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.

Posted in Christian History News in Focus, History, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

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.

Posted in Church, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

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)
Posted in Christian History News in Focus, Church, Roman Catholic & Orthodox | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Has Hell Always Been Forever?

Posted on 09/13/2011 by Paul Pavao

I’ve been putting up Christian history "news" posts on my Christian History for Everyman site. That’s not really a blog, though, and I’m learning there are some benefits to the blog setup.

So I’m moving those here, and I’ll just link to them from my Christian history site.

Today, Google Alerts informed me of a blog that I immediately liked (and subscribed to). It turns out the guy, George Sarris, is a professional speaker as well as a trained theologian, so it’s not surprising he’s so interesting. In fact, he has an excellent blog post on the Nicene Creed and unity, a subject on which I wrote an entire book.

But the post I wanted to comment on is called Hell: It Hasn’t Always Been Forever. In it, he writes:

Actually, Origen was not the first or most noted “universalist” in the early years of the Christian Church, and the belief was not a minority view held only by him and a few isolated followers. According to nineteenth century pastor and theologian Edward Beecher (1803-1895) – son of Lyman Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and one time pastor of Park Street Church in Boston – four of the six theological schools in the ancient church favored some form of ultimate restoration, while only one favored endless punishment.

I can’t blame Mr. Sarris for this deceptive piece of information. He did get it from someone else, but this paragraph paints, in my opinion, a very inaccurate picture.

The blog goes on to mention Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, and Gregory Nazianzus as fellow universalists, along with Origen.

Let’s take a look at what that really means.

Origen … of Alexandria

Origen belongs to the first half of the 3rd century. Basil and the two Gregories belong to the middle and late 4th century. Further, Basil was the brother of Gregory of Nyssa, and all three were friends. They are also all from the Middle East shortly after the Council of Nicea when the teachings of the church in Alexandria, the place where Origen was trained as a teacher, reigned as the supreme example of intellectual orthodoxy.

Clement of Alexandria was a lot closer to Origen’s time, preceding him by one generation. However, Clement of Alexandria directly trained Origen, who spent most of his adult life in Caesarea only after he was excommunicated by the church in Alexandria. (He was excommunicated for teaching in Caesarea at the invitation of the church in Caesarea. Apparently the bishop of Alexandria at that time was a slave of jealousy. Too bad, a long line of truly gifted and gracious men came after him.)

Clement was one of the most notable teachers of his time, and he helped make Origen one of the most notable teachers of his time. In fact, throughout the third century the church of Alexandria was famous for its scholarly nature and its great teachers, who were all acquainted with and highly influenced by Origen’s writings.

The Influence of Alexandria on Fourth Century Scholars

Thus, it is no surprise, really, that the great controversy which led to the Council of Nicea began in Alexandria. After Nicea, the leader of the orthodox party was Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. All eastern scholars had to be acquainted with the Alexandrian way of thinking, and those eastern scholars would have included three leading teachers, the friends Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus, and Basil the Great.

The point of all this is that it does no good whatsoever to add the names of Clement, the two Gregories, and Basil to Origen’s name as supporting universal reconciliation. That is not "four schools out of six," but is one stream of thought beginning with Clement and spreading because of the influence of Origen.

Reading History Without Wishful Thinking

If someone wanted to really answer the question of what early Christians believe without muddying the waters by throwing out fancifully speculated numbers like "four schools out of six," he would address Origen’s position in his own time. The fact is, only Clement and Origen make any suggestions of universal reconciliation in their time. There are at least a dozen writers still extant from between A.D. 150 and 250, and it would be no problem to gather quotes proving that all of them believed in eternal punishment after death for the majority of human beings.

These authors can be shown to represent Christianity in general much more than Clement or Origen, who are both known to be willing to speculative on a wide range of subjects. Irenaeus, for example, was raised up under the teaching of Polycarp in Smyrna in Asia Minor, but later was highly influential and involved with many of the western churches because of his stature after he became a missionary to the Gauls in what is now Trier, Germany.

Irenaeus’ apologetic writings are an attempt to keep church leaders holding to the apostolic faith against the powerful influence of mystical, self-centered gnosticism.

Justin Martyr wrote apologetic writings defending Christianity against Roman paganism, and as a traveler he was widely familiar with the faith of the European churches. Theophilus was bishop of Antioch in Asia Minor, the apostle Paul’s home church. His work is an explanation of Christianity written to an unbeliever.

On and on the other writings of Clement and Origen’s time can be shown to have no purpose than to describe and defend Christianity as it was understood by all the apostolic churches in harmony.

Not so Clement and Origen. They were teachers writing instructional books to other believers in which they clearly felt free to interpret the Scriptures as they felt led.

In general, this was not a problem, nor were they under obligation to avoid doing so. Irenaeus, whom I mentioned above, makes it clear in his writings that outside the basics of the apostolic faith, teachers should feel free to speculate as long as they don’t change the nature of the faith itself.

Did Clement and Origen go too far?

Did Clement and Origen go too far by suggesting that the will of God is that all should be redeemed in eternity?

I think so. I think they overstepped their bounds, and I believe that any honest historian has to conclude that they stood alone on several of their views, including the subject of universal reconciliation.

I should point out that at this point, having read most of what Clement of Alexandria has written, I am not prepared to admit that Clement allowed for universal reconciliation, despite the quotes given. Such quotes are easily misinterpreted. I have not yet had the time to read back through Clement’s writings to verify things on my own yet.

That is not bias on my part. Even by modern standards, I could be labeled a liberal. Personally, I cannot agree with the thought that God would eternally torture people for any reason, and especially not for sins committed during a temporal period on earth. Further, I am a huge fan of Origen. He was one of the most committed, godly men who ever lived, and he was tortured for his faith. He was reliable, faithful, and slow to anger despite opposition from both the world and supposed friends (like the bishop of Alexandria who excommunicated him over jealousy against the will of the church in Caesarea).

Historical (and Apostolic) Christianity

On the other hand, the teaching that only a few find the gate of life came from Jesus himself. I do not believe that any Christian teacher, no matter how gifted, is free to change such basics of the faith. I personally don’t feel free to do so, either. The early churches universally believed that only a few would find the gate of life, and they considered part of the definition of the faith. (e.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I:10:1).

Whether you agree with me on that or not, the point I want to make in this post is that the historical facts say that Origen was alone in his view of universal reconciliation in his time. Adding the names of Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, and Gregory Nazianzus to Origen’s and then acting as though this changes anything is an act of historical dishonesty, all the more repugnant because so few Christians are in a position to be able to defend themselves against such chicanery.

Posted in Christian History News in Focus | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

A New Look at the Remission of Sins

Posted on 09/13/2011 by Paul Pavao

I can’t take any credit for this idea. I got a text from a brother today saying:

I was reading in Acts this morning, and in 2:38 Peter tells them to repent and be baptized for the remission of sins. Remission has a whole new meaning since following your experience with leukemia.

By this, he means that my leukemia is in remission. We don’t know whether it might return, but right now I have no symptoms or effects of leukemia.

Initially, I assumed that this use of "remission" is a great spiritual lesson but that it would have no grammatical validity.

My mistake:

From my Online Bible program, which attributes this definition to Thayer’s Lexicon (I incorrectly attributed this to Strong’s earlier):

  1. To release from bondage or imprisonment.
  2. forgiveness or pardon, of sins (letting them go as if they had never been committed), remission of the penalty

Okay, I’m going to ignore the temptation to complain about the ridiculous, redundant parentheses in that second definition and stick to my subject matter here. Notice that the first definition of the Greek word aphesis is the release from bondage or imprisonment, not forgiveness.

Now, I’m not denying that Acts 2:38 is talking about forgiveness. Baptism is for the forgiveness of sins. It’s just that it’s not only forgiveness as we are prone to think about forgiveness.

When I became sick with leukemia, I had symptoms. I had ugly lesions on my back; I was short of breath; I couldn’t play sports; I worked slowly and tired quickly.

When my leukemia went into remission, I was able to spend 3 weeks building up stamina so that I could jog, exercise, play sports, work without tiring, and sleep normally. Each day of exercise paid off in additional energy for the next day, the exact opposite of what I experienced under the power of blood cancer.

From experience I can tell you that remission from leukemia is truly a "release from bondage."

I’ll try to keep this short. You can make your own analogies, and you’ll get more from those analogies creating them yourself than if I do it for you. I’ll probably spend all day thinking about this.

The deliverance that Jesus Christ wrought in our lives (for it is Jesus Christ and not baptism that does the work) is truly a remission, in just the same sense that my deliverance from leukemia is a remission. Everything changes. Sin doesn’t have power over us anymore (Rom. 6:14). Where we used to be in bondage to our own desires, unable to overcome them and choose to do the will of God, now we are empowered by the Spirit to actually walk in the will of God that is revealed to us through the Spirit.

Even the exercise analogy applies. Now that the leukemia is in remission, I can exercise and get stronger. Before you were a Christian, your attempts to live in the righteousness of God would just exhaust you. The commands of Jesus Christ were overwhelming; they could not be done except by the rare few, like Mother Theresa or Gandhi.

No longer. Once we made partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:3-4), our obedience to the commands of Christ builds strength. We grow stronger in the Spirit, not exhausted from overwhelming service.

You’re in remission from sin! Get up and run!

If you’re not, you can be. Find someone where you are who is in remission from sin, and ask them how you can come to Christ for his healing.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

I Wish I Could Dodge the Evolution-Creation Controversy

Posted on 09/12/2011 by Paul Pavao

Soon, or perhaps already, a mutant army of mosquitoes and caterpillars are being unleashed in the Brazilian jungle.

Scientists have used gene therapy to engineer mosquitoes and moths that bear viable offspring, but those offspring are pre-programmed with a suicide gene. They will never make it to maturity. In other words, those mosquitoes and moths will have children, but they will never have grandchildren.

The idea is for these mutants to outcompete their non-mutant comrades and thus to put an end to the grandfather clause for mosquitoes! (Warning! There are several more bad puns in this otherwise very serious post.)

Let’s see dengue-carrying mosquitoes mutate their way out of that one!

The picture above is spider silk.

Spun by E. coli bacteria in petri dish.

It’s not stronger than steel, like an actual spider’s silk is. The E. coli must be lacking some cellular equipment that the spiders have. Further, their production of the silk is so slow—a few hundredths of an ounce in three hours—that the silk currently serves no commercial purpose.

Nonetheless, the common threads (pun not intended, but not removed, either) in these two stories is the transfer of genes between species and evolution.

We’re doing it in a lab.

Can We Really Reproduce Evolution in a Laboratory?

If you have even a small interest in science, you ought to subscribe to Discover.

If you want to get involved in the creation-evolution controversy and have any idea what you’re talking about, you really must subscribe to Discover or something like it. (That is, unless you’re a scientist reading the actual peer-reviewed articles.) Once you’ve started with sources like Discover and New Scientist (though Discover is much more interesting) I can show you how to follow up on and verify their articles with authoritative articles and studies.

So can we really re-create evolution in a laboratory?

Yes. The only reason we haven’t raised a Neanderthal in a lab is because:

  1. We’ve only recently sequenced the Neanderthal genome, and
  2. Most of us think it’s immoral or dangerous.

We already produce insulin for diabetics using yeast that’s been given the human gene for insulin production!

Do you understand that yeast is a fungi? It belongs to a different kingdom taxonomically. It is as unrelated to humans as any plant or bacteria. Yet we can install our genes in yeast and get the yeast to run those genes.

Our ability to convince E. coli to make spider silk and yeast to make human insulin ought to be a slam dunk for evolution. The argument ought to be over!

I’m telling you, folks; we (we being deeply-committed followers of Jesus Christ) are going to look as foolish today as we did back when we said the earth couldn’t possibly go around the sun.

Actually, we already do. What I mean is that it’s not going to be too awful long before the truth slaps us in the face so hard that we won’t be able to deny it anymore.

Learning on Purpose

The other day I ran across a web site on creationism. In other words, it’s against evolution, even though I can’t figure out why a person who believes in creation can’t make room for God to have created by evolution. On that site, I found:

How did a fish get lungs by accident? How did the precise, exact information to build a lung get written into a fish’s DNA code by natural selection? … Lungs are designed for breathing air. Why would a random accident even start building a lung in the first place? How could a mistake – a random accident in a DNA code – just happen to be exactly the right step leading to a DNA code for a lung?

Now that’s a good question, isn’t it?

Even I have to admit it’s a good question. It’s the sort of question that ought to be asked if we have any interest in knowing if evolution is true. (And if we’re going to say evolution is not true or, even more pertinently, if we’re going to accuse scientists of a conspiracy to deceive us, then we better have a good inkling whether evolution is true, or we’re really terrible people who will assuredly be judged by God for our slander against people who have been much more honest and diligent than ourselves.)

But if it’s the sort of question that ought to be asked, then it’s the sort of question that ought also to be answered!

The web site doesn’t answer it. It just leaves the question of how a fish’s lung could evolve hanging out there, suggesting to all of us that the question in unanswerable.

It’s not only answerable, but I know the answer.

We’re Christians, though. We don’t care, so I’m not going to bother with it. Let’s just continue on our awful path, loving our ignorance.

I guess I was in a bit of a mood today. Maybe it’s the chemo. I’m low on blood, the chemotherapy is still working, and as a result my head is swimming and I need more oxygen …

That’s so sad. I just couldn’t resist the last couple puns.

Posted in Evolution and Creation | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Was Cardinal John Henry Newman Correct?

Posted on 09/08/2011 by Paul Pavao

From the blog: Early Church Fathers:

Today, as Protestant theologians study the Fathers of the Early Church, they are awakening to the truth of Blessed John Henry Newman’s conclusion: "You cannot study the Fathers and remain a Protestant."

Is this true?

It’s obviously not universally true because I’ve been studying the "fathers" for over 20 years, and I’m still not only non-Catholic but actively opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. I know many in the same position.

It is true, however, that a lot of Protestants who begin to study the early church fathers soon convert to Roman Catholicism, or perhaps more commonly, to an Eastern Orthodox Church.

Why haven’t I?

I do not believe that a close doctrinal agreement with the early Christianity or even the apostles is the purpose of the Gospel. The purpose of the Gospel is to bring humans into relationship with their Creator through Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholics are correct in asserting that it is not just individual relationships that God is looking for. He is building a church with Jesus as head, which will be his body. As such, unity is critically important.

It is also true that most Protestants are either unaware of this or apallingly negligent of it.

What should be my reaction to this? Because Protestants are divided, should I then consider the Roman Catholic Church the only alternative and return to it?

Should I weigh which group of Christians, Catholics or Protestants, have a more correct view of the Lord’s Supper, of baptism, or of church government?

I think not.

Jesus said that we are to judge a prophet by his fruit.

The goal, as far as I can see in Scripture, is that Christians would received the Spirit of God, walk by that Spirit, and thus experience unity, love, and a holy life, astounding the world by their lovely, united discipleship to Jesus Christ.

I’m sorry to say it, but as a person who was raised Catholic, I never saw such fruit in a Roman Catholic congregation, not even one of them. In fact, I saw nothing remotely resembling it, and I attended Catholic mass regularly in North Dakota, Taiwan, Kansas, and Germany.

I rarely see such fruit in Protestant churches, either.

Here’s the problem:

  • In Roman Catholic congregations, the Mass, rituals, and a few correct beliefs have replaced discipleship. Most members show no signs of having the Spirit of God, and thus they do not have a practical unity, do not live as family to one another, and do not live holy lives.
  • In Protestant churches, meetings and correct beliefs have also replaced discipleship. Further, Protestant meetings have become almost excusively evangelism meetings, not the building up of the body of Christ described in Scripture. Thus, those who are living as disciples feel forced into boring "fellowship" with those who are not disciples. They do not feel free to form as the church with only those who truly follow Christ.

I assert that it is undeniable that the Christians of the second and early third centuries would have been horrified at what passes for the church in this century, and in fact in any century since the fourth.

Would they have been so horrified that they would have left the church to form a new church composed of only those who agree with them?

I don’t know. In the fourth century, I would not have left the church, either. However, like the monks who first appeared in the fourth century, I would have found real disciples to pursue Christ with, and I would have limited my contact with nominal Christians to evangelism (including friendship evangelism).

In the 20th century, however, Christians are already split into thousands of denominations. I have written repeatedly refuting the claims of the Roman Catholic Church (for example) to have succession and to be the only denomination to be authorized by God, so I will not bother with that here.

Suffice it to say that what would have mattered to third century Christians, and possible most third-century Christians, is the local church. They would have known that the Church as a whole consists of united churches, not one hierarchy with a pope, cardinals, and archbishops over it—nor a denominational board, as the Protestants often have.

The goal of the commandment, according to 1 Timothy 1:5 is "love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith." The early Christians would most certainly have agreed with that, and they would have rejected as Christian all who simply attended services as a spectator.

The earliest Christian writings enjoin daily fellowship, the sharing of possessions, and a walk with Christ so close and holy that reading those writings convicts the most godly of modern Christians. They knew nothing of the sort of Christianity lived by the vast majority of Catholics and Protestants.

Thus, my pursuit has remained to free Christians from their false obligation to attend "services," as though God had called them to a once a week performance. The gathering of the saints is important, but it is for the building up of the body, a place where each member exercises his gift, though most gifts are exercised in the daily lives of believers as they share their course together as one family.

I have chosen as my course to encourage the godly to be in fellowship with the godly and to treat the ungodly, even if they are baptized attenders of church, as those who need to be evangelized and delivered from their false religion as surely as a gnostic needed to be delivered from his false religion in the second century.

I do not agree with Cardinal Newman. To me, the early church fathers—at least the ones from before the fourth century when suddenly anyone could call themselves Christian—do not lead a person to the mostly nominal Catholic churches and to the later invented hierarchy that they wrongly refer to as the Church. The writings of the early church fathers lead us to deep commitment to Christ, to reliance upon the Holy Spirit, and to a Spirit-inspired close family relationship with those who pursue Christ as we do.

Posted in Church, Modern Doctrines, Roman Catholic & Orthodox | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments