Christ is one, and he alone is righteousness for all who believe in him, irrespective of anything in themselves and irrespective of their place in the church. But office has higher standards than membership, is available only to a select few (Jas. 3:1), and is not meant to glorify the ones who hold it but so that they may serve everyone else in humility and without partiality. (Mk. 10:42-45; 1 Tim. 5:21). 

Last year I asserted that we should reconsider what terms we employ in discussing the question of fitness for office in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Subsequent correspondence suggests that such an assertion merits further consideration. Of particular interest is the concept of the unthinkable in moral questions.

In such matters conscious obedience to what has been explicitly stated is, it needs but little comment, of great importance. God has revealed his moral law in the Old Testament, clearly transcribing by the hand of his prophet Moses those things that he wishes men to do or refrain from doing. But alongside of the question of intentionally obeying such explicit commands is the related matter of the unthinkable.

Consider an example. Some time ago I was working in a clinic where a boy was getting a shot. He resisted by making a scene, to which what appeared to be his grandmother responded by chiding him for his incivility. The boy responded by loudly cursing this poor woman.

When I mentioned this incident to a coworker from Michigan, he, while not approving the behavior, nonetheless asserted there were occasions in which he could conceivably curse while addressing his mother, albeit not with a disrespectful tone. That notion, like the boy’s behavior, is utterly foreign to my Southern upbringing, so much so that I am not sure what would have happened to me if I had ever done either. It was simply inconceivable that I would ever curse in the presence of a parent or grandparent, much less toward one.

Nor was this because I had the advantage of a rigorous Presbyterian upbringing (I didn’t). I knew that one does not disrespect familial authority like that even when I was, at most, vaguely familiar that Ex. 21:17 exists. This was because I was the beneficiary of a common moral sense that had been developed and propagated by my culture in the form of sundry taboos.

And central to the effectiveness of such taboos is the concept of the unthinkable: for what cannot be thought in one’s own mind cannot be discussed with others, and what cannot be discussed openly cannot be done with impunity. The creation of the taboo is a strong impediment to the commission of the behavior it ultimately seeks to defend against.

Now such taboos are not merely a result of God’s common grace (where they are beneficial), nor a result of sin (where they depart from his will, Mk. 7:1-5, 9-20; 1 Tim. 4:3-5); they are to have their place also in the church, provided of course that they are fully in accord with scripture and do not go beyond it by forbidding what God allows (Col. 2:18, 20-23; 1 Tim. 4:3) or requires (Matt. 15:3-6). See, for example, 1 Corinthians 5. A man in Corinth had married his step mother (a violation of Lev. 18:8), and Paul in his letter is aghast that such a thing had not only occurred but also been boasted over (vv. 2, 6).

It is not clear why the church was boastful about such a thing, but some think that it involved a misunderstanding of liberty in Christ.1 Whatever its precise cause, the church had stumbled by permitting what even pagans recognized as intolerably evil  (v. 1).

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