Letter from the PFFM Board of Directors

Dear Friends of Theology Matters,

The Book of Order was officially changed on July 10 to eliminate the sexual standard of “fidelity and chastity” for church officers. We, the Board of Directors of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry, are deeply grieved by this action of the presbyteries. This act is a rejection of the clear meaning and authority of Scripture. It contradicts the confessions and repudiates 4000 years of sacred history. It severs us from most of the worldwide communion of Christian churches. Theology does matter!

Some of the voting commissioners that supported the change claimed it would bring peace to our denomination. We believe there will be greater divisiveness. We expect that what is permissible will soon become mandatory in order to foster “full equality.” We expect the 2012 General Assembly to attempt to change the Book of Order on marriage from “a man and a woman” to “2 persons.” We are concerned for the conscience of every Presbyterian who by nature of our connectionalism participates in every ordination. We are concerned for the effect of this on mandatory Board of Pensions dues for installed pastors, collected from every Presbyterian, that likely will soon cover relationships that Scripture forbids. We are concerned for the confusion and divisiveness this will produce as congregations divide over how this action will be implemented when they call new pastors, and elect new elders and deacons.

All of these structural or polity concerns are serious. They are, however the result of a graver issue: the theological collapse of the PC(USA). This vote is another sign of a growing counterfeit Christian doctrine. It is counterfeit Christian doctrine because it denies the saving work of Christ. Christianity entails a system of doctrine based on Scripture’s interpretation of the meaning of historic events. A relationship with Jesus Christ flows out of those events and their meaning. Today the church is undermined by beliefs that not only are inconsistent with Christian faith, but which actively oppose and attack Christian faith. Some people do not know the faith of the church and others have intentionally substituted a faith of their own creation. This newly imagined faith is not Christian; it is a counterfeit. To seek a relationship with God apart from the Jesus revealed in and interpreted by Scripture, is to accept a lie.

The doctrines that lead a person to accept and bless what God has specifically prohibited in Scripture are not Christian doctrines. Indeed, these doctrines deny the authority of Scripture, the nature of human sin, the being and nature of Christ, and the atonement.

Theology Matters began in January of 1995 in response to the counterfeit Christian doctrines expressed at the Re-Imagining Conference held in November, 1993 in Minneapolis. The conference was supported with $66,000 of Bicentennial funds and attended by 2000 women, including a number of women on staff at the PC(USA) headquarters in Louisville, as well as women leaders in most of the mainline churches. The women rejected the work of Christ applauding one speaker who boasted that “I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff.” The women substituted milk and honey representing women’s bodily fluids for the bread and wine and called it communion. Jesus was replaced by Sophia. An artist in the front of the conference area painted four panels of the goddess with earth in her womb— portraying a pantheistic religion. A workshop leader claimed that her theology was first of all informed by “making love with Coni,” her lesbian partner. The attendees painted red dots on their foreheads and bowed to the divine in one another. This pantheistic, pagan religion was celebrated by the women attendees as a new version of Christianity. A Christianity without Christ, without the atonement, without Scripture.

In response to the conference, congregations withheld millions in per-capita funds. Nevertheless, in an effort to mask the counterfeit Christian teachings and find a united response to the conference between those who objected to it and those who celebrated it, the 1994 General Assembly approved a statement declaring that “conference presentations and rituals used language, including the term ‘sophia,’ in ways that imply worship of a divine manifestation distinctly different from ‘the one triune God’….Yet, some found the use of ‘sophia’ as a name for God to be liberating.” In that act, PC(USA) General Assembly commissioners declared that a counterfeit Christianity without Christ was liberating.

Other people might identify a different point marking the aggressive assault on Christian faith from within the church. Some would mark the 1960s rise of Liberation Theology that morphed into Radical Feminist Theology, Sexual Theology, Black Liberation Theology, etc. Some would identify the modernist controversy of the 1920s and others would go back further to the rise of modernism in the mid-18th century. Some would point to the early church controversies over Arianism, Pelagianism, and Docetism that attacked the nature of Christ and the meaning of salvation. Some would recognize the beginning of the assault on the truth of Judeo-Christian faith when the Hebrew people danced around the golden calf having a feast to Yahweh in Exodus 32. And some would rightly look back to Adam and Eve’s decision in the Garden to be like God and determine for themselves what was true rather than allow God to define truth and falsehood. Certainly the church in every age has been assaulted by counterfeit Christian teachings. The Bible is not a story of peaceful co-existence, but a battle against falsehood. In both the Old Testament and New Testaments, the Gospel is presented in contrast to the idolatry that was creeping into the church and denying the truth. What is at stake in this struggle, as in all others throughout the life of the church, is Christian faith and at the heart of Christian faith, our understanding of Christ himself.

Our Purpose

Theology Matters has understood from its inception that we cannot promote and understand Christian faith without denouncing the counterfeit doctrines that seek to deny and destroy it. Theology Matters’ purpose has always been:

The restoration of Reformed theology as taught in Scripture and expressed in the Confessions, in the lives of individual Presbyterians and in the Church. To affirm the Christian faith is necessarily to reject all false ideologies. The First Commandment carries both a commitment to the One True Lord God and a rejection of false gods, “I am the Lord your God, …You shall have no other gods before me.” To commit to the Lord God and reality as he has defined it, without also rejecting false gods and their world view is to unite the worship of the living Lord with idols.

Therefore Theology Matters is committed to promoting the doctrines of Reformed Christian faith and their world view implications by contrasting them with the beliefs of false religions and their distorted world views.

Theology Matters is convinced that an obedient understanding of family and ministry can only grow out of a faith in Jesus Christ that is based on Scripture and the Confessions.

Q. 95 “What is idolatry?
A. It is to imagine or possess something in which to put one’s trust in place of or beside the one true God who has revealed himself in his Word.”
Heidelberg Catechism

What We Believe

1. We believe in the One living and true God who exists eternally in three persons—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We believe that “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”1 We believe that God is our Creator, that he has revealed himself to us through the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and that apart from this revelation we remain ignorant of his name, his nature, and his will.

Therefore, we reject the false ideology that asserts that the creature has the right to name and define the Creator, or to determine how God should act in any time and place.

2. We believe that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. We believe that he was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, performed miracles, suffered and died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, is seated in glorious authority making intercession for his elect, and that he will return to judge sin and establish his eternal kingdom.

Therefore, we reject the false ideology that denies either the human or divine natures of Christ, his atoning work, or his exalted Lordship.

3. “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”2

Therefore, we reject the false ideology that asserts that there are other “lords” to whom we owe allegiance.

4. We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the inspired Word of God—the unique, reliable, and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ and his will for our lives. We believe that the Creeds and Confessions of the church, while subordinate to Christ and the Scriptures, are nevertheless authoritative standards.

Therefore, we reject the false ideology that declares that the Bible is an ancient document inapplicable to modern life, that God continues to give new revelation apart from Scripture, or that the meaning of Scripture is at variance with the plain meaning of its words understood in their historic context. We also reject the false ideology that teaches that the plain meaning of the Creeds and Confessions, understood in their historic context, are without authority in the church.

5. We believe that from every generation and race, God has sovereignly called and redeemed a people for his own glory— “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”3 We believe that Jesus Christ is alive and present with this people by the indwelling and empowering Holy Spirit whose work it is to regenerate, give faith, justify, sanctify, and give assurance that we are, by grace, at the price of Christ’s shed blood, the adopted sons and daughters of God.

Therefore, we reject the false ideology that teaches that human beings have the capacity within themselves, by virtue of their humanity alone, and apart from redemption, to become the sons and daughters of God.

6. We believe that as the people of God, we have been called and commanded to proclaim the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ, to call men and women, boys and girls, to the obedience of faith, and in every generation to reclaim and reform the purity of the Church’s witness.

Therefore, we reject the false ideology that denies the Church’s call, in every generation, to challenge cultural distortions of the gospel and to witness to the uniqueness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and human beings.

What We Will Do

The Westminster Confession of Faith in the PC(USA) Book of Confessions explains the importance of exposing and correcting counterfeit Christian teachings through church censures or discipline: “Church censures are necessary for the reclaiming and gaining of offending brethren; for deterring of others from like offenses; for purging out of that leaven which might infect the whole lump; for vindicating the honor of Christ, and the holy profession of the gospel; and for preventing the wrath of God, which might justly fall upon the Church, if they should suffer his covenant, and the seals thereof, to be profaned by notorious and obstinate offenders.” (6.171)

We pledge in Theology Matters to continue to present, teach, reason, and argue for the truths of Christian faith while denouncing the counterfeit Christian doctrines that deny those truths and lead people astray. We do not do this because we are without sin:

• We do it, in order to vindicate the name of Christ that is being blasphemed by those who use the Name to bless what God has said in his revelation he abhors and what Christ came to redeem.
• We do it, out of love for our neighbor; to reclaim those people who are seeking truth and have been fed lies.
• We do it, so that grace might be extended “to all those who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” because only when sin is acknowledged and repented of, can grace and forgiveness be received.
• We do it, so that the wrath of God might not fall on the church.
• We do it, because Christ came “to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11).
  Nevertheless, the crucified and risen Savior told Peter that Peter’s ministry was to “feed my sheep” knowing that many would reject his disciples and the Gospel message even as they had rejected Christ himself.
• We do it, so that one day, as people’s faith in the Christ of Scripture is restored, the P(CUSA) might be renewed.

So we, the Board of Directors of Theology Matters, will continue to feed God’s people with the truth of the Gospel and denounce, even more plainly than we have in the past, the counterfeit doctrines being promoted in the name of Christ. We cannot seek peace, co-existence or a false unity with the counterfeit Christian doctrines that have infiltrated the church as if what a person believes is of no consequence. Out of our own thirst and hunger, we call others to come with us to the Living Water and the Bread of Life. We urge you to contend for the Gospel where Christ has placed you for the sake of Christ and his bride the church. We stand with you.

This letter first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Sep/Oct 2011).