The Radical Resurgence

I had been reading The Wittenberg Door since the 1970s. In each issue they would carry an interview with someone of interest. In 1980 they traveled to San Jose, California, to talk with Juan Carlos Ortiz. This interview was selected to appear in The Door Interviews (Zondervan, 1989, pp. 183-190). What follows are excerpts from what Juan Carlos had to say. I believe his words are packed with insights that are just as important now as they were in 1980.  – Jon Zens

Door: You make a starting point in your book. You suggest that when we are talking about the significance of the Bible, in practice, evangelicals believe that God speaks, then the church, and then the Bible. Wouldn’t most evangelicals strongly disagree with that?

Ortiz: Sure they would. That viewpoint has upset many people, but they are only getting upset at themselves. Look at history. It was not the Bible that made the church; it was the church that made the Bible. It was not the Bible who chose the members of the church, but the members of the church who chose the canon of the Bible.

Door: Your viewpoint sounds very Roman Catholic.

Ortiz: The only difference between Catholics and protestants is that the Catholics are honest and say it.

Door: Say what?

8.    Context and Content in  N.T. Preaching.

Having sought in vain for a particular concept of preaching to serve as a criterion for church and ministry, let us keep the word as a general label for the varieties of verbal ministry in N.T. times.

Only by guess and surmise do we construct a notion of what the early church services were like….. Apostles, elders, and teachers must all have preached in divers other ways, but without any hint that one kind of speech has priority.   Yet there is one genuine distinction. C.H. Dodd has demonstrated that when speaking  to non-Christians the early church did have a most specific message.  Here the “proclamation” spoke of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, followed by a summons to repent and believe.

It is clearly possible to distinguish from this those teaching processes in the church which presuppose the listener’s faith……it did make a difference to the N.T. preacher whether his listener was in the church or outside of it, a difference not only in tactics but in content.

Thus we have come upon a new dimension of definition, and a much more solid one – “proclamation” defined not by a specific office but by a specific listener, namely the unbeliever.   But this is clearly not what the Reformation meant, for the whole concern of Reformation theology  was to justify restructuring the organised church without shaking its foundations.  The Reformation retained infant baptism and state-coerced church membership, thus the distinction between believers and unbelievers, members and non-members could not become visible.  The true church had to be defined independent of its membership.  “The church is where the word is properly preached and the sacraments properly administered” is a criterion applying to the pastor and the synod, not the congregation or the Christian.

7.    The Centrality of Preaching.

Especially since the Reformation, the “proper preaching of the Word” has been central in definitions  of both the church and her ministry.  Just what the “Word” means and what the “proper” means have varied immensely from Luther to Calvin, and from Wesley to Barth, but formally the criterion has remained stable.

What we need to test here is not primarily whether the term “proclamation” is biblically derived, nor whether there should be “proclamation” in the church, but a much narrower question.  Is the word’s definition sufficiently objective and clear that anyone can use it and get the same  “measurement”?….

To move from the preachers of Acts to the teacher of James 3, or the teaching elder of the Pastorals, from Calvin to Finney to Billy Graham, and think one word covers that all, is simply to render  that word useless.

6.    Wellhausen’s  Children.

(The concept of multiple ministry) has not been one of the classic options in the inter-denominational arguments of the last four centuries…….Some of these are implicitly or explicitly arguments in favour of the abandonment of the multiplicity  in favour of the mono-pastoral pattern, and to these we turn first.

It is one of the commonly held beliefs of N.T. scholarship in recent years that one can discern within the documents of the N.T. literature itself the signs of a marked evolution in patterns of ministry.  In the young churches which arose directly out of the ministry of Paul, whose life we see reflected in his correspondence with them while they were still very young,  – for example, in the Corinthian letters – there was great spontaneity, even confusion, of enthusiasm and creativity, with a variety of “gifts” and “ministries” which  to our tastes would appear to be chaotic.  Paul did not deplore this enthusiasm (they say), but neither did he prescribe it.

4.    The Meaning of Ministry In the N.T.

The most striking general trait is what  we may call the multiplicity of the ministry. Under this label we gather three distinguishable  observations:

– The diversity of distinct ministries; that there are many, and the listing vary.

– Plurality. The fact that in some roles, notably the oversight of some congregations, several brethren together carried the same office.

– The universality of ministry: that “everyone has a gift” is said explicitly in 1 Cor. 7:7. 12:7; Eph. 4:7, and 1 Pet. 4:10, and implicitly in Rom.12:1.    Does this multiplicity have a  theological meaning?  The multiplicity of gifts assigned by the one Lord who fills all is thus itself an aspect of Christ’s saving work and of His rule from on high.

The “fullness of Christ” in Eph.4:13, or the “whole body working properly” of 4:16 is precisely the interrelation  of the ministries of 4:11,12 in line with the divine unity  of 4:3-6. ”Unity of the faith”, “mature humanity”, and “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” are not descriptions of a well-rounded Christian personality but of the divinely co-ordinated multiple ministry.

2.   Religion In The Old Testament.

The priesthood of Israel takes over most of the traits of the general religionist. The priest is qualified by heredity and initiation.  He presides over celebrations of the annual cycle and blesses the king.

In sum, in Israel the function of the religionist is present, accepted, used, but it is also filled with new meaning, relativised in value, and removed from the centre.

3.    The Vocabulary of Ministry In The New Testament.

 If we come to the N.T. with this “professional religionist” view of  ministry, asking, “What is said on this subject?” then we can add together some things which Paul said about himself as apostle, some things he wrote to Timothy and Titus about themselves, some other things he wrote  to them about bishops and deacons, some things Acts reports about the leaders in Jerusalem and Antioch, salt the mixture with some reminscences from the O.T, and come up with quite an impressive package as the “Biblical View of Ministry”.  But if we ask whether any of the N.T. literature makes the assumptions listed above:

Perspectives on Ministries in Renewal.  John Howard Yoder.

(Author of The Original Revolution & The Politics of Jesus)

(What follows are excerpts from the above article which appeared in Concern ~17th February 1969, pp. 33-93.   The whole article is excellent. Since it is no longer available, I have tried here to capture some of Yoder’s key points, in order to highlight some foundational concerns. – Jon Zens)

The following text is presented to provide a focus for conversation.  The attempt is not made to carry on a conversation with the major alternative positions.

1.   The Universality of the Religious Specialist.

There are few more reliable constants running through all human society than the special place every human community makes  for the professional religionist. We may consult comparative religion, anthropology, sociology, or psychology…… the report is always the same.  Every society, every religion, even the pluralistic and “secular” civilisation  makes a place for the religionist.  The basic cultural-anthropological parallel is all the more striking in view of a great variety of superficial differences.