first off, absolutely love the "smoothy" expression. Second, you are spot on about the BCO's authority on the PCA's polity and practice. I listened to the OSP podcast and I'm in complete agreement that once the PCA starts down the road of "well, it doesn't say we can't do...", then we've taken a page out of the playbook of the NP et al. Latitudarianism (as Machen saw it) is the slow death of any denomination. Why is it that we, as Christians, refuse to learn this?
Thanks for this helpful article, Ryan! I am largely in agreement with what you've written here, but I'm wondering how you would interpret the sentence that follows the one you highlighted above in section IV (from BCO 29-1): "Nothing, therefore, ought to be considered by any court as an offense, or admitted as a matter of accusation, which cannot be proved to be such from Scripture." This final sentence of BCO 29-1 seems to somewhat contradict your point that "when the BCO tells us to do something, even if we have found an obscure or unclear text that seems to suggest we have the option to do it differently, we do not have that liberty within the PCA."
GM Ryan,
first off, absolutely love the "smoothy" expression. Second, you are spot on about the BCO's authority on the PCA's polity and practice. I listened to the OSP podcast and I'm in complete agreement that once the PCA starts down the road of "well, it doesn't say we can't do...", then we've taken a page out of the playbook of the NP et al. Latitudarianism (as Machen saw it) is the slow death of any denomination. Why is it that we, as Christians, refuse to learn this?
Thanks for this helpful article, Ryan! I am largely in agreement with what you've written here, but I'm wondering how you would interpret the sentence that follows the one you highlighted above in section IV (from BCO 29-1): "Nothing, therefore, ought to be considered by any court as an offense, or admitted as a matter of accusation, which cannot be proved to be such from Scripture." This final sentence of BCO 29-1 seems to somewhat contradict your point that "when the BCO tells us to do something, even if we have found an obscure or unclear text that seems to suggest we have the option to do it differently, we do not have that liberty within the PCA."