Being One Body with the Early Church

A. Introduction: High Ecclesiology

“But the other woman [Sarah] corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother” (Gal 4:26).

“The catholic Church is the proper name of this holy mother of us all; spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, she bears the seal and likeness of the Jerusalem above, which is free and which is our mother. She began by being barren, but now she has numerous children” (Cyril of Jerusalem).

“The Bride of Christ brings forth spiritual sons for God. He alone can have God as his Father who first has the Church as his mother.” (Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church).

1. The NT evidence does not suggest that Church is an optional appendage to one’s Christian life. It is a necessity! Among many other things, the NT describes the Church as…

• The family of God—by adoption and grace (Ro 8:29; Eph 2:19).
• The body of Christ—an organic whole where every member has a part (1 Co 12:27-28; Eph 4:15-16).
• The temple of the Holy Spirit—where God’s presence and power can (should) be perceived (1 Co 3:16; Eph 2:21-22; 1 Pe 2:5).

2. The key issue: Is salvation perceived exclusively in individualistic terms, or might it just be that God calls us to “work out our salvation” in community? A permanent, settled disregard for the life of the Church should be a red flag—a sign of serious spiritual problems.

3. The bishop, especially in the role of Eucharistic president, was a potent symbol of the Church’s unity. Ignatius, Philadelphians 3:2–4:1:

Take care, then who belong to God and to Jesus Christ—they are with the bishop. And those who repent and come to the unity of the Church—they too shall be of God, and will be living according to Jesus Christ…. Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of his Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons.

B. One Gathered Body

Everything that is conventionally done in church was done first in small groups meeting in homes:

Worship: “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread from house to house and ate their food with glad and generous hearts” (Ac 2:46).

Proclamation/Evangelism: “And every day in the temple and from house to house they did not cease to teach and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah” (Ac 5:42).

Prayer: “[Peter] went to the house of Mary…where many had gathered and were praying” (Ac 12:12)

Teaching: “I did not shrink from doing anything helpful, proclaiming the message to you and teaching you publicly and from house to house” (Ac 20:20).

Notice also the rhythm of small groups and large groups--the temple courts and private homes. If something had to be discarded because of fear of persecution, the earliest church universally held onto the small-group meeting.

1. Thinking small: the early church grew big by remaining small.

• They in private homes, in earliest times around a dinner table. Later, homes were adapted for public usage, but we’re still only talking about maybe 50-60 people.
• Fear of persecution—no driving interested in publicity! (Therefore, not generally open to visitors unless they had someone to vouch for them.)

      Small group dynamics.

• Public confession of sins (see Jas 5:16): “On the Lord's own day, assemble in common to break bread and offer thanks; but first confess your sins, so that your sacrifice may be pure” (Didache 14:1).
• The “flip side” of public confession is a loving administration of what our Anabaptist forebears called “The Rule of Christ”: Church discipline! (Mt 18:15-20; see 1 Co 5:1-5). In a large hierarchical setting, "excommunication" can become a weapon of terror, but in the context of a few dozen of one's closest Christian friends, it functions more like an "intervention" to confront a loved one with the reality of his or her self-destructive behaviors.
  
• Widespread involvement in ministry. The Apostolic Church Order (Egypt, ca. 300) staffed a church of perhaps 60-100 members with a bishop, two or three elders, three male deacons, and three female deacons. The ancient church also involved a diverse multiplicity of lay ministers: subdeacons, widows, readers, exorcists, doorkeepers, etc.
• Interactive teaching methods

2. Discernment of truth was a communal exercise.

“First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pe 1:20-21).

“So Philip ran up to [the chariot] and heard [the eunuch] reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him” (Ac 8:30-31).

“The individual is foolish, but the species is wise”—Edmund Burke (British philosopher and statesman).

• “Everything that we share we know to be true; what we have that is peculiar to us, we know to be false”—Heraclitus (d. ca. 475 bc). This Greek/Eastern mindset represents an alternative to the logical, objective, scientific way of finding truth. If the community accepts what is offered by one of its members, it is true. Knowledge is derived from common experience.

• Not a rigid rule: Several saints are praised for their nonconformity to prevailing heresy. Athanasius (4th century) was exiled multiple times because he would not bow to Arianism. In the seventh century, many people were swayed by the heresy of Monotheletism. Maximus (“the Confessor”), a layman, stood firm and did not give way. When he was in exile, emissaries of the emperor came and said: “You are alone. The emperor has agreed to this. The Patriarch has agreed to this. The Pope of Rome has agreed to it. You are outside the Church.” “No,” said Maximus, “in that case I am the Church.”
• Note connections with canon criticism, which begins with how the text has been read and used within the believing community (for example, Brevard Childs, The New Testament as Canon).

C. One Universal Body

1. It was not enough for the early Christians to be united on the micro-level. They also fiercely desired to maintain unity across geographic expanses. How? By appealing to a common Tradition that was allowed to trump local innovations that went too far.

“So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter” (2 Th 2:15).

We study Church history in order to “catholicize our heresies” (Timothy George, Baptist Church historian)

2. What Tradition Isn’t. ‘Tradition’ versus ‘traditions’—interplay between local custom and universal Tradition.

• “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living”—Jaroslav Pelikan, church historian.
• “Not everything received from the past is of equal value, nor is everything received from the past necessarily true”—Kallistos Ware, Orthodox bishop
• By the definitions of Eastern Orthodoxy, nothing can ultimately be considered Tradition (with a capital T) that is not first found in the Bible. The only things that count as “true” Tradition are natural outgrowths of what may be found in the biblical texts.
• “The Lord said, I am truth. He did not say, I am custom.” A bishop at the Council of Carthage (257), quoted by Kallistos Ware
• The dictum of Augustine: “In things necessary let there be unity, in things doubtful, liberty and in all things, charity.”

3. What Tradition Is.

a. Western Christianity misunderstands what the ancient church meant by Tradition by setting it alongside Scripture and then asking questions about the relative authority of each. Both Catholics and Protestants do this, largely because of centuries of arguing with each other over this very issue.

b. The Eastern Church takes a more organic, dynamic, or holistic approach, which is often difficult for Westerners to grasp. For Easterners (as for the ancient Church), Scripture and Tradition are two sides of the same coin: the deposit of faith, and how the Church lives out that faith in the world.

• Tradition as the way in which the Church reads the Bible.
• Tradition as the life of the Spirit within the Church.
• Tradition as the sense or mindset (phronema) of the Church. (Note: Php 2:5, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” uses the verb form of phronema.) Tradition as an active and living process (see 2 Th 2:15), not a static set of propositions—not something dead that is handed down, but something living being handed over.

“In the final analysis, then, the Tradition denotes the acceptance and the handing over of God’s Word, Jesus Christ (tradere Christum), and how this took concrete forms in the apostles’ preaching (kerygma), in the Christ-centered reading of the Old Testament, in the celebration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and in the doxological, doctrinal, hymnological and creedal forms by which the declaration of the mystery of God Incarnate was revealed for our salvation” (Dan Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, p. 36).

c. Tradition is at least as much the process as it is a set of results. It is “doing church” in a particular way, with a particular attitude or mindset. Remember—the process of discerning the truth is a communal process. There can be no “lone gunmen.” The bishops are responsible for teaching the Tradition, but the laity are the guardians of the Tradition. They ultimately must accept or reject what their teachers are teaching them!

d. Ecumenicity and catholicity: Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory 4:3 (434), the so-called “Vincentian Canon”:

Now in the catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly “catholic,” as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally. We shall hold to this rule if we follow universality [i.e., ecumenicity], antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality if we acknowledge that one faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed; consent, if in antiquity itself we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.

Note: The purpose of the “Canon” is to be a theological guidepost for discerning the most fundamental tenets of the faith—not to squelch debate on secondary issues. Vincent himself admitted the possibility of development in theology.

Kenneth E. Kirk (Anglican bishop) asserts that there are only certain rare cases where the “Canon” applies, and when it does, “nothing but absolute and conscientious conviction after the most devout, exhaustive, and heartsearching inquiry would justify even a momentary wavering of allegiance.”

4. Development of the Tradition. Some specific areas of development (cf. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism)

a. Kerygmatic tradition (doctrine). Summaries of the Christian message, focused on the death and resurrection of Christ: “the pattern of teaching to which you were committed” (Ro 6:17).

• Ro 6, Paul’s discussion of sin and grace with reference to baptism.
• 1 Co 15, the gospel “delivered” and “received.”
• Kerygmatic tradition allows for nuance and emphasis. Paul was certainly aware of the tensions that existed between him and the Jerusalem “pillars” over the substance of the gospel and its ethical demands (Ac 15; Gal 2:11ff.) But even so, there was a basic cohesiveness to the message (1 Co 15:11).

b. Church tradition (liturgy).

• 1 Co 11, the Lord’s Supper “delivered” and “received” (1 Co 11:23). The words of institution, originating with the Lord, had become the common property of the faithful.
• Early Christian hymns (Php 2:5-11; Col 1:15-20; Jn 1:1-18, etc.)

c. Ethical tradition (behavior). “Paul uses the language of tradition just as freely for corporate and personal Christian living as he does for matters of Christian belief” (Williams, p. 55).

• Col 2:6, “just as you have received Christ, so walk in him.” The Jesus tradition is sharply contrasted with what the Colossians had previously been taught based on “human traditions” and deceptive philosophy (2:8).
• Appeals to statements of Jesus (1 Co 7:10; 9:14), whether these statements are recorded in the four Gospels or not.
• Exhortation to imitate Paul’s own conduct, because he is imitating Christ (1 Co 4:16; 11:1; Eph 4:20-21; Php 2:5; 4:9). 1 Th 1:5b-6: “You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord.”
• 2 Th 3:6, avoid any brother or sister who “does not live according to the tradition you received from us.”

Tradition is holistic—you can divide the creedal tradition from the tradition of church practice and ethics for purposes of analysis, but they ultimately form a seamless whole. Faith and practice are consistently linked. “The [tradition] of Jesus, therefore, functioned as a dialectic between a pattern of belief and a pattern of conduct (cf. 1 Tim. 1:5; 4:3) which reinforced each other and identified the believer as a disciple of Christ” (Williams, p. 56).

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