PCUSA and Membership Decline

[hedrick]

Do you recognize a Covenant of Redemption (as I do), the agreement between the Father and the Son and the choices of God from eternity? As you know the reformed understanding of redemption, in the order of the golden chain, regeneration precedes faith, which is correct. So I am not crystal clear on your intended meaning, especially concerning non-Christians. I attempted to be fair and balanced in the previous response, even sympathetic in mentioning infant salvation (as it relates to the content of faith), but your response puzzles me, sorry.

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought in saying that the salvation of non Christians was outside covenantal understanding you were rejecting it. I agree that the rest of the posting in fact would tend to allow for it.

I'm on the fence about salvation. The most conservative possibility I'd consider is that God's acceptance is based on faith, which of course is itself the result of God's call. I don't believe, however that that faith always takes the form of Christianity. What is faith for Abraham? It's his response to God. But God presented himself under a preliminary form that didn't include an explicit knowledge of Christ. I'm not convinced that this possibility stoped in the 1st Century.

 

[hedrick]

Do you recognize a Covenant of Redemption (as I do), the agreement between the Father and the Son and the choices of God from eternity?

Oddly, when I read Calvin one of the things I found most interesting was his support for a single covenant, including both OT and NT.

The other two are the covenant of works before the fall, and the covenant of redemption. I don't think using the term covenant for them is useful.

I think there's a difference between a command and a covenant. God certainly commanded Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit, and punished them when they did. But was it a covenant? There was no formal agreement, as there was with both Noah and Moses. I don't think it adds to our understanding to call it a covenant.

Similarly with the covenant of redemption. I don't see what it adds to call it a covenant. Portraying Father and Son as making an agreement between them seems at least odd from a Trinitarian point of view. Can God conduct negotiations between himself? I believe there's only one will in the Trinity. which would make the idea of an agreement kind of hard. (There is actually some disagreement about this, but the consensus at least in the West seems to be that there's one will in God.)

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

Dear hedrick, I plan on getting back with you later, I would like to discuss further, but I've got to take a nap, running on 3-4 hours of sleep and feeling like a zombie. Ping me if I have not responded by tomorrow. God bless.

 

[sdowney717]

There are a lot of people with a more casual attitude towards both Scripture and evidence than I would like. But that doesn't mean that there's no way to support the idea of the salvation of non-Christians. It's pretty obvious that there were people during the OT period who were saved, since Paul uses Abraham as an example. If we're going to say that faith is required, that forces us to a definition of faith that doesn't include an explicit knowledge of Christ.

Abraham though rejoiced that he was to see Christ's day. Those saved were submitted to God in the OC, and if they had faith in HIM, they lived. The just shall live by His faith, that faith had to be in the Lord God as He revealed Himself and how He was to be worshiped in the scriptures, and this was very strict, deviations from what He said must be done meant the person was offering 'strange fire' to the Lord, and the Lord destroyed them, or they were to be cut off from among the people.

 

[sdowney717]

About Abraham and Christ.
Those jews who claimed to be sons of Abraham, Christ said did not know the Father.
But He said Abraham knew the Father and Christ, and they did come to visit Abraham to discuss Lot and the cities of the plain. Abraham knew this was the preincarnate Christ.

John 8:54-57 English Standard Version (ESV)
54 Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’

55 But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word.

56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” 57 So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”

Earlier Christ plainly told them the truth about themselves. And yes they sought to kill Christ by throwing stones just as He said.

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

 

[hedrick]

The just shall live by His faith, that faith had to be in the Lord God as He revealed Himself and how He was to be worshiped in the scriptures, and this was very strict, deviations from what He said must be done meant the person was offering 'strange fire' to the Lord, and the Lord destroyed them, or they were to be cut off from among the people.

As I'm sure you know, the OT has both voices that emphasized cultic specifics and Israelite exclusivity and broader concepts of faith and repentance. Jonah satirizes the first perspective. Jesus reflected the prophets, which operated from the second perspective, though they certainly had limits, such as idolatry. Paul criticizes the first cent version of Jewish exclusivity.

 

[hedrick]

As to John 8:56. When Paul uses Abraham as a model of faith it is for believing God's promise to make of him a great nation, and acting on it. There's no sign either in Romans or Hebrews that Abraham's faith was in Christ explicitly. Implicitly, of course, the most complete fulfillment of that promise is through Christ. But that requires our perspective, not Abraham's.

 

[sdowney717]

As to John 8:56. When Paul uses Abraham as a model of faith it is for believing God's promise to make of him a great nation, and acting on it. There's no sign either in Romans or Hebrews that Abraham's faith was in Christ explicitly. Implicitly, of course, the most complete fulfillment of that promise is through Christ. But that requires our perspective, not Abraham's.

Romans 4:16 New King James Version (NKJV)
16 Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be [a]sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all

In the OC, Christ was the Lord God who was with Israel as they left Egypt. So when you read about God and His rules, commandments, ordinances, worship, they worshiped Christ and God, but did not know Him by that name or by the great salvation covenant of grace Christians obtained from His work. In the NC, Jesus told us God makes us born of God, born again, else you can not be a part of the kingdom of God. This grants us the right to be called the children of God and citizens of heaven and the word of God cannot be broken.

As you can see, Paul unites both Christ and God in His works that They did in the Old Covenant. You can not reliably tell the 2 apart from simply reading scripture, it is best to assume the NAME is equally substitutable as either God, or Christ in the old testament scriptures. Father and Son are both one, yet distinct, along with the Holy Spirit. Christ clearly told the Jews that Moses wrote of Him, but they did not believe what Moses wrote was about Christ.

John 5:45-47 New King James Version (NKJV)
45 Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

1 Corinthians 10:1-5 New King James Version (NKJV)
Old Testament Examples
1 Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. 5 But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

 

[sdowney717]

Another example, regarding creation of all things.
Genesis 1 New King James Version (NKJV)
The History of Creation
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness [a]was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Hebrews 1 New King James Version (NKJV)
God’s Supreme Revelation
1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

So who made the heavens and the earth? The Father God, or Christ or did they both do it together...

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought in saying that the salvation of non Christians was outside covenantal understanding you were rejecting it. I agree that the rest of the posting in fact would tend to allow for it.

I'm on the fence about salvation. The most conservative possibility I'd consider is that God's acceptance is based on faith, which of course is itself the result of God's call. I don't believe, however that that faith always takes the form of Christianity. What is faith for Abraham? It's his response to God. But God presented himself under a preliminary form that didn't include an explicit knowledge of Christ. I'm not convinced that this possibility stoped in the 1st Century.

I am convinced that...

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

is true.

Simply put, I do not see room for the Gospel according to inclusivism in the Scriptures.

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

Oddly, when I read Calvin one of the things I found most interesting was his support for a single covenant, including both OT and NT.

The other two are the covenant of works before the fall, and the covenant of redemption. I don't think using the term covenant for them is useful.

I think there's a difference between a command and a covenant. God certainly commanded Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit, and punished them when they did. But was it a covenant? There was no formal agreement, as there was with both Noah and Moses. I don't think it adds to our understanding to call it a covenant.

Similarly with the covenant of redemption. I don't see what it adds to call it a covenant. Portraying Father and Son as making an agreement between them seems at least odd from a Trinitarian point of view. Can God conduct negotiations between himself? I believe there's only one will in the Trinity. which would make the idea of an agreement kind of hard. (There is actually some disagreement about this, but the consensus at least in the West seems to be that there's one will in God.)

Christians usually acknowledge two Covenants, the Covenant of works and the Covenant of grace, and they are usually thought of in terms of Old and New Covenants. While this is true so far as it goes, it is incomplete and leads to misunderstandings. This is how I thought of the Covenants before I became a Calvinist, even after I embraced Presbyterianism I kind of had my understanding of Covenant Theology on hold, you might say it was a mystery to me. Years ago after doing some reading from Thomas Brooks work "An Ark for all of God's Noah's", and reading into what a Covenant is, the muddy waters became much clearer. I think for many the Covenant of works and the Covenant of grace are thought of as a plan A and a plan B, but this is not the case, and never was. As I read about this third Covenant in Brooks work, the Covenant of Redemption, I could see the continuity between the Covenants, and how they are part of one continuous plan of Redemption, part of one plan from eternity, for the redemptive purposes of God. A Covenant is a contractual agreement between two or more parties. The Covenant of Redemption from eternity is between the persons of the Trinity. The Covenants of Works and Grace are between God and men. So the parties of contractual agreement between the Covenant of Redemption and the Covenants of Works and Grace are different. And then there are differences in Covenants, they may be conditional or unconditional, and our Triune God is the head of them all. Covenants can also be thought of in terms of promises. I may have more to add later, at the moment life at home is not allowing for much thought or response, sorry.

 

[hedrick]

I am convinced that...

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

is true.

Simply put, I do not see room for the Gospel according to inclusivism in the Scriptures.

The context of John 14:6 is not individual judgement, but how we understand and come to God. I do believe that the only way to come to the Father is the Son.

 

[FireDragon76]

It's hard to say. It might just have fewer churches. There are plenty of smaller denominations. I'd like to see individual congregations merge though, or one go out of business and its members move to a nearby one. It doesn't make sense to use our resources to support several different small churches of the same type in the same area.

Our own church continues to have a good age range, I'm happy to say.

I'm pretty pessimistic about the future of the traditional mainline denominations. Mainline theology is doing fine. It will end up being held by a pretty good fraction of evangelical churches, not to mention Catholic churches. But the denominations aren't doing well.

Many mainline churches are stuck in very traditionalist type patterns of worship and prayer. And the "contemporary" versions tend to be the perview of fundamentalism.

I like contemporary worship in the Episcopalian or Lutheran tradition but I don't like the worship materials that tend to go along with some iterations of that, they don't fit mainline theology. Some people use it as an excuse to dump Christian contemporary music into worship, even though most of it doesn't fit.

I think it's a case of mainline churches being too comfortable and unwilling to change to the present realities, despite their liberal social positions. Grandma doesn't want to let go of the bad hymns and outdated models of doing church.

 

[hedrick]

Many mainline churches are stuck in very traditionalist type patterns of worship and prayer. And the "contemporary" versions tend to be the perview of fundamentalism.

While this is true, I'm not convinced that this is the main problem. Mainline Christianity only appeals to people who want to apply critical thought to Christianity. It appears to me that most people who apply critical thought end up non-religious.

 

[FireDragon76]

While this is true, I'm not convinced that this is the main problem. Mainline Christianity only appeals to people who want to apply critical thought to Christianity. It appears to me that most people who apply critical thought end up non-religious.

I think you are correct.

Maybe I am just a Christian because I was baptized and raised that way, in the end, and because the people at my church are irresistably loving and accepting. But otherwise, it's not necessarily the best use of a sunday morning, and there's alot of cringeworthy stuff I hear that I just bite my tongue (our worship materials are sometimes full of terrible pietistic religious cliches, I'm sure you'ld recognize the type).

I think I like pastor Nadia Bolz Weber's style better. It's interesting she's a celebrity in our denomination, but few people can imitate her because seminary training doesn't really prepare you to have that authentic voice beyond religious cliches.

 

[Debp]

There are a lot of people with a more casual attitude towards both Scripture and evidence than I would like. But that doesn't mean that there's no way to support the idea of the salvation of non-Christians. It's pretty obvious that there were people during the OT period who were saved, since Paul uses Abraham as an example. If we're going to say that faith is required, that forces us to a definition of faith that doesn't include an explicit knowledge of Christ.

The old testament saints were saved because they were looking forward in faith to Christ.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Recently I stumbled across the PCUSA website and was surprised that, unlike most other denominations, it does not hide or mask its membership statistics. One can easily find all manner of statistics for each individual congregation in the PCUSA.

I was dismayed to find that my childhood church, which had over 900 members then is now down to considerably less than one-third of that now. I was also surprised at the number of really small congregations. I attend a small (about forty people) church now and was surprised to find that a Presbyterian church which has a much larger and nicer building than we do has considerably fewer members. I don't know how they can afford to pay their pastor, much less maintain the building.

The truth about the denominational membership slide is complex, to say the least. There have been many congregations which have left the PCUSA. That accounts for much, if not most, of the membership loss.

Although many congregations, especially the smaller ones, are heavily skewed toward the older end of the population, there are some which seem to have a balanced age ratio among their members. Also, quite telling is the membership numbers compared with average attendance. In the small congregations attendance is not much lower than membership, but in large congregations attendance is sometimes considerably less than half of the membership.

Theological stance is also interesting. One might point the finger at liberal congregations as being the biggest losers, but that is not necessarily the case. For example, Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago weighs in as a relatively solidly liberal congregation, yet its membership is stable to growing slightly.

Also, location does not seem to play a huge role. When I was a wee tyke our church decided to abandon its downtown home and move uptown to a much more affluent area. That did not help in the long run at all. In the meantime, some inner-city Presbyterian churches such as Second Presbyterian Church in Chicago which were, for decades, complete basket cases, are stable and even growing.

For those with an interest in these trends, I recommend that you do you own investigation. The website is here - PC(USA) Research Services - Church Trends

 

[drjean]

ICYMI:

The Presbyterian Church USA passed several resolutions critical of Israel at its biennal General Assembly.


Among the 11 resolutions on Israel that the assembly dealt with late on Friday was one opposing anti-BDS legislation at the state and federal level, and another referring to Israel as an apartheid state. The assembly also voted against resolutions that it said were not sufficiently critical of Israel because they also mentioned Palestinian transgressions, particularly the terrorist group Hamas.

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Presbyterian-Church-USA-passes-resolutions-critical-of-Israel-560826