by Jim » Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:49 pm
I’m no scholar but I think Christ mentioned the church on only a couple of occasions, both recorded in Matthew 16 and 18, the first time to perhaps establish the universal church and the second to indicate the need for a local congregation of sorts. Church polity, if any, for him seemed to be left to the participants. Paul or Peter would have been expected, it seems, to establish the structure of the local church but aside from naming such leaders as elders and deacons, preachers, etc., didn’t seem to say much about how all of it fitted together. Folks disagreed over matters of doctrine even then, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they banded their congregations into various groupings for whatever purpose, such as Paul’s lifting of an offering from some churches to help others. Denominations were bound to arise if only because of the disagreements…same as today.
Institutionalizing the faith seems understandable on both the abstract (theological) and tangible (organizational) bases, each probably always impacting the other. People who don’t get along are not as likely to do “good works” as people who do. Churches that are gung-ho on local autonomy can find a denomination amenable to that approach, while churches feeling safer within a hierarchical system can find a home in which they are agreeable to being told what’s what. There are advantages both ways. It seems that Christ was willing to leave the nuts-and-bolts to the believers, since if he had wanted he could have established a one-fits-all pattern. In a way, I wish he had. Perhaps he didn’t because freedom of choice was inherent in mankind from the beginning, put there by God. Or…perhaps he just wasn’t aware of what would happen down the line, sort of bringing up the question of what God knows and when he knows it.