The following is an essay I wrote for my Systematic Theology Class at CMU. I only post my essays after I get my grades back so there isn't a chance of mistakingly being charged with plagiarism. As I get more grades back I will post more of my essays from this term.
Christian
Restorationist Theology:
Critiques
and Learning
Tim
Wenger
BTS
5780
Karl
Koop
08-12-2014
Introduction
As
the church seeks a faithful response to the problems of today, some
within it seek to look to the early church for the necessary answers.
This belief is called restorationism. This essay outlines what
restorationism is and how it developed over the course of history. It
will focus in on Anabaptist restorationism1
but will also touch on other historical and contemporary forms of
restorationism. Restorationsim throughout history teaches us the
importance of where we come from, but it is also important to
remember that other groups have arrived at different points through
similar processes and we must learn from each other.
The
Concept of Restorationism
In
an age when there are so many different
claims on the truth, it is hard to know who to trust. There is often
a perceived need to find a source of authority for our beliefs and
actions that extends beyond ourselves. One of these sources of
authority is the early church. It is easy to see that the church
today and the church in the first century are very different. One
response to this is called restorationism.
Restorationism
is the attempt to bring the church back to the original state (two
closely related terms are restitutionism and primitivism, for the
simplicity of the essay, I will just be using the term
Restorationism). The belief is that the early church represented a
“Golden Age” where it was what it should be. However, there must
have been some sort of fall to explain why we do not share the wanted
characteristics with the early church. Generally the fall is dated to
three Centuries later, when Constantine turned Christianity into the
official religion of the Roman Empire because true Christianity, with
its emphasis on love, non-violence voluntarism is not compatible with
the basic needs of an empire which uses military force to coerce
compliance.2
Restorationism is the attempt to recover the beliefs or practices
lost in the fall3.
It is important to note that there must be some sort of fall/ loss
within the restorationist framework. Without a loss, there is no
reason to “get back” to the original church.4
Historical
Roots of Restorationism.
This
understanding that the early church represents something more pure
than the church is presently is something that has been understood
for a long time. Even before the traditional restorationist fall at
Constantine, Clement of Rome (circa 96 CE) thought that the earliest
christianity was the purest. He wrote “The apostles received the
gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ... having therefore received
their commands... they went forth in the assurance of the Holy
Spirit, preaching the good news that the kingdom of God is coming...
[T]hey appointed their first converts, testing them by the Spirit, to
be Bishops and deacons for the future believers.”5
This view that the early church was pure can be seen throughout
christian history until the 19th century.
According to Littell, it is
possible to see interpretations of history narrated in terms of
Golden Age, Fall and Restitution in church history. Early church
fathers blended this narrative (which can be understood as coming
from pagan philosophy) with their understanding of church history.
Tertullian saw Nature as being normative, with those who worked with
their hands in the fields and in workshops having “primordial
knowledge” while the philosophers and academics are lacking it.
Similarly for Tertullian, the simple early church has authority in
its beliefs and actions, but overtime fell to corruption.6
For
Lactantius, “philosophy” was a recent invention, while an inborn
knowledge of truth was lost at the tree of knowledge. St. Ambrose
locates the Fall with when private property was instituted. St
Gregory wanted to return to an “adamic state of brotherhood,
communism and peace” and criticized those who thought philosophy
more important than other simpler lives.7
These
understandings led to attempts to return to the Golden age, such as
early monasticism which emphasized “pious-anti-intellectualism and
a cultivation of the innocence of the child like mind. Pacifism,
communism, celibacy... simple living.”8
This
belief in wanting to get back to a pure church led to the development
in the Middle Ages of a new myth of a lost tribe somewhere in Asia or
Africa that had come to a near-christian faith through intuition as a
critique of the overly-speculative nature of Medieval Christianity,
as well as a protest to Papal and Byzantinian power.9
Joachim
of Fiore (circa 1190 CE), Transformed this understanding of Golden
Age, Fall and Restoration through his three dispensations of history
ending in a fulfilled apocalypse, rather than a previous periodizing
of history put forward by Augustine. For Joachim of Fiore, after the
fall there were three ages, the first age, the Age of the Father, was
during the old covenant where legalism ruled via prophets and judges,
the second age, Age of the Son of the institutional church ruled by
grace, and a third age that was soon to come of perfect freedom, the
Age of the Spirit, where the humble would be lifted up, the old Roman
church would fall and a new leader would rise up.10
According
to Karl Koop, It was also visible in the High Middle ages in the
“Spiritual Franciscans, Waldensians, Apostolic Brethren, along with
strong papal supporters like Bernard Clairvaux” who recognized
significant problems in the Catholic Church from early on.11
Restorationist
Anabaptism
Some
of the most prominent restorationists in history are from the Radical
Reformation. They viewed the early church as having a strong emphasis
on pacifism, if they wanted to be true Christians, like the early
church, they needed to be “defenceless and martyred... the way of
the church from Christ to Constantine.”12
These Anabaptists,13
blamed Constantine for the fall because it was with Constantine where
Christianity moved from being a religion of voluntarism, to the
religion of the state. At Constantine, the church was given power to
force others to follow it, where it was previously the persecuted
church it had become the persecuting church. As such, the Anabaptists
wanted to restore to restore the church to it's pre-constantinian
nature. 14
According
to John Howard Yoder, other radicals viewed the fall as occurring
elsewhere in history. For some it was the events in Eden; the
Levellers opposed class distinctions because in Genesis 2 there are
not any. Flemish Anabaptists were accused of taking of their clothes
in their services as a symbol of Adam and Eve's Innocence.15
These
Anabaptists broke away from both the Catholics and Magisterial
Reformers (who were sometimes called “halfway men” due to the
fact that they would not continue their reformation of the church to
include separation of church and state), and formed free
congregations with strong emphases on pacifism and church discipline
to keep the church pure.16
It
is important to recognize that a label like restorationist or
primitivist is something that we have placed on the radicals through
the lenses of history. As John Howard Yoder points out, the radicals
would not have claimed this as part of their identity, however, the
inverse is true as well, the Catholic and Magisterial Reformers would
not have thought it wrong to hold to restorationism. Applying these
terms to the early anabaptists merely recognizes that they have a
stronger orientation towards a beginning that their contemporaries
did not.17
In
fact all Christians in the 16th would have claimed biblical authority
for their positions. Luther argued from Paul's presentation of the
Gospel, while Catholics arguing for apostolic succession and their
ability to develop their theology would also quote scripture.18
Even spiritualists like Sebastian Franck and Kaspar Schwenkfeld, who
downplayed following the bible literally sought to prove their point
with scripture.19
John
Wesley the Restorationist
A
non-anabaptist who was heavily influenced by restorationist thinking
was John Wesley. John Keefer highlights how in Wesley's life and
founding of the Methodist Church, a lot of his motivation is to
recapture something from the early church that was missing in his
age. John Wesley's father, himself a priest in the church of England,
taught Wesley to look at the Patristics to understand the apostles'
writings in bible. When Wesley was attended Oxford, he was able to
read many of the Pastristics' writings.20
As
students, he and his brother Charles founded “The Holy Club,” a
group dedicated to recreating the early church via modelling itself
after what it read in Acts 2 and 4, practising a community of goods,
and a strong emphasis on prayer, fasting and participating in the
Lord's Supper.21
Towards
the end of his time at Oxford, Wesley's attention was turned by the
Non-jurors towards the ecclesiastical tradition. His attention moved
towards recreating the liturgical and sacramental aspects recorded in
the “Apostolic Constitutions” and “Apostolic Canons” because
he viewed them as teaching authentic Apostolic teachings on church
order.22
However, when he tried to be a missionary in Georgia he was supremely
rejected.
Later
Wesley attended a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate street, where he had
a profound religious experience, and his connection to the early
church: Conversion as a work of the Holy Spirit. Aldersgate changed
Wesley's restorationism “from ecclesiology to soteriology”.23
As
he and his brother developed Methodism, he believed that they were
bringing back apostolic faith. He believed that he had overvalued
apostolic church practices previously, and instead needed to be
dynamic and willing to allow the Holy Spirit to lead them to develop
practices that fit their own cultural situation. As such the
Methodist's practices of “watchnight and lovefeast services, their
practice of discipline, their charities, and the foundation of the
schools” were themselves expressions of Apostolic faith within a
different culture.24
Wesley believed that the Methodist church was very close to bringing
in a new age of Apostolic faith, and yet he also recognized the
“mystery of iniquity,” that the church continuously requires
salvation.25
When John Wesley was buried, part of his tombstone read:
This Great Light arose
(By the singular Providence of
God)
To enlighten THESE Nations,
And to revive, enforce, and
defend
The Pure, Apostolical Doctrines
and Practices of
The PRIMITIVE CHURCH:
Which he continued to do, by his
Writings and his Labors,
For more than Half a Century.26
Continuations
in Anabaptist Restorationist
After
the reformation, Anabaptist restorationist theology had a significant
change. As it is said, history repeats itself, and the religious zeal
of the Early Anabaptists seems to have tapered off over the
centuries. When Thielman J. van Braght wrote The Martyr's Mirror
in 1660, he was a Mennonite
Elder in Holland. There was a conflict
at the time called The Lammerenkrijgh, (or the War of the Lambs),
whereby there were two camps, a more conservative side that retained
the old belief in there being a faithful, true, visible church, and a
more liberal side that was
associated with the Colliagiants.27
Van Braght was on the
conservative
side and wrote The Martyr's Mirror
as an appeal that there has always been a visible church, and calling
the liberal side back to them. In
it there are many stories of Christian Martyrs giving their lives for
the faith through the ages, then the second, larger section is
stories of the Early Anabaptists being persecuted and dying for their
beliefs.28
As Karl Koop says “One
of the primary intentions of the... Martyr's Mirror... was to show
that the Anabaptists, rather than Catholic or Protestants,
exhibited the marks of true Christianity though their practice of
believers baptism and experience of martyrdom.”29
Similarly,
John Howard
Yoder notices a trend, that for descendants of the Anabaptists,
today's Mennonites and Hutterites, it is important to not only try to
get back to the early church, but also to restoring to the early
Anabaptist movement. Paradoxically, the Anabaptists
who were once radicals, now represent
the old faith that we are trying to recover.30
However, Yoder challenges an understanding of an Anabaptist fall as
occuring because they were weak or failed, but rather the need to
recover their original mission is because of “the community's
missionary aggressiveness”. Because Mennonites have spread their
faith so far, it is necessary to recall the community back to faith.31
The
Modern Restorationist Movement
There
continues to be restorationist theology present in North American
congregations. One of the foremost groups calling themselves the
Restorationist Movement includes denominations such as the Churches
of Christ. According to B.J. Humble the early leaders viewed the
mainstream denominations (ironically including the methodists) as
being tied too much to their creeds. Because their confessions of
faith had too much authority in determining who was a part of the
denomination and who was not, these leaders left their denominations32
and eventually began the restoration movement based on the principle
of “be [ing] the New Testament church today.”33
Humble
uses a hypothetical story to illustrate why they believe that they
should do this:
Imagine
that a collector finds a rare book detailing a civic club that
existed in London four hundred years ago. This book included their
constitution and all of the relevant details about their organization
and purpose. Recognizing this club's purpose of serving others,
similar to the Knights of Columbus, or Rotary clubs, and realizing
that there are so many causes that need support, the collector might
think that it would be exciting to try to recreate this club today so
it could attend to these needs since this book has all of the
information necessary for doing this. If they could restore this
civic club, why not the church of the New Testament?34
In
the following part of the paper, I will examine some potential
critiques of Restorationism.
Is
There Something to go back to?
As mentioned previously for the
first 18 centuries of Christian history, there was a pretty
homogenous view of the spread of Christianity. Michael Strickland
writes that as early as Clement of Rome, it was understood that Jesus
told the apostles the gospels who then, empowered by the Holy Spirit
went out preaching the gospel and made converts who eventually became
the bishops and deacons.35
Heretics were seen as later perversions of the earlier true message.36
However, within the last two
hundred years or so, there have been growing critiques that challenge
the idea of a pure early church. The Bauer thesis, supposes that
“orthodoxy” does not necessarily mean that it came straight from
God, but rather the opinions of the church in Rome. Heresies from
other geographical areas are, according to the Bauer thesis, actually
how Christianity developed in those areas from the beginning. To
demonstrate this, one only has to look at the differences in theology
that already existed as early as the second century in such different
areas as Egypt, Crete, and Rome.37
Further development of this thesis by Ehrman goes that the
“proto-orthodox” eventually won for four reasons:
They claimed that their version
was rooted in the Old Testament; they rejected Jewish practices in
order to be universally accessible; they had a strong hierarchy,
which later developed the canon; and finally that they communicated
with each other in a concerted effort to become the world wide
official version of the church.38
This hypothesis, along with an early dating of texts like the Gospel
of Thomas which show different interpretations of Jesus' life
question whether or not the Church of the New Testament actually is
an historical reality.
However, it should be pointed
out that in recent years, the Gospel of Thomas has been given a
second century dating by many scholars, and that the Baurer Thesis,
while it gives a legitimate questioning of a simplistic reading of
New Testament and demonstrating the variety seen in early
Christianity, has had many of its presuppositions questioned by
scholars.39
Is
there something worth going back to?
Historical
questions aside, there is a question about whether or not the early
church is in fact something that we should emulate. Even within the
New Testament Canon itself there are significant reasons why we
should question whether or not the early church is as pure as it is
made out to be. First of all, in the gospels the apostles are not
portrayed as being the most intelligent. Repeatedly they are shown to
not understand Jesus' message. One moment Peter is confessing Jesus
as the Christ,40
the very next paragraph Jesus has to say to Peter “Get behind me,
Satan” because Peter doesn't understand the nature of the suffering
Christ.41
James and John ask Jesus if they can sit on either side of Jesus when
he comes into his kingdom resulting in conflict between the
disciples.42
Even
if the argument is given that these are pre-pentecost examples of the
disciples, and as such do not count as the early church, there are
many examples of the early church having problems too. Repeatedly in
Paul's writings he mentions conflicts in the church. Paul refers to a
time when Peter refused to eat with the gentiles because it was
unclean to do so. Paul challenged Peter arguing that the gentiles
should not have to follow the law.43
Later in the same letter Paul expresses his frustratation with those
who want to make the gentiles follow the Law, by saying that he
wishes they should continue what they started at their circumcision
and cut off the rest of their penises.44,45
And it is not just Paul, even the author of the book of Revelation
has problems with the church in Laodicea, calling them lukewarm
because they do not realize how much help they need from God.46
Is
it possible to go back to back to them?
Even
if the Early church is worth going back to, it is also important to
note that within restorationism, there is an underlying belief in the
possibility of human perfection. The internal narrative is that the
early church was nearly perfect and the Constantinian shift (or
whatever historical point is labelled as the fall in the specific
case) has drastically altered the church, but if the contemporary
church can just reclaim what was lost by emulating the early church
then the church would be very close to perfection.47
But
is this even a realistic goal? Is the purpose of Christianity to
become perfect? Or have we fallen too far to recover? It is easy to
accuse restorationism as supporting a works-righteousness theology.
If the belief is that we need to recover the early church to save the
church, then it neglects the fact that salvation, individually as
well as corporately, rests in Christ. The accounts in Revelation 19
and Matthew 25 of the last days both recount that Jesus/ the Son of
Man must come back in order to bring about the kingdom of God. It is
not something the church can do.
Restorationism
hurts relationships
Implicit
in restorationist theology is that those who are not restorationists
must be wrong. Karl Koop argues that this is untenable. Christians
are always rooted in theological, cultural and historical issues that
impact that impact how one views the world. However, Koop argues that
Christians need to view the world through “catholic lenses” that
encourage them to consider themselves part of the communion of the
saints globally throughout history.48
Van
Braght's Martyr's Mirror
which was written, at least partially, to demonstrate that the
Anabaptists exhibit true christianity, in line with the early church
as opposed to the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions
demonstrates this
assumption that all other beliefs are wrong.49
According to Koop, it neglects the possibility that the Holy Spirit
is able to work through the fallen church. A more faithful church
will allow for a multiplicity of ideas, allowing for other faith
traditions to represent God's Truth.50
Where
to go from here?
Throughout
this essay, I have tried to explain Restorationism, how it is a
continuation of idea that was present before the early Anabaptists,
as well as present in the church afterwards. I then presented some
critiques about Restorationism.
Restoration
does in fact have some legitimate strengths. Even if the early church
of history and reported in the bible didn't exist the way we thought
it did, or wasn't as pure as we thought it was, there is still
something to to be gained from restorationism. Restorationism looks
back in time in order to develop a grand narrative that explains
where the church is going. This is good, however, as Karl Koop
suggests, instead of focusing on just the early church, and perhaps a
faithful remnant through history, we should look with discerning eyes
at all members of the community of saints, and by studying their
traditions try to gather a broader understanding of what it means to
be Christian. Mennonites, who learned the importance of voluntarism
and pacifism from the early church, can look to other historical
restorationists such as the Methodists to understand the importance
of salvation that they learned from the early church. Members of
older congregations, can learn from the members of today's
Restorationist Movement's critique of the denominational structure
with its overly bureaucratic and systematized faith, while
denominations like the Churches of Christ need to recognize that when
the entire focus is on the early church, they neglect the traditions
that they are rooted in. They have removed the roots that ground them
in the Christian faith.
Restorationism
seeks to ground itself in the story of the early church, its
adherents should also seek to understand the historical developments
that led the global church to where it it. While some of it may be
problematic, there is almost two thousand years of Christians asking
the same questions, and coming up with different answers. It is
important to not throw any of these perspectives away, even if they
do not reflect the realities of today's context.
Bibliography
Hughes,
Richard T., “The Meaning of The Restoration Vision” in The
Primitive Church in the Modern
World, edited
by Richard Hughes, ix-xvii. Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1995.
Keefer,
Luke L. "John Wesley : disciple of early Christianity." Wesleyan
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no. 1
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1, 1984): 23-32. ATLA
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Koop, Karl.
“Reading Tradition through Catholic Lenses: Moving Beyond
Restorationism,” in New Perspectives in Believers Church
Ecclesiology, edited by Abe
Dueck, Helmut Harder and & Karl Koop, 125-142. Winnipeg: CMU
Press, 2010.
Littell,
Franklin H. 1959. "Christian primitivism : a historical
summary." Encounter 20,
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296. ATLA
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Franklin H. "A pattern of religious primitivism." Union
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Michael. "Revising the ancient faith: primitivism, the Gospel of
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beginnings." Restoration
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Yoder,
John Howard. “Primitivism in the Racial Reformation: Strengths and
Weaknesses” in The
Primitive
Church in the Modern World, edited
by Richard Hughes, 74-97.
Chicago: University
of
Illinois
Press, 1995.
Zijpp,
Nanne van der. Global Anabaptist Enclyopedia Online,
“Lammerenkrijgh.” 1959.
http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Lammerenkrijgh&oldid=111295.
1This
bias is mostly because it is within my Mennonite context that I have
personal experience with restorationism.
2Franklin
Littell, “A Pattern of Religious Primitivism” Union
Seminary Quarterly Review 1,
no. 3 (1946): 24, ATLA Religion Database with ATLA
Serials, EBSCOHOST.
3Karl
Koop, “Reading Tradition through Catholic Lenses: Moving Beyond
Restorationism,” in New Perspectives in Believers Church
Ecclesiology, ed.Abe Dueck,
Helmut Harder and & Karl Koop (Winnipeg: CMU Press, 2010),
126.
4Richard
T. Hughes, “The Meaning of The Restoration Vision” in The
Primitive Church in the Modern World, ed.
Richard Hughes (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1995), x.
5Michael,
Strickland, “Revising the Ancient Faith: Primitivism, the Gospel
of Thomas and Christian Beginnings..” Restoration Quarterly
49, no. 4(2007): 217-218, ATLA Religion Database
with ATLA Serials, EBSCOhost.
6
Franklin
H. Littell, “Christian Primitivism: a Historical Summary.” in
Encounter
20,
no. 3: 293
Atla
Religion Database with AtlaSerials, Ebscohost.
9
Ibid.
11Karl
Koop “Reading Tradition through Catholic Lenses,” 130.
13I
understand the difficulty of using the term Anabaptist to refer to
a monolithic movement. In this case, I am using the term because
Franklin Littell uses it, as I use other sources with more specific
definitions, they will be included.
15John
Howard Yoder “Primitivism in the Racial Reformation: Strengths and
Weaknesses” in The Primitive Church in the Modern World, ed.
Richard Hughes (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1995), 75.
16
Littell “A Pattern of Christian Primitivism, ”24.
18
Ibid., 75.
19
Ibid.
20
Luke L Keefer, “John Wesley: Disciple of Early Christianity.”
Weslyeyan Theological Journal 19,
no. 1 (1984): 23-24, ATLA RELIGION Database with ATLASerials,
EBSCOHOST.
21
Ibid., 24.
22
Ibid.
23Ibid.,
25.
24
Ibid., 26.
25
Ibid., 30.
26
Ibid., 23.
27
Nanne van der Zijpp
. “Lammerenkrijgh.” in Global
Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online.
(1959) http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Lammerenkrijgh&oldid=111295.
28Thieleman
J. Van Braght, Martyrs Mirror: The Story of Seventeen Centuries
of Christian
Martyrdom,
From the time of Christ to A.D. 1660. trans.
Joseph F. Sohm 2nd
ed,. (Waterloo,
On: Herald Press, 1938), .
30Yoder
“Primitivism in the Racial Reformation: Strengths and weaknesses,”
76.
31
Ibid., 79-80.
32Bill
J. Humble,
"What is the Restoration Movement?." Restoration
Quarterly 22,
no. 1-2 (1979):13, ATLA
Religion Database with ATLASerials,
EBSCOhost.
33
Ibid.,
14.
34
Ibid.
35
Strickland, “Revising the Ancient Faith,” 217-218.
36
Ibid., 221.
37Ibid.,
222.
38Ibid.,
224.
39Ibid.,
224.
40Mark
8:29 English Standard Version.
41Mark
8:31-33 ESV.
42Mark
10:35-45 ESV.
43Galatians
2 ESV.
44Galatians
5:12 ESV.
45I
may be a little hyperbolic in my reading of this, but, depending on
the translation, the words castration or emasculating are actually
used.
46Revelation
2:14-18 ESV.
47
Littell,“Christian
Primitivism: a Historical Summary.”
292-3
48Koop,
“Reading Tradition through Catholic Lenses,”
127.
49Ibid.,
131
50Ibid.,
136.
