THIS letter raises some fascinating issues for me.
A critical one is that we have no way of knowing who the Nicolaitans are. While there are theories the theories seem to have insufficient support. This raises serious questions about how scripture can be edifying when some core concerns (the Nicolaitans get mentioned twice by John of Patmos) are essentially unrecoverable references. All we know is that John claims the resurrected Christ detests both their deeds and their doctrines. All else is speculation.
This issue is naked here. We simply don't know who these guys were. In other biblical passages we believe we know, or we can reconstruct partial references, or simply, what appears as common sense is quite false.
So if we wish to hold on to a doctrine of scriptural inspiration, or a role for the bible in our individual and corporate guidance, we also need a model which does not depend on actually understanding fully the original sense of the text. I turn to scripture for guidance -- but the guidance is always tentative, because my understanding, while perhaps spirit led, is always (at least potentially) partial. I'm called to be pragmatic, and the proposed action or belief I'm exhorted to is at best a theory, an hypothesis, to be tested in the laboratory of my living.
Not easy for me. I like to get my intellectual ducks in a row before I step out into the world of action. And this passage is telling me that I cannot do so. There is a point where analysis becomes paralysis and I must act. I must risk.
I then bring this spirit of not knowing back to this passage.
I see that this letter is not addressed to the church at Ephesus but to its angel. Not to the lamp on the lampstand, but to the star shining in Christ's right hand.
Ephesus (or its angel) is praised for hard work and perseverance. Which in turn implies that it faces resistance or attack. Again the doubt. Can we really be fed by a passage that presumes that we are persecuted for our faith when we are not?
I see also paradox. It is praised for not standing/tolerating/bearing wicked people/men. For challenging false apostles. And for hating these unknown Nicolaitans. And yet, it is held accountable for lack of love. Love (I presume for one another) is consistent with challenging false teachers, hating false teachers, refusing to put up with (unspecified) wickedness.
And then I look at my real life and blood faith communities that wrestle with matters like neo-pagan and neo-trinitarian Quakers worshipping and working together. Gay marriages. Gay ordination. Women's ordination. Whether there should be a church organ and a choir in a church or a rock band.
In the face of such issues this letter to the angel of Ephesus is less like guidance than it is like a zen kōan -- something to be lived with until enlightenment comes unbidden on the winds of the spirit.
6 comments:
David, my bible notes see the mention of "love" as "devotion", which may mean not love of others but love of God? That might help with the inconsistancy, but still the message seems pretty unchristian to me.
Here is a place where Bruce Malina's peculiar expertise may be illuminating: "In the first-century Mediterranean culture, words that in our society refer to internal states generally require external expression. Thus 'to know' means to be aware of and experience, 'to covet' is to desire and take, 'to be jealous' is to consider something exclusive and protect it. Two words nearly always assigned to internal states in our society are 'hate' and 'love.' In the ancient world, 'hate' would mean 'dis-attachment,' 'nonattachment', or even 'indifference.' 'Love', on the other hand, is best translated as 'group attachment' or 'attachment to some person.' To 'hate' the works of the Nicolaitians is to be dis-attached from their group. There may or may not be feelings of repulsion. But it is the inward attitude of nonattachment, together with the outward behavior bound up with not being attached to a group (and the persons who are part of that group) that hate entails. To hate the works of another group would thus be to act dis-attached from that group and to behave accordingly. Beyond hate, however, indifference is perhaps the strongest negative attitude that one can entertain in Mediterranean interpersonal relations. ( pg 52, _Social-Science Commentary on the Book of Revelation_, 2000.)
Revelation was addressed to, and had to be meaningful to, people who were much more intensely group-oriented than we consider desirable. And they, it appears, would have considered our widespread indifference to one another worse than "hate."
I like to suppose that a Nicolaitian social might have been a real fun event, complete with barbecue pork and cute, friendly, uninhibited women. But I certainly don't know.
We have this revelation through John, and we can assume he passed it on as faithfully as he knew, but we have no guarantee of it being free from John's personal biases; in fact our experience with the rest of the Bible suggests that such personal elements are always present.
So we can't just take something uncritically, saying "Look! It says right here: 'Stay away from wicked people!' We should do that too!" Jesus didn't stay away from wicked people. Neither did he pretend that wicked people in office were honest public servants, who could be persuaded to vote righteously by enough good letters on your issue. Not that wicked people are different from us, but they're, well, wicked. Focused on short-term personal satisfactions & spiteful zero-sum behavior--unpleasant company unless you're extremely shallow or extremely deep.
What I hear this passage saying to us is: "If your group wants to effectively do the work of a church, you need to stick closely to the truth, test and investigate to be sure that's what you've got. If someone isn't really with you, don't pretend they are. And don't content yourself with appearances: Don't do anything in my name unless you can do it with your whole hearts and minds."
Forrest, your comments remind me of the Mennonite practice of shunning. So you think then this letter is advocating a shunning of those who are doing this wicked Nicolaitan thing?
Something like that, maybe.
Walter Wink mentions one of Paul's letters, where Paul thinks that one church member has been bad, and says he should be delivered "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh." Paul is not, apparently, talking about doing awful things to the man's body; Paul wants him kicked out of the church until suffering motivates him to subdue his naughty part, stop letting it lead him around so. After the man has repented, Paul is upset because they're reluctant to take him back.
There is at least one branch of the Amish who decided that shunning was wrong. (They broke off, as Anabaptists tend to have a schism whenever one of them embraces a new interpretation of some crucial passage.) One Pendle Hill class visited a nearby Amish church and one of their families; they had not only renounced shunning but started actively talking with "The English," meaning people outside this originally-German denomination. Openess to backsliders seems linked to openess to outsiders, in this modern group. Probably there'd once been an interpretation of one scriptural passage that discouraged both.
Paul seems to have been talking about something more practical, ie disassociating the group from anyone whose current behavior was an impediment, but not ruling out repentance and reinstatement.
Quakers used to have disownment. In Canada at least, the practice has largely been done away with. Older birthright Friends recall folks getting read out of meeting for "marrying out" and looking back "reading out" and "disownment" were seen as excessive use of power on the part of the ministers.
I am not certain we did not throw out the baby with the bathwater. At some point we need to be able tos ay to one another -- here we are, this is who we are, live with us or not. Choose.
David, my understanding of Quaker history suggests that in this country disownment led almost to the destruction of the movement, from which we perhaps have never fully recovered. (It included members of my family, who became good Methodists-- maybe better than Quakers!)
In FGC that grievous error led to a movement in the opposite direction to the point where there ceased to be requirements of any sort for membership, so that today some meetings are virtually controlled by people with neither knowledge of Quakerism nor substantial Quaker values.
Too bad! As Wink said, it's just a principality anyway.
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