"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light."
- Genesis 1:1-3
God spoke and it was. The words above begin describing the creating God in the process of bringing life into being. The words "formless void" are translated from the Hebrew "tohu wavohu," whose meaning is very difficult to grasp. As my professor of Hebrew, Dr. William Power, said, it is random chaos with no discernible form or function. Pretty apt description for how the church functions at times!
All organisms, from the first single-celled, amoeba-like substance, seek to organize themselves in such a way as to maximize the efficiency of who (or what) they were created to be. Whether it's a football team, a marching band, a Sunday School class, or any governmental entity, the one thing all have in common is that they have a discernible structure and purpose. And most continually are seeking new and better ways to function enabling them to perform more efficiently and effectively.
As the early church begin to form - and this was within a decade of the death and resurrection of Jesus, it organized itself along the same lines as the trade guilds (what we know as "trade unions") of the time. While scripture records them as ekklesia, the Greek word often translated as "church," for them the term meant more of a group of like-minded people bound together for a common purpose. It was not until the latter quarter of the first century that what we call "church" began to form.
By the time of the writing of the Gospel of Luke, expectation in the imminent return of Jesus had begun to wane. As long as people thought they would be "carried up" in the Parousia (what we call the 2nd Coming) there was no need for any kind of organized structure. Only with a diminished expectation did thoughts turn to how to maintain the communities that had begun in the middle part of the century. Hence the rise of creeds, a way of transmitting from group to group and generation to generation the tenets of the faith. Hymnody began to develop (and it was very different from what we have today). And, along came a different structure, one intended to last.
The letters to Timothy (probably written in the first quarter of the second century) record this beginning structure with three distinct leadership positions: Episkopos (bishops), Presbyteros (elders), and Diakonos (deacons). The purpose was for order, and for the maintenance of the structure. Gradually, in the first several centuries, the church as we've come to know it, began to develop. Initially the 'church' was the Roman church, which came to be called 'catholic' (from the Greek words kata holos, or 'according to the whole').
Grace and peace,
Mike
September 21, 2014