4. What Does Church Power Deal With?
Rev A W MacColl
We must largely pass over the details of Bannerman’s lengthy discussion of the various ways in which ecclesiastical power is administered in the life of the Church. In handling the power of doctrine, he demonstrates that it is the duty of the Church to defend the truth and that creeds and confessions are necessarily part of the Church’s witness to the truth.
In considering the Church’s power in matters of worship and ordinances he discusses the arrangements for Divine worship, and his defence of the Christian Sabbath is characterised by a fine reference to the three Sabbaths mentioned in Scripture – that of God the Father in creation, that of God the Son in redemption and that of God the Holy Spirit in the completion of the work of the new creation in eternity.
His view of the call to the ministry emphasises the possession of gifts as the evidence of being called to the work, and he downplays the importance of a subjective confirmation regarding the call to the work (p 452). This is, perhaps, in harmony with his earlier statements regarding Church membership, where, in keeping with the Lowland Free Church of his day, he does not regard it to be the duty of Church courts to seek to arrive at a conclusion regarding the state of an individual’s soul before granting admission to Church membership (p 85). His view of the Independent theory of the ministry is also notable in highlighting where the Independent view differs from the Presbyterian: Independents hold that a man is only a minister when he is actually performing the functions of the ministry in a particular congregation. The Presbyterian view is that a man is ordained to the office of the ministry in the visible Church and is a minister irrespective of whether or not he is at any particular time performing the functions of the ministry in one particular congregation.
Bannerman deals with the sacraments at considerable length and his arguments for infant baptism are masterly, in opposition to the anti-paedobaptist
1Last month’s article discussed “the power of the Church”. This is the final section of a paper given at last year’s Theological Conference. All references in the text are to James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, Banner of Truth reprint, 2015.
view. He argues for the efficacy of infant baptism in the visible Church because it brings infants into the pale of the Church and in contact with God’s covenant, and advances his own personal speculation that it may be connected with regeneration in the case of elect children regenerated in infancy.
In his treatment of the Lord’s Supper, Bannerman reminds us of four aspects of the ordinance to help us understand its significance. First of all, it is instituted by Christ; secondly, it is a sensible, outward sign of spiritual truth; thirdly, it is a seal of the federal transaction between the believer and Christ; and finally, the Supper is a means of grace. He reminds us that the manner of Christ’s presence – if not the degree – is the same in Baptism and other ordinances as in the Lord’s Supper. Christ is present to the faith of the believer. Much error and ambiguity have arisen regarding the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, not least as a result of the Romanising tendencies of the High Church party in the Church of England. But Bannerman quotes one of the Anglican Evangelicals, Dean Goode, with approval on the central point at issue, “The controversy might perhaps be almost wholly summed up in one brief question: Is the reception of the true body and blood of Christ an act of the body or of the soul, of the mouth or of faith?” (p 673).
The Roman Catholic theory of the sacrament is built upon three dreadful errors: firstly, transubstantiation; then the notion of a real mediatory priesthood and, finally, the sacrifice of “the flesh and blood of Christ” offered up by that priesthood again and again in the mass. These are the “integral parts of that monstrous system of sacerdotal usurpation by which the Church of Rome seeks to build up her spiritual tyranny” (p 675). The priestly theory lies at the very root of the difference between the Popish and Protestant systems (p 675). But does a sacrificing mediatory priesthood exist still in the Christian Church? A resounding “no” is the response thrice given:
No, a separate priesthood in the Church was only for a time under the Old Testament, to prepare the way for the coming of the Great High Priest, Christ. In Israel it was limited to Aaron’s line in order to typify that the great work of mediation was limited to Christ alone.
No, for it is inconsistent with the privileges of believers under the gospel.
No, for it is inconsistent with the one office of Christ as the Priest and Mediator of His people:
“The whole brotherhood of believers are no longer dependent upon one of themselves for the liberty or opportunity of access to the common Father and without distinction of special office; it is the freedom purchased for all, without earthly priest or earthly intercessor interposed, to go with boldness into the very holiest. The presence of an earthly and external priesthood is
no evidence of superior privilege, but the reverse. It is the mark of an imperfect and carnal dispensation” (p 680).
Thus the Roman theory imposes “daring and impious restrictions, upon the freeness of God’s grace and the liberties of His redeemed people” (p 681).
The New Testament recognises no separate priesthood other than that of the whole body of believers. Bannerman notes that the idea of priesthood is never used as a description of the Christian ministry. There is only one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. In solemn language he states, “It is the sin above others of the Church of Rome, that it has assumed to itself that name of Priest, which none in heaven or earth is worthy to bear but the Son of God, and that its ministers pretend to stand between the creature and the Creator in the exercise of His priestly office among men” (p 685). This false priesthood, Bannerman argues, “establishes for itself a spiritual dominion over the souls of its victims, greater and more absolute than any other dominion in the world” (p 686).
He concludes the third part of the treatise by giving a clear and balanced statement of the power of discipline. The key of doctrine is declarative, he notes, while the key of discipline is ministerial.
In Part Four, where the various forms of Church government are discussed, Bannerman skilfully brings forward the biblical case for Presbyterianism by contrasting it with the claims of the other systems of ecclesiastical government. He acknowledges Presbyterianism to be “the successor of the Church of the New Testament age”. He concludes with a noble description of the principles of Church government which we profess, referring to “the fashion and principles of a Church which recognises no pontiff and no hierarchy, but a college of elders equal in honour and in place, owning among themselves only the aristocracy of genius and of piety, of learning and of zeal, in which they shall have rule and leadership whom God has graced with the birthright of high gifts and the better heritage of His Spirit; which asserts an authority without a lordship over God’s heritage, and makes the office-bearers, not the slaves of the members, nor yet the members the slaves of the office-bearers in the Christian society – in a Church which unites Scriptural order with the Scriptural freedom, and where Christian liberty is sheltered beneath the shadow of Christ’s crown” (p 854).
Bannerman has an Appendix, which takes the form of an elaborate defence of the view that the Free Church would not be repudiating her foundational principles by joining with the United Presbyterian Church, who were, of course, voluntary in their outlook on Church-State relations. Although he himself believed in the Establishment principle and argues persuasively for it, he was prepared to co-exist in a Church with those who did not hold it.
Bannerman was opposed on this point by his eminent New College contemporary, Professor George Smeaton. We believe that the events of subsequent history, in both Church and nation, have fully vindicated the view of the anti-unionists, such as Smeaton, John Kennedy and James Begg. As Begg stated at the time, the repudiation of the Establishment principle would seem inevitably to lead to national atheism and, of course, this is largely what we have to contend with in our own day. It is a stark demonstration for us that, when a Church begins to accommodate unscriptural views which are antagonistic to its constitutional foundation, there often appears to be no limit to the extent to which that Church may cast off her former distinctive principles. This can happen very quickly as the Free Church between 1863 and 1893 so sadly demonstrated. We clearly learn that no Church at any time, however sound her profession may be, is exempt from the danger of declension.
Bannerman’s great treatise is a standing witness to the biblical teaching concerning Christ’s Church and will ever be valuable for that reason. It will continue to be esteemed by those who, in the words of Bannerman’s son, Professor Douglas Bannerman, “love to see a great subject worthily handled” (p xxi). The great biblical, Presbyterian principles it discusses are worthy of our continual attention and will yet be fully vindicated throughout the visible Church when the Lord brings again Zion and the watchmen see eye to eye. But it is sad and sobering to note that so many of those who were so carefully instructed by Bannerman, Smeaton, Cunningham, “Rabbi” Duncan and other eminently gifted and orthodox men, so quickly departed from the faith once delivered to the saints. May the Lord grant us grace to be faithful to the priceless heritage He has yet preserved among us!