In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 11-20.
In 2022 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 11-20:
After we are justified by God, we can never return to Adam. What does this mean for someone like me who lived as a lesbian for a decade and believed I was gay? It means that homosexuality is part of my biography, not my nature. My nature is securely chained in Christ (Colossians 3:10-20). What does it mean if a Christian falls back into an old sin pattern? It means that he is acting against his true nature. How do we stop acting against our true nature in Christ when our flesh craves our old sin patterns? By going to war with our sin through the power of Christ’s blood.
At a called meeting on Tuesday, December 6, 2022, the PCA Missouri Presbytery voted to release the three ministerial staff members of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri. The Presbytery voted to release Dr. Greg Johnson, Lead Pastor, Associate Pastor Keith Robinson, and Youth and Family Pastor Sam Dolby from the Presbyterian Church in America. The Presbytery acted under the provision of the Book of Church Order 38-3a.
Instead of focusing on “lust,” if this passage is to be correctly taught, the emphasis should be placed squarely on the will: that is, “What is the proper response to sexual desire?” There are proper outlets for sexual desire, but it is the exercise of the sexual appetite outside these confines is the problem. Even prior to actually committing the act, once the will has turned towards illicit behavior, sin has already entered the heart and, once fully conceived, will bring forth death.
There are several serious problems with Pastor Johnson’s reasoning here. First, his speech was highly biographical, emotive, and even prejudicial. He implied that anyone who disagrees with his position “hates” homosexuals. It equates traditional Christian sexual ethics with anti-gay bigotry. Second, he assumes that, except for his commitment to Christ, he might have taken a same-sex husband and had a family and that by not violating God’s natural and moral law thus he has made a great sacrifice for the sake of Christ and his kingdom.
Those who criticize Memorial often do so from beyond our walls. I write as one who worships weekly in her pews, who has walked with Greg Johnson through the last five years of controversy, who has seen the toll it has taken upon my leaders and the resources of our church– resources which should have been devoted to the care of the flock and the service of our community.
Here is the real problem that I believe underlies the failure of those frequently using the term abuse to provide a clear, biblical definition: the preference of the term abuse dislocated from sin, moves abuse out of the moral and spiritual realm and into the psychological. In other words, it tends to shift the serious matters at hand from that which is properly clerical and refers them to the clinical.
Thus far, 51 of the 88 PCA presbyteries have voted on Overtures 23 and 37. The remaining presbyteries will begin voting at their respective meetings beginning in January 2022, with 20 presbyteries voting during January; by then, a clearer trend will become obvious as to whether these amendments will receive the required 2/3 votes of the presbyteries.
One former moderator of the General Assembly characterized this year as the “Pitchfork Assembly,” because of the outrage in the pews related to some of the events of recent years in the PCA. This is both cause for prayers of thanksgiving (i.e. that people in the churches are willing to sacrifice to send their elders to the Assembly and that God has raised up elders willing to do the work of the church) and prayers for peace (i.e. that God will pour out a spirit of humility and grace even as we contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints so we may be united in truth and love).
The major lesson from this assembly on this matter is that we need to double down on our Presbyterian principles. Witnesses and evidence with biblical process for those who are guilty and vindication for those who have been falsely charged. This has always been the Presbyterian way and is doubly necessary in the negative world.
There is absolutely no doubt, based on extant evidence, that the term arsenokoitai in 1 Cor 6:9 is correctly translated as “men lying with a male.” If any updating of the NRSV were to be done on 1 Cor 6:9, it should have been done in the direction of translating arsenokoitai as “men lying with a male.” The previous NRSV translation of “sodomites” was not the best translation because “Sodom” is not part of the stem of this Greek noun…. What the NRSVue translators have done is to conform the biblical witness to their own ideological biases, biases that mitigate against the overwhelming evidence from morphology and historical context.