Originally published at: Wheaton shames black anti-abortionist - Warhorn Media
Wheaton College’s best and brightest just unleashed an attack against Ryan Bomberger, the black man who spoke on campus about being conceived through the rape of his mother. Students are angry this black man said how pleased he was that his mother chose not to murder him. They are infuriated that he testified to the…
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I gave up on Wheaton after that hijab debacle a few Christmases ago. If they won’t stand quickly and firmly against a professor saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, well, I don’t expect anything good after that.
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Conquest’s Third Law
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
What is the way to reverse this trend among places like Wheaton and the SBC seminaries?
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Another way I’ve heard it put: “Every institution becomes what it was founded to oppose.”
No idea who said it or if it’s remotely close to a quote. I can’t find it online.
Anyway, I think the answer is in a commitment to be “always reforming.”
However, the problem is that institutions also exist to perpetuate themselves, which is often at odds with reformation, especially as viewed by safe, conflict-avoiding company men.
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Not original with him, but Lloyd-Jones said it in his talk about IFES on occasion of one of its anniversaries. It’s in one of his collections of talks.
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Just listened to this whole thing. No way I would send my kid there if they had an issue with that.
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The problem with institutions is that they are not saved, or redeemed, therefore the spiritual attack on those institutions eventually wins out. It’s very rare for those running the institution to turn it from the gentle slide into liberalism.
Not sure about this since being a lesson about institutions. Denominations are composed of churches and have no better track record. Rather, I wonder if the lesson might better be “always reforming” according to the Word of God. How ironic or depressing or evil that the pic is of Wheaton returning (by crane) to its proper place on their campus a grave marker to an abolitionist of the nineteenth century. The marker had been removed for over a century, yet as Wheaton honors its dead prophets, they shamelessly shame their living ones today.
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Lately I’ve been thinking that every earthly institution must die, just as every earthly man must die.
They sprout, grow, bear fruit, maybe even successfully reproduce for a few years or decades or centuries, but they, like every other living thing, are subjected to futility. Here we have no abiding colleges or seminaries or denominations.
The 16th century reformers were expelled from the visible church, because it was dead and they were not. So they gathered together, and suddenly there was a new visible church. Eventually, their visible church was fully corrupted and dead too.
It’s almost dialectic, but rather than being born of synthesis, the new thesis is born of excommunication (active or passive).
The visible institutions are passing. The invisible will abide, but God has determined they dwell in and among the earthly institutions.
Didn’t Lewis make a similar distinction between England and Britain? One is a passing kingdom, the other is a transcendent realm?
And isn’t the alternative a part of the Papist heresy, asserting that the visible church is the only church?
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Good points, brother. Dad used to say organizations are like people; they have their infancy, youth, middle age, and dotage. And he wished that just once an organization would realize they’d reached their dotage and vote themselves out of existence. Love,
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We have to build new parallel institutions.
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Agreed, and there is a long history of this. And it needs to start with training pastors.
That is why we started Clearnote Pastors College. If you are able to support that work, please do.
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Parallel institutions are necessary but insufficient. The PCA was set up to be a parallel institution. At some point, we need to learn how to retake and hold our institutions. At the very least, Christians need to learn how to burn everything down on the way out. Otherwise, building the parallel institution is just building the enemy’s future infrastructure.
I agree with the sentiment, but there’s no guarantee of our ability to do so. Generally new institutions need to be created precisely because a wicked majority party has control of it.
What is possible is fighting for reform both before and after leaving. Making real enemies is necessary. So is taking real risks. This is precisely why private work for reform is never going to cut it.
@adionne documented a perfect example of a reform movement in the PCA capitulating:
That article is what it looks like to fight to get a reform movement to fight. When you’re relegated to that level of fighting, you don’t have a lot of power to light fires on the way out. But really, you don’t need to. The point is that the institution is already burning. All you can do is fight for the sheep, calling them to follow you. And when you’ve gotten them out, you can ignore the rest of it as it burns. There’s nothing left of value there, even if they’ve got all the money.
And I think that’s an appropriate way to look at it. His kingdom is not of this world, and it is precisely for that reason that we can walk away from the structure our great-grandparents built.
Another thing to keep in mind is that some structures have systemic flaws, so founding another institution that avoids those flaws may be necessary. This is what I’ve come to believe about pastoral training in academic institutions run by scholars. Wrong. Pastors should be well-read and discerning in a way scholars will never be, and those men should train those who follow them. They things you have learned from me pass on to faithful men… Much more to say about this, but I would never return to academic training for pastors run by men with some kind of doctorate. I would almost say having a doctorate is bad for pastoral ministry and worse for those training pastors. And I say this having gone to Gordon-Conwell and UW-Madison, pastoring in Boulder, CO and Bloomington, IN, and growing up in Wheaton, IL.
As for the PCA being founded to be a parallel institution, I don’t think anyone leaving a corrupt denomination thinks of himself as creating a parallel institution. Certainly I didn’t when leaving the PC(USA). Again, my concern is systemic flaws and I believe nationalistic denominations fail because of their rejection of something that can be called “appropriate technology” or “subsidiarity.” Give attention to the local (Antioch) and only use the broader church (Jerusalem) when needed. This is why we are founding a presbytery. It’s also why when our congregation has hit major problems, our session has placed themselves under the explicit authority of a blue ribbon group of other churchmen outside our church who are known and trusted by many, and we submit to them as a council as we go forward.
Reform often calls for Ichabod to be written where everyone can see and take warning, and then to meet in someone’s home leaving the synagogue to Satan. Love,
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This is why we are founding a presbytery.
Your church is starting a presbytery, or part of the founding of one?
Yup, every church needs a superior jurisdiction for appeals and fellowship and pastoral ordination, so a number of churches are working on it and we’re now near the end of three years perfecting constitutive documents. Love,
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Did your church leave the PCA? Am I missing something?
Our church in Wisconsin left the PC(USA) and joined the PCA back in 1991. Then I moved to Bloomington, Indiana, to pastor a church that had left the PC(USA) a decade earlier but was determined to be independent. So I labored out of ecclesiastical bounds at that church and continued to labor out of ecclesiastical bounds until about eight years ago when I transferred my credentials from the PCA to Clearnote Fellowship. For all the reasons long enumerated on Baylyblog and now Warhorn, as well as other reasons related to my son’s decision not to be ordained by the PCA.
Long story short, our congregation has never been in the PCA. I was in the PCA, but our church has covenantal baptists and paedobaptists as officers, and for that reason we are Westminster Standards confessional with freedom of conscience of time and mode of baptism allowed as an exception. Very sweet unity. It works because we are covenantal regardless of which side of the baptism issue we come down on. Now we are working with other churches to put together a new presbytery which we hope will be birthed in the coming year after three or so years of hard work prepping.
Love,
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I find all of this talk about leaving and forming new institutions/churches really interesting, though theoretical as I am not a pastor or in a position to act on such things.
My concern is how you square all of this with the very strong warnings against causing division in the Church. I have a “friend” (i.e. internet aquaintence) who moved from Reformed Baptist to Eastern Orthodox after much reading of the Church Fathers’ writings that condemn those who cause division as apostate. He became convinced that the Eastern Orthodox (with all their divisions!) was the true continuation of the New Testament Church.
I don’t agree with his conclusions, but I do agree the Bible speaks strongly against division. I also understand the points that are being made here.
How do you guys put it all together?
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