Chapter 5: Churches of Galatia (part 2)
12. The Churches In Lukan and Pauline language two meanings are found of the term Ecclesia. It means originally simply “an assembly”; and, as employed by Paul in his earliest Epistles, it may be rendered “the congregation of the Thessalonians”. It is then properly construed with the genitive, denoting the assembly of this organised society, to which any man of Thessalonica may belong if he qualifies for it. The term Ecclesia originally implied that the assembled members constituted a self-governing body like a free Greek city (
Gradually Paul’s idea of “the Unified Church” became definite; and, with the true philosophic instinct, he felt the need of a technical term to indicate the idea. Ecclesia was the word that forced itself on him. But in the new sense it demanded a new construction; it was no longer “the church of the Thessalonians,” but “the Church in Corinth”; and it was necessarily singular, for there was only one Church. The new usage grew naturally in the mind of a statesman, animated with the instinct of administration, and gradually coming to realise the combination of imperial centralisation and local home rule, which is involved in the conception of a self-governing unity, the Universal Church, consisting of many parts, widely separated in space. Each of these parts must govern itself in its internal relations, because it is distant from other parts, and yet each is merely a piece carved out of the homogeneous whole, and each finds its justification and perfect ideal in the whole. That was a conception analogous to the Roman view, that every group of Roman citizens meeting together in a body (coventus Civium Romanorum) in any part of the vast Empire formed a part of the great conception “Rome,” and that such a group was not an intelligible idea, except as a piece of the great unity. Any Roman citizen who came to any provincial town where such a group existed was forthwith a member of the group; and the group was simply a fragment of “Rome,” cut off in space from the whole body, but preserving its vitality and self-identity as fully as when it was joined to the whole, and capable of reuniting with the whole as soon as the estranging space was annihilated. Such was the Roman constitutional theory, and such was the Pauline theory. The actual working of the Roman theory was complicated by the numberless imperfect forms of citizenship, such as the provincial status (for the provincials were neither Romans nor foreigners; they were in the State yet not of the State), and other points in which mundane facts were too stubborn; and it was impeded by failure to attain full consciousness of its character. The Pauline theory was carried out with a logical thoroughness and consistency which the Roman theory, could never attain in practice; but it is hardly doubtful that, whether or not Paul himself was conscious that the full realisation of his idea could only be the end of a long process of growth and not the beginning, his successors carried out his theory with a disregard of the mundane facts of national and local diversity that produced serious consequences. They waged relentless war within the bounds of the Empire against all provincial distinctions of language and character, they disregarded the force of associations and early ties, and aimed at an absolute uniformity that was neither healthy nor attainable in human nature. The diversities which they ejected returned in other ways, and crystallised in Christian forms, as the local saints who gradually became more real and powerful in the religious thought and practice of each district than the true Christian ideas; and, as degeneration proceeded, the heads of the Church acquiesced more and more contentedly in a nominal and ceremonial unity that had lost reality. As is natural, Paul did not abandon the old and familiar usage of the term Ecclesia, when the new and more technical usage developed in his mind and language. The process is apparent in Galatians 1:13, where the new sense occurs, though hardly as yet, perhaps, with full consciousness and intention. Elsewhere in that letter the term is used in the old sense, “the Churches of Galatia”. In 1 Corinthians 1:2 the new sense of Ecclesia is deliberately and formally employed. The term Ecclesia is used in Acts in both these ways, and an examination of the distinction throws some light on the delicacy of expression in the book. It occurs in the plural sense of “congregations” or “every congregation” in Acts 14:23, Acts 15:41, Acts 16:5. In each of these eases it is used about Paul’s work in the period when he was employing the term in its earlier sense; and there is a fine sense of language in saying at that period that Paul went over the congregations which he had rounded in Syria and Cilicia and in Galatia. In all other cases (in the Eastern Text at least), Luke uses Ecclesia in the singular, in some cases markedly in the sense of the Unified Church (e.g., Acts 9:31), in some cases as “the Church in Jerusalem” (Acts 8:1), and in some cases very pointedly, “the Church in so far as it was in Jerusalem” or “in Antioch” (Acts 11:22, Acts 13:1); and in some cases where the sense “congregation” might be permitted by the context, the sense of “the Church” gives a more satisfactory meaning. The author, therefore, when he speaks in his own person, stands on the platform of the developed Pauline usage, and uses Ecclesia in the sense of “the single Unified Church,” but where there is a special dramatic appropriateness in employing the earlier Pauline term to describe Paul’s work, he employs the early term. An exception occurs to this rule, in an addition of the Bezan Text, according to which Apollos went to Achaia and contributed much to strengthening the congregations (
Note 1. Date On our view this journey began in March 47, and ended about July or August 49.
Note 2. Declension of Lystra The variation in the declension of the word Lystra 5-3 is sometimes taken as a sign that the author employed two different written authorities (in one of which the word was declined as feminine singular and in the other as neuter plural), and followed them implicitly, using in each case the form employed in the authority whom he was following at the moment. This suggestion has convinced neither Spitta nor Clemen, who both assign Acts 16:1-3 to one author. Only the most insensate and incapable of compilers would unawares use the double declension twice in consecutive sentences. The author, whoever he was and whenever he lived, certainly considered that the proper declension of the name was
One indirect piece of evidence may be added. Myra is an analogous name. Now the local form of accus. was
Incidentally we notice that the name of the city is spelt Lustra, not Lystra (like Prymnessos), on coins and inscriptions. That is an indication of Latin tone, and of the desire to make the city name a Latin word. People who called their city Lustra would have distinguished themselves pointedly from the Lycaonians, the subjects of King Antiochus and mentioned in that way on his coins.