By my watch, we are about three minutes after starting time, so I'll go ahead and rally the troops, mobilize. Anybody not get the handout for today? Anyone not get the handout? Oh, I think Peter's got a handout back there, so if you raise your hand, he can get you one. Okay, if anyone slips in, there are some more at the back they can pick up on their way in. It's been a while. I don't know if you guys have been counting, but we had an ice storm that canceled Sunday school. We didn't meet the 23rd or the 30th because of holidays. Last week, we were blessed to have Ian Hamilton. So practically, a month has gone by and we haven't met this class, Ancient Church History. It's a rather dangerous question, but does anyone remember the last thing we talked about, which was many moons ago? It was last year or a year ago. Church history martyrs. Okay. Persecution. That's right. So last time, a long time ago in the galaxy, far, far away, we talked about persecution, which is an external challenge to the church. One thing to keep in mind is that throughout church history, Satan and his demonic hordes hate the church, they hate Jesus Christ, and they attack and challenge the church at various points. And last time we saw that external to the church, you have persecution. This week, we want to go a little closer to home, and if you look at your handout, you'll see that there's an internal challenge the church faces in the second century in particular, and that's the challenge of heresy. challenge of heresy. So our topic this morning will be heresy and orthodoxy. Heresy and orthodoxy. Before we begin, I'd like to throw out just a question to get us thinking. Which one came first? The chicken or the egg? Heresy or orthodoxy? Which one came first? Any Proposals. Dr. Barkhage. Okay, because God is truth truth precedes any heresy Brian So Satan is the first heretic He's stirring up division in the garden by questioning the Word of God. That's very helpful and Oh What do you what do you mean by that Right, it is a trick question. Anne said we had orthodoxy, heresy rises up, and then the church has to respond to that heresy. and presents orthodoxy in a fresh way. Well, the reason this is significant, oh yes, Mr. Loring, I'm sorry. Yeah, logically, orthodoxy has to come first. The reason this is significant, You're all attuned to the atmosphere of today. There's a man named Bart Ehrman who's continuing a thesis put forth by F.C. Bauer. And really what he's saying is all you have is a big hodgepodge of ideas and all these, in some sense, heresies floating around. And it was all OK until eventually the church decided to top down, shut that down, and establish orthodoxy. So he puts everything on its head and reverses it. And in a more popular level, you have things like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, all these attempts to say, really, it was this diversity, heresy, and then orthodoxy came later. And if you think that's not significant, I was actually talking recently to a couple in a church who told me that their son, through reading Bart Ehrman and others, had departed from the faith, renounced everything, found the New Testament wasn't reliable and became an atheist. So what we're going to look at in the second century has relevance for unbelief and heresy today. And the basic pattern we're going to see is that in the beginning you have orthodoxy that is in some ways implicit. It's nascent. It's embryonic. It's all there in the Bible, but the church's understanding of it is growing. Heresy comes forth. That forces the issue. and the church then has to clarify and articulate more explicitly what the truth has always been. With that in mind, we're gonna read a passage of scripture that touches on this topic, and we'll pray, and we'll get started. Titus 1, verse 9, to Titus 2, verse 1. This is the word of the Lord. Titus 1 verse 9, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and Refute those who contradict. There are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. One of them, a prophet of their own, said, cretins are always liars. evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in faith. Not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth, to the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. But even their mind and conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works, they deny him. being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine. Let us pray. Father, as we approach this subject of orthodoxy and the threat of heresy and the challenge to restate these truths in every generation, We pray that you would give us sound mind, a heart that loves good doctrine, doctrine which accords with godliness. Lord, we pray that you would slay and you would hinder the work of Satan. Thank you that he's bound. We also know he goes about as a roaring lion. Protect us, fortify us against his attacks, and do so for Christ's sake. In whose name we pray, amen. All right, so my thesis for this morning is pretty simple, and I've written it out on your handout. Taking together these two themes of heresy and orthodoxy, the thesis is this. God used heresy. He used heresy to help the church clarify and articulate what she already believed. Paris is a bad thing, but in God's providence, he uses it to help the church clarify and articulate what she already believes. And hopefully, we'll see that as a strand throughout our studies. Really, the context is the second century, roughly from the year 100 to 300. It's an immensely important time period where the church is hammering out, ironing out how to deal with error and how to restate the truth. So we're gonna look at this in two parts, heresy, and in particular, three challenges that are launched against the truth, and then orthodoxy. How did the church respond to these challenges? And along the way, hopefully we'll explain what these heresies were, but also look a little bit at their relevance for today, why they're still live issues. The first heresy, the first challenge, is Gnosticism. Gnosticism. You read 1 John, it appears that the apostle is dealing with an early form, a sort of proto-gnosticism. Gnostics deny that Jesus came in the flesh, and so John over and over again is saying, no, he came. This is the gospel, the word of life, which we have handled. Basic idea of gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means very simply knowledge. in particular, a secret knowledge. And if you're in the early church, Gnosticism is not a monolithic system. It's a whole spectrum of ideas that is floating around in the air, coming from the East, from Babylon and Persia, getting mixed up with Greek thinking, and then a little bit Christianized, so that you have all sorts of diversities of Gnosticism. And the one we're gonna look at is Christian, so-called Christian Gnosticism. And even here, Irenaeus, the church father, says this Gnostic philosophy is really like a multi-headed hydra. You cut off one head and it grows another. Very diverse, very challenging to really nail it to the wall. It's like jelly. There are three big traits that we see emerge from this Gnostic philosophy. And the first is dualism. Gnostic philosophers were dualistic, which means they had a very sharp dichotomy between spirit, which is good, and matter, which is bad. Spirit, good. Matter, evil. And they believed that there was this supreme being and hundreds of emanations from him, different tiers of reality. And toward the bottom, there was a godlike creature called the Demiurge, who by accident created this world. We found ourselves in it. And that's why there are little sparks of divinity trapped in human bodies. So in a Gnostic view, your body is bad. And that soul that you have, that spark of divinity, is trapped. in the prison house of the body. And for the Gnostics, their whole mission is somehow we've got to escape the body. We've got to get out of this exiled place and return to the Pleroma, return to heaven, return to spiritual reality. And you can imagine, what did they think of the doctrine of the incarnation? If Jesus is divine, and we believe that he took on flesh, what do you all think the Gnostics said about that? Any ideas? It didn't happen. There's a word called docetic. That's the second trait. Docetic Christology. That word simply means appear. It appeared to be that Jesus had a body, but actually he didn't. He was a spiritual being, so he denied the incarnation. And the third trait I've written down is esoteric, which simply means that they believed that this knowledge that would get them to the Pleroma, that would help them escape their bodies, was a secret knowledge, an esoteric knowledge, a mystical knowledge. So in their scheme, you have these different aeons. matter, somewhat more spiritual, more spiritual, to get to the very top. And Jesus came down to help us get back to the supreme being. And he does that through a salvation that comes by knowledge, secret knowledge. It's like you have a password. You come to the gate of one of the levels, and you just have the secret code. You give it to them. Now you've got to make it to the next level and the next level. So it's salvation by secret knowledge. You may have heard of the Gospel of Thomas. Well, that's a Gnostic gospel where this forgery, this counterfeit writing puts on the lips of Jesus, basically these very types of ideas. David Calhoun, calls Gnosticism a second-century version of Star Wars. But it's this almost fantastical mythos, where you're doing battle against the forces of darkness, making your way from one level to the next. And if you think about it, I don't think too hard about it, but there is some resemblance to Star Wars. The character Yoda at one point says, luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. There's this dualistic, light, dark side of the Force. I'm not saying you can't enjoy Star Wars, but just realize that these ideas still come to us in our popular culture. They're still in the air. Peter Jones from Westminster in California wrote a book many years ago called The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back, in which he shows that New Age philosophy in many ways has similarities to this ancient heresy. So just realize that it might seem far away, but actually it's often very close to home. These ideas still affect the church today. That's the first challenge, the first heresy. There's a second one, and that is Marcionism. Marcionism comes from a man named Marcion. He was the son of a bishop living in Asia Minor. He was intelligent. He built ships. And one day, he went to Rome. And when this son of the church was in Rome, he encountered a Gnostic philosopher. And it messed up his entire worldview. And what he really does is synchronize some Gnosticism, some Christianity, and something of everything else that he's seen. And he creates his own heresy. Some of it's Gnostic. And really, you can understand Marcion in some ways. He's taking Gnostic ideas and he's applying them to the scriptures and to the church. He has Gnostic assumptions. Like the Gnostics, spirit is good, matter is bad. And for Marcion, he associated the Old Testament with Matter, the material. Law. So Old Testament is bad. Law is bad. The New Testament is good. The New Testament is spiritual. The New Testament is about grace. What Marxian ends up doing, he does two things. First, he sets up a rival church with a rival set of bishops that lasts maybe till the 7th century. The big thing Marcion did was he decided, rather arrogantly, he was going to sit down, pull out his Bible, and decide which parts were true and which parts weren't based on his own self-appointed arbitrary criteria. And using his Gnostic views, He decided to take out the entire Old Testament. So that's the bulk of your Bible. It's 39 books. It would be easier to read it in a year. Cut that all out. That's gone. He decided that Matthew, Mark, and John had too many issues. So let's throw those out. Just one gospel writer got it right. He had the secret knowledge. That's Luke. And Luke was wrong about the virgin birth. That's material. And Jesus couldn't have really had a body. So let's just begin with Jesus came down around the time of Tiberius, and entered the world full-grown as a spiritual, purely spiritual preacher. So all you've got left, at the end of the day, got his scissors out, he's cutting this, cutting that. He's got part of Luke, and he's got 10 epistles of Paul. And that's Marcion's Bible. That's his alternate canon. Now, Dr. Amvoris mentioned a name a little earlier. I'm not sure if you've heard it. This is very relevant throughout church history. This isn't just Marcion. There's a famous president of ours named Thomas Jefferson. And I believe you can see his Bible in Monticello, where he almost literally sat down with scissors and cut and pasted his own version of the scriptures. The nice thing is he took out all the supernatural occurrences, all the miracles, and what you've got left is a completely secular, immanentized book. In this case, not Gnostic assumptions, but Enlightenment assumptions. The same thing happens with the Jesus Seminar. Have you ever heard of those? These supposedly intelligent men sit around a table and say, hmm, Jesus might have said that one. Let's give that one a certain color code. And Jesus probably did say that. Again, it's all based on their own unbelieving assumptions. Anytime you start passing judgment on the Bible, it immediately becomes subjective and prideful, rather than standing under the Bible and letting it judge you. Another good example, anyone ever heard of Charles Stanley? Charles Stanley has a son named Andy Stanley, and recently he's pretty much gone off the deep end by saying that the Old Testament is a bunch of rubbish, and the love of God is only clearly expounded in the New Testament. So this idea of cut-and-paste Bible, alternate canon, is still very clear and present danger today. Third, heresy. We've got Gnostic philosophy, we've got Marcion, third one is Montanism. Montanism develops in Phrygia with a man named Montanus, that's easy to remember, and his two female associates named Priscilla and Maximilla. These are women who were married, but because they got caught up with this movement, they left their husbands and devoted their lives to helping Montanists speak what he thought was the truth. Now, Montanism is a heresy, it is dangerous, but it's a little different than those first two, in the sense that it has a number of things correct. It doesn't have a lot of the crazy theology of the other two, but it does have some peculiarities of its own. And interestingly, does anyone know what church father embraced Montanism later on in his life? Anyone know? Tertullian. I heard a couple people say it. Tertullian, the great pioneer of Trinitarian theology, actually embraced Montanism for some odd reason toward the end of his life. We might speculate a little bit on why that is later on. But there are three big traits that define Montanism. First one is, I've used a kind of anachronistic phrase, but Pentecostal. These people were all into charismatic utterance and sign gifts. Speaking in tongues, new revelations, prophecy, they're the mouthpiece of God. Not just Montanus, but his two female associates. They are on fire. with the Holy Ghost, at least in their own minds. Second, they are eschatological. What I mean by that is they believe very strongly that Jesus is coming back any second, imminent return. It's almost as if they're walking around with sandwich boards saying, the end is near, and we've got to sell everything you've got and go to Papusa, because Papusa is a city where Jesus is going to come back any day. So they really stir up this mad frenzy of eschatological expectation. It's going to happen any time. Third thing is ascetic. And really, that just means strict discipline, very rigorous devotion. And that's probably, at least in my mind, what Tertullian may have grabbed onto. These were people who were serious about holiness. And he, in some ways, rightly admired that. But in some ways, it could become a little bit legalistic in its strictness and rigor. Now, why would this be relevant? We saw that Gnostic philosophy still comes about in the New Age movement. It's in our pop culture. We've seen that Marcion's view of the canon is creeping into Thomas Jefferson and Jesus' seminar. But what about this one? Any ideas of why this is relevant today? Anything you see today that might correspond to this? Pastorellis. The Holy Spirit, which is an aspect of Christianity that we want to neglect. We shouldn't make it so prominent that it takes over. Right. The ministry of the spirit. And I think the big thing that I think of is the Pentecostal movement, early 20th century, the charismatic movement. Even among a lot of the new Calvinists, it's in some ways hip to still be non-cessationist and to at least emphasize in a chastened form this idea of gifts of the spirit, miraculous sign gifts. Beyond that, all the cults, the Russellites, the Mormons, all of them have an emphasis on new revelation, eschatological expectation with the Mormons that has a certain view of American history and American geography and archaeology and then the strict discipline is apparent in a lot of these cults. There you've got it. The agnostic philosophy, what Calhoun called a second century version of Star Wars. Like Jesus is waging white magic against the black magic of the forces of darkness. You have a man who's cutting up his Bible with scissors and pasting it here and there. And you have a wild-eyed, ecstatic preacher who's on fire to bring the final judgment in now. Three big challenges. Gnostic, Marcion, and Montanus. How does the church respond to these challenges? And that takes us to our second point, orthodoxy. Orthodoxy, which, as we said before, actually precedes all of these heresies. But now the Church has to respond to them and say, they've deviated. They've departed. What do we do now? And the categories that I've given you, canon, creed, and government, actually come from Irenaeus of Lyon, writing in the second century, especially against Gnosticism. He uses these three categories to sum up the Church's response. The first is canon. which literally means a rule or a standard by which we measure. At least in our own common usage, it means a list, an exclusive list of inspired books. If you open up your Westminster Confession, chapter one will be a list of canonical books, and it distinguishes those from the apocryphal books. So an exclusive list. And really, this issue, when it comes to Roman Catholics, when it comes to Mormons, liberals, boils down to one big idea. And I want us to kind of define that issue. So my question is, did the church create the canon? Would you be okay with that formulation? Did the church make the canon? Brian's shaking his head no. You want to suggest a reason why? They recognize the canon. It's a very helpful distinction. The Roman Catholics say that the canon is what it is because the church said so. It made the canon. It created the canon. But actually, according to the scriptures, The scriptures were recognized. They were identified by the church in time. The moment that letter by Paul was written, and he signed it off, the Ammonuses signed it off, it was inspired, inerrant, infallible, canonical. But it took some time by the power of the Spirit in God's providence for the church to recognize and identify these books. So don't put the cart before the horse. B.B. Wargo is a helpful illustration The scripture is like a road that is what it is. The church is like the signpost pointing to the road, but the road would still be what it is and go where it goes, whether the signpost pointed to it or not. But in God's providence, he's helped the church be a faithful signpost. Well, criteria. It's all well and good to talk about this, but what criteria do we use? When I was on the floor of a presbytery for my licensure exam, I was asked the question, why these 66 books and no others? It's a question of candidate. And some of you may stand before a presbytery and be asked that very question. Or maybe your neighbor, who's Roman Catholic, will say, well, what about Tobit? What about Wisdom of Solomon? What about all these other books? What about the Book of Mormon? How would you respond? to that question, why these 66 books and no other? Any ideas? Dr. Bartosz. I think the first thing I would like to say is this is critical, and that is that truth is infinite, and God is truth, and is not the responsibility of mankind. accountability of the creator. The holy grace of the creator to give mankind its truth. We miss that true supposition, we're in danger of setting man as the one that sets the order of truth. And we have a stewardship to recognize that truth through progressive illumination. And in that stewardship, we acknowledge evidences that we see, but this is not the primary reason. The primary reason we have the truth is because the Spirit of God illuminates us regarding what is the truth. But we have a stewardship to see that the external evidences, that is, those things that would show consistency within And then there are the internal evidences, or the illuminated works of the Holy Spirit, to the Church Corporate, the Church which is a holy stewardship that God has given us. But we vow before our Creator, this is critical, we vow before our Creator, and we say, Amen. Well, we'll skip this section since you've already basically taught. I think Dr. Bhargava's point is spot on, especially the idea that we have to approach this as we do all apologetic issues presuppositionally. Some reformed people lose their minds on the canon and they suddenly become evidentialists and classical apologists. But ultimately to do that is to say that at rock bottom, Human reason is why I accept these books to be true. And ultimately, the foundation of truth lies in man, not in God. At that point, you've raised that age-old question, has God not said? So with that in mind, there's a couple types of criteria that the early church did use. The first they used was external evidence. Before you get upset about that word evidences, remember that we're looking at that within the framework of Christian theism. Now, one external evidence that was used is apostolic origin. In other words, Jesus said in the Bible, as the Father sent me, so I send you. The apostles are given an authority. to proclaim the words of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised he would lead them into all truth. So when we have a book like Romans, written by an apostle, the Apostle Paul, there's an apostolic origin, and it's received not simply as the word of man, but as it is, the word of God. What happens when you have a book like Luke or Mark, neither of which were apostles? What do you all think? It's in our Bibles. Why? They were companions of the apostles. Okay, Mellon's on to something. These men were associates of the apostles, who knew the apostles, who wavered under them. For instance, Luke is a companion to Paul. And John Mark, who probably wrote the Gospel of Mark, was a companion of Peter and Paul. And so they knew these men. They were often drawing on their eyewitness testimony, especially Luke, as he organizes information under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So there's that evidence. Also just the universal use, that as the churches in Asia Minor, in Europe, in North Africa were having these letters, reading them, preaching from them, there emerged a consensus. They were all using basically the same list of books under God's providential supervision. But the big evidence, and the one I want to focus on, perhaps more primarily, is the internal evidence of the Scriptures. That these books cohered. They corresponded to what God had already said. They were totally consistent with God's self-disclosure, all the way back from Moses, with the books of the Torah, all the way through the prophets, up until today. They were not only self-attesting, these books claimed to be the word of God, but they were self-evidencing. They carried with them their own internal evidences, and beyond that, self-authenticated, that the Holy Spirit persuaded and sealed the truth of these books to his church in time and in space. And with that in mind, I want to read Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 4. Do you ever get stumped on this issue? Why these 66 books? A good place to start, whether with yourself or with your spouse or with a neighbor, anyone who has this question, is Westminster Larger Catechism question four. How doth it appear that the scriptures are a word of God? And a very helpful, pastoral, theologically correct answer is the scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God by their majesty and purity But they consent to all the parts and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God by their light and power, to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation. They have these internal evidences that they are effective, they're beautiful, they're true, they cohere. And then the divine say, but the Spirit of God, bearing witness by and with the scriptures in the heart of man, He's alone, able, fully to persuade us that they are the very word of God. Self-attesting, self-evidencing, and self-authenticating. The Holy Spirit puts his seal on it. This is true. This is yes and amen in Jesus. Now, with that in mind, let's look a little bit at, very briefly, the development of the canon as it is established in the church. Again, it's already there, but it takes some time for the church to universally recognize and identify these books according to Christ's promise that he would lead his church into all truth. First of all, you have the Old Testament scriptures, which were well-established at this point. You read Josephus and others. These were the books, the law, prophets, and the writings they received from their fathers. Later on, Roman Catholics get hung up on the apocryphal books. But it's interesting that one of their heroes, Jerome, in the early church clearly distinguished what he called canonical books. R66, from the deuterocanonical books, the Apocrypha, written in the intertestamental period. So even within Roman Catholic lineage, Jerome dismantles that whole idea. The OT has those 39 and no others. Later on, the four Gospels are established. We are 150 in Tatian's Diatessaron, Irenaeus' work on the Gospels. And really, by the year 250, By the year 250, there is a definite consensus. Often you'll have referred to in the resources the year 367. Because in 367, Athanasius wrote an Easter letter where he lists all 27 of our New Testament books as we have them today. That's a helpful document. But actually, even as early as year 250, Origen and his homilies on Joshua had an identical list of 27 New Testament books as we have them today. So very early on, although there's some debated books and there's some books that they question, should the Shepherd of Hermas be there? Should the didache be there? Ultimately, the consensus is overwhelming. God kept his promise that he made in John 14 to 16. So don't fret the messiness of this process. God was glorified in this process. God delighted to work in and through his church providentially to bring these 66 books to light for what they really were. If you have more questions on this particular issue of canonicity, I highly recommend the work of Michael Kruger at RTS. He's got a blog humorously called Canon Plotter, which is full of excellent resources. And he has a new book called Canon Revisited, where he deals with everything we've talked about, but in much greater detail. And the good thing about Kruger, from what I can tell, is he takes a presuppositional approach to the self-authenticating scriptures. So I think overall, he won't lead you astray. Yes? One very slight quibble about using the word 66. In the Old Testament, there were different collections among the historical books, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Also, I think among the minor prophets, where they were collected differently at one time, but that in no way affects the the actual substance of the 266 books. That's a good point. I don't think the 66 itself, that word itself, is not necessarily... Right. What we have now in the form of 66 books is what was already established. You have the Book of the Twelve, the Minor Prophets, Chronicles is all one package. So point well taken. So if you want to be exact, you have to keep in mind that the way things were collected did change over time. Okay, second response, and we don't want to run out of time, is the creed. We have canon and we have creed. Peter, did you have a question? I have a question about canon. The apostle John dies around 118, so that's important for us to think about the time period. In other words, the finishing of the work of the apostle, That's a good point. But even that 250 origin date is actually much more significant because we're drawing those two points together. No, thank you. That's a good point. Second response, not just canon, which obviously that dealt with the Gnostic Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas. It also dealt with Marcion's cut and paste Bible and all the other heresies that were going on. But the second big response was creed. Creed. Some people don't like to have creeds each day. And so if you go on their website, they will have a statement of faith that they've written afresh out of their own resources that no one else has. And they say, that's not a creed, it's a statement of faith. Actually, everybody has creeds and confessional statements because we have to be able to tell people what we think the Bible teaches. Anybody want to give what they think might be an example of a creed or a confession in the Bible itself? Any ideas? In Timothy's, I don't know if it's chapter, the book of Timothy. Timothy, yeah, I think 1 Timothy 3, 16, where you have that extended confession about Christ coming in the flesh and being justified in the spirit. A lot of people think that is an early creed. For Old Testament Christians, Deuteronomy, the Shema, here of Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That was a confessional statement that they taught their children. They said over and over again. In the Feast of Perspirates, Deuteronomy 26, it didn't matter whether you were part of that generation or not. You were called to say, my father was a wandering Aramaean and to recount the history of Israel and then place yourself in that story and confess it as your own? You have statements like Paul says, this is a faithful saying. This is a form of sound words, a form of sound doctrine. So within the scriptures, there's this incipient phenomenon of creed making. of confession making, make the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. Well, early on, there are certain very simple creeds that develop. And one of the most famous that's been captured recently in a title of a book by Derek Thomas and Sinclair Ferguson is Ikthus. Anyone know what Ikthus means? I'll give you a hint. You see the symbol of Ichthus on the bumper stickers of cars all over South Carolina. Oh, it's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Son of God. Yes. So Jim Lorien skipped ahead. Ichthus is an acrostic, which means, I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, my Savior. But the literal word means fish. And so early on, the symbol of a fish was a symbol for Christianity. because this became really a representation or a token of that truth statement, I believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, my Savior. Now later on, more intricate and more complex creeds develop as the assault on truth becomes increasingly complex and difficult to handle. And the most famous of these, one that we confess regularly, is the Apostles' Creed. The Apostles' Creed came out of a practice. This is often true, that our theology and our worship are intimately interwoven, that how we worship, the songs we sing, what we do in this space, as the people of God, affects what we believe, and vice versa. Anyone know where the Apostles' Creed came from? It wasn't like the apostles sat down one day, and Matthew said, well, I think we should say, I believe in God the Father Almighty. That'd be a good way to start. And then Luke was like, well, that's all right. Let's pick it up. And then they just sort of went around the table adding little bits and phrases. So they're like, oh, there it is, Apostles' Creed. The apostles didn't write this. It's much later. It really develops around the year 150, which is still about 50 years after John died. So it's early on. It came out of baptism. that initiatory rite in the church, where a candidate for baptism would be asked three Trinitarian questions about what they believe concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Out of that baptismal rites of confessing your faith, as a new convert, came what came to be called the Apostles' Creed. The form in which we have it dates to about the 5th century, but even around the year 150-200, almost everything that we say on a Lord's Day in that creed was already present. And if you notice that creed, the language of it, the references to Pontius Pilate, to Jesus Christ being born of a virgin, namely Mary, a real historical person. There is a self-conscious repudiation of Gnostic philosophy, of Marcion, of Montanism, of everything that's been challenging the church. They say, no, real historical people actually happened. We can date it. Jesus came in the flesh, and we will be raised up again. It's a wonderful, confession of faith, and whenever we do that, don't think that you're simply reciting it, or repeating it, or reading it, no. You are joining your voice with a whole host of witnesses who've gone before, bearing witness to the same orthodox truth, the creed. Well, we barely have time for it, but there is a third response, and that is government. Canon, scriptures, creed, summary of what we believe, and then finally, government. And this one becomes a little bit more problematic. Government. You look at your outline, I've listed a development in church history. Sometimes you talk to Roman Catholics and they speak as if what you see today with the papacy and the cardinals and all the layers of hierarchy is basically what they've had in the Western church going all the way back to the apostles. In reality, there is a development and a progression. Even Roman Catholic scholars will acknowledge that in the earlier days, the days immediately following the death of the apostles, you basically have at the expense of sounding rather agenda-driven and question-begging, you have Presbyterianism. You've got councils made up of collegial elders who work together to solve problems with connectionalism across the churches. You have collegial bishops. They are working together. You have elders, you have deacons. That's the structure. You can understand why, as they combat heresy, as they want to put these things to the ground. There's a temptation to want to consolidate power and to more efficiently deal with church business and to deny and destroy heretics. So from that early collegial bishops, you get monarchical bishops in the second century with people like Ignatius of Antioch, where you have churches that are still relatively independent. They're connected, but they're not in this hierarchy. But there's a certain position, that of the bishop, that is distinct from the elders and from the deacons, where one man is set up as perhaps the first among equals, but it's a distinct office, and he's doing distinct authoritative actions. From that you have Diocesan bishops in the 3rd century, with Cyprian in North Africa, where a real hierarchy is developing, where this man, this bishop, is not simply controlling this local body, but he's controlling this other body nearby, and it's becoming a regional presence. And so finally, in roughly the 5th century, Some more 20 years, 300 to 700, somewhere in there, we have the development of what we could call metropolitan bishops. We have this big city like Jerusalem, Caesarea, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, eventually Rome, where the bishop in that city is a dominant player. Of those cities, Constantinople and Rome vie for a lot of power, the east versus the west. And eventually, the patriarch of Constantinople and the bishop of Rome The Pope began to have more and more tension. Finally, Rome declares itself not simply to have the first among equals, but to have the first, the only, the Pope. But realize that as you study the development of church order and government, it's not, it's a messy process and it takes time, and it comes in this context of refuting error. The big idea behind all these responses, even where it goes a little bit astray with church government, is ultimately the idea of apostolic authority, and even the idea of apostolic succession. What I mean by that is the people who are defending orthodoxy are saying that what we are teaching, we can trace back to the apostles of Jesus Christ. The apostles are dead, and they're gone. We are a continuation of what Jesus did in the first century and what he commissioned his apostles to do. We are truly one, holy, catholic, apostolic church. Now for Roman Catholics this became a sort of strict organizational succession, where this guy ordained this guy, and he ordained him, and he ordained him. And we can keep going back all the way to Peter, who was the first bishop of Rome, which, of course, there's no evidence that Peter was ever the pastor of the church in Rome. He was probably killed in Rome. But for us as Protestants, we can't, even in denying that, that form of apostolic succession, remember that there is a sense we believe, we preach, what we teach, what we catechize, our children's belief. We can trace that back to the apostles. But that doctrine has a lineage and a history. We are truly one holy, Catholic, and apostolic church. As you think about this, as you think about heresies in this day, as you think about heresies today, remember our thesis. Even as Satan has attacked the church, even as the church was torn apart by heresies, God has used heresies, he's used them, to help the church clarify and articulate what she already believes. Whether it was the Pelagian controversy with Augustine, whether it was Roman Catholic medieval system of merit, whether it's Pentecostalism today, or Dispensationalism today, at every juncture when error has raised its ugly head, it's forced the church, it's helped the church in God's providence to say, how can we more clearly and cogently articulate the truth in our generation? May God be praised, not only for how he helps us to state the truth and be faithful to it, but also how he's even used error to be an occasion for this very thing. Are there any questions? Brian, I know we don't have a lot of time, but I'm not doing an exhaustive research project on this, but so many of the New Testament books reference Old Testament scripture and claim that that is scripture. How do people that omit the Old Testament or omit specific books deal with those problems? Because there are hundreds of them. I can tell you what Marcion did. He just cut those out. Just cut out all the references. He was anti-Jewish, and so when he saw Paul quoting a Psalm of David, he would say, that's a Judaizer who's basically editing that manuscript. Paul was fine, but some Judaizer went in and inserted, interpolated that reference. So he's agenda-driven, he just takes those out of his Bible. That's what he does. It gets really subjective and arbitrary. But if you have a pair of scissors and you have pace, you can do it. Yes? I don't remember who said it, but somebody once said that men are not against the Bible until the Bible's against them. And I think that's what ends up happening. I remember reading an article by Carl Truman several years ago And it's basically about these modern controversies, such as the so-called new perspective on Paul, who's popular in New Testament studies. And what they'll say is, say Galatians, Paul's concern was not about legalism, but Jewish exclusivism, and it included Gentiles, and their views of salvation were basically pretty good. But then they'll read Ephesians and Philippians, and Paul is unambiguously attacking legalism, and they'll say, well, he didn't write that, because it doesn't fit the theory, so it goes out the window. But then raises the question, well, even if he didn't write it, how do you have these radically different views of justification arising right after he died in the early century? No, it's very helpful. So a new perspective is a good example where, in New Testament studies and historical criticism, they have a set of assumptions, and that drives how they interpret everything. So it's a good example of a very present danger for the church. That's great. Any other questions or comments? Grant? Actually, no, you can't. No, OK, good. You're not allowed to talk. How do you respond to criticisms of the apostles, We could talk to one of our friends about it. I know what you're talking about. Descent into hell. That phrase is not in the original baptismal formula that we have, for instance, around the year 150. I think it's added, I can't date it. I know by the fifth century it's there. Somewhere along the line, he descended into hell. One thing I would say is, it's there early on. And so everyone from at least the 5th century up until today has confessed that part of the creed, including the Magisterial Reformers, Westminster Divines, and all of our forefathers in Continental Reforms and Presbyterian circles. Some people have different views on how to interpret it, so Calvin and others will explain what the phrase means theologically in different ways. And for instance, is this referring to Christ experiencing the condemning wrath of God on the cross? Is it an actual descent into Hades? We have compartmental views. There's all sorts of different ways to approach what that actually means. All I would say is, I'll say two things. First, read Danny Hyde's book, In Defense of the Descent. because I'm sure he does a much more thorough job of explaining the origins of that phrase and why it's significant. The second thing I would say is just to be cautious about excising parts of our tradition that we don't understand, but that yet all of our forefathers have felt was important. And at this point, I'm not in a position to give a full-fledged defense of the phrase, but that's my basic response. Good question, though. Yes? And that's a big issue, obviously, to just state one simple thing. The creed itself became the structure of what we would call systematic theology for 1,500 years afterwards. And at least the short explanation they give is Christ's humiliation after his death consisted in him being buried and continuing in the state of the dead and under the power of death until the third day. That's very helpful. So even within our own Westminster standards, there is an attempt to explain that ancient phrase. Thank you very much. All right. Any other questions? And if not, we're going to go ahead. I think the other classes are dismissing. So let's close our time in prayer. And next week, Lord willing, I will have an updated schedule that takes into account all of the days we've missed, and hopefully does justice to this period of history. Let's go ahead and pray. Father, we thank you that you condescend to work through the messiness of sinners and finite creatures daring to speak of infinite things and of glorious truths, even of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man. Lord, we pray that even as we've studied these heresies in the second century and seen your church respond to them, that you would give us courage, boldness, and understanding, and charity, and love to be able to engage and contradict the errors of our own times. Lord, help us, by your grace, to restate and proclaim the truth in our generation for the glory of Jesus. We pray this in his name, amen.