The Church and the Churches

From the word translated "church." Our English word "church" has a derivation from the Greek meaning the Lord's.

See: church | Etymology, origin and meaning of church by etymonline

 

We have to be careful of what is known as the "root fallacy".

Common Fallacies in Semantics

1. The root fallacy One of the most enduring of errors, the root fallacy presupposes that every word actually has a meaning bound up with its shape or its components. In this view, meaning is determined by etymology; that is, by the root or roots of a word. How many times have we been told that because the verbal cognate of ἀπόστολος (apostolos, apostle) is ἀποστέλλω (apostellō, I send), the root meaning of “apostle” is “one who is sent”? In the preface of the New King James Bible, we are told that the “literal” meaning of μονογενής (monogenēs) is “only begotten.”[3] Is that true? How often do preachers refer to the verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō, to love), contrast it with ϕιλέω (phileō, to love), and deduce that the text is saying something about a special kind of loving, for no other reason than that ἀγαπάω (agapaō) is used? All of this is linguistic nonsense. We might have guessed as much if we were more acquainted with the etymology of English words. Anthony C. Thiselton offers by way of example our word nice, which comes from the Latin nescius, meaning “ignorant.”[4] Our “good-bye” is a contraction for Anglo-Saxon “God be with you.” Now it may be possible to trace out diachronically just how nescius generated “nice”; it is certainly certainly easy to imagine how “God be with you” came to be contracted to “good-bye.” But I know of no one today who in saying such and such a person is “nice” believes that he or she has in some measure labeled that person ignorant because the “root meaning” or “hidden meaning” or “literal meaning” of “nice” is “ignorant.” J. P. Louw provides a fascinating example.[5] In 1 Corinthians 4:1 Paul writes of himself, Cephas, Apollos, and other leaders in these terms: “So then, men ought to regard us as servants (ὑπηρέτας, hypēretas) of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God” (NIV). More than a century ago, R. C. Trench popularized the view that ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) derives from the verb ἐρέσσω (eressō) “to row.”[6] The basic meaning of ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs), then, is “rower.” Trench quite explicitly says a ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) “was originally the rower (from ἐρέσσώ [eressō]).” A. T. Robertson and J. B Hofmann went further and said ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) derives morphologically from ὑπό (hypo) and ἐρέτης (eretēs).[7] Now ἐρέσσω (eressō) means “rower” in Homer (eighth century B.C.!); and Hofmann draws the explicit connection with the morphology, concluding a ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) was basically an “under rower” or “assistant rower” or “subordinate rower.” Trench had not gone so far: he did not detect in ὑπο (hypo) any notion of subordination. Nevertheless Leon Morris concluded that a ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs)was “a servant of a lowly kind”;[8] and William Barclay plunged further and
designated ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) as “a rower on the lower bank of a trireme.”[9] Yet the fact remains that with only one possible exception—and it is merely possible, not certain[10]—ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) is never used for “rower” in classical literature, and it is certainly not used that way in the New Testament. The ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) in the New Testament is a servant, and often there is little if anything to distinguish him from a διάκονος (diakonos). As Louw remarks, to derive the meaning of ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs) from ὑπό (hypo) and ἐρέτης (eretēs) is no more intrinsically realistic than deriving the meaning of “butterfly” from “butter” and “fly,” or the meaning of “pineapple” from “pine” and “apple.”[11] Even those of us who have never been to Hawaii recognize that pineapples are not a special kind of apple that grows on pines. The search for hidden meanings bound up with etymologies becomes even more ludicrous when two words with entirely different meanings share the same etymology.

Carson, D. A.. Exegetical Fallacies (p. 30). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

 

After giving us your ideas about all that, and when you are ready to reach your conclusion, you finish off by starting by say;

I appreciate you sharing that with us.

That's not the way I would go about formulating a Doctrinal position, any more than I would turn to my wife in the car and ask her, "what do you believe about that?"

Not that she wouldn't know more than me about it ("did you thank God for other things He's showed you?", "are you praising His Holy Name", "have you got your heart right and crucified it's affections and lists?", "are you prayed up?", "have you asked God to give you the meaning that He would have for you to understand?", "have you fasted and prayed over it, for number of days?", "when you stand before God are you sure that He has settled you on the other closely related topics surrounding it, to be able to arrive at His conclusion?", "have you resourced enough information from which you could be given the illumination of it?", "you have?, then that means you have all of the related passages, so you can know they have to all agree?", "or are you going to just Google it and/or go what your wife or somebody else wants to think, or that they believe without thinking much?"), especially, now, since she in the Glories of HEAVEN!

Since, we've gone all the way around the barn with this subject already, for the fun of it I went about checking several commentaries and other Bible tools, and I see they all go along doing all manner of exegesis, using every way to go about the science of Hermeneutics, etc., even including taking some noice of the original languages now and then, until they get to the subject of the O.P., when they seemingly just thrown all of that out the window.

What are going to, try to teach it from the Bible, by rightly dividing the word of truth?

There is a line in a movie from a teacher of evolution that went something like, "I don't understand it, I just teach it."

It reminds of the vast majority of all of the End Times messages I've seen, where it is more than commonplace for that Book of books to get shut up, their placing an elbow down on it, and then they look out over the audience in all seriousness and say, "let me tell all about where we are and what all is going to be taking place in the future!!!"

I've even got to hear one say, "when I see my little granddaughter in Heaven, that was stillborn, she'll be a full grown woman".

"I'm sorry about you granddaughter and wasn't that just the greatest message you just brought?"

What are going to do?

In the case of the Bible, mixing it with faith, recognizing it's Authority and its Author, Who taught about, "line upon line, precept upon precept", and "comparing scripture with scripture", is probably a good recommendation, for starters.

Then, you can take or leave the ideas of sinners, like myself, and all other Bible teachers, depending on whether those ideas of theirs are still in harmony with the revealed Word of God.

Like my lasted epiphany, according to me, where I'd say, according to me, that "the meaning of a word used in the Bible is never defined by that same word's antithesis, in any case."

That you can take or leave it, according to me, as only the words of a man.

Like eating the meet of a resource or sermon that we'll refer to as the meet of a fish and say that we're O.K. to just, "eat the fish and leaves the bones".

 

Your post begins by saying, "From the word translated "church", with a period there, that makes a nice looking prepositional phrase, and yet we both can agree that we understand a prepositional phrase will also occasionally have a noun and verb connected to it, to make a complete sentence about what we've got to say.

And, then speaking of person-centered Humanistic Rogerian therapy congruence, the link you shared goes about to determine the etymology of the word church, by beginning with the Old English words cirice and circe.

I understand.

The word 'church', after being translated into English, was the object of your inquiry into that site, to find meanings that it has evolved into, beginning with its meaning given in Old English, then going from there.

 

I go with Historical Baptist's understandings of what the Bible teaches on such words as, "church", and "churches", which are translated from the Greek. "ekklesia".

I have several books and dozens of articles concerning the specifics concerning how God would have us to understand what He intends for the meaning of "ekklesia" to be, as it was used in the Old Testament in Greek, "ekklesia", in pre-New Testament secular usage, as well as in every usage of "ekklesia" in the New Testament.

This is a source listing one sound article regarding the word. "ekklesia".

"Sound" meaning as the Historical Baptist position, with this being a Baptist Forum, after all: Nature of the Church, I. K. Cross

Yet, getting back to ekklesia, as it directly relates to Mitchell's post, where D. A. Carson points out in his book Exegetical Fallacies, where we are encouraged to avoid giving unyielding credence exclusively to what meanings the root word's have exactly, and to not automatically deduce that they determine the meaning of the word that comes them, to the letter, word for word.

Specifically, a word may have its meaning to be slightly more specific and have it's own particular connotation we need to discern, based on its usage at the time and what the word would have meant to those who used it, or heard it, then.

As opposed to the strick combination of its two root words that make up the Greek ekklesia, where the word is a compound of two segments: "ek", a preposition meaning "out of", and a verb, "kaleo", signifying "to call" - together, literally, "to call out", that only give a limited understanding that is insufficient to describe its usage.

The usage of "ekklesia", in Old Testament Greek, secular writings and throughout the New Testament always showed an emphasis on the "together" significance of ""kaleo", for, "a summoned together gathering", and would be what we know as an "assembly, congregation, council", or "convocation".

The usage of "ekklesia" was that of assembly.

The Louw-Nida dictionary has the following entry:

"11.32 ἐκκλησία, ας f: a congregation of Christians, implying interacting membership—‘congregation, church.’ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Κορίνθῳ ‘to the church of God which is in Corinth’ 1 Cor 1.2; ἀσπάζονται ὑμᾶς αἱ ἐκκλησίαι πᾶσαι τοῦ Χριστοῦ ‘all the churches of Christ greet you’ Ro 16.16.

"Though some persons have tried to see in the term ἐκκλησία a more or less literal meaning of ‘called-out ones,’ this type of etymologizing is not warranted either by the meaning of ἐκκλησία in NT times or even by its earlier usage. The term ἐκκλησία was in common usage for several hundred years before the Christian era and was used to refer to an assembly of persons constituted by well- defined membership. In general Greek usage it was normally a socio-political entity based upon citizenship in a city-state (see ἐκκλησία, 11.78) and in this sense is parallel to δῆμος (11.78). For the NT, however, it is important to understand the meaning of ἐκκλησia as ‘an assembly of God’s people.’"

Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. 1996, c1989. Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament : Based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition.) . United Bible societies: New York

This is important because so many people have built their doctrine of the church on the meaning of this one Greek word and thus have a truncated, insufficient understanding of the church. Basically, the New Testament usage for the term was that of an assembly, that of a congregation, but today many posit and endorse an assembly that never assembles, and assume as a fact for the meaning of the word "church", or "ekklesia" that is put forward as a basis of argument, to be the antithesis, or opposite, of what it meant in Bible Times.

So, whereas, we are warned to not ignore a word's usage at the time it was used, in favor of taking its meaning directly from its root words, we must also be cautious not to allow its changes in usage through the years to affect what God intended for it to be expressing to us, all along.

As we just saw, over time, man have turned its meaning Topsy-Turvy, by the New usage they have come up with that would leave the meaning of the word translated "church", of being an "assembly", from "ekklesia", "a summoned together gathering", into now being said to have a new meaning and that the word, "church", should mean the opposite of its original meaning that it has throughout the entire Bible as an "assembly", "ekklesia", "a summoned together gathering".

When has any kind of reversal in the meaning of a word ever happened like that that could be credited to God?

It just don't look right, whatsoever.

An Internet post from JollyBlogger says

"I should also point out that Carson points out that etymologies can be useful, they just have to be used in conjunction with other good hermeneutical principles."

True that.

 

The Church, the Mystical Body, exists on this earth, and is called the Church militant, because its members struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil... The Church triumphant is the Church in heaven... Brother Glen

 

While,

is not the pillar and the ground of the truth, I believe I am safe in going along with what God says actually is "the pillar and the ground of the truth", which are His churches He has Perpetuated through the centuries, safeguarding His truths committed to them, as they have been continually managed and maintained by Another Comforter Jesus sent, Anointing them Most Holy places, where the Shekinah Glory of the Holy Spirit dwells and Supernaturally sustains their existence, since they are said to be, "an habitations of God through the Spirit."

 

!

"Holy water!"

"Spiritual language!"

"Mystical Body!"

Gimme a minute and I'll show you 50 examples of men and women writing and talking about ether one of them!

They're everywhere you look, around every corner, under every rock, so to speak.

They're always right under your nose.

And, even though I'm predestinated to, "be conformed to the image of his Son", I'll not be repeating any of Jesus' Christlike pronunciamentos He said about such things, here, on the BB.

I'm too busy seeing if I can find them in the Book, the way that others swear that they do.

So far. Dunno.

I'll get back with you on that.

 

I appreciate you saying that your posts are excellent and your quoting of Watchman Nee, again, and your opinions on the O.P., are to just be admitted as truth.

That's all you've got.

Apart from:

Was it time to start switching out the opposite meaning to the word church, that was shown in keeping with the O.P. to be being attempted, to now start switching out that antithesis of the word church, for the introduction into the discussion of the opposite meaning of the word body, as it is, by definition, and as it is used in the Bible, with its antithesis, already?

You're wanting to play God, again, already?

What is the rush?

What happened to the O.P., where "the church and churches", has to be switched out, for "one spiritual Body of Christ", midstream?

What IS with all the quick switch artistry going on, between words used and with the definitions of words anyway?

Who does that?

You have to come up with the theory that God means the exact opposite of what He says when He uses words?

When did He start all that?

That's the kind of thing you want us to "rejoice in it"?

To who?

God doesn't have two different wills that are contrary to one another.

That is why teaching a second man-made body that doesn't exist in His Mind is a schism in the body and the members of His body would vote to have its practitioners disciplined from their body, for Doctrinal Heresy, as that body is instructed, being the body of Christ and members in particular.

That is what His one kind of body is told to do, if they have any claim to being the body of Christ, He describes in His word.

25 "That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.
26 "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.

27 "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular."

This body is the one kind of body taught in the Bible, just as their is one kind of hope, one kind of Faith, and one kind of baptism.

I Corinthians 6:17 "But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit", so the addition of the word "body", in the flesh there, would be unnecessary if this verse were read and mixed with faith in context, instead, and any insistence otherwise would be another schism, in any body of Christ that is a body of Christ.

 

When Watchman Nee makes all these statements, he doesn't bother quoting any verses that plainly teach anything close to them and other than trying to say a word means the opposite of what it means, he is just talking straight out of thin air.

Jesus Christ used the word church to mean the opposite of what the word church means?

In order for him to reach the point of alluding to something similar to this mentioned:

... wouldn't it have been smarter for him to have just been more obvious in rewriting the Bible, like you do here to claim:

...where you actually have to add the words, "one spiritual Body of Christ", into 1 Corinthians 12:13 and 1 Corinthians 6:17, and rewrite the Bible to make your point?

That might have been a better look for him, rather than just talking and saying things (like you did in #2, with no Bible at all).

...

Not everyone is predisposed to viewing each instance of the word church, or body, or house, or Temple, or household, or flock, etc., in the Bible that makes reference to a religious state of affairs, as being A.) a local church body of members that assemble, or B). several, or all of the local church bodies that have been organized and assemble for worship, however, those usages of the word church, or body, etc., fit, in every case.

That leaves no need for altering the meanings of those words, to equal what they mean and to mean their antithesis indiscriminately, or inventing something that is said to be Universal and Invisible, to not be outdone by the Catholics, who invented Universal Visible, but Protestants did, purely in an attempt to justify themselves as being apart and distinct from Catholicism.

Proponents of the Universal Invisible theory are simply professing that they originated as religious societies with the Reformation and are practical Protestants.

Then, since Protestants came from Catholicism and Catholicism originated as they detached and split from the original assemblies of baptised believers that were the successors of New Testament Christianity and began changing the organization of what a church had always been known to be, to hierarchies and politically connected hierarchies, at that, the current successors of New Testament Christianity profess their origin to have been from the original church Jesus built and do not sympathize with any unmitigated alterations to its meaning, as it is used throughout the New Testament, that have been changed by Catholics and Protestants.

Our church assembly has no fellowship with Protestant, or organizationally Protestants called 'baptist', who are Universal 'Church' advocates, Visible or Invisible, as their origin.

They deny Jesus has Perpetuated His kind of local church assemblies He originated and organized and promised to be with, "throughout all ages", and would be with them "always", and that the "gates of hell would not prevail against them".

The testimony of those who are organizationally Protestants called 'baptist', who are Universal 'Church' advocates, Visible or Invisible, is that the Lord's local church assemblies had gone out of existence and that by reforming Catholicism, the church organizations of the New Testament could be initiated anew, only this time, changed after fifteen centuries into the invention of a Universal Invisible entity.

That is not the testimony of Historical Baptist.

The Greek, σῶμα, in I Corinthians 12:13 & 12:27, for example is not, "Βασίλειο", or
"οικογένεια", there or anywhere else, and neither is, "ekklesia", or the word church ever translated from, "Βασίλειο", or "οικογένεια".

"Βασίλειο", and "οικογένεια", have entirely opposite meanings to, "σῶμα", and, "ekklesia".

Since, Antonyms are not Synonyms, I can't see the equating of them as having been by the Hand of God.