The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church

Gerard Mannion, Lewis S. Mudge, Gerard Mannion, Lewis S. Mudge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134190157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The nature and story of the Christian church is immensely important to theology students and scholars alike. Written by an international team of distinguished scholars, this comprehensive book introduces students to the fundamental historical, systematic, moral and ecclesiological aspects of the study of the church, as well as serving as a resource for scholars engaging in ecclesiological debates on a wide variety of issues. It divides into six parts:

• the church in its historical context
• the different denominational traditions
• global perspectives
• methods and debates in ecclesiology
• key concepts and themes
• ecclesiology and other disciplines: social sciences, philosophy, literature and film.

Authoritative, accessible and easily navigable, this book is indispensable for everyone interested in the nature and history of the Christian Church.

Part I
HISTORICAL ECCLESIOLOGY

1
IN SEARCH OF THE EARLY ‘CHURCH’

The New Testament and the development of Christian communities

Paula Gooder

Introduction

When did ‘the Church’ begin? People often assert that Pentecost sees the birth of the church, and on one level this is true. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost transformed the disciples from a frightened group of people into a band of confident, articulate missionaries. Pentecost is a vastly significant moment in the development of the church but to say, as some do, that it is the birth-day of the church is to give both too late and too early a date to the birth of the church: too late a date because it focuses the church solely around the action of the Holy Spirit and not around the presence of the person of Jesus; and too early a date because it is only towards the end of the first century, at the very earliest, that the Christian community began to have the kind of structure that many would recognize as ‘church’. The church did not so much have a birth-day as a birth-century.

A reading of the New Testament also indicates that it is not possible to chart with certainty the beginning of the church. Instead what we observe from its pages is the growth of a number of Christian communities alongside each other: some of them live together in harmony, while others compete and have conflicts with each other. Some of these communities have strong allegiances to Judaism, while others are more markedly Gentile. The growth of the earliest Christian communities was neither linear nor monochrome. They grew haphazardly, chaotically and without discernible structure – at least at first. It is the aim of this study to sketch out the complexity of the development into church that marks the first century CE.

One of the challenges for those attempting to recover the details of how the earliest Christian communities grew is to find ways of piecing together the information that we possess. The methodological challenges that arise here are common to much New Testament scholarship. For many years one of the favourite methods of approach was through word study. The most influential of such approaches is Kittel’s famous Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, which is based upon the attempt to understand and reconstruct early theological ideas using the theologically significant (Greek) words found in the New Testament.¹ In 1965, however, James Barr pointed out the severe shortcomings of this approach.² One of his major criticisms was that the work of the dictionary is in the realm of ‘concept history’ and yet it deals solely with words. The word ekklēsia illustrates the problem he identifies. Although the word ekklēsia is vital for understanding how the early church developed, to look only at this word and no other would deliver an impoverished picture of what the early church comprised. Furthermore, it is not possible to explain the development of Christian community with primary recourse to this word as its usage is sporadic and inconsistent.

It is important, however, not to allow the pendulum to swing back too far. Barr’s critiques of Kittel are apposite and persuasive but they do not give grounds for discarding word studies entirely. The value of word studies, although limited, remains. Word studies provide a useful foundation which can be built on in further study. Problems lie not in word studies themselves but in assuming that they can provide an entire answer to any given question.

This chapter seeks to illustrate the ways in which New Testament scholarship has attempted to trace the development of the early church and the challenges raised by such attempts. It cannot reconstruct the history of the early church itself – this would require at least three volumes by itself; instead, it looks at some of the ways in which scholars have attempted to undertake the task. This survey is limited and far from exhaustive – for example I have not even attempted to present the vast amount of scholarship on the development of ‘ministry’ in the early church;³ instead, I have sought to present major themes and indicative methodologies of current New Testament scholarship on the subject.

As a result, this chapter falls into two main sections. The first section is an examination of terminology and comprises a word study of the Greek term ekklēsia as well as an exploration of other words and phrases used to describe the earliest Christian communities in the various books of the New Testament. This then provides a foundation for the second section, which will seek to illustrate some of the most important areas in the study of early Christian communities in the New Testament period.

Terminology

The use of the word ekklēsia

It is popular to make a lot of the etymology of the word ekklēsia. The word is derived from the Greek ek = out and kaleo = called; thus great emphasis is placed, in some circles, on the ‘church’ being the ‘called out people of God’. There is no evidence in the New Testament, however, that ekklēsia is used to mean ‘called out’. This illustrates amply the dangers of using etymology as a way of investing a word with meaning.⁴ The origins of a word do not tell you what it means now. We can only discover this by observing how it is used in context. The word ekklēsia has a rich usage in both Greek and Jewish literature but this has no direct link with being ‘called out’.

The word was used commonly in Greek circles to refer to the meeting of all male citizens in Greek cities who gathered together to make decisions about the legislative and judicial welfare of the city.⁵ Luke uses it in this way in Acts to refer both to the lawful gathering of citizens (19.39) and to an unlawful gathering which ‘did not know why they had come together’ (19.32). This indicates that in Acts ‘gathering’ is a primary meaning of the word – not what is done once the gathering has taken place. Ekklēsia is also used in Greek translations of Jewish texts to translate the Hebrew word qahal and within the Septuagint (LXX) seems to have developed a meaning almost synonymous with sunagōgē. As in Greek its primary meaning is assembly.

However, we cannot leave it here. The background of the word indicates that it was often used to describe an activity – assembly – but common New Testament usage indicates that it began to describe not so much an activity as a reality.⁶ In other words, ekklēsia could have a meaning whether or not the Christians were actually assembled; thus Paul could talk of the ekklēsia of God (e.g. 1 Cor 10.32) as an entity, though at other times it was used to describe an actual gathering of Christians (e.g. Rom 16.5). The most common use of the word is in describing local gatherings but even in this period it was used occasionally in a range of texts to point towards a more abstract reality (see Mt 16.18; Acts 9.31; and Rom 16.23).

But why pick on ekklēsia at all? Why not choose an entirely different word? J.T. Burtchaell argues that the words sunagōgē and ekklēsia began as virtual synonyms, and that the early Christian community adopted ekklēsia because sunagōgē was already being used by their Jewish compatriots.⁷ Giles takes the argument a little further and demonstrates that the word sunagōgē developed in meaning during this period, from meaning ‘all Israel as God’s covenant community’⁸ to referring to the communities of Jews living outside Palestine and meeting together on a regular basis, and from there to the building in which these communities met. Ekklēsia developed in a similar way through Christian history, so that in the post-New Testament era it could be used of the building in which Christians met, as well as the community and the actual act of meeting. The first century CE marks the period of its development and it was only later that its meaning became more fixed. We can see evidence of continuing fluidity in the epistle of James, since 2.2 uses the word sunagōgē of what is presumed to be a gathering of Christians. This indicates that the words were not entirely fixed in their use at this point, though it is unusual enough to be surprising.

The problem of the word ekklēsia is that it was used in some parts of the New Testament but not in others. It appears in Matthew and Acts but not in Mark, Luke or John; in Paul but not in 1 and 2 Peter, and only occurs once in Hebrews. This indicates that many New Testament writers not only could but did describe the Christian communities known to them using words other than ekklēsia. The author of 1 and 2 Peter used many descriptions of the community to which he wrote (1 Pet 2.5–10); even Paul, who did use the word, used other words as well, such as offspring of Abraham (Gal 3.29). Thus ekklēsia was used alongside many other words and phrases in the first century to denote Christian communities and, although it was more commonly used than any other description, it was far from being the only one used in this period.

A final issue concerning the word ekklēsia is that of translating it into English. It is the custom in modern English translations of the New Testament to render the word ekklēsia as church. The problem with this, as Meeks notes, is that is an ‘anachronism, which cannot fail to mislead’.⁹ Although, in many instances, Christians had ‘begun using the term in a peculiar way that must have been puzzling to any ordinary Greek’¹⁰ it had not yet, in this period, fully developed to the extent that the formal word ‘church’ can accurately be used for it. Giles notes that the two alternative options for translation are community (followed by Luther and Barth using the German Gemeinde) and congregation (followed by Tyndale and the 39 Articles);¹¹ but, as ‘congregation’ has lost its universal meaning in common parlance, community best renders the meaning of ekklēsia today.

This study of the word ekklēsia demonstrates the value and the limits of word studies. While a study of the word ekklēsia in the New Testament provides us with a helpful way-in to understanding the development into church that took place in the first century CE, it can do no more than point us in the right direction. Over-concentration on words can assume too monochrome and ‘technical’ a meaning, which as we have demonstrated does not exist for ekklēsia in the New Testament era. It can also miss important aspects of a concept. In other words, there is much more to an understanding of the early church than just the word ekklēsia; in order to gain a clearer picture it is important to explore images of Christian community in the different New Testament texts.

Other descriptions of Christian communities in the first century

As we have seen, ekklēsia is not the only word or phrase used to designate Christian communities in this early period. The use of other images was widespread: Minear estimates that there are more than eighty different images used for the church in the New Testament texts.¹² In what follows, therefore, we shall explore the most important, either in terms of number of times used or in terms of influence.

The gospels

The gospels contain few examples as their prime concern is the life and ministry of Jesus. The communities into which the gospel writers were writing stand as shadowy groups behind the text. It is clear that such communities exist. For example, Kee in his influential book on the Community of the New Age noted that all the images used to signify Christian existence in Mark were corporate,¹³ something that indicates that Mark was really talking to a community. However, while these communities exist they are given no titles – other than in Matthew’s gospel where the community is twice addressed as ekklēsia – and their existence must be identified and interpreted through a careful reading of the text.¹⁴

Acts of the Apostles

Outside the gospels many more descriptions and/or titles of the early Christian communities can be found. Acts has the most widely differing appellations, from ‘those who believe’ and ‘those who call on the name’ to brothers and sisters (adelphoi), saints (hagioi), disciples (mathētai), Christians (christianoi) and ‘the way’ (ho hodos), as well as ekklēsia.¹⁵ The phrases in English beginning with ‘those who … ’ all translate participles in Greek and are used to describe the action of the people referred to (having believed, having been saved, having turned to God). These are not so much ‘titles’ as descriptions. The other words are more interesting as they may indicate the way in which the early communities referred to themselves in this period.

Acts is not alone in referring to the early Christians as brothers and sisters.¹⁶ It is widely used in Paul, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, the Johannine epistles and Revelation. In all of these contexts adelphoi is used to refer to fellow believers. If we are seeking an internal title for the early Christians then we need look no further. The sense of community among the earliest Christians was so great that they addressed each other using familial terms. This tradition goes back to Jesus himself who calls his disciples adelphoi (M...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Ecclesiology – the nature, story and study of the Church
• Part I Historical ecclesiology
• Part II Ecclesiological ‘traditions’
• Part III Global perspectives
• Part IV Methods and debates
• Part V Concepts and themes
• Part VI The Church in a trans-disciplinary context