Episode 226: The Church's Spiritual Government — Dan De Graff

“Yet that ignores really the foundation. The church institution and her council is not the foundation. The individual or individuals’ claim to be led by the Spirit to operate certain ways is not the foundation. But as Bavinck writes, ‘The kingship of Christ over his church consists in that by this word and Spirit he gathers and governs his own and protects and keeps them in the redemption acquired. The church has its foundation and unity in the counsel of God, in the covenant of grace, in the person of Christ, but consisting as it does of human beings, it must be gathered and added to by Christ’s word and Spirit’ (372). The word and Spirit will not clash, they will not contradict. They are the means and guides of truth by which God leads and invites us to lead with him. It is vital, then, that those things do not loose their place in our council rooms and in the work that we do outside of them.” —Dan De Graff

Transcript of This Episode

As I shared when Jason, Willy, and I teased the conference theme on the podcast, I’m the newbie when it comes to Herman Bavinck. I had heard his name before. I knew he was probably important in our Reformed tradition, but I couldn’t tell you anything about him, and I didn’t have to read the Reformed Dogmatics in part or whole when I was in seminary. That probably draws the ire and mocking of some of you, and I’ll keep piling it on myself—I’ve been in pastoral ministry for over ten years, and still hadn’t picked him up until this year.

Part of why I’m telling you this is because I think for a good number of you, his influence—directly and indirectly—on the historical thinking of the CRC and its practices is a given. Yet reading particularly the sections on church government and the means of grace that I’ll be talking about later, there are connections that just clicked for me. Whether or not they know it, I can see the lasting influence of Bavinckian ideas in the churches I’ve been in and see throughout the orthodox reformation of the CRC.

You have a handout, and I hope it’s helpful as we get into small groups and the large group discussions in a little bit as well as when you return to your local church. My talk is not tightly going to address all the key points pulled from Volume 4 Chapter 6, but I do plan to reference what’s in that chapter a lot. Especially, if you’re like me and don’t know Bavinck very well—hopefully you can join in a greater appreciation and understanding of his enduring impact. I appreciate, too, hearing Jason talk about last night the cooperation of the Holy Spirit and Christ. I’m going to talk a lot about Christ, but the Holy Spirit is the agent—he takes the work of Christ and applies it to believers.

Prayer and Reading: Colossians 1:15-20

“Government is indispensable for the church as a gathering of believers…The church is unthinkable without an authority that sustains, guides, cares for, and protects it.” Upon reading and hearing those opening sentences of this section, one might get the impression that Bavinck is in favor of heavy-handed, authoritarian leadership of the church. Yet that’s really not true. As he goes onto say right after that, “…This authority rests with God, who is not only the Creator of all things but also the Savior of the church. As people of God, the church, under the new covenant as well as under the old, is a theocracy. The Lord is its judge, lawgiver, and king…In the church [God] has appointed Christ to be king” (329).

For everything else that follows about how God instituted and called leaders in the Old and New Testament periods, for how church government transformed appropriately and inappropriately over centuries, and what the Reformation—specifically Calvin—got right in Bavinck’s opinion, the kingship of Christ over his church is the foundation. Yet Christ is not the only one governing. Just as in many areas of life, he doesn’t need us but he has chosen to. “…It was his pleasure…to…use [our] services in the exercise of his sovereignty and to preach the gospel through [us] to all creatures” (329). Before we even get into officebearers, in the past or present, this is an important reminder that Christ reigns over all things, all aspects of life. There are not areas that people should assume, “God or his Word do not have say on this topic or in this sphere.” In the Reformed faith, in particular, we recognize his kingship, or lordship, over all things, which invites and obligates us to a joyful submission to his will.   

When we talk about the presence and exercise of human government in the church, Bavinck clarifies we’re talking about the church as institution rather than organism. Both rightly exist. The church, the body of believers, the passive gathered community, exists, and is properly under the kingship of Christ as an organism. That I am in the same church as each of you and every true believer is real. So, too, are local churches. Bavinck talks about the institutional church as “the mother of believers” and it is “…manifest in the offices and means of grace.” The churches we attend and lead are not just things past generations planted or we continue to keep up, but the local church is a product of “the work of Christ himself” (330-31).

Because Christ establishes the local church, then he is the One who decides what it needs and what it does. For the present topic, he who alone can rightfully claim to be King of all local churches gets to decide how that they will be led and what is to be observed. Where do we find that information? Scripture. To jump to the end of Bavinck’s chapter, he sees the Reformation’s restoration of the offices of elder and deacon to be alongside the minister of the Word to be accurate with Scripture. When we look at the Christian Reformed Church, and see in our Church Order the parity of offices, that ministers of the Word, elders, deacons, and more recently commissioned pastors, are equal in dignity and honor—that goes back to at least 1965, there is perhaps some influence from history and Bavinck.

That being said, he focuses much more on the elders or overseers than deacons. That makes sense given the term he uses about the church’s government being an, “aristocratic-presbyterial organization.” Hopefully I’m summarizing correctly—churches should have a ruling body rather than just a ruling person, and that body is the elders who have been appointed by that congregation. That concept is unique as it runs contrary to not just the Roman Catholic Church as he talks at length about them, but also what we may see in some of our churches. In many CRCs, the ones I’ve served included, the Council made up of elders and deacons, rather than the consistory—the elders with the minister, the Council is the decision-making body. There’s a culture and assumption that all officebearers rightfully have a governing say. Yet whether it’s been fostered in the culture of our congregations or just assumed, people also tend to view the pastor as the single head of the church, just get his approval. So, too, not thinking deeply about what Scripture requires and mandates for officebearers, to serve on Council can turn into a rotation of the available men and if they’re not willing, then allow the women—there’s not really a true discerning of gifts.

I want to lay out Bavinck’s understanding of elders from Scripture to the early church with his own words. There is much more that I could quote but I’ll try to stick to what I think are the main and relevant points that hopefully we can take into our discussions in a little bit. “…The book of Acts teaches us that at an early stage, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, men were appointed in the churches whose task it was to exercise oversight over the congregation and, while they were first called ‘elders’ [presbyteroi] because they were usually chosen from among the class of elders [older men], [they] were later, with a view to the work assigned to them, called ‘overseers’ [episkopoi]. ‘Overseers,’ then, are elders who were designated for a specific ministry in the church. Hence all ‘overseers’ were ‘elders’ but far from all the ‘elders’ were ‘overseers’” (342).

What did these men—the overseers—do? Read from 1 Timothy 3:4-5, 9, 11-12 which highlight the family leadership-imagery of both elders and deacons. Bavinck writes, “The task…becomes clear from the description of their office…They are called ‘those who are over you,’ ‘those with gifts of administration,’ ‘leaders,’ ‘pastors,’ who must care for the church, not for the sake of dishonest gain, not to lord it over others, but with eagerness to serve, ruling the church as the flock of God…It is evident that the office of elder was charged primarily with the oversight, government, and guidance of the church. To this end it is of course necessary that they have some knowledge of the truth…Originally the office of overseer was not one of teaching but of ruling the church…In that first period there was yet no pressing need for a separate teaching office. Initially, the apostles, evangelists, and prophets served as teachers, and the gift of teaching was further given to many persons who held no office in the church of Christ” (343).

“But gradually teaching was more closely linked to the episcopal office. As churches expanded, the need for the administration of the Word and sacrament could no longer be met by apostles, evangelists, and prophets. Needed was a local and permanent office charged with providing for it. Nor, in the long run, would it do to leave the task of teaching totally free, since this freedom occasioned all sorts of abuses” (343). He expands on that, “All sorts of errors and heresies surfaced inside and outside of the church. Competence in teaching not only consisted in instruction and admonition but also in refuting those who rejected the truth…Training, preparation, and study became necessary for the exercise of this office in the church…The necessity of schooling and the provision of a living were the reasons that the ministry of the Word was assigned not to all the overseers but to only a few” (344). This is where in stricter presbyterian systems we can see the follow-through of ruling elders and teaching elders. For the CRC, it’s the elders, who typically have a pretty low-bar in willingness or ability to teach and/or preach, who are distinguished from the minister of the Word.

I think this is a really important point for then and for today, in the CRC and beyond. Bavinck affirms and we would affirm the leading of the Holy Spirit in ministers and in churches and in their governments, but we cannot ignore that as long as people are involved in these positions and institutions, sin and error are still present. Every believer has the Holy Spirit, but we all still need and benefit from oversight. As the church grew and expanded and continues, the elders provide necessary oversight against sin and brokenness, they provide for oversight in part through preaching, but also elders are to provide oversight of preaching and teaching. In order to do that, they must be listening and learning themselves, to diligently exercise care and not just assume preachers can or should say whatever they want.

As I said earlier, Bavinck talks at length about the Catholic Church and what the leadership of the local church and beyond morphed into. One of the things the Reformation rejected was a hard separation of the clergy from the laity. He writes, “In the Roman Catholic Church ‘clergy’ has become the word for a special class of ecclesiastical persons who…have been separated from all others, constitute a unique class of ‘clerics,’ are in a very special sense the Lord’s possession, are equipped with absolutely sovereign power over the people, and serve the laity as necessary, even indispensable, mediators of salvation. Now Scripture knows nothing of such a class of people…[Even in the Old Testament] the people as a whole were the kleros, the possession and inheritance of the Lord, a priestly kingdom, a holy nation….There is even much less reason to speak of a clerical class in the New Testament: the Holy Spirit was poured out upon all, and now all are led by the Spirit, share in his anointing, are a royal priesthood, a church of people called to be saints, and a people and possession of God” (358-59).

While most if not all of us agree with this, there is some of that hierarchical, special clergy class that practically hangs on in peoples’ minds. I’d encourage you to give that some thought in your discussion times. With busyness, with lives being stretched thinner, with priorities changing, tasks do get passed to the one or ones who gets paid by the church, or they get passed to the few in the congregation or classis who are known to follow through on things. Some churches sense a greater divide between the average member and those who are serving on Council. Those of us who are pastors have likely been trained in college and seminary, we can more easily make time to attend conferences like this and continue to read. Expertise isn’t bad or negative, but it takes intentionally training officebearers and congregations to know we don’t have special powers.

Bavinck names the rejection of a clergy-laity hierarchy by the Reformation, and sees a significant recovery of “the universal office of believer,” that all believers are prophets, priests, and kings. (I actually debated putting believer on all of your name tags after reading that.) Here’s what he writes, “The gifts needed for the exercise of office do not essentially differ from those granted to all believers. For that reason the congregation is able to point out from among its own members those who are endowed with gifts suited to the exercise of office, and call and elect them to office in Christ’s name. But from this it also follows that, if necessary, believers themselves may proceed to reform the church. If a church in its offices and ministries shows that it assigns more authority to itself and its ordinances than to the Word of God and clearly reveals itself as a false church, then believers have the holy task and obligation to separate themselves from it and to proceed again to live ecclesiastically in accordance with the Word of the Lord” (376-77).

It may seem odd to labor briefly on this point of the priesthood of all believers when I’m talking about the government of the church, but these things go and remain together. The government, instituted by God, rises from the church body. While there is authority and oversight, Bavinck identifies officebearers as having “…not a ruling but a serving power” (377).

For the rest of my time, I want to go back what he identifies about those in church government. To remind us, the foundational piece of understanding the church’s leadership is the kingship of Christ. Bavinck writes, “It is always Christ who calls people to these offices and equips them for them. The churches can and may designate the persons, but in so doing they are not autonomous but bound to the ordinances of the Lord. In establishing the church as an institution, they may not go about it arbitrarily and according to their own insight but must also in this connection ask what the Lord wants them to do…The care of the poor, the oversight of the flock, the administration of Word and sacrament, the calling and election of ministers—the alienable right and solemn duty of the local congregation. The Reformed, thanks to their deep sense of the sovereignty of God [not just the goodness, love, or fatherhood of God], understood this…” (370).

“Every particular [local] church is a manifestation of the universal church, of the people of God, at the place where it manifests itself in action. Just by virtue of its origin, it is inseparably connected with the universal church…[Each] was planted by the seed of the Word that another church broadcast in that locality…According to Scripture…every local church, however small and unimpressive, is independent and complete. There are no mother churches in the sense that one church might be free to lord it over other churches…All churches are equal because they are all…dependent in the same way…directly and absolutely, on Christ and bound to his word.” (373)

Over the last few years, we—that being the orthodox side of the CRC—have been emphasizing the covenantal aspect of our polity. Churches are not free to do whatever they want, but agree to be and to act in accord with what we do. We’ve heard—on the progressive side usually but perhaps not exclusively—the call to recognize local autonomy. Even at this Synod, there’s an overture stressing the local church government’s authority when it comes to baptism. Over the years, with women in ecclesiastical office, with paedocommunion (children partaking in the Lord’s Supper), with gay and lesbian-identifying people having the privilege to participate in the sacraments or be eligible for and serve as officebearers, part of the argument that people have made is that each local church, each congregation, should rightfully have independent authority. They can root their argument in these parts of Bavinck.

Yet that ignores really the foundation. The church institution and her council is not the foundation. The individual or individuals’ claim to be led by the Spirit to operate certain ways is not the foundation. But as Bavinck writes, “The kingship of Christ over his church consists in that by this word and Spirit he gathers and governs his own and protects and keeps them in the redemption acquired. The church has its foundation and unity in the counsel of God, in the covenant of grace, in the person of Christ, but consisting as it does of human beings, it must be gathered and added to by Christ’s word and Spirit” (372). The word and Spirit will not clash, they will not contradict. They are the means and guides of truth by which God leads and invites us to lead with him. It is vital, then, that those things do not lose their place in our council rooms and in the work that we do outside of them.