Dear Editor:

The latest offering from Rev. Brundage requires a brief response.
His latest letter is an example of the presumption, idolatry, irrationality and apostasy which assaults the PCUSA today.

First, his letter is a case study in presumption. If someone is strident in his opposition to sin, he must be angry and hostile and devoid of the Holy Spirit, since the Holy Spirit "is not a hostile spirit". Tell that to Ananias and Sapphira. I'm sure the brethren who had to drag their cold dead bodies away might have another perspective on the Holy Spirit. God is not at all gentle about sin. The cross is not a gentle place. I can assure Rev. Brundage that I am not a raving lunatic devoured by hatred and anger. I write with my hot chocolate by my side and a healthy low pulse rate. By the grace of God, I am at peace with God through my Lord Jesus Christ. But, like my Lord, I am not a peace with everyone. His enemies are my enemies. When they assault the Church and deceive the people of God, I put down my hot chocolate, put on my armor, take up the weapons of the Word of God and prayer and go to war. The Church of Jesus Christ takes the gates of hell by storm. The Church will prevail. Take a look at what Paul had to say to the false teachers troubling the church in Galatia (Galatians 5:12). Ouch! Paul was fairly hostile. I suppose he did not have the Holy Spirit then, or so Rev. Brundage would have us believe. No, Rev. Brundage, the days are coming to an end when "peace and gentleness" can be used as a shield behind which false teachers can hide because preachers and teachers faithful to the Word of God are too timid to be called "hostile". Am I hostile to sin and false teaching in the Church? By God's grace, you bet I am. You presume that because I am hostile to sin I am not obedient to the Holy Spirit. You presume too much.

Second, Rev. Brundage exhibits the idolatry assaulting our church today. He creates a god without justice, without holiness, without wrath. His god accepts everyone and demands nothing from anyone. He is the god without wrath who saves people without sin through a savior without a cross. This god is worshiped and loved by many within the PCUSA. But, it is not Jehovah, the one true God. It is not the triune God of the Bible, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a god crafted by the ego of humanity to affirm the sinfulness of men and women and invoke divine blessing on their folly. It is the golden calf. It is Baal. It is an idol. It is a lie.

Third, Rev. Brundage displays the wholesale acceptance of post-modern irrationality, embraced as a virtue. He writes that on the issue of whether homosexual conduct is sin "the Bible supports both positions". He adds that while he may tear Romans 13:8 from its context to support a point alien to the text "so be it", since any quotation of any text destroys the intent of the original, which we can never know in the first place. Self-contradiction is accepted as consistent with truth and as characteristic of the Word of God. And why not? Truth is what we make it. It is truth "for me". Two diametrically opposed positions can both be true, so long as people sincerely believe them. Objective revealed truth, the foundation of Reformed theology, is an abandoned relic.

Fourth, Rev. Brundage sets forth the essence of his false teaching. He comes to the Word of God informed by John Stuart Mill, a utilitarian philosopher. Mill believed that individual freedom was the ultimate good and that personal choice was the ultimate goal of life, checked only by ensuring that the greatest good for the greatest number is accomplished. In other words, goodness is the greatest number of people doing exactly what they want to do, so long as they are not harming one another in the process. If Rev. Brundage teaches his congregation that this is what goodness means, he should resign his ordination and seek a position as a philosophy professor, for he has ceased to function as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. From a Biblical perspective, Mill has precisely defined hell and called it heaven. That is exactly what some in the PCUSA are doing today. The ultimate good is not individual freedom. Rather , it is submission to God. The ultimate goal of life is not personal choice, it is obedience to God through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the redeemed sinner, who is now a saint through the completed work of Jesus Christ. Heaven is not a place were everyone does what he or she chooses. Heaven is the place where everyone chooses to do the will of God. As Paul declared to the Romans: " ...having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness". (Romans 6:18). John Stuart Mill portrays a humanistic worldview in which man is the measure of all things. The Apostle Paul portrays a Biblical worldview in which Jesus Christ is Lord. The rejection of Paul and the preaching of Mill is false teaching. Let us use the word. It is heresy.

Rev. Brundage has done a service in his letters. He shows us what we have become as a denomination. For my colleagues in ministry who think I am being a little hard on Rev. Brundage, please consider this. Here is a teacher of the church who has studied J.S. Mill and made his choice about what is truth. But what of those people who will look to him and so many others like him and believe that they are hearing the Word of God proclaimed? What about the children who grow up in church every Sunday learning to worship a god who does not exist and call him Jehovah? What about the person struggling with sexual sin who comes for guidance and is told to embrace sin and accept it as a gift of God? Who is it who really hates the gay man and the lesbian woman and heaps death and misery upon them; the one who tells them the soothing lie or the one who tells them the difficult truth? Who will be advocates for these people? Who will tell them the truth in love and offer forgiveness and redemption and restoration in Jesus Christ? Ministers of the Word and Sacrament, elders of the Church, it must be you.

Stand up and be warriors for the Kingdom. Do not do so to defeat Rev. Brundage. Rather, stand up and speak the truth to rescue the perishing and care for the dying who have replaced the truth of God with a lie with the help of the PCUSA. This is our denomination. People have been deceived on our watch. We are accountable to God for their welfare. How can we be silent any longer? How can we allow Rev. Brundage and those who embrace his philosophy to shame us into silence by telling us we are not being "gentle and loving" and that we are too "hostile" to have the Holy Spirit. Jesus was gentle and loving with repentant sinners. He took a rod to those infecting the temple with falsehood. He called those leading people to destruction through false teaching "vipers" and "blind guides". You have read Rev. Brundage's letters and know ministers in your presbytery who agree with him. What do you think? In the PCUSA, what would Jesus do?