Section 68. The Church As Edifice

Section 68. The Church As Edifice

SECTION 68. THE CHURCH AS EDIFICE

In addition to what has been treated in the foregoing chapters concerning the nature of the New Testament church, the epistles of Paul also contain a great deal concerning the practice and the organization of the church. One can perhaps best gather this up in the concept occurring so frequently in Paul of the upbuilding of the church. Its presupposition is on the one hand that the New Testament church did not immediately reach its final goal and perfection; on the other hand that therein it is the abiding object of God's care over it and has itself been called to progress, extension, consolidation, in a word, to its own self-upbuilding. Another concept that runs parallel to this and could be employed for the same thing is that of the growth or increase of the church. Both conceptions, as we shall see still further, have always been closely coupled together, both have a clear redemptive-historical background, and each represents a viewpoint of its own. The figure of upbuilding predominates, however, so that we take our point of departure in it.

The idea of upbuilding rests on the concept often occurring in the New Testament of the church as the "house," the "temple," the "building" of God, as does that of growth on the representation of the church as "planting," "field," etc. Just as "body of Christ," they constitute a further definition of the church as the people of God and make us see that one may not grant one of the several "images" of the church an exclusive significance and absolutize it at the expense of the others.

What first of all concerns the representation of the church as "house," "temple," or "building" is its broad Old Testament basis. This has already been demonstrated frequently.¹ Applied to the true eschatological Israel, this imagery had its point of departure primarily in the prophetic promise of the gracious restoration of the people who had been given up to exile, of the reconstruction of their devastated houses and walls, of their cities and temple.² The concept upbuilding thus becomes a symbol of the gracious dealings of God with the remnant of his people, and is found in this sense in later Judaism's expectation for the future.³ In this redemptive-historical and eschatological sense it is applied in the whole of the New Testament and especially in Paul to the Christian church as well.

In doing so the church can be represented both in general as a building, and in particular as the temple of God. The place of the Old Testament temple and worship is taken, according to 1 Peter 2:5, by "the spiritual house," into which the church is built as "living stones." The same thought underlies Paul's qualification of the church as the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16, 17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21), just as he speaks of the new life as the spiritual worship in which believers are to dedicate themselves to God as a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1; cf. 15:16).

Closely bound up with this is the thought of the indwelling of God, and this also sheds light on the nature of the church. Here, too, the Old Testament background of the dwelling of God among his people in his temple is plain (cf. 2 Cor. 6:16). Now this dwelling is further described as an indwelling of the Spirit of God, who is at the same time the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9-11; 1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21; 2 Tim. 1:14). The order of ideas is again that by belonging to Christ the church is the temple of God in which the Spirit of Christ dwells, which can also be described therefore as the dwelling of Christ in their hearts (Eph. 3:17; cf. Rom. 8:10).

Along with that — perhaps in close connection with it — the idea of the divine "house" or "building" recurs again and again — however, without direct allusion to the temple. The church is God's building (1 Cor. 3:9), the house of God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15); believers are members of the household of God (Eph. 2:19; cf. Gal. 6:10); and the apostles and elders are God's stewards (1 Cor. 4:1; Tit. 1:7; Eph. 3:2; Col. 1:25; 1 Tim. l:4ff.). In harmony with this we find in Paul a whole series of figures and expressions that are borrowed from the building of a house, whereby the conception is not always the same. In 1 Corinthians 3:10 Paul calls himself the architect who lays the foundation on which others go on to build (cf. Rom. 15:20). In the same context Christ is called the foundation (1 Cor. 3:11; cf. Col. 2:7), and there is mention of the differing quality of the structure erected on it ("gold," "silver," etc.), whereby it is evidently not the church itself but the labor bestowed on it by later preachers or office-bearers that is thought of. Elsewhere the apostles and prophets are called the foundation (Eph. 2:20), and the church itself, especially in the paraenetic sections, is represented as the subject of the upbuilding (e.g., Eph. 4:16). This last idea finds application in various connections and from a great many points of view, and is among the most typical features of Paul's preaching (see below). The most inclusive "building terminology" that is applied to the church is found in Ephesians 2:19-22. It is said here of the gentile Christians that they are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow-citizens and members of the household of God. Here the idea of the church as the house of God is closely bound up therefore with the spiritual citizenship of the true Israel, the redemptive-historical people of God (cf. v. 12). This house is now entirely determined by Christ and his work of redemption. It has its foundation in the apostles and prophets designated by him to that end; Christ himself is its supporting ground, the cornerstone⁴ of the whole building (cf. Isa. 28:16 [ LXX ]; Ps. 118:22). In him — thus Ephesians 2 : 21 — t h e whole structure,⁵ fitly joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, and in him the gentiles, too, are built up together into a habitation of God in the Spirit. Thereby belonging to the building also becomes a dynamic thing. The temple is the point of departure, but also the goal. Everyone who is in Christ is built up together in this building in order thus to belong to the house in which God will dwell with his Spirit.⁶

All this may enable us to see as well how closely connected are the conceptions of the church as the body of Christ and as the house or dwelling of God. The imagery sometimes flows together.⁷ The same words that express the inner coherence of the body of Christ also apply to the consolidation of the house of God (cf. Eph. 4 : 1 6 and 2:21). It is said of the house of God that it grows up, as a living organism (Eph. 2:21), and of the body that it is built, as a house (Eph. 4:12, 16). A third idea blended together with these is that of the church as the planting of God. Already in the Old Testament "to build" and " t o plant" go together (respectively, "to pull down" and "to pluck out") (cf. Jer. 24:6). The New Testament church, too, is at the same time God's field and God s building (1 Cor. 3:9); and "planting" and "watering," just as laying the foundation and building, are the labors of the apostles and their fellow-workers (1 Cor. 3:6ff.). Thus receiving a share in the privileges of the people of God can be called being grafted into the olive tree (Rom. 11:17ff.). T o be incorporated into the church is therefore "to be rooted" in Christ, which again is a synonym of "to be grounded" and requires further "upbuilding" (Eph. 3:17; Col. 2:7). These figures and representations are mingled together in all sorts of ways, so that one may even ask whether the growth of the church as building and body is oriented to the idea of the body or to that of planting (cf. 1 Cor. 3:6; 2 Cor. 9:10 It is also said of believers themselves that they grow up, increase in the knowledge of God (Col. 1:10; cf. 2 Cor. 10:15). It is evident from all this therefore how much for Paul the conception originating in the Old Testament of the church as the people of God, house of God, temple of God, and planting of God has become thoroughly bound up with the idea characteristic of his own world of thought of the church as the body of Christ, so that what holds for the one can also be said of the other, and what is to occupy us still further in Paul's preaching concerning the church we can treat as a unity.

In summary⁸ the following can be said of the building up of the church as Paul speaks of it in his epistles:

(a) In accordance with the redemptive-historical character of the church this upbuilding must be seen first of all as the continuing work of God with his people (Rom. 14:19, 20), whose temple and dwelling place it is. This continuing and consummating work consists both in the bringing in of those who till now have been without (cf. Rom. 15:20ff.) and in the inner strengthening and perfecting of all who in Christ now belong to it (1 Cor. 14:3; 1 Thess. 5:11, et ai).

(b) This upbuilding takes place on Christ the foundation once laid (1 Cor. 3:10, 11), and the apostles and prophets ordained by him to that end (Eph. 2:20, 21; cf. Rom. 15:20). It accordingly bears the character of a continuing confirmation and consolidation on this foundation (Col. 2:7), by which the church receives a character of its own, comes more and more to adulthood, and is safeguarded and cleansed from all alien powers and doctrine that darken its character and throw it into confusion (cf. Eph. 4:12-14; Col. 2:6-8).

(c) For the sake of this upbuilding God equips the church with all sorts of gifts and powers that he places at its disposal, as also with various kinds of ministries that must further its upbuilding (Eph. 4:11ff.; 2 Cor. 10:8; 13:10; cf. Rom. 12:3, 6ff ; 1 Cor. 12:4ff., 28ff.). In particular the gathering of the church serves this upbuilding (1 Cor. 14:26); it is most closely bound up with the proclamation of the Word of God (1 Cor. 14:3; Rom. 15:20), and is directed toward the right corporate manifestation of the church in the world.

(d) The apostle devotes particular attention as well to the mutual upbuilding of the church, whereby it is primarily a question of the right relationship of community and individual, of the induction of the individual into and his functioning in the whole, but whereby each one is ever to place the good of the church above his own preference and ability (cf. 1 Cor. 8:1; Rom. 14:15, 19; 12:3ff.).

Several of these general aspects merit further consideration.

SECTION 69. EXTENSIVE AND INTENSIVE UPBUILDING

The nature of the upbuilding thus described, as the continuing and consummating redemptive work of God with his church, is such that both the increase and the inner consolidation of the church pertain to it; one could speak of the enlargement and preservation, of the extensive-missionary and the intensive-confirmatory element of this upbuilding, which in the work of God are one.

That the extensive-missionary point of view, which is so closely bound up with the redemptive-historical background of the divine building, is frequently present in the New Testament concept of upbuilding,⁹ appears a single time from the Pauline usage as well (Rom. 15:20). The extension and progress of the church, in a qualitative as well as in a geographical sense, is in his train of thought among the essential characteristics and conditions of the Christian church in the time between Christ's ascension and future appearing. All his own missionary work, which drove him on from one place to another, from Jerusalem to Illyria and from Illyria to Rome and Spain (Rom. 15:19ff.), is the proof of it. Accordingly he sees the progress of the church in the world in the same way: as the result of the gospel that in the whole world is bearing fruit and increasing (Col. 1:6; cf. v. 23).¹⁰ Beyond this one cannot speak of a completed missionary "theology" in Paul. The key motif of his missionary thought is the breakthrough of the proclamation of the gospel to all the nations (Rom. 1:16; 3:22ff.; 15:9ff.); with that the catholicity of the church has been given in principle (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11; 1 Cor. 12:13); there are no spatial boundaries set to the proclamation of the gospel and to the church; everything works toward the pleroma, the full number intended by God both of Jews and gentiles (Rom. 11:12, 25), a perspective with which for Paul also the end of history coincides (Rom. 11:25, 26).

This grand vision of the world-encompassing significance of the gospel and of the expansion of the church causes him furthermore to involve the church that has already been brought to salvation in this missionary work in a great many ways, and to awaken the church itself to a missionary attitude.¹¹ The church enters into it, and rejoices when people elsewhere come to conversion (1 Thess. 1:9; 2 Thess. 1:4). Its intercession for Paul and his missionary labor is repeatedly requested (2 Thess. 3:1; Eph. 6:18; Col. 4:3). This intercession is a striving together with the apostle (Rom. 15:30; Col. 4:12). The church is also called to tangible assistance. With a view to his work Paul often makes an appeal to the church for assistance, in which a specific term¹² is repeatedly employed, which we can translate by "to help on one's way," sometimes also by "to send out" (cf. 1 Cor. 16:6, 11; 2 Cor. 1:16; Rom. 15:24; Tit. 3:13).

All this does not mean merely an incidental rendering of assistance, in which the church shows its sympathy for the work of the apostle; rather, its own mode of existence as a missionary church is reflected in it.

This missionary posture consists on the one hand, more indirectly, in the sanctification of the life of the church. It must be mindful of what is good, acceptable, and commends itself to all men (Rom. 12:17); its friendliness and gentleness of spirit must be known to all men (Phil. 4:5); it must walk in wisdom toward those who are without, not permit a good opportunity to slip by. Its word is always to be gracious, seasoned with salt (Col. 4:5). The members of the church are to mind their own affairs and to work with their hands, that they may walk decently, respectably, before those who are without, having no need of anything (from others) (1 Thess. 4:12). They must be in the forefront in good deeds, for these are good and profitable to men (Tit. 3:8). The whole life of the church is to be such that an opponent to his shame has nothing adverse to say of us (Tit. 2:8). This motif recurs throughout all the epistles of Paul in various nuances and elaborations:¹³ the life of the church must be a recommendation of its faith, in conformity with, "worthy of," the Lord (Col. 1:10) and the gospel of Christ (Phil. 1:27). In this last point the missionary element is very clear.

Along with this, however, there is a more direct, deliberate missionary calling of the church. If one examines what Paul says about it in his epistles, the yield does not appear to be great. The church is indeed stirred up to imitate the apostles and Christ (1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; 1 Thess. 1:6). These passages again have reference in the first place to the conduct of the church, but then surely with the conscious and deliberate intention of saving others thereby.¹⁴ More direct stimuli to missionary activity are found, for example, in Colossians 4:5, 6 (once again in close conjunction with conduct). Elsewhere, in Ephesians 6:15, Paul speaks of "the readiness of the gospel of peace" as necessary for the church, and he urges it to join in the struggle for the faith in the gospel (Phil. 1:27). It is evident also from other statements that the churches responded to this admonition of the apostle. Such passages as 1 Thessalonians 1:7ff., Romans 1:8, and Philippians 1:5, 12ff. show clearly that the sound that went forth from them had a good ring to it. They lent themselves to the end that the word quickly spread abroad, and that their faith was spoken of by others. They had a warm, active involvement (koinōnia; Phil. 1:5) in the progress of the gospel. One may even think that so little is expressly said on the missionary stance of the church because it was not so much necessary to stimulate it to activity, as that this be manifested in the right manner, i.e., not in words only, but above all in good works.¹⁵ However this may be, that it was part of the existence of the church to give testimony to the gospel in word and deed, directly and indirectly, can scarcely be disputed on the ground of Paul's epistles, but finds corroboration everywhere in them. And the deepest motives for this, just as for the work of the apostle himself, lie in the consciousness that the church is included in the great world-encompassing work of God in Jesus Christ. It is not the church itself that is the ultimate object, not its numbers and prestige, but the revelation of the full eschatological salvation in Christ, of whom the church is the pleroma, that is to say, the bearer of the glory of Christ (Eph. 1:23; 4:13, 16).

It is in the closest connection with this that what is said time and again in the epistles of Paul concerning the inner confirmation and upbuilding of the church is to be understood. On the ground of the great redemptive-historical perspectives of Paul's preaching there can scarcely be question of any priority or preponderance of what is called indeed the "preserving" and the "increasing" of the church; nor can one posit as a dilemma whether the nature and destiny of the church are situated in its missionary calling or in its inner consolidation.¹⁶ As the people of God and as the body of Christ the goal and destiny of the church lie in its pleroma, in the extensive as well as in the intensive sense of the word. For this reason Paul can at one time give expression to the fact that the purpose of the divine economy of redemption for the church is situated in the coming in of the fullness of the gentiles as well as that of the Jews (Rom. 11:25-32); and this all to the praise of God, from whom and through whom and unto whom are all things. But he is also able to say that all the gifts of Christ to his church serve to build up the body of Christ, the destiny of which he then describes as follows: "till we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). It is thus the intensive "fulness," the adulthood and maturity of the church, toward which the entire process of upbuilding is directed.¹⁷

If we look more closely at what Paul understands by this inner upbuilding, growth, and adulthood of the church, then in addition to what has already been said in another context concerning the "perfection"¹⁸ and "fulness"¹⁹ of the church, the following are still to be pointed out:

(a) In the upbuilding of the church it is a question first of all of its establishment in Christ, of the certainty that it may and must ever increasingly draw from the fact that Christ is its foundation and the source of its life. Paul speaks of this being founded and rooted in Christ in terms of an accomplished fact. Christ is the foundation and cornerstone (1 Cor. 3:11; Eph. 2:20), the church is once-and-for-all grounded (tethemeliōmenoi) and rooted (errizōmenoi) in him (Eph. 3:17; Col. 2:6, 7), and on this ground the upbuilding is now to go on as an actual reality.²⁰ This being rooted and grounded consists in having "received" Christ, a terminus technicus for the acceptance of the authoritative apostolic tradition concerning Christ (1 Cor. 11:23; 15:1, 3; Gal. 1:9; Phil. 4:9; Col. 2:6; 1 Thess. 2:13; 4:1; 2 Thess. 3:6). It is now of utmost importance for the upbuilding of the church that, as it has "received" and "learned" Christ (Col. 2:6; Eph. 4:20, 21), so it should walk in him and abide in him. Paul never wearies of stressing this binding character of the "tradition," in the authoritative, apostolic²¹ sense of the word, even in the words in which the church has received it (1 Cor. 15:1, 2). Only thus will it be safeguarded against instability, being moved up and down, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, in the game that men play with it, in the deceit of false doctrine (Eph. 4:14). He sets this tradition, which is "according to Christ," over against "the tradition of men and the principles of the world," falling prey to human wisdom (Col. 2:7, 8). This concern for the church's remaining rooted and grounded in Christ, in accordance with the holy, apostolic (Eph. 3:5) tradition and doctrine, is found in all the epistles of Paul, and not only in the Pastoral Epistles, although there the contrast with rising heresy and the admonition to continue in "sound" doctrine come particularly to the fore (cf., e.g., 1 Tim. 1:10; 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:3; Tit. 1:9, 13; 2:1, 2), and the expression "that which has been entrusted" (parathēkē, depositum) takes the place of "tradition" (paradosis), otherwise with the same meaning (1 Tim. 6:20; cf. 2 Tim. 1:12, 14; 2:2).

(b) This being rooted and grounded in Christ as the church has "received" and "learned" him does not, however, signify a static condition, but precisely the foundation for a progressive upbuilding and growth from this root. One is also not to think here only or in the first place of a quantitative extension, but of inner, qualitative upbuilding and growth. It is a question here of remaining immature and underage (nēpios, nēpiazō; cf. 1 Cor. 3:1; Gal. 4:3; Eph. 4:14) as contrasted with progress toward perfection, manly maturity. What is intended by this is the appropriation of the full Christ. Although Paul thus distinguishes between being underage and full-grown in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 3:1, 2; 2:6; Eph. 4:14), he does not wish thereby to introduce a classification within the church, but rather he sets himself against the religious immaturity of some.²² The whole church is to live out of the abundance and fullness of Christ, in order with all the saints to be able to apprehend what are the dimensions (of what has happened and been given in Christ); it must learn to know his love which surpasses knowledge and

thus be filled unto all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:18, 19).

It is a matter here, as is again and again apparent particularly in Ephesians and Colossians, of the full awakening of consciousness, knowledge, insight into the all-embracing significance of Christ. What is intended is not a purely theoretical or speculative knowledge, but an ever more profound awareness and an increasing clarity of insight with regard to all the implications of the salvation given in Christ.²³

(c) This is accompanied by still another aspect of this upbuilding, that of mutual unity and love, which is no less a proof of maturity than is knowledge. For the truth must be practiced in love, and only so does growth take place (Eph. 4:15), just as the hearts of believers are to be united together in love unto all insight and knowledge (Col. 2:2). The building up of the church accordingly consists in this, that all may come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and may attain to mature manhood (Eph. 4:13). On the one hand this means therefore a common growth and upbuilding to greater perfection. On the other, Paul's admonition, precisely in the texts on upbuilding, is directed toward this, that mutual harmony, the right relationship of community and individual, be preserved. It is accordingly here that his warnings apply against spiritual individualism and self-complacency.²⁴ For this reason he also cautions against a knowledge that is not directed toward the whole and refuses to place itself at the service of others; this knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Cor. 8:1). Therefore it is precisely those who have come to a deeper insight and spiritual maturity who must bear with those who are not yet so far along. For each one must wish not to please himself, but his neighbor, for good, for edification (Rom. 15:1, 2). With every spiritual gift that arises in the church the question should therefore be asked as to its "value for upbuilding,"²⁵ its value for the church (1 Cor. 14:3, 5, 26), so that he who aspires to spiritual gifts must do so with a view to this upbuilding (1 Cor. 14:12). It is repeated again and again that love is the secret of upbuilding (Rom. 14:15, 19; 1 Cor. 8:1), of all gifts is the most excellent (1 Cor. 13), constitutes the bond that alone makes the church "perfect" (Col. 3:14). Positively this upbuilding consists in mutual admonition, encouragement, warning, patience (1 Thess. 5:11; cf. v. 14; 1 Cor. 14:3). The continuing upbuilding of the church means that not only in its individual members, but

Furthermore, the charismata Christ wills to give for the edification of his church, both in their diversity among themselves and in their collective tendency toward the upbuilding of the one church, are to be appreciated in the right way. This "chapter" on the charismata in Paul's epistles requires a separate treatment, however.

SECTION 70. THE SPIRITUAL EQUIPMENT OF THE CHURCH. CHARISMA AND MINISTRY (OFFICE)

If one can therefore say that the pronouncements on the upbuilding of the church are plain in their general purport and give us a clear insight into the meaning of the apostle, we are placed before many difficulties when we attempt to form a picture of the structure and organization of the church, as that in part is presupposed in the Pauline epistles, in part also emerges in all kinds of concrete instructions and prescriptions. In general, we have to do here with the special spiritual equipment of the church, which is necessary for its upbuilding and which, as we shall see still further, is given expression particularly in the concepts charismata and ministries.

The treatment of the problem involved here is also of such great consequence for the reason that in the history of investigation it has been thought possible to appeal especially to Paul for a very specific conception of the character and organization of the early Christian church. This conception is said to have been determined to a very considerable degree by incidental and individual operations of the Spirit, consisting above all in prophetic and ecstatic charismata and still to have been entirely "free" from the later institutional and official organization of the church. In this conception we have to do with what was presented in great style by the jurist Rudolf Sohm around 1900, a position that no longer finds supporters in its totality, but which nevertheless makes itself felt and exercises influence in a great many respects in the New Testament literature on this subject, especially in connection with the interpretation of the Pauline texts.

Sohm's basic thesis²⁶ was that every form of ecclesiastical polity is in flagrant conflict with the essence of the church. He started from the church as an absolutely spiritual reality, the invisible body of Christ, the church whose citizenship is in heaven, which is held together only by common faith and pneumatic charismata, which has an external organization therefore neither locally nor otherwise, but is present as the church wherever only two or three are present in Christ's name. This church receives its leadership and government immediately from God by the Spirit, who makes his will known to persons appointed to that end. The church is to pay heed to it, but cannot itself produce this government, nor designate certain persons for that purpose. The prophets, too, are dependent on the Spirit in their speaking. There can be no question therefore of any office or legal order instituted by the church. Everything is dependent on the immediate influence of the Spirit.

Although Sohm appealed chiefly to Paul, he thought that with the above he had sketched the whole structure of the early Christian church. In this respect his conception has met with much opposition. For as was very quickly demonstrated by Harnack²⁷ and later by Holl,²⁸ in the remaining books of the New Testament, as in the Pastoral Epistles (which it was usually thought could not be attributed to Paul), there are so many direct and indirect data that clearly point to an institutional organization — if still elementary — of the early Christian church that one certainly cannot all along the line conclude a pneumatic-charismatic organization of the church. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the New Testament data Harnack especially has thrown light on the untenableness of Sohm's extreme spiritualism. In so doing he contended that the church as a sociological entity simply requires an organizational formation, which becomes church-law as soon as it is applied to ecclesiastical affairs.²⁹ On the other hand, the spiritualism of Sohm was opposed by Harnack, but not at heart overcome. Both started from a specific, liberal view of the church, of which the religious-individual and the personal-pneumatic relation between Christ and the individual believer was the governing point of view. For Harnack, too, therefore, the institutional and juridical aspect of ecclesiastical organization was a concern alien to the essence of the church; he would have nothing to do with what he termed a "religious" determination of law in the church.³⁰ Church law, office, ecclesiastical connection, in short, everything in the church that does not rest on the free impulse of the Spirit, but bears an institutional character, does not touch the inner essence of the church, has an administrative significance, and is based on agreement. On the ground of this view he arrived at his well-known distinction between religious (or charismatic) ministries, which are founded on the free impulse of the Spirit and were not bound to a local church, and administrative, local ministries.³¹ Particularly in Paul the individual-charismatic purportedly comes strongly to the fore, and only gradually was what for him was still pneumatic superseded by the institutional and administrative, when the eldership came in the place of glossolalia and prophecy. Others have posited, especially following in the footsteps of Holl, that Paul from the outset stood in sharp contrast with the church at Jerusalem. Whereas the traditional and institutional was of dominant significance in the early Jewish-Christian church, Paul is said to have placed much more emphasis on the personal and pneumatic discernment of individual believers; in regard to that, too, the independent significance of the local church is said through him to have come very much to the foreground, and the importance Jerusalem initially had in the primitive Christian church is said thereby to have been broken.³²

The whole problem, particularly as it was posed by Sohm, came to stand in an entirely different light, however, when a more adequate approach to the New Testament idea of the church took the place of the spiritualistic and individualistic views of theological liberalism,³³ and the redemptive-historical conception of the church as the people of God made possible a better apprehension of the relationship between the nature and manifestation of the church. Only then could the antithesis posited by Sohm between the spiritual character of the church on the one hand and the institutional, ecclesiastical organization on the other, be overcome in principle, and one did not need to stop at the essentially hybrid solution of Harnack, who thought he could wed the spiritual essence of the church to a secular organization alien to that essence. With this development the groundlessness also emerged of the constant appeal which it was thought might be made to Paul for this conception.³⁴ For with Paul the Spirit not only represents the invisible and heavenly existence of the church, but is given to the church precisely as earnest and firstfruits in the provisional character of its temporal existence, so that the church should reveal itself therein as the people of God directed toward the future and as the historical-visible communion of the body of Christ. Every dualism of visibleness and invisibleness, of form and Spirit, is alien to the New Testament, as also to the Pauline, idea of the church. On this account the historical and visible upbuilding and instrumentation of the church are pointed out as also the object and the fruit of the Spirit, not only elsewhere in the New Testament but in the epistles of Paul as well, and the charismata and ministries given to the church are to be viewed in this light.

These general points of view do not, however, release us from the task of entering further into the concrete data in Paul's epistles that have a bearing on this spiritual equipment and organization of the church. In so doing we encounter a multiplicity of descriptions and distinctions, at the root of which there is apparently no fixed, systematic arrangement.

As summary, general qualifications for all that serves the upbuilding and equipment of the church the apostle primarily employs two words, gifts ( charismata; Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 1:7; 12:4, 9, 28, 30, 31; 1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6; in a single instance also called domata [Eph. 4:8; cf. v. 11], in accordance with the quotation from Ps. 68:19) and ministries ( diakoniai; Rom. 11:13; 12:7; 1 Cor. 12:5; 16:15; 2 Cor. 4:1; 6:3; 11:8; Eph. 4:12; Col. 4:17; 1 Tim. 1:12; 2 Tim. 4:5, 11). In addition to these we meet with still other descriptions, such as workings ( energēmata; 1 Cor. 12:6, 19), work ( ergon; Eph. 4:12; 1 Thess. 5:13; 1 Tim. 3:1; 2 Tim. 4:5), administration, stewardship (oikonomia; 1 Cor. 9:17; Eph. 3:2; Col. 1:25; 1 Tim. 1:4; cf. 1 Cor. 4:2; Tit. 1:7), service (leitourgia; 2 Cor. 9:12; Phil. 2:17, 30; cf. Rom. 15:16). None of these words has carefully defined boundaries, and more often than not they are used in a broader sense rather than as a denotation of specific gifts or activities in the life of the congregation. The most striking thing is surely that these words have no sacral connotation and that, conversely, the words that are used in the LXX and in Hellenism for the sacral ministry in temple or sanctuary are not employed in Paul and in the New Testament generally for any service in the Christian church.³⁵ In that fact is expressed the entirely new manner in which Paul understands the intercourse between God and the church as his people.³⁶

Although each of these qualifications has its own special significance, the words charisma and diakonia most characterize this spiritual equipment, the first as a denotation of what Christ by his Spirit grants to the church in diversity and freedom, the second as a general delineation of how this functions in the church.³⁷ It is especially important thereby to give the concept charisma, which may be said to be highly characteristic for Paul's theological usage,³⁸ the large content that it has for him. To be sure, he distinguishes³⁹ in 1 Corinthians 12 between charismata, "ministries," and "workings" (vv. 4-6), and he understands charismata especially of gifts of healing (vv. 9, 28, 30); in the same context, however, charisma also means all that Christ works in the church to its upbuilding and fulfillment (v. 31). Elsewhere all the "workings" and "ministries" stand under one denominator — charismata (Rom. 12:6), just as in Ephesians 4 domata (gifts) is the key word. This general significance of charisma is corroborated by the use of charisma in a less specific context: in Romans 1:11 Paul expresses the hope that in his visit to the church he may impart to it "some spiritual charisma" for its strengthening, which clearly has a general meaning. And in 1 Corinthians 7:7 he says, with reference to the questions concerning marriage, that "each man has his own charisma from God, the one of one kind, the other of another," which does not refer to the married or unmarried state itself,⁴⁰ but surely gives expression to the fact that the charisma of the Spirit can consist in being able to abstain from marriage (cf. v. 7a).

It is evident even from this general use of charisma that one may not restrict the content of this idea to the unusual and spectacular, such as the performance of healings, speaking in tongues, being in a condition of ecstasy, etc. For, while these special charismata get particular (critical) attention in 1 Corinthians 12-14, in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 they are not mentioned at all. In the church at Corinth great value was apparently attached to them, and perhaps these unusual phenomena were intended by "the pneumatica" with which in 1 Corinthians 12:1 Paul introduces the whole subject of the charismata. Paul begins by setting these pneumatica over against heathenism and what occurred there, too, in the way of ecstatic phenomena (of a demonic nature; vv. 2, 3). He gives a warning against the latter to the Corinthians, who were apparently particularly susceptible to " pneumatica" (but also to derailment in them). Nevertheless he accepts these miraculous powers, ecstasy, and even glossolalia as gifts of the Spirit of Christ. But in doing so he makes a double reservation: in the first place, they must serve the upbuilding of the church. "They are validated not by the fascinosum of the praeter-natural but by the edification of the community."⁴¹ And in the second place, he elucidates with great clarity the diversity of the charismata. The pneumatic and charismatic is not only that which is spectacular and unusual, or which touches the inwardness of the religious life. Charisma is everything that the Spirit wishes to use and presses into service for equipping and upbuilding the church, what can serve for instruction and admonition and for ministering to one another, or even the effective direction and government of the church. The whole distinction between charismatic and non-charismatic ministries in the church therefore cannot be reconciled with the Pauline conception of charisma.⁴²In discussing the several gifts we have still to return to the particulars. But the general purport of the " charismata chapter," 1 Corinthians 12, is simply to reject any hierarchical distinction between what is to be valued in the gifts and service in the church as more and less "pneumatic." For "it is the same Spirit" and "the same Lord" (1 Cor. 12:4, 5) who works all things. There is differentiation, of course, and every charisma is not of equal worth. Apostles, prophets, and teachers are expressly listed first in the enumeration ("first," "second," etc.) (1 Cor. 12:28; cf. Eph. 4:11). Paul also speaks of "the best charismata" (1 Cor. 12:31), and he puts prophecy highest (1 Cor. 14:1). But this distinction is other than that of more or less ecstatic or spectacular. For the apostles are also the governors who order practical affairs, who occupy themselves with the collection and with the care of the poor (2 Cor. 8ff.). In 1 Corinthians 12:28 the ability to help and to govern stands between the gifts of healing and glossolalia, and in Romans 12:6 the last two are entirely lacking. Each has his own charisma from God. All stands under his sovereign will (1 Cor. 12:11, 18), and is to be directed "according to the measure of faith" that God will assign (Rom. 12:3; Eph. 4:7). And everyone has to live and to act therein according to the nature of his charisma, and not according to that of another (Rom. 12:3, 6ff.).

The second fundamental idea in which the equipment of the church is spoken of in a summary way⁴³ is that of ministries. Decisive for the significance of the concept ministry — thus Beyer writes — is that young Christianity learned to consider and to characterize every activity in the church important for its upbuilding as diakonia.⁴⁴Generally, therefore, the charisma acts in the church as a ministry and finds its destiny and its criterion only in its character as ministry (cf. 1 Pet. 4:11). By this designation the congregational character of all the gifts conferred by Christ and of all the activities these gifts enable is thus denoted. For all these gifts have been placed at the service of the body of Christ, with the ultimate object of the service and glorification of God himself in Christ (cf. Eph. 4:12; 1 Cor. 14:26; Col. 3:16, 17).

Wherein these different gifts and ministries consist will have to appear further in the following section. It is of importance for what occupies us here to observe that as little as one may make a spiritualistic antithesis between "charismatic" and "administrative" ministries, so little is one to want to see a distinction in principle in an actualistic sense between the charisma as a gift of Christ active in concreto on the one hand, and the institutional, ordered ministries or offices in the church on the other.⁴⁵ And it is the more necessary to take a position against this because interpreters who are fully alive to the unwarrantedness of this first antithesis and repudiate in it the spiritualism of Sohm (and Harnack), yet with respect to the latter remain stuck halfway along in this one-sided conception of charisma and diakonia. In particular it is a question here again of the interpretation of the Pauline conception. This is said to have been incompatible in principle with the later institutional conception of office and ministry in the church, so that we have to draw a sharp distinction between Paul and the church at Jerusalem as well as between Paul and the later development, as this is said to be met with particularly In the Pastoral Epistles and in the writings of Luke.⁴⁶

It is our conviction that the contrast between the charismatic and institutional is at bottom just as false as that between charismatic and non-charismatic ministries in the church.⁴⁷ It is no doubt true and it has its significance that in the enumerations in Romans 12, I Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4 it is not the institutional, but the qualitative aspect in these charismata that comes to the fore. It is not presbyters, bishops, or deacons who are spoken of there, but the charisma of giving leadership, helping, showing mercy. This points to the fact that even if some of the charismata mentioned here are denotations of specific offices,⁴⁸ yet it is not the official-institutional as such, but the material significance of the office that is brought to the forefront. But he who wishes to seek a contrast here between the institutional and the charismatic is on the wrong track. For one thing, Paul reckons his own apostolic office among the gifts Christ has given to his church (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:11). The apostolic office is undoubtedly distinguished from all other offices and ministries in that its bearers have been immediately called by Christ, and have a wholly unique, fundamental significance for the church.⁴⁹ But it is nevertheless apparent from this office how little reason there is for making a contrast between office and charisma, between institute and Spirit, and how wrong the categories are with which one is at work if he wishes here to place the actual, concrete, Ereignis-like (that is, having the character of event or happening) as a distinguishing feature of charisma over against the continual, regular, and institutional character of office.

Furthermore, in Paul's epistles along with the special office of the apostles we see the clear signs of stability, institutionality, and orderedness of specific ministries and charismata in the church. In addition to what is to be said later in more detail on their differentiation, in the general qualification of "ministry" there is already a clear stabilizing tendency. To think here only of incidental and concrete service is not only an unnatural conception of the reality, but is also in conflict with the Pauline usage, where "ministry," even though it does not yet have the special significance of "diaconate," can denote a definite, "fixed" activity in the church that is discharged by specific persons.⁵⁰ Paul accordingly speaks not only of the charisma of governing (1 Cor. 12:28), but also of "the leaders" of the church (Rom. 12:8), to whom authority was due and submission owed. One thinks in this context, too, of "the firstfruits" (Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:15), persons who in a certain locality or a certain area had first come to the faith and in consequence enjoyed a special position of trust. That all this may be said to point only to moral and not to "official" authority or that from these specific charismatic endowments or personal positions of authority certain qualifications to act as leader resulted a posteriori,⁵¹can indeed indicate the historical course of events, but even so does not distinguish the official and institutional qualitatively from the charismatic or justify even an antithesis between the two. For it is in the nature of certain charismata that they have not merely an incidental, but a continual significance, and therefore of themselves might lay claim to continuing and regular recognition (for which reason the charismata, too, are not only denoted as powers, etc., but also as persons; cf. 1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:8, 11). The charisma tends, therefore, to the institutional and consists in the fact that the church not only here and now, but as far as this is needed, receives a fixed instrumentation and "articulation," as once again with a figure borrowed from the body Paul describes the healthy functioning of the church endowed with the gifts of Christ (Eph. 4:16; cf. vv. 11, 12). It is therefore a false antithesis to set the charismatic and institutional as "spiritual authority" (Vollmacht) and "human rule" over against each other,⁵² For not only does this "human rule," where, as for example in the Pastoral Epistles, it is active in establishing and institutionalizing, stand in the closest relation to charisma and "spiritual authority" (cf. 1 Tim. 4:14; 1:18; 2 Tim. 1:6; 1 Tim. 3:1ff.; Tit. 1:6ff.; 2 Tim. 2:24), but in this whole antithesis between "human" and "spiritual" the "spiritual" character of the church and the choice, appointment, and ordination of certain persons for certain ministries going out from it are eliminated or ignored — a view that is certainly not in agreement with Paul's conception of the church's character and its own competence (cf. 1 Cor. 3:21, 22, et al). However striking it may therefore be that in the enumerations of 1 Corinthians 12:28 and Ephesians 4:11 apostles, prophets, and teachers do occur, but not presbyters and deacons, this need

not only mean that in the Pauline congregations at the time of the apostle there was not yet a presbyterium⁵³ (as is clearly evident also from the Epistle to the Philippians, written in the same period as that to the Ephesians; Phil. 1:1⁵⁴), but likewise it in no way distinguishes this ministry of presbyters and deacons from that which Christ has given to the church as charisma.

The sequel will have to teach us to what extent it is possible from the data of Paul's epistles to reach an insight into the actual state of affairs in the congregations addressed by him. Everything is certainly not going to become clear to us thereby. But with full allowance for what is uncertain here, we shall have to be very careful indeed with the argument from silence, especially when this is pressed into the service of certain preconceived opinions with respect to the manner in which the Spirit works and equips the church. We may rather, on the basis of what has so far become apparent to us, ascertain that for a right understanding of the spiritual equipment of the church the distinction between the charismatic and institutional sooner leads us astray than that it could serve us as a directive for what follows. If one chooses to regard the enumerations in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians 4 from the viewpoint of office and charisma, then only one conclusion is possible, namely, that the office is itself a charisma?⁵⁵ Every attempt to construct an antithesis here betrays a conception of the work of the Spirit that was indeed for a long period of time characteristic of a certain interpretation of the New Testament idea of the church, but which finds as little support in the Pauline conception of the building up of the church as it does in that of the remainder of the New Testament.

SECTION 71. DIVERSITY OF GIFTS

So far as the several gifts, ministries, etc., are concerned, Paul gives them no systematization, but rather places emphasis on the great diversity in the gifts and ministries God has given to the church (cf. Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:4),⁵⁶ a diversity, however, which must find its harmony in the unity of the body and its general well-being (pros to sympheron; 1 Cor. 12:7).

When one examines the lists as they occur in Romans 12:6-8; 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, 28-30; Ephesians 4:11, he repeatedly meets with gifts and ministries — some of which are the same, some of which are different.⁵⁷ The following are to be mentioned in summary:

(1) apostles (1 Cor. 12:28, expressly mentioned "first"; Eph. 4:11);

(2) prophets (Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10, 28: "secondly"; Eph. 4:11);

(3) teachers (Rom. 12:7; 1 Cor. 12:28: "thirdly"; Eph. 4:11: "pastors and teachers");

(4) evangelists (Eph. 4:11; cf. 2 Tim. 4:5);

(5) service ( diakonia [Rom. 12:7], here intended therefore in a special sense, probably to be understood to the same effect as antilēmpseis in 1 Cor. 12:28);

(6) distributing, showing mercy (Rom. 12:8);

(7) giving leadership (ho pro-histamenos [Rom. 12:8]; cf. kybernēseis in 1 Cor. 12:28);

(8) the gift of exhortation (Rom. 12:8: ho parakalōn);

(9) the word of wisdom ( logos sophias; 1 Cor. 12:8);

(10) the word of knowledge (logos gnōseōs; 1 Cor. 12:8);

(11) powers (dynameis; 1 Cor. 12:10, 28; cf. "faith" [1 Cor. 12:9; see 1 Cor. 13:2] );

(12) gifts of healing (1 Cor. 12:9, 28);

(13) glossolalia (1 Cor. 12:10, 28);

(14) interpretation (of the speaking in tongues; 1 Cor. 12:10, 28);

(15) distinguishing of spirits (1 Cor. 12:10).

Elsewhere one finds indications that coincide with the above; for example, he who gives instruction in the Word (Gal. 6:6 — see under 3), those who give leadership in the Lord (1 Thess. 5:12; cf. 1 Tim. 5:17 — see under 7), and admonish (nouthetountes; 1 Thess. 5:12 —see under 8). Finally, the following are still to be mentioned separately:

(16) overseers ( episkopoi ; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:2; T i t . 1:7), whether or not to be taken together with

(17) presbyters (presbyteroi; 1 Tim. 5:17, 19; Tit. 1:5);

(18) deacons (Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:8, 12).

In addition to what we have already brought together under one denominator (cf., e.g., under 5 and 7), there are certainly all kinds of designations here that are not to be kept apart rigidly, but coincide in the same person or ministry. Thus, for example, the gift of exhortation⁵⁸ (8) in 1 Corinthians 14:3, 31 is specifically reckoned as being part of the prophetic activity (2). Similarly, it is difficult to distinguish between the "word of knowledge" (10) and the "word of wisdom" (9). Both also occur close connection with prophecy (2) and teaching (3) (1 Cor. 13:2; 14:6; vol. 1:28).⁵⁹ Likewise that which is mentioned under 5 and 6 obviously lies close together, just as what is mentioned under 11 and 12 and under 13 and 14. Furthermore, one has to consider to what extent the "pastors" mentioned in Ephesians 4:11 are the same as the teachers mentioned there, or whether they are more to be identified with those who give leadership (7, 16) (cf. Acts 20:28). This brings us finally to the question as to what the relationship is between the gifts mentioned in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Ephesians, and the offices of overseers, presbyters, and deacons intended in Philippians 1:1 and the Pastoral Epistles. In general the gifts and ministries enumerated by Paul do not denote a differentiation of persons, but rather represent and particularize the fullness of the grace given by Christ to his church; finally, they clearly demonstrate that the whole instrumentation and upbuilding of the church has not been committed to a number of charismatici added to the church, whether or not in an official relationship, but rather has its matrix in the church itself as the body of Christ. Not a few only, but all by incorporation into the one body have been baptized into the one Spirit (I Cor. 12:13).

On the several gifts, ministries, offices, the following remarks are to be made.

(1) Apostles

They stand first in the lists (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:11). The apostolate (Rom. 1:5; 1 Cor. 9:2; Gal. 2:8) is distinguished from all the other gifts and ministries because it does not belong to the continuing, repeatedly renewed equipment of the church, but bears a foundational and once-for-all character (Eph. 2:20). Apostles, in the sense of 1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11,⁶⁰ are those who have beheld Christ himself, the eyewitnesses of the redemptive event lying at the foundation of the church, who have been called by Christ himself to this special ministry. Paul, too, appeals for his apostolate to the fact that he has seen the Lord, the Risen One (1 Cor. 9:1; cf. 15:8, 15). Together with being an eye-witness the special divine calling and sending also pertain to the essence of the apostolate (cf., e.g., Gal. 1:1). The apostleship is the privilege (charís; Rom. 1:5; 15:15) conferred by Christ himself on those who have been witnesses of his resurrection. They are therefore the heralds of salvation authorized by Christ (Rom. 10:15; 1 Cor. 1:23; 9:27; 1 Tim. 2:7 [apostle and herald]; cf. 2 Tim. 1:11); and their word is the kerygma (1 Cor. 15:14). Through this special position with respect to Christ as well as to the church, the apostolate according to its nature is unrepeatable and untransferable. The apostles, as the first gift of Christ to his church, therefore form a closed group, the bounds of which in Paul are not to be determined with certainty,⁶¹ but of which he knew himself to be the last (1 Cor. 15:8; cf. 3:10).

The concept apostle is determined first of all by the idea of appointment and authorization. As apostles of Jesus Christ their word has absolute authority in the church, and they lay claim to obedience (Rom. 1:5; 2 Cor. 2:9; Phil. 2:12, et ai). They are the receivers and bearers of the tradition, the foundational gospel (1 Cor. 15:3-7; 11:23; 1 Thess. 2:13), the guarantors of the depositum fidei (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:12, 14), the layers of the foundation of the church (1 Cor. 3:10; Eph. 2:20; 1 Cor. 9:1, 2); their writings are intended for liturgical reading in the church (Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:27), the canon for the church to come.⁶²

From the significance of the apostolate understood in this way it is clear that the apostles, unlike those invested with other ministries in the church, do not come forth from the church, but that the church rather owes its genesis to them (cf. Gal. 4:19; 1 Cor. 4:14, 15; 2 Cor. 6:13; 1 Thess. 2:11; Philem. 10); also that the significance of the apostles is not restricted to one congregation but that they exercise a universal ministry in the gospel. On the other hand, their task does not remain restricted to the foundation of the church. Although Paul places all the emphasis on this fundamental work and leaves the continuing upbuilding of the church to others (1 Cor. 3:10; cf. 1:17; cf. also Rom. 15:20, 21), yet he exercises a permanent authority over the churches founded by him. He stands by the church with counsel and admonition, with instruction and warning. He also occupies himself not only with the further unfolding of the gospel and with the combatting of false doctrine, but with the institution and maintenance of right order (taxis; Col. 2:5) in the church (cf. 1 Cor. 4:15; 9:1ff.; 2 Cor. 3:1-3; Gal. 6:6, et al). The Pastoral Epistles in this respect represent a somewhat later stage in the development of the church and put all the stress on this regulative authority of the apostle and his fellow-workers; yet at a later time the organization of individual churches was not wrongly taken back to the apostles.⁶³ The apostles are not only the founders of the church; they also exercise authority over the whole church. One can speak of "an ecumenical function of the apostles."⁶⁴ Their significance for the upbuilding of the church, therefore, in addition to being unique and unrepeatable, is in part exemplary as well, directed toward imitation and succession, as is evident so far as Paul is concerned particularly from the Pastoral Epistles.

(2) Prophets

Along with the apostles the prophets occupy an important place in the enumerations given by Paul (1 Cor. 12:28 ["secondly" prophets]; Eph. 4 : 1 1 ; cf. Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10). He devotes special and separate attention to the prophetic charisma (1 Cor. 14). Of all the pneumatica one must strive most after prophecy (1 Cor. 14:1). Paul places it above speaking in tongues (1 Cor. 14:5). Whereas the speaker in tongues edifies himself and is intelligible only to God, the prophet is concerned to build the church, to exhort, to encourage (14:3, 31). It holds for prophecy, in distinction from the language of tongues, that it takes place not only with the spirit, but also with the understanding, just as for public prayer in the church, the singing of psalms, and the giving of thanks (1 Cor. 14:13-19). Unbelievers and interested auditors,⁶⁵ too, will be brought to true self-knowledge only by prophecy (and not by glossolalia). For glossolalia must impress them as madness; prophecy, on the other hand, is

addressed to them and can lead them to repentance and worship.

Prophecy is a special form of the Spirit given to and working in the church. For this reason the speaking of the prophets can also be called revelation (1 Cor. 14:30, cf. v. 26; v. 6, cf. Eph. 3:15), and they are mentioned together with the apostles (Eph. 3:5; cf. 2:20).⁶⁶ This character of prophecy as revelation is to be sought in speaking under the direct impulse of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 14:30), but also in the content of what is spoken in this way. The prophet receives an insight into the mysteries of God (cf. 1 Cor. 13:2); he explains the meaning and progress of the divine redemptive activity (Eph. 3:5). When in Romans 11:25; 1 Corinthians 15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:13, Paul announces and interprets to the church the redemptive work of God still to be expected, he also speaks in virtue of prophetic endowment. Yet. prophecy does not only or primarily have reference to the future. It consists as well in pointing out the will of God (1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14), serves the church for exhortation, encouragement, and instruction (1 Cor. 14:3, 31; cf. vv. 24, 25). Prophets are the Spirit-impelled proclaimers of the Word of God to the church, who unfold God's plan of redemption, as well as elucidate and impress upon it the significance of the work of God in Christ in a pastoral and paraenetic sense.⁶⁷

This prophecy and revelation is not to be understood, however, as an exceptional gift in which the church as such has no share and which it has to receive only as an infallible message of the Spirit coming to it from without. However much Paul sees the work of the Spirit in this prophecy and therefore warns the church not to quench the Spirit and not to despise the prophesyings (1 Thess. 5:19, 20), on the other hand the church is constantly to put prophecy to the test as to its genuineness and truth (1 Thess. 5:21; cf. 1 Cor. 14:36-38). It is a gift given to and in the church, which ought to be discerned by the church itself therefore and secured against abuse and degeneration (1 Cor. 12:10; 14:29). In Romans 12:6 it is said that prophecy must take place in conformity with the faith (kata tēn analogian tēs pisteōs). It is not only said here that every prophet must prophesy according to the measure of the faith allotted him,⁶⁸ for this would be too general a standard and difficult to understand. Evidently a more objective norm is intended here, namely, the faith according to its content,⁶⁹ or, in general, Christian doctrine. Any prophecy that no longer takes place in the faith of the Christian church, any prophetic enthusiasm gone astray,⁷⁰ must continually be averted. It is in agreement with this that in 1 Corinthians 14:29ff. Paul gives clear directions on the manner in which prophecy is to take place in the church. This, too, is to be done not in confusion, but in peace and in mutual harmony. Several are not to speak at the same time, but separately, and one is to be prepared at once to give place to others. There is to be opportunity not only for prophesying, but also for judgment of the others. Whether by "the others" the whole congregation⁷¹ is meant, or the others who were prophetically gifted,⁷² prophecy is to be tested as to its content. For as the Spirit gives prophecy to the church, so he gives it the ability to discern the true and the false or inferior. It is not a question of the self-realization of the few, but of what is able to build and exhort the whole church. For this reason the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets (v. 32). Some take this as a mutual giving heed to one another and a submitting to one another on the part of the prophets;⁷³ most, however, as an indication of the self-control a prophet is to have over himself. In any case it is a matter of benefit for all and of the prophets putting themselves at the service of all. To that end they have need of self-control as well as an openness to mutual criticism. This same motive causes Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:2 to make prophecy conditional on love. Here again it is a question of being subservient to the church (love; cf. 1 Cor. 8:1) and against pneumatic individualism, no matter with what splendid gifts it may be adorned.

This prophecy, which is an evidence of the riches of the New Testament church, not only makes its appearance during the worship service as a gift here and now, but also qualifies certain persons to be prophets, that is to say, as permanent bearers of the gift of prophecy (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:11).⁷⁴ The prophetic gift certainly gave them a position of leadership and will also have brought them to recognition in the church as designated leaders, whether in a more or in a less official sense.⁷⁵

(3) Teachers

Teachers are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 under "thirdly," in Ephesians 4:11 in one breath with pastors. As Paul ascribes the prophetic gift to himself (1 Cor. 14:6), so also that of the teacher (cf. 1 Cor. 4:17; 2 Thess. 2:15; Col. 1:28; 1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11). In 1 Corinthians 14 (cf. Rom. 12), "teaching" occurs as a charisma that manifests itself freely in the church (1 Cor. 14:26). Yet just as in the case of apostles and prophets, a clearly delimited group of persons with a definite spiritual quality is apparently to be thought of with teachers as well (1 Cor. 12:28; cf. Eph. 4:11). They might as such lay claim to a certain recognition and count on the liberality of others (Gal. 6:6). This points to a continuing, methodical activity. We do not read of a distinct office of teacher, that is to say, appointment as teacher in and by the church. It is required of the leading figures in the church, for example, of the overseers, that they be didaktikos, apt to teach (1 Tim. 3:2; cf. 2 Tim. 2:24; Tit. 1:9), and of the elders those are to be held in highest honor who are charged especially with preaching and instruction (1 Tim. 5:17; cf. 1 Thess. 5:12; 2 Tim. 2:2). Women are forbidden to teach (1 Tim. 2:12).

It is no simple matter to distinguish precisely the activity of these teachers from those of the other charismatici, for example, the prophets. Their teaching seems to go back less than prophecy to the direct inspiration and impulse of the Spirit, but rather to have consisted in instruction and in transmitting the apostolic tradition, both as concerns its great redemptive-historical content and the paraenesis arising from it. As "teaching" and "tradition" are concepts that in Paul lie very closely together (cf. Rom. 6:17; Gal. 1:12; 2 Thess. 2:15; Col. 2:6, 7), so one will have to understand by "teachers" those who were competent to instruct others in the Christian tradition and precepts (cf. 1 Cor. 4:17; 2 Tim. 2:2). One is not therefore to restrict the activity of these teachers to a certain part of Christian doctrine, for example, to the paraenesis, but rather to extend it to the whole content of the proclamation.⁷⁶ Hence at one time "the gospel" in an all-embracing sense, then again the manner in which one is to live from it, is denoted as the content of the "doctrine" (Gal. 1:11, 12; Col. 1:23; 3:16, et al). One will therefore be permitted to suppose that in the time when oral tradition was still the primary source for knowledge of the Christian faith, the teachers provided an important ministry for the propagation of that tradition. In this connection the corresponding use of the name of teacher in the Synoptic Gospels as a designation of the Jewish teachers is also to be pointed out. They, too, had the task of transmitting the fixed material of tradition, whereby in particular the tradition concerning the Old Testament played a great part. If, as could appear from the close connection of "tradition" and "doctrine," one may consider the name of the Christian teachers to have originated by analogy with that of the Jewish, in this way the activity of these Christian teachers is also to be further understood.⁷⁷ The labor of these teachers will have been of particular significance for the catechumenate and the instruction of those who wished to be baptized. On the other hand, as appears from the close conjunction of "pastors and teachers" in Ephesians 4:11, their teaching activity had a broader scope as well. While the modality of prophets and teachers was different, therefore, the former representing more the current, the latter the traditional aspect of the preaching of the gospel, the function of both lay in upbuilding, comforting, and giving spiritual direction to the church. It is consequently not easy to locate exactly the line of demarcation and to determine with respect to the "word of wisdom" and "word of knowledge," for example, whether these are specifically prophetic or didactic qualities.⁷⁸ When one reads Colossians 2:1-8, for example, it is clear that the treasures of knowledge and wisdom that are hidden in Christ exhibit prophetic as well as didactic aspects, both of which are necessary for the upbuilding of the church and require interpretation by persons who are differently gifted.

(4) Evangelists

In the enumerations of the gifts given to the church the evangelists are mentioned only in Ephesians 4. Elsewhere in Paul we find this qualification in 2 Timothy 4:5, where he exhorts Timothy: "do the work of an evangelist." Because of the sparing use of this word — elsewhere in the New Testament only in Acts 21:8, where there is mention of the evangelist Philip — it is not easy to determine its content accurately. Most often the thought is that of men who set out to proclaim the gospel, such as Philip (Acts 8:4ff., 12, 35, 40), or of helpers of the apostles. Thus Paul calls Timothy his fellow-worker in the gospel of Christ (1 Thess. 3:2). Their number was perhaps greater therefore than is to be gathered from the scanty use of the name evangelist⁷⁹ (cf., e.g., Col. 4:11; 2 Cor. 8:18; Phil. 4:3). Here again a specific office in the sense of a regular appointment is not to be spoken of with certainty. Certain persons being regularly employed in this ministry will surely have been qualified as such. That one is to regard them not only as missionaries but also as leaders of already established churches, as Friedrich, also on the ground of 2 Timothy 4:5, thinks himself able to posit,⁸⁰ is doubtful. Certainly the evangelists will not have confined themselves to the proclamation of the gospel, but also have baptized and given directions for the establishment of the organization of the church (cf. 1 Tim. 2:2; Tit. 1:5; Acts 8:12). Yet their proper work, so far as we are able to conclude from the few examples, apparently lay not so much in the government of the church as in the continuing proclamation of the gospel.⁸¹ In the first period they frequently formed the link between the apostles and the leading figures in the church. With the dying out of the apostles the evangelists disappear as well.⁸²

(5) Pastors

So far as the pastors in Ephesians 4:11 are concerned, these are mentioned together with the teachers with the same article, which does not to be sure imply an identity, but does seem to point to a close relationship between the work of pastors and teachers. One may infer the nature of the ministry of these pastors from the metaphorical mode of expression, as that of the leadership and care of the church. In 1 Peter 2:25 Christ is spoken of as pastor and overseer (episkopos); in Acts 20:28 the presbyters of Ephesus are charged to take heed to the flock (cf. 1 Pet. 5:1, 2). Pastors therefore do the work that is elsewhere committed to presbyters and bishops. Ephesians 4:11 qualifies "pastors and teachers" more as an activity than as an office, though the office of overseer can very well be alluded to (cf. Phil. 1:1). That "pastors and teachers" are so closely linked points to what they have in common in their ministry

as leaders of the church, whereby the teachers especially take upon themselves the task of instruction, the pastors the general guidance of the church (cf. 1 Tim. 5:17).

In close connection with this ministry of the pastor we shall also have to understand the other qualifications that point to gifts of leadership in the church. Thus Romans 12:8 exhorts the pro-histamenos⁸³(he who gives leadership) to exercise this charisma with zeal. The same word is employed in 1 Thessalonians 5:12, and in the same context there is mention of "those who admonish you." In 1 Timothy 3, again with the same word, the demand is made of the overseers that they are to rule their own house well (pro-histamenon [v. 4]; prostēnai [v. 5]); for how shall a man who cannot do this be able to take care of (epimeleisthai) the church of God? And in 1 Timothy 5:17 the same quality is ascribed to the presbyters (hoi kalōs proestōtes presbyteroi). Although the point of view in Romans and 1 Timothy is different (what is there called charisma is here made a condition for the office), the one does not exclude the other, and with those who give leadership in Romans 12 Paul can very well be alluding to presbyters or bishops.⁸⁴ The same applies to the enumerations in 1 Corinthians 12:28-30. There he uses the word "qualities of government" (kybernēseis) in the same sense. Here, too, he certainly has in view specific persons in the church, who in virtue of the capacities given to them occupy a position of leadership and to whom others are obligated to submit themselves (cf. 1 Cor. 16:16), Once again the qualities and not the official powers are mentioned here. But this need not mean that in these churches no such offices as that of presbyter had (yet) been instituted⁸⁵ (cf. Phil. 1:1).

(6) Mutual service

The charismata that refer to mutual service in the church are yet again of a somewhat different character. When believers are admonished in Romans 12 that everyone is to put the gift conferred on him into practice in the right manner, Paul comes to the following pronouncements, among others: "if it is [the gift of] service, [let it appear] in serving ( cite diakonian, en tē diakonia), . . . he who distributes ( ho metadidous) of his own, [let him do it] in simplicity, . . . he who does acts of mercy ( ho eleōn), [let him do it] with cheerfulness..." (Rom. 12:7, 8). And the expression "mutual acts of service" or "ability to serve" (antilēmpseis) in 1 Corinthians 12:28 will have to be classed in the same category.

It is no simple matter to form a clear idea of all these descriptions and to make a precise distinction, for example, between distributing and doing acts of mercy. The first perhaps has aid to the poor in view, the second the work of mercy in a more general sense.⁸⁶ The acts of service of 1 Corinthians 12:28 could then embrace the one as well as the other.⁸⁷ Still more difficult is the interpretation of the general denotation "service" and "serving" in the context of Romans 12:7. Perhaps the word that in general can denote every act of service, in Romans 12:7, where the point is just that of specialization, has the significance of helping work of love, practical rendering of service, as it is also employed elsewhere in Paul (cf. Rom. 15:31; cf. v. 25; 1 Cor. 16:15; 2 Cor. 8:4ff.; 9:12ff.). In Romans 12:7 it would then have about the same meaning as that which we have taken as "acts of service" in 1 Corinthians 12:28. In any case, it is clear that among the various charismata the apostle also emphatically designates those which lie in the province of the practical rendering of assistance to one another.

(7) Presbyters, bishops

If so far we have had to do chiefly with those charismata whereby it was especially the qualitative character of the ministries that was in the foreground, and if the boundaries between these ministries and the offices to be occupied in behalf of the church are not always clearly to be distinguished, it is otherwise with the offices of presbyter, bishop, and deacon, mentioned in Philippians 1:1 and the Pastoral Epistles.

So far first of all as the presbyters and bishops are concerned, it should be stated at once that we have to do here with one and the same office. The names, of course, have a different significance. Presbyter, eldest, certainly has a patriarchal background and originated in Judaism, where it is the designation of a certain status. That in the Pastoral Epistles it is "a specification not of office but of age," as Jeremias supposes,⁸⁸ is in view of Titus 1:5 not to be accepted.⁸⁹ The episkopos is not so easily identified as the counterpart of a pre-Christian figure, whether from the Jewish or from the Greek world,⁹⁰ But even so both words must denote the same kind of office-bearers, from different points of view. For not only are the demands that are made of the good presbyter in Titus 1:5-9 very much akin to what is said of the episkopos in 1 Timothy 3:2ff., but also the designations are used interchangeably in Titus 1:7 without there being a transition to other persons.⁹¹

The significance of the office of presbyter or bishop is not expressly mentioned in the Pastoral Epistles. It is assumed to be well known. The necessary prerequisites of the presbyter or episkopos respectively in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:6ff. are of a general, for the most part ethical nature and only intimate obliquely anything of the character of the office, for example, in 1 Timothy 3:4, 5, where there is mention of "to be at the head of" (pro-histasthai, prostēnai), "to keep under discipline" (echein en hypotagē), "to take care of" (epimeleisthai). It can be gathered from this, therefore, that the task of the presbyter-episkopos consists particularly in giving leadership to, and seeing to it that things go well in, the church, just as there is mention in 1 Timothy 5:17 of the elders who "rule well," and in Titus 1:7 the episkopos is called "God's steward" (Theou oikonomos). A special point, moreover, is his ability to

advocate and defend the Christian doctrine. The bishop is to be didaktikos (1 Tim. 3:2), which we shall surely have to take as "apt to teach." According to Titus 1:9 he must "hold fast to the trustworthy word in accordance with the teaching, so that he may be able also to exhort upon the ground of the sound doctrine and to confute those who contradict it." Similarly there is mention in 1 Timothy 5:17 of the honor⁹² that is due to the elders who rule well, "particularly to those who labor in [the preaching of] the word and in teaching" (hoi kopiōntes en logo kai didaskalia). It is to be inferred from this that the elders had the leadership of the church not only in terms of administration and church order, but also in a spiritual and essential sense.⁹³ Within and without they had to advocate and defend the Christian faith in its pure and original meaning. In this respect their labor in part coincided with that of "the teachers." As is evident from 1 Timothy 5:17, however, not all elders were equally directly and specifically involved in "labor in the word and in teaching." For some the center of gravity was more general leadership, from which, however, one cannot dissociate the teaching aspect; for others it was more proclamation and teaching, without it being possible simply to identify them with "teachers" or "prophets." It appears from

this that the boundaries between the official and non-official charisma are fluid. The charisma of government and leadership (Rom. 12:9; 1 Cor. 12:28) was indispensable and in that sense a prerequisite for the presbyter-bishop. Nor, moreover, could aptness to teach be lacking, for it was the men with those special gifts who were called to leadership in the church. The charisma tends to the office, and the office cannot lack the charisma. That there was furthermore a development toward the official is not to be denied, and is altogether in the nature of the case, both when one views it from the side of the charisma and from that of the office. From the side of the charisma: certain qualities given by the Spirit of themselves made the persons qualified thereby to come to the fore; and the recognition and appointment of these persons as official leaders, elders, bishops, lay in the line of development and was negatively advanced by the fact that the church had to distinguish between that which was genuine and edifying and that which was spurious and destructive in what were said to be pneumatica. On the other hand, the appointment of general leaders in the official sense was not a novelty for the Christian church, but in harmony with its Jewish-synagogical background, and in general with the demands of practical reality. That in so doing not every individual charisma became an office is clear from this practice and is likewise understandable from the nature of the case. The presbyter-bishops were not intended to take the place of the nonofficial charismatici. The meaning and structure of their office had a more general significance: to give leadership to the organizational and spiritual life of the church. They were indeed recruited from among the persons endowed by the Spirit with special gifts, but did not deprive the latter of the freedom and the room to go on building the church in a non-official sense. The general character of the office of the elders as giving leadership did involve the fact that certain charismata (e.g., that of the ability to teach, to govern, to speak) were more essential and conducive to commendation than others that contributed less to this leadership (e.g., the gift of healing, speaking in tongues, et al.). It is to be understood in this way that where the official aspect begins to come more into prominence, as, for example, in the Pastoral Epistles, some charismata are discussed, others are not. This development is not to be called one-sided in the sense that the office came to thrust aside or overshadow the charisma.⁹⁴ As congregational life consolidated itself on the foundation of the apostolic tradition and doctrine (formation of the canon), the church had greatest need of those charismata which Paul designates as the foundation of, and as indispensable for, the office of the presbyter-episkopos: the gift of government, the ability to teach, the correct distinguishing of what is in conflict with sound doctrine, and a good posture toward those without. It is primarily this office, therefore, to which he entrusts the church in its further upbuilding and development when the time draws to a close during which the apostles and their immediate helpers stood by and governed the churches.

(8) Deacons

In close connection with the presbyter-episkopos Paul speaks of deacons (Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:1, 8; in Tit. 1 he mentions only the former). From the "deacons'-mirror" in 1 Timothy 3:8-13 very little is evident concerning the nature of the office intended there. The demands made of deacons are of a more general kind. It is to be gathered from the remainder of the New Testament that the office of the deacon especially provided for (the direction of) mutual assistance in the church and will therefore have had reference in particular to what Paul describes in Romans 12 as the charisma of serving, sharing, showing mercy (w. 6-8), and in 1 Corinthians 12:28 as the gift given by God to the church of the "capacity to help" (antilēmpseis). It is clear from the manner in which he speaks of these charismata that he does not attribute to all this activity a subordinate or dependent significance among the charismata as a whole, but rather brings into prominence their peculiar and independent character. If, as surely seems obvious, we may now assume that the office of deacon was instituted for the regular supervision of this mutual assistance, it can also be concluded from this that the deacon is not to be viewed merely as an assistant elder, or as a subordinate of the overseers,⁹⁵ but as an office-bearer to whom a peculiar task was assigned in the proper functioning of the life of the church as the body of Christ and that he was to be acknowledged as such. That for this work a separate office came into being will have to be judged in the same way as the rise of the office of elder. It applies to the office of deacon, too, that it did not come in place of the charismatic ministries, but that it rather rested on them, but nevertheless proved to be necessary for regular and assured order in this work. That room remained and had to remain alongside it for the gifts of the Spirit that were not being employed in the way of office is plain when one is able to distinguish the office of deacon, just as the office of the presbyter-episkopos, in terms of its own reason for existence, namely, as a means of giving direction to the church in an ordered way in the right administration of the gifts and powers given it by Christ, which it needed for its continuing and regular upbuilding.

(9) Women

The position the woman occupies in the upbuilding and equipment of the church constitutes a separate question. We must confine ourselves here to what is most important.⁹⁶ Generally Paul's pronouncements on the place of women in the church exhibit the same two viewpoints we have already been able to observe in his precepts for marriage:⁹⁷ on the one hand the woman shares fully in the salvation given in Christ, and there is complete equality between' man and woman in that respect, just as between Jew and Greek, master and slave, etc. (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11; cf. 1 Cor. 11:11, 12); on the other hand, fellowship in Christ does not remove the natural distinction between man and woman, and man's position of leadership with regard to woman. Considering the place women occupied in Paul's day, both in antiquity in general and in Judaism in particular,⁹⁸ the first point of view certainly meant nothing less than a revolution for the position of women in the church as well. This equality of man and woman in Christ emerges in a great many ways in his epistles. Although he frequently addresses the church as "brethren," he often directs himself expressly to the women as well; and that not merely, as also happened in the synagogue, with commandments, but in other ways, too, as is evident, for example, from the large place women take up in the lists of greetings (cf. Rom. 16). The gift of prophecy for the benefit of the church he attributes to women as much as to men (1 Cor. 11:5), just as "praying," by which what is intended in this context is certainly not only personal, private prayer, but prayer in the presence and to the edification of others. Along with that such women are to be pointed to as Priscilla, whom with her husband Paul calls his fellow-worker (cf. Acts 18:2); and as Mary (Rom. 16:6), of whom he testifies, with a word that specifically denotes work in the gospel and in the church (kopian), that she "worked" hard. The same applies to Tryphena and Tryphosa and Persis (Rom. 16:12). He attributes to such a woman as Phoebe in Romans 16:1ff. specific ministries and qualities in his own and the church's behalf, which are certainly to be classed among the charismata of assistance and serving in Romans 12:7ff. and 1 Corinthians 12:28. Even if Phoebe were not a deaconess in the "official" sense of the word,⁹⁹ there is in that fact, as we have repeatedly contended,¹⁰⁰ no fundamental difference whatever from official appointment to the occupancy of such a ministry by the church. Nor is there any argument whatever to be derived from Paul's epistles that it was only the nonofficial charisma that was extended to the woman and not regular office. In 1 Timothy 5:9ff. there is in any case mention of an ordered task for widows in the church and of a ministry or office to which some of them were to be admitted and others were not.¹⁰¹

On the other hand, Paul also imposes certain restrictions on women, particularly so far as their behavior in the meeting of the church is concerned. In 1 Corinthians 14:34 it is expressly required of them that they keep silence in the church (gatherings). It is no simple matter to reconcile this commandment to silence with the gift (and liberty) granted them in 1 Corinthians 11 of praying or prophesying. According to some it is only asked of the women in 1 Corinthians 14:34ff. that they be silent in the judging of others (prophecy);¹⁰² others wish to regard verses 34 and 35 as later additions;¹⁰³ still others are of the opinion that a satisfactory solution has so far not been found.¹⁰⁴ It seems difficult to escape the conclusion, however, that to "keep silence in the church" means the same thing as the words in 1 Corinthians 14:28: to be silent in the meeting of the church. One is to think of this praying and prophesying of the women as restricted to pneumatic utterances outside the official gathering. The proscription apparently applies to women speaking in public.

Paul motivates this command to silence in various ways. In 1 Corinthians 14:34 he says it is not permitted women to speak¹⁰⁵ but that they "must remain subordinate," must conform to the rule or order appointed them (hypotassesthai; cf. Eph. 5:22), "as" — so he adds to this — "the law also says." What is meant apparently is the rule or order relating to the place of woman with respect to man. It follows accordingly that if there is anything a woman desires to know she is to ask it of her own husband at home. For, thus Paul goes on, "it is shameful ( aischron) for a woman to speak in the church [gathering]." We meet with a similar pronouncement in 1 Timothy 2:11. A woman is —in the church meeting, for which directions are given here — to keep quiet in all subordination ( hypotagē). It is therefore not permitted a woman to teach, nor "to have authority¹⁰⁶ over the man,"¹⁰⁷ but she is to keep still, to be quiet. Here again an appeal follows to what is in 1 Corinthians 14 called the law, in other words, to the history of the beginning: Adam was created first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman.

It is clear that in this argumentation two different motives are very closely coupled together: (a) what "the law" says or is inferred from the history of the beginning, and (b) what according to standards current in Paul's day was considered unbecoming for a woman. The latter he denotes with the words "it is shameful" in the same manner that he speaks in 1 Corinthians 11:5-13 of "proper" (prepon; v. 13) and "shameful" ( aischron; v. 6) with a view to whether or not a woman prays or prophesies with uncovered head. In this last instance, too (in a way the sense of which is difficult for us any longer to fathom¹⁰⁸), the intention was to give expression to the distinction between man and woman and perhaps also to the subjection of woman to man. The deeper motive, i.e., the place that from the beginning God chose to ascribe to woman in her relationship to man, therefore finds its concrete form in the manner in which it is proper according to custom that a woman conduct herself in public and is to know her place with respect to man. So far as this is concerned Paul is here apparently apprehensive, just as he is elsewhere, lest in the consciousness of its new freedom the church give offense to others, and he admonishes the Corinthians, who in this respect evidently permitted themselves more liberties than did other churches, to keep within the general line of conduct (cf. 1 Cor. 14:33, 36ff.). On the other hand, it is clear that there is also a relativizing element in this appeal to custom and the "commune mesure," insofar, that is, as the (sub-ordinated) position of woman with respect to man is to be given expression in a manner that must be considered appropriate for a certain time and culture.

(10) Extraordinary powers, glossolalia

While there is an unmistakable connection between the gifts and ministries in the church with which we have dealt so far and the offices more clearly discernible in the later epistles of Paul, the apostle still mentions a few other charismata, in particular in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, which bear a character in many respects to be distinguished from them. It is here a question first of all of the charismata mentioned under 11-15 in the enumeration given above, namely, "powers," "faith," the gift of healing, glossolalia, and its interpretation.

As regards the "powers" mentioned first (1 Cor. 12:10, 28), one will have to think here, just as with the "faith" spoken of in 1 Corinthians 12:9 (cf. 1 Cor. 13:2), of the gift conferred by the Spirit on some persons of performing unusual deeds, miracles in the broadest sense of the word (cf. 1 Cor. 13:2), of which the gift of healing will surely have constituted a very prominent part. Paul speaks of these special powers not only in this catalogue of the charismata. In more than one place he testifies that his own appearance was accompanied with these miracles; so, for example, in Romans 15:18, 19, where he speaks of what Christ has wrought through him for the obedience of the gentiles, "by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit." And in 2 Corinthians 12:12 he mentions expressly "the signs of the apostle," which were wrought in the church of Corinth "by signs and wonders and powers" (cf. also Gal. 3:5 and 1 Thess. 1:5). There is a confirmation here of what we read from the reports of Paul's conduct in Acts 13:11; 14:3, 10, et al., and in general of that which according to Mark 16:17 the risen Christ promised to his disciples as evidence of his communion with them.

Paul describes these powers, etc., in 1 Corinthians 12 therefore as charismata, given by God in the church, not to all, however, but to some (1 Cor. 12:29, 30). When he speaks to the same effect here of "faith," this will have to be understood in a special sense, that is, as the confidence worked by the Spirit in the miraculous help of God, which enables the performance of miracles (cf. Mark 4:40; 9:23ff.; 11:22ff.; Matt. 17:20; Luke 17:6),¹⁰⁹ a gift that is distinguished from the others and is not peculiar to every believer (cf. 1 Cor. 13:2: "if I have all faith..."). Because of this last the question as to the nature of this charisma thrusts itself the more forcefully upon us. For faith as trust in the wonderworking omnipotence of God is not only given to some, but, as appears from Romans 4:17-20, also defines the essence of that which distinguishes every believer as a child of Abraham from unbelievers. With this charisma it is accordingly not only a question of the certainty of what God will do in his time and way in the fulfilling of his promises, but of the certainty of being enabled by God at a specific moment to perform a miracle. Christ reproaches his disciples for their unbelief or little faith

when they appear to be incapable of doing such mighty acts (Matt. 17:20). Paul speaks of these in particular as "the signs of the apostle" (2 Cor. 12:12). We shall thus have to view this charisma in close connection with the coming of the kingdom of God manifesting itself in the proclamation of the gospel, as a gift that Christ confers and wants to see used in the upbuilding of his church, however without every believer knowing himself gifted with this charisma of faith or empowered to the performance of miracles. And we shall have to judge the "gifts of healing" in the same way, though in 1 Corinthians 12:9 they are again distinguished from "faith." Neither do all have those gifts (v. 30), nor may there be jealousy of or contempt for one another in the church with respect to this diversity of gifts (1 Cor. 12:14ff.; Rom. 12:4ff.). But here again the Spirit works extraordinary powers. There is otherwise no further reflection

on these healings in the epistles of Paul. They do not signify an end of sickness, suffering, and death in this world, nor do they constitute the means for being released from temporal suffering for everyone who simply believes (cf. Rom. 8:22, 23; 2 Cor. 12:7ff.; 2 Tim. 4:20). They are rather signs of the mighty power of Christ and of the all-embracing significance of his kingdom, which the Spirit works in the service of the proclamation of the gospel. They clearly have an extraordinary significance, however, and do not in Paul's epistles receive a permanent place in the continuing life of the church and in its upbuilding, as may also be concluded from the lack of any official form of this charisma.

Further, the manner in which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 12-14 of glossolalia is no less striking and much more elaborate, partly, as we have already seen, in connection and comparison with prophecy. Just as gifts of healing and miraculous powers, glossolalia only occurs as a charisma in Paul in the catalogue of 1 Corinthians 12, and in the express discussion of the value of glossolalia in 1 Corinthians 14. Although this need not mean that the phenomenon was not to be found in other churches, it was evidently especially prominent in Corinth. Paul considers it necessary to say something about it. He calls it by the name of speaking or praying in tongues,¹¹⁰ and for those who possessed the charisma ascribes a God-glorifying significance to it (1 Cor. 14:2ff.). And in 1 Corinthians 13:1 he mentions speaking in the tongues of men and of angels, with a clear allusion to glossolalia. It may be therefore that glossolalia was regarded as a kind of "heavenly language." Paul thus has a positive attitude toward it. In glossolalia he recognizes the working of the Spirit in the church. He himself lays claim to the possession of this gift, even to a greater degree than all in Corinth. On the other hand, he values prophecy more highly, and of that fact he also gives a full account. He would wish indeed that all spoke in tongues, but rather that they prophesied (1 Cor. 14:5); and he concludes his discussion with the characteristic pronouncement: "desire earnestly to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues."

From the manner in which prophecy and glossolalia are placed over against each other in 1 Corinthians 14 we get a somewhat clearer picture still of what is intended here. Glossolalia is speaking to God in a language unintelligible to others (1 Cor. 12:2, 28). This speaking can have a varied significance: praying, singing psalms, praise, thanksgiving (cf. vv. 14ff.). The one who thus by the Spirit speaks hidden things is not beside himself in the sense that he would no longer be conscious of his own speech and action. On the contrary, he speaks to God and to himself (v. 28), and he edifies himself (v. 4); he must also, if necessary, be able to impose silence on himself (v. 28). Paul, moreover, makes the distinction that he who prays, sings, etc., in glossolalia does this indeed with his¹¹¹ spirit ( pneuma), but not with his understanding ( nous) (vv. 14ff.). This surely indicates that the state of consciousness is otherwise than it is ordinarily; the " I " is consciously active to be sure, but what is spoken, prayed, or sung does not admit of being controlled or put into words by the understanding.¹¹² It is said of the understanding therefore that with glossolalia it is unfruitful (v. 14), that is to say, is not involved in it and thus cannot be the intermediary for enabling others to share in what the one speaking in ecstasy is saying. As regards the sounds themselves that are produced in glossolalia, Paul demonstrates their unintelligibility in the example of musical instruments, if these were to give forth sounds with no difference in tone. In that case no one is able to distinguish what is played on the flute or harp, or what the meaning is of the sound of the trumpet. Just so does glossolalia lack a clear sense (eusēmos logos; v. 9); one cannot understand the meaning of the sounds (hē dynamis tēs phōnēs; v. 11); for this reason one can compare glossolalia with "speaking into the air," that is to say, no one comprehends it, no one is reached by it; one remains unintelligible to others, just as when he speaks in an alien language not familiar to others (vv. 9-11). Indeed, those who so speak even give others who have no acquaintance with this glossolalia the impression that they are mad (v. 23).

It is this lack of communication that Paul urges as the great objection against glossolalia and by which he estimates its worth as lower than that of prophecy, for example, unless what is said be interpreted and the church built thereby. Of glossolalia that is not interpreted, however, nothing is to be expected. The ignorant auditor cannot say "amen" to it. For unbelievers it can only be a sign of their hardening, namely, that God permits them to be spoken to in this unintelligible manner, as Paul makes known with a peculiar use of a pronouncement from Isaiah 28:11ff. (1 Cor. 14:21, 22). For this reason he also determines that one is not to express himself in glossolalia unless there is someone to interpret it. If there is not, he is to be silent; further, there shall not be more than two, at most three, who speak thus, and then each one in his turn (vv. 27, 28). It holds here, too, that everything must be done decently and in order.

Reference is still to be made in this context to the interpretation of glossolalia, listed as a separate charisma (cf. 1 Cor. 12:10). This interpreter can himself be the one who speaks in sounds (1 Cor. 14:5, 13); it may also be another (v. 28).¹¹³ The gift of interpretation is not given with the gift of glossolalia, however. He who possesses the first must pray God that he may also receive the second (14:13). Only then does his gift become fruitful for others. In the light of all this, therefore, we shall have to understand the glossolalia of which Paul speaks as a psychological or parapsychological phenomenon,¹¹⁴ in which the power of the Spirit manifested itself in certain persons, perhaps also in connection with what occurred elsewhere in a specific locality,¹¹⁵ and enabled them thus to give utterance to their religious feelings in a special manner. The extraordinary character of this gift is clearly pointed out by Paul.

It is an attendant phenomenon, not salvation itself, that (some) believers received in it. The highly personal character of this charisma explains the unmistakable caution with which Paul judges it and the very incidental attention he devotes to it.

SECTION 72. ECCLESIASTICAL ORDER AND DISCIPLINE

Not only do charismata and the persons gifted with them pertain to the upbuilding of the church, but also the observance of a certain order and the acknowledgment of a certain law in the church. We touch here once more, and now indeed in the most direct manner, the relationship of the charismatic and the institutional in the upbuilding of the church, and the controversy about it that has manifested itself time and again in the history of interpretation.¹¹⁶In the more recent literature on this subject¹¹⁷ Sohm's conception that for Paul in particular "church" and "law" constitute an inner contradiction has been overcome; likewise scholars are no longer satisfied with the conception of Harnack that insofar as ecclesiastical order and law can be spoken of already in Paul and in the whole of the New Testament, this is nothing other than the adaptation of worldly categories and legal forms for the external upbuilding of ecclesiastical life. From the manner in which Paul wishes to see order and discipline maintained in the church it is clear that to his mind this must answer to the essence of the church as the holy people of God and as the body of Christ visibly manifesting itself. The question now is what this involves and to what extent one can arrive at a clearly outlined idea of the upbuilding of the church thus understood in terms of church order.

It can here be posited first that for the furtherance of this upbuilding Paul does not seek his strength in as many regulations and legalistic rules as possible, but wants above all to make the church conscious of its own being in order thereby in concreto to test the organization of the ecclesiastical life and make it answer to that. We have already seen¹¹⁸ that in his paraenesis he repeatedly appeals to its own faculty of discernment as full-grown church (Rom. 15:14; Col. 2:5; Phil. 1:5, 6, 9ff.). This does not hold only for the Christian life in general, but also for the organization of congregational life in the narrower sense of the word. In so doing he continually exercises the greatest care not to usurp the church's own powers (1 Cor. 5:4; 2 Cor. 8:18, 23; 1 Cor. 16:3).

But this liberty and independence may not be abstracted from the great principle that in the church a well-ordered condition is to prevail, just because it is the people of God. All things must be done decently and in good order. God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, that is to say, of a condition of well-being (1 Cor. 14:40, 33). The church is to set itself rules, and Paul also establishes them for it in a great many ways. He requires this order ( taxis) where it is lacking, he commends it where it is present (Col. 2:5), and he wants the church to subject itself to it (1 Cor. 16:16; Eph. 5:21). Every appeal against this to the liberty of the Spirit is misplaced, for the charisma that is of God is incompatible with disorder (1 Cor. 14). It has rightly been said that all his life Paul opposed the arbitrariness of the charismatici and set limits to them on the basis of sound understanding, custom, love, and the cross of Christ, and therewith placed the very charismata, too, under the liberty and discipline of Christ and his Spirit as the ground and strength of a truly ordered church.¹¹⁹ But the arbitrariness is accordingly shown of the conception that is able to discover the charisma of Christ and of his Spirit in the free, spontaneous, and concrete, and not in the institutional, fixed, and regulated.¹²⁰ Paul does not confine himself therefore to the giving of specific "advice," which he offers to the church for consideration (as, e.g., in 1 Cor. 7:6¹²¹), but his instructions bear the character of commands ( parangelia, parangellein; 1 Thess. 4:2; 1 Tim. 1:18; cf. v. 5; 1 Cor. 7:10; 11:17; 1 Thess. 4:11; 2 Thess. 3:4, 6, 10, 12; 1 Tim. 1:3; 4:11; 5:7; 6:13, 17) or, with another word characteristic in this connection, of ordinances ( diatassein, diatassesthai; 1 Cor. 7:17; 11:34; 16:1; Tit. 1:5). Similarly the word "exhort" ( parakalein), usually employed in a general pastoral sense, can sometimes have the significance more in the area of church order of "charge," "ordain"; very clearly, for example, in 1 Timothy 2:1; cf. 6:2; Titus 2:15; also with this connotation, however, in Romans 16:17; 2 Corinthians 8:6; 9:5; 2 Thessalonians 3:12. But without this special terminology, too, this character of Paul's pronouncements as ordinances sometimes emerges very clearly, for example, in 1 Corinthians 14, where in the form of these prescriptions a certain stereotyped quality is to be observed: in the first member of the sentence a specific situation or possibility is repeatedly posited, whereupon in the second "in the decretal jussive"¹²² Paul's ordinance follows (1 Cor. 14:13, 30, 35, 37).

Such ordinances as these, rules for congregational life, are to be met with incidentally in most of the epistles of Paul, not systematically, but according as there was occasion or necessity for them. In 1 Corinthians this also occurs apparently as an answer to certain questions that have come to him: 1 Corinthians 7:1 on marriage; 1 Corinthians 8:1 on the attitude one is to take toward meat sacrificed to idols; 1 Corinthians 12:1 on the charismata. But he also speaks with a regulatory effect of the manner in which a woman is to conduct herself in the church (1 Cor. 11;2ff.), of the right observance of the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:17ff.), elsewhere of the obligation to provide those who instruct others in the Word with a subsistence (Gal. 6:6; 1 Cor. 9:14; cf. Rom. 15:27), of vigilance over against teachings that produce discord and the duty of turning aside from men who disseminate such doctrine (Rom. 16:18); on the other hand, of honoring those who exert themselves for the gospel and being amenable to them (1 Cor. 16:15ff.). All this serves to induce the church to preserve its own character, to cause it to live together in order and harmony, to bring it to a distinctive and responsible common service of God, to secure it against error and schism.

Although these regulations constitutive of rule and order for the life of the church lend themselves with difficulty to a systematic treatment because in Paul's epistles they mostly bear an incidental character and are connected to what is already presumed to be familiar, it cannot be said — as seems for some to hold as a kind of indisputable truth — that there is a profound or fundamental difference on this point between the older epistles of Paul and those to Timothy and Titus. In particular the contrast is to be rejected here, according to which in the former the ordinances given by Paul are to be directly attributed to Christ and to his Spirit, while in the latter the Spirit acts as the Spirit of a certain principle, namely, as the power of the holy and apostolic tradition.¹²³ The difference consists in this, that in the Pastoral Epistles Paul "commands" and takes regulatory action via his fellow workers (1 Tim. 1:3, 18; 4:11; 5:7; Tit. 2:1, 15, et al.), for which indeed parallels are also to be adduced in the older epistles (cf., e.g., 2 Cor. 8:6ff.). That thereby the personal and situational recedes more into the background and a pattern of more stabilized prescriptions and ordinances develops is obvious. With regard to the content of these prescriptions, however, this does not in itself as yet make any essential difference. If, for example, in 1 Timothy 2:1-3:13 specific prescriptions are given for the gatherings and the organization of the church and indeed one has spoken here of "the oldest church order,"¹²⁴ even so this bears no other character than what Paul ordains, for example, in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 with a view to the gathering of the church and promises to regulate still further when he comes (1 Cor. 11:34). The point in both cases is that men shall know how they ought to behave themselves in the house of God (1 Tim. 3:15). And these prescriptions in the Pastoral Epistles have a character that arises no less from the nature of the church than in the older epistles (cf. 1 Tim. 2:3ff.; 3:15ff.; Tit. 2:11ff.; 3:4ff.); while in the latter Paul enters no less into detail, when the occasion exists, than is the case in the former (cf., e.g., 1 Cor. 14 passim; 1 Cor. 16:2; 1 Tim. 5:9ff.).

So far furthermore as the content of this order to be observed by the church is concerned, in addition to what has already been said regarding it with respect to the gatherings, ministries, and offices, what Paul writes on the mutual and ecclesiastical exercise of discipline is still to be mentioned in particular. In so doing he not only speaks of admonishing one another¹²⁵ (Rom. 15:14; Col. 3:16; 1 Thess. 4:18), whereby they were to attempt to reclaim the disorderly (1 Thess. 5:11, 14; Gal. 6:1, 2, et al.), but he also requires that the congregation act in the way of church order or church law against the one who pays no attention to admonition or by his gross aberration can no longer be suffered as a member of the church. Passing by such a passage as 2 Corinthians 2:6, 7, where the picture is less clear, reference is to be made first of all to 2 Thessalonians 3:6, where Paul commands the church in the name of Christ to "withdraw" themselves from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the authoritative doctrinal tradition of the apostle. And in verse 14, evidently with a view to the same case, it is added that if anyone is not obedient to the word of Paul's epistle, the church is to "mark"¹²⁶ such a one and have nothing "to do" with him, that he may be ashamed. The question that arises here is whether what is intended by all this is expulsion from the church or a measure within the congregation, whereby normal intercourse with such a person was suspended and in this way the unacceptableness of his behavior was made clear to him, but brotherly admonition was not withheld. In view of the probable nature of the sin in view here (cf. v. 11) and Paul's addition that one must continue to consider the persons intended here as brothers and must go on admonishing them (v. 15), this latter view is surely the more probable. They did not as yet break with him entirely. It is evident, however, what a stress the apostle lays on the holiness and blamelessness of the church in the world and how much he wishes to see ascribed to the prescriptions given by him not only an ethical or "medical" significance, but also a significance in terms of church government. Where this is flouted, action is to be taken by the church, if in the case of 2 Thessalonians 3 not immediately in the definitive sense of expulsion from the church, yet surely in such a brotherly manner that the one implicated is confronted with the consequence of his acts.

Paul wishes to see a severer sentence passed in the case of 1 Corinthians 5. There he reproaches the church with the fact that it has not yet removed from its midst a member living in grave immorality, and he demands that it execute on him the sentence that the apostle has already determined concerning him,¹²⁷that is, "to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord" (1 Cor. 5:5). It is plain that formal expulsion from the church is meant here. This is then qualified, however, as a delivering to Satan in the name of the Lord Jesus. When it has gathered in the name of Christ (cf. Matt. 18:20), the church is to understand itself as the executor of the full power of the Lord to hand the sinner over from Christ's saving dominion to the sphere of the power of Satan (cf. Gal. 1:4; Col. 1:13). This handing over means for the sinner that his flesh is abandoned to "destruction." This is often so taken that being delivered over to Satan will result in death for the sinner.¹²⁸ But it cannot then be made clear¹²⁹ how the words that follow — "that [his] spirit be saved" — are to be understood. If death follows, there is no longer any place for such a salvation. It is much more probable, therefore, that with this "destruction of the flesh" a grave physical affliction, at least affecting the temporal life, is to be thought of,¹³⁰ which is to strike the sinner who has been delivered up to Satan (cf. 2 Cor. 12:7; Luke 13:16; Job 1, where suffering, too, is attributed to the working of Satan). The latter part of the sentence then denotes a possible spiritual turning and salvation arising from this; cf. the similar pronouncement in 1 Timothy 1:20

Here again expulsion from the church has a double purpose: first, to cleanse the church of those who desecrate it by their conduct. The sequel (vv. 9ff.) goes into this still further, once more (just as in 2 Thess. 3:14) with the admonition not to associate with people who, though they may be called brothers, give themselves up to all manner of sins, and even not to want to eat with them. It is required here, however, otherwise than is presupposed in the first instance in 2 Thessalonians 3, that the guilty be put away, out of the church. The second purpose is expressed here also as the conversion of the sinner, though the remedy be one that goes much further: to deliver him up to the evil power of Satan.¹³¹

Finally, the ordinance in Titus 3:10 ought still to be mentioned with reference to "a heretical man," that is to say, one who by false doctrine jeopardizes the unity of the church. Paul commands that Titus, after the first and second admonition, shall reject such a man. Here too expulsion, removal from the church, is intended, as also appears from the very negative judgment of this sinner in verse 11. The question is then what is meant by the first and second admonition. Reference is usually made here to Matthew 18:15-17, and indeed justly. A further background is very likely to be sought in the synagogical disciplinary practice, where likewise the practice was not to proceed to excommunication before repeated warnings had been given.¹³² The distinction was also known in the synagogue between provisional and radical expulsion, from which the difference between the procedure followed in 2 Thessalonians 3 and that in 1 Corinthians 5 and Titus 3 can possibly be further elucidated.

All this does not for our purpose need to be further investigated in detail. It is to be concluded from the above that with regard to church discipline, too, Paul wanted to see clear regulations followed in the church, and in so doing perhaps found correspondence in certain measures in the Jewish congregation from which he had come. So far is it removed from any such notion as that for him church and law, Spirit and canon, were incompatible. However much in the exercise of discipline the church must also have the salvation of the sinner at heart, this may not result in any obliteration within it of the boundary between what is and what is not lawful and with that also between the church itself and the world.¹³³ This boundary is rather to be maintained by the application of clear regulations and has its standard not only with respect to the moral life but also with respect to the doctrine received in the church in what has been handed over to it and its leaders as the apostolic paradosis (2 Thess. 3:6, 14; 1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:14; Tit. 3:10; cf. 1 Tim. 4:7). And all this speaks the more forcefully because in the epistles that have been preserved to us these surely very radical regulations and measures are mentioned only incidentally and without detailed explanation. This confirms the impression we have already received repeatedly that with reference to the order in the churches required by Paul one must be very cautious with the argument from silence and that the church had already been much more fully informed about such things than we can gather from these epistles

Of importance furthermore are those in whom these powers in the church are vested and by whom the order of church government is to be maintained. We are faced here with a somewhat complicated problem; it is worthwhile to go into it a little more deeply.

In what we have dealt with so far we have already seen a clear twofold tendency. On the one hand the church itself must be aware of its responsibility for order and discipline in its midst. On the other hand, the church is to know that it is itself subject to this order and to obey it as an order given it by God.

So far as the first is concerned the important fact to be pointed out is that in his epistles the apostle is constantly addressing the church, with the exception only of Philippians 1:1, where the bishops and the deacons also occur in the address (and the Pastoral Epistles). Nowhere does he direct himself over the head of the church to the office-bearers. Even in so severe a case of discipline as that intended in 1 Corinthians 5 he reproves the church that it has not taken action, and he wants the exercise of discipline still to take place "when we are assembled, you and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ," etc. (1 Cor. 5:4). Although the interpretation of this pronouncement presents us with certain difficulties,¹³⁴ it is surely clear that the church, together with the apostle, is the executor of the sentence against the sinner, which Paul had already determined (v. 3); at the same time this execution must not only take place with an appeal to the command once given by Christ, but also in the consciousness of Christ's own presence in the church and thus of the authority and spiritual power to act with which the church in consequence is invested.

That the church does not have to submit itself as an underage or dependent multitude under the authorities set over it, but has the power and calling to upbuild itself, is fundamental for a correct insight into the Pauline concept of the church and of the order and law that are to obtain in its midst. And where the church is not aware of this and does not conduct itself as "perfect" in Christ but as novices and minors, Paul reproaches it for this; particularly when people appeal over against each other to him or to Apollos, as if they were anything other than the means by which the church has come to conversion. Therefore they must know that they are not the work of Paul or Apollos, nor are they to name themselves for them, and much less still are the factions in the church to attempt to cover themselves with their authority. The church is God's building, a temple in which God dwells. Its boast and its authority do not lie in the fact that it can appeal to men. All things are the church's, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas . . . , and it is Christ's (1 Cor. 3: 1ff., 21ff.).

The second point of view is no less clear and important, however: the church is itself subject to the authority and order that have validity in its midst and owes obedience to them. And this not merely by way of mutual arrangement and as an agreement of the ecclesiastical community, but because this is the authority and the order that Christ has set over it. Nor is this authority and this order an abstractum, but it assumes concrete shape in the persons in the church who are invested with these full spiritual powers and in the control they exercise.

That Paul is himself conscious of bearing this authority and on that ground requires obedience of the church to his ordinances has already been sufficiently evident to us. But he does not restrict this authority to himself. He also ascribes it to those who in virtue of the charismata given them or their position in the church from the beginning give leadership and stand in the forefront. However little the outlines of office stand out as having been fixed in his early epistles, already in the first epistle to the newly established church at Thessalonica he points his readers to those whom they are to acknowledge and esteem highly (5:12ff.). And in the same epistle to Corinth in which he makes all gifts and ministries to be understood in the organic relationships of the body of Christ, it is said as well that the church is to be in subjection, that is to say, to respect the order ( hypotassesthai) that is represented by those who place themselves at the service of the saints, exert themselves and labor for it (1 Cor. 16:16, 18; cf. Phil. 2:29). There is thus a twofold relationship in which the church is the subject as well as the object. The church that has been taught of God is itself the bearer of the gifts, ministries, and full powers that Christ has conferred on it, and at the same time the object of this authority. And this twofold aspect — one could perhaps say: this reciprocal dependence — does not comprise an internal contradiction, but arises from the essence of the New Testament church and can be understood in particular when one grasps the significance of the body of Christ. For it is in this communication, in this corporate communion between Christ as the Head and the church as his body, that all the charismata, ministries, and offices are given to the church. It is itself their bearer, and all these gifts do not function outside or above, but in the body, and belong to the parts and articulations that knit together and nourish the body (Eph. 4:16).

It is God, therefore, it is Christ, it is the Spirit, who "appoints," "gives," "assigns," and "entrusts" apostles, prophets, and teachers in the church (1 Cor. 12:28; Rom. 12:3; Eph. 4:7, 8, 11; Rom. 12:6; Gal. 2:7, et al.). They are God's builders, vine-dressers, stewards (1 Cor. 3:6ff.; Rom. 15:20; 1 Cor. 4:1, 2; Tit. 1:7). The ministry of the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ in his body become visible in them. For this reason the exercise of office and the functioning of gifts and powers in the church are never only a mutual service of the members of the church to one another, and discipline never only a supervision one of another. It is the gift of Christ, it is the truth and the law of the Lord; the full powers of Christ are administered and vested in them. Thus the authority and those who hold it are given by Christ for the upbuilding of the church, and thus the church has to acknowledge, honor, and subject itself to them, and obey them.

But it is no less essential that in this equipping of the church with charismata, ministries, and full powers, an authority or level is not created that could place itself between the church and its Lord. For whatever may be due the church through the apostles, prophets, and teachers given it by Christ, whether instruction, or admonition, or discipline, or comfort, it is always due it as the body of Christ, in the communion of which all official gifts and full powers also function. There is no power or office apart from the church; and these contain nothing in themselves that has been withheld from the church itself. The question whether the church is the subject or the object of the full powers that are held by certain persons in its midst falls away as soon as one catches sight of the church as the corpus Christi. The church labors and struggles with them in watching and praying (2 Cor. 1:11; Eph. 6:18; Phil. 4:3; Col. 4:3; 1 Thess. 5:25; 2 Thess. 3:1, et al.). The church has to place itself under the spiritual powers, discipline, office. But, conversely, all these stand under the judgment of the church. Paul says this expressly with a view to the prophets. Not only are the spirits of the prophets to be subject to the prophets themselves in self-criticism, but the other prophets are also to judge when one of them speaks (1 Cor. 14:32, 29). Competent criticism, but criticism even so! And that does not only apply to fellow-prophets, but to the whole church. As little as they are allowed to despise prophecy and to quench the Spirit, so much are they to test everything and hold fast that which is good (1 Thess. 5:19ff.; cf. 1 John 4:1). Moreover, it is not only the non-official charismata that are at issue here, but equally the official. For between them there is no difference in principle. In the Pastoral Epistles the institutional character of certain ministries is much more clearly to the fore than elsewhere, and the Gegenüber of office with respect to the church. But nowhere are the prerequisites for office more fully and more earnestly pointed out than there: prerequisites that are not only to be respected by the office-bearer in his ministry, but which are also to be, and to continue to be, insisted on by those who choose the overseers and deacons and call them to the office.

From all this it may also appear that, though we do not find any clearly developed doctrine of office in Paul's epistles, yet the premises for such entirely conform to what we meet with elsewhere in the New Testament on investiture with certain powers or ministries. It may be at first glance that a diverse mixture presents itself here, which does not immediately seem capable of being combined and unified. Thus, for example, the election of Matthias in Acts 1 takes place with prayer and the casting of lots, after two names were first put forward by the assembled church (1:15, 23ff.). The church offers two candidates, the Lord himself designates. In Acts 6 the church chooses the seven and presents them to the apostles. These pray and lay their hands on them. The Spirit says to the prophets and teachers: "Separate for me Barnabas and Saul." After fasting and prayer hands are laid on them, and they are sent forth. Although it is not altogether settled who does the fasting and praying (the church or the prophets and teachers), it is clear that while the Spirit, Christ himself, is the Person acting, who calls to specific offices and tasks, its execution takes place by means of fasting and prayer in and by the church (cf. 14:23). Thus it can simply be said elsewhere to the overseers of Ephesus: "the Holy Spirit has placed you in the church" (Acts 20:28), whereas in Acts 14:23 it is said than Barnabas and Paul appointed elders. Similarly, as appears from 1 Timothy 4:14, Timothy received his special calling through the agency of a prophecy (cf. 1:18) and with the laying on of the hands of the body of elders, but the appointment of elders from city to city is in Titus 1:5 without more ado charged to Titus.

At first sight it may appear that all sorts of ideas run through each other here and that on this ground one could now defend apostolic succession, then again direct calling by the Spirit, in a third instance designation to office by means of prophetic voices, finally also investiture with office as the act of the church only.

When one surveys the whole, however, it is evident that in each investiture with and acceptance of official power to act and authority two different elements are present: first, Christ himself, who will not only have the office established and maintained in the way of the transference of the power once given, but works in the church through his Spirit, so that the work of the Lord on earth may be done, his church be built up, and his power to act invested in persons qualified to that end. Second, the church itself, which designates and chooses these persons and in the name of the Lord enables them to enter upon the work charged to them.

For the rest, so far as the emergence of office-bearers in the early Christian churches is concerned, one will have to take into account the different situations and gradations in the independence of the churches and the more or less consolidated conditions. While most of the epistles are addressed directly to the churches themselves, in the Pastoral Epistles it is Paul's closest fellow workers who under his instructions are to act with regulatory authority, are to appoint eiders where these are lacking (Tit. 1:5), and must put affairs in order where abuses are threatening (cf., e.g., 1 Tim. 5:5ff.). That the increasing dangers that menaced the church from the side of heresy will have constituted a powerful reason for a stricter order and tighter upbuilding of the church may also be gathered from these epistles. On the other hand, the view that in these persons delegated by the apostle (who then appear in the guise of Timothy and Titus) we should have to see an intermediate link between the apostolate and the monarchical episcopate in which then the apostolic succession would demonstrate itself¹³⁵ is in many respects in conflict with the real situation, to be taken as history, that is described in the Pastoral Epistles. Timothy and Titus function as temporary leaders of the churches in Ephesus and Crete (cf. 1 Tim. 1:3; 3:15; 2 Tim. 4:9ff.; Tit. 1:5; 3:12ff.). The purpose of their appearance and of the epistles addressed to them is precisely to bring the church and the office coming to development in it to greater independence, in view of Paul's absence and approaching demise and their own impending departure. The letters, directed to them are accordingly to be read in the meetings of the church itself, as is evident, among other things, from the concluding benediction, and were thus intended for the church as apostolic paradosis and included as such in the canon. And the authority is indeed given to Timothy and Titus to appoint office-bearers (1 Tim. 5:22; Tit. 1:5), but this is not to say that this took place without cooperation or designation by the church and that they themselves may already be said to represent an "intermediate level" between the apostolate and the "laity." Timothy himself is repeatedly reminded of his own ordination, which had come to him not only in the name of the apostle, but also in the name of the church (cf. 2 Tim. 1:6 and 1 Tim. 4:14; 6:12). Furthermore, he is encouraged in a great many ways not to conduct himself in too unassuming a fashion, not to feel ashamed of his youth, to show his progress in

the work committed to him, etc. (cf. 1 Tim. 4:11, 15, et al.). Every trace of an incipient hierarchical order or "apostolic succession" is lacking here. Nor can the episkopos to be appointed by them be interpreted as a primus inter pares, who would then represent the incipient hierarchy.¹³⁶ However clearer in these epistles than in the older ones are the contours with which the ordering of the church is marked, no fundamental shifting is to be found here that would justify the qualification of (transition to) "early catholicism," or which would consist in the transition from the liberty of the Spirit to a principle of tradition and legitimacy.¹³⁷ For on the one hand even in the older epistles all authority and order in the church, has its norm in (the "principle" of) the apostolic tradition, and on the other hand it is difficult to say in what respect the brief "mirrors" of the elders and deacons in the Pastoral Epistles contain anything that did not as yet hold for "those who give leadership," etc., in the previous epistles. For these prescriptions are put so generally, and in a certain sense so primitively, that there can as yet be no question of an even in some degree elaborated official instruction or legitimation, to say nothing of a thorough-going distinction between clergy and laity.

Neither can the ordination mentioned in the Pastoral Epistles ("laying on of hands"; 1 Tim. 4:14; 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6) serve as evidence for such a development in a hierarchical direction. As is also apparent elsewhere in the New Testament (cf., e.g., Acts 13:3), the laying on of hands is here not (as with the Jews¹³⁸) to be taken as conveying the grace of office and incorporating one into an unbroken succession that perpetuates itself via this ordination; it is rather to be thought of detached from that, as the (whether or not temporary) designation and equipping to a specific ministry or office. It does not create an institute standing above the church, but places one in the service of the church, at its direction (1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14), and with its cooperation (1 Tim. 5:22), in order in this way as well to invest with the full powers that have been given to the church. This laying on of hands therefore does not represent a stage of authority and office in the ancient Christian church that is different in principle from Paul, even though in the remaining epistles such an ordination is not explicitly mentioned.

In summary, all the authorities and ordinances that have been placed in the church to build up and keep pure the body of Christ have been given it by Christ and as such require submission and obedience from the side of the church; at the same time, these powers are held by those who have been placed in the church and have been given to the church to that end. In the persons who have been endowed with these charismata and ministries, too, Christ is equipping the church. But this equipping does not take place without its own cooperation, insofar, that is, as those who hold the authority of Christ in the church do so on its designation or at least under its supervision and judgment. The office — in a single formula — is from Christ and through the church.

If, therefore, in the organization of the local churches a transition is to be observed in Paul from the apostolic to the congregational-presbyterial stage that comes about only gradually, this applies still more strongly to the interrelationship of the local congregations.

We have already been able to ascertain¹³⁹ that ekklesia in Paul usually denotes the local church. This is not of course to say — one need only think of Colossians and Ephesians — that Paul may be said to think in terms of "local congregations" and to consider the church as a whole only as something secondary; the cause of this phenomenon is to be found in the fact that he had in practice primarily to do with individual churches and the questions and problems arising in them.

This does not alter the fact, however, that in various ways he makes the local congregations also realize their fellowship among each other and wishes to promote among them as large a degree of agreement in their actions as possible. Time and again he points the churches to what is taking place elsewhere. They are to be conscious of the cosmic ("ecumenical") relationships in which the gospel involves them (Col. 1:6, 23; 1 Tim. 3:16; cf. Eph. 1:10). What happens in other congregations must have their full interest (cf. 2 Cor. 9:2ff.; Col. 4:16); they are to participate in that which is undertaken elsewhere (1 Cor. 16:1ff.); they must allow themselves to be guided by the same line of conduct. Paul accordingly stresses that he gives the same directives in all the churches (1 Cor. 7:17; 4:17; 14:33); he wants them to pay heed to each other's ecclesiastical rules; and he reprimands the Corinthians for their individualizing and independent attitude: "Did the Word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?" (1 Cor. 14:14, 36).¹⁴⁰

The basis for this interrelationship does not lie only in the practical desirability or necessity of cooperation, exchange of ideas, mutual assistance, or brotherly advice, but above all in the nature of the

church, the unity of which is not the product of the component parts, but rather underlies them.¹⁴¹ In the local congregation the universal church of Christ manifests itself. Therein lies its independence, on the one hand; on the other, the necessity for allowing itself to be determined by and amenable to other congregations. For as the figure of the multiplicity of the members and the one body (Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 12) forms a directive for life in the local congregations, so no less for the relationship of these congregations to each other. For Christ does not have many bodies, but the one body of Christ must manifest itself in the unity and harmony of the whole church, local and general (cf. Eph. 4:1-6).

It is provisionally here again the apostle himself who gives guidance to this interrelationship. The apostolate represents not only the foundation, but also the unity and the ecumenical character of the church. But in the same sense in which in the local congregations the apostolic powers of government and superintendence are continued in the competence, adulthood, and self-sufficiency of the congregations themselves and in the government of the leaders given to them and designated by them, the church in its larger connections will also have to preserve its unity, exercise the authority of Christ given to it, and subject itself to it. The fundamental structures of the church as the body of Christ here also constitute clear directives for the whole church. For this reason no vacuum arose with the disappearance of the last apostle, and the local congregations do not break apart as separate "bodies," but they have to preserve their interconnection and authority in harmony with the being and calling of the church as the body of Christ,

Paul's epistles (and the whole of the New Testament) give still less detailed prescriptions for this than for the organization of the local congregations. Provision is not made by apostolic succession or by the beginning of a hierarchical upbuilding corresponding with it. The "succession," if that is here to be spoken of, lies in the churches themselves and in the apostolic paradosis given in them. This does not mean for the church in general (any more than for the local congregations themselves), however, that in this interrelationship no regulations and no ordering of the authority given to the church would apply. Nor that outside the context of the local church this would only bear the character of a charismatic or ethical authority in the sense of the "twofold organization" of Harnack.¹⁴² Here again every opposition of the pneumatic and charismatic and of church order and institution is in conflict with the nature of the church, and it lies exactly in the line of what was evident to us with regard to the local upbuilding of the churches that the churches themselves must bear the responsibility for seeing that, insofar as this is necessary and in harmony with the being of the church, the authority of Christ be given expression and be made to function in the sense of church order in the broader connections as well.

Because in the New Testament no new apostles succeed the initial ones and likewise no distinct offices are created to rule the church in its broad relationships, it is most in harmony with the development perceptible in Paul's epistles (and in the New Testament as a whole) for these broader connections, too, that the church receive the government it needs in certain organs designated by the several congregations themselves. However one chooses to conceive of such ecclesiastical organs, whether, as in the first instance is certainly the most obvious, as church assembly (cf. Acts 15; Gal. 2) or otherwise, the principal thing is that they are designated by the congregations themselves in order, on the analogy of the government of the local congregation, to invest the authority conferred on them by Christ in the larger ecclesiastical relationships as well.¹⁴³

Along with this the manner in which Paul himself exercises his authority over the local congregations can constitute a clear directive. He is aware of having been vested by Christ with authority and power, but he does not hesitate to say: "All things are yours . . . , whether Paul, or Apollos." He does not act without the church and apart from it, therefore, even when the church itself is in default, but rather stirs it up to be conscious of its own calling and authority, to know its own independence and adulthood (1 Cor. 5:5; Rom. 15:14, 15). But at the same time he takes action when it forsakes its calling as the church in unspiritual leniency or passivity, in order to cleanse it of the alien blemish and to make it to be "the fresh dough" in accordance with its belonging to Christ, the paschal lamb who has been sacrificed for it (1 Cor. 5:3, 7). For this holy and Christian character of the church transcends everything else and in consequence requires preserving and upholding, if those who were first designated to that end should forsake their calling.

Although, in keeping with the incipient character of the church to which Paul addresses himself and in view of the peculiar significance of his writings as epistles, a systematic exposition of the precepts regarding church order is lacking, these epistles contain a multitude of motives and directives that are of great and abiding significance for correct insight into the structure, connection, and government of the Christian church and thus for its organizational upbuilding as the people of God and the body of Christ.¹⁴⁴

SECTION 73. WORSHIP

It may be asked finally what place worship occupies in the whole of Paul's ecclesiological pronouncements and what significance is to be attached to it for the upbuilding of the church.

It is surely of fundamental importance that where Paul directly or indirectly makes mention of the meetings of the church he does not speak of them in sacral concepts. Twice he employs the term "worship" ( latreia), once as a denotation of the Old Testament worship of God (Rom. 9:4), and once of the life of New Testament believers (Rom. 12:2). But he does not apply it to the meetings, but to the daily walk of the church. And the same holds for sacrificial terminology. Attention has rightly been called to the fact that after the sacrifice made by Christ, the priest as pontifical mediator between God and men is entirely missing in the world of the New Testament.¹⁴⁵ All of life is spiritual worship, every believer a priest (Rom. 12:1; cf. Rom. 1:9; Phil. 3:3; 2 Tim. 1:3). So far as priestly leadership has to be given in this sacrificial service, it consists in the apostolic instruction and admonition as to how the spiritual sacrifice of the church can be acceptable to God (Rom. 15:16; cf. Phil. 2:17). With this a fundamental change has been ushered in with regard to the Old Testament. The New Testament knows no holy persons who substitutionally perform the service of God for the whole people of God, nor holy places and seasons or holy acts, which create a distance between the cultus and the life of every day and every place. All members of the church have access to God (Rom. 5:2) and a share in the Holy Spirit; all of life is service to God; there is no "profane" area.¹⁴⁶

On the other hand, for Paul the meeting of the church nevertheless has a specific and highly important significance. In it the revelation of the church takes place in what distinguishes it from the world; in the common participation in the one bread it is disclosed as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:17). Especially in its coming together the church is to be conscious of its priestly and prophetic task in behalf of and, in a certain sense, as substitute for the world: in its intercession for all men (1 Tim. 2:1ff., 8), in being the demonstration for unbelievers and observers that God is with it (1 Cor. 14:24, 25). For this reason adoration, prophecy, confession, the preaching of God's Word are also to take place. This does not create a new distance between life in the cultus and that of every day, for that is also and precisely to be cultus. But in these meetings the peculiar character of the church in the world is disclosed in an exemplary way, just as the indwelling of Christ in his church becomes manifest through the proclamation of the gospel, the observance of the Lord's Supper, the promise given, and the benediction pronounced in his name (cf., e.g., 2 Cor. 1:20; Col. 3:16; 2 Cor. 13:14, et al.).¹⁴⁷

Now so far as these gatherings¹⁴⁸ of the church are concerned, it is far from the case that in Paul we have received detailed information or prescriptions. In the epistles that have been preserved to us he writes of them incidentally, more often than not in connection with certain abuses and with the presupposition of much that is often not clear to us and about which we should be glad to know more.

Thus at the very outset it is difficult on the ground of the Pauline epistles to answer the question as to whether and to what extent these gatherings of the church were under the guidance of specific persons designated for that purpose.

This question is of course closely bound up with that of the presence of office-bearers in the church in general. If one starts from such a passage as 1 Corinthians 11:17ff., very little is evident of a fixed order; rather, there seems to be a shortage of leadership. And the same thing applies to 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul is obliged to impress on the church that God is after all not a God of confusion (v. 33). On the other hand, all this is certainly no proof that in the meetings of the church there was in general no leadership, even in the church at Corinth, which was apparently inclined to spiritualism and licentiousness. When Paul elsewhere exhorts this church to be subject to certain persons who occupy a special place in its midst (16:13ff.), it is difficult to accept that this leadership took place exclusively outside the meetings of the church and did not also have influence on the organization of these gatherings.¹⁴⁹ Similarly, the prescriptions with regard to speaking in tongues, prophesying, etc., presuppose that certain rules had to be observed, something that is scarcely to be imagined apart from leadership.¹⁵⁰ With all this we may certainly consider more to have been presupposed than is expressed in so many words. Yet it is evident from the manner in which in this respect, too, Paul continually addresses himself to the church, and not to a few who occupy positions of leadership or to office-bearers, how much the gatherings of the church are not a hierarchical affair or one to be discharged by a few "holy" persons, but bear a fully congregational character.

This is not, of course, to say that these meetings would have significance as the mutual exercise of fellowship and not also and above all as "liturgy" and the worship of God. The contrary is the case. Although there are again more indirect than direct data, the following are to be pointed out.

(a) The proclamation of the Word in the assembly of the church. The church has not only to thank the preaching of the gospel for its origin, but its continued existence is dependent on the inviolate preservation of this preaching (cf. 1 Cor. 15:1, 2; Col. 2:7; 1 Tim. 6:14, et al). That it was especially the meeting of the church where the continuation of preaching in its various shapes occurred is obvious and appears as well from the direct pronouncements of the apostle. Thus he commands that his own epistles be read aloud in the assembly of the church (1 Thess. 5:27; Col. 4:16). The word that is employed for this (anaginōskō, anagnōsis) is the technical term for the cultic reading aloud of the Old Testament in the synagogue (cf. Luke 4:16; Acts 13:15, 27; 15:21; 2 Cor. 3:14, 15). By applying this terminology to the reading of his own epistles he not only ascribes the same authority to the apostolic word as to the Old Testament writings (as in 1 Tim. 5:18 he also combines a quotation from the Old Testament with a word of Jesus and introduces the whole with the familiar formula: "for the Scripture says"), but he also intends that they function as such in the gathering of the church. Elsewhere this "public reading" apparently has reference to the continued reading of the Old Testament in the gatherings of the church¹⁵¹ (1 Tim. 4:13), just as, evidently once again with a view to teaching activity in the meeting of the church, Paul says of the God-inspired Scripture of the Old Testament that it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, etc. (2 Tim. 3:16; cf. Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 9:9, 10). Accordingly, just as in the synagogue (cf. Acts 13:15; Luke 4:20), the congregation was exhorted and taught from this "reading." All this comes clearly to the fore especially in the Pastoral Epistles. In the absence of Paul Timothy is to apply himself to public reading, exhortation, and teaching, understood, as appears from the repeated article, as fixed constituent parts of his work in the assembly of the church, for which he must prepare himself diligently.¹⁵² Moreover, by the "exhortation" one is to understand not only the critical-paraenetic word, but all that is able to serve for religious awakening and upbuilding; "teaching" refers especially to the tradition, including its interpretation and application to the present (cf. Rom. 15:4). The church had increasing need of the reading of Scripture and instruction in the tradition in proportion as error arose that also appealed to Scripture (1 Tim. 1:7). In various ways in the Pastoral Epistles this "labor in the Word and in the doctrine" (1 Tim. 5:17) is insisted on (cf. 1 Tim. 4:11; 6:3; 2 Tim. 4:2) with the employment of different terminology (cf. 2 Tim. 2:14, 15; Tit. 3:1), whereby again and again the assembly of the church is presupposed as the place of this activity (cf. 1 Tim. 4:16; 2 Tim. 2:14).

In the older epistles more attention is devoted to the non-official prophetic utterances. Here, too, it is a matter of the continuing activity of the exalted Lord through his Spirit in the church, even if not everything that announced itself as a charisma of the Spirit was to be accepted, but was rather to be judged on its worth and authenticity (1 Thess. 5:21; cf. Rom. 12:6). As the gift of prophecy and of teaching was more and more restricted to certain persons, these also will have interpreted the Word of God in the assembly of the church, as is apparent from such designations as: to teach the Word (Gal 6:6) and to labor in the Word and doctrine (1 Tim. 5:17). Yet the "free word" not bound to a specific office also continues to characterize the meeting of the church (cf. Eph. 4:29; Col. 3:16; 1 Tim. 2:8ff.). But this freedom will increasingly have been exercised under the guidance of specific persons.

(b) In addition to the Word of God going forth to the church in its various forms, Paul speaks further of the observance of the Lord's Supper as an event recurring time and again in the assembly of the church. Here again in the epistles more is presupposed than is prescribed. How frequently the Supper was observed, or in the judgment of the apostle ought to be observed, can no longer be concluded with certainty from the way in which he writes of it (cf. 1 Cor. 11:25, 26), though one does get the impression here that the observance of the Supper took place in close connection with a non-cultic meal preceding it and thus was perhaps among the regular constituents of the church assembly.¹⁵³ Nor is the manner in which the Supper took place and in which the anamnesis element was given further expression, for example, by the recitation of certain parts from the tradition, described in the epistles of Paul. He does apparently feel the need of more rule in the church at Corinth. But he saves these additional regulations until he is there in person (1 Cor. 11:34).

So far further as the administration of baptism is concerned, it incorporates into the church and will therefore certainly have taken place in the presence of the church (cf. I Cor. 12:13). That baptism by immersion may be inferred from Romans 6:4¹⁵⁴ is, in our view, not simply to be posited without further ado. For baptism is not a symbol of going down in death and rising to life.¹⁵⁵ Baptism in Paul symbolizes cleansing and washing (1 Cor. 6:11; Eph. 5:26). This does not alter the fact that the "water bath" thus intended can have taken place in the form of immersion, which the word "baptize" originally means. Baptism for Paul is baptism into Christ and thus the appropriation of the redemptive event realized in Christ, and one can think to that effect of a baptismal song in such a passage as Ephesians 5:14.¹⁵⁶

Through whom baptism took place and with whom the decision lay as to admission to baptism do not arise. It is surely worthy of remark that Paul says of himself that Christ has not sent him to baptize, but to preach the gospel (1 Cor. 1:17), and that he more or less glories in the fact that he baptized only a few of the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:14). One is not to see here a depreciation of the liturgical act, and baptism is not set over against the gospel as a matter of secondary importance.¹⁵⁷ Paul only wants in this way to deprive the partisans in Corinth of every argument for calling themselves after him as the party of Paul. Yet it remains striking that he explicitly divided the commission to proclaim the gospel and to baptize from each other. Baptism thus evidently pertains to the competence of the church itself, as soon as it has been established, substantially of the persons designated by it to that end.

(c) In addition to the ministry of the Word in its various forms of reading, prophecy, teaching, and the administration of baptism and the Supper, we find mentioned in the Pauline epistles the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs as an element of the assemblies (Col. 3:16; cf. Eph. 5:19). Although we are not further informed as to the content and character of these songs, it is apparently a question here of the songs to be sung in the meeting of the church, whether prepared by an individual member and rendered in the church (cf. 1 Cor. 14:26, 15), or, what is no less likely, sung by the whole congregation. The designations "psalm," "hymn," and "spiritual song" do not give much to go on for a further distinction, unless with "psalms" one chooses to think of the psalms of the Old Testament, for which no decisive arguments are to be adduced, however, and against which there are also objections to be urged.¹⁵⁸ That in such passages as Ephesians 5:14; Philippians 2:6ff. ; 1 Timothy 3:16, we have to do with examples or fragments of Christian song, as is often supposed, is not improbable, though we shall have to be cautious in our judgment here because direct indications for it are lacking. The same thing holds for other expressions, formulae, stereotyped phrases, in which it is thought that liturgical elements can be pointed out, as, for example, the salutation with which Paul begins his epistles and in which a formula for the commencement of the gatherings of the church could possibly be seen;¹⁵⁹ similarly, the thanksgiving and intercession that follow on this prescript in almost all of the Pauline epistles; likewise doxologies and eulogies; and non-Greek expressions such as Maranatha (1 Cor. 16:22), Abba (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15), and Amen (2 Cor. 1:20; 1 Cor. 14:16, et al.). That this last did in fact involve a form of agreement on the part of the church is evident from the passages cited. Further, in 1 Corinthians 16:20-25 one can find allusions to the liturgy of the Supper; ¹⁶⁰ reference is also to be made to the "holy kiss," repeatedly mentioned in Paul (Rom. 16:16; 1 Thess. 5:26; 2 Cor. 13:12).¹⁶¹ To examine all this at length, whereby the origins of the congregational confession of faith ought also to be discussed as well as congregational prayer, the place of the Lord's Prayer, the observance of the first day of the week, etc., does not belong to an investigation into the content of Paul's preaching.¹⁶² From all that has been mentioned it may appear, however, how significant for Paul, too, the meetings of the

church were for its upbuilding. However much the "liturgy" must be seen as a spiritual worship of God embracing the whole of life (Rom. 12:1, 2), this does not alter the fact that the indwelling in and communion of Christ with the church have their point of concentration and special realization in its unity as assembled congregation.

1. Cf., e.g., Michel, TDNT, V, pp. 120f.; and the monographs on this idea by P. Vielhauer, Oikodome, Das Bild vom Bau in der christlichen Literatur vom Neuen Testament bis Clemens Alexandrinus, 1940; P. Bonnard, Jésus- Christ édifiant son Église, 1948; J. Pfammatter, Die Kirche als Bau. Eine exegetisch- theologische Studie zur Ekklesiologie der Paulusbriefe, 1960; J. H. Roberts, Die Opbou van die Kerk volgens die Efese- brief, 1963.

2. Cf. Roberts, ibid., pp. 22ff.

3. Clear light is shed on this point in the Qumran writings; cf. especially Pfammatter, Die Kirche als Bau, pp. 155ff.

4. Akrogōniaios, following Jeremias, Angelos, I, 1925, pp. 65-70; ZNW, 1930, pp. 264-280; TDNT, I, pp. 792f., is taken as "keystone" by many recent exegetes. There are also serious objections against this translation, however, so that in our view the old translation still has much to be said for it; cf., e.g., Percy, Probleme, pp. 328-332, 485-488. See the detailed discussion in Roberts, Die Opbou, pp. 61ff.

5. Pasa oikodomē (some mss. insert hē after pasa) is usually taken as: all that is built. There are also important arguments, however, for the translation "the whole building"; cf. Hanson, The Unity of the Church in the New Testament, 1946, p. 132; Dibelius, Col, in loc.; see also Bl.-Debr., Par. 275, 3; Roberts, Die Opbou, pp. 167ff.

6. En pneumati in v. 22 gives a further definition of katoikētērion. The thought is that of 1 Pet. 2:5: oikos pneumatikos; cf. 1 Cor. 12:13.

7. Some accordingly wish to assume gnostic influences in relation to oikodomē in Eph.; cf. e.g., Vielhauer, Oikodomē, pp. 141ff.; Käsemann, Leib Christi, pp. 171ff.; Michel, TDNT, V, pp. 145f.; Schlier, Christus und die Kirche, 1930, pp. 57ff.; but see also Percy, Probleme, p. 329; Hanson, The Unity of the Church, pp. 129ff.

8. On this see further G. Friedrich, "Erbauung," RGG, II, 3rd ed., col. 538.

9. So rightly D. van Swigchem, Het missionair karakter van de Christelijke gemeente volgens de brieven van Paulus en Petrus, 1955, p. 108.

10. See also E. Schweizer, "The Church as the Missionary Body of Christ," NTS, 1961, pp. 1-11.

11. For the following see also the detailed and exact analyses of van Swigchem, Het missionair karakter van de Christelijke gemeente.

12. Propempein; in general: accompany, see a person off (Acts 20:38; 21:5); specifically: equipping one for the journey by giving him money, provisions, companions (cf. 3 John 6; Acts 15:3).

13. See van Swigchem at length ( Het missionair karakter, pp. 88ff.); also W. C. van Unnik, "Die Rücksicht auf die Reaktion der Nicht-Christen als Motiv in der altchristlichen Paränese," in Judentum. Urchristentum. Kirche ( Festschr. Jeremias), 1960, pp. 221ff.

14. For this meaning of the example see also W. P. De Boer, The Imitation of Paul, 1962, pp. 213ff,

15. So van Swigchem, Het missionair karakter, pp. 140, 144.

16. For this problem, in addition to van Swigchem, ibid., pp. 247ff., see G. Brillenburg Wurth, "Het apostolaat der kerk," in De apostolische kerk, 1954, pp. 98-133; H. Berkhof, "Tweeërlei ekklesiologie," in Kerk en Theologie, 1962, pp. 145ff.

17. For Eph. 4:12ff. see also the full and penetrating exegesis of Roberts, Die Opbou, pp. 170ff. He wants here to distinguish the missionary as well as the consolidating motif; that is, he takes hoi pantes in v. 13 as the "full total" of those who will come to the knowledge of Christ; on the other hand, v. 14 would then speak of the consolidating element in the upbuilding. A serious objection to this conception is that the subject of katantēsōmen in v. 13 and that of ōmen in v. 14 would vary in meaning (cf. pp. 173 and 177).

18. See above, Section 44,

19. See above, Section 62.

20. Epoikodomoumenoi and bebaioumenoi — present participles.

21. Cf. above, p. 240.

22. This also holds for the striking usage of 1 Cor. 2:6 (cf. P. J. Du Plessis, [TELEIOS], The Idea of Perfection in the New Testament, 1959, p. 178).

23. On this see above, Section 41.

24. Cf. above, p. 295.

25. For this peculiar and repeated use of oikodomeō in 1 Cor. 8ff. also see Michel, TDNT, V, p. 141. He surmises that Paul here associates himself with certain expressions current in the church of Corinth.

26.Defended especially in his principal work, Kirchenrecht, I, 1892; later summarized and repeated in his Wesen und Ursprung des Katholizismus, 1909.

27. For Harnack's conception see especially his The Constitution and Law of the Church in the First Two Centuries, ET 1910. His extensive criticism of Sohm's work is included there (pp. 175ff.).

28. Cf. his essay, "Der Kirchenbegriff des Paulus in seinem Verhältnis zu dem der Urgemeinde," 1921, included in Karl Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, II, 1928, pp. 44-67.

29. The Constitution and Law of the Church, pp. 215f.

30. Ibid., p. 214: "This [that is, the relative character of every administration of justice] means that ecclesiastical law cannot include religious regulations in the proper sense because these are thereby deprived of their value, and indeed are called in question."

31. See for this already Harnack's Die Lehre der zwölf Apostel, 1884, pp. 145ff.

32. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze, II, pp. 62ff.

33. For this whole development see, for example, O. Linton, Das Problem der Urkirche in der neueren Forschung, 1932: F. M. Braun, Neues Licht auf die Kirche, 1946, pp. 29ff.; W. G. Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems, ET 1972, pp. 212ff. Especially with a view to church polity, W. Maurer, "Vom Ursprung und Wesen kirchlichen Rechts," in Zeitschr. für evang. Kirchenrecht, 1956, pp. 5ff.; he points especially to the significance of H. von Campenhausen. For his standpoint see below.

34. Cf., e.g., the summary in Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze, II, pp. 62ff.

35. Paul does use the word leitourgia — occurring outside the N.T. frequently in a sacral sense —a few times, but then in the general, non-sacral sense of mutual service (2 Cor. 9 : 1 2 - o f a collection [cf. Rom. 15:27]; Phil. 2:25, 30). The only time that leitourgos has a sacral connotation in Paul is Rom. 15:16 (in connection with hierourgein). But here he speaks in a figurative sense (cf. below, p. 481).

36. See further below, p. 481.

37. Charisma can also in general denote the gift of God in Christ (Rom. 5:15, 16; 6:23; 11:29; 2 Cor. 1:11), and the particularization of it for all believers (Rom. 1:11); diakonia can also have a general, more abstract meaning of ministry (cf. 2 Cor. 3:7ff.; 5:18); on the other hand, of one definite kind of ministry or assistance, e.g., of the collection for Jerusalem (Rom. 15:31; 2 Cor. 8:4ff.; cf. Rom. 12:7).

38. Cf., e.g., E. Käsemann, "Ministry and Community in the New Testament," Essays on New Testament Themes, p. 64: "We can establish with the maximum degree of historical certainty that it was Paul who was the first to use it in this technical sense and who indeed introduced it into the vocabulary of theology."

39. See further below, pp. 446ff.

40. So, e.g., Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 70ff., who wishes to understand the contrasts mentioned in Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11 (male-female, slave-free, etc.) as charismata, not to be sure in the mere fact of their existence, taken by themselves, but because each of them (maleness, femaleness, familial and social relationships, etc.) can become a charisma ("when it is overshadowed by the motion en Kyriō of I Cor. 7:39"). But however true it is that charisma has to do with the whole of life because "the field of the Church's operation must be the world in its totality" and "the secular is no longer abandoned to demons and demonic energies" (p. 72), the Pauline usage of charisma is plainly narrower. It does not have reference to marriage, etc., itself, but to the special and varied spiritual possibilities God gives to believers in every area of life in order thereby to build his church and glorify his name.

41. Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, p. 67. With regard to these special pneumatica he writes: "He can hardly go further in his approach to his opponents at Corinth and to the world of Hellenistic mystery religion which lies beyond them. But this is precisely the point at which he diverges most sharply from his environment."

42. Against this distinction introduced by Harnack (see above, p. 439) see also E. Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, ET 1961, pp. 145, 181ff,

43. Sometimes diakonia is also used for one specific ministry (cf. Rom. 12:7; see also above, p. 441, n. 37).

44. TDNT, II, p. 87.

45. For the preceding and the following see also my essay "Kerkelijke orde en kerkelijk recht in de brieven van Paulus," in Ex auditu verbi (Festschr. G. C. Berkouwer), 1965, pp. 194-215.

46. For this antithesis, in addition to the older conception o£ Holl et al. already mentioned, see also Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 83ff., who, among other things, denies with great decisiveness that the Pauline church at the time of the apostle would already have known a presbyterium and who characterizes the development as it emerges in the Pastoral Epistles as an abandonment (dictated by the circumstances) of the "Pauline conception of a church order based on charisma" (p. 88). Schweizer, too, regards an ordination, in general an appointment at the beginning of a specific ministry, an impossibility with Paul (Church Order in the New Testament, p. 101). Such an appointment or ordination would be for him "a subsequent recognition of a ministry that had been bestowed previously" (p. 207). Here again all the emphasis falls on charisma and ministry as event ( Ereignis). For this same actualizing conception of office see Kàsemann, ibid., p. 83: "The Apostle's theory of order is not a static one, resting on offices, institutions, ranks, and dignities; in his view, authority resides only within the concrete act of ministry as it occurs, because it is only within the concrete act that the Kyrios announces his lordship and his presence." H. von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries, ET 1969, is also of the opinion that, though certain regulations were observed, every ministry that was performed in the church did not for Paul rest on such human regulations, but "it is the employment of a gift which the Spirit bestows" (p. 68). For von Campenhausen here the antithesis between Spirit and "law" especially plays a great part (cf. pp. 56ff.). For this whole problem see also J. L. Leuba, Institution und Ereignis, 1957.

47. See P. Menoud, l'Église et les ministères selon le Nouveau Testament, 1949, p. 12; also Bultmann, Theology, II, pp. 97ff.

48. See below, pp. 446ff., 455ff.

49. See further below, pp. 448ft.

50. "The discharge of certain obligations in the community" (Beyer, TDNT, II, p. 88). In addition to the "ministry" of the apostles (the office of apostle) (Rom. 11:13; 2 Cor. 4:1; 6:3ff.; 11:8), reference is to be made to Col. 4:17 (cf. 1 Tim. 1:12; 2 Tim. 4:5, 11). For the apostolate oikonomia is also employed, which perhaps comes closest to our "office" (cf. 1 Cor. 9:17; Eph, 3:2; Col. 1:25).

51. As Schweizer puts it (see above, p. 444, n. 46).

52. As von Campenhausen does (see above, p. 444, n. 46).

53. As Käsemann interprets it (see above, p. 444, n. 46).

54. For the attempt to eliminate Phil. 1:1 from the discussion see below, n. 85.

55. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, II, p. 104: "According to Paul's view the tasks and activities within the compass of congregational life (the 'varieties of service,' the 'helps' and 'administrations'; 1 Cor. 12:5, 28) are also gifts of the Spirit. To that extent it may be justified to term the offices of 'presbyter' and 'episkopos' charismatic, but in so doing one must be aware that although this corresponds to Paul's specific understanding of the matter it nevertheless does not agree with the oldest usage of Hellenistic Christianity" (cf. I, p. 154). So Kümmel as well in Lietzmann-Kümmel, Cor. ( p. 188): "for Paul all the functions of the church bear a charismatic character."

56. There is a difference of opinion on the question whether diaireseis in I Cor. 12:4ff. speaks of "diversity" in gifts, etc., or of "distribution." It is usually translated by the former. Schlier, however, defends the latter in TDNT, I, p. 185, and is followed, among others, by Kümmel (Lietzmann-Kümmel, Cor., p. 187), departing from Lietzmann (p. 60). Schlier appeals (a) to the plural, (b) to the contrast with to de auto pneuma, (c) to the parallel with the "basic concept" hē phanerōsis tou pneumatos (v. 7). One could point further to v. 11 where diairoun undoubtedly means "distribute." Nevertheless the element of diversity in this expression is unmistakable. The contrast with to de auto pneuma obviously stands over against the dissimilarity, the differences among the gifts of the Spirit; and in v. 7 the accent is placed on what is of service for all (pros to sympheron), once again in contrast to the gift allotted to each one separately. However, in the word diaireseis the thought of bestowing (in variety) certainly also has a part (cf. vv. 11, 8). We do not, however, have a word that (as diairein, etc.) embraces the one as well as the other: "distribution" insufficiently indicates the differentiation. One will perhaps have to be content with a circumscription: "there is a variegated distribution of charismata," etc.

57. For a full and illuminating survey see Joseph Brosch, Charismen und Ämter in der Urkirche, 1951, pp. 38-41.

58. One is to think of pastoral admonition and encouragement (cf. paramythia; I Cor. 14:3; 1 Thess. 2:12; 5:14; Phil. 2:1), often difficult to distinguish from paraklēsis (see Stählin, TDNT, V, p. 817).

59. Cf. Bultmann, TDNT, I, p. 708, n. 73.

60. The effort of Brosch, Charismen und Ämter in der Urkirche, pp. 98ff., to distinguish the apostles mentioned in 1 Cor. 12 and Eph. 4 from the apostles appointed by Jesus and to conceive of this apostolate as a temporary phenomenon, which in its "circles of duties and manners of applications showed similarities with the stable office of the apostle, but was of a purely charismatic nature" (p. 109), rests, as is apparent from his whole argument, far too much on (Roman Catholic) dogmatic presuppositions and leads to very arbitrary exegeses of the passages involved.

61. The question is whether Paul knew other apostles in addition to the twelve in the sense of founders of the church. In 2 Cor. 8:23; Phil. 2:25 there is mention of apostles of the church(es), by whom are simply meant authorized (apostle = one having full powers) of one or more specific churches. And in 2 Cor. 11:5, 13; 12:11, it is a question of people who apparently called themselves apostles, but are called by Paul "false apostles who pose as apostles of Christ." Did Paul, however, know still other apostles of Christ than the twelve and himself? It is of special importance who are intended by tois apostolois pasin in 1 Cor. 15:7 (after the twelve; v. 5!). Holl has made it perfectly clear that one cannot understand here Christian missionaries in general (Gesammelte Aufsätze, II, pp. 47f .).Only to think of the twelve, however — as Harnack, e.g., wished to do — is, after v. 5, also difficult; that the twelve plus James were intended (so Holl) does not appear from the context. Although the circle of "all the apostles" can only have been very small, yet more seem to have belonged to it than the twelve (cf. also Rom. 16:7; see also Grosheide, 1 Cor., p. 389; Lietzmann, Cor., pp. 77, 78; and for the whole question of 1 Cor. 15:7 at length W, G. Kümmel, Kirchenbegriff und Geschichtsbewusstsein in der Urgemeinde und bei Jesus, 1943, pp. 4ff.). Whether James also belonged to it is not to be proved with certainty from Gal. 1:19; 2:9.

62. On the significance of the apostolate see further my "De apostoliciteit der kerk in het N.T." in De Apostolische Kerk, 1954, pp. 39-97 and the literature cited there; The Authority of the New Testament Scriptures, pp. 13ff.; and especially B. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 1961, pp. 262ff.

63. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, II, p. 106.

64. Menoud, l'Église et les ministères, p. 32.

65. Hoi idiōtai; see Arndt-Gingrich-Bauer, p. 371, s. v.; cf. also ho topos tou idiōtou (v. 16).

66. For the view that Old Testament prophets are intended here, see, e.g., Roberts, Die Opbou, pp. 124ff.

67. Cf. such definitions as those of Friedrich, TDNT, VI, p. 848, and P. Menoud, l'Église et les ministères, p. 41.

68. So, e.g., Brosch, Charismen und Ämter, p. 86.

69. Cf. H. Greeven, "Propheten, Lehrer, Vorsteher bei Paulus," ZNW, 1952/3, p. 10; von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority, p. 62.

70. So Friedrich, TDNT, VI, p. 851.

71. So Lietzmann, Cor., in loc.

72. So Greeven, ZNW, p. 6; Büchsei, TDNT, III, p. 947, n. 8; Brosch, Charismen und Ämter, p. 76; von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority, p. 62.

73. Greeven, ZNW, p. 13.

74. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 161f.

75. See Greeven, ZNW, p. 8, and the literature cited there.

76. Cf. Greeven, ZNW, pp. 18ff., and W. Schrage, Die konkreten Einzelgebote in der paulinischen Paränese, 1961, pp. 136ff.

77. Cf. Greeven, ZNW, p. 28; von Campenhausen, loc. cit.

78. On this see also Brosch, Charismen und Ämter, p. 115 (cf. pp. 80, 91, 92).

79. Cf. Friedrich, TDNT, II, p. 737.

80. Loc. cit.

81. Cf. E. K. Simpson, The Pastoral Epistles, 1954, p. 154.

82. See also J. L. Koole, Liturgie en ambt in de apostolische kerk, 1949, pp. 81, 82.

83. Ho pro- histamenos; variant — stanomenos.

84. Brosch is of the opinion that by those who give leadership in Rom. 12 are meant those who were entrusted with the work of mercy. The same would hold for the kybernēseis in 1 Cor. 12:28. But this is, also in view of the use of prostēnai, etc., in 1 Tim. 3:4, 5; 5:17, a too restricted view; see also B. Reicke, TDNT, VI, p. 702.

85. Some are of the opinion that in Rom. and 1 Cor. the presence of elders and deacons must simply be presupposed. Who other than the elders would have written Paul the letter to which he responds in 1 Cor.? Thus A. M. Farrer, The Apostolic Ministry, 1947, p. 153. He thinks also that in 1 Cor. 6:2 an allusion is made to Isa, 24:21-23 (LXX), where there is mention of God's judgment ( episkopē) and of his glory before his elders. There would be in this a hint that in 1 Cor. 6 Paul thought of the supervision of the elders over the church. Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, p. 99, n. 379, terms this argumentation "unconvincing." But as much interested as (the Anglican) Farrer appears to be in the early episcopate, so much is Schweizer at pains to give as little "chance" as possible to the institutional in Paul. In practice he plays down Phil. 1:1, mentions this passage only once, states that Schmithals regards the words syn episkopois kai diakonois in Phil. 1:1 as a gloss (for which there is otherwise no textual critical or material basis whatever), and then acknowledges in passing — after he has first written that in Paul the absence of presbyters " i s . . . a demonstration in which he throws overboard everything that is merely conservative and retrospective, and stresses the vitality of the ever-present Spirit in the Church of the last days" ( ibid., p. 99) — that inasmuch as Paul recognizes the antilēmpseis and the kybernēseis as charismata, it "is quite possible that such services were part of the order later too" (p. 103, n. 395). But, as appears from Phil. 1:1, this then occurred already in a church founded by Paul in his own lifetime (for that matter also entirely in harmony with Acts 14:23), so that there can be no question of a demonstration that there were no elders, etc. In fact, all that Paul writes on giving leadership, etc., is applicable to the office of elder, however remarkable it may be that outside the Pastoral Epistles only in Phil. 1:1 does he speak explicitly of bishops and deacons.

86. Cf. my Rom., p. 280. Bultmann, TDNT, II, p. 483, speaks of "lovingkindness in general."

87. Delling, TDNT, I, p. 376, writes: "The reference is obviously to the activity of love in the dealings of the community."

88. J. Jeremias, Die Briefe an Timothēus und Titus ( NTD), p. 33.

89. In Tit. 1:5 there is mention of katastēnai of presbyters, which it is surely difficult to understand of older men.

90. See the discussion of the various views in Beyer, TDNT, II, pp. 614ff., particularly that of Goetz, who finds the Jewish archisynagōgos with his hypēretēs in the episkopos with the diakonos; and that of Jeremias, who connects the episkopos with the mebaqqēr, the leader of the church of the New Covenant according to the Damascus Document. From thence the conclusion would be back to the office of the leader of a Pharisaic community. But, without regard now to the linguistic issue, the question is whether one can speak of such a material correspondence, that the office intended in the Qumran literature can in a broader ("Pharisaic") context have been the pattern for the New Testament bishop; see also Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, p. 201, n. 763; and B. Reicke in Krister Stendahl, The Scrolls and the New Testament, 1958, p. 150.

91. See, e.g., Beyer, TDNT, II, p. 617; Bultmann, Theology, II, p. 102. To oe sure, others wish to know nothing of an identification of presbyter and episkopos; so, e.g., Bornkamm, TDNT, VI, pp. 666f., s. v. presbys. He points out that episkopos in the Pastoral Epistles always occurs in the singular, while the presbyters form a college. He thinks then that they represent two different principles of church organization, and that the episkopos has originally a more monarchical tendency. One will have to think of the bishops in the Pastoral Epistles, according to Bornkamm, as the presbyteroi proestōtes, which he then conceives as "presbyters who come to the fore"; cf. also J. L. Koole, Liturgie en ambt in de apostolische kerk, p. 93. Spicq, too, in his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, will know nothing of an identification. The episkopos is the primus inter pares, the presbyteros kat' exochēn. In this way, in the episkopos of the New Testament the transition is established to the monarchical episcopate. But altogether incorrectly. When the episkopos is spoken of in the singular this is undoubtedly to be taken generically, just as occurs with the presbyter in 1 Tim. 5:1; cf. Bl.-Debr., Par. 139 (for the singular) and Par. 252, 263 (for the particle). In Phil. 1:1 they are in fact mentioned in the plural. Furthermore, that in 1 Tim. 3:1-7 and 8-13 the episkopos and the deacon are indeed spoken of, but not the presbyter mentioned elsewhere in 1 Tim., is no evidence of two different offices, but only of a varying use of language (cf. also Acts 20:17, 28). Titus 1:5-8 is in this respect certainly highly illustrative and conclusive. The shifting of the monarchical episcopacy to the New Testament is therefore arbitrary.

92. Time, is also thought of in the sense of honorarium (cf. 1 Tim. 5:18).

93. So now Dibelius-Conzelmann, A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, pp. 54ff.

94. G. Delling, Worship in the New Testament, ET 1962, pp. 40f., also shows that the differences that occur with respect to the operation of the Spirit in worship between the Pastoral Epistles and the earlier epistles do not touch the essence of the matter (see further above, p. 444).

95. Some indeed want to relate the office of deacon to those who performed certain services for the apostles (cf. Acts 19:22; 13:5); possibly the deacons would then in a similar way be the servants of the bishops (cf. Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, p. 199). But this interpretation of the deacon's office projects back the later development. Paul speaks of the deacons as servants of the church and their ministry as a charisma given to the church and not as servants or a charisma for the benefit of the apostles or bishops.

96. For the following see also the detailed studies of G. Delling, Paulus' Stellung zu Frau und Ehe, 1931; F. J. Leenhardt, La place de la femme dans l'église après le N. T., 1948; N. J. Hommes, De vrouw in de kerk. Nieuwtest. perspectieven, 1951; G. Huls, De dienst der vrouw in de kerk, 1952; K. H. Rengstorf, "Die neutest. Mahnungen an die Frau," etc., in Festschrift fur O. Schmitz, 1953, pp. 131-145; L. Hick, Die Stellung des hl. Paulus zur Frau im Rahmen seiner Zeit, 1957; Else Kähler, Die Frau in den paulinischen Briefen, 1960.

97. Above, Section 50.

98. See, e.g., Strack-Billerbeck, III, pp. 467ff., 558ff., 610ff.

99. The text does not in our view permit firm conclusions (cf. my Rom., in loc.). There is also a difference of opinion on the question whether in 1 Tim. 3:11ff. there is mention of the wives of the deacons or of deaconesses. The former is the more probable; but see, e.g., also Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, p. 86, n. 334.

100. Above, Section 70.

101. Chēra katalegesthai: be enrolled, be considered, as "widow."

102. Cf. Koole, Liturgie, p. 101.

103. Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, p. 203, n. 783. But in terms of textual criticism there is not the slightest ground for this.

104. Schrage, Die konkreten Einzelgebote, p. 126.

105. Lalein. One can still consider whether this is intended in the sense o£ "to teach," as in Tit. 2:1. But v. 35 points in another direction.

106. Authentein, a word that seldom occurs.

107. In spite of the exegesis of some who have wanted to curtail the significance of this passage as much as possible, andros cannot here mean specifically "her husband," as though it were only a question of "the woman wanting to lord it over her own husband." We have to do here not with a household rule, but with a liturgical prescription.

108. For the various opinions with respect to this still unresolved question, see the commentaries, especially Lietzmann-Kümmel.

109. For this meaning of pistis, see Bultmann, TDNT, VI, pp. 206f. Brosch defines this gift as "a supernatural ability to discern that God is going to reveal might, justice, and mercy in a very definite, concrete case. Should another person, who does not possess this charisma, wish to induce a similar miracle of God in a similar case, one would have to say, 'He is tempting God' " (Charismen und Ämter, p. 50).

110. Genē glōssōn (1 Cor. 12:10, 28); lalein glōssais (1 Cor. 12:30; cf. 13:1), also with the singular glōssē (1 Cor. 14:2), proseuchesthai glōssē (1 Cor. 14:14). It is not entirely clear how one is to take glossa in this usage. The meaning "tongue," in view of the plural, seems hardly to fit. One is rather to think of glōssa in the sense of unknown, unintelligible word (so, e.g., Lietzmann). Behm thinks that one must start from the meaning "language," but then as a technical expression for one or another uncommon language ( TDNT, I, p. 725). Nevertheless the plural seems to point more to the individual words or sounds. The expression has, however, acquired a stereotyped significance.

111. To pneuma mou is (among others, by Lietzmann, Cor., and by Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 207) not understood of the human spirit, but of the divine Spirit given to men. To be sure, the possession of the Spirit, so far as we see, is nowhere denoted by the possessive pronoun. But pneuma does surely have a very specific significance here, related to the divine Spirit. See also above, pp. 117f., n, 68.

112. "Intelligent and intelligible speech" (Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 211).

113. Cf. Grosheide, 1 Cor., p. 374, n. 63.

114. To what extent one may speak here of a natural predisposition is outside the reach of our judgment. It is surely clear that Paul does not regard the charisma as lying in the special state of consciousness or the strange sounds — therein is just the limitation of the charisma — but in the manner in which the Spirit makes this the medium of a peculiar religious experience. For the "natural" aspect see also Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, p. 184.

115. W. Keilbach writes in RGG, VI, 3rd ed., col. 1941, that in the history of heathen religions glossolalia was neither a very frequent nor a very important phenomenon. He adds to this, however: "However, it assumed impressive form in the Greek cultus and in the ecstatic mysticism of Hellenism." In this connection it would not be strange that the glossolalia found an unusual matrix in the spiritualistically tinted church at Corinth.

116. Cf. Section 70. For what follows here note 45 is also relevant in part.

117. See, e.g., besides the literature already mentioned earlier, E. Käsemann, "Sentences of Holy Law in the New Testament," New Testament Questions of Today, pp. 66ff.; H. von Campenhausen, Die Begründung kirchlicher Entscheidungen beim Apostel Paulus, 1957; by the same author together with H. Bornkamm, Bindung und Freiheit in der Ordnung der Kirche, 1959; W. Maurer, "Vom Ursprung und Wesen kirchlichen Rechts," in Zeitschrift für evangelisches Kirchenrecht, 1956; R. Bohren, Das Problem der Kirchenzucht im Neuen Testament, 1952; F. W. Grosheide, Wat leert het Nieuwe Testament inzake de tucht?, 1952.

118. Above, pp. 287ff.

119. Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 84f.

120. Cf. Bultmann, who posits against the spiritualistic conception that in this way one takes for normal what Paul in 1 Cor. 12 and 14 combats precisely as dangerous or at least limits (Theology, II, p. 98).

121. Kata syngnōmēn, ou kat' epitagēn: "by way of advice, not by way of command."

122. Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today, p. 74.

123. To that effect Käsemann, Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, I, p. 255.

124. Cf. J. Jeremias, "Die Briefe an Timotheüs und Titus (NTD), p. 13.

125. On this at greater length see Bohren, Das Problem der Kirchenzucht im Neuen Testament, pp. 91ff.; Grosheide, Wat leert het Nieuwe Testament inzake de tucht?, pp. 8ff.

126. Sēmeiousthe: to be thought of as communication in one way or another to the church. For similar measures in the exercise of discipline in the synagogue, see, e.g., Strack-Billerbeck, IV, 1, p. 309.

127. On this see also below, p. 473.

128. So, e.g., Lietzmann-Kümmel on 1 Cor. 5:5; Büchsei, TDNT, II, p. 170, n. 9; Schneider, TDNT, V, p. 169; Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today, p. 71; Bohren, Das Problem der Kirchenzucht, p. 110, and the literature mentioned there in note 135.

129. Cf., e.g., Bohren, ibid., pp. lllff.

130. Various Greek fathers also understood it in that sense (cf. K. Staab, Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche, 1933, pp. 178, 243ff.); Grosheide (1 Cor., pp. 143, 144) understands olethros tes sarhos as "destruction of the sin" in the way of a process of purification. But it is difficult to understand the expression with olethros only of the sin.

131. One can also think here of the anathema-formula frequently employed by Paul (Rom. 9:3; 1 Cor. 16:22; Gal. 1:8, 9; cf. 1 Cor. 12:3). Anathema, however, at least in the LXX, is being abandoned not to Satan, but to the judgment of God (cf. Behm, TDNT, I, pp. 354f.); in general: that which by God or in God's name has been abandoned to destruction (cf. Strack-Billerbeck, III, p. 260). Paul does not use the word, so far as we see, in the context of the congregational exercise of discipline. Some have indeed wished to infer from a comparison of 1 Cor. 16:22 and Did. 10, 6 that the anathema was pronounced at the beginning of the celebration of the Supper against possible unbelievers or the unworthy (cf. G. Bornkamm, "The Anathema in the Early Christian Lord's Supper Liturgy," in "On the Understanding of Worship," Early Christian Experience, pp. 169ff.). To want to conclude from this that in the early Christian church there was an "open" Lord's Supper, which was, e.g., also accessible for those who had not been baptized (cf. Bornkamm, pp. 171 f.), is unjustified (cf. also Did. 9, 5). If the anathema had a place in the Supper liturgy, then it was certainly as a summons to self-examination for the church itself (cf. 1 Cor. 11:28).

132. For expulsion from the synagogue, see Bohren, Das Problem der Kirchenzucht, pp. 23ff., and the literature cited there; also Strack-Billerbeck, IV, 1, p. 298; A. Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 29th ed., II, 1934, p. 183.

133. See also Schrage, Die konkreten Einzelgebote in der paulinischen Paränese, pp. 159ff.

134. This holds in particular for the "coming together" of the church with "the spirit" of the apostle. All kinds of interpretations have been attempted; see, e.g., in Lietzmann-Kümmel, Cor. In our view one will, also considering v. 3, have to understand by this a (surely very) graphic way of speaking with which Paul gives expression to his authority and cooperation with respect to the sentence to be executed.

135. So Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, p. 87.

136. As C. Spicq, Les Epitres Pastorales, 1947, pp. 86ff., 232, tries to make plausible; see also above, p. 457, n. 91.

137. So Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, p. 89. Against this "modern-protestantischer Vorurteil," which in every church order that is not placed under an explicit reservation (leaving everything unsettled again) sees an attack on the liberty of the Spirit and of the sovereign Word of God, see also von Campenhausen, Bindung und Freiheit in der Ordnung der Kirche, pp. 18ff.

138. Cf. Strack-Billerbeck, II, pp. 647-661.

139. See above, Section 54.

140. Cf. von Campenhausen, Bindung und Freiheit, pp. 14ff.

141. See also Bultmann, Theology, II, p. 96.

142. See above, p. 439.

143. See also my essay "De apostoliciteit van de kerk volgens het Nieuwe Testament," in the volume De Apostolische Kerk, 1954, pp. 39-97, especially 93ff.

144. See, e.g., also von Campenhausen, Die Begründung kirchlicher Entscheidungen beim Apostel Paulus.

145. P. A. van Stempvoort, Decorum, orde en mondigheid in het Nieuwe Testament, 1956, p. 11; see also P. Menoud, l'Église et les ministères selon le Nouveau Testament, 1949, pp. 16ff.

146. On this see also the essay by Käsemann, "Worship in Everyday Life," New Testament Questions of Today, pp. 188ff.

147. For the significance of the "liturgy" in the New Testament church see also Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 78f.

148. Synerchesthai, whether or not with epi to auto (1 Cor. 11:17, 18, 20, 33, 34; 14:23, 26).

149. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, II, pp. 109ff.

150. See also G. Delling, Worship in the New Testament, pp. 34f,

151. See J. L. Koole, Liturgie en ambt in de apostolische kerk, pp. 29ff.; cf. also, however, with greater reserve, Delling, ibid., pp. 92ff.

152. Cf. W. Lock, The Pastoral Epistles, 1959, p. 53.

153. See Delling, however (Worship in the New Testament, p. 148), who sees in the meal of 1 Cor. 11 a festive affair, which in his opinion "speaks in support of its infrequency," But a common weekly meal may very easily be thought of as a communion meal.

154. As Delling thinks (ibid., p. 130, n. 5). He also refers to Col. 2:12 and 1 Cor. 10:2.

155. Cf. above, p. 402.

156. As, e.g., Dibelius-Greeven do (Col.).

157. So Lietzmann, Cor., p. 9; on the other hand, see Kümmel, however, in the annotations of the same work.

158. See also my Col., p. 222, and especially Delling, Worship in the New Testament, p. 87. Koole thinks of psalms from the O.T. (Liturgie, p. 60).

159. Cf. Delling, Worship in the New Testament, p. 56.

160. See the above-mentioned (n. 131) essay by Bornkamm, in Early Christian Experience, pp. 169ff.

161. Cf. K. M. Hofmann, Philema hagion, 1938.

162. On this see the special studies that have been mentioned, such as those of Koole, Delling, and further O. Cullmann, Early Christian Worship, ET 1953; A. Cole, The New Temple, 1950, et al.

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