8 Laos and Leadership Under the New Covenant: Some Exegetical and Hermeneutical Observations on Church Order
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LAOS AND LEADERSHIP UNDER THE NEW COVENANT: SOME EXEGETICAL AND HERMENEUTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON CHURCH ORDER[1]
The New Testament is full of surprises, but perhaps none is so surprising as its generally relaxed attitude toward church structures and leadership; especially so, when one considers how important this issue became for so much of later church history, beginning as early as Ignatius of Antioch. Indeed, for most people the concept of “church history” refers primarily to its history as a body politic, involving both its evangelism and growth and its intellectual/theological development.
Probably for a variety of reasons,[2] the New Testament documents simply do not carry a concern for church order as an agendum.[3] The thesis of this essay is that the primary reason for this stems from their understanding of what it means to be the people of God under a new covenant, as that in turn is related to their common experience of the eschatological Spirit.[4] The burden of the essay is ultimately hermeneutical—how we move from the first-century documents to twentieth-(twenty-first) century application. But those questions, as always, must first be subject to the exegetical ones—how we understand the texts themselves.
I. The Issue(s)
Historically the church seems to have fallen into[5] a model that eventually developed a sharp distinction between the people themselves (laity) and the professional ministry (clergy), reaching its sharpest expression in the Roman Catholic communion,[6] but finding its way into almost every form of Protestantism as well. The net result has been a church in which the clergy all too often exist apart from the people, for whom there is a different set of rules and different expectations, and a church in which the “gifts” and “ministry,” not to mention significance, power structures, and decision-making are the special province of the professionals. Being “ordained” to this profession, the latter tend to like the aura that it provides, and having such ordained professionals allows the laity to pay them to do the work of the ministry and thus excuse themselves from their biblical calling. The rather universal model, with a few exceptions, looks something like this:
Figure 8.1 Contemporary Ecclesiastical Structure
The biblical model, on the other hand, looks something far more like the following diagram—without clergy at all, but with identifiable leadership, who were simply part of the whole people of God:
Figure 8.2 Biblical Leadership Model
The problem for most moderns, of course, in coming to the biblical texts, is that we tend to presuppose our resultant form of church to be theirs; we therefore carry both different agenda and a different experience of the church back to the documents. But history and tradition have had their innings. Even though it is arguable that we have genuine continuity with the New Testament church in many ways—especially our experience of grace and the Spirit—our experience of the church itself is so far different from theirs that seemingly ne’er the twain shall meet.[7]
As I see it, the areas of difficulty are four: (1) the tension between individual and corporate life, where Western Christians in particular are trained from birth to value the individual above the group, whereas in the New Testament perspective the community is still the primary reality, and the individual finds identity and meaning as part of the community; (2) the tension between eschatological and institutional existence, most moderns knowing only the latter, whereas the New Testament church existed primarily as an experience of the former; (3) the place of structures as they flow out of these two tensions; and (4) the hermeneutical difficulty created by the nature of data, since the New Testament documents, which teem with reflections and insights, have very little directly intentional instruction on these matters. So how do they apply? Do we seek a biblical norm to follow,[8] or seek to model what fits our situation best, or try rather to approximate the spirit of the biblical pattern in our already existing structures?
I propose in the rest of this essay to take up some of these issues by first examining the biblical data and then by offering some brief hermeneutical observations in light of those data.
II. The People of God in the New Testament
1. The Language
By first pursuing the New Testament language for the Christian communities, I hope to demonstrate two realities about them: (a) their strong sense of continuity with the people of God under the former covenant, and (b) their basically corporate nature.
That the early believers thought in terms of continuity is writ large on nearly every page, in nearly every document.[9] They did not see themselves as the “new people of God,” but as the “people of God newly constituted.” Nowhere is this more clear than in their adopting Old Testament “people of God” language, a language appropriation that is as varied as it is thoroughgoing.
a. Church (ekklēsia). Because this word does not appear in the English Old Testament, and because its usage for the “assembly” of the Greek polis is generally well known, the Old Testament background for New Testament usage is frequently overlooked. In the Septuagint (LXX) ekklēsia is regularly used to translate the Hebrew qahal, referring most often to the “congregation of Israel,” especially when it was gathered for religious purposes.[10] Thus this word in particular was a natural one for the early believers to bridge the gap as they began to spill over into the Gentile world.
Since the concept of a “gathered people” was primary in both Greek and LXX usage, it is arguable that this is what lay behind the earliest Christian usage as well. Thus in its first appearance in the New Testament (1 Thess 1:1) Paul is probably thinking primarily of the Christian community as a gathered people, constituted “in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” who would be listening to the letter as it was read. It is also arguable that its usage throughout the New Testament never gets very far away from this nuance; the ekklēsia refers first of all to the people in the various cities and towns who gather regularly in the name of the Lord for worship and instruction.
b. People (laos). Although not particularly popular with Greek writers, this is the word chosen by the LXX translators[11] to render the Hebrew ‘am, the word that occurs most often (over 2000 times) to express the special relationship Israel had with Yahweh: Above all else they were Yahweh’s “people.” Although at times the word can distinguish the people (usually non-Israelite) from their leaders (e.g., Gen 41:40; Exod 1:22), in most cases it is the collective word that designates the whole people whom God had chosen—people, priests, prophets, and kings together. Thus in Exodus 19:5, in establishing his covenant with them at Sinai, God says (LXX), “You shall be for me a laos periousios (special/chosen people) from among the ethnon (nations/Gentiles).”
In the New Testament the word occurs most often to refer to the Jewish people of that era.[12] But in several striking passages it is used in its Old Testament sense, especially reflecting the language of Exodus 19:5–6 (cf. 23:22 LXX), to refer to people of the new covenant, usually in contexts that include Gentiles. Thus Luke reports James as saying: “How God at first showed his concern by taking from the ethnon a laos for his name” (Acts 15:14); in 2 Corinthians 6:16 Paul, by way of Old Testament citation, specifically applies “people of God” language to God’s new temple, the church; in Titus 2:14 the goal of Christ’s saving purpose is “that he might purify for himself a laos periousios,” while 1 Peter 2:9–10 combines “people” language from two Old Testament passages (Isa 43:20/Exod 19:6/ Isa 43:21), followed by a word play on Hosea 2:25 (cf. 1:9), to designate Gentile Christians as “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God,” who were formerly “no people” but now “are the people of God.” So also the author of Hebrews transfers several Old Testament “people” passages or concepts to the church (2:17; 4:9; 7:27; 13:12).
c. Covenant (diathēkē). Although this term does not occur often in the New Testament, it is used in ways that are significant to our topic. The author of Hebrews in particular adopts covenantal language to tie the new to the old, seeing Christ as the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s “new covenant” in which God says again, as in the sinaitic covenant, “They shall be for me a people” (Heb 8:7–12; citing Jer 31:34). Paul also adopts this language to refer to the “new covenant” of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:6; cf. Gal 4:24). Perhaps even more significantly, as the people joined in common fellowship at the Table of the Lord in the Pauline churches, they did so with these words: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor 11:25; Luke 22:20). It should be noted that both the language “new covenant” and its close tie with the Spirit and the people of God are seen in terms of continuity with the Old Testament (in this case as fulfillment); thus in the church’s earliest worship and liturgy there was the constant reminder of their continuity/discontinuity with the past.[13]
d. Saints (hoi hagioi). Although not frequent in the Old Testament, the designation of Israel as God’s “holy people” occurs in the crucial covenantal passage in Exodus 19:5–6, an expression that in later Judaism referred to the elect who were to share in the blessings of the messianic kingdom (Dan 7:18–27; Ps Sol 17; Qumran). This is Paul’s primary term for God’s newly formed, eschatological people. He uses it in the salutation of six of the nine letters addressed to congregations, plus Philemon, as well as in several other kinds of settings. Its appearance in Acts 9:41; Hebrews 6:10; 13:24; Jude 3; and Revelation 8:4 makes it clear that this was widespread usage in the early church. In all cases it is a designation for the collective people of God, who are to bear his “holy” character and thus to be “set apart” for his purposes. To put that another way, the New Testament knows nothing about individual “saints,” only about Christian communities as a whole who take up the Old Testament calling of Israel to be “God’s holy people” in the world.[14]
e. Chosen (eklektos and cognates). Closely related to the covenant is the concept of Israel as having been chosen by God, by an act of sheer mercy on his part. In the Old Testament this concept is most often found in verb form, with God as the subject. However, the LXX of Isaiah 43:20–21 uses eklektos as a designation for the restored people of God. This usage is picked up in several places in the New Testament (e.g., Mark 13:22; 1 Thess 1:4; 2 Thess 2:13; Col 3:12; Eph 1:4,11; 1 Pet 1:2; 2:9). As in the Old Testament the term refers not to individual election, but to a people who have been chosen by God for his purposes; as one has been incorporated into, and thus belongs to, the chosen people of God, one is in that sense also elect. Likewise in the Old Testament, this language places the ultimate ground of our being in a sovereign and gracious God, who willed and initiated salvation for his people.
f. Royal Priesthood. This term, taken directly from Exodus 19:6, is used in 1 Peter 2:9–10 to refer to the church. I include it here not only because it is further demonstration of continuity, but also because as in the Exodus passage it so clearly refers to the people corporately,[15] not to individual priests or to the priesthood of individual believers.[16]
g. The Israel of God. This unique expression occurs only in Galatians 6:16 in the entire Bible. Nonetheless, in many ways it gathers up much of the New Testament thinking—especially Paul’s—on this matter. All those who live by the “rule” that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, these are “the Israel of God” upon whom God’s benediction of shalom and mercy now rests.[17] While it is true that Paul does not call the church the “new Israel,” such passages as Romans 2:28–29; 9:6; Philippians 3:3, and this one demonstrate that Paul saw the church as the “true Israel,” i.e., as in the true succession of the Old Testament people of God. At the same time it emphasizes that those people are now newly constituted—composed of Jew and Gentile alike, and based solely on faith in Christ and the gift of the Spirit.
This comes through nowhere more forcefully than in the argument of Galatians itself, for which this passage serves as the climax. Paul’s concern throughout has been to argue that through Christ and the Spirit Gentiles share with believing Jews full privileges in the promises made to Abraham (indeed are Abraham’s true children), without submitting to Torah in the form of Jewish identity symbols (circumcision, food laws, calendar observance).[18] They do not need to submit to the regulations of the old covenant in order to be full members of the people of God; indeed, in “belonging to Christ,” they are “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (3:29), which is confirmed for them by the gift the Spirit (4:6–7).
Here especially the primary name for God’s ancient people has been taken over in the interests of continuity, but now predicated on new terms. The Israel of God includes both Jew and Gentile, who by faith in Christ and “adoption” by the Spirit have become Abraham’s “free children,” and through Christ they have become the inheritors of the promises made to Abraham. Gentile believers as a people are included in the newly constituted people of God, the Israel of God, which is at the same time also an obviously corporate image.
h. Further (Non-Old Testament) Images. The essentially corporate nature of the people of God is further demonstrated by the various images for the church found in the New Testament that are not from the Old Testament: family, where God is Father and his people are brothers and sisters (2 Cor 6:18); the related image of household, where the people are members of the household (1 Tim 3:5,15) and their leaders the Master’s servants (1 Cor 4:1–3); body, where the emphasis is simultaneously on their unity and diversity (1 Cor 10:17; 12:12–26); God’s temple, or sanctuary, where by the Spirit they corporately serve as the place of God’s dwelling (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:21–22); God’s commonwealth, where as citizens of heaven Jew and Gentile alike form a polis in exile, awaiting their final homeland (Phil 3:20–21; Eph 2:19; 1 Pet 1:1,17).
In sum: By using so much Old Testament language to mark off its own identity, the early church saw itself not only as in continuity with the Old Testament people of God, but as in the true succession of that people. One of the essential features of this continuity is the corporate nature of the people of God. God chose, and made covenant with, not individual Israelites but with a people, who would bear his name and be for his purposes. Although individual Israelites could forfeit their position in Israel, this never affected God’s design or purposes with the people as a people. This is true even when the majority failed, and the “people” were reduced to a “remnant.” That remnant was still Israel—loved, chosen, and redeemed by God.
This is the thoroughgoing perspective of the New Testament as well, but at the same time Christ’s coming and the gift of the eschatological Spirit also marked a new way by which they were constituted. The community is now entered individually through faith in Christ and the reception of the Spirit, signalled by baptism. Nonetheless, the church itself is the object of God’s saving activity in Christ. God is thus choosing and saving a people for his name.
Perhaps nothing illustrates this quite so vividly as two passages in 1 Corinthians (5:1–13; 6:1–11), where rather flagrant sins on the part of individuals are addressed. In both cases Paul aims his heaviest artillery not at the individual sinners, but at the church for its failure to deal with the matters. In 5:1–13 the man is not so much as spoken to, and his partner is not mentioned at all; everything is directed at the church—for its arrogance, on the one hand, and its failure to act, on the other. So also in 6:1–11. In this case he does finally speak to the plaintiff (vv. 7–8a) and the defendant (vv. 8b–11), but only after he has scored the church for its allowing such a thing to happen at all among God’s eschatological community, and thus for its failure to act. What is obviously at stake in these cases is the church itself and its role as God’s redeemed and redemptive alternative to Corinth.
2. The People and Their Leadership
The sense of continuity with the old, however, does not seem to carry over to the role of leadership as well. Under the old covenant the king and priests in particular, although often included in much of the “people” language, were at the same time recognized as having an existence apart from the people, with their own sets of rules and expectations. It is precisely this model of leadership that breaks down altogether in the New Testament. The basic reason for this is the Lordship of Christ himself. As God intended to be himself king over Israel, so Christ has come as God’s king over his newly constituted people. As head of his church, all others, including leaders, function as parts of the body both sustained by Christ and growing up into him (Eph 4:11–16).[19]
Thus leadership in the New Testament people of God is never seen as outside or above the people themselves, but simply as part of the whole, essential to its well-being, but governed by the same set of “rules.” They are not “set apart” by “ordination”;[20] rather, their gifts are part of the Spirit’s work among the whole people. That this is the basic model (as diagrammed earlier) can be demonstrated in a number of ways, some of which deserve special attention.
a. The Nature of the Epistles. One of the more remarkable features of the New Testament Epistles is the twin facts (a) that they are addressed to the church(es) as a whole, not to the church leadership,[21] and (b) that leaders, therefore, are seldom, if ever,[22] singled out either to see to it that the directives of a given letter are carried out or to carry the directives out themselves. To the contrary, in every case, the writers address the community as a whole, and the expectation of the letter is that there will be a community response to the directives. In several instances leaders are mentioned (e.g., 1 Thess 5:12–13; 1 Cor 16:16; Heb 13:17), but basically in order to address the community’s attitudes toward them. In 1 Peter 5:1–4 the leaders themselves (apparently)[23] are addressed, in this case with regard to their attitudes and responsibilities toward the rest of the people.
Thus, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 5:12–13 the whole community is called upon, among other things, to respect those who labor among them, care for them,[24] and admonish them; yet in vv. 14–15, when urging that they “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all,” Paul is once more addressing the community as a whole, not its leadership in particular. So also in 2 Thessalonians 3:14 the whole community is to “note that person” who does not conform to Paul’s instruction and “have nothing to do with him.” Likewise, in all of 1 Corinthians not one of the many directives is spoken to the leadership, and in 14:26 their worship is singularly corporate in nature (“When you [plural] assemble together, each one of you has . . . ; let all things be done with an eye to edification”). One receives the distinct impression that people and leaders alike are under the sovereign direction of the Holy Spirit.
This is not to downplay the role of leadership;[25] rather, it is to recognize that in the New Testament documents leaders are always seen as part of the whole people of God, never as a group unto themselves. Hence they “labor among” you, Paul repeatedly says, and their task in Ephesians 4:11–16 is especially “to prepare God’s people [‘the saints’] for works of service [‘ministry’], so that the body of Christ may be built up.” Thus the model that emerges in the New Testament is not that of clergy and laity, but of the whole people of God, among whom the leaders function in service of the rest.
All of this is quite in keeping with Jesus’ word that his disciples were to call no one “rabbi,” “father,” or “master,” for “you have one teacher and you are all brothers and sisters” (Matt 23:8–12), and with his word that “those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42–44).
b. The New Testament Imperatives. Closely related to this is another reality that is easily missed in an individualistic culture, namely, that the imperatives in the Epistles are primarily corporate in nature and have to do first of all with the community and its life together; they address individuals only as they are part of the community. In the early church everything was done allelōn (“one another”). They were members of one another (Rom 12:5; Eph 4:25),[26] who were to build up one another (1 Thess 5:11; Rom 14:19), care for one another (1 Cor 12:25), love one another (1 Thess 3:12; 4:9; Rom 13:8; 1 John passim), bear with one another in love (Eph 4:2), bear one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2), be kind and compassionate to one another, forgive one another (Eph 4:32), submit to one another (Eph 5:21), consider one another better than themselves (Phil 2:3), be devoted to one another in love (Rom 12:10), and live in harmony with one another (Rom 12:16).
All of the New Testament imperatives are to be understood within this framework. Unfortunately, many texts which Paul intended for the community as a whole have been regularly individualized, thus losing much of their force and impact. For example, in 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 Paul is not talking of believers’ building their individual lives on Christ; rather, the admonition in v. 10 (“let each one take care how he/she builds”) is intended precisely for those in Corinth responsible for building the church, that they do it with the imperishable materials compatible with the foundation (a crucified Messiah), not with “wisdom” and division. Likewise vv. 16–17 are a warning to those who would “demolish” God’s temple, the church in Corinth, by their divisions and fascination with “wisdom.” And on it goes. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12–13) is not a word to the individuals in the community to work harder at their Christian lives, but is spoken to a community that is out of sync with one another (as vv. 1–5 make clear) and that needs to work out its common salvation with God’s help. In the same vein, it is impossible to compute the misunderstandings that have arisen over 1 Corinthians 12–14 because the text has been looked at outside the context of the community at worship.
All of this, then, to say that the people of God in the New Testament are still thought of corporately, and they are addressed individually only as they are members of the community. And leadership is always seen as part of the whole complex. Leaders do not exercise authority over God’s people—although the community is to respect them and submit to their leadership; rather, they are the “servants of the farm” (1 Cor 3:5–9), or “household” (1 Cor 4:1–3). The New Testament is not concerned with their place in the governance structures (hence as we will note below, we know very little about these), but with their attitudes and servant nature. They do not rule,[27] but serve and care for—and that within the circle, as it were.
III. The Theological Basis for the New Testament People of God
Before turning our attention to some observations about the nature of structures and ministry in the New Testament, it is time now to suggest the theological/experiential basis for the New Testament church’s discontinuity with the old, and thus for their being a newly constituted people, which in turn accounts for their relaxed attitude toward governance structures as such. This basis, I suggest, is a combination of three realities:[28] the work of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, and the eschatological framework within which both of these were understood.
1. The Work of Christ
We need not belabor this point. The single, central reality of the New Testament is that “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36); and that changes everything. On the one hand, he “fulfills” all manner of hopes and expectations, thus functioning as both continuity and discontinuity with the old: he is the “seed” of Abraham, inheritor of the promises to Abraham, through whom both Jew and Gentile alike are now “heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:16, 29); he is the great high priest, whose singular sacrifice of himself eliminates all other priests and offerings, through whom we all now have direct access to the Father (Hebrews); he is the rejected stone now become the chief cornerstone by whom we have become living stones in God’s new “spiritual house” (1 Pet 2:4–8).
On the other hand, the death and resurrection of Christ bring an end to the old and begin the new. His death ratified a new covenant, so that the people of God are newly constituted—based on faith in Christ and including Gentile as well as Jew.[29] His resurrection set the future in motion in such a way that this newly constituted people are “raised with him” and enter an entirely new mode of existence—so much so that a radical new understanding of that existence also emerged.
This is obviously the focus of New Testament theology, and the primary reason for discontinuity with the former people of God (in the sense that they must now come through Christ in order to belong). But such focus does not in itself account for the people of God sensing themselves to be a newly constituted people as well.[30] This can only be accounted for on the basis of the eschatological framework of their self-understanding and the role of the Spirit within that understanding.
2. The Gift of the Spirit
Although the New Testament people of God were constituted on the basis of Christ’s death and resurrection, the Spirit, who appropriated that work to their lives, was the key to their present existence as that people. The Spirit is both the evidence that God’s eschatological future had dawned (Acts 2:16–21) and the guarantee of their own inheritance at its consummation (Eph 1:13–14).[31] The Spirit is that which marks off God’s people from the rest, whereby they understand the wisdom of the cross, which the world counts as foolishness (1 Cor 2:6–16). Their common experience of Spirit, both Jew and Gentile, plus their continuing experience of the Spirit’s activities among them, is that to which Paul appeals in Galatia as evidence of the new expression of being God’s people (Gal 3:2–5); and the Spirit by whom they walk, in whom they live, and by whom they are led is the reason they no longer need Torah (5:16–23). Not only has Christ brought an end to Torah but by belonging to him believers have also crucified the flesh (Gal 5:24) that was aroused by Torah (Rom 7:5). Through the Spirit they fulfill the whole Torah as well as the law of Christ by loving one another (Gal 5:13–14; 6:2).
Moreover, the Spirit is the key to their existence as a people. Through Christ both Jew and Gentile together “have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18). By their common, lavish experience of Spirit the many of them in Corinth, with all their differences and diversity, became the one body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13); by the Spirit’s abiding in/among them they form God’s temple, holy unto him—set apart for his purposes as his alternative to Corinth (1 Cor 3:16–17).
Finally, the Spirit serves as the key to their new view of ministry. Ministry lies not in individuals with inherited offices, nor even in individuals with newly created offices. Ministry lies with the gifting of the Spirit. God through his Spirit has placed ministries in the church; and since the Spirit is the eschatological Spirit of Joel’s prophecy, all of God’s people are potential prophets—Jew/Gentile, male/female, home owner/slave. The Spirit is unconscious of race, sex, or rank. He gifts whom he wills for the common good (1 Cor 12:7, 11).
Thus the Spirit, as available to all, and gifting various people in divers ways as he wills, is the crucial ingredient of their new self-understanding—and thus of their discontinuity with the old.
3. The Eschatological Framework
The net result of Jesus’ death and resurrection followed by the advent of the Spirit was that the early church understood itself to be an eschatological community, “upon whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor 10:11). The early Christian’s citizenship was already in heaven, from whence they were awaiting Christ’s return to bring the final consummation (Phil 3:20–21). With the resurrection of Christ, God set the future inexorably in motion (1 Cor 15:20–28), so that the form of this present world is passing away (1 Cor 7:31).
Thus the early church understood the future as “already” but “not yet”[32] and its own existence as “between the times.” At the Lord’s Table they celebrated “the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). By the resurrection and the gift of the Spirit they had been stamped with eternity. They had been “born anew to a living hope . . . to an imperishable inheritance preserved in heaven for them” (1 Pet 1:3–5). They already “sat in the heavenlies” through Christ (Eph 1:4). In their present existence, therefore, they were living the life of the future, the way things were eventually to be, as they awaited the consummation. It is thus in light of the eschatological realities of their existence that Paul tries to shame the Corinthians by trivializing both the need to redress one’s grievances and the secular courts in which such litigation took place; in light of eschatological realities such things count for nothing (1 Cor 6:1–6).
As much as anything, it is this sense that Christ’s death and resurrection marked the turning of the ages, and that the Spirit in/among them was God’s down payment and guarantee of their future, that marked the crucial point of discontinuity with what had gone before. With Christ and the Spirit they had already begun their existence as the future people of God. And it is precisely this new, eschatological existence that transforms their understanding of being his people. The future has already begun; the Spirit has come upon all of the people alike, so that the only differences between/among them reflect the diversity of the Spirit’s gifts, not a hierarchy of persons or offices. There can be no “kings” or “priests” in this new order, precisely because this future kingdom, which was inaugurated by Jesus and the Spirit, is the kingdom of God, and thus a return in an even grander way to the theocracy that was God’s first order for Israel.
IV. Structure and Ministry in the New Testament
As already noted, one of the truly perplexing questions in New Testament studies is to determine the shape that leadership and structures took within the earliest congregations of God’s new covenant people. The difficulties here stem from the lack of explicit, intentional instruction, noted at the beginning of this study. The reasons for it are related to the twofold reality of their eschatological existence and their experience of the Spirit, not to mention the simple fact that one seldom instructs on something that is generally a given.
What I hope to do here is to offer some reflections on the data as they come to us in the documents. Several things seem quite certain:
Leadership was of two kinds.[33] On the one hand, there were itinerants, such as the apostle Paul and others, who founded churches and exercised obvious authority over the churches they had founded. On the other hand, when the itinerant founder or his delegate were not present, leadership on the local scene seems to have been left in the hands of “elders,”[34] all expressions of which in the New Testament are plural. Thus Paul founded the church in Corinth, and it is to him that they owe their allegiance—so much so that he rather strongly denounces other “apostles” who teach foreign doctrines on his turf (cf. 2 Cor 10:12–18).
In the same vein Paul delegates Timothy, and apparently later Tychicus, to straighten out the mess in Ephesus created by some false teachers, who in my view were elders who had gone astray.[35] Timothy is not the “pastor”; he is there in Paul’s place, exercising Paul’s authority. But he is to replace the fallen elders with new ones, who will care for the church and teach when Timothy is gone (1 Tim 5:17–22; 2 Tim 2:2; 4:9). The elders in the local churches seem to have been composed of both episkopoi (overseers) and diakonoi (deacons), who probably had different tasks; but from this distance there is little certainty as to what they were (except that the episkopoi were to be “capable teachers,” 1 Tim 3:2).
Unless Revelation 2–3 provides an exception, there is no certain evidence in the New Testament of a single leader at the local level who was not at the same time an itinerant. The status of James in Jerusalem is at once a more vexed and complex issue. In an earlier time, as evidenced by both Luke and Paul, he appears to have been one among equals. But as the others moved on and he stayed, he apparently emerged eventually as the predominant leader, but in what capacity one is hard pressed to determine. In any case, he was not native to Jerusalem—a kind of “permanent itinerant”?—and probably exercised the kind of leadership there that Paul did over his churches.
Because of the authority vested in the apostle as founder of churches—either by the apostle himself or as in the case of Epaphras one of the apostle’s co-workers—there does not seem to be any other outside authority for the local churches. That is, apostles apparently did not assume authority in churches they had not founded. Paul’s considerably more restrained approach to the church in Rome in contrast to his other letters serves as evidence.
Moreover, even though there is a form of collegiality among the “apostles” and “elders,” Paul at least did not consider any one of them to have authority over him, although he felt a kind of urgency that they all be in this thing together.[36] Thus, there appears to have been a kind of loose plurality at the top level, with recognition of each other’s spheres and ministries as given by God (Gal 2:6–10).
Apart from the authority of the apostles over the churches they had founded, there seems to be very little interest in the question of “authority” at the local level. To be sure, the people are directed to respect, and submit to, those who labored among them and served them in the Lord (1 Cor 16:16; Heb 13:17). But the interest is not in their authority as such, but in their role as those who care for the others.
The concern for governance and roles within church structures emerges at a later time. Nonetheless, the twofold questions of laity and women in ministry are almost always tied to this question in the contemporary evangelical debate. The great urgency always is, Who’s in charge around here? which is precisely what puts that debate outside New Testament concerns.
One of the difficulties in the Pauline letters is to determine the relationship between certain gifts, especially prophecy and teaching (as e.g., in 1 Cor 14:6, 26), and people who are designated as prophets and teachers. The clear implication of 1 Corinthians 14:6 and 26–33 is that teaching, for example, is a gift that might be exercised by anyone in the community; yet in 12:28 he sets prophets and teachers after apostles as God’s gifts to the community. Most likely both of these phenomena existed side by side; that is, prophesying and teaching, as well as other gifts, were regularly exercised in a more spontaneous way by any and all within the community, whereas some who exercised these gifts on a regular basis were recognized as “prophets” and “teachers.” The former would be ministry for the upbuilding of the community; the latter would naturally emerge in roles of spiritual leadership within the community.
Thus, in the final analysis we know very little about the governance of either the local or larger church. That structures of some kind existed can be taken for granted; but what form these took is simply not an interest in our documents themselves. It is arguable that at least part of the reason for this is their sense of corporate life as the people of God, among whom the leaders themselves did not consider themselves “ordained” to lead the people, but “gifted” to do so as one gift among others.[37]
V. Some Hermeneutical Observations
How, then, does all—or any—of this apply to us? Here our difficulties are a mixture of several realities. First, how does one handle biblical revelation that comes to us less by direct instruction and more by our observations as to what can be gleaned from a whole variety of texts?[38] Second, if we do think in terms of “modeling” after the New Testament church, which of the various models do we opt for, and why?[39] Third, since we are already set in various traditions, and since so much water has gone under the bridge in any case, what difference does any of this make on our very real personal and corporate histories? I have no illusions that I can resolve these matters; indeed, they merely raise some of the deep hermeneutical issues that have long divided the people of God. For most of us, there is comfort in the known, and structures we are used to are easily seen as biblical. Nonetheless, I want to conclude this study with a few observations.
We should probably all yield to the reality that there are no explicitly revealed church structures that serve as the divine order for all times and in all places. Even so, I think there are ideals toward which we might strive—although we may very well keep present structures in place. In this regard, I would put at a top level of priority our need to model the church as an eschatological community of the Spirit, in which we think of the church as a whole people among whom leaders serve as one among many other gifts, and that one of the basic priorities of leadership is to equip and enable others for the larger ministry of the church. Despite years of ingrained “division of labor,” I am convinced that a more biblical model can be effected within almost any present structure. But it will take a genuine renewal of the Holy Spirit, so that the “clergy” cease being threatened by shared gifts and ministries, and the people cease “paying the preacher to do it.”
As to structures themselves, it is my guess that the model that emerged was the result of a transference of roles, in which there arose at the local level a more permanent, single leader, but now based on the model of the itinerant apostle. This bothers me none, as long as the model of a single pastor wielding great authority in the local church is not argued for as something biblical in itself. The danger with this model, of course, is that it tends to focus both authority and ministry in the hands of one or a few persons, who cannot possibly be so gifted as to fill all the needs of the local community. Furthermore, leadership, especially of the more visible kind, can be heady business. For me the great problem with single leadership is its threefold tendency to pride of place, love of authority, and lack of accountability. Whatever else, leadership in the church needs forms that will minimize these tendencies and maximize servanthood.
Thus I would urge the movement toward a more biblical view of church and leadership in which we do not eliminate “clergy”—except for all the wrong connotations that that word often brings with it—but look for a renewed leadership and people, in which ordination was not so much to an office as the recognition of the Spirit’s prior gifting, and the role of leadership was more often that of Ephesians 4:11–16, preparing the whole church for its ministry to itself and to the world.
If the structures of the New Testament church themselves are not necessarily our proper goal, I would urge that the recapturing of the New Testament view of the church itself is. If the church is going to be God’s genuine alternative to the world, a people truly for his name, then we must once again become an eschatological people, people who are citizens of another homeland, whose life in the Spirit is less creedal and cerebral and more fully biblical and experiential, and a people whose sense of corporate existence is so dynamic and genuine that once again it may be said of us, “How those Christians love one another.”
1 This paper was originally prepared for discussion at a Regent College faculty retreat. Rather than a research paper that tries to take account of the vast array of secondary literature (on church order and laity), I have attempted something more modest: an essay that offers one NT scholar’s reading of the biblical texts on specific issues related to the church as the people of God, namely, the interrelationships between people, clergy, ministry, and church order. Although what I do here is akin to re-inventing the wheel, it is hoped that some items will be fresh—although on others I can be easily scored for not having consulted the literature. I am grateful to my Regent colleagues for a vigorous discussion of the paper, from which I have made a few revisions and added some footnotes for greater clarity.
2 One reason not otherwise noted in this paper is the especially ad hoc nature of our documents. Even the so-called Pastoral Epistles show little interest in church leadership or governance as such. Rather, Paul is concerned with the character and qualifications of those who assume positions of leadership. See G. D. Fee, 1 and 2 Timothy, 19–23, 78–79.
3 As I have noted elsewhere, the very fact that such diverse groups as Roman Catholics, Plymouth Brethren, and Presbyterians all use the Pastoral Epistles to support their ecclesiastical structures should give us good reason to pause as to what the NT “clearly teaches” on these matters. See “Reflections on Church Order in the Pastoral Epistles, with Further Reflection on the Hermeneutics of ad hoc Documents,” JETS 28 (1985) 141–51. This is one of the things that makes Acts such a different kind of “church history” from its successors. There is scarcely a hint of church organization or structures (1:15–26 and 6:1–6 play quite different roles). At some point, for example, leadership in Jerusalem passed from the Twelve to James (cf. 6:2 and 8:14 with 11:2; 12:17; and 15:13), without so much as a word as to how or why. At the local level, in 13:1–3, those who appear to be in leadership are “prophets and teachers,” while in 14:23 elders are appointed for each congregation. This is hardly the stuff from which one can argue with confidence as to how the early church was “organized”—or whether it was!
4 By this I mean something quite technical, namely, the outpouring of the promised Holy Spirit as the primary reality indicating that Jewish eschatological hopes had been fulfilled, or realized. For the early church “this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16), the sure evidence that the End (Eschaton) had begun and the time of the future had dawned.
5 In contrast to having come by such order through purposeful, intentional action on its part.
6 I mean de jure, of course. One of my colleagues pointed out that de facto there is nothing more severe in this regard than some independent churches (baptist, pentecostal/charismatic).
7 For me this is always brought home as a living reality in teaching NT theology. Although my emphases and packaging of the biblical data frequently stimulate rousing discussion (debate?), nothing does so quite as much as the section in Pauline theology on the nature of the church as the eschatological people of God, presently living out the life of the future as they await the consummation. Not only do I have great difficulty in helping students to catch the NT perspective, but even when it happens, there is difficulty in assimilating it—because this touches them right where they live.
8 Whether we should try to model the NT church, of course, is yet another hermeneutical question in its own right. On the place of “historical precedent” in Christian hermeneutics, see some programmatic suggestions in Fee and Stuart, How to Read, 87–102. [Cf. chapter 6 in the present volume.]
9 This is no more than we should expect, given Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic expectations, his own announcement of the kingdom as “fulfilling the time,” and the Jewish complexion of the earliest believers. Continuity is thus found in a whole variety of ways in the Gospels: e.g., in direct statements reflecting the motif of promise and fulfillment, in symbols and images of various kinds (Jesus’ choice of the Twelve is scarcely accidental!), in the hymns in Luke’s birth narrative.
10 Thus, e.g., Deut 31:30: “And Moses recited the words of this song from beginning to end in the hearing of the whole ekkēsia of Israel.”
11 Probably because the more common word ethnos was used by Greek writers to refer to themselves as a people in the same way the Hebrews used ‘am. Thus for the Jews ethnos came to equal “Gentiles,” and was so used by the LXX translators. Hence the need for a different word to distinguish themselves.
12 Luke uses it most often (84 of 142); Matthew 14; Hebrews 13; Paul 12; Revelation 9. In many of these it occurs in citations of the OT.
13 Just as the Lord’s Table, through its symbol of the bread (1 Cor 10:16–17), should serve for us as a reminder of our continuity with centuries of believers.
14 See G. D. Fee, First Corinthians, 32–33, for the difficulties in rendering this term into English; the option which seems best to capture its inherent nuances is “God’s holy people.”
15 Cf. B. Childs on Exod 19:6: “Israel as a people is also dedicated to God’s service among the nations as priests function with a society” (The Book of Exodus [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974] 367).
16 The NT knows nothing of the “priesthood of the believer” as it is popularly conceived, with each person’s being his or her own priest with God, without need of an external priesthood. To the contrary, the NT teaches that the church has a priestly function for the world (1 Pet 2:9–10); and our role of ministering to one another makes us priests one for another.
17 Although it is grammatically possible that this phrase refers to Jewish people, and is so argued by many (see esp. P. Richardson, Israel in the Apostolic Church [SNTSMS 10; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969] 74–102), both the unusual nature of the qualifier “of God” and the context of the whole argument argue for the position taken here.
18 The issue in Galatians is not first of all justification by faith (i.e., entrance requirements), but whether Gentiles, who have already been justified by faith in Christ and given the Spirit must also submit to Jewish boundary markers (i.e., maintenance requirements) in order to share in the covenant with Abraham (as Gen 17:1–14 makes so clear). For arguments presenting this perspective see T. David Gordon, “The Problem in Galatia,” Interpretation 41 (1987) 32–43; and J. D. G. Dunn, “The Theology of Galatians,” SBL 1988 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 1–16.
19 [Surely one of the ironies of my own tradition, the American Assemblies of God, as well as that of many other such traditions is that every criticism of the ministry in any of its forms, including very bad preaching, was always challenged on the basis of 1 Sam 24:6, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord’s anointed.” Although Pentecostals might argue that the NT analogy of “the Lord’s anointed” is the one who speaks by the Spirit, in fact this became a tacit elevation of “ordained” ministry to the position of the untouchable king. No wonder the history of such movements, and even more so of independent churches, is fraught with stories of ministerial moral failure. Kings play by a different set of rules, and the structures of accountability are seldom in place.]
20 That is, they are not “set apart” to an office; rather, hands are laid upon them in recognition of the Spirit’s prior activity. Cf. Acts 13:1–2; 1 Tim 4:4.
21 The one exception to this is Philippians, where Paul writes to the church “together with the overseers and deacons.” One might also include Philemon, where Paul includes Archippus in the salutation, but since the letter is addressed to Philemon, Paul continues by mentioning two further individuals before including the church. Some, of course, would argue that 1 Timothy and Titus are such documents; however, both of these younger colleagues serve as Paul’s own apostolic delegates in Ephesus and Crete. They are both itinerants, whose stay is temporary. Thus they are not church leaders in the local sense.
22 One exception to this might be Col 4:17, where Paul specifically tells the church to exhort Archippus to “complete the task you have received in the Lord” (NRSV); but even here the church is the primary focus, and it is not at all clear what Archippus’ “task” is. Cf. Phil 4:3, where Paul asks a trusted fellow-worker to mediate the differences between Euodia and Syntyche. But in this case, since these two women are also designated as his fellow-workers, Paul is asking for help not so much from a church leader as such, but from one who has been a co-laborer with both Paul and these women. As in the preceding note, Timothy and Titus are “leaders” of a different kind. They are in their respective situations in Paul’s place; they are not local leaders “in charge” of the church.
23 This seems almost certainly to be the case, despite the corresponding “younger men” that follows in v. 5.
24 The verb in this case is ambiguous in Greek, meaning either to “govern” or to “care for.” Apart from 1 Tim 3:4–5, elsewhere in the NT, as here, it is used absolutely so that one cannot determine which nuance is intended. But in the Timothy passage the synonym that is substituted for it in v. 5 means unambiguously to “care for.” This seems most likely what Paul ordinarily had in mind. Cf. E. Best, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1972) 224–25.
25 Indeed, despite some NT scholarship to the contrary, it is highly unlikely that the early communities ever existed long without local leadership. The picture Luke gives in Acts 14:23 is an altogether plausible one historically, given the clear evidence of leadership in the earliest of the Pauline letters (1 Thess 5:12–13)—a community where he had not stayed for a long time, whose leadership must have been in place when he was suddenly taken from them (Acts 17:10; 1 Thess 2:17).
26 This is an obvious reference to the imagery of the church as the body of Christ, another corporate image used by Paul, which I have not dealt with in this essay because it is both so obvious and lacking OT roots.
27 Language of “rulership” and “authority” is altogether missing in the NT passages which speak about leadership, except as Paul refers to his apostolic authority in his own churches.
28 To be complete and more precise, of course, one should start with their absolutely primary theological presupposition: That the one God—holy, sovereign, and gracious—had purposed their salvation, which he effected in Christ and made available for all through the Spirit (see e.g., Gal 4:4–7).
29 The classic illustration of Paul’s own struggle with continuity and discontinuity between the new and the old—expressed in terms of Gentile and Jew—is Romans 11, where Gentiles have been grafted onto the olive tree “and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root” (v. 17, NIV). Yet Israel itself must be regrafted in order to be saved.
30 After all, in the early going, as Luke portrays things in Acts 1–6, the early believers lived within Judaism—and surely expected that all Jewry would acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, Savior, and Lord.
31 Cf. the powerful eschatological metaphors of the Spirit in Paul that especially make these double points: “seal” (2 Cor 1:21–22; Eph 1:13; 4:30); “earnest/first installment” (2 Cor 2:21–22; 5:5; Eph 1:14); “firstfruits” (Rom 8:23). This latter metaphor in particular helps us to see how Paul views life in the Spirit as lived in the eschatological tension of the “already” and the “not yet”; while at the same time the Spirit is the guarantee of our certain future. The larger context of Rom 8:12–27 is especially noteworthy. With the Spirit playing the leading role, Paul in vv. 15–17 has struck the dual themes (1) of our present position as children, who are thus joint-heirs with Christ of the Father’s glory, and (2) of our present existence as one of weakness and suffering, as we await that glory. These are the two themes taken up in vv. 18–27. By the Spirit we have already received our “adoption” as God’s children, but what is “already” is also “not yet”; therefore, by the same Spirit, who functions for us as firstfruits, we await our final “adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies.” The first sheaf is God’s pledge to us of the final harvest.
32 Cf. 1 John 3:2: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
33 But not of the two kinds most often noted in the literature: charismatic and regular. Rather, it is itinerant and local. Authority lies with the itinerant, except when he is on the local scene.
34 Since the earliest congregations grew out of Judaism, the (chiefly lay) elders of the Jewish synagogues almost certainly served as the model for the early Christian communities.
35 See Fee, 1 and 2 Timothy, 7–10.
36 Gal 2:1–10 is the clear evidence. Paul went up “by revelation” not by requirement. His urgency was a common bond in the same gospel.
37 In this regard see especially how the participle for leaders “those who care for the church” is found nestled between “contributing to the needs of others” and “showing mercy” in Rom 12:8.
38 [On this matter see chapter 1, pp. 2–5.]
39 [On this matter, see chapter 6, pp. 85–89.]