The Sins of Hierarchy?

I just read a new arti­cle (I apol­o­gize, it’s been removed) on theooze.com (you can tell it’s my favourite web­site, right?) by pas­tor Keith Giles with respect to the ‘New Tes­ta­ment church’ and how mod­ern (or con­tem­po­rary?) Chris­tian­ity has become, or runs the risk of becom­ing, ‘Churchi­an­ity’. One of Giles main con­tentions states that:

The arti­fi­cial, man-made hier­ar­chy we see in the Chris­t­ian church today is not what the Church prac­ticed under the Apos­tles in the New Tes­ta­ment. Instead of a Body made up entirely of Spirit-filled min­is­ters of the Gospel, the Chris­t­ian church even­tu­ally sur­ren­dered this heav­enly model for a more top-down approach.

As one New Tes­ta­ment scholar, Howard Sny­der, put it:

“The clergy-laity dichotomy is…a throw­back to the Old Tes­ta­ment priest­hood. It is one of the prin­ci­pal obsta­cles to the church effec­tively being God’s agent of the king­dom today because it cre­ates a false idea that only ‘holy men,’ namely, ordained min­is­ters, are really qual­i­fied and respon­si­ble for lead­er­ship and sig­nif­i­cant min­istry. In the New Tes­ta­ment there are func­tional dis­tinc­tions between var­i­ous kinds of min­istries but no hier­ar­chi­cal divi­sion between clergy and laity. The New Tes­ta­ment teaches us that the church is a com­mu­nity in which all are gifted and all have ministry.”

With respect to what Howard Sny­der has said above , who isn’t con­demn­ing in any way the Old Tes­ta­ment priest­hood  (Com­mu­nity of the King, pg. 112–3) , I some what agree. Sny­der is cor­rect in point­ing out that for too long the church has clung to the errant idea that, “only ‘holy men,’ namely, ordained min­is­ters, are really qual­i­fied and respon­si­ble for lead­er­ship and sig­nif­i­cant min­istry”. To claim that there is no hier­ar­chi­cal divi­sion between ‘clergy’ and ‘laity,’ how­ever, seems some­thing of a con­fused state­ment to me. While the Old Tes­ta­ment idea of priest­hood for a spec­i­fied few (e.g., Levites) has not car­ried over into the New Tes­ta­ment, which I believe teaches the priest­hood of all believ­ers. That is not to say that within this ‘new’ ‘priest­hood of all believ­ers’ there isn’t a delin­eation of min­istry (think ‘func­tions’ of the Trin­ity), in other words, hier­ar­chy. What I want to make clear in say­ing this is that hier­ar­chy does not nec­es­sar­ily deal with a dichotomy between ‘dom­i­nate’ and ‘sub­or­di­nate,’ nor do ‘dom­i­nate’ and ‘sub­or­di­nate’ roles nec­es­sar­ily refer to a thing hav­ing more or less power over another. I hold to an ortho­dox view of the Trin­ity. I believe that the Son is sub­or­di­nate yet equal to the Father, just as I believe it may be the case that the Holy Spirit is sub­or­di­nate to the Son, yet equal to the Father and the Son. It seems to me that hier­ar­chy and func­tion are rela­tional. For instance, humankind is head over God’s cre­ation (given a func­tion). After the Fall, Adam was head over Eve (of course, I would teach the equal­ity of men and women). Jesus Christ is the head of the Church (within a spe­cific func­tion) and the church is in a posi­tion of sub­mis­sion to God (func­tion). Par­ents are the heads of their chil­dren (again, func­tion). The orga­ni­za­tion of angels is hier­ar­chi­cal. I don’t believe you can assign a func­tion to a thing with­out also cre­at­ing a hier­ar­chy. Hier­ar­chy, in my under­stand­ing is not a neg­a­tive, detri­men­tal thing, hope­fully as I’ve illus­trated above.

I’m under the impres­sion that both Giles and Sny­der believe ‘doing church’ should be a reflec­tion of the nature of God within the Trin­ity (not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing). To apply this to Giles and Snyder’s per­sonal view of min­istry,  this is to say that if there is no hier­ar­chy within the Trin­ity, then the church should also reflect this eter­nal real­ity (e.g., no hier­ar­chy). Thus, any view of the church — mis­taken or cor­rect — is nec­es­sar­ily related to one’s view of the God­head. What I would say to this is that it’s unre­al­is­tic, sub­stan­tially because it holds a mis­taken view of hier­ar­chy and power (God the Son and the Holy Spirit are sub­mit­ted to the will of the Father, after all, even while being co-equal).

With all of that said I do agree with Sny­der in say­ing, “The New Tes­ta­ment teaches us that the church is a com­mu­nity in which all are gifted and all have min­istry.” To use this as a con­dem­na­tion against hier­ar­chy is at best, a stretch. To also affirm I agree with Giles when he says the church should be filled with Spirit-filled min­is­ters of the Gospel, no mat­ter their func­tion if it’s directly related to ‘min­istry’ (the pas­toral kind) or not. This, how­ever, leads into my sec­ond con­cern: how to do church.

I don’t believe there is any one ‘right’ way to do church. To become some­thing of a post­mod­ern (or is that, ultra­mod­ern?): soci­eties and cul­tures change, lan­guage changes, con­texts change. What worked in the New Tes­ta­ment may not nec­es­sar­ily work today. What works today most prob­a­bly wouldn’t have worked in the New Tes­ta­ment. To look at our church today and pro­claim dis­agree­ment and con­cern because we aren’t ‘New Tes­ta­ment’ enough is well, unre­al­is­tic. If you haven’t noticed, we aren’t liv­ing in first cen­tury Rome any more. Absolutely the body of Christ should be Spirit-filled. Absolutely every mem­ber of the body of Christ has a role and func­tion (1 Corinthi­ans 12). Absolutely we should take care of the poor, wid­owed and des­ti­tute (James 1:27) but how we do that, depend­ing on the con­text, is going to dif­fer. I may give away all my tithes to the poor (and tell every­one about it) and be a good wit­ness, or I might not, sup­port a vari­ety of min­istries and be an even greater wit­ness to the poor. There is no set way in the New Tes­ta­ment that shows what church should be, which is dif­fer­ent than New Tes­ta­ment imper­a­tives of what it means to be a believer and fol­lower of Christ (of course this would affect how we do church).

All that aside, I agree with a lot of what Giles has said. To con­demn hier­ar­chy, how­ever, and to con­demn the way we ‘do church,’  is unfounded.

Related posts:

1. Finite Sins, Eter­nal Punishment