Theopedia

Church government

Definition

Church government, or church polity, is the doctrine of how Christ governs his church through offices and structures of authority. Three major patterns have developed across Christian history: episcopal government by bishops, presbyterian government by graded assemblies of elders, and congregational government exercised by the gathered local church itself.1 The 1689 confession holds a congregational polity: each particular church chooses its own officers, bishops (elders) and deacons, and no outside body holds binding authority over it.2

Confessional Witness

The 1689 confession states plainly who governs a particular church and how its officers come to hold office. “A particular church, gathered and completely organized according to the mind of Christ, consists of officers and members; and the officers appointed by Christ to be chosen and set apart by the church… are bishops or elders, and deacons.”3 Those officers are not appointed from outside: “the way appointed by Christ for the calling of any person… unto the office of bishop or elder in a church, is, that he be chosen thereunto by the common suffrage of the church itself… and of a deacon that he be chosen by the like suffrage.”2 Members who join a particular church come “under the censures and government thereof, according to the rule of Christ”4, government exercised by that church itself, not by a bishop or presbytery set over it.

The confession does not leave churches isolated from one another. “As each church… [is] bound to pray continually for the good and prosperity of all the churches of Christ… so the churches… ought to hold communion among themselves.”5 Where difficulties arise, “many churches holding communion together” may send “messengers” to give advice, but those messengers “are not intrusted with any church-power properly so called; or with any jurisdiction over the churches themselves… or to impose their determination on the churches or officers.”6 Inter-church counsel is real but advisory; binding authority stays with the local congregation.

This is where the 1689 parts from the wider Reformed confessional family.7 The Westminster Confession instead gives synods and councils real, structural authority: “it belongeth… ministerially, to determine controversies of faith… and government of [Christ’s] Church… which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission, not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made.”8 Westminster qualifies this immediately: “all synods or councils since the apostles’ times… may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice.”9 The two confessions agree such authority is fallible; they disagree on where governing authority finally rests, in the local congregation or in a graded system of assemblies above it.

Biblical Basis

The New Testament names two ordinary offices in a local church: elder, also called overseer, and deacon.10 The terms “elder” (presbyteros) and “overseer” (episkopos) name the same office rather than two ranks. Paul summons “the elders of the church” at Ephesus and tells them the Holy Spirit made them “overseers, to care for the church of God” (Acts 20:17, 28). Writing to Titus, Paul instructs him to “appoint elders in every town,” then without any sign of changing subjects lists qualifications “for an overseer, as God’s steward” (Titus 1:5-7). Peter charges “the elders among you” to shepherd God’s flock, “exercising oversight” (1 Pet. 5:1-2). Paul’s greeting to the Philippian church names only “overseers and deacons” (Phil. 1:1), which Strauch reads as an unlikely omission of the church’s elders unless overseer and elder name the same men.11 Bavinck draws the same conclusion systematically: “elders and overseers may be the same persons and bearers of the same office… Distinguishing episkopos from presbyteros is the only way to make sense of 1 Timothy 5:17.”12 Later church fathers already recognized this. Jerome wrote, “A presbyter and a bishop are the same… at that time the same persons were called either bishops or presbyters,” and, per J. B. Lightfoot, every extant patristic commentary on the relevant texts before the fifth century affirms the identity.13

Scripture consistently presents this office in the plural within a single congregation. Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders… in every church” (Acts 14:23, singular “church,” plural “elders”); James instructs a sick believer to “call the elders of the church” (James 5:14, again singular “church”).14 The office also presupposes the congregation’s own involvement: the church at Jerusalem elected the Seven, whom the apostles then set apart (Acts 6:1-6), and Antioch’s prophets and teachers, gathered as a church, sent out Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:1-3), the same pattern the 1689 reflects in requiring officers “chosen… by the common suffrage of the church itself.”15

Deacons form a distinct, subordinate office, always named alongside the overseers (Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:8-13) and traced to the church’s choice of seven men “to serve tables” so the apostles could give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word (Acts 6:1-6).16 Their qualifications closely track the elders’ own,16 but they do not bear the elders’ teaching and ruling responsibility (1 Tim. 3:1-7; 5:17).

Historical Development

The apostolic-era pattern of elder and overseer as one interchangeable office, with no hierarchy among local congregations, gave way within a century to something structurally different. Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early second century, is the first clear witness to three distinct ranks, overseer, presbyters, and deacons, speaking of them repeatedly as separate kinds of office-bearer, though he still surrounds the episcopus with a council of presbyters and grants him no authority beyond his own local church.17 The “aristocratic-presbyterial” governance of the earliest churches developed into a “monarchical-episcopal” arrangement, beginning in the East and later followed in the West.18 By the mid-third century, Cyprian could still describe all bishops as equal in dignity and “jointly the head of the church.”19 Rome’s own claim to primacy developed later and more slowly: the Council of Nicea (325) granted Constantinople only “the primacy of honor after the bishop of Rome,” and Chalcedon (451) assigned Constantinople “equal priority” with Rome rather than subordination to it.20 It was Leo I (440-461) who first developed papal primacy “with all deliberateness… to the rank and value of a religious dogma,” resting it on Matthew 16:18.21 The medieval papacy built on that foundation: Gregory VII’s Papal Dictate declared “the church of Rome has never erred,” Boniface VIII’s 1302 bull Unam Sanctam held it “absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff,” and the First Vatican Council, on July 18, 1870, gave the papacy’s jurisdiction over the whole church its final, formal dogmatic statement.22

The Reformation “set itself in full opposition to the very notion of a hierarchical church,” rejecting apostolic succession and any scriptural ground for ranking overseer above elder, and finding support for that reading already in Jerome, Chrysostom, Theodoret, the Waldensians, and Wycliffe.23 Among the Reformed churches this recovery took a synodical, not strictly congregational, shape. Zwingli instituted synods at Zurich in 1528; Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances required the Genevan preachers to assemble quarterly to review one another’s teaching and conduct, adding an annual visitation in 1546.24 The first full Reformed synodical church order arose in France, where representatives first met in synod at Paris on May 26, 1559, and a classis was inserted between the provincial synods and the local church councils in 1572; the pattern later spread to Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, England, and America.25 Two streams objected to this binding synodical structure from the start: the Remonstrants, who judged synods permissible but unnecessary and properly subject to the state, and the Anabaptists and Independents, who rejected any binding classical or synodical linkage among congregations at all.26 English Particular Baptist congregationalism, of which the 1689 confession is the confessional expression, belongs to this second stream, worked out within a Reformed doctrinal framework rather than a separatist one.7

Opposing Views

Episcopal polity holds that Christ governs his church through bishops who stand in a distinct office above the presbyters, commonly tracing that office’s authority to succession from the apostles. In Roman Catholicism this culminates in the papacy: the bishop of Rome holds “the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church… not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the church dispersed throughout the whole world,” as “the supreme judge of the faithful,” subject to no council.27 Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism likewise govern through bishops, without accepting Rome’s claim to a single universal jurisdiction. Advocates of the episcopal reading have pointed to Revelation’s address of each of the seven churches to a single “angel” as early evidence for a single ruling officer per congregation.28

Presbyterian polity governs through graded assemblies of ordained elders, ordinarily session, presbytery, and synod or general assembly, holding that synods and councils carry real, binding authority when their decisions accord with Scripture, even though any given synod “may err.”9 The Westminster Confession’s own chapter on synods and councils, described under Confessional Witness above, is the classic statement of this position.

Single-elder-led congregationalism governs, like the 1689’s own polity, through the local congregation rather than an outside bishop or presbytery, but places ordinary leadership in one pastor or elder rather than a plurality. Alexander Strauch, cataloguing the standard five-view taxonomy of church polity (single-elder-led congregational, presbyterian, congregation-led, episcopal, and plural-elder-led), observes that of the five, “the least known or practiced is the plural-elder-led view,” meaning a single pastor leading a congregational church, not a plurality of elders, is the more common practice among congregational and Baptist churches today.1 The 1689’s own language, “officers… are bishops or elders, and deacons,”3 does not itself settle the question of number, though Reformed Baptist eldership practice has generally read the New Testament’s own pattern, elders appointed in the plural within a single congregation (Acts 14:23; James 5:14),14 as normative.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), “Preface and Introduction,” 9-20: summarizing the five-view taxonomy from Chad Owen Brand and R. Stanton Norman, eds., Perspectives on Church Government: Five Views of Church Polity (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2004): single-elder-led congregational, presbyterian, congregation-led, episcopal, and plural-elder-led. “Of the above five positions, the least known or practiced is the plural-elder-led view of church leadership.” ↩ ↩2

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 9. ↩ ↩2

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 8. ↩ ↩2

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 12. ↩

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 14. ↩

  6. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 15. ↩

  7. See Church’s Confessional Witness and Historical Development sections on the 1689’s congregational polity and its place among post-Reformation congregationalist movements. ↩ ↩2

  8. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 31, “Of Synods and Councils,” para. 3. ↩

  9. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 31, “Of Synods and Councils,” para. 4. ↩ ↩2

  10. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “Aside from the extraordinary offices of apostle, prophet, and evangelist, there are only two ordinary offices, that of deacons and that of presbyteroi.” ↩

  11. Strauch, Biblical Eldership, chap. 11, “Philippians 1:1: Overseers and Deacons in the Church at Philippi,” 123-130. ↩

  12. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  13. Strauch, Biblical Eldership, chap. 11, 123-130, quoting Jerome and J. B. Lightfoot. ↩

  14. Strauch, Biblical Eldership, chap. 3, “Shared Leadership,” 43-60: “In Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders (plural) in each church (singular). According to James 5:14, a sick believer is to call the elders (plural) of the church (singular) to come and pray.” ↩ ↩2

  15. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “the offices of teacher, elder/overseer, and deacon presuppose the existence of the church, a church that as a local body has the right to designate and elect the bearers of these offices.” ↩

  16. Strauch, Biblical Eldership, chap. 11, 123-130. ↩ ↩2

  17. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  18. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “The organization described in the preceding paragraph, an organization that can be called aristocratic-presbyterial, soon developed into a monarchical-episcopal arrangement. This started early in the East; the West soon followed suit.” ↩

  19. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  20. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality,” citing the Canons of the Council of Nicea, canons 2-3, and the Council of Chalcedon (451), canon 28. ↩

  21. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  22. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality,” quoting Gregory VII’s Papal Dictate, Boniface VIII’s bull Unam Sanctam (1302), and the First Vatican Council (July 18, 1870). ↩

  23. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “The Reformation set itself in full opposition to the very notion of a hierarchical church and the disjunction between clergy and laity.” ↩

  24. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  25. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  26. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: objecting to synodical government were “(1) Those who regarded them as permissible but unnecessary and believed that they were under the authority of the state (Remonstrants); (2) those who considered every group of believers independent, and rejected every binding classical or synodical linkage (Anabaptists, Independents).” ↩

  27. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality,” quoting the First Vatican Council (July 18, 1870) on papal primacy and jurisdiction. ↩

  28. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “Rev. 1:20-3:22 is important because it describes the bishop in such a prominent role that he could be described as a messenger (angelos)… It is likely that the development of the monarchical episcopate has its roots there.” ↩