Broad Church on Broad Way
Rev. Angus Stewart
Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) Communications and Press Secretary, Stephen Lynas' letter (Belfast Telegraph, 3 March, 2008) tries to gloss over the different theologies in the PCI but this only serves to underscore its unfaithfulness to Jesus Christ.
He writes of "latitude" and "different understanding" in interpretation of God's Word. But "the true and full sense of any scripture is ... not manifold but one" (Westminster Confession 1:9).
He glories in the PCI's "broad range of views" and different "practices," including access to the pulpit, baptism, marriage, etc. But the PCI's Westminster Standards set forth a united, biblical position on church doctrine, sacraments, discipline, worship and government.
He acknowledges the presence of "liberals" and "modernists" in the PCI, but falsely includes these false teachers "within a reformed theology"!
He avers the PCI "knows exactly what it believes"—namely various conflicting and contradictory doctrines!
In short, for the PCI the Bible is a wax nose and the Westminster Standards are a dead letter, because heretical doctrines and unbiblical practices are tolerated and promoted. As the official position and unofficial consensus of the PCI becomes more "liberal" and "modernist," its spurious unity requires the evangelicals to compromise further.
God commands a very different unity, a unity in the truth: "that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (I Cor. 1:10). Christ even warns that the "broad" way leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13-14).