The Bible and the Church

Posted on 10/09/2008 by Paul Pavao

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.

Posted in Bible, Church, History, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Canon and the Crowbar

Posted on 10/02/2008 by Paul Pavao

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).

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obeying God

Posted on 09/28/2008 by Paul Pavao

The following isn’t a carefully outlined teaching, just random but extremely important thoughts. Really, it’s just comments on things Watchman Nee said in the book Spiritual Authority.

The greatest of God’s demands on man is not for him to bear the cross, to serve, to make offerings, or deny himself. The greatest demand is for him to obey. (p. 13 [New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers, Inc.] 1972, paperback)

As people, descendants of Adam, we like the idea of having our life outlined for us. We want to know what to do. We want to study the Bible, and we want to have a principle to follow for each situation. This is not what God wants, however. “As many as are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God,” says the Scripture (Rom. 8:14). We are to know how to be a spiritual people.

The Bible says that if righteousness came by the Law, then Christ died in vain (Gal. 2:21). Often this is misinterpreted to mean that God doesn’t care about our works at all. Of course he cares about our works. One day he will judge us by our works, and we are told to fear that judgment (2 Cor. 5:10-11; 1 Pet 1:17). Paul described his ministry as going around testifying to us Gentiles that we should repent and do works that befit repentance (Acts 26:20).  He most certainly was not telling us in Gal. 2:21 that our works don’t matter!

Instead, Paul is trying to tell us that the Law will never produce righteousness in us. He says that if the Law could have produced righteousness, then righteousness would have come from the Law (Gal. 3:21). However, because of the sin that is in our flesh, the Law is too weak to produce righteousness in us (Rom. 8:3).

So what will? The answer is that walking by the Spirit can produce righteousness in us (Rom. 8:4). Jesus did not just die for the forgiveness of our sins. He died to give us the Spirit of God. The mark of the new covenant is that everyone from high to low, old to young, and ruler to servant will receive the Spirit (Acts 2:16-21). The Law’s requirements are righteous, but they will be produced by our walking in the Spirit of God, not by our following the old Law nor any new set of rules or principles.

May God give us both revelation so that we can understand this and boldness so that we are willing to carry it out.

This is important. It is possible to give all your possessions to the poor and give your body to be burned, yet not have love and obtain no profit for your great sacrifices (1 Cor. 13:3). It is likely–because the Scriptures say this will happen to many–that you (uh–yes, you; it’s you that are told in 1 Pet. 1:17 to be afraid and you told in 2 Pet. 1:5-11 to learn and grow) will prophesy, work miracles and cast out demons in Jesus’ name, but be denied entrance to the kingdom of God.

The will of God is the absolute thing; the cup (that is, the crucifixion) is not absolute. (p. 14)

This was fascinating. Watchman Nee is very defensive of Jesus in the story of Gethsemane (thank God for men who stand up for Jesus). He says that Jesus’ prayer in the garden was not out of weakness. He prayed that the cup might pass from him, but he did not pray that he could be out from under God’s will. If God’s will could be different, if the cup of the crucifixion did not need to be drunk, then Jesus was asking if it could pass. However, if God’s will could not be different, then there was no question at all. It is always the Father’s will that must be done.

We can feel whatever we feel. We can ask whatever we might ask, but we must be subject to the will of God. The will of God must matter to us as it did to Jesus. He prayed in agony for hours while his apostles fell asleep in order to know the will of God. He did not walk away from the garden wondering. Instead, he got up saying, “Let’s go. The one who betrays me is here” (Matt. 26:46). He got up knowing what was going to happen to him. He had found the will of God; it was the cup, and now he would drink it.

It was a neat picture. May we care as our Lord cared about the will of God.

To serve God we are not called to choose self-denial or sacrifice; rather we are called to fulfill God’s purpose. (p. 15)

Eph. 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” We are not called to do just any works. We are called to do the works God has prepared for us to do. We will  only find those works by the Spirit, not by following rules and being strict disciplinarians.

David Wilkerson wrote a book called The Cross and the Switchblade about going to New York to minister to gangs there. The trip to New York was not just some good idea that he got. He laid it before God, agonized before God in prayer, and put tests before himself to see if this were really the will of God. It was. So God preserved, protected, and empowered him there. Not only did it produce direct fruit in the 1960’s when it happened, but to this day Teen Challenge, which came out of that ministry, is acknowledged even by the U.S. government as the most effective ministry, by far, to drug addicts in America.

This alone is work in obedience to God’s will, that which originates with God. We are not to find work to do, rather we are to be sent to work by God. Once having understood this we shall truly experience the reality of the authority of the kingdom of the heavens. (p. 16)

Do you want to really be effective? Go where God sends you. Do what God calls you to do. Those who prophesied and cast out demons in Matthew 7, but were rejected by God, did not experience the blessing of God, despite the things they did. How could they? They were unknown to the Lord. Even so, there are many today holding great crusades and describing great miracles, but leaving no changed lives and no churches behind. This happens because they are not doing what they are called to do.

Satan laughs when a rebellious person preaches the word, for in that person is dwelling the satanic principle. (pp. 16-17)

Like begets like. Natural gives birth to natural and spiritual to spiritual. Ministers who have chosen their own principles and their own ministry in order to preach the word will give birth to unspiritual disciples who do not know how to follow God. God will not be able to use them. We see this principle working in far too vast of numbers in the United States. So much ministry is ineffective. Churches have no impact on the society around them. On the contrary, society not only influences the churches but eventually overthrows them. There is no power to continue. Older Christians warn zealous new Christians that their zeal will disappear after a few years. Their warnings are usually correct.

Christianity is supposed to be a spiritual religion. Like Adam in the garden we are supposed to be walking with God, not living by our knowledge of good and evil. Let us obey the command to walk by the Spirit, for it is by the Spirit that we will put to death the deeds of the flesh (Rom. 8:12-13) and only as we are led by the Spirit that we are not under the Law (Gal. 5:18).

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Questions and Complaints

Posted on 09/21/2008 by Paul Pavao

I had 30 spam comments this morning on my blog, which is why the comments are moderated. The spam comments are all very similar. There is a nonsense sentence followed by links. Who would do this? What are they trying to accomplish? I’m having trouble thinking of a scenario where someone would actually click on those links.

This post is called “Questions and Complaints” because those are where most of my writing ideas come from. Either someone asks me a question or I’m complaining about something I don’t think is right or don’t agree with. This post is on the complaint side, a hodgepodge of responses to things I read this morning.

I got up early this Sunday morning, read Discover magazine a bit, then got online and googled “the church,” hoping maybe to find some interesting, committed group of people that understands the importance of the church. I found out that there’s an Australian rock band called The Church, and it’s also a popular name for bars, both in America and England. However, I also found a number of sites of churches.

It fascinated me to find a group in London that has a web site just beginning. The one page they saw fit to have up on their site was their beliefs page, which was arranged, of course, like a statement of faith with numbered points. Point number one was their belief in the Bible as the “word for word” revelation of God. They even saw fit to describe the Bible as the “complete” revelation of God.

Should this really be point number one in a statement of faith? The early churches had a statement of faith that over 300 years developed into the Nicene (or Apostles) Creed, which never mentions the Scriptures, despite the fact that the bishops at Nicea had a strong belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures (the books of which were not yet defined; several were still in question). These bishops had such a strong attachment to the Scriptures that the greatest difficulty at the Council of Nicea was a struggle over adding an extra-scriptural word to the statement (they called it a “rule”) of faith they were developing. Nonetheless, the only reference to the Scriptures in the creed they came up with, which is still quoted weekly by many churches today, is in the line “. . . rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”

The next church page I went to was http://www.thechurchofgod.com. Their front page has only one paragraph on it. It begins with “Welcome to the official website of the Church of God. We are fully committed to the Bible . . .” That’s nice. How about God? Are you committed to God? Can you be? Or is he unknowable, and is it dangerous to try to follow him?

That’s my greatest objection to all these statements about following the Scriptures. Do you know that the Scriptures say they can’t be followed unless you’re first following God? The Word of God is foolishness to the natural man, and the natural man cannot comprehend them. God–yes, God, that being that runs the universe–must reveal the things of God to you in order for you to understand them. Examine away! Study the Scriptures! Make sure you’ve carefully checked out everything you’ve been told! In the end, unless God gives you revelation, you will be deceived.

What should you do about all these voices calling out to you? How do you decide between all the various groups claiming to be the church and all the various messages coming from Christian denominations? Check it out in the Scriptures, right? That’s not what the Scriptures say. The Scriptures say that you will know a prophet by his fruit. Only a good tree can produce good fruit. Bad trees will produce bad fruit.

That’s the teaching of Christ. I wonder if we believe it. I am in possession of a 19-page refutation of Rose Creek Village written back when we were “The Church in Bethel Springs.” The pastor who wrote it gave a glowing testimony of our fruit here. He said that the testimony of all the brothers he knew who had visited was that we were everything a church ought to be. His conclusion? This great fruit was produced by a bad tree. How did he know it was bad? He disagreed with Noah and me on a couple interpretations of Scripture. Worse, he couldn’t even present any good arguments for those interpretations of his. All he had is that his interpretations were more common than ours. Surely Scripturally it is not a very good argument that there are a multitude of people–a broad path–that agree with you, especially when you acknowledge in advance, as this pastor did, that his own church and others like it are prone to backbiting and half-heartedness.

Let me give you a different message. If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you have some idea where I’m coming from already, you are open to it, and you will look at what I’m saying Scripturally and agree. However, if you’re just passing by and found this blog on a search, there’s little chance you’ll agree with me no matter how clear the Scriptures are on the following subject. American Christians like to honor the Scriptures with first place on their statement of faith, but actually believing the Scriptures when they disagree with that statement of faith is of little importance to almost any Christian. Really. I’ve talked to thousands of them all over the world. It is a rare Christian that can look at a Scripture verse honestly if it disagrees with his or her church.

Okay, so here’s that different message. It is the church that is the pillar and support of the truth. People who believe that the Scriptures are the pillar and support of the truth really don’t like it when I say that, but it’s simply a Scripture quote (1 Tim. 3:15). There’s a similar statement made in 1 John 2:27. If someone is trying to seduce you, John says, the safety you have is that “you don’t need anyone to teach you, but the anointing will teach you all things, and it will be true and not a lie.” The “yous” in that verse are all plural, not singular. There’s no promises that God will guide an individual into truth in this manner–in fact, there’s promises to the contrary (Heb. 3:13)–but 1 Jn. 2:27 does promise some sort of infallibility to an obedient church.  History testifies that this guidance into what is true comes with stops and starts, mistakes and corrections, but it is nonetheless a guidance into truth, and it is a promise of God, a promise he has repeatedly fulfilled.

If you really want to follow and believe the Scriptures, you need to follow and believe the anointing of God with other believers. Can you imagine a statement of faith that began with, “We believe that all the truth and revelation we have has been humbly received from God by the anointing of his Spirit because we can’t trust our carnal minds to interpret Scripture without that revelation”?

I promised a hodgepodge of issues, but I got carried away with this one, and this post is long enough. I’ll address the other major issue I wanted to cover in my next post. I think it’s important to cover the issue of trusting God’s anointing over and over and over again. Many American Christians are stuck in dead and powerless tradition, and those who are not don’t have a clue about the power and importance of the church. Thus, they are stuck in a system that keeps them in fellowship with dead and powerless Christians, pouring themselves out in ministry to them, until they become burned out, exhausted, and sometimes unbelieving. They have no idea what God wants to bring them into, the joy and power of the unity of disciples. They have no idea of the ministry God will automatically create if those who have given their lives up for God knit themselves together as God’s people, having the candlestick of God’s approval in their midst (see Rev. chs. 1-3), and becoming the city of God whose light cannot be hidden. It’s far more important than people realize. Just because Christians gather together doesn’t mean that God calls them a church. It is possible to have your candlestick pulled (Rev. 2:5), yet wind up together trying to be a church without realizing God has departed from you. We quote Rev. 3:20 as a salvation verse, but it is a statement to the church in Laodicea that Jesus is now on the outside, knocking to come in, rather than being in their midst, all of them being joined to him.

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Leaving Everything

Posted on 09/11/2008 by Paul Pavao

I started to write  a blog last night, and I decided I wanted it permanently on my “Rest of the Old, Old Story” web site. You can read it at http://www.oldoldstory.org/teachings/leaveitall.html. Sorry for linking you to a “blog,” but this seemed to work. Leave me a note (your back button will get you back here after reading it) if you have comments. It’s a lot to chew on. It was a lot for me to chew on, and I wrote it!

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Inspiration

Posted on 09/02/2008 by Paul Pavao

This is part two of “Dealing with Bible Errors the Right Way”

All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for good works. (2 Tim. 3:16,17)

The authority of the inspired scriptures resides, not in an intrusive control of the writing process, nor in an error-free presentation, but in a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation. (James Tunstead Burtchaell CSC, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology)

Yesterday we—well, I—discussed whether the existence of errors, real or imagined, left us with no more inspiration than “a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation.” I am not satisfied with that, and I am reasonably certain that the apostle Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, meant far more than that.

Today, there as an awful heresy that none of us recognize as such. It is a denial of the inspiration of the Bible that the apostles and early Christians knew. It is the false and damaging teaching that “a text without a context is a pretext.” What that means is that if a sentence or passage of Scripture is quoted out of context, then it is being misused. If this were true—which, thank God, it is not—then it would disqualify most quotations of the Old Testament that are found in the New.

Let’s begin with the virgin birth. If you believed the heresy that all Scripture use must be “in context,” then you would have to reject the New Testament use of Isaiah 7:14 (Matt. 1:23). In context, Isaiah 7:14 is a prophecy to King Ahaz of Judah that a maiden, in his day, would give birth to a child named Emmanuel. Before Emmanuel became old enough to tell good from evil, King Pekah of Israel and King Rezin of Syria, who were troubling Ahaz, would be removed from their thrones. That’s the context, and Matthew completely ignored both context and translation in using Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the virgin birth of Christ.

It’s only the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, that refers to the mother of Emmanuel as a virgin. The “original” Hebrew calls her a maiden, which can refer to a virgin, but is not necessarily one. Good thing, too, since we don’t believe in two virgin births. We believe that the mother of the first Emmanuel, the one born in Ahaz’ time, was not a virgin. Only the mother of Jesus, the true Emmanuel, was a virgin.

Because we don’t understand inspiration, and because we’ve believed the heresy that “a text without a context is a pretext,” skeptics like to point out that Matthew pulled Isaiah 7:14 out of context—way out of context. Shoot, they might as well start wandering through all the prophecies quoted in the New Testament, because most of them are out of context.

Take Hebrews 1:5, for example. While the first portion of that verse, taken from Psalm 2, works quite well in its original context, the last half doesn’t work at all. It is taken, not very well, from 1 Chr. 28:6, where God tells David, “Solomon thy son shall build my house and my court, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be to him a father” (LXX, the version seemingly used by the writer of Hebrews).

Let’s look at another. In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes Joel 2:32, which says, “It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (LXX). However, in the original Hebrew that’s not just any Lord. In the original Hebrew, it says whoever calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved. Then it gives a “because,” which means it explains why “whoever calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved.” That “because” goes like this: “For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as Yahweh hath said, and in the remnant whom Yahweh shall call” (Joel 2:32, KJV with LORD changed to the original Yahweh).

So why does Paul feel free to apply this to Jesus? Clearly, it’s addressing Yahweh, the God of the Jews, and it says that we’ll be saved by calling on Yahweh specifically because salvation shall be in Mt. Zion and in Jerusalem. In other words, it will be in Israel’s holy city. To have people calling on Jesus, even if you use the more accurate Yeshua or Yahshua, in any old city, outside of Judaism, as Paul is suggesting, is hardly in context!

Worse, Paul presses on and in v. 18, he quotes from Psalm 19. He says, “Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18, KJV). For the last few verses, he has been talking about calling on the name of Jesus and preaching Jesus in all the earth. In v. 17 specifically, he has said that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Then he suddenly says that people have already heard because “their” sound went into all the earth.

Whose sound? In context, in Romans 10, you’d have to assume he meant the preachers he’s been talking about for four verses. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” he asks in v. 14. However, he can’t be talking about preachers, because Psalm 19, from which he is quoting, makes it quite clear that “their sound” is the revelation of the glory of God given by the skies. The skies declare the glory of God; they certainly do not reveal the name of Jesus, which is “the only name given under heaven by which man must be saved,” according to Peter (Acts 4:12).

We could go on and on. I found those by flipping around in the New Testament for just a couple minutes. It seems ironic to me that we Americans speak of God’s inspiration of the Scriptures, a highly spiritual and mystical process, and then look for it to be manifested intellectually with Scripture carefully used in context and scientific accuracy, completely irrelevant to the message, being divinely bestowed on primitive people. Scripture was never meant to be used in this method, and our defense of “verbal, plenary inspiration of the Scriptures” has little, if anything at all, to do with real inspiration, and it cripples us and makes us, in the Bible’s words, foolish.

Just as God’s message goes into Scripture by inspiration, so it comes out by revelation. The Scriptures never subject themselves to man’s intellect. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent” (1 Cor. 1:19). So much for the reliability of everything you learned in Bible school. Paul had a different method for preaching the Gospel. “Not with wisdom of words,” he said, “lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect” (1 Cor. 1:17).

Can we really use a prophecy pulled out of context from Isaiah, then use a Greek translation that doesn’t exactly match the Hebrew? Of course we can. The prophecy does not prove the event. The event proves the prophecy. So God used an unusual route to let us know he knew in advance of the virgin birth. However, Isaiah 7:14 does not prove there was a virgin birth. The virgin birth proves that the LXX translation of Isaiah 7:14 was a prophecy.

Todd Burke, a missionary to Cambodia and author of a book whose title I don’t remember, told a story about arriving in a poor area of Cambodia. He was sleeping on a 1/16th of an inch thick mat, like all the Cambodians, but his birthday had arrived. He had the money to go down to the store and buy a mattress; not as nice as an American mattress, but a mattress nonetheless. He and his wife got up that morning and prayed about whether it was okay to purchase that mattress.

After they prayed, they opened their little daily devotional called My Daily Bread. The Scripture for that day? “Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” They laughed and laughed, but they took it as a word from the Lord, and they did not purchase the mattress.

This isn’t silly. The God of inspiration is the God of revelation. Rather than reveal his whole plan to Isaiah, who surely could not have handled the entire picture of the Messiah, he gave Isaiah prophecies containing bits and pieces of the whole picture. In Isaiah’s prophecy to Ahaz, he breathed in a subtle clue that when God came to earth (Emmanuel, God with us) he would come through a virgin. In other places, he breathed in not-so-subtle testimonies of a suffering Messiah.

We at Rose Creek Village have had our own experience of the subtle inspiration of God: a testimony that God was thinking of us thousands of years in advance. In 1995, several families from the church in Geneva, Florida came to Bethel Springs, Tennessee to proclaim the Life of God. Wanting some time to discuss these things, one of the sisters in Bethel Springs suggested retreating for a week to a national park some five hours away called Standing Stone. Why Standing Stone? To this day we do not know, except that God had things to say to us. There were many parks closer and just as beautiful.

It was a difficult weak, and there was much opposition from the enemy. The brothers and sisters from Geneva cried out to God. On the very last night, they were ready to end the day when one of the sisters came out to say, “We need to sing one more song. Let’s sing ‘Awake.’”

Everyone gathered. They began to sing, and the Holy Spirit suddenly began to move. Faces changed, hearts lifted, and many who had wondered opened their hearts to the message of God. In one moment the church in Bethel Springs was born.

It was months later when we ran across the passage in Genesis that describes Jacob’s vision of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it. Then the Scripture says:

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep … and Jacob rose up early in the morning, took the stone that he had used as a pillow, and stood it up like a pillar and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel.

Now perhaps you think it pure chance that God used the song awake to pour the oil of the Holy Spirit upon us at a place called Standing Stone in order to begin the church at Bethel Springs, but we cannot. We know that for the God of the Scriptures to be thinking of us 3,000 years ago or more is not strange. It is simply the way God works. It is a normal experience for those that live by revelation.

Inspiration has nothing whatsoever to do with scientific accuracy or a memory jogged by God to remember insignificant details like whether bystanders saw a light or heard words (Acts 9:7; 22:9). Nor does inspiration have anything to do with whether the days of Genesis are literal 24-hour periods or eras consisting of thousands, millions, or billions of years. Inspiration has to do with the fact that it was God’s influence that made Moses use “greater light” and “lesser light” rather than “sun” and “moon” in Genesis one. The greater and lesser light, more importantly than representing the sun and moon, represent Christ, the light of the world, and the Church that, with no light of its own, reflects the glory of the Son.

Those who understand inspiration are ever learning, always being taught by the revelation of God. Who told Paul that Abraham’s two sons are really two covenants, one bringing freedom and one bringing slavery? We can debate until we pass into eternity whether there was a literal Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in a literal garden being eaten by a literal man. It will do us no good. It is far more important that we receive the revelation that we, like Adam, will be barred from the rest of God found in his garden if we live by the knowledge of good and evil. The flaming sword turns every way to bar the life of man from the garden of God. Even so, only those who will lose their life may enter eternal life by eating the Tree of Life found in the garden where live all those who find their rest in God alone.

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Dealing with Bible Errors the Right Way!

Posted on 09/02/2008 by Paul Pavao

The authority of the inspired scriptures resides, not in an intrusive control of the writing process, nor in an error-free presentation, but in a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation. (James Tunstead Burtchaell CSC, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, from William Sykes, The Eternal Vision)

I’m sure this was written by someone who does not believe that the Scriptures are “error-free” in the traditional sense. The person who gave the above quote probably knows that there are number differences between Chronicles and Kings (e.g., 1 Kings 4:26 & 2 Chr. 9:25) and between Ezra and Nehemiah (e.g., Ez. 2:29 & Neh. 7:33). He probably knows that one Gospel says that Jesus encountered blind Bartimaeus on the way into Jericho, and another says he encountered him on the way out (Mk. 10:46-52 & Luk. 18:35-43). He probably knows that it’s foolish to quote the Bible as scientifically accurate because it says the world hangs on nothing (Job 26:7) without also mentioning that it also says the earth sits on pillars (1 Sam. 2:8) and has a sky as hard as metal (Job 37:18).

James Tunstead Burtchaell’s answer to these errors, whether they are real or imagined, is to argue that the Scriptures are “a reliable expression of the faith.” Personally, I don’t believe that’s enough. I believe that’s “caving in.”

I want to give a different answer in two parts. One, the inspiration and usefulness of the Scriptures has nothing to do with whether there are errors in the Bible. Two, I want to explain what inspiration is and what we miss today because we don’t understand inspiration.

Watchman Nee believe that all such errors were only apparent. They could be explained by the careful Bible student so that they could be shown not to be errors. However, he didn’t think explaining the errors was a solution to the problem. Instead, he wrote:

There was once a brother, who, not long after he had believed in the Lord, was confronted by another person who told him that there were errors in the Bible. He was so exasperated that he nearly cried. … He laid this matter before an elderly sister, for he reckoned that since this sister loved the Lord and loved the Bible so much she certainly would be agitated if she realized there were these errors in the Bible. The strange thing was, however, that after this sister heard him out, she was calm as could be. Her reply to his presentation was: This is no problem. … All she said was, that knowing God did not depend on the solving of these questions! (The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, pp. 7-8)

Nee adds, “This brother spent an entire year searching the Scriptures with regard to these questions. Upon finding out the evidence that the Bible passages in question were correct and not in error, the heavy burden upon his heart dropped away” (ibid., p. 8). Nee does not agree there are errors in the Bible, but he also does not agree that it matters. What does matter, he explains right afterward:

People may attempt to prove this or that thing, but we Christians can prove one very important thing—that God is indeed God and that we know Him who is so real. And by knowing Him, all problems are solved. Such knowledge does not rely on how logical are the reasons or how clear the doctrines; it relies only on revelation. (ibid., pp. 8-9)

Recently I gave a teaching on the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. I had noticed how the prayers of the apostle Paul focused on knowing God through revelation. For example, the first prayer Paul prayed for the Ephesians was “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ … may give to you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:17). When he prayed for the Colossians, whom he had never met, his prayer was similar. “Since the day we heard, we do not stop praying for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col. 1:9).

Paul’s major concern for churches, whether ones he formed like the Ephesians or ones he’d never met like the Colossians, was that they would have a spiritual wisdom and understanding.

We need the same thing. Today anyone with an internet connection can find a list of all the contradictions in the Bible and hear all the arguments against the historicity and scientific accuracy of the Bible. I have talked to many whose faith has been shaken or completely lost once they heard those arguments. Statistics indicate that up to 80% of college students lose their faith during their years in college. It’s likely that the teachings they hear in history and science classes are as much to blame as the temptations of the world.

The answer is not to know all the arguments for the scientific accuracy of the Bible. The answer is to know God. A rich and real experience with God and with the Scriptures would remove all doubt! Wouldn’t you love to be able to answer, “Well, if the Scriptures are so full of error, then why have they repeatedly provided timely answers to the issues of my life? If God is not real, then why are my prayers answered and why has the direction God has given me proven useful and accurate again and again and again? You can show me all the contradictions in the Bible that you want, but it is simply impossible for me not to believe in it because it has been so powerfully effective in my life. Truly, God has proven his Word, both the Word in my heart and the Word on the pages of the Bible, to be alive and powerful. I cannot disbelieve. I can only believe; experience demands it.”

We do not need more intellectual arguments. We need more spiritual experience. Personally, I believe that most of the people I have met who have lost their faith lost it not because of the arguments they heard but because their spiritual experience agreed with the arguments against their Christian faith. They didn’t have their prayers answered. They didn’t have a close walk with God. The Bible was already cold and dead to them. Thus the intellectual arguments that there are errors in the Bible simply reinforced what they were already experiencing—that there is no power and life in the Scriptures or in walking with God.

Nothing will shake the faith of the man or woman who knows God. Such a man or woman will either say “I don’t care what you think about errors in the Bible; I know the Bible is powerful and from God,” or they will answer with arguments of their own. Either way, their faith will stand, because it is based on a knowledge that God is real, alive, and powerful, and that the Scriptures are true and effective. I promised a second part to this blog, explaining what inspiration is and what we’re missing out on by not understanding it. However, this post is long enough. I will save section two for tomorrow or the day after (or maybe the day after that; I’ll try to get to it quickly!).

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Following God: The Made Hard Way

Posted on 08/19/2008 by Paul Pavao

Today I saw a book advertised at Christian Book Distributors called Following God: The Made Easy Handbook. Wouldn’t that be great, I thought. Following God made easy. I could sure use a book like that.

Unfortunately, the person who made following God hard was Jesus Christ, and he says his is the only way. The path, he said, that leads to life is ‘pressed hard, like grapes in a winepress, troubled, afflicted, and distressed.’ Oh, you thought he said the way was “straight” or “narrow.” He didn’t.

First of all, Jesus never said anything about the way being straight. That’s just a mistake based on the fact that the old English word for narrow was strait, as in “the Straits of Gibraltar.” So, not “straight”; “strait” is the word.

Second, “strait,” which means narrow, is what he said the gate was. It’s the Greek word stenos. The path, however, is thlibo. That’s not nearly so nice a word. It’s used 10 times in the New Testament, and only in Matthew 7:14 is it translated narrow. Everywhere else, it’s translated with words like troubled, afflicted, and suffering tribulation. One time, in Mark 3:9, it’s translated by the KJV as “throng.” It’s what the crowd was doing when they were crowding Jesus into the sea.

Oh, and it’s a verb, not an adjective. The way is crushing or troubling, not narrow.

There’s other comments that Jesus makes about following God. For example, he said things about denying yourself, hating your own soul, and taking up the cross. The cross, you know, was not just an instrument of execution. It was an instrument of torture. It often took people three days to die on it. That’s why Pontius Pilate was so surprised to find out Jesus was dead that afternoon. It’s why the soldiers broke the lower leg bones (ouch!) of the two men crucified with him. On a cross, you normally die by slowly suffocating to death as your chest muscles cramp and tighten until you can’t breathe. Good legs allow you to push up on the nail and ropes, relieving the pressure on your chest and allowing you to breathe. Break the legs, and the victim can’t do that. Then they die faster.

Now take up your cross and look for the “Made Easy” way.

Paul told his churches that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). I looked up that word “tribulations.” It’s the noun form of thlibo. Apparently Paul agrees with Jesus on this. The way is full of trouble.

There’s more. Paul’s idea of following God involved “I die daily,” and “I discipline my body and bring it under subjection.” In Colossians we find him “striving” and “in great conflict.” Peter used some form of suffer 15 times in the short letter we know as 1 Peter. I don’t have to look suffering up in Greek to know that it’s not easy.

So why then did Jesus say that his yoke was easy and his burden light? I guess I could tell you that it’s one of those mysteries, but I don’t want to do that. Instead, because he’s talking about those that are working and are heavy laden and because he speaks of giving them rest, I think he’s talking about spiritual things. The Law is a heavy burden to those that do not have the Spirit of God. Christ calls us from the Sabbath of man that rests the flesh to the Sabbath of God that rests the spirit. Our spirits can live constantly in that rest, and we find our Sabbath rest in him (Heb. 4). He will keep us in his hand. We will find rest in him. We will find that for the true disciple, there is no way but Christ’s. Truly. he is the rest of our souls that eases our heavy burden so that our spirit soars. “In his presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Amen, it is true.

But look at whom he gives that rest and pleasure to. Is it just anyone? No. Read through the letters of Revelation 2 and 3. He gives his rest to those who suffer for him. He gives his rest to those who are worthy and have stood against the spirit of the age. Those who find their reward in the flesh and who find ease in this life will find that God has no reward for them in the next life. They’ve received it here. Worse, the rich man who was comforted in this life not only lost his comfort in the next one, but he was tormented as well.

I have not read the book Following God: The Made Easy Handbook. Perhaps the author knows all these things and is giving real insight into resting in Christ. Somehow I doubt it, but maybe. It is hard to imagine, though, that any English speaker will benefit by hearing that there’s an easy way to follow God. Americans, I know, are always looking for the easy way. Well, there’s not an easy way to follow God, my fellow Americans. God’s looking only for the hardy and committed, those who will forsake this world, their comforts, and their own lives to follow his Son.

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Odds ‘n Ends and the “Pastoral” Epistles

Posted on 08/13/2008 by Paul Pavao

One of the things I’ve always found irritating is when Bible translators hide things from us. I remember the shock I got when I decided to research the Seraphim of Isaiah 6. Amazingly enough, the Hebrew word “seraphim” is used in more than Isaiah 6. It is found twice in Numbers 21, and once in Deut. 8:15, Isaiah 14:29, and Isaiah 30:6. However, outside of Isaiah 6 our Bible translators have actually translated it for us. The word means serpent or snake.

Now why don’t they bother to translate the word in Isaiah 6? I can only assume that they’re embarrassed to tell us that there are snakes in heaven. However, hiding things from us because they’re embarrassed or disagree is not a power I think any of us want to give to Bible translators.

It may seem strange that the snakes in Isaiah 6 have wings and are praising God, but in Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6 those snakes fly as well. At least the KJV thinks so, and the Hebrew word uwph used as an adjective in those two verses indicate those snakes fly as well. I like to call flying serpents dragons, and I think it’s neat that God has them in heaven. You’d think at least our Chinese brethren would like it, too.

One other place Bible translators decided to hide a word from us is in 1 Timothy 3. There we are introduced, for the first and only time in the Scriptures, to “the office of a deacon” (1 Tim. 3:10, KJV). The NASB, which just a chapter earlier considers it important to inform us in a note that “modestly” (2:9) is literally “with modesty,” doesn’t bother to mention that “serve as deacon” in 3:10 is one word, not three, and is translated serve, minister, or wait upon. Nor do they bother to tell us in 3:12 that the word “deacons” is found 29 other times in the New Testament but almost always translated servant. Somehow, though, it is important to tell us that, in the same verse, “good managers” is literally “managing well.” I suppose we might have been confused by the difference between “modestly” and “with modesty” or “good managers” and “managing well.” However, the difference between the invented word “deacon” and “servant” is apparently not of importance to us.

Well, now that I’ve gotten my complaints out about the things Bible translators hide from us and given my reasons for thinking they do it on purpose, let me get to the real point of this post. The two letters to Timothy and the letter to Titus are commonly called the pastoral epistles. Dr. Henry Clarence Thiessen, in his Introduction to the New Testament says, “It was in the 18th century that they were first called ‘Pastoral Epistles,’ and this title has been generally applied to them since that time” (p. 253).

Despite acknowledging this, though, I was delighted to find that Dr. Thiessen is aware that Timothy could not have been a pastor (p. 262; he says “bishop,” but I’ll address this in a moment). There are really only three words applied to “offices” in the church in the New Testament. The churches were led by episkopoi, variously translated as bishop or overseer and the equivalent of our English word “supervisor.” Their job is to shepherd (Gr. poimaino) the churches (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:4). Thus, they are clearly the ones referred to as shepherds or pastors (another unique translation of a common Greek word) in Eph. 4:11, because they are the ones told to shepherd.

In the New Testament, “elder” is used interchangeably with “overseer.” For example, the elders of Ephesus are told in Acts 20:28 that the Holy Spirit has made them overseers. In Titus 1:4, Titus is told to appoint elders in Crete, but two verses later he’s given the qualifications of an overseer. In 1 Pet. 5:2 elders are told to “exercise oversight” (NASB), which is the Greek episkopeo, the verb form of the noun “overseer.”

Thus, New Testament church leadership is limited to elders, who filled the “office” of overseer by shepherding the churches, and servants. Timothy and Titus were not elders; they were men who appointed elders. Dr. Thiessen calls Timothy “Paul’s temporary representative in his apostolic capacity at Ephesus” (p. 262) However, Paul had no problems simply referring to Timothy as an apostle (1 Thess. 1:1 with 2:6). Tertullian, around A.D. 200, refers to the companions of the apostles as “apostolic men” (Prescription Against Heretics 32; Against Marcion IV:2). Dr. Thiessen writes, “Zahn notes that Timothy’s position cannot be described as that of a bishop, for that was an office for life and confined to the local church” (p. 262) Timothy and Titus are best referred to as apostles, which appears to be Paul’s usage, or “apostolic men,” a later usage. Their job was to appoint elders to run the churches they were temporarily caring for so that they could move on to their next area of ministry.

It would be comfortable to say that this twofold leadership structure of elder/overseers and servants is what the Bible teaches, but history indicates things are not so simple. There is indication even in the Scriptures that John’s churches were structured differently, with individual rather than corporate leadership (3 Jn. 9,12; Rev.1:20), and the testimony of later history is even more firm. It is the universal testimony of the early Christians that Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna were appointed overseers of their respective churches by the apostle John and that as overseer, they were the chief elders of their churches.

The evidence that John really did appoint them as individual overseers in their churches is pretty interesting, so I’m going to tell you about it.

Both Ignatius and Polycarp left us letters. Polycarp left just one, to the church at Philippi, but Ignatius left us seven. All of Ignatius’ letters are to other churches that were founded or watched over by the apostle John but one. Ignatius wrote very early. His letters date from A.D. 110. John’s letters and Jesus’ letters (Rev. chs. 2 & 3) deal with gnostic influence in the churches, and Ignatius was still dealing with the gnostics just two to three decades later. Ignatius’ answer was to exhort the churches to stick closely to their overseer. Overseers should approve baptisms, be aware of love feasts, and in general be a source of unity and sound doctrine. This was Ignatius’ answer to heretical gnostic doctrines, and he emphasized it in all his letters.

All but one, that is. He wrote a letter to the church in Rome, where Paul had spent time and where Peter had settled down to serve as elder (1 Pet. 5:1,13 and the universal testimony of early church writers). In his letter to Rome, Ignatius never even mentions an overseer, one of those cases where the silence is deafening. Scholars have suggested that perhaps Rome’s overseer was either gnostic or had gnostic leanings, so Ignatius could not support him. The answer, though, is easier and not difficult to spot. Rome didn’t have an overseer. Rome was Peter’s church, and it was led by elders, not by an overseer.

Fortunately, we don’t have to guess if this was true. The church in Rome wrote a letter to the church at Corinth around A.D. 95. Supposedly, this letter was penned by the Roman overseer, Clement, and so it is named First Clement. However, the letter clearly states it is from the church at Rome, not from an individual, and it clearly described Paul and Peter’s form of leadership, not John’s. Chapter 42 of that letter, for example, says, “The apostles…appointed the firstfruits [of their labors]…to be overseers and servants.” Chapter 44 continues, “Our apostles also knew…there would be strife on account of the title of overseer….Our sin will not be small, if we eject from oversight those who have blamelessly…fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those elders who, having already finished their course, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure [from this world], for they have no fear that anyone will deprive them of the place now appointed them.”

The church at Rome, writing to another Pauline church, Corinth, uses overseers and elders interchangeably and speaks of both in the plural, just as we find Paul and Peter using the terms in the New Testament. Thus, it seems obvious that Ignatius, when writing to Johannine churches, spoke of an individual overseer, but did not mention such a person in his letter to Rome because there was no such person in Rome.

Polycarp, too, though he is addressed as an overseer in one of Ignatius’ letters, makes no reference to an overseer in his letter to Philippi, another Pauline church. Instead, he introduces himself to the Philippians as “Polycarp, and the elders with him,” and speaks of “being subject to the elders and servants.”

Thus, it seems clear enough that John had a different leadership structure in his churches than Paul and Peter. John’s churches had one overseer, “ranked” above the elders, and servants with them, while Paul and Peter’s churches had only elders and servants, the elders also being known as overseers.

The interesting sidelight of this is that Rome was Peter’s church. The Roman Catholics assert that the Roman bishop (or overseer) is the pope, God’s representative on earth, and Peter was the first pope, while Clement was the third, after Linus, who was between them. However, Rome had no overseer to be pope, and both Peter and Clement–assuming he wrote the epistle given his name on behalf of the church in Rome–left us writings so that we would know.

My blogs are usually long, but this one’s ridiculous. I hope that if you made it this far you found some of it interesting or useful. It’s one of my favorite subjects, though I’m not sure why.

Posted in Bible, History | 1 Comment

Knowing What You Believe

Posted on 08/05/2008 by Paul Pavao

Recently I bought an Old Testament Survey on clearance from christianbooks.com. “Surveys” give the background, culture, and other details of the books of the Bible. I’ve never read one before, but I’ve been intrigued ever since Noah told me some history he’d read on the minor prophets. I’d recognized by reading, for example, that Micah uses a lot of the same terminology as Isaiah (e.g., cf. Is. 2:2ff with Mic. 4:1ff*). I’d never thought, until Noah mentioned it, that Micah might actually have listened to Isaiah prophesy, but there’s a good chance he did.

So I bought this inexpensive Old Testament Survey, hoping to find little facts like that. There are some, but this survey is really a lot closer to a commentary than what I expected. It’s called Encountering the Old Testament, and it’s by Bill T. Arnold and Bryan E. Beyer.

Actually, I hate mentioning their names, because I have a complaint. I don’t know why I am always astonished at the lack of honesty or scholarship in Evangelical writing, but no matter how often it happens, I’m always surprised. I must be pretty dense. I can’t imagine that so many people are just purposely dishonest, so I’m hoping that most of them are just blind.

Page 454 of Encountering the Old Testament has a text box titled “What about those who have never heard?” They write, “Some people suggest that those who never hear the gospel might still receive salvation if they respond to God’s spiritual light in nature.” They then proceed to argue against this viewpoint. Their first argument reads like this:

Salvation by works is impossible. If we can earn our salvation, then Christ did not need to die (Gal 2:21).

If this statement were made by a high school student or by a co-worker down at the office, I would understand. However, this statement is in a hardcover textbook that claims “first-rate scholarship” on the back cover. The Publisher’s Preface says, “In these two series, Baker will publish texts that are clearly college-level…They will not be written for laypeople or pastors and seminarians…Rather, they will be pedagogically oriented textbooks written with collegians in mind.” There’s an introductory note “To the Professor” and “To the Student.” The Publisher’s Preface refers to “curriculum for Christian colleges” and “textbooks” as the standard this book is living up to. At this level, the statement above is simply inexcusable.

Galatians 2:21 says nothing at all about earning salvation or about works. It speaks of a righteousness that comes from the law. While your average evangelical, brainwashed and ignorant (sorry), can confuse law, works, and earning your salvation as though they are all the same thing, it is inexcusable for something that claims “first-rate scholarship” to confuse terms like that.

The Bible does say that salvation is not by works, but not in Galatians 2:21. It says it in Eph. 2:8. Unfortunately, it also says in Rom. 2:6-7 that eternal life does come by works. Galatians never addresses works alone; it only addresses the works of the law. It clearly says that the works of the law will not produce righteousness, though it never discusses whether the works of the law have anything to do with eternal life or going to heaven.

Again, it is not necessary for the average evangelical sitting in the pew to notice these things. It should be thoroughly embarrassing, however, that a college textbook would pay no attention to these matters. Arguments like these are an introduction to ignorance and poor scholarship, not an introduction to studying the Old Testament.

Now if this were a purely academic matter, it wouldn’t be that important. We’d just be dealing with academic ignorance. While that’s bad, it’s not as bad as deception and following a false gospel. It is exactly this sort of ignorance that causes people to believe that they can be Christians, disciples of Jesus Christ, without meeting any of the requirements that Christ himself laid down for his disciples.

There’s a lot of work in sorting through salvation, justification, eternal life, judgment, works, law, faith and grace. You have to pay attention not just to the terms but even to the authors. James and Paul, for example, use almost exactly the same terminology to make exactly the opposite statements. Paul says we can’t be justified by the works of the Law, while James says we are justified by works and not faith alone (Rom. 3:28; Jam. 2:24). While Paul mentions “works of the Law,” and James mentions “works,” that’s only the minor difference between those two verses. The major difference is Paul and James’ use of the word “justification.” They mean two different things when they use it, which is obvious from context.

Studying those things can be a lot of work. There is a way around all of that. You can choose someone to believe. Most of my readers, I think, have been influenced by the evangelicals and are thus using Martin Luther’s explanations of terms. Personally, having been an evangelical for over a decade, I found the fruit of that path to be sadly lacking. There were good people who knew God on that path, but overall it fell far short of the New Testament description of the church, where “he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Instead, only the deeply committed and strong of will grew on an ongoing basis. Most just slowly grew cold. Buddhists, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses can claim those kind of results; in fact, probably better results because, being older and more accepted, it’s much easier to be lazy and comfortable in an evangelical church.

I’ve chosen to believe the 2nd century church. United and holy, they possessed an amazing power that carried them through in the midst of intense persecution. Minucius Felix, in The Octavius, was able to boast that “many of us have given…our whole bodies to be burned without any cries of pain…Among us, even women and young boys treat crosses, tortures, wild beasts, and every bugbear of punishment with the inspired patience of suffering…Can’t you wretched Romans see that they couldn’t endure these without the power of God?”

The fruit of their lives would be enough to make me choose their theology over the theology of others, but I enjoy study. I like the work of separating the verses on grace from the ones on faith, of sorting verses on eternal life from verses on salvation, and finding out if there’s any consistent and obvious pattern. As a result, I know that early church theology leaves the follower of Christ without almost none of the “difficult” verses that are an inherent part of evangelical theology.

Learning who to believe based on the fruit they produce is something Christ commanded, and it can save you from a lot of the work involved in strenuous theological study. That can be good because I don’t think all of us are supposed to devote ourselves to study and teaching. The church needs teachers, but even more, it needs workers who are out doing what is taught. Workers don’t need to waste their time doing the study that God has called teachers to do.

However, if you’re going to do the work of study, you should do it in such a way as to find the right answers. The sort of poor scholarship I ran across in Encountering the Old Testament is a sure-fire way to continue in traditions that make the Word of God void.

I can’t resist voicing one other complaint. I suppose I want evangelicals to see what their teachers are like and pursue something better. The argument I addressed above is on a page devoted to the book of Jonah. That page, 454, has this statement on it, “Probably to Jonah’s great surprise, the people [of Nineveh] believed God’s message!”

Probably to Jonah’s great surprise? Aren’t these people writing a college textbook? In Jonah 4:2, Jonah says to God, “Wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my country? That’s why I fled to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and you repent of the evil you intended.” Jonah didn’t flee because he was scared of public preaching. Jonah fled God because he knew that Nineveh might repent and avoid judgment. Jonah wanted them to be judged. He sat outside the city in the hot sun waiting in vain hope that God might judge Nineveh anyway, despite their repentance.

Please understand, I’m not trying to be picky. I believe my complaint here is valid and important. If you’re just the average person and you missed the fact that Jonah wanted Nineveh to be judged and regretted their repentance and salvation, that’s understandable. If you’re a scholar, however, you’re supposed to be helping people learn what’s true. In order to do so, you pay careful attention to what you’re studying and teaching. My complaint is not this book’s mistakes. My complaint is their lack of diligence in pursuing what is true, and my statement you, my reader, is that this is common. It’s not uncommon; it’s the standard in popular evangelical works. They are not pursuing what is true, but simply continuing on in dead traditions, and that course of action will reap you no better results in the 21st century than it did the Pharisees and their followers in the 1st century.

You are not going to be able to depend on your evangelical teachers to enlighten you. You are going to have to be more diligent yourself. I’m not afraid to ask that diligence of you, because the first and greatest commandment includes the command to love God with your mind and strength and as well as your heart and soul. An effort to find out what’s true fits well into that command. “In all your getting, get wisdom,” the Proverb says.

Footnote:

*What a mess of abbreviations! “e.g.” means “for example.” It’s short for the Latin exempli gratia. “cf.” means compare, and I’ve always wondered why. I googled it, and it’s short for the Latin confer, which means compare or consult. Finally, “ff” means “and forward.” I’m not sure why there’s two f’s rather than one.

Posted in Bible, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments