Excommunication

eks-ko-mū-ni-kā ́shun: Exclusion from church fellowship as a means of personal discipline, or church purification, or both. Its germs have been found in (1) The Mosaic “ban” or “curse” (חרם, ḥērem, “devoted”), given over entirely to God’s use or to destruction (Leviticus 27:29); (2) The “cutting off,” usually by death, stoning of certain offenders, breakers of the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14) and others (Leviticus 17:4; Exodus 30:22-38); (3) The exclusion of the leprous from the camp (Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 12:14). At the restoration (Ezra 10:7, 10:8), the penalty of disobedience to Ezra’s reforming movements was that “all his substance should be forfeited (ḥērem), and himself separated from the assembly of the captivity.” Nehemiah’s similar dealing with the husbands of heathen women helped to fix the principle. The New Testament finds a well-developed synagogal system of excommunication, in two, possibly three, varieties or stages. נדּוּי, niddūy, for the first offense, forbade the bath, the razor, the convivial table, and restricted social intercourse and the frequenting of the temple. It lasted thirty, sixty, or ninety days. If the offender still remained obstinate, the “curse,” ḥērem, was formally pronounced upon him by a council of ten, and he was shut out from the intellectual, religious and social life of the community, completely severed from the congregation. שׁמּתא, shammāthā', supposed by some to be a third and final stage, is probably a general term applied to both niddūy and ḥērem̌. We meet the system in John 9:22: “If any man should confess him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue” (ἀποσυναγωγός, aposunagōgós); John 12:42: “did not confess ... lest they should be put out of the synagogue”; and John 16:2: “put you out of the synagogue.” In Luke 6:22 Christ may refer to the three stages: “separate you from their company (ἀφορίσωσιν, aphorísōsin), and reproach you (ὀνειδίσωσιν, oneidísōsin = ḥērem, “malediction”), and cast out your name as evil (ἐκβάλωσιν, ekbálōsin).”

It is doubtful whether an express prescription of excommunication is found in our Lord’s words (Matthew 18:15-19). The offense and the penalty also seem purely personal: “And if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican,” out of the pale of association and converse. Yet the next verse might imply that the church also is to act: “Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” etc. But this latter, like Matthew 16:19, seems to refer to the general enunciations of principles and policies rather than to specific ecclesiastical enactments. On the whole, Jesus seems here to be laying down the principle of dignified personal avoidance of the obstinate offender, rather than prescribing ecclesiastical action. Still, personal avoidance may logically correspond in proper cases to excommunication by the church. 2 Thessalonians 3:14: “Note that man, that ye have no company with him”; Titus 3:10: “A factious man ... avoid” (American Revised Version margin); 2 John 1:10: “Receive him not into your house,” etc., all inculcate discreet and faithful avoidance but not necessarily excommunication, though that might come to be the logical result. Paul’s “anathemas” are not to be understood as excommunications, since the first is for an offense no ecclesiastical tribunal could well investigate: 1 Corinthians 16:22, “If any man loveth not the Lord, let him be anathema”; the second touches Paul’s deep relationship to his Lord: Romans 9:3, “I myself ... anathema from Christ”; while the third would subject the apostle or an angel to ecclesiastical censure: Galatians 1:8, 1:9, “Though we, or an angel ... let him be anathema.”

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Author: International Std. Bible Encyclopedia

Keywords: Excommunication

Source: James Orr (editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 5 volume set.

Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.