I Thought This Would Be About Polity (BCO Preface II.4-8)
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[MUSIC]
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Hello and welcome to “Poverty Matters.”
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This is episode three of BYOBCO.
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My name is Ben Ratliff and I’m joined by Scott Edberg and Jared Nelson.
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And today we are continuing the discussion that we began last time on the second part of the
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preface of the PCA Book of Church Order.
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We’ve been through the king and head of the church and we’ve worked our way through the first three
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of the eight preliminary principles.
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And today we’re going to continue that journey through the principles beginning with number four
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and hopefully making it all the way through.
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But before we do that, I want to remind you about our guest that we still have along for a ride today.
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He’s decided to come back.
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It’s Steve Tipton who’s with us.
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Steve, you came on last time waving around your illustrious Florida residency, but still we’ve
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invited you back to join us again.
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What do you think so far about your time on “Poverty Matters?”
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Give the people an impression.
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Great.
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It’s been good.
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It’s rare that you find one brother that wants to sit down and talk about these things much less
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three.
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So this has been exciting.
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We are so glad to have you.
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It was excellent, excellent to have you around last time.
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Well, we’re just going to jump straight in.
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If you need any preamble on the principles, go back to our previous episode.
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We’re beginning today with principle number four in the second part of the BCO preface, which
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says that godliness is founded on truth.
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A test of truth is its power to promote holiness according to our Savior’s rule.
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“By their fruits, ye shall know them,” for Matthew 7.20.
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No opinion can be more pernicious or more absurd than that which brings truth and falsehood
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upon the same level.
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On the contrary, there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth, and duty.
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Otherwise, it would be of no consequence either to discover truth or to embrace it.
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And before we get really into the meat of this, I wanted to point out, and then this is worth
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saying about all of the principles.
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They are saturated with Scripture.
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Not always direct quotes as it’s referenced in the parenthetical here in principle number
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four, but there’s Scripture all throughout these.
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But in particular, principle number four is referring to this portion of Matthew 7, where
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Jesus says, "Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are
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ravenous wolves.
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You will recognize them by their fruits."
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And he takes this idea of fruits and works it into an illustration.
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He says, "Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
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So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
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A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
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Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
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Thus you will recognize them by their fruits."
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This reminds me, or it brought to mind at least when I was reading through, Aspen Wall Hodges work
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on the preliminary principles where he makes the point that truth is the only source of goodness,
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and goodness is the fruit and test of truth.
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This is a common idea that Jesus uses in his teachings.
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Let’s talk about how it comes to be in our government.
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Steve, talk to us a little bit about how courts make declarations on what’s good and what’s
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godly using this principle.
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Yeah, so I think it’s really important that we recognize, again,
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if this is a biblical principle, a biblical idea, and that it ties into the power that the church has,
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that the power of the church is not to decide what is true or determined, what is godliness,
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or determine what good character is apart from square.
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Rather, our role is to declare what scripture teaches.
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Again, that’s the idea of bringing truth and falsehood upon the same level.
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In this sense, falsehood with regard to what is good would be worldly human wisdom.
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Our role, our job, our calling is to declare the truth as it is found in scripture.
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We cannot seek to bring on the same level biblical truth in our opinions or our understanding of things.
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We declare the truth of scripture rather than make it up.
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We’re not determining truth.
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We are declaring truth as its found in scripture.
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This preliminary principle almost seems to be a way to balance and understand some of the other ones,
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such as preliminary principle number one and five, where we are talking about some diversity
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and liberty of conscience, that there’s not a limitless diversity and liberty that we’re all just getting together
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and either voting on something or anybody can believe whatever they want to.
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I think this is an important principle to remind us that this all needs to be grounded in truth
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and we don’t just have a minimalistic truth here.
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This isn’t just a fundamentalism that even just has a couple of points or seven or eight points.
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I’m reminded of a “machine” quote when he said, "When a man has once come into sympathetic contact
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with that noble tradition of the Reformed faith, he will never readily be satisfied with a mere fundamentalism
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that seeks in some hasty modern statement a greatest common measure between men of different creeds.
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Rather, he will always strive to stand in the great central current of the church’s life that has come down to us
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through Augustine and Calvin to the standards of the Reformed faith."
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This is not saying that we just have a few things that we think are true
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or that everybody can have an opinion on anything, but we’re talking about there are clear and plain truths
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and matters of faith and doctrine and practice, and these should be what unites us,
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and on the things where Scripture is silent, of course, there’s going to be liberty,
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but we can’t pretend like everybody’s opinion is of equal worth.
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We have to have these discussions on the basis of what do Scripture say,
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and can you tell me were Scripture commands or demands that?
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I also like the connection that it makes between faith and practice and truth and duty,
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because in one sense they’re restating those same things, right?
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What are we to believe? We’re going to believe what is true, and what are we going to practice?
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Our practice is not simply the application that a pastor happens to come up with on a Thursday afternoon,
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right? Practice is duty.
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And so, while, yeah, we still have to think about how to apply a text and provide a variety of ways
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in which a congregation or even an individual Christian can put into practice the truth that they believe
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at the end of the day, if we are declaring practices that aren’t duties, then we are airing.
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We are straying from what this preliminary principle is talking about.
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And again, it underlines the importance of these things.
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They’re not simply the foundation for a form of government.
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They’re a foundation for what it means to be the church.
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What is a church and how does it operate? How does it exercise its rights and its responsibilities?
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It’s really helpful. The preliminary principles here connect number four and five when number five begins this way,
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saying, "While under the conviction of the above principle, it is necessary to make effective provision
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that all who are admitted as teachers be sound in the faith.
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There are truths and forms with respect to which men of good character and principles may differ.
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In all these, it is the duty both of private Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other."
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Steve, we’re continuing the thought from number four into number five.
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Number five sets up these distinctions for us between those who teach and those who do not tease that out for us a little bit.
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It’s talking about this idea that there are those who are going to be teaching, that there’s those who teach and those who don’t,
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and that it is important. It’s necessary, in fact, it says it’s necessary to make effective provision for all admitted as teachers that they be sound in the faith.
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There’s so much there. We could spend all day just talking about this, the idea of effective provision,
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that there’s no way that we can require it or do it in one sense.
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We make provision for this, and we’re going to fail at times. We’ve seen that even in the history of the PCA,
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where we admitted teachers who ended up not being sound in the faith, and we go back and try to store up our provisions to make them more effective.
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We seek to do that. It’s not just in the BCO, of course, it’s also in the ways in which Presbyterians carry out these provisions,
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whether they will be effective or not. But the point is that teachers have to be sound in the faith.
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They have to be sound in the faith as we have understood it as a denomination in the sense that this is where we start talking about adherence to the Westminster standards,
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that the standards, our Westminster standards, define for us. We’ve used that as our definition for what it means to be sound in the faith.
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Again, this isn’t a bare fundamentalism. This isn’t a minimalism. Even if we want to talk about the way the RA is,
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the system of doctrine, or somebody help me here.
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- Vitals of the faith.
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- Yeah, vitals. Thank you. The system or vitals are not describing a minimalist, reformed understanding.
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They’re defining a maximalist, reformed understanding. And so, while there may be bits and pieces that we allow differences and we grant exceptions,
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the point is that a man who is going to take that vow, that ordination vow, the second ordination vow, needs to be able to do that in good faith.
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That’s what good faith subscription really is talking about, is the idea that he can vow to receive and adopt the confessions and catechisms as their understanding of what Scripture teaches.
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They can make that vow in good faith because the Presbyterian has said the places where they may differ are not, they’re not hostile to the whole system.
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And again, thinking of in a maximal sense, not a minimal sense. So, it’s important that shares adhere to the doctrinal standards, the form of doctrine that we have as a domination.
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But it’s also important to recognize that members, that regular members involved in that, do not have to subscribe.
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We were talking about this last time. They don’t have to subscribe to the standards that we hold.
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Now, again, to take five vowels and those vowels are not, you know, they don’t deny the fact that there is a government and even discipline that is established.
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And the church that includes the fact that teachers are going to be sound in the faith. But it reminds us, it reminds them that the basis of admission as a member is not on the maximal doctrinal standards, but a credible profession of faith, which is, you know, what the, what the five
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memberships are seeking to establish that somebody has a credible professional faith. And so the this particular principle is helping us to see that there are, there are differences between those.
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And so we can, we can accept in the membership someone who may differ in some of the principles, some of the aspects of the confession.
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Maybe even, you know, quite a bit of it, for that matter. You know, I know we talked last time about the Baptist.
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And we were speaking, or it seemed that the suggestion is that the only real difference is maybe that they have a different understanding of the subjects of BASM.
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But, you know, we can, we can accept in the membership and our many in Baptist who has very different understandings about salvation.
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You know, they’re going to hear a lot of things on Sunday, hopefully that they would disagree with. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be a member in our congregation.
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You know, as long as they understand, look, this is what we believe and this is what we’re going to be teaching and this is what you’re going to be hearing.
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You will see children that infants baptized here. In that sense, it becomes up to them to make that decision about whether or not they want to join with us.
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This may be breaking news. Steve Tipton would receive an Armenian into his fellowship.
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Well, we have. Yeah, I want to get into a discussion a little bit here on Good Face subscription. And Steve brought it up a little bit.
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I want us to get there in just a minute. But first, this idea of mutual forbearance.
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And Jared, you have some thoughts for us on who gets to decide on this matter of mutual forbearance what fits into it and what doesn’t. And you take us really far back you wrote your notes out originally and I looked at them and it scared me.
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Because it reminded me of my church history exams for ordination which just still give me shivers help us out.
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Well, just the historical context of American Presbyterianism when the Westminster confession of faith was adopted as the confession for the Presbyterian church.
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This was in 1729 there was the adopting act. And when they did that they wanted ministers to subscribe but they could exempt a couple of places explicitly chapter 20 and 23 chapter 20 that talked about the civil government enforcing church
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censors and chapter 23 that talked about the power of the civil magistrate in enforcing orthodoxy.
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And that seems to be a context in which some of this mutual forbearance was going I like some of what Steve was talking about with.
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There’s a lot of different groups here there’s the members. There are the pastors and officers and then there’s even other societies that’s talked about here. And so within those groups, there’s different levels of adherence to the confession.
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But, and so the forbearance with some of the members may be different than what the forbearance is with some of the, the officers between each other and what, what sort of variance there is between those officers.
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And so that that leads then to the question I think of what’s that mutual forbearance what are the lines of that.
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Where is it that we are going to recognize there’s differences between officers within the church and maybe Scott has some thoughts on that because I haven’t heard from him for a while.
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Oh yeah, just been quietly sitting here in the background for since the last episode. And I like how you framed it as it relates to tears and levels of membership.
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How we treat our brothers and sisters outside of the communion perhaps our Baptist brothers. We have much more latitude if I could use that word with them rather than those even within our own congregations or within the leadership itself.
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And so you think of the general brotherly love that you share with those who are outside your church perhaps even outside your our own denomination. It’s generally much broader.
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I just got a thing in the mail from the Gideon’s inviting me to, I’m sure you guys have that as well there October pastor appreciation meals. It’s very broad.
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Including a very diverse group of traditions, but there is patience. There is great patience as you have breakfast with brothers outside of our own denomination but then as you winnow it in as you narrow it within our own congregation
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and we’ve talked about some of them, perhaps the more controversial issues where people might be expelled because of their faith but you still have great latitude with your congregants and you don’t anticipate your congregation having all the theological points perfectly
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in order like the men who are shepherding over them. You, you grant grace, you grant patience. When thinking about your Baptist brother, do you bring them up on charges for withholding baptism from their child or something of that nature and it will usually teach through
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you don’t teach correctly, you try to teach them as you come alongside them. I think that’s the forbearance that’s in mind here. As you escalate that to those who hold office and who’ve made vows before God and upholding these matters, it becomes much narrower.
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And I would say that’s it’s vastly narrower from those other two tiers. As we’ve seen within our own denomination, there are some press materials that have a list of things you can take exception for.
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And that’s it. If you have an issue outside of these five or six ideas then this press material won’t consider you for office.
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And the same may happen on sessions as ruling elders are ordained or deacons. And so the funnels in the higher, the more authority you have within the local church, the narrower, the narrower you are with perhaps the latitude of forbearance.
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And so, I guess that question points us towards, does this principle itself then lend itself to good faith subscription. And I kind of have that group. This isn’t meant to encourage a liberty and approach to ministry or doctrines but is this a foundational aspect of our own system of government as
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well? I would say. Yeah, I don’t think this requires, you know, whether you want to call it good faith subscription or whether we want to call it the practice of allowing exceptions.
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I mean, I think you could have a strict subscription Presbyterianism that still would hold to this principle, especially in line with earlier principles that even if we air for only violating our own, you know, right rather than infringing upon the rights of somebody else.
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And I think that, you know, it’s important to recognize again, it’s necessary to make a sexual provision for all that are admitted as features be found in the faith.
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And it’s not just that we have to make effective provisions for that, but we also have to determine what we mean by sound in the face. And that’s not up to private Christians per se, rather it is up to the domination has to make those provisions
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or the association or since it’s a denomination.
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And so, you know, one of the things that this is really helpful in is that, you know, for instance, I’ve got a really good friend who’s a reformed Anglican and we have an enormous amount in common and when we get together, we love to talk about, you know, reform scholasticism and other things like that.
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He might, however, if he were ever admitted into the PCA, he might be like my worst enemy because of our differences, right?
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Okay, hyperbole, but still, right, I can be friendly with him and I can exercise mutual forbearance over those things that I know we disagree on because we are in different communions.
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You know, because he’s not trying to transform the PCA in the Anglican is I’m not trying to, you know, transform the ACNA into Presbyterianism.
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And so I think that there’s that sense in which part of that mutual forbearance, especially amongst teachers, is the recognition that we ought to go to those places where sound in the face, whatever whatever that means in the PCA or the ACNA or anywhere else that that’s that we, we align ourselves with that idea.
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And so, again, I’m not saying that we ought to be strict subscription or maybe some people saying we are.
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I think good faith subscription is a workable mechanism for making sure that those who are admitted to be teachers are sound in the face, like anything, right?
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I mean, the proof is in, you know, the putting the proof is in the outcome of what you end up with.
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And so there’s always going to be times where we do a good job and do a bad job, but I think as far as the principal goes, I don’t think it requires good faith subscription, but I do think it dumb tells well, well with good faith subscription.
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It certainly doesn’t deny good faith subscription doesn’t require it and it doesn’t deny either.
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Yeah, if you read Morton Smith who’s known as a full subscription is he has a note on this that says, allowing for differences and opinion about certain areas of truth, a balance should be maintained between what is necessary for teachers in the church to believe
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and that in which liberty is permitted, there is no defining here of these two areas. And I think he kind of points that out to as he was more of a full subscriptionist that he could affirm this principle if the confession is is defining those lines, but then within taking exceptions
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and allowing exceptions to the confession.
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Both of those seem to function within this parent, this principle.
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And building off of that do you think forbearance isn’t compromising it’s not the idea of at a church court when you grant an exception that.
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Well that that view is right. I mean the court is allowing you to have that view despite the view, the you know the court itself rejects the view as taught in the confession think of like images or something.
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We think you’re wrong on this but we’re allowing you to privately have that view and still serve in our communion and so it, it part of forbearance is not seating the ground to say that’s, that’s what we believe it is
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and we’re working with those around you. And they’re not people aren’t always right. And so as you’re dealing with their errors, they’re not so bad that they are ordainable in our nomination.
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So the character qualifications and authority of church officers are laid down in the holy scriptures, as well as the proper method of officer investiture, the power to elect persons to the exercise of authority in any particular society resides in that society.
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Jared why don’t you get us started here and sort of outline the basics that are presented here number six.
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Well, one of the major elements of this is the principle of the election of persons that are the officers of that society.
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That’s seems to be what some of the commentators will narrow in on just to read a couple of quotes from a couple of them Smith says a particular society or congregation has the right to elect its own officers.
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This is to be done in accord with the scriptural qualifications for such officers, and then J a hodge writing from Northern Presbyterian perspective says the right of election belongs to those over whom the authority is to be exercised pastors, ruling elders and deacons must be elected by the
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particular churches in which they hold office. So this, in some ways is arguing against the idea of a bishop appointing certain people over a congregation that the congregation has no say in that they do not affirm that decision at all.
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And so this is maintaining the right of the congregation in that context.
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Recently we had an appeal in our Presbyterian that went up to the SJC having to do with men who were being disciplined by a borrowed session because they had disagreed with a proposed teaching elder becoming their pastor.
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It was ruled as a was that they were accused of Fifth Commandment violations by sort of bucking against the the session in there that was overseeing them.
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The session was found it fault by the SJC properly but Jim Eggert wrote a concurring opinion.
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And in that opinion he writes that the right of congregations to select the officers of the church implies a correlative freedom of its individual members to exercise their conscience about those who will rule over them without interference or censure from the courts of the church.
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And I just bring that up it’s it’s this is a significant issue in many cases this this gets into matters of, of courts, oppressing those under their care and forcing them to certain things this is this preliminary principle keeps us from from our rights being infringed upon.
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It keeps us from having pastors over us that we have not elected or ruling elders or deacons.
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And when you’re when you’re thinking about it one of the main responsibilities of a congregation in the life of like a congregational meeting and part of that is the calling and choosing their leaders.
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And they have that that right and we should be very slow and sessions themselves should be very slow to usurp that right.
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That is their great privilege. They don’t get to approve budgets. They do get to approve the sale of properties and things of that nature.
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And they don’t have a lot of say outside of who rules them. As we could probably talk about in Guy Waters book as it relates to the leadership as vested in the ruling elders but it’s the congregation who chooses their leaders.
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And I’m like, kind of walk up to me this weekend and said, we voted against you, but we’re happy you here. And we were wrong. And so there, it is their liberty.
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I didn’t go home and soak. I was glad and by their change of heart. But it is their liberty they got to vote their conscience on who would rule them, or who would lead them, who would shepherd them.
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And the same goes for ruling elders and other officers as well.
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And so it’s really, really, really, really important.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so it’s really important to be able to do that.
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And so when we transferred to the PCA, they thought that they were robbed of all of their authority and power, because they no longer had the authority over the budget anymore.
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And they can no longer change the pastor’s pension because of a bad sermon from the other week.
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And so it is a little different.
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You get to choose and you trust those leaders who you choose.
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Well, and I think it also goes back to that, something we were talking about the last time about the idea that the authority that Christ invested in the church.
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It’s exercised by the officers, but it’s invested in the church.
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And so this is carrying on that same idea that they do have this right.
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And it’s correct.
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I mean, you have very few rights as a member.
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I mean, very few opportunities to vote.
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I mean, you have your right.
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There are very few opportunities to vote, but you do have this responsibility.
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And so, you know, we shouldn’t take that away either by just placing, you know, men over the congregation, and they don’t have any choice in that matter.
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I’ll be interested to hear the decision about associate pastor or assistant pastor someday.
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So number seven, all church power, whether exercised by the body in general, or by representation is only ministerial and declarative, since the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice.
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No church, due to couture may make laws to bind the conscience.
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All church courts may air through human frailty, yet it rests upon them to uphold the laws of scripture, though this obligation be lodged with fallible men.
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Scott, you want to jump in here and, and help us understand this distinction that’s being set up between ministerial and declarative.
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Yeah, so you’ll find this is almost as popular as the ordinary needs of grace within Presbyterian polity, but that our ministry is ministerial and declarative it is ministerial in that those who are ministering are acting as God’s instruments.
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We are his instruments we are ministering to the people and it is declarative in that we are proclaiming the truth and goodness of the Scriptures. This is perhaps against being magisterial or legislative, and that the church does not have the authority of the magistrate with the sword.
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It can’t kill someone for being a heretic by its own right, and it cannot legislate in that it cannot create its own laws.
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And so we are declaring what is already written in scripture. We are ministering that to the people themselves and so we do not create new.
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We create from what we already have the source as found in word of God in the Scriptures, and we don’t have the power to perhaps find someone because they violated one of the commandments know we, we declare their error, and we minister to them there in
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that we have within our own polity is that we minister and declare we don’t, we’re not magisterial or legislative.
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It may help to think in terms of what it means to be declarative to think about the nature of church discipline. If it doesn’t have the sword what does it have well what it has is the basis of the word of God, and what has been done in heaven.
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Looking through Matthew 18 and talking about keys and discipline often attached to that some of the language there of what you will what you loose on earth will be loose in heaven what you have bound on earth will be bound in heaven well, a way that you could translate that with the tense that may be better is what you loose on earth will have been
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in heaven. In other words, what discipline is seeking to do is to see what heaven has been doing and is doing, and to declare that that on the basis of the word of God, if you make that declaration we have to say heaven is saying that the word of God is saying that you’re in the wrong that
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you’re admonished for that. And so the part of the nature of what church discipline is trying to do is declare what heaven has done what what the what the throne of Christ is doing.
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Number eight, and Steve after I read this I’m going to kick to you to kind of summarize this final principle for us the basic just that it’s getting at.
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And this is since ecclesiastical discipline must be purely moral or spiritual in its object and not attended with any civil effects, it can derive no force whatever, but from its own justice, the approbation of an impartial public and the countenance and blessing of the great head of the church.
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So, ultimately the object is the person itself who’s receiving that discipline is receiving it on the basis of a moral or spiritual act or failure to act and so that’s certainly that idea of the first thing that it’s not attached to, you know, we’re not
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attached to civil laws we’re not here to enforce civil laws on to people but rather the moral and the spiritual laws, they’re founded scripture.
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And, and therefore it is not attended with civil effects now it’s important to recognize that doesn’t mean that it cannot be attended by, you know, civil effects that if some if someone is an embedded is embezzling, we might still want to go
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into a physical discipline for that embezzlement, but whether we find them guilty or not or whether we, you know, communicate them eventually or not, that does not deny the fact that there may be civil ramifications for that.
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It just means that our object is the moral, the spiritual spin that has been that has occurred or it or not occurred if we find them innocent, rather than the civil aspects of that.
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And it talks about this idea that this discipline can derive no force, whatever, although it’s important that that sentence continues it doesn’t end there.
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It derives no force, but from its own justice, the abrogation of an impartial public and the countenance and blessing of the great head of the church.
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So on the one hand, we don’t have the authority, we cannot force people like, you know, I suppose we could literally pick them up and carry them out of the church, but in a sense that that we don’t have the sword, you know, we can’t force people to repent.
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All we can do, however, is declare, again, it’s ministerial and declarative, we’re declaring their actions as sinful because of the word of God.
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And the force that derives from that declaration is not civil, it’s not physical, but it’s moral and spiritual and it derives from the justice of that statement does.
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Is it a just statement does it accord with their actions or does it accord with the word of God, and then again this approbation of an impartial public, which I take to mean that those who, whether it’s the courts or whether it is, you know, the broader public as they see that action.
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You know, not, we’re not talking about unbelievers here we’re talking about in a sense, I think, you know, that the church more broadly speaking, but they see that action they see the justice in it that’s partly where that forces derived, but then ultimately it’s the countenance and blessing of the great head of the church that we are doing these things
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with the power of Christ and on behalf of him, you know, we’re representing, again, we’re representing Christ to that individual and declaring the truth that comes forth from his word.
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And so it has forced, but it has a spiritual for has a moral force, not a civil, not a physical force to it.
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Much in the same way the principles begin in preface number two with a preamble, they have a conclusion at the end that says if the preceding scriptural principles, be steadfastly adhered to the vigor and strictness of government and discipline applied with pastoral prudence and Christian love will contribute to the glory
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and well being of the church.
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I was impressed by Morton Smith in his common J. He writes about this paragraph saying it serves as a reminder of the source of the government of the church, namely the Bible.
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It also calls for the proper practice of church government and discipline with the encouragement that if it is properly executed, there will be a twofold result, the glory of God and the well being of the church.
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Any of y’all have any concluding thoughts here for us.
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I just think it’s been interesting as you are going through as we’re walking through the BCO, perhaps people would think, I thought this would be about polity I didn’t know this would be about theology, but there’s so much theology that undergirds our
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ability to do that, and you can’t talk about our polity without talking about theology, and so maybe that gives a context to if we’re debating over practice and over compliance to our polity, it is not just bickering over rules, though sometimes it can
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be a good idea, but we’re telling each other what our theological convictions are. So that’s part of the reason we study polity is because polity is theology, and our theology is about rightly loving God with our with our minds and with our practice.
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And it helps us to remember that the point of theology and studying theology, we could come up with a different podcast talking only about theological topics and we would be amongst a swimming in a very larger pool than what we announced.
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The point of theology ultimately is to produce, you know, right practice that you know that orthodoxy that doesn’t result in orthopractic is an orthodoxy.
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And so the point of thinking about these things from a principle stand is that we want to want to begin at the right place, so that our polity is not just in conformity to the basic principles of scripture, but that the whole everything that we do is
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Presbyterian the ministers as elders everything that we do is aimed at is seeking the glory of our trying God and the good of his people, the good of the church.
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And if we don’t start on the right foundation, then we’re going to have a much harder time doing that.
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Well as Hudson Taylor would say this podcast is over. We want to say a big thank you to Steve Tipton for joining us I’ll be sure to include places that you can find him online and otherwise in our show notes so if you’re interested in connecting with him or listening to anything that he may have on the Internet
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and other places.
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Check down there.
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If you’re interested in learning more about anything we spoke about, check out the show notes in your podcast player or at polity matters.org.
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If you’ve enjoyed the show, consider following us on Twitter and Facebook at polity matters and subscribe in your podcast app of choice.
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Scott Edberg is a senior minister of Providence PCA in Troy, Illinois and you can find him on Twitter at S Edberg.
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If you’re looking for Jared, he’s the pastor of new life Presbyterian church of Hopewell Township and he’s on Twitter at brother Nelson.
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He’s also an editor over at Presbyterian polity and you can find him writing around the Internet from time to time so be on the lookout.
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I serve as the associate pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Mississippi. I’m on Twitter at underscore Ben Ratliff and on sermon audio under Benjamin Ratliff.
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We hope that you’ll join us next time as we take up the final portion of the BCO preface concerning the Constitution of the PCA.
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Say goodbye gentlemen.
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Goodbye gentlemen.
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See ya.
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[Music]
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