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More Than Christians - Norman Hubbard
86 Plays5 months ago
Have you ever wondered why early Jesus-followers called each other siblings, holy ones, or beloved? Norman Hubbard sits down with Matt and Nick to discuss the early church’s use of normal language in surprising ways to express and shape their unique relationships. He describes how these unique relationships were an expression of the gospel of Jesus, and considers ways our church tradition has been teaching an incomplete gospel when it prioritizes justification at the expense of reconciliation and redemption. Check out this conversation about Norm’s book, “More than Christians: Practicing Gospel-Shaped Community with the Language of the Early Church”.
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
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Transcript
Introduction to Norman Hubbard and Community Identity in the Early Church
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, welcome to the Reparidigm Podcast. Today we're sharing a conversation that we had with our friend Norman Hubbard who wrote the book More Than Christians, Practicing Gospel-Shaped Community with the Language of the Early Church.
00:00:11
Speaker
In an era where evangelicals in the United States at least have pretty much lost their way, We've been seduced by political voices and the powers of the world. We think there's probably nothing more important for us to be doing as the community of Jesus, but to be talking about our identity in Jesus.
00:00:26
Speaker
So to that end, enjoy the conversation with Norman Hubbard about Christian identity with the language of the early church. Norman, your education's in linguistics you've worked in college ministry. What got you interested in the language of the early church?
00:00:39
Speaker
I've always been a word nerd. And what I did in graduate school, among other things, I worked in um some lexicography courses, so dictionary writing, which is like just next level nerdiness about words.
What Did Early Christians Call Themselves?
00:00:57
Speaker
I did work in um discourse analysis in written language, which what I was working on is how do people negotiate social space, especially power dynamics in written discourse?
00:01:10
Speaker
um Kind of an odd field. Never ask anyone what they studied in grad school. um Because it's always so obscure that it kills conversation. That's a conversation killing thing. yeah i just i studied you know written discourse and power relations. um But it kind of got me attuned to, I guess, the way that we use language to...
00:01:34
Speaker
um open, closed social space. That's in my way distant background. i kind of left all that stuff behind. I worked in vocational campus ministry with college students for over 25 years, but um I was studying Jesus's vision for discipleship and ran across in Acts chapter 11, where the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch, which a lot of people have noted before.
00:01:59
Speaker
And I just asked myself, ah so what do they call themselves before they called themselves Christians?
The Journey to Writing 'More Than Christians'
00:02:05
Speaker
um You can ask many people that question and they will usually have a pretty good answer to it.
00:02:13
Speaker
um Although it's funny to me, most people will say they called themselves the way um that does not seem to be what they customarily called one another, though. That may have been how they some refer to the movement itself. I wouldn't address you. Hey, no. Fellow follower of The Way. the what Nick, The way You know, and so, yeah, I just started pursuing that. um I had actually was in conversation with the publisher at Nav Press, um who they eventually published the book More Than Christians. And he was interested in that. but He said, I'm not aware of anything in the popular press ah where anyone has written on that before. Would you be interested in following up on it?
00:02:56
Speaker
Which is never ask a word guy, would you be interested in studying these words? You know? The guy who was excited about lexicography. That's exactly right. Yeah.
00:03:08
Speaker
I tell people i one time presented a paper at the Dictionary Society of North America, um also a conversation killer. so Yeah. Where are they getting together
Complexities of the Term 'Christian' Today
00:03:17
Speaker
this year? yeah Well, that one was in Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah.
00:03:22
Speaker
Committed followers of Jesus, obviously we call ourselves Christians, but oftentimes in a lot of contexts we'll be like, well, I'm a real Christian or they're a real Christian, as opposed to a lot of people calling themselves Christians that presumably are not. Yeah.
00:03:35
Speaker
It's funny, you had a quote in the book where you said, when a noun needs to be resuscitated by the adjective real, it's time to conduct a post-mortem. So thought be interesting to conduct that post-mortem a little bit yeah and talk about why the word Christian is so confusing, if not problematic to you today. Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it.
00:03:55
Speaker
In fact, I texted someone this morning. I was using the word Christian, and then I thought, should I use that word? you know um i yeah And we should use the word Christians, but understand its origin, um borrow from when it first kind of came into the church.
00:04:15
Speaker
If there's a problem with it, um it's it's not that we use the word Christian. it's We primarily use that term, and there's such a rich vocabulary Christian.
Shifts in Gospel Focus Post-Reformation
00:04:27
Speaker
Christian self-designation in the scripture and in our early history, it said so much about who we believed ourselves to be based on what Jesus had done for us at the cross that it's not that the term itself is problematic as much as it's a loss to only refer to one another in that way.
00:04:48
Speaker
and because of where we stand in history now, it can become more more of a cultural designation. Yeah, absolutely.
00:04:59
Speaker
I kind of want to get more into that maybe at the end of this conversation. Yeah, sure, sure. And that's where that's where the whole, you know, well, that person's a real Christian. i used to run with a friend who was and not ah not a believer when I lived in Illinois. And he once separated out the church into, he said, Norm, there are there are nice Christians and there are not nice Christians. You know what i mean? And so it was like, but what he was basically identifying, I think, may be a bit of ah a problem is that um there's sort of people who call themselves Christians, um perhaps as a cultural reference or with reference to their background or some sort of nominal commitment to a traditional faith, um but that
00:05:43
Speaker
You know, it doesn't mean much. And so then we have to ah supply the adjective real or true or whatever. That's a C.S. Lewis thought. By the way, I think he's the first person i I read who said something like, anytime you have to start describing someone as a real so-and-so, there's a problem with that.
00:05:59
Speaker
The noun has gotten blood of a lot of its meaning. I think you're right. I think that is Lewis because I remember reading that as well. It is interesting, though. I wonder if we incorporate a lot of the other early church vocabulary that was used to refer to one another.
00:06:13
Speaker
Those who aren't real Christians, I wonder if they'd be a bit uncomfortable with using some of that early vocabulary. Yeah. The brother-sister language that we're going to talk about here. i wonder if using all the extra vocabulary is actually a help to kind of include and solidify those who really are committed to the way, so to speak.
00:06:30
Speaker
I'm reacting so positively to it because it makes us uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. I mean, like those of us who love Jesus and and and want to be identified with him and want to surrender our lives to him, um try try um identifying a person or a small group of people as disciples, which is what they were calling each other. When they first started being called Christians, they were calling each other disciples. And most people were like, ah.
00:06:59
Speaker
Maybe our self-designators should be challenging to us. Yeah. You know, challenge our commitment yeah out to the cause. And it possibly is the case because of where we stand in history, where the term Christian is actually an easy self-designator.
00:07:12
Speaker
It doesn't mean much. It doesn't call me to do much. I can just be one nominally. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. You argued in your book that today we tend to practice a partial gospel.
00:07:23
Speaker
He said the Reformation left the notion that salvation by grace through faith is the full definition of the gospel. It's incomplete, you've said. We've downplayed reconciliation at the expense of justification.
00:07:35
Speaker
so why do you think that that reconciliation has been downplayed in our tradition? I am not a church historian. And so that was one of the claims that I made in the book where I thought, I guess I'm just going to print this and duck.
00:07:50
Speaker
We weren't expecting to get asked about it. yeah interview The message of ah justification um had been so lost in the church during the medieval era that um And, you know, Luther and in his compatriots sort of found it and proclaimed it and preached it and emphasized it.
00:08:17
Speaker
It was an immeasurable gain for the church for that to happen. um But it sort of became the message of salvation, justification by grace through faith in Jesus. And i i hope I said it clearly enough in the book. i I never want that message to be sort of pushed to the side.
00:08:41
Speaker
It's just that there's more in the New Testament. There's more ah really in the scriptures that was lost at the fall and accomplished at the cross than simply the forgiveness of sin, ah the removal of guilt, the sentence of our condemnation being laid on Jesus and him taking that for us. Again, that is ah ah marvelous message of the gospel. It's just not all there is.
00:09:11
Speaker
I called um the most reformed friend that I have to ask him. And he wasn't mad? Yeah. To ask him this question. I was teaching this at a conference, a student conference. And i said, can I say this? Because like I'm not trying to um um not trying to minimize the doctrine of justification.
00:09:33
Speaker
What I'm trying to do is sort of elevate the gospel accomplishment, if you will, or the accomplishment of the cross that brought reconciliation between us and God. It removed the hostility between us and God and the message of redemption.
00:09:50
Speaker
um That is that ah the enslaving power of sin and Satan and death over us has been overcome at the cross of Christ. And we we no longer have to live in subjection to those powers, as I've just expressed it. I mean, those are the three sort of, ah you know, five cent words there, justification and redemption and reconciliation.
00:10:14
Speaker
For for centuries in the history of the church, ah the primary accomplishment of the cross was understood largely in terms of redemption, that humanity was held captive to Satan and sin and death.
Broadening the Concept of Salvation
00:10:29
Speaker
And Jesus came and vanquished those powers and set us free. um And so it is interesting to note that kind of since the Reformation, justification has been the dominant way that we've understood what God has done for us.
00:10:44
Speaker
at the cross. Prior to that, it was redemption. I'm not sure it was ever quite reconciliation. And I will be honest, it it it could be I don't think this is the case.
00:10:57
Speaker
Audience, I don't think this is the case. um it It could be that there is a priority to those sort of works that Jesus accomplished at the cross and that ah justification ah receives as much attention as it does in the church today because it is sort of the the leading accomplishment of the cross.
00:11:20
Speaker
That without the removal of sin – there could have been no redemption. There could have been no reconciliation. I'm certainly open to that. um I'm not entirely sure that ah you you see that in the gospel or the teachings of the New Testament.
00:11:38
Speaker
um But, you know, if a person insisted on that, I would say, it's a good argument, brother. I call him brother and, you know, try to smooth over. No, I'm kidding. No, but i'm I'm certainly open to that argument. But I i definitely think um if you if you read in the scriptures, the idea of redemption, and again, when I use that, these terms are used so, ah especially redemption is used in a sense as a comprehensive term.
00:12:09
Speaker
It refers to the comprehensive work of God in salvation. My propensity, which is not necessarily um reflected on the pages of the Bible, is to use the term salvation as the sort of superordinate
Salvation and Community in Christian Theology
00:12:27
Speaker
term. is the It's the umbrella term.
00:12:31
Speaker
ah that consists of justification, redemption, and reconciliation. So redemption, more specifically, meaning um the the freedom that Jesus brought us through his death from the powers of sin, Satan, and death.
00:12:47
Speaker
um You know, again, is there that priority? um I don't know that I see that in the scripture, But I do know that we have probably not thought quite as much about the the gospel force of reconciliation in our day.
00:13:03
Speaker
and kind of our Reformation tradition, I think sometimes there's a tendency to make a distinction between on the one hand, kind of the gospel message of salvation, which is very justification centered. And then everything that comes after that is kind of separated out and typically kind of labeled sanctification. Right. Specifically to separate it from that you know justification, salvation.
00:13:22
Speaker
What is the key difference between what you're arguing for and maybe a typical Reformation understanding your own justification? Now I might get in trouble. um I think that that view is wrong.
00:13:37
Speaker
And I try to say this clearly in the book. Our reconciliation was accomplished at the cross. we don't become brothers to one another through a process of increasing sanctification, um where we grow more friendly and loving and supportive of one another.
00:13:58
Speaker
ah We became brothers when Jesus died. It's and ah ah this the language that I use. i mean, my my understanding of the gospel, the gospel is an announcement or a proclamation of the salvation that God accomplished for believers through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in fulfillment of the promises that he made to Israel.
00:14:23
Speaker
um And so, if If reconciliation is part of the saving work of God, it was done, it was accomplished at the cross. Just as our redemption was accomplished at the cross, the what I've called sort of the overthrow of or the the victory over the power of sin, our freedom was accomplished at the cross of Jesus Christ.
00:14:48
Speaker
Our sanctification involves living into and out of that reality. It's really real. It is. To use another adjective. It's really real.
00:14:59
Speaker
It is truly real. is truly real. um But we need to live into that reality. And I don't think just for my reformed friends who are listening.
00:15:09
Speaker
and By the way, I think I'm mostly reformed, which makes my reformed friends uncomfortable. But um you're not really reformed. Yeah, not really. I'm not truly reformed.
00:15:22
Speaker
i't There's no one that I know of who would disagree with this. There's nothing that I've read that would suggest that anyone thinks that our reconciliation was not final and complete at the cross of Jesus. Ephesians chapter 2, 11 to 22 makes it so clear. ah Colossians chapter makes it so clear that it is it is in Christ, it's through Christ, it's through our being united to him through faith in his death and his resurrection that brings a reconciliation of humans to God and us to one another.
00:15:57
Speaker
am I saying something controversial? I might be, but I also think it's probably saying something true. During the beginning of the book, you asked the question, what if the gospel means more than profound personal transformation?
00:16:13
Speaker
What if the cross also transforms relationships, you said? um You say also that the gospel involves God's decision to reshape not just souls, but societies around Christ. Yeah.
00:16:24
Speaker
What do we get wrong when we view the salvation of the world, the salvation of God's creation, simply through individualistic terms, as if it's all about me and my personal transformation, my personal journey, my spiritual formation? Yeah.
00:16:40
Speaker
And this is one of those things like your salvation, Nick, your salvation um is of um eternal importance to God. Matt, the shaping of your soul, the salvation of your soul and of mine.
00:16:55
Speaker
um God himself took a personal interest in. I'm a little uncomfortable with some of the ways that we personalize this, you know, um but you you can't avoid Galatians 2.20. I've been crucified with Christ and it's no longer i who live, but Christ who lives in me.
00:17:16
Speaker
and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, listen to this, who loved me and gave himself for me.
00:17:27
Speaker
And so I never want to lose that. i don't think there's a lot of risk in that, at least in the contemporary evangelical world. I don't think we're at risk of losing that.
00:17:39
Speaker
what we probably are at risk of not maybe losing, but sort of downplaying or relegating or just not thinking about is um the fact that in in saving me,
00:17:55
Speaker
He brought me into a new family, into a new set of relationships. It's just, it's it's inescapable. And it was truly inescapable for the earliest church, because all of a sudden, people who had nearly nothing to do with one another for of variety of reasons, ethnic, religious, etc.
00:18:17
Speaker
ah We're now sitting in the same room addressing the same God as Savior. ah And so the language that you read there is almost inescapably sort of community language, communal language. Disciple, by the way, is probably the one...
00:18:32
Speaker
um exception to that. um I mean, I don't... Even disciple implies a relationship with somebody who's discipling you. It does. I mean, all of it probably is. It's probably the one term where when I was studying it, I was like, I'm not sure how, you know, like how much weight does this bear of we're in this together? Yeah.
00:18:54
Speaker
if If the emphasis of our gospel is primarily on upon me and this my salvation from sin, my standing before God, ah the process of my growth and transformation into Christlikeness, those are all wonderful things.
00:19:11
Speaker
They just miss ah ah a big part of the purpose of God. my My understanding, by the way, of the end of God. By the end of God, you don't mean the death of God, I presume.
00:19:23
Speaker
Yeah. ah Did I say that? a but was in The end of God. Yeah, sorry. God's ends? God's purposes? Yes. ah Yes, not the death of God. ah but But the end that God had in mind for his people, you know, I i learned this from Dr. Schultz, that part of the end of God, ah the goal of God,
00:19:46
Speaker
is ah ah out of his his own disposition to magnify his glory and goodness. he He wanted to create a people who were capable of experiencing that glory and goodness and expressing it and extending it.
00:20:07
Speaker
um But it's the it's the people that he had in mind who would do that. It's the community of humans made in his image.
Language and Community in Early Christianity
00:20:16
Speaker
This is what we lost in Eden.
00:20:19
Speaker
It's what was ah foreshadowed in the law, ah was the the restoration. It was secured at the cross, and it's going to be realized in the world to come.
00:20:32
Speaker
that's our That's our hope. And it has it has everything to do with me personally, but it has everything to do with us as a people of God. Yeah, we as individuals are caught up within this larger redemptive movement. Yes, I wish, i mean, I kind of wish that I had a bigger frame of reference than being the American, you know, Southerner and Midwesterner that I am, because I i think that And probably in in many churches in the world, the notion that yeah they might have to say, you know, you you know you matter.
00:21:07
Speaker
It's not just us. yeah ah Here we have to sort of reverse that and say, you know, it's not just you. It's God. it's we, it's us as a people. um But I think that that has as much to do with, again, our cultural moment, our place in history.
00:21:21
Speaker
um And the Bible helps us with both of those to, um to recognize the salvation that God, when he's looking at us, loving us, desiring to save us as individuals, but also then bringing us into a people.
00:21:37
Speaker
You spent a lot of the book talking about the power of words yeah and and specifically words within relationships. You wrote, words tell us everything we need to know about where we stand in relationship to one another. You call it word magic.
00:21:49
Speaker
You wrote, the early church didn't invent new words. They used words in a way no one else did or could. You described the early church's use of language as organically unnatural, a phrase I loved. So how did the early church use language in a way that was organically unnatural?
00:22:05
Speaker
I don't naturally call anybody brother or sister. um i i find it kind of funny that I wrote this book. In fact, I mean, I would have to take a deep breath and deliberate calling someone beloved. um You know, funny, I have a mentor of mine who that's his primary term of self-designation when he's teaching a group.
00:22:28
Speaker
He calls a group beloved all the time. Yeah. And I love it, but it just feels so weird to me. um And so um that's the unnatural part is, ah and I think it was true in the early church. I think it's true for many people today.
00:22:47
Speaker
we would have to really think hard um before we said, you know, you're my worker. my fellow worker Co-laborer maybe sounds a little bit better, but there's an unnaturalness about these terms um in a sense because ah the gospel does not suit our natural like bents.
00:23:15
Speaker
That's the unnatural part. The organic part, what I was trying to get at is I did grow up in a tradition. I grew up down south in a Southern Baptist church where people regularly referred to one another as brother so-and-so.
00:23:27
Speaker
And that's true in some church traditions. But it was a um it was a formality. You just didn't You know, when you were playing golf with Brother Gary out on the golf course, you didn't call him Brother Gary. That was like something you did in church. I'm not saying you never would, you know, but it was kind of like it was sort of inhouse an in-house, ah almost title, sort of like Mr. So-and-so, you know.
00:23:56
Speaker
There's no evidence in the New Testament or the writings of the Apostolic Fathers that that anyone was ever called brother or the more common one for us today would be saint as a title, that sort of formal designation.
00:24:14
Speaker
um There are two references. One in 2 Peter, Peter refers to our our maybe even our beloved brother Paul, um but it that does It doesn't seem like he's using, like if he met him on the street, it doesn't seem like he would be, he would call him brother Paul. He's just saying, Paul is our brother. You know, I would never call you St. Matthew.
00:24:37
Speaker
So how was it being used? If it wasn't being used in that sort of formal sense, well, ah it was being used more organically. Like, you know, if you have siblings, I naturally, if you will, refer to my sister as my sister. you say, you know, who is that? I'd say, oh, that's my sister.
00:24:59
Speaker
That's an organic use of the word sister in natural relationships. It doesn't feel foreign to us at all. We'll just do that with other believers in Jesus. That's my sister. um you're You're my brother.
00:25:12
Speaker
And I have found that I'm able to do that. As unnatural as some of these things feel to me, it has become, and I do have to deliberate some of the time to do this, but it's become a little bit easier for me to say, like if I'm teaching in ah in a class at church, I can say, because we are all Jesus's disciples, we're It's important for us to give attention to what he says disciple should do in this situation. You know, like you just say what is true.
00:25:43
Speaker
It would be kind of like, you know, if you're at a family meeting discussing finances. Well, because we're a family, da-da-da-da-da, you know? Sure. So there's an organic use of these terms. And saint saint is probably the one that when a term has been, um when its meaning has changed.
00:26:02
Speaker
You just say holy ones, since we're all holy ones. When its meaning has changed so much over the course of time, I'm not sure whether saint can be used today. um i mean, it can, of course.
00:26:16
Speaker
But most people, if you say, hey, I know that you're a saint. They would go, absolutely not, you know, because it conveys this idea of like, I'm i'm i'm morally exceptional.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the only use of that today is the football team or like, yeah, he's a saint. yeah he's say if He did something really, its yeah really good. that's it's so it's ah It's a superlative term.
00:26:43
Speaker
Which is, ah it is the exact opposite of the way it's used in the scripture. Yeah, that's interesting. And that's that's where I go. That's probably the one term where I'm just... ah So I i recommend um taking the the idea of saints is, you know, the yeah even the idea of holy ones is that God has set apart a people that ah to accomplish his purposes in this world. He's he's removed us from ah sort of common circulation, if we if you will. They're like saintly shovels in the Old Testament, you know, i mean or or holy holy implements like shovels and pails in the temple. It didn't mean they were morally superior. It meant they had been set apart for specific use for the purposes of God in the temple.
00:27:35
Speaker
And I use that kind of as a joke, but that's that's what we are. And so maybe just saying, because we're the people of God, we're the people who God has saved and set apart for his purposes.
00:27:46
Speaker
So something descriptive like that feels, um to me, organic. You might have to really think it through and like, how do I use this? That's the unnatural.
00:27:57
Speaker
ah let it Let it be organically unnatural. And if it feels a little weird, maybe we're doing it right. that kind of the purpose? that is That is probably the case. I make a claim, it is kind of a linguistically nerdy claim that words don't just say things, they do things.
00:28:17
Speaker
I don't have an elaborate theory. like ah you know you can We can talk about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of how language shapes conception. i was reading recently, ah if you if you're if your language for language,
00:28:32
Speaker
has a word four the honor that is due to one's mother-in-law. Does that shape the relationship that you have between yourself and your mother-in-law? Well, I don't exactly have a theory on that. I mean, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is just that, that language in us gives a certain ah cast to the way that we see the world.
00:28:59
Speaker
So if we don't have language for a thing, then we simply don't don't see it. Yeah, yeah that we it's categories for thinking, yes categories for reality. Yes, exactly. And i ah I think I'd say I'm kind of open to that as a general idea. I think there's there's certainly some something to commend it.
00:29:17
Speaker
um But my own philosophy of language use is a lot more normal or um every day.
00:29:29
Speaker
ah You know, we know that if we approach someone and say, I'm sorry for what I said, I love you, and I shouldn't have done that, it changes the nature of the relationship that we have with them. I mean, our words are actually accomplishing ah social work in that way. You could take a negative example to, you know, where if you if you curse out a coworker, I work at a place where I've seen this happen.
00:29:56
Speaker
um not Not my ministry context, by the way. I work elsewhere also at a marina. um And, ah you know, watch two coworkers um just light into one another over politics, curse one another out, and then they didn't speak. They haven't spoken to one another for over a year.
00:30:14
Speaker
um And so words are closing or creating distance between us. And that's, I don't think a person needs an elaborate linguistic theory to see it happen in their everyday life.
00:30:30
Speaker
um And I think that that is um to get back to the gospel. i think it's what the early church was doing.
00:30:42
Speaker
They believed that Jesus had brought them together at the cross, that their faith in him meant that what whatever um ethnic or religious or class distinctions would have divided them in the Jewish-Gentile world or in the Roman sort of hierarchy,
00:31:03
Speaker
had had been in some way closed. That gap had been closed ah when they were united to Christ and they became united to one another.
00:31:14
Speaker
That is a reality now that they have to express And they expressed it in words like brother and sister, beloved, the people of God, that's who we are. And in expressing it, they're also ah making it real in this room, like in this specific context for us.
Redefining Social Structures in the Early Church
00:31:37
Speaker
So I say it like it is. You're my brother. That's just, it's a gospel proclamation. But in saying it like it is, I'm also shaping the kind of social relationship that we have.
00:31:48
Speaker
yeah I think that's really interesting that brother-sister language, you note that fratricide in the ancient world and the ancient Roman world was worse than divorce. Like the brother-sister language really matters. And by the end of the first century, you got Messianic Jews that follow Jesus referring to Gentiles as brother and sister. Like how odd is that? Yeah, I this is where I say i i've done a I did a fair amount of study on this um just because I didn't want to say things that were untrue. John Kloppenborg is probably the only one who I've read um who says there is evidence, there's inscriptional evidence
00:32:27
Speaker
in the Roman world of people calling one another brother, um sibling, largely in trade guilds, like we we have it today, the brotherhood of electrical workers, right? Unions will refer to themselves as a brotherhood.
00:32:44
Speaker
um And so... so Other than that one example, there seems to be no evidence that people from, again, different ethnic, religious, class backgrounds, and certainly, certainly not across the Jew-Gentile divide.
00:33:06
Speaker
um You know, we John Lennon was not writing, you know, imagine the brotherhood of man, you know, in an ancient Jewish context, like all the world is one, you know, it just,
00:33:18
Speaker
It was introduced in the church. I mean, it it is it is a ah feature of the gospel. Because the interesting thing is even in the trade guilds, what brought us together was our common profession.
00:33:33
Speaker
What brought us together in the church is, if you will, our common confession that Jesus Christ is Lord and the belief that because I am in him and you are in him, you and i just happen to belong together, not by our choice, ah but by God's choice. And so i do think...
00:33:52
Speaker
People were probably who came into um the Christian assemblies of the early century or centuries would have been pretty mystified, just the language itself. And we have also evidence that they were mystified by not just because, you know, you can I can call you brother and treat you like dirt. Yeah.
00:34:16
Speaker
But we have evidence that that was not happening, that the that the um the association, um the connotation of calling you brother or sister, it's really sibling.
00:34:28
Speaker
So when you see the word brother, it really, it's a sibling. So it could be a brother or a sister. Calling you brother, being your brother, meant and I mean, I have certain obligations to you.
00:34:41
Speaker
Joseph Hellerman has probably done ah some of the best work on this. Hellerman is the one who introduced me to the idea that the the core of ancient Near Eastern ah culture or family was the sibling relationship.
00:34:57
Speaker
um And so today, if you want to represent today in media, the disintegration of a family unit, you show it by abuse or betrayal of spouses, um divorce, you know, whatever.
00:35:11
Speaker
In the ancient world, it would have been um the fracture between siblings. It would have been abuse towards a sibling or a sibling in need who was ah cast out and not supported or as this is this helps to shape our understanding of what happens in Genesis 4 with Cain and Abel. Because what happened, we don't see when sin entered the world, we don't see a slow, gradual descent towards violence. We see the immediate, despicable...
00:35:46
Speaker
you know, murder of a brother, which is in itself like the picture of the disintegration of human society. that's why it's called the fall, not the descent. Yeah, ah that's right.
00:35:58
Speaker
That's, uh, and that's on the negative side, right? The positive side would be, um, brothers who show solidarity with one another.
00:36:10
Speaker
The outside world is against you. um you know Unfortunate circumstances have come your way and swept your fortunes away. Where do you turn?
00:36:21
Speaker
You turn to your brothers and sisters. They are the ones who ought to be there for you, to shield you from attack, to support you you know with the vicissitudes of life.
00:36:33
Speaker
Well, When the church starts calling one another brother and sister, that's exactly what they would have understood. Like this is what is expected of us now as part of the family of God.
00:36:48
Speaker
I'm circling back around because you asked Nick earlier. i think this is probably one of the big missing pieces in the gospel of like individual salvation that is That idea doesn't really bring with it any sense that you belong to me and I belong to you and your fortunes are and my fortunes are intertwined. And no obligation to no obligation. Yeah, that's right.
00:37:14
Speaker
And so I think that ah the the early church had that. um And again, it's not that they it's not that they were creating it with their language.
00:37:27
Speaker
Jesus created it at the cross, and they believe that to be true, and they use their language to reflect what they believe to be true. And in so doing, they're also shaping the way that they um love and support one another.
00:37:43
Speaker
You quote the second century Christian letter called the Epistle to Diognetus. And this section is really beautiful. He says, Christians live in their own countries, but only as non-residents.
00:37:54
Speaker
They participate in everything as citizens and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. What would it mean for the Jesus community, think today, to self-identify as foreigners in our country and instead as members of a different political reality altogether? Yeah, that sounds like a great book for you to write, Nick.
00:38:22
Speaker
I think that what the church believed about themselves that is that there their identity as the people of God, those whom God had saved and set apart for himself.
00:38:38
Speaker
I think I'm right in saying this. This was their primary identity. Everything else was secondary to that. Every absolute claim of family, that means biological family, sort of your ethnic tie,
00:38:55
Speaker
to use the the nerdy academic word, was relativized um when they came to faith in Christ. there was no There was no claim um higher than the claim of Christ on their lives.
00:39:10
Speaker
And the fact that he had brought them together um as one people, I should say, too, I think it was very, very important for a lot of people who lost all family ties um because of Jesus to to know that um though my mother and father forsake me, God will never forsake me.
00:39:35
Speaker
And I have a family. um I have a people. it's a weird people, um, you know, our our skin color, our language of origin, you know, they're, they may all be different and it may, may not, may, may not make any sense to the people around me, but this is my people and they've got my back and, and all the other claims, um, would have been secondary, not,
00:40:01
Speaker
Not unimportant. I think that's probably we can kind of maybe swing the pendulum or I can in my explanation too far. um It's not like ethnic identity disappeared.
00:40:13
Speaker
um It's not like, you know, your class somehow, somehow you are no longer poor or you are no longer the patron or whatever, like the Roman patronage system. was still present in the church, um but it could not be prioritized over the salvation that Jesus had brought in the community that he had brought together.
00:40:35
Speaker
Could we learn some lessons from that today? and um Can any generation fail to learn lessons from that? Every one of us um has been sort of pressed into cultural mode of our um of our family, of origin, of you know our political tribe. um And of course, that's on the ascendant today, sort of the the political commitment that is required of a person.
00:41:04
Speaker
In our nation states, of course. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, with the um certain and this is true, not just in the United States and, you know, 2025, but sort of the rise of nationalism or nationalist identity seems to be on the increase everywhere.
00:41:19
Speaker
ah It is not as though those things go away in the church. They don't go away, but they cannot be ultimate. ah the the The ultimate appeal cannot be to ah political tribe, ethnic group, family, social class.
00:41:38
Speaker
It's not that the church can create a new kind of human community. It is a new kind of human community. The language that's used in the church, and this is the whole point of More Than Christians, is reflective of the gospel.
00:41:57
Speaker
It's what God has already accomplished.
Gospel as a Counter-Narrative to Cultural Divisions
00:41:59
Speaker
in light of the fact that we are such a community in Christ, ah how ought we to live? And any time, any claim, again, family, class, political tribe, ethnic group,
00:42:15
Speaker
ah presses in and our churches begin to mirror those communities, there's probably a problem there. I mean, if they, if they map onto one another completely, you can be guaranteed there's a problem because these are all, uh, natural, um, you know, natural human communities and we are a part of a supernatural human community. yeah Would you say that, is it too strong to say that those other identities are incidental to our true identity are real? Yeah. Identity as people of the, you know, the family of God, the community of Jesus.
00:42:53
Speaker
You just gave a five cent word to a word. Are they are they incidental? um I've never used that term to describe them. Yeah.
00:43:05
Speaker
I would say they are not absolute and can make no absolute claim on us. If that means that they're incidental, then yes. Would you say that in practice, those identities can work against the you know reconciliation that you've argued is a key part of the gospel that yeah sometimes we've lost? Seems to be no doubt about it.
00:43:27
Speaker
ah Let me take ah ah class the class distinction that is you know prevalent everywhere, including here. If my sort of my Christian association is only with people um of the same sort of socioeconomic status,
00:43:43
Speaker
And I regard um anyone. So, you know, i go to a middle class church and anyone who comes from a needy area, needy community, um we might, you know, help in some way, but largely that's the government's problem.
00:44:01
Speaker
that strikes me as being a sub-Christian notion. Like, I haven't worked this out. I don't have all the answers. um This book is my exploration um into a topic that I feel like I need to learn. But my ah my brothers and sisters have a claim on my solidarity and support. That's what siblings, that's what it meant to be a sibling.
00:44:26
Speaker
And so if if somehow... The configuration of my Christian community, I use the word Christian, so I'm not opposed to it The configuration of my Christian community um somehow gives me a pass on standing in solidarity and support with those who are poor and needy among my siblings.
00:44:46
Speaker
I have a very incomplete gospel that I've accepted. So that's one example of how I think the um the the natural cast of our society's cultures or whatever, um if the churches begin to mirror those completely, um it's it's a problem with the gospel that we have believed or a problem with it. It's the inadequacy of the gospel.
00:45:12
Speaker
an incomplete gospel imbalanced gospel that we've guess accepted. Dare we believe the full gospel? yeah it might have demands on us and our communities. yeah yeah Maybe that's why we don't. yeah I tend to want to relegate it to certain aspects of my spiritual life and then the rest of my life can just be my life. you know ye Would you do us the honor of reading a quote from the epilogue of your book?
00:45:36
Speaker
I would be happy to. The church will always be in danger of internalizing the factionalism that defines relationships in the world. Cultural turf wars, class divisions, and tribal alliances tell us how we separate ourselves naturally.
00:45:54
Speaker
Only the church has a gospel that is strong enough to bring people together.