When Thomas Witherow died in 1890, The Witness newspaper commented, “He wrote because he had something to communicate.”
The three publications contained in I Will Build My Church are testaments to this statement. Thomas Witherow wrote on polity, baptism, and the Sabbath because he believed that he had something to say—something that God had already said on these issues in Scripture. That is to say, Witherow did not write out of personal interest, nor did he only write on topics pertaining to his hobby horses; rather, he wrote in response to the exigencies of his moment in history. His writing arose out of events and circumstances relevant to his time in the nineteenth century and local to his ministry in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Witherow believed that he had something to say on each of these topics specifically for his time and place in history, and so he wrote to communicate.
Witherow wrote The Apostolic Church (the work from which the following passage is excerpted) as part of a denomination-wide offensive by Presbyterian clergy to reassert their principles on ecclesiology against two opponents: the dominance of Episcopacy, on the one hand; and the tendency toward Independency within Presbyterianism, on the other. For Episcopalians (e.g. Anglicans) and Independents (e.g. Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Free Evangelicals, etc.) today, Witherow presents both a challenge and an option. According to Witherow, the challenge for Episcopalians is that Prelacy falls short on every principle of biblical polity, making it an entirely erroneous system, and therefore without right to claim precedence in the apostolic church. Likewise, the challenge for Independents is that it falls short on three of the six biblical principles, making it an entirely deficient system, and therefore without right to claim precedence in the apostolic church. Witherow, however, does not stop after dismantling Episcopalian and Independent claims; he also provides a constructive alternative: Presbyterianism. The bold and confident claim of Witherow is that Presbyterian polity meets each of the six biblical principles, and therefore has a right to claim precedence in the apostolic church. Since Witherow begins with an inductive study of Scripture, establishing the principles of polity on God’s Word, Presbyterianism emerges as the biblical option.
—Jonathan Gibson
The word church in our common discourse is used in a variety of senses. Sometimes it signifies the material building erected for divine worship; sometimes it means the people usually assembling in such a building; sometimes the aggregate body of the clergy as distinguished from the laity; sometimes the collective body of professing Christians. As general use is the law of language, it does not become us to take exception to the variety of significations that are given to the term by our best writers; nor can we even say that much practical inconvenience arises from them, inasmuch as the accompanying circumstances usually determine the specific sense in which the word is to be understood. But it is never to be forgotten that, when we come to the interpretation of the Word of God, the variety of senses commonly attached to the term is altogether inadmissible, and would, if adopted, darken and corrupt the meaning of divine revelation. The word church in Scripture has always one meaning, and one only: an assembly of the people of God—a society of Christians. The Greek word ecclesia, in its primary and civil sense, means any assembly called together for any purpose (Acts 19:32); but in its appropriated and religious sense, it means a society of Christians, and is invariably translated by the word church. Examine the Scriptures from the commencement to the close, and you find that the word church never has any other meaning but that which we have stated. Let any man who feels disposed to dispute this statement, produce, if he can, any passage from the Word of God where the sense would be impaired, if the phrase society of Christians, or Christian assembly were substituted for the word church. This, we are persuaded, would be impossible.
Though the meaning of the word church is always the same in Scripture, let it be observed that its applications are various. It is applied, at the pleasure of the writer, to any society of Christians, however great, or however small. Examples of this fact will not fail to suggest themselves to all who are familiar with the Word of God. We give a few passages as specimens:
Colossians 4:15: “Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.” There the term is applied to a society of Christians so small as to be able to find accommodation in a private dwelling-house.
Acts 11:22: “The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem.” There it means a society of Christians residing in the same city, and including, as we know on excellent authority, several thousand persons.
Acts 7:38: “This is the one [Moses] who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.” Here the word signifies a society of Christians: an assembly of God’s people so large as to include a whole nation, consisting at the time of at least two million in number. The term is also applied to the people of God in the days of David, when residing in Canaan, spread over a great extent of territory, and amounting to many millions (Heb. 2:12, compared with Psalm 22:22–25).
The truth is that the word church has only one meaning, but it has a variety of applications. The term of itself never conveys any idea but a society of Christians.
1 Corinthians 12:28: “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.” Here the term means the society of Christians residing on earth; for it was among them, not among the saints in glory, that God raised up men endowed with apostolic and prophetical gifts.
Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The word is here used to signify the society of Christians in the largest sense: all for whom Christ died—the whole family of God—all saints in heaven and all believers on earth, viewed as one great company.
Let it be observed, however, that, amid all this variety of application, the word church never alters its sense. Its meaning in every occurrence is the same. However applied, it never ceases to signify a society of Christians. But whether the society that the inspired writer has in view is great or small, general or particular, is to be learned, not from the term, but from the circumstances in which the term is used. In every instance it is from the context, never from the word itself, that we are to gather whether the society of Christians, intended by the writer, is to be understood of the collective company of God’s people in heaven and earth, or only of those on the earth, in a nation, in a city, or in a private house. The practice—into which the best expositors of Scripture are occasionally betrayed—of taking up some idea conveyed by the context only, and regarding that idea as entering into the meaning of some particular word, has been shown by a late eminent critic to be the origin of those numerous significations—perplexing by their very multitude—appended almost to every word in our classical dictionaries, and the prolific source of errors in the interpretation of the Word of God. This is obviously what has led many to suppose that the word church has two meanings—signifying something different when referring to the universal body of believers, from what it does when denoting the body of believers connected with a particular locality. The truth is, that the word church has only one meaning, but it has a variety of applications. The term of itself never conveys any idea but a society of Christians; it is the context that invariably determines its general or particular application. It is manifestly inaccurate, therefore, to maintain that an idea, invariably conveyed by the context, enters into the meaning of the term; when, as all must admit, the term, apart from the context, does not suggest either a limited or universal application.
Had we occasion to speak of the several Christian congregations of a province or nation in their separate capacity, it would be quite in accordance with the scriptural idiom to designate them the churches of that region. None can forget how frequently the Apostle Paul speaks of the churches of Syria and Achaia, Galatia and Asia. So, if we required to speak of the individual congregations of Christians in Ireland—the separate Christian societies scattered over the country—we might denominate them the churches of Ireland, there being nothing in existing ecclesiastical usages to make such language either unintelligible or liable to be misunderstood. But it deserves to be noticed that, when we use such phrases as the “Established Church of Scotland,” the “Episcopal Church of America,” or the “Presbyterian Church of Ireland,” there is no departure whatever from the scriptural sense of the word. The meaning of the word in Scripture, as we have seen, invariably is a society of Christians, and this is precisely its meaning in any of the above phrases; the context, at the same time, limiting the Christians in question to those professing certain principles, and belonging to a particular country. When we employ, for instance, such a designation as the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, the word church is used precisely in the scriptural sense to denote a society of Christians, which we learn from the context professes Presbyterian principles and resides in Ireland.
The Christians of a district, or a province, or a kingdom, holding certain principles in common, if viewed as a collective community, are a church, exactly in the sense of the Scriptures.
The propriety of applying the term to signify the Christian people of a country, does not arise from the fact that they are ever assembled in one congregation, either personally or by representatives, but from the fact that the mind contemplates them as a collective body. All saints in heaven and believers on earth are styled the church, not because they are assembled either literally or figuratively, but because, in the view of the mind, they are regarded as a great society, separated from the world, and united by common principles into one great brotherhood. And so the Christians of any denomination, though composing a multitude of congregations, may, in their aggregate capacity, be properly styled a church, not because they are either figuratively or literally assembled, but because, in the view of the mind, they are regarded as a collective body, distinguished from others, and united among themselves, by the profession of a common creed.
It was once doubted whether the Scriptures contain an example of the word church being applied to the Christians of a country. The science of biblical criticism has now set that question at rest in all time coming. The true reading of Acts 9:31 is, “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.” No man, with the slightest pretentions to scholarship, can now hesitate about receiving this as the original form of the text, when it is known that the lately discovered manuscript—the Codex Sinaiticus—is in its favor, no less than A B C, these four being at once the most ancient and valuable manuscripts of the New Testament now extant. Not to speak of the evidence derivable from the ancient versions and the Fathers, the united voice of these four manuscripts is enough to settle the correct form of any text. Their testimony as to the original reading of Acts 9:31 none can question; and to that passage we confidently point as a clear instance of the word church being applied to the Christians of a country, viewed as one collective society, though in reality divided into many separate congregations.
Some writers, indeed, give a different account of the matter. They tell us that the universal community of Christians in heaven and on earth is called in Scripture the church, not because they are viewed as one great brotherhood, united by common principles, but because they “are at all times truly and properly assembled in Jesus.” It is a mere fancy to suppose that the mind ever takes such a fact into account, when employing the term in its universal application. But, if so, it does not alter the case. The Christians of a particular district, or of a province, or of a nation, may be properly designated a church for the same reasons, because they also “are at all times truly and properly assembled in Jesus.” There is no sense in which all the Christians on earth and in heaven are “assembled in Jesus,” that the Christians of any particular country are not thus assembled. If the whole is assembled, so also are the parts. Take the matter either way, the Christians of a district, or a province, or a kingdom, holding certain principles in common, if viewed as a collective community, are a church, exactly in the sense of the Scriptures. They are a society of Christians.