Douglas Green Affirmed by New Life Presbyterian Church

An interesting follow-up to WTS-Philly’s decision to forcibly “retire” Douglas Green is that Douglas Green’s own church New Life Presbyterian Church, has investigated the matter and cannot find any grounds for supposing that Green was in violation of the standards. You can read New Life’s statement here, parts of it are below:

As a result of our study and these meetings, we the Session of New Life Church, while fully respecting the right of the Board of Westminster Seminary to determine the bounds under which its faculty may operate, respectfully disagree with its judgment and are satisfied that Doug Green’s teaching does not fall outside the Westminster Standards.

We also wish to affirm how much we value Doug’s presence and leadership as a Ruling Elder and teacher of our congregation.  He has shown us Christ in the Old Testament time and again, in rich and lovely ways.

We find ourselves in full agreement with the statement that appeared on the Westminster website when the announcement of the “retirement” was made. In answer to the question of how he responded to the Board’s action, the following was noted:

Dr. Green maintains that his approach to biblical interpretation and specifically New Testament use of the Old Testament does not violate the Westminster Confession, that his views on this subject have not changed since 2009, and that they are consistent with his teaching throughout his time as a professor at Westminster. Nevertheless, he respectfully recognizes the right of the Board of Trustees to interpret the seminary’s confessional standards and in so doing clarify its theological boundaries. He counts it the highest privilege to have taught close to 2,000 godly and gifted Westminster students over the last 22 years and values both the friendship and scholarly interaction he has enjoyed with his colleagues on the faculty during this period.

Over at his blog, William Evans further highlights the acute irony here:

This episode does have its share of ironies.  A parachurch institution ousts a long-time tenured professor on the basis of what appears to be a peculiar reading of the Westminster Confession (one that would also, it seems, exclude Charles Hodge), while a Presbyterian church Session answerable to the Westminster Standards and to the higher courts of the church finds nothing amiss.  There are, I think, some lessons here regarding the use and misuse of confessional documents, as well as issues relating to the communal interpretive context within which those documents are understood, but those are topics for another time.