Unauthorized Ecclesiastical Systems, by W. E. Vine

 the following is an excerpt from chapter 1 of W.E. Vine's excellent book THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES. It is available freely on the Internet, and also in printed form from various sources.

Unauthorized Systems

Events at Jerusalem, therefore, provide no support for the establishment of a controlling centre for the organization of churches. One will search in vain in the Acts and the Epistles for even an intimation of the establishment of such an institution.

Apart from such matters as the supply, by churches in a district, of the needs of poor saints in another region, the only bond binding churches together was spiritual, that of a common life in Christ and the indwelling of the same Holy Spirit. There was no such thing as external unity by way of federation, affiliation or amalgamation, either of churches in any given locality or of all the churches together. Apostolic testimony is, indeed, against the organization of churches into an ecclesiastical system. There is no such phrase in Scripture as "The Church on earth," nor is there anything in the Scriptures to justify such an idea (see p. 57). The only Head of the Church is Christ, and at His hands provision is made for the spiritual needs of each local church. The Church, consisting of all who are joined to Him, the Head, is "visible" as an entity to God alone. In contrast to it there stand out to the eyes of the world ecclesiastical systems, but these include the real and the false. As systems, they are the product of departure from the design of the Divine Founder and Builder and of human interference with the operation of the Spirit of God.

The view has been promulgated that certain decrees of church councils, and potentates, in centuries subsequent to apostolic times, were either developments from apostolic teachings or such additions as were necessary to meet the circumstances of later times. That the accretions were developments is contrary to facts, and that additions were designed or needful is contradictory to the testimony of Christ and His Apostles.

The following pages show something of the departure from the instructions and commandments laid down for the churches by the Lord and His Apostles, and the radical difference between what was established in apostate Christendom and the doctrines of the faith "once for all delivered to the saints." The rise of ecclesiastical systems produced a state of things in the churches which, so far from being developments of the faith, were utterly opposed to it. Such a departure was, after all, the fulfillment of what Christ and His Apostles had foretold, that false teachers would arise, speaking perverse things.

In these later times the Spirit of God has been operating in the hearts of thousands of His people, causing them to return to apostolic teaching.

 

W. E. Vine, M.A.

 (1873-1949)