Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Number of quotes: 12
Book ID: 79 Page: 4
Section: 2C
For Jesus there is no ‘formal principle’ of theology, {5} and no institutional public position either to confine or to support him. He acts with complete freedom as the person he is, and thus, in this comprehensive sense, ‘with authority’.
Quote ID: 2146
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 9/10
Section: 2C
Of his own faith, however, Jesus never speaks.{43} Hidden behind the veil of his own silence he remains in the end the one man who already stands on the far side of the old nature, {44} not merely proclaiming the coming of the kingdom and the holiness of a renewed humanity, but also exhibiting and incarnating them. He himself is the great ‘sign’ of the coming and irruption of the kingdom of God.
Quote ID: 2147
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 47
Section: 3A1
However imperiously Paul the apostle may demand a hearing for Christ, however ingenuously he may put himself forward as a pattern for imitation, yet he cannot simply give orders. He does not himself create the norm, which is then to be obeyed without further ado, but instead the congregation of those who possess the Spirit must follow him in freedom; and it is this freedom which he has in mind when he addresses them. They must themselves recognize in his instructions the ‘standard of teaching’ to which they are committed, {141} and to which Paul in a sense merely ‘recalls’ them, {142} in order that they may affirm it for themselves, and freely and joyfully make it their own once more. {143}
Quote ID: 2148
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 53
Section: 2C
Paul also differs from the later historians and dogmatic theologians of his Church in the fact that he attaches little importance to a neat definition of specifically apostolic authority in relation to the authorities of other ‘evangelists’ and spiritual teachers. He constantly brackets himself with Barnabas, {191} Apollos, {192} and various other members of his congregation {193} in a way which is highly significant......
The emphasis on the special character and unique importance of the original apostolic office and testimony for its own sake is completely post-Pauline.
Quote ID: 2149
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 58
Section: 3A1
On this basis Paul develops the idea of the Spirit as the organising principle of the Christian congregation. There is no need for any fixed system with its rules and regulations and prohibitions......
It is love which is the true organising and unifying force within the Church, and which creates in her a paradoxical form of order diametrically opposed to all natural systems of organisation.
.....
Christians have in very fact died to the old ‘human’ nature, and thus also to the old ideas of status and social order. Among them there can be neither respect nor distinction of ‘person’ {24} since there was none in Christ’s acceptance of them.{25}
Quote ID: 2150
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 63/64
Section: 3A1
In Paul’s thought, therefore, the congregation is not just another constitutional organisation with grades and classes, but a unitary, living cosmos of free, spiritual gifts, which serve and complement one another. Those who mediate these gifts may never lord it over one another......
Christians have the Spirit of Christ. Because of this, spontaneity, obedience and love are in fact presupposed and required of the Church as, so to speak, the ‘normal’ thing. When the Church ceases to be spiritual, that is to say, when within her that which is normal for the world is exalted into a law, then in Paul’s eyes she is dead.
.....
On the other hand, however, Paul mentions helpers, controllers and administrators, whose activity he includes among the ‘spiritual gifts’; and he is plainly concerned that these people should not be despised, and that nothing should be done to make their work more difficult.
Quote ID: 2151
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 65
Section: 2C
Nevertheless, it is true that among the gifts of the Spirit which Paul enumerates in Corinthians--though not first in the list--the gift of ‘government’, the art of the pilot or ‘helmsman’{60} as it was called in the political imagery of the ancient world {61}, is also mentioned. But even this does not imply ‘government’ in the strict sense of the word, but much more the gift of ‘providing assistance.’{62} For an office of governor on the lines of the presbyterate or of the later monarchical episcopate there was no room at Corinth either in practice or in principle.{63}
Quote ID: 2152
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 69
Section: 2D1
The gift of the Spirit which is the basis of each ministry within the congregation cannot be ‘handed on’, but in every instance is directly bestowed by the Spirit himself.
Quote ID: 2153
Time Periods: 1234567
Book ID: 79 Page: 76
Section: 2C
The only authority known to Paul as instituted by God in advance, and therefore to some extent independent of the congregation, is that of the apostle. Everything else in a matter of ‘gifts’, and has validity only as a function of the life of the Spirit which has been awakened in the congregation. The community cannot generate this life from within herself, it is given to her; but there is no need for her to accept its manifestations uncritically. She incorporates them, and recognises them as genuine operations of her spirit as occasion requires. Such recognition may lead to the taking over of permanent ministries or functions by those who possess the gifts; but it establishes no automatic personal authority superior to that of ordinary members nor any subordination of one Christian to another.
Quote ID: 2154
Time Periods: 1234567
Book ID: 79 Page: 129
Section: 2C
That the founding of the Church on Peter is unthinkable in the mouth of Jesus it is impossible to doubt. {18}
Quote ID: 2155
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 79 Page: 160
Section: 4A
For no more than the Church did ancient philosophy know of a communication of teaching without the idea of a community within which this could take place, or at least a personal contact between the earliest figure and his successors. Exactly as in the later lists of bishops these philosophical diadochoi {60} are, when occasion requires, numbered by their ‘generations’ from the founder of the school,{61} and the term diadoche no longer signifies (as paradosis does) the content of the teaching, but instead the link created by the process of handing on and receiving, and so the philosophical school itself Greek word. There is an analogous development in the Church, when the idea of diadoche or successio (the Latin rendering) is used later to denote both the sequence and the actual lists of bishops.
Quote ID: 2156
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 79 Page: 294
Section: 2C
This book has been concerned only with the foundations of the doctrine of office as these were laid in the Early Church. The central difficulty, which we have encountered at every turn, has been that of determining the right relationship between office organised on a legal basis and free spiritual authority. The two are not originally identical, and yet they have to be brought into a proper relationship if the office of the clergy is to retain its religious meaning and remain an office of the Church in the full sense of the word.
Quote ID: 2157
Time Periods: 234567
End of quotes