Highland Park session asks PCUSA council to affirm Christ as only Savior and Lord
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, October 7, 2000
DALLAS – The session of the 5,500-member Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas has formally asked the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to reaffirm the denomination’s historic theology that there is salvation in none other than Jesus Christ.
The session’s request was conveyed by certified mail on Oct. 2 to Peter Pizor, chair of the General Assembly Council; John Detterick, executive director of the council, and Donald G. Campbell, director of the Congregational Ministries Division. As of Oct. 6, Highland Park officials said they had not received a reply from the council.
The Highland Park letter was in response to an event in June in which a keynote speaker told a PCUSA-sponsored peacemaking conference that Jesus should not be considered the sole instrument of salvation. At one point during his presentation, the Rev. Dirk Ficca asked rhetorically, “What’s the big deal about Jesus?”
The letter asks the council to:
- Make “a public statement that the Presbyterian Church (USA) believes and proclaims the good news of the salvation by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ as the only Savior and Lord.”
- “Direct and require all entities, agencies, and programs of the Presbyterian Church (USA) – including the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program – to be good stewards of the resources provided by working towards the proclamation of that witness.”
The letter includes citations from the speech by Ficca, a Presbyterian minister who is executive director of an ecumenical organization that represents of Christian and non-Christian religious groups.
The Presbyterian News Service, in its account of Ficca’s speech, said he “espoused a radical brand of ecumenism.” But leaders of the peacemaking conference defended his speech and said it was within the context of the denomination’s Reformed tradition.
In September, the General Assembly Council talked briefly about the issue, but took no action. Pizor and Detterick were applauded for a joint statement they had issued after Ficca’s comments spawned an avalanche of criticism.
Pizor and Detterick originally said that Jesus was the author of their salvation, but they did not specifically refute Ficca’s contention that there are other valid paths to God through non-Christian religions. Questioned by The Presbyterian Layman about their joint statement, both said that they were wrong and that they should have been more specific in stating, as does Scripture, that “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.”
Pizor and Detterick later told the General Assembly Council that they could not stand by their original statement, but their retraction drew no response from members of the council.
The Highland Park session said the General Assembly Council “had a responsibility to correct and respond because this was a keynote address that was made at an event promoted, sponsored, organized and presented by an entity of the Congregational Ministries Division of the General Assembly Council.”
It also said that the “failure of the General Assembly Council to take action and to ‘let it be’ is a delinquency. ‘Letting it be’ suggests that the presentation [by Ficca] was an acceptable statement of what the Presbyterian Church (USA) believes. ‘Letting it be’ is a failure to review the work of General Assembly agencies that is not consistent with General Assembly mission directions, goals, objectives and priorities.”
The action by the Highland Park session begins a process through Book of Order channels that could lead to a judicial case on one of the major theological issues in the denomination. While the denomination’s confessions agree that Jesus is the one and only Savior and Lord, Presbyterian events and Presbyterian polls show that many Presbyterians, including some leaders, believe otherwise.
The ReImaging god movement, some of whose leaders have denied the atoning work of Christ, has introduced an alternative to Jesus – a goddess named Sophia. A Presbyterian minister in Chicago, who opposed a Southern Baptist Convention plan to send evangelists to his city, criticized the Baptists for suggesting that salvation is only through Christ. He equated their plans for evangelism with a hate movement.
A recent survey by the Presbyterian Panel, the official polling service for the denomination, found that a majority of Presbyterians are either fuzzy on the nature of Christ’s divinity or that they believe there are other paths to God. Asked whether “only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved,” only 46 percent of the members, 48 percent of the ministers and 22 percent of the specialized clergy said yes.
The Highland Park session wants the General Assembly Council to “cure a delinquency for failing to correct an irregularity that occurred during the Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference, July 26-29, 2000.” Citing G-3.0300a of the Book of Order, the session’s letter declares that “the Church is called to tell the good news of salvation by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ as the only Savior and Lord.”
If the council fails to respond to the Highland Park session, the session could pursue the case through the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly, the highest court in the denomination.