What is the basis of Christian community?

For many years I had a  ”continuation theology” which saw the church as the continuation of Israel and therefore receiving all the covenant promises and benefits. This was partly a reaction to the dispensationalism I was first taught and was encouraged by my reading of the reformers and English Puritans.

Now my thoughts have been changed somewhat though I do believe we are the true “Israel of God”. Since the magisterial reformers and Puritans all envisioned “National churches” where the membership of church and state was coterminous (with every child baptised and an overlap between social and ecclesiastical discipline) it seemed reasonable to emphasise that somehow every Christian nation/church was in a covenant with God analogous to and growing out of Israel’s national covenant with God.

Most Presbyterian and Anglican covenant theology was forged in that thought-world. I doubt whether the reality was ever close to the theory – think of Luther’s unsatisfactory fudge of “ecclesiola in ecclesiam” which was an attempt to recognize a sort of two tier level of fellowship. In any case I am certain that species of covenant continuation is untenable now. As I have explained previously, I believe many of the covenant promises and privileges of Israel have now been thrown open to the whole world in the Gospel of Christ.

I believe furthermore that Christ has in himself fulfilled the covenant obligations which Israel failed in and that both common and special Grace flow from the covenant sworn between Father and Son and sealed at the cross.

So what is the basis of Christian community if it is not covenant? The answer is, I believe, simple and written all over the pages of the bible; it is kinship. The tie of kinship is obvious in the Law of Moses – how often is one’s obligation described as to “your brother” or your “fellow Israelite” or some other such term? Every Israelite was a blood relative.

My relationship with other believers is not one of a colleague nor of a covenant commitment to them. We are brothers (in Christ). This is the fellowship (commonality) of the Holy Spirit. The term “New Covenant Community” is too plastic for  me – it can be shaped in too many ways. But if you and I have been made by the grace of the Spirit into members of the “household of God” my obligations are clear and far-reaching. It makes the Sovereign  God Himself the centre  of the  church. We are the assembly of the Christ, the community of the Spirit, the children of the Father.

Incidentally, I am a little uncomfortable with making the leadership into a major focus of community. Sometimes fellowship exists in spite of leaders rather than because of them. I do not believe the stars in Jesus hand in Revelation 1 to 3 are Clergy. They are the Angels (spirits or souls) of the churches. In both Thyatira and Sardis the leaders are clearly in the wrong. It is up to the members to reform the church or at least stay faithful themselves.

There are two tragic tendencies which work against realising this quality of fellowship. One is  ”individualism”  -  the besetting sin of my culture. The other tendency is putting blood kinship above Christian fellowship which is a common failure where the extended family is more dominant.

To turn back to the positive, the New Birth is what creates spiritual life at both the communal and personal level. It does not just give me a share in the resurrection, it places me into the pattern of obligations and privileges of the church of the firstborn (Hebrews 12:23) (Note the plural – not Christ the firstborn but we who are the firstborn sons of God).

One problem which I have to recognise is the issue of spurious “new births” – people who have prayed a sinner’s prayer or have had a moving experience in church and so declare themselves born again. It can lead to an amoral “gnosticism” and I believe this is far too common. 1 John is in our bibles to deal with this.

I am writing concisely so please forgive the lack of  references and  argumentation. I am sure readers can fill the gaps.

Caught between two poles?

In Evangelical thought there are two poles which pull at the fabric of our thinking. The Dispensational Pole and the Covenantal Pole. (OK, there are lot’s of other pushes and pulls but let me keep it simple).

Dispensationalism has been so thoroughly debunked that anyone who still holds to it has to be some sort of obscurantist (please note that put-downs are banned on this site unless they hide behind long words) . Since few users of this site will be interested in the Dispensational view I think it might be more useful to challenge some of the assumptions of our covenant theologians.

I first heard of Covenant Theology when my Anglican vicar used it to justify baptising babies; you know the argument :

(1) Baby boys were circumcised to show they were children of the Old Covenant;

(2) Baptism is roughly equal to circumcision so we therefore baptise baby boys (and girls) into the New Covenant.

It sounded forced then and it still does.

The Anglicans have an extra layer of incredibility with the role of God-parents who contribute faith by proxy on behalf of the baby being wetted.

For all that supposedly glorious history I think that Covenant Theology has been about the need to justify various hangovers from the mediaeval Roman mess. These hangovers are state “churches”, infant baptism, and unregenerate congregations. The Covenant guys venerate the memory of the “magisterial reformers” who were in reality far too much creatures of their own times to complete the process of Reformation by God’s Word.

I also believe there is a nostalgia for the time when men like Knox, Zwingli and Calvin were a force in the land and the voice of the “Church” echoed in the corridors of power.

In fact, they were all failures in that the institutional churches they created have long since decayed. The derided anabaptists and their spiritual heirs are still here whereas Presbyterianism only really thrives as an argumentative bunch of sects in North America.

Anglicanism is healthy where a baptist-like churchmanship dominates in some ex-colonies and it is sick where Catholic or Reformed Anglicans are in charge. The only white dominated overwhelmingly evangelical diocese of which I am aware is New South Wales, Australia which has been blessed by the congregational ecclesiology of Moore College for many years.

Those of us who disbelieve covenant theology are likely to be considered pietists who lack a sense of history.  We are told we fail to see that the unity and consistency of God demands that there can be only one covenant between God and Man.

Few of us deny that, since God and Human Nature remain the same, there will inevitably be commonalities in the way He has related to us but to claim that there is really only one covenant of grace seems to be going beyond what is written or even logical.

I believe that we have been weakened by this one-eyed view more than we realise. The radical nature of the New Covenant has been downplayed and the revolutionary way in which the People of God are now defined by the work of the Holy Spirit is often obscured. The incarnation and death/resurrection of Jesus has changed everything and some things have even been abolished.

My belief is that the healthiest expression of church life is only possible where there is a baptistic understanding of the church as gathered by the Spirit to the Son of God through faith and repentance created by the Word of God.

Presbyterian/Anglican theology obscures the Divine process of Church Building and leads to a bureaucratic, institutional or cultural model of church life. It “objectifies” the people of God into a sociological grouping and downplays the supernatural nature of conversion and faith. The work of the Spirit is regarded as essential but virtually undetectable.

The result is that congregations can not be trusted with decision making so church officers and synods and presbyteries must manage them. The New Israel has been numbered and gathered into an organisational net to appear more like Old Israel.

No one denies there is continuity between the two ages but it is a continuity of relationship. Many of the Covenant promises and requirements addressed to Israel are now addressed to the whole world rather than the institutions called churches and the regenerate are now gathered by the voice of their Shepherd into congregations of those who are being redeemed.

We do not need to multiply covenants like the dispensationalists but we also need to recognise that the New Covenant has truly superceded the old way of the Legal Code. Instead of being defined as the Children of God by a fence of laws, rites and traditions we are defined by the presence of Christ in the Gospel by the Holy Spirit as the centre around which we gather in churches.

Another problem of the covenantal denominations is their tendency to dominate national life. This has led to reactions in places like Switzerland, England, Holland and Scotland where eventually this domination has been overthrown by populations seeking liberation from overbearing churchmen. Nearly everyone was glad to see the back of the squabbling Puritan Jihadists in 1660.

Both Covenantal Calvinism and Roman Catholicism have some responsibility for the aggressively secular climate we are now in. Even the two categories of “Church” and “State” in which so much thinking is still expressed are deceptive and unbiblical.

We are sometimes stuck behind the start line when it comes to thinking about the world we live in.

I pray that the Lord, the God of Israel, will bless this website so that we can do some positive reflecting on His Word.