INTRODUCTION

It’s a presumptuous title for a book, don’t you think?

How the Church lost The Way …

It’s a double whammy. There’s a simple angle and a clever one. Firstly, we can take it at face value and ask ourselves what has gone wrong with the Church? Actually, this is not a biting critique of the Church today. There are no crude frontal assaults at the clerical edifices or cunning strikes at the soft underbelly of the ecclesiastical world. It is merely an analysis of a series of events that occurred in the far-off past, in the formative years of the established Church. It is a reference to a process that started many centuries ago and has continued unabated ever since.

We can also look again at the title and see something else. Before the Church had got used to calling itself The Church, it was called The Way. So the implication here is that the Church didn’t just lose its way, but it lost touch with its origins. At some point in its history it stopped being called The Way.

So what? It’s just a name, isn’t it? Well, it’s a good name if you think about it. It has an air of certainty and exclusivity. For a central figure who claimed that he was not just The Way to God but the only way, this alternative name for the fledgling Church is a pretty good one. Yet once the events of the Book of Acts were all played out, the name disappears from history. And so did the certainty and the exclusivity of the message at the heart of it.

Now for the subtitle.

… and how it can find it again.

To which, your reasonable response is …

Oh yes, what makes you so sure you have the answers, if indeed there is a problem to start with?

Here is the problem.

It’s subtle, but it’s there nonetheless. It was highlighted to me recently in a Church that I was regularly attending. The memory verse for that year was to be Romans 1:16 and they proclaimed it on a card given out to Church members. It read, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes ….”

Sounds right, but it’s not the whole story. You see, they had missed out the last bit of the verse, “… first for the Jew, then for the Gentiles”. Also, in that same Church, a sermon series in Romans skipped seamlessly from the end of Romans 8 to the start of Romans 12, as if the missing three chapters – the key New Testament chapters on the role and future of the Jews – inhabited some parallel universe!

You may deem me over-sensitive on this issue. After all, I am a Christian of Jewish birth and that would make me over-vigilant for any whiff of anti-Semitism. And this is true, but my concern is not for myself, or for fellow Jews, but for the Church itself.

Thumbing through what is described as one of the most widely used textbooks in Christian theology1, authored by one of the most respected theologians of our age, two observations surprised and shocked me. Firstly, in the extensive index, there was not a single reference for any of the following terms, Jewish, Israel or Hebrew (or Hebraic), whether as single words or within phrases. Secondly it was stated that the key debates in the early Church on Jesus Christ were conducted in Greek and in the light of the presuppositions of major Greek schools of philosophy.

To an impartial observer studying the Bible and subsequent Christian history, it would seem that a Jewish-based faith, defined by the Bible, had become a Greek philosophy, defined by arguments birthed in the minds of Socrates, Plato and their ilk. Yes, this is a very simplistic deduction, but gut feelings often uncover crude truths, that layers of sophistication, tradition and cleverness can sometimes mask. It is surely significant that the textbook index had as many references to Plato as the apostle Paul and for Aristotle just double the total and add some. But, as for Moses, just a big fat zero. What was it about these Greek philosophers and their influence on Christian thought? Did God use them to shed much needed extra light on our faith? Does that mean that the Bible is insufficient for our needs? Important questions, but seldom asked and rarely answered.

I have already stated that the perceived problem is a subtle one, but no way is it a trivial one. The scenarios outlined are just symptoms of a problem in the Church, a historical process that has been going on for centuries in most Churches, whatever their denomination.

The process of stripping out every trace of Jewishness from the established Church started officially as a result of a decision made in the Fourth Century AD and has been motoring along quite nicely ever since. Yet it seems to be in direct opposition to one of the Apostle Paul’s major declarations as to what the Church of Jesus Christ was to be, in his letter to the Ephesians:

“For he himself (Jesus) is our peace, who has made the two one (Jews and Gentiles) and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14-16.)

Speaking first in metaphor we see that God’s purpose was that the Body of Christ should be a mixed-race man, part Jew, part Gentile. What this means is that the Church was always meant to have Jewish and Gentile elements. The fact that this has never really happened in history does not prove God wrong, it just paints the Church as unfulfilled. The Church was meant to be an entity with Jew and Gentile at peace and reconciled and no-one can ever claim that it has ever got even close to that ideal. But it doesn’t mean that it is never going to happen because God’s word does not lie. It’s going to happen and some people claim they know how it is going to happen. So are they right or are they wrong? We can only answer that once we find out what they are saying.

The “One New Man” movement that has recently appeared in the USA is to be commended in that it seeks to restore the Hebrew roots of Christianity, lost since the Fourth Century AD, when the established Church started its campaign of extermination of all things Jewish. But, just like a catherine wheel, going from a steady jerkiness to all out mayhem in a matter of seconds, some in the movement, after first taking it to a reasonable place, just let rip, confusing some Gentiles into believing that they had, in some way, become Jewish! It is acceptable to restore Jewishness where relevant, but not to the extent that there would be a blurring of identity and Gentiles would be seen worshipping in full Jewish garb, going to Yiddish classes and eating Kosher. This can’t be right. Someone lit the fuse and the whole lot has gone all gefilte fish!

This has been something that has troubled me for many years. It is OK to bring back the Jewish elements, but surely God was speaking about a balance between Jew and Gentile? Surely folk could see that a mainly Jewish Church is no more the answer than the mainly Gentile Church that has been the status-quo for sixteen centuries. Isn’t God talking about a balanced arrangement here? If He is, then there is some serious rethinking to be done.

As I sit in Churches, I wonder how much that I see and hear would be different if Paul’s “One New Man” declaration had caught on. Would there still be icons, statues and murals? Would there be Churches and Cathedrals as we know it, at all? Would the structures and hierarchies be any different? What about worship styles and liturgies? Then my mind wandered as it wondered. What about the catering? Would Alpha courses become Aleph courses? Will we all be singing choruses in Hebrew? Would the preacher need coaching in stand-up comedy? My imagination was stirred. So I decided to investigate further.

PROLOGUE

We start with a mental exercise. Not an easy one, but a useful one and one that hopefully will prepare your mind for what it is about to receive. No, I am not proposing a New Age emptying of thoughts, but rather a realisation of what lies beneath them. Imagine you have just woken up to a new day. Then mentally trace through it, concentrating on your voluntary actions, rather than the more mundane (though serious) processes that actually keep your body alive. Here’s what could be a typical day.

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, then realised I had just paid a homage to The Beatles. Ah, The Beatles. Memories flooded back of the previous night at the themed bar, guzzling too much food and beer, while being entertained by a rather good Beatles tribute band. Ah, The Beatles. The first worldwide celebrities of pop culture, trendsetters in music, fashion, drug taking, political agitation and communication. These hazy thoughts were swept aside by pangs of hunger and I had a full fry-up for breakfast, then went to work. Once there, I just counted the hours to clocking-off, mechanically going through the processes of my allotted tasks, but my mind focussed on the football game I was going to later …

OK, so what? Given that I’ve just described a typical day for someone living in the West in the 21st Century, there must be a purpose to the exercise. Before the great unveiling I will move to a Sunday and repeat the mental process, but focussing on the daily activities of a typical Christian.

Woke up, got out of bed, prayed and did my devotions. Slight dread but duty first, put on my ‘Sunday best’, cleanse my mind of distractions, then Church. Sit there quietly, sing the songs, listen to the sermon, mind wandering … 4,000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire, what the? … walk to the altar, take communion, polite conversation, then leave the Church, change clothes, then an afternoon in town, take in a show, some Chinese food, a few drinks. Home late at night, not looking forwards to work tomorrow, just need to get through the week until the next weekend. Get ready for bed, prayers and sleep.

Of course you may not connect with this entire list, but I guarantee there are at least some familiar aspects. Now to the big point, the climax, the denouement. If I told you that, in both lists, you are chiefly following processes flowing from the thoughts and practices of a civilisation that flourished in a land many miles eastward, many centuries ago. And that land was not the Middle East of Jesus, two thousand years ago, but rather the Greece of four hundred years or so earlier than the Christian era. And ideas flowing from that land of Greece are very much still alive and kicking. In fact they set the foundations and principles behind our daily lives in our modern world. Let that sink in for a few moments.

Look at people going about their daily lives. Some stride purposefully around, secure in their imagined immortality. They live guilt-free lives filled with pleasure. For a growing number, the working week has no other purpose than facilitating the wild excesses of the weekend. Others are not so secure. The certainties of old had been eroded, leaving behind a confusion of beliefs and philosophies. Some mix and match and hope for the best, others just retreat from the World, yet others reject everything save that which feeds their self-interests. Then there are those who just shrug their shoulders and get on with things. What will be, will be, they chant. Finally there are those who don’t care any more and have given up.

There’s nothing new under the sun. This same scenario was a perfect fit just over two thousand years ago, in the streets of Ancient Greece. The difference is that each of the attitudes painted were, for them, schools of thought and philosophy. The names will be familiar to you. The Epicurianists took meaning from modest pleasures, while the Hedonists took this to the extreme. The Eclectics were the mix and matchers, while the Ascectics turned their back on the world and its pleasures. The Sceptics just rejected everything, while the Cynics took this further and just lived for themselves. The Stoics simply put it all down to fate while the Nihilists denied any sort of meaning at all.

We may be separated from these folk by two thousand years of Christianity but the cynics (I worked that one in quite cleverly, didn’t I?) among us would wonder why our society, as a whole, seems to have rejected the certainties of the Gospel of Jesus and have slipped back into those ancient ways. To make matters worse, there are aspects of many of these philosophies in the Christian Church too. These and other Greek ideas are very much a part of the modern ecclesiastical world. So when was the Church infiltrated? When did we turn our backs and let these pagan ideas in?

The answer is simple, serious and startling and it’s the subject of this book.

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