Apostasy

Because I didn't get enough controversy on my last article, I thought I'd weigh in on apostasy.

26 "Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men.
27 "For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.
28 "Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
29 "I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
31 "Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
32 "And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
--Acts 20:26--32 (NASB)

When Paul was leaving Miletus, he spoke to the overseers (bishops) of the assembly in Ephesus. Part of his parting speech with the Ephesian overseers was the warning that apostasy was coming "after my departure," that it would come from among the leaders in the assembly, and it would be driven (at least in part) by a desire to build a following.

At the end of his life, Paul wrote to Timothy, who was in Ephesus. He gave Timothy this warning:

1 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
-- 2 Timothy 3:1--5 (NASB)

But when we get to the later epistles, we have warnings like the ones in Jude:

4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
-- Jude 4 (NASB)

And in 3 John:

9 I wrote something to the church; but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say.
--3 John (NASB)

1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, 2 Peter, and Revelation 2&3 all contemplate apostasy as something that was already underway and widespread. Jude and Peter tell us false teachers already had a foothold in the church, Revelation 2&3 talk about churches already caught up in idolatry (Thyatira), empty formalism (Sardis), and indifference to the Lord (Laodicea). 1 John claims there were many antichrists already, and 2 John warns against becoming entangled with those who denied the Christ.

I mention these to indicate that apostasy is not contemplated in Scripture as something that was going to happen, but as something that had already started. 2 Timothy 3 warns about the "last days," but 1 John tells us "Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour" (1 John 2:18, NASB). Hebrews starts "in these last days" and 2 Thessalonians 2:7 says "the mystery of lawlessness is already at work."

Now, it is certainly true that we expect things to get worse: evil always develops (consider Romans 1), and 2 Timothy assures us that things will get "worse and worse." Apostasy is not simply a state: it develops and grows.

It's also true that there have been revivals, renewals, and repentance in the last 2000 years. The state of apostasy is not absolute in the sense that there is no longer a remnant on the earth: God is still saving sinners. And not every Christian has apostasized. Revelation 2&3 contain a message for the "overcomer" in every church, even Thyatira and Laodicea.

But there can be no dispute that apostasy has been generally the state of things for the last 2000 years, since the Apostles died. Scripture explicitly claims that to be the case, our knowledge of church history concurs, and our personal experience agrees. Apostasy characterizes the Church.

There are a couple interesting points in all the warnings of apostasy:
First, Scripture almost always talks about apostasy as a top-down process. It's not that the people apostasize and that corrupts their leaders: rather, the leaders apostasize and carry the people into corruption. Paul said the "ravenous wolves" would arise from among the Ephesian overseers. John said Diotrophes loved to have the "chief place". Revelation tells us "the woman Jezebel" was teaching. This parallels the Old Testament, where apostasy characterized the kings and priests. Even in the wilderness under Moses, it was the chiefs of the tribes who led the people into rebellion. There are certainly exceptions, but apostasy in Scripture characteristically develops in a top-down direction.

Second, it looks suspiciously like Ephesus would be at least a center of apostasy. There are four epistles written to Ephesus in the New Testament: Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Revelation 2:1--7. Additionally, we have detailed accounts of Paul's work there, including his speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. Apostasy is a central theme among the Scriptures specifically to Ephesus. That's not to say Ephesus is the core of apostasy, nor that it was the only place apostasy occurred. But it seems particularly linked to apostasy in Scripture.

Third, Paul gave the Ephesian elders two resources: he commended them "to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified". This is of enormous importance.

I know I'm going to step on some toes here, but I really feel this needs to be said. The remedy for apostasy is the Word of God. It is "able to build [us] up and to give [us] an inheritance among all those who are sanctified." We tend to try and remedy apostasy with statements of faith, creeds, confessions, church councils, canon law, or fiery preaching. But the Apostle offers the Word of God as the remedy.

That's not to say all those other things are wrong per se, but that they are insufficient. The Word of God was given explicitly to correct, reprove, exhort, and train us. It is the only infallible and authoritative resource we have. To the extent that a statement of faith reflects the Word of God, it is good: but it has no authority in itself, its authority is strictly identical to the extent it is Scriptural.

It has taken me a long time to come to that conclusion.

And to be sure, the Word of God is sufficient, authoritative, infallible, and inerrant; but that's not to say every question of faith and doctrine is simple, obvious, and without sincere disagreement. But in the end, if we allow anything to occlude the authority of the Word of God over us, we are in the process of personally apostasizing: we are leaving the one thing we can count on.

As I'm living down here in a world that's basically on hold until the Lord Jesus comes to establish His kingdom and throne, I've gotten very caught up in all sorts of things. And sadly, a lot of my dabbling in some church or another has really been me looking for the Right Place. It's been my looking for a group I can count on, or an history I can put faith in, or a tradition that is correct. But at the end of the day, I've been having to learn that the Word of God is what God has seen fit to give me. That's the resource He considers sufficient for His people living down here.


Now, apostasy has been used as an excuse for all kinds of things. And while I want to clarify that we ought not to look for an excuse for what's not biblical, it is very true that apostasy changes things. Heh. Ideas have consequences. So I guess we need to look at some of those consequences, but I think this is long enough already for now.

Theotokos

It seems like the Mother of God kept coming up this weekend. I've been mulling this over a lot recently, so I finally decided to break down and put a blurb about the Theotokos on my blog.

Let me say outright that the title Mother of God is at best inaccurate, and at worst blasphemous. Now that all the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and [big-'o'] Orthodox readers have left...

Syllogisms

The title "Mother Of God" is generally understood to be based on the argument that if we really believe Jesus Christ is God, then the Mother of Jesus must be the Mother of God. This is the typical argument that is given by Roman Catholic, [big-'o'] Orthodox, and Anglican believers. We might sum it up in the following syllogism:

Jesus is God.
Mary is the Mother of Jesus.
Therefore Mary is the Mother of God.

It's a fairly convincing argument, but it's invalid.

A valid syllogism has the form:

A implies B
B implies C
Therefore A implies C

More classically, that would be expressed categorically:

All A is B
All B is C
Therefore all A is C.

The idea being that classical logical refers to categories, rather than individuals.


So we could give the valid syllogism:

Socrates is a man
All men are mortal
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Categorically, this looks like:

All Socrates is Man
All Man is Mortal
Therefore all Socrates is Mortal.

That is, we've now created categories to argue about, although the first category ("Socrates") only has a single member.


Our first syllogism looked like this:

Jesus is God.
Mary is the Mother of Jesus.
Therefore Mary is the Mother of God.

If we translate it to categories, we end up with something like:

All Jesus is Born of Mary
All Jesus is God
Therefore all God is Born of Mary

This looks like a valid argument, but it isn't: it has the form:

All A is B
All C is B
Therefore all A is C.

We could make an identical argument that's more obviously incorrect as:

All Men are Mortal
All Women are Mortal
Therefore all Men are Women

This argument has the exact same form: this logical fallacy is called the Undistributed Middle. It's a logical fallacy that's been well known and understood for centuries. In fact, it was probably a well-known fallacy even before the Council of Ephesus declared Mary to be the Theotokos in 431.

It's possible to bludgeon this argument into valid form if we reverse the second line:

All Jesus is Born of Mary
All God is Jesus
Therefore all God is Born of Mary

In other words, you can only logically say Mary is the Mother of God if you are willing to say "All God is Jesus." This is, of course, a denial of the Trinity.


Absurdity

But we don't need to play with syllogisms to see the problem with the title Mother of God. It's obviously absurd if we simply consider Scripture. Jesus Christ is only actually referred to as the "Son of Mary" once in Scripture:

"Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?" And they took offense at Him. (Mark 6:3, NASB)

We have a few examples where Mary is called "His Mother": Matt. 1:18; Matthew 2:11; Matthew 13:55; Luke 1:15; Luke 2:34; John 19:25; and Acts 1:14. We also have "Mother of my Lord" in Luke 1:43. There may be other variations on the theme, but this is a reasonable sample. And the mentions of Mary are entirely in the Gospels and Acts. She's not even named in the Epistles.

On the other hand, we have Christ called "Son of David" something like 16 times in Scripture: in the Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Revelation. So, is David correctly the Father of God? There appears to be a much greater weight of Scriptural support to called David the Father of God than there is to call Mary the Mother of God.

But really, why stop there? Why not refer to Zecharias and Elizabeth as the Uncle of God and Aunt of God? Maybe we could refer to John the Baptist as Cousin of God, and Joseph as Stepfather of God.

It's ridiculous, but exactly logically consistent with the argument used to prop up the title Mother of God.


Nestorianism

The fact is, the title Theotokos was introduced as a test of orthodoxy to counter the teachings of Nestorius. Nestorius taught that Christ was two Persons: there was a human Person and a divine Person in Christ. The Council of Ephesus declared Nestorius to be in error: there is one Person, although He has two natures. The Council of Ephesus used Mary to prove the point: Mary was the Mother of Jesus Christ, not the Mother of Christ's Humanity.

The Council was right to declare Nestorius in error: it is certainly untrue that Christ is two Persons. He is a single Person, although He has two natures. The teaching that Christ has only one nature is Eutychianism, which was condemned about twenty years after Nestorianism.

But Ephesus went beyond Scripture and even logic when they insisted that Mary was Theotokos, the God-bearer. While their intentions were correct---they insisted we cannot divide up the Christ---, their conclusion was wrong: Mary did not bear God, she bore Christ. To say Mary bore God is to deny that God is three Persons, and embrace modalism. And yes, modalism was condemned as heresy long before the Council of Ephesus.

Admittedly, the translation of Theotokos to Mother of God is not exactly correct: there is more implied in the term Mother than in the term Bearer. And this mistake opens the floodgates to paganism.


Mary, the Mother of the Lord

The problem with most Protestants is, they tend to swing on the pendulum away from worshipping Mary to beating on her. So let's have this out: Mary was the woman chosen by God to be the means through which the Son of God was incarnate by the Holy Ghost. To quote the Nicene Creed:

I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ... Who, for us men, and for our salvation came down from Heaven; And was incarnate but the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary

She is, in that sense, intimately tied up with God's plan of redemption. She was chosen by God: Protestants sometimes have trouble admitting this.

But there is no warrant whatsoever in Scripture for us to worship, adore, or pray to her. There is no hint in Scripture that she was without sin, or that she was not as in need of the Son of God to die for her as I am. There is not a suggestion in Scripture that he intercedes for us: quite the opposite! We have one Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus.

And let's be honest, our Roman Catholic, [big-'o'] Orthodox, and Anglican friends have been fulfilling the Scriptural prediction: "All generations henceforth shall call me blessed." She is most certainly blessed.



Just had to get that off my chest.

Brick wall

I remember watching Bandits, a movie with Bruce Willis and Billy-Bob Thornton. I wouldn't recommend it for moral reasons, although it was entertaining and terribly funny. At any rate, at some point Thornton says, "The problem with being smart is, I have a pretty good idea how things are going to turn out."

We didn't need to be terribly smart to foresee some problems with our attending an Anglican church--- we expected this---, but I'm not happy that we've hit some of the issues we anticipated.

It looks like our brief time with the Anglicans is coming to a close, but it was a much-needed haven for a time.


I suppose there's a lot more to say, but I'll end with: we're really in need of your prayers right now.

Hotline from Heaven

I've been thinking about a comment J. N. Darby made in his (pedantic and over-written) "Familiar Conversations on Romanism." He was discussing the role of tradition in the Christian walk, and pointed out that if we really have the written Word of God, then everything else said, taught, or spoken in the time between its writing and now is really of secondary or tertiary importance.

This is a rather trivial observation in one sense, but it's profound in its implications.

If it's true, then there is a tremendous responsibility placed on each Christian to read, learn, know, obey, and live the contents of that Book. If it's true, then no person living in a place where Bibles are available has any excuse for not knowing what it says. And if it's true, then no individual Christian has the luxury of not judging what he or she is taught against the Scripture.


As I think back over the men and women I personally admire as Christians, it seems the revolutionary changes that have happened in the Church have been the result of someone sitting down with the Scriptures with the attitude that everything is negotiable in their light. That is to say, I am not taking anything off the table when I read Scripture: if what it says and what I believe aren't lining up, then I need to change what I believe.

I think of Martin Luther, who threw away most of his theological world when he finally concluded "the just shall live by faith" actually meant that God justifies the ungodly--- meant God is looking for faith plus nothing else rather than a life of gradual improvement.

I think of J. N. Darby, who walked away from his career as a clergyman when he realized that the Scripture spoke of assurance of salvation in simple terms, not complex propositions.


I've fairly recently (like in the last few years) realized some of the implications of the simple fact that justification in Scripture means "declaring to be righteous". It has changed a lot of things: it has clarified many issues, and created many more.

More than a decade ago, I realized that the evangelicals I had known used the words "salvation" and "saved" in a way very different from Scripture: they used it to mean "justified" or "born again"; Scripture uses it to mean "arrived". So Ephesians makes the famous claim "by grace ye are saved," a past tense. But Ephesians also declares that we're seated in Christ in the heavenlies. Romans, which contemplates us justified and waiting for the Lord to come, declares we shall be saved. That realization changed a lot of my opinions on things too.

I read John 6 afresh two or three years back, and realized eternal life is something we need to feed: that having a right to eternal life is not the same thing as enjoying the possession of it. How could that not affect me?


I'm no Luther, Darby, Cranmer, Calvin, or Nee. I'm OK with that. But I have to follow the same underlying principle: everything is negotiable in light of the Word of God.

And every once in a while, the Lord reminds me of that.

Hitting the books

As I've been trying to walk it out down here until the Lord Jesus comes back, I've had to do some mulling over the role of Scripture in the Christian life. This is not supposed to be a great thesis on the subject: this is just my personal position. Take it as my personal confession on the subject. 

First, I accept the Bible (66 books) as the inerrant, authoritative Word of God. I think the Nicene Council was essentially correct about what constitutes Scripture, but I absolutely affirm that the Scripture was the Scripture before the Nicene Council. The Nicene Council did not make those books Scripture, it simply recognized what was already true.

Second, it is impossible to prove that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Either you accept that or you don't. I can show you any number of evidences that it's true, but I can't actually prove it. But then, I'm not going to answer to you for my life down here, when all's said and done. 

Third, if the Bible really is what God has said, then it trumps everything else. It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks on a subject: the question is what God has said about it. It is the final test. 

Fourth, the Bible might well be silent on a subject. Get over it. We need to stop trying to read something into Scripture about whatever-it-is-we're-interested-in-at-the-moment. If Scripture is silent on something, then we need to acknowledge that.

Fifth, the Bible was written to be understood. This has been the hardest point to really finalize in my mind. It seems the vast majority of Christianity sees Scripture as something that can only be understood through layers of commentary.  But (and I realize this could reduce to a circular argument) the narratives of Christ commenting on Scripture to the people of His day generally reduce to Him telling them they missed the "plain reading"---the "obvious point"---of a passage. He never took them to task for missing some mystical meaning, nor for using the wrong commentaries: He took them to task for not simply obeying the plain and simple sense of the passage. 

Sixth, the hardest part of obeying the Scripture is to trust that it's sufficient. It's one thing to acknowledge it's inerrant or authoritative; it's quite another to acknowledge its sufficiency. I think it strange how frequently we trust in creeds, dogmas, catechisms, theologies, doctrines, and commentaries when we have the Bible. I admit it's not the easiest book to understand, and it can take some time to compare Scripture with Scripture to figure out how a passage applies, or what it means. But really, if God has spoken, it's worth the time and effort to listen.

I think a lot of this blog really reduces to the question of whether what "we" (for a non-constant value of "we") are doing lines up with Scripture.  

Proceeding with Caution

I've jokingly referred to myself as Angstlican. While on the one hand I've been worshipping in an Anglican church, I'm doing so cautiously and very self-consciously. In the spirit of this blog---a place to work through Christian fellowship issues "on paper"---I'd like to talk a little about my adventures in Anglicanism.

First, let's get this one thing straight: I haven't gone Episcopalian. 

While the term "Anglican" generally means of the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a member in the USA; there are any number of "Anglican" offshoots: the vast majority of these view the Anglican Communion as apostate. "Anglican" implies a very wide range: it encompasses everything from low-church Reformed groups, to high-church Anglo-Catholics (including Roman Catholic sympathizers), to the liberal Anglican Communion (including the Episcopal Church in the USA).  And within any given branch of Anglicanism, there is wide variety between individual churches and even more between individual Anglicans. So "anglican" and "episcopalian" are far from equivalent terms.

Further, most of the more traditional Anglican churches practice closed communion, and I am not "in". I am very much a long-term visitor. So while it's true I've been worshipping in an Anglican church, I am certainly not "Anglican" to them. I am very much a visitor.

And finally, one lesson I have been slowly learning is, group identity is pretty much just an idol to be avoided. After years of claiming not to be in a denomination, I finally realized my association with "brethren" amounted to exactly that. I am not interested in buying into that sort of situation again. So regardless of where I worship, I am endeavouring not to identify myself as anything other than a Christian. That may or may not go over well with anyone else, it might even cause some ruffled feathers if it should ever come up in conversation... but that's not my problem. I can't allow their sensitivities to occlude what I see as a Scriptural course of action.

Second, I take the Bible as the infallible, authoritative, inerrant Word of God. If God has given us His written Word, then we must be responsible to know what it says and submit to it.  Someday I will stand before God and give an account of what I have done, that ought to motivate me to master the contents of His Book.

I see nothing in Scripture to indicate I need tradition, history, or creeds to understand it. I do see solemn warnings and condemnation to the Pharisees for elevating their tradition over the Scripture: "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition [Ye] hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with [their] lips; but their heart is far from me But in vain they do worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:6--9, KJV).  Let's be clear that "commandments of men" is a very wide phrase. It includes high-church creeds and dogmas as well as low-church doctrines and personal pet theories. It includes the well-intentioned as well as calculated heresy. This is a trap anyone can fall into.

All my actions need to be governed by the Word of God.  To the extent that doctrine and practice line up with Scripture, I can participate in them. But when I see something that can't be rectified with Scripture, then I need to draw the line. I am not fit to be the judge of orthodoxy, but I will personally stand before God to give an account... anything less than testing everything against the Word of God is negligence.

The Anglicans I know tend to be somewhat awed by anything sufficiently old. There is almost a sense where they are more concerned with "the Catholic faith" ("Catholic" in the sense of "one Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church," not "Roman Catholic") than the Biblical one. And to be honest, there is a ditch on both sides of the road with this one: on the one hand, there is the danger of completely ignoring the Word of God because of our traditions; on the other hand there is the very real danger of "private interpretation" and "wresting the Scripture to our own destruction."  I've seen people fall into both errors just in my own short time on the earth... I have certainly done both.

I think one thing to consider is, all the major heresies in the history of the Church occurred in the first four centuries. The idea that "they were closer in time to Christ than we are" is demonstrably irrelevant: the Gnostics were active and flourishing in the time of the Apostles...  there would be no Nicene Creed, except that Arianism had grown into a major force in the Church. Antiquity is certainly no assurance of correctness.

I am content to accept church history, tradition, and creeds to the extent that they are useful. If a tradition, creed, or history helps me understand Scripture, I accept it thankfully. But it ultimately has to pass that test. And frankly, I am trying to teach my children the same thing. If anyone, living or dead,---including me---teaches them something not verifiable by Scripture; then it might be worth considering, but it's not authoritatively true. And if it flat-out contradicts Scripture, it's false.  "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Galatians 1:7, KJV.

Once again, I side with Thomas Cranmer: it's OK to include what Scripture is silent on. Calvin took the opposite view, that it's only OK to include what Scripture specifically endorses. Scripture is silent on things like holidays and whether we should have a dedicated building: but since it doesn't condemn, I am OK with doing them. So I'm not minimalist so much as I am unwilling to accept anything on its own merit. Everything---everything---must be subject to the Word of God.

Third, I am utterly disinterested in the current Anglican fad of groveling on the banks of the Tiber. I can think of nothing less relevant to me than whether I have Rome's approval, unless it is the opinion of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 

I have examined the claims of the Roman Catholic Church in enough detail to reach a conclusion, and I simply can't reconcile them with the Word of God. The cornerstone of Roman Catholic theology is the claims to being the One True Church. Since it is demonstrably historically untrue that either the Roman Church or the papacy represents a single unbroken succession from the Apostles to now, the discussion is fundamentally over. I've nothing against the countless true believers in the Roman church, but I'm not interested in drinking that particular brand of Kool-Aid.

So to all the Anglicans who seem determined to trek back to Rome, I wish you well, but I'll sit this one out. I'm not interested in working for what God offers freely.

Finally, my tenuous association with Anglicanism (see #1) is not because I buy into Anglicanism per se, but because I have found a local church where I've been able to worship sincerely. It may well be this is the only decent Anglican church in existence (which I don't believe), and I certainly don't endorse everything these people do and believe (although my points of disagreement may be surprising to some). But I've found a place with 70 palm trees and 12 wells, and I've been enjoying the respite from the desert. I make no assumptions that God wants me here permanently, but I'm enjoying the stay while it lasts.