on Item 06-03 (On
Amending G-6.0108b, “Freedom of Conscience - Within Certain Bounds” to
Safeguard the Amendment Process)
The
Advisory Committee on the Constitution advises the 217th General Assembly
(2006) to disapprove Item 06-03.
Rationale
Item 06-03
seeks to amend G-6.0108b to add an additional sentence that would make
certain “specific” standards of the Book of Order essentials of the
Reformed faith and polity for officers of the church. The rationale for
the overture states that its purpose is to preclude the authoritative
interpretation of G-6.0108b offered by Recommendation 5. of the Report of
the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church.
The
Advisory Committee on the Constitution does not believe that the proposed
amendment to G-6.0108b offered by Item 06-03 accomplishes the intent
stated in the rationale. The premise of this overture is that the task
force recommendation treats G-6.0106b as nonessential. This premise is
incorrect.
The impact
of the proposed overture cannot be understood apart from the actual
language of G-6.0106b:
Those who
are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to
Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the
church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in
fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman
(W-4.9001), or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any
self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be
ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and
Sacrament.
The
overture assumes that this provision contains an unambiguous standard that
the task force report seeks to circumvent. However, as the Advisory
Committee on the Constitution has advised with respect to other overtures,
by using the mandatory term “shall” to refer to the phrase “practice which
the confessions call sin” rather than delineating practices that bar
ordination, G-6.0106b creates an intersection between belief and practice.
A person can only repent of conduct he or she genuinely believes to be
sinful. If a person does not believe conduct to be sinful, he or she may
abstain from that conduct out of concern for the wellbeing of the
community (e.g., 1 Corinthians 8), but he or she cannot be said to repent
of that conduct. The authoritative interpretation offered by the task
force would allow an ordaining or installing governing body, when faced
with a particular practice that is described as sinful at some place in
the confessions, that the candidate does not believe to be sinful, to
ordain or install the candidate on the basis that the candidate’s
belief that the practice was not sinful does not depart from the
essentials of the Reformed faith. This interpretation is not an attack on
the mandatory nature of the “shall not” in G-6.0106b, but a recognition of
the variety of belief as to which practices “the confessions call sin.”
Accordingly, the Advisory Committee on the Constitution does not believe
that the amendments to G-6.0108b accomplish the intent described in the
overture’s rationale. The amendment does not affect the variety of belief
as to which practices the confessions call sin, and thus would not prevent
an ordaining or installing body from deciding that a candidate could be
ordained and/or installed even if that person did not believe that some
conduct the confessions call sin was not sinful, and therefore
unrepentantly engaged in that conduct, as long as the governing body found
that belief not to be a departure from the essentials of the
Reformed faith.
To the
extent the assembly desires to accomplish the intent set forth in the
rationale of these overtures, it should propose amendment to G-6.0106b
replacing the language “practices the confessions call sin” with a list of
the practices that would preclude ordination or installation, or approve
an authoritative interpretation defining as specifically as possible the
practices that the confessions call sin, either by delineating each
practice the assembly believes G-6.0106b refers to or by stating that
G-6.0106b refers literally to any practice in any way described as sinful
by any portion of The Book of Confessions.