Gradually, I hope, denominational structures can downsize and assets and resources shift down to presbyteries and local churches. It represents, to me, a long, slow process but one that moves us a bit to closer to what Thornwell saw as a genuine plumb line for missions. We chose the other approach. We exercised great flexibility in how we prosecuted missions, but with little effective boundary-setting. Missions, as with the rest of Presbyterian polity, against its own stated wishes, eventually drifted in the direction it had always intended to avoid.

I am doing what most aging historians do, digging into the thoughts and deeds of the dead. In my case, that means reading with intensity the writings of old Presbyterians and Reformed saints. This is to be expected as I am a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). I am talking about people like Calvin, Hodge, Thornwell, Dabney, Girardeau, etc. Since the volume of work is vast, even though people such as James Henley Thornwell only lived to be 50, his writings fill four thick volumes. A fellow Presbyterian, Charles Hodge, lived much longer and wrote even more. Fortunately, I have recently discovered more recent scholarly work that sheds light on the issues and debates that characterised 19^th century American Presbyterianism. Hodge is better understood, and much has been written about him.

Thornwell is a different story. In our intolerant age of toleration, Thornwell’s advocacy of biblical slavery short-circuits any serious investigation of his many other ideas. It is a great shame. He was, of course, wrong about slavery, but not because he was a consumed racist. He was closer to being a biblical literalist. Fortunately, I was referred to a Ph.D dissertation about Thornwell’s Presbyterian debates with many antagonists, most noteworthy among them Charles Hodge, written at Princeton University by Kenneth J. Foreman in 1977.[i] It is a maddeningly meticulous and precious work that focuses most closely on Thornwell’s perspectives concerning ecclesiology and missions.

Recently, a church planting apprentice I am mentoring also dropped off a large, thick stack of journals, the Confessional Presbyterian, as a gift. In turns out volume 9 (2013) was dedicated to the life, ideas and controversies of Thornwell. One article written by a PCA pastor, scholar and old friend Dr. Nick Willborn, focused on Thornwell’s positions concerning church and missions. It came just in time for me to start synthesising my own thoughts.

I think deeply about these matters for a simple reason. I am both a teaching elder and a missionary that continues working among church planters in Muslim, Hindu and Native American contexts. I want to do things biblically and not simply because that is the way it is. How should missions be pursued? What should our motives be? What is the content? How should missions be overseen? Thornwell debated these things for most of his working life and they are worth revisiting.

Willborn, helpfully, states Thornwell’s six principles for conducting missions.[ii] He lists them as follows:

1. Jure divino Presbyterianism: This is what Charles Hodge referred to as “hyper-hyper-hyper High Church Presbyterianism. Scripture, as it lays out the structure and exact design, is the single source for developing ministry in the church. That means that the church’s only offices are elder (teaching and ruling) and deacon. Its only courts are the Session, Presbytery, Synod and General Assembly.
2. The Bible knows no offices in the church such as Administrator, Coordinator, or Secretary. Thornwell clarified what he meant. A person may be ordained as a minister, but if he does not do the work of a minister; if for example, he is a coordinator, he is not adhering to the biblical pattern. As Willborn paraphrases, the Scripture not pragmatism determine activities and structures.
3. The local church diaconate is directly connected to missions since the Bible admits to no other structure for dealing with the financial affairs of the church.
4. The missionary must be properly accountable. That starts with his examination and ordination by a presbytery. Missionaries are not third offices in the church. He is to be ordained in the church to minister the gospel, make disciples, etc. He is a missionary, therefore, because he labours overseas. He relates to the General Assembly and Synod through his local church and presbytery, not through a board or committee. This is his exclusive accountability relationship.
5. The local session and presbytery are the primary oversight for the conduct of missions for ordination to oversight.
6. The principle focus of missions in the church is spiritual. The church is a covenantal community, not a corporation, agency or committee.

Well, that was then and this is now. Presbyterian and Reformed missions are light years away from Thornwell’s descriptions. As it happened, in the main, he lost these debates to the unassailable practicality (or pragmatism) of very great and godly men such as Charles Hodge. But what of his argument? Was Thornwell wrong? Beyond that, what do we therefore do now?

In my opinion, we first start with Thornwell’s basic premises. Is he right in locating eldership, the diaconate, the session, presbytery, synod and General Assembly in the Bible? I think all Presbyterians, by definition, agree. These are the basic structures for the governance and ministry of the church. Does that fact then mean that these are the most important entities in carrying out the mission of the church? I cannot see how it could be otherwise. Is he then correct in limiting structures and ministries to explicit biblical direction? That is where he essentially lost the fight.

There was a mixture of arguments arrayed against him. Early on, these included people who thought the conduct of missions was best overseen by voluntary organisations (held by New School Presbyterianism), with board structures for administering missions. Old School Presbyterians such as Hodge and Thornwell rejected that model for missions and militated for direct church control. A central problem, however, emerged as leaders in the church disagreed over what church control meant. So, Old School Presbyterians uncritically adopted a board structure for the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA).

It may have been that the roots of the differences could be seen in Hodge and Thornwell’s different understandings of the church. Hodge’s basic definition of the church began with the church being “an organised society” sharing the same form of government and tribunal.[iii] Thornwell, on the other hand, began his definition, “The church of Jesus Christ is a spiritual body, to which have been given the ministry, oracles and ordinances of God…”[iv] One gets the unmistakable impression that the church for Hodge consisted of basic definitions and principles, allowing for the exercise of flexibility and wisdom. Thornwell, on the other hand, fundamentally understood the church as a divine revelation, explicitly stated.

The differences ran deeper and the consequences were profound. Thornwell argued for the existence of a General Assembly that served as an executive authority, a court, for missions, but one that left the work of missions to the presbyteries and local churches. In other words, missions was the principle work of the churches and presbyteries themselves.

When the slavery and States Rights issues forced the division of American Presbyterians into a Northern and Southern church, a criticism that Thornwell levied against the Northern, denominational, board-dominated structure was that the overall General Assembly became dominated by people filling seminary and committee positions rather than local church teaching and ruling elders. Hodge himself never held a position outside of the academy.[v] That meant that the discourse and administration of the church shifted upwards. Thornwell was a grassroots Presbyterian, but the drift in the North flowed away and uphill.

The Southern church, the Presbyterian Church of the United States (PCUS) eventually drifted with it too, though the drift was slower as the church clung longer to Thornwell’s legacy.[vi] The broadening of the PCA beyond its origins in the PCUS has accelerated its drift toward a board-like dominated structure, organised, administered and overseen from the top.

In my opinion, Thornwell was essentially right. His biblical instinct inherently embraced explicit biblical structures and relationships. In one sense, he lost the war because it was already too late. Reformed evangelicalism had already embraced board structures and top-down administration. He argued for the right and wrong of ideas but these had little traction for a church that had already invested deeply in a missionary apparatus that was far too difficult to dismantle. This may have also been aided by the essentially pragmatic nature of church in America that harmonised well with its flexibility.

Why disrupt a rapidly growing missional engine? Numbers and size have always dominated American ministry. Theological debate is a valuable thing, but it should not impede the work. Pragmatism, however, had its consequences. As Presbyterian executive structures and schools (with the long exception of Princeton Theological Seminary) dominated, they also drifted with the intellectual tide into modernism and theological liberalism. Consequently, efficiency, the hallmark of American Presbyterian, sped its departure from the Bible.

When conservative Presbyterians realized that a new denomination was going to be necessary to counter the dominance of liberalism administered through top-down driven, central General Assembly committees, it embraced once again some of Thornwell’s instincts. It realized that a grassroots movement was necessary. It also realised that the heart of the growing dominance of liberalism in the PCUS came through its missionary work and structure. Liberal ideas flowed down from missionaries into the church.[vii] So, when in 1973 the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) formed, it had a profound suspicion of top-down executive rule. It tried to decentralize and focus on having a strong parity of teaching and ruling elders.

Within a few decades, however, expansion brought with it the drive for greater efficiency. It was also, from the start, not simply a conservative reimagining of American Presbyterianism. It was also very much a post-war neo-evangelical denomination that resembled other dominant neo-evangelical organisations. Chief among these were parachurch missions and evangelistic organisations. Voluntary societies, in other words, were back. Early PCA missions efforts resembled these but eventually became what was thought more “properly” Presbyterian. That, however, meant that they more and more began to look just like the missions structures of the PCUS that they had left. Martin Marty, in describing modern American religion as “The irony of it all,” was not far wrong.

When we consider missions in the PCA today, we see the thorough repudiation of Thornwell’s ideals. We have a dominant mission agency headed by a coordinator. It answers to a standing committee in the General Assembly, but oversight is weak and perfunctory. Missionaries do not answer directly to local churches and presbyteries. Local churches and presbyteries do not drive missionaries. They frequently support missions through giving without having any real relationship to the missionaries they support. Churches are the bodies given the responsibility of the ministry of Word and Sacrament. They are the repositories and guardians of doctrine, but denominational missionaries and others are not monitored by churches or presbyteries. Occasional reports are filed, but none constitute any effective oversight.

What should we think of this? Surely, we can do better. There is a vast and possibly growing gap between missions and the church, between missions and the Bible. I suggest that we bring back Thornwell into focus. It may be right that throwing out what we have to fully align with his sense of missions is impossible. It may also be unnecessary. Limiting structures to those explicitly stated in the Bible is a debatable point. It was and Thornwell lost to those who thought other structures and lines of administration and authority were allowable biblically.

I believe that we also have another alternative. There is a vast divide between what is commanded and what may be allowed. I know people may disagree, but I think we have a measure of latitude in applying wisdom within missions without denying the essential truths that Thornwell espoused. Essential, I believe, is the operative word.  What would that look like? Well, to start with, it would mean that the visible church and its government, meaning the courts of the church in Presbyterian polity, would exercise direct oversight of the missions of the denomination, of its operations, its embraced and expressed doctrines, its money and its pastoral care. The direction of missions would, therefore, be driven by presbyteries and churches, not a front office.

One might argue that a top-down structure is more efficient. That may or may not be. It is true now because that is how we chose to structure ourselves. It is not inherently better. A greater problem is that churches and presbyteries are not ready to take on that responsibility. Denominational finances are not structured to support that kind of decentralisation. Administrative resources are all clustered centrally precluding adequate decentralised administration. Even more importantly, local churches and presbyteries rarely know that it is their responsibility. It is also, frankly, easier to let someone else be responsible for missions. The problem that will continue to dog us is that this is wrong. Churches and presbyteries are responsible, whether they have been exercising that responsibility or not. That suggests one of two paths. Either we learn how to take steps that align us better with the deep structures and ministries of the Bible in the denomination we have, or we start all over again and try and get it right. Speaking historically, Presbyterian churches do not have a stellar track record in that regard.

John Frame’s “Machen’s Warrior Children” offers a few needed cautions and perspectives.[viii] Frame recounts the perpetuation of division within American Reformed denominations within the 20^th century. He begins his survey with Gresham Machen’s leaving the PCUSA in 1936 after the denomination suspended him from ministry for establishing the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. He created the board so that trustworthy, Reformed, biblically-faithful missionaries could be sent out into the field. He felt compelled to do so due to the control of missions in the larger denomination by liberals. He, shortly after his suspension, also founded the PCA that later renamed itself the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). He died of pneumonia the following year, 1937, and, per Frame, disappointed at further signs of division in the new body.

Frame catalogued many different flashpoints within conservative Reformed denominations. A few bear on current issues such as the controversy regarding how to deal with human sexuality, the nature of church unity and the role of tradition. These all intertwine in our decision making. He notes that subscription has been an ongoing area of disagreement with Presbyterians such as Morton Smith espousing a strict subscription to the Westminster Standards and William S Barker arguing for greater flexibility.

In Frame’s view, that debate focused too closely in history and not enough on theology. His observations concerning tradition are related. In his view, the main issue is sola scriptura not traditional practice. There is, in his view, a greater need for “an explicitly exegetical model of theology.” The ramifications for this are rather obvious. More care must be taken in constituting test of orthodoxy. The care comes along with a greater sense of humility and self-criticism. It is important, for him, not to declare something new a heresy too soon. Likewise, it is advisable not to rapidly form partisan groups.

It seems to me that much of what Frame said deserves careful and, perhaps, critical consideration. Most of the conservative Reformed people I know that are familiar with the history, applaud Machen’s initiative in forming a mission board that allowed the gospel to go out into the world, unencumbered by liberal theological roadblocks. That seems to clash, at least on the surface of it, with Thornwell’s strict subscription and Jure divino Presbyterianism. Therefore, are we prohibited from all innovation or response that, rather than moving us away from biblical fidelity, moves us closer to God’s will for us?

What of Frame’s apparent tension between tradition and exegesis? The answer to that is more complex than Frame described. When one exegetes a text to know how to serve God, it is not a matter of one man or woman alone with a text which then is articulated into theology. People also read theologically. We learn ways in which we read the Bible. The great tradition of the early church and the Reformation is that we read the Bible in the church and within a shared context of hermeneutics. We learn how to read in the body of Christ. It seems, therefore, better not to pose tradition and exegesis as antagonists.

Of course, Dr. Frame may not have intended this in that way. Nevertheless, it seems wise to acknowledge that tradition is fundamentally necessary for reading well. None of the Reformers would have placed the two as equal sources of authority, nor would they conflate the two. What they did was read the authoritative word in the church in respectful conversation with their ancestors in the faith.

Frame also, given our current debate concerning human sexuality, underscored that back in 2003 when he wrote this, that some things were beyond the pale. These were not negotiable within a biblical faithful church. He included in these “no go” areas, biblical standards of sexual fidelity and chastity, the ordination of homosexuals, etc. That implies two things to me. First, given our own circumstances, the issues are worth contending over. I read the opinions of some that there is nothing happening now worth fighting over, let alone dividing. On that point, I heartily disagree. Second, however, it seems to me that the ways in which we define things or even describe them, are the key to determining whether a line has been crossed.

That brings me to a proposal that gets back to Thornwell. I think that Thornwell was, on balance, correct. The Bible does more than provide simple principles. On the other hand, I am not sure that there is no room for a degree of wisdom that may be exercised in innovating. What I am trying to get at is the idea that if things are not entirely set in concrete, they should still play a determinative role in how much and what kind of innovation we admit. Thornwell was right in focusing on local churches and presbyteries as exercising field leadership over missions. There is not scriptural warrant or wisdom for board-like mission organizations for exercising authority over missionaries and missions. Must they be abolished.

I have two answers. In the first place, I agree with Hodge in saying that this is impractical. Second, I am not sure it is necessary. What matters more, in my opinion, is that every structure should be directly accountable to the larger church, and not through the ineffective committee structures we have now. Second, there is a great deal that we can do now to educate and empower local churches and presbyteries as to their heavy responsibility toward missions. Most of the churches I have known over the last 20+ years have no idea how central their roles are. The status quo gets in the way. There are only three paths from which to choose. You can try and start a revolution in the denomination, maybe complete with pitchforks. You can walk away and start the church all over again in hopes that you get it right this time. Or, you can start by educating the church as to what biblical missions should be. Doing so will necessarily lead to a church seeing itself in the Bible itself.

I am persuaded that the right move at this point is that third alternative. We start by dealing with one main issue, missions, and consider ways that boost the significance of the local church. In my case, one way in which I do this is by encouraging partnerships in church planting, between American congregations and international church plants. The ministry itself is driven by the international leadership. The partnership is facilitated by local church leadership. No one in the partnership has any church-like authority. It is simply a way in which churches learn to work together min missions. Missionaries may participate in the partnership but church leadership remains at its centre. The churches themselves are drawn together by more than shared ministry. They share similar Reformed convictions. All the men in the partnerships are directly answerable to their sessions and presbyteries.

Partnerships that are constituted in this way, do one more thing. We do live in a world that is or was dominated by denominations. In the early days of Protestant missions, denominations, along with voluntary associations, were dynamic instruments of missions expansion. That was how the word got out. They moved out into vast areas of Asia and Africa that were fundamentally unchurched. That is no longer the case. Those early efforts bore fruit. Today, non-Western churches vastly outnumber Western ones and they are often more aggressive in church planting and largely more conservatives than missionaries that still come to them. This requires a different response that denominationally driven work. Rather, it suggests to me, that local churches from a denomination may find it easier and more productive to partner with national counterparts than it is for denominations to attempt navigating across their constitutional boundaries. In this case, small scale is better.

Gradually, I hope, denominational structures can downsize and assets and resources shift down to presbyteries and local churches. It represents, to me, a long, slow process but one that moves us a bit to closer to what Thornwell saw as a genuine plumb line for missions. We chose the other approach. We exercised great flexibility in how we prosecuted missions, but with little effective boundary-setting. Missions, as with the rest of Presbyterian polity, against its own stated wishes, eventually drifted in the direction it had always intended to avoid.

Sexuality is on the table now and it certainly represents a crisis. I suggest, however, that rediscovering the thoughts of someone such as James Henley Thornwell and using him as a means or a lighthouse will steer us away from danger and allow us to follow a safe course rather than as a final destination might serve us all well.

Bill Nikides is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as Director of International Church-Church Partnerships with Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship (REF; formerly Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship).

[i] Kenneth J. Foreman, Jr., “The Debate on the Administration of Missions Led By James Henley Thornwell in the Presbyterian Church, 1839-1861,” Ph.D Dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1977.

[ii] C.N. Willborn, “James Henley Thornwell: An American Theologian.” The Confessional Presbyterian. 9 (2013) 5-20.

[iii] E. Brooks Holified, “Hodge, the Seminary, and the American Theological Context.” Charles Hodge Revisited. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002, 119.

[iv] Morton H. Smith, Studies in Southern Presbyterian Theology. Phillipsburg: P&R, 1962, 176 citing Collected Writings IV, 473.

[v] E. Brooks Holified, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War. New Haven: Yale University, 2003, 371.

[vi] Morton H. Smith, 174.

[vii] See David A. Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America. Princeton: Princeton University, 2017.

[viii] John M. Frame, “Machen’s Warrior Children.” Alister E. McGrath & Evangelical Theology. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003.