DID JESUS ESTABLISHED ANY CHURCH?

 

Yes - and no.

 

It depends what you mean by church.

 

The Greek word ekklesia, and the Latin word ecclesia, repeatedly occurs in the Gospel. The English translation is church.

 

But what is mean by church today is something totally different from the original meaning of this word. Church is for us a hierarchical organization with its human head and legal constitution. Thomas Aquinas defines the church as a perfect society, endowed with executive, legislative and judicial power. The church, according to this theological concept, developed since the fourth century, is a state organization whose management obeys the same rules of any other government institution.

 

This is the juridical aspect of the visible (material) church.

 

In the Gospel, however, the word church has nothing to do with this concept. The whole Gospel of Jesus, the Christ, gravitates around the core concept of the "kingdom of God" or "kingdom of heaven" - and this kingdom coincides exactly with what the Gospel mean by church, but the invisible church (within man).

 

The Fifth Gospel of the Apostle Thomas, discovered by Bedouins in Egypt (1945) and translated into many languages, explicitly addresses this kingdom of God, in the world and man, this true church, real, internal, invisible.

 

Jesus explicitly denies that the kingdom of God can be discovered by compliance and obedience of rules and dogmas; that the kingdom of God has a geographic location and we can direct to this or that address saying: "Here is the kingdom of Heaven".

 

After summarizing everything, he ends: "The kingdom of God is within you".

 

The translation "among you", like it was just a social phenomenon, is false; either the Greek text of the first century, as the later Latin text says "is within you", i.e., within the human soul. With this Jesus denies that it is a social organization.

 

The Kingdom of God lies potentially within every human creature, and man must be aware and develop this kingdom.

 

The true church of Jesus has nothing to do with a social or juridical organization.

 

Why then the visible church was established?

 

The visible church was established by men, by theologians, and can coexist with the invisible church, thus as the body is the material aspect of the spiritual soul. But it would be an absurd to say that the soul has head, legs, arms, etc.

 

The soul or the essence of the church is the internal kingdom in each individual; the body or the existence of the church, can be a visible society, as long as this does not look for to be superior than that, but living in perfect harmony as a visible manifestation of the invisible church. In case of conflict between the church body and the soul of the church, we must abandon the body, asserting only the soul.

 

The invisible soul of the kingdom of God can manifest through various visible bodies - provided that there is no identification between the soul and the body, between the internal kingdom and the external organization.

 

Since the majority of humanity is spiritually immature, the metaphysical message of Jesus appears in the form of child pedagogy, as it is the whole theology. This pedagogical interpretation of His cosmic message is a necessary social malady, because the majority of humanity is not and never has been able to understand and assimilate the spirit of the invisible kingdom - but it is better for the poorly evolved spiritually masses to have a pedagogical discipline, than be without it.

 

Already in the first century, Paul of Tarsus wrote to the Christians: "To those among you who are infants in Christ, gave them milk to drink - but to adults who are in Christ, gave them solid food".

 

Twenty centuries were not enough for many of these children to become adults in spirit. The evolution goes with minimum steps in maximum spaces!

 

Unfortunately, many Christian leaders have social, political and financial interests in order to keep Christianity in its infantile stage of blind obedience, because no leader can govern spiritually adult men. The spiritual adulthood is autonomous and self-determining, and does not slavishly obey orders established by needs and passions. If all Christendom was spiritually mature there would be no need for the existence of a visible church, because the church is essentially invisible, the kingdom of God within man. In the direct proportion which grows the “Christocracy”, descends the “clergicracy”. And when the Christocracy has reached 100, the clergicracy will descend to 0.

 

It seems that John, in Revelation, predicted this triumphant Christocracy when he wrote: "There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and God's kingdom will be proclaimed upon the face of the earth".

 

Spiritual leaders can and should be guiders of people, like indicator arrows along the way, but not intermediaries between man and God. But to act as counsellors and guides for others, man must realized within the kingdom of God. Otherwise, he is another "blind guide leading the blinds".

 

Do not simply say and do - it is necessary to be, in spirit and truth, what we recommend to others.