Renewal leader outlines ‘fatal flaw’ in final report of PUP task force
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, June 19, 2006
217th General Assembly
Birmingham, Ala.BIRMINGHAM — A renewal leader in the Presbyterian Church (USA) said Sunday morning that “respecting each other’s ways” rather than standing on the Word of God is “the fatal flaw” in the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity.
Rev. Parker T. Williamson, editor emeritus and senior correspondent of The Layman, told more than 200 people filling a ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel for the Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International worship service that the task force had been “commissioned to do theology” but, instead, “gave us sociology.”
The members of the task force spent four years becoming “such good friends,” Williamson said, that they determined “nothing should undermine their unity. No principle, no conviction, no behavior, no Scripture, no faith … nothing could diminish their ‘respect for each others’ ways.”
The message that task force members have bringing to presbyteries all over the country since they released their report in August, he said, has been: “‘Look at us. Note how different we are, and yet what good friends we are.’ The important thing, you see, is our relationships.”
“No one finds fault in the fact that these good people became friends,” Williamson said. “In this world of common grace, each of us has forged friendships with persons of a different faith, or even no faith at all. But one does not build a theology on human experience. Where does theology come from? Jesus said it clearly when identifying the source of Peter’s confession: ‘Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, [this did not come from consensus] but my Father who is in heaven.’ Do you hear the resounding ‘No’ to a faith that is forged in mere human experience?
“When we hear the Word of God,” he said, “we are drawn by the power of the Holy Spirit into that divine communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are brought into a presence that no human endeavor can create. We are transformed by the renewal of our minds.”
Williamson called that the “the essence of communion, our participation in the life of the holy Trinity, that eternal love of the Father for the Son, and the bonding of the Holy Spirit. … Theology is theo-logos (language about God) that must, first and foremost, be the language of God. Thus, it can come from nowhere else than the Word of God.”
By contrast, he called the task force report a “political alternative to the Word of God, this sociology that purports to be a theology. … Can anyone who believes the Gospel accept that formula for church unity?”
Williamson said the report’s theme is clear. “Deciding between polarities like yes and no, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil, must be avoided at all costs because such decisions polarize people, create two camps, and cause some — God forbid — to feel excluded. So, let’s exchange yes/no for both/and. Let’s welcome all positions.”
That approach, he said, is “a far cry from our Lord’s counsel: ‘Let your yes be yes and your no be no.’ ‘No one can serve two masters.’ Joshua’s challenge to Israel: ‘Choose you this day whom you will serve.’ When Israel tried to encompass Yahweh and Baal, Elijah roared: ‘How long will you go limping between two opinions?'”
Scripture requires Christians to choose between alternatives, Williamson said, “one of which is false, ungodly, unbecoming of the Christian life. How in the world does PUP manage to dismiss the whole counsel of God, calling it a ‘binary format’ that is to be avoided for the sake of unity? How in the world does PUP embrace both good and evil? It does so by looking to the world. PUP’s ideology and the recommendations that flow from it are grounded not in the Word of God, but in the PUP members’ own shared experience.”
The only way to embrace opposite both yes and no positions, he said, “is to dismiss their ontological significance — declare that neither is true or false in itself, but only in the opinion of the person who holds it. Thus, what is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me and, because we love one another, we can (using PUP’s words) ‘honor’ one another’s convictions.”
Where does that leave Presbyterians, Williamson asked? “It leaves us in a very dangerous place, a place that threatens our mortal souls. It invites us to violate the First Commandment: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ Why? Because in setting ourselves up as the ultimate arbiters of truth, we become our own gods.”
The task force report, he said, does not deal with “the Word of God written. We’re dealing with the word of God to me. We’re dealing with what I say it says. We, not Scripture, define what ‘is’ is.”