Church

The word used for church in the NT is ekklesia which means literally a calling out; then an assembly or meeting of an assembly; then a community, congregation or church, whether local or scattered over a wide area. The ancient Greeks had civic assemblies called ekklesiai. The OT root seems to be kahal or assembly of Israel as God's people, translated by the Septuagint as ekklesia. In the NT, church means the gathering or community of the faithful, believers in Christ. It usually refers to the local congregation (e.g. Matt 18:17; I Cor 1:2) but also to the community of believers throughout the world (Matt 16:18; Eph 1:22).

The four gospels contain the word church only three times, all in Matthew. By contrast, it occurs frequently in the writings of Paul, especially in I Corinthians, Ephesians, in Acts of the Apostles, and in the first two chapters of Revelation. Paul was the great apostle of the Gentiles who founded and nourished churches throughout the Mediterranean basin. Acts tells the story of the early church, after Jesus' ascension. The Book of Revelation begins with letters to seven churches. But the rarity of the word in the gospels does pose the problem of whether Jesus founded a church. Much depends on what is meant by church; apart from Matthew 16:17-19, the gospels do not say, and that passage could be a post-Easter statement of the risen Christ. One tradition sets the birthday of the church at Pentecost (Acts chap. 2); alternatively, the church was said to have been born from the side of Christ, in the water (of baptism) and the blood (of the eucharist) that flowed from the open wound (John 19:34). Both of these traditions place the founding of the church after Jesus' public ministry.

It is clear from the gospels that Jesus gathered a circle of disciples around him (Matt 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16). This gathering may have had something to do with the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel as the full assembly of the people of God (Matt 19:28; Luke 22:29). In this sense, Jesus' public ministry may be said to have founded a community of believers which looked to the future restoration of all Israel (more than a local congregation) and the coming of the Kingdom of God. After Jesus' death and resurrection, this community developed into what the later NT calls the church.

Jesus' primary attention was devoted, not to the church as such, but rather to the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. On the basis of Matthew 13:41 some Christians have identified the Kingdom of God on earth with the church. Today this identification is commonly regarded as an incorrect interpretation of the main teaching of the Gospels. One text which is rather exceptional does make a connection between church and kingdom: Jesus tells Peter he will build his church on him, that it will endure despite opposition, and then he gives Peter the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Here is a link between church and Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 16:18-19). He goes on to add: "whatever you bind on earth will be bound (i.e., God shall bind) in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed (i.e., God shall loose) in heaven." These strong words imply that the believer's relationship to the church on earth will in some way affect his relationship to the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, the Kingdom of God and the church, while not identical, are related. The church is the community of those who hope and pray for the speedy coming of the Kingdom of God.

The Acts of the Apostles mentions a number of local churches but the special viewpoint of Luke in Acts comes out most clearly perhaps in 15:22 (cf v:4). "Then it pleased the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch." This indicates a structured or ordered church. There is a twofold ministry or leadership structure made up of apostles and elders/presbyters/priests. (These elders reappear in Acts 20:17, and in 20:28 are said to be overseers or bishops.) But the whole church assembly participates in decision-making and the decision is missionary. The church has the power to commission men to preach the gospel, to carry on the work of the original apostles. Luke, in Acts chapter 15 and elsewhere, seems to have the idea of the apostles as a kind of governing college in Jerusalem. This picture of the church in Acts has brought up the matter of church ministry. The earliest list of ministries is perhaps to be found in I Corinthians 12:28. Here the top three ministries are apostles, prophets and teachers. (Another neglected list is in Matthew 23:34: "prophets, wise men and scribes", a purely OT list.) Paul's list is rapidly replaced by the Acts list, which is then supplemented in the pastoral epistles by a third ministry, the diaconate (I Tim 3:8, 12). The result is a threefold ministry of: bishop (as successor but not equal to the apostles); priest or elder; and deacon; which has remained classical and standard in the church ever since. But, as the complete list in I Corinthians 12:28 shows, this threefold pattern does not exhaust the range of ministries, nor does it spell out how they are to be worked out in practice.

Paul, the great founder of churches, makes further contributions to the NT understanding of church. He created a famous metaphor, the church as the body of Christ (Rom 12:5; I Cor 12:12-27; Eph 1:22-23; 2:16; 4:12; 5:23, 30; Col 1:18, 24, etc.). Extending the OT idea of the church as the people of God, this image fuses the scattered people into an organic unity in Christ, a single living organism. Paul thus had a very strong notion of Christian community. He believed that these communities of love would grow and attract new members, helping and strengthening one another. It is disputed how Paul acquired this image, whether from the moment of his conversion or from Roman stoicism; but it is a natural enough concept and certainly seems to be linked in his own mind with the birth of the church from Christ and the Holy Spirit in baptism (Rom 6:1-11; I Cor 12:12-13), and with the eucharistic body of Christ (I Cor 11:17-34). Consistent with this, Paul also deepened the understanding of Christian ministry as a share in the charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit: he believed that every Christian was or could be endowed with such a charism. It is often thought that John chapter 15 with its image of Christ as the vine and his followers as the branches, is a way of expressing the same basic idea of organic unity as in the body language of Paul. Ephesians perhaps goes further than other epistles in suggesting a cosmic church which fills the universe as the body of the cosmic Christ (Eph 1:23).

Many characteristics of the church could be mentioned, but classically they are: unity (John 17:21; Eph 4:3-13; catholicity or universality (Matt 28:19-20); holiness (Eph 5:27) and apostolicity (Matt 10:40; Eph 2:20).