‘Till We Have PCA Faces

Our brother Kenneth Kang-Hui over at the Reformation in the City blog has been writing a few worthy serials on issues of the 38^th GA of the PCA. I wanted to call attention to his work and respond to an excellent post at some length greater than usually welcomed for blog responses to a post. His post was itself a response to a post at Stellman’s Creed Code Cult on Over-Strategizing. In addressing two PCA adoptions initially set somewhat as alternative to one another, Kenneth wisely cautions of the danger of talking past each other regarding PCA strategies. It brings to mind my favourite of C.S. Lewis’ works, ‘Till We Have Faces, where two loving sisters are at odds over what they see, over what is real and what is imagined, over expressions of love, and over expressions of ‘God’s’ providence and grace.

We ought always to value the importance of listening, of being quick to hear and slow to speak (thank you, HS (Holy Spirit), James (1:19), and mom). Forgive me, I realise talking past one another in assumption is a most usual problem and convenience common to humankind. We want others to answer to us, to affirm our assumptions, rather than dissolve our assumptions and presuppositions in a process of mutual understanding and enlightenment, to being answered, to properly seeing one another’s genuine face.  We have a ready response to a supposed belief or argument, and we think this is in keeping with the Biblical teaching of always being ready to defend or reprove or exhort (2 Tim.4:2 ; 1 Pet. 3:15). And yet, as prepared as we may well be to defend our stance, to reprove error, and exhort to righteousness, we are too often ill prepared to hear the account for the hope that is in someone else, with gentleness and reverence, to consider the one to whom we preach or instruct with great patience. To me, that’s the distinction of talking past someone rather than having a real dialog. We respond to what we expect rather than what we encounter, and we frame what we encounter as though it were what we have expected. We hear such often in the venues of evangelism and debate, and it’s a considerable impediment.  Two of my regular noting in ongoing debates are Debating Calvinism {five points, two views} with Dave Hunt and James White, and that whole Clark – Van Til Controversy, both of which topics remain with us to this day, even age-in and age-out, dating back to Augustine and beyond, even back to the Garden and “Hath God said…?”