Indeed, nor as in so many instances I heard of when researching the book 'what I wrote' last year, of missionaries illegally setting up unregistered 'orphanages' under the radar because they felt that if they registered them properly the authorities would restrict their freedom to 'preach the gospel.'
On the authority thing, yes the Gospels talk about Christ's authority rather than the Apostle's authority - but it's not a big step from that, biblically speaking, to see a connection/shared or delegated authority - or mandate, responsibility or whatever else we might call it if we are worried about the 'a' word.
If Christ is the Head and the Church is his Body then one would expect the Church to operate with a measure of that authority.
The problem then, of course, is how we define and recognise such authority. It's certainly bottom up in NT terms, those who claim or exercise authority should be the servant of all.
The Orthodox seem to have the view that most things are fine provided they have the blessing of a canonical bishop. The RCs appear to have ratcheted things up a stage or two further, although it may look and feel very differently on the ground.
I've known evangelical Anglican clergy who have appeared to abrogate to themselves authority that can only be exercised by a Diocesan Bishop - and to appear equally unaware that this is what they've tried to do.
It's all very messy.
We have a mandate to do stuff. What stuff? Where? And how do we know or tell whether it is legitimate? By its fruits?
We have a mandate to do stuff. What stuff? Where? And how do we know or tell whether it is legitimate? By its fruits?
That's why I've basically decided to cut through all this obsession with authority. As a disciple, I seek to do good as I understand Jesus would want and to resist evil as he would want. And yes I think the test of whether I'm doing that right is the fruit; that certainly seems to be Jesus' perspective. The difference with anybody else doing good is the reasoning behind it.
If I purport to do all that on behalf of anybody else apart from Jesus (e.g. in a capacity as pastor, chaplain, etc.) then the question of authority is not so much a spiritual one as an organisational one. I need a mandate from those I claim to represent to do so. Otherwise, I'm not credible, and possibly fraudulent.
Ok, I get that, but however 'organisational' it might be - a chaplaincy, a missionary organisation, a church or denomination - all those involved would claim to have some kind of 'spiritual authority' as well, however that's understood.
Or are we in danger of separating out the sacred from the secular here and introducing unhelpful dichotomies?
In your role as a pastor you presumably both serve and represent the flock under your care - if I can use that term. Is that a 'spiritual' role or is it purely a managerial or administrative one? It's both, of course.
In your prison chaplaincy role then you presumably have a mandate from the prison authorities. But again, is it a 'spiritual' role or is it a more broadly pastoral one? Again, it's both, surely?
I can't speak for the way the RCs and Orthodox and other Churches with a high ecclesiology operate, but whilst it appears very heirarchical, I've known clergy from these traditions roll their eyes in horror when I've told them some of the things I've seen go on not only in 'restorationist' circles but some other evangelical circles more generally - including Anglican ones.
That isn't to say that they don't have heavy-handed interventions and wheeler-dealing to deal with. I'm sure they do.
We've all got problems. It's simply a different set of problems depending on your ecclesiology.
On the 'authority' thing, I've been struck over the years how many of my former church-mates from my restorationist days who remain involved with churches - and most of them do - tend to wary of 'officially' joining anything or signing up for church membership or other formal arrangements. I can well understand why.
I tend to think that authentic spiritual authority is evidenced by whether those one seeks to serve recognise it.
Jesus was recognised as 'one who taught with authority'.
I can be an officially recognised chaplain but if I'm not recognised as 'doing the stuff' by the lads any institutional authority I may have ain't worth shit. In an ideal world institutional authority is a recognition of what a constituency has already collectively discerned, not the other way around.
The interesting thing in this respect re. the Great Commission is Jesus implying that his emissaries will be seen to have his authority as they carry out his command. That perhaps begs the question as to why some Christians "doing evangelism" will be regarded as legitimate and worth listening to, while others may not, by people who know nothing about them except what they can see and hear at that moment.
Hmmm ... which surely applies to all of us whether we see ourselves as 'doing evangelism' in a formal way or simply trying to live out our faith and 'witness' to the Gospel as it were.
Is the 'authority' in the eye of the beholder?
Is it intrinsic and inherent and only becomes apparent like the 'proof of the pudding' ie 'in the eating'?
That's what I'm not sure. But some people seem to be almost automatically recognised as "having authority" while others are not. Of course one has to ask why they are so recognised and whether it's due to human or spiritual factors. And, of course, one has to admit the very real possibility that someone regarded as "authoritative" could be a fake or a charlatan (as, indeed, St. Paul well knew).
Max Weber: "the church is a cult that has succeeded".
What authority did the Eleven have on the day of Pentecost?
They felt they had a mandate from Jesus to announce the resurrection and forgiveness of sins, and to baptise in his name.
They also felt empowered by the Spirit within them.
But they had absolutely no institutional authority to back them up.
The proof of the pudding was indeed in the eating for them.
2,000 years on, we have our Christian institutions. Again, in an ideal world, these would mirror this God-given and follower-recognised authority. In any case, as part of small-t tradition, they may confer some cultural legitimacy. But they can never definitively replace the other kind of authority. Which once again, is never overpeople.
Well, one could argue that the Eleven and the others comprised a micro-institution and with 3,000 added on the Day of Pentecost, one could argue that they didn't remain micro for very long.
You still seem to have this restorationist YearZero thing to some extent ...
The word "vocation" needs to be brought into this discussion. As does the last two thousand years of history. The Christian faith is not a historical reenactment event, and we have been doing it for some time. This needs to be taken into account when we look at how to live out any biblical imperative. At the same time, however, some of the church's folies de grandeur need to be quesitoned. Specifically, contrary to what I was told on several occasions, I do not believe it is the church's job to grant or withhold vocations, or to decide who can validly be decided to have any particular vocation. The church's job is to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit, and to foster the vocations granted, through which the body of Christ grows. Nor does it only grow through evangelists; it can grow as much through teachers, prophets and healers - arguably more so in a culture which dismisses overt appeals to religious conversion. We are in the times we are in, and need to learn how, in humility, to serve Christ in others. This is how the body of Christ will grow healthily - not by signing up more and more ecclesiastic or biblical fanatics.
You still seem to have this restorationist YearZero thing to some extent ...
Piffle. It's a fact that the Eleven had no institutional backing, ergo institutional backing is not a core component of the Great Commission. Despite which I acknowledged that it had a subsequent role to play.
@ThunderBunk, thanks for bringing up the word "vocation" which had also been in my mind in relation to this discussion.
Two other points, following on from my previous post.
First, I really need to offer a translation of folies de grandeur, but I'm struggling, because it's so close to being a translation in itself, but I can't recall seeing "follies of grandeur" used in English. Which is why it's there in French.
Secondly, vocation is an enormously important issue for me, because I don't actually believe I'll ever find a way of living that expresses entirely the calling, the itch I carry within me. As far as I have seen thus far, it doesn't really have a widely recognised shape. To me, making disciples of all nations means enabling everyone to meet and rejoice in Christ in them, even those not cut out for life at the heart of religious institutions.
First, I really need to offer a translation of folies de grandeur, but I'm struggling, because it's so close to being a translation in itself, but I can't recall seeing "follies of grandeur" used in English. Which is why it's there in French.
Delusions of grandeur? That’s the English equivalent I’m used to hearing.
First, I really need to offer a translation of folies de grandeur, but I'm struggling, because it's so close to being a translation in itself, but I can't recall seeing "follies of grandeur" used in English. Which is why it's there in French.
Delusions of grandeur? That’s the English equivalent I’m used to hearing.
Thank you! That's exactly the phrase that was being drowned out of my mind's ear by the French version. The echo in the channel tunnel is terrible tonight...
One could suggest from your line of argument, Eutychus, that you are making Mark Betts's point for him, that the Great Commission applied to the original disciples and not us.
They had no institutional backing for one day only.
From my reading of the text, the Great Commission applies to all disciples that have started to follow Jesus as a consequence of the first ones.
Nowhere in the Great Commission, as @Nick Tamen has correctly observed, is there any mention of anybody having any authority except Jesus.
The disciples had a mandate to make disciples (of Jesus) and to pass on that same mandate to others.
The Eleven, soon to be Twelve, were recognised as de facto leaders of the nascent Church not because of some external authority granted to them by the institution but because they were the original recipients of that mandate.
The only authority anybody needs to make another disciple of Jesus is to have received that mandate from somebody who already is.
The Church is an attempt to structure and institutionalise that happening, and that's not all bad, but I'm far from convinced that what we understand as the institutional Church we know today was part of God's Plan A. I often think (and say) that it is one of the worst misunderstandings in the history of Christianity.
We used to bang on and on about nasty old institutional Christianity back in the 1980s and '90s with all the restoration schtick. As you well know, all we ended up doing was creating our own institutions.
Put a bunch of people together in a room.and you end up with an institution.
I don't understand why you seen so fixated with the Eleven having a direct mandate from Christ as if that obviates the need for institutional structures.
We aren't the Eleven and we can't avoid them.
All we can do is try to build in checks and balances to stop them becoming heavy-handed and overbearing.
From my reading of the text, the Great Commission applies to all disciples that have started to follow Jesus as a consequence of the first ones.
Nowhere in the Great Commission, as @Nick Tamen has correctly observed, is there any mention of anybody having any authority except Jesus.
The disciples had a mandate to make disciples (of Jesus) and to pass on that same mandate to others.
The Eleven, soon to be Twelve, were recognised as de facto leaders of the nascent Church not because of some external authority granted to them by the institution but because they were the original recipients of that mandate.
The only authority anybody needs to make another disciple of Jesus is to have received that mandate from somebody who already is.
The Church is an attempt to structure and institutionalise that happening, and that's not all bad, but I'm far from convinced that what we understand as the institutional Church we know today was part of God's Plan A. I often think (and say) that it is one of the worst misunderstandings in the history of Christianity.
You have metastasized the mandate of the 11 (12) into a mandate for the whole church. How? There were more than 11 Christians on Pentecost (Mary, Martha, and Lazarus come to mind). Did all of them have the leadership mandate? No.
Like football, rugby is a game of two halves, Baptist Trainfan ...
What was wierd about last night's match was that one side was rubbish in the first half and the other side rubbish in the second ...
On the issue of God's Plan A, or Plan B or Plan Q, R, S ...
We all carry some freight there. Back in the day the restorationist crowd thought Plan A was down to them and would involve everyone of faith and goodwill leaving the historic churches and denominations and joining them. Yes, and submitting to the authority of a charismatic 'apostle.'
The Orthodox and Catholics see themselves as preserving and maintaining Plan A and the Orthodox prayers certainly carry the plea that everyone else should abandon their heterodoxy and return to the fold. I daresay the RCs have similar prayers and ideas.
I struggle with that just as much as I struggle with the idea implicit in Eutychus's posts that somehow we have to do an ecclesiastical Pol Pot Year Zero thing (without the violence) and start all over again.
Hence my limbo position, which is jolly uncomfortable.
You're being very selective in reading my answers. I said the institutional Church was not all bad.
When you have instutions whose leader is appointed by the head of state, own vast amounts of land, invest in payday loan companies, and develop parallel legal systems that shield their own from justice and allow abuse to be perpetrated, you have to wonder though.
And besides, historic Christian institutions are mostly dying of their own accord. They're just taking a very long time about it because of how much political power and material wealth they've amassed.
Put a bunch of people together in a room.and you end up with an institution.
Doubtless, but one can make choices about how that institution is structured, and particularly how it is structured in terms of power, that make a difference. Or at least that is what I am bent on attempting to do in my small corner. Your mileage may vary.
I don't understand why you seen so fixated with the Eleven having a direct mandate from Christ as if that obviates the need for institutional structures.
I'm "fixated with the Eleven", as you put it, becuase in case you hadn't noticed this thread is about the Great Commission and that is who it was given to. There is no mention of any institutional structure in the Great Commission and you can't extrapolate one from it so far as I can tell. I'm not "obviating the need", I'm simply not commenting on what isn't there.
You have metastasized the mandate of the 11 (12) into a mandate for the whole church. How?
It says they are to make disciples of all nations, etc., and teach them to obey all Jesus has commanded them, which I take to include that same instruction, i.e. the mandate is for all discples of all nations.
Of course the 11 had a special place by virtue of their original calling by Jesus, the beginning of Acts naturally focuses on them, and they retain their founding leadership capacity by virtue of this special and non-repeatable status, the conditions for which are set forth by Peter when choosing Matthias to replace Judas in Acts 1.
At the same time, one can't help but notice in the rest of Acts that most of the making disciples, baptising, and teaching is carried on by people other than the 11, often without apostolic sanction (at least initally) and quite often to apostolic discomfiture.
I struggle with that just as much as I struggle with the idea implicit in Eutychus's posts that somehow we have to do an ecclesiastical Pol Pot Year Zero thing (without the violence) and start all over again.
To reply to this cross post.
I don't think everybody should start again with Year Zero, and have said as much more than once in debates about Christendom. We are where we are, and as I have also said before, I benefit as much as everybody else from the influence of institutional Christianity in our contemporary societies, the good and unfortunately the bad.
At the same time I find myself in a position where I'm largely outside those institutions, and thus in a position to try something else.
[ETA: Where the Restorationists went wrong in my view was that they misunderstood the nature of authority; the "apostolic" leaders assumed it and assumed they had it to exercise over other people. Asserting control like that is bound to create an almost instant institution]
And in any event, Kerygmania is supposed to be where we look at what the text of Scripture itself says. And I contend that the Great Commission says nothing about institutions; it doesn't even mention the Church. It talks solely of making disciples; I believe the Church is a byproduct of doing that, and not the ultimate aim.
I take all those points, Eutychus but would observe that the Chinese house-churches which are often cited excitedly as exemplars, are hardly bastions of received orthodoxy (small o) and I'm sure most of us here would complain about them if they existed on our patch.
That said, the situation seems to be improving from what I can gather as they have more interaction with the wider scene worldwide.
Although there does seem to a renewed move towards government restrictions and pressure on religious activities in China.
I know you are not saying that everything about institutionalised Christianity is wrong, but I still get the impression that there's this residual restorationist thing that the Church was only at Plan A for around 15 minutes on a Thursday afternoon somewhere in the first century and it's all gone to buggery since unless me and my mates sort it out in someone's front room or down the local sports hall.
I once raised a question at an Orthodox conference about Ananias, the disciple we read about in Acts who baptised Paul. He wasn't one of the 12, he didn't seem to hold any office yet the Lord used him to minister to the Apostle Paul.
The Orthodox, of course, directed me to Tradition and various stories they had, and which I'd not heard before, which indicate that Ananias had received a due institutional mandate in some form or other. I don't remember how, now.
Of course, one could argue that this was redacted at a later time as the Church became more institutionalised, conveniently covering the gaps in the scriptural accounts.
Yes, the apostolic leadership do seem to have been taken way off guard in the Book of Acts - the incident with Cornelius springs to mind. Yet they adapt and rethink things. The institutional and the spontaneous can be at odds but they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
I'm sure the Orthodox are as - if not more - guilty as anyone else who has ever established state churches or Caesaro-Papism or powerful structures. But from what I can see, in theory at least, they don't see a dichotomy between the institutional and what we might call the charismatic - even if that tension isn't always a creative one.
'It's not as if God is on anyone's pay-roll,' an Orthodox priest wryly observed to me recently.
Anyhow, back to the Great Commission. I suppose the Orthodox / Catholic view would be that the Commission applies to the original disciples and through them to those who have followed in succession - whether Big S or small s.
So, to a greater or lesser extent, the rest of us operate in the shadow of that, as it were. It isn't necessarily the case that we are doing it wrong, we are just flying under the wrong flag ...
Something like that.
The same Orthodox priest observed to me that when he serves the Eucharist he isn't doing it on his own authority or any intrinsic power vested in himself. Essentially, God does it, and he is only the human vessel who carries out the administering of the Holy Gifts.
On the mandate thing, if the only mandate we require to make disciples of others is to receive the Gospel from someone who already is a disciple - which is fair enough - it does presuppose that there is some kind of community, 'plausibility-structure' and, dare I say, institution there for these existing disciples to function in the first place.
I take all those points, Eutychus but would observe that the Chinese house-churches which are often cited excitedly as exemplars, are hardly bastions of received orthodoxy (small o) and I'm sure most of us here would complain about them if they existed on our patch.
I think it was earlier in this thread that I admitted that much to our collective annoyance, upstart and theologically questionable movements on our doorstep actually seem to make at least some disciples of Christ. I'm not sure the Church ideally needs institutions but standing in the protestant and anabaptist tradition as I do I am absolutely certain that the institutional Church needs upstarts.
I know you are not saying that everything about institutionalised Christianity is wrong, but I still get the impression that there's this residual restorationist thing that the Church was only at Plan A for around 15 minutes on a Thursday afternoon somewhere in the first century and it's all gone to buggery since unless me and my mates sort it out in someone's front room or down the local sports hall.
Like I say, your mileage may vary. My responsibility is to work the corner of God's garden where I think he's put me. As also observed upthread, that doesn't prevent me from rejoicing wherever and however the Gospel is preached, and I'm not answerable before God to how others do that. I'm answerable for how I do that.
The Orthodox, of course, directed me to Tradition and various stories they had, and which I'd not heard before, which indicate that Ananias had received a due institutional mandate in some form or other. I don't remember how, now.
LOL well of course they would. As self-serving a narrative as was ever devised. (Did you know Straight Street is still there in Damascus?).
The institutional and the spontaneous can be at odds but they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Agreed; see above. I don't think there's anything institutional about the Great Commission, though.
Anyhow, back to the Great Commission. I suppose the Orthodox / Catholic view would be that the Commission applies to the original disciples and through them to those who have followed in succession - whether Big S or small s.
I had been wondering just now exactly how the doctrine of big S succession works: I don't recall the original 12 of Acts passing on their 'apostolic mandate' as such to anybody, at least not in Scripture. But that's probably another thread...
So, to a greater or lesser extent, the rest of us operate in the shadow of that, as it were. It isn't necessarily the case that we are doing it wrong, we are just flying under the wrong flag ...
Flags are badges of institutions. What "flag" do you see in Matthew 28?
On the mandate thing, if the only mandate we require to make disciples of others is to receive the Gospel from someone who already is a disciple - which is fair enough - it does presuppose that there is some kind of community, 'plausibility-structure' and, dare I say, institution there for these existing disciples to function in the first place.
I disagree.
Take the Ethiopian eunuch. No community, no plausibility structure, no institution (no apostle!1!11!). Take Saul/Paul even and his initial reception rejection by the institution followed by his years in the desert. I think being a disciple of Jesus comes first. Disciples of Jesus then naturally agglutinate, and that gives you the Church. It's a byproduct, not the aim. As is the institution itself.
(Indebted again in my thinking here to Roger "let's have as many denominations as possible" Forster: "Jesus promised to build his Church; our job is to seek the Kingdom").
The Church was only at Plan A for around 15 minutes on a Thursday afternoon somewhere in the first century.
Is Outrage. I have it on authority from the Holy Fathers, confirmed by charismatic revelation, recent Alaskan archaeological discoveries and an Act of Parliament recently discovered in the Westminster Catacombs, that Jesus gave the Great Commission on a Tuesday, around elevenses time.
A mandate is, necessarily, passed from hand to hand (mano a mano). Therefore, to understand a mandate it is necessary to understand which hands one is receiving it from, and that is as much the last hands it was in as it is Christ's. Yes, Kerygmania is about the current life of the bible, but again, that happens in the context of two thousand years of interpretation and of lived experience. The habit of wishing these away is what infuriates me most about most protestants, even if some have an exemption for the last 4-500 years of "real" history.
I've been at pains to point out that I haven't wished away the last two thousand years of history. It is what it is.
What I'm keen to emphasise is that the history of the institutional church (or the institutional history of the Church) is not the whole story, and is no story at all unless disciples are indeed made 'from hand to hand'. I rejoice in the fact that I received the Gospel from somebody who received it.... and so on, presumably, all the way back to those first disciples.
That is profoundly organic; how institutional or institutionally mandated the people in that chain have or haven't been along the way makes absolutely no difference at all.
... Specifically, contrary to what I was told on several occasions, I do not believe it is the church's job to grant or withhold vocations, or to decide who can validly be decided to have any particular vocation. The church's job is to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit, and to foster the vocations granted, through which the body of Christ grows. ...
Up to a point. Clearly, the church can't grant vocations, or perhaps withhold them.
Nevertheless, it's entirely right and proper that there should be some sort of collective way of discerning whether a person who comes along and says 'God has spoken to me and has called me to do X' (and by implication, 'it's your duty to support me') is right, mistaken or even truthful. It's also entirely right proper, and in my view, wholesome, that the person seeking to work out whether they have a vocation and to what, should not be too presumptuous to be willing to defer to the wisdom of others, to ask themselves 'well, if M and N aren't convinced I'm called to X or Y, perhaps they may be right rather than me'.
I'm honestly not sure how we've got here ... this thread is about the Great Commission and Jesus sending out his apostles for evangelism. Now we probably all think that (apart from the personal witness of "gossipping the Gospel") it is a Good Thing for churches to carry out this task in an organised and responsible way. But somehow we seem to have strayed into the Waters of Vocation and Authority which, if nothing else, seems to be more about us looking into the Church and the way we do things and less about looking outward to "all the nations".
We've got here because it's a matter of how disciples are made and who decides who should make them. If the task is devolved into the church as the body of Christ, then it follows that the church needs a process by which to decide how and by whom the work is done.
Embodiment can't happen in a vacuum any more than interpretation can, and in this case, that vacuum is filled by the cloud of people claiming to follow Christ.
Yes and no. I certainly like organisation and accountability, which is why I think that it's good for local churches to co-operate in mission and service. However, as Eutychus has already pointed out, the great mass of evangelism in the earliest days of the Church was not done in an organised manner but by Christians - who had in fact been scattered by persecution - who spoke and taught of Jesus wherever they happened to find themselves; moreover that the Apostles, whom one might have expected to be taking the lead in this task, were in fact remarkably disengaged.
All of which exemplifies why the first century CE can only provide a small part of the picture. We are not living in the first century, but the twenty-first and need to start from where we are. We have a plethora of people sending themselves in all directions, backed by all sorts of organisations. We can be informed by scripture, but we also need to be informed by the current situation and our own discernment in the present moment. That is the only time accessible to grace, and the only time in which we can live.
I'm honestly not sure how we've got here ... this thread is about the Great Commission and Jesus sending out his apostles for evangelism.
I think (perhaps mistakenly) that's the first time anyone's used the word "evangelism" in this thread.
Which I don't think is in the Bible and which to our contemporary ears brings with it all sorts of unfortunate decisionist overtones.
The text of the Great Commission refers to "making disciples" [of Jesus]. Of course that involves sharing the Gospel, but there are a myriad of ways of doing that. Speaking for myself, these days I'm more interested in getting people "following" Jesus, initially in much the same way that one "follows" people on Twitter, than in getting them to "pray the prayer".
I think the whole problem with how these verses are misunderstood is that it is thought that responding to the Great Commission requires one (either individuals or designated mandated apostolic persons depending on one's ecclesiology) to consciously do stuff in a particular way, be it during "Mission Week" or a "Decade of Evangelism" as though they belonged in a special religious season or were a flu epidemic or something.
To me the Great Commission should be outworked in who we are as followers of Christ and in what naturally flows out of that. If one is a disciple of Christ one cannot but contribute to fulfilling the Great Commission. The problem is that so much of what passes for organising and sustaining church can actually distract from following Christ. We seek the Church and hope Jesus will somehow build the Kingdom instead of the other way around.
Thing is, Eutychus, there was a plausibility structure when the Ethiopian eunuch was converted. The Church.
Philip the Evangelist wasn't operating in a vacuum.
Ok, so there was no institutional church as such in Ethiopia at that time but there were Jews, which is what the Ethiopian eunuch was.
None of this stuff is disembodied.
On the organic thing, the Orthodox clergy I know are forever telling me how 'organic' their set-up is compared to Western ones which they see as terribly institutionalised.
It all depends where one is standing, I suppose. We could conjugate some verbs here:
My set-up is lovely and organic.
Your set-up is institutionalised and hide-bound ...
Apologies if I seem to be a broken record, BT. It is simply one of the tropes of evangelicalism that really gets to me, and for which I seem entirely incapable of developing any tolerance. I think it's because there is never any acknowledgement that it is actually a metaphor rather than a reality, and the bible isn't really a time machine.
No apology needed! I agree that we can't turn the clock back, nor do I want "loose cannons" who totally ignore the Church as it exists. On the other hand I don't want us to be stymied by possibly unhelpful structures.
Thing is, we are all flying flags. Eutychus is flying an Anabaptist / independent one.
Fine.
Provided he doesn't think he isn't flying one at all.
As soon as we say we are Christians rather than Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims or atheists or worshippers of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, we are flying a flag.
Get over it already.
Of course,Eutychus is operating in a country with a very established Church - for all the vissicitudes of the Revolution - and he used to be involved with a very heavy-handed and authoritarian charismatic evangelical set-up - as I've been.
So I completely understand where he's coming from and am not unsympathetic even though I've been selectively playing Devil's advocate here.
What makes someone else's tradition / Tradition or set-up any more or less self-serving than our own?
Besides, on other threads I've known Eutychus make the very salient point that the Book of Acts is descriptive rather than prescriptive, yet here he's citing it as if it's some kind of blue-print for us to follow. Or am I being unfair.
On the structures thing, it seems to me that the same structure that can help in some circumstances can stymie elsewhere - you've only got to talk to Baptist ministers for 5 minutes to find that the same 'church meeting' system that proves gloriously effective in one place can be the bane of their lives elsewhere.
Is the Papacy and Magisterium a help or a hindrance? I'd say it is. If I were RC I might think differently.
Anyhow, however we understand the 'commissioning' element of the Great Commission and the S/succession aspect (whether Big S or small s), I think we're all agreed that it doesn't involve lording it over people or forms of decisionism.
Incidentally, at the Orthodox conference I cited earlier, for all the very High and some would say exclusive ecclesiology, they readily acknowledged that the Holy Spirit can and does work way beyond the boundaries of the Church / Tradition and Orthodoxy as they understand it.
Dare I suggest it's another of these pesky both/ and things?
Yes, a structure and framework can become a strait-jacket. Yes, we need the mavericks, the St Francis of Assisis, the George Foxes and the misfit Holy Fools.
We need the Mother Maria's of Paris with her cigarettes and cigars, her skipping of the Liturgy to feed the hungry, her stand for the city's Jews and her deportation to Dachau.
I haven't thought this through in detail, but doesn't this have a lot to do with identity? All of the things GG has listed are elements of each tradition with which, as I understand it, their adherents identify particularly closely. As such, they are almost certainly profoundly ambivalent in their impact on potential new recruits, repelling as many as they attract. How many of them can legitimately be set aside, and for how long, to "make disciples of new nations"? Must they always, inevitably, reassert themselves whenever the new recruits integrate themselves into their new context?
Given that Christianity is a collective religion in which disciples group together into churches, isn't something like that inevitable? For all organisations (golf clubs, choirs, sports associations etc) have their own culture, traditions and "unspoken norms"; new ones rapidly develop them even though the members may protest that they are "free to do what they want" - after all, we all come with our own cultural baggage.
Besides, on other threads I've known Eutychus make the very salient point that the Book of Acts is descriptive rather than prescriptive, yet here he's citing it as if it's some kind of blue-print for us to follow. Or am I being unfair.
Yes, you are. You've ignored all my acknowledgements of the institutional churches and nowhere have I said Acts is a blueprint to follow.
The fact is, though, that Acts doesn't record Ananias getting any institutional mandate whatsoever, any more than it records Philip having any institutional mandate as an evangelist. It seems quite clear to me that the apostles were trying to catch up with him in Acts 8:14 after the fact, and the same can be said of his encounter with the Ethopian eunuch.
Any argument for institutions on the basis of such passages is an argument from silence, unless anybody can find anything to the contrary.
Observing that the spread of the Gospel in Acts is as often in spite of the Apostles as it is because of some institutional decision is not stating a blueprint, it's an observation. Acts is not a licence to act unilaterally, but neither does it set out any requirement to be licenced.
I have no basis to argue with your scholarship, but in terms of living out the commission now, we have to take into account that there is almost no part of the world, and no people in the Western world or its former colonies, who have had no contact with Christianity. As such, we are not dealing with people or cultures meeting a faith unknown to them for the first time. I believe, therefore that this is why we need consider very carefully quite what a crowd we now belong to, and how the Great Commission is now best lived out. There are a lot of people in western countries and the decolonised south who are very sensitive about their contact with Christianity, and who will take a lot of convincing that any Christian talking about their faith is trying to do anything other than steamroller their essential selves and substitute some kind of "saved" or "good Catholic/Orthodox/whatever" patented set of attitudes and behaviours. I may be repeating myself, but I think there are lot of people itching to go out and make disciples in their own image, and not God's, God's image being already there.
I may be repeating myself, but I think there are lot of people itching to go out and make disciples in their own image, and not God's, God's image being already there.
That's why I made sure to clarify that people should be making disciples of Jesus.
I once got derided in a national pastors' fraternal of some 500 leaders for asking the speaker on the topic of discipleship just who he thought disciples were being made of in his scheme.
As you can see, I've never got on very well in institutional Christianity of any kind.
Comments
On the authority thing, yes the Gospels talk about Christ's authority rather than the Apostle's authority - but it's not a big step from that, biblically speaking, to see a connection/shared or delegated authority - or mandate, responsibility or whatever else we might call it if we are worried about the 'a' word.
If Christ is the Head and the Church is his Body then one would expect the Church to operate with a measure of that authority.
The problem then, of course, is how we define and recognise such authority. It's certainly bottom up in NT terms, those who claim or exercise authority should be the servant of all.
The Orthodox seem to have the view that most things are fine provided they have the blessing of a canonical bishop. The RCs appear to have ratcheted things up a stage or two further, although it may look and feel very differently on the ground.
I've known evangelical Anglican clergy who have appeared to abrogate to themselves authority that can only be exercised by a Diocesan Bishop - and to appear equally unaware that this is what they've tried to do.
It's all very messy.
We have a mandate to do stuff. What stuff? Where? And how do we know or tell whether it is legitimate? By its fruits?
That's why I've basically decided to cut through all this obsession with authority. As a disciple, I seek to do good as I understand Jesus would want and to resist evil as he would want. And yes I think the test of whether I'm doing that right is the fruit; that certainly seems to be Jesus' perspective. The difference with anybody else doing good is the reasoning behind it.
If I purport to do all that on behalf of anybody else apart from Jesus (e.g. in a capacity as pastor, chaplain, etc.) then the question of authority is not so much a spiritual one as an organisational one. I need a mandate from those I claim to represent to do so. Otherwise, I'm not credible, and possibly fraudulent.
Or are we in danger of separating out the sacred from the secular here and introducing unhelpful dichotomies?
In your role as a pastor you presumably both serve and represent the flock under your care - if I can use that term. Is that a 'spiritual' role or is it purely a managerial or administrative one? It's both, of course.
In your prison chaplaincy role then you presumably have a mandate from the prison authorities. But again, is it a 'spiritual' role or is it a more broadly pastoral one? Again, it's both, surely?
I can't speak for the way the RCs and Orthodox and other Churches with a high ecclesiology operate, but whilst it appears very heirarchical, I've known clergy from these traditions roll their eyes in horror when I've told them some of the things I've seen go on not only in 'restorationist' circles but some other evangelical circles more generally - including Anglican ones.
That isn't to say that they don't have heavy-handed interventions and wheeler-dealing to deal with. I'm sure they do.
We've all got problems. It's simply a different set of problems depending on your ecclesiology.
On the 'authority' thing, I've been struck over the years how many of my former church-mates from my restorationist days who remain involved with churches - and most of them do - tend to wary of 'officially' joining anything or signing up for church membership or other formal arrangements. I can well understand why.
Jesus was recognised as 'one who taught with authority'.
I can be an officially recognised chaplain but if I'm not recognised as 'doing the stuff' by the lads any institutional authority I may have ain't worth shit. In an ideal world institutional authority is a recognition of what a constituency has already collectively discerned, not the other way around.
Is the 'authority' in the eye of the beholder?
Is it intrinsic and inherent and only becomes apparent like the 'proof of the pudding' ie 'in the eating'?
What authority did the Eleven have on the day of Pentecost?
They felt they had a mandate from Jesus to announce the resurrection and forgiveness of sins, and to baptise in his name.
They also felt empowered by the Spirit within them.
But they had absolutely no institutional authority to back them up.
The proof of the pudding was indeed in the eating for them.
2,000 years on, we have our Christian institutions. Again, in an ideal world, these would mirror this God-given and follower-recognised authority. In any case, as part of small-t tradition, they may confer some cultural legitimacy. But they can never definitively replace the other kind of authority. Which once again, is never over people.
You still seem to have this restorationist YearZero thing to some extent ...
@ThunderBunk, thanks for bringing up the word "vocation" which had also been in my mind in relation to this discussion.
First, I really need to offer a translation of folies de grandeur, but I'm struggling, because it's so close to being a translation in itself, but I can't recall seeing "follies of grandeur" used in English. Which is why it's there in French.
Secondly, vocation is an enormously important issue for me, because I don't actually believe I'll ever find a way of living that expresses entirely the calling, the itch I carry within me. As far as I have seen thus far, it doesn't really have a widely recognised shape. To me, making disciples of all nations means enabling everyone to meet and rejoice in Christ in them, even those not cut out for life at the heart of religious institutions.
Thank you! That's exactly the phrase that was being drowned out of my mind's ear by the French version. The echo in the channel tunnel is terrible tonight...
Meanwhile, the Eleven had no institutional backing. So what? The rest of us do.
They had no institutional backing for one day only.
From my reading of the text, the Great Commission applies to all disciples that have started to follow Jesus as a consequence of the first ones.
Nowhere in the Great Commission, as @Nick Tamen has correctly observed, is there any mention of anybody having any authority except Jesus.
The disciples had a mandate to make disciples (of Jesus) and to pass on that same mandate to others.
The Eleven, soon to be Twelve, were recognised as de facto leaders of the nascent Church not because of some external authority granted to them by the institution but because they were the original recipients of that mandate.
The only authority anybody needs to make another disciple of Jesus is to have received that mandate from somebody who already is.
The Church is an attempt to structure and institutionalise that happening, and that's not all bad, but I'm far from convinced that what we understand as the institutional Church we know today was part of God's Plan A. I often think (and say) that it is one of the worst misunderstandings in the history of Christianity.
We used to bang on and on about nasty old institutional Christianity back in the 1980s and '90s with all the restoration schtick. As you well know, all we ended up doing was creating our own institutions.
Put a bunch of people together in a room.and you end up with an institution.
I don't understand why you seen so fixated with the Eleven having a direct mandate from Christ as if that obviates the need for institutional structures.
We aren't the Eleven and we can't avoid them.
All we can do is try to build in checks and balances to stop them becoming heavy-handed and overbearing.
You have metastasized the mandate of the 11 (12) into a mandate for the whole church. How? There were more than 11 Christians on Pentecost (Mary, Martha, and Lazarus come to mind). Did all of them have the leadership mandate? No.
What was wierd about last night's match was that one side was rubbish in the first half and the other side rubbish in the second ...
On the issue of God's Plan A, or Plan B or Plan Q, R, S ...
We all carry some freight there. Back in the day the restorationist crowd thought Plan A was down to them and would involve everyone of faith and goodwill leaving the historic churches and denominations and joining them. Yes, and submitting to the authority of a charismatic 'apostle.'
The Orthodox and Catholics see themselves as preserving and maintaining Plan A and the Orthodox prayers certainly carry the plea that everyone else should abandon their heterodoxy and return to the fold. I daresay the RCs have similar prayers and ideas.
I struggle with that just as much as I struggle with the idea implicit in Eutychus's posts that somehow we have to do an ecclesiastical Pol Pot Year Zero thing (without the violence) and start all over again.
Hence my limbo position, which is jolly uncomfortable.
When you have instutions whose leader is appointed by the head of state, own vast amounts of land, invest in payday loan companies, and develop parallel legal systems that shield their own from justice and allow abuse to be perpetrated, you have to wonder though.
And besides, historic Christian institutions are mostly dying of their own accord. They're just taking a very long time about it because of how much political power and material wealth they've amassed.
Doubtless, but one can make choices about how that institution is structured, and particularly how it is structured in terms of power, that make a difference. Or at least that is what I am bent on attempting to do in my small corner. Your mileage may vary.
I'm "fixated with the Eleven", as you put it, becuase in case you hadn't noticed this thread is about the Great Commission and that is who it was given to. There is no mention of any institutional structure in the Great Commission and you can't extrapolate one from it so far as I can tell. I'm not "obviating the need", I'm simply not commenting on what isn't there.
It says they are to make disciples of all nations, etc., and teach them to obey all Jesus has commanded them, which I take to include that same instruction, i.e. the mandate is for all discples of all nations.
Of course the 11 had a special place by virtue of their original calling by Jesus, the beginning of Acts naturally focuses on them, and they retain their founding leadership capacity by virtue of this special and non-repeatable status, the conditions for which are set forth by Peter when choosing Matthias to replace Judas in Acts 1.
At the same time, one can't help but notice in the rest of Acts that most of the making disciples, baptising, and teaching is carried on by people other than the 11, often without apostolic sanction (at least initally) and quite often to apostolic discomfiture.
To reply to this cross post.
I don't think everybody should start again with Year Zero, and have said as much more than once in debates about Christendom. We are where we are, and as I have also said before, I benefit as much as everybody else from the influence of institutional Christianity in our contemporary societies, the good and unfortunately the bad.
At the same time I find myself in a position where I'm largely outside those institutions, and thus in a position to try something else.
[ETA: Where the Restorationists went wrong in my view was that they misunderstood the nature of authority; the "apostolic" leaders assumed it and assumed they had it to exercise over other people. Asserting control like that is bound to create an almost instant institution]
And in any event, Kerygmania is supposed to be where we look at what the text of Scripture itself says. And I contend that the Great Commission says nothing about institutions; it doesn't even mention the Church. It talks solely of making disciples; I believe the Church is a byproduct of doing that, and not the ultimate aim.
That said, the situation seems to be improving from what I can gather as they have more interaction with the wider scene worldwide.
Although there does seem to a renewed move towards government restrictions and pressure on religious activities in China.
I know you are not saying that everything about institutionalised Christianity is wrong, but I still get the impression that there's this residual restorationist thing that the Church was only at Plan A for around 15 minutes on a Thursday afternoon somewhere in the first century and it's all gone to buggery since unless me and my mates sort it out in someone's front room or down the local sports hall.
I once raised a question at an Orthodox conference about Ananias, the disciple we read about in Acts who baptised Paul. He wasn't one of the 12, he didn't seem to hold any office yet the Lord used him to minister to the Apostle Paul.
The Orthodox, of course, directed me to Tradition and various stories they had, and which I'd not heard before, which indicate that Ananias had received a due institutional mandate in some form or other. I don't remember how, now.
Of course, one could argue that this was redacted at a later time as the Church became more institutionalised, conveniently covering the gaps in the scriptural accounts.
Yes, the apostolic leadership do seem to have been taken way off guard in the Book of Acts - the incident with Cornelius springs to mind. Yet they adapt and rethink things. The institutional and the spontaneous can be at odds but they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
I'm sure the Orthodox are as - if not more - guilty as anyone else who has ever established state churches or Caesaro-Papism or powerful structures. But from what I can see, in theory at least, they don't see a dichotomy between the institutional and what we might call the charismatic - even if that tension isn't always a creative one.
'It's not as if God is on anyone's pay-roll,' an Orthodox priest wryly observed to me recently.
Anyhow, back to the Great Commission. I suppose the Orthodox / Catholic view would be that the Commission applies to the original disciples and through them to those who have followed in succession - whether Big S or small s.
So, to a greater or lesser extent, the rest of us operate in the shadow of that, as it were. It isn't necessarily the case that we are doing it wrong, we are just flying under the wrong flag ...
Something like that.
The same Orthodox priest observed to me that when he serves the Eucharist he isn't doing it on his own authority or any intrinsic power vested in himself. Essentially, God does it, and he is only the human vessel who carries out the administering of the Holy Gifts.
On the mandate thing, if the only mandate we require to make disciples of others is to receive the Gospel from someone who already is a disciple - which is fair enough - it does presuppose that there is some kind of community, 'plausibility-structure' and, dare I say, institution there for these existing disciples to function in the first place.
I think it was earlier in this thread that I admitted that much to our collective annoyance, upstart and theologically questionable movements on our doorstep actually seem to make at least some disciples of Christ. I'm not sure the Church ideally needs institutions but standing in the protestant and anabaptist tradition as I do I am absolutely certain that the institutional Church needs upstarts.
Like I say, your mileage may vary. My responsibility is to work the corner of God's garden where I think he's put me. As also observed upthread, that doesn't prevent me from rejoicing wherever and however the Gospel is preached, and I'm not answerable before God to how others do that. I'm answerable for how I do that.
LOL well of course they would. As self-serving a narrative as was ever devised. (Did you know Straight Street is still there in Damascus?).
Agreed; see above. I don't think there's anything institutional about the Great Commission, though.
I had been wondering just now exactly how the doctrine of big S succession works: I don't recall the original 12 of Acts passing on their 'apostolic mandate' as such to anybody, at least not in Scripture. But that's probably another thread...
Flags are badges of institutions. What "flag" do you see in Matthew 28?
I disagree.
Take the Ethiopian eunuch. No community, no plausibility structure, no institution (no apostle!1!11!). Take Saul/Paul even and his initial reception rejection by the institution followed by his years in the desert. I think being a disciple of Jesus comes first. Disciples of Jesus then naturally agglutinate, and that gives you the Church. It's a byproduct, not the aim. As is the institution itself.
(Indebted again in my thinking here to Roger "let's have as many denominations as possible" Forster: "Jesus promised to build his Church; our job is to seek the Kingdom").
What I'm keen to emphasise is that the history of the institutional church (or the institutional history of the Church) is not the whole story, and is no story at all unless disciples are indeed made 'from hand to hand'. I rejoice in the fact that I received the Gospel from somebody who received it.... and so on, presumably, all the way back to those first disciples.
That is profoundly organic; how institutional or institutionally mandated the people in that chain have or haven't been along the way makes absolutely no difference at all.
Nevertheless, it's entirely right and proper that there should be some sort of collective way of discerning whether a person who comes along and says 'God has spoken to me and has called me to do X' (and by implication, 'it's your duty to support me') is right, mistaken or even truthful. It's also entirely right proper, and in my view, wholesome, that the person seeking to work out whether they have a vocation and to what, should not be too presumptuous to be willing to defer to the wisdom of others, to ask themselves 'well, if M and N aren't convinced I'm called to X or Y, perhaps they may be right rather than me'.
Embodiment can't happen in a vacuum any more than interpretation can, and in this case, that vacuum is filled by the cloud of people claiming to follow Christ.
Which I don't think is in the Bible and which to our contemporary ears brings with it all sorts of unfortunate decisionist overtones.
The text of the Great Commission refers to "making disciples" [of Jesus]. Of course that involves sharing the Gospel, but there are a myriad of ways of doing that. Speaking for myself, these days I'm more interested in getting people "following" Jesus, initially in much the same way that one "follows" people on Twitter, than in getting them to "pray the prayer".
The problem with using "Mission" as an alternative is, of course, that everyone makes it into whatever they want it to mean.
To me the Great Commission should be outworked in who we are as followers of Christ and in what naturally flows out of that. If one is a disciple of Christ one cannot but contribute to fulfilling the Great Commission. The problem is that so much of what passes for organising and sustaining church can actually distract from following Christ. We seek the Church and hope Jesus will somehow build the Kingdom instead of the other way around.
Philip the Evangelist wasn't operating in a vacuum.
Ok, so there was no institutional church as such in Ethiopia at that time but there were Jews, which is what the Ethiopian eunuch was.
None of this stuff is disembodied.
On the organic thing, the Orthodox clergy I know are forever telling me how 'organic' their set-up is compared to Western ones which they see as terribly institutionalised.
It all depends where one is standing, I suppose. We could conjugate some verbs here:
My set-up is lovely and organic.
Your set-up is institutionalised and hide-bound ...
No, just addressed to people who hasn't existed for two thousand years or so. Assertion doesn't put us in their places.
Fine.
Provided he doesn't think he isn't flying one at all.
As soon as we say we are Christians rather than Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims or atheists or worshippers of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, we are flying a flag.
Get over it already.
Of course,Eutychus is operating in a country with a very established Church - for all the vissicitudes of the Revolution - and he used to be involved with a very heavy-handed and authoritarian charismatic evangelical set-up - as I've been.
So I completely understand where he's coming from and am not unsympathetic even though I've been selectively playing Devil's advocate here.
What makes someone else's tradition / Tradition or set-up any more or less self-serving than our own?
Besides, on other threads I've known Eutychus make the very salient point that the Book of Acts is descriptive rather than prescriptive, yet here he's citing it as if it's some kind of blue-print for us to follow. Or am I being unfair.
On the structures thing, it seems to me that the same structure that can help in some circumstances can stymie elsewhere - you've only got to talk to Baptist ministers for 5 minutes to find that the same 'church meeting' system that proves gloriously effective in one place can be the bane of their lives elsewhere.
Is the Papacy and Magisterium a help or a hindrance? I'd say it is. If I were RC I might think differently.
Anyhow, however we understand the 'commissioning' element of the Great Commission and the S/succession aspect (whether Big S or small s), I think we're all agreed that it doesn't involve lording it over people or forms of decisionism.
Incidentally, at the Orthodox conference I cited earlier, for all the very High and some would say exclusive ecclesiology, they readily acknowledged that the Holy Spirit can and does work way beyond the boundaries of the Church / Tradition and Orthodoxy as they understand it.
Dare I suggest it's another of these pesky both/ and things?
Yes, a structure and framework can become a strait-jacket. Yes, we need the mavericks, the St Francis of Assisis, the George Foxes and the misfit Holy Fools.
We need the Mother Maria's of Paris with her cigarettes and cigars, her skipping of the Liturgy to feed the hungry, her stand for the city's Jews and her deportation to Dachau.
We also all need one another.
The fact is, though, that Acts doesn't record Ananias getting any institutional mandate whatsoever, any more than it records Philip having any institutional mandate as an evangelist. It seems quite clear to me that the apostles were trying to catch up with him in Acts 8:14 after the fact, and the same can be said of his encounter with the Ethopian eunuch.
Any argument for institutions on the basis of such passages is an argument from silence, unless anybody can find anything to the contrary.
Observing that the spread of the Gospel in Acts is as often in spite of the Apostles as it is because of some institutional decision is not stating a blueprint, it's an observation. Acts is not a licence to act unilaterally, but neither does it set out any requirement to be licenced.
I once got derided in a national pastors' fraternal of some 500 leaders for asking the speaker on the topic of discipleship just who he thought disciples were being made of in his scheme.
As you can see, I've never got on very well in institutional Christianity of any kind.