St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (Aug 2023)
The Church in the Christian Bible
Abstract
The theme of ‘church’ in the New Testament raises four central questions, the answers to which are essential for Christian theology. The questions are there for all, because of the text; but the answers are of different importance, due to the different traditions: (1) what is the relationship of ‘church’ to Israel and to contemporary Judaism? (2) what is its relationship to Jesus and his call to discipleship? (3) how did Christianity develop in its earliest times, and what structures of community building and leadership did it develop? (4) what images and motifs of the church emerge; what theological concepts are developed to represent the nature and mission of the church? These questions are also those of the first Christians – although they are not always asked and answered directly, rather indirectly. All four questions remain relevant today. The first question is about Jewish-Christian relations, which are shadowed by the history of anti-Judaism but illuminated by the righteousness of God – ‘for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable’ (Rom 11:29). The second question becomes a problem in modern times, in view of the suspicion that the church is the institutionalized betrayal of Jesus, as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) wrote, saying that the power of faith would take the place of freedom of belief (The Antichrist 41–50). The third question, on the one hand, compels biblical exegesis to deal with an accusation (which has been repeatedly raised since David Hume, 1711–1776) that missionary monotheism is aggressive because it does not accept the cultures of the people it seeks to convert; on the other hand, it also leads to denominational controversies such as how important the episcopal ministry is for the church, or whether this ministry is testified to in the New Testament or not. The fourth question leads to the examination of what self-understanding the first believers have of themselves and the community they form ‘in Christ’. The church exists for the sake of the gospel; the gospel is spoken and heard, taught and learned, received and passed on in the church. Therefore, the church is not a subject of the New Testament writings that can be separated from their forms and contents. Methodologically, the connection between the origins and intended receptions of the New Testament writings and their direct and indirect statements about the church must be reconstructed. In this process, significant correlations between the history of the pre-Easter Jesus movement, the post-Easter mission, and the oldest theologies of the church become apparent. The New Testament does not contain a tract ‘church’; there is no single or even dominant concept of ‘church’. Rather, it contains many reflections on the nature and mission of the church, and the common belief – in the one God through the Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit – is combined with a variety of forms of being church that do not divide but unite (Alexeev, Karakolis, and Luz 2008). However, from the beginning there are disputes about the true faith which lead to exclusions and inclusions – and from the beginning there are many bridges that connect different traditions, in order to resolve hard conflicts and to create new relationships.
