A declaration of boundaries: segregationism

What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be My people.” Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you, (1 Cor 6:16-17).

Dear brothers in Christ,  Grace and Peace to you in our Lord and Savior.  Thank you for taking the time to meet with us, to give us the opportunity to speak to you more closely about the controversies that have arisen around certain divisive doctrines.   The purpose of our meeting first of all, was to apologize to you for our failure to apply this scrutiny earlier, when you were examined for admission into membership with us on the basis of a credible profession of faith.  We owe the same apology to others, who on different occasions were not examined, or helped to better understand the terms of our membership and communion.

Thank you, brothers, for accepting this admission of fault on our part.  It was not our desire to draw unkind attention to you, to humiliate you or to bring distress to your families and disruption to your friendships; but this has happened, and it is in part due to our failure to fully examine your profession of faith in terms of the implications of the divisive doctrines.  

As we reminded you when we were with you, you are made in the image of God. To disrespect that image is to disrespect God.  Also, by the time we met with you, you had already been examined without respect to person and found to have a sincere faith. No one calls upon the Lord for salvation without the Spirit of God. The Lord, in whose likeness he made you whom he has given his Spirit, is far greater than we are. So, we feel ourselves to be under his scrutiny, and in danger of being judged ourselves if we do not regard you as being more important than ourselves, for his sake.

Many things were discussed when we met. Our conversation could have gone on to provide a more complete understanding, or to exacerbate our disagreement. However, we judged that we understood well enough that, we can now hope to accurately speak to what we learned from you, about your differences with us.  When we cite examples, then, it is only to illustrate the sort of thing we mean.  They are not charges, against which you would be expected to defend yourself; rather, they are a warning intended to be instructive to all.

We appreciate the trust you placed in us so that you would speak to us frankly and respectfully about how your faith in Christ is entwined with convictions concerning ancestry and culture, and segregation.  In particular we stated at the time, and we  repeat at this time, that it is our settled intention to impose a prohibition or barrier, not only around you but also restricting all members and prospective members of the mission or church of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in  Coeur d'Alene.  This ban will forbid all who are within the jurisdictions under our authority, either  to instruct or to encourage others in those doctrines, either publicly or in private (outside your own family), because to do so would be to subvert the faith of the Church and bring scandal upon its members, and dishonor to the name of Christ (cf. 1 Timothy 1:3-4), i.e.

• It is forbidden to teach that there is a limit of genealogical or cultural distance, something other than faith in Christ alone, beyond which God disapproves of marriage between one man and one woman, who are Christians by faith.
• It is forbidden to teach that God disapproves of and will punish those who deliberately ignore the difference between distinct peoples so as to bring different tribes or nationalities into close proximity with one another, even including in the church, breaking down a wall of separation that God has created and intends to maintain.
• It is forbidden to teach that white Europeans are heirs of Christendom or Christian civilization in the sense that, even apart from faith, that is the promised Kingdom of God on earth, for which our Lord taught us to pray, "thy kingdom come".

In the fear of God, We command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to whom we shall give an account on the last day not only for what we have done and have believed, but also for what we have taught you to believe and to do:   these doctrines shall not be taught .

This is an ominous pronouncement, extraordinary for any church judicatory to place upon a member of the Church, and it requires some special explanation. First, we will describe from our conversations and other reports, a distillation of those beliefs and moral actions that hamper your communion with fellow Christians, and from which it is our duty to protect our members and to seek your good by counseling you to separate yourself from the idol that so endangers you.  Second, We will attempt to persuade you of a better way. Next, we will establish that we have authority sufficient to declare this ban, as well as an obligation to do so.

We have made an effort to discern those matters which must be made public for the protection of the church, in order to distinguish them from those things that you have entrusted to us in confidence.  In regard to more confidential matters we will address you more confidentially - not here, where we are pronouncing curses - but elsewhere, to bless you, and to strengthen you against anything that may subvert, weaken or destroy your faith, in order that with all the saints you may comprehend the length and breadth and height and depth, and may know the terms under which your communion with us in Christ's love may be continued and improved, Lord willing.

A distillation of errors

1. Compromise of the Sufficiency of Scripture :  

Nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men to the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, which is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.

1. We urge you first of all to remember what you affirmed without reservation when you were examined concerning your faith: you professed a sincere belief in the Scriptures as the only guide given to mankind, to direct us in the knowledge of God and the duty God requires of men.
2. But to this Holy Word you have added another revelation or guide, in obedience to which you are dividing your faith in God.  

1. Natural revelation  - the knowledge of the wisdom   and power of God, which may be derived from the study of history and other natural things, is of a different kind and authority, compared to Scripture. Natural revelation cannot be a source by which men may be commanded in the name of God, to believe it, or to do it, in order to fulfill the purposes of God.   There is no knowledge of good and evil that we can obtain by following our natural desires or reason,  so that we may actually gainsay what God says concerning himself and his will.

• Christendom and White heritage
• Genetics and sociology

2. Tradition  - there is no authoritative person or authority by the naming of which the plain teaching of Scripture can be overthrown, even if that name is highly revered or ancient, and even if our communion in the faith, with the one named, is never in question.  

• Segregationist ideas among church Fathers such as Cyprian
• Anti-semitic teachings of Luther
• The defense of segregationism by revered Old School Presbyterians, e.g. or our own J. Gresham Machen
• The support of Jim Crow and Apartheid
• Segregationists or supremacists past or present, in communion with us
• Adding to Scripture by tradition, for example adding that the wife of Ham was a descendent of Cain, without Scriptural warrant.

     4.   Private interpretation   - refusal to accept what the Scriptures say  

• The mixed multitude, brought out of Egypt and another later, out of Babylon (Exod 12:38)
• Zipporah the wife of Moses is a gentile, and probably of dark complexion (Exod 2:15-25)
• Gentiles are in the genealogy of Jesus, for example Ruth 2 refers repeatedly to Ruth as a foreigner, i.e. Gentile, Tamar and Rahab - Canaanites, i.e. Gentiles
• Gentiles and Jews worship together in the New Testament churches. Paul calls separation along ethnic lines a denial of the Gospel (Galatians 2:11-21)
• A tithe of the men whom Jesus healed of leprosy, the tenth man who returned to Jesus after he was healed to offer praise to God, was a foreigner like yourselves. (Luke 17:11-19; cf Deuteronomy 10:19)

Justifying and defending divisiveness in the Church of Jesus Christ  cannot be reconciled with  the saving work of Jesus Christ who came to destroy the wall of hostility between God and man and between man and man. This eradication was already foreshadowed in the vision God gave Ezekiel of a Temple without a court of the Gentiles segregated by a wall.

You are to divide this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the foreigners who dwell among you and who have children. You are to treat them as native-born Israelites ; along with you, they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the foreigner dwells, you are to assign his inheritance there, declares the Lord GOD,' ( Ezekiel 47:21-23).

What was implicit in the Old Testament the New Testament makes explicit. Paul describes one new people of God formed into Christ’s one body. Ephesians 2 describes an undifferentiated people of God without distinctions.

        

 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit, (Eph 2: 14-22 ).

To balkanize or “babelize” what Christ has united through his once for all sacrifice is a denial that at Christ's ascension  he took his seat at the right hand of God the Father and is ruling and reigning now.

At this point you will probably be thinking, "but God divided the nations in Genesis 11!" First, we admonish you to speak correctly. This division  is not a creation ordinance.  This division  came thousands of years after Creation, and it was imposed by God to await that time when they would be gathered to God,  who came down from heaven, to call upon his Name (for He was never far from any of them).

In Genesis 4, God does levy a curse of damnation against Cain, but it deals with cultivation and wandering, not salvation.

And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, (Gen 4:11-12).

The promise of a deliverer in Genesis 3 for all humanity that calls on the Name of the Lord is not invalidated by Genesis 4:11-12. Nor is the deliverer only promised for the line of Seth to the exclusion of the descendents of Cain. So even before the flood there was no idea that salvation was restricted to the line of Seth. Two factors concerning chapter four are relevant to this understanding of the promise of salvation .

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.”  To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people  began to call upon the name of the LORD, (Gen 4:25-26).

If God meant us to understand that salvation was restricted to the line of Seth, this concluding colon should have been left until the next chapter, where the next generation break of Genesis begins; 2:4-4:26 forms one narratival unit, and 5:1-6:8 forms the second. While the line of Cain was east of Eden, they were living at that time that men  began to call upon the Name of the Lord (italics indicates an indefinite collective noun inserted for good English flow, but not in the Hebrew). The Curse of Cain did not bar his descendents from calling upon the Name of the Lord.

There is but one family descending from Adam and Eve,  and after the flood from Noah and his wife. Our Savior was born into our family (Luke 3:38), so that in him all the families of the earth might be blessed according the promise given to his ancestor Abraham (Matthew 1:2).

At Babel, God divided the languages of a single people , thus sowing the division of nations and cultures. This single family was living together four generations after the Flood (Gen 11:17). If the curse against Canaan (Gen 9:25) was meant to divide these peoples permanently, why is it that it is not until the days of Peleg, that God divided the languages and thus divided the peoples? The divisions were meant to preserve the line of the Messiah and so that all could come to him. It is telling that the very nations that were divided are part of Abram’s call in Genesis 12.

 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. In order that I will make of you a great nation, and in order that I will bless you and make your name great, in order that that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed ,” (Gen 12:1-3).

Abram’s call mentions the nations and speaks of their inclusion. In the same way Isaiah looking forward to the coming of Christ sees a ingathering of the excluded. For example, eunuchs had been excluded from the worship of the Triune God under the Mosaic administration and yet Isaiah forsees a day when even the eunuchs will be fruitful in the Kingdom of our Lord. However, the inclusion of the nations did not wait until the coming of Christ. We see many examples of those from other ethnic groups joining themselves to the People of God, e.g. Caleb, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah, just to name a few.

While in the Old Testament, we see a few brought into the covenant community by faith, Christ reunites all those whom he has redeemed by his accomplished redemption. At Pentecost, he gave a sign that Christ had ended the division of the Nations for those who were united to Christ. The speaking in tongues was an audible sign that Babel was defeated for those in Christ Jesus (Acts 2:5-13). Christ’s redemption brings about the end of sin, the end of enmity between God and man, and between man and man.

We share your distaste of worldly counterfeits of the reconciliation that is ours in Christ. Yet we do not fight one form of worldliness, multiculturalism, with a different form of worldliness, segregationism. We put before you that Christ is making a better way.  The Christian is a new creation.

...if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come, (2 Cor 5:17).

For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation, (Gal 6:15).

So the unity we have in Christ surpasses any old unions we had whether of race, creed, or gender. These realities do not pass away but they are to be counted as dung in comparison to the new reality of our union with Christ, the hope of glory, and our union with the new humanity that Christ is forming out of the old (Phil 2:8).

To segregate again the people of God is to deny that Christ has accomplished all that he has said he has accomplished in his word. This is why when Peter built a fence between the Jewish Christians and the Gentiles Christians in Galatia, Paul rebuked him for denying the Gospel. The Gospel is a declaration that Yahweh has returned to Zion and is ruling and reigning in his Church (Isaiah 24:23; 40:1-3, 9-11; Zech 8:3, inter alia ). Christ’s ruling and reigning means that the ordering of his church is not left to any human. And since Christ has commanded the full unity of his people, in all their relationships as Brothers and Sisters in Christ to so divide again what Christ has brought together is a diminution of Christ’s victory over sin, death, and hell and an usurpation of Christ’s prerogatives! In his rule, Christ has become our peace. First before God, and then between our brothers and sisters in Christ. Any attempts to re-erect a wall of partition is not only an attempt to alienate brother from brother in Christ, but is to rebuild what separated men from their God. It is, to repeat Paul,  a denial of the Gospel ! For to reintroduce these categories is to submit to the elementary principles of the world. They have the appearance of wisdom, because the remaining corruption in the believer is too easily seduced by the wisdom of the world.

A defense of the authority  and obligation of the church to forbid false teaching

The church, as governed and represented  by the eldership, has the authority to prohibit its members from teaching false and/or divisive doctrines. The apostle Paul writes words that are a stunning rebuke to much of the individualistic Christianity that has become so pervasive in our day:

 

These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly; but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, (1 Timothy 3:14-15).

 

The church of God is the pillar and ground of the truth! This does not mean the church is the source of truth; that belongs to God alone. The church is built upon the unmovable foundation of Jesus Christ, who is the head of the church. This does mean, though, nothing less than the church is the protector and support of God’s truth. And as such, the church is not just permitted, but is required to protect the truth from all that would encroach upon it. This by no means is to be taken that the church is somehow infallible in its understanding and interpretation of God’s truth. It does mean the church must be diligent in searching the Scripture to make sure it is coming ever more to a perfect understanding of truth, and guiding its members in that path.

 

One particular outcome is that the church will need to take steps to maintain the purity of the church, which in the case of particularly pernicious doctrines and understandings may require the serious step of demanding the cessation of any such teaching. We see this very thing spoken of by Paul regarding the church at Ephesus, where he explicitly tells Timothy to command some to stop teaching certain things:

 

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith, (1 Tim 1:3-4).

 

In another of his pastoral epistles, Paul demands of Titus that he guard the truth with all firmness:

 

Speak these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority.  Let no one despise you, (Titus 2:15).

 

In the context of his epistle to Titus, Paul is speaking about all manner of issues of both doctrine and conduct within and without the church, and ends with Paul speaking of the church’s authority to enforce these things.

 

To further underscore the critical nature of the church’s role in supporting truth in its midst, we find Paul with all forcefulness exhorting Timothy to contend for the truth:

I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word!  Be ready in season and out of season.  Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching, For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables, (2 Tim 4:1-4).

 

Paul warns Timothy that he is not preaching just for the joy of it, but for two very serious reasons. First, he is accountable before God, charged with preaching, convincing, rebuking, and exhorting. Second, this is for the eternal good of his hearers.

 

Scripture is clear that the church, as governed by its leadership, is accountable before God to maintain the purity of the church, and as such must take all reasonable steps to fulfill this awesome task.