If you reject and/or redefine the WCF doctrines of
-church
-church government
-covenant
-sacraments
-worship and Lord’s Day
-and certain elements of soteriology
are you really Westminster Presbyterian?
or are you some frankensteinian concoction of various emphases?
The answer is obvious to the honest.
Now, who does this today?
Anyone with open eyes and ears can answer that question.
And there you will find a rot and compromise more fundamental, more comprehensive, more cancerous than all the impending dooms of the culture wars and pagan encroachments and petty tyrannies—important as they are.
Why?
Because judgment begins at the house of God.
Which means it doesn’t begin with the culture.
Which means the culture is bad because the church is.
Which means any reformation that does not begin with identifying the sins of the church, and repenting and reforming accordingly, is no reformation at all.
So you aren’t going to defeat pagan pluralism with confessional pluralism. No matter how much you think otherwise. No matter how much action you take. No matter how many things you build. No matter how rhetorically clever you are. No matter how helpful you might be on secondary issues. No matter how well you might market yourself to ducks you might happen to gather and make quack along with you.
You’re failing to deal with the chief issues.
So, you think, I have to be perfect to do any good? to make any impact? to be used of God? No. Of course not. God only uses sinners. And his judgments are mixed with mercy. So, because God is gracious, and we are sinful, you can miss many chief points and still profit men. Even the Pharisees were to be heeded when they spoke rightly. This is not the issue.
The issue, plainly stated, is this.
If you don’t do the works of Abraham, you aren’t his son; if you sit in the seat of Moses but have not his faith, you aren’t of Moses; if you reject and/or redefine the fundamentals of the WCF, you aren’t a Westminster Presbyterian—no matter how much you might protest to the contrary.
Truth matters. Consistency matters. First principles matter—much more than the expedient of simply “getting things done.” There is a word for claiming the name without possessing the substance: hypocrisy. There is a word for using expediency as a chief operating principle: faithless. There is a word for using “charity” to mask sin: flattery.
This is basic.
Many can go on about all the issues out there in the culture, as they should. Meanwhile, the tyrant of King Pragmatism reigns unchallenged in the commitments, institutions, and thinking of many. And the people love to have it so. In fact, it seems to be a coveted union card to enter some circles. Toleration of competing or contradictory views is seen as a virtue. A reactive unity deemed necessary because of so-called common enemies becomes the cover for compromise and complacency.
What this means is most present diagnoses offered by popular talking heads are often seriously off. They identify symptoms—symptoms that may need treated and alleviated, but symptoms nevertheless. Which means: not the source, not the foundation, not first principles. Thus their prescriptions are too shallow. They lightly heal wounds. Even if such mean well, band-aids for cancer is a long-term approach that is terminal. Thus, reformation is deeper and costlier than many want to admit.