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Evangelical
John M. Frame
Originally published by Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, 1991).
Dedication
To
the Churches Who Nurtured Me
Covenant
Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Community
Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Blue
New
Life Presbyterian Church
Covenant
Presbyterian Church
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,
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 OPC[2]
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 labor[3].
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. This book is simply a cry from the heart,[5]
but one which I want very much for my brothers and sisters to hear.
I continue to
acknowledge debt to many who have stimulated my thinking on this and other
subjects. Some are listed in the preface to my Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.[6]
Here I would like to give special thanks to the twenty-five or so friends
who read an earlier version of this book, especially the following who
offered a great many suggestions: Richard Gaffin, James Jordan, Thom
Notaro, Robert Strimple, Vern Poythress, and Jay Adams (who,
very much in character, urged me to add a chapter on "what to do
now"). Of course, I take full responsibility for the use of their
ideas (and my own!) herein. Thanks also to my pastor
Preface (2000)
Nearly ten years have passed since Evangelical Reunion was first published. Response to it was hardly overwhelming. A few reviewers seemed a bit bewildered by it and dismissed the main thesis—that denominationism always involves sin on someone’s part—as extreme. Some others liked it, but not well enough to keep the book in print for more than three or four years. I’m told that church courts of some denominations have expected their candidates for the ministry to “set their positions over against:” mine, and my approach has recently been derided by some as a “big tent” view of the church.
Still, the book has had a bit of a following. I still autograph a few of them each year, and somebody at www.christianbook.com has maintained a stash of them.
As for me, I remain unbowed by the critics. So far as I know, nobody has seriously taken up the challenge of my first Preface, to refute me from the Bible. Until someone does, I must remain where I stand.
I am grateful to Richard Pratt and Ra McLaughlin who have granted me the facilities of the Third Millennium web site to pass this message on to readers of the new century. They have also been most generous in their web publication of a number of my other shorter writings.
Mar., 2006: I
now have another opportunity to publish this book on the web, thanks to the
good offices of
Introduction
This
book is not for everybody, though I will not forbid anyone from buying
and/or reading it. In this volume I will be speaking to fellow Christians,
those who love Jesus Christ, trust him for their eternal salvation, and
are seeking to obey his commands. In my vocabulary, and in the teaching of
Scripture, "Christian" does not refer to someone who merely
holds to high moral standards, or goes to church, or seeks justice in
society, or admires the teachings of Jesus. A Christian is rather
someone who has a special relationship, a friendship, with Jesus.
For Jesus Christ is no mere historical figure. He is a living
person, raised from the dead. Moreover, he is Lord, the supreme ruler
of heaven and earth.
How
do you become his friend? First by recognizing that no matter how good you
may be in your own eyes and in the eyes of other people, you are a sinful
person in the eyes of a holy and righteous God (Rom. 3:23). Second,
by recognizing that sin against perfect holiness deserves death (Rom.
6:23). Third, by recognizing that you can do nothing to prevent the
eternal death that is coming to you, and by throwing yourself upon the
mercy of God (Eph. 2:8, 9). Fourth, by recognizing that Jesus died in the
place of his people (Mark 10:45) and that he offers eternal life to all
who trust in that sacrifice (John 3:16). Fifth, by yourself trusting
Jesus: asking forgiveness on the basis of his shed blood and seeking to
obey him as your Lord, your supreme Master.
Further,
this book is written to those Christians who have come to see the need to
trust and obey God's written Word, the holy Scriptures (II Tim. 3:16, 17,
II Pet. 1:19-21). This book is essentially a Bible study, though it does
deal with our present situation as well as with the Bible. My deep
conviction is that the Scriptures are God's very voice, speaking to
us. Unless you share this conviction, you will think my argument
is not very strong. Indeed, it is a weak argument, if it is only
my argument. But if it is the argument of God himself, then we
had better pay attention to it and heed it. If the argument is
only mine, then you can dismiss it politely by saying "That's
very nice, but we would prefer to leave things the way they are."
But if it is God's argument, then we had better be willing to
make disruptive, dramatic changes. What God says, particularly,
takes precedence over the warm feelings of coziness we have in
our present denominational structures.[8]
Before
you read the argument, perhaps you should ask yourself whether, if God wanted you to help him tear
down all the old, familiar denominational structures, you would
be willing to join the project. If you are not willing to make such a
conditional commitment in advance, you are not one of the ones to whom
this book is addressed. Rather, you need to work on the basics of
Christian discipleship and godly priorities. I am writing in this book to
potential ecclesiastical revolutionaries, to those who are so sold out to
Jesus that they are willing to give up many cherished things for him
(meditate on Deut. 6:4ff, Matt. 8:18-22, Luke 9:23-26, 14:26, I Cor. 9,
Phil. 3:1-14). I am writing to those who put the authority of God above
the comfort of the status quo.
Denominations,
I have discovered, are something of a sacred cow in Christian circles. We
often look at them the way a Steeler fan, say, looks at his football team,
or the way a patriot looks at his country, or the way a loving son looks
at his mother. The denomination is my team, my country right
or wrong, my mother[9]
in Christ. We like to see our denominations succeed where others fail,
indeed to succeed at the expense of the others. Sometimes, we identify
such success with the blessing of God. Failure to support the team, then,
turns out to be a kind of blasphemy, almost like renouncing Jesus himself.
To others, the denomination is not so much a team as it is a warm, cozy
place to call home. And a man's home, of course, is his castle. When the
castle is perceived to be under attack, the attackers must be vanquished.
Something very deep inside us calls us to all out war against anyone who
threatens the home.
So
perhaps it is foolish for me to write this book. Many will see it as an
attack on their team, their country, their mother, their home. Actually, I
don't think it is. I think my argument, if implemented, will produce a
much stronger team and country, a far more comfortable maternal home.
Indeed, rather than destroying all we love and cherish in our
denominations, my proposal will preserve all that is good about them far
more effectively than we are able to preserve it today.
But even if the application of these ideas leads to some loss, some sadness, the people of Jesus ought to be willing to make such tiny sacrifices for Jesus. Tiny? Yes, compared with his great sacrifice for us. His sacrifice is the only measure of our love (I John 4:7-11).