An important distinction in our thinking about church

It seems to me that we are not often as careful when we think and speak about church as we are in other areas of Christian doctrine. Confusions abound, sometimes through a lack of careful distinctions.

Earlier this year I was in a debate with some older brothers in the faith about the threefold order (bishops, priests, and deacons). I had been arguing that we can affirm such an order as consistent with the teaching of Scripture (that is, a case can be made that this way of ordering our ministry structures doesn't conflict with any specific element of teaching of Scripture and may indeed arise out of elements of that teaching — the same, of course, could be said for a number of different ways of ordering ministry structures) while we must not suggest that the threefold order is mandated by Scripture. These brothers, who have spent decades defending the faith, often in very difficult circumstances — i.e. their faithfulness and courage are both beyond doubt —insisted I needed to say more than this. They wanted to give the threefold order the dignity of biblical teaching rather than ascribe it to an exercise of our Christian freedom consistent with the teaching of Scripture. This, to them, is the biblical order.

This desire to invest our ideas with the authority of biblical teaching is something of which we ought to be very wary. The distinction between the normative teaching of Scripture, which we are all bound to submit to as the word of God, and our faithful, edifying reflection upon the teaching of Scripture is something we should be familiar with. With Luther, my conscience is bound by the word of God, but I am not bound by any particular doctrinal system. Such systems can have both strengths and weaknesses. But they must not stand in the place of Scripture or be confused with Scripture. This is nothing novel; it is standard Protestant and evangelical teaching. However, I want to argue that this distinction needs to be taken much more seriously, especially in the area of ecclesiology.

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