Dear Editor Rev. Lanning,

April 1, 2021

I write regarding your editorials “Our Present Controversy (7)” and “(8)” in the February and March 2021 Sword and Shield issues.

One of the points you make on page 6 is in direct reference to the bewitching of the Galatian churches by the Judaizers. “The churches of Galatia were bewitched by the Judaizers to believe the false gospel that they obtained righteousness and salvation by Christ and their keeping of the law. The false doctrine into which the Protestant Reformed churches fell is essentially the same false gospel that the Judaizers taught. Paul wrote against the lie with a very specific and sharp rebuke of the Galatians: O foolish Galatians…”

Just prior to the rebuke of the Galatians, Paul reports his necessary rebuke of the apostle Peter for the same thing, the compromise of the gospel. We learn that Peter and Barnabas “walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel.” They brought works of the Jewish law into the picture, adding to Christ, and compelling others also. We read of this in Galatians 2:11–16.

In Exodus 32:1–6 we read of Aaron’s complicity, facilitation, and participation in Israel’s idol worship, a story so familiar I will not take the space to quote the scripture here.

My question is, with these examples in mind, please explain your statements that so many office-bearers be deposed (March 2021 Vol.1 No.13 ”Our Present Controversy (8)” pgs. 6,7); “When the church of Jesus Christ identifies false doctrine in her midst, it is her solemn, holy, and urgent duty to discipline the office-bearers who taught and / or defended the false doctrine.” And further, “By an official decision of the church through her consistory, the church must depose her office-bearers.”

Your view is that office-bearers must lose their office if they “taught and /or defended the false doctrine.” You do not say continue teaching and continue defending. You mean if ever. You are looking back at what men did during a time before the error was even clearly identified and condemned by judgment of the PRC Synod in 2018. You must also have in mind committee reports, consistory decisions, or the way a man voted on an appeal or protest. We know that from your sermons also. Should we stop all voice votes and rule that all voting is recorded so we have evidence of a man’s defense of false doctrine and can depose him?

You leave no place for development of clarity of the truth on the part of assemblies or in the minds of individuals. Depose, you say.

In your view it is not enough that they be corrected by the judgement of Synod, not enough that they subscribe to the settled and binding judgement of the classis or Synod, not enough that they repent, not enough that they do not militate against the decision or continue in the error, and not enough that they discontinue teaching and discontinue defending the false doctrine.

Peter or Barnabas or Aaron did not lose their offices, nor were they removed from service. Your singular path of “discipline equals deposition”—is that really all there is? Or are there other ways of discipline the church can use with sanctified judgment to exercise God’s correction of repentant office-bearers?

I see correction through exposing the error, proclamation of the proper doctrine, rebuking, and repentance with amendment of teachings as an appropriate way.

Please give your thoughts on the Peter/Barnabas/Aaron examples and the fact that God did not relieve them of their official callings and duties on account of their episodes of gospel compromising, and why you see deposition as the only way now.

In Christ,

Barry Warner

REPLY

Your letter addresses my argument that officebearers who teach or defend false doctrine must be disciplined by being deposed from their offices. You argue for a different approach than deposition.

Your singular path of “discipline equals deposition”—is that really all there is? Or are there other ways of discipline the church can use with sanctified judgment to exercise God’s correction of repentant office-bearers?

I see correction through exposing the error, proclamation of the proper doctrine, rebuking, and repentance with amendment of teachings as an appropriate way.

You base your argument on the examples of Aaron, Peter, and Barnabas, all of whom fell into the public sin of departing from the truth and walking not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. Each of these men was rebuked, apparently repented, and maintained his office without being deposed. Your argument is that deposition was not the only way to deal with their compromise of the gospel, and so it should not be the only way to deal with Protestant Reformed ministers, elders, and professors who compromised the gospel in the Protestant Reformed Churches’ present controversy.

In general—but only in general—I agree with the point that you make. I believe that it is possible for an officebearer in the course of his work temporarily to fall into the sin of teaching false doctrine through ignorance, carelessness, laziness, lack of clarity, fear of men, flattery of men, misspeaking, or some other such reason. When that officebearer’s error is exposed, when he is rebuked, and if he repents and repudiates his false doctrine, that officebearer could retain his office. It would not be necessary to depose him for his temporary fall into the sin of false doctrine. Your example of Peter is a good illustration of this. Peter publicly fell into the sin of not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. Paul withstood Peter to the face because he was to be blamed. Peter apparently repented of his sin, so that he was not deposed but remained an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. By implication, an officebearer today could fall into the sin of false doctrine and be disciplined in the way you suggest without being deposed: “I see correction through exposing the error, proclamation of the proper doctrine, rebuking, and repentance with amendment of teachings as an appropriate way.” Van Dellen and Monsma’s commentary on article 80 of the Church Order is to the point when they describe the sin of “false doctrine or heresy.” “Nor is it the implication that one who unintentionally, through the use of a wrong term or otherwise, states a matter erroneously, thereby makes himself worthy of discipline. The deviation must be conscious and deliberate” (Idzerd Van Dellen and Martin Monsma, The Church Order Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1941], 331).

Thus far I agree in general with the point that you make.

However, I do not agree that your suggestion may apply anymore in the present controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches. After all, the editorials that occasioned your letter were not a general discussion about how to deal with a temporary, one-time fall into false doctrine. The editorials were about “Our Present Controversy.” They were addressing the all-out assault of the devil upon the Protestant Reformed Churches, which assault aims to establish in the churches the false doctrine of conditional covenant fellowship. By the time these editorials appeared, the controversy had been raging for years in the Protestant Reformed Churches. The editorials were not a general or academic question about deposition but laid out a specific path for the denomination to follow in her present controversy to rid herself of the dreadful lie that has taken hold. That specific path includes this: depose your ministers, professors, and elders who have taught or defended the lie in your midst. Depose them as part of your defense of the truth and as part of your contending against the lie. My call to deal with the lie by the discipline of the liars was explained on the basis of scripture and the confessions. Interested readers can find all of this in the March 2021 issue of Sword and Shield.

The path that you lay out only works if we were back in the year 2015, let’s say, when a Protestant Reformed minister preached, regarding the “way” of John 14:6, that our obedience is the way to the Father, even though Jesus says that he alone is the way to the Father. If the consistory of Hope Protestant Reformed Church would have rebuked her minister for the sin of false doctrine in his sermon and required him publicly to repudiate his false doctrine, and the minister had repented of his sin and anathematized his error and had taken up the sword against his own error, then that minister could remain a minister and not be deposed. In fact, that minister would probably even be known in the churches today as the foremost champion of truth and the fiercest foe of error in utter gratitude to God for having rescued him from the lie into which he had fallen. Yes, then a case could be made for the path of correction that you lay out that stops short of deposition.

What actually happened in the Protestant Reformed Churches was that the consistory of Hope church, so far from rebuking the minister for his false doctrine, defended the minister’s false doctrine as true doctrine. The consistory did not merely stand behind the minister, but the consistory stood behind the sermon and the doctrine of the sermon. The consistory labored tirelessly to prove that the sermon was true and that the false doctrine of the sermon was historic Protestant Reformed theology. One elder stood against the sermon and stood for the truth. The consistory turned on that elder, charged him with being an antinomian, deposed him from office, and placed him under discipline that would end up dragging on for three years. The consistory of Grandville Protestant Reformed Church concurred with Hope’s persecution of her one faithful elder by adding its approval to the elder’s deposition. When the case came to Classis East, the ministers and elders of Classis East defended the false doctrine of the sermon. When the case came to Synod 2016, the ministers, elders, and professors of synod failed to condemn the false doctrine of the sermon. Shortly thereafter, seventeen more sermons of the minister were brought to light that taught the same errors. And on and on it went. I and others have already written and spoken about this controversy at length, so I will not rehash it all now.

The time to follow your suggested path of correction was back in 2015 at the first instance of the false doctrine. When the one faithful elder objected to the sermon on John 14:6 as the heresy of a conditional covenant, that was the time for the minister to repent of his error, repudiate it, and contend against his own sermon. Now that the case has developed to where the Protestant Reformed Churches are today, it is entirely too late to follow your suggested path, which stops short of deposition.

How is one to know, then, when it is time to depose officebearers for false doctrine?

First, when officebearers refuse to acknowledge the heretical character of their false doctrine. A man may unwittingly fall into false doctrine and still be corrected. But when he continues in it and defends it, then he must be deposed for it. Take any of the examples that you cited: Aaron, Peter, or Barnabas. They all kept their offices when, in the first instance of their departure from the truth, they were rebuked and they repented and turned from their sin. But they cannot be used as a justification for men keeping their offices who persist in their false doctrine and defend their false doctrine. What would have happened to the men you cite if, instead of repenting after the rebuke of Moses and Paul, they had continued to dance around the golden calf or to remain withdrawn from the Gentile believers? What would have happened if, instead of repenting, they had convinced their consistories to defend them in their actions for years? Is it conceivable that these men would have remained in their offices?

God’s word is clear about how the church is to deal with heretics: “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself” (Titus 3:10–11). The Protestant Reformed Churches were called to admonish the false teachers in their midst, not to defend them and their false doctrine for years. When consistories and classes and synods defend a heretic and refuse to reject him, then every officebearer involved in that defense becomes entangled in the heretic’s error himself.

To quote from Van Dellen and Monsma’s explanation of “false doctrine and heresy” again: “However, though one has not taught or spoken false doctrine deliberately and consciously, yet if he should maintain the false views in question and refuse to acknowledge their heretical and erroneous character, the error becomes conscious and wilful, and worthy of discipline” (331).

And if I may be allowed to quote myself from the editorial in question:

All false doctrine must be taken in hand by the church, and the teachers and defenders of it must be confronted. And all men who continually repeat the error, or who repeatedly defend the error, or who repeatedly refuse to acknowledge the heretical character of the error, must be disciplined by the church. (“Our Present Controversy (8),” Sword and Shield 1, no. 13 [March 2021]: 7)

Second, one knows that it is time to depose false teachers when those teachers continue in the doctrinal error after that error has been condemned by ecclesiastical assemblies. When the Synod of Dordt ruled that the doctrine of the Remonstrants was the old Pelagian error out of hell, that ruling forbad anyone from teaching Arminianism, whether ignorantly or otherwise, on the pain of losing his office.

Likewise, Synod 2018 declared the errors of the sermons to compromise the gospel, displace the perfect work of Christ, compromise justification by faith alone, and compromise unconditional covenant fellowship. Although that ruling was shot through with weakness, as a letter in the June 15 Letters Edition of Sword and Shield made clear, that ruling at least forbad any Protestant Reformed officebearer from teaching those false doctrines.

But what actually happened after Synod 2018? The minister of Hope Protestant Reformed Church taught the same errors in November and December of 2018, and the consistory of Hope defended him in those errors for over a year, until January 2020. Even when Classis East in January 2020 finally said there were errors, classis refused to acknowledge that they were the same errors that had already been condemned by Synod 2018. To the date of this writing, the position of the Protestant Reformed ecclesiastical assemblies on those errors is that they had nothing to do with Synod 2018.

No, now is not the time in the Protestant Reformed Churches to be arguing for some sort of correction that stops short of deposition. Back in 2015 a case could be made for it. Now that so many ministers, professors, and elders have either taught the same error themselves, or have defended the error, or have connived at the error by their silence, or have bloodied their hands by casting out those who did oppose the error, the turning of the denomination will only happen by putting all of those men out of office. Now is not the time to find a way around deposition of officebearers; now is the time to apply deposition rigorously for the recovery of the truth and the salvation of Christ’s sheep.

If I may make one final observation on your letter, I find your letter to be quite ironic. You argue against the deposition of the officebearers responsible for the lie in the Protestant Reformed Churches by proposing a path that stops short of their deposition. However, the officebearers responsible for the lie in the denomination have never once been in danger of being deposed by the denomination. The denomination has never shown the slightest inclination to apply any discipline to them whatsoever. Not a single one of the teachers or defenders of false doctrine in the Protestant Reformed Churches has suffered so much as the beginning of discipline against him.

What makes your letter so ironic is that, from the very first moment of this controversy, the Protestant Reformed Churches have shown themselves perfectly willing to depose officebearers. There has been a vigorous and sustained exercise of discipline against officebearers, just not against those who taught or defended the lie in the Protestant Reformed Churches. At the time my editorials in question appeared, six officebearers had been suspended, deposed, or relieved of the duties of their offices. By now, a seventh has been suspended. All of these officebearers have been on the side of the truth and have stood against the lie.

It is my personal opinion that the Protestant Reformed Churches will not turn from their false doctrine and will not exercise the Christian discipline of deposition against those officebearers who have led the churches astray. I would love to be proven wrong, but these churches have been clear and consistent throughout this controversy that they do not stand with those who defend the truth but stand with those who lead them astray into the lie.

I urge you to reconsider the position that you put forth in your letter. Ask yourself the question whether at this stage of the controversy, it is truly sufficient that the teachers and defenders of error not be deposed.

Let us all beware lest we defend those who ought not be defended, thus strengthening the hands of the evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness.

—AL