Presbyterian Coalition - Renewal Leaders Respond

A Response by Renewal Leaders to
The Covenant Network's
"Interpreting Book of Order G-6.0106b"

Editor's Note: At their November 2003 conference, the Covenant Network distributed a paper titled “Interpreting Book of Order G-6.0106b.” The paper offers candidates for office as well as sessions and presbyteries sly ways to circumvent our denomination’s constitutional standards for ordination. Below you will find first the wording of G-6.0106b in our Constitution, second a section of what the Covenant Network paper wrote in error, and finally a critique of that section of the paper. The critique is part of a series of responses to the Covenant Network paper that appears on the Coalition’s website. Presbyterians for Renewal has posted the complete Covenant Network paper on their website so that others may view the errors firsthand. It can be found here.

What the Covenant Network erroneously contends in
"Interpreting Book of Order G-6.0106b":
"REFUSING TO REPENT"

Critique of the Covenant Network’s Interpretation of
“Refusing to Repent”
by James D. Berkley

The writers want you to think that ... Presbyterians can wrest repentance from its biblical/historical meaning in relation to humankind’s confessional response to God’s holiness and sovereignty, and set it up to be something deriving solely from the individual’s subjective judgment of what sin might or might not be. They try to argue that if one simply decides that same-sex sexual practice isn’t bad, then one certainly can’t be expected to repent. What’s more, one can continue such practice unabated, free from ontological guilt and fully expecting to be ordained. They try to claim that personally deciding that no repentance is required is somehow something quite different from “refusing to repent.” At its heart the problem is this: The writers have the audacity to try to treat as noble a willful failure to agree with God.

Examples of how they go wrong:
1. They start by calling it a fallacy that “refusing to repent means any failure to follow the majority” (or later “a mere refusal to acquiesce [to] the views of a narrow majority”). This is a straw-man logical fallacy that skillfully misleads. One does not need to repent from “failure to follow the majority”; one must repent from failure to follow God. In our Presbyterian polity, it’s not “every man for himself.” We are biblical and confessional, and our Book of Order regulates our common life. We have soberly determined—with Christians everywhere at all times—that God considers homosexual practice sin. Thus, the question is for those who practice that sin: What does one do: continue thus sinning, or repent and turn away from it? Those who choose to continue, who “refuse to repent” cannot be ordained. As the Authoritative Interpretation says, neither members nor officers are “free to adopt a lifestyle of conscious, continuing, and unresisted sin in any area of their lives.”

2. They decree that “…a person may be disqualified from ordained service only if ‘refusing to repent’ of what s/he recognizes as sinful.” How self-centered! That’s not it at all. We repent from what God has called sinful in the Bible. None of us is free to pick and choose what we might consider sinful, to form our own little mini-list of moral imperatives. God is the One who defines what requires repentance, and our job is to attend to his Word and obey. Repentance, in fact, is classically understood as turning from our willful, self-absorbed way toward God’s perfect way; it is changing our mind to conform to the mind of God. If we repent of only those things we might choose to deem sinful, we will definitely be “refusing to repent” of some things God deems sinful.

3. They make an even more outrageous claim: “Many persons in same-sex relationships believe that their relationship is in accordance with God’s will. Sessions and presbyteries may conclude that such persons are fit for office, despite G-6.0106b, because such persons are not ‘refusing to repent.’” Okay: with that logic, if one believes one’s own hate-filled racism is in accordance with God’s will, despite all the Bible teaches and our church proclaims to the contrary, one can still be deemed fit for office because one can’t “refuse to repent” of something one doesn’t agree is sin. Of course such thinking is absurd. Wouldn’t such deficient reasoning also mean that a persistent, unrepentant homophobe could be ordained? In the GAPJC Londonderry case, author Oddleifson argued that a person in a non-marital heterosexual relationship could also be ordained.

4. They try to claim that “our Confessions establish that ‘repentance’ is a state of inward conviction about the wrongfulness of one’s acts” and “repentance is a sheer gift of God and not a work of our strength.” It is true, the conviction of the Holy Spirit moves us from total depravity toward contrite confession. But Jesus starts his ministry with the command: “Repent, and believe in the good news” (Mk 1:15). Peter’s first preaching concluded with: “Repent, and be baptized” (Acts 2:38). They would not command what we have no moral agency to accomplish. Moreover, we express the centrality of grace in asking for repentance. We don’t require ordained persons to be perfect, merely that they acknowledge need for repentance. Indeed, the nature of repentance is intent, as reflected in the language of our ordination questions (“Will you … seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ” G-14.0207f) and in the commonly used formula in receiving members (“Do you intend to participate actively and responsibly in the worship and mission of the church?” W-4.2003c). How purely utilitarian and godless it is to take a rich theological concept like repentance and twist it like a putty nose until it is unrecognizable, all to attempt to make a political point! These writers need to leave theological interpretation to those who respect Theos.

5. They make the absurd claim that “G-6.0106b should apply only when the candidate appears to have thrown off the lordship of Christ or shown willful indifference to Scripture.” This is incredible. They’re saying, “Forget what G-6.0106b actually says and buy something altogether different that we’re trying to pawn off on you.” This statement yanks “refuse to repent” out of context from the previous two sentences in G-6.0106b and fancifully weaves an entirely different meaning and purpose.

6. They kill their own argument when they say of persons in same-sex sexual relationships: “They … have not been convicted in their own conscience that any repentance is required.” That’s the problem, not the excuse. Making such individualistic determinations is an arrogation of power that reflects the rampant individualism of American culture and repudiates fundamental principles that make us Presbyterian—that we are part of a larger community and learn from the whole. “Conscience can be an expression of error, and the claim to the right of private judgment can be an act of disobedience to God,” warns the 1983 General Assembly report “Historic Principles, Conscience, and Church Government.” There is a decided problem when people choose not to repent, despite what Presbyterians have decided, what the Bible says, what the Confessions say, what the Constitution says, what the Authoritative Interpretation says, what the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission says, what the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly says, and, most of all, what God says. They simply won’t be convinced that they need to repent. That sounds a whole lot like “refusing to repent,” doesn’t it?

James D. Berkley, D.Min., is Issues Ministry Director of Presbyterians For Renewal and a minister member of Seattle Presbytery.