When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were on the run from the posse, at one point Butch, looking back at the relentless pursuers, asked, “Who are those guys?”
Well, presumably we Presbyterians are not on the run from anyone. But who are we? There are many good sources, in addition to the Bible, to get a sketch of who we are. From time to time I may post something from a historical nature or from a more ecclesiastical/theological nature.
The first installment is from Charles Hodge. Hodge lived from 1797-1878. He headed up PrinctonTheological Seminary from 1851 to 1878.
While I have some quibbling I could do with Hodge here and there, I believe he is worth reading and overall is an able spokesman for Presbyterianism.
Here is past 1 of an address Hodge gave in 1855 before the Philadelphia Historical Society.
What is Presbyterianism? - Part 1 by Charles Hodge
An Address Delivered Before the Presbyterian Historical Society at their Anniversary Meeting in Philadelphia, on Tuesday evening, May 1, 1855. BY THE REV. CHARLES HODGE, D.D.
BRETHREN:—We are assembled this evening as a Presbyterian Historical Society. It has occurred to me that it would not be inappropriate to discuss the question, What is Presbyterianism? You will not expect from me an oration. My object is neither conviction nor persuasion; but exposition. I propose to occupy the hour devoted to this address in an attempt to unfold the principles of that system of Church polity which we, as Presbyterians, hold to be laid down in the word of God.
Setting aside Erastianism, which teaches that the Church is only one form of the State; and Quakerism, which does not provide for the external organization of the Church, there are only four radically different theories on the subject of Church Polity.
1. The Popish theory, which assumes that Christ, the Apostles and believers, constituted the Church while our Saviour was on earth, and this organization was designed to be perpetual. After the ascension of our Lord, Peter became his Vicar, and took his place as the visible head of the Church. This primacy of Peter, as the universal Bishop, is continued in his successors, the Bishops of Rome; and the apostleship is perpetuated in the order of Prelates. As in the Primitive Church, no one could be an apostle who was not subject to Christ, so now no one can be a Prelate who is not subject to the Pope. And as then no one could be a Christian who was not subject to Christ and the apostles, so now no one can be a Christian who is not subject to the Pope and the Prelates. This is the Romish theory of the Church. A Vicar of Christ, a perpetual College of apostles, and the people subject to their infallible control.
2. The Prelatical theory assumes the perpetuity of the apostleship as the governing power in the Church, which therefore consists of those who profess the true religion, and are subject to apostle-bishops. This is the Anglican or High-Church form of this theory. In its Low-Church form, the Prelatical theory simply teaches that there was originally a three-fold order in the ministry, and that there should be now. But it does not affirm that mode of organization to be essential.
3. The Independent or Congregational theory includes two principles; first, that the governing and executive power in the Church is in the brotherhood; and secondly, that the Church organization is complete in each worshipping assembly, which is independent of every other.
4. The fourth theory is the Presbyterian, which it is our present business to attempt to unfold. The three great negations of Presbyterianism—that is, the three great errors which it denies are—1. That all church power vests in the clergy. 2. That the apostolic office is perpetual. 3. That each individual Christian congregation is independent. The affirmative statement of these principles is—1. That the people have a right to a substantive part in the government of the Church. 2. That presbyters, who minister in word and doctrine, are the highest permanent officers of the Church, and all belong to the same order. 3. That the outward and visible Church is, or should be, one, in the sense that a smaller part is subject to a larger, and a larger to the whole. It is not holding one of these principles that makes a man a Presbyterian, but his holding them all.
I. The first of these principles relates to the power and rights of the people. As to the nature of Church power, it is to be remembered that the Church is a theocracy. Jesus Christ is its head. All power is derived from him. His word is our written constitution. All Church power is, therefore, properly ministerial and administrative. Everything is to be done in the name of Christ, and in accordance with his directions. The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and laws, and, therefore, an administrative government of its own. The power of the Church relates, 1. To matters of doctrine. She had the right to set forth a public declaration of the truths which she believes, and which are to be acknowledged by all who enter her communion. That is, she has the right to frame creeds or confessions of faith, as her testimony for the truth, and her protest against error. And as she has been commissioned to teach all nations, she has the right of selecting teachers, of judging their fitness, of ordaining and sending them forth into the field, and of recalling and deposing them when unfaithful. 2. The Church has power to set down rules for the ordering of public worship. 3. She has power to make rules for her own government; such as every Church has in its Book of Discipline, Constitution, or Canons, &c. 4. She has power to receive into fellowship, and to exclude the unworthy from her own communion.
Now, the question is, Where does this power vest? Does it, as Romanists and Prelatists affirm, belong exclusively to the clergy? Have they the right to determine for the Church what she is to believe, what she is to profess, what she is to do, and whom she is to receive as members, and whom she is to reject? Or does this power vest in the Church itself—that is, in the whole body of the faithful? This, it will be perceived, is a radical question—one which touches the essence of things, and determines the destiny of men. If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied. If it vests in the whole Church, then the people have a right to a substantive part in the decision of all questions relating to doctrine, worship, order, and discipline. The public assertion of this right of the people, at the time of the Reformation, roused all Europe. It was an apocalyptic trumpet, i.e. a trumpet of revelation, tuba per sepulchra sonans, calling dead souls to life; awakening them to the consciousness of power and of right; of power conveying right, and imposing the obligation to assert and exercise it. This was the end of Church tyranny in all truly Protestant countries. It was the end of the theory that the people were bound to passive submission in matters of faith and practice. It was deliverance to the captive, the opening
of the prison to those who were bound; the introduction of the people of God into the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. This is the reason why civil liberty follows religious liberty. The theory that all Church power vests in a divinely constituted hierarchy, begets the theory that all civil power vests, of divine right, in kings and nobles. And the theory that Church power vests in the Church itself, and all Church officers are servants of the Church, of necessity begets the theory that civil power vests in the people, and that civil magistrates are servants of the people. These theories God has joined together, and no man can put them asunder. It was, therefore, by an infallible instinct, the unfortunate Charles of England said, “No bishop, no king;” by which he meant that if there is no despotic power in the Church, there can be no despotic power in the State; or, if there be liberty in the Church, there will be liberty in the State.
But this great Protestant and Presbyterian principle is not only a principle of liberty, it is also a principle of order. 1st. Because this power of the people is subject to the infallible authority of the word; and 2d. Because the exercise of it is in the hands of duly constituted officers. Presbyterianism does not dissolve the bands of authority, and resolve the Church into a mob. Though delivered from the autocratic authority of the hierarchy, it remains under the law to Christ. It is restricted in the exercise of its power by the word of God, which bends the reason, heart, and conscience. We only cease to be the servants of men, that we may be the servants of God. We are raised into a higher sphere, where perfect liberty is merged in absolute subjection. As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole. The believer ceases to be the servant of sin, that he may be the servant of righteousness; he is redeemed from the law, that he may be the servant of Christ. So the Church is delivered from an illegitimate authority, not that she may be lawless, but subject to an authority legitimate and divine. The Reformers, therefore, as instruments in the hands of God, in delivering the Church from bondage to prelates, did not make it a tumultuous multitude, in which every man was a law to himself, free to believe, and free to do what he pleased. The Church, in all the exercise of her power, in reference either to doctrine or discipline, acts under the written law of God, as recorded in his word.
But besides this, the power of the Church is not only thus limited and guided by the Scriptures, but the exercise of it is in the hands of legitimate officers. The Church is not a vast democracy, where everything is decided by the popular voice. “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, (i.e. of order) as in all churches of the saints.” The Westminster Confession, therefore, expressing the common sentiment of Presbyterians, says—“The Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of his Church, hath therein appointed a government in the hands of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate.” The doctrine that all civil power vests ultimately in the people, is not inconsistent with the doctrine that that power is in the hands of legitimate officers, legislative, judicial, and executive, to be exercised by them according to law. Nor is it inconsistent with the doctrine that the authority of the civil magistrate is jure divino. So the doctrine that Church power vests in the Church itself, is not inconsistent with the doctrine that there is a divinely appointed class of officers, through whom that power is to be exercised. It thus appears that the principle of liberty and the principle of order are perfectly harmonious. In denying that all Church power vests exclusively in the clergy, whom the people have nothing to do but to believe and to obey, and in affirming that it vests in the Church itself, while we assert the great principle of Christian liberty, we assert the no less important principle of evangelical order.
It is not necessary to occupy your time in quoting either from the Reformed Confessions or from standard Presbyterian writers, that the principle just stated is one of the radical principles of our system. It is enough to advert to the recognition of it involved in the office of ruling elder.
Ruling elders are declared to be the representatives of the people. They are chosen by them to act in their name in the government of the Church. The functions of these elders, therefore, determine the power of the people; for a representative is one chosen by others to do in their name what they are entitled to do in their own persons; or rather to exercise the powers which radically inhere in those for whom they act. The members of a State Legislature, or of Congress, for example, can exercise only those powers which are inherent in the people.
The powers, therefore, exercised by our ruling elders, are powers which belong to the lay members of the Church. What then are the powers of our ruling elders? 1. As to matters of doctrine and the great office of teaching, they have an equal voice with the clergy in the formation and adoption of all symbols of faith. According to Presbyterianism, it is not competent for the clergy to frame and authoritatively set forth a creed to be embraced by the Church, and to be made a condition of either ministerial or Christian communion, without the consent of the people. Such creeds profess to express the mind of the Church. But the ministry are not the Church, and, therefore, cannot declare the faith of the Church, without the cooperation of the Church itself. Such Confessions, at the time of the Reformation, proceeded from the whole Church. And all the Confessions now in authority in the different branches of the great Presbyterian family, were adopted by the people through their representatives, as the expression of their faith. So, too, in the selection of preachers of the word, in judging of their fitness for the sacred office, in deciding whether they shall be ordained, in judging them when arraigned for heresy, the people have, in fact, an equal vote with the clergy.[1]
2. The same thing is true as to the jus liturgicum, as it is called, of the Church. The ministry cannot frame a ritual, or liturgy, or directory for public worship, and enjoin its use on the people to whom they preach. All such regulations are of force only so far as the people themselves, in conjunction with their ministers, see fit to sanction and adopt them.
3. So too, in forming a constitution, or in enacting rules of procedure, or making canons, the people do not merely passively assent, but actively cooperate. They have, in all these matters, the same authority as the clergy.
4. And finally, in the exercise of the power of the keys, in opening and shutting the door of the communion with the Church, the people have a decisive voice. In all cases of discipline, they
are called upon to judge and to decide.
There can, therefore, be no doubt that Presbyterians do carry out the principle that Church power vests in the Church itself, and that the people have a right to a substantive part in its discipline and government. In other words, we do not hold that all power vests in the clergy, and that the people have only to listen and obey.
But is this a scriptural principle? Is it a matter of concession and courtesy, or is it a matter of divine right? Is our office of ruling elder only one of expediency, or is it an essential element
of our system, arising out of the very nature of the Church as constituted by God, and, therefore, of divine authority?
This, in the last resort, is, after all, only the question, Whether the clergy are the Church, or whether the people are the Church. If, as Louis the XIV said of France, “I am the State,” the clergy can say, “We are the Church,” then all Church power vests in them, as all civil power vested in the French monarch. But if the people are the State, civil power vests in them; and if the people are the Church, power vests in the people. If the clergy are priests and mediators, the channel of all divine communications, and the only medium of access to God, then all power is in their hands; but if all believers are priests and kings, then they have something more to do than merely passively to submit. So abhorrent is this idea of the clergy being the Church to the consciousness of Christians, that no definition of the Church for the first fifteen centuries after Christ, was ever framed that even mentioned the clergy. This is said to have been first done by Canisius and Bellarmine.[2] Romanists define the Church to be “those who profess the true religion, and are subject to the Pope.” Anglicans define it as “those who profess the true religion, and are subject to Prelates.” The Westminster Confession defines the visible Church, “Those who profess the true religion, together with their children.” In every Protestant symbol, Lutheran or Reformed, the Church is said to be the company of faithful men. Now, as a definition is the statement of the essential attributes or characteristics of a subject; and as, by the common consent of Protestants, the definition of the Church is complete without even mentioning the clergy, it is evidently the renunciation of the radical principles of Protestantism, and, of course, of Presbyterianism, to maintain that all Church power vests in the clergy. The first argument, therefore, in support of the doctrine that the people have a right to a substantive part in the government of the Church is derived from the fact that they, according to the Scriptures and all Protestant Confessions, constitute the Church.
2. A second argument is this. All Church power arises from the indwelling of the Spirit; therefore those in whom the Spirit dwells are the seat of Church power. But the Spirit dwells in the whole Church, and therefore the whole Church is the seat of Church power.
The first member of this syllogism is not disputed. The ground on which Romanists hold that Church power vests in the bishops, to the exclusion of the people, is that they hold that the Spirit was promised and given to the bishops as a class. When Christ breathed on his disciples, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained;” and when he said, “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and when he further said, “He that heareth you heareth me; and lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world;” they hold that he gave the Holy Ghost to the apostles and to their successors in the apostleship, to continue unto the end of the world, to guide them into the knowledge of the truth, and to constitute them the authoritative teachers and rulers of the Church. If this is true, then, of course, all Church power vests in these apostle-bishops. But on the other hand, if it is true that the Spirit dwells in the whole Church; if he guides the people as well as the clergy into the knowledge of the truth; if he animates the whole body, and makes it the representative of Christ on earth so that they who hear the Church hear Christ, and so that what the Church binds on earth is bound in heaven, then, of course, Church power vests in the Church itself, and not exclusively in the clergy.[3]
If there be anything plain from the whole tenor of the New Testament, and from innumerable explicit declarations of the word of God, it is that the Spirit dwells in the whole body of Christ; that he guides all his people into the knowledge of the truth; that every believer is taught of God, and has the witness in himself, and has no need that any should teach him, but the anointing which abideth in him teacheth him all things. It is, therefore, the teaching of the Church, and not of the clergy exclusively, which is ministerially the teaching of the Spirit, and the judgment of the Spirit. It is a thoroughly anti-christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people.
When the great promise of the Spirit was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, it was fulfilled not in reference to the apostles only. It was of the whole assembly it was said, “They were all filled with
the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Paul, in writing to the Romans, says, “We being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having, therefore, gifts differing according to the grace given unto us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth, on teaching.” To the Corinthians he says: “To every one is given a manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal. To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit.” To the Ephesians he says: “There is one body and one Spirit; but unto every one is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” This is the uniform representation of Scripture. The Spirit dwells in the whole Church, animates, guides, and instructs the whole. If, therefore, it be true, as all admit, that Church power goes with the Spirit, and arises out of his presence, it cannot belong exclusively to the clergy.
3. The third argument on this subject is derived from the commission given by Christ to his Church, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” This commission imposes a certain duty; it conveys certain powers; and it includes a great promise. The duty is to spread and to maintain the gospel in its purity over the whole earth. The powers are those required for the accomplishment of that object, i.e. the power to teach, to rule, and to exercise discipline. And the promise is the assurance of Christ’s perpetual presence and assistance. As neither the duty to extend and sustain the gospel in its purity, nor the promise of Christ’s presence is peculiar to the apostles as a class, or to the clergy as a body, but as both the duty and the promise belong to the whole Church, so also of necessity do the powers of the possession of which the obligation rests. The command, “Go teach all nations,” “go preach the gospel to every creature,” falls on the ear of the whole Church. It wakens a thrill in every heart. Every Christian feels that the command is addressed to a body of which he is a member, and that he has a personal obligation to discharge. It was not the ministry alone to whom this commission was given, and therefore it is not to them alone that the powers which it conveys belong.
4. The right of the people to a substantive part in the government of the Church is recognized and sanctioned by the apostles in almost every conceivable way. When they thought it necessary to complete the college of apostles, after the apostasy of Judas, Peter, addressing the disciples, the number being an hundred and twenty, said, “Men and brethren, of these men which have companied with us, all the time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.” And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and cast lots, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the apostles.” Thus in this most important initiatory step, the people had a decisive voice. So, when deacons were to be appointed, the whole multitude chose the seven men who were to be invested with the office. When the question arose as to the continued obligation of the Mosaic law, the authoritative decision proceeded from the whole Church. “It pleased,” says the sacred historian, “the apostles and elders, with the whole Church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch.” And they wrote letters by them after this manner: “The apostles, elders, and brethren, (oi` avpo,stoloi kai. oi` presbu,teroi kai. oi` avdeljoi,) send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia.” The brethren, therefore, were associated with the ministry in the decision of this great doctrinal and practical question. Most of the apostolic epistles are addressed to churches, i.e. the saints or believers, of Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, and Philippi. In these epistles, the people are assumed to be responsible for the orthodoxy of their teachers and for the purity of church members.
They are required not to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits; to sit in judgment on the question whether those who came to them as religious teachers were really sent of God. The Galatians are severely censured for giving heed to false doctrines, and are called to pronounce even an apostle anathema, if he preached another gospel. The Corinthians are censured for allowing an incestuous person to remain in their communion; they are commanded to excommunicate him, and afterwards, on his repentance, to restore him to their fellowship. These and other cases of the kind determine nothing as to the way in which the power of the people was exercised; but they prove conclusively that such power existed. The command to watch over the orthodoxy of ministers and the purity of members, was not addressed exclusively to the clergy, but to the whole Church. We believe that, as in the Synogogue, and in every well ordered society, the powers inherent in the society are exercised through appropriate organs. But the fact that these commands are addressed to the people, or to the whole Church, proves that they were responsible, and that they had a substantive part in the government of the Church. It would be absurd in other nations to address any complaints or exhortations to the people of Russia in reference to national affairs, because they have no part in the government. It would be no less absurd to address Roman Catholics as a self-governing body. But such addresses may well be made by the people of one of our States to the people of another, because the people have the power, though it is exercised through legitimate organs. While, therefore, the epistles of the apostles do not prove that the churches whom they addressed had not regular officers through whom the power of the Church was to be exercised, they abundantly prove that such power vested in the people; that they had a right and were bound to
take part in the government of the Church, and in the preservation of its purity.
It was only gradually, through a course of ages, that the power thus pertaining to the people was absorbed by the clergy. The progress of this absorption kept pace with the corruption of the Church, until the entire domination of the hierarchy was finally established. The first great principle, then, of Presbyterianism is the re-assertion of the primitive doctrine that Church power belongs to the whole Church; that that power is exercised through legitimate officers, and therefore that the office of ruling elders as the representatives of the people, is not a matter of expediency, but an essential element of our system, arising out of the nature of the Church, and resting on the authority of Christ.
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