Four Tragic Shifts In The Visible Church
180-400 A. D.
by Jon Zens
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:
1. 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.
2. 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'.
3. 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.
4. 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?
For instance, some assert that since
the early church met primarily in homes, we are obliged to emulate this
example. I think the primary theological point of the New Testament in this
regard is that under the New Covenant there are no holy places. Contemporary
Christianity has almost no grasp of this significant point. Taking the cue from
the Old Covenant, people are still led to believe that a church building is
'the house of God'. Believers are free to meet, anywhere in which they can
foster, cultivate and attain the goals set before them by Christ. The problem
today is that many church structures neither promote nor accomplish Christ's
desires for His body. Homes are a natural place for believers to meet, and the
early church flourished well into the first and second centuries without
erecting any temple-like edifices. In places around the world where persecution
reigns, house-church movements have flourished. Someday in America, if our
religious infrastructure falls as a result of economic and political turmoil,
true believers will be forced to meet outside of traditional church buildings.
But the issue still is not what type of place believers gather, but what shape
their committed life together takes as they wrestle with the many duties and
privileges flowing out of the priesthood of all believers.
I believe that it is far more
important to capture the spirit of church life as we see it unfolded in the New
Testament, than it is to try and woodenly replicate cultural particulars of the
first century. We do not live in the first century, but the concepts and
principles in the New Testament endure and will come to expression in any
culture. The four tragic shifts about to be examined will give us all plenty to
reflect and act upon as we seek to take our discipleship earnestly. Christians
must take their stand and devote their precious energies to building up the
body of Christ in ways that return to the original patterns of the New
Testament.
1 The Shift From
the Body of Christ as a Dynamic Organism to a Settled Institution
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul goes into
some detail concerning the implications of the church being a living organism,
a body with many parts. In the early chapters of Acts we see a vibrant, caring,
sharing and witnessing body of believers created by the power of the Spirit who
was poured out by the risen Christ. This corporate 'new man' created by Jesus
was not without leadership and organization, but there is no evidence of desire
by the leaders to create a tightly-knit religious institution, with an
elaborate hierarchy and intricate chain-of-command. The leaders above all were
to be servants to feed and build up the flock; the organization that came to
expression was for the purpose of meeting people's needs, not to create a
religious bureaucracy.
The church Christ purposed to build
is always described in terms of 'koinonia', a common
sharing of life together in the bonds of Jesus Christ. However, the reality is
that as time went on after the apostles' death, the church gravitated
increasingly toward finding its essential definition, not in a dynamic
organism, but in a visible institution with a hierarchy of officers. The church
came to be no longer identified as a body of believers bonded by love as
members one of another, but as a religious organization whose officers gave it
significance. Ultimately it was asserted that without the officers, there was
no church. Organization usurped vital life as the hallmark of the church.
This legacy still remains with us
today. The needs of people are subordinated to the maintenance of religious
bureaucracy. Patterns of church government often have nothing to do with the
ethos of the New Testament. Many define the 'true' church in terms of outward
marks such as "the proper preaching of the Word, administration of the
sacraments, and practice of discipline". But these characteristics have
been outwardly present in dead churches. The New Testament defines the church
dynamically in terms of functioning together as a body. If church was defined,
for example, in the organic terminology of Acts 2:42-47, how many churches
would you find? Why is it that even today when somebody asks "What church
do you attend?:, the next query after you tell them is
usually, "Who is the pastor there?" We still tend to define church in
terms of leadership instead of by loving relationships among the brethren.
2 The Shift From
Polyform Ministry to Uniform Ministry
In the early church ministry was
conceived of in terms of Ephesians 4:16, "From Him the whole body, joined
and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in
love, as each part does its work." Ministry was seen as committed to the
whole body by Christ its Lord. As Paul put it, "Now the body is not made
up of one part but of many ... As it is, there are many parts, but one body"
(1 Cor. 12:14,20). To every person in the body of Christ is given a
manifestation of the Spirit for the benefit of all (1 Cor. 12:7). Universal
giftedness in the church, which is secured by the resurrected Christ leading
captivity captive (Eph. 4:7-8), included such important leadership gifts as
apostles and administration.
The great tragedy is that from about
180 A. D. onwards the increasingly institutionalized church began to assign
ministry more and more to the officers (the "clergy"), and less and less
to the common people (the "laity"). George W. Forell
astutely summarizes the shift from body-ministry to bishop-ministry:
“Ethical guidance for people
recently converted to Christianity and likely to bring a pervasive pagan
attitude to his new life was offered at first by a polyform
ministry of grace, reflected in the New Testament. But, as time went by, moral
authority was increasingly focused on an ordered ministry of bishops and
deacons ...The institution most effective in containing the threats to the
unity of the nascent Christian movement was the gradually evolving office of
the bishop ...Through the office of the bishop the shape of the Christian life
is determined and the masses recently brought into the Christian movement are
conformed to Christ.”1
No emphasis on one person who
occupies the office of bishop (pastor) can be found in the New Testament. While
it certainly contemplates a plurality of leaders as part of life in Christ's
body, the overwhelming emphasis falls upon exhortations that involve all the
members of the body. At least 58 times in the New Testament believers are
commanded to fulfill responsibilities relating to "one another". We have turned the tables and viewed ministry as essentially
resting upon "the minister", and forgotten that ministry as unfolded
in the New Testament is spread around to everyone.
If ministry is not seen as focused
in one office in the New Testament, where was precedent for a separate caste
found? It was found in the exclusive priesthood under the Old Covenant. William
Bausch observes:
“Our survey has shown us that no
cultic priesthood is to be found in the New Testament. Yet we wound up
importing Old Testament Levitical forms and imposing them on Christian
ministry.”2
The negative implications that arose
from the shift from polyform to uniform ministry are
myriad. The mutual care so basic to the fabric of early church life was
virtually lost. Why? Because mutuality - "you are all
brethren" - was buried underneath the superstructure of institutionalized
officers. William Bausch crystallizes this point by saying,
“Nevertheless in practice there is
no denying that there has historically been a gathering into one person and his
office what were formerly the gifts of many. ...[This
practice] goes astray, of course, when it translates to mean that only
ordination gives competence, authority, and the right of professional
governance. It goes further astray when eventually all jurisdictional and
administrative powers in the church come to be seen as an extension of the
sacramental powers conferred at ordination. In short, there is a movement here
away from the more pristine collaborative and mutual ministries of the New
Testament.”3
We must face the fact that the
traditions regarding church government and order which we have inherited are
cast in very suspicious garb. They are clergy-centered and generally stifle and
suppress the "one another" perspectives of the New Testament. Servant
leadership should be a natural part of body-life by which the people of God are
encouraged toward, facilitated in and equipped for various ministries.
Unfortunately, however, the shift from polyform to
uniform ministry has created the deplorable situation in which the church
forever remains as a dependent, helpless, non-maturing infant for the sake of
the officers who watch over the crib. We have inherited traditions in which the
tail wags the dog. It is my conviction that because of the deep-seated nature
of this awful shift in perspective, the greatest practical need facing the
church today is the reincarnation of "a polyform
ministry of grace".
3 The Shift from a Suffering Church
to an Institution of Ease
The early church grew and prospered
incredibly without having church buildings or being protected by the state. In
fact, from apostolic times to the ascension of Constantine the church went
through cycles of intense persecution spearheaded by the ruling powers. These
times of persecution are well documented in such books as Persecution in the
Early Church by H. B. Workman and Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
by W. H. C. Friend.5
However, the advent of the emperor
Constantine in 312 A.D. brought great changes, most of them for the worse.
Money from state funds was used to erect Christian church buildings and support
Christian clergy. Ultimately, Christianity was declared to be the state
religion. From Constantine onwards the visible church became enmeshed in
political intrigue, and the state mingled in the determination of church
affairs. As Louis Berkhof notes regarding the Council
of Nicaea in 325 A.D. [which Constantine convened and presided over]:
“A settlement forced upon the Church
by the strong hand of the emperor could not satisfy and was also of uncertain
duration. It made the determination of the Christian faith dependent on
imperial caprice and even on court intrigues. ...The sequel clearly probed
that, as it was, a change in emperor, and altered mood, or even a bribe, might
alter the whole aspect of the controversy. This is exactly what happened
repeatedly in subsequent history.”6
Constantine set in motion the ideal
of a territorial state religion with Christianity at the helm. This ideal was
the death knell of all that the Gospel stood for. It signaled the end of
believers gathering separately from the pagan culture as a counter-culture
where the way of Christ was displayed in simplicity. Now the church was
conceived of as all the people in a nation who were born as citizens of the
state and constituted as part of the visible church by infant baptism. Church
and politics were fused together, creating immense confusion. Ron VanOverloop notes this phenomenon operation from the
post-apostolic church to the Reformation:
“As was the case in the early church
when emperors called the great ecumenical councils together, so was the
progress of the Reformation to a great extent determined by the political
maneuvering taking place in each country.”7
In the early church the disciples
banded together in homes and other places as communities "called out"
from the world; but Constantinianism erased this
distinction and defined "church" as all citizens in a given
territory. This had the practical effect of watering down true discipleship and
creating a worthless nominal Christianity. Werner Elert
contrasts the early days with the rise of Constantinianism:
“[In the early church] the strength
of their ties with one another is matched by the strength of the boundary they
draw to the outside. In business dealings with one another they do not choose
an unbeliever to arbitrate; they transact their business "before the
saints" and between "brother and brother" (1 Cor. 6:1.5). One is
to throw in one's lot with those who fear the Lord, consider their common good,
and daily visit the saints face to face ...After Constantine things changed
radically with the influx of the masses. This did not prosper the Christian
brotherhood. If we can believe only half of what Salvian
says, there was not much left of it a hundred years later in many parts of
western Christendom.”8
The shift from a suffering church to
an institution sanctioned and promoted by the state forces us to face a crucial
question: Was the Constantinian change the rise or
fall of the church? How you answer that question will greatly
define your whole view of the church and its mission. In light of New
Testament revelation about the church Christ purposed to build, I submit that Constantinianism was a wretched stone thrown into the sea
of church history, the ripples of which still lap on our shores today.
We must make a choice. Are we going
to cast our lot in with the New Testament vision for the body of Christ
[simplicity, suffering, servanthood], or in with the Constantinian
model [powerful institution, clergy dominance, rule by political maneuvering]?
Are we going to devote the energies of our short life-span to perpetuating the
post-apostolic shifts that moved away from the simplicity of Christ, or to
restoring the spirit of the New Testament vision?
4 The Shift from a Spirit-Dependent
Church to a Letter-Dependent Institution
Twice in his epistles Paul refers to
the fact that the church serves Christ "in [the] newness of the Spirit and
not in [the] oldness of the letter" (Rom. 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:6). The church was
a community of the Spirit from the Day of Pentecost. In light of this reality
the early church did not trust in fixed forms to maintain and guard her
existence. There was an openness of the body to be led by the Spirit in light
of Christ's Gospel-word.
This can be seen, for example, in
the glimpse of an early church service revealed in 1 Cor. 14. Edification was
the goal which was to be reached by the Spirit-led participation of the body.
The balance Paul desired can perhaps be summed up like this: no form of order
in the service must be allowed to stifle the free expression of edifying gifts
in the body; no expression of spontaneity in the body must be allowed to
blossom into unprofitable disorder. William Barclay isolates these important
points from 1 Cor. 14:
“[Paul] is determined that anyone
who possesses a gift should receive every chance to exercise that gift, but he
is equally determined that the services of the Church should not thereby become
a kind of competitive disorder. ...There must be liberty but there must be no
disorder. ...There was obviously a freedom and an informality about [this
service] which is completely strange to our ideas. ...Clearly the church had no
professional ministry. ...It was open to anyone who had a gift to use that
gift. ...There was obviously a flexibility about the
order of service in the early church which is now totally lacking. There was
clearly no settled order at all. Everything was informal enough to allow any
man who felt that he had a message ...to give it. ...The really notable thing
about an early Church service must have been that almost everyone came feeling that he had both the privilege and the
obligation of contribution something to it.”9
Unfortunately, as time went on this
Spirit-dependence gave way to more and more fixed forms of worship, which
phased out body participation and committed ministry only to an ever-growing
web of ecclesiastical hierarchy. By 250 A.D. church order was set in concrete
with one bishop ruling over various territories. The momentum of this church
bureaucracy was accelerated when Constantine and his successors sanctioned the
church and contributed moneys and resources to this increasingly powerful
institution. What began as a Spirit-led organism ended up as a letter-dependent
institution. The leaders no longer trusted in the
Spirit to hold the body together; instead they leaned on intricate human
contrivances and rules to feign outward unity.
One of the saddest features of this
shift to letter-dependence, combined with the church's new collusion with the
state, was the employment of coercion both to gain and maintain adherents.
Simply trusting in the Spirit would have resulted in a spiritual reality too
vulnerable to be controlled by human contrivances; the use of raw power backed
by the weapons of the state seemed to promise greater stability. Eric Hoffer
makes this tragic observation which church history, unfortunately, verifies:
There is hardly an example of a mass
movement achieving vast proportions and a durable organization solely by
persuasion ...It was the temporal sword that made Christianity a world
religion. Conquest and conversion went hand in hand. ...Where Christianity
failed to gain or retain the backing of state power, it achieved neither a wide
nor permanent hold. ...It also seems that, where a mass movement can either
persuade or coerce, it usually chooses the letter. Persuasion is clumsy and its
results uncertain.10
Again we must ask ourselves,
"Are we going to be a part of perpetuating this shift to trusting in
outward carnal hedges to hold the church together, or are we going to purpose
to contribute to a return of child-like trust in the Spirit of Christ to build
and sustain His body?'
Concluding Remarks...
We have examined four clear shifts
in early church history. These shifts are acknowledged by church historians of
all theological persuasions. James D. G. Dunn, one of the foremost New
Testament scholars of our time, summarizes the essence of these four shifts
like this:
“Increasing institutionalism is the
clearest mark of early Catholicism - when church becomes increasingly
identified with institution, when authority becomes increasingly coterminous
with office, when a basic distinction between clergy and laity becomes
increasingly self-evident, when grace becomes increasingly narrowed to
well-defined ritual acts. We saw above that such features were absent from
first generation Christianity, though in the second generation the picture was
beginning to change.”11
'Such features were absent from
first generation Christianity,' that is, they are not found in the New
Testament. Does this concern you? Is your heart burdened by the chasm between
the original work of the Spirit and the hardened institution that quickly
emerged in the post-apostolic days? Does it bother you that most of what we
associate with 'church' has little to do with the New Testament, and more to do
with patterns that reflect a drift away from it?
Further, and this is the key
question, were the shifts we have studied a faithful extension of New Testament
ideals, or a tacit denial of all that they stand for? If the answer is the
latter, then it is incumbent upon believers to work for the recovery of
Christ's ways and to stop contributing to the perpetuation of non-edifying
ecclesiastical patterns.
The following articles contain
excerpts from various sources relating to early church history. I commend my
thoughts on the four shifts and the upcoming collaborating materials to your
discerning conscience. May the Lord guide you into appropriate responses as
'the worthy walk' is set before us in the Gospel.
1. History of Christian Ethics, Vol.
1, Augsburg Pub. House, 1979, pp. 39-40
2. Traditions, Tensions, Transitions
in Ministry, Twenty-Third Publications, 1982, p. 54j
3. Traditions, Tensions, Transitions
in Ministry, p.30
4. Cincinnati: Jenning
& Graham, 1906, 382pp.
5. New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1967,
577pp.
6. The History of Christian
Doctrines, Banner of Truth, 1978, p.87
7. 'The Westminster Confession of
Faith', The Standard Bearer, Oct. 1, 1979, p.17
8. Eucharist and Church Fellowship
in the First Four Centuries, Concordia Pub. House, 1966, pp. 66-67
9. The Letters to the Corinthians,
Revised Edition, Westminster Press, 1975, pp. 133-134
10. The True Believer, Mentor Books,
1964, pp.100-101
11. Unity and Diversity in the New
Testament, Westminster Press, 1977, p.351
This article was lovingly typed and
proofread
by Micheal & Marci Blubaugh,
Deland, FL.
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/6778