I thought I’d make a rather belated response to a discussion on church and pomo and An und fur sich about the church that happened a while back. Adam Kotsko wonders why people move from saying ‘community is necessary to follow Christ’ to saying ‘we must therefore join an existing church.’ He wonders why a group of like-minded liberals couldn’t get together and start a community that is more true to Christ than current existing churches.
The traditional response, since Irenaeus, has been to suggest that apostolic succession ensures the continuity of genuine faith, and this is tied in with bishops and particular episcopal structures. But this was developed in a time before there were any dogmatic creeds (though there was a fairly universal rule of faith), before any ecumenical councils, whilst Christianity was very new and persecuted and still partly secret from outsiders. In a changed context with two thousand years of history, large institutions, many churches, books, academics, a billion lay people, councils, do we still need bishops passing the faith to one another to ensure fidelity to Christ? Have there been lay people who have started churches? If they did, was it in response to missionaries? You have to hear the message first before you can start a church, and ideally you need to be taught a form of life that is recognisably Christian too.
Part of point of apostolic tradition is publicly preserved tradition (contrast with Gnostic secret tradition). But does the priesthood of all believers figure in enough in early AS doctrine? Probably it couldn’t given the situation the early church was in. Now we’re in new situation in which learning and reading are widespread, so a kind of democratization has taken place, which changes things. This goes along with Irenaeus’ idea of orthodox churches going back to apostles and heretical churches arriving later: now that the tradition is so public and so widely known and now that so much missionary activity has taken place, I’m not sure that argument is as strong.
I think the intention of apostolic succession is at least two-fold: to ensure fidelity to Christ and the tradition as it has been developed by the church and the Spirit, and to enable communion with other churches. The former is part of the response to questions of what is normative for followers of Christ (orthodox): the tradition delineates certain things, though there is actually not a lot of agreement here: the stricter Orthodox do not recognise Protestants as Christians, etc. The latter is part of the initial premise: to follow Christ is to be in community, especially in God’s people as understood and instituted through Christ. Part of the way the doctrine and practice of apostolic succession secured both of these intentions was through a kind of peer review: bishops would come to ordinations of priests in other sees, would discuss with each other and ask for advice, as indeed would priests (I’m using these terms for convenience, I realise they only come into existence post-NT) – letter writing between churches is a marked feature of early Christianity.
My guess is that there is no exhaustive list of normative features of a faithful church, but that they have a kind of Wittgensteinian family resemblance; you know one when you see one if your competent in the language. Part of the doctrine of apostolic succession is the notion that the Holy Spirit and the charism of ordination is passed on only through the laying on of hands of the bishops: you simply cannot function in that role in a church without that passing on of the chrism of ordination. If you start a new, independent church you bypass that, but, sociologically, someone could perform the functions of a priest in such a community without having been ordained, though the community itself would have to recognise them in that role. So I’m not so worried about the orthodoxy of independent churches (though in my experience they often seem fundamentalist. But isn’t Shane Clareborne’s community an independent start? That seems pretty decent). I would wonder about how such a group would maintain communion with other churches. What practices or mechanisms or policies would be in place that would keep them accountable to the wider body of the church? How would they take correction, consult, share ideas? How would they practice repentance? If you start a community because you think you can be more faithful to Christ/ianity than most churches then what’s to stop you becoming arrogant? What’s to stop you becoming heterodox? Of course, there’s no guarantee any local church won’t do that, or an institution. In fact, many institutions and churches are good and bad at the same time, like most things. So you pick your problems; what can you live with, what can’t you. Personally, for example, I love high liturgy but can’t cope with refusal to ordain women.
I also want to come back to Adam’s claim that most churches fail to be faithful to Christ. We clearly have different experiences. I’m fortunate to attend a wonderful local church that practices hospitality, compassion, mercy, repentance, love, support, loving communion. Some of the things that go on at the general level of that church are downright morally wrong, but I think the local level is more important.
One answer to Adam is to say, ‘start a church. Get some people to help you, because church history is littered with groups who thought they were better than the church in general.’ That sounds more harsh than I mean it to, but if you think you can do better than the church, then you should. When I say ‘do better than the church’ I don’t mean the large institution of a whole denomination; that’s just not a like for like, or fair, comparison. I mean you should be a group of people that is more faithful to Christ than most local churches. Then we could discuss what that looks like in communal practice.
A further point. If communion is important, surely better to start a church in communion, and that is to start from an existing denomination. Here is where the Anglicans have done so well: they have allowed groups of like-minded people to start churches that are experimental yet overseen by a bishop. So they give traditionalists what they want and Adam’s types what they want. That also helps the existing church too, because they can see a part of them living in a certain way and precisely because that group is a part of their church they can be more open to the challenge they may present.
To satisfy our systematic friends I should probably say something about the church being constituted by the Spirit but I’m not sure how that applies in this context. Most ‘movements of the Spirit’ are discernable only through discussion in the church (perhaps this is what the Anglican model attempts?)
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