We pick up again with Alan Strange’s treatment of Hodge in Empowered Witness. There are some questions raised by this work that bear consideration in a review. A reader who is not already in sympathy with the essential argument or who perhaps sides with the Southern Presbyterian view of the spirituality of the church might be forgiven for wondering whether the author begs the question by describing Hodge’s view as he does. What seems to Strange to be a “supple” or “nuanced” view might be accused of special pleading. Why, for instance, may Hodge claim that the visible church, as “God’s witness on earth,” is authorized to “bear testimony against all error in doctrine and sin in practice, whether in magistrate or people,” thus potentially licensing the church to pronounce on any number of social issues, and yet seek to limit that testimony by the church as church regarding “questions of banks and tariffs, with regard to which the rule of decision is human laws or secular interests” (74, 75)? Is this attempt to institute such limits coherent with Hodge’s own stated principles? Hodge was zealous to preserve the prerogative of the church to speak to “sins and to enjoin many duties which lie properly within her sphere” (431). Were I, however, to try to make this argument to suspicious Millennial and Gen-Z students, I should expect a rigorous interrogation. Natively suspicious Millennials and Gen-Z-ers may not find entirely persuasive Strange’s argument, that, though “Christ and the apostles did not abolish slavery, it is also the case that the consequences of the gospel would tend to ameliorate if not eliminate it (seen in Paul’s letter to Philemon)” (121). Philemon may have given Onesimus his freedom. We do not know.¹ The New Testament frequently presents slavery negatively, for example, as a metaphor for captivity to the law for salvation, to sin and to fear (e.g., Gal 2:4; 4:24–25; 5:1; Rom 6:17, 19–20; 8:15; 2 Cor 11:20; Tit 2:3; 3:3; 2 Pet 2:19), even as it sometimes uses it as a positive metaphor for our obedience to Christ (e.g., Rom 6:15, 18, 22). In 1 Timothy 1:10 Paul condemns “enslavers” (ESV) as sinners along with murders, homosexuals, and liars. Yet, the New Testament also accepts slavery as a fact of life in the ancient world (e.g., 1 Cor 12:13; Eph 6:5; Col 3:22; 1 Pet 2:18). Over centuries, Christianity did have a positive effect regarding slavery in the empire, but the stark fact is the New Testament church never convened a synod to speak as a church to issues of slavery (as the American Presbyterian church did in 1818), nor did she convene a synod to speak as a church to any of the other great and grave moral crimes and corruptions that marked the Roman empire of the period. How may we justify Hodge’s principles in light of the relative silence of the New Testament church? (124)

In his final chapter Strange tackles these questions and challenges fairly. For example, he recognizes that Hodge’s distinction between what is civil (secular) and what is spiritual is not as obvious as Hodge thought (111). He likes Hodge’s view better than Thornwell’s because the former’s did not “box him in” by a “some sort of recommitment” (116). Strange offers a useful diagnostic question to help us sort through the issues wisely: “Does this [act of the church] advance the true spiritual task/calling/mission of the church?” (112). He argues that the church taking a position on a tax bill does not, but opposing slavery does.

Here, however, we return to Westminster Confession (WCF) 31.4. Does not the church already confess a rubric for deciding to which issues the church as church may speak? To Strange’s diagnostic question we should turn to these confessional categories:

1. Is the matter before us ecclesiastical? By this one question alone virtually all of the 127 official positions of the PCUSA are disqualified. Further, it is hard to see how Overture 12 or even the “peculiar institution” of slavery meets this test given that the apostolic and early post-apostolic church was surrounded by gross sexual immorality and slavery and had slaves within her members to whom the apostles gave instructions.
2. Is it intermeddling with civil, that is, secular affairs? Again, how do Overture 12 or the 1818 resolution against slavery meet this test?
3. Is it a case extraordinary? Slavery was not unusual in the first century, and neither in the apostolic period was gross sexual immorality. That the sexual immorality of our age is shocking to our consciences does not ipso facto qualify it as “extraordinary” in the sense in which the divines intended that word.²
4. Has the magistrate asked the opinion of the church? As T. David Gordon has noted, no governmental body asked the PCA’s opinion about the transgender issue.³

This is not to say that Christians as individuals, as secular legislators or policy makers, or in organizations dedicated to addressing such issues should not speak out against man stealing (which is a patent violation of Deuteronomy 24:7 and was a capital offense), human trafficking, slavery, or the insanity of the trans-agenda. Christians should speak to these issues. We should be leaders in the effort to end human trafficking. For example, one wonders about the relative silence of progressive evangelicals about perhaps the greatest child-trafficking operation in centuries, that conducted by the Biden Administration. The question is this: To which issues may the church as church speak officially, on behalf of Christ, to the magistrate? I am increasingly convinced that, when all the biblical and confessional tests are considered, when we look at the New Testament church, we should conclude that the church may speak humbly to the magistrate when her liberty to function as the church is affected. For example, the church might have humbly petitioned the magistrate to open churches during the Covid lockdowns, and some did. Should the magistrate require churches to hire trans-employees, that would be a legitimate cause for a humble petition. But the general corruption of the pagan world into sexual insanity, however alarming, simply does not meet the biblical and confessional tests.

In light of this tension between the confessional standards and the argument of the book, it struck this reviewer that the book would have been even more helpful had there been some discussion of how the distinction between nature and grace illumines this question. For example, are American Christians aware of how John C. Calhoun’s appeal to natural law (p. 40) in defense of slavery was at odds with the understanding of natural law espoused by the American founders? Calhoun may have been brilliant, but his argument was un-American. It cost the Republic a civil war, and it took most of two centuries to apply the Founders’ view of natural law and natural liberties to all Americans, regardless of ethnicity, but the Founders certainly grounded their principle in natural law.

Further, even if the church as church is limited by WCF 31.4 from making declarations, there is nothing keeping ministers from preaching Philemon to slaveholders or human traffickers in their congregations. Indeed, should I discover a human trafficker in my congregation, I would notify the police and bring it to the attention of my consistory as a violation of the eighth commandment and possibly the sixth.

Theologically, the slavers and the trans-activists share a trait: both have a deficient anthropology (doctrine of humanity). Neither understands correctly that humans are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26). Slavers and human traffickers and abusers of all sorts implicitly deny the humanity of those whom they steal, traffic, or otherwise enslave. The trans-agenda is driven by Gnostic theology that calls good evil and evil good. It does not understand that the creational order was and remains good (Gen 1:25), even if corrupted by sin.

Finally, I want to dissent a bit from the author’s argument for the continuing validity and use of Hodge’s doctrine of the spirituality of the church. The proper use of the spirituality of the church is not its “supple” use to preserve the church’s “prophetic voice,” but the preservation of the visible church. When the author says, “Let the church be the church,” we should all say “Amen!” When the visible church chooses to speak through her assemblies, she ought to choose her battles very carefully. We ought to speak about as often as the apostolic church did (e.g., Acts 5:29) because every time we speak (e.g., Overture 12) we run the risk of stepping on the slippery slope to the PCUSA’s 127 social positions.

It would be better to view the spirituality of the church as the way to liberate the church to focus upon the pure preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the use of church discipline (Belgic Confession 29).

This is a good and thoughtful book. It will make a good study for adult Christian education classes, Christian high schools and colleges, sessions, and elder training courses.

Notes

1. There were later church leaders named Onesimus, but scholars doubt the identification of any one of them with the slave mentioned in Philemon.
2. On these issues see these essays, R. Scott Clark, “‘Cases Extraordinary.’ the Spirituality of the Church, and the Trans Crisis,” and, “Of Semicolons and the Spirituality of the Church,” and T. David Gordon, “Thoughts On Overture 12.”
3. See Gordon, “Thoughts on Overture 12 (PCA GA 2023).”

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Alan D. Strange, Empowered Witness: Politics, Culture, and the Spiritual Mission of the Church (Wheaton: Crossway, 2024).

You can find the whole series here.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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