Church Prochronism

The Hermeneutical Argument Against Ecclesia = Church

Using the word church in Scripture is a type of anachronism called a prochronism.

Here is the 2009 Wikipedia definition of Prochronsim. It might be ironic to you that we are using a dictionary that is constantly being updated to modern ideas to define this word.

“A prochronism, on the other hand, occurs when an item appears in a temporal context in which it could not yet be present (the object had not yet been developed, the verbal expression had not been coined, the philosophy had not been formulated, the breed of animal had not been developed, the technology had not been created).

An example might be Western movies’ placing of firearms not introduced until the 1870s, such as the Winchester 1873 rifle or the Colt Single Action Army revolver, into frontier society of antebellum or Civil War years.

While prochronisms such as this may not be noticeable to the uninformed, other prochronisms are frankly comic in their effect (e.g., a tenth-century British peasant earnestly explaining his village as an “anarcho-syndicalist commune” in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or a Beatlesque band called the “Bedbugs” appearing in the American Civil War–era TV comedy F-Troop).”

THE PROBLEM

When did the Christian religion start? I would argue spiritually that it began before time in the thoughts of God. But I am not talking about spiritually. I am asking, physically and historically. Historically from man’s perspective and especially important to this argument, in the perspective of the history of language, Christianity started after Christ came.

Acts 11:26 “And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the multitude and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.”

Church is a word that Christians use to refer to something that is Christian. If I ask a taxi driver to drive me to the nearest church, where is he going to take me? To a building were self proclaimed Christians hold worship services.

The Greek word ecclesia however is a secular word without any spiritual meaning. This word was used long before Christians existed and never was ever used for defining religious buildings or services or groups and specially not Christian ones, since Christians did not exist until Christ.

To use the word church, a Christian coined term which is modern in the sense that ecclesia outdates the sense of it’s meaning, to define a word like ecclesia that has never had any spiritual or religious meaning is a hermeneutical error called an anachronism. This specific type of anachronism is called a prochronism. This is very similar to translating chariots of fire as rocket ships.

Here is another example of a prochronism:

2 Kings 2:11 “And as they still went on and talked, behold, spaceships and airplanes separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a laser beam into heaven.”

In a chat conference while arguing this point I wrote this example and the response was comic laughter. This is because prochronisms are often used in comical performance or movies.

This is more of an obvious prochronism where you can see the error of the translator. The idea that chariots of fire were space ships might be a good idea, but that idea should not go in the documented translation of the text, it should go in the footnote that it is your opinion of what the author, had he understood astronomical science, should have said in that situation. But the truth is, the author did not say that. We must translate what the author said and meant in his time period, not what we think he should have said based on our time period.

Some translations commit more of these prochronisms than others. Translations that do more paraphrasing work often do this and many have come to understood that while paraphrases can be helpful they are also acts of intentional eisogesis. That eisogesis may or may not be wrong but more often than not it tends to be error.

When you use a christian term created by Christians to define a word nonreligious in nature, predating Christianity, you know you have a prochronism. We don’t call witch doctors physicians for the same reason.

The word ecclesia has traditionally been used when talking about The Great Ecclesia of Athens and also predating Christianity you have the Greek Translation of the Old Testament which has Ecclesia being used to represent multitudes of people who often were evil people.

Proverbs 21:16 The one who wanders from the way of wisdom will end up IN THE MULTITUDE of the dead. (in the ecclesia of the dead)

So there are better words more faithful to the intent of the author that can be used to represent the word ecclesia than church. By translating ecclesia as church you are eisogeting everything you believe about modern church into the scripture when the concepts you eisogete into them often do not exist.

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