Presbyterian publishing executive condemns Confessing Churches
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, March 18, 2005
Davis Perkins, president of the Presbyterian Publishing Corp., has condemned the Confessing Church Movement within the Presbyterian Church (USA) in his introduction to an essay by a “progressive theologian.”
The essay on confessions by Douglas Ottati, a member of the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., was e-mailed recently to Presbyterians throughout the country.
“The term ‘confessing church’ has come to mean something altogether different in the current Presbyterian context … as right-wing organizations seek to use confessional statements as theological sledgehammers to bludgeon Presbyterians into a rigid orthodoxy that divisively excludes certain persons from ecclesiastical leadership,” Perkins said.
By “certain persons,” Perkins was referring to practicing homosexuals, who are prohibited by the church’s constitution from being ordained as officers. But denominational leaders have chosen not to enforce the prohibition and many ministers and lay officers are open about their same-sex relations.
Several orthodox Presbtyerians – including some who are not involved in the Confessing Church Movement – have told Perkins that his diatribe against the Confessing Church Movement was uncalled for. One, who asked not to be named, called for a retraction and said, “[Y]our statement about the current meaning of a ‘confessing church’ is just plain mean-spirited, not to mention factually incorrect.”
The Rev. Bob Davis, an evangelical who finished second in a four-way race for General Assembly stated clerk last year, wrote an open letter to Perkins saying his remarks were “divisive” and asking for a clarification or an apology.
“As one who has sought to use the opportunity afforded by the confessing churches movement to equip people to articulate their faith, I am offended by your broad-brush, ill-informed, and hurtful statement,” Davis said.
The “rigid orthodoxy” that Perkins denounces refers to the three-fold resolutions adopted by the sessions of 1,310 congregations that declared: 1) Jesus Christ alone is the way, truth and life; 2) the Bible is the infallible and authoritative Word of God; and 3) God’s people are called to holiness in all aspects of life, which includes honoring the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, the only relationship within which sexual activity is appropriate.
Perkins calls Ottati “arguably one of the most insightful progressive theological voices in the Presbyterian Church today. …”
Ottati is a self-proclaimed “progressive” theologian who, in previous writings and speeches, has declared that it is not necessary for a Christian to believe that Jesus bodily rose from the dead.
Ottati’s essay is titled “Confessional Standards for a Confessing Church.” It is the seventh tract in the publishing corporation’s “Price H. Gwynn III Church Leadership Series.” Gwynn, a retired Charlotte businessman, was moderator of the 202nd General Assembly (1990) and a former member of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation’s board.
Ottati is the third “progressive” theologian featured in the series. He once defined progressive theology as a conglomeration of theologies: process, liberal, Christian realist, liberationist, feminist, black, womanist and Minjung, a Korean philosophy that is a radical re-interpretation of Christianity.
The other “progressive” theologians contributing to the Gwynn series were John Buchanan, pastor of 4th Presbyterian Church in Chicago and co-founder of the Covenant Network, and Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary and a member of the PCUSA’s Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity.
Ottati, Buchanan and Wheeler have opposed having any essential tenets, such as those adopted by the Confessing Churches, and have lobbied aggressively against the denomination’s constitutional “fidelity/chastity” standard that prohibits the ordination of practicing homosexuals.
Ottati’s essay was based largely on the Confession of 1967, which was first adopted by the United Presbyterian Church (USA) and later became part of The Book of Confessions for the Southern and Northern mainline Presbyterian denominations that merged into the PCUSA in 1983.
The Confession of 1967 represented a major departure from the confessional tradition of American Presbyterians. Before 1967, the only confessional standards used by American Presbyterians were the Westminster Confession of Faith and its Larger and Shorter Catechisms. The Confession of 1967 also marked the beginning of the steep membership decline in mainline Presbyterianism – from 4.2 million in 1967 to 2.4 million in 2004.
In his essay, Ottati notes the impact of the Confession of ’67, which introduced a “measure of plurality into the Church’s doctrinal standards.” Unlike Westminster and other orthodox confessions, C-67 focused on sociology and reconciliation. It adopted a neo-orthodox view that Scripture was “nevertheless the words of men.”
The “measure of plurality” promoted by progressive theologians allows for individualism and conflicting views of Scripture. One of the themes of progressive theologians is an appeal to individual conscience and an abbreviated version of the Reformation standard – “Reformed and reforming,” without the rest of the clause: according to the Word of God.
Ottati also says C-67 and the adoption of a book of confessions “encourages Presbyterians to understand their confessional authorities as particular, ecumenical, and living or dynamic standards” – not as unchanging standards for Biblical interpretation.
With The Book of Confessions, he adds, “There now seems little reason to alter the documents themselves in order to achieve (what could only be an artificial) uniformity or strict agreement with current faith and practice. So, for example, in the current Book of Confessions, the claim in A Brief Statement of Faith that the Spirit ‘calls women and men to all ministries of the Church’ stands in flat opposition to the insistence of the Scots Confession that ‘the Holy Ghost will not permit [women] to preach in the congregation.'”
Ottati adds, “For now, precisely because the confessions are not entirely self-consistent and uniform, it becomes more difficult to claim that they ever could function as an entirely self-consistent rule.”
Because The Book of Confessions, which now includes 11 documents that include conflicting statements, stands in opposition to “renewed efforts to introduce authoritative lists of ‘essential tenets.’ Accordingly, it should also be emphasized that it is the entire Book of Confessions, rather than anyone’s summary of or Cliffs Notes on the collection, that forms the authoritative confessional standard for the Presbyterian Church (USA). Practically speaking, from a Reformed perspective and as a matter of self-description, a diverse collection of confessions encourages us to take them for what they really are: authoritative yet fallible and subordinate standards that point to the one true Word.”
The Book of Order makes several references to the “essential tenets.” And it requires candidates for ordination as deacons, elders and ministers to “sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?”
But General Assemblies have repeatedly defeated overtures that would specify what those essential tenets are.
In 1997, the 209th General Assembly mandated that a paper titled “The Confessional Nature of the Church” be published with The Book of Confessions. That paper, which does not have constitutional authority because it was never approved by presbyteries, declares that there are no authoritative essentials.
Ottati’s conclusion in his essay was that “all confessional statements have only a provisional, temporary, relative authority.”
The notion of “progressive” theology – essentially a departure from orthodox theology that focuses on Christ and is grounded in Scripture – is not new.
In 1888, C.H. Spurgeon, writing in the Sword and Towel, addressed the progressive movement of his time with a blunt assessment:
“The idea of a progressive gospel seems to have fascinated many. To us that notion is a sort of cross-breed between nonsense and blasphemy. After the gospel has been found effectual in the eternal salvation of untold multitudes, it seems rather late in the day to alter it; and, since it is the revelation of the all-wise and unchanging God, it appears somewhat audacious to attempt its improvement. When we call up before our mind’s eye the gentlemen who have set themselves this presumptuous task, we feel half inclined to laugh; the case is so much like the proposal of moles to improve the light of the sun. Their gigantic intellects are to hatch out the meanings of the Infinite! We think we see them brooding over hidden truths to which they lend the aid of their superior genius to accomplish their development!”
For further reading, see “Progressive?This emerging theology in the PCUSA moving church backwards into paganism,” The Layman, February 2003.