Jesus, Paul, and maybe a good many other apostles wouldn’t have qualified as elders on that criteria, so I’m glad your friends were at least half joking! Yeah, there’s something to be commended in having raised a family and even seeing grandchildren (assuming there was a least some commendable parenting practice and faithful living involved in getting there.) But I think there’s even more to be said for the conviction that ruling out (up front) any entire domain of people as disqualified for leadership, be they women or single people, young people or even (in at least some settings) straight white males! …will cripple that institution as it denies itself access to huge portions of what the Holy Spirit could and wants to teach.
If all leaders represent a narrow type of people, like old men, there is a real risk that will affect negatively the future of the congregation/church.
On the other hand, there is a real risk of ending to wrong tracks if the leaders are selected based on diversity criteria. Churches are not democratic societies, they represent the Kingdom of God where the leadership is ultimately in the hands of our Lord. If the King calls certain persons to leading positions, that is more important than any external qualities of the persons. All old men or all young women, that does not matter if these are those chosen and called by God.
There remains the small but crucial question of who is really chosen and called by God?
There are persons who claim and honestly believe that they are called by God to lead although they are unsuitable or not yet mature enough for the leading positions. Some of the selfmade candidates may also be persons with personality disorders, such as sociopaths and psychopaths. Church communities have features that make them vulnerable to manipulating psychopaths. Especially if there are not many willing to carry the responsibilities of leadership, those willing to take such a position may gain such a position too easily.
For these reasons, there should be some kind of minimum criteria and a long-enough monitoring of the candidates before electing someone to a leader. I see the criteria mentioned in the biblical scriptures as a set of criteria that increase the likelihood of getting suitable persons to the positions, in cases where it is not evident that the person is chosen by God to the position.
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For sure! Yes - absolutely we don’t let just anybody lead or teach. People who have not proven themselves trustworthy (by having already lived a good example of faith and love within a community for some sufficient period of time) or are not gifted with whatever competencies needed for their area of leadership would probably not be given lead positions. My only objection (which I think you affirmed) is that our response to the Spirit’s call should never be: “She can’t because she’s a woman…” or “He can’t because he’s the wrong skin color, or single, or whatever…”. In other words - the church should never deny God’s providence by throwing up these artificial (and non-biblical) stumbling blocks. But that’s not the same as saying there is no requirement at all for leadership. As you say, psychopaths and such should never be put in such a position, and one hopes that the bar is considerably higher yet than just merely ‘not being a criminal or sociopath’. If God has truly called somebody, then they should have what they need. Moses may have felt inadequate, but God didn’t leave him empty-handed to demonstrate his “God-callenness” to the Pharaoh and to his own people.
Pity the people who are so desperate that they ask small-minded cowards and criminals to be their leaders!
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Says you through sheer apologetical imagination. The other option is Mark has nothing about Judas’s death and Matthew and Luke, who copied Mark diverge wildly here. Papias also adds a third very early and different tradition about his demise. The evidence seems to indicate that no one really knew anything about Judas or his betrayal. The evidence after Mark wildly contradicts beyond what is in Mark. And the evidence before Mark (Paul) shows no obvious knowledge of Judas and mentions a “twelve” at odds with Gospel testimony. Maybe Judas was a creation of Mark ca. 70CE blaming the Jews (Judas) for the death of Jesus. Later authors ran with it and concocted wildly divergent endings for him.
The only fact here is that Mark is our only source of info about Judas. All the other authors depend on Mark and wildly differ from him on details he does not have. A singly attested point from an anonymous work published 40 years after Jesus’s death, about which there is nothing concrete in the earliest stratum.
While it may be true, it’s not very obvious. At best you can invoke the embarrassment criterion in favor of this singly attested datum. But it wouldn’t have been embarrassing for everyone. The disciples are already portrayed largely as imbeciles in the texts.
Also, I have to ask, on what basis do you claim that in the earliest church, the twelve and small handful of Christian’s thought of themselves/the phrase as “a term of art”? All while the church was still finding its legs and in conflict over a host of issues? I think that is just making things up to support what we may want to be true.
Caesar and the Gallic Wars means nothing to me. That is just a red herring. I don’t care or know who wrote that work. Works like the Gospels of Thomas and 50 other gospels were attributed to apostles early as well. Church testimony is largely just hearsay. Critical scholars (minus Gathercole) largely agree the titles are later textual additions and the texts are formally anonymous. And by earliest fathers you mean Papias? Every early connection of GMark with Mark and Peter is dependent upon this lost source which no one can actually read for themselves. Even if some of the gospels were written by their traditional namesakes, the evidence just isn’t compelling or clear cut unless you want it to be. Hardly useful to base anything on it.
Edited to add: What is the patristic evidence in favor of traditional authorship before Irenaeus (ca. 180) for the other 3 gospels? None that I know of.
Huh? This came from Introduction to Old Testament years ago; “the Twelve”, as applied to the tribes, was always an artificial number given that the listings in various places don’t match.
You have a habit of ignoring scholarship you don’t like, by misattributing it, that is quite annoying.
It has nothing to do with how they thought of themselves, it was an extension of how the term was used already in Israel, most relevantly in second-Temple Judaism.
It is exactly because they know “what that table is” that participation is limited. The practice is ancient: the service used to be in two parts, the liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Faithful, the former open to any and all, the latter limited to those known to be baptized faithful Christians. For centuries there was no problem since no one participated in Holy Communion who had not “announced” their intent beforehand so the celebrant knew who was coming. In early centuries it was not uncommon for traveling Christians to carry documents from their bishop affirming their “good standing” so they could commune in other congregations than their home one.
BTW, this is related to why the Orthodox require priests to have beards – it’s so they “look like men”. On one occasion some wit asked “What about bearded ladies?”
I just wonder what started that.
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
seems pertinent. It goes along with
“Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others.”
I.e. don’t appoint leadership without seriously training the candidates. It’s an admonition that comes out of second-Temple Judaism; those doing the ordaining were held to be responsible for errors and failures of those they ordained.
This was taken to apply to ordination from very early:
“No one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.”
The perhaps major aspect was that no one has the authority to announce that he/she is called by God and thus take on leadership, rather the call must come via the existing leadership, just as Moses called Aaron.
My favorite mentor, a Lutheran priest, kept getting asked by a nearby seminary to serve on the faculty. He always told them that there was just one position he would accept: Master of Novices. The task was to guide seminarians in personal spiritual life to ensure competence in working with people, something a fair amount of seminary graduates lack. It was his one big criticism of the Lutheran seminaries in the U.S. that there was no one tasked to help shape the personal devotional life and interpersonal skills of the students.
When I was in grad school there was an ordained staff member who had a PhD in psychiatry and another in psychology whose responsibility was to make sure that students could operate on an even keel – seminaries should have such!
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It is true that there has always been a separation between those that are followers of Christ vs. those who are not. The interpretation of who belongs among those who can participate has varied somewhat, especially during the last decades. There is also greater trust on the participants as the audience may include tens of people whom nobody knows. In such situations, it is told who can participate and it is left to the conscience of the listeners to decide whether they can themself attend.
This change reflects what has happened in the world: people do not anymore live permanently in small communities where the priests/pastors can know all persons. Mixing of people between churches has also increased, the participants of a weekend service may include people coming from many different denominations.
When I was young, in the national Lutheran church only those that had been confirmed could attend. Nowadays, also children that can understand what Eucharist is can participate (parents decide if their children can attend) and participating to the Eucharist is part of the Confirmation school in order to teach how to behave in such a situation - modern children may have no idea of how to behave as many come from homes that do not give any Christian teaching, have not attended to Christian events (except weddings and funerals) and do not even baptize their children. I heard that in one city, before the start of the Confirmation schools in the last year, the priests baptized >30 teenagers that wanted to attend to the Confirmation camps, mostly children of nominally ‘Lutheran’ homes.
This change in the largest church (>60% of the population are nominal members) has spread to many smaller churches as the mixing of believers from different backgrounds has increased. Most small churches used to be very strict in that only those that have been baptized after they became believers could attend. Now, in some of those churches also believing children (not yet baptized) have been allowed to participate. Times and interpretations are changing…
The comment raised my interest and it brought me to a thread at Academic Biblical subreddit. There’s an interesting topic about Judas and the connection to Genesis 37. I wouldn’t call your view a ‘baseless conservativism’ and I also believe Vinnie’s view is a perfectly reasonable one to have.
Yes, there is the confusing question about who should participate related to age/ baptism/knowledge.
I’ve lived and worked in Norway for periods of time, and when I do, I attend a Norwegian State (Lutheran) church because there are no churches of my denomination (that is just fine because God can work through many denominations). At first, I did not know the Norwegian Language and couldn’t understand what the priest was saying from the stage about the Eucharist/Communion and so I participated without much thought (there didn’t seem to be any “filtering” of those sitting in the pews of who participated and went to the front…I think all did).
Once I learned to speak Norwegian, I could understand that the priest was saying that “more” was happening with the ceremony than what I believe. (In my tradition, communion is seen as a memorial not as a “sacrament of grace” with a change in the elements). I did not know, then, whether someone like me would be accepted to participate or not. So, I emailed the priest and explained (in Norwegian) what my problem/question was. He said he was OK for me to participate, as long as I considered myself to have Christian faith…
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Wording is important for many but may mask similarities in practices and beliefs. The word ‘sacrament’ seems to have been used in a rather diverse sense during the first centuries AD, often as a synonym for the word ‘mystery’ in matters related to God’s actions or plan (my impression from a limited number of early writings I have read). Later, the word became something meaning quite specific type of rites.
Although some call the Holy Communion/Eucharist, baptism and some other practices as ‘sacraments’ and others not, all Christian denominations and churches I know have these practices in some form. What differs may be the interpretation of what happens in such a ritual. Sometimes the interpretations may be so different that they divide people into different denominations. Yet, if we would not use words like ‘sacrament’, there would probably be much less dividing talk among believers.
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Very true that different traditions use different names. In this case, the difference in practice went beyond just labels, though, and into the meaning of what was happening and how the priest was functioning in the ceremony. I was fine with taking such a Eucharist (participating in my own frame of reference) but just did not want to offend the resident priest/ church who may have had certain requirements or expectations for the participants that I wasn’t aware of.
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True academic skepticism is simply to ask question and not to jump to any conclusions without evidence. And since conclusive evidence is rare (either way) that usually means only questions and no conclusions.
Of course, not everything needs to be treated as an academic issue. But for most of us who have no experience of these events, that is a reasonable way of handling them.
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