Editor's Note: This article is part two 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. 

We began our study of Presbyterian church government by pointing out its historical importance to Western democracy—an importance largely unknown and unappreciated even by Presbyterians nowadays—and its relative unimportance as a part of the teaching of Holy Scripture. Church government is not Jesus Christ or his cross! Before we go any further in our study, we must define our subject. What is Presbyterianism? The term itself suggests government by elders or presbyters. But Presbyterians aren’t the only Christians whose churches are ruled by elders, just as Baptists are not the only ones who practice baptism. Indeed, every form of church government employs elders understood in some fashion. Congregationalists or Independents have elders; so do Episcopalians (“priest,” after all, is only an English transliteration of the Greek word for elder, “presbyter”).

The fact is, to define Presbyterianism is no simple matter. Presbyterians themselves have had great difficulty agreeing on a definition of their own church government. James Henley Thornwell, the great nineteenth-century Southern Presbyterian, once offered this definition: “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.” Unfortunately, only the last clause of that definition is uncontroversial. Thornwell’s contemporary, the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge, for example, would not have consented to “two classes of elders.” (We will return to that interesting and important disagreement in a later installment of this series.) Others would object to the too-easy comparison of a presbytery to a civil legislature.

 Presbyterianism is a unique combination of principles that are all individually found in other polities

One simple way of defining Presbyterianism is to distinguish it from its alternatives. Presbyterianism, for example, is not Congregationalism because it does not locate ultimate church power in the will of the local congregation. Ultimate church power, in the Presbyterianism system, is held by the assembled elders, whether called the presbytery, the synod, or the general assembly. Presbyterianism is not Episcopal church government because it does not organize its elders in a hierarchy, with some of its elders exercising authority over others. Presbyterians have no bishops or archbishops (at least in theory!).

Another way of defining Presbyterian church government is to reduce it to those principles with which all Presbyterians concur. In the nineteenth century, the Irish Presbyterian Thomas Witherow—in an influential little book, The Apostolic Church: Which Is It?—argued that Presbyterianism consisted of the presence of six convictions. 

First, Christ is the only King and Head of his church. There were many in older days who argued that the government of the church was subject to the government of the state. There was a mixture of church and state in those times that we in the early twenty-first century find almost incomprehensible. Erastians argued that the government of the church, whatever its form, was subject to direction and even control by the king. Presbyterians asserted, to the contrary, that the government of the church was subject to no other human government but directly to Christ the King. That conviction led to much bloodshed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

Second, office bearers—ministers, elders, and deacons—are to be elected by the people. Bishops in the Episcopalian system assign ministers to congregations; Presbyterian congregations choose not only their ministers but their elders and deacons as well. In Scottish church history, the assertion of the right of congregations to elect their office bearers—in earlier days local nobles controlled the settling of ministers in particular congregations—was a source of continued and bitter controversy and resulted in at least one major division of the Church of Scotland (the “Disruption” of 1843). 

Third, in the New Testament, the terms “bishop” and “elder” are synonyms and describe the same church office and the same church officer. “Bishop” (episkopos), which means “overseer,” describes the function of the office. “Elder” (presbyteros), which literally means “old man,” describes his character and qualifications as a man of spiritual depth and experience. While Episcopalians regard bishops as exercising a greater authority and holding a different office than elders, Presbyterians maintain that their office is the same. Every elder is a bishop. 

Fourth, there is to be a plurality of elders in every church. In Episcopalian and some forms of Congregational church government, the minister/priest is the only elder or presbyter serving the congregation. Presbyterians maintain that the New Testament always and everywhere shows us congregations with more than one elder. Local church government, therefore, is not held in a single pair of hands. 

Fifth, ordination is an act of the presbytery. As opposed to Episcopalian theory, it is not the bishop who holds the authority to confer upon a man the authority of church office but the elders acting in concert. 

Sixth, and finally, the congregation has the right to appeal to—and the obligation to submit to—the larger church. Congregations are not sovereign; they are not the last word as in Congregational or Independent forms of church government.

These six principles are held, at least in some form, by all Presbyterians. However, none of them is unique to Presbyterianism. Presbyterians share some of them with Congregationalists and others with Episcopalians. Presbyterianism, in other words, is a unique combination of principles that are all individually found in other polities. This fact serves to remind us of the point made in our first study: namely, that church government does not separate Christians from one another in nearly so serious ways as do some other doctrinal differences.

But something else must be said about Witherow’s definition of Presbyterianism in six particulars. Add them up and we have so far only the barest outline of a church government, certainly nothing approaching the elaborate systems of practice and procedure that Presbyterian churches have produced through the centuries. It is striking, for example, that in Witherow’s summary of Presbyterian principles, no specific mention is made of presbyteries or synods or general assemblies. The existence of the larger church as an organ of government is assumed in the sixth principle above but only in the most general way. A system of graded church courts is, to most observers, one of the essential parts of all Presbyterian systems, but, according to Witherow, that system is not itself one of Presbyterianism’s fundamental features. What is more, it is a simple fact that Presbyterian churches around the world operate in ways quite different from one another, no matter their agreement on these principles. For example, Francis Turretin, the seventeenth-century Genevan theologian, an important historical representative of Presbyterian thought, argued that it would violate no principle of Presbyterian polity if the church were to invest significant powers in a president, so long as those powers were subject to the review and control of the church’s elders acting in concert. However, Turretin’s authority notwithstanding, English-speaking Presbyterian churches have so jealously guarded the parity of the eldership—the equal authority of every elder—that such a proposal strikes them as manifestly un-presbyterian. In Scotland, Presbyterian ministers are paid by the denomination; in America, by the local congregation. In the Netherlands, Presbyterian pastors are members of their own churches; in the United States, they are typically members of presbyteries. The list of differences in both principle and practice is very long and, as we shall see, some of these differences bear mightily on important issues of church life.

So, while we may say that Presbyterianism consists of a certain set of convictions regarding the government of the church, those convictions are quite general and must be fleshed out into a working church government with practices and procedures nowhere directly taught or illustrated in the Bible. As the history of Presbyterian thought and practice proves, these fundamental principles leave a great deal of room for both variety of application and innovation in practice.