GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
THE SECRET SACRAMENT:
THE ESSENTIALITY OF BIBLICAL COMMUNITY FOR CHRISTIANS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
BY
AUSTIN D. PFEIFFER
JULY 5th, 2012 Accepted by the Faculty of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Christian Thought
Examining Committee:
Faculty Adviser: Dr. Robert Mayer, Senior Librarian
First Reader: Dr. Donald Fairbairn, Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity Copyright © 2012 by Austin D. Pfeiffer All Rights Reserved
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. To Andy Hamer
Just about now, by the way, we are beginning the tenth year of our friendship; that's a fairly large slice of one's life, and in the past year we've shared things together almost as closely as in the previous years of our vita communis.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge, from Tegel Military Prison, April 11th, 1944 What life have you, if you have not life together? There is not life that is not in community, And no community not lived in praise of GOD. Even the anchorite who meditates alone, For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of GOD, Prays for the Church, the body of Christ incarnate. And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads, And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance, But all dash to and fro in motor cars, Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere. Nor does the family even move about together, But every son would have his motorcycle, And daughters ride away on casual pillions.
-T.S. Eliot, “Choruses from 'The Rock'” in The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950. Contents
PREFACE vii
ABSTRACT xi
INTRODUCTION 1
PART ONE. THE BIBLICAL BACKDROP OF COMMUNITY 16
Chapter 1. The Old Testament Foundation of Community 21
Chapter 2. The New Testament Image of Community 30
PART TWO. A THEOLOGICAL VISION OF BIBLICAL COMMUNITY 49
Chapter 3. Twentieth-Century Portraits of Biblical Community 51
Chapter 4. A Prescription For The Secret Sacrament: 63 Biblical Community In The Twenty-First Century
CONCLUSION 79
BIBLIOGRAPHY 85
VITA 91 Preface
The process of this thesis has been a curious paradox of order and chaos. The idea began as a historical reflection on the roots and rise of neo-monastic communities in the twenty-first century. Over the course of working with a number of advisers, the outline and focus took different shapes and forms. At the same time, my research all throughout seminary – be it ethics, biblical studies, or practical theology – always focused on
Christian community. Only near the end was I able to see how these evolutions would fit together.
I came to seminary having observed two contradictory realities in the church. The first is what seems like a new, heightened interest in talking about community in
Christian life. The second is the lack of actuality on those talking points with the rise of narcissism and isolation in the digital age. This led to my interest, both theoretically and practically, in neo-monasticism. The vision cast by neo-monastic writers is compelling, but the broader church has not latched on to their unequivocal devotion to a life together.
Being at Gordon-Conwell, a school that emphasizes biblical studies as the foundation of all Christian thought, I wanted to establish an argument from scripture that devoted community is essential as a means for experiencing Christian life. This is the task of Part One of my thesis. The approach was to explore the Hebrew and Greek scripture first, with later appeal to scholarly commentaries to compare with my conclusions. With that foundation in place, I hope to validate for the broader church, the historical examples and hermeneutical conclusions of Part Two.
My personal interest in Christian life together came through my brief, but inspiring time with the Ecclesia Collective in San Diego, CA. At a time in my life when
vii Christianity was beginning to seem like theory, I saw the physicality of the Gospel alive at their table, in their yard, but most in their friendship. Thank you to them for stoking a feeble flame. I would like to thank Rick Downs, who pushed me to study at Gordon-
Conwell, as well as Joe and Anne Farrell for their patient encouragement. Thank you to
Dr. Garth Rosell, who invited the idea of this research from a historical perspective.
Thank you to Dr. Steve Klipowicz for guiding my research study on hospitality in missional households in the 20th century, particularly for pushing me to read, research, and write on much more than I was comfortable. For guidance in my research I would like to thank Dr. Jay Sklar, Dr. Gordon Hugenberger, and Dr. Cathy McDowell for responding to my questions with great suggestions. I would like to thank the staff of Z.
Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, for their hospitality and assistance as
I spent so many hours using their resources.
I would especially like to thank Dr. Rollin Grams, for teaching me to mine the depths of primary sources in the darkest parts of libraries. Dr. Grams, thank you for challenging me to look straight into the text before letting anyone else put their shade on my reading of scripture. I would also like to thank Dr. Bob Mayer for caring about writing as a craft and for being a source of encouragement and guidance when my thesis seemed lost. Thank you to Dr. Donald Fairbairn for placing in my heart the dual passions for guarding orthodoxy, while thinking for myself. You have been thought provoking, patient, steadfast, wise, and kind, and I am so grateful to have had you as an adviser, professor, and reader.
I am grateful for the Christians with whom I have life together. Thank you to the men I sat around many fires with while a student at GCTS; Aaron, Andy, Jonathan, and
Robby. Thank you to Ben Milner for being such a great shepherd. Ben Warner thank you
viii for wisdom and steadfast prayerful friendship. Thank you Steve Beck for keeping our community alive and teaching us what it means sow peace. Thank you to Salem
Presbyterian Church for support and guidance. Thank you Daniel Umlauf for calling me to clarity and for sharing your literary-philosophical gifts. Thank you Anna Gissing for challenging my ideas and raising the bar for theological thinking. Thank you to my parents for pushing me to pursue my masters and for letting the son of a business man pursue such unprofitable ventures as Creative Writing and Theology. Thank you to Jean and Garland Elmore for showing me what it means to care about education, for spiritual mentoring, and for allowing me to marry your daughter. Last, thank you to my wife Erin for being a woman of God first and foremost. And for helping me graduate college, signing me up to visit seminary, putting the car keys on my desk, pushing me to stick with academia, and supporting me all the while. You are a wonderful woman, wife, mother, and community-mate.
ix Abbreviations
AB - Anchor Bible ESV - English Standard Version ICC - International Critical Commentary LSJ - Liddell-Scott-Jones, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford) LXX - The Septuagint NA27 - Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 27th edition NAC - New American Commentary NASB - New American Standard Bible NICOT - New International Commentary on the Old Testament NIGTC - New International Greek Testament Commentary NICNT - New International Commentary on the New Testament NIV - New International Version NT - New Testament OT - Old Testament OTL - Old Testament Library SP - Sacra Pagina SBL - Society of Biblical Literature WBC - Word Biblical Commentary
x Abstract
This thesis is a prescriptive manifesto for Christian community characterized by common life, hospitality, and confession in groups of believing Christians. Robust Christian life does not exist outside the space of the gathered community (ekklēsia). Christians experience this intimate communion with Christ and each other (koinōnia) through the practice of the foundational, ancient necessity of sacramental gathering (arkandisziplin) for experiencing Christ’s saving grace. An exposition of biblical texts on community serves as the foundation for understanding community through journal articles, first-hand accounts of historical Christian community, biographies, and university lectures. The exegetical foundation and the theological conclusions will show that Christian community, especially in houses and homes, is of utmost importance to God.
xi INTRODUCTION
The Essentiality of Community
Imago Dei: The Trinity's Community Image In Humans
It is not good for man to be alone and so God made a companion for Adam. Christ did not leave humanity alone, but sent a helper, the Holy Spirit, to create Christ's companion the church. Christian community cannot supplant a relationship with God.
Nevertheless, from the beginning in the Garden of Eden, humans were created to encounter God through communal relationships. The creation of Eve is the catalyst for the timeless norm of humans relating to God in human community. From Eve's creation onward, relationship to fellow humans is in the fabric of human existence.
The image of the Trinitarian God is found in the Christian community. All
Christian life together in worship, discipleship, and outreach, show that humans were created to live in community. The ability to realize the essential relationship between human beings and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is heightened through relationship with one another. Karl Barth synthesizes the Trinitarian imago dei in humans by writing,
“God exists in relationship and fellowship. As the father of the Son and the son of the
Father He is Himself I and Thou, confronting Himself and yet always one and the same in the Holy Ghost. God created man in His own image, in correspondence with His own being and essence.”1
Christianity is not a mystical religion. It is not a communal exchange between the divine and human. It is physical, a material spirituality cognoscente of flesh, led by the
God who became flesh. It is also not a religion where God and the individual enjoy an 1 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume 1, Part 1. eds. Thomas F. Torrence & G.W. Bromley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956-1975), 324.
1 exclusive hermetic relationship. The church is an indispensable part of the Christian relationship with God. Miroslav Volf argues the church community is a reflection of the
Trinity. He uses categories from Odo Marquard to describe two mistaken understandings of Christianity as “multiplicity” and “unity.” Volf offers an understanding of why community is essential for followers of the Trinity by writing, “since God is the one God, reality does not, as Aristotle's metaphor suggests, degenerate into individual scenes like a bad play; yet since the one God is a communion of the divine persons, the world drama does not degenerate into a boring monologue.”2 Volf notes that one's perception of God
(as relational or not) will affect one's perception of what it means to assemble as the community of Christ. God is the Trinity, relational and unified, and thus Christians gather as relational and unified.
What led to the disparity between the relational nature of God and the postmodern understanding of community? Protestant thought inherited a conception of God that emphasizes the “oneness” of the God with whom Christians claim relationship. The
Reformers took Aquinas' view of the Trinity, which emphasizes not the persons but the referential relationships of the Trinity3 to its logical end, trading out the relational communion of the Trinity, in an attempt to safeguard the oneness of God.4 The result is a theology where individual communion with God is the lone objective. This individual communion is weakened because this understanding of God lacks His relational quality.
This theology cannot fully comprehend the Trinity and therefore it cannot comprehend
2 Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church As The Image Of The Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 193. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 7: “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Ia. 33-43)”, ed. T.C. O'Brien (Cambridge: Blackfriars, 1976), 141-143. 4 This idea first appeared in a paper titled, “Salvation Belongs To Our God: A Historical-Biblical Exploration Of Salvation.” Submitted to Dr. Donald Fairbairn for CH/TH 669: Soteriology In Christian History, at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, May 2nd, 2012.
2 human community. When Christians gather in the name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they gather with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt 18:20). Any Christian spirituality lacking community lacks the full benefits of communion with God. Dismissing community as unessential to the Christian life is to misunderstand the nature of God.
Equally, to misunderstand community elicits a misunderstanding of God.
Disparities in Understanding Community in the Modern and Postmodern Eras
Community is at the core of the Christian faith and more importantly God's being.
The twenty-first century understanding of community must then be examined. A vocabulary of “community” enjoys frequent lip service in twenty-first century society, for instance with reference to online social networks. In Christianity it is also frequently spoken of, but usually in the garb of church programs or superficially organized collections of like-minded people.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed this shallow understanding of community in
American culture. When Bonhoeffer came from Germany to study at Union Theological
Seminary, he noticed Americans were exposed in young adulthood to a form of communal life, highlighting a “thousandfold ‘hello’ resonating through the halls of the dormitory.”5 He mournfully concluded though that “all American thought, especially with regard to theology and the church…[does] not see the radical claim of truth on the shaping of their lives. Community is therefore founded less on truth than on the spirit of
‘fairness.’”6 The idea of community in the American church, as Bonhoeffer observed it, emphasizes individual wants and needs, a fairness of entitlements. Selfishness reigns when individualism favors cordiality at the expense of vulnerability. Its antidote is a
5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931. eds. Reinhart Staats and Hans Christoph von Hase, trans. Douglas W. Stott (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 306. 6 Ibid, 306.
3 naked life before fellow Christians. Postmodern culture is far removed from the biblical proposition that living in relationship with others is essential to embracing truth.
The twenty-first century is an important time to study the biblical concept of community because relationships are redefined every day by changes in technology and societies. Despite the overuse of the term “community,” the western church faces greater individualistic entitlement and narcissism in the digital age. As Cherie Harder points out, there is a difference between being known as an online persona and being understood as a living human. Harder makes light of how social networking applications attempt to tie themselves to the physical world by integrating GPS coordinates to their subscribers’ postings. Ultimately they cannot replace physical community. This reveals a tension between the ability of the Internet to connect real people and the human thirst for real, terrestrial, material connection inherent in God's creatures since Eden.
Harder's strongest point is her recognition that human nature will keep people grounded in a physical reality, regardless of technological advancement. Concrete existence as a community has tangible affect and cost, “requiring the sacrifice of money, time, and attention. Inviting people into our homes…[in] a different order than inviting their friendship online.”7 No technological advance will change that humans consume food, wear clothes, live in shelters, and exist in physical reality. Thus real relationships in physical community are critical for the church.
Norman Wirzba argues that it is difficult for the postmodern culture to “say grace” over a meal. In a post-agrarian society, humans no longer see themselves as the objects of
7 Cherie Harder, “Hospitality in the Digital Age,” Trinity Forum, December 10, 2010, http://www.ttf.org/index/update/december-2010/, (accessed December 10, 2010).
4 providence but as the subjects controlling technology and environment, with relationships filtering through devices and vehicles.8 The solution is humility to thank God for His creation. Christian community forces humble cooperation where an action like “saying grace introduces us to a new understanding of ourselves as creatures placed in a world of gifts.”9
The entitlement Bonhoeffer identified in some American churches is a surrealist faith. It is Christianity removed from confession of sin, without willingness to invite in the stranger. It is individualistic and identifies community on secondary traits. These secondary traits are markers like activities, values, or culture, instead of a daily, common life. They are the core of a delusional community that does not fully understand God. The imago dei of the Trinity begs for human relationships in Christian faith, with no room for inward, individualistic desires of consumerism or entitlement in churches. To expect unilateral companionship from the church is to look for encouragement and love while conveniently neglecting to offer grace and love to others inside and outside the church.
The delusions and luxuries of prosperity in the American church disintegrate community in ways the oppressed church of history was able to resist. This unrealized community begs for theological reflection on what it means for Christians to live in commonality, understand relationship, and experience conflict and reconciliation. There is a need to reign in the shallow vision of a communal Utopia dreamed up by Western
Christians.
The biblical evidence will show that Western Christians must trade in homogenous neighborhoods and confront the equally harmful individualism that manages
8 Norman Wirzba, “Saying Grace: Transforming People, Transforming the World,” in Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, 3.2 (2009): 199-200. 9 Ibid, 195.
5 conflict and relationship by avoiding proximity. Community in the Bible is none of these misconceptions. God gathers His people, His way, for a daily life of common faith. The people of God are responsible to be in the community through authentic confession and by opening the common life to outsiders. Biblical communities include others, with a desire to point people not to the community, but to Jesus Christ. This exchange of commonality and hospitality serves as a means for God's grace. God uses human relationships in a sacramental way and this thesis will describe how the twenty-first century American church should be realigned in this truth.
The claim of this research is that there is a timeless biblical conception of
Christian community that is a natural part of the Christian's life. It cannot fit into categories of “evidence of faith” or “meritorious work.” It is instead a mere natural experience of the saved thwarted only by sinful resistance of this touchstone for
Christians of all generations. The first core trait of biblical community is that gathering community is the work of God, with the human participation through hospitality. The second is of a common life together, as a family of sinners studying, praying to God and confessing to each other. These traits have roots in the Old Testament, found explicitly in
New Testament theology of community.
The established biblical-theology of community will validate twentieth-century examples. Observing the realization of these biblical ideas in journal articles, first-hand accounts of historical Christian community, biographies, and university lectures, will show that familial community, especially in houses and homes, is of utmost importance to God. Taking the biblical portrait and historical examples, this thesis will provide a prescriptive theology for postmodern Christian community characterized by a cooperative lifestyle of hospitality and confession. Robust Christian life does not exist
6 outside the space of the gathered family of a small Christian collective. This is where
Christians experience intimate communion with Christ and each other through the foundational ancient necessity of sacramental gathering to experiencing Christ’s saving grace.
Christian Life Together: A Sacramental Discipline
Protestantism limits the sacramental discussion to baptism and the Lord's Supper for fear of undoing the work of the Reformation. As a result, those sacraments risk becoming ritualistic tradition and having their essence missed. The sacraments are the
Holy Spirit's avenue to express grace to humans through other people. This thesis is not arguing to expand the list of sacraments beyond the exclusive two. Nor does it argue the church plays a dispensing role in the work of God's grace. Instead, it cautions that with this rigidity comes the risk of humans miming the activities of sacrament.
Christians allowed to think the sacraments are authentic outside a robust communal life are free to misunderstand the relational nature of God. Humans who call themselves Christian, but live unfettered to a fellowship of study, prayer, and breaking of bread like the community in Acts 2, live in a lie. In this delusion they will never grasp the light described in 1 John 1. The light of the Gospel is the Holy Spirit serving grace to the world. The Bible shows this happens in community. Does the Lord's Table only seat one?
Could it be celebrated alone, silent in a pew with individual cracker morsels and single- serve grape juice? Making the point a different way, Edmund Clowney writes, “Baptism is not to be celebrated in the privacy of one’s bath or shower.”10
Calvin defines sacrament as, “an external sign, by which the Lord seals on our consciences His promises of good-will toward us, in order to sustain the weakness of our
10 Edmund Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 272-273.
7 faith, and we in our turn testify our piety toward him, both before himself, and before angels as well as men.”11 The word “sacrament,” as Calvin explains, is the Latin rendition of the Greek mysterion, meaning a hidden mystery or secret. Mysterion does not carry the insubstantial clouds of ethereal Gnostic obscurity, but the contrary. Calvin cautions an understanding of sacrament as cryptic and sealed in shadows.12 Clowney challenges the
Roman Catholic view and perhaps refines Calvin’s understanding from a space of general revelation to special revelation saying, “Spreading the sacramental over the whole creation dilutes its force. If everything is sacramental, then bread and wine are already sacraments before their consecration.”13 There can be a danger in calling Christian community sacramental when the demarcation between Protestant and Catholic has rested heavily on a polarity of defining what sacrament is. Clowney understands sacrament as transcending simple symbols of grace in the Creator’s landscape, while limited to “a sign of participation in saving grace. It marks not the presence and work of
God, but his application of salvation to sinners.”14
Bonhoeffer’s push for Christians to gather in confession of sin and need of grace from Christ never implied mystery or obscurity, despite his description of Christian gathering as the “secret” discipline.15 Mysterion is material and terrestrial, just like the
11 John Calvin, Institutes of The Christian Religion, Book IV, chapter 14, section 1, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 843. 12 Calvin, Institutes, Book IV.14.14, 850. 13 Clowney, The Church, 270. 14 Ibid. 15 The editor’s introduction of the English edition of Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison translates the term Arkandisziplin, as “arcane discipline”, noting, “In previous editions of Letters and Papers, it has been translated as ‘secret discipline,’ and in Discipleship (DBWE 4) as ‘discipline of the secret.’ We have decided, however, to follow Bonhoeffer’s example in order to avoid any misunderstanding of the phrase and especially of the word ‘secret,’ and have translated it simply as ‘arcane discipline.’ Bonhoeffer is referring not to something done in secret but to the mysteries of the Christian faith, which have been revealed in Christ and are made known and preserved in the life of the church.”
8 Lord Jesus Christ and the community he creates. Found throughout Paul's writings (1Cor
13:2, 14:2; Ro 16:25; 1Cor 2:7; Eph 1:9, 3:9, 6:19; Col 2:2, 4:3) is how creation has always been pregnant with the Gospel’s truth. Christ uncovers it for Christians with the
Incarnation, unmasking the Gospel through mysterion in His parables (Matt 13:11; Mark
4:11; Luke 8:10). In God communing with humanity, the Gospel became revealed.
Sacramental community confronts the privatization of faith by Western culture to accomplish as Calvin writes, “an august representation of things spiritual and sublime”16
Though the shallow whimsical definition of “community” may be a modern invention, the alternative idea of people brought together in worship and repentance is not. Nor is it simply a New Testament concept. Gordon Hugenberger argues the concept of communion together, what is called koinōnia in the New Testament, is an operational mode of God back in the sacrificial system. Hugenberger shows that the sacrificial system’s purposes of propitiation and consecration also included communion. God requires a sacrifice for penance, but in the sacrificed foods there are opportunities to commune and eat the sacrificed food, bringing people together who have first been reconciled with God and then woven together through the meal.17
God’s interest in community is foundational; it is a composite of reconciliation and interlocked relationship. Community is not the end, but the means so Christian's
“hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ” (Col
2:2 ESV). The Protestant way of categorizing spiritual activities and lifestyle as either
“evidence of faith” or the misunderstanding of activities as “meritorious works” is not
16 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV.14.2, 843. 17 Gordon Hugenberger, “OT 501: Lecture 10.” Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2006.
9 helpful for defining community.
Arguing that a more robust community life is sacramental is not the same as the
Roman Catholic belief in the church as the universal sacrament of salvation.18 Union with the church is not union with Christ. Community is not evidence of faith, it is not a dispensary, and it is not an obligation. At the same time, union with the Trinitarian God is cheapened when Christians do not act out salvation in a communal life together, sharing the grace of Holy Spirit through relationships. Karl Barth calls this his Credo Ecclesium,
“that I believe that here, at this place, in this visible assembly, the work of the Holy Spirit takes place. By that is not intended the deification of the creature; the Church is not the object of faith, we do not believe in the Church; but we do believe that in this congregation the work of the Holy Spirit becomes an event.”19
Sacrament is an event of the Holy Spirit, experienced in the gathering of devoted
Christians. As such, community and church are interchangeable terms. Community is the essential commonality of the gathered assembly of Christians known as the church. They are not separate biblical ideas, they are the same reality.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology of the church could be parsed into two groups. His work in the ecumenical movement sought to unite the universal body of Christ. Eberhard
Bethge, his dear friend, former pupil, and future biographer, describes this passion as a lasting influence on his theology, an interest in “the idea of the living church.”20 The community at Finkenwalde represents Bonhoeffer's equal interest in the intimate,
18 The Second Vatican Council, "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium." The Vatican. Pope Paul VI, 21 Nov. 1964. Web. 26 May 2012.
10 confessing fellowship of Christians, which might be called “churches.”21 There is the universal church and there are churches. This thesis seeks to deal with the individual ekklēsia; local, intimate, confessing gatherings of Christians.
On April 30, 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to Eberhard Bethge. In the letter Bonhoeffer projects a loneliness characterized by nebulous anxiety for the state of
Christianity in the age of World War II. He fears the world is so morally polarized and compromised by holocaust and war, that the delusion of religiosity would no longer be enough to keep the Church sustained. In his stripped existence Bonhoeffer begs the seemingly elementary question, “what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today…we are approaching a completely religionless age…even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ aren’t really practicing that at all.”22 In search of a plain expression of Christianity, contrasting the formal religiosity of so much of Christian history and dogma,23Bonhoeffer proposes the arkandisziplin. This “secret discipline” moves thought of Christ from the “object of religion [to] truly lord of the world.”24 The discipline is gathering as believers,25 stoking the coals of belief through the sacraments and worship of Jesus Christ.26
21 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study Of The Sociology Of The Church, ed. Clifford J. Green (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 134-6. 22 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison. eds. John W. Gruchy, and Isabel Best (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 362. 23 See footnote 11 on page 362 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter and Papers from Prison, for an explanation of Bonhoeffer’s doctoral supervisor, Reinhold Seeberg’s, definition of “religious a priori.” 24 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 364. 25 This definition of the term comes from Bonhoeffer’s lectures on the “The Nature of the Church” in Barcelona, Spain in the summer of 1932. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. eds. Geffrey B. Kelly, and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 91. 26 Bonhoeffer uses this term in another letter to Bethge, reinforcing this definition, (Letters and Papers from Prison, 373) and the thrust of the idea is found absent the term itself in another letter (Letters and Papers from Prison, 390).
11 The Biblical Backdrop of Community
There is a visible church (consisting of people who claim allegiance to
Christianity) and an invisible church (consisting of people in authentic union with
Christ). To paraphrase Eberhard Arnold, community is the space where the invisible
Church is made visible.27 The biblical understanding of community is a group of people gathered by the relational God, to share with each other life with Him. In the Old
Testament God gathers His people, they do not assemble themselves. God assembles the
Israelite community by calling them together with hospitality to the stranger. The New
Testament deepens this theology through the Greek words ekklēsia and koinōnia.
The common life, koinōnia, is the life God's people share with one another as people in relationship to the Lord. Underneath all forms of expression for Christian community is a common life amongst believers. The common life is fostered through lifestyles of closeness and confession. This communal life is more fully realized in the
New Testament as God fellowships with man in Jesus Christ, sending the Holy Spirit.
Throughout history the Spirit's spreading of grace on Christians is illuminated in the theater of Christian community. Gospel life is only in community (1 John) and it is God who creates life together (Acts 2). As such the Christian home is the venue for that expression, and intimacy and hospitality are the virtues.
The gathering further forms through Christian hospitality to the outside world.
Hospitality is the human part of gathering, it separates the people of God from any exclusive human gathering. The people of Israel were a particular nation, but hospitable to the resident alien. The same is an expected truth for Christian community in the New
Testament. The Corinthians and Galatians were rebuked for ignoring hospitality because 27 Eberhard Arnold, God's Revolution: The Witness of Eberhard Arnold. ed. John Howard Yoder (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 67-68.
12 of their cliques and cultural segregation. Sean McDonough, speaking on the overt and abundant motifs of hospitality in the gospel of Luke, challenges historical mission theology by claiming, “hospitality tends not to be discussed as part of the theology of missions because it is not one of the more macho Christian virtues...Luke, however, communicates that hospitality is a critical, cardinal Christian virtue.”28 Hospitality, through food and invitation, is seen in Luke's account of the parables of the Wedding
Feast and the Great Banquet (Luke 14), the story of Zaccheaus (Luke 19), and perhaps most evident at the end of the road to Emmaus (Luke 24). There the disciples offer Jesus, whom they have yet to recognize, invitation to their homes. He accepts and uses this to invite them to His table.
Before the Incarnation of Christ in the world, Leviticus calls God’s people to hospitality. In Leviticus 19:10, the agricultural imagery calls the people not to harvest the edges of their land, but to leave crops for the poor and the sojourner to glean. Both
Leviticus 19:10 and 19:34 are precursors for the Greatest Commandment. In verse 34,
Moses calls God’s people to treat the sojourner as a citizen, showing hospitality and forgetting their status as “stranger.”
Some sacrifices in Old Testament times ended by drawing the tribes of Israel together for a meal in celebration of the holiness of the Lord, emphasizing the importance of relationships for the people living under His steadfast love of them. The exegesis of these passages will be substantiated in chapters 1 and 2. To sum up, Hebrews 13:1-2 describes the biblical theology of community, “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares (Heb 13:1-2 ESV). 28 Sean McDonough, “NT 501: Lecture 4.” Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2005.
13 A Theological Vision of Community
The historical church has affirmed the theology of common life under God through their lives and modes of gathering. The Desert Fathers and Mothers, Celtic
Monasticism, Benedictine Monasticism, the Waldensians, and the Anabaptists sought life together. When hospitality was demonstrated through invitation by Christian to non-
Christians around these communities, people joined. Traces of older movements resurfaced in the twentieth century. New modes of common life and hospitality emerged in the invitation of strangers into the mountain chalet of L’Abri in Switzerland, the acceptance of the disenfranchised in Catholic Worker homes, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s action of gathering students away from the storm of Nazism into the Finkenwalde
(Germany) Seminary.
In the twentieth century L’Abri was a reaction to the moral relativism, postmodern pessimism, and the crash of modern thought in post-World War II Europe. The Lutheran church, begun by the Reformation and later revived by the Pietists, had slumped into an obsession with doctrine and philosophy removed from faith in practice. The Nazi takeover of the German Lutheran Church in 1934 led to the formation of the Confessing
Church and the underground seminary at Finkenwalde.29 These communities are examples of the biblical norm in the modern era.
In the forlorn darkness of the broken world, 1 John 1 describes humans as helpless, floating farther from God. In contrast, in the light of the Gospel Christians are found in fellowship with God, but also each other. Christians must live a common life to experience Christ’s saving grace. Bonhoeffer endorses confession because, “the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of 29 Susan Rakoczy, “Witness of Community Life,” Journal of Theology for South Africa, 127 (March 2007), 44.
14 self-justification is abandoned…It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride.”30 Life in the light of the Gospel is born out of the confession of sin (1Jn 1:9).
Bonhoeffer called confession, “The Joyful Sacrament,” essential in anticipation of the
Lord’s Supper.31 Sacraments are manifestations of saving grace. Sacraments cannot be done alone and if Christians are to confess Jesus as Lord and rest under the glow of us
His light, then community is necessary to experience saving grace. Christian community is the arcane, secret discipline of Christians gather by God. The avenue for the Holy
Spirit to offer sinful people grace is community – the secret sacrament.
30 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper Collins, 1954), 112. 31 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 120-121.
15 PART ONE
The Biblical Backdrop of Community
With the Incarnation, Christ’s life on Earth, God's relational personality comes in fuller view. God, communal as the Trinity, came to commune with humanity and the moments of hospitality seen in the Gospel accounts of Christ’s life reveal the purpose of community amongst Christians. Four key points in the New Testament appeal not just to the first century, but for an ongoing essentiality of community for Christianity.
Acts 2:42-47 and 1 John 1:1-8 are foundational passages for understanding community in the earliest life of the Church and for the contemporary church to emulate.
Looking past truisms and removing ambiguity from commonplace Christian terms like
“fellowship” and “common life,” exegesis of these passages restores an understanding of the depth of Christian community. The letters of Paul are replete with occasional comments and illustrative metaphors on communal life, fusing anecdote with pragmatism for the Christian community. Paul defines community as local and familial. The impact of this emphasis means that interpreting Paul's theology must account for human relationships to each other and God. Paul's portraits of church contribute to the New
Testament theology an idea of community not as a process, organization or institution, but a family. The benediction of the book of Hebrews sends its readers off into community with tokens of exhortation to be the community of Christ, in family fellowship and warm hospitality.
Exegesis of these passages show the essentials of Christian community. First, the community of Christ is knit together by God (Acts 2:47, Col 2:2), with human participation through hospitality (Heb 13:2, 3Jn 5-8). Second, it is intimate and
16 involuntary like a family. Third, it consists of an ongoing life together (Acts 2:46). This life together is God's sacramental sharing of grace to individuals living in each other's physical presence, through confessing sin, studying God's Word, praying, and breaking bread.
In Colossians 2 Paul hopes for the community to be knit together in love (Col
2:2). This work of God is captured in the Greek word ekklēsia. Ekklēsia is Greek for an assembly, a summoned gathering. Aristotle uses it referring to assemblies in Homer.1 The
LXX uses it to refer to the gathered people of Israel in Deuteronomy 31:30. The Christian term “church” is derived from ekklēsia, but at times misses the essence of the word.2 The idea of the church building, a Christian variation on the Temple, is not in the word ekklēsia. The New Testament references to the idea of ekklēsia do not carry any sense of organization or institution.
Louis Berkhof points out that Jesus is the first to use the word in the New
Testament, in Matthew 16:18. Berkhof shows that while the assembly may be found in homes or gathered worship, it is not the place, but the “circle of believers in some definite locality, a local church, irrespective of the question whether these believers are or are not assembled for worship.”3 Ekklēsia refers to the gathering of God's people, the collective assemblage. There is no biblical theology of community sparked by human will or vision.
In addition, the sacramental experience of grace cannot be realized in isolation. To live in
1Aristotle, Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), "Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, section 1252a" in Perseus Digital Library.
17 the name of Christ, in citizenship of His Kingdom, is to share a familial bond of experience and identity with other Christians.
The lifestyle of this collection of believers, the daily walk together, is captured in another Greek word koinōnia. Koinōnia is often translated “fellowship,” but carries a profundity far beyond what might be confused in modern English for mere camaraderie.
The LXX forms of koinōnia are found most in the apocryphal books of the Maccabees. 3
Maccabees 4 uses the word a few times with reference to commonality, but also partnership in marriage. Aristotle uses a cognate in Politics, with reference to localized government as a cooperative of people with a shared common good in mind. The word koinōnia here is not the “common good,” but the “partnership.”4 Other uses of koinōnia appear in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon¸ with the meaning of sharing and taking part.5 The ancient definition is a consequential bond through a common share in something, though not necessarily intimate sharing.
The New Testament image is not fully seen in the LXX or ancient Greek literature. Chapter 1 of this thesis will look at Old Testament feasts as expressions of
God's communal gathering. In the Old Testament, God gathers His people in community, but the full weight of koinōnia comes through Christ, Gerhard Kittel points out, “Dt. 12 paints the joy of these festivals in glowing terms,”6 though even here koinōnia is not used in the LXX to describe the gathering table of Israel with the Lord.
Koinōnia always carries a sense of sharing identity or mutuality in partnership. 4 Aristotle, Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), "Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, section 1252a" in Perseus Digital Library.
18 The various independent definitions of the word are (1) a common understanding, (2) a shared citizenship, and (3) marriage partnership. These are not fully conformed in one singular usage until the New Testament. In the wake of Jesus Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, God’s people now relate to Him and each other with a new degree of familiarity. Legal alliances, common ideals, the intimate bond of a marriage, are all fused together in the three uses of koinōnia in 1 John 1:3, 7.
The New Testament understanding of fellowship is a quilt of identities and relationships. Throughout God's Word, most fully in the New Testament, he gives His people a common experience of His work, citizenship in His community, and communion with Him. Philippians 3:7 describes Christians sharing a common experience of the physical resurrection of Jesus and a desire to experience the suffering of Christ. The faithful Lord of Israel (Deut 7:9) applies His nationality to the fellowship of those called in Jesus Christ (1Cor 1:9). The two words ekklēsia and koinōnia are the essence of biblical community. God gathers His people together in ekklēsia; localized groups of
Christians living in cooperation and hospitality. This life of cooperation is koinōnia; the intimate, familial, daily life of Christians. It is a lifestyle of study, prayer, and confession in the physical presence of brothers and sisters in Christ.
The origins for understanding Christian community are in the common life assembly of Israel. The Lord of Israel, creator of Eve, advocate of relationship, is the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in community with each other. God is communal in nature and has created a people in His communal image. The Old Testament hints at the worth
God places on community, not as an end, but a means of teaching, experience, and witness. The heart of God has always been to gather His people to celebrate His work of restoring their relationship to Him and each other. Assemblies of men, women, and
19 children, in the Lord’s name turn wayfaring strangers into fellow travelers, foster peace, and most important reflect the relational nature of God. This is not exclusive to the New
Testament. It is a fundamental value of God's heart seen in God's attitude to Israel in the
Old Testament.
20 CHAPTER 1
The Old Testament Foundation of Community
The Fellowship Table: God Assembles Israel for Common Fellowship
The Lord gathers Israel to commune with Him in the physical presence of other
Israelites. The feasts in the Pentateuch show how God gathers His people. God enlists the Israelite participation through hospitality to the stranger, commanded in Leviticus 19.
Perhaps more clear in the nation of Israel than in the church, is the notion that the community of God is like a family. It is involuntary and their lives contain conflict and reconciliation. In calling them to live in His image as He created them, God calls His people to gather outsiders through hospitality. The Israelites were forced to live ongoing life together, in Jerusalem or exile. God creates this life together for individuals to exist in each other's physical presence. The assembly of Israel shows the communal nature of the
Lord and points to the New Testament idea of Christian community.
Shared meals are not central to covenant or sacrifice in the Old Testament.
However, the activity of gathering over food reveals God's desire to integrate gathering of community in the interactions between Himself and the Israelite people. Gordon
Hugenberger argues that eating together is an active symbol of commitment in the community of Israel. He points out that fasting, abstention from food, often expresses grief. Conversely “feasting together in a common meal; can be expressive of well-being and rejoicing.”1 He also describes eating as an act of reconciliation, evident with Ruth, the Moabite widow-alien who receives the gracious hospitality of Boaz. “And at mealtime Boaz said to her, 'Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the 1 Gordon Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant: Biblical Law and Ethics as Developed from Malachi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), 206.
21 wine.' So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over” (Ruth 2:14 ESV). Isaiah proposes the same in the prophetic image of the wolf and lamb one day eating in peace.2
Gathered Fellowship in Old Testament Offerings
Leviticus 3 typifies God's desire to gather people in both communion with Him and each other. Jay Sklar argues this offering, “The Fellowship Offering” (NIV), or “Peace
Offerings” (ESV), is best translated, “covenant communion offering or covenant fellowship offering.”3 The food of the offering is food (lechem) for the Lord (Lev 3:11).
Of course God is not hungry (Psalm 50)4, this is not a function of nutrition for God. This is a table fellowship and the meal of the offering is realization that the Lord is nigh (Ps
34:18, Ps 145:18). He is present;5 he warms the table of the Israelites.
D.J. Davies, according to Gordon Wenham, portrays the purpose of sacrifice as
“restoring the relationships between God and Israel, and between different members of the nation.”6 Wenham correctly critiques this interpretation for not capturing the full purpose of sacrifice in Leviticus. However, he agrees that community is a secondary purpose of the sacrifice. This is in line with the essence of Sklar's suggestion for the name
Covenant Communion Offering in Leviticus 3. It points to the future New Testament community where Christians gather in sacrament to experience the Holy Spirit's work of grace. Scott Hahn connects the Old Testament idea of oath and covenant to the
2 Ibid, 206. 3 Jay Sklar, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on Leviticus (Leicester, England: Tyndale, upcoming), Leviticus 3. 4 Ibid. 5 D.J. Davies, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 89 (1977): 387-99. Cited in Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 81. 6 Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 26.
22 sacramental mysteries in Christianity concluding, “through the covenant relationship God establishes between himself and his people, he has devised a just way to dispense his mercy and a merciful way to dispense justice.”7 God gathers Israel for the sacramental exchange of His mercy.
The meat of an entire animal, Jacob Milgrom suggests, would have been a rare luxury aside from royalty, enough to feed an entire household or clan, much more than one family.8 This shows the sacrificial meat was not just for the sustenance of an individual family. Rather its abundance forces sharing and therefore a gathering forms.
The image is a crowd and a bounty catalyzing community. God this gathers community by calling for the abundance, creating a celebration of His presence. The unity of this gathering and the sharing of food is a subtle reflection of the lifestyle seen in the
Jerusalem community of Christians in Acts 2, especially that it is the work of God and not man. Deuteronomy 12:12, like Leviticus 3, describes a call of the community in Israel to feast with joy in the presence of the Lord, “And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levite that is within your towns, since he has no portion or inheritance with you” (Deut 12:12 ESV). God is not only gathering His people with Him, but with each other.
In the words of Peter Craigie, “Then, as now, the surrounding world was experiencing a time of change, of political tension and military engagement. But in the midst of world events, a small community was being urged by Moses, 'the man of God,'
7 Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 336. This observation is thanks to Anna Gissing. 8 Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004), 29-30.
23 to commit itself wholeheartedly to the Lord.”9 Israel's relationship with God functioned more than individually, it existed in communal union with the covenant making Creator.
Throughout the history of Israel, these were inseparable realities.
Gathered Fellowship in the Old Testament Feasts
The outworking of this prescription reappears in the scenes of the Feasts in
Deuteronomy 16. The Feast of Weeks and The Feast of Booths10 mirror the language of
Deuteronomy 12:12. The Hebrew word translated “rejoice” (samach) is not a demanding imperative. The command seems to be eliciting a state of reality in Israel. The Lord is saying, “When you are carried over Jordan’s banks and inherit the Promised land, You will rejoice.” S.R. Driver describes it as “naught but rejoicing, altogether rejoicing.”11
Rejoicing in the Lord happens when the people of Israel pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
These were not festivals or feasts in the sense of temporal festivity or a shallow indulgence of an abundance of food. The Lord wanted Israel to come regularly and recognize His steadfast love to the stiff-necked people in these common, sacramental gatherings. He gathered the nation to recognize His glory and love through community.12
The description conjures images of a bustling assembly of joy-filled people, young and old, men and women, neighbors from foreign lands, servants, children, priests, widows.
While the social dynamics of parents to children, servants to masters, citizens and aliens are in play here; all are united in “naught but rejoicing, altogether rejoicing.” This unity despite social distinctions will resurface when examining the characteristics of the Acts 2 community in Jerusalem.
9 Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 7. 10 ESV, Craigie, Deuteronomy. 11 S.R. Driver, Deuteronomy, ICC (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902), 198. 12 Ibid. 245.
24 This scene in Deuteronomy captures the Lord's heart for gathering people with
Him and each other, foreshadowing what Paul describes in Galatians 3 and coming to perfection in Revelation 21 in the New Jerusalem. As it is written in Hebrews, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:22-24 ESV). God, through the
Covenant Community Offering (Lev 3), the Feasts (Deut 16), and at the table of Jesus
Christ (Matt 26, Luke 22), gathers His people so individuals may comprehend His character and message through their collective experience.13
While ceremonial, The Feast of Booths, is also another timeless act of God's assembling people. God assembles His people for the disclosure of His will and character. Presumably Leviticus 23 and Exodus 23, 3414 refer to the Feast of Booths, aforementioned here in Deuteronomy 16. The Israelites dwell in temporary huts or booths weaved from “splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook” (Lev 23:40 ESV). The purpose was to live out what the Israelite ancestors experienced in the wilderness.15 The contrast of humble tents laced with twigs and leaves against the rejoicing harvest, points to the Lord’s providential rescue of slaves,
13 It should be made clear that the primary exchange and conversation between the Lord and Israel is His covenant faithfulness to the restlessly defiant nation. The sacrificial system and covenants are not primarily focused on community-building. The feasts, the law, are plain with their primary role, but they are not one-dimensional. The communal aspect is not mutually exclusive to the primary focus and appears to be over-looked frequently. 14 Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, AB (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 2027. Craigie, Deuteronomy, 246. 15 Driver, Deuteronomy, 197.
25 turned tent-dwellers, who are then and now the community to whom the Lord provides food and shelter.16 The community serves a didactic purpose. Their life together provokes gratefulness for the blessings of food, shelter, and clothing. Is not much of Israel, and humanity in general, prone to take these graces for granted?17
Israel's Embrace of the Stranger: The Hospitable Family of God
Not only is God’s historical love for Israel revealed through the communal assembly, but also God’s inclusive compassion, which he implores Israel to imitate. In
Deuteronomy 16:11, 14, the Levite is not distinguished from the widow nor the sojourner.
While the priest is noble in a sense, he is reliant on the charitable inclusion of the tribes
(Deut 18, Num 18), as with Israel to the sojourner. The Levite and the sojourner are the same to the Lord. The point then is not pity for the outsider, or the downtrodden. More deeply, God implores true inclusion; unconditional warmth like the Lord has shown in unshakable embrace of Israel. This is like the Acts 2 community, whose hospitality did not just dispense mercy to the needy, but instead included them in a communion where cooperation eliminated need (Acts 2:45-47).
The Pentateuch alone emphasizes this point continually. Exodus 23, reinforcing the previous chapter says, “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Exod 23:9 ESV). Leviticus makes the same claim, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong” (Lev 19:33 ESV). Deuteronomy as well says, “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deut 10:18-19 ESV).
16 Craigie, Deuteronomy, 245-6. 17 Wenham, Leviticus, 305.
26 The Hebrew word ger, means alien, stranger, or sojourner. Douglas Stuart is critical of translating ger as “stranger” since Israel was not a “stranger” to Egypt in the sense of an unfamiliar person(s), given the 430 years they spent dwelling there. He favors instead “resident alien.”18 The criticism is fair enough, but misses the point. Ger is recognized to come with the connotation of an outsider. Ger is someone without privilege or advocate, perhaps not unfamiliar in proximity (like Israel to Egypt), but still foreign and helpless to win friends. John Durham calls the resident alien a “’newcomer,’… without familial and professional and sometimes national connections and so was open to abuse.”19 Martin Noth sees “one who lives outside his family and his tribe and entrusts himself to the protection of an individual or a community.”20 William Propp describes a person “distant from any kinsmen to assist or avenge him…no matter how many generations his family may have lived in the land.”21
The tent city of the Feast of Booths empathizes with the wandering Exodus generation and its harvest festival is dappled with such eclectic attendance. With regard to neighbors, strangers, and hierarchical factions of society, God's principle concern is bringing people together. He brings people together to reflect His posture toward humanity and His hope for individuals’ attitude to each other. God transcends tolerance.
Instead of erasing social distinctions, personality, identity, he challenges Israel to see beyond discrimination as He did for them. The feast is God’s pedagogical quilt of community.22
18 Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, NAC (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 516. 19 John I. Durham, Exodus, WBC (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), 328. 20 Martin Noth, Exodus: A Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 186. William Henry Propp, Exodus 19-40, AB (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 258. 21 Propp, Exodus, 258. 22 Driver, Deuteronomy, 196-7.
27 The implication here is not just evangelistic. It is not just that God wants His community to reflect His nature. Equally, it is not a cold legal mandate for Israel to not leave the outsider to exclusion. The community of Israel functions to do the Lord’s work of gathering community through hospitality to the outsider. The community of Israel also celebrates God's steadfast love to the rebellious people of His chosen nation. It is both the restoration of Eden’s intention and a reflection of God’s relational nature. As such, community is not a consequence of Israel’s relationship to the Lord, but a function of it.
Just like the ekklēsia of the New Testament, Israel is assembled by God, with the hospitality of the people.
Conclusion
The community of Israel is living out God’s grace, drinking it in and offering it to each other. They fail throughout, but the community remains the theater troupe in His sacramental drama. Psalm 133 says,
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the LORD has commanded the blessing, life forevermore (Ps 133 ESV).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the opening sentence of his work Life Together, quotes Psalm
133:1. Before Jesus Christ’s inauguration of the Christian community, before the apostles worked this out in early church, the pilgrims en route to the festivals in Jerusalem sang this Psalm23 to celebrate the Lord’s “divine presence…as the source of blessing and
23 Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-50, WBC (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2002), 278.
28 sustenance…to which a new pilgrim people are making their way and whose benefits they already enjoy in part, as even now they ‘meet together.’”24
What Bonhoeffer calls gemeinsame Leben, “life together” or the “common life” the Israelites celebrate in their offerings and feasts. These foreshadow the community of
Christ.25 The Christian communities of the New Testament continue to reflect the reality that God's community is brought together in His work, through hospitality and a cooperative lifestyle, evidence of the normative cores of biblical community.
24 Ibid, 280. 25 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together; Prayerbook of the Bible. eds. Geffrey B. Kelly, Daniel W. Bloesch, and James H. Burtness (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), 27.
29 CHAPTER 2
The New Testament Image of Community
As with Israel, the community of Christ is the work of God. God draws Christians into His gathering work through hospitality. The result is a group of people living under the Father as brothers and sisters in Christ. The people are familial and collaborative and their common ways come in study, prayer, and confession. Together they enjoy God's sacramental sharing of grace to individuals through their physical presence.
Paul's writings occupy much of the New Testament and the scope of community concerns he addresses are myriad, but his view of Christian community is narrowly defined as constant and familial. 1 John highlights the tangibility of the Gospel truth and the inseparable and essential function of community life for Christians living in the light.
Acts 2 illustrates that community is gathered by God and the life together is a means for the Holy Spirit to draw in the stranger and reconcile people with each other, and ultimately God. These verses define the New Testament theology of community as intimate, open, and bound together by God.
The Common Life that God Assembles: Acts 2:42-47
How tempting it is to open the Bible to Acts 2:42 seeking a prescriptive list for
Christian community. Acts 2:42-47 describes a real community of believers in Jerusalem in the first century. It is not a pedagogical illustration of the ideal Christian community.
Luke writes Acts of the Apostles1 to account for some of the actual people in “this sect we know that everywhere...is spoken against” (Acts 28:22),2 “who have turned the world
1 Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 51-60. 2 F.F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman, 1988), 8.
30 upside down” (Acts 17:6 ESV).
The Temple in Jerusalem was influential for commerce and politics. The intricacy of its inner-workings effected agriculture, art, travel, raw materials, making it a massive institution of common life and culture.3 Modern institutional organizations like large churches may look more like the Temple than the Jerusalem church. To define the
Jerusalem church as a set of operative functions would be to ignore the revolutionary, grassroots nature of this community. Instead of developing their own autonomous institutions they were still gathering and now preaching in the Temple (Acts 2:46, 3:1,
5:21, 42). The extraordinary thing about the community is not the sharing of all things; this was the continuation of Jewish communal practices of mercy and collective service.4
It is their familial devotion to Jesus Christ and the Gospel, the outcome of which is a community “having favor with all the people” (Acts 2:47 ESV).
One cannot ignore that the story of this ideal community is enveloped by stories of preaching and the work of the Holy Spirit. Reading Acts 2:42-47 in the broader narrative of Acts, with the imprisonments, beatings, culture-clashes, engraves an image of a community bound by relationships, not functional imperatives. As Richard Hays notes,
“in this text, we are given neither rules for community life nor economic principles; instead we are given a story that calls us to consider how in our own communities we might live analogously.”5
Acts 2:42-47 teaches the contemporary church about the qualities of a Christian
3 Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem In The Time Of Jesus: An Investigation Into Economic And Social Conditions During The New Testament Period, trans. F.H. & C.H. Cave (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 56-57. 4 Ibid, 131. 5 Richard Hays, The Moral Vision Of The New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction To New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), 302.
31 community. The identity of the Jerusalem community is encapsulated in 2:42, a verse packed with cultural and theological significance. The mode of life for this fellowship is courageous devotion, proskartereo. The Greek word proskarterountes, used to describe the Jerusalem community's earnest dedication to a collective Christian life, is used in the
LXX in Numbers 13:20. Moses implores unconditional commitment from the Israelite spies sent to Canaan, asking them to return with fruits from Canaan, regardless of their judgment of the land. Paul uses it in Romans 12:12. In a sequence of exhortations Paul calls Christians to brotherly affection, fervent zeal, hospitality, and constant prayer. These are the marks of the lifestyle also found in the Jerusalem community. The word is used twice in Acts 2 to describe their devotion to fellowship and discipleship (v. 42) and their attendance in the Temple (v. 46). It is the same notion in the Israelite spies, Paul's exhortation in Romans, and the lively commitment of the Jerusalem community in Acts
2. Biblical community is a space of robust allegiance to Christ,.
This word is key to the theology of biblical community because it is a primal component to the Jerusalem community, of which every other group of gathered
Christians is to imitate. The Acts 2 community is no utopic reality. It is a symbiotic aggregate of imperfect people in imperfect conditions with unfaltering commitment to the way of Christ. They persist in any condition (as Moses called the spies to in Numbers 13) and who cultivate steadfast prayer. The key is not the environment, but the relationships within a common identity (koinōnia). Acts 2:42-47 unfolds in a sequence of traits and relationships in the Jerusalem community that can be typical to any Christian community.
The section beginning at 2:42 pans broadly, focusing in as the descriptions carry on. They are devoted to two things – the teaching of the apostles and the gathered fellowship. What unfolds from their devotion are relationships and exchanges that form a
32 communal lifestyle. One cannot idealize the Jerusalem community's lifestyle without recognizing the core of it is belief that Jesus Christ is Lord and the Holy Spirit, who dwells amongst humanity, compels people to call on the name of the Lord for salvation.
It can be misleading to only read Acts 2:42-47, because the “apostles' teaching” noted in verse 42 is more specific than meets the eye. The apostle's teaching is the very
Gospel, which Peter outlines in the preceding portion of Acts 2. The Jerusalem community cannot be co-opted as a visionary illustration for any human endeavor in society, government, or culture. From Richard Hays again; “Acts is a book not about love but about power. Its fundamental theme is the triumphant march of the Spirit-empowered church throughout the Roman world.”6 It is a unique result of the Gospel, which kindles the koinōnia of the light that 1 John speaks of so much. Koinōnia appears in Acts 2:42 as another aspect of their devotion. Again here, it is with a thrust much stronger than the camaraderie implied by the English word “fellowship.”
Koinōnia is more than an alliance, it is a condition of life. The Christian who lives in the light of Christ finds herself part of a common identity (1Jn 1). As the scan of
Luke's description focuses tighter from the broad strokes of devoted life to the pillars of discipleship and fellowship, he describes two components of koinōnia life: the breaking of bread and the prayers.7 Like the fellowship table of Israel, God gathers people together in reconciliation through the meal. The breaking of bread in Acts 2:42 is much more intimate than the Old Testament feasts, which recognized the closeness of the Lord to
6 Richard Hays, The Moral Vision Of The New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction To New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), 201. 7 Ben Witherington, citing R. Pesch, agrees that the breaking of bread and prayer in verse 42, are defining koinōnia, not adding two items to a list of four. (Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, 1998, 160.) Barrett disagrees, arguing the Greek sets up two pairs of attributes, A and B, C and D. (Barrett, ICC, 1964). I agree with Witherington based on my interpretation of Acts 2:46, which implies the common fellowship of koinōnia in their gathering together daily, doing the two activities of prayer and the breaking of bread.
33 Israel described in Psalms 34 and 145. God took on flesh to live as Jesus Christ and the expression “tē klasei tou artou” (“the breaking of bread”, Acts 2:42) is something
Theophilus, the recipient of Luke-Acts, would have connected to the Lord's Supper (Luke
22) and to Christ appearing to His disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) after the
Resurrection.
The second objective of the fellowship is tais proseuchais (“the prayers”), definite and plural. F.F. Bruce speculates the prayers may have modeled their continued attendance at the Temple (v. 46), but also would have been their own occasional prayers in the seasons of their community.8 Whether the prayers imitated Jewish prayers or were new, what is striking is that the community of commoners (koinōnia) spoke to the Father.
No longer was the Temple and Priesthood essential to their collective cries and praises to the Father. In Jerusalem, this devoted fellowship broke bread and prayed together with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
All those who witnessed the Christian community in Jerusalem were filled with fear (phobos). Their fear, or awe (ESV), brings back the question of whether the Jerusalem community is a vision of ideal community for any human gathering. Reading about the sharing of possessions and the lack of need amongst the community (Acts 2:44-45) is a worthy ideal for humanity. The powerful signs and wonders done by the apostles are by the power of the Holy Spirit, a fact attested to in this chapter. The phobos was not directed at the people themselves, but at God. LXX occurrences of phobos refer to awe- filled fear of the works of the Lord, such as “Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone, till your people, O LORD, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. (Ex 15:16 ESV) and “The fear of the
8 F.F. Bruce, Acts, 73.
34 LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.
His praise endures forever! (Ps 111:10 ESV). All the works of justice in the Jerusalem community are from the heart of the Lord, who, “will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts” (Mal 3:5 ESV).
The identity of this community is rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is a unique phenomenon that no human society, ideology, or government, no matter how similar in ideals, could ever imitate or recreate. By its nature this was not a government, ideology, or a society, but the work of God. As the
Christian church spread and more communities formed, the peace and wild growth were to the credit of God, “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied” (Acts 9:31 ESV).
The established facts that (1) Acts 2 is historical-narrative, (2) Pentecost and the preaching of the Gospel are knit tightly into the identity of the Jerusalem community, and
(3) its unique nature against any other form of human gathering, are crucial to understanding Acts 2:44-45. These verses resemble Acts 4:32-35.
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need (Acts 4:32-35 ESV).
These portions of Acts can be mistaken for a socio-economic ethical paradigm that is normative for Christian communities. There is no law here however, no command to the
35 broader geographic and historical church.9 These are narrative observations, consequences of an underlying energy in the early church community. The unity and mutuality is born from the Holy Spirit, so to take them as primal directives to humanity is a mistake.
Each generation of Christians would be wise to thirst for a life where, “all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:44 ESV). This lifestyle is not a condition set in place by casting such a vision or mandating unity and cooperation.
What these believers shared in common (koina) is their koinōnia in the light of Christ.
Because of the Gospel these Christians would bear each others burdens in a sinful world, relinquishing their crutches and becoming crutches for each other. To choose such a life is to choose to dwell together through the Holy Spirit, devoted to truth, as 2:42 suggests.
Only in such a context can selfishness die, making way for the economic interdependence they experienced.
The story of the Rich Young Man (Matt 19, Mark 10, Luke 18 – “The Rich
Ruler”) is an imperative on financial self-sacrifice, but this economic asceticism is not part of the “central core message of the Bible.”10 What is central are hopes of liberating oneself from things of this world (Ro 12), free from concern about one's own needs and instead eagerness to meet the needs of others (Matt 6). These are essential morals of the
Christian faith, in the Old and New Testament. Commanding a law of giving upon the community has no biblical support. At the same time, Christ calls for shedding everything to follow Him (Matt 16:24-25) and the communities gathered in His name reflect this love and mercy (John 13:35). There is no New Testament law for mercy, but it seems
9 Hays, Moral Vision, 294. 10 Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart, How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 71.
36 every community built on the foundation of Christ ought to give liberally within itself and worry not of their providence.11
Any theological conclusion using Acts 2 and 4 to support a communist or socialist politic misses the spiritual liberty of the biblical characters involved. All are compelled to follow Christ. In this life, Christians are of a condition unfettered from frivolous human concerns like money or power. As he records Acts 2 and 4, Luke would have in mind
Christ's caution that, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:33 ESV). The fact that Christ compels the community of believers to abandon their lives, coupled with the material cooperation of the Jerusalem community, makes the Bible equally unfit for defending capitalism. Again, this community is unique in human philosophy, under the umbrella of devotion to Christ, with the outcome of a selfless, familial social economy.
The glad hearts of these Christians evoke memories of the feasts of Israel. The pilgrims rejoiced with gladness for the provision and love from God. They met in
Jerusalem, in the name of reconciliation, a taste of fellowship with God in their community. The Jerusalem Christians taste the reconciling union with a new depth and clarity, through the breaking of bread. All these human celebrations point to the New
Jerusalem, where all will be like it was in the Garden of Eden, as the Lord says through
Isaiah,
“You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bones shall flourish like the grass; and the hand of the LORD shall be known to his servants,
11 I believe Acts 2:44-45, while not imperative, meets the burden for trans-cultural application [Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart, How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 70-76], as well as for ethical biblical norms [Rollin Grams, "The Use of Biblical Norms in Christian Ethics." in Journal of European Baptist Studies 4, no. 1 (2003), 4-19.
37 and he shall show his indignation against his enemies.
“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the LORD, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the LORD (Isaiah 66:14, 22-23 ESV).
The rhythm of life in the Jerusalem community is in the verse 46 phrase, “kath
ēmeran” (“day by day”).12 The NIV misses the essence of the verse by translating this
“every day.” Luke's use of the expression “day by day” leaves no room for the notion of ritual or obligation in their lifestyle. They lived together as days came and went, not scheduled to assemble but naturally gathered. Acts 2:46 reaffirms the branches of koinōnia (Acts 2:42), that Christian gathering is identified in prayer and the breaking of bread.
They attended the Temple, which is not a reflection of their continued affiliation with Judaism (Acts 4:17-18, 5:21, 42). F.F. Bruce connects their Temple attendance to the devotional prayer of the community.13 The community also receives their meal with glad hearts, rejoicing like the Israelites at the offerings (Lev 3) and feasts (Deut 12 and 16).
This meal is more intimate than the fellowship tables at the pilgrimage festivals. It is communion with God himself. God has now come, broken bread with humanity, and broken himself in solidarity with humanity, reconciling the sinful to himself as only God can do.
The expressions of breaking bread, “tē klasei tou artou” (2:42) and “klōntes te
12 LSJ supports the idiomatic use of kath ēmeran as “day by day.” George Henry Liddell & Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., "ēmera." ed. Sir Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), ēmera (accessed from Perseus May 31, 2012). 13 F.F. Bruce, Acts, 73.
38 kat oikon arton” (2:46), are part of a motif Luke threads through his two-volume work.14
The motif is the hospitality of Christ in the giving of His body. It is seen at the table of the Last Supper before the Crucifixion, then after the Road to Emmaus following the
Resurrection, and now in the Jerusalem community after the Ascension. The Israelites experienced communion with the Trinity periodically, pointing to a day when the Lord would once again dwell amongst His people. Such communion blossoms in the
Incarnation and the breaking of bread. Christ, the God of the fellowship of the Trinity, reveals the future of the New Jerusalem, not just offering a bilateral relationship between the Father and individual people, but a reconciled fellowship. In Eden, God created communal friendship between himself and Adam, but also Adam and Eve. After Adam and Eve destroyed the communion, the Lord, Jesus Christ, used communion to restore
His created order, which will end in fellowship amongst humanity and the Trinity.
Acts 2:42 arches over as a heading for the common life portrayed in verses 2:43-
2:46. Acts 2:47 complements 2:42, enveloping the account by revealing the root of the community. Here, as well as in verse 44, the simple phrase “epi to auto” appears. Ben
Witherington cuts through any debate of the exact translation by noting that it essentially
“refers to a gathered group in harmony with one another.”15 The Christians in Jerusalem were gathered together in a beautiful harmony and all Christian communities ought to reflect the same. To experience communal amity like they did would lead any gathering to be, “praising God and having favor with all the people” (Acts 2:47 ESV). In the midst of the Roman Empire and the Jewish Temple establishment these rogue followers of the
14 Luke Timothy Johnson and Daniel Harrington observe a theme in Luke-Acts where Luke connects table fellowship and the presence of Christ. Johnson and Harrington, Acts of the Apostles, SP (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press: 1992), 58. 15 Witherington, Acts, 161.
39 Messiah needed to come together. They needed to hear each other sing praises and know they were not alone, not imagining the Spirit's presence in the world. Does a community create this dynamic or do they witness, celebrate, consume, and reflect it from another source?
The answer is in Acts 2:47, “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47 ESV) and in a word found elsewhere in the New
Testament, ekklēsia.16 Acts 2:47 leaves room for no imaginative dreamer, no charisma- filled visionary, no idealistic leader. God creates Christian community, a product of His love that knits community together in harmony (Col 2:2, 3:14).
The Family Metaphor: Community in Paul’s Letters
Communal life is strewn across Paul's writings. Joseph H. Hellerman counts 118 uses of sibling terminology in the Pauline letters.17 Paul addresses theological and ethical concerns as unique circumstances in specific gathered communities. Issues of work ethic in Thessalonica, cultural rifts in Galatia, orderly worship in Corinth, are theologically applicable today, but speak to the communal reality of actual gatherings, with specific issues. Paul's use of ekklēsia is local, particular, and unique, implying he is always reflecting on finite gatherings of people, rather than an institution or a swath of shared cultural identity. He uses ekklēsia in the plural throughout his writing, which
“demonstrates that the idea of a unified provincial or national church is as foreign to
Paul's thinking as the notion of a universal church.”18
The portrait of community in Paul's writing is of a specific group of people,
16 Witherington also argues a similarity between what is described in Acts 2:42-47 and the Greek word ekklēsia, even though Luke does not use the word here. Witherington, Acts, 161. 17 Joseph H. Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 92. 18 Robert J. Banks, Paul's Idea of Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 37.
40 gathered at tables, in homes, as one body, pushed to work through conflict as a family.19
Paul uses sibling language forty-one times in 1 Corinthians, with only one use not referring to “the surrogate family of God.”20 Witherington argues that 1 Corinthians 11-14 is dealing with a misunderstanding of the relationships in the ekklēsia, not “the sacred space.”21 In fact, Paul was attempting to distinguish the Christian community from the
Roman idea of a banquet or collegium, focusing on the people who are gathered, not the temple or organizational structure.22 Paul's view of community is of tangibility, the physical reality of Christianity. Paul writes often on occasions of community questions, either reacting to or attempting to prevent strife and disunity amongst real people living together as Christians. The material world, with the discomfort of nearness, the necessity of food, the difficulty of work, is not just taken into account in Christianity, but experienced by God himself in Jesus Christ. Paul's writings implore real people to use their hands, eat together, hear each other's voices, work through conflict, and unite through conflict to break actual bread in the name of the real Lord, Jesus Christ.
Implied in Paul's theological concerns is peace in the intimate confines of communities. No loosely tied mass of strangers would face the specific problems that
Paul addresses for the communities he writes to in his epistles. The modern conception of
Christian community as church organization is foreign to the theology of Paul, whose use of family terminology is unique to both Jewish and Greek literature.23 The family
19 For a look at the dynamics of house churches in the early church, specifically meals, see Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth, 28, 141, 241. 20 Hellerman, Ancient Church as Family, 100. 21 Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 242. 22 Ibid, 243. 23 Robert Banks, Paul's Idea of Community, 59-60.
41 metaphors in Paul's writing touch on a familial bond with God the Father, through Christ, in adoption (Rom 8, Gal 4, Eph 1). Naturally, as children of God, Christians are assembled as the family of God.
Bonhoeffer's study of the sociology of the church, Sanctorum Communio, distinguishes social allegiances (which he calls “genetic sociology”) from ekklēsia. Paul's understanding of community as family lines up with his use of ekklēsia. Civic organizations, military alliances, national culture allegiance, can be voluntary sources of identity. Family on the other hand, is not a choice and this is how Paul employs ekklēsia.
Paul forces proximity, intimacy, and reconciliation on the family of God, because “the church does not come into being by people coming together (genetic sociology), rather its existence is sustained by the Spirit who is a reality within the church-community, therefore, it cannot be an expression of belonging to the church.”24
Paul's occasional comments for different communities remind them that life together is not optional in the Gospel. It is in fact fruitful, and any disruption of the intimate life bound together by God leads to dysfunctional relationships between God and individual people. Keeping in mind the specific idea of the sacramental quality of community – that a familial, communal, life is inseparable from the Christian experience
– Paul's writings seek to create cooperation and unity in the early Christian communities,
This is for the sake of harmonious life together more than organizational process.
The common (koinōnia) fellowship (ekklēsia) forces uncomfortable proximity on people and the Pauline metaphor of community as family is important for understanding the biblical push for individuals to embrace one other. Implied in his exhortations for life outside the earthly distinctions of class and culture, is the necessity of life together to 24 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study Of The Sociology Of The Church, ed. Clifford J. Green (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 160.
42 experience the work of the Holy Spirit. In Christian fellowships, like the Israelites at the
Feasts, the lines of socio-economic distinction are erased, not just eschatologically, but in the present (Gal 3:28, 1 Cor 12:13). Paul would not have confronted the Galatians about circumcision (Gal 5:6), the Corinthians about socio-economic and ethnic conflicts over food (1 Cor 8) and the Lord's supper (1 Cor 11), and the Thessalonians about brotherly love conquering idle sloth (1Thes 4, 2Thes 3)25, if community life was not integral to
Christianity in the present.
Paul's writings add to the chorus of New Testament voices sounding the primal essence of community as a means for experiencing life with Jesus Christ. It is not enough to be a group of individual Christians for Paul, but rather a united body, experiencing each others voices in song, teaching, and prayer (1 Cor 14). The letter to the Philippians helps sum up Paul's theology of ekklēsia, “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Phil 2:1-2 ESV). In the words of Robert Banks “The gospel is not a purely personal matter, It has a social dimension. It is a communal affair.”26
The Physical, Confessing, Collective of the Light: 1 John 1:1-9
1 John is like an editorial, an open letter. The beginning is not a greeting or an address. It is a prologue making a nod to John 1:1. I.H. Marshall says the letter could be a sermon manuscript since some of the content is occasional. Despite lacking formal salutation or conclusion it contains contextual comments.27 1 John is more than an
25 For a good defense of Pauline authorship in 2 Thessalonians and Paul's occasion for the epistle to a community in conflict, see Todd D. Still, Conflict at Thessalonica, 59-60. 26 Banks, Paul's Idea of Community, 33. 27 I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), 99.
43 occasional manuscript. It is a plea for generations of Christians to a life lived together in
Christ. To little children, fathers, young men, 1 John 2 reinforces the first chapter’s charge that the growing flood of the light of Jesus Christ and the diminishing darkness, creates a community where “whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling” (1Jn 2:10 ESV). Christianity is not an internal, existential awakening through gnosis. It is the material reality of Jesus Christ, who by walking this
Earth and bringing His Gospel message, is understood and experienced amongst real human beings.
The authorship of 1 John is disputed and there is no internal reference to the author’s name being John.28 Independent of identifying the authorship and literary relationship of this epistle to the gospel of John or Revelation, it is fair to claim the writer of 1 John is compelled by the real life of Christ and His teachings. The author believes
Jesus Christ and His teachings are substantial, tangible, and witnessed.29
The writer of 1 John has an adversary in the epistle. This letter confronts anyone who dare frame the life and Gospel of Christ as ghostly in appearance or muted in perceptibility. In Acts 4, Peter and John are arrested for proclaiming the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Sanhedrin cannot deny the physical healing of a crippled beggar detailed in Acts 3, which was notably performed by these same people who claim the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. The tangible substance and power of the Gospel is not up for debate for these scribes and elders. Instead, the Sanhedrin asks Peter and
John to quit spreading the story. Peter and John refuse because they say they “cannot but
28 Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 9-11. Marshall, Epistles of John, 42. 29 Kruse, Letters of John, 11. Marshall, Epistles of John, 43-45.
44 speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20 ESV). They must respond with their senses to the tangible truth they have encountered. This is the same truth 1 John heaves at anyone reading the epistle:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (1Jn 1:1-3 ESV).
The core of Christianity is Jesus Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
This core is heard, seen, looked upon, touched, seen, seen again, and once more heard.
The Greek of 1 John 1:1-3 is an onslaught of disjointed repetition, void of the clarity that
English translations provide through punctuation. It is marked with relative pronouns and conjunctions where intuition calls for periods.30 The run on sentence is jarring for the reader, asking one to plow through physical verb after physical verb. It describes the
Gospel as an external and physical reality consumed by the senses. Christianity claims for itself the bodies and minds of those who live in its implications. Indeed its people are clutched through the physical senses. As Marshall concludes, “Jesus…is the source of spiritual life; those who believe in him go through a spiritual experience comparable to physical birth and thus obtain the gift of life.”31
These passages describe citizenship of the Kingdom and sharing with Christ. Both refer to Christians fellowship with God. Just as in Leviticus 3, 1 John shows fellowship with God also incorporates fellowship with each other; “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed
30 Marshall, Epistles of John, 99-100. 31 Ibid, 103.
45 our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1Jn 1:3 ESV). As the passage continues there is dispute whether verse four says, “And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete” (1Jn 1:4 ESV), or “so that your joy may be complete” (emphasis added). The difference is subtle and is an issue of whether later scribes were attempting to create textual synchronicity with the gospel of John.32 The author's relationship with the reader is either shared (our) in Christ, or the author cares enough for the reader to wish the joy of fellowship of the light upon them (your). Either way, it conveys fellowship amongst the people.
The rest of 1 John 1 contrasts defining koinōnia like Aristotle (merely a people gathered in civil commonality), and the Christian understanding of koinōnia as transcending finite human bonds as an ongoing common life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer interprets 1 John through confession. For Bonhoeffer, Christian koinōnia is a state where,
“in confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart
[and] since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned.”33 The light Bonhoeffer speaks of is not a mystical exchange between humans from a pantheistic source. In a literal sense, the
Greek text of 1 John says that “God is light, and darkness is not in him, none.” The blinding pure light of Christ is the bright disinfectant of evil. It affects individual
Christians when living amongst each other. 1 John shows that the physical truth of
Christianity is understood in the physical presence of other Christians.
1 John 1 does not claim perfection in Christians. A few sentences later the author
32 NA27, ESV, NIV, and NASB favor “our.” “Your” would align with the gospel of John 16:24, strengthening an argument for shared authorship between the texts, but making “our” the more difficult and therefore favorable reading. Marshall, 105 and Kruse, 58 agree. 33 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper Collins, 1954), 112.
46 writes, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1Jn
1:8 ESV). Christians are full of sin, but must live in the presence of other Christians, in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. This shines light on darkened souls and wipes away the rot so Christians might carry on in love. Thus, when 1 John 1:6 says Christians are liars if they walk in darkness, it means Christians walking in isolation are in danger of the lie of self-justification. This idea is fortified by the counter-intuitive wisdom of 1 John 1:7. A life in darkness ferments when apart from God. Interestingly, John tacks on a poetic negative for what it means to live in the light, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1Jn 1:7 ESV). Salvation is in union with Christ, who shed His blood as a sacrifice and lives eternally in the Resurrection. The Christian experiences the Spirit's rule of grace by confessing sin in the communion of fellow wayfaring strangers. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn 1:9 ESV).
1 John 1 is a pointed depiction of Christianity. Christianity is physical, felt by the senses, in belief of God who himself has experienced physical human life. To believe in this faith is to confess one's sins before Christ. To live in the lie of sinlessness is delusional and creates isolation. However, when Christian's confess, they dwell among
God and live collectively in the light of the Gospel. To live in the light is what it means to live in koinōnia.
Conclusion
Luke Timothy Johnson describes Hebrews 13 as “penultimate...far from an afterthought.” The concluding chapter of Hebrews serves well as a closing to this biblical backdrop for Christian community. Hebrews 13 presses the faithful to a lifestyle of
47 community, worked out in hospitality (13:2), compassion (13:3), purity (13:4), and devotion to Christ (13:5-6). There are so many avenues of curiosity, so many theological and ethical directives that could be explored with regards to the Bible and community life. They are far beyond the interest here. The simple thread here is the familial bond itself, found in homes, at tables. It is a non-negotiable, a benefit of the Holy Spirit's work for the Christian, gathering the faithful together and keeping their doors open for the wayfaring stranger to join the assembly.
Mercy, purity, worship, and mission are under-girded by the brief remark, “ē philadelphia menetō” (“let brotherly love continue”). Let the family love continue amongst the children of God (Heb 13:1) and welcome the stranger into the family (Heb
13:2) it implores. The Lord gathers His people, He assembles them at a table to reconcile in fellowship with each other and himself. It is His work in the Fellowship Offering (Lev
3), the Feasts (Deut 12, 16), and ultimately in the hosting at His own sacrifice (Luke 22,
24). The people of God need only to fight the desire to live alone in darkness (1Jn 1:6) and submit to the gathering of the Spirit (Acts 2:47).
The common gathering of God's people is not organizational, entrepreneurial, specialized, or contextual. The fellowship of God's family is just that, gathered at tables with the Lord, equal parts familiar love and hospitable openness. Christianity is a communal affair with a rich tradition of expressing the biblical ethos of familiarity and hospitality. The twenty-first century church can, and ought, to learn from this tradition, in an age of isolation.
48 PART TWO:
A Theological Portrait of Biblical Community
The repetition of community in the Bible is steady and constant like the quarter notes in a waltz. As history dances on, the beat continues through Israel, the apostles, the early church, and today. To undertake all the components of a community life would splinter this work in far too many directions. The church is God's gathered people and community is the substance of the actual gathering. Through the biblical corpus, in the
Pentateuch, Luke-Acts, the letters of Paul and John, there is no doubt that community essential to God. After all, God is communal himself. The biblical theology of community is of a common life created for Christians, by God. In an age where community is a platitude, it is necessary to recapture the truth that humans were created to live together, close together and open to the world. Observing twentieth-century communities with the biblical interpretation of Part 1, will serve a hermeneutical task of portraying the biblical essence of ekklēsia and koinōnia in contemporary settings.
A century or so after the communities of the New Testament, the anonymous author of a letter called The Epistle to Diognetus1 wrote about what makes the Christian community unique to all human “country, language, or custom” (Diognetus 5).2 The author describes a people dwelling amongst the civilizations, governments, and cultures of the world, not claiming their own languages or borders, eating food, marrying, living amongst the barbarians and Greeks, yet “they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship.”3 The peculiar communities of God live on
1 Michael W. Holmes, introduction to “The Epistle to Diognetus” in The Apostolic Fathers in English (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 290. 2 Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers, The Apostolic Fathers in English (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 295. 3Ibid.
49 past the first century and remain alive through the work of the Holy Spirit. God assembles communities as the word ekklēsia implies. Human willpower needs only to resist disassembling the brotherly love of the koinōnia, remaining hospitable to the outsider.
The physical presence of Christians (1 John 1), living the common life (Acts 2), in familial hospitality (Hebrews 13 & Pauline epistles) has lived on through ages. The question now is what does physical life together look like in modern times? The answer comes through some twentieth century communities. This sets up the final question.
Ought the Christians of this new millennium expect an intimate cooperative, gathered by
God? The answer is a resounding yes. The biblical backdrop, sustained through the ages in monasticism and home fellowships, implores Christians to live together, in hospitality and confession.
50 CHAPTER 3
Portraits of Biblical Community in the 20th Century1
Introduction
The twentieth century saw a renewed interest and new insights for life together. In
Nazi Germany, post-Christendom Western Europe, and later finding root in the United
States, theologians were exploring the biblical roots of community and Christians resisted cultural zeitgeists to remain in a life together. Western prosperity following the Great
Depression, the rise of the Nazis, and the confusion of postmodern relativism and existential complacency, pushed new generations of Christians to a life together.
The Protestant church in Europe suffered from an optimistic delusion throughout the nineteenth century. The church viewed itself as a catalyst for a rebirth of a benevolent society.2 The European Catholic Church took the opposite tack. Instead of embracing modernism's positivity, they withdrew and condemned the world of the nineteenth century.3 Later, the Roman Catholic Church would sign a concordat with Hitler's government to maintain independent autonomy. Protestants found themselves removed from the conversation.4 In the United States, Protestants were less engaged by the World
Wars. As such, Protestants busied themselves with legislating morality, such as the prohibition of alcohol. The Protestants in power were blaming Jewish and Catholic
1 Some of these ideas first appeared as part of a research course in a paper titled, “Missional Monastic Households and Intentional Communities in the 20th Century” submitted to Dr. Steve Klipowicz for the research course EV/WM 760, at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, December 2010. 2 Edmund Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press: 1995), 3 Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: Volume 2 (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 1984, 2009), 360. 4 Ibid, 364.
51 immigrants for the drunkenness of American society and out of such division rose groups like the Ku Klux Klan.5
The World Wars, Nazism, Hiroshima, and the Great Depression seriously indicted the notions of modern optimism. American Protestant churches believed they were still a relevant source of benevolent investment in society, but intellectual relativism rendered the church irrelevant. This change went relatively unnoticed by the church, as described by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, “while the American church was busy thinking it was transforming the world, the world declared victory in its effort to extinguish or ignore the Church.”6 These historical facets are the soil in which modern
Christian communities sprouted.
The Work Of God to Gather Ekklēsia in the 20th Century
Francis and Edith Schaeffer founded the L’Abri (French for “the shelter”) community in Switzerland in 1955. The Schaeffers were coming out of a spiritual crisis in Francis’ life. He was overwhelmed by the ugliness he observed on the human side of
Christianity. Through the crisis, Schaeffer developed an empathy for the unbelieving, as well as the believing skeptic. Such empathy sparked the foundation of L’Abri. Edith described the idea as, “a spiritual shelter to any who have spiritual need…we want to open the doors for unsaved friends and for others who are Christians but who long for more reality and a deeper spiritual life and for Christian workers who desire to dig deep into spiritual study and have time for discussion and meditation.”7
Soon after L'Abri's inception, the Schaeffers were asked to leave Switzerland
5 Ibid, 374. 6 Stanley Hauerwas & William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville, TN, Abingdon Press, 1989), 147. 7 Jerram Barrs, “The Beginnings of L’Abri I,” Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2005.
52 because of their growing influence as Protestants in a Catholic canton. They faced a crisis of housing, which ended with an eleventh hour opportunity to purchase the chalet where
L’Abri still exists today. The night before the Schaeffers were to be deported from
Switzerland, Edith prayed for money to buy a chalet. The next day, they received a check from an American family who sent it based on their own middle-of-the-night conviction.
The amount exactly covered the down payment for the original chalet.8
The idea of Finkenwalde Seminary in Germany came when Dietrich Bonhoeffer was working as a pastor in London. His friend George Bell introduced him to a number of communities. One affected Bonhoeffer through their communal recitation of Psalm
119.9 Bonhoeffer went on to invite 23 ordinands to live with him at Zingst, the brief, premier site of his seminary community. They were forced to leave Zingst and moved to
Finkenwalde next.10 Relying on the hospitality of others, they modeled Jesus’ suggestion to the apostles to partake of hospitality in Christian homes (Luke 9). The Confessing
Church was a grassroots movement, light on funding. The hospitality of confessing
Christians led to huge amounts of donations.11 The house at Finkenwalde was a miraculous opportunity when the first site, Zingst, fell through.12
No planning or human strategy could create these communities. Just like the ekklēsia of the Jerusalem Christians described in Acts 2, God creates, assembles, and provides for Christian communities. Through trusting prayer and belief in God's power to create, humans can participate in the gathering of a community.
8 Jerram Barrs, “The Beginnings of L’Abri I”, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2005.
9 Rakoczy, “Witness of Community Life,” 44.
10 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 380.
11 Rakoczy, “Witness of Community Life,” 46.
12 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 347-8.
53 Germany saw some intuitive, but radically new forms of community in the time of the Third Reich. The already many appeals of this thesis to the theology of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer show his comprehension of the essentiality of common fellowship in
Christianity. It was not just a part of his thought. Eberhard Bethge highlights this in a letter Bonhoeffer wrote to his brother in 1933, two years before Zingst. In the letter
Bonhoeffer specifically appeals to the monastic ideal. He called for “a new kind of monasticism,”13 a theme claimed by the recent neo-monastic movement as a rallying cry.14
Karl Barth, the renowned neo-orthodox theologian and friend of Bonhoeffer’s, criticized Finkenwalde because of its utilization of monastic ideas. Bonhoeffer responded to Barth by agreeing with his critical view of ancient monasticism's indulgence of a legalistic, insular life. However, he noted how it was equally prevalent in the pietistic tradition.15 In his own words, this vision was the core of the Church’s future, “a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship.”16
Luther had rejected monasticism wholly for what Bonhoeffer described as, “their interpretation in terms of individual achievement.”17 Instead pietistic individualism, life in the old estate house at Finkewalde was cooperative, where “the ordinands themselves donated to the fledgling enterprise. Bonhoeffer donated his entire theological library… 13 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Vision, Man of Courage (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 380. 14The Rutba House. "About New Monasticism." NewMonasticism.org. newmonasticism.org/about.php (accessed June 10, 2012).
15 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, eds. Geffrey B. Kelly and F.Burton Nelson (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 452.
16 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 380.
17 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (IV.30). Translated by R.H. Fuller. First Touchstone Edition. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 265.
54 each day around noon everyone gathered to sing hymns or other sacred music.”18
Monasticism was born out of a desire to reclaim the organic purity of the early church.
The monastic ideal was forged in the midst of persecution and the absence of lukewarm complacency. German Christian communities sprouted from similar soil as Christian communities bloomed once again for survival in a hostile landscape.
One of the first Germans to do so was Eberhard Arnold of the Bruderhof
Community. Bruderhof was born out of the post-World War I German Youth Movement, which John Howard Yoder describes as,
a surge of new energy…a new joy in nature, folk singing and dancing, walking and camping, non-politicized and non-eroticized friendships, and clean fun, overcoming class disparities through simplicity linked with disrespect for materialism and social sufferings.19
The Bruderhof was a Hutterite community in the tradition of the Anabaptist radical reformation.20 The Bruderhof sought to reclaim the early church's common life with the thrust of ekklēsia in mind. When asked how such a community might materialize, Arnold said, “The motivating force does not come from us as people...we act and continue to act because we are compelled to do so.”21
For Bonhoeffer’s Finkenwalde Seminary, the beginning came much before its physical inception. The Van Horn sisters taught young Dietrich at the Bonhoeffer home.
The sisters had been educated at the legendary Christian missionary center of Herrnhut, the same tradition out of which the Bruderhof formed. The Bonhoeffer family celebrated
18 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 348. Bonhoeffer (documentary), directed by Martin Doblmeier, 2003. 19 Eberhard Arnold, God's Revolution: The Witness of Eberhard Arnold. ed. John Howard Yoder (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 16. 20 Markus Baum, Against The Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof (Farmington, PA: Plough, 1998), 168. 21 Ibid, 169.
55 faith in the home, even more than the physical church, with the children partaking each day in the reading of scripture and singing hymns.22 Having such a home-centric vantage of Christian community and living, Dietrich Bonhoeffer grew into a man who “was no mere academic. For him, ideas and beliefs were nothing if they did not relate to the world of reality outside one’s mind.”23 Bonhoeffer's understanding of community was born out of the family home, giving him the practical experience to understand the New Testament theology of community as an intimate familial bond.
The providence of God to create L'Abri and Finkenwalde are evidence of the timelessness of ekklēsia in the biblical theology of community. These revivals of communion are beyond the circumstantial grasp of human will. Eberhard Arnold's theology of ekklēsia, the Schaeffer's desire to trust God in providing a spiritual shelter for the doubting and unbelieving, substantiate that God created community for Christians in the twentieth century.
Koinōnia in 20th Century Communities
At L'Abri, conversation was a lynch pin in the experience. Over meals, in the library, while working, the common life was tied together by conversation. The
Schaeffers were intentional about fostering conversation and saw it as the essential path to recognizing truth. There was a scheduled afternoon tea time at L’Abri on Sundays. Tea time was prescribed in its hour, but open in its scope, for the expressed purpose of fostering conversation.24 Francis would regularly ignore his day off and take walks
22 While these facts are true, the whole Bonhoeffer family is not known for a robust belief in Christ like Dietrich. Käthe Gregor Smith, I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Harper Row, 1967), 27-28. Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 11-12.
23 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 53. 24 Ibid.
56 through the alpine with individuals staying at the chalet.25
Jerram Barrs, Edith’s assistant in cooking and gardening, tells of how conversation trumped all other concerns at L'Abri:
Lunch was supposed to be ready at one o’clock. Inevitably she would appear at twelve-thirty and we would be just about ready to serve and then somebody would come in to talk to her. She would stand there with a ladle in her hand, and even though you would be ready to serve and there were 30 people sitting there waiting for lunch, because she gives people her total attention, lunch would not get served until she finished that conversation. So you would be trying to keep everything hot for half an hour or even an hour while she gave whoever it was her undivided attention.26
Because they saw conversation as the conduit to revelation, they had only one rule to limit conversation. Its purpose was to focus people towards recognition of truth. That one rule was that all discussions had to reflect on ideas, not people, personality, or organizations. This removed personal biases and man-made systems, means that could belittle the ideal end of discussions at L’Abri. It was also a trusting nod to the power of
God to work in community.27
After dinner on Saturday nights a combination of those who ate at L'Abri and late arrivals, would meet in the living room for discussion. Francis would let anyone pose any topic. Not shying away from a topic, not controlling the terms on which life and faith are discussed requires an intimate setting, the table of a house or a path in the forest. The willingness of the Schaeffers to leave open the topics of conversation is counter-intuitive for the organizational church which plans it gatherings to the hindrance of collective conversation. L'Abri here grasps the attitude of a common life devoted to prayer, study, and the breaking of bread like in Acts 2.
25 Jerram Barrs, “Life at L’Abri,” Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2005. 26 Ibid. 27 Jerram Barrs, “L’Abri is Born,” Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2005.
57 Bonhoeffer saw koinōnia as the essential antidote to a disease in his German,
Lutheran heritage. He saw this culture as a breeding ground for delusional theologians, incapable of Christian community because of their insular and theoretical outlooks on faith. One of his students, Paul F.W. Busing, shared this perspective saying, “In my days at a German university, no one took any responsibility for nurturing the spiritual life of a candidate for the ministry.”28 Bonhoeffer was equally frustrated in America, a land where theology was nonexistent and Christians were “intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, are amused at the fundamentalists, and yet basically [the American liberals] are not even up to their level.”29
Bonhoeffer communicated to the younger generation on a practical, active level.
His concept of “cheap grace” described the religious divorce of Christianity from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the sake of a shallow forgiveness devoid of
God’s power. His concept of “cheap grace” is an idea born out of communal living. Like
1 John 1, it recognizes the tangibility of humanity and its need for tangible forgiveness in
Christ. Evan Drake Howard describes Bonhoeffer’s legacy and its fusion of costly grace and community: “That is why Bonhoeffer contends that cheap grace is a fatal weakness in the church, draining Christ's body of its purpose, its mandate, its life. It is counterfeit grace and leads individual Christians to maintain the external form of religion while enjoying none of the redemptive power of Christ.”30 The maintenance of individualistic religiosity is impossible in the close proximity of a house. Conversation about life in the
28 Paul F.W. Busing, “Reminiscences of Finkenwalde,” The Christian Century (September 1961): 1108.
29 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, and New York: 1928-1931, ed. Clifford J. Green, trans. Douglas W. Stott (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 265-6. 30 Evan Drake Howard, “Bonhoeffer’s Legacy for American Christians,” The Reformed Journal, (April 1985): 16.
58 shared life of Christian community will reveal person's sin and provoke urgent thirst for
Christ’s costly grace.
In an increasingly secularized-turned persecuting environment, Bonhoeffer saw communal discipleship as crucial. Bonhoeffer proclaims that Christ cannot be co-opted for human purpose, but that Christ is instead the flesh of the Christian faith. The common life of study was the antidote to the Historical Jesus, making it “now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment.”31 For Bonhoeffer, the mission was to maintain the Gospel’s autonomy first and foremost, equipping confessing believers to be stewards of truth in community.
Conversation was an important part of the Finkenwalde experience. Bonhoeffer educated through a Socratic approach. A few times a day the students gathered for discussions or the presentation of sermons. Bonhoeffer or his assistant William Rott would guide them through the exegesis of a passage.32 Busing reinforces the claim that no life together can develop without conversation. He describes his experience at
Finkenwalde regarding conversation:
We had come to realize that there can be no common life among Christians unless a way can be discovered of engaging in conversation and of confessing one's sins and shortcomings and transgressions to one's brother in an awareness of God's presence. And so we went to each other in the effort and in the hope of carrying one another's burdens and thus of fulfilling the law of Christ.33
The life together at Finkenwalde, like any thriving community, was not only serious study and discipline, it also featured recreation. There was singing and piano playing (by
31 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, and New York, 342-3. 32 Susan Rakoczy, “Witness of Community Life,” Journal of Theology for South Africa, 127 (March 2007): 47.
33 Busing, “Reminiscence of Finkenwalde,” 1110.
59 Bonhoeffer himself).34 Bonhoeffer was fond of playing games and organized them daily.
There were hikes and battles of soccer and table tennis. At Finkenwalde the recreation tied right into the other important and light-hearted piece of community…meals. They often played after dinner.35
Life at Finkenwalde had a rhythm. They woke each morning in silence, devoted to prayer first like the Christians in Acts 2:42. They set out specific scripture readings also like the Christians in first-century Jerusalem. The reading of scripture was not just routine. Like the early church, the Finkenwalde community prioritized study and prayer, a suggestion Bonhoeffer outlines in his book Life Together,36 and Busing accounts as the priority before breakfast.37 Another student from Finkenwalde, Albert Schonherr, described the morning service as Bonhoeffer’s vision for students as having “the first word to come was supposed to be God’s word.” The worship services were around the kitchen table, not in a chapel, and featured hymn singing and scripture readings from the
Old and New Testaments.38 The morning devotion, the daily prayers, the common meals, and the table fellowship at Finkenwalde and L'Abri are like updated theater revivals of the first century communities described in the New Testament.
The table was a catalyst for community at L’Abri. Edith would walk around serving the dishes, checking to see everything was prepared to her standards. Francis would start discussions at the table, which would last for up to two hours. Francis would
34 Rakoczy, “Witness of Community Life,” 46
35 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 270. 36 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, “Chapter Two: The Day With Others,” trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper Collins, 1954), 40-75. 37 Busing, “Reminiscence of Finkenwalde,” p. 1109.
38 Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister, directed by Martin Doblmeier (South Carolina ETV and PBS, 2003). Additionally, unused footage is cited in Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 268.
60 be so engaged in answering the guests questions and engaging with the discussion, that he often ate cold food or nothing at all.39 The table fellowship of these communities placed sinful people in close cooperation with each other.
The choice to shop for a different community was no option in the Swiss Alps or
Nazi-ruled Germany. These communities were families, where sin was brought to the forefront of a Christian's heart when everyday lives affect each other. The community- mates would no doubt thirst for the prayer, study, and breaking of bread in the midst of their own revealed sin and the challenge of maintaining a life together.
The Open Table of The Gathered Community
The idea of hospitable invitation was close to Bonhoeffer’s heart. He lived with his parents’ on and off all the way up to his incarceration by the Nazis in 1943.40 In their home he hosted “open-evenings.” Often with the help of his mother, he drew his acquaintances into family life. Integrating his faith and home, he ministered to both his family and his students.41
Andrew Fellows, from L’Abri England, writes that when he is asked “what is
L’Abri?” he answers, “it is the offer of hospitality.” Fellows distinguishes real hospitality as welcoming strangers, from what he defines as “modern hospitality,” which is simply
“entertaining friends.” Fellows believes hospitality goes beyond a mere Christian action.
It is a “central act for discipleship,” and the study of Scripture is of course a core of
Christian community (Acts 2:42).42
The hospitality of L’Abri was not just on the grounds. Jerram Barrs was once
39 Jerram Barrs, “Life at L’Abri,” Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2005.
40 Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 42. 41 Ibid, 126. 42 Andrew Fellows, “Hospitality,” http://www.labri-ideas-library.org/, 2009.
61 hitchhiking home to England from Switzerland when he met a young man in the English countryside who was stealing cabbage from a farm. Barrs invited him to L’Abri for the community life of conversation and prayer. 43 This a perfect modern illustration of the biblical truth that ekklēsia forms when God uses human hospitality. Philosophical skeptics were drawn in by the hospitality of L'Abri. On their first morning in the chalet, a nomadic Buddhist emerged from the forest and approached their window. He joined the first breakfast at L’Abri and became a Christian three weeks later. 44 As Hebrews 13 reminds the church then and now, brotherly love abounds when Christians embrace hospitality.
Conclusion
God's work to provide the funds and resources to create L'Abri and Finkenwalde illustrate the biblical theology of ekklēsia apparent in the twentieth century. No amount of human charisma or organization could raise up these miracles of community. Still remains the truth that God creates authentic Christian community. L'Abri, Finkenwalde and other twentieth-century communities were marked by the biblical theology of community, the same theology that throughout the ages has a sense of family. Christian community remained a providential gift in the modern era, where sin was brought to the forefront and prayer, study, and the breaking of bread continued. These communities show that physical, material fellowship of other believers is still a grace of the Holy
Spirit.
43 Jerram Barrs, “L’Abri is Born,” Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2005. 44 Jerram Barrs, “Life at L’Abri,” Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2005.
62 CHAPTER 4
A PRESCRIPTION FOR THE SECRET SACRAMENT:
BIBLICAL COMMUNITY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Introduction
Individual narcissism, material prosperity, and self-marketing on social networks1 makes authentic community a challenge in the twenty-first century. Isolation is easy and in the digital age it oscillates between self-obsession and self-denial. Jasie Peltier, who is both a worker at L’Abri and someone who became a Christian there, described the twenty-first century L’Abri visitor in a 2008 Christianity Today article. The difference between L’Abri in Francis Schaeffer’s day and L’Abri now is that while Peltier would rather have conversations centered on the objects of philosophy and theology, the female students she guides generally turn the topic of discussion to their own experiences and feelings. Peltier says, "No one has a clue what 'authenticity' is…They think it's spilling your guts, purging. They think, ‘I'm going to be real here,’ and being real means sharing, over-sharing."2 It is here where biblical community offers a solution. The proximity of community life in conversation and cooperation squashes self-promotion and self- deprecation.
Andrew Fellows believes the church must comprehend this “new consciousness” in order to minister in the twenty-first century. He parses individualism and narcissism, both conditions of the twenty-first century, as such: “individualism is a description of the
1 This idea has been raised in a number of spheres, such as the aforementioned Trinity Forum from December of 2010 (see Cherie Harder quote in the Introduction), as well as a number of New York Times columns by Bill Keller. Bill Keller, "Wising Up To Facebook."The New York Times, June 10, 2012, The Opinion Pages, U.S. Edition.
2 Molly Worthen, “Not Your Father’s L’Abri,” Christianity Today (March 2008): 64.
63 'economic' self, Narcissism is a description of the 'psychological self'. Individualism describes the pursuit of wealth and material comfort.” Narcissism describes “the pursuit of identity and personal well being.”3 He suggests the cure for both is reality and since human beings are created in the real image of God, the presence of others moves us from delusion into God's reality.4 The small, intimate, familial community is therefore the perfect soil for God to humble the postmodern human soul into fellowship with Him.
Modern era communities' provide the digital generation with wisdom on the pitfalls of ethereal existences. Journal articles about both L’Abri and Finkenwalde highlight the implications of a society obsessed with technology, which breeds narcissism and self-promotion. With self-marketing through social networks and blogs, humans now control their identity as it is perceived by others. Van Drake Howard suggests that, “such movements might meet people's immediate needs and might even flourish for a time. But as Bonhoeffer's insights on the importance of community suggest, they will collapse since they lack the coherence provided by the scriptures, worship, prayer, and service… whether in frenzied Nazi Germany or affluent America.5
Community rids Christian life of the impotence of technological socializing.
Biblical community places people into physical interaction with each other. Community, as 1 John 1 says, initiates confession. Confession reveals reality because in the revelation of sin, Christians cannot live in delusion or isolation. Instead they must confront a
“constant reminder of the other.”6
3 Andrew Fellows, “Narcissism,” http://www.labri.org/england/resources.html (accessed December 7, 2010). 4 Ibid.
5 Evan Drake Howard, “Bonhoeffer’s Legacy for American Christians,” The Reformed Journal, (April 1985): 15.
6 Fellows, “Narcissism.”
64 The conversational approach to learning shared by Schaeffer and Bonhoeffer created environments of egalitarianism, something badly needed in the American church.
In prosperity, churches find the resources to professionalize the priesthood of all believers. This robs the body of its efficacy as a woven fabric of spiritual gifts. Biblical community in the twenty-first century must embrace the collective equality of koinōnia.
This is done by placing hospitality and confession back in the hands of the whole community, all those pursued by Christ, just as those in the Acts 2 ekklēsia.
In the last chapter of Life Together, Bonhoeffer describes interdependence in community and Neil Holm shows how this understanding of confession creates interdependent relationships:
A university-level report indicates that even in a secular university, sharing of confessional narratives contributed to a community that was committed to learning. This "spiritual awareness pedagogy" relied heavily on egalitarian group processes where the teacher tried to change classroom hierarchies and to attend to issues of power and control. This pedagogy can be adapted to the school classroom to lay the foundation for the disciplines that Bonhoeffer advocates.7
The merits of interdependence cannot be removed from the biblical theology of koinōnia.
Moral relativity in the postmodern era provides no comfort for the shaky self- consciousness of narcissistic and delusional people. For Christian communities in the twenty-first century to experience and share the Gospel, they must subvert the individualistic culture through common life under God, in confession and hospitality.
“Community” is a broad term, a term capable of capturing many exhortations and anecdotes in the Bible's pages. The task here was to set out an argument that community itself is the essence of the church as God's people. Community is underneath and above the myriad questions of worship, mission, discipleship, or polity. God's design makes
7 Neil Holm, “Classroom Formation & Spiritual Awareness: Pedagogy Based on Bonhoeffer’s Life Together”, Journal of Education & Christian Belief, (2008): 172.
65 essential His gathering of people. The assembly of Christian community can be summed by Hebrews 13:1-2; an intimate cooperative of brotherly love and hospitality. The foundation of Christian life together is a group of people gathered by God that is intimate and open.
Why prescribe community to the twenty-first century church? The digital revolution provides interaction without physical presence. This offers a false-sense of intimacy and makes confession easy to avoid. This age offers many people the capacity to fictionalize their self to the false-community of the Internet. Humans live removed from the land and the people in ways that past generations were forced to encounter. The twenty-first century urban dweller never needs to risk their person or personality for food, work, or conversation. It is easy to relinquish the inconvenience of a lonely stranger and to evade confession of sin. This threatens the Christian's ability to truly experience the light of which 1 John speaks.
The church must encourage a common life by deconstructing the postmodern myth that community can exist apart from daily, physical participation in the local family of Christ. This is accomplished when the church lives in constant communion with one another, available for interruption by a brother, sister, or stranger.
Ekklēsia: Christians Remaining in God's Gathering
The power of a community comes from the Holy Spirit. From the Garden of Eden to the postmodern city-scape, the sin of autonomy seeks to obstruct the Lord's work of community. The devil's crafty deception is to convince people that they are not gathered as an ekklēsia. As a result, Christians take it upon themselves to establish it. The human response takes different shapes. From rigid house churches fighting to avoid structure to complicated bureaucracies of multi-site churches, the dreams of humans attempt
66 unnecessarily messy visions of community. To ask the question, “how can we gather people?” is to ignore the biblical truth of ekklēsia. Proximity, daily living in the presence of other Christians, is the biblical mode for the Holy Spirit's establishing Christian community.
The spokes of community life are not ideas or activities, they are the natural results of a group of people gathered in the name of God. Community is found in cooking, eating, laughing, singing, crying, sharing, working, resting, studying, talking, and praying. In other words, Christian community is just that, Christians in each other's physical, daily presence. The Christian who longs to ignite community with a personal ideal will be too busy trying to assemble his vision to be present for the meals, songs, and prayers. This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned against when he cautioned the
Christian community against visionary dreams,8 a sound corrective for the twenty-first century Western church. Wrapped up in its material prosperity and the myth of pastors as entrepreneurs, the church must discard language of dreaming about the future or the casting of missional visions to remain true to the theology of ekklēsia. Embracing these wish dreams makes the mistake of confusing the church for a human guided institution when it is a result of the Spirit's construction.
Edmund Clowney calls this defining the church “as becoming rather than being,” forgetting the church is “a company of the redeemed,” not a “ministry of redemption.”9 In other words, instead of defining the church as an assembly of those believing in or exploring salvation through Jesus Christ, the church is sometimes wrongly deemed a vehicle for ministry. Misunderstanding community as a distinct entity from church,
8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper Collins, 1954), 27. 9 Edmund Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press: 1995), 18.
67 creates a destructive tension for the people gathered in the name of Christ. In Jerusalem, they were not defined by when they met, how they met, or by their mission. Their identity was existential, the community existed because of who it was they were devoted to (Acts 2:42), the one who gathered them (Acts 2:47).
Contemporary churches might organize worship, discipleship, nurture of children, around the palates of potential members so they can join the fellowship of those in Christ.
Those potential members join and are then funneled into the work of drawing in new potential members, as well as retaining the participating members. As such, the church never realizes the goal of fellowship in Christ. Clowney might say the church should be the destination of nurture, worship, and witness, but instead has become the conduit to a never-realized destination. He describes the American church as, “a tradition of individualism that sees the church as a voluntary club for the converted. Until we have a deep biblical sense of the corporate identity of the new people of God, we will not be able to present the gospel of peace.”10 Bonhoeffer called the ekklēsia the manifestation that
Christ is not “the object of religion, but something else entirely, truly lord of the world.”11
It is tempting in the postmodern rejection of the Constantinian inspired church of
Christendom to value a loosely defined human community. Such a view of life together is a cynical overreaction to the co-opting of God's people by visionary dreamers. These are people who Bonhoeffer describes as ones who co-opt the Christian gathering by confusing their own idea of community with the existing work of God.12 Acts 2 portrays a balance for the poles of postmodern Christian community, which Clowney articulates,
10 Ibid, 164. 11 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison. John W. Gruchy, and Isabel Best, eds. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 364. 12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper Collins, 1954), 27.
68 “those who scorn the church as an institution may rightly rebuke the secularizing of the church on the model of imperial Rome or entrepreneurial Wall Street, but the sacraments testify that the church must have organized form as well as an organic life.”13
Armed with the knowledge that God alone assembles community, Christians can be assured they need only resist the temptation of isolation and hostility. The task of resistance comes in two forms. Christian community lives in close physical and spiritual proximity, and Christian community warmly opens its arms to the outside world. God gathers resident aliens, citizens of His Kingdom, to continue in brotherly love, not neglecting hospitality to future family members.
Hospitable Invitation: The Open Table of Christian Community
Henri Nouwen holds loneliness as “one of the most universal sources of human suffering today.”14 This observation was first published in 1976 and is even more valid today. Accounting for all the digitally-induced isolation of the twenty-first century, evermore substantial is the claim that “people are in growing degree exposed to the contagious disease of loneliness in a world in which a competitive individualism tries to reconcile itself with a culture that speaks about togetherness, unity and community as the ideals to strive for.”15 In this crooked world, the rich and poor alike hold out their hands in requisition for mercy, companionship, inclusion, and healing. The biblical community is the opposite, because it is fueled by the mercy, companionship, inclusion, and healing it receives from fellowship with Christ (1Jn). The community of Christ reaches out with invitation, as Christ has for it.
Boiling Christian community down, its essence is intimate commonality and open
13 Clowney, The Church, 272. 14 Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out (London: Fount, 1998), 5. 15 Ibid, 5.
69 invitation. Across the New Testament authors, Christians are implored to hospitality (Heb
13:2; 1Pet 4:9; Titus 1:8; 1Tim 3:2). The Christian community, because it is assembled by
God, is not in the business of selecting its guests. All humans are guests at God's table.
The Christian's participation in hospitality is to include outsiders seeking to make the stranger family.
The unifying power of food is unmistakable in the New Testament vision of community.16 A rebuke of the Corinthians (1Cor 11) was their socio-economic delineation at the community table.17 The Catholic Worker Movement farms used food to fuse two important community expressions; cooperation and hospitality. Dorothy Day devotes an entire chapter in Loaves and Fishes to the importance of conversation in the Catholic
Worker houses of hospitality. Day describes the garden as a choice site for discussions, gathering together the homeless with college students.18 The intersection of working the garden and communing over the yield, provides food to the hungry, work for the unemployed, and mutual respect for all who cooperate to steward the land and take in its fruits.
Peter Maurin, who co-founded the movement with Dorothy Day, used farming as a solution to unemployment, giving purpose to the destitute while humbling the privileged. He believed men would never understand community if they simply worked in factories day to day for the sake of a paycheck, instead of the worth of a purpose in labor done in cooperation with other humans.19 The farm was a paramount community incubator. Peter Maurin took the integration of community expression even further by 16 Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 73. 17 Ibid, 73. 18 Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes, (New York, Orbis, 1963), 29.
19 Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 223.
70 taking students to the farm, getting them in the field working, then lecturing.20 The cooperation in labor and communion over meals between unemployed people and college students is a demonstration of healthy openness in Christian community. It reflects common equality, which fosters recognition of the gatherer, Christ, avoiding hierarchy in
Kingdom citizenship.
The collective sharing of the Jerusalem community (Acts 2) is built on a sense of parity amongst the individuals, equally sinners (Rom 3:23), equally under Christ (Gal
3:28). The open offer of community for outsiders to join the family of Christ cannot be infected with an idea that human beings are alone capable of justice and mercy. Rather they act as a conduit for God's action. To not neglect hospitality (Heb 13:2, 1Pet 4:9) is to remember
through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph 2:18- 22 ESV).
The challenge for privileged communities of Western Christianity is to steward the powerful and dominant culture they possess. To open themselves to the world, they may move into a neighborhood with the intention to “transform it,” but in doing so impose cultural assimilation on the residents. Or to avoid this openness, privileged
Christians may seek economic and racial homogeneity for their community, neglecting hospitality altogether. This makes the choice of society's privileged either gentrification or segregation. The Christian community of hospitality provides a third alternative. This
20 Day, Loaves and Fishes, 47.
71 solution is to understand the equal unrighteousness of every human (Rom 3:23). Instead of isolating segregation or condescending transformation, hospitality seeks draw the disenfranchised into empowerment through cooperation in the community life.
To be open to the outside world means to assume those who the community draws in will be part of the cooperative. Like the early church, there is no need among the community of Christ because the needy are not clients of mercy, but members of the common life
(Acts 2:42-47, 4:32-35).
Biblical community forms in the light of the Gospel (1Jn 1:7). By offering the fellowship of the light to outsiders, the community of Christ offers the light of Christ
(Matt 5:14-16, John 8:12). The physical touch of another Christian imitates Christ's notion of relationship, to be present. The digital society of postmodernism and urbanization need not reinterpret the New Testament vision of community for this context. It only needs to look at the simple continuity from the Israelites to the Jerusalem
Christians to the Corinthian communities, through church history and into the 20th century. Christians gathering in each other's physical presence is a continual work of
God, embraced through intimate table fellowship and hospitable hands.
Koinonia: The Physical Presence of the Family of Christ
There is power in proximity with other Christians because it means the presence of Christ (Matt 18:20). The potential of a physical community life of Christians is infinite because of Christ (Phil 4:10-20). There is an unspoken closeness in the communities of the Bible. Koinōnia implies nearness, a common life requires proximity. To know the needs of the widows, to know who the parent-less children are, to know who is hungry, to break bread in homes, and to live in the transparency of the light, Christians must share a common, intimate, familial bond. No matter if Christians gather in a stone and glass
72 sanctuary, at a rustic wooden table, or around a fire pit, the essence of Christian gathering is not occasional, but familial.
The closeness of a community is natural to creation, but thwarted by a sinful lust for liberty. The sin of liberation from community is not caused by Christians shirking a responsibility to initiate community. It is caused by Christians who run away from or complicate the natural assembly. This is the same sin as Adam and Eve (Gen 3).
Thankfully God has met humanity at their table, gathering the Israelite's for communion with himself and each other (Lev 3), making His presence more known at the table of the
Lord's Supper (Luke 24), reflecting the future when God and humans will eat together in perfect reconciliation (Rev 21).
Christine Pohl links this idea to the exiles in Jeremiah; “In Jeremiah 31:2, the people of God are described as having found 'grace in the wilderness' – God's sufficient provision along the way provides a taste of the fuller bounty yet in store for them and us.
Wilderness and exile are never the final word; in fact, the final word in Jesus is grace upon grace. The shepherd continues to gather the flock; the host continues to offer a banquet of restoration, love and abundance.”21 This means the twenty-first century
Christian community, wherever they meet, needs only to meet at the table fellowship of the Supper.
The concept of a digital family, a family meeting at multiple sites, a family commuting to be a family, is unnatural. The family metaphor captures the necessity for community to be physical and ongoing. Physical, familial bonds are a defining substance of Christian community. This can guide twenty-first century Christians to eat together, garden together, mourn and laugh with each other, and to ground themselves in a group
21 Christine D. Pohl, “The Word” in Christian Century (December 27th, 2005), 19.
73 God places in their lives, regardless of their choosing. To understand community as family is to relinquish the romance of creating an ideal community. It abandons visionary dreams for the reality of communion with whomever God places.
Being a part of the ekklēsia is not a passive venture. It requires firm roots and covenantal love. No matter the dysfunction or distaste of one's community, no matter how clingy or detached individuals may be, the imperative to let brotherly love continue (Heb
13:1) defies conditional commitment. Like a family, the obstacle is not creating an association, but the near impossible task of remaining in association, through love. This is despite an awareness of the darkest and most pathetic parts of a Christian's closest fellows. Paul encourages the Romans,
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all (Rom 12:14-18 ESV).
Community is not easy. It is impossible to create and easy to destroy, but Christians transcend these challenges with the spiritual discipline of submission to communal life.
Richard Foster characterizes submission as freedom, “the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way. The obsession to demand that things go the way we want them to go is one of the greatest bondages in human society today.”22
Returning to Romans 12, this submission is when Christians “love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom 12:10 ESV).
Christian community thrives under study of God's Word (Acts 2:42), prayer to
God's ears (1Pet 3:12), and confessional transparency with each other (1Jn 1). A vibrant
22 Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), 111.
74 community, like the God-assembled collective of first-century Jerusalem, devotes itself to the study of the apostle's teaching and assumes it is dependent on the authority of scripture.23 Hauerwas and Willimon confront the post-enlightenment idea that scripture is
“unrealistic” by arguing that the Gospels are real because they function as literature for real communities to study.24 Study of scripture is the community's claim that it is not an end in itself. The same is true of prayer.
Prayer is the Christian's opportunity to exercise fellowship with God and at the same time declare God's complete otherness above the community. There is no need to contextualize prayer for communities living in different ages. Prayer is an ageless activity of the Christian with the same thrust yesterday, today, and tomorrow. No matter the culture or the time period, the physical presence of other believers is the most natural way to petition and praise God as 1 Timothy 2:1 urges. In this age of individualism, digital delusion, and mobile culture, Christians should resist isolation by joining prayerful gatherings (Heb 10:25). When brought together Christians can fulfill God's desire for communities to pray for the powerful and plead for peace with expressed submission to
Christ (1Tim 2:2-7). The church community ought to be like a puddle of study and prayer under the cloud of Christ. Brotherly love continues amongst Christians when they meet often, close together and in confessional transparency.
Not much in the twenty-first century challenges the essential components of study and prayer in the common life more than the myth of professional, specialized Christians.
This is the idea of leaders who live removed from or above the community. Craig
23 Richard Hays' Introduction to The Moral Vision of the New Testament, particularly footnote 29, contains a great argument for community living under the assumption of Scripture's authority, rather than the community standing over Scripture, questioning its validity. 24 There is a danger in endowing the authority of scripture in the readers, but their point is strong in the sense of community not identifying itself as independent of the Bible. Stanley Hauerwas & William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville, TN, Abingdon Press, 1989), 128
75 Blomberg offers a wise note parsing what is and is not leadership in the Christian community: “far from aspiring to become the strong, dynamic, visionary leader to whom
God uniquely speaks and then expecting the 'flock' to follow relatively passively...more biblical are those definitions of leadership that involve seeking to discern what God is already doing among a group of believers and then determining how best to encourage them.”25
The koinōnia aspect of the ekklēsia is not compatible with Christians living apart from or above the people they call their fellowship. As Hauerwas and Willimon argue,
“we must not justify the clergy in a way, giving theological justification for the existence of a special class of upper-crust Christians. We do not need clergy who claim to possess some clerical trait not held by the rest of the baptized – special training in psychotherapy, special meditative techniques, special empathy for sufferers, special awareness of social issues.”26 There is only one Father in the family of God (1 Tim 2:5) and the idea of a specialized worker, commuting in to serve a community, is a foreign corruption of the
Christian community.
The New Testament vision of community is the common (koinōnia) life in the assembly (ekklēsia) of Christians by God. The duty of the human is to embrace to God's gathering by maintaining its cooperative unity and equality through humble, transparent, confession. To assume one is sinless is to destroy community (1Jn 1:8) and to assume one is distinct above their community is sin. The life together of Christians is fostered by confession and confession comes by intimate proximity. Christians who live together in
25 Craig L. Blomberg, “A Complementarian Perspective: Blomberg” in Two Views on Women in Ministry, Stanley N. Gundry and James R. Beck, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 175. 26 Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville, TN, Abingdon Press, 1989), 113.
76 authentic confession of weakness, foster community. When Christians expose their sin to the light of the Holy Spirit in others, they have fellowship with God and each other (1Jn
1:7). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn 1:9 ESV).
People are not saved by being part of the community, but can they experience salvation apart from community? Such is a striking retort to modern and postmodern
Christianity. Harold Bloom observes this cultural religiosity of the self and self- experience in American Christianity. Americans may find themselves dwelling amongst a collection of others, but resist participation because America calls for celebration of autonomy. Americans idolize a libertarian individual's manifest destiny, so “urging community upon American religionists is a vain enterprise.”27
1 John provokes a battle for the ones who would call themselves citizens of the
“cowboy nation” and citizens of the Kingdom of light. To this, Hauerwas and Willemon offer the benediction, “The Christian claim is not that we as individuals should be based in community because life is better lived together rather than alone. The Christian claim is that life is better lived in the church because the church, according to our story, just happens to be true.”28
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer closes his classic work on community, Life Together, he refers to 1 John making the point that confession is the key to breaking open a communal life. When a Christian confesses to another the evil within him, he no longer lives in self- induced isolation, but is laid bare before the surrounding fellowship. To confess is the
27 Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of The Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 27. The connection of Harold Bloom to 1 John 1 is thanks to Benjamin Milner. 28 Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, 77.
77 sacramental exchange wrapped up in the light of the Gospel.29 Confession crushes “the last stronghold of self-justification”30 When the individual lives exposed, they no longer resist the common life and can fear not the inclusion of the wayfaring stranger.31
Liberated from self-justification, individuals in the community are free to cultivate a life of prayer and study under God. The antidote to isolation in the age of self- promotion and digital delusion is to remain as one humble piece of the common life of
Christ. To remain, is to pray, study, and break bread together, fostered by a life of confession. This intimate presence of other humans is a means of grace.
29 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 112. 30 Ibid, 112. 31 Henri Nouwen makes a strong case for the importance of confession amongst pastors and church leaders in the present day church. Henri J.M. Nouwen, In The Name of Jesus (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1989), 64-70.
78 CONCLUSION
The danger of the digital revolution is its offer for people to work, shop, eat, and rest in isolation. Urban societies of the twenty-first century are removed from the land where their food is produced. People can shape other people's perception of their personality and identity through portraits of a false-self online. Churches can use technology in ways that might contact a wider audience, but at the expense of the physical presence of other Christians. This threat is not the technology itself. It is the temptation to take timeless ways of Christian living and re-imagine them outside the biblical conception. What the early church faced in gnosticism, the twenty-first century church faces in digitalization – an attempt to deny our material, physical nature.
Gnosticism reduces people to a spirit. Technology can reduce people to a digital profile or a video image. To allow relationships between Christians to be mediated by computers, screens, or phones is to lose the core of Christian community.
The arkandisziplin, the “secret discipline” proposed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the unspoken essential of Christians gathering in the physical presence of other Christians, preserving faith in worship and prayer.1 Elsewhere, Bonhoeffer writes of “the joyful sacrament,”2 confession, where “the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned.”3
This age of technologically induced delusion needs Christian communities who confess a person's true-self, a sinner in need of saving.
Confession is the discipline of declaring the true-self. Intimate communion with
1 “Glossary of Terms” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. eds. Geffrey B. Kelly, and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1990), 561. 2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper Collins, 1954), 120-121. 3 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 112.
79 other Christians guides the believer away from the lie of sinlessness. This communion requires trust, which is born out of the common bond in the physical presence of other
Christians. Then the sacramental manifestation of saving grace is realized. Scripture shows this cannot be done alone. 1 John 1 describes how Christians who confess Jesus as
Lord live in the community of His light and those lying to themselves about the darkness of sin, live in isolation. To be in the light is to live the secret discipline and the joyful sacrament, where the church experiences the Holy Spirit's saving grace. The intimate physical presence of Christian community is captured in combining Bonhoeffer's ideas to describe the “secret sacrament.” This idea of secret sacrament is necessary and biblical, especially in a time of such easy delusion.
The notion of professional leaders casting vision to create an ekklēsia finds no biblical support. God gathers the Israelites in the feasts of the Old Testament, they do not assemble themselves. It is God who adds to the Jerusalem community (Acts 2:47).
Christians content to remain in the comfort of their home without a daily life of confession, prayer, and study, live outside the koinōnia. They miss out on God's sacramental work in Christian community.
To experience koinōnia the twenty-first century church does not need new expressions of community or innovative visions. The idea that church is a family of brothers and sisters in Christ, confessing their sins and openly inviting outsiders, must be recaptured in an age obsessed with inventiveness and autonomy. Innovation and urbanization can aid or hinder the postmodern Christian community. The measure of their influence will be if they enhance the truth that Gospel life is only in community (1 John) and it is God who creates this life together (Acts 2).
The fellowship table of Israel (Lev 3, Deut 12, 16) was familial, like Paul's
80 theology of community. The idea of sermons available for Podcast may be no different than reading the book of a pastor from a different time or place. However, when
Christians choose to live outside the daily social theater of the community of their church, they are defining community in a different way than the Bible. They are defining
Christianity as something consumable and temporal. Biblical community is daily and intimate. It cannot be imitated on the Internet and it cannot be realized when Christians do not live amongst the people they call their church.
The tent city of the Feast of Booths brings neighbors and strangers together. It foreshadows the Christian ekklēsia where Christ erases social distinctions, personality, identity (Gal 3:28). The human role is today the same as it was for the Israelites and the early church. The exhortations of Leviticus 19 are the same encouragement of Hebrews
13:2. God's assembled people join His inviting work through their hospitality.
Biblical community is at odds with any notion of a private life, especially for leaders in the community. To communicate only over email, to organize online, to live outside the neighborhood of the church community, makes it impossible to be interrupted by wayfaring strangers and aliens amongst the church. The postmodern church does not need dreams of multi-site churches or innovative communities. The biblical ideal of hospitality is clear, it is the open invitation of a community living amongst the world.
Humans participate in God's work of ekklēsia when elders of the community heed Paul's call for hospitality in Titus 1:8, as well as the commands of Leviticus 19 and Hebrews
13:2.
Christians of the modern era were able to capture the biblical conception in modern ways. Communities like Finkenwalde, L'Abri, Bruderhof, the Catholic Worker
Houses, allowed God to gather people in common, familial, cooperative lifestyles
81 through hospitality and confession. This is not to say that all Christian community can only exist in houses of intentional cooperation. There is an essence to these communities of an ongoing life together that is found throughout the Bible. It shows the postmodern era need not invent a new kind of community. Instead of letting technology mediate relationships, Christians in the twenty-first century need to cherish the gift of the physical presence of other believers. As Psalm 133:1 says, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Ps 133:1 ESV). In any context, biblical community flourishes when daily lifestyles of study, prayer, confession, hospitality, and the breaking of bread are embraced without the mediation of anything other than Christ himself. The sacramental presence of others is the lifestyle of Christians, “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:19-21 ESV).
There are more questions for the postmodern church in light of this biblical theology of community. The community of Christ in every generation has to examine how it relates to the surrounding culture. Paul and Silas were described as the men whose message had turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6). Paul coaches the Romans to not conform to the ways of the world around them (Rom 12:2). Yet in Romans 13, Paul calls for peaceful cordiality from Christians toward the civil government. The early church had to balance its subversion and peacemaking in relationship with the Roman Empire and the Jewish community. The postmodern church must make the same assessment of its relationship to society, the marketplace, and government.
The concept of koinōnia begs questions about the Priesthood of All Believers. To foster a common life with the naked transparency of confession raises questions about lay
82 and clergy divides. The postmodern church, like every other generation, will have to identify the balance between the common life and the roles in the church that Paul writes about specifically in his pastoral epistles. The role of women in the common life of the church is particularly in need of exploration for Christian community in the twenty-first century.
Last, the early church gathered in homes. The home is a natural place for a group identified as an intimate family to gather. However, how does the church reconcile the wisdom of so many centuries of Christian communities who have gathered in ordained spaces of worship and outreach? The function of buildings used by communities, both homes and cathedrals, ought to be explored.
The task of this thesis was to define biblical community, highlight modern expressions of the biblical conception, and to show how possible and essential this conception is for the twenty-first century. These questions for further research regard the postmodern church's relationship to society, the function and definition of roles in the church, and the function for venues like homes and church buildings. These questions are all wrapped in the idea of church as an organization. They are contextual. The biblical portrait of the ekklēsia and koinōnia, called in this thesis the secret sacrament, is normative. The postmodern church must take the biblical norms of this thesis to define postmodern Christian community. On this timeless foundation it can begin to answer the contextual questions of organization.
Community is more than a benefit of Christianity, it is essential. God has gathered
His people in community for His purposes since creation. Gathering together is not to be neglected or shaped in a way where brotherly love cannot be exchanged (Heb 13:1). T.S.
Eliot asks,
83 What life have you, if you have not life together? There is not life that is not in community, And no community not lived in praise of GOD.4
Neither the empty promises of community as an end in itself, nor the myth of a libertarian-self, will satisfy the longing of the human heart for community. The human choice is to allow God to gather His people as he would and to submit to this daily rhythm in confession, prayer, and hospitality. Biblical community is a gift. This secret sacrament “is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with
Christian brethren.”5 May the postmodern era enjoy this gift.
4 T.S. Eliot, “Choruses from 'The Rock'” in The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950 (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Grace & Co., 1967), 101. 5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 20.
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90 Vita
The author is Austin D. Pfeiffer. Mr. Pfeiffer was born November 28th, 1982, in Cincinnati, OH. He lived in Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Colorado, California, Massachusetts, and North Carolina before the age of 30, developing a perpetual wanderlust, and at the same time a curiosity and longing for stable community. He graduated from Jesuit High School in Portland, OR in 2001. He went on to receive his B.A. in English at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he was a graduate of the Creative Writing program. He married Martha Erin Elmore (B.S. Wake Forest University 2005, M.S. Harvard University 2009) in 2008. In 2009 they moved from Boston, MA to Winston-Salem, NC, where they helped found an intentional living community in the West Salem neighborhood. There first son, Silas Dietrich Pfeiffer, was born May 11th, 2012.
In the summer of 2012 he will complete his M.A. in Christian Thought at Gordon- Conwell Theological Seminary – Charlotte, where he was a Fellow at the Pierce Center for Discipleship. In the Fall of 2012 he heads to Duke Divinity School to begin classes in the hopes of completing a Th.M. and pursuing Doctoral studies.
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