But when exactly did it begin? If that can be established, we can agree a starting point.
In church history it’s mostly held that the first generation of Christians has an authority over the rest. Demonstrate that the apostles believed this or did that, and we have something by which everything else can be measured.
I used to think that, following the death of the longest surviving apostle (most likely John), Christianity essentially fell off a cliff where it plunged into confusion and later corruption. This darkness prevailed until the lightning rod of Luther, who put the ship back on an even keel, but which stayed stuck in a muddy harbour until the Puritan mission, Great awakening, Victorian revival and missionary movement that led, finally, and at long last, to the Charismatic renewal and church restoration movement. Conveniently enough - it’s all been leading to ‘me’.
My pedagogy may have had architects too since it’s a narrative I’ve heard repeated by many others.
My question however, and the question I can’t get away from (and which is only now showing how important it is to me, particularly for settling internal disputes of theology), is ‘what does that retelling, say about Christ’s leadership of the church?’ More specifically, since Jesus promised that the Spirit would lead us into all truth, ‘what does it say about the Spirit’s competency in leading us?’
I can’t get away from this question. It’s troubling me, and I’m wondering where it’s been all this time and, truthfully, where it will eventually lead.
Sometimes this thought/question loop leads me into murkier places than I’d like to go: what if he’s not been leading us all along?
Other times the implications have been less seismic ‘what if the church is more captive to its culture than we’d like to admit?’. Less seismic but, I’m sure you’d agree, still quite significant.
Almost fifteen years ago now I remember the impression that reading Rodney Stark’s ‘The Triumph of Christianity’ made on me. One of the overriding effects it had was to give me a sense of rootedness. I remember, perhaps for the first time, as a Christian the peace and confidence I felt knowing my family tree. I felt confident I could draw a line from the first generation of Christians to me, through the fall of the Roman Empire, the early Middle Ages, the Reformation, the colonialist expansion and on into the secularisation of Western Europe. I suddenly knew who I was, and I also felt as though the ‘cliff fall’ in the post apostolic era was less severe than it had previously been. There was less of a gulf between me and them.
Whereas previously the cliff edge had been around 90AD, now it was more like 300AD (with the edict of Milan), but even then I still managed to find siblings among the rocks.
Then came David Bentley Hart’s book, The Story of Christianity. I took it slow and enjoyed the many pictures and stories along the way. For a start, reading church history written by an Eastern Orthodox Christian, opened my heart to the possibility of finding family outside my narrow slice of the church. If Stark’s book pushed the cliff edge to the 300s, Bentley Hart, took it to the schism of East and West in the 900s.
Things, it seemed, didn’t ‘fall apart’ when St John died. The Spirit taught, led and shaped things far more than I’d realised. After this came Tom Holland’s book ‘Dominion’, and then Glen Scrivener’s ‘The Air We Breathe’ and my scaffold has only become more inhabitable.
At this stage, you may be thinking, my conclusion is simply that ‘history matters’ and yet, whilst this is undoubtedly true, the reason for me writing this has a more contemporary and existential edge than that.
I have a growing conviction that the Spirit has been guiding Christ’s people throughout history. I mean to say that I believe he’s present in the prayer meetings of every gathering of Christians. He’s always been there and he’s always been guiding them in their answers.
With my limited knowledge of the past and my even more limited understanding of church denominations I’ve struggled to see it, but he’s been there all along.
When I read Augustine’s Confessions, the Spirit in me recognises a brother. When I read Spurgeon on Christ, I feel the same. The Spirit has shown each of us the same jewel, and we’re each doing our best to behold it, to behold him.
When it comes to the things that trouble me about the contemporary debates in the church, our internal disagreements, it confuses me - now that I’ve seen it - why we don’t consider the Spirit’s witness through history in our discussions.
As a friend of mine has said: ‘if 95% of Christians throughout history all felt the Spirit told them that a certain text meant this and not that, you’d have to have a pretty good case for saying it meant something else.’
When it comes to the Spirit’s witness on things settled through the ages: on the doctrine of Christ, on the nature of God, on the nature of redemption, or on ‘second tier’ items like homosexuality, or gender roles in the home or in church, or the charismatic gifts and dynamic power of the Spirit why is there so little regard for the witness of the ages? It genuinely confuses me and it grieves me because I can’t help think of the implications of it all.
If it’s only now that we’re seeing clearly what God’s mind is on these things, what kind of a God is he?
Now, since each generation is unwell in a new way, and since each culture falls off a different side of the horse, clarifications and corrections are most definitely needed. But outright revolution? Aren’t revolutions meant to overthrow power structures? In which case, whose leadership are we overthrowing, the Spirit’s?
Things do fall apart, and every generation has to work out which pieces need to be stuck back together and where, but there’s been no cliff edge that the church has fallen from, no time when Christianity got trampled and lost beyond recognition. We may not know much about the inner life of true believers and there have been many messy entanglements between Christians and culture, idolatry and truth. These have all required unpicking, and will require unpicking in each new generation, but a complete overthrow of the Spirit’s witness to the saints?
A little more humility in the face of the Holy Spirit’s divinity and directive leadership is needed I think.
The context changes, the church adapts, the expression of truth may shift and appear differently from culture to culture, but not the Truth, not the Gospel, not the Spirit’s guiding hand over it all.
It bothers me immensely not least of all because I know how little I know, and much I need to grow. The only hope I’ve got is that the Spirit will lead me, as he’s leading my siblings, as he’s been leading others.
The precious Holy Spirit is the only show in town. The closer we can stay to him, and the more we can avoid getting caught in the weeds of worldly wisdom and human culture, the more chance we’ve got.
Spirit of God
soften my heart to hear your whisper,
sharpen my mind to follow your logic
and open my eyes to see as you see.