Church Government According to the Bible. Simon V. Goncharenko
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for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”66
Even Christ, in Potter’s opinion, joins faith and baptism together as necessary conditions for salvation in John 3:5: “unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” And in Mark 16:16: “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved.” Potter concludes that these and the like passages of Scripture led the primitive church to infer that where the gospel had been sufficiently propounded, “no man could be saved without baptism actually obtained, or earnestly desired.”67 The rejection of baptism in the New Testament, according to this tradition, was tantamount to declining the covenant of God, as was the case with circumcision in Israel.
It may come as a surprise, in view of such high importance being ascribed to baptism within the Church of England, that Anglicans consider it one of the lowest ministries, with the power to perform it belonging chiefly and primarily to bishops, though it could be delegated to presbyters and deacons operating under the authority and within the “jurisdiction” of the bishop. Whether a layman can perform baptism in the Anglican Church is a delicate issue. In consulting the works of early church fathers, there is somewhat of a consensus that it can be done only in extreme situations where no ordained clergy can be procured.68
Another responsibility belonging strictly to priestly office within this denomination is the right to consecrate the Lord’s Supper. As Christ consecrated the bread and the wine and commanded his disciples to continue this practice in remembrance of him, the act of consecration, according to the Anglican theology, falls within the command to continue. Unlike baptism, the right to perform the consecration of the Lord’s Supper is open only to the bishop or the presbyter, but not to the deacons, because:
Baptism was always reckoned one of the lowest ministries, and, therefore, was usually committed by the apostles to ministers of the lower orders . . . or that baptism, being the right of admission into the church, was thought more necessary than the Lord’s supper; which reason is commonly assigned by the ancient fathers for permitting laymen to baptize when any person was in danger of leaving the world unbaptized. But there is yet a farther reason why none but bishops and presbyters have ever consecrated the Lord’s supper; viz. because the Lord’s supper was always believed to succeed in the place of sacrifices; consequently, as none beside the high-priest and inferior priests were permitted to offer sacrifices under the Jewish law, so the Lord’s supper was consecrated by none but bishops and presbyters, who alone are priests in the Christian sense of that name.69
In the exercise of church discipline, Anglicans believe that the power to determine and pronounce the disciplinary measures resides with the “rulers” of the church, and not the whole assembly. As the ones invested with the authority to make laws, it is natural for the governors of the church to “pass sentence on those who break them.”70 These disciplinary judgments were pronounced in the public assemblies (Matt 18:19) but received their force from the leadership of the church.
Presbyterian Polity
The presbyterian system of church government places primary authority in a particular office as well, but puts less emphasis on the individual office and office holder than upon a series of representative bodies that exercise that authority.71
Presbyterianism originated in the Protestant Reformation, particularly in Calvin’s Geneva.72 In this reformer’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, as in the later Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, the key to both the doctrine and the order of the church is found in God’s sovereignty, rather than in the explicit testimony of Scripture.73
The key officer in the presbyterian structure is the elder.74 Accordingly, this model traces its name from the two Greek words: presbuteros, which occurs sixty-six times in the Greek New Testament75 and means “older man” or “elder,” and presbuterion, which occurs three times in the Greek New Testament (Luke 22:66; Acts 22:5; 1 Tim 4:14) and means “body of elders.” Presbyterians believe that presbuteros (elder) and episkopos (overseer) are descriptive synonyms designating a function for the same office holder:
Beyond dispute, for Paul the elder was an overseer and the overseer was an elder. The two terms simply describe two roles of the same officeholder: as an elder this officer exercises authority; as an overseer this same officer performs the functional role of spiritual supervision and oversight.76
According to this model, the elders or overseers governing the church, distinct from those charged with teaching, are chosen by the congregation, which must recognize that “their officer’s election is Christ’s will and that in the final analysis, as Paul states in Acts 20:28, it is the Holy Spirit who is placing these men in the office of elder/overseer.”77 Thus, “in choosing officers, the church does not grant them authority, but recognizes Christ’s authority and calling.”78 The Presbyterian congregation recognizes that the church is not a pure democracy, so the job of the elders/overseers does not consist of simply carrying out the congregation’s will.79 Instead, their responsibility is “to rule and oversee the congregation, not primarily in agreement with the will of the congregation but primarily in agreement with the revealed word of God, in accordance with the authority delegated to them by Christ, the head of the church.”80
Presbyterians recognize that the scriptural pattern of government is necessary for the wellbeing of the church, but is not essential for its existence.81 At the same time, they insist that the governmental structure of the New Testament church, especially the one described in Acts, provides a warrant for their “governmental connectionalism.” In other words, by logical deduction from the passages describing the practices and organization of the early church, the theologians of this tradition hold that the Scripture supports their connectional government of graded courts: local “session,” regional “presbytery,” and “general assembly.”
The local council of elders/overseers referred to as the session or consistory exercises authority over the local congregation. Some of these same elders/overseers, together with elders/overseers from other local churches, serve periodically as members also of a presbytery or classis that usually meets quarterly to exercise authority over the several local churches in its geographically circumscribed area, and more specifically to examine and to ordain ministers of the gospel and to exercise discipline over the same when the need arises. Of these elders/overseers, along with elders/overseers from other presbyteries, in turn, some serve as members of a national General Assembly or synod that usually meets annually to exercise authority over the several presbyteries in a region or country, to worship God together, to hear reports on the spiritual health and future plans of the church’s mission agencies and educational institutions, and to adjudicate disciplinary cases that come before it from the lower courts.82
This system of graded assemblies, or courts, reflects the unity of the church catholic, regional, and local.83