Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
In Matthew 18 I see "ekklesia" and "ekklesias" both translated "church" because of presumed context, and 2 Corinthians 11:8 "ekklesias" translated as plural, "churches", because of context. But the context in Matthew 18 is not a given; it could be either singular or plural. It is not important, except if you want to use Matthew 18 as your "proof text" to dismiss paradigm two.
And then, when you DO have multiple meetings in one city, like college meetings and prayer meetings and home meetings, and Meeting Hall One and Meeting Hall Two, you call them "meetings". That way you don't violate your own "one church, one city" paradigm.
What it involves, as I see it, is making a word mean one thing when it is helpful to your paradigm, and making it mean another when the first meaning is inconvenient. I. e., playing games with words. Now, I probably do the same thing, I confess: but I don't found a religious sect on my word games.
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This is why I continue to make the point that the LC model is not really about having one "church" per city. It's about having one organized entity with one administration per city.
"Church" can be interpreted in many ways, from a world-wide group that never meets (universal church) to a home group with flexible leadership (house church). It's a benign word. It speaks of the believers as a group.
Obviously, there is a manifestation of church which is more organized. Christianity in general calls these "local" churches. But the LC believes this organized version of the church must comprise the entire city.
The problem is that they give no way for this to be accomplished practically without one leadership group being empowered to condemn all rivals. To LCers, somehow everyone else is supposed to just recognize these leaders and fall in line, or at least cooperate for the so-called greater good. But again they are asking everyone in the city to arbitrarily trust that these leaders are what they say they are. This is cockeyed and unreasonable.
They just expect to be able to come into a city, plop themselves down as "the church" and everyone else is supposed to figure out that all are supposed to organize themselves around the leaders of this little group. If they can't figure that out, then they are condemned at best as "unclear" and at worst as "divisive opposers."
Obviously, this model was not truly designed to organize an entire city as one church. It was designed for a fringe group to convince itself that it was right and everyone else was wrong.