The Rev. Dr. David Coffin is pastor of New Hope Presbyterian church, a 20-year-old congregation that meets in Fairfax City’s Fire Station No. 3. Coffin, a student of early American theologians Jonathan Edwards and Robert Dabney, is said to be one of the most learned men of his denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America. Coffin will speak in Washington at Christ Reformed Church’s “Christianity and Politics” lecture series later this month alongside other well-known Reformed intellectuals. Coffin sat down with The Washington Examiner to talk about his lecture, “The Spirituality of the Church,” and his own faith in God. Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I’m certainly a Christian. The problem is that’s a pretty generic term these days. I would say that I’m a Catholic Christian in that I hold to the fundamentals of the faith as set forth in the historic creeds of the church. I’m a Protestant Christian in that I believe the Reformation was a return of the church to its original scriptural foundations. I’m a Reformed Christian, meaning that the way of salvation understood in historic Reformed or Calvinistic Christianity seems to me most faithful to the Scriptures.
What is the “spirituality of the church”?
In a way it’s a corollary to the idea of religious liberty, the idea of the separation of church and state. It’s the doctrine that the church shouldn’t intrude into the government, that the church has a limited calling, given to it by Christ that it doesn’t have the freedom to expand upon. It’s a doctrine that’s fallen on hard times now. But the idea of it goes back as far as the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says synods are not to interfere into the affairs of the commonwealth but are to devote themselves to the life of the church. People nowadays think whatever Christians are called to do the church is called to do and vice versa. But this is a mistake. The believer is called to engage in politics, but the church is not, as such. So for example, the church can scripturally say abortion is the taking of an innocent life. But, under the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, the church can’t declare how Christians are to respond to abortion as a political matter — should they pack the court? Should they get a constitutional amendment passed? As with all political questions, it involves exercise of prudential judgments that just aren’t spelled out in scripture and Christians have a right to disagree with respect to such judgments. This doctrine is an odd thing these days because evangelicals are so convinced that if you are really going to be committed to the lordship of Christ, the church itself should be involved in all kinds of politics.
But doesn’t the church have a stake in the health of the society?
Oh yes, and that’s what Christian individuals are supposed to be about. The Christian has a civil calling. But the church does not have a right to speak anywhere where we she cannot say, ‘I’m speaking on behalf of our Lord.’
What are the dangers if the church does become involved in politics?
The chief danger is the church is disobedient to Christ. It’s a kind of apostasy in my view, and that’s why I think it’s a very serious question. The second thing is that if the church enters in this field, then the state has a right purely in self-defense to push back. Take for example, President Bush’s policy on faith-based initiatives, to have faith-based groups take government money to do their work. Now what’s a fundamental principle we try to teach kids? That you’re accountable for your use of money. And what the faith-based groups tries to say is we’ll take the money, but we don’t want to be accountable to you, the state. And that’s fundamentally irresponsible. And the state will say, ‘Oh no, if you’re taking money we have a right to be responsible for its use.’ So then the state intrudes into the decision-making processes of faith-based groups or churches.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
Well, I’d go back to J.I. Packer’s little sentence: ‘God saves sinners.’ That is the beauty and simplicity of the gospel, and the fact is I want to believe every one of those words in the fullest biblical sense. And one of the wonders of life is coming to understand those words more and more, scripturally and in experience. I adhere to the Westminster shorter catechism: ‘The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.’ And by understanding and living Dr. Packer’s little sentence, I think God is most glorified and we find most pleasure in him.
– Liz Essley
