Previous installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
No doubt you’ve heard the infamous loaded question, “When did you stop beating your wife,” which presupposes that the one being asked (a) has a wife, (b) has been beating her, and (c) stopped. One cannot answer it without implicitly subscribing to all three.
When Otis Q. Sellers broke with the churches in 1934, he had not yet abandoned the conviction that something today had to correspond to the Greek New Testament word ekklēsia, traditionally mistranslated “church.” Many insights born of long study would eventually converge on a new conviction, namely, that “When did the church begin?” was a question as loaded as “When did you stop beating your wife?”
In 1980 Sellers recalled the beginning of his reconsideration, which required answering the question, “What is the church?”[1] Forty-six years earlier, in the spring of 1934, Pastor John C. O’Hair of Chicago’s North Shore Church had invited Sellers to a meeting of 55 fundamentalist ministers, of which Sellers was then unambiguously one. The advertised topic was baptism, about which O’Hair had recently been delivering radio messages. Not long into the first day, however, interest had shifted to “When did the church begin?”
. . . [B]y the second day it also became apparent that there was not a man there, including myself, who had any workable definition as to what the Church was or is in Scripture. So, there we were, thrashing about, making statements pro and con, trying to decide when something began when none of us knew what the thing was. . . . Over and over, it was said that “the Church is the body of Christ,” and none could object to this, but it was of no help in solving the problem that was under discussion. It simply imposed a second difficult question: “What is the body of Christ?” There were numerous remarks about “the visible and the invisible Church,” prompting one brother to affirm: “All churches in the New Testament were quite visible.” But the “visible and invisible” formula did not answer the question, “What is the Church?” or “When did the Church begin?”
All in attendance enjoyed the open discussion, and they attempted to repeat the effort that fall, but with less harmonious results. Pastor O’Hair thought the discussants were going too fast; most of them wanted to avoid controversy but, Sellers was not happy about that:
. . . I had gone into the conference in order to learn, seeking for help in uncovering the truth. If I could not learn in fellowship with others, then I would learn alone. The quest for truth became the supreme purpose in my life, and now after forty-six years, it is still the goal of all my endeavors.
Sellers then cites reportage of what we now call the mainstream media, in particular Time magazine’s article on the first assembly of the World Council of Churches:
The greatest church meeting since the Reformation could not even agree on a definition of the word “church’” (Time, September 13, 1948). This was true then and it is still true today.[2]
Why? Because “church” has no definition. An unabridged dictionary will list “what are supposed to be definitions,” Sellers observes, “but no basic meaning out of which all other usages are derived.”
It is a weasel word that will wiggle out of any trap that is set for it. It is a Humpty-Dumpty word that means just what the user wants it to mean, neither more nor less. It is a chameleon which changes its color to suit its environment. It is a harlot among words, having no permanent relationships to anyone idea. . . . a wet blanket that will snuff out any flame of truth that God has kindled in regard to the truth concerning His ekklēsia. Translators have literally forced this word into the New Testament, not because it represented or translated the Greek word ekklēsia, but because they wanted to get their religious organizations into the Bible. What other conclusion can we come to when we find that they failed to so translate ekklēsia in Acts 19:32, 39, 41 when it worked contrary to their position?
That’s what motivated Sellers’s return ad fontes.[3]
And one of the first conclusions I came to was that the marvelous phenomenon that is called ekklēsia in the New Testament has no relationship or connection with the great religious monstrosity that parades under the name of “the Church” today. . . . [T]he ekklēsia of the first century was totally different in every respect from that which is called “the Church” in both the Roman and Protestant camps today. Certainly, in the Roman Church and in the Protestant churches we see something that men have built, and it borders on blasphemy to say that this is what the Lord meant when He promised to build of Himself His ekklēsia (Matthew 16:18).[4]
Men have, as it were, masqueraded as ekklēsia:
By making extravagant claims they have often succeeded in gathering together a few or many followers in some form of organization with themselves as the head, giving themselves some Biblical title such as apostle, elder, or bishop; then when the organization has prospered numerically and financially, they pragmatically insist that the results demonstrate that the true Church has now been restored among men, even the one the Lord promised to build.
The presupposition of all virtually all investigations into the meaning of ekklēsia, namely, that “it has to mean something that will relate it to that which is called ‘the Church’ today” is “a fallacy that must be purged from our minds if we would give the Lord a clean slate to write upon.”
It is a serious error [Sellers continues] to take an important word such as ekklēsia and fasten upon it some inane meaning which reduces it to absurdity. Most students know quite well that this was the name given to the legislative assemblies in the Greek city-states. This is true, but when they deduce from this that these assemblies were so-called because their members were “called out of their homes” to transact official business, they stultify the meaning of this word. Having discovered that the word is formed from ek (out) and kaleō (called), they take the prefix ek and make it to mean “severed from.”
In fact, it is more like an extension or projection, as the arm is out of the torso.
Then having found that one meaning of kaleō is “to call, invite, or bid,” they ignore the fact that in at least 96 out of the 146 times this word is found in the New Testament, it cannot have any such meaning.[5] So, combining these two errors they say that since Christians have been called out of the world, we are the Church. Continuing in their error, they cite as proof that Israel was an ekklēsia (Acts 7:38) since she had been called out of Egypt. And while it was entirely true that Israel was an ekklēsia, it was not because she had been called out of Egypt. As a nation Israel was destined to be an ekklēsia because she had been given a mediatorial position that was out of God. See Genesis 12:3, Deuteronomy 7:6, 14:2, 26:18-19.[6]
Ekklēsia is untranslatable and, as such, “should be transposed and a meaning based upon its usage should be attached to it. . . . This word means “out-positioned” and is used to describe individuals, companies, or nations which have a position out of another. Its highest use is when used of one who has a position out of God.”
. . . [W]e know that it is the purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ to build an ekklēsia that will be in fixed relationship to Him when He governs the world. He has announced His purpose to build it and, when all is ready, He will present it to Himself a glorious ekklēsia, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it shall be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:27). This is a certainty, but it is also a certainty that there is nothing on earth today that claims to be “the Church” which can qualify for this glorious position.
To Be Continued
Notes
[1] Otis Q. Sellers, “Ekklesia Truth,” Seed & Bread, No. 120, March 10, 1980. Quotations of Sellers in this post are from this study.
[2] “Religion: No Pentecost,” Time, September 13, 1948. “The watching Protestant world had hoped, in its dim and sentimental way, for something better. It had perhaps even hoped for another Pentecost. At Pentecost, there were tongues of fire from heaven, and human beings like ready lamps, waiting to be lit. At Amsterdam, there were committees, agenda, resolutions, debates, and trilingual earphones. The men of Amsterdam did not expect and did not receive flames from heaven. They had not met to be inspired but to “get something done.” They were moved, not by tongues of fire, but by reasonable anxiety, cautious good will, Protestant practicality. The world wanted to be saved—but, like the rich young man, it wanted to save its possessions too. In their more informed, more professional way, the delegates at Amsterdam represented that ambiguous desire.
“Grand Strategy. Had Amsterdam [where the assembly was held] actually
accomplished anything? Had the long, slow, painful struggle toward church unity been worth all the effort and all the talk? Christians around the globe applauded the words of one of Amsterdam’s leaders, New York’s Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam [whose likeness graced this issue’s cover]: “The need for unity is urgent . . . Our disunity is a denial of our Lord . . . We cannot win the world for Christ with the tactics of guerrilla warfare . . . This calls for general staff, grand strategy, and army. And this means union.”
[3] See “Otis Q. Sellers: The Autodidact Who Returned ad fontes,” October 26, 2021.
[4] See “Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία, Part 4: The Rock and His Substance,” August 30, 2022.
[5] See “Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία, Part 1: The primacy of sound exegesis over confessional commitment,” August 16, 2022.
[6] See “Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία, Part 3: to have a position out of Christ is the status of individuals first, then of their societies,” August 24, 2022. Genesis 12:3: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Deuteronomy 7:6 and 14:2 “For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” Deuteronomy 26:18-19: “And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments; And to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as he hath spoken.”