The area which above all others captured the attention of Scotland’s Reformed theologians was the doctrine of the church.  This was especially true of the 17^th century, but the 19^th century also produced a voluminous literature, including James MacPherson’s splendid overview, The Doctrine of the Church in Scottish Theology.  It is here, too, that Scottish theology achieves its greatest international significance.  Calvinism as a world movement has two great branches, the Dutch and the Scottish, the former represented by the Dutch Reformed family, the latter by the Presbyterian.  Today, the Presbyterian family is thoroughly established in North America,Australia,New Zealand, Africa,Korea,Japan and indeed wherever the gospel has been carried by the missionary advance of the last two centuries.  Inevitably, the children no longer cling to their mother’s apron-strings, yet all acknowledge that their roots are in the Scottish Reformation and that they inherited their principles, more or less complete, from their Scoto-Irish spiritual forebears.

John Knox, of course, set up no presbyteries, and this can easily lead to the conclusion that he was no Presbyterian.  But Presbyterianism is not government by Presbyteries, but government by presbyters, and the essential principles of such a polity were already set in place by Calvin in Geneva.  Here already it was perceived that the words presbyters and bishops referred to one and the same office; and here, too, it was laid down that churches must be governed not by one individual, but by a plurality of such presbyter-bishops.  There had to be a presbyterion: a college or council of presbyters, “which was in the church what a council is in a city.”  (Calvin, Institutes, IV.XI. 6). Hence the Scottish presbytery, the Genevan consistory and the Dutch classis.  The geographical area covered by such a council was a matter of administration, not theology.  It could be a local kirk session, overseeing one congregation, or a general kirk session, covering all the congregations in one city.  In the early days of the Reformed Church in Scotland, government was by local kirk sessions, provincial synods and what were originally known as conventions of the Universal Kirk of Scotland but eventually came to be known as the General Assembly.

The blueprint for what is often referred today as ‘Melvillian Presbyterianism’ was laid down in the Second Book of Discipline (approved by the General Assembly in 1578), but only in 1581 did the Assembly begin to erect presbyteries, and more than a century would pass before what W. M. Campbell called “the Triumph of Presbyterianism”.  The so-called Golden Act of 1592 formally recognised and established Presbyterian government, including general, synodical and provincial assemblies, and by the following year presbyteries were in place throughout Scotland, but James VI and Charles I remained determined to impose bishops and only in 1638, when the whole of Scotland united under the National Covenant, did the kirk come under effective Presbyterian Government.  Even then, the triumph was short lived.  Oliver Cromwell, who governed Scotland as part of a united Commonwealth from 1651, was no friend of Presbyterianism and banned all meetings of the General Assembly (in fact, there were no meetings of the Assembly between 1649 and 1690).  Under his murderous successors, Charles II and James VII, Presbyterianism was on the rack and a full-blown episcopacy imposed on the Kirk.  Only with the Revolution Settlement of 1690 was Presbyterianism finally secure.  It had taken one hundred and forty years to establish inScotlandthe polity which Knox had witnessed inGeneva.

The best succinct exposition of Scottish Presbyterianism is Alexander Henderson’s Notes on the Government and Order of the Church of Scotland (available on the Edinburgh Theological Seminary web-site: click on ‘Resources’ and ‘Rare Texts’).  Henderson captures its genius in a brilliant summary: superiority without tyranny, parity without confusion, subjection without slavery.  Such a polity was no mean achievement.  How could there be order where all were equal and where none had authority over another?   By ensuring that each individual was bound to comply with the collective will of the several “assemblies”; and by erecting a system of graded courts where the lower was always subject to review by the higher: the kirk session by the presbytery, the presbytery by the synod and the synod by the General Assembly (“the Universal Kirk”).

Scotland’s 17^th century theologians were unanimously convinced of the divine right of presbytery, yet at the same time they could be remarkably flexible and willing to adapt, especially in the case of “kirks not settled”.  They invoked this principle when approving the Westminster Confession in August 1643, declaring that the right of the civil power to convene synods (affirmed in Chapter 31.2 of the Confession) applied only to churches not duly constituted in point of government.  The same adaptability showed itself in the First Book of Discipline.  Recognising the shortage of properly trained ministers, the Kirk authorised the use of Readers; and in the absence of a comprehensive network of presbyteries she appointed Superintendents.  This latter office was no sinecure.  Superintendents were basically church planters, under obligation to preach at least three times a week and also under obligation to keep on the move.  They could stay in any one place only as long as it took to set the local church on its feet, usually by arranging for the appointment of either a Minister or a Reader.  This was far removed from monarchical episcopacy and even further removed from all notions of apostolic succession, as is made clear in the fact that there was no separate ordination to the office of Superintendent.  They were simply ministers on secondment.

It is worth noting, however, that in the later controversies over bishops the resistance of Scottish theologians focused not so much on the office itself, but on the manner of their appointment.  To appoint bishops because that was the settled will of the Kirk (and the Scottish people) was one thing; to have them imposed by royal decree was something else.  It was this same attitude that fuelled national resistance to Laud’s Liturgy in 1638.  It was an assertion of royal supremacy which violated not only the spiritual independence of the Kirk but the constitutional rights of the Scottish people and the prerogatives of their parliament.