Ecclesiasticism

Ecclesiasticism is religion shaped by the institutions, traditions, and parties that surround it rather than by the heart of God's command. It surfaces wherever forms of godliness outpace their substance, wherever rules handed down by elders crowd out the commandment of God, wherever a religious establishment uses its standing to honor itself and to oppose the very work it claims to guard. Across the Hebrew prophets, the gospels, the Pauline letters, and the wisdom of Sirach, this is a recurring problem: the outward apparatus of religion turning against its inward life.

The commandment of God and the tradition of men

The clearest framing comes when Jesus answers the Pharisees and scribes who challenge his disciples for eating with common, unwashed hands. He quotes Isaiah back at them: "Isaiah prophesied well of you⁺ hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, But their heart is far from me. But in vain they worship me, Teaching [as their] doctrines the precepts of men" (Mr 7:6-7). Then he names the substitution directly: "You⁺ leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men" (Mr 7:8). The same charge, sharpened: "Full well do you⁺ reject the commandment of God, that you⁺ might keep your⁺ tradition" (Mr 7:9). The illustration is Corban — a vow-formula used to redirect support owed to father and mother — "making void the word of God by your⁺ tradition, which you⁺ have delivered: and many such like things you⁺ do" (Mr 7:13).

The "many other things" Mark catalogues — "washings of cups, and pots, and bronze vessels, and beds" (Mr 7:4) — are the visible scaffolding of an inherited religious culture, the reason "the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands diligently, don't eat, holding the tradition of the elders" (Mr 7:3). Jesus pushes the question past the scaffolding into the human heart: "there is nothing from outside the man, that going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man" (Mr 7:15). What proceeds is "evil thoughts ... whoring, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, wickednesses, deceit, sexual depravity, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness" (Mr 7:21-22).

Isaiah had already drawn the same line centuries earlier: "this people draw near [to me], and with their mouth and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men which has been taught [to them]" (Is 29:13). Paul warns Titus against "Jewish fables, and commandments of men who turn away from the truth" (Ti 1:14), and Peter calls his readers to remember they were "redeemed from your⁺ useless manner of life handed down from your⁺ fathers" (1Pe 1:18). Paul, looking back on his pre-Christian zeal, names the same dynamic in himself: "I advanced in the Jews' religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers" (Ga 1:14). The Colossians are warned, "Take heed lest there will be anyone who makes spoil of you⁺ through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Cl 2:8). The author of the Epistle to Diognetus presses the contrast against pagan religion as well: "Nor was this instruction of theirs found by any speculation or concern of curious men; nor do they maintain an ordinance of men, as some" (Gr 5:3).

Tradition itself is not condemned wholesale. Sirach commends listening to handed-down wisdom: "Do not despise what you hear among the gray-headed Which they have heard from their fathers. Because from this you will receive understanding To return an answer in the time you need it" (Sir 8:9). The fault is not handing things down but elevating what was handed down above what God commanded.

Ceremonialism and the insufficiency of forms

When religion is reduced to its observances, the prophets and apostles speak with one voice: the forms cannot do what God asks. Samuel tells Saul, "Does Yahweh have as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in accepting [the Speech of] Yahweh? Look, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams" (1Sa 15:22). Hosea compresses it: "I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings" (Ho 6:6). Micah pulls the demand inward: "what does Yahweh require of you, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Mi 6:8). Yahweh through Isaiah refuses the assemblies themselves when the heart is wrong: "Bring no more vain oblations; incense is disgusting to me; new moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies--I can't endure evil and the solemn meeting" (Is 1:13). David in penitence acknowledges the same: "you do not delight in sacrifice; or else I would give it: You have no pleasure in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: A broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Ps 51:16-17). Ecclesiastes, blunt in proverb form: "Keep your foot when you go to the house of God; for to draw near to hear is better than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they don't even know how to do evil" (Ec 5:1). Mark's scribe agrees with Jesus: "to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love his fellow man as himself, is much more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices" (Mr 12:33).

The Pauline reading carries the same logic into the new covenant. The "carnal ordinances" of food, drink, and washings were "imposed until a time of reformation" (He 9:10). "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of God" (1Co 7:19). "Food will not commend us to God: neither, if we don't eat, are we the worse; nor, if we eat, are we the better" (1Co 8:8). "The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Ro 14:17). Paul rebukes the Galatians for going back: "how do you⁺ turn back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, to which you⁺ desire to serve as slaves over again? You⁺ observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you⁺, lest by any means I have bestowed labor on you⁺ for nothing" (Ga 4:9-11). The same warning to the Colossians: "If you⁺ died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you⁺ subject yourselves to ordinances" (Cl 2:20). His positive note: "For freedom Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and don't be entangled again in a yoke of slavery" (Ga 5:1).

Legalism and the Sabbath conflicts

A particular form of ecclesiasticism is legalism — the use of the law's letter against its purpose. The Pharisees challenge Jesus' disciples for plucking grain on the Sabbath: "Look, why do they do on the Sabbath day that which is not lawful?" (Mr 2:24). They put the same charge to Jesus directly: "Why do you⁺ do that which is not lawful on the Sabbath day?" (Lu 6:2). When Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler is "moved with indignation" and tells the crowd, "There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the day of the Sabbath" (Lu 13:14). The Jews tell the man Jesus has just cured, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed" (Jn 5:10). Paul's diagnosis of the same pattern in his countrymen: "they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Ro 10:2). Jesus himself answers the Sabbath challenge by appealing to a deeper consistency in their own practice: "If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, that the law of Moses may not be broken; are you⁺ angry with me, because I made a man every bit whole on the Sabbath?" (Jn 7:23).

Hypocrisy: the distance between profession and practice

Ecclesiasticism cultivates a distinctive hypocrisy — the religious performer whose mouth says one thing and whose heart and conduct say another. Ezekiel describes a crowd that comes to the prophet "like the coming of a people, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but don't do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their gain" (Eze 33:31). Isaiah hears Israel "called by the name of Israel ... who swear by the name of Yahweh, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness" (Is 48:1). The psalmist describes Israel under judgment: "they remembered that God was their rock, And the Most High God their redeemer. But they flattered him with their mouth, And lied to him with their tongue" (Ps 78:35-36). Proverbs draws the picture: "Fervent lips and a wicked heart Are [like] an earthen vessel overlaid with silver dross" (Pr 26:23). John's letter answers it: "let us not love in word, neither with the tongue; but in deed and truth" (1Jn 3:18). And Jesus puts the question that exposes it: "why call⁺ me, Lord, Lord, and not do the things which I say?" (Lu 6:46). Titus describes the same kind of professor: "They profess that they know God; but by their works they deny him, being disgusting, and disobedient, and to every good work disapproved" (Ti 1:16). Paul warns Timothy of those "holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power: from these also turn away" (2Ti 3:5), and of teachers in "the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron" (1Ti 4:2).

Jesus calls this leaven by name. "Take heed to yourselves [and stay away] from the leaven which is the hypocrisy of the Pharisees" (Lu 12:1). To the same hypocrites: "you⁺ know how to interpret the face of the earth and the heaven; but how is it that you⁺ don't know how to interpret this time?" (Lu 12:56). When the synagogue ruler protests Sabbath healing: "You⁺ hypocrites, does not each of you⁺ on the Sabbath loose his ox or his donkey from the stall, and lead him away to watering?" (Lu 13:15). And the saying that turns the charge of hypocrisy back on the would-be corrector: "How can you say to your brother, Brother, let me cast out the mote that is in your eye, when you yourself don't look at the beam that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of your own eye" (Lu 6:42). James gives the working definition: "If any man thinks himself to be religious, while he doesn't bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man's religion is useless" (Jas 1:26).

The wisdom of Sirach lives in this territory of seeing through outward show. "Do not be a hypocrite in the sight of men. And take heed to [the utterances of] your lips" (Sir 1:29). "Do not praise man for his form; And do not be disgusted by man for his appearance" (Sir 11:2). The flatterer is a stock figure: "While he needs you, he will be with you; And he will flatter you, and laugh with you, and make you promises. As long as he profits, he will deceive you" (Sir 13:6-7). "Before your eyes his mouth will speak sweetly, And he will marvel at your words; But afterward he will alter his mouth" (Sir 27:23). "Like a bird that is caught in a cage, so is the heart of the proud" (Sir 11:30). "When a sieve is shaken the refuse remains, So [it is with] the filth of a man in his reasoning" (Sir 27:4). The proverbial summary: "as he thinks in his soul, so he is: Eat and drink, he says to you; But his heart is not with you" (Pr 23:7), and "When he speaks fair, don't believe him; For there are seven disgusting things in his heart" (Pr 26:25).

Sanctimony and outward judgment

Closely tied to hypocrisy is the posture of self-conscious holiness held over against others. Isaiah names it: those "who say, Stand by yourself, don't come near to me, for I am holier than you. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burns all the day" (Is 65:5). Jeremiah hears self-acquittal in the same key: "you said, I am innocent ... Look, I will enter into judgment with you, because you say, I haven't sinned" (Je 2:35). Isaiah pictures a religious busyness over which the heart is unchanged: "they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways: as a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the ordinance of their God, they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God" (Is 58:2) — drawing near as a kind of performance.

Outward judging is its companion. Jesus answers it crisply: "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (Jn 7:24). Yahweh's word to Samuel about Eliab is the foundational rebuke: "Don't look on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him: for [it is] not [a matter of] what man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks on the heart" (1Sa 16:7). Stature impressed Israel in choosing Saul ("from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people," 1Sa 9:2) and in admiring Absalom ("Now in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as good-looking as Absalom: from the sole of his foot even to the top of his head there was no blemish in him," 2Sa 14:25). Paul warns the Corinthians about boasters "who glory in appearance, and not in heart" (2Co 5:12), and tells them, "You⁺ look at the things that are before your⁺ face" (2Co 10:7). James pictures ecclesiasticism in microcosm: "if there comes into your⁺ synagogue a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, and there comes in also a poor man in vile clothing; and you⁺ have regard to him who wears the fine clothing, and say, You sit here in a good place; and you⁺ say to the poor man, You stand, or sit there under my footstool; don't you⁺ then make distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?" (Jas 2:2-4). Mark's fig tree, leaves but no fruit, is the same diagnosis in image: Jesus came to it, "if perhaps he might find anything on it: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for it wasn't the season of figs" (Mr 11:13).

The professional class: scribes, parties, and arrogance

Scribes appear across the Hebrew Bible as a professional class — Zadok and Ahimelech were priests, "Seraiah was scribe" (2Sa 8:17); Shebnah is "the scribe" in Hezekiah's court (2Ki 18:18); the king's scribes are dispatched in Esther 3:12; Ezra is "a ready scribe in the law of Moses" (Ezr 7:6); the people summon Ezra "the scribe" to bring "the Book of the Law of Moses" (Ne 8:1); 1 Maccabees describes scribal cohorts under Judas (1Ma 5:42) and an assembly under Alcimus (1Ma 7:12). Jeremiah, however, can already see the office turning corrupt: "How do you⁺ say, We are wise, and the law of Yahweh is with us? But, look, the false pen of the scribes has wrought falsely" (Je 8:8). Sirach's own scribe-figure is double-edged: at his best "the wisdom of the scribe increases wisdom" (Sir 38:24), and ancestral leaders are remembered as "Wise in speech in their scribal office, And speakers of wise sayings in their tradition" (Sir 44:4).

By the time of the gospels, the scribes appear most often as Jesus' opponents. They reason against him with the Pharisees: "Who is this that speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" (Lu 5:21). Jesus warns plainly: "Beware of the scribes, who desire to walk in long robes, and love salutations in the marketplaces, and chief seats in the synagogues, and chief places at feasts" (Lu 20:46) — and again, "Beware of the scribes, who desire to walk in long robes, and [to have] salutations in the marketplaces" (Mr 12:38). The same craving for status appears in his woe to the Pharisees: "Woe to you⁺ Pharisees! For you⁺ love the chief seats in the synagogues, and the salutations in the marketplaces" (Lu 11:43). Paul sets the scribe alongside the wise and the disputer: "Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1Co 1:20).

The Jewish parties of the gospel period appear in the same frame. The Pharisees and lawyers "rejected for themselves the counsel of God, not being baptized of him" (Lu 7:30). The Pharisee in the temple stands as the type of religious self-confidence: "Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican" (Lu 18:10). And the Pharisees ally with the Herodians against Jesus — "the Pharisees went out, and right away with the Herodians gave counsel against him, how they might destroy him" (Mr 3:6); they later send "certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, that they might catch him in talk" (Mr 12:13).

A salt that has lost its savor

Set against this whole pattern is the image Jesus gives his disciples at the close of one of the rebukes gathered under this head. "For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good: but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you⁺ season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace one with another" (Mr 9:49-50). Religion that has stiffened into ecclesiasticism is precisely salt that has lost its savor — its forms are intact, its institution stands, but the seasoning power is gone.

What religion should be

The same passages that catalogue ecclesiasticism also hold the affirmative pole — what religion looks like when it is not hollowed out. Deuteronomy's question of what Yahweh requires: "to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (De 10:12). Ecclesiastes' summary: "fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is [applicable to] all man" (Ec 12:13). James' definition: "Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world" (Jas 1:27). Paul: "Love works no ill to his fellow man: love therefore is the fulfillment of the law" (Ro 13:10). Sincerity is its mark — Joshua: "fear Yahweh, and serve him in sincerity and in truth" (Jos 24:14); Paul: "the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and sincerity of God ... we behaved ourselves in the world" (2Co 1:12); "we are not as the many, corrupting the word of God: but as of sincerity ... we speak in Christ" (2Co 2:17); "that you⁺ may be sincere and void of offense to the day of Christ" (Php 1:10); Timothy taught to show "in your doctrine [showing] uncorruptness, gravity" (Ti 2:7). The keeping feast Paul commends is "not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1Co 5:8). And the basic mark: "He who says, I know him, and doesn't keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1Jn 2:4).

The pious examples scattered through the rows show the alternative in living form — Enoch who "walked with God" (Ge 5:24); Noah, "a righteous man, [and] perfect in his generations: Noah walked with God" (Ge 6:9); Job, "perfect and upright, and one who feared God, and turned away from evil" (Job 1:1); Jabez calling on God (1Ch 4:10); Hezekiah, who "wrought that which was good and right and faithful before Yahweh his God" (2Ch 31:20); Daniel praying three times a day with windows open toward Jerusalem when prayer had been outlawed (Da 6:10); Nathaniel, "an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile" (Jn 1:47); the unfeigned faith of Lois and Eunice in Timothy's household (2Ti 1:5); and Jesus' own self-description: "he who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone; for I always do the things that are pleasing to him" (Jn 8:29).

Reproach upon the cause of truth

Religion turned into ecclesiasticism harms the name it claims to honor. Nathan's word to David: "by this deed you have shown utter contempt for Yahweh, the son also who is born to you will surely die" (2Sa 12:14). Nehemiah confronts the leaders who oppress the poor: "Shouldn't you⁺ walk in the fear of our God, because of the reproach of the nations our enemies?" (Ne 5:9). Ezekiel hears the nations turn the exile against Yahweh's name: "These are the people of Yahweh, and have gone forth out of his land" (Eze 36:20). Paul puts the same charge to a Jewish hearer: "You who glory in the law, through your transgression of the law do you dishonor God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you⁺" (Ro 2:23-24), having already warned, "you therefore who teach another, don't you teach yourself? You who preach a man should not steal, do you steal?" (Ro 2:21). And Peter: "many will follow their sexual depravity; by reason of whom the way of the truth will be evil spoken of" (2Pe 2:2).

Romans' opening of chapter 2 collects the inner logic of all of this: "Therefore you are without excuse, O man, whoever you are that judge: for in what you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge participate in the same things" (Ro 2:1). Ecclesiasticism's standing dishonor is that the institution which claims to teach the way of God ends by participating in the very wrongs it indicts — and so the name of God is blasphemed for its sake.

Superstition

A small thread of the rows speaks to the cousin of ecclesiasticism — superstition, religion fastened to an external object or sign without truth. Jeremiah: "Don't learn the way of the nations, and don't be dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them" (Je 10:2). The Aramean kings comfort themselves with a regional deity: "Their god is a god of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we: but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we will be stronger than they" (1Ki 20:23). The Judahite refugees in Egypt rationalize their idolatry by appeal to chronology: "since we left off burning incense to the queen of heaven, and pouring out drink-offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine" (Je 44:18). Even residence in the holy city can shade into a superstitious assumption of holiness: "he who is left in Zion, and he who remains in Jerusalem, will be called holy" (Is 4:3).

These threads converge on one summary: "Where the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Ro 14:17), the institutional, ceremonial, and traditional apparatus around it has its proper, supporting place. Ecclesiasticism is what happens when the apparatus is given the place of the kingdom itself.