The Pure New Testament Church
Fundamentalist Protestants are so amusing. I know, I know, you'll think that's a condescending and rude thing to say, but I just don't know how you can take these people seriously sometimes. I have to laugh, or I will go crazy.
I've just received (from a "fundy" I know) a chart-by-chart comparison that demonstrates how far gone the "Traditional church" actually is, in relation to the ideal "New Testament Church."
The funny thing is, the "Traditional Church" in this case actually encompasses many, many Protestant denominations. So, you see, this fellow wants his readers to understand that everybody else is wrong, and he alone has understood what the New Testament ideals are.
Like I said, you have to laugh.
It never once occurs to these people to read anything outside of the New Testament, does it? Church history after 90 AD must be just one terribly long, slow, and sad history of decline and corruption.
You try to go back with these people. Try to get them to consider the writings of the early Church. What do they say in response? They do not hesitate to affirm that the Church was already headed towards corruption by the second century.
The second century!
This guy was telling me of the early decline of the Church, and as one of the signs of the apostate church, he cited things like "a tendency towards heirarchical leadership."
Umm ... yeah. You can find that as early as St. Ignatius in 110 AD.
So, let's see ... St. John died around 90 AD, and St. Ignatius was writing in 110 AD, so that means that the Church had become apostate within 20 years of the apostolic age.
Who would be so foolish as to affirm this? Do they not realize that they wrongly indict the Apostles themselves by these charges? Poor St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John ... they were such horrible teachers that they couldn't even manage to pass their message through 20 years of history without it going from "purity" to "apostasy." This also means that the apostles were such poor judges of character that they were unable to distinguish between "faithful men" who would "be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2) and those "wolves" who would ravage the flock and not tolerate sound doctrine.
This, of course, then indicts Our Lord Himself. What the heck was He thinking, picking these twelve (or eleven) idiots who were so inept that they couldn't pass on His teaching or appoint worthy ministers, even though they had the help of the Holy Ghost Himself?
Well, thank God for modern-day reformers who can help us return to the purity of biblical teaching, eh?
So what should our NT Church look like (minus, of course, any appeal to any writing outside the NT documents)?
1) The corrupted "Traditional Church" (TC) meets in special buildings designated for the purpose. The NT Church (NTC) met in homes.
2) In the TC, leaders are trained in seminaries, ordained, then assigned to a church; in the NTC, leaders were hand-picked by the people who knew them and their character.
3) In the TC, the worship is divided between clergy and laity, with the clergy (including music ministers, readers, etc.) doing all the active work; in the NT church, worship was "participatory and interactive" where "every member had a function and a contribution to make publicly."
4) In contrast to the TC's typical "rigid, inflexible" form of worship, the NT church's services "were characterized by informality, flexibility, and spontaneity."
5) Even the goals are different. The goal of a TC meeting is "worship, listening to a sermon, conferring grace, or evangelism," but in the true NT church, the goal of a meeting was "mutual edification."
6) In the TC, the "Lord's Supper" is celebrated with but a small cracker and a sip of wine; in the NTC it was a full meal.
7) My personal favorite. In the TC, the pastor/teacher "delivers monologue sermons with no opportunity for questions or input from the congregation or ‘laity’"; in contrast, in the NTC "Various brothers taught the church and allowed the congregation the opportunity to question them and/or add their own insights."
That's just a sampling of this hysterical document. What do you say to all of this? Gotta love it when modernity projects its "profound" insights back into antiquity. Actually, this entire document sounds like it was written by an embittered member of the laity who is jealous for more power and control in the church.
Whoever wrote the document has a disdain for structure; they want to meet in homes, help pick their leaders, help lead the worship service, be involved in "mutual edification" (which sounds real pretty, but lacks any substantial definition), and be able to add personal "insights" to the pastor's sermon.
Apparently the only way to pull this off is to reconstruct a vision of the New Testament Church, which is created from whole cloth and entirely out of the imagination of the individual.
No serious student or scholar of Church history would accept this invention. The Church was hierarchical from the beginning; those appointed as teachers did the teaching; the worship was structured and liturgical; the Agape feast was something distinct from the actual Eucharistia of the liturgy.
The Church met in homes for as long as they had to while they were being chased from place to place by men with swords. That's what we call a practice born out of necessity, not a pristine ideal.
When Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity, he also restored their property to them, and they finally began to build churches for the purpose of common gathering.
And why did they build those churches with so much pomp and flair? To answer that, you'd have to know the Church's early belief in the Real Presence. They built beautiful churches because each church was a domus Dei, a temple, a santuary, a palace for The King.
So I say if you want to go back to the true NT Church, my friend, then go start up a "ministry" in some third-world country where Christianity is hated and persecuted.
And while we're at it, here's another "biblical" practice that ought to be reinstituted in this ideal New Testament Church ...
I've just received (from a "fundy" I know) a chart-by-chart comparison that demonstrates how far gone the "Traditional church" actually is, in relation to the ideal "New Testament Church."
The funny thing is, the "Traditional Church" in this case actually encompasses many, many Protestant denominations. So, you see, this fellow wants his readers to understand that everybody else is wrong, and he alone has understood what the New Testament ideals are.
Like I said, you have to laugh.
It never once occurs to these people to read anything outside of the New Testament, does it? Church history after 90 AD must be just one terribly long, slow, and sad history of decline and corruption.
You try to go back with these people. Try to get them to consider the writings of the early Church. What do they say in response? They do not hesitate to affirm that the Church was already headed towards corruption by the second century.
The second century!
This guy was telling me of the early decline of the Church, and as one of the signs of the apostate church, he cited things like "a tendency towards heirarchical leadership."
Umm ... yeah. You can find that as early as St. Ignatius in 110 AD.
So, let's see ... St. John died around 90 AD, and St. Ignatius was writing in 110 AD, so that means that the Church had become apostate within 20 years of the apostolic age.
Who would be so foolish as to affirm this? Do they not realize that they wrongly indict the Apostles themselves by these charges? Poor St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John ... they were such horrible teachers that they couldn't even manage to pass their message through 20 years of history without it going from "purity" to "apostasy." This also means that the apostles were such poor judges of character that they were unable to distinguish between "faithful men" who would "be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2) and those "wolves" who would ravage the flock and not tolerate sound doctrine.
This, of course, then indicts Our Lord Himself. What the heck was He thinking, picking these twelve (or eleven) idiots who were so inept that they couldn't pass on His teaching or appoint worthy ministers, even though they had the help of the Holy Ghost Himself?
Well, thank God for modern-day reformers who can help us return to the purity of biblical teaching, eh?
So what should our NT Church look like (minus, of course, any appeal to any writing outside the NT documents)?
1) The corrupted "Traditional Church" (TC) meets in special buildings designated for the purpose. The NT Church (NTC) met in homes.
2) In the TC, leaders are trained in seminaries, ordained, then assigned to a church; in the NTC, leaders were hand-picked by the people who knew them and their character.
3) In the TC, the worship is divided between clergy and laity, with the clergy (including music ministers, readers, etc.) doing all the active work; in the NT church, worship was "participatory and interactive" where "every member had a function and a contribution to make publicly."
4) In contrast to the TC's typical "rigid, inflexible" form of worship, the NT church's services "were characterized by informality, flexibility, and spontaneity."
5) Even the goals are different. The goal of a TC meeting is "worship, listening to a sermon, conferring grace, or evangelism," but in the true NT church, the goal of a meeting was "mutual edification."
6) In the TC, the "Lord's Supper" is celebrated with but a small cracker and a sip of wine; in the NTC it was a full meal.
7) My personal favorite. In the TC, the pastor/teacher "delivers monologue sermons with no opportunity for questions or input from the congregation or ‘laity’"; in contrast, in the NTC "Various brothers taught the church and allowed the congregation the opportunity to question them and/or add their own insights."
That's just a sampling of this hysterical document. What do you say to all of this? Gotta love it when modernity projects its "profound" insights back into antiquity. Actually, this entire document sounds like it was written by an embittered member of the laity who is jealous for more power and control in the church.
Whoever wrote the document has a disdain for structure; they want to meet in homes, help pick their leaders, help lead the worship service, be involved in "mutual edification" (which sounds real pretty, but lacks any substantial definition), and be able to add personal "insights" to the pastor's sermon.
Apparently the only way to pull this off is to reconstruct a vision of the New Testament Church, which is created from whole cloth and entirely out of the imagination of the individual.
No serious student or scholar of Church history would accept this invention. The Church was hierarchical from the beginning; those appointed as teachers did the teaching; the worship was structured and liturgical; the Agape feast was something distinct from the actual Eucharistia of the liturgy.
The Church met in homes for as long as they had to while they were being chased from place to place by men with swords. That's what we call a practice born out of necessity, not a pristine ideal.
When Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity, he also restored their property to them, and they finally began to build churches for the purpose of common gathering.
And why did they build those churches with so much pomp and flair? To answer that, you'd have to know the Church's early belief in the Real Presence. They built beautiful churches because each church was a domus Dei, a temple, a santuary, a palace for The King.
So I say if you want to go back to the true NT Church, my friend, then go start up a "ministry" in some third-world country where Christianity is hated and persecuted.
And while we're at it, here's another "biblical" practice that ought to be reinstituted in this ideal New Testament Church ...
On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lights in the upper chamber where we were gathered. And a young man named Eutychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer; and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him, and embracing him said, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. (Acts 20:7-11)
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