2012 ARP General Synod Faces Tough Decisions
This upcoming meeting of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian
Church’s General Synod, scheduled for June 5-7, 2012, has the potential to be one of the more
significant meetings of that body in recent memory. Judging from the contents of the Synod packet
of materials sent out to delegates, a number of issues will elicit spirited
discussion.
Creation
One matter that has received some media attention already is
a Memorial (the ARP equivalent of a PCA “Overture”) from Mississippi Valley
Presbytery calling upon Synod to affirm the special creation of Adam and Eve as
the first parents, to affirm that “the account of creation as found in Genesis
1 and 2 is history,” to “deny any teaching that claims that the account of
creation as found in Genesis 1 and 2 is mythology,” and to “deny any theory
that teaches that Adam and Eve descended from other biological life forms and
that such a theory can be reasonably reconciled with either the Standards of the Associate Reformed
Presbyterian Church or Holy Scripture.”
There is nothing to which I strenuously object in the
Memorial, so long as terms are properly defined. But therein lies the rub. It bears some resemblance to an Overture
being presented this year by Rocky Mountain Presbytery to the PCA General
Assembly. A key contextual difference,
however, is that the PCA already has an excellent report regarding the interpretation
of the days of creation in which a variety of views (literal six days, the
day-age theory, the literary framework hypothesis, and analogical days) are
recognized as falling within the bounds of orthodoxy. However, there apparently are some in the ARP
who believe that those who do not hold to literal six-day young-earth
creationism should “change,
acquiesce, or depart honorably in conviction” (see my response
here), and approval of the proposed Memorial without additional study and interpretive
context may well lead to conflict and dissension in the future. In addition, the Memorial would also exclude
such fathers in the faith and defenders of the inerrancy of Scripture as B. B.
Warfield, Gleason Archer, and J. I. Packer.
Better to study this one for awhile!
Tithing
Last year’s Synod referred a recommendation from the Board
of Stewardship that sought to extend the tithing principle from individual
support of the church to congregational support of the Denominational Ministry
Fund (a novelty in Presbyterian history, so far as I can see) to the Committee
on Theological and Social Concerns. In
response, the TSCC has produced a
substantive and nuanced report that repays careful study.
Church Government and Related Matters
The Special Committee to Revise Form of Government has
presented a “Proposed Draft for the Revision of the Form of Government” to this
year’s Synod. This document represents a
substantial and in many ways needed revision.
It will, however, need to be carefully examined and evaluated by the
delegates. One matter in the document
that caught my eye was a change in the educational requirements for ministers.
According to the current FOG, “A minister must present evidence of having
obtained a baccalaureate degree, or its equivalent, from an accredited
four-year college or university, as well as evidence of a theological education
embracing three years of satisfactory work in the seminary of this denomination
or in a seminary approved by the Presbytery.”
The proposed document includes a seemingly small but potentially
significant change: “A minister must present evidence of having obtained a
baccalaureate degree, or its equivalent, from an accredited four-year college
or university, as well as a master of divinity degree from an accredited
seminary approved by the Presbytery.” This
change will have the net effect of tying ARP ministerial preparation even more
closely to a transcript-based seminary model of theological education, and this
at a time when the effectiveness and viability of the seminary model is
increasingly questioned.
In other matters, the Special Committee on Efficiency has
presented a long series of recommendations, three of which would effect
significant changes to Presbytery boundaries.
These would split the current First Presbytery (which includes all of North Carolina) into
eastern and western NC presbyteries, establish a new Presbytery consisting of
churches in the Charlotte, NC area, and fold all ARP churches west of
the Mississippi River into a Midwest
Presbytery. This presumably would entail
the end of the current Korean-speaking Pacific Presbytery, problems with which
are the subject of an extensive report by the Ecclesiastical Commission on Judiciary
Affairs.
The Elephant in the Room
Once again a major topic of discussion at Synod promises to
be the relationship between the General Synod and its historic educational
institutions–Erskine
College and Erskine
Theological Seminary. A bit of context
is needed to understand the current state of the question. In March of 2010 the General Synod in an
extraordinary called meeting (known as the “Snow Synod”) voted to remove the
Erskine Board of Trustees and replace it with an Interim Board. A number of legal actions were filed by
trustees and other parties, and at its June 2010 meeting the Synod renounced
its efforts to replace the Board contingent upon the dismissal of the lawsuit
that was pending against the Synod. Over
the next year the Erskine Board revised its By-Laws in ways that were
interpreted by some in the ARP
Church as marginalizing
the role of the ARP
Church at Erskine.
At the 2011 meeting of the Synod, a motion was
overwhelmingly adopted calling upon the Erskine Board to enter into a process
of Charter and By-Laws revisions that would recognize the organic relationship
between the Church and schools, and grant the Synod right of trustee removal
for cause. In February 2012 the Erskine
Board declined the request of the Synod, citing accreditation requirements and
the need for fiduciary independence. Then
in May 2012 a “Minority Report of Erskine Trustees” was submitted by eleven
members of the Erskine Board. It argued,
in essence, that the Board majority was trying present Erskine as a
more-or-less independent institution instead of an “agency” of the ARP Church
accountable to the General Synod. It
also pointed out that quite a number of accredited church-affiliated colleges
and seminaries have charters which allow for trustee removal by the respective
churches. This “Minority Report” also
contends that the relationship between Erskine and the General Synod is at an
“impasse,” and recommends that “the Moderator of Synod appoint a Special
Committee to Study the Relationship between the General Synod of the Associate
Reformed Presbyterian Church and Erskine
College and Theological
Seminary.”
In addition, two Erskine-related judicial complaints will be
before the Synod. Both come out of
Second Presbytery (Erskine is located within that presbytery’s geographical
bounds), and involve alleged failures by a congregation and the Presbytery to
discipline officeholders who filed legal actions against the Synod in the wake
of the March 2010 “Snow Synod.” It will
be interesting to see if and how the Synod decides to deal with these
complaints.
At this point, we can step back a bit and ponder where the
Erskine/ARP relationship is headed. The
“Minority Report” description of an “impasse” may well be appropriate language,
and I have sensed for some time that Erskine and the ARP Church
are headed for separation (though I doubt that either will ultimately benefit
from a split). A key question for the
Synod at this point is whether the Church has a realistic chance of effecting
the sort of changes it desires (i.e., similar to the pattern followed at many
Southern Baptist-related colleges and seminaries), and the answer to that question
is less than clear. At the same time,
Erskine is still heavily dependent upon the over half million dollars per year
that the General Synod contributes to the schools. Rather clearly, Erskine and the ARP Synod
have difficulty living together, but a question to be asked is whether Erskine
can survive as an independent entity.
Anthropological Monism
An issue that has been percolating on the Erskine campus
(but largely under the radar of the Church) is Erskine President David Norman’s
“Presidential Initiative for Human Restoration” and the associated THRIVE
series of meetings and convocations.
This has been Dr. Norman’s effort to flesh out his administration’s
emphasis on “care for the poor” that was announced when he took office in 2010. In a meeting for faculty and staff earlier
this year Norman presented an interpretive schema in which “mental poverty”
leads to “social poverty,” which then lead to “economic poverty” and physical
poverty” (a portion of Norman’s presentation that day was later published as “Understanding Our Poverty,”
ARP Magazine, March/April 2012, p.
16). An astute Erskine Seminary
professor present then asked Norman,
“Where does the spiritual dimension fit in?”
The President’s response suggested that the spiritual aspect is somehow
related to all four forms of poverty.
In the same meeting Norman explained how he had come to have
questions about the nature of the human soul while a seminary student, and how watching
a beloved grandparent descend into the night of Alzheimer’s Disease had helped
to convince him that consciousness is tied to physical existence. Most faculty and staff probably left the
meeting a bit baffled, but an examination of Norman’s published doctoral
dissertation brings the issue into sharper focus (see David Norman, Brain, Mind, and Soul in the Theological
Psychology of Donald MacKay, 1922-1987 [Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2008]). In brief, the Erskine President is an
advocate of what is often called “physicalism” or “physicalist monism.” That is, he views the human being as a
psycho-physical unity and he denies that anything called a “soul” can exist
independent of the body. The term he
chooses to use for this point of view is “Comprehensive Realism.”
Here again, some context is needed. To be sure, there has been a decided trend in
philosophical circles toward anthropological monism. Many philosophers are atheists and
metaphysical materialists, and anthropological physicalist monism is simply a corollary
of such atheistic materialism. But there
have also been Christian thinkers who have embraced monistic views of the human
person in various forms, and for a variety of reasons. For example, some are convinced that
anthropological dualism (the view that the spiritual soul can exist without the
physical body) is fatally infected with Platonic dualism and thus leads to an
undue denigration of the physical aspect of existence. Others regard anthropological dualism as
overly speculative, and so on. Here I
should note that my own thinking on this matter has been powerfully influenced
by John W. Cooper’s Body, Soul, and Life
Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), a fine volume that I first encountered when it was
published in 1989, and upon which some of this material is dependent.
A key question regarding such anthropological monism has to
do with biblical passages (e.g., 2 Corinthians 5:6-9; Philippians 1:21-23) speaking of an
“intermediate state” (a condition of conscious existence between physical death
and the final resurrection). In the
Philippians passage just referenced, the Apostle Paul draws a contrast between
“life in the flesh” on the one hand, and physical death which entails a
departure “to be with Christ” which is “far better” on the other. As Cooper notes, some (such as the Dutch Reformed
theologians G. C. Berkouwer and Herman Ridderbos) affirm both a monistic
anthropology and the reality of the intermediate state, and they just live with
the apparent contradiction. Others
(e.g., F. F. Bruce) affirm a doctrine of “immediate resurrection,” holding that
at death the person experiences an immediate bodily resurrection in
heaven. Still others effectively deny
the intermediate state completely and affirm what Cooper calls the
“extinction-re-creation view.” In other
words, at death the person ceases to exist, but at the final resurrection God
creates a new and improved version of the same person. This extinction-re-creation view was held by Norman’s intellectual
hero, the Scottish brain scientist Donald MacKay, and is defended by Norman
himself.
Of course, there are a host of problems attending
anthropological monism, especially in its more radical extinction-re-creation
form. As John Cooper and others have
demonstrated, there is a tremendous amount of biblical evidence in both the Old
and New Testaments suggesting that a conscious existence of the soul continues
after physical death, and this biblical witness is amply reflected in the
confessional tradition of the Reformed churches (see, e.g., WCF 32.1, HC Q. 57). Furthermore, despite its current popularity,
this model faces perhaps insuperable philosophical difficulties. For example, on monistic terms how does one
account for continuity of personal identity between death and resurrection? Norman’s
strategy here is basically to appeal to the relativity of “time-for-us” as
opposed to “time-for-God,” a solution that may create more problems than it
solves. Thus it is not surprising that
quite a number of well-known Christian philosophers–Alvin Plantinga, William
Hasker, C. Stephen Evans, and my former Erskine College
colleague John Wingard (now teaching at Covenant College)
for example–are staunch opponents of anthropological monism. Representative here is C. Stephen Evans of Baylor University,
who recently wrote that “contemporary physicalism about human persons is in something
of a crisis mode, in which most philosophers are sure that some form of
physicalism must be true, but no one has a convincing account of how
physicalism could be true. The time is
right for a new look at dualism.” I
agree.
To bring matters back to the Church, the pastoral
implications of this extinction-re-creation model are, in my judgment,
positively disastrous. For example, what
is a pastor to say to bereaved family members when elderly Aunt Matilda or
young Johnny is taken away in death? The
best one can offer on this way of thinking is that the loved one is dead and
gone, period, and that at some point in the future somebody very much like them
(Norman would claim it is the same person) will reappear. Furthermore, if we hold that there is no
distinct spiritual thing called the soul, do we have the conceptual apparatus
needed for dealing with the spiritual dimension of human existence? In other words, does Norman’s category of “mental poverty” go deep
enough? His less-than-clear explanation
of poverty suggests that the answer to this question is “No.” Finally, in the absence of a robust appreciation
of the spiritual dimension, will the current Erskine THRIVE initiative almost
inevitably trend in the direction of the old “social gospel”? The lessons of history suggest that the
answer to this question is “Yes.”
Though David Norman and I clearly disagree on this issue, none
of this should be taken as personal criticism of him. As far as I can tell, he has been transparent
about his anthropological views, and he has sought to engage faculty discussion
on the THRIVE initiative. Furthermore,
he has the courage of his convictions and he has sought to frame the mission of
Erskine in light of them. And after all,
these are important matters that deserve to be discussed in the context of a
liberal-arts college. Finally, he has
shown considerable courage in making some tough decisions in the Erskine
context, and credit should be given where credit is due.
That being said, there are issues to ponder. Norman is advocating a position regarding the
constitution of the human person that many, if not most, conservative
Christians would regard as odd, and which is open to serious objection on
scriptural, theological, and philosophical grounds. This also suggests that the theological
boundaries among those who self-identify as “evangelicals” have become broad
indeed. In addition, all this again
raises questions as to whether the ARP
Church is likely to have
much of an impact on institutional direction in the future.
In other words, June 5-7 should be interesting indeed!
William B. Evans
