Is faith supposed to judge politics?

[ken_sylvania]

There was a serviceable Greek word commonly used for religious, inward focused gathering but Jesus deliberately chose the word used for public policy producing political assemblies.

What account are you referring to?

[barnhart]

There was a serviceable Greek word commonly used for religious, inward focused gathering but Jesus deliberately chose the word used for public policy producing political assemblies.

What account are you referring to?

I don't understand the question. Jesus chose ecclesia, a word with distinct political overtones, instead the Greek word for religious gatherings.

[JohnH]

There was a serviceable Greek word commonly used for religious, inward focused gathering but Jesus deliberately chose the word used for public policy producing political assemblies.

What account are you referring to?

I don't understand the question. Jesus chose ecclesia, a word with distinct political overtones, instead the Greek word for religious gatherings.

I didn’t know Jesus spoke Greek to his disciples, but I’ve learned a lot of new things here on MN.

[ken_sylvania]

There was a serviceable Greek word commonly used for religious, inward focused gathering but Jesus deliberately chose the word used for public policy producing political assemblies.

What account are you referring to?

I don't understand the question. Jesus chose ecclesia, a word with distinct political overtones, instead the Greek word for religious gatherings.

I'm not understanding why Jesus would have used a Greek word to describe religious gatherings, considering most of his conversations were likely conducted in the Aramaic or Hebrew language. (I believe consensus is that he normally would have used Aramaic, but he spoke Hebrew to Saul). Sure, he could have used a Greek word, just like some folks seem to like to insert a Greek word in their English language discussions occasionally, but think it's quite a stretch to say that his failure to use that Greek word means much of anything at all.

[ken_sylvania]

There was a serviceable Greek word commonly used for religious, inward focused gathering but Jesus deliberately chose the word used for public policy producing political assemblies.

I take it you are a firm believer in the verbal inspiration of the Bible? Or at the very least, that all dialogue by Jesus is recorded verbatim?

[barnhart]

There was a serviceable Greek word commonly used for religious, inward focused gathering but Jesus deliberately chose the word used for public policy producing political assemblies.

I take it you are a firm believer in the verbal inspiration of the Bible? Or at the very least, that all dialogue by Jesus is recorded verbatim?

Not really, but I trust the disciples and gospel writers.

[Bootstrap]

There was a serviceable Greek word commonly used for religious, inward focused gathering but Jesus deliberately chose the word used for public policy producing political assemblies.

What account are you referring to?

I don't understand the question. Jesus chose ecclesia, a word with distinct political overtones, instead the Greek word for religious gatherings.

Actually, the word Jesus used can mean either a public civic assembly (as the Greeks used it) or the assembly of Israel before God (as the Septuagint used it). You actually see both uses in Acts:

Acts 7:38 calls Israel “the ekklesia in the wilderness.”
Acts 5:11 says, “Great fear came upon the whole ekklesia,” referring to the new community of believers in Jerusalem.
Acts 19:39 uses ekklesia for a town meeting in Ephesus, showing its ongoing civic sense.
Acts 11:22 mentions “the ekklesia in Jerusalem,” already applying the term to a local body of believers.
Acts 20:28 speaks of “the ekklesia of God, which he obtained with his own blood,” extending the word to the whole redeemed people of God.

So in Acts, ekklesia is used to describe Israel’s sacred assembly, the civic assembly of a city, and the new Christian community.

When Jesus says in Matthew 16:18, “On this rock I will build my ekklesia,” I think this includes both meanings: (1) The biblical assembly of God’s people (qāhāl YHWH → ekklesia in the LXX), (2) The public civic gathering where citizens met to deliberate.

The other word you mention is synagōgē. In the Gospels and Acts, synagōgē consistently means a synagogue:

“He went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues” (Matt 4:23).
“Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues” (Acts 15:21).

Jesus did not say "on this rock, I will build my synagogue". He said "on this rock, I will build my ekklesia" - a word that means both God’s covenant assembly in Scripture and the public civic assembly in Greek life, making His people both the sacred community of God and a visible, public body under His kingship.

[Bootstrap]

I'm not understanding why Jesus would have used a Greek word to describe religious gatherings, considering most of his conversations were likely conducted in the Aramaic or Hebrew language. (I believe consensus is that he normally would have used Aramaic, but he spoke Hebrew to Saul). Sure, he could have used a Greek word, just like some folks seem to like to insert a Greek word in their English language discussions occasionally, but think it's quite a stretch to say that his failure to use that Greek word means much of anything at all.

We have only the written Greek. We can speculate about what he might have said in Aramaic. Jesus probably spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, but the earliest texts we have are in Greek. How does that affect the way you would approach interpreting passages like this?

Here's how I see it: Even if we speculate about what he might have said in Aramaic, we don’t have a lot of possible alternatives that would change the meaning here. The standard Aramaic words for “assembly” are עֵדְתָּא (ʿedta) or כְּנִישְׁתָּא (kenishta), which line up closely with the Hebrew קָהָל (qāhāl) and עֵדָה (ʿēdāh). These are the same words that the Septuagint translators usually rendered as ἐκκλησία (ekklesia) or συναγωγή (synagōgē). In the Syriac New Testament (the Peshitta), the word for ekklesia is also consistently ܥܕܬܐ (ʿedta), showing that early Semitic-speaking Christians understood it the same way.

What matters for us is that the Gospels chose to preserve His teaching in Greek, and the word they consistently give us is ekklesia. That word carries both the biblical sense of Israel’s assembly before God and the public civic sense of an authoritative gathering. The Greek wording we have is not an accident. It reflects the way the early church understood and transmitted his words.

[Jazman]

No, it doesn't. They turned him for holding a political view they disagreed with. He has every right to speak out about that.

It sounds like he did more than just "speak out about" it... Why is he taking a dispute between himself and his church to a national media outlet?

[Praxis+Theodicy]

Our witness isn’t to take over the government or hitch ourselves to political parties. It’s to live as the people of God under Christ’s reign. Our worldview is biblical, not politically partisan.

I usually try to say that Christians should never be partisan, but we are always called to be political. Since the Kingdom is a reality for us, all political parties are rival allegiances to that Kingdom, so we can never be partisan.

But I also have to emphasize that ideologies are also toxic (maybe more so) to a Christian walk. Ideologies are not political parties, so they can seem like they are okay. And sometimes they can be held very loosely and be okay... but for the most part, they offer a tempting all-consuming way of viewing the world that rivals our allegiance to the Kingdom of God in our very hearts.

A Christian who is not political has failed to have a Kingdom witness.
A Christian who is partisan has given up his Kingdom allegiance.
A Christian who preaches an ideology has let his heart stray away from his King.