A Reformed Church Must Oppose Hierarchy

For many years this periodical has from time to time highlighted a movement to develop over the churches a centralized bureaucracy of “administrators,” originally to “help,” but eventually to control their activities. The biggest and most threatening such effort at present appears to be that of the committee continuing to develop the “Vision 21” project, which the synod of 1987, despite a volume of objections, in principle, endorsed. The purpose of this project is ostensibly to make the denomination’s agencies more efficient. Many larger denominations have developed that kind of structure, and long before that the Roman Catholic Church has pioneered it, for the same reason of efficient control.

A principle objection to developing such a centralized control structure is that the Bible constantly warns against the temptation to develop it. Our Lord in Matthew 20:20–28 (cf. Mark 9:34, 35; Matt. 23:8) sternly warned His followers against such grabbing for power over one another, and Peter forewarned against such grabbing for power over one another, and Peter forewarned church elders against the same temptation to pervert their leadership into domination (1 Pet. 5:1–4). John in his Third letter (9–11) warned against the destructive arrogance of a church bureaucrat named Diotrepbes. Although the Apostle Paul could claim the authority given Him by Christ (2 Cor.10:8), be plainly showed that that authority was to be regarded as under and in the service of the Lord’s gospel with which he bad been entrusted. H e wrote, “if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” When Peter behaved in a way that compromised the gospel, Paul “withstood him to his face” in a public rebuke (Gal. 1:8, 9; 2:11–14). By precept and example, the Lord’s Apostles, far from committing the church to unconditional following of church leadership, opposed hostile church authorities, saying “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). When local church leaders began to oppose the gospel, Paul, far from teaching the believers to submit to them, led the believers o ut of their fellowship (Acts 18:4–7; 19:9). Thus God’s Word orders us to separate from fellowship with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14–7:1).

At the conclusion of our latest denominational synod, according to reports, delegates we re given the final admonition to “Trust your leaders!” It would be hard to imagine a piece of advice more totally opposite to that of God’s Word and therefore more anti-Reformed. Such a blind following of leaders is nothing but idolatry of a kind to which traditionally conservative Christians may be particularly susceptible. Think of the veteran Joshua’s farewell to his people and their leaders (Josh. 24:14, 15). Far from assuring them of his unqualified support, he urged them to be faithful to the Lord and warned them against every temptation to compromise with surrounding idolatries. He warned them that if they compromised with the old ones, or with the newer, more faddish and “progressive” forms of idolatry, neither be nor his family would accompany them. If faithfulness to the Lord and His Word forces us to break away from the majority, every Christian is committed by the Lord to such a break. The usurpation of Christ’s authority by the Roman Church drove our forefathers out of it. Our own establishment’s development of the same kind of anti-Christian tyranny must drive us out of it.

A most common argument recently being used in effort to silence opposition to centralized denominational control is the one that calls all such opposition “independentistic” or “congregational.” The Ministers’ Institute address on “Will Our Congregationalism Kill Us?” by Dr. Henry De Moor, who teaches Church Polity at our denominational seminary advanced that argument (See the report on that conference in this Outlook). H e had developed that argument also in other writings (June, 1988 RES Theological Forum, pp. 31) and most extensively in his 1986 doctoral thesis for the Kampen seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church (GKN). This 350-page document entitled Equipping the Saints, tends to dismiss the notion that the authority of the local church consistory is original while that of other assemblies is delegated by it as (1) a concession to American democratic politics and (2) an invention of Abraham Kuyper. Clearly, De Moor’s argument favors a centralized heiarchy, and it gives support to the present development of such a structure.

Despite the valuable historical research of this thesis, (1) it fails to ground its judgment on the Bible’s teaching, and it consequently also (2) does not do justice to the motives that originated our Reformed Church polity. We have already seen how the Bible nowhere encourages developing a centralized church organization, but warns against moving in that direction. The Reformed principle of the original authority the Lord entrusted to the local church offices is not a Kuyperian invention or product of American secular democracy. (Notice the way these two explanations really contradict each other. Kuyper was hardly a Yankee democrat!) This principle (of local elder authority) is simply the pattern that our early Reformed fathers, struggling to escape from the anti-Christian tyranny of the Roman bureaucracy, found in the Scriptures and tried to work out as they struggled against great obstacles to develop a Biblical form of church cooperation. Restoring and preserving the jurisdiction and individuality of each church was so much the concern of those early Reformed churches that they tried to safeguard those rights in the very first article of the Church Order adopted by the first regular Synod (Emden, 1571): “No Church shall dominate over other Churches, no Minister of the Word, Elder or Deacon shall dominate the one over the other, but every one shall guard himself against all suspicions and enticements to dominate” (Monsma and Van Dellen’s Church Order Commentary [1941], p. 341; cf. De Moor’s thesis, p. 267). Could anything more clearly show how far we have slipped from our Biblical, confessional (and even historical) moorings than the fact that this original principle of Reformed Church Order is now being misrepresented as a comparatively late, secular heresy?

A Reformed Church Must Seek Church Unity

The early history of the Reformed Churches, who affirmed as a first principle their rejection of any church hierarchy, also highlights a danger to which they were exposed, in their reaction against the abuse of church power, of fragmenting into separated, independent churches. Monsma and Van Dellen’s account points out how difficult it was to persuade especially those churches who had been persecuted by church authorities, to cooperate in holding any kind of synod for joint action.

The Word of God tells us that we must endeavor “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). Our Lord prayed that His people might be one (John 17:11, 21ff.) in a unity of faith in His Word (but not with unbelievers who like to exploit the name “Christian”). Although churches which have had to break away from unfaithful denominations may have to become independent as a temporary policy, independency is no cure-all for the abuse of church power, but is exposed to its own variety of abuses. One of the most common of them is the misuse of power and influence by the individual minister. I was once consulted by a troubled group of members of an independent church, seeking a way out of a controversy which was tearing their church apart. I outlined the way our churches attempt to forestall or correct such problems through consulting with church visitors and classes. Regrettably, they did not have any such devices and what their church had had of a constitution had been arbitrarily altered by the minister!

A recent widely publicized church incident in Britain has, in the words of the editor of the Scotch Free Church’s Monthly Record, (March, 1988, p. 61), “sent shock waves through Reformed churches all over the world.” Rev. Errol Hulse, highly respected and influential Reformed Baptist pastor whose books and editorials in Reformation Today are widely read and esteemed, was summarily dismissed by his independent congregation on the initiative of its elders, although no charge of heresy or misbehavior was involved. Editor MacLeod’s comment seems appropriate: “What kind of polity what kind of Christianity is it that can deal out such summary cruelty to a minister of the gospel? We ventured the opinion some years ago that an Independent minister has no more security than a pub pianist. Not in our wildest nightmares did we anticipate such a terrible confirmation.” “It is particularly sad to notice the role played by the elders. No man did more than Erroll Hulse to reinstate eldership in English congregationalism and it is a cruel irony that he should fall victim to an abuse of what he himself fought for . . . . Things have now come to the point where elders are functioning not merely as the pastor’s equal but as boards of directors with summary powers of dismissal. Surely the original vision was that they would be colleagues, not employers? Better by far the power of a church-meeting than the power of an oligarchy.” Editor MacLeod suggests the need for “some apparatus whereby the kind of problems which emerged . . . can be referred to the wider church” (as they would be under Reformed or Presbyterian polity), instead of leaving the victim of local injustice with nowhere to turn.

Dr. J. I. Packer, in his little 1958 book, Fundamentalism and the Word of God, pointed out that “the problem of authority is the most fundamental problem that the Christian Church ever faces.” “There are three distinct authorities to which final appeal might be made-Holy Scripture, Church tradition or Christian reason;” that is to say, “Scripture as interpreted by itself; Scripture as interpreted (and in some measure amplified) by official ecclesiastical sources; and Scripture as evaluated in terms of extra-biblical principles by individual Christian men.” He sees these three views of authority as those held by the Confessional Protestants or Reformed, the Roman Catholics and the modern Liberal Protestants, respectively, and points out that one has to choose between these three-one can no more combine these views to build one church on them than one can build on three totally diverse foundations. “Sham unity is not worth working for, and real unity, that fellowship of love in the truth which Christ prayed that his disciples might enjoy will come only as those sections of the wall which rest on unsound foundations are dismantled and rebuilt” (pp. 42–46).

In our rising church crisis, Dr. De Moor (and others in our church bureaucracy for whose view he seems to be an articulate spokesman) would drive us toward accepting centralized control by warning against the opposite threat of independentism and fragmentation. We ought to notice that these are not two alternatives between which we must choose. As Packer pointed out, the Reformed Church’s guiding principle is and has to be the authority of Holy Scripture. It is only as that authority of the Bible is lost from sight that the church is caught in a dilemma between control from the top down or from the bottom up.* Our problem is that under the influence of Higher Critical abuse of the Bible by our church leadership everything the Bible says has become debatable and recent synod majorities have fiercely resisted every proposal to end controversies with a “Thus saith the Lord” which appeals to the Bible. A former president of Calvin’s Board told us some years ago the startling fact that for 15 years the Biblical doctrine of the church had not even been taught in the field of Systematic Theology in training our ministers. When our churches in their church polity discard the light of God’s Word, we should not be surprised if we continue to stumble in hopeless confusion as we try to deal with multiplying problems. The only effective remedy for that kind of ecclesiastical mess (which we share with many others) is the old one of Reformation by a return to hearing and obeying God’s Word. In past centuries the Lord gave reformation and renewal to His church by that route. If we stubbornly refuse to turn that way, the Lord sternly warned us that our troubles will increase. He said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men” (Matt. 5:13).

*It is interesting to observe in the last pages of Dr. De Moor’s thesis (p. 350), that he thinks that one can avoid this dilemma between from the top down or bottom up rule by appealing to the authority of Christ. That raises the question how one can determine what Christ commands. Since the appeal is not to the Bible (which has become completely ambiguous to today’s critical “scholars”), our dilemma between (like Roman Catholics) obeying a church hierarchy or (as Liberals) each doing as he or she pleases, remains. In neither of these cases can we have a truly authoritative gospel or church.