The decision of Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA) in St. Louis, Missouri to host the Revoice Conference has raised quite a ruckus in the Presbyterian Church of America and some other evangelical denominations. The purpose of the conference is:
Supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same-sex-attracted, and other LGBT Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic, Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.
A PCA teaching elder and lead pastor of the sponsoring church is a speaker at the conference along with several graduates of and one professor from Covenant Theological Seminary, the PCA’s official seminary.
The problem, as well noted by critics, is that the literature and supporters of the conference refuse to identify lustful desires of any sort–in this case homosexual–as a sin.
Here is how the conference organizers explain their belief about human sexuality:
We believe that the Bible restricts sexual activity to the context of a marriage covenant, which is defined in the Bible as the emotional, spiritual, and physical union of a man and a woman that is ordered toward procreation. At the same time, we also believe that the Bible honors those who live out an extended commitment to celibacy, and that unmarried people should play a uniquely valuable role in the lives of local faith communities.
While the organizers don’t call sexual activity outside of marriage a sin, they at least acknowledge such activity is “restricted” by the Bible to within the confines of marriage. But what they don’t do is deal with issues of the heart, such as sexual lust.
A statement from the president and faculty of Covenant Seminary takes a similar approach:
Outside of this context [of marriage], sexual activity is sinful—whether heterosexual or homosexual—and requires wise pastoral care and discipline when committed by those in the church.
Covenant echoes the belief of the conference organizers that sexual activity outside of marriage is not biblical–and goes further by acknowledging it as sinful, but also repeats their silence on sins of the heart.
Of course, this isn’t how Jesus talks about the heart:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27–28 ESV)
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was teaching His people about the coming Kingdom, how it would be very different from what they were used to. In particular, He wanted to point them toward a reliance on His righteousness by faith for their salvation. Part of doing this was showing them how Israel and its leaders had misunderstood the teaching of Scripture and how this had led the priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees and Sadducees to rely on a righteousness earned by their works, and thus they saw no need for the saving work of Jesus Christ.
It is particularly surprising that teaching elders, professors, and seminary graduates in a reformed denomination such as the PCA would make the same mistake the leaders of Israel made. For in focusing on sexual activity rather than the sexual lusts of the heart, they are repeating some of the errors of the Catholic Church that drove Martin Luther and others to lead the Protestant Reformation. Self-righteousness by one’s works does not lead to eternal salvation.
Thus supporters of the conference within the PCA are leaving the souls of adulterers of all stripes in eternal peril–celibates filled with unrepentant lust are not relying on Christ’s righteousness for salvation. Instead, they are laying up for themselves “treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 5:19).
Interestingly, this approach comes not from the Protestant or Reformed tradition, but from the Catholic. Denny Burk and Rosaria Butterfield explain the internal desire to do something that is sinful is, in fact, sinful itself, but Catholics don’t exactly see it that way:
The Reformed Tradition differs from Roman Catholicism in its understanding of Augustine’s doctrine of concupiscence. Concupiscence is simply the Latin translation of the Greek New Testament’s terms for desire (epithumia, epithumeō). Augustine understands this desire to be the key pre-behavioral component of our sin. Such desire consists of the fallen inclinations that we all continually experience before ever actually choosing to sin. In a sermon on Romans 7, Augustine describes it this way:
[The apostle Paul] gives the name of sin, you see, to that from which all sins spring, namely to the lust [concupiscence] of the flesh.
The key point here is that Augustine identifies the desire to sin as sin….
The Roman Catholic tradition, however, departs from Augustine on this point and reflects the view that concupiscence is not itself sin, and that only conscious acts of the will can truly be deemed to be sinful. This explains why the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls homosexual sexual activity sinful but stops short of calling homosexual desire sinful and instead labels the desire as “objectively disordered”—because not properly ordered to the good of marriage—but not in itself sinful.
Douglas Wilson picks up on this idea as he points us to the 39 Articles of the Episcopal Church:
“the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, φρονημα σαρκος, (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin” (Article 9).
The emphasis there, incidentally, is mine. Temptation that assaults us from without, as the serpent did with Eve and with Adam, is not sin. Temptation that comes from the devil in the wilderness, attacking the faithful Son of God, is not sin. Temptation that arises from the flesh, from our remaining sin, from the remaining brokenness of our nature, has of itself the nature of sin.
Concupiscence is not simply a biological desire, which is God-given. A desire to eat, or drink, to breathe, to run, to have sexual relations, are all within the boundaries of God’s kindness to us. We are creatures, and He has bestowed many potential pleasures on us, and it is no sin to want them. But concupiscence operates within the fallenness of our flesh, and wants things because they are forbidden. Paul calls this bent our “members which are on the earth.”
Burk and Butterfield go straight to the source to identify the Reformed perspective in this debate:
Perhaps the classic expression of this comes from John Calvin, who also acknowledges his explicit appropriation of Augustine on the point in 3.3.10 of his Institutes:
We hold that there is always sin in the saints, until they are freed from their mortal frame, because depraved concupiscence resides in their flesh, and is at variance with rectitude. Augustine himself does not always refrain from using the name of sin, as when he says, “Paul gives the name of sin to that carnal concupiscence from which all sins arise. This in regard to the saints loses its dominion in this world, and is destroyed in heaven.” In these words he admits that believers, in so far as they are liable to carnal concupiscence, are chargeable with sin.
The support for this conference appears to be another example of worldliness, i.e., a desire for respect from the world, shaping the understanding of Scripture of some in the PCA, and moving them away from the historic, Reformed perspective on this issue. And also moving them away from the ability to love sinners and help them to repent of whatever sinful desires they may have.
Read the rest of Burk and Butterfield’s article here.
Read the rest of Wilson’s article here.
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