You will search in vain for church and saints [ἐκκλησία and ἁγίων] in the gospels, save for Matthew 16:18, Matthew 18:17 and Matthew 27:52 (and what "saints" meant in the latter isn't exactly the same idea which we find after the gospels, but let's not open that can of worms right now).
The gospels dubiously tell us Jesus predicted his future death and resurrection on the third day, but the future church and its many members? not so much, which only underscores the dubiosity of the third-day rising predictions. (For fun, I resurrect the word "dubiosity", which had fallen into disuse already by the time of Samuel Johnson).
You would think that a guy who knew he was going to rise from the dead and found a church would have said much more about it. After all, predicting the future church is small potatoes compared with predicting your own crucifixion and resurrection on the third day. Jesus' imagination was clearly focused on something less pedestrian than the now interminable church age and the salvation of its billions of goyim.
And you would also think the church would have made him talk much more about it.
The gospels dubiously tell us Jesus predicted his future death and resurrection on the third day, but the future church and its many members? not so much, which only underscores the dubiosity of the third-day rising predictions. (For fun, I resurrect the word "dubiosity", which had fallen into disuse already by the time of Samuel Johnson).
You would think that a guy who knew he was going to rise from the dead and found a church would have said much more about it. After all, predicting the future church is small potatoes compared with predicting your own crucifixion and resurrection on the third day. Jesus' imagination was clearly focused on something less pedestrian than the now interminable church age and the salvation of its billions of goyim.
And you would also think the church would have made him talk much more about it.
Talk of the "church" only in a little corner of Matthew is probably "early catholicism" at work, or at least something like it. It looks suspiciously similar to the insertion of the third-day-rising predictions themselves. It too is propaganda, but on a much smaller scale.
This tells us something very important.
The absence of "church" from the gospel tradition, even from John, testifies to, if not the sway of a smoldering conception of the eschatological future imagined by Jesus, at least to the enduring cognitive dissonance the memory of that still produced. The problem still being wrestled with in the gospels is the death of Jesus and the failure of the end of the world to materialize, not something else. This dissonance probably had everything to do with the production of the written gospels in the first place. The emphasis on, and the similarity of, the passion narratives in the gospels both make that plain.
The absence of "church" as a category, however, points to an earlier stage in this process of self-reflection than we find in the epistles. We are not yet at the later self-referential stage of the church found in Paul and elsewhere in the New Testament after the gospels where "church" and "saints" are most definitely used as routine categories. This means the material in the gospels, if not the gospels themselves, dates much earlier than is generally appreciated. The absence of "church" in the gospels is thus similar in significance for their dating to the gospels' failure to mention the destruction of the Jewish temple. Together they point to a date for the gospels before 70, perhaps well before.
It is difficult to believe that when the rest of the New Testament after the Fourth Gospel is loaded with uses of "church" and "saints" that the gospels could possibly come from that era.
The hypothesis of an intrusion of "early catholicism" has not been without its problems, however, for example for the composition of Luke-Acts. It is almost inconceivable that the repeated use of "church" in Acts, for example, comes from the very same hand as gave us the Gospel of Luke, or at least that Acts comes from the same time period of composition as the gospel, a point which perhaps speaks against the two-volume history hypothesis of Luke-Acts. But it is more inconceivable that on the original conception in New Testament scholarship of "early catholicism" at work all over the place in Luke's Gospel that it could be an exponent of that without once mentioning the church. To make matters worse for the theory as originally conceived, the third gospel's unique witness to some of Jesus' most pointed eschatological assertions hardly fits the relatively more mundane future ecclesiastical setting from which it is supposed to have sprung.
What this means is that as a phenomenon "early catholicism" remains a useful hypothetical category whose content has to be rethought and scaled back. The gospels' solution to the eschatological dilemma which occasioned their composition in the first place supplies that content. Early catholicism is thus at the same time a lot earlier than originally conceived and dedicated to a different object.
It seems best to view the gospels as earlier than 70, at least in spirit, and as attempts to rewrite the narrative of the failed eschatological message of Jesus.
This tells us something very important.
The absence of "church" from the gospel tradition, even from John, testifies to, if not the sway of a smoldering conception of the eschatological future imagined by Jesus, at least to the enduring cognitive dissonance the memory of that still produced. The problem still being wrestled with in the gospels is the death of Jesus and the failure of the end of the world to materialize, not something else. This dissonance probably had everything to do with the production of the written gospels in the first place. The emphasis on, and the similarity of, the passion narratives in the gospels both make that plain.
The absence of "church" as a category, however, points to an earlier stage in this process of self-reflection than we find in the epistles. We are not yet at the later self-referential stage of the church found in Paul and elsewhere in the New Testament after the gospels where "church" and "saints" are most definitely used as routine categories. This means the material in the gospels, if not the gospels themselves, dates much earlier than is generally appreciated. The absence of "church" in the gospels is thus similar in significance for their dating to the gospels' failure to mention the destruction of the Jewish temple. Together they point to a date for the gospels before 70, perhaps well before.
It is difficult to believe that when the rest of the New Testament after the Fourth Gospel is loaded with uses of "church" and "saints" that the gospels could possibly come from that era.
The hypothesis of an intrusion of "early catholicism" has not been without its problems, however, for example for the composition of Luke-Acts. It is almost inconceivable that the repeated use of "church" in Acts, for example, comes from the very same hand as gave us the Gospel of Luke, or at least that Acts comes from the same time period of composition as the gospel, a point which perhaps speaks against the two-volume history hypothesis of Luke-Acts. But it is more inconceivable that on the original conception in New Testament scholarship of "early catholicism" at work all over the place in Luke's Gospel that it could be an exponent of that without once mentioning the church. To make matters worse for the theory as originally conceived, the third gospel's unique witness to some of Jesus' most pointed eschatological assertions hardly fits the relatively more mundane future ecclesiastical setting from which it is supposed to have sprung.
What this means is that as a phenomenon "early catholicism" remains a useful hypothetical category whose content has to be rethought and scaled back. The gospels' solution to the eschatological dilemma which occasioned their composition in the first place supplies that content. Early catholicism is thus at the same time a lot earlier than originally conceived and dedicated to a different object.
It seems best to view the gospels as earlier than 70, at least in spirit, and as attempts to rewrite the narrative of the failed eschatological message of Jesus.
