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The Eldership in the Reformed Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

T. F. Torrance
Affiliation:
37 Braid Farm Road Edinburgh EH10 6LE

Extract

The institution of the office of elder in the Reformed Church in the sixteenth century was an innovation in the traditional structure of the western Catholic Church and the canonical pattern of its ministry. There were precedents for something like this in the Waldensian and Bohemian (later Moravian) Communities in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and there still are features corresponding to it in the leadership of congregational life in Greek Orthodox Churches arising out of the overlap between the worshipping congregation and the cultural community. In the Reformed Church itself the eldership came to be more closely associated with the ministry of Word and Sacrament which has had the effect of linking together ‘clerical’ and ‘lay’ service within the corporate priesthood of the Church and in the operation of its ‘sacral courts’ at synodal, presbyteral and consistorial levels. The eldership has certainly been a source of inner cohesion and stability in the life of Reformed Churches, leaving upon them characteristics of particular significance in the ecumenical fellowship of Churches.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1984

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References

page 504 note 1 For Peter Martyr see Loci Communes, 4.1.11; and for John Calvin see the 1559 Institute, 4.3.8; 4.11.1, 6, 43; Commentaries on Rom. 12.8; 1 Cor. 12.28; and 1 Tim. 5.17.

page 504 note 2 For this appeal to patristic evidence, see Campbell, Peter Colin, The Theory of Ruling Eldership, 1866, pp. 612.Google Scholar

page 504 note 3 See especially, Gesta apud Zenophilum and Acta purgationis Felicis, in the Appendix to Milevitani, S. OptatiLIBRI VI, CSEL vol. XXI, 1893, pp. 187204.Google Scholar

page 504 note 4 See Vitringa, De Synagoga Vetere, ii.3: ‘care was taken that they should not be called presbyters, lest any one should ignorantly confound them with the elders or presbyters mentioned in Scripture, but seniores and gerontes’. And John Forbes, Instr. Hist.-Theol., 1645, 16.1.17.

page 505 note 5 Les Ordonnances Ecclesiastiques, Calvini, JohannisOpera Selecta, edited by Barth, P. & Niesel, W., vol. II, 1952, p. 369fGoogle Scholar and Reid, J. K. S., Calvin: Theological Treatises, 1954, p. 63f.Google Scholar

page 506 note 6 Steuart of Pardovan, Collections, I. viii.3.

page 506 note 7 Donaldson, G., Scottish Reformation, 1972, p. 222Google Scholar; cf. Foster, W. R., The Church Before the Covenants, p. 69Google Scholar, and Makey, W., The Church of the Covenant, pp. 125127.Google Scholar

page 506 note 8 op. cit., I. iii.3.

page 507 note 9 Second Book of Discipline, II.6 & IV. 1.

page 507 note 10 See the account of the debate given by Peter Colin Campbell, op. cit., pp. 32ff.

page 509 note 11 cf. A Manual of Church Doctrine according to the Church of Scotland, by H. J. Wotherspoon and J. M. Kirkpatrick, revised and enlarged by T. F. Torrance and Ronald Selby Wright, London, 1960, pp. 99ff.

page 510 note 12 Second Book of Discipline, I.6.5: ‘As the Pastors and Doctors should be diligent in Teiching and sawing the Seid of the Word, so the Elders should be cairful in seiking the Fruit of the same in the People’. Likewise, Alexander Henderson, op. cit., III. V.

page 510 note 13 See, for example, Gillespie, George, An Assertion of The Government of the Church of Scotland in The points of Ruling-Elders, and of the Authority of Presbyteries and Synods, Edinburgh, 1641, pp. 14ff.Google Scholar

page 510 note 14 For the theology that lies behind this diaconal/complementary form of ministry, see ‘Service in Jesus Christ’, my contribution to Service in Christ. Essays Presented to Karl Barth on his 80th Birthday, edited by McCord, James I. and Parker, T. H. L., London, 1966, pp. 116.Google Scholar

page 510 note 15 Thus A. Henderson, op. cit., I.III. ‘Ordain’ was the term intruded by G. Gillespie, op. cit., p. 15, and is found in Pardovan's Collections, new edition, 1773, I.VI1.4.

page 511 note 16 For ordination of ministers, sec Sec. Bk. of Disc., II.6; T. Smeaton, Orth. Resp., p. 107; A. Henderson, op. cit., I.1; Form of Presb. Ch.-Gov. and Ordination; cf. Rutherford, S., Due Right of Presbyteries, 1644, pp. 186fGoogle Scholar; Gillespie, G., Miscellany Questions, 1649, p. 63f.Google Scholar

page 511 note 17 cf. Rutherford, S., A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbyterie in Scotland, 1642, pp. 2ffGoogle Scholar; The Due right of Presbyteries, 1644, p. 206f; and Gillespie, G., Miscellany Questions, 1649, p. 40f.Google Scholar

page 512 note 18 For Calvin's view of the diaconate see Reid, J. K. S., ‘Diakonia in the Thought of Calvin’, Service in Christ, edit. by McCord, J. I. and Parker, T. H. L., 1960, pp. 101109.Google Scholar

page 512 note 19 It is not surprising that Steuart of Pardovan could claim that ‘the office of Deacon is included in the office of a Ruling Elder’, Collections, VI.2. cf. A Manual of Church Doctrine, 1960, pp. 80ff, 99ff.

page 513 note 20 See John Forbes, op. cit., I.XVI.1, 21–22.

page 514 note 21 The Westminster Assembly employed a similar analogy with reference to 2 Chron. xix.8–10, in support of those ‘commonly called Elders’: The Form of Church Government, ‘Other Church-Governors’.

page 514 note 22 Evidently seniores plebis in North Africa, while not cleri, could yet be included with them under ecclesiastici viri: Gesta apud Zenophilum, Appendix to the works of Optatus, op. cit., p. 189.

page 515 note 23 The Works of the Reverend and Learned John Lightfoot, D.D., revised edition, London, 1684, vol. 1, pp. 276 & 279.Google Scholar

page 515 note 24 Sanhedrin 1.6, Eng. edit, by Danby, Herbert, The Mishnah, 1933, p. 383Google Scholar; cf. also Babylonian, Talmud, Megillah, IV. 1Google Scholar; Josephus, Antiquities, IV.viii. 14, 38, and Jewish War, II.xx.5.

page 515 note 25 See Lindsay, T. M., The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries, 1903, pp. 115ffGoogle Scholar; Lockton, W., Divers Orders of Ministers, pp. 22ff.Google Scholar; and Daube, D., The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism, 1956, pp. 237f.Google Scholar

page 515 note 26 cf. Schürer, E., A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ, II. II, p. 247f.Google Scholar

page 515 note 27 The Mishnah, 4.3, edit. by H. Danby, p. 387.

page 516 note 28 LIBRI VII, 2.4, CSEL edition, p. 39; cf. 1.10, p. 12f.

page 516 note 29 See Schuerer, op. cit., II.II, pp. 55ff, 70ff, 227ff.

page 516 note 30 See Connolly, R. H., Didascalia Apostolorum, 1929Google Scholar; and F. F. Bruce, Men and Movements in the Primitive Church, ch. 3 on ‘James and the Church of Jerusalem’, pp. 86ff.

page 516 note 31 op. cit., pp. 118ff.

page 517 note 32 cf. again my essay ‘Service in Jesus Christ’, op. cit., pp. 1–9, and 13f.