Introduction
We are familiar with many valuable models of the church such as ‘family’, ‘house’, ‘community’; perhaps, ‘elect’, ‘believers’, ‘disciples’, ‘followers’—any number of words usefully capture something of the ‘body of Christ’. In this essay, we are interested in historical and dispensational models, of which there are traditionally three, and we want to describe a fourth.
Historical and Dispensational Models
An ‘historical’ or ‘dispensational’ model of the church is all about answering the question: What has the church been since the Apostolic Age under God’s guiding hand? Has there been a church? In the course of history since Adam, has God changed the principles of how he brings about groups of the faithful? Here are three answers to these questions for the period Anno Domini:
- God through Jesus created the church as the body of Christ with the Apostles; he has continued to bring people to Christ ever since on the same basis and there has always been his church throughout the course of history—it is the universal catholic church embodied in the Catholic Church, which can trace its history back to the apostles.
- What is stated in (1) is true except for the last part: the Catholic Church became apostate over the centuries and fostered false practices and teachings; what happened in the Reformation under God was a stripping out of these practices and teachings and the Protestant Church is now the embodiment of the universal catholic church which can trace its history back to the apostles.
- Catholic and Protestant views of the church in history are wrong. The church became corrupt in various ways and at various times in history, but the Reformation was not enough. What has been needed is a restoration of the original apostolic church and this has happened now under God in our [substitute preferred name] church.
These three views can be dubbed the Catholic, Reformation and Restoration models of the church. They are explanations of how God has interacted in history to bring about the faithful and maintain them as a body. The Roman Catholic Church holds to (1); an example of a Reformation church would be the Lutheran Church; and an example of a Restoration church would be the Assembly of God Pentecostals.
A Fourth Model?
These three models are very familiar; they all share the assumption that God has been at work in history among Gentiles to bring about and maintain bodies of faithful men and women as the ‘apostolic’ church. A logical fourth model, and not one that is really countenanced by Christians, would be that God has not been at work in history in this manner—this would be an individualistic model. It affirms that God has not been at work building and maintaining the universal Catholic Church or the Reformed or Restoration counterparts since apostolic times.
What would be the components of an ‘individualistic’ model? It has to cover individuals coming to the faith throughout history and, perhaps, associating together with like-minded individuals with the same faith. The following are some suggested elements of this model:
- God’s prophetic purpose is with Israel; with Israel dispersed among the nations, his providential activity has been with them to preserve them, pending the time that he would bring them back to the land to receive their Messiah.
- The existence of ‘the church’ is dependent on Israel being in the land and there being a ‘mission to the Gentiles’ in the last days.
- The bestowal of the Spirit was the driving force of the church in the first century, but with the dispersal of the Jews, this bestowal came to an end; it was a bestowal orientated towards the Jews.
- In the absence of the Spirit, Gentiles have the faith left behind by the apostles in the New Testament; it is for them to respond to this call and witness to those around.
- God has always been interested in individuals coming to Christ, but ‘the church’ is a body implied by the mission to the Gentiles in the Prophets for the last days and not throughout history.
- Individuals who believe the faith left behind by the apostles have banded together into communities; in the course of history, such communities have come and gone, but they should not consider themselves to be the Apostolic Church.
This ‘individualistic’ model of the church claims to be grounded in what the OT prophets say about Jesus and the mission to the Gentiles in the last days. The last days of the Jewish Commonwealth saw such a church which Jesus built, but in the last two thousand years such a spirit-guided mission has not been part of God’s purpose; nevertheless, this is shortly to be His purpose in the last days that are coming upon His people before the advent of their Messiah.
Challenges
The model throws down challenges in several directions. It is an obvious denial of the Catholic view of the church. It is also a denial of the Reformation view of the church because this is just modified Catholicism. Perhaps surprisingly though, it is also a denial of the Restoration model which, while evident throughout history, rose to prominence in the 1830s in America. The roots of the model lie in the Radical Reformation, which migrated to America, but the example we gave, Pentecostalism, traces its roots to the beginning of the twentieth century in California.
The model is a denial of restorationist views of the church because such churches are unrelated to a bestowal of the Spirit that pertains to Israel and their return to the land. Thus, claims to possess the Spirit fail to measure up because the Spirit so-claimed is not directing its energies towards God’s people and their repentance. Throughout OT history, this was the purpose of such bestowals and it is how the Prophets predict future bestowals.
The four models are mutually exclusive and they are ‘big-picture’ views of history. Christians sit inside one of the three standard models and these are obvious to the eye because they are manifested in large institutional churches. Christians inside the fourth model are unlikely to be noticed by the world—they don’t have the drive to create ‘the Church’ or replicate what Jesus and the apostles created. They stand outside the mainstream churches.
Individuals who are content to band together for the times in which they live are transient and their make-shift structures are likely to pass away if their witness to their neighbours falls upon deaf ears. The ‘individualistic’ model explains why such groups pass away: in the current dispensation that we call Anno Domini, God has given his Word and individuals have responded—He has not been about building and maintaining an institutional church.
Conclusion
This discussion piece has not elaborated upon or engaged the Catholic, Protestant or Restoration models of church history. The issues involved in a full-scale discussion are large and far-reaching. For example, within this topic area lays the answer to the question of the operation of the Spirit today, whether we are thinking about broader charismatic or narrower Pentecostal views. Instead, we have sought to sketch the claims of the ‘individualistic’ model. On this model, there are just individuals who have been baptised with the faith left behind by the apostles and who have associated locally with other like-minded individuals.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One