Let’s make this simple to understand, shall we? Just want to look at the structure of the thing.
1. An accusation was circulated in the PCA, claiming that Steve Wilkins is a newt;
2. The Louisiana Presbytery, understandably concerned, met with him a couple times and determined that in their judgment he was in fact not a newt;
3. Because of newt-controversy elsewhere, a Study Committee of the PCA had been formed, and charged with the task of finding out if there were “newts infiltrating everywhere”;
4. Those appointed to the committee were all of the conviction that this was in fact so, and there were none appointed who did not hold to this important reformational tenet;
5. The committee returned with a bullet-point summary of what non-newtdom had to consist of, and which GA resoundingly adopted;
6. Somewhere in the meanwhile, a memorial from another presbytery and complaint from within the Louisiana Presbytery made their way to the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission, from which there is no appeal, and out of which few return to the sunlit lands;
7. The complaint was against Louisiana Presbytery for harboring newts, but was not a charge against Wilkins for actually being a newt, that being sort of assumed as a given;
8. But Wilkins had been earlier relieved by the work of the Study Committee, kind of, because the committee’s bullet points confirmed that he was not a newt. He didn’t have a tail, for starters;
9. But the Starchamber Judicial Commission (SJC) nevertheless determined that the Louisiana Presbytery had, in its inquiry, unaccountably come up with what Presbyterian judicialists call the “wrong answer.” This wrong answer was evident from the fact that they claimed Wilkins was not a newt, when the SJC knew for a fact that he was one, leaning heavily on the report of the committee for this insight;
10. The Louisiana Presbytery has the option of pleading “not guilty” before the full Commission, in which case they will then be tried on the accusation that they failed to do what was necessary about the pressing newt issue in their presbytery.
This is where we are now. What is likely in the near future? I will write as though it has already happened because, you know, the way things have gone thus far, it probably already has.
11. The Louisiana Presbytery tried to defend themselves by having Wilkins appear — for if he can show the magisterium that he is not a newt, then his presbytery cannot be faulted for saying that he wasn’t one. Hey? One follows their reasoning of course;
12. This effrontery from Louisiana, and from Wilkins, pretending that there hadn’t been any charges against him, much less a trial yet, was ruled out of order, and more than a little bit rude. “We are not here to go over that ground again, Rev. . . . is it Salamander?”
13. And so the sad day finally arrived, when the assembled presbyteroi turned the gentleman into a newt.
But he got better.