evaluation of the various models of church polity yields a number of hermeneutical issues that each model has to address, even if just on the level of assumption. The particular positions taken by the proponents of each specific government style with regard to these hermeneutical issues influences their exegesis and affects their conclusions.
Therefore, in order to assure an accurate understanding of the biblical passages on polity, we must line up this position on the guiding theological parameters and issues against Scripture. This will assure that the New Testament passages on polity are understood, interpreted, and applied carefully and faithfully in accordance with the intent of the original authors.23
First, however, a quick definition of some frequently used terminology is in order.
1. Credit and appreciation for this introduction should go to Dr. Malcolm B. Yarnell III, who suggested the parallel between the events of Elizabethan England and the focus of this project. As a result, the Whitgift-Cartwright-Harrison debate makes, in my opinion, an interesting introduction to the present work.
2. The six propositions may be summarized as follows: “(1) The names and functions of archbishops and archdeacons should be abolished. (2) The ministry of the church should be brought in line with the apostolic church. There should be only two orders of clergy, bishops to preach and pray, and deacons to care for the poor. (3) Each church should be governed by its own minister and presbyters, not by bishops, chancellors, etc. (4) Ministers should be confined to the care of particular flocks. They should not be at large. (5) No man should be a candidate for the ministry, or solicit an appointment. The ministry is a divine calling. (6) Bishops should not be appointed by secular authority; they should be selected by the church” (Gane, “Sixteenth-Century Puritan Preachers,” 26). See Jones, Thomas Cartwright 1535–1603; Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 112; Carlson, “Archbishop John Whitgift,” 295.
3. New, “Whitgift-Cartwright Controversy,” 203.
4. Ibid., 205. Since the question of church government lay outside matters of salvation, Whitgift felt justified in exercising more freedom upon arriving at his position. Additionally, the Archbishop’s somewhat soft view of human depravity, which he likened to a spiritual infirmity that impaired man’s natural capacity for reason, contributed to the development of his understanding.
5. The Presbyterian-Reformed tradition, as affirmed by Cartwright, insisted on a stricter standard: A biblical command was needed for anything that was to be included in worship. See Frame, “Questions about the Regulative Principle,” 357. Cartwright distrusted human intellect because his notion of man’s corruption was far more thorough—he considered every faculty deficient. Man could and should not frame a church organization because “the infirmity of man can neither attain to the perfection of anything whereby he might speak all things that are to be spoken of it, neither yet be free from error in those things which he speaketh” (Whitgift, “Works of John Whitgift,” 148, 176–77).
6. New, “Whitgift-Cartwright Controversy,” 206. In general, his approach was common to Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran theologies in their agreement that the church’s worship practices ought to be scriptural in the sense of not contradicting the Bible.
7. From adiaphora, or morally indifferent.
8. Brachlow, Communion of Saints, 22. “Even where Scripture seemed to offer an apparently clear directive, Whitgift insisted that this did not mean Christ intended to shackle his church with ‘that precise form that is there set down.’ On the contrary, Whitgift argued that the form of ceremonies, orders, and discipline in the church depended largely upon historical conditions. Therefore, Christ intended that ecclesial matters should be left to the authority of the bishops, aided by the civil magistrate, who together could determine an appropriate polity for the church not according to biblical prescription, but by their good judgment” (ibid., 22–23).
9. Whitgift, “Works of John Whitgift,” 190–91. See also Brachlow, Communion of Saints, 23.
10. The idea of regulative principle comes from the Puritan “regulative principle of worship” by which whatever is commanded in Scripture with regard to worship is required, and whatever is not commanded is forbidden. See Smith, “What Is Worship?” 16–17.
11. Brachlow, Communion of Saints, 47–49.
12. Schweizer, Church Order, 13, emphasis Schweizer’s.
13. Frost, “Church Government: Church History,” 2.1.
14. Brand and Norman, Perspectives on Church Government, 3–4. See also Saucy, Church in God’s Program, 98.
15. Waldron, “Plural-Elder Congregationalism,” 66.
16. Ryrie, “Pauline Doctrine of the Church,” 65.
17. Knight, “Church Government,” 90.
18. Garrett, “Congregation-Led Church,” 171. Those who subscribe to this view include Knox, Early Church, 15; Schweizer, Church Order, 13; Frost, “Church Government: Church History,” 2.1. In addition, this is the de facto way that Russian Baptist churches were historically organized during the years of the Soviet Union—the structure of the Baptist Union of the USSR closely mirrored the civil organizational pattern of the country such that superintendents were appointed over regions of churches, thus bringing about an amalgam of congregationalism and episcopacy within the denomination.
As to the scholars who hold to a flexible form of church government, several recurring suggestions have been made as to why God has left us no definite order. Among these is the lack of evidence—the New Testament does not give enough clear evidence for us to decide how they organized their churches. See Davies, Normative Pattern of Church Life, 17; Morris, Ministers of God, 111; Fung, “Function or Office?” 36; Cox, “Emerging Organization,” 35. For the view that God never intended to use the New Testament to establish a blueprint for church government, see Harper, “Duplicating the New Testament Church,” 24; Von Schlatter, Church in the New Testament Period, 77. For the argument that our situation today is so different from the one in the first century that there is little relevance in seeking to emulate early church polity, see Schaeffer, Church at the End, 67; Lambert, “Church,” 1:650; Martin, “Authority in the Light of the Apostolate,” 81. For a more detailed discussion, see Daughters, New Testament Church Government, 10–14.
19. This view is represented by Reymond’s forceful presentation of Presbyterian polity discussed later in this chapter. See Reymond, “Presbytery-Led
