Daily Archives: June 24, 2009

Early Christianity and Social Reality

Posted by on June 24, 2009 9 comments

Again from Kaye’s superb book on conflict in the church:

We observe in early Christianity that existing social connections and priorities are in a state of flux and are being changed. The absolute claims  of Jesus’s lordship cut across existing patterns for social and personal order. The immediate result is to introduce new patterns of diversity and difference within the newly constituted community of the churches. The early Christian reality was that the gospel, universal in its scope and address and yet demanding a personal and living response, laid the foundations of a rich profusion of local diversity and cosmic belonging. (p. 24)

Or, to put it in different terms, what we see in the unfolding of the church recounted in the New Testament is the irruptive happening of catholicity itself in diverse and particular contexts. The event of catholicity is, thus, an event that is at once subversive of existing social conventions and generative of new possibilities for human life and community.

Love, Conflict, and Church Order

Posted by on June 24, 2009 1 comment

Ran across a quote I found interesting in a book I’m proofreading the other day on Paul’s correspondence in 1 Corinthians about church order:

Paul does not settle a question of disorder or division with a form of order or an organizational structure. Rather he underlines the diversity of contribution by naming it as a gift from the risen Christ. He leaves open the full effect of that variety according to the core principle of love. Love is more abiding than faith and hope, it is certainly more fundamental than arrangements of order. This is extraordinarily high risk in group dynamic terms. In theological terms, it is a stunning assertion of confidence in the creative ordering of divine presence.

The quote is taken from Conflict and the Practice of Christian Faith by Bruce Kaye, p. 16-17 (forthcoming from Cascade Books).

I think it is a pretty important point on the issue of the meaning and function of church order, at least insofar as we seek to have the apostolic witness of the New Testament inform such issues in our own context. Here Paul sounds remarkably Johannine, lacking even a hint of what would later come to be called Petrine in his recommendations for dealing with conflict in the church.

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