Educating Christian Children

The Ecclesia

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 3-7

Genre: Talk

Track: 3

Dictation Name: RR312B3

Location/Venue:

Year:

[Rushdoony] Our subject last night was The Royal Priesthood. This morning it is The Ecclesia.

The word ‘Ecclesia’ is usually translated, quite correctly, as ‘church’. Very early in its history, before the end of the Apostolic Age, the church began a ministry to human need. Saint Paul in Acts 24:17 writes of having collected alms and offerings ‘to my nation’ that is, for Judea, for people there, irrespective of their faith.

In Romans 15:25-28, Paul writes of maintaining a ministry to the needs of the saints in Jerusalem. In 1 Corinthians 16:1, reference is made to the collection for the saints. Because of these references, commentators limit the meaning of ‘to my nation’ to the church. This goes against the obvious difference in the meaning of nation and church. The word Paul uses is ‘Ethnos’, nation. The fact that very early, Christians ministered to non Christians as they were able, makes clear that they saw such a step as basic to their life. Why? They were, after all, the church of Jesus Christ, His Ecclesia. When you read the letters of Paul, he writes to the church in Corinth, to the church in Philippi, to the church in Rome, and so on. Our definitions now are backwards; we read our present meaning of the word ‘church’ backwards into the Bible, instead of saying: “What is the meaning of ‘ecclesia’ and how does that relate to what we are doing?”

Ecclesia is made up of two words, Ecc-coleo, the call or summons to an army to assemble. It had a literal meaning in Paul’s time for the public assembly of all the citizens of a city to plan and prepare for action, and to govern the city state.

So that when Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, he is writing to the town council of Corinth, the governing body. But the church in Corinth was a small handful of people; why did Paul pick out this word, ‘ecclesia’ and call the handful of believers in each city where there was a church, a congregation, the ecclesia? He did so because he said in effect: “Under God you are now the ruling body of this city. You are to govern. You are to plan its future. You are to create the city of God in this city where you have been planted.” This is why Rome very early regarded the church as a potentially dangerous body. It was an imperium in imperial, and empire within the empire; it was an ecclesia, a city council, as against the city council.

It is a sad fact that the only body in the world today that is imitating this and doing it is the Muslim community in London. They have created their own parliament, and are issuing their own orders- they are very arrogant- whereas the Christians were seeking to serve. The church was seen as an imperium in an imperial, an empire within the empire, because the church refused to pay taxes, because the churches king, Jesus, was ruler over Rome, not Rome over Christ and His realm.

If you look at the language used so often in the scriptures about the church, it is called in the text a ‘paroicha’. Our word ‘parish’ comes from that. But it meant at the time a foreign embassy, with extraterritorial rights, as all embassies have to this day. A foreign embassy could not be taxed. You could not enter therein; to this day no law enforcement official can walk into a foreign embassy and exercise his powers; it is foreign territory, not taxable, nor to be controlled by the host country. The church was an embassy, and we have a reflection of that fact when Paul speaks of himself as- what’s the word?

[Audience] An ambassador.

[Rushdoony] An ambassador for Christ, the king of kings; an ambassador. And the church, an embassy from heaven.

The church maintained its own courts, 1 Corinthians 6, to settle all cases in terms of the kings law, as given in the Old Testament, and the church collected its own taxes, the tithes. Christ’s government was declared to be over this world, but not of this world. The local churches were seen as outposts of this supernatural, or heavenly kingdom. Not given to violence or military conquest, but out to convert and to command all peoples and nations for Jesus Christ, king of kings, and Lord over all Lords.

Their goal was a new creation in which all people are made new, in which the kingdoms of this world are made the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. The church, or ecclesia, was therefore rightly seen as a foreign body, a foreign government, seeking to take over both the Roman Empire and the whole world. It had its own law, the law as given by God through Moses.

An early Churchman, Tatian, whose dates are 110 to 172 A.D., was influenced by Gnosticism. He was also an aesthetic, so he despised this world and law. And so he was rebuked very early by Clement of Alexandria, who died circa 220, for running down God’s law. Clement wrote against him saying that: “We are all subject to God’s law. We cannot denigrate law. We are under the king and his law word, and it law which trains us up to piety, which tells us what is to be done, which restrains us in our sins, and which imposes penalty upon us after penalty when we go astray.”

Clement astutely compared the work of the law to the healing work of a doctor or a surgeon, but it also sidestepped the fact that the law is the primary instrument of government, and Rome wanted no rival law. Clement avoided saying that, because it was too much like a declaration of war against Rome. Tatian was seen as departing from the faith by relegating the law to the Old Testament, because the Ecclesia is the local form of God’s kingdom on earth. To deny the law is to deny the kingdom of God, Clement held, and the kingship or lordship of Christ.

Those dispensationalists who deny Christ’s present royal status over all men and nations come to that position by denying His law, and therefore dethroning Him as king. A king who has no law has no rule, and is no king. The true ecclesia, the true church, is thus theonomic; it cannot be otherwise. Its name requires it to govern by the law of its Redeemer King, by His atoning work we have been redeemed to be kings and priests unto God and His Father. We have been saved to be this world’s governing peoples.

These Redeemed and governing peoples are out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, all racist definitions of the royal priesthood are thus barred and banned. It was a great joy to me the first time I went to Tampa to visit Joseph in the church he had newly established, to see the role he played in one commission after another in the city and the country, and how actively the church was involved in things as a true ecclesia, the true city council of Tampa.

Saint Augustine in The City of God summarized and described the Biblical division of the two human races, the old Adam’s race and the New Adam’s, and he called them the Kingdom of Man and the Kingdom of God. Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount makes clear that only those who build upon Him, the Rock, would see their works endure, while those who built on man built upon sand, and their works would collapse. Saint Augustine held that all Civil Governments that rule without God’s law are like criminal gangs; they have no legitimate law, nor authority.

The ecclesia is the governing body of a city state in origin, and the name was not accidentally chosen, but deliberately selected to indicate the Kingdom work of Christ’s people, His Royal Priesthood. It is strange that the meaning of Ecclesia has always been known, but scholars put it in a footnote or in parenthesis, as though: “Well, that’s what it meant when Paul used it, but that is not what it means now.” (laughter)

But the New Testament from beginning to end describes the people of Christ as the chosen rulers of the New Creation. The parable of the talents describes the testing of the members of the ecclesia, those who increase the talents given to them are made rulers; those who do not use them are cast out of the kingdom. In other words, our status in Christ’s eternal kingdom depends on much more than saying yes to Jesus.

Now for a civil government to extend its sway means an extension of power and control, but our Lord’s ecclesia must govern differently than the Gentiles do. In Matthew 20:25-28 our Lord declares:

“25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Jesus is saying to His church: “You as the town council, in every community where you are, you govern by ministering. The Gentiles love to lord it over you, but it shall not be so among you.” The true ecclesia He says is a ministry of service; this is our Lord’s definition of it.

The church therefore has a task to do, to educate its people into a ministry of service. We have come to limit education to children and to formal schooling; a very serious mistake. I was told a while back by a top computer expert that the computer industry has a problem in that many of its ablest young men come in with a mastery of their skills, and a sense of satisfaction with their status, but a failure to grow. And in about 10 years they are either dropped or sidelined, it requires continuing growth to keep up with things in an industry that is continually revolutionizing itself.

I knew one such man who was out of the business after a few very successful years. He had failed to grow with the computers growth.

Within the church there is an urgent need for continual growth, so that Christ’s Royal Priesthood may continue to govern. The human quest of fallen man is for power and status. As against this, our Lord at the past supper began by washing His disciples feet. He asked them: “Know ye what I have done to you?” He had set an example of service. The church in some branches has made this a part of its liturgy, but it is the meaning which should compel us. We are commanded to be members one of another, meaning that as a family we care one for another. The church is not only called God’s ecclesia, a governing body in terms of God’s law, but a household, God’s family, a family of faith, not of blood. Family members care for one another, they are forgiving, they are mutually supportive. The family of God can only be an effective governing body if it is also truly a family of faith. When the faith tie weakens, the blood tie also weaken, so that today the blood family reflects the decay of the faith-family. But the signs of revival are all around us.

I believe it is beginning with family revivals. Christian families coming together, having family reunions, and I am delighted by the fact that across the United States, more and more families are coming together; sometimes only 80-100, sometimes as much as 800, and that these family reunions are also times of worship, and some go out to the cemetery there to clean the grave sites of their forebears and to have a service there, others going to the old family church. We are seeing a different kind of revival now. This time it is not just a matter of going forth at a church meeting, but going out to minister in Christ’s name. When the essence of the Ecclesia’s ministry is service, its work however much persecuted, triumphs.

Rome persecuted the church, but finally found that the church was its best government, because the church had courts to settle troubles, it provided for the needy in its own circle and those outside of the circle; it took care of the homeless elderly, and the homeless children, it took care of the sick, it rescued and ransomed captives. That is an Old Testament command that we don’t pay much attention to, but the ransom of captives by the early church was very extensive. Wherever there was a need, they governed by the ministry of service.

Rome found that its best government was the church, and so Constantine summoned the Bishops, and he told them: “From now on when you go out in public you are to wear the garb of a Roman magistrate, so that the people of Rome will know where they can get justice.” To this day, a Bishops garb, although scarcely a bishop in the world knows it, is that of a Roman magistrate.

Constantine, very much abused today by the humanists, and unhappily by too many Christians, had serious faults, but he was a great man. He recognized that there was no better government in the world than that which Jesus Christ provided. So when he called the council of Nicaea to help them find what the true faith was, he did not sit on a throne in their midst, but on a stool at one end of the circle. He knew he was among his superiors. To persecute the church had become suicidal, because the effectual government had become Christ’s rule through His people. They were the effectual sources of government by their courts, their charities, and by their works of education.

I believe we are demonstrating the same thing, slowly but surely, to the Rome of our time, the modern state. We are educating our children, and some of their children, and doing a better job than the state can do; and we are in one area after another beginning ministries to the needy, to widows and orphans, that the state is compelled to recognize as good. It wasn’t publicized, but John Upton’s work in Romania gained for him a resolution by the House of Representatives in Washington D.C., the Chalcedon Resolution, commending the work he did.

Step by step, as we become truly an ecclesia, Christ’s governing body, a government that is a ministry, the world, like the Rome of Constantine will be compelled to say: “This is the true government in our midst.” God grant that that day come again speedily. Thank you. (applause)

[Audience Speaker] Why do you think over the past 100 years there has been less emphasis on the ecclesia as you describe it, and more emphasis on the church as an institution?

[Rushdoony] The reason for it is sin. (laughter, applause)

In an institution you can exercise power. In Christ’s ecclesia you are out there washing feet… and guess what people prefer to do? And that is it very simply. Another factor has been the modern state. The modern state does not want a true ecclesia; neither did the Medieval states. As a matter of fact, the church at the time of the Reformation had been a captive church for well over a century. One reason why the popes were ungodly men like Alexander the 6th the Borgia Pope and the others, was because the various nation states in the Holy Roman Empire did not want them to be too involved with religion, they might offend somebody. That is how the Renaissance Popes became patrons of the arts, it was the only thing that was legal for them to do, and so they were picking popes who were not even Christian.

Well, the modern state has been nudging the church in the same direction, so where are the Christians in our mainline churches? Up until your lifetime, almost everybody was in a mainline church, and the mainline churches were encouraged to go the way of all flesh, and they have. So this is why you are in existence, because whether you have been fully conscious of what ecclesia means or not, you recognized that Christ needs such a body, and you have been working to create it. I think we are on the brink of a new Reformation. I believe it is overdue. The first step in that has been the Christian and the Homeschool movement. We are now going to move into the area of Christian charities, and finally we will move into the third great area of statist power, health; which will be the most difficult because of regulations. But the church once was the ministry of health, education, and charity. The state has taken over all three, and that is where its power is. I don’t know how much your property tax here is, but in the average county across the United States, it runs between 60-80% of your property tax that goes for welfare and education, and you are not getting your money’s worth. (applause) [tape ends]