One More Strength—Its Greatest—of Presbyterianism (Presbyterianism, Pt. 5)

There is a virtue in Presbyterianism greater than any of these. I am speaking of the way Presbyterian church government embodies and practices the unity of the church.

Editor's Note: This article is part five 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. 

In the last installment of this series, I began to list some of the virtues or strengths of Presbyterian church government. I mentioned the wisdom of relying on a number of godly men instead of but one; its division of labor by which each essential function of church leadership is provided its own office; and its lay officers who serve as a barrier to clerical absolutism. But, there is a virtue in our system greater than any of these. I am speaking of the way Presbyterian church government embodies and practices the unity of the church. Our Savior and his apostles laid great emphasis on such unity. The oneness of the body of Christ would be a demonstration to the world of the truth of the gospel, our Savior said (so lacking in unity is the human race in general, and so crippling is that disunity), and Paul often argued that God’s people individually would draw great strength from a church that was one in heart and purpose. This stress on the unity of the church of Christ may be said to be the principal interest of Presbyterian church polity. In the first installment of this series, I cited J. H. Thornwell’s definition of Presbyterian church government: “The government of the church by parliamentary assemblies, composed of two classes of elders, and of elders only, and so arranged as to realize the visible unity of the whole church.” At the time, I pointed out that only the last part of that definition was uncontroversial, but the last part concerns the unity of the church.

 In a world such as ours, however, we can only create such a visible and practical unity to the extent that we can persuade Christians and congregations to agree with these principles.

To be sure, Presbyterians aren’t alone in favoring a government that makes both real and visible the unity of the church. Episcopalian church government (i.e. the polity of Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc.) does as well. Perhaps for this reason, Presbyterians would have to admit that their principles bring them nearer to episcopacy than to independence. In independent church government, in which each congregation is entire to itself and subject to no other, the unity of the church is more of a theory than a fact. In Presbyterianism, individual congregations belong to presbyteries which, in turn, belong to General Assemblies. Each local church is part of the larger church in real ways: each congregation is subject to the larger church, is able to appeal to it for redress or help, and each congregation shares in the life and work of the church as a whole. It is not for nothing that the name of our church is The Presbyterian Church in America, not the Presbyterian Churches in America. We are altogether one church! 

According to Presbyterian principles, in an ideal world there would be but one Christian church in Tacoma, Washington, with the many congregations of that one church—each governed by its elders on the local level—subject to the rule of the united eldership of the town. That city church or presbytery (as before Corinth or Ephesus), would then be part of the regional church of the Puget Sound (as before the church of Judea or Samaria), in turn governed by a representative selection of its elders drawn from all its congregations. That regional church or synod would then be part of the General Assembly, the Christian church in its entirety, as before in the assembly of Acts 15, ruled by a representative selection of elders drawn from all its synods. In a world such as ours, however, we can only create such a visible and practical unity to the extent that we can persuade Christians and congregations to agree with these principles. So, alas, there is not one single Christian Church of Tacoma, Washington, whose congregations are all subject to a single government and which belongs to the one Christian Church of the United States, which, in turn, belongs to the one holy, catholic Christian Church ruled by its representative, international eldership. The church in Tacoma does not speak with a single voice and does not display its unity in a way that demonstrates its supernatural origin. There are many more independent congregations than Presbyterian ones and, for a variety of reasons, the church presents to the world many faces instead of one. In far too many ways the church looks like any other human institution, fractured by the inability of people to get along and to unite in love and mutual confidence for the sake of a common purpose. That is not the only reason for the church’s disunity, to be sure, but that disunity should nevertheless be a matter of real grief and embarrassment to Presbyterians and all Christians.

The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is the most remarkable and the most wonderful institution in the world.

We Presbyterians have not, of course, always lived up to our principles. In 1936, the ministers who founded the separatist Presbyterian denomination, in which Faith Presbyterian Church would eventually be established in 1953, did not so much leave or separate from the Presbyterian Church USA as they were cast out of that church. As the 18th century Scotsman John Brown of Haddington once put it: “Providence often points out the duty of separation by permitting some faithful ministers to be tyrannously thrust out of her communion.” What happened in 1936 was not an un-Presbyterian act to create a new church, even though it did result in two churches instead of one. It was loyalty to Holy Scripture and to Jesus Christ on the part of some Presbyterians, and disloyalty on the part of others, that produced that division. What happened in 1937, however—the division among the separated conservatives over eschatology and Christian liberty—was a very un-Presbyterian act, as some of its principals later acknowledged. Now one church had become three. Still, the chart of Presbyterian church history in the United States very clearly reflects the Presbyterian commitment to the unity of the church. It reflects the union of a number of Presbyterian bodies over the years. And now, after the tumult of more than three hundred years of American church history, almost all American Presbyterians (a number somewhat larger than 3 million) belong to one of two churches, the Presbyterian Church USA and the Presbyterian Church in America—with perhaps only 150,000 Presbyterians remaining to be divided among a number of smaller bodies (excluding the Dutch Reformed churches).

The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is the most remarkable and the most wonderful institution in the world. It demonstrates its supernatural origin by nothing so much as its unity across all the barriers that ordinarily separate people from one another. In our time we are seeing wealthy American Episcopal congregations placing themselves under the authority of Anglican bishops in Rwanda and Nigeria. That is a beautiful and important development. We have a long way to go to embody that unity as profoundly in the Presbyterian church. But, I am thankful that our principles compel us to care that our church, as much as possible, demonstrates herself to be the one, holy, catholic church she is said to be in Holy Scripture and the ancient creeds.