- Nov 26, 2019
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I would have to say yes. God wanted to save not just the individual but also the society, because that's where we, as individuals, have to live. If God is concerned with social conditions, and angry at social injustice, and I know He is, then He is as interested in the collective as He is in the individual.
So I would agree with you that the Bible seems to focus on the collective more than with the individual. But I don't think this is out of disregard for the importance of the individual. Rather, individual relationship with God has been a given from the beginning, and it is everywhere implicit in every individual mentioned in the Bible.
But the collective, the nation, or nations--plural, need to be addressed because that is where human relations and social evils become a problem on earth that God wants to remedy. He wants us restored in a relationship to Himself, but some of this is so that we can relate properly to our neighbor, to one another.
So God set up and institutionalized a legal form of worship in the OT era such that an entire nation can practice the same religion and all collectively relate to God and to one another in a peaceful, spiritual way. But it is always understood that not all individuals will cooperate. And even those who observe the common religious rituals could do so deceptively, hiding their corrupt ways beneath a religious veneer.
Hopefully, I got your point?
Yes, largely. Although the system God set up in the Old Testament continues in the New - the Church, however you define it ecclesiologically, for example:
- Invisible Church Ecclesiology which is very popular among Evangelicals in which the Church is an invisible union of all Christians (I am sympathetic to this model, but I dislike its lack of a focus on Eucharistic unity, on communion, which characterizes the other popular models)
- the Roman Catholic ecclesiology where the Catholic Church in communion with the Pope is the Church (I am not a huge fan of this model since it makes the Pope the only bishop to have the same authority that most bishops in other churches with episcopal polity such as the Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic, Assyrian, Methodist, Moravian and many Lutheran churches typically have, since usually all bishops, or at least all diocesan or equivalent bishops have).
- the Local Church ecclesiology of Baptists, Congregationalists and the Stone/Campbell movement, among others, which is focused on the Local Church where the Gospel is proclaimed, assembled as a Congregation around the Lord’s supper (I rather like this given my Congregationalist background and those aspects of the Stone/Campbell movement, that is, the Churches of Christ and the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ that I also like, such as its focus on Christian unity and the weekly celebration of Holy Communion).
- A similiar ecclesiology taught by Martin Luther and adhered to by a majority of Lutherans, albeit one with more of a focus on correct doctrine, and one which is permissive of episcopal and presbyterian forms of church polity, regarding church polity as a matter of adiaphora, whereas those who adhere to Local Church ecclesiology really want a congregational polity where each local church is self-governing (I really also like Luther’s approach to ecclesiology).
- The ecclesiology of apostolic succession as defined by St. Cyprian of Carthage, which is followed by most Eastern Orthodox and a majority of the Oriental Orthodox, which is based on apostolic succession from Orthodox bishops in communion with each other since the Apostles (obviously I am very committed to this theology).
- “Branch ecclesiology” which relies more on apostolic succession as defined by St. Augustine of Hippo, and which is preferred by most Anglicans and other Protestants with Apostolic succession, such as Moravians, some Lutherans, some Methodists, most bishops of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, some of the Oriental Orthodox including if I recall most members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and also Old Catholics, both the conservative jurisdictions such as those in the Union of Scranton, and the liberal jurisdictions such as those of the Union of Utrecht (I also greatly like this ecclesiology).
- A permutation or combination of the above, as well as other, less common approaches to ecclesiology, some of which I greatly like and some of which I particularly dislike.
Basically, regardless of which one of those models of the Church, whose existence we confess in the Nicene Creed, you subscribe to, that Church is now what unites us as the Body of Christ, according to St. Paul, and is the entity in which we Christians serve together as a Royal Priesthood, with Christ as the High Priest (where Priest means Hierus or Sacerdos or Kohen and not Presbyter (Presbuteros, meaning Elder in Greek) which it was originally an Anglicization of, now more commonly Anglicized as Presbyter; we are all Priests but we are not all Presbyters). According to St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians and other epistles, in Baptism we are grafted onto the Body of Christ - the Church. And this is in effect the New Israel, or rather a reformation of Israel, since Second Temple Judaism had developed serious faults, and it was time, with the coming of Christ, to move away from the practice of animal sacrifices in the Temple and only a limited number of Kohanim who would serve as intermediaries between us and God; we are now all a priest, and our prayers in a sense allow us to intercede for non-Christians, since we can and should pray for peace, and for the welfare of all, and for our enemies and those who persecute us, since as non-believers, they are not members of this priesthood.
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