100-Prop. 97. The various forms of Church government indicate that the Church is not the promised...

PROP. 97. THE VARIOUS FORMS OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT INDICATE THAT THE CHURCH IS NOT THE PROMISED KINGDOM.

TAKING THE PROPHETIC RECORD, WHICH GIVES THE MESSIANIC KINGDOM A UNIFORM GOVERNMENT WITH A UNIFORM FAITH, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCEPT OF THE CHURCH, WITH ITS DIVERSIFIED FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, AS AN INTENDED EXHIBIT OF THE KINGDOM.

Obs. 1. While men differ in their interpretation of the church, yet it is generally admitted, excepting by the Roman Catholics and a High-Church party, that Christ did not found His church with an accurately defined and fixed form of government for its associated capacity, but left the forms it should assume in society, and among nations, to the development made by Providence and human agency. This view, perhaps slightly but not materially modified, is the belief of multitudes. If we accept of it, then it refutes the notion of the church being a Kingdom, for it admits at once that the church at its commencement lacked one of the essentials of a Kingdom, viz.: a regularly constituted form of government. With our doctrine of the church and Kingdom this omission remarkably harmonizes; so much, indeed, that it is requisite. If the Roman Catholic doctrine is correct, that such a Kingdom under a regularly constituted government is found in the church, then an important and serious objection would be raised up against us. Millenarianism has ever resisted her doctrine as an invasion of the Messiah’s rights and privileges, and as hostile to the early church view; for her doctrine cannot be maintained, being merely the result of the hierarchical growth of centuries, and lacks a Scriptural foundation. The very design of the church does not require such a government, it being fully met by the simple organization, few rites, sacraments, worship, and rules which are given.

It is remarkable how guarded prophecy is, not to allow the Church-Kingdom theory to find encouragement in its portrayals of the future. Thus e.g. Daniel 2 and 7 (comp. Props. 104, 121, and 160), in which we find that the nominal conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine and the resultant form of church government patterned after the civil, is unacknowledged. The transformation formed no Kingdom of God (as multitudes vainly dream) for the Empire still remains symbolized as a beast down to the end. Its Christianity, nominal and hierarchical, pregnant with bitter evils and future persecutions, properly remains unrecognized. The simple fact, Scripturally attested, is this, that during these “times of the Gentiles,” believers, instead of inheriting a Kingdom, are members of civil government, and are taught to render civil obedience, acknowledging earthly kings and rulers to be such over them. Let the student refer to Props. 3, 58, etc., and see the diversity existing respecting the time when this alleged Kingdom was inaugurated, and he will find additional reason for rejecting the prevailing view, because a Kingdom, to be such, must, of necessity, have some form of government allied with it, but this vagueness, indistinctness, lack of form, is opposed to the notion of such having been founded.

Obs. 2. Some hold that by virtue of the church being a Kingdom, Christ rules over it by a vicegerent (i.e. the Pope); others, by a divinely appointed and regularly descended Episcopacy; some, by the rules of the State, forming State religions; others, by the ministry and officers of the congregation; some, by individual congregations who in the aggregate form the Kingdom; others, by General Councils, Conferences, Assemblies, or Synods; and others, by the associated union of the civil power with the church either as primary or subordinate. There is a variety to suit all inclinations. Again, some tell us that the church is a Kingdom, but that no one form of government is prescribed, it being left optional with the church to organize that form best adapted to contingencies; others, that the government of the church must be so shaped as to accommodate itself to the civil; others, that the New Testament leaves the whole matter discretionary with every individual congregation to assume one; and still others inform us that the church, whilst a Kingdom, is not one in the strict sense of the word, only symbolically, but is a society of believers governed by the moral law and the institutions of the New Testament its members being still subject to the civil power, etc. History is filled with the bitter contests arising between the advocates of these opinions, and every party nearly can enroll its martyrs who fell in defence of its peculiar tenet of church government. Is such a sad diversity consistent with the idea of Christ’s covenanted Kingdom? The idea of a stable, well-ordered, acknowledged, and duly enforced government is connected by all the prophets with the Messianic Kingdom, but if the church is it, what party can rightfully claim it? So little is this the predicted Kingdom that there is no one here (excepting we take the infallible Pope, or Young, or others, who claim to speak by inspiration) to decide when believers differ among themselves respecting the government itself. Is it not strange that intelligent men continue to insist upon having such a Kingdom present, when they differ so essentially among themselves concerning such a weighty matter as the form of the Kingdom? Can we imagine that when Christ’s Kingdom as covenanted and predicted is once truly set up, that it will be in a shape so undecisive and peculiar, that men will contend with each other as to its nature and form? No! never! In the day that the Lord is King over all the earth (Zechariah 14), and His majesty and power is seen in giving and enforcing law, in restoring and upbuilding with Godlike energy and force the Davidic throne and Kingdom, men will not find it so insignificantly or enigmatically expressed that its organization, etc., can become a question like the preceding.

Singular episodes are to be found in this diversity. We mention a few as illustrations of the inability of man to preserve a consistency when violating the Divine order relating to the Church. Some German divines, thinking that the Church as a Kingdom, to be truly such, must have some point of external unity, insist (as e.g. Rothe and Thierschs-see Pressense’s review of them, Early Years of Christianity, p. 411-412), that the apostles must have held a second Council at Jerusalem, in which they instituted the Episcopate! Savonarola, under the influence of this Kingdom notion, claimed that Christ had condescended to become the peculiar Monarch of the Florentines (Roscoe’s Life of Lorenzo de Medicis, p. 345). The Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy men, Mormons, etc., with this Church idea have claimed a special Kingdom of God as existing among themselves. Fanatics have duly taken advantage of the notion, and carefully incorporated it into their schemes. Ecclesiastical History (especially English and Scotch) contains numerous instances where national establishments of religion were discarded on the ground that they were opposed to the nature of Christ’s Kingdom, while the very men who made such an objection made themselves liable, on the same ground precisely, of rejection, because they too set up the Church separated from the State as the Kingdom. Edward Irving, in his work Church and State, overlooking, even while expounding prophecy, the design of this dispensation in gathering out a people for a future divinely constituted Church and State, makes in his argument a divinely constituted State practical, and as, in a measure at least, existing. This plunged him into opinions intolerant, etc. The notion of “The Divine Right” is indeed ideally correct, but we must not forget the period when God Himself shall practically and really manifest it in a chosen King and His associated selected kings. This view of the Church and the State was one cause of Irving’s troubles, leading him to endeavor to realize the impossible, that which was in the future and in God’s own performance. Such allusions as these could be multiplied, which are given not for the sake of showing an abuse (for the abuse of a doctrine does not disprove the doctrine itself), but rather how variously men are influenced by the notion that in some way or other the Kingdom of Christ is to be now witnessed.

While thus employing the diversity existing as evidence that the Church is not the Kingdom, we must not be understood as opposed to a form of Church government as a necessity for its growth, etc. Hence we are compelled to dissent from the exceeding lax views of the “Plymouth Brethren” respecting Church government. It has been the universal opinion of the Church, following the Apostolic age, that the Holy Spirit, in and through the Church, called the Ministry, such a call being confirmed by a mediate act of the Church. The Church, in its official capacity, is the instrument to determine, by examination, the validity of the call, in order to avoid imposition, etc. This has been the universal rule, founded on Scripture, however disputes, etc., arose respecting the grades of the ministry. We cannot, therefore, sympathize with the “Brethren’s” tirade against “Clericism,” simply because, if followed, it would result in disintegration and perversion. Hence, to make baptism an ordinance not in, but outside of the Church dependent on the individual and the teacher, is unscriptural (leaving out an ordinance of the Church); and to make the ministry dependent on the will, or vagaries, or supposed inspired influence, of individuals, is also unscriptural (making the Church virtually dependent upon influences outside of it, and over which it has no control). The authority-if any is claimed-depends not upon any official voice of the Church, but upon the ipse dixit of this or that one claiming to be directed by the Spirit of God. The door is thus opened to claims and pretensions that pride, love of notoriety, etc., will speedily avail themselves of, owing to human depravity. Alas! extremes in the Church have already borne a mass of deadly fruit; even with the greatest care and utmost watchfulness, unqualified and uncalled men have been foisted on the Church, but human weakness, with no proper checks, untrammeled, and with power to claim a ministerial position, will be sure to manifest itself. Studying such passages as 2 Timothy 2:2, and those referring to the appointment of Elders, as well as the intimations of a continued ministry in the Church, and then linking with these the universal custom of the early Church, as testified to by history, that a ministry, no matter in what forms (for that is another question, touching the Hierarchy, etc.), was perpetuated in and mediately by the Church, it seems to us strange that men, evidently sincere and pious, will set themselves up at this late day as alone right in discarding all “Clericalism,” and the whole Church from the days of the apostles in the wrong. The result is, that however honest in their views, they are only injuring the truth by associating such demoralizing opinions, unnecessarily disquieting others in their Church relationships, and increasing the number of sects by forming, with special and extraordinary high spiritual claims, another. The effort to make the eldership an exceptional and mere introductory office is unsuccessful and unhistorical. So the effort to overthrow the view, that men in the Church, and by virtue of their position in the Church as teachers, are not to perpetuate a ministry (as exemplified in Timothy, Titus, and Barnabas) by some act of setting them apart (thus giving them an official recognition), is both unscriptural and unhistorical. To leave the distribution of the Lord’s Supper to a direct intimation of the Holy Ghost is fanatical and substituting human imaginings for divine inspiration. To leave the Holy Ghost, on an occasion of discipline, to designate who shall be, for the occasion, the Elders or rulers, is, to say the least, dangerous, and may cause personal feeling or prejudice to triumph. To allow special and specific claims to eldership or rulership, etc., under the specious plea of being directed by the Holy Spirit, is the visionary notion of a mystical enthusiasm, and tends to bring us under the subjection of false claims and pretenses. The entire theory (as illustrated e.g. Holden’s Ministry of the Word, and Corinth and Sects) is calculated to lead astray and impair the usefulness of its upholder. For it raises up an antagonism to other Churches, which, to say the least, is uncharitable and unchristian. Thus Holden (Corinth and Sects) declares emphatically that a man who has the truth, and is conscientious, cannot go to any of the Churches (saving that of the “Believers”) to worship, for in doing so he virtually connives at schism, sectarianism, etc. It will be well indeed for these “Brethren” if they have the piety, usefulness, etc. that many in these Churches manifest. This intense bigotry (and there are others who just as freely condemn the “Brethren”) is the natural, logical outgrowth of their system, and evidences that it is based on error.