Semantical Analysis of the word “Church”
When Christ directs grieved church members to tell their case “to the Church” (Matthew 18:17-18), is He referring to the church officers (elders) or to the whole multitude of believers in that congregation?
In the original biblical languages, the words קָהָל and ἐκκλησία respectively mean “church”, “congregation,” or “assembly.” קָהָל also refers at times to assemblies and gatherings of nations and people in a civil context (Genesis 28:3; 35:11; Jeremiah 50:9). Some NT examples include Acts 19:38-39 and Luke 22:66 (synedrion).
What it is important for us here to note is that there are instances in which קָהָל denotes a sitting body of judges and/or elders (1 Chronicles 13:2-4; 29:1, compare with 28:1; 2 Chronicles 1:2-3).
For Hebrew, the term עֵדָה is also used which can refer to a congregational multitude of people (Exodus 12:6, 19; 16:1-2; Leviticus 8:4-5, plus many more examples) or a council of judges and elders (Psalm 82:1).
Was There a Presbytery at Jerusalem?
It is highly probable that there was more than one congregation of believers in Jerusalem due to the large numbers we read of that were converted there (Acts 2:41, 46; 4:4; 5:14; 21:20). All these singular congregations are referred to collectively as one church (Acts 8:1).
The dispersion (Acts 8:1) doesn’t prove such a scattering, such that there might not remain more than one congregation in Jerusalem. See Acts 9:31; 12:24; 21:20, for the increase of the church even in the midst of the persecution. There was still one church (Acts 12:5).
We also read of a plurality of elders in Jerusalem, over the multiplicity of congregations collectively designated as “one church”:
“27 Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). 29 So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. 30 And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.” (Acts 11:27-30)
“When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.” (Acts 15:4)
“When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.” (Acts 21:17-18)
Furthermore, the apostles were elders (1 Peter 5:1). The acts they exercised towards many congregations they did as elders in relation to them. This gives strong precedent for presbyterian government.
Objection: “In the beginnings of that church, their meetings are wet out to us by two adjuncts. (1) That they met ὁμοθυμαδὸν, with one accord in the same duty of prayer (Acts 1:14). And (2) ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ together in one and the same company (verse 15).” (Chris Coldwell, The Grand Debate: The Westminster Assembly’s Deliberations on Presbyterian Government [Naphtali Press & Reformation Heritage Books, 2024], pg. 74). —{This is in Sessions 161-162 of The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly 1643-1652, ed. Chad Van Dixhoorn [Oxford University Press, 2012], 2:540-552.}
Response: The term ὁμοθυμαδὸν in no way teaches that all of the believers were meeting in one place, but rather that they were all of one spirit, as the word is used elsewhere (Acts 15:25; 18:12; 19:12; Rom. 15:6).
The meeting of the disciplines in Acts 1 was not a gathering for the public worship of God as such, but for the electing of the new apostle to replace Judas Iscariot.
Objection: In Acts 6:2, we read that the apostles called together the “whole multitude” of disciples for the choosing and ordaining of deacons.
Response: “We do deny that the mentioning of the multitude and the whole multitude proved that all and every one of them that believed in Jerusalem were at that meeting. For it may signify either a great multitude—as Luke 8:37, ‘the whole multitude of the Gadarens besought him to depart from them,’ and Acts 25:24, Festus says, ‘all the multitude had dealt with’ him about Paul—not every individual Gadaren or Jew, but a great number of them, or the generality, which the Greeks use to express by πανδημεί.” (The Grand Debate, pg. 118).
Objection: “For the mention of the five thousand (Acts 4:4), this cannot be evinced from that place that the five thousand were a new number added to the three thousand….But that this number of five thousand should refer to them that believed, is not certain; seeing both the Greek will bear it and favor it, as well to be meant of the number that heard, as of the men that believed; and of the two, that former is the more probable, that he should say of the men that heard they were five thousand, and that of them that heard many believed, this sounds well, and is no way forced.” (The Grand Debate, pg. 76)
Response: 1) Augustine understands the text as importing that the 5,000 here mentioned are a new number added to the previous 3,000 (Tractate 31 on the Gospel of John). 2) The syntax of the Greek indicates that the “many [πολλοὶ δὲ] who heard the Word” are the subject of the verb ἐπίστευσαν (“believed”). 3) We read of other multitudes being converted (Acts 5:14; 6:1, 7) so that the evidence overwhelmingly works against Congregationalism.
Objection: The large numbers of converts were not members who remained in fixed churches at Jerusalem. “Those three thousand who were converted, were not settled dwellers at Jerusalem, but strangers, sojourners of the ten tribes, which were dispersed in all those countries mentioned in [Acts] 2:9, who came up to the feast of Pentecost, as the manner of the Jews was (Acts 21:20, 27-28). Jews that lived in Asia came to the feast of Pentecost as Paul also did, compared with Acts 20:16.” (Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 2:541) Furthermore, Acts 2:14 distinguishes between “Jews” and “dwellers at Jerusalem.”
Response: Acts 2:14 works against this argument, since those non-citizens who dwelled at Jerusalem very well may have been members of the church there. That many in Jerusalem were from other countries (Acts 2:9) doesn’t prove that they were not fixed in their dwellings in the city for the feasts as well as the expectation of the Messiah (Luke 19:11). This is further evident since the same chapter tells us that the multitude of believers Peter preached to were “added to their number” (Acts 2:47). If they were not members of the church of Jerusalem, why were they involved in the local fixed fellowship (vv. 42, 44-46) and the acts pertaining thereunto? Lastly, the dispersion of Acts 8:1 says that those scattered throughout Judea and Samaria were from the church of Jerusalem.
Objection: The diversity of languages amongst the dispersed Jews who came to Jerusalem (Acts 2:8-11) does not prove that there was more than one fixed congregation there. We may infer that most Jews were generally well-learned in the Hebrew language. In Acts 20-22, the Jews from throughout the world came to the feast of Pentecost. Concerning the Jews from Asia, we read that “He [Paul] made a speech to them, and they heard him speak the Hebrew tongue, they kept silent and heard him patiently.” (Session 164, in Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 2:557-563).
Response: Paul was speaking only to the Jews who had brought accusations against him. To infer from this, that the general dispersion of Jews in Asia and other nations had a comprehensive understanding of the Hebrew language is to try and prove more than what may be proven from Scripture.
Objection: We do not read of an elders at the church of Jerusalem, until after the dispersion of Acts 8:1. Therefore, the strength of the Presbyterian argument depends upon there being many congregations in Jerusalem after the dispersion.
Response: The order of existence does not always follow the order of the history, i.e. just because Luke only mentions elders in Jerusalem after the dispersion does not mean that the apostles neglected to ordain any there until after the dispersion.
Objection: “Although the apostles are called elders (1 Peter 5:1; 2 John 1), yet they are so called virtually, not formally, and but because apostleship contains all offices in it; so they are elders but upon this ground, that they are apostles…And surely those offices which Christ distinguishes (Ephesians 4), he gave some apostles, some pastors and teachers, the same person is not formally both, though virtually he may be. All that they did in that church of Jerusalem they are said to act as apostles….They exercised it together, because it fell out that they were together; and it was fit none of them should be excluded. But it depended not upon this union of all in a body, as acts of elders in a presbytery do.” (The Grand Debate, pgs. 84-85)
Response: [a]. “But if by formally they mean, they were not made elders before or after they were made apostles, but that being apostles, they might and did act as elders (which they disprove not) that is sufficient for our argument.” (The Grand Debate, pg. 147). [b]. Distinct offices may exist formally in the same person, as Melchizedek was both king and priest. [c]. As for the reason that “all the acts done by the apostles in Jerusalem were done insofar as they were apostles,” — While Scripture says that these acts were done by apostles, it nowhere says that they were done by apostles qua erant apostoli exclusive (insofar as they were apostles exclusively). If that were the case, it would follow that nobody could these acts (such as ordaining other elders and deacons, and public preaching in Jerusalem) but apostles alone, which neither Congregationalists nor Presbyterians would ever concede. [d]. In the case of Acts 6, the apostles acted partly as apostles and partly as elders. They acted as apostles in their instituting of a new office of the diaconate, which did not previously exist in the newly established church. They acted as elders in ordaining men to that office.
Objection: The apostles’ power over many congregations was founded upon their power over all the churches (which is extraordinary), and so cannot be a pattern for the power of elders over many.
Response: “The apostles’ power over many congregations as one church, to govern them all as one church jointly, and in common, was not founded upon their power over all churches, but upon the union of those congregations into one church, which union lays a foundation for the power of elders governing many congregations, and the apostles’ practice in governing many congregations jointly as one church, is the pattern and precedent of that government, even as our brethren would make the apostles’ joint governing one congregation, to be the pattern of many ministers governing one congregation.” (The Grand Debate, pg. 145)
Objection: Though Acts 11:30 does speak of a general group of elders in Jerusalem, yet we read of no presbyterial acts of government or jurisdiction done by them. Rather, the elders simply received alms given for the aid of the Christians in Judea. Furthermore, verse 29 indicates that the whole text is speaking not of the elders of Jerusalem, but rather those of Judea.
Response: [a] The elders of Judea are not at all spoken of in Acts 11, but rather the distressed brothers there (due to the famine prophesied by Agabus). [b] Jerusalem is included in the ancient province of Judea. The messengers of churches abroad are always directed to the elders of Jerusalem when going to Judea. Thus, the prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch (Acts 11:22), among whom Agabus warned of the famine.
Was There a Presbytery at Ephesus?
The Westminster divines argued for a plurality of congregations at Ephesus on the basis that Paul spent 3 years preaching and ministering there (Acts 20:31). Similarly, we find a large multitude of believers in Ephesus (Acts 19:17-20). Hence the price of the books burned was as great as 50,000 pieces of silver (Acts 19:19).
We read of a body of elders that existed over the collective church in that city:
“Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church (τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους τῆς ἐκκλησίας) to come to him.” (Acts 20:17, cf. verse 28)
In Paul’s ministry in Ephesus, we read of other workers who accompanied him and assisted him in his work there, such as Gaius and Aristarchus (Acts 19:29; 20:4), Timothy and Erastus (Acts 19:22). Is it to be considered probable that such a company of men were all employed in the business of only one congregation in Ephesus?
When Christ writes to the seven churches of Asia, Ephesus is one of the cities whom He addressed. It is referred to as the “church” in the singular number (Revelation 2:1), and it had one common ecclesiastical government, e.g. church discipline - “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.”
Yet the apostle John intimates that there was a plurality of congregations in the church of Ephesus - “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 2:7). This same phrase appears in all seven letters to the churches of Asia, and yet they are each called one church.
Paul mentions the particular house church of Aquila and Priscilla (1 Corinthians 16:8-9), which was at Ephesus. Surely all the thousands of believers did not meet in that one place, but rather it was one of many congregations?
Objection: As for Paul’s 3-year stay, it does not prove that there were so many converts in Ephesus as could not meet in one place, for — 1) suppose there were two or three thousand converts, and yet they could still meet in one place. This would account for Paul’s long stay at Ephesus. 2) The efficacy of Paul’s preaching extended not only to Ephesus, but also to the rest of Asia (Acts 19:26). And when Paul mentions his 3-year stay (Acts 20:31), this is to be understood in reference to his missionary activities in the whole region of Asia (20:18).
Response: a) With respect to what is said about all Asia in Acts 19:26, this should be understood more in regard to the large multitudes of people throughout Asia who came to Ephesus (likely the pagan worship of Diana and Artemis) rather than to Paul going through Asia in this space of time, therefore the Scripture says “all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.” (Acts 19:10). b) Concerning Acts 20:18, 31 — this does not prove that Paul’s 3-year stay was not confined to Ephesus. Acts 19:8-10 says clearly that Paul spent two years and three months in Ephesus, and we do not read any express statement in Acts that Paul traveled elsewhere right after that time. It is likely that the remaining 8 months also took place in Ephesus.
Objection: The church in Aquila’s house was but a family church, not a proper independent congregation which met for the preaching of the Word and the sacraments.
Response: If we take a look at the entire text of the verse in question, it becomes clear that a congregation was meant: “The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 16:19). Thus, Aquila and Priscilla’s church was counted among “the churches of Asia.” This language clearly expresses it to be a congregational church. Finally, there were many house churches at the time due to the persecutions (Acts 12:12; 19:9; 20:8; 28:23).
