ekklesia

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jul 26 16:05:59 EDT 1999


At 12:56 PM -0500 7/26/99, Steve Long wrote:
>>
>>My problem with this is that, while I agree that Paul surely is inclusive
>>in his conception of believers incorporate EN CRISTWi as all belonging to
>>the SWMA CRISTOU, I have my doubts whether it is ever safe to say that
>>EKKLHSIA in an authentic letter of Paul (personally I'd exclude 2 Thess,
>>Eph, Col and the pastorals) refers to more than a local house-church type
>>of congregation. Certainly Paul does not use SUNAGWGH, and in fact, I think
>>that word is used exclusively of the Jewish local prayer and study meeting.
>>In fact, I'm inclined to think that the usage of EKKLHSIA for the entire
>>body of Christ is restricted to later-composed NT texts, but that's not an
>>item for discussion in this forum.  I doubt we can find a clear instance in
>>an authentic Pauline letter of EKKLHSIA in the sense of the universal body.
>>
>How about 1 Corinthians 10:32: APROSKOPOI KAI IOUDAIOUIS GINESQE KAI
>ELLHSIN KAI TH EKKLHSIA TOU QEOU?

You do mean THi EKKLHSIAi TOU QEOU, I assume.

>I guess its possible he's referring to a local body but the inclusive
>nature of Jews and Greeks make me think he's referring to the universal
>church. In 11:16 he refers to local bodies in the plural, so I would take
>10:32 as an inclusive singular.

Yes, this may be a legitimate instance of a universal usage; perhaps it is
the more appropriate here where it is referred to as hH EKKLHSIA QEOU
rather than as CRISTOU, that it refers to "the whole congregation of God"
inclusive of Israel and of Christian believers" rather than in any of the
later senses in which Christian usage speaks of the EKKLHSIA.




Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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