Hierarchy vs Equality: Apostles, Disciples, and the John-shaped Whole in the Church

Or, Making Johannine Ecclesiology Great Again

Why are so many pastors, churches, and church traditions enamored with authority? Surely we all know examples of the high premium many Christian leaders place on authority. After writing this post, I happened across a recent publication at the local Christian bookstore that illustrates my concern: Authority: How Godly Rule Protects the Vulnerable, Strengthens Communities, and Promotes Human Flourishing, by Jonathan Leeman of 9Marks. I mention it here for illustrative purposes only; I have not read the book and am not critiquing it. Here is Leeman’s main point from the back cover: “The answer to bad authority, however, is not no authority, but good authority.” My question today, why so much emphasis on authority, whether good or bad or both?

There are many answers, and many ways of answering that. Here’s one answer I’d like to suggest for consideration: Because these leaders neglect 19% of the New Testament, while also making 25% of the NT out to be the entirety of the NT’s vision of church leadership. Let me explain.

Some Boring Math

Edmund Clowney’s book, The Church, is the only seminary text on ecclesiology I had to buy and read.¹ In his book he cites Johannine texts 149 times (Gospel, 119; 1 John, 11; 2 John, 1; 3 John, zero; Revelation, 18). That sounds like a lot. What about other major NT writings?

Clowney cites Paul 671 times. Of all of his NT references (1,251), that equals 53.7%, and Paul’s letters amount to 24.6% of the NT.² Clowney cites Luke/Acts 196 times, or 15.7%, and Luke/Acts is 27% of the NT.

However, John makes up only 11.9% of Clowney’s NT references, compared to the total Johannine 19% of the NT.

Granted, statistics can easily be used to tell any story. This is certainly not the only way to account for which parts of the NT most influence Clowney’s text. But it matches with my experience in Bible college, seminary, and 38 years in the church: our vision of what the church is, and especially how it functions, is essentially Pauline.

This has significant consequences. When the Johannine works of the NT (mostly the Fourth Gospel and three Letters) are read through the lens of Paul, the egalitarian, non-hierarchical emphasis of John is filtered out through a (perceived) Pauline emphasis on authority.³

More Paul vs John Math

But maybe I need to give more evidence for you to consider. Those statistics are from the entirety of Clowney’s book, which deals with the whole range of ecclesiological issues: not only church authority but also sacraments, spiritual gifts, missions, etc. So what about sections of the book that specifically deal with authority, power, and office in the church? Which authors/books does Clowney cite most?

In Clowney’s chapter “The Structure of Christ’s Church,” there are 132 NT references. Paul makes up 55.3% of that (73 citations). Runners up are Luke/Acts (22%) and Matthew (12.1%). John is cited a measley 3 times (2.2%).⁴

In the chapter on “The Ministry of Women in the Church,” Clowney cites NT passages 143 times, of which Paul is 126, or 88.1%. Runner ups are Peter (3.4%) and John (2.8%).⁵

Yet More Paul vs John

Beyond numbers, here is a prose example of Clowney missing what John is doing because Paul is his controlling hermeneutic:

“The function of the apostles was unique and unrepeatable; they received the revelation that is the meaning and the message of the church. Paul ground his authority on that revelation (Eph. 2:20; 3:2-7). In the Spirit the apostles were chosen (Acts 1:2); through the Spirit they remembered Christ’s words and deeds (Jn. 14:26; Acts 10:41); through the Spirit, too, they received the complete revelation of the risen Christ (Jn. 15:26-27; 16:13-15).”⁶

The problem with this paragraph is that Clowney interprets John through the lens of Paul (and Luke). Cloweny just assumes that the texts in John about the Spirit bringing remembrance and revelation are, like in Paul and Luke, “unique and unrepeatable.” Hoever, John never gives any distinct reference to a group of twelve disciples in ch. 13-17, nor does he refer to them as “apostles.” We are not told explicitly who was present for the upper room discourse and Jesus’ multiple promises of revelation through the Spirit. In John, many characters are referred to as disciples aside from named apostles (meaning, those we know to be “apostles” from the other Gospels, like Peter, Andrew, etc.). Eg, the Jews who believed in him (8:31), the healed blind man (9:28), and Joseph of Arimathea (19:38). In John’s telling, the promise of teaching from the Spirit is given to a more general category of people, namely, “disciples,” those who apprentice themselves to Jesus and “continue in [his] word” (8:31).

This aligns with the First Epistle of John where he writes “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.” (1 John 2:20), and “As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you don’t need anyone to teach you. Instead, his anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie; just as it has taught you, remain in him.” (1 John 2:27). Notice the emphasis on “all of you,” and all of the “you” pronouns are plural. 1 John, which some scholars believe to be an interpretation and application of the Gospel of John, is applying promises like John 16:13 to the entire believing community: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come.” John can do this, because, as framed in the Fourth Gospel, that promise was for all disciples, not just twelve apostles.

Towards a Solution: Biblical Theology of the Church

If I am on to something with this diagnosis of an over-reliance upon Paul for our ecclesiology⁷, what’s the remedy? Roman Catholic priest and Bible scholar Raymond Brown wrote a fascinating little book titled The Churches the Apostles Left Behind. Taking six different strands of NT writings that, according to Brown, post-date the death of the apostles, Brown addresses the question of how the churches managed to survive after the death of their apostolic guides. Brown has a few fundamental and relevant premises which I’ll take for granted: 1) there are different kinds of church communities detectable in the NT; 2) the unique needs of these communities led the NT writers to tailor unique emphases to help these communities survive.⁸

With each specific community, Brown points out strengths and weaknesses in the corresponding NT ecclesiological treatments. It might sound odd to include both strengths and weaknesses; this is holy Scripture, inspired and infallible. But this is where Brown is instructive and insightful. For example, if the churches of Crete needed firm, clear authoritative leaders because of the presence of false teachers and “rebellious people” (1:10-16), what about when those rebellious false teachers were sufficiently dealt with and gone? The weaknesses of ecclesial visions arise when a particular vision takes precedence and pushes out other complementary approaches. As Brown explains,

“In this book I have not dealt with different models of the church given in the NT because no one of the biblical authors discussed intended to offer an overall picture of what the church should be….I approached a number of NT books looking for an answer, explicit or implicit, to a specific problem, namely: What were Christians in the Sub-Apostolic Period (the last one-third of the first century) being told that would enable their respective churches to survive the passing of the authoritative apostolic generation? There was no evidence in these works that a consistent or uniform ecclesiology had emerged. Rather, writings addressed to different NT communities had quite diverse emphases. Even though each emphasis could be effective in the particular circumstances of the writing, each had glaring shortcomings that would constitute a danger were that emphasis isolated and deemed to be sufficient for all times. Taken collectively, however, these emphases constitute a remarkable lesson about early idealism in regard to Christian community life.”⁹

Biblical vs Systematic Ecclesiology

One way to summarize Brown’s point is the contrast (complementary, in my view) between biblical theology and systematic theology. Briefly, according to Vern Poythress, “Whereas systematic theology is topically organized, biblical theology is historically organized.” ChatGPT summarizes, “Biblical theology traces the development of theological ideas over time within the context of the biblical narrative, whereas systematic theology organizes theological concepts into a coherent system of belief.”

As any student of the past knows, history is messy. It consistently resists synthesized organization. Not that history is incapable of coherent organization, but it is more difficult to synthesize than topics and concepts that are less cluttered by multifaceted stories, people, places, and events.

It was the chaos of disorderly conduct and false teaching in Crete that motivated Paul to deploy clear concepts and structured authority. As Brown notes, this was a good strategy:

“in the rare moments when theological freedom threatens to become anarchy, ‘the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15) has the right to not let itself be destroyed from within.”¹⁰

But there is a downside to that strategy:

“The great danger with an exclusive stress on officially controlled teaching, however, is that, having been introduced at moments of crisis, it becomes a consistent way of life.”

I would add that the danger exists when stressing “officially controlled teaching” as if it’s appropriate for all kinds of crises. The audience of the Gospel of John had its own crisis, but it was different. John didn’t use the same strategy, because he was speaking into a different context, one marked by a different chaos—the chaos of religious trauma and institutional betrayal (cf John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2; 20:19).

Because of that context, he emphasized different ecclesiological values suited to heal and strengthen his audience. In a later post I might share Brown’s exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of Johannine ecclesiology. For now, I’ve already mentioned one of the strengths Brown highlights:

“A second strength in Johannine ecclesiology is its egalitarianism, i.e., the sense of equality among the members of the community…[In John,] disciple is the most important category, and there is no evidence that either charisms [gifts] or offices give status.”¹¹

As Brown put it elsewhere, “by constantly stressing disciples (78 times) John shows that priority is not to be placed on roles (or offices) toward or over others but on relationship to Jesus and receiving life from him.”¹²

Mary Coloe, another John scholar, agrees:

“The household model [of the church] as imaged in the language of the Fourth Gospel essentially deconstructs the patriarchal household model of antiquity, since it takes as its point of reference the divine communion [between Father and Son]. The Fourth Gospel, while using “father-son” terminology, reconstitutes the relationship as a dynamism of mutual self-giving love…We do not have within this household a hierarchy of leadership other than the leadership of faith and love.”¹³

In the context of this egalitarian ecclesiology, it’s probably significant that John uses the word “apostle” (apostolos) only one time, on the lips of Jesus just after he told his disciples to follow his example of humble foot-washing service:

“Truly I tell you, a servant [doulos] is not greater than his master [kyrios], and a messenger [apostolos] is not greater than the one who sent [pempsantos] him.” (John 13:16)¹⁴

Quote from Raymond Brown

“Johannine ecclesiology is the most attractive and exciting in the NT. Alas, it is also one of the least stable. One rejoices that at the end of the first century, when much about the church was being formalized and institutionalized, there were Christians who still marched to the sounds of a different drummer [ie, the so-called Johannine Community(ies)]; and one is sad that the road down which they went was inevitably a dead end. But their witness lives on in the many-faceted great ‘church catholic’ that brought their Gospel into its canon. Even if that Gospel cannot be the only guide for the church catholic, and even if alongside the Beloved Disciple (and indeed over him) have been placed the apostles, such as Peter and Paul, the community of the Beloved Disciple continues to bear warning witness that the church must never be allowed to replace the unique role of Jesus in the life of Christians.”¹⁵

Question

How do you think we should wrestle with the diversity in the New Testament regarding the church? Where and how have you seen distorted emphases, whether toward hierarchy or toward equality?

1. Edmund P. Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press,1995).

2. This math was initially inspired by Fred Sanders on X re Luke/Acts.

3. Please note, here I mean “egalitarian” in the broadest sense, not complementarian vs egalitarian, but hierarchical vs egalitarian, ie, “a belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic affairs.”

4. At a cursory glance, this analysis appears to also fit Leeman’s book, Authority. His practical chapters on the church’s “authority of command” and on elder’s “authority of counsel” mostly reference Paul, as well as the go-to Matthean texts on authority in Matthew 16 (the keys) and Matthew 18 (discipline). The same goes for an excerpt from this book at Desiring God, which mostly references Paul, as well as 1 Peter 5 and Hebrews 13.

5. While I’m not focusing on the gender debate here, it’s worth noting that Clowney just assumes Paul is the only NT writer who addresses the ministry of women in the church. The first 12 pages of his chapter on women only deal with Pauline exegesis (along with a reference to Genesis 3 vis a vis 1 Timothy 2). At the 13th page he references John 13 when Jesus washes the disciples feet, to demonstrate “that relations of authority and submission, while not removed, are radically transformed by the gospel” (p. 226). However, while Jesus upends presuppositions about masters and servants, Clowney writes, “Christ the Saviour remains the Lord of the church. The relation of Christ and the church is not egalitarian” (p. 226-227). Therefore, according to Clowney, neither is the relationship between husband and wife, which is patterned after the relationship between Christ and the Church. Without going in to further detail, this is noteworthy: Clowney’s utter lack of engaging what the Johannine corpus has to say about gender and women in the church. The same goes for the complementarian text, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. RBMW references John 21 times. Comparative references: 1 Corinthians, 174 times; 1 Timothy, 101 times. There are as many references to 1 Corinthians 11:3 as the entirety of John. 1 Timothy 2:12 is referred to 18 times, and it has its own chapter.

6. Clowney, 74.

7. We could also add Matthew, but that’s another post (and another chapter of Brown’s book). Also, and this deserves more than just a footnote, I am not saying that John’s emphases are entirely unique. A thorough, close apprenticeship to Paul’s writings should also lead us to more egalitarian, less hierarchical models of leadership and church involvement. Ie, the Protestant priesthood of believers and all that.

8. We needn’t concern oursleves with Brown’s critical scholarship regarding dates of these letters, and whether they were by any of the original apostles vs an apostolic delegate. I think Brown’s contributions stand regardless of those debates.

9. Raymond Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 146-147.

10. Brown, 39.

11. Brown, 99.

12. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, edited by Francis J. Moloney (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 224.

13. Mary Coloe, Dwelling in the Household of God: Johannine Ecclesiology and Spirituality (Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 2007), 197-198.

14. “The one use of apostolos (13:16) reflects on the function of being sent as a messenger, applicable to any disciple” (Brown, Introduction, 228).

15. Brown, The Churches, 123.