How do you get from London to Edinburgh? Even if you’ve never visited either city, you’ll likely know that there’s more than one answer to the question. Plug the destinations into a maps program and you’ll be offered a host of routes, and even those will be just the major ones. In reality, there are thousands of connections between the two capitals, an almost endless number of ways you can travel between them. Of course, some are more obvious than others, the large motorways cutting a clearer trail than the winding country roads. But the point remains: there are many ways to make the journey.
When it comes to Scripture, what links Genesis to Revelation? We know that the Bible is one book, giving a coherent, unified message. It is, ultimately, the product of one Author, revealing one way of salvation to mankind. But is there only one theme that binds the Bible together? The answer, surely, is no. Just as on any other journey, there are multiple paths we might follow as we trace God’s great redemption story. To change the image, Scripture is a book woven together by many threads, a rope of many intertwining cords. To search for “the one theme” of the Bible is a pointless exercise; rather, we can enjoy discovering dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different melodies that combine to create the final symphony.
Let’s consider some of the major roads. It’s sometimes noted that the Bible nowhere uses that common evangelical phrase “relationship with God.” This is not, of course, because there is no relationship with God. Rather, the Bible’s word for that bond between Jesus and His people is covenant. Unsurprisingly, therefore, covenant is a major road through the pages of Scripture. Beginning in the garden of Eden, God entered into a covenant with Adam. Although the explicit word covenant doesn’t appear in the text of Genesis 2, all the elements that make up a covenant are there: the two parties (God and Adam), the terms of the relationship (wholehearted obedience, expressed in the command not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), penalties if the covenant is breached (death), and rewards if it is kept (eternal life, symbolized by the Tree of Life; Gen. 3:22). Indeed, Hosea later refers to this arrangement as a covenant (Hos. 6:7).

After some positive comments about the St. Olaf of the 90s, he mysteriously pronounced that: “Other indicia suggest the Midwest college is entering a divestiture of its Lutheran identity that, though much longer in coming, could be swifter in its eventual accomplishment.” Other schools—Azuza Pacific and Calvin—were assessed quite positively, but Burtchaell had little confidence in their futures as Christian schools.

During my sabbatical year of 1985–86 at St. Edmunds College of Cambridge University, I had the good fortune of having many conversations about Christian higher education with James Burtchaell, who also had a year-long sabbatical there. He had recently moved from the provost’s office of Notre Dame to its theology department.
I had moved in 1982 from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago to Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, recruited by President Norman Fintel in order to build a strong religion department and to help strengthen the connection of the college to its Lutheran heritage, including the founding and shaping of a Center for Religion and Society.
Burtchaell was fearful that Notre Dame was loosening its connection with the Catholic tradition, as so many other Catholic schools had done. He was very interested in criticizing and preventing such a move.
I was still in mild shock about the Roanoke College that I found when I arrived there in 1982. Half the department chairs were hostile to the college’s connection with any sort of religious tradition. The other half were apathetic about that connection, not seeing any relevant connection between the college’s Lutheran heritage and liberal arts education. Only two of us department chairs thought it important to hire Lutheran Christians if the college was to have any continuing relation to its original founding. The Dean and the President both farmed out the hiring of new faculty to the departments.
The shock came from the contrast to what  I experienced when attending a Lutheran college in the Midwest in the late 50s that was unabashedly Lutheran in its identity and mission. Though I had lectured at many Lutheran colleges while I was a seminary professor for nearly twenty years, I had not looked closely at their overall religious substance. After my jolt in arriving at Roanoke, I now had to take a closer look. What had happened in those twenty years?
A great aid in taking that closer look came from my friend Burtchaell, who had followed up his interest in the secularization of Christian schools. In the April and May 1991 issues of First Things Burtchaell wrote two connected articles entitled “The Decline and Fall of a Christian College.” The articles presented a very long and highly erudite historical account of how Vanderbilt moved from being what Methodists hoped would be their flagship Christian university to a thoroughly secular institution in which Christianity offered no public relevance. In the articles he points to nine fateful moves that were crucial in that secularization.
Though there were some earlier studies of secularization in higher education, this one was a game-changer because of its clarity and passion. In hopes of understanding the process of secularization, I had already organized a faculty/administration discussion group on the subject of Christian higher education. When Burtchaell’s articles came out, we were given tools to understand what had happened. We could almost put our college’s name in every reference to Vanderbilt that Burtchaell made. His work was enormously helpful to understand what had happened and gave us clues about how we might take measures to mitigate the secularization process and perhaps rebuild a viable Christian college.
However, those articles were but a foreshadowing of what was to come in his The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from their Christian Churches, a tome of 868 pages, published by Eerdmans in 1998.1
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Southeast Alabama Presbytery approved an overture at a March 31, 2022 Called Meeting, asking the 49th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America to “amend BCO 16 by adding a new paragraph using wording from the Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality.”

The Overture presents proposed wording to amend BCO 16 by adding a fourth paragraph.The overture argues that since the 48th General Assembly in 2021 voted unanimously to commend the Human Sexuality Report, it seems appropriate to ask the 49th General Assembly to approve wording to add to BCO 16. The proposed wording provides the following:
16-4. Those whom God calls to bear office in His Church shall demonstrate maturity of faith and growing conformity to Jesus Christ. While these office bearers will see spiritual perfection only in glory, they will continue in this life to confess and to mortify remaining sins. Thus, those who identify or describe themselves according to their specific sins, or who teach that it is acceptable for Christians to identify or describe in such a manner, shall not be approved for service by any court of Christ’s Church.
An overture is a means by which a Presbytery can bring a matter to the GA for consideration. This overture will be considered by the 49th PCA General Assembly at its meeting in Birmingham, Ala., June 20-24, 2022.
Whereas, the Westminster Standards make a categorical distinction between the “state of sin” and the “state of grace” (WCF 9.3-4); and
Whereas, ever since the Fall, man is naturally in the “state of sin” in which he has lost all                ability to will and to do any spiritual good and is a slave to the penalty, guilt, and power of sin (WCF 9.3); and
Whereas, in the state of sin, his sin defines who he is, and he must rightly conceive of himself and label himself as a fornicator, idolater, adulterer, homosexual, thief, drunkard, reviler, and swindler (1 Cor. 6:9-10); in this state of sin, that is how he is to consider himself and identify himself because he is a slave to sin; and
Whereas, when the Holy Spirit works faith in man, uniting him to Christ in his effectual calling, he is translated into the “state of grace” (WCF 9.4; WSC 30) and partakes of the benefits of justification, adoption, and sanctification (WSC 30-32); and
Whereas, in this state, while he does not perfectly or only will that which is good but also that which is evil (due to his remaining corruption), he is freed from bondage to sin and by grace is enabled freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good (WCF 9.4); and
Whereas, the conversion from the state of sin to the state of grace is so dramatic and the distinction between the two so vast that the Christian is no longer to conceive of himself and label himself as a fornicator, idolater, adulterer, homosexual, thief, drunkard, reviler, and swindler; Scripture says such will not inherit the kingdom of God, “and such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:9-11); in the state of grace, the believer is no longer to identify that way (e.g. as a fornicator, idolater, adulterer, etc.) for “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11); because of his union with Christ, his specific sins no longer define who he is; and
Whereas, due to remaining corruption, the Christian can still speak of himself as a sinner in the present tense (1 Tim. 1:12-16) as one who continues to experience and battle with the presence and pollution of sin (Gal. 5:17; Rom. 7:14-25) and even at times feel as though he is enslaved to sin (Rom. 7:14); however, the truth is that the believer is no longer a slave to sin, having been freed from slavery to its guilt (Rom. 3:24; Eph. 1:7), its penalty (Gal. 3:13), and its power (1 Pet. 1:18-19; Rom. 6:6); and
Whereas, while of course the Christian is (and can say he is) a sinner (1 Tim. 1:12-16), he is no longer to identify himself with his specific sins; as Paul says, “Such were some of you” (1Cor. 6:9-11), and “Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent… I received mercy… in Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 1:13-14); and
Whereas, instead of considering himself as a drunkard or an adulterer or a homosexual, the Christian is commanded to have a different self-conception: “You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11); and
Whereas, the Christian may continue to struggle with the same sins all his life long; such a believer should not consider himself a drunkard or an adulterer or a homosexual but rather a Christian who struggles with the temptation to drunkenness, adultery, or homosexuality; and who is repentant if or when he succumbs to such temptations; and
Whereas, BCO 16-1 reads, “Ordinary vocation to office in the Church is the calling of God bythe Spirit, through the inward testimony of a good conscience, the manifest approbationof God’s people, and the concurring judgment of a lawful court of the Church;” and
Whereas, BCO 16-2 reads, “The government of the Church is by officers gifted to representChrist, and the right of God’s people to recognize by election to office those so gifted isinalienable. Therefore no man can be placed over a church in any office without the election, or at least the consent of that church;” and
Whereas, BCO 16-3 reads, “Upon those whom God calls to bear office in His Church He bestows suitable gifts for the discharge of their various duties. And it is indispensable   that, besides possessing the necessary gifts and abilities, natural and acquired, every one admitted to an office should be sound in the faith, and his life be according to godliness. Wherefore every candidate for office is to be approved by the court by which he is to be ordained;” and
Therefore, be it resolved that BCO 16 be amended by adding 16-4 as a new paragraph with the following wording (underlining for new wording):
16-4. Those whom God calls to bear office in His Church shall demonstrate maturity of faith and growing conformity to Jesus Christ. While these office bearers will see spiritual perfection only in glory, they will continue in this life to confess and to mortify remaining sins. Thus, those who identify or describe themselves according to their specific sins, or who teach that it is acceptable for Christians to identify or describe in such a manner, shall not be approved for service by any court of Christ’s Church.
Approved by Southeast Alabama Presbytery on March 31, 2022.Attested by TE Kevin Corley, Clerk