Parker T. Williamson
Executive Editor
In a welcome turn of events, Presbyterians appear
ready to jettison a subject that has preoccupied our
denomination for more than two decades. Weary of the General
Assembly’s incessant interest in intimacy, commissioners
are voicing a desire to exchange sex talk for God talk.
Sex remains on the docket – activists have generated
almost 30 overtures that revisit the subject – but in
churches throughout the denomination, Presbyterian passions
for debating this issue have peaked. Many who will travel to
the General Assembly meeting in Louisville this June believe
that enough has been said about sex. Instead, they want to
talk about Jesus and the Great Commission.
Church session talking about God
Church sessions throughout the United States are already
talking about Jesus. Inspired by the Confessing Church
Movement, these elders and ministers of Presbyterian
congregations are turning their attention to Christianity’s
core questions: Who is Jesus Christ? From what authority does
one discern the will of God? In the light of God’s self
revelation, how now shall we live?
Much of what currently passes among us as “theology”
has no
theos in it. Desiring to be relevant,
denominational leaders have parroted the voice of culture.
With that loss of transcendence, the PCUSA has blurred its
vision.
'The way, the truth, and the life'
Congregations that have rediscovered Jesus are bringing the
core of our faith back into focus. That is why the most
important thing that the General Assembly can do when it
gathers in Louisville this June is to restate the Presbyterian
Church (USA)’s commitment to Jesus Christ as “the
way, the truth, and the life.”
The definite article here is important. He is not a way among
many, but
the way. And he is not a mere
Christ-concept, a blob of spiritual Gnosticism wearing a label
called “Christ.” He is the flesh and blood Jesus
Christ who lived and died and was raised from the grave, the
one to whom Scripture attests. He alone is Lord.
The gospel is at stake
If commissioners to the 2001 General Assembly reaffirm the
Church’s historic faith in Jesus Christ, instructing all
agencies of this denomination to teach, preach and publish
this faith (and no other), they can go a long way toward
restoring the peace and purity of our severely fractured
Presbyterian Church (USA). There must not be even the
slightest equivocation, not one genuflection toward that
syncretism that masquerades under a cloak called “diversity.”
At stake here is nothing less than the gospel.
Worldly discourse employs the voices of politics, sociology,
and psychology. But the Church, which employs a language quite
different from that which is spoken by culture, has something
to say that no one else can say. It’s called the Word of
God.