Eclectic Thoughts on Autonomy by Bob Craycraft

ECLECTIC THOUGHTS ON AUTONOMY

I. What we do or don’t do as Christians can result from a number of influences:

a. The Scriptures specifically command us to do it.

b. The Scriptures specifically prohibit us from doing it.

c. An example of something appears in Scripture, with no instruction to do it or not do it.

d. The Scriptures are entirely silent.

i. With respect to autonomy, the Scriptures are almost entirely silent.

ii. If anything, item “c” above applies. To draw conclusions about autonomy, we must study the Scriptures, identify the early Christians’ practices, and draw some conclusions.

II. In certain respects, autonomy may not have been as much of a choice as it was a given (at least in the earliest years of the church).

a. It was a given due to the geography of the churches and the lack of timely communication.

b. It was a given since nothing to the contrary was being taught by the apostles.

III. The word “autonomy” or anything like it does not appear in Scripture, so there’s no “biblical” definition of the word.

a. In Webster’s dictionary, the noun “autonomy” is not a primary listing.

b. The primary listing is the adjective, “autonomous”, with autonomy the noun and autonomously the adverb appearing after that.

c. The dictionary definition of autonomous is “having the right or power of self- government”.

i. What does this imply?

1. Does it imply being separate from any other group or organization?

2. Does it imply being anti-social?

3. Does it imply having no contact with anyone else – i.e., no fellowship?

4. Does it imply the absence of a hierarchical superstructure?

5. Does it imply being a law unto myself (i.e. – I’m personally autonomous)?

6. Does it have financial implications?

ii. The reality is, it could be any or all of these things, depending upon what the group “having the right or power of self-government” decides to do.

IV. What cannot be forgotten here is that this is the dictionary’s definition of autonomous.

a. That definition implies several things:

i. That the group has “rights” or “power”

1. Having the right to do something is one thing

2. Having the power to do something is quite another

ii. That this power allows for “self-government”

b. The Bible does have some things to say about who has rights and power within the church of Jesus Christ – and about how the church is ultimately governed.

i. I Corinthians 11:3 says that Jesus Christ is the head of every man and that the head of Christ is God.

ii. In Matthew 28:18 Jesus said that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him.

iii. The Scriptures claim a level of authority (II Timothy 3:16 and elsewhere) and, according to Jesus in John 12:47-48, will be the basis on which we are judged when Jesus returns to earth and each one of us is called to stand before God.

iv. What this means is that the church is a Theocracy.

1. God is the King and his commands are authoritative

2. Christ is our Savior and Lord and his commands must be obeyed and his example followed

3. The Scriptures reveal God and Jesus to us, and represent the “constitution” that must govern those who claim to follow them.

V. But, under that incredible umbrella lies the local church with its needs, opportunities, personalities and unfortunately, its sin. To what extent do we have the right, power and need for governing ourselves? Said another way, to what extent do we have the right, power and need to be autonomous?

a. Do we have the right to determine our own leadership structure?

i. If we follow the Biblical model, how do we identify qualified people and install them as our leaders?

b. What about money?

i. Should everything we collect stay in Cincinnati?

ii. Should we fund mission work in other countries?

iii. Should we work with other congregations in supporting missions, a camp, and other efforts in which we believe?

iv. Should we have a paid staff or not?

v. Should staff members be part time or full time?

vi. What type of administrator does the church need?

vii. Should we keep the building?

1. If we keep the building, how will we take care of it?

c. To what extent will we fellowship with other churches –

i. Who claim to believe exactly as we do?

ii. Who we know to believe differently on certain things than we do?

d. What will our interpersonal relationships be like within our own church – informal only, some formal?

e. As you can see, there are lots of questions. But what are the answers?

i. As I said earlier on, this is an area where little specific direction is provided within Scripture.

ii. Where we need to start is with those examples in Scripture where these issues appear to be addressed within a practice or event (with no corresponding command to follow that specific practice or replicate that certain event).

iii. We’ll follow that up with similar examples from outside of Scripture (other records of the early Church).

iv. And then, as a congregation, we’ll need to make decisions as to how we’ll respond to this information – and then act upon those decisions.

OTHER RANDOM THOUGHTS

(From Zondervan Pictorial Dictionary of the Bible)

In the NT are found local Christians in fellowship with one another, but not linked organizationally with those in another locality.

Dr. Hort in The Christian Ecclesia (p. 168), referring to the teaching of the Epistle to the Ephesians, writes, “Not a word in the epistle exhibits the One Ecclesia as made up of many ecclesiae. To each local Ecclesia St. Paul has ascribed a corresponding unity of its own; each is a body of Christ and a sanctuary of God: but there is no grouping of them into particular wholes or into one great whole. The members who make up the One Ecclesia are not communities but individual men. The One Ecclesia includes all members of all partial Ecclesiae; but its relations to them are all direct and not mediate.

Just as the church is of God’s creating, so is its unity. Man’s part is not to create it but to maintain and express it. The NT does not necessarily involve the forming of an elaborate inter-church organization. In the apostolic ear no one church had superiority over any other, and no earthly center was regarded as the headquarters of the Church on earth. As Alan Stibbs has pointed out, “When local congregations are referred to in the New Testament, they are not collectively called ‘the church’; that is, they are not thought of as constituent parts of one organized earthly institution. Rather, they are explicitly and surprisingly called, in the plural, ‘the churches’” (God’s Church, p. 66).

The apostles delegated the government of local churches to the individual congregations and to those gifted individuals in their midst who possessed gifts of leadership (I Cor 12; 14; Phil 1:1; Col 1:7, etc.).

Frequently the apostles would write the churches expressing their views on matters of discipline, and church polity (Galatians and Corinthians).

The execution of church discipline and the government of local churches was largely a function of the local congregations of believers.

Various groups within the Christian Church have stressed either the role of the congregation or the role of the elders, and other local church leaders with regard to decision making in the local churches. It seems that the corporate life of the Early Church was marked by an interaction of all of the above-mentioned groups.

The increasing participation of the members of local churches in the congregation life of the church at times led to disputation. However, the local churches were in the habit of appealing to the apostles or to their written directions in what is now the NT as the final authority in such matters.

With respect to Acts 11 and 15 – It was evidently the practice of the churches to communicate with one another and with the apostles whenever doctrinal and practical decisions necessitated the same. No mention is made in the NT of communication between the local churches and some central or mother church such as the Jerusalem church. NOTE: No mention is made of the convening of church councils after Acts 15 throughout the end of the apostolic period.

No directions are provided in the NT instructing the churches to turn to some central authority for direction; rather, churches are exhorted to rely upon the Word of God as their source of final authority (2 Timothy 3:14-17; 4:1-4; Titus 1:7-9). It seems obvious that such references to the Word of God are synonymous with the Scriptures.

The NT mentions several cooperative ventures among the churches (Romans 15:1, 26, 27; 2 Cor 8:19; Galatians 2:10.

The churches were in the habit of contributing together to special funds for various benevolent purposes (Acts 11:27-30), and frequently exchanged friendly greetings and prayerful concerns (Romans 16:3, 4, 5, 16; I Cor 16:19; 2 John 13. A certain mutuality of purpose was recognized by the churches in such important tasks as the sending forth of missionaries (Acts 11:22-26; 13:1).