Dispute over the Deity off Christ

The United Presbyterian Church is disunited over a heresy case

It all started at a routine meeting of delegates from Presbyterian congregations around Washington in 1979. On the agenda was the application of United Church of Christ Minister Mansfield M. Kaseman for Presbyterian credentials so he could serve as a clergyman in the Rockville (Md.) United Church, which belongs both to Kaseman's U.C.C. and the United Presbyterian Church.

During the meeting, the affable Kaseman was asked whether he believed Jesus Christ is God. "No," he responded, "God is God." Kaseman was accepted by a majority. But that answer stirred deep alarm in some delegates. In recent years conservative Presbyterians have had to swallow a fair degree of doctrinal flexibility, but they interpreted Kaseman's response as a denial of the deity of Christ. The conservatives filed a protest and eventually the Permanent Judicial Commission, the national supreme court of the 2.5 million-member United Presbyterian Church, bounced the case back to the local presbytery for further examination.

The traditional statement of Presbyterian faith had been the lengthy Westminster Confession of 1647. It includes the ancient definition of Jesus Christ as "the second Person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father." At the second examination last March, Kaseman was asked four times about Christ's bodily Resurrection. He finally said, "I believe in the Resurrection without necessarily believing in the bodily Resurrection." Though he said he "affirms" the doctrine of the Trinity, as required by the Presbyterian church, he indicated he is uncomfortable with traditional creeds and shuns doctrinal formulas on principle. "For me," he declared, "the God worth knowing is found more in the quest of liberation than in the pursuit of orthodoxy."

The presbytery again approved Kaseman, again conservatives appealed, and a final hearing was scheduled in Philadelphia before the Permanent Judicial Commission. Maryland Pastor Stewart J.Rankin asked the 14 black-robed judges to bar Kaseman, declaring, "The eternal destiny of mortal souls hangs in the balance." Defending Kaseman, Washington Pastor Arthur R. McKay insisted that Presbyterianism had crossed a "great divide" in 1967, which conservatives simply refuse to recognize.

What had happened in 1967 was that the church broadened its body of creeds and loosened the vows required of new clergy. Presbyterian ministers formerly had to pledge that they "receive and adopt" the Westminster Confession and catechisms. Since 1967 they have only had to promise to be "instructed" and "continually guided" by nine creeds and confessions. The Permanent Judicial Commission decided the local presbytery had been correct in considering Kaseman's views "within the acceptable range of interpretation" permitted by the new vows.

The ruling, making doctrinal heresy far harder to prove, comes at a tense time. Dozens of conservative congregations have broken away over the church's 1979 ruling that all congregations must put women on their governing boards. The Kaseman case threatens to set off another wave of walkouts. Last week leaders of the "confessionalist" wing declared that the ruling "has legitimized apostasy" and announced a campaign to get the church's national assembly to restore orthodoxy when it convenes in May. qed

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