What to say? Chapter 3 (and a post that may be longer than it)

I'm having a hard time deciding what to say about chapter 3. I can only assume Frame conceived of this as a transition between sections, because it's rather light on substance. Nonetheless, I'll try to chew on what I can. Here's the broad statement that would best summarize the chapter, I think:

We need an ecclesiology that makes some careful distinctions between the attributes, powers and gifts of the church, on the one hand, and those of particular denominations, on the other. We should no longer develop doctrines of the church which are written as if the schisms had never taken place, or as if we were still living before A.D. 451.

I guess it must be my Independent Baptist background, but I'm initially inclined to react to this by saying, "Of course. Who does that? Oh, wait, you're *Presbyterian*. Got it."

That is, it's true. It's dead obvious, in fact. Which is why it's so stunning that the church as a whole hasn't quite glommed on to it yet.

At the same time, independent or "free church" ecclesiology has been grappling with this for centuries, now, sometimes more successfully than others. Taking Frame at his word that (a) denominations should be de-privileged and (b) ecclesiology should not pretend that the church functions now in the manner it might have functioned in some alternate, schism-free reality, I would arrive at the following basic teachings:

• 1) there are churches, and there is the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church."
• 2) in Christ, all of the local bodies *are* one Body.
• 3) in the world, the Body *exists as* many local bodies. (that is, there *is no* magisterium)
• 4) the test of membership in the Body of Christ is confessed faith in Christ, baptism, and submission to the discipline of some local church.
• 5) the local body should only have as members those who are members of the Body.

Among the implications of these teachings would be:

• 6) members in good standing of any local body are also in communion with any other local body.
• 7) members who reject the discipline of one local body should not be received by another.
• 8) impenitence in the face of church discipline for sinful behavior would be one sort of rejection of discipline; impenitence in the face of church discipline for false teaching would be another.

However, there arises the complicating factor which seems to give rise to Frame's difficulty in analyzing the various Protestant splits in Chapter 2:

• 9) local bodies which pervert the Gospel, baptize unbelievers, or discipline falsely compel those they excommunicate to sin in remaining outside the church or to join other local bodies.
• 10) local bodies which pervert the Gospel, baptize unbelievers, or discipline falsely compel other local bodies to evaluate whether the prospective members or the church they left are schismatic.

Now, given these "givens" it may seem that we must either throw up our hands in despair and embrace both members of our church (before one can leave), or erect a hierarchy which can, by some measure of worldly force (whether financial, social, or political) settle all cases which arrive at stage (9&10). I think, however, that this is premature. If we accept that unity is a positive good in the church, albeit (as I still think) a secondary one, a fruit of first-order goods such as love for the brethren and devotion to the Gospel's spread, then the above could be viewed as a *negative test* for necessary division. That is, when we look at the believers and the churches around us--when it comes to cases--do we, in fact, see that the divisions which exist are based on points 9 & 10? Are they *currently* so, even if they may have been *historically* so at some time?

Many times, I think our answer will be "no." And where that is the case, it is not "compromise" in any shameful sense to encourage one body to reach out to another. This is the great failure of the sort of Independent Baptist churches I grew up in, methinks: they fail to treat the above as *negative tests*, and instead require that churches affirmatively demonstrate that they are "of like faith and practice" before they will interact fruitfully with them or receive their members. This is a defensive reaction typical of separatists, who are always a hair's breadth away from being properly schismatic (I disagree that independent churches are schismatic for leaving a denomination, on grounds Frame should approve: that denominations have no spiritual authority) and have often, and egregiously, crossed right over it. That Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and other denominationalists have done no better in no way excuses those who have done bad enough.

I suggest that the way out is not, as Frame's Presbyterian commitments lead him to expect, through a unity-building hierarchy; rather, it is through a revival of love for the brethren and zeal for the Gospel in our local churches, coupled with a thorough de-privileging of denominations. Can that be? On a grand scale, probably not.

In your church? Well, have you tried? Have I? What would it look like if we did?