My blog up until this point, has predominantly been about the Christian´s relationship with God. As I recently stated, I want now in a few blogposts to look at the Christian fellowship; the fellowship of believers, the church. It is the church as a theological entity in the New Testament which interests me, not church buildings or denominations (e.g. the Lutheran Church)
To a degree several New Testament writers have thought about this question, but it is Paul and John, who have most fully explained the nature of the church. John, I will come back to later on this year, so in what follows I shall be looking at the writings of Saint Paul.
THE WORDS
A natural place to start is to look at the words in the Greek text which are involved. Κύριος/kyrios, means Lord. The word church comes from the adjective kυριάκος/kyriakos, meaning ‘that which belongs to the Lord’. Paul only uses this word once, in 1 Cor. 11,20, where it is used of the Lord’s Supper. So this doesn’t take us very far. That we use the word church, derived from kyriakos, tells of the Christian conviction, that the church belongs to Jesus Christ – nothing more.
The word Paul commonly uses for church, is the Greek word εκκλησία/ekklēsia, meaning assembly. It is the word we get ‘ecclesiastical’ from. It is compounded of the preposition εκ/ek, meaning ‘out/out of’, and the verb καλεω/kaleō, meaning ‘to call’. The ‘ekklēsia’ is therefore the ‘assembly of those who are called out’. It was used in Ancient Greece for a summons to the army to assemble, and also denotes the assembly of competent full citizens of the city; the πολις/polis.
In choosing the word ekklēsia, Paul therefore is choosing the common word for an (political) assembly. But this will hardly have been the point for him! What will have been decisive for Paul, in his choice of ekklēsia, is that this is the word used in the Greek translation of the old Testament called the Septuagint (the LXX), and which Paul knew well. Here, ekklēsia translates the Hebrew word qahal, used of the ‘Congregation of Israel’, the people of God at Sinai, where the 10 commandments were given, and where Israel was constituted as God’s holy people (Deut. 9,10 and 10,4): The ‘qahal of the Lord’; ‘the qahal of God’; qahal/ekklēsia here standing for the people whom the Lord has summoned to be bound by the rules of the Covenant.
So Christians are the εκκλησία/ekklēsia of God, those who are summoned, called out, to belong to the New Covenant; to belong to the Lord.
We can thus reaffirm the conviction that the church belongs to the Lord, and also add that there is a certain continuity between the qahal of the Old Testament, and the ekklēsia of the New. Paul may have known that Jesus had taught this; see Mt. 16,18, where qahal most probably underlies ekklēsia.
THE ONE FOR THE MANY
If there is theology in the choice of the word ekklēsia, what else does Paul think about the church?
He has much to say, and we will look at some of it in the next few blogposts. But central to Paul’s doctrine of the church, is his doctrine of Christ. His theology starts with Christology – with who Christ is. The word Messiah implies that there be a messianic people – but on what grounds are they to be elected?
The question: ‘Who is Christ, and what has he got to do with the church?’ is fundamentally a grappling with the question of how the One can count for the Many:
“There is only one who can properly be called the Son of God; only one who knew no sin; only one who was crucified and rose from the dead; what right have the Many to appear in the story at all? How can and does what is done and experienced by the One affect the Many? How do the unique actions of a unique person affect a plurality of persons?” (C.K. Barrett)
Galatians 3,16, gives us a clue:
“Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.”
God elects Abraham, and makes a covenant with him: In him shall all the world be blessed! His descendants shall be as the sand on the seashore, or as the stars of heaven. But the descendant in Gal. 3,16 to whom the promises refer, is SINGULAR says Paul, making the point that “offspring” is singular. It refers to Christ!
Abraham has several sons, but only two are of interest to the biblical narrative; Ishmael by Sarah’s handmaid the Egyptian Hagar, and Isaac, the son of promise! God sovereignly elects the one and not the other to be heir to his covenant promises to Abraham of a people in whom all the world shall be blessed; it will be through Isaac, and not Ishmael. Isaac has two sons, Esau and Jacob. Again, the one is elected and the other is not. It is through Jacob God’s promises to Abraham will be realised. Thus in the first two generations, the offspring are reduced to one out of a number that were physically qualified. And in each generation, it is not first those who physically qualify as heirs, but those who qualify according to promise – they are the heirs (Rom. 9,8).
“Why not also in the last generation? To say that at the time of End also, the offspring was reduced to one is only another way of stating the Pauline doctrine of the universal sinfulness of the human race, apart from Christ. The Law had precisely this effect when it shut up the whole universe under sin (Gal. 3,22).” (C.K Barrett)
So to be clear: GOD ELECTED ONE, CHRIST!
He non-elected the whole of humanity, and consigned them to sin and condemnation – because all men sinned. In Paul’s words:
“For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.”
Rom. 11,32
So the non-electing of the whole human race was that he might have MERCY ON ALL! That they ALL may be elected IN CHRIST, on THE GROUNDS OF GRACE, through FAITH IN HIS NAME! That ALL MAY BE HEIRS TO THE PROMISES TO ABRAHAM – not on the basis of works of the Law, that NONE MAY BOAST, but by grace, through faith in Christ; the ONE for the MANY!
And for those who receive grace through faith:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal. 3,28
This was always the plan of the Father, for:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love” Eph. 1,3-4
SUMMING UP
1. The church belongs to Jesus Christ! Let there be no doubt about that!
2. The church is the people of the Messiah!
3. The church is a community which is continuous with the old precisely in the person of Jesus, and nowhere else!
4. The church consists of all those from every nation of the earth, who receive by faith the grace from God which is in Christ Jesus.
This blogpost will have perhaps been heavy going for those who have not read books of theology, or thought much about theology in general. And for part of this, I am indebted to the late professor C.K. Barrett at Durham University, UK, and a specialist on Paul. It is, however necessary to lay a solid theological foundation, if we are to talk well about the church at Corinth, AD 55, or any church.
With this blogpost, we have just made a start. The next posts will need to include some theology, but will hopefully be lighter, and more practical. Perhaps next time we will talk about the body of Christ, which is Paul’s most distinctive term for the church. 😀