No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
A New Testament Church Today?1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
Nor are we any longer able to be sure that the evidence of Scripture gives us direct guidance on how we should order our lives or organise our Church in the strange new world, so different from that of the New Testament and from that of Reformation Scotland, into which we have been thrown.’ (The Committee of Forty)
‘It may seem surprising that the question of the correct way to order the church has to be dealt with again and again. Is it really not possible to answer this question once and for all? Is it inconceivable that one could discover definite rules to order our lives at all times? Can the New Testament, the sole plumbline and norm for the church's life according to the unanimous conviction of the Reformers, not supply us with such rules which would be universally valid and permanent?’ (Eduard Lohse)
This surprise to which Lohse refers is perhaps the greater when one considers the confidence with which the Westminster divines felt themselves able to attach scriptural proof texts to their ordinances in their formulation of ‘The Form of Presbyterial Church-Government’, but both the Committee of Forty seeking to find a suitable form of church life for the Church of Scotland today and the Landesbischof of Hannover addressing the synod of his church in Braunschweig as they gathered to discuss a new church order felt that things had changed.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1978
References
page 517 note 2 Reports to the General Assembly with the Legislative Acts (Edinburgh, 1975), p. 512.Google Scholar
page 517 note 3 ‘Die Gemeinde und ihre Ordnung bei den Synoptikem und bei Paulus’ in Ellis, E. E., Crässer, E. (eds.), Jesus und Paulus, Festschrift for Kümmel, W. G. (Göttingen, 1975), pp. 189–200, here p. 189.Google Scholar
page 517 note 4 SJT, xxviii, 1975, pp. 45–62, here pp. 49f.
page 518 note 1 ‘Legitimation und Lebensunterhalt: ein Beitrag zur Soziologie urchristlicher Missionare’, NTS, xxi, 1974/1975, PP 192–221.Google Scholar
page 519 note 1 Art. XX, ed. G. D. Henderson (Edinburgh, 1960), p. 47.
page 520 note 1 Sanders, J. T., Ethics in the New Testament (London, 1975), p. 130.Google Scholar
page 520 note 2 cf. the bibliography given by Smith, J. Z., ‘The Social Description of Early Christianity’, Religious Studies Review, i, 1975/1976, pp. 19–25.Google Scholar
page 520 note 3 Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1975), p. 3Google Scholar; the latter phrase is borrowed by him from Y. Talmon.
page 521 note 1 ‘“Through Jesus Christ Our Lord”: Some Questions about the Use of Scripture’, Theology, lxxx, 1977, pp. 30–36, here p. 33.Google Scholar
page 521 note 2 loc. cit., p. 51.
page 521 note 3 ‘Blind Alleys in the “Jesus of History” Controversy’, New Testament Questions of Today (London, 1969), pp. 23–65, here p. 64.Google Scholar
page 521 note 4 Jesus Means Freedom: a Polemical Survey of the New Testament (London, 1969).Google Scholar
page 522 note 1 cf. Sanders, ibid.
page 523 note 1 Though perhaps a considerable portion of the wealth to be distributed came from this group (cf. Theissen, G., ‘Soziale Schichtung in der korinthischen Gemeinde: ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des hellenistischen Urchristentums’, ZNW, lxv, 1974, pp 232–272, here p. 269).Google Scholar
page 523 note 2 ‘Ministry and Community in the New Testament’ in Essays on New Testament Themes (Studies in Biblical Theology, First Series, xli, London, 1964), pp. 63–94, here p. 91Google Scholar, and New Testament Questions of Today, p. 22; cf. also p. 247 and Vielhauer, P., ‘On the “Paulinism” of Acts’ in Keck, L. E., Martyn, J. L. (eds.), Studies in Luke-Acts, Festschrift for Schubert, P. (London, 1968), pp. 33–50, especially p. 49.Google Scholar
page 523 note 3 This seems to be the use of the term by Kasemann, E., who sees early Catholicism as having arrived with the disappearance of the expectation of an imminent Parousia (cf. ‘Paul and Early Catholicism’, New Testament Questions of Today, pp. 236–1, especially p. 237)Google Scholar; yet he is prepared to speak also of ‘nascent Catholicism’ (p. 242), which better describes a process than the term ‘early Catholicism’. A mediating position is found in Schulz, S., Die Mitte der Schrift: der Frühkatholizimus im Neuen Testament als Herausforderung an den Protestantismus (Stuttgart/Berlin, 1976)Google Scholar: the developed position is ‘Catholicism’ and ‘early Catholicism’ represents the last phase of the development in the New Testament in which the later ‘Catholicism’ appears in embryo (p. 78).
page 524 note 1 This similarity may not be a coincidence; cf. Luz, U., ‘Erwägungen zur Entstehung des “Frühkatholizismus”. Eine Skizze’, ZNW, lxv, 1974, pp. 88–111Google Scholar, who points out the parallel, but contrasted, development of gnosticism and early Catholicism (especially pp. 99–106).
page 524 note 2 So Lohse, E., Grundariss der neutestamentlichen Theologie (Theologische Wissenschaft, v, Stuttgart, 1974), §356, p. 147Google Scholar; cf. Conzelmann, H., An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament (London, 1969), p. 290.Google Scholar
page 524 note 3 cf. Luz, loc. cit., p. 90: at an earlier period we must content ourselves with speaking of ‘nascent early Catholicism’. At any rate Ign., Trail. 3.1, has advanced far in this direction when he affirms that one cannot speak of an ⋯κκλησ⋯α. if it does not have deacons, elders, and a bishop.
page 525 note 1 Ecclesiatical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (London, 1969), P. 58.Google Scholar
page 525 note 2 ibid., p. 65.
page 525 note 3 ibid., 70.
page 525 note 4 Essays, p. 83.
page 525 note 5 Theology of the New Testament, II (London, 1955), p. 98Google Scholar, arguing against the views of R. Sohm; cf. also Schweizer, E., Church Order in the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Theology, First Series, xxxii, London, 1961), §241, p, 204.Google Scholar
page 525 note 6 op. cit., pp. 68–70: ‘pure charismatic authority is both a theoretical impossibility and an historical fiction’ (p. 70).
page 525 note 7 cf. Herten, J., ‘Charisma—Signal einer Gemeindetheologie des Paulus’ in Hainz, J. (ed.), Kirche im Werden: Studien zum Thema Ami und Gemeinde (München/Paderborn/Wien, 1976), pp. 57–89Google Scholar, who calls the realaising of this concept of a charismatic community ‘utopian but necessary’ (p. 89).
page 526 note 1 op. cit., p. 95.
page 526 note 2 cf. Schulz, op. cit., pp. 68–76.
page 527 note 1 op. cit., pp. 423–9.
page 528 note 1 loc. cit., pp. 107f.
page 528 note 2 New Testament Questions of Today, p. 247.
page 528 note 3 Early Catholicism could therefore in a sense be said to be pre-Pauline, at least in embryo; likewise too, as Käsemann implies, its sacramentalism may go back to the pre-Pauline hellenistic church (cf. ibid., pp. 243–6; but contrast Schulz, op. cit., p. 431).
page 528 note 4 ibid., p. 248; cf. Essays, p. 87, on the Pastoral Epistles as evidence of this.
page 528 note 5 op. cit., p, 67, quoting Bultmann, op. cit., II, p. 97; cf. p. 98.
page 529 note 1 New Testament Questions of Today, p. 248.
page 530 note 1 Schweizer, E., Art. πνε
μα πνευματικóς, TDNT, VI, p. 435Google Scholar (also n. 689), gives this verse as another example of the divine Spirit given to the spiritual man and differentiated from his νος(I Cor. 14.14), which can still be called ‘his’ spirit; ‘fundamentally there is for Paul only the one Spirit of God imparted severally to individuals’. Compare R. Jewett's treatment of this section of I Cor. (although not specifically this verse) in terms of the ‘apportioned spirit’ of God (Paul's Anthropological Terms: a Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums, x, Leiden, 1971, pp. 191f; he argues that it would run counter to Paul's intention to distinguish the divine and human spirits here).
page 531 note 1 op. cit., p. 257.