Latest / Clear Path Christianity / Who/What DEFINES Christianity? || CPC Podcast Ep. 12
Transcript
- Cole Crone: Okay, ramp ramp. Okay, Lampy. Am I okay? I think I need a bro, but what are you gonna do? A bro. A bro. A bro? Yeah. Don't be. Don't know that means. For these fellas. All right. Unique New York, unique New York. Tell me when it's like a minute 30. Give it a... Hold a minute. Just give it a minute to warm up. Well, stop me like you did last time. That's fine. I just, you need to be more specific about what it is you're looking for. Cause you'll just say, you just said, it again. And I go, what? Well, do it how? Okay. there are potentially thousands of religious groups claiming to follow Jesus Christ. So there are potentially thousands of religious groups that are claiming to be following Jesus Christ. claiming to be faithfully representing biblical Christianity, claiming to be representing historic Christianity, claiming to be a restored Christianity. Now, the problem is that many of these groups contradict each other on not just on light, secondary, or tertiary doctrines. but on fundamental issues. Issues that are, or issues and doctrines that are so fundamental that they concern things like the very nature of God, the person of Christ, the essence of the church. So if all of these groups are claiming to follow Jesus and claim that the Bible is at least an authority, why are there all these different views? So the question that I want to answer or ask and hopefully answer in this episode is who or what gets to define Christianity. good so far? Okay well that's just the intro. So right out of the gate, I want to dispel at least one major ⁓ false assumption. And that is this, that if the group appeals to the Bible, then it must be a Christian group. There's an adjacent claim that I think ⁓ is equally false assumption. Any group that slaps Jesus Christ on their building is, by definition, a Christian group. Now, I was in a group for 30 plus years of my life that had the name Christ in its group and its group name, its title, if you will. And I never heard anybody talk about Jesus for the 30 plus years that I was there. I didn't see anybody living the way that he lived. didn't see anybody teaching the things that he taught. You see, so just slapping, you know, Christ or Jesus Christ or Bible on your, you know, your billboard outside doesn't mean anything. Right. That's the false assumption that I want to immediately ⁓ dispel here. And there are several reasons. one, as I showed a few podcasts ago, the Bible can be interpreted selectively, which is a big problem, right? If, if I can get the Bible to say anything I want it to say, which I think I demonstrated fairly well in that episode a few episodes ago. And I think there are many, ⁓ quote unquote pastors and preachers online who are doing that very same thing as well. So I think the evidence is pretty clear that the Bible can be used highly selectively. Second, it can be interpreted in isolation. Because love it or hate it, one of the side effects of the Protestant Reformation is that everybody gets to interpret the Bible for themselves. And so you give the Bible to 50 people and you get 50 different interpretations. Love it or hate it, that's one of the side effects of this movement. And the third thing is that it can be— the Bible itself can be placed under a flawed external authority. And so the Bible's authority actually ends up being transferred onto something that doesn't have the Bible's authority, but wants to leverage the Bible's authority, you see. So you get this— ⁓ weaponization, if you will, of the Bible. So it can be interpreted subjectively in a vacuum by ⁓ bad faith actors. And so we can't just assume that everybody who's preaching or teaching out of the Bible is doing so. ⁓ Every group that is preaching and teaching out of the Bible is by definition a quote unquote Christian group. Clear? Okay. Okay, I'm trying to look at as much as my autism will allow me, but I'll try to look at it more. ⁓ I don't know. I'm looking into that a lot more than I ever have. ⁓ Okay. So. ⁓ having dispelled hopefully that immediate false assumption, let's move on to viewing Christianity as exactly what it is. And that is a historic faith. Because we have to remember that Christianity does not begin anew with every generation of people who come to faith, right? This is a 2000 year old religion. And as I've said many times on this podcast, Something that a 2,000 year old religion should not be known for is innovation. So if we look at Christianity as something that did not begin with us, but as something that was handed down to us, then we should be concerned with what the people before us believed Christianity was. So if you look at from the book of Acts to the many apostolic letters, we see several things that mark the early development of the Christian faith. The first thing is that the apostles preached publicly. Okay? So there's no secret code that is being spread. The gospel is being preached in the streets, in the synagogues, on the hillsides, ⁓ you know, in the Areopagus on Mars Hill. And everything in between, in front of ⁓ emperors, in front of... farmers in front of Jews and Gentiles, slaves, free. Anyone and everyone is hearing the message that God has given to the apostles. It's not something that's happening behind closed doors. Okay. We see that churches were established across all regions within the Roman Empire. Many regions, diverse regions, different languages, and so forth. And we see that Within that early church, ⁓ teachings were shared, corrected, and clarified. We see this as early as you can, as we have records from the Bible to the people immediately following the Bible. And all the way up until today, we see teachings being shared, corrections being made, and clarifications being added. all the time. And this is because each generation isn't reinventing the wheel, but rather we're choosing to stand on the shoulders of giants that we might see God more clearly. Because it seems to me that if Christianity is true, and I believe that it is, it should have this historic footprint. It should not be something that vanishes and reappears after centuries, sometimes, after the time of its founder. If Jesus instituted a church 2,000 years ago, we should be able to trace that church through the annals of time. clear so far. Okay. So anytime you talk about historic Christianity or the historic development of Christianity, you have to at some point talk about councils and the subsequent creeds which come out of those councils. And we're going to look at two of the earliest, most influential councils and the creeds which arose from those councils. So. Again, because we can see that one of the things that marked the early development of Christianity, again, even within the Bible itself, notice Acts 15. Acts 15, is it Jerusalem Council? You don't have a Bible app on your phone? I'll look. No, I wanted your best guess. Jerusalem decree, yes Jerusalem council. Okay. even within the Bible itself. See Acts 15. There were theological disputes that threatened to divide the church. Early on in the development of Christianity, right after the time when Christianity was no longer illegal to practice, and there was more freedom to do ecumenism between the bishops. Now, of course, there was always collaboration among the bishops and among the churches prior to this time. But it was much easier now that Christians can practice Christianity openly within the Roman Empire. There was a man by the name of Arius of Alexandria who began to teach that Jesus was a created being. His slogan and the slogan of his acolytes were, speaking of Jesus, there was when he was not. In other words, there was a time when there was no son of God. Jesus came into being at a particular time. according to Arius and the Arians. So we had another major player at the time, Athanasius of Alexandria. Again, you gotta remember Alexandria was the place where all of the best thinkers were. You had Alexandria, you had Rome, you had Jerusalem, you had Antioch, you had a few big players in terms of churches. Alexandria was one of those. And you have these two kind of up-and-comers who are clashing on the very identity of Christ. And so you have a council of about 250 to 300 bishops that is convened, again from all over, and they are given the task of settling this matter. Who is Jesus Christ? Because you got people over here who's saying that He is the eternally begotten Son. And you have people over here saying, no, he's a created being. are mutually exclusive claims that can't both be true. And so the church comes together to decide which of them is it. And at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Arianism is rejected. And it was affirmed that the sun is of the same substance as the Father. One of the primary Trinitarian tenets that the vast majority of Christians still hold to this day was definitively decided by a council of bishops in 325 AD. Now the creed which came out of this council, the Nicene Creed, which is still to this day, recited in thousands upon thousands of churches worldwide. over 1700 now years later, became the first in a series of authoritative statements on the Christian faith. So we have all of these statements in the Bible that seem to put this Jesus Christ on par with God. It makes all these, there's all these statements about there being one God, but there's these different persons referred to as God. How do we synthesize that? And Arius had one way of doing it. Athanasius had another way. The church sided with Athanasius. So, approximately 125 years later, there was a fourth ecumenical council, the Council of Chalcedon, which expanded the Christology that was first laid down in Nicaea 125 years later, to settle another matter which had arisen, the monophysite teachings, which basically claimed that Christ's humanity was... fully absorbed into his deity. That Jesus wasn't both God and man, but he was a separate kind of divine being altogether. And this time about 500 bishops got together and affirmed that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully man. All things necessary to be God, he has, and all things necessary to be man, he has. So what we need to realize when we look at these historic creeds and these councils and these creeds that come out of these councils is a few things. One, we need to notice that these councils did not invent doctrines. Okay? These are deeply biblical, scriptural, and Holy Spirit indwelled leaders in the Christian faith. Second, they never override the teachings of scripture. Again, they're taking the Bible and they're saying, it seems to teach these things. How do we systematize these various teachings into a coherent package? And that is what you have with these councils. Now, these church leaders, again, who were directly descended from the apostolic line, Many of them were bishops in the very churches that Paul had established 300, 400 years prior. Okay. So these men were simply trying to define the boundaries of orthodoxy, ⁓ repute theological distortions, and preserve what had been widely believed. Again, Jude three, the faith, which was, is that Jude three? Just think, again, think of the book of Jude. The faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. These men were deciding what is that faith that was once for all delivered to the saints? Because if it was once for all delivered, we must still have it. And so that's where you get these definitive rulings. Where am I at time-wise? Okay. Now, these earliest ecumenical councils established core boundaries, the core boundaries of the historic faith. Things such as, the triune nature of God. Two, the identity of Christ as both fully God and fully man. And the gospel that had been historically proclaimed. Now. You can disagree about many, many, many things and still be Christian. But there are a few things that you just simply don't get to redefine and call yourself a Christian. One, who or what God is. Or, who or what Christ is. Define, redefine, fundamentally redefine either of those two things and you can't stay in what has been historically considered to be Christianity. There was a really funny meme going around social media the other week that just said, it was a man's face and he just said, ⁓ hi, I'm a Christian but I don't believe in God. If you can believe someone would say something, well it's the internet, of course someone would say something that stupid. my point is like you don't realize you're making a contradictory statement. It's like saying, it's like if I said hi I'm Cole, I'm married but I'm also a bachelor. It's like well. You used that one already. Yeah but in the last episode. What's another one? I don't know. You're the one who's always full of them. I don't understand why you, is your brain just pooping itself? Yeah, because it's a lot of pressure to be under if you guys don't understand. Okay, I'll try a different one. That's like me saying, yeah, I'm male, but I'm also female. Or I'm old, but I'm also young. Right, do you understand? These are opposing states. You can't be a Christian and not believe in God. It's the most ridiculous thing ever. But of course you can believe anything that you want to believe because you can redefine terms to mean whatever you want them to mean. Well, not if you want to remain within historic Orthodox Christianity. So again, to go against these teachings is to fundamentally depart from what Christians have believed for 2,000 years. Right? This constitutes a different religion. It's not a different interpretation, a different understanding, a ⁓ different sort of practice. It's a different religion altogether. Okay, so next I want to look at specifically at why movements in this restoration, ⁓ these movements calling themselves restoration movements, I want to systematically look at why these claims fail. Okay, so there are three basic claims of a restoration movement. So again, a restoration movement has to insist that ⁓ Christianity must be defined as something other than what it was defined as for 2000 years or 1800 years or 1900 years or whenever these particular traditions came into being. Okay, there are at least three basic claims. One, that the true church was lost or that truth was corrupted. or and or really, we are restoring quote unquote original Christianity. Okay, so those are the claims. Now this sounds somewhat plausible on the surface. Again, if you have been taught to distrust history or you have been taught to distrust truth altogether, see the last episode of this podcast for more discussions on that. But if you follow these claims, all the way, it raises, these claims raise at least three significant problems. And I'm going to look at them, all three of them. The first is going to be a biblical issue. The second is going to be a historical issue. And the third is going to be an epistemological issue. And we'll get into these in turn. First, there's a biblical issue. What do restorationists do with Jesus's promises? I'm going to give you just two. I could give you many more. Jesus says, I also say to you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. So what's Jesus gonna do? I'm gonna build my church. And he follows that up by saying, and the very gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." In other words, I'm going to build this thing that is literally unstoppable. upon the Peter's, again, if you're Protestant like me, you're gonna say that it's upon Peter's confession that ⁓ Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. It is upon that rock that I'm gonna build my church. Or maybe you're Roman Catholic and you're gonna say, no, it's upon the papacy, it's Peter, that either way, the promise is that Jesus is going to build his church and that nothing can stop it. Restorationists, what do you do with that statement? Second, you have the Great Commission. Jesus says, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always. Okay, so if you look up in the Greek, ⁓ I'm kind of being facetious when I say this, but if you look that up in the Greek, the word always in English, it means always, always. And then in case that wasn't clear enough, Jesus says, even to the end of the age. So again, what do we do with Jesus's promises here? If Jesus is going to build his church and the gates of hell are not going to prevail against that church, or if we take the Matthew 28 passage, right? This is Matthew 16, Matthew 28. If we take these passages seriously, how do restorationists make sense of these? This seems to me to be a major... a major biblical issue because you either have to affirm that Jesus is a liar or a failure. Which of the two are you gonna choose? So that's the biblical issue. Am I clear? Okay. Biblically, you can't have a falling away of the church because Jesus promised to build the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Okay, so again, restorationists, how can you assert that the true church was lost or that the truth was corrupted or that you are restoring original Christianity when Jesus here clearly says that's never going to be necessary? Second, you have an historical issue. There's a historical issue with restorationist claims. Because you have to wonder, well, who preserved the gospel? The apostle Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 3 that the church is the pillar and buttress of truth. that the church is the pillar and buttress of truth. If there's no church, there is no truth. Okay, so if you look at that history, did that actually play out? If the church vanished as a result of a lost gospel, where's your historical evidence of that? Because if you look at the history objectively, what it clearly shows is that Christianity spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, places like Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, et cetera. writings, teachings, and debates were recorded both within the Bible and outside of the Bible all the way till they're still happening today. Now while disagreements did happen, those disagreements yielded all kinds of clarification on what it exactly is the Bible was teaching. Okay. So if the true gospel was lost, where exactly did this happen? Second century, third century, fourth century, because these conversations are happening throughout those. And the things that are being decided by the ecumenical councils are not the things that are being ⁓ continuously rehashed. Right? There's linear development of doctrine. So, if there's no clear historical record of a completely different, true Christianity that was being either suppressed, if you are of the conspiracy mindset, or being preserved, if you're not, What exactly is going on here? It seems like you have two options. Either one, the church, or the true church, completely vanishes without a trace, or it existed and left us zero coherent or recoverable witness of that existence. A faith that claims to be historical but leaves no historical evidence that sort of undermines the whole premise. So how do we make the assertion that the true church was lost or that truth was corrupted or that some later group restored the gospel when we don't see any evidence of that gospel being suppressed? In fact, we have nothing but open dialogues happening, letters being written back and forth, all of these opposing opinions being openly heard and openly refuted. Where is this secret conspiracy that is hiding the true church? And finally, can you not slam doors, lady? And finally, you have a major epistemological issue. Now remember, epistemology just deals with how do we know the things that we know? Okay? Why trust a much later restoration? That's the question. That's the epistemological question. What is the epistemic justification of trusting a much later restoration of a 2,000 year old faith? if the church got it wrong for centuries. Why trust that a restoration, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century restoration, got it right? Okay, now it seems to me that on this epistemological level, there are several issues. ⁓ One, if you reject church history or the broader Christian community or the transmission of doctrine, then on what basis do you accept this new authority? It seems like if we're going to reject all the history and the views of all of the other denominations, we're not going to actually confront them. We're not going to actually refute their claims. We're not going to actually engage with them. We're just going to say, Oh, well, you were corrupted and we're here to fix you. Congratulations. Well, no, you have to, there, there, you need, I need epistemic justification for those claims. because you're rejecting everything that you are going to try to stand on. restoration claims always rest upon a few different things. ⁓ One, some kind of new prophet, some kind of new revelation or interpretation of previous revelation, or some kind of new authority. Can she do that in her room? or any other place. It's all the way open. Is all the way open. Okay. Thank you. So restoration claims always rest upon a few different things. You have one either a new prophet or you have a new revelation or a new interpretation of an old revelation or you have some kind of new authority. Okay. But again, you have to ask. How are these things being validated? Now, if it's true as the restorationist says it is, and it's true because it says it is, because it tells us so, do you see how that's a circle? This is circular authority. If the restoration says it, and it says it because it tells us so, that's a circle. that refutes itself, that circular authority. And third, we see that no external verification is possible. Not just that there's no external verification, but that external verification isn't even possible. If you state that ⁓ prior history is corrupt, you cannot appeal to earlier sources. you can't compare teachings and you can't test. Because again, you've just thrown all of that out. So on what grounds do you get to appeal to those things if by your own claims they have been corrupted? If everything that came before is unreliable, there's nothing left to verify anything. So, let me summarize with this statement. If restoration was once necessary, as all restorationist groups claim, how do you know that it won't be necessary again? How do you know that your restorationist movement isn't due for another restoring? It seems to me that you could have endless restorations if we're going to dismiss everything that Jesus established through his apostles and everything that his apostles handed down to their disciples and so on and so forth. And we're going to claim some kind of conspiracy in the creeds and these other things. It seems like we can make all of those claims about your restorationist move. So if you've listened to this podcast before, you know that I like to, to, ⁓ to have these diagnostic questions. like to offer diagnostic questions for you to kind of mull around in your head. What time am I at? Okay, I just want to make sure we have plenty of material to get a 25 minute episode. Okay, so the diagnostic questions are number one, does this teaching align with what Christians have historically believed? Did this teaching literally fall out of the sky? Did this teaching pop into the mind of somebody working in a field 250 years ago? Did, I mean, where did this come from? Is this actually founded in historical Christianity or not? Second, does my movement depend on a recent reinterpretation? And three, does my movement stand within the stream of the church or outside of it? If ask yourself those three questions, I think that you will realize maybe my group has some real problems. Because again, you and me, we don't get to just redefine Christianity any more than you get to redefine any other kind of historical data, right? It just is what it is. and you have to either accept it for what it is or you have to posit some kind of conspiracy that is suppressing what it clearly shows. So we don't get to take a 2000 year old religion and then fundamentally redefine all of its tenants. See, that would be unfair. We can do that, but you're just creating a new religion. You don't get to do that and call it the same thing, right? You don't get to take the label off a can of tuna and put, ⁓ you know, chocolate icing on the can and sell it. Right? Because it's still tuna inside there. Right? You try and spread that on a sponge, know, Paul Hollywood's gonna be all over you. Because that's not what's there. You can take the packaging off, but you can't change what it is fundamentally. So we don't get to ask, what do I want Christianity to be? Rather, we have to ask, what has Christianity always been? So hopefully this episode provided you with some tools and some diagnostics that you can use to assess whether or not you are in a valid Christian. thoughts. You didn't stop me, so I assume I was clear.