Bible scholar criticizes task force's theological work By John H. Adams The Layman Online Saturday, June 26, 2004 2004 General Assembly Richmond, Virginia June 26-July 3, 2004 General Assembly news index RICHMOND, Va. – The denomination's Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity presented its mid-term report Saturday morning to commissioners to the 216th General Assembly even as a Biblical scholar accused the panel of "truncating" the purity claims of Scripture. On Saturday morning, Dr. Robert A.J. Gagnon, associate professor of New Testamentat at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, issued through The Layman Online a stinging indictment of the task force's report on its study of Ephesians. "In drastically truncating Ephesians' message about purity, the Preliminary Report of the task force deserves to be significantly altered before acceptance by the General Assembly," Gagnon said. "Failing that, it should be rejected." While Presbyterians were reading Gagnon's commentary on the Web, task force members were presenting an interim report to about 300 commissioners, who attended a four-hour session that preceded the official opening of the 216th General Assembly. What the commissioners saw was task force members demonstrating a harmonious view of their work together, but they heard little about what the task force's final report might reflect. The most controversial part of the task force's work is to advise the denomination on how to deal with its "fidelity/chastity" ordination law. That issue will be on the task force's agenda in August. The format for Saturday's presentation was that task force members antiphonally read a script describing their work and goals. In each case, the two-person report included one task force member who has opposed the ordination standard and the other who has favored it. Their major point was to commend their "dialogue" process in which they work to achieve harmony and consensus rather than become polarized because of their difference. For instance, one team included Jack Haberer, who in the past has led helped lead campaigns against repealing the ordination law, and John Wilkinson, a Covenant Network director who has argued the other side of the issue. Wilkinson, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y., recently voted with the majority of the members of his presbytery's Committee on Ministry to approve the call of a practicing lesbian to Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester. While Wilkinson and Haberer gave evidence of their friendship cultivated by serving on the task force, they did not provide any inkling of how they might vote – if necessary – on the ordination issue in preparation for the task force's final report. Gagnon contended that the task force was – according to his evaluation of its materials gleaned from its interpretation of Ephesians – promoting unity and peace without regard to purity. Yet Ephesians includes numerous passages that clearly demand that Christians abstain from homosexual practice and other sexual immorality, he said, and the task force chose to ignore them. Gagnon is the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice, which is considered the definitive work on the issue. Gagnon says both the Old Testament and the New Testament speak with one voice: Homosexual behavior is sinful and not to be tolerated within the community of God's people.

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