 Essential
principles  The Presbyterian Layman Volume 33, Number 2, Posted April 3, 2000
Darrell Scott’s testimony before Congress challenges a fundamental premise of secular liberalism: that government laws and policies can perfect human behavior. As the state establishes moral values by what secularists define as politically correct, the nobler qualities of people – accountability, liberty, dignity – are eroded. The most essential element of good human behavior – a transformed heart and mind – is omitted. For the last 50 years, mainline Protestantism, influenced more by cultural trends than sacred theology, has also tried to perfect the institutional church through laws and policies. It, too, has presupposed the perfectability of humankind by promoting the good and just society through pronouncements and lobbying to help the state define moral goodness. Sadly, the mainline denominations have neglected the Great Commission and the first Great End of the Church: to proclaim the Gospel for the salvation of mankind. While increasingly relying on polity and regulations to define moral conduct, the institutional church risks deviating further from Scripture. The docket of our General Assembly will again be crowded with proposals reflecting that regulatory mindset – overtures and pronouncements that promote policies and requirements of conduct but neglect the proclamation of the Gospel, which alone transforms hearts and minds. Like other mainline denominations, the PCUSA is simultaneously becoming antinomian and pharisaic – antinomian in the sense that we increasingly tolerate behavior by church officers and governing bodies that violates the law of God as revealed in Scripture and the person of Christ; and pharisaic in the sense that the jots, tittles and loopholes of the Book of Order dominate the dockets of our assemblies and courts. We are unsuccessfully trying to hold together and live by the letter of human laws and regulations reflected in our written polity while continuing to neglect the weightiest matters taught by God’s law. Church courts, which decide cases on the basis of what the Book of Order explicitly prohibits and ignore the controlling principles of the whole counsel of God and our confessions, affirm this compulsion to regulate behavior. Thus, the Book of Order looks more and more like a code of behavior and less and less like a constitution of controlling principles. When we recapture a passion for living by Grace, through Faith and under the Authority of Scripture then the church will find true unity centered in our Lord and Savior and will fulfill the Great Commission. Robert L. Howard |
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