I am not the first one to ask the question, Did Jesus come to start a new religion or was he primarily doing something else (i.e., reforming Judaism, creating an alternative spirituality, acting only as a prophet against injustice, announcing the end of the world, etc.)? This question has been debated for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And though I am not the first to ask it, I will certainly not be the last. Why does this question persist? Maybe because the question is and remains valid in light of the vagueness of the Gospel witness about Jesus’ preunderstanding in reference to the Church. But the question is re-emerging even more so now in this so-called post-modern, post-religious age that we find ourselves entering in earnest.
A subset of the above question which also has been and is still hotly debated is, Did Jesus come to inaugurate the so-called Kingdom of God or to establish what is commonly known as the Church? This question then is both ecclesiological (the study of the nature and purpose of the Church), and missiological (the study of the basis and practice of world-wide evangelization, usually called missions). [There is no such word as missions in the New Testament.]
The study of ecclesiology presupposes that God created, Jesus instituted, and the Holy Spirit continues to imbue and empower the Church. This presupposition is not just a spiritual Church (made up of all the “saved” people of God), but also an institutional and hierarchical structure. This latter nature of the Church I contend is primarily a cultural construct and not a Biblical one.
Although the institutional and hierarchical Church is clearly not a Christo-centric idea, I am not saying it cannot not function as a valid expression of Christian faith. But I am saying that Jesus never asked anyone to start a new institutional religion, a “Christian Church” or a revitalized denomination of Judaism. I understand that my stance makes it very difficult for me to have a discussion about the institutional Church with others who exist within it, because it is presupposed as orthodox. [This post was prompted by my recent experience of speaking with three pastor friends/colleagues personally and privately about their “church” work from very different denominational backgrounds. As a disclaimer, I am employed as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) instructor promoting a pluralistic and interfaith ministry model as normative].
For many Church bodies (denominations), looking at the example of St. Paul, they interpret the Kingdom mission of God (Missio Dei) as the creation (planting) and multiplication of institutional and hierarchical churches around the world. They get this idea from another non-biblical term called the Great Commission (re-purposed from the Greatest Commandment found in Matthew 22:35-40). This so-called Great Commission is found in several Scriptural texts, the clearest being Matthew 28:18-20: “Then Jesus came up and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’” (NET). The Great Commission is “great” because it is found in all four Gospels and in Acts (Mk 16:14-16, Lk 24:44-49, Jo 20:19-23, Ac 1:4-8), and is Jesus’ last instruction before departing earth (The Ascension).
Thus, the Great Commission is fairly well established scripturally, but whether or not it is primarily about the establishment of institutional churches is still very debatable. Why? Because there is absolutely no mention of Church in any of the Great Commission texts, and, as most know, the word church only appears twice in the Gospels (and those instances synonymy to the Church of the Pauline letters is dubious at best).
So, what if Jesus’ Great Commission was not about starting institutional and hierarchical churches, but simply about making followers of His Way as is clearly stated in all of the Great Commission texts? It seems to me very plausible that St. Paul started churches because he only knew institutional Judaism and was erroneously replicating the new Way of Jesus within his own cultural milieu as a means of organizing new disciples (and not as a Biblical mandate).
Some scholars believe that what Jesus actually started was an anti-group, an anti-structural movement of global change, what I like to refer to as the un-kingdom of God. Jesus, the un-king, did not create a new institutional and hierarchical religion or Church, because being the wisest man that ever walked the earth he knew that hierarchical groups become power structures, and power structures always devolve into domination systems which oppress.
But what of the Pauline scripture that speaks of Christ loving and dying for the Church? (Ep 5:25). This Church can only be a description of those who were followers of the Way of Christ, God’s new people, and should not be interpreted as the fallen, corrupt, state-loving institution we know today, which, by the way, was created neither by Christ nor Paul, but by Constantine and other power-hungry men.
Now, God does want a people of God’s own, a Church if you will. But it isn’t meant to be a sub-divided, objectified, hierarchical and institutional people. The Church is in fact the cosmos, the whole world that God intends to be God’s people. The Great Commission is a call by the Cosmic Christ to do the work of transforming the cosmos: “For this is the way God loved the world [cosmos]: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (Jo 3:16, NET).
The Church as a “thing” or institution is a false idol, a dualism that objectifies the subjects of Christ’s blessed un-kingdom. The Church if it is anything must be a subject not object; Jesus would not die for a thing, but a people. He does not make holy an inanimate object, but a people. The Church then is a communion of humans (subjects) in union with Christ, who lives and reigns in the hearts of humans, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen!
© Pablo de la Paz, 2016
Jesus Anarchist 