Schism and the modern churches, Reformed included

[darrellmaurina]

Hello J.E.,

In the time of Revelation's 7 churches they were divided according to city / location – although there were more than just 7, as 7 was a symbolic number of divine completeness.

We know from Paul, writing to the Colossians, there was a church in Laodicea – that even had an epistle Paul wrote to them, which epistle we know nothing of (Col 4:16 KJV).

The situation is slightly different in Galatia, for there Paul speaks "unto the churches of Galatia" (Gal 1:2 KJV), a region where he and his fellow workers planted churches in a number of cities.

So in the earliest churches, there was one to a city, when there was one. So you are right when you say there was no "Turkey national church".

It is certainly correct that many say, as you do, that "there was no Turkey national church" and that there was one church in each city. However, there may be some underlying presuppositions here, on the part of at least some people, which must first be proved, and regarding which we need to be aware when discussing these issues. Presuppositions often underlie views of polity, and if they are assumed rather than examined, misunderstandings can happen.

Discussions of what is and is not a "schism" or unwarranted separation often depend on whether we think each local church is a complete body that may or may not choose to have formal or informal relationships with other churches, or whether we believe there is (or should be) a "regional church" that represents all like-minded Reformed churches in a given region. The answer to that question has implications for many areas of local and denominational church life, as well as relationships between denominations.

The Dutch Reformed, the Congregationalists, and the Reformed Baptists certainly disagree on a number of issues, and have disagreed for centuries going back all the way to the Puritan era, but one point on which there is common consensus is that the local church is a complete church, in and of itself, and that assemblies above the local eldership are for the well-being of the church (bene esse), not for its being (esse).

While there are distinctive terms used in each of those three ecclesiastical traditions, I'm going to cite the Dutch, whose Reformed character is not usually denied, because I'm well aware that there are Reformed people who say "Reformed Baptist" is a contradiction in terms and that Congregationalism is inherently un-Reformed as well.

It is the norm for the Dutch Reformed to teach that the classis and the synod are merely temporary assemblies with no ongoing status. The authority of the consistory is original, while that of the "broader assemblies," which are NOT called "higher courts," is delegated. While it is true that there were depositions of Arminian ministers during and following the era of the Synod of Dordt, the modern conservative position among most of the Dutch Reformed is that classes and synods have NO AUTHORITY to depose ministers or elders, let alone entire consistories, and the maximum extent of denominational authority is to set a church outside the federation.

Those are not accidental or minor points. They have to do with a fundamental difference from others in the Reformed world on whether there is such a thing as a "regional church" or a "national church."

If it is the 1800s in Scotland, and if people are asking why the Covenanters, the Burgher and Anti-Burgher party of the Seceders (the Erskine wing of what in North America became the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church), and the Free Church should maintain their own identities, the belief that formal organic church union of the institutions is imperative starts to make more sense if all of those ecclesiastical bodies share a belief that there is, or at least that there should be, a single national church in Scotland, subdivided into regional synods and presbyteries.

The current situation in the NAPARC denominations, where there isn't agreement on even basic questions like whether assemblies beyond the local church have any authority to exercise discipline over member ministers and churches beyond setting them outside the federation, is quite different from the situation in 1800s Scotland where the parties were largely in agreement on the principles of polity, though not in all areas of practice.

There is no way, at least not until an entire generation of ministers and elders die, that you will get agreement from most of the Dutch Reformed that a classis or synod has the authority to depose a consistory or its pastor. The fights are too recent and too many godly victims of ecclesiastical abuse by liberal denominations are still living.

But lest anyone think this is mere "pragmatism" in the modern United Reformed Churches in North America and other recent secessions rather than based on underlying principles of polity, the views of polity being described here as "Dutch Reformed" have been standard since the era of Abraham Kuyper in the 1800s. There are **REASONS** why his denomination was known as the GKN or Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (plural) and not Kerk (singular). The Protestant Reformed Churches and Canadian Reformed Churches (and the broader Vrijgemaakt ecclesiastical family) predate the URC by many generations, and while they differ from each other in a number of ways, and both disagree with Kuyper on important issues, I believe that actually proves the underlying views of polity predate Kuyper though he was clearly the most articulate modern advocate of what has become known as the "Dutch Reformed" view of church government. I happen to think Kuyper's views on polity can be traced back to the Church Order of Dordt, but I'm well aware that is a point of dispute, and the role of the civil government in exercising authority in church matters complicates things considerably when dealing with polity questions in the 1600s. The simple fact is that in today's environment, almost no conservatives among the Dutch Reformed advocate synodical or classical authority to depose, and it has been the liberals who claimed denominational authority to depose ministers like Hoeksema and Schilder and their consistories.

However, when a Presbyterian argues that Scripture teaches a regional church, or that each city church in the New Testament was a "presbytery" exercising authority over local churches within the city, that is not teaching something strange or odd. It's classic Presbyterian polity and needs to be respected as such. But it is not the only way Reformed people have understood the Bible and the early history of the apostolic and post-apostolic church.

A Presbyterian conservative who advocates for a synod or general assembly dissolving a presbytery, or assuming original authority when a presbytery isn't adequately dealing with a problem, is acting very differently from how Dutch Reformed conservatives think and act. Both are acting consistently with their own ecclesiastical traditions and ways of understanding what Scripture teaches about church government.

Those differences have consequences and work themselves out in many aspects of church life, including what is a "schism" and what is "schismatic behavior."

We need to examine and understand the underlying presuppositions if we are going to discuss with each other, and that doesn't always happen because people on the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed sides sometimes think there is agreement on presuppositions when there actually is not.

 

[Northern Crofter]

So in the earliest churches, there was one to a city, when there was one.

It is certainly correct that many say, as you do, that "there was no Turkey national church" and that there was one church in each city.

The Westminster Divines, in laying out the case for presbyterian government, believed there was more than one congregation in many of these cities, using Ephesus as an example: "That there were more congregations than one in the church of Ephesus, appears by Acts xx. 31, where is mention of Paul’s continuance at Ephesus in preaching for the space of three years; and Acts xix. 18, 19, 20, where the special effect of the word is mentioned; and ver. 10. and 17. of the same chapter, where is a distinction of Jews and Greeks; and 1 Cor. xvi. 8, 9, where is a reason of Paul’s stay at Ephesus until Pentecost; and ver. 19, where is mention of a particular church in the house of Aquila and Priscilla, then at Ephesus, as appears, Acts xviii. 19, 24, 26. All which laid together, doth prove that the multitude of believers did make more congregations than one in the church of Ephesus." (Form of Presbyterian Church Government according to the Westminster Standards, §"Of Classical Assemblies," II)

 

[NaphtaliPress]

The Westminster Divines, in laying out the case for presbyterian government, believed there was more than one congregation in many of these cities, using Ephesus as an example: "That there were more congregations than one in the church of Ephesus, appears by Acts xx. 31, where is mention of Paul’s continuance at Ephesus in preaching for the space of three years; and Acts xix. 18, 19, 20, where the special effect of the word is mentioned; and ver. 10. and 17. of the same chapter, where is a distinction of Jews and Greeks; and 1 Cor. xvi. 8, 9, where is a reason of Paul’s stay at Ephesus until Pentecost; and ver. 19, where is mention of a particular church in the house of Aquila and Priscilla, then at Ephesus, as appears, Acts xviii. 19, 24, 26. All which laid together, doth prove that the multitude of believers did make more congregations than one in the church of Ephesus." (Form of Presbyterian Church Government according to the Westminster Standards, §"Of Classical Assemblies," II)

First Presbyterian Church of Ephesus, Second Presbyterian Church of Ephesus, Third .... Seriously, in addition see the debate papers between the majority of the assembly and the Independent minority that was published as The Grand Debate. A second Naphtali Press edition is available at RHB.

 

[darrellmaurina]

Both @Northern Crofter and @NaphtaliPress are correct in pointing out the Presbyterian belief of what it meant to have a "Church of Ephesus."

What they are saying is classic Presbyterian polity. I have spent decades arguing to the Dutch that while I disagree, it is a legitimate Reformed way to read the Bible, and before the collapse of mainline American Presbyterianism, was once a common conservative Reformed view.

While I could give the exegetical response from the 1648 Cambridge Platform to that Presbyterian argument, that would take the discussion into a different direction. I want to focus only on the point that modern Dutch Reformed conservatives do **NOT** believe their classis has the power that Presbyterians believe is possessed by their presbytery, because they do not believe a classis is a "regional church," but rather a "broader assembly."

The counterargument which some will make is that in farther-back Dutch history, the Dutch **DID** have some "collegiate churches" in which there was a single consistory supervising multiple congregations in a city. This was not a classis, but rather an implementation in some of the larger Dutch cities of what the Dutch had seen in Geneva with a single consistory supervising multiple local congregations within the city. Collegiate churches existed but were not common. My personal read is that a case can be made from Scripture for the older Dutch idea that there would be one consistory in each city supervising multiple congregations, but outside the city, even five or ten miles away, smaller cities, towns and villages (think Cenchrea in Romans 16:1) would have their own church rather than coming under the authority of the consistory of the larger city near them. I don't advocate that view, but I understand why some of the Dutch, in the Reformation and post-Reformation era, did so. That joint consistory model within a city has some practical benefits and exegetical arguments in its favor, and a case can be made that the church in the second century, prior to the rise of episcopal authority, may have looked something like how the Genevan church was governed with one body of elders supervising multiple congregations within the city.

At least in North America, none of the modern Dutch Reformed denominations except the RCA have that "collegiate church" structure, even on paper, and as far as I know, the RCA has only one remaining "collegiate church," the New York City consistory which dates back to Dutch colonial days. Even in New York City, most RCA congregations have their own consistories. The last I checked, Marble Collegiate Church (yes, the church of Norman Vincent Peale and of the Trump family) was one of less than a half-dozen churches that were still under the authority of that joint consistory.

Again, all of this has direct consequences for how we understand "schism" and the concept of a "national church."

I don't think very many of us think the confessionally Reformed churches in New York City are under any mandate to all come under the authority of the consistory on which Norman Vincent Peale served. I don't think even Redeemed Zoomer would go that far.

 

[Christodulus]

I want to say in light of the posts above me that I am only talking about the churches being formally and officially united, the question of whether original authority is located in the congregational or the national church is not at issue.

At the time of John's Revelation?

Yes, from the very moment the churches were established. They exercised greater unity than acknowledging each other’s existence, they were directly in formal communion with each other, supported each other with funds, and gathered together in synod. It was a real, material, unity. It would not be incorrect to say the catholic churches of the Roman Empire constituted a single denomination.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Women deacons in the ARP. Solve that and then the ARP can invite the others to join them; they're as old as the original PCUSA after all. It might be objected that the ARP is still more a regional church compared to the PCA which is more national. But the pca does need to get over its fear of biblical polity simply because the PCUS was heavy handed and abusive and ditch the unbiblical pragmatic episcopal-congregational business model hybrid they created.

I think the real question is not primarily the title “deaconess,” but what the title is understood to mean and how the ministry is actually ordered.

The Church is the household of God, and Scripture orders that household through qualified male officers. Women should not be ordained to the diaconal office as though they occupy the same office as male deacons. But that does not mean women cannot be formally recognized and organized to perform substantial works of mercy under the oversight of the Church’s male officers.

There is a long history of women serving in this manner. Whatever conclusion one reaches about Phoebe in Romans 16:1, the ancient Church unquestionably employed women called deaconesses. The terminology and practice varied, but these women generally ministered to other women where modesty and propriety made male ministry difficult. They visited sick women, cared for the poor, assisted women preparing for baptism, and helped maintain order among women in worship.

The Didascalia Apostolorum describes women assisting in ministry to women while remaining within the Church’s ordered authority. The Apostolic Constitutions likewise distinguishes deaconesses from male deacons and assigns them particular forms of service. They were not female elders, preachers, or simply interchangeable members of a sexually undifferentiated board of officers. The ancient sources commonly recognize differences in authority, function, and ecclesiastical position.

The same basic distinction appears in parts of the Reformed tradition. Calvin’s Geneva employed women in organized diaconal service, particularly in caring for the sick and poor, but it did not establish a modern egalitarian diaconate. In substance, the PCA’s category of “Assistants to the Deacons” occupies much of the same territory: women performing important and recognized ministries of mercy under the authority of the Church’s male officers.

That is why I do not regard the word “deaconess” itself as the fundamental problem. The real problem is the creation of an egalitarian diaconate. Some churches appeal to the ancient use of “deaconess” or point to Geneva, but their actual practice bears little resemblance to either. They place men and women into the same office, on the same board, with interchangeable authority and function, while abandoning the household ordering that governed the historical practice they cite.

One cannot claim Geneva merely because women are called deaconesses while discarding the very ecclesiastical ordering within which those women served. That borrows the historical vocabulary while replacing its substance.

I would prefer churches simply acknowledge that they are doing something theologically and historically novel. Their practice seems driven less by Scripture or the historical diaconate than by contemporary egalitarian assumptions and a desire to appear culturally attractive. Calling the result “deaconesses” does not make it ancient, Reformed, or biblical.

The decisive question, therefore, is not what title appears in the bulletin. It is whether the Church is maintaining the household ordering established in Scripture. Are women being recognized and organized to assist the male diaconate in appropriate works of service, or has the church created one egalitarian office in which men and women are treated as interchangeable? Those are materially different arrangements, and historical appeals should not be permitted to obscure the difference.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

It is certainly correct that many say, as you do, that "there was no Turkey national church" and that there was one church in each city. However, there may be some underlying presuppositions here, on the part of at least some people, which must first be proved, and regarding which we need to be aware when discussing these issues. Presuppositions often underlie views of polity, and if they are assumed rather than examined, misunderstandings can happen.

Discussions of what is and is not a "schism" or unwarranted separation often depend on whether we think each local church is a complete body that may or may not choose to have formal or informal relationships with other churches, or whether we believe there is (or should be) a "regional church" that represents all like-minded Reformed churches in a given region. The answer to that question has implications for many areas of local and denominational church life, as well as relationships between denominations.

The Dutch Reformed, the Congregationalists, and the Reformed Baptists certainly disagree on a number of issues, and have disagreed for centuries going back all the way to the Puritan era, but one point on which there is common consensus is that the local church is a complete church, in and of itself, and that assemblies above the local eldership are for the well-being of the church (bene esse), not for its being (esse).

While there are distinctive terms used in each of those three ecclesiastical traditions, I'm going to cite the Dutch, whose Reformed character is not usually denied, because I'm well aware that there are Reformed people who say "Reformed Baptist" is a contradiction in terms and that Congregationalism is inherently un-Reformed as well.

It is the norm for the Dutch Reformed to teach that the classis and the synod are merely temporary assemblies with no ongoing status. The authority of the consistory is original, while that of the "broader assemblies," which are NOT called "higher courts," is delegated. While it is true that there were depositions of Arminian ministers during and following the era of the Synod of Dordt, the modern conservative position among most of the Dutch Reformed is that classes and synods have NO AUTHORITY to depose ministers or elders, let alone entire consistories, and the maximum extent of denominational authority is to set a church outside the federation.

Those are not accidental or minor points. They have to do with a fundamental difference from others in the Reformed world on whether there is such a thing as a "regional church" or a "national church."

If it is the 1800s in Scotland, and if people are asking why the Covenanters, the Burgher and Anti-Burgher party of the Seceders (the Erskine wing of what in North America became the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church), and the Free Church should maintain their own identities, the belief that formal organic church union of the institutions is imperative starts to make more sense if all of those ecclesiastical bodies share a belief that there is, or at least that there should be, a single national church in Scotland, subdivided into regional synods and presbyteries.

The current situation in the NAPARC denominations, where there isn't agreement on even basic questions like whether assemblies beyond the local church have any authority to exercise discipline over member ministers and churches beyond setting them outside the federation, is quite different from the situation in 1800s Scotland where the parties were largely in agreement on the principles of polity, though not in all areas of practice.

There is no way, at least not until an entire generation of ministers and elders die, that you will get agreement from most of the Dutch Reformed that a classis or synod has the authority to depose a consistory or its pastor. The fights are too recent and too many godly victims of ecclesiastical abuse by liberal denominations are still living.

But lest anyone think this is mere "pragmatism" in the modern United Reformed Churches in North America and other recent secessions rather than based on underlying principles of polity, the views of polity being described here as "Dutch Reformed" have been standard since the era of Abraham Kuyper in the 1800s. There are **REASONS** why his denomination was known as the GKN or Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (plural) and not Kerk (singular). The Protestant Reformed Churches and Canadian Reformed Churches (and the broader Vrijgemaakt ecclesiastical family) predate the URC by many generations, and while they differ from each other in a number of ways, and both disagree with Kuyper on important issues, I believe that actually proves the underlying views of polity predate Kuyper though he was clearly the most articulate modern advocate of what has become known as the "Dutch Reformed" view of church government. I happen to think Kuyper's views on polity can be traced back to the Church Order of Dordt, but I'm well aware that is a point of dispute, and the role of the civil government in exercising authority in church matters complicates things considerably when dealing with polity questions in the 1600s. The simple fact is that in today's environment, almost no conservatives among the Dutch Reformed advocate synodical or classical authority to depose, and it has been the liberals who claimed denominational authority to depose ministers like Hoeksema and Schilder and their consistories.

However, when a Presbyterian argues that Scripture teaches a regional church, or that each city church in the New Testament was a "presbytery" exercising authority over local churches within the city, that is not teaching something strange or odd. It's classic Presbyterian polity and needs to be respected as such. But it is not the only way Reformed people have understood the Bible and the early history of the apostolic and post-apostolic church.

A Presbyterian conservative who advocates for a synod or general assembly dissolving a presbytery, or assuming original authority when a presbytery isn't adequately dealing with a problem, is acting very differently from how Dutch Reformed conservatives think and act. Both are acting consistently with their own ecclesiastical traditions and ways of understanding what Scripture teaches about church government.

Those differences have consequences and work themselves out in many aspects of church life, including what is a "schism" and what is "schismatic behavior."

We need to examine and understand the underlying presuppositions if we are going to discuss with each other, and that doesn't always happen because people on the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed sides sometimes think there is agreement on presuppositions when there actually is not.

I think you are identifying a real distinction in modern Dutch Reformed polity, especially as it developed through Kuyper and the Doleantie, but I don't think it works historically to project that position backward and describe it as simply "the Dutch Reformed" understanding over against Presbyterianism.

Van Mastricht is a pretty significant problem for that account.

In Theoretical-Practical Theology, Book VII, Van Mastricht treats the particular church as a real and complete church. I agree with you there. He speaks of believers covenanting together in a particular church and strongly protects the ordinary authority of its eldership. But he does not infer from that that classes and synods are merely advisory associations without genuine ecclesiastical jurisdiction. His treatment of the ministry expressly includes consistorial, classical, and synodical assemblies, and his treatment of government distinguishes the various distributions of ecclesiastical power.

More importantly, Van Mastricht attributes to synods not merely dogmatic and ordering authority but potestas critica, judicial authority. Bouwman's detailed treatment of the older Dutch polity notes that Van Mastricht includes admonition, excommunication, and deposition among the acts that can belong to synodical power, appealing to Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5. He also recognizes the regular subordination involved in appeals from a presbyterial assembly to a classis and from a classis to a synod.

Voetius is even harder to reconcile with the way you've stated the distinction. He certainly insists that synodical power is cumulative rather than privative. The broader assembly does not swallow up the proper authority of the local church. But he explicitly rejects the Independent position that broader assemblies possess only advisory authority. He says classes and synods have authority to determine ecclesiastical matters authoritatively and judicially and to exercise censures, particularly in cases of appeal and maladministration.

That is actually the important distinction. The authority is federative, ministerial, and derived from the churches acting together. It is not episcopal authority existing independently above the churches. But derived authority is still real authority.

The Church Order of Dort itself seems pretty difficult to square with the stronger claim you're making. Article 31 provides an appeal from a minor to a major assembly and says the decision of the major assembly is settled and binding unless contrary to Scripture or the adopted church order. Article 36 then says:

"The classis has the same authority over the consistory..."

as the particular synod has over the classis and the general synod over the particular synod.

The Leiden Synopsis Purioris Theologiae goes in the same direction. The classic Dutch Reformed tradition did not think that acknowledging the integrity of the local church required reducing synods to temporary advisory conferences. The older distinction was designed to avoid both hierarchy and Independency.

So I would put the historical development differently. I don't dispute that many conservative Dutch Reformed churches today understand the federation substantially as you describe it, or that the traumatic experiences surrounding Hoeksema, Schilder, and later controversies have reinforced that position. But that is not sufficient evidence that this was simply the historic Dutch position all the way back to Dordt. In fact, there is good historical scholarship arguing that the Doleantie substantially reworked the relationship between local church autonomy and broader assemblies rather than simply reproducing Dort.

And this matters to the schism question. The classic Reformed options were not simply:

1. the Scottish idea of one national Church with "higher courts," or
2. autonomous local churches voluntarily associating in bodies that can ultimately do little more than advise or withdraw fellowship.

Van Mastricht and Voetius occupy a more nuanced position. The particular church really is a church and possesses proper ecclesiastical authority, while churches joined together also exercise real corporate ecclesiastical authority through classes and synods.

That seems much closer to classic Presbyterianism than your post allows, even though there are certainly differences in terminology and in how far that broader authority may properly extend.

So I think the modern Dutch/Presbyterian distinction you are pointing to is real. I just would not make it a seventeenth-century distinction between "the Dutch Reformed" and Presbyterians. Van Mastricht, Voetius, the Synopsis, and the actual language of Dort make that historical claim very difficult to sustain.

 

[EvanF]

Yes, from the very moment the churches were established. They exercised greater unity than acknowledging each other’s existence, they were directly in formal communion with each other, supported each other with funds, and gathered together in synod. It was a real, material, unity. It would not be incorrect to say the catholic churches of the Roman Empire constituted a single denomination.

It's hard to imagine a denomination in the modern sense that would withstand the level of doctrinal controversy and scandal we see among these early churches and in which congregations or dioceses could sustain apostolic letters of admonition without any effective discipline from church courts and councils. We see the example of the oecumenical council in Jerusalem, but to argue that this is evidence of formal denominational organization across regions, let alone the whole empire, seems difficult to accept, especially while the church in Rome was perhaps a tenth the size of that in Antioch by the end of the first century.

 

[darrellmaurina]

@Semper Fidelis : Let me first say I think we agree on deaconesses. Wonderful! More on that at the end.

Regarding Dordt and the developments prior to the Doleantie (i.e., Kuyper) -- we agree this is complicated. There's not a straight line here of development.

The decision of the Dutch civil government to prohibit the general synod from meeting again after Dordt led to all sorts of intrusions of the civil government in church affairs that I don't think anyone today would advocate.

I would caution, however, that there is more than one way to understand Article 31. The very article you cite here -- "The Church Order of Dort itself seems pretty difficult to square with the stronger claim you're making. Article 31 provides an appeal from a minor to a major assembly and says the decision of the major assembly is settled and binding unless contrary to Scripture or the adopted church order" -- became the unofficial name ("Article 31 churches") of Klaas Schilder's followers, post-1944.

The question for the Vrijgemaakten (the "Liberated" churches) was not whether they agreed or disagreed with Article 31, but rather, TO WHOM it had to be proven that something decided by a synod was contrary to Scripture or the church order. The conservatives who followed Schilder said it had to be proven to the CONSISTORY whether something was or was not contrary to the Scripture or to the church order.

That interpretation is not sophistry, or turning the church order upside down and standing it on its head, though that is the claim the liberals made when conservatives said the synods were tolerating damnable heresy and persecuting the godly. Those words are not too strong to describe what the Dutch synods were doing by the late 1800s and early 1900s with toleration of ministers who were promoters of Buddhism, while at the same time trying to force Kuyper's churches to accept professions of faith and admission to membership in their local churches of people who had been catechized under liberal ministers and refused to be catechized by Kuyper's supporters. "After all, we are all one church, every member should be allowed to freely transfer to any church."

Not so fast, the conservatives said. LOCAL ELDERS, not the classis or synod, determine whether a person has a credible profession of faith and can be admitted to the Lord's Table and local church membership, and local elders run the affairs of the local church.

Schilder, and before him, Kuyper, were not liars or fools or manipulators of words. Their understanding of Article 31 had a very long history that can't be understood apart from knowing how the Church Order of Dordt worked in practice following the civil government stepping in and getting rid of Arminian ministers, but then not letting the general synod meet again.

Imagine what the PCA would look like today if the civil government forbade the General Assembly from meeting and every presbytery could do what it wanted with no way to appeal to the General Assembly, though the presbyteries could have regional synods for each state without a general synod on the national level, which led to each regional synod depending on what the local state governments thought was good or bad. (The Dutch had four levels of assemblies -- consistory, classis, particular synod and general synod -- and while the general synod was not allowed to meet, the particular synods continued to meet until the Napoleonic era with church reorganization under top-down civil authority telling the church how to run its affairs, and making things worse, leading to the 1834 Afscheiding.)

The results would not be good if the PCA General Assembly was not allowed to meet, and they were not good in the Dutch Reformed world in the decades following Dordt. Virtually nobody today is going to defend the way things worked among the Dutch Reformed from the late 1600s to the early 1800s. The best that can be said is that the Dutch Reformed remained a single denomination with lots of people doing lots of different things, and the influence of the Nadere Reformatie (roughly equivalent to the First Great Awakening) kept a bad situation from falling apart. When people agree on what they believe and the need for personal conversion, even if they can't use the ecclesiastical structures to promote and enforce their beliefs, a lot of problems more or less "go by the wayside." Liberal churches call likeminded liberal ministers, conservative churches of various categories call likeminded conservative ministers, and they try not to fight too much because the civil government is probably not going to do the right thing if it ends up having to "lay down the law." The Scots kind of found that out the hard way with government intervention in their own ecclesiastical turmoils that led to the creation of the Free Church, and before that, of the Covenanters and the Seceders.

Beginning in 1834, the Dutch theological conflicts boiled over and multiple groups of Dutch seceding churches wanted to re-establish the old Church Order of Dordt, but had significantly different ideas about what the words on the paper meant and how they should be applied.

Even in the tradition that led to the GKN, the Afscheiding tradition of 1834 differed somewhat on church government from the Doleantie tradition of 1886 before the merger in 1892 of most, but not all, of the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk (note the singular "Kerk") with Kuyper's followers to form the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (note the plural "kerken"). The traditions that led to the Ledeboerian churches and Kersten and the Gereformeerde Gemeenten and the Oud Gereformeerden were different in their own ways as well. All claimed to be returning to the Church Order of Dordt, but had different ideas of what it meant and how it should be applied in their new context free from state control of the church.

While the earlier differences can't be ignored, the current consensus conservative Dutch Reformed position in North America is all but unanimous that synods and classes have no power to depose ministers or churches. They do, however, have the power to set a church outside the federation. That has been done multiple times by conservative denominations in both North America and the Netherlands.

That is also the usual position of conservatives in the Netherlands, though not unanimous. Things get complicated because of the existence of the Gereformeerde Bond, the strong conservative group in the old Dutch state church which has for well over a century basically taken the position of saying, "We refuse to leave, we'll keep preaching the Reformed faith and ignore the denomination," and of the Gereformeerde Gemeenten, the Dutch "mother church" of the denomination that deposed Dr. Joel Beeke, which I think virtually everyone here in the Puritan Board would consider to be an unjust act of the NRC synod.

Again, this all gets very, very complicated.

What I think is pretty clearly established is that the modern conservative Dutch Reformed view of polity -- modern being since the mid-to-late 1800s -- is very different from the modern conservative view of Presbyterianism.

I think it's also obvious that none of us want the civil government to exercise the level of intrusion in church affairs that was happening in the years following the Synod of Dordt. Yes, the result was the Remonstrants were rebuked by the synod and removed from their church positions by the assistance of the civil government. That led to the Dutch churches becoming firmly attached to "Five Point Calvinism."

But it also led to practices in church affairs that are not clearly "Presbyterian," "Dutch Reformed," "Congregational" or "Episcopal," but sort of a Calvinized Erastianism.

That works only as long as the civil magistrate is a Calvinist and quickly goes bad when he is not.

Now on your second point: I am happy to say I think we agree on deaconesses.

There may be something in your post with which I would disagree if I dug into it in detail and looked at the implications of your points, but I can't find anything here with which I wouldn't agree. I've been saying for decades that if we view "deaconing" as the verb "to serve," and "deacon/deaconess" as the male and female terms for those who serve, many of our problems resolve themselves. Any woman qualified to be a deaconess will not care about the title but rather about serving. Any woman whose primary interest is the title is by definition disqualified, and in many cases, is actually looking to use the diaconate as a steppingstone to women in the eldership.

I think the real question is not primarily the title “deaconess,” but what the title is understood to mean and how the ministry is actually ordered.

The Church is the household of God, and Scripture orders that household through qualified male officers. Women should not be ordained to the diaconal office as though they occupy the same office as male deacons. But that does not mean women cannot be formally recognized and organized to perform substantial works of mercy under the oversight of the Church’s male officers.

There is a long history of women serving in this manner. Whatever conclusion one reaches about Phoebe in Romans 16:1, the ancient Church unquestionably employed women called deaconesses. The terminology and practice varied, but these women generally ministered to other women where modesty and propriety made male ministry difficult. They visited sick women, cared for the poor, assisted women preparing for baptism, and helped maintain order among women in worship.

The Didascalia Apostolorum describes women assisting in ministry to women while remaining within the Church’s ordered authority. The Apostolic Constitutions likewise distinguishes deaconesses from male deacons and assigns them particular forms of service. They were not female elders, preachers, or simply interchangeable members of a sexually undifferentiated board of officers. The ancient sources commonly recognize differences in authority, function, and ecclesiastical position.

The same basic distinction appears in parts of the Reformed tradition. Calvin’s Geneva employed women in organized diaconal service, particularly in caring for the sick and poor, but it did not establish a modern egalitarian diaconate. In substance, the PCA’s category of “Assistants to the Deacons” occupies much of the same territory: women performing important and recognized ministries of mercy under the authority of the Church’s male officers.

That is why I do not regard the word “deaconess” itself as the fundamental problem. The real problem is the creation of an egalitarian diaconate. Some churches appeal to the ancient use of “deaconess” or point to Geneva, but their actual practice bears little resemblance to either. They place men and women into the same office, on the same board, with interchangeable authority and function, while abandoning the household ordering that governed the historical practice they cite.

One cannot claim Geneva merely because women are called deaconesses while discarding the very ecclesiastical ordering within which those women served. That borrows the historical vocabulary while replacing its substance.

I would prefer churches simply acknowledge that they are doing something theologically and historically novel. Their practice seems driven less by Scripture or the historical diaconate than by contemporary egalitarian assumptions and a desire to appear culturally attractive. Calling the result “deaconesses” does not make it ancient, Reformed, or biblical.

The decisive question, therefore, is not what title appears in the bulletin. It is whether the Church is maintaining the household ordering established in Scripture. Are women being recognized and organized to assist the male diaconate in appropriate works of service, or has the church created one egalitarian office in which men and women are treated as interchangeable? Those are materially different arrangements, and historical appeals should not be permitted to obscure the difference.

 

[darrellmaurina]

The recent controversies with Redeemed Zoomer, his debate with Pastor Everett Henes, and his views of schism and the PC(USA) have left me wondering about these things.

I understand there is a difference between those who adhere to the 1647 WCF and the later American revision, notably that the former adherents have a different view, their churches ordered on establishmentarian principles, and the latter on ecclesial principles that differ.

I certainly don't want to stir up any discord or even extended discussion between the two views, but I desire understanding of the principles involved.

I want to understand regarding what are to be considered schismatic churches and non-schismatic from the American viewpoint. Folks that planted churches not based on previously established churches would not be considered schismatic, I would think.

My wife and I moved to Cyprus in 2002 so she could take care of ill family members. There was no Reformed church in my city (only one other in the nation — save a house church I could not get to, and after being in non-Reformed churches a while we joined forces with the Reformed pastor in the other city, who helped us plant a church in our city. In 2011 we returned to NYC, and others took over the work.

After a while I left a PCA church there that was departing from sound doctrine, such that I would no longer invite friends to hear false teaching. This false teaching began to spread to other nearby PCA churches, which led my wife and I to eventually join a 1689 church in my area, which I helped co-pastor till the lead pastor could raise up others to help in the ministry.

Then in 2021 we returned to Cyprus, and I began pastoring again. Now I am old and incapacitated and others are standing in for me to pastor.

But all this has me wondering about the legitimacy of churches in these days.

For those who are in the "American system" of church governance — not even necessarily Presbyterian or Reformed — what is and isn't schism?

Rev. Rafalsky, since you are the original poster on this thread, I want to return to your comments.

My fairly detailed post on Dutch Reformed history may, at first glance, look like "thread drift" or a digression from your point.

Actually, it is not thread drift at all. It is PRECISELY addressing your point. But I want to make the connection explicit to your post asking about Zoomer.

I have said repeatedly that if Zoomer were in Europe, his views on schism and remaining in what we here would call the "mainline churches" would not sound as strange as they sound here. What Zoomer is teaching on the sinfulness of schism is very close to what I was being taught at Calvin College and Calvin Seminary four decades ago. My professors weren't getting their views out of liberal ecumenism -- far from it. They were correctly representing an older conservative Reformed position which was once the norm for conservatives in Europe. Now it's true that they were using an older view of church union to defend liberal doctrines and a liberal ecclesiastical establishment, but that doesn't mean they were misrepresenting the older Reformed view of what a church is and what schism is.

That older view of schism is fundamentally incompatible with the American evangelical default position that the local church is the primary institution through which Christ works, and that the church is supposed to be a "gathered church" of believers who voluntarily unite themselves into a church based on a shared common view of what they believe.

Zoomer's views seem not just strange but liberal, even in Reformed circles, because most American Reformed people are not the types of people who read and post on the Puritan Board. Many of us have bought into the default American evangelical position of what a church is supposed to be, and that position is fundamentally individualistic. While in theory it elevates the local church as the primary institution through which Christ works, in actual fact it makes the decision to join or not join a church entirely a matter of individual human free will, doing what is right in his own eyes.

That makes good sense with Arminianism. It makes good sense to Baptists. (Not talking about our Reformed Baptist brothers here, I mean Baptists as a group. The Reformed Baptists have historically made the same cautionary warnings about the "gathered church" that Congregationalists did, and for the same reasons, and to their credit, place a high priority on the need for local church covenants to affirm historic Reformed confessions, not just a "statement of faith.")

It is, however, fundamentally contrary to the older Reformed view of what churches are, or at least what they are supposed to be, that churches are NOT formed by a group of people getting together to worship God the way they think is right, but rather that GOD has established the one true church to which all the godly must unite themselves.

I believe that if Zoomer were to move to the Netherlands and join one of the historic Dutch churches in the Gereformeerde Bond, and were to be taught in detail about WHY the older Reformed view taught that there should be a national Reformed church for all Dutch people as a "blood and soil" covenant with God, responding to his sovereign deliverance of God's people in a specific place from the hand of their persecutors, he would sing the old Dutch hymn "We gather together" with a very different understanding of church membership being thankfulness to God for His deliverance of His people.

What Zoomer is doing is taking an older Reformed view of mainline churches and schism without fully understanding its context in the Netherlands and in Scotland, and to a lesser extent, in early American Puritan history.

Content without context creates confusion.

I don't know that Zoomer is confused. He appears to be a smart young man and while I don't agree with him on some important fundamentals, I mean it when I say I wish him well in his reconquista project. He seems very much like me when I was his age -- both the good and bad parts.

I do think Zoomer is confusing other people even if he is himself not confused.

 

[Brandon M.]

Content without context creates confusion

This is excellent. Made me think of something I learned in hermeneutics class back in my undergraduate Bible college days: "A text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext."

 

[darrellmaurina]

This is excellent. Made me think of something I learned in hermeneutics class back in my undergraduate Bible college days: "A text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext."

Spot on.

The phrase you were taught as an undergraduate in Bible college is close to, maybe the same as, what I was also taught decades ago. It probably was subconsciously in my mind when I wrote my statement that "Content without context creates confusion."

Alliteration and rhyme, because they involve repetition, are good memory aids. Your phrase works because of the parallels between TEXT, conTEXT, preTEXT and proofTEXT. Mine works because of CONtent, CONtext, and CONfusion, with the "joining word" also having the "C" and "T" sounds of "create."

This isn't new, but actually ancient. Greek and Latin poets knew that principle. So did the medieval troubadours. So did the human and Divine author of certain psalms, and more broadly, Hebrew parallelism. When people can't read, or don't have quick access to a printed text, things like rhyme and alliteration are not only memory aids but also good ways to keep a text from changing over time. When the rhyme doesn't work, it's an indicator that an error has crept into the poem or the song.

That principle is less of something I was taught formally, and more something I picked up back in the 1980s from black inner-city pastors and only much later made the connection to its ancient origins in a pre-literate society. Those pastors decided a naive white guy serving a dying church and trying to reach their community in which our church was located needed to learn how to "preach to our people." It worked, with the credit correctly belonging to God and the prayers of His people. and certainly not to me. I learned far, far, far more from godly older Black men who were not Reformed, and who had never been to seminary or even college, but who had a deep awareness of their depravity and desperate need for God's grace, than I ever learned in homiletics class.

Years later I also learned that the call-and-response method of singing in older black churches also has Reformed roots in the precentors "lining out" the psalms, and is a great aid to memorization that we ourselves used in the days of the Reformation to teach the psalms to white people in Europe in the 1500s who couldn't read and couldn't have afforded to buy a psalter even if they could have read it. I wish I'd known that and could have shared it with some of the godly black men who took me under their wing after they figured out my "book learning" hadn't turned me into a "white liberal do-gooder," unlike the typical white guy in an inner-city church.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

@Semper Fidelis : Let me first say I think we agree on deaconesses. Wonderful! More on that at the end.

Regarding Dordt and the developments prior to the Doleantie (i.e., Kuyper) -- we agree this is complicated. There's not a straight line here of development.

The decision of the Dutch civil government to prohibit the general synod from meeting again after Dordt led to all sorts of intrusions of the civil government in church affairs that I don't think anyone today would advocate.

I would caution, however, that there is more than one way to understand Article 31. The very article you cite here -- "The Church Order of Dort itself seems pretty difficult to square with the stronger claim you're making. Article 31 provides an appeal from a minor to a major assembly and says the decision of the major assembly is settled and binding unless contrary to Scripture or the adopted church order" -- became the unofficial name ("Article 31 churches") of Klaas Schilder's followers, post-1944.

The question for the Vrijgemaakten (the "Liberated" churches) was not whether they agreed or disagreed with Article 31, but rather, TO WHOM it had to be proven that something decided by a synod was contrary to Scripture or the church order. The conservatives who followed Schilder said it had to be proven to the CONSISTORY whether something was or was not contrary to the Scripture or to the church order.

That interpretation is not sophistry, or turning the church order upside down and standing it on its head, though that is the claim the liberals made when conservatives said the synods were tolerating damnable heresy and persecuting the godly. Those words are not too strong to describe what the Dutch synods were doing by the late 1800s and early 1900s with toleration of ministers who were promoters of Buddhism, while at the same time trying to force Kuyper's churches to accept professions of faith and admission to membership in their local churches of people who had been catechized under liberal ministers and refused to be catechized by Kuyper's supporters. "After all, we are all one church, every member should be allowed to freely transfer to any church."

Not so fast, the conservatives said. LOCAL ELDERS, not the classis or synod, determine whether a person has a credible profession of faith and can be admitted to the Lord's Table and local church membership, and local elders run the affairs of the local church.

Schilder, and before him, Kuyper, were not liars or fools or manipulators of words. Their understanding of Article 31 had a very long history that can't be understood apart from knowing how the Church Order of Dordt worked in practice following the civil government stepping in and getting rid of Arminian ministers, but then not letting the general synod meet again.

Imagine what the PCA would look like today if the civil government forbade the General Assembly from meeting and every presbytery could do what it wanted with no way to appeal to the General Assembly, though the presbyteries could have regional synods for each state without a general synod on the national level, which led to each regional synod depending on what the local state governments thought was good or bad. (The Dutch had four levels of assemblies -- consistory, classis, particular synod and general synod -- and while the general synod was not allowed to meet, the particular synods continued to meet until the Napoleonic era with church reorganization under top-down civil authority telling the church how to run its affairs, and making things worse, leading to the 1834 Afscheiding.)

The results would not be good if the PCA General Assembly was not allowed to meet, and they were not good in the Dutch Reformed world in the decades following Dordt. Virtually nobody today is going to defend the way things worked among the Dutch Reformed from the late 1600s to the early 1800s. The best that can be said is that the Dutch Reformed remained a single denomination with lots of people doing lots of different things, and the influence of the Nadere Reformatie (roughly equivalent to the First Great Awakening) kept a bad situation from falling apart. When people agree on what they believe and the need for personal conversion, even if they can't use the ecclesiastical structures to promote and enforce their beliefs, a lot of problems more or less "go by the wayside." Liberal churches call likeminded liberal ministers, conservative churches of various categories call likeminded conservative ministers, and they try not to fight too much because the civil government is probably not going to do the right thing if it ends up having to "lay down the law." The Scots kind of found that out the hard way with government intervention in their own ecclesiastical turmoils that led to the creation of the Free Church, and before that, of the Covenanters and the Seceders.

Beginning in 1834, the Dutch theological conflicts boiled over and multiple groups of Dutch seceding churches wanted to re-establish the old Church Order of Dordt, but had significantly different ideas about what the words on the paper meant and how they should be applied.

Even in the tradition that led to the GKN, the Afscheiding tradition of 1834 differed somewhat on church government from the Doleantie tradition of 1886 before the merger in 1892 of most, but not all, of the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk (note the singular "Kerk") with Kuyper's followers to form the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (note the plural "kerken"). The traditions that led to the Ledeboerian churches and Kersten and the Gereformeerde Gemeenten and the Oud Gereformeerden were different in their own ways as well. All claimed to be returning to the Church Order of Dordt, but had different ideas of what it meant and how it should be applied in their new context free from state control of the church.

While the earlier differences can't be ignored, the current consensus conservative Dutch Reformed position in North America is all but unanimous that synods and classes have no power to depose ministers or churches. They do, however, have the power to set a church outside the federation. That has been done multiple times by conservative denominations in both North America and the Netherlands.

That is also the usual position of conservatives in the Netherlands, though not unanimous. Things get complicated because of the existence of the Gereformeerde Bond, the strong conservative group in the old Dutch state church which has for well over a century basically taken the position of saying, "We refuse to leave, we'll keep preaching the Reformed faith and ignore the denomination," and of the Gereformeerde Gemeenten, the Dutch "mother church" of the denomination that deposed Dr. Joel Beeke, which I think virtually everyone here in the Puritan Board would consider to be an unjust act of the NRC synod.

Again, this all gets very, very complicated.

What I think is pretty clearly established is that the modern conservative Dutch Reformed view of polity -- modern being since the mid-to-late 1800s -- is very different from the modern conservative view of Presbyterianism.

I think it's also obvious that none of us want the civil government to exercise the level of intrusion in church affairs that was happening in the years following the Synod of Dordt. Yes, the result was the Remonstrants were rebuked by the synod and removed from their church positions by the assistance of the civil government. That led to the Dutch churches becoming firmly attached to "Five Point Calvinism."

But it also led to practices in church affairs that are not clearly "Presbyterian," "Dutch Reformed," "Congregational" or "Episcopal," but sort of a Calvinized Erastianism.

That works only as long as the civil magistrate is a Calvinist and quickly goes bad when he is not.

Now on your second point: I am happy to say I think we agree on deaconesses.

There may be something in your post with which I would disagree if I dug into it in detail and looked at the implications of your points, but I can't find anything here with which I wouldn't agree. I've been saying for decades that if we view "deaconing" as the verb "to serve," and "deacon/deaconess" as the male and female terms for those who serve, many of our problems resolve themselves. Any woman qualified to be a deaconess will not care about the title but rather about serving. Any woman whose primary interest is the title is by definition disqualified, and in many cases, is actually looking to use the diaconate as a steppingstone to women in the eldership.

Darrell, I think your latest post actually narrows the claim in a way that gets us much closer.

If the claim is that a modern conservative Dutch Reformed understanding, particularly from the mid-to-late nineteenth century onward, developed in a direction significantly different from Presbyterianism, I don't have much disagreement with that. The history you are laying out concerning Kuyper, the Afscheiding, Doleantie, Schilder, and the later North American federations demonstrates exactly that.

But that is a substantially narrower claim than the one with which I originally disagreed.

Earlier you wrote that the Dutch Reformed, Congregationalists, and Reformed Baptists shared a consensus "going back all the way to the Puritan era," and that it was the Dutch Reformed norm to regard classis and synod as merely temporary assemblies, with the implication that the broader assemblies lacked the kind of continuing ecclesiastical jurisdiction Presbyterians attribute to presbyteries and synods.

I don't think the historical evidence establishes that stronger claim.

Van Mastricht alone makes it very difficult. He is not a nineteenth-century Presbyterian looking back at Dordt. He is a major seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed theologian operating squarely within that tradition, and he attributes genuine judicial authority to broader assemblies, including admonition, excommunication, and deposition in appropriate cases.

Voetius is even more interesting because some of the language you are using is certainly there. He says synodical authority is derived rather than original, limited rather than absolute, ministerial rather than magisterial, and exercised temporarily by delegates. Rutgers later emphasizes exactly those points.

But "temporary" there does not mean what I think your earlier post made it sound like it meant.

It means that a synod is not a permanent episcopal governing college possessing an inherent office over the churches. Its delegates assemble, exercise authority entrusted by the churches, and then the assembly concludes. It does not follow that its authority while assembled is merely advisory or that the churches are essentially congregational churches that happen to cooperate.

Voetius expressly speaks of classis and synod exercising real, albeit delegated, ecclesiastical authority. Bouwman's discussion of Voetius even stresses that broader assemblies exercise church government and that their power is not simply an advisory power fundamentally different from government exercised in the consistory.

And Article 36 of Dort remains sitting there:

"The classis has the same authority over the consistory as the particular synod has over the classis and the general synod over the particular synod."

Whatever qualifications we put around that authority, that is very difficult to turn into Congregationalism.

So I think the history you have provided establishes a development within the Dutch Reformed tradition, especially after the nineteenth-century conflicts over centralized ecclesiastical power. It helps explain why conservative Dutch federations today are extremely protective of consistorial authority and deeply suspicious of broader assemblies exercising original or direct disciplinary power.

That's worth recognizing.

What I don't think it establishes is the stronger historical proposition that the Dutch Reformed tradition writ large has always held what amounts to a congregational conception of the church, with classes and synods merely temporary associations lacking genuine jurisdiction.

In fact, your statement in this latest post that the "modern conservative Dutch Reformed view of polity, modern being since the mid-to-late 1800s," differs substantially from modern Presbyterianism seems to concede much of the point I was making.

That is a later development within the tradition. It should not simply be read backward through Van Mastricht, Voetius, the Synopsis, and Dort and then presented as the historic Dutch Reformed position.

And I think that distinction matters for the original discussion about schism. We shouldn't build a historical argument about what constitutes the visible Church upon a nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dutch development and then treat that development as though it represented the undifferentiated Reformed understanding going back to the seventeenth century.

 

[darrellmaurina]

@Semper Fidelis , we're getting a lot closer here.

I think we will both agree that it is unreasonable to assume that a system of government has remained unchanged for four centuries since the Synod of Dordt, or since the Westminster Assembly, let alone the earlier assemblies of the 1500s that laid the structural foundations in Scotland and in the Netherlands for what later crystallized at the Westminster Assembly and the Synod of Dordt. Neither document came out of a vacuum. While both documents were based on a high level of scholarship and political debate, it's also true that both reduced to writing longstanding practices that had existed, based on both exegesis and practical experience of what worked, and what didn't.

Things get complicated from that point, however.

With regard to the Westminster Assembly and Presbyterianism, we can trace the changes in Presbyterian polity and practice after Westminster fairly easily since we can look at the denominational forms of government, books of church order, etc. in the various American denominations. I am not aware that any American Presbyterian denomination, even the "microdenominations," use the unamended Westminster Form of Presbyterial Church Government produced by the Westminster Assembly. There may be one, but if there is, it's likely quite small and perhaps is an American branch of one of the Scottish bodies where I am told that some of the smaller Scottish Presbyterian bodies still use the Westminster Form of Presbyterial Church Government largely unamended. Our Scottish brothers can perhaps clarify that matter.

In the American context, however, even the briefest look at the OPC, PCA, and ARP forms of government, all of which seek to be part of the historic Presbyterian tradition (though there are clear differences in Northern Presbyterianism and Southern Presbyterianism which are reflected in the OPC and PCA documents), will show they are vastly more detailed than the Westminster document. To understand PCA or OPC polity requires reading hundreds of pages, compared to a short document of only a few pages. My Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland edition of the Westminster Standards, which includes the Directory for Public Worship and the Form of Presbyterial Church Government, is sitting in my church office so I can't access it quickly to see a page count, but I don't think it would be unfair to say that it is less than 10 percent of the size of the OPC and PCA documents.

Furthermore, the OPC and PCA documents are not static. They get amended and proposals to amend them are not rare or unusual, but a common occurrence considered at most if not all general assemblies. (Of course, many proposals get turned down.)

Things are very different in the Dutch Reformed world.

I'm old enough to remember when there were still Christian Reformed churches that had the Church Order printed in the back of the editions of the Blue Psalter Hymnal in their pews, since the synod and the denominational publishing house expected that the Church Order wouldn't get changed again, not just for years but for decades after the printing. The expectation was that the books in the pews would wear out before there was a need to revise the church order, at least on anything major. Obviously that stopped when the CRC started to make regular changes to its church order, but the idea that the church order is a "living document" subject to regular revision is quite new, and was regarded by conservatives at the time as a sign of denominational decline and lack of understanding of principles of Reformed church government on the part of younger pastors and of professors at Calvin Seminary.

For much of its history, while the CRC wasn't using exactly the Church Order of Dordt, it was close to the Dutch revisions of Dordt that dated back to the Afscheiding and Dolenatie traditions, and their subsequent merger. For example, there was an article on particular synods in the CRC church order. The CRC has never had a particular synod at any point in its history, but for most of the CRC's history, that article was kept in the church order but never implemented.

(Side point for Presbyterians: the CRC decision to declare the ban on women ministers in the church order "inoperative" makes more sense if it's understood that not only the CRC, but many other Dutch Reformed denominations, had "inoperative" parts of the Church Order of Dordt which for various reasons were officially in the church order but not being followed. I don't think any Dutch denomination follows the requirement of Dordt that theological books be submitted for ecclesiastical review prior to publication, but some keep that language in the church order.)

Now why is this relevant?

When a church order is a brief document that is regarded as having almost confessional standing, i.e., something handed down from the Synod of Dordt that is to be changed only for the most weighty of reasons, church polity changes in practice and in principle are not going to be seen in church order changes.

Instead, what is seen is that people debate how specific articles of the church order are to be interpreted without actually changing or clarifying the article.

The example you cited is actually a good one: Article 31.

On the face of it, it seems to clearly establish that the general synod has final authority and lays out an appeal process. I would not be surprised if we could prove that is in fact what the majority at Dordt wanted.

But it's not the way most Dutch conservatives have traditionally read the article, or implemented it.

The "settled and binding" clause which appears to establish general synod authority was interpreted by Schilder and his followers to say things were settled and binding unless proved contrary to the church order or the Word of God, and that it was the LOCAL CONSISTORY which made that decision because all assemblies above the local level are only temporary and go out of existence when they adjourn.

Schilder was not being duplicitous. His interpretation has a long pedigree.

Under conditions when the General Synod is not allowed by the government to meet, not just for years or decades but for generations, what do we expect will happen?

With no final way to resolve disputes, some classes (particularly those in the Dutch Bible Belt) will become very conservative and enforce strict standards for ministerial preparation. Others will tolerate all sorts of deviations from the confessions. Still others will take a "let the consistories do what is best in their local needs and circumstances."

Again, the "local needs and circumstances" argument, which seems strange to conservative Presbyterians, was the claim being made by women in office advocates in the CRC who said, "We're not saying everyone needs women deacons but let us have them in our specific local situation, and since deacons don't get delegated to classis, it won't affect anyone else." That was, of course, a trojan horse for women elders, but again, the argument was made that the more urban and highly educated classes had an evangelistic need to reach women who were turned off by a ban on women elders, so no classis was FORCED to allow women at the classis, but each classis was ALLOWED to declare the relevant church order article inoperative.

I remember sitting at a Concerned Presbyterians meeting about three decades ago in which a prominent conservative PCA pastor, who later left for the OPC, said something I've never forgotten: "The paper changes last."

He was right, and with that phrase, he explained to me what happens when the formal written confessions and church order of a denomination are not controlling its practices. I should have known that years earlier, but my secular legal training was still putting blinders on my eyes and I didn't understand how things work in denominations where the written rules are guidelines and guardrails with a lot of well-accepted "wiggle room," not hard-and-firm documents that are to be followed by everyone, enforced when violated, and amended when needed.

Nobody with half a working brain cell thinks the Netherlands Reformed, Heritage Reformed, Free Reformed or Canadian Reformed are liberals. I'm not making that claim at all.

But their approach to their respective church orders is not the way American Presbyterianism works.

Their Church Orders are either unamended from Dordt, or with relatively small changes that were mostly made decades or generations ago.

There's a lot of room for interpretation in a brief document, and what counts for all of those denominations (and also the Protestant Reformed and to a lesser extent the United Reformed) is that the synodical interpretations of the church order need to be consulted.

The 1944 division in the Netherlands between the synodical and the liberated churches was one example of how two groups of people can read the exact same words and understand them in very different ways.

So in summary: No, I am **NOT** saying that Kuyper's views on polity, which have been described repeatedly by historians as "crypto-congregational," are the original intent of the Synod of Dordt. There are people who make that claim, and who note the presence and influence of actual English Congregationalists at Dordt. I won't go that far.

What I think happened is that the fathers of Dordt knew their primary task was to provide a theological justification to drive Arminianism out of the Dutch churches, and to create a theological document that could be used by other Reformed denominations elsewhere whose leaders could say, "These are the men whose churches were troubled by the teaching of Jacob Arminius, they knew him and his followers well, they called an international synod to examine the problem, here is what the synod decided, and we need to follow their lead."

That is, in actual fact, how the Canons of Dordt were used, formally and confessionally in the Netherlands, and less formally elsewhere in other Reformed churches of Europe.

I think everyone agrees the Church Order of Dordt was an afterthought. Questions of church polity are not why the synod was called, but since something had to be done to establish an ecclesiastical structure to avoid the Canons being a dead letter, the Church Order of Dordt was adopted, and it largely codified pre-existing practices.

But much as the Synod of Dordt recognized differences between the infralapsarians and supralapsarians at the synod, and came to a consensus statement that avoided the "divide and conquer" strategy that the Arminians had been using to gain tolerance for their views by setting the infra and supra people against each other, the fathers at Dordt knew they had significant differences on church government. That was particularly true for the international delegates -- remember, an English bishop was seated as a member, and William Ames, then living in the Netherlands, was present as an advisor.

I do not dispute the arguments of the Reformed theologians you've been citing on polity. That thread is certainly present in Reformed history advocating for a stronger synod as a way to enforce the Canons of Dordt and to drive out Remonstrants.

I also recognize that it won't do to say, "That's just the private opinions of people, not official synodical action." The Dutch, even in secular jurisprudence, rely far more on the opinions of professors of law than we have done in the American experience. The CRC, when it was still conservative, had multiple church order commentaries circulating that had various levels of quasi-official status on how the church order should be interpreted, in line with older Dutch commentaries that were not translated into English. The most important was the Van Dellen-Monsma commentary, which used to be almost required reading for elder training in the CRC, and which is apparently available at a cost of $19 from the Protestant Reformed publishing house.

What I'm trying to say is that because the General Synod was not allowed to meet, the Dutch did not establish the level of central authority that the Scots Presbyterians succeeded in establishing.

The church order was brief. There were wide disagreements on what it meant. And no way to resolve those disagreements.

I often say, "Time will tell," and in the case of the Dutch, while it was initially the conservatives who wanted a strong central authority to drive out the Remonstrants, over the centuries, it became the conservatives advocating a view that the authority of the consistory is what counts and the broader assemblies can do no more than expel a church from the federation.

I don't disagree with you that if a vote had been taken at the Synod of Dordt, the modern conservative position on polity quite probably would not have been the majority. The Synod wanted the Remonstrants gone, quickly.

But they created a church order that left room for interpretations that were anything but a centralized top-down structure of church courts.

It's hard for me not to think that was deliberate, i.e., to keep a unity on what right doctrine looks like, but avoid detail and specifics on precisely how each local classis and regional synod would deal with the matter.

After all, everybody ALSO knew that secular politics, and the role of the civil magistrate, would have the final say on whether a minister, even if deposed, would be exiled or allowed to keep publishing and causing problems. The real decision was not in the hands of the synod, but of the civil magistrates who the synod was advising.

Not unlike the problem faced by the Westminster Assembly in getting its document adopted by Parliament, which was well aware of the role of Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army.

Let us be thankful to God that we do NOT have to deal with that level of coercion by the civil magistrate in our theological disputes.

I don't want to think about what might happen if Paula White and those like her, who have the ear of our chief civil magistrate, could have a say in our denominational affairs in America.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

I'm under the weather; hammered in fact--I've been pushing too hard to make up lost time since the radiation and I hit a break wall last week and this week have either real bad allergies or a cold that has me in bed; shortly at least. That by the way; I won't be able to contribute much--but I wanted to say that the synod where Koelman was was very tightly controled by the magistrates and they were the ones insisting and the synod or classis (I forget) carried out his removal from the ministry over preaching against holy days and liturgy.

 

[darrellmaurina]

I'm under the weather; hammered in fact--I've been pushing too hard to make up lost time since the radiation and I hit a break wall last week and this week have either real bad allergies or a cold that has me in bed; shortly at least. That by the way; I won't be able to contribute much--but I wanted to say that the synod where Koelman was was very tightly controled by the magistrates and they were the ones insisting and the synod or classis (I forget) carried out his removal from the ministry over preaching against holy days and liturgy.

Spot on regarding the civil magistracy and its role in Dutch ecclesiastical life.

Hope you get better soon. I'm having my own medical issues and part of why I've had time to write recently is that I had to miss all of my government meetings yesterday and today due to pain problems. Nothing close to your issues with cancer and radiation, though.

We need to be praying for you.