Four tragic shifts in the visible church
Jon Zens has written an excellent article that begins with these words:
Most professing Christians do not realize that the central concepts and practices associated with what we call ‘church’ are not rooted in the New Testament, but in patterns established in the post-apostolic age. While there are a legion of disagreements among serious students of church history concerning various issues and details during the period of 50 A.D. to 325 A.D., they all speak as one voice in affirming the four undeniable shifts that will be examined in this article. Church historians of all theological and ecclesiastical backgrounds observe in their writings the following four shifts:
- The church portrayed in the New Testament was a dynamic organism, a living body with many parts. The church from around 180 A.D. onwards became an increasingly hardened institution with a fixed and complex hierarchy.
- The early church was marked by the manifestation of a polyform ministry by which edification and the meeting of needs were accomplished through the gifts of all the brethren. The post-apostolic church moved more and more toward a uniform conception of church offices which separated ministry from the ‘laity’ and limited significant ministry to the ‘clergy’.
- The church of the first and most of the second centuries was characterized by cycles of intense difficulty and persecution – it was a suffering body. With the advent of Constantine the church became protected, favored and ultimately sanctioned as the state religion by the Roman state, and thus became an institution at ease.
- In the New Testament the church, with no small measure of vulnerability, depended on the Holy Spirit to hold the brethren together and to lead them in ministry. Later, the church trusted in itself as a very powerful institution, along with its many rules, rites and offices to secure visible unity among its adherents.
These four shifts are indisputable. They did not come about in a day. They were the result of many factors working together as time elapsed. There are many implications to ponder in light of these significant changes that occurred. I would like to explore each of these shifts in order to highlight certain key issues that each of us needs to face. We claim to take Christ’s revelation about the church in the New Testament seriously, yet the reality is that too often we are more attached to the ‘received order’ which is based on human traditions. What does it mean to be faithful to the New Testament’s teaching about the church? In what sense are the examples of the church life ‘binding’ on us?
Zens is thoughtful and articulate and his thoughts are worthy of contemplation. I agree heartily with him regarding the characterization of the Church as vulnerable and weak under persecution as opposed to the Church as a protected and favored entity. As Tertullian (c. A.D. 155-230) noted, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. That is one reason that the Church is flourishing in China, quite frankly.
Still, I disagree with Zens on several points.
First, his statements regarding the concepts and practices of modern ecclesiology being entirely extra-biblical is a practice in historical revision/contemporary elistism. Is it more likely that Christians living in A.D. 180 would have a better grasp on what took place just a mere century earlier, or more likely that Christians living 2,000 years after the fact would be more in tune with the biblical tradition? Were Christians living in A.D. 180 completely submerged in their culture and ignoring Scripture whereas we have escaped the influence of our culture and been able to “simply rely on Scripture”? Is the Church during the age of Irenaeus and Athanasius and Augustine and Chrysostom one that is no longer “dynamic”? Have you ever heard the response of Irenaeus when he received a notice of execution? It is humbling, inspiring and…dynamic. Was the Bishop of Hippo a man that read and studied and taught the Scriptures diligently? Were the souls won under the preaching of the “Golden Mouth” done so under less than dynamic circumstances, or did the same Holy Spirit use the proclamation of His Word to bring salvation to them?
Second, to declare that there a “legion of disagreements among serious students of church history concerning various issues and details during the period of 50 A.D. to 325 A.D.” but that “they all speak as one voice in affirming the four undeniable shifts that will be examined in this article” is unfounded. If he wants to state that there is unanimity among those of the Free Church tradition, then that is one thing, but if he is speaking for all traditions, then he is over-reaching and generalizing too greatly.
Third, is there or is there not a distinction in the New Testament between “clergy” and “laity”? Many within the Free Church tradition contend that there is none, yet I wonder if that accords with Acts 6 or the Pastoral Epistles? All members of the Church are gifted for service and serve different functions within the Body (as the Apostle Paul makes very plain in 1 Corinthians), yet not all are called to be apostles, elders, deacons, etc.
Zens states, “We claim to take Christ’s revelation about the church in the New Testament seriously, yet the reality is that too often we are more attached to the ‘received order’ which is based on human traditions.” I think perhaps Zens is unaware of the primacy of some human traditions within his own (Free Church) thinking. Men such as Athanasius and Augustine took Christ’s words in the NT about the Church seriously and were willing to suffer for them. Had Athanasius *not* stood “against the world,” then the ‘received order’ of today would not even be Christian. We must not forget that the Apostle Paul discipled Timothy and told him to entrust the faith to faithful men (2 Tim. 2:2).
I also wonder about the contention regarding hierarchy, etc., when we see the Apostle Paul commanding Titus to appoint elders in Crete (Titus 1:5) and appointing Timothy (not the Church or even the presbytery) as the one to take responsibility for the discipline and ordination of elders (1 Tim. 5:17-22)?
What a coincidence. I just received a brief note from Frank Viola asking me if I had ever read any Jon Zens and then went to your blog to see the excerpt from one of his articles!
I just wish a lot of this kind of material were available in Spanish (the local language here in Ecuador) it would greatly facilitate a lot of what we are trying to get across to others in planting churches.
Bill,
Thank you for the link to the article. I also appreciate Guy for pointing me in this direction. I look forward to reading more of your blog.
-Alan
James: Thanks for posting your reaction to Zen’s article. I figured it would take a few more days for my American friends to get over their 4th of July celebrations. How many hot dogs did you put down on Wednesday? (I read your blog, too.) I always appreciate hearing from you, James!
If anyone is guilty of “historical revision/contemporary elitism,” it would be those who have a vested interest in squelching the “inconvenient truths” (to borrow Al Gore’s phrase) being quietly stated by men like Jon Zens, Mark Strom, and a few others.
I think our brother makes it clear that these shifts “did not come about in a day” but rather that the church became “an increasingly hardened institution with a fixed and complex hierarchy.” He’s not aiming his guns at men like Irenaeus or Athanasius or Augustine or Chrysostom, as if there were virtually no bright lights or dynamic voices in the post-180 A.D. era. But we would also have to admit that even the best examples among the early church fathers were far from perfect. God continues to use imperfect vessels, even today, but that has little to do with the extra-biblical structures with which Zens takes issue.
It doesn’t take a PhD (not meant to disrespect those of you who have them) to recognize that the organizational church structures of today look nothing like those of the New Testament. That’s the point Zens is making in the larger article under “Shift #1″:
I can’t comment on your second point with any degree of confidence, because I’m not a church history expert who is familiar with the corpus of thought surrounding these shifts. So unless Jon Zens weighs in to personally defend his statements, then your challenge will go unmet.
As far as the clergy/laity question, I would say emphatically “No, there is no such distinction in the New Testament, not in terms of rigid categories of ‘office’ like we recognize today.” Sure, there are functional giftings within the body of Christ, but there is a healthy sense of fluidity in the way those gifts are manifested and distributed by the Holy Spirit in the early church. At one point, Philip served as a “deacon” for a season in Jerusalem, then we see him going forth as an “evangelist” when persecution broke out. We have to be careful that we don’t impose our present methodology back onto the passages of Scripture that mention elders and deacons.
We really don’t know what would have happened if Athanasius had not been a faithful brother, do we? What may have happened if the Reformers had deconstructed more of the “institutionalism” of the RCC rather than focusing their efforts almost completely on the salient issues surrounding justification by faith alone? No one knows. They picked their battles and so we are now living with the consequences, so to speak: we have clarity concerning how we are justified before God and yet we are still enamored with titles, buildings, power, prestige, and a whole Pandora’s Box of related ungodliness within the modern church. As Zens points out,
We’ll have to disagree, James. I think Zens is right on target, but I still love you, brother.
This was an outstanding, thought-provoking article that is right on.
This kind of discussion boils down to whether or not the contents of the NT are our touchstone or not. If anyone in the post-apostolic age contradicts what is revealed in the NT, they stand to be corrected. It is very clear to anyone reading the Early Fathers that some very strange and non-NT perspectives appeared in droves. It is not inherently elitist to point out that most of the visible church in the period of 250-1800 went far astray from what the NT says about “church.” The fruits of the research of many confirms again and again that church historians of all theological stripes affirm that (a) the early church was simple and (b) that simplicity quickly gave way to an increasing ecclesiastical bureaucracy. Even the Roman Catholic theologian, Herbert Haag, stated that the “clergy/laity” distinction is without biblical support: “In the Catholic Church there are two classes, clergy and laity, with different privileges, rights and duties. This structure does not correspond to what Jesus did and taught. Consequently it has not had a good effect in the history of the Church” (Upstairs, Downstairs: Did Jesus Want a Two-Class Church? The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1997, p.109). Paul mentioned “saints, bishops and deacons.” There is no “clergy/laity” distinction in the NT as developed in the post-apostolic age. The Greek word “kleros,” from which the English word “clergy” is derived, applies in the NT to all saints, never to a special class of “ordained” people. By narrowing the usage to only certain individuals a meaning was invented that was foreign to the NT, and served to destroy the crucial teaching of the Lord, “You are all brethren.”
Jon: I agree with you wholeheartedly that “this kind of discussion boils down to whether or not the contents of the NT are our touchstone or not.” I agree with you that there is more simplicity in the NT and less hierarchy in the NT than what developed. However, that is not to say that there is no hierarchy in the NT whatsoever. I point again to Acts 6 and the Pastoral Epistles. All members of the Church are gifted for service and serve different functions within the Body (as the Apostle Paul makes very plain in 1 Corinthians), yet not all are called to be apostles, elders, deacons, etc. The Apostle Paul discipled Timothy and told him to entrust the faith to faithful men (2 Tim. 2:2). He also commanded Titus to appoint elders in Crete (Titus 1:5) and appointed Timothy (not the Church or even the presbytery) as the one to take responsibility for the discipline and ordination of elders (1 Tim. 5:17-22). Does that mean that elders rule as authoritarian dictators? Certainly not. That contradicts what the Apostle Peter writes (1 Pet. 5). While all are called to be ‘priests’ and serve in this Kingdom, not all are called to be elders and deacons. I’m looking at the NT here, brother, not simply tradition.
Bill: BTW, I only ate two hot dogs on the 4th.
Bill,
I interact with the Zens article on my blog. I started by posting a comment here, but it grew to a length that would have been rude to post here. (I’m not sure that directing people to my blog is any more polite, but it seemed the lesser of two rudenesses.)
http://ubergoober.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/tragic-shifts-or-growing-up/