I have a question for our PCA brothers about one aspect of their Rules of Discipline.
In BCO 30-4, it defines excommunication as “the excision of an offender from the communion of the Church. This censure is to be inflicted only on account of gross crime or heresy and when the offender shows himself incorrigible and contumacious.” According to the PCA Historical Society, this definition goes back almost unchanged to 1879, as it appeared in the PCUS’s Rules of Discipline.
My question is, how is it Biblical that a sin must be a “gross crime” in order for excommunication to be inflicted? In Matthew 18, the process Jesus lays out starts with a sin that is personal and private (hence not a “crime”), and potentially able to be resolved by just the two parties. Nevertheless, the offender eventually can be excommunicated if he does not repent. Nothing in the text indicates that the original sin committed has to be “gross” (i.e., "extreme" or "very serious" as defined by Cambridge) for this process to occur. And while someone might say the real sin for which someone is now being excommunicated is unrepentance, that is not how the Rules above read. (In 1974–again according to the PCA Historical Society–this section was amended to delete a comma and add the word “and” in the second sentence, which makes it even clearer that the original sin has to be a “gross crime” in and of itself, and not just something that becomes gross through the addition of incorrigibility or contumacy.)
To put the matter practically: if someone commits a less extreme sin but consistently refuses to repent of it when confronted, is the church unable to excommunicate him because it wasn’t “gross” enough in the first place? If that is really what the Rules are saying, how does this square with Matthew 18?
In BCO 30-4, it defines excommunication as “the excision of an offender from the communion of the Church. This censure is to be inflicted only on account of gross crime or heresy and when the offender shows himself incorrigible and contumacious.” According to the PCA Historical Society, this definition goes back almost unchanged to 1879, as it appeared in the PCUS’s Rules of Discipline.
My question is, how is it Biblical that a sin must be a “gross crime” in order for excommunication to be inflicted? In Matthew 18, the process Jesus lays out starts with a sin that is personal and private (hence not a “crime”), and potentially able to be resolved by just the two parties. Nevertheless, the offender eventually can be excommunicated if he does not repent. Nothing in the text indicates that the original sin committed has to be “gross” (i.e., "extreme" or "very serious" as defined by Cambridge) for this process to occur. And while someone might say the real sin for which someone is now being excommunicated is unrepentance, that is not how the Rules above read. (In 1974–again according to the PCA Historical Society–this section was amended to delete a comma and add the word “and” in the second sentence, which makes it even clearer that the original sin has to be a “gross crime” in and of itself, and not just something that becomes gross through the addition of incorrigibility or contumacy.)
To put the matter practically: if someone commits a less extreme sin but consistently refuses to repent of it when confronted, is the church unable to excommunicate him because it wasn’t “gross” enough in the first place? If that is really what the Rules are saying, how does this square with Matthew 18?
