Volume 1: Issue 2 | July 2018
Editorial: Gnostic Errors
A few years ago at the high school where I taught, we were talking in the math faculty workroom, and I said something about our bodies being resurrected. A colleague near my age said, “I never heard that before!” Knowing she had been raised in the Methodist Church, I asked, “Can you still recite the Apostles’ Creed?” She rattled it off. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth….” but as she approached its conclusion, an air of wonder crept into her voice, and she slowed down, reciting the concluding words “…the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.” The Creed’s affirmation of our coming bodily resurrection was in the memorized words, but not in her thinking. Like many Christians, she wrongly thought that only our souls have an eternal destiny.
Younger Evangelical Christians are no more orthodox in their beliefs than she was, but with more excuse. They often do not even know the Apostles Creed. A professor at George Fox University recently wrote in a blog piece that the majority of his students do not believe in a coming bodily resurrection. What they want is an eternity of bliss with God, when the soul is finally free from its “meat suit.” Concerning the bodily Resurrection, they think more like ancient Greeks than like Christians.
When Paul preached in Athens, his hearers thought they heard him promoting two new gods, Jesus (male) and Resurrection (female gender in Greek), so they brought him before the local court on the charge of proclaiming unauthorized gods. On the contrary, Paul defended himself, “I preach the ‘unknown god’ whom you already worship, the Creator ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.’ It is unreasonable, therefore, to imagine He should be worshiped with the work of human hands. Until now, God let you alone in your ignorance, but now He commands everyone everywhere to repent. He has appointed his chosen Man as judge, making His choice clear by raising that Man from the dead.” (See Acts 17:22-32) When Paul got to the Resurrection from the dead, the court stopped listening and just laughed. Why?
Everyone has an idea about why life is awful and people are miserable. An ancient Greek answer was that in people a divine spark, a soul, is imprisoned in a material body. Cremation of the body at death would free a person’s divine spark. The Resurrection of the body, meaning back to prison for the soul, struck them as absurd and repellent. Gnostic heretics adopted this Greek idea, an essential soul inside a valueless material body. Naturally, they abhorred the idea of God come in the flesh and rejected what the Apostle John wrote: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every Spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God (I John 4:2).”
The varieties of Gnosticism used the name “Jesus” to spread his “secret” teaching – which only they possessed, and always very elaborate – claiming for it a way of salvation superior to what the public teaching of the Church her Scriptures. Denigrating the human body, they slandered the Creator of the material universe as a bad god, unlike the good God of love whom their Jesus supposedly revealed. Early Second Century books such as the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Philip, taught this Gnostic faith. The Christian Church fought a life and death battle against it for two centuries, using among other weapons the Apostles’ Creed, which begins by affirming the Creator as the one true God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and ends with the Resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
Gnostic errors, though repudiated, have never disappeared entirely from the Christian Church. They appear when people hope “to die and go to heaven,” a phrase found nowhere in the Bible; or when Christians talk about “soul winning”; or when people describe the Old Testament God as mean and the New Testament God as kind and loving; or when they call alcohol itself evil; and in other ways as well.
In A Little Strength, we will address Christian versions of the old Gnostic error that denigrates the material human body while exalting only the human soul. We will also criticize Gnostic thinking now romping through our culture, in such follies as the ambition of some in Silicon Valley to upload human minds into the computer cloud and achieve immortality apart from the human body; or the desire to distinguish biological sex and gender from each other; or the American Supreme Court’s diktat that two men or two women can make a valid marriage.
The Gnostic error about human nature, denying the equal realities of being made from the dust, male and female like the animals, and also made in God’s image, remains a potent and dangerous error. It undermines Christian faith and distorts godly ethics. We aim to give it no quarter.
-- Bill Edgar
Women Teaching in the Church
Sermon Excerpt from John Edgar
"I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control."
-- I Timothy 2:8-15
Editor's Note: The whole sermon can be found on Sermonaudio.com, entitled "Getting Dressed for Church."
Now we come to verse 11, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.” What does that mean? Verse 12 explains it: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.”
First we must establish the scope of this command. I Timothy 3:15 tells us what these paragraphs are about: they are about how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God. So I Timothy 2:11-12 does not mean that women may not become schoolteachers. Nor does it mean that a woman cannot explain the gospel, since Priscilla with Aquilla explained the gospel to Apollos more accurately (see Acts 18:26). It means that in God’s house, when the church is assembled for worship, a woman is not to proclaim the gospel. The church’s official teacher is to be a man.
“Or exercise authority over a man.” It is important to keep this whole phrase together. Sometimes the verse is quoted as ‘a woman may not exercise authority,’ but that badly distorts what Paul wrote. A mother has authority over her children, a wife often has authority over household and business finances (see Proverbs 31), and women and men together have authority over creation (see Genesis 1). The precise scope of Paul’s instruction is important, within the church; its qualifier, over a man, is likewise important. Paul makes no judgment about a woman being a boss in the workplace, queen in a kingdom, or president of a republic, but God declares that in His house (see I Timothy 3:15) those who provide the authoritative teaching and exercise authority are to be men.
Immediately after our passage, Paul gives the qualifications of elders, both teaching and ruling. Among those qualifications is that an elder must be a man. Paul makes that requirement absolutely clear by using the specific Greek word for a male, aner, rather than the general word for a human, anthropos.
So the scope of “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” is specific to the Church, and the teaching is crystal clear. In the church assembly, women are to learn quietly, as indeed most everyone must learn quietly. How can learning take place if the teacher cannot be heard? And women are not to have authority over men, meaning that the elders who exercise church discipline and oversee the church’s life must be men.
Many denominations today disregard this passage in I Timothy and other passages like 1 Corinthians 11 & 14. Among your fellow Christians, some will have female pastors. If I go to a general meeting of ministers in this area, I meet female pastors, some of whom are better at remembering names than I am. Clearly many people object to this passage. Some simply ignore it, but others try to interpret it away. What objections do they make to the obvious and long-accepted understanding of it explained above?
Objection 1: It says, “I do not permit,” which they take to mean that Paul did not permit women to teach, back then, but his practice does not bind us today. The unusual “I do not permit” signals us that this was merely his practice, not the permanent will of God.
Answer 1: Paul just said in verse 7 that he was the teacher of the Gentiles. As Gentiles, we should hear our teacher!
Answer 2: More generally, Paul was an apostle of the Lord. What he teaches in holy Scripture is not optional. If he did not permit it, it is because the Lord does not permit it. Objection 1 tears Scripture apart, and pretends that when we read it we only deal with the human author. If indeed we are only dealing with human authors, why not go home? Why are any of these words binding? Indeed, going home is just what many in denominations that have changed their practice in recent decades to ordain women as elders are doing. People are staying home, and these denominations are dramatically aging and shrinking. The phrasing, “I do not permit,” does not make Paul’s instructions optional. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul in writing his letter to Timothy, and what it does not permit is not permitted.
Objection 2: This is an ad hoc letter to the church in Ephesus. That is, it was written to address a specific situation. Therefore, its conclusions are not binding generally on the church in all times and places.
Answer: This objection raises all kinds of questions about the New Testament. Virtually all of its letters were ad hoc letters, that is, they were all written to meet specific situations. This objection, that Paul was only writing to address some unknown special situation in Ephesus, opens the door to getting rid of all of the teaching in the ad hoc letters of the New Testament that does not appear right to our own [contemporary] eyes. We actually know the crisis that caused Paul to write his letter to the Galatians. Does anyone conclude from the fact that Paul wrote Galatians to deal with a specific crisis in those churches that in other churches another gospel than the one Paul preached is acceptable?
It is possible that a given command might be given just for one church in its own situation, but we must read carefully and humbly. Since the Holy Spirit has placed I Timothy in the Scriptures, our starting assumption must be that the Spirit means it for all churches in all places at all times. The intended universal application of I Timothy 2:11-12, in fact, explains why Paul writes, ‘I do not permit.’ The point is that he does not permit it anywhere; he does not mean it just for Ephesus, and his permission matters because he is an Apostle of Jesus Christ. As Paul writes elsewhere, all the churches do it this way (see I Corinthians 14). Women don’t teach in the public assembled worship nor exercise an elder’s authority in any of them.
Objection 3: Women did not teach in any churches back then due to the prejudices of the era. Our culture is more advanced and more just where women are concerned than the ancient world was. The cultural assumptions that limited the church in Paul’s day cannot be permitted to limit the church in our time and place.
Answer: Now this is an interesting objection. Might it work? Jesus said that the divorce laws Moses gave Israel were because of “the hardness of their hearts, but from the beginning it was not so (Matthew 19:8).” Might the same thing be said about Paul’s instructions to Timothy? Is it because of the hard hearts in the Mediterranean world of the First Century that Paul could not permit women to teach?
Let’s look at the reasons Paul gives for his rule. Does he say, for example, that the rule is so as not to offend outsiders? The reasons Paul gives should help us figure out if these verses are truly binding on all, or were only to accommodate the prejudices of his time and place.
Verse 13: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” is the reason Paul gives for his command. He speaks of Genesis 2, as Jesus did when he spoke about divorce. But notice the difference. While Jesus used Genesis 2 to show that the Old Testament’s regulation of divorce was of limited scope, Paul uses Genesis 2 to show that the New Testament’s regulation of women teaching is permanent! The reason is grounded in creation: “for Adam was created first, then Eve.” This is not a culturally based reason at all. It is not a hardness of heart issue. It is based on what God did in the beginning, before human sin, independent of any human action.
The Scripture indicates that Jesus does not, in this life, alter the order of creation. Instead, we still live in His world, and are subject to its order. Jesus saves us from sin, not from creation. As I Timothy goes on to say in chapter 4, everything created by God is good.
Now why should the order of creation matter for teaching and authority in the church? First of all, both Jesus and Paul teach that it does, especially since it came before sin distorted human relations with God and with one another. What God created good, is good! Second, older foundational arrangements govern what comes later, as when God declared Abraham righteous by faith before he was circumcised (see Romans 4). Finally, Genesis 2 shows that only Adam heard God’s instruction about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve had to hear about the rule from him, so Adam became the first teacher.
Does this divine rule, that selected men must bear the teaching and ruling office in God’s house, imply that men and women have a different value? No. In Genesis 1, which precedes Genesis 2, God declares that male and female alike and together bear the image and likeness of God. God calls male and female together “Man” and tells them to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth.
When some call God’s rule that in the Church of God a woman may not teach or rule over a man unfair, they make a basic error: that if two humans have the same intrinsic value as humans they must therefore be permitted to do the same things, or there is an injustice.
The basic error in this charge of injustice stems from not fully understanding God in whose image we are made. The three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, equal in power and glory (see Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 6). But in their salvation of fallen Man, the three Persons of the Godhead have not all done the same things for our salvation. Though equal in substance with the Father, the Son submitted to the Father’s will. The Son sent the Spirit to testify of Him. Therefore, those who bear the image of God should not say, “If there is equal worth, there must be identical roles.” Immediately after Genesis 1 tells us that we are made in God’s image and likeness, it tells us that Man is male and female, equally Man but not having identical assignments in God’s world. Women, for example, bear children; men do not, no matter how much a man may want to do so nor how gifted he may think he is to be a mother. Thus, it has to be the seed of the woman that will crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15).
God formed Adam first, then Eve, and the Bible says that this chronological order of Creation matters for who does the teaching in the public assemblies of Christ’s House and who exercises the authority of elders. Therefore, Paul’s instructions to Timothy concerning church order in Ephesus were not a concession to first century Mediterranean cultural prejudices. They are God’s will for His Church, where He, not we, make the rules, including that a woman is not to exercise authority over a man, nor is she to teach with authority.
When our sense of rightness conflicts with what the Scriptures teach, it is our sense of rightness that needs to change, not the Word of Christ who dwells in His Church by the Spirit whom He has sent.
Prayer Request: Saying Thank You
Request: Ask God to make you, your family, and your church expressively thankful people, who often and regularly say, “Thank you,” both to God and to other people. Children learn to say “Please” more readily than they do “Thank you,” but the “Thank you” in God’s eyes is at least as important as “Please.”
Some years ago, a teacher came into our math faculty workroom with an air of wonder and delight, telling us, “A student actually said ‘Thank you,’ to me today.” I said, “Yes, Jesus once healed ten lepers, and only one came back to say, ‘Thank you.’ Since I’ve been teaching, I’ve concluded His ten percent was actually high!”
Several verses to pray over about saying “Thank you:” one that commands thanking God in all circumstances and not grumbling against His Providence, one that is from Paul’s thank you note to the church in Philippi, and one that tells how not thanking God leads to a darkening of the spirit and loss of the truth.
1. “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you (I Thessalonians 5:18).”
2. “Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. I have received full payment, and more. I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God (Philippians 4:115-18).”
3. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1:21-22).”
Send stories about some unusual situation in which someone said thank you to you, or you said thank you to God or to someone else. Send the story either to Bill Edgar (b.edgar@verizon.net) or to John Edgar (johnevniki@comcast.net).
--Bill Edgar
Get to Know Your Members
Hunter and Angela Jackson, Broomall RPC
Where are you each from?
Angela – I was born and raised in New Jersey. Clayton is where I spent most of my childhood.
Hunter – I was also born and raised in Jersey. I spent most of my childhood in Pennsauken. We moved to the suburbs of Sewell right before my final two years of high school.
What did you believe about God growing up? What did your family teach you? Did you go to church? Where?
Angela – I knew Jesus loved me and died on the Cross, for me. I was five when I prayed the Sinner’s Prayer with my mom. My siblings and I attended various non-denominational churches in the area and attended a Christian school in Vineland, NJ from K-12. My older sister and I eventually joined a Baptist church in Glassboro, mainly for the youth group.
Hunter – My mother prayed for us (my sister and me) and with us. She encouraged me to pray about my nightmares when I was a child. We went to a Baptist church in Lindenwold, NJ, that taught a lot of wrong things, but it exposed me to the Bible and God’s desire to be in relationship with His creation. The pastor of this church taught what is known as “health and wealth” teaching, but at the time I believed it to be true Christianity. I grew up with my mother, sister, and grandmother. Not having any male role models or examples, I struggled with a lot of things I felt I couldn’t share with them and was ignorant to what being a godly man meant.
How did things change as you went through high school and beyond?
Angela – I became very legalistic and self-righteous at my Christian school. I would say that I had a works based view of my salvation and just focused on trying to do “good things.” Upon graduating high school, I attended a Bible college where the Lord started to reveal to me I couldn’t earn my salvation. I went to Bible college with plans to become an overseas missionary, but the Lord since has changed my plans.
Hunter – Similarly to Angie, I became very legalistic. I believed I had to be obedient in order to receive blessings and favor from the Lord (the health and wealth gospel). What I wanted was to be a stronger and faster athlete, so my “piety” was linked to that goal. In college, those beliefs were shattered. I wasn’t performing well in football and my “unholy” teammates were. I couldn’t make sense of it. After that, I just started seeking fun and excitement!
How did you meet? Get together?
Angela/Hunter – Hunter showed up at the Baptist church in Glassboro as a new youth intern. It was during the summer Angie was leaving to attend college in Florida. Angie knew of him for five years and heard good things about him from friends and her sister while she was away. Angie came back to Jersey the Spring of 2015 because her grandmother’s health was failing. During this period, Hunter gave Angie a book called, Ordinary by Michael Horton. Hunter asked Angie to read it and wanted to hear her thoughts on it because it was the opposite of what she was taught and believed about the Christian life (having to be an extraordinary Christian). Angie read the whole book and agreed to have coffee with Hunter, where Hunter explained his beliefs about Reformed Theology, and also his desire to marry Angie. We had a short dating and engagement period because we wanted to be married as soon as possible.
What led you to God?
Angela– Trials from a very young age; my parents divorced when I was eight. The Lord’s grace in my hurts and needs brought me to Him.
Hunter – Books! A friend gave me a book by A.W. Pink. His writing opened up the Bible to me in a way that opposed all the learning I received as a child. Learning about depravity was really the breaking point, because as I was reading Pink I knew I was wicked and loved my sin.
What led you to visit Broomall?
Angela – See Hunter’s answer. :)
Hunter – It is a very long story. I was serving as a youth pastor at a Baptist church in Glassboro. While serving there, I was studying and developing convictions that alarmed the pastor. Without telling any of the leadership, the pastor set up a meeting with the session at Broomall. I got to meet John Edgar and Will Werts, who asked me a series of questions. I asked some questions as well. When I left, I told Angie how encouraged I was. I was encouraged to know I wasn’t alone in some of the beliefs I had; at the time I only knew of dead theologians and churches in Scotland that believed in Psalmody. It was refreshing. The pastor at the Baptist church did not want me to explain the real reason I was leaving, so he developed some statements and stories that led to a lot of lying and gossip. It’s sad, but any chance we could get, Angie and I would visit Broomall.
What led you to join Broomall?
Angela – I had the conviction to be a part of a denomination with a Biblical church government.
Hunter – The people! When Angie and I left our old church, we were both very guarded because of our past hurt. However, the people at Broomall really made us feel like we could put our guard down.
How has God helped you in the last few years?
Angela – In learning to become an obedient follower of Christ, in understanding repentance, and continuing to break free from legalism. The Lord is also helping me to be a loving, patient wife and mother to my twin girls.
Hunter – The Lord has shown me His faithfulness throughout so many life changes, that He has given me rest from anxiety and worry.
What are you most thankful for at this point in your lives?
Angela – My husband and our healthy chunky babies.
Hunter – My wife and children. Angie has stood by me through a lot; it makes me want to be a better husband and father. I am also grateful that my girls will have a present father. In my family line, they will be the first in living memory. My sister and I were raised without our father. My mother was largely raised without her father. My grandmother was also raised without her father. In His grace, it seems that the Lord has decided to bless Angie and me with a family to change certain dynamics that have been the “norm” for far too long. I am grateful.
God's Will for Your Life: Proverbs Exposition
"Train up a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not depart from it."
-- Proverbs 22:6
“Train up a child…” is one of the few proverbs Christians quote today. It’s encouraging. Begin early, do it right, and your child will stay on the straight and narrow into old age. Trouble is, many believers “claim” this promise, train their children, and yet the children stray anyway. How come?
First, proverbs are “rules of thumb:” here is how our world of sin and woe usually works under God’s providential rule. Biblical proverbs, therefore, are not ironclad divine promises. For example, “A soft answer turns away wrath,” but David’s soft answers only turned King Saul’s anger away for short intervals. Generally, older people live by what they were taught when young, so train your child in the way he should go. But remember, every child is a born scoffer, resistant to instruction, and some choose to scoff at God until the day they die no matter what their parents teach them. At the same time, God holds parents like Eli and David responsible for not correcting their offspring.
Second, proverbs are not “how to” manuals either. Americans hear “train up” and go looking for a “how to” manual, thus providing a profitable market for the Ezzo method, Tedd Tripp’s shepherding a child’s [inaccessible] heart, the gospel of homeschooling, or Bill Gothard’s training manuals. But the Bible does not give us a “step one, step two, step three” child-rearing program any more than He gives us a “how to find a spouse” set of instructions. Writers who offer such programmatic guidance are charlatans, like those who claim to have discovered the year and day of the Lord’s return. Instead of a “how to” manual, God gives us means of grace: the Bible, prayer, preaching, generosity, Sabbath-keeping, the Sacraments, and central in Proverbs, parental instruction of children.
Third, father and mother are not the only ones with access to their child. My mother told me she felt great relief one day when she realized she was not the sole influence in Bill’s life. King Rehoboam chose his young friends’ foolish advice over the advice of Solomon’s older and wiser counselors. In fact, God Himself allowed Satan into the Garden where he could influence Eve and Adam in the direction of disobedience to God.
A different translation gets the spirit of Proverbs 22:6. “Start a boy on the right road, and even when he is old he will not leave it (New English Bible).” On what path do parents set their children? The one they themselves walk! A father and mother who live repentantly and courageously, with hope in God, faith in Jesus, love for God and neighbor, while worshiping God in family and Church, set their child on the right path. Then they must let go, as did the Prodigal Son’s father, a picture of our Father in heaven. In a famous parting, the father of John G. Paton, 19th Century Scottish Covenanter missionary to the New Hebrides Islands, said good-bye to his son with these words, “Your father’s God go with you.” He set his son on the right path, his father’s path, and then trusted the Lord to go with him to the end of life. And He did!
-- Bill Edgar
Book Review:
Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Bible by Jay Adams, 1980.
Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage by Jim Newheiser, 2017
The Westminster Confession of Faith defines marriage in Chapter 24, “Of Marriage and Divorce.” Our Testimony adds further teaching. If the Shorter Catechism had included “What is marriage?” among its questions, the answer would be a summary of WCF 24.1-2: “Marriage is a life-long covenant between a man and a woman to live as one flesh, for their mutual benefit and for the bearing of children.”
What does “one flesh” mean? Just what the words say, bodily sexual union of a man with a woman (see I Corinthians 6:14-20). That union at the heart of marriage establishes a single-family identity, with economic, emotional, legal and spiritual implications, even while husband and wife retain their own personal identities.
In Genesis 1:27-28, God identifies Man as male and female. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The profound juxtaposition of the singular “him” with the plural “them” reveals that the singular species Man is made up of two sexes. God’s subsequent command to “be fruitful and multiply” reveals the necessity of sexual union between a man and a woman (Genesis 1:29). Like the animals, fruitfulness requires the literal physical bodily union of male and female.
In Genesis 2, God declares it “not good” for the man, a single male, to be alone. No animal can remedy his aloneness. Why? Because the man needs a woman to be fruitful! The man’s chief lack was not someone to talk to. God talked with him. Animals furthermore make good companions, as dog and cat owners know. But only a woman could allow the man to obey God and be fruitful. From the first man, therefore, God made the first woman and brought her to the man, who exclaimed, “Finally, another human!” using words about their physical bodily identity. “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh (Genesis 2:23).”
Is it a marriage if there are no children? Yes, certainly. It happens often in this sin-cursed world. But as any Phillies baseball fan understands, while the goal of his team is to win games, it is still a baseball team when it loses. It is still a marriage without children. It is also still a marriage if there is little apparent “mutual benefit,” since some marriages turn out to be for worse rather than better, for sickness rather than for health. A publicly recognized covenant promise of man and woman to live faithfully as one flesh all their lives, and ordinarily the sexual consummation of that promise, means that God Himself has joined them together in a life-long marriage. As Jesus taught, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate (Mark 10:6-9).”
Do Jay Adams and Jim Newheiser have a good understanding of marriage? Both counselors spent years talking with unhappily married people. They know that good marriage counseling, and sound ethical teaching about divorce and remarriage, begins with understanding marriage. Unfortunately, both men badly mistake the heart of marriage, espousing “soul mate” marriage (my summary term for their teaching) to the near exclusion of “body mate” marriage. Their implicit disregard of fleshly bodies in discussing marriage begins with a misreading of Genesis 2.
In a textbook case of eisegesis (reading a meaning not there into a text), Adams transforms God’s judgment of fact, “It is not good for the man to be alone,” into the subjective emotional problem of “loneliness.” “In other words, the reason for marriage is to solve the problem of loneliness (italics his, p. 8).” “Love in marriage focuses on “giving one’s spouse the companionship he/she needs to eliminate loneliness (p. 12).” Marriage is “to keep each other from ever being lonely again (p. 13).” “This marriage union by covenant solves the problem of loneliness…(p. 16).” (Think of the Rob Thomas 2005 song, “Lonely No More” with the refrain “I don’t wanna be lonely anymore.”)
The trouble with Adams’ assertion that the purpose of marriage is to end loneliness is that it ignores the potentially fruitful one-flesh nature of marriage between a man and a woman. Friends, co-workers, neighbors, relatives, and fellow believers can address the problem of a person’s loneliness! If loneliness is the problem, a lonely man might do just as well, or better, with another man than a woman.
Newheiser makes the same mistake as Adams, reading “alone” as “loneliness.” He writes, “God designed marriage to provide the good gift of companionship. When Scripture initially declares the need for marriage, the focus is not on sexual gratification or the need to produce children. Rather we are told that the man needs a companion with whom he can share life, so that he won’t be lonely: ‘It is not good for the man to be alone (Genesis 2:18) (p. 8).’” Like Adams, Newheiser ignores Genesis 1 and the biology that made it “not good” for the first man to be alone: alone a man could never fill the earth with other image-bearers of God!
Throughout his account of marriage, Adams consistently places the marital physical relationship last. Husband and wife should be one “intellectually, emotionally, physically (p. 17).” The Seventh Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” deals primarily with bodily physical faithfulness, but Adams writes, “Companionship, therefore, is the essence of marriage (p. 8).” “A companion is one with whom you are intimately united in thoughts, goals, plans, efforts (and in the case of marriage, bodies) (p. 11-12).” The point of marriage is to have someone “with whom he (she) can talk things over, someone to counsel, someone to care; to share joys, perplexities, ideas, fears, sorrows, and disappointments: a helper (p. 16).” The Preacher in Ecclesiastes, by contrast, does not emphasize the advantage of having a soul mate with whom to share “thoughts, goals, plans, efforts.” When he writes, “two are better than one,” he describes a “body mate” who can keep you warm at night and pick you up when you literally fall down (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).
Newheiser does a little better than Adams. He writes, “In addition to companionship, the Lord has given marriage for sexual intimacy,” but he puts bodily unity after companionship. Quickly going on to assert, “This one-flesh union involves far more than sex,” he ignores the obvious purpose of sex in both in animals and humans, to produce offspring. In the last sentence of his chapter, “What is Marriage?” he finally mentions children. “A proper view of marriage is essential…for the training of children…. (p. 11).” That’s it. In his next chapter, “Why Did God Create the Institution of Marriage?” children merit a brief opening paragraph. Besides ignoring children in their focus on the affective side of marriage, neither Adams nor Newheiser discuss other central aspects of marriage, such as the sharing of material goods and the possible advantages of a division of labor between husband and wife.
Both Adams and Newheiser follow their accounts of marriage with divorce and remarriage issues, as well as advice for dealing with unhappy couples. However, misreading “alone” in Genesis 2 as “loneliness,” and their “soul mate” view of marriage show their devaluation of the material human body and of the mundane realities of things like laundry, car repair, and food preparation. This Gnostic way of thinking is an ancient error, fully rejected by the Christian Church, but it lingers on in many ways in Christian thinking.
One effect of a “soul mate” rather than a “body mate” view of marriage is that it disarms the Church when she opposes “gay marriage.” Two men can certainly provide companionship to each other and assuage loneliness. “Soul mate” marriage also allows an unhappy spouse to claim failure in communication (loneliness unsolved), or looking at lascivious pictures and videos as opposed to actual “one flesh” adultery with another flesh and blood creature, as suitable grounds for seeking a divorce.
Even though each book, especially Newheiser’s, has some helpful material in it, the Christian Church badly needs a more biblical account of marriage than either Adams or Newheiser provide. It probably won’t come from the counseling profession that unavoidably takes its agenda mostly from unhappy people it tries to help.
-- Bill Edgar
Notable Reformed Presbyterian Ministers Serving in Atlantic Presbytery Churches
James Renwick Willson
(1780-1851)
In a kind of apostolic succession, James McKinney (the 1793 Irish immigrant RP preacher who is the actual founder of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America), tutored the 1798 Scottish immigrant, Alexander McLeod. He in turn tutored James Renwick Willson, the fiery preacher who led the church through its 1833 split.
Unlike McKinney or McLeod, Willson himself was a fourth-generation American in a family that immigrated in 1713. His family oral tradition held that the father in the immigrant family was a brother of Margaret Willson, famously drowned in 1685 for refusing to take an oath declaring James VII head of the Church of Scotland in Wigtown. She was eighteen when she died a martyr to the truth.
The Willson family moved west with the frontier, and James Renwick Willson was born in a log cabin on a farm fifteen miles south of Pittsburgh. For income, the family sometimes turned their wheat into whiskey and marketed it down the Ohio River.
In his highly literate family, J.R. Willson later remembered reading and debating with his father John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. J.R.’s wife learned Hebrew, so that she could tutor their two sons and three daughters in the language. Both sons became Covenanter pastors, and all three daughters married Covenanter pastors.
From 1817-1840, Willson was pastor of the Coldenham Reformed Presbyterian Church, except for the years 1831-33, when he pastored a Reformed Presbyterian church in Albany, New York. A forceful and fearless preacher, Willson ran afoul of the New York State legislature when he published a sermon in 1832 criticizing the American Constitution for its denial of Christ’s authority and its protection of human slavery. What most inflamed the legislature was his criticism of George Washington for being a Deist, and Thomas Jefferson for being an infidel with loose morals. Both men were major slaveholders. Willson’s judgments were not uncommon in 1800, and are unexceptionable today, but in 1833 the country practically worshiped its Founding Fathers and would not abide their being criticized. After a long debate, the legislature voted 96-2 not to permit Willson henceforth to pray before any of its sessions. Then, on February 22, 1833, (Washington’s birthday), a drunken mob burned him in effigy. Fortunately, he was out of town and soon returned to Coldenham.
The same year, 1833, the Reformed Presbyterian Church split in two during a tumultuous meeting in Philadelphia. Willson led the half that has continued until today as the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. In 1836, Synod appointed him its Seminary professor, so he always had a few young men living with his family. That same year, Willson led the Synod in repudiating its previous support of the American Colonization Society, having concluded that its main purpose was to remove all free Blacks from America, not to end slavery.
In Willson’s time, the Coldenham Reformed Presbyterian Church had a large black membership, attracted in part by the privilege of being buried in the church cemetery. No other nearby church would permit that. However, in 1839 the Coldenham Session voted that Black members had to sit in the balcony. An infuriated Willson appealed to the Presbytery against the Session, calling their decision the “Liberia of the Sanctuary,” like the new country in Africa where Americans were sending free blacks to be out of sight and mind:
“You dishonour the adopted sons and daughters of God Almighty. You will not pretend to deny that the coloured members of the congregation are saints…. You dishonour Christ. He admits them to sit with him at his communion table & yet you dishonour him by your declaring that those who eat & drink with him shall not sit on the same floor, lest you be defiled. What! Christ’s guests defile you!”
He concluded his lengthy appeal by scorning the cowardice that lay behind the session’s decision:
“Public sentiment…is that sentiment the rule by which a Covenanter consistory is to be directed in judgment? Is that God’s peace in his church … procured by depriving the disciples of Christ of their rights? Are all the poor, who do not pay much into your coffers, to be trodden down because of their poverty? O shame!”
The next year, in 1840, Willson resigned as pastor of the Coldenham Church. Synod moved the Seminary to Allegheny City next to Pittsburgh, and again in 1845 to Cincinnati, where one of his students was Charles Williams, an African American from the Coldenham Church. In 1849, Synod moved the Seminary a third time, to Northwood, Ohio, where an aging Willson ceased teaching in 1851. He spent his last years with his son, James McLeod Willson, pastor of First Church Philadelphia, and spent his summers in Coldenham. There he died in 1853 from a fall and old age, and was buried in its cemetery, right below where the pulpit he preached from was once located. A memorial stone to Willson voted by the Reformed Presbyterian Synod some years later stands between the present church and the parsonage.
J. R. Willson was a learned man who published a number of books, a courageous man, and an eloquent preacher who attracted large audiences to his evening services in Albany. Raised on a frontier farm, he was never “urbane.” He was a proud Covenanter, loyal to Christ his King regardless of public favor or not, and unswervingly committed to treating all people alike, which in America meant slave and free, black and white. He totally rejected polygenesis theories gaining popularity in the decades before Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859, which posited humans appearing at different times in different continents as different races. There is only one human race, he maintained, since all people stem from an original pair, Adam and Eve. “The Africans are men. Before God and the Universe, their right to protection by every legal barrier, is as good as that of any British subject or American citizen ever was.” When accosted by a woman asking, “Is it true that the Covenanter Church does not allow slave holders to take communion?” he answered, “Yes, madam, it is true. Why, we don’t even allow horse thieves to take communion.” The anti-slavery, anti-racist stance of the Covenanter Church was not “liberal,” he maintained against Southern and Northern opposition. It was the simple teaching of the Bible, which every true Christian was bound to live out in practice.
-- Bill Edgar
Meeting of the Atlantic Presbytery at Hazelton
March 30-31, 2018
Your Presbytery usually meets twice a year, plus briefly at Synod. We meet to hear reports, examine students, pray together, and conduct Presbytery business. Our meetings are open to the public. Meetings rotate through the churches of the Presbytery. We encourage you to sit in when we come to your congregation. To save money and build bonds of friendship, the visiting elders stay overnight with members of the host congregation. We thank Hazleton Area Reformed Presbyterian Church for its hospitality on a weekend when they also had a funeral to attend (see the obituary for Jean Neel in this issue).
One reason for our good cheer this spring was the excellent attendance -- every eligible pastor and elder was able to attend. Daniel Howe (from Christ Church, Providence Rhode Island) was elected moderator, and Steven McCarthy (Walton New York) was elected clerk, replacing long-time clerk J. Bruce Martin (Ridgefield Park New Jersey), whom the Presbytery thanked with a well-earned ovation. Having allowed Bruce to retire as clerk, the Presbytery promptly elected him as assistant clerk to help Steven his first year, and Bruce graciously accepted his new role.
The presence of young men seeking the ministry always encourages us. Hunter Jackson, a first-year student at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary from Broomall, took and passed his first two examinations. Zach Dotson, who currently fills the pulpit at Coldenham-Newburgh while he attends Greenville Seminary online, was interviewed and accepted as a student under the care of the presbytery. He then passed two of his exams, but not his third, which he will retake. In a related development, our most recent student under care, Gabriel Wingfield, accepted Christ Church’s call to be their associate pastor. Presbytery met on June 2 to examine him, and ordained and installed him as associate pastor at Christ Church on June 9, 2018.
The Presbytery has long been aware of the need to encourage young people in our congregations. White Lake Camp has been operating since 1922. More recently, Kyle and Violet Finley have helped coordinate weekend retreats, and they shared their plan to hold an event within Atlantic Presbytery in May, just after the Presbytery meeting. Pastors, as well as young people, can find help and encouragement at White Lake Camp, so a pastor’s retreat will be held at White Lake in July, 2018, the first such event since 1991.
One important aspect of Presbytery oversight is an annual visit by a few appointed elders to one of the congregations. This year a team visited Ridgefield Park in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City. Their report praised the congregation’s faithful, long-serving leadership, gave various recommendations in regards to their pastor Bruce Martin’s impending retirement, and encouraged members of the church to put special effort into developing friendships and support among themselves and prayer for those without. In an interesting observation, the visiting committee also discouraged a habit of calling themselves the ‘last’ of the New York City RP churches. Instead, they urged them to speak in a way that looks forward. In 2018-19, a Presbytery committee plans to visit Coldenham-Newburgh.
The Hazleton congregation reported on two works in Harrisburg, one developed by Hazleton that worships in English, and one that approached us and worships in Spanish. The English service has been meeting twice a month on Sunday evenings and has been doing well. As of this writing, the Spanish work has run into difficulties and may or may not continue. Presbytery set aside money to help both works and developed a plan to ask the denomination’s Home Mission Board for additional financial assistance.
Finally, we noted that by God’s grace an expected deficit of $5300 for 2017 turned into a surplus of $5354. Requested Seminary student support, travel, the Harrisburg work, and young people’s events all came in under budget. The surplus will help us sustain a more expensive 2018, in which we hope to encourage more frequent worship in Harrisburg, as well as fund this summer’s retreat at White Lake for pastors and their families. In anticipation of continued support for Harrisburg, the Presbytery assessment was raised to $40 per year per communicant member from $35. The adjusted budget anticipates a deficit of $8130, to be funded from the existing balance of $28,569.31. The auditors reported a clean audit, and the presbytery thanks Joe Comanda of Broomall for his long service as treasurer.
The Presbytery meeting set the next meeting for October 26-27 in White Lake Church and concluded in good spirits. Please pray for the people and projects of the Presbytery mentioned in this report.
-- John Edgar
Obituary:
Jean Neel, Hazleton RP Church
Jean Neel, 90, went home to be with her Lord and Savior on March 20th, 2018. A descendant of Mayflower pilgrims, Jean was born in Newtown Square, PA. When she married her husband Ralph, she moved to New Castle, Delaware, where she had a spinning and weaving business called Mourning Star. Upon retirement, they bought a farm in Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania, raising sheep. God gave them four children. Ralph went on to glory before Jean, in 2014.
The Neels were part of the group, which, with Tedd Tripp, eventually became Hazleton’s Grace Fellowship Church. She and Ralph transferred to Hazleton Reformed Presbyterian Church in the late 1990s.
Jean devoted her life to her family, her brothers and sisters in Christ, her art, her music and her Lord. She loved the church, especially hearing sermons, so much so, that she always asked to take her pastor’s sermon manuscripts home with her to read during the week. She delighted in finding details in the sermon she may have missed during the preaching. And Jean became a spiritual mother to several women in the congregation, practicing Titus 2:3-4.
The funeral was held March 31, 2018 at the historic Old River Church in Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania, in the valley shadows below their sheep farm. Jean loved the history of this 1830s church building. It still had no heat, electricity, or plumbing. It was where both she and Ralph wanted their funerals to be conducted and their bodies, still united to Christ, to be buried in the cemetery nearby. In faith, Ralph and Jean died, having the sure hope of the bodily Resurrection. The Lord provided a beautiful day for the funeral in the midst of the cold Pennsylvania winter of 2017-18. At Jean’s request, her friends at both Grace Fellowship and Hazleton Reformed Presbyterian Church jointly conducted the service, with both Tedd Tripp and Paul Brace preaching. "Blessed are those who die in the Lord" (Revelation 14:13).
-- Paul Brace