Good Start,
Disastrous Conclusion?
At the beginning of this week’s General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland one leading evangelical messaged:
Good start to
the General Assembly today as the Council of Assembly moved the following
motion, which was unanimously approved by the General Assembly: 'Issue a call
to the Church of Scotland to pray that God will do a fresh work amongst us as
God's people and instruct Presbyteries and Kirk Sessions to consider how best
to respond to this call.’
My immediate response was to wonder whether
this normally acute theology professor had lost his powers of analysis and
discernment. Firstly, this motion had
passed unanimously. That either
indicates that the G.A. was of one mind on this matter, or that the motion was
such that various parties could put their own spin and interpretation on the
words. Given that the Church of Scotland
is a predominately theologically liberal body, were the majority understanding
the words in a different sense from the good Professor?
Theological liberals have developed the art of
using orthodox and even pietistic language in a non-biblical manner. They are happy to affirm confessions that
they totally reject, to recite creeds that they dismiss and to quote even the
Bible in ways contrary to its original meaning.
What does it means to pray that God would do “a fresh work amongst us as God's people”? Do we mean that God will bring the church to
repentance over its theological and moral apostasy, that he will reinvigorate
it with a new confidence in the biblical gospel of Christ’s atoning and
renewing sacrifice, that it will rediscover a new boldness to preach that
individuals need to be born again, and a new commitment to the great truths of
the Reformation expressed in the solas of Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”),
Sola Fide (“faith alone”), Sola Gratia (“grace alone”), Solus Christus (“Christ
alone”) and Soli Deo Gloria (“to the glory of God alone”)? Certainly that would be the good Doctor’s
interpretation; but is that how the larger body of the Assembly interpret this
call to prayer for a “fresh work”?
We know that for many “a fresh work amongst” us means a new openness to homosexual
practices and gay marriage, a new ecumenism that fully embraces Rome and is indeed a multi-faith
ecumenism, a new theology that casts off the doctrinal restrains of Scripture
and the Reformed confessional tradition, a new understanding of the cross that
excludes penal substitutionary atonement, and a new universalism that
guarantees the salvation of all individuals with or without faith in Christ as
Saviour and Lord.
The enthusiasm of the Saturday over the prayer
for a “fresh work amongst us” has to deal with the reality of the Thursday and the decision of the
General Assembly to continue on its revisionist trajectory in accepting and endorsing
homosexual marriage and openly rejecting the authority of Scripture by an
appeal to an ephemeral word behind the Word that may contradict the text of
Scripture and be more attuned to the spirit of this present age and moral
culture.
In political discourse the term “useful
innocents” is sometimes used to speak of those naive individuals who are susceptible
to manipulation in the support of a cause and who fail to see the reality
behind their enthusiastic endorsement of a particular movement. For the Church
of Scotland evangelicals are the “useful innocents” who provide money and
manpower to maintain a liberal edifice that despises their theology, mocks
their morality, and longs for their eventual demise. Talk of “reconciled
diversity”, “constrained differences”, or “mutual flourishing” will prove to be
empty rhetoric on the part of the liberals – it should be equally unacceptable
to evangelicals who believe that there is a “faith once for all delivered to
the saints” to be defended, anathemas to be pronounced against any who preach a
different gospel, and discipline to be exercised against those who support,
encourage or practice sexual immorality.
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