Advanced Church Polity
What lies at the heart of Reformed and Presbyterian church polity is the conviction that the Bible sets forth the fundamentals foundational to the government of the church and that the church is a spiritual, not a civil or biological, institution. This course will explore these and like polity matters, drilling down deep in our church orders to ferret out the implications of the nature of the church. The church, at its heart and in its essence, is a spiritual institution, a kingdom not of this world, and as such employs spiritual means to obtain spiritual ends. The nature of church power is spiritual, the power of the keys; it is ministerial and declarative. That the church enjoys spiritual independency from all other earthly institutions, including the state, is expressed in the doctrine of the spirituality of the church (or in the affirmation of the sphere sovereignty of the church). The proper use, as well as the abuse, of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church and allied concepts, has received much attention in both the academy and the church in recent years. This course will give special attention to American slavery since the spirituality of the church has been abused to defend and excuse that institution. Though American slavery ended more than a century and a half ago, the racism that bought contributed to and developed from it remain with us, providing a continuing challenge to the church. At the same time, the contemporary politicization of all institutions threatens to compromise the church’s true spirituality. We will examine the variety of ways that the faithful have sought to relate church and state and Christianity and politics, seeking not only to assess the past but also to address the present. This course will focus then on recovering the spirituality of the church, exploring its potential contributions to the ongoing dialog of how the church is to relate to the world in which it finds itself, both in how it distinguishes itself from the world and how it gives itself to the world.
What lies at the heart of Reformed and Presbyterian church polity is the conviction that the Bible sets forth the fundamentals foundational to the government of the church and that the church is a spiritual, not a civil or biological, institution. This course will explore these and like polity matters, drilling down deep in our church orders to ferret out the implications of the nature of the church. The church, at its heart and in its essence, is a spiritual institution, a kingdom not of this world, and as such employs spiritual means to obtain spiritual ends. The nature of church power is spiritual, the power of the keys; it is ministerial and declarative. That the church enjoys spiritual independency from all other earthly institutions, including the state, is expressed in the doctrine of the spirituality of the church (or in the affirmation of the sphere sovereignty of the church). The proper use, as well as the abuse, of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church and allied concepts, has received much attention in both the academy and the church in recent years. This course will give special attention to American slavery since the spirituality of the church has been abused to defend and excuse that institution. Though American slavery ended more than a century and a half ago, the racism that bought contributed to and developed from it remain with us, providing a continuing challenge to the church. At the same time, the contemporary politicization of all institutions threatens to compromise the church’s true spirituality. We will examine the variety of ways that the faithful have sought to relate church and state and Christianity and politics, seeking not only to assess the past but also to address the present. This course will focus then on recovering the spirituality of the church, exploring its potential contributions to the ongoing dialog of how the church is to relate to the world in which it finds itself, both in how it distinguishes itself from the world and how it gives itself to the world.
What lies at the heart of Reformed and Presbyterian church polity is the conviction that the Bible sets forth the fundamentals foundational to the government of the church and that the church is a spiritual, not a civil or biological, institution. This course will explore these and like polity matters, drilling down deep in our church orders to ferret out the implications of the nature of the church. The church, at its heart and in its essence, is a spiritual institution, a kingdom not of this world, and as such employs spiritual means to obtain spiritual ends. The nature of church power is spiritual, the power of the keys; it is ministerial and declarative. That the church enjoys spiritual independency from all other earthly institutions, including the state, is expressed in the doctrine of the spirituality of the church (or in the affirmation of the sphere sovereignty of the church). The proper use, as well as the abuse, of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church and allied concepts, has received much attention in both the academy and the church in recent years. This course will give special attention to American slavery since the spirituality of the church has been abused to defend and excuse that institution. Though American slavery ended more than a century and a half ago, the racism that bought contributed to and developed from it remain with us, providing a continuing challenge to the church. At the same time, the contemporary politicization of all institutions threatens to compromise the church’s true spirituality. We will examine the variety of ways that the faithful have sought to relate church and state and Christianity and politics, seeking not only to assess the past but also to address the present. This course will focus then on recovering the spirituality of the church, exploring its potential contributions to the ongoing dialog of how the church is to relate to the world in which it finds itself, both in how it distinguishes itself from the world and how it gives itself to the world.