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Evangelical Reunion Evangelical Reunion John M. Frame Originally published by Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, 1991). Dedication To the Churches Who Nurtured Me Beverly Heights United Presbyterian Church Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Westerly Road Church Princeton, New Jersey Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Westminster Orthodox Presbyterian Church Hamden, Connecticut New Haven Evangelical Free Church New Haven, Connecticut Community Orthodox Presbyterian Church Blue Bell, Pennsylvania New Life Presbyterian Church Escondido, California Covenant Presbyterian Church Winter Park, Florida Preface (1990) Although I teach theology, I have never specialized in the doctrine of the church, or "ecclesiology" if you prefer. Still, I haven't been able to avoid thinking about the church, the way I've been able to avoid thinking about, say, the timing of the Rapture. In a sense the old saying is true, that if God is our father, the church is our mother. All of what I know about God and about Jesus, I have learned, directly or indirectly, from the church. Most of my spiritual encouragement, challenge, comfort, has been through the church. Most of my friendships have been within the church. (I do admire Christians who are able to develop deep friendships with non-Christians, but I don't seem to have that gift.) Most of the love I have known has been in the church. I found my wife in the church, and now my children are growing up in the church. My home away from home is always the church. My favorite music is the music of the church. My favorite people are the people of the church. Many of my favorite times have been times spent in the worship of the church. I am probably even more "churchy" in my lifestyle than most theology professors. A theologian can justify a certain amount of "church hopping:" spending his Sundays preaching and teaching in one church after another, never putting down roots in a single fellowship. For various reasons of temperament and gifts, I have never felt that God has called me to such an itinerant ministry, although I have no quarrel with my colleagues who do sense such a call. I am a "stay at home" type. I serve on the session of my local Presbyterian church. Every Sunday I play the piano and lead the congregation in worship. Often I will teach Sunday School as well. So my life is probably more church-centered even than that of most Christians. I don't consider myself superior to those believers who have not found the sort of fulfillment in the church that I have. Sometimes, Christians, through no fault of their own, find themselves in churches that don't carry out their biblical responsibilities and therefore don't provide the blessings they ought to provide. And some Christians, gifted in evangelism, for example, spend more time than I do out in the world, witnessing to the lost, seeking to bring people into the church from outside. I commend them enthusiastically. I do think, though, that the church ought to be important in some ways to all of us, even those in bad church situations or those who are called to labor mostly among the unchurched. It is the church, not just individuals, for whom Jesus Christ shed his blood (Acts 20:28, Eph. 5:25-27). And for that reason, together with the reasons peculiar to my own personality and gifts, I have been unable to avoid meditating on the biblical teachings about the church. And there are other reasons why I keep coming back to this subject. One dates back to 1958, when I was just starting college. In that year, the denomination of my childhood, the United Presbyterian Church of North America, merged with the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. The UPNA had been relatively conservative in theology, the PCUSA strongly liberal, though with some conservative congregations. Just about that time, the conviction began to dawn on me that "liberalism" was not the Christian Gospel at all.1 I came to the 1 See J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1923), Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1962). conclusion that I could not remain in the PCUSA, especially since my PCUSA presbytery at that time was demanding that its ministerial candidates receive training (which I interpreted "brainwashing") at liberal seminaries. I joined an independent church at that point. But many of my closest friends and respected teachers (notably John H. Gerstner) made other choices, forcing me to rethink and rethink. So my earliest years of theological self-consciousness were focused upon denominational and church questions: what is a true church? What obligations are involved in church membership? In what sort of church would God want me to minister? Another reason for my interest in ecclesiology is that for twenty two years I was a minister in a tiny (20,000 members, 200 churches) denomination called the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (henceforth OPC). The editor of a Christian magazine once described the OPC as a kind of continuous theological seminar. Granting some editorial license, I can accept that description, with the footnote that most of the time, as I recall it, the seminar focused on ecclesiology. Like me, the OPC2 had withdrawn from the PCUSA over the issue of theological liberalism, in 1936. In 1937, the Bible Presbyterians broke away, in turn, from the OPC. Those events were constantly discussed in the OPC; most all of us elders heard many opinions about schism, church purity, denominations and so on. So in those twenty two years I did a lot of thinking about the church. In 1975 (?) I served as counsel to a fellow minister who was charged with being too sympathetic toward charismatics and others. On three occasions since I was ordained, the church engaged in intensive discussions concerning merger with other bodies. And during the last of my twenty-two years, 1988-89, I spent much time pondering, together with my local congregation, whether they and I should stay in the OPC or to seek transfer into a somewhat larger denomination (200,000 members, 1000 churches), the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). We did make that transfer; I and the church are now PCA. But we did not make it without a lot of Scripture searching, heart searching, emotional agony, and intellectual labor3. 2 At first it was called the Presbyterian Church of America, a name changed later because of legal problems. This name should not be confused with the present day body founded in 1973 called the Presbyterian Church in America. 3 In this book I shall refer from time to time to my experiences in the OPC and the PCA. I grant that these are small bodies and may not be of interest, in themselves, to most readers of this book, who, I hope, will represent many other communions. I beg you, however: please don't write off the book as parochial because of these references. I am taking some pains to use examples from other denominations as well; but I must write out of my own experience, and, for better or worse, that experience has been mostly in the OPC and PCA. My editor at Baker Book House urged me to find more examples and illustrations from outside the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition. I tried, but without much success. I am not a specialist in modern church history, and I hesitate to use examples that I have not experienced from the inside, so to speak. And of course besides addressing the broader evangelical constituency, I do also want to say some things to "my own people" which I think they need to hear. If you are neither OPC nor PCA, these references to obscure denominations may help you to gain a more objective perspective on the issues discussed, more objective than if I were discussing your own denomination. If you are in one of these groups, you may lose the advantage of objectivity, but gain the advantage of a Through all of that, I have come to certain convictions about the church, particularly about denominations and denominationalism. These are convictions that do not seem to be commonly expressed in the theological literature. Indeed I have not been able to find much agreement to them among my friends with whom I have shared my thoughts. Yet I cannot seem to wriggle away from these ideas, for they seem to me to be the inescapable teaching of Scripture, and I still believe with B. B. Warfield that "what Scripture says, God says." So I've decided to try out my thoughts on the Christian public at large, the trans-denominational body of Christ. If you think I am wrong, please show me how I am wrong; show me from Scripture, please. I'm willing, I hope, to change my views in response to a really biblical argument. If you think I'm right, then see what you can do to change the thinking of others in the church, so that somehow we might, by God's grace, overcome the "curse of denominationalism" that defames our Lord and so often enfeebles our witness. By "denominationalism," I mean, sometimes (1) the very fact that the Christian church is split into many denominations, sometimes (2) the sinful attitudes and mentalities that lead to such splits and perpetuate them.4 I do not look on this book as a scholarly volume, though I trust that it is well-informed. It is not a systematic ecclesiology; it will not be part of my dogmatic project, A Theology of Lordship. There will not be a lot of scholarly footnotes (though there will be a number of explanatory ones), and I will seek to avoid technical concepts for the most part.
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