How
Can Our Denomination Become What It Ought To Be?
June 18, 2006
Birmingham, Alabama
James
R. Edwards
__________
Three
years ago my son Mark and I were riding a cog railway in Switzerland
that took us to a station called Eismeer—Sea of Ice. From there
we began a two-day climb to the summit of the Eiger, famous for its
dramatic immensity, its thousands-of-feet of exposure, its storms,
its difficulty and danger. It had first dreamed of climbing the Eiger
when I was seventeen. I was fifty-seven years old when I finally climbed
it. It had taken me forty years to prepare myself mentally for the
climb. It is a dangerous and demanding mountain face, a face on which
one can either lose life or find life. After all the years of soul-searching,
planning, and preparing, Mark and I curiously had very little to say
as the train rattled upward through the Swiss Alps.
I have a similar feeling as I speak to you tonight. A vote stands
before our denomination that, like the Eiger, has an ultimate quality
to it. Also like the Eiger, we cannot say we have actually chosen
this moment. Rather, we could not avoid it, at least if we desired
to be faithful to what we perceive the call of God. What happens this
week may well affect the destiny of the PCUSA. Like all ultimate moments,
there are potential gains and losses—and both are large.
Our denomination has known that this moment, or something like it,
has been coming for twenty-eight years, since 1978, the first year
we voted on the question of ordaining persons who claim that homosexuality
is an alternative, God-willed form of sexuality that does not disqualify
one from ordained ministry. Perhaps no issue in the history of our
denomination—and certainly no issue since our denomination split
over slavery in the 19th century—has been so controversial and
divisive. Nor has any issue been so thoroughly studied, debated, and
prayed about. I have the same feeling tonight that I had in the cog
railway: everything has been already said that could possibly be said.
Some things, however, are so important that they need to be said again
and again. I knew when I was asked to speak that I would have nothing
new to say. Rather, I need to repeat the ta diapheronta,
those things, to use Paul’s word (Romans 2:18; Philippians 1:10),
that we cannot forget without jeopardy to our salvation..
In 1970 my wife and I went to Europe for a year where I studied New
Testament at the University of Zürich with Eduard Schweizer.
Before arriving in Zürich we visited with Corrie ten Boom. Corrie
lived a marvelously God-filled life. We asked Corrie, “What
do we need to know that can make our lives like yours?” She
answered, “You don’t need to know anything new. You need
to live what you already know.” I believe Corrie’s advice
is a guidepost for the present hour. Our most important choices and
decisions as Christians are seldom made on the basis of new information.
Rather, they are made in remembering what we already know to be true,
and then acting on it. Tonight, I do not want to be novel or profound.
This is not a moment for either. I want to recall four basic truths
that we need to remember and trust—remember and trust—as
we cast the votes that will be asked of us.
I. For those who think the Presbyterian Church’s ordination
of women sets a precedent for its ordination of homosexuals.
For
many people in our denomination, the central issue with regard to
the ordination of practicing homosexuals is that it is a parallel
issue to the ordination of women. Since the PCUSA has “found
a way around” the Biblical view of the role of women in the
church, to put it in street language, to be consistent, it should
also affirm the ordination of monogamous gays and lesbians. For many,
this argument seems irrefutable and virtually requires the denomination
to affirm the ordination of practicing homosexual persons. I want
to be as brief and factual as possible in order to dispel needless
confusion on this point.
First,
ordination of women and ordination of gays and lesbians are not parallel
issues. There are divergent voices in Scripture on the role of women
in leadership positions in the church, but there are no divergent
voices in Scripture on the practice of homosexuality. The Old and
New Testaments do not present a uniform picture regarding women in
leadership roles. On the one hand, there is 1 Corinthians 14:33-36,
where Paul says that women ought not speak in church, and that this
holds for all churches. On the other hand, there is Huldah, a woman
prophet in the OT; Priscilla, tutoring and correcting Apollos; Phoebe,
delivering the Epistle to the Romans to Rome, and, according to our
best evidence, a woman apostle in Romans 16:7 named Junia. The PCUSA
has sifted through the disparate evidence and made a theological
judgment that the ordination of women is justifiable according to
Scripture.
The
denomination has studied the issue of homosexuality in greater length
and depth than it has studied women in leadership positions, and it
has never come to the conclusion that the ordination of practicing
homosexual persons is justifiable according to Scripture. The reason
is simple: there are no divergent voices in early Christianity regarding
homosexuality. On the contrary, Scripture offers a clear and united
voice against homosexual practice.
• Six texts in Scripture explicitly condemn homosexual and lesbian
practices, and no text in Scripture affirms, supports, or
condones the practice of homosexuality.
• It seems impossible to defend and justify homosexual practice
in light of the Scriptural teaching on the imago Dei, the
sexual complementarity between male and female which reflects the
image of God in humanity—the image, in fact, that Jesus cited
in Mark 10 as the sole basis of marriage.
• When the early Church encountered pervasive homosexual practices
in the Greco-Roman world it did not accommodate such practices, but
upheld its opposition to them. In fact, early Christianity frequently
likened homosexuality to idolatry, one of the most serious offenses
in Christianity.
• There is no text in Judeo-Christian literature from Leviticus
to Constantine that affirms or condones homosexual practice. “Every
pertinent Christian text from the pre-Constantinian period . . . adopts
an unremittingly negative judgment on homosexual practice, and this
tradition is emphatically carried forward by all major Christian writers
of the fourth and fifty centuries” (Richard Hays, JRE 14/1 [1986],
202).
• Throughout Christian history, the practice of homosexuality
has universally been understood to fall outside God’s will.
The fifteen-volume Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge
(1955) contains no entry on the subject. Nor does Oxford University
Press’s 1992 authoritative two volume Encyclopedia of the
Early Church. The reason there is debate over homosexuality today
is not because the church has changed its position, but because society
has changed its position in the wake of the sexual revolution of the
1960s.
• Despite debate on the issue in Europe and North America, the
Christian church world-wide is unanimous that the practice of homosexuality
falls outside God’s ordained will for human sexuality.
Those
who advocate the ordination of practicing homosexuals are aware of
this evidence. Thirty years of study and debate have confirmed and
strengthened each of the above points. Why, then, do they set their
sails in opposition to it? Over and over they say that the Holy Spirit
is speaking to the church through culture. They believe that at root
the ordination of practicing homosexuals is an issue of liberation
and human rights. In advocating of the ordination of practicing homosexuals,
they believe they are adhering to a prophetic and transformational
model of ministry that is essentially Scriptural.
All
Presbyterians, I believe, are committed to a prophetic and transformational
model of ministry as rooted in Scripture. But most Presbyterians do
not believe that true transformation occurs by allowing culture to
set our agenda. Biblical prophets stood inside the redemptive
tradition of Israel, not outside it. They legitimated their word by
saying, “Thus says the Lord,” not by appealing to culture.
Prophetic transformation and liberation derived their power from stewardship
and application of sacred tradition, not from forgetting God’s
revelation within Israel, or denying it, or opposing it. How is it
possible to argue that the Holy Spirit is moving the church to affirm
the ordination of practicing homosexual persons when Scripture, which
is the product of the Spirit, expressly forbids it? How is it possible
to argue that the Holy Spirit is leading our particular church to
ordain practicing homosexual persons when throughout history—and
throughout the world today—the Spirit has led and is leading
the church to affirm heterosexual marriage or abstinence in singleness?
I know of no Holy Spirit that testifies against its own revelation
in both Scripture and the church. An attempt to be prophetic apart
from the revealed word of God leads to cultural captivity of the church.
The claim to have special insight into the will of God has a bleak
record in the history of Christianity. Whenever we hear a claim to
a superior revelation not in accord with “the faith once-for-all
handed down to the saints” (Jude 1:3), not in accord with the
Vincentian canon of the church “everywhere, at all times, and
for all,” we hear, I submit, the voice of another spirit than
the Holy Spirit, we an appeal to transformation to culture or ideology,
but not to God’s will.
II. For those who think it is not our place to judge.
One
of the stumbling blocks in the controversy over the ordination of
practicing homosexual persons is that those who oppose it are often
called “judgmental,” “Pharisaical,” or both.
This is a hollow cliché that should be challenged. The charge
that it is “Pharisaical” to judge is a historical injustice.
The Pharisaic tradition was the one tradition in first-century
Judaism with which Jesus had most in common, and for which he had
most respect. That is why he fought it so earnestly. Jesus approved
much about Pharisaism: “Everything that [the Pharisees] say
to you, do it and keep it,” said Jesus (Matthew 23:3). What
Jesus opposed was not that Pharisees made judgments, but that they
failed to hold themselves to the judgments they made.
This leads to the real issue, that it is thought unChristian to judge
the behavior of others. This platitude is often said as a way of intimidating
those who hold opposing opinions. UnChristian to judge? Tell that
to Amos who judged the indulgence of Samaria’s sophisticated
women as “Cows of Bashan” (Amos 4:1). Tell that to Jesus
in his judgment of the religious leaders, “Woe to you scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites . . . “ (Matthew 23). Tell that to
Paul who judged a man who was sleeping with his father’s wife—and
those who condoned it—in these words: “Hand him over to
Satan” (1 Corinthians 5:5). With the single exception of the
little letter of Philemon, every book of the New Testament contains
explicit judgments of false doctrine and immoral behavior. Every book
also commands readers likewise to judge false doctrine and immoral
behavior. “I urge you, brothers and sisters,” says Paul
in Romans 16:17-18, “to be diligent with regard to those who
cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that
you have learned; separate from them. For such people do not serve
our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery
they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded.” The word for
“appetites,” the Greek word koilia, means that
which appeals to them personally. There is, indeed, a wrong kind of
judgment, namely, of imagining that we are without fault and above
judgment. But there is also a right and Christian kind of judgment
that guards the purity of doctrine and morality so that the gospel
maintains its saving efficacy, and so that the faith maintains a positive
witness to those outside it.
III. For those who wonder how equally dedicated people can come to
such divergent positions?
Almost
twenty years ago I was debating a man and a woman on the subject of
the ordination of practicing homosexual persons. After the debate
the man said to me, “I think you won the debate, but you know
it doesn’t matter.” “I think it matters,”
I replied. “No, it doesn’t,” he said, “and
I’ll tell you why. We will either win this issue, or we’ll
take the church down—and we don’t care which.”
Those
who champion the ordination of homosexuals in our denomination are
zealous; indeed, many, I believe, have the zeal of God. Even the zeal
of God, however, may be mistaken. “I bear witness of the Jews,”
says the Apostle Paul, “that they have the zeal of God, but
it is not properly informed, for they are ignorant of the righteousness
of God” (Romans 10:2-3). Godly zeal without Godly knowledge?
How can that be? The Apostle Paul explains how in Romans 1. When people
knowingly exchange the truth of God for a falsehood, they will sooner
or later be unable to differentiate between truth and falsehood. Three
times in Romans 1 (vv. 24, 26, 28), Paul repeats that when people
anchor their worldviews to creation rather than to the Creator, to
that which is made rather than the Maker, that God hands them
over to preferred falsehoods rather than unwelcome truths. When
God hands them over, says Paul, they honestly can no longer see the
truth. Paul calls this condition adokimon noun( a mind that
no longer corresponds to reality. Romans 1:28 contains a wordplay
on this idea in Greek: “Since they did not think it fit (edokimasan)
to acknowledge God, God handed them over to an unfit (adokimon)
mind.” I have met people in our denomination who have an unfit
mind on the issue of the ordination of practicing homosexuals, including
the man above who was willing to destroy the church for a cause he
believed in.
One
of the reasons our church is so divided over the ordination of practicing
homosexual persons is because we no longer believe doctrine matters.
If doctrine does not matter, then the gospel does not matter. The
gospel, after all, only reconciles and transforms life because it
is true. If it were not true, it would bear no fruit. The
gospel can only make me in God’s image because it is a true
image of God. This is precisely what Paul says in Romans 6:16. It
is not we who determine the gospel, but the gospel that determines
us. “Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves have now
obeyed from your heart the gospel to which you have been
entrusted.” The gospel does not belong to us; we belong to the
gospel.
The vote on the ordination of practicing homosexual persons is, in
the final analysis, about whether there is such a thing as doctrine,
and whether it matters. In his battle with medieval Roman Catholicism,
Martin Luther recognized that it was no use fighting over morality
alone, over lapsed and immoral lives. The important issue, the only
issue, was on the proper knowledge and teaching of the Word of God.
Listen to Luther’s words:
But when it comes to whether one teaches correctly about the Word
of God, there I take my stand and fight. That is my calling. When
the word of God remains pure, even if the quality of life fails us,
life is placed in a position to become what it ought. That is why
everything hinges on the purity of the Word. I have succeeded only
if I have taught it correctly.
The
title for this talk has been modeled after this quotation. “How
can our denomination become what it ought to be?” In a nutshell,
the issue before the PCUSA is contained in the last three sentences
of Luther’s quotation: “When the word of God remains pure,
even if the quality of life fails, life is placed in a position to
become what it ought. That is why everything hinges on the purity
of the Word. I have succeeded only if I have taught it correctly.”
If the church wants to be prophetic, if the church wants to be a faithful
steward of the faith once-for-all handed to the saints, let it believe
those words, commit itself to them, stand for them, and if necessary,
die for them.
IV. For those who labor and are heavy laden.
Finally,
I want to speak to those who want the battle over human sexuality
to be done with. They are weary of it, and they may have contingency
plans for leaving the denomination. For those of you—no, for
all of us—I want to recall the nature of ecclesial change.
Twenty-eight years (and counting) is a long time to fight over the
issue of homosexuality, especially in a world that thinks in terms
of zero-wait-states, instant replays, and increments of nano-seconds.
We want this problem to be decided and resolved so we can “move
on.” Much of our battle fatigue, I believe, is due less to actual
time at the front than to frustration that the methods that rule the
corporate world are not solving problems in the denomination like
they do in the corporate world. We feel bereft and bereaved that our
utilitarian methodologies have not worked. We also are tempted to
follow another corporate reflex: to discard and dispense with the
church (in this instance) because it does not conform to the system.
You may, of course, leave the denomination. Many have. But if you
do, those who stay will be weakened by your abandonment. No one, however,
can promise a quick “solution” to the issue of human sexuality.
Since the Industrial Revolution, attitudes toward human sexuality
have been undergoing seismic shifts in the Western world. Stock prices
can be regulated from corporate boardrooms, but the San Andreas Fault
cannot be. Issues related to human sexuality are deep subterranean
tremors in the geology of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first
centuries. They have been with us for generations, and they will remain
for the foreseeable future. If we hope to be instruments of God’s
will in these tumultuous times, if we say to God as Isaiah said, “Here
I am, send me,” then we must know that we are committing ourselves
not to a single or momentary witness, but to a protracted witness
that will last beyond our generation. If we have not counted the cost
of this kind of discipleship, we shall have no witness to bear.
How long will the battle take?
• Perhaps it will take another hundred years, as did the Iconoclastic
controversy of the 8th century;
• Perhaps it will take another two centuries, as did the Christological
debates of the 3rd and 4th centuries;
• Perhaps it will take four or five centuries as it is taking
to complete the Reformation begun by Luther and Calvin;
• Perhaps it will take eight centuries, as it took the Byzantine
Christians in their struggle with Islam, a struggle, as you know,
that they ultimately lost.
How long will the struggle take? We cannot say. Remember the words
of Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:19, “It is necessary that heresies
arise among you, in order that the genuine believers among you may
become known.” We can only say that God is using this struggle
to prove our faith and to make of us what he wills to make of us.
If there were an individual that our generation would claim as a model
of bearing witness to Christ it would surely be Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
If there were a movement that our generation would claims as a model
of bearing witness to Christ it would probably be the Confessing Church
or the Barmen Declaration. Perhaps we should be more cautious about
claiming such names. What right do we have to claim their names when
we put our own reputations, our own prospects for promotion, our own
standing with colleagues, our own striving for relevance and acceptance
above our faith convictions? Let us beware of citing Bonhoeffer with
our lips but following Neville Chamberlain with our lives. Perhaps
we should declare a moratorium on names like Bonhoeffer and the Barmen
Declaration until we are willing to bear witness to the faith in our
time as they bore witness in theirs.
Three
weeks ago I attended worship in the great cathedral of Berlin. The
Bishop of Lübeck, Frau Dr. Barbara Wartenberg-Potter, preached
on the necessity of giving a courageous and intelligent witness in
a time of confusion, lest we mistake our virtual realities—the
falsehoods that Paul speaks of in Romans 1—for the one true
reality of God. I ask you to commit yourself to a courageous and intelligent
witness in a time of confusion. I ask you
• Not to think that serious theological differences in the denomination
can be “managed” by ambiguous compromises.
• To beware of appeasement strategies, especially of appealing
to peace over doctrine. That is a bet that has never paid in the church.
Only when we adhere to the One Lord and One Faith can we be united
in one peace, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit.
• To guard against the temptation to make the faith “relevant.”
The attempt to make the faith relevant almost always makes it trivial,
ridiculous, and despicable. If we want to see the Holy Spirit empower
our denomination—and I believe we all do—let us do the
one thing the Holy Spirit always and everywhere blesses: let us preach
and live with integrity the faith once handed to the saints.
It is
important for us to bear a courageous and intelligent witness so that
the world hear and believe the gospel. It is also important for us
to bear a courageous and intelligent witness so that we will continue
to believe the gospel to which we have been entrusted.
“My beloved friends, be steadfast, immoveable, abounding in
the work of the Lord always, knowing that your labor in the Lord is
not in vain. Be on guard, stand in the Faith, be courageous, be strong;
let all things be done in love” (1 Corinthians 15:58; 16:13).
