Category Archives: Bible Commentary

Slouching Toward Heresy: Early Confessions

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The Christian church makes use of two types of confession of faith.

  1. The symbol set up once for all, and drawn up in the language of the new testament. This is ascribed to the apostles as an authentic summary of scripture. [Cullmann, p 10]

    Cullmann points out an example of this first type is the so called Apostle’s Creed. An example of the next one, below, is the Nicene Creed. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan symbol represents a mixed type, on the one hand containing the anti-Arian formula, but on the other often regarded as apostolic. [Cullmann, referring to Caspari]

  2. The symbol conditioned by circumstances, which transcribes the Biblical Gospel into the language and concepts of a certain period. On the basis of the New Testament, this symbol takes up position over against new problems and heresies unknown in the apostolic age. [Cullmann, p 10]

I would like to point out the New Testament in the 27 book form we see today was compiled by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367 AD, 32 years after the Council of Nicea. So for over 300 years the New Testament did not exist as a bible. It consisted of scattered manuscripts and letters copied and sent around the world from region to region as separate writing. Not all books were accepted. Jude, James, 2 Peter are examples of rejected books in many parts of the world.

So when someone says “I go only by the New Testament” what they are referring to is that which was compiled in 367 AD, translated into Latin, translated into English 1100 years after the fact. [Duvall and Hays, p 499].

And was accepted by the Bishops of the catholic church after 367. Protestantism was far off in the future.

What Cullman is really talking about, and Habermas is evaluating, is having rules of faith and formulas which trace back to the apostles. The purpose was (and is) to dethrone every future tradition in the name of apostolic tradition. Not to set ecclesiastical tradition above scripture. [Cullmann, p. 13], [Habermas, p 143-170]

Is fundamentalism now a new ecclesiastical tradition? Is it slouching towards heresy? Hard to say. But when one gets criticized for affirming the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed because “it is not Baptist belief, Baptists don’t have creeds” one begins to seriously wonder.

So, a reasonable course of action is to study the teachings of the apostles and how these were written down, and how these writings were spread across the world, ending with the compilation of the New Testament in 367 AD.

In decades of attending Baptist churches I have never heard of this. It seems to have been buried and is the best kept secret of the 21st century, as if it is some sort of rotten fruit.

REFERENCES:



Oscar Cullman, The Earliest Christian Confessions, 64 pp., published 1949 and 2018.

Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 304 pp, published 1997.

Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God’s Word, 592 pp., published 2020.




Mark 9

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49 Everyone will be salted with fire.

50 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”


This tells me to worry about salting myself and focus only on my own journey. And to back off on harassing other believers who have their own journey. Advocating truth is different than hunting someone else’s sins. And it is different from human pressure to conform.

12 steps isn’t about fixing someone else. If we try to do that we will stumble them. And then earlier verses in Mark 9 apply to us.

12 steps also isn’t about holding to right church doctrine. Instead it is about how God is touching our own particular soul. Not about how someone else is supposed to experience God touching their soul. Only God knows the inner needs of another human. Only God can decide how to minister to them.

Telling another person “your experience must be my experience” is not being salty. So how do believers share saltiness? By confession, by sharing their own yieldedness with each other. That confession has nothing to do with condemning another believer for “doing it wrong”, or pressuring them to “shape up.”


Mark 7:

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My thoughts on Mark 7, based on a sermon by Deven MacDonald.

Mark 7:

1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.[a])

5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.

7 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’[b]

Hypocrisy.

Why is it hypocrisy? Because it focuses on what people can see, not what God sees.

When Christians focus on the externally visible sin of another but ignore the inner transforming work of God they are being hypocrites.

Check all the boxes!!!!! Then you are a proper Christian.


Handwashing is an external human behavior. The pharisees criticized Jesus over this external behavior. Jesus focused on the heart as seen by God.

The trap of self righteousness.

1a. Self righteous people are quick to attack. Why?

The trap is building identity on an exterior outwardly visible stuff. Their identity is fragile. They will lash out at anything or any one who challenges that fragile identity.

The self righteous also criticize the sinner who has come to experience God and forgiveness. And anybody who celebrates a sinner coming to God is also criticized. Why? Because the latter person isn’t likewise criticizing the sinner.

Happened to me just tonight.

1b. Repeating, Self righteous people are quick to attack. Why?

Because in large part they don’t understand grace.

2. Self Righteous people are quick to make up rules that aren’t actually found in the bible. (verse 5 was a ritual about hand washing).

3. Self righteous people are quick to focus on outward habits and practices as the foundation for their standing with God.

4. Self righteous people are quick to justify their actions.

WHAT DEFILES A PERSON?

Continuing in Mark 7:

14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” [16] [f]

17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.

So, What comes out of the HEART is what defiles. Not the external.

WHAT SAVES US?
Titus 3:5

5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,

Not because of the criticism of instruction of the self righteous Christian.

1 John 1:9
New International Version

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Remember point 4 (above) about the self righteousness? 4. Self righteous people are quick to justify their actions. In other words, their criticism of sinners.

Christ will forgive your sins, even if Christians won’t.

My Sin of the Day (and why I wrote this now).

My sin of the day was I celebrated a lesbian who came to Christ and was transformed. Then I did the horrible: I said I wish I could bring my other lesbian friend to church to hear the gospel. But the people at church would only condemn.

Then I was attacked by the self righteous Christians (who want to condemn and attack lesbians instead of bring them to Christ.).

I kept repeating it is the job of the Holy Spirit to convict of sin, not me. And not them.

The critics kept ignoring this. It is clear they want to criticize sins of others. Even if it means those folks don’t get saved.