Bannerman’s The Church of Christ

1. Introduction

Rev A W MacColl

These articles deal with a theological work which, more than any other, gives a comprehensive treatment of the whole field of ecclesiastical theology, from the Scottish Presbyterian position. It is James Bannerman’s treatise entitled The Church of Christ. A native of Perthshire, born in 1807, Bannerman was initially a minister in the old Established Church and played a fairly prominent part in the Evangelical Party before the Disruption, joining the Free Church at its foundation in 1843. Bannerman was widely regarded as an expert on ecclesiastical issues, Church history and Church law, and in 1849 was appointed to the chair of Apologetics and Pastoral Theology at

¹The first section of a paper delivered at this year’s Theological Conference.

New College, Edinburgh. He held this position until his death in 1868. He is recorded as having been a man of impressive bearing, with a commanding voice and a powerful intellect.

Bannerman also wrote a treatise on the doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures and helped to edit the four volumes of William Cunningham’s Works along with his New College colleague, James Buchanan. The Church of Christ, however, is his great legacy to theological literature. It comprises the course of lectures which he gave to fourth-year students in Pastoral Theology. It is arranged in four parts dealing, first of all, with the nature of the Church itself; then with the power of the Church; thirdly, with the functions which the power of the Church is involved in, and finally, with the mode of governance of the Church. As we can see therefore, the bulk of the work is devoted to an analysis of the power Christ has vested in His Church, and we might say at the outset that Bannerman’s 1000-page discussion forms a very full and comprehensive analysis indeed.

Clearly, it would be far too much to endeavour to summarise all of Bannerman’s arguments in one paper. While the treatise has its own “grave and stately eloquence”, it is nevertheless dense, though Bannerman’s writing style is not quite as involved as the writings of his New College colleague, William Cunningham. Again, like many of Cunningham’s writings, Bannerman’s work deals largely with principles rather than with detailed exegesis – that is, interpretation – of particular passages of Scripture. As Robert Candlish indicates in the Preface, the method adopted here is mostly a mapping out of the terrain for students to explore for themselves by means of further reading and reflection. But in the places where Bannerman does handle particular parts of Scripture, his exegesis – like Cunningham’s – is masterly for penetration and balance.

We will therefore confine ourselves to considering some of the leading features of the work. The main emphasis will be on the first two sections, which deal respectively with the nature of the Church and the power of the Church. We will also highlight certain features of the Romish controversy, in light of the five-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation of the Church of Christ from the impurities of Popery.

By way of introduction, Bannerman notes that the Bible does not speak merely to individuals. Rather, it speaks very largely to the society of believers, who constitute one collective body. The existence of such a body of believers “is not an accidental or voluntary union which has grown up of itself” but has been intended by God from the very beginning. “Without the existence of a Church, or of a body of believers, very much of what is contained in the Bible would be unintelligible, and without practical application”. Two

features stand out in the biblical descriptions of the Church: firstly, it is the body of Christ and, secondly, it is the earthly dwelling-place of the Spirit.²

What is meant in Scripture by the term Church? The Greek word ecclesia basically means an assembly gathered together from a multitude. It is similar to the Hebrew term translated congregation. In this case, the Church has been “called out” from the world through the gospel to the fellowship and worship of God. Five different but closely allied meanings of the term church can be gathered from Scripture:

1. It is used to describe the whole body of the faithful: for example, Ephesians 5:25: “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it”. Christ’s promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church is “language which plainly refers to the society or association of all those who had believed or should believe in Him” (p 7).

2. The name church may apply to the whole body throughout the world of those that outwardly profess the faith of Christ. “This outward society of professing Christians is frequently spoken of and delineated in Scripture under the term Church.” It is spoken of in Acts when the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved; and in Corinthians and Ephesians, where lists of office-bearers are given, these officers being the “outward provision which God has made for the order and government and edification of the Church”. The figure of the vine and the branches indicates a “two-fold union” to Christ, one with living, fruitful branches and the other “a dead or mere external union” (pp 9-11).

3. The term church may refer to a body of believers in any particular place, associated together in the worship of God. The New Testament contains abundant examples of particular gatherings of believers denominated as churches in their particular localities, even down to the smallest groups who met together in private houses.

4. The term church is given to a number of congregations associated together under a common government, for example, the Church at Jerusalem. Bannerman, following the Westminster Form of Presbyterian Church Government, holds that “no one building could have contained the many thousands of believers that crowded Jerusalem at the time, in the fullness of a Pentecostal harvest; nor is it possible, except under the influence of some misleading theory, to believe that they formed no more than one congregation. . . . When we read of the Church at Jerusalem, we find the term applied, not to a single congregation of believers, but to a plurality of congregations, connected together as one body or Church by means of a common government” (p 14).

²J Bannerman, The Church of Christ, Banner of Truth, 2015 reprint, pp 1-3. Other references to this book are given in brackets in the body of the article.

1. The body of professing believers in any place, as represented by their rulers and office-bearers, are called “the church”. In Matthew 18, there is recourse to “tell it to the Church” in cases of offence where redress has not been obtained privately or before two or three witnesses. This usage is rooted in Jewish Synagogue terminology and is thus employed “to denote the rulers or office-bearers of the Christian society” (p 15).

From the first sense of the word – the whole body of the faithful – all the others are derived. The whole body of the faithful in every generation is the fundamental idea which underlies the whole biblical view of the Church. Of course, differences have emerged as to the validity of these descriptions of the Church. On the one hand, Romanists deny the invisible Church; while on the other hand, we have the Independents who tend to deny the doctrine of the visible Church. This shows the need to have the right understanding of what Scripture actually means by the word church (p 18).

It is very important to bear in mind that, while the invisible Church is the fundamental source of the idea of the Church, yet in studying ecclesiology we must largely deal with the visible Church – whether viewed as universal, local, under a shared government or as represented by its office-bearers.

Now, the Church is a divine institution, originating with Christ, not with man. It is neither a voluntary association (the Voluntary theory) nor a creature of the state (the Erastian theory). The Church of Christ is a spiritual institution; “in its primary character it is a spiritual instrumentality for working out the spiritual good of man”. The era of the New Testament Church therefore “is emphatically that of the manifestation of the Spirit”. Bannerman goes on: “In the Divine appointment of a spiritual society, distinct from and independent of the state, God has taught before our eyes the grand and vitally important lesson of the fundamental distinction between things civil and things spiritual; and has made provision that the Christian Church, His own appointment, shall never become either the tyrant or the slave of the kingdoms of men” (pp 26-29).

With regard to Church-state relations, Bannerman outlines the view that “an alliance can be formed between the two, without sacrificing on the one side or the other their independent character or public functions and on which it may be their duty to act in concert for the promotion of certain common ends”. While it is necessarily the duty of the state to recognise the true religion, since Christ is the Head over all things to the Church, he suggests that it is not so clear if it is the duty of the state to maintain or endow a particular Church at all times (pp 103, 132-4). He points to the example of Christ before Pilate appealing to the claims of truth as the real warrant for the Church to demand recognition of its teaching and protection by the civil powers

(pp 171-2). Furthermore, Bannerman often draws heavily on the writings of George Gillespie, whom he holds in the highest esteem as an ecclesiastical theologian. He argues, as Gillespie does, for the separate identities of Church and state in Israel under the Old Testament (pp 127-132).