Home » Posts tagged 'Roman Empire'
Tag Archives: Roman Empire
The Historical Story of External Factors Perverting the Meaning of Church (part three)
Evidence in the New Testament
As you read through the New Testament, you see early attacks inside and outside of the church that correspond to what happened at that juncture of history in the world. Revelation 2 and 3 provide a good example of how churches in the first century degrade through changes in doctrine and practice in areas appropriate to the occurrences of the time, diverting from Jesus Christ and His commands. The Lord Jesus Christ gave many various means to keep His churches: faithful pastors edifying, preaching, admonishing, warning, and protecting, church discipline, the Lord’s Table, and personal and ecclesiastical separation.
All of the tools for preserving churches intact revolve around the sufficient, canonical words of scripture. The Word of God is like a purifying fire, like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces, and like water that washes away filth. The fire burns away dross, the hammer shapes something ugly into the beautiful, and the water cleanses away sin and false doctrine. All of this keeps a church or churches on track to extend to another generation.
False Tradition and Human Philosophy
Scripture itself never loses its power, but it becomes something different when someone mixes it with false traditions and human philosophy. In the Old Testament, pagan religion from surrounding foreign nations perverted Israel’s doctrine, practice, and worship. In the New Testament, Gnosticism, a collection of religious ideas and systems that emerged in the late first century AD, had a significant impact on the church by infiltrating it.
One can see in the New Testament reactions to proto-Gnostic false teaching that arose during the history of the first century. It reshaped doctrine, especially regarding the nature of God, creation, and salvation. Gnostic beliefs posited a dualistic worldview where a supreme, hidden God existed apart from a malevolent creator deity (the Demiurge), which some Gnostics identified with the God of the Hebrew Bible. They believed that material existence was flawed or evil, leading them to focus on personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) as the path to salvation rather than faith in Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection.
First century Gnosticism emerged from various sources, such as Jewish mysticism and Hellenistic philosophy. Scripture teaches its own sufficiency in part to combat adding and taking away from its teaching. The additions and subtractions emerge from the woof and the warp of that historical period.
Platonism
Debates over doctrine early in church history hinged on philosophical issues. These debates did not and would not occur from solely influences of scripture. Teachers familiar with the dialogues of Plato relied on the writings of the Greek philosopher in their interpretations of the biblical text. To recognize how they arrived at their teachings, one must understand how neo-Platonic Greek philosophy mixed into their doctrinal views. Plato represented a distinct view of the world seen in the type of teaching espoused by those hearkening to his ideas.
Church leaders believed Christians could appropriate the world’s philosophy and culture, where this seemed right to them. Augustine of Hippo provides an example, when he writes:
If those who are called philosophers, particularly the Platonists, have said anything which is true and consistent with our faith, we must not reject it, but claim it for our own use.
Plato’s writing contributed to the shaping of early doctrine of professing Christianity, including in systems of interpretation of scripture. The Alexandrian Jewish scholar Philo was a key figure in developing allegorical interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, aiming to reconcile biblical texts with Platonic philosophy.
Schools of Theology
Schools of theology arose, many times organizations separate from church authority. Origen was a student at the catechetical school in Alexandria, which had a strong tradition of allegorical interpretation, and likely studied under Clement of Alexandria who was known for relating Christian teachings to Greek philosophy. Origen didn’t invent allegory but he significantly advanced and popularized it, drawing on the influence of Greek philosophy. He often distinguished between a literal and a spiritual or allegorical meaning of scripture.
Doctrines did begin to change and false ones spread to various churches even in the first century, as seen what occurred in the seven churches of Asia (Rev 2 & 3). John expresses concerns over the doctrine of Christ that reflect the introduction of proto-Gnostic heresies (1 & 2 John). The Apostle Paul confronts Greek philosophy in 1 Corinthians 6, that presented a lax view of sexual immorality. In 1 Corinthians 15 he addresses something undoing the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Roman Empire
Most professing Christians and churches could not resist the power of the Roman Empire’s embrace of Christian religion and modification to the religious power of the state. The emperor Constantine possessed his own experience of Christianity and then used his position to affect faith and practice. He promoted his imagination of Christianity with construction of cathedrals, Bible translation, and the calling of official councils for discussion of theological issues.
Like a Rome emperor wanted unity in his empire for its resultant strength, Constantine and then others after him pushed for cohesive doctrine and practice across the empire. He organized and structured Christianity around his own aspirations for Christianity. This conformed Christianity beyond the New Testament to a state religion. Doctrine and practice became malleable to the state. The emperor and the state hierarchy used its authority to use its power to mold Christianity according to the same means by which it ordered the political and secular.
Influence of the State
State endorsement brought safety and great influence. It was difficult for small churches to resist the current of state power, getting swept into the flow of its governance and acceptance. Churches could sell their freedom and autonomy for security and prominence. Anyone could conceive of the opportunities that could come with the immensity of the state and the size of its resources.
The state would endorse those with its position and finally punish those resisting it. It published and propagated what it approved. At many different points it would destroy anything in opposition. What remained available was what the state affirmed. During many various periods, the state kept what it ratified and eliminated what it didn’t. This was a means to maintain cohesion.
More to Come
The Historical Story of External Factors Perverting the Meaning of Church
The New Testament Meaning of Church
God revealed His Word, which is the special revelation of every and all of His Words by God the Spirit through human authors. Those words communicate plainly the will of God to man, including the nature of the church. The church is what scripture says it is through its cumulative usages in the New Testament. What the Bible says the church is, is what it is, regardless of what occurs in the world or what men may say or have said that it is.
The New Testament shows that in its rudimentary sense, the church is local only. The underlying Greek word, ekklesia, means “assembly.” The church is an assembly. It is always an assembly and that’s what the word means. Even if the New Testament addresses the doctrine of the church in a generic way, a church is still what it is, an assembly. And yet today, people will say and have said that the church is mainly not an assembly, but a mystical or spiritual universal entity, not local or visible. How did this happen? It didn’t start out that way.
Historical Theology
Historical Theology or the History of Christian Doctrine can show the changes in the meaning of words and doctrine. The meaning of ekklesia and the doctrine of the church changed from its usage and teaching in the New Testament. The church changed into something it was into something it was not and is not. More than changing, outside influences through history actually perverted the meaning of church and the doctrine of the church.
The history of Christian doctrine tells a story of external factors. One of the values of historical theology is chronicling the culture of the world, governments, and other societal elements that affected the beliefs of Christianity. External factors have affected the interpretation, meaning, and doctrine of God’s Word. Instead of reading out the plain meaning of the text of the New Testament, people read into the text something not in it. This is another attack on scripture by Satan and the world system.
How Changes Occurred
One of the benefits of studying the history of Christian doctrine is investigating the changes in doctrine and how they occurred. Outside circumstances affected how people understood the biblical writings and their teaching. False teaching also begets more false teaching. A major component to change is fear. The Roman Empire opposed Christianity in the first three centuries and people adapted their belief and practice out of fear. Scripture reveals how that fear can and will modify what people will believe.
In addition, teachers of scripture mix biblical teaching with human philosophies, such as Platonism and mysticism. Through the decades and centuries since Christ, students of scripture allowed the influence of other writings to affect their understanding of the Bible. Traditions sometimes took precedent over sound exegesis of the biblical text. Predominant teachers held greater sway in the minds of people. Powerful men put their thumb on the scale of their preferred scholars and instructors, giving them an oversized impact on contemporary thinking.
Once John finished writing the book of Revelation in the late first century, which completed the New Testament and the canon of scripture, apostolic authority ceased. Scripture stood as the final authority. Also, authoritative leaders were in individual churches, not anything greater than that. The New Testament shows no hierarchy. Pastor and deacons were the only church officers. The pastor presided over their prospective, individual churches, each under Jesus Christ. Individual churches would fellowship with other churches of like faith and practice.
Just Individual Churches
The New Testament shows that churches cooperated with one another in non authoritative ways. They passed around the New Testament books (Galatians 1:2, Colossians 4:16). Churches met together to settle disputes with one another (Acts 15). A church would host and provide hospitality to those traveling from other churches (3 John). Several different churches might send funds to help out another church (1 Corinthians 16:1-3). An individual church would send support to a missionary from another church (Philippians 4).
According to the New Testament, no other church had authority over another church. Jesus was the Head of each church and accomplished that headship through scripture. The demarcation between churches could and did impede the spread of false doctrine. No evidence exists in the New Testament of one church having authority over another. The spirit of the New Testament is serving one another (Philip 2:1-5, Eph 5:21, Matt 20:25-28), not domination over one another.
Authority in Individual Churches
God gives authority to pastors over individual congregations and nothing greater than that (Hebrews 13:7,17, 1 Peter 5:1-3, Titus 2:15, 1 Timothy 5:17). Even the pastors with authority over their individual, separate churches (assemblies) also are themselves under the authority of their churches (1 Timothy 5:19-20). After the end of the apostolic era, this is all someone sees in the New Testament. Apostles had authority greater than one church, but no one else. The apostle Paul still submitted to church authority though, the authority of the single church at Antioch (Acts 13:1-3).
What drew together the churches of the New Testament into unity was having the same Head, Jesus, the same source of authority, scripture, and an identical gospel, means of salvation. Jesus calls His church, “my church,” in Matthew 16:18. He congregation distinguished itself from other assemblies by the means expressed by Him in the Gospels and then through His inspired followers in the rest of the New Testament. Churches could become something less than or other than a church or a true church, like the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:14-21.
Separate Churches Protecting Doctrine and Practice
When Jesus wanted to bring back a church toward Him, so that it didn’t become a Laodicean church, He worked through individual messengers through an inspired message. He didn’t operate through a greater hierarchical system. One can understand how that having a so-called catholic church with hierarchical authority could bring immediate and widespread false doctrine, heresy, and apostasy. With the head corrupted, everything below it would corrupt too. The autonomy of individual churches could protect the truth using the means given only to individual churches.
Separate churches could protect the doctrine and practice of the church through separation. God gave each church pastors to protect the separate church and church discipline. Church discipline could not operate through anything greater than a single church. It was designed for one church. The Lord’s Table was given to a separate church, which had accountability with its own membership. Body parts function in one location with the witness of all the other parts. Parts of a body do not work together outside of a single locale, which is what “body” itself communicates.
Body, Local
The Apostle Paul in defining the body, didn’t say “we are the body,” but “ye are the body,” excluding himself (1 Corinthians 12:27). That didn’t mean Paul wasn’t himself in a body. He was, even as he says in Romans 12:5. The oneness of a body though is in a particular body, not in bodies spread out all over the globe. Unity occurs in churches, which were given by Christ the means to do so.
With the plain understanding of church in the New Testament, how did other teaching develop through the centuries? This is a story and strongly relates to a few significant factors. Judaism and then the Roman Empire persecuted the first church and then the churches proceeding from that church. Judaism crossed regional boundaries and the Roman Empire was itself spread over the then known world. The Roman Empire was mammoth and with tremendous military and political power. It threatened the very existence of the first churches that started across its empire.
More to Come
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
Recent Comments