REIMAGINING CHURCH: by Frank Viola (David C. Cook Publishers). Frank Viola is a creative guy. He writes well too.

And in his latest book, he is free from the shackles of having to write things others insisted he include in the book Pagan Christianity, so if we want a close glimpse of the constructive project (rather than the deconstruction of the paradigm of what he calls the institutional church which was one of the main aims of Pagan Christianity), Reimagining Church is the right place to start. There are certain aspects of what I will call traditional churches that make Frank break out in a rash--- hierarchial structures for example, with which he contrasts organic churches where any one can speak any time they feel led to do so, and there are no traditional leadership structures. The claim is that Christ is being the head of the gathering or meeting, and so human heads are not required. Frank left traditional churches in 1988 and set out on a journey to find, and help create more organic churches, free from the encumbrances of traditional leadership structures, free from liturgy (instead spontaneity is seen as a spiritual sign of being organic). He simply professed boredom with traditional worship, saw it as too leader dominated, and too often a performance. And so he set off on his quest seeking what he viewed as a more perfect representation of what he took to be the NT model of what church was supposed to look like. He describes very straightforwardly how he reimagines how the church ought to be-- organic in its construction; relational in its functioning; scriptural in its form (aha! it has a form); Christocentric in its operation; Trinitarian in its shape; communitarian in its lifestyle; nonelitist in its attitude; and nonsectarian in its expression. (p. 26). Now thats a tall order. Lets see how he develops these ideas and blueprints for the 21rst century church. At this juncture, I want to make a disclaimer and lay some of my own cards on the table for all to see. I have no problems with what I would call close fellowship, really treating one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. I have no problems with people exercising their spiritual gifts, including in worship and in fellowship meetings. Joyful exuberant worship and fellowship is great. I have no desire to quench the Spirit. What I do have a problem with is how much of the NT ecclesiology one has to either ignore, deny, or reinterpret to come to the conclusion that organic body life is THE model that the early church followed and that we ought to follow. I also have a problem with those who have a problem inherently with the notion of hierarchial leadership structures, because in fact such structures are Biblical not merely in the OT, but in the NT as well, as documents like the Pastoral Epistles and Acts make clear. And so I want to say up front, small gatherings in homes like Frank describes are not in themselves a problem, though even in those kinds of meetings some Euthychuss of this world can fall asleep, or even become crashing bores during them! All too often boredom you see is not caused by dead worship services but by a state of mind of a person who lacks imagination including imagination about art, and liturgy, and stain glassed windows and robes, and crosses, and candles and organs and string instruments and people actually trained in what they are doing musically and otherwise as they help worship to happen in authentic and traditional ways. But I digress.

What I am going to stress in what follows is that the body metaphor is only one of the many metaphors used to describe the church in the NT (the temple and the bride being two others), and it was not meant to be taken literally, or for that matter organically. Indeed, the function of the body metaphor in 1 Cor. 12 is not to uphold a vision of organic church, but to oppose the divisions and factions and fissures in the Corinthian congregation by stressing that all the body parts are crucial and essential, and no one can say to another member of the body I have no need of you. In other words, the metaphor doesnt describe a mode of worship or a way of doing a fellowship meeting or an organic way of doing church, it describes a way of treating ones fellow body members with love and respect whether you are meeting together or not. Nor does the metaphor itself describe at all what Christs role might or might not be when the meeting is held in a home. In fact, Christ is not even said to be the head of the body in 1 Cor.12! The issue there is the relationship between the members, not the relationship between Christ and the members. That comes later in Colossians and serves a very different purpose. More on this shortly. On pp. 27-28 Frank gives us his paraphrase of Martin Luther Kings famous I have a Dream speech. Basically it states his wish for a more organic and spontaneous church where everyone is actively engaged and sharing their gifts. I am sure he meant no offense but I am equally sure that many African Americans would have problems with turning a speech about social justice and opposition to racism into an ode to a specific sort spiritual concept of church life, especially when what is envisioned is rather different from the black religious and black church experience in various ways. On p. 31 we have an interesting quotation from one T. Austin Sparks, which reflects the usual exaggerations about how spontaneously pneumatic all early church life was and how all knowledge and understanding of the Bible comes from the Holy Spirit. Sparks is quoted as saying We cannot obtain anything in our New Testament as the result of human study, research, or reason. Its all the Holy Spirits revelation Everything [in the early church] then was the free and spontaneous movement of the Holy Spirit. I honestly dont know why Frank would use such a quote when he knows perfectly well that at both ends it is false. Frank is a diligent student of the NT. He knows we need to use all the powers God has given us, and all diligence to understand the Word of God, and of course in addition to this we especially need the illumination of the Spirit, indeed the latter is the most essential thing. It is not however by any means the only essential thing. Frank is not an anti-intellectual, but you would never know it from this quote. It reminds me of the student who came up to class one day frustrated and said I dont know why I need to do all this research, and writing and studying of the NT. Why I can just get up into the pulpit and the Spirit will give me utterance. I rejoind: Yes, you can do this, but it is a shame you are not giving the Holy Spirit more to work with. And on the second pointNo, everything in the early church was not all the free and spontaneous movement of the Spirit. Often it involved the will, and hard work of ordinary mortals, such as Paul when he sought to make the collection for the poor in Jerusalem. Often it involved setting up a order of deacons or elders or even widows to

perform certain tasks. On p. 32, Frank allows there are many images of the church, which he then claims are all living entities. This is not quite true. A field, for example, is not inherently a living entity. Dirt has no life without seeds and water. And while the temple imagery in 1 Peter does indeed refer to living stones, what Frank fails to note is that this is an hierarchial image of church. Buildings have structures, just as the church has organization and structures. It is quite impossible to make a hard and fast distinction between an organism and an organization, even when the subject is the church. And more to the point, the NT writers dont want us to make that sort of mistake either. On this same page, Frank makes a dramatic contrast between organic church life naturally produced when a group has encountered Jesus Christ in reality (external ecclesiastical props being unnecessary) and the DNA of the church is free to work without hinderance. He seems to think that by contrast the modern institutional church operates on the same organizational principles that run corporate America. (p. 32). This is a grotesque exaggeration of the facts. Frankly, most traditional churches would have been shut down long ago if they were businesses! And most are certainly not run purely on some sort of business model. I have pastored six traditional Methodist Churches, and served in numerous others, and not a one of them could be characterized in this way. Decisions are made after much prayer, often involving whole church meetings, discussions, long prayer sessions and then further reflections. I dont know many businesses in America that make decisions that way. Are there some churches that have sold their souls to a business model? Perhaps so. But in the hundreds I have preached and taught in around the world, I have never found one that truly fits that caricature. One of the foundational principles for Franks approach to church life is that the Trinity itself is a sort of blueprint or model of unity in the midst of relationships for church life (N.B. he seems to think Gen. 1.26 is a reference to the Trinity, but in fact most OT scholars would tell you that this is probably God discussing matters with his courtthe angels. The Trinity does not show up as a concept until the NT era, and for a very good reason. The Son was not revealed before the Incarnation. The Hebrew who wrote Gen. 1.26 would have been stunned to discover that he was referring to the Trinity! No, he would reply, it refers to Yahweh and his retinue, his court see e.g. Isaiah 6). Now part of the major premises of Frank about the Trinity, is that there is no hierarchy, even a functional hierarchy in the Godhead itself. So for example on p. 35 we hear about the mutual submission of all members of the Trinity to each other. But in fact this is not quite true. We hear a good deal about the submission of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to the Son and the Father, but nothing at all about the submission of the Father to either the Spirit or the Son. It is always the Fathers will about which Jesus prays, and teaches his disciples to pray, and it is the Fathers will to which he himself submits. And actually this is not simply a temporary expedient during the life of Jesus on earth when he once walked amongst us. Indeed 1 Cor. 15 says quite clearly that when Christ returns, his task will be to subject all things to the Father. Listen carefully to what Paul then says about what happens at the end of the process of subjecting all thingsNow

when it says that everything has been put under Him [i.e. Christ] it is clear that this does not include God [the Father] himself who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to God [the Father] who put everything under him, so that God [the Father] may be all in all. That is, even at the eschaton, and the end of all human history, the Son will be submitting himself and all things back under the rule of the Father. Now this submission of the Son to the Father is not an ontological one, it is a functional hierarchy we are talking about here. If then we accept the premise of Frank and others that the Trinity provides the blueprint or pattern for how the church should be viewed, ordered, structured, then we would naturally expect the church to have a functional hierarchy. If its good enough for Jesus, it should be fine for us as church as well. But there is more. Frank goes on to say The church is the organic extension of the triune God. It was conceived in Christ before time (Ephes. 1.4-5) and born on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2.1ff.). (p. 35). There are several serious theological problems with this sort of assertion: 1) it violates the Creator creature distinction the Bible insists on from first to last. The church is not a natural or organic extension of God on earth! To the contrary the church is a distinct entity, like a bride, that God has chosen to unite himself to, through spiritual relationship and koinonia. This is a very different matter indeed. Any idea of church that suggests that any group of human beings is simply the natural extension of God on earth has badly misunderstood what Paul and others are talking about. 2), Ephes. 1.4-5 is not about the conception of the church pre-temporally. All of the Greek here is clear enough that what the author is talking about is happening to and in Christ not to and in us the church. It was Christ himself who was chosen before the foundations of the world to be our savior. We, as church didnt existent then. These things are only true of believers by extension because NOW (not then) we are in Christ. You do have to exist before you can be in Christ, and no human being existed before Adam. Frank goes on to say that the church possesses the very same life that God himself possesses. This also is not quite accurate. God has eternal lifehe has always been and always will be. We however, through a process called the new birth obtain everlasting life--- life that begins at a particular point in time, and goes on infinitely into the future. God has his eternal life quite naturally. We obtain everlasting life as a gift from God. There are then clear differences here. To this we must add that when God gives us everlasting life, had he truly given us exactly what he has, we would have had no need for either the Holy Spirit or anyone else to indwell us, fill us, revivify us again and again and so on. We would have been divinized, which we arent. It was the voice of the snake which promised you shall be as gods, not the voice of God. This is not Christian theology, but it certainly is Mormon theology. What being partakers of the divine nature means (2 Pet. 1.4) is that we are given spiritual union with the one who has such a nature, and it transforms us, not into God or gods, but into true and godly human beings. It doesnt make us the natural extension of God on earth either, though I have met some church folk who think they are Gods gift to humanity. Franks disconnect here appears to be between the notion of hierarchy and the notion of equality. He cant seem to imagine the two going together either in the Godhead, or in

proper church community. He states for example, that while Jesus was on earth he simply voluntarily submitted to the Father. While I grant that he certainly did do this, it wasnt just pro tempore, or during the period of time while he was on earth. 1 Cor. 15 is equally clear that he will do so again once the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of God, and all evil and enemies are placed under his feet. So here is where I stress that ontological equality, and functional subordination have always been and always will be compatible, and the blueprint Godhead provides us with a reason to expect that in the church there will be a hierarchial pattern of ordering things. I would hasten to add that it does NOT lead us to expect that this pattern will involve a gender hierarchy. No, it will involve a leader and follower, shepherd and sheep, pastor and congregation, apostle and co-workers hierarchy--- something Frank wants to avoid at all costs, seeing it as either inorganic or simply fallen human structures. Alas, however, it is the divine design, mirroring the functional subordination that indeed has and does exist in the Trinity. When the Bible says honor thy father (and mother), it never conceives of a day when somehow the son ever ceases to be a son, ceases to owe respect to the father, ceases to be ordered under the father in these ways. There will always be an ordering in that relation and so a hierarchy. Likewise, there never comes a day when the only begotten Son becomes the Father, or somehow the Father changes roles and becomes the only begotten Son. Equality and indeed mutual love and respect do not in any way necessarily rule out an ordering of relationships, or even functional subordination in such relationships either in the Godhead, or in Christian community. I am afraid that what has affected and infected this discussion is secular notions of equality that assume that equal must mean the same in all respects, or the same in all functions. But this is not what the Bible either says or suggests.
Pt. II

The hermeneutics of Frank Viola are interesting, and contra what some might think, Frank is not interested in playing first century Bible land. Listen to what he says: But as I shall argue in this book, the New Testament contains no such blueprint for church practice. Neither does it contain a set of rules and regulations for Christians to follow. (p. 37). I take it that he means normative rules about church praxis, I am sure he is not denying there are imperatives in the NT that Christians must follow. What Frank seeks to do then is sift the NT trying to decide which practices mentioned in the NT are merely descriptive (they used to do it that way) and which are prescriptive (we all ought to keep doing that, and doing it that way). He further explains that he means that some things we find in the NT are merely culturally relevant practices (headcoverings perhaps), some reflect the unchanging nature and identity of the church (p. 39). Now this is interesting. On the basis of what criteria does one decide that X is transcultural, but Y is culturally bound, X reflects the very DNA of the church in all generations, but Y, not so much? Frank works through four models for doing church, three of which he sees as not really viable, the fourth of which he is a strong advocate. They are : 1) Biblical blueprintism; 2) cultural adaptability; 3) postchurch Christianity; 4) Organic expression. Frank is well

aware that 1) does not work, not least because the first century church as depicted in the NT is full of flaws. Anyone want to pastor First Church Laodicea? I didnt think so. He is also rightly wary of over-contextualization which results in becoming indistinguishable from the larger culture, accommodating to the values and intellectual climate djour. But Franks strongest and most pointed (and I would add, most telling) critique is of some of the emerging/emergent folks ideas about church. Listen to what he says: After critiquing the notion that spontaneous social interaction or personal friendships are what being church means without the need to belong to an identifiable community that meets regularly for prayer, worship, fellowship etc. he adds Such a concept is disconnected with what we find in the NT. The first century churches were locatable, identifiable, visitable, communities that met regularly in a particular locale [about all of which he is right on target]. To this he adds the postchurch paradigm appears to be an expression of the contemporary desire for intimacy without commitment. (p. 40). I would say that the organic church model has arisen in part in response to the deep desire for intimacy in Christ with ones fellow believers, especially in the wake of the decline and brokenness of the physical family and alienation from the larger cultures forms of doing community. In this regard both the organic model and the postchurch model are responding to the same felt needs and serve in part as a form of compensation for inadequate family life or cultural life. T his is what the sociologists would say about the rise of this recent phenomenon, and they are surely partly right, though this is not the whole story. What I find rather amazing in the 4 paradigms listed here is nowhere is the traditional church model listed, which is neither 1) 2) 3) or 4). Perhaps Frank thought he critiqued that enough in his previous book. Frank is not arguing that churches have no form or structure. Rather he maintains they should emerge from within the active life of the church community, not be imposed from without. Honestly I dont think many of us would disagree with this. But this is how it works--- the Holy Spirit gifts different persons differently. Not all have the gift of prophecy, not all have the gift of teaching, not all have the gift of administration/steering/ leading, not all have the gift of preaching and so on. The hand of the body has a different function than the foot, to use the body analogy. What this means is, the body of Christ must discern who has which gifts, since all have one or more such gifts, and stimulate not stifle the use of these gifts. And it is true, too often the traditional church has not adequately done this. But it is quite false to suggest that the body of Christ is simply interchangeable parts with each person equally gifted to do all tasks. This is frankly a bad misreading of the Pauline letters. On p. 41 Frank would have us believe that the headship of Christ replaces all human headship in the church. Never mind that this is not what the NT says or suggests, beginning with Jesus himself who appointed the twelve and then later commissioned all the apostles, both men and women, to lead the church of the resurrection. Never mind that Jesus told Peter that he would build his church on the properly confessing Peter, and give him the keys to the kingdom, as the representative of the community as a whole (cf. Mt. 16 and 18). Never mind that the Pastorals tell us that even in the 60s apostles were appointing their co-workers to appoint elders and deacons hither and yon in the local

church, and there was not a distinction made between itinerant leaders (who could be paid) and local leaders (who according to Gal. 6 should also be paid). But we will say more of this in due course. Also on p. 41, Frank says that the permanent DNA of the church involves: 1) expressing the headship of Christ in his church as opposed to expressing the headship of a human being. This however is a false contrast, since Jesus himself set up certain human beings to be heads over, and indeed even judges of the twelve tribes of Israel. Christs headship is expressed in the local church not apart from human leadership, but rather through it. 2) the true church will always encourage the every-member functioning of the body. This is true, but the question is how and when. There are times and places where it is appropriate to allow everyone to share. There are other times and places, for example during the celebration of the Lords Supper, where it is not appropriate for all to share spontaneously. The bad guy in this discussion continues to be what Frank calls dead tradition or lifeless rituals. It is a shame that he hasnt experienced lively rituals and living tradition which strengthens the faithful. He needs to come to worship in Estes Chapel at Asbury Seminary sometime. 3) The true church will always map to the theology that is contained in the NT, giving it visible expression on the earth; 4) It will always be grounded in the fellowship of the Triune God. Few would object in principle to these last two mandates, but the question is, what do they entail and imply. The rightness or wrongness of such dictates depend on their fleshing out. His model of church is a loving, egalitarian, reciprocal, cooperative, nonhierarchical community (p. 41). He right about most of that, but especially wrong about the last point, and I would add once more egalitarianism is not in any way at odds with functional hierarchy. Obviously authentic Christian community involves familial love, devotion of members to one another, the centrality of Christ, the innate desire to gather together for worship and fellowship and the desire to form intimate relationships in Christ (see p. 45). To this Frank insists we must addopen participatory gatherings and the impulse to share Christ with a fallen world. These additions are unobjectionable, but open participatory gatherings is not how worship is described in the NT, except when it went wrong in Corinth and Paul had to correct it. There is a time and a place for such gatherings, but worship is not frankly the time for everybody share now. Worship is supposed to be theocentric, God-centered and should not be confused with fellowship and sharing with one another. We will deal with how Frank attempts to get around this distinction between koinonia and doxology in a bit. But let me be clear, in Franks paradigm the chief function of a normal church meeting is edification, rather than worship and glorification of God (see pp. 49-53), this is certainly where I would most disagree, not because there isnt a place for church meetings which have as their primary function edification. Of course there isthose are called fellowship meetings, not worship meetings. And of course the problem with inviting strangers to the kind of intimate fellowship meetings is precisely the problem Paul is correcting in Corinth in 1 Cor. 14. Strangers and the uninitiated will say Christians are out of their minds. Strangers cannot participate in that sort of meeting because they are not yet in Christ. And so, in an odd twist of things, church meetings in Franks paradigm are not open and participatory at all, if by that we

mean open to all comers, Christian or not. Frank sets up a paradigm of four different types of meetings in the early church: 1) apostolic meetings where apostles preached to an interactive audience. Their goal was to plant a church from scratch or to encourage an existing one (pp. 49-50). Frank admits that in such a meeting the apostle does most of the ministry, but then quickly adds that these sorts of meetings are never permanent (p. 50). Now one has to say that this conclusion stands at odds with church history in various ways, including NT history. We have long standing historical traditions that James stayed put in Jerusalem permanently, and once Peter left, became the head of that church. Indeed, as the records from Papias and others show, the leadership was passed down within the holy family in the first century in this church (see the work by Richard Bauckham on Jude and the Relatives of Jesus). And it is a very odd thing to call Paul merely an itinerant when in fact Acts tells us he planted himself in Ephesus for two and half years, and stayed long after the church there was well established. Not only so, but he appointed people like Priscilla and Aquila his co-workers to be leaders there and elsewhere. O yes there was a leadership structure in Pauline churches, and yes, it was appointed top down, not bottom up. 2) Evangelistic meetings are the second category of meetings, and Frank would include preaching in the synagogue and the marketplace. Evangelistic meetings were designed to plant a new church orbuild an existing one. (p. 50). Whatever Pauls goals may have been, he never ever so far as we can tell, held an evangelistic meeting in a synagogue! What he did was participate in the synagogue worship services throughout the Roman empire! That is, he continued to take part in Jewish worship which involved prayers, preaching, reading of scripture and the like, just as the apostles continued to worship in the temple in Jerusalem as well. There is now a very fine book talking about how much the early church, especially in its Jewish Christian forms took over from the synagogue, including its elder structure. The reader wanting to see the overlap between Jewish and early Christian worship and structure should read From Synagogue to Church by James Burtchaell (Cambridge U. Press). 3) Decision making meetings. Here Frank sites Acts 15, the church council meeting. He stresses the chief feature of this meeting is that everyone participated in the decision making process (p. 50). Thats true. But its one thing to confer, another thing to conclude, and even Peter and Paul were only conferring in this meeting. The person who concluded and wrote up the Decree was James, in consultation with the other elders in the Jerusalem Church and in consultation with the Holy Spirit as well of course. The point is, we did not have a democratic vote at this meeting, and a decision was not taken by the body as a whole. Rather the leadership made a decision after conferring and hearing out one and all. 4) Church Meetings. Here Frank is arguing that these meetings did not involve preaching, based again on his reading especially of 1 Corinthians. What is totally missing in this analysis is the function that Pauls letter was meant to have in such a meeting! The letter was not for private consumption of individual Christians one by one. It was to be dramatically read out in the church meeting as the apostolic voice preaching to the

congregation through a surrogate appointed by Paula Timothy or a Titus. So, even in Corinth, there was proclamation of Gods Word in the church meeting by an apostolic delegate whenever possible. We could of course also point to the long standing church meeting in Troas where Paul goes and preaches, and Euthychus falls out of the window. Was this somehow a different kind of meeting than category 4)? Probably not. The Christians meetings, especially when a majority of those present were Jews and Godfearers were not purely pneumatic in structure. They looked more like a synagogue worship service in various regards. What is entirely missing in the fourfold paradigm is a proper worship service in which the whole service, prayers, singing, offerings, etc. with the exception of the preaching, is theocentric in character, not anthropocentric. Now I am not suggesting that Franks church meetings do not involve elements and aspects of worship, of course they do. However, by not having worship meetings in addition to fellowship meetings doxology is inadequately focused on. This, perhaps more than anything else is my primary concern about the organic model Frank is advocating. It neglects worship and the proper task of preaching to Christians who so desperately need it in an age of Biblical illiteracy. It also ignores that we have creeds, and liturgies and hymn fragments already embedded in our NT which were used in Christian meetings in the first century. No one who has read the Didache could doubt that this is so, and for that matter the NT says so as well. What about texts like Heb. 10.24-25? Dont they suggest that the primary purpose of church meetings is edification? Well in fact no they dont. Hebrews is a sermon, based on a string of OT texts. It is not a letter at all, except in the sense that it was sent from a distance, and the author expected in this oral culture for this letter to be rhetorically and aptly and dramatically read out as a sermon to the whole congregation. He mentions in passing at Heb, 10.24-25 that the audience ought also, in addition to listening to this sermon, to edify one another. He does not even say that it must be done in the church meeting when this sermon was dramatically performed. Edification is necessary, but Hebrews only mentions it in passing! Heb. 3.13-14 certainly does exhort us to exhort one another, but nothing is said about this happening in the church meeting and corporately, indeed the whole phrase one another implies one person exhorting another person in its primary sense, not one exhorting everybody else. And we could debate how much private exhortation of a sinful Christians particular problems should happen in the corporate meeting. Jesus says that if a brother has something against you, one goes to them in private, and if they wont listen then one takes others with you. This is not an action meant for corporate worship or even an every member fellowship meeting. My point is simple. You cannot assume that the one anothering described here and elsewhere in the NT is all or mainly or usually to transpire in a church meeting. Indeed, there is good reason to think otherwise in various cases. And I might add 1 John is likewise such a sermon that was meant to be read out dramatically, as is James. And James makes clear that Christian meetings should allow strangers to come and share in them, and that at least these Jewish Christian meetings functioned much like synagogue meetings. Notice that the Holy Spirit is hardly mentioned in James. 1 Corinthians is an example of correcting over-pneumatic approaches, not encouraging them. What Paul allows for a time, being a smart pastor (consider the issue of baptism for the dead), is not necessarily what he prefers. Indeed, he

is in the process of steering the audience in a different direction from their preferred practice. It is a serious mistake to make what is said, especially what is said in passing and by way of correction, in 1 Corinthians the model for organic church. On p. 55 Frank gets to the theological nub of the matter the most startling characteristic of the early church meeting was the absence of any human officiation. Jesus Christ led the gatherings by the medium of the Holy Spirit through the believing community. Somehow human leadership is seen as necessarily getting in the way of Christ leading the meeting. Now, I grant that sometimes human leadership can indeed get in Gods way. Of course that is true. But if one reads the whole drama of salvation history including in both the OT times, God was always setting apart particular persons for leading Gods peoplea Moses, an Elijah, the apostles, the elders, the deacons and so on. It cannot then be true that the selection of some to be human leaders and others not to be is somehow an unbiblical or unchristian notion. And one must askWhat exactly is meant by Jesus Christ is leading the meeting? By this does one mean that the Spirit inspires some to speak words of wisdom or words of knowledge or prophetic words in some Christian meetings? If that is all that is meant, that is unobjectionable. If however what one means is that church members speak as Jesus, that is seriously problematic. Jesus speaks for himself, in the Gospels, and after the ascension he continues to speak for himself through visions. But what even the apostles never claimed is that they were speaking as Jesus. They claimed they were inspired by the Spirit to speak the truth for God. That is a very different matter. The danger of blurring the line between Christ speaking and a Christian speaking is always a serious one. The very reason Paul wants the prophetic words of prophets weighed and sifted, as he suggests in both Romans and 1 Corinthians, is because they may well be 80% Spirit inspired, but 20% human additives. They must be sifted and weighed, and in any case the Spirit is not Christ, and Christ is not the Spirit and the human Christian is neither, of course. Here in Kentucky we have the last remnants of the 19th century Shakers, or shaking Quakers as they were earlier known. If you read their history, and in particular the history of their leader Mother Ann, one of the delusions she had was that she was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit on earth, and that she spoke as the Holy Spirit. This is rather like Rev. Moon when he claimed to speak as the second coming of Jesus. So, I must stress once moreit is human beings speaking in church, and we trust God is using them, inspiring them in what they say, but we are warned to sift their words with good reason. There can be no sifting if Jesus is speaking directly to us--- only obeying. Even Christian prophets speak even under the inspiration of the Spirit not as Jesus or as the Father or as the Spirit, but for them. There is a big difference. On p. 59 we hear that the body of Christ, is Christ in corporate expression, and on p. 60 we are told that the divine function of church meetings is so Christ can manifest himself in his fullness. While this is interesting language it overlooks that the very point of the body metaphor is to make clear that the body is not the head, it is simply connected to the head. The body of Christ is not Christ, who happens to be bodily in heaven. The fact that Paul uses language somewhat loosely in this sermon to stress the connection between the head and the body should not be over-pressed. And what exactly does it mean for Christ

to express himself in his fullness in a church meeting? Beginning with p. 60ff. we get a clearer glimpse of what Frank means by Christ manifesting himself in his fullness, and we learn why it is such a urgent matter for him that everybody participate in such a meeting. If that doesnt happen then Christ is not fully manifested, and the body is not fully edified. Here we are dealing with a profound confusion between Christ who is simply the head of the body, and the congregation who is the body. The body is not the head, and the body is frankly NOT Christ. Frank puts it this way He is assembled in our midst. (p. 60some assembly required, apparently). Now this is most peculiar language. Christ is not in need of being assembled! His presence is no less present when it is not everyone who speaks in a church meeting. Nor is it true that the only way that Christ can be properly expressed is if every member of a church freely supplies that aspect of the Lord that he or she received. (p. 60). Again this is once more to confuse the head with the body. The body belongs to the Lord, but it is not the Lord. And perhaps we have forgotten Christs promise that wherever two or more are gathered there I am also. Notice the ALSO, in such a saying. Christ is not the body, he is coming to be with the body. I am all for lively body life, but not for delusions of grandeur. The other thing that concerns me about this is that it is too Christomonistic rather than properly Trinitarian. Jesus, more often than not, pointed away from himself and to the Father during his earthly ministry and through his teachings. He taught his disciples to pray to God as Abba, and we are told that one day the kingdom will be returned to the Father. Real Trinitarian worship involves coming to the Father through Jesus the Son in the power of the Spirit. It is not Christomonistic. On p. 61 Frank stresses that Christian church meetings centered on Christ and every word shed light on Him. Now from my reading of the NT, I would suggest this is false. I quite agree that Christ is the main subject of early Christian witness and focus. Its not however all about him. It is often about other things. I can for example imagine a church meeting based on the homily of James. Jesus is barely mentioned at all in this sermon, and that is just fine. There were probably many early Christian meetings which were not specifically dwelling on Jesus especially the Jewish Christian ones. I suppose in a broad sense one could argue that even when Christ was not mentioned what did happen in such a meeting shed light on Him, but it would appear Frank means more than this. Two of the undercurrents in this book are a dislike for what is called elitism, and the notion of a clergy class of religious authorities who speak for the Lord. There is a resistance to the notion that we need such specialists or especially trained persons in the body of Christ. I disagree, and actually it has nothing to do with elitism, it has to do with some being given more gifts and talents than others, just as in the parable of the talents, and what follows thereafter is the need for good stewardship of all that is given. While God can even speak to his people through Balaams donkey, there is a reason why we hear in the Scriptures that studying the Word of God (in the original languages) is important, and is a way to be found approved. Frank seems to have confidence that schooling and special training can be bypassed since Christ can speak directly through any member of his body. I must say that when I have gone to such charismatic meetings, what is more often than not expressed is not some new revelation from Jesus in person, but simply words of

comfort or exhortation or spiritual insight which I would call words of knowledge etc. Its not Jesus speaking personally, its spiritual insight into someones life prompted by the Holy Spirit, and very much ad hoc, and having an immediacy and a definite shelf life to it. And sometimes, as well it is of such a generic sort that one wonders why the Holy Spirit was being redundant. And sometimes one wonders in some cases whether it even came from the Holy Spirit at all, rather than some other spirit. This is why the NT writer said we must test the spirits, and the utterances claiming to be from God. In other words, I see no NT evidence at all that at any genuine church meeting we must allow or assume that everyone is or will be speaking, or that they should do so. Nor do I see any evidence that if everyone is not speaking, Christ is not properly or fully manifested. When Paul preached to the Christian Ephesian elders, he was basically the only person who did so on that occasion, but I would not want to be the person who suggests that Christ was not fully manifested then and there. The reaction of the elders suggests otherwise. On p. 63 we have another of the exaggerations which a prophetic figure is too often prone to. There were many more of these in Pagan Christianity, but they are not absent in its sequel. Frank says the early Christians were clergyless [not if by that we mean without human leaders], liturgyless [this is false as many of the NT studies on the creedal and hymnal and the Lords Supper liturgy (see 1 Cor. 11) will attest], programless and ritualless. Well, no on all four points in fact. Baptism and the Lords Supper are indeed rituals and have always had liturgies. In the case of the earliest stages of the Lords Supper the liturgy was indebted to the Passover liturgy. On pp. 67-68 Frank wants to make a distinction between Christs headship as in relationship to the corporate body of Christ, and Christs lordship as in relationship to the individual. This distinction does not work at either end of the equation, exegetically. On the one had we have the reference to Christ being the head of the man (or possibly the husband) in 1 Cor. 11, and on the other had we have the many references to Christ being Lord over all persons, all beings, all the church, and not just over individuals. He is right however to critique the rampant individualism of the modern church and its failure to see the necessity of corporate fellowship and worship and witness and authentic community. Here lies one of the real positive correctives in this book for Western Christian culture. One of the more important portions of this book is the glimpses we actually get of what happens in an organic meeting as described by Frank on pp. 69-71. I would encourage you to read this. I see nothing objectionable in this, and various things to praise. It is good for ordinary Christians to be empowered to speak and share and home meetings are a good place to do this, as they are less intimidating. Frank notes as well that planning was involved, and so it was not purely spontaneous after all. He speaks of people getting together two by two and praying and preparing. Those who spoke, spoke on the theme of spiritual water or rivers, one prompting the other, and hopefully the Spirit prompting them all. Frank freely admits that some meetings are far from glorious or even adequate. But what is beautiful about this is not that it is leaderless, for in fact whoever first stood up and spoke took the lead and others were prompted to leap in and share. What is good about this is that the saints shared openly and from their hearts. And here is where I say that home meetings in institutional churches often function identically to this. They are

not substitutes for larger corporate gatherings for worship, but they are certainly necessary supplements thereto. The difference is, Franks movement thinks church must be small and intimate in all its fellowship and worship gatherings. I disagree. Indeed, as Francis Asbury once said, the larger the mass, the greater the tidal wave of Spirit movement, and the more it becomes visible and obvious to all present. This need not be confined to just evangelistic meetings. Big can be beautiful when it comes to church, but so is small, and both are often necessary for normal spiritual life. The discussion of the Lords Supper begins well enough by describing some of the symbolism of the bread and wine and its theological overtones. I quite agree that the earliest Christians took the Lords Supper, at least in some of their meetings, in the context of a real meal. I dont agree that every meal shared by a group of Christians included the Lords Supper and was limited to the breaking of one loaf of bread. The breaking of the single loaf is grounded in the Passover ritual practice and is a continuation of that practice. In other words, the context is a meal, but the sharing of the Lords Supper is a special portion or aspect of that meal. What Paul in fact says in 1 Cor. 11 is that the Lords Supper should be shared whenever they all come together. But there were various house churches in Corinth and nearby Cenchreae and it is clear enough that not every church meeting involved this ritual. Some scholars would in fact say that the Lords Supper is not mentioned at all in the summaries about the earliest Christian meetings in Acts 2 and 4. The phrase through the breaking of the bread, may or may not be a sacramental allusion. Of course the other issue here is, is there something sacramental about the Lords Supper that would not be true of an ordinary meal, and the answer to this is yes. Paul does not give a warning in regard to an ordinary meal about partaking in an unworthy manner and being divinely judged for doing so. Paul gives that warning for not discerning the body when one shares in the Lords Supper (see at length my book on the Lords SupperMaking a Meal of It). I quite agree with all the complaints in this chapter about the trivializing of this sacrament ( Frank humorously calls what usually happens the Saviors sampler, the Nazarene Niblet, the Lords Appetizerp. 76). What I dont agree with is that there is no distinction between what is going on in the Lords Supper and what is going on in the larger context of the shared meal. The latter is just a fellowship meal. The former is more than that even when it is done in the context of the latter. And this brings up a key point. In the Passover, the Passover elements were distinguishable from a normal full meal and had special symbolic significance. The same is true of the Lords Supper, which in turn means that the size of the portion is not important. It is the meaning of the portion, as the Lords Supper can satisfy even in small quantities. It is a means of grace, not a means of getting full! Frank is quite right that the Lords Supper is a covenant meal. He is wrong however that what happened at the last supper was simply the inaugural Lords Supper (p. 77). No, the last supper had Passover dimensions not carried over into the Lords Supper (e.g. the bitter herbs Jesus dipped his bread in with Judas). As 1 Cor. 11 makes perfectly clear the Lords Supper involves the recitation of what happened to Jesus on the night of the last supper. This was not an original part of that last supper meal itself. In other words, when Paul recited on the night when our Lord was betrayed, he took bread..he is reciting the common liturgy which had developed in the early church to commemorate that covenant

making moment. As Paul says, he is passing on the tradition which had been passed on to him ( 1 Cor. 11.23). When he says for I received from the Lord he is using the technical Jewish language for passing on a tradition. He means it ultimately goes back to Jesus and what he said. He does not mean that he literally heard it from the horses mouth. This is Jewish traditioning language and we see it again in 1 Cor. 15 when Paul talks about the tradition in regard to the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus. In other words, Paul had no problems with passing along church traditions--- and neither should we. Frank stresses the joyful aspect of the feast, and suggests it is not a time for focusing on sorrow for our sins. Not a single word is said here about Pauls stern warning about what happens when we take the meal in a manner that is unworthy without discerning the body of Christ. And here is where I say that simply amalgamating the Lords Supper as the beginning and ending acts of an ordinary meal does the Lords Supper insufficient credit. I am happy that the meal context is being preserved. I am not happy that the sacramental character of the Lords Supper is not being honored with proper contrition for sin before partaking of the Lords Supper and a particular focusing on the death of Jesus himself. There is a place for having a more solemn portion of an otherwise joyful feast. The Lords Supper needs to be taken in a worthy manner, not merely as just another part of a fellowship meal. I agree with Frank that the Lords Supper is a spiritual reality (p. 79), indeed I would want to say that the Lords is especially spiritually present in the partaking of this meal. All the more reason to do it with respect and repentance. There is an odd several paragraphs in this chapter about how the Lords Supper mirrors what is going on in the Trinity, as if the Son was consuming the Father and vice versa. This is yet another example of over-pressing the language of abiding and the like which describe metaphorically the spiritual connection between the Father and the Son. The Lords supper is not a picture of what is happening in the Trinity. It is a picture of a historical event, what happened on Golgotha, not what always happens in the Godhead. This is what comes of over relying on suggestions of Stan Grenz and others about how church life mirrors the life in the Trinity, which can be greatly exaggerated. God has no need of food of any kind and the Son while he may have been consumed with the work of the Lord, was not consumed by the Lord. One of the major claims made in Pagan Christianity was that Christian meetings were always in homes for the first 300 years of church history. I am not going to belabor this, since I dealt with the faulty history in the posts on the former Viola book, but it needs to be said once morethis is false on several scores. First of all, Christians met in homes, synagogues, the Temple, down by the riverside, in caves and elsewhere in the first century. They met in buildings and outside of buildings. The exaltation of the home to the exclusion of all the other meeting places is a mistake, and historically false. Secondly, we have clear archaeological evidence now in regard to houses being altered into church buildings already in the second century in the house of Peter in Capernaum (indeed, this may have transpired beginning in the first century), and we have further evidence of church structures in Jordan, and in Rome, some in the catacombs from before the third century A.D. Purpose built buildings for church purposes are not some mandated against by the NT, nor is there anything particularly holy about meeting in homes, nor does the

NT mandate that practice. When you are an illicit religion in the Roman Empire where such religions are suspect and often persecuted, it is not a surprise that meetings were in private places. The social context affects this whole matter and discussion. Frank suggests that when the church got too big to meet in just one place, they then simply multiplied and met in multiple houses. This is partially true, but it hardly explains the Pauline exhortation to the several house churches in Corinth whenever you all come together . That had to be possible, perhaps in yard of a Christian villa. I have looked at large villas excavated in Corinth, and there are various of them where one could meet on the grounds and have several hundred people present. The truth is, we have no idea how large early Christian gatherings could get and did get, and we have no right to assume that the limit would be the limits of the size of a villa dining area, or dining area plus atrium for example. But here we come to a major bump in the road for the Viola thesis. You cant have ever member sharing if 300 show up, unless you are prepared to go on for hours and hours and hours. And yes, it is true, some of the personalness and personality of a small group meeting is lost in a larger group. Some small group experts say 12 is the magic number beyond which true intimacy begins to get lost. I see no mandate of any kind in the NT suggesting we have to all meet always in such small groups or that that should be seen as the norm for a church meeting. Frankly there is nothing quite like hearing 300 hearty souls singing in unison And Can it Be in Estes Chapel, and yes the acoustics help. There is strength in numbers, and praise is multiplied exponentially in larger groups. Hooray for larger church worship services, for yeah verily they too comport with the NT witness. They are more obvious lights to the world and cities set on a hill. Frank gives us the short list of the pluses of how churches in homes do a good job of being church: 1) the home testifies that Gods people are his house. This is a fair enough point. Frank is forgetting however that Judaism was a legal religion in the first century, and Christianity was not. It did not have permission to erect religious buildings, so it met in other peoples buildingssynagogues, the temple, the Hall of Tyrannus, and in homes, and out in the open of course. Meeting in homes was making a virtue of a necessity. And he is wrong in addition about the persecution in Jerusalem. The favor of the people was short-lived. Within a decade Peter and John and James Zebedee were incarcerated as church leaders. James was executed, and Peter ended up fleeing elsewhere. Indeed so great was the persecution of Christians in Jerusalem that Luke says this is what largely prompted the mission to Samaria and Galilee (see e.g. Acts 7-8). 2) The home is the natural setting for one anothering. Well actually its a good setting for that, but it can also be done almost anywhere, including out in the open, on the job during a meal break, and so on. 3) The home represents the humility of Christ. He has a point about the problems with the edifice complex amongst Christians and the cost of upkeep. However the down side of simply meeting in homes is that it suggests that nothing special, nothing holy, nothing exceptional is going on here. It suggests a casual attitude toward worship and fellowship. It suggests I dont really need to make an effort to give God my best when we worship or fellowshipIll just sing a chorus of just as I am even if I am a slob, and go ahead and go to this meeting. It is one thing to go and eat

with sinners and tax collectors in their domain. It is another to set up a place to meet the Lord in holiness, even if it is in homes. There is nothing casual or ordinary about meeting God in person. The venue and the vehicle can help suggest the specialness of the occasion. God isnt interested in sinners simply being themselves at home in church. It expects them to become their best selves, giving their very best to God and his service, and the home setting honestly doesnt encourage this as well as some other settings. 4) The home reflects the family nature of church. This is a good point, perhaps the best point and reason for meeting in homes. I do not think we can say here that the early Christians met in homes because it reflected the unique nature of the early church. We simply do not know there was any element of conscious choice about this matter, much less the elaborate theology that Frank is enunciating to justify this as the normative practice. And really there is no empirical data to support generalizations like Most contemporary Christians attend church as remote spectators, not as active participants (p. 91). My response beHow do we know this? Furthermore, this has not been my experience. It sounds like before 1988 Frank only attended dead traditional churches. Its a great pity. 5) The home models spiritual authenticity. Well, it can do so, but since more Christian marriages end in divorce than endure, they more often model human brokenness, infidelity, rebellion of children, and a host of other sorts of family soap operas. Imagine what happens when a little church group meets in the home of a dying marriage, and is unable to stop the process, ending in taking sides with one spouse or the other. This is the other end of the spectrum of what is described in Acts 2 and 4, and this leads to another point. For whatever reason, small house churches seem more subject to schism (as they were in Corinth) than larger churches that meet outside of homes. This is not what Frank means when it talks about house churches multiplying. What I am talking about is not multiplication but rather ungodly division. This is the curse of low church Protestantism in general, and house churches are not immune to it either. Ironically in part this is because of a lack of good local leadership, and also due to bad ecclesiology. I agree with Frank entirely that where one meets affects how one meets, and how one feels about the meeting. The building shapes us, not merely vice versa. John Wesley understood perfectly well the value of small group meetings in homes. He called them class and band meetings. They were essential for accountability confession of sins, prayer and the like. He did not however make the mistake of thinking that such a venue is inherently the best place for all church activities to transpire, or that the NT Christians suggested that it was. It was rather a both/and matter, and my position would be we need both small and larger church meetings. Not an either/ or situation. The sociology of size helps the church at both ends of the spectrum. I am far more likely to feel that I am part of the body of Christ universal if I meet with a large group of diverse Christians, many of whom are not of my race, my nation, my class group, my education, and so on. Build the ark big enough and you can rescue all sorts of critters two by two, so they can come in from the judging rain. I frankly think that a sanctuary does a better job of conveying sanctuary as a spiritual and religious idea than a home which has no altar at all, indeed has no religious symbols to speak of. Frank is utterly convinced that the normative meeting place for the early church was the

home. (p. 94). Honestly that is mistaking description for prescription especially on the basis of Acts. I agree that Christians probably more often met in homes than not in the NT era. There were specific social reasons and practical necessities for this. I see no ecclesiology of place attached to the home to the exclusion of other venues in the NT. Pt. III I must confess that Chapter Five is my favorite chapter of this book. I find myself both edified and helped by this chapter. Frank is right that the use of family language and house language dominates the discussion and the metaphorical language about the character of the early church. And like Frank, I think the NT writers are talking about a spiritual reality, not merely a sociological and social paradigm, such as fictive kinship. One caution needs to be interjected at this juncture, namely the ancient family looked very little like the modern one. It was an extended family to start with, and the household included slaves, hence their presence in the NT household codes. Thus, what ancients meant by family is not quite what we mean today. Frank gives us six descriptors of what it means for the church to be a family and act appropriately like one: 1) members take care of each other. I quite agree this is important. I have seen this happen in large and small churches, and I have seen it not happen even in tiny churches. Size is not the issue here, compassion and motivation and conviction is. Frank complains that too many traditional churches use the business model to envision themselves. Honestly I dont know many who do this at least consciously, but sometimes there is pressure from church members to run it more like a business. This needs to be resisted. 2) members spend time together and not just at church times and places. Thats a no brainer. 3) members show one another affection. This one is both a promise and problem. The good side is one may feel received and accepted. The problem side however is huge. Over 30% of all women in churches have been abused by men before they reached adulthood, many by their own parents or siblings. Many of these wounded women should not be subjected to unwanted touch, particularly by members of the opposite sex. The problem of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and the like in the church is a serious one. And encouraging no professional personal boundaries between members of a church is often dangerous in a world full of abused and dysfunctional people. Let me be clear. I am not saying one should give up on hugs or the like. But there needs to be a good deal more consciousness raising in the church about these sorts of things, and about the dangers of intimacy, whether spiritual in character or otherwise. One more word of warning. The boundary line between ones sexuality and ones spirituality is often a thin one and the two things can be confused. People who are passionate in category A tend to be the same in B, and one bleeds over into the other. In other wordsa call for affection needs to be tempered with a call to guard ones heart, analyze ones motives and behavior, and the like. 4) Families Grow. Well yes they do, they also shrink when kids leave home and persons die. This analogy with the church can only be pressed so far. The point is that churches are supposed to be growing, and sheep shift is not church growth! 5) the members share responsibility. This can take a lot of forms, and need not include everyone speaking at every church meeting. There are a thousand tasks that the saints should be equipped to do. 6) the members reflect the Triune God in their relationships,

abiding in one another and self-sacrificially loving and serving one another. The language of abiding in Johns Gospel is quite interesting. Literally what Jesus says is keep on abiding in me and I will abide in you. There is a matter of effort at abiding in Christ, and it comes with a promise. The analogy is drawn between Christs relationship with the Father and the disciples relationship with Christ. Of course this parallel is not a perfect or exhaustive one, but in regard to the giving and receiving of love and self-sacrificial service, there is an appropriate analogy. What is interesting however is that the parallel is not between how the Trinity relates to each other, but simply the Son and the Father, and the disciples and Christ. And both of these are in relationships of subordination to the one above them. The Son submits to the Father and his will, as the disciples to do Christ and his will. In other words, mutual sharing and loving neither rules out hierarchy nor necessarily implies it, but they are certainly compatible. A better family example would be parent and child. The child most certainly is in a hierarchial relationship with the parent and the household codes make clear this involves both submission and obedience. Does this make the child somehow less of a person than the parent? Of course not because the subordination is only functional, not ontological. Again, I must stress the functional subordination of the Son to the Father finds its analogy in similar relationships between human beings, parents and children. There is no evidence at all that the heavenly Father is in submission to the Son or ever in a subordinate role in relationship to the Son. The submission is not mutual in the Trinity. Frank goes on to stress that the interactive and participatory model of church is what we are striving for. This would entail a stress on the group rather than the individual. In other words signs like accent on the individual have no place in the church. The corporate identity as family comes first, and ones physical family and individual identity come thereafter. Frank has a right to be outraged when a church does not take care of its own, and sees to all its members needs. Paul says the same thing in Gal. 6. And sadly seeing an uber-wealthy traditional church fail entirely to take care of its own poor members was the last straw for Frank with the traditional church. I would simply say that a church should not be evaluated on the basis of its worst behavior or worst member. Thats unfair. But I do understand Franks frustration. Chapter Six beginning on p. 117 spells out in some detail what church unity ought to look like. Frank stresses that all Christians in a particular town are part of the household of God in that place, and presumably the body of Christ in that place. In my hometown of Charlotte that would mean close to 900,000 Christians in that one locale. Thats a big household to say the least. Frank also stresses that whomever God has accepted as his own, we should accept as our fellow Christians. I quite agree with this. Membership in a particular local church is not the same thing as being a member of the body of Christ. People have been accepted by God because they have repented and trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ (p. 119). There are then some theological preconditions to membership in Christs body, and if a particular local church asks more in order to join its fellowship, Frank calls this sectarianism. In other words, Frank is in favor of minimal requirements for recognizing someone is a Christian and a part of the body of Christ. I think I am in basic agreement with this. He does not discuss whether young children are considered provisional members of the church or covenant community or not. In my view, Paul says

they are in 1 Cor. 7they are holy or set apart for God even without a profession of faith. I do agree as well that visitors are not part of the body of Christ, they are just visitors and as such they are welcome. Frank offers an historical rationale for why today instead of their being a church in a locale, there are various different denominational and not-denominational churches. He believes that we should trace this splitting or division back to the imposition of a clergy laity distinction in the church in the third century and thereafter. The problem with this analysis is twofold. Firstly while there wasnt a clergy/laity distinction in the earliest church there was a hierarchial leader/follower distinction throughout the whole period. This then cannot be the cause of the rupture. Secondly, it was the Protestant Reformation which spawned the rise of the modern notion of Denominationalism, and indeed it did not spawn it immediately, but it rose to prominence in the last 3 centuries. Before Luther, there were various churches who all saw themselves as the one and only true church (Catholics, various sorts of Orthodox Churches, and so on). Some of these churches still think that way. In my view they are certainly wrong, and sectarian in their approach to this matter. All true Christians everywhere are the church, and part of the worldwide body of Christ. And no denomination has a stranglehold on the truth either. I find the Bob illustration (about a layman who has teaching gifts but is told must pursue clergy training to be allowed to do it) on pp. 122-23 very odd. I dont know any traditional church that requires clerical training for someone to be allowed to teach in that church. This is simply false. Indeed, most of the teachers in the churches I have worked with were lay people. I was the only trained pastor of the bunch, and the fault line between teacher and non-teacher did not fall along the line clergy/laity. This is equally true in most Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, UCC, Episcopalian and other traditional churches. Clerical orders are not required to be a teacher. Even here at Asbury Seminary, many of our faculty are not ordained pastors. So the notion that ordination requirements prevents someone from teaching, or even preaching in church, is false at least within most contexts in mainline Protestantism. These churches would not need to be asked What about Bob? Frank then critiques attempts at unity through better organization or ecumenical efforts at mergers etc. I would say that I am happy with whatever helps remove barriers to fellowship and shared service in Christ. Unity is not merely a spiritual connection. It has a social dimension as well. There can indeed be organizational impediments to unity, but there can also be organizational ways to help foster that unity as well. Even if Frank wants to call this holding hands over the fence without taking down the fence, he is able to see this as a good thing (p. 125). Frank then calls for the abolition of denominationalism. I would like to inject a word of caution about this. Christians of course do not all agree on many, many things. What having different denominations does is actually allowing church growth to continue along various trajectories without spending all ones time adjudicating disputes and differences. What denominations do is allow people to fellowship with other like minded believers and to live in peace. It is not perfect or ideal,

but were we to abolish the various different denominations, short of the eschaton it would likely lead to more internecine warfare between Christians and an even more horrible witness to the world. While legal separation with some cooperation is not as good as marriage, it beats divorce or even worse fraternal war twenty ways to Christmas. I personally happen to be glad to fellowship and worship with any and all other true Christians around the world. I have participated in all kinds of worship and fellowship meetings. Ive even preached in the one Baptist Church in Moscow which even Stahlin couldnt close down, and saw the babooshkas (grannies) who placed their bodies on the line to keep that church open. They are my sisters in Christ who stood tall against atheistic communism. But it is good for me and for them that I am not a part of their denomination, otherwise I would be constantly arguing with them about allowing women to do ministry not merely become martyrs! My goal is to be a world Christian in love with the whole body of Christ, however short of the return of Christ, I am realistic enough to think that the fences are not all going to come down, nor likely should they since we all remain fallen persons with inadequate theologies and inadequate charity. Frank is right that using the litmus test of doctrinal purity for creating unity in fact only leads to more sectarianism and church splits. It divides rather than adds to the unity. He adds I can imagine all the Christians who specialized in perfect doctrine passing out after they discovered who made it into the kingdom. Angels will be running around all over the place with smelling salts to wake them up! (p. 128). Aint it the truth! On the other hand I am stunned by statements like During the NT era, each church was completely unified. All the believers in a specific locale lived as members of one family. (p. 129). Actually this is to paint to ideal a picture of the early church. It is perfectly clear that there are divisions in the Roman church between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians and they dont all meet together, and they certainly were not all unified. Indeed, Romans is a discourse written to help unified that factious bunch, just as 1 Corinthians is, in a different sense. And it is telling that he never speaks of the church in Rome in Romans. And further more, there were both Pauline and Johannine churches in Ephesus which were not unified (see Paul Trebilcos fine work on Ephesus and the churches there). I enjoyed the remarkable story of overcoming denominational differences to form one fellowship meeting together on pp. 132-33, showing it is indeed possible. The lion can lie down by the lamb without thinking about lamb chops sometimes. And I think basically Frank is right unity in Christ comes by focusing on what we share in common in Christ. The word koinonia actually does not mean fellowship. Fellowship is the result of koinonia. What it means is a deliberate sharing or participating in common with someone in something. This indeed can create unity if we all are singing In Christ Alone together. In Chapter Seven Frank asks the tough questionWhat is Gods eternal purpose in creating human beings? Frank suggests that the answer to this question can most clearly be glimpsed in places like Ephesians and Colossians. Salvation was not the original reason God created human beings in the first place. I would add that healing and salvation are actually only the means, only a redemption and recovery program to the

eternal end,which is the proper worship of God and fellowship in Christ. Frank suggests that we examine closely Gen. 1-2 and Rev. 21-22 if we want to see Gods eternal purposes for humankind quite apart from the Fall, both before it and after it. Gods purpose was to create a human community that lived in unity and acted unto God, and not unto and for themselves (p. 143). Frank also says that Gen. 1.26 refers to the deliberations within the Trinity, but this is quite unlikely. The Trinity had not yet been revealed to humankind when Genesis was written and early Jews were right to see this as a reference to God and his heavenly court. And what follows from this is that the reference to let us make God in our image involves not just the image of God, but also in the image of angels. This is why for example the Psalmist says we are but a little lower or less than angels, and why angels in Gen. 6 tried to mate with humans, and why Jesus says that in the eschaton we will be like angels. Unfortunately for Franks theologizing here, this is not a story about the replication of life in the Trinity in the life of a human community. The communion in the Godhead, says Frank, should be mirrored in the koinonia in human community, and at least on this point, I think Frank is on the right track. But in fact image bearing for Christians does not look like the Trinity. It looks like bearing the image of Christ himself specifically. This is what Paul speaks of when he talks in Rom. 8 about being conformed to the image of the Son. This is why Christians are called to cross bearing, and to their own death and resurrection. Death and resurrection is not a pattern that reflects the inner life of the Trinity, it reflects the particular story of Christ, and indeed of Christ on earth. So again, we need to be careful to note over-read the Scriptural evidence. It isnt the story of the inner life of the Trinity that is replicated in the pattern of the story of Christians, even of Christians in community. But I agree whole-heartedly that we were created for a love relationship with God and with eachthat is why the great commandments involve loving God with whole heart and neighbor as self. The commandments reflect the eternal purpose and intent. And as for ruling the earth, and Gods desire to do that, that is a call for us to be stewards and lovers of Gods greater creation. Sometimes poetry and poetic image can go too far. On p. 145 Frank draws an analogy saying that just as Eve was in Adam before God created her, so the church was in Christ before the foundations of the world. The Father put his Son into a deep sleep on a hill at Calvary. Then in his resurrection, He released the woman onto the earthand her name is ekklesia. This is problematic on several fronts. Firstly, Eve was not some sort of incubus or fetus in Adam. No, Eve was constructed out of Adams parts and did not exist in Adam before then. Sorry, but this is too much of stretching of the story. Secondly, the bride did not exist before the foundations of the world in Christ. Only Christ existed, and the bride was not in Him in that sort of sense. And furthermore it was not the resurrection which caused the church to emerge. Technically speaking that did not and could not come about until Pentecost when the Spirit gave birth to the church. So the analogy doesnt work on either end of the deal. Frank gets full marks for creative thinking, but in the end, its bad exegesis. Frank however is right on target in saying that God is not just interested in new persons, he is interested in a new heaven and a new earth, since the latter was also affected by the Fall. In short God wants a human family, a diversity in

unity sort of like the Trinity, and his purpose was to have a love relationship with such a human family from before all time. Frank prefers to put it this way: God wants a bride to marry, a house to dwell in, a family to enjoy, and a visible body through which to express Himself. (p. 147). For some this will sound far too close to Mormon theology about God needing a body and a family etc. And there is the further problem that the church is not the bride of God the Father, but rather the bride of Christ, who after all was once a human being and then a glorified human being. It is Christ the glorified God-man whose bride we are, and not the Trinitys or the Fathers. And for the record, God does not need us to have a physical extension. He has that in the Incarnate and then glorified Christ. It must be doubtful then that we should see the church as the extension of God on earth. Rather it is a community in spiritual union with Christ. This is a different paradigm. I quite agree that a needs based approach to church (and preaching) misses the chief purpose of the church, which is to love God and enjoy and worship Him forever. This is why Revelation is the most worship focused book in the canonthat is where we are headed. Not caught up in small group one anothering, but in something even grander caught up in love, wonder and praise of our God, looking not to the things which are seen, such as each other, but fixing our eyes on the things which are unseen, namely God about which we now have conviction and assurance (Heb. 11.1). The church, when at its best, is only in a very limited sense mirroring the life within the Trinity. It is not chiefly supposed to be inwardly focused on itself. Besides its task to worship God, most often it is called to bear the image of Christ alone in the world. In other words after the doxological task and image, the missional image to the world is primary, the life in community image is secondary, if we are talking about the mission of the church. The Great Commission is about the mission. The true community is the product of the mission. The early church was a missionary movement which also did nurture. The church today is a nurture entity which has a mission function or committee. This is an analysis as applicable to the house church movement as it is to the mainline churches, sadly. It is not the goal and purpose of the community of Christ to simply enjoy each others company and focus inwardly on themselves and their koinonia. Chapter 8 begins with the old canard that tries to make a hard and fast distinction between function and office, or between function and position. This is a false distinction in the church for the very good reason that functions regularly and continually exercised are de facto positions or offices in the church. And indeed the theology of gifting in the NT comes with a theology of charisma, by which I do not mean the modern notion of charismatic personality, but the idea of an ongoing grace gift, given to a particular person. I agree that ministries should be exercised on the basis of the grace and gifts given to a person. I also agree that God gives gifts to all persons in the Body, and calls all to some form of ministry. It is then correct to say that there is not a clergy/laity distinction in the NT. What there is however is a leader/follower, or teacher/disciple, or elder/children distinction in the NT, and yes this involve hierarchy. Not everyone is called and graced and gifted to be a teacher, and so on. I want to stress that these distinctions did not arise out of nowhere in the second century church or in succeeding generations. They existed at the very beginning of church history. What I am stressing is

that passages like 1 Cor. 12 certainly do make clear that such roles are Spirit equipped and Spirit given and so in that sense, they are organic, to use Franks terms. The Spirit however decides who gets which gifts, and no one has them all, and no one is without some gift, and no the gifts do not simply rotate around in the church on a given day. In other words, the Spirit is concerned about our assuming our proper God-gifted roles, the Spirit is not simply interested in functions regardless of who performs them. One of the main flaws in the whole organic non-hierarchial model is that it leave quite out of the picture the fact that the Bible is replete with examples of persons, both in the OT and in the NT, particular persons called and gifted for specific tasks or functions. From Abraham to Moses to Samuel to David to John the Baptist to Jesus to the apostles to their co-workers to elders and deacons, God doesnt call functions, he calls specific persons to do specific tasks, and he equips them thereto. Frank on p. 155 points to the fact that Jesus is making a distinction between his model of leadership and the worlds notions in Mt. 20.25-28/para. He is absolutely right about this. We are not however exchanging a hierarchial model of leadership for a non-hierarchial model. Servant leadership is still leadership. It is simply exercised differently than it is done in the world, or at least it should be. And of course in this same passage Jesus models servant leadership (see also Mk. 10.45). Domination and power plays from above are the worlds model. Service and sacrifice is Jesus model, and so Jesus rebukes James and John because they conceived of leadership in a worldly way. It should be notice however that Jesus was later to say to these same persons that they would at the eschaton sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. This most certainly is a model of leadership from above that is hierarchial. What happens though when this model of leadership is faithfully carried out is that the pyramid is invertedChristian leaders lead from below, they lift others up by getting beneath them in the pecking order of things and serving them. Like a weight lifter who, instead of trying to stand and clean and jerk the weight over his head, instead lies down and pushes the weight up from underneath, this is the way Christian leadership is supposed to work. The leader becomes like a servant, but this explains his model of leadership, his modus operandi, not whether he is leading by example or not. There is a difference between leading by the example of humble service and lording it over a group of people. This is the contrast Jesus makes in these sorts of passages. You will notice that this did not prevent Jesus from teaching, preaching, healing and sending out the 12 two by two to do the same, as leaders in training. Jesus did not train all of his disciples to be leaders, because all were not called by him to do so. And lest we think that power does not somehow work in a top down mode in the Kingdom, look at a text like John 20. Jesus breathes on his 12 and says receive the Spirit, in preparation for their doing what Jesus has called and now gifted them to do. They receive their power and authority from on high, not from a vote of a congregation, or a suggestion of a fellow church member or the like. The kingdom of God is indeed a hierarchial notion. It not only has a king, Jesus, it also has his agents, shaliach as they are called in Hebrew, apostles, prophets, teachers etc. So lets be clearmodern business or military models of leadership are not the source of the hierarchial models the church uses when it comes to leadership--- the Bible, including the NT is. Authority is not just based on godly character, meekness and a willingness to serve, though all those things are necessary. It is based on whom God has called, gifted, empowered to serve in a particular

manner perhaps specific roles and functions. Function does not merely follow character. There are plenty of Christians of good character who are simply not called to leadership, or as Paul calls is, steering, administration, oversight. It is certainly true that Jesus strongly interjects some checks and balances so that arrogance and pride and self-serving behavior will not be allowed to be the impetus in Christian leadership. For one thing, he stresses that we should avoid encouraging people to call us by fancy titles. We need to take a more humble approach to leadership. Self-exaltation rather than self-sacrifice is not to be the manner in which we lead (see Mt. 23.8-12). But leadership by gifted and called persons we still need and require, not merely the leadership of Christ in heaven, but the leadership which he exercises through his anointed and appoint agents, both male and female, on earth.

If I were to probe the presuppositions Frank has about Christian leadership, one of the sine qua nons for him seems to be the idea that the concept of the priesthood of all believers implies a notion in which all Christians can assume all leadership functions at one time or another. The problem with this notion is severalfold. If we look at the places where the language of the priesthood of all believers appears in the NT (e.g. in 1 Peter, in Revelation) the author in question is not even talking about leadership in those passages. Two things are going: 1) a denial that we any longer have a need for a specific class of human beings called priests. Why? Because Jesus paid it all, and the role of the priest is to offer sacrifices for others to God. But Jesus, our high priest has accomplished this task once and for all as Hebrews says, and we need not have it repeated, replicated, or redramatized. We are done with temples, priests, and sacrifices on the earth in that sort of literal sense. This has not morphed into a notion that instead of just a few humans being priests, now every believer is a priest in this sense. That would simply be expanding the gene pool of human priesthoods to everyone. This we do not find in the NT. For example, when leaders are named, described, or their roles are mentioned the roles mentioned are things like apostle, prophet, elder, deacon, teacher, evangelist, BUT NEVER PRIEST. Why not? Because the priesthood of Christ has done away with that sort of human priesthood altogether. 2) What then are Peter and John and others referring to when they talk about the priesthood of all believers? The answer is simple. Every Christian has an obligation to offer themselves up as living sacrifices to God (see Rom. 12), and offer up the sacrifices of prayer, praise, thanksgiving so often referred to in the NT. That is, every Christian is his own priest in these matters, and no one else can perform those tasks for you. No one can worship God for you. No one can dedicate you to be totally sold out to God for you. YOU must do that yourself. This has nothing whatsoever to do with leadership functions, it has to do with our total dedication to and worship of God. All of use, especially when we gather together are called to offer up prayers and praise and thanksgiving to God. This is not supposed to be the performance of the few on behalf of the couch potatoes for Jesus. Nor when it comes to responding to Gods call to give yourself wholly to God should you ever say here I am Lord, take my brother/sister. Only you can present yourself as a living sacrifice. In short, the priesthood of all believers concept is used to reconfigure the way we look out our spiritual lives and duties and the call to worship God. It tells us nothing about who is or isnt gifted to be an apostle or a prophet or a teacher, and the like.

Frank (pp. 160-65) wants to insist that the problem is not just with a few self-seeking pastors. The problem is inherent to the whole pastor/clergy system. So the solution is ditch the system. He is right that sometimes, egocentric and yet insecure pastors instead of enabling the congregations gifts, makes himself indispensible to the congregations lifestyle and in fact disables the congregations gifts. This however is an example of pastors behaving badly, not an inherent flaw with having pastors in the first place. Let me give an example. I used to attend an 8 a.m. Missouri Synod Lutheran service in Charlotte N.C. Now one would be hard-pressed to find a more conservative and traditional, and indeed male dominated denomination in those days. And yet something remarkable happened during the charismatic renewal movement in the 60s and 70s. The pastor became a charismatic, and so did his congregation! Did they then jettison the rituals, liturgy and clergy system in order to let the Spirit flow and have all members in ministry? Not at all, but things did change. That 8 a.m. service became an hour and half long (or longer). The liturgy became a sung liturgy with folk instruments. A time in the middle of the worship service was set aside for anyone to give a word of witness, share an exhortation, share a spiritual gift or experience. There was speaking in tongues, and even more beautiful singing in tongues. And there would always also be a powerful expository sermon, and we would all take the eucharist together every Sunday with joy and gladness, leaving the building singing and ringing. Everyone participated. Indeed the A frame church was packed out every week because the Spirit was doing a mighty work amongst the 300 or so present. There was strength in numbers, there was beauty in liturgy, we were fed by the Word and by the sacrament. And Pastor Mirly was not the center of attention everyone participated in some way in the service and it was far from clergy dominated. There was nothing lifeless, perfunctory, dull, dead about this worship time at all. We also had wonderful fellowship, made friends., and life was grand. I often went from there to a formal Methodist Church with my family and I felt like I had gone from the sauna to the first church of the Frigidaire. The difference wasnt that one service was in a home and one in a church, one had liturgy and the other didnt, one had preaching and the other didnt, one had a pastor and the other didnt. The difference was the openness to the Holy Spirit, who could hardly get a word in edgewise in the latter service. Pastor Mirly had carved out a time in the liturgy for pure spontaneity and it worked well. We didnt need a whole service like that. Indeed we needed the teaching and preaching of a person deeply steeped in Gods Word in the original languages and we got it in spades. And here is where I say that well trained, seminary educated ministers offer a congregation something they will not otherwise get, no matter how open to the Holy Spirit one or another person may be and no matter how well they may know their favorite English translation. What is it? It is the ability to interact with the living word of God in its original language form. The Holy Spirit works with the material we give the Spirit. Yes, sometimes the Spirit through a miracle gives a surprising insight to a person not so equipped. This does sometimes happen. But the better Biblically equipped the person, the

more the Spirit can do with them. Its just a fact. Education is not the enemy of inspiration. Indeed, it makes a person far more useful to the Lord in many ways.

Pt. IV Here first are some interesting statistics which Frank kindly provided me about house churches--House church demographics and psychographics in the United States:

The average age of those involved in house churches ranges between 30 and 55. 55% are males. 45% are females. 65% have children under the age of 18. 45% are in the Southern part of the United States. 35% are in the Western part of the United States. 15% are in the Central part of United States. 5% are in the Northern part of the United States (excepting the NW). States with the most house church activity: Florida, Georgia, California, Texas, Oregon, Washington. 55% are college educated. 40% are registered Republican. 30% are registered Democratic. 15% are registered Independent. 15% are not registered to vote. 66% are Caucasian. 24% are African-American. 7% are Hispanic. 2% are Asian. 1% are other. 41% home school their children. Average income per household: $30,000 $60,000 Religious Background 46% Protestant: Charismatic/Pentecostal. Religious Background 34% Protestant: nonCharistmatic evangelical. Religious Background 12% Catholic. Religious Background 8% Other. To me the most interesting bit here is that we have just the opposite male female breakdown that we find in the traditional church which is 55% or more female, and only 45% or less male. Notice that house churches are mainly strong in the south and the west and overwhelmingly they are of low church Protestant background. --------------

p. 167. Chapters Nine and Ten (pp. 167-99) provide us with Franks vision of what leadership should look like. In his view it has but two main functionsoversight and decision making. While I would agree these are two of the functions of leaders, they are by no means the only functions of leaders. Notable by its absence is the ministry of the Word. But the Pauline gift lists are perfectly clearsome all called to be teachers, some are called to be pastor-teachers (Ephesians), some are called to be evangelists. And yes some are called to the task of prophesy. These are all leadership roles. The other striking thing is that only just over half are college educated. Finally, notice that there is about twice the number percentagewise of African Americans in this movement than are in the population as a whole, or in the Mainline Churches (which is about 11%). ---------------In order to explain away the notion that elders held a regular position and role in the early church listen to how Frank evaluates the situation: The term elder refers to their character [i.e. age and hopefully maturity]. The term overseer refers to their function. And the term shepherd refers to their gifting. (p. 170). This explanation is wrong, right, and wrong, in that order. While it is certainly true that the term presbyteros can refer to an old person, in a Jewish, or for that matter Christian context it normally had primarily a religious context. This is not a surprise since this term came over into Jewish Christianity first from the synagogue (see e.g. Acts 15the elders of the Jerusalem church). It is interesting that when Paul actually wants to characterize himself as an elderly person he uses a different form of this word presbytes (Philemon vs. 9). To be sure, in a text like 1 John 2, it is possible, perhaps even probable that the author is talking about older Christian as opposed to the children or youth in the Lord. But when for example Paul calls the elders of Ephesus (i.e. the leaders of that church) to come meet him at Miletus, he was not asking the senior citizens of that church to go on a long walk to meet him! More often than not the term elder in the Pastorals and elsewhere refers to a church role, function, office, call it what you like. And this should not surprise us since there already were such folks in the synagogue who were not necessarily gray beards (see the discussion in James Burtchaells From Synagogue to Church). I agree with Frank however that the term overseer can indeed refer to a function that an elder has, as it seems to in Titus for example. It does not have the sense bishop that it came to have later. Nevertheless, in Philippians it does seem to be referring to a particular role that particular persons were playing in that church (Phil. 1.1), which could be distinguished from the role of deacon. The term shepherd has a long history. It is applied for example to kings and priests in the OT (see e.g. David, and Ezekiel on religious leaders called shepherds). As used in the NT it refers to a specific pastoral role that some persons were gifted to undertake. Whether they were elders, teachers or someone else, they were certainly leaders. Not just anyone was called to be a shepherd. Frank seems to know more than can be known about the quantity of teaching done by elders in the early church and the quantity done by others. He argued While gifted elders had a large share in teaching, they did so on the same footing as all other members. (p. 170). Actually this is false probably in two ways. First of all, the call for all Christians to exhort one another is never specifically linked to the worship or teaching service. It could be one on one, it could be private, but it is never linked to the time when the church gathered together for worship and fellowship. By contrast this is quite specifically when those who have been appointed elders are expected to do their teaching. Indeed, it is he

who has been entrusted with the trustworthy message so he can encourage others by sound doctrine and is expected to teach it regularly (see Titus 1.9; 1 Tim. 3.1able to teach, not apt to teach, because not all have the gift of this sort of teaching). Frank is especially bothered by the concept of a single or a senior pastor leading a church. He thinks this has no basis in the Scriptures. However the Pastorals indicate this is exactly how churches were startedby appointing elders to each one of them. And who did the appointingthe apostolic co-worker of Paul, a Timothy or a Titus. In other words, it was top down. As for the concept of the senior or lead pastor, it probably comes from the notion of the pastor-teacher mentioned in Pauls discussion of the matter. It is worth noting as well that we are told in Ephesians that the church is not simply based on our relationship with Christ our cornerstone. Ephes. 2.20 says it is also built on the foundation of human leadership of the apostles and prophets. Shepherding is in any case not just an occasional function done occasionally like a crisis intervention specialist. On the contrary it is a ongoing role that the leader needs to perform, because sheep cant lead themselves anywhere, and need constant guidance and supervision. The image of Gods people as sheep both in the OT and the NT should have warned us that a casual rather than constant, ad hoc rather than appointed approach to leadership in the church will not suffice for sheep. On p. 171 we are told that elders never made decisions for this or that church. This reflects an inadequate reading of Acts 15. It is indeed precisely James and the elders of that church who make a decision as to how to allow Gentiles to have full fellowship with Jewish Christians. Peter and Paul confer, but James and the elders conclude this matter, particularly James does. Franks vision of how the early church made decisions was neither dictatorial nor democratic, but consensual. This frankly is not always true. Paul often made executive decisions, like the way he handled the serious immorality mentioned in 1 Cor. 5-6. In fact I would be hard pressed to think of any evidence in the NT that a major decision was made consensually during a meeting of a whole church in which all had equal authority and decision making power. Where is the evidence for this? When Paul corrects the two women in Philippi in Phil. 4, does he say, call a church meeting and come to a consensual decision about this problem? No. He simply tells the women what to do. In the wake of the Onesimus mess does Paul ask Philemon to call a church meeting in his house and all those present work out an agreed upon approach to handling the return of the run away slave? No. Paul has his own authoritative letter read out in the church and expects Philemon to respond appropriately, with the eyes of the congregation watching him. I could go on, but here is an example, like with the issue of hierarchy where it is Frank, not the traditional church which has been infected with modern notions of what leadership and how decision making should be done in the church. Frank likens the role of elders to the role of the liver (p. 172), an invisible entity which filters out the poisons in the system. This analogy hardly does elders any justice. Both Acts 20, and the Pastoral indicate they were to be visible, regularly functioning in the church meetings, not just behind the scenes. When Paul called the elders to Miletus, he did not call a meeting of the whole church, or ask them to work behind the scenes. He

urged them to do all the things he had been doing with the church there. Their role was visible, vital, and people could regularly distinguish them from other members of those churches. Did the elders at Miletus share oversight with the other members of the congregation? No, or Paul would have asked them to come meet him as well and to protect the folk from wolves. Frank then wants to insist that elders plural were always appointed to ever church, appealing to Acts 11.30, 14.23. 20.17, Phil. 1.1, James 5.14, Titus 1.5. (p. 173). It would be interesting to know how he could know this since there were multiple house churches in various of these places, not just one, especially in the case of Ephesus and Philippi. For example there were churches which met both in the house of Lydia and in the house of the jailor in Philippi, even from near the outset of things. We see this same pattern in 2-3 John. There are multiple house churches even in a small area and in the case of the problematic one, there seems to have been only one elder leading that church Diotrophes. Frank is trying at almost any cost to avoid the notion of a church with one elder, but in fact there surely were some in the early church (see e.g. the Didache). There is simply no basis for a dogmatic statement like No church in the first century had a single leader. (p. 173). The evidence suggests otherwise. The ultimate human authority over Pauls churches was Paul himself. This is perfectly clear in his letters by the way he directs, corrects, commands, changes what goes on in these congregations. He quite rightly uses both the father and mother metaphor to explain his relationship with his converts. No one else played that role in their lives, and like an ancient parent he expected to be obeyed. While he preferred to persuade, he was perfectly willing to command, especially immature Christians like those in Corinth. The idea that the Pauline churches as depicted in Acts or in Pauls letters operated on the basis of consensual decision making is a gross exaggeration. Perhaps sometimes this happened. But often enough, as in 1 Cor. 5-6 it did not happen, and Paul would go into command mode. It is simply false to say that only Christ had the authority to command the church. No, in fact Christ bequeathed such authority on his apostles. The better question would be--- did they pass it on to other leaders who were under them, such as elders and deacons? It appears to me that the answer to this is yes. Paul passes the baton to Timothy and Titus in the Pastorals, they in turn appoint elders and overseers who surely were authorized to do various things by the apostolic co-workers. Indeed Paul gives both a character and a job description of these persons in 1 Timothy and Titus.

Frank seems confident as well (p. 176) that there were no elders sent to this or that locale by some authority figure. They were all indigenous. This also is false. Apollos was given a letter of reference and sent to the church in Corinth out of the church in Ephesus with the help of Aquila and Priscilla. Phoebe was sent with a letter of reference to work in the church in Rome by Paul, and he urged them to help her in her ministry (Rom. 16). The distinction between itinerant workers and local workers is an artificial and all too modern one, not grounded in the NT itself. Sometimes the itinerants went local. Paul lived and stayed in Ephesus for over two years and for over a year and a half in Corinth. This is

hardly pure itinerancy. And when he came to Ephesus he worked with churches his cohorts Prisca and Aquila had been setting up. Equally false is the claim elders always emerged long after a church was set up. The reason for this dogmatic claim is obvious Frank insists that all leadership must emerge organically from a local church. But often it did not work that way in the early church or now. Titus 1 is perfectly clearTitus himself will appoint elders in every town. Titus is not a local church meeting and consensually deciding something. Titus is an apostolic co-worker, structuring local congregations. In fact one could read Titus 1.5 to mean ordain elders for every town. The Pauline work on Crete (not to be confused with Cyprus) was unfinished. Presumably Paul is referring to Tituss earlier work there. In any case, it is Titus doing the appointing of elders over already existing churches and their job is to manage Gods household. We do not know how soon after these churches were planted these elders were appointed to them. It could have been soon, it may not have been. We simply dont know. But in any case it is a serious distortion of the truth to say traveling apostolic workers acknowledged them after they emerged from within the congregation (p. 176). Nope, Titus appointed them after he personally had evaluated their character and gifts and graces. What sadly becomes apparent is the need to preserve the local indigenous multiple leadership principle at all costs, and the cost is a fair exegesis of the Pastoral Epistles and other evidence. Listen to a literal reading of Acts 14.23Paul and Barnabas appointed (or ordained) elders for them in each churchand committed them to the Lord. It does not say here the Holy Spirit did this. It says the apostolic workers did. Acts 20.28 says that those who are already elders have been made overseers of Gods people by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. It does not say the Holy Spirit appointed these men to be elders. No, the Spirit gifted and equipped them for their oversight function. In other words, there is no basis in these texts which Frank appeals to for the notion that elders emerge from the local congregation and are merely acknowledged by the apostolic delegates. Wrong. The apostles appointed and ordained these folks. And here is where I issue a strong warning, speaking the truth in love as I see it, to all those who take this approach to reading the NT--- beware when you love your own vision of ministry more than what the NT actually says about leadership and ministry! Beware of misleading the church on these very matters in an age when the church is Biblically illiterate and desperately needs more and better leadership, better trained leadership, better educated leadership to cope with the increasing dysfunction in our culture and world. Whenever you love your own vision of ministry more than you love the Word of God which challenges all of our inadequate notions of ministrybeware. God will require of you that you sacrifice this vision of ministry on an altar. He will ask that it be put through a refiners fire. He will remind you of the dangers of becoming false prophets. On p. 179 we see just how far Frank will go to deny the plain sense of a text in order to support his theories, in this case that local elders were not paid. While it is quite clear that Paul argues for his being paid for his ministerial work in 1 Cor. 9, Franks view seems to be that that sort of arrangement only applies to itinerant workers, not local ministers. The fly in that ointment is that we have several texts that disprove this theory. Firstly, there is Galatians 6.6those who receive instruction in the word (aha, there are local church

teachers who are expected to teach the Word), should share all good things with their instructor. Paul here is not referring to himself, he is talking about local teachers of the Galatians, and he is urging them to support them not only with hospitality but with all good things which includes money. The context in the Greek is clear enough--- there are some five terms for monetary things here, including the word for financial burdens. Secondly, the reason in the Pastoral Epistles persons are not to be appointed as elders if they are money-grubbers is precisely because they were going to be paid and these tendencies should not be in play when the congregation is going to support them. Thirdly the exegesis of 1 Tim. 5.17-18 is distorted. The word time may or may not refer directly to money here, but the last verse, which is a quote from Jesus says the workman is worthy of his wages. The wages here are not honoring, they are money. This is clear enough from the original context of that saying of Jesus, which Paul himself repeats in 1 Cor. 9. In both those texts the wages are money. There is no reason to think it means anything else here. Both the larger Biblical context, and the references in the Pastorals we already have to elders and deacons needing to not be greedy folks, make clear the sense of this text. Local elders and teachers were to be paid, just like the apostles. Of course they could refuse such money, but the church had an obligation to pay them, not least because in this context we also here--- local elders do the teaching and preaching in the congregationaha! Furthermore, Acts 20.33-35 in no way under cuts what Paul says in 1 Cor. 9 about the right for a minister like himself to be paid. The key verb in Acts 20 there is covet. Paul is saying he was no money grubber, and yes he did chose on more than one occasion to refuse pay and work with his hands. He did not want to get caught up in the reciprocity system. (N.B. 1 Timothy 5 was not addressed to the elders in Ephesus. It was addressed to Timothy!see my Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians Vol. One on all these Pastoral Epistle issues). One of the fundamental mis-steps is the mistaken argument from silence. Frank assumes (see pp. 181-83), that Pauls letters to churches reflect the only letters he wrote to individuals in those congregations. Now of course we know otherwise. Philemon and Colossians both involve the same audience, except Philemon is directed to only one part of that audiencePhilemon and the church that meets in his house. What Frank has to assume is that because Paul is addressing everyone in most of his letters, then he assumes that everyone is going to deal with the problems in a given church. This assumption is unjustified. Look for example at Phil. 4. There Paul asks a true yokefellow to intercede and help sort out the mess caused by two women ministerial co-workersEuodia and Syntyche. There is then a local leader Paul appeals to, to sort out this mess. Furthermore, the Pastoral Epistles prove that Paul wrote to such leaders as Timothy or Titus (and Philemon) as well as writing to whole churches. Then too, Paul mentions at least two letters that went to Corinth in addition to 1-2 Corinthians. In short, it is far more likely that Paul addressed church leaders in a separate letter rather than in the letter that was to be read out to the whole congregation. Philippians seems to be something of an exception, perhaps because Paul was in chains and not able to write a separate letter to the true yokefellow (could this be Luke?). Group letters were for everyone in the group. Individual letters were for leaders. You cant judge the character of the latter from the

character of the former. Unfortunately it is an argument from silence to examine group documents and draw conclusions about things only normally discussed in private letters to leaders! The basic principle is this absence of evidence in group letters does not provide you with evidence of absence since we also have the Pastorals, and Philemon and other evidence in the group letters like Philippians about the importance of local church leaders. Lets stress something positive about this chapter. On pp. 186-87 Frank gives a helpful list of all the sorts of things that a congregation should be doing for itself. He is quite right that there is no justification in the NT for the notion that the leaders should do all the ministry. No they are to equip all the saints for ministry. I agree with him that sometimes lay folk assume that since they are paying the ministers to minister, then they dont have to do it. This is the result of insufficient or just bad teaching in a particular church. The fault does not lie with the paying of the minister, it lies with an inadequate teaching and equipping of everyone to minister, and probably that oversight should be laid at the door of the paid minister himself! Its his own fault he has not enabled and encouraged the ministry of the whole body. The real plus of this book is that Frank rightly insists on the mobilization of the whole body to serve and love each other. This is a good and necessary thing. One of the things I find rather amazing about Franks book is that he relies on liberation theologians like Leonardo Boff to help him articulate this theology of the relationships within the Trinity as a pattern for church relationships. Now Frank is a conservative charismatic Evangelical Christian, for whom the B-I-B-L-E is the true litmus test for everything. What I find amazing is that the sort of egalitarianism that is being articulated here in part comes from Marxist social analysis used as a filter to read the NT and reconfigure its theology and praxis. (see p. 189). At times what is said in this book sounds more like Boff or Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza than like Jesus or Paul, and it should be said that neither Boff nor Fiorenza have the high view of Scripture Frank does. Of course it is true that American Christians have radical notions about freedom, and they do often have a problem with authority figures and respecting authorities. The antiinstitutionalism of this book places right into that ethos in our culture, and is partly derived from it. It is some of these American notions of what equality must look like, what really liberating leadership should look like that provide lens for reading the NT in certain ways. Now it needs to be said that these ideas just mentioned are not the same as democracy, though they are often found clustered together. Frank is clear that the church is not a democracy, even though he advocates various forms of these other ideas. We need to return to Acts 15.22-25 (see p. 193) at this juncture. Lets start however at the beginning of the chapter and see what it saysPaul and Barnabas were appointed by the Antioch Church to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. That is leaders from the Antioch Church went to Jerusalem to meet with the leaders of the Jerusalem church, specifically its apostles and elders! However many people who were going to attend the Jerusalem council meeting, the issue was going to be mainly discussed and decided by the leaders. When the meeting transpired, and after some from the more Pharisaic Jewish Christians had insisted on circumcision for Gentile Christians

we then hear this at vs. 6--- the apostles and elders met to consider this question. Notice again who is doing the deliberating. It is not everyone, it is the leaders of the church. Who then speaks thereafterthe leaders! Peter, Paul and Barnabas, leaders in either the Jerusalem or Antioch churches. The whole assembly listens, but only the leaders speak. What happens next--- then James, the head of the Jerusalem Church by 50 A.D. (for Peter had become itinerant long before then), speaks. He gives a little expository sermon based on an OT text and then he says it is my judgment therefore that we should not trouble the Gentiles. He does not say, it is our judgment or Christs judgment. He says, it is my judgment--- period! He is the one who concludes the matter, and the Decree is drawn up to mirror exactly what he said and decreed! This was hardly an example of decisionmaking by consensus!! No way, Jose! But that is not the end of the matter. Once James made his final and definitive decree, then the apostles and elders jump into action. Once again it is the leaders taking action here, they do this in concert with the whole church(notice that this passing reference to the whole church is in a subordinate prepositional phrase. The church is not the subject of the main verb or the action). How should we envision this? Presumably the leaders said that persons needed to be chosen to accompany the Decree letter and everyone agreed. Notice that the person chosen, Judas and Silas, who were leaders (hegoumenoi) among the believers presumably in Jerusalem. The emphasis throughout this passage is on leaders coming, leaders speaking leaders decreeing, and leaders being sent with the letter, chosen by apostles and elders in consultation with the others present. Now we notice that the letter is from the apostles and the elders, not from the congregation as a whole (vs. 23). The apostles and elders say that some persons had gone out from the Jerusalem church to Antioch urging circumcision on Gentile believers. Notice what is said about this action--- without our authorization. Who is the our here? The apostles and elders who wrote the letter, of course. And notice that this was inappropriate. They should have gotten permission to go and saying things from the apostles and elders, but failed to do so. This is what happens when people try to act in an important ecclesial matter without sanction from the church leaders. Vs. 23 then says so we all agreed to choose some men. Now the we all here could be just the apostles and elders who are the authors of this document, but perhaps this refers to them plus the congregation who had been consulted. In any case it is perfectly clear that this is a leader led event, and the actions taken are based on the Decree of the leader James. The novel and interesting phrase it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us does not mean that the congregation had a sance until the Spirit spoke through someone and told them what to do. It simply means that these apostles and elders were confident that this was a Spirit led decision, one the Spirit would and did approve of. One final footnote. I sincerely doubt that the adamant Judaizers referred to at the beginning of Acts 15 were happy with this decision and decree. They would have seen it as a hopeless compromise. And in fact, they continued to bewitch Pauls churches as a careful reading of Corinthians and perhaps Philippians shows. In sum, Franks interpretation of this passage is nearly entirely wrong, completely ignoring that this is a leader led even where a leader makes a decree which everyone must follow. This text is in no way an example of what he calls consensual decision making. The attempt to make this passage say something else on pp.

233-34 is weak and does not work. One more thing. The body of Christ is often divided about important matters and often needs to take the advice of its leaders, even when there are some nay-sayers. Of course it is good to work for consensus, but it cannot always be had, and yet action is required. When Hurricane Katrina hit, some of my church wanted to go down there almost immediately and help. Others wanted to wait and let more time elapse. Those who wanted to go were authorized to go by the pastor, and the ministerial staff, and the vast majority of the congregation agreed, though there was no voting or Roberts rules of order in play. It was absolutely the right thing to do, and indeed it was a spiritually transforming thing to do for our workers who were sent. God was in this action. p. 194 tells us that when the Trinity is in consensus, then God acts, and this is the model for the church. One little problem. What happens when Jesus will was different in the Garden of Gethsemane than the Fathers will? Answer Jesus submits to the Fathers will. This is not an example of consensual decision making. Jesus will was not to go to the cross if it could be avoided. Nevertheless not my will but thine is a statement about submission to someone elses will. And guess whatthat is perfectly acceptable to God and the Spirit. There will be times when consensus cant be reached, but some members are willing to submit to the judgment of others, in particular to leaders who have more wisdom and experience about such hard choices. This is not manipulation, it is submission, and it is appropriate. Also on p. 194 Frank tells us that Heb. 13.17 does not say obey those who are over you. He may be right. It may read be persuaded by those who are over you. But the important point about this is the over you part. There was a leadership hierarchy in the church. There were some who were over the others. This much is clear. And something else becomes clear, working for a consensus of everybody is sure easier if you limit your church size to 20 folks. The NT however requires no such limits, any more than it requires consensual decision making. However, I do think it is a good practice to try to achieve consensus first, even if actions have to be taken without it. I dont think there is anywhere in the Bible that mandates such a practice. I tend to agree with what Frank says on p. 198that how we treat each other in the process of making decisions is often as important as what we decide. We need to be Christians both about the process and the actions taken. But consensus is not required. When Paul and Barnabas could not agree about whether to bring Mark the second time around or not, they parted company, each went on to do good ministry with others. Apparently they did not think it necessary to struggle for a consensus, and it was more important to act than to go on butting heads. Sometimes thats the way it must be in the church. One thing is clear--- leadership does not always come from the whole church in concert, nor should. Sometimes leaders actually have to lead and thats exactly what we see in Acts 15. Beginning about p. 200 Frank deals with the issue of covering or to put it another way, accountability. His basic premise is that we are all accountable to God, and apparently only accountable to God. This however is not quite true. For example, when James (see James 5) says we should confess our sins to one another, this immediately places us in an

accountability relationship with our fellow Christians. Yes, indeed we are accountable to the rest of the body of Christ of which we are a part, not least because our behavior reflects on that body of believers and bears good or bad witness to it. And of course there is plenty of discussion about Paul being accountable to God for his converts, there is the millstone teaching of Jesus about the disciples accountability for leading or misleading the least of these. Frank points out that the house church movement in the 70s rose and fell because of this issue of accountability or covering. It is easy to understand why. When you have such an incredibly low church polity that each congregation basically does what is right in their own eyes, rather like the period of the judges, it is easy to see why the accountability issue would become a problem. The solution however is not to suggest we are only accountable to the Lord, not only because it is not true ( I am also accountable to my parents, my wife, my children, to my school which I have promised to serve faithfully, my church and so on), it is also because the danger of their being almost no accountability at all when one denies all accountability to fellow believers or human beings is great. It is a funny thing, but people who are only accountable to God (or think they are), often behalf as if they are not accountable to anyone, because no ones watching over me. God of course is invisible, and even Christians fall into the trap of thinking that if no human is minding me, then no one is watching, especially no one is watching what I do in private. This is of course foolishness. God sees all, but the psychology of accountability makes it far better for fallen human beings, even redeemed ones to recognize and own they are accountable to other human beings. But Franks main concern is accountability in a hierarchial schema, which is anathema in his book if we are talking about spiritual realities. I like what he says however on p. 207My experience has been that when the fundamental aspects of love and servanthood are mastered in a church, the issues of authority and submission amazingly take care of themselves. Its not as if there isnt plenty of teaching in the NT about authorities of various kinds and submission of various sorts, and Frank is wrong to suggest it is but a footnote in the discourse. On the contrary, the household codes alone take up huge chunks of space in Colossians, Ephesians and 1 Peter. But he is quite right that when people are sincerely serving the Lord and each other in love, these other issues fall more easily into place and line without anyone needing to pull rank, or the like. The sad tale of the shepherding movement of the 70s which led to tyranny and manipulation is recounted on pp. 208-09, and I agree with much of this critique. However, part of the solution to this problem comes in ways Frank would not allow--connectionalism between churches, and a recognized and responsible leadership structure within each church. Could the movement Frank is a part of be an over-reaction to things like the oppressive shepherding-disciple movement and the failures of the house church movement before? I think there is some real truth to this suggestion, and Frank as much as admits this when he says the movement developed an aversion to words like authority, submission, and accountability (p. 209), which is a great pity since the NT affirms all three of these ideas. In the haste to avoid becoming a cult run by tyrants like Jim Jones in the 70s, this movement has gone to the other end of the spectrum and denied all hierarchial leadership relationships within the church. What is odd about this is that this movement is quite different from the primitive Quakers who still are alive and well

in our society, especially different from the Evangelical Friends. Frank offers (p. 210) us a proper definition of submission, or being in subjection (hupotassso). He also rightly stresses that this is an attitude each person must voluntarily take upon themselves. That in no way means it is optional. Indeed it is commanded, but we do not have in the NT commandments like parent subject your children, husbands subordinate your wives, masters subject your slaves and so on. Each person is treated with respect and as a person capable of making their own moral decisions, even in the case of children. It is quite remarkable how children are exhorted in Col.3-4 and par. Frank is equally right that we are corporately subject to Christ, to one another in the believing community, and to those proven and trustworthy Christian workers who sacrificially serve our believing community (p. 211). What is missing in this analysis at this point is the physical family relationships that also involve submission. Frank makes as his theme verse Ephes. 5.21submit to one another out of reverence to Christ. I agree this is a crucial verse and it means that we do not have a unilateral submission of women to men in the body of Christ. This verse however has nothing to do with the issue of leadership in the church. It has to do with the posture each Christian should take towards otherswe should all be in service to one another, and preferring others to our own concerns. Paul puts it well in Phil. 2let each one look not to his own concerns, but rather to the concerns of others. This is what it means to put others first, and so be in mutual submission with them. One of the real strengths of this book by Frank is the stress on one -anothering as Frank calls it. But nothing in regard to this principle rules out leadership structures, nor does it suggest that all sorts of authority is equally distributed to all members of the body. For example, a person who is not gifted to be a prophet, has no authority to go around pontificating in prophetic fashion. The same can be said about teaching, preaching, administering, and so on. Yes, of course this does not mean that the whole body cant in some contexts exhort one another, and so on. That is just a basic Christian responsibility since we are our brothers keeper and are responsible for each other. It is quite another matter however to be gifted and called to be a church teacher, something James warns not many of us should be. I always shudder when I read that verse. Frank insists that only Christ possesses authority from God (p. 212). This is false on many levels, and so Frank quite rightly goes on to qualify this sort of absolute remark. Rom. 13 for example explains that God has give exousia to governing officials. It comes from God, to be sure, but it is dispensed to various particular human beings. Or if we want an ecclesial example look again at the Great Commission in Mt. 28--- all authority has been given to Jesus, but he is on that very occasion dispensing said authority to his disciples to go forth and baptize and teach people. Frank acknowledges Christ has delegated his authority to men and women in this world for specific purposes (p. 212). We then have delegated authority, but then so does the risen Jesus. He says it was delegated to him by the Father. He did not inherently have this authority before the resurrection, and indeed it was by the resurrection that he became our risen Lord (see Phil. 2.5-11), worthy to be called Lord. This is indeed the language of hierarchyfrom the Father to the Son, from the Son to the disciples.

Frank (p. 213) makes a helpful distinction between submission and obedience, although the two Greek words are often used as synonyms or near synonyms. Subjection is an attitude; obedience an action. Subjection is absolute; obedience is relative. Subjection is unconditional; obedience is conditional [i.e. we dont obey when someone commands us to violate Gods will, whoever it may be]. Subjection is internal; obedience is external. This is a truly helpful distinguishing summary, one of the best in the book. The problem here is while Frank is right in what he affirms, he is wrong in what he denies. P. 214 says the Bible never teaches that God grants believers authority over other believers. Lets take one example of how this is clearly false. Believing parents absolutely are given authority over their believing children. Indeed, the children are commanded to obey their believing parents. Now the parents are warned not to abuse this power, but the household codes are quite clear that they have it, and ought to do so. We also see quite clear authority relationships between Paul and his coworkers and converts. Even a cursory reading of the Pastoral Epistles and analysis of Pauls relationship with Timothy and Titus makes this very plain. But let me cite a text which is clear as a bell on this issue1 Cor. 16.15-16 You know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and they have devoted themselves to the service of the Lords people. I urge you brothers and sisters to submit to such as these and to everyone who joins in the work and labors at it. The verb in question is that selfsame hupotasso Frank was referring to. In sum, Paul urges the Corinthians to submit to their local church leaders. Why? Because they have been given authority over such a house church. Frank tries (pp. 215-20) to make a hard and fast distinction between organic authority and official authority. He recognizes there is the latter in this world and that it is linked to a particular ongoing office (say, a governor), and he allows that God has set up such offices in the world, but in his view this is not at all how it ought to work in the church. What is interesting about this analysis is that he admits that both sorts or types of authority come from God (see e.g. Rom. 13.1ff.). Its not as if the worlds authority structure then has simply come from the world. In regard to organic authority in the church Frank says it is not intrinsic to a person or position. It does not reside in persons or an office (p. 216). He adds Earned recognition and trust from the body is the only valid benchmark for ones spiritual authority. (p. 220). This latter remark is odd, for what it suggests is that the church, not Christ is the source of this authority actually, regardless of ones rhetoric about it coming from Christ. Where would this criteria have left someone like Elijah, who was rejected by Gods people, or Paul when he was rejected rather than recognized by various of his converts? Did this leave him without authority? Of course not, because the recognition or failure of recognition by the body is not the source of that authority in any way--- the Lord is. The fact that a particular congregation may not recognize the gifts and graces of minister X may well be no comment at all as to whether he has them or should exercise them in regard to those very people. Of course it is better if the congregation does recognize and work with the minister. But the minister has authority if he has been called and anointed and graced by God whether or not that particular congregation recognizes him or her.

The second profound problem with this whole organic authority paradigm is that the NT is clear that God bestows authority on persons, particular persons. There is not merely a nebulous notion that if perchance someone should say or do something that the congregation deems in accord with Gods will, then it has authority. Listen to the following passages: Fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. (2 Tim. 1.6). This is of course Paul talking to Timothy and reminding him that he received these gifts through a ritual of laying on of hands performed by Paul, in which ritual the Holy Spirit was at work. Or consider what Lk. 24.48 saysthe Eleven are commanded to stay in Jerusalem until they receive power from on high. Notice that Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit here, not himself. Theologically speaking the power, the unction to function, comes to them from the Holy Spirit, not because of the connection of the body to the head. And there could hardly be a more top down way this works. They do not receive power from meeting together as a body, they receive it, each individually from the Holy Spirit. Look at what Acts 2.3 says--- and they saw what appeared to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each one of them. Ahathere was no body of Christ yet prior to this falling of the Spirit on the disciples, and yet there empowerment and authority and gifting came on each individual person therenot through a bodily connection with each other or through the bodys connection to the head. In other words, the notion of organic authority does not do justice to texts which actually tell us how individuals obtain power and authority from God to do ministry. On p. 218 we see a false either or. Pauls letters are full of persuasion (this is certainly true), and then Frank adds appeals and pleas rather than commands. This is false. There are plenty of commands as well. Paul would rather persuade than command, but he has the authority to command his converts especially when they get out of line, and he frequently does so. Much of Chapter Twelve provides a very helpful analysis of how authority should be exercised, namely meekly, in love, with humility and the like. Despite the fact that Frank does not accept that the Bible says that God authorizes certain persons for certain leadership roles nor is he happy with the idea that authorization is a top down thing, even conveyed through one set of human hands to another, in the case of Paul and Timothy, there are many good warnings about the abuse of power in the traditional church, and the value of having all such authority normed by the principle of mutual submission to one another in love. More ministers in my tradition need to read this chapter. On p. 231 I am afraid I do not recognize the denominational churches Frank keeps talking about, if one is characterizing them in general. He says In the denominations, members unreservedly follow a single leader a board of lay-leaders, or an organization. Frankly, this is just nonsense if the subject is a mainline denomination. Members in my denomination not only question authority, they are as likely to do their own thing as follow a single leader. And I have never been in a church where this wasnt a healthy dynamic, because the ministers all recognized they were accountable to God and to their people and they would work for consensus on important matters. I guess my complaint is that while anyone can tell horror stories about this or that church or denomination, these

sorts of remarks are not merely uncharitable as a characterization, they are caricatures and untrue in general. The notion of members in lockstep with ministers doesnt at all fit the UMC. Indeed, remarks like this can only be called the demonizing of ones fellow Christian churches. On page 232 Frank perpetuates the myth that in the early church we have autonomous but fraternally related churches, while admitting that in the first 17 years of church history they all came out of the Jerusalem Church. If you look either at Acts 8 or Acts 14-15, or Galatians you know perfectly well this is not true. The Jerusalem Church sends emissaries to Samaria to inspect and correct if need be what was done by Philip in that place. They send no less than Peter and John for this crucial task. Paul in Galatians admits that men who came from James had caused trouble both in Antioch and in Galatia, but what he also says in that selfsame letter is that he went up to Jerusalem to get the right hand of fellowship and the imprimatur on his ministry from the pillar apostles lest I be running in vain. Now if even Paul can say this, it is perfectly clear that we are not talking about autonomous but fraternally related churches at all in the early church! The collection Paul took up for the mother church was required of him by the Jerusalem church, and he did his best to collect it and deliver it in tact. I cant imagine a house church today acting like the Jerusalem church did in that matter. Notice as well that when Paul came with the collection, they had additional requirements for Paul himself, taking a Nazaritic vow and providing funds for others doing so. Its perfectly clear the Jerusalem Church was the mother church during all this time from about A.D. 30-60 or so. P. 232 tells us that Rev. 2-3 indicates autonomous churches in Asia who each get their own instructions from John. Three things need to be said: 1) John has authority over all these churches; 2) Revelation is an encyclical to all seven of those churches, which means they all read each others mail, and 3) what this suggests is they are all being held accountable to each other! Thats why John reveals their individual dirty laundry to all of them. pp. 235-36 can only be called a rant against denominationalism, which is even called a heretical notion antithetical to orthodoxy and dividing the body of Christ. I find it truly ironic that Frank thinks the notion of individual autonomous house churches is somehow less divisive of the body of Christ, than having denominations. Wrong Frank, youve just divided it up into even smaller tiny autonomous pieces in this approach! Chapter 14 is interesting as it provides us with Franks take on apostolic tradition. No he is not talking about a tradition out side of and in addition to the NT, but rather the one in the NT. He says it involves both precept and example, both commands and paradigms, and that we the contemporary church should live by both of these. I actually agree with this conclusion entirely. He is right that to keep the commands but ignore the praxis is not adequate. He is right that belief and behavior, head and heart, life and practice belong together. And I like his point that Gods blessing doesnt necessarily indicate his approval. So true. What then counts as the apostolic tradition and practice for Frank? Its not the list in Acts 2 and 4, surprisingly enough but rather open participatory meetings, observing the Lords Supper as a communal meal, house church meetings, the practical expression of church

bodily unity (in the autonomy of each house church). Lets compare this to what the Scriptures actually say, and a historical point is crucial here. In the Roman Empire superstitios were illegal, not merely persecuted sporadically but illegal, especially odd foreign eastern religions like Christianity. As long as Christianity seemed to be just another form of Judaism, there was a sort of protection against prosecution and persecution since Judaism was a religio licita by Roman standards, a legit religion. Once Christianity spread to places where the majority of the members were Gentiles in a given church, then there was trouble, big trouble. The church had to go private and underground. The house church was not a principle of early Christianity, much less an apostolic tradition, it was a necessity in a religiously hostile environment, and it is not an accident that it ceased to be a major practice once Constantine decreed that Christianity was a legitimate religion. Had the church simply forgotten its apostolic tradition? Well, no, because there was no apostolic mandate saying thou shalt meet in homes and never build religious buildings. This is simply a self-justifying myth to legitimate only the house church as Biblical style church. 2) lets examine briefly Acts 2.42-47. The first church devoted itself to the teaching of the apostles. Not just anyone teaching, but the teaching of the apostles. That was the final authority when it came to teaching. They devoted themselves to sharing in common (kononia). So much was this so they made sure no one went without the necessities in life. They devoted themselves to sharing meals together and praying. There were miracles performed by the apostles (where are those happening today, would be a good question to ask). All the believers were together and shared all things in common. Notice that when the church got bigger (see Acts 4.32-35) it no longer says they were all together, but it does say they continued to be of one heart and mind. Acts 2 adds that they shared all things in common. They sold possessions and gave to those in need. This social practice of the apostles is even more strongly emphasized in the Acts 4 summary. Then 2.46 says daily they met together in the Temple courts, and they broke bread in their homes praising God, and (for a time) enjoying the favor of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. Now had there been some sort of apostolic decree that Christians should not or no longer go to the Temple or participate in its services then this summary would have read differently. We also would have nothing like Acts 21.24-25 where Paul is commanded to go to the Temple and perform purification rites there. Having a house church doesnt rule out going to the religious building and performing religious functions and practices. There is no contradiction here at all. Nor is there today when people both meet in homes and also gather at a church building on Sunday. In other words, the apostolic tradition does not endorse or imply a house church only principle. And I find it very surprising that Frank says nothing about the strong stress of taking care of the poor and sharing all things in common as part of the apostolic tradition. Indeed, what Frank says is ministers should leave individuals and their finances alone as a private matter. This view is not in accord with the view of the original apostles (look at the story of Ananias and Sapphira contrasted with the practice of Barnabas). In other words, some of what Frank says is in the apostolic tradition, isnt, and some of what he fails to mention is. In the last main chapter of this book, Frank is an equal opportunity critiquer of the megachurch, the restoration movement, the cell church movement, and the Emerging Church phenomena. Its not just the traditional church he has problems with. I will leave it to you

to evaluate his critique of these renewal movements. His view is the traditional church can hardly be renewed, so we need to pull the plug on it, dismantle the clergy system and start over with a more Biblical modelthe house church and organic body life of course. There is a useful summary of Franks rhetoric against the traditional church and in favor of the organic house church model on pp. 274-75. Frank is not through thoughthere is an Appendix, and it should not be cut out, since it provides more of his rationale for his views. According to pp. 284-87 the listing of apostles, prophets, teachers in a particular order is because of their usefulness of gifts in church planting and building. But what does the Greek text actually say--- God has placed in the church (en ekklesia), first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers( 1 Cor. 12.28). He does not say God placed first on the mission field apostles etc. He is talking about those who have authority in the already existing church. He is absolutely not talking about church planting here, unlike earlier in 1 Cor. 3. And notice that it is God who has placed these persons in the church for leadership. Not the congregation, not through a process of long maturing and development into an elder. No, God has put or placed them in the church to serve as authorities for Gods people. This text should be compared to Ephes. 4.11Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastor-teachers for the equipping of the saints for ministry. Exactly, and where does this take place? In already existing churches of course. Apostles are not functions they are persons exercising gifts. The same can be said of the rest of the list. Now if God and Christ have put in the church such church leaders, who exactly are we to say--- No, No thats too hierarchial for my taste. Thats appointment of particular individuals to particular ministries from the top down--- God forbid! That might spoil the organic soup. More exegetical gymnastics follow. The Greek word proistemi in 1 Thess. 5.12 and Rom. 12.8 is translated guards and cares for. But in fact its primary sense in these texts is superintends over. A superintendent is some one who is over others and has the responsibility for looking out for them, just as we have in schools today. In this regard he is like a shepherd, which is also a hierarchial concept. And then we once more try to turn anointing, laying on of hands into a mere recognition or acknowledgement of someone by another. This is not what Titus 1.5 suggests, as we have already noticed. It is perfectly possible of course to be an authority without being authoritarian or strident or a tyrant, just as it is possible to uphold true doctrine without becoming doctrinaire. In the end the critique Frank offers of the institution church, while having many valid points, ends up being only valid in the critique of the excesses, mistakes, and problems of the church. And what Frank wishes to put in its place is in some ways even less Biblical, for it ignores the trans-local character of the church, undercuts the roles of persons called and gifted by God to be ministers and servants of the church, exalts a model of church life that is not merely anti-institutional but goes to the other extreme to avoid liturgy, the high arts, tradition in the fuller sense of the term, and much more. But let us end by saying what is good, very good about this book. It stresses the need for face to face family of God koinonia and love and service, especially in a broken world. This is indeed a great need of the church, and I am thankful Frank has lifted it up. May all

the church here this heart-cry for true Christian fellowship and one-anothering, and learn from it. AMEN

Response from the Author:

Frank Violas Response: Part One -Okay, so in a moment of insanity, I accepted BW3's challenge to appear on his blog and respond to his review of my latest book, "Reimagining Church." www.ReimaginingChurch.org Just to prevent any confusion, Im the Frank Viola who was the high school baseball pitcher, not the major league Cy-Young Award winner (painful sigh). Truthfully, I'm both humbled and honored that BW3 would think enough of my books to (a) actually read them, (b) take time out of his grueling schedule to review them on his blog. And not just review them, but post a lengthy 4-part response to them. Loquacious has taken on brand new meaning for me (smile) (c) To receive Bens gracious invitation to let me respond, and (d) to give me "the last word" in Bill O'Reilly style. (What a guy!) I'm impressed. Most people who differ with each other on issues like this embed themselves in their own circle. What Ben has done, therefore, is not only needed, but its highly commendable. And I hope that those who are on both sides of the fence on this subject will learn from this exchange. Although I may disagree with what I call the institutional church model/structure, I have great respect and appreciation for the people who are in it, including its leaders. (I owe my conversion and baptism to them.) God has used many people who belong to the institutional church in my life, and that continues till this day. Some of the most godly, mature Christians Ive ever met are members of it in fact. By the same token, Ben is not attacking those of us who meet outside the institutional church structure/system. Hes addressing the ideas behind why I and others feel that we have a solid biblical basis for gathering the way we do. Too many times Gods people on either end of this discussion resort to personal attacks and the judgment of heart-motives of their own brethren in Christ. But we have not so learned Jesus Christ. Im glad that Ben and I can have a substantive conversation on the issues and hope that similar conversations will continue in the Body of Christ. Consequently, Id like to begin by thanking Ben for this opportunity. (I reserve the right to retract that last sentence after I read Bens reply to my response. (smile)) Let me begin by listing my credentials. I've never been to seminary (visiting seminary libraries doesnt count). I've never been to Bible college. I don't speak Greek or Hebrew or Latin. (I dont even remember Spanish, even though I took two classes in high school.) I don't part my hair down the middle or the side (its difficult to when you dont have any). I still have a mustard-like fast ball,

but I lost my wicked curve at age 27. And contrary to popular opinion, I wasn't born during the first century. Oh, and Philippians 2:4-8 happens to be one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible. I'm quite content with the above. There are the Pauls of this world (professionally schooled in Tarsus and Jerusalem). And then there are us Peters, who have no such credentials. (I love A.W. Tozer and G. Campbell Morgan for that reason, by the way. They were autodidacts.) All told: another eminent scholar like Jon Zens or Robert Banks or Howard Snyder or Leonard Sweet or Miroslav Volf or Stanley Hauerwas should be engaging Ben on some of these subjects. Not an erstwhile baseball pitcher. But then again ... what fun would that be? Tis a lot more thrilling to see an erudite scholar unsheathe his sword on a poor, ignorant layman who can barely wield a plastic knife, right? Three more points of introduction. First, Im keenly aware that I could be mistaken in many of my views. Ive made many mistakes in my life, but God has graciously taught me through them all. I have also changed my views over the years upon receiving further light, and Im constantly open to new light. As I say in the book, Im still learning, Im still in school, and Im still open to hear the Lord through all of His little ones both scholars and new converts. I trust that this will always be the case. Im so thankful for the many close friends that God has put in my life and taught me through. And Im thankful for my relationship with Ben. Every day I thank the Lord for His mercy and grace in my life. I am nothing; Christ is everything. This will always remain true. What you will read in my response, therefore, is how the terrain looks from my hill right now. Albeit, Im looking at the back of the rocks, while Ben may be seeing their front. Second, Im not a promoter of house church. Those who are familiar with my work know that Im quite critical of much that goes on in the modern house church movement, and as I say in my book, I do not believe that house church is the only model of church. In fact, its a myth to believe that there is one house church model, as is commonly assumed. The house church movement is very, very diverse. There are elements of it that I agree with, some elements that I love, and other elements that horrify me. As I like to say, meeting in a home doesnt make you a church anymore than eating a donut makes you a police officer. (smile) If interested, readers can listen to a recent message I delivered at a house church conference at http://www.ptmin.org/Dallas2007.mp3 for more details. If nothing else, it will give you my heart on the matter. More on this subject later. Third, I wish you all could see the comical banter that Ben and I pass along in our private emails. Its huge fun. I love the guy, and Im deeply thankful for this opportunity to

interact with him on this venue. (So if you happen to see me poke fun at Ben and viceversa, dont be alarmed. We do this often in our private emails.) The truth is, theres a healthy respect there. On that high note, I shall respond to Ben's 4-part eBook (ahem [cough] review, sorry). Actually, Im not joking about the eBook. Bens complete review exceeds 26,000 words. Compare that to the average-sized review of the same book: http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=2104 http://kingdomgrace.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/review-reimagining-church/ http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-frank-viola-project-and-why-you-should-takeit-seriously It took me awhile to wade through Bens 4-part review. Unlike his books, I found the writing style a bit tedious. Id describe his style of writing on his blog as an intellectual stream of consciousness. Consequently, Im responding to Bens review in the order in which he wrote it. Therefore, it wont be as organized as a chapter in a book might be. After all, this is just a blog post anyway. (grin) This first post will be under 8,000 words. [Deep breath] MY RESPONSE TO PART ONE General comment: Im of the opinion that the bulk of Bens review is based on taking for granted a number of theological points of view, all of which are contested. Yet he believes these points to be self-evident. His theological construct is popular among conservative American evangelicals, but I believe its very hard to justify biblically. More on that later. 1) Ben opens his review asserting that he believes the vision of church thats presented in my book denies, ignores, and reinterprets much of the NT ecclesiology. I would suggest the opposite. Namely, that the modern institutional paradigm for church that Ben embraces as biblical denies, ignores, and reinterprets much of the NT ecclesiology. I argue in my book very specifically how the churches in the NT fit the organic expression of body life that I describe. Many examples are cited from Scripture. Given Bens claim, Id like to see one or two examples of a United Methodist church in the NT, for example. For instance: Show me in the NT the church building, show me the modern Methodist pastor, show me the order of worship, show me the weekly sermon delivered by the pastor to a passive audience every week/month/year, etc. In fact, Id like to see just one example of a *modern* pastor in the NT. 2) Ben goes on to correct me, saying that the body metaphor is not the only metaphor of

the church in the NT. Im well aware of this and am in agreement. In fact, I dedicate an entire chapter to the family image an image that dominates the NT. 3) I found Bens comment about my use of Dr. Kings speech to be curious at best. Its hardly a paraphrase. I think I lifted 5 words from the speech in total and credited Dr. King with it. No doubt, Dr. Kings work is an area where African-American sensibilities vary widely. However, I have many African-American friends who are involved in ministry, and Ive consulted with some of them about this. Their response to me was, We dont see how any African-American would be offended with the way you used the speech. We feel it actually honors Dr. Kings speech. For that reason, I had no trouble using it. But Ben is very right in saying that I have no intention of offending anyone. That would include an institutionally-minded clergyman like Ben Witherington (smile Ben ;-) 4) Regarding the T. Austin-Sparks quote, Ben didnt quote him entirely. The quote begins with, The ministry of the Holy Spirit has ever been to reveal Jesus Christ, and revealing Him, to conform everything to Him. He also left these parts out of the quote: No human genius can do this. It is all the Holy Spirits revelation of Jesus Christ. Ours is to seek continually to see Him by the Spirit, and we shall know that Henot a paperpatternis the Pattern, the Order, the Form. It is all a Person who is the sum of all purpose and ways. This quote opens up the Reimagining the Church as an Organism chapter. Sparks is speaking in the context of church formation. Hes reacting against what I call the biblical blueprint approach to church planting, which says, study the bible, research, activate your frontal lobe, imitate, and presto, an instant church is born. Sparks point is that the pattern for the church is a Person. And a revelation of Christ by the Spirit is necessary. T. Austin-Sparks was not an anti-intellectual. No more than I am. His books The School of Christ and the The Stewardship of the Mystery are without peer in their unveiling of Jesus Christ and the church in Gods eternal purpose. They show a depth of spiritual insight and scholarship thats found in few writers today. 5) Ben opines that my assertion that the major images of the ekklesia as being living entities is false. (Note: Ben really likes using words like false, error, wrong, etc.) He offers Pauls image of the church being a field as proof (see 1 Cor. 3). A field, to Bens mind, isnt a living image. He believes that Paul has dirt in view here. My response: I seriously doubt that Paul was talking about an acre of dirt when he said to the Corinthians you are Gods field. I believe Paul had a wheat field in mind, or something similar. (Compare with other texts in the NT and in Paul himself; wheat is often an image of believers.) Ergo, a field is a living image. To confirm this, Paul uses the language of planting and watering in that same text. Images of life and growth. The point I was making is that the ekklesia is depicted as an organism in the NT over and over again. I dont understand how this can be denied. 6) To my mind, Ben argues that buildings are a hierarchical image of the church because buildings have structures. Maybe Im not very smart, folks, but where do I locate the hierarchical structure of a building? I understand that buildings have a ceiling and a roof (along with walls, etc.), but theyre built from the bottom up. Even so, is that what Paul and Peter are trying to convey when speaking of Gods house/ building? Or are they trying to convey that the church which is comprised of Gods people is the dwelling of God? And does not the NT teach that Jesus Christ Himself is the foundation, the cornerstone, the capstone, and the temple itself (as embodied in His people)? So where are we supposed to connect the dots of human hierarchical/ top-down/chain-of-

command social structures within the image of the church as building/temple? 7) Ive never denied that the church is without a particular expression or anatomy. Im not a post-church Christian as I state in the book. The physical body which is a living entity has a distinct expression. An anatomy, if you will. So too does the ekklesia of God. (This is one of the main points that I make in Reimagining). However, to leap from expression to hierarchy is nonsensical in my opinion. A plant has an expression and an anatomy too. But theres no hierarchy between the leaves of a plant or between the roots, stem, and branches. Each provides for and supports the other. So it is with the ekklesia of God. 8) Again, the house of God is made up of living stones. This is a living, breathing image. 9) The main point of all of this, of course, is my contention that the church is a spiritual organism and not a human organization. Ben appears to deny this despite the fact that countless evangelical churches and organizations have in their missions statements, The church is an organism. And many of them add and not an organization. Reimagining affirms this but it seeks to draw out the practical implications. If the church is an organism, then what does that mean *practically*? Thats the question that the book seeks to answer. 10) One comment on the word organization. While the church has an expression, an anatomical structure, if you will, I wouldnt call it an organization. No more than Id call my physical body an organization, or a family an organization, or a bride an organization, or a wheat field an organization. Being a living organism doesnt exclude the idea that organisms do have a certain anatomy or expression. Nor does it mean that its a chaotic, disorganized blob of life. (Although sometimes it can look that way!) Nor does it mean that it wont have habits. One of the definitions of nature is that it includes innate tendencies, instincts, and habits. I talk about this in terms of the DNA of the church. Perhaps there may be better language for communicating all of this, but I havent found it yet. 11) If I believe that the church is a spiritual organism and Ben believes that its a human institution, then obviously our paradigms are hugely different and this will account for our differing interpretations of many NT texts. This emerges in the area of Christology and the believers unification with Christ also. 12) In the book, I quote one scholar who incisively observes, When the Greeks got the gospel, they turned it into a philosophy; when the Romans got it, they turned it into a government; when the Europeans got it, they turned it into a culture; and when the Americans got it, they turned it into a business. Ben denies that the church follows a business model. However, I believe he completely misunderstands my point about this. I am not claiming that the leaders of institutional churches think and act like business men, which is what he understands me to say. His justification was in my church we pray before every decision, etc. But that wasnt my point. Im not suggesting that the leaders of these churches are unspiritual or materialistic. I am speaking of the *structure* of such churches. My point is that the structure of the institutional church (which I define in the book) is one that imitates modern business patterns and methods. The typical American church, for example, has a structure thats basically similar to that of a company that has stock-holders (the members of the church), a board of directors (the leadership staff or clergy), a hierarchical structure, a CFO (church treasurer), and a CEO (the pastor). So its

organized very much like a business. 13) The constitutional scholar and historian Andrew C. McLaughlin in a book called Foundations of American Constitutionalism argued that the sort of covenantal thinking that we find in Puritanism which is rife throughout American evangelicalism is identical to the sort of thinking that led to the formation of the earlier business corporations of that day. 14) Now lets get to Genesis 1. (Ben alludes to my references to Genesis 1 and 2 in Parts Two and Three also, so this will cover his critiques there as well.) The problem here is one of hermeneutics. Ben is assuming that the hermeneutical debate is over. And that a conservative version of the modern approach has totally won. But this isnt true. The debate is not over. The question is not closed. There have been developments in theology that challenge the modern hermeneutical model. One of them is canonical criticism. Probably most associated with the late Brevard Childs of Yale. Canonical criticism basically says that every part of the Bible must be interpreted in its relationship to the entire Canon. Therefore, when the NT was created and the canon expanded, the meaning of the OT actually changed from our perspective. It became fuller. Why? Because now it could be completely interpreted from the standpoint of Christ. Recall how the resurrected Christ interpreted the Scriptures beginning from Moses through the Prophets to Cleopas and his companion on their walk to Emmaus. Post-resurrection interpretation goes beyond authorial intent. The modern hermeneutic rejects this. According to the modern hermeneutic, authorial intention *is* the meaning of a particular text, period. Christological interpretations of the OT that would be figurative or typological are rejected out of hand. 15) Now the subject of hermeneutics is a huge one. But its where many of our differences in interpretation lie. Ill reference C.H. Dodds classic book, According to the Scriptures, as well as the work of Hans Frei, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonheoffer, Edmund Clowney, and James A. Sanders all of whom held to this canonical approach to Scripture and believed that all Scripture must be interpreted in the light of Christ. Ive discussed this issue in depth elsewhere, so if you want a more comprehensive understanding, take a look at http://www.ptmin.org/beyond.pdf In it, I give many examples of how the meaning of OT Scripture went beyond authorial intent and understanding. Therefore, I would pitch my tent with Hans Frei in his claim that we should understand the literal meaning of Scripture to be the story of Jesus Christ. The literal meaning shouldnt be isolated in the authorial intention of the writer (if that can be discovered). Instead, the literal meaning of Scripture is about Jesus Christ. 16) Consequently, I am not asserting that the author of Genesis 1 had an understanding of the Trinitarian nature of God. However, to my mind, this is a moot point. And it touches on the limitations of Bens modern hermeneutics. Those who hold to canonical criticism would say that Genesis 1:26 can indeed be viewed as a Trinitarian reference. Dr. Michael L. Brown, who is a first-rate OT scholar, agrees with me here. See also D.J.A. Clines, et al. On another note, I find it hard to believe that the our in Gen. 1:26 is referring to God and his court of angels, as Ben suggests. For this would mean that humans were created in the image of God *and* in the image of angels. Perhaps Ben believes this, but Im unconvinced. No, Gen. 1:26 is in keeping with the complex nature of the Godhead. 17) A related note: I agree with both Barth and Bonheoffer who stated that the interpretation of Scripture should not be limited to an academic context. When we talk

about interpreting the Scriptures, were talking about unfolding their meaning in the life of the church. Not unfolding their meeting in an academic history course. The scholar, therefore, should submit himself to the life of the church as being the context in which biblical interpretation acquires its full meaning. This gets into John Howard Yoders hermeneutics of peoplehood. Stanley Hauerwas has written powerfully on this subject as well. Ben seems to assume that interpretations acquire their meaning by meeting certain academic and intellectual canons of interpretation. 18) To put a finer point on it, the problem Im underscoring here is the assumption that the meaning of Scripture, and therefore, the ground for any legitimate theology, is simply one where any unregenerate exegete can figure out the meaning of the inspired text. It assumes that the meaning of Scripture is accessible to the unregenerate scholar simply because he can follow the secular canons of interpretation of historical documents. I believe, along with Barth, Bonheoffer, Yoder, Hauerwas, et al. that proper Scriptural interpretation requires the Holy Spirit working in the believing community. Academic tools can help, but they cant take us there in and of themselves. We interpret Scripture together in the context of the church. 19) Now on to a fundamental point in BWs theology. I disagree with Bens opinion on what the NT teaches regarding our union with Christ. In effect, he denies our participation in the divine life. I certainly do not agree with Mormon theology and flatfootedly deny that we become gods or divine beings. Ive never taught or believed this. I believe that our union with Christ Jesus is actual, real, and even experiential. Bens whole perspective is quite Zwinglian on this issue. The absolute distinction between God and human beings requires that the church be in and of itself nothing but a human organization. A human organization in which Christians come together to build one another up and obey God together. Its based on the classic American evangelical theology in which a relationship to Christ is seen as substitution. And were excluded from it. According to this view, so many texts that speak of our union with Christ (Christ IN us and we IN Christ) are taken as metaphorical instead of actual. I believe, along with many other theologians, that this idea is flawed. Christ is the Vine and we are the branches. This is one of scores of images that speak of the kind of union that we have with Jesus Christ. 20) Ben seems to think that God gives us a sort of separate kind of eternal life, rather than His own life. Peter says that we are partakers (sharers) of the divine nature. Thats not simply an abstract positional statement. Its real. The same life that God lives by dwells in us. And we can live by that life. In the words of Jesus Himself, As the Father has sent me and I live by the Father, so He who partakes of me shall live by me. Christ is life. And He is *our* Life. Paul says Christ lives in me. Not in some positional, metaphorical, abstract way. But in an actual way. Partakers doesnt convey the idea of two boards that are glued together as two completely separate things. Partaking involves an actual participation in something. We arent united to God in that we become God by nature. But the divine energy, the divine action, and the divine life is shared with us. 21) This moves us into the question of Christology. Bens language almost sounds Nestorian to me. While the divine nature doesnt cease to be divine in Christ, the human nature does not cease to be human. (See the work of Jaroslav Pelikan and David Bentley Hart for a good discussion on this.) The divine and human do not, therefore, exclude one another. Christ is not on one side of the wall and the church on the other. Such an idea

fundamentally misconceives the entire nature of the ekklesia. The church isnt something that we create. Its something that God has created. 22) Again, Ben seems to see the church as simply individual Christians coming together to build one another up and help one another in obeying Christ even while they continue to be essentially individual Christians with individual relations with God (the Puritan view). He conceives the church as simply an earthly, historical, non-divine institution. This is not the historic teaching of the church, however. The classic example is that of a fire poker plunged into a fire. The fire indwells the fire poker, yet the fire poker never ceases to be in and of itself iron. On the other hand, the fire never becomes a fire poker. But the poker glows like the fire does and its hot like the fire is. The attributes of the fire become communicated to the poker. The poker *partakes* of the fire. Go ahead and touch the poker and youll know right away if this union is metaphorical or not. The divine life is given to us at every moment as a gift. We do not possess it as if its ours separately. The gift of the divine life is a perennial gift. But it never becomes our possession (this is one of the great fallacies of Mormonism). Dietrich Bonheoffer did a good job distinguishing between the image of God (the imago dei) and being like God possessing divinity as a possession of our own (the sicut deus). Bearing the image of God means being caught up in the life of the Trinity and expressing it. We humans were created to have God live His life in and through us. We arent fully realized human beings when we dont experience this. In the words of one writer, It takes God to be a human being. Ben and I disagree on this. 23) For some great classic reads on the churchs union with Christ, I refer you to Watchman Nees classic, The Normal Christian Life, and his The Secret of Christian Living (a newer publication). His book The Body of Christ: A Reality is also worth reading. W. Ian Thomas The Indwelling Life of Christ is also recommended. (Warning: The Normal Christian Life can change your life. It completely wrecked me as a young man. I still havent recovered from it.) 24) My basic response to Bens opinions on the Trinity is that I believe he misconceives it. And again, he does so in a very typical modern Western way. He honors the divine nature over the divine persons. In this framework, God becomes a box of attributes. The more biblical point of view, I would claim, is that which was taken by the Eastern Fathers who said that we must understand God in the first place in terms of the three divine persons, not in terms of the one divine nature. They certainly didnt deny the one divine nature, but they started in a different place. 25) The Eastern Fathers, along with the Western Fathers before the middle ages, rightly understood that all the members of the Trinity were involved in an eternal relationship depicted by a great dance. A relationship in which the Father totally gives all and everything that He is to the Son as sheer gift. The Son, then, is the retainer of the fullness of the Godhead. The Son, in turn, gives Himself totally to the Father by glorifying Him. In that sense, the Son could be said to be subordinating Himself, but the problem is, if we stop there, we miss the fact that the Fathers act of filling the Son with His fullness and glorifying Him is also a kind of subordination. So in that sense, the Father and the Son each take turns subordinating themselves to one another. 26) Consequently, to take the moment of the Sons subordination and treat it as something distinctively belonging to the Son is to fail to deal with the very dynamics of the Trinitiarian life. It fails to deal with the Fathers eternal dispossession of Himself in

giving Himself to His Son eternally, and holding on to nothing of Himself. The Father is a Father because He has a Son; the Son is a Son because He has a Father. Each divine person doesnt exist apart from the others. Thats one of the distinctions between the divine persons and the divine nature. 27) When Ben turns subordination into a distinctive trait of the Son, subordinationism actually becomes part of the Sons *unique* nature. We then start to move toward the very confused point of view that makes each person of the Trinity a being that has an individual nature. For this reason, Bens opinion that there is a functional hierarchy in the Trinity is one that, according to Kevin Giles and Gilbert Bilezikian, does not reflect the teaching of the historic church. Jurgen Moltmann, Miroslov Volf, Kevin Giles, Gilbert Bilezikian, and Stanely Grenz are just some of the theologians who have written extensively on the non-hierarchical nature of the Trinity. (Thats no shabby bunch of theologians, by the way.) I cite them in Reimagining, and their specific works (which are referenced in the book also) take dead aim at Bens opinion of the functional subordination of the Son. They address every objection he makes, and then some. 28) So whats going on in 1 Cor. 15:28ff? As Pannenberg observes in his Systematic Theology, the Father hands over the Lordship to the Son (see also Philippians 2:9-11). The Son in turn hands back the Lordship to the Father. Thus there is mutuality in their relationship. Even in the end, the Son does what He always does. He dispossesses Himself of what is His and gives it to the Father. But the Father does what He always does. He pours out everything that He is and has on the Son, including the glory of being Lord. To exegete hierarchy from that text, therefore, is quite a reach. A careful reading of the NT shows both the Father and Son engaging in a mutual exchange love, life, honor, glory, etc. I give examples of this in the book. The question I would like Ben to consider is this: Is it possible that you are wrong and Moltmann, Volf, Giles, Bilezikian, Grenz, et al. are all right? Is that a possibility in your mind? 29) Ben closes Part One with these words: I am afraid that what has affected and infected this discussion is secular notions of equality that assume that equal must mean the same in all respects, or the same in all functions. But this is not what the Bible either says or suggests. I deny that equality makes Christians the same in gift, role, and spiritual maturity. My book underscores that point repeatedly. So this is a straw-man statement. I would instead say that what has affected and infected the discussion are secular leadership patterns that project hierarchy back into the NT and contradict the historic teaching of the church. As Kevin Giles put it, Historic orthodoxy has never accepted hierarchical ordering in the Trinity. We dont deny subordination/subjection in the Christian life. Were denying the need for a chain-of-command. Were not calling for a gathering of equal figures who have the same rights. Were calling for a gathering of people who willingly give up their rights out of love for one another that springs from encountering Jesus Christ. Another element that has affected and infected the conversation is the proclivity to embrace one kind of hermeneutic as being the only legitimate hermeneutic, when the fact is that this debate is far from over. 30) Footnote to interested readers: I recommend three books on this subject. Stanley Grenzs Theology of the Community of God. Much of whats in Reimaging Church can be supported theologically in Grenzs work. While Im not really a fan of systematic theology, Grenzs book is exceptional. He really got it. He understood how the Trinitarian Community works out Gods purpose of bringing forth a community on earth

that reflects His nature. Im so glad he wrote this work before he left us. The other books are Kevin Giles "The Trinity & Subordinationism" and Jesus and the Father. Two essential texts on the topic. 31) I could go on with this, but my response is getting too lengthy for my tastes (and undoubtedly, for your eye-sight). So Ill rush through Part Two. MY RESPONSE TO PART TWO 1) Ben begins by bemoaning the fact that I dont mention the traditional church in my four ways of doing church (as he puts it). He says he finds this amazing. The reason is simple. Im not listing four ways of doing church. Im listing four way of restoring the church, which is stated in the subtitle. So obviously I wouldnt mention the traditional/institutional church, because its the very subject of the attempted reforms I mention. (I got the clear impression that because of his tight schedule, Ben was forced to skim-read my book.) Therefore, Im amazed that Ben would be amazed that I didnt add the traditional church as a reforming/restoring paradigm. (smile) 2) Ben seems to feel that gathering in an organic way is a recent occurrence dictated by cultural breakdowns. I dont. If one reads books like the Reformers and their Stepchildren, The Torch of the Testimony, The Pilgrim Church (the latter two books were originally endorsed and forwarded by F.F. Bruce.), theyll discover that there have always been Christians who left the institutional church to gather in simplicity under Christ. I believe the reason is because there are spiritual instincts at work that go beyond environmental factors. It almost sounds like Ben is saying that organic church life is only for those poor, befuddled souls who have broken families and no friends. (I hope thats not what hes saying or thinking, but it can easily be taken that way.) The fact is, I know scores of people who havent come from broken families whose spiritual instincts and desire for more of Christ has led them to organic churches. Id also recommend George Barnas Revolution that goes into the spiritual reasons why so many Christians are leaving the institutional church 1 million adults a year in the U.S. and growing. 3) Straw man alert: I dont believe nor do I teach that the body of Christ is made up of interchangeable parts where everyone is equally gifted. I actually discount this idea in the book. I affirm the diversity of gifts numerous timeseven the shepherding gift. Though I believe its profoundly different from the conventional pastoral role. 4) Ben says I deny leadership in the church. On the contrary: I very much believe in leadership and dedicate numerous chapters to unfolding my understanding of leadership in the church. In fact, heres a direct quote from the book: Every church has leadership. Whether its explicit or implicit, leadership is always present. In the words of Hal Miller, Leadership is. It may be good or bad. It may be recognized and assented to or not. But it always is. Depending on who is doing the leading, leadership can be the churchs worst nightmare or its greatest asset. But to say that the church needs human headship is, I believe, completely false. (Yikes, Im starting to sound like Ben now Youre wrong, thats false, Im right, etc. etc. etc.) (smile) Okay, so let me restate it as a question: Where, pray tell, is anyone other than Jesus Christ called the head of a church? 5) Ben seems to think that OT officers are precedents for NT ministries. I give an entire section to this objection and answer it. NT scholar Robert Banks in his seminal book, Pauls Idea of Community, excoriates the idea that the NT had officers as we

understand them today. 6) One of the major points in my book is to distinguish between those leadership forms that subvert the headship of Jesus from those which dont. Ben doesnt mention this at all, but instead gives his readers the inaccurate impression that I ignore the fact that the church has leadership. 7) Ben makes it sound as if I deplore large gatherings of Christians. I have no problem with large gatherings of Christians who come together for teaching and worshipping in song. Im sure many people find such meetings at Asbury Seminary enjoyable. Btw/ Ben, if you pay for my air-fare, Ill accept your invitation to worship with you at Estes Chapel, and Ill even buy you a happy meal afterwards! ;-) But I would not call such gatherings a church meeting unless each member of the body is free to share, minister, and display Jesus Christ. A church meeting, as Ive defined it in the book, is a distinct type of gathering. Incidentally, I was part of the Vineyard once, and I dont think anyone can trump their large worship services. Not back in the 90s anyway. They were majestic. 8) Jon Zens has adequately answered Bens opinion that the purpose of a church meeting is mainly for worship. See http://www.paganchristianity.org/zensresponds1.htm 9) I believe the church meeting should be Christocentric. I dont see them as anthropocentric and am not sure why Ben would think that after reading my book. Neither do I see the meetings as detached from worship. Note that my definition of worship is much broader than Bens. I define it in the book. My views on the mancentered nature of the modern gospel as well as the church are addressed clearly in the chapter entitled, Reimagining the Eternal Purpose. Not sure how anyone can think Im anthropocentric after reading that. 10) Ben denies that Paul was itinerant. He cites his long stay in Ephesus and Corinth as proof. But being itinerant doesnt excluded lengthy, but temporary stays in various places. Trace Pauls *entire ministry* and you will see that hes consistently on the move. (I do this in The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, which is a narrative ecclesiology.) 11) Ben claims that James was the decision-maker in the Jerusalem council on Acts 15. I address this in the book, but Ill summarize here. This interpretation reveals ignorance in how consensus decision-making is done. Consensus decision-making declares the sense of the meeting. In such meetings, votes arent taken. Its not a democratic event, as Ben seems to think Im suggesting. In consensual decision-making, theres always some (usually those who are respected) who stand up and give the sense of the meeting. In Acts 15, James did this. In other such meetings it may have been one of the other overseers or apostles who were present. A close examination of the text makes clear that everyone was involved in the decision and there was much discussion. Luke doesnt give us the details. If we assume all that happened is whats in the text, than that was about a 5minute meeting. Anyways, I lay this all out in the book step by step. 12) Im surprised that Ben thinks that Paul enjoyed going to synagogues just to worship with his fellow unconverted Jews. I dont believe this. It seems evident to me that Paul frequented the synagogue because had an open door to preach the gospel to the Jews there (to the Jew first, was his pattern. And he found them in the synagogue). Thus his purpose was evangelistic. Read carefully those accounts and notice that Paul would most often say at some point, Okay, thats it, Im leaving. Im turning to the Gentiles now. If Paul went to a synagogue as an obligation to worship, he wouldnt have made

staying in it contingent upon their acceptance of the gospel. So as I say in the book, an evangelistic meeting can occur anywhere and in any context. Go to a bar and if you find yourself preaching to the crowd, that gathering just become an evangelistic meeting. 13) Ben utterly lost me on his reinterpretation of Hebrews 10:24-25. A rather bizarre way of making the text say the opposite of what it plainly says. The exhortation of the writer is an ongoing thing. Exhort one another when you assemble together not once, but continually. This text carries the same spirit as 1 Cor. 14:26. The assembly or church meeting is marked by *mutual* exhortation and edification. I think its a few-mile stretch to say that this text is dealing with church discipline. Verse 24 is an appeal to exhort one another to good works. Church discipline is dealing with bad works. I see no indication of this in the text at all. Donald Guthrie and F.F. Bruce both exegete this text to envision a regular gathering where mutual encouragement takes place, as do other scholars. 14) Ben also suggests that one another is not an indicator of mutuality, but it involves a private setting. (?) I disagree with this completely and see no evidence for it. See Jon Zens superb article Building Up the Body: One Man or One Another http://www.searchingtogether.org/articles/zens/bodybldg.htm 15) Here again Bens Zwinglian approach emerges. He denies that Jesus Christ can speak through His people. I find this seriously problematic (to use Bens phrase). This, I believe, is a reflection of Bens misconception of the Trinity and the indwelling Spirit. Is not the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Christ? Doesnt Gods Spirit inspire Christians? Romans 8 makes clear that Christ dwells in us by the Spirit, not metaphorically, but in actuality. In 1 Cor. 12, Paul argues that the Corinthians no longer serve dumb (mute) idols (v.2). Instead, they serve a speaking God. Jesus Christ has the power of speech through His Spirit (v.3). And where does He speak? Through His Body (v.4ff.). By the way, while Ben denies that Christ speaks through the body, I get the impression from his review that he believers God speaks through the preacher. Why is it that God can speak through the clergy but not through the laity? Especially when the NT cannot sustain such a division. 16) Like Zwingli, Ben believes that Christ isnt present on earth; Hes only present in heaven. Luthers response to this was, Does that mean that Christ is in heaven the way a stork is in a tree? Christ is in heaven, but Hes also present on earth by the Spirit through the church. Acts 1:1 opens by saying that Lukes Gospel was a record of all that Jesus *began* to do and teach. The implication is that the Book of Acts was a record of what Jesus *continued* to do and teach through His body, the church. (See also John 14-17.) 17) Bens view reduces the term body of Christ to a very poor and weak metaphor. Pauls use of the phrase doesnt map at all to this. The statements about the body being totally separate from the head are addressed above in my discussion on our union with Christ. The body and the head are distinct, but they are not separate. John A.T. Robinson, Dietrich Bonheoffer (scholars) as well as Watchman Nee and T. Austin-Sparks (more popular writers) have written extensively about the intimate union between the head and the body. This union is an actual, real, and living thing. Its not metaphorical. Paul says so much in 1 Cor. 12:12. I recommend Bill Freemans excellent book, The Church is Christ and T. Austin-Sparks Gods Spiritual House. In effect, Ben sees our relationship to Christ as purely external. This is a monumental subject; but the fact that Ben and I differ so much on it reveals why our views of ecclesiology are so profoundly different.

18) Weve dialogued about this in private emails, but when Ben reads my description of organic church meetings, he thinks of the small-group charismatic meetings that hes witnessed. (Others conceive it as a Quaker meeting or a Plymouth Brethren meeting.) None of this is what Im speaking about and this lends to some of the differences in our communication and understanding. 19) I dont buy the idea that the Lords Supper is a static liturgical ritual. Rather, it can be celebrated in scores of different ways, still holding to the shape of a banquet that celebrates the Lords death and resurrection in a corporate context. Theres no evidence that the church had one fixed liturgy for the Supper throughout its life. And very early on it morphed into something very different from what Jesus gave us and the apostles practiced. (George Barna and I give an entire chapter to this in Pagan Christianity. I have a friend who is an Episcopalian scholar and he agrees.) There was also no set form of the Eucharistic words until very late. 20) Ive never denied that the church meeting may include preaching as Ben suggests. What Im saying is that it was never marked by one-man preaching a sermon to a passive audience. 1 Cor. 14:26 and 31 includes prophecy and instruction, for instance. I can see any gift inserted there. The hallmark, however, is mutuality. Note: apostolic and evangelistic meetings are different altogether. I expound this early in the book. 21) I agree that when someone shares in a meeting, at that moment they are leading. Again, I affirm leadership. The question is, what is leadership according to Jesus and how does it flesh itself out in the ekklesia? Thats what Reimagining seeks to grapple with. 22) Because apostles publicly endorsed overseers in some churches, Ben says that they were appointed from the top down. Notice how he assumes that apostles were at the top of some kind of chain-of-command hierarchy. Acts 20 says its the Holy Spirit who chooses overseers. Apostolic workers had the discernment, no doubt along with the input of a local church, to perceive who were already functioning as overseers. In the book, I give many more examples of this paradigm thats consistent with the NT narrative. Yet some of us cant seem to resist connecting the dots of hierarchy wherever we look. 23) Ben observes that I dont say a single word about Pauls stern warning about what happens when someone takes the Lords Supper unworthily. And on that point, hes right. I mention this in Pagan Christianity on page 192 and 196. I disagree with Ben that Paul is saying that we should take the Supper after we mourn over our sins. (The selfexamination there had to do with ruptures in the believing community.) Like other scholars, I believe that Paul doesnt have in mind being unworthy while you partake, but partaking in an unworthy manner. Nonetheless, I should have added a bit about this to the chapter on the Lords Supper in Reimagining. My bad ;-( (Frank reaches out to give Ben a hug.) 24) I stand by my statement that the church met in homes for the first 300 years of its existence. I dont ever recall saying nor do I believe that they met *exclusively* in homes, as Ben asserts that I said. Ive stated in both Pagan Christianity and in Reimagining Church that the early Christians met in other places such as courtyards, cemeteries, rented halls, by rivers, along dusty roads, etc. I dont decry buildings altogether. Not by any means. In fact, in the book, I discuss different ways in which organic churches have and can use them. 25) The so-called findings of early church buildings in the second century, etc. have been challenged by other archeologists and historians. Upon closer inspection, most of these

findings turned out to be no more than a home in which a wall was knocked out to create a larger space. Some have been shown to be burial places, not churches. Its a stretch, therefore, to call such adaptations religious buildings. We who gather in organic churches will often renovate a home to make it larger. We also knock out walls and revamp garages often. Imagine someone 1,500 years from now digging these renovated homes up and calling them, church edifices. Umm okay. In short, these discoveries are being disputed. Just like the so-called ossuaries of Jesus that Ben himself has challenged. (Three cheers for BW3 for doing that for us! He da man. (smile)) 26) I dont understand how having a large church is a major bump in my thesis. As I say in the chapter in question, when the church becomes too large for open participatory meetings, it meets in several locations and comes together periodically for special events. This is what the Jerusalem church did. Ive been in organic churches that did the same thing. No bump there. (smile) 27) One small observation for those who have a hard time understanding how I could cite people whose ecclesiologies and other theological views dont line up with my own. Im not a person who believes that someone has to be theologically correct in every point to glean truth from them. This, to my mind, is just plain silly if not narrow-minded. Therefore, I could read someone like Augustine and benefit from his theological insights in some areas, while disagreeing with him in others areas. I seek to root all my beliefs in Scripture; but countless scholars, theologians, and ministers of the Word both past and present have benefited the church by providing both language and insight into the Scriptures, regardless of their religious pedigree or denomination or belief system. Ive always believed this and probably always will. Shucks, there were things I myself believed years ago that I disagree with today. I find nothing inconsistent about this at all. For that reason, I can *even* learn from a Ben Witherington! (grin) Dont fall asleep yet, folks. The next post will include my response to Parts Three and Four of Bens review.

Yours in His bonds, FV2 Frank Viola, the second Pt. II I am very pleased to have these two responses to the posts I have done to Frank Viola's important and well-written new book. Among other things, what we are modeling here is civil discourse (I hope), even at points where we strongly disagree. And it is too rare a thing not to note it and appreciate the fact. Both Frank and I admit that of course we could be wrong about even things we feel passionate about. As Mr. Wesley once said this is not a 'smack-down' venture, but rather we are saying "where your heart is as my heart, give me your hand and help", and where

we disagree, then we agree to disagree and still treat one another as brothers in Christ. Enjoy these two responses from Frank. I still wish he had pitched better for my Red Sox all those years ago, but you can't have everything. I have to settle for watching his fastball go by in these two posts. :) BW3 Frank Violas Response: Part Two -My first thought after reading Part Three was: Wow, Ben actually complimented my book on a few occasions. And he actually said that some of it edified and helped him. (I was pinching myself as I was thinking those thoughts to make sure I was awake.) My first thought after reading Part Four was: Take a deep breath, Ben. Everythings gonna be okay. Albeit, he did say at least one kind word when he wrote: More ministers in my tradition need to read this chapter. (Frank gives Ben a high-five.) This post will come under 7,000 words. MY RESPONSE TO PART THREE 1) Bens caution about people who have been abused and their inability to show or receive affection is correct. And we should be aware of it. At the same time, our goal is to bring healing to such people that eventually reopens their traumatized heart to others. So it seems to me anyway. 2) Bens belief in a functional, unilateral subordinationism comes into view again. The problem with this is that it lacks the mutuality of the Trinity. Subordination is mutual in the Godhead. The Father totally gives Himself in His fullness to the Son. Thats why the Son is the Logos, because He contains the Father in His fullness. The Sons very essence is that of a gift from the Father. How, then, can that not imply some moment of mutual subordination in the Trinitarian dance of love? The Father isnt saying to the Son, Hey, Im here to run your life. Thats not the giving of a gift. The Fathers relationship to the Son is an act of love, and act of self-giving, of dispossessing Himself for the sake of the Son, who in turn, dispossesses Himself back toward the Father and surrenders Himself to the same Father who in effect surrendered Himself to Him. So theres a mutual surrender involved. Bens rejection of this is at the heart of his view of the Trinity. Functional subordination, then, occurs among all the members of the Trinity, not just of the Son to the Father. It happens in a distinctive way in each case, nonetheless it really happens. The Spirit also subordinates Himself in that He comes to glorify Christ. 3) In the chapter on church unity, I root the origin of sectarianism and division to the clergy/laity divide. Bens opinion is that this is wrong because 1) there wasnt a clergy/laity division in the early church, and 2) denominationalism began with the Protestant Reformation. Were talking apples and oranges here. I was speaking of the third century when the clergy/laity *did* begin. One can trace the disputes and divisions

between churches at that time and afterwards. Also, sects within the Christian church predate the Reformation by many years. 4) In the book, I make a statement that implies that in most institutional churches, the pastor does not share his pulpit on a continual basis with laymen who have no theological training. Ben asserts that this is simply false. (Ben loves the word, false. He used it around 20 times in his review.) I have to scratch my head and say, really? For those of you who are part of institutional churches and dont have any theological training at all, heres a test: Tell your pastor or priest next Sunday that you wish to mount the pulpit once every month to preach to the congregation. Please email me if your pastor or priest says yea, sure and you actually do it. My email is [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you. We can keep a tally going. 5) Ben gives a conventional defense of denominationalism. But he also gives the impression that Im urging and expecting all denominations to fold and be abolished. Im not. My chapter on church unity makes two main points. The first is to examine Gods will with respect to denominationalism and sectarianism and where it weighs in on the issue of unity. My thesis is that modern denominationalism has made division in the body of Christ acceptable. I then discuss the implications and ramifications for those who gather in non-denominational, non-institutional churches or who are embarking on that journey. No practical solutions or instructions are given. A quote from the book: Perhaps you are wondering if I believe that the denominational system will one day disappear, and Christians everywhere will begin to practically express their oneness in Christ. Unfortunately, I dont see a day like that coming in my lifetime. But I do hope that those of you who read this book will apply its message to your own life and act accordingly. 6) I dont see the various meetings that Paul makes reference to in a particular city as being hostile to each other and functioning as different denominational churches. I would argue that theres precious little evidence of this in the text themselves. Surely there was tension between Jews and Gentiles in some of the Pauline churches, but it doesnt follow to argue that they denominated themselves into separate churches. Sounds to me like a justification for modern denominationalism. 7) Bens modern hermeneutic emerges again which says that authorial intention is the meaning of the text. For this reason, he cannot accept my discussion of Adam and Eve as being a picture of Christ and the church and adds some extremely odd concepts to it that Ive never stated nor do I believe. I address the hermeneutical issue behind this in my first response. While my discussion of Gen. 1 and 2 is bad exegesis according to Bens limited hermeneutic, its perfectly legitimate exegesis according to canonical criticism and other methods of biblical interpretation. Some of which were routinely employed before modernism emerged. 8) Ben rejects my notion that the church expresses Christ as the second member of the Trinity. He says instead that the church expresses the image of Christ specifically. My response is, Can the image of Christ specifically be separated from Christ being the Logos, and can Christ being the Logos be separated from the Trinity? In other words, Ben builds a wall between Christology and the biblical teaching of the Trinity. And he seems to assume that the one has nothing to do with the other. Jesus Christ Himself cannot be separated from the second member of the Trinity. 9) Ben goes on further to argue that what we see in the church has to do with Christs

death on the cross and has nothing to do with the interrelationships of the Trinity. The problem with this is that it overlooks the intimate connection between the cross and the nature of God Himself in the Trinity. The principle of the cross reaches back before Calvary. Its rooted in the inner life of the Triune God. Each member of the Trinity dispossesses and gives of themselves to each other. Therein lies the headwaters of the cross. Its part of Gods eternal nature and at the fore of Christs gift of Himself at the cross. Here again Ben builds another wall in his theology, setting the Trinitarian nature over against the cross. 10) I agree with Ben that the church was born on the day of Pentecost. However, Pentecost isnt an event that happens in isolation of the resurrection. If there had been no resurrection there would have been no Pentecost. Pentecost, in a sense, is the churchs receipt of the fruits of the resurrection. Ben again builds an unnecessary wall in his theology. 11) Ben also has the view that since the church is the bride of Christ, its related exclusively to Christ, and it has nothing to do with the Trinity. Christ is the Eternal Son of the Father, this doesnt stop when He becomes the bridegroom. Christ doesnt cease from being the second Person of the Trinity to become the bridegroom. Repeat: at the heart of many of our differences is Bens disconnection between the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology. 12) Ben says the purpose of the church is embodied in the Westminster Catechism. I would argue that Gods eternal purpose goes beyond this and is far more glorious. Id recommend DeVern Fromkes book Ultimate Intention as an introduction on this point. 13) I dont recall saying that God has a need like we humans do, nor do I believe that God is incomplete without us. 14) I dont disagree with Bens emphasis on the church having a missional purpose that goes beyond itself. I both strongly believe this and make mention of it in the book and elsewhere. 15) Again, Ben makes the mistake of assuming that because some are gifted as teachers in the body (which I completely affirm), that this naturally means that there is a hierarchy in the church. This does not follow. I also agree with him that different members of the body are gifted for specific tasks and functions. This is major point of my book. But again, diversity of gifting doesnt imply hierarchy. I also spend a lot of time in the book showing how apostles, prophets, teachers, etc. are not officers, but functions in the body. 16) Ben believes that because some are called to ministry and receive power from on high, this means that they are part of a hierarchy. Again, this is a non sequitur; it doesnt follow. I also disagree with Bens statement that the kingdom of God is indeed a hierarchical notion. Hmmm. Jesus made quite clear on many occasions that it wasnt. Dont be like the Gentiles who operate by top-down leadership. For it shall now be so among you. Dont call any man Father, Master, etc. for you one is your Master (Christ) and you are all are brethren, etc. 17) Ben says that the concept of the priesthood of all believers implies a notion in which all Christians can assume all leadership functions at one time or another. Not sure where he got that idea, but I dont agree with it and dont know anyone who does. 18) Ben fails to recognize that Im not talking about pastors who led in a wrong way, but instead, Im talking about the clergy *system* and the *structure* of leadership in that system. He spends a lot of time on this, but it didnt resonate because hes addressing

a point I never made. MY RESPONSE TO PART FOUR Bens Part Four exceeded 10,000 words twas a mini-book, indeed. A stream of consciousness on steroids with some emotion peppered in for good measure. But sadly, for most of it, Ben got a bit carried away, I feel. A few people who read the book told me that they were shocked at some of the misrepresentations that were included in this part of his review. In addition, he -- in a very cavalier way dismissed many of the main points in the book, a large number of which answered the very objections he wrote in his diatribe. I dont believe this was intentional, but merely a facet of the particular manner in which Ben read the book. 1) Ben doesnt mention the fact that in every area where he disagrees with me, there are top-drawer scholars, theologians, and teachers who are in agreement with my positions. In the book, I both cite and quote most of them as I make various points. Some of them are John Howard Yoder, Karl Barth, Robert Banks, Howard Snyder, F.F. Bruce, Stanley Grenz, Deitrich Boenhoefer, James D.G. Dunn, Leonard Sweet, Roland Allen, Watchman Nee, T. Austin-Sparks, et al. 2) Ben asserts that Christian elders were essentially the same as the Jewish elders of the synagogue. This is an assumption. Most of the arguments for this view are based on the idea that the Talmud accurately reflects second temple Judaism. And then the assumption is made that synagogue elders *had to* influence Christian elders. Robert Banks and Jacob Newsner (one of the best Talmudic Jewish scholars out there today) strongly disagree with him. Both of them point out that we have very, very little contemporaneous documentation for the practices of second temple Judaism. According to Newsner and Banks, the Talmud (the major source for second temple Judaism) takes the practices of Judaism of its day and projects it back retrojecting it into the second temple period. In so doing, it attributes to the second temple period things that were not really true. Hence in their view, the Talmud is unreliable as a source for second temple Judaism. In their research, Newsner and Banks demonstrate that elders at the time of second temple Judaism were not synagogue officials. They were in effect civic officials in the local Jewish civic community. And they didnt receive ordination. All of these were later developments. More can be said, but Ill leave it there. 3) As I state in the book, elder (since its not an office) is a relative description. It doesnt, therefore, reflect an *absolute* age threshold. Its more of a relative description of spiritual maturity within a spiritual community rather than an indication of a set physical age. Spiritual maturity and wisdom often come with age. But not necessarily. 4) Ben again incorrectly assumes that I dont recognize distinctions in function. What I disagree with him on is whether these distinct functions have some sort of official status. I demonstrate in the book that I dont believe they do and why. 5) Ben says that elders were expected to do their teaching in the church meetings. My question is, wheres the evidence for this? I dont doubt that those elders who had the gift of teaching did some teaching in the church meetings, but the rest of the body was also free to participate in those meetings also (1 Cor. 14:26ff.; Heb. 10:24-25, etc.). Theres no evidence in the NT where we see an elder dominating a church meeting with a

sermon of sorts. 6) A related point: Ben doesnt seem to grasp my distinction between church meetings, apostolic meetings, decision-making meetings, and evangelistic meetings all of which I define in the book. To Bens mind, everything is a church meeting. This creates monumental confusion in our discussion. 7) In order to justify sola pastora, Ben goes out of his way to dismiss the fact that elders were plural in the churches of the first century. He incorrectly states that I insist that elders were always appointed in every church. I dont believe that all churches had elders and state so in the book. Some churches dont appear to have elders. Antioch (of Syria) and Corinth are examples. We cant be sure if they did or not. 8) Ben argues that every mention of elders has in view various churches in a region, so theres no way to tell if a particular church had plural elders or one elder per church. But then his argument shifts to stating with confidence that there was a single pastor for each church, yet he gives no clear evidence for this. But does the Bible support Bens idea that elders (plural) were appointed in churches (plural), so each church had one elder/pastor over it? Or does it support my thesis that in those churches where elders did exist, they were plural in each church? Lets look at some texts to answer this question: Galatians 14:23 and they appointed ELDERS (plural) in every CHURCH (singular). In Acts 20, we are told that Paul called for the ELDERS (plural) of the CHURCH (singular). James 5:14 call for the ELDERS (plural) of the CHURCH (singular). In short, Ben cannot demonstrate the notion of one elder per one church. More can be said about this, but Ill stop there. 9) Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, the Lord said. Sometimes this happens with the keyboard too. Listen to Bens words. On the contrary it is an ongoing role that the leader needs to perform, because sheep cant lead themselves anywhere, and need constant guidance and supervision. I believe this statement is at the root of Bens entire ecclesiology. Note his words: THE leader sheep CANT sheep NEED CONSTANT. Ben seems to think that Christians are incapable of taking care of one another so they need the help of a human pastor to care for them and tell them what to do. Here he presses the shepherd metaphor very hard. But I object: Christians arent the property of a pastor like sheep are to a shepherd. Neither is it okay for a pastor to exploit them for his own benefit as a shepherd does his sheep. Every metaphor has its limits. If you press the shepherd metaphor too hard, the results are very unpleasant. As I say in the book, If we push the shepherd-sheep metaphor beyond its intended meaning, well readily see its foolishness. Shepherds are incapable of breeding sheep. They also steal their wool and eat them for dinner! Ben essentially makes the pastor out to be a clergyman over a laity. To my mind, these remarks from Ben reveal a very low view of the Holy Spirits work in and through Gods people. It would seem that Ben envisions the church spiraling into chaos if it doesnt have one local human shepherd. But I completely disagree. See my next point. 10) I have known scores of churches where 1) there was no need for a clergyman, a.k.a., single pastor, 2) the body was equipped to take care of one another just as Paul encourages the church to do in 1 Thess. 5:14, Romans 15:14, and in so many other places, 3) shepherding occurred organically and it manifested itself in the plural. And most of it was done behind the scenes, and 4) those poor dumb sheep were knowing Jesus Christ together, experiencing His riches together, expressing those riches together,

and taking care of one another by the grace and power of His indwelling life. Without a professional minister present. They were also impacting peoples lives, displaying our glorious Christ to a broken world. None were perfect. All had problems. Mistakes were made. Lessons were learned. But God did wonderful things in and through them all. A main point of Reimagining is to show that such churches are 1) rooted in Scripture and 2) possible in our day. Right or wrong, I believe that Jesus Christ, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, is alive enough to be head and pastor over His own sheep. And I have witnessed it dozens of times in dozens of places. 11) Ben then talks about Pauls authority. He seems to have missed my entire discussion on the difference between organic (or moral) authority vs. official authority. These are two very different things. Paul often exercised moral authority, but not official authority. One of the things that Jon Zens, another NT scholar, observed and pointed out to Ben was his penchant for reading back into the NT our contemporary church practices. (This was not an accusation of intention by the way; it happens quite unconsciously.) As I read Part Four, I couldnt help but agree with Zens observation. In response to what Ben had to say in defense of Pauls use of official authority, the official authority of elders, justifications for top/down leadership and chain of command hierarchy in the church, Id encourage readers to take a look at Robert Banks article, Church Order and Government in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993. Its very powerful. Also see his book Pauls Idea of Community, Chapters 15-17. There Banks gives a ground-breaking look at Pauls view of authority. 12) Yes, Paul corrected two women in Philippi, but that was clearly a case of moral/spiritual authority, not one of official authority. Paul wasnt asserting that he had the power to regulate personal relationships between two individuals. As such, this is clearly a case of moral authority. (I devote two chapters to this subject in the book.) 13) In this connection, one of the interesting things about Rob Banks is that hes watched the spiritual and practical dynamics of organic church life firsthand for years. Hes also witnessed the way that institutional churches operate. So have I. When one gets this sort of experience on both ends, the NT begins to open up differently. The clerical, institutional glasses fall off. And so much of it makes sense. No longer do we have to resort to exegetical gymnastics to try and support a clergy system. We also understand elders, not from an institutional standpoint, but from an organic one. Why? Because weve watched them emerge organically in the context of Christian community. The headship of Jesus Christ ceases to be an abstract, positional doctrine. It instead becomes a breathing reality. Consequently, when someone tells us there must be a leader in a church as well as a liturgy. If not, the gathering will turn into chaos, we look at them with mild amusement. Weve been in hundreds of meetings that operated without leader or liturgy, and many of them were drop-dead glorious. Weve been in countless meetings where decisions were made by consensus with elders and apostolic workers present. And they look identical to what we read in Acts 15. Theres no chain-of-command or hierarchy in place. And no one, including the elders and workers, are barking out orders to the church or telling her what to do. Yet some declare the sense of the meeting. Weve also endorsed elders in churches, but as Marjorie Warkentin discusses in her seminal book on ordination, its not a matter of setting someone into a sociological slot of human convention (an office). As Rob Banks points out in his many lectures, our institutional

ideas are read back into the NT. We put 21st century clerical glasses on and filter everything in the NT through them. In short, Ben and I are living in two different ecclesiastical worlds. Its not a matter of one being bad and the other being good. They are just very different. And this is one reason why his interpretation of certain texts differs so drastically from mine, Robert Banks, Jon Zens, Watchman Nees and others who have lived in organic church life. (Add to the list my good friends Tony Dale, Felicity Dale, John White, Hal Miller, and many more.). D. Bonheoffer also got a taste of it and wrote about it in his book Life Together and so did Emil Brunner (see his book The Misunderstanding of the Church). 14) Yes, Paul and the churches knew who the elders were. But this doesnt mean that they held an office, or that they led the meetings, or that they preached weekly sermons. It simply means that everyone in the community knew who the most mature Christians among them were. And from what we can see in the NT, elders emerged sometime after the church was planted, not immediately following. 15) Ben cites the Didache in his argument. As Jon Zens already pointed out, the Didache doesnt reflect primitive church practice. Look at Jons argument at http://www.paganchristianity.org/zensresponds1.htm Its quite compelling. 16) I have already answered many of Bens points about leadership and clergy salaries at http://www.ptmin.org/answers.htm Sources are cited there as well. That page also includes a discussion regarding honorariums, and I answer personal questions on that point. 17) I dont deny that honor could involve giving money to elders as a gift at times. I state this in the book in fact, saying that it could include freewill offerings as a token of blessing from time to time citing Gal 6:6. What Im objecting to is a professional clergy salary. Im sorry, but even after reading Bens lengthy discussion in support of clergy salaries, I remain unconvinced that such a thing can be sustained by the NT. The statement that elders were not to be money-grubbers is not a defacto proof that elders were going to receive a salary. No more than the statement that they were not to be drunkards meant that the church was going to be giving them wine on a regular basis, or that the elders were required to drink wine. That the elders were known in the community (no doubt through work) is shown in the little phrase, they must have a good reputation among outsiders. Point: Loving money is a character defect according to Paul regardless of what form of employment one may have. People who love money are open to bribes, etc. This in no way proves that elders were paid a professional salary. 18) Ordination of elders was simply the public recognition of something that was already true. People should respect them and put weight in their words. Ordination did not give a person new powers that they had not had beforehand. I develop this thought in the book and cite other scholars who agree. 19) Ben says with absolute confidence that the call for all Christians to exhort one another is never specifically linked to the worship or teaching service. This is misleading. First, I cant find a worship service in the NT. Second, the call to mutual exhortation is indeed tied to the corporate meetings of the church where the ekklesia assembles together. Just read 1 Cor. 14:26ff. and Hebrews 10:24-25. The plain reading of these texts refutes Bens statement. Incidentally, for those who assume that 1 Cor. 14:26 is descriptive only and not prescriptive, or that its a rebuke of some sort, consider Gordon Fees comment: "the first sentence, which offers a description of what

*should be happening* at their gatherings, echoes the concerns of chap. 12, that each one has opportunity to participate in the corporate ministry of the body. The second sentence, the exhortation that all of the various expressions of ministry described in the first sentence be for edification, echoes the basic concern of chap. 14as well as of chap. 13." Fees interpretation is echoed by many other scholars. 20) Ben is confused on my view of spiritual gifts and ministries. Not all Christians are prophets or teachers or apostles. But again, I dont see these functions as titles that carry official authority with the power of command. Ben seems to assume that because I deny offices, Im somehow denying that there are prophets and teachers and apostles. Also: those who are gifted to teach and preach arent necessarily leaders in overseeing churches. While all overseers can teach, not all teachers are overseers (1 Tim. 5). It seems to me that Ben thinks that ministers of the Word are part of an ecclesiastical chain of command. I disagree. The ascension gifts are no such thing. I address this in the book as well as in my article, Rethinking the Five-Fold Ministry http://www.ptmin.org/fivefold.htm 21) If the churches in the first century had a single pastor or offici-elders in the way that our modern churches do (as Ben asserts), then why, pray tell, do we never find a NT epistle thats written to a church addressed to the pastor of that church? Or even to the elders? Without exception, every letter in the NT that is written to a church is addressed *to the community* itself. Its not addressed to a pastor or offici-elders. Even in the letter to the Philippians, Paul addresses the whole church and off-handedly mentions the overseers, but only after he greets the church. 22) Ben agrees that we dont see elders commanding the church to do things in the epistles. (Paul never blows the whistle for the elders to rise up and start taking care of problems. No doubt, he should have in Corinth and Galatia. Unless elders were a different creature than what weve made them out to be.) Ben faults this as an argument from silence and hence he feels its weak. I do not. If the church in Century One operated like Ben claims it did, we would expect these things to be reflected in the epistles. (Paul would be writing to the elders. Or at least, hed be telling them to straighten the mess out.) When they do not, the silence becomes deafening. Ben then says that there may be proof of elders barking out orders to churches in *private letters* that we dont have. My response: An argument based on hypothetical, undiscovered, possibly non-existent letters is *beyond* weak. Im arguing from what we actually have. Ben argues from what may have never existed. I affirm that arguing from thoroughly hypothetical documents is not compelling at all. 23) Ben tries to challenge my thesis that in the first century, a pastor wasnt imported from one church to be the pastor of another church in a different city. (Like the common practice.) He then invokes the language of absolute certainty again saying this is false. An example he cites is Apollos. But where does it say that Apollos was a pastor? Or even an elder? Apollos, clearly, was a traveling teacher (1 Cor. 3). He wasnt sent to Corinth to be their pastor. He, like Barnabas and Peter, visited Corinth to minister to the church temporarily, as traveling workers do. Years later, Paul urges him to visit again. Thus to use Apollos as an example of an imported pastor is a perfect example of reading the NT with clerical glasses. So it seems to me anyway. (The same could be said about Phoebe. I dont see any evidence that she was a pastor being sent to take over another church.)

24) Again, being itinerant doesnt exclude temporary residence. Temporary residence is *temporary*. Paul is most often on the move. 25) Also, this business that Paul really writes his letters to the leaders of the churches when he says you doesnt hold water. (Im not speaking of Titus, Timothy, or Philemon, but of the epistles to the churches.) When Paul or the other apostles want to address an individual in a particular church, they name those individuals. And when they want to speak to the elders, they call them out clearly (see 1 Peter 5 for instance). I think what we have here yet another example of trying to stretch the NT to make it fit the modern clergy system. Right or wrong, thats how I see it. 26) While Ben denies a clergy/laity dichotomy, he affirms it in all of his rhetoric and arguments. I fail to understand why he feels he needs to deny it. I see no difference in his thinking from those who hold to a clergy/laity system. The arguments are identical. 27) Ben expresses dismay that I would find worthwhile insights in someone like Leonardo Boff, and he implies Im being influenced by Marxism because of that. (?) Leonardo Boff believed in the Trinity. I believe in the Trinity. Does that make me a liberation theologian? One may agree with pieces of Ben Witheringtons exegesis without adopting Ben Witheringtons Arminianism. By the same token, one may agree with points made by Leonardo Boff without sharing his attitudes towards Marxism. The charge that Boffs theology is based in toto on Marxism cannot be sustained. This is flatly untrue; its a libel that some conservative evangelicals have made against certain liberation theologians. But more importantly, Boffs Trinity and Society, which I cite in the book, draws on the Catholic and Orthodox history of doctrine. It doesnt draw from Marx at all. As such, Boffs key points are in line with Grenz, Bilezikian, Giles, etc. in their understanding of how the Trinity and the church are related. I trust Ben doesnt think theyre Marxists. 28) Also, I wouldnt consider myself in the terms that Ben has. Im not a charismatic; Im post-charismatic http://frankviola.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/stripping-down-to-christalone-rethinking-the-gifts-of-the-spirit/. And I dont consider myself to be an evangelical, but rather a post-evangelical. But whos paying attention? (smile) 29) I dont get Bens argument about Jesus having a differing will from the Father. The point about consensual-decision making is that the body seeks the will of God and then acts once it gets the mind of God together. The church struggles to find Gods will, agrees on it, and then acts. It doesnt take a vote nor does it take orders from a few special members. Thats the point of my chapter on decision-making. Jesus Christ is Head of His church. Decisions that are made independent of the Head constitute conspiracy. 30) Bens argument that Paul and Barnabas separated without a consensus of *the church* fails to recognize that Paul and Barnabas (a) arent a congregation, and (b) were involved in the work. And (c) the matter that they disagreed on had to do with the work and not a local church. No time to develop this, but see Robert Banks discussion on the difference between the church and the work in Pauls Idea. Watchman Nee discusses it also in The Normal Christian Church Life. This is a very important distinction. 31) Ben misrepresents my views on accountability. He says that I deny accountability. He characterizes my belief to be one of saying that Christians should be accountable to no one on earth, and its okay if they disconnect themselves from the body. My entire thesis

in Part Two makes the exact opposite point. And I condemn this sort of thinking in the book as well as in my own life. We are mutually subject to one another in the place where we fellowship. We are mutually subject to those Christians who God puts in our lives and bonds us with spiritually. Accountability/subjection are only safe in Christian community. On the other hand, the idea that says you are covered by being in a church where the people hardly know one another, let alone the pastor, is a sham. Theres a kind of accountability thats real and living; and theres a kind thats artificial and nominal. Reimagining champions the former. 32) Ben didnt like my Appendix. After reading Parts Three and Four of his review, I can understand why. For those of you who havent read the book yet, the appendix lists virtually every text in the OT and NT that people use to justify the clergy system, hierarchical leadership, authoritarian practices, covering, officers in the church, etc. Touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm is even included. In many of my answers to those objections, I go to the Greek and cite reputable sources like F.F. Bruce, Robert Banks, Gordon Fee, Bauer, et al. Even so, the Appendix answers about 75% of Bens objections to the book. 33) When I read Bens sober words about loving ones vision more than the Word of God which challenges all of our inadequate notions of ministry, the thought that went through my head and heart was: Every servant of God should heed this, including Ben. We who have spent time in Babylon ought to beware that we do not adopt the ways of Babylon nor seek to defend it. For if we do, its scent will not leave our garments and Gods people will not fail to smell it eventually. 34) Ben references Pauls remark about the household of Stephanus, but he assumes that Paul means that the household of Stephanus can give the Corinthians orders. I disagree. Paul was urging respect and recognition of spiritual maturity here. Not the authority to dictate orders. I handle this text in the book. 35) Ben says that the church sometimes fails to recognize ministry so you cant rely on the church for this. (Of course, Ben is speaking of the churches that he knows, which are traditional/institutional). My response: Is Ben claiming that denominational authorities never fail to recognize ministry? This, to my mind, is a straw man. It would be foolish for either of us to argue infallibility on either end. 36) Ben says that its the Holy Spirit who works through the church, not Christ. Look at Acts 1 and 2. The Holy Spirit is poured out by the ascended Christ. Look at John 14-17 where Jesus clearly says that He will come to us in the Holy Spirit. And that the Holy Spirit reveals Him. I recommend Andrew Murrays book The Spirit of Christ. Murray was not simply a devotional writer. In this book, his insights and exegesis are superb. Ben also tries to argue that God doesnt act through the congregation (church). My question then becomes: So does that mean that God cannot act through denominational authorities too? If Gods actions and human actions are two totally separate things always, then it follows that God cannot act through denominational authorities either (=pastors, clergy, even seminary professors Yikes!). 37) Ben again uses the rhetoric of absolute certainty asserting that my statement that the churches in the first century were not autonomous and fraternally related. He then attempts to prove this by trying to make an argument that the Jerusalem church required a collection of Paul. Ill just say that F.F. Bruce and Oscar Cullman disagree with Ben on this, along with many others. The fact is: autonomy and fraternal

relationship do not exclude one another. Churches may be autonomous and fraternally related at the same time. I have an adult sister who is younger than me. I have no authority to command her to do anything. She may still respect me, however. (And on some days she actually does! (smile)) So churches may be both fraternally related and autonomous. Autonomy isnt the same thing as isolation. And fraternal relationship isnt the equivalent of command-styled relationship. 38) Ben argues that John had authority over the seven churches in Asia Minor. My question: what sort of authority was John exercising/using? Again, this goes back to official vs. organic/moral authority. Ben seems to assume officialdom constantly. 39) Ben argues on the lexicon questions about the meaning of the words for leadership in the NT. In the book, I cite F.F. Bruce, R. Banks, W.E. Vine, Bauer, Gingrich, Danker, etc., on what those words mean. In a number of places, they differ with Bens opinion. I hope I can be excused for agreeing with them instead of him. (smile) 40) NT scholar Jon Zens did an outstanding job responding to an earlier review by Ben at http://www.paganchristianity.org/zensresponds1.htm Many of the same points Ben makes in his review are beautifully addressed in JZs response. So instead of taking up any more bandwidth, I refer you to that piece. Its formidable. THOUGHTS IN CLOSING I trust that my response to Ben was charitable and gracious; for this is what was in my heart. I ask for forgiveness if I said anything contrary to the spirit of Jesus Christ. This certainly wasnt my intent. I personally loathe engaging in academic debate, for I feel that in *most* cases, such dialogues swell the cranium and grieve the spirit. May it not be so in this case. I shall end this post with a kind word about BW3. I have found his work of digging up the historical and social background to certain texts in the NT to be very helpful. For that reason, I relied a good bit on his socio-rhetorical commentaries in the research for my book The Untold Story of the New Testament Church. (By the way, contrary to rumor, I havent burned my BW3 library just yet.(smile)) To my mind, this kind of NT background work is Bens forte. And hes good at it. I also appreciate how accessible he is to his readers. Even more, I appreciate that he has a sense of humor. (I wasnt sure that he did until I tested the waters so to speak and teased him a few times privately. He took it well, returned some himself, and thats when the friendly banter began.) And probably most important, Im grateful for his gracious invitation to have me respond on his blog. This speaks volumes about him all good. (Again: I reserve the right to retract that sentence upon seeing his response. (smile)) Alrighty then, I think Ive taken up enough bandwidth on Bens blog today. Im through (exuberant applause of relief). Ben now has 500 words to reply ;-)

Your brother in His unfailing grace, Frank V.

Epilogue: N.B. STAY TUNED FOR FRANK'S FINAL REJOINDER EARLY NEXT WEEK. Well its been interesting and fun, and I guess that the main thing that WORRIED me from reading Franks responses is that we seem at points to not be hearing each other, and what we are actually saying. One illustration must suffice. I certainly do think that the people of God are a living entity, call it a body if you like, and so an organism, but I also believe that any organism inevitably has organization (the question is what kind), and God in his graciousness has given us the task to help in that process. Not all organization is organic, but some of it of course is in Christs body. So, Frank you have misread me on this point. What I do insist on is that Paul is indeed using a body metaphor to try and describe the spiritual reality that exists in the church and the spiritual union that exists between Christ and his people. It is simply an analogy, and far from a perfect one (lets please not call anyone the toenail of the body of Christ :). The other thing that I found odd in this whole response is that Frank seemed to think I was accusing him of advocating leaderless Christianity. Nope, I was suggesting he was advocating inadequate leadership, and inadequately Biblically modeled leadership for the church, especially as it now exists. We just have to agree to disagree on this. And why exactly should we be following an example of ecclesiology and leadership that only a minority of even house churches follow, which is a tiny, tiny minority of the church universal? That should give pause NOT to the vast majority of the church but rather to that tiny tiny minority and cause them to thinkare we missing something here? What also becomes clear is that Frank and I disagree on the degree to which the Trinity is a model for church life. Again Frank misses my point that I DO think that being partakers of the divine nature means we model on a lesser scale the character God, and have everlasting life, which on a lesser scale is not merely like but derived from the eternal life of God. What I found quite shocking is that Frank seems to think we can know far more than what Scripture says about the inner life of the Trinity before the universe was created. Where in the world do we get the idea that the Trinity was involved in a mutually submissive dance of giving and taking before all time? The only thing the Bible says about what the Father and the Son and the Spirit were doing back then was creating the universe, or God was planning to redeem it. Thats all folks. We know next to nothing

about how the Trinity interacted back then. I guess Frank has been reading too many theologians who dont feel compelled to ground their theologizing in a close reading of what Scripture actually says. Otherwise, I cant figure out where this is coming from-Grenz, Giles, Volf, and Bilizekian I guess? And not an exegete amongst them. I also find Franks whole understanding of the interpretation of the Greek Fathers on the Trinity more than a little wrong. They insisted equally on the oneness and on the threeness of the Trinity, and they were not for blending together the three as if whatever the Father said the Son also said and the Spirit. For example talking about the Son-Father or about the Father dying on the cross or the like was condemned as a heresy. Their words, deeds, and personhood can all be distinguished without turning this into tritheism. The Trinity is three distinguishable persons and yes the three can have a conversation, and each could play their part. The fact that they agree doesnt mean that only one person spoke! That would be like arguing when the three Musketeers said in unison all for one and one for all they never said anything individually. The fact that the three agree doesnt mean they are all speaking in every instance. But when the Holy Spirit inspires a Christian to speak, it is of course she/he who is speaking, inspired by the Spirit. If you have listened intently enough and spoken faithfully enough, what you say can be called broadly the Word of God. You are speaking for God in such cases, not speaking as God-- either Father, Son or Spirit. The last thing we need in the church is people going around claiming that they speak AS Jesus. That way lies madness, and if it were true, then such a person would become uncorrectable, indeed how dare we correct them? No, we need to take the warnings in 1 Cor. about sifting the words of Christian prophets absolutely seriously. Pauls warning make evident that we are not, in this life, just extensions of God or Christ. God in any case does not need human beings to express himself on earth. He can do it directly of course, coming down in a theophany. He has however graciously chosen to use us. As for hermeneutics, Frank seems to me, unless I am missing something, to be adopting what I can only call a spiritualist hermeneutic which privileges theology over history, and ignores the progressive nature of revelation in the canon. I quite agree with Frank that we need to read the earlier part of the canon in light of the later part. That does not mean that we then have permission to read the later part of the canon back into the earlier part when it is not there, and more to the point the NT writers were not suggesting it was! The author of Hebrews put it well when he said the previous revelation was partial and piecemeal and the fullness of revelation came in Christ. Thats a historical perspective on things, and the right one. More on this in my forthcoming two volume work on NT theology and ethics entitled The Indelible Image. The danger in canonical criticism, which most NT scholars find seriously flawed (see the criticisms now in J.K. Mead's Biblical Theology), is that it denies the historical meaning of the text over and over again, which is why it is called a theological or even Gnostic hermeneutic by some. We are not the inspired writers of the canon, and we do not have

the right to read into the text things God didnt inspire those writers to say. Our job is to interpret the text, not remake it in terms of our modern meaning-making exercises. One of the ways to advocate a position is by what I would call the divide and conquer method. We see this in Franks work where he tries to make neat distinctions between church meetings, evangelistic meetings etc. But does the NT encourage us to make these sort of hard and fast distinctionswell no, not really. Church meetings could be evangelistic meetings, they could be council meetings, they could be fellowship or worship meetings, they could include all of these on one occasion. Another good example of a distinction that is not based in the NT is Franks distinction between Pauls moral authority and his official authority. Paul most certainly did believe he had apostolic authority over his converts, which is why he was perfectly happy to command them when they needed it, to insist on various things, even placing his own imperatives next to Jesus in 1 Cor. 7. Notice how he distinguishes his own words from the words of Jesus I say, not the Lord says Paul in 1 Cor. 7. This should make ever so clear that: 1) Paul did not believe in the concept of Christians speaking AS Jesus (not even in his own case!). Jesus had already spoken for himself; and 2) he believed his own inspired words had the same authority over his converts as Jesus. This is more than moral human authority, this is apostolic authority derived from Christ himselfi.e. top down authority. So Frank and I will have to continue to disagree on this, without being disagreeable. One of the things I find ironic, is that the precious few NT scholars Frank finds that agree, in part, with some of his notions, would vehemently deny many of the building blocks of his major theses. For example, I studied with Gordon Fee, and I knew Fred Bruce, who was a Plymouth Brethren. Neither of them would agree with most of the ecclesiology enunciated by Frank. And neither does Jimmy Dunn who, like myself, is involved in the Methodist Church. Criticisms of the institutional church do not connote endorsement of Franks alternative model. Nor would theologians like Bonhoeffer agree either. In other words, Frank cites them when they agree with him. They have been sound-byted to support views they would not be entirely happy with, and exegetical interpretations they would often repudiate. Robert Banks is another story. He is the one NT scholar of international reputation who has stepped out on the limb Frank is also sitting on. Its an interesting limb of the tree called the church, but it wont bear the weight of the whole church, indeed time will tell whether it bears the weight of the few who are out there on that limb now. Ive tried to coax Frank in from the limb. Looks like I failed. Frank I'm all for consenual decision making where possible. It is the consensus of the vast majority of the church now and historically that you are wrong. I will stand with them. Blessings, Ben

Epilogue Pt. II I appreciate Bens Epilogue. As I read it, two things stood out immediately: One: I was quite impressed that Ben could craft a response in less than 7,000 words! ;-) Two: I dont think the mug shot at the top of the Epilogue is a very good photo of Ben. Hes a bit better looking than that ;-) Im glad to see that BW3 acknowledges that both he and I have misread each other on some points. This is inevitable given the stale medium of Internet discourse (which I have never liked). And its only exacerbated by our profoundly different paradigms and experiences. On a personal note, Im happy to learn that I misunderstood a few of Bens points. Its good to know that hes not as far out in left field as I had originally thought. (grin) Let me repeat something I said at the front (in Part One of my Response). I could be completely wrong in all my views and Ben could be completely right. However, his arguments arent new to me. I, along with many others who I personally know and respect in the Lord, have grappled with them for many years. We have listened carefully to those with whom we disagree, we have weighed their arguments, and we have not found them convincing. Of course, that could be an oversight on our part. Or it could mean that we who disagree with the conventional view of church may be on to something. (Hold that out as a possibility.) In addition, I never asked or sought to be published. Each of the publishers sought me out (to my shock). And after much prayer and counsel from people who I know and respect in the Lord, I agreed. Im very encouraged that these books are getting out and creating conversation that touch on those things that relate to the headship and centrality of Jesus Christ. I stand with all that Ive written, yet Im keenly aware that I could be mistaken. So I welcome this sort of civil and gracious dialogue and feel that its healthy. That said, let me wrap this discussion up by focusing on a number of topics that Ben addresses in his Epilogue. I trust that it will help our readers to better see my line of reasoning and why Ive come to various conclusions. ***Counting Heads and Sitting on Limbs*** The bulk of Bens Epilogue invokes with I would call the argument of counting heads. Ben appeals to it twice. It goes like this: What the majority of the church has believed is correct. The minority view is incorrect. Ben asserts that my views on the church represent a tiny, tiny almost invisible minority of Christians. Using his words, Im out on a limb that only a few others share. (Frank clears his throat.)

I concede that in terms of my complete ecclesiology, Im part of a minority voice in the Body of Christ. (In terms of my views on the Trinity, however, Im in the majority. More on that later.) A few facts to consider. The Radical Reformation, which I and others identity mostly with, has always been in the minority. Most of these brave souls were exterminated in years past. In fact, if Ben and I were discussing these same issues some 500 years ago, after my rejoinder (if I was even given a chance to write it), I would have been taken out and burned at the stake. Interestingly, however, this minority is growing in our day. Reportedly, 1500 pastors a month leave the clergy system (traditional pastorate) in the United States. (That number has been reported by Rev Magazine, Leadership Magazine, CT, Focus on the Family, et. al.) According to Gallop, 1 million adult Christians per year leave the institutional church in the U.S. and the number is growing. Most of them are still following the Lord and fellowshipping with other Christians. As Reggie McNeal has said, A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost their faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith. George Barna has written extensively on this in recent years. Note: By nature, Im skeptical of statistics. Part of my early Christian journey was in the Pentecostal movement. And I quickly came to the conclusion that if a Pentecostal gives you a figure of those healed or saved, cut it in half and divide by two and youll *probably* get the real figure ;-) Frankly, I have no idea what the real numbers are. But what I do know is that according to many researchers all across the board, the typical American evangelical, conservative, traditional church is on the decline. Many Christians are either shifting toward more liturgical church forms (Catholic/Anglican/Eastern Orthodox) or they are seeking to gather in more simple/organic forms of church life. I think its unwise to ignore all of this or fall into the temptation of judging those Christians whove taken those turns. What Reimagining Church does is bridge the gap between the Catholic/Anglican/Orthodox emphasis on the Godhead and authentic Christian community and practically applies it to organic forms of church life. But beyond all this, the most striking thought that shot through my mind while reading Bens counting-heads/Franks-out-on-a-thin-limb argument was . . . This is the same exact same line of reasoning that was launched against John Wesley some 200 years ago. And it was launched by the clergymen of his day.

Early on, Wesleys critics were filled with sentiments that he and his movement had departed from the historic church. I find this ironic seeing that Ben has been serving in a denomination that owes its very existence to John Wesley. Add to that: this same line of argumentation was leveled against all the Reformers, who in turn, leveled it against the Radical Reformers. And history repeats itself as it so predictably does. Historical sidelight: Shortly before the Diet of Worms, the pope dispatched one of the major theologians of the day, Cardinal Cajetan, to speak to Luther. What the pope told him was do not argue with him on the substance of the issues. Just simply insist that hes obligated to submit to my authority and the authority of the Church. Hmmm . . . Note that I (and everyone else I know for that matter) cannot fill the shoes of a John Wesley or a Martin Luther. But the point remains. As one writer for Leadership Magazine put it recently, The heroes of church history began as reflective Christians who doubted what everyone else took for granted, and as a result, were in almost every case marginalized If renewal comes from the marginsas it nearly always appears to dothen by amputating our margins, we do what the chief priests and scribes did when a needed voice showed up at the margins of their community. If we will take the counting heads/out on a limb argument to its logical conclusion, then Ben and I ought to join the Roman Catholic Church and submit to the pope. The last time I checked, the RCC is the largest segment of the Christian world today. The fact is, the church as an institution has been wrong on the issue of slavery throughout the centuries. Its been wrong on the issue of the sword (shedding blood over doctrinal differences) since the fourth century. Its been wrong on the unholy wedding between church and State since Constantine. Its been wrong on the place of women throughout the centuries treating them as second-class citizens and degrading them in its theology. (Interestingly, Ben himself broke with the majority historical voice on this issue.) Point: the counting heads/out on a limb argument doesnt seem to hold up very well when put under the magnifying glass of church history. The tiny, tiny minority has often been proven in the long run to be correct. Consequently, I think the question of ecclesiology should be settled (where possible) by comparing arguments rather than by counting noses. ***Exegesis vs. Theology*** One of the constants in this discussion has been the hermeneutical question. To my thinking, because the Scriptures point to Christ, we cannot restrict ourselves to authorial

intent. We must ask and answer relevant questions about the God to whom the Scriptures so truly and reliably reveal. In other words, we cant build our views about God on exegesis alone. We must also do theology because theology is ultimately about God. In this connection, Ben accuses Grenz, Giles, Volf, and Bilezekian of not grounding their theologizing in a close reading of Scripture and then says theres not an exegete among them. Really? I encourage our readers to pick up Stanley Grenz monumental work, Theology for the Community of God. Flip over to the back. You will find a 13-page, tiny-font Scripture index referencing the scores of texts that Grenz grounds his theology in. Throughout the book, Grenz roots his theology solidly on compelling exegesis. Also pick up Gilbert Bilezikians Community 101 and watch how he grounds his theology in the NT text time and time again. Do the same for Kevin Giles books, The Trinity and Subordinationism and Jesus and the Father. Giles grounds his views solidly in the NT and the consensus of the church historically. Read those books and then decide whether or not Bens charge that these men do not ground their theology in a close reading of Scripture is true or not. Incidentally, Giles and Grenz appeal to Scripture in the books Ive cited above far more than Ben does in his theological book, The Problem of Evangelical Theology. (I just plugged your book, Ben. (smile) ) I believe that Ben has set up a straw man implying that theologians dont do exegesis. Thats just not true. Right or wrong, its my opinion that Ben confuses exegesis with theology. Karl Barth believed that exegesis was not theology; it was only the beginning of theology. I would agree. Very simply, the biblical text points us to something outside of itself. The Bible is not a book about the Bible. The Bible is a book about the Lord Jesus Christ. ***Canonical Criticism vs. Historical Criticism*** Ben suggests that we dont have permission to read the latter part of the canon back into the earlier part. My question is: Who is the permission giver? Who can give or deny us that permission? I wonder if implicitly Ben is suggesting that the exegetical scholar is the one who grants such permission. If thats the case, then the exegetical scholar who denies canonical criticism is viewed as standing as king over the whole realm of biblical interpretation and tells everyone what is and what is not permissible. Interestingly, not all exegetes are bound to the narrow methodology that says you must interpret a text by just restricting yourself to ask one question, What did the author have in his head at the time when he wrote that text?

Again, I address this in Beyond Bible Study, www.ptmin.org/beyond.pdf Ill just say that we can learn a great deal by looking at the NTs own way of interpreting the OT. Matthew quotes Hosea saying, Out of Egypt have I called my Son and applies it to Jesus Christ. Such an interpretation clearly had nothing to do with the authorial intention of Hosea. But this is typical of the way the NT utilizes the OT. It sees the full meaning of a text coming in the fullness of light that weve received in Christ. Just so were clear: I believe that the meaning of Scripture *includes but exceeds* the product of the modern hermeneutic. The modern historian doesnt have the last word on the meaning of Scripture. The interpreters of Scripture prior to the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment still had the basic equipment they needed to understand Holy Writ: the Holy Spirit and their fellow Christians through the ages. Just because they didnt have modern historical science does not mean that they were incapable of understanding the Scriptures. Such a thought is absurd to me. To think it is the height of Western, Enlightenment arrogance in my view. Brevard Childs, like myself, accepted historical criticism. Childs position was that historical criticism is a good beginning, but not a good stopping place. We dont stop with the historical information of the text. We rather go on to see the fullness of the canon. Thus Childs didnt deny historical criticism. The problem is that some are setting canonical criticism and historical criticism up as an either/or choice. But thats a false choice. One can advocate the historical study of Scripture and yet say that historical study needs to be inserted into a larger and richer context, i.e., the existing canon of Scripture which contains a revelation of Jesus Christ. My book, The Untold Story of the NT Church, is mostly a work of historical criticism written on a popular level. But just like Childs, Im insisting that the interpretative process is not completed by historical criticism alone. Put another way, the biblical texts are not just a grab bag of individual books. They are an organically united, canonical collection and they are only fully intelligible as such. ***Jesus Christ Speaking Through the Members of His Body*** This is not a black vs. white matter. I cant identify with Bens statement of speaking AS Jesus. I have no idea what that means. I affirm that Pauls statement, yet not I, but Christ lives in me is an actual, and not a metaphorical, reality. Therefore, I believe that Christians can speak by the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). Prophetic utterances occur in the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12-14). The Spirit of Christ still inspires, anoints, and speaks through His people. At the same time, we are exhorted to judge every prophetic utterance and discern what in it rightly represents the mind of God. Why? Because NT prophecy is not understood by looking at the OT mediatorial prophet as its model. NT prophecy is not the same thing as the ministry of the OT prophets, because OT prophets had a mediatorial position. NT prophets and those who prophesy do not have this mediatorial position. So what they say must be judged.

By the way, its reported that Bishop Butler, an Anglican clergyman, supposedly scolded Wesley once saying to him, Sir, this matter of Christians being inspired by the Holy Spirit in spiritual gifts is a horrid thing, a horrid thing. I find that interesting, given this discussion. ***The Godhead and the Church Fathers*** Ben says with absolute certainty that the NT says nothing of the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit before creation except that God created the universe, or God was planning to redeem it. Thats all folks. I cant agree. John 17:24b is just one example of a text that tells us something about the relationship between the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world. And there are more such texts folks. ;-) Ive never said nor do I believe that the Father died on the cross. My point was that the principle of the cross is found in the Godhead. God is love. Thus His nature is to dispossess Himself and pour His life into the other members of the Godhead. Calvary was merely an outworking of this principle, which is rooted in Gods nature and worked out among the Trinitarian Community. The views on the Trinity that Reimagining Church advocates is held by Catholics today, by Orthodox today, and by most Anglicans and Lutherans, as well as many people in Reformed and other denominations. Regarding my views of the Trinity, Ben says Im wrong on the Eastern Fathers and Im wrong on the Trinity. First, when I wrote about what the Eastern Fathers believed in my response, I was essentially quoting their writings themselves. Second, those who have studied the writings of the Fathers in detail know that subordinationism was considered a heresy and that the Fathers did not believe that there was a chain-of-command hierarchy in the Godhead. Some, however, have quoted the Fathers out-of-context in their attempt to try to justify a hierarchy in the Trinity (Augustine is sometimes used for this). A challenge to our readers. Read Kevin Giles two books (mentioned above) and the Appendix in Gilbert Bilezikians Community 101. They will clearly show that the view on the Trinity taken in Reimagining Church is in line with the historic teaching of the church. Note that I quote them in the book also. Case in point. When the Eastern Fathers Gregory of Nyssa and the other Cappedocian Fathers stated that God the Father is the fount/source of the Godhead, some said, Youre teaching subordinationism. And they insisted, No, we arent. The Father is the fount of the Godhead, but what He begets is One who is fully like Himself, and therefore, He is not subordinate to Him. So the accusation of the subordination of the Son was specifically made and denied by the Eastern Fathers.

Contrary to Bens claim, I am not blending together the three Persons of the Trinity. Im simply insisting that their glorious distinctive relationships are intelligible only when seen in the context of an overarching analogical resemblance. Yes, the three Persons are different. But they have an analogical resemblance to one another. They are distinct, but not separate. The Fathers gift of Himself to the Son is not the same as the Sons gift to the Father. But they are analogous, and the term subordination can name one element of that analogy. Further, their relationship to one another is rightly named love, and therefore can be understood as being analogues. The relationship between Father and Son, then, is a matter of mutual submission. They just submit in different ways. Perichoresis, as the early Christians called it, the Divine dance, is what makes our human relationships intelligible in our relationship to God. Regarding Bens comments on the members of the Trinity having different functions, this is what theologians call appropriation. The great theologians throughout the centuries, without any exception that Im aware of, have all said that appropriation must be done very carefully. It should not be thought to mean that if we appropriate creation to the Father, that only the Father is involved in creation. In fact, all the members of the Trinity are in their own distinctive ways involved in creation. The same is true for every Divine act. All the members of the Trinity are involved in the incarnation, in the atonement, in the resurrection, in regeneration, in sanctification, etc. Each Divine act is associated with a specific member of the Godhead, but that doesnt mean that its an activity *exclusive* to that member. ***Soundbytes or Building Blocks?*** I believe that Ben misses the point, here. Im not naming various scholars as members of a single school of thought that I subscribe to. Not at all. Im simply crediting those people who have helped me answer specific questions. Thus when I quote and cite scholars who are Roman Catholic, Anglican, and part of other denominations, I do so because they drew the same conclusions that I have on certain questions. Quoting them doesnt mean that I agree totally with their entire model or vice versa. What it does mean, however, is at a minimum, their handling of certain texts draw the same basic conclusions that Ive drawn. To get more specific: I own all of F.F. Bruces work and have studied his exegesis and life for years. Bruce wasnt your typical Plymouth Brethren. He believed in 1 Cor. 14:26/Heb. 10:24-25 open-participatory meetings (as do I); he believed that women could speak in those meetings (as do I); he disagreed with J.N. Darbys biblical blueprintism approach to ecclesiology as well as his dispensationalism (as do I); he didnt believe in a clergy nor a single pastor system (as do I); he believed that elders were plural in the local assembly (as do I); I could go on. The fact is, F.F. Bruces ecclesiology was far closer to mine than it is to BW3s. Further, Bruce was a formidable exegete. And in my view, one of the greatest NT scholars of this age.

The same is true for Gordon Fee. While we may not agree on every detail of our ecclesiology, theres wide agreement. For instance, Fee believes that 1 Cor. 14:26 was prescriptive. He believes that God through the Spirit speaks through the church, etc. He believes that Paul was an itinerant apostle. He believes in a plurality in elders in every church. He denies top-down authority leadership structures. What follows are some direct quotes from Fee that make the same identical points that I make in Reimagining Church that Ben took issue with in his review. "God as Trinity, including the Holy Spirit, is the ground of both our unity and our diversity within the believing community (God in Three Persons: The Spirit and the Trinity in Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, p. 45). "One of the more remarkable features of the New Testament Epistles is the twin facts (a) that they are addressed to the church(es) as a whole, not to the church leadership, and (b) that leaders, therefore, are seldom, if ever, singled out either to see to it that the directives of a given letter are carried out or to carry them out themselves" (Laos and Leadership Under the New Covenant in Listening to the Spirit in the Text, pp.132-133). "Closely related to this is another reality that is easily missed in an individualistic culture, namely that the imperatives in the Epistles are primarily corporate in nature, and have to do first of all with the community and its life together; they address individuals only as they are part of the community. In the early church everything was done allelon ('one another')" (p.134). "Leaders do not exercise authority over God's peoplealthough the community is to respect them and submit to their leadership; rather they are the 'servants of the farm' (1 Cor.3:5-9), or 'household' (1 Cor.4:1-3). The New Testament is not concerned about their place in the governance structures . . . but with their attitudes and servant nature. They do not rule, but serve and care forand that within the circle, as it were." (p.136) The truth is, Gordon Fees ecclesiology is far closer to mine than it is to BW3s. Further, Fee is an excellent exegete. (I quote him at other times in Reimagining Church.) And Robert Banks work on the anatomy of Pauls authority in the church is incomparable, bar none. Point: The way that Bruce, Fee, Banks, Howard Snyder, and even in some places Dunn, handle the Biblical text is in *many cases* the same way that I handle the text. Contrary to Bens statement, the building blocks of my theology of the Godhead and the relationship between Jesus Christ and His church maps tightly with the theology of Bonhoeffer, Grenz, Volf, and Giles. The difference lies in the *practical application* of that theology. I believe that if we apply their theology practically, it will not lead us to justify a Catholic church, an Anglican church, a Lutheran church, or an American Baptist

church. Instead, it will lead us to the organic expression of the ekklesia. All told, Im perfectly fine with being characterized by sitting out on a limb. The truth of the matter is that many Christians of the past and a countless number in the present have taken their seat there also. In my estimation, Bruce and Fee, and even Snyder, are sitting on that limb too, but some of them are closer to the tree than others. (Unfortunately, those who were part of the original Radical Reformation were tossed off that limb to meet horrid deaths.) By the way, Bens closing statement, the consensus of the vast majority, is an oxymoron. A consensus means you dont think in terms of minorities and majorities. Anyways, thats how the tree looks from my humble limb ;-) ***Closing Words*** Id like to thank Ben once again for this conversation. As I said in Part 2 of my response, I loathe this sort of academic discussion because 1) it typically doesnt get past the frontal lobe, 2) it often degenerates into something that grieves the spirit, and 3) it rarely if ever ends up changing anyones mind. However, I sensed that there was a shot that Ben and I could demonstrate, by Gods grace, how two Christians can have a vigorous, robust discussion on issues with which they strongly disagree and do it in a respectful, Christ-honoring way void of personal attacks and ad hominems. I certainly hope that this was the case. Our readers will have to decide if we pulled it off. I also hope this discussion wont end here, but that it rather becomes a starter of sorts that others will continue in many other places. Methinks that if Ben and I keep going round the ben on this topic (no pun intended), that his blog will become an echo chamber of sorts, where the same arguments will just be repeatedly echoed. (Counter-assertion arguments have already begun to show up, I think.) Theres a lot to reflect on in whats already been said, I think. Regarding the book that provoked Bens review in the first place, there are plenty of positive reviews (see http://www.ReimaginingChurch.org). And there are some not-sopositive reviews (like BW3s). ;-) There are credentialed professors who wholeheartedly agree with the book (like Leonard Sweet who has made it required reading for his doctoral students). And there are those who wholeheartedly disagree with it (like BW3). ;-) There are renowned authors who have endorsed it (like Shane Claiborne and Alan Hirsch). And there are renowned authors who havent endorsed it (like BW3). ;-)

Suggestion: If this conversation has been of interest to you, I seriously hope that you will read Reimagining Church for yourself instead of relying on someone elses review whether good or bad. Many of the arguments made in it havent been touched on in this conversation by the way. Add to that: if you suffered the pain of reading Pagan Christianity, then you owe it to yourself to read Reimagining. For one simple reason: Pagan was only the first half of a conversation the deconstructive side. The constructive half which is the most important is found in Reimagining. Pagan was never meant to be a stand-alone, and its not complete without Reimagining. That said, I hope our conversation will continue in the church at large, and I trust that it will be Christ-honoring friendly dialogue among brethren rather than hostile debates among enemies. Im of the opinion that with respect to dialogue, the journey is more important than the destination the process more important than the outcome. Despite our differences in ecclesiology, I stand with Ben Witherington III in our shared testimony that Jesus Christ is this worlds true Lord. And I affirm him as a gifted member of the body of Christ. Its been an honor. Your brother who sits on a limb, Frank p.s. Ive not watched too much of Bill OReilly. But in some of the episodes Ive seen, he doesnt really give his guests the last word despite his claim. However, to quote Hebrews, I shall think better things of my brother Ben. (smile) Ultimately, the Lord Jesus Himself will have the last word, eh?