This is a good point, I think, to stop and say some good things about CENI, the idea of looking in the Bible for commands, examples and necessary inferences. I’ve tried to emphasize throughout that my problem is with the use of CENI as a hermeneutic. I object to the idea that says “Just look for commands, examples and inferences, and you’ll know what God wants.” That doesn’t work.
A few other things that I disagree with:
- The idea that the Bible “authorizes” certain things to be done in worship. The concept of authorization is foreign to the New Testament. (So yes, I reject the regulative principle)
- The idea that the New Testament was written to be a constitution. Reading the Bible as legal code fails to recognize the text for what it is: an ancient sacred text. It’s not a science book. It’s not a history book. It’s not legal code. It’s not even a love letter, which was a popular concept not long ago. It is a collection of the writings of God’s people. They are occasional writings. They have a teaching purpose, even the books that seem to be mere narrative or poetry. They are not law code.
- The idea that we are to restore the first century church. (Which one? The Jerusalem church that was “zealous for the Law”? The Corinthian church with its divisions? The Ephesian church that was plagued by false teachers? The Thessalonian church that had lazy members?) We are to attempt to be the church that God wants us to be. We should be a biblical church, seeking to live out the norms of the Bible in a twenty-first century world. The goal of the early church was to be like Jesus. We should imitate that goal. We don’t try to be like the first-century church. We try to be like Jesus.
That being said, I like the idea of looking to the early Christians to learn about how to please God. I believe that we, as Luke says of the Jerusalem Christians, should devote ourselves to the teachings of the apostles. We should examine the commands given in the New Testament, analyze them and learn from them. Some are obviously temporal in nature; others seem to have a longer reach.
We should look to the example of the early church and learn from that example. I should say “examples,” I guess, for there are multiple examples. There are things we should imitate about the early church. There are things we should avoid. And inferences are part of how we come to understand these stories.
Unless we’re going to deem the New Testament record irrelevant, we will look at the commands and examples of the Bible and consider the inferences we make from them. In that respect, CENI is great. Long live CENI. But as a hermeneutic, it’s a failure. It’s a way of putting ourselves in the seat of Law Giver, when that seat is already occupied. It’s way of taking our opinions and making them laws, of codifying our traditions.
Obviously there’s a lot more to say on this subject. We’ll continue the discussion. I just want to make sure that I give commands, examples and inferences the respect they deserve.
Tim,
The only one that surprises me on this post is your rejection of the Restoration Principle. Wasn’t the goal of the first-century churches to follow Jesus, as you say? Inasmuch as this is the case, can we not consider them case studies toward that end? And what’s wrong with wanting to be a part of the institution Christ meant to establish (Matt 16:18/Eph 2:20)?
i guess i’ve never heard anyone who adheres to a Restoration Principle caching it out in terms of re-establishing one particular congregation mentioned in Scripture. But in that vein, what would be wrong with wanting to imitate Smyrna (Rev 2:8)?
Guy,
I wondered how that one would come across. I’ve written on this before, in a post last summer.
I know that no one talks about restoring one congregation in particular. But if we’re going to restore the first century church, isn’t that church made up of different congregations? Weren’t they as diverse as congregations are today? Some would deny that, but the epistles show us they were.
I didn’t say I don’t want to be a part of the church. I’m saying that I don’t want to imitate an imitation of Jesus, I want to imitate Jesus himself. The early church was far from perfect. If I imitate them, with their errors, and do so imperfectly, I’ll be even further from the original. The apostles didn’t go out with the model of the Jerusalem church, insisting that every congregation try to do what was being in Jerusalem. They went out preaching Jesus. That’s why the Antioch church could open its doors to Gentile members before the Jerusalem church apparently did.
I’m not against restoring New Testament Christianity. I’m against “restoring the first century church.”
Grace and peace,
Tim
I wouldn’t say that the concept of authorization is foreign to the New Testament.
Often Jesus is challenged to verify whatever it is which authorizes him to do or say certain things. “By what authority…?”
The New Testament doesn’t look with a great deal of favor upon the authorization-demanding attitude. The canon was not written in order to provide “Thus saith the Lord” authorizations for every activity – that’s TOTALLY not what Col 3:17 is talking about! *deep breath* *rantover*
Like you said, that ain’t what it’s there for – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t in there sometimes.
Tim,
You wrote:
“I know that no one talks about restoring one congregation in particular. But if we’re going to restore the first century church, isn’t that church made up of different congregations?”
i take it (correct me if i’m wrong) that you’re claiming that the Restoration Principle entails that each 21st century congregation is obligated to emulate a particular 1st century congregation. No, i don’t see how that follows at all. Are you saying there’s no other way for a Restoration Principle-advocate to understand the word “church” in the principle? Why think that?
Surely what advocates mean is “church” in a more abstract sense similar to how we can talk about “government” without referring to any particular or concrete example of national leadership. i don’t see how this “which church?” objection rebuts *that* position. i’m not saying advocates have it all right. i’m just saying if i understand your objection correctly (do i?), it seems like a straw-man.
Now in your other post you do point out that the apostles did not travel around saying “do like the Jerusalem church.” That seems totally right. But notice Paul did have teachings/practices he claimed to enjoin on all churches (1Cor 7:17; 11:16; 1Tim 3:15). And surely baptism and communion were institutional features of every church (does anyone really want to deny that?). And surely Jesus had something in mind when He said He would establish His “church” (He clearly couldn’t have been referring to a particular concrete congregation, could He?).
And i don’t see how you’d get things like the offices, appointing of, or qualification of elders and deacons, or the proper use/practice of miraculous gifts if you were merely trying to imitate Christ. You need apostolic teaching and the example of NT churches for that, don’t you?
So i thought the position goes something like: Since the churches we read about in the NT were the recipients of apostolic teachings, it is likely that we can investigate their behavior/practice/beliefs in such a way that might afford us these kind of features like Paul was talking about–that is, perhaps we can discern which of the respective features of each case study was normative, anomalous, erroneous, etc. And that is what is meant by “restoring the first century church.” That’s how i always understood the position to go. Do you have authors/sources that represent the position differently? And if that is the position even as you understood it, then i don’t understand how exactly this differs from what you’re calling “restoring NT Christianity” (as opposed to “restoring the first century church”)?
You wrote:
“Weren’t they as diverse as congregations are today?”
If you mean the CoC, then definitely not, i’d say. Just as you’ve pointed out, where’s the fasting? Or where are any orders of widows? Or orders of virgins? Where’s the congregations who live communally?
But i think saying that CoC’s have been inconsistent or mistaken in their application of the Restoration Principle is quite different than saying there’s something mistaken about the principle itself.
–guy
Rather than getting into each of your points, guy, I’d simply say this:
Restoring 1st Century Christianity places the focus where the NT places the focus – upon the relationship with, walk with, and imitation of Christ.
Restoring the 1st Century Church places the focus on the bride rather than the groom.
Let Jesus restore the church while we continue to restore and renew our relationships with him.
Nick,
And you’re saying that people who advocate “The idea that we are to restore the first century church” as Tim put it mean or intend or understand that idea as: “Restoring the 1st Century Church places the focus on the bride rather than the groom” as you’ve put it? Who does?
i don’t see how that idea necessarily leads to that understanding of it. And if it doesn’t, then i don’t see why the idea itself ought to be rejected (at least not on that basis).
–guy
Guy,
The problem I see is that there is this myth of uniformity among first-century congregations. That’s why, for example, people take the qualities of elders list from 1 Timothy 3 and combine it with the one from Titus 1, rather than recognizing the differences that exist in those lists. They were similar, but not exactly the same, for the needs of the different congregations were not the same.
It was right for the Jerusalem church to continue practicing Judaism. It would have been wrong for the Galatian church to do so. Holding up the portrait of “the first century church” ignores the fact that the church of the first century was quite diverse.
Those Christians were living out the principles of Christ in their situation, both in terms of time and in terms of place. Going back to the elders lists: it was right for the Ephesian church to avoid the appointing of new converts. That church had existed for decades when Paul wrote Timothy. Not so the Cretan church, which is why that qualification doesn’t appear in the list Titus received. By talking about “the first century church,” we overlook those elements and try to create a homogeneity where there was none.
You are right in recognizing a larger scope to the word “church.” I can see now why you were bothered by my statement. Maybe I’m reacting more to a misapplication of the phrase “restore the first century church.” As you noted, Paul emphasized that certain practices were taught universally. Doesn’t that imply that other practices were not? (Is that a necessary inference? ;-) ) When I hear people talk about restoring the church of the first century, the idea seems to be that every church service was basically the same, that every church was structured essentially the same, etc.
If we believe the apostles to have enjoyed a special standing within the church, how can we restore the church without apostles? Most who seek to restore the first century church reject the presence of miraculous gifts today. Given the prominent place those gifts played in the first century, how can we restore the church without having the same gifts?
Rather than restore the first century church, I believe in restoring what the first century church was supposed to be: the body of Christ in their given context.
Grace and peace,
Tim
Forgot to fulfill my duty of correcting your misunderstanding (and my miscommunication). No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m denying the existence of one singular expression of “the first century church.”
I don’t think that’s what they intend to do, guy – I think the law of unintended consequences took a big ol’ chomp out of their good intentions.
The church is the bride.
Putting the focus on the church… puts the focus on the bride. I’m not sure what’s unnecessary there.
Also… baptism and communion are practiced nearly universally among all branches and sects and denominations of Christianity. The reasoning may differ behind them; the frequency may differ; but the practices remain foundational.
Those who promote the restoration of the first-century church argue that that is not enough; there must be *must have* weekly communion and baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sins (along with the VAST host of other issues upon which we must all agree) or the church has not been restored. The problem is – as we have seen replayed time after time after time – agreement on a vast majority of those things is no guarantee that those in agreement will be thereby formed into Christlikeness. Why not? Because they’re not AIMING for Christ-likeness, but 1st-century-church-likeness.
Our *focus* is important. We’ve been convinced by the plea to restore the 1st-century church that the command to “imitate me, as I imitate Christ” will be best fulfilled by cobbling together all the commands and examples from the 1st century congregations, mixing them together, trying to sift out their mistakes, and assuming that what is left behind will be Christlikeness.
It hasn’t happened, and after two hundred years, isn’t it possible to draw the conclusion that aiming at the wrong thing tends to make you hit the wrong thing?
All of those churches were trying, in their own cultures and contexts, to imitate Christ. Why should we try to replicate THEM rather than imitate Him in our own cultures and contexts?
Tim,
You wrote:
“By talking about “the first century church,” we overlook those elements and try to create a homogeneity where there was none.”
But as you’ve pointed out, features of those lists which were not normative are discernible. As you say, there has been clear misapplication of the principle. And homogeneity (5 points to the house of Tim-Arch-en-dor for word of the day! =o) among the various NT congregation need not be an assumption held together with the Restoration Principle, no? At least, i don’t see how the Restoration Principle entails it. But i agree it’s a mistaken assumption that is commonly held when CoC’s have tried to apply the Restoration Principle.
You wrote:
“If we believe the apostles to have enjoyed a special standing within the church, how can we restore the church without apostles? Most who seek to restore the first century church reject the presence of miraculous gifts today. Given the prominent place those gifts played in the first century, how can we restore the church without having the same gifts?”
This is actually part of the “mind-splinter” that moved me to leave. So far as i could tell, CoC-brand-cessationism and CoC-brand-restorationism just don’t seem compatible.
i guess it’s only fair that i show some of my cards. i think despite the apparent heterogeneity among the first century congregations, i tend to think the church was moving toward a greater degree of uniformity (Eph 4:11ff). –that there is a clear progression or evolution or development if you will from the “church” (abstract sense) in Acts 2 vs Acts 28 (so to speak). And i also tend to think that “restore” is the scary term in the principle. i guess i don’t see why i need to accept that some terrible and enormous apostasy happened right at the end of the first century or shortly thereafter. But minus talk of “restoration,” it does seem that we need justification for our beliefs/practices that so far as i can tell is more or less in accord with a Restoration Principle.
–guy
Nick,
You wrote:
“Putting the focus on the church… puts the focus on the bride. I’m not sure what’s unnecessary there.”
But you’ve smuggled in the term “focus” here which i think is doing the heavy lifting in y our argument.
Paul said “follow me as i follow Christ.” i don’t think his instruction necessarily caused the Corinthians to misplace their “focus.” In the same way i don’t see how the Restoration Principle would necessarily do so.
–guy
Show me where a Restoration thinker has formulated the Restoration Principle in such a way that we can “be all things to all people, that by any means available we might save some” and I’ll buy that the Restoration Principle says no more than “Imitate the early church, even as they imitated Christ.”
That’s not what “Restoration Principle” has meant over the course of the 200-year history of the movement – it is a little late in the game to fight for the words and smuggle in a different definition.
Nick,
Suppose there were a principle like: “Obey God in all things.”
i think we could make a very good case that much of first century Phariseeism could claim that principle as justification for their various abuses. And we could even say, “show me one Pharisee who doesn’t understand that principle in such a way that leads to all these abuses” and we could likely come up with no examples concrete or ideological. Does it follow [a] that we ought to reject the principle? Or that the abuses follow *necessarily* from the principle? [b] Yet it may be true that every instance of a Pharisee’s commitment leads to abuses.
i admit that something analogous to [b] may very well be true. But my beef in this discussion regards [a].
–guy
It’s funny, but it’s the Ephesians 4 passage that moved me away from talking about restoring the church. For I saw there the clear focus of the early church: become like Jesus.
They weren’t looking to each other to discern the model. They were looking to Christ. Yes, Paul said “imitate me” but he threw in “as I imitate Christ.” I can look at your imitation of Christ to gain an idea of how I might live it out, but the ultimate standard is Christ, not your particular imitation of Christ.
Grace and peace,
Tim
P.S.—True confession… I was looking for another way to say “uniformity,” so I called up the thesaurus on my computer!
Tim,
i guess i don’t see that Christ aimed *merely* for various individuals to imitate all His behaviors, but He did intend to establish an organization that does have within it offices, functions, and roles–that Christ’s church and kingdom is more than any given set of individuals mimicking Christ’s behaviors recorded in red letters. And in some mysterious sense, that organization is His Body. And given that, i don’t see why there should be in principle any dichotomy between following/imitating Christ and following/imitating (or perhaps, maintaining) the offices, function, roles, beliefs, practices of the organization Christ sought to establish.
–guy
guy – *Major* difference.
“Obey God in all things” is not a man-formulated principle. It is codified as a command of God all through the Tanakh.
The Restoration Principle, as good of an idea as it might be, is not an instruction from God – the failure of traditional CoC thinkers and writers, after 200 years, to produce such an instruction from Scripture is pretty convincing that it is a tradition of men rather than a doctrine of God.
And “organization” is not the word I would use to describe the family/body that Christ sought to establish. Most things in the cosmos have some level of organization about them, but I’d hardly call most of them organizations.
Nick,
i see a parallel here between this discussion and the blog post you shared with me yesterday. Patrick Mead’s interlocutor expressed the notion that everywhere he’d seen abuses, there’d been institutionalization. Therefore, the abuses were mere symptoms of institutionalization, and institutionalization should be rejected. What was Mead’s response? Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. i see a good case that abuses have tracked the Restoration Principle. But i have a Mead-like intuition about this case. Saying there’s something faulty in the principle itself is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Yes, the Restoration Principle is man-made that “Obey God in all things” is not. But i don’t see why that’s a relevant difference in this discussion. My only point was that abuses performed in the name of a principle does not necessarily implicate the principle itself. The Restoration Principle may be false or worthy of rejection for some other reasons. Fine. But i don’t see why it is for *this* reason. That’s my point.
–guy
Okay… maybe I need to back up and get a clearer view of the whole picture.
Patrick’s argument is that some level of institutionalization is inescapable whenever people consistently come together in groups for a common purpose. It is inescapable, so if a person is frustrated with one particular manifestation, they shouldn’t abandon the concept of getting together in groups – they should look for and work with a group more suitable to them.
How is the concept of restoration (as opposed to some formulation of a capital-letter Restoration Principle) of the 1st-century church essential to us?
—————-
A different question – doesn’t the very denotation of “restoration” assume that there was a prior condition that was better than the current condition, to which we need to return? THAT is the principle I reject – that the 1st-century church was the squeaky-clean and shiny, right-off-the-showroom-floor model and that the current model (or even the model received by Campbell, Stone, etc.) is something out of a demolition derby that needs to be restored to its former glory.
That’s why Dallas Burdette asserts that the neither Stone nor Campbell used the term “Restoration Movement.” Rather, it was the Stone-Campbell Reformation.
Reforming simply denotes the need for improvement.
Restoring says that there was once an idyllic state that must be returned to.
Nick,
Well, we understood Patrick’s comments differently.
But i still don’t think i should reject the Restoration Principle based on historical abuses of it. Not anymore than i should reject Christianity on the basis of abuses that have always seemed to accompany it.
i’d agree with you. It’s the “restore” bit i don’t like. But that’s because i don’t think the church somehow disappeared or was lost or suffered some huge apostasy.
–guy
Nick,
Oh yeah, i forgot. Incidentally, i thought your comment about “organization” was interesting. i take organization to refer to a group of people organized toward a certain end/goal wherein there may even be offices or distinctions of duties and roles. By that understanding i’d say the church is an organization. Why not?
–guy
Because that isn’t Scriptural language for the church.
Israel was an group of people arranged towards a certain goal wherein there were offices and distinctions of duties and roles.
But of all the different language used to describe it, organization never really comes up, and while I don’t have a problem with innovative language that furthers kingdom work, I’m not convinced that the connotations of “organization” add more than they subtract from the discussion.
i take it Israel was an organization too. As any nation or kingdom is. i don’t see why the term should have a bad connotation. i mean, i don’t understand what motivates the aversion. You make the “scriptural language” comment but i’m guessing you’re okay with the word “Bible” and “New Testament.” What does “organization” subtract?
–guy
Okay. Can someone clear the air for me. Was the Restoration Principle originally stated as the desire to restore the New Testament Church or to restore New Testament Christianity? One would focus on the group, the other on the individual.
That asked, I feel frustrated by those who scoff (yes, they actually scoff at the idea) of restoring a NT church. They start spinning questions like Tim did (“Which one? Corinth? Galatia? etc.”) until I say I wouldn’t mind being a part of a church like the Corinthian one. It usually stops them dead in their tracks. “You mean with all the division and acceptance of sin?” I respond that I’d love to work with a church that is so gung-ho to do what God wants them to that you have to get their attention again and rein them back (as in dealing with the man who was living in sin with his stepmother). It would be a fresh change for once…
Just an observation, but can’t we say that of most NT churches — that they deeply desired to do GOD’S WILL? Of course, wouldn’t want to be known as the “God-Spit Church of Christ” (aka, Laodicea). But then again, we don’t know the end result of hearing the chastisement from Revelation 3.
I am having more problems with NI than C and E. Doesn’t “inference” mean that you’re reading in between the lines? And who determines what is “necessary”? There are very few doctrines espoused that rely on Necessary Inference to stand. The ones I know of that do usually result in division, not so much that one party is faithful and the other isn’t, but that one party thinks it’s necessary to infer and the other party doesn’t.
Perhaps then the way we can look at and learn from the examples of the early church in the New Testament should be the same way that we (hopefully) look at and learn from the examples of Israel in the Old Testament. Both examples are examples of people striving to live as God’s people but neither are automatically prescriptive for us today but are meant to be a descriptive record that awakens our own imaginations, as people indwelled by the Holy Spirit, as to how we might live faithfully to God. This is not to say that there are no prescriptive instructions found among the text, rather it moves us beyond reading the Bible as a piece of legislation that it was never meant to be.
Grace and Peace,
Rex
Barry,
I’m very comfortable with the idea of restoring New Testament Christianity. (But I don’t see that as focused on the individual; I see it as focused on the divine principles rather than the human implementation of those principles)
Again, maybe I’m reacting to the connotations around “restore the first-century church” or the misapplication of that idea. What I fear is that people think that the first-century church enjoyed this idyllic pure form of Christianity which led to a golden age of peace and harmony. I’ve grown up hearing, “If we could just restore the first-century church, Christians around the world would be united.” The idea is that if we can restore the exact practices those Christians, we can enjoy a time of unity.
But they didn’t. If we restore their practices precisely, we can expect to have precisely the same types of problems they did.
I see “New Testament Christianity” as describing the ideal, not the flawed human pursuit of that ideal. I’m much more comfortable with pursuing the ideal.
I wouldn’t want to be a part of the Corinthian church, unless the church were aware of its problems and trying to overcome them. The division there (based on personalities, social differences, etc.) was ugly. The tolerance of immorality was debilitating; it’s one thing to want to reach out to others, it’s quite another to be proud of tolerating flagrant sin. We could go on and on. I don’t see them as “gung ho to do what God wants them to”; look at their practice of the Lord’s Supper. Is there anything in that that reflects a desire to do anything but imitate Greek culture?
[As a balance to all of this, please read my article on Why I Love The Church; I don’t think the church has to be perfect to be godly]
When Josiah found the Book of the Law in the temple, his reform didn’t consist of looking to see how previous generations had lived the Law. It consisted of looking at the Law and studying to see what God expected of people. I think that’s what restoration should be about.
Grace and peace,
Tim
Tim,
I think that when you leave CENI out as a hermeneutical principle, looking at the Scriptures and studying to see what God expected of people is about.
That should read< "…studying to see what God expected of people is what restoration is about.”
You are assuming a 1st century church based upon what history? The original follower’s, read the marginalized book of James (Yaacov), were Torah observant Jews.
Get the historical facts in the History Museum at netzarim.co.il
Eliyahu,
Thanks for the visit and the comments. I agree that the original followers were Torah-believing Jews. I also believe that the door was opened to Gentiles, that they could be grafted into the lineage of Abraham.
When you ask “based upon what history,” I’m supposing you mean based upon what historical evidence. There is strong archeological, literary and historical evidence supporting the validity of the New Testament writings.
I visited your site. Thanks for the link.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer