Now in discussing this we come to the question of the email leak and to the objection that it was an unlawful act of trafficking in confidential intellectual property that discredits the leaker and makes any criticism of you that is built upon the leaked materials illegitimate. The leak was unsavory, and on its first occurrence I regarded it as an open question as to whether it was appropriate or whether, it having already occurred, it would be appropriate to peruse the leaked materials. Upon reflection I have concluded that you have suffered no wrong in this and that the leak, though unpleasant, was justified.

“You shall reason frankly with your neighbor” (Lev. 19:17). It is in that vein that this testimony is given to you concerning your deeds.

The Nature of Your Organization

First is your secrecy. You have set yourselves up as a shadow presbytery, with a confidential membership and an agenda and doings that are known largely only insofar as you have failed to maintain your cover. There is not a single line in Scripture that justifies this secrecy of yours, in which you persistently hide your deeds from the church. The Beatitudes do not say ‘blessed are the secret activists,’ nor do any of the ethical instructions of the New Testament commend secretive activities. I search the qualifications for elders in vain for the suggestion that skill in political machinations is a desirable virtue, and I find equal difficulty in locating the advice of Proverbs, the command of the Law, or the worthy example from Israel’s history that teaches the propriety of such things.

To be sure, Scripture does allude to secrecy, but apart from unpretentious piety (Matt. 6:3-4, 6, 17-18), the innermost thoughts of man (Ps. 44:21; 51:6; 90:8), and God’s hidden counsel (Deut. 29:29; Lk. 8:10; Rom 16:25; 1 Cor. 2:7), it does so in only two broad circumstances. In the first case the faithful use secrecy to avoid persecution (Acts 9:23-25). This secrecy is mitigated, however, by two factors. It was a passive secrecy intended to avoid the persecution of others, not an active secrecy that involved plotting against them. When the early disciples hid from the Jews they are not recorded as having plotted to achieve influence to stymie the persecution-prone Sanhedrin or Herod, but rather as having gone through the normal expressions of piety in seeking deliverance (Acts 12:12; comp. v. 5). In addition, this secrecy was often willingly foregone in favor of public ministry and an acceptance of the suffering that might accompany it. The prophets, our Lord, and the apostles all suffered openly because of their public testimony to the truth. They sometimes eluded those that wished to persecute them, but they were consistently bold in their public ministries and in the patience with which they endured corresponding suffering.

The second occasion in which secretiveness appears is in seeking to conceal wrongdoing. It is a mark of false teachers that they conceal their true nature. Jude says of them that they “crept in unnoticed” (Jude 4), while Peter says that “they secretly bring in destructive heresies” (2 Pet. 2:4) and Paul describes his opponents as “false brothers secretly brought in – who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 2:4). Ezekiel records how the elders of Israel committed idolatry in secret (Eze. 8:8-12; 14:1-11), while the probability and danger of idolaters secretly enticing others to infidelity was so great that the Law prescribed a harsh remedy to defend against it (Deut. 13:6-11).

Alas, in their sin the faithful have sometimes stumbled and looked rather to concealment than to grace for deliverance. Adam and Eve hid themselves after the Fall (Gen. 3:8-10), while Abraham and Isaac concealed their true identities from foreigners whose power they (mistakenly) feared (12:12-13; 20:2; 26:7-11) and Peter concealed his own discipleship (Lk. 22:57-60). Yet in such cases this was a sinful departure from their faithfulness, a faithfulness which was elsewhere proven by their deeds (Gen. 22:1-18; 26:25; Acts 1:15-22; 2:14-40; 4:8-14, 18-20; 5:29-33, 40-42; 10:34-48; 12:2-17; 15:7-11).

It is not so with false teachers, for whom secrecy is their typical modus operandi, nor with their master, Satan, who ever disguises his true nature and works secret mischief (Gen. 3:1-5; Cor. 11:26). Does it not bother you that your way of doing things is exactly the same as that of Satan and false teachers, and that it is the precise opposite of how Christ and the apostles conducted themselves? It should keep you up at night and move you to examine yourselves closely and to seek God’s face in utter humiliation and heartfelt repentance. Judging by your persistence in this way for nearly 9 years now, it seems that you have not come to such a knowledge of the true nature of your deeds or of the right attitude concerning them.

Understand that there is no excuse or justification for your secrecy, since you do not do it to avoid persecution but to hide yourselves from others whom you extol as brothers with whom you desire good relations. The PCA was not apostate and likely to persecute you for pursuing your agenda had you begun as a public organization in 2013; nor is the present PCA faithless and inclined to use persecution against you, even when we lay aside the prescient fact that it is not within our power to persecute in the same way that unbelievers did the early believers.

An Objection Considered

Now perhaps you will object and say that this is all a misunderstanding and that yours is not a secret organization but a private one. Perhaps you will say that you also need privacy in order to do your pastoral work. In this you assert principles that, if consistently applied in ethical matters, would be disastrous. In common use private and secret are not strictly synonymous: what is private is the legitimate concern of its subject only, whereas what is secret is intentionally (rather than coincidentally) hidden from certain others because its being known by them would cause conflict. Secrecy carries it with the connotation of willful, deliberate concealment, whereas what is private is the concern of its subject as a matter of course. As an insignificant citizen my domestic life is private, but it is so absent any special attempt to keep it to myself. But my email password is a secret, as I put conscious effort into keeping others from discovering it.

Consider another example. If a man beats his wife behind the pulled shades of their bedroom is that a private matter or a secret one? It is not a legitimately private matter, for the commission of violent offenses is a public concern that involves not only the immediate perpetrator and victim but others as well, such as the rest of their families and the punitive agents of the state. If an abuser plead as defense that what transpires within his own home is without exception his private business the district attorney would laugh him to scorn and proceed with charges.

Why? Because the matter, though kept secret until it is discovered, is not limited in its effects to the immediate participants. Private actions that bear a public effect are not truly private, regardless of the circumstances in which they occur. Their influence on others – even (or perhaps especially) others who may not know about them – makes them matters of public concern and redress.

And so it is with your organization and its doings. If you were merely an invitation-only club that meets to play checkers or discuss 13^th century Hungarian literature yours would be a private organization, since those things will have no significant effects upon the church you serve. But it most emphatically does affect others when you dream up agendas that you then act out when the opportunity arises, and which will have significant effects upon every PCA church, perhaps for many generations or in perpetuity.

Also, you fail to see that privacy is not wholly separate from public recognition, unlike secrecy, which wishes for the wider public to be oblivious as to the very existence of the thing hidden. Private property, for example, is recognized as such by the law and by the community: each parcel has a tax number and its address, owner, purchase history, boundaries, etc. can be learned by other citizens even if the owner has fortified the property against entry (after the contemporary fashion) with fences and rude signage. But secret property – as for example, a moonshine still – is that which the owner endeavors to conceal from being known about by the wider community at all. Now you are not pristinely secret, as your existence has been discovered, but neither are you a formal, open organization; your doings and most of your membership still remain in the shadows in an intentional attempt to elude public knowledge, which qualifies you as secretive, not private.

Also, office is ipso facto public and should, as such, be exercised in a public, accountable way. It is not appropriate for anyone to hold both public office and membership in a secret organization that seeks to influence the actions of public officeholders and the outcomes of public assemblies. Officeholders, as beneficiaries and stewards of the public trust of the people whom they serve, ought to take care to keep that trust and not betray it or give occasion for suspicion, which is what is done when one maintains membership in a secretive organization.

The Question of the Email Leak

Now in discussing this we come to the question of the email leak and to the objection that it was an unlawful act of trafficking in confidential intellectual property that discredits the leaker and makes any criticism of you that is built upon the leaked materials illegitimate. The leak was unsavory, and on its first occurrence I regarded it as an open question as to whether it was appropriate or whether, it having already occurred, it would be appropriate to peruse the leaked materials. Upon reflection I have concluded that you have suffered no wrong in this and that the leak, though unpleasant, was justified. Here is why:

1. Privacy is not separable from legality. No one has a right to privacy in wrongdoing: to the contrary, participants have a duty to testify to the wrong deeds of unlawful enterprises. To persist in concealing their existence and transgressions because of that strange notion of brotherly loyalty that is common in such organizations is not honorable; to turn state’s evidence is. Your organization is unlawful and is nowhere provided for by Scripture, prudence, a common sense of ethical propriety, or our constitution. It is in every way contrary to the ethos of such things and stands condemned thereby. The leaker did not violate your right to privacy in this – for you have none. Rather, he acted in accord with his duty to turn from the illicit organization and its deeds, and to reveal them to those who are affected by them (Lev. 5:1; Zech. 8:16-17; Eph. 4:25; comp. Prov. 29:24 and 2 Kgs. 5:31-32).
2. The leak was an act of defense, a response to your own conspiratorial doings. It is often lawful to respond in defense with the same type and nature of thing with which one has been assailed. It is lawful to use force to repel force. So also is it lawful to respond to secrecy with deeds that are of a like nature. One who strikes in defense is righteous where one who strikes in cruelty is not. One who secretly infiltrates a conspiracy is similarly justified, whereas the original offenders are not.
3. Necessity justifies in some circumstances what is unlawful in others (1 Sam. 21:6). The leaker was compelled to his action by your own secrecy. There could have been no knowledge of your doings in the dark except by infiltration and exposure. His deed was provoked by your own and could not have occurred apart from it. You created the necessity and have, as such, no ground upon which to complain.

We may plead all of this against you, for we act in defense; you, the instigators, may lay claim to none of it. The leaker has but done his duty by informing the rest of us of your doings that will affect us. He who uses craft and secrecy can little object if others do so more adeptly in response. And an organization that has secretly set itself up in the midst of another cannot object to others secretly infiltrating it in response, at least not without being hypocritical.

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.