Trueman: Being Presbyterian in the Church of Scotland

By now, I'm sure that many have heard about the ruling in the Church of Scotland to allow a practicing homosexual to assume the pastorate in one of its churches. Some have cried 'Foul' as if this has never happened before while others have argued that it is the natural result of abandoning the Scriptures on lesser issues.

Dr. Carl Trueman, who has already weighed in on this issue, has posted his response to this decision. Note: you won't find this at the Ref21 blog where his other comments were posted. Here is his rationale...

To avoid creating further grief for my colleagues at Ref21, I have posted my thoughts on the Church of Scotland decisions over at Scott Clark's place. Thanks to Scott for accommodating me.

What I appreciate about this post is his concern for Presbyterian polity and handling things through the courts of the church. Indeed, as he argued in his earlier posts, evangelicals in the Church of Scotland abandoned the courts of the church long ago in exchange for being left alone. They figured that they could sidestep thorny issues (the ordination of women, challenges to the inerrancy of Scripture, etc.) and all would be fine as long as those doctrines stayed outside the four walls of their individual churches. Trueman rightly points out that this is not Presbyterianism but rather the mindset of an independent church operating within a Presbyterian denomination. Now that a practicing homosexual has been allowed to serve as a pastor in the Church of Scotland in spite of a petition with 12,000 signatures speaking against that possibility, these 'independent' Presbyterian churches want to act even more independently. Trueman rightly questions their motives and argues that they are not really Presbyterian at all.

You can read the entire article at this link: Trueman: Being Presbyterian in the Church of Scotland « Heidelblog. In particular I encourage you read the final paragraph.