Must We All Be Presbyterians? (Presbyterianism, Pt. 3)

Does the New Testament actually prescribe a form of church government that Christians are duty bound to practice still today? Does the New Testament material regarding church government taken together amount to a commandment that we are obliged to obey? 

Editor's Note: This article is part three of a series adapted from talks given to Faith Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, a congregation of our denomination (PCA) and presbytery (Pacific Northwest Presbytery). We have retained specific references to that congregation to keep intact the flow of thought. 

After introducing the subject of Presbyterian church government and providing something of a definition, we move on to consider another fundamental question: whether the Bible actually commands a specific church government. We know that the New Testament says certain things about elders and ministers and provides us a little knowledge of how the church was governed in very early times, but does it actually prescribe a form of church government that Christians are duty bound to practice still today? Does the New Testament material regarding church government taken together amount to a commandment that we are obliged to obey? 

Many Christians have answered, “No.” Some Anglican scholars, for example, have happily admitted that, according to the New Testament, the government of the apostolic church had a form more like the Presbyterian church than the Episcopal church, but go on to argue that such a form was peculiar to the circumstances of that early stage of church life and that the New Testament does not commit us to a particular form of church government. They further assert that as the church grew and matured, it became expedient to appoint bishops over the common run of presbyters and that nothing in the New Testament prohibits such a development. Presbyterians, in large part, have argued the contrary: that Presbyterian church government is a jus divinum, a divine law to be obeyed by all Christians. They did not claim that the details of their system of church government were determined by a divine law—human wisdom and expediency accounted for much—but they argued that the fundamentals of their system were derived from the Scripture and were a law for all Christians to follow. In other words, every Christian ought to be a Presbyterian!

But if all of this information is only descriptive and not prescriptive, if it only informs us of what early Christians did and not what we must do, then none of it settles the question of what sort of church government we ought to have today.

It is clear that this question lies at the bottom of any and every discussion of the government or polity of the church. On the one hand, it is quite easy to demonstrate that the terms bishop (overseer) and presbyter (elder) are used synonymously in the New Testament and never describe separate offices (Acts 20:17, 28; Titus 1:5-7). Episcopalians often admit this. It is also easy to show that there was a plurality of elders in apostolic congregations and that congregations elected their officers, or at least, on some occasions, had some role in their selection (Acts 1:15, 22; 6:5-6). Episcopalians often admit this as well. At least once, we see that something like a presbytery or synod with power to rule over the whole church was known to the early Christians (Acts 15). Independents or Congregationalists sometimes admit that. But if all of this information is only descriptive and not prescriptive, if it only informs us of what early Christians did and not what we must do, then none of it settles the question of what sort of church government we ought to have today.

On the other hand, if there is a divine law of church government, precisely how much does that law require? For example, some of the commissioners at the Westminster Assembly were happy to allow for ruling elders as an expedient measure but denied that the office was instituted jure divino, by divine law, and was therefore a perpetual office of universal obligation for the church. According to them, a church that thought it helpful to have ruling elders was free to have them, but no church had to have them. Much of the debate about church government at the Westminster Assembly was framed in terms of whether there was a jus divinum for this feature or for that. The last statement to appear on the general question in the Minutes of the Westminster Assembly is this: “The government that is jure divino is that which is by preaching and ruling elders, in presbyteries and synods, by way of subordination and appeals.” That is, in fact, an interesting and helpful summary of Presbyterian church government. It leaves out congregational election of officers (that wouldn’t finally and fully be granted to Scottish Presbyterians until the 19th century), but otherwise describes a distinctively Presbyterian system. It does not provide for the office of bishop that is the distinctive feature of Episcopal church government and, over against the Independents, gathers all the congregations in a single church under a single government. 

The arguments for believing that there is a law of church government in the Bible and that, therefore, we are to govern the church according to instructions found in Holy Scripture are especially these:  

1) The church is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Subjects do not ordinarily decide how the King is to rule his kingdom (Matthew 16:18-19), all the more when the King is holy and his subjects are sinners!  

2) The offices of the church are said to be “given” by the Lord Jesus himself (Eph. 4:11-12). 

3) The offices of the New Testament, apart from that of deacon, continue offices that existed in the Old Testament church and were, in the ancient epoch, instituted by divine law (e.g. Ex. 28:1; Rom. 15:16). That is, the ancient offices of priest (minister of Word and Sacrament, Deut. 33:10) and elder (Deut. 1:9-18) existed in Israel by divine command, not by human wisdom or expediency, and those same offices continue into the new epoch and are part of the government of the New Testament church.

4) Even in the days of the apostles, when it might have been expected that all decisions would be made by the apostles, the elders acting in concert were part of the governing body of the church and took part in its rule (Acts 15:6, 23). That has long been taken by Presbyterians as striking proof that the government of the New Testament church was not peculiar to its own situation but was intended to be characteristic of church government in all succeeding periods. 

For these reasons and others, it has seemed to Presbyterians that the Lord Christ did not leave it to us to decide how to govern his church. But, all is not quite so simple. How much do we actually know about the government of the church in the New Testament? We should be humble enough to admit that our argument, at least in parts, is not as convincing to others as we Presbyterians often think it ought to be. Good and reasonable men have argued that, in the first-century church, apostles had a greater authority than ordinary ministers, which, it could be debated, established a pattern later followed by the creation of bishops who exercised such authority over other ministers. Paul and Titus both appointed elders (in Galatia and Crete); we are not told that they were elected by the congregation. The question has always been reduced to this: precisely how much of the New Testament’s description of the government of the church is actually required of us?

However, the broad outlines of Presbyterian polity are not only obviously biblical (the offices themselves and the stress on the practical unity of the church), but represent apostolic church government in its most material features, facts that have been widely acknowledged even by advocates of other polities.