The Doctrinal Chaos Argument

One of the frequent objections to the Protestant rule of faith, sola Scriptura, is the “Doctrinal Chaos” argument. It is usually stated along these lines:

“Just look what happens when people believe that Scripture alone should be followed. There are just so many Protestant denominations, and yet, they all follow the same Bible. I heard there were as many as 20,000! Christ promised us a unity of beliefs (John 17:31), not a great splintering of denominations. If a rule of faith such as sola Scriptura causes division, then obviously it can’t be an effective (much less the true) rule of faith. This clearly shows the necessity for the Church and its traditions to bring unity to Christendom and clarify what the Bible says.”

This argument has probably been used with great success in convincing many a Protestant to convert to either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. However, there are a number of problems with this argument:

1. Misleading Numbers: First of all, the number of 20,000 that is constantly used is a bit misleading. The source of this number comes from David A. Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World A.D. 1900—2000 (ed. David A. Barrett; New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). The actual number of Protestant “denominations” listed in this work is actually about 8,000, but of course, this number would still be gladly used by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists. However, Barrett also lists the number of Roman Catholic denominations at 223 and the number of Orthodox denominations at 580!¹ So, the numbers are derived using a different definition of “denomination” than is normally used.

In fact, Barrett is using “denomination” to refer to any body that retains a semi-autonomous jurisdiction. Thus, if there were ten Independent Baptist churches in a single city with all the same beliefs, then this would be counted as ten different “denominations”. Furthermore, if there were two Southern Baptist congregations in a city holding the same beliefs but had different worship styles (traditional vs. contemporary), then this too would be counted as two different “denominations”. So, the number of actual denominations would shrink greatly from 8,000 to some number probably within the low hundreds. See here² and here³ for more information.

But it doesn’t stop there. There are several separate denominations which hold to the same confession of faith. For instance, the Presbyterian Church of America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and several Reformed denominations all hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith. This could be said of several Baptist denominations which hold to one of London Baptist Confessions of Faith. This would shrink the number of actual separate beliefs further down into a few dozen or so.

Lastly, it should be noted (as I argue below) that most Protestant denominations don’t differ on most theological issues and have no differences at all on issues of prime importance (i.e., necessary for salvation). In reality, the real divisions are a permutation of a few issues of secondary importance⁴: paedo-baptism vs. credo-baptism, Calvinism vs. Arminianism, church government, Pentecostalism⁵ vs. cessationism, a few minor⁶ sacramental divides (Luther’s, Calvin’s, and Zwingli’s), etc. So, the amount of real, substantive disagreement is actually quite small.⁷

2. Begging the Question: The argument begs the question of the importance of visible unity against Protestant ecclesiology which does not emphasize institutional unity at all. It uses Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ecclesiastical standards and priorities to judge a theology that does not even accept those standards! To the Protestant, the Church is the mystical body of the elect united spiritually to Christ and to each other. The visible church is the congregate of that body (plus pseudo-believers of course). Whether the elect meet in one church building or another with slightly different beliefs is of little importance given Protestant ecclesiology since ultimate unity will be realized at the eschaton.

In fact, according to Reformed theology, God in His providence allows for competition among viewpoints so that the truth will be revealed and refined (1 Corinthians 11:19). In this case, disunity is a means unto an end. Lastly, the appeal to John 10:16 and John 17:20-21 is eisegetical since the unity being spoken of there refers to a unity of all people groups (i.e., ethnic and diachronic) rather than an institutional unity (see John 11:51-52).

In summary, to assume that the main function⁸ of one’s rule of faith is to be a problem-solving device which brings about visible unity simply begs the question in favor of high-church ecclesiology. Rather, the rule of faith is only supposed to show us what we should believe about God and our duty to Him. Thus, the argument is dead because it commits this fundamental fallacy.

3. Overstatement of Division: The argument overstates the differences between Protestant groups. In reality, most Protestant groups are very much united doctrinally. As J.I. Packer noted:

“The extent of unanimity among its adherents has been remarkable. If one reviews the historic Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Congregational and Baptist confessions, or compares, for example Calvin’s Institutes with the systematic theologies of F. Pieper the Lutheran, Charles Hodge and Louis Berkhof the Presbyterians, E.A. Litton and W.H. Griffith Thomas the Anglicans, W.B. Pope the Methodist and A.H. Strong the Baptist, or if one examines the preaching and spirituality of churches which actively upheld sola Scriptura as a principle for determining faith and action, what impresses is the oneness of overall outlook and the width of the area over which substantially identical positions were taught. Whether those involved felt close to each other as they sparred over points of specific agreement, or defended their denominations against criticism, is perhaps doubtful; but what is not doubtful is that those who historically have held to sola Scriptura, recognizing no magesterium save that of the Bible itself, have been at one on all essentials and on most details too, in a very striking way. If evidence tending to confirm the clarity of Scripture is called for, this fact will surely qualify.”⁹

Though I may have doctrinal differences with a Methodist or a Presbyterian (and some important ones at that), I can still attend their church and receive communion there with a clear conscience.

4. Is the Opposite Valid?: If disagreement over a doctrine means that that doctrine is unclear in Scripture, then does agreement over a doctrine mean that it is clear in Scripture? Protestants agree on the nature of justification by faith alone. Will the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox concede that this is Scriptural since there is agreement amongst those who hold to Scripture alone?

5. Naïve Assumption of a Single Cause: The argument assumes that the *only* possible cause of disagreement between Protestant traditions is that the Bible is not clear enough. However, there are actually a number of reasons for disagreement that have nothing to do with the Bible’s perspicuity (or lack thereof):

1. Influence of Humanistic Philosophy: Some Christians, having been influenced by autonomous philosophy¹⁰, have forced Scripture to say whatever their rationalistic epistemology dictates. This is not sola Scriptura but partim Scriptura/partim philosophia. Take free-will in the early church, for example:

“The earlier patristic period represents the age of the exploration of concepts, when the proclamation of the gospel within a pagan culture was accompanied by an exploitation of both Hellenistic culture and pagan philosophy as vehicles for theological advancement…Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil…It is quite possible that the curious and disturbing tendency of the early fathers to minimize original sin and emphasize the freedom of fallen man is a consequence of their anti-Gnostic polemic…Justin’s anti-fatalist arguments can be adduced from practically any of the traditional pagan refutations of astral fatalisms, going back to the second century B.C.”¹¹

This form of epistemology arose again within Protestant circles during the Arminian Remonstrance. For an example of this, see Walls and Dongell’s Why I am Not a Calvinist where they admit that the Arminian idea of libertarian free-will is derived not from Scripture but from contested philosophical arguments.

2. Emotional Dislike of Certain Doctrines: Some people are emotionally repulsed by certain Biblical doctrines such as Original Sin, Federal Headship, Predestination, Election, Eternal Conscious Punishment, etc., and so, they force a reading of the Bible to conform to their tastes.

3. Verse Isolation: Many exegetes throughout the ages have taken single Bible verses removed from their surrounding context and built entire doctrines around their eisegeted verse. This ignores Scripture rather than building on it. It is ‘verse alone’ rather than ‘Scripture alone’.

4. Ignorance of Grammatico-Historical Context: Exegetes of the past have frequently ignored Scripture’s sitz im leben resulting in eisegesis. For example, if an author of Scripture uses a proverbial phrase particular to a place and time period, and the modern reader is unaware of that, then that reader would probably misunderstand what Scripture says and end up eisegeting the verse.

5. Influence of Tradition: During the Reformation, several of the Reformers were inclined to believe in certain doctrines simply because they had been in the Church for a long period of time. Of course, these Reformers also believed that these traditions could be supported by Scripture, but nevertheless, the possibility still remains that this psychological influence could have caused them to misinterpret Scripture.

6. Sin: There have always been men who have gone with their pride instead of accepting correction. To quote J.I. Packer again:

“The matters on which adherents of this principle have differed have been secondary. To the traditional Roman Catholic complaint that Protestant Biblicism produces endless divisions in the church, the appropriate reply is twofold: firstly, the really deep divisions have been caused not by those who maintained sola Scriptura, but by those Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, who rejected it; second, when adherents of sola Scriptura have split from each other the cause has been sin rather than Protestant biblicism, for in convictional terms the issues in debate have not been of the first magnitude.”¹²

7. Some Don’t Practice Sola Scriptura: Many of the newer denominations don’t even practice sola Scriptura. Pentecostals have Scripture as their main authority but also rely on charismatic experiences and ongoing revelation. Some heretical denominations of the past, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, were started by those who claimed to be prophets, and some of their writings are used along with Scripture.

8. Non-perspicuity in Non-Essentials: On some non-essential doctrines, Protestants will admit a degree of non-perspicuity in Scripture. Eschatology immediately comes to mind. In fact, the Westminster Confession of Faith clearly states this:

“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”¹³

The very possibility of all of these reasons should force us to give pause before we throw our hands up in the air and conclude that lack of Biblical clarity is at fault simply because of the presence of denominational differences.

6. Old Covenant Unity: There was no infallible teaching authority under the Old Covenant system, and this even resulted in a number of competing viewpoints once the idea of theology began to develop after the death of the last prophet. The Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, the schools of Hillel vs. Shamai were all sects in existence at the time of Christ. If God did not find it necessary to install an infallible teaching authority under this covenant with the competition of viewpoints that resulted, then why should we think that any disunity under the New Covenant is unacceptable?

Of course, at this point, the Catholic or Orthodox apologist may retort that because there has been a change in covenants to a “better” covenant, the New, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then the gift of infallibility has been given and God’s standard of unity has changed. There are a few problems with this that come to mind. First, it assumes that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is supposed to cause institutional unity. Where’s the exegetical argument? Second, as it applies to the Roman Catholic Magesterium, the counter-argument assumes that the Holy Spirit would only be given to a teaching authority. Thirdly and related to the second point, Scripture, especially in the Old Testament prophets, says that not only will the teaching authority not be more centralized, it will be more decentralized! The prophets make it clear that what was given exclusively to the teaching classes of the prophets, priests, and kings, namely the charismata, would be given to all the members of the New Covenant:

• “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

• “You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied and praise the name of the LORD your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; then My people will never be put to shame. Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and there is no other; and My people will never be put to shame. It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” (Joel 2:26-29)

7. Early Church Disagreement: Individual theologians and groups within the early Church disagreed on a number of issues, but never felt the need for absolute unity in doctrine¹⁴:

1. Atonement Theories: To quote J.N.D. Kelly:

“The student who seeks to understand the soteriology of the fourth and early fifth centuries will be sharply disappointed if he expects to find anything corresponding to the elaborately worked out synthesis which the contemporary theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation presents. In both these latter departments controversy forced fairly exact definition on the Church, whereas the redemption did not become a battle-ground for rival schools until the twelfth century, when Anselm’s Cur deus homo (c.1097) focused attention on it. Instead he must be prepared to pick his way through a variety of theories, to all appearance unrelated and even mutually incompatible, existing side by side and sometimes sponsored by the same theologian.”¹⁵

2. Catharsis: Catharsis was the belief that, on the Last Day, if anyone had any sinful imperfections on their soul, then they would have to endure a painful but purifying fire that would correct that person’s disposition toward sin. This belief had its roots in Clement of Alexandria and was taught by men such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. The belief eventually took root in the Western Church where it would later grow into a different but similar doctrine, Purgatory. However, most of the Eastern Church didn’t believe in it then, and they still don’t now.

3. Hermeneutical Approach: In the early centuries of the Church, there were two main hermeneutical approaches at exegeting Scripture. The allegorical school, started in Alexandria and thoroughly influenced by Hellenism, taught that every passage of Scripture had both a literal and a figurative meaning. The literal school, started in Antioch, believed that unless the context necessitated it, Scripture should be interpreted literally. These two schools disagreed, sometimes vehemently, over the interpretation of Scripture.

This is simply a small list taken out of the many disagreements found between the early church fathers. [See one of my other posts, “The Argument from Apostolic Tradition and Succession”.]

7. The Early Church and the Perspicuity of Scripture: It is evident from a number of passages in various writings of the early fathers that they believed that Scripture was perspicuous when it came to essential doctrines¹⁶ (Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin ch.55, Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 6.15, Tertullian, Against Praxeas, ch.11, Lactantius, The Divine Institutes 5.1, 6.21, Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, Discourse 1.4.13, De Synodis 1.6, Against the Heathen 1.1, Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 2.3, 8.43, Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit 3.14.94, Augustine, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, Sermon 2.1, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Letters of the Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, Letter 99-To Claudianus the Antigrapharius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 5.12, John Cassian, On the Incarnation 6.4, etc., etc., etc.). Yes, they believed in using ‘Tradition’, but it was always used as a supporting argument, never the foundational one. For example, in Theodoret’s Dialogues, he spends the majority of the time exegeting the Bible against the heretic and only appeals to the fathers last. Here are his words:

“You ought to have been persuaded by the apostolic and prophetic proofs; but since you require further the interpretations of the holy Fathers I will also furnish you, God helping me, this medicine.”

-Theodoret of Cyrus, Dialogues, The Immutable

7. Passages Presupposing Biblical Perspicuity: There are passages in Scripture which presuppose that book’s own or another book’s perspicuity (Psalm 119, Matthew 15:1-11, 22: 29-32, John 20:30-31, Acts 17:11, 1 Corinthians 4:6, 2 Timothy 3:15-17, 1 John 1:4, 5:13, etc.).

7. Tradition Unclear Too?: Using the same standard, the church fathers weren’t perspicuous either since Mormons can use the church fathers to ‘support’ their doctrine of deification. There are also orthodox Protestant theologians such as Thomas Oden who believe that some later Protestant soteriological beliefs can be found within the writings of the church fathers. Lastly, both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox, who share the same church fathers, disagree on what is the true tradition of the Church from their interpretation of the church fathers. Of course, the accusation is that these groups take those passages out of context, but why can’t the same level of discernment be given to Scripture?

7. Rome Has a Far More Serious Set of Disagreements: Though there may not be as large a range of opinions as found amongst Protestant denominations, Rome, for example, has a number of disagreements amongst its own, some that are far more serious than those amongst Protestants:

1. Universalism in the Priesthood and Amongst the Peoples: Ever since Teilhard de Chardin started to influence the Roman Catholic priesthood, the Roman Catholic Church has moved leftward (i.e. more humanistic) in its theology. As a result, the priesthood (with some at the highest levels) and many of the laymen they influence have become universalist in their soteriology. This is out and out heresy, and it has affected the denomination at all levels. Conservative Protestants have split-off and no longer commune with liberals.

2. Traditionalists vs. Conservatives vs. Moderates vs. Liberals: There is a spectrum of beliefs within the Roman Catholic Church concerning the humanist-traditionalist divide that range from Traditionalists (i.e. the most ‘conservative’) to Conservatives to Moderates to Liberals (i.e. the most humanistic). This is an extreme divide since you have people who actually believe in the faith decreed in the older Western ecumenical councils (with their anathemas) alongside humanists who are Catholic in ritual but are practical atheists by conviction. This is a *far* greater divide than anything that exists between the conservative Protestant denominations.

3. Pro-Abortionists: Rome has yet to excommunicate politicians and others who advocate abortion. This would not be tolerated in my church or any other conservative church that I know of. Even though there is no ambiguity to Rome’s condemnation of abortion and those who support, there are still those who call themselves ‘faithful’ Catholics as well as ‘pro-choice’. Obviously, the perspicuity of a rule-of-faith should not be assumed on the basis of the number of divergent opinions who claim it. If only Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists would use the same standard with Scripture!

4. Vatican II, A Pastoral Council?: Some traditionalists and conservatives believe that Vatican II was only a pastoral council and not an infallible one which binds the conscience. They say this because there are several statements in the council which contradict previous Roman Catholic teaching. Other conservatives, moderates, and liberals hold that it was indeed an ecumenical council.

5. Muslims, Jews, Protestants, and Orthodox: In the past, the historic view of the Roman Church was that, outside of official communion in the Roman Catholic Church and obedience to the Roman Pontiff, there is no salvation. However, as of Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church has made statements that say that not only can Protestants be saved but also Jews and Muslims (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 819, 838, 840, and 841). Liberals and moderates will say that the Church teaches that Judaism and Islam are different paths to God and Heaven. Conservatives say that these passages teach that only those who are ignorant of the details of the Gospel in those religions can be saved and that Protestants and Eastern Orthodox are true Christians. Traditionalists continue to hold to ‘extra ecclesiam nulla sallus’ sometimes with the exception for extreme ignorance. Statements and actions by John Paul II lended support to the liberal and moderate view. However, church leaders in Central and South America have given support to the conservative and some to the traditionalist. The Roman Catholic Church refuses to clarify the issue.

6. Dei Verbum: The historic view of the Roman Church concerning Scripture was to affirm its full inerrancy. However, a more recent dogmatic statement released by the R.C.C., Dei Verbum, has stated that the Scriptures are inerrant concerning that which is “for the sake of our salvation” (Part 11). Many Roman Catholic scholars would say that this means that the Scriptures are only inerrant on statements concerning salvation (i.e. how to be saved, etc.), but most R.C. apologists would disagree and take the more historic stance of verbal, plenary inspiration.

7. The New Order of the Mass: There are several competing views about the ‘New Order of the Mass’ as prescribed in Vatican II. Even according to R.C. organizations, the wording is vague and used by all groups to promote their own doctrine. There are even some traditionalists who still insist that the Mass can and should only be said in Latin.

8. Predestination: What is the official belief of the Roman Catholic Church on the issue of predestination (Augustinianism, Thomism, Molinism, etc.)? There isn’t one but many competing views: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm

9. ‘Tradition’ at Trent: At the Council of Trent, there were two basic views of ‘Sacred Tradition’. One was the partim-partim view which held that the truths of Divine Revelation are found partly in Scripture and partly in the traditions of the Church. The second was the material sufficiency view which held that all Divine Revelation is contained in Scripture but not all of it is perspicuous (thus necessitating the use of Tradition). During the Council of Trent, the majority held to the ‘partim/partim’ view with the minority holding to material sufficiency. The wording of the council was specifically made obscure so that it would please both sides. For many centuries afterward, most Roman Catholics interpreted the wording of the council to mean the ‘partim/partim’ view, but now, modern Roman Catholics interpret it to mean material sufficiency. To this day, there has never been any clarification on an issue as important as the nature of the rule of faith

10. Pagan Syncretism in South America and Africa: There is a big problem in South America and Africa with Roman Catholics combining Catholicism with elements of pagan idol worship. The Roman Church has not made any big push, such as excommunication, to stop such practices. To this, I could add a rhetorical question posed at those who use the ‘Doctrinal Chaos’ argument: does this rank idolatry nullify the perspicuity of the Roman Church?

If the Roman Catholic here retorts with, “Yes, we do have disagreements, but we are still one church,” then I should reply by noting that his church is a unity in name only and not a complete union of doctrine or spiritual love as he is so quick to chide Protestants for. The followers of the various beliefs may all go by the same name but not the same beliefs or convictions (as is most prominent in the conservative-liberal divide).

7. The Eastern Orthodox Have Their Divisions as Well: Like Rome, there are a number of theological divides within the Eastern Orthodox churches as well:

1. Conservatives vs. Liberals vs. Neo-Orthodox: One can go to an Orthodox seminary such as St. Vladimir’s and find several different views on the inspiration of Scripture corresponding to the conservative, liberal, neo-orthodox divide amongst professing Protestants. As I noted in the similar point under the Roman Catholic division above, this is a far greater divide than anything within the conservative¹⁷ Protestant camp.

2. Bordering on Universalism: There have been many Eastern theologians dating back to the church fathers who have held to theologies bordering on (if not fully teaching) universalism. This is a form of rank heresy and is much more serious than any divides with Evangelicalism.

3. Ethnic Divide: Several of the Eastern Orthodox churches are seen by many of their members as being “national” or ethnic churches. They believe in their church because that is their ethnic religion and don’t have real communion with other Orthodox churches and their bishops.

4. Ecumenism with Rome, the Oriental Orthodox, or Protestants?: There are many, especially amongst the Russian Orthodox that don’t believe that the Orthodox should recognize the Roman Catholics, the Oriental Orthodox, or Protestants as fellow Christians. See here.¹⁸

5. Original Sin: There are a few theologians within Eastern Orthodoxy that hold to Augustine’s view of Original Sin (i.e., that the guilt of the sin transferred to subsequent generations) while the majority do not.

6. The Old Testament Canon: There is a disagreement within the Eastern Orthodox Church as to the extent of the Old Testament canon. There are a range of views as to what in the deutero-canonical books should be included, and some theologians argue that the Hebrew canon (i.e., the same as the Protestant canon which excludes all of the deutero-canonicals) is the correct one.¹⁹

7. Heresy is Universal, No Matter the Authority: As noted above, even in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, heresies such as universalism and open theism still abound. Does this mean that those two churches’ doctrinal statements aren’t clear enough? If it doesn’t, then why isn’t the same slack given to Protestants?

7. Disunity is Better Than Forced Unity: I would rather have many denominational splits which separate the conservatives from those who hold to liberal theology than to be forced to commune with and be represented by liberal theologians. Rome has more than her fare share of liberals at the very highest echelons of the church, and Eastern Orthodoxy will get to that point in time.

7. It’s Worth It: Reading the Bible individually may be risky, but even more risky is believing in a Church with delusions of infallibility and the mistaken notion that its beliefs are apostolic when, in reality, they were ancient misjudgments on the part of the early Christians and frozen in time as ‘tradition’.

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1 Lest the RC and EO apologists try to counter by saying that their 223 or 580 denominations doesn’t compare with Protestants’ 8,000, I would remind the reader that the original argument used by RC and EO apologists was that division is necessarily the result of the failure of the underlying authority structure. So, the question isn’t small division versus massive division, but rather, it is division, period. Any division at all would (by this argument’s standard) mean a failure of the authority structure.

2 http://www.ntrmin.org/30000denominations.htm

3 http://www.ntrmin.org/30000denominationsrevisited.htm

4 Though I would still consider these important, I would not consider people who hold to different positions on these issues to be non-Christians.

5 Though, I would argue that many Pentecostal denominations don’t hold to sola Scriptura.

6 That is, in my opinion.

7 In fact, there are corresponding theological divides within the Roman Catholic Church on many of the same issues that I mentioned above.

8 Which would be the standard by which it is judged to be true or not.

9 J.I. Packer, ‘Sola Scriptura in History and Today’ in John Warwick Montgomery, ed., God’s Inerrant Word: An International Symposium on the Trustworthiness of Scripture (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1974), p.55.

10 i.e. Philosophy that starts with man’s reason and interprets the Bible through that lens instead of starting with Scripture and judging a philosophical belief or deriving one by what the immutable Word of God states.

11 Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.17, 19, 20.

12 Packer, op. cit., p.55.

13 Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.7.

14 I should note that this is more of an internal critique of my opponents’ authority system. The opinions of the early fathers are simply a curiosity to me than an authority to which I should have to bind my theological system to.

15 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.375. (emphasis mine)

16 I will note again that, just as with point 6., this is an internal critique rather than accepting the premise that one’s theology should take into account the beliefs of the church fathers.

17 Liberal “Protestants” don’t hold to sola Scriptura.

18 http://www.orthodox.net/ecumenism/index.html

19 “For the Greek Church, the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 introduced Wisd and other Deuterocanonical books to a place in Holy Scripture. ‘There appears to be no unanimity, however, on the subject of the canon in the Greek Orthodox Church today. Catechisms directly at variance with each other on this subject have received the Imprimatur of the Greek Ecclesiastical authorities and the Greek clergy may hold and teach what they please about it (Metzger: 195),” -D. Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Doubleday 1979), p.67.

“The Hebrew version of the Old Testament contains thirty-nine books. The Septuagint contains in addition ten further books, not present in the Hebrew, which are known in the Orthodox Church as the “Deutero-Canonical Books. These were declared by the Councils of Jassy (1642) and Jerusalem (1672) to be “Genuine parts of Scripture”; most Orthodox scholars at the present day, however, following the opinion of Athanasius and Jerome, consider that the Deutero-Canonical Books, although part of the bible, stand on a lower footing than the rest of the Old Testament.” - T. Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin Books 1997), p.200.

The Infallible Knowledge Argument

A common argument used amongst the less thoughtful Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists these days is what I call the “Infallibility Argument” or the “Infallible Knowledge Argument”. The argument is usually stated that, in order to know such things as the inspiration, canonicity, or interpretation of Scripture, we must have an infallible authority to give us the answers to these things. Otherwise, we can never know these things with certainty. Therefore, we must bow the knee before “Mother Church” instead of relying on our human fallibility and Scripture alone for these answers. As I mentioned earlier, I called those who utilized this argument “less-than-thoughtful” and for good reason:

1. Reduction to an Infinite Regress: If we have to have an infallible authority in order to know anything with certainty (such as the inspiration, canonicity, and interpretation of Scripture), then we have pressed the problem one step backwards since one would also need a second infallible authority to authenticate the first infallible authority. Of course, that would take the problem another step backward to a third infallible authority necessary to authenticate the second, and on and on it goes into infinite regress of necessary infallible authorities. The problem with such an argument is that it assumes epistemic infallibilism (see the point on epistemic infallibilism below).

At this point, some Roman Catholic apologists have appealed to historical evidence in order to give credence to the belief that the Church of Rome possesses infallible authority. Of course, once that is done, the Protestant is also allowed to determine the canonicity and interpretation of Scripture on the basis of historical evidence without any appeal to an infallible authority. I covered this same point in more detail here.¹

2. The Specificity of the Conclusion is Limited by the Uniqueness of the Claim: For this kind of argument to work, there can be only one group claiming infallible authority that the Christian can go to for answers. However, the Roman Catholic Magesterium or the Seven Ecumenical Councils are not the only groups claiming infallible authority. There are also cult organizations such as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the Mormon Prophet, and others claiming infallibility.

3. Popes of the Past Have Not Seen It This Way: Popes, such as Leo XIII, have seen the issue the other way around:

“But since the divine and infallible magisterium of the Church rests also on the authority of Holy Scripture, the first thing to be done is to vindicate the trustworthiness of the sacred records at least as human documents, from which can be clearly proved, as from primitive and authentic testimony, the Divinity and the mission of Christ our Lord, the institution of a hierarchical Church and the primacy of Peter and his successors.”²

4. The Hebrews Knew the OT Canon Without an Infallible Authority: When he chastised the Pharisees and Sadducees for not knowing the Scriptures (e.g. Matthew 15:3-9, 22:29-32, John 5:39-47, etc.), Jesus implicitly assumed that these groups should have known what was and was not canonical as well as the meaning of those Scriptures even though they didn’t have an infallible authority to decide these matters.

5. Early Church Knew the NT Canon Without an Infallible Authority: According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the first time the extent of the canon was infallibly established within the Roman Catholic Church was at the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century. The Eastern Church has had no such infallible conciliar decree marking out the extent of the canon, and the debate continues to this day within that Church’s own ranks. It is, thus, apparent that the Church got along just fine without an infallible canon list for fifteen hundred years in the West and two thousand years and counting in the East.

6. Assumes Epistemic Infallibilism: The problem with the argument lies within its implicit assumption that the only way to have any knowledge at all is to have infallible knowledge. This is the same assumption made in Post-Modernism/Linguistic Analysis/Deconstructionism/etc. The problem, of course, is that it is impossible for a human being to possess infallible knowledge of anything due to his finitude. However, this only prevents man from having 100% certainty. When we pick up a newspaper everyday and read a sentence or paragraph that someone wrote, we most certainly understand the meaning of the writer even though we may not be able to discern every last detail or every word’s full connotation that the writer intended. Though we have less than 100% certainty, we still have certainty nonetheless, and we could not live our lives on anything else. In the same way, the Protestant can use fallible means to determine the meaning of Scripture and the extent of the canon with certainty.

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1 http://contra-gentes.blogspot.com/2007/09/eisegeted-verses-introduction.html

2 Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13provi.htm

James White's Debate with Jalal Abualrub, Part 1

Bravo!!!

The Influence of Greco-Roman Culture on Early Christianity

It is frequently urged by both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists and theologians that the beliefs and teachings of the church fathers provide a better picture of true, apostolic Christianity than the beliefs that came out of the Reformation. It is argued that the earliest fathers were the successors of the Apostles and received apostolic teaching in the form of unwritten traditions from them. They then passed that tradition on faithfully to the next generation of Christians and so on to the present day Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Contrary to this, it became clear to the Reformers and those who succeeded them that some aspects of the Christianity of the church fathers (and hence, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches) better reflect aspects of the thoughts, languages, and customs of their cultural environment. It is the purpose of this paper to show that, on many of the distinctive issues that separate Protestants from Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, the church fathers were heavily influenced by Greco-Roman thought and culture to believe what they did.

I am not saying that the influence was total (contra Harnack). Indeed, they rejected many (but not all) of the conclusions of Greek philosophy, but the point is that they still accepted and worked within the categories of Greek philosophy and the ontological scheme that it taught. With such a framework in place, it became impossible for the church fathers to see such things as juridical justification by faith alone. It was only with the Reformation and its “ad fontes”, “back to the sources”, approach that men started to question the categories of theological thought that they had learned, and Biblical exegetes saw that the beliefs of the church fathers were all too fallible and not a completely reliable guide to apostolic Christianity.

General

“The earlier patristic period represents the age of the exploration of concepts, when the proclamation of the gospel within a pagan culture was accompanied by an exploitation of both Hellenistic culture and pagan philosophy as vehicles for theological advancement. This tentative exploration of the conceptual world is particularly well illustrated by the rise and subsequent decline of the Logos-Christology. The use of such concepts in Christian theology was not, however without its risks: it was not sufficient merely to baptise Plato and Plotinus, for the tension which existed between the essentially Hebraic concepts which underlie the gospel and the Hellenism of the medium employed in its early formulation and propagation remains unresolved. Whilst it is evident that some form of adaptation may be necessary in order to give the gospel more immediate impact on its introduction to an alien culture, it is equally evident that such an adaptation may result in both compromise and distortion of the characteristic and distinctive elements of the gospel. An excellent example of the influence of a Hellenistic milieu upon Christian theology is provided by the doctrine of the [apaueia] of God, which clearly demonstrates the subordination of a biblical to a philosophical view of God.…Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil…It is quite possible that the curious and disturbing tendency of the early fathers to minimize original sin and emphasize the freedom of fallen man is a consequence of their anti-Gnostic polemic…Justin’s anti-fatalist arguments can be adduced from practically any of the traditional pagan refutations of astral fatalisms, going back to the second century B.C.”

–Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.17, 19, 20.

“Especially through Origen and the Alexandrian school (with roots in Philo), Christian theology was influenced by the notion of the cosmic ladder of being, with lower forms of existence participating in higher forms, deriving ultimately from the absolute. Creation, in this scheme, is an emanation (for Origen, eternal) of divinity from the one God reaching all the way out to the extremities of being. Specific scriptural teachings challenged or qualified aspects of the metaphysical heritage, but the worldview was essentially that of Middle Platonism, Stoicism, and Neoplatonism.”

-Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), p.184.

“In the West, Rome, its institutions, and its language had been imposed, whereas the cities in the Greek East had tended to absorb Roman values and to transform them into a common Greco-Roman culture in which the Greek element predominated. In much the same way, we find Christianity tending to absorb Greek philosophical values, until by the end of the third century the line between the beliefs of the educated Christian and the educated pagan in the East would often be hard to draw. After the conversion of Constantine, the empire now directed from New Rome (Constantinople) moved with astonishing ease from the patronage of the immortal gods to that of the supreme God.”

-W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, p.368.

“However, he does not limit himself to scriptural and traditional sources; he also borrows something from ancient Greek philosophy. Echoes of Plato are discernible in the following text:
I believe the words of the wise, that every fair and God-beloved soul, when, set free from the bonds of the body, it departs from here, at once enjoys perception and contemplation of the blessings which await it... and goes rejoicing to meet its Lord... Then, a little later, it receives its kindred flesh... in some way known to God, who knit them together and dissolved them, enters with it upon the inheritance of the glory there. And, as it shared, through their close union, in its hardships, so also it bestows upon it a portion of its joys, gathering it up entirely into itself, and becoming with it one spirit, one intellect and one god... Why am I faint-hearted in my hopes? Why behave like a mere creature of a day? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of the heavens, the transfiguration of the earth, the liberation of the elements, the renovation of the universe.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_11

Language Issues

“The general tendency among Latin-speaking theologians was to follow Augustine of Hippo…in interpreting iustificare as iustum facere…While this may be an acceptable interpretation of iusificare considered in isolation, it is not an acceptable interpretation of the verb considered as the Latin equivalent of [dikaioun]…it would appear that the Greek verb has the primary sense of being considered orestimated as righteous, whereas the Latin verb denotes being righteous, the reason why one is considered righteous by others…[I]t is necessary to observe that the early theologians of the western church were dependant upon their Latin versions of the Bible, and approached their texts and their subject with a set of presuppositions which owed more to the Latin language and culture than to Christianity itself. The initial transference of a Hebrew concept to a Greek, and subsequently to a Latin, context point to a fundamental alteration in the concepts of ‘justification’ and ‘righteousness’ as the gospel spread from its Palestinian source to the western world.”

–Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.14, 15.

Doctrine of God

“In Justin the oneness, transcendence and creative role of God are asserted in language strongly coloured by the Platonizing Stoicism of the day. It was apparently his sincere belief that the Greek thinkers had had access to the works of Moses.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.86.

“The Apologists’ originality (their thought was more Philonic than Johannine) lay in drawing out the further implications of the Logos idea in order to make plausible the twofold fact of Christ’s pre-temporal oneness with the Father and His manifestation in space and time. In so doing, while using such Old Testament texts as Ps. 33, 6 (‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made’), they did not hesitate to blend with them the Stoic technical distinction between the immanent word (logos hendiathetos) and the word uttered or expressed (logos prophorikos).”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.96.

“[Clement of Alexandria] clearly distinguishes the Three, and the charge of modalism, based on his lack of any technical term to designate the Persons, is groundless; and if he appears to subordinate the Son to the Father and the Spirit to the Son, the subordination implies no inequality of being, but is the corollary of his Platonic conception of a graded hierarchy.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 127-128. [I will note that the Reformed are sometimes chastised by the Eastern Orthodox for not believing that the Son receives His Being from the Father. However, as Kelly notes, this idea comes out of Platonism. The next quotes will reinforce that.]

“No doubt he tries to meet the most stringent demands of monotheism by insisting tht the fulness of unoriginate Godhead is concentrated in the Father, Who alone is ‘the fountain-head of deity’… As it is formulated by Origen, however, the underlying structure of thought is unmistakably borrowed from contemporary Platonism.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.131.

“In a more limited field the impact of Platonism reveals itself in the thoroughgoing subordinationism which is integral to Origen’s Trinitarian scheme. The Father, as we have seen, is alone [autotheos]; so St. John, he points out, accurately describes the Son simply as [Theos], not [ho Theos]. In relation to the God of the universe He merits a secondary degree of honour; for He is not absolute goodness and truth, but His goodness and truth are a reflection and image of the Father’s.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 131-132.

“[Athanasius’s] anthropology, it should be pointed out, which was thoroughly Platonic and treated the soul as having no necessary connexion with the body, was perfectly consistent with the latter hypothesis.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.287.

The Fall and Soteriology

“As we might expect, the [Fall] account [Athanasius] gives is a blend of Platonizing metaphysics and the Genesis story. Its most interesting feature is the contrast presupposed throughout between man considered as a creature, i.e. in his natural state, and as the recipient of God’s bountiful favour.…Instead of keeping their gaze fixed on God, however, the first human beings, Adam and Eve, allowed themselves to be distracted by the material world which was closer to them, particularly by their bodies. They turned away, in other words, from Him Who alone is being in the true sense to things which have no real being of their own. So they fell. Deprived of the grace of the divine image, they were reduced to the corruption which, after all, was their nature, lapsing into ignorance and idolatry.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.287.

“Like Athanasius, they call in philosophzing allegory to aid them in interpreting the Biblical story. For Gregory Nazianzen the Garden is clearly the Platonists’ intelligible world of ideas, its plants being ‘divine concepts’. Gregory of Nyssa carried speculation to the point of proposing, on the basis of Gen. I, 26f., a double creation. The first consisted in the production of the ideal of archetypal man, in the Platonic sense, perfect and without sexual differentiation, comprising in himself all possible men and women. It was because God foresaw that, being creaturely and therefore mutable, he would sin, that He subdivided him, by a second creative act, into male and female, thus inaugurating the actual race of men.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.348.

“According to this, human nature was sanctified, transformed and elevated by the very act of Christ’s becoming man. Often, though not quite correctly, described as the characteristically Greek theory, it cohered well with the Greek tendency to regard corruption and death as the chief effects of the Fall. In its strict form it tended to be combined with the Platonic doctrine of real universals, in the light of which it was able to treat human nature as a generic whole.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.375.

“All the fathers, of whatever school, reproduce this motif. The physical theory, it is clear, is an elaboration of it, only parting comparny with it when, under the influence of Platonic realism, it represents human nature as being automatically deified by the incarnation.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.377.

“Athanasius’s language often suggests that he conceived of human nature, after the manner of Platonic realism, as a concrete idea or universal in which all individual men participate. From this point of view, when the Word assumed it and suffused it with His divinity, the divinizing force would be communicated to all mankind, and the incarnation would in effect be the redemption. Such is the clear implication of numerous passages, such as, ‘Forasmuch as the Word became man and appropriated what belongs to the flesh, these affections no longer attach to the body because of the Word Who assumed it, but have been destroyed by Him’…There is little doubt that Athanasius’s Platonism tended at times to lose touch with his Christianity.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 378-379.

“Like Athanasius, too, [Gregory of Nyssa] translates the Biblical idea of solidarity into the language of Platonic realism. The whole of human nature, he claims, constitutes as it were a single living being…so that the experience of a part becomes the experience of the whole. In this way all mankind is seen to share in what Christ achieves by His resurrection.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.381.

“Hilary, for example, can write, ‘It was we who needed that God should become flesh and dwell in us, that is, by taking a single flesh to Himself should inhabit flesh in its entirety’. The Platonic conception of human nature as a universal clearly lies in the background here. We can see it again in his statement, ‘For the sake of the human race the Son of God was born from the Virgin and Holy Spirit…so that by becoming man He might take the nature of flesh to Himself from the Virgin, and so the body of the human race as a whole might be sanctified in Him through association with this mixture’. The same Platonic realism inspires Victorinus when he writes, ‘When He took flesh, He took the universal idea of flesh (universalem [logon] carnis); for as a result the whole power of flesh triumphed in His flesh.…Similarly He took the universal idea of soul.…Therefore man as a whole was assumed, and having been assumed was liberated. For human nature as a whole was in Him, flesh as a whole and soul as a whole, and they were lifted to the cross and purged through God the Word, the universal of all universals.’ Elsewhere he argues that, since Christ’s body is ‘catholic’, i.e. universal as opposed to particular, all individual human bodies were crucified in it, and His sufferings have a universal quality.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 386-387.

“[Cyril of Alexandria’s] argument, we observe, was influenced by the Platonic realism which affected the thought of Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa. Human nature was treated as a generic whole, so that when the divine Word assumed it at the incarnation it could reasonably be said, ‘By virtue of the flesh united to Him, He has us all in Himself’, and, ‘We were all in Christ; the common person of humanity comes again to life in Him’.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.397.

Allegorism

“Allegorism was well established in Alexandrian Judaism, and Philo, as we have seen, made a systematic use of it to bridge the chasm between the Old Testament revelation and his own Platonizing philosophy. In the hands of such a second-century Christian writer as ‘Barnabas’ Philonic allegorism was able to detect a Christian significance in the least likely passages of the Old Testament.”

–J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.70.

“The inherent difficulties of typology, however, made the transition to allegorism extremely tempting, especially where the cultural environment was Hellenistic and impregnated with Platonic idealism, with its theory that the whole visible order is a symbolical reflection of invisible realities. Hence it is not surprising that most of the fathers injected a strain of allegory, some of them a powerful one, into their typology.”

–J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.72.

Catharsis

“The two theologians were indebted to ancient Greece for the idea that the chastisement inflicted by the gods is not punishment but rather a means of education and salvation, part of a process of purification. In Plato’s view this chastisement is a boon offered by the gods. Clement and Origen deduce from this the idea that “to punish” is synonymous with “to educate” and that any chastisement by God contributes to man’s salvation…Their Platonic idea of Christianity led Clement and Origen to take a comforting view of the matter…In keeping with this attitude, the two theologians give a soothing interpretation of the Old Testament passages in which God explicitly uses fire as an instrument of his wrath...Origen develops to the full the theory of purification, catharsis, which came to him from Plato, the Orphics, and the Pythagoreans.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp.52-53, 55.

“The theme of illumination is, in turn, inseparable in his thought from the theme of purification (katharsis). Gregory inherited an interest in this theme from his studies of ancient Greek philosophy, where katharsis is one of the key notions.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_8

Universalism

“[Universalism] was picked up by Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-220), one of the founders of the Alexandrian schools of theology which tried to reconcile Christianity and Greek philosophy by creating a synthesis between the two. Although there is a possibility that he later came to believe in eternal punishment, it is generally conceded that Clement was the first to teach Universalism in the Christian Church.”

-Dr. Robert A. Morey, Death and the Afterlife (Bloomington, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1984), p.223.

“The term [apokatastasis] is found in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and developed into a doctrine of universal salvation by Origin. Origen was condemned by a synod in Constantinople…the general concept of a final apokatastasis is, however, found in Gregory of Nyssa and persists in a modified form in Byzantine theology, notably in Maximus the Confessor. It recurs in Modern Russian thinkers such as Solovyov, Bulgakov, and Berdiaev,”

- The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, p.36.

“As the implacable opponents of Eunomius, the Cappadocians were nevertheless dependent on Origen both for their biblical learning in the succession of his Hexapla and for their speculative thought; that becomes evident above all in the formulation of the doctrine of apokatastasis put forward by Gregory of Nyssa, which was spared the official condemnation visited upon Origen’s doctrines,”

- The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, p.482.

“Hell exists as a final possibility, but several of the Fathers have none the less believed that in the end all will be reconciled to God. It is heretical to say that all must be saved, for this is to deny free will; but it is legitimate to hope that all may be saved. Until the Last Day comes, we must not despair of anyone’s salvation, but must long and pray for the reconciliation of all without exception. No one must be excluded from our loving intercession. ‘What is a merciful heart?’ asked Isaac the Syrian. ‘It is a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for all creatures’ (Mystic Treatises, edited by A. J. Wensinck, Amsterdam, 1923, p. 341). Gregory of Nyssa said that Christians may legitimately hope even for the redemption of the Devil.”
http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/11/1/6.aspx

Apophaticism and Mysticism

“Athenagoras described God primarily with negative attributes. This is, he explained what God is not rather than what God is. Later Christian theologians labeled this approach “apophatic theology,” and it became a major part of the story of Christian theology. Apparently Athenagoras and later apophatic thinkers assumed that God’s perfection means being unlike anything created. Thus God can only be truly described by saying what He is not rather than what He is. He is not imperfect, and to change or suffer or even be comprehensible to the human mind is to be tainted by creaturely imperfection. The result, of course, was a gradual diminishing of the Biblical God’s personal nature. Of course, neither Athenagoras nor any other Christian thinker rejected God’s personal being, but some of the ways in which they began to describe God seem to be more like the transcendent origin and ground of all things (arche) in Greek philosophy, which is rather abstract, than the very concrete, personal and interactive God of the Hebrew Bible and apostolic writings.”

-Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p.63.

“A remarkable combination of Platonism with Christianity, to the injury of the latter, appears in the system of mystic symbolism in the pseudo-Dionysian books, which cannot have been composed before the fifth century, though they were falsely ascribed to the Areopagite of the book of Acts (xvii. 34), and proceeded from the later school of New-Platonism, as represented by Proclus of Athens († 485). The fundamental idea of these Dionysian writings (on the celestial hierarchy; on the ecclesiastical hierarchy; on the divine names; on mystic theology; together with ten letters) is a double hierarchy, one in heaven and one on earth, each consisting of three triads, which mediates between man and the ineffable, transcendent hyper-essential divinity. This idea is a remnant of the aristocratic spirit of ancient heathenism, and forms the connecting link with the hierarchical organization of the church, and explains the great importance and popularity which the pseudo-Dionysian system acquired, especially in the mystic theology of the middle ages.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 3.9.117

“The image of the sun, which derives from Plato, is one of Gregory’s favourite images when he speaks of God. Gregory uses this image in particular when he speaks of the human person’s striving to God as the highest good:
...From many and great things... which we receive and will receive from God, the greatest and the most generous is our inclination and our kinship to Him. In the realm of intelligible things God is the same as the sun in the realm of sensible. The sun illumines the world visible, while God illumines the world invisible; the former makes bodily sights sunlike, while the latter makes intelligible natures godlike. The sun, while giving a seer to see and a seen to be seen, is itself incomparably more beautiful than what is seen; in the same manner God, while giving a thinker to think and an object of thinking to be thought of, is Himself the climax of everything intelligible, so that every desire finds its end in Him and nowhere else reaches forward.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_7

“To understand this text, one should remember that in the Platonic tradition the way to perfection was perceived as one from multiplicity to simplicity, from duality to unity. Plotinus, in particular, claims that in order to come to the knowledge of the Unity we must become one from many. Contemplation of the One is, according to Plotinus, a total unity with the One which excludes all multiplicity or diversity:
‘There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme...is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no desire, once this ascent is achieved... It was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a reunification, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose’. The highest stage of the mystical ascent is a state of ecstasy, a total mingling with the One and diffusion in Him. The vision of the highest Intellectual-Principle is connected in Plotinus with the experience of the vision of light emanating from it. One can, of course, point to the disparity between the ecstasy of Plotinus as a diffusion in the impersonal One and the mystical contemplation of Gregory as an encounter with the personal Deity, the Trinity. Yet one cannot but see a startling similarity of language, terminology or imagery between the two authors.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_8

Asceticism

“The church fathers were also infected by this virus, too enthusiastic about the potential of Greek philosophy as preparation for the gospel, according to Balthasar. For Dionysius and Maximus, despite a formal adherance, ‘the Trinity plays almost no role whatever in the living-out of the Christian life. In fact what Maximus does is to get past the Cappadocians and Nicea and consciously link up with the Origenist schema of Logos theology.’

Closely bound up with this is their version of the incarnation, which despite the Antiochenes and Nestorius, constantly was inclined to a docetic and Eutychian view. The incarnation is consequently thought of as the most extreme point of “egression” of God from himself. The self-emptying back home to the Godhead.…In this schema the incarnation must appear as something provisional and transitional. The resurrection of the flesh, formally confessed and maintained, appears like a disturbance of the systematic lines and usually was subtilized in one or another form.

Hence come ‘its asceticism and mysticism,…a movement of the ascending, step-by-step return of the world potencies into God, unambiguously away from the material to the spiritual. Spiritualization, presented in a thousand different colorations, is the basic tendency of the patristic epoch,’ with early monasticism already providing ‘the peril of this movement.’ ”

- Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 206-207, quoting Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption, pp. 113, 115, 116, 119, 120.

“Yet there are abundant examples also of a quite different emphasis on the ascent from matter to mind, which funded asceticism and monasticism. According to Maximus, for example, ‘deifying’ is equivalent to ‘nonmaterial,’ and sexual propagation itself was a result of the fall. ‘For this reason the Logos of God became man, to set man free from this passion and to restore him to the condition for which he had been created.’ ‘Through “practical philosophy” or the active life of the Christian,’ Pelikan explains, ‘some believers rose from the flesh of Christ to his soul; through contemplation others were enabled to go on from the soul of Christ to the “mind” of Christ; and through mystical union some few were able to move further still, from the mind of Christ to his very Godhead.’ ”

-Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 304-305.

“Even the Grecian philosophy was conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Stoics, not as theoretical knowledge merely, but also as practical wisdom, and frequently joined itself to the most rigid abstemiousness, so that “philosopher” and “ascetic” were interchangeable terms. Several apologists of the second century had by this practical philosophy particularly the Platonic, been led to Christianity; and they on this account retained their simple dress and mode of life. Tertullian congratulates the philosopher’s cloak on having now become the garb of a better philosophy.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.104

“The orthodox or catholic asceticism starts from a literal and overstrained construction of certain passages of Scripture. It admits that all nature is the work of God and the object of his love, and asserts the divine origin and destiny of the human body, without which there could, in fact, be no resurrection, and hence no admittance to eternal glory. It therefore aims not to mortify the body, but perfectly to control and sanctify it. For the metaphysical dualism between spirit and matter, it substitutes the ethical conflict between the spirit and the flesh. But in practice it exceeds the simple and sound limits of the Bible, falsely substitutes the bodily appetites and affections, or sensuous nature, as such, for the flesh, or the principle of selfishness, which resides in the soul as well as the body; and thus, with all its horror of heresy, really joins in the Gnostic and Manichaean hatred of the body as the prison of the spirit. This comes out especially in the depreciation of marriage and the family life, that divinely appointed nursery of church and state, and in excessive self-inflictions, to which the apostolic piety affords not the remotest parallel. The heathen Gnostic principle of separation from the world and from the body, as a means of self-redemption, after being theoretically exterminated, stole into the church by a back door of practice, directly in face of the Christian doctrine of the high destiny of the body and perfect redemption through Christ. The Alexandrian fathers furnished a theoretical basis for this asceticism in the distinction of a lower and higher morality, which corresponds to the Platonic or Pythagorean distinction between the life according to nature and the life above nature or the practical and contemplative life… Clement of Alexandria, otherwise remarkable for his elevated ethical views, requires of the sage or gnostic, that he excel the plain Christian not only by higher knowledge, but also by higher, emotionless virtue, and stoical superiority to all bodily conditions; and he inclines to regard the body, with Plato, as the grave and fetter of the soul.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.105

“But how little such views agreed with the spirit of that age, we see in Clement’s own stoical and Platonizing conception of the sensual appetites, and still more in his great disciple Origen, who voluntarily disabled himself in his youth, and could not think of the act of generation as anything but polluting.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.107

“As Richardson noted, philosophy meant virginity, and in its earlier usages, did ‘not refer to Christian virginity, but primarily to philosophical celibacy.… The Neo-Platonic philosophy of the times, through its doctrine of the purification of the soul by its liberation from the body or sensuous things, taught celibacy and ascetic practices generally. So Plotinus (d. A.D. 270) practiced and taught to a degree, and Porphyry (d. 301+) more explicitly.’ As Prestige noted, pagan mystics ‘prayed to be delivered from the flesh rather than sin.’ Hellenized Jewish hermits appeared well before Christian hermits lived in the Egyptian desert, and there was a Hellenized Jewish colony of hermits in the Egyptian desert, and there was a Hellenized Jewish colony of hermits near Lake Mareotis. From the second century B.C., the ‘immured ones’ of Serapis lived incarcerated in cells near their god, receiving food through small windows and living and dying in their holes. This pagan asceticism, deeply rooted, infiltrated into Christianity.”

- Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Thoburn Press: Fairfax, VA., 1978), p.165.

“In Salvian, regrettably, we find the weakening of the body required, ‘for the health of the body is inimical to the soul.’ The soul is ‘an attribute which is divine,’ and the body ‘an enemy which is of the earth.’ ”

- Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Thoburn Press: Fairfax, VA., 1978), p.169.

“Knowledge in us is from the soul, which has its origin from heaven; ignorance from the body, which is from the earth: whence we have something in common with God and with animal creation. Thus, since we are composed of these two elements, the one of which is endowed with light, the other with darkness, a part of knowledge is given to us, and a part of ignorance. Over this bridge, so to speak, we may pass without any danger of falling; for all those who have inclined to either side, either towards the left hand or the right, have fallen.”

-Lactantius, Institutes 3.6