“God’s covenant with the body of Christ, while sufficient for an open source Christian, does not deny the truth and benefit found in other religious and wisdom traditions. We trust that the God who has given us freedom in Christ has acted to ensure the freedom of all creation. There is no need to say that our understanding of God’s actions (revealed to us in the work and person of Jesus Christ) in any way limits or affects the truths of other religions.”

Thirty-six teaching and ruling elders signed an open letter written to Plains and Peaks Presbytery expressing their concerns about a presentation given by the vice moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The letter – written out of conviction, not anger – said that those who signed it “believe that the furthering of the ‘peace, unity and purity of the Church’ is not accomplished through muting convictions, but rather through speaking these convictions in love.”

At its May presbytery meeting, the Rev. Landon Whitsitt, vice-moderator of the GA and executive/stated clerk of the Synod of Mid-America, gave a presentation on “Open Source Theology” – based on the concept of open source software.

The letter stated that while it is a “compelling metaphor … there is much in Rev. Whitsitt’s ideas that we found to be disconnected from Scripture, and from the faithful expressions of Scripture found in our Confessions.”

It then raised three concerns with the theology of the presentation.

1. “Our freedom in Christ is founded only in our subservience to Jesus Christ as Lord. … Our freedom in Christ can only be found in our submission to Him as Lord, in dying to ourselves, and in our obedience to His Scriptures. … We are not free, then, to conduct ourselves, or to lead God’s people, apart from our submission to Jesus Christ and to His Word.”

2. “There is a definitive source and interpretation of what God did and is doing through Christ. … The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the source for our understanding of God’s saving action in Christ. We cannot add or take away from this source. Theology is, in this sense, not ‘open’ … As a governing body within our denomination, then, our ‘alignment’ must be first and foremost with Scripture. Alignment with our constitution, including recent changes to it, must be second and subservient to our primary submission to Scripture.”

3. “Jesus Christ is the only source of salvation. … Jesus did not die on the cross, and God did not raise Him from the dead, so that He could be one option among several for a saving knowledge of God. To be sure, we must be respectful of other religions, and be in dialogue with those of other faiths. But any ‘truth and benefit’ to be found in these religions does not include the truth and benefit of God’s saving action, for this is only in Christ.”

The letter closed by stating that the signers, “make these affirmations, not only to stand on our convictions, but also in the hope that our presbytery as a whole would be governed by our bounded freedom in Christ, by the authority of Scripture and by a unified faith in the uniqueness of Christ. We were discouraged to hear several of Reverend Whitsitt’s ideas repeated or paraphrased on the floor of presbytery. The source to which we must be unswervingly open, in our theology and in our governing, must be Jesus Christ as witnessed to in Scripture. He is our Lord, and none other; our freedom is found in submission to Him, and without this submission, there is no tie that binds.”

According to the agenda, Whitsitt spoke three times at the May presbytery meeting. Besides his “Open Source Theology” presentation, he also discussed “Applying Open Source Thought to the Church,” and gave his opinion of the “State of the PCUSA.”

Open Source Church

Whitsitt is the author of Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All, which presents many of the same themes as his May presentation to Plains and Peaks Presbytery.

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[Editor’s note: Some of the original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid, so the links have been removed.]