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Sub-Apostolic
Era in the NT
When the last eyewitness was gone
Who are called "apostles" in the NT?
"Apostolic Age" and "Sub-Apostolic Period"
Approaches to the Sub-Apostolic Period
......... (Baur; Bauer; Lake; Brown)
Churches Detectable in the New Testament
The sub-apostolic descent of Paul
The "Ephesus" form of church
The Addressees of Revelation
The Christian outlook that Hebrews supports
The outlook of the Epistle of James
Positive regard for the Jewish Heritage
When the last eyewitness was gone
IN "a death in the desert" Robert
Browning poetically describes John, the last apostle, expiring in
concealment:
When my ashes scatter, says John,
"there is left on earth
No one alive who knew (consider this!)
-Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands
That which was from the first, the Word of Life
How will it be when none more saith, 'I saw'?"
Browning's fidelity to the tradition that John was the last of the
apostles may have been too simple, but his poignant question is perceptive.
How was it when the last apostolic witness disappeared from the scene,
and the church could no longer depend on the testimony of those who
said, "I saw"? In the past that question was answered by
turning to works written after the NT because it was assumed that
the NT and the apostolic era were coterminous. NT books were thought
to have been written by apostles, and the era after the NT was dubbed
"sub-apostolic." In Catholic tradition this view was {14}
summed up in an axiom about revelation closing with the death of the
last apostle, which assumed that the NT lay safely within the apostolic
lifetime. Today, however, most scholars would date the end of the
apostolic period earlier and thus within the NT era. Indeed, if one
does not accept Bishop John A.T. Robinson's maverick attempt to date
the whole NT before a.d. 70, it can be claimed intelligently that
most of the NT was written after the death of the last known apostle.
Who are called "apostles"
in the NT?
Perhaps that qualified statement needs to
be explained. Although many are called "apostles" in the
NT, we have detailed knowledge of only three. If we begin with the
Twelve, most are no more than names. If one excludes Judas Iscariot,
the first four alone stand out, namely, the two sets of brothers:
Peter and Andrew, James and John. Although in the gospels those four
are portrayed as frequently in the company of Jesus, in the NT story
of the early church Andrew disappears; James is martyred in the early
40s (Ac 12:2); and John is mentioned only as a shadow companion of
Peter in a few scenes (Ac 3:1; Ac 4:13; Ac 8:14; Ga 2:9). Later tradition
enhanced the biography of John by identifying him as the Beloved Disciple
of the Fourth Gospel tradition, but that is far from certain.4 In
fact, then, Peter is the only member of the Twelve of whose ecclesiastical
career we are substantially informed, thanks to the Pauline Letters
to Gala-tia and Corinth, the Book of Acts, and to epistles in the
Petrine tradition. Outside the Twelve we know a great deal about Paul
the {15} Apostle, thanks to 13 letters attributed to his name in the
NT and to biographical information supplied by the Book of Acts. James,
"the brother of the Lord," was probably an apostle, even
though not one of the Twelve. His importance as leader of the Jerusalem
community is attested both in the Pauline Letters and the Book of
Acts; also a NT letter is attributed to him, and the letter of Jude
identifies its author through relationship to James. According to
reasonably reliable tradition, Peter and Paul died in Rome in the
60s, and James died in Jerusalem in the 60s.6 Thus, by the end of
the second third of the century, i.e., by the year a.d. 67, the three
apostles about whom we have detailed NT knowledge had disappeared
from the scene.
"Apostolic Age"
and "Sub-Apostolic Period"
I suggest, therefore, that the term "Apostolic
Age" should be confined to that second one-third of the first
century, and that the last one-third of the century should be designated
as the "Sub-Apostolic Period." With the exception of the
undisputed letters of Paul, most of the NT would have been written
in this last one-third of the century - a period when the authors
who are preserved in the NT wrote without using their own names and
occasionally under the mantle of the apostolic forebears. (An exception
would be the otherwise unknown prophet named John who identifies himself
as the author of the Apocalypse or Revelation.) Later tradition tended
to assign authors to the originally anonymous gospels;8 but modern
scholarship has called into doubt the accuracy of those assignments
which, in any case, may have been meant to tell us more about the
authority behind the individual work than about the actual writer.
{16} As for the Deutero-Pauline epistles (the Pastorals, Ephesians
and Colossians9) and the Catholic epistles, the designation of the
authors as Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude probably represents
a claim to apostolic adherence rather than an objective designation
of apostolic writing. Indeed, a namelessness of the actual writers
fits in with a sub-apostolic ambience where fidelity to the memory
of the great apostles is the dominant characteristic.
In the terminology that I favor, the "Post-Apostolic
Period" begins at the end of the century when we have Christian
writings put forth on their own authority, e.g., the Letters of Ignatius
of Antioch and the Letter from the Church of Rome to the Church of
Corinth known to us as 1 Clement. This written work of a "third
generation" was moving away from claiming the direct mantle of
the apostles. Returning, then, to Browning's poem, I would move his
scene of the death of the last apostle back to the mid-60s - a date
that makes no less important the question of how was it "when
none more saith, 'I saw.' " Now, however, we can use most of
the NT to answer that question.
Various Approaches to
the Sub-Apostolic Period
In the past and reaching up into the present
there have been many attempts to answer the question that Browning
phrased poetically. If in the following brief summary I indicate the
inadequacies of some of them, ultimately it will be seen that each
has a grain of truth. No one view is totally adequate, and the deficiencies
in some of the proposals I shall mention warn us against hoping that
the answer can be simple.
The classical answer, already given in
1 Clement (42 and 44), is {17} that just as Jesus appointed apostles
(understood to be the Twelve along with Paul), so also the apostles
appointed bishops or presbyters to succeed them. Consequently, there
was understood to have been an orderly succession of authority in
the sub-apostolic era producing a unified church, marred only by heretics
who were seen as rebels against the stipulated system. That classical
thesis began to be rejected at the time of the Reformation and has
been effectively challenged by modern scholarship (both Roman Catholic
and Protestant) which has shown that the Clementine picture was too
simple and not universal.
In the last century another answer was given
by F. C. Baur whose thesis, at least for a while, also became classical.
In Baur's somewhat Hegelian conception of church history, the thesis
and antithesis were represented by James (or even Peter) and Paul
- a pro-Jewish conception of Christianity in struggle with a pro-Gentile
one. A period in the second century saw the synthesis of what preceded,
and the image of Peter was invoked to symbolize a Christianity intermediary
between that of Paul and of James. Integral to the Baur hypothesis
was a very late dating of some documents used to substantiate the
sequence, e.g., Acts. Much of modern scholarship would challenge such
dating and would consider the various Christian attitudes detected
by Baur to have been simultaneous and quite early.
In the 20th century other answers to the
question of sub-apostolic Christianity have been offered. Walter Bauer
argued that NT Christianity and its immediate sequence constituted
an era in which there was no standard or orthodox Christianity. Rather
from many early diverse and contending Christian views there emerged
in the second century a victor which became orthodoxy; this orthodoxy
moved from Rome eastwards. Most scholars would acknowledge {18} some
of the diversities Bauer posited in the NT period; but recently there
has been an increasing chorus of objections that Bauer's hypothesis
is too simplified and leaves unanswered fundamental questions. For
instance, was what emerged from the diversities by "winning out"
more faithful to what Jesus of Nazareth taught and represented than
were the Christian views that lost the struggle? From reading Bauer
and his proponents, one can easily get the impression that all diversities
were of equal value and that what emerged as orthodoxy was simply
a historical accident, or the survival of the strongest rather than
survival of the fittest.
Another modern answer was that of Kirsopp
Lake who interpreted the Sub-Apostolic Period in terms of great Christian
city-centers. In Jesus' lifetime his ministry had fluctuated between
Galilee and Jerusalem. In the Apostolic Period, if we confine our
attention to the West, centers like Jerusalem, Antioch, and Corinth
flourished. In the late Apostolic and Sub-Apostolic Periods, according
to Lake, Ephesus and Rome emerged as the great Christian centers with
which many NT books can be associated. Rome was deemed to represent
Jewish Christianity, more conservative from the very start, and a
proponent of a high ecclesiology and a low christology.
Related to Rome, in Lake's judgment, were
Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 1 Peter, the Epistle to the Hebrews,
1 Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas. (In fact, however, there are
many elements of high christology in Hebrews; and in my judgment,
it can be associated with Rome only as a corrective sent to modify
Rome's Judaizing tendencies.) Related to Ephesus were Colossians,
Ephesians, and the Fourth Gospel - works with a low ecclesiology,
in the sense of placing little emphasis on church structure, but with
a high christology which associated Christ with creation. Recent scholarship
might find confining Lake's concentration on two Christian centers,
for certainly Antioch and Alexandria were also in the picture in the
sub-apostolic and/or post-apostolic eras. Nevertheless, his detection
of a Christianity that was more conservative and more closely associated
with Judaism (Rome) and of a Christianity that was more volatile (Ephesus)
remains a valid insight.
In this book I shall proceed in a manner
different from the approaches discussed above, even though there is
some truth in each which may complement my approach. I shall examine
a number of different church situations reflected in the sub-apostolic
works of the NT (i.e., the works written in the last one-third of
the first century), concentrating on the most important element that
enabled each church to survive after the apostolic hero or guide had
departed the scene.
Churches Detectable in
the New Testament
Before the chapters devoted in detail to
individual churches, it might be well in this introductory chapter
to survey the communities or churches detectable in the sub-apostolic
NT works. (The number would be even larger if one made use of second-century
material, including gnostic writings, and retrojected the situations
reflected in those works back into the first century; but the scope
of the lectures reproduced in this book dictates that I confine myself
to the NT.) In subsequent chapters I shall not discuss in detail all
the communities {20} that I now list, but it may be helpful to the
reader to have the general survey.
The sub-apostolic descent
of Paul
Let us begin with the sub-apostolic descent
of Paul. Despite the powerful personal impact of the apostle on those
whom he converted, an intelligent case can be made that within 20
years after his death variant strains of thought had developed within
the communities influenced by Paul. In a fascinating article C. K.
Barrett has shown that at least three different post-Pauline strains
can be detected through an analysis of NT works associated with Paul:
one exemplified by the Pastoral Epistles, one exemplified by Colossians
and Ephesians, and one exemplified by Luke/Acts. I plan to dedicate
a chapter of this book to each of these strains; but even now, it
may be wise to illustrate diversity among them.
Although the audiences or communities respectively
addressed by these works all knew of Paul, it is not certain where
the audiences were located geographically or whether they knew each
other. The author of Luke/Acts idealizes Paul, for he divides Christian
history into almost equal eras centered on Peter and Paul. The latter
embodies God's plan to move Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome and
to "the ends of the earth." Yet the author of Acts never
mentions that Paul wrote a letter and betrays no knowledge of the
Pauline letters. In the strain of Pauline heritage represented by
Colossians and Ephesians Paul is greatly honored as the apostle who
can authoritatively address the communities - indeed as one of the
apostles (and prophets) {21} upon whom the church is founded (Ep 2:20).
It is also very clear that the author of Ephesians knew many of the
Pauline letters, even beyond Colossians, and that he draws upon them
in formulating his own thought. Thus, while both the author of Luke/Acts
and the author of Ephesians have moved beyond Paul's thought, one
has done so seemingly independently of Paul's writings, and the other
has done so in marked dependence on them. Are we not to think this
difference was manifest also in the image of Paul possessed by the
communities formed by these authors?
Let us consider another issue, namely, the
relation to Judaism. In Ephesians the relationship between Jew and
Gentile seems to have been solved pacifically. The wall of hostility
has been broken down; those who were once far off have come near;
Jew and Gentile are reconciled in one body to God through the cross
(Ep 2:11-22). For the author of Acts (Ac 28:25-29), however, the very
last words of Paul terminating the book indicate the Jews will never
see, nor hear, nor understand; they are permanently closed off from
the gospel. Salvation, according to the Paul of Acts, is for the Gentiles
who will listen and understand. In other words, in the different communities
addressed by these works - communities that both respect Paul - there
may have been very different views about the future relations of Jews
and Gentiles. Both attitudes are at a distance from that of the historical
Paul in Romans who argues that the Gentiles were converted to make
the Jews jealous, that ultimately the Jews themselves will be converted,
and that the Gentiles are but a wild olive branch grafted onto the
tree of Israel (Rm 11:11-26).
When we turn to the Pastoral Epistles,
namely to 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, we find still a different post-Pauline
situation. The author of these works remains troubled by Judaizers
(among others) and their demand for circumcision. In Chapter 2 below
I shall discuss in detail the strong insistence of the author of the
Pastoral Epistles on church structure and the appointment of church
officials. This is an insistence that is lacking in both Colossians/Ephesians
and Luke/Acts, even though both works know of church functionaries.
We shall see below that the author of the Pastorals, the author(s)
of Colossians/Ephesians, and the author of Luke/Acts have a very different
dynamism in what they emphasize as important in their respective conceptions
of the church. All this variation occurs within {22} the Pauline tradition
in works that are directly or indirectly related to the apostle! Presumably,
the churches addressed by such works, if they were in contact, would
have been in koinonia or communion with each other - at least there
is nothing explicit in the works to indicate otherwise - but their
ways of thinking are different because they have emphasized different
aspects of the great Pauline tradition.
If such variations exist within the one
heritage, not surprisingly there are variations among different heritages
in the Sub-Apostolic Period. In a recent book, The Community of
the Beloved Disciple, I have studied the Johannine community (or
communities, since by the time of 1 John there had been a secession).
One might find some similarity between the Fourth Gospel and Colossians/Ephesians
in terms of a high christology in which the pre-existent divinity
of Jesus is underlined. Such a christological criterion, however,
would distinguish Luke/Acts from the Fourth Gospel (and from Colossians/Ephesians)
since there is no explicitation of pre-existence in the Lucan writings.
In terms of relation to Judaism, the Fourth Gospel would differ markedly
from all three Pauline strains discussed above. In John the Christians
have been driven out of the synagogues (Jn 9:22; Jn 16:2); the Jews
are virtually another religion - or are worse, since they have the
devil as their father (Jn 8:44). The liturgical feasts inherited from
the OT are now feasts "of the Jews" (Jn 6:4; Jn 7:2) and,
therefore, do not pertain to Christians. Indeed, Jesus is scarcely
thought of as a Jew and can speak of the Jewish law as "their
law" (Jn 15:25). Even if tradition has placed the writing of
the Fourth Gospel in Ephesus, the same city addressed (in some manuscripts)
by the Epistle to the Ephesians, one can scarcely imagine that in
Johannine Christianity the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile
has been broken down, as in the situation envisaged by Ephesians.
The "Ephesus"
form of church
I mentioned above that Kirsopp Lake identified
Ephesus as one of the two great Christian centers of the Sub-Apostolic
Period, a center with a distinctive theology. More likely, Ephesus
had different {23} churches with different theologies. We must remember
that the Christian situation in a large city would have involved a
number of house churches where 20 or 30 people met together; and so
there is no reason why there could not have been in the one city house
churches of different traditions - for example, of the Pauline tradition,
of the Johannine tradition, of the Petrine or apostolic tradition,
and even of the ultraconservative Jewish-Christian tradition. Even
though the house churches of one tradition probably had koinonia with
those of another tradition, Christians may not have transferred easily.
Furthermore, in II and III John it is clear that, once an inner Johannine
secession had taken place, within the same tradition there was no
longer koinonia between the two sides, or admittance to the respective
house churches (II Jn 10; III Jn 9-10).
Those addressed in the
Book of Revelation
Related directly to the Ephesus area and
related indirectly to the Johannine Community of the Fourth Gospel
and the Epistles would have been the recipients addressed in the Book
of Revelation. The bitter remarks about the "synagogue of Satan"
and "the Jews" (Rv 2:9; Rv 3:9) suggest once again a group
in which the wall of hostility had not been broken down (unlike Ep
2:11-22). Revelation has affinities to the Fourth Gospel in the theme
of replacing Jerusalem and the earthly Temple by a heavenly Jerusalem
and the presence of God and Christ. Nevertheless, the apocalyptic
insistence on final es-chatology is so unlike the stress on realized
eschatology in the Fourth Gospel that one has strong reason to doubt
that the two works were addressed to the same recipients at the same
time. The Johannine relationship to the recipients of Revelation may
have been {24} at most that of distant cousins. I am tempted by the
thesis that those addressed in Revelation were heirs of the Johannine
tradition who (perhaps because of early migration from Palestine or
of early missionary activity to Asia Minor) had not been catechized
by the fourth evangelist, or by his companions, and so were not affected
by the major theological synthesis of Johannine tradition known to
us in the Fourth Gospel.
This early departure from the Johannine
stream could explain some affinities of thought between the seer of
Revelation and the writer of the Johannine Epistles, since the latter
deliberately went back to "the beginning" of the Johannine
Gospel tradition (1 Jn 3:11) to refute those who were distorting the
Fourth Gospel by interpreting it independently of earlier presuppositions.29
Both Revelation and I John stress the sanctifying cleansing power
of Christ's blood (Rv 1:5; Rv 5:9; Rv 7:14; 1 Jn 1:7 and 1 Jn 5:6-8).
Both works stress final es-chatology much more than does the Gospel.
Nevertheless there are differences. The epistolary author by implication
knows of false teachers (1 Jn 2:27) and false prophets (1 Jn 4:1)
among those who seceded from the Johannine Community, but among his
own followers he rejects human functionaries like teachers (and probably
prophets) in favor of the Gospel tradition of the Paraclete-Spirit
who will teach all things and will announce the things to come (Jn
14:26; Jn 16:13). For Revelation, however, there are prophets in the
communities (Rv 11:10; Rv 16:6);30 indeed the author himself (Rv 1:3;
Rv 22:9,19) is a prophet. Revelation knows also of false prophets
(Rv 16:13) and of false teachers who seemingly have not yet been expelled
from the community (Rv 2:20). Neither the Fourth Gospel nor the Johannine
epistles speak of the apostles, while Revelation shows respect for
"apostles and prophets" (Rv 18:20) and special veneration
for the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb (Rv 21:14). Such a reference to
twelve as the number of the apostles implicitly challenges Paul's
insistence that he was an {25} apostle. Another difference from Paul
would be reflected in the anti-imperial attitude of Revelation: the
Roman Empire and emperor worship are the beastly puppets of Satan
(Rv 13) and the numerical value of Nero's name 666) is the number
of the beast (Rv 13:18). Certainly this differs from the pro-imperial
attitude attested in Rm 13:1-7 (and in other works associated with
Rome in the last 40 years of the first century, such as 1 Pt 2:13-17;
I Clem 60:4-61:1).31 These collective observations are meant to show
that while Revelation has affinities with the Johannine heritage,
and even the Pauline heritage, it cannot be easily classified in either
camp.
The Christian outlook
that Hebrews supports
Similarly, the outlook expressed by the
author of Hebrews has certain Johannine and Pauline parallels but
remains quite distinct. (Hebrews is a corrective writing, but here
I am concerned with the Christian outlook that Hebrews supports rather
than the one that it corrects.) As for a Johannine relationship, Hebrews
is close to the Fourth Gospel in proclaiming Jesus as God, a Son through
whom the world was created (Heb 1:2-3,8). Nevertheless, John does
not attribute to Jesus' humanity the limitations that one finds in
Hebrews, e.g., being tempted (4:15), learning obedience (5:8), and
being made perfect (5:9). Certainly the Johannine Jesus who refused
to pray to be delivered from the hour of death (Jn 12:27-28) could
not be described as crying out with tears to God who was able to save
him from death (Heb 5:7). As for a Pauline relationship, in the Eastern
churches and later in the universal church Hebrews was thought to
constitute the fourteenth letter of Paul - a view virtually no scholar
holds today. The style of Hebrews is totally different from Paul's,
and there is nothing in the Apostle's writing to match the prolonged
radical critique of Israelite cult that is at the heart of Hebrews.
Indeed in Romans chaps. 9-11 and 15:16, Paul shows himself far more
preservative of Judaism and its cultic language than does Hebrews
which would replace the OT sacrifices, priesthood, and Tabernacle.
{26}
The radical attitude of Hebrews toward Judaism
(similar to that of the Fourth Gospel) separates it from the mindset
of at least three other sub-apostolic works of the NT (1Peter, James,
and Matthew). Although 1 Peter is written in the name of the first
of the Twelve, it is thought by most scholars to have been written
by a Petrine disciple after Peter's death. Elsewhere I have argued
that it represents the outlook of the Roman church to which Hebrews
was addressed as a corrective. Below I shall devote a chapter to 1
Peter, and so here let me simply report that 1:13-2:10 applies to
Gentile converts the whole Exodus experience of Israel, so that they
have left their former servitude, and been redeemed by the blood of
a lamb, while going through a period of wandering toward a promised
inheritance. If for Hebrews the levitical priesthood has been replaced
by Christ, for 1 Peter the Christian people constitute a royal priesthood.
Preservation and reapplication, rather than replacement, mark the
theology of 1 Peter. The language of Judaism is used as if it belongs
to Christianity and there are no other claimants.
The outlook of the Epistle
of James
Even more Jewish is the outlook of the Epistle
of James. If I Peter is addressed to the chosen exiles of the diaspora
(plausibly Gentile Christians), James is addressed to the twelve tribes
in the diaspora (perhaps Jewish Christians). Jm 2:2 assumes that the
Christian addressees are assembling in a synagogue. There are no passages
dealing with christology, but there is an insistence on the morality
of the prophets of Israel: Religion is "to visit orphans and
widows in their affliction" (1:27); and no partiality must be
shown to the rich over the poor (2:1-7). It is possible, then, that
James is addressed to a Christian community in the last third of the
century where belief in Jesus meant a heightening of Jewish values
but no real divorce from Judaism. We know that in post-NT literature
such as the Pseudo-Clementines James became the hero par excellence
of Jewish Christians who did not differ from Jews over the Law but
only over faith in Christ. An incipient form of such a development
may account for the appeal to James as the authority behind this canonical
epistle, for in it we hear: "Whoever keeps the whole Law but
fails in one point has become guilty of all of it" (2:10). Certainly
the emphasis that "one is justified by works and not by faith
alone" {27} (2:24) reflects values different from those of Paul
in Rm 3:28: "One is justified by faith apart from the works of
the Law."35
Close in many ways to James is the Gospel of Matthew,36 even though
it is clear that Matthew is written to a Jewish Christian community
that had Gentile Christian adherents in large numbers. This mixed
community is taught that not the smallest letter of the Law or a curlicue
of a letter of the Law is to pass away until all is accomplished (Mt
5:18). Even though in the attitude of Jesus, "You have heard
it said... but I say to you" (Mt 5), some very non-legalistic
attitudes are inculcated, the perspective is one not of abolishing
the Law but of fulfilling the divine purpose behind it. Paul and Matthew
might have reached similar practical conclusions about individual
obligations, but Paul would have done so on the principle that Christ
is the end of the Law (Rm 10:4), while Matthew would have seen Jesus
as the perfect and demanding lawgiver of the eschatological period.
Positive regard for the
Jewish Heritage
A Roman Catholic who praises a non-Pauline
stance in the NT is always suspect, but some communities (like that
of Matthew) probably did not go through the Pauline crisis about the
Law and preserved a more moderate and positive attitude toward the
Jewish heritage.37 If one cannot put new wine into old wineskins without
destroying them, Matthew encourages an arrangement that allows the
preservation of all the wineskins, both new and old (9:17). The Matthean
community's relation to Judaism (see ftnote 183 below) may have been
less ruptured than that of the Johannine community, but more troubled
than that of the community addressed by James. In a later chapter
I shall discuss Matthean ecclesiology after the death of the apostles,
an ecclesiology that has had enormous influence in the history of
Christianity. For later Christianity Matthew's Gospel was first, not
simply in the order of the canon. {28} I have left to last the community
addressed by Mark. In a book devoted to "The Variety and Unity
of the Apostolic Witness to Christ," L. Goppelt concluded that
redaction-historical studies in recent years had not been certain
enough to enable him to reconstruct the theological profile of the
oldest evangelist.38 I would be even more certain that such studies
do not allow us to reconstruct the profile of the community addressed
by Mark (even to the elementary point of being sure whether Mark was
reinforcing that community in beliefs it already held or was inculcating
beliefs that were absent). For instance, Norman Perrin and a number
of younger scholars whose works he endorsed (T. Weeden, W. Kelber,
etc.) have argued that an important element in the Marcan community
admired the apostles (like Peter) as wonder-workers and as spokesmen
of a trium-phalistic faith based on the resurrection appearance of
Jesus. To correct that admiration Mark wrote a Gospel highly critical
of the apostles (especially Peter) as figures who never understood
Jesus and never believed - a Gospel where resurrection appearances
have been suppressed in favor of a parousia in Galilee. I happen to
agree with E. Best39 and others that this is a wrong reading of the
evangelist's intentions. True, Mark describes the Twelve as misunderstanding
because Jesus had not yet suffered, but this treatment implies no
more then that their important role after the crucifixion required
a difficult initiation period - all Christians believe through the
prism of the cross, even the greatest. This encouragement is addressed
to Christians who are themselves suffering. (If Mark was written to
the Roman church,40 Mark may have wished to reassure the readers that
Peter's own recent suffering and death under Nero was not a defeat
but a step toward victory.) Mk 16:7 is a reference to a well-known
resurrection appearance to Peter, so that in my judgment the parousia
in Galilee is a fiction of the interpreter's imagination. Part of
the methodological problem is that, while we may be able to diagnose
something of Matthew's and Luke's theology by seeing how they {29}
change a source known to us (Mark),41 we do not have Mark's sources.
Theories based on the changes Mark made in hypothetically reconstructed
sources are too uncertain to be of much use. If one is content to
deal with Mark as it now stands, one can get some agreement about
what Mark is saying, but not necessarily about why he is saying it.
Yet the "why" question is all important for interpreting
the outlook of the recipients.
Even leaving aside Mark, we have found
a remarkable sub-apostolic variety of thought: witnesses to three
different forms of post-Pauline thought (Pastorals, Colossians/Ephesians,
Luke/Acts), evidence of two different forms of post-Johannine thought
(the epistolary author's adherents and their secessionist adversaries),
works with both Pauline and Johannine similarities (Revelation, Hebrews),
a post-Petrine witness (1Peter42), and some witnesses of a more conservative
Christianity respectful of the Law (Matthew, James). I have pointed
out significant differences among these witnesses, and their interrelationship
is highly complicated. For instance, Luke is related to Pauline thought,
while Matthew is quite distinct from Paul; yet the two Gospels share
many common features (infancy narratives, virginal conception, use
of Q).
As we seek to employ these witnesses to
reconstruct community situations in the Sub-Apostolic Period, a serious
methodological problem is to ascertain whether the thought expressed
is peculiar to the author or is truly shared by a community. When
one is dealing with epistles or letters, the situation is often easier
to determine. Nevertheless, since all of the works have been preserved
(and even accepted as canonical), we are certain that at least some
Christians found guidance in them. Another methodological problem
involves caution about the partial extent to which the writing portrays
community views. If the Pastorals stress presbyteral structure and
{30} Colossians/Ephesians stress the body of Christ, that does not
mean that the Christians who received the Pastorals and the author
who wrote them were ignorant of the theology of the body of Christ,
nor that those involved in Colossians/Ephesians were ignorant of the
presby-teral structure. One can be certain only of the positive emphasis
that Christians were hearing in a particular work.
I hope to avoid some pitfalls by working
with that positive emphasis applied as an answer to a specific question.43
In the chapters that follow I plan to discuss seven sub-apostolic
NT witnesses (Pastorals, Colossians/Ephesians, Luke/Acts, 1 Peter,
John, the Johannine Epistles, and Matthew). I wish to see how the
different emphasis in each of these seven witnesses would answer the
question of survival after the death of the great first generation
of apostolic guides or heroes.44 A sociological observation, already
made by Max Weber, is that the problem of continuance and succession
is inevitably raised with the disappearance of the original leaders
of a movement. The crisis is accentuated to the degree that those
leaders have innovatively moved their followers away from the previous
criteria of authority. By the time of the death of the apostles, the
churches were already breaking away or broken away from much of what
previously constituted authority in Judaism; but then (as ever since)
they have had to survive without the living tutorship of the great
figures of the first generation. The answers of their immediate successors
were, I suggest, repeated throughout the ages - not in the sense that
one church repeated one answer and another church repeated another
answer, but in the sense that each church has repeated many of the
answers. A difference among modern churches lies in the proportionate
arrangement of answers. {31}
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