The Elder: Today’s Ministry Rooted in All of Scripture by Cornelis Van Dam
A Book Review By Bryan Knedgen
Cornelis Van Dam is Emeritus Professor of Old Testament and served as Professor of Old Testament for 30 years at Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary. He gained a Masters of Theology from Knox College, University of Toronto and a Doctorate of Theology from Theological University of Kampen, The Netherlands. an Dam penned The Elder: Today’s Ministry Rooted in All of Scripture back in 2009 and has written a large number of articles on aspects of law, government and wisdom in God’s kingdom.
After becoming a Teaching Elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church last May, I have been trying to lean into what it means to be an elder in God’s Kingdom, thus, I took up this in that pursuit.The book is divided into five sections. The First section contains the introduction, where he talks about an understanding of what the office of elder entails. The second section handles the office of elder in its Old Testament Origins, as leaders and judges. The third section manages elders in the New Testament with regards to continuity and transformation from the Old Testament. The fourth section tackles elders as nurturers and preservers in God’s Kingdom. Finally, the fifth section grapples with the preservation and current attitudes towards the position. Furthermore, Van Dam has written a helpful study guide and questions at the end of the book that is paired with each chapter along with a helpful list of resources for more study on Eldership.
In the Introduction, Van Dam starts the discussion of defining an elder: how have societies used it and how is it different in the covenant community of the church. He defines the ecclesiastical office of elder as, “ … a task given by God for a specific continuous and institutional service to his congregation with a view to its edification.” Where the elder is a particular ecclesiastical (church) representative of God to his people for preserving and nurturing of life in God’s covenant community. The following two chapters both use an image from the Bible to create touch points for how we think about elders. The first is a shepherd and his flock, where he talks about the Lord as shepherd and elders as under shepherds of the Good Shepherd. The next image is a bearded head, which in the Hebrew is the word for elder and ties more directly into the subject of the second section.
The second section looks at the Old Testament Origins of elders throughout the history of Israel. Van Dam makes the important distinction in this section about how elders are both political and spiritual leaders of the community of Israel. In the first chapter, he first looks at how elders were leaders in ancient Israel and the positions that they held in pre-monarchy, post monarchy, exile and post exile. In the second chapter he discusses elders as judges in ancient Israel, where the town gates were the heart of a community and judgments needed to be with righteousness and grace, akin to our heavenly father.
Transitioning from the Old Testament to the New, Van Dam focuses on elders in the church in section three. He guides us through the continuity and transformation that New Testament officers had with their Jewish counterparts of old. The first chapter of this section looks to establish the basis for church eldership and a distinction between ruling elders and teaching elders. After that, the next chapter looks at church elders during the time of Pentecost and the shift from churches being led by the apostles to it being led by local elders.
The largest chapter comes in the fourth section, where Van Dam looks at the most difficult part of a elder, ruling and disciplining in the modern age. The first chapter brings up the topics of loving leadership, stewardship and preaching of the Gospel while leading, gathering and nurturing the local congregation. Moving on from the previous chapter, Van Dam points to the necessity of an elder’s watch of his own life. From there, he discusses the need of an elder to watch his congregation, and the use excommunication and readmission in that role.
The final and shortest chapter of this book looks at two pressing questions within eldership today. The first is women in eldership, whether women are eligible for this office, and the second is the length of eldership service, whether once an individual is ordained as elder needs to be ordained again or will be for life. This chapter elaborates on the differing views on these two issues and those the author has chosen to follow.
The Elder was a helpful book for understanding my calling more and allowing me to understand my role in better light of God’s covenant community, the church. One of the most helpful parts was about authority and how we are to treat those under our care. I deeply enjoyed his conversation about the idea of “judging,” as it shed new insight into the term for me. He states, “To judge is to restore the disturbed order and relationships of a community to peace…” He does this again when he describes the motivation of sin as one of “weakness” and “rebellion.” Compassion and empathy well up in me as I meditated on viewing sin this way. In addition, he has a section which converses with Wenham’s, “The Gap between Law and Ethics in the Bible”, a favorite essay of mine. These topics were edifying and helpful in building more categories to better take care of the flock God puts under me.
The weakest part of the book was his understanding of “keys to the kingdom.” It was a slog of a section that didn’t make much sense. It starts off good but then he tries to shove the Gospel into the midst of it and I couldn’t understand how he got there. His understanding is metaphorical and I don’t know how helpful reading the text that way is but I thought it didn’t fit well. In addition, I found his section on female eldership to be underdeveloped. The ten pages he gave to its discussion does not do justice to presenting the differing views of this issue. This is a great systematic overview of eldership and I encourage you to read this book if you are hearing God’s call to lead his covenant community on the local level.