Why New Calvinist Church Discipline is Against American Laws
Originally published August 17, 2013
There is something that everybody is missing in regard to so-called “Redemptive Church Discipline.” The New Calvinist movement is a return to authentic Calvinism. I read the Calvin Institutes almost daily, and I can tell you that the New Calvinists are making every effort to conform to every detail thereof. It is almost as if the Calvin Institutes are a higher authority than the Bible.
But there is a problem. Whether the Calvin Institutes or the Westminster Confession, those documents were prepared for a church/state venue. American laws are based on the separation of church and state. During the time that European government was in bed with the Reformation, the church could compel individuals to do certain things under threat of government force.
While seeking to have that same authority in the lives of American parishioners without government force, they are improvising through other means resulting in the violation of American civil liberties. When it gets right down to it, according to American law, you can’t restrict a person from the commission of a legal act by threatening to defame them publically. Church covenants with articles stating that parishioners cannot leave a church without the permission of the elders may be a violation of the law in and of itself. It’s a threat regarding loss of reputation if you exercise your legal right to leave a church. New Calvinist elders routinely tell parishioners that they cannot leave a church for doctrinal reasons. That’s against the law.
Furthermore, the so-called “Matthew 18 process” almost always ends up in excommunication if someone vacates their membership in-between one of the steps. I understand that they may be avoiding the issue in that way, but you absolutely can’t humiliate them publically for refusing to stay in the process. Leaving a church is not illegal; therefore, you can’t disparage them publically. Threatening to publically humiliate a person if they vacate membership (or any other legal act) is considered to be coercion under the kidnapping statute in most states.
I am presently doing research in preparation for a home church model. I am amazed to see how the New Testament model has a peaceful solution for almost every scenario. But in regard to this subject, the crux is fellowship versus authority. If a person leaves a church in the midst of a church discipline issue (for lack of a better term), they have merely vacated fellowship with the assembly on their own. That’s the only end result anyway if you’re in America, no? Trying to have authority over that person without government backing is where things get iffy.
Moreover, in many situations, the elders of a church really have no legal authority to ban a person from church property unless they are causing a disturbance. This has led to many ugly confrontations and legal challenges. A private home is different. If a home fellowship doesn’t want a person there for whatever reason, the homeowner can have the person removed by the local police if necessary. This is just one of many examples where home fellowships don’t find themselves in legal dilemmas.
The primary reason is that home fellowships are based on, well, fellowship and not authority. Breaking fellowship versus having some sort of authority over the person are two very different things, and the former circumvents a lot of unnecessary drama.
paul
Addendum:
“Telling it to the church” would only involve telling it to the home fellowship of maybe 20 people. Somebody showing up at another home in that network is probably going to incite a phone call to the original fellowship anyway. Secondly, it cannot be restated enough that if a “member” leaves in the middle of the Matthew 18 process, the same result of no fellowship is accomplished anyway. The institutional church creates a bunch of unnecessary drama because of its penchant for authority.
When We Use Words, Should We Know What They Mean? Truth, Mythology, Orthodoxy, and Creed
In order to control people, you have to control their minds. And in order to control their minds, you have to control the definitions of words. The meanings of words form what we believe about truth and reality. And, when it gets right down to it, a proper assessment of reality is the foundation of truth (and by the way, you can only control people by force for so long. The key is to control their minds).
Truth is not “fact.” Truth has a moral value to it. Facts are building blocks that can build any theory of truth.
I have written about all of this before, but this short essay was inspired by one of my Facebook friends. She announced that she was using The Westminster Shorter Catechism for kids to instruct her young child. Why would she do that? Because the WSC is “orthodoxy,” and that word has come to mean…TRUTH. Hence, the opposite of “orthodoxy” is “heterodoxy,” a practice that I am often accused of: meaning; untruth.
Now, the WSC is often spoken of as being “subordinate truth.” And in fact, that is a fact, but let’s think about this; why is a subordinate truth needed? Isn’t truth powerful enough by itself?
“Well Paul, a creed, or confession, or catechism, is just a form of truth that is taught on the common person’s level, it makes truth easier to understand for the average person.”
Exactly.
The assumption is that there is a truth caste system. There are those who understand Truth, big T, and then those who are only capable of understanding a revisal form of truth on a more elementary level.
Orthodoxy is NOT truth, orthodoxy is an elitist interpretation of truth by those preordained by God (or mother nature) to have a special gift for interpreting truth. People merely pick the orthodoxy of preference which ranges from A-Z of world religions. Protestantism, like Catholicism, or for that matter Hinduism, was founded on orthodoxy which has become a word fictitiously associated with the meaning of the word…truth. The title of those who penned the Westminster Confession should be telling: the “Westminster Divines.” What would be our first clue?
Orthodoxy is not truth, orthodoxy is some man’s interpretation of truth. This is what separates Protestantism from the true called out assembly of Christ: the priesthood of believers. Clearly, this states that every human being is capable of understanding truth on their own, and is culpable before God ALONE for the adjudication of that truth. This also assumes that man is created with freedom of conscience. And by the way, the horizontal political expression of this, is an idea that we call the United States of America. And by the way, there is a reason why the Pope and New Calvinists alike are brazen Socialists, confused Protestants notwithstanding. Will we be judged individually for following God, or men appointed by God? This should be evident. We only follow men who follow Christ according to our own assessment of truth.
“But Paul! That will lead to Chaos!”
Exactly.
Herein is the rub: reality, and presuppositions regarding man; ability to understand reality, or epistemological caste? That’s it in a nutshell folks. It’s the exact lie first perpetrated in the garden: Hey Eve, you really can’t understand God without a mediator. You need somebody who has special insight into the spiritual, “nay, has God really said…?”And the priesthood of believers versus spiritual caste was a major battlefront in the first century church and a major theme of the apostle John’s writings.
Right out of the gates of the garden came the declaration of the kingdom of darkness: spiritual caste enforced by government, and the ownership of truth by Plato’s philosopher kings. Philosopher, and king, and the divine right of kings. All of human history was saturated with wars over orthodoxy until 1776. The vast number of wars fought throughout human history have been religious civil wars, or more accurately, wars over orthodoxy.
The divine right of kings is responsible for chaos, not kings who protect a reasonable freedom of conscience. This was the crying out of small voices in the wilderness of a European culture drenched in blood.
In ancient times, spiritual caste was expressed in mythology. To see mythology as ancient superstition shrouded in ignorance would be an incorrect assessment. Mythology is merely stories (parables) created by philosopher kings so that the unenlightened masses can understand principles of society for purposes of social justice. For Plato, that was UNITY period. Whatever “truth” unified was the proof in the pudding; unity equals truth.
Mythology is no different than orthodoxy, and the various teachings thereof: creeds; confessions, and catechisms. Of course it is “subordinate truth.” Of course there is a “higher truth,” but the rub is that the common folks can’t really understand THE Truth…capital T. Hence, you follow the orthodoxy of your choice…presumably to heaven. Pick well, the choices are vast, and the various enlightened choices are better than yours because of the reality that you have accepted: orthodoxy.
The prime example of this in our evangelical day is the Redemptive Historical hermeneutic that dominates the institutional church. It is, Bible as story. Bible as “gospel narrative.” This is absolutely NOTHING more or less than mythology itself dressed in uppity European intellectualism.
Christ promised YOU that you would find truth if you seek it. This isn’t a seeking to find the right man to follow, this is between you and God Himself. And this issue goes way, way back in time. It was a major issue with Moses, and the apostle John, and it is a major issue in our day. Therefore, I close with these words from Moses:
The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law… For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
paul
Reformed Caste System: The Puritans Saw Violation of Caste as Equal to Violation of the 5th Commandment
“But with this considered, the Puritans believed that the idol of upward social mobility was a specific violation of the 5th commandment. Yes, wanting to improve the lot you were born into was dishonoring one’s parents.”
There is a reason for everything. I like reasons; the “why.” I understand that “Stupid is—is stupid does,” but I want to know why people are stupid. “They’re just stupid”; that’s easy, discovering why they are stupid can enable us to save them from their stupidness and thus give them hope. See, I really am a loving, hopeful kind of guy.
Why do New Calvinists constantly quote and point to the Westminster Confession to make their points? And why does that irritate us so much? The second why is easy; they act like the Confession has the same authority as Scripture. An added third why changes our irritation to fear: the Westminster Confession was a standard of civil law compiled by Calvinistic Puritans at the beckoning of the Church of England. Hence, when New Calvinists cite the confession, they are exposing their kinship, knowingly or ignorantly, to a theocratic document (“Theocracy is a form of government in which official policy is governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or is pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religion or religious group”[and I will give you three wild guesses as to who the New Calvinists believe are the “divinely guided” ones]).
Later, the Church of England and the Puritans had a lovers quarrel over control of European mutton, and the Puritans were labeled, “nonconformists.” Other groups of Baptist origin were labeled the same regardless of their devotion to the same totalitarian principles as the Church of England; ie., The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith which was drawn from the Westminster Confession and written by Puritans as well. After this totalitarian plague landed in America, another document was drafted from the Westminster model, this time by the “Pilgrims” (alien European Puritans): The Savoy Declaration.
These documents encompass a conviction for state and church to rule together at the supposed pleasure of God, and with all of His authority by proxy. Ooopsies and boo-boos are covered by diplomatic immunity. Be not deceived: the spirit of the Westminster Confession is the lust of every New Calvinist. That’s the why behind their obsessive citation of it.
However, the central idea of the Westminster Confession that totally depraved mankind must be ruled with a divine iron fist is going to manifest itself in a number of different applicable elements. New Calvinists use this for cover; the “fact” that they don’t “agree with everything” in the Confession supplies cover for the fact that they are totally sold out for the central idea that is the foundation of the document. That would be the control of the totally depraved by the “Westminster divines” of whom they are kin.
The heart of the document and its sentiment is revealed in the applicable elements—one being a caste system modeled after the extreme European social caste system of that day. Misrepresenting your social class to marry into a family that was in a higher social stratum was a capital offence. Different social classes dressed differently, and entitlements were also determined by class as well.
The Puritans were really, really big on the whole idea of being content with were God had sovereignly placed you in life. In all caste systems, your social stratum is determined by what stratum you were born into; ie, determined by the social stratum of your parents. The system disallowed mobility between the social strata, or for all practical purposes: improvement. Of course, there were rare exceptions born of the milieu of life combined with intentionality for those who dared.
Notwithstanding, the Puritans saw a desire to climb the social strata as a “heart” problem: pride, discontent, thinking that your totally-depraved-self deserves more than your sovereignly appointed lot in life—which is a magnificent gift compared to what you deserve: hell. Today’s New Calvinist Puritan wannabes would say that you have “idols of the heart.”
But with this considered, the Puritans believed that the idol of upward social mobility was a specific violation of the 5th commandment. Yes, wanting to improve the lot you were born into was dishonoring one’s parents:
The essence of the Puritan idea of status is found in the Larger Catechism of the Westminster Confession of Faith, that comprehensive body of theology hammered out by the Puritan scholars of Cromwell’s England in the mid-1640′s. The question of status was basic to the Puritans’ interpretation of the Fifth Commandment, “honor thy father and thy mother.”
By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant not only natural parents, but all superiors in age and gifts; and especially such as, by God’s ordinance, are over us in place of authority, whether in family, church, or commonwealth…. The general scope of the fifth commandment is, the performance of those duties which we mutually owe in our several relations, as inferiors, superiors, or equals (Gary North: The Freeman; June 1974 • Volume: 24 • Issue: 6).
The logical conclusion is borne out by what the Americanized Puritans (Pilgrims) instituted as civil law in their own New England old England way. Undoubtedly, due to European influence that connected dress to status, the Pilgrims included what is known as Sumptuary Laws (laws regarding what one may or may not wear) in their theocratic laws:
Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1651
Sumptuary Laws (Laws Regarding What One May or May Not Wear)
ALTHOUGH SEVERAL DECLARATIONS and orders have been made by this Court against excess in apparell, both of men and women, which have not taken that effect as were to be desired, but on the contrary, we cannot but to our grief take notice that intolerable excess and bravery have crept in upon us, and especially among people of mean condition, to the dishonor of God, the scandal of our profession, the consumption of estates, and altogether unsuitable to our poverty. And, although we acknowledge it to be a matter of much difficulty, in regard of the blindness of men’s minds and the stubbornness of their wills, to set down exact rules to confine all sorts of persons, yet we cannot but account it our duty to commend unto all sorts of persons the sober and moderate use of those blessings which, beyond expectation, the Lord has been pleased to afford unto us in this wilderness. And also to declare our utter detestation and dislike that men and women of mean condition should take upon them the garb gentlemen by wearing gold or silver lace, or buttons, or points at their knees, or to walk in great boots; or women of the same ran to wear silk or tiffany hoods, or scarves which, though allowable to persons of greater estates or more liberal education, we cannot but judge it intolerable. . . .
It is therefore ordered by this Court, and authority thereof, that no person within the jurisdiction, nor any of their relations depending upon them, whose visible estates, real and personal, shall not exceed the true and indifferent value of £200, shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold and silver buttons, or any bone lace above 2s. per yard, or silk hoods, or scarves, upon the penalty of 10s. for every such offense and every such delinquent to be presented to the grand jury. And forasmuch as distinct and particular rules in this case suitable to the estate or quality of each perrson cannot easily be given: It is furtber ordered by the authority aforesaid, that the selectmen of every town, or the major part of them, are hereby enabled and required, from time to time to have regard and take notice of the apparel of the inhabitants of their several towns respectively; and whosoever they shall judge to exceed their ranks and abilities in the costliness or fashion of their apparel in any respect, especially in the wearing of ribbons or great boots (leather being so scarce a commodity in this country) lace, points, etc., silk hoods, or scarves, the select men aforesaid shall have power to assess such persons, so offending in any of the particulars above mentioned, in the country rates, at £200 estates, according to that proportion that such men use to pay to whom such apparel is suitable and allowed; provided this law shall not extend to the restraint of any magistrate or public officer of this jurisdiction, their wives and children, who are left to their discretion in wearing of apparel, or any settled militia officer or soldier in the time of military service, or any other whose education and employment have been above the ordinary degree, or whose estate have been considerable, though now decayed.
And:
By 1674, Cotton Mather’s father, Increase Mather, was convinced that the continual violation of the Fifth Commandment — the status commandment — was the chief sin of his generation. (That someone named Increase could take this position only serves to emphasize the irony.) Inferiors were rising up against superiors in the commonwealth — in families, schools, churches. It was not an uprising that he feared, but this incessant rising up. “If there be any prevailing iniquity in New England, this is it…. And mark what I say, if ever New England be destroyed, this very sin of disobedience to the fifth commandment will be the ruin of the land.” Samuel Willard agreed with Mather.
The problem, as the Puritan divines saw it, was that men were not satisfied with their lot in life. Daniel Dension’s last sermon, appended by another famous preacher of his day, William Hubbard, to Hubbard’s funeral sermon for Denison, cities ambition as the curse of the land, along with envy:”… Ambition is restless, must raise commotions, that thereby it might have an opportunity of advancement, and employ envy to depress others, that they fancy may stand in their way….” Such ambitious men are unwilling “to abide in the calling, wherein they are set; they cannot stay for the blessing, nor believe when God hath need of their service, he will find them an employment, whatever stands in the way of their design, must give place…”(Ibid).
Of course, New Calvinists would reject this outwardly, but what they can’t deny is that they are merely rejecting a nuance of the central idea that they embrace with all passion.
Caste is king.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
leave a comment