Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that observes it’s been six months since it joined the gym and there’s no progress. It’s going there in person tomorrow to see what’s going on.
I deeply appreciate all the support for the new book The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised & Expanded. The donations were beyond what I imagined. And the book (now on its 395th draft) was given to the first editor on Monday. (Not the publisher’s editor, but an independent editor I hired thanks to the generous help many of you gave.) I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the book.
Now for the subject at hand.
You’ve probably heard it before: “Church happens wherever a Christian is.”
That’s the slogan for the postchurch view, which I dismantled back in 2009.
Yet the misguided idea that the church is “the called out ones” is still pervasive in the body of Christ despite that scholars and theologians have discounted it for years.
The word “church” that appears in most Bible versions is translated from the Greek word ekklesia.
In the first century, ekklesia DID NOT mean “called out ones.”
So why do people say that it did?
Because that’s what you get when you combine the prefix with the root word. But that’s now how you discover how people used a word during a certain era.
Because that’s what you get when you combine the prefix with the root word. But that’s now how you discover how people used a word during a certain era.[1]
First-rate scholar Robert Banks in his seminal work Paul’s Idea of Community offers an irrefutable argument in the New Testament, ekklesia means assembly or meeting. (Rob is a long-time friend and a superb Greek scholar. And his work has been confirmed by countless other scholars.)[2]
When it came to the town hall in Greek cities, people were “called forth” from their homes to “assemble” together.
It wasn’t the “calling forth” that made a group an ekklesia. It was the “assemblying.”
This explains why in Acts 19, the word ekklesia is used three times to refer to people in the marketplace who assembled. And these people were not Christians. (See Acts 19:32, 39, 41. By the way, the WEB version translates “ekklesia” correctly—“assembly.”)
So as Banks, Dunn, and many others (see footnote) have pointed out, ekklesia just means an assembly. Or a meeting/gathering.
That’s how the word was used in the New Testament.
The word is akin to our term “Congress.”
Congress assembles. One individual is NOT Congress. But a member of Congress assembles with the other members.
Since the early Christians gathered regularly in a given city, they were called the ekklesia of that city. And when they met, they assembled the parts of Jesus Christ by functioning , making Him visible. (I explain this in my book, Remagining Church.)
Consequently, there is just as much biblical support to say “I am the church” or “you (individual) are the church” as there is to say “the church is a religious building.”
The support is zero.
By the way, I’m not suggesting at all that as Christians, we aren’t called out of the world. If you’ve read Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, I argue that we are called to “come out” of the world system. But the word “ekklesia” doesn’t have that meaning.
Next week we’ll take a look at the real apostolic succession.
NOTES
[1] To define an ancient word by its root has been called “the root fallacy.” James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London: Oxford University, 1961), 100ff.
[2] During the New Testament era, the term “ekklesia” simply meant a gathering or assembly. Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community: Spirit and Culture in the Early House Churches (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 25-28; James D.G. Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 599-601; Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 166-167; Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin, eds. Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 123-124; Douglas Mangum, ed., “Assembly,” Lexham Theological Wordbook (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014). Logos edition. “An ekklesia was a meeting or assembly.” It was used to describe “a local congregation of Christians and never a building.” J.D. Douglas and N. Hillyer, eds., New Bible Dictionary, second edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1982), 205. According to Wayne Meeks, the term “ekklesia” was borrowed from the political assembly in Greek cities. Wayne Meeks, ed. Library of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 2:138. David deSilva agrees. Personal correspondence with deSilva, 8/4/23. See his book One Another: The New Testament Prescription for Transformation (Seedbed, 2021) for a discussion on the importance of Christians gathering together in-person. I could add many more sources, but this should suffice.
For more, check out Christian Stuff That’s Not Boring
P.S. If someone wanted to change your life and zealously forced this blog post on you, you can appease them and subscribe here. It’s gratis and comes with a dozen Super Fire Hot Wings … the kind you can only eat after you sign a set of release forms. (No lemon suckers please. They won’t understand the humor.)
Mackenzie Johnson
Excellent article that clears the haze over this issue. You’ve made your case and you are right. Citing the scholars is a great idea for the skeptics. Thank you!
Landon
Thank you for making this so clear and citing scholars. I keep hearing people say this over and over (called out ones is what church means), but some people are so stubborn that they like their traditions even if they are wrong, and these are people who claim to be free of tradition. Any reasonable person will read this and be convinced. If they are skeptical they can read the works of the scholars you listed. Thank you again! I love these Thursday articles. They’ve helped me grow.
Brian
I’ve been thinking about the word “MY” lately: “I will build MY ekklesia” … not just AN ekklesia. I’m guessing that listeners at that time would have been amazed that he would borrow a Graeco-Roman concept and lift it to higher Kingdom meaning. Would the original listeners have heard it as an authoritative convening (assembly)?
Frank Viola
They would have heard it as a people who assemble together. Again, read Acts 19 and it’s three uses there. Nothing religious or official or spiritual about the word. It just means a gathering of people. Paul infused it with the idea that this assembled people are the parts of Jesus Christ coming together to display Him. I explain this in “Reimagining Church.”
Mark Millich
William Tyndale wrote: “…in the translation of the New Testament, where I found this word ecclesia, I interpreted it by this word ‘congregation’ instead of church.”
He did so because at that time the word church had “divers significations” including having come to be understood as either a building, or the clergy or “spirituality” separate from the laity or people.
He went on to write: “Now is ecclesia a Greek word, and was in use before the time of the apostles, and taken for a congregation [or assembly] among the heathen, where was no congregation of God or of Christ. And also Lucas [Luke] himself useth ecclesia for a church, or congregation, of heathen people thrice in one chapter, even in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts*, where Demetrius the goldsmith, or silversmith, had gathered a company against Paul for [his] preaching against images. [*In verses 32, 39, and 41, where Tyndale rendered the word congregation, the A.V. renders it assembly.]
From Tyndale’s Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, The Parker Society 1850 edition, pages 11-16.
Frank Viola
Congregation, assembly, gathering. All words for the same thing.
Tyndale wrote a very long time ago. “Congregation” today is often used to refer to a passive group of people sitting inactively as in a movie theater (or in pews during a religious service) or even as a synonym for a denomination when the people aren’t assembled together.
“My congregation enjoys contemporary music,” said Pastor Sparky.
For this reason, assembly/gathering is better for the meaning of ekklesia.
Mark Millich
Yes, those words are somewhat synonymous. The New Testament gospels and epistles were written a very long time ago also, in another language, 1500 years before Tyndale and two millenium before our time. I’m not advocating the use of the word congregation either, but adding our brother William’s historical witness and testimony to your list of scholars and theologians to buttress what you wrote. Our understanding of these truths is an ongoing work in progress, “until we all come into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” And let’s remind Pastor Sparky that it’s not his congregation, church, gathering, assembly, or ecclesia – it’s the Lord’s.
Timothy James Price
Thanks for making this very clear. References help a great deal.
Harold Eller
Just want to thank you for this excellent article. Robert Banks, James Dunn, Wayne Meeks and the others you cited are all excellent scholars. I studied this subject in a seminary class and everything you said in the article is accurate. I hope it changes the minds of those who are ignorant and keep repeating a false claim about the meaning of ekklesia in the New Testament.
Mike Livi
I read that ekklesia means a local governing body where laws and such were either permitted or forbidden. He likened that meaning to the church and used Matthew 18:18 about binding and losing, permitting or forbidding. Have you heard anything on that meaning?
Frank Viola
If you look at the sources I cited, “ekklesia” is the term for the civic assembly in a Greek city. The foremost meaning as the NT uses it for God’s people gathering together is NOT about laws, but about the assemblying together. People who read more than that into the term are missing how Luke and Paul used it. If you want more information on the term, consult the works I cited. They are all first-rate scholars.
Caleb
Frank, this is a brilliant article. Thanks again for slaying another religious tradition that’s based on misinformation. I believe you’ve ended the myth once and for all!
Frank Viola
Thx. for “getting it.” You are right. Sadly religious tradition is almost impossible to break and some people will still repeat misnomers even when they’ve been refuted by the consensus among Greek scholars.
Mike Spinelli
So maybe we are still called out, but we are called out together, or we are the “called together” ones. We cannot be the assembly unless there are two or more. We are certainly called to be together. Just a thought.
Frank Viola
If you read the entire article, the point is made at the end that Christians are called out of the world.
But that’s not what the word “ekklesia” meant in the NT.
It’s beyond dispute that it means “assembly.”
Also, a church is NOT 2 or 3 gathered. I have addressed that misunderstanding in the past. Matthew 18 is talking about an excommunication meeting; Jesus is not defining a church there.
The 2 or 3 are to take the matter TO the ekklesia, so the 2 or 3 cannot be the ekklesia. They are merely a part of the assembly.
Myths that are propagated so often are really hard to kill, even in the face of irrefutable scholarship.
Jack Raayth
What would you say about the use of the word church in conjunction with a denomination e.g., Baptist Church, Presbyterian Church, etc.?
Frank Viola
Your question is answered in my book Reimagining Church. https://frankviola.org/books