The New Synagogue

INTRODUCTION:

As we are considering some changes in how we elect and establish the elders of our church, the session has asked me to lay out the scriptural case for the principles we are seeking to honor and observe in this.

THE TEXT:

And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening. And when Moses’ father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even? . . . (Ex. 18:13-27).

OVERVIEW:

We find in this text the great wisdom of Jethro. Moses was fully occupied (v. 13). When Jethro saw it, he asked, “What is this?” (v. 14). Moses replied that he was the judge who applied the law to the people (vv. 15-16). Jethro replied that this was not good, and said that if Moses kept it up, he would not only wear himself out, but that he would also wear out the people (vv. 17-18). Jethro’s advice was that Moses should represent the people to God, and teach the people (vv. 19-20). In addition, he was to delegate the task of rule through judgment to men of integrity, assigned to various levels (v. 21). They would judge the routine matters and the really complex situations would be brought to Moses (v. 22). Jethro said that if God required this, then both Moses and the people would be spared (v. 23). Moses agreed (v. 24), and he appointed rulers over tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands (v. 25). They judged the people, but the hard cases came to Moses (v. 26). And Jethro departed (v. 27).

BACKGROUND:

In addressing this entire subject, we have to begin by stating openly certain assumptions that we are making. If we begin the discussion without actually sharing these assumptions, we will succeed in having a vigorous debate, but it is not likely we will get anywhere. The first assumption is that the New Testament does not invent the office of elder. When elders are established in the newly planted Christian churches (Acts 14: 23), this was not a new thing. The people of God had been governed by elders (already) for millennia. This means we are to build our ecclesiology from Old Testament foundations, and not from New Testament scratch.  For us as modern American Christians, this is a particularly important assumption for us to address. Second, we must not look for a jure divino authentication for every detail of any form of church government. God established the synagogue (and therefore the church) through the process of historical development. God required weekly worship from the Jews (Lev. 23: 3), but gave them absolutely no liturgical direction in the law on how that weekly worship was to be conducted. The Temple service was strictly defined, and the sacrifices, but not synagogue worship. And last, we need to remember the distinction between principles and methods. There is a difference between these questions, for example. “Is this form of church government representative and decentralized?” and “Where does the Bible require a two-year term for an elder?” In our form of church government, we are seeking to implement all the relevant principles, which is not the same thing as having a proof text requiring that minutes be taken at the elder meetings.

SYNAGOGUES AT THE TIME OF JESUS:

Even a cursory glance at the New Testament shows Jesus and the apostles participating fully in the worship of the synagogues as they preached the arrival of the kingdom. Further, the connection is so tight that Christian churches are even called synagogues (Jas. 2:2). We have to stop short of absolute identification, but recognize that we are dealing with more than just an analogy. Now how were these first century synagogues governed?

The lowest officer was the chazzan (Luke 4:20). The Greek word for this here is huperetes. He was frequently the schoolmaster for the covenant schools that were connected to the synagogue. Then we had the local sanhedrin, the local session of elders (zeqenim), or rulers (archontes). The chief among them was the ruler of the synagogue (archisynagogos), an officer referred to frequently in the New Testament. At the synagogue in Rome, and probably in the western Diaspora, there were a few other interesting features. One was that some rulers seem to have been chosen for a specified period, and others for life. Also there was an apparently unordained eldership called the gerousia that was likely responsible for outward affairs, men who acted sort of like modern trustees.

AN ETYMOLOGICAL QUESTION:

One of the things we have to be careful to do in this is distinguish the basic meaning of a word from the office. There are a number of words denoting age, wisdom and experience which have then become names for a particular office (the holder of which may or may not have age, wisdom or experience). Words in this category would be elder, senator, senior, and alderman. A twenty-eight year old man can be elected an alderman, and if St. Paul was a member of the national Sanhedrin (Acts 26:10), he was almost certainly under the minimum age requirement of thirty (Gal. 1:14). Most elders will generally be (and should be) older but you don’t have to be old to be an elder.

THE RULE OF ISRAEL

Presbyterian church government is simply a Christian application of this kind of decentralized and yet ascending order of representation. In the CREC, we have in the council rule over thousands, in the presbytery rule of lesser thousands, in the local session rule of hundreds. What we do not yet have, and what we are looking for in our recent proposals, is rule of fifties and tens, depending on the parish.

THE QUESTION TO ASK:

Although the circumstances are different, we need to learn to say “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15: 28). On the question of church government, Scripture assigns us a place to stand, as well as room to move. As we “move,” we must not do so in a way that is contrary to anything required by Scripture, and only move within the parameters assigned to us by Scripture. For example, our proposal to have parish elders addresses the representation of tens and fifties, but do we do this on the basis of geography, or family, or both? And when we make such decisions, are we in greater conformity with wisdom or not? Often we ask for the scriptural warrant for Jethro’s proposal (since it is not implemented yet), but require no warrant for what Moses was doing before Jethro got there. One of the things we want to do is examine all that we are doing in the light of Scripture.