England was a duel—a literary one—between Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and Presbyterian theologian Thomas Cartwright.1 This debate would last until 1577 and center around the six propositions Cartwright set forth in his exposition of the model of the primitive church based on the first two chapters of Acts. Cartwright’s propositions dealt with orders of clergy and with their offices, duties, and calling.2 At the center of the controversy was the governmental form of the church. Was it to be Episcopal or reformed, in the direction of the Presbyterian model?3
John Whitgift, adopting a relativistic stance on church polity, considered experience and convenience to be appropriate yardsticks for a viable form of church government.4 With his stringent view of human depravity, Cartwright argued that episcopacy had no foundation in Scripture and that a system not commanded by God should not be tolerated.5 In response, Whitgift claimed that the Scriptures were authoritative for all things pertaining to redemption, but permissive in matters indifferent to it.6 Or, in the words of Stephen Brachlow, “Since he could find no evidence in the New Testament that Christ had delineated an organizational structure for the church with the precision and clarity Christ had employed in other doctrinal matters, Whitgift reasoned that ecclesiology must therefore be an adiaphora7 issue, an indifferent matter, secondary to the more substantive doctrinal teachings of the gospel.”8 Cartwright believed that the Scriptures revealed a model for church organization—a single pattern for the church that amounted to a perpetual and immutable law for all succeeding generations living under the gospel.9 Thus, people were to put into practice what was in the Bible and abstain from doing what was not in it.
Who was right and who was wrong in this theological duel? Was Whitgift right in his more adiaphorist, or normative, approach to biblical treatment of church polity? Or was Cartwright correct in using Scripture as a regulative principle in this debate?10 And if Cartwright was right, then what does this imply about the more adiaphorist stance that he himself took in his later controversy with such separatists as Robert Browne and Richard Harrison?11
There seems to be a degree of arbitrariness about Cartwright’s approach. Having professed that the practice of biblical church discipline was a matter of salvation in his debate with Whitgift, Cartwright conveniently failed to mention the soteriological significance of ecclesiology in his correspondence with Harrison. This same type of inconsistency is apparent in most major Protestant denominations’ exposition of church polity today, for although they all look to the same source of support for some or all of their views, each seems to emerge with a different argument.
The aim of this work is to provide assistance in eliminating the fog of random exegesis by fleshing out hermeneutical assumptions shared by the adherents of all polity models and grounding these in the word of God, and in so doing, present the most biblically defensible model of church government.
Sufficiency of Scripture and Church Polity
Prior to diving into the deep waters of theology, a more foundational matter must be addressed—that of Scripture’s sufficiency in the area of polity. To put it in the form of a question: Is the Bible sufficient to address the issues of church polity? Or is Schweizer right in asserting that “there is no such thing as the New Testament Church order?”12 The same notion is echoed by Frost: “In the New Testament and the early church up to the second century, in spite of incipient legal thinking, there was no fixed form of church government.”13
The arguments put forth by Schweizer and Frost must be rejected for at least two reasons. The first reason is biblical and the second is theological. Biblically, careful examination of the New Testament provides ample evidence of specific set patterns or frameworks within which early church members structured their time together. They gathered together at set times for worship and prayer (Acts 2:42, 47), practiced the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Acts 2:41–42, 46), received offerings in an organized fashion (1 Cor 16:2), sent letters of recommendation from one church to another, maintained official lists of those who needed care or assistance from the church (1 Tim 5:9), and practiced church discipline (1 Cor 5; 2 Cor 2:5–11), among other things.14
Theologically, if the church is indeed the body of Christ, then Waldron is correct in stating that it is unthinkable that God would leave it here on earth without any distinguishable organizational blueprint.15 That church polity is significant to God is evidenced by the fact that “for every time that Paul used the word ‘church’ of the organism” in Scripture, “he used it six times of the organization.”16 Furthermore, “if Paul can say of the Old Testament Scriptures that ‘everything that was written in the past was written to teach us’ (Rom 15:4), how much more so is it true that the principal instruction that the apostle gives concerning church government in the New Testament applies to us?”17
Historically, there have been three basic responses to the question, “What is the relationship between the New Testament and church polity?” First, there is the view that the New Testament provides no “system” or “pattern” of church government, and thus churches in later centuries should be guided by “expediency” in matters of polity, often conforming to the political order or the societal norms under which particular churches exist.18 Second, others have held that the New Testament provides a single, divinely-given “precise model” of church polity, which is applicable to “all ages and circumstances” and is to be rigidly enforced, leaving nothing to be determined in later centuries and in diverse cultures.19 Third, there has been a mediating position which finds in the New Testament “a pattern of ecclesiastical organization and discipline in outline, not in detail,” according to which certain “principles” or essentials are clearly taught, although their application is left “to the judgment of Christians” in diverse contexts according to a “wise expediency.”20
Here I will argue for a position that lies somewhere between the second and third views; namely, that Christ has gifted the church with all that she needs to pursue her ministry, and this gift is presented within the context of how the Lord established his church from the beginning.21 Careful examination of the New Testament provides ample evidence of the early church’s understanding of polity.22
The importance of reevaluating biblical data in the area of church polity is clearly evidenced by the wide variety of different Protestant approaches to structuring church. As was the case some 450 years ago in Whitgift and Cartwright’s day, so it is today: Any given Sunday morning reveals a plethora of ways in which God’s people understand and practice church polity. They all look to the Bible to derive support for all or some of their beliefs and practice. But
