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Suggested
Solutions
ANCIENT PRECEDENT
The church of the Apostolic Age was a
church in unity. Somehow we must recapture the secret of
their organization and unity. It had all the advantages of
denominationalism without any of its defects.
For instance: The apostolic church commanded the
loyalty of universal Christendom quite as successfully as
any modern denomination can win the devotion of its own
members. That church guarded the gospel truth just as
effectually without human creeds, and preached the truth
quite as successfully as any modern confessional communion
can. The discipline of the Apostolic Church was quite as
efficient, and the lines of demarcation between it and the
world as clearly drawn, as if it had availed itself of the
corporation organization of a modern denomination.
And yet the apostolic church had no human creeds. It
had no canon law of the church. In fact it had no book of
discipline of any kind; nor had it even a church book in
which to keep record of its membership. Even the apostles
themselves were not rulers in the sense that modern
bishops and church officials are; for they had no scrap of
paper to certify the* authority. The people simply obeyed
them entirely out of moral suasion. They had faith in them
and loved them; and consequently were easily persuaded to
do whatever they asked them.
The claim of modern bishops to rule by the transferred
authority of the apostles is such a complete surrender of
official power that it is amusing to any student of
history. Beyond doubt the apostles had authority—more
than any other men who ever lived, except the Master
himself. But it simply was not the same kind of authority
as that of modern church officials. Of that kind of
authority they had much less than that of a country
circuit rider in the hills of Arkansas. The circuit rider
has the authority vested in him by the Conference—an
authority which the civil government will uphold to the
utmost limit of his legal and official prerogative as an
official in a corporation legally organized by the law of
the land. Every student of history knows that the
apostles— not even Peter himself—had a shred of such
authority.
I shall be told that they had, nevertheless,
ecclesiastical authority as officials of the young
organization. Again I must deny that they had one shred of
the ecclesiastical authority exercised by modern bishops.
Anybody who knows anything about it knows that the bishops
exercise authority by virtue of the fact that they are
chosen or appointed or elected to official places in a
humanly organized corporation. And their powers are given
and strictly defined by the canons or book of discipline
of that corporation.
The apostles had none of this. Only one of them was
even elected as an apostle; and he was never heard of
again. It is true Christ appointed the rest of them as
apostles; but they had no certificates to show for it.
Moreover, they would have been worthless, officially, if
they had, because this church was no legal corporation. It
was not a legal entity in the view of the law. It had no
record-book, no creed, and no book of discipline. And even
if it had had all these, they still would have had no such
authority as modern bishops; for Christ himself gave them
no authority to rule, in the official sense.
Officially the apostles were just in the position of
tramp preachers, who are said by officials to have no
authority. The apostles had power—the power of the Holy
Ghost. They could persuade people to do things; and
persuade them more effectively than others were able to
do. That was their authority—the only legitimate
authority in the kingdom of God.
These are patent facts of history, too well
authenticated to be denied. The only answer that can be
made to them is the following: The apostolic church was
merely in the infant stage of its development then. It can
no more go back to that now than a man can go back to his
childhood. The church of the twentieth century has grown
up and developed more complex features and organizations.
To this the answer is: The Christendom of today does
not represent a logical and normal development of the
faith and ideals of the church of the first centuries.
Suppose the case of a healthy child who grows up and
becomes afflicted with rheumatism or palsy. When the
doctor comes he asks for a short life history. The family
tell him that the man was healthy as a child; and now he
wants to become healthy again as he was then. Will the
doctor draw back in astonishment and assure them that it
is impossible to restore him to his childhood again?
Certainly he cannot be restored to his childhood in all
respects, but it is very much to be desired that he may be
restored to the condition of his childhood so far as his
health is concerned.
Those who ridicule the idea of the church going back
into her infantile state again ought to consider the
indicated normal development of the church. Viewed in that
light it may appear that the church is less developed than
she was as a child. The church of the twentieth century
ought to be a wiser, more powerful, more efficient, more
spiritual, and more unified church, with higher and finer
moral ideals, more widely held and more fully realized
than the church of the first century. Who is optimist
enough to assert that this is the case,
Instead of that she suffers from a disease which
sometimes threatens to bring her death—the disease of
division. To get rid of that she will surely have to go
back to the sane and simple health rules of her happy
childhood. For her the prescription reads: Less
artificiality, more spiritual nature; less human law, more
of the Spirit of Christ; less human organization, more of
the divine freedom of the Holy Ghost.
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