What is a Presbyterian?
Back in Part 1 I posed this question and my eight possible answers:
As a Presbyterian I believe that my, and my church’s, primary responsibility is to:
- Glorify God and enjoy Him forever
- Proclaim the gospel for the salvation of human kind
- Provide shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship for the children of God
- Provide for the maintenance of divine worship
- Preserve the truth
- Promote social righteousness
- Exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the World
- Maintain an ecclesiastical government of teaching and ruling elders governing jointly in community
All of this is follow-up to a thought provoking post by Carol Howard Merritt where she had a point that we often hear the criticism of young evangelicals that “Well, they
obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian.” This continuation of my thoughts was equally motivated by listening to a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago using the term Presbyterian in a way I thought was imprecise. (I thought he should know better but I’ll ask him for clarification when I see him again in a couple of days.)
“Being Presbyterian.” What does that mean? To review the source of my eight possible answers above, #1 is confessional from the Westminster Standards, #2-7 are constitutional for the PC(USA) with about a century of tradition behind them, and #8 is polity from a variety of Presbyterian constitutions.
In addition, “Being Presbyterian” is used in a variety of settings these days from a blog by Colin Carmichael for the Presbyterian Church in Canada to a book (On Being Presbyterian) by Sean Michael Lucas. And there are a number of web sites, from churches to denominations, that have their answer to what it means to be Presbyterian.
As I mentioned above, what partly motivates me here is listening to my friend use the following three words interchangeably: Reformed, Calvinism, Presbyterian. While (most of the time) these three words are very closely related, each does have a distinctive meaning. So in this context what makes Presbyterian different? As one of the comments on Part 1 pointed out, it is #8 above, the ecclesiastical government, that makes Presbyterians uniquely Presbyterian. The other seven items could be claimed by a number of other traditions, Reformed or otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong here, there are many different aspects to being Presbyterian, otherwise there would be no need for all the books and web sites. But I suggest that the “Presbyterian distinctive,” the unique identifier, is the manner of church government. (And I should point out that since this form of government has its roots with John Calvin in Geneva, we may call it Presbyterian, but other Reformed churches use it as well.)
It is true that Reformed Theology, Calvinism, and Presbyterianism are very closely linked and historically originated in this order in a very short period of time. (With due recognition that to a certain degree Reformed theology is recovering the theological work of Augustine.) In terms of their most basic theological principle, the sovereignty of God, there is almost complete agreement. And as I have been commenting here on the Presbyterian distinctive, R. Scott Clark has re-posted his series on Who or What gets to define “Reformed.” (Part 1, Part 2, A little more…)
It is unfortunate the term “Calvinism” has come to represent a fairly narrow (five points to be exact) theological concept put together by a Dutch synod 55 years after John Calvin’s death. This loses sight of the richness of the three volume Institutes of the Christian Religion which may be the single most important development of Reformed Theology. However, I am in agreement with my trusty New Dictionary of Theology (Ferguson, Wright and Packer, editors) that to make Calvinism synonymous with Reformed Theology loses sight of the rich history of Reformed Theology before and after Calvin. As the Dictionary says:
Reformed theology is often called ‘Calvinism’ due to the towering impact of John Calvin. However, this is not an entirely satisfactory term. First, owing to the above pluriformity [the Reformation in other cities] Calvin neither could nor did impose his views on others. The autonomy of the various Reformed centers saw to that… Second, it is doubtful whether Calvin’s distinctive theology, rooted in biblical exegesis, was properly grasped by many who came later…
More to the point, what we know as Presbyterianism grew out of Calvin’s theology and church order in Geneva and is evidence of how limited a scope the term ‘Calvinism’ came to represent. We speak of Reformed Baptists and Congregationalists being Calvinistic, but they lack the connectional system typified in most Reformed and Presbyterian branches. So just having Reformed theology does not necessarily imply you are Presbyterian.
It is important to note that in some limited cases being Presbyterian does not imply that you are Reformed. While the Cumberland Presbyterian Church has a clear Presbyterian polity and theology of a covenant community, its 1984 Revision of the 1883 Confession of Faith says, concerning Saving Grace:
When persons repent of sin and in faith embrace
God’s salvation, they receive forgiveness for their sin and experience
acceptance as God’s children. [4.10]
This is one item, and somewhat out of context, but it is a taste of their confession which does not follow the five points of Calvinism.
Now, it is all well and good to rehearse the history and summary theology of Presbyterianism, but what does it mean to be Presbyterian?
My answer is grounded in action and result: The action is with God whose nature and will we try to understand through the witness of Scripture, including the example of the New Testament Church. The result is that Presbyterians live as the Body of Christ into which God has called them, organizing their ecclesiastical government in a way that allows us to discern God’s will in community and hold each other accountable as the Body of Christ.
Practically speaking, our Presbyterian distinctive is the ecclesiastical government which results from the reliance on the covenant community when we recognize that individually we are fallen, imperfect and fallible individuals. And we acknowledge that synods or councils “may err; and many have erred,” but it is better than “going it alone.” You might think of it as the worst way to run a church, except for all the other ways. 
Getting back to my original list, all eight of those ideas fall out of the belief in the sovereignty of God and the nature of the covenant community. And therefore, while they can be applied to a wide range of denominations, there is a practical tie to Presbyterianism.
So “being Presbyterian” means a lot of things. It begins with the nature of God and what God as done for us, which leads to the call upon our lives as covenant community and the Presbyterian distinctive of our polity. So when we hear “Well, they
obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian,” the imperative of the covenant community is that if God has called them into it, we accept them as they are and then be in discussion with them about what “being Presbyterian” means.
S.D.G.