The Rest of the Old Old Story

Someone once told me that if I wanted to know if a teaching was true, look at what it asks you to do. If it asks you to do something that Scripture also commands, you can probably trust the teaching.

If it asks you to do something different than Scripture commands, throw it out; it’s false.

I heard that 25 years ago. It has served me well for 25 years.

Predestination According to Calvin

I have a lot of problems with the Calvinist version of Predestination.

Since I haven’t read Calvin’s Commentaries or Institutes myself, I’m relying on what I’ve heard from people who call themselves Reformed or Calvinist.

I am also responding to what is known as the 5 points of Calvinism, which make the anagram TULIP. TULIP is:

• Total depravity
• Unconditional election
• Limited atonement
• Irresistible grace
• Perseverance of the Saints

Really, I doubt I agree with a single one of those things, but let’s start our short series on Calvinism with the most offensive and ridiculous one …

Limited Atonement

There are at several Scriptures that sound like they were written specifically to refute Calvinism’s Limited Atonement:

• God our Savior … wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:3-4).
• We trust in the Living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe (1 Tim. 4:10).
• He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world (1 Jn. 2:2).
• The Lord is not slow concerning his promise … but is patient toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth (2 Pet. 3:9).

Okay, so a guy comes along 1500 years after these things are written and argues–for the first time in history–that “all men” means just the people who will be saved and that “not any” means not any of the elect.

There’s nothing to argue here. This Limited Atonement teaching is unscriptural nonsense, and the man who teaches it teaches falsehood. Maybe John Calvin had a bad childhood, or maybe he was overly influenced by Luther’s over-reaction to monasticism, or maybe he’s just evil and influenced by the devil. Whatever the cause, if John Calvin taught limited atonement and that God only wants some people to be saved, as people say he did, then he taught error.

Calvinism and Predestination in General

We’ll go into this subject more in the next few days. Maybe we can do each point of Calvinism one by one. Total Depravity seems to be the only one, in my opinion, that has even a small Scriptural basis. However, taking human depravity so far that a person can’t even choose to be saved is taking it too far.

(It also is having too much confidence in your own Bible interpretation; nothing is ever as sure as it seems. “Can’t” and “never” are big words when you start applying them to God and man.)

The rest seems like nonsense to me that disagrees with everything taught by the apostles’ churches.

I mentioned at the start of this post that we ought to see what a teaching tells us to do in order to test it, and we’ll do that as we look at the other points of TULIP.

Due to working on Christian History for Everyman, I’ve been slow in posting here. I’m working on a page on apostolic succession, however, and it is perfect for a blog entry.

The line (uh, here I am quoting myself again) that caught my eye was:

Apostolic succession is an argument against the Roman Catholic Church, not for it.

My line was prompted by this wonderful passage from Tertullian’s Demurrer Against Heretics. Tertullian was a lawyer, and a “demurrer” is a legal brief. (Apparently, lawyers could be Christians in A.D.  200. I’ve heard rumors that might be possible even in A.D. 2100, but I haven’t verified those yet.)

Since the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach, no others ought to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed … Nor does the Son seem to have revealed [the Father] to any other than the apostles, whom he sent forth to preach …

What that was which they preached … can … properly be proven in no other way than by those very churches which the apostles founded in person, by declaring the Gospel directly to them themselves, both viva voce, as the phrase is, and afterwards by their letters.

If, then, these things are so, it is equally apparent that all doctrine which agrees with the apostolic churches, those molds and original sources of the faith, must be reckoned for truth, as undoubtedly containing that which the churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God. In the same way, all doctrine must be prejudged as false which savors of disagreement with the truth of the church and apostles of Christ and God. …

We have fellowship with the apostolic churches because our doctrine is not in any way different from theirs. This is our witness of truth.

- Demurrer Against Heretics 21

Sorry for all those ellipses. Tertullian is more wordy even than me, and he can’t resist any opportunity–in fact, he creates as many opportunities as possible–to inject some explanatory comment. His rabbit trails have rabbit trails.

However, he’s one of the most logical thinkers among the early Christian writers.

Perfect lawyer.

What Is Apostolic Succession?

 Tertullian makes it clear that truth comes from God. God gave it to Christ, Christ gave it to the apostles, and the apostles committed it to the churches. Thus, the churches became the standard of truth.

This is the reason that Paul says that the Church, the household of God, is the pillar and support of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15).

The Roman Catholic Church, somewhere down through the centuries, went completely crazy and decided that since they were the standard of truth, they had the right to change the truth at will.

The Roman Catholic Church, however, is not the standard of truth. The apostolic churches were the standard of truth.

Apostolic succession, to Tertullian and his contemporaries, was a way of arguing that their churches, a mere hundred years removed the apostles, had received truth from the apostles and maintained it unchanged.

Apostolic Succession as Proof of Pristine (Unchanged) Truth

Tertullian’s argument from apostolic succession was limited. Such an argument could prove that the church to which he belonged and the ones with which they were in fellowship had received truth from the apostles 100 years earlier. It could not prove they had kept it pure.

For that he had to resort to a stronger argument:

Is it likely that so many churches, and they so great, should have gone astray into one and the same faith? … Error of doctrine in the churches must necessarily have produced various issues. When, however, that which is deposited among many is found to be one and the same, it is not the result of error, but tradition. (ibid. 28)

Little different view of tradition than what the Roman Catholics tell you about, isn’t it? Tradition is authoritative, just as they say, but only if that tradition came from the apostles.

Think about this argument. Tertullian’s argument assumes that there is no central authority in the church. Notice that he mentions  “that which is deposited among many.”

Tertullian’s argument falls apart if there is a central authority–a pope, or a supreme church in Rome–that can dictate doctrine. In that case, it would be extremely likely that so many churches, no matter how great, would go astray into one and the same faith because one man, the pope, could have dictated it.

Tertullian doesn’t mention this, however, because he’d never heard of a pope. He had no idea that anyone would argue that the church in Rome was supreme over all other churches.

Apostolic Succession as an Argument Against the Roman Catholic Church

Tertullian speaks of churches which …

… although they do not derive their founder from apostles or apostolic men (since they are of much later date, for new churches are being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine. (ibid. 32)

Churches such as these, he says, will submit other churches to a “test.” What is that test?

For their very doctrine, after comparison with that of the apostles, will declare, by its own diversity and disagreement, that it had for its author neither an apostle nor an apostolic man. This is true because just as the apostles would never have taught anything self-contradictory, so the apostolic men would never have taught doctrine different from the apostles. (ibid.)

So when we who are seeking to follow apostolic teaching ask the Roman Catholics to prove that they, too, are following what came from the mouth or pen of the apostles, we are simply following in the footsteps of the church fathers; something the Roman Catholic Church is quite unwilling to do.

Apostolic succession was meant to establish that a church held to apostolic teaching without changing it. The Roman Catholic Church uses apostolic succession to justify exactly the opposite. They want to have authority even when they are disobeying Christ and changing his teachings.

The churches which actually had apostolic succession, something no church has had for over 1700 years, would have condemned them as heretics.

Apostolic Succession, Tradition, and the Authority of the Church

Apostolic succession, tradition, and the authority of the Church all refute Catholicism. They do not defend it.

• Apostolic succession is simply one argument used by early churches to establish that they had received and apostolic doctrine and maintained it unchanged.
• Apostolic tradition is apostolic doctrine. Paul refers to his teachings as tradition several times (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15).
• The Authority of the Church comes from being the pillar and support of the Truth. The Truth is that which is delivered to the churches by the apostles, who received it–and the authority to pass it on–from Christ, the Truth himself.

Protestants and the Fight for Truth

If this is so, then why has the Roman Catholic Church used these things–apostolic succession, tradition, and the authority of the Church–to argue for themselves and against Protestants.

It is because the Protestants are an easy target. Just as the Roman Catholics would never honestly look at the teachings of the fathers because those teachings condemn them for deviating from the tradition of the apostolic churches, so the Protestant churches refuse to submit to the apostolic churches–and thus to apostolic teaching.

There is now and always will be a fight for Truth. Truth sets men  free. Thus, Jude tells us that we must contend earnestly for the Truth in the form of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

With whom, however must we fight?

Is it not the devil? Is it not principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness in heavenly places?

It is. And they would like nothing more that we fight against each other and for our traditions rather than against them and for the apostles’ traditions, which came from Christ.

Scripture vs. Apostolic Tradition

Where do we find the apostolic tradition? Isn’t it just in Scripture?

Are we really so blind? Millions of people study the Scriptures every day, and they disagree and divide with each other every day. Almost every heretical group gets their doctrines from the Scripture. I’ve almost never heard of a Jehovah’s Witness or WOW missionary (from “The Way International”) leaving their heresy because of being convinced from the Scriptures.

We know what the apostolic churches were like. We know the basic traditions the apostles delivered to those churches.

Loud voices cry out that we don’t. People say the early churches disagreed with one another. People say that they fell away and became legalistic.

They didn’t.

We may not like it, but they didn’t.

They were one, they were holy, they stood in persecution, they overcame the world, and they were so powerful that they brought the Roman empire to its knees even as it killed their bodies on a daily basis.

Among us you will find uneducated persons, craftsmen, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth. They do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves. (A Plea for the Christians 11)

Ignore them at your peril.

The Scriptures, no matter how badly we want to make them “the sole rule of faith and practice,” continue to teach that the Church is the pillar and support of the truth and that God will guide the saints into truth only while they are completely united (1 Tim. 3:15; Eph. 4:11-16; 1 Jn. 2:27),  not while they simply read the Bible.

Conclusion

I was looking for a nice, tidy ending to this rambling post that started on apostolic succession and the Roman church, but then turned on us who have clung to Sola Scriptura.

I have no such ending. I hope something in this blog has helped you.

Even more, I hope you will quit caring about yourself, your life, your savings, your college, your career, your car, your denomination, your loyalties, your alma mater, your family, your money, and anything else you’re prone to caring about, and you’ll begin caring about his kingdom.

When you do, you’ll look around and be horrified at how hard it is to find something that can rightly be said to be “the pillar and support of the truth.”

Then perhaps you’ll weep, cry out, repent, find those who are truly your brothers and sisters–not accepting their mere claims but examining their lives–and together ask God to reveal to you what he has only promised to reveal to those who are united and who fear him alone.

He is worth it all.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog on the ten commandments. There I argued that the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) split “You shall not covet” into two commands in order to draw attention away from the command they omit, which is “You shall not make any graven image.”

My son came to me last week to tell me that he looked in a Catholic Bible and the ten commandments there are the same as in a Protestant Bible.

This is true. The problem with the ten commandments by Roman Catholic (RCC) standards is not in their Bible translation. They have left the Bible unchanged. The problem is in the list they publish and teach to their followers.

Here is the description of the difference between the RCC ten commandments and the list made by Protestants according to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The system of numeration found in Catholic Bibles, based on the Hebrew text, was made by St. Augustine … and was adopted by the Council of Trent. It is followed also by the German Lutherans … This arrangement makes the first commandment relate to false worship and to the worship of false gods as to a single subject and a single class of sins to be guarded against. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04153a.htm)

In other words, they are claiming that the reason that they make “You shall have no other gods before me” and “You shall not make any graven images” into one command is because this is all one class of sin: false worship.

The reason they give for dividing “You shall not covet” into two commands is:

It seems, however, as logical to separate at the end as at the beginning, for while one single object is aimed at under worship, two specifically different sins are forbidden under covetousness; if adultery and theft belong to two distinct species of moral wrong, the same must be said of the desire to commit these evils. (ibid.)

The problem, as I pointed out, is the Biblical text.  The ten commandments are the ten commandments. The proper way to divide them into ten commands is the way God divided them through Moses. We cannot simply make up our own divisions.

Here is how Moses gave the last commandment to Israel:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s. (Ex. 20:17)

Perhaps you will notice that the command not to covet your neighbor’s wife, which the RCC claims is a separate commandment, is in the middle of all the other things we are not to covet. The RCC makes the 9th commandment to be “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.”

As you can see, the problem is that my neighbor’s goods are listed  both before and after my neighbor’s wife. It’s not very hard to figure out that Moses, and thus God through Moses, was not counting the command not to covet your neighbor’s goods and the command not to covet your neighbor’s wife as two separate commands. No theology degree is needed to see that this is completely illogical, no matter how logical the Catholic encyclopedia claims it to be.

In fact, it requires an advanced theological degree to become blind to something so obvious.

Roman Catholic Justification for Their Ten Commandments

The RCC argument for combining “You shall not have any gods before me” and “You shall not make any graven images” is not bad. They state:

This arrangement makes the First Commandment relate to false worship and to the worship of false gods as to a single subject. (ibid.)

That’s fine. The Jewish list of ten commandments does the same. They make the first command–which, strangely enough, is not a command at all–to be “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” They then combine the command to have no false gods and not to make any graven images into one command.

That’s strange, but at least it doesn’t require pulling a tenth commandment right out if the middle of the ninth.

Also, the Jews are opposed to making graven images and bowing down to them.

The Roman Catholics, however, are not. The Catholic Encyclopedia says this about the making of graven images:

… the prohibition [is] directed against the particular offense of idolatry alone. (ibid.)

Okay, let’s talk about that. What exactly is idolatry? Is it not God who gets to define this as well?

God says, “You shall not make for yourself any graven image … You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them” (Ex. 20:4-5).

Do Roman Catholics not bow down to graven images? I know that as a 6th grade student at a Catholic elementary school I was made to bow down and kiss the feet of a statue of Mary. Everyone knows that Catholics bow down in front of statues of saints and pray to those saints all over the world. It happens every day at Lourdes in France.

Do they really expect us to believe that it is just an accident of interpretation that their list of commandments says nothing about not making or bowing down to graven images?

Exodus 20 vs. Deuteronomy 5

I need to point out that while Exodus 20 says not to covet your neighbor’s house, then your neighbor’s wife, and then his other goods, Deuteronomy 5 lists the coveting of your neighbor’s wife first. Thus, if you wish to divide “You shall not covet” into two commands, Deuteronomy 5 does allow you to do so without destroying the text.

Um … does this matter?

The RCC claims to base their numbering of the ten commandments on a list given by Augustine in his work Questions on Exodus. I can’t seem to find a copy of that online, and The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers doesn’t contain it. However, I read enough references to it online to be confident they’re telling the truth.

Those references point out that Augustine was using Deuteronomy 5 to make his list, which is a very strange thing to do in a book entitled Questions on Exodus.

Oh, well. This blog is not about Augustine, who lived before the catholic churches were “Roman Catholic,” though he did not live before images of saints were being made and adored by almost-but-not-quite converted pagans.

(The pagan emperor Julian the Apostate, who reigned over three decades before Augustine was bishop, said that the saint worship of the Christians of his day was greater than the hero worship of the pagans before them. Even he scoffed at it and called it idolatry.)

Despite all this, it has been over 1600 years since Augustine wrote his book. No one considered during that time that his list doesn’t make sense if you read Exodus?

Someone needs to state the obvious. The making of statues fosters idolatry in general. In particular, the making of statues of saints not only can foster idolatry, but it already has created rampant idolatry throughout both the modern and historical Roman Catholic Church.

In fact, according to Exodus, bowing down to a statue is already idolatry.

Throughout the reign of the Pope as a civil authority (a time known as “the Dark Ages”) and until the 1960′s, the RCC discouraged the reading of the Bible. As long as this was so, they could simply publish a list that never mentions a prohibition against making and bowing down to graven images.

Over the last 40 years, however, the RCC has conceded and encouraged the reading of the Scriptures. Some of those RCC members need to petition their leaders to correct their dishonest rendering of the ten commandments.

Until it’s corrected, no matter what is written in the Catholic encyclopedia, their ten commandments are a loud testimony that the RCC has not only practiced idolatry, but allowed and promoted it.

Don’t you hate it when someone announces that “all the scholars know” that Christianity isn’t true; they’re just scared to tell us?

I hate it, and it’s baloney.

A guy named Bart Ehrman has written a book called Jesus, Interrupted, claiming just that sort of thing. He tells us things like:

• Only 8 of the 27 books of the NT were written by the authors to whom they’re attributed
• Each Gospel portrays Jesus differently
• Paul and Matthew are at odds on keeping the Law
• The Nicene Creed and Trinity are not found in the Bible
• Doctrines like the suffering Messiah, the divinity of Christ, and heaven and hell are not based on teachings of Jesus

HarperCollins, the publisher, writes in their review:

As Ehrman skillfully demonstrates, [these points above] have been the standard and widespread views of critical scholars …

Nice.

Inch-Deep Scholars

Books like Ehrman’s are always directed against myths of modern Christianity. With this I concur. I speak out against myths of modern Christianity as well.

However, I replace those myths with truth, not unbelief!

For example, Paul and Matthew are at odds on keeping the Law; that is, if Paul’s letters teach what most Protestants say they teach. Big if.

Paul’s letters don’t teach what we Protestants say they teach.

A good scholar, when he notices that Paul’s letters and Matthew’s Gospels don’t match on the subject of Christians keeping the Law, will ask why. He will not simply point out that problem to the masses in an attempt to shipwreck their faith.

It’s not like it’s some mystery. It’s obvious to anyone who reads the writings of the early Church that we have completely lost their view of the Law. The Baptists don’t have it, the 7th Day Adventists don’t know about it, and the Pentecostals are completely unaware of it.

It’s gone, lost, buried and unheard of.

Unless, of course, you read the fathers, like scholars who write about the early Church are supposed to. That way, they know what they’re talking about.

You can find the early Church view of the Law, which powerfully reconciles Matthew and Paul in a way that is encouraging, uplifting, and even exciting, in Against Heresies, book IV, chapter 12 and forward. (I have also written a web page on it at http://www.christian-history.org/law-of-moses.html)

There’s no reason you should know that, but it’s inexcusable that an early Church scholar doesn’t know that.

A Quick Look at the Other Issues

1. Only 8 of the 27 books of the NT were written by the authors to whom they’re attributed

More accurately, we’re only confident about 8 of the 27 books. Those books were written 2,000 years ago. For most of those, all we have is some quote, decades later, that attributes the book to that person. It’s not terribly reliable information.

We already knew that. Before, however, you say that 19 books of the New Testament were written by plagiarists and frauds, you ought to have proof yourself!

That proof is difficult to find. Mostly the unbelievers and scoffers rely on textual criticism, a very unreliable source when you have so few pages of an author’s work, and when we know that various scribes would often have been used.

My response to the scoffers? The Scriptures transform lives and are involved in miraculous, powerful events every day. They have been for 2,000 years. They’re unstoppable and filled with power. That comes from God, and God doesn’t use frauds.

2. Each Gospel Portrays Christ Differently.

The review actually says “remarkably divergent portrayals.”

We’ve read them ourselves, Mr. Ehrman. Thanks, anyway.

This is crazy. The same scoffing, unbelieving scholars argue that Matthew, Mark, and Luke copied their information from one another. This rather limits how divergent they can be!

As for John, we already know how divergent John is. He wrote his Gospel at least four decades after the events. Irenaeus tells us it was six decades later. John was dealing with gnostics, and his Gospel was written partly to refute the gnostics.

It’s no wonder his Gospel presents a “remarkably divergent” view of Christ. It’s not a contradictory one, however. We Christians have read it ourselves, remember?

3. The Nicene Creed and Trinity are not found in the Bible.

This is like Paul and Matthew’s view of the Law. Our modern interpretation conflicts with the Bible on some minor points, but the Nicene Creed and Trinity doctrines themselves are found in the Bible. Much of the Nicene Creed is quoted word for word from the Bible.

Someone who knows history ought to know that the Nicene Creed’s basis is Matthew 28:19: ” … in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Paul, too, gives a similar formula to the Nicene Creed in 1 Cor. 8:6: “We believe in one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.”

If you ever have time, I give a thorough explanation of the history of the Council of Nicea and an early Church explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity at http://www.christian-history.org/nicea.html.

4. Traditional doctrines such as the suffering Messiah, the divinity of Christ, and the notion of heaven and hell are not based on the teachings of the historical Jesus.

More inch-deep scholarship. The idea of heaven and hell are only hinted at in the Old Testament. That’s why the Sadducees–Jews who didn’t believe in an afterlife–could exist.

However, the Book of Enoch is full of the idea of heaven and hell, and Jesus most certainly agrees with Enoch. He even pulls directly from Enoch on the subject of the afterlife in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:20ff).

If scoffing, unbelieving scholars were talking about Enoch, they’d tell you that Enoch greatly influenced Jesus. They’d be hoping to attack your faith. However, it’s inconvenient to mention Enoch when you’re trying to say that Jesus didn’t believe in heaven or hell.

I guess Ehrman also missed the story of the judgment of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25.

Conclusion

There are good, solid reasons for believing in Christ. The most notable reason is that if you do, he’ll unite you to God and change your life.

However, it is true that a lot of what we believe today is contradictory and false. It’s been 2,000 years, many unconverted people have been Christians and even clergy, and Christians have battled and fought with each other much of that time. We’ve damaged and wrecked “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”

For those scoffing scholars, it’s like shark feed. Our errors draw them, and they circle the boat looking for those who fall overboard.

I’m for getting a better and truer grip on that faith so that we can have even more power with God.

I’m against throwing out the faith just because we’ve lost some of it and patched it up with myths.

Let’s not confuse these unbelieving scholars with honest academicians simply hunting for the truth. These are scoffers, enemies of God, on a crusade to wreck the faith. We need to rise up against them.

We’ll have a much easier time if we have at least a few of us who know something about the faith once for all delivered to the saints.