by Robert Hatch
The only biblical concept of “apostolic succession” is found in Paul’s words to Timothy: “. . . what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men [Greek, anthropois, or humans, male or female] who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). What Timothy had heard from Paul and was to “entrust to faithful men” was not doctrines about Church government or about the Holy Spirit but “the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13), which he also called “the good deposit entrusted to you” (2 Tim. 1:14), referring to the apostolic gospel about Jesus and the kingdom of God.
(By “the apostolic gospel about Jesus and the kingdom of God,” I mean what Paul calls "gospel," which he claims was revealed to him by the risen Jesus [see Gal. 1:11-12]. The apostolic gospel consisted of Jesus’ “good news of the kingdom of God” [Luke 4:43], as it is typically referred to in the NT Gospels, into the framework of which Paul incorporated his explanation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The grievous error of ecclesiastical Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, has been to excise the eschatological kingdom of God of Jesus’ gospel from Paul’s gospel of the risen “Jesus Christ and him crucified” [1 Cor. 2:2] and, in so doing, inventing a Trinitarian “gospel” that has nothing to say about the kingdom of God because, unlike Paul, it explains Jesus' death and resurrection without reference to the kingdom of God. In the Trinitarian gospel, "God the Son" dies to appease God the Father--that is, to pay God the Father to forgive sinners--so that "God the Spirit" can distribute forgiveness to penitent--that is, church-going, clergy-supporting--sinners. This is a "gospel," I submit, that can be found nowhere in either the NT Gospels or the letters of Paul or any other NT writer. The apostolic gospel is, according to the NT writers, "the word of God," a phrase which refers, throughout the Bible, not to the Bible itself but to the biblical message, which the Bible was written to explain to its readers and to preserve for future generations.)
The international Christian community and every local Christian community thereof was intended by the apostles to continue under the same authority after as before the apostles died: the authority of the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Unlike ecclesiastical Christianity, the NT writers assert the centrality of the apostolic gospel to not only every individual Christian but also every local Christian community as well as the international Christian community as a whole. And the NT writers assert the power of the apostolic gospel to extend the authority of Christ to and exercise the authority of Christ within every generation of believers.
The body of Christ is a community of faith in that it is the faith of Jesus and the apostles (i.e., the good news of Jesus and the kingdom) that creates, sustains, and expands it. Christians are members of the body not because they have “placed membership” with some religious organization, or even because they have been immersed in water or performed some other initiatory rite, but because they believe the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom. Their faith makes them members and leads them (“led by the Spirit”) to edify one another in the faith at a variety of times and places in assemblies of all shapes and sizes. (And whoever believes the apostolic gospel, and to whatever extent he or she believes, that one is a member of the international Christian community, whether “churched” or “un-churched” or “ex-churched.”)
The Greek word, ekklesia, means “assembly,” and was a nonreligious word in the first century. In Acts, ekklesia is used with reference to a riotous mob (Acts 19:32, 39) and a town meeting (Act 19:41). By rendering ekklesia with the religious term “church” (as do all ecclesiastical versions of the New Testament), ecclesiastical Christianity has invented a religious organization that it can control with its clergy. The NT ekklesia was a community of faith in that it was assembled by the faith of its members in the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God, experienced by its members in the form not of a formal, hierarchical organization but of informal, egalitarian association (specifically in the form of household gatherings).
A formal, hierarchical organization requires an official, authoritarian approach to “leadership,” which is precisely what Jesus admonished his disciples against: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42-43). It’s a grave error to read “lord it over” as meaning to exercise authority only in a heavy-handed way. Jesus’ words equate the phrases “lord it over” with “exercise authority over,” whether heavy-handedly or even-handedly. Any kind of official, positional authority is out of place in associations characterized by freedom and equality, which require, instead, the interpersonal dynamic of mutual submission, each treating the other as one wishes to be treated oneself.
Does this mean that there is no authority? No. It means that the authority of Jesus, which he passed on to his chosen apostolic messengers, is invested in the biblical message of Jesus and the kingdom. Elders (in NT terms, not a title but a description) are those whose maturity in the faith is demonstrated by their grasp of the apostolic gospel, evidenced by their words and their deeds. In other words, they lead not by position but by persuasion. In Heb. 13:17, “Obey your leaders and submit to them,” the word translated “obey” is a form of peitho, which means to persuade, as in, “Be persuaded by your leaders and submit to them.” No sense of positional authority is given by this or other NT references to Christian leadership.
This does not mean that leaders were or are superfluous to Christian fellowship. It simply means that leaders, as servants of the message and those who hear it, serve the message by persuading others to believe it and behave accordingly, as they strive to do themselves. Which is precisely the paradigm for leadership that Jesus constructed for his disciples: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). Jesus’ “commandment” was to follow his example of love, the love of God revealed in the apostolic gospel: “. . . but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). This, then, is the authority of love rather than of law, an authority exercised by means of persuasion rather than of coercion. The same authority that the risen Jesus gave (through the "Spirit") to the apostolic generation, he has given (through the same "Spirit") to the international Christian community of all generations: the authority of the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God (which the NT writers take great pains to enable their readers to understand with their minds so that their readers can apply the gospel to their individual and collective lives).
This means that the “laity” in “the pew” have as much access to the power and authority of Jesus’ good news of the kingdom as the "clergy" in "the pulpit," but their position in the “pew” may deceive them into thinking that the occupant of the pulpit has been given some kind of positional authority over them by the Lord (reinforced by the symbolism of the pulpit exalted in space over the pew), in which case they may never come to experience the persuasive power of the good news for themselves.
The “Church” (of whatever variety) is necessarily dependent on its clergy because it was designed to be so by the post-apostolic inventors of ecclesiastical Christianity. Christians find themselves psychologically locked into this system of religious authority primarily because they have been distracted from seeking a clear understanding of the biblical message of Jesus and the kingdom, and its all-sufficiency for Christian existence in the present age, by the religious superstitions of ecclesiastical Christianity, along with its religious sideshows, which are open to the public every Sunday, all designed (however unwittingly by those who conduct them) to keep Christians dependent on “the Church” and its clergy. The crowning achievement of the Church councils of the third and fourth centuries was to replace the Jesus of the apostolic gospel with the Trinitarian Christ of “the Church” as the mediator between God and humanity. Thereafter, instead of worshipping God in spirit and truth (i.e., through faith in the biblical message of Jesus and the kingdom) every day, Christians have been indoctrinated into “going to church” to worship God on Sundays (and maybe at mid-week “services”) through the rituals of their “Church.”
This is not to say that the NT writers prohibit organizations for the purpose of Christian ministry and fellowship. It may be that interpersonal relationships, household gatherings, congregational organizations, annual conferences, and other forms of association are each and all valid ways for Christians to build up the body of Christ. At the same time, any form of positional authority (as opposed to the persuasive authority of the biblical message) would seem to be inappropriate and damaging to the NT spirit of Jesus.
Church history reveals (for all to read) that, relatively early in the post-apostolic period, the Christian community was led to submit to a “bishop” in each city (later called the “monarchical bishop"), each one exalted over his fellow elders, who became his “clergy,” to enforce his rule over each local Christian community. Thereafter, the Christian community began to be transformed from an egalitarian community of faith into a hierarchical organization of law, eventually viewing itself as the kingdom of God on earth, and as having the mandate of God to impose its will (which it called “the will of God”) on all nations. And it did so with a vengeance, utilizing the full panoply of violent technology made available by the kingdoms of the world. With the Enlightenment and the subsequent rise of democratic government, the Church (thank God) lost its power to rule with violence. It ruled thereafter by perpetuating its religious superstitions, like “hell” (a word and a concept found nowhere in the original language of the Bible), and its psychological satisfactions for the felt need to be released from the God-given responsibility of self-government.
The NT escape route out of the misconceived and misdirected religious authority of ecclesiastical Christianity is the redirection of one’s believing towards a persuasive understanding of the biblical message of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Only as the authority of the biblical message is gradually, intelligently internalized can its truth about the hope of the kingdom and the love of God become a renewing, transforming power in Christian lives.
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