Yesterday I posted an overview of the Didache to introduce what it is and where it came from, but essentially it’s an early Christian document from around the same time that the New Testament itself was still being written. “Didache” means “teaching”, and the document provides a compilation of (probably) oral tradition about what the apostles taught concerning community life. Today I’m blogging on Chapter 6 of Tony Jones‘ newest book, The Teaching of Twelve: Believing & Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community. The Didache is not a long document, but it is instructive for the fact that it deals with practical community matters during a time of liminality when the church was just coming to birth. We ought to imagine that it will offer us insight for a time when the church is undergoing a rebirth.
I don’t generally participate in many blog tours of this sort, but when the offer came from Paraclete Press, I took it up. In my mind, the Didache is worth studying and worth making more widely known, and I’m glad that Tony Jones has undertaken this project. It is generally helpful to insert the weight of church history and other theological material into a conversation that is often consumed with philosophy and general issues of the day.
The book itself follows a format of examining what the Didache says and comparing and contrasting it with what the New Testament says on each subject. It is not an exhaustive comparison by any means, but manages to zero in on the major points in each case. Each chapter wraps up with a few gleanings from Tony’s conversations with “Trucker Frank,” a member of Cymbrogi, a Christian community which has studied the Didache together and applied the teachings to its own daily life and practice. After this wrap-up, Tony provides a few discussion questions for reflection and application.
But we turn our attention to chapter six of the book, “Living Together in Community”, which deals with chapters 6 through 15 of the Didache. Lest that sound like a long passage, the chapters in the Didache are quite short. Not only does the book include the full text, but Paraclete has put it online as well.
The chapter opens with a discussion of the word “church” as compared with the Greek concept of ekklesia. Tony notes well that at the time of the writing of the Didache, the term did not yet have the associations that later came to the term to associate it with a religious gathering or group. The associations we have today with the term “church” — many of them negative — were not yet a speck on the horizon.
The first section of the chapter deals with the Didache’s instruction on eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols. Here the comparison is made to the Jerusalem Council in the book of Acts to illustrate that the Didache’s instruction is a summary of that council’s conclusion. In this short section of the text lies the verse that Tony Jones and Trucker Frank offer as representative of the whole book and as a favorite. “For if you are able to bear the entire yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect, but if you are not able, then at least do what you can.” Herein is a refreshing message for many of us who have striven for perfection and failed… do your best, and that will suffice. It is suggested that adopting this “do your best” attitude could have saved the church a world of hurt and schism over the years.
Concerning baptism, Tony outlines four distinctives about the instructions given versus common practices today. The first of these is most interesting to me, since I’ve been in company with believers who suggest that since there was no waiting period between conversion and baptism in the New Testament, we ought not to prolong this period today either. In fact, as Jones infers, at the time the Didache was written, there was apparently already a timeframe between conversion and baptism which was occupied with instruction in “all things.” Of the type of water to use, it is worth noting that the Didache makes a point of laying out preferences with a number of alternatives. In other words, the method (immersion clearly implied) is probably not theologically important, but should be adhered to when possible.
Baptismal candidates are recommended to fast before they are baptised, and this admonition forms a lead-in to the next section on fasting and prayer, where the Didache’s instruction aligns with that of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, but adds a few practical instructions. For one, the manual recommends fasting on different days than “the hypocrites” do, in order to set themselves apart. Fast on Wednesday and Friday instead of Tuesday and Thursday. In addition, the Didache Christians are told to pray three times per day, and to pray the Lord’s Prayer. On this point, Tony notes the similarity — that is, “virtually verbatim” — of the text of the Lord’s Prayer in the Didache and in Matthew’s gospel (translation differences accepted, of course). This is noteworthy for the fact that the Didache was almost certainly composed without the aid of Matthew’s gospel. On the instruction to pray three times daily, a comparison is rightly made to the Daily Office, which has been practiced by (some) Christians through the entire history of the church.
The Didache next moves to the subject of the Eucharist. Here, Tony introduces the subject with the observation, “Nothing is more intriguing—and more out-of-step with our usual ecclesial conventions—in the entire Didache than the two sections that deal with the Eucharist.” He organizes the differences under the headings of the Eucharist, the order, and what’s not mentioned. The order is generally a minor point of whether the cup or the bread is served first, and here the practice differs from the instruction given by Paul. Once again, this argues for an early date to the Didache, since later Christians would almost certainly be aware of Paul’s letters.
The terminology of the “Eucharist” does not appear in the New Testament. Being something of a hobbyist Johannine scholar, at this stage I issued a mild objection in the margin, noting the linguistic associations in John 6, where the feeding of the 5,000 is linguistically associated with the Eucharist, including by the use of this very Greek verb (6:11), which means “to give thanks.” Trucker Frank makes a similar observation at the end of the chapter, so the concept is introduced later. Again, this is of interest in that John’s gospel, the latest to be written, was composed several decades after the Didache, illustrating not only that the linguistic allusions in John were most probably quite intentional, but that the development of the term “Eucharist” dates very early in the life of the church, to somewhere near its very formation.
What’s not mentioned is indeed intriguing, since there’s no mention of Jesus’ death, either in a historical or theological manner. Presumably this knowlege is assumed, but the Didache takes the omission a step further and seems to infuse the Eucharist with the symbolism of community and of belonging to the Church Universal. Jones illustrates that in the prayer of thanks for the cup lies an allusion to the Gentiles’ entry into a “spiritual Israel,” making them equally heirs of promise with Jewish Christians. I find in the prayer for the bread some further powerful symbolism of community and belonging:
We thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you made known to us through Jesus your servant. To you be the glory forever. Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. To you is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever.
This community symbolism in the Eucharist has perhaps been lacking in many of our church communion experiences, and the Didache’s shifted emphasis is therefore striking. Perhaps it may be used to bring balance to our own observation of the Eucharist. Although Tony assumes here that eucharistic practices today do not align with those shown in the Didache, I have been a part of a gathering which made a specific point of using this form of the liturgy, and have used it (and variants of it) myself in leading the Eucharist in our home church. I think I may therefore suggest that it has enriched our experience of the Eucharist in those settings.
The third major area in this chapter and in this section of the Didache deals with “Those Pesky Visitors” as Tony Jones puts it. He writes, “The good news is that there were no television preachers in the first century. The bad news is that they seemed to have a problem with wandering prophets and teachers.” This is actually a major section in the Didache, so the problems must have been significant, but at the same time, the instruction on how to sort them out rather than just writing them off carte blanche tells us that it was an important ministry at that time. The Didache offers a number of tests for authenticity and “comes down where it always
does–on the side of common sense.” Many of the tests are also fairly common-sense easy ones that target the motives of the itinerant minister as to whether he’s after personal gain from his “ministry.” I need say little more than that were these tests applied publicly to many of the big-name ministries today, the perception of our faith would be a lot more positive than it is now.
Lastly, we find a section on Community Leadership, which speaks of appointing local bishops — or overseers — from within the community as leaders of that community. Here is where I find the most pronounced difference to current practice in the church today, as it speaks of much less heirarchy and assumes organic leaders will arise and be recognized by the community, rather than being called from outside and being given a title, position, and stipend.
Trucker Frank calls the Didache the “Rosetta Stone of the New Testament” for the way it has helped his community understand Paul. Primarily this speaks to the way the Didache offers a “do your best” approach and minimizes a number of the differences that have historically caused rifts in the church as we know it. *cough* *denominations* *cough* Of his community, Frank says, “The Didache’s message that we should ‘do our best’ on these controversial issues have kept us from getting hung up on the things that our grandparents got hung up on.”
Tony Jones calls the Didache “the most important book you’ve never heard of.” While I’m familiar with it myself, I concur with his assessment that most Christians today are not, and that it is an important work with which we should be grappling. In fact, the omission of any mention of the Didache was one of my major criticisms with Frank Viola’s Pagan Christianity, and my discussion of it actually centers on the very passages discussed in this chapter of Tony’s book. I gave Frank the opportunity to respond in an interview, and he did. You may note there the implied ascription of a second-century date for the Didache, but an early date makes it that much more important for Frank to have dealt with in his work, and this is in my mind what makes Pagan Christianity more of a popular than a scholarly work. (Note that Ben Witherington also goes to the Didache in his critique of Pagan Christianity.)
One of the things I quite appreciated about Tony Jones’ treatment of the Didache was that despite a lack of footnotes or endnotes, the work itself remains scholarly-informed, but still manages to bring everything down to a practical level of daily practice. Indeed, the last word consistently goes to a guy named “Trucker Frank” — how much more down-to-earth can you get? Whether or not you’ve read or are a fan of Frank Viola’s Pagan Christianity, I can recommend Tony Jones’ treatment of the Didache in The Teaching of Twelve, and commend the subject matter as deeply valuable in our present social and ecclesiological milieu. (My $2.00 words for the day.) I would hope for myself to get my hands on a final printed copy of the book to replace my pdf galley copy, as it’s something I could see myself returning to.
Well done, Tony.
Subscribe Posts
December 5th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tony Jones and bromaynard, dbgooglereader. dbgooglereader said: The Didache: on Living Together in Community: Yesterday I posted an overview of the Didache to introduce what i.. http://bit.ly/8mAsIb [...]
December 5th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Thank you for an excellent review. I also
was greatly benefitted by Viola’s book Pagan Christianity.
When Tony mentioned getting involved in the project we
were excited because a lot of the content of the Didache
amplifies some of Viola’s points. Hopefully Tony’s book
will fill in missing historical gaps in an otherwise thorough
historical discussion in Pagan Christianity.
Grace and Peace from the Cymbrogi.
December 5th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Viola’s book, “Reimagining Church”, is the necessary sequel to “Pagan”. “Pagan” is very incomplete without it, as it was never meant to be a stand-alone book.
Also, Viola debated Witherington on the question of the Didache here: http://www.ptmin.org/FV_BW.pdf . Another New Testament scholar, Jon Zens, weighed in on Witherington’s critique in much more detail here: http://www.paganchristianity.org/zensresponds1.htm .
December 21st, 2009 at 10:38 am
Very interesting thoughts on the eucharist and the prayer you included.
If the foundational doctrine of the church is/was communion and fellowship, inclusion and participation in the life of the Father, Son, and Spirit, then by making justification the foundational doctrine, we’ve lost a signficant aspect of both the eucharist and the meaning of church.
January 1st, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Whadda year! In a year where half of my time was eaten by illness, yours was one of the few blog voices I tried to read on any kind of regular basis. I appreciate what you have contributed to the ongoing attempts to blog the journey of whatever it is that we are calling the movement(s) whose waves we’ve been riding. Thanks for your efforts … and I’m looking forward to your thoughts on virtual community in this new year.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
All God’s people say, Amen. It really bugged me me when people started weaving Tony’s personal life into the comments.
But as to the content of Tony’s post, I’m sort of caught in between, I get it…and I don’t get it. The marriage thing over the past couple of years, it’s been like flogging a dead horse. Every election it seems to raise the hackles of the church. It’s on a very short leash, as to it’s effectiveness. It’s barks, and tries to bite but doesn’t cover much ground. It’s a red herring, the pinnacle of morality for much of the church. Brother…maybe you can tell me as to when marriage be came a mandate for the church. Maybe if Jesus hadn’t served so much wine at that wedding in Cana, we might have a better picture of the details ( just Joking ). In my mind it might be best to let the State, licsence and take care of the legal side of it…and let the Church bless what they want. I know in my own marriage of 33 years, the legality, the paper work side has never ever been it’s focus. It has never been what keeps it together. There have been times when I’ve had my bags packed by the front door. But it has always been the profound divine covenant that my wife and I made with each other in the presence of God. There is something beyond imagination, a bond like the physics of intermolecular forces in that covenant of marriage. Let the State have law of marriage…let the church lay claim to the grace, the imagination and the bond of that covenant. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is his. But, again Bro’ this might be all hot wind. For as Buck said, ” I don’t know. I don’t speak wind.”
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Ron,
I’m confused as to why Tony’s personal life would NOT have a bearing on what he’s been saying. Perhaps you could unpack this for me. (This is not an attack as I value you as a gracious brother in Christ.)
I am profoundly pissed at how easily people break the marital covenant – but still want their opinions front and centre on the topic of marriage. And when the wife of your youth and, no doubt, your children are in profound pain at your marital breakup, this might be a good time to step away from the spotlight, step off of your soapbox and submit to some wise elder counsel.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Bill, you have absolutely no idea about the details of my personal life.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
To all readers: this post is unabashed gossip. Anything based on rumor and innuendo is, by definition, gossip, and therefore sinful. Indeed, it borders on bearing false witness.
I urge you to take whatever action you deem appropriate when you ate confronted by sinful behavior. I have.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
I’m sorry Tony but your story is splashed across a million pixels in the Twitter, blog and interwebbed universe. Predominantly by you.
Removed an ad hominem bit here — Bro.M.
Just a reminder that I’d like to refocus the discussion onto the pros and cons of what Tony suggested in his post rather than aspects of his personal life. If there’s a time and place for that kind of discussion, this isn’t it.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
For clarity, I’ve tried to remove references to the rumour and criticism *in the post* that Tony refers to in the comment above. I don’t think he means to say that my interaction about the refusal to perform legal marriages is gossip, since that’s the point of his post. The same may not apply to the comments.
And again, the topic of the conversation following will be the point of Tony’s post on performing legal vs. sacramental marriages.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Ron,
As long as the church gets the wine in the deal, eh? ;^)
I agree that it’s rarely the legal aspect that weighs in on making a marriage “work”, but the sacramental one… though I’ve seen people apply a legalistic approach too often to a sacramental bond. (Still think the difference between an annulment and a divorce is pretty thin.)
I’m thinking the merger of the two was simply expedience, but I don’t know for certain. Somebody has to witness for legality, so it turns out to be the clergy. Or the JP. Or the captain of a ship, maybe?
Wish I could speak “wind.”
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Bill,
The way someone’s personal life would / would not have a bearing is probably that it may reflect on why they said something or how they might have experienced it, but that isn’t always directly related to whether or not what they’re saying is valid.
Just a thought.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Well … I’ll give my two cents on Tony’s list as well. I’d hate to put something on his blog for fear of being (virtually) shot by his followers. And that is the thing I find most disturbing about this whole controversy. It’s not who said what or when or to whom, but it’s the lines in the sand being drawn in the comments by people who appear to be claiming sides. I’m not interested in sides or, who is following Tony and who claims Andrew, and who claims Apollo … I’m interested in reading that which will assist me in following Christ. I thought the ECM was about finding a third way, not defending one’s turf. But I could be wrong.
* There is no “historic” institution of marriage; it has been a fluid concept for thousands of years, changing with time and across cultures
Well … it depends on how one defines marriage. If one is defining marriage by current Western standards, then … this would be a true statement. However, every culture currently and in the past has some form of ceremony which solemnizes and creates a unity between two people; most generally speaking, a man and a woman. Most of us wouldn’t recognize the “marriage” ceremonies of other cultures, but they are no less binding within that culture.
* Our society has determined that monogamy is good, so we incentivize it in various ways
I’d disagree with this. As a part of the animal kingdom (mammals) human beings are (again, generally) monogamous and mate for life. Yes, there are (sub)cultures which allow polygamy, but those are not generally well accepted amongst the mainstream of the larger world population. Yes, I do remember Muslims in this. Some few Muslims continue to practice this, however, there are very stark restrictions on a husband’s ability to marry and keep a second wife and they are limited to four. The majority of Muslim husbands have only one wife. It is becoming less and less acceptable.
* It’s a plain reality that gay and lesbian couples are among us, and they’re not going away
True dat … but it’s also true that alcoholics are among us and they’re not going away either. So do we allow them to continue to kill themselves and create untold emotional havoc on the lives of their families without doing something? I’m not drawing parallels between alcoholics and homosexual couples, I’m just saying that this reasoning is specious. Just because something exists amongst us, it does not necessarily follow that we we need to promote, encourage or otherwise do anything to make things easier for it to occur.
* So let’s afford them similar incentives toward monogamy by allowing them to enter the binding contract that we call “legal marriage”
I actually agree with this, except for the slightly distasteful insinuation that homosexuals somehow **need** an incentive to remain monogamous. I know several homosexual couples who have been monogamous for years and years without the incentives that Tony speaks of here. Many of them would be satisfied with being allowed to have civil unions.
FTR, I agree with this because I see it as a step which will help strengthen the marriage bonds because it will negate the need to give benefits to non-married couples who have been living together. This way, the state can again promote the state of matrimony without discriminating against homosexual couples. So can large (global) companies such as Disney and the like.
* This will not implicate what any congregation or denomination considers a “sacramental marriage”
The civil unions that some states currently perform (e.g. Vermont) do NOT currently implicate what any congregation or denomination considers a marriage. There is not one church in Vermont which has been forced to perform civil unions because of the law. Really, the whole hoopla over marriage is a tempest in a teapot which is encouraged by people (politicians) with less than pristine interests at heart.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 6th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
I don’t have anything to add to the comments on any side, I just have a question.
What makes a marriage in the eyes of God? Does it need to adhere to the culture in which it exists? Does some ’set-apart’ priest need to perform some ritual? Or can a man and a woman [or same sexed - not getting into that debate] just decide to consummate themselves to each other?
As the ‘un-churched’ Christianity continues to grow, with the emphasis on the equality and the priest hood of all believers, is there a possibility that this is being raised or will be raise?
Just some thoughts that were raised as I read these blogs.
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence
January 7th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
i find this discussion very intersting… I have been thinking a lot about marriage, and the deconstruction of our legal institutions surrounding it when I got married myself (living in a country where only the state can perform marriages) and I have a more realist view on marriage (see http://bramboniusinenglish.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-emerging-joneses-and-my-anarchist-marriage/)
My controversial and unorthodox opinion is that marriage is too important to let the state define it, and that it’s already been defined by creation. (Just as Jesus went back to creation and not to the -godgiven- laws of moses when the pharisees tried to trick him in a divorce debate) and I think in a world where the legal marriage has not much meaning and is irrelevant (as it is here in belgium) that we Christians should be able to show just with our lives the value of marriage, and to let our vows be lived out. Let our yes-word be a yesword!!!
The whole current Emerging church situation is getting too complicated for my poor mind… But I pray whatever happens, that God will be able to use all for the advance of His Kingdom… It’s not about Emergent/ing/ence but about His Kindom!!!
shalom
Bram
This comment was originally posted on Subversive Influence