Review: The Untold Story of the New Testament Church
By Mike Morell |
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The Untold Story of the New Testament Church by Frank Viola
The past year has been a Jesus kind of year for me; in my reading, I’ve been spending a lot of time with the second person of the Trinity in his first-century Palestine context. I’ve had companions along the way like NT Wright, Steve Chalke’s Lost Message of Jesus and Brian McLaren’s Secret Message of Jesus; Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis and even Jack Miles’ Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God. Delving into the story of the Son of Man and his life, deeds, and teachings on earth has been a literary adventure of immense spiritual value. It has also awakened in me a curiosity that brings me full-circle to my evangelical roots: What happens next in the story of the early church? In particular, “what about Paul?”
 The question of who “the apostle to the Gentiles” is and what to do with him has been raised repeatedly in the last two years or so by friendly (and not-so-friendly) critics of those of us who are reimagining ways to be the church in a postmodern, post-Christendom context. Some say we are ignoring his doctrines, leveling the very “foundations” of our faith. It is said that we are jettisoning a man whose letters to churches and church planters makes up a bulk of our sacred writings in favor of a watered down “narrative” theology based on the life and ministry of Jesus.
I personally have no interest in pitting Jesus against Paul, though occasionally my readings of the Gospels and Epistles have brought up seemingly sharp contrasts in speaking styles and content—lilies of the field in the synoptics versus cosmic courtroom dramas in Romans, that sort of thing. But what if there was a narrative approach to Paul and the other first century church planters, enabling us to see the rest of the New Testament as a cohesive story?
After reading Frank Viola’s The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, I see a chronological retelling of the first century story as a real possibility. Previously unexamined facets of the earliest church come to light as the peculiar genius of Jesus and his earliest apprentices shine forth in a new way.
Please don’t misunderstand: This is not a tome of revisionist history, casting (say) Paul as a contemporary “spiritual master” or human rights crusader. Viola simply identifies a problem in our approach to first century theology and ecclesiology: If we read the New Testament “as is” in our bibles from Matthew to Revelation, the vast majority of it won’t make sense as a story because it is out of sequence. Rather than arranging the writings either in the order they were written or a narrative-chronological sequence, our canon (Paul’s letters at least) were arranged in order of longest to shortest in the second century. Because of the odd sequence, it is difficult for us to understand the authorial intent of many of these letters. It’s also not too feasible to understand the perspective of the people who received them. We are largely ignorant of the socio-cultural and political environments behind the texts. Instead, we learn context-less chapters and verses plugged into our systematic theology of choice, wrenching living letters from their historical, chronological context. I’ve found the outline of the apostolic journeys, the people and personalities, and the larger cultural events in the first-century world to be most illuminating. Many passages of scripture that are opaque and that I’m prone to “spiritualize” come to have a “plain meaning” (with fresh relevance) once seen in context.
The material in Untold Story isn’t arcane knowledge, but it might as well be for many of us. For instance, everyone knows about Jesus and “the twelve,” but did you know that Paul had at least six “disciples” that he apprenticed to carry on his work of establishing church communities? Holy DaVinci Code, Batman, it’s true! See here…
Paul, Gauis, Titus and Timothy take the upper country and make their way by land to Ephesus in Asia Minor. When they come to Ephesus, they meet three brothers whom Paul has sent for: Sopater (of Berea), Aristarchus, and Secundus (both of Thesselonica). Paul will train these six men in Ephesus for the work of planting churches. Their mission is to expand the community that God has purposed from the beginning so that His nature will be expressed throughout the earth. These men will also serve as delegates from their respective churches when delivering the relief fund to the church in Jerusalem.
All six men have experienced the life of the church for at least three years, and they are going to be trained to be apostolic workers under the tutelage of Paul. These men are:
· Titus from Antioch
· Timothy from Listra
· Gauis from Derbe
· Sopater from Berea
· Aristarchus from Thesselonica
· Secundus from Thesselonica
(This is from pages 113 and 114 in the book, and you can see it in Acts 19:22; 20:4; 21:29; 1 Corinthians 4:17; and 16:10, 20 in Holy Writ.)
How does he do it? Well, as best as I can tell, Viola pours through dozens of different New Testament chronologies and Pauline biographies to weave his narrative ecclesiology of the early church. All of this information has existed in disparate pieces available to scholars of various stripes—both evangelical and mainline—for decades (and some of it centuries), but to my knowledge this is one of the first times it’s brought together under one rather concise (clocking in at under 200 pages) cover.
Because of its brevity, sometimes I feel like it reads too sparsely; I would like for Viola to opine a little about Paul’s contemplative, mystical dimension or to expand a bit on Paul’s egalitarian treatment of women or nonhierarchical church structures (to be fair, he does address these matters at length in some of this other works). While he includes many of the “large stroke” details (including social-historical vignettes about governments, social practices, and other faiths), it seems clear to me that Viola intends this to be an outline and jumping-off point for the reader’s discovery of New Testament saga…not a final destination.
All in all, I think Untold Story is an enriching read for anyone who wants a more robust view of the rest of the story in Century One. It is a worthy contribution to the emerging conversation about the church’s engagement with scripture and the stories behind it, helping us discover resources for our own forays into authentic missional community today.
 Mike Morrell is a freelance journalist and editor who maintains Sites Unseen, an alt.Christian web directory with over 4500 of “the best Jesus-infused sites you never knew about.” Mike has been married for five months now to the love of his life, Jasmin. They make their home in a house church community in Atlanta, though in August they’ll be embarking on the next phase of their journey: a new intentional community expression in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Mike would like to be your Myspace friend.
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