More on the meaning of ‘church’

In my essay in Briefing #302 (‘The gathering: thinking afresh about church’), there were a number of issues that I didn’t have the space to address adequately. To stimulate further thought on these issues, here are some further cogitations about the meaning of ‘church’, and other related questions.

(These comments may not make much sense if you have not read the main article. It’s available online.)

Does ‘church’ only ever mean ‘gathering’?

As I briefly outlined in a footnote to the essay, the basic meaning of the Greek word ekklesia, usually translated in our Bibles as ‘church’, is ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’. It is an ordinary, rather than special religious word, and was used in this way by the New Testament authors (e.g. Acts 19:32; Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 14:19). The overwhelming majority of New Testament references to ‘church’ thus speak of a particular gathering or assembly of people, whether in Jerusalem or in Prisca and Aquila’s house or in heaven around God’s throne.

There are indications that, as would seem natural, ekklesia came also to be used to describe these gatherings even when they weren’t actually gathering—that is, to describe the group of people who met regularly in a particular place, whether or not they were physically meeting together at that time. In Acts 8:3, for example, where Paul was ‘ravaging the church’ by going from house to house dragging people off to prison, it seems he was not ravaging the actual assembly, gathered in one place at the time, but the men and women who belonged to that assembly. This was the church in Jerusalem, characterized in Acts 2:42-46 as being “together and having all things in common&#8221, who met together daily to attend the temple, and broke bread in their homes. They were a group who got together, who ‘churched’ in various ways and at various times (such as in Acts 4:23-31, where the assembled group prayed for boldness). Likewise, after the Jerusalem gathering is scattered throughout Judea and Samaria (in Acts 8), Luke continues to refer to them as ‘the church’ (singular) in Acts 9:31, even though they no longer meet in each other’s presence.

These very occasional more abstract uses of ekklesia are based upon the concrete use. People could be thought of as belonging to an entity called an ‘assembly’ (i.e. ‘church’), even during the week when they were at home, because they did actually assemble as a group.

Thus, the primary and common meaning of the word we translate as ‘church’ is of an actual gathering or assembly of some kind (whether Christian or non-Christian, whether on earth or in heaven). The idea that you could be part of the ‘church’ as an abstract community or network of people (such as a denomination), who did not actually meet together, is quite foreign to New Testament thought, and to the meaning of the word ekklesia.

That is not to say that there weren’t strong links between congregations (that is, between churches), or that Christians in Macedonia did not give sacrificially for the saints in Jerusalem; however, their relationship or fellowship is quite understandably not called ‘church’ because they did not meet together.

There is a bigger, broader ‘gathering’ or ‘church’ of which all Christians are part, which both unites us and is the rationale for our earthly gatherings. It is the spiritual, invisible, heavenly gathering of which we are members in Christ (e.g. Heb 12:22-24; Col 1:18).

Interacting with Kevin Giles

The view just put forward about the meaning of ‘church’ in the Bible is sometimes referred to as the Robinson-Knox Corrective (RKC), after Drs Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox, who taught it at Moore College in Sydney in the 1960s-70s as a biblical corrective to the widespread misuse of ‘church’ language in modern debate. The influence of the RKC has been significant within evangelicalism over the past 30 years, and it has attracted its critics.

Some have argued that the congregational emphasis of the RKC marginalizes other important facets of church life. For example, what of the denominational and ecumenical relations between congregations (between ‘churches’)—are they of no significance and importance? Shouldn’t there be a wider sense of Christian unity and community amongst all the world’s Christians? And what of the church’s ‘face to the world’? Won’t a local, congregational emphasis result in individualistic Christians, focused on themselves and their own holy huddles?

Concerns of this type have lead some critics to go to great lengths to find something other than the congregational emphasis in the biblical material. Kevin Giles’s book What on earth is the church?, published in 1995, is a notable example . At one level, Dr Giles’s book is full of thoughtful reflection on recent theological discussion about church, and surveys a large range of relevant biblical material in a scholarly way. Yet, in his desire to refute the basic tenets of the RKC, Dr Giles repeatedly finds himself trying to push the weight of biblical evidence uphill. As with many such books, his strategy for coping with this difficulty is fourfold:

  1. Cast the opposing position as an unattractive straw man that no-one would want to associate with;
  2. Admit that at first glance there appears to be a great deal of biblical evidence for the straw man position;
  3. Find a couple of places where the biblical
    evidence could be read differently, focus on those instances,
    define them as the more important and significant, and use them
    to silence and over-ride the mass of other material; and
  4. Finish the job by calling on the support of other authorities, such as the experience of those involved, elements of Christian tradition or the opinion of eminent scholars and theologians.

This strategy will be familiar to anyone who has read books attempting to justify, for example, women’s ordination or the validity of homosexual practice, in the face of seemingly overwhelming biblical evidence to the contrary. In the case of women’s ordination, texts like Galatians 3:28 (“there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”) have been used at stage 3 of the argument to silence other texts (such as 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 11 and 14).

In this particular work, Dr Giles wishes to show that “the church is primarily that world-wide community that confesses Jesus as Lord and is enlivened by the Holy Spirit” (p. 15). The problem he has is that (as discussed above) the word ‘church’ is always used in the New Testament to refer to actual assemblies, to bodies of people who gather, not a ‘community’ or network of individuals who might be connected by some bond or common interest but who do not actually get together. In order to evade the force of this uncomfortable fact, Dr Giles embarks on the four-step strategy.

He firstly suggests, quite staggeringly, that the RKC is individualistic in its focus:

In the congregational ecclesiology, the thought that the church is basically a locally specific ‘aggregation’ of believers who have decided to form a church, or to belong to it, is invariably close at hand. This individualistic way of thinking is one serious flaw in this conception of the church, as the New Testament is not predicated on such a view of life. (p. 15)

He goes on to criticize ‘congregational ecclesiology’ for its supposed ignorance of the ‘communal’ and relational nature of the Bible.

To suggest that the Bible is ultimately about individual salvation, or that the church is but a local assembly of individuals who are bound together only by their personal associations, or that each individual congregation is in no way linked with other congregations, introduces ideas alien to biblical thinking. (p. 21)

No doubt it does. But the holding of a ‘congregational ecclesiology’ in no way commits one to this sort of isolationist, individualistic Christianity, nor has it ever done so. On the contrary, as readers of D. B. Knox’s work on this subject will know, his doctrine of church was predicated on a profoundly relational view of God and reality, and decried all forms of individualism and self-centredness.

When Dr Giles comes to assess the biblical evidence, the results are disappointing to say the least. So committed is Dr Giles to disproving the RKC thesis about the meaning of ‘church’, that he engages in quite breathtaking sequences of argumentation. These arguments are lengthy, detailed, and couched in all the language of scholarly respectability—and yet, when broken down and examined, they are surprisingly vacuous.

To take one example: Dr Giles regards the use of ekklesia in Acts 20:28 as particularly significant “because this is the only place where Luke specifically indicates that the word can refer to a universal reality without geographical limitations” (p. 86). This would seem a bold statement to make, given the context. Paul has called the elders of the Ephesian ekklesia to meet him at Miletus, and he addresses them as overseers of this flock, this church of God at Ephesus. “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock … etc.” ‘Church’ in this sentence would seem to mean what it means pretty much everywhere in the New Testament: the assembly of God’s people who meet in that place (in this case, Ephesus).

What then is Dr Giles’s basis for concluding, against the strong implication of the context and of the usual meaning of the word, that Luke is using ekklesia in this instance to specifically indicate “a universal reality without geographical limitations”? It is because Paul then adds “for whom Christ died”:

As Christ certainly did not die only for the Christians of Ephesus, all Christians come into view. (p. 86)

Of course, this is the same form of argument as the one which says:

All fish swim in the sea.

My nephew is swimming in the sea.

Therefore, my nephew is a fish.

But this does not prevent Dr Giles, in all seriousness, from advancing this as a reason for reading ‘church’ in Acts 20:28 as referring not to the local Ephesian assembly but to a universal reality. (Quite apart from the logical fallaciousness of the argument, Dr Giles doesn’t discuss what this reading of the verse does for the responsibilities of the Ephesian elders, who are charged earnestly to be dutiful overseers of this ‘church of God’!)

In case this startling argument doesn’t convince the reader, Dr Giles adds a further reason why ekklesia in Acts 20:28 doesn’t mean ‘assembly’ but a universal community:

This is also indicated by the fact that these words reflect the language of Psalm 74:2, where the Hebrew edah is found. Although the Hebrew word qahal, meaning assembly, is always translated by ekklesia in the Greek Old Testament, the more theologically weighty Hebrew word edah, meaning the covenant community, or the people of God, lies behind [Acts] 20:28.

This sounds very scholarly and serious, and may dazzle some readers with its italics. But let us examine what is being argued. Dr Giles is suggesting that:

  • Psalm 74:2 bears a passing similarity to Acts 20:28 (such that it is “lies behind” it);
  • Psalm 74:2 doesn’t contain the Hebrew word qahal that is translated by ekklesia in the Greek Old Testament; it uses edah, which is a word with a broader semantic range than qahal, and often (but not always) refers to a community or a people group rather than a particular gathering. edah is translated in the Greek Old Testament of Psalm 74 by sunagoge. (The verse says: “Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage!”)
  • So because something other than an assembly could be under discussion in Psalm 74, written in Hebrew, Paul must be talking about something other than an assembly in Acts 20:28, written in Greek, even though he uses a completely different word in Acts 20:28 (the word ekklesia)—a word which only means ‘assembly’ in the Greek language of New Testament times.

This can only be described as linguistic barbarism, yet it is put forward as a serious argument. And it is not the only place where Dr Giles cuts a swathe through basic linguistic theory as it applies to biblical exegesis. He discusses Acts 19, for example, in which the word ekklesia is used several times in its normal everyday sense to describe a gathering of people—in this case a mob of unbelieving Ephesians. This is an uncomfortable piece of evidence for Dr Giles’s cause, and so he seeks to dismiss it by saying the following:

The fact that Luke can use this important theological term, ekklesia, in a secular context in its classical sense is not at all surprising, for Luke and other New Testament writers frequently use words that have Christian meaning non-theologically. This means we should no more derive Luke’s Christian meaning of the term ekklesia from the Acts 19 uses than we should derive the Christian meaning of sodzo/save from his usage of this term in Acts 27:20 and 31, where it refers to rescue from drowning. (p. 85)

Dr Giles does not seem aware in this paragraph of the basic linguistic distinctions between the meaning of a word (its lexical sense, and the range of concepts associated with it) and the thing in the world to which the word refers. So we do learn a great deal about the meaning of sodzo/save from Acts 27:20 and 31. We learn that the lexical sense of the word is something like ‘to rescue’, or ‘to deliver’ (from danger). And thus when the word is applied to a different object, in a different context, such as a Christian discussion about being ‘saved’ from God’s judgement, we know what is being talked about. It’s a rescue, a deliverance—whether from drowning or sickness or danger or judgement. The lexical sense is much the same; the referent is different.

In the same way, we do learn about the meaning of ekklesia from Acts 19. We learn about the lexical sense of the word; and armed with this knowledge, and with the knowledge we gather from elsewhere about the lexical sense and range of ekklesia, we can work out the meaning of particular sentences in which ekklesia is used.

This is all quite elementary, and it is disappointing that Dr Giles advances arguments of this calibre to seek to establish his case—especially since, at a later point in the book, he cites James Barr’s critique of word studies, and chides his opponents for falling into linguistic errors (see p. 232).

The real problem lies in having set himself such a difficult, and I would suggest unnecessary, task. Against the vast weight of biblical data, Dr Giles labours to establish that “the church is primarily that world-wide community that confesses Jesus as Lord and is enlivened by the Holy Spirit”. That is to say, he is seeking (in part) to prove something about the meaning of the word ‘church’ (or rather the Greek word ekklesia). He is not seeking simply to establish that there is a community of Christians throughout the world (which plainly there is); nor he is merely seeking to show that this community is marked by confessing Jesus as Lord (which it must be); nor is he simply trying to establish that this community should co-operate, enjoy fellowship, share resources, join in common cause and care for one another in whatever ways are appropriate and possible (this too is plainly desirable, and urged upon us by the Scriptures in numerous ways). Dr Giles wants to go further and say that this worldwide community should be labelled and thought about using the biblical language of ‘church’. Thus he needs to demonstrate that this is what the biblical word means. Of course, this requires him to show that the New Testament writers used the word in a quite different way from the society around them, where the lexical sense of the word was ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’, and nothing else (as Dr Giles admits).

The result is a book which, for all its learning, and for all the good things that it does say about the nature of Christian corporate life, is profoundly flawed.

Concluding thoughts

For me, the most disappointing thing about Kevin Giles’s book, and those who seek to argue in a similar way, is that much of the effort is unnecessary. The realization that the biblical word ekklesia/church means ‘assembly’, does not prevent cooperation and fellowship between churches (that is, between assemblies)—on the contrary, it puts it on a secure basis. Seeing ‘church’ as a ‘gathering’ does not prevent us from engaging in action together in the world, nor from hatching great plans for mutual benefit and for the advance of the gospel. It does not, of itself, promote individualism or self-centredness.

Nor have we said everything there is to be said about being Christian, and what our ‘corporate life’ should be like, once we have established the meaning of one biblical word. The Bible has a rich vein of teaching on this general subject, using a variety of images and concepts. But let us not fudge the evidence or explain it away. Let’s be taught and shaped by it, and adjust our thinking, and the way we speak, accordingly.

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