An analysis of the PUP report
By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman Online, April 27, 2006
Editor’s Note: The Presbytery of Western North Carolina invited the Rev. Parker T. Williamson to give a presentation and critique on the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity at its stated meeting April 25 in Montreat, N.C. At that same meeting, the presbytery also voted (59-61) to reject an overture by the First Presbyterian Church of Hendersonville that would have called on the General Assembly to reject recommendations 4, 5 and 6 of the PUP report. What follows is the presentation that Williamson, editor emeritus and senior correspondent of The Layman, made to the presbytery.
Mightily, lustily, with passion, a congregation in Cairo sang that hymn. The windows had been flung open – partly to expel the suffocating heat from hundreds of bodies packed into the upstairs sanctuary, partly to bear witness to a Muslim world just beyond its walls.
Bearing witness to the Lord Jesus Christ in that land is no marginal matter. There’s no hiding the fact that you are a Christian, for religion is indelibly marked on the identity card that every Egyptian must carry.
And that name, the name of Jesus, carries a sentence. You’re the last in line for medical care. Converting a Muslim to the Christian faith is punishable by death. The law will not allow your congregation to repair its sanctuary. So, a courageous pastor and his congregation silently mortar the inside walls at night. “”It’s OK,” he says as his people shore up the interior, “for we know that strength comes from within. It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
“O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise!”
The sound of those words, brought to Egypt by our missionaries long ago, attracted two observers in the back pew. The congregation suspected who they were during communion, when they refused the bread and the wine. Then, automatic rifles appeared from beneath their robes, and all doubt disappeared.
Yet, this radiant congregation kept on singing! This gathering of Sudanese refugees whose homes had been destroyed and whose families had been murdered – this gathering of shopkeepers, teachers, mechanics and the unemployed – belted out the words in a glorious crescendo:
“He breaks the power of reigning sin. He sets the prisoner free …”
I heard the words of that great hymn that night, but also in another, radically different context. Several years ago, Presbyterian Church (USA) leaders decided to publish a new hymn book. A committee gathered in Louisville to find words that might express the denomination’s increasingly inclusive faith. I observed that meeting as a reporter.
Gender made life difficult for “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.” Militarism did in “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Then they took on John Wesley’s masterpiece, “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise!”
The motion was made to replace those words with these: “O for a world where everyone respects each other’s ways!”
The motion passed. Then someone suggested that Presbyterians in the pews might take issue with the exclusion of this grand old hymn. So they decided to showcase the new words as the preferred hymn (page 386), and place “A Thousand Tongues” on page 466, labeled as “an alternative.”
You see the difference. By an act of reverse alchemy, the precious gold of saving faith was exchanged for the dross of pluralism. Egyptian Christians are prepared to die for the saving faith, and many have done so. But who would die for a paltry philosophy called “respecting each other’s ways?”
Some ways do not warrant respect.
The PUP report
That, dear friends, is the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity report’s fatal flaw. Commissioned to do theology, the task force gave us sociology. For four years, its members gathered, mostly behind closed doors, to pool their experiences, share their joys and sorrows, rejoice in their common humanity, and become dear friends. They became such good friends 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.”
That is the message that, two-by-two, they have paraded before presbyteries all over this country before this upcoming General Assembly. “Look at us,” they say. “Note how different we are, and yet what good friends we are.” Jack says he would not want to belong to a church that excludes Barbara, and Barbara says the same thing about Jack. The important thing, you see, is our relationships.
Now, no one finds fault in the fact that these good people became friends. 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. It is just too flat. 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?
Listen to the Word of God:
- “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel – but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ … Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
- Galatians 1:6-12
Inspiration comes from above. When we hear the Word of God, 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.
That, dear friends, is 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. “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, Peter, but my Father, who is in heaven.” 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.
Political alternative to the Word of God
Consider the contrast, this political alternative to the Word of God, this sociology that purports to be a theology: “O for a world where everyone respects each others’ ways.”
Can anyone who believes the Gospel accept that formula for church unity?
Oh, surely – some will say – PUP said nothing like that! Ah, but it did, and unanimously so. Consider PUP’s own words:
“All parties should endeavor to outdo one another in honoring one another’s decisions …” (Line 1069).
Consider PUP’s suggestion that we ditch parliamentary procedure because it “forces the choice into a binary format that divides governing bodies into two parties” (Line 616-617).
Consider, “Therefore, we believe the church should seek constructive, Christ-like alternatives to the ‘yes/no’ forms in which questions about sexuality, ordination, and same-gender covenantal relationships have been put to the church in recent decades” (Lines 604-607).
The 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. Let’s do what PUP member Vickie Curtis suggested during her presentation to my presbytery:
“Conduct polarity management exercises,”
“Envision hope born of conversation,”
“Honor one another’s views.”
That’s 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 us to choose between alternatives, one of which is false, ungodly, unbecoming of the Christian life.
The whole counsel of God
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.
Hear the Word of God:
- “Do I make my plans like a worldly man, ready to say Yes and No at once? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. For the Son of God , Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you … was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes.”
- II Corinthians 1:17-19
The only way you can embrace opposite “truths” (both yes and no) is to dismiss their ontological significance; i.e., to 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.
PUP says, “We have not compromised our basic convictions or commitments. We still hold most of the views and perspectives we brought to the task force” (Lines 371-372).
Please do not miss the ontological significance of this amazing statement. It does not really matter whether the building in which we gather today is made of stone or straw. If your “basic conviction” is that it is straw, then so be it. The fact of the matter doesn’t matter because in this worldview there is no fact, only what you experience as fact. It’s all about your truth, because there is no such thing as truth in itself. So, each of us can have our own convictions, provided, PUP says, that they are “sincerely held” (Lines 604).
Since when has sincerity had anything to do with truth? Has history not proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that one can be sincerely wrong?
A very dangerous place
And were does that leave us? 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 thought behind “O for a world where everyone respects each other’s ways” or, as PUP puts it, “honors one another’s convictions,” is of ancient origin. It’s found in the garden of Eden, where two humans decided to “be like God,” determining for themselves what is good and what is evil. It is found in the time of the judges, “when there was no king in Israel” (no authority beyond the people themselves), “and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
That’s how PUP came up with its infamous Recommendation #5, a proposal that we leave a standard on the books, but give each governing body the right to determine if it is “essential for them.” If they say it is not essential, then for them the standard is null and void.
Please note the practical foolishness of such a proposal, the chaos that inevitably results from embracing a self-contradiction, from taking a position that both affirms and denies the validity of a truth. And this issue is not limited to the subject of sex. If this denomination says governing bodies can “scruple” section G-6.0106b in the Constitution, it follows that they can “scruple” section G-8, or G-9 or, in fact, any other constitutionally defined “standard.” You don’t believe that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords? You believe he is only of a number of choices on the smorgasbord of world religions? You do not believe that he was raised bodily from the dead? That’s okay. Declare a scruple and you’re in. In PUP’s big-tent polity, there’s plenty of room.
PUP’s post-modernism makes a mockery of our Constitution, not only in practical terms, but in essential terms as well. It violates one of the Book of Order’s preliminary principles:
- “No opinion can be either more pernicious or more absurd than that which brings truth and falsehood upon a level, and represents it as of no consequence what a man’s opinions are. On the contrary, we are persuaded that there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Otherwise, it would be of no consequence either to discover truth or to embrace it.”
- Book of Order G-1.0304
PUP’s view that a standard is “aspirational,” merely a principle that one aspires to rather than a law that must be obeyed, effectively guts the Constitution. Follow PUP’s formula, and the Book of Order becomes nothing more than a wish book, precisely the view of our current stated clerk, the denomination’s chief constitutional officer, who insists that it is not his job to enforce the Constitution.
Tantamount to amending the Constitution
The PUP report’s proposal is tantamount to amending the Constitution without amending the Constitution. If one wishes to do away with our ordination standards, the honest approach would be to propose an amendment to the General Assembly, try to achieve a majority vote, and then have it sent out to the 173 presbyteries for their advice and consent. In fact, that has been attempted, and the people of this denomination overwhelmingly have rejected the proposal, most recently by an almost three to one margin.
The members of the task force know it is highly unlikely that those who wish to amend the Constitution by deleting G-6 can achieve their goal. So, their report suggests that the standard not be changed, but only our “interpretation” of the standard be changed. Why? Because an interpretation requires only a majority vote at the General Assembly. No referendum by the people is necessary.
Such a procedure – namely, leaving the words in place but redefining their meaning – is patently dishonest. From a constitutional standpoint, it is a direct violation of Londonderry v. the Presbytery of Northern New England, in which our denomination’s highest court ruled that no governing body has the authority unilaterally to amend the Constitution.
Insofar as church polity is concerned, PUP’s recommendation is a nightmare, but as important as the governance issue is, it is critical