Unformed Expression
Formed expression is what our hearts cry out for. We want our preachers to articulate the truth with a kind of clarity that enables us to grasp and retain it. We want our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to capture and express affections we have had but have not known how to express. We want corporate prayers to be elevated, careful, thoughtful and Scriptural. We want the music to have structural integrity, a tonal center, and a normal and recognizable sense of progression. When people who are trained in the forms of rhetoric, poetry, or music give us a structure, it actually sets us free to express ourselves properly.
Richard Weaver’s book Ideas Have Consequences is one of the more demanding reads you’ll encounter. I’ll confess it took me more than one reading to grasp his arguments. Throughout the book, Weaver keeps dropping these gems of insight, which one often picks up on a re-read. One of them is this:
Unformed expression is ever tending toward ignorance.
To put it another way, when people express themselves, whether through speech, writing, poetry, music, or other art forms, their expression needs the guidance of form. Speeches need introductions, propositional statements, main points, supporting arguments, conclusions and the like. Poetry needs a particular metre, rhyme scheme, line length, metaphor, and other devices. Music needs melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and so forth. Whatever the device used for human expression, it has a form that such expression must be poured into, like metal into a mould. The mould can be changed, but apart from the mould, molten metal will simply pour chaotically into a shapeless mess.
Weaver is suggesting that human expression is just like that. Remove the constraints of form, and human expression tends towards ignorance. If thoughts and affections are not channelled and disciplined by the structure of speech or poetry or music or the like, they become disorganised, disparate, disjointed and, in a word, chaotic. Chaos does not enlighten or educate anyone; it increases ignorance.
Consider some cringeworthy examples from within the walls of the church: A preacher whose desire to be extemporaneous exceeds his supply of helpful things to say; “testimony time,” where the one testifying cannot make his or her point without saying it twenty different ways over fifteen minutes; prayer meetings where the prayers are meandering rambles of stock clichés and trivial requests; songs written by the song leader earlier that week (or day); “prophetic singing,” where the song leader plays chords and makes up words as he goes along.
In these situations, we grow exasperated. We wish the preacher would simply stick to his notes. We wish the one praying would shorten his prayer to the things needful to ask for.
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C.S. Lewis Led Us into A Hallway but Told Us Not to Stay There
He pointed them to to the rooms off the hallway, what he described as various denominations. This is because as believers study their Bibles they will develop convictions that move them beyond the minimal commitments of basic Christianity. The rooms represent different layers of shared beliefs that culminate in the kinds of nuances that distinguish Pentecostals from Presbyterians, and Lutherans from Baptists.
C.S. Lewis has led generations through the wardrobe and into the magical land of talking Fauns, lampposts, and the benevolent lion. But Lewis led just as many—likely more—into a far more powerful place, a hallway. Yet Lewis made it clear, he didn’t desire for any of us to stay there.
This is what C.S. Lewis had in mind when he talked about the hallway in his influential work Mere Christianity. The hallway represents the entry point into the Christian faith. The hallway can be well summarized by historic Christian statements, like the Apostle’s Creed. The hallway represents those basic things every Christian must believe, those unifying and foundational truths at the heart of Christian faith.
As great as this hallway is, however, Lewis didn’t want people to stay there. He pointed them to to the rooms off the hallway, what he described as various denominations. This is because as believers study their Bibles they will develop convictions that move them beyond the minimal commitments of basic Christianity.
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The Hidden Social Justice Issue
In a new book, Get Married, and in countless op-eds, white papers, and columns, Wilcox makes the case that traditional marriage and family are the lynchpin to a flourishing life, economically, socially, and spiritually. Consider one stunning fact: “The best community predictor of poor children remaining stuck in poverty as adults was the share of kids in their communities living in a single-parent family. Not income inequality. Not race. Not school quality.”
Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s imagine you are a young Christian burdened by the state of the world. You want to make a difference.
Let’s get more specific.
You see documented in headline after headline, rising crime, addiction, and deaths of despair. You believe God has called you to be a small part of what He wants to do to redeem the communities most left behind.
What issue would you make your priority in this desire to engage in genuine social justice? One scholar suggests an issue that would probably not be the first, for you, to come to mind: marriage.
Brad Wilcox is a professor of sociology and director of The National Marriage Project at The University of Virginia and a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. For the last decade and a half, Brad has been studying marriage and family in America and he’s come to one conclusion:
So many of the biggest problems across America are rooted in the collapse of marriage and family life in all too many communities and homes across the country.
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Lady Preachers in PCA Pulpits?
Being authentically presbyterian when an egalitarian culture is so decidedly against the truths of God’s word and his design for his church is hard. And though it is hard and unpleasant work, faithful churchmen must call to account those who would deviate from God’s blueprint for His church and her worship.
Presbyterianism is pretty simple. As the name suggests, presbyters (elders) are essential to the church. Congregations elect qualified men to ensure that the means of grace (word, prayer, and sacraments) and discipline are maintained. These men—one or more of whom is an elder qualified and approved to preach—constitute the local session, and are accountable to higher courts that have the oversight of larger geographical areas (regional presbyteries and synods or general assemblies). The various local churches and courts are vitally connected primarily by a common confession of faith and a common church order—not primarily by experience or ardor (more about that later).
Bonds of love and trust between churches in a presbyterian denomination rely on common belief and common, accountable order. Essential to that order are the clear definitions of office and preaching. And this is why the fact that women are filling pulpits and expounding Scripture at the center of stated Lord’s Day worship services in the PCA is so troubling, and why it bodes so ill for the peace, purity, and sustainability of the PCA.
Yes, you heard correctly: Women have recently preached (by any commonsense definition of preaching) in PCA churches, and PCA women (including pastors’ wives) have preached in churches of other denominations. I will not post links to videos and websites here that prove this contention (though hundreds are aware of them and they are not hard to find), since there are active or pending complaints and communications about these incidents at presbytery levels. One thing is certain—you will hear about some of these cases before long.
Why is this happening? Previously-stated justifications given for women expounding the Scriptures during stated Lord’s Day worship services involve finely-drawn distinctions between teaching and preaching. Some have contended that there is nothing in our standards that absolutely says women cannot read, give the sense of, and apply Scripture during a worship service. They might even say that the Westminster Divines or authors of the PCA Book of Church Order never defined preaching as clearly as they should have.
Is it surprising that the divines did not defend truths and concepts that were not under attack, nor define subjects about which all 17th-century Christians were agreed? Likewise, one reasonably assumes that the founders of the PCA assumed that women would never be preaching in PCA churches so long as the office of elder was limited to men.
Why is it that women are barred from preaching in conservative Reformed churches? Our sisters can speak well and even produce impressive spiritual experiences when they speak. They can study and have biblical knowledge and wisdom just like men. So why not preach?
The short answer is that our scripturally-faithful books of order limit preaching to those men who are called and approved to the teaching office of elder, or else to those who are in training for the office and under the care of presbytery. The Larger Catechism provides some clarity:
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