As long as power remains in the few and not in the all, the church is bound to face undue difficulty, conflict, and corruption, as does the world.
For quite some time now, I have wanted to teach a class on what is probably my favorite period of church history (give or take a century or two): the period of the apostolic fathers (2nd–5th century AD).
This past Sunday, we began our journey and will continue over the next twelve weeks, studying figures such as Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Perpetua of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and many others.
Such figures comprise the focus of many scholars who specialize in early Christianity. However, I would like to set the record straight regarding some key issues in the discipline.
Scholars who study early Christianity have a wealth of literary sources at their disposal. Some scholars in their reconstruction of the history of this period rely almost exclusively on such sources.
The problem is: literary sources from late antiquity present the perspectives of elite authors who held a significant degree of social, economic, and (often) political power.
In other words, those who had the capacity and resources to produce literary works that were disseminated, used, copied, and passed down (to us), represent a very slim proportion of the total population of ancient Christians.
Therefore, if you construct your image of ancient Christianity entirely on the basis of these sources, in the end what you’ll see is the Christianity of those in power, not what I’d call a “representative sample”!
To put it differently, there existed vast swaths of ancient Christians not considered elite, privileged, wealthy, or literate. Therefore, if we rely exclusively on portrayals of Christianity by those in power, we will miss the invaluable perspective of these “ordinary Christians,” who made up the majority of disciples in the ancient world.
To get at these “ordinary Christians,” however, one must either rely on archaeology, papyrus documents, inscriptions, or other examples of material culture. Or, as Georgia Frank has recently done (in her book Unfinished Christians), one must read ancient literary sources quite critically in attempt to conjure the invisible, other Christians implied therein.
I say this because sometimes people think that literary sources produced by ancient Christians give us a universal, transparent window into the experience of all ancient Christians, but this simply is not true.
With that said, I do not wish to imply that all such literary sources are worthless for historical reconstruction. No! They are incredibly worthwhile pieces of evidence.
However, in using them, one must keep in mind that they represent but a small portion of the larger Christian population: the perspectives of those with power.
This brings me to my second point: the distribution of power within (ancient and modern) Christianity.
For many, when they think of power, they think of political, economic, or perhaps physical power. Power –the subtle and, at times, undetectable influence of some persons over others– can take a variety of forms within Christian circles.
As I said before, literary sources from late antiquity were almost universally produced by those in power: clergy with the education, time, and resources to think up, dictate, and publish literary tractates; educated scholars with the training, sponsorship, and leisure to compose treatises on abstract topics; even monks whose authority extended over, at times, several monastic communities, made them indistinguishable from the bishops in neighboring towns.
Power, like air or water, is ubiquitous and always up for grabs, that is: it constantly passes into and out of people who may not be conscious of it at all.
Such power results in a perspective on reality that is inescapably different from the perspective of those without power: i.e., the questions asked by masters were different from those asked by slaves; the topics valued by the rich were different from those valued by the poor; the version of Christianity espoused by those with income, property, and social support, was (and is) different from that espoused by those without such earthly privilege.
Power is everywhere and affects everything. As Christians, we must be especially cognizant of this.
Such power, which often passes into pastors, church leaders, teachers, and others, must always be redistributed to other members of the church. If power is allowed to pool in the office or self-image of some but not all, this will result in blindness and corruption. It always does.
The church, from the very beginning, was to be a place where power was relinquished, where first became last, those with much gave to those with little, where slave, free, Jew, Greek, male, and female, were spiritual equals in Christ.
As long as power remains in the few and not in the all, the church is bound to face undue difficulty, conflict, and corruption, as does the world.
The Protestant Reformation and the legacy of Martin Luther famously emphasized the priesthood of all believers in response to the supposed “clericalism” many claimed had begun to characterize the Roman Catholic Church.
Clericalism refers to the increased agency of the clergy (bishops, priests, etc.) and the decreased agency of the laity (non-ordained members of the church). Services were being conducted in a way that the laity began to have little to no agency in the church. The Reformation, by translating the Bible into the vernacular of the people (i.e., Luther’s German Bible) and developing a different form of church polity, sought to restore agency to the people, which was a biblical notion in their minds.
The Baptists came to epitomize this principle more than most other denominations (with the exception of maybe the Congregationalists). By reducing the gap between clergy and laity –some Baptist ministers (i.e., Spurgeon) resisted formal ordination for this reason– power was redistributed to all Spirit-filled believers, not pooled among bishops, priests, pastors, or elders.
These principles of radical equality, power redistribution, and the priesthood of all believers must be guarded at all costs, because only through them can the church avoid the power imbalances which plague our world.
Many Christians have been burned by churches due to this unspoken, unaddressed imbalance of power. Through titles, offices, privileges, and personalities, power has been allowed to pool in the few, rather than spread evenly to the all.
As Christians, we all have power: not limited, earthly power, but unlimited, spiritual power: the Holy Spirit. Because it is limitless, such power can be shared among all –it’s not a zero-sum game!– creating a community of equals with different roles who together reflect our Lord Jesus Christ.
If power –unspiritual, unheavenly power– is allowed to pool in the personalities and offices of a few, such will corrupt, distort, and malign, and thus hinder the mission of Christ’s church.
Christianity and power have had a checkered relationship from the very beginning. However, time and again, through Scripture and history, we see that where power is relinquished and redistributed the church succeeds in accomplishing its mission, to the glory of God in Jesus Christ.
Jonah Bissell
Pastor