Chapter 5 -- Response to Doug

Long time no see! I'm, er, back. . . .

I think our paths are more-or-less exactly together on this point:

[Regarding Frame's assertion that issues such as paedo/credobaptism must be solved by "the courts of the one true church"--Doug, did you note the weird plural, there?] Uh, I think not. You aren't going to get a "court of the one true church" until you solve this issue. If this issue is going to be resolved, it will have to be done on a *local, congregational, and ecumenical* level, and by the time Frame's "courts" came into being, this question would have already been dealt with.

Exactly. I can't get from multi-denominational hierarchy to mono-denominational hierarchy (at which point the meaning of "denomination" would finally collapse into "catholic" again) without first either solving or overruling all the denominational problems. Surely, there should be some areas in which we could cooperate this way, and I guess those for whom the existence of denominations is non-negotiable will have to keep on trying that.

What I don't understand is the need to do the back-and-forth of "destroy denominations" while embracing a strategy which requires strengthening them. It seems grossly unlikely that, say, a Presby-Lutheran mondo-denomination would feel the need to cooperate with, say, the Methodists that a small-town Baptist church feels to cooperate with the Methodist church across the way. Since when has strengthening a hierarchy ever improved total cooperation?

Seems to me that churches, absent the denominational ties that bind them, would be much more inclined to cooperate with other churches--some based on proximity (and leading to the combination of churches which, while their denominations own their leadership and their facilities, will never happen) and some based on similarity of emphasis, goals, or vision (which will help strengthen and preserve the various gifts in which various groups excel).

Chapter 5 -- Reiteration (gougatsu ato)

Five months (that would be finals, a trip to Australia, surgery, three weeks hospitalized, and starting a new college teaching job) ago, we had just reached Chapter 5. We agreed to start doing two chapters at a time, to speed things up (posting speed, not reading speed, being the chief difficulty, here). I suggest that, since Chapter 5's already under weigh (or "underway"), and since Chapter 6 starts a new Part of the book, we do 6 & 7 together, and so forth. . . .

So, Chapter 5. I'm also a bit underwhelmed here, but so far that's been my reaction to a lot of the argumentation in the book. I keep hoping for more, because Frame has better stuff than this; perhaps the really meaty stuff is going to come later. I can't help thinking, though, that the prolegomena is more than half the argument, in a case like this, and I think he's failed to make his premises clear and unobjectionable; for me, the same objections keep repeating in each chapter, until he addresses them.

Let me grab two chunks as focii for discussion:

But as we've seen, God did not establish a zoo, but a church. His plan for dealing with estrangements is not amicable divorce, but mutual discipline within the church (Matt. 18:15-20; 1 Cor. 5) (which can, to be sure, sometimes lead to excommunication when a really serious problem cannot otherwise be overcome).

When the denominations are most true to their traditions, they are most ecumenical.

Here is my problem with Frame's analysis, as someone from an Independent Baptist background, who, like other independents and congregationalists of all stripes (including Free Presbyterians), is more sharply critical of denominations than Frame, but from an entirely different angle: Frame's critique of denominationalism is really just another turn of the denominational wheel. Acting on his analysis, it seems to me we will necessarily just re-create the conditions which led to the denominationalism of the present.

Frame is right that "God did not establish a zoo [where "harmony" is the product of barriers between natural enemies/competitors], but a church." He is right that "amicable divorce" is not an option in church discipline: there is reconciliation, and there is excommunication, and in between is a state of sin for any party not actively seeking reconciliation. This demands our attention and our repentance.

However, Frame seems to me to be mistaken when he believes that a hierarchical One True Church (or, as Doug's been calling it, Unified Church Government--I really want a GUT acronym, but can't get there) with "courts" (what is it with Presbyterians and the judicial metaphor?) is the answer. He seems to be self-defeating when he teaches that the denominations themselves are a middle ground between isolated churches and the One True Church; if that is the case, then it is the unification of denominations, which requires their strengthening and enlarging until some absorb/merge with others, until finally only one remains, with only the excommunicated outside. . . .

But wait, from the standpoint of Rome or Antioch, that's exactly what there is today.

And further, from the standpoint that produces the Lutheran and Reformed and Episcopal denominations, Frame's midway strategy--let denominations grow and dialogue, and eventually they'll work out their differences and merge--is exactly what's underway. Granted, in some cases, it's been a more fissiparous process than they'd hoped, but that's still the calculated goal: we'll be true to our confessional tradition, and sooner or later they'll get it right and join us.

This won't help to "destroy denominations," unless we really believe that (a) all such historical differences can be worked out through some heretofore unexampled dialogic phenomenon or (b) one denomination really is in possession of such worldly power as would enable it to enforce a "join or be excommunicated" decree meaningfully. Case (a) is the hope of ecumenists in the less positive sense; case (b) is the hope of, well, medieval Roman Catholics and, if the stories are true, the 20th-C Russian Orthodox.

More to the point, this puts hope where there's no basis for hope: in the legitimacy of denominational hierarchies above the local churches. Frame clearly (as a committed Presbyterian must, I suppose) believes that supra-church hierarchies are manifestations of the church. I remain, Baptistically and Biblically, quite archly skeptical on the point.

That a local church may organize its affairs in any number of ways, I have no doubt. That it might choose to cooperate with other churches in any number of ways, I have no doubt. That the churches are under obligation to cooperate and to communicate with each other, I have so little doubt that I'm happy to join Frame in his desire to lead our churches in repentance on the point. That any offices exist outside the local church, which have authority over the local church, I have grave doubts.

Christ did not establish any denominational hierarchies. Not only did He not establish many (as Frame argues), He did not even establish one. He sent out His own Apostles, who on the basis of that special sending formed churches, who communicated and cooperated by sending messengers from one to another (including, as even the Twelve acknowledged, sending the Apostles out from particular churches to particular churches--though Christ's special commission to certain Apostles was still a unique grace to the church). Those churches are His Church, their members are His members, and there is no need nor call nor promise for anything else.

When the churches disagreed, they did not consult "courts" or denominational higher-ups. They sought, simultaneously, two forms of guidance: Apostolic authority (available today only in Scripture form) and the conscience of the whole church. They formed their conscience by, in addition to seeking right authority, sending elders from each church to a council, where the matter was given due deliberation.

Now, if Frame wants to suggest that a council of the churches (which are The Church) equals a denominational hierarchy, that's his prerogative. What seems clear to me, though, is that the existence of modern denominational structures--with offices, finances, bylaws, parachurch organizations, schools, seminaries, and often even political entanglements--is the chief barrier to the cooperation of the churches as The Church. That should be Frame's point, given the force of some of the stronger arguments up to now.

He seems too unwilling to cross his own denomination, though, and so tries to argue that we can defeat denominationalism by . . . being better denominationalists.

When the denominations are most true to their traditions, they are most ecumenical.

Call me a skeptic on that one.