Why the Church?

Half-title Page

Why the Church?

Other Books in the Reframing New Testament Theology Series

Other Books in the Reframing New Testament Theology Series

Why Salvation? by Joel B. Green

Why the Cross? by Donald Senior

Praise for Why the Church?

"Atheists ask, ‘Why the church?’ with scorn and derision. Spiritual-but-not-religious folks ask the same question with indifference. Robert Wall, an ordained Christian scholar, poses the query with both theological sympathy and acumen. Beginning with the conviction that all the New Testament is ecclesiology and using the ancient creedal description of the church as ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,’ Wall constructs a biblical theology of the church from the groupings of the canonical writings. He tackles the pluriform witness of scripture and produces a coherent, if complex, portrait of the followers of Jesus. The result is a work of theological interpretation and canonical criticism that is impressive in its own right and also a model of how such thematic study can be done. Biblical theology, like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, has too often been tied down by a thousand higher-critical quibbles and qualifications, like so many Lilliputian cords. In this volume—without any sacrificium intellectus—Gulliver breaks free."

—N. Clayton Croy, Professor of New Testament, Trinity Lutheran Seminary,Columbus, OH

Greater clarity and emphasis on a doctrine of the church is an urgent task for Protestant churches, and Rob Wall has provided a cogent and powerful analysis of New Testament resources for such a doctrine.

—Scott J. Jones, Bishop, Great Plains Area, The United Methodist Church

In this fascinating monograph, Rob Wall brings his skills as theologian, interpreter, and minister to bear, producing a most helpful volume on the church. Reading the New Testament documents through a canonical lens, Wall traces the themes of the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Through his superb engagement with the biblical text, he demonstrates that these themes are not superimposed upon the New Testament writings but arise rather naturally from them. Reflecting on these and related themes by means of the energetic embrace of scripture for which he is known, Wall provides the reader with a relevant, thoughtful, and at times prophetic study of the church in its contemporary postmodern context. This book by a leading Wesleyan New Testament scholar is a welcome gift for all those interested in exploring this topic academically and pastorally.

—John Christopher Thomas, Clarence J. Abbott Professor of Biblical Studies,Pentecostal Theological Seminary, Cleveland, TN

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why the church?

Copyright © 2015 by Abingdon Press

All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested.

ISBN 978-1-4267-5939-0

All scripture quotations unless noted otherwise are from the Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com.

Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NET) are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996-2006 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked (AT) are the author’s own translation.

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Why the Church?

Chapter Two

The Fourfold Gospel

Chapter Three

The Acts of the Apostles

Chapter Four

The Pauline Letters Collection

Chapter Five

The Catholic Epistles Collection

Chapter Six

A Brief Epilogue: Why the Church?

Bibliography

Foreword

At first glance, the phrase New Testament theology seems clear enough. However, attempts to explain it immediately expose some speed bumps. Do we want to describe the theology we find in the New Testament? Construct a theology on a New Testament foundation? Or perhaps sketch an account of early Christian beliefs and practices from the New Testament era? This series of books frames the question in a different way: How do we take seriously that, together with the Old Testament, the New Testament has in the past and ought in the present inform, form, and transform the church’s faith and life?

Almost everyone will agree that the New Testament books concern themselves with theology. This truism is supported on almost every page as New Testament writers speak of God, the significance of Jesus of Nazareth for God’s agenda for the world, the character of God’s people, faithful life before God, and God’s coming to set the world right.

How does the New Testament witness relate to the church’s life today? This is less clear and therefore more controversial. The church affirms its allegiance to the God of whom scripture speaks and, therefore, ties itself, its faith and witness, to the Old and New Testaments. How the church’s affirmations work themselves out in terms of engagement with the New Testament materials—this is the question.

Reframing New Testament Theology gets at this question by encouraging active, theological engagement with the New Testament itself. Readers will find among the books in this series an awareness of the obstacles we face—obstacles like the following:

• New Testament texts were written in another time and another place. In what sense, then, can we say that they were written to us or for us? After all, those first readers of Matthew’s Gospel or the Letter of James would be dumbstruck by the idea of streaming video in a church service, just as most of us lack any firsthand experience with anything analogous to the challenges of peasant farmers and fisherfolk in ancient Galilee.

• What of the sheer variety of voices we hear among the New Testament books? If we want the New Testament to help orient our thinking about mission or salvation, how do we make sense of the different perspectives we sometimes encounter? Do we accord privilege to some voices over others? Do we try to synthesize various viewpoints?

• New Testament writers raise issues that may seem foreign to us today and overlook some of our contemporary concerns. Our educational systems, political structures, immigration policies, knowledge of the universe, modes of transportation, and the countless other day-to-day realities that we take for granted separate us from the equally countless assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors that characterized people living in the ancient Mediterranean world. Faced with these differences, how do we work with scripture?

Additionally, our readers will find an awareness of a range of questions about how best to think about New Testament theology—questions like these:

• Since the new in New Testament presumes an Old Testament, what status should our New Testament theological explorations assign to the Old Testament? How do we understand the theological witness of the New Testament in relation to the Old?

• Are we concerned primarily with what the New Testament writers taught (past tense) their first readers theologically, or do we want to know what the New Testament teaches (present tense) us? Is New Testament theology a descriptive task or a prescriptive one?

• Do we learn from the New Testament writers the stuff of Christian theology, or do we apprentice ourselves to them so that we might learn how to engage in the theological task ourselves? Does the New Testament provide the raw material for contemporary theology, or does it invite us into ongoing reflection with it about God and God’s ways?

If contributions to this series demonstrate an awareness of obstacles and issues like these, this does not mean that they address them in a uniform manner. Nor are these books concerned primarily with showing how to navigate or resolve conundrums like these. What holds this series together is not a particular set of methodological commitments but a keen sense that scripture has in the past and should in the present instruct and shape the church’s faith and life. What does it mean to engage the New Testament from within the church and for the church?

One further consideration: The church turns to the scriptures believing that the Bible is authoritative for what we believe and what we do, but it does so while recognizing that the church’s theology is shaped in other ways, too—by God’s self-disclosure in God’s book of nature, for example—and in relation to the ecumenical creeds with which the church has identified itself: the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Not surprisingly, New Testament theology invites reflecting on, interacting with, learning from, and sometimes struggling with the scriptures, and doing so in relation to human understanding more generally as well as in the context of our common Christian confessions.

Intended for people interested in studying the New Testament and the nature of the Christian message and the Christian life, for classrooms, group interaction, and personal study, these volumes invite readers into a conversation with New Testament theology.

Joel B. Green

General Editor

Acknowledgments

Iam indebted to many congregations of different communions whose fellowship, instruction, and worship over many years have shaped my deep love for God’s church. My sensibility as a scholar of and for God’s people is founded in that holy and happy experience. In particular, I mention First Free Methodist Church of Seattle, a beloved family of believers with whom I currently serve on the pastoral staff as scholar-in-residence. My work on the faculty of Seattle Pacific University and Seminary is another rich source of constant delights and illuminations. I thank especially those undergraduate students who gathered with me during fall quarter, 2012, to work our way through the New Testament’s teaching about the church. The raw materials of this book were mined in conversation with them. Thanks, friends! And to the wonderful band of colleagues who teach scripture, theology, and ministry alongside me at the university and at the seminary, I admit my dependence upon your brilliance, your daily wisdom, and especially your faithful friendship. In particular, I thank Daniel Castelo and Rick Steele (theology), Bob Drovdahl (ministry), Dave Nienhuis (New Testament), and Doug Strong (dean) for their friendship and intellectual hospitality.

To Hope McPherson and Kelsey Rorem, for their careful reading of the manuscript and indispensable help in crafting the chapter summaries. To my research assistants, Nathan Sosnovske and C. Adam Baker, for helping me track down answers to all kinds of questions that sometimes led us on wild-goose chases and down rabbit trails. But what fun we had! Thank you all again and again.

To my beloved companion and remarkable conversation partner during our forty-five years together: Carla, I thank God for all of the precious gifts you bring into the lives of so many people, especially into mine. But now, let me simply express my thanks to you, once again, for your help commenting on and editing early drafts of this book.

Words fail to express the sheer delight our granddaughter, Aria, brings into our lives. Daily! What constant fun she is and what renewed hope she inspires in us. Our prayer is that the church, which has baptized her into God’s saving grace, will continue to nurture her faith and to guide her life as God’s daughter. This book is dedicated to you, Aria Michel Scheffler, with my love and thanksgiving.

Chapter One

The title of this book raises a common but hard question: Why the church? Many have attempted to answer it. Even a cursory review of their various responses notes that this question is typically prompted and shaped by a range of different intellectual postures forged in various social worlds. Each response may suggest a different approach to a study of the New Testament’s response to this question.

For example, the question why the church? may well be asked by those believers who are disaffected with the institutional church. Some sociologists have even pegged this group as an entire generation that has migrated into a post-Christian era with a firm perception of the church’s cultural irrelevance or naiveté. Why the church? is a typical question asked, then, by believers of a certain age with a shrug of their shoulders, whose observations of the church’s declining public role or role in their own lives have left them spiritually unfulfilled and intellectually indifferent.

Similar to other seminarians, in a poll we took of our incoming students, more than 80 percent expressed no interest in becoming members of the clergy. Most came from nondenominational congregations without any connection to other congregations held together in formal institutional structures, a common discipline, and confession of faith. These students are more entrepreneurial, interested in start-ups and ad hoc ministries of one kind or another. It has become increasingly difficult to speak of scripture as the church’s book or of an approach to its interpretation as for and of the church to students so rootless and restless.

Familiar reasons are sometimes given to explain why this disaffection with the institutional or denominational church has happened. In a recent study of current trends within the religious world, George Barna observes that the decline in church attendance, especially noticeable among educated young adults, is due to a perceived disconnect between the social patterns and intellectual interests of the church culture they have experienced growing up and the nonreligious world in which they now work and live. Surveys tell us that they still believe in God and even in the Bible’s characterization of God. Many claim to practice prayer and believe in life after death, even if they do so only to the extent that it doesn’t cross the line into superstition; mystery is fine but magic is not. Despite the evident influence of new and functional atheisms about the way in which Christians think about their faith, these surveys suggest that the reasons are less intellectual than they are existential. Their growing disaffection is for a particular kind of faith community, not for the community’s faith.¹

Barna’s survey includes nomadic Christians who are no longer attending church. This book aims to put their dis-ease to rights. For example, the failure of the church to speak into the real world in which most live and work may be challenged by the biblical vision of a missional church. At the same time, the church sometimes presents and even demonizes the social world as corrupt, making it at odds with the everyday experience of most people. The result is the impression of a straw man gospel that is largely irrelevant to the real questions most Christians ask: So why the church when one’s churchly experience is thought optional or a waste of time? A more careful description of the workplace and neighborhood may help guide the application of scripture’s teaching about the church to the church. This is also true when people are surveyed about their theological education. Studies reveal that most Christians come to church only to find that God has gone missing from the pulpit or from educational programming. In a word, the church, by and large, has failed to catechize its membership in the theological goods of the faith. So first, the problem of the church is not its material presence—it’s not unhip architecture or even the church’s presumed civil role within the public square. The problem is not edificial but spiritual: for many, the church is not a place where they go to find God.

The so-called new atheism is a mostly political movement whose press releases by famous pundits and entertainers have far outstripped its now waning influence. But the hard question remains: What do these skeptics tell us about the status of today’s church, since their rejection of God is rarely for purely intellectual reasons and is more typically rooted in an experience of church or its membership? Perhaps it is a general apprehension of the public church that allows the movement’s intellectual leaders (e.g., Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) to get away with uncritical, inaccurate caricatures of theism, as though it is the source of all that is wrong with modern culture. They ask why the church? with scorn and ridicule. Unfortunately, many educated believers have found that the church is unable to explain adequately the relationship between faith and science/reason, at least in a thoughtful way that would help them negotiate their Christian faith in a secular workplace or public classroom where the veracity of a strictly secular worldview is assumed. Naturalism or materialism, to some disaffected believers, seems to be a better intellectual explanation of the real world than the kingdom of God.

The popular definition of true religion has less to do with theological beliefs and more to do with lifestyle issues. In part, this is due to the investment of social media as brokers of religious discourse in the economy; the central topics of social media concern the ethics of human relationships. The perceived problem is not only the inability of many communions to speak in decisively biblical ways into the many hot-button social issues that confront the membership of any public institution (e.g., war on terror, homosexual marriage, immigration reform, or gun violence) but also the inherently discriminating effect that applying the Christian gospel will surely have. While the global church is catholic by every meaningful index, it is also exclusive in its core beliefs and traditional practices. Precisely as a public institution, the church’s life in the world is distinguishable from other institutions. For a growing number of young believers, shaped by an ethos of tolerance and inclusivity, then, their conflict with the exclusive character of their faith has turned some against the institution itself.

The liberal ethos of modernity, of course, is naturally suspicious of traditional authorities, especially when they may derail or shortchange the individual’s freedom to make his or her own choices. The canons and creeds of Christian faith draw boundaries in a way that place any transgressor outside its embrace. Indeed, scripture’s objection to those who doubt God does not play well in a modern world where this very thing is celebrated as a growing-up experience. The purpose of this book does not include some heady prognosis for this dis-ease, but it will seek to construct a NT conception of God’s people that will help address, if only implicitly, the practical concerns of disaffected Christians.

The second problem is theological, mostly Protestant, and concerns the lack of an ecclesiology to underwrite the community’s grammar of faith. For all of the interest recently vested by professional theologians in a dogmatic explanation of church, especially to explain new global phenomena such as Pentecostal/charismatic movements or ecumenical/interfaith dialogue, there is noticeable inattention given to it in ancillary, often contentious, discussions of Christian beliefs. The question why the church? may therefore be asked by puzzled students with a scratch of their heads, who wonder how ecclesiology might contribute to discussions about the authority of the church’s scripture, the economy of God’s salvation, or God’s mission in the world to establish God’s kingdom on earth as it now is in heaven.

If God’s people formed the NT in order to help form itself into the church, then it follows that, in a sense, all of the NT is ecclesiology; its study implicates readers in a range of discussions that concern what it means to belong to God’s people and to believe and behave as they ought. The crisis is not only that the lack of a robust ecclesiology in these various theological discussions impoverishes them intellectually; the crisis is also existential, since the failure to treat scripture’s address, which is ecclesial, subverts its formative role in shaping a community who continues to experience the risen One and to proclaim him in word and deed for the world.

This book responds to the neglect of this topic for those students in search of a biblical understanding of the church, and perhaps then on this basis to lead them in the spiritual renewal of their congregations. What scripture animates is a vision of God’s people, not a blueprint of congregational renewal or clergy reform but an inspiring witness of God’s providential sojourn with God’s people that cultivates in its readers the wisdom necessary to think and respond to the demanding vocation of being the church in and for our own day.

Does God Need the Church?

As important as it is to consider different reasons why people might question or defend their need for the church, more pertinent is the theological question as to whether God needs the church, especially one whose failures are notorious! Isn’t even the suggestion that our omni-God should need anything outrageous? Still more ludicrous is that God should require the services of a stumbling, bumbling church that only gets in God’s way! And yet any student who prepares to study scripture’s conception of the church must face this challenging question: Why does God elect and bring a particular people into existence to love and treasure and to commission and call? After all, God, being an omni-God, doesn’t act without good reason. Why the church?

Three broad lines of argument may be useful in sketching an answer to this question: the church provides a home for a covenant-making God, the church actively participates with God in a shared mission to save the world, and the church bears passive witness to the gracious operations of a sav-ing God.

Church as God’s Home

We should agree that the persona of the triune God is sociable. We observe this in the intimate, familial manner of the Son’s address of the Father according to the Gospels: Jesus calls God Father and God calls Jesus beloved Son. They enjoy each other’s company and seek to work together in common projects. Not surprisingly, then, we gladly observe that God needs a home in which to dwell with God’s adopted children; the church