30 Days in the Bible, Day 23: Acts 2:40-47

When Luke described the practices of the early church in Acts 2:42-47, the first thing he mentions is that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” I don’t think this is an accident. When we look at what the church did in these verses, we see actions that arise out of an understanding of God’s Word. The fellowship, worship, and outreach of the first century church are built on the foundation of God’s revelation of truth to them.

What was the content of the apostles’ teaching? It began with the proclamation that Jesus was the fulfillment of the hope of the Old Testament. The Law, Prophets, and Writings of the Jewish Scriptures looked forward to the coming of the promised Messiah and to a salvation that would reverse the curse of sin. The apostles believed and taught that this Messiah was Jesus of Nazareth.

The Bible of the early church was what we call the Old Testament today. The earliest books of the New Testament wouldn’t be written for another 15-20 years, although some of the gospel accounts probably started circulating almost immediately. Since they still considered themselves faithful Jews, the apostles would have gone to their Scriptures to teach about the meaning of the coming of Jesus. Jesus Himself had gone to those Scriptures to explain to the two on the road to Emmaus the OT teaching about the Messiah.

Over about the next 60 years, the apostles’ teaching was written down in the recognized Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse we now call the New Testament. This teaching explained and filled in the details about the person and work of Jesus and about the role of the Holy Spirit. As a result, we are able to read and study the apostles’ teaching today. When we read and study the Bible, both Old and New Testament, we find ourselves in the same place as those early Christians who based everything they did on that teaching.

If we want our modern Christian fellowship, worship, and outreach to have power and lasting effects, we need to follow the example of the first Christians. What we do in the name of Jesus must be founded and built upon what He reveals to us in His Word. A church may meet together, go through some defined worship practices, and speak a message, but if those are done in human power and wisdom rather than in the power of God’s Word the results will not have eternal value.

Christians and churches today must worship the Lord in Spirit and truth, fellowship with and build up each other, and reach out to our world with the good news of Jesus Christ. We can’t do this unless we hear what God says in His revelation, and put what we learn there into practice. As we continue to dig into the Word individually and as a group, we will find that all we do as Christians will be honoring to Jesus and will draw us closer to Him.  

Loving the Cross

Here is a well-known quote from "The Imitation of Christ" (Bk. 2, Ch.11) to meditate on as we approach Passion Week:

"JESUS has always many who love His heavenly kingdom, but few who bear His cross. He has many who desire consolation, but few who care for trial. He finds many to share His table, but few to take part in His fasting. All desire to be happy with Him; few wish to suffer anything for Him. Many follow Him to the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the chalice of His passion. Many revere His miracles; few approach the shame of the Cross. Many love Him as long as they encounter no hardship; many praise and bless Him as long as they receive some comfort from Him. But if Jesus hides Himself and leaves them for a while, they fall either into complaints or into deep dejection. Those, on the contrary, who love Him for His own sake and not for any comfort of their own, bless Him in all trial and anguish of heart as well as in the bliss of consolation. Even if He should never give them consolation, yet they would continue to praise Him and wish always to give Him thanks. What power there is in pure love for Jesus — love that is flee from all self-interest and self-love! Do not those who always seek consolation deserve to be called mercenaries? Do not those who always think of their own profit and gain prove that they love themselves rather than Christ? Where can a man be found who desires to serve God for nothing? Rarely indeed is a man so spiritual as to strip himself of all things. And who shall find a man so truly poor in spirit as to be free from every creature? His value is like that of things brought from the most distant lands. If a man give all his wealth, it is nothing; if he do great penance, it is little; if he gain all knowledge, he is still far afield; if he have great virtue and much ardent devotion, he still lacks a great deal, and especially, the one thing that is most necessary to him. What is this one thing? That leaving all, he forsake himself, completely renounce himself, and give up all private affections. Then, when he has done all that he knows ought to be done, let him consider it as nothing, let him make little of what may be considered great; let him in all honesty call himself an unprofitable servant. For truth itself has said: “When you shall have done all these things that are commanded you, say: ‘we are unprofitable servants.’” Then he will be truly poor and stripped in spirit, and with the prophet may say: “I am alone and poor.” No one, however, is more wealthy than such a man; no one is more powerful, no one freer than he who knows how to leave all things and think of himself as the least of all."

The Disappearing Church

One of the subjects that has attracted my notoriously fickle attention lately is the history of the church in the Syrian city of Edessa. I was first piqued by the legends of the correspondence of Jesus and King Abgar, and then by the earlier Acts of Martyrs of Edessa (which, alas but rather obviously, are not true, although some scholars believe they may reflect a genuine core around which the details were built).That led me to some brief articles on the city of Edessa and the church in that city. The church arose rather early, and went through a number of controversies and dabs at heresy. It remained a fairly strong witness for quite some time, even after the Muslim conquest. What I have found makes me curious to know more.

Yet the Edessene church is no more. Despite a history of strong figures, vigorous theological debate, and steadfastness under persecution, the church eventually gave way to forms of Christianity that would become marginalized, and then to the fate of most of the churches that came under Muslim domination. To borrow a phrase from Revelation, their lamp has gone out.

This phenomenon is not a relic of the past. We have only to look at the once-powerful churches of Europe to see that decline and destruction still happen today. True, the church has not fully succumbed yet, but the trends are not good. This didn't happen from military conquest by another religion, either; it happened by the gradual erosion of faith and doctrine, in some cases carried out within the churches.

The good news is that Christianity has spread throughout the world, and is growing and vibrant in may places. The bad news is that what we have seen happen in European countries could spread to the United States and elsewhere if we are not careful and willing to stand for the truth. Could it be that future generations will look back at Germany, France, and even the US as the Edessas of our era- churches once strong and alive, become nothing but distant memories of a tiny minority? We cannot allow the church to disappear from anywhere she stands, and we should pray and act to see the church of Jesus Christ grow even further in lands where once the church was strong as well as in the frontiers of mission.

The "Unchanging" Church

I was talking to one of my fellow pastors today, and he told me about a friend of his who became a convert to Roman Catholicism after reading the works of the church fathers. Such conversions are not terribly unusual (although I think more evangelicals tend to move toward the Orthodox Church), and often result in rather zealous evangelists for their new theological views.

This young man told my colleague that he joined the Roman Catholic Church because he thought it had retained the true teaching of the early church, and in fact that its teaching and practice had not changed in two millennia. Such a view is taught in some Catholic circles, but it is historically naive. Still, it raises a critical question: in what ways do we Christians today have a part in an "unchanging" church?

Part of the issue is rooted in the very nature of the early church. The church from its early days was under sporadic persecution in divers locales. The New Testament was still being written up to almost the end of the 1st century, and the full acceptance of the NT canon would take another century or two. The church's structure was still fluid, and there were few voices of authority to promote orthodox teaching. Rival religions often hung onto the edges of Christianity. There is something in the Fathers to confound any modern church tradition: pedobaptists have to explain the Didache, presbyterians and congregationalists the epistles of Ignatius, and many Christians struggle with the battle between the Jewishness of some writers and the Greco-philosophical bent of others.

I absolutely enjoy spending time reading and studying the fathers of the church. Yet I know that they were fallible men despite their gifts, and that the teaching of the Bible is more important than the teaching of its early interpreters. At the risk of sounding unduly critical, placing authority in the hands of the Fathers is not dissimilar to the way Jews of Jesus' time placed authority in the hands of the rabbis rather than in the Scriptures. Our authority is the Bible; our teachers are the men and women of faith throughout the ages who seek to guide us into truth.

We participate in an "unchanging" church when we hold fast to the Biblical doctrines that were hammered out by those who went before us in an attempt to clarify what the Bible teaches us. There is in this sense an "orthodox consensus" that is centered on belief in God as Father, Son, and Spirit, in Jesus as both fully divine and fully human, in the practice of baptism and Communion (albeit differently understood), and in a firm conviction that all genuine believers in Christ are part of a larger body, one spread throughout the world and throughout the ages. We all share in belief in the early creeds, and that center of our faith holds us together when other beliefs and practices set us apart. There is an unchanging core for Christianity, but it is not found in the fathers; rather, our unchanging center is Jesus Christ as revealed in His eternal Word.

A Half-Millennium of Change

I finished reading Pelikan yesterday. (Of course, now I have to add the rest of the series to my reading list, especially vol. 2.) As I read the final chapter, discussing the state of Christianity around AD 600, I thought about the change that had occurred within the church over half a millennium. As someone who has a special interest in the 2nd century, I found the church entering the 7th century was a much different entity, both in practice and belief. There had been much clarification and solidification of several major doctrines, and many liturgical innovations as well. The church was politically connected to the Empire; no longer was it a persecuted minority.

Yet as I thought about it, it shouldn't be so strange that so much had changed over what is quite a long period of time. To put it in perspective, 500 years ago the Western church was still six years from Luther's Ninety-five Theses. While there was a reformative unrest in the church, the fuse had not yet been lit. In the Eastern church, less than 60 years had passed since the fall of Constantinople, and the church was still dealing with the fallout from that event. The changes since those days have made our own half-millennium at least equally interesting.

What is truly intriguing about the changes in the first 500 years of the church is the way those changes took place in the context of an era without the rapid transit and information options of our own age. Of course, that also may have been a plus; sometimes we spend so much time and effort reacting to the latest news that we fail to truly digest what is important. Athanasius couldn't send out a quick, hot e-mail in response to an Arian publication. He would have time to read it, and his reaction was written out over a period of time that allowed him time to really think it through. (This doesn't mean all correspondence or writings were carefully thought out, but it's probably safe to say they took a little more thought than those of our age generally do.)

The other factor that impressed me is how much of the catholic consensus that existed in 600 still underlies the theology of the varied branches of Christianity today. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike recite the Nicene Creed, and find support for what they believe in the writings of the Fathers. (Admittedly, Protestants do it less than the other branches, and the Orthodox seem a little more attached to the ancient Fathers due to the rise of the papacy in the West.) While the world of patristic Christianity is certainly not the same as our world today, we still find ourselves all part of one universal brotherhood.

That idea should help to cure us of some of the arrogance we exhibit in modern Christian circles. We often prefer to hear the latest idea, and to follow teachers who proclaim that they have discovered something new to add to the faith. Surprisingly, the "latest" idea often turns out to be something that has been known and taught for centuries. Some perspective on those who have gone before us, and on whose shoulders we stand, is needed to give us a wider perspective on the church, not only geographically but chronologically as well. In heaven, we will be worshipping God with brothers and sisters from all ages, and growing together with them forever.

A half of a millennium will seems a few days then; when we have the ability to meet our ancestors through what they have left for us, it should not separate us as a family now.

Old Papers

I've been cleaning up my basement, and in the process I came across a pile of old papers I had written in and after seminary. While the scholarship is obviously dated, I found that much of what I wrote 20 years ago still stands up pretty well today. Were I to cover the same subjects now, I would not be embarrassed to start with what I wrote back then.

Perhaps more intriguing is looking back at how I approached the various subjects. These papers were for the most part assignments for classes I took in seminary and graduate school, so there is some obvious "academic speak" in them. I found some details were incorrect, and I think that was largely due to the time pressure of school, along with some inexperience in certain fields. Interestingly, the exegetical work done for a few papers in OT and NT studies has held up well; I doubt that much would change if I rewrote those today.

I especially found my writing for church history fascinating. Some short papers written as responses/reactions to questions involving different eras of church history demonstrated (at least to me) my interest in the earliest years of the church. The roots of my love of the patristic period were already beginning to form then. It would not be until a course in patristics a couple of years later that my interest would grow, but seeing my academic roots was a stimulating experience.

I was pleased to find my magnum opus among those old papers. (Yes, my tongue is firmly in my cheek.) I wrote a paper for Patristics on baptismal doctrine and liturgy in the writing of the Apostolic Fathers, which I later expanded for a graduate school application. Although the work was done on translations of the texts, I believe I did justice to the topic, and I would not be embarrassed to have someone read that paper now.

Recalling the work that went into that paper, I think that I have a lot to do to match it with my current project, another visit with patristic theology. Rather than discouraging me, I find that reading my old work encourages me to look ahead, to study harder, and to attempt to do just as well in explicating and discussing another subject.

Often when we go to school, we labor for days, weeks, or months on a subject, only to have the paper read by a professor or a committee, graded, and forgotten. It was like a visit to my past to read these old works, and to recall much of what went into their production. I hope to use what I learned then to help me as a scholar now.