Written by Benjamin T. Inman |
Friday, January 21, 2022
The rubric of Overture 23 is a common sense Presbyterian adaptation to our context. It does not promulgate a stricter sexual ethic or a narrower view of sanctification. It specifies qualifications for office exactly where they may well be misunderstood or challenged. Our society has largely and even unconsciously adopted new corrupt assumptions about homosexuality… Aspirants for office who do not share our convictions should have clarity from the start: the PCA is not congenial to what is affirmed in various evangelical connections. This is not shocking news in general, although it may be acutely offensive given the topic specified. Some people hate this more than predestination.

A discussion offered for the deliberation of Eastern Carolina Presbytery(TE Benjamin T. Inman, Assistant Pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Fuquay-Varina)
(I address an argument recently offered for voting down Overtures 23 & 37. While I have not heard it expanded so directly, it has been implied in various discussions. It strikes the target.
“In the past, we have trusted local sessions entirely as to the character of their candidate they are putting forward for licensure and ordination. I don’t want that to become a practice on the floor of Presbytery, where a young man may stand before a room full of men he does not know and don’t know him. The local session is the right place to determine fitness for office with regard to the character requirements set forth in scripture.”
It is heartening to hear reference to the actual point of the amendments. While Overture 23 places specific attention on homosexuality, neither amendment addresses pastoral practice regarding any notorious sin. Rather than the nurture of members or even the discernment for receiving members, both amendments address only the qualifications and examinations for office. Sadly, the quoted argument is at odds with our polity and demonstrates our need for reform–all the more urgent in our corrupt context. The offered amendments for the Book of Church Order (BCO) chapters 16 and 21 stipulate just such reform.
Why These Overtures Matter
23
Overture 23 gives a rubric for homosexuality in assessing officer candidates. It does not address the controversy of Revoice, although it does represent a view in contrast to some points elaborated in those conferences. This rubric would not be cited for the pending SJC case about Memorial PCA’s hosting of the first Revoice conference. Qualification for office is simply not relevant there. Nor does it attempt an after-the-fact reconsideration of the recent SJC decision regarding Missouri Presbytery’s investigation of TE Greg Johnson. One member of that SJC panel has opined from his well informed position that the amendment of overture 23 would not have changed the outcome. Despite the furor, sex and such is not the point of the amendments.
The rubric of Overture 23 is a common sense Presbyterian adaptation to our context. It does not promulgate a stricter sexual ethic or a narrower view of sanctification. It specifies qualifications for office exactly where they may well be misunderstood or challenged. Our society has largely and even unconsciously adopted new corrupt assumptions about homosexuality. Increasingly, evangelical opinion and institutions demonstrate an assimilation to these aberrant views; consequently, there is good reason for the PCA to specify its qualifications for office. Aspirants for office who do not share our convictions should have clarity from the start: the PCA is not congenial to what is affirmed in various evangelical connections. This is not shocking news in general, although it may be acutely offensive given the topic specified. Some people hate this more than predestination.
More happily, the PCA too can repeat the apostle and say of candidates for office, “and such were some of you.” Men for whom homosexuality appears among the “earthly” things which they must put to death (Col 3:5), these men should have clarity as well. They should know: no shame or suspicion will attend being an example to the flock of God’s “perfect patience” to the “foremost” of sinners (1 Tim 1:14), though they replace Paul’s ringing “blasphemer” with a frank “homosexual.” They should be no more embarrassed in disciplining homosexual sin than was Paul in excommunicating men “that they may learn not to blaspheme” (1 Tim 1:20).
37
Overture 37 directs presbyteries for examinations in the ordination of teaching elders. The topic is NOT homosexual Christians in the PCA but PCA officers in a precipitously degenerating society. As the ferment regarding racism, degradation of women and sexual exploitation of the vulnerable pricks our conscience with a longing for past healing and future fidelity, the PCA does well to question the rigor of officer examination. A renewed purpose and more careful process is recommended not only by doubt about the past. It is all the more commonsensical in a society with diminishing moral constraints in general, a society which is arguably most conspicuous in normalizing sexual corruption by simplistic correlation of consent with subjective identification.
The amendment of BCO 21 stipulates careful examination with attention to notorious matters (including but not circumscribed by sins sexual, relational, racial and financial). The specified matters have become observably notorious over the recent many years in the scandalous failures of Evangelical leaders, congregations and institutions. The scandal cannot be blunted: the adjectives evangelical, Spirit-filled — even Biblical — are no longer reassuring public marks of professed identity. Evangelical sins grieve us to remember semper reformanda,– which includes both the mysterious fecundity often called revival or renewal, and the clarifying reassertion of principles and practices regretfully neglected.
Presbyterian polity– practiced by faith, and not by rote— is our denomination’s declared method to deter such shamefulness and harm. We believe that presbyterian governance– which is to say presbyterian ministry and mission– is not necessary for the existence of the church but for the well being of the church (BCO 1.7). If the church did not exist, it could not be so powerfully and publicly shamed; the issue is her well-being, her wholesomeness. Without disdain for the numerical majority of evangelicals who differ on the matter, we rightly and with expectation pray that God will bless their well-being without presbytery. The Presbyterian Church in America, by conviction– as grateful heirs of the church that replaced Bishops with Presbyteries– we claim to stake the matter on the officers serving rightly and faithfully in submissive plurality. For the PCA, the qualifications of officers are a fundamental for fidelity. This is why the amendments of Overtures 23 and 37 matter.
Why These Overtures are Reform
As do many, the argument here under review assumes that the BCO is presently sufficient. Sadly, it actually assumes practice at odds with that very standard. A question put to our presbytery must not be decided by contradiction of our standards– in the guise of wisdom. While I will go on to criticize it, I appreciate the argument’s attention to the actual point of the amendments. In this, it serves deliberation well. For better consideration, I repeat it:
“In the past, we have trusted local sessions entirely as to the character of their candidate they are putting forward for licensure and ordination. I don’t want that to become a practice on the floor of Presbytery, where a young man may stand before a room full of men he does not know and don’t know him. The local session is the right place to determine fitness for office with regard to the character requirements set forth in scripture.”
The argument’s logic is coherent and champions a laudable concern; however, it ignores our polity. Look, there, that’s what a rubber stamp looks like when it has been well used. By arguing earnestly in the opposite direction, it demonstrates our need for reformation of both order and ardor.Read More

Getting ready for Jesus’ return is not a matter of working out the exact date; Jesus told us that was impossible. It is about just getting on with the job God has called us to do. Just ask yourself again each day: how I can live for my Lord today? How can I love God and his people well with the opportunities I have been given?

If you want to get fitter and stronger, it takes time. Going to the gym once for three hours won’t do it. Neither will going for a 5km run and then never running ever again. The key is to do with regularity. Even small amount of exercise, done regularly and often, will lead to you getting fitter and stronger. It is a process, something that you need to have as part of your everyday life.
When you have been working on your fitness and strength for some time, you are ready for all kinds of things. If a friend asks you to help them move house, you can physically do it. If you need to go for a hike, you will be capable of doing it. The regular work has meant you are always ready for physical tasks.
Why are we thinking about exercise? After all, this is not one of those fitness blogs! I think the process of working on our physical fitness has some useful connections to working on our spiritual health.
Read More
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Thinking about God’s attributes may be hard work, but no other object of study is more suitable to humble and expand our mind. It allows us to forget ourselves and focus all our attention on the only true God who is the source of all life and blessings.

When we talk about God’s attributes we try to answer questions such as “Who is God?” and “What is God like?” Now, these questions may seem futile—how can our finite minds grasp who God is or what He is like? These questions may also seem rather abstract, questions that scholars, but not ordinary Christians, may find fascinating. Instinctively, we tend to be much more interested in what God has done for us rather than in who He is. In a sense, this is understandable. Arguably, one of the achievements of the Protestant Reformation was to refocus people’s minds on what God had done for them in Christ. John Calvin frequently criticized medieval theologians for “merely toying with idle speculations”1 about the nature or the essence of God. However, Calvin and the other Reformers did not deny the utility of thinking about God’s attributes. On the contrary, they encouraged a knowledge of God that would foster pietas, as they called it, what Calvin defined as “that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.”2

However, the topic of God’s attributes was explored in greater depth by seventeenth-century Reformed theologians.3 Among those, no one wrote a more comprehensive study than the English Puritan Stephen Charnock. His Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God is the most extensive Puritan treatise on the doctrine of God. It was written at the end of his life for the congregation in Bishopsgate, London, that Charnock copastored with another famous Puritan, Thomas Watson. Unfortunately, the work was left unfinished when Charnock died in 1680 while writing a discourse on the patience of God. The work displays the qualities that make him one of the best Puritan theologians: a sharp mind, remarkable exegetical skills, and a peculiar gift for striking metaphors and analogies. However, this work is especially valuable and still worth reading today because of its typical Puritan emphasis on practical applications.
Charnock never gives the impression that the attributes of God are simply qualities that describe who He is; rather, He affirms the classical Christian doctrine that God is all His attributes fully at the same time. There is no distinction between His attributes and His essence (divine simplicity). Charnock’s focus is also firmly Christocentric, as he always shows how Christ claimed these divine attributes for Himself. Now, these discourses on the existence and attributes of God are nearly one thousand pages long,4 and one may ask why he wrote so much on this topic. I believe it is because Charnock knew that glorifying God is our privilege and duty as Christians, and we cannot glorify Him as we should if we do not have a right view of His attributes. Charnock’s colleague in Bishopsgate, Thomas Watson, wrote that to “glorify God” means, among other things, to have “God-admiring thoughts.”5 This is exactly what Charnock tries to instill in us through those discourses. In one of the introductory discourses he makes the crucial point that worship is essentially an act of understanding, an idea that we desperately need to recover today. Says Charnock:
Worship is an act of understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, and actual thought of his majesty, recognizing him as the supreme lord and governor of the world, which is natural knowledge; beholding the glory of his attributes in the Redeemer which is evangelical knowledge.6
Let us start where Charnock starts, with God’s eternity. Charnock begins by affirming that it is possible for us to think about such an attribute. Although we clearly cannot grasp fully what God’s eternity means, we can understand that this attribute is real:
Though we cannot comprehend eternity, yet we may comprehend that there is eternity; as though we cannot comprehend the essence of God, what he is, yet we may comprehend that he is.7

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