Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/450

428 PAUL gallon, " was the fact that wherever the gospel was preached, especially in the great cities of the empire, the converts tended to Christian form communities. Such communities, whether for religious or commu- non-religious purposes, were among the commonest phenomena nities. of the age. How far Paul himself encouraged the formation of such communities among his converts is uncertain ; but many considera tions lead to the inference that where they were so formed they were formed rather upon the Gentile than upon the Jewish model. Out of several names which were in current use to designate them, that which Paul used was common to both Gentile and Jewish com munities, and it was also that which he continued to use in another sense to designate the whole body of Christians. Hence has arisen the confusion which pervades almost all Christian litera ture between the use of the word fKKrjjia, or " church," to denote the whole multitude of those who will be saved regarded as an ideal aggregate, and the use of the same word to denote a visible community of professing Christians in any one place or country. The raison d etre of these communities was mutual help in the spiritual, the moral, and the outward life. Every member of a community had received the new life of the Spirit, and the diver sities of character and opportunity which exist between man and man were conceived as diversities of manifestation (0oW/>wcrts) of the Spirit who lived within them, or, from another point of view, as diversities of gifts (xapt oyxaTa). " But to each one was given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal " (1 Cor. xii. 7). When the community met in assembly some of its members " prophesied," preaching as though with a divine inspiration ; some spoke in such ecstasy that their words seemed to be those of an unknown tongue and needed an interpreter ; some taught again the lessons which they had learned from Paul ; some hid " a psalm " ; some had " a revelation" (1 Cor. xiv. 26 sq.}. Sometimes the aim was rather moral than spiritual "edification." They exhorted one another, and "admonished" one another (Rom. xv. 14). Sometimes on points of practice they carried this "judging" of one another farther than Paul approved. The Christian liberty, which was no less a bond of union than the recognition of the new Christian law, was in danger of being overthrown ; and more than once Paul thought it necessary to insist that they should not judge one another any more, but rather strive not to put a stumbling-block in each other s way (Rom. xiv. 10 sq. ; 1 Cor. x. 25 sq. ). If, however, the offence of any member were gross and open, the assembly became a court of discipline. To the community at Corinth, which had been slow to recognize the necessity of being thus "children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse genera tion," Paul wrote peremptorily "not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner " (1 Cor. v. 11). In one flagrant case they were bidden to " put away the wicked man from among themselves " (1 Cor. v. 13) ; but the right of the community to deal with such cases at their discretion was also recognized ; for, when the guilty person had on his repentance been forgiven, or punished with a lesser punishment, instead of being expelled, Paul wrote again that the action of the majority was sufficient and had his approval (2 Cor. ii. 6, 10). But all such action was subordi nated to the general rule, which is repeated in many forms, " let all that ye do be done in love" (1 Cor. xvi. 14). A not less promi nent aim of these communities was mutual help in the material and outward life. Some of their members were necessitous or sick ; and the duty of helping all such was discharged partly by giving contributions to the common fund and partly by distri buting it. Sometimes also the members of other communities came as strangers, travelling as men did, " quorum cophinus fo&numque supcllcx" (Juvenal, iii. 14, of Jews). For such men, who probably brought, as in later times, letters of recommendation from one community to another (2 Cor. iii. 1), there was an ungrudging hospitality ; and not long afterwards, if not in Paul s own time, it was a necessary qualification for a widow who wished to be placed as such on the roll of the community that she should not only have "used hospitality" but also herself have "washed the feet" of the tired travellers as they came in (1 Tim. v. 10). In Thessa- lonica, where the community was probably both poor and small, it seems probable that the members worked together at common trades, making contributions to a common fund and sharing a common table. It was natural that some should presume on the goodness of their brethren, and try to share the latter without making contributions to the former. Paul made a special rule that this should not be the case, and he himself, though he had the right to exemption, yet, for the sake of example, would not " eat bread for nought at any man s hand, but in labour and travail worked night and day" that he might not burden the slender resources of the brethren (2 Thess. iii. 8 ; 1 Thess. ii. 9). In such communities, where the "gift " of each member was used for the common good, organization had not the importance which it had in an ordinary secular society. All work which the members of the community did for one another, including that which was done by the apostle himself, was a "ministry" (dtaKovia], and every one who did such work was, so far forth, a " minister" (5ia.Kovos). The names which ultimately came to be appropriated by special officers, appointed to do delegated work, were at first common to the whole body of members. As is natural in all communities, there were some who devoted themselves to the work with especial zeal ; and the most rudimentary form of organization is found at Thessalonica, where certain persons are spoken of as devoting themselves to the special works of" labouring," i.e., probably attending to the material needs of the poorer brethren, "admonishing," i.e., probably bring ing back erring brethren to the right way, and " presiding," or more probably (though the word is of uncertain meaning) " acting as protector," like a Roman "patronus," against oppression from with out. The community are enjoined to recognize such persons, " and to esteem them very highly in love for their work s sake " (1 Thess. v. 12, 13). In a similar way at Corinth, where the democratical character of the community is even more apparent, Paul beseeches the brethren to " be in subjection " to those who had " set them selves to minister unto the saints" (1 Cor. xvi. 15, 16). But this recognition of the special zeal of certain members was very far from being a recognition or appointment of officers as such. The functions which came in time to be regarded as giving those who discharged them an exceptional status, were onlyregarded as "gifts," resembling in kind and not surpassing in excellence those of the other members of the community. In the Epistle to the Romans, " he that ruluth " (or "protecteth ") is in the same rank as "lie that giveth" and "he that exhorteth" (Rom. xii. 8) ; and in the First Epistle to the Corinthians " helps " and " governments " are not prominent above "miracles," "healings," and "divers kinds of tongues" (1 Cor. xii. 28). It is not until the later period, and probably also the different circumstances, of the Epistle to the Philippians that officers are found with definite titles, and probably also with a distinct status ; Paul there writes " to all the saints . . . with the bishops and deacons " (Phil. i. 1). Still later, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, it seems probable that those who are spoken of as "apostles," "prophets," "evangelists," "pastors and teachers," are distinct from the great body of the community (Eph. iv. 11, 12). But it is to be noted that in no certainly authentic epistle does Paul make any mention of "presbyters." The view of Grotius and Vitringa that the " church " took the place of the " synagogue " seems, as far as the Pauline communities are concerned, to have little foundation. Those communities had a much closer resem blance to the Greek and Roman associations in the midst of which they grew ; they stood side by side with the Jewish communities, but distinct from them, as "the churches of the Gentiles" (Rom. xvi. 4). Admission to the community, or at least to full membership of Baptism, the community, seems to have been effected by the rite of baptism : "in one spirit were we all baptized into one body" (1 Cor. xii. 13). So important was this form of admission conceived to be that when a believer died before baptism another appears to have been baptized vicariously for him (1 Cor. xv. 29). It was a baptism "into Christ Jesus" (Rom. vi. 3 ; "into Christ," Gal. iii. 27), a phrase which must probably be interpreted by the analogous expressions in 1 Cor. i. 13, 15, to mean that the name of Jesus Christ alone was used (that the name of the Trinity was not invariably used in early times is clear from St Ambrose, DC S2nritu Sancto, i. 3). But in the teaching of the apostle baptism was more than an initiatory rite, and baptism " into Christ Jesus " had for him a special signi ficance. The immersion of the body in water was a "being buried with Christ," and that not only symbolically but in a real, though mystical, sense ; the rising out of the water was in a similar sense an actual rising with Christ into a new life, " that, like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life " (Rom. vi. 4, where the word fwTjs, "life," must be taken in its customary sense of actual or physical, not metaphorical or moral, life). It was otherwise ex- B-essed as the "putting on " of Christ, i.e., the being endowed with is nature (Gal. iii. 27, where the same word is used as in 1 Cor. xv. 53, "this mortal must 2>ut on immortality "). In the later form of Paul s doctrine an analogy was drawn between baptism and cir cumcision (Col. ii. 11, 12), the point of the analogy apparently being, not merely that each was an initiatory rite, but that, as in circumcision there Avas a "putting off" of a part of the body, so in baptism the whole " body of the flesh " was destroyed and the " new man " put on. There was the further significance in the rite that by baptism "into one body" the distinctions of race were obliterated. The baptized became "one man in Christ Jesus," so that there could no longer be either Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female (Gal. iii. 28 ; cf. 1 Cor. xii. 13). The differences between the several members were merely the differences of functions which result from the diversity of parts in an organic whole ; and thereby the foundations of a world-wide society were laid. The most significant act of the community when it met together Tlie ^ was the common meal. Like the members of most contemporary Lord s associations, the members of the Christian communities dined Supper, together. This common meal was a sacred meal ; it was " the Lord s Supper"; it continued and commemorated the Paschal supper at which the Lord had bidden His disciples to eat the bread which was