Just before noon on November 11 Florida Presbytery began the vote on the BOO amendments. When we came to vote on 08-C my mind began to wander and to wonder.  As we were forced to choose between the Greek “sympathy” and the Latin “compassion,” I looked around, and it seemed to me that the eyes of my fellow commissioners had that “deer caught in the headlights” look in them.

We seemed to be standing on the same theological “slippery slope” that the Church stood on almost a thousand years ago — torn between the Greek and Latin Fathers — before it slid down into a split that has not yet been healed. The eyes of these commissioners seemed to say, “Are we being forced to choose again between those two ancient factions in the church?”

After centuries of following the Latin Fathers’ teaching that the great human problem is sin, we have finally come to see wisdom in the Greek Fathers’ teaching that the great human problem is death.  Were we, in being asked to choose between “sympathy” and “compassion”, being forced to choose between the Latin immorality and the Greek mortality as competing explanations of the human dilemma?  In being asked to switch from “sympathy” to “compassion” were we also being asked to give up all the wisdom and insight of the Greek Fathers and march forth behind the Latin Fathers? 

All this went on in my mind, and I was settling in for a lengthy and learned debate on a thousand year old issue that is still unresolved — mortality vs. immorality, Greek Fathers vs. Latin Fathers, East vs. West. Then before I knew what was happening the vote on 08-C was taken and passed without debate, and the presbytery moved on.  Once again I had misread the look in the eyes of the commissioners — it was not panic, just boredom — but it still left me wondering!
 
Bill Lee, honorably retired

Tallahassee, Fla.