On Why New Testament Polity Is Prescriptive, with Bobby Jamieson (Pastors Talk, Ep. 224)
Is New Testament polity prescriptive for churches today? Jonathan Leeman, Mark Dever, and Bobby Jamieson discuss what different denominations believe about New Testament polity and common arguments against the prescriptive nature of the New Testament. In this conversation, they talk about how to determine culturally specific elements and the gray areas that can be found in different prescriptions of the New Testament. Tune in to Pastors Talk to find out why it is critical to understand the prescriptive nature of New Testament polity.
- What Denominations Believe the New Testament is Prescriptive?
- Arguments Against the Prescriptive Nature of New Testament Polity
- Culturally Specific Elements in the New Testament
- Nuances of New Testament Polity
- Why it is Crucial to Understand the Prescriptive Nature of New Testament Polity
Resources Referenced
Why New Testament Polity Is Prescriptive by Bobby Jamieson
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
This is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
This is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
And…
Bobby Jamieson:
Bobby Jamieson.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to Pastors Talk.
Mark Dever:
He is musical.
Jonathan Leeman:
He sure is. Well, he played saxophone as a… You were a performance major, weren’t you?
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, but not the drums like Kevin Macdonald.
Mark Dever:
How do get from saxophone to polity? I mean, is that a declension or a going up the mountain?
Bobby Jamieson:
It’s just a pivot.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to Pastors Talk. Pastors
Mark Dever:
Exists for…
Jonathan Leeman:
Building healthy churches. Helping pastors build healthy
Mark Dever:
Jonathan Leeman:
9Marks.org, that’s right. I want to come to that.
Mark Dever:
We always want to do what we want.
Jonathan Leeman:
Everybody’s…favorite topic, just many, many demands for this topic.
Mark Dever:
You’re joking, but there really are
Jonathan Leeman:
An oldie, but goodie is the New Testament prescriptive for church polity or is what we read there just descriptive? That’s the topic. Would it be fair to say guys that if the New Testament isn’t prescriptive for church polity, church government 9Marks wouldn’t exist?
Mark Dever:
I think so.
Bobby Jamieson:
Sounds about right.
What is Church Polity?
Jonathan Leeman:
What is church polity?
Mark Dever:
Although most of what we talk about is not polity. I mean,
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right.
Mark Dever:
Expositional preaching. Polity is the stated way in which an organization makes decisions.
Jonathan Leeman:
Church government.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Bobby Jamieson:
How the church is structured, and how authority is exercised and distributed.
Jonathan Leeman:
So wouldn’t you say…
Mark Dever:
How it operates.
Jonathan Leeman:
You just said, okay, you said expositional preaching is not a part of that, but that does, in some sense, fall under what we must, should, and can do when we gather. We would say must, right?
Mark Dever:
Okay, down, polity monster, down. I mean, polity can’t absorb every topic into it just because we like polity. Okay?
So discipleship, a culture of discipling, we may think a certain polity aids it, but it’s not fundamentally a polity conversation. You know, the Bible may teach a certain polity, but that does not mean the biblical theology is best summarized as a subsection of polity.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’ll grant your point generally, but in a few minutes I’m going to come back and –
Bobby Jamieson:
If everything is polity, nothing is polity.
Mark Dever:
Thank you, Stephen Neal.
Which Traditions Believe that the New Testament is Prescriptive?
Jonathan Leeman:
We’re getting deep here. Do most Christian traditions, and here I’m thinking Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, non-denominational, and Baptist traditions at that level, do most of them affirm that the New Testament is prescriptive in matters of church government? And let’s leave Baptist, we’ll go Baptist last.
Mark Dever:
Certainly not an Orthodox or a Roman position because they would understand that the tradition evolves and certainly even in the East they would say it’s evolved beyond the first century.
Jonathan Leeman:
Anglicans too.
Mark Dever:
Well, no, Anglicans are going be a little bit more…
Jonathan Leeman:
They would say it’s a matter of tradition. At least Anglicans today say it’s not prescribed, I think.
Mark Dever:
Right, yep. There were certainly Deiure Anglicans, especially during the Reformation, who argued strongly for the position that they themselves, the structure of their church.
Jonathan Leeman:
But today I would just call them high church pragmatists, methodologically.
Mark Dever:
Well, many Anglicans are not high church. Many Anglicans are…
Jonathan Leeman:
No, okay, fair enough. They are bishopric tending pragmatists.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, Yeah. that’s fair.
Jonathan Leeman:
Presbyterians, do they treat the Bible as prescriptive on polity?
Mark Dever:
If they’re evangelical, classically, yes. Current mainline liberal PCUSA, the Bible’s not prescriptive on much.
Jonathan Leeman:
And Baptists, historically, looking back 400 years.
Mark Dever:
Just like the Presbyterians. I mean, historically, yes, but these days, if you have a looser view of the authority of scripture, then you don’t expect to find much there that’s authoritative.
Jonathan Leeman:
And most evangelical pastors, and church leaders today, yay or nay?
Mark Dever:
I think they do not assume that it is not because they don’t think the Bible’s authoritative, but because they just don’t think the Bible has spoken to it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. The broad categories of questions I want to ask here, there’s three of them, whether it’s prescriptive, and I can say why, whether and why it’s prescriptive, how do we know what’s prescriptive or not, and then… what exactly is prescriptive.
Why is the New Testament Polity Prescriptive?
On that first category? Why? Bobby, is it prescriptive?
Bobby Jamieson:
I appreciate how you’ve isolated those three elements. In a way, it’s hard to keep each of them separate.
Jonathan Leeman:
Totally distinct, yeah.
Bobby Jamieson:
Because, for instance, I think one of the clearest ways to get at the whether question is the what and specific elements of the what. You know?
So talk about elders. Talk about who the church’s pastors are, what they should be called, what the qualifications are, and whether should there be more than one of them, and maybe that’s an inductive approach. There are different ways of going about this.
That’s kind of an inductive approach. If you ask those questions, I think, oh, you start to see the terms overlap and actually even coincide. pastor, overseer, elder. Oh, then you start to notice they show up in the plural consistently.
Then you start to notice, you know, there’s a list of their qualifications. Then you start to notice, okay, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church in Acts 14:23.
Then you notice Paul told Titus to do that very thing in Titus 1:5. And I think in some ways it’s easier to get there from the concrete.
And, you know, Baptists who affirm a plurality of elders will agree with Presbyterians and independent Bible Church folks and some others in all-seeing, oh, elders are normative, there should be a plurality of elders. Here’s the office, here’s the qualifications, and so on. And so in a way, it is important to try to address the question kind of in the abstract.
But that’s almost the hardest step. That’s almost the hardest way to go about it. I think it’s, it’s always simpler and more direct to pull on a particular.
Jonathan Leeman:
Just look in the text and say, is there something here that’s…
Mark Dever:
But Bobby, wouldn’t you agree? It is that overall general statement that is often contradicted just clearly in seminaries today. And in writing, when you get to this topic, you begin by saying, at least assuming, and probably even saying, now the New Testament does not have anything prescriptive to say on polity.
Jonathan Leeman:
Like you wrote a paper on this and you quote Millard Erickson as one example.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yep, that’s right.
Arguments Against the Prescriptive Nature of New Testament Polity
Jonathan Leeman:
As one example and others. What are the arguments they give?
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, so there are basically two arguments. One is that there isn’t a consistent pattern to be discerned in the first place. You know, so there’s kind of different structures. Maybe you start off with something centered around the apostles and then it kind of morphs as it changes shape.
Jonathan Leeman:
You look at early Acts, there are no elders. You look at the end of the past orals, there are elders.
Bobby Jamieson:
That’s right. And so because there is an apparent development, because there’s an apparent shift, you can’t say there is just one, just as a sort of historical descriptive matter. There isn’t a consistent position.
Mark Dever:
Moves from Pentecostal at Pentecost to Presbyterian by the pastorals.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, that’s right. That would be one common sort of historical reconstruction. So yeah, if there isn’t a consistent pattern to be discerned, well then it’s an even further step.
Jonathan Leeman:
Surely it’s not prescriptive.
Bobby Jamieson:
Surely it’s not prescriptive because there would have to be a sort of consistent precedent to follow.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s the first argument you said there were two.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, the other argument Erickson makes and others would make too is kind of like, even if there were a consistent pattern that you discerned, that could merely be deep. What they did.
Describe what they did back then, not what we have to do now. And part of the rationale for reading the evidence that way is that there is not a sort of straightforward treatise on church polity in the New Testament or even a sort of straightforward laid out, you know, now concerning as Paul does in 1 Corinthians on these various topics.
There’s no sort of extended now concerning church polity. And so if you are going to argue that there is a consistent pattern and that it’s prescriptive, not merely descriptive, you have to do that by discerning a lot of different passages. Working in a lot of different ways.
Mark Dever:
Well, and I want to acknowledge the difficulty in this, Jonathan, because I mean, we’re obviously all agreeing with BJ’s paper that you can read on the 9Marks website, Why New Testament Polity Is Prescriptive. But you the other day were pressing me about what I’m going to preach in the next longer New Testament series.
And I said, Luke, and you said, why not Acts? And I said specifically, I do think it’s challenging to know sometimes when you’re looking at a passage that’s prescriptive versus descriptive. Now that’s not my only reason. I was not giving you a serious, I had not had a long meditation and this was my –
Preaching from Acts
Jonathan Leeman:
Apparently Bobby, Mark doesn’t believe in preaching Acts. That’s what I took away from that conversation.
Mark Dever:
I do very much believe in preaching Acts.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s just too hard, he said.
Mark Dever:
I do believe in preaching Acts.
Jonathan Leeman:
I just can’t do it.
Mark Dever:
I just want to acknowledge what all of our friends are saying in seminaries when they are saying that there is much that’s descriptive in the New Testament. Here are us three people who sit around and take an old traditional Reformed kind of position on polity that it is prescriptive in the New Testament, it is revealed and therefore it is prescriptive. And yet even I at least, one of these three would say I acknowledge.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s tough!
Mark Dever:
That I myself when I’m looking at the… New Testament and the narrative in Acts, it is not always immediately clear what’s descriptive and what’s prescriptive.
Culturally Specific Elements in the New Testament
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, and of course, then you have even passages that are prescriptive to an individual or to a certain congregation. Then you have to deal with, are there culturally bound, culturally specific elements to this?
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Bobby Jamieson:
Are there situationally specific elements to this, given how occasional the epistles are?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, something I say to my seminary class when I teach on this is, for instance, okay, how do we know it’s prescriptive and what’s not? And somebody will inevitably say, well, if it’s commanded.
And I’m like, okay, so greet one another with a holy kiss. Okay, well, maybe not that. How else do we know? Well, if it’s repeated.
Well, greet one another the holy kiss is repeated five times. So like, if anything should be prescriptive, you think it would be a command, that’s five times, and yet none of us treat it that way.
Bobby Jamieson:
Are any of your students ex-communicating people for being non-kissers?
Jonathan Leeman:
Not yet. So yeah, let’s all concede that this is a tough topic, right? And it requires a certain… sophistication of hermeneutics to read through these occasional letters.
Mark Dever:
Serious questioning. Bobby, is your book biblical reasoning any help on this?
Bobby Jamieson:
Well, not directly since we’re mainly focused on the doctrines of God and Christ, the person of Christ, and the doctrine of the Trinity. And it’s not a kind of book on theological method per se. It’d be little bits and pieces that could be relevant, but not really.
Mark Dever:
Would there be an argument to write a sort of middle-level book on this particular topic with that?
Bobby Jamieson:
I certainly think it’s a topic that could do with fuller treatment because it is one of those things that is going to inform and also constrict the way you do ministry.
Mark Dever:
It will divide churches. It will…
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, kind of where do you feel conscience bound that this is an apostolic teaching, this is a normative teaching, whether by implication, by extending a given teaching from a certain, I mean, yeah, it’s going to set boundaries to how you’d want…
Should Churches Cancel Their Christmas Services If They Are On Sundays?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, just to give this conversation a current events field, way, way back before Christmas of 2022, you guys may remember how that conversation… Whether Churches should cancel their services on Christmas Day.
Mark Dever:
That’s right because Christmas that year fell on a Sunday.
Jonathan Leeman:
Was all over Twitter. And one side saying, well, you guys don’t care about the New Testament. And the other side saying, oh, y’all are a bunch of Pharisees, right?
And prescribing what the Bible doesn’t prescribe as such. So that would be a very live issue of does the New Testament prescribes, requires us to meet every week such that we can’t cancel on any given day, right?
Any given week. Let’s go to your two points or two critiques, Bobby. There’s no unitary pattern.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yep.
Jonathan Leeman:
I mean, that seems legitimate, no? I mean, there is a difference between Acts 6 and 2 Timothy 4. The church looked…different, structurally.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, I do think, and I do think there is a kind of organic emergence and development of the church in some ways in the early chapters of Acts, that it doesn’t just plop down from heaven, okay, poof, you know, it emerges from…
Jonathan Leeman:
Here’s your book of church order.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, well, it emerges from those still following Jesus at the time of his crucifixion and resurrection, then a whole bunch of people getting saved. And so there is some type of organic development.
But I do think one really big question that starts to kind of zero us in is what about the office of apostles? Is that meant to be replicated, ongoing, refilled, or extended over local churches? And I think that there is a clear New Testament answer of no. So they appoint an apostle to fill Judas’s vacated role, but there’s no reference whatsoever in the New Testament to anybody else being appointed an apostle.
Mark Dever:
Well, in fact, in the book of Revelation, you even have the 12 in a stated way parallel to the 12 tribes.
Bobby Jamieson:
Now there is a usage of the Greek word apostolos that’s a little bit broader than that.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. Barnabas.
Nuances of New Testament Polity
Bobby Jamieson:
That gets us into a slightly nuanced conversation, but you never see apostles as it were appointing apostles. You never see apostles giving instruction about how to recognize apostles.
Mark Dever:
As if it’s an office like the elder.
Bobby Jamieson:
Exactly. And you even see apostles being like Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, very clearly limiting the scope of his own authority to instruct a church about what they should do. He’s already formed a judgment on it.
He instructs a church about what they should do. The very language of handing someone over to Satan. There’s a different scenario in First Timothy 1, and who knows what the specifics are, but in one case Paul does, as it were, say, I’ve handed over so and so.
Jonathan Leeman:
Seems to excommunicate those two.
Bobby Jamieson:
But who knows, was this, we just don’t know the
Jonathan Leeman:
Hard to say.
Bobby Jamieson:
Exactly…Whereas in a particular case, in one local church, Paul instructs them, and informs them about what they should do..
First Corinthians On Recognizing the Authority of the Local Church
Mark Dever:
First Corinthians 5
Bobby Jamieson:
First Corinthians 5, but he leaves it to them to exercise their own authority. So get even an apostle in his relationship to a local church limiting the scope of his own authority. To kind of recognize the authority of a local church, that he’s not exercising authority directly, but he’s instructing them.
So that what that piece I think shows is that apostles are not an ongoing office, it’s not a replicated office, and so any influence that the presence of the apostles sort of exerts upon New Testament polity, I think we’re meant to zero out. We’re meant to see that as a foundational first-generation office.
They exercise authority through the inspired writings, you know, that continue to provide a foundation for the church. But you take away that piece, then you ask, okay, wait a minute, then…
Did the apostles establish repeated or ongoing patterns for how churches should be structured? If we take away the office of the apostle, that’s not providing a normative pattern.
Jonathan Leeman:
Before you move on apostles, let me just say, my sense is that throughout the New Testament, the apostles interacted with churches. They tended to act more like elders. Your point of self-limiting.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, Peter calls himself an elder.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I was just saying, well, he says, I exhort the elders as a fellow elder.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Or second and third John. He introduces himself as… the elder. So there’s a sense in which I almost, I can’t prove this, but they did occasionally exercise unique apostolic authority, but they also, as you said, limited themselves to being what a pastor’s like.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, that’s right. In Acts chapter six, they’re not the ones to appoint the seven. In the Jerusalem council, there are elders as well as apostles.
They’re not a kind of defining the shape of church government in an ongoing way. So you remove that big piece and the playing field starts to get a little clearer.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. Okay. So that’s your point on the unitary pattern.
Bobby Jamieson:
Yeah, that’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
It shows up pretty quickly. But then you’re…
Bobby Jamieson:
And just to say it positively, you know, the apostles are appointing elders in very young churches in Acts 14. Paul is instructing Titus to appoint elders in very young churches in Titus 1.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, Yeah.
Bobby Jamieson:
And he’s instructing him to do that as a matter of setting what remains into order. So he seems to have a specific church order in mind.
Faith Gives Way to Order
Jonathan Leeman:
Faith gives way to order.
Bobby Jamieson:
That’s right. That’ll be for the kind of maturing or completion of the structure of the church so that I don’t think, you know, you get mentions of elders pretty early in the book of Acts and you get elders mentioned, yeah, I mean in the 50s, 60s and Paul’s, like Philippi, overseers and deacons. So I don’t think they’re only a sort of latecomer on the scene.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think there’s also a sense, even though they were restraining themselves to elder-like work, there’s also a sense, I think, in which we would say their authority devolved to the whole church. That apostolic authority of binding and losing goes to the whole church and not just the elders. Fair?
Bobby Jamieson:
I think so in the sense that the only group that seems to exercise that authority in the New Testament is the whole local congregation, all 1 Corinthians 5, not a small group of leaders.
Mark Dever:
Matthew 18.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you guys do with the, is this just descriptive or prescriptive? Erickson’s second critique. Just because that’s what was doesn’t mean that’s what should be. How do we move from description to prescription?
Mark Dever:
Certainly, if you have more than one description, that begins to say something. If it’s in more than one situation, you begin to then raise questions.
Bobby Jamieson:
I think repetition is one. I think if there’s a reason, a rationale kind of appended to it. So like I mentioned in Titus 1:5 where Paul says to put what remains into order, that seems to indicate that Paul has in mind a specific order that the churches should be conforming to.
How Is Church Order Affected If There Are No Qualified Elders?
And you could say, well, what if there’s no men qualified to be elders? What if I think they’re not ready to be put into that order? They’re sort of lacking that element of order.
It doesn’t mean they’re not a church, but it means there is a kind of standard or benchmark that Paul has in mind as he’s instructing Titus about how to fulfill his ministry. And he’s saying, bring churches up to that benchmark.
So the fact that he even uses that language of order seems to indicate that Paul has that in mind and that this is not limited to a specific scenario in Crete where it means they have to have elders for some reason that doesn’t apply over in Ephesus or doesn’t apply in Philippi or whatever. So there’s a rationale appended to it.
I also think the case of who’s in and out of a church, I suppose in principle Jesus could have left this to be a matter of prudence, a matter of discernment, and cultural variability. I think on that one I would appeal to… multiple kinds of instruction across multiple kinds of scenarios.
So Jesus lays out one in Matthew 18, he also seems to provide a kind of rationale in Matthew 16 about the exercise of the keys of the kingdom, and then Paul in different situations, at least what I take to be two different situations, and one’s in First Corinthians 5, one’s in Second Corinthians 2, where the whole church is either being called upon to act or is reported as having acted. And so again, you have a sort of multiple attestation.
In different circumstances, it’s the whole church who’s acting. And I do think you can draw out a kind of rationale internal to the kind of authority Jesus is giving there. So I think there is a kind of rule or reason given as well.
Mark Dever:
Jonathan, you’ve written about that exact point where?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well –
Jonathan Leeman:
Drawing out that authorization.
Why it is Crucial to Understand the Prescriptive Nature of New Testament Polity
Jonathan Leeman:
Several places. Understanding the congregation’s authority. That’d be the short lay-level version.
Something more aimed at pastors would be don’t fire your church members. For academics, political church. Yeah, so a few places.
A couple of things to remark on that, to take away from that, BJ. Number one, I think it’s crucial to point out that understanding the New Testament is prescriptive for polity doesn’t mean you simply have an on-off switch. It’s biblical, it’s not biblical, it’s a command, or it’s not.
You have multiple levels of sort of ethical weight on any given thing, like being baptized, that’s a command, that’s an on-off switch. Whereas the plurality of elders, well, it’s a consistent example, it’s the ideal, and we should move toward it.
But if you inherit a church that doesn’t have a… plurality of elders and you’re the only elder there. It’s not like you’re suddenly in a state of sin.
Bobby Jamieson:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
The way you would be if you weren’t baptized, right? So I think when it comes to the ethics of church government and formation, we have to recognize it’s not simply black and white. There are four or five lanes you could say.
Is Not Having Formal Membership a Sin?
Mark Dever:
So not having formal membership is not a question of sin?
Jonathan Leeman:
Membership. Well, it would depend. If a church was taking no account of who they were and not practicing church discipline, yes, I would say they’d be sinning. but not having membership classes, not having membership interviews, the way we do them, you know, sitting with an elder and a PA, not adopting the particular forms that say CHBC or CBC adopts. That is not SIN.
Mark Dever:
Not having members meetings.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
Not having a list of members.
Bobby Jamieson:
Well, here I would say…
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, the list depends on what you mean. Right. This is where I think we need a distinction between elements and forms. Right?
Bobby Jamieson:
I think the way I would define the element of church membership is something like a mutual self-conscious commitment in which a church affirms and cares for the Christian and the Christian submits to and cares for the church.
Mark Dever:
So it need not be written down, but it must be universally acknowledged.
Bobby Jamieson:
And it must be actionable in the sense that someone can be put in or put out.
Mark Dever:
It can be known to be or known to not be.
Bobby Jamieson:
Exactly. And that is a
Jonathan Leeman:
You can’t practice -baptism in the supper.
Mark Dever:
It’s not my view is the Smiths are members of the church. It’s that they either are or they are not.
Bobby Jamieson:
And there’s a sense in which every kind of prudential practice just flows downhill from trying to recognize that, affirm that. So I would say in certain circumstances, it could look very informal, but still be upholding the reality of that mutual self-conscious commitment of these eight persons in a house church in a country ending in Stan.
You know, that could absolutely fulfill. That mutual, self-conscious, accountable, committed, etc. They might be helped by having certain formal practices that will preserve it and make it more transparent and legible to each other and so on, but it could absolutely look very informal as long as they understand here’s the character of the relationship, the commands that Jesus has given us that we have to fulfill and the nature of the relationship has to enable that.
Jonathan Leeman:
You guys are operating with a distinction between elements and forms which allows you to have this conversation. Can you make that distinction in your heads explicit for us and why that’s crucial for understanding the prescriptive nature of New Testament polity?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. The element is simply something that is required by scripture either explicitly or implicitly. The form is how that’s done.
Jonathan Leeman:
And we’re not saying the forms are prescribed on the whole.
Mark Dever:
What we mean by forms, is we’re not saying those forms are prescribed. Now what the hearer hears is, Oh, there’s no certain form prescribed or we may say that form is prescribed, but what we’re meaning is distinct from it. Element we’re saying that’s not prescribed.
Jonathan Leeman:
Like you have to sing, you must sing, you have to preach, you have to baptize, you have to…
Mark Dever:
You can raise form questions about all of those elements.
Bobby Jamieson:
Exactly. Each one of those elements. Yeah, and in that sense, I think actually this is one of the most helpful… How can I put it?
This kind of lightens the load, it lightens the draw, you know, how much water does the ship draw to kind of get cleared, you know, exegetically. The elements are pretty spare and mere and minimal.
The Church Is a Bound-Together Organism
So all I’m arguing for basically when I would say that the New Testament lays out a prescriptive pattern of church polity, it would be that the foundation of it is that the church is a bound together organism with an in and an out, and there’s a different ethical commitment to those who are in, real accountability for being in, and you’re treated differently than someone who is out. So there’s a reality of a dividing line between the church and the world.
We can call that membership for shorthand. Then the next step would be over who has the authority to decide who’s in and out. would be the congregation as a whole. I think that’s clearly implied in Matthew 16, 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and so on.
Then we have two offices of particular kinds of leadership. One, elders, the spiritual leaders, the spiritual models, teachers, and general overseers of the church. And then deacons who care for practical needs, and help promote and preserve unity are not teaching and ruling, to use Paul’s language from 1 Corinthians 5.
And really that’s about it. That there’s an in and out, the whole congregation has authority over the in and out, and there’s two distinct leadership offices.
Jonathan Leeman:
And they recognize it through the ordinances.
Bobby Jamieson:
That’s right. Yeah, and the ordinances are the expression or the exercise of that authority. And that’s it. Now, I think that there are scriptural teachings that inform and guide how those things should operate.
But it’s a pretty minimal skeleton. And I suppose then another implication would be that a church is formally independent. That is, it’s not subject to an authority structure above or beyond the local church.
That’d be one implication of that. So ruling out connectional polities in which some other entity or connection of churches has a kind of binding authority.
Mark Dever:
Just on that point, Bobby so were a friend here listening who was a sort of de jure Presbyterian or de jure Episcopalian, we would positively disagree with that.
Bobby Jamieson:
Correct. Now, we would agree in principle, you know, if the Presbyterian is affirming there’s an in and out of the church, and that should be a discipline to the boundary, we’re agreeing 100%. They’re affirming there should be elders and deacons, we’re agreeing 100%.
We might disagree about some of the nuances of those offices. But yeah, then when it gets to a body or entity having authority of command, where they can reach in and say, this must happen, this must not
Mark Dever:
There is a stated body above the local church, which is implied in Acts 15. Or allowed even in Acts 15. When it itself takes the Lord’s Supper and disciplines that membership of those who may and may not take the Lord’s Supper, we would say there they are really interfering with the privileges that Jesus gives uniquely to the local congregation.
So in that sense, our understanding of polity, while it may not, well, it certainly does not have a role for a presbytery above the local church or a convention acting like a presbytery or a bishop above the local church, it would certainly contradict. Specific claims that those extra local church bodies or officials could themselves assert.
Bobby Jamieson:
Correct. And a couple of further points on that. One would be, you know, to take another example, you have the very rare case of a D.R.A. Episcopalian, but they would appeal to something like Titus’s role in appointing elders.
Oh, he’s acting kind of like a bishop. Who has authority over local congregations and they would mean that to be a standing pattern. Titus 1 and Crete. Yeah, Titus and Crete.
I think one of the sort of ironies in this conversation is that we Baptists historically are some of the sort of loudest arguers for the New Testament polity being normative. I think one of the reasons why more connectional and hierarchical polities disavow seeing it in scripture is that you’d have to build kind of a large edifice off of very slim evidence.
Well, what authority does the bishop have? And is there an appeal? And well, you’re just building it off such slim
Jonathan Leeman:
We’re not trying to do that.
Bobby Jamieson:
We’re not trying to do that. We’re saying the only… Easier task for us. We have an easier task because we’re just looking at a local church.
We think that’s the only sort of formal institutional expression of the kingdom of God. Not that our cooperation doesn’t manifest a kind of Christian unity in a broader sense where there’s voluntary cooperation in all sorts of ways and churches are interdependent and we can manifest that in all sorts of informal ways, but that when all you have to do is look at who’s in and out of the local church, sort of who qualifies, how is that authority exercised, and who’s in charge.
Are there any recognized leaders and where does the buck stop in certain areas? That’s an easier task. And I do think the New Testament gives a clear and consistent articulation of answering that smaller set of questions.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, my hermeneutical cheat sheet on this whole conversation is pretty small, or as you said, mere. You got Matthew 16, 18, sort of 26 with the establishing of the Lord’s Supper, and then 28.
And there you have the basic foundation. And then what do you get in Acts? You just sort of get the illustration of that, playing itself out. And the only thing left to be added are elders, right?
Which you get some of it in Acts and then decidedly, Acts 20 for instance, and very decidedly with Paul’s qualifications. But as you say, that’s really it. There’s not much more to it.
Last comment and then a final question. Mark, is the one place I would push back. On what you said much earlier and maybe push back on what you said, BJ, about the weather. Like, we really can’t get the weather without the what.
Driving Ecclesiology
And Mark, your polity monster comment. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day who… was correcting me a little bit by caring too much about New Testament ecclesiology and quote unquote, he called tests of faithfulness and he was making the case that ecclesiology is downstream from missiology. Our missiology needs to drive our ecclesiology.
Bobby Jamieson:
He’s saying it should be and you’re not letting it be.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. And I said, well, actually, no, I understand both missiology and ecclesiology to be a subset of ethics. I understand that we have biblical commands and norms and we seek to keep them, whether locally or abroad.
Polity is Social Ethics
That’s what we’re called to do. Polity is ethics, or if you want to call it social ethics. We’re simply called to obey Jesus and this is how we do it socially, right? You have ethics and you have social ethics.
You have Aristotle’s moving from his ethics to his politics. And what are we trying to do in this conversation? If we’re commanded to gather, we gather. If we’re commanded to bind and lose, we bind and lose.
If we’re commanded to baptize, we baptize. If we’re commanded to have elders, that’s what we do, right? And so that’s where I would say even things like preaching. Is a part of singing, though it’s not formally about making decisions, as you say.
It is part of what makes the Church a church, right, and makes us a unique thing on this planet. And that’s where I would also say on the weather question, Bobby, that why can we know that it’s binding, that the New Testament is prescriptive?
Because Jesus has all authority and we’re bound by Him. And it’s not as if polity is this like another area of discipleship. No, it’s just part of discipleship.
This is part of how we follow Jesus and obey him together. And we tend to isolate polity and church government in this other category outside of just general obedience.
Mark Dever:
And that makes you feel left out.
Jonathan Leeman:
Maybe.
Mark Dever:
Because you write a lot about authority.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, that’s right. And what I’m trying to help people understand.
Mark Dever:
You new book coming out about it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Lord willing in September.
Mark Dever:
Because God does talk about it. And he talks about it very practically in our churches.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right. And some stuff.
Mark Dever:
And when we avoid these conversations, we actually are making space for abuse. Not our intention. Not our intention. But we are making space for it.
Bobby Jamieson:
One way to say that would be that if Jesus…
Mark Dever:
Lacking accountability.
Authority and Accountability in the Church
Bobby Jamieson:
If Jesus actually gives the local church authority and he kind of posits that the church has this authority, then we should really look to him to show us how to exercise it and we should look to him for guidance about who actually has it. In one sense, if you think the church has no authority anyways, well then it’s kind of all over.
We’re arguing about nothing. But if the church actually has any authority over its members, if it has any authority to speak for the kingdom of heaven, then our default posture should not be that it’s up to us, but that we should look to, well, who has Jesus authorized to do what?
And I think when you bring that kind of question to a passage like Matthew 16, exercising the keys of the kingdom, or Matthew 18, binding and loosening, somebody’s in, somebody’s out, if that’s the authority that the church has to exercise, then we should look to clues Jesus himself has given for who is doing that exercising.
And it’s a matter of submission and transparency then to say, here’s how we understand Jesus to have set up the church, we’re doing our best to follow this, here are the precise limits. You know, here’s something we can say in a membership class here at CHBC, no pastor will ever excommunicate anyone from this church.
Does Preventing Excommunication Inhibit Authority?
Mark Dever:
It would be a nonsensical statement for us to say that a pastor could excommunicate.
Bobby Jamieson:
The elders will never excommunicate anyone from this church. That’s right. The only people who will be removed as an act of discipline are the congregation as a whole in a stated meeting as a gathering of the whole church actually votes to remove.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because you have a precise and heavy understanding of what the Bible is authorized or not authorized you as elders to do.
Bobby Jamieson:
And that creates a radical limit on our authority. It makes it very transparent. You can offer a good faith guarantee to someone that here’s what will never happen in this church.
Mark Dever:
We’ve all three been elders in more than one congregational church and we can all three say this polity, the biblical. Does not guarantee error-free ruling in the church. So please don’t hear us as saying, if you get this right, you know, everything else goes great.
I know churches that I think polity is not as good as ours is, Anglican churches or Presbyterian churches or elder rule independent churches who are wonderful congregations who are doing things very well in many ways. And I know, on the other hand, Baptist churches who have correct, regular polity and yet themselves are not marked by a spiritual health and vigor that I would love to see.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, as long as we’re concluding on… qualifications, let me offer one last or ask you guys to offer one last qualification, which is true or false. We’re not saying every jot and title of what a church does is written down in the Bible.
Is It a Sin to Not Provide Membership Classes?
We’re leaving vast expanses for wisdom and prudence in the application of what the Bible says. Can you unpack that at all?
Mark Dever:
Well, Bobby said about membership classes, for example, earlier. We’re not maintaining that a church is in sin if it doesn’t have membership classes.
That is a way in order to induct someone into the responsibilities of being a member of a church. I’m sure there are other ways you could do it as well.
Bobby Jamieson:
All kinds of practical questions from whether should elders have term limits to whether should deacons meet as a body or to should deacons have specific areas of service.
Mark Dever:
When the congregation does vote, is it a majority vote? Is it a unanimous vote? Is it a two-thirds vote?
Bobby Jamieson:
All kinds of things are matters of… prudence, trying to do our best to observe general patterns in Scripture and what’s kind of wise and prudent and makes cultural sense that there’s… And then we want to recognize that we might see certain advantages or disadvantages of those practices, but they’re far from divinely inspired.
Jonathan Leeman:
So the article on the website that Bobby has discussed is called, Why New Testament Polity is Prescriptive. I cover it in chapter one of my book, Don’t Fire Your Church Members, from a slightly different angle. And this is a good conversation that we’ve just sort of scratched the surface on. I think.
Mark Dever:
But we have been having it for 20 years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Oh yeah, that’s true.
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A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
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