DOES THE CHURCH HAVE A PATTERN?

See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you in the mountain. —Heb. 8:5

This passage has long been a proof text for the doctrine that the church of the New Testament, like the tabernacle of the Old Testament (which is what the above verse refers to) is to be built according to a detailed pattern or blueprint. And that pattern or blueprint is the New Testament. This view has been set forth in many Church of Christ sermons with some such title as “Building According to the Pattern.” The Christian Churches have also been given to this kind of thinking, with no less a luminary than P. H. Welshimer choosing to preach on “A Twentieth Century Church on a First-Century Pattern,” as he did as early as the 1928 North American Christian Convention.

I believe that this interpretation is untenable and indefensible, and one that has worked havoc among us in that it has contributed to division after division. Our umpteen parties within the Movement are due in part to what might be called “patternistic theology.” Once we assume that the New Testament is a prescribed pattern, with all the details of name, organization, work, and worship of the church spelled out, then it follows that all congregations must be alike, believing alike and conforming to the same prescription. Add to this the fact that each “wing commander” among us has his own idea of what the right pattern is and you have the making for more debates and more divisions.

The logic is as flawless as it is severe: If the New Testament is the blueprint for the church and I read the blueprint aright, then my view of the church is the right one and all others must line up with the way I see it. This leads to the “only true church” mentality, and again the logic is unerring, for in correctly read the pattern my church is right and yours is wrong. No diversity allowed! This is why we have divided over such matters as Sunday schools, choirs, instrumental music, societies, sponsoring churches, lesson leaves, and even whether we can eat in the church building or have a Christmas tree. It is assumed that the New Testament, as the church’s pattern, legislates in all such matters in one way or another.

This patternism has given rise to the so-called “law of silence,” which means that if the New Testament is silent regarding the thing in question it is disallowed. If there is such a “law” it is one that has to be obeyed with much selectivity, for there is no way that we can reject everything about which the New Testament is silent. The list of things concerning which the Bible is silent is virtually endless, but no party among us selects more than a few of them to be tests of fellowship. A case in point is a recent exchange in the Christian Chronicle, a Church of Christ news journal. The editor suggested that our congregations might do well to have an occasional choral presentation along with congregational singing. In response to this the editor of another journal wrote and asked for book, chapter, and verse for a choir. It so happens that said editor is high on lectureships, for his name is usually among the featured speakers. And where does the Bible talk about lectureships?

We can resolve this hermeneutical problem onl y by some hard, honest thinking. Is the New Testament really the kind of book that we are making it? If it is a detailed pattern, like unto the instructions God gave Moses for the building of the tabernacle, why are there such differences in interpretation? If it is as “clear” and “easy” as we make it out to be, why do we stand alone in many of our conclusions? There are not differences like that over the recipe for a chocolate cake? The fact is that the New Testament bears no resemblance to a recipe, pattern, or blueprint —because their prescriptive nature allow for no differences of opinion.

And where does the New Testament make any such claim for itself? The proof text cited above is referring to the tabernacle in the wilderness, regarding which Moses was given precise detail, including the exact measurements for the curtains and the design of the priests’ garments. Where is there anything in the New Testament that even remotely suggests that it is to be such a pattern as that for the church through all the centuries?

Too, Moses was given the pattern for the tabernacle prior to the building of it, and with such instructions in hand he proceeded to built it. Is that the way the early churches were set up? There is not a congregation mentioned in the New Testament that had the New Testament for its pattern, for the New Testament was not written, canonized, and circulated until hundreds of years later. How could the New Testament have been the pattern for the first Churches of Christ when they had no such book?

Hard, honest thinking will convince us that “going by the New Testament” is not as simple as we have made it. We would have no problem if the New Testament were indeed a pattern like the one given to Moses, just as it was no problem to Moses. He knew exactly down to the last detail what God wanted, and so he responded to the warning and “built all things according to the pattern.” It is not that way with us and the New Testament. Even with the New Testament in hand we cannot always be sure exactly what we should do —and so the New Testament lends itself to varying interpretations. Do we have “pattern theology” on such issues as military service, euthanasia, genetic engineering, birth control, the death penalty, trade relations?

And if it is setting up a church how about having trustees, owning property, erecting edifices, building baptistries, setting up a corporation —and precisely how is a congregation to be organized? On all these matters the New Testament may lay down principles, and there is some information, but there is obviously nothing even resembling a spelled-out agenda. The New Testament is far more descriptive (of the life and faith of the early believers) than it is prescriptive.

Bold thinking forces us to ask how ancient documents, however inspired they may be, composed under such volatile and varying circumstances, are to be interpreted and applied to the ongoing life of the church, century after century. Is there any evidence in those documents that we call the New Testament that the church in all succeeding generations is to do precisely as the first century church did, if indeed this can be correctly ascertained? Or is it that in the experience of the early believers as revealed in the New Testament we are motivated to do for our generation what they did for theirs —but not necessarily in exactly the same way? If they washed each other’s feet, for example, which was apropos to that generation but not to ours, I might do my neighbor’s yard for him.

To assume that the New Testament is a detailed pattern for the church for all ages is to be confronted with insurmountable difficulties. According to Acts 4 the church at Jerusalem practiced a kind of communism in that each one sold his possessions and placed the proceeds in care of the apostles, “and they distributed to each as anyone had need” (verse 35). This is what the first-century church did. Would brother Welshimer, who wanted the twentieth-century church to be built upon the first-century pattern, want his Christian Church in Ohio to do as the first Christian Church in Jerusalem did?

That same Jerusalem church, with the apostles and elders in charge, issued a letter to the Gentile churches in which they set forth a list of four “necessary things” that they were to do or not do. One of the essentials was that they were to abstain from things strangled, that is non-kosher food (Acts 15:20). Why does that letter not apply to the Gentile churches today if Biblical patternism is the correct hermenutics? Could Moses pick and choose when he was warned to build the tabernacle according to the pattern?

Numerous things in the New Testament may be accounted for on the basis of cultural influence, whether it be foot washing, the holy kiss, the wearing of a veil, hair styles, or the role of women, and so we should feel free to make changes according to our own culture, while preserving the spirit of these instructions. But if the New Testament is a pattern to be followed precisely, we are stuck with all these ancient customs, such as the fact that some five times the New Testament says, “Salute one another with a holy kiss.”

The place of women in New Testament times is a fitting instance of how pattern theology gets us in trouble. The apostle Paul in his cultural setting saw it appropriate to regulate the woman’s dress and hair style, that she would wear a veil in the assembly, that she was not to speak in church, and that she should be submissive to man. It is highly unlikely that Paul would say the same things to the churches today, especially to those in the Western world where the woman is for the most part liberated from those antiquated prejudices that denied her personhood.

Paul’s instructions to Timothy about widows further points this up. According to 1 Tim. 5:9 Paul did not want a woman “enrolled as a widow,” which means to be supported by the church, if she were younger than 60. He goes on to speak of the younger widows, and these he wanted married, barefooted, and pregnant, or words to that effect. While such notions may have fit those times, it would be foolish to make such instructions a pattern for all ages and cultures. In our culture widows do not have to be maintained by the church. They can go to work, which they could not do in Paul’s day, and they probably have insurance and Social Security.

But when a church today does find it necessary to help widows financially, perhaps by giving them a church job (which is close to what Paul was talking about), do we have to turn down a widow who is only 58 or 59? We even feel free to employ a 35-year old widow and think nothing of it. Wherever Paul came up with his “threescore years”, we seem to have no problem ignoring it. But if that is part of a divine and detailed pattern that we are warned to heed to the letter, then what? Paul also says that such widows are to have washed the saints feet. That one really does thin out the ranks! This points well to the vast cultural differences between their culture and our own, and it underscores the impossibility of pattern hermeneutics.

What then is our pattern? It is the same pattern that Peter, James, and John had and all the churches of the Bible —Jesus Christ himself! The invitation that Jesus issued to his disciples is ours also: “Come, follow me.” This is the pattern that is often referred to in the New Testament, such as Philip. 2:5, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” and 1 Pet. 2:21, “To this were you called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.” The God of heaven did indeed give a pattern to his people, but it was a Person and not a book or an array of documents, and that Person is after his own likeness. This means that ultimately God is our pattern, as Paul recognizes in Eph. 5:1, “Be followers of God as dear children.” Jesus shows us the way to God. He is God’s interpreter (Jn. 1:18).

This means that the New Testament, indeed all of Scripture, may be viewed as our pattern to the degree that it reveals Christ to us. Our interpretation of Scripture should always be in reference to Christ. Jesus Christ is the law and the prophets, the essence of all that they mean. That is how Jesus himself saw the Old Covenant Scriptures —“They testify of Me,” he said in Jn. 5:39.

As we look for a more responsible hermeneutics I would suggest we start where Alexander Campbell started: Interpret the Bible the same way we interpret any other book, according to laws of common sense. Except that I would add, and in reference to the Spirit of Christ.

By a “Spirit of Christ” rule of interpretation I mean that we should disallow any understanding of Scripture that compromises or contradicts the Spirit of Christ. If we interpret verses, for instance, in a way that relegate women to an unequal place in the Christian community, that interpretation must be suspect, for it is contrary to the Spirit of Christ that liberates women and makes them equal. If we use the Bible to sever fellowship between sisters and brothers in Christ and make them suspicious of each other rather than to love and accept each other, we must question such a use of the Bible. Even when one quotes endless proof texts, if he uses them in a sectarian and mean-spirited way, he is abusing the Bible rather than properly interpreting it, however “right” he may appear to be.

What then is the New Testament if not a pattern of the sort given to Moses for the tabernacle? It is part of Holy Scripture and is to be esteemed as such, and like all Scripture “It is profitable” (2 Tim. 3:16). But it must be interpreted responsibly, and patternistic hermeneutics is not responsible, to which our dozens of parties bear witness. We are to read the New Testament so as to be brought closer to God by being brought nearer to Christ, and this should be our rule. Nothing else really matters.

One line from the New Testament illustrates my point: “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three, and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). Whatever the question may be in our study of the New Testament, if our interpretation has no relevance to faith, hope, or love, which is the essence of the Spirit of Christ, we can forget it, for it does not abide. That says it all. The “abiding interpretation” is that which points to the Spirit of Christ in terms of faith, hope, and love. All else is useless opinion. —the Editor