Biblical Eldership Church Leadership

Notes

5. John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), father of modern dispensational theol ogy and dominant leader in the exclusive branch of the Brethren Move ment, taught that churches or missionaries today cannot lawfully appoint elders because there is no one with God-given authority to officially ap point elders. Darby defends this teaching with two arguments: (1) He interprets the fact that the only New Testament examples of elder appointment are by apostles or their delegates to mean that only apostles can appoint elders (see “Reply to Two Fresh Letters from Count De Gasparin,” in The Collected Writings ofJ.N. Darby, ed. William Kelly [repr. ed., Sunbury: Believers Bookshelf, n.d.], 42339-373). Apostolic ap pointment is thus a requirement for New Testament elders. Since there are no living apostles or delegates today, there can be no office of elder ship. (2) Darby also argues that the churches in Paul’s day were beginning to fall into spiritual ruin, thus God, in judgment, did not allow the office of eldership or any external structure of the church to continue. Elders, therefore, were limited to the first century churches, and are irrecover ably lost to churches today (see R.A. Huebner, The Ruin of the Church, Eldership, and Ministry ofthe Word and Gift [Morganvillez Present Truth, n.d.], pp. 33-35). It is true that the only New Testament examples of elder appointment are by Paul or one of his delegates (Acts 14:23; Titus 125), but to con clude from these examples, as Darby does, that the biblical writers in tended to teach that only apostles can or did appoint elders is an interpre tation of the historical facts that cannot be substantiated by the facts them selves or by the rest of the New Testament’s teaching on eldership. Darby’s conclusion goes beyond the expressed teaching of Scripture. He is argu ing from silence. The New Testament doesn’t say that only apostles ap pointed elders. So it is important to be able to differentiate between what the Bible states historically and what Darby infers doctrinally from these historical examples and then teaches as biblical principle. To illustrate, one can take the same historical facts that Darby has taken and propose a completely different theory. One can say that Paul’s example of appointing elders is meant to be a biblical model for all church planters, missionaries and their helpers, elders, or evangelists. It can also be asserted that Paul’s authority to appoint elders rested not only on the fact that he was an apostle but that he was, at least in the case of the Galatian churches, the original church planter, evangelist, spiritual fa ther, and proven servant of God (Acts 14:23). Since the historical ex amples Darby uses don’t expressly confirm or negate his theory that only apostles have the authority to appoint elders, we must test his theory by the whole of Scripture’s teaching on eldership.

319