Only partially in response to the United Methodist Church's General Conference on homosexuality, I have been asking myself a lot recently what the definition of Church is. What holds a group of people together in what we call a church? What should hold a group of people together in what we call a church? Most importantly, what is the purpose of what we call Church?
The way I read Christian history, we seem to have defined Church for the past thousand years or more as the arbiter of truth. Personally I have a great respect for the Roman Catholic Church, its theology and practices, but it's hard not to see our thinking of Church as 'arbiter of truth' implied in Rome's responses to the Protestant movement over time. Luther did not question whether the Church should be the arbiter of truth but rather whether Rome had veered away from truth. Obviously, then, Rome did not respond well to Luther's attempts at reform, instead attacking him as a mere nobody: "How can you think you know truth more than our established institution?" Skipping over a few hundred years, Rome then decided that the Pope is infallible. Whatever the Pope decides is indeed the word of God made manifest in our world, is truth.
Over and over again the Protestant response to Rome has accepted, it seems to me, the concept of Church as arbiter of truth. I can think of only a few movements since 1700 in the Western world that have questioned that definition: Methodism and Pentecostalism. But both those movements eventually transformed into truth movements. I argue this mostly because what I hear from people who attend other Protestant denominations, as well as many Catholics, is that different churches aren't actually different. "Essentially, the worship and sermons are the same," I hear from people, and worship and preaching appear to be the only elements of church life that define a church.
My question is, should the Church be an or the arbiter of truth? By arbiter of truth I mean an organization that determines for its adherents what to believe, what is right, how to behave, and what practices to follow. By arbiter of truth I include both orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice). Typically those who emphasize orthopraxis think they are far and above those who emphasize orthodoxy, but essentially the two are the same. Both claim to know how Christians are to be formed by the truth that is God.
That, though, seems to be the important, often missed point, that God is truth. God, then, is the arbiter of truth, for God is truth. To say that the Church is the arbiter of truth in light of God is to say that the Church is truth. There are those who may make such an argument, Stanley Hauerwas among them perhaps, but if the Church is truth in any form then we should all be Roman Catholic. If the Church is truth then there can only be one church, one expression, and we should therefore work together as one body to find, as one body, what the truth is. The history of Catholicism as well as Protestantism has proven how misguided such a notion is. We are clearly clueless as to what or how truth should be expressed in a church. How many Protestant denominations are there? Look it up. It's an insane number. Catholics are clearly still figuring it out, too. Methodists and other denominations struggling with major questions like homosexuality in the church are, then, also misguided when attempting to make decisions based on the true way of believing or the true way of practicing. If God is truth, then the Church must be something else.
Without referencing every scripture passage in the New Testament regarding the church, ekklesia, I'll pick out a few that, in my reading of the Bible, are representative of what the Church is meant to be. In no particular order, we should think of Jesus's encouraging the disciples and the early church in how to interact well with each other in Matthew 18, in which he says that he is present where two or more are gathered in his name; as well as Jesus's teaching his disciples that if people exorcising demons are not against them, then they're for them; and then Paul's admonitions to collect money for the poor and widows in Jerusalem as the body of Christ. At the outset of what we call Christianity, the Church had nothing to do with order, belief, or practice. Believers should be new creatures in Christ but, otherwise, were connected by a spirit of support and prayer. In that spirit of support and prayer the believers, as the body, should keep their minds on the end goal of spreading the good news about the kingdom of God. Nothing should separate us from that.
Certainly, we can point to a number of texts in which the Church is concerned with order and orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Those texts, though, chronologically, occur much later. As Yoder would wonder, not all tradition is necessarily equal. The tradition of Jesus and his disciples, how they understood the life and message, matters most. To them, it's clear that one's personal, subjective relation to the truth, the truth that is Christ, is our one and only arbiter of truth--new creatures in Christ. Truth can only be known between the individual and the Truth. Otherwise, truth cannot be known. We know truth when we have been transformed, and that only.
If an individual person is the arbiter of truth as evidenced in his or her transformation in and through Christ, then the Church's role is to provide prayer, support, and accountability for each individual to find truth and live in that truth, which is Jesus. And, more, to uplift one another in such a way as to express truth in one's individual living so that others may come to appropriately use her or his own arbitration of truth. The Church, then, should not be divided along orthodoxy or orthopraxy faults; or along faults of worship, either. Rather, the Church should be united in concern for discipleship. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Church should be one, but that we should not be worried about divisions if our divisions do not interfere with discipleship, with our living person by person in the truth, transformed by the truth that is Jesus.
Thinking of the Church in this way could help us put away our petty issues and instead focus on Christ--Christ in our life, as the truth of our being, and Christ for others, as the only truth worth following, so that we can pray for and support one another.
This is, in a Methodist sense, what scriptural Christianity is (I refer you to Wesley's sermon, "Scriptural Christianity"). Scriptural Christianity and holiness are defined not by agreement with doctrinal standards supposedly derived from the Bible but by the love and grace infused into us by the Holy Spirit through faith. Questions about "biblical truth" on issues non-essential to salvation, as in homosexuality, abortion, marijuana, democracy, etc. are misguided. Rather, biblical truth can only refer to whether an individual is alive with the Spirit witnessed by the fruits of love and justice. Scriptural Christianity and holiness ask, "Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ? Search your heart, be convicted by Christ's life and model, and follow him alone."
As people of the Church, then, we should wonder together, "What does it matter if we have truth but do not have love? What does it matter if my so-called denomination has stuck together in unity but does not have love? What does it matter if Christianity has retained its traditions but does not have love? Heretofore we have wrongly defined scriptural Christianity and holiness and, therefore, do not even know what Church is, let alone Methodism.
Our Church, and especially the spirit of Methodism intended to re-enliven Christians everywhere, should be a body of prayer and support to keep alive the flame of the Holy Spirit, of true scriptural Christianity and holiness: discipleship of Christ, and that alone.
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