Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Christian Restorationist Theology

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 Theological Journal 19, no. 1
(March 1, 1984): 23-32. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed
December 1, 2014).
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, no. 3: 292-
296. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 2, 2014).
Littell, Franklin H. "A pattern of religious primitivism." Union Seminary Quarterly Review 1, no. 3
(March 1, 1946): 22-25. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 1, 2014).
Strickland, Michael. "Revising the ancient faith: primitivism, the Gospel of Thomas, and Christian
beginnings." Restoration Quarterly 49, no. 4 (January 1, 2007): 217-227. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 2, 2014).
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.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11Karl Koop “Reading Tradition through Catholic Lenses,” 130.
12 Franklin H. Littell “Pattern of Christian Primitivism,” 23.
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.
14 Ibid., 24.
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.
17 Yoder “Primitivism in the Racial Reformation: Strengths and Weaknesses,” 74-75.
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), .
29 Koop “Reading Tradition through Catholic Lenses,” 131.
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.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Everything I write is intended to be part of a conversation, even prayers are conversation with God if we take time to listen. These are beginning thoughts, please join me in the conversation.