Reformed Presbyterian Minutes of Synod 1997 - Rparchives.org

80 MINUTES OF THE 1997 SYNOD OF THE
22. Item 1 was adopted. Item 2 was referred to the Business of Synod
Committee.
The report of the Judicial Committee on Communication 97-4 was
taken up. Communication 97-4 asks that the Queries for Ordination be
declared part of the Constitution of the RPCNA. The report was
discussed at length.
Rich Johnston directed Synod in the morning prayer time for the
educational ministries of the church. Delegates gathered in small groups
for prayer and concluded the prayer time singing Psalm 119E, stanza 1.
Following the announcements. Synod took recess at 12:20 p.m.
THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1997, 1:30 P.M.
Synod reconvened at 1:30 p.m. being led in prayer by Jim McMahon.
The roll was passed.
The minutes of the morning session were read and approved.
The report of the National Reform Association was taken up. The
request for three delegates from Synod was referred to the Nominating
Committee. The report was received and appears in Appendix B.
The report of the Committee on Understanding the Times was taken up,
approved and is as follows:
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES
As the first generation raised by postwar parents attains adulthood, the
counterculture of the sixties has, in turn, become mainstream. The pervasive
outlook one encountersis less a worldview thanit is a reaction against worldviews
as such.It is thus fitting that contemporary thinking should acquire a label merely
noting a place in history in terms of the demise ofits predecessor without
intimating any content: "postmodernism."
Thomas Oden has opined that Modernism, the great secular experiment, was
finally laid to rest with the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989, precisely two
hundred years afterits birth with the French Revolution. Tracing this shift in
thinking in an article for Modern Reformation (September/October 1995), Gene
Veith writes, "if scientific rationalism cannot be depended on to give us objective
truth, maybe thereis no objective truth. The postmodernists argue that truthis not
so much a discovery but a construction." In linguistics, the dominant realm of
current philosophizing, the "deconstructionist" school discovers beneath claims to
express objective meaning thatall communicationis actually the assertion of power
and the attempt to dominate.
The cynical and relativistic outlook is not confined to the ivory tower, but has
been widely, though almost unconsciously, absorbed. Modernism rejected the
Christian faith because its truth could not be established scientifically. Orthodox