Written by Michael J. Glodo |
Sunday, April 7, 2024
The Aaronic blessing not only contains but also anticipates the greater fullness of seeing God face to face, seeing our Creator and our Redeemer as he is, and as a consequence, sharing in his divine life, sharing in his beatitude, his blessedness.

The ultimate climax or aim can be seen, first of all, from the stair steps of the blessing itself. “The Lord bless you and keep you.” That is the Lord’s protection, his preserving power. “The Lord make his face to shine up on you and be gracious to you.” God’s grace. And then the third line is, “The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” And so shalom is that big idea of God reigning for the good of his people and their happiness and his glory. Shalom is in the benediction itself. That’s the goal or the purpose.
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If our documents do not accurately reflect the way we want to conduct the business of Christ’s church, then we should amend them to conform to our desired practice. If the text as written and adopted does not accomplish that which we know to be the original intent of the Assembly, then we need to bring our text in conformity to our original intent. We have a robust and well-understood process for doing so. But what we must not do is set aside the plain reading of the text in favor of uncertain and disputable understandings of original intent. Put another way, we must not disregard our documents in order to accommodate counter-textual practices.

During the proceedings of the 49th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), we saw two examples of historical precedent being invoked to support a decision of the moderator that appeared to be contrary to the plain language of the Book of Church Order (“BCO”) or Rules of Assembly Operation (“RAO”). In this article, it is not my intention to reargue those points or to cast aspersions against the presbyters who argued on either side.  I take it for granted that all involved were acting in good faith and seeking to serve the Church to the best of their abilities. Rather, it is my intention to argue that such a historicist approach to constitutional interpretation is flawed, and that instead the PCA should follow a strict textualist approach — resorting to historical and extrinsic evidence only where the text of the BCO or RAO is ambiguous.
Twice at the 49th Assembly, we saw the following scenario play out: A commissioner seeks to assert his rights or the rights of another to speak or take an action, based on the text of the BCO or RAO, and is then told he may not, based on what appears to be a counter-textual interpretation of the rule. The counter-textual interpretation is supported by reference to some historical precedent or other, perhaps from many years ago. Sometimes these precedents are based on prior language that has since been amended.
First Instance: Filing an Objection to a Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) Case
First, during the morning session of the Assembly on Thursday, June 23, 2022, TE Jerid Krulish of the Pacific Northwest Presbytery came to a microphone and asked to lodge a protest or objection against the decision of the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) in the Herron case 2021-06.
Moderator RE John Bise interrupted TE Krulish’s speech and conferred with Stated Clerk Emeritus TE L. Roy Taylor. TE Bise then ruled that only those individuals entitled to vote on a matter may lodge a protest, so TE Krulish, who was not a member of the SJC, could not do so. TE Krulish then asked to raise it as an objection: “It is my understanding than an objection may be raised by any member of the court who did not have the right to vote.” RE Bise again conferred with TE Taylor. RE Bise then reported, “The parliamentarians advise me that at the 41st General Assembly this matter was considered and it was adjudicated that an objection is not allowable sir.  I appreciate your concern but there is no path for that.”
TE Jared Nelson then rose and challenged the ruling of the chair.
RE Bise then yielded to TE Taylor for some additional historical information that could be useful to the Assembly. TE Taylor stated that only the members of the SJC who were disqualified from voting could raise and objection. TE Taylor cited the minutes of the 41st General Assembly, page 39, for the proposition that only members of the SJC could register an objection to a decision in a case adjudicated by the SJC.  He stated that after that ruling was made at the 41st Assembly, the moderator’s ruling was challenged and sustained.[1]
In the ensuing debate, TE Jacob Gerber cited BCO 45-4 where “objection” is defined. In full, that provision reads:
45-4. An objection is a declaration by one or more members of a court who did not have the right to vote on an appeal or complaint, expressing a different opinion from the decision of the court and may be accompanied with the reasons on which it is founded.
TE Gerber then argued that the SJC is a commission of the GA, not a court.  The GA is the court, so members of the GA have the right to raise an objection to a decision rendered by the SJC.  TE Gerber noted that this understanding is based on what BCO 45-4 actually says. He made a textual argument.
The ruling of the chair was then sustained by a vote of 1051-548.  This colloquy can be found on the live stream video for the Thursday morning session between 2:26:00 and 2:35:30 here.[2]
Second Instance: Presenting a Minority Report
The second example of a counter-textual ruling was when Moderator RE John Bise ruled against my attempt to bring the Committee on Constitutional Business (CCB) minority report to the floor. TE David Coffin, after being accorded the privilege of speaking first, made an argument based on historical practice that appeared to be contrary to the plain language of RAO 19-2. In fact, he did not directly address BCO 19-2. The opening sentences of TE Coffin’s speech were as follows:
For context, it is important to recall that in the past, the Committee on Constitutional Business (CCB), under a different name, did report its advice on Constitutional issues as recommendations for ratification by the General Assembly (GA). The process had become highly controversial, enormously time-consuming, and the outcome was not binding upon anyone. The process was revised by the work of an ad interim committee and the proposed CCB was created by the Assembly as an exclusively advisory committee presenting no recommendations for action by the Assembly.“
In fairness, TE Coffin indicated that had he had the opportunity to speak to the issue again, he would have addressed the application of RAO 19-2, but the topic clock ran out before he could do so. The relevant portion of RAO 19-2 reads as follows:
When a minority of a committee wishes to present a minority report, the member reporting for the minority shall have the privilege of presenting the minority report and moving it as a substitute for the portion of the majority report affected.
The plain language of this provision contradicts RE Bise’s ruling. The chair was narrowly sustained on this point by a vote of 970 to 856.  The debate can be found in the video of the Wednesday afternoon session between 1:40:28 and 2:02:47 here.
Ruled by Text or by Discerning Intent?
Both of these examples illustrate an approach to interpreting and applying our rules that requires special knowledge of the history of the PCA. It is an approach that treats the text of the BCO and RAO as secondary to supposed original intent deduced from a loose body of history and tradition. It is my argument in this article that such an approach is in error, and that the Assembly should adopt a textual approach to interpreting and applying our accepted rules.
In interpreting statutes and contracts, civil courts look first to the text. If the text of the statute or contract is clear and unambiguous, then the inquiry ends there and the text is given effect via its natural reading. Only if the text is ambiguous does a court then consider extrinsic evidence such as the negotiating history of a contract, the courts of dealing between the parties, or the legislative history of a statute.
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[1] For a record of the cited actions of the 41st General Assembly, see the following:41-39 Report of the Standing Judicial Commission: RE John White led the Assembly in prayer and presented the Report of the SJC (Appendix T, p. 551). TE Andrew Barnes sought to register an objection to the decision of the Standing Judicial Commission on Case 2012-05, Hedman v. Pacific Northwest Presbytery. A point of order was raised by TE David Coffin that a General Assembly commissioner’s registering an objection to an SJC decision on a case is out of order because only a member of the Standing Judicial Commission who did not have a right to vote on a case may register an objection (BCO 15-4; 39-2; 45-4). The Moderator ruled the point of order was well taken because the only person who could file an objection to the SJC’s judgment on Case 2012-05, Hedman v. Pacific Northwest Presbytery, was an SJC member who was disqualified under BCO 39-2.4 The ruling was appealed, and the Chair was sustained (Minutes of the 41st Stated Meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, 39).
41-40 Report of Committee on Constitutional Business: TE Mark A. Rowden, Chairman, led the Assembly in prayer. TE David Coffin raised a point of order that the exception of substance to the March 6, 2013, minutes of the SJC (2012-06 Bethel vs. SE Alabama), (Appendix O, p. 364), is out of order because in them the CCB takes exception to an SJC case and to its decision and therefore violates the prohibitions in RAO 17-1, final paragraph. The Moderator declared the point well taken, and ruled that the lines be struck. TE Art Sartorious made a parliamentary inquiry as to whether point of order was premature since the report had not yet come before the Assembly. The Stated Clerk reviewed the proper order of procedure, explaining that if an exception is ruled out of order, it is taken “off the table.” TE Sartorius inquired as to whether the ruling to strike would apply also to the exceptions of substance to the September 6, 2012, and November 29, 2012 minutes. The Moderator said that the question was out of order because the Assembly was dealing only with the removal of specific lines. The Moderator’s previous ruling was appealed, and the Chair was sustained. Chairman Rowden proceeded to presentation of the report (Appendix O, p. 361) as information. TE Art Sartorius made a parliamentary inquiry regarding the other exceptions of substance to the SJC minutes (Appendix O, p. 365), “one of which,” he thought, had been “covered by the previous ruling.” He asked how these would be handled. The Stated Clerk replied that it would go to the SJC officers for a response. TE David Coffin suggested that the exceptions to the SJC minutes for September 6, 2012, and November 29, 2012, should be included in the Moderator’s ruling on the March 6, 2013 ruling. The Moderator responded that his previous ruling should cover all three exceptions. TE Coffin commented that he had not addressed the minority report because, as the minority report is not the report of the CCB, it could never, regardless of its opinion, become the occasion for someone to move that a case be reconsidered (Minutes of the 41st Stated Meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, 40).
[2] N.B. After the ruling, in private conversation others noted that the Herron case was still in process and an action (i.e., decision) had not yet been made in total that would allow for the objection. This would have been a clearer reason for ruling TE Krulish’s attempted objection out of order, but that reason (i.e., the absence of an action against which a commissioner could lodge an objection) was not discussed during the Assembly’s deliberations.
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Human beings are intentional creatures, meaning that every action we take has a purpose.  As Voegelin says, “Truth is never discovered in an empty space,” meaning that we only differ from the opinions imposed on us by society when those opinions clash with a given project in which we are personally involved14.  If the truth isn’t actively compromising our preconceived notions, it is not present.  This is the core insight of critical consciousness: if we never directly confront a lie in society, we cannot expect it to suddenly appear, specter-like, before us.  Hegemonic power functions through the peer-pressure of others, who do not find themselves in a situation where they need to challenge a social lie and use the opportunity to mock and scorn those who are attempting to flee the chains of Plato’s Cave.

A major part of Shenvi’s dismissal of the so-called “woke right” is on the basis of their opposition to the “Global American Empire,” and his rejection of the possibility of social hegemonic power as described in Critical Theory, especially of the notion of Critical Consciousness. All he demonstrates, however, is that Wolfe and Isker do a poor job of articulating the nature of the current American elite and that he fails to understand the vast body of work in Philosophy of Consciousness dealing with the way the human mind filters information. I’m lumping these two together because hegemonic cultural power can’t be understood until we have a firm grasp as to why the claims of Critical Theory about consciousness are scientifically valid. People are, in fact, blind to certain truths due to their background, life history, and basic moral tenor, and are incapable of acknowledging these truths without a comprehensive worldview adjustment, or in Christian language, a conversion experience1.
A consistent theme throughout Shenvi’s works is that he doesn’t claim that Critical Theory is factually wrong, he claims that its consequences are undesirable.  Replete through this section of his essay are quotes like:
In practice, these assumptions make appeals to reason or logic or Scripture nearly impossible because they require us to “see through” people’s arguments to discover the “real” reasons that they are making particular claims.
Again, I raised the same criticisms with the woke left: once you accept the idea that all truth claims can be dismissed as mere power plays, no claim will emerge unscathed. In fact, this reasoning devours itself.
Moreover, this approach to truth leads to a purity spiral. Once you accept the argument that you are blind to the ways your reasoning itself has been corrupted, there is no easy way to push back against any claim that the woke decide to make.
Also, keep in mind that wokeness admits of no ecclesiocentric (i.e. church-based) solution to the problems it discovers. Wokeness is primarily a political project. According to its proponents, the only solution to the marginalization of straight White men (or LGBTQ Black women) is the radical transformation of our nation’s government and culture. That is why woke churches eventually loosen their hold on the gospel to free up resources for sociopolitical activism. We saw this clearly on the woke left. We will see it on the woke right.
What if we do need to understand why a person is saying such a thing in order to understand their meaning?  Take, for example, something as simple as a child’s ploy.  On my last birthday, I told my wife to forget the cake because we’ve been eating too much recently.  My children waited until I left and raced to their mother, to explain to her how birthday cakes are a tradition and it would be thoughtless of her to let me go without cake on my birthday.  How thoughtful!  My children must truly be devoted to the upholding of family traditions!  In all four of these arguments, there is no substantial rebuttal of the facts that 1) people twist the truth in order to achieve ulterior ends, 2) power players use legitimizing narratives to secure their positions, 3) each of us possess unexamined biases and sinful self-loves that prevent us from aligning our will to that of God and to the truth, and 4) there is no place in Scripture where God promises an ecclesiocentric solution that eschews all political action to the problems of this world.  Luther must sometimes go to the Princes.  Instead, Shenvi fears that the consequences of these facts will be detrimental to the Church and its mission.  That may be so, but denial is not a solution to those consequences.  Facing the consequences is the only solution.
Despite this, I’m going to treat this argument as if he had asserted that the principles of critical consciousness are untrue rather than merely undesirable.  I will have to borrow from another of Shenvi’s essays, Part 3 of his Social Justice and Critical Theory essays.  In those essays, Shenvi is demonstrating a characteristic that Mark Noll identifies as a key feature of Evangelical thought, the stubborn adherence to obsolete scientific paradigms and the conflation of these scientific paradigms with the Christian worldview2.
Despite my overall negative appraisal of the book’s effect on Evangelical intellectualism, Noll is correct in identifying a number of characteristics of Evangelical culture and their relation to 18th and 19th Century theories in epistemology and psychology.  The notion that every truth is equally accessible to all people, that any text can be read simply and plainly to derive an objective meaning, and that human beings are essentially rational creatures who are open to changing their beliefs on the basis of a logical argument belong to a past paradigm of science that was readily absorbed by Evangelical thinkers.
First, it should be explained that there is nothing anti-Christian about the fundamental principles behind the idea of critical consciousness.  Evidence of the basic phenomenon can be found right in Scripture.  Take, for example, the second half of Romans Chapter 1, in which the Apostle Paul describes the consequences of ungodly and unrighteous life.  In verse 21, it shows that the first thing to go in the unbeliever are their intellect and their moral compass.  Those who stand against God are left to their own devises, losing their reason, degenerating into further wickedness, until finally they sink so low as to lose the inhibitions that are writ into human nature itself, glorifying in their evil and calling it good.  This passage is certainly describing a person who is beyond reason, incapable of right judgment, and outside of the power of persuasion.
Augustine of Hippo reiterates this point in Book 1 of De Libero Arbitrio, in which he argues that it is only through the restorative power of the Holy Spirit that humans are capable of reasoning and judging correctly.  If we were left in our sins, all of us would suffer the consequences of Romans 1, but because Christ redeemed us, we have regained the patrimony of reason which was lost.  This is one of the reasons that I strongly reject both the arguments of Russell Moore as well as those of Wolfe regarding our ability to reason with and work jointly with unbelievers towards a common ultimate goal.  While an unbeliever can be accidentally correct on an individual issue, it is impossible for them to be right about the right things in the right way.  Alliances of convenience will always become inconvenient in time, just as Christians became inconvenient to establishment Fusionist Conservativism; Christians cannot rely on movements and parties that are not explicitly Christian in orientation to promote our principles and goals.  Instead, Christians need to be prepared to take up leadership for ourselves, stand on our own moral, institutional, and political legs, and to assert for ourselves an “Evangelical Mind.”  To paraphrase a theme from Hauerwas and Willimon’s Resident Aliens, if you agree with unbelievers on the same issues, for the same reasons, then how is your worldview Christ-centered3?  If Christ hasn’t made you incomprehensible to the unbeliever, and doesn’t make the unbeliever incomprehensible to you, have you really been changed?  Have you really embraced that which is a stumbling block unto the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks?
Let me use an example to illustrate a principle of modern philosophy of mind which illustrates a problem with Shenvi’s archaic epistemology.  I grew up in the generation that ripped open PCs and rebuilt them, not the generation that rebuilt cars.  As a pre-teen, I familiarized myself with the key components of a PC and built myself a computer from parts as soon as I had an independent checking account.  When my father would ask me to help him work on his car, we would open the hood and I would merely see an undifferentiated mass of engine.  Likewise, when my father would help me with my computer, I could see every component and piece, but he only saw a mass of electronics.  I could no more “see” the alternator than he could “see” the RAM, because conceptualization precedes perception.  I did not know what an alternator did or what it looked like, and so it was functionally invisible to me.  Everything under the hood looked like undifferentiated engine to me.  Explaining the workings of the engine to me, at that point, would have been meaningless because I had no conceptual basis on which to attach the concepts I was being taught.  I was, in fact, blind to auto mechanics in the same way that my father was blind to electronics.
It would be long and deeply cumbersome to cite the mountains of proofs for the notion that conceptualization precedes perception.  This concept is not even vaguely controversial in professional circles.  We can only assimilate concepts to comparable concepts already in our possession because human consciousness works by means of metaphor.  An unfamiliar concept can only be understood in its relation to a known concept4.  In layman’s terms, if you wish to describe an object that I’ve never seen or heard of before, the only way you can describe it to me is through a comparison.
The fullaberry is a fruit – comparison to a known classThe fullaberry is sweet – comparison to a known sensationThe fullaberry is round – comparison to a known shapeThe fullaberry tastes like a pear – comparison to a known tasteThe fullaberry is purple – comparison to a known color
Based on this brief description, I’m sure most readers have a very similar image in their head of the kind of object that is a fullaberry.  Let’s say, however, that one reader is blind, and therefore doesn’t know what “purple” means.  His mental image is going to be deficient compared to others.  If he has never tasted a pear, it will be even more deficient.  If we have a series of five people, each of whom does not understand the meaning of one of the five terms, then each of them has a flawed mental model of the fullaberry that differs along a different essential attribute.  Finally, if we had a hypothetical person with no understanding of the concepts of fruit, sweet, round, pear, or purple, then my description of the fullaberry is meaningless.  Without these essential points of similarity, this person is utterly incapable of comprehending my description of this fictional object.
When we perceive reality, all perception is inherently intentional.  Nobody is a passive observer of reality, but each of us is embedded in a particular project through which our perceptions of the world are colored.  When we act, perception highlights for us the things most relevant to our goal.  When we choose one of these available paths, new objects of interest are again highlighted that fulfill our intended ends, as well as objects that we did not expect to perceive as a result of our actions.  Objects that are neither desired nor unexpected fade into the background and are not perceived because perception is essentially the act of sensing variations in the experienced lived-body state5.
We perceive the variations we expect, and those we do not expect, but do not perceive that which we does not vary, relative to our intentional project.  We don’t often recall the color of the grocery store wall unless someone was painting it.  We don’t notice the color of the car three spaces down from our own unless it was particularly gaudy.  Critical theorists point out that what achieves our attention is defined by norms, and it is only the breach of those norms that raises something to our consciousness.  We notice these things because they’re out of order6.
Critical theorists rightly argue that our norms form the expectations we have of social phenomenon, and we do not perceive that which fulfills those expectations.  I can’t, for the life of me, remember the last person to stand in line with me at a grocery store.  If you were driving past a scene on the side of the road in which the officer was making an arrest, and the person was elderly, white, and wearing a formal suit, your attention would be held in a way that isn’t true if the suspect was young, black, male, and wearing street clothes.  More often than not, you wouldn’t even notice the arrest.
Critical Race Theorists are correct to say that the latter fulfills the dominant normative expectations of our society.  In order to perceive an act as unjust, we first must possess the conceptual frame that such an action is non-normative because our attention is a limited resource and our minds will naturally conserve that resource for our intentional ends.  A person who expects to see such arrests on the side of the road doesn’t actually perceive them but permits them to fade into the generic background of one’s immediate goals, such as driving to work.  This is the meaning of the “blindness” described by Critical Theory, whatever misuse that Kendi and DiAngelo put it towards.  If we acknowledge, even implicitly, the normativity of an injustice, we will fail to recognize when it occurs because such things will be normal and possess a low priority in our minds as compared to the problems of our immediate situation.
For this reason, we are all blind to certain phenomena around us on the basis of our backgrounds, life experiences, and basic moral tenor.  As someone whose house has been burglarized, I am especially aware of vulnerabilities to breaking-and-entering into my home that would be invisible to people without that experience.  Women describe a heightened awareness of potentially dangerous places when walking alone at night which most men would not even perceive.
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