to the thought of Aquinas” in which, for example, they “excised the problematic teachings of infused righteousness as it relates to justification but retained Thomas’ teaching on infused habits for the doctrine of sanctification.” As evidence Prof. Fesko says that John Owen “took a nuanced approach to Aquinas’s doctrine of justification,” especially as regards the concept of an infused habit of righteousness. He quotes Owen’s The Doctrine of Justification by Faith as proof when it speaks of “an habitual infused habit of Grace which is the formal cause of our personal inherent Righteousness,” but which is yet distinct from the “formal cause” of our justification, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.
The edition Prof. Fesko has quoted is available here. Owen mentions Thomas a single time and says this:
It is therefore to no purpose to handle the mysteries of the Gospel, as if Holcot and Bricot, Thomas and Gabriel, with all the Sententiarists, Summists, and Quodlibetarians of the old Roman Peripatetical School, were to be raked out of their Graves to be our guides. Especially will they be of no use unto us, in this Doctrine of Justification. For whereas they pertinaciously adhered unto the Philosophy of Aristotle, who knew nothing of any Righteousness, but what is an habit inherent in our selves, and the Acts of it, they wrested the whole Doctrine of Justification unto a compliance therewithall.
Such strong language and complete rejection can hardly be called taking a “nuanced approach to Aquinas’s doctrine of justification.” When Prof. Fesko, commenting upon the passage he had quoted, then asks:
How does Owen hold the concepts of imputed and infused righteousness together? How does he blend this Thomist category of the infused habit of righteousness together with the Reformation teaching of justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ?
We may fairly reply that he doesn’t: the passage from Justification by Faith Fesko quotes proves that Owen and other Protestant theologians vigorously distinguish between imputed and infused righteousness. It is noteworthy as well that the word “infused” appears a mere two times among Justification by Faith’s approximately 208,000 words.[3] “Imputed” appears 305 times and “imputation” some 429 times. The notion of an infused habit is not prominent, then, by any stretch of the imagination; if anything, it is, as the context of the excerpt Fesko quoted also shows, a mere passing thought, at least in this particular work.
Curiously, Fesko does not answer his own question with a further appeal to Owen’s works but by shifting to the position of the Westminster Assembly (which Owen did not attend). To this end he appeals to the Westminster Confession (11.1-2, 14.2) and Larger Catechism (Q. 77), and he believes he finds in them “the language of infused habits” which “the divines continue to employ” in Q. 75 of the Larger Catechism, which speaks of the sanctified as “having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life.” Prof. Fesko believes that the description of Questions 75 and 77 (“in sanctification his Spirit infuseth grace”) “sounds a lot like Aquinas’s doctrine of justification as the believer increases in righteousness, but the difference here is that this growth does not factor in justification, which rests entirely upon Christ’s imputed righteousness.”
Before proceeding to Prof. Fesko’s other remarks in this section, let it be noted that in B.B. Warfield’s analysis of the Westminster Assembly and its products there is a single reference to Aquinas, and even there on a point of logic and regarding the completeness of Scripture.[4] That work is not an absolute catalogue of the minutes, admittedly, but if Aquinas were such a large presence in the thought of the Westminster divines we might expect that to show in a work such as Warfield’s. In addition, note that the phrase “habit” appears nowhere in the Westminster Confession or Catechisms and that “infuse” (in its various forms) appears in the Westminster Confession a single time in 11.1, cited by Prof. Fesko, in which it is said that “Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins” (emphasis mine). Returning to Prof. Fesko’s remarks, he ends the paragraph in question by saying this:
In justification the infused habit of faith is passive but in sanctification it is active. What Aquinas conflates Owen and the Westminster divines distinguish. Even though they distinguish justification and sanctification, they nevertheless maintain they are inseparably joined together.
While we are on the topic of conflation, note carefully Prof. Fesko’s words (especially his first sentence) and how they compare to those of the passages he cites and his earlier statements. Larger Catechism Question 77, the only Westminster statement to positively employ the language of infusion, says that in sanctification the Spirit infuses grace, not a “habit of faith.” Sanctification follows justification, so the grace that the Spirit is said to infuse then is distinct from the faith which factors in justification.
This is proved as well by Westminster Confession 11.2, quoted previously by Fesko, which says that “Faith . . . is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces.” In other words, faith justifies, and the various “other saving graces” that accompany it come into view in sanctification with its operation of the Spirit in which he “infuses grace” per Larger Catechism Q. 77. It is not an accurate summary to say that there is an infused habit of faith that is first passive in justification but then subsequently active in sanctification, when the confessions appealed to actually distinguish between the saving grace of justifying faith (Q. 72) and the other saving graces that accompany it (Q. 73; Conf. 11.2). (The question of when, and to what extent, faith is best described as passive or active is one we will not engage here.)
And as for the fact that the Westminster divines and Owen distinguish what Aquinas conflates, it may be asked how exactly that proves anything for Fesko’s case. That the respective parties have different perspectives upon sanctification and justification has nothing to do with the question of whether the former got a concept of infused habits from the latter.
Fesko also appeals to the Canons of Dort’s explicit mention of faith as being infused. Yet here too the question arises as to whether the similarity in terms between Aquinas and Protestants arises because the latter are borrowing from the former: perhaps Dort’s divines borrowed the concept of infused faith unknowingly or got it from other sources? That is an academic question which we have neither the space nor the inclination to answer here, but whether or not Fesko’s basic assertion is correct, he fails to make the case in this article. Such evidence as he provides is circumstantial at best and can be sufficiently explained by other theories absent further evidence. Mere coincidence or reception from other sources is at least as probable on the thin evidence (if such it is) that Fesko gives here. When he states that Owen, Dort, and Westminster “plied Aquinas’s insights” he is therefore coming to a conclusion that is not warranted and which other material in his sources makes seem highly doubtful. Consider again Owen’s mention of Aquinas above, as well as the fact that the Synod of Dort also rebuked the Franeker professor Maccovius for his use of the Romanist scholastics Suarez and Bellarmine.[5]
Fesko asserts two benefits of “the concept of an infused habit.” First, “infused habits help us distinguish between natural human ability from [sic] those abilities given by the grace of God in salvation.” But one can do such a thing without the concept of infused habits, for example by saying that natural morality is a result of God’s common grace, whereas sanctification comes from his saving grace. It is not clear that the language of infused habits does anything that cannot be done just as well otherwise. When Fesko states that “acknowledging that a capacity for holiness and righteousness is infused is another way of saying that it is the gift of God” we can reply: ‘why not just say that a capacity for righteousness is the gift of God, then, and spare your readers the scholastic terminology and the confusion it is likely to engender?’
Second, Fesko claims that “the infused habit of faith establishes a conceptual context for a theology of virtue,” to which the same objections apply. One can simply say that true virtue pleasing to God is his own gift and arises because of our new nature in Christ and the operations of the Spirit in us as we work out our salvation.
In conclusion, consider the sheer absurdity of Fesko’s position. He belittles his living brethren for the sake of trying to lay claim to the heritage of a dead Romanist who would regard him as a heretic who should be put to death. In this we see a fine example of how theologians have a bad tendency to get carried away in their speculations and researches, and how they tend to lose sight of the practical matters entailed in serving Christ. Be very careful whom you read, dear reader, for “bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33) and “much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecc. 12:12). You do not need to tackle Aquinas’s many words (the Summa Theologica in PDF is over 9,400 pages) or his excruciating prose, nor sift through his various erroneous doctrines in order to be a faithful servant of Christ, whose yoke is by contrast light and easy (Matt. 11:28-30), and whose word is sufficient for all you need in order to know him and to abound in virtue (Ps. 19; 119; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Pet. 1:5-8).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] Summa Theologica, IIaIIae Q.11, Art. 3
[2]Summa Theologica, IIIa, Q. 25, Art. 3 and 4
[3] “Infusion” appears 25 times, but often while discussing the position of Rome.
[4] The Westminster Assembly and Its Work by B.B. Warfield, p. 206, quoting the position of George Gillespie expressed in one of his writings.
[5]H. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. I, p. 181
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The real concern is that it is a sin to say one thing and then do another. The PCA has published a Book of Church Order to show its members how it organizes itself and conducts its affairs. Our officers are required to swear that they approve our form of government; that they will submit to their brethren in the Lord; and that they will seek the church’s peace and purity (BCO 21-5; 24-6). No one has been compelled to do this – any officers and churches that have become part of the PCA have done so freely –but having done so they are compelled to be faithful in fulfilling their conditions and vows of membership.

In recent years there has been much debate in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) over the question of whether it is permissible to ordain women to the diaconal office. The debate has been robust, long-running, and often technical in nature, with the relevant scriptural passages analyzed completely as to the meanings of their words in the original Greek, their grammatical structure, etc.
Yet it is hard to escape the feeling that the academic nature of the debate, its long-endurance and vigor, and its concern with such a narrow question have meant that it has been something of a distraction from other, far more important matters. It is not clear that the basic question is more than one of secondary pragmatic concern: a Christological or soteriological controversy this is not. Even as ecclesiological controversies are concerned it seems to be of less importance than many others, such as those surrounding the nature and proper administration of the sacraments.
Of greater concern are two matters which have been brought to the fore by this question which involve principles that are likely to show themselves in matters of greater consequence. The first is the question of why many desire to have deaconesses. What compels them to believe that the church should reform on this point? Whether or not Acts 6:1-6 relates the institution of the diaconate, the scriptural and historical records suggests that the diaconal office was instituted as a response to practical needs. There would undoubtedly be practical advantages to using women in such a role, not least since so much of the diaconal ministry is directed toward women (especially widows). It is conceivable that practical concerns alone would compel one to desire to ordain deaconesses. It is conceivable as well that the testimony of the New Testament as to the great usefulness of women in providing practical aid might commend the desirability of having deaconesses. In considering these two possibilities charity compels us to suspect that they are a large factor in the motivations of many who desire to open the office of deacon to women.
And yet it is indisputable that this movement occurs at the same time that our society is working to make every occupation open to women, doing so by acting on the principle that there are no meaningful differences between men and women and that they are functionally interchangeable. Or to be more precise, the church somewhat lags the culture on such matters, so that what is now essentially complete in society (the expansion of combat roles to women being the last thing to fall) is now proceeding, albeit tardily, in the church. While the motives of many would-be reformers may be good, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the similarity in aim (removing restrictions from women) inherent in both the church’s movement for deaconesses – itself part of a larger movement to increase the participation of women in ministry – and society’s more aggressive and successful movement to make men and women interchangeable is no coincidence. Whether they realize it or not, at least some of those that propose ordaining deaconesses are acting on impulses learned from society rather than from the church’s immediate needs or from Scripture.
And that is a point of real concern. In his common grace God sometimes permits unbelievers to be broadly correct in their external behavior. It is not so here. The impulse that resents any distinctions of role because it desires for sex to be null and for men and women to be interchangeable is utterly contrary to the witness of Scripture that sexual distinctions are real, legitimate, and ought to be respected.
Even if those that have been influenced by society form only a minority of our would-be reformers, and even if they have only partly assented to society’s ideas on this point or have somewhat modified them in light of their own beliefs, the fact that some of the impetus for change in the church comes from the world, in however diluted a form, is problematic. For if the world has influenced us on this point we might expect it to influence us on various others, including those of greater moral consequence. Having influenced our thinking about sex roles, it is conceivable that it might influence our thinking about sexuality. We might find the world’s basic idea on that point – viz. that sexuality is the result of an immutable orientation that is essential to one’s personal identity – appear among us, not in its full, undiluted expression but clothed in Christian garb and expressing approval of some (but not all) of our own beliefs (say, concerning the sinfulness of certain sexual behaviors) and grafting them on to a foundation of worldliness.
Returning to the point, in so far as the desire for deaconesses is a result of being influenced by the world it is a bad desire that ought to be opposed. It is not clear how much of a role this worldly influence plays, nor is it clear how it could be easily identified in most cases. It seems a fair assumption that it plays a significant role, and those that desire reform ought to examine themselves to see to it that their motives come rather from practical concerns and the New Testament’s testimony to women’s abilities in mercy ministry than from any desire to be in step with the ethos of our culture.[1]
The second matter which our present diaconal debate somewhat obscures is of greater consequence, and such is its solemnity that I approach it with reluctance. Some among us have so desired deaconesses that they have not waited for reform and have instituted them on their own initiative and against the Book of Church Order’s (BCO) limitation of the office to men (7-2). This action has taken a variety of forms.
One PCA church has pastors, elders, and servant leaders as its officers, tasks the latter with “budget formation, local and global giving, our mercy fund, and our adoption fund,” and lists women among their number.[2] In other cases “men are ordained as deacons and women are commissioned as deaconesses without ordination, though both the men and the women are elected by the congregation and serve as equal partners in diaconal ministry,” what has been called the “equal partners” view.[3] In others “both men and women serve as equal partners in diaconal ministry and are often described as ‘deacon’ or ‘deaconess’ though no one is ordained to this ministry,” what is referred to as the “nobody ordained” view.[4] In some cases it is not clear what approach has been used: churches simply list deaconesses alongside of their deacons, with no explanation as to how they have been selected or whether they differ from the deacons.[5]
Consider: in questions of misadministration matters of fact are as important as those of form, and often more so. A church which has ordained deaconesses at this time is guilty of insubordination to the constitution. It is not clear that the churches that have deaconesses are guilty of that. But there are many that have de facto deaconesses on account of a variety of clever organizational arrangements, many of which contravene our constitution on anything but the most hackneyed reading.
The BCO does not provide for unordained deacons (17-1), for “servant leaders” (1-4), or for diaconal assistants (see footnote) or others who do the work of the diaconal office in a regular, organized fashion but who do not formally hold the office (9-1 through 4).[6] It regards the office of deacon as “ordinary and perpetual” (7-2; 9-1) and assumes that a church will lack it only because of extraordinary circumstances that make it “impossible” “to secure deacons” (9-2). In such cases their duties devolve upon the ruling elders (9-2), not upon an unofficial or unordained class of people: the BCO knows nothing of a church willfully foregoing deacons, and one that does so contradicts historic American Presbyterian theory and practice, which has maintained that the office is as much jure divino as that of elder,[7] and one of whose crowning achievements has been that we have gone farthest in restoring the office to its proper place as opposed to the practice of other polities which have utterly transformed or neglected it.
Anyone who does the work of a deacon, not occasionally or in one’s private life, but in conjunction with the church’s organized ministry and at its behest, is functionally a deacon, irrespective of whether or not he or she formally holds the office. Those churches that have de facto deaconesses are therefore no less culpable of disobeying our constitution than any (if there are such) who have ordained women to the office.
Now we come to the crux of the matter, concerning which several preliminary remarks are needed. It is possible for God’s people to stumble into sin, and the commission of an offense does not necessarily mean that the offender is a false professor; they could be sincere believers who have stumbled. In cases where this has occurred it is appropriate for the error to be confronted, and doing so ought to be motivated by compassionate concern rather than embittered criticism. “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov. 27:5-6a). In considering these matters my criticism is not motivated by any pleasure in quarreling (I have none), but by a sincere conviction that there is wrongdoing that ought to be repented.
Now lay aside the questions of the permissibility and desirability of deaconesses, for they are not the real issue here. The real concern is that it is a sin to say one thing and then do another. The PCA has published a Book of Church Order to show its members how it organizes itself and conducts its affairs. Our officers are required to swear that they approve our form of government; that they will submit to their brethren in the Lord; and that they will seek the church’s peace and purity (BCO 21-5; 24-6). No one has been compelled to do this – any officers and churches that have become part of the PCA have done so freely –but having done so they are compelled to be faithful in fulfilling their conditions and vows of membership.
And promising that one approves the church’s government and then doing what is obviously in violation of it is not being true to one’s vows. It is oathbreaking, one of the worst forms of lying and a thing which God hates (Prov. 6:17, 19), the saying of the right formula to get a desired office and authority but then elevating one’s own desires above the rules of the body which one swore to obey and which has given one honors and authority to administer its affairs and teach its doctrine. This is a matter of simple honesty.
Now one might rejoin that the matter is not so simple. The promised acceptance of our form of government is not unqualified but “in conformity with the general principles of Biblical polity” (ordination vow #3), and one might assert that such general principles in some way mitigate the claims of the government of whom one has sworn approval.[8] If any is inclined to make such a case he is free to do so, but he will have a hard case on his hands, for as our former stated clerk has stated “there is [no] detailed explanation of what affirming a belief in the general principles of biblical polity” means.[9] Or one might assert, what was also anticipated in that same statement, that the general nature of ordination vows in some way absolves him of the duty of obeying every particular of the church’s form of government. That would seem to find an insuperable difficulty in the principle that the more generic is one’s vow, the wider are his obligations: a man who has promised to materially support his wife has an easier task than one who has promised to be a good husband, for being a good husband requires far more than merely meeting his wife’s material needs.
Then too, it would seem to be a principle of polity (and everything else we do) that we should mean what we say and say what we mean. Or in the words of our Lord, “let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matt. 5:37, NKJV). There is no room for dissembling, partly disagreeing in one’s own mind but not declaring that fact, or attempting to mitigate what one meant after an oath has been made. We do not meet this standard if we say that the Book of Church Order is a part of the church’s constitution (BCO Preface, §III) and our officers swear to approve it and to obey their brothers who govern in light of it, but then actually do so only insofar as it accords with their own beliefs.
Scripture ascribes to the church great power and dignity as the body of Christ, and regards lying to it as a grievous offense (Acts 5:3-11). Now it may be that the church is currently wrong and that it should employ an office of deaconess – I am not convinced of it at this time, but it is a serious position that deserves a fair hearing and that has been held by some of God’s foremost lights among us (e.g., Warfield) – but that is separate from the question of obeying our constitution as currently written, a failure to do which rather harms than helps the case for deaconesses. Or it may be that the church should not compel men to answer generic vows of submission to the church or to approval of its government, or else that it should formally modify the BCO to permit a diversity of practices regarding mercy ministry. Those are all fair, open questions.
What is not an open question is what one is required to do if he has freely sworn to do something. Simple, faithful obedience is required, and the only means of seeking a release is by removing to a different denomination, resigning office, or seeking a modification of the form of government which one has sworn to approve. To disobey is rebellion (Num. 16:1-49), which is in God’s sight “as the sin of divination” (1 Sam. 15:23), a thing which he will not tolerate among his people (Deut. 18:10-14); and well might we fear that his chastisement draws near to us because of our failures in this. May we all repent forthwith lest he come to us in judgment (1 Pet. 4:17).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] One may rejoin that chauvinism is also a social phenomenon and that opponents of deaconesses should similarly examine themselves and mortify any motives of opposition that come from it. The charge is freely granted.
[2] http://www.salempresws.org/leadership
[3] Minutes of the Thirty-Ninth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, p. 553
[4] Ibid., p. 554
[5] E.g., https://www.gracemillsriver.org/about-us/leadership/
[6] BCO 9-7 provides for sessions to appoint godly men or women to assist the deacons in “caring for the sick, widows,” etc. but expressly says that they hold no office and are not eligible for ordination. It would be improper to appoint deacon’s assistants but then have them functionally be simply deacons; i.e. to use 9-7 as a means of skirting BCO 7-2’s requirement that only men be ordained as deacons. Northern California Presbytery was cited for an exception concerning this very thing by the 36th General Assembly, in which BCO 9-7 was mistakenly asserted as allowing the election and installation of unordained deacons and deaconesses that would form a body called a diaconate. Minutes of the Thirty-Ninth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, pp. 469-471
[7] If Presbyterian government is established by divine law in its principles and in some measure its particulars, and if deacons are established as one of the particular offices Christ has given his church, as they are, then the jure divino nature of the whole system adheres also to this constituent part in so far as it too is given by scriptural revelation.
[8] This was the position of Northern California Presbytery that was at issue in Standing Judicial Commission cases 2009-25 and 2009-26. Minutes, p.553.
[9] “Issues Facing PCA” by L. Roy Taylor, p. 3, note 7. The original says, “now detailed explanation,” but context suggests this was a usage error and it has been reproduced in accord with its intended meaning here.
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Law and gospel go together in Paul’s thought, and having been shown the truth of the gospel and having trusted God in light of it, we are then to show the sincerity of our faith and to realize the law’s temporal purpose and the rest of God’s predestined will for us (Eph. 2:10) by obeying the law as a way of love for redeemed persons (Rom. 13:8-10; Col. 3:1-14; 1 Jn. 2:3-5). Law convicts, gospel reconciles, and law informs and sanctifies the redeemed life.

In a recent article I criticized an anonymous group of Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) agency heads for using the phrase “gospel imperative that ‘love does no wrong to a neighbor (Romans 13:10)’” that had also appeared in a 2016 denominational resolution. Central to my objection was that the phrase spoke of the gospel while quoting a section of Romans that deals with the law – the rest of v. 10 states “therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (emphasis mine) – and thus conflated what ought to have been distinguished. In a subsequent response a professor and PCA member, Chris Bryans, expressed uncertainty as to my meaning, saying:
I am not sure where Mr. Hervey is going in his brief comment about Romans 13:10. In attempting to separate law and gospel he believes that Paul is not discussing the gospel but the Law. The author is correct but only in a limited sense.  And, as I am sure Mr. Hervey will recognize, although Paul lays out the gospel in Romans chapters 1-11, the applications of the gospel present themselves in the beginning of chapter 12 and continue to the end of the book. 
And elsewhere:
What Mr. Hervey also means by the “separation of law and gospel” is as unclear to me as some of the issues of the Statement seem to be to him. How the separation of law and gospel relates to the issue at hand is also a puzzle to me. The same statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is part of law AND gospel. This needs further elaboration and I look forward to it.
In answer to the professor’s objections, and also because of correspondence which informs me that ministers doing important denominational work regard the law/gospel distinction as peculiarly Lutheran, I offer this response.
In the first case, I did perhaps speak poorly in saying that a “separation” should be maintained between law and gospel, which might suggest they are utterly antithetical. It is noteworthy, however, that I had earlier said (in my “brief comment about Romans 13:10”) that “as a rule the law and the gospel should be carefully distinguished, and each appealed to in its proper place”; i.e., the separation in view is really a clear distinction that puts each in its proper sphere and in the right relation to the other. I will concede that I could have been clearer, but I do not wish for Professor Bryans or anyone else to believe that a believer can so fully separate law and gospel that he can deal with only one rather than both, or that they ought to be regarded as exclusive of each other.
What is the law? In its widest sense it means God’s revealed will for human behavior. In this sense it includes the moral law which is impressed upon human conscience through God’s common grace operating in society (Rom. 2:14-15).[1] In a narrower sense it refers to the special revelation of this will in the Old and New Testaments, hence it sometimes refers to the whole Old Testament (Jn. 10:34), while in other cases it refers specifically to the Mosaic Law (Matt. 7:12), and in yet others it refers to the way of love as taught and exemplified by Christ and his apostles (Jn. 15:9-17; Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 6:2; 1 Jn. 4:21-5:3).[2]
What is the gospel? It is the good news of the kingdom of God which has appeared with the incarnation of Christ (Matt. 4:23; 9:35), and which has been raised against the oppressive kingdom of sin, death, and devil that afflicts people with misery and separates them from God (Lk. 11:14-22; Jn. 12:31). God’s kingdom is built upon the redeeming work of its king, who has atoned for the sins of his people and broken the power of death and the devil by dying in their place and rising from the dead (Rom. 4:25; 1 Cor. 15:20-22; Heb. 2:14-16). This redemption is received by faith (Mk. 1:15; Rom. 1:16-17; 3:21-26), and so the gospel is then the message of God’s kingdom and of how to enter it by a faith that receives and rests on the king who has accomplished redemption by his work.
The distinction between law and gospel is not per se a distinction between the Old and New Testaments, between grace and judgment, or between commands and promises. Both law (Matt. 5:17-19) and gospel (Gen. 3:15; 15:6; Ps. 32:1-2; comp. Rom. 4:3, 6-8) are present in both testaments, albeit with different degrees of clarity.[3] Both are of grace, as God could have left us to wallow in the darkness of our own sin. Both have to do with judgment (Rom. 2:12, 16). Both relate to sin and have a part in the lives of both believers and unbelievers, being to the former a blessing and to the latter a source of condemnation (2 Cor. 2:15-17). Both contain commands – “do” and “do not” in the case of the law and “repent and believe” in the case of the gospel (Mk. 1:15; 6:12; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; Rom. 16:25) – as well as promised rewards for obedience (Deut. 28:1-15; Acts 16:31; Rom. 10:9-13) and warnings and punishments for disobedience (Deut. 28:15-68; Heb. 6:4-6; 2 Pet. 2:20-22).
Law and gospel are antithetical only on one point, and even there only insofar as there is human misunderstanding about the matter. It just so happens that this is the most important matter in any person’s life. In the question of salvation the law and gospel are opposed if a person believes that salvation comes from obeying the law, the misunderstanding of Judaism and of various groups throughout church history. If one is inclined to think along such lines, the answer is that the law is a failed, impossible way of gaining eternal life and serves only to condemn, whereas the gospel of God’s free grace in the person and work of Christ, received by faith, is the only means of obtaining the desired salvation. As regards salvation the law is death (Rom. 7:5, 10) and the gospel is life (5:10-21); the law increases sin (5:20) and the gospel compels to righteousness (5:21-6:14); the law is of works (Gal. 3:10-12) and the gospel of faith (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16; 3:13-14); the law is condemnation (Rom. 3:19-20) and the gospel is grace and justification (3:21-26); the law is selfish (Gal. 5:2-4) and the gospel is Christ-centered (2:20-21).
Properly understood, law and gospel are distinct but complementary. The law convicts of sin and shows the insufficiency of all human efforts to earn eternal life, whereas the gospel shows God’s remedy for human depravity and guilt. For the redeemed the law shows the need for the gospel (Rom. 3:19-20), while the gospel provides the material knowledge which faith believes and which moves one to trust God for salvation (3:21-30). The gospel then sets one in the right relation to the law by making it a joyful guide for how to love God and Man (13:8-10), not a hopeless way to try to earn salvation (3:20), nor a condemning testimony to one’s own conscience (2:15) and at the Day of Judgment (2:16). For the reprobate both law and gospel serve to increase the guilt of those who have encountered and rejected them, while those that have not known them will be judged apart from them (Lk. 10:13-16; 12:47-48; Rom. 2:12; 2 Pet. 2:21.)
What makes all of this liable to confusion is that Paul uses the phrase “the law” in different ways, using it to refer especially to the Mosaic Law in the earlier chapters of Romans, and then in the later chapters meaning by it what he elsewhere calls “the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), i.e. a way of living characterized by love for neighbor. Nonetheless, in its varied forms the law is one thing, the gospel another. Both go together to provide an accurate knowledge of Man’s sin, of his need for forgiveness, of how to obtain eternal life, and of how to live a life pleasing to God. But they are distinct and must be carefully recognized as such. To attempt to have law without gospel is to attempt to earn salvation – and to fail miserably. To attempt to have gospel without law is to become an antinomian and to open the door to hypocritically pleading Christ while living wickedly. To conflate the two is to convert the gospel into a new law, the error sometimes known as neonomianism, which changes the gospel from being about what God has done in Christ, the reconciliation which is received by faith, and makes it instead into a different set of directions for what men must do to please God.
Those that speak of a ‘“gospel imperative that ‘love does no wrong to a neighbor’” while appealing to Romans 13 make the error of mistaking gospel for law. Romans 13 is about law, not gospel: loving neighbor is therefore a legal imperative, not a gospel one. But Romans 13 is about law as a guide for proper conduct because Romans 1 through 11 are about gospel and about the law as a testimony to our own sin, our inability to save ourselves, and our need for God to redeem us.[4]
Law and gospel go together in Paul’s thought, and having been shown the truth of the gospel and having trusted God in light of it, we are then to show the sincerity of our faith and to realize the law’s temporal purpose and the rest of God’s predestined will for us (Eph. 2:10) by obeying the law as a way of love for redeemed persons (Rom. 13:8-10; Col. 3:1-14; 1 Jn. 2:3-5). Law convicts, gospel reconciles, and law informs and sanctifies the redeemed life.[5] That is the proper relation and order of law and gospel as revealed in Paul’s writings.
Those that fail to distinguish the two and regard as gospel what is really law open the door to further error, not least the errors of the so-called social gospel, which turns the Church’s message from the gospel of reconciliation to God by faith into an appeal for merely temporal philanthropy. That the phrase to which I objected occurred originally and subsequently in statements about social affairs should therefore move you to concern, dear reader. And while I do not think this indicates that the mistaken authors in view are heretics, nonetheless it betrays a sloppiness in scriptural exegesis and ethical and theological thought that ill becomes our denomination and its foremost men, a sloppiness that merits criticism (and amendment) lest it inspire further failures to rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15) that will lead us father away from the Church’s proper mission of making disciples by the means of grace and on into the abyss of socio-political activism in which so many other Presbyterians have foundered and died by abandoning the Great Commission for things that are more properly the province of other institutions.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] H. Bavinck, Reformed Ethics Vol. I, 218-226
[2] Of course what is recorded in the New Testament was, previous to its authorship, transmitted via other means (2 Thess. 2:15).
[3] This lack of clarity is especially as regards the gospel in the Old Testament. One of the purposes of the law was to show the depravity of sin and with it the need for a gracious redeemer to save man from sin’s dominion: thus the law was added to help clarify the gospel (Rom. 7:7-13; Gal. 3:21-26).
[4] On this point Professor Bryans and I agree, though implications is arguably a preferable term to his own “applications,” as it better communicates the fact that being in the right relation to the law is a consequence of embracing the gospel of salvation by faith in Christ.
[5] Hence we have historically distinguished between the three uses of the law, two of which are in view here. Its use in conviction is regarded as the second use of the law; its use in teaching love is its third use.
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Those that are involved may consider that Christ commissioned the church to make disciples of all nations, not to make all nations fit an ideal social vision that has never been realized in this life; that she should not give aid to those whose actions stir up strife rather than peace; and that we have set the church on a dangerous moral and spiritual path that ends, not with us helping to achieve a more just society, but with us consigning ourselves to insignificance and eventual oblivion.

On June 4th, 2020, a group of agency heads in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) published a “Statement on Heinous Killings” at ByFaith, the denomination’s webzine. This document offered a response to the turbulent social climate occasioned by “the heinous killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the systemic mistreatment of many other people of color.” As this is the statement’s second anniversary, let us examine its claims, doing so in view of Scripture and of what has transpired since that time.
Commendation is due certain elements of the statement. It aims to promote peace and reconciliation in a time of turmoil. Scripture is clear that such is our duty and that “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt. 5:9). Many of its individual claims are sound. For example, in the body’s first section the authors appeal to all people being made in the image of God as the basis for human dignity and worth. They also relate how mistreatment of outsiders led Israel to incur God’s condemnation, how Paul emphasizes the gospel’s destruction of social barriers, and the glorious truth that the church is made up of people of every nation, tribe, and tongue.
The statement also desires to acknowledge and remedy past and present wrongs and appeals for divine mercy in seeing effectual remedies be applied by means of traditional forms such as lamentation, prayer, and personal and corporate repentance. Throughout its tone is one of a zealous desire for righteousness to be done in the matters with which it deals; yet “zeal without knowledge is not good,” and there are many elements of the statement that raise questions or are cause for concern.
What is Unclear or Fraught with Uncertain Implications
The first question that arises is as to the statement’s use of the first person plural pronoun. When the authors use “we” do they mean themselves or are they also speaking for others in the denomination? Their own statements complicate rather than clarify the issue, for they begin by saying that “we write as PCA agency presidents and permanent committee coordinators,” but then say in the next sentence that “only the General Assembly can speak for the PCA at large, and we do not presume to do so here,” only to then immediately say that “as elected leaders of PCA agencies and permanent committees, we feel compelled to speak clearly on these matters in the interest of gospel healing, unity, and peace.”
They later use “we” 27 times in describing how they intend to respond to current racial tensions. They may be fairly asked: if you are not writing for the denomination as a whole but feel your offices compel you to speak, is it a fair inference that you are speaking then only for your own agencies and committees? Or do you mean that the solemn nature of your offices has impressed upon all of you your duty to speak as united individuals, but not in your official capacities as such? Either way we are presented with an enormous wrinkle in that, the statement being anonymous, their authority (whether as people or as officeholders) is undermined thereby: when, for example, they say that “we repent of our ongoing racial sins,” the reader has no way of knowing who is in view and whether they have in fact done so.
Also uncertain is the question of the precise meaning of some of the things prayed for. What, for example, is the exact meaning of praying that leaders “shun words and actions that humiliate others or fuel violence”? Does it mean that they will not make needlessly provocative statements and abuse their power by using excessive force? If so, such a suggestion is sound. But being arrested, tried, and punished is apt to be a humiliating experience for many who experience it, so that civil authorities will probably humiliate people by implication simply by performing their duties. Or again, Minneapolis’ mayor seems to have had a similar thought as our agency heads, and it led him to order the police to abandon one of their precincts, which was subsequently torched and looted: he would probably maintain that minimizing police and rioter casualties commended such an action, whereas others might say that it emboldened yet further destruction and that in forgoing humiliating rioters such an action humiliated police and law abiding citizens.
As written, the authors’ prayer could lend support to those that believe dereliction of duty, breaking one’s oath to uphold the law, and cowardice are despicable sins that are on all too frequent display by elected officials. Conversely, prominent activist groups could find in it a plea for defunding the police and ending what they call mass incarceration. The question is, first, what the authors themselves mean, which is not clear from this document alone; second, whether they realize they might be giving moral support to others who might otherwise disagree with them – again, any side could appropriate the language of the statement.
A similar question may be asked about the authors’ prayer that “those in positions of power . . .  speak with truth and humility” and that they “seek justice and righteousness ahead of comfort, affluence, and the preservation of the status quo.” Just what do truth, humility, and earnest seeking after justice look like in such cases? Do they mean going along with the moral tide of the moment, or might they lead one to dissent by suggesting the status quo is not as dire as is maintained? A reader may ask further whether, in a climate of moral foment and mob outrage as characterized both the time of the statement’s release and the present, speaking with truth and humility is likely to be well-received, whatever its form (Prov. 22:3).
What is Problematic
The statement’s use of Scripture raises real concerns. In the second paragraph under the section entitled “Scripture” we read the following:
In spite of exhortation to “do good; seek justice, correct oppression” (Isaiah 1:17) Israel oppressed the poor and thrust aside outsiders, leading to judgment and exile (Malachi 3:5). Such racism and ethnocentrism were not merely the sinful acts of individuals. These sinful traits had become so embedded in the laws and customs of the society that the Prophet Isaiah pronounced a woe on “iniquitous decrees and the writers who keep writing oppression” and the Psalmist spoke pointedly of “wicked rulers who frame injustice by statute” (Isaiah 10:1; Psalm 94:20). The Bible frames racism as individual and systemic sin, and calls God’s people to stand against both.
Left to itself, the first sentence’s meaning is approximately correct, except that it omits that there were other causes of Israel’s exile (notably idolatry, 2 Kgs. 21:11-15) and uses Mal. 3:5 awkwardly: it fails to note that Malachi was written after the return from the exile that earlier prophets like Isaiah had threatened; implies 3:5 either mentions this previous exile or threatens another, where it actually speaks generically of “judgment,” and fails to note that 3:1-5 describe the future coming of John the Baptist and the Messiah four hundred years later.[1] The next three sentences represent the central idea that controls the authors’ exposition of the passages cited, namely that they show that “the Bible frames racism as individual and systemic sin.”
Further review shows that such a statement does not do justice to the passages in view. Isaiah 1 never mentions ethnic outsiders as victims. Its tone is more general in lamenting Judah’s sins of rebellion (vv. 2,5, 23,28); ignorance of God (v. 3); corruption (vv. 4,23); infidelity and irreverence (v. 4); hypocritical displays of piety (vv. 11-15); bloodshed and murder (vv. 15, 23); injustice and oppression, especially in dealing with the poor and fatherless (v. 17); spiritual adultery (v. 21); stealing (v. 23); accepting and soliciting bribes (v. 23); dereliction of duty (v. 23); and idolatry (v. 29). The only group of victims that are mentioned by name are the widows and fatherless of v. 17, whom the statement authors omit in their quotation of the verse. Ethnic outsiders are mentioned twice when v. 7 regards them as devouring the land in front of the Judeans’ very eyes, which suggests that in some cases it was the foreigners that oppressed the Israelites, a calamity which God allowed as chastisement for their sins.[2]
Indeed, Isaiah’s portrayal of ethnic outsiders is interesting. They are sometimes recorded in a favorable light (14:1; 56:6; 60:10; 61:5), but in some of these cases they are presented as serving the Israelites (60:10; 61:5), and on other occasions they are presented unfavorably (1:7; 2:6; 25:21; 25:5; 62:8). If we move beyond the explicit use of terms like foreigner and sojourner to those cases where particular nations are addressed, we find both harsh curses (most of chapters 13 -24) and wonderful promises (19:18-24).
Malachi 3:5 lists six sins: sorcery, adultery, false swearing, oppressing a hired worker, oppressing widows and orphans, and thrusting aside sojourners, or seven if we include not fearing God as an offense as well as the root of the others. The statement’s authors find in this and in Isa. 1:17 “racism and ethnocentrism” that “were not merely the sinful acts of individuals” but “had become so embedded in the laws and customs that the Prophet Isaiah pronounced a woe on “iniquitous decrees and the writers who keep writing oppression” and the Psalmist spoke pointedly of “wicked rulers who frame injustice by statute” (Isaiah 10:1; Psalm 94:20).
There is apparently no reason why such passages should be interpreted as indicating that injustice toward foreigners was more widespread than that toward fellow Israelites. The verse immediately preceding Isa. 10:1 says that “Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim devours Manasseh; together they are against Judah” (9:21), which suggests intra-Israelite wrongdoing. The only victims of wrong that are named in this section (9:8-10:4) are “the needy,” “the poor of my people,” “widows,” and “the fatherless” (10:2). That the poor are said to be “of my people” and that foreigners are only mentioned as adversaries (9:11-12) suggests the “iniquitous decrees” were directed rather against fellow Jews than outsiders. (Note also that the next section, 10:5-19, contains an oracle against Assyria.)
Psalm 94 does pronounce a woe against those that murder sojourners (v. 6), but this accompanies a complaint against murderers of widows and orphans (Ibid.), and the verse preceding says of the wrongdoers that “they crush your people, O LORD, and afflict your heritage” (v. 5), which suggests that, again, much of the evil in view was directed against fellow Jews (or perhaps that the oppressors in question were foreigners).
The heinous killings statement uses “people of color” and “ethnic outsiders” as approximate synonyms: what the latter were to ancient Israel the former are to our society; and in appealing to Scripture it finds “ethnic outsiders” in the verses that speak of “sojourners.” This is a rather sloppy presentation. Sojourners are not ethnic outsiders as such, but a particular class of foreigners who temporarily reside in a place other than their native land, usually on account of economic or other personal reasons. Scripture knows many other types of ethnic outsiders, from those that oppressed the Israelites (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, the Philistines, etc.) to those that were the Israelites were to destroy (Canaanites) to those that showed them some measure of favor (as Persia under Cyrus) to those nations whose relations with Israel were varied (such as Moab). To use verses that speak specifically of sojourners as though they speak generically of foreigners is to give an inaccurate view of Scripture’s testimony of Israel’s relations with foreigners.
As an aside, it may also be noted that regarding people of color as ethnic outsiders is often rather inaccurate: many people of color are among the nation’s longest-established ethnic groups, and they often suffer not as outsiders but at the hands of outsiders. Gentrification comes to mind in this respect.
Returning to the point, we see an example of this conflation of “sojourners” with “ethnic outsiders” in this excerpt:
After he redeemed Israel from slavery God commanded them to extend justice and care to all people, including ethnic outsiders. Exodus 22:21 is one example among many: “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
Actually, God did not command the Israelites to care for all people. Ex. 22:18-20 establishes the death penalty for certain heinous offenses, and, of course, elsewhere (including 23:20ff) they are told to annihilate the Canaanites. We might say that such people received justice rather than care.
When the statement later considers New Testament testimony about attitudes toward ethnic outsiders it says that “Jesus proactively served outsiders (see John 4:7ff).” Christ did not exactly serve the Samaritan woman at the well. He taught her (and later many other Samaritans, w. 39-43), but he performed no miracles and in the course of his teaching recognized and uttered what might strike us today as an ethnically insensitive remark (v. 22). Elsewhere we see him interact with the Syro-Phoenician woman to exorcise a demon from her daughter (Mk. 7:24-30), yet in this episode too he asserts Jewish preeminence (v.27) and performs his miracle only when the woman acknowledges the truth of his statement (vv. 28-29). In Luke’s account of the healing of a centurion’s servant we are told that the centurion employed Israelite elders as emissaries and that they appealed to Christ on the basis of the centurion’s pro-Israel sentiments and benevolence (Lk. 7:3-5). Later we are told that Greeks approached Philip seeking an audience with Jesus and that he did not grant it but used it as an occasion to discuss his approaching death (Jn. 12:20-26). Christ’s recorded dealings with Gentiles are few, and he regarded his mission as being first to the people of Israel. The reader may judge whether the best description of Christ’s relations with Gentiles is related, then, by saying that he proactively served them.[3]
The statement continues by saying that the church “was born into a mission of multi-ethnic inclusiveness on Pentecost, when people from all over the known world heard the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection in their own language; a sign that Babel’s curse of ethnic division and hostility was being undone in the church (Acts 2:5-13).” Acts 2:5 states that the listeners were “Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven,” i.e., pilgrims who had come from the various places where the first Jewish Diaspora had dispersed them, not Gentile citizens of those nations. Note also that some hearers (“others”) mocked the apostles (v. 13), and that the passage makes no mention of any of this having anything to do with the fruits of Babel. When Peter responds to the scoffing with a sermon (v. 14ff) he cites Joel and the Psalms, but not Gen. 11 – in fact, no New Testament writer ever refers to Babel.[4]
As for what they call “Babel’s curse of ethnic division and hostility,” Scripture does not say that God cursed the peoples at Babel with division and strife, but that he providentially confused their speech to keep them from forming an empire of unbridled pride (Gen. 11:4-5) and to force them to fulfill the creation mandate. When Scripture records God cursing someone it is typically explicit (Deut. 27:9-26), yet we have no such language in Gen. 11. By restraining their evil God was actually blessing Earth’s inhabitants at that time. So also the passage teaches that God prevented formal unity in favor of an ethnic distinction which had existed already (as the preceding chapter relates). God willed, then and since, that men should dwell in distinct nations (Acts 17:26), and what hostility they feel between themselves is not a result of Babel but a consequence of their own sin.
The statement continues by saying that Paul “championed the gospel’s power to unite people across social barriers (Galatians 3:28-29 and Ephesians 2:12-13).” This is indeed a glorious truth, but it merits some qualification. The unity and equality that believers enjoy is first spiritual, as it is in Christ (who is one) and whose work of atonement is the same for all the elect. The main point of Gal. 3:28-29 is as a polemic against the Judaizers whose false teaching was troubling the Galatians. When Paul tells the Galatians that all are one in Christ he is telling them that they do not need to act like Jews in order to receive salvation (3:7). By his work Christ has done what the Law could not (2:16, 21), and he has thus provided a benefit that can only be received by faith and which is forfeited if one seeks it by lawkeeping (3:10; 5:2-6). This spiritual equality means that we should be humble in our dealings with each other and forgo wronging each other (5:13-15; 6:26), but it does not mean that all social distinctions have dissipated (Eph. 5:22-24; 6:1-3; Heb. 13:17). Paul recognizes the legitimacy of existing social relations and urges believers to respect them (Rom. 13:1-7), to live rightly within them (Eph. 6:5-9), and to seek to modify them where appropriate by lawful means (1 Cor. 7:21).
While the principle does hold that our spiritual equality means we are of right equal in many other respects, those that use this passage should be careful to not allow its social consequences to drown out its foremost meaning about the sufficiency of Christ and the benefits that accrue to us by faith in him. Using the passage in a manifesto concerned with social relations in the (largely unbelieving) culture at large is very different than using it, as Paul did, in an epistle to a young church troubled by grave doctrinal controversy, and so great care is needed on this point.[5]
Similar concerns arise in connection with the statement’s use of Eph. 2:12-13. Ignorance and unbelief had created a barrier between the Ephesian Gentiles and Jews, as had some of the requirements of the Law (v.15); but these social barriers were far less formidable than the spiritual barrier that existed between the Gentiles and God before they were brought to faith. Hence v. 12 says that they were “separated from Christ” and “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Indeed, a review of the section in view (2:11-3:6) suggests that unity with the Jews is valuable especially because of its spiritual significance, in that it represents union also with Israel’s God (2:16, 19).[6]
Again, it is spiritual unity which leads and undergirds social unity, and we ought not to lose sight of this when using these passages. In addition, that social unity is still within the church: Paul thinks of the church and the world as essentially distinct, and when he speaks of the blessings of Christ he has reference to the church and its members, not the world – he knows nothing of a transformation of the world that does not involve its citizens becoming citizens of the kingdom of God (Rom. 15:8-21; 1 Cor. 7:31). The statement, which speaks much of a temporal and material notion of justice in society rather than only of salvation and of unity within the church, is therefore in a real danger of reducing the full and proper meaning of such passages. The gospel does indeed unite people across social barriers, but it does far more than that, and in remembering its temporal consequences we must never minimize its eternal benefits.
The statement’s final sentence under “Scripture” says that “Scripture counts racial injustice (especially that which takes away life from an image bearer) as grave sin, which Christ will judge and against which the church must stand.” At first glance this appears a fair summary, but on further reflection we see that it raises a number of questions. It is true that all forms of injustice will be judged by Christ, especially those that involve murder. But it is a very fair question just what is entailed in the church standing against injustice. If that means that it faithfully preaches the law to the consciences of men to call them to repentance from all sin, then such a statement is true indeed. But if it means that the church as institution (as opposed to believers as individuals and groups) lays aside the declaration of the truth to give itself to social and political causes and means, then it is highly objectionable and would entail forfeiture of duty for an activism to which we are not called. My authority for such a statement is the example of Christ himself:
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. (Lk. 13:1-5)
Here we see that some of his contemporaries objected to the Roman administration’s cruelty, and yet Jesus’ response was not to condemn Pilate or to urge people to trim their lamps for a social revolution (comp. 12:35ff), but to tell them that they would perish in their sin if they did not repent and make their peace with God. By the standards of many contemporary activists Jesus was guilty here of failing to stand against Roman oppression of the Jewish people, including sacrilegious murder. By being silent about such injustice and failing to stand against it he was, on their view, complicit in it.
And so also, on their view, should he have used the example of the tower of Siloam to advocate for equity in tower ownership and safety. Clearly the Siloamese were victims of structural and systemic inequities in building construction standards, and justice mandated Jesus agitate for reforms that would include regulations governing tower safety, as well as subsidies to provide the disadvantaged Siloamese with direct grants to construct safer towers to bring about tower equity and fairness. This is no facetiousness: substitute “housing” or “home” for “tower” and we have a replication of much contemporary talk about home ownership in this country.
But to the point, while Christ is the only sinless man, he did not do, in a society of more severe ethnic strife than our own, and one that was characterized by his own people’s domination by an authoritarian, cruel, pagan, Gentile power, what the authors of this statement would have us to believe that he ought to have done. He did not take a social stand, but rather deflected the matter and made it an occasion for evangelism. A thought: perhaps the church, which is Christ’s body, ought to find in this an example for how it should handle social matters, instead of going along with the spirit of the moment or taking its cues from contemporary activists, many of whom are hostile to our faith and church?
The statement later quotes approvingly a 2016 resolution which refers to the “gospel imperative that ‘love does no wrong to a neighbor’ (Romans 13:10).” This section of Romans deals with the law (comp. vv. 8-9) and how believers best fulfill it in their lives, and is not treating the gospel as such, which Paul has dealt with in the earlier chapters of the book. As a rule the law and the gospel should be carefully distinguished, and each appealed to in its proper place. The statement later says:
We join our voices and hearts with those who suffer and lament the evils of personal and systemic racism in our country, our church, and our own hearts. We cry out with the Psalmist “O LORD, how long shall the wicked exult?” and with the prophet Jeremiah “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (Psalm 94:3; Jeremiah 12:1).
It may be asked: who are the wicked whose exultation and prosperity is lamented? Are they the wrongdoers in the incidents mentioned by name in the introduction? If so, it seems rather odd to describe them as exulting and prospering when they were universally condemned and indicted at the time, a very different experience of the world from the wicked whose seeming impregnability is bewailed by psalmists and prophets. Or is it some other group involved that is to blame for racism in nation and church? Also, as written the combination of Jer. 12:1 and Ps. 94:3 with the last clause (“our own hearts”) suggests a measure of self-deprecation. That is an odd way to use the passages in view, to say the least – neither chapter involves confession and both include imprecation (Ps. 94:1-2; Jer. 12:3b) – especially when there are other passages that better suit the purpose of self-deprecation for wrong.
Lastly the statement appeals to Rom. 12:15 to say that its authors “strive to ‘weep with those who weep.’” Though the section of Romans in view contains instructions for how to interact with both believers and unbelievers, v. 15 is best understood as referring to showing sympathy with fellow believers. The first half of the verse says to “rejoice with those who rejoice.” Now the authors had just quoted Ps. 94:3 and its mention of the wicked exulting, ergo if Rom. 12:15 established an absolute principle that makes no distinction between who is rejoicing and why, it would have to be understood as commending that we rejoice with the wicked when they exult in wrongdoing. That would entail contradiction with other Scriptures, not least the admonition of Rom. 12:9 to “abhor evil,” and therefore it is obvious that the rejoicing and weeping are limited to those cases in which they would be appropriate, which occur mainly in the case of unity with other believers. Douglas Moo therefore says that “Paul shifts from exhortation about the relation of Christians to those outside the community (v. 14) back to their relation to fellow Christians (vv. 15-16)” in his commentary on Romans.[7]
The authors appeal to the verse as their justification for showing sympathy not only for fellow believers, but also with others in our society, which as a practical question would include groups such as BLM that lament more than just violence and that publicly lament such things as the nuclear family. This may seem an unfair charge, but when one states that he laments with those that lament and does not further qualify the statement he effectively extends solidarity and sympathy to all that are involved in the moral tide of the moment, not merely those that share his faith and morals. At the least, he cannot be surprised if readers interpret him to mean such a thing.
Out of the 20 Scriptures referenced, the statement’s use is objectionable or merits comment in 17 cases. When we examine the statement’s other language we discover the reason. The document uses terms and concepts from contemporary activist rhetoric 21 times. Many of these terms are of recent coinage and do not coincide with Scriptural conceptions of the matters in view. Racism, for example, only dates to 1928,[8] while empathy dates to 1908 and is, to boot, a strange concept of dubious utility that comes originally from the world of art criticism.[9] Systemic is an irregular adjective that has traditionally been used in “medicine and biology for differentiation of meaning” from the more regular form systematic.[10]
When contemporary activists conceive of anthropological distinctions they typically divide people into two broad ethnic classes, people of color and whites, or into the two broad socioeconomic classes of oppressor and oppressed. Scripture regards humanity as one,[11] though it distinguishes men by spiritual state as elect and reprobate, lost and saved, believers and unbelievers, as well as by ethnic distinctions: in its broad form, Jews and Gentiles; in a wider form as the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gen. 10), and as the various tribes and nations into which God has providentially distinguished them (Acts 17:26).
The Scriptural record attests that because of sin these groups are often antagonistic toward each other, yet it regards all injustice and oppression as wrong, regardless of its character, motivation, or respective offenders and victims. It knows of no permanent categories of oppressors and oppressed, and regards it as a grievous evil when a formerly oppressed people oppresses others in turn (Ex. 22:21).  Its conception of the nature and divisions of the human race is notably different, therefore, from that of many contemporary activists, and it has, in addition, different conceptions about the nature of justice and of how it ought to be realized (Ex. 23:1-8; Lev. 19:15; Deut. 1:17; 16:19). To attempt to read Scripture through the lens of a contemporary worldview is a mistake and will invariably lead to misinterpreting Scripture or twisting its true meaning.
Hence when the statement says that Scripture “frames racism as individual and systemic sin” it is not letting Scripture speak for itself or by its own terms, but is trying to force it into a contemporary mold. Scripture reveals much about oppression and injustice both within and between nations, and for reasons that include selfish advantage, international rivalry, partiality and prejudice, greed, and the like. It does indeed establish the principle that standards should not generally differ between people or groups, and that discrimination on the basis of ethnicity is therefore unjust. But Scripture goes much farther and condemns partiality for or prejudice against for many reasons in addition to ethnicity. The contemporary view with its obsession over what it calls racial matters is much more limited in its conception of the nature and scope of wrongdoing than is Scripture, and to interpret Scripture by modern conceptions is to impoverish the rich doctrinal and ethical material we have at hand with which to oppose all manner of wrongdoing.
Last, we come to the statement’s particular actions. We mentioned above how its authors extend sympathy of sentiment to many groups whose beliefs are hostile to our own by failing to distinguish between those who protest current social affairs. Special attention belongs to their statement that “we lament that peaceful protests, offered in good faith to highlight racial injustice, have occasionally turned violent.” That this matter receives a single sentence of this nature is concerning: protests did not simply “turn” violent, as if they were Georgia weather on a July afternoon. Cities throughout the nation were inundated with a 1960s level of rioting. Many protests were violent from the first, and that by the intention of many of their participants and organizers. Viewed from the vantage point of subsequent history the statement’s language here strikes an observer as woefully inadequate. Portland was the scene of months of rioting and a few days after this statement was published rioters in Seattle established the short-lived Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (or Occupied Protest) which recognized no government authority and whose occupants resisted police efforts to respond to shootings. Yet this state of affairs, whose rotten first fruits were already apparent, receives a single sentence that minimizes the extent and severity of the criminal violence. Three named incidents (one of which is generally regarded as an accident) get an entire manifesto, yet nationwide riots get a single sentence of mild disapproval. Such imbalance little accords with the nature and gravity of the situation.
Elsewhere we find a similarly concerning treatment of the matters in view. Under the section entitled “Repent,” the statement says:
In humility, we repent of our ongoing racial sins. We repent of past silence in the face of racial injustice. We repent of a negligent and willful failure to account for our unearned privilege or to surface the unconscious biases that move us to protect our comfort rather than risk speaking against racial injustice.
Repentance is indeed a Scriptural concept, and yet here it is made subordinate to concepts taken rather from contemporary activist sources than from Scripture itself. Nowhere does Scripture name “racial sins,” “silence in the face of racial injustice,” “a negligent and willful failure to account for our unearned privilege,” or failing to “surface the unconscious biases that move us to protect our comfort” as sins. It does indeed say to love neighbor as self, show no partiality, love our enemies, regard all men as neighbors worthy of love and respect, engage in self-examination to mortify sin and ensure our thinking is patterned after the example of Christ rather than that of the flesh or world, and speak truth faithfully, yet far from limiting such principles and actions to questions of proper ethnic relations it teaches that they should be realized in all matters, relations, and questions of moral conduct.
That is very different from the activist conception, which sees what it calls racial justice as paramount and which, as a practical consequence, has its proponents become greatly agitated when anyone dissents or tries to take a wider view of justice and reconciliation by saying, to cite one notable example, that ‘all lives matter.’ Let us be clear on this point: though some of the terms above could be understood as valid concepts if interpreted in light of Scripture and used alongside of its many other moral concepts and principles, the fact that they have come from extra-Scriptural sources means that it is those extra-Scriptural sources that will define their meaning. And as we noted above, the matter will go farther and see those terms used to interpret Scripture rather than Scripture being used to evaluate their prudence, veracity, and tendency to promote peace and righteousness. And let us be clear as well that Scripture’s material is, again, richer and deeper than that of the contemporary activist worldview, that it will produce true righteousness where the other will not, and that in trading the one for the other – which is what is entailed when we do not allow Scripture to speak for itself but make it the servant of the contemporary activist framework – we impoverish rather than enrich ourselves.
Also worthy of special note is the concept of “unearned privilege.” This, like the other terms, is tacitly assumed as true by the authors without any attempt to qualify, explain, prove, or even clearly define it. It raises a multitude of practical questions, such as what the unearned privilege the authors enjoy involves or whether it is the sole means of their enjoyment of the “comfort” mentioned in the last sentence quoted, or is accompanied by others. Lay that aside and note that, as the statement is not qualified, it somewhat implies that “unearned privilege” is necessarily wrong by its very nature. That may not be what the authors intend at all, but absent further explanation it is reasonable to conclude that at least some readers will come away with the idea that unearned privilege is invariably wrong.
That is a very dangerous state of affairs, to say the least. Only once let men think that unearned privilege is wrong in human affairs and they are apt to take the idea one step farther and logically conclude that it is wrong in other matters as well. For if law abiding, respectable, hardworking middle-class Americans are to be accounted guilty of grievous injustice because their comfort is a result of unearned privilege, either wholly or in part, why not proceed along that line of thought and conclude that not only temporal questions to do with the distribution of wealth are unjust because of disparities, but also eternal questions to do with salvation are so as well? If it is unfair that some people have bigger houses than others, why not think that it is unfair that some people have eternal life when others do not? Surely that is a matter of greater importance, and the potential injustice all that much greater as well.
Only once let men get this idea that unearned privilege is inherently wrong – an idea which they are sure to get if the term is not used with the greatest care and clarity – and the doctrines of providence, grace, and election are imperiled among us. For what is grace but unearned privilege, the reception of something that we are not due solely as a result of God’s mercy and good pleasure? Nay, the thing goes farther than that. Life itself is unearned privilege, for we have no right to exist at all, much less after the sin of our first parents and our own transgressions. Every breath, every article of clothing, every pleasant moment, every morsel of food is unearned privilege, for we deserve nothing but death for our sins.
Now it might be rejoined that this conflates human relations with God and human relations with each other, and that unearned privilege is the modus operandi and unobjectionable in the one but inherently unjust in the other. Fair enough, yet therein lays the essence of my complaint, that the authors do not make such a clarification but use the term quite carelessly in such a way that they invite such confusion. Also, while my theorizing might seem fanciful, it actually accords rather plainly with the actual tendency of the revolutionary spirit wherever it is found. The French precursors to our own aspirant activists did not only aim to destroy the monarchy but anything to do with the church and traditional conceptions of God; and many a revolutionary has taken the horrid blasphemy on his lips with pleasure, reciting as dogma ‘Ni Dieu! Ni Maitre!’ (‘No Gods, No Masters’) and thus endeavoring to make war upon all that is deemed evil, whether it has its source in Man or God. For those that seek to remake the world into a more just utopia seldom stop with rejecting social and economic arrangements, but in their arrogance and their lust for power give themselves to a frenzy that does not hesitate to impute error to God himself, whose government and providence are hated as the source of wrong. Not thoughtlessly should the authors give support to such a spirit or make use of its concepts, yet that is the real nature of what they have done, whether they realize it or not.
In the final section entitled “Act” the statement says:
We need to act, within the spheres where God has given us influence, in the interest of biblical justice for men and women of color. Therefore, we will work within our committees and agencies to identify and apply the gospel to our racial biases. We will seek to honestly assess our programs and practices for structural or systemic biases and work diligently to remedy those we find.
A question: what if there aren’t any “structural or systemic biases”? You say that you will remedy those you find, thus suggesting that you are sure that you certainly will find them. Is it possible that your framework is not a healthy one in which to conduct these types of investigations, leading, as it does, to foregone conclusions before the fact?
Also, the way that “gospel” is used here is fraught with potential danger. The gospel is the message of forgiveness of sin and reconciliation to God through the merits and satisfaction of Christ and his work, received by grace through faith. Being thus reconciled to God will begin a moral change that will lead to improved relations with one’s fellow man as the process of sanctification drives evil prejudices from our hearts and we recognize that what unites us is far more important than the very small temporal things that distinguish us. But the gospel is first about our reconciliation with God; it is not a panacea for social ills, for it is relevant that we continue to believe the gospel even if we are separated from human society by exceptional circumstances (like shipwreck in the Pacific), and it must first reconcile us to God before we can begin to love neighbor as we ought.
Plus, in many such cases what is needed is law, not gospel, the command that you shall love your neighbor as yourself; and prudence and truthfulness commend that we keep a strong separation between law and gospel lest conflating them we should deprive men of a sound knowledge of both. By thus using ‘gospel’ as a catchall generality (as is now in vogue) we detract from the essential message of salvation and cheapen the gospel by conflating it with law and by implying very bad things about its character; indeed, we move in the direction of social gospel and liberation theology, and we know from long experience the direction in which such things take the church and how the former eviscerated the mainline denominations.
Conclusion
This statement does not seem to have ever been retracted or modified, nor is it entirely clear that we have actually accomplished the justice in society and church that it stated we would work toward. It was a piece of moral preening that established the permissibility of bad practices: the strange combination of using the authority and dignity of office with the safety but forfeited respect of anonymity that has since been used by others (maybe – the anonymity factor means we can’t say with certainty);[12] the general program of finding a framework for ethical thought in external and often unabashedly secular sources that can also be found elsewhere; the desire for worldly respect that shows in other matters like the ongoing Revoice controversy; the poor exegesis of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament; the abandonment of the spirituality of the church and of her proper mission of spreading the gospel for a dubious program of social and political activism; the muddying of the true gospel message of reconciliation with God for one that finds in it a cure for social ills and a means for human reconciliation; a corresponding slight of the law of God, whose message is dimmed when the gospel is used where the law ought to be used, and when the Old Testament is poorly exegeted in general and in its moral censures in particular; the desire to be in step with contemporary cultural events and to allow them a part in determining the church’s message and efforts at outreach; and the lending moral support to movements whose actual fruit has been awful and has done much harm to society at large and especially to their ostensible beneficiaries.
It is never right for the church to give its aid to people who would overthrow the civil power – which is what is involved in things like defunding the police, abolishing bail, and seeking to minimize and eventually eliminate incarceration for at least the vast bulk of offenses – and whose programs have resulted in a massive increase in crime, that is, in actual people being harmed in person and property, many of whom have been people of color themselves. We in the pews view things such as this with great alarm and see in them proof that liberalism –at least as a moral impulse, if not yet as a heretical system of doctrine – has made deep inroads into our denomination and characterizes many of our leaders at even the highest levels.
Those that are involved may consider that Christ commissioned the church to make disciples of all nations, not to make all nations fit an ideal social vision that has never been realized in this life; that she should not give aid to those whose actions stir up strife rather than peace; and that we have set the church on a dangerous moral and spiritual path that ends, not with us helping to achieve a more just society, but with us consigning ourselves to insignificance and eventual oblivion. Such has been the example of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) its remnants are now a part of, and such will be our case if we do not look to Scripture and the admonitions of history but insist upon trying to earn the world’s respect by trying to help it achieve its own very flawed vision of justice.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] The judgment that fell upon Israel after the arrival of the Messiah and his messenger was varied in both time and type of execution, but would ultimately include exile in addition to the other calamities of the revolts of 66-73 and 132-135, such as the destruction of the temple, abolition of the Sanhedrin, and enormous loss of life.
[2] There is some difference of opinion as to the meaning of the final clause (“as overthrown by foreigners”), and whether it is to be understood as referring to the nature of the desolation (i.e., the ravages are like those accomplished by a marauding foreign army), to its perpetrators, or both. There is similar difference of opinion as to the timing of the desolation in view.
[3] Yet in all these episodes the foreigners gave a good testimony. The Samaritans shamed the Jews by believing without signs (comp. Matt. 16:1-4) and by eagerly embracing him who was without honor in his own hometown (Mk. 6:4) and whose own nation rejected him. By her persistent humility the Syro-Phoenician woman received what many Jews could not because of their unbelief (Mk. 6:5). The centurion had faith superior to any in Israel, and the Greeks, though not receiving their immediate desire because the time was not right (comp. Rom. 11:11-24) yet gave a good testimony in desiring him of whom the Jews were soon to cry “away with him” (Jn. 19:5).
[4] Let the reader also ponder whether Peter spoke in tongues – nothing in the text suggests so – and how it was that the hearers discussed among themselves (2:12) unless they had a common tongue in addition to their foreign tongues.
[5] And so also the statement’s use of Gen. 12:3: as Gal. 3:8 teaches, this verse has reference to justification by faith. The statement asserts that it teaches the principle of ethnic equality and finds in this a motive for working toward social equality in both church and society, yet the proper meaning of the verse refers to spiritual unity and equality in Christ by faith. To move from that to calling for an end to heinous killings in the society at large is an odd use of the verse that does not comport with its primary meaning in its proper context, an appeal from the greater (spiritual equality) to the lesser (temporal social equality) that carries in its method the risk of seeing the latter drown out all thought of the former.
[6] The statement’s division is somewhat odd: 2:14-15 seems to be more pointed in elucidating the unity of Jew and Gentile than 2:12-13. The nearness which the Gentiles now enjoy in Christ is first a nearness to God (comp. 2:4-10; 16, 18, 22). Note the passage’s transition from Israel under the Law, from which Gentiles were estranged by unbelief and ceremonial uncleanness, to the household of God or new Israel (as Paul elsewhere calls it, Gal. 6:16), in which they participate by faith.
[7] The Epistle to the Romans by D. J. Moo, published 1996 by William B. Eerdman’s. He does however note that others interpret 12:15 as including weeping and rejoicing with unbelievers, and cites Chrysostom as an example.
[8] Per Online Etymology Dictionary
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] B.B. Warfield’s On the Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race is recommended as a helpful resource on this point.
[12] The reference is to “The Letter” that appeared at afaithfulpca.net before the 2021 General Assembly. Its authorship has not been publicly stated, though email revelations suggest it was a collaborative effort spearheaded by a teaching elder in Maryland. It was however signed publicly by a group of several hundred endorsers.

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God did not build his church upon suave, charming, likeable men. He built it upon a man of sorrows who was rejected by men and acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3), and upon irascible fishermen who lopped off someone’s ear (Jn. 18:10), and upon other men who were not wise or attractive by worldly standards (Acts 4:13; comp. 1 Cor. 1:27).

There is a common idea in the contemporary Presbyterian Church in America that our people should be winsome, particularly in their polemics and intra-denominational disagreements. Thus we find, for example, two Covenant College professors lauding a controversial figure in the denomination as winsome in the course of a recent review of one of his books at The Gospel Coalition. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines winsome as meaning “sweetly or innocently charming; winning; engaging.” Perhaps that is the first thing we should note: if the author in view were truly ‘winning’ or ‘innocently charming’ he would not be, as the reviewers themselves admit, a source of much controversy.
But more importantly, this notion that it is desirable to be winsome is contradicted by the testimony of Scripture and by that of church history. If you are inclined to doubt that try this little test: ask whether the figures of faith were winsome in the great events of redemptive history. Was Moses winsome when he appeared before Pharaoh demanding Israel’s release and was ignored time and again (Ex. 10:11, 28; comp. 7:3-4)? Was he winsome when he ruled the people of Israel in the wilderness and they grumbled against him (Ex. 15:24; 16:2-3; 17:2-7), or when he told the Levites to slay their wayward kin and neighbors without hesitation (32:25-28)? Were the Judges winsome in their difficult dealings with foreigners and fellow Jews alike (Judges 7:28-30; 12:1-4; 15:11-13)?
Was David winsome? Why then did he have so many enemies, his own father in law trying to murder him (1 Sam. 8:11) and his own wife despising him (2 Sam. 6:16), his own sons rising against him (ch. 15) and his subjects cursing him (16:5-8), his own counselors abandoning him (vv. 20-23) and many others troubling him? Why then did the people celebrate him for his ‘tens of thousands’ of slain enemies (1 Sam. 18:7) and why are so many of his psalms cries of anguish amidst the persecutions of men?
Was Solomon winsome? At first glance it would seem so, for how else could he have attracted the Queen of Sheba from afar and been associated with something such as the Song of Solomon? Yet what was the end of it? The wail of Ecclesiastes that all is vanity (1:2) and that the days of darkness would be many (11:8), and the revolt of the people against his son because of their displeasure with the heavy yoke of Solomon’s reign (1 Kgs. 12:4). His was not a reign of winsome persuasion, but of whips (12:11), forced labor (5:13-14), slavery (9:20-21; Ecc. 2:7), bureaucracy (1 Kgs. 9:22-23), opulence (Ecc. 2:4-10), oppression (4:1), and corruption (4:8), and he himself seems to have often loathed it (2:17-18).
What then of the prophets? Were they winsome? When Micaiah ministered during the reign of Ahab how did that sovereign describe him? “I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil” (1 Kgs. 22:8; comp. v. 27). Jeremiah was not winsome, and so hated was he that his own people sought to censor and destroy him (11:21; 12:6). So also did Amos fail to win his audience, for he irritated the priesthood and was falsely accused of conspiring against the monarchy (Amos 7:10-17). Elijah provoked Jezebel to wrath and fled the kingdom (1 Kgs. 19), such was his winsomeness. Time would fail to tell of Elisha and the irreverent youths (2 Kgs. 2:23-24) or of the other prophets. Let us rather remember the words of our Lord, who bewailed Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Matt. 23:37), and of Stephen, who asked the Jews “Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” (Acts 7:52).
Proceeding from the monarchy to Israel’s later history, was Nehemiah winsome when he drove men from the gates of Jerusalem (Neh. 13:21), or when he beat and cursed the faithless and pulled the hair of their beards (v. 25)? Was John the Baptist winsome when he ministered in the wilderness in rough garments of camel’s hair and ate locusts (Matt. 3:1, 4), or when he called the scribes vipers and spoke plainly of the wrath to come (v. 7)? Was he so when he provoked Herod by condemning his incestuous marriage and was imprisoned and murdered as a result (Matt. 14:3-5)? Was our Lord winsome when he pronounced his woes upon the Pharisees and lawyers (Lk. 11:39-44; comp. vv. 45 -52, especially v. 45), or when he made a whip of cords and drove men from the temple (Jn. 2:15)?
Were the apostles winsome when they publicly confronted each other (Gal. 2:14-16), or when they wished their opponents would castrate themselves (5:12), or when they were embroiled in controversies with false teachers, or when they called men dogs (Phil. 3:2) and blemishes (2 Pet. 2:13) and told them their money could perish with them (Acts 8:20)? Was it not rather the astonishment of their opponents that they were uneducated commoners (Acts 4:13), and was it not the most educated of them of whom his opponents could say “his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Cor. 10:10)? Winsome men are not martyred, yet all of the apostles except John met that fate, and he was so charming that men put him in exile on a tiny Mediterranean island. Or what of Stephen? We are told that he was full of the Spirit and grace (Acts 6:5), yet he said the Jews were stiff-necked and wicked (v. 51) and so provoked them that they “cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him” (v. 57) and “cast him out of the city and stoned him” (v. 58).
If we move from the testimony of Scripture to that of later church history we find the same things. So effulgently winsome were many of the early believers that Nero is said to have illumined his gardens with their flaming corpses. So winsome was Polycarp that a stadium full of pagans screamed at him the slanderous charge ‘away with the atheists’ as they called for his immolation. So winsome was Athanasius that he was exiled five times and left us his legacy as Athanasius contra mundum. The ‘winsomeness’ of Luther needs no comment, and as for Calvin, such was his winsomeness that he was thrown out of Geneva after his first tenure there and that his critics slandered him as the ‘Pope of Geneva.’ So winsome were the Puritans that a royal edict expelled all of them from their pulpits in the Church of England in 1662 and all manner of laws were passed to suppress them.
In light of these things who can doubt that the notion that we are to be winsome is a contemporary falsehood, one of those lies told by conventional worldly wisdom by which men so often live their lives? No, we are not to be winsome. We are to strive to live at peace with all men in so far as it depends upon us (Rom. 12:18); we are to be peaceable, gentle, loving, fair, and kind (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 4:2; Col. 3:12; Tit. 3:2; 2 Tim. 2:24-25; Jas. 3:17); we are to give no needless offense (1 Cor. 10:32).
Yet these things are different from winsomeness. Honesty, charity, peaceableness, and the like are timeless principles of conduct. What qualifies as winsome varies between people and groups. What is winsome to a northerner might offend a southerner, and what is winsome to an urban stockbroker might find little favor with a Midwestern farmer. Then too, the contemporary American notion of winsomeness seems to entail being clean, respectable, nice, aesthetically attractive in one’s demeanor and appearance, and generally inoffensive in one’s opinions. It is a notion of personality and deportment that comes rather from the corporate world of sales and marketing than from God’s word or the history of the church.
God did not build his church upon suave, charming, likeable men. He built it upon a man of sorrows who was rejected by men and acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3), and upon irascible fishermen who lopped off someone’s ear (Jn. 18:10), and upon other men who were not wise or attractive by worldly standards (Acts 4:13; comp. 1 Cor. 1:27).
Who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7). Who strives after a changing and disputable trait like winsomeness shall have no reward for preferring it to true virtues. Reader, if you have been in the habit of speaking of being winsome as a desirable or necessary trait for our ministers and people, lay your hand upon your mouth and repent your sin forthwith. Urge men to tell the truth (Ex. 20:16; Eph. 4:25), to be impartial (Lev. 19:17; Prov. 24:23), and to be fair and virtuous (Jn. 7:24; 2 Pet. 1:5-8). Bear true testimony yourself, regardless of whether it means praising or criticizing men. But do not seek after virtues which are no such thing, nor insist that others do the same. And if you find two professors at our denomination’s college praising someone for being winsome, chalk it up to the gentlemen speaking unworthily of their position and task and pray they exercise better taste in judgment in future; for “a servant is not greater than his master” (Jn. 15:20), and our Lord did not “come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.
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Though it may be true that no court has formally endorsed Side B in the sense of issuing a resolution that says something along the lines of ‘We the session of Generic Presbyterian hereby commend the school of doctrine known as Side B to our members, to our follow presbyters, and to the denomination at large,’ yet still some of our courts have lent other forms of support to the contemporary movement to normalize homosexual experience among us. That support has been no less real just because it has not taken the form of endorsement.

When the apostle John gave instructions on how to interact with heretics he did not say to give them no endorsement, but rather to give them no greeting (2 Jn. 10-11); and it needs but little comment that there is a wide array of different types and levels of support between privately saying ‘Hello, how are you?’ to a traveling heretic and publicly declaring one’s support of him to the church at large. It is disappointing, then, to find Tim Keller forgetting this prescient fact in his recent opinion that because no Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) court has endorsed what is called Side B,[1] therefore any view of the present state of affairs that regards that school as ascendant is mistaken.[2]
On this point we must politely but forcefully demur, for though it may be true that no court has formally endorsed Side B in the sense of issuing a resolution that says something along the lines of ‘We the session of Generic Presbyterian hereby commend the school of doctrine known as Side B to our members, to our follow presbyters, and to the denomination at large,’ yet still some of our courts have lent other forms of support to the contemporary movement to normalize homosexual experience among us. That support has been no less real just because it has not taken the form of endorsement; if anything, considered solely from the perspective of practical consequence, that support has been more helpful than any mere statement of approval.
With all due respect to the gentleman, and much respect is due him, it must be pointed out that one of our churches has allowed its property to be used by the Revoice conference and by individuals in other circumstances, at least one of whom advertised his event with graphic homoerotic imagery.[3] Thus at least one session has given practical support to such things, and when others in the denomination have complained that session’s presbytery declined to reprove or restrain the behavior in view and even suggested that some of the complainants should examine their own hearts, whether there they might be guilty of sin.[4] Thus at least one presbytery has lent practical support to the movement by refusing to restrain it.
But lay this aside for a moment, relevant though it is, and consider instead two things. One, Satan is cunning, and when he first seeks to corrupt the church he does not do so with open claims that would reveal him, but rather with subtle, careful, intentional moves that aim to lay the groundwork for corruption without evoking too much opposition. Hence Paul says that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14) and that “his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (v. 15). In seeking to lure Eve into rebellion he did not begin with “your eyes will be opened and you will like God” (Gen. 3:5), but rather with the crafty, obfuscating question of “did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” (Gen. 3:1). So also when the devil tempts us on this matter we should not expect him to send his minions introducing constitutional changes that deny marriage is between one man and one woman, but rather with something more subtle that will let his minions begin the process of working apostasy without revealing their true nature.
Our ‘did God actually say?’ moment came when we were enticed to have these controversies at all. ‘Did God actually say that “sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you” (Eph. 5:3), or that this sin so displeases him that he names it by euphemisms (Lev. 18:22), or that this sin occurs in societies whom he has given over to licentiousness as punishment for their impiety (Rom. 1:24-28; comp. Lev. 18:27)?’ Yes he did, and by having this discussion at all we disobey him and disregard the testimony of his word, which teaches that the corruptive power of sin is so contagious and apt to pollute even its enemies that it must be handled, even in opposition, with utmost care (Gal. 6:1). I do not thereby say that all who have been involved are therefore apostates, for there is such a thing as stumbling into error that afflicts true believers (Matt. 16:23; Gal. 2:11-13); yet the sin is real, irrespective of whether it is done by a believer or by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And it is a sin that many in our denomination have committed.
Two, the movement to normalize homosexual experience represents a moral revolution, and such things, in the nature of the case, move rather quickly. In 1996 another Presbyterian denomination adopted a change to their constitution recognizing marriage as between one man and one woman. In 2011they reversed their position and declared their support for so-called same-sex marriage, and as of today they seem to be straining with the utmost fury to ‘be on the right side of history’ (if not of its Lord) by embracing so-called transgenderism, a thing which was almost unheard of before several years ago. That denomination is the PCUSA, and those of whatever faction should pause and ponder the rapidity and completeness of her infidelity on this point before they entertain any thought that ‘We’re the conservative PCA: that won’t happen here any time soon.’ “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).
In light of these two facts people like Tim Keller and others of like mind should not be hasty to dismiss any perspective that regards the PCA as drifting into error as regards sexuality and morality. Already it has become rather common to hear people describe themselves with terms taken from the LGBT movement (e.g. ‘gay’), whose hostility to our faith is obvious. Already concepts from that movement, including especially that of an effectively immutable orientation, are in use among us and have achieved a fair amount of acceptance. Already it is regarded as appropriate to give occasion for people to share their experiences of lust and how it affects their professed faith, as if their experiences, however emotional, are anywhere near as important in such matters as the objective authority of scripture. Already we have deemed this matter sufficiently important to warrant a study committee and report and have deemed it prudent to allow people who profess to experience homosexual lust to be a part of that committee.
The language, subjective emotional experience, and hamartiological and anthropological doctrine and framework of those that profess to experience same-sex lusts have all been effectively normalized, as evidenced by the fact that they are used even by many of the opponents of such concepts and that this use has nowhere been meaningfully resisted or judicially condemned. All of this has occurred without official endorsement by any PCA court, and in all of it there has been much harm done to the church’s fidelity, some of it by some of her erstwhile defenders. Weep and pray, dear reader, for God condemns not only those that advocate sin but also those that are derelict or halfhearted in their opposition to it (1 Sam. 2:22-36; Prov. 25:26), and we have been hitherto slack in meaningfully opposing the leaven that so rapidly spreads among us.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] If indeed this school is errant in its doctrine, as I believe it is, it would be irreverent to affix this term to ‘Christianity,’ hence why I refrain from doing so.
[2] Keller, Tim. “What’s Happening in the PCA?” By Faith Online, March 21st, 2022, https://byfaithonline.com/whats-happening-in-the-pca/
[3] Pruitt, Todd. “Doctrinal Latitude and the PCA.” Reformation 21, March 14th, 2022, https://www.reformation21.org/blog/doctrinal-latitude-and-the-pca
[4] Shaw, Jim. “An Open Letter to the PCA Missouri Presbytery.” The Aquila Report, May 24th, 2019, https://theaquilareport.com/an-open-letter-to-the-pca-missouri-presbytery/
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If you will accept it, this is written not in belligerence and quarreling, nor to fulfill a salacious need to ‘fight a culture war’ or engage in doom-mongering, but to give you a frank, unfettered testimony to how your deeds appear to someone in the pews; and judging by the conversations and correspondence I have had with other members, this perception of you is by no means unique to me. Repent of your secrecy and of your scandalous deeds.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
A Final Concern
You seem to regard alcohol with excessive fondness. In speaking of a candidate for moderator you speak of his service and virtues and say that “this is not to mention his collection of whiskeys and his willingness to kindly share them.” In praising the vigor of the new members of your organization you say that they “were asking good questions, crafting motions, present for every major vote, worshipping well at the evening services, and keeping up with our whiskey consumption,” while elsewhere gratitude is extended “for working together, and for stepping into the gap when it was needed on committee reports, microphones, bottles of bourbon and cigars” and a reference is made to “a well-deserved beer after a long business meeting.” An observer may be forgiven for thinking there is something a little inappropriate in elders regarding themselves as ‘deserving’ a beer after doing denominational work, or in equating an elder’s possession of a fine whiskey collection with his years of service, to say nothing of putting “worshipping well” and “keeping up with our whiskey consumption” alongside of each other.
Now maybe you will object and note that you forewent beer in order to vote, as is stated several times, but it is curious that this seems to be, not so much restraint, but a practical necessity to advance your agenda: take a break from your drinking to come and vote, not because it is inappropriate for an elder to be out on the town during a week that he is supposed to be doing the grave, consequential work of the church of Christ but because the agenda needs your support. It is curious too that these rejoinders to abstain are frequently accompanied by an assurance that it will be compensated for by an occasion for communal drinking later, and that it is often enjoined that voting times are not a good time to get a beer, but somewhat less frequently that they are poor times to get coffee, read a newspaper, go for a stroll, make phone calls, or any of the other things an elder might be expected to do between assembly sessions.
Laying aside that this comes across as simply immature and juvenile, there are some pointed statements about such things in Scripture. As for your newer members doing well by keeping up with the whiskey consumption of the old hands, Isaiah testifies “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink” (5:22); while for his part Hosea condemns the faithless inhabitants of Israel because they “cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding” (Hos. 4:10-11). In Prov. 31:4-5 Lemuel says that “It is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted.” The principle applies to elders as well: for as kings were the civil shepherds who were responsible for the temporal order, justice, and wellbeing of the people, so are elders responsible for the order, discipline, and fidelity of the spiritual commonwealth that is the church – yet their need for sobriety is greater, for they deal with questions of eternal significance, rather than ones of a merely earthly nature.
The New Testament supplies further instruction on this point, for it says of the man qualified to be an elder that he is “not (one who lingers) beside (his) wine” (1 Tim. 3:2, Hendriksen-Kistemaker commentary translation), while it elsewhere states that “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble” (Rom. 14:21). That last verse establishes the duty that all believers have to respect the rights of conscience of their brothers in matters that are unessential to the faith (v. 17), a duty you seem to forget in this matter. There are and have been numerous Presbyterians who are teetotalers, both within our denomination and in others such as the ARP, and to see your cavalier attitude toward drink is no doubt a source of offense to them. In addition, there is a much larger body of people, again within our denomination and outside its fold, that have struggled with alcohol addiction and abuse, and your behavior provides a terrible example and testimony to them. In this matter you disobey the great principle of Romans 14, and you ought to give thought that your actions may well lead others to stumble or otherwise limit the effectiveness of your ministry.
Perhaps you will rejoin that the talk of hardy drinking is all in jest; fair enough, but does Scripture condone such coarse jesting as appropriate for those that would rule Christ’s church? Does it not rather say that “All impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” and that there should be “no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking” (Eph. 5:3-4)? Or perhaps you will say that drinking is no sin and that it is excessive drinking that is the problem that ought to be foregone. There are sins besides excessive consumption that come into play in relation to alcohol: an excessive fondness of it (especially one that values it above good testimony and brotherly respect) or an excessive tendency to look to it to relieve distress (as in ‘deserving a beer’) are also faults in this respect, and they seem to show in your speech about alcohol. Then, too, excess is not always a question of drunkenness, as there are occasions where any consumption of alcohol is inappropriate, most notably in handling matters of great importance, whether temporal or eternal, civil or ecclesiastical. Our society frankly worships alcohol and our job as believers should be to extol its responsible use and a right attitude about it, and this is undercut when you join in the beer and whiskey worship yourselves.
Last, in this your behavior in this matter is like that of the old liberals in the PCUS, who loved drink and made wide use of it. Kennedy Smartt says in his I Am Reminded that some of them even gave drink to underage assembly attendants, and that the disgust this lawbreaking engendered was part of the impetus for desiring to be separate from such people, while an early PCA history mentions how the groups that laid the groundwork for the PCA sometimes received the PCUS liberals’ bar bills by mistake.
A Final Objection
Now you may object that much of this criticism proceeds on the assumption that the National Partnership is one, where in fact you have – and celebrate! – diversity of thought, voting habits, and manners of internal and external expression. You are both one and many. You have one purpose, one program, one agenda, and while there may be some diversity of thought or voting, it yet occurs within the scope of achieving the one, agreed-upon aim that you all share of giving the denomination the character you desire. As for those of you who have qualms with some of the precise behavior of some of your members that I have criticized here, consider the instruction God gives you: “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals’” (1 Cor. 15:33). You are the company you keep (comp. Prov. 13:20), and as for those of you who do not approve some of the behavior or beliefs condemned here, why persist in keeping such company or in following the lead of those that do such things? Is it safe or wise to do so, or is it rather likely to bring you trouble (like Jehoshaphat allying with Ahab, 2 Chron. 18:1-19:2) and needless grief?
A Final Appeal
If you will accept it, this is written not in belligerence and quarreling, nor to fulfill a salacious need to ‘fight a culture war’ or engage in doom-mongering, but to give you a frank, unfettered testimony to how your deeds appear to someone in the pews; and judging by the conversations and correspondence I have had with other members, this perception of you is by no means unique to me. Repent of your secrecy and of your scandalous deeds. You have done an outrageous thing in Israel and have left a bad testimony to others both within and outside of our fold. You have despised both shepherds and sheep, and have sought to use our denomination for your own ends, rather than to serve it in humility and submission for the good of the sheep. Time will fail to tell of your failure to “be above reproach” (1 Tim 3:2) in these things; and however much you may be inclined to deny that, as you have for years, there is no sense of that phrase which is met by your secretive doings or by many of the things you have said or done. Repent in haste, with fullness of heart and sincerity of purpose, for this word stands, and it should give us all an occasion to fear: “For 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 (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.