Obviously, since I am in Monroe (still) for the now finished Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference, the “situation” in the PCA has been much on my mind. And the guys have talked about it in various ways, and from various angles.
As I was reflecting on it this morning, I thought that I should write about one aspect of all this that I do not believe I have mentioned before. Steve Wilkins is accused of some kind of incipient Arminianism in his alleged departure from the Confession. (Incidentally, Steve’s last talk at the conference was on the Westminster Confession, in which Steve clearly demonstrated his fundamental allegiance to the Reformed understanding of the role of creeds and confessions.) Now this confessional “departure” of his has to be pretty subtle because, for the life of me, I can’t find it. Steve is a straight-up predestinarian, and he acknowledges that this sovereignty on God’s part encompasses all things, including the salvation of individuals coming to faith in Christ. If this is all true, then it has to be said that Arminianism is really different from what it was when I was a kid.
Anyhow, this is all happening in a denomination in which there are scads of genuine, bona fide Arminians running around in ministry. The PCA does not have any shortage whatever of man-centered contemporary evangelicalism. Happy clappy goo churches are plentiful, and in many of them, the extent of their acquaintance with Calvinism is that the pastor once read a book about it in seminary, which book he won’t publicly admit to reading. Now, in this setting, a group of predestinarian TRs have set about to get predestinarian Steve. Anybody who believes that there isn’t something personal about all this just isn’t paying attention. Why go after a minister whose “Arminianism” is so implicit as to be non-existent, and leave alone those countless ministers in the PCA whose compromises with contemporary Arminianism are explicit? If that is what you want to do, the PCA should be a target-rich environment. But the PCA pragmatism (that does not take the Bible seriously) is not the target in all this, and the federal vision (which takes the Bible and the Reformed faith very seriously) is the target. What is the explanation?
Steve has been examined by his presbytery, twice. If later this month, on the basis of the second exam, the presbytery declares him to be a-okay, then the Standing Judicial Commission of the PCA has the option of picking up original jurisdiction on this. Technically, they would be reviewing or evaluating the actions of Louisiana Presbytery, not Steve, but given the procedures they have been willing to violate to get to this point, it seems pretty clear that they could “get Steve” if they so desired. If they do, I believe it is important for them to have to do it in broad daylight, on the fifty-yard line, with the stadium full. Hence these posts.
What is happening here is all in Girard. A victim has been selected, and the courts of respectability want to draw a veil of respectability over the process of dispatching the victim. The more the victim protests that this is all an abuse of the church courts and procedures, the more this enflames those who want the justice they dispense to be self-evidently “righteous.” But it is not — it is nothing of the kind.
Imagine a classroom where students are standing on their chairs, throwing spitballs, yelling at one another, and so on. One student is sitting in the back, quietly. He shifts his feet, and accidentally brushes the desk in front of him, moving it two inches. Suppose the teacher ignores all the other students, and busts this one. If the teacher really cared about classroom decorum, he has other things to address first. But if he does not, then we are justified in thinking that what is happening is more a matter of settling some personal score, than a matter of protecting the classroom.
If the TRs out to get Steve defend themselves by saying that “you have to start somewhere,” and if they succeed in using the SJC to accomplish what they want, then this should strike fear in the hearts of all the other rowdy students. There should be a “chilling effect” across the PCA, where every minister who is running some Finney-inspired seeker service should think to himself, “Oh no! The PCA will deal with us next!” But there will be no chilling effect at all. No one will even slow down. The rowdy students will continue their classroom riot, while the quiet student is cooling his heels in the principal’s office. And this is because everybody involved knows exactly what this is about. We also know what it is not about. Why pretend otherwise?