I am famous for my more-later‘s. It usually means that I had a series of complete thoughts, but not a complete idea, or the time to develop the complete idea. Well, this time, I think I have the time to finish at least one of these more-later’s. This one pertains to the theological issues in the Unity Proposal. It is long.
The theological issues are:
- The inconsistency of our overall theology.
- Unresolved issues regarding Control and Obedience
Do We Have a Consistent Theology?
Looking at our overall theology, we appear to be making contradictary claims about the apostles. On the one hand, we claim that the apostles were foundational only. On the other, we claim that the need for apostles (with a different title) are needed today(See the section “But We Have No Apostles!”) We claim that the hermentuic of the traditional Churches of Christ are a barrier to a biblical understanding (again, the Hyper-Autonomy article) without seeing the issues in our own hermenutic.
As far as the miraculous gifts, we begin in Ephesians 2:20 and say that the apostles were only foundational to the church and therefore not continuing offices. We move on to Hebrews 2:3-4 which says miracles were performed by apostles interpreting that to mean that only apostles performed miracles. (Ananias’s miracluous healing of Paul is explained differently.) We then conclude that after the passing of the last apostle (usually John), miraclous gifts performed through people ceased. We also contend that the office of an apostle is not necessary now as their function was fulfilled in laying the foundation of the church for all time. This ties in to many other facets of our theology as well, but those ties are outside the scope of what this post.
If the function of the apostles have been fulfilled in laying the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20), then it is difficult to say that the role of an apostle is needed today. The arguement as I understood it is that the office of the apostle is no longer needed, but the role is needed. The only biblical reference to this inference was stated
This approach involves a group of qualified people with moral and relational authority acting as representatives and working in consensus to meet the same existing needs that were once met by the apostles and their first century coworkers (i.e., prophets, evangelists, and shepherd-teachers — Ephesians 4:11-13).
ICOC Unity Group
Ephesians 4 speaks to the present reality of the church as it exists at the time Paul was writing. At the time of the writing, all of these offices existed. Christians have been fashioned through the Spirit into one body, (Eph 4:4, Eph 4:12, Eph 4:16), belonging to one God (in contrast to the many gods of the pagan world) by one way of salvation through faith, brought out especially by the significance of baptism (Eph 4:1-6). Christian unity is more than this: It is also shown in the spiritual gifts to people to serve in making the community more like Jesus (Eph 4:11-16). In other words, the principle is that God arranges us so that we can build the body of Christ through various means.
As the apostles and prophets do not exist today, the principle must remain that God has made each of us in order to build up the body of Christ. There is nothing in this principle that says anything about relational authority – it says that we should use our gifts to help each other become mature in Christ. In agreement with the group, I will say that one gift is the gift of administration. This gift can and does help churches work together regionally and globaly. This gift also implies a certain amount of authority within it. You have to have authority over a bank account in order to write checks, you have to be the decision maker in a charity group in order to decide which projects will be funded. However, this authority is not ecclesiatical authority.
This may seem like a fine point, but the justification for the role of an apostle being needed is predicated on the perceived need of persons with ‘regional authority’. Considering our history with misunderstanding authority, it is important to avoid inserting assumptions about authority into verses that have nothing to do with authority. (Since 1983, we have had at least three “A New Look at Authority” papers written . Two by Al Baird and one by Douglas Jacoby. Since 2003 almost everyone has done a sermon about it.) The assumption about regional church authority is stated and then justified, however, the verses in Ephesians used do not imply any kind of church authority and thus are not valid for their point. After that, their examples are all of apostles exercisizing their God-given authority as they were fulfilling their God-given purpose.
Let me be clear, we need each other in the body of Christ. I believe this extends, in our particular situation at this specific time, to the Churches of Christ and the Independent Christian Churches, as well as those in historic fellowship. I believe that we need to cooperate and come together to meet common needs, especially taking care of our churches that feel abandoned by the aftermath of HKL. I believe that it is possible for two or more adults from our historic fellowship can sit down and discuss how to meet needs and work toward meeting them without the imposition of some kind of theocratic structure. It is already occurring that two restoration churches leaders can sit down and discuss building bridges – that needs to continue to happen. After a little bit, the talking should result in something actually being done. Like the group has said, this can include various travelling teachers (or teachers accessible online) to fill in needs. Sure we have Douglas Jacoby, but we could also have folks like Tom Olbrecht (who met with Boston leaders) or Jack Reese from ACU or Bob Russell from Southeast Christian Church. We can attend various Elderlink events and even create our own. We truly need each other and should not say “we do not need you”.
Control and Obedience
We had a culture of control. No one seriously disputes it. Inasmuch as we have admitted to that sin, we have not dealt with our desire to have control. As it says in James, our desires give birth to our sin. If we do not control (not eliminate) our desires, it will give birth to sin again. We also have to deal with our desire for someone else to have control over us. Although much has been written about the right and wrong of being in control, virtually no print is dedicated to the desire to be controlled. Without dealing with the desire to be controlled, we will go back to the system we had before. The Israelites cried out in the desert that their needs were met in Egypt despite the hardships placed on them – I see the same things happening now.
It is short-sighted to discuss the issue of control only as an issue of the leadership. It is illogical to describe solutions to this issue by comparing it to a pendulum. As stated by me and others, trying to place a solution between two extremes is a logical fallacy. To this point, we have begun to own up to our desire to be in control – the Unity Proposal goes to great length to say that local church authority will not be compromised. Other leaders and teachers have confessed their control issues and vowed change (though some have not). However, only our critics spend any time or effort trying to get members to think for themselves. We can be as cautious as humanly possible to avoid exerting unhealthy control over anyone, but if a person continues to ask for that unhealthy control they will get it from someone. This makes life for any leader difficult and an issue that troubled me personally when I was on the Deacon Board of my church.
We should be teaching responsibility to people, not insist on various level of authority. A guideline that I would suggest would be like this: If an church leader is responsible for something or some area of ministry, then it is reasonable to assume that he or she should have the authority to carry out that responsibility. If, however, someone else is primarily responsible for the outcome of a given decision, church leaders would be out of line for suggesting that they should make the decision.
For example, I am responsible for raising my son. It is out of place from someone else to tell me how to raise my son, though it is good to provide help from Scripture or experience. I would be foolish to insist on raising my son without help, but my foolishness does not give anyone the legitimacy to start giving orders. (Obviously, I am not talking about extreme cases here.)
In the same way, the local church is responsible for decisions made that affect its membership. A given church may do foolish things, but that does not empower any other outside church leader to start trying to ‘fix’ issues in the local church. It is tempting, especially since five years ago, a given church leader had the authority to do so. Reading Ephesians 5, Paul speaks of certain areas where a Christian is responsible in his or her life. The key passage being:
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
Ephesians 5:15-17
A great article that deals with this in more detail can be found here. (I do not necessarily endorse this group, just this particular article.)
And?
And nothing, really. These are the areas that concern me about the agreement. I think our bias towards control and obedience heavily influence us to believe that unity implies some kind of authority. Unity implies cooperation, not authority. We can work out common issues without forming a permanent central group. We can travel from place to place teaching each other and receiving help from others. I do not support this agreement. It is biblical sounding and it rhymes with various biblical ideas. However, it is also founded on assumptions that I do not believe are biblical.