My wife and I were out Saturday in door-to-door evangelism.  We talked to several people including a long time to a couple of Mormon missionaries.  At one of the doors, we rang the bell and stood waiting in the cold outside.  We heard someone talking, so we waited longer.  Then I said, “Someone is talking on the phone.”  “The phone.”

As we walked to the next door, I thought about the ease at using that language. “Someone is on the phone.”  “He’s on the phone.”  Is there only one phone in that household?  Doubtful.

I remember when there was one phone in the house, so if you were on “the phone,” you really were on “the phone.”  There was one.  When I grew up, it was one phone, attached to the wall with a short stretchable cord.  Then came the option of getting a longer cord.  If someone called, that was the only phone call happening in the house.

In our house right now, we’ve got three phones for four people.  Despite the number of phones, if someone calls, no one would question the statement, “He’s on the phone.”  Everyone knows “the phone” doesn’t mean “one phone,” as in one phone in number.  It is a singular noun, but it does not mean a single phone.  You know that.  Everyone knows that today.

So, when the words “the church” are found in the New Testament, why would people think that it must mean “one church”?  They shouldn’t.

Particular or Generic Singular Noun

Perhaps you remember from English class, and it’s the same in the New Testament Greek language, that one aspect of the noun is number.  Number.  Nouns are either singular or plural in number.  Singular is one and plural is more than one.  Under the category of number is singular and plural.  However, let’s go further.

Under the category of singular noun is one of two possibilities, depending upon the context.  A singular noun is either (1) particular (specific), or (2) generic.  It cannot be any other but one of those two:  particular or generic (specific).  If you hear another possible usage of the singular noun, someone invented it or made it up.

When I said to my wife, “Someone is on the phone,” what usage was that?  I could not tell which phone he had.  It was a man on “the phone.”  That was not a particular phone, so it was not a particular usage.  It was the generic use of the singular noun.  It didn’t matter what particular phone he was using.

Grammarly says:

Generic nouns are nouns that refer to all members of a class or group. They are often used when making generalizations or talking about universal truths.

In 1938 Fred Long Farley wrote, The Art of Language, and he wrote an example of the use of the generic singular noun:

The generic use of the singular is seen in . . . “the dog is man’s best friend.”

One English grammar calls these “count” (particular, specific) or “non-count” (generic) singular nouns.  In 2000 Kabakciev wrote in Aspect in English:

The pattern of the article used with count and non-count nouns should be complemented with the pattern of use of generic and non-generic nouns. . . . Generic notions in English are expressed, for example, by subjects like the cat, a cat, and cats in sentences like . . . . a.  The cat drinks milk  b.  The cat is an animal.

As you are read this, I think you understand the generic use of the singular noun.  You understand “the phone” as I used it to my wife.   Arthur Wakefield Slaten counted up the generic nouns and the ones with the definite article “the” in his book, Qualitative Nouns in the Pauline Epistles, and he wrote:

The 929 generic nouns were rendered in English nouns preceded by the definite article in 222 cases.

In other words, generic nouns occur all the time in the Pauline epistles.  Expect it.

Te Ekklesia, The Church

Ekklesia, the Greek noun translated “church,” is found at least 117 times in the New Testament.  Then you’ve got te ekklesia, “the church.”  Those two words in the Greek New Testament occur together at least 70 times, closer to 80.  You have a lot of opportunities to decide whether “the church,” this singular noun, is particular or generic.  Related to number, it can be only one of those two.

Here are some examples of “the church” used as particular or specific, and particularly in the Pauline epistles:

Romans 16:1, “I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea.”  Romans 16:5, “Likewise greet the church that is in their house.” 1 Corinthians 1:2, “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus.”  1 Corinthians 11:18, “For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it.”  1 Corinthians 11:22, “What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.”  1 Corinthians 14:5, “I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.”  1 Corinthians 14:12, “Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.”  Colossians 4:16, “And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.”  3 John 1:9, “I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.”  Revelation 2:1, “Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.”

Read those verses.  There are many other examples than those above.  I gave obvious cases of particular or specific uses of “the church.”  What about the generic uses of “the church” in the Pauline epistles?

1 Corinthians 12:28, “And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.”  1 Corinthians 14:19, “Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” 1 Corinthians 14:35, “And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” Ephesians 3:21, “Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”  Ephesians 5:23-24, “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.  Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.”  Colossians 1:18, “And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.”  1 Timothy 3:5, “(For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)”

There are more than these examples of the generic use of “the church.”

Generic Nouns

While speaking about qualitative nouns, in his The Basics of the New Testament Syntax, Daniel B. Wallace addresses generic nouns:

It is akin to a generic noun in that it focuses on the kind.  Further, like a generic, it emphasizes class traits.  Yet, unlike generic nouns, a qualitative noun often has in view one individual rather than the class as a whole.

If you want to read an in depth discussion of the generic noun, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a long article that says very much about it, more than I would want to quote here.  If you don’t get what I’m writing and need more, there’s a lot there.

Sometimes even when Paul writes to a particular church, he’s not writing about a particular church, but about the doctrine of the church, so he uses a generic singular noun.  This is very common in scripture, as noted before, but it is also seen in The Constitution of the United States.  Think of the very beginning in the preamble, “the common defense” and “the general welfare.”  In Article One is “the state legislature,” speaking of no particular state.

Ephesians 5:23 is a great place to look at the generic use of “the church,” even as quoted above in that list of uses. “The husband” is a generic singular noun, speaking of no particular husband, but “the husband” as a class.  “The wife” is also a generic singular noun.  Then “the church” and “the body” are used the same way.  If “the church” and “the body” were to be anything other than a generic singular noun, then one would expect “the husband” and “the wife” to be something else too, which they aren’t.

There is only a generic or a particular use for the singular noun.  There is no “universal” or “Platonic” or “mystical” usage of the singular noun.  A “mystical” use, or anything like it, allows to treat scripture like a Gumby doll.  Ekklesia, which means, “assembly,” can’t be a single, universal, mystical, something-or-other.  It is by nature only local.

When the New Testament says, “the church,” it is either a particular, specific church or it is representative of a class, the generic usage of “the church,” and context will determine which one.  When talking about the church as an institution, the New Testament uses “the church.”  That’s the way it should be.  It is not saying there is one church in the entire world, just like there is not one wife and one husband in the entire world.  There also is no mystical wife, no mystical husband, and no mystical church.

You probably still use the words, “the phone.”  And when you do, you too are using a generic singular noun, just like when the New Testament often times uses the words, “the church.”  You don’t mean a “universal, mystical phone” and the New Testament doesn’t mean a “universal, mystical, church.”