The Early Church Fathers And Tradition
I came across a good article talking about "sola scriptura vs solo scriptura", and as the course of events would have it the role of the early church fathers and tradition in the church came up as a topic.
The orignal blog post is here: http://www.tillhecomes.org/sola-scriptura-solo-scriptura/.
My comment is listed below:
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What I find quite amusing is that my Calvinist friends always start with Augustine but very rarely ever want to quote anything from those before him: the fathers of the first three centuries of the church. It seems to me they usually just ignore them.
I believe one of the reasons is because several of the 'core' calvinistic beliefs were called out as heresy by the earliest church fathers. For instance, the idea of a strict determinism concerning salvation (the calvinistic interpretation of predestination & election). It's not that this idea wasn't known by the church... it was. But the issue is that it was only known OUTSIDE of the church for the first three centuries. It was a belief held by several of the gnostic groups, but not by the church. The same kind of thing is true for a limited atonement, unconditional grace, total depravity, inability to forfeit salvation, etc. - in other words, in every place where classical Calvinism departs from God's Word.
It is quite an interesting read in the early fathers though. The exact same arguments the gnostics put forth to explain their beliefs are the same teachings you hear today in calvinistic circles. It makes me sad that those things crept in to the church, but they did and we must deal with them from the standpoint of God's Word. And in line with this blog post, tradition plays a part in that too simply in looking at the first three centuries of the church and understanding that they would be aghast at some of the beliefs that are claimed as 'orthodoxy' - both immediately following their time and from the 1500s onwards.
Many trumpet their beliefs as, "...the truth once for all handed down to the saints", but these Christians from the first centuries would be forced to ask, "which saints?", because those things certainly didn't come from them. These weren't the truths which they defended in speech, ink, and for many of them - with their own blood. They were drug behind horses until they came apart, burned slowly at the stake, beheaded, flayed alive, grilled alive on sheets of metal, pressed to death slowly between weights - all of this because they proclaimed that Jesus was their Lord (Iesous Kurios and not Kaiser Kurios!) and the Apostles and the Spirit were the disseminators of God's truth concerning His Son Jesus to mankind. And they, in their turn, sought to do the best they could to carry on the Apostle's teachings that they heard from them directly or from the men that came directly after them.
My opinion of them is that they would be just as appalled at Reformed Theology as they would Roman Catholicism. I believe they would see the former as corrupted with certain gnostic beliefs that slander God's character and make Him out to be a liar, while the latter would be seen as so corrupted by paganism that it basically boils down to rude idolatry sprinkled with certain Christian beliefs.
Certainly the fathers weren't perfect. They were dealing with understanding God's word through the Spirit just like us. The Greek fathers did have the benefit of being native speakers of Koine Greek and growing up in Koine speaking societies with all of their idioms and patterns of speech. I do wonder why more weight isn't sometimes given to their understanding of Scripture (which was written in their native language) by those in our time and before who only learned Koine academically. It seems fairly arrogant to so diverge from three centuries of native language interpretation in favor of that which was learned in a classroom separated from the real use of language and culture by millennia.
Personally, my biggest issue with the early fathers is that several of them took a turn towards works based salvation, or so it seems to me. Some of that can be cleared up by understanding that in their times there was a huge, cultural war between the concepts of vice and virtue (things were so bad that even some of the pagan philosophers were appalled), and they spoke to that from a Christian perspective that sometimes seemed to sanction works based salvation when instead they were simply drawing contrasts between how they behaved vs. the pagans. But other times it seems some of them truly did believe that they played a part in earning salvation, although in other places these same authors denied it.
But then I have to examine my own heart and confess that when I look to myself and not to Christ, when willful sin begins to harden me because I have let it in, I too can begin to fall into legalistic, self justifying modes of thought and behavior. In this area, as in all areas of sin in regards to those who are indwelt by Christ, The Spirit always corrects me and snaps me out of myself, but can I look at these early Christians and claim that I am any better? Certainly not.
I believe the best use of them is to acknowledge how poor their writings were when compared to Scripture. But I believe in God's providence He has used that to show how truly special and unique the writings of the New Testament are - that they were inspired by Himself and not simply the writings of pious or pietistic men.
The earliest fathers were often somewhat naive, somewhat childlike in some ways, but those qualities enabled them to hold on to the truth they had learned from the Apostles and apostolic men with a ferocity that I doubt would be much reflected in our day under similar persecutions.
Although I disagree with much of what they wrote, the more I read them the more I love them. Most of them found themselves embedded in a sinful society that was so bad it makes our culture look like a self righteous meeting of the hair shirt, stick as a chair club. But in that most dire of times the Spirit worked through them to turn the world upside down for the kingdom of God. And at the end of the day, the vast majority of them would attribute their salvation to God's grace rather than anything they had done to earn salvation.
I believe their final self examination at the end of their life would have been: did I remain faithful to the Lord Who was so faithful to me? And in that they would certainly be Apostolic indeed:
Galatians 6:7-10 (NIV)
7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
(Grace is not a license to sin. It is a license for Holiness. It is a license to become more and more like God until we are taken up when He returns or taken out by death)
2nd Timothy 2:11-13 (NIV)
11 Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; 13 if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.
( I hear so many Christians that take v 13 as a comforting promise, when in actuality it is a most solemn warning - God has made salvation available by His extension of Grace through faith that He enables in us by revealing Himself to us. Those that give up on faith are those that give up on the benefits of Grace, for being faithless is to consider God either unworthy of trust or unworthy of our endurance in the faith He has enabled for us. It requires a daily dying to self and daily suffering at the hands of our sinful nature against which we strive. Anything less than that is only a child playing with fire).
Hebrews 3:5-19 (NIV)
5 Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. 7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9 where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. 10 That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.' 11 So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.' " 12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15 As has just been said: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion." 16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed ? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
God bless ya'll from Texas. Take care, /Scott.
www.truthmill.com
@truthmill (twitter)
truthmill@yahoo.com
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The orignal blog post is here: http://www.tillhecomes.org/sola-scriptura-solo-scriptura/.
My comment is listed below:
---------------------
What I find quite amusing is that my Calvinist friends always start with Augustine but very rarely ever want to quote anything from those before him: the fathers of the first three centuries of the church. It seems to me they usually just ignore them.
I believe one of the reasons is because several of the 'core' calvinistic beliefs were called out as heresy by the earliest church fathers. For instance, the idea of a strict determinism concerning salvation (the calvinistic interpretation of predestination & election). It's not that this idea wasn't known by the church... it was. But the issue is that it was only known OUTSIDE of the church for the first three centuries. It was a belief held by several of the gnostic groups, but not by the church. The same kind of thing is true for a limited atonement, unconditional grace, total depravity, inability to forfeit salvation, etc. - in other words, in every place where classical Calvinism departs from God's Word.
It is quite an interesting read in the early fathers though. The exact same arguments the gnostics put forth to explain their beliefs are the same teachings you hear today in calvinistic circles. It makes me sad that those things crept in to the church, but they did and we must deal with them from the standpoint of God's Word. And in line with this blog post, tradition plays a part in that too simply in looking at the first three centuries of the church and understanding that they would be aghast at some of the beliefs that are claimed as 'orthodoxy' - both immediately following their time and from the 1500s onwards.
Many trumpet their beliefs as, "...the truth once for all handed down to the saints", but these Christians from the first centuries would be forced to ask, "which saints?", because those things certainly didn't come from them. These weren't the truths which they defended in speech, ink, and for many of them - with their own blood. They were drug behind horses until they came apart, burned slowly at the stake, beheaded, flayed alive, grilled alive on sheets of metal, pressed to death slowly between weights - all of this because they proclaimed that Jesus was their Lord (Iesous Kurios and not Kaiser Kurios!) and the Apostles and the Spirit were the disseminators of God's truth concerning His Son Jesus to mankind. And they, in their turn, sought to do the best they could to carry on the Apostle's teachings that they heard from them directly or from the men that came directly after them.
My opinion of them is that they would be just as appalled at Reformed Theology as they would Roman Catholicism. I believe they would see the former as corrupted with certain gnostic beliefs that slander God's character and make Him out to be a liar, while the latter would be seen as so corrupted by paganism that it basically boils down to rude idolatry sprinkled with certain Christian beliefs.
Certainly the fathers weren't perfect. They were dealing with understanding God's word through the Spirit just like us. The Greek fathers did have the benefit of being native speakers of Koine Greek and growing up in Koine speaking societies with all of their idioms and patterns of speech. I do wonder why more weight isn't sometimes given to their understanding of Scripture (which was written in their native language) by those in our time and before who only learned Koine academically. It seems fairly arrogant to so diverge from three centuries of native language interpretation in favor of that which was learned in a classroom separated from the real use of language and culture by millennia.
Personally, my biggest issue with the early fathers is that several of them took a turn towards works based salvation, or so it seems to me. Some of that can be cleared up by understanding that in their times there was a huge, cultural war between the concepts of vice and virtue (things were so bad that even some of the pagan philosophers were appalled), and they spoke to that from a Christian perspective that sometimes seemed to sanction works based salvation when instead they were simply drawing contrasts between how they behaved vs. the pagans. But other times it seems some of them truly did believe that they played a part in earning salvation, although in other places these same authors denied it.
But then I have to examine my own heart and confess that when I look to myself and not to Christ, when willful sin begins to harden me because I have let it in, I too can begin to fall into legalistic, self justifying modes of thought and behavior. In this area, as in all areas of sin in regards to those who are indwelt by Christ, The Spirit always corrects me and snaps me out of myself, but can I look at these early Christians and claim that I am any better? Certainly not.
I believe the best use of them is to acknowledge how poor their writings were when compared to Scripture. But I believe in God's providence He has used that to show how truly special and unique the writings of the New Testament are - that they were inspired by Himself and not simply the writings of pious or pietistic men.
The earliest fathers were often somewhat naive, somewhat childlike in some ways, but those qualities enabled them to hold on to the truth they had learned from the Apostles and apostolic men with a ferocity that I doubt would be much reflected in our day under similar persecutions.
Although I disagree with much of what they wrote, the more I read them the more I love them. Most of them found themselves embedded in a sinful society that was so bad it makes our culture look like a self righteous meeting of the hair shirt, stick as a chair club. But in that most dire of times the Spirit worked through them to turn the world upside down for the kingdom of God. And at the end of the day, the vast majority of them would attribute their salvation to God's grace rather than anything they had done to earn salvation.
I believe their final self examination at the end of their life would have been: did I remain faithful to the Lord Who was so faithful to me? And in that they would certainly be Apostolic indeed:
Galatians 6:7-10 (NIV)
7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
(Grace is not a license to sin. It is a license for Holiness. It is a license to become more and more like God until we are taken up when He returns or taken out by death)
2nd Timothy 2:11-13 (NIV)
11 Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; 13 if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.
( I hear so many Christians that take v 13 as a comforting promise, when in actuality it is a most solemn warning - God has made salvation available by His extension of Grace through faith that He enables in us by revealing Himself to us. Those that give up on faith are those that give up on the benefits of Grace, for being faithless is to consider God either unworthy of trust or unworthy of our endurance in the faith He has enabled for us. It requires a daily dying to self and daily suffering at the hands of our sinful nature against which we strive. Anything less than that is only a child playing with fire).
Hebrews 3:5-19 (NIV)
5 Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. 7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9 where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. 10 That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.' 11 So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.' " 12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15 As has just been said: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion." 16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed ? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
God bless ya'll from Texas. Take care, /Scott.
www.truthmill.com
@truthmill (twitter)
truthmill@yahoo.com
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Comments
Thanks for leaving a link to your site also. It is how I found your blog, and most of the other blogs I read and comment on.