guides
theology guides Lines in the sand
guides
by THOMAS W. GILLESPIE
"Where do we draw a line in the sand?" I heard that question more than once as we approached the June General Assembly in Birmingham, from pastors and elders wondering what would be the outcome of the "Peace, Unity, and Purity" report with its provision for the right of presbyteries and sessions to allow "scruples" with regard to specific constitutional standards for ordination to our three ordered offices. Many are wondering i f they could or should remain in a denomination that will not honor uniformly the provision of G.0106b regarding the expected sexual behavior of ministers, elders, and deacons. I confess that the question has crossed my mind as well, and thus this brief reflection on the subject. Like all ordained officers of our Presbyterian Church, I promised at my ordination "to study the peace, unity,
m 'Us
^
and purity of the Church" and I remain committed to that vow. What makes it inherendy difficult to do at times, however, is the fact that it is actually a three-fold promise. Metaphorically speaking, it is like the ancient Roman troika - the chariot drawn by three horses. The skilled driver could keep the team pulling together rather than against one another. Otherwise, a ride led to inevitable disaster. I n our current ecclesial situation, we have no peace because our concern for purity is pulling against our commitment to unity. Those of us who support the ordination standard of G. 0106b care deeply about the personal purity of sexual behavior among our ordained officers, while those who oppose that provision care with equal passion about a corporate purity of justice they believe is being violated by the Church's current practice. So the irony is that purity is off stride, thereby throwing unity off balance and
Presbyterians! 1
leaving peace caught in the middle with nowhere to go. As a result, we are all conflicted in our endeavor to honor our ordination vow "to study the peace, unity, and purity of the Church." M y guess is that at the end of the day each of us resolves the conflict by privileging one of our threefold promises over the other two. Let me share two anecdotes that explain why I privilege unity. More than half a century has passed since I entered the Presbyterian ministry as a new church development pastor in Southern California. At some point in those early days I read a trilogy of books published by (then) Westminster Press with the intriguing titles, The Case for Protestant Liberalism, The Case for Neo-Orthodoxy, and The Case for Protestant Orthodoxy. While my own theological sympathies lay with the author of the second mentioned volume, there was a point scored in the last one that impressed me and has remained with me across the years - all the more poignant because the author of that book was Edward John Carnell, the president at the time of Fuller Theological Seminary. Carnell contended
Your National Conference Centers
2FT"
IONTREAT. Iconference center www.stonypointcenter.org
www.pres-outlook.org
www.moatreat.org
www.gko3trancri.org
The Presbyterian O u t l o o k • 19
that the only theologically justifiable reason for leaving any Church would be its official denial of Jesus Christ. N o t the presence of ministers in its ranks with a weak or non-existent Christology, mind you, but the confessional denial of Christ by the Church. Even then, he suggested, it might not be justifiable to leave a Church unless you yourself as a pastor were officially prevented from proclaiming the Christ you confess. That is not only an explicit recognition of the centrality of our Christological confession, but also an implicit tribute to the importance of Church unity. In the halcyon days of American Presbyterianism during the 1950s, of course, the issue of division in our Church was purely hypothetical. N o one could have imagined then that at the beginning of the twenty-first century we would be where we are today. D i visiveness is in the air. For not only are many Presbyterians actually asking the question of when it is justifiable to leave (and thus divide or, more likely in today's post-modern milieu, splinter) the Church we love and serve, there are others smugly saying, "Let 'em go."
Grants
for
• Ministry needs • Capital needs • Debt reduction ^
The Public Foundation for Stewardship Advancement, Inc. provides resource solutions for ministry and mission! CALL TODAY!
The PFSA, Inc. 888-456-PFSA (toll-free) www. thepfsa. org info@thepfsa. org
20 * The Presbyterian O u t l o o k
But faced with the real possibility of yet another in a long series of ruptures in the American Presbyterian family, I remain convinced that Camell's standard is the one I must honor. Only a confessional denial of Christ would allow me to leave the Church in which I was baptized, nurtured, confirmed, married, and ordained. And i f the PUP report is an accurate indication of where the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is on such matters as Christology, I am in no danger of having to make that decision. M y gratitude to the Task Force on this issue is genuine. M y second anecdote has to do with the issue of purity. Shortly after I came to the presidency of Princeton Seminary in 1983, Professor Edward A. Dowey directed my attention to a dissertation written by a doctoral candidate at (of all places) Dallas Theological Seminary. The topic was, "The Reorientation of Princeton Theological Seminary: 1920-1928." I learned a great deal from this remarkably evenhanded work about those painful years of the modernist-fundamentahst controversy when both my school and our Church were disrupted. Two points in that story are of more than historical interest.
the^ eight who stayed, every one had come to the faculty from the pastorate, which is simply to say that these professors knew what pastors know all too well, namely, that the Church as represented in its real live congregations is never pure, doctrinally or morally, and never will be short of the consummation of God's eschatological purpose. That is not an excuse for irresponsible theological thinking or unethical personal behavior, but it is a fact that tempers unrealistic expectations. Having come to theological education from twenty-nine years in the pastorate, I find myself a kindred spirit to those pastor-professors who stayed at Princeton and in the Presbyterian Church almost eighty years ago now and for the same reason. M y ecclesiology, like that of Charles Hodge (and more immediately Karl Barth), is of the Reformed type. The peace, unity, and purity of the Church are both a given and a hope. They are givens in Christ that we contradict in our personal and corporate behavior. Yet we dare to live in the hope Christ engenders that the contradictions will ultimately be resolved in God's time.
My own sense is that for the present I can do more to preserve the unity of the Church than I can to insure its puFirst, there was not a card-carrying rity. That is a personal call that not modernist within a hundred miles of everyone will share, of course. Yet I Princeton's faculty at the time. The dispute at the seminary was over ecclesiolo- urge all who, like myself, are weary of thirty years of ecclesiastical "insurgy. The author pointed out that J. Gregency" over the issue of constitutionalsham Machen, the professor at the eye l y . established and denominationally of the storm, was not a fundamentalist honored standards for the sexual bebut a strict Westminster confessionalist. Nonetheless, he had an Anabaptist havior of the ordained officers of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), to place doctrine of the Church that placed a this struggle for purity within the largpremium on the purity of the Christian er context of the unity that faith in life. Unlike his predecessor, Charles Christ entails. He calls us to himself, Hodge, whose Reformed ecclesiology and to be in relation to him is to be in included the wisdom of the dominical relation to all others — like it or not — parable about allowing the wheat and who have likewise responded to his inthe weeds to grow together until harvitation. That unity is necessary in orvest time when the one would be sepader that the quest for purity and peace rated from the other (Mt. 13:24-30), may continue until they are realized at Machen was a purist - a doctrinal Harvest Time. purist. In his view there was no possibility of theological "light" associating with doctrinal "darkness" in the THOMAS W. GILLESPIE is president and Church. professor of New Testament emeritus of The second important thing I learned from this dissertation was even more surprising. When the split in the faculty came in 1927 and Machen led seven colleagues out to found Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, only eight of the original faculty remained at Princeton. O f the eight who departed, not one had ever served as a pastor. Of
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.
www.pres-outlook.org
guides
by THOMAS W. GILLESPIE
"Where do we draw a line in the sand?" I heard that question more than once as we approached the June General Assembly in Birmingham, from pastors and elders wondering what would be the outcome of the "Peace, Unity, and Purity" report with its provision for the right of presbyteries and sessions to allow "scruples" with regard to specific constitutional standards for ordination to our three ordered offices. Many are wondering i f they could or should remain in a denomination that will not honor uniformly the provision of G.0106b regarding the expected sexual behavior of ministers, elders, and deacons. I confess that the question has crossed my mind as well, and thus this brief reflection on the subject. Like all ordained officers of our Presbyterian Church, I promised at my ordination "to study the peace, unity,
m 'Us
^
and purity of the Church" and I remain committed to that vow. What makes it inherendy difficult to do at times, however, is the fact that it is actually a three-fold promise. Metaphorically speaking, it is like the ancient Roman troika - the chariot drawn by three horses. The skilled driver could keep the team pulling together rather than against one another. Otherwise, a ride led to inevitable disaster. I n our current ecclesial situation, we have no peace because our concern for purity is pulling against our commitment to unity. Those of us who support the ordination standard of G. 0106b care deeply about the personal purity of sexual behavior among our ordained officers, while those who oppose that provision care with equal passion about a corporate purity of justice they believe is being violated by the Church's current practice. So the irony is that purity is off stride, thereby throwing unity off balance and
Presbyterians! 1
leaving peace caught in the middle with nowhere to go. As a result, we are all conflicted in our endeavor to honor our ordination vow "to study the peace, unity, and purity of the Church." M y guess is that at the end of the day each of us resolves the conflict by privileging one of our threefold promises over the other two. Let me share two anecdotes that explain why I privilege unity. More than half a century has passed since I entered the Presbyterian ministry as a new church development pastor in Southern California. At some point in those early days I read a trilogy of books published by (then) Westminster Press with the intriguing titles, The Case for Protestant Liberalism, The Case for Neo-Orthodoxy, and The Case for Protestant Orthodoxy. While my own theological sympathies lay with the author of the second mentioned volume, there was a point scored in the last one that impressed me and has remained with me across the years - all the more poignant because the author of that book was Edward John Carnell, the president at the time of Fuller Theological Seminary. Carnell contended
Your National Conference Centers
2FT"
IONTREAT. Iconference center www.stonypointcenter.org
www.pres-outlook.org
www.moatreat.org
www.gko3trancri.org
The Presbyterian O u t l o o k • 19
that the only theologically justifiable reason for leaving any Church would be its official denial of Jesus Christ. N o t the presence of ministers in its ranks with a weak or non-existent Christology, mind you, but the confessional denial of Christ by the Church. Even then, he suggested, it might not be justifiable to leave a Church unless you yourself as a pastor were officially prevented from proclaiming the Christ you confess. That is not only an explicit recognition of the centrality of our Christological confession, but also an implicit tribute to the importance of Church unity. In the halcyon days of American Presbyterianism during the 1950s, of course, the issue of division in our Church was purely hypothetical. N o one could have imagined then that at the beginning of the twenty-first century we would be where we are today. D i visiveness is in the air. For not only are many Presbyterians actually asking the question of when it is justifiable to leave (and thus divide or, more likely in today's post-modern milieu, splinter) the Church we love and serve, there are others smugly saying, "Let 'em go."
Grants
for
• Ministry needs • Capital needs • Debt reduction ^
The Public Foundation for Stewardship Advancement, Inc. provides resource solutions for ministry and mission! CALL TODAY!
The PFSA, Inc. 888-456-PFSA (toll-free) www. thepfsa. org info@thepfsa. org
20 * The Presbyterian O u t l o o k
But faced with the real possibility of yet another in a long series of ruptures in the American Presbyterian family, I remain convinced that Camell's standard is the one I must honor. Only a confessional denial of Christ would allow me to leave the Church in which I was baptized, nurtured, confirmed, married, and ordained. And i f the PUP report is an accurate indication of where the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is on such matters as Christology, I am in no danger of having to make that decision. M y gratitude to the Task Force on this issue is genuine. M y second anecdote has to do with the issue of purity. Shortly after I came to the presidency of Princeton Seminary in 1983, Professor Edward A. Dowey directed my attention to a dissertation written by a doctoral candidate at (of all places) Dallas Theological Seminary. The topic was, "The Reorientation of Princeton Theological Seminary: 1920-1928." I learned a great deal from this remarkably evenhanded work about those painful years of the modernist-fundamentahst controversy when both my school and our Church were disrupted. Two points in that story are of more than historical interest.
the^ eight who stayed, every one had come to the faculty from the pastorate, which is simply to say that these professors knew what pastors know all too well, namely, that the Church as represented in its real live congregations is never pure, doctrinally or morally, and never will be short of the consummation of God's eschatological purpose. That is not an excuse for irresponsible theological thinking or unethical personal behavior, but it is a fact that tempers unrealistic expectations. Having come to theological education from twenty-nine years in the pastorate, I find myself a kindred spirit to those pastor-professors who stayed at Princeton and in the Presbyterian Church almost eighty years ago now and for the same reason. M y ecclesiology, like that of Charles Hodge (and more immediately Karl Barth), is of the Reformed type. The peace, unity, and purity of the Church are both a given and a hope. They are givens in Christ that we contradict in our personal and corporate behavior. Yet we dare to live in the hope Christ engenders that the contradictions will ultimately be resolved in God's time.
My own sense is that for the present I can do more to preserve the unity of the Church than I can to insure its puFirst, there was not a card-carrying rity. That is a personal call that not modernist within a hundred miles of everyone will share, of course. Yet I Princeton's faculty at the time. The dispute at the seminary was over ecclesiolo- urge all who, like myself, are weary of thirty years of ecclesiastical "insurgy. The author pointed out that J. Gregency" over the issue of constitutionalsham Machen, the professor at the eye l y . established and denominationally of the storm, was not a fundamentalist honored standards for the sexual bebut a strict Westminster confessionalist. Nonetheless, he had an Anabaptist havior of the ordained officers of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), to place doctrine of the Church that placed a this struggle for purity within the largpremium on the purity of the Christian er context of the unity that faith in life. Unlike his predecessor, Charles Christ entails. He calls us to himself, Hodge, whose Reformed ecclesiology and to be in relation to him is to be in included the wisdom of the dominical relation to all others — like it or not — parable about allowing the wheat and who have likewise responded to his inthe weeds to grow together until harvitation. That unity is necessary in orvest time when the one would be sepader that the quest for purity and peace rated from the other (Mt. 13:24-30), may continue until they are realized at Machen was a purist - a doctrinal Harvest Time. purist. In his view there was no possibility of theological "light" associating with doctrinal "darkness" in the THOMAS W. GILLESPIE is president and Church. professor of New Testament emeritus of The second important thing I learned from this dissertation was even more surprising. When the split in the faculty came in 1927 and Machen led seven colleagues out to found Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, only eight of the original faculty remained at Princeton. O f the eight who departed, not one had ever served as a pastor. Of
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.
www.pres-outlook.org
