Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (3 vols.)?

It is the product of joint work between Roman Catholics and Evangelicals in Germany - so fairly main-stream...  Take this article as an example.

ἐκκλησία, ας, ἡ   ekklesia   national assembly; congregation, congregational assembly, church; (the) Church
1. Occurrences in the NT — 2. Meanings — 3. Usage — 4. Ἐκκλησία as a Christian term — a) Paul — b) Acts — c) Deutero-Paulines — d) Matthew — e) Hebrews — f) Elsewhere in the NT
Lit.: C. K. BARRETT, “Paul’s Address to the Ephesian Elders,” FS Dahl 107–21. — K. BERGER, “Volksversammlung und Gemeinde Gottes,” ZTK 73 (1976) 167–207. — W. BIEDER, Ekklesia und Polis im NT und in der alten Kirche (1941). — C. G. BRANDIS, PW V (1905) 2163–99. — L. CERFAUX, The Church in the Theology of St. Paul (1959). — N. A. DAHL, Das Volk Gottes (1941; reprint 1963). — G. DELLING, “Merkmale der Kirche nach dem NT,” NTS 13 (1966/67) 297–316. — J. ERNST, “Von der Ortsgemeinde zur Großkirche—dargestellt an den Kirchenmodellen des Philipper- und Epheserbriefes,” Kirche im Werden (ed. J. Hainz; 1976) 109–42. — H. FRANKEMÖLLE, Jahwebund und Kirche Christi (1974). — J. GNILKA, Der Epheserbrief (HTKNT, 1971) 99–111. — J. HAINZ, Ekklesia (1972), esp. 229–55. — P. HOFFMANN, “Der Petrus-Primat im Mt,” FS Schnackenburg 172–90. — W. G. KÜMMEL, Kirchenbegriff und Geschichtsbewußtsein in der Urgemeinde und bei Jesus (1943). — O. LINTON, RAC IV (1959) 906–21. — O. MICHEL, Das Zeugnis des NT von der Gemeinde (1941). — P. S. MINEAR, Images of the Church in the NT (21975). — H. P. MÜLLER, THAT II, 609–19. — A. OEPKE, “Leib Christi oder Volk Gottes bei Paulus?” TLZ 79 (1954) 363–68. — H. SCHLIER, “Die Kirche nach dem Brief an die Epheser,” Schlier I, 159–86. — K. L. SCHMIDT, TDNT III, 501–36. — R. SCHNACKENBURG, The Church in the NT (1965), esp. 55–117. — W. SCHRAGE, “Ekklesia und Synagoge,” ZTK 60 (1963) 178–202. — E. SCHWEIZER, Church Order in the NT (1961). — idem, Matthäus und seine Gemeinde (1974). — K. STENDAHL, RGG III, 1297–1304. — P. STUHLMACHER, Gerechtigkeit Gottes bei Paulus (1965) 210–17. — A. VÖGTLE, “Messiasbekenntnis und Petrusverheißung,” idem, Das Evangelium und die Evangelien (1971) 137–70. — For further bibliography see TWNT X, 1127–31; DNTT I, 305–7. — K. BERGER, TRE XVIII, 198-218. — M.-A. CHEVALLIER, “L’unité plurielle de l’Église d’après le NT,” RHPR 66 (1986) 3-20. — G. FRIEDRICH, “Die Einheit der Kirche nach dem NT,” The NT Age (FS B. Reicke; 1984) I, 181-200. — J. GNILKA, “Das Kirchenbild im Matthäusevangelium,” FS Dupont 127-43. — W. KLAIBER, Rechtfertigung und Gemeinde. Eine Untersuchung zum paulinische Kirchenverständnis (FRLANT 127, 1982). — G. KÜNZEL, Studien zum Gemeindeverständnis des Matthäusevangeliums (1978). — H. LÖWE, “Bekenntnis, Apostelamt und Kirche im Kolosserbrief,” FS Bornkamm 299-314. — H. MERKLEIN, “Die Ekklesia Gottes. Der Kirchenbegriff bei Paulus und in Jerusalem,” BZ 23 (1979) 48-70. — K. PANTLE-SCHIEBER, “Anmerkungen zur Auseinandersetzung von ἐκκλησία und Judentum im Matthäusevangelium,” ZNW 80 (1989) 145-62. — J. ROLOFF, “Pfeiler und Fundament der Wahrheit. Erwägungen zum Kirchenverständnis der Pastoralbriefe,” Glaube und Eschatologie. (FS W. G. Kümmel; 1985) 229-47. — G. SCHÖLLGEN, “Was wissen Wir über die Sozialstruktur der paulinischen Gemeinden?” NTS 34 (1988) 71-82.
1. The 114 occurrences of ἐκκλησία in the NT are unevenly distributed. There are only 3 occurrences in the Gospels, all in Matthew (16:18; 18:17 bis). The word appears most frequently in Paul’s letters (46 occurrences, 22 of which are in 1 Corinthians), in the deutero-Pauline letters (16 occurrences), and in Acts (23 occurrences). It appears twice in Hebrews. Among the Catholic Epistles, it is found only in 3 John (3 occurrences) and James (once). Of the 20 occurrences in Revelation, 19 are in formalized phrases in the letters to the seven churches (chs. 1–3).

2. The noun ἐκκλησία is derived etymologically from ἐκ and καλέω; accordingly it was used to designate “(the totality of) those who are called out.” However, this original meaning nowhere plays a recognizable role in our material. It is always displaced by terminological shifts which the concept has undergone during a long history. In classical Greek as well as in Hellenistic literature, it became a technical expression for the assembly of the people, consisting of free men entitled to vote (CIG I, 739, no. 1567). This political usage is present also in Acts 19:39, which refers to “the regular assembly” of the inhabitants of Ephesus. In a wider sense the word can be used for any public assembly; thus in Acts 19:32 it is used of an “assembly” “in confusion,” which had come together in the theater at the urging of the silversmiths of Ephesus (cf. also v. 40).
In the overwhelming majority of the NT passages, ἐκκλησία is used as a fixed Christian term and is to be translated with congregation or congregational assembly or c(C)hurch. Distinguishing among passages that use ἐκκλησία with these different meanings is possible only within limits. The distinction between congregation/ church (the body of Christians at a specific place; Germ. Gemeinde) and Church (the supra-congregational association of God’s people or the totality of all Christians; Germ. Kirche) is foreign to the NT. Closely related is the fact that early Christianity did not conceive of ἐκκλησία primarily as an organizational, but rather as a theological entity. The ecclesia universalis is neither a secondary union made up of individual autonomous churches, nor is the local congregation only an organizational sub-unit of the total Church. Rather, both the local assembly of Christians and the trans-local community of believers are equally legitimate forms of the ἐκκλησία created by God.
Because there is no German word which expresses at the same time the universal and the local-particular aspect (indeed, Versammlung, proposed by Schmidt, TWNT III, 505, is unsuitable because it is too imprecise), one does best to be content with Gemeinde for all occurrences which refer to the concrete local ἐκκλησία or speak generically of the local ἐκκλησία. Kirche is best suited for all occurrences which speak abstractly from the concrete local situation of the ἐκκλησία in an all-embracing sense or make theological statements referring to its general nature. (Eng. “church” does embrace both the universal and the local-particular, but capitalization or lack thereof usually, as in the present work, eliminates this useful ambiguity. RSV’s consistent use of lower-case “church” will be modified as necessary in quotations that follow.)

3. In a series of passages which reflect the earliest Christian usage, we see the phrase ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ, “church of God” (1 Cor 1:2; 10:32; 11:22; 15:9; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:13; pl. in 1 Cor 11:16, 22; 1 Thess 2:14; 2 Thess 1:4). Here gen. “of God” is not merely an addendum defining more precisely the preceding term church, but is instead an integral part of a fixed terminological formulation. Indeed, this formulation might have come into existence as the translation of qehal ’ēl, which is attested in apocalyptic Judaism as a term for the eschatological company of God (1QM 4:10; 1QSa 2:4; Stendahl 1299; Stuhlmacher 210f.).
This insight revises the traditional view (L. Rost, TDNT III, 529, n. 90), according to which the Christian term ἐκκλησία is derived from the LXX, which introduced it as the translation of the OT’s qāhāl, “assembly, company of the people of God.” Such a direct adoption from the OT is improbable for several reasons: 1) Qāhāl is translated in the LXX not only with ἐκκλησία, but also with συναγωγή. Indeed, the latter is the more clearly defined and theologically weighty term designating the community of salvation. 2) The LXX renders qehal yhwh with ἐκκλησία (συναγωγή) κυρίου, while the NT prefers ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ. 3) In the NT there is no proof from Scripture associated with ἐκκλησία (perhaps with the exception of Acts 7:38, → 4.b), although such important terms are normally connected with a direct reference to an OT term.
On the other hand, considerations must also be offered against Schrage’s thesis, according to which ἐκκλησία was first taken up as a self-designation in the Hellenistic Jewish circle around Stephen (Acts 6) and then developed further by Paul in a polemical antithesis against the term συναγωγή, which was burdened by Jewish nomism. This view runs aground when it is observed that ἐκκλησία never occurs in Paul’s letters where a tone critical of the law can be detected. Indeed, the term is inserted, with no inconsistency created, in Matt 16:18 within the framework of the Matthean community’s Jewish Christian understanding of the law (→ 4.d). Moreover, Paul in 1 Thess 2:14 includes the early Jewish churches in the designation ἐκκλησίαι τοῦ θεοῦ.
Consequently one may proceed with the assumption that ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ (qehal ’āl) was first a self-designation of the early community coming into existence after Easter. The term was used because it corresponded with the eschatological self-understanding of the Church, which understood itself to be the company elect by God and determined by him to be the center and crystallization-point of the eschatological Israel now being called into existence by him. The Hellenistic Jewish Christians around Stephen, the Gentile Christians at Antioch (Acts 11:26; 13:1), and Paul were able to appropriate the name without difficulty despite the fact that they differed from the people of Jerusalem in their understanding of the law. Indeed, the common consciousness of Jewish and Gentile Christians of being the eschatological community of God proves to be the unifying thread, without which the basic recognition at the Apostolic Council of Gentiles free from the law by Jewish Christianity faithful to the law (Gal 2:6–10) was hardly conceivable.
Ἐκκλησία, wherever it appears by itself as an ecclesiological term, is to be understood as an abbreviation of the original term ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ. That is, the more precise designation with the genitivus auctoris “of God” is to be assumed. (In this sense G vg in 1 Cor 14:4; Phil 3:6 have appropriately added “of God.”)
Occasionally Paul mentions Christ also in connection with ἐκκλησία; thus in Rom 16:16, “the churches of Christ greet you.” The fact that God is in no way replaced by Christ as the founder and initiator of the Church is indicated by 1 Thess 2:14: “For you … became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea” (“in Christ Jesus” refers to “churches of God,” not to “imitators”). The act of God in founding the Church is mediated by Christ. The church in Thessalonica was indebted for its existence, no less than the churches in Judea, to the work of Jesus Christ in the word of the gospel. The same is said in the shorter phrase in Gal 1:22: “the churches in [RSV “of”] Christ in Judea”; “in Christ” is not only a formulaic phrase replacing the adjective “Christian” (so F. Mussner, Galaterbrief [HTKNT] 98, n. 110); such a characterization would be meaningless because Paul knows no ἐκκλησία other than the Christian ἐκκλησία. What is spoken of is, rather, the origin of the Church of God in the Christ-event.

4. a) In Paul’s statements about his activity as persecutor, we apparently come, in tradition-historical perspective, to the earliest usage. He calls himself “a persecutor of the church” (Phil 3:6) and says: “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor 15:9). Here he takes up the self-designation of the early Jerusalem church as “the church of God,” in which, as with the designation “the saints” (2 Cor 9:1, 12), there is a manifestation of that community’s self-understanding as the eschatological community of salvation. The fact that Paul in no way speaks in general of the total Church, but rather thinks in terms of a geographical area, is made probable by Gal 1:22f. and confirmed by the context of 1 Cor 15:9: Paul contrasts himself, as the last apostle called, with the other apostles of Jerusalem. That he as persecutor is “unfit to be called an apostle” is determined by this antithesis: While Peter and the other apostles constituted the church of God in Jerusalem by their witness, he, Paul, sought to destroy this church!
The transference of the name ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ to local groups of the disciples of Jesus outside of Jerusalem was certainly accomplished before Paul (→ 3).
Nevertheless Paul gives a further development to this usage. When he speaks of ἐκκλησία, he normally thinks first of the concrete assembly of those who have been baptized at a specific place. One can scarcely see here a conscious polemic against a centralized understanding of the Church held by the early Jerusalem church (contra Hainz 232–36). On the contrary, what is significant is, in the first place, Paul’s missionary conception: The eschatological people of God came into existence, in his view, not only through the fact that individuals from all peoples in and around Jerusalem, the place of salvation, could assemble, but also through the fact that the resurrected one made him an apostle and commissioned him to bring about “the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” through the power of the gospel entrusted to him (Rom 1:5) and to gather the community of salvation from place to place worldwide. The close connection between “apostle” and “Church” is expressed clearly in the coordination of both concepts in the prescripts to some of his letters (1 Cor 1:1f.; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:1f.). The Church is indebted for its existence not to the apostle’s work; it remains bound together in the salvation event which prevails worldwide through the gospel. Despite the local limitation in its concrete existence, by means of the obedience of faith it is fully the Church of God. It is not as an isolated entity that it is “of God”; it is “of God” in such a way that in it God’s worldwide act of judgment, which leads to the Church’s founding, takes on visible form.
This understanding of the Church finds programmatic expression in 1 Cor 1:1f. There (v. 2) Paul addresses the Corinthian Christians as “the church of God which is at Corinth” (so also in 2 Cor 1:1), i.e., as the church in whose existence the characteristic features of the coming worldwide Church of God appear and which is thereby able to represent this Church in its totality. The “ecumenical perspective” that follows in 1 Cor 2:2 (and is often attributed to a later redactor without sufficient reason) includes “all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours,” i.e., the whole Church as it comes into existence through the work of the apostle.
For the Pauline understanding a great role is played by the local assembly (for worship). It is “church” whenever individuals “assemble as a church (ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ)” (1 Cor 11:18). This usage has only an apparent relationship with the secular-political usage in Hellenistic literature (→ 2). For Paul the ἐκκλησία is constituted not only by the act of assembling together in order to disperse after the conclusion of assembly; it maintains this name also outside of the concrete assembly. Thus 14:23: “If, therefore, the whole church assembles.… ” Assembly for worship is the center and at the same time the criterion for life in the church. Here it is determined whether it really is the church “of God.” Thus the unbrotherly behavior of the rich toward the poor in the Corinthian common meal is nothing less than “despis[ing] the church of God” (11:22). What is despised here is, first, the power of the Lord’s Supper to unite the church, but also what coming together should be for the Church of God.
The instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 are directed to the church’s assembly for worship. Over against the inclination to a pneumatic individualism in Corinth Paul emphasizes the significance of the worship event for the community. While a person who speaks in tongues only “edifies” himself, because what he says is unintelligible, the prophet edifies “the [assembled] church,” because it understands him (vv. 4f.). Glossolalia should be permitted in principle only when care is exercised that it is intelligible for everyone present (vv. 23, 27f.). The most important principle is: Everything should be done for the edification of the church (vv. 5, 26), i.e., it should stand in the service of the act of the Spirit, which the church ruled by Christ wants to have as its living space. Here an important aspect of Paul’s understanding of the church is indicated; this he elaborates, not with the word ἐκκλησία, but with the figure of the body of Christ (12:4–27; Rom 12:4ff.).
In principle, every local assembly of Christians, in whose center is the service of worship, is considered a church. Thus Paul often mentions house churches, including that of the couple Aquila and Prisca—first in Corinth (1 Cor 16:19), then in Rome (? Rom 16:3f.)—and that of Philemon (Phlm 2).
Ecclesiological statements that lead beyond the level of the local assembly are rare in Paul’s letters. But they are not totally absent. Thus, according to Paul, the individual church represents God’s community of salvation, that which by God’s actions is coming into being throughout the world, in that definite ethical norms and patterns of conduct are valid in all individual churches equally. Paul teaches the same “ways in Christ,” i.e., the same elementary moral instructions, “in every church” (1 Cor 4:17). He expects the Corinthians to adopt the rule accepted in the “churches of God,” according to which women come veiled to the service of worship (11:16), and that they, “as in all the churches of the saints,” not be allowed to give public speeches in the assembly of the church (14:33f.). In 1 Cor 10:32 Paul gives the demand for inoffensive behavior in the presence of Jews, Greeks, and “the Church of God.” Because of the collocation here, it is clear that he is speaking not of the local congregation, but of a third comprehensive human group, one which is significant in salvation history. It is the eschatological people of God, the Church, which stands alongside Jews and Greeks. Of special importance is 12:28: “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers.… ” Paul speaks here of the fundamental structure of the Church’s ministries, as it appears in all places in the past and present with individually varying significance (thus prophets and teachers were probably of little lasting significance for the Corinthian Christians). By all this Paul comes close to a fundamental statement about the nature of “the Church”: whatever its historical place may be, certain norms of behavior are valid and certain offices and a holy law are established by God. In all of this the Church’s inner structure as “the body of Christ” (12:27) is realized.
b) In Acts also ἐκκλησία usually designates the concrete local congregation, whether in Jerusalem (5:11; 8:1, 3; 11:22; 12:1, 5; 14:27; 15:4, 22; 18:22), in Antioch (11:26; 13:1; 15:3, 41), or in locations within the Pauline missionary areas (16:5 [Derbe and Lystra]; 20:17 [Ephesus]). In a few of these passages the earliest usage is evident: ἡ ἐκκλησία without a reference to the place as a name for the original Jerusalem church (in which Luke of course avoids the more precise genitival determination τοῦ θεοῦ). Thus in 18:22: (Paul) “went up [to Jerusalem] and greeted the church” (also in 12:1, 5). Repeatedly ἐκκλησία stands as a term for the local congregational assembly: In what is apparently an old Jerusalem local tradition the divine act of judgment on Ananias and Sapphira is described: “And great fear came upon the whole church, and upon all who heard of these things” (5:11). The church appears here to be constituted by sacral law; through the practice of this law it defends its eschatological purity. After returning from their missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas call a congregational assembly in Antioch in order to give an account to the church which sent them (14:27). What we have in 15:3 (“So, being sent on their way by the church …”) is perhaps a concrete act of commissioning by the Antiochian congregational assembly. According to v. 4 (“When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders”) the full congregational assembly in Jerusalem comprises its own governing body, to be distinguished from the apostles and the elders as a governing body leading the Church. The apostolic decree concluded by them (cf. v. 23) is determined by the entire congregational assembly. This could be the sense of the unsettled formulation retained in v. 22: “Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church.… ”
Luke conceives of the individual local churches as constituted and organized according to an arrangement which was derived from Paul. This view is assumed in the comment in Acts 14:23: Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders for them in every church.” The phrase presupposes the pl. use of the word.
But the sg. usage is present in Acts 9:31. Ἐκκλησία designates here the totality of Christians in a specific geographic area and is thus to be translated with Church: “So the Church in all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up; and walking in the fear of the Lord.… ” (The pl. v.l. in the Byzantine Imperial text and the majority of later manuscripts is undoubtedly secondary.)
A special position is held by Acts 20:28: “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the Church of God which he has obtained with his own blood” (RSV mg.). It is the only theological statement by Luke about the nature of the Church. Its essential difficulty is reflected in the uncertain textual tradition: a series of important witnesses (among others P74 A C* D) read “Church of the Lord,” which may involve a secondary attempt to make a clear reference for the rel. clause and to avert a misunderstanding, as if it were speaking of God’s blood rather than Christ’s blood. It is improbable that ἰδίου is understood as a noun (“which he obtained with the blood of his own Son”), since such usage is seen nowhere else in Luke-Acts. Instead, it is likely that the apparently patripassian phrase came into existence when Luke introduced a traditional formula, whose christological reference was not in doubt for him and his readers (H. Conzelmann, Acts [Hermeneia] 175; Barrett 114). In favor of this argument is the fact that this is the only passage in Acts which speaks of the vicarious atoning death of Jesus. The statement’s content is in harmony with Col 1:18, 24: in both passages ecclesiology is based on christology. The Church is the historical realm of salvation created by the death of Jesus. Behind Acts 20:28 is probably a deutero-Pauline ecclesiology.
Acts 7:38 is not easy to explain. In a Moses-Christ typology the function of Moses as mediator at the giving of the law is described: “This is he who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers.… ” It is possible that LXX use of ἐκκλησία = “assembly of the people” (Deut 4:10; 9:10; 18:16) is present here. It is not to be ruled out, however, that the typology here should be extended to the Church, indeed, in the sense that Christ as lawgiver for the Church definitively surpasses the function of Moses for the OT community of salvation.
c) In the deutero-Pauline literature ἐκκλησία is again used as a term for the individual congregation, as in Col 4:15f. (the whole church of Laodicea and the house church of Nympha there); 1 Tim 5:16 (“the church” in the generic sense). Characteristic of these writings is, however, a series of fundamental statements about the nature of the Church. Indeed, Colossians and Ephesians associate christology and ecclesiology most closely, so that every statement about the Church becomes a statement about Christ. The basis for this in tradition history is the Pauline concept of the Church as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27; Rom 12:5), which is extended into ontology and salvation history.
The relationship between Christ and the Church is determined in a twofold way. On the one hand Christ is directly united with the body, i.e., the Church. “Paul,” in his own body, fulfills the remaining afflictions of Christ “for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col 1:24). Thus it should be said that the Church is founded on the salvific deed of Christ at the cross and that its form of life—normatively represented through the apostle—is shaped by Christ’s suffering. On the other hand Christ is the head of the Church: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, [that is,] the Church” (vv. 17f.). Today it is almost undisputed that the phrase “[that is,] the Church” is a gloss by which the author of Colossians interprets the hymn in 1:15–20, which originally concerned the lordship of Christ over the cosmos (E. Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians [1982] 55–57). The author wants to show, as does the author of Ephesians, that the lordship of Christ over the world is presently realized visibly only in the Church insofar as it is oriented in faith to the one who is the “head.”
The Church is thus not only founded on Christ; at the same time it has Christ as the one to whom it stands in relation and as the goal of its growth. The Church is a realm of salvation permeating the cosmos, tangibly initiated by the death of Christ, but nevertheless not static, but growing in a historical development toward the norm established in Christ, its head (Eph 2:20; 3:12ff.; 4:15).
The lordship of Christ over the world and his lordship over the Church are both viewed together and differentiated in Eph 1:22f. God “has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.” Christ is head and lord of the cosmos (Col 2:10) as of the Church, but only the Church is his body; it is permeated by his “fulness” in a special way. Consequently it alone has the capability and the mission to call the world back to Christ’s lordship and thus to obedience to the world’s creator. It realizes this mission through its proclamation. Thus it is “through the Church” that “the manifold wisdom of God” is declared “to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:10).
In an entirely characteristic way, the parenesis concerning the marital relationship of husband and wife, which is part of the traditional scheme of the household code (Col 3:18ff.), becomes in Eph 5:22–33 the occasion for instruction about the relationship between Christ and the Church. Undoubtedly the ecclesiological exposition is not only an exposition serving the marriage parenesis, but is instead the essential purpose of the section. Indeed, here again both aspects—Christ as head and as body of the Church—are closely intertwined. The subordination of wife to husband, which was self-evident in ancient society, serves to illustrate the former: “The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church” (v. 23). As the wife obeys her husband, so the Church maintains constant obedience to Christ (5:24). The second aspect is inferred from Gen 2:24 (Eph 5:30): The couple become “one flesh” according to the will of the creator. Consequently the husband, who gives loving care to his wife, is caring for his own body (v. 28). In the same way Christ acts on behalf of his own body, the Church (v. 29). He “loved the Church and gave himself up for it [RSV “her”]” (v. 25). His loving care for it is realized in the renewal which it has experienced through baptism (v. 26). The meaning of v. 32 (“This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church”) is disputed, but is probably a hermeneutical comment made to justify the interpretation of Gen 2:24 with respect to Christ and the Church. “Mystery” means “the true, hidden meaning of the quotation” (H. Conzelmann, Epheserbrief [NTD 8] ad loc.).
The statement about the nature of the Church in 1 Tim 3:15 is unique in its static view of the Church. Here where it is called “the house [RSV “household”] of God” and “the pillar and bulwark of the truth,” in the background is the image (perhaps dependent on 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 6:16) of a firm house which offers protection and in which one can move and still be preserved from shock and destruction. The image of the house easily flows into that of the household: The Church is the familia dei. Thus an analogy can be drawn between the function of the father of the house and of those who hold office in the congregation: “For if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God’s Church?” (1 Tim 3:5).
d) The saying about the rock in Matt 16:18 raises a multitude of problems. It is formally the explanation of a name, in which is used a play on words, only inadequately reproduced in Greek, with the Aramaic sobriquet of Simon, Kēp̱ā’ (in Greek transliterated as Κηφᾶς and translated as Πέτρος). “And I tell you, you are Peter (Kēp̱ā’), and on this rock (kēp̱ā’; Gk. πέτρα) I will build my Church.” The explanation of the name discloses the significance of Simon for the Church: just as the holy rock is the foundation of the Jerusalem temple, so Peter is the foundation of the holy building of the Church, the eschatological temple that Jesus himself will erect (cf. Mark 14:58 par. Matt 26:61; Rev 21:14).
In accord with contemporary scholarship one may regard it as impossible that this is a saying Jesus uttered before Easter with the intention of founding a special community (so even Schmidt 525f.). Matt 16:17–19 turns out to be a passage with a diverse history of tradition that Matthew has inserted radactionally into the CaesareaPhilippi scene of Mark 8:27–30. Furthermore, attempts to localize Matt 16:18 at another place within the pre-Easter history of Jesus (so O. Cullmann, TDNT VI, 106f.) or to place the logion at the first appearance of the resurrected one before Peter (so Vögtle 170) are ultimately not convincing.
Linguistic indications place the logion unambiguously in the second generation: 1) The statement about the ἐκκλησία as a holy building is a statement about the nature of the Church which corresponds both structurally and in its metaphorical content (cf. Eph 2:20: the apostles and prophets as the foundation of the Church as building; Rev 21:14; 1 Tim 3:15) to deutero-Pauline statements about the nature of the Church (→ 4.c). 2) The designation of the Church as the ἐκκλησία of Jesus hardly corresponds to earlier usage (→ 4 .a on Rom 16:16; Gal 1:22), but fits well with Matthew’s conception of the Church: It is the Church of Jesus because it is composed of the disciples of Jesus, constituted and held together by the authority of Jesus the teacher (Matt 28:18–20). The special meaning of Peter as the foundation of the Church probably rests for Matthew on the idea of Peter as the guarantor and interpreter of the teaching of Jesus, that which was fundamental to the Church.
Matt 18:17, unlike 16:18, uses ἐκκλησία for the assembled local church.
e) Heb 2:12 takes up Ps 21:23 LXX and gives it a christological interpretation: “in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” Ἐκκλησία is obviously understood as the heavenly assembly, in the midst of which Christ proclaims God’s praise. This heavenly congregation is thus fundamentally an assembly for worship. Heb 12:23, on the other hand, speaks of the earthly congregation, but of course in such a way that unmistakable reference is made to the heavenly assembly for worship. The heavenly congregation is “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” and a “festal gathering.” Its counterpart stands at the distance separating heaven and earth. It is “the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven.” It is indeed still on earth, but it is more than a mere transitory likeness of the heavenly congregation, for its members have their destiny there on the basis of their relationship to Christ.
f) The occurrences in the other NT writings are of relatively limited significance. Jas 5:14 speaks in the generic sense of “the elders of the church.” 3 John 6, 9, and 10 reveal a picture of a concrete local congregation with relatively well-developed legal-institutional structures. In the phrase “puts them out of the church” (v. 10) there is probably a reference to an official legal act. Altogether Revelation has 20 references to the local congregation.
J. Roloff


Balz, H. R., & Schneider, G. (1990-). Vol. 1: Exegetical dictionary of the New Testament (410–415). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.