What Is Christianity?

Posted on 10/31/2011 by Paul Pavao

I got carried away and wrote a long email to a young man who wrote me. It covers evolution, church history, the apostles, the Word of God, the Scriptures, the Gospel, and what is central to Christianity.

I hate to see it simply languish in my sent folder, so here goes:

All Bible quotes in this post are from the NASB.

You wrote:>>Either you believe everything in the Bible is the inspired Word of God, being completely true, and that it is the standard for which Christians should live their lives, or you don’t.<<

To me you just made two statements, not one. The first, if I'm understanding your meaning correctly, is that the Bible is completely accurate historically and scientifically. That's a bit more narrow of a definition than "completely true."

Is the Bible “Completely True”?

There is no denying that I don’t believe the Bible is completely accurate historically or scientifically. I don’t believe the world is set on pillars (1 Sam. 2:8). I don’t believe that the sky is as hard as a metal mirror (Job 37:18). I believe that the earth moves, even though Psalm 93:1 says it doesn’t.

Of course, everyone–including you, your pastor, and everyone else you know–agrees with me on the three things I just listed. Oh, they have their excuses as to why that’s different than doubting the exact scientific accuracy of Genesis 1, but it all looks the same to me.

Do we really believe that God made plants before there was a sun? Do we really believe that there is a tree that if you eat from it, you’ll have eternal life whether God wants you to have it or not? That’s certainly what the story of the Garden of Eden suggests. God had to ban Adam … No, let’s not call him Adam. His name is Man. The Hebrew word Adam is used over 500 times in the Old Testament, and it is only translated Adam in the first few chapters of Genesis.

So, God had to ban Man and Life (Life was the name of Man’s wife) from the garden because if he didn’t, then Man would eat from the tree of life and live forever; apparently even if God didn’t want him to live forever!

Maybe that was meant to be an accurate description of the very first days of mankind, but I don’t believe that. And everyone I’ve read on the subject of how the Hebrews told stories agrees with me. To the Hebrews, “true” was not a matter of historically accurate. “True” had to do with whether it communicated truth.

I believe that the story of Man and Life not only communicates truth, but it communicates God’s truth. It’s not just a saying or a bit of human wisdom. It’s a message from God.

In that sense, I do believe that the Scriptures are completely true.

Is “scientifically and historically accurate” the correct definition of true? Well, that’s for you to decide, but I believe that is a modern, western definition that doesn’t apply very well to the Hebrew Scriptures. It was certainly not their mindset, according to every Hebrew scholar I’ve read.

Is the Bible our Standard

The other part of your statement was whether the Bible is “the standard for which Christians should live their lives.”

First, let me say that I definitely believe that the Bible is the standard for which Christians should test, though not necessarily live, their lives. If our lives disagree with the Scriptures, then we are in error. With that I completely agree, but the Scriptures teach us that we are to be led by the Spirit, not led by the Scriptures. The Scriptures can provide guidance, but we are to walk in the Spirit.

Today, we think the Bible is the center of the Christian faith.

I’m pretty certain that the apostles thought that Jesus Christ is the center of the Christian faith. I think they believed that the ultimate testimony of Christianity was that the Gospel they received from Jesus was “the power of God to salvation,” and that those who believed the Gospel received a real and powerful justification, becoming new creations.

Paul describes that concerning the Thessalonians:

“You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. For the Word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything” (1 Thess. 1:7-8).

The Scriptures talk about the Word of God growing three different times in Acts (6:7; 12:24; 19:20). We tend to equate the Scriptures and the Word of God, but the apostles didn’t. They believed the Word of God is either Jesus or the entire message of God, in whatever form it came. One major form is that the Word of God lives in us, planted like a seed. It can grow because as the number of disciples multiply, the Word of God grows.

We can say that the Scriptures are the standard by which we must live our lives, but could the apostles’ churches say that? I’ve read all the writings of the second century church, and I can tell you–along with the agreement of pretty much every Christian scholar you want to check–that the New Testament writings were not gathered together until about a hundred years after Jesus died.

And do you know how they gathered the New Testament writings?

They were not gathering “inspired” writings. They were not gathering “New Testament” writings. They were gathering the writings of apostles and men who accompanied the apostles. They wanted all and any they could find.

It was the apostles who were inspired, not just their writings. (For example, see 2 Thess. 2:15 and verses like 1 Cor. 11:2 and 14:37.) The New Covenant has never been about a book. It has been about God pouring out his Spirit on all flesh, bringing them into the church, and making of them a family that would glorify his name by their love for God, their love for each other, and their disdain for the things of the world.

Boxing up God, the Scriptures, and the Gospel

I’m so sorry, dear reader, that writing like this is so limited. Today we’ve boxed everything up and made everything nice and tidy.

God’s never been that way. He’s always left questions and things we don’t understand. He doesn’t care about our fitting his grand plan into our limited human minds. He cares about our trust and obedience. He wants us to know him, for eternal life is to know him, not to pass a test on his plan of salvation (Jn. 17:3).

The Original Faith

My goal is not to convince you of things, but to let you look at the faith that’s been handed to us. The original faith consisted of a firm trust that God sent Jesus, Jesus sent the apostles, and the apostles raised up churches to preserve the truth. Those churches all had a basic “rule of faith” to keep them on the straight and narrow. The Apostles Creed is a 4th century “rule of faith.”

When you read the writings of the 2nd century church, it’s such a glorious thing to see the purity of original Christianity. They held firm to the foundation that “The Lord knows those who are his, and let those who name the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). They demanded that Christians accept the basic truths, the sort of things outlined in the Nicene Creed, but after that, “sound doctrine” was much more like what is described in Titus 2 than the sort of things we argue about today.

They honored those who lived holy lives. In fact, one early Christian said, “We don’t speak great things; we live them.”

When they defended Christianity, they spoke of the divinity of Christ’s teachings and how the Spirit of God empowered them to be delivered from greed and lust and to live lives of good conscience. Further, they stood gallantly during persecution, arguing that the bravery of the martyrs was proof of the power of the Spirit of God in the lives of Christians.

Misusing the Scriptures

I love the Scriptures. I hope, as you can see, that I study them thoroughly. I pattern my life after them, and I quote them in defense of all I say. If what I say can’t be found in the Scriptures, then what I say can be rightly rejected.

But we’ve done something awful with the Scriptures in the modern era. As I read today in a George MacDonald book, there are too many people who are “more desirous of understanding what they are supposed to understand than of doing what they are supposed to do.”

We argue and fight over doubtful matters. We make our determinations of what is true based on our intellectual interpretations of Scripture, when in fact Jesus (in Scripture) taught us to judge our teachers by their fruit and not by their confident interpretations (Matt. 7).

The Doctrine According to Godliness

We need to relearn the “doctrine according to godliness” as mentioned by Paul in 1 Tim. 6:3. Because our doctrine is according to intellect and argument, rather than according to godliness, we are what Paul describes in 1 Tim. 6:4-5:

He has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved minds and deprived of the truth.

Let us set ourselves to obeying Jesus Christ and honoring him by our lives.

Evolution and Doubtful Disputes

I have a web site on evolution. That is not because I think that Christians need to take a position on evolution, nor because I want anyone at all to agree it’s true. What I want is that men who have boxed up the Word of God and wrapped a book cover around him do not splinter the church of God into fighting factions over doubtful subjects.

The mark of a Christian is not that he agrees that Genesis one is literal … nor that it’s not literal. The mark of a Christian is that by the power of the Spirit of God he obeys Jesus Christ, living a life marked by the love of God.

We have enough work achieving that goal, but modern Christians have forgotten that it is a goal. They have become confused into thinking that Christianity is a mere understanding of and assent to the atonement.

Salvation is not a plan; it’s a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Posted in Bible, Church, Evolution and Creation, Gospel, History, Holiness, Modern Doctrines, Unity | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Revelation and Repentance

Posted on 10/29/2011 by Paul Pavao

This is another post that I need to hear.

With gentleness [correct] those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been help captive by him to do his will. (2 Tim. 2:25-26, NASB)

Repentance, according to this passage, requires revelation. God has to grant our opponents repentance that will lead to the knowledge of the truth.

This should be liberating for us. We do not have to make our arguments strong enough to convince the hard-hearted and foolish. We only have to make our arguments well enough, and with gentleness, to please God. God will take it from there.

Any of you who have ever had a word from God lodge in your heart knows how unshakeable the conviction of the Lord is. That word will pierce like a thorn until you either give in or make a conscious choice to turn your back on God and choose evil.

One final note. This is not the only place that says repentance must be given by God:

They quieted down and glorified God, saying, "Well, then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that that leads to life." (Acts 11:18b, NASB)

 

Posted in Gospel, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Foolishness of the Message Preached

Posted on 10/28/2011 by Paul Pavao

“It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”

For those of us who fancy ourselves apologists, it can be difficult to rest in the foolishness of the message preached. We want to be able to explain the reasonableness of the Gospel, and we hope to make the path to faith easier and the response of God more sure by our guidance.

It is true that the Gospel is a confrontation and an ultimatum, whether we like it or not. We cannot help God respond nor make the Gospel more palatable. Either what we preach is true and God will back it up with supernatural power or we need to find something different to preach. The true Gospel is powerful whether we can explain it or not. When it seems foolish to men that Christ died for sins, then God is all the more pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached.

Let us beware lest in our human wisdom and desire to “help” God that we become guilty of preaching a palatable but false Gospel that God must oppose.

“I will bring the wisdom of the wise to nothing.”

Posted from my iPhone

Posted in Gospel | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Division and Heresy

Posted on 10/20/2011 by Paul Pavao

In the last post I discussed baptism in Jesus’ name. I mentioned that those who deny the Trinity are the ones who normally bring this up.

Their belief is that God is only one person. To them, Jesus is the Father, is the Son, and is the Holy Spirit. God is "the Father in creation, the Son in redemption, and the Holy Ghost in the church."

This doctrine—which has been called modalism, Sabellianism, and "Jesus only"—is one of the oldest heresies. Sabellius and Praxeas were excommunicated for holding the doctrine in the early third century, just 150 years after the time of the apostles.

Even more interestingly, Tertullian, writing about the same time that Sabellius and Praxeas were excommunicated, explains that the majority of Christians held to some version of "Jesus only" because they were too simple and uneducated to grasp the concept of "the Trinity in Unity."

The question I want to put before us today is whether we ought to excommunicate modern Sabellians. Should we avoid fellowship with the "Jesus only" churches today?

My answer to that question is yes, but I want to qualify that answer.

Of course we have to reject them. That is the historical position of the church. It is clear that the teaching of the Trinity is what the apostles handed down to the church, and the church really cannot have rebellious members teaching things that are certainly contrary to apostolic teaching.

In this case, I’m referring not only to apostolic teaching, but to a teaching that the apostles considered important.

For us there is but one God, the Father … and one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (1 Cor. 8:6)

That verse can be a bit of a struggle for modern Trinitarians, who don’t hold to exactly the apostolic doctrine of the Trinity, either; however, 1 Cor. 8:6 definitely flies in the face of modalist teaching. (I have a book on the subject.)

It is not just scripturally, but historically, that it is obvious that the modalists contradict apostolic teaching. The very basis of every early church creed was the Trinity!

What About Godly "Jesus Only" Believers I’ve Met?

I’ve met my share of godly modalists. I’ve met my share of hard-nosed, judgmental, critical modalists, too, but it’s not those I’m concerned about. It’s the godly ones, who actually seem to be marked with love that I’m concerned about.

"Everyone that loves is born of God," says the apostle.

Is that true?

I certainly believe that’s true, just as I believe all theological teaching that comes from an apostle. I assume that most of my readers agree because it’s in the Bible (1 Jn. 4:7).

So what about a modalist who by John’s definition is born of God?

My answer is that we attach too much to being born of God.

Being born of God is apart from works. Being born of God means that you have received the Spirit and grace of God so that you are able to obey and follow God. You must still "sow to the Spirit" and "not grow weary in doing good" if you want to reap eternal life (Gal. 6:7-10). I know that’s unthinkable heresy to a lot of people, but that’s the simple Gospel of the early church, and it’s easily justifiable to anyone who is familiar with Scripture.

We cannot ignore Scripture just because a person is born of God. We are supposed to mark those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine we have learned. In the modern era, we take that way too far, but we are not taking it too far when we forbid a Christian to teach modalism, a doctrine which has been condemned by the church since it reared its head in rebellion to the apostles’ appointed successors and to their churches 1800 years ago.

Such a person may find mercy at the judgment seat of Christ. A modalist walking in love, as far as I can tell, may well find himself among the sheep who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and visited the sick and imprisoned. We are not given indication in the Scriptures that people will be judged for misunderstanding the Trinity. We are given indication that they will be judged for ignoring the needy (Matt. 25:31-46).

Nonetheless, we are told to reject heretics after the first or second admonition (Tit. 3:10). Today, that word "heretics" might best be translated as "forcefully opinionated men causing divisions." The fact that they might go to heaven does not give them the freedom to trouble the saints and divide the church.

I’d be curious for any feedback, especially scriptural feedback, that you might have for me on this.

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Baptism in Jesus Name

Posted on 10/18/2011 by Paul Pavao

Let’s add a new dimension to this blog, and let me begin by asking you for a moment’s prayer. Together, we might be able to change a life in our spare moments doing things like this.

Today, I’d like to ask you to pray for Sue. I met Sue at the hospital, and she’s been consistently sending me little emails of encouragement as I’ve been going through my treatment for leukemia. In the meantime, Sue’s leukemia is in remission. It’s been about a year and a half. If she makes it to the two-year mark she’ll be considered cured, but we want to pray that she’s cured way past the two-year mark and that her life continues to make an impact in the life of others.

Thank you!

Baptism in Jesus Name

Okay, today’s post is from an email I wrote to a friend who’s a missionary. He’s doing great work for Christ (you can pray for him, too: Jason Fitzpatrick in Mexico), but occasionally I get to help him with some detail of history or theology. I’m very honored when I get to do that, as I don’t really feel worthy to be advising people who are doing the kinds of things Jason is doing.

Anyway, he asked about why baptism is always said to be in Jesus’ name in the Bible except that one time in Matthew 28:19.

I know Jason, and he’s a practical and insightful man. So I addressed what the real issue is, which is what do we do when we baptize. This also touches a little on the Trinity because most people who object to baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit object to the whole concept of the Trinity.

So, here it is:

*****************

Personally, I think we’re missing the point.

In the name does not mean that we’re saying his name while we are baptizing. In the name means that we are doing it by his authority or on his behalf. If we are sent out in a King’s name, it doesn’t mean that every time we do something we say, "In the name of the king I post this poster on a tree for the 375th time."

No, if someone asks us why we’re doing it, we say, "We’re doing it in the name of the king, who ordered us to do it."

So we can say, "I baptize you in the name of Jesus," and that can be baptizing in his name … IF YOU’RE SENT BY HIM TO BAPTIZE. However, if you’re sent by him to baptize, you can also say, "Welcome to the church," and it would still be in Jesus’ name. What you say doesn’t matter. Whether he sent you to baptize matters.

Thus, there is no difference between baptizing in Jesus’ name and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for their authority is one and the same.

Getting hung up on technicalities, in my opinion, is the work of the devil to create division among Christians. It’s okay to study such things. I have studied such things, and I recommend that others who are called to teach do the same. However, we who act in the name of Jesus must remember the heart of the one who sends us. Is he hung up on the words we pronounce? If so, then we should be, too. If he is not hung up on the exact name we pronounce, but we are, then we can say "in the name of Jesus," but we are not acting in his name; we are acting on our own.

Posted in Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

What Are We Holding Onto?

Posted on 10/08/2011 by Paul Pavao

I’m still filing away old emails from after transferring from a PC to a Mac and from the Mozilla Thunderbird email program to Mac’s "Mail."

In the process, I ran across a June 9 email from Christianity Today that focused solely on evolution, and more specifically on the historicity of Adam and Eve. That newsletter sent me to this article, titled "The Search for the Historical Adam."

The issue I want to discuss today is not whether Adam was a historical figure, though I imagine most of you know I consider the garden story an obvious allegory, even less likely to be an actual historical story than "The Prodigal Son" or "The Good Samaritan" because those don’t involve talking snakes and trees that can make you live forever (even if God doesn’t want you to!).

What I want to discuss is where we’re going to stand if we come to agreement, as I’m sure we will eventually will, that man evolved. In the 1600’s, we came to agreement that the earth moves around the sun against the literalist (and Lutheran and Calvinist) interpretation of Psalm 93:1. Eventually, and probably soon, denying evolution is going to look so foolish that Christians in general will no longer take that stand.

Sorry for the term "foolish," but it is the concern about looking foolish, not truth or evidence, that is going to turn the evolution deniers. We might as well be honest about our human nature. You can forcefully overcome it and pursue objective truth, but the huge majority of us don’t.

Anyway, an evangelicalism "expert" (an expert on evangelicalism???) at a policy center in Washington "call[ed] the new thinking the new thinking an ‘urgent’ and ‘potentially paradigm-shifting’ development with ‘huge theological implications.’"

It does have huge theological implications, but they are implications we are going to face whether we like it or not. As Francis Collins and Karl Giberson put it, "unfortunately" the concepts of Adam and Eve as the literal first couple and ancestors of all humans simply "do not fit the evidence" (The Language of Science and Faith as cited by the referenced and linked Christianity Today article).

So What Are Those Implications?

If we have to admit that Adam and Eve were not literal people and that the Garden story is the allegory that it seems to be, then where do we stand? What do we have left?

What I’m afraid of is that most Christians have nothing more than a religion they’ve been talked into with a book that they honor for reasons they do not understand. Those Christians will be left with nothing at all. For them, Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, is correct. Their whole religion will crumble.

I used the word "honor" in the preceding paragraph advisedly. I do not agree that such Christians believe the Bible. They only reverence it. Try sometime to get two "Bible-believing" Christians to agree on what the Bible says about some point of difference. It doesn’t take much effort to see that neither cares what the Bible actually says; they care only about what their particular tradition has taught them.

Today, most traditions which include people who reject evolution have taught their adherents to reverence the Bible in a way that borders on worship. They have also taught their followers to equate their traditions with accurate Bible interpretation. Anyone who disagrees with them is wrong by definition and is thus at least somewhat separated from God.

Embracing evolution for Christians from those traditions looks like leaving the faith. They have to face the following horrifying consequences, all of which violate their tradition, and each of which represents one step away from following God.

  • There was death before Adam
  • Our sin nature is not the consequence of the fall but the natural consequence of evolution
  • The Bible is not historically literal throughout
  • The Bible is errant when it comes to science

There are probably others, but we don’t need to mention them because these are enough to ensure ostracization from their denomination or tradition.

Finally, one of the worse fears these Christians have is that the only alternative to their strict literalism is a liberal Christianity that embraces homosexual pastors and exchanges holiness for social programs that are not even personal but run by governments and large organizations.

A Purely Intellectual Christianity

I want to point out here that all four of those bullet points above are nothing but statements that can be written down in a doctrinal statement. Not a single one of them is an action, nor can any of them be transformed into an action at all.

I assert that the majority of evangelical Christianity is primarily an intellectual theory. Yes, many Christians live a life that is "holy" by New Testament standards that evangelical Christians agree on: no sex outside of marriage, respect for others, kindness, regular prayer, etc.

However, this is not primary to evangelical Christianity because evangelical Christianity has a powerful emphasis on Paul’s phrase, "not of works." Living a life of obedience to the teachings of Christ has to take a back seat to acknowledging all the purely intellectual assertions of the evangelical traditions.

And those purely intellectual assertions are threatened by evolution.

Evolution and a Practical, Spiritual Christianity

I’m not afraid to see those intellectual assertions crash. They don’t belong to apostolic Christianity anyway.

Sometimes I wonder how the Bible could say things so clearly, yet so many of us miss it. Of course, I know the answer to that. Most Christians are not Bible believers; they are holders of tradition.

For example, Paul says very clear what is at the foundation of Christianity in 2 Timothy 2:19:

God’s foundation stands firm, and inscribed on it is this:
The Lord knows those who are his
And let him who names the name of Christ withdraw from unrighteousness

Now there is action, and it was primary to Paul. In fact, he said it is what is inscribed on God’s foundation, rather than all those “I believe’s” that are inscribed on denominational foundations.

I don’t know how many times evangelicals have responded to this with, "Well, Paul said sound doctrine is important."

This is sound doctrine!!

There’s only one passage that specifically defines sound doctrine. It’s the entire chapter of Titus 2. Go read it. There isn’t anything remotely similar to "no death before Adam."

In fact, it ends by saying that Jesus died "to purify a unique people for himself, zealous for good works."

Right before that, it tells us that the purpose of grace is not to convince us that we can go to heaven no matter how we live but to teach us to "deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age."

In Romans 6:14—so that we can move out of the so-called "pastoral epistles" into the so-called "faith epistles"—Paul tells us that grace is what breaks sin’s power over us, so that we can stop being slaves of sin. There again, in Romans 8:3-4, Paul tells us that is the reason Jesus died. He says something similar in Romans 14:9, telling us that Jesus died so that he could be Lord of both the living and the dead.

This sort of theology, which as you can see I’m merely quoting from the Bible, is not intellectual. It is powerful, difficult, and puts us in a daily struggle against sin which Jesus’ death has empowered us to win.

Paul describes that struggle in Galatians 5:16-18 and again in Galatians 6:7-9. It is described very similarly in Romans 8:5-14, but my favorite description is in 2 Peter 1:3-11.

What is Christianity? It is the death of Christ to deliver us from the power of sin so that our lives can be so utterly transformed that we can be described as "born again" and "a new creation." It is the resurrection of Christ who lives in us by the Spirit of God so that our lives are noticeably divine.

That Christianity is not threatened by evolution. Who cares whether Adam evolved when we are no longer sons of Adam but sons of God? (I love the fact that 1 Corinthians 15 calls Jesus the second man, but the last Adam. He is the last Adam, whose death and resurrection creates a new race of men, the children of God.)

Since I have put myself in conflict with a proclamation from strict literalists—by whom I mean people who strictly believe that their interpretations are accurate no matter how much they don’t match the Bible—I want to make an appeal to Jesus’ standard for conflict resolution when it comes to the proclamation of his teachings:

Beware of the false prophets … you shall know them by their fruits. (Matt. 7:15-16)

You decide what message produces truly good fruit.

Posted in Bible, Evolution and Creation, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Communist Goals and How They’ve Succeeded

Posted on 09/26/2011 by Paul Pavao

I don’t normally write about politics, but this post is going to sound like I’m a sap for conspiracy theories. The fact is, I write off most things that even sound like a conspiracy theory, because conspiracy theorists have proven to be universally untrustworthy in my experience.

I’m just going to tell you what I know; do with it what you want. I’m not even a Republican; I voted for Obama, though I’m not a Democrat, either.

Today a friend sent me a video that sounds like a bunch of malarkey. It’s a state congressman who says that he attended a communist meeting in 1992 which outlined goals like promoting women’s lib and homosexuality in order to destroy families. He also said that they talked about promoting environmentalism to destroy businesses, and in this way they hoped to bring America down.

What he says is adjusted somewhat from what I heard in an Air Force briefing during basic training in 1982. My briefing didn’t mention environmentalism, and the emphasis I remember was the promotion of pornography and a general openness to sexual immorality.

I was told that this goal, of eroding America’s morals to destroy her, was written in a communist book. Then the goals were read to us. The video by this state congressman lists some of those very goals at the end.

Pretty much every one of those goals has been successfully met.

I will add one thing. When I was in public school it was taught as obviously true and common knowledge that Rome fell because its citizens became selfish and immoral, and laziness and self-indulgence went with the selfishness and immorality.

I don’t believe that’s taught anymore.

I remember moving to California in 1990 and being shocked by the open scoffing at a selfless life. It was considered naive to share and to help others. "Look out for number one" was the motto.

I had heard "look out for number one" growing up, but it was considered foolish advice, and it was usually said as a joke or a poor attempt to justify behavior that was socially unacceptable.

Not in California. Self-promotion, self-protection, self-indulgence, and turning your head to the needs of the person next to you were considered the appropriate way to live.

I was shocked.

Today, however, no one is shocked at such awful advice. It’s now the American way to live, not just the Californian way to live.

I don’t know if communists have enough power to capitalize on their erosion of America’s values, but they carefully outlined a plan over 50 years ago, and they have completely succeeded. It’s sad that the victims are children. The statistics on the difference between children raised in a home with two parents and children raised with a divorce in their lives are dramatic.

Enough said. Here’s the video:

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Nicene Creed, New Catholic Wording, and What’s Really Important

Posted on 09/23/2011 by Paul Pavao

First of all, I mean no disrespect to an an excellent article by Dr. Edward Sri. I’m just using it as a push off to complain about how we avoid important issues.

There’s a lot of interesting points in Dr. Sri’s article, and I don’t disagree with any of them. His article is reverent and focused on practical spirituality. If there’s anything I support, it’s practical spirituality. He’s taking the Nicene Creed and talking about how it practically relates to Christians, in this case Roman Catholic Christians in particular.

Good for him. This post is not directed at him.

When are we going to tell people the more shocking news about the Council of Nicea? I cannot possibly be the only one who knows it!

No, I’m not talking about the nonsense Dan Brown put in The Da Vinci Code, which he got from the discredited books Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Passover Plot.

What I am talking about is the wording "consubstantial," a translation of the Greek word homoousios. According to Dr. Sri, the Roman Catholics are changing the translation in the Nicene Creed from the previous "one in being."

It makes no difference to me which way they translate it. Either way, the reason that the Nicene bishops used the term homoousios is because they did not believe, as Dr. Sri put it, that the son was "a distinct divine person who has existed from all eternity." Well, at least not in the way we understand the phrase.

Christians of the second, third, and early fourth centuries universally applied Proverbs 8:22 to apply to the Son of God in the beginning. They read it in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and so they read it this way:

The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works.

To those early Christians, Jesus was "made" by the Father. They did not understand this to be "made" in the same sense that everything else was made. The difference between the Son and everything else is that all of creation was created from nothing. Not the Son. He was "made" from the substance of God, a process normally referred to by the church as being born or generated, not made.

To those early Christians, Jesus was quite literally the "Word" of God. To them, however, the Greek word Logos was a much bigger word than "Word." It could be translated reason, mind, or thought to them as well. In fact, here’s a very interesting description of logos by Tertullian, who wrote very early in the third century:

Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought … Whatever you think, there is a word … You must speak it in your mind …
     Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech … The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness you are? (Against Praxeas 5)

To those early Christians, the Son of God was originally only the Logos of God, that "voice" inside of God. He was not the Son until, sometime before he created everything, God "made me the beginning of his ways for his works."

Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, the apostle Paul’s home church wrote the following just a century after Paul died:

What else is this voice but the Logos of God, who is also his Son? (To Autolycus II:22)

Theophilus adds:

This is what the holy Scriptures teach us … John says, "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God," showing that at first God was alone, and the Logos was in him. (ibid.)

There was a time—though before time was created—according to the early Christians, that the Son was inside the father, not yet begotten or generated or made. What word you used for what happened didn’t matter because the generation of the Son was beyond anything that man can understand.

Arius changed all that. He made terminology important. When Arius came along, he argued that the Son had not existed prior to his creation by God, and thus the Council banned the terminology "made," even though it’s used in Proverbs 8:22.

This we all know, but what we aren’t told is that the Council of Nicea did not argue in return that the Son had always existed as a distinct person. They argued that the beginning of his existence as a distinct person was not a creation from nothing but the generation of the Logos from inside of the Father. He was, literally, a Son—"begotten, not made."

Do not let anyone think it is ridiculous that God should have a Son … The Son of God is the Word of the Father. (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 10; A.D. 177)

Just to drive the point home, let me point out that Athenagoras also said:

He is the first product of the Father, not as though he was being brought into existence, for from the beginning God … had the Logos in himself. (ibid.)

We can change the translation of homoousios from "one in being" to "consubstantial," and, as Dr. Sri suggests, it may be a good thing. I really think, however, that someone needs to tell modern Christians what ancient Christians meant by homoousios, which is that the Son was birthed, before the beginning, from out of God, and that he was not always a distinct person. There was a time when God was alone, and the Logos was still inside of him.

Note: Starting with the training school at Alexandria, a teaching began to arise that anything that happened before the beginning must have happened before time was created. Since time was not yet created, then whatever happened before the beginning had always happened. Thus, there had never been, according to the school at Alexandria, a "time" when the Son was not yet generated. The school at Alexandria was highly influential in the fourth century. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that a number of the bishops at Nicea would have concurred that there wasn’t actually ever a time when the Son was still inside the Father. That does not, however, change the meaning of the Greek word homoousios in the Nicene Creed.

There’s more information and more quotes at Christian History for Everyman, and there’s even more in my book, In the Beginning Was the Logos.

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Churches as Communities (Larry Crabb)

Posted on 09/15/2011 by Paul Pavao

A friend posted this quote on Facebook. It’s too good to pass up. I have nothing to add to it. I just want to tell you it’s from Larry Crabb. I haven’t read any of his booksin over 20 years, but this quote got me thinking that maybe I ought to go read him again!

Churches are rarely communities. More often they are social machines that run smoothly for a while, break down, then are fixed so they run smoothly again or noisily chug along as best they can. The invitation to greet pew mates during the early part of the worship service typically leads nowhere. It’s often nothing more than a squirt of oil on the gears. You could state your name was Bob or Howard or Rita or Sue and it would make no difference. Those kinds of interactions rarely create community – they more often substitute for it. The path of the Spirit is so very different. It’s narrower, steeper, and straighter than any other. It’s a path traveled only by worshipers who celebrate their dependence on God and each other by turning their chairs toward a small community of friends and sticking with them, and who find the power of God’s Spirit to make community work. They know that God gives them his Spirit and works miracles both in them and among them, not because they cleverly make it happen, but because they revel in their dependence and learn to hear the Spirit’s voice.

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Christian History News In Focus: Has Evangelicalism Been Disproven by an Evangelical?

Posted on 09/14/2011 by Paul Pavao

A blog called "Shameless Popery," which makes its way into my Google Alerts on a regular basis, posted an article called "An Evangelical Disproves Evangelicalism".

The evangelical in question is Scot McKnight. I am only slightly familiar with him. I already thought he was a good historian, but the citations in the Shameless Popery article make it clear he’s far more. He’s to be commended for the well-spoken insights quoted there.

To be sure, Protestant denominations have a functional, if somewhat fuzzy, “teaching magisterium” within their ranks, but that magisterium can be denied at any time by most pastors and certainly by all individuals with no more powerful punishment than banishment from the local church so the person can join a church of his own choosing.

Ouch!

McKnight is a Protestant. He is not Catholic, but his quotes were ample fodder—and justifiably so—for Shameless Popery’s arguments. Mr. Heschmeyer concludes there:

  • If the Church has binding authority over the individual, then Catholicism is true. She’s the Church that the Reformers disobeyed.
  • If the Church doesn’t have binding authority over the individual, then it’s theological anarchy.

I have made it clear on this blog that I believe in the authority of the church. Paul called it the pillar and support of the truth and said that in it all fullness dwells (1 Tim. 3:15; Eph. 1:23).

But it is an immense leap of logic to say that if the church has binding authority over the individual, then Catholicism is true.

Why Catholicism? Why not Eastern Orthodoxy, which is the organizational, earthly leftover of the ancient apostolic churches in the east, just as the Roman Catholic organization is in the west. Eastern Orthodoxy rejects the claims of the pope.

Since one of the most foundational teachings of the New Testament is that carnal lineage does not necessarily impart spiritual lineage, Shameless Popery’s leap of logic is invalid. (As a interesting grammar side note, this leap of logic is called "begging the question," a phrase which is losing its true meaning today.)

Scot McKnight’s statements are Scriptural and accurate; it is only Shameless Popery’s conclusions that do not follow. The statement that "the church" is important and has authority in the individual Christian’s life (though not the carnal, unsubmitted authority wielded by organizations, which can never themselves be churches) does not identify that church.

Identification of "the church" in the eyes of the God can be made on a Scriptural and historical basis.

Shameless Popery would have us identify the Roman Catholic Church as the church simply because it was the organization that happened to be mistreating the Reformers and enslaving Europe at the time (see their statement above), one of the most inept, uncaring, and cruel governing bodies in the history of mankind. I’m not sure what sort of logic would conclude that because a religious organization wielded great political power, it must be the church of God, but I can’t go there.

Even if the RCC had been the church, the Reformers would have been left without choice. None of the Reformers left the RCC by their own volition. All were driven out after standing up against either awful violations of human decency (Luther) or complete loss of the Christian Gospel (Calvin, Zwingli). Listen to the reasons John Calvin gave for taking a stand against corruption while he was a Catholic priest:

We deny not that those over whom you preside are churches of Christ, but we maintain that the Roman pontiff, with his whole herd of pseudo-bishops, who have seized upon the pastor’s office, are ravening wolves, whose only study has hitherto been to scatter and trample upon the kingdom of Christ, filling it with ruin and devastation. …
     They charged me with two of the worst of crimes—heresy and schism. And the heresy was, that I dared to protest against dogmas which they received. But what could I have done? …
     Those who were regarded as the leaders of faith, neither understood Thy Word, nor greatly cared for it. They only drove unhappy people to and fro with strange doctrines, and deluded them with I know not what follies. Among the people themselves, the highest veneration paid to Thy Word was to revere it at a distance, as a thing inaccessible, and abstain from all investigation of it.
     Owing to this supine state of the pastors, and this stupidity of the people, every place was filled with pernicious errors, falsehoods, and superstition. … They figured and had for themselves as many gods as they had saints, whom they chose to worship.Thy Christ was indeed worshipped as God, and retained the name of Saviour; but where He ought to have been honored, He was left almost without honor. For, spoiled of His own virtue, He passed unnoticed among the crowd of saints, like one of the meanest of them.
     There was none who duly considered that one sacrifice which He offered on the cross, and by which He reconciled us to Thyself—none who ever dreamed of thinking of His eternal priesthood, and the intercession depending upon it—none who trusted in His righteousness only. That confident hope of salvation which is both enjoined by Thy Word, and founded upon it, had almost vanished. (Ref: my page on John Calvin and Cardinal Sadolet)

Does Calvin exaggerate?

"The church," as Shameless Popery claims it to be, was regularly executing people for attempting to put the Scriptures into the language and the hands of common people. They burned John Huss alive, burned William Tyndale after they strangled him, and when they could not get their hands on John Wycliffe, the RCC had his remains dug up and his bones burned 12 years after his death!

The RCC’s efforts to prevent the preaching of the Gospel were so extreme as to include the murder of those who did preach it by means of government officials which they controlled.

Perhaps Calvin put it too mildly.

The fact that the Reformers were driven out by this organization proves that it is "the church"???

As I said, I cannot conceive of any logic that would justify such a conclusion.

So What and Where Is the Church?

Spiritual descent has always triumphed physical descent:

Do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. (John the Baptist, Matt. 3:9, NASB)

If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the deeds of Abraham. … You are of your father the devil. (Jesus, John 8:39,44)

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. 29 But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. (Apostle Paul, Rom. 2:28-29, NASB)

This post is long enough, and I have written on this subject on this blog extensively, so I will simply say that to the apostles and among their churches for over a century, "the church" was the local church. Across the world, it was the churches that constituted "the church."

And the local church is headed up by Jesus Christ, consisting of disciples who have committed themselves to Christ and to one another. It has and needs leaders; its members have formed and used various levels of organizations; but the church can never be and organization. There is a huge difference between committing yourself to a family that you have been born into through the Spirit and signing up as a member of an organization and agreeing to its bylaws.

Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (2 Tim. 2:22)
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