Those Pesky Nicolaitans 3: The Blooming Obvious

“Can’t we get you on Mastermind, Sybil? Next contestant, Sybil Fawlty from Torquay; special subject, the bleeding obvious.”

Fawlty Towers S2 E6, ‘Basil the Rat’ (1979)

So it turns out that one of the things people are likely to do when you tell them you’ve developed some unusual theological opinions, is lend you things to read. I’ve been lent a few this past week. Here’s a short extract from one that made me laugh (emphasis mine):

Things to read.

“This is one reason why faithful Bible teaching isn’t more common in churches, because faithful Bible teaching will always cause offence. Sermons about the right way to do liturgy, or about church government, or about current affairs, or about the terrible sins of other people, or about the fascination of religions and philosophies will not upset me. But the voice of God spoken by a faithful Bible teacher will get under my skin.”¹

Ahem. Maybe sermons about church government won’t upset you. Me, on the other hand…

Another bit of literature that’s been kindly sent my way includes a chapter called ‘Follow your leader’ which includes, in its introductory section, the following:

“It seems to me that most of us simply accept the leadership pattern of whatever church we happen to go to. It may be that when we change churches we come across a different pattern or system. We might prefer it, or dislike it in comparison. But we don’t often step back and ask, ‘What leadership does the Bible tell us about? What leaders are we to have? What are they to do?’”²

Well, blimey O’Reilly, if the author hasn’t hit the nail on the absolute head – but he goes on, unsurprisingly, to draw conclusions on this matter that are extremely different from mine. I was toying with spending this third instalment of my little series on a refutation of his points, actually, until I decided that that just wasn’t how I wanted to play this game.

We’re all so used to reading passages that talk about specific roles within the church under the assumption that they’re referring to leadership structures that, if I were to go on the defensive at this point, I could spend week after week dissecting pericope after pericope, and explaining why they don’t automatically imply that some Christians have authority over others, until we were all totally sick to the back teeth of this whole business. I really don’t want to be sitting here next Christmas writing ‘Those Pesky Nicolaitans 27 ½’ or something, and I’m quite sure you want to be sitting here next Christmas reading such a thing even less, so instead, I’m going to introduce you to one of my favourite principles for studying the Bible, with just a few case studies, and you can all go away and examine the text for yourselves and figure out your own views on the matter.

That, in fact – if you’ll permit me a brief digression – is kind of the whole point. My position on church government is, in a way, a slightly self-defeating one. It’s like believing in democracy is kind of self-defeating: we’d rather be governed according to a philosophy we don’t like, provided that a majority of our countrymen voted for it, than impose government according to a philosophy we do like on them against their will. Similarly, the fact that I don’t believe any member of the Church should exercise authority over any other, precludes me from exercising any authority whatsoever over fellow-believers such as yourself, O Capable and Freethinking Reader. I would rather – I would much, much rather; I really can’t overstate this – that you go and search the scriptures and draw your own conclusions, even should they contradict mine on every possible level, than that you agree with me completely and even passionately without having actually seen these things in scripture for yourself. Let each be fully convinced in her own mind,³ and all that.

So don’t assent to what I say just because I’m pretty nifty with language and splash my opinions all over the Internet. But equally, please don’t assent to what you hear from the pulpit just because that guy has been to theological college and everyone else at your church seems to reckon he’s sound. Regardless of any of that, can you see this stuff in the scriptures for yourself? Are you convinced? Could you stand on that conviction if you were standing alone? Can you see it?

And on that note, meet one of my favourite Bible-study principles. Here it is: assume that everything in scripture is obvious or explained. Assume that God is not being cryptic, as if he were some mystical oracle delivering an ambiguous rhyming prophecy or something. Assume that the meaning is plain, because the mystery once hidden, the mystery of Christ in us and the hope of glory, has now been revealed to the saints by the Spirit, so that we might exercise all wisdom for each other’s edification.⁴ (How insanely cool is that? We have access to knowledge that the faithful prophets of old would have given anything to get a glimpse of; we, sinners that we are, have been granted to see truth concealed from even heavenly beings.⁵) And assume that if something in scripture seems obscure, it’s probably – not definitely, but probably – because you don’t know your Old Testament well enough.

With all this in mind, consider the following little segment of Hebrews: “Obey your leaders and submit to them.”⁶ Well, gosh, Anne, doesn’t that rather blow your church-leadership-is-not-a-category-that-exists theory out of the water? I don’t think so. What does ‘leader’ actually mean here? Well, scoot back a few verses and we find this: “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.” (Same Greek word for ‘leader’, just to be clear.) Boom! The term is defined for us, just like that. Our ‘leaders’ are those who spoke to us the word of God, and any believer might have done that for us; no special status is needed. So the people we’re being charged to obey and submit to here are those who have spoken to us the word of God. And frankly, obeying people who are chatting truth about God seems like a pretty reasonable course of action in any circumstances, right guys?

You see what I mean about assuming stuff is obvious or explained? If there’s a definition given, then blooming well take it. Granted, you may well have to look a little more widely than a single verse earlier in the same chapter. Take the business of elders, for instance. Church elders start showing up midway through Acts, but without any explanation as to who they were and what their role consisted of;⁷ the epistles similarly mention them a fair bit, but again, without making it at all explicit what the eldership gig actually involved. In other words, the New Testament writers are assuming that their readers just know what elders are; there’s no explanation because it’s not needed. So our task is to work out what their point of reference was, in order that we might work from the same one, and so interpret the scriptures rightly. And of course, their point of reference was the Old Testament. So let’s kick off from Genesis and see what we can find. The Hebrew word translated ‘elder’ (זָקֵן zāqēn) is really just an adjective meaning ‘old’; it’s not until Deuteronomy that we start seeing elders as a group be given specific responsibilities. These basically have to do with settling problems to do with societal relations, and enacting appropriate discipline: making sure murderers get handed over for proper punishment; making atonement for blood shed by an unknown perpetrator; punishing husbands who falsely accuse their wives of sexual misconduct; witnessing the official disgrace of brothers who refuse to do the duty of levirate marriage; that sort of thing.⁸ So we can assume that the role of elder in the Church entails a similar function, though the types of problem and the nature of the discipline at hand may be a bit different. Note that the eldership is not defined as a teaching or preaching job; note that it’s not paid work; note that the elders always act as a group; I could go on.

Again, you see what I mean? Assume everything is obvious or explained, even if you have to flick an awful lot of pages backwards to find where it is so. Sometimes, though, you don’t have to flick anywhere at all; you just need someone to point out what the passage actually says, or to manage to look at it with fresh eyes yourself. As soon as somebody said to me that 1 Corinthians 9 is about food, not money, that fact suddenly became so glaringly blatant that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it previously.⁹

What was once a mystery has been revealed to us. What is hidden from those who are wise by the world’s standards, God can make known even to little children. The Spirit who searches the deep things of God is living in us – in you, dear reader, if you are trusting in the blood of Christ as your sole means of being counted righteous before God who is thrice holy.¹⁰ Take up and read;¹¹ assume that God is able and willing to make himself clearly understood to you; and see where the blooming obvious takes you.

Footnotes

¹ This is from a little pamphlet by Christopher Ash called ‘Listen up!’, which styles itself as ‘a practical guide to listening to sermons’. It actually packs an awful lot of good advice into a few colourful pages and is well worth a read, particularly if listening to your church minister(s) giving sermons is, and is likely to remain, your primary method of participation in church teaching – but of course, I disagree with the premise that that should be true for any of us. Anyway, here’s one place to get hold of it if you feel so inclined: https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/listen-up.

² That’s from God’s New Community by Graham Beynon. Here’s somewhere you can get it for marginally cheaper than the RRP, if you fancy a peruse: https://www.10ofthose.com/products/1356/gods-new-community.

³ A phrase I draw from that bit in Romans where Paul’s telling the Church not to fall out over Jewish dietary restrictions and festal practices, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+14&version=ESVUK, which I think may be applied far more broadly in light of verse 23: whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

⁴ Here I riff on the last few verses of Colossians 1: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+1&version=ESVUK.

⁵ No, genuinely; check out Matthew 13:17 and 1 Peter 1:12.

⁶ The thirteenth chapter of Hebrews is the only place where a group of people within the church are described as ‘leaders’ (unless you count the adjectival use of the participle in Acts 15:22), which I think strengthens even further the case for construing the term as it is defined within the chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+13&version=ESVUK.

⁷ I think the first mention is in 11:30, and if you go and read the relevant section you’ll see what I mean about a lack of further explanation: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+11&version=ESVUK.

⁸ I’m basically looking at Deuteronomy 19-25 for this stuff: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut+19&version=ESVUK.

⁹ It really is! Take another look for yourself: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+9&version=ESVUK.

¹⁰ Yeah, I’m not going to footnote all those allusions. You’ve got the Bible Gateway search engine if you’re desperate to know their sources.

¹¹ This famous phrase comes out of Augustine’s Confessions, if you didn’t know. Here’s an English translation of the relevant portion: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confess.ix.xii.html.

Those Pesky Nicolaitans 2: What Church Leadership?

“So, who’s in charge now? I need to know who to ignore.”

Doctor Who S9 E3, ‘Under the Lake’ (2015)

Let’s launch straight into today’s reading, shall we?

 

This is the pulpit in the cathedral in my home city. I hate pulpits, for reasons that should promptly become apparent.

What, therefore, is it, brothers? When you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation; let all things happen for building up. If someone speaks in a tongue, (let there be) about two or at most three, and each in turn, and let one person interpret; and if there be no interpreter, let him be silent in assembly, and let him speak to himself and to God. And let two or three prophets speak, and let the others make a judgement. And if (something) is revealed to another sitting, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. And the spirits of prophets are subjected to prophets, for God is not of disorder but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints.¹

Huh. I wonder, dear reader, how much like a typical service at the church you attend does that sound?

In this little chunk of Paul’s first letter to his brothers and sisters in Christ at Corinth, he’s giving them some pointers on how to keep things orderly when they meet together; it seems as if they were doing a lot of talking over one another in uninterpreted tongues, which isn’t exactly a recipe for effective mutual encouragement. So Paul indicates in which circumstances it’s more productive to be silent: if you’ve got something to say in a tongue, but there’s nobody to interpret it, keep schtum; if you’re busy saying a prophecy when someone else present receives a revelation from God, yield the floor.² But take a look at that second sentence, and notice what Paul there considers a given about corporate worship: when the saints come together, each one of them brings something to say. And then again a moment later: you can all prophesy one by one. Paul had a problem with the Corinthians all speaking at once; he didn’t have a problem with them all speaking, full stop.

In essence, Paul says, look, guys, instead of all speaking at once, you should all be speaking in turn. He doesn’t say, look, guys, instead of all speaking at once, you should all be listening to the pastor/vicar/minister/insert other term for the guy who stands at the front and delivers the sermon. And on top of that, according to what Paul says, any individual who speaks is not exercising authority over the rest of those present, but subjecting him- or herself to their collective authority: let two or three prophets speak, and let the others make a judgement … the spirits of prophets are subjected to prophets.

According to this picture of things, then, I should rock up at a meeting with my fellow-believers expecting to hear various other people offer psalms and teachings and revelations and so forth, to evaluate whether these seem sound, and to give my opinion on that matter as part of the collective; and to have whatever psalm or teaching or revelation I may have to offer subjected to the same treatment. What has happened at the vast majority of the church services to which I have rocked up during my life, on the other hand, is that I have heard one person deliver a teaching. End of. I mean, sometimes it’s a very good teaching, but that’s not the point. Do we not all have spiritual giftings which we are commanded to exercise for the building up of our brothers and sisters? And yet have you ever seen the guy at the front yield the floor because a revelation was made to someone sitting down? Have you ever seen the congregation make a group judgement about the soundness of what they’ve just heard from the front?

If we’re doing church the way the Bible says we should, nobody should be up the front. There shouldn’t be a front. King Arthur had the right idea when he had his famous table designed by Sir Cumference.³ The authority belongs to the body as a whole, not to any particular appendage of it. Well, unless you count the Head.

 

A round table for a dinner-party ... ooh, that links rather well.

The scribes and the Pharisees … love the first couch at the dinner-parties, and the first seats in the synagogues, and the greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by people Rabbi. But you are not to be called Rabbi, for your teacher is one, and you yourselves are all brothers. And call no man your father on the earth, for your heavenly Father is one. And you are not to be called instructors, since your instructor is one, the Christ. The greatest of you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.⁴

Look at the logic in what Jesus is saying to his disciples here. Nobody in the Church is to be given the title of ‘rabbi’ (literally ‘my great one/master’, but translated in the New Testament as ‘teacher’) – why? Because the Church ultimately only has one teacher. Nobody in the Church is to be given the title of ‘father’ – why? Because the Church ultimately only has one Father, our God in heaven. Nobody in the Church is to be given the title of ‘instructor’ – why? Because the Church ultimately only has one instructor, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. As for us, we’re all brothers. We’re all on the same level, and the only one above us is God. If we style ourselves as teachers or fathers or instructors – or, I might add, as Reverend So-and-So, Pastor So-and-So, His Holiness So-and-So the Umpteenth, et cetera (yes, I’m putting all those in one box) – we’re trying to usurp God, because he is the only one who has a right to exercise authority over the Church. And anyone who tries to make himself great like that is going to be brought low.

Isn’t this amazing? We are all brothers. None of us is any more important than any other of us. We are equals, all formerly dead sinners ransomed for the same price and adopted to the same status as co-heirs of eternity. God relates to each of us directly, with Christ as our sole mediator. How huge a privilege is that? And yet how huge a call to humility? In a world stuffed to the seams with inequality of every variety, we march to a different beat. Among us, greatness is not to be in charge, but to serve – to make oneself last and least for the sake of one’s fellows.

So it sort of leaves me scratching my head when people talk about things like being called to church leadership, or whether women ought to take roles in church leadership. Like, what church leadership? The next step up from being a common-or-garden believer in the Lord, is being the Lord himself. Church leadership, adelphoi (and I have never used that term more meaningfully), is not a category that exists.

Footnotes

¹ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+corinthians+14&version=ESVUK. You’ll have noticed I’ve given my own translation rather than sticking to the ESV, so sorry for the clunkiness.

² And, if I’d kept the quotation coming for a couple more verses, he’s about to give a third scenario involving women. But I think if I were to deal with that jazz in this post, it would rather distract from the main point. Another time, perhaps.

³ Ahem. Sorry. Will a pertinent Studio C sketch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZiIVvEJ8m0, do by way of apology? (Watch right to the end.)

⁴ Again, whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+23&version=ESVUK.