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Rediscovering the Reformation: Learning From the One Church In Its Struggles
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Overview
This book will approach the Reformation from the perspective on last year's Spring Harvest theme, 'One in Christ', and therefore look not at how or why the church split, or whether the church should have split, but from the perspective that the church cannot split because it is Christ's one body. From this basis, the book will explore themes of Christianity such as the church, attitude to scripture and faith, belief, grace and works seeking wisdom from each of the incarnations of the church that resulted from the disagreements of the sixteenth century.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780857219053 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Lion Hudson LTD |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2019 |
| Edition description: | New edition |
| Pages: | 200 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.12(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Understanding the Church
One of the big decisions required when putting this book together was the order in which Scripture and church should be considered. The choice to put church first will seem strange to some readers, so it needs to be explained. This is not an issue of authority, as we will see that Scripture maintains the primary position. Rather, it is about history and method, recognizing both that there was a church before there was a Bible (the Old Testament Scriptures were obviously gathered earlier and will be considered in the next chapter), and that the church selects the books that will form the New Testament and guards the faith of believers not only in this selection but also in establishing teachings in line with those received from Christ and the apostles. Sometimes churches' teachings seem almost to imply that Christ ascended and left behind the New Testament, rather than sending his Spirit to inspire and form his body, the church, of which the writers and writings of New Testament documents were a part.
The nature and role of the church were a vital part of the discussions around the time of the Reformation. The major reformers were just that – reformers – who sought to bring the church back to its core teachings and duties and away from corruptions that had infected it, and this would also be true of the majority of the content in documents from the Catholic reforming Council of Trent. In considering this, we should avoid getting caught up in ideas of getting back to the church of New Testament times, or the earliest church, precisely because of the lack of authoritative scriptures and accepted doctrines at that point when these are so important in later disputes.
This chapter aims to trace some of the most important developments in thought on the church from the late first century through to the time of the Reformation, in order to illuminate the teachings of the reformers when they write about the church.
The Early Church
It's quite a challenge to provide a concise picture of the early church as a preparation for later reforming thought! It won't be necessary to look at every area of early church thought and life, but only to draw out relevant threads on the formation of the church with regard to both problems that would arise and strengths to which the reformers looked back. The New Testament writings generally refer to the church through images – body, bride, vine, building (not the physical building, but that of which Christ is the capstone) – rather than developing a systematic theology of the church, which has always made constructing a definitive concept of church difficult.
One important characteristic of the early church was the authority of the message that was being taught in the churches. This was particularly an issue because of the uncertainty about aspects of church teaching and perceived threats to the gospel that we will look at shortly. The perceived value of the church's message is evident already in the New Testament writings, with Paul encouraging Timothy to "[g]uard the good deposit that was entrusted to you" (2 Timothy 1:14), an encouragement that ends with the phrase "with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us". The plural pronoun "us" is interesting here, indicating a collective responsibility for protecting the message. Later in the same letter, the dangers that would face the church are also stated: "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear" (2 Timothy 4:3).
The evidence of the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament is both that the warning was just and that the church followed Paul's encouragement to remain true to the message they had received, despite the temptation to follow more attractive teachings. Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, who was himself taught by the apostle John, echoes Paul's words to Timothy closely in his letter to the church at Philippi at the beginning of the second century:
Whoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is antichrist; whoever does not confess the witness of the cross is of the devil; and whoever corrupts the oracles of the Lord to support their own desires, saying that there is neither resurrection nor judgment, that person is the firstborn of Satan. Therefore let us leave the empty actions of many along with their false teachings, and rather turn to the word that was delivered to us from the beginning, being sober in prayer and constant in fasting, praying to the all-seeing God with supplications that he will not lead us into temptation, just as the Lord said, "The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak".
(Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians, 7:1–2)
Around the same time, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch writes on similar lines in his letters, warning the church to guard itself against "mad dogs" that stealthily bite at the truth. Ignatius praises the church at Ephesus for the way it resisted such false teachers:
I have learned that certain persons passed through you on their travels, bringing evil doctrine with them, but you did not allow them to sow their seed in you because you stopped your ears so that you would not receive the seed they had sown. You are stones of a temple that were prepared beforehand to be a building of God the Father, being hoisted up to the heights through the work of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, and using the Holy Spirit for a rope; your faith is your winch, and love is the way that leads up to God.
(Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians, 9:1)
In seeking to hold fast to the faith of the church, Christians are encouraged in this early period to submit themselves to the teachings of their leaders as the church in Acts listened to the apostles. An early bishop of Rome, Clement, writes on these lines to the church at Corinth:
Therefore it is right for us to learn from so great and so many examples, submit our necks and occupy a place of obedience, taking sides with those who are the leaders of our souls, so that in ceasing this foolish dissension we may gain the goal that lies before us in truthfulness, keeping away from every fault.
(1 Clement 61:1)
A similar line on respect is shown in the Didache, or The Teachings of the Twelve, which discusses the appointment of leadership in a church:
Appoint for yourselves therefore bishops and deacons who are worthy of the Lord, men who are meek and not lovers of money, who are true and approved. They also perform a service for you of prophets and teachers. Therefore do not despise them for they are your honourable men along with the prophets and teachers.
(Didache, 15:1–4)
Some of these key early Christian writings suggest that there were wandering Christian teachers who would be paid to preach in churches and who were popular because of the message they gave – often more pleasant than the encouragement to be united and persevere when suffering that the local leaders gave. There are repeated warnings against the division such teachers could create and a belief that churches should give first authority to the leaders that God has given them.
One important aspect of the early church is thus a sense of being a united body of faith across the Roman empire, something that was challenged both by the rapid spread of Christianity from the Near East across the empire and by the difficulty of some of the key points of the faith. By the end of the first century the apostles had all died, and there were questions about the faith that needed an authoritative witness to the truth. This is clearly provided by certain leaders who had learned the faith from the apostles and then by their successors – we have already had quotations from Clement, who early tradition claimed was taught by Peter, and from Polycarp and Ignatius, who were taught by John. These three had such a recognized authority that they were able to write to advise churches on matters of faith and practice, Clement writing a letter to Corinth, Polycarp to Philippi, and Ignatius to the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, and the Smyrnaeans.
Why is authority such an issue for the early church? Largely because of the difficulty of not only protecting the Christian message but even understanding it in the context of the first couple of centuries. What become the New Testament writings have a strongly Jewish focus because the majority are written when Jerusalem retains a central place in Christianity, before its destruction by the Romans in AD 70. However, the growing church around the empire is primarily Gentile and heavily influenced by Greek thought, which creates new problems for the church in understanding core elements of the Christian gospel.
One element that sums up the church's struggle is incarnation, which is clearly absolutely central to the gospel. There were two aspects of Greek thought that made it difficult for many to conceive that the eternal Word of God could take on flesh. First, there was the teaching on creation, concerning which many strains of Greek theological thinking sought to distance the perfect God (or Good) from the material world because of the corruption and imperfection evidenced in that world. Second, there was the nature of God, who was believed to be "impassible", incapable of change or suffering, which is problematic for an eternal Word that not only takes on flesh but even dies on a cross.
The challenges posed by just this one part of the surrounding cultural and philosophical influences on the early church demanded not only great devotion to the teaching of the gospel, but also an assurance that the message being taught in the church was that received from Christ and the apostles. Even for those churches with access to some or many of the writings that would form the New Testament, there are no simple replies to many of the perceived false teachings because, as we will see, there is little if any systematic theology in those stories and letters. As regards the incarnation, there is the added problem that the central term used to describe Jesus Christ, "the Son of God", can just as easily be considered in line with the Greek cultural understanding of God and the world as with the far more complex God-man of the Apostolic Tradition.
With a large number of oral and written sources beginning to circulate, some of uncertain origin, it is the church and its recognized leaders that quickly become the guardians of the faith as they affirm the core beliefs and begin to battle against those who have departed from sound teaching. A good early example of erroneous teaching would be Marcion of Sinope, a Gnostic teacher and the son of a bishop, who was confronted by Polycarp and declared "the firstborn of Satan" because of his departure from the faith of the church in denying the incarnation and the validity of the Jewish scriptures.
Through the first 300 years of Christianity, the Christians lived through persecutions and the pressures of pagan Roman society, having to deal with leaders and gatherings that denied important beliefs of the early church, with few writings recognized as an authority that could be used to test suspect teachings. The nature of Jesus Christ was the greatest issue that was faced, with recurrent voices emphasizing either his divinity or his humanity and the church bravely battling to assert both as coexisting in the one person.
One controversy that summed up many struggles of the early church, however, related to the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's relationship to the believer, to the church, and to the writings that the church was increasingly relying on through the second century. It concerned a prophet called Montanus and two prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla. The major issues that arose with this movement in Phrygia, modern-day Turkey, concerned not salvation but the teaching about the Spirit and the relationship between the Spirit, the church, and the developing Scriptures. The experience of the Spirit manifesting in prophecies and miracles was not new to the church – the gifts of the Spirit had always been affirmed and evidenced, and would continue to be for centuries to come. Montanus gained a significant following because of his holy life, his visions, and the miracles associated with his ministry, but his claim that he was the Father speaking in human form, and the claim to be the embodiment of the Paraclete (more associated with Maximilla) and thus to be uttering the very words of God, were rejected by the church. Such teachings did not totally depart from writings that would be included in the New Testament – Montanus sought to ground his teachings in passages from John's Gospel in particular – but they were against the faith that had been handed down and thus had to represent misinterpretations, such as the distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Paraclete.
Such ideas challenged the core notions of the Apostolic Tradition regarding the nature and purpose of the church, namely that, following Christ's ascension, the Spirit had been sent to form the church and guide it to hold true to the gospel that was transmitted through the apostles. If a lone voice, or group of voices, arose with a new divine authority above that of the church or the Christian writings, which could reject or reinterpret elements of the gospel message, then the assurance of believers and the unity of the body of Christ could not be maintained.
There are other aspects of the earliest church that could be explored – persecution, an emphasis on holiness, evangelism – but these were not the key points that arose during the Reformation discussions on the church. More central were questions of the faith that resided in the church and the transmission of that faith by the leaders. For the earliest church, these were vitally important because the New Testament books were as yet undecided and the faith was under threat from cultural and philosophical alterations, many of which came from Christians wrestling with the revelation of Christ in the context of their understanding of reality.
The Establishment of the Church
The Theological Project
Things change greatly for the church from the late third century, often gradually in some of the areas we are focusing on here. One of these is the study and explanation of the Christian faith that began to develop at that time and reached early heights in discussions of the godhead in the fourth century, most notably in the great Councils at Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381).
The earlier church seems to have loved its teachings and ideas, but was not overly theological or systematic in how it discussed and presented them. Partly this is because the church struggled to understand its beliefs well. The evidence of Celsus, a second-century Greek philosopher, is that the church was not a sophisticated entity during his life, being comprised largely of the disenfranchised – the poor, slaves, women – rather than the well-to-do and educated classes. Given that the work of creating more formal "Christian theology" requires a knowledge of philosophy for the precise use of words and concepts, there were few in the church who were able to take on such a project, particularly given the lack of contemporaries with whom they could safely discuss ideas or any schools that passed on formed Christian teaching. This situation makes the contribution of the few great early theologians, most notably Irenaeus of Lyon, all the more remarkable.
One key factor that complicated the subject of Christian belief was that there were many important areas of Christian thought that were strongly upheld but not clearly understood, particularly relating to the key figure of Jesus. The church knew that Jesus was a man, but also believed him to be divine. They knew that Jesus was not the Father, being the Son, but that Jesus' relationship with the Father was not that of any other human being. But the language of "Son of God" could easily end up separating Jesus from any notions of divinity, while emphasizing the unity of the Son with the Father could separate him from any real humanity. The church today talks easily about Jesus being fully God and fully man, often I think without properly appreciating what either of these phrases means or what the challenges are in asserting that Christ is in reality both.
There is great complexity in these ideas right at the heart of the Christian gospel without clear answers to all the surrounding questions. For the early church, the problem raised was less great than one might think, primarily because of the experience of God and a humility towards the teaching of the church and its leadership. That Christ was born of a virgin, lived, died, rose, and ascended, sending the Spirit to enliven and equip the church, was a matter of faith, not requiring an understanding of the metaphysical implications of any one part. In accepting this and experiencing the power of the Spirit individually and communally, the church was able to cling to the gospel through tough circumstances.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Rediscovering the Reformation"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Matthew Knell.
Excerpted by permission of Lion Hudson Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction,
Chapter One: Understanding the Church,
Chapter Two: Approaches to Scripture,
Chapter Three: God's Work in Salvation: Grace,
Chapter Four: The Human Response: Faith, Belief, Works,
Chapter Five: Persecution,
Chapter Six: Summing Up,
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