Definition/Biblical Imagery
I have chosen to call this chapter “the Church” instead of the more formal word “Ecclesiology.” This is due largely to the fact that this will be more of an extended reflection on various topics relevant to understanding the church and how believers fit into it than an in-depth study of all the problems that this topic is capable of. These problems are so extensive that, if one wanted to deal with every one of them, the chapter might very well exceed the length of the rest of the work combined. It is my concern to raise some classical issues and think them out in a way consistent with the rest of this work, that is, using Christ as the beginning, middle and end of our thinking.
The church has been defined in different ways throughout the years. Sometimes, and still within certain branches of the church, it is defined by outward association with a leader or a series of leaders (such as the Pope or the sum of the Eastern Orthodox bishops). However, in more recent times, there has been a greater appeal to the scripture to define what the church is. Interestingly, the mainstream of the Reformation looked to verses like Matthew 18:20 to define the church. “For where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst.” This goes along with their definition of where the church is to be found: Where the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments are rightly administered.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it perpetuates the problematic thinking that the church is bound up by a particular gathering. So long as Christians are gathered together for Word and Sacrament, we cannot doubt that a church exists according to this way of understanding it, but what happens when the people leave the gathering and go home? Are they still part of the church? Very few people would say that people who are part of the church when they are gathered together are no longer part of the church when they are no longer so gathered, but this just goes to show that Matthew 18:20 is not sufficient in itself (it might also be argued that it appears within the context of a chapter regarding church discipline, and not intended to define the church in the first place).
John Wesley, the leader of the Methodist movement in England in the eighteenth century, took a somewhat different approach. He was not concerned about establishing his movement as an independent church, for that was what he was hoping to avoid. Instead, he was intending to foster an ecumenical spirit between the Anglican Church and the various nonconformist churches, members of whom were active participants in his Methodist classes and bands. When setting out to write a sermon on the nature of the church, Wesley appealed, not to the common passage in Matthew, but from Ephesians 4:1-6. “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”
The emphasis in this passage is not on a gathering, but rather the relationship of the believers with the Triune God of grace, bound together by baptism. In light of this treatment of how the believers are to be related to one another, it can come as no surprise that Wesley did not make hasty judgments about whether a particular church preached “the pure word of God” or whether the sacraments were exactly “rightly” administered, but yearned that those who were already united in Christ would be united outwardly, or at
least not be harshly divided. This understanding of the church is radically Trinitarian and thus radically participatory and relational (we are members of the church inasmuch as we participate in the life of God through Christ and in the Spirit).
(It is important to note here that Wesley would be no friend of the rampant relativism found in much of the mainline church today. It is true that, in his sermon “On the Catholic Spirit,” he wrote, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt we may” However, he did not mean that no opinions or doctrines, like the incarnation and the Trinity, were important. He says later, “It is not a speculative latitudinarianism. It is not an indifference to all opinions: this is the spawn of hell, not the offspring of heaven.” Wesley called for all Christians to be gracious and seeking unity, but more than that, he called for them to truly be Christians.)
There are a few images of the church in the New Testament that are particularly potent. One is the calling of the church the “body of Christ.” This comes to marvelous expression in 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul says each believer comes to participate in the gifts of the Spirit (which are also the ministries of Christ and the effects of God the Father) and is empowered to work in complimentary ways so that we are all together the body of Christ, and are all parts of a single, though differentiated whole. This is a wonderful way to think of the church, but it is important that we do not become fixated on the metaphorical sound of the image. It does not seem that Paul meant this to be a true metaphor, that is, we are to think of the various people as being like a body, but rather that we are a body, we are intimately connected to one another as parts of a body and we must always remember that and let it govern our thinking.
A second image is the church as the “bride of Christ.” This only comes up explicitly a few, but important times within the New Testament; however, there are certainly several places in the Old Testament that imply that such an interpretation of the people of God is appropriate. The idea is that the church is like a bride presented to a bridegroom, who makes her his own and gives himself to her completely. This is a rich image, but we must be careful not to read every aspect of marriage, even marriage in ancient Israel, into it. After all, a bride would provide a dowry, and we surely cannot think, in light of the person and work of Christ, that we are to provide a dowry to make the marriage worth Christ’s while. No, instead, an idea latent in an allegorical understanding of the Song of Solomon (which not all agree with, it must be stated), is useful here. There, we read about a wealthy king who takes a poor Shulamite woman to be his bride. In this case, the bride has nothing to contribute to the king, but is the recipient of all blessings.
A third image, used only once explicitly by Christ is that believers are branches on a vine. This is more properly an image of the church than it is an image of the individual believer. After all, we are not all totally separate branches on totally separate vines; rather, we are all branches on the very same vine of Christ. This is important as it emphasizes that, at the end of the day, our life does not come from ourselves, but it is, as it were, the blood of Christ that pumps through our veins as the church. We are so bound to Christ that we cannot exist outside of him. As all believers are equally bound to Christ the same vine, they are all equally bound to one another, as each are bound to Christ. This kind of imagery is implied every time we read Paul speak of believers as being “in Christ,” a phrase that appears in Paul’s writings well over one hundred times. It is, in many ways the dominant imagery to speak of the life of faith, both individually and corporately, and was recognized as such by the reformers, but has been ignored in much of modern thinking due to the amazing primacy given to the concept of being forgiven.
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