It is a very bad thing when a professor at a conservative Reformed seminary could even consider stating that he “could affirm domestic partnerships” for homosexuals. It is especially bad considering how much good Dr. Michael Horton has done for the church.
Dr. Horton is a well-known figure in Reformed circles. He was named to Christianity Today's list of 50 young evangelical “up and coming” theologians in 1996:
http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/1996/november11/6td20a.html
In addition to his teaching duties at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, he's editor of Modern Reformation and host of the White Horse Inn radio program. He's done a lot of good in the church world and is probably best known as the author of “Putting Amazing Back Into Grace” and numerous books critical of bad theology among evangelicals. He's also spent a lot of time building bridges between Reformed people and conservative Lutherans, especially those in the Missouri Synod. He believes, with good reason, that confessional conservatives need to work together to stem the flood of bad theology filling evangelical circles which too often denies the fundamentals of the faith.
His views on political engagement are not new, but his statements about homosexual domestic partnerships are very disappointing.
This is not an issue that should even be on the table for discussion. The least that can be said is it makes Westminster-West look bad and creates a PR problem. Perhaps more of a concern is that this “Two Kingdoms” theology is leading its adherents, step by step and perhaps too slowly for them to notice, into some very bad places.
Perhaps it's true that frogs don't jump out of boiling pots if they're heated slowly. It's the job of seminary professors to be more discerning than frogs.
For more details on this “Two Kingdoms” theology, in both its “Radical Two Kingdoms” (R2K) and more moderate and nuanced “Escondido Two Kingdoms” (Es2K) versions, read more here:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2916768/posts
Kudos to Martin Snyder of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America for alerting me to this article on the White Horse Inn website; he's credited Mark Van Der Molen, an Indiana attorney and elder in the United Reformed Churches in North America, for alerting him to it.
Westminster Theological Seminary in California was begun in significant measure due to dissatisfaction by Christian Reformed conservatives in Southern California over problems at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids. Years after the seminary began, the current president, Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, helped lead many of the larger west coast Christian Reformed congregations out of the CRC and into the URCNA. While the main issues in founding the URCNA were such things as the ordination of women, toleration of theistic evolution, and attacks on inerrancy, increasing demands for toleration of homosexuality in the CRC were on the list of complaints.
So far the Christian Reformed Church hasn't yet dropped off the homosexual cliff, and the URCNA isn't even close to that point. However, there are very uncomfortable parallels between Christian Reformed problems in the mid-1990s with homosexuality and this article on the White Horse Inn website.
Back in the 1990s, Calvin Theological Seminary dismissed a visiting professor from the Netherlands, Dr. Jan Veenhof, when it was discovered and reported in Christian Renewal that the professor had written an article advocating gay civil unions but not marriage.
Unlike Dr. Veenhof whose views were much worse, the rest of Dr. Horton's work makes clear that his views here are an aberration, not part of a broader pattern of support for homosexuality, and I have no desire whatsoever to get Dr. Horton terminated from Westminster-West.
What I do want is to call attention to the consequences of what has been called “Radical Two Kingdoms” theology and urge Dr. Horton to back off before it's too late. I'm fully aware that he opposes homosexual practice; the problem is that his views on political engagement are leading him into a political position which is virtually indistinguishable from that of theological liberals.
My coverage of the Dr. Jan Veenhof incident is here:
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/reformed/archive96/nr96-122.txt
This got extensive media attention in the Grand Rapids Press, Detroit Free Press, and the Banner. Most of those articles aren't online, but here are some links to articles from the Calvin College Chimes which make clear this was a very big deal:
Here is some more recent Grand Rapids Press coverage mentioning the earlier incident with Dr. Veenhof:
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/08/calvin_college_has_had_to_conf.html
As CRC historian Dr. Robert Swierenga has written: “Relations with the GKN were further strained in 1996 when Calvin Theological Seminary released at mid-year visiting professor Jan Veenhof, a highly respected member of that denomination, who had written approvingly of faithful Christian homosexual couples. His controversial dismissal, together with the local crusading work of Jim Lucas, prompted the staff of Chimes, the Calvin College student newspaper, to devote its final spring 1997 issue to the topic of homosexuality at the college. The editors called for greater ‘understanding,’ ran an article by religion professor Philip Holtrop that noted the possibility of reading the Bible to allow for homosexual practices, and carried an ad for a college-sponsored gay and lesbian student discussion group ‘to provide a safe and accepting place on the Calvin campus.’”
http://www.swierenga.com/BurnWoodenShoesOrigPaper.html
It should be patently obvious that things aren't anywhere near that bad at Westminster-West. The question for Dr. Horton is not whether homosexuality is good or bad — unlike Dr. Veenhof, Dr. Horton makes clear he's opposed to homosexual practice, not just homosexual marriages — but rather what the state should do about something that the church opposes as a matter of biblical ethics. There are limits to the parallels with Veenhof, and also, for that matter, to the Peter Enns controversy over at Westminster-East.
Dr. Horton is an orthodox Bible-believing scholar. We must never forget that. He is a brother and deserves to be treated as such. People can have wrong views on politics without being heretics, and the main problem with Dr. Horton and the “Two Kingdoms” theology is that they fail to understand the importance of applying their conservative theology to politics.
However, I believe that if Westminster Seminary doesn't do something to at least indicate that these views are not representative of the rest of the faculty, Calvin Seminary professors will quite legitimately be asking some tough questions.
Why should they not claim that conservatives have a double standard for blaming Calvin Seminary for inviting a visiting professor who Calvin later got rid of after his views on homosexual domestic partnerships became known based on an article written in a foreign country in a foreign language, but nobody seems to have gotten very upset about a long-term Westminster-West professor who advocated very similar views publicly on the White Horse Inn right here in the United States?
I'm not a Calvin Seminary professor, obviously, but if I were one, I'd be saying some of the people who seceded from the Christian Reformed Church need to apologize to Calvin Seminary if they don't complain about this happening at Westminster-West.
“Dr. Horton is an orthodox Bible-believing scholar. We must never forget that. He is a brother and deserves to be treated as such. People can have wrong views on politics without being heretics”
This is not just a “political issue”. The Bible is quite clear on sodomites in both the OT and NT. Consequently, he is not orthodox. He needs to be counseled as the Bible requires, and then shunned if he persists in this gross heresy. And, yes, this teaching is heretical.
By the way, all legislation is an expression of values. Those values will either be informed by the Bible or by something else.