PCUSA theologian: Discipline should be 'ordinary exercise,' too By John H. Adams The Layman Online Friday, October 4, 2002 ORLANDO, Fla. – Telling those attending Gathering VII they had a right to be angry, Dr. Charles Wiley said Friday that "discipline in the Presbyterian Church is atrophied because we have failed to exercise a comprehensive and Biblical notion of the role of discipline in the Presbyterian Church and the Christian life." Wiley, an associate in the denomination's Office of Theology and Worship, emphasized that the "recovery of the exercise of church discipline in a Biblical manner is vital to the future" of the denomination. But Wiley did not limit church discipline to high-profile polity issues, including public defiance of the PCUSA Constitution by church officers who refuse to comply with the denomination's "fidelity/chastity" ordination standard. Rather, he proposed a more sweeping disciplinary strategy that includes such cases – "extraordinary discipline" – and simpler matters that focus on relationships within congregations – which he called "ordinary discipline." Wiley, who recently was awarded a Ph.D. by Princeton Theological Seminary, based his differentiation between "extraordinary" and "ordinary" issues on Calvin's ministry in Geneva during the Reformation. One of the issues that concerned Calvin greatly, Wiley said, was that the Geneva Protestants became reconciled with their brothers and sisters before they went to the communion table. Calvin's first and brief tenure as the leader of the church in Geneva was unsuccessful. Before he agreed to accept an invitation to return to Geneva, Wiley said, Calvin insisted on a "consistory" [the elders] "that would ensure a baptismal discipline around the table. In his famous reply to Sadeleto, Calvin wrote … 'For the body of the Church, to cohere well, must be bound together by discipline as well as sinews.'" During the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants alike applied – sometimes in equally brutal measure - what Wiley called "extraordinary discipline" to deal with heresy and heterodoxy. But the "great achievement of our Reformed forbears was the recovery of ordinary discipline … the practice of the church to help Christians to stay true to their deepest desires, to live a gospel life, to stay true to the vows we make at baptism." Quoting Augustine's "Love God and do what you want," Wiley said this was not a statement underwriting an "anything goes" account of the Christian life. "Instead, discipline is the role of the church community in reminding us what we truly want. That is, the foundation for church discipline is, ironically, the freedom we have in Christ … Discipline becomes a help, a boon to us in exercising our freedom to live godly lives." Wiley did not speak against extraordinary discipline to deal with polity issues. But he did say, "There is no extraordinary discipline without the practice of ordinary discipline." "If you want to transform your church, then transform your session from a board of directors for the church corporation to a body of elders with responsibilities for the spiritual life of your congregation: counseling with those to be baptized, accepting people into membership, being responsible for the services of the table, not treating these vital responsibilities in the usual pro forma manner." He said ordinary discipline is prescribed in the preamble to the "Rules of Discipline" in the Book of Order, which says in part [D-1.0103], "The traditional Biblical obligation to conciliate, mediate, and adjust differences without strife is not diminished by these Rules of Discipline … It remains the duty of every member to try (prayerfully and seriously) to bring about an adjustment or settlement of the quarrel, complaint, delinquency, or irregularity asserted, and to avoid formal proceedings … unless … they are determined to be necessary to preserve the purity and purposes of the church." Calling "discipline a human activity done in obedience to God that allows us to better hear the Word and receive the grace of God promised in the sacraments," Wiley referred to the time when he was a member and later elder at Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church in Durham, N.C. "One of the most profound parts of that fellowship for my wife and me was that we reconciled with each other and with others during the [passing of the] peace … to look someone in the eye with whom you are not at peace, extend your hand and say, 'The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you,' – that is the fruit of the gospel." When the church focuses only on extraordinary discipline, he said, "we have lost the ability to realize it is in our everyday lives with each other that our sin seeps out." He added, "The question for all of us is whether or not we as individuals in Christian community … are faithfully exercising extraordinary discipline – a discipline of all life rooted in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and guided by the Scriptures."

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