THE CHURCH PRECEDED THE NEW TESTAMENT

That the church of Jesus Christ, created by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in 30 A.D., was in existence and thriving long before the New Testament was written and gathered into a single volume is a fact of enormous significance. If we assume the thesis that we are to follow “the pattern” as set forth in the New Testament (NT) in setting up congregations in our time, we are left with the fact that this was not the case with the apostolic churches of the first century. They were not founded upon the order prescribed in the NT for the simple reason that the NT did not then exist.

We have difficulty accepting this fact, for it runs counter to the way we think about the church and the NT. Surely it was the NT that produced the church! Wrong. Just the opposite is the case: It was the church that produced the NT! Then the NT was not “the authority” of the earliest churches? Right. Then what was authoritative? The answer: Jesus Christ was their authority. This made the apostles and other inspired envoys authoritative in that they represented Jesus Christ. But in all of this there was no plan to write a book to serve as “the guide” for the church.

If we had been calling the shots, being as “Book” minded as we are, we would have had Jesus call his apostles together for the purpose of writing a book. Once the book was written our Lord would have said something like: “Go preach the gospel and baptize, and build churches on this book.” Not only is there nothing like that in the Story, there is not even a hint that Jesus intended his disciples to author a book for the ongoing of his community. He pointed to the coming of the Holy Spirit and he promised that he would be with them always, but not a word about a collection of documents that we have come to call the NT.

Moreover, it appears that those who wrote what came to be the NT had not the slightest notion that they were contributing to a book. Paul never got together with other apostles and said something like: “We are not going to be around much longer, so we must get with it and produce a book that will serve as a guide for the church.” The church already had “a guide,” It was Jesus. It was a Baby that God gave to save the world, not a Book, not even an inspired one.

The documents that make up the NT were written incidentally, circumstantially, and extemporaneously, growing out of some particular need or situation. And except for Luke-Acts there was no idea that one book (letter) would ever be associated with another. Mark, who probably wrote the first gospel account, never dreamed that his handiwork would one day be part of a Matthew-Mark-Luke-John arrangement in a book. Paul had no idea that he was writing First Thessalonians or Second Timothy. He was simply writing a letter to one of his young churches about their problems and yet another letter to a young evangelist. Except for certain problems that came up he might never have written either of them. There would never have been any correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians except that he received a letter from them that raised certain questions. He certainly had no idea that he was writing part of the NT.

The church was something like 50 years old before Paul’s letters, which was the first partial collection, were gathered and circulated. It was well into the fourth century before the NT as we know it today was recognized as such. So, it is a reality to be dealt with, particularly in our search for an appropriate hermeneutics, that the earliest Churches of Christ did not have the book that we look to as authoritative.

This does not mean that inspired, authoritative documents were not in the mind of God all along. To human eyes it might appear that the letters in the NT were a happenstance of history. But the church has always believed, as we now believe, that God was at work in history and it was because of His providence that we have the NT. Neither does it take anything away from the significance of the NT to recognize that it was produced by the church rather than the other way around.

But the fact remains that the apostolic churches, which we look to in one way or another as prototypes, did not have the NT as their pattern. They had Scripture in the form of the Old Testament, and this was significant. They had the preaching and direction of the apostles and their associates. They had the leading of the Holy Spirit, which was the presence of Christ. They had a growing oral tradition about Jesus Christ, his deeds and his teaching.

The center of it all was Jesus. Their confession was “Jesus is Lord,” and they made this confession unto death itself. Anything was authoritative to them as it pointed to and magnified Jesus Christ. They looked to the Old Testament in terms of what it revealed about Christ. The apostles proclaimed Christ. They gathered, preserved, and memorized every morsel of information about Christ. When the NT eventually began to emerge, a document here and a letter there, it was inspired and authoritative as it reflected the spirit of Christ.

Add to all this another remarkable fact, which is that even when the NT finally appeared it never claimed to be the guide, pattern, or authority for the church down through the ages, and we have cause to rethink our way of viewing the NT. “All authority has been given unto me,” Jesus told his church, and that authority has never been vouchsafed to any man, group of men, or to any book. Jesus Christ is our authority, first, last, and always!

And that is the way we should view the NT—as authoritative insofar as it reveals to us the spirit of Christ. This is why Romans means more to us than James, in that it lays bare the grace of God that is greater than all our sins. It is why I John is more “authoritative” than Jude in that it tells us that “He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world.” That is why a single passage, such as “If God is for us, who can be against us?,” means far more than scores of other verses combined. The NT is thus authoritative as it brings us into closer fellowship with God and with His Son Christ Jesus.

This is why the primitive churches did not have to have the NT. They had Jesus Christ.

These facts, once acknowledged, not only liberate us from an impossible patternistic hermeneutics, but they also allow for adjustments to be made in what the church believes and practices down through the centuries. Because of changing cultural conditions the church may say “We don’t believe or practice that anymore.” If it was once a rule that women should cover their heads in the assembly, it doesn’t follow that it must always be so. If women were once to be silent in the assemblies, it might not hold true in different cultures centuries later. If only men served as evangelists and elders early on, the church might change this in cultures where women serve as monarchs, governors, and judges. If back then the church functioned without societies and agencies of any kind, the centuries might make a difference. If then they used crude means of communication, today we might use Tel star!

But what really matters—Jesus Christ and the gospel—never changes. And those things in Scripture that clearly reflect the spirit of Christ, so that the church can say, “This is Christ speaking for all time,” must always abide.

You will notice that I have made the church not only the producer of the NT but the interpreter as well. There is no way to avoid this. Only the church can decide what the NT is saying to the church. But it is not an infallible interpretation. We must keep on, generation after generation, interpreting the Bible, more and more responsibly. That is why it matters what Luther thought, what Calvin thought, what Campbell thought, what our parents thought. We take the torch of Biblical study from them and bear it for our own generation, shaking it as we go, believing that the more we shake the torch the brighter it bums.

And it is always Jesus Christ to whom we look as we look at Scripture. Just as he is God’s own interpreter, it is his Spirit that rules over the Bible.—the Editor