Thoughts on GA: Wither the Word? Wither the Water and the Wine?

Over the next few posts I’d like to offer some reflections on this past week’s PCA General Assembly.

The first item I’d like to comment on is the seminar given by Tim Keller and Ligon Duncan on the topic of why the Presbyterian Church in America should stay together rather than splintering apart. Keller’s talk was the more noteworthy of the two, which is why I will focus my comments there.

Keller contends that the PCA consists largely of three types or groups of people: doctrinalists, pietists, and culturalists. The doctrinalists are those who, as the label suggests, are highly concerned with doctrinal precision and strict subscription to the Westminster Standards; the pietists are those for whom personal conversion and experimental sanctity are among the highest of priorities; the culturalists are those who see the transformation of society as being the paramount goal of the church. In a word, person #1 looks for a theological expression of Presbyterianism, person #2 looks for a personal and existential one, while person #3 seeks his faith to be expressed in the public square.

Keller argues that the fact that American Presbyterianism has traditionally tended to take one of these three forms demonstrates how much each of these categories is actually part of our collective DNA. Like the man who avoids his own brother only to have a son who grows up to be just like him, so one of these factions within the PCA simply cannot avoid the others—we each carry the traits of our opponents in our very bloodstream, so there’s no use trying to extricate ourselves. Keller argued that we actually need one another to keep our own selves in check, and that the PCA is really the only Reformed denomination in this country with this degree of diversity—most of the others are exceedingly more homogenous than we are. "We're one but we're not the same" and all that.

In my mind, the flaw in Keller’s threefold taxonomy (which is not really his but Wolterstorff’s), is the fact that if it is accurate then I am not a part of the PCA. I mean, I am sure he would place me in the doctrinalist camp (if he knew me well enough to place me anywhere), but I certainly don’t see myself as belonging there. With the possible exception of the two months immediately following my discovering Banner-of-Truth-Christianity, I have never once preached a doctrinal sermon (as in, “My three points this morning are the Nature, Means, and Fruit of Justification”). In fact, none of Keller’s presumed doctrinalists would ever preach that way—at least not that I have heard—and neither would they think of themselves as doctrinalists.

(And I’m sure it goes without saying that I am no pietist, and if possible, even less so a culturalist.)

So where does that put me and my friends within the PCA?

Well, unless there is a category somewhere that transcends the well-worn conservative/liberal breakdown (which Keller’s categories seem to assume), then the answer is pretty much nowhere.

If, however, there were a category according to which I could express my faith ecclesiastically rather than doctrinally, personally, or culturally, then not only would I find myself quite at home there, but I think it would make a comfy abode for the hundreds of other old-school Presbyterians in our denomination. If there were an option of understanding my faith as tied to things like Word, water, and wine on the Lord’s Day, well, that would please me just fine.

But there’s the rub, innit? It’s hard enough to actually practice churchly Presbyterianism in the PCA without succumbing to attendance-envy toward the congregation down the road that’s redeeming a bunch of stuff for Christ, starting with what constitutes acceptable worship of God. But when the conversation doesn’t even make the concept of churchly Presbyterianism a conceivable option, well, it makes defending it well-nigh impossible.