The Early Church and Primitivists

A friend commented the other day about my take on "primitivism", so I thought I'd take this opportunity to say what I am and what I am not.

If you read my review of Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?, you'll notice that I briefly criticize Smith for his way of handling what he calls primitivism. But I don't think he quite has in mind what I do when he uses that term...

So what is primitivism in the Church context? It refers to those that believe the descriptions of churches in the New Testament are prescriptive - that is, we are supposed to pattern our modern (or postmodern!) churches after them. This sounds good on the surface of things, but understand that this means a primitivist will not acknowledge his own culture for influecing church systems, but instead wants to do things "like they did in the Bible". So, for example, no accompanied singing - they had no pianos or electric guitars in Antioch, so there shall be none in your church today. This attitude carries all the way through what church looks and feels like, to a degree dependent upon the level to which a person is committed to "primitivism".

For example, some denominations are more primitivist and others less. Most denominations are not primitivist at all. Take the Plymouth Brethren, for example. They are more primitivist than most. They like to refer to passages of the Bible like Proverbs 22:28 and Jeremiah 6:16 in an effort to hearken back to the "old ways". Depending on the church and the time period, this usually means the NT church (but again, in varying degrees). In other words, their pattern of simplicity is predicated upon a belief that the NT church pattern should be the norm for today.

There are plenty of cults and cult-leaning organizations out there that are primitivist as well, some of them radically so. I have a friend who's involved in one such "church". Only a cappella music, no make-up for the ladies, greetings with actual (cheek) kisses, no jewelry, no prepared sermons (just open the Bible at random and preach the page it lands on!), etc...

A different take on primitivism would be to see the NT church pattern as important and worthy of study, but not prescriptive. It's primarily descriptive in nature. This view is where I'm at. I value the NT church pattern for two primary reasons:

1.) It is, after all, part of the Bible and therefore merits our attention, study, and reflection. There are surely elements of timeless truth that we can pull from their church life, just as surely there are elements of their culture so foreign to ours (think: "greet with a holy kiss") as to be meaningless (or just plain weird!) in ours.

2.) The historical culture of the NT church period was much more akin to postmodernism than to modernism. Therefore, as one seeking to minister in an increasingly postmodern America, the experiences and practices of the NT church can be very meaningful today. Take the description of church life found at the end of Acts 2: They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. The simplicity and authenticity (to use a postmodern buzz words) of that experience draws me in. I - and many like me - want church life to be something like that.

So back to where this all started - my critique of Smith. He seems to be criticizing primitivists (which he seems to use to also include anyone that leans that way, like me) for valuing the NT church pattern but not other historical church patterns. He finds this hypocritical because the NT canon was finalized by an historical church setting that was not first century. In other words, he seems to be saying, "How can you value the NT church pattern and not others, when the very NT you hold in your hand was not finally and fully collected until well after the first century?". But here he's mixed two separate issues - I can (and do) value the NT church pattern over others but yet still value the theology and wisdom and teachings of other generations of the church. You don't have to take them all together. So I appreciate the thinking and events that went into finalizing the NT canon (whether you consider that to be a 3rd, 4th or 5th century event) but do not put those historical churches in the same category of thought and refection as the NT church precisely because they aren't in the NT (and other reasons that would take even more space to discuss - this post is too long already). To the degree that they reflect upon postmodern culture and worldview, I value them. But still not like the NT church.

All that to say this: I'm not a primitivist but I lean that way a bit more than most.

Hatushili