Expectancy of an Imminent Parousia and Concern with Church Order: An Inverse Relationship?

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. ~0017 VoL. XXXIX JANUARY, 1975 No.1 EXPECTANCY OF AN IMMINENT PAROUSIA AND CONCERN WITH CHURCH ORDER: AN INVERSE RELATIONSHIP? GIVEN THE FACT that the Parousia, understood in a futurist sense, has not come and that by the end of the Subapostolic period there is evidence of a rather dominant three-fold priestly structure, one is led inevitably to the question of the relationship between the two. However, deciding what that relationship is, is no easily answered question. Certainly no direct answer is forthcoming from the texts themselves for the simple reason that no writer, either in the New Testament or among the Apostolic Fathers, has stated explicitly why there was concern for Church Order or how the early communities understood the " delay " in the Lord's Coming. This silence in itself is not surprising; conscious reflection often follows upon a lived experience. Let us express the dilemma in its simplest terms: if the Lord had come in glory shortly after his Resurrection-Ascension, the 1 LEWIS S. FIORELLI question we are asking in this essay would be meaningless. However, admitting that does not compel one to conclude that, therefore, concern with Church Order must be directly inverse to the problematic of the parousial "delay." Rather, such a directly inverse relationship smacks of a simplistic solution to a subtly complex problem. Our aim here, therefore, is two-fold: (1) to attempt to show that a directly inverse relationship between the expectancy of an imminent Parousia and concern with Church Order, though perhaps a significant factor, is not sufficient alone to explain the fact of Church Order; (fl) to suggest that a more fruitful avenue of approach to the whole question of Church Order may lie in the examination of the antecedent probability, given the more or less cultic character of Jesus and the Twelve, of the rise of a cultic order within the early Church. The first aim is certainly the more fundamental one as far as we are concerned and therefore more attention will be given to it. The second aim is a mere suggestion, via a concrete example , to bring home the reality that other factors may be operative in the concern with Church Order beyond the factor of the" delay" in the Lord's return. The first aim is in a sense a negative contribution to the whole problematic; the second is a more positive suggestion that one look beyond the categories of Church Order and Parousia when attempting to understand either one or the other or the relationship between the two. Since it is not possible to ascertain directly (i. e., from explicit statements in the sources) the relationship between the parousial delay and concern with Church Order, an indirect approach must be used. Therefore, an overview of the rise of Church Order will be given, tracing its development, in broad strokes, from the New Testament writings through and to the emergence of a dominant three-fold priestly class in the Apostolic Fathers. Once' this is done, two questions. must be brought to the texts: (1) in the earliest New Testament writings, when the expectancy of an imminent Parousia is most acute, is there any concern with Church Order or conditions for its emergence ?; (2) in the later New Testament writings and into the IMMINENT PAROUSIA AND CHURCH ORDER s Apostolic Fathers, when one might legitimately expect a lessening of imminent parousial expectation, are there nevertheless still traces of interest in the Lord's Second Coming? If the answer to either or both of these questions is in the affirmative, the conclusion would seem to suggest that at least there is no directly inverse relationship between the categories of Church Order and parousial expectation-while not thereby suggesting that there is no relationship. I. AN OvERVIEW oF THE RisE OF CHURCH ORDER IN THE NEw TESTAMENT AND THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS In studying the New Testament as a whole the fact of several and apparently simultaneous types of Church Order is brought to the fore. Variety rather than uniformity in...