Over the past several years I've heard more than one statement or discussion regarding the question of the Church needing to function as an institution or fixture within society and not fall into the category of being a sect and it connotations of marginalisation, exclusivity, and even extremism. The acceleration and amplification of the culture wars and the perceived marginalisation of the Church has fueled this discussion.
Within the orbit of the debate, one often hears of Rod Dreher's Benedict Option, appeals to Dark Ages Ireland (and that awful Cahill book from the 1990's), as well as various other discussions regarding 're-evangelisation' and the like - a point I will return to at the end of this writing.
Much of the lamentation focuses on questions regarding the Church as being represented by the steeple or spire and having a place of prominence on the main street or square of the town. The discussion often begs the question regarding Christendom, assuming the Church's role is to be a primary institution within society with church leaders as the movers and shakers in said society, in many ways its leaders and moral guides.
The sect view focuses instead on the Church's pilgrim identity, the necessity, permanence, and thus expectation of persecution, antithesis and second class citizenship status. Under this scenario, the Church is viewed as a fringe and dissident group on the margins of society - a peculiar people not meeting on the main street in a prominent institutional edifice but in the back alley, the warehouse, the basement, and even the catacomb or cave. It's identity is not found in the tangible marks of institution such a property, buildings, titles, wealth, investment, and names on doors but among the community of believers marked by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Apart from the physical presence of the congregation, the only physical manifestations that mark the presence of the Church are the consecrated bread, wine, and water used in our holy rites - and of course the written word.
Someone will argue that to present these as mutually exclusive is an error. I will grant that the mere presence or reality of such trappings does not mean the Holy Spirit is absent but rather I wish to contrast in general terms an ethos, a spirit regarding the Church that is found in the New Testament as opposed to the institutional model - which all too often is marked by the corruptions of bureaucracy, institution, and often market driven decadence. Ill or broadly defined categories do not permit absolute statements but generalisations are warranted.
The New Testament evidence supporting the sect view is overwhelming and it is the governing assumption not just for the time of the apostles but the entirety of the Church Age as revealed in the many and complex visions of Revelation which (it must be argued) span the entirety of the 'Church Age' - the age of Parousia or Last Days which is the period that can also be referred to as the time between the First and Second Advents.
The institutional or sacral model must rely in Biblical terms exclusively on the Old Testament and it must re-tool its norms - re-casting them in terms of New Testament categories, and thus fundamentally changing these categories and subverting them. And this very methodology requires an expansive theological lexicon and apparatus.
The other available and probably the most plausible option for the institutional paradigm is represented by a kind of progressivism which argues that the Church (using the tools of philosophy and culture) builds a civilisation (the physical and temporal manifestation of the New Covenant Kingdom). The problem (for some candid thinkers) is that this model cannot function without leaving Scripture behind or at least relegating to be but one factor in a larger set of authorities. Under this view, the Scriptures are singularly insufficient and the Church must move beyond them (in some capacity) to manifest this larger Kingdom reality. As such, the models seen in the apostolic period as well as the larger ante-Nicene Early Church are not exemplary or emblematic but primitive trials or provisional prototypes meant to be developed and ultimately left behind.
Another problem for some holding this view is that it cannot escape the powerful current and momentum of dynamism. There's no way to 'put the brakes on'... though various factions in both the Roman Catholic and Confessional Protestant world have attempted to do so. The Throne and Altar paradigm was new once as were the Confessions. They arose from a context but that context has continued to change.
The truth is that most sacral models - even the Confessional and 'conservative' Protestant ones borrow a bit from both the Old Testament and Progressive models - even if it is inconsistent (in light of their claims) to do so. In many respects, their views are riddled with internal contradiction that become manifest when put to the test as we are witnessing so painfully in our own day. Some escape the charge of confessional infidelity by appeals to the confused and still controversial motto of semper reformanda. One thinks of the unconvincing and compromised arguments of figures like Peter Leithart, Doug Wilson, James Jordan, Rushdoony, and others of that ilk - many of which exhibit not only a gross ignorance of Scripture, Redemptive-History, and apostolic teaching, but of Church history as well.
The fundamental question here is with regard to hermeneutics. Does the New Testament take precedent over the Old? Does the New interpret the Old?
Reading through the New Testament the answer to both questions is an unequivocal 'yes'. The New teaches us how to read and interpret prophecy. It reveals that the entirety of the Old Testament was in anticipation of Christ. It's many persons, sacraments (if we may use the term), symbols, law codes, and the like were all pictures or types pointing to Christ who is the fulfillment. To revert to the Old (a recurring theme) is to Judaize, to abandon the gospel (and therefore the Kingdom) - a return to fulfilled and obsolete models and shadows in lieu of the substance. To transform them ad hoc and integrate them into a philosophical model for culture building, legislation, aesthetics and the like is unwarranted and exegetically unsustainable.
Also in the New Testament the various concepts of gospel, Kingdom, covenant, Church, and the like are interwoven, inseparable, and often interchangeable. The would-be sacralists mix and match these concepts and categories with those of the world, with bodies politic, and other ideologies in grand syncretist fashion. They seek to elevate the world's institutions and civilizational categories but instead secularize, water-down, and denigrate the holy doctrines that all point to Christ.
The New Covenant reveals that the Old when taken apart from Christ was a ministration of death, weak and unprofitable, and unable to save - not only the Israelites but the nations.
There is no basis for returning to the Old as some kind of normative semi-functioning covenant that we need to employ for the life of the Church and for the advancement of the Kingdom. There's no basis for taking it ad hoc (as is the case for the Judaizers of our day). It's all or nothing - a holistic picture pointing to Christ as not just Prophet, Priest, and King but Saviour and Judge - and thus fulfilled by His own Person, words, deeds, and teaching.
Removing or modifying the typology destroys the picture. Further, Christ actually raises the bar in terms of ethical expectation and thus much that was winked at, tolerated, and accommodated in the weakness of the old order and the time of shadows is no longer acceptable. The New Covenant people are called to a higher calling - one appropriate for the Last Days. Hebrews (chapters 9-10) directly contrasts the Mosaic Law with the New Covenant and its higher calling as does Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. The ethics of the New Covenant are diametrically opposed to the sacral-institutional mindset and the ethics it tends to spawn. You cannot serve God and mammon is perhaps one of the most ignored teachings in the midst of a sermon that is for the most part unheeded or at best manipulated.
Does this mean the Old Covenant writings are of no value? By no means! However, we could say they are often descriptive rather than prescriptive. As an active covenant - the Old is dead, disannulled and obsolete. Not because it was just cast aside in old school Dispensationalist fashion, but because it was fulfilled and it's temporary purpose is no longer applicable. Faith has come and we are no longer under the schoolmaster. As a child I might build a model of a house but as an adult when I have the actual house, why would I go back and study the model or worse, seek to live inside it?
The Last Days Sect view has profound implications for how we deal with culture and it necessarily rejects the syncretic 'worldview' model that dominates the Christian scene. Christians have an epistemology which is sufficient to interact with the world (and rich beyond measure) but it is not the kind of holistic-comprehensive and coherentist philosophy that the culture builders seek. Much is left undeveloped and relegated to mystery. But this is not a problem for us as this is not our home, our treasures and hearts are elsewhere. We don't need the answers to all the questions they pursue. Would that they understood - there are no answers apart from Christ who is known by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works through the Church. The state, its armies, police, and legal codes are not means ordained by the Spirit to build the Kingdom of Heaven - nor (as much as we might appreciate them) are the arts. Those who argue otherwise assume that we are to seek a unified theory and that this found by means of coherence and inference. They have no Biblical case. This present evil age will remain so until Christ returns. There are many wonderful things within the fold of culture but as Christians we are always somewhat detached. We needn't fear and retreat as do some but we're not invested in it either. We are detached users at best.
The Early Church functioned as a sect until the Constantinian Shift when it was transformed into an institution. The First Reformation movements re-embraced the sect model which almost always included a focus on poverty and its otherworldly rejection of power. Poverty and the notion of a culturally influential or dominant institution are incompatible.
This Last Days eschatological and pilgrim impulse was destroyed by the Magisterial Reformation which wed itself to power (and inevitably mammon) and created a rival Christendom. It was not in any way shape or form a return to primitive Christianity. This is not to say that all associated with the Magisterial Reformation was negative but it was deeply flawed and we live the results even to this present hour.
Tragically, it swallowed up and largely destroyed the legacy of the First Reformation. This was done deliberately in a manner not unlike the Jesuits in the Catholic-dominated lands. It was a combination of coercion and seduction and given the fact that the Magisterial Reformation (and the larger Renaissance) unleashed a century of conflagration, many Kingdom Christians living in those difficult times were forced to seek shelter and refuge, take sides, or with their circles broken they found themselves in new (yet foreign) circles and surrounded by a flurry of new ideas. It's hardly surprising if not inevitable that subsequent generations would be won over and abandoning the nonresistance and poverty of their Kingdom-minded ancestors, they happily took up the sword and coin calling of Magisterial Reformation and its new Christendom. Others in reaction moved in different theological directions - and this wasn't always a positive move either.
And here's where it gets a little confusing as the Magisterial Reformation often seeks to 'claim' or appropriate the proto-Protestant groups of the First Reformation. Regardless of some theological overlap born of Scriptural study, fundamental differences remain - even with groups like the Hussites and Lollards who (it could be argued) represent a kind of hybrid. Some took up arms and formed alliances with political factions and yet also retained (inconsistently) some of the Early Church and First Reformation's sectarian ideals in viewing Christendom as antichrist and the Church as corrupted by mammon.
For many groups associated with the First Reformation and with the later Anabaptists, Kingdom theology takes precedent and on a practical level these differences generate a real antithesis in the realm of ethics.
From approaches to money and questions of violence and more specifically state violence, there are vast differences. New Testament categories concerning individual obedience to the state and how the Church is to interact with the state are subverted and replaced by a so-called Christian State policy and a Christian politic, and the new morality and values it spawns. It's no less true today.
The
institutional approach also spawns denominationalism, a schismatic
ecclesiology (and often mindset) that leads to the Church being
treated and run as a business or institution. The Church (often
conflated and confused with the denomination) is an entity with
status in society - hence the steeples and signs. And with it comes
everything from business offices, lofty titles, investment
portfolios, and spin-off institutions like colleges and other
schools. There is yet another irony here in that the advocates of the
institutional view of the Church (and specifically the denominational
partisans) will charge the sectarian view with being guilty of schism
- when in fact their denominational boundaries and bureaucratic
hurdles are by definition schismatic and even condemned by Paul in 1
Corinthians. That fleshly tendency was already in existence and
running rampant.
Some of the Restorationists in the 19th century attempted to address some of these issues but struggled to break free from the grip of their Enlightenment epistemological context and the many assumptions and enticements of America's prosperous society. Today, like many of the Anabaptists they have been deeply affected by Evangelical culture and its corrosive ethos and have all but turned their backs on the spirit and principles of their forebears.