The Rest of the Old Old Story

The song Amazing Grace was written by John Newton, an ex-slaver who repented. It’s easy to think that the amazing part of grace is that God forgave him for his horrible past. This isn’t true, however. What do you call it when a judge lets a first-time criminal off with probation? It’s called mercy. The defendant throws himself on the “mercy” of the court, not the grace of the court.

Grace is different from mercy, and it’s important that we know that. Grace is that “amazing” influence from God that breaks the power of sin. In Romans 7 we read about ourselves and our struggles to do what is right. There is Romans 7 and there is grace. They are two opposite things. The Law produces Romans 7. Grace overthrows Romans 7.

The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. ~Tit. 2:11-12

Sin will not have power over you because you are not under law but under grace. ~Rom. 6:14

This is grace, but there’s something just as amazing about grace as what it produces and that’s how easily it’s accessed. We miss it. We struggle and look for strength within. We strive with temptation. All of it is looking in the wrong direction.

The mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. ~Rom. 8:6

If you are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Think on things above, not on things of the earth, because you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ~Col. 3:1-3

Though our outward man is perishing, yet our inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works in us a far greater and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at things which are seen, but at things which are unseen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are unseen are eternal. ~2 Cor. 4:16-18

We need only to turn our minds–to keep them set on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. But how often do we remember this? Instead, we strive as though we trust in ourselves. It is one thing to strive to get your mind on things above, but we have to know where our strength comes from. We have to be striving to get to the source of our power, not striving to obtain power from a place that has no power: ourselves.

We are far too prone to establishing a new law. We have a New Testament law rather than an Old Testament law. Let  me tell you that if the Old Testament Law, which was specifically designed for a fleshly people that do not have the Spirit, was too hard to keep, the New Testament commandments, which were designed for a spiritual people empowered by grace, will be even harder to keep.

Let our striving be towards God, not toward some strength we’re trying to obtain from ourselves. Let us remember that our job is set our mind on the things of the Spirit and on things eternal, not to keep a new law. If you are a disciple of Christ, and if you have the Spirit of God, then setting your mind on the things of the Spirit will lead you to live the life God wants from you. Nothing else will.

If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. ~Gal. 5:18

As many as are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. ~Rom. 8:14

I changed the theme on this blog. Let me know if you like it or not by clicking the comment link above. (It gives the number of comments, but it’s a link.)

Okay, I borrowed someone’s word, but since I’m going to give them a rousing advertisement, I think it will be okay. You can find The Rebelution at http://www.therebelution.com (don’t forget the “the” if you intend to memorize that for later).

A couple of twins, sons of Greg Harris, the noted home school leader of a couple decades ago, spawned The Rebelution. They call it a rebellion against low expectations for teens. They started a blog, it caught fire, and they ended up being called on by an Alabama State Supreme Court justice to come work as interns there at the tender age of 16, completely unqualified except for their experience as skilled debaters (and thus researchers). It was a great success, and they followed by working or campaigns for Alabama Supreme Court justices. (I guess those aren’t appointed the way US Supreme Court justices are.)

The ladies of our house are using the book Do Hard Things, written by these remarkable young men, for devotions at breakfast. I’ve only heard the first chapter, but I have read several of the Harris’ youths blogs and web pages, and I unhesitatingly recommend anything they do. If you don’t have the book, you should run not walk to your nearest bookstore and get it.

We have 70 or 80 useful years on this earth nowadays. That’s a lot, but it’s not a lot. It’s a lot to do things with, but it’s not so much that we ought to waste those years. It’s not just teens who should be rebelling against low expectations. I’m 47, and I have no intentions of settling down and earning enough money to retire on. My life’s worth more than that to me than that. There’s still plenty of time to change the world–or at least a few people around me.

The Scriptures say, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared beforehand for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). We’re not just created for good works. We’re created for good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. There are things lodged in your heart, that neither you nor anyone else can make go away. You can let them sit there and die while you don’t fulfill your purpose, but they’re always there, waiting to be aroused. When you wake them up, they will push you along a path that you were made for. Circumstances and situations will fall in place, your deepest skills–things you didn’t even know you had–will awaken, and you will fulfill what you’re made for. It may not look like that to you, and it may not feel like that to you, but that will be the result. It’s not supposed to be easy, but it is supposed to work.

There is tons of advice out there for finding out what it is that you, deep down inside, want to do and are made to do. I won’t give it here. Do Hard Things has some of that advice. It’s directed at teens, but why shouldn’t you borrow advice that works for teens? You’ll have to do your own searching for more of that advice, but I’ll give you the first step. Help people. Look for ways to serve. If you want to be great in God’s kingdom, you have to become the servant of all. So serve and help. That will be the foot up you’ve always needed.

I put a teaching on the pope in the early church up on youtube. I can only load videos up to ten minutes long, so it’s in five parts. I also just finished editing a teaching on apostolic succession, kind of a corollary to the one on the pope, that will go up in four parts, hopefully today sometime. Part one is right here, and there’s a link below to go to the rest of them.

Part one is here, and you can link to parts two through five from there.

I also put those up on godtube, but I don’t know when they’ll show up. I’ll put up another post when the teachings on apostolic succession go up.

Today I started a twice a week Bible study at the wonderful hour of 5:30 a.m. for just half an hour. There was just a couple of us this morning. We’re going to go through Paul’s letters. I think I want to post the highlights of our studies, because today’s was awesome. The writeup might be better than the actual study. I don’t know how that happens. Writing’s easier for me.  However, I don’t want to post it here, but on my web site. So today’s blog is just a link to:

http://www.oldoldstory.org/commentary/rom1-1.html.

Okay, I’m posting this right away after my last blog, so you probably haven’t seen the previous one yet. If you have the time, make sure you read it, though this one can be read by itself, too. It’s not really a part two, just a different approach to a question asked by Craig Allerts in A High View of Scripture? The question is “Does it make sense to say that the fourth-century church was making very good decisions about the Bible but mostly poor ones about everything else?”

Again, as I mentioned in the last post, his point is that Evangelicals today accept the books of the Bible that were set in the 4th century but they believe the 4th century church was corrupt. Does this make sense? Allerts believes that the Scriptures and the church are inexorably tied together, which of course they are. However, the 4th century church didn’t really pick the books of the Bible. They just picked from among those used by their predecessors, then attempted to nail down the collection of books of Scripture so that it could not be changed.

In the last post, I addressed the issue of the canon of Scripture. In this post, I want to address something more specific, which is the councils that addressed the canon of Scripture.

It has always amazed me that apologetic groups (i.e., those specializing in defending the faith, usually anti-cult groups), like the Christian Research Institute (CRI), claim to hold to the historic Christian faith, and then they mention the “great creeds” of the church. There are so many contradicting ideas involved in these claims that it’s hard to know where to start.

The first contradicting idea is the one Allerts points out. The Councils that gave us all the “great creeds” were held by ecclesiastical bishops representing churches that Protestants would consider cold, corrupt and Roman Catholic (though they were by no means ruled by Rome yet). If I were to produce the writings of the bishops present at these councils and ask Protestants to review them, they would disagree almost as thoroughly with those writings as they would with the writings of modern Catholics. Why, then, would CRI point to the “great creeds” as emblematic of the historic Christian faith?

As an aside here, I once wrote CRI and asked them about this. I pointed out some major doctrines that were believed from the 2nd century through the time of the councils, and I asked them if they believed those doctrines, which I knew they didn’t believe. They said no, of course, so I asked them why they said they accept the historic Christian faith, when in fact they really disagree with it. They replied that whatever the Bible says is the historic Christian faith, which makes a joke of their use of “the historic Christian faith” to refute the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.

The second contradicting idea is what they mean by the “great creeds.” An article on their web site (http://www.equip.org/site/c.muI1LaMNJrE/b.2708569/k.B787/JAE1001.htm), written by the note apologist Norman Geisler, says that there are three creeds: the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed are pretty much the same creed. There’s very little difference in wording. There’s an official Creed from Nicea, and there’s a later creed, only slightly adjusted, that’s probably wrongly attributed to the Council of Constantinople in 381. That later creed is the Apostles’ Creed. In between those two is the Athanasian Creed, which contradicts the other two. However, we’ve turned the Trinity into such a “mystery” that everyone pretends like they don’t contradict. I’ll explain the contradiction under the next point.

Finally, CRI and the other apologists, along with the Roman Catholics and almost everyone else DO NOT AGREE WITH THE NICENE CREED OR THE APOSTLES’ CREED! (Sorry, I really try to avoid caps, but this is a such a ludicrous thing, it’s worth shouting about.) HELLO, HELLO! Is anyone paying attention here? Catholics and Protestants alike recite this creed. CRI calls it an essential of the historic Christian faith, BUT THEY DON’T AGREE WITH IT.

The Nicene Creed (and the Apostles Creed) begin with “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty . . .” (The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus I:5). The wording is exactly the same as 1 Cor. 8:6. It does not say, “We believe in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” On the other hand, the Athanasian Creed does say that. It reads, “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet there are not three Gods, but one God” (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02033b.htm).

It was not until after Nicea that our modern idea of the “mystery” of the Trinity existed. In the early church, the Father was the one God, and he had a Son. The Son, they explained, is the Word of the Father. He always existed inside of the Father, but at some point in eternity past, the Father birthed the Word from out of himself in some way we cannot comprehend. They loved to quote Psalm 45:1 (LXX), “My heart has emitted a good Word,” and Prov. 8:22 (also LXX), “The Lord has created me the beginning of his ways for his works,” in reference to this eternal begetting of the Word.

The Word, they explained, is like a beam coming from the sun. It is of the  same essence and nature as the sun, not of a different nature. Thus, the Word of God is made of divinity, of the divine substance. Angels, ourselves, animals, the sun, moon, stars, and the earth were all made from nothing. They are all formed of a created substance we can simply refer to as “matter.” All matter had a beginning. It is not eternal, and it is not divine. The Word of God, however, is not made of matter. He is from the divine substance, because he is the Word of God, who  has always existed inside of God. Thus he is divine and can be called God.

However, for us, as 1 Cor. 8:6 says, there is but one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. How do we resolve this “mystery”? Tertullian, referred to as “the father of the Trinity doctrine” by historians because he was the first to use the word Trinity (in latin; Athenagoras used the Greek word Triad), explains it this way:

If the Father and Son are alike to be invoked I shall call the Father “God” and invoke Jesus Christ as “Lord.” But when Christ alone [is mentioned] I shall be able to call him “God” . . . For I would give the name of “sun” even to a sunbeam, considered by itself; however, if I were mentioning the sun from which the ray emanates, I certainly should at once withdraw the name of “sun” from the mere beam. For though I do not make two suns, still I reckon both the sun and its ray to be as much two things and two forms of one undivided substance as God and his Word, as the Father and the Son.

You will find that this practice of Tertullian’s is the consistent practice of the apostles in Scripture, as well as the practice of all the other Pre-Nicene Christian writers. If the Son is mentioned alone, he is called God. If he is mentioned with the Father, then the Father is called God and the Son Lord. This is because, as the Scripture repeatedly says, and as the Nicene Creed affirms, there is one God, and that one God is the Father.

While the Jehovah’s Witness version of John 1:1, which calls the Word “a god,” is not correct, neither is our translation, ”The Word is God.” I have both read books on the subject and sat through a lesson on John 1:1 in Greek class. According to literally everything I’ve seen, in the last clause of John 1:1 the word “God” is used as an adjective. One book I read suggested the best translation would be, ” . . . and the Word has the character and nature of God.” Really, though, it seems apparent to me that the proper way to translate God as an adjective is to use the adjective form of God, which is “Divine.” John 1:1 should read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Divine.” The Word, as the Nicene Creed confirms, is of the substance of God. He is like God, not like creatures. He is the Creator and not the created.

This is what the Nicene Creed means by “God from God, Light from Light, very God from very God.” It adds that he is “begotten, not made” and “one in substance with the Father.”

In the end, the important thing to note is that the Nicene Creed, unlike the Athanasian Creed, says, “We believe in one God, the Father.” It is this simple affirmation that CRI and most Protestants do not agree with. They do not understand the doctrine of the early church, and they don’t want to. They don’t want to understand what the Nicene Creed says the early church believed because they don’t want to deal with the fact that they don’t agree with it.

There are ramifications to this unreality (I hesitate to call it dishonesty). Jehovah’s Witnesses get to walk into people’s homes and point out John 17:3, a prayer by Jesus that reads, ” . . . that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” “See,” the JW says to the soon-to-be-ensnared soul, “you have been deceived by Christendom. There is no Trinity. The Father is the only true God.” Who can answer them? This is Jesus Christ himself saying that the Father is the only true God.

Unlike the modern Protestant view, the Jehovah’s Witness view did exist prior to Nicea, and it was rejected by the church both before and at Nicea. The JW view is that the Son was created from nothing, like the angels. Thus, he had a beginning and is not eternal. The JW’s say that God somehow made the Son to be god, but not Almighty God, like the Father. The result is that they have two Gods: one major God and one minor, created God. There are two divinities in the JW system: one uncreated divinity of the Father and another created divinity of the Son. This was exactly the teaching of Arius that was rejected at Nicea. To the early church, there is only one divinity. The Son, being the eternal Word of the Father, who always existed inside of the Father, is of the same substance–the same divinity–as the Father (“one in substance with the Father, God from God . . . “). He is not created, but born (“begotten, not made”).

On the other hand, we Protestants–and the modern Roman Catholics as well–have no room to talk to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Our view, that the one God is three co-equal persons, wasn’t developed until after Nicea. It was a merger of modalism (Jesus only: the view that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all the same divine person filling three roles, like an actor), which had been common in the early church at least as far back as the 2nd century, and the Nicene view.

Nor are we convincing to those who hear us argue with JW’s. We look bad when they point out John 17:3 or 1 Tim. 2:4 (“There is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus”). They have been able to make a booklet on the early Christian view of the Trinity, where they pull quotes written from the Nicene viewpoint, but they make them look like they represent the JW/Arian viewpoint, the same thing they do with Jn. 17:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; and 1 Tim. 2:4.

I recommend reading through Tertullian’s Against Praxeas. Some of it is hard to understand, but some of it is extremely insightful into the early Christian view of the Trinity. It’s not a long booklet, and it’s representative of everything else you’ll read in the early Christian writings on the subject. You can also try Athenagoras’ A Plea for the Christians, which is a somewhat longer work generally defending Christianity, but it has a lot of insightful and helpful comments about the relationship of the Son and the Father. Both can be found for free online. You can always look at http://www.ccel.org for any early Christian writing.

Oh, you may be wondering what I’m going to say about the Holy Spirit in reference to Nicea. I’m going to say what the Council of Nicea said, nothing more and nothing less: “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”

Well, I’m still reading A High View of Scripture? by Craig Allert, and I’m still it in random order.I’m in the middle of the third chapter, but I’ve read the end and beginning of it already. He brings up a very interesting point I’d like for any of you who might happen to read this to consider.

Quoting a writer named Frederick Norris, he says, “Does it make sense to say that the fourth-century church was making very good decisions about the Bible but mostly poor ones about everything else?”

The point he is making is that it is the 4th century church that established the canon. With the exception of the Muratorian Fragment, which the author points out is disputed (as to date), all the lists of books of the Bible are fourth century and later. If it is the fourth century church, the author argues, that chose the books of the Bible that we agree with, how can we think that the 4th century church was corrupt? They were corrupt, but they chose good and inspired books of the Bible, anyway?

I felt compelled to answer his question because I believe the 4th century church was very corrupt. I’ve written often on the difference between Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, which covers the period from the birth of Christ to A.D. 323, and Socrates Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History, which covers the period from A.D. 323-75. The latter is full of violence, political intrigue, and corruption. So how could a corrupt church pick the right books for the Bible?

The fourth century church didn’t pick the books of the Bible. They did make the determination that they needed to make an exhaustive and exclusive list of which books belong in the Bible–well, not in the Bible, per se. They’d never heard of the Bible. They were simply making a list of the books which could be read as authoritative in the church, and they based their list on the determinations of their more holy predecessors of the Pre-Nicene era. Thus it was not the corrupt 4th century church that chose the books of the Bible; instead, they chose to actually make a list of the books of the Bible and attempt to exactly define the canon, an attempt that I definitely do not think was good.

They didn’t succeed. Even in the fourth century, those canons varied slightly. To this day, the Roman Catholic (RCC) and Orthodox churches that recognize the fourth century councils as authoritative disagree on the books that belong in the Bible. The RCC has 7 books in its Old Testament that the Protestants don’t have. The Orthodox churches have even more. It’s hard to get an Orthodox Christian to tell you what books belong in his Bible, but it often includes 3 and 4 Maccabees and 2 Esdras, neither of which are in the RCC Bible (there’s a list at http://orthodoxstudybible.com/uploads/BibleBooksChart.pdf). On top of this the Assyrian Orthodox Church, which is basically the “Catholic” church of Iran and has three English speaking congregations in the United States, has a Bible that ends at 1 John. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes 1 Enoch (a book which is quoted in the book of Jude in our New Testament).

The writer of A High View of Scripture points out that the word canon, which means the authoritative list of books that are Scripture to us, meant something different to the early church. A canon is a measure or rule. To the early church, the canon was not the list of books of Scripture, but the “Rule of Faith.” The Rule of Faith was a short creed that each church had, which was memorized at baptism and required for each Christian to believe. Tertullian points out that Matthew 28:19 is such a baptismal creed (De Corona 3), requiring faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The creed of Tertullian’s day (c. A.D. 200) had become somewhat longer. By the early 4th century, the Rule of Faith of the church of Caesarea, with slight (but historically significant) adjustments, would become the creed of the Council of Nicea, which by our time is known as the Apostles’ Creed.

It is this basic set of beliefs, plus a strict desire for a holy life, that kept the early church on track. We Protestants are really no different, though we fool ourselves into thinking we are. We have a basic set of beliefs, a statement of faith, barely longer than the Rule of Faith of the churches of the Nicene area. The Bible sure isn’t going to move us from those beliefs. The very center of the faith for most Protestant denominations is “salvation by faith alone,” yet the only occurrence of the words “faith alone” in the Bible is in James 2:24, where we are told that justification is not by faith alone. It is a good thing that Protestants weren’t allowed to set the canon themselves, because Martin Luther, the most well-known of the Reformers, would not have included James for that very reason. Since he could not exclude James, he limited himself to introducing it in his translation of the New Testament as an epistle of straw with nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it. Clearly, Martin Luther’s canon, his rule of faith, was not the 27 books of the Protestant New Testament.

Unfortunately, the Protestant rule of faith differs from the early church’s in one very important area. The early church was very careful to base their rule on traditions they had received from the apostles. Protestants are forced to hope that their tradition is correctly interpreted from 2000-year-old writings, translated from another language, based in another culture, and mostly short letters addressing problems. We can’t agree on how to interpret those writings, not in almost any area. Salvation, eternal security, baptism, the gifts of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, the return of Christ, the literalness of Scripture; pick any area, and you will find Protestant churches which disagree with each other over it.

So, my answer to the question of why I would trust the decisions of a corrupt 4th century church is that I wouldn’t. I don’t think the canon should have been closed. The 4th century church chose the books it did because of what was accepted by the earlier churches. As a result the choices they made were pretty good ones. There was no way, of course, to know for certain what to do with books like Hebrews, Jude, 1 Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas, because there was no consistent pattern in the 2nd and 3rd century churches for these books. So they guessed. No problem, though, because we’re not really Bible believers, anyway. We, like the early churches, have a statement of faith that we believe instead. So if our denomination holds to eternal security, then we simply ignore or explain away Scriptures like Hebrews 6:2-6. If our denomination believes you can lose your salvation, then we read Hebrews 6:2-6 at face value. In like fashion, how we interpret “that which is perfect” in 1 Corinthians 13 will have nothing to do with how we read that verse, but only with what our denomination teaches us to believe.

Sounds like a mess, doesn’t it? I know I’m taking a really hard shot at the Protestant motto of “No creed but the Bible.” I’m arguing that not only is this not true, but it shouldn’t be. Craig Allert’s book takes an even stronger shot at it because he’s got more space than me. But what are we to do? The early church had tradition handed down by the apostles in the recent past. Their leaders were given the specific task of preserving that tradition, and they carefully chose godly replacements with the same commitment to preserving that tradition. They didn’t pay their elders, but supported them in the same manner as the widows and orphans. They chose those elders from the midst of the congregation based on their holy and committed lives. They had other apostolic churches to consult and compare with. Thus, they had good reason to believe that the Rule of Faith to which they held was apostolic, inspired, and reliable.

But what about us? Our statements of faith are disagreed upon from church to church. Some of our most basic tenets were inherited from a man who said that it was impossible to reconcile Paul and James. Two of the three major Reformers (Luther and Zwingli) refused to unite, and two major and separate movements were formed from the very beginning (Reformed/Calvinist and Lutheran). If it is not the Bible that will support our statements of faith, what will?

God knew that Christians, being human, would never be able to agree on interpretations of spiritual writings. Religious people, from the time of Israel until now, have never agreed on those things. The world, the Scriptures say, will never know God through wisdom (1 Cor. 1:19-21). The early church left room for this, picking issues of holiness, commitment to God, and a few basic doctrines as the places to draw lines. What will we do?

There’s a rather amazing promise made in 1 John 2:27. It says that we don’t need anyone to teach us, but that the “anointing” will lead us into all things, and it will be true and not a lie. That’s an amazing promise, but we miss something as English speakers. The “you” in 1 Jn. 2:27 is plural. We don’t notice because there is no difference between a plural and singular you in English. In most other languages, including the Greek that John wrote in, there is a difference, and John used the plural you.

Jesus promised to be with his disciples, wherever two or three are gathered in his name. Thus, what we have today is what mankind has always had. We have God. Our only hope is God. Our hope, as I hope you can see above, is not in a book God wrote; it is in God himself. If we will deny that tendency of our flesh towards “schisms, divisions, and factions” (Gal. 5:19-21), and join together in abandon to God–because you can’t be his disciples unless you deny yourself and lose your life–we have hope. We have promises that he will be with us and that his anointing will lead us into what is true and not a lie. The church, the Scriptures say, is the pillar and support of the truth. We have tried to make the Scriptures the pillar and support of the truth, but it will not work. It says the church fills that role. The church the Scriptures know of is not the Baptists, Assemblies of God, or the Roman Catholics or Orthodox. It’s those two or three disciples gathered in his name, where Jesus is. They will find themselves, in their utter submission to God, not only standing on, but being, the pillar and support of the truth.

I’m always writing blogs that are too long, but I have to add one last point. God is never going to guide you into a systematic theology. Even the expanded Rule of Faith that the early church had was short. It’s a paragraph, not a book. Our experience at Rose Creek Village is that God regularly guides us into what we ought to do, not into a good rule or belief that we can rely on the next time we need to know what to do. No, we need the guidance of God every time. God’s not near as interested in knowledge as we are. He wants us to constantly depend on him, and we can.

This is not to say that the Scriptures are not to be relied upon to learn from. They are able to make you wise for salvation, says Paul, and so I have been trying to use them in this last section to show you how to be saved from today’s bizarre system of Christianity and return to what the apostles founded. The Scriptures, however, according to the Scriptures, are for “rebuke, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16,17). Do you notice any consistency in the things mentioned in those verses? Rebuke–reproof–correction–instruction in righteousness–equipped for every good work; not one of these things has the least bit to do with systematic theology. Everything has to do with righteousness and good works. The Scriptures are supposed to be used to rebuke, reprove, and correct us and help us correct each other. They are supposed to instruct us in righteousness, and equip us so that we can actually do righteousness rather than just know what it is. We are missing the boat when we use it to teach doctrines in seminaries and Bible schools.

Oh, this was originally about the canon and the 4th century, wasn’t it? That being the case, I should add this. You really ought to read some of those books that didn’t make it in, but almost did. You ought to read 1 Clement, the Didache, and the Letter of Barnabas. You definitely ought to be familiar with 1 Enoch, which is quoted in Jude. Things like the Wisdom of Solomon and other books of the Catholic Apocrypha should be read, too. And you’re simply missing great stories if you haven’t read the Roman Catholic’s chapters 13 and 14 of Daniel, called Susanna and Bel and the Dragon. They are all available free online. Forget about those people who told you we ought to wrap up all those letters and books into a bound edition called the Bible and who left out books that were precious to your holy, united, and powerful predecessors of the 1st and 2nd century.

I want to talk a bit more about Craig Allert’s question that I started with, but from a different tack. I’ll do that in the next post.

First, let me remind any who read this and don’t know that I also have a web site at http://www.oldoldstory.org. Rose Creek Village’s home page is http://www.rosecreekvillage.com. We are having a “writers guild” meeting on Oct. 14, and we will be working to make updates to the RCV web site more common. Hopefully, you’ll be seeing weekly updates there by mid-November.

The Canon and the Crowbar was the working title of a book I wrote back in 1991. Scroll Publishing was going to publish it in 1992, but I had a falling out with them in the summer of that year. The falling out was mainly because the president of Scroll Publishing was going to join one of the Catholic churches, and I wasn’t willing to join with him. I never shopped that book around to other publishers because not long after that I decided that the book’s approach to reviving an honest and committed Christianity was the wrong approach.

However, the title applies well to this post. I am reading A High View of Scripture? by Craig D. Allert. I’m in the chapter about the Bible and the church. It’s chapter three, but I’m not reading the book in order, so I may have read more than three chapters. I’ve just been skipping around in the book; it’s been more fun that way.

The author doesn’t do a great job of starting out the chapter. I don’t blame him; I blame the editors. He appears on the first three pages to be arguing that the Pre-Nicene church (before Nicea in AD 325) didn’t believe in verbal inspiration. I couldn’t understand how he could argue this; they clearly did believe in verbal inspiration. By the fourth page, though, it becomes clear that what he’s really arguing is that the “Bible” of the early church was larger than ours. He writes, “In reality, using the fathers’ reference to Scripture . . . forces us to adopt a wider canon than Protestants currently hold.”

Keep in mind this is a Protestant author. The book is part of a series of resources for Evangelicals put out by Baker Academic. It’s very well done. The author know what he’s talking about, even if the introduction to chapter three is somewhat–well, a lot–unclear.

In order to make his point (which is extremely easy to make if one has actually read the early church writers) he mentions things like Polycarp (d. A.D. 155) quoting 1 Clement 5:4–well, rats; I just looked that up; that’s a really poor example. No one would agree that Polycarp’s quoting Clement there. Good grief. Well, now you know why you should always check your sources.

Let me give you a better example. It is clear in the writings of the early churchthat they read 1 Enoch. In fact, we don’t have to go to the 2nd century. We can go right to the Bible. There Jude, of course, quotes 1 Enoch directly (1:9 or 2:1, depending on which version you reference).  You probably already know he quotes the person Enoch there, but you may not have known that he’s quoting word for word from a book that’s still available. He is, and all of the early church writers were at least familiar with it (in my opinion).

One of the most unusual places I found a reference to Enoch is in Justin’s writings (c. AD 150).  He writes:

 But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices . . . (2 Apology 5)

Here he tells us that the demons are the children of the angels that transgressed, the “giants” or “nephilim” mentioned in Genesis 6:4. In another place, he speaks of those “who are seized and cast about by the spirits of the dead,” and he refers to these as “demoniacs” (1 Apology 18). This teaching is from the book of Enoch. In 1 Enoch the children of angels and the women they married were giants. The giants were judged by God, and their spirits were condemned to wander the earth till the judgment. This would explain their desire to possess people’s bodies, and it also might explain “Legion’s” request to Jesus not be sent out of the local area (Mk 5:10).

Whether you agree with Justin that demons are the spirits of dead men or not, there is no doubt that he was familiar with and believed 1 Enoch. There is no doubt that the letter of Jude, which is in the Bible, quotes 1 Enoch directly. Even to this day, the Ethiopian Orthodox church has 1 Enoch in their Bible.

There’s much more, of course. There are numerous citations from the Roman Catholic Apocrypha in the early fathers, and there’s other citations–given as Scripture–that we have no idea where they came from. 2 Timothy 3:8 references Jannes and Jambres, from the no longer extant book called, not surprisingly, Jannes and Jambres. Hebrews 11 references Isaiah being sawn in two, which Evangelicals know as “tradition.” However, that tradition didn’t come from nowhere. It came from the book The Martyrdom of Isaiah.

The fact is, everyone knows the Pre-Nicene church didn’t have a close canon. There was debate about James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. The Assyrian Orthodox church ends their NT at 1 John to this day. 1 Clement, The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Letter of Barnabas were all referred to as Scripture by at least one early Christian writer.

I remember having a discussion with my 1st year Greek teacher (the only year of Greek I took) about 1 Enoch. His logic was dizzying. Basically, he said that since the Bible quotes 1 Enoch 1:9, that one verse is inspired. The rest isn’t, however, and, worse, he said 1 Enoch wasn’t written by Enoch. When I asked him why Jude said the quote is from Enoch, he said, again, that only 1:9 was spoken by Enoch. The rest isn’t from Enoch and isn’t inspired. Simply amazing.

So why does any of this matter? Well, for one, because it’s fascinating. Admit it, if you are a Christian, and you love the Scriptures, don’t you want to know these things? The only reason you wouldn’t want to know it is because you’re scared it will overthrow some belief you have about the Bible. If you’re not scared, however, and if you love the Scriptures, you have got to take delight in knowing how our current Bible came to be formed.

Secondly, this information matters because Christianity in the 21st century is an awful mess. Division and worldliness are rampant. Christians only deny this when they feel attacked. When they don’t feel attacked, however–like when they’re talking to each other–they admit it readily. Chuck Colson, in his book The Body, tells us a story–which he says is true–about a fistfight between the pastor and deacons of a church in Massachussets. He’s citing it as an example of the problems rampant in modern Christianity. One paper we received, writting against us but to friends by a pastor in Florida about 10 years ago, comments about the backbiting that is “common” in evangelical churches (and comments that love and care for one another is what his friends found with us at RCV; nonetheless, he didn’t like some doctrinal things, so he called us wolves).

So Christians know there is a problem–a big problem–in Protestant churches. Problems are solved by changing things; by doing things differently. Take the same actions, you will get the same results. Plenty of evangelical churches have tried “trying harder,” and overall it has not worked. Something has to change.

This little page is not written to say what needs to change; however, if you want to change, you have to accurately assess your current situation so that you know what needs to change. When a company has a financial problem, they don’t shoot in the dark. They audit their current situation; they find where the problems lie; then they make changes that fix the problems. Making random changes in hope that one of them will be successful is not a good way to go forward.

So Evangelicals need information. We (even with all my complaints about evangelicalism, I feel that we align most closely with them) need to make changes, and we need to know where to make those changes so they will be effective. The very best way to do that is to mimic those who are successful.

The 2nd century church was successful. When persecution came, they stood. When people spoke evil of them, they were able to boast that Christians live righteous lives and even submit to and support the Roman government that persecuted them. They succeeded in many areas where we wish we could succeed. It’s worth asking why.

And if it’s worth asking why, it’s worth knowing that the 2nd century church did not have a closed canon. Craig Allert says that evangelical writers “assume that the overriding concern of the church was to form a written collection . . . so that it might have a solid rule by which to govern its faith and life.” Evangelicals assume this about the primitive church because it is true about us. Evangelicals refer to the Bible as “the rule for faith and practice.” The early church had a “rule,” too, but it wasn’t the Bible. They called it “the rule of faith,” and it was a statement of basic beliefs. In the 2nd century, it was very short, but as heresies developed it grew a bit. Eventually, in the 4th century the “rule of faith” of the church in Caesarea was expanded by a couple words and became “The Apostles Creed,” which is repeated weekly in many churches to this day.

Think about the benefit of this. In the 2nd century church, that basic creed was the only required belief. In other areas, Christians were free to explore, learn, and argue. Such a policy would stop the Baptists and Pentecostals from dividing over spiritual gifts, the Church of Christ from dividing within itself over whether its Scriptural to have a church-run orphanage, and even the Methodists and Presbyterians from dividing over predestination and free will.

Of course, we all know that just adopting the Apostles Creed as the rule of faith for all churches would not cure the divisions of Evangelical Christianity. A lot more would need to be done. However, it is important to know that the holy, united, and powerful 2nd century church had as one of its traits that it’s “rule of faith” was short, and they did not split over interpretations of the whole Bible. In fact, they didn’t even agree on what the whole Bible was, because it was not collected into one book yet. There were a number of Scriptural books that were believed by the early church to be inspired. It would not hurt us a bit to learn from some of the ones they used, such as 1 Clement and The Epistle of Barnabas. The tract, “The Way of Light and Darkness,” is an excellent discussion of the Christian life that all of us could learn from, and it’s found in both The Epistle of Barnabas and The Didache (or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles).

2 Timothy says that all Scripture is inspired by God. We all know that, but it would do us good to note what it says Scripture is for. It is to make us “wise for salvation,” and it is to equip us for every good work. Too often, we have used it to give reasons that we don’t have to do good works, and too often we have used it to equip us for some very bad works, such as dividing from one another, an offense that “the Bible” says will keep you out of the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:19-21).

We Evangelicals are believers in salvation by grace. Let it be known that grace is that influence from God that breaks sin’s power over us and teaches us to be “zealous for good works” (Rom. 6:14; Tit. 2:11-14). When our focus is on walking in grace in this way, the love that is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (upon those who obey him [Heb. 5:9]) will keep us from dividing over whether our hands are raised in the air in a Sunday morning church service. In fact, that love might very well prove to those who doubt that Jesus is really the Son of God (Jn. 17:20-23).