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The Church Fathers Are NotThe Church Fathers (Part Two)
Proper Evaluation of History
God promised the preservation of scripture, but not the preservation of history. Since God promised the preservation of scripture, He insures that with a high level of divine intervention. The Bible says much about this. Since God doesn’t promise to preserve history, we must judge history in a different way. We must weigh it.
The history of the people and events of history differs in nature than the history of Christian doctrine. Believers can open the Bible, which God preserved, and compare the history of Christian doctrine with what the Bible says. Especially the doctrine found in what people call “the church fathers” diverges from biblical doctrine and practice. Biblical doctrine and practice and the church fathers have many dissimilarities.
An important part of good historical evaluation is observing historical influences on beliefs, practices, and methods. The Bible itself helps with this ability in a sufficient way. Already in the first century, external factors affected what the church believed. This is all over the New Testament. Keeping false doctrine out of the church required and requires tremendous vigilance.
The Trajectory of External Influences on the Church
New Testament Times
If one just looked at an epistle like 1 Corinthians, chapter after chapter chronicle both external and internal influences on the church at Corinth. People over emphasized the effect of baptism in chapter one. They also devalued preaching as a method for what Paul calls “signs” and “wisdom.” In chapter two, people were placing higher value on naturalism over supernaturalism. Greek philosophy that denigrated the place of the physical body led to acceptance of sexual sin in chapters five and six. The same kind of false teaching on the body led to mass denial of bodily resurrection in chapter fifteen.
One could keep moving through the entire New Testament and do something very similar to the samples of the previous paragraph. God wants us to see how false doctrine and practice enters the church and then takes hold. Revelation two and three chronicle seven churches and varied degrees of departure from the truth, even to the extent that the Laodicean church in Revelation three had already apostatized. Jesus and John tell history as a warning with the seven churches about both the internal and external attacks.
The Roman Empire and Greek Philosophy
The persecution of the Roman Empire affected churches in the first century. This parallels with anything and any place where persecution occurs. People accommodate the pressure and change from biblical belief and practice. The pressure of Sodom affected Lot and his family. The world itself corrupted Demas (2 Timothy 4:10).
Many other external factors changed and change thinking. This is why Paul warns against philosophies and traditions of men (Colossians 2:8). Theologians like Origen invented their own subjective approach to interpretation of scripture. Many others accepted then Origen’s way. Some read so much Greek philosophy, available during the period of the church fathers, that they took on the thinking of the Greek philosophers. Include Augustine among those. Greek philosophy doesn’t mix with the Bible and improve it. It corrupts it.
When Paul says “wisdom” in 1 Corinthians 1-2, he, like James in James 3:15, meant human wisdom, which could be intellectualism, naturalism, rationalism, or human reasoning. The false teachers that Peter battled as seen in his second epistle judged according to their own reasoning, attempting to conform their theology to that.
Syncretism
An important term to understand is “syncretism.” Wikipedia gets it right when it says in its entry on syncretism:
Syncretism is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.
People mix two different philosophies, ideas, concepts, or beliefs and out of the two becomes something brand new, a hybrid, which contrasts with the ones from which it came. The false worship of Israel arose from syncretism, mixing Israel’s divine, scriptural worship with pagan or idolatrous worship practices.
Comparison with the True Church
The church doctrine and practice of the church fathers does not look like the church in the New Testament. The church fathers represent a path that diverts from the true path of the New Testament churches. As I wrote in part one, almost entirely they read as proto-Roman Catholic. Roman Catholicism came from somewhere and this is easy to see. It’s no wonder that for centuries Roman Catholicism did not want people to read the Bible on their own. When they read it, they would see the differences.
It is easy to see in history what happened when people were reading the Bible and comparing it with Roman Catholicism. People left Roman Catholicism. They knew that wasn’t the truth. Based on reading scripture, they separated from Roman Catholicism. As well, true churches never joined that path in the first place. True churches always existed and people joined with them who left Roman Catholicism based on reading or hearing scripture. They also needed courage because Roman Catholicism through the years would kill them for disagreeing.
Roman Catholicism and the Church Fathers
Roman Catholicism preserved the church fathers. They served Roman Catholic mission and goals. Roman Catholicism uses the church fathers as their evidence of a historical trail. Roman Catholic apologists point to the church fathers as evidence of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
The authority and military of the Roman Empire served Roman Catholicism. The denomination itself took on qualities of an Empire and enforced the doctrine and practice. Ultimately, it would not allow for challenge. This produced an inauthentic history of a church. It never was the church. The Roman Catholic Church always was a pseudo-church, posing as one. It keeps people fooled and strapped into false religion. The church fathers offer a major contribution to the deceit and destruction.
Today evangelicals embrace the church fathers. They point to them as a part of their own history. This supposes that God used Roman Catholicism to keep the truth. It isn’t true and it doesn’t even make sense. This doesn’t just provide a cover for the error. It sends people down the wrong path.
The Example of Baptismal Regeneration
A good example of the deceit and danger of the church fathers relates to the teaching of baptismal regeneration. The church fathers taught baptismal regeneration. The Bible doesn’t teach that. It teaches against it. Roman Catholicism among other kinds of deeds and rituals requires baptism as a condition for salvation. Protestants did not make a full turn from Roman Catholic doctrine with their acceptance of infant sprinkling. This dovetailed with the Roman Catholic view that the church was the worldwide kingdom of God on earth.
In Matthew 16, Jesus told Peter that He was building His church on the gospel. His church has a true gospel. The church fathers undermined the gospel and the church that arose from that teaching was a false one. It was Roman Catholicism and its state church.
More to Come
Changes in Personal Belief and the Effects on Relationships (part two)
Very often I tell people that I don’t know if I’m done changing in doctrine and practice. As I get older, I am changing less, but I haven’t found that changing ends. I think I’m done and then I encounter something else or another way I might need to change.
Changes
Other people always want me to change. When I evangelize I encounter others every week who want me to change in my beliefs, and I don’t. When I try to help others change, I cannot in good faith attempt to do that without the willingness to change myself. If I was not willing to change in a discussion of doctrine, I would call that, being closed minded. I expect open mindedness from others who I want to change, so I must be willing too.
In all my years of working for the Lord in and through churches, I have watched many changes on the landscape of churches and religious institutions in the United States. As I grew up, I rarely heard an expository sermon. Then I would attend preaching meetings and hear little exposition. Now I hear exposition for half the sermons at the same conference. I see this as a good change.
I have also seen many bad changes, so many that churches are worse today than ever. The worst changes are not doctrinal so much. They are cultural. The culture of church in the United States changed. It sadly followed the world, the spirit of the age. This then affects the whole country in a very negative way.
Changes in doctrine and practice followed the culture in the United States. Many churches don’t even know they changed. It occurred slowly over a long period of time, like watching a toddler grow up to a teenager. It was slow, but the outcome is very noticeable.
Change and Relationships
Because change can be bad, very bad, sometimes any change, especially if it isn’t a more conservative one, can seem bad. As a parent, maybe you have changed the rules or the code of conduct at home. You gave the children more liberty than they had. You had good intentions for loosening up on the standards. That could look like a change for the worse to some people. In fact, a parent may change his approach to teach discernment, so a way of helping his children.
Very often someone won’t change because of its potential effect on his relationships. Others will criticize him for changing. They may threaten him not to change. He doesn’t want to face that. Almost every change I’ve ever made affected relationships and sometimes in a major way.
When someone takes one position and changes to another, it might look like something is wrong. Why did he change? The truth doesn’t change. He believes and practices the truth. Is he forsaking the truth in some way?
Sanctification
I agree that the truth doesn’t change. It doesn’t. We must change though. It’s part of our sanctification. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says:
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit.
You can see that Paul uses the controversial “C” word, “changed.” Jesus doesn’t change. You must though.
It is even harder to change something as a leader. Whenever you change as a leader, people you’ve led will question the change.
Knowledge
When a leader changes in an area that he himself taught or preached, so that people followed, it might be very hard for the followers. This is one reason why as a leader you have to be very sure about something you teach or preach. Nonetheless, it can and will happen. You thought you understood fully. You thought you did. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12:
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Belief and practice relates to knowledge, something Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 12-14 among the spiritual gifts. Even though God gifts in knowledge, a person on this side of glory still sees through a glass darkly. He has knowledge. He still needs more knowledge until his glorification. Not until he sees Jesus face to face will he not need knowledge anymore.
Replay
Mulligan
I haven’t played golf much, but I understand playing golf and hitting some bad shots. It will happen. Among those who play golf as a hobby or for exercise, they understand the idea of a mulligan. Everyone knows you will hit a tee shot into the woods. You tee up another ball and start over. You give yourself a mulligan.
Even if you try to get everything right as a leader, you still need a few mulligans. You see through a glass darkly. You are trying to see through a glass clearly. If you are a preacher, did you ever preach a sermon, and you had to come back and correct something you said? I have. I hate it when I have to do it. Very much, I would rather not do that. I’m always afraid that I’ll lose the trust of the people if I come back to make the correction.
Editorial Process
Readers probably relate to the editorial process. You edit and find mistakes. When you think you have them all, you read again and find more mistakes. You edit. When you think you’ve got that all done and then give the piece to someone else to read, he finds many more mistakes. You publish the piece. Readers find more errors in the published document, something you hate the worst. It’s too late. Corrections must occur now in the next edition.
Some might say that we don’t get any mulligans in real life. I would say, hopefully we do. We all need mulligans in this life. Christians should understand that better than anyone.
Dress Rehearsals
A statement I often use is this: “Life has no dress rehearsals.” At various times of my life, I directed dozens of plays and programs. I’m not promoting drama as an element of worship. We had dress rehearsals for the plays and programs in our school. I am glad we had them.
It’s true that life doesn’t often have a dress rehearsal. Sometimes I thought I believed exactly right. It wasn’t until later that I found that a particular belief came from a tradition and I didn’t know it. I thought I had studied that myself. Once I did study it, I wondered how I defended that position.
Defending Positions
Tradition
Sometimes what will happen is that we have a belief or practice based upon a tradition and we teach it or preach it. At some point someone challenges the belief or practice. Rather than admit that we got that from tradition, we scrape up some arguments to defend the tradition. The tradition, maybe not a scriptural teaching, becomes more entrenched.
I’m not opposing all tradition. Paul uses the word (2 Thess 3:6) in a positive manner. Tradition isn’t enough for keeping the position though. Bad traditions can continue when we defend all traditions.
Inconsistency or Principled?
I’m fine with the word, inconsistent. It closely relates to another good word, principled. I noticed that some of the same people who attacked the January 6 protestors defended the Tennessee capital protestors. The attack was inconsistent. It wasn’t principled.
If we get further information about some position or issue and it merits a change, it is principled to change. It is not inconsistent. Changing might be easier. It could be harder. Whether it is easier or harder to change may not relate to consistency or principle. It relates to the reaction of other people and your future relationships.
Further Information
Let’s say that in the morning, you tell your children they must go to bed at 9pm. You get home at 9:15pm. Your children are still up. You say, “Get to bed.” The oldest child asks, “Can I ask you a question?” You say, “Yes.” He says, “Mom said we could stay up, because school was cancelled for tomorrow.” That’s new information that you didn’t have. You can change. You can think about what you said before, understand that you didn’t have all the information, and you can change your position. It isn’t inconsistent.
Evaluation of Leaders
Paul saw division in the church at Corinth. One major reason for division was bad evaluation of leaders. When leaders think of the evaluation of others, it can affect what they do in either a good or a bad way. I am not saying that they shouldn’t listen. Paul called the leaders, the “ministers of Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:1).
“Ministers” translates the Greek word for “galley slaves.” The galley slaves work together on the oars, moving the ship forward, because they have one master. He calls out the rhythm of the oars. This simplifies the process for them. They’ve got one person to please. The person most important to please as a leader is Christ Himself.
The Gospel Is the Power of God Unto Salvation, pt. 4
Scripture evinces a tendency to distrust the gospel. This reveals itself in trying other means than the gospel for salvations or increased numbers of conversions. When Paul writes, “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation,” he says that it is only the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. No human instrument helps the gospel.
I explained the harmony of the working of the Holy Spirit with the gospel, their being the same. Love, compassion, and all of that, which accompany the gospel, are not accomplished by human means. They are God working “in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philip 2:13). God uses believers as instruments. As before mentioned, they are messengers (cf. Malachi 3:1). He uses hard or blessed providences to prepare men’s hearts.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3). The infliction of hard providences conditions hearts for reception. As Jesus said (Matt 9:12), “They that be whole need not a physician.” In Mark 2:17, He portrays the same truth: “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” We know that hard, worldly, and superficial heartedness affects reception of the gospel seed (Matthew 13:1-23). None of these truths detract from the truth of “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
Many different ways professing believers or perhaps non-believers show their unbelief in the gospel as the power of God unto salvation, represented by various categories of manifestations of their unbelief.
Human Means or Methods Better Than the Gospel
For many and from a human perspective, the gospel is ineffective. It doesn’t work. Paul pointed out this error in 1 Corinthians 1-2. To the lost, he says “the preaching of the cross,” the gospel, “is foolishness” (1 Cor 1:18). They want either something more clever, inventive, or scholarly, what Paul calls “wisdom” (1:18-21), a human type, or a kind of ecstatic experience, quasi supernatural, that would indicate divine power, what Paul calls “signs” or “might” (1 Cor 1:19-27). The gospel doesn’t fit either demand of the world for persuasion.
The gospel is the prescribed method of God for salvation because it gives glory to God. Its inexplicability leaves God only as the source of its work and effects. Then “no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Cor 1:29). “He that glorieth. . . glorie(s) in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:31).
Part of the wisdom of man, his personal nobility, manifests itself in impressive rhetorical flourish or “excellency of speech or of wisdom” (1 Cor 2:1). The speech is the style and the wisdom is the superior intellect. The gospel is not an exercise in amazing speech and human ingenuity. It is a fulfillment of faithfulness, the one rowing in the galley of the ship (cf. 1 Cor 4:1-2), keeping his hands on the oar. It isn’t beyond a believer to do.
God gifts some more to do it (gifts of prophecy and teaching, verbal gifts, 1 Cor 12, Rom 12, 1 Pet 4), but everyone can do it because it requires only faithfulness. This may and does include studying scripture to the extent that he shows himself a “workman that needeth not to be ashamed” (2 Timothy 2:15).
Playing Along with Unbelievers
Using other means than the gospel plays along with unbelievers, accrediting their rejection of or indifference to it. The world wants something smart and something amazing to it. A professing believer or just an unbeliever, who claims to be a believer, thinks or says:
The world likes this. It likes this when I do it. The world then responds to this. My group gets bigger because of this. It’s smart and amazing. The world recognizes this. This is what I should.
This too is human wisdom and seeking after signs, when no one is getting signs. It glorifies the one who came up with the acceptable idea, going along with the world liking what it accepts. This doesn’t glorify the Lord though and it doesn’t even work, even though it looks like it’s working, part of its deceit.
What really works makes someone the offscouring of the world and hated, as Christ talked about to begin the Sermon on the Mount (1 Cor 4:13, Matt 5:10-12). Depending on God for His work gets a reaction like someone in the world would never want to have. He knows he will get it, so he moves a different direction, the broad road, to avoid it. Becoming hated doesn’t seem like an effective method. Being liked looks more like what will work, so instead of faithful service, professing believers and probably unbelievers signal their own virtue with their methods.
More to Come
Debunking of Nine Marks Dual Church View: Both Universal and Local Churches, Part Three
Nowhere does scripture make a connection between an earthly church and then a final heavenly church. Neoplatonic Christianity or professing Christianity invented this idea, one borrowed by Jonathan Leeman in his article, The Church: Universal and Local, for the 9 Marks parachurch organization. A believer in a salvific way has a citizenship in heaven and has a seat in heaven in the sense that God reserved it for him, which is like someone seated in Congress without physically being there. Because He saved me and keeps saving me, Jesus anchors me in the heavenly holy of holies. The seating of me and the anchoring of me there does not mean I am there in the present. It is a blessed guarantee of my salvation.
Universal church ecclesiology uses neoplatonic language. It says the true church is all believers, the apparent “universal church,” which manifests itself in a visible church, the local one. It finds reality in the ideal or the mystical. Leeman says the universal church becomes local by gathering. A church is a gathering. A gathering doesn’t become a gathering by gathering. The not-gathered thing is not a gathering. This is also how all of the New Testament reads. It’s not called a gathering or an assembly when it doesn’t assemble. It isn’t an assembly then. The only reason why Leeman talks about the church as universal comes from neoplatonism.
Jonathan Leeman writes a unique ecclesiology. The dual church view isn’t unique, but his attempt to keep an attachment to the literal meaning of ekklesia, “assembly.” 9 Marks and he see the damage of the typical universal church teaching, that becomes easily untethered from the biblical practice of the church, which is only local. The typical universal church teaching creates free agents without accountability, living how they want yet continuing to call themselves Christians.
The attempt to keep congruity between assembly and universal church keeps Leeman in the mainstream of evangelicalism, which loves its universal church. It keeps alive a multitude of boards, conventions, associations, colleges, universities, and other parachurch organizations. Someone can live and work in that parachurch world as if it is Christian ministry without anything like it in the Bible. It is unhelpful, but mainly untrue. Whatever kingdom-like quality Leeman wants to attribute to the church, the mixture of the universal undermines the authority that the kingdom of Jesus Christ possesses.
As one might expect, Leeman’s system of interpretation effects his outcome. He fails to mention, however, his system — amillennialism. That system must see a universal church, which is a synonym with the kingdom. It erases a line between soteriology and ecclesiology. It results in reading his conclusions into scripture.
A Kingdom Argument
Leeman uses a doctrine of the kingdom to argue for a universal church. Some truth exists within the framework of his argument. As a representative of His church, Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom in Matthew 16:18-19. That does not mean the church is the kingdom, which emerges from amillennialism, an eschatology of Roman Catholicism and Capital Hill Baptist Church, Mark Dever, and 9 Marks. The church and the kingdom interrelate like the church and the family of God do.
Leeman says the church provides the way to say who citizens of the kingdom are. He compares church membership to the means of possessing the passport into the kingdom. To know who they are, Leeman postulates baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the means. He says these are covenant signs of the new covenant, so they express the entrance requirements into the kingdom. Nothing in the Bible says this. It is nifty inventiveness to attempt to prove a point, while having nothing to do so. It’s another way of my saying that it’s a stretch by Leeman.
The article further argues the kingdom/church concept with the language of “binding” and “loosing” in Matthew 16:19 and 18:18. Churches are doing kingdom work. They are not the kingdom. They represent the kingdom on earth. God gives the church — churches — heavenly authority to judge who is in and who is out. I’m sure that Leeman knows that doesn’t mean that the church kicks people out of heaven or out of the kingdom.
Jesus characterizes the extent of the judgment of the church in Matthew 18:17, “Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” The church regards a person as heathen. He may not be heathen. The man under church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5 proved himself to be a kingdom citizen, even though the church loosed him. The Lord Jesus Christ gives to the church, which is visible and local, the earthly judgment of heavenly or kingdom citizenship.
It’s true that someone, who isn’t baptized, doesn’t take of the Lord’s Table, won’t join a church, doesn’t submit to church leadership, and won’t gather with a church, the church should judge as not saved. Christ gave that judgment to the church. This doesn’t mean the church is the kingdom. It’s been given the authority of the kingdom. The King of the kingdom is Christ and the Head of the church is Christ.
The Bible offers a distinct soteriology and a distinct ecclesiology. They are distinct doctrines. However, they also relate to one another. Church membership requires salvation. However, it also requires baptism. Baptism isn’t salvation. It isn’t a “putting away of the filth of the flesh” (1 Pet 3:21). According to the New Testament, a church can have unbelievers in it, a mixed multitude, and will very often have unsaved church members, who should examine themselves whether they be in the faith (2 Cor 13:5). Most reading here know that church membership is not the same as salvation.
Terminology like church, temple, and body relate to the church. Words like kingdom, family, and saint relate to salvation. You can be in the kingdom, family, and a saint without baptism. To be in the church, temple, and body, you must be baptized. Scripture shows some relationship between terms of the church and of salvation. However, Leeman takes this further than what scripture teaches in order to vindicate his false universal church teaching.
Historical Argument
Leeman attempts to justify the universal church with a historical argument, using the patristics and the Protestant Reformers. He portrays a pendulum swing between an emphasis on the local church then the universal church and then back to the local church, meanwhile both churches existing with his dual church view. He writes the following:
Yet among Baptist groups the risk now would be to shift the weight of the body entirely onto the other foot, where Christians would give all their attention to the local church and little to the universal. Certain strains of Baptist churches, such as the Landmarkists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, would in fact argue that only the local church exists. They would also refuse to share the Lord’s Supper with anyone who was not a member of their own church. Gratefully, such strains were rare.
He charges Baptists with overemphasis on the local church, especially those he calls and others label, “Landmarkists.” He attacks closed communion, unwillingness to share the Lord’s Supper with someone not a member of his church. I would contend that the Landmarkists brought ecclesiology back to scripture and communion back to its “communion of the Lord’s body,” which is local only. Christ gave communion to His church, which is local only.
The Landmarkers rose out of the Southern Baptist Convention, when Protestants shared their pulpits and partook in their communion. Baptists distinguish themselves as separatists. They separate from false doctrine such as infant sprinkling. Further, Southern Baptists allowed modernism or liberalism into the churches and rejected church perpetuity in their seminaries, leading to ecumenism. Landmarkers brought the Convention back to scripture and historic Baptist doctrines.
Leeman uses a kind of smear tactic, because his knowing what readers may have heard about Landmarkism. It’s like calling someone “flat earth” or “election denier.” It’s a rhetorical tactic. It doesn’t make a true historical or biblical point. He assumes people will think Landmarkism is bad, so they’ll associate local only ecclesiology then as bad too.
I agree that men through history believed in a local church, a universal church, in only a local church, and in both a local and a universal church. You can find all of those ecclesiological positions through history. However, we know a church is local. Where is the universal church in scripture and did it develop through history? Did it arise from neoplatonism?
Forced Universal with It “Showing Up”
Leeman says the universal church shows up in churches, which are local. He says that happens when churches cooperate with another in common service or labor for the Lord. Yes, churches all have the same Head if they are true churches. That doesn’t make a universal church. It is a generic church. It is an institutional understanding of church. Each true church has Christ as its head. This is not the discovery of or a doctrine of a universal church.
Churches either fellowship based upon the same doctrine and practice or they separate from one another. When they fellowship, that isn’t a universal church concept. That is just fellowship between two churches, like existed between the Jerusalem church and the Antioch church.
The universal concept of church seems to require churches cooperating. It leads to diminishment and corruption of true doctrine. If there is to be “no schism in the body” (1 Cor 12:25), and the body is universal, then no church should separate from one another. However, “the body” in 1 Corinthians 12 is defined as local in v. 27, when Paul says, “Ye are the body of Christ,” speaking of the church at Corinth. If it was universal, Paul would have written, “We are the body of Christ.” He doesn’t. Schisms exist between bodies. They are not to exist in the body.
The unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17 (v. 22) is found in separate churches that fellowship one with another based upon the truth (John 17:17). Unity is required in individual churches (Eph 4), not between separate churches. Separate churches attempt to have unity like Jerusalem and Antioch tried in Acts 15. True unity requires separation.
Evangelicals like Leeman do not teach biblical separation. They don’t write on it. They talk about church discipline, but they don’t teach on separation from other churches. Their false universal church teaching fuels this, which will mean apostasy for their churches and their movement. Every New Testament epistle teaches the doctrine of separation, which depends on a right view of the nature of the church.
Debunking of Nine Marks Dual Church View: Both Universal and Local Churches, Part One
On 8/25/2022, the organization Nine Marks, started by Pastor Mark Dever of Capital Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, published on its website an article written by Jonathan Leeman, the editorial director of Nine Marks, entitled, “The Church: Universal and Local” (Click on the article to compare this analysis with the post). Nine Marks, I believe, wants to defend “local” because that is the main emphasis of Nine Marks. In the articles I have read by Nine Marks, they want to emphasize the meaning of “assembly” for ekklesia. That is enough to get major push back from the rest of evangelicalism.
Despite its doctrine of the church, local, Nine Marks teaches a universal church in the above article also as its position on the church, so a dual church view. Is there both a universal church and a local church? This post will begin an assessment of Leeman’s article as to its ecclesiological veracity.
In his first paragraph, the introduction, Leeman provides his definition for a universal church, a contradiction in terms, and for a local church. He calls the “universal church” “a heavenly and eschatological assembly.” You have to admire the point of consistency from Leeman with the meaning of ekklesia in his definition. He sticks with “assembly” through the essay. However, if it is an assembly, how could it be “universal”? Something universal does not and can not assemble. Leeman forces the definition to fit a catholic presupposition.
In Leeman’s summary, the second paragraph, he says the “New Testament envisions two kinds of assemblies.” I can’t argue against an assembly in heaven. Saints will assemble in heaven (cf. Hebrew 12:23). The church is not just any assembly though. The New Testament uses ekklesia to refer to something other than the church, and the King James translates it “assembly,” referring to a group of people gathered together, not a church (Acts 19:32, 39, 41). An assembly in heaven, the King James also calls “an assembly,” because it isn’t a church.
I’ve heard the heavenly assembly called a “church in prospect.” Leeman doesn’t use that terminology, but he takes the essence of that and stretches it into something mystical and for today. He calls salvation the membership for the universal church. All the saints will not be in “heaven,” actually the new heaven and the new earth, until the eternal state. The Bible has terminology for all saved people: the family of God and the kingdom of God. What occurs in heaven is not an ecclesiological gathering. The heavenly assembly does not function as a New Testament assembly.
The practical ramification of a “universal church,” Leeman explains, is “a local church that partners with other churches.” Leeman knows that nowhere does an English translation call the church a “local church.” Every church is local. Assemblies are always local. Churches should partner with other churches, but that isn’t a universal church. Those are still assemblies partnering with other assemblies of like faith and practice.
In his section, “Two Uses of the Word ‘Church’,” Leeman utilizes Matthew 16:18 and Matthew 18:17, the only two usages of ekklesia in the Gospels and both by Jesus. He says the first is universal and the second is local. Since no assembly is universal, he’s wrong on Matthew 16:18. An analysis of every usage of ekklesia by Jesus, most in Revelation 2 and 3, and over twenty times, every one is obviously local. Good hermeneutics or exegesis understands Matthew 16:18 like all the other times Jesus used ekklesia, where Jesus said, “my church.”
Jesus’ ekklesia is still an ekklesia, not something scattered all over the world, but still an assembly. When He calls it “my ekklesia,” Jesus distinguishes it from other governing assemblies. People in that day already understood the concept of a town meeting, a governing assembly. Jesus rules through His assembly and gives it His authority. Ekklesia was also the Greek word translated for the Hebrew congregation of Israel, the assembly in the Old Testament.
Leeman attempts to illustrate his dual church doctrine with two examples from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:18 and 1 Corinthians 12:28.
For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. (11:18)
And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. (12:28)
Leeman says that 11:18 must be local and 12:28 must be universal. Leeman fails to mention a syntactical structure in Greek and English, either the particular or generical singular noun. Singular nouns have either a particular or generic usage. Singular nouns must be one or the other. 11:18 is an example of a particular singular noun. 12:28 is an example of a generic singular noun. The latter speaks of the church as an institution, representing all churches.
Ephesians 5:25 is a good example of the generic use of the singular noun.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
If there is a universal church, then there must be a universal husband and a universal wife. All of these singular nouns are examples of the generic singular noun. “The husband” is still a husband in one particular place or location. There is no mystical or platonic husband. This is how Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 12:28. If the church in 12:28 is universal, then Paul excluded himself from salvation in 1 Corinthians 12:27, the previous verse, when he writes:
Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
He says concerning the church at Corinth, “ye are the body of Christ,” excluding himself. When Paul uses the body analogy, he means something local. All bodies are local. All body parts belong to one particular body, not spread out all over the planet.
Leeman assumes without proving. He does not prove a universal church. He assumes it and then he sees it places in the New Testament where it isn’t. His conclusions do not follow from his premises. In his section on “Universal Church,” being “God’s people” in 1 Peter 2:10 and adopted into God’s family in Romans 8:15 are not allusions to a church or “the” church.” These are salvation terms, not ecclesiological ones.
All 118 usages of ekklesia in the New Testament are an assembly either used as a particular singular noun or a generic singular noun. An ekklesia is always local. In a few instances, the assembly is something other than a church, but when it is used for the church, it is always local. That’s what ekklesia means.
To Be Continued
John MacArthur: “Men Dressed Like Women”
Not many days ago, well-known evangelical pastor, John MacArthur, went public, perhaps worldwide, by calling on pastors today to stand with Canadian evangelical pastors by preaching for biblical sexual morality. I noticed that he himself preached “Such Were Some of You but You Have Been Washed” from 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 on January 16, 2022, Sunday morning. I’m sure that they will make that available soon on the Grace To You website. In late December, Phil Johnson did an interview with John MacArthur and asked him what he thought about various issues in the news, including Covid, Totalitarianism, and the Antichrist.
MacArthur also said this in the interview:
Totalitarianism that is going to come will basically be imposed on us by Godless, Christ-hating, Bible hating, anti-Christian forces. They may not be overt about that, but if you want to make sure that we are free to murder babies, and you want homosexuality to be acceptable, and you want to appoint people into high positions, who are men dressed like women, and if you want to protect transgenders and all of that, then you have a Godless agenda, you have a God-hating agenda. . . . They’re not even trying to be hypocrites. They are not trying to cover up. I mean, how insane are you when you introduce someone called Rachel Levine and turn that guy into a four star general, who’s acting like a woman, who’s actually a man? . . . How perverse is this culture, it’s so far gone.
And he said more. I agree with what he said, however, I want to talk about the root cause of such a result that MacArthur describes.
What was the start of the gender identity crisis, gender fluidity, and then transgenderism, what MacArthur describes as “men dressed like women” and “a guy who’s acting like a woman”? MacArthur assumes that we understand what it means to dress like a woman. Do we understand? Where does scripture show this? What is the verse that tells us how women dress?
For decades, almost his entire time as a pastor, John MacArthur often referred to 1 Corinthians 4:6, “not to think of men above that which is written.” In a recent question and answer, he said:
I have no authority. I don’t have authority beyond the Scripture. I can never exceed what is written, 1 Corinthians 4:6. To do that is to become, Paul says, arrogant, and to regard yourself as superior. I have nothing to say to you that puts any demand on you if it isn’t from the Word of God.
MacArthur’s interviewer, Phil Johnson, wrote the following:
Let me say this plainly: It is a sin to impose on others any “spiritual” standard that has no biblical basis. When God gave the law to Israel, He told them, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2). And, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32).
The same principle is repeated in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for their sectarianism, saying “I am of Paul”; “I am of Apollos,” and so on. His rebuke to them includes these words in 1 Corinthians 4:6: “I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.”
That is a good guideline for how we should exercise our Christian liberty: Don’t go beyond what is written in Scripture.
Does the Word of God say what effeminate behavior is? Does it tell us what is transgender? In his interview with Johnson, MacArthur says that men dressed like women. This is where the downfall of the nation is. This is why totalitarians will rise up to control Christians — in order to protect the practice of men dressing like women.
Do women dress like men? Men dress like women, when they do what? Wear dresses. That is female dress. What do men wear? They wear pants.
MacArthur wants a stand for gender distinctions. That ship sailed a long time ago, when he capitulated on women’s dress. He’s just now saying anything about it. Why? Because men are now wearing dresses.
I guess it’s a strong stand against men in dresses. I guess. Does that seem strong to you? Most men are still against that. What is a strong stand in actuality is against women dressing like men. You won’t hear that ever from John MacArthur, because that very selectively, as the NASV says in 1 Corinthians 4:6, “exceeds what is written.” Since scripture doesn’t say what female dress is, then women can dress however they want.
Does it say what male dress is?
Evangelicals like MacArthur are way too late on the issue of gender distinction. They gave up on it long ago. Transgenderism directly relates to their capitulation and compromise with the world a long time ago. Judgment begins with the house of God.
Can Anyone Be Effeminate? Consider the Chinese
As I begin to write this post, it feels like something canceled on twitter, youtube, and facebook. No one must think this or this way. It must not be said or written. Perhaps a future reeducation camp in store for someone who crosses this boundary.
I was speaking this week to someone from China and the subject of effeminate Chinese men came up. This story made the news at the beginning of September 2021. You can find articles at major news outlets, such as ABC News and the Washington Post, reporting that as Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), starts a third term, the government cracks down on every sector of society with a “rectification” campaign. As part of pressure to align with the government’s vision of a powerful China and a healthier society, the CCP has banned effeminate men on television.
Apparently the trend or growth of effeminate men in Chinese society spread across the border of China through South Korea. South Korean and Japanese singers influenced Chinese pop stars toward unacceptable “niang po,” a Chinese insulting slang for effeminate men, which means “girlie guns.” The National Radio and TV Administration said that broadcasters must “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics.”
In a positive way, China’s government has ordered its broadcasters to encourage masculinity, a practice just the opposite of that of the United States. Its government says it wants to put a stop to abnormal beauty standards. The Washington Post article quotes Rana Mitter, an Oxford professor of modern Chinese and politics as saying:
The party does not feel comfortable with expressions of individualism that are in some ways transgressive to norms that it puts forward.
China does not see a future without two clearly delineated roles between men and women. Where does China get that idea? China wants effeminate women and masculine men.
Is there hope for any country that forsakes the God-ordained or natural roles of men and women? 1 Corinthians 11:14 and Romans 1:26-27 read:
Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
China sees something abnormal or a transgression of natural norms and stops it. The United States encourages it and prohibits discouragement. Listening to a podcast a few weeks ago, Jordan Peterson in an interview seemed to bemoan or mourn the illegality in Canada of conversion therapy. Not long ago society required masculinity and the fulfillment of the male role in society. Now it’s bullying to do so.
Churches now cooperate with the perversion of men, ignoring effeminate behavior. Imagine someone in a church telling a boy to stop acting like a girl. Churches now exalt soft-spoken, effeminate sounding and acting men, calling their mannerisms the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Today’s tone police cancels masculine tone. Churches need their own rectification campaigns.
Will men do anything? Will the ostensibly godly men of churches do anything?
If the Lord tarries and you live, prepare for world takeover by the Chinese, the country with the last men standing.
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Other articles from What Is Truth on the subject.
Refreshing Honesty from “Desiring God” on Men Acting Effeminate
Noticeable Increase in Effeminate Sounding Men
Ability to Judge, Standard of Judgment, and Judging Effeminate Behavior (and Separating from It)
Beauty, Worldly Lust, Effeminate and Truth in the Real World
The Elimination of Practices and Activities Deemed Dispensable By the Truth About Real Gain
You can do certain things. They’re permissible, sure. They’re not wrong per se. Paul argue that’s not how we should choose to do things. We might like them. They might be fun.
Paul could have made money off of his preaching. According to him in 1 Corinthians 9, he even deserved it. Those who preach of the gospel, he said, should live of the gospel. However, he willingly gave up that support for the sake of the gospel. As an evangelist or missionary, taking monetary support for preaching the gospel could diminish the effects of his preaching.
The money Paul could have made was a type of gain. It’s still a well-known type of gain. Gain is an economics term, like “capital gains.” Adam Smith in his classic, Wealth of Nations, begins chapter ten by saying:
The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others.
Then he names those five principles circumstances and elaborates on them. You see his use of the word “gain.” He uses it 17 times in that chapter. In the next paragraph, he writes:
Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
He says that honor is the reward of certain honorouble professions, rather than “pecuniary gain.” “Pecuniary” is “related to or consisting of money.” He implies there are other types of gain, like honor. Honor is a kind of gain, not pecuniary, but one to be chosen over money apparently. The profession brings honor, if it doesn’t bring money.
The Apostle Paul refers to gain again and again in scripture, and this is seen in 1 Corinthians 9 in a section that most label as a section on Christian liberty. I respect that idea that 1 Corinthians 6-10 is about Christian liberty. I don’t mind it, but it is worth looking at it from the perspective of the definition of real gain.
God created man for a relationship with Him. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 16:26,
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
There’s that word “gain.” The implication here is that someone profits nothing, even if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul. Luke 9:25 says,
For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?
In the King James Version, Paul uses the word “gain” five times. He writes first in 1 Corinthians 9:19,
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.
To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.
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