Unity, Purity, and Peace: Struggles in the Reformed Church in America: Purity by Matthew van Maastricht

June 7, 2018September 17, 2018 Cynthia Holder Rich

In the debates and dialogues in the RCA there are three words that have become a flashpoint.

“…unity, purity, and peace.”^[1]

This triplex, then, tends to frame the narrative in the RCA, and it is so often used as a weapon. But the bigger question, I think, is what do these words mean? How are these values lived out? This series will examine the tensions in the RCA from the perspective of these three values, and, most of all, exploring what these may mean and what implications they have for the ongoing tensions and divisions in the RCA.

One of the “conservative” claims is that they stand on purity, and this serves as a justification for their actions. But what does purity mean? It seems to them purity means a inerrantist doctrine of scripture (which only goes back a couple of centuries), and which insists on a surface reading of selected passages related to human sexuality. But is this all that purity entails? Indeed, what is the referent of purity?

Purity and the Marks of the True Church

The Belgic Confession, the most comprehensive of the Reformed Church, speaks of the marks of the church, that is, how one can discern the true church from the false church (remember, this was a sixteenth-century Reformation-era document).

The true church can be recognized

if it has the following marks:

The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel;

it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them;

it practices church discipline for correcting faults.^[2]

Here, then, we get a glimpse of that to which purity refers: the means of grace — Word and sacrament. The question that remains, then, is not so much whether we value purity, but rather what purity looks like when it comes to the preaching of the gospel and administration of the sacraments. The biggest question, in my mind, is what we mean by pure preaching of the gospel and pure administration of the sacraments, followed closely by a second, whether or not purity is something that is attainable or something toward which we always work.

Surely this cannot mean that the true church has to fully agree on all points of biblical interpretation in order to purely preach the gospel. What is the gospel? The gospel is salvation and redemption in Christ. Of course, all churches proclaim this. But even more, this gets to the root of scriptural interpretation and the lens through which we read and understand scripture. The Reformed Church has the doctrinal standards: The Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession with the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and the Belhar Confession. These are part of the Constitution, that is, these are those essential tenets of faith that help us to understand scripture, as though they are lenses or windows. Pure preaching of the gospel, then, means proclaiming the word in accordance with these statements of faith.

Purity of Doctrine

Further, in order to determine whether or not the gospel is purely preached, there needs to be a framework for understanding it. Many of those who claim to be leading the charge for purity understand the framework for the gospel to be whatever they understand about it, which is an incredibly postmodern relativist perspective. There need to be external standards by which our proclamation of the gospel is measured. Some, however, will use statements such as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which is an external statement not accepted by our tradition. The pure preaching of the gospel, then, is that which is done in accordance with the doctrinal standards. In which case, this significantly shifts the discussion of purity.

But further, there is the question of whether purity is something that can be attained or whether it is something that we must continually strive for. Indeed, it often seems as though one faction of the church insists that they have attained the pure proclamation of gospel. However, even the conservative neo-Calvinist Louis Berkhof clearly states that, “[s]uch an ideal is unattainable on earth; only relative purity of doctrine can be ascribed to any Church.”^[3] Therefore, purity is not so much something that we can attain, or maintain, but it is something toward which we strive.

Purity of Biblical Interpretation

The above assumes that purity refers to the marks of the church in the Belgic Confession. This is the most logical understanding of purity in “unity, purity, and peace.” But what if we assume that it is purity of biblical interpretation broadly, rather than simply purity of the presentation of the gospel message? This, then, gets into the issues of hermeneutics, how we read and interpret Scripture. After all, there is no way to read Scripture as though we are a blank slate. We always come to the reading of Scripture with presuppositions and values through which we read it. It is the nature of our limited humanity.

There has been some discussion at the general synodical level of doing work regarding a Reformed hermeneutic of scripture, but this always falls to the side in favor of jockeying for power and the push for a “conservative”^[4] ideological cleansing. Until we can talk about how to read and interpret Scripture, this understanding of purity will gain us nothing. Because, both “conservatives” and “progressives” fully declare that Scripture is the Word of God. Both insist that they are reading and interpreting Scripture consistent with the scriptural narrative itself.

But until the “conservatives” stop their crusade for an ideological purge, there will never be an opportunity to talk about hermeneutics, there will never be an opportunity to talk about readings and interpretations of Scripture, and the value of “purity” will continue to be meaningless.

Matthew van Maastricht is the pastor at the Altamont Reformed Church in Altamont, New York, and a Reformed Church polity and standards teacher.

^[1] Book of Church Order of the Reformed Church in America (BCO), p. 130.

^[2] Belgic Confession, Art. 29.

^[3] Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology: New Combined Edition. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1938/1996, p. 577. I use the term “neo-Calvinist” in the classic sense, not the modern sense.

^[4] Throughout, I use the terms “conservative” and “progressive” in quotes, as these are oft used terms, but are not very helpful. Indeed, in many cases the conservatives are not conservative and the progressives are.