Discussions in Church Polity

Discussions in Church Polity is a collection of essays by Charles Hodge, the Princeton Seminary theologian, gathered and published in 1878, the year of his death. The volume was selected from the essays Hodge had contributed over several decades to the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, and it was edited by his son, A. A. Hodge. The pieces were written in response to the live controversies of nineteenth-century American Presbyterianism: the question of how the church should govern itself, who holds authority within it, and how a denomination should conduct itself when its members divide over doctrine and practice.

The essays work out a consistent view of the church from Scripture and from the Reformed tradition. Hodge argues that Christ is the church's only head, and that its government must therefore rest on the warrant of the New Testament rather than on convenience or custom. He defends the Presbyterian system of ruling and teaching elders, with authority exercised through graded courts, against both prelacy on one side and congregational independence on the other. He treats questions that were then pressing in the General Assembly: the powers of church courts, the nature of ordination, the place of boards and voluntary societies in the church's missionary work, and the limits of what a church may require of its members. Throughout, he holds that the church is a visible society with real government, not merely an invisible fellowship of believers, and that its rulers are bound by the Word they serve. His method is that of the careful controversialist: he states the opposing view fairly, appeals to Scripture and to the standards of the Presbyterian church, and reasons toward a conclusion.

The book remains a reference point for anyone studying how nineteenth-century Presbyterians understood church authority, and it preserves the arguments of the Old School side in the debates that shaped American Presbyterian identity. Its questions have not gone away. Churches still disagree about who may govern, how far a denomination can bind conscience, and what separates faithful order from mere institutional habit.

Who should read this: pastors, elders, and students of Presbyterian and Reformed church government who want the reasoning of one of its most influential defenders in his own words. It will also serve historians of American Protestantism. It is not a devotional book and not an introduction to Hodge's theology; readers seeking his doctrine of salvation or his piety should begin with his Systematic Theology or his commentaries, and anyone unmoved by questions of ecclesiastical order will find these essays dry.