The primary issue of purity before the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) at this time is how we are to be faithful Christians now and into the future. Three points: (1) The purity of the Church comes from Jesus Christ. (2) The dilemma we are in comes from a clash of epochs as well as a clash of poles, right and left. (3) PC(USA) identity, resources, and actions point us to a third way out of our dilemma.
1. The purity of the Church comes from Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the key to all three topics — peace, unity, and purity. Jesus Christ accomplishes our true peace, reconciling us to God while we were yet sinners. As Jesus Christ is one, so are we truly united in Christ, regardless of any diversity. But purity raises questions about standards and how closely we conform to those standards. Are we more or less pure in goodness, doctrinal correctness, commitment in our hearts or in our lives? With these questions come comparisons and finger pointing: some of us are more pure and some are less so. That’s part of our current polarization, isn’t it?
The point, of course, is not how much purity we have, more or less, but whether we have any purity at all. Whatever purity we have, I believe, reflects back upon the purity of Jesus Christ, who is Emmanuel, God with us. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, goes the beatitude (Matt 5:8). For the Protestant reformers, following the Bible, purity of heart, like faith, comes from God alone by grace alone, i.e., as God’s gift of a single-minded focus on Jesus Christ. To paraphrase the hymn, Jesus really is fairer, Jesus really is purer, who makes the woeful heart to sing. Our purity hinges on the purity, love, truth, and righteousness of Christ, which is God’s to give, not ours to acquire, possess, or dispense. But as God’s gift to us, whatever purity we have is precious and sure, and it cannot be taken away from us.
Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke about living through the evil of Hitler’s Germany during the 1930s and 40s. Face-to-face with evil, many otherwise well-intentioned people, including Christians, could not withstand the Nazi onslaught because they lacked a single-minded devotion to God. Only the person who sees reality in God will stand, said Bonhoeffer, namely, the person whose eye is firmly fixed on Christ at the center of the Church and Christ at the center of the World. With this focus Bonhoeffer did navigate the upside down life of his time. The eye is the lamp of the body, says Jesus. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness (Matt. 6:22f).
2. What does purity have to do with whether or not to ordain gays and lesbians to the offices of the Presbyterian Church? The answer, I believe, is that the ordination of officers touches the heart of our identity as Presbyterians. According to the Reformation confessions in our Book of Confessions, you can tell a true Church from a false one by three specific marks or keys to the kingdom. The true Church exists, they say, wherever the Word is purely preached, the Sacraments are rightly administered, and church discipline/ discipleship is practiced. The Reformers elevate these marks because, (a) they invariably exercise the Scriptures in proclamation, in the Sacraments, in governance; and (b) in the power of the Spirit (never automatically!) they set forth Jesus Christ, at the center of the Church’s life, her worship. Just so, Jesus Christ in person gathers a community around himself, redefines our everyday lives in terms of God’s life at the moment, exercises redemptive power, governs the Church, and moves us to glorify God daily. Presbyterian polity and identity are built around that core. The PC(USA) Book of Order makes these connections in its first paragraphs.
So, the ordination of officers touches our core identity as Presbyterian Christians centered in Jesus Christ. Preserving the purity of church offices is essential for the purity of the Church. Common sense (if nothing else) tells us to move V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y to change ordination standards that are based on four thousand years of Scripture, confessions, deep nature, and Church rules.
But there’s another layer here. People in the current debate talk about mission, not the Reformation marks of the true Church. They speak of how useful the Gospel is to meet human needs and how useful the Church is to do God’s work in the World. One side is concerned about mission evangelism; the other side is concerned about mission social action/social justice. Both right and left, however, share the underlying concern for the mission of the Church.
Of those committed to mission evangelism, the far right rejects homosexual behavior as a violation of the moral law set forth in the Bible. To ordain gays and lesbians, they say, takes away the credibility of the Church in its primary mission of evangelism. The rest of the Church, they say, is not upholding set standards of doctrine and morality as well as they do; so, the rest of the Church must not be as committed to mission evangelism as they are. But the far right overlooks the Reformation marks of the true Church in favor of mission, and they ignore the crucial interaction of Gospel and Law in all the Reformation confessions, including specifically The Westminster Confession of Faith.
Of those who press for mission social justice, the far left rejects the long-standing biblical, confessional, and Church proscriptions against homosexual behavior. Such rules, they say, are an outdated moralism that no longer applies to Christians, especially for homosexuals in long-term, committed relationships. Officers in the Presbyterian Church are called to a useful function. So, if devout Christians, who happen to be practicing homosexuals, feel called to serve as minister, elder, or deacon, why not? And why not ordain them?
The issue of sin is what separates homosexuality from the treatment of slavery or the role of women.
“¢ For the far left, homosexual behavior is not more sinful than the acknowledged sins of pride or greed. So, they say, if we don’t exclude these other sins, it is unfair/unjust to exclude gays and lesbians from being ordained to church office. This argument, mainly from the negative, looks and sounds like a justification of the sin as well as the sinner.
“¢ It does not help to bypass homosexual behavior by emphasizing homosexual orientation, what a person is by nature. For then the Gospel simply gives us license to “do what is within us,” once again justifying the sin as well as the sinner.
“¢ To avoid connecting homosexuality with sin altogether, sexuality itself has to be recast for its usefulness to a variety of human relationships. This move allows Modernist/Pietist people to put aside long-standing, historical perspectives on sexuality and set their own course in these matters.
To summarize, we Presbyterians are in an identity crisis. We are caught up in a highly charged right-left debate that touches the heart of what it means to be Presbyterian in the Reformation sense. Both right and left, however, readily ignore or insulate themselves from our Reformation confessional heritage. In the meanwhile, in the Modernist/ Pietist era of the last 350 years, we have adopted a language of theological discourse that focuses on our usefulness more or less, better or worse, weaker or stronger. Our eye thus falls easily on the purity of one another, with a lot of finger pointing. Our eye falls on ourselves instead of Jesus Christ, the only place where real purity is to be found.
3. Looking for a third way out of our dilemma. The stakes are huge. By all accounts, we are at an epochal turning point in Church and culture, moving out of one era, Modernism/Pietism, into another, Post-Modernism+. The trouble is, the far right and the far left are still, in my estimation, largely trapped in the Modernism/Pietism of the recent past. They are so focused on each other that they cannot see how they mirror each other or why the times are bypassing them both. The whole Church is at risk if, like them, we look no farther than our immediate present or recent past. That route takes our eye off Christ and off God’s call to follow Christ into the future.
In what direction do I think a third way can go? Like most of us, I regard mission evangelism and mission social action/justice as essential companions, not competitors. The Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 derives entirely from the mission activity of Christ himself. All power/authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me [= Christ],” says Jesus (18). And, lo, I [Christ] am with you always, even to the end of the age (20b). We are to baptize people into the name, i.e., into the person of the Father, the Son (= Christ), and the Holy Spirit (19f). We are to teach what God is doing at the moment (whatsoever I have commanded you” 20a). Jesus Christ is the central actor in the mission of the Church, and we the Church are joyful participants in Christ’s mission of justice and redemption.
I get a strong boost from the PC(USA) Book of Confessions. The confessions clarify how Presbyterian Church order connects with Jesus Christ. The confessions bolster my confidence in the Presbyterian Church as an authentic Christian community centered in Jesus Christ, not based on the allegiance of its members more or less or the purity of its decisions better or worse. The confessions pull me back to a strong accent on grace in this Pelagian culture. They give me a confidence that the God who began a good thing with the Presbyterian Church will bring it to completion. The Reformation confessions also provide me with several key benchmarks going forward, namely: Jesus is Lord, God as a human being. To worship, serve, or live with and for Christ is an end in itself that has no useful purpose beyond itself. Jesus Christ is Lord over all of life. The problem of the Law is not legalism but idolatry, when we put the Law in the place of God and use it to make ourselves righteous before God.
The last item deserves further comment. For the Reformed tradition, the Law is most profound when it points us to God, who gave the Law, who also keeps the Law. I’m drawing here on John Calvin’s third use of the Law, The Heidelberg Catechism’s accent on gratitude, The Westminster Confession’s treatment of eternal decree/covenant of grace, and Karl Barth on the command of God. Christ, of course, fulfills the Law utterly and replaces it with himself. Then the Law, removed of its curse, returns to its rightful place as part of the covenant of grace. In Christ the Law describes who God is, what God is like, where God is, what God is doing, and what we want to be doing when our chief end is fellowship with God instead of making ourselves righteous. That’s what The Westminster Shorter Catechism calls, “glorifying and enjoying God forever.” Mark it well: Neither the moralism of the far right nor the lawlessness of the far left can touch the joy that keeping the Law entails in Christ.
4. Where does all this leave us in the present dispute over ordination? As difficult as it is to endure, our best work emerges in exactly such situations as the one we are in. Faced with an either-or impasse, gracious Presbyterians refuse to alienate or be stampeded by either side. With impatience and uneasiness (!) they wait and work and pray for a third way, which only becomes clear to everyone when it appears. The result usually turns out better for the whole Church — right, left, and center. But it cannot come from far left or far right alone, nor can it happen if the two sides don’t play their parts. I believe the complete resolution in the matter before us is not yet clear, but the center is the only part of the Church looking for a third way instead of a win-lose result.
“¢ The little pamphlet, Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, adopted almost unanimously by the 2002 Columbus GA, represents the center’s considered response to the Confessing Church Movement on the far right: The eye of the PC(USA) IS on Jesus Christ.
“¢ I believe the fidelity-chastity clause in the Book of Order (G-6.0106b) is also a statement of the center, approved by the presbyteries in 1995-96, twenty years into the dispute. The PC(USA) as a whole has thus far steadfastly refused all efforts either to rescind this provision or apply it more rigorously. In the Theological Task Force Report on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church passed last year the far left is accommodating itself to, not nullifying, the Book of Order as it stands.
“¢ I believe the Peace, Unity, and Purity Report passed by the 2006 Birmingham GA is also an act of the center. By my count, the vote was 298 in favor to 92 hardcore votes on the left and 129 hard-core votes on the right — 221 total against. In this vote the center once again stood firmly against both the far left and the far right.
Like it or not, we Presbyterians still remain bound to one another in the peace, unity, and purity that Christ accomplishes and gives to us in the PC(USA). So:
“¢ Unafraid, in our disagreements let us cherish our dialog partners and speak the truth in love to one another, without assuming that the far right and the far left are the only alternatives before us.
“¢ Unafraid, in the name of Jesus Christ, let us reach out to gays and lesbians within the PC(USA) and beyond. The issue before us is about ordination to office in the PC(USA), not membership or salvation.
“¢ Let us reawaken to our own PC(USA) Book of Confessions, to help us keep our eye on Jesus Christ.
“¢ Let us affirm our long-term Presbyterian identity, Reformation and Pietist, as our distinctive contribution to the universal church.
God is beckoning us Presbyterians into the future, with Jesus Christ going before us. And wherever Christ is, usually in surprising places, we will find the purity of the Church as well. May God bless us in our deliberations on the matter before us, and may God bless the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Merwyn S. Johnson of Charlotte, N.C., is professor of historical and systematic theology emeritus, Erskine Theological Seminary in Due West, S.C. and visiting professor of theology at Union-PSCE at Charlotte, N.C.
*See companion worksheet on the identity of the PC(USA) at www.presbyteryofcharlotte.org program areas, ecclesiastical affairs.
