THE CHURCH AND CHURCHES OF THE APOSTLES AND PROPHETS

John R. Gaden*

The Starting Point and Aim In seeking to understand or to develop a doctrine of the church as it appears in

the earliest Christian generations, the first quesion to ask is how to begin. There are a number of possibilities. One may follow Paul Minnear's classic study, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Westminster, 1960), begun in the 1950's for the WCC's Faith and Order Department, in which he isolated some 96 analogies and centred on those that gravitate around the church as the people of God, the new creation, the fellowship in faith and the body of Christ, without paying too much attention to the particular strata in which they are found. Another approach would be to take the various Models of the Church clarified by Avery Dulles (Doubleday, 1974) in his analysis of some modern ecclesiologies and see how far any of them are to be found in our period. A third possibility, common enough among Anglicans in the last one hundred years, would be to trace from New Testament times the development of the four marks of the church (one, holy, catholic and apostolic) first found together in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. Fourthly, we could use the approach of BEM itself and seek to discover some convergence on what we regard as central to the understanding of the church in the New Testament and the early life of the church, combining the first and third approaches.

The approach adopted here is somewhat different from any of these. It tries to take seriously both the existence of widely differing Christian communities in this period, a fact almost universally accepted by scholars today,1 and the socio-historical context of those communities. As such it draws on the rapidly increasing number of sociological studies of early Christian communities as well as on those who seek to establish trajectories of Christian life through the first generations from the apostolic age immediately following the Resurrection to the end of the second century.2 Beginning with the work of Raymond E. Brown in particular, now usefully summarized in The Churches The Apostles Left Behind (Paulist, 1984).3, I will try to describe the life and development of these communities and only then raise theological issues about the church and the churches.

THREE TYPICAL TRAJECTORIES Study of the earliest Christian communities reveals an astounding variety,

which tradition has too easily homogenized both in the New Testament Canon and in histories of the early church. What Robert Wilken calls The Myth of Christian Beginnings (Doubleday, 1971), invented by Luke's Acts of the Apostles and receiving classic form in Eusebius of Caesarea's History of the Church, would have us believe is that the church was originally one and undivided, developing in an orderly way under the guidance of the Holy Spirit from Jesus' call and commissioning of the twelve apostles. The reality is otherwise. Luke, for instance, omits any reference to Christian activity in Galilee or in Syria (except * John Gaden is lecturer in pat rsi ics, spirituality and theology in the Adelaide College of Divinity

and is Warden of St. Barnabas' Theological College.

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for Antioch) nor does he explain the origin of Christian communities in Alexandria or Rome, either because he does not know of them or because none of these fit his view of the Gospel being proclaimed by duly authorised persons in ever-widening circles from Jerusalem.

From this great diversity I have chosen three trajectories the Pauline, the Johannine and that of women led communities as sufficiently illustrative for our purposes, although I recognise that it omits equally important trajectories such as the Petrine/Roman and those of Jewish Christianity. I look at each first in the apostolic and sub-apostolic period, i.e. up to about 100, the end of the period covered by New Testament writings, the first two generations of Christians, and then at what happens in the post-apostolic period of the second century, the third generation and on.

(1) The Pauline Trajectory in the First Century. R.E. Brown's book, The Churches The Apostles Left Behind, is concerned with the question of how the various Christian communities survived "after the death of the great first generation of apostolic guides and heroes" (p. 30). However, before looking at the post-Pauline communities we will consider briefly the best-known Pauline community, the church at Corinth, though it should not be regarded as necessarily typical of other Pauline communities.

(a) Corinth. Paul addresses his correspondence to "the church of God which is at Corinth" (1 Cor 1:2, 2 Cor 1:1) which met regularly in one place for the Lord's Supper and other worship (1 Cor 11:18 ff, 14:1 ff) as well as to regulate the life of the community (1 Cor 5:4) and hear Paul's letters read out. Because it could only have met at someone's house, the size of the assembly was much less than a hundred, since even the enlarged room of the third century hosue-church in Dura - Europas only "measured about 40 feet by 16 feet, and could hold little more than sixty people".4 It is not clear whether this church also met in smaller household groups as in Rome, though the houses of Gaius (1 Cor 1:14, Rom 16:23) and Stephanas ( 1 Cor 1:16,16:15 f), both Paul's converts, would have been available, as well as that of Chloe (1 Cor 1:11). Though small, the Christian community in Corinth represented a mixture of social levels, both Jews and Gentiles, without either of the extreme ends (cf 1 Cor 1:26-28), but sufficiently divergent to cause problems about eating together (1 Cor 11:17-34) and eating meat with non-Christians (1 Cor 8-10). Its members prided themselves on their divine wisdom ( 1 Cors 1:17-2:16) and possession of pneumatic gifts ( 1 Cor 12-14), while also being divided into factions around their original mentors (1 Cori: 7, 3:1 fi) After response to the preaching of the Gospel, entry into the community was effected by baptism (1 Cor 12:13) and its solidarity maintained by the Lord's Supper and the common worship (1 Cor 10:16 f, 11:17 ff, 14:5,12), in which ajl including women exercised leadership roles. Their identity as "those sanctified in Christ Jesus" and "called to be saints" (1 Cor 1:2) was re-affirmed through acclaiming the lordship of Christ, the crucified one now raised from the dead (1 Cor 12:3, 15:3 f). The Corinthian Christians regarded each other as brothers and sisters (eg. 1 Cor 7:15), all members of the one body (1 Cor 12:12-17) yet belonging also to a world-wide community of Christians (1 Cor 1:2). Order was maintained by Paul's external authority as an apostle, by community rules on ethical conduct (1 Cor 5-10), by the appeal to love (1 Cors 13) and by local leaders associated with Paul's original evangelism in Corinth (1 Cor 16:15 f),

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although Paul also mentions the wider circle of apostles, prophets and teachers (1 Cor 12:28), of whom Apollos at least was initially involved with Paul in Corinth (1 Cor 3:4-6), while others, "the false apostles" (2 Cor 11:13), worked to undermine Paul.

(b) Post-Pauline Communities. A Pauline heritage is found in at least three differing forms the Pastoral Epistles, Colossians-Ephesians, and Luke's two volume Gospel and Acts but some common themes are sounded in these second generation communities, even though we do not have as much information about them as about the church in Corinth. In the Pastorals, the dying Paul is represented as sending Timothy to Ephesus and Titus to Crete to deal with threats to the Christian community posed by false teachers. A similar situation is apparent in both Colossians and Ephesians, while Luke reflects a context of Jews and Christians in conflict resulting in the separation of church and synagogue.However, all three stress the unity, universality and importance of the church, whether as the supra-terrestrial body of which the head, Jesus Christ, is now exalted far above all things (Col 1:15-20, 2:8-19, Eph 1:3-23, 4:1-16) or as the community in which the saving acts of God are continued through the intervention of the Holy Spirit as the Gospel is proclaimed to all the world (Acts 1:8, 2:1 ff etc.) or understood as God's household in every place, "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15).

To protect their communities from error, these writers stress the need for officially approved teachers and for a faithful transmission of the received proclamation and teaching, a concern already apparent in Paul (1 Cor 11:23 ff, 15:3 ff, Phil 2:19-24). The Colossians are tp live in Christ Jesus the Lord as they received him from Epaphras (2:6, l:5a-7). Because there is "one Lord, one faith, one baptism", the Ephesians are to build up the body of Christ into this unity through the enabling roles of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (4:5, 11-13, cf 2:20). In Acts, the original preaching of the apostles, shared first by the seven (6-8), is continued by Paul to be passed on to elders like those in Ephesus (20:17-35), whom Paul is said to appoint in every church in his mission (14:23). The Pastoras are even more insistent on the careful appointment of local presbyter-bishops and deacons (1 Tim3:l-13, Tit 1:5-11). This incipient institutionalism of faith and order, called by some "early Catholicism",5 also has a domesticating, conformist side in the adoption of household codes similar to those of the surrounding patriarchal society (Col. 3:18-4; 1, Eph 5:21-6:9, 1 Tim 5:3-16, 6:1-2) and in the emphasis on the leaders' safe respectability (1 Tim 3:2-7, Acts 26:5, 30-32). (2) The Johannine Trajectory in the First Century. Raymond Brown's major work has been to trace the life of the community which, over a period of sixty years or so, produced the Gospel and the three Epistles of John.6 This community was spread in both time and space with a number of house-churches, perhaps in Ephesus and outlying provincial towns, although the term 'church' only occurs in the relatively late 3 John, where it refers to a local congregation (vv 6,9f). We shall deal at this point with John 1-20, leaving the Epistles and John 21 to the second century section.

John 1-20, dated about 90AD., revels a community of believers at odds over the years with a variety of groups, seven in all according to Brown the world as a whole, disbelieving Jews, adherents of John the Baptist, crypto-Christians

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within the synagogue, Jewish Christians with an inadequate view of Jesus, and Christians of the apostolic churches. Such an alienated community not unexpectedly found their identity by looking inwards and prizing the individual's relationship of love and faith with Jesus together with love and service to each other (10:1-18, 13:1-17, 34f, 15:1-17). In this waythey remained in touch with the life of God present in Jesus, as the Spirit gave enlightenment and new birth through baptism (3:1-21) and continual nourishment through the Eucharist (6:26-65). However, unlike communities in the Pauline trajectory, no hierarchical leadership, apostolic order or doctrinal formulations were required to control the life of the community, because all were seen to be equally disciples, responding to the words and works of Jesus for which the Beloved Disciple was primary witness (13:23-25, 19:35-20:8) and which continued to be interpreted to each believer though the Paraclete-Teacher (14:15f, 25f, 15:26f, 16:12-15). This community of the Beloved Disciple regarded itself as "closer to Jesus and more perceptive" than the Apostolic churches, yet looked to eventual unity between them (10:16, 17:20f).8

(3) Women Led Communities in th First Century. Our sources for the role of women in founding and leading Christian communities in this period are scant and heavily androcentric.9 That women were involved in the missionary movement of the first two Christian generations is clear, but they are often no more than names, if that. Given the egalitarian nature of disciples hip in John, it is not suprising to find mention of a woman missionary there, the one primarily responsible for the conversion of the first Smaritan Christians (4:28-42). For John, too, it is a woman, Mary Magdalene, who has primacy as witness to the resurrection and so Mary gains the title of "apostle to the apostles", even if nothing else is said of her apostolic work (20:17f). In the Pauline communities also women took part in establishing churches and Paul lists a number of women among his co-workers, either as travelling missionaries or local leaders or both (see Rom 16:1-7, 12, 15, Phil 4:2f, Philem 2). Of these it is worth singling out Prisca, who along with her husband Aquila, is mentioned as the teacher of Apollos (Act 18:26) and as one in whose home in Rome, in Corinth and in Er/hesus, a house-church met (1 Cor 16:19, Rom 16:5). This missionary team is the prime example of male-female equality and partnership in the service of the Gospel.

Women with the freedom to make missionary journeys must usually have had independent means and, like those who hosted local churches in their houses (cf Acts 12:12-17, Col 4:15), they must have been people of some wealth and standing. It would seem that part of Phoebe's ministry at Cenchreae arose out of her status as patron-cum-superintendent of the church there (Rom 16:If) However, it would be wrong not to recognise that for Paul and for Luke what gave women prominence in the Christian community was not so much social standing as their spiritual gifts of leadership, prophecy, teaching, service and pastoral care (Acts 2:17, 21:9, 1 Cor ll:3ff), although the two are obviously connected. (All of the above also, of course, applies to men.)

In Mark the faithfulness of women disciples would be stressed over against the weakness of the male twelve, but already in Paul and increasingly in the Pastoral Epistles, women's leadership was brought under male control. Paul's concern for order in the Corinthian church led him to require women to have their hair

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bound up when prophesying as a sign of their authority (1 Cor 11:2-16), but also to require silence of married women in church (1 Cor 14:33b-36), perhaps suggesting that at least in Corinth single women were more appropriate leaders, in line with his preference for the unmarried state (1 Cor 7:32-35,39f). The use of household codes in the post-Pauline communities to re-inforce traditional patriarchal standards, however Christianized, only hardened this control of men over women to the point where the Pastoral Epistles prohibit women from teaching men (1 Tim 2:11-15), allowing them in the church only the subordinate role of deacon (1 Tim 3:11) and a general ministry restricted to other women (1 Tim 5:3-16, Tit 2:3-5). As becomes clear, not all women were prepared to be submissive having once tasted their freedom in Christ.

SECOND CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS With the death not only of Paul and other first generation leaders but also of

their immediate converts, certain problems became acute for the various Christian communities. What was the authentic Gospel? How was continuity with the first apostolic generation to be maintained? How were the life and identity of communities to be sustained? Who had authority to decide answers to these questions? Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient evidence to show exactly how particular communities or trajectories handled the transition and by the second half of the second century the collecting of Christian scriptures means that a number of trajectories are beginning to inter-act. However, it is possible to distinguish a number of approaches to these problems, even if in places they overlap.

(a) Episcopal Authority (Ignatius). Though strongly influenced by Paul's theology of the Cross with a sprinkling of Johannine ideas, Ignatius of Antioch, martyred about 110 AD, developed a view of the church centred on the bishop, perhaps from the Petrine tradition of Matthew. Not only must everything (baptism, eucharist, teaching) be done with reference to the bishop (Smyrn 8. If, Magn 4.1, Phil 7.2, Eph 4-5, Trail 2.2), but it is the bishop who assembles and constitutes the congregation, for the bishop is "to be regarded as the Lord himself (or as God) and "wherever Jesus is, there is the catholic church" (Smyrn 8.2, Trail 2.1, 3.1, Eph 6.1). Associated with the bishop is his council of elders (presbyters) and the deacons, "and apart from these there is nothing to call church" ( Trail 2.2). When talking of this threefold pattern, we must be careful to remember that the size of the congregation is still small, so that Ignatius refers to a situation much closer to our parish with pastor, a vestry or council and helpers.

It is significant, however, that Ignatius knew no doctrine of apostolic succession. His authority was established by appeal to the Spirit of prophecy speaking through him (Phill.lf) and to the threefold ministry being patterned on God's way of working through Jesus and the apostles (Magn 6.1, Smyrn 8.1). We do not know how Ignatius became Bishop of Antioch nor did he appear to provide for a successor, but other sources concerning churches in Asia Minor at this time (e.g. Rev 2-3, 1-3 John) show no evidence for this threefold order. Its novelty perhaps explains his over-insistence on the need for unity with the bishop and his associates. But the fact that the church in Rome was not yet ordered in this way did not mean he had no communion with it. On the contrary (Rom. Pref), for even his own church in Antioch was now bereft of a bishop (Rom 9.1).

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More important, then, was a shared faith in the Cross of Christ and a common discipleship of suffering (Rom 4,8). Already the expression of this faith was in credal form ( Trail 9) as a defence against Judaizers and Docetists, but in Ignatius' mind communion with the bishop and love for one another were recognizable signs of authentic faith and discipleship (Trail 7, 13). (b) The Certainty of Revealed Knowledge (Gnostics). The three Epistles of John, written about 100-110 AD, indicate that a major secession has taken place in the Johannine community and it is widely agreed by Brown and others that the larger group took with them into various Gnostic circles a particular intepretation of the Gospel of John.10 Gnostic literature and polemical information about Gnostics span at least the second and third centuries and is extremely diverse in nature and alocation. The following are some very impressionistic and partial comments.11

The Church was understood to be a spiritual reality, in Valentinian terms one of the first Ogdoad, born along with the Human from Logos and Life (Ptolemaeus, Comm. in Irenaeus, Haer 1.8.5), or even identified with the third member of the Godhead, existing like the Son from the beginning (Trip. Tract. 57). It was made up of the elect, pneumatics or Gnostics, existing in perfect harmony with each other ( Trip. Tract. 94, Great Seth 67f) and thus in union with the Pleroma. The visible church is the place where psychics may receive instruction and purification in order to gain access to the Pleroma (Trip. Tract. 123), while sacraments operate on two levels, as pictures of true reality for Gnostics and means of grace for psychics (Irenaeus, Haer. I. 13.2-4, 21.2-5). Some Gnostic groups had an organized, hierarchical ministry. Others maintained a Pauline Corinthian type of community in which the gifts of each member were given play despite the inevitable tensions (Interp. Know. 15-21). Some Gnostics continued to exist within orthodox/apostolic churches (cf. Clement Alex. Strom. VII), while others were excluded as false, although the charge of being false/heretical was mutual (Apoc. Peter 77-80). Those thus excluded, however claimed to be the true church, teaching the truth in succession to the apostles, particularly, through the gift of the chrism (Ptolemaus, Flora 5, Gospel of Philip 74), and alone to have the right ievelation, hence the naming of so many of their gospels after apostles. A sense of alienation from the world and the desire for certainty of salvation lay behind much Gnostic thought, but the various religious systems produced by the Gnostics were not sufficient to withstand the combination of Christian attack from without and fissiparous individualism within. Nevertheless, it is not hard to see various Johannine themes pushed here to self-destructive extremes.

(c) The Spirit of Prophecy (Montanists). Prophesying is widely attested in the apostolic and sub-apostolic periods both for men and women (Acts 2:17f, 1 Cor 14: Iff, I Thess 5: 19f, I Tim 4:14, Rev 1:3, 19:10, 22:6f) and continues on into the second century. Those with the Spirit of prophecy exercised a leadership in Christian communities that had priority over the more institutionalized presbyter-bishops and deacons (Did. 10, 13, 15), but there was always the problem of false prophets (Matt 7:15-23, 1 John 4:1-6, Rev. 2:20-23, Did. 11). This ambiguity in prophecy raised the need for control over both message and speaker, but the move of the 'orthodox' in this direction inevitably led to the decline of prophecy, so that groups such as the Montanists could rightly point to

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the lack of the Spirit's gifts in the mainline churches. While remaining doctrinally orthodox, Montanist churches (so called in Tertullian, adv. Prax 1) introduced stricter moral discipline over their adherents and emphasized the leading of the Spirit by giving prominence in their official ministry to prophets both male and female (Hippolytus, Elench. VIII. 19, 2f, X.26). They, too, appealed to a line of succession as their guarantee, but here it was a succession of those possessing the prophetic gift (Eusebius, H.e.V.MA).

Beginning in Phrygia and moving from Asia Minor to Gaul, Rome and North Africa, this enthusiastic apocalyptic movement drew both on Johannine teaching about the Paraclete and Paul's about spiritual gifts, but above all it showed confidence in present manifestations of the Spirit and the purity of its member's lives. Gradually driven out by the Orthodox', it dwindled taking with it the Spirit of prophecy from the great church, but not before Tertullian had enunciated a definition of the church very different from that of Ignatius:

The church itself is properly and principally the Spirit himself ... any number of persons at all joined in this faith [in the Trinity] is recognized as the church by him who founded and consecrated it. Therefore, the church will indeed forgive sins, but this is the church of the Spirit through spiritual people and not the church consisting of a number of bishops {Pudic 21).

(d) The Guarantee of Apostolic Succession (1 Clement, Ireneaus, John 21). We know nothing of the church in Corinth between the time of Paul's letter and the first letter ascribed to Clement, written some forty years later about 97AD from "the church of God sojourning in Rome" to "the church of God sojourning in Corinth" (1 Clem. Pref). It is worth noting that the verb 'sojourning' (paroikousa), which means living as strangers, non-citizens, is that from which our work 'parish' is derived. In neither place is a bishop or single leader mentioned, but each church is governed by a council of presbyter-bishops together with deacons (42.4). However, at Corinth jealousy and envy within the congregation had led to some of the presbyter-bishops being put out of office and the creation of a schism (3. Iff, 44.4, 46.5-9, 47.6). The letter extols obedience, humility, forgiveness and love, appeals to God's ordering of creation which brings it peace (20) and to the principle of subordination in the army and the body (37f), before applying God's ordering of Israel's cultic life to the church, where each (high priest, priests, Lvites, lay people) has a proper service according to rank (40f). As God sent Jesus and Jesus sent the apostles, so the apostles "appointed their first converts as bishops and deacons of future believers" (42), providing also for "approved men" (sic) to succeed them, the latter being "appointed by other reputable men, with the consent of the whole church" (44.1-3).

While 1 Clement asserts that this pattern of apostolic succession happened everywhere (42.4), it was left to later writers, particularly Irenaeus, writing from Gaul about 180 AD, to draw up lists of this succession in Rome and other centres, (although bishops and presbyters still seem equated (Haer. III.3.1-4, IV.26.2-5). However, Irenaeus is not so much concerned with disorder in a local community as with his claim against the Gnostics that the universal church alone preserves the truth of the Gospel and is therefore the true church. For him, the church is transmitted to every place by a known succession of leaders who guard it by not falsifying the Scriptures or altering the rule of faith, but by "a lawful and careful exposition according to the Scriptures" and by "the pre-eminent gift of love"

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which exceeds both knowledge and prophecy (ibid. IV.22.8). We have in Irenaeus the first flowerings of a catholic Christianity which sees the salvation and perfection of human beings mediated through mother church, where the Gospel is proclaimed and the sacraments administered by a publicly ordered ministry that is faithful to the apostolic tradition found in New Testament writings, especially the four gospels, and in credal formulations (ibid. 1.10. If, III.l.lf,7f). "Where the church is, there is the Spirit of God", and those who do not belong to this visible, apostolic church do not share in the Spirit who continually renews the life of the church in truth, so that even when the reverse is stated, "where the Spirit of God is, there is the church", it is controlled by the fact that "the Spirit is truth" and truth of course is found in fidelity to the apostolic tradition (ibid. III.24.1).

Raymond Brown argues12 that the Johannine community, which prided itself on being guided into truth by the Holy Spirit, was eventually forced by the schism apparent in 1 and 2 John to come to terms with the apostolic church represented by the figure of Peter. Thus, John 21, the rehabilitation of Peter after the Resurrection, was appended to the Gospel to persuade Johannines to accept the authority of the apostolic ministry, but also to reassure apostolic churches about the true discipleship of Johannines, but not before Peter is put three times through the Johannine test of personal love for Jesus. The presbyter of 1 and 2 John had no authority to impose his understanding of the Johannine tradition on those to whom he wrote. He could only appeal to their sharing in the common fellowship and to the inner teaching of the Spirit (1 John 1:1-4, 2:26f). It is even possible that this presbyter's quarrel with Diotrephes in 3 John 9f concerned this very point of apostolic leadership, with Diotrephes representing just such an authority over a church of equals as we have seen developed further in Ignatius and Irenaeus.

(e) Women Leaders and Woman*s Church. It should not be a surprise to find the main evidence for women leaders and communities of women outside the male establishment represented by Ignatius and Irenaeus. The grouping of widows mentioned in 1 Tim 5:3-16 continued under male control and it is possible that they lived together in community along with dedicated virgins (Ignatius, Polyc. 4, Smyrn. 13, Polycarp, Phil. 4). Certainly the contemporary world knew religious cults and associations restricted to women and there is evidence for a woman's synagogue in Philippi. It is perhaps for such groups of Christian women that the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla were written, because Thecla is set forward both as a vowed virgin and as a missionary commissioned by Paul "to teach the Word of God", enlightening many in Seleucia (6-9, 41, 43). Before the end of the second century, Tertullian tells of women claiming the right to teach and baptize on the basis of this story, a right which he opposed (De bap. 17). The struggle of some women to remain free of male hierarchical control in the church is also reflected in other apocryphal writings, mostly Gnositc, which built on the privileged position of Mary Magdalene and other women at the empty tomb to make her a major recipient of Jesus' revelations and thus a teacher of the apostles, who at first dispute her right to teach (e.g. the Gospel of Mary, Pistis Sophia) or her right to be first in Jesus' love (Gospel of Philip 63f). It is not possible to say whether the women responsible for the presence of such texts also formed a woman church. Among

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the Montanists, while Maximilla and Priscilla exercised leading roles as prophets, Maximilla indeed succeeding Montanus as leader of the movement, and while their women prophets in places taught, baptized and celebrated the eucharist, it was in the assembly of all (Didymus, De Trin. III. 41.3; Cyprian, Epist 75.10). There is no evidence for Montanist women churches.

JEWISH AND HELLENISTIC MODELS FOR THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA

This long descriptive treatment of the church and the churches in the first 150 years or so may be rounded off by listing possible or explicit models that were used by Christians to image their own communities. I include here only those that seem to be most significant, noting that none of them appear in pure form without being mixed with others:

Family/Household of God 'love patriarchy', head of the house (Pastoral Epistles)

Synagogue council of elders and head of synagogue (Jerusalem church under James)

Cultic Assembly of Israel a holy people with a clerical hierarchy (7 Clement and increasingly in 3rd century)

Collegium or Religious Association patron, overseer (episcopos), deacon Town Council and Association of CitizensMayor

(/ Clement, Ignatius) Fellowship of Believers/Disciples Community of Equal Love

(John, Gnostics) Eschatological/Spirit-filled Community (Qumran, John, Montanists) Organic Body of Christ (Paul, Ephesians, Colossians, Irenaeus) World-wide 'Brotherhood'/ 'Race'/ Nation Transcendental Reality a Platonic Idea/Form

(Ephesians, Colossians, Gnostic) Imitation of Christ a community modelled on Jesus' self-abandonment

(Mark, religious communities)

CRITICAL THEOLOGICAL ISSUES These are listed primarily as discussion-reflection points.13

(1) The Normative Role of the early Church This is the fundamental issue. In what ways are the various Christian

communities of the first two centuries normative for us? Given that their models for the church were drawn largely from Jewish and Hellenistic society, can any of them be absolute for us? Note the absence of the popular modern model of the church as Servant or of the church as Mission.

(2) What did 'Church' (Ecclesia) Mean at This Time? In the NT, ecclesia refers to one or more of three gatherings:

(a) Christians meeting together in one house (Rom 16:5, Philem 2) (b) All the Christians and house-communities in one city or province (Acts 8:1, 9:31, 1 Cor 1:2, Col 4:6, Rev 2:1 etc) (c) All the churches and Christians together as one universal church (Eph 1:22f, 5:23, Col 1:18, 24)

In the second century, these uses of ecclesia were expanded at both ends. It is used to refer to an even smaller number than a house church, namely a gathering of three, no doubt drawing on Matthew 18:20, but also given a Trinitarian basis (Tetullian, Pudic 21). With this usage, then, any gathering of Christians could be called 'church'. At the other end, it comes to refer to a reality transcending time

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and space, a spiritual mystery to which the elect, the saved, all believers past and present belong. Further, as a variety of groups began to claim the title for themselves, the great church began to add a number of qualifiers, arriving finally at "the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church".

We are left with the problem of understanding how a local congregation or gathering, a diocese, a national body, a world-wide denomination, and all Christian people can share the name 'church'.

(3) How are 'Orthodox* and 'Heretic' Distinguished? Despite all the developing stress on apostolic ministry, even as late as Irenaeus

what seems to count in the end are: the centrality of Jesus; i.e. confession of faith in Jesus crucified and risen,

the affirmation that Jesus is the one who frees us to be in community with each other and with God:

active love for one another (fellow Christians) through the working of the Holy Spirit.

These are an irreducible minimum for being recognized as Christian churches and themselves raise the basic Christological and Trinitarian questions.

(4) Pluralism and the Canon of Scripture Does the NT canonize plurality, including a diversity of Christian

communities, or does the concept of canon require us to homogenize? To put this another way, are the various Christian communities complementary, able to exist side by side, or does each need to take the other's insights on board (as Brown argues)?15 What happened in fact during the time when the Canon of Scripture was being developed was that the patriarchal apostolic model of'early Catholicism' became dominant, with all the other models subsumed under it. Further we may ask whether the Canon functions as a means of setting the limits to pluralim, so that as long as a community is consistent with one strand of the NT it should be tolerated by others consistent with different strands.

(5) The Meaning of Koinonia16 (a) All NT writers stress the need for unity or communion between believers and many show a consciousness of belonging to a church or community of beievers to be found in every place. They relate a common participation in Christ or a common sharing in the same Spirit to the need for unity among Christians. (b) In centres such as Ephesus there may have been both Pauline and Johannine churches existing side by side, and there is no evidence to suggest that they were not in communion with each other. Even though Paul separated from Peter and Barnabas at Antioch over the question of table fellowship, which presumably included the eucharist, he did not break off relationships with the tradition they represented but raised money for the saints in Jerusalem, taking it there himself (Roml5:25f). (c) Because there is communio Sancii Spiritus (Communion in the Holy Spirit), there must be communio sanctorum (Communion of the saints), which requires communio in sacris (Communion in sacraments). (6) A Complex of Canons11

As we saw developing in Irenaeus, Scripture was not the only canon produced as a guarantee of apostolic tradition. At the same time as the establishing of th

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NT Canon, there came into existence other apostolic canons Creeds Ministry Liturgies for Sacraments (Initiation-Baptism and Eucharist) Praxis love and discipleship.

How do these Canons relate to each other? In talking of development, is there a 'Golden age' of the first five centuries? Does development come to an end? What are the criteria for legitimate development?

(7) Institutional Barriers and Openness to the World Every Christian community needs some self-definition over against the world

and this may lead to introversion or the creation of barriers. It posed no problem for Paul himself and he apparently expected outsiders to come to the gatherings of believings (1 Cor 14:23-25). However, nowhere in the surviving sources is Paul seen to encourage his congregations to engage in evangelism, except in the ministry of evangelists, and direct outreach does not form part of early churches' self-definition, although the church grew abundantly. But what these churches did was to define themselves in ways that were open to the world, as places for all peoples, nations and cultures.

(8) Semper Reformando and the Ideal Community of the Kingdom The churches' structures and institutions are constantly called into question by

the interaction between the renewing drive of the Spirit, the Gospel portraits of Jesus, his pattern of relationships and proclamation of the Kingdom, and the idealised picture of the early Jerusalem church in Acts. Our vision of God's Kingdom continues to reform the life ofthat community which the Spirit gathers around Jesus through those who stand in the line of the apostles and prophets.

FOOTNOTES 1. On the pluralism of early Christian Communities, see E. Schweizer, Church Order in the New

Testament (SCM, 1961); E. Ksemann, New Testament Question of Today (SCM, 1969), pp. 236-59; J.D.G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (SCM, 1977); D. Harrington Light of all Nations (Glazier, 1982); W. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (E.T. Fortress, 1971:1934).

2. Most helpful here is Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians. The Social World of the Apostle Paul (Yale UP., 1983) and John G. Gager, Kingdom and Community. The Social World of Early Christianity Prentice-Hall, 1975). See also J.M. Robinson and H. Koester, Trajectories Through Early Christianity (Fortress, 1971). A more detailed and extended approach than the one adopted here is E. Schillebeeckx, The Church with a Human Face (SCM, 1985).

3. This book is a companion to his earlier ones, The Community of the Beloved Desciple (Chapman, 1979) and, with J.P. Meier, Antioch and Rome. New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity (Paulist, 1983).

4. J. P. Audet, Structures of Christian Priesthood (Sheed & Ward, 1967), p. 159. R. Banks, Paul's Idea of Community (Lancer, 1979), pp. 45-50, puts the number at 40-45 as a maximum.

5. See the discussions of this term in Ksemann, Dunn, and Harrington cited above. 6. R.E. Brown, The Gospel According to John 2 Vols (Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1966) and The

Epistles of John (Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1982). 7. Brown, Community, pp. 168f. 8. Ibid., p. 84. 9. I rely here particularly on the work of E.S. Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (SCM, 1983).

10. Brown, Epistles, pp. 69-115. 11. See texts in J.M. Robinson (ed), The Nag Hammadi Library (Harper & Row, 1977) and the

discussion of E.H. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (Random House, 1979). 12. Brown, Community, pp. 93-164, Epistles, pp. 100-115.

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13. Y. Congar, Diversity and Communion (SCM, 1984), has a much more extended theological discussion of issues arising from the starting point of pluralism.

14. The final chapter of Dunn, op. cit., is very helpful here. 15. Brown, Churches, pp. 73f, 99, 123, 149f. 16. See S. Brown, "Koinonia as the Basis of New Testament Ecclesiology", One in Christ, 12(1976),

157-167. 17. See J. Knox, The Early Church and the Coming Great Church, (Abingdon, 1955).

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