CHAPTER 11 - ON MR. WOLFF'S CHAPTER 11, CONCERNING TEACHERS
CHAPTER 11 — ON MR. WOLFF’S CHAPTER 11, CONCERNING TEACHERS
First of all, I admit that there is not in the Church a charge of teacher. In the word, the teacher is presented as a gift.+ It is only those who will have doctors of theology like Mr. Wolff, who think that doctorship is a charge. Mr. Wolff, who denies (page 45) that doctorship is a charge, says (page 49), that a professor of theology ought to consider himself as a functionary in the Church.
When men choose to make all ministries to be charges, or a clergy, and deny at the same time that ministry is the exercise of a gift, they must naturally imitate Mr. Wolff, and seek for information as to those charges. It is not surprising that the author, after having called prophecy a ministry, and denied at the same time that ministry was the exercise of a gift, should meet with difficulties in this respect. But as for the person who, resting on the ground of the word, finds there — in Ephesians 4 — that the teacher is a gift connected with that of pastor; who sees in 1 Corinthians 12 that God has set teachers in the Church; who reads in Romans 12 that he who has the gift of teacher is to be occupied in a modest manner with the accomplishment of the duty connected with the exercise of that gift: the person, I say, who sees all this, does not find much difficulty as to such a simple thing.
All that Mr. Wolff says on the subject presents such confusion, that it is impossible to get clear of it; for he makes the teacher to be a sort of quality which pervades every charge; but in the passages already quoted, the word of God presents to us the doctorship as a gift. It is not only a doma, but a charisma; and, according to Mr. Wolff, gifts have absolutely ceased in the Church.
+But, then, it must not be said that there is a charge of pastor; for these two things are found in the same category, and connected with the same demonstrative pronoun, Tous de.
[p. 263] It is therefore somewhat bold to quote Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 12 as lists of ministries, and even to tell us (page 46), “It is therefore in this last passage that we are compelled, by exegesis and grammar, to recognize the proper classification of ministry”; since he affirms that ministry is not the exercise of a gift, and that both these passages present a list of gifts; in Ephesians 4: 11, they are called domata, and in 1 Corinthians 12, they are charismata. See verses 30, 31, 38.+
Hence in our turn we might ask ourselves, which was the ministerial charge — with imposition of hands — formed by the different kinds of tongues, and by the gifts (charismata) of healing? If one did not trouble the Church by such contradictions — if one did not seek to weaken faith, a confusion of that sort would only excite compassion. I question whether such a mode of treating the word and the Church might not rather call for severity.
The blame lies in a greater measure with those who encouraged the young man who is the author of such a pamphlet, than with him whom they have put forward, applauded and encouraged in such a work. It is the abettors of the thing who are the most guilty.
I have already answered the remarks on the union of pastors and teachers which the writer presents in this chapter.
In result, admitting there was no charge of teacher, as there was of bishop and of deacon, it is very evident that in the teacher was a gift which might be possessed by an apostle, or by a bishop, or any other, or by a man who only had this very gift of teaching.