In a post from April 2019, found here, I commented the following:
The development seen in the first few hundred years of the Church was a Holy Spirit guided development, just as the writing of the New Testament was. It is that Spirit-guided, but imperfect, Church that recognized the Spirit-guided writings, collected them, treasured them, and passed them on to future generations. This makes more sense than either Landmark theology or some type of testimonium theology.
When people look at the current worship of the Orthodox Church, they rightly comment that no such vestments and no such Liturgy were found at the beginnings of the Church. And, they would be right. They were not so found. What was found early on were the underpinnings that formed what became today’s Church.
I do not have time to go into all the underpinnings because there are massive studies on those, particularly given the historically later claims of the Reformers and the Anabaptists. Let me simply comment that the Early Church appears to have followed the worship style of the synagogue with the Lord’s Supper at the end. That outline is reflected in Acts 2:42, “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” This is the outline that is followed to this day. One can see that outline being fleshed out in both The Didache and the apologies of St. Justin the Martyr.
That is all the ink that I will spend on the underpinnings, please do some research to see them. What I did wish to address was a rather naïve idea that is often found in some of the Reformers and in the Anabaptists. That naïve idea is the belief that the full intention of the Lord was to keep worship as it was celebrated in the Upper Room by a very small crowd of people as they were in semi-hiding. Sadly for them, there is no evidence that such was the Lord’s wish.
Rather, as one looks at passages such as many in the Book of the Revelation, and some of the Eucharistic allusions in the Epistle to the Hebrews, not to mention Saint Luke’s retrospective organization of the early Jerusalem worship into the Eucharistic pattern, one sees an organization that is already developing in order to meet the needs of the growing Christianity. Just like Moses had to develop captains to help him in the administration of the People of Israel, so do the Twelve Apostles quickly develop deacons to help in that same administration. Notice that neither the captains nor the deacons were ordered of God, yet God fully supported them. Spirit-guided human wisdom is quite adequate for many tasks without necessitating a direct intervention by God.
In fact, it could be argued that just like the Old Testament people developed worship and organization, so did the New Testament people. Were we to hold the Old Testament people to the same argumentation that is used by the Radical Reformers, then they should never have met in synagogues. Synagogues are not found as approved by God in any text. Rather, they developed during The Exile and continued even after the restoration of Temple worship. Yet, Jesus was raised as a synagogue-attender. Jesus preached in the synagogues. Jesus never even hinted that the development of synagogues was improper. In passing, the Temple which Jesus visited periodically was the Second Temple, a temple rebuilt by an essentially pagan ruler appointed by the Roman Emperor. Yet, never did Jesus declare this Temple to not be really a temple.
What I am arguing is that just like Jewish worship developed from the early Tent of Meeting to the Temple(s) to the synagogues, so did Christian worship. Jewish priestly vestments did not exist until several hundred years after Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-Joseph. One can read of the development of Old Testament worship. One may well argue that it was guided by God, and so it was. Various parts of that guidance can be seen in the various books of the Hebrew Bible. But, not all the development was so clearly guided, remember what I commented about the synagogues. The Midrash of the Jews will comment on the appropriate dress for the leader of the Passover, but no such command is found in the Hebrew Bible. Yet, there is evidence in the New Testament that Jesus wore just such a vestment when he celebrated Passover with his disciples.
Note that the soldiers who were gambling over Jesus’ robes meant to split them into pieces with each soldier receiving a piece of the robe. Yet, Scripture records that the robes (vestment) which Jesus wore were of such a fine cloth and cut that they decided to gamble for them whole. That discrepancy has indeed been noted by various Protestant preachers who have developed this rather apocryphal tale of Mary (and other Jewish mothers) supposedly weaving this special robe-without-seam for their children, etc.
But, there is no Midrash evidence for that interpretation while there is evidence for the special Passover garment and Jesus is arrested immediately after the Passover before he can change. For instance a Jewish informational website, Chabad.org states, ” It is customary that the person leading the Seder wear a plain white garment, or kittel. … the white garment serves to remind us of the white garments that the Kohen Gadol would wear when he entered the Holy of Holies while serving in the Bet haMikdash. On this night, every Jew who leads the Seder service is considered to be like the Kohen Gadol performing the Divine service. “
To this day, every priest who serves a Divine Liturgy puts on the basic white garment of Passover. That garment is not described in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. Nevertheless, that garment is indeed described in the Midrash, alluded to in the betting over the robe of Jesus, and maintained in the Church to this day. In the East, it is interesting to note that if one is not celebrating a Divine Liturgy (or a Pre-Sanctified Liturgy) one does not put on the white garment. Shades of Passover!
Why is it so difficult to believe that as the Christian Church grew that the same God guided the development of Christian worship, particularly when early traces of that development can be seen in various epistles? The type of meeting arrangements that may have been necessary under persecution is not necessarily the arrangements adequate for a Church no longer under persecution. Even during the “pre-legitimate” centuries of the Church, meeting places began to be built. Once large parts of the population were Christian, it is no surprise that buildings large enough to encompass the growing population were built. Nor is it surprising that those buildings were decorated even as the Jewish synagogues were decorated, in a more sumptuous fashion.
As I commented, there is a certain naïveté in the approach of the Radical Reformation, and even of the Calvinist Reformation. Just like they were forced to develop the doctrine of the testimonium to explain why the Bible was never really approved by the Church (despite all the history) so were they forced to develop the doctrine of the regulative principle to impose upon history a mandate that is never found in either the Bible or in early history. I wonder if those of the Radical Reformation would also be offended by our giant modern theater churches with their sound systems and semi-professional worship groups? Apparently, that is allowed development. Oh well!
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