Category: Announcements

A COVENANT of ORDINATION for OFFICEBEARERS in the CRCNA

We, the undersigned office bearers of the CRCNA heartily accept the authority of the Word of God as received in the inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which reveal the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ, namely the reconciliation of all things in him.

We accept the historic confessions: the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort, as well as Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony, as faithful expressions of the church’s understanding of the gospel for its time and place, which define our tradition and continue to guide us today.

Personally, I’m not wild about accepting the ‘Our World Belongs to God’ as a fourth form of unity. It strikes me that before that should happen there should be some advance notification to the Churches that that is being considered because there are some people who, understanding the three forms of unity, don’t pay any attention to this ‘expression,’ and thus would need time to get up to speed on what it actually says.

We promise with thankfulness for these expressions of faith to be shaped by them in our various callings: preaching, teaching, writing, and serving. We further promise to continually review them in the light of our understanding of the Scriptures.

I hope that all realize that in this series of posts I honestly believe that I have been shaped by the Confessions in my writing of these posts.

I wonder if Guido de Bres would have characterized the Belgic Confession of faith as a ‘expression of faith’ or if he would have characterized it as a faithful summation of the Gospel?

Now previously I had to defend, and diligently teach the Confessions. I also had to reject and refute all errors. Now, I just have to be shaped by the Confessions. Is this not a downgrade?

Should we at any time become convinced that our understanding of the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures has become irreconcilable to the witness of the church as expressed in the above documents, we will communicate our views to the church according to the prescribed procedures and promise to submit to its judgment.

Doesn’t this have a silencing effect?

We do this so that the church will remain faithful to, grow in understanding of, and be diligent in living out this witness in all of life to the glory of God.

My difficulty with this whole process overall is that it strikes me as an attempt to solve one problem with another problem. The problem that exists currently is that people don’t take the FOS seriously. The answer that has been stumbled upon is to get rid of the FOS so that people won’t have to worry about not taking it seriously. I suppose that is one way to deal with the problem.

Another difficulty I have is the nagging suspicion that this is being done in order to build bigger tents. The Three forms of unity (TFU) and the FOS don’t allow us the kind of flexibility to be all things to all people. The TFU and the FOS don’t allow ministers to do both baby dedications and infant baptisms, and how can we build bigger tents unless we do both? The TFU and FOS are very precise about the character of God in such a way that modern sensibilities are offended, and how can we build a big tent if we offend those sensibilities. The TFU and FOS don’t allow post-modern categories because they speak as if absolute truth can be absolutely known regardless of people’s time, place, or culture, and everyone knows that you can’t build bigger tents with that kind of certainty. Mist is in. Clarity is out.

I don’t think the committee’s argumentation is well reasoned and therefore I oppose this change.

The Form of Subscription Revision Committee Report

I.)Background

The history of the functioning of the Form of Subscription (FOS) in the Christian Reformed Church is a story about our denomination’s determination to be and remain a confessional church. This is highlighted in the narrative of the history of the FOS as given in Report 38 of the Acts of Synod 1976, which concludes with this sentence: It may be said that the adoption and use of the traditional FOS has been an integral part of the CRC’s history as an orthodox, conservative, confessional church (Acts of Synod 1976, p. 561).

Here we start with the recognition that the FOS is intrinsically tied up with being a confessional Church. Would such a observation lead one to determine that it is entirely possible that since this is true that it is somewhat likely that should someone mess with the FOS they would at the same time be found tinkering with the Confessional nature of the CRC?

We believe two assumptions underlie this determination. The first is that a confessional church’s identity and mission always arise out of a specific heritage of understanding (“standing under”) the Scripture. In the case of the CRC, this heritage is the interpretation of Scripture as given in the historic creeds of the early church: the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed as well as the confessions of the church of the Reformation: the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dordt, sometimes referred to as the three forms of unity. These creeds and confessions were acknowledged to be so constitutive of our identity and so critical to our mission in the world that continuity with them must be preserved. In other words, the church believed it must remain orthodox in order to be the church.

It is certainly true that that ‘a confessional church’s identity and mission always arise out of a specific heritage of understanding the Scripture.’ But it is even more true to say that a confessional church’s identity and mission always arise out of a specific heritage of God’s revelation as given in Scripture. You see the emphasis of the committee falls on human understanding gained in a particular historical situatedness while the emphasis of my statement emphasizes God’s ability to communicate His truth and build His Church trans-historically and trans-culturally. Second, we must keep in mind that it is because of how people understand or don’t understand God’s Word that accounts for their ‘specific heritage of understanding the Scripture’ not their specific heritage of understanding that accounts for how they do or do not understand God’s Word.

The second assumption is that the CRC viewed its orthodox identity to be so tenuous and its mission in the world so fraught with danger that a regulating instrument needed to be employed to keep us orthodox. The FOS, adopted essentially unchanged from its initial draft at the 1619 Synod of Dordt, was taken to be this regulating instrument. This assumption is evident in the statement made by Synod 1976 in its response to the overture of Dr. Harry Boer that, ‘the FOS is not intended primarily as the instrument by which the church examines its confessions in the light of Scripture and provides for the orderly revisions of the confessions. It is rather the instrument for safeguarding the administration of the Word and the government of the church in harmony with the confession’ (Acts of Synod 1976, p. 577).

Reformed Churches for 500 years have adopted subscriptionist procedures. I am not sure that such an arrangement proves that they believed that their identity to be tenuous or their mission in the world was fraught with danger. It may only prove that they wanted a procedure in place that would provide a means to make sure everybody in the choir would sing from the same sheet of music.

Our committee believes that from 1976 on, the history of the FOS indicates that the first assumption remains true (that a church’s identity and mission arise out of a specific heritage) while the second (that a regulatory instrument is needed to keep us orthodox) is increasingly being called into question. Increased cultural and ethnic diversity, the increase in new church plants, and the cultural moment often described as postmodernism are among the factors raising these questions.

Well, I agree that no promissory note, by itself, can keep a denomination orthodox unless there exists a will by those in the denomination to bring consequences upon those who violate the vows.

Second, if a specific heritage is challenged enough by the new cultural moment does the church’s definition of ‘orthodoxy’ change with the advent of a new heritage growing out of the new cultural moment? And if the answer to that question is ‘yes’ would such a change mean a moving away from the old specific heritage that required a precise form of subscription to a new ‘covenant of ordination’ that better reflected the new heritage?

It seems clear to our committee that, historically, the FOS has functioned negatively to effectively shut down discussion on various confessional issues rather than positively to encourage the ongoing development of the confessions in the life of the church. In other words, the FOS has been used to define a standard of purity in the church more than being a witness to unity. The variety of issues with signing the Form of Subscription as well as attempts to change it indicate that office bearers today desire to be more guided and less silenced by the confessional documents.

OK… here is where it gets really dicey.

First the current FOS, in the fourth paragraph, does allow for conversation. Indeed, upon my reading the current FOS encourages conversation. It even reminds those who want to talk about possibly disputed points in the three forms of unity of their appeal process should they believe that they have been unduly silenced in lower church courts.

Second I believe the whole notion of standard of purity vs. witness of unity is a false dichotomy. It is precisely because it is a standard of purity that it can be a witness of unity. Can two or three walk together (unity) except they be agreed (purity)?

Third, one wonders what ‘the ongoing development of the confessions in the life of the church,’ means. In a post-modern context that could mean that we are going to discover that the confessions are going to develop so that they don’t mean what we always thought they meant. I guess living in times where deconstruction has become a byword in our Universities I get a little nervous when I read about the ‘ongoing development of the confessions …’

Fourth the last sentence in the immediate above quote is a logical fallacy that is called a hasty generalization. One could as easily say that the refusal to change the FOS to date reveals that office bearers are satisfied with the current FOS.

Fifth if it is the case that office bearers today desire to be more guided and less silenced by the confessions does that mean that the ability to be more guided and less silenced by the confessions results in office bearers who will be more vocal in thinking themselves free to disagree with where the confessions are trying to guide them? And if they do disagree with the guidance does that mean anything or is that just an example of Confessional development?

Many people in the church continued to wrestle with this issue. In 2003 as a part of a dissertation for his master of theology degree at Calvin Theological Seminary, Rev. Ken Nydam sent out a survey to seventy new church development (NCD) church pastors and fifty established church development (ECD) church pastors within the CRC, seventy of which were returned. (An Historical and Theological Assessment of the Problems with the Form of Subscription in New Church Development in the Christian Reformed Church of North America [Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, May 2003]). Nydam concluded that while all churches want to retain some kind of doctrinal covenant for the CRC many churches also wonder, if a document that was originally conceived in a historical context of intra-church skirmishes that had political ramifications can be applied to our contemporary mission environment� (Nydam 2003, 13).

The only thing here to say is that this is an open question that needs concrete examples. Why can’t the FOS be applied to our contemporary mission environment? What is it, (chapter and verse please) about the FOS that makes it difficult to apply to our contemporary mission environment? From the document itself what is the sticking point?

IV.) Rationale for the proposed Form of Subscription rewrite

We confess that Scripture is the Word of God. It is utterly trustworthy and reliable in all issues pertaining to faith and life. However, our understanding of it is always limited and in need of refinement. In the words of missiologist Leslie Newbigin,

The responsibility of the church is to declare to each generation what is the faith. This is always a fresh task in every generation. No verbal statement can be produced which relieves the Church of the responsibility continually to re-think and re-state its message. No appeal to creeds and confessions can alter the fact that the Church has to state in every new generation how it interprets the historic faith and how it relates to the new thought and experience of its time. It belongs to the essence of a living Church that it should be able and willing to do so.

(The Reunion of the Church: A Defense of the South India Scheme,
�London: SCM, 1948, 137-38)

No one could disagree with this as long as what is being re-thought and re-stated has continuity with both Scripture and what has been thought and stated before. I mean, Arminius would have insisted that he was just re-thinking and re-stating Scripture’s message. Obviously then not all re-thinkings and re-statings are equal. What standard shall we use to measure our re-thinkings and re-statings if not Scripture and the Confessions as they faithfully communicate Scripture?

The four-hundred year old FOS has traditionally been viewed as being the hallmark of a confessional church. However, the many years of conflicted discussion about the FOS in the CRC reveal the need for a doctrinal covenant more in harmony with current realities. We cannot afford to be more concerned about historical integrity than current expression. Ironically, it has been under the current FOS’s stern watch that a significant and increasing neglect of the confessions has occurred.

First, the many years of conflicted discussion may not reveal the need for the kind of change proposed by the committee. The many years of conflicted discussion could reveal instead that people don’t want to be Reformed, or the many years of conflicted discussion could reveal instead that nobody wants to enforce the FOS.

Second is the committee saying that the four hundred year old tradition of a FOS isn’t or shouldn’t be a hallmark of a confessional Church? Has the committee decided that it is possible for a Church to remain confessional without a FOS? Does the committee have any examples where Churches have remained confessional who dispensed with the strong commitment that comes with signing a FOS?

Third, does the idea about being more concerned with current expression over against historical integrity not communicate some kind of generational arrogance? Reformed people have always been a people who have managed to be relevant (current expression) precisely because they understand how the past is prologue.

Fourth, the last sentence in the quote above is another logical fallacy. This time it is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. All because a neglect of the Confessions has occurred doesn’t in any way prove that it is the fault of the FOS. There could be a host of reasons why neglect has arisen that doesn’t have one whit to do with the FOS.

Fifth, notice also the biased language. The FOS has been on a stern watch. Who wants something looking over their shoulders that is stern?

Our committee believes that a helpful way to view the confessions is to regard them as true snapshots in time of the church’s self-understanding as it wrestled with Scripture in the light of contemporary issues. Understood in this way, the confessions offer deeply grounded guidance to the contemporary church by linking us to the past and reminding us to pay attention to what has been deemed vital in the past. However, there must be ongoing reflection and development as the church constantly seeks to explain what faithfulness to the gospel looks like in its time and place. Synod itself recognized this when it called for an update of Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony because it serves as a dynamic statement of faith [that] must be periodically reviewed and perhaps revised if it is to speak contemporaneously. (Acts of Synod 2005, p. 734).

I believe that a helpful way to view this committees work is to regard it as a true snapshot in time of the committees self-understanding as it wrestled with the FOS in the light of contemporary issues. Other committees might be formed that would give us other snapshots. Therefore we shouldn’t take the committee’s recommendations to seriously because, after all, they are only snapshots.

Once again I find nothing in the FOS that prohibits ongoing reflection and even development. If somebody wants to develop the three forms of unity then all they have to do is come to Classis and explain their superior development and if they are clearly correct then the Confessions will develop.

Next, concretely speaking what does ‘deeply grounded guidance’ mean, and what happens if a office bearer rejects the ‘deeply grounded guidance’ they find in the confessions?

“On January 28, 1961, Elijah Muhammad sent Malcolm X to Atlanta to negotiate an agreement with the Klu Klux Klan whereby the Klan would support a separate Black state.”

J. Goldberg
Liberal Fascism — pg. 196

The premise here is that both the Klan and the Nation of Islam were Fascist Nationalist movements who could reach accord on eliminating the presence of each by pursuing ethnic / cultural segregation in agreeing to give each a purified homeland.

Since we see that fascism is colorblind, is it also possible to have a kind of fascism that is reverse of what we see above? In other words would it be possible for a people to desire a homeland that was purified of any distinct ethnicity / culture, choosing instead to build a kind of mongrel nationalism where the kind of ethnic identity required would be no or all ethnic / cultural identity (we might even call it multiculturalism) and where the presence of any unique ethnic / cultural identity except mongrel ethnic / cultural identity would be considered unpatriotic?

Would that be possible?

Recently, I posted a series of three ‘Ask The Pastor’ Posts. What I didn’t say in those posts is that these were the questions that I would be asked during my Colloquium Doctum interview for transfer of ordination into the Christian Reformed Church.

Today I underwent examination and passed unanimously and so I am now officially what I have been unofficially for the past 13 years, to wit, an ordained minister in good standing in the Christian Reformed Church. It seems the only minor issue was my strong rejection of open theism. I think I said that it was heresy and a canker that needed to be ripped out of the Church. I never would have imagined that sentiment could have been controversial in the least. There were also some questions about my rejection of women to hold ordained positions but apparently I convinced them that such a position isn’t akin to being a knuckle scraping troglodyte who habitually grabs and drags stray women by their hair. I probably should have worked harder to convince people that my position is the position that esteems women and reflects godly compassion for women while the contrary position in reality does just the opposite but I think most of the people in Classis’s position on that is pretty much set in concrete and not even my eloquence could have changed that.

I have mixed thoughts and emotions about my newly minted status with the CRC. First, I realize that the CRC is not a perfect denomination and has some challenges before it but as I map out the Reformed denominational landscape I do not see a denomination that isn’t without its substantial issues. In the end I think all of us, who are trying to be epistemologically self conscious about being Reformed, are, in many respects, in the same boat together, and together, regardless of what Reformed denomination we are in, we are either going to survive together or we are going to capsize together. I honestly believe I can help all genuinely Reformed people, regardless of their Reformed denominational stripe, by working for Reformation and awakening in the CRC. Second, I am relieved to have this behind me. I have been operating 20 years as a Reformed minister with independent Baptist credentials. It is satisfying to finally be a Reformed minister with Reformed credentials. Third, I feel conflicted. I have not pushed this credential issue over the years because I was never absolutely confident that Bret McAtee and the CRCNA was a good fit. As long as Classis was willing to ignore me, I was willing to let them ignore me. Now I am CRC. Have I made the right decision? I believe I have but only time will tell. Fourth, as contradictory as it might sound, compared to what I’ve just said about being conflicted, I am confident. When pressed with decisions that result in being conflicted I have always trusted Augustine’s motto of ‘love God and do as you please.’ By God’s grace I do love God and I have done as I pleased and now I am confident that God will work to glorify His name in this decision and the consequences that will be subsequent to it.

So, I am a CRC minister. Next time you see me you can address me as ‘Dominee.’

Failing that, ‘Your Holiness’ will be sufficient.

p.s. – Regarding the last part, in the famous words of Foghorn Leghorn,

“That’s a joke… I say, that’s a joke, son, don’t you get it?”

“The central question that emerges is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes-the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”

William F. Buckley — American Man Of Letters
National Review, August 24, 1957

Everybody knows that Bill Buckley died Wednesday. I can’t honestly say that I was overwhelmingly influenced by Buckley, though like all conservatives, I read his columns and watched his ‘Firing Line’ production.

In many ways he was a man of subtle contradictions. On one hand he was the architect of Reagan era conservatism while on the other hand he remained a member in good standing of the Council of Foreign Relations.
On one hand he professed loyalty to conservatism, while on the other hand he gave Joe Sobran the ‘heave ho’ from National Review and embraced Trotskyites neo-cons (non-cons) such as Norm and Midge Decter (nee – Podhertz). Within his lifetime he gathered the conservative movement and within his lifetime he saw it splinter again.

Buckley will always be remembered as erudite, urbane, and witty. He still retains those character traits. Buckley could marshal those traits in defense of convictions, as can be seen above, that still lie outside mainstream America — convictions, that if were articulated today by a well placed conservative, would bring the wrath of the politically correct world down upon them.

Perhaps it is fitting that Buckley should die at the time when it seems that the Republican party, which was the ideological vehicle of ‘Buckleyism’ is officially burying that brand of conservatism underneath the rubble of the ‘conservatism’ of those people, who at the end of his career, he was unwilling to cast out of the movement and who finally took over his magazine.

Conservatives everywhere owe a great deal of gratitude to William F. Buckley, but it should be ‘eyes wide open’ gratitude. Buckley carried the conservative embers for most of his life, but at the end he passed the torch to a group, who are in many ways, the very opposite of what he contended for throughout his life.

We should thank God for William F. Buckley and pray that in our old age we will be able to finish well what we started.