{"id":583,"date":"2012-10-29T14:43:20","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T21:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/?p=583"},"modified":"2012-11-19T00:14:12","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T08:14:12","slug":"important-cases-go-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/29\/important-cases-go-to-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Important Cases Go to Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

The PC(USA) G.A. Judicial Commission to hear three major cases<\/a>. One is a ruling by the Los Ranchos Presbytery to reinstate the old “fidelity and chastity” clause of the Book of Order at a more local level. The Synod ruled such resolutions were constitutional. So it’s being appealed. This is the “tails you lose, heads we win” school of polity. More-local councils should only be allowed to make decisions when they make the right decisions. Or at least the politically correct ones.<\/p>\n

But you say, connectionalism requires that presbyteries are subordinate to [the discernment of the will of God expressed by the Holy Spirit through] the councils to which they belong? Hmm. I’m minded of this observation by Kevin DeYoung<\/a>, which is generally supportive of a presbyterian approach to church discipline:<\/p>\n

the elders in a Presbyterianism system serve as Christ\u2019s representatives and with Christ\u2019s authority, but they are not mini-Christs. The presbyters do not have a blank check to decide whatever they want. The keys of the kingdom must always be tied to the King\u2019s words.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The context was discipline within the local church, but if you change elders to presbyteries, or synods, or the general assembly PJC, it’s still true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The PC(USA) G.A. Judicial Commission to hear three major cases. One is a ruling by the Los Ranchos Presbytery to reinstate the old “fidelity and chastity” clause of the Book of Order at a more local level. The Synod ruled such resolutions were constitutional. So it’s being appealed. This is the “tails you lose, heads … Continue reading »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[229,670,45,677],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ordination","tag-pcusa","tag-presbyterian","tag-sexuality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}