The Doctrine of Double Speak uh I mean Effect

One of the recurring themes in RP theology is doctrines that are created to answer a specific question, but then get turned into a lens through which all things must be judged. Or maybe all things that we don't like get judged through that lens and the things we don't want to question are never to be questioned.

As an example, the "Regulative Principle of Worship" sounds good and simple - we don't do stuff in worship without a clear scriptural warrant (command or example). So, having mid-service announcements, or a mission update or something that isn't cool like that gets kicked out. It was originally, in my understanding, used to question the idolization of the communion elements (the host) in Catholic services. But, if you ask an RP pastor why we baptize people in worship, when there is neither command, nor example, nor even necessary consequence, they will end the conversation in record time. Remember that Hebrew infants were circumcised "on the eighth day", so no example there, and NT baptisms occurred immediately on profession of faith, without any indication that the congregation had to be gathered or even that it was done in a worship service.

So, it's not surprising that RP leaders would dredge up another woefully inadequate doctrine to nitpick reproductive health. This time, the Doctrine of Double Effect. Thomas Aquinas is supposedly the first theologian who argues this, in Summa Theologiae - I use https://aquinasonline.com/double-effect/ as the source of the discussion of the original.

Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. … Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible. And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful. (ST II-II 64,7)

The original statement seems pretty reasonable. I can take an action that has a bad effect, as long as my intent is good, and the bad effect does not outweigh the good effect. But, as with other things, the devil is in the details. The action becomes the object of scrutiny. The article above continues:

1. One may only intend a good or morally neutral action. One may never intend an intrinsically evil action, an action that is inherently evil. Intrinsically or inherently evil acts have an object which is disordered, i.e., which reason recognized as opposed or thwarting some human good. Some examples intrinsically evil actions are lying, fornication, adultery, murder (intentionally, directly killing another human being), suicide.

2. The good action, or at least a morally neutral action, that one does intend has two effects: a good effect which one intends to achieve, and an evil side-effect, which one does not intend (even though it may be foreseen), but which is tolerated.

3. The evil effect cannot be the means of achieving the good effect, for this would be equivalent of intending evil to bring about good, and so go against Romans 3:8.

4. There must be proportionality between the good intended and the evil tolerated. The good to be achieved must outweigh the evil tolerated; one cannot allow significant evil effects for a trivial reason.

Unfortunately, the codification of the rule (which has persisted, like the codification of the Regulative Principle of Worship) ends up destroying the original argument.

Aquinas says very little about the action itself, other than the intent, but the Aquinas scholars start gatekeeping the action. "Good or morally neutral action". The problem here is that killing is not, in and of itself, a morally neutral action. Aquinas doesn't weigh in on the morality of the action itself, but on the intent and the balance. If killing someone is necessary to save a life, and the saving of the life is a better outcome than the loss of life, then the action of killing someone is justified.

To give a better example of this, a topic I remember coming up a lot is the Surprise Party paradox. Maybe paradox isn't the best word. But here's what Geneva Freshmen discuss at the lunch table. Let's say your roommate has a birthday coming up and you want to throw them a surprise party. At what point are you breaking God's law? What if you say that you're going to take them to a movie, but you're really not going to take them to a movie. Maybe you can plan to take them to a movie a few days later and now you're not lying. But, what (horrors!) if your roommate asks you point blank, ARE YOU PLANNING A SURPRISE PARTY? Now you must choose between obedience to God (telling your roommate the truth) or the fun, that you think your roommate will enjoy, of being surprised and celebrated?

The debate, like the Aquinas scholars, turns into gatekeeping the action. Lying is NEVER permissible, therefore, telling your roommate that you're not planning a surprise party is sinful, even though the INTENT of telling your roommate a lie is something you believe to be the greater good - a well-executed surprise party that they will enjoy much more than realizing they were lied to.

This is where it becomes unhinged. For example, people erroneously believe that an undercover cop is morally required to admit to being a cop if asked directly, "are you a cop?". Christians would then have difficulty with being a spy "are you a spy?" Soldiers would have difficulty - "can I bomb a city knowing there will be civilians killed", or even "should I try to kill this enemy soldier if I could incapacitate him by shooting both his kneecaps?"

I think this is why Aquinas avoided nitpicking the action itself and focused on the intended and unintended consequences. Even killing is okay if the intended consequence (saving life) outweighs the unintended consequence (killing an aggressor).

Why does this matter?

The RP church appointed a study committee to decide on a revision of the RP Testimony from the current "Deliberately induced abortion, except possibly to save the mother’s life, is murder." to "Deliberately induced abortion is murder."

The study committee rationalized this using the "Doctrine of Double Effect" to pontificate that the ACTION of a chemical abortion, even if an abortion is required to save the life of the mother, and the baby has no chance of survival, is murder. So, again, gatekeeping the action itself, the action of abortion is never permissible, under any circumstances. Instead mothers who have an ectopic pregnancy must have their fallopian tube removed (a "morally neutral action"), even if the consequence is reduced fertility and the death of the unborn child, because chemical abortion cannot be morally neutral.

So, in doing this, the RP church (as they often do) ruled broadly on an extremely narrow case, in order to victimize and harm women, but as a consequence have made all sorts of things immoral.

1. Self-defense is now immoral. Harming or killing someone cannot be a morally neutral, thus self-defense is sinful. The intent of saving life doesn't matter because the action of killing a person is not morally neutral.
2. The death penalty is now immoral for the same reasons, even though it seems God commands it.
3. Spying is immoral
4. Amputation is immoral - the act of cutting someone's limb off is not in itself morally neutral even if it is done for the intent of saving the person's life

It becomes completely wacko when we judge the action itself. I believe Aquinas is right - if my intent is to do good and my action is measured to not cause unnecessary harm, and the good outcome outweighs the "unintended but expected" consequence (Aquinas waffles that I can kill a person without the intent of killing a person. Yuck!) then it is morally permissible.

With that said, by Aquinas's reasoning, killing an unborn child with the intent of saving the mother's life is morally permissible, even if the action I take would not be morally neutral in other circumstances.

In the same vein, lying to my roommate, which would generally be sinful, can be morally permissible when the intent is for a greater good (unexpected joy and celebration).

In the same way, lying to the Nazi guards about housing Jews is morally permissible because the good consequence (saving innocent life) outweighs what would otherwise be sinful (lying to lawful authority).

So, the Aquinas scholars (and current RP leaders) miss Aquinas's point altogether. The action itself is sinful in most circumstances. There's no getting around that, that this doctrine is the exception rather than the rule. It's sinful to lie, EXCEPT... It's sinful to kill, EXCEPT... Instead they turn it into this legalistic checkbox where we try to fool God. "I didn't INTEND to kill the baby, but I removed the fallopian tube and the baby just happened to die." (Is God fooled by this?) "I didn't INTEND to kill civilians, but I dropped a bomb on an industrial facility at 9AM that was producing drones so that the workers would be incapacitated"  (Again, is God fooled?) "I didn't intend to poke my mugger's eyes out to stop him from attacking me, but, yes, I took my car keys and hit him in the eye."

If killing an unborn baby to save the life of the mother is immoral, is God really going to look away because you took out the fallopian tube instead of cutting the baby out, or taking a drug to kill the baby?

Rethinking: Is the RPCNA a cult?

 One of the questions that keeps coming up about the RPCNA is whether the RPCNA is a cult. I think the answer is not so clear-cut. I believe the NAPARC churches are, in general, "high-control" authoritarian churches, and that overlaps a lot with cult behavior, but the difference is in degrees. I'm using a list of cult characteristics I found that is supposedly from the Cult Education Institute, but I can't find the original link:

1. Absolute authoritarianism without accountability
2. Zero tolerance for criticism or questions
3. Lack of meaningful financial disclosure regarding the budget
4. Unreasonable fears about the outside world that often involve evil conspiracies and persecutions
5. A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving and there is never a legitimate reason for anyone else to leave
6. Abuse of members
7. Records, books, articles, or programs documenting the abuses of the leader or group
8. Followers feeling that they are never able to be “good enough”
9. A belief that the leader is right at all times
10. A belief that the leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or giving validation

As a background, I grew up conservative in what is probably a more liberal presbytery in the RPCNA, so there were some authoritarian tendencies because the RPCNA overall is high control, but I would say that what I experienced as abuse as a child wasn't the church exactly, but how the church taught parenting - as "instant unquestioned obedience". So, yes, in a sense that was spiritual abuse enabled by the church, but not direct spiritual abuse.

My church/presbytery growing up was mildly cultish...

I would say that there were shades of cultish behavior in my church growing up:

(4) My church, as did the vast majority of Evangelical churches, believed that all levels of government were consciously antagonistic against Christians and Christian morality. Schools at all levels were underhandedly teaching anti-Christian propaganda as neutral truth, and that Christians were increasingly threatened for their Christian beliefs or practices. This exacerbated, in my opinion, the abusive environment growing up, because I believed that I had nowhere to turn. The church would unquestioningly support the abusive practices of my family, and the state would use any complaint as an excuse to destroy anything Christian in my home.

(5) The church always emphasized that those who left, whether for other denominations, or left altogether were "choosing sin over the truth". The implication is that the RPCNA was the pinnacle of all churches and any step away from the RPCNA was a step into some sort of sin. The sin was determined by the destination church. Mostly, it was because people couldn't handle the purity of RPCNA worship and demanded satanic instruments or human-corrupted hymns. Maybe it was because people couldn't stand the idea that Jesus was the "mediatorial king" of every aspect of life and they wanted to be Sunday-only Christians. Of course those who left had no ability to defend themselves from defamation.

(8-9) The doctrine of Total Depravity was always emphasized and, with a sense of false dichotomy, the Spiritual calling of church leaders to office was also emphasized. As I've pointed out, sermons hold this with both hands - that members are depraved and flawed, while leaders are Spiritually gifted to give God-ordained insight to members. This authoritarianism leads members to (8) believe that they are never good enough and, at the same time, that (9) leaders are always right. This despite the fact that these supposedly God-ordained leaders make decisions in courts based on simple majority, as if it's expected that they are not so God-ordained.

My church/presbytery in adulthood up was significantly cultish...

When I moved to a more conservative presbytery, I discovered they exemplified more of the cultish behavior in addition to what I experienced before:

(1) There was the appearance of accountability - leaders acknowledged in private that the behavior of other leaders was inappropriate, but that was never public, and nothing ever appeared to happen. Leaders whose behavior was acknowledged as abusive were not removed from roles they were abusing. At the higher courts, calls to accountability were often drowned out by praise for long, distinguished service. That is, yeah, that wasn't good behavior, but we shouldn't hold someone accountable for a single failing, no matter how abusive to the members, when they've served as a leader for decades. Note that an elder abusing another elder... completely different standard. We see that there are various degrees of accountability enforced, but I don't think I've ever seen an RP leader charged with "domineering".

(2) I was specifically labeled and sidelined for asking questions. Apparently once someone is an adult member, or maybe just within this church/presbytery, questions are a sign of insubordination and distrust. Often leaders simply told me that I "must accept" what they were teaching because they were the authority, even when what I was supposed to accept was in direct opposition of the stated position of the church!

(3) In general, budgets are above board at the RPCNA churches I've attended. The abusive church would repurpose significant sums of money based on a Session decision. In my understanding, this was not only a violation of the Constitution, requiring congregational approval, but also a violation of federal law because the funds they repurposed had been designated.

(6) I think RPCNA churches are all abusive to various degrees. Some churches create an abusive dynamic where members are distrusted and leaders are trusted, but some will single out a "sinner" in the congregation and push them to change or leave. This is why I think Biblical Counseling for pastors is a bad idea. Biblical Counseling stamps a date on whether a person is able to change or is going to cling to their "sin". Combine that with church discipline and churches abuse the members who need their help the most.

(7) I don't think there are as many cases of this - maybe one benefit of the RP structure is that a single pastor can only go so far in creating a cult without the help of his presbytery and synod. Jared Olivetti was exposed in the media because his session and significant leaders within his presbytery were involved in coverup. Synod didn't participate in the coverup, which could be because there was already media coverage of the issue.

In summary, maybe more questions than answers

I feel there are multiple ways I can look at this. From a time perspective, I believe the RPCNA overall is becoming more cultish each passing year. The "liberals" are leaving or being forced out and the "conservatives" are becoming more entrenched and pushing more dogma through the church courts.

From a pastoral personality perspective, I think there is a spectrum of pastors. Some want nothing to do with cultish behavior (for all the hatred towards the McCracken dynasty, I believe that they tend to be very pastoral and not about pushing their authority on others) and some want to be the king of the 30-or-so people in their congregation. Again, over time, the ones with restraint find themselves more and more having to question whether they want to stay in the RPCNA when more cultish dogma is passed.

From a presbytery perspective, I think while the overall church is marching towards being a cult, each presbytery has a distinctive characteristic that may be more cultish/authoritarian or less.

Good news from the RPCNA. White supremacist former pastor excommunicated

Former RPCNA pastor Sam Ketcham was deposed and excommunicated according to the Roys Report: https://julieroys.com/reformed-presbyterians-excommunicate-white-supremacist-minister/

One hopes that this was done because his actual racist beliefs are at odds with the RPCNA, which has a history of being anti-slavery and anti-racism (although non-racist on paper and in practice are two separate things!), and not because he was not properly meek and repentant in front of his peers.

Notably, Ketcham has teamed up with fellow excommunicated racist and misogynist Michael Spangler to push their white supremacist views. I wonder how they worship a savior of an inferior race... but I guess one must have a unique level of skill in cognitive dissonance to hold both scriptural inerrancy and racism in the same system of doctrine.

Spangler was tried along with a few others for spewing misogynistic hatred in a Facebook group called "The Genevan Commons". The others mostly kissed the Presbytery ring and got off with a hand slap, but Spangler doubled down on his comments and was disciplined more severely.

Authoritarian Abuse, legalism and perfectionism

It's been awhile. I was challenged by a comment a few months ago, which was, essentially that I was wrong and should stop talking. I don't agree that I'm wrong, but it led me down a line of thinking. Why do people (myself included) get locked into arguments where one or both aren't going to be convinced or change? I've had many debates - political, economic, theological - and inevitably, there's a point where I realize, or I should realize, that the conversation is not going anywhere and walk away.

I knew it had to do with some aspect of growing up in a spiritually abusive authoritarian environment, but I couldn't piece it together. It's one thing to be right, even if only in my own mind; It's another to feel like I have to prove that I'm right to random strangers doing drive-by comments.

I came across this quote that put it into perspective:

In all of my research across the decades, we have found that perfectionism is "What will other people think?" versus striving for excellence, which is driven by "What do I want?" Perfectionism is one of the most insidious forms of self-protection because no matter how we excel, we can never control other people's perceptions of us. (Strong Ground, Brené Brown, Ch. 15)

This got me full circle. For me, perfectionism is a defense mechanism that combines authoritarianism (the subtle shift from God-centric religion to church-leader-defined religion), legalism (the idea that actions are externally-visible examples of our relationship with God) and Total Depravity (the idea that God demands perfection and that any deviation from perfection is sinful).

If you want a good primer on authoritarian spiritual abuse, check out Gary Ezzo's premise of "trangulation". Your child disobeys you. That means that you have to choose between your child and God because God says you must punish disobedience. If you choose not to spank your child, you are putting your child in the place of God. -- There's a logical flaw here, but this was taught in a lot of churches, leading to legalistic authoritarian child abuse and driving kids towards perfectionism. I don't have to love or care, but as long as I check the boxes my parents care about, I'm okay.

I think this answers a lot of debates I've seen online, especially politically. Both parties must not only be right, but must prove that they are right without question. Unfortunately, life has a lot of gray and a lot of nuance, and, in my opinion, no system, despite how well designed and well intentioned cannot withstand the onslaught of enough greedy and evil people.

It's interesting because I have always thought of myself as striving for excellence and not wanting to allow people to "live rent-free in my head" - allowing someone other than God the place of defining something so core to my identity.

Hopefully, this can be helpful to you and others. I know people who cannot lose arguments, most likely because perfectionism is to tightly coupled to their identity. It leads to anger and rage, and best to figure out ways to defuse the argument. "Agree to disagree" or "I don't see it that way, and you're not going to be the one to convince me otherwise." If you're a person who can't lose an argument... where does your value come from? Are you letting the person across the chat thread define whether you have value or not? 

If you're stuck in an authoritarian/legalistic environment, whether it's a church or workplace, check yourself and get coaching or help to learn how best to survive with your value intact.