ekklesia/Mitchell Gray

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jul 27 20:42:14 EDT 1999


At 7:25 PM -0400 7/27/99, Theodore H Mann wrote:
>Hi Mitch:
>
>Yes, my wife and I say the same thing, as well as "we're meeting with the
>saints," or some such.  However, if "church" is not the best translation
>of EKKLESIA, as a couple of people have recently suggested, then some
>other term needs to be used which captures both the local and global
>aspects of the body of Christ.  Am I mistaken in my understanding that
>the NT speaks of the EKKLESIA on both levels?  Perhaps "assembly" or
>"congregation" are fine, in spite of my feeling that they seem to have a
>decidedly local flavor to them.

I'll take a closer look at the 114 instances of EKKLHSIA in the GNT, but I
really expect to find the great majority of them in reference to local
congregations rather than the universal body of believers. That is the
chief reason why one might prefer to use "gathering," "meeting," or
"congregation" than "church"--because it is less likely to be misleading to
an English reader who tends to think of "church" in all its ambiguity.


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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