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Repentance Defended Against Antinomian Heresy: A Brief Defense of the Indubitable Biblical Fact that Repentance is a Change of Mind that Always Results in a Change of Action, part 1
approximately the first two-thousand years of Baptist history, Baptist churches—the
churches established by the Lord Jesus Christ—have defended the fact that when
a lost sinner repents and is born again, a change of action will necessarily
follow. The fact that repentance
is a change of mind that results in a change of action is the historic Baptist
position. There are no Baptist confessional statements that deny that
repentance will result in a change of action or that positively affirm that
repentance is only a change of mind that may or may not result in a change of
action. The idea that repentance
is only a change of mind that may or may not result in a change of action is a
new and different gospel (Galatians 1:8-9) from the one that has been preached
by Baptists throughout the course of the church age, for it is a different
gospel from the one taught in the Bible.
historic Baptist doctrine that repentance is a change of mind that results in a
change of action will be referenced below as the RAC (Repentance Always results in Change) position, and
the new position that repentance is a change of mind that may not result in a
change of action will be referenced below as the RNC (Repentance does Not always result in Change)
position.
Evidence Affirms the RAC
the verbs shub[i]
and nacham[ii] are used in
the Old Testament for the concept of repentance. Nacham emphasizes the
emotional aspect of repentance, conveying the idea of “to be sorry, to come to
regret something,”[iii] and is
found with reference to human repentance in texts such as Job 42:6: “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Shub means “to turn back . . . turn back to God . . .
turning around . . . be converted . . . turn away from, abandon . . . a course
of action . . . to desist . . . from doing wrong.”[iv] It is a very common verb, appearing in
passages such as the following representative texts:
Lord GOD; Repent (shub, Qal[v]),
and turn yourselves (shub, Hiphil) from your idols; and turn away (shub, Hiphil) your faces from all your abominations. . . . But
if the wicked will turn (shub,
Qal) from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do
that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. . . .
Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return (shub, Qal) from his ways, and live? . . . Therefore I will
judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord
GOD. Repent (shub, Qal), and turn
yourselves (shub, Hiphil) from all your transgressions; so iniquity
shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye
have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit:[vi]
for why will ye die, O house of Israel? . . . Nevertheless, if thou warn the
wicked of his way to turn (shub,
Qal) from it; if he do not turn (shub,
Qal) from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy
soul. . . . Say unto them, As I
live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but
that the wicked turn (shub, Qal)
from his way and live: turn (shub,
Qal) ye, turn (shub, Qal) ye from
your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 14:6; 18:21,
23, 30-31; 33:9, 11)
gospel is received in the same manner in both the Old and New Testament
(Hebrews 11:1-2; Romans 4). The RNC finds no support from the first three-fourths of the
Word of God.
Evidence Affirms the RAC
for repentance is metamelomai, meaning “to have regrets about something . . . be
very sorry, regret . . . to change one’s mind.”[vii] Metamelomai bears some similarities to the Old Testament verb nacham. The
Greek verb appears in New Testament texts such as: “He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he
repented, and went” (Matthew 21:29).[viii] The central words for the New Testament
doctrine of repentance, however, are the verb metanoeo and the noun metanoia.
Testament Greek lexicon BDAG[ix]
lists all verses with metanoeo in the
New Testament[x] under the
definition “feel remorse, repent, be converted,” including the mention of
repentance “of . . . immorality . . . of . . . sins . . . repent and turn away.”
as: “[T]o change one’s way of life
as the result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin
and righteousness — ‘to repent, to change one’s way, repentance.’ . . . Though
in English a focal component of repent is the sorrow or contrition that a
person experiences because of sin, the emphasis in metanoeo and metanoia seems
to be more specifically the total change, both in thought and behavior, with
respect to how one should both think and act. Whether the focus is upon
attitude or behavior varies somewhat in different contexts. . . . Though it
would be possible to classify metanoeo
and metanoia in [the category of words
for] [t]hink[ing], the focal semantic feature of these terms is clearly
behavioral rather than intellectual.”[xi]
change one’s mind, i.e. to repent (to feel sorry that one has done this or that
. . . used especially of those who, conscious of their sins and with manifest
tokens of sorrow, are intent on obtaining God’s pardon . . . to change one’s
mind for the better, heartily to amend with abhorrence of one’s past sins . . .
[leading to] conduct worthy of a heart changed and abhorring sin.” Metanoia is defined as:
“a change of mind: as it appears
in one who repents of a purpose he has formed or of something he has done . . .
especially the change of mind of those who have begun to abhor their errors and
misdeeds, and have determined to enter upon a better course of life, so that it
embraces both a recognition of sin and sorrow for it and hearty amendment, the
tokens and effects of which are good deeds. . . that change of mind by which we
turn from, desist from, etc. . . . used . . . of the improved spiritual state
resulting from deep sorrow for sin.”
the NT, metanoeō and metanoia . . . form an essential part of the kerygma
[preaching] lexicon, urging ‘conversion’ to Christianity. There is no longer
any question of distinguishing between change of thoughts, of heart, of
actions. The change is that of the soul, of the whole person (the new
creature), who is purified of stains and whose life is transformed,
metamorphosed.”[xii]
Testament affirms concerning the New
Testament usage of metanoeo and metanoia: “Metanoeo . . . [is] radical conversion, a transformation of nature,
a definitive turning from evil, a resolute turning to God in total obedience .
. . [i]t affects the whole man, first and basically the centre of personal
life, then logically his conduct at all times and in all situations, his
thoughts, words and acts.”[xiii]
continued to speak of repentance as a
change of mind that results in a change of life. The standard Patristic Greek Lexicon edited by G. W. H. Lampe,[xiv]
despite large pages of references to repentance (metanoia, metanoeo) in the patristic writers, never gives a single
reference where repentance refers
to a change of mind that does not result in a change of action, while it
provides overwhelming evidence for the historic Baptist doctrine of repentance
in vast numbers of passages in the writers of the early centuries of church
history.[xv]
provide overwhelming evidence in favor of the RAC and against the RNC. Were the RNC true, all standard lexica would have to be in error.
The verb
appears 1,075 times in 956 verses, listed here in the order they are found in
the Hebrew Bible: Gen 3:19; 8:3,
7, 9, 12; 14:7, 16–17; 15:16; 16:9; 18:10, 14, 33; 20:7, 14; 21:32; 22:5, 19;
24:5–6, 8; 26:18; 27:44–45; 28:15, 21; 29:3; 30:31; 31:3, 13, 55; 32:6, 9;
33:16; 37:14, 22, 29–30; 38:22, 29; 40:13, 21; 41:13; 42:24–25, 28, 37; 43:2,
10, 12–13, 18, 21; 44:8, 13, 25; 48:21; 50:5, 14–15; Ex 4:7, 18–21; 5:22; 10:8;
13:17; 14:2, 26–28; 15:19; 19:8; 21:34; 22:26; 23:4; 24:14; 32:12, 27, 31;
33:11; 34:31, 35; Lev 6:4; 13:16; 14:39, 43; 22:13; 25:10, 13, 27–28, 41,
51–52; 26:26; 27:24; Num 5:7–8; 8:25; 10:36; 11:4; 13:25–26; 14:3–4, 36, 43;
16:50; 17:10; 18:9; 22:8, 34; 23:5–6, 16, 20; 24:25; 25:4, 11; 32:15, 18, 22;
33:7; 35:25, 28, 32; Deut 1:22, 25, 45; 3:20; 4:30, 39; 5:30; 13:17; 17:16;
20:5–8; 22:1–2; 23:13–14; 24:4, 13, 19; 28:31, 60, 68; 30:1–3, 8–10; 32:41, 43;
Josh 1:15; 2:16, 22–23; 4:18; 5:2; 6:14; 7:3, 26; 8:21, 24, 26; 10:15, 21, 38,
43; 11:10; 14:7; 18:8; 19:12, 27, 29, 34; 20:6; 22:8–9, 16, 18, 23, 29, 32;
23:12; 24:20; Judg 2:19; 3:19; 5:29; 6:18; 7:3, 15; 8:9, 13, 33; 9:56–57;
11:8–9, 13, 31, 35, 39; 14:8; 15:19; 17:3–4; 18:26; 19:3, 7; 20:48; 21:14, 23;
1 Sam 1:19; 3:5–6; 5:3, 11; 6:3–4, 7–8, 16–17, 21; 7:3, 14; 9:5; 12:3; 14:27;
15:11, 25–26, 30–31; 17:15, 30, 53, 57; 18:2, 6; 23:23, 28; 24:1; 25:12, 21,
39; 26:21, 23, 25; 27:9; 29:4, 7, 11; 30:12, 19; 2 Sam 1:1, 22; 2:26, 30; 3:11,
16, 26–27; 6:20; 8:3, 13; 9:7; 10:5, 14; 11:4, 15; 12:23, 31; 14:13, 21; 15:8,
19–20, 25, 27, 29, 34; 16:3, 8, 12; 17:3, 20; 18:16; 19:10–12, 14–15, 37, 39,
43; 20:22; 22:21, 25, 38; 23:10; 24:13; 1 Kings 2:16–17, 20, 30, 32–33, 41, 44;
8:33–35, 47–48; 9:6; 12:5–6, 9, 12, 16, 20–21, 24, 26–27; 13:4, 6, 9–10, 16–20,
22–23, 26, 29, 33; 14:28; 17:21–22; 18:43; 19:6–7, 15, 20–21; 20:5, 9, 34; 22:17,
26, 28, 33; 2 Kings 1:5–6, 11, 13; 2:13, 18, 25; 3:4, 27; 4:22, 31, 35, 38;
5:10, 14–15; 7:8, 15; 8:3, 6, 29; 9:15, 18, 20, 36; 13:25; 14:14, 22, 25, 28;
15:20; 16:6; 17:3, 13; 18:14, 24; 19:7–9, 28, 33, 36; 20:5, 9–11; 21:3; 22:9,
20; 23:20, 25–26; 24:1; Is 1:25–27; 5:25; 6:10, 13; 9:12–13, 17, 21; 10:4,
21–22; 12:1; 14:27; 19:22; 21:12; 23:17; 28:6; 29:17; 31:6; 35:10; 36:9;
37:7–8, 29, 34, 37; 38:8; 41:28; 42:22; 43:13; 44:19, 22, 25; 45:23; 46:8;
47:10; 49:5–6; 51:11; 52:8; 55:7, 10–11; 58:12–13; 59:20; 63:17; 66:15; Jer
2:24, 35; 3:1, 7, 10, 12, 14, 19, 22; 4:1, 8, 28; 5:3; 6:9; 8:4–6; 11:10;
12:15; 14:3; 15:7, 19; 16:15; 18:4, 8, 11, 20; 22:10–11, 27; 23:3, 14, 20, 22;
24:6–7; 25:5; 26:3; 27:16, 22; 28:3–4, 6; 29:10, 14; 30:3, 10, 18, 24; 31:8, 16–19,
21, 23; 32:37, 40, 44; 33:7, 11, 26; 34:11, 15–16, 22; 35:15; 36:3, 7, 28;
37:7–8, 20; 38:26; 40:5, 12; 41:14, 16; 42:10, 12; 43:5; 44:5, 14, 28; 46:16,
27; 48:47; 49:6, 39; 50:6, 9, 19; Ezek 1:14; 3:19–20; 7:13; 8:6, 13, 15, 17;
9:11; 13:22; 14:6; 16:53, 55; 18:7–8, 12, 17, 21, 23–24, 26–28, 30, 32; 20:22;
21:5, 30; 27:15; 29:14; 33:9, 11–12, 14–15, 18–19; 34:4, 16; 35:7, 9; 38:4, 8,
12; 39:2, 25, 27; 44:1; 46:9, 17; 47:1, 6–7; Hos 2:7, 9; 3:5; 4:9; 5:4, 15–6:1;
6:11; 7:10, 16; 8:13; 9:3; 11:5, 9; 12:2, 6, 9, 14; 14:1–2, 4, 7; Joel 2:12–14;
3:1, 4, 7; Amos 1:3, 6, 8–9, 11, 13; 2:1, 4, 6; 4:6, 8–11; 9:14; Obad 1:15;
Jonah 1:13; 3:8–10; Mic 1:7; 2:8; 5:3; 7:19; Nah 2:2; Hab 2:1; Zeph 2:7; 3:20;
Zech 1:3–4, 6, 16; 4:1; 5:1; 6:1; 7:14; 8:3, 15; 9:8, 12; 10:6, 9–10; 13:7; Mal
1:4; 2:6; 3:7, 18; 4:6; Psa 6:4, 10; 7:7, 12, 16; 9:3, 17; 14:7; 18:20, 24, 37;
19:7; 22:27; 23:3, 6; 28:4; 35:13, 17; 44:10; 51:12–13; 53:6; 54:5; 56:9; 59:6,
14; 60:0–1; 68:22; 69:4; 70:3; 71:20; 72:10; 73:10; 74:11, 21; 78:34, 38–39,
41; 79:12; 80:3, 7, 14, 19; 81:14; 85:1, 3–4, 6, 8; 89:43; 90:3, 13; 94:2, 15,
23; 104:9, 29; 106:23; 116:7, 12; 119:59, 79; 126:1, 4; 132:10–11; 146:4; Job
1:21; 6:29; 7:7, 10; 9:12–13, 18; 10:9, 16, 21; 11:10; 13:22; 14:13; 15:13, 22;
16:22; 17:10; 20:2, 10, 18; 22:23; 23:13; 30:23; 31:14; 32:14; 33:5, 25–26, 30,
32; 34:15; 35:4; 36:7, 10; 39:4, 12, 22; 40:4; 42:10; Prov 1:23; 2:19; 3:28;
12:14; 15:1; 17:13; 18:13; 19:24; 20:26; 22:21; 24:12, 18, 26, 29; 25:10, 13;
26:11, 15–16, 27; 27:11; 29:8; 30:30; Ruth 1:6–8, 10–12, 15–16, 21–22; 2:6;
4:3, 15; Song 6:13; Eccl 1:6–7; 3:20; 4:1, 7; 5:15; 9:11; 12:2, 7; Lam 1:8, 11,
13, 16, 19; 2:3, 8, 14; 3:3, 21, 40, 64; 5:21; Esth 2:14; 4:13, 15; 6:12; 7:8;
8:5, 8; 9:25; Dan 9:13, 16, 25; 10:20; 11:9–10, 13, 18–19, 28–30; Ezra 2:1;
6:21; 9:14; 10:14; Neh 1:9; 2:6, 15, 20; 4:4, 12, 15; 5:11–12; 6:4; 7:6; 8:17;
9:17, 26, 28–29, 35; 13:9; 1 Chr 19:5; 20:3; 21:12, 20, 27; 2 Chr 6:23–26,
37–38, 42; 7:14, 19; 10:2, 5–6, 9, 12, 16; 11:1, 4; 12:11–12; 14:15; 15:4;
18:16, 25–27, 32; 19:1, 4, 8; 20:27; 22:6; 24:11, 19; 25:10, 13, 24; 26:2;
27:5; 28:11, 15; 29:10; 30:6, 8–9; 31:1; 32:21, 25; 33:3, 13; 34:7, 9, 16, 28;
36:13.
The verb
appears 108 times in 100 verses, listed here in the order they are found in the
Hebrew Bible: Gen 5:29; 6:6–7;
24:67; 27:42; 37:35; 38:12; 50:21; Ex 13:17; 32:12, 14; Num 23:19; Deut 32:36;
Judg 2:18; 21:6, 15; 1 Sam 15:11, 29, 35; 2 Sam 10:2–3; 12:24; 13:39; 24:16; Is
1:24; 12:1; 22:4; 40:1; 49:13; 51:3, 12, 19; 52:9; 54:11; 57:6; 61:2; 66:13; Jer
4:28; 8:6; 15:6; 16:7; 18:8, 10; 20:16; 26:3, 13, 19; 31:13, 15, 19; 42:10;
Ezek 5:13; 14:22–23; 16:54; 24:14; 31:16; 32:31; Joel 2:13–14; Amos 7:3, 6;
Jonah 3:9–10; 4:2; Nah 3:7; Zech 1:17; 8:14; 10:2; Psa 23:4; 69:20; 71:21;
77:2; 86:17; 90:13; 106:45; 110:4; 119:52, 76, 82; 135:14; Job 2:11; 7:13;
16:2; 21:34; 29:25; 42:6, 11; Ruth 2:13; Eccl 4:1; Lam 1:2, 9, 16–17, 21; 2:13;
1 Chr 7:22; 19:2–3; 21:15.
The
Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, L Koeher, W. Baumgartner, M. Richardson, J. J.
Stamm. New York: Brill, 1999.
The
Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, L Koeher, W. Baumgartner, M. Richardson, J. J.
Stamm. New York: Brill, 1999.
Exhortations
such as this one make it clear that Ezekiel is calling unconverted Israelites
to salvation, not simply calling backsliders among the true people of God to
live up to their privileges;
Ezekiel calls the Israelites to enter into the promises of the New
Covenant of a new heart and a new spirit.
Compare Isaiah 65:2, which does not just contextually refer to
idolatrous and unconverted Israelites (65:2-7), but is employed by Paul of the
unregenerate Jews who reject the gospel (Romans 10:21), in contrast with those
Gentiles who believe it (Isaiah 65:1; Romans 10:20). It is clearly erroneous to assume that every passage in
which the Lord addresses His chosen nation refers to those who truly belong to
Him because Israel was, in a national sense, the people of God. Rather, texts warning sinning Israel
frequently refer to the unconverted, rather than merely to those who are not
properly obedient (cf. Romans 9).
A
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian Literature (3rd ed.), W. Arndt, F. Danker, & W. Bauer.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
A
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian Literature (3rd ed.), W. Arndt, F. Danker, & W. Bauer.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
The kind
of shallow abuse of lexica that is sadly characteristic of “Baptist” advocates
of the RNC heresy could appear
were a RNC to note BDAG definition
1 for metanoeo, “change one’s
mind,” and the fact that, while metanoia is defined as “repentance, turning about, conversion,” the words
“primarily a change of mind” are also present in the lexicon. The RNC, assuming that the lexical definition of the word as
“change of mind” proves that the word means only a change of mind, and a particular kind of change of
mind, one that may result in nothing, could then pretend to have support from
BDAG for the RNC position. Such a conclusion represents an extreme
misreading of the lexicon, for:
1.) The lexicon places none—not a single one—of the 34 New Testament
uses of metanoeo underneath the
definition in question. It gives
no indication that this is a use that is found in the New Testament at all. 2.) References listed under definition
#1 in BDAG in extrabiblical Greek, whether to the Shepherd of Hermas, Diodorus Siculus, Appian, Josephus, and so on,
actually refer to a change of mind that results in a change of action—the RAC position—as is evident if one actually looks at the
passages. The RNC needs to demonstrate that at least one of the texts
referenced in BDAG actually is a clear instance of its doctrine—which has not
been done.
pre-Koiné Greek for alleged evidence, noting the definition in the lexicon of
“perceive afterwards or too late.”
Here again the entire lack of any evidence for this meaning in the New
Testament must be ignored. It is
also noteworthy that, with one exception, the listed examples of this
definition are from the Greek of the 5th century B. C. (Epicharmus,
Democritus). Similarly, the
examples for “change one’s mind or purpose,” which, in any case, suit the RAC position, as one who changes his purpose will
actually act differently, are all from the 5th or 4th
century B. C., while the definition “repent,” which the lexicon presents as
that of the “NT,” and which includes a good number of examples from Koiné Greek
that is contemporary with the New Testament, is certainly an affirmation of the
RAC position. Liddell-Scott defines metanoia as “change of mind or heart, repentance, regret,”
placing the New Testament examples in this category, and categorizing the
meaning “afterthought, correction” as one restricted to rhetoric and cited as
present only in an extrabiblical rhetorical treatise. The history of the development of metanoeo and metanoia is traced in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel;
cf. also Metanoew
and metamelei in Greek Literature until 100 A. D., Including
Discussion of Their Cognates and of their Hebrew Equivalents, Effie Freeman Thompson, pgs. 358-377 of Historical
and Linguistic Studies in Literature Related to the New Testament Issued Under
the Direction of the Department of Biblical and Patristic Greek, 2nd series, vol. 1. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1908. Thompson, who made a “[d]iligent search . . . for all the intsances
of the words under consideration, with a view to including all the works of all
the known authors in each period” (pg. 353), noted that metanoeo and metanoia moved away from a purely intellectual sense that was present, although
not exclusively so, in early Greek.
In relation to Greek that is contemporary with the New Testament, he notes: “[In] non-Jewish post-Aristotelian
writers to about 100 A. D. . . . passages continaing metanoeo show that . . . there is no instance of . . . purely
intellectual action. The change is that of feeling or will . . . In the Old
Testament Apocrypha and other Jewish writings to about 100 A. D. . . . metanoia means change of purpose . . . this change is (a)
moral; (b) from worse to better; (c) internal; (d) necessarily accompanied by
change of conduct” (pgs. 362, 368-9).
Philo is cited as affirming:
“[T]he man has lost his reason who, by speaking falsely of the truth,
says that he has changed his purpose
(metanenohke¿nai [a form of metanoeo, “to repent,” in this tense and sentence, “says that
he has repented”] when he is still doing wrong” (pg. 369)—the RAC exactly.
In contemporary “Palestinian writers, there is no instance of the
intellectual simply; but there are abundant instances of both the emotional and
volitional action” (pg. 375).
Coming to the New Testament usage, Thompson writes: “An examination of the instances of metanoeo shows that . . . the verb is always used of a change
of purpose which the context clearly indicates to be moral . . . this change is
from evil to good purpose . . . is never used when the reference is to change
of opinion merely . . . is always internal, and . . . results in external
conduct . . . metanoia reveal[s] a
meaning analogous to that of the verb . . . mwtanoia does not strictly include outward conduct or reform
of life . . . [but] this is the product of metanoia . . . lupe
[sorrow] is not inherent in metanoia,
but . . . it produces the latter[.] . . . The New Testament writers in no
instance employ [repentance] to express the action solely of either the
intellect or of the sensibility, but use it exclusively to indicate the action
of the will” (pgs. 372-373).
Thompson concludes: “In the
New Testament, metanoeo and metanoia . . . are never used to indicate merely intellectual
action. . . . [T]hey are always used to express volitional action . . . the
change of purpose . . . from evil to good. . . . [T]hey always express internal
change . . . [and] they require change in the outward expression of life as a
necessary consequent . . . [t]he fullest content [is] found in the . . .
radical change in the primary choice by which the whole soul is turned away
from evil to good” (pgs. 376-377).
The RAC is obviously
validated by a historical study of the development of the meaning of metanoeo and metanoia, while the RNC is
obliterated.
Greek-English
Lexicon of the New Testament:
Based on Semantic Domains. J. P. Louw & E. A. Nida. New York: United Bible Societies, 1996.
Lexicon of the New Testament, C.
Spicq & J. D. Ernest. Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 1994.
Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G.
Kittel, G. W. Bromiley & G. Friedrich. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964. TDNT provides a detailed diachronic study of the words in
addition to a synchronic study of the New Testament evidence.
The RNC could seek to abuse Lampe in the same way as BDAG by
simply quoting Lampe’s definition A for metanoeo, “change of mind,” and definition A for metanoia, “change of mind, afterthought,” and then reading the
RNC definition of a “change of mind” into the
lexicon. Were a RNC to actually look at the texts referenced by Lampe in
his definition, he would discover that they all refer to a change of mind that
results in a change of action—that is, the RAC position.
For example, under metanoeo definition
A Lampe refers to the Martyrdom of Polycarp 9:2; 11:2 and the Shepherd of Hermas 15:3;
the Shepherd speaks of people who repent “and return again to their evil
desires”—an obvious change of action—while the references in the Martyrdom
of Polycarp record a call by a Roman
official to Polycarp to repent of his Christianity, renounce Christ, and
worship Caesar—a very radical change of action. Overwhelming evidence in the usage of early church history
establishes the RAC position, while
not a single instance of metanoeo
or metanoia out of the hundreds of
passages referenced by Lampe establishes the RNC position.
Representative Quotations from the Earliest Christian Writings— Are These Men Trinitarians or Arians?
D. 325 at the Council of Nicea, or even later, is a historical monstrosity.
William G. T. Shedd writes:
invalidated . . . prove conclusively that . . . [the] Ante-Nicene Fathers . . .
held the same Trinitarianism with the Nicene and Post-Nicene divines. 1.) The Ante-Nicene Fathers employed
the word God in the strict sense
of signifying the Divine substance,
and applied it to the Son in this sense.
2.) They admitted but one substance to be strictly Divine, and rejected
with abhorrence the notion of inferior and secondary divinities. 3.) The confined worship to the one
true God, and yet worshipped the Son.
4.) The attributed eternity, omnipotence, and uncreatedness to the Son,
and held him to be the Creator and Preserver of the universe. 5.) Had the Ante-Nicene Fathers held
that the Son was different from the Father in respect to substance, eternity,
omnipotence, uncreatedness, [etc.], they would certainly have specified this
difference in the Sabellian controversy;
for this would have proved beyond all dispute that the Son and Father
are not one Person or Hypostasis.
But they never did” (pg. 153, William G. T. Shedd, History of
Christian Doctrine, vol. 1, book
III:2:3, elec. acc. AGES Digital Software).
following astonishing affirmation:
become a doctrine of Christendom? Many think that it was formulated at the
Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. That is not totally correct, however. The Council
of Nicaea . . . did not establish the Trinity . . . [n]one of the bishops at
Nicaea promoted a Trinity[.] . . . If a Trinity had been a clear Bible truth,
should they not have proposed it at that time? . . . [At] the Council of
Constantinople in 381 C.E. . . . [for] the first time, Christendom’s Trinity began
to come into focus. Yet, even after the Council of Constantinople, the Trinity
did not become a widely accepted creed. . . . It was only in later centuries
that the Trinity was formulated into set creeds” (Should You Believe in the
Trinity? pgs. 7-9).
were equally God (contra Arianism), and yet were distinct Persons (contra
Sabellianism), was believed and confessed by Christians from the time of the
composition of the New Testament onwards.
There are no Arian statements such as “the Son of God was created out of
nothing” or “the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force.” While this composition is not a detailed history of doctrine
or of ancient Christiandom, and thus does not attempt to evaluate the whole of what
any of the following writers believed, the following ten quotations (which
could have been greatly multiplied) from contemporaries of the apostle John and
those only decades after him—and far, far before the Council of Nicea—make it
painfully obvious just how wrong such Arian and Sabellian corruptions of
history are:
|
Deity of the Son
|
|
|
Ignatius (died c. A. D. 100)
|
|
|
Ignatius (died c. A. D. 100)
|
|
|
Clement (c. A. D. 100-150)[iii]
|
“Brethren, we ought to conceive of Jesus Christ as
of God, as the judge of the living and the dead.” (2 Clement 1:1)[iv] |
|
“Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts . . .
reference is made . . . to Christ . . . [in] the Psalm[s] of David . . . [as] the God of Jacob . . . the Lord of hosts . . . the King of glory” (Dialogue with Trypho, 36)[v] |
|
|
Justin Martyr (c. A. D. 100-165)
|
He existed formerly as Son of the Maker of all
things, being God, and was born a man by the Virgin. (Dialogue with Trypho, 48)[vi] |
|
Justin Martyr (c. A. D. 100-165)
|
Now
the Word of God is His Son[.] . . . From the writings of Moses also this will be manifest; for thus it is written in them, “And the [Messenger/Angel] of God spoke to Moses, in a flame of fire out of the bush, and said, I am that I am, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of your fathers; go down into Egypt, and bring forth My people.” . . . [P]roving that Jesus the Christ is the Son of God and His Apostle, being of old the Word, and appearing sometimes in the form of fire, and sometimes in the likeness of angels; but now, by the will of God, having become man for the human race . . . [T]hey who affirm that the Son is the Father, are proved neither to have become acquainted with the Father, nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now . . . having . . . become Man by a virgin, according to the counsel of the Father, for the salvation of those who believe on Him, He endured both to be set at nought and to suffer, that by dying and rising again He might conquer death. (Apology of Justin 1:63)[vii] |
|
Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. A. D. 150)
|
[To] the Lord Jesus Christ . . . be the glory with
the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. (Martyrdom of Polycarp 22:3; cf. 14:3)[viii] |
|
Epistle to Diognatus (2nd century)
|
On the contrary, the omnipotent Creator of all, the
invisible God himself, established among men the truth and the holy, incomprehensible word from heaven. . . not, as one might imagine, by sending to men some subordinate, or angel or ruler or one of those who manage earthly matters, or one of those entrusted with the administration of things in heaven, but the Designer and Creator of the universe himself, by whom he created the heavens, by whom he enclosed the sea within its proper bounds, whose mysteries all the elements faithfully observe, from whom the sun has received the measure of the daily courses to keep, whom the moon obeys as he commands it to shine by night, whom the stars obey as they follow the course of the moon, by whom all things have been ordered and determined and placed in subjection, including the heavens and the things in the heavens, the earth and the things in the earth, the sea and the things in the sea, fire, air, abyss, the things in the heights, the things in the depths, the things in between—this one he sent to them! . . . [H]e sent him in gentleness and meekness, as a king might send his son who is a king; he sent him as God; he sent him as a man to men. (Epistle to Diognetus 7:2,4)[ix] |
|
Athenagoras (2nd century)
|
Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men who
speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and who declare both their power in union and their distinction in order, called atheists? (Plea for Christians, 10)[x] |
|
Irenaeus (c. A. D. 120-203)
|
Therefore
neither would the Lord, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the apostles, have ever named as God, definitely and absolutely, him who was not God, unless he were truly God; nor would they have named any one in his own person Lord, except God the Father ruling over all, and His Son[.] . . . Since, therefore, the Father is truly Lord, and the Son truly Lord, the Holy Spirit has fitly designated them by the title of Lord. [When] the Scripture says, “Then the Lord [Jehovah] rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven” [Genesis 19:24] . . . it here points out that the Son, who had also been talking with Abraham, had received power to judge the Sodomites for their wickedness. And this [text following] does declare the same truth: “Thy throne, O God; is for ever and ever; the scepter of Your kingdom is a right scepter. You have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: therefore God, Your God, has anointed You.” For the Spirit designates both [of them] by the name, of God — both Him who is anointed as Son, and Him who does anoint, that is, the Father. . . . Therefore, as I have already stated, no other is named as God, or is called Lord, except Him who is God and Lord of all, who also said to Moses, “I AM That I AM And thus shall you say to the children of Israel: He who is, has sent me to you;” and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who makes those that believe in His name the sons of God. (Against Heresies, III:6:1-2) |
Christianity: “[W]e confess . . . the
Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues . . . [and] both
Him, and the Son . . . and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore,[xi]
knowing them in reason and truth, and declaring without grudging to every one
who wishes to learn, as we have been taught” (Justin Martyr, Apology 1:6).[xii]
The Arian and Sabellian cannot so confess, or so worship the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, the one true God.
Christ, rather than the Deity of the Spirit, it should be noted that “no
apologetic writer of the second century spoke of the Spirit of God as one of
the creatures” (pg. 49, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, Henry Barclay Swete. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books,
1966 (reprint of 1912 ed).), but they did make statements such as “we
acknowledge a God, and a Son his Logos, and a Holy Spirit, united in essence, —
the Father, the Son, the Spirit” (Athenagoras, Plea for Christians 24). The
affirmation that the Father, Son, and Spirit are united in essence (or, more
literally, equal or one in power) requires that they are the one true God.
been believed in and adored by Christians for the entirety of church history.
To read the Greek in the endnotes, you will need the Helena Greek font,
which will be on your computer if you download a trial version of Accordance
here.
If one
wishes to maintain (as is likely) that 2 Clement was not written by that
Clement of Rome who flourished c. A. D. 90-100, was the third pastor of the
church at Rome, and composed 1 Clement, nevertheless “the controversies with
which the writer deals are those of the early part of the 2nd
century[.] . . . Internal evidence . . . assigns to the work a date not later
than the 2nd century, and probably the first half of it” (“Clemens Romanus,” A
Dictionary of Early Christian Biography,
Henry Wace. elec. acc. Accordance Bible Software). “[If
not by Clement of Rome himself, then it] appears to have been delivered about
[A. D.] 140–50” (“Clement of Rome,” The New International Dictionary of the
Christian Church, gen. ed. J. D.
Douglas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
1974. Elec. acc. Accordance Bible Software).
∆Adelfoi÷, ou¢twß dei√
hJma◊ß fronei√n peri« ∆Ihsouv Cristouv, wJß peri« qeouv, wJß peri« kritouv
zw¿ntwn kai« nekrw◊n.
kai« Qeoß kai« Ku/rioß
tw◊n duna¿mewn oJ Cristoß . . . ei˙ß ton Criston ei˙rhvsqai . . . ⁄Esti de«
yalmoß touv Dabi«d ou∞toß . . . Qeouv ∆Iakw¿b . . . Ku/rioß tw◊n duna¿mewn . .
. Ku/rioß tw◊n duna¿mewn . . . oJ Basileuß thvß do/xhß.
prou¨phvrcen Ui˚oß
touv Poihtouv tw◊n o¢lwn, Qeoß w‡n, kai« gege÷nnhtai a‡nqrwpoß dia» thvß
Parqe÷nou.
ÔO Lo/goß de« touv
Qeouv e˙stin oJ Ui˚oß aujtouv[.] . . . Kai« e˙k tw◊n touv Mwse÷wß de«
suggramma¿twn faneron touvto genh/setai. Le÷lektai de« e˙n aujtoi√ß ou¢twß:
“Kai« e˙la¿lhse Mwu¨sei√ a‡ggeloß Qeouv e˙n flogi« puroß e˙k thvß ba¿tou, kai«
ei•pen: ∆Egw¿ ei˙mi oJ w‡n, Qeoß ∆Abraa¿m, Qeoß ∆Isaa¿k, Qeoß ∆Iakw¿b, oJ
Qeoß tw◊n pate÷rwn sou. ka¿telqe ei˙ß Ai¶gupton, kai« e˙xa¿gage ton lao/n
mou.” . . . ∆All∆ ei˙ß aÓpo/deixin gego/nasin oiºde oi˚ lo/goi, o¢ti Ui˚oß
Qeouv kai« aÓpo/stoloß ∆Ihsouvß oJ Cristo/ß e˙sti, pro/teron Lo/goß w‡n, kai«
e˙n i˙de÷aˆ puroß pote« fanei÷ß, pote« de« kai« e˙n ei˙ko/ni aÓswma¿twˆ: nuvn
de÷, dia» qelh/matoß Qeouv uJpe«r touv aÓnqrwpei÷ou ge÷nouß a‡nqrwpoß
geno/menoß[.] . . . Oi˚ ga»r ton Ui˚on Pate÷ra fa¿skonteß ei•nai e˙le÷gcontai
mh/te ton Pate÷ra e˙pista¿menoi, mhq∆ o¢ti e˙sti«n Ui˚oß twˆ◊ Patri« tw◊n
o¢lwn ginw¿skonteß: o§ß kai« Lo/goß prwto/tokoß w·n touv Qeouv, kai« Qeoß
uJpa¿rcei. Kai« pro/teron dia» thvß touv puroß morfhvß kai« ei˙ko/noß
aÓswma¿tou twˆ◊ Mwu¨sei√ kai« toi√ß e˚te÷roiß profh/taiß e˙fa¿nh: nuvn d∆ . . .
dia» parqe÷nou a‡nqrwpoß geno/menoß kata» thn touv Patroß boulh/n, uJpe«r
swthri÷aß tw◊n pisteuo/ntwn aujtwˆ◊, kai« e˙xouqenhqhvnai kai« paqei√n
uJpe÷meinen, iºna aÓpoqanw»n kai« aÓnasta»ß nikh/shØ ton qa¿naton. It should be noted that the references by
Justin to Christ as ⁄Aggeloß refers
to Him as the Messenger or Angel of Jehovah, the Old Testament Person who is so
far from being a created being that He is Jehovah Himself. This is apparent to
anyone who reads the context of Justin’s declarations.
oJ ku/rioß ∆Ihsouvß
Cristoß . . . w—ˆ hJ do/xa sun patri kai« aJgi÷wˆ pneu/mati ei˙ß touß
ai˙w◊naß tw◊n ai˙w¿nwn, aÓmh/n.
Diog. 7:2 aÓll∆ aujtoß aÓlhqw◊ß oJ pantokra¿twr kai«
pantokti÷sthß kai« aÓo/ratoß qeo/ß, aujtoß aÓp∆ oujranw◊n thn aÓlh÷qeian kai«
ton lo/gon ton a‚gion kai« aÓperino/hton aÓnqrw¿poiß e˙ni÷druse . . . ouj
kaqa¿per a‡n tiß ei˙ka¿seien aÓnqrw¿poiß uJphre÷thn tina» pe÷myaß h£ a‡ggelon
h£ a‡rconta h£ tina tw◊n diepo/ntwn ta» e˙pi÷geia h£ tina tw◊n pepisteume÷nwn
ta»ß e˙n oujranoi√ß dioikh/seiß, aÓll∆ aujton ton tecni÷thn kai« dhmiourgon
tw◊n o¢lwn, w—ˆ touß oujranouß e¶ktisen, w—ˆ thn qa¿lassan i˙di÷oiß o¢roiß
e˙ne÷kleisen, ou∞ ta» musth/ria pistw◊ß pa¿nta fula¿ssei ta» stoicei√a, par∆
ou∞ ta» me÷tra tw◊n thvß hJme÷raß dro/mwn h¢lioß ei¶lhfe fula¿ssein, w—ˆ
peiqarcei√ selh/nh nukti« fai÷nein keleu/onti, w—ˆ peiqarcei√ ta» a‡stra twˆ◊
thvß selh/nhß aÓkolouqouvnta dro/mwˆ, w—ˆ pa¿nta diate÷taktai kai« diw¿ristai
kai« uJpote÷taktai, oujranoi« kai« ta» e˙n oujranoi√ß, ghv kai« ta» e˙n thØv
ghØv, qa¿lassa kai« ta» e˙n thØv qala¿sshØ, puvr, aÓh/r, a‡bussoß, ta» e˙n
u¢yesi, ta» e˙n ba¿qesi, ta» e˙n twˆ◊ metaxu/: touvton proß aujtouß
aÓpe÷steilen. . . . e˙n e˙pieikei÷aˆ kai« prauŒthti wJß basileuß pe÷mpwn ui˚on
basile÷a e¶pemyen, wJß qeon e¶pemyen, wJß a‡nqrwpon proß aÓnqrw¿pouß
e¶pemyen, wJß swˆ¿zwn e¶pemyen, wJß pei÷qwn, ouj biazo/menoß: bi÷a ga»r ouj
pro/sesti twˆ◊ qewˆ◊.
Ti÷ß ou™n oujk a·n
aÓporh/sai, le÷gontaß Qeon Pate÷ra kai« Ui˚on Qeon kai« Pneuvma a‚gion,
deiknu/ntaß aujtw◊n kai« thn e˙n thØv e˚nw¿sei du/namin kai« thn e˙n thØv
ta¿xei diai÷resin, aÓkou/saß aÓqe÷ouß kaloume÷nouß;
Note also
the composition “The Worship of the Son of God in Scripture and the Earliest
Christianity” at http://sites.google.com/site/faithalonesaves/salvation
oJmologouvmen . . . patroß dikaiosu/nhß kai«
swfrosu/nhß, kai« tw◊n a‡llwn aÓretw◊n. . . kai« ton . . . Ui˚on . . . kai«
ton . . . Pneuvma¿ te to profhtikon sebo/meqa, kai« proskunouvmen, lo/gwˆ
kai« aÓlhqei÷aˆ timw◊nteß, kai« panti« boulome÷nwˆ maqei√n, wJß e˙dida¿cqhmen,
aÓfqo/nwß paradido/nteß.
Did the Trinity Come from Paganism? part 3
the Unitarians in the Watchtower society wish to prove that the Trinity comes
from paganism in general, they quote, more often than any other single
reference book[i] in their Should
You Believe In the Trinity? the work “The
Paganism in Our Christianity [which]
declares: ‘The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan.’”[ii] While the lack of context makes the
quotation extremely difficult to trace,[iii]
one can with great diligence discover that it comes from pg. 197 of the book in
question, written by one Arthur Wiegall[iv]
(New York, NY: Knickerbocker
Press, 1928). An extensive
quotation of Wiegall will demonstrate to all just how credible—or rather,
incredible—he is:
miraculous . . . made [Christ] God incarnate to the thinkers of the First
Century; all these marvels make
Him a conventional myth to those of the Twentieth. Many of the most erudite critics are convinced that no such
person [as Jesus Christ] ever lived. . . . [The] twelve disciples [were invented
from] the twelve signs of the Zodiac. . . . [The gospels are] meagre and
garbled accounts . . . borrowed from paganism . . . many of the details of the
life of our Lord are too widly improbable to be accepted in these sober days. .
. . [M]any gods and semi-divine heroes have mothers whose names are variations
of “Mary” . . . the name of our Lord’s mother may have been forgotten and a
stock name substituted. . . . . The mythological origin of [the record of
Jesus’ birth] is so obvious that the whole story must be abandoned. . . .
[When] St. Luke says that when the child was born Mary wrapped Him in swaddling
clothes and laid Him in a manger . . . [the] author was here drawing upon Greek
mythology. . . . The story of the Virgin Birth . . . is derived from pagan
sources. . . . The story of the forty days in the wilderness and the temptation
by Satan . . . [comes from] a pagan legend. . . . the account of the
Crucifixion . . . parallels . . . rites of human sacrifice as practiced by the
ancients. . . . In primitive days it was the custom in many lands for a king or
ruler to put his own son to death as a sacrifice to the tribal god. . . . in
the primitive Passover a human victim was probably sacrificed. . . . [T]he side
of Jesus [being] pierced by a lance . . . [relates to] a widespread custom
[like] . . . the primitive Albanians used to sacrifice a human being to the
moon-goddess by piercing his side with a spear. . . . Nobody in his senses now
believes that Jesus ascended into Heaven . . . His body must anyhow have died
or been cast aside. . . . such an ascension into the sky was the usual end to
the mythical legends of the lives of pagan gods . . . [T]he Christian
expression “washed in the blood of the Lamb” is undoubtably a reflection of . .
. the rites of Mithra. . . . [T]he worshippers of Mithra practiced baptism by
water. . . . There is no authentic evidence that Jesus ever intended to
establish a Church . . . the Lord’s Supper has been changed . . . under
Mithraic and other ancient influences. . . . The doctrine of the Atonement . .
. nauseates the modern mind, and . . . is of pagan origin, being indeed the
most obvious relic of heathendom in the Faith . . . it is not, of course,
supported by anything known to have been said by Jesus. . . . this idea of a
god dying for the benefit of mankind, and rising again, had is origin in the
fact that nature seemed to die in winter and revive in spring. . . . [T]he Logos [the Greek term for “Word,” used of the Lord Jesus
in John 1:1, 14; 1 John 5:7; Revelation 19:13] theory, which had been adopted
by the author of the Gospel of St. John from the philosophy of Philo . . . went
a long way towards establishing the identification of Jesus Christ with God . .
. the idea of the Logos itself
was pagan. . . . Sunday, too, was a pagan holy day . . . the Jewish Sabbath . .
. is obviously derived from moon-worship. . . . Now Sunday . . . had been for
long the holy day in the solar religions of Mithra . . . Christians . . .
[worshipped on Sunday] by pagan custom. . . . in this Twentieth Century
thoughtful men . . . [reject] the phantom crowd of savage and blood-stained old
gods who have come into the Church, and, by immemorial right, have demanded the
worship of habit-bound man.”[v]
an irrational, Bible-hating wacko.
He provides no documentation, no proof, nothing that even closely
resembles a semblance at an argument for the claims in his book; they are nothing but the speculations
and ridiculous accusations of his feverishly anti-Christian mind. The Watchtower quotes Weigall more than
any other individual in their Should You Believe in the Trinity?—despite the fact that a quote from him on the origin
of the Trinity has about equal weight with a quote from a supermarket tabloid
about King Kong being sighted in Yosemite National Park or one of the Tooth
Fairy opening up a dental practice in New York City.
affirm that the Trinity is derived from paganism are regularly unreliable and
untrustworthy, and they are all, in any case, false. The Scripture, which is superior to all uninspired
historical evidence, manifests the Biblical origin of Trinitarianism. The Arian and Unitarian interpretation
of post-Biblical history is also unscholarly and mythological. The idea that the Trinity is derived
from paganism cannot be sustained.
variety of pictures of three pagan gods in a group[vi]
to scare people into thinking that the Trinity comes from paganism, and
sometimes manufacture or find various further quotations that allege that the
Trinity was derived from various pagan religions.[vii] However, there simply is no connection
between pagans who worshipped many gods and sometimes put three of them
together (as they would sometimes put two, four, or some other number of their
gods together in a particular idolatrous image) and the tri-unity of the one
God of the Bible.[viii]
that Trinitarianism was derived from Plato or Platonic philosophy. They offer as proof for their
contention extremely questionable quotations of the sort examined above, by
people like Norton, Lacugna, and Weigall.
What they do not do is quote Plato. A rather severe problem for their position is that the
writings of Plato do not contain the doctrine of the Trinity.[ix] Nor do the writings of Aristotle or
other pre-Christian pagan philosophers.
Similarities of language[x]
between post-Christian neo-Platonic philosophers and Christian Trinitarians are
weak, and similarites of meaning are either nonexistent or very strained. If they were to indicate anything, they
would demonstrate the influence of Christian theology upon the thought of
post-Christian pagan philosophy, rather than the reverse.[xi] Furthermore, even if one were to
establish genuine and clear Trinitarian testimonial from pre-Christian pagan
writings—which cannot be done—it would not demonstrate that Christians took
pagan ideas into their theological system when they believed in the
Trinity. The fact that the
fundamentals of Trinitarian doctrine were given to Adam (Genesis 1:2, 26),
recognized by righteous Gentiles in the Old Testament era (Job 19:25-27; 33:4,
echoing Genesis 1:2) and believed by Israel in the Mosaic economy (Isaiah
48:16) makes the consideration that remnants of the original Trinitarian
revelation might be present among those descendents of Adam that fell into
paganism, or among those pagans influenced by Israel or righteous Gentiles in
the Old Testament era, a definite possibility. In this case, Trinitarian ideas present in pre-Christian,
non-Jewish writings would be evidence of influence from the God of Adam and of
Israel.[xii] What cannot in any wise be established
historically is that Christian Trinitarianism was simply the influx of pagan
thought into theological thinking.
Should
You Believe In the Trinity? in the
section, “How Did The Trinity Doctrine Develop?” pg. 11. Weigall is also quoted with approval
elsewhere in this Watchtower work (pgs. 3, 6).
The
publisher of the book is not cited.
The page number the quote is from is not cited. The year the book was published is not
cited. The ISBN number is not
cited. The Watchtower work which
quotes the book has no bibliography.
Nothing is provided in the Watchtower composition that would enable the
reader to access the book in question and discover if the author has any
credibility is provided; the most
basic conventions for quoted material are neglected. In light of the radically, ridiculously unhistorical and
unscholarly nature of the book in question, a desire on the part of the
Watchtower society to make the book inaccessible and so prevent readers from
discovering the facts about it is understandable, though detestable. The lack of page numbers, publishers,
year published, etc. is a common factor for all works cited in this Watchtower
publication.
Weigall is
an individual of sufficient obscurity that his academic qualifications, or lack
thereof, are nearly impossible to discover. It is not known if this great “historian” went to college,
if he dropped out of high school (as did the majority of the New World
“Translation” committee), etc.
Pgs. 17,
19, 20, 23-24, 50, 51, 60, 61-62, 68, 71, 85, 86, 87, 92, 105, 140, 141, 152,
155, 160, 163, 187-188, 229-230, 235-236, 277.
Robert
Morey (pgs. 488-489, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues. Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers, 1996) writes,
“The Watchtower . . . ‘proves’ [its] claim [that the Trinity comes from
paganism] by pictures of three idols of various pagan deities standing together
as if they represent the source of the Christian concept of the Trinity. For example, they point to Egyptian
idols of Osiris, Isis, and Horus.
logical fallacies. First, it
commits the fallacy of equivocation in that the word ‘Trinity’ is being used
with several different meanings.
The word ‘Trinity’ according to Christian theology refers to one,
infinite/personal God eternally existing in three Persons: the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. But the word
‘Trinity’ is used by the Arians to refer to any grouping of three finite gods
and goddesses. Obviously there is
no logical relationship between three finite gods and the one trinue God of
Christianity.
the categorical fallacy of trying to relate together concepts that have no
relationship at all. The following
diagram illustrates the radical difference between the Trinity and pagan
triads:
|
The Trinity
|
Pagan triads
|
|
one God
|
three gods & goddesses
|
|
infinite in nature
|
finite in nature
|
|
omnipotent
|
impotent
|
|
omniscient
|
ignorant of some things
|
|
omnipresent
|
limited to one place
|
|
immutable
|
mutable
|
|
perfect
|
imperfect
|
|
good
|
good and evil
|
Watchtower’s attempt to link the Trinity to pagan triads reveals either that
[it does] not understand the Trinity, or that, if [it] does, [it] is being
deliberately deceptive.”
Morey (pg.
489-490, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues) writes, “The same problem arises when [Arians—specifically the
Watchtower in Should You Believe in the Trinity?] claims the doctrine of the Trinity came from
Plato. They do not indicate where
the Trinity can be found in the writings of Plato. They quote from Unitarians and other anti-Trinitarians who
make the same claim, but nowhere do they quote Plato.
translated some of his dialogues from the original Greek, we must go on record
that we have never found in Plato anything even remotely resembling the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Perhaps this is why Arians never give a single reference to Plato’s
works to back up their claims. . . .
many times . . . that . . . [Trinitarians] borrowed their conceipt of the
Trinity from Platonism and used Plato’s Demiurge as their concept of Christ . .
. What they fail to tell their readers is that Plato’s Demiurge was a finite
being created by God and, thus, not equal to God. The following diagram reveals whose Christ is patterned
after the Demiurge:
|
The Demiurge
|
Two Views of Christ
|
|
|
Platonism
|
Arianism
|
Trinitarianism
|
|
created
|
created
|
not created
|
|
finite
|
finite
|
infinite
|
|
not eternal
|
not eternal
|
eternal
|
|
not omnipresent
|
not omnipresent
|
omnipresent
|
|
not omniscient
|
not omniscient
|
omniscient
|
|
not omnipotent
|
not omnipotent
|
omnipotent
|
|
semi-divine
|
semi-divine
|
full deity
|
the above chart, it is clear that it is Arianism that has patterned its view of
Christ from Plato’s Demiurge.”
(though not all—some were rabid enough to attempt to read into Plato’s works
what was clearly not present, a practice followed even by some earlier writers)
who adopted and promolugated much of the philosophy of Plato in the medieval
and subsequent eras, and tried with all their might to Christianize the Greek
philosopher, were honest enough to admit that there was no Trinity in
Plato. For example, “Marsilio
Ficino, 1433–1499, one of the circle who made the court of Lorenzo the
Magnificent famous, was an ordained priest, rector of two churches and canon of
the cathedral of Florence. He eloquently preached the Platonic gospel to his
‘brethren in Plato,’ and translated the Orphic hymns, the Hermes
Trismegistos, and some works of Plato
and Plotinus, — a colossal task for that age. He believed that the divine
Plotinus had first revealed the theology of the divine Plato and “the mysteries
of the ancients,” and that these were consistent with Christianity. Yet he was
unable to find in Plato’s writings the mystery of the Trinity” (David Schaff, The
Middle Ages: From Boniface VIII, 1294, to the Protestant Reformation, 1517, Vol. 6, Chap. 8:65 in Philip Schaff’s History of
the Christian Church, elec. acc.).
The
evident fact that the requirements of language will lead to some overlap in
terminology between God’s people and paganism as believers communicate the
truths about God derived from revelation should be obvious from a simple
consideration of the necessities of discourse in a language common to believers
and unbelievers. The fact that a
Christian who is explaining truth about the nature of God in modern America at
a secular university to a philosophy major may use terminology familiar to his
unsaved philosophical friend does not mean that the Christian’s view of God
came from anti-God philosophy.
Christian theological works that employ a precision of logic and
terminology also employed by careful non-Christian philosophical works do not thereby
prove that the Christian content was adopted from that of the pagans. Likewise, the use of a Trinitarian word
such as hupostasis by both
Christians and pagans is no more proof that the Christian concept came from
pagan philosophy then the fact that the phrase “one God” was employed by
Christians and pagan philosophy demonstrates that Christians derived their idea
of the unity of God from heathenism.
One might as well conclude that a church building is an evil derived
from the ungodly world because structures owned by both Christians and
non-Christians follow common standards required by law in building codes.
“The
Socinian and rationalistic opinion, that the church doctrine of the Trinity
sprang from Platonism and Neo-Platonism is . . . radically false. The Indian Trimurti, altogether
pantheistic in spirit, is still further from the Christian Trinity. . . . [The
post-Christian pagn writers] Plotinus (in Enn. V. 1) and Porphyry (in Cyril. Alex. 100 Jul.) who, however, were already unconsciously affected by
Christian ideas, speak of trei√ß uJposta¿seiß but in a sense altogether different from
that of the church” (Philip Schaff, Ante-Nicene Christianity, Vol. 2, Chap. 12:149 of his History of
the Christian Church,
elec. acc.).
The
affirmation of revelatory influence upon pagan philosophy is alleged, for
example, by Justin Martyr, who asserts that Plato derived his idea that there
was but one God from Jews living in Alexandria, Egypt (Horatory Address to
the Greeks, Chapter 20).
Lure Them In, pt. 1
When Purpose Driven Church first came out, I had never heard of Rick Warren, and I snatched it up immediately. I thought we were Purpose Driven and I wanted to know what he had to say. If you read that book, you had a hard time finding the purpose. I concluded the purpose was “making unsaved people happy when they visit your church.” Rick Warren grew up in the home of a Southern Baptist pastor, who moved from small church to small church. When little Rick invited unsaved kids to his dad’s church, things weren’t designed to impress his visitors so they wouldn’t come back. This sent Rick on a path to research what would make churches get big. In his book, he says that nothing was more important for growth than the choice of music. They went out and polled everyone and found people wanted “pop music.” That became the music of Saddleback. People who didn’t like pop music would just become necessary casualties to church growth success.
Luring in unbelievers to church has become the major if not unanimous church growth philosophy of evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Rick Warren isn’t alone in that particular purpose that drives his church. What attracts unbelievers? Surprise. Carnal things.
The Corinthians understood the attraction of carnality for church growth. They knew that Greeks sought after wisdom and Jews after signs, among other allurements. Excellency of speech was important to impress Greeks. They had mastered rhetoric and logic and debate to defend themselves in their own court systems. If you couldn’t impress with your speaking ability, you weren’t going to attract Corinthians. The church there knew the importance of ecstasy in Greek worship in their temples and religion. They also brought that into the church. Paul derided and forbade all these different sorts of compatibility with the culture for purposes of church growth. He required faith in the gospel instead and especially in order to glorify God. Despite that, these techniques continue and more so today than ever.
Unbelievers aren’t spiritual, so you can only go for the carnal to attract them and so churches do in many different ways. You can divide the kind of allurements into categories.
REVIVALIST FUNDAMENTALIST LURES
It would seem that “revivalist” and “lure” would be mutually exclusive. I would understand someone thinking this. If you’ve got the power of God, the dynamic working of the Holy Spirit, perhaps even gained by paying the cost, you wouldn’t resort to carnal allurements. Not so. The revivalists have been on the cutting edge especially of luring a particular demographic. There is a tradition of revivalists using carnality to lure unbelievers to their gatherings.
I have called their strategy promotion. Technically or definitionally I don’t think there is a difference between promotion and marketing, but I have used them to differentiate between different strategies. You promote for one demographic and you market to another.
Revivalists have their own musical attraction in the way of fast paced kind of carnival-type music that is designed to have some kind of effect on people. They have specialized in certain kinds of performance features in the music to target unbelievers. Some of this is now too tame to have as much of an effect, but it still comes with the same philosophical underpinnings. This music has been so long now, it has a tradition. Because it has been used in church, now its adherents think it is church music and discern it as spiritual. It wasn’t written to be spiritual, but because it has an effect, that is now attributed to the Holy Spirit. This is the ecstatic feature of this musical aspect of revivalist fundamentalism.
In addition to the music are give-aways. Evangelicals do this too, but revivalist fundamentalists have specialized in small toys, candy, ice cream, fast food, and soda. These motivate a poorer, unbelieving demographic to do something. These strategies work on certain people up to a certain age, so there is a turn-over rate, but they haven’t stopped working. When they work, the success of them also motivates the workers, which helps keep them going. In the end, the allurements are called service and are attributed to “God working.” None of this is true, but it is how it works in revivalist fundamentalism.
On top of certain music and give-aways, revivalist fundamentalists depend on “big-days,” that among them could be carnival Sunday, round-up Sunday, old-fashioned Sunday, among others. They might have in a magician, a musician, or give away a trip to the zoo, a kite, a sno-cone, a watermelon, or a package of M & M’s. Most of you readers know about this strategy.
Some revivalist fundamentalists do this more than others. For some, it is very developed and constant. For others, it is more hit and miss. I’m surprised to find how wide ranging it is. It isn’t just Hyles people who do this. Bob Jones types also use these strategies regularly. Some put a big emphasis on it during their version of vacation Bible school—Neighborhood Bible Time, etc. You’ve got traveling groups that do this with teens for an entire week to lure in unsaved teens with the carnal amusements and promotions. They also in most cases also believe in the “power of God,” ironically.
The practices I’ve described are an offense to God. They take away glory from Him. They turn faith into sight, so they are faithless. They practice and encourage carnality. They take away discernment. They make the church into something it isn’t supposed to be. They disobey scriptural methodology. They hurt real evangelism. They make a mockery out of worship. I could list twice as many of these that I’ve already written. I think that this part of Christianity has done more damage to the church than any other practice.
Despite all of what I’ve said they are, they most often don’t result in a loss of or break in fellowship between churches. Churches expect other churches to do these things. It reminds me of what people will say about winning professional sports teams: “if you aren’t cheatin’, you’re not tryin.'” They think that teams that really want to win should cheat. The idea is that the churches that do these things, which are like or are cheating, are trying harder because they resort to this carnality. It is so prominent that people now just expect it and then let it go. This should be a separating issue because of what it is.
One more thing. How is this justified? One is that scripture doesn’t say, “Thou shalt not give candy.” Another is that Jesus told a story in which a lord said to his servants to go into the highways and hedges to compel them to come in—a misinterpretation of that has become a reason to lure people in. Also, Jesus healed people—that drew a crowd. He used something to draw a crowd so doing that is permissible. What about all of these? In short, first, silence isn’t permission. 1 Corinthians 1-3 forbids this. Jesus’ parable was teaching to preach to sinners, not promotion. And then Jesus’ healing wasn’t to draw a crowd. He healed people to show He was the Messiah. None of those work as arguments and how could they be teaching that in contradiction to what Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 1-3? Jesus hated that people followed Him for temporal bread or to seek after signs. He said it was an adulterous people who did that.
Another point of the revivalist fundamentalists is now used to differentiate them from evangelicals who do the same kind of thing. The fundamentalists aren’t as bad. It’s a matter of degree. If you don’t do too much of it, you’re not so bad. I’m convinced these people know this is wrong, but maybe I’m too positive in this evaluation. I think they know it’s wrong and they do it anyway. The most popular way to deal with things like I’ve said here is to attack me. I lack compassion. Why not go soulwinning instead of criticizing? Or, how many souls have you won lately? Those attacks don’t mean anything to me, except to add to the exposure of the ones this post describes.
More to Come
Local Only Ecclesiology, Baptist History, and Landmarkism, pt. 4
Part One, Part Two, Part Three
An assembly is an assembly. People who don’t assemble are not an assembly. A church is an assembly. That’s the meaning of the word, “church” (ekklesia). If you take the plain or normal meaning of “church,” you read it as an assembly. A church is a group of people, not all over the world, but in a particular locale, that assemble regularly for a specific business. What I just wrote is it.
All believers in the world don’t function as an assembly and will never function as an assembly. At some point, all believers will assemble in heaven, but that doesn’t mean they are an assembly now. They’re not. They never assemble now. And that is why you will never see in the Bible a universal church. There is nowhere in Scripture that a church on earth in this age in which we live, which includes right now and in the last 2000 years, is defined as all believers. There is not a single text in the Bible that explains or describes the church as a “universal church.” That idea is foreign to God’s Word. It actually contradicts what the Bible does say.
Those, like Fred Moritz, who say and teach that the true church is all believers, are not getting that from the Bible. And then, to add insult to injury, Moritz attacks those who do teach what the Bible says about the church and treats them like they are coming with a novelty. His view of the church is an old view, it’s Catholic and then Protestant, but it doesn’t go all the way back to the Bible. He reads into Scripture his presupposition.
Then Moritz in his online journal article for Maranatha talks like two local only advocates or teachers (B. H. Carroll and S. E. Anderson) really did believe that a church was the unassembled all believers on earth, even though they said that they didn’t. Personally, I’m not so concerned what they said they believed, because I know what Scripture teaches, but I think it is important to consider what they were talking about and whether it is what Moritz says they were saying. His quotes of Carroll and Anderson don’t present any problem for a local only position. They are saying that all believers at the most are a church in prospect, that is, all believers will assemble in heaven. This is also the way that Richard Weeks taught it at Maranatha. That doesn’t do anything to back a present assembly of all believers. All believers will never assemble until heaven, so they are not a church in this age. That means there is no universal church. There is none. There never will be one. Universal and assembly are mutually exclusive.
The singular noun “church” is always an assembly. However, normal grammar says that the singular “church” could be a particular church or a generic one. If it is generic, it is still an assembly. However, it is talking about an assembly or the assembly in a representative way. There are no other usages of the singular noun, besides a particular or a generic. In the few (about 10) passages “church” is used in a generic fashion, it is still talking about something local and visible.
So where did the idea of a universal or catholic church come from? This is where a bit of irony comes in. Moritz makes a big deal about the influence of covenant theology on James Graves. He probably was influenced some by covenant theology in some of his understanding of the kingdom of God, but this is not where he got his local only ecclesiology, as Moritz seems to assert. However, at that time, many were influenced at least a little by covenant theology, because of the pervasive influence of Protestantism.
In the New Testament, a church is only an assembly that meets. That’s how the New Testament authors used “church.” It’s how they understood “church.” It’s easy to see, however, that Greek philosophy was already beginning to influence the early churches. The Corinthians were denying bodily resurrection because of the Greek philosophy of the immortality of the soul alone. You read local only ecclesiology in the earliest patristic, Clement of Rome in his first century letter, 1 Clement. However, as you keep reading patristic ecclesiology, you find influences in hermeneutics related to a response to persecution. Origen developed an allegorical approach to Scripture. And then much changed with the advent of Constantine and the state, catholic church. Patristics and then later Catholic theologians mixed Platonism, a kind of Greek philosophy, with Scripture to come to a new position on the church, one not found in the Bible. This same view continues to influence today and it has done so to Fred Moritz.
Scripture teaches premillennialism. Every New Testament believer took that hermeneutic. We should assume early Christians believed the same. However, with Roman Catholicism’s faulty view of the kingdom, seeing the church as the kingdom of God on earth, came the amillennial view. The presupposition of amillennialism affected the approach to Scripture. Allegorization or spiritualization of many Bible passages became the norm. Augustine essentially codified this in Catholic thought with his response to the Dontatists. The politics meant little to no challenge to a Catholic hermeneutic for centuries. With the reformation came an in depth justification of amillennialism by a system of covenant theology. The reformation stopped at ecclesiology. Roman Catholicism and the the reformers spiritualized the church with the covenant theology. This is where Moritz gets his view of the church and this is the irony.
The Baptists or Separatists, the non-Catholic churches, saw things differently. Richard Baxter, a reformed pastor, recognized the ecclesiology of the Donatists, when he wrote in 1707 in his Practical Works: “[T]he Donatists arose from their not sufficiently distinguishing the Cburch Universal from the Associated Churches of their Country nor well considering that baptism as such is but our entrance into the Universal Church and not into this or that particular Church.” If you read the Schleitheim Confession of the Swiss Anabaptists in 1527, led by Michael Sattler, you will read a local only ecclesiology outside of the position of covenant theology. William Tyndale grew up in a Baptist home and “he always translated the word by the word congregation and held to a local conception of a church” (Tyndale, Works, London, 1831, II, p. 13).
I’m in no agreement with the theology of Swiss theologian Emil Brunner, but he writes as an observer and historian in his The Misunderstanding of the Church (p. 60):
Both in classical Greek and in the usage of the Greek Old Testament, Ecclesia means congregation, the assembled people. So then the New Testament Ecclesia in its original form, is the fellowship of Christ or the people of God assembled for purposes of divine worship.
On p. 90, he continues:
So far our thesis has proved sound: the Ecclesia of the New Testament is a communion of persons and nothing else. It is the Body of Christ, but not an institution. Therefore, it is not yet what it later became as a result of a slow, steady, hence unnoticed process of transformation. . . . Then the neo-catholic Roman church —is distinguished from the Ecclesia above all in this—that is no longer primarily a communion of persons, but rather an institution.
Brunner saw this as acceptable, but in telling it as it is about the history of the meaning of church. Scripture doesn’t teach a catholic church—that was a development of thought from the original understanding.
More to Come
Did the Trinity Come From Paganism? part 1
that Trinitarianism is derived from paganism. They commonly quote various publications as well to support
such affirmations. For example,
the Watchtower society (so-called “Jehovah’s Witnesses”), representative of modern Bible-affirming Arianism,
states, “‘New Testament research has been leading an increasing number of
scholars to the conclusion that Jesus certainly never believed himself to be
God.’—Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.”[1]
In fact, as “Yale University professor E. Washburn Hopkins affirmed: ‘To Jesus
and Paul the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown; . . . they say
nothing about it.’—Origin and Evolution of Religion.”[2] Why? “The Encyclopedia of Religion admits: ‘Theologians today are in agreement that the
Hebrew Bible does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity.’ . . . The
Encyclopedia of Religion says: ‘Theologians
agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the
Trinity.’”[3] If, as Arians affirm, Trinitarianism
does not come from the Bible, where does it come from? The Watchtower references the book “The
Paganism in Our Christianity [which]
declares: ‘The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan.’”[4] In fact, these Unitarians affirm in “the
book A Statement of Reasons,
Andrews Norton says of the Trinity: ‘We can trace the history of this doctrine,
and discover its source, not in the Christian revelation, but in the Platonic
philosophy . . . The Trinity is not a doctrine of Christ and his Apostles, but
a fiction of the school of the later Platonists.’”[5] Similarly, the modalist leader David
Bernard writes, “[T]he idea of a trinity did not originate with Christendom. It
was a significant feature of pagan religions and philosophies before the
Christian era, and its existence today in various forms suggests an ancient,
pagan origin. . . . The Scriptures do not teach the doctrine of the trinity,
but trinitarianism has its roots in paganism.”[6] However, the allegation that
Trinitarian doctrine comes from paganism, rather than from Scripture, is
entirely false. This notion has
several severe problems.
pre-Christian pagan writings, this objection to the Trinity contradicts another
common anti-Trinitarian retort, namely, that Trinitarianism is unbiblical
because the word “Trinity” is not in the Bible. If the fact that the word is not present means that the idea
is not present, then the fact that the word “Trinity” is not in pre-Christian
pagan authors means the idea is not found in paganism. The two objections are
contradictory. Anti-Trinitarians
should make up their minds to stick to the one or the other, but not employ
them both. However, despite their contradictory
nature, Unitarians and modalists generally do advance both allegations. For example, the Unitarian and modalist
compositions quoted in the previous paragraph both employ the “the word
‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible” attack.[7] Anti-Trinitarian compositions often do
not worry about the logical consistency of their allegations, but simply employ
whatever attacks sound good at the time, even if they are contradictory.
came from paganism is not sustainable historically. As demonstrated in The Triune God of the Bible,[8]
Trinitarianism is taught from Genesis to Revelation. The idea that, centuries after the inspiration of the New
Testament, paganism somehow crept in and brought forth the idea of the Trinity
is impossible in light of the clear Biblical evidence for Trinitarianism and
the testimony of post-Biblical Christianity from even the earliest period.
anti-Trinitarian literature to support their affirmations of the non-Biblical,
pagan origin of the Trinity are usually extremely suspect. While, since “of making many books there
is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12), it is not
possible to trace and evaluate every single quotation in every anti-Trinitarian
composition, an evaluation of some of the sources employed in the Watchtower’s Should
You Believe in the Trinity? quoted above
will be evaluated as representative of much of the distortion and
misinformation advanced in the anti-Trinitarian cause.
above, states, “‘New Testament research has been leading an increasing number
of scholars to the conclusion that Jesus certainly never believed himself to be
God.’ —Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.” The quote is prominently
displayed in the exact middle of the page, set off in bold print within a
special box.[9] No author of the article, page number,
or other information is provided.
The quotation was deemed important enough to be made twice in this Arian
publication, once in a special box on the side of a page highlighting its
importance. One can with
difficulty discover the very poorly referenced source of the quotation.[10] Upon acquiring the periodical, one
notices that the Watchtower left out, without any indication of the removal,
the underlined words in the quotation:
“New Testament research over, say, the last thirty or forty years
has been leading an increasing number of reputable New Testament
scholars to the conclusion that Jesus himself may not have claimed any of
the Christological titles which the Gospels ascribe to him, not even the
functional designation ‘Christ,’ and certainly never believed himself to be
God.” The author of the article,
G. H. Boobyer, is a radical Bible-rejector who denies that the Lord Jesus ever
claimed to be the Christ, and thus rejected the idea of Scripture that He was
God as well. While Boobyer will
deny that Jesus is the Christ and that He is God, he will in his article
reference the conclusion of another writer with approval that early “Christians
might, in certain senses, have been willing to recognize the deity of the
emperor.” Why such egregious
misrepresentation of Boobyer’s claim—leaving out his claim that Jesus never
said He was the Christ to quote only his rejection of the Scriptural testimony
to His Deity? Is this the kind of
“scholarship” that the Arians in the Watchtower society will employ—people who
will say that Christians were willing to recognize the deity of the emperor,
but will say that Jesus never said He was the Christ, and thus not God? And why will they rip the actual
quotation of Boobyer into pieces, and leave out the parts that radically change
his meaning?
anti-Trinitarianism by affirming that “Yale University professor E. Washburn
Hopkins affirmed: ‘To Jesus and Paul[11]
the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown; . . . they say nothing
about it.’—Origin and Evolution of Religion.
. . . [Therefore] the Christian Greek Scriptures provide . . . [no] teaching of
the Trinity.”[12] Again, no publisher, page number, or
other information is provided for the quotation. With considerable effort, one can discover the location of
the quotation.[13] One begins to see why such incredibly
poor citation of the source is made when one discovers that Hopkins, in the
very sentence before the one reproduced by the Watchtower Society, states that
“The beginning of the doctrine of the trinity appears already in John,” thus
demonstrating that Hopkins recognized that Trinitarianism was found in the New
Testament, and on the same page affirmed that “The early Church taught that
Christ was the Logos and that the Logos was God,” while two pages after the
quotation made by the Watchtower Hopkins affirms that “[T]he plain faith of the
early church members . . . was just this and nothing more. Jesus is God. So proclaimed the first
hymns, sung by the early Church.”[14] Hopkins thus believed that early
Christianity agreed with the New Testament in teaching the Deity of Jesus
Christ. Of course, since these are exactly the opposite of the conclusion drawn
by the Watchtower from its quotation from Hopkins’ book, it is clear why there
was no great desire by this Arian organization for someone to look up the
quotation and see what was on the very same page, and in the immediate context
of the sentence from Hopkins so grossly taken out of context by the Watchtower.
any case, Hopkins’ book is not filled with Scriptural exegesis refuting the
many passages in the gospels and Pauline epistles that teach
Trinitarianism—nothing remotely like this is found anywhere in his book. Rather, Hopkins, because of his
anti-Bible evolutionary philosophy, believed that the New Testament writings of
the apostle John evolved a Trinitarianism that was not known to the Lord Jesus
(who was not, Hopkins believed, the Son of God) or Paul (whose writings,
Hopkins affirmed, were not inspired).
Hopkins believed that “[e]very religion is a product of human evolution
and has been conditioned by a social environment. Since man has developed from a state even lower than
savagery and was once intellectually a mere animal, it is reasonable to
attribute to him in that state no more religious consciousness than is
possessed by an animal. What then, the historian must ask, are the factors and
what the means whereby humanity has encased itself in this shell of religion,
which almost everywhere has been raied as a protective growth about the social
body? . . . [T]he principles of religion [are like the principles of human
evolution]. . . . [Man] once had a brain like that of a fish, then like that of
a reptile, and so on through the types of bird and marsupial, upward to the
brain of the higher mammals. . . . Man then was not suddenly created.”[15] From Hopkins’ belief that all religion,
including Christianity, is a mere product of evolution, like man himself, he
describes what he believes is a progression from “the worship of stones, hills,
trees, and plants” to “the worship of animals” to “the worship of elements and
heavenly phenomena” to “the worship of the sun,” to the worship of man, of
ancestors, and eventually the alleged evolutionary development of
Christianity. From this
evolutionary, atheistic viewpoint, Hopkins wrote:
. . . utilized . . . much pagan material . . . [such as] baptism . . . the hope
of immortality and resurrection, miraculous cures [and] water turned into
wine[.] . . . The religions of the divine Mother and of Mithra had already
taught the doctrine of a redeeming god . . . man through the death and
resurrection of the god became . . . a partaker also in the divine nature . . .
the pagan gods were still rememberd under a new form . . . [whether of] demons
. . . [or] angels . . . to whom man still prayed. . . . It makes no difference
whether union be felt with Brahma or God, with Vishnu Krishna or with Jesus
Christ . . . the realization of union, not the special object of faith, [is]
what matters. . . . God is one with Vishnu . . . Christ and Buddha and Krishna
represent the same idea . . . [When someone is] bowing down before Buddha . . .
let us not cry out, “Ah, the wretched idolator!”
religion evolved and that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God led him to
conclude that the “evolved” idea of the Trinity must have not been believed by
this “Jesus” who was not God’s Son, that Paul only gradually evolved it, and
that the apostle John and early Christianity then saw it evolve. Unless one accepts Hopkins’
evolutionary philosophy, the quotation made by the Watchtower from his book is
worthless, as Hopkins assumes without any evidence or argument that the Lord
Jesus saw Himself as simply a man, rather than as than God incarnate, equal to
the Father and the Holy Spirit.
The fact that even a radical religious skeptic and Christ-rejector like
Hopkins admitted, in extremely close proximity to the sentence wrenched from
its context by the Watchtower, that the New Testament teaches Trinitarianism
and the earliest Christianity knew Jesus was God, illuminates the extremely
deceitful manipulation of sources by the Arians in the Watchtower society.
Should
You Believe In the Trinity? in the section, “How Did The Trinity Doctrine Develop?” pg. 11.
The Watchtower makes the same quotation on pg. 3, since the organization
likes it so much.
See The
Oneness of God, David K. Bernard.
Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, Chapter 11, sections “Pagan roots and
parallels” and “Post-apostolic developments.
““The word
‘Trinity’ is not found in the Bible” (Should You Believe in the Trinity? pg. 6), “The Bible does not mention the word trinity,
nor does it mention the word persons in reference to God.” The Oneness of God, Bernard, Chapter 12, sec. “Nonbiblical Terminology.”).
Note, though, that the word “person” IS explicitly used of the Father as
contrast with the Son, Heb 1:3! So this is a quibble about the “s” on
“person(s)”!
Pgs. 19,
20. Should You Believe in the
Trinity? The second time, when not in
a big, prominently displayed box, the quote reads, “The fact is that Jesus is
not God and never claimed to be. This is being recognized by an increasing
number of scholars. As the Rylands Bulletin states: ‘The fact has to be faced
that New Testament research over, say, the last thirty or forty years has been
leading an increasing number of reputable New Testament scholars to the
conclusion that Jesus . . . certainly never believed himself to be God.’” Here, while the extremely misleading
omission that this same article said Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah or
Christ is retained, at least elipses were included. It should be mentioned that someone who did not acquire the
actual article would have no way of knowing that the two quotations are of the
same sentence, since the first one is even more significantly corrupted and
altered than the second quotation, and neither quote gives any information that
makes it at all easy to determine the actual source of the quotation.
It is
found in the article “‘Jesus As “Theos” In The New Testament,’ by G. H. Boobyer,
Bulletin of The John Rylands Library,
Vol. 50, (1967-68) pgs. 247-261.
While
Hopkins also said on the same page that the Watchtower took their quotation
from that Paul did not specifically use the word God for Christ (an affirmation for which he provided no
evidence, and which he is wrong about, Romans 9:5; Titus 2:13, etc.) and in his
rejection of the inspiration of the Bible Hopkins claimed Paul confused Christ
and the Holy Spirit, he nevertheless also stated that “Paul . . . applies to . . . Christ . . .
words of the Old Testament used of God: ‘I am God and . . . unto me every kee
shall bow’ (Is. 45:22, 23; Phil. 2:10),” an affirmation that modern Arians
would generally be extremely uncomfortable with and one that is only consistent
with a recognition of the absolute and full Deity of Christ.
Pg. 336, Origin
and Evolution of Religion, E.
Washburn Hopkins. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1924.
Images and Pictures of Jesus Christ Forbidden by Scripture
Baptists have rejected the use of all images in worship, including images of
Jesus Christ. The London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 states:
light of nature shews that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty
over all; is just, good and doth good unto all; and is therefore to be feared,
loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart and all
the soul, and with all the might. But the acceptable way of worshipping the
true God, is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will,
that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men,
nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other
way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures. (Chapter 22:1)
this prohibition of images of all kinds, including those of Jesus Christ,
historic Protestant documents agree. For example, the Westminster
Larger Catechism states:
sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling,
commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted
by God himself; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the
three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image
or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or
by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of
them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the
worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up
of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of
antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever;
simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship
and ordinances which God hath appointed.
noted by the Catechism, the second commandment is central to the question:
shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or
that is
in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not
bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my
commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6)
God forbids any to worship Him with “pictures . . . [or] images” (Num
33:52). This prohibition forbids the making of any picures of God
Himself, as well as practices such as bowing down before statues or pictures
(Ezekiel 8:10), even with the intent to worship God, not them. John 4:24
says, “God is
a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth.” All physical images of God necessarily misrepresent Him—as an
invisible Spirit, He is immaterial and cannot be pictured. The Lord
commands mankind to offer Him spiritual worship as commanded in His Word, not
worship with images. Since Jesus Christ is God, no images of Him should be
made. The Trinity is undivided, and prohibitions of images of God include
not God the Father and God the Holy Ghost only, but also God the Son.
Furthermore, no image could be made to represent Jesus Christ’s Divine nature,
since that is invisible and spiritual. Nor can any image correctly
represents the awe-inspiring glorified body He received after His resurrection.
One who saw His glorified humanity fell at his feet as dead (Revelation
1:10-18); no image can make this happen. No image correctly
represents His human nature during His earthly ministry, for the Bible records
nothing of His appearance at that time (compare 1 Peter 1:8; 2 Corinthians
5:16). Besides, Christ’s human nature is not divided from His Divine
nature; He is one Person with two natures, and no image can, therefore,
correctly represent Him as the Person He is. The common pictures of Christ
with long hair are even worse—indeed, they are a Satanic attempt to imply that
He was sinful, since “if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him” (1
Corinthians 11:14). If you have attempted to worship God using images,
including images of Christ, you have broken the second commandment—and worship
with an “image . . . the LORD thy God hateth” (Deuteronomy 16:22). Rather
than making pictures of Christ, view Jesus Christ in His ineffable glory by
faith through the Word—for then the Holy Spirit will progressively change you
into His moral likeness (2 Cor 3:18). Do not degrade Christ by making or
using images of Him. Do not have such images in your house. Do not use images of the Son in children’s
ministries. You can either cover up pictures of Him if you use children’s
curricula that have such images, or use a curriculum—such as this one—that does not contain them. Do not use such images for any other purpose in God’s church. If you have done so in the past, not having thought about whether what you were doing was right, now is the time to confess your sin (1 John 1:9) and stop. From this point forward, do not make, use, condone, promote, or contribute in any way to the use of images of the Son of God.
more information, note the resources here.
Attacks or Denials of God’s Creation
Scripture emphasizes God as Creator. God Himself elevates His work of creation. He desires recognition and glory for what He did and then continues to do in sustaining the creation. Believing in Him as Creator is one vital aspect of believing in Him. In other words, you don’t believe in Him if you deny His creation.
The Bible opens (Genesis 1:1) and closes with God creating (Revelation 21:1). We see this all over the psalms. Psalm 33:6-8:
6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. 7 He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
Psalm 93:3-6:
3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. 5 The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. 6 O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
Psalm 104:1-24:
vv. 1-3. Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, thou art very great! Thou art clothed with honour and majesty. . . . Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: He maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind. . . . Thou best set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth. v. 10. He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. . . . vv. 13–14. He watereth the hills from his chambers:
The earth is satisfied with fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; . . . vv. 19–20. He appointed the moon for seasons: The sun knoweth his going down. Thou makest darkness, and it is night; . . . v. 24. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom host thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.
We don’t worship the Lord without acknowledgement of His creation, and God is seeking for true worshipers. It’s easy to see that denying creation is part of apostasy (2 Peter 3:13). Paul said that the unbeliever under God’s wrath worships and serves the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:20). Creation on a root level declares that God is in fact God (Isaiah 45:18). Heaven’s population declares Him worthy because He created all things (Revelation 4:11). We should concern ourselves with the faith of those who attack or deny God’s creation.
I want us to consider several ways that men today attack or deny God’s creation, and, therefore, God as Creator.
1. Evolution
More evangelicals and even some professing fundamentalists believe in evolution. One of the leadership of The Gospel Coalition, Tim Keller, is one. The Bible doesn’t read evolution. Now prominent evangelicals are working at making evolution acceptable to evangelicals. They are looking at the Genesis account in unique ways that I have never seen before.
2. Homosexuality
An argument for homosexuality is one against God’s creation, as clearly seen in Romans 1. Maybe not ironically, Keller goes soft on homosexuality in his preaching:
Well, it’s much, much, much easier to to have private conversations about it. I think . . . uh . . . can make this short. I . . . I believe in general that if you preach on why homosexuality is a sin . . . uhhh . . . there are . . . at least in my . . . in my . . . in my . . . in my church I know there’s lots and lots of folks who have same sex attraction who know that that’s not . . . as a Christian, I can’t do that. I’m not gonna go there. There’s a good number of them. I’ve got a lot of non-Christians who are present who are friends of gay people but are not gay. Uhhh . . . and then uhh, there’d be a number of people with same sex attraction who . . . are there. And generally speaking, it’s almost impossible to preach a sermon and hit all 3 or 4 of those constituencies equally well. Ummmm . . . it’s just . . . it’s just think about . . . you know . . . you know . . . you’re a communicator. You know you need to . . . well, what’s my goal? Who are my audience and . . . wow! it’s like a conundrum you can’t solve. So, the best thing has always been for me. . . . to not do the public teaching as much as segment my audience through . . . ummm.
This explains the numerical growth of Keller’s church in New York City. This kind of attitude and action leads to some bad statistics on young evangelicals and homosexuality. When you see a fast rising acceptance of homosexual marriage in the United States, you think about professing evangelicals. The “millennials,” those whose oldest are approaching thirty, have been polled and 44% of them support homosexual marriage. That’s bad, but 19% of evangelicals overall support it. Keller’s preaching, and others’ like him, with homosexuality correlate to these statistics.
God created male and female and He made the woman for man, not a man for the man, just to remind us of the obvious.
3. Egalitarian Marriages and Relationships and Roles
Closely related to the first two here are marriages that attack or deny the God ordained roles. We’ve got feminist theologians now and they have made great headway. Male headship and female submission are part of God’s creation. He designed man as head over woman. You’ve got homosexuals and now you’ve also got metrosexuals. Men are more like women today. You know this. They have a certain fastidiousness to their clothes and hair, talk with a slight lisp, and have a lot of girlfriends. This is a new norm. Mr. Mom at home also reflects this—dad in the apron. An engineer in our church says that female engineers are outgrowing men. Without a role, you’ve probably noticed, boys become aimless, not knowing how to act anymore. It seems that you either have a fake manhood or little manhood. Real manhood is disappearing. You might be amazed at how much metrosexuality is at West Point, when I’ve been there visiting.
To remind you of Scripture, roles are based on creation order (1 Timothy 2:13; 1 Corinthians 11:8-9). Attacks or denials of complementarianism, separate roles for men and women, are attacks or denials of God as Creator.
4. Unisex Dress
Christians are some of the strongest advocates today for unisex dress. They take no position on Deuteronomy 22:5 and 1 Corinthians 11:3-16. They have relegated it to something ancient and closed off by history. Women in churches have butch haircuts and wear blue jeans. Men support it. They elevate female happiness over biblical obedience. These appearance issues are about God’s design in His creation again. I believe #2 and #3 above proceed from #4 here. Of course, a wrong belief comes first, but in practice, the appearance precedes the egalitarianism. Men won’t fight this now for the same reason Keller won’t preach against homosexuality. They don’t want to deal with those consequences. But what about God? I believe God sees this abuse as equal to homosexuality. Equal. I’m basing that on the use of the word “abomination.” God wants to be supported as Creator. Not doing so is akin to not believing in Him.
5. Amoral Music, Art, and Literature
Yes, Christian acceptance of rock and rap and grunge (etc.) music is an attack on God as Creator. At the root of it is a denial of Divine aesthetics, objective beauty. There is one God, one truth, one goodness, and one beauty. To make beauty amoral, to subjectivize beauty, is a rejection of God’s creation. Pre-enlightenment moral imagination saw God’s creation as the model for beauty. It was beautiful if it reflected God’s Divine nature and His order. Not any more. Ugly is the new lovely. And it doesn’t matter. All of these are related.
One more things about the music. This isn’t conviction based. This is feeling based. God as Creator is also Controller. One’s music is like Fido’s bowl of dog chow—you take it away, even if you are owner, and you might get bitten. People bite over music. That’s why a well-known presuppositionalist, like Douglas Wilson, really a fake one based on this issue alone, and many conservative evangelicals fight to keep their tunes. He’s got lots of rock on his playlist and you’ve got a disorder if you criticize. That’s part of his serrated edge for you insiders. Oh, if it’s good rock, well done rock. But love of rock contradicts presuppositionalism. It’s a bow to relative beauty.
I think there are more than these 5, but I don’t want to make this more controversial than it already is. Man worships himself as Creator. Evangelicalism and a majority of fundamentalism are already there. And another big chunk of fundamentalism doesn’t care. You wondering how a one world religion will happen? Wonder no more.
The Pandering President of America, States of America, Church of America, and the Pandering Party
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says that pandering is:
To cater to the lower tastes and desires of others or exploit their weaknesses.
I like the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary definition even better:
To do or provide exactly what a person or group wants, especially when it is not acceptable, reasonable or approved of, usually in order to get some personal advantage.
The United States has the perfect conditions for pandering to succeed, to take hold, to spread, and then to dominate. People here are consumers and have a consumer mentality. As much as people may say that they don’t want to be pandered to, they continue to be, because it works. And people will continue to pander as long as it does work. I don’t see any end in sight.
Of course, it is the nature of the flesh to enjoy and reward pandering, so that without restraint of that flesh, pandering will continue. Flesh also feeds off of other flesh. The flesh of the panderer and that of whom is pandered feed off of each other. Both flesh get what they want. One wants the pandering and the other the success of pandering—perfect complements to each other, a perfect couple.
The Bible speaks to the dangers of being pandered to, to reject it. We see it all over Scripture actually. Satan pandered to Eve. Jacob pandered to Esau. Aaron pandered to Israel. Delilah pandered to Samson. Jeroboam pandered to the ten northern tribes. Solomon warned about the pandering of sinners in Proverbs. He admonished regarding the pandering of people with money.
Part of business education is the art of pandering. So much of it goes on in advertising that people have grown to expect it. They want it. They have rewarded those who are best at it.
As a result of the above, we’ve got the Pandering President of America, who has become perhaps the biggest panderer in political history, pandering to homosexuals, to blacks, to hispanics, to illegal immigrants, to Hollywood, to the poor, to the middle class, to women, to teachers, to unions, and to environmentalists—a list of special interests from which he hopes to cobble together enough votes to win in November. Both major political parties pander to various groups, but pandering is virtually the entire strategy of Democrats. At one time, Democrats used class envy to guarantee the poor at election time. With that economic group now safely in the bag, they are applying the same type of pandering to the middle class, hoping to use class envy with an even larger segment of the population, to divide America. They have reached an almost political nirvana, arriving now to a place where 49.5% of Americans don’t pay any income tax. That has become a sweet pandering point for the PPOTUS (pandering president of the United States) from which he can keep an amazingly high approval rating even though the economy is tanked.
You can only keep pandering as long as you have something really to offer people with which to pander them. The pandering in Greece, for instance, doesn’t work anymore, because Greece doesn’t have anything to give anyone. They have successfully stifled productiveness by redistributing wealth. The people who received the benefits were still angry with the gravy train out of business. Since there was so few left to punish, they just started destroying things. We see the same thing here in the United States with the occupy movement. It is an astounding level of reprobation arising from desolate minds.
Pandering, of course, is a kind of lying, mainly flattery. God calls it a “lying vanity” in Jonah. Pandering mainly degrades God and then truth. Since God is the God of Truth, when truth becomes a casualty, God is the victim. And that is why pandering is even worse when it is being practiced by those who profess to be God’s people.
Churches today of all kinds have copied the pandering that has become the culture of the United States. Rather than stand against pandering, they customize it and then implement it in the church. There are so many examples of it, but the two greatest examples that come to mind are Rick Warren, with his Pandering Driven Church, and then Joel Olsteen. I personally don’t get Joel Osteen or how that people get sucked up into his type of pandering, the big hairdo type. It says “fake” all over it. But his kind of glitz does work at least in Houston. There are so, so many though. I hardly know where to start or stop when it comes to examples of pandering. I’m more angry with those who should know better, those whose preaching and writing would indicate that they repudiate pandering, but then they do it. Those are the ones that I think should be exposed. It is the more subtle pandering that I believe is even the most dangerous and then destructive.
The worship in churches has deformed almost exclusively for pandering. Instead of evangelism, churches use pandering. Preaching styles have become a kind of pandering. Theologies have been distorted by pandering.
Since there is so much of it, I’m going to give just a few examples to indicate how rampant it is. John MacArthur and Grace Community Church panders to the youth culture with the staging and rock band of their Resolved Conference. MacArthur also pandered to the Jesus’ Movement by calling it a modern day revival. He pandered to the rock music lovers of his church by saying that church services shouldn’t be rock concerts, but that he wouldn’t say that there is anything wrong with any particular musical style. All that is pandering. Ron Hamilton panders to children with his Patch the Pirate inventions. Forty something Mark Driscoll panders to punks by dressing like a pubertic fourteen year old. John Piper panders by calling “Desiring God,” “Christian Hedonism.” Most church marketing today is mere pandering, attempting to connect with someone with some fleshly or worldly lust. Most brochures are pandering to the carnal interests of a constituency or demographic. Many Bible colleges and Christian universities are non stop panderers in their promotions. Pensacola Christian College came first to mind, but I’m sure there are many worse.
Certain practices nauseate me as I think about it. I read about a church that promoted their own prayer for a nearby community that had suffered a tragedy. They exploited that situation by pandering with their mention of prayer. I’m not going to say the name of the church, because that would make naming the name the whole issue. I believe churches do this with all sorts of practices that they continue as a means to pander to a certain people group of their church. What the Bible teaches should be good enough. A congregation should want that. But no, they also expect some pandering, and the leadership, therefore, provides it.
So much more could be said about pandering in and by the church—a whole book. But this is only a blog post, especially intended to get you thinking. And then I might be accused too of pandering to people who hate pandering or who don’t want to be pandered to.
Self-Loathing Revivalist Baptist Continuationists
Friday I’m going to post again, postponing (ha, is that a pun?) Thomas Ross’s regular contribution until Monday. My post will be entitled “I’m Gunna Use Worldly Lust to Lure Kids to Christian College.” I’ll leave it to you to guess what that will be about. Don’t miss it though. Now proceed to read.
When I was growing up, around jr. high and high school, I would hear certain preachers say they were “independent, fundamental, hell-fire, separated, soulwinning Baptists.” Something like that. It would usually be followed by a hearty “amen.” Silence would have been a social faux pas. On the other hand, I don’t think anyone would say he was a “self-loathing, revivalist, continuationist Baptist,” but a lot of those guys I heard actually were. Amen?!?!
Let me tell you what I’m talking about. Maybe you already know. That would be nice, but even if you don’t, here goes.
Self-Loathing
I’ll start with self-loathing. I googled “self-loathing white man” and got 14,300 results. Then I tried “self-loathing black man,” which resulted in 25,900. That isn’t scientific, but some people think someone is self-loathing. “Self-loathing white people” garnered 32,700 more results. I’m not going to keep going. The idea of a self-loathing white person is that he is ashamed he is white because….you name it: slavery, the Crusades, 9/11 (we’re why the buildings went down), the Cherokee trail of tears, and Bill Maher. Just thought I’d throw a curve with the last one. Anyway, he’s a white man who lets everyone run over him because he deserves it. In my opinion, the self-loathing black man is a little more complicated. Of course, as a self-loathing white man, I don’t have the right to discuss him, but I can report what I read, and the most up to date picture of the self-loathing black man has Herman Cain under it. It’s complicated because I don’t think Herman Cain is self-loathing, but those who embrace what it really means to be black say that Herman really only does what he does because he hates his own blackness. So there you go. Really uplifting. And perhaps I digress.
These Baptist continuationists are ashamed of their continuationism. They’ve got continuationist finger prints all over them. Continuationism is in their DNA. Their hand is in the continuationist cookie jar. But they can’t be proud to be a continuationist, like, say, John Piper or Wayne Grudem. They deny their continuationism. They do not embrace it. Hence, the aforementioned self-loathing. You might say they’re just ignorant of their continuationism, but I prefer self-loathing. Maybe they are continuationists in denial to borrow more psychobabble.
Revivalist Baptist
I say “revivalist” to differentiate these people from Charismatics or Calvinists. Revivalism truly is a brand of continuationism. I’m sure of it now. And I’ll explain why under the last section.
These are Baptists. Until Piper, I had not heard of someone who wanted to be known as a continuationist (in other words, one who wasn’t self-loathing). Baptists don’t want to be known as continuationists. B in Baptist stands for Bible. Bible finished. Bible sole authority. But I’ve been around Baptists since I was a toddler. That’s when my family joined a Baptist church. And fundamentalism and Baptists are rife with continuationism—their own brand of it, the self-loathing kind.
Continuationists
Continuationism is a belief that miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit still operate today. They continue. Paul got supernatural abilities as an apostle and we get some of the same kind of stuff today. John Piper describes his continuationism, not exactly a Charismatic kind, like this (in his book Signs and Wonders Then and Now):
On the one hand, we ought to honor the uniqueness of Jesus and the apostles. On the other hand we ought to be open to the real possibility that this too might be a unique moment in history, and in this moment it may well be God’s purpose to pour out his Spirit in unprecedented revival—revival of love to Christ and zeal for worship and compassion for lost people and a missionary thrust with signs and wonders.
That sounds pretty close to the way I think many Baptists, who would not call themselves continuationists, would explain their own point of view.
Self-proclaiming continuationists say that prophecy is revelation from God and since prophecy still exists, revelation from God will continue as well. Continued revelation is one peculiarity to continuationism. Virtually none of even the most extreme continuationists, the Charismatics, believe that revelation continues in the same sense as the 66 books of the Bible, but a lesser kind of prophecy.
How are these revivalist Baptists also continuationists? I’ll list some obvious ways.
- God still speaks to them or tells them what to do or what to preach.
- They see certain types of big events as miraculous signs by which God approves of and works through them.
- They look for post-salvation experiences to validate their power.
Oftentimes revivalist continuationism leads to extra-scriptural authority. A pastor shows the Holy Spirit is using him in an “unusual way.” God is speaking to him. God said build a building, a big one. People question. They are questioning God, because God told him to build it. Later when the building gets filled up using non-scriptural or unbiblical methods, that was actually the Holy Spirit validating the whole experience. The man of God now has more unquestioned authority at his disposal. If anyone questions, the building card can be thrown down. Remember when God spoke about the building? Sort of like the burning in the bosom. People know this man has some special unction. Don’t say apostolic. That’s part of the self-loathing. But it is at least semi-apostolic.
I’ve seen some young men hear the same voices, that said marry a really pretty girl. The voice in the girl’s head said, “Don’t marry the boy.” When the girl says no, she must be out of the will of God, because she wasn’t getting the inspired voice in the head.
When you speed music up and use certain chords, you can cause certain feelings. That isn’t the music. That’s the Holy Spirit. The music excites the crowd and they think it was the Holy Spirit. A lot of people felt that same inspired feeling, so it must be true. How could so many people feel it, and it not be true?
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