THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
A common criticism levied against Evangelicals is that we tend to downplay (or even ignore) that rather large bit of Christian history which took place between the death of the apostle John and Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg. Worse still, I have even got the impression, whether rightly or wrongly, that the church, far from prevailing against the gates of Hades as Christ promised (Matthew 16:18, see also John 16:13) must have lapsed into error fairly early on (perhaps even as early as the end of the first century) only to be restored again at the Reformation, a view held by groups such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. In more recent years, I have had additional reasons to look into the early history of the Church, as I have been involved in teaching church history to interns and have written a short book on the subject (Rooted: reconnecting with the history of the Church)
So, I started reading from the primary texts of the early church, beginning with Augustine of Hippo, Irenaeus of Lyon and the Apostolic Fathers and then moving on to the dogmatic decrees and creeds of the early Ecumenical Councils and other early writings. However, this new found interest in patristics quickly started to raise awkward questions. If I was going to accept the doctrinal definitions of the early church about the person of Christ or the canon of the New Testament as representing the mind of the Spirit, why not also accept the consensus of the early Church on other issues as well? The early church (from what I had read) certainly seemed to have a high degree of unity on key doctrines compared with more recent denominational wranglings. I had already received the shock of reading Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” (and discovering that his views on the church and the sacraments weren’t quite what I’d imagined) and if the Reformation-era church wasn’t what I thought it was, maybe the early church wasn’t either.
Some of the specific doctrinal implications for me of accepting the authority of the early church can be briefly summarized, as follows –
(a) The Lord’s Supper
Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom in Rome at the start of the second century A.D., hearing of the Docetism threatening the church in Smyrna, wrote to them concerning the false teachers, as follows –
“Now note well those who hold heretical opinions about the grace of Jesus Christ that came to us; note how contrary they are to the mind of God. They have no concern for love, none for the widow, none for the orphan, none for the prisoner or the one released, none for the hungry or thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer because they refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up.” (Ignatius of Antioch, “To the Smyrnaeans” 6.2)
One significant impact for me personally on accepting the objective presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper has been to regain the “present tense” of the sacrament. I had always, ever since becoming a Christian at sixteen, believed in a “past tense” of remembering the death of Christ and a “future tense” of awaiting the marriage supper of the Lamb, but, even in doing so, I had somehow lost sight of the privilege of actually encountering Christ himself at his meal, sacramentally eating his flesh and drinking his blood as spiritual nourishment (compare John 6:53).
(b) Baptism
Perhaps most difficult of all, given my “credobaptist” heritage, is accepting the consensus of the early church that baptism is the “bath of regeneration” (see Titus 3.5). Having said this, I have long held baptism to be, in some sense, a burial (Romans 6.4) and certainly much more than simply an outward washing (compare 1 Peter 3.21) or memorial. Indeed, one of the best arguments that I have heard in favour of believer’s baptism is the fact that that baptism is a burial, and it is not traditional to bury people until they have actually died!
(c) Worship
I came to faith in Christ within a tradition of Christianity in which spontaneity and freedom in worship were emphasized, rather than fixed liturgical forms. It came as something of a surprise to me, therefore, to discover that the evidence for liturgical worship in the early Church is actually rather strong, particularly with regard to the administration of the Lord’s Supper. The outlines of a Eucharistic liturgy can be found in the Didache (late 1st/early 2nd century) and this is confirmed by later works such as Justin Martyr’s First Apology (2nd century) and the Apostolic Constitutions of Hippolytus of Rome (early 2rd century). Within Scripture itself, there is reference to an altar (Hebrews 13.10), prayers (Acts 2.42, note the reference to “the prayers” – “tais proseuchais” rather than “prayer”) – including various “hours” of prayer (e.g. Acts 3:1, 10:3, 9) – and the use of incense in the heavenly worship (Revelation 5.8) which, perhaps unsurprisingly, suggests a certain degree of continuity in worship style between the church and the synagogue or temple. Indeed, in Acts 13.2, the Holy Spirit appears to interrupt the apostles during the liturgy (the Greek text of the verse begins with the word leitourgountōn – “as they were performing liturgy (i.e. public worship or service) which would indicate that order in worship and openness to the work of the Holy Spirit are not necessarily as mutually incompatible as I once thought.
(d) Church government / oversight
Here, at least, my study of the early church has not shaken my thinking too much. I have believed in the ministry of multiple local elders since I first started to think about the issue, and have since then grown to see the importance of deacons, as part of the biblical pattern (1 Timothy 3.12ff). The main challenge came from the early evidence of individual city churches each being overseen by a single bishop. This pattern is strongly advocated by Ignatius (who was probably a disciple of the Apostle John) and, perhaps, also by Clement of Rome in his reference to High Priests, Priests and Levites in relation to the church (1 Clement 40.5). While the New Testament seems to use the terms elder and overseer (or bishop) interchangeably (as does an early manual on running a church, the Didache), it does also refer to the position left vacant by Judas Iscariot as an episkopen or “bishopric” (Acts 1.20) and, on occasion, seem to indicate that some elders (e.g. James in Jerusalem, Titus in Crete) had a leading role overseeing several local congregations. Disciples of the eye-witness apostles seem to feature prominently among early bishops, carrying on the tradition of the apostles, especially in those early decades when the New Testament was still being written. Another point to note is that many churches run by multiple local elders have a “lead elder” and it could be that the move to having a single “bishop” over each city church during the early second century was more of a change of terminology than one of structure.
(See other posts in this series and buy Edward’s book)