The Draft concludes with a chapter entitled, "Ideas & Questions for Immediate Consideration," which deserves our careful attention because it articulates a direction for the Fellowship to pursue as it begins to put flesh on the barebones of its current "structure." The chapter begins with the following paragraph:
"The Church has a Faith without which she cannot live faithfully. Truth leads to duty, faith to practice. A church that wants to be a servant found faithful to its commission must be a steward of the Faith entrusted to its care. A fellowship that desires to be an effective witness to the gospel, must know the gospel. An apostolic church must not only live a life like that of the apostles, it must teach what the apostles’ taught."But for the capital "F", the first sentence appears redundant, but with it we seem to come close to the crux of the matter for many Fellowship Presbyterians, namely that PC(USA) today is deficient in its grasp of Faith and thus is not living it out. Were that not the case, it is hard to see the need for the Fellowship or a "new Reformed body." The problem with capital "F" Faith is that it does not exist and never has since the beginnings of the church. Empirically, we can only speak of Christian faiths of which there has been a multitude over the long centuries. The adherents of many of them, probably the great majority of them, have proclaimed their own version as the one true Faith. One wonders why we keep doing this to ourselves, but we do. Indeed, this is a key difference evangelical and progressive Presbyterians, self-styled. Evangelical Presbyterians continue to believe in and pursue the clearest expression possible of the One True Faith on which depends, usually, our salvation and the health of our churches. For progressives such a thing does not exist in any empirical, objective sense; there are, as I say, only the many variations of faith in Christ. There is no need to re-hash this point. We've touched on it in this series before. But we do need to acknowledge that this is one of the key points of divergence that divide the good people of PC(USA) one from another. Some of us are committed to our faith as being as best we understand the Faith while others of us are committed to a faith, which we understand to be but one of many possible expressions of faith in Christ.
For PC(USA) this crucial difference in mentality and perspective between evangelicals and progressives means apparently that we must go through yet another denominational split and add another "Reformed body" to the stable of Reformed and Presbyterian denominations. Some (many? most?) of those who believe in Faith rather than faiths do not feel that they can remain in the same church with those of us who believe our faith to be one valid expression of faith rather than the only true one. That is the bottom line, one that goes even deeper than the whole standards of ordination debate.
Moving on.
"Truth leads to duty," I would prefer to restate as "The search for truth leads to duty." Fellowship Presbyterians will just as surely object to this rewording as reflecting some of what they find "wrong" with PC(USA) today, a looseness that feels like faithlessness. For myself, the insistence on not capitalizing Faith or believing that I have a handle on the Truth actually lies at the heart of my struggle to be a person of faith. Idolatry is a real danger that all those who would follow Christ faithfully must grapple with. In our time, the most dangerous idols are ideas rather than physical images, and any time we start capitalizing nouns such as Truth or Faith we are in danger of turning them into things we worship in place of God. There is a fine but important line between believing as a matter of faith (trust) and believing in Faith as an idol in place of God.
And, yes, faith surely does lead to practice as day follows night.
The concept of "a steward of the Faith" offers intriguing possibilities so long as "Faith" is not understood to be an absolute. We have inherited a set of traditions in the Presbyterian church, and we do have a set of confessions that speak from the midst of that tradition. Fellowship Presbyterians, to go back to a point made early in this series, make an important point when they observe that we haven't done much of a job at all at using the Book of Confessions as a tool for theological reflection and faithful action. We would do well to pay attention to the criticism, especially because the Draft faults evangelical Presbyterians as much as anybody. Even here, however, it would behoove Fellowship Presbyterians to understand that theology is not everybody's "thing" and that verbally semi-inarticulate Christians can still faithfully follow Christ by the way they live (see Nancy T. Ammerman, "Golden Rule Christianity"). Yes, there are dangers in the failure to be articulate in one's faith, but there are also dangers in fixating on the articulation of faith as well.
The Draft goes on to state that, "A fellowship that desires to be an effective witness to the gospel, must know the gospel." No argument there. And thank you for the small "g" in the word "gospel". (One wonders, though, why "Faith" is capitalized at points but "gospel" isn't, since the two are often used as cognates of each other). The final sentence in this paragraph, "An apostolic church must not only live a life like that of the apostles, it must teach what the apostles’ taught," makes an important point as well, so long as we understand that we have to "live like the apostles" in an entirely different social, political, and economic context and that different faithful Christians will do so in different ways. And we also have to remember that "teaching with the apostles taught" as recorded in the New Testament leaves us a great deal of latitude theologically. At least from this progressive's point of view, there are many different faithful ways to read the teachings of the apostles, none of them perfectly faithful but still faithful. For clarity's sake, I am not suggesting that all readings of the New Testament are faithful, but I would insist that many are substantially faithful within the limitations of our struggle to be understand matters of faith.
In sum, this first paragraph displays again both the things that divide us and that we share in common. I wonder what would happen if the Fellowship of Presbyterians brought the Draft to the denominational table and said, "Let's talk," instead of using it as an instrument for considering withdrawal from PC(USA)? Would the rest of us be responsive? Could we actually talk with each other across the boundaries of our differences, given how much we hold in common? I wonder.
