Series on the Modern Lukewarm Evangelical Church – No. 7
To summarize, Satan has continually sought to compromise and corrupt God’s design, organization, and operation of the church (i.e., “church government and operation”) during the seven periods of the Church Age. This church government and operation is portrayed by and rests upon the leadership gifts given to the elders of the church and the gifts of the Spirit given to all members of the body of Christ. When Satan corrupts the operation of the leadership gifts as well as the gifts of the Spirit, he has successfully corrupted the organization and operation of the church. When the local members of the body of Christ abandon, misuse, compromise, or corrupt these gifts, it creates disarray and dysfunction within the church and hinders the accomplishment of the church’s mission outside of the church. Satan’s attacks are blocked to the degree that the church follows God’s plan and pattern for the church’s organization and operation established in the first century New Testament church.
In the study of church history, it will be helpful for the reader to read Revelation chapters 2 and 3 where John records Christ’s message to the seven churches of Asia Minor. These local churches were selected by God to give a timeless and cautionary message to His people throughout the centuries to the end of the age. The messages to the Seven Churches of Asia represent seven time periods over the past 2,000 years and give a panoramic prophetic view of church history beginning at the day of Pentecost and which will end in the twinkling of an eye at the Rapture of the church.
The works of each of the seven Asian churches revealed certain distinctive characteristics that symbolized a similar distinctive characteristic in each of the seven periods of history during the Church Age. With three exceptions (the first century church at Ephesus and the churches at Smyrna and Philadelphia), the history of the Church Age reveals how far the church has drifted from the original design, organization, and functioning of the first century church. The three exceptions were periods when the church most closely followed the example of God’s design, organization, and functioning of the local church as expressed through a more faithful exercise of the leadership gifts and the gifts of the Spirit as found in the first century New Testament church.
In Part II we shall look at the first two of the seven periods of history in the Church Age (Ephesus and Smyrna) and how the Bible doctrines, leadership gifts, and the gifts of the Spirit were intermittently defended or compromised, corrupted, and abandoned.
The Growth of the church during its first three hundred years was concerned with two major issues—its doctrine or beliefs and its organization. Both its doctrine and organizational structure were established in the first century through Christ’s ministry, the actions of the apostles, and their divinely inspired writings which became known as the New Testament.[1]
• Ephesus – Lost its first love (AD 30-100). Ephesus was a typical first century church that had many great works and had labored and endured without growing weary. Their sin was that they had left their first love. This period ended with the death of John, the last apostle.
Little needs to be added with regard to the church’s faithful adherence to the teachings given to the church for this was the age of Jesus incarnate and the apostles who lived in and recorded the inspired biblical history of the first century. When the first century churches veered away from the faithful exercise of the leadership gifts and the gifts of the Spirit, Peter, John, Paul, and other apostles were there to minister correction in person and/or through their epistles and other canons of the faith.
Yet, in spite of all their good works, faithfulness, defense of the truth, and hardships endured, the first century church failed to maintain their deep love and passion for Christ that they once had. Christ’s message to the first century church of their fallen condition was written by John near the end of the first century (c. AD 90-96). Therefore, in less than seven decades after the church was born, its love and passion for Christ had cooled to the point that they were in danger of losing their place and destiny in God’s kingdom.
• Smyrna – The persecuted church (AD 100-312). They suffered tribulation, poverty, and slander. They were encouraged to not fear the coming suffering, imprisonment, and for some even death because a crown of life awaited the faithful.
The second period of church history was marked by persecution, suffering, poverty, and death. When such occurs at any time in history, the only recourse for the faithful is to trust in God and follow his commands including exercising the leadership gifts and the gifts of the Spirit. In this regard the church during the second and third centuries was generally found to be faithful.
Doctrines of the faith
During its first three hundred years of existence (the Ephesus and Smyrna periods), the church not only grew spiritually and numerically, it grew organizationally out of necessity. From its beginning church councils have been held to deal with problems within the church, almost all of which arose from doctrinal issues. The challenges from the heresies of Gnosticism and Montanism in the last half of the second century led the church to the Apostles’ Creed and clarified the heart of Christian doctrine for everyone in the church. From this struggle came the canon (list) of books that comprised the New Testament.[2]
The rise of church councils dealt almost exclusively with doctrine. Even as the canon of the New Testament emerged as a result of the controversies surrounding various heresies, many leaders of the church still did not have a deep knowledge of the Bible. As a result, there was an on-going misunderstanding of many fundamental articles of the faith which led to questions and controversies.[3]
Although faced with many doctrinal challenges by false teachers in the second century (the 100s), local churches continued to operate under the guidance of multiple elders derived from the local church who exercised their leadership gifts as shepherds of the local flock. The gifts of the Spirit given to the body of Christ continued to be made manifest with little outside interference. However, during the third century (the 200s) there were signs that the first century design, organization, and functioning of the local church was about to change.
As has been noted, the church’s beliefs established in the first century came under severe attack during the following two centuries (the 100s and 200s). After the apostles of the first century died (the last was John who died in the late A.D. 90s), those who were personally taught by the apostles became known as the apostolic fathers in the first half of the second century (and included Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Barnabas). Although the church had spread rapidly around the known world at that time, the church had very little depth in understanding the truth as revealed in the New Testament Scriptures. At the same time heathens attacked the church through lies and falsehoods that mischaracterized Christianity and brought Christians under great persecution. The foremost of the defenders of the faith was Justin who wrote his famous Apology in 153. In 165, he was beheaded in Rome for his beliefs and became known as Justin Martyr.[4]
The attacks against the church in the first half of the second century (100s) largely came from outside of the Church. In the second half of the second century, two great heresies (false doctrines) arose within the church. Gnosticism was a heresy that brought into question Jesus’ incarnation, i.e., Christ never dwelt on the earth in human form. Montanism was a heresy that taught that the Comforter (the Holy Spirit) promised by Christ in the upper room the evening before his crucifixion did not come at Pentecost but was now at hand and that the end of the world would soon occur. The defense against these and other heresies fell to the church fathers, successors of the apostolic fathers during the last half of the second century (100s) and throughout the third century (200s). The church fathers included Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen.[5]
The Apostles’ Creed, a summary of the Apostles’ teachings, was adopted as a means to distinguish what the church believed to be true Christian doctrine as opposed to the heretical doctrines of the Gnostics and Montanists. As new heresies attempted to infiltrate the doctrines of the church, it was necessary to identify and consolidate the canon (list) of authentic and inspired works of the New Testament writers. By doing so, the New Testament canon was separated from other writings that were of a historical nature or were false teachings.[6]
Important point: The church owes to the church fathers a huge debt in defending the faith at a crucial moment in church history. The right understanding of the New Testament came through much study, thought, and action on the part of the church fathers. However, they too were learning from the original texts and from each other, and their writings, however illuminating, contained some seeds of error that would bear tainted fruit in future generations of the church and its leadership.
Church government
We now turn from the doctrines of the church to its organization and operation. The organizational and operational patterns of the first century church were presented in Part I. The elders of the local church of the first century were known as presbyters (the Greek word for “elder”) and were all the same rank. Kuiper states that,
…it was natural that in each congregation one of the presbyters should take the lead. He would be president of the board of presbyters, and he would lead in worship and do the preaching. The presbyters were called overseers. The Greek word for “overseer” is episcopos, from which we get our word “bishop.” The title bishop was given to the presbyter who in the course of time became the leader of the board of presbyters. So the other presbyters gradually became subordinate to the presbyter who was their overseer, or bishop, and the bishop came to rule the church alone.[7]
Here we see the early signs of erosion of pattern of organization laid down in the first century church.
Out of the struggles with the heresies of Gnosticism and Montanism came the first challenges to the foundations of the congregational/local control form of church government laid down in the first century. How was the church to establish its position as the authority who decided the meaning of the Bible? Defense of the true faith was difficult to accomplish through a loose coalition of leaders from individual churches. Therefore, certain leaders of the larger churches presumed to speak as having authority over a group of churches in deciding issues of biblical interpretation. Many spoke as representing the decisions of the group for whom they spoke. But the frailties of their successors’ human natures caused them to succumb to the charms of pride, power, and avarice and thus perverted the episcopal answer to the challenges presented by false teachers and false doctrines.
The organization of the first century church was very simple and contained two offices: elders and deacons. But as the hierarchy of the church developed beyond the local level, an episcopal form of church organization (government) began to emerge with a decade or two after the death of the apostle John at the end of the first century. Beginning early in the second century the church began to adopt (gradually at first) the episcopal form of church government which lasted to the late 1600s, almost two hundred years after the beginning of the Reformation in the early 1500s.[8] The episcopal form of church government continues in the Catholic Church, in the Protestant liberal-modernist-progressive churches, and a few other denominations.
The following is a brief but important description of the episcopal hierarchy (and its harm to the church) that developed within the church. Because churches were first established in the cities, people in the cities became Christians first and the country people surrounding the cities were considered pagan (heathen) and were the last to be converted. The city and the surrounding countryside became a district called a diocese. As churches and their ruling bishops were added within a diocese, the first bishop in the diocese became a diocesan bishop with authority over the other bishops in the diocese. In time several diocesan bishops began looking to certain other diocesan bishops in larger and/or more influential cities. The bishops in the larger, more influential cities became monarchical bishops. These bishops were thought to be the successors of the first century apostles, and as such, they held great authority within the church.[9]
During the growth of the episcopal form of church government in the various cities in the second century, the connection between churches was very loose and informal. However, by the year 200, the church had been molded into one unified body. This unified body was known as the Catholic (universal) Church, sometimes called the Old Catholic Church. But it should not be confused with the Roman Catholic Church which came later.[10]
Over time further layers were added to the top of the church hierarchy. The bishops of the largest cities began to be looked upon as of a higher rank than monarchical bishops and other bishops of smaller churches. These were called metropolitan bishops. Eventually, five churches were considered to be the most important of all in the Christian world: Jerusalem (Israel), Antioch (Syria), Alexandria (Egypt), Constantinople (Turkey), and Rome (Italy). The bishops of these cities became known as Patriarchs. Rome was in the western and Latin part of the Roman Empire, and the remaining four cities were in the eastern and Greek part of the Empire. Because Rome was considered the first city in the Empire, the churches in both the East and West looked to the authority of the bishop in Rome. The bishop of Rome eventually was called the pope (the Latin word for “father”). The church over which he ruled came to be known as the Roman Catholic Church.[11]
In time the Roman Catholic Church adopted the belief in papal supremacy, an anti-biblical extreme belief and false teaching that stands at the pinnacle of the episcopal government hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Referring to the doctrine of Papal Supremacy the Roman Catholic Catechism (religious instruction) notes in paragraph 882, “the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.”[12]
In the centuries to come Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria were conquered and ruled by pagans and lost their position and influence over the Christian world. Only Constantinople would survive and become Rome’s counterpart in the East, the Eastern Orthodox Church. For centuries this tenuous and tension-filled relationship continued until the Great Schism of 1054 when a complete separation occurred between the two great branches of the Christian faith.
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In Part III, our examination of the seven periods of church history will continue with the third and fourth periods—Pergamum and Thyatira.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 14.
[2] Ibid., p. 18.
[3} Ibid., p. 15.
[4] Ibid., pp. 15-16.
[5] Ibid., pp. 17-18.
[6] Ibid., pp. 16, 18
[7] Ibid., p. 17
[8] Ibid., pp. 18-19.
[9] Ibid., pp. 19-21.
[10] Ibid., p. 21.
[11] Ibid., pp. 39, 41-42.
[12] “Papal Supremacy in the Bible and Church Fathers,” Catholic Faith and Reason, https://www.catholicfaithandreason.org/papal-supremacy-in-the-bible-and-church-fathers.html (accessed August 22,
2021).
