Out There: Eternal Security/Once Saved, Always Saved (OSAS)
Today I’d like to look at another doctrine that is out there in the Christian world. It is usually called either the doctrine of “Eternal Security” or “Once Saved, Always Saved” (“OSAS”).
In case you haven’t heard of it, this doctrine basically says that once you have been “saved” (however one understands that to happen) you can never lose your salvation – it’s absolutely impossible. No amount of sin can change that. Your card has been stamped, the credit card paid off and your name added to the guest list….
Eternal Security Origins
The doctrine of “Once Saved, Always Saved” has its roots in “Sola Fide”, the 16th Century doctrine that we are saved by “faith alone“ (something which Scripture itself flatly denies in James 2:24). I will briefly look at the doctrine of “Faith Alone” in an upcoming blog entry.
Like “Faith Alone”, “Eternal Security” made its first appearance at the Reformation, being introduced by leaders such as Bucer and Calvin. Interestingly though, it was never taught by Luther:
“Through baptism these people threw out unbelief, had their unclean way of life washed away, and entered into a pure life of faith and love. Now they fall away into unbelief” – Martin Luther, Commentary on 2 Peter 2:22
“Once Saved, Always Saved” also has its roots in the Reformed understanding of justification. The majority of Protestant theology says that our justification is a mere declaration of righteousness (“legal imputation”), in contrast to Catholic theology which says that we have grace poured into our soul (“infusion of grace”), returning to us the divine life lost by Adam in The Fall. This, however, is a topic too large for this blog entry, so let’s move on..
The Logic & Oversight
The central thrust of OSAS logic is that, since salvation is a free gift of grace, nobody can take it away from you. Supporters of this doctrine usually quote passages such as:
“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand” – John 10:28
Proponents of this doctrine are absolutely correct when they state that salvation is a free gift, but they miss the fact that a gift, even if it is initially accepted, can ultimately be scorned, sullied and rejected. Although no one can snatch you from Christ’s hand, you can wriggle yourself free if you so choose.
In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the Son chose to renounce his sonship, leave his home and go his own way. As a consequence of this he became “lost” and “dead” (Luke 15:32). The same spiritual death is open to us if we choose to reject our Father and walk away from our family home.
But what does the Bible say?
Rather than provide any more argumentation, I’ll simply let the Bible speak for itself:
“If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death” – 1 John 5:16-17
“But if some of the branches were broken off [the Jews], and you, a wild olive shoot [the Gentiles], were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree [Jesus Christ], do not boast over the branches…For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you…Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in His kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off” – Romans 11:1-23
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by ayokeofslavery…You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallenaway from grace” – Galatians 5:1, 4
“And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel” – Colossians 1:21-23
“Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day . . . that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end” – Hebrews 3:12-14
“If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: ‘A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud’” – 2 Peter 2:20-22
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” – John 15:1-6
…and many, many more…
If it is possible to die, be cut off, yoked back into slavery, turn away, fall away from grace, thrown away and burned then it is possible to lose your salvation. For Paul and John, once saved clearly doesn’t mean always saved.
Usual objections
When I’ve spoken with non-Catholics about this topic and presented to them what Sacred Scripture says on the matter, the passages are usually ignored. Instead, verses about God’s faithfulness are usually quoted at me. However, it’s not God’s faithfulness that’s in question – it’s ours!
When I eventually get them to comment on the passages I’ve presented I’m often told that Scripture isn’t saying what it looks like it’s saying. Here is a snippet of an email I received from one person with whom I’ve been corresponding:
“A good study of this will show that Paul [and] John speak of being cut off from fellowship with God, not cut off from salvation.
One can be in Christ, but yet cut off from fellowship. Fellowship and salvation are two different things. When one sins, and refuses to repent, God will not comune with us, until we make it right by Him. This is cut off from fellowship. God does this to bring us back into fellowship with Him.”
Unfortunately, this argument has no real scriptural grounding and really just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If Christ didn’t come to restore our fellowship with God then what did He come to do? In what way do the passages I presented suggest that they are talking about “communion”, separate from “salvation”? In what way can one be a member of a vine or an olive tree, then be cut off and burned and yet still be joined to the original plant?
I don’t see how Scripture could use language any more dramatic than “turn away…cut off…yoked back into slavery…fall away from grace…be alienated from Christ…burdened again…entangled…return to vomit…and wallow in mud”. Do these sound like people who are assured of their salvation? How could Scripture use language any more serious? I asked these questions in my last email three months ago. I have yet to receive an answer.
The alternative to OSAS? Remain in Christ and hope in Him who is faithful.
“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him” – Psalm 62:5
UPDATE: Mack responded to this post in the Comment Box below. I responded to his comments in a three-part series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
RP,
You have to differentiate body, soul, and spirit.
The born-again man has a saved soul which is “once saved always saved”. But we have no security that our body won’t die (1 Corinthians 5:5) or that our human spirit will remain in joyful fellowship with God (1 John 1:6). But while a Christian has a soul cut off from the flesh (Col. 2:11) and joined permanently to Christ, his body also is predestinated to eventual salvation at the resurrection when it will be made permanently like Christ (1 John 3:2).
So the verses that seem to indicate a loss of salvation actually speak of a loss of either daily fellowship, or of the body by early death, or loss of a ministry, or loss of rewards. God can turn a wayward saint over to Satan (1 Cor. 5:5) or to men (John 15:6) for destruction in this life, but he won’t cast his soul into hell – he can’t (Ephesians 1:14).
Some of the verses are addressed to groups, not individuals.Therefore a church might contain lost individuals, and the institution may be rejected and eventually disbanded if it departs from the gospel (Rev. 2:5).
Also, some of the verses may be addressed to saints who are going to be alive during the tribulation, after the bride of Christ is removed. The bride of Christ in the church age has eternal security presently, but eternal security won’t affix to tribulation saints unless they “endure unto the end” faithfully (Mark 13:13).
And, of course, sound doctrine comes from sound words, which is why the King James Bible must be studied and believed rather than whatever versions you are using.
– Mack.
I’m afraid I’m rather unconvinced by these explanations. How could the language of “turn away…cut off…yoked back into slavery…fall away from grace…be alienated from Christ…burdened again…entangled…return to vomit…and wallow in mud” be any more serious?!
> …we have no security that…our human spirit will remain in joyful fellowship with God
How can one be “saved” and not be in fellowship with God? How can that possibly work? I addressed this argument in my post:
“Unfortunately, this argument has no real scriptural grounding and really just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If Christ didn’t come to restore our fellowship with God then what did He come to do? In what way do the passages I presented suggest that they are talking about “communion”, separate from “salvation”? In what way can one be a member of a vine or an olive tree, then be cut off and burned and yet still be joined to the original plant?“
With regards to Mark 13:13, you appear to be saying that it points to something distant point in the future. While I wouldn’t deny that this points forward in history and is a template for the end of the world, the context of the passage is Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70. So, to be consistent, if you’re going to do away with eternal security at some point in the future (although why do this, I’m not really sure), then you should also do away with it in the First Century since that is the immediate sense of the passage.
I think it would be helpful if we got specific. Rather than speaking generically, could you pick one of the passages I’ve quoted above and explain how it doesn’t actually say what it sounds like it’s saying?
Once again for emphases: man is also a trinity (Genesis 1:26), he is body, soul, and spirit. You have to start thinking about how New Testament salvation operates on those three different levels.
And more than that, you have to realize that God is dealing with Churches in addition to individuals, and with church attendees outside of the Bride of Christ who end up going into the tribulation and are tested like wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 25. cf., Rev. 2:10, 2:22, and 3:10).
So there is a lot of complexity that a simplistic, superficial gloss is not going to even begin to uncover.
Regarding 1 John 5:16-17 the sin is the fleshly sins of Christian, some of which are serious enough to result in early physical death (1 Corinthians 5:5). The soul remains saved, this passage does not send any Christians to hell.
Romans 11:1-23 is addressed to gentiles as a group who are invited into to join the family of God, but warns them as a group of holding the Jews in contempt since God is able to turn again to Israel and dump the Gentiles (which will happen during the tribulation period). No saved individual Christians are sent to hell in the passage.
Galatians 5 is addressed to a group of persons (saved and lost church attendees in Galatia) who are drifting off into Jewish legalism and other human self-effort types of religious do-goodisms. They have fallen from grace into legalistic bondage. No saved Christians go to hell in the passage, although they might be among all the people mistakenly caught up in legalism because of the church’s bad teachings.
In the King James Bible the “ye” demonstrates that Colossians 1:21-23 is plural, a statement to the group. No individual Christians are damned in the passage, rather the local church is suppose to not move from the faith (sadly many have). Of course, individual saved people can be carried along by false doctrines (like St. Peter, see Galatians 2:13), and it would bring them into temporal condemnation only.
Hebrews is addressed to Hebrews, just like James 1:1 is. We should be reluctant to contradict church age theology in the epistles Paul wrote to gentile Christians by citing what was addressed to Jews. Apparently God allowed these books (James and Hebrews) to be written early (see Act 12:2) prior to Acts 15 as a way to put into the Bible passages that would have doctinral application during the tribulation. That is a complicated answer, but falls under the heading “rightly dividing the word of truth” which is another lengthy topic.
2 Peter 2:20-22 says they “escaped the pollutions of the world” which is an external filth, not an internal one. These people evidently adopted religion but were always unsaved because they never trusted Christ: they remained pigs and dogs, and their true nature won out eventually. But the saved person is a new creature: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” 1 Cor. 5:17.
John 15:1-6 has to do with fruitfulness, not salvation. The branches are cut off and burned “by men” not by God.
Abraham was God’s friend, but their “fellowship” was silent for 13 years between Genesis 16:16 and 17:1 after Abraham fathered a son by Hagar. Likewise Christians who sin experience a lack of intimate fellowship with God that hinders their prayers and robs them of joy. But they never lost salvation.
Clear up these issues because it is important to get saved and know it. Have you trusted Jesus Christ’s death on the cross for your sins? Did you ask him to save you? Did you believe his promise that he will?
– Mack.
Hey Mack, thanks for taking the time to give a thorough response. I think I’ll address your interpretations in a separate post rather than cram my response down here in the comment box. I’ll aim to do it this weekend.
But with regards to your final question, yes, I place my trust in Jesus and ask him to save me. He is faithful, but I know that I am not. As we pray at every liturgy, Kyrie Eleison.
Okay, Part 1 is now up.
…and now Part 2…
Thanks for the reply. I see they are at “catholicdefense” too, so any response I’ll post there.
And I’m glad to hear that you trust Christ and ask him to save you – present tense.
But as the saying goes, “a miss is as good as a mile” – so forgive me for pestering you to be specific.
My question was “Have you trusted Jesus Christ’s death on the cross for your sins?”
That question is based on 1 Cor. 15:3-4 KJV; John 1:29 KJV; Gal. 1:4 KJV; Isaiah 1:18 KJV; Col. 2:13-14 KJV; Hebrews 1:3 KJV; 1 Peter 2:24 KJV; 1 John 2:2 KJV; Revelation 1:5 KJV; and Isaiah 53:5,11 KJV.
So did you ever go to Jesus and say anything like this: “Lord, I am a guilty sinner who deserves hell, and I believe you died for my sins to offer me pardon and eternal life. I receive you as my Saviour on that basis and I thank you for it.” ?
The crucial part is your admission of a specific need (“I’m a sinner who rightly deserves hell”) and receiving Christ’s provision for that need (“Jesus died for my sins”). After connecting those two things together, you are home free.
Men today are not damned for what they do, but what they fail to do: “Of sin, because they believe not on me;” John 16:9 KJV. That is a sin of omission, not commission (John 15:24 KJV).
– Mack.
…and Part 3.
> So did you ever go to Jesus and say anything like this: “Lord, I am a guilty sinner who deserves hell, and I believe you died for my sins to offer me pardon and eternal life. I receive you as my Saviour on that basis and I thank you for it.” ?
I have said something like this
1. In my bedroom in my second year of university (My mother’s faith was becoming my own in a very real way)
2. After university, at an evangelical altar call
3. At every Sunday liturgy
>The crucial part is your admission of a specific need (“I’m a sinner who rightly deserves hell”) and receiving Christ’s provision for that need (“Jesus died for my sins”). After connecting those two things together, you are home free.
Where in the Bible does it say I have to say these two specific things (and only these two specific things) and I’m home free?
Your home free because all your problems stem from one thing: sin. And the solution to sin is the cross – as stated in the verses I mentioned (please see):
“1 Cor. 15:3-4 KJV; John 1:29 KJV; Gal. 1:4 KJV; Isaiah 1:18 KJV; Col. 2:13-14 KJV; Hebrews 1:3 KJV; 1 Peter 2:24 KJV; 1 John 2:2 KJV; Revelation 1:5 KJV; and Isaiah 53:5,11 KJV”
Romans 10:13 says, ” For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
You called upon him to save you, so he did it. You’re saved. Unless God’s a liar.
I’d say God isn’t a liar. I’d say you are saved.
Now enjoy it forever.
>Your home free because all your problems stem from one thing: sin. And the solution to sin is the cross
Well, you’re not going to find disagreement from me there. The issue is (a) how the merits of the cross get applied to Christians (b) what impact sin has afterwards.
> You called upon him to save you, so he did it. You’re saved.
You quote Romans 10:13 as though it is the only sentence in the Bible about salvation. Other verses also exist on the subject and you also need to deal with those…and the best way to do that is by responding to my rebuttals, showing me where my analysis is incorrect.
> Now enjoy it forever.
I think I’ll just keep on working out my salvation, thanks.
Hi, RP!
As this is my first comment here I’d like to say thank you for this and all of your posts. I’ve seen many of your comments over at catholicdefense, but I had not visited your site until a couple of days ago. (I have a lot of reading to do, in other words :))
MackQuigley brings quite a lot of pre-suppositions to the discussion in his first comment alone that I think have been overlooked. (If I’m wrong about that please correct me!) It is these things that bar Mack from understanding your argument against OSAS, and (probably) make further discussion impossible, at least not without some very lengthy posts dealing with each pre-supposition individually.
Mack, I’d like to make some observations regarding your first comment and to pose some questions to you.
The first observation is your absolute insistence that man is tripartite, composed of body, soul, and spirit, and that this must be recognized. (You point to this understanding of man beyond your first comment, and you make it your first point in at least one other place, as well.) What you have failed to do, though, is actually prove this point in spite of your Scripture references. In other words you are simply making an assertion.
1. What (exactly) is the soul?
2. What (exactly) is the spirit, and how does it differ (exactly) from the soul?
You said “The born-again man has a saved soul which is ‘once saved always saved'”. This is simply a question-begging assertion on your part that you make no attempt to prove.
1. What (exactly) does it mean to be born again?
2. How (exactly) is one born again?
3. When (exactly) does this new birth take place?
4. If it is – as you rightly say – that the soul is saved, and that our earthly, corruptible bodies (which will indeed perish) will at the resurrection be made incorruptible, what happens to the spirit (which you assert is separate from both body and soul) at the moment of new birth? At death? At the resurrection?
You say “But while a Christian has a soul cut off from the flesh (Col. 2:11) and joined permanently to Christ, his body also is predestined to eventual salvation…”
You seem to be equating “flesh” with “body” here. Am I reading you correctly? If so, how is it at all possible that the soul is cut off from the body and yet the body actually remains alive? If not, what could your statement (and your understanding of Col. 2:11) possibly mean?
Judging by the next-to-last paragraph in your first comment, and the reference to “the tribulation” and “church age”, you are a Dispensationalist. Is this correct?
You say “Also, some of these verses may be addressed to saints who are going to be alive during the tribulation after the bride of Christ is removed. The bride of Christ in the church age has eternal security presently, but eternal security won’t affix to tribulation saints unless they ‘endure until the end’ faithfully (Mark 13:13)
Wow. That’s quite a lot to deal with.
1. Does Christ have one bride or two?
2. If the bride of Christ is one, then why eternal security for one part (eternal security that apparently does not at all require endurance “until the end”, and not for the second part?
3. How (exactly) are people to be saved during “the tribulation”?
4. If salvation is gained in exactly the same way for both groups, why (exactly) is endurance not required from the first group while eternal security is granted, and endurance is required while eternal security is withheld from the second group?
I’ve gone on for far too long and will close for now.
Hi RanJo,
You are asking all the right questions. If people want to know about saved/lost they need to start figuring out what those words mean at the base level. And you got a King James Bible – or can get one – so none of this is secret information. Everybody simply needs to go through the Bible putting it all together and making sense of it.
Given the limits of time and space, I’ll switch to an outline style so I quickly get this information out. You’ll have to run down the verses yourself.
I. three parts of man
1. Man is a trinity per Genesis 1:26 (because God is);
2. It’s body, soul, spirit – see “sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body” 1 Thess 5:23.
3. Genesis 2:7 (dust of the ground – body; , breath of life – spirit; living soul – soul)
4. Example of Christ: body on cross/tomb; soul in hell; spirit in God’s hands (luke 23:46; acts 2:27).
II. what’s a soul?
1. A soul is inside but has all the features of the human body – see eg. rich and lazarus: luke 16:23-26. see 1 samuel 28:14; see ezekiel 8:3.
2. In OT what the body touches defiles the soul – Lev. 5:2. so soul and body are knit.
3. souls don’t die at death, but can be destroyed by God later at 2nd death (matthew 10:28; revelation 20:14). Soul isn’t annihilated, it is reduced to a worm: Mark 9:48.
III.. spirits
1. man’s soul and spirit are distinct: “dividing asunder of soul and spirit” Heb 4:12
2. there 4 categories of spirits in the Bible: Holy Spirit; unclean spirits; spirit of man; spirit of beast. (see throughout; and Ecclesiastes 3:21)
3. spirit of man gives him life and moves through the blood (job 33:4; genesis 9:4).
4. spirits have moods and emotions and can interact with other spirits and are invisible and many other characteristics – see throughout.
5. soul of a baby is innocent and therefore its spirit is initially alive (romans 7:9); upon sinning, its spirit immediately “dies” (gen 2:17) – so all men are technically dead to God, even though their bodies are still alive for a time (matthew 8:22).
IV. born again
1. the Holy Spirit gives the new birth, reconnecting a man to God by the Spirit. John 3:6. 1 Cor 15:45.
2. daily the Holy Spirit moves upon the man’s human spirit – in his mind and heart, renewing it, refreshing it: ephesians 4:23 “be renewed in the spirit of your mind”; romans 12:2; titus 3:5; 2 timothy 1:7
3. etc.
V. flesh / body
1. body parts: blood, bones, flesh. – blood and bones are different: “dividing asunder … joints and marrow” Heb 4:12.
2. blood is the problem: “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” 1 cor 15:50; christ’s new body no mention of blood: “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” luke 24:39; “we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” Ephesians 5:30.
etc.
The “spirit of man” is a life force, it is in every man, saved our lost. the born again man has the Holy Spirit sealing him in the inner man- i.e., the soul, putting the soul in Christ. The spirit of a man is exhaled to God upon death, for a Christian, to Jesus “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Acts 7:59.
As for Colossians 2:10-11, it says there is a circumcision that puts off the outer man by the operation of God. That would indicate the OT situation where souls are defiled along with bodies simultaneously when a man touches something physically no longer happens to saved Christians.
Sorry to be rambling, this is taking a while. What have forgotten?
You ask about dispensations – yes there is a difference between a single bride and 10 virgins. So there is a church (the bride) and others (5 wise virgins saved during the tribulation). the virgins have to be ready at the moment christ returns, or they end up being lost. Their salvation depends on works to the extent they can’t take the mark of the beast and have to help people (matthew 24-25) and be undefiled to the end. They are still saved by christ alone, but not by faith alone. But Christians now are saved that way.
Sorry I’ve rushed this along, it deserves much more time than I’ve just given it just now. If I can clear anything up let me know.
And if you think I’m wrong somewhere, simply show me where from the scriptures (KJV) since that is the final authority.
– Mack.
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Here is my story: I grew up fundamentalist Baptist. I repented of all my sins and accepted Jesus Christ into my heart to be my Lord and Savior at age nine…and again in my early teens…just to be sure. In my early 20’s my family moved to another state where we attended a non-denominational, evangelical mega-church (which taught Baptist doctrine) for several years. In my mid to late 20’s I stopped going to church because I didn’t “feel” God inside me and he didn’t seem to listen when I prayed.
I remained unchurched until I was married in my forties. I started attending liberal churches. When we had children, I started looking again at more conservative/fundamentalist churches, something closer to what I had believed as a child and teenager. We joined a conservative, orthodox Lutheran church. I became very involved in the church. I was happy and content in my orthodox Christian belief system. I read the Bible and prayed regularly.
One day I was surfing the internet and came across an atheist’s website. He was a former fundamentalist Baptist/evangelical pastor! I was shocked! I started to engage him in conversation, and also tried to bring him back to the Faith, to belief in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
However, this man pointed out to me some very big assumptions in my Christian belief system which I had never thought of, such as:
1. Just because there is evidence for a Creator does not mean that the Creator is the Christian God, Yahweh.
2. Our current Bibles contain thousands of scribe alterations, most of them inconsequential, but a couple of them are shocking. Why did God allow scribes copying the original Scriptures to change, delete, add, or alter his inerrant, Holy, Word?
3. How do we know that the books of the New Testament are the Word of God? Is there a verse that tells us? Did Jesus give us a list? Did Paul?
4. Do we really have any verifiable eyewitness testimony for the Resurrection or is it all hearsay and legend?
5. Modern archaeology proves that the Captivity in Egypt, the Exodus, the forty years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, and the great kingdoms of David and Solomon are only ancient Hebrew fables.
At first I fought him tooth and nail. I fought him for four months. At the very end I had to admit that there are no verifiable eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus in the Bible or anywhere else. All we have are four anonymous first century texts full of discrepancies and contradictions. The only thing I had left to attach my faith to was the testimony of the Apostle Paul: why would a devout Jewish rabbi convert to a religion he so hated unless he really saw a resurrected dead man on the Damascus Road?
But after studying the five Bible passages that discuss Paul’s conversion, I had to admit that Paul never says he saw a resurrected body. All Paul says is that he saw a light…and that this event occurred in a “heavenly vision”. Visions are not reality…not in the 21st century nor in the 1st.
And as for the improbability that a Jewish rabbi would convert to a hated religion, there is a Muslim cleric in Israel today who not too many years ago was an ardent Zionist Jewish settler and rabbi, intent on ridding the Muslims from Jewish land.
Strange conversions occur. They do not prove that the new religion is true and inerrant.
I was broken-hearted, but I saw my Christian Faith was nothing more than an ancient superstition that had been modified in the first century by Jesus, a good man, but a dead man. There is zero evidence that this first century Jew is alive and the Ruler of the Universe.
Hey Gary,
Welcome to Restless Pilgrim 🙂
To add a few brief comments to the points you raise…
> 1. Just because there is evidence for a Creator does not mean that the Creator is the Christian God, Yahweh.
This is absolutely true. To prove that there is a Creator does not prove the identity of that Creator as Yahweh, however it is enough to disprove Atheism (Aquinas’ Five Ways, Cosmological Argument etc).
> 2. Our current Bibles contain thousands of scribe alterations, most of them inconsequential, but a couple of them are shocking.
Can you give me some examples of the ones you find shocking?
> Why did God allow scribes copying the original Scriptures to change, delete, add, or alter his inerrant, Holy, Word?
Why do you assume that God would intervene? Was that ever promised?
What would you expect to happen if a scribe was copying a manuscript and about to accidentally skip a line? Would he suddenly be jolted awake by the Holy Spirit and remote controlled by God so as to include the missing line?
> 3. How do we know that the books of the New Testament are the Word of God? Is there a verse that tells us? Did Jesus give us a list? Did Paul?
This is an argument against Fundamental Protestantism and Sola Scriptura, not the Christian Faith. Both Catholic and Orthodox Christians can answer this question very easily. In fact, the answer to this question is a large part of why I came back to the Catholic Church.
> 4. Do we really have any verifiable eyewitness testimony for the Resurrection or is it all hearsay and legend?
What would you regard as “verifiable”? Can you give me something concrete?
> 5. Modern archaeology proves that the Captivity in Egypt, the Exodus, the forty years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, and the great kingdoms of David and Solomon are only ancient Hebrew fables.
I very much disagree.
> All we have are four anonymous first century texts full of discrepancies and contradictions
This statement very much betrays your Baptist formation. The Church was alive and well proclaiming Her testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead long before anyone even thought about committing any of the four Gospels to paper.
> The only thing I had left to attach my faith to was the testimony of the Apostle Paul: why would a devout Jewish rabbi convert to a religion he so hated unless he really saw a resurrected dead man on the Damascus Road? But after studying the five Bible passages that discuss Paul’s conversion, I had to admit that Paul never says he saw a resurrected body
It’s worth noting that you haven’t actually answered the question as to what would make Paul do a 180 degree turn on Christianity? The text makes it clear that he had an encounter with Jesus. It is Sola Scriptura literalism that has a problem with the fact that Luke doesn’t explicitly record that Paul saw a physical body.
> Visions are not reality…not in the 21st century nor in the 1st
That strikes me as a rather big presupposition.
> And as for the improbability that a Jewish rabbi would convert to a hated religion, there is a Muslim cleric in Israel today who not too many years ago was an ardent Zionist Jewish settler and rabbi, intent on ridding the Muslims from Jewish land
And the reason he gave was what?
> Strange conversions occur. They do not prove that the new religion is true and inerrant
Agreed. I don’t think anyone would claim anything different.
> I was broken-hearted, but I saw my Christian Faith was nothing more than an ancient superstition that had been modified in the first century by Jesus, a good man, but a dead man
If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then (a) production of his body would have been a very quick way to put the new religion to death, yet none of the Church’s opponents even tried to do this (b) you have to explain why so many people were willing to go to their deaths for the sake of this lie.
Out of interest, have you read “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis? A few other websites that you might like to check out:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/
http://www.strangenotions.com/
http://www.catholic.com/
But the Gospel stories were written 40-60 years after Jesus’ death. How can we know what the earliest Christians believed about the Resurrection? We have Paul’s writings, written in 25-30 years after Jesus’ death, but Paul gives us very little detail about the event. In I Corinthians Paul tells us that Jesus died, was buried, on the third day rose again, and then was seen by a list of people. However, many theologians believe that this passage was an early Christian creed. Paul was simply repeating it. If true, this is not evidence that Paul knew the people who witnessed the resurrected Jesus, nor their stories.
This would be very poor evidence to present in a court of law.
> But the Gospel stories were written 40-60 years after Jesus’ death. How can we know what the earliest Christians believed about the Resurrection?
Do you have any compelling reason to doubt that what we find in the Scriptures and extra-Biblical documents (Didache, Epistle of Clement etc.) is different from what was previously orally proclaimed?
If it was different, why would the previously established congregations embrace writings which contradicted the faith which they were previously taught orally (2 Thes 2:15)?
> We have Paul’s writings, written in 25-30 years after Jesus’ death, but Paul gives us very little detail about the event.
Which isn’t surprising because Paul isn’t writing these letters to preach the Gospel or to provide a systematic theology or detailed church manual. He’s writing to specific congregations to deal with specific issues affecting that church.
I think this is more of your Sola Scriptura training coming out in your thinking.
> In I Corinthians Paul tells us that Jesus died, was buried, on the third day rose again, and then was seen by a list of people. However, many theologians believe that this passage was an early Christian creed. Paul was simply repeating it.
(a) Different theologians believe different things. Some believe in Christian orthodoxy, while others deny the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the inspiration of Scripture… For whatever opinion one holds, one can usually find a theologian somewhere who agrees.
(b) Even assuming Paul is repeating a creed, so what? Does it necessarily make it any less true? In Philippians Paul most likely quotes a Christian hymn (the Carmen Christi). What does that prove?
> If true, this is not evidence that Paul knew the people who witnessed the resurrected Jesus, nor their stories.
Rather unlikely, given that he speaks of meeting Peter and Jesus’ brother.
> This would be very poor evidence to present in a court of law.
What evidence would you accept?
Let’s look at the evidence:
Paul, writing 25-30 years after the crucifixion gives us only a brief outline of the events the Resurrection. I agree that by at least by 50-60 AD, Christians believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. The question is: Did this belief begin immediately after Jesus’ death or some time later?
Let me give you a hypothetical situation: Jesus is crucified. His body is taken down from the cross and then buried in a common, unmarked grave with other criminals executed by the Romans. No one other than a few Roman soldiers know where it is and they aren’t talking.
Jesus’ disciples were expecting to rule along side Jesus in his new earthly kingdom. They are devastated by the death of their friend and the promised Messiah. They return to Galilee to resume fishing. A week, month, year, or several years later, one of the followers of Jesus, a woman, has a vision in which she sees Jesus and Jesus tells her that he is risen, has ascended to heaven, and will soon return to establish his earthly kingdom, and that the eleven will reign with him in the re-established kingdom of Israel.
The one follower tells some other women, and they too have visions of Jesus. The women tell the eleven…and they begin to have visions, with Jesus telling them the same story, soon other followers of Jesus are having visions of Jesus, and as the story grows and grows, more and more details are added to it.
Within just a few short years, the story has become that women were the first to see the resurrected Jesus in a garden where one man, or maybe two men, or maybe two angels announced the resurrection, then Jesus to them, then appeared to the Eleven, and then to hundreds, maybe even five hundred people, eating fish with them, and then he was taken up to heaven, just like Elijah.
Do I have any evidence for this story? None.
But this story is much more probable than that a first century man walked out of his grave after being in a state of composition for three days. The four Gospels are anonymous, written many years after the event, in foreign lands, in a foreign language, most likely not by eyewitnesses. The Gospels were not specifically attributed to the currently assigned writers until Irenaeus in 180 AD, based on a few vague statements by the mystic Papias.
If you have other evidence, please share it.
> Paul, writing 25-30 years after the crucifixion gives us only a brief outline of the events the Resurrection. I agree that by at least by 50-60 AD, Christians believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. The question is: Did this belief begin immediately after Jesus’ death or some time later?
Do you have any compelling reason to think it developed later?
If one can affirm the basic timeline of the book of Acts, Paul had been active quite some time prior to the authorship of (say) Thessalonians, first in opposing the Church and then in witnessing to Christ.
> Let me give you a hypothetical situation: Jesus is crucified. His body is taken down from the cross and then buried in a common, unmarked grave with other criminals executed by the Romans. No one other than a few Roman soldiers know where it is and they aren’t talking
Do you have anything to corroborate this hypothetical?
> Jesus’ disciples were expecting to rule along side Jesus in his new earthly kingdom. They are devastated by the death of their friend and the promised Messiah. They return to Galilee to resume fishing. A week, month, year, or several years later
BTW, the further you push back the establishment of belief in the Resurrection, it becomes increasingly hard to explain the scale of the Church within just a few years.
… one of the followers of Jesus, a woman, has a vision in which she sees Jesus and Jesus tells her that he is risen, has ascended to heaven, and will soon return to establish his earthly kingdom, and that the eleven will reign with him in the re-established kingdom of Israel
That’s not really right, but okay…
> The one follower tells some other women, and they too have visions of Jesus. The women tell the eleven…and they begin to have visions…
Why are these people suddenly having visions?
> with Jesus telling them the same story, soon other followers of Jesus are having visions of Jesus, and as the story grows and grows, more and more details are added to it
From this you have to assert purposeful deception on the part of the founding members of the Church, claiming resurrection appearances for 40 days after the crucifixion which never actually took place.
Absolutely nothing in the text suggests that these appearances of Jesus were visions. In fact, they go to great lengths to assert that Jesus was really there, that he ate and drank with them and they touched His body.
> Within just a few short years, the story has become that women were the first to see the resurrected Jesus in a garden where one man, or maybe two men, or maybe two angels announced the resurrection, then Jesus to them, then appeared to the Eleven, and then to hundreds, maybe even five hundred people, eating fish with them
People are believing this and will to die for this why? Who would die for something they know to be a lie?
> …and then he was taken up to heaven, just like Elijah.
There’s an important distinction between Ascension and Assumption, but let’s leave that for the time-being.
> Do I have any evidence for this story? None
Which is extremely problematic…
> But this story is much more probable than that a first century man walked out of his grave after being in a state of composition for three days
Why? You’ve just admitted that you have absolutely no evidence for the story you’ve told, whereas the traditional story has contemporaneous written accounts and historical evidence of a sudden explosion of a new religion which, despite keenly inviting persecution upon itself, spread like wildfire.
> The four Gospels are anonymous…
With authors universally attributed by later Christians without the slightest contention.
> ….written many years after the event…
Within that generation and with clear signs that this was a pre-existing oral tradition.
(Remember we’re in the First Century here, don’t apply an anachronistic document-centric mindset)
> in foreign lands
What significance does that have? On this blog I recount stories of things that happened to me in England, despite the fact that I now live in the US. Is my story somehow invalidated?
> in a foreign language
There is more than a little evidence that Matthew’s Gospel was originally written in Hebrew.
Greek was well-known throughout the Roman Empire thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Why would Paul write to predominantly Gentile congregations in Aramaic? They wouldn’t be able to understand it! Also, if you had a message you wanted to share with the world, would you write it in a language that only a very specific group of people could read, or would you write it in the language most accessible to the greatest number of people?
I think I have a story on my blog somewhere about my adventures in France where much of the original dialogue took place in French. Does the fact that I now recount the dialogue in England somehow discredit what I say?
> most likely not by eyewitnesses.
That’s a big assertion.
> The Gospels were not specifically attributed to the currently assigned writers until Irenaeus in 180 AD, based on a few vague statements by the mystic Papias
What does that prove? Does that mean that prior to that time there were lots of different authorships supposed? That’s an argument from silence, at best. Again, do you have any good reason to doubt Papias and Irenaeus?
Again, you’re looking at this from a Sola Scriptura point of view, assuming that Christianity began with the construction of the New Testament, rather than with oral preaching.
Considering that Christianity was persecuted for the first few centuries of its existence, it’s incredible that we have as solid an historical record as we do. The reproduction of the New Testament was not a controlled, edited process. We have manuscripts from all across the Roman Empire and this should give us great confidence. The very fact that we have this manuscript tradition allows us to do critical study on the documents to see if they were tampered with. The New Testament is the best-attested work of antiquity. In addition, we have works of the Church Fathers which give testimony to this Faith from throughout the Empire.
Sorry, I was out of state this weekend with my girlfriend. Just catching up…
> What I am trying to point out to you, dear friend, is that your faith is built entirely on assumptions.
Some assumptions, yes. For example, I come to the text already believing in God (both through the classical proofs and through personal experience). However, you’ve revealed more than a few assumptions in your own position.
> Many scholars believe that the gospels were written after 70 AD and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple
I’ve addressed the “Many scholars…” argument before. There are good reasons to give Mark an early date, prior to AD 70.
> Most scholars do not believe that the gospel of Mark, the first gospel written, according to most scholars, was written in Palestine, as the author seems unfamiliar with the geography of the area
I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to about unfamiliarity with geography, but when was there ever the claim that Mark was written in Palestine? The tradition of the Church doesn’t place it there.
> So if “Mark” is writing his story in Antioch or Alexandria, after the destruction of Jerusalem, how many “witnesses” to the alleged resurrection are going to be around to say, “Hey! That isn’t what happened at all!” Very, very few
It’s ironic that you began this post talking about assumptions and the main argument thus far is built on an assumption concerning the dating of Mark.
However, again, I have to point out that the preaching of the Gospel didn’t begin with the authorship of Mark. If you’re not a Protestant any more, you can ditch Sola Scriptura!
> Even if they were not killed in the destruction of Jerusalem, what was the average life span in the first century, especially of the lower classes? If a man was 20 at the time of the crucifixion, he would be 60 in 70 AD.
…and sixty year-olds are known for their false testimony?
However, while we’re on the subject of the destruction, to what do you attribute the preservation of Christians during the Jerusalem siege? Now, if Jesus had prophesied its fall, it would make sense that they’d flee to Pella…
> How quickly was “Mark’s” gospel circulated? We have no idea
We can make some educated guesses, based upon manuscript evidence and Early Church Father citations.
> If it is true that Clement quoted from the gospel of Mark in 97 AD, then the same man who was 20 at the time of the crucifixion is now 87 years old!
So? (It’s probably worth noting that the legates sent with Clement’s letter were, in fact, old men)
> You are assuming, friend that the Resurrection story as found in the Gospel of Mark, was the Resurrection story of the earliest Christians.
…and you’re assuming that it’s not.
> I don’t think anyone was lying. I think that these people genuinely believed that Jesus really did rise again.
Thus far you’ve built layer upon layer of assumptions as to what happened, but without any evidence to back it up. However, I don’t see how you could conclude that no duplicity was present.
The apostolic message was that there was a bodily resurrection of Jesus, that they ate and drank with His disciples and that they touched His wounds. That’s not the same as a vision, be it individual or collective.
I asked you before if you’ve read Mere Christianity. Have you you?
> Like I said, many people had visions during this time period. A vision, a fact, does not make
These are “visions” that they never claimed to have. Also, “many people had visions during this time period”?
> So, assumption after assumption has created the modern Christian Faith
Not modern, ancient.
> Here is the kind of evidence that we have for other events in Antiquity, such as the Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon: known generals and other known statesman and historians recorded the event and their individual accounts agree on the main points
You’re surprised that the usurpation of the greatest empire in the world has good historical testimony?
> The Resurrection story has four anonymous books with conflicting very important details… Only someone who WANTS to believe this supernatural story would accept all these discrepancies as “harmonizable”
There are a number of different ways these details can be harmonized. Answers were given as far back as Eusebius. Difficulties don’t make impossibilities. We run into the same thing with Josephus, Tacitus, …
For the longest time we had no archaeological evidence concerning Pontius Pilate and many skeptics brayed he never existed and that the secular sources we had concerning him were just piggy-backing off the Christians. However, in the 60s, the Pilate Stone was discovered.
“You’ve just admitted that you have absolutely no evidence for the story you’ve told, whereas the traditional story has contemporaneous written accounts and historical evidence of a sudden explosion of a new religion which, despite keenly inviting persecution upon itself, spread like wildfire.”
Where are the contemporaneous written accounts? Stories written 40-60 years later are not contemporaneous. Again, the authors of the four gospels are anonymous. They could be anyone. They could even be novelists! And, Matthew and Luke, borrow heavily from Mark, and John’s story has only an outline of similarity to the Synoptics. John has Jesus saying an doing things that none of the other three Gospel writers say anything about.
For all we know, a guy living in Antioch, Syria, heard of the folk tale of Jesus resurrection, and wrote a brilliant historical novel—a little historical truth mixed with a lot of fiction. Three other novelists, living in other foreign countries, get a copy of Mark, and write their stories for purposes we do not know. The Church gets ahold of these stories, and since the core story is the same as what people have been saying in the oral legend for 40-60 years, they latch on to it. Then in 130 AD, Papias makes one comment about John Mark writing a gospel about Peter’s teachings…and that is how we have the holy, inerrant, inspired Word of God.
Do you have any evidence for your version of this event other than “all the Church Fathers said this was true?” Do you have any Church Father, prior to 180 AD, specifically pointing out the four gospels we have in our Bibles as the Word of God, and specifying that they were written by two of the disciples, Matthew and John, and two associates of apostles, Mark and Luke?
Do you have evidence of an “explosion” of Christianity? Yes, it grew, but how many Christians were there in the world in the first two centuries? But how do you explain the growth of the Mithras religion which was Christianity’s main competitor in the first few centuries AD? The Mormon Church started out with six men in 1830 and now has 15 million followers. That is a much more rapid expansion than Christianity in its first two hundred years.
So, there are no verifiable eyewitness accounts of the alleged resurrection. The claim that there are is based on second century hearsay. To base an entire religion on hearsay today would be seen as naïve and irresponsible.
> Where are the contemporaneous written accounts? Stories written 40-60 years later are not contemporaneous.
It’s within living memory of the events.
> Again, the authors of the four gospels are anonymous
And again, so what?
> They could be anyone
Again you’re coming to this with a hermeneutic of suspicion. Why doubt the universal testimony?
> They could even be novelists!
Any evidence for this?
> And, Matthew and Luke, borrow heavily from Mark, and John’s story has only an outline of similarity to the Synoptics. John has Jesus saying an doing things that none of the other three Gospel writers say anything about.
Again, you’re making a significant assumption about the authorship of the Gospels. However, you’ve also set for yourself and impossible standard:
1. If the Gospels accord with one another then it’s a sign of copying
2. If the Gospels differ from one another then it’s a sign of contradiction
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…
> For all we know, a guy living in Antioch, Syria, heard of the folk tale of Jesus resurrection, and wrote a brilliant historical novel—a little historical truth mixed with a lot of fiction. Three other novelists, living in other foreign countries, get a copy of Mark, and write their stories for purposes we do not know.
Again…you’re coming at this from a Sola Scriptura mindset. The oral proclamation of the Gospel existed a long time prior to writing of the Gospels. You’ve anachronistically thinking about documents – producing a book was not a cheap or easy thing to do. What you are suggesting is also quite astounding, that several people wrote works of fiction which somehow accidentally were taken as fact! You say that we don’t know why the Gospel writers wrote, yet several of them tell us why (Luke 1:1-3, John 20:31).
> The Church gets ahold of these stories, and since the core story is the same as what people have been saying in the oral legend for 40-60 years, they latch on to it.
You’ve just created a paradox. What is the Church preaching prior to the discovery of these stories?
> Then in 130 AD, Papias makes one comment about John Mark writing a gospel about Peter’s teachings…and that is how we have the holy, inerrant, inspired Word of God.
Again… this Sola Scriptura mindset has to go. Do you really think that just because some random dude talks about one person writing down the preaching of another person, that everybody suddenly decides it’s all true? You need to stop assuming that something isn’t believed until someone writes it down.
> Do you have any evidence for your version of this event other than “all the Church Fathers said this was true?”
What evidence would you accept?
> Do you have any Church Father, prior to 180 AD, specifically pointing out the four gospels we have in our Bibles as the Word of God, and specifying that they were written by two of the disciples, Matthew and John, and two associates of apostles, Mark and Luke?
That’s a very specific request, an impossible standard to fulfill. Could you imagine similar demands being put upon other documents of antiquity? This is also a result of your Sola Scriptura upbringing rather than from historical training. Why would a Father have motive to commit something like that to writing? There are many things that I personally believe, much of which I haven’t committed to writing because a situation hasn’t arisen to prompt me to do so…and this is before we add the fact that the Church is persecuted (with burning of their writings), as well as the fact that history is sometimes unforgiving concerning the retention of documents (e.g. there are lots of works of Tertullian which I’d love to read but we don’t have any more).
Having said that, we do find the Apostolic Fathers quoting from the Gospels. Off the top of my head, we definitely see this in Clement of Rome (~AD 97), Ignatius of Antioch (~AD 107) and Polycarp of Smyrna (~AD 110).
> Do you have evidence of an “explosion” of Christianity? Yes, it grew, but how many Christians were there in the world in the first two centuries?
I’ve seen various studies and estimates but can’t put my hands on them right now. Either way, the Church certainly achieved significant numbers over a vast geographic landscape in an incredibly short space of time.
> But how do you explain the growth of the Mithras religion which was Christianity’s main competitor in the first few centuries AD?
Extensive support from the state and army in particular. Christianity, on the other hand, received nothing but persecution from Jews for their claims concerning Christ and from the Romans for their stubborn clinging to monotheism.
> The Mormon Church started out with six men in 1830 and now has 15 million followers. That is a much more rapid expansion than Christianity in its first two hundred years
That is an extremely problematic comparison, particularly because communications and travel were significantly better in 1830 than in comparison to AD 33. Although the LDS experienced opposition in the early part of their ministry, the opposition they received was nothing close to that for Christians under Roman Rule. You also have to answer the question “What am I going to get out of this?”. Christians looked forward to persecution and death. On the other hand, if you were a male Mormon, there were quite a few perks which came with conversion.
> So, there are no verifiable eyewitness accounts of the alleged resurrection
You keep talking about “verifiable”. What would constitute as verifiable? Can you point to some examples in history?
> The claim that there are is based on second century hearsay
You don’t appear to dispute the claim that the Gospels were written in the First Century, so this statement has to be inaccurate.
What I am trying to point out to you, dear friend, is that your faith is built entirely on assumptions.
Many scholars believe that the gospels were written after 70 AD and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Most scholars do not believe that the gospel of Mark, the first gospel written, according to most scholars, was written in Palestine, as the author seems unfamiliar with the geography of the area. So if “Mark” is writing his story in Antioch or Alexandria, after the destruction of Jerusalem, how many “witnesses” to the alleged resurrection are going to be around to say, “Hey! That isn’t what happened at all!” Very, very few. Even if they were not killed in the destruction of Jerusalem, what was the average life span in the first century, especially of the lower classes? If a man was 20 at the time of the crucifixion, he would be 60 in 70 AD.
How quickly was “Mark’s” gospel circulated? We have no idea. If it is true that Clement quoted from the gospel of Mark in 97 AD, then the same man who was 20 at the time of the crucifixion is now 87 years old! You are assuming, friend that the Resurrection story as found in the Gospel of Mark, was the Resurrection story of the earliest Christians.
I don’t think anyone was lying. I think that these people genuinely believed that Jesus really did rise again. But belief does not prove historical fact. Like I said, many people had visions during this time period. A vision, a fact, does not make.
So, assumption after assumption has created the modern Christian Faith. Here is the kind of evidence that we have for other events in Antiquity, such as the Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon: known generals and other known statesman and historians recorded the event and their individual accounts agree on the main points.
The Resurrection story has four anonymous books with conflicting very important details, such as, 1. Who came to the tomb first? 2. How many angels or young men were at the tomb? 3. Was the stone already rolled away when the women arrived or did they witness it? 4. Did Jesus tell the women they could “hold” him or not? 5. Did Jesus tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee or to stay in Jerusalem? 6. Did Jesus ascend that day, eight days later, or 40 days later? 7. Did Jesus ascend from the Upper Room, Bethany, the Mt. of Olives or from a mountain in Galilee? and on and on.
Only someone who WANTS to believe this supernatural story would accept all these discrepancies as “harmonizable”.
How about we start with one issue? Agreed?
Let’s discuss the evidence for the authorship for the Gospels. Please present the evidence, being as specific as possible, regarding the authorship of these four works of ancient literature.
Hmm…not really. This comment thread was off-topic to begin with. It’s also a lot of work for me just for a comment thread to collate all the scholarship to argue for the authorship of the various Gospels and, even then, I think it only has limited bearing on the veracity of the Christian claims concerning Christ. Tell you what, I’m taking a blogging sabbatical this Advent, but when I get back I’ll do a short post on each of the Gospels discussing the claims of authorship.
Ok, let’s ignore who wrote the Gospels and just look at the formation of the orthodox/catholic belief system. It isn’t as if all Christians in the first two centuries were unanimous in their support for catholic doctrine. There were probably just as many “denominations” then as there are now. How do we know that the orthodox/catholics were correct? Why not any of the “heretical” groups that were destroyed once the catholics gained power under Constantine? How do we know that the version of Christianity that we have today is not just the version that survived the early Christian civil wars?
> Ok, let’s ignore who wrote the Gospels and just look at the formation of the orthodox/catholic belief system. It isn’t as if all Christians in the first two centuries were unanimous in their support for catholic doctrine.
Well, you can compare Catholic doctrine against my survey from the first 300 years here
> There were probably just as many “denominations” then as there are now.
That’s an assumption you’d need to prove rather than guess.
> Why not any of the “heretical” groups that were destroyed once the catholics gained power under Constantine? How do we know that the version of Christianity that we have today is not just the version that survived the early Christian civil wars?
My guess is that this comes from your Baptist training. This is a common Protestant suggestion upon discovery that the early centuries of Christianity bear the mark of a Faith rather different from that of your average Evangelical. Here’s what I recently wrote to a Seventh-Day Adventist in the comment box of another post:
Now, it is sometimes argued that the “real” Christians were persecuted by the Catholics and that’s why we have no record of them. However, such an assertion has real problems. To see why, we have to ask ourselves how we know so much about Docetism, Gnosticism, Modalism, … We know about these heresies because Catholic apologists of the time argued against them, explaining why they were false. For example, St. Irenaeus of Lyons’ most famous work, “Against the Heresies”, is a series of books debunking Gnosticism. Therefore, arguments about suppression and persecution don’t really fly, particularly since one would hope that the “real” followers of Jesus would be tenacious enough to leave some mark on history.
You focus on my Baptist upbringing, but I was an orthodox Lutheran for many more years than Baptist. Lutherans and Roman Catholics are in agreement on the teachings of the early Church (baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, loss of salvation, etc.).
My point is, how do you know that the teaching of the winners (the orthodox/catholics) is correct and not those of the Gnostics, the Arians, the Essians, the Marcionites, the Manicheans, etc. etc. I can post the full list of “heretics” of the first four centuries if you like. For instance, the big debate in the early church was on Christology: was Jesus God the Creator, one with the Father, or was he a lesser divine than the Father, only the Son, or was Jesus just a divine being?
Constantine sided with the orthodox/catholics against these other Christian groups. These groups were then branded as heretics, and viciously persecuted and even put to death. Their beliefs were eventually stamped out by persecution, torture, and extermination, not by gentle persuasion.
Maybe the Arians or some other group truly taught the teachings of the Apostles, but were wiped out, most of their teachings destroyed, and we have been led to believe ever since that the apostles taught the orthodox/catholic doctrine of the Trinity.
(When I use the word “catholic” or “orthodox” without a capital letter, I am referring to the teachings of the early Church through the first five or six Councils. If I am referring to the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Roman Catholic Church I will specifically state as such.)
Here is a link to a list of early Christian “heretical” groups. The question is: were these groups truly heretics, perverting the teachings of the apostles, or were they just the losers in the Early Christian Civil Wars?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_heresies
“My guess is that this comes from your Baptist training. This is a common Protestant suggestion upon discovery that the early centuries of Christianity bear the mark of a Faith rather different from that of your average Evangelical. Here’s what I recently wrote to a Seventh-Day Adventist in the comment box of another post:”
Once again, you are seeing me as an ex-Baptist, not an ex-Lutheran. I came to the conclusion that the Baptists have no claim whatsoever to having existed since the apostles, they are a new religion, created in the seventeenth century. I came to see Lutheranism as the closest Church to the teachings of the Early Church. I know you don’t agree with that, but the point is that Lutheran teachings and Roman Catholic teachings regarding the core doctrines of the one, holy, Catholic Church are very similar. We and Catholics agree on the teachings of the early Church through the first five or six Councils.
> You focus on my Baptist upbringing, but I was an orthodox Lutheran for many more years than Baptist.
It’s because the “hidden Christianity” theory is something I typically associate with Baptists.
> My point is, how do you know that the teaching of the winners (the orthodox/catholics) is correct and not those of the Gnostics, the Arians, the Essians, the Marcionites, the Manicheans, etc. etc. I can post the full list of “heretics” of the first four centuries if you like.
There’s no need – the very fact that we know about these groups puts pay to the idea that “real” Christianity could have been wiped from the historical record. That was the point I was making.
With regards to knowing the truth against heresy, there’s a number of tests we can use, depending upon the group in question.
(Did you mean the Essenes? They weren’t a Christian group)
Many of them appear too late in history to be seriously considered as the original Christianity.
As Irenaeus demonstrated in “Against Heresies”, Apostolic Succession puts pay to the claims of the Gnostics.
Against other heresies, earlier Fathers were cited, as well as the liturgy of the Church (Lex orandi…) as tests to see whether a theological idea had apostolic roots.
> Constantine sided with the orthodox/catholics against these other Christian groups. These groups were then branded as heretics, and viciously persecuted and even put to death. Their beliefs were eventually stamped out by persecution, torture, and extermination, not by gentle persuasion.
This is a somewhat wonky rendering of history. Constantine’s support of the Arian movement changed over the course of his life. He actually died after being baptized by an Arian bishop.
Later Emperors supported Arianism enthusiastically and others such as Julian even tried to reinstate Paganism.
Also, it was exile, rather than torture and death, that was the typical punishment for failing to step in line with the emperor. Both Arians and orthodox bishops suffered this (depending upon who was in charge).
> Maybe the Arians or some other group truly taught the teachings of the Apostles, but were wiped out, most of their teachings destroyed, and we have been led to believe ever since that the apostles taught the orthodox/catholic doctrine of the Trinity.
I think an extremely strong case for the Nicean faith from Scripture and Tradition. Just because there was disagreement over an issue doesn’t mean that the truth can’t be known – such an epistemological point of view would have serious consequences if we took that position.
I think we have to be careful with hyperbole of language. We know exactly what the Arians taught because we still have some of their works, as well as the Catholic rebuttals.
You also seem to imply that the Church has intentionally hid what happened during the struggle with Arianism. It hasn’t.The very fact that we say the “Nicaean Creed” at every liturgy should be enough to prompt the question “What’s this all about?” Any student of history can read all about what happened.
I am not inferring that the early Christians held beliefs that they knew were non-apostolic. I believe that all these groups, orthodox and non-orthodox, most likely believed that they held the true apostolic teachings of Jesus Christ.
My point is that there is no solid evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus, and without the resurrected Savior, even Roman Catholic doctrine crumbles and collapses. If Jesus is still dead, his remains buried somewhere in the sands of Palestine, the entire Christian Faith is bogus.
Now, I cannot prove that a first century Jew did not walk out of his grave after being truly dead for three days, but neither can I prove the non-existence of pink unicorns or that a teapot circles the moon.
What I am saying is that your belief in a Resurrection Jesus Christ, the foundation of the Christian/Catholic Faith has no evidence to support it. So your Roman Catholic beliefs are just as much built on baseless faith, as is the faith of an evangelical, only his faith is in an inerrant Bible and your faith is in an inerrant Church and Church Fathers.
Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and conservative Protestants all claim that a dead man rose again. This is as far fetched, if not more so, than the Muslim claim that Mohammad flew to heaven and Jerusalem on a winged horse.
The Christian story, the Muslim story, the Hindu story, the Jewish story, etc. are all superstitious fables. Each of these groups will claim “evidence” for their supernatural claims but each of these groups dismisses the supernatural claims of all the others as silly and ignorant, but yet revere their superstitions as unquestioned truth.
There is no evidence for your belief system, friend. The only evidence you have is hearsay.
> I am not inferring that the early Christians held beliefs that they knew were non-apostolic. I believe that all these groups, orthodox and non-orthodox, most likely believed that they held the true apostolic teachings of Jesus Christ.
And I’m not saying that they’d fail a polygraph either.
> My point is that there is no solid evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus
We seem to have switched topics again… However, since we’ve switched back to the Resurrection, I’ll repeat the question I’ve asked a few times: what evidence would convince you?
> and without the resurrected Savior, even Roman Catholic doctrine crumbles and collapses. If Jesus is still dead, his remains buried somewhere in the sands of Palestine, the entire Christian Faith is bogus
And it would be the easiest thing for enemies of Christianity to do – provide a body. However, there is no evidence that this was ever even attempted.
> Now, I cannot prove that a first century Jew did not walk out of his grave after being truly dead for three days, but neither can I prove the non-existence of pink unicorns or that a teapot circles the moon
Exactly, that sort of negative cannot be subjected to testing.
> Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and conservative Protestants all claim that a dead man rose again. This is as far fetched, if not more so, than the Muslim claim that Mohammad flew to heaven and Jerusalem on a winged horse
Perhaps because you’re coming at this with an atheistic presupposition? After all, if one denies that there is any God, then Jesus certainly can’t be Him. If the supernatural doesn’t exist, then neither can supernatural events can’t take place.
I never said there is no God.
There may well be a Creator. There may well be millions of gods. There may be millions of supernatural beliefs that are really true. Almost every culture has its superstitions. So how do we determine which to believe and which to discount as very improbable and therefore beliefs that we should not lay awake at night worrying about. Do you worry that Allah is going to cast you into the Muslim hell? Of course not. Supernatural claims by definition cannot be proven false with physical evidence. We each have to weigh what evidence we have to determine the likelihood of a supernatural claim. You do not lie awake at night terrified of being cast into the Muslim hell by Allah because you do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to believe this supernatural claim.
And I hold the same position regarding your Christian supernatural claims. Just as you are not angry at Allah, I am not angry at the Christian god. Just as you are not choosing to rebel against Allah, I am not choosing to rebel against Yahweh/the Trinitarian Christian god. You don’t worry about the Muslim hell because you don’t believe that Allah exists, as I do not believe that Yahweh exists. You would demand evidence from a Muslim to believe his supernatural ancient tale, as I am doing with you of your ancient supernatural tale.
Most atheists and agnostics (including me) do not attempt to prove that a Creator does not exist. Our argument is that there is no evidence to prove that the Christian god is the Creator; that the Christian holy book is the very Word of the Creator; or that the Church represents the Creator here on earth.
We believe in Science and Reason. Give us good evidence that the Christian god exists and we will believe. But give us evidence, don’t ask us to accept your supernatural tale by blind faith.
Here is the evidence I would require to believe the Christian/Catholic story:
The Alleged Event:
The Sunday after Jesus crucifixion, Mary Magdalene, Mary Smith, and Salome Jones, arrive at Jesus tomb to experience a great earthquake and to find the stone rolled away and two angels sitting on the stone. Several Roman soldiers are lying on the ground in front of the tomb unconscious. The angels tell the women that Jesus has risen and that they will see him shortly.
In the city of Jerusalem, dead people are shaken out of their graves by the earthquake, and walk the streets of the city, visiting family and friends, creating terror, wonder, and pandemonium.
As the women are leaving the Garden, they see Jesus standing by the entrance. They take hold of his feet and worship him. He tells them to tell the Eleven that he will meet them shortly in the Upper Room, which he does in the mid-afternoon. He eats broiled fish with them, allows them to touch his wounds, and they discuss the events of the preceding days.
Late in the afternoon, Jesus leads them through the streets of Jerusalem, creating quite a stir as everyone in the city saw him executed just a few days earlier. He leads the disciples out to Bethany with a huge crowd following behind them, where he gives them last minute instructions about spreading the Good News to the entire world, and then levitates off the ground and disappears into the clouds in front of hundreds/thousands.
Evidence for this event:
1. Four eyewitnesses to this event each write a book, completely independent of the other three, which give identical or near identical details of the above event and the three years of Jesus ministry. The four eyewitnesses, identify themselves somewhere in their books, and state their relationship to Jesus. The author of Matthew, for instance, states that he is Matthew, sometimes called Levi, who was once a tax-collector in the city of ______ where Jesus first saw him and called him to be his disciple.
2. Roman and Jewish non-Christian sources record the great earthquake that was so strong it shook the dead out of their graves, most probably also causing severe damage to the city and loss of life. The fantastic story of the dead walking the streets of Jerusalem is spread throughout the Roman empire and recorded in multiple writings of the time. Jewish sources mention the tearing of the Temple veil that coincided with the earthquake.
3. Roman and Jewish non-Christian sources record the sighting of Jesus by hundreds (five hundred?) walking through Jerusalem with his eleven disciples (who had been in hiding) to walk the road to Bethany, where numerous Christian and non-Christian eyewitnesses state that Jesus levitated into the sky.
4. The Roman guards guarding the Tomb are executed for failing to guard the body. This event is recorded by Christian and/or non-Christian sources.
5. Several years later, Saul of Tarsus is traveling to Damascus when Jesus appears to him. Saul/Paul recounts in one of his letters exactly how Jesus’s body looked along with what Jesus said. Paul also notes in this letter than he compared the “Jesus” that he saw on the Damascus Road with the Jesus that Peter and James knew well; the description of Jesus’ height, weight, body type, hair color, eye color, and voice match exactly with that of the Jesus that Peter and James knew.
6. Numerous or at least several written testimonies from the earliest Christians beginning in at least the 70’s AD, continuing on into the subsequent century, testifying as to the authorship of the Gospels, with statements made by these Christians of first hand conversations with the authors of the Gospels and of conversations with other apostles confirming the authorship of the Gospels and the accuracy of the stories within the Gospels.
But, we don’t have this kind of evidence, do we? This is the evidence we do have for this alleged, incredible, Supernatural event:
1. Four anonymous books written decades after the event that contain major discrepancies, such as the number angels, the position of the stone, the appearance or lack of appearance of Jesus to the women in the Garden, the location of meeting the Eleven, the number of days spent with the Eleven, and the location of the Ascension.
2. Zero records from Roman, Jewish, or other non-Christian sources of these events, including the massive earthquake that shakes dead people out of their graves.
3. Saul of Tarsus says that he only saw a light in a “vision”.
4. The first reference to the alleged writers of the Gospels does not appear until the second century. It is hearsay: Papias in 130 AD writes that the “presbyter” John told Papias that John Mark, the associate of Peter, wrote a gospel of Peter’s teachings. Papias does not identify this gospel. It could be the gospel which we today call the Gospel according to Mark, or it could have been a “gospel” that has been lost or one of the non-canonical gospels we do have but for whom the authorship has been assigned by the Church to someone else. We do not know. Fifty years later in 180 AD Ireneaus assigns the four gospels we have today to two of the Apostles and to John Mark and Luke, the assistant of Paul. On what basis did Ireneaus make this decision? Does he tell us?
5. Do we have writings from the 30’s and 40’s AD which tell us what the earliest Christians believed? No. Our first writings are not until the mid 50’s with Paul. What does Paul tell us about the life of Jesus and the Resurrection? Answer: almost nothing. By the time the anonymous authors of the Gospels wrote their stories, the oral story could have dramatically changed. If the Church is right and all but John were martyred, when were they martyred? Maybe all but John were dead, and John was supposedly in eastern Asia Minor, far from Jerusalem. So if the story changed, who would point that out? Oral stories can change and be embellished within days, let alone years. Yet, Christians ask us to believe that dead men walk out of their graves and levitate into outer space based on this very, very poor evidence.
Dear Reader: If Christians want to believe this story by faith, go right ahead. But don’t tell us that you have good evidence for it because you don’t. There is as much evidence for the belief that a teapot circles the moon as there is that a first century dead man in Palestine walked out of his tomb to have a broiled fish sandwich with his fishing buddies.
This story is an ancient superstition. There is no evidence or reason to believe otherwise.
Ask yourself this question: If the above “evidence” was given to you to support the belief that Jupiter is the resurrected Lord God of the Universe, would this be enough evidence for you to believe it and dedicate your entire life to following Jupiter’s holy book?
I wrote this “comment” above in response to your request on my own blog today and copied and pasted it to you, that is why it says “Dear Reader”. I’m not trying to address YOUR readers.
I’m sorry but that is a very questionable proposition. The Bible is unique, being the most well-documented collection of documents in all of human history. Civilizations have come and gone, but the Bible has remained. It is certainly a book worth looking into, even if at first you are a skeptic.
I believe that the evidence for God is ubiquitous and plain. I also believe that such a God is good, because He has provided a good earth for us to inhabit. I also believe that such a God would communicate with us, and the best candidate for that communication is the Bible. In that book is one described as the Word, God with Us, who revealed His love for humanity by dying on a cross. Such a proposition make perfect sense to me. But I understand that most highly intelligent, highly educated people actually do not make decision on logic, but mostly emotion. So, faith is just that, a decision. We either decide that we want to be distant from God or draw closer to Him. The decision is actually eternal. Hell is just eternal separation from God and heaven is just eternal closeness. You decide!
The ancient churches begun by the Apostles (Catholic, Orthodox, Assyrian, Coptic, Thomas, etc.) have several real flaws, mainly following in the errors of the Jews, by adding human traditions to Holy Scripture and focusing on them as equal to the faith once and for all delivered. However, that said, it also has some doctrines more right than we Protestants, such as a more correct understanding of “faith alone” from James. I marvel that some Protestants dance around the issue by such double talk as, we are saved by faith alone but not a faith that is alone. And certainly OSAS is dead wrong as this article so well points out. I am thankful that we are saved by faith and not perfect doctrine, because none of us, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, has perfect doctrine.
Hey Mr. Spong, welcome to Restless Pilgrim, and thank you for your kind words about my article. I have a few thoughts about your comment concerning the “real flaws” in the Apostolic Churches:
1. On what basis do you think you understand Christianity better than they did, particularly considering that they were taught by the Apostles and their successors, as well as shepherded the Church through the brutal years of persecution?
2. These are the people who helped discern the canon and preserve the New Testament during those turbulent centuries. Why would you trust heretics(?) with “real flaws” to do a good job?
3. These are also the people who develop the Christology and Trinitarian theology to which you almost certainly hold. Doesn’t it seem strange that they would successfully navigate such trickly philosophical and theological issues and yet have “major flaws” regarding some (unspecified) basics of Christianity?
4. You do not provide evidence that these Apostolic Churches held to “human traditions”t. I would also point out that Jesus does not condemn “tradition”, but only human tradition when it comes into conflict with what God has said. The New Testament itself speaks favourably of sacred “tradition” when it comes to passing on the Deposit of Faith (e.g. 2 Thessalonians 2:15).
5. If you think that nobody has perfect doctrine, it seems at least possible that you could be wrong about your understanding of, say, salvation. How do you know what which elements of your doctrine could possibly be wrong?