Restoring the New Testament Church By Looking Backwards

The term "restoring the New Testament church" is popular in our time.  Church plants often trumpet a vision around this theme, and that's not a bad thing.  It acknowledges that our present practice of church life is lacking something compared to what is described in the New Testament.  It's not difficult to get a group of Christians to agree to the question, "Should we build a New Testament church?"  However, agreeing to do this and actually creating such a church are very different things.

What is a New Testament church?

After agreeing to the first question, the next question becomes, "What exactly does a New Testament church look like?"

The fact is there is no single ideal New Testament church example that we can follow.  We see some variety, but more importantly we see failure mixed in with success.  The Jerusalem church leaders had trouble distributing the food to the widows and needed financial support from the other churches when a famine hit, the Galatian church was sidetracked by legalism, and the Corinthian church had chaotic meetings and members who sued each other.  The church at Sardis had a reputation for being alive but was dead, and the Laodician church was lukewarm.  Each one of these was a New Testament church, but when folks say, "Let's build a New Testament church," they probably aren't referring to these specific characteristics.

Some people see the New Testament church as one that emphasized evangelism, or practiced intimate community life among its members, or every member serving rather than letting a paid professional staff do all the work, or team eldership, or the full functioning of the spiritual gifts, or an emphasis on relational ministry rather than a focus on church buildings and programs.  Any of these goals are noble and would represent a step towards the original behaviour of the New Testament churches.

But getting agreement on the specific qualities of a New Testament church is still not the most difficult question.  That crown belongs to this question:

How do we actually build a New Testament church?

Answers to this question are harder to come by, at least by successful practitioners.  Critics are a dime a dozen, but leaders who have actually accomplished what they set out to do are fewer.  Setting out a vision and achieving that vision are very different things.

Many church planting methods are out there, and some of them actually work.  I have no desire to repeat or debate those -- others are better qualified at that than I am.

However, as we are busy restoring an aspect or two of the New Testament church, how do we keep from losing some of our existing church traits that are good?  How can we ensure we move forward in one area without taking a step backward in another?

I propose to tackle this question of restoring the New Testament church from a completely different perspective.

Learn By Looking Backwards

If we are lacking characteristics from the original New Testament churches, that means at some point along the journey the church lost those characteristics.  It seems therefore that if we understand why and how the church lost those traits in the first place, it may help us both to restore them and how to avoid losing them again in our generation.

So in coming blog posts, I want to try to answer questions such as, "How did the church ...

• ... lose baptism by faith and adopt infant baptism?"
• ... lose team eldership and vest church authority in a lone bishop?"
• ... lose symbolic communion and believe the bread and wine literally become the flesh and blood of Christ?"
• ... lose the priesthood of all believers and adopt a distinction between clergy and laity?"
• ... lose the independence of each local congregation and adopt a central hierarchy that imposed decisions on other churches?"

... and numerous other similar questions.

It's not always possible to answer these questions with absolute authority because historical church records were not written for the purpose of answering these questions.  Therefore, most of the time the answers will have to be inferred.  However, I believe we can glean enough information to understand what caused the church to lose these traits in generations past, and therefore understand what errors we need to avoid in our time.

Epistle to Diognetus

Despite all of the persecutions, internal conflicts and failures of the early church, some true Christian witness remained.  The Epistle to Diognetus is one such testimony.   It shows that about a century after the close of the New Testament, the key aspects of Christian behaviour and beliefs were still functioning and intact.

Broadbent sums it up this way:  "Amidst the confusion of conflicting parties there were true teachers, able and eloquent in directing souls in the way of salvation."  (The Pilgrim Church, p. 39)

The author of this letter is unknown, as is his recipient Diognetus.  The author refers to himself as "a disciple of the Apostles" and "a teacher of the Gentiles" (Diognetus 11:1) but nowhere gives his name.  Some sources call it the "Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus" but Mathetes is just the Greek word for "disciple" and it is unlikely that this was the writer's name.  The emperor Marcus Aurelius had a tutor named Diognetus, but it is unclear if this was the same person who received this letter.  The letter was likely written in the late second century A.D., but only a single manuscript from the 13th century survived.  That manuscript was destroyed at Strasbourg during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, but by then other copies had been made.

The epistle is a response to Diognetus' questions about Christianity.  The introduction states:

Since I see thee, most excellent Diognetus, exceedingly desirous to learn the mode of worshipping God prevalent among the Christians, and inquiring very carefully and earnestly concerning them, what God they trust in, and what form of religion they observe, so as all to look down upon the world itself, and despise death, while they neither esteem those to be gods that are reckoned such by the Greeks, nor hold to the superstition of the Jews; and what is the affection which they cherish among themselves; and why, in fine, this new kind or practice [of piety] has only now entered into the world, and not long ago; I cordially welcome this thy desire, and I implore God, who enables us both to speak and to hear, to grant to me so to speak, that, above all, I may hear you have been edified, and to you so to hear, that I who speak may have no cause of regret for having done so.

The writer then goes on to tackle a number of Diognetus' questions.

The first one is the futility of idol worship, which Diognetus apparently practices.  Christians were viewed as abnormal for refusing to worship idols, but the writer turns the situation on its head and argues it is the pagans who are behaving abnormally by worshiping objects made of wood (subject to rot), iron (subject to rust) or silver (subject to theft) which clearly have no inherent divine characteristics.  The God of the Christians is not something invented by man.

He also contrasts Christians with the Jews, who while they worship the true God, they do so by keeping a myriad of rules and by offering sacrifices, which leads to boasting.  Christians do not worship God in this fashion.

So what distinguishes Christians then?  The writer tackles this eloquently in Chapter 5 of his epistle.

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; ... But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives.

This passage gives an interesting glimpse into the pagan culture of their day.  Killing unwanted babies was apparently accepted, but not among the Christians.  Monogamous marriages were not the cultural norm, but for Christians they were.  (Lightfoot and Harmer's translation states, "They have their meals in common, but not their wives.")

It's also interesting to note that Christians of this period saw no need to distinguish themselves by outward appearances, such as clothing, as the Hutterites and Old Order Mennonites do today.  Their behaviour was what distinguished those early Christians from the rest of society, not the externals.

The writer appears to be familiar with the Gospel of John, as he refers to Christ as the Word and quotes from John 3:16 (Diognetus 10:2).  He also quotes a phrase from 1 Peter 3:18, "the just for the unjust" when describing Christ's sacrifice for our sins. (Diognetus 9:2)  He understands that it is not the organizational hierarchy of the church that preserves it, but rather through Christ "who is ever born afresh in the hearts of the saints" (Diognetus 11:4) that keeps the church enriched and "the tradition of the Apostles ... preserved," an apparent reference to the fight against heresies.

This letter is a very wise and gracious presentation of the Christian faith.  The writer is likely one of the earliest Christian apologists, other than the New Testament writers themselves.