Problems with Stevens' Response to Gentry
By Ed Hara
I am loathe to take on such a fine and
brilliant mind as Ed Stevens, who has shown in many of his works that he is
well educated and a master of the Greek and of Scriptures. At the
same time, we are both human, rather than
divine, and therefore subject to error and to disagree with each
other. We also, as he says in this paper, are subject to
running our opinions and learning through our own paradigms and grids, which
can certainly prejudice the outcome of our research. Let me say
right now that I hold Brother Ed in the highest esteem. I believe him to
be one who loves the Lord and his walk with Christ shows that love. I
just hope that as the tenor of this paper makes it clear where my spiritual
journey is ultimately taking me,
that he will continue to be able to say the same for me.
Those who leave the Reformed faith are not usually looked upon with kindness by
the brethren they have left behind.
It is incredible to me that the more I see of the Internet, the more I see "believers" constantly arguing with one another. I find myself wondering if this was the "unity" which our Lord had in mind when He prayed that "they all might be one". Unfortunately, this will be just one more argument. I hope that as it is read, one will not think that in trying to be firm I have not stooped to too low a level.
In the first response section, Brother Ed talks about the kingdom in such a way that I wonder if he considers it to be a separate article from the Church itself. I have always understood that the Church and the kingdom have been, in some ways, considered to be one and the same thing. I note that when our Lord spoke of the kingdom, he did not say "the kingdom WILL BE like unto", indicating a presence of the kingdom already. He used the language of describing that which was already extant. This ties in nicely with Matthew 21:33-46 (I will be referring to this passage a lot -- there are a number of tremendous implications in this parable)
Ed's second response is extremely interesting to me as a covenantalist. He talks about the camp of the "post everythingists", those who consider everything to be past. He also states that there is a very limited number of them out there. Then he discusses the need for the continuing covenantal signs/seals. This is most important, for if one were to insist that the Church is not here today, as Brother Ed seems to do with his "complete fulfillment", then one would have to immediately ask "But how do we NOW make covenant with God, since there is no longer a Church and hence, Baptism as a covenantal sign/seal is no longer valid? How do we obtain forgiveness of sins if the Eucharist is no longer valid?" A serious concern indeed for those who are covenantal and in that covenantalism understand that the Sacraments as operating "ex opere operato."
I am curious to know what Ed means by "other ongoing expressions of our covenantal relationship with God". Is he becoming a Sacramentalist in the Catholic tradition?
What is Max King's covenant eschatology? Sounds like something I really want to get a handle on, since ANYTHING with the word "covenant" in it IMMEDIATELY catches my attention! When I hear that Max approaches the covenant from a corporate position, I want to know more. The corporate covenant of God, especially the Yom Kippor of Christ in Heb. 9, is possibly the most misunderstood part of the New Covenant, and is responsible for the reprehensible doctrine of "once saved -- always saved".
I will have to do extensive studying
of the idea of the millennium happening between AD 30
and AD 70. Not that it couldn't be.
We have to remember that the thrust of eschatology was involving the covenant
people of that time, which was the nation of
In his third answer, Ed states
"We believe the Old Testament world (the old “heaven and earth”) passed away at AD 70, so the Old Testament Law is no longer binding upon us in the same way it was upon Jewish Christians living in Palestine before the end of the Jewish government in AD 70.
I find myself wondering if this
creates a disconnect which is too great for the Church
to leap over. I see Ed treating the Church as if it were a completely new
and totally different organism than the nation of
Back to Matthew
21 again.
I see NO DIFFERENCE in the vineyard itself. The only thing I do see a
difference in is in the change of administration. The old
administrators are kicked out and the new ones brought in at the AD 70
destruction of
The structure of covenantalism, as found in Deut. 28 must remain in place, with just the nature and administration of the covenant changing from Old to New Covenant.
The promise of Hebrews 12:22-29, the
establishment of a new kingdom which cannot be moved, does not mean
that this cannot be the Church here on earth. In fact, if we keep in
type, it must mean that. It does not seem right to insist that the
first earthly ecclesia, which is seen, physical,
and earthly, be replaced with a new ecclesia which is invisible,
spiritual only, and strictly in Heaven. This is the error of the
reformed where they, in order to justifiy their
rebellion from the errors of the Church, described
the church as a strictly spiritual body.
This is not warranted from Scripture. The resurrection chapter, 1 Corin. 15,
describes the Second Adam as a spiritual being, but does that mean that He had
no physical body? That heresy was dealt with in the early
stages of the Church by those who insisted that Christ was not fully man, but only appeared to be man.
The idea that a spiritual being is not able to have an earthly body is an
attack upon the Incarnation of Christ Himself. He is
described as being made a quickening spirit, but
this does not mean that He was not fully human. In like manner, the
Church is an earthly Body which is also the heavenly
In the very next paragraph, Brother Ed totally validates the existence of the Church.
The New Covenant is not going to replace the Old with something different in kind, but only different in glory.
Read that again carefully. Not different in kind, but in glory. No wonder the Catholic Church talks about the "fullness of the faith" found within Her walls. She is the continuation of the Old Covenant, retaining the same kinds of liturgies and worship practices, yet having the glory of the New Covenant by having now the PERFECT Lamb which is offered on the altar. Protestantism tries to destroy this continuation by creating two entirely different covenants with two entirely different bodies. I think I will memorize this phrase, for it is a good explanation of the change in covenants.
As we have seen throughout this book, the passing away of the heaven and earth does not need to refer to the physical world. It often refers to a covenantal establishment.
Oh, boy! This is getting better and better! It was indeed not the Church (ekklesia -- gathering -- covenantal family of God) which passed away. It was not that the Church of the New Covenant is something radically different from the Church of the Old Covenant, but that the covenanat establishment (administration) was replaced. Think of a house with tennants who have killed the son of the owner. They are destroyed, but the house itself still remains, and new tennants are brought in. That is the picture we miss in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen. The covenantal ceremonies of worship, cutting covenant, praise and thanksgiving , and most of all, of sacrifice, are kept. It is the adminstrators who are tossed out on their ear! Look at the ceremonies of the Catholic Church and you will see, if you look closely, Jewishness written all over them.
Now Brother Ed steps on a landmine.
Every generation must continually be reforming and reconstructing the church and society around RIGHTLY INTERPRETED AND APPLIED BIBLICAL LAW.
Hooooowheeeee!! Does this man know what he has just done? And just WHO is going to be the institution to rightly interpret and apply Biblical law? The Theonomists? The Reconstructionists? The Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox, Presbyterians, Fundamentalists, or Episcopalians? There are thousands of denominations, sects, and cults within Protestantism. They all have books of "exegesis" which defend their positions. Ed, you don't really think that they are going to give two hoots and a hollar about YOUR interpretation of the Scriptures, do you? By what right and authority do you and the reformed, reconstructionist, theonomists claim divine guidance over your interpretations and applications of the Law of God? You are going to have to bring to the table some serious proof that God has spoken to YOU and the reconstructionist/theonomists and laid the mantle of infallibility upon your shoulders so that others put down their exegetical swords and get in line behind your authority. That is going to be one heavy burden to bear, especially when the reformed destroy the notion of an earthly Church by their creation of the "invisible Body of believers" as the true Church on earth. Well, how very nice! How do you know then WHO has the authority to speak if you don't have a visible body on earth as a point of reference? This is going to be fun to watch. I hope to have a front row seat in Heaven as this all works itself out. Should be very entertaining.
This is the legacy of the reformation and its insistence upon "sola scriptura" and the right of private interpretation. When I was a Presbyterian Calvinist, I often wondered, and could not understand, why everyone in the world couldn't see that our position was the right one. Of course, I am sure that the Baptists with whom I disagreed couldn't understand how I could be so chowder headed as to not see that they had the correct understanding of Scripture. I have more fun on the Internet than I can shake a stick at watching various Protestant denominationalists fight and wrangle over Scripture!! Luther himself lived long enough to see the bitter fruits of his rebellion against authority, writing that "every fool with a pulpit and a Bible considers himself a teacher of the Word, spewing forth the most abominable heresies...."
Well, Herr Doktor Luther, you have no one to blame but yourself for shredding the Body of Christ into thousands of pieces. Yes, the Church was in serious need of reforming certain abuses which had crept in, but you threw out the baby with the bathwater, tossing out not only those activities which were being abused and may have been inventions of men, but also twisting and perverting 15 centuries of Church doctrine which was solidly founded upon the teachings of the Apostles. Once you did that, and insisted that you had as much right and authority to make up your theological novums, such as "sola scriptura" and "sola fidei" (in which case you were even unafraid to tread where angels fear to tread, changing the very Word of God itself), you opened the doors for everyone to claim as much authority. Yet I find nowhere that authority is given to anyone but the Apostles (Matt. 16:18-19) and their heirs by the laying on of hands (Acts 8: 18, 1 Tim. 4:14, Heb 6:2). It is not some invisible entity which was given authority to speak for God, but the visible Church here on earth, and I find nowhere in Scripture where you were given the right to leave the Church and start a new body. Even in the Old Testament when the covenantal nation of Israel was in apostasy and rebellion, I find nowhere does God say to those who remained faithful "Go and start another nation and I will bless you there" The family is supposed to remain intact, but you, Herr Luther, have tossed Her sons and daughters to the wind.
Brother Ed,
I only see ONE group of people to whom the promise was made that they
would be led into ALL TRUTH -- The Twelve. (John
16:13) There were twelve "offices" of the new covenant which
replaced the twelve authoritative tribal leaders of
Further on down the article, I find another statement which just torpedoes the whole reformed position.
Jesus said He would build His church (the kingdom) and the dominion of Death and Hades would not prevent it. Is the church here? Did it survive the Jewish attempts to destroy it? Has it made any progress in the last two thousand years?
Here is Brother Ed's admission that the kingdom and the Church are one and the same. The Matthew 21 parable gives us no room to insist, as do the reformers, that the Church is changed from the visible, physical, and seen entity which God dealt with under the Old Covenant, to an invisible, spiritual, and unseen entity which has doubtful authority over the lives of believers. I would ask Brother Ed to please find me in this parable any indication that the nature of the vineyard changes. The adminstration changes, with the change of the covenant from old to new, but the vineyard remains the same in structure. We have a better covenant in which we now cultivate the True Vine and give the fruits of this Vine to the nations for their healing.
If the Catholic Church was not the "new nation" (1 Peter 2:9) of the new covenant, then the gates of hell indeed did destroy the Church. The Gospel which went to the ends of the earth was not, despite the wailings of the Calvinists to the contrary, Calvinism and "sola fidei/sola scriptura". Justification by faith alone is called the egg which Luther laid and Calvin hatched. The only problem with it is that this idea was unknown by the Church for 15 centuries, which means that if Calvin is right, the gates of hell and death did prevail for 15 centuries and MILLIONS of believers went right straight to hell. You cannot parse this any other way. You cannot insist that there was some mysterious "remnant" which held to the true Gospel (unless you passionately cling to your dog-earred copy of THE TRAIL OF BLOOD) because the WHOLE ECCLESIASTICAL WORLD WAS CATHOLIC!!
And it is not just justification by faith alone. It is the Eucharist, the issue of baptismal regeneration (which if you are any kind of covenantalist you should believe in), the continuing mediatorial priesthood, it is, in fact, 90% of Catholicism (Eastern Catholics don't accept purgatory, indulgences and certain Marian doctrines) which the reformed of today would have to claim that came directly from the pit itself, thus making Satan the winner for 15 centuries rather than God. I just don't see that as a very decisive victory for Christ or for the Church which He promised would not be overcome by the gates of hell and death.
Bottom line, it was either the Catholic Church which our Lord was making these promises to, or it couldn't really be any body and institution here on earth. Or perhaps I should say, the Church which became Catholic as it developed and grew over centuries. One has to wonder why those men who spoke Greek and understood all of its tenses and nuances as easily as we handle the English language, didn't come to Luther and Calvin's understandings by the second or third century? Were they all THAT DUMB? And to top it off, they had the Apostolic promise of being led into all truth, therefore, those things which St. John taught and handed down to Polycarp, for instance, had to have the imprimateur of truth upon them as teachings.
The pre-70 saints only had an “earnest” or “pledge” of the benefits that we now enjoy in the fully-arrived kingdom.
Here is another fine example of twisting Scripture to prove what one wants to prove.
Eph 1:14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
We have the Holy Spirit as the earnest of our inheritance, not as the earnest of the coming kingdom. Now what is the inheritance of the believer?
Eternal life.
Lu 18:18 ¶ And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? (Notice the eloquent silence from our Lord regarding this man's understanding of eternal life as an inheritance. Why did He take this wonderful opportunity to correct this man's thinking and establish the Reformed position for ever?)
This is where the thinking of Calvinists and Catholics comes to a screeching disconnect, based on Luther's faulty notion of "sola fide" justification. This isn't even covenantal and those who are in the reformed camp ought to take a closer look at how a covenant works before they go spouting off Luther's nonsense as truth.
CRITICAL POINT: a covenant has terms! There is no such thing as an unconditional covenant. The corporate covenant of Yom Kippor had terms. That was why the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies with a rope tied around his ankle. Deut. 27 & 28 clearly spell out the terms of covenant. Under the New Covenant, we again see the conditional nature of the covenant in the warnings to believers against apostasy. Those warnings are there specifically because a covenant is conditional! If the covenant of salvation is unconditional, those warnings are the most foolish writings in the whole corpus of Holy Writ.
I have written a 48 page dissertation on the covenant and how it works, so I hardly intend to repeat all that here. Let me say that one of the most important aspects of the covenant is that it is not just some legal document. It is not merely juridical. A Biblical covenant, while having elements of the juridical in it, is a giving of one person to another. This theme runs through the Scriptures, from God and Adam pledging themselves one to another to the giving of Christ and His Bride to one another. As part of this, God calls the world to come to him and be adopted as sons, giving ourselves to Him and He to us in a family covenant.
Let us now look at one of the most misused stories in Scripture to see how a family covenant, and ultimately, eternal life, works. It it the story of the Prodigal Son. Note first of all that he is a son in the father's house. He is not a foreigner. I have heard preacher after preacher insist that this parable is the story of God saving sinners.
HOGWASH! (I really wish I could say something more to indicate the strength of my disagreement).
This is the story of one who is ALREADY A SON! It is us after our adoption by grace through baptism into the family of God. Throughout the Scriptures we see God painting His relationship with His creation as that of a Father. The family unit is seen as a covenantal unit in the Scriptures. We have the right, therefore, to apply the covenant of salvation, the family covenant God makes with believers through Christ, to this story.
The son asks for his
inheritance, a rather nasty insult to the father. But does he get the
whole inheritance? NO. He gets an earnest of it. The
father does not give the boy everything he has. We know this
because there is yet fortune to dispense left in the father's hands when the
son returns. The son gets his earnest and begins to spend
it. We get the earnest of the Holy Spirit and are expected to use
it wisely. The son, rather than doing wisely with this largess, goes to the far country and wastes it
all. This is a picture of what believers do when they go into
continued, unrepented of sin or apostasy. Hence
Now, there still awaited further inheritance for the boy at the father's house. We see him come to his senses and return to the father's house and receive that which was there for him. But suppose--
Suppose the boy had died in the far country?
Would he then have received the inheritance? No. He would have died in his cursed (covenant breaking) condition. This is a picture of those who break the family covenant with the Father and leave the household of God, going into the "far country" of sin or apostasy. At the Judgement Day they will find that they have been disinherited by their absence from the Father's household and their acts of rebellion.
(Rom 2: 5-10), all men will be judged by their acceptance and adherence to God's gracious offer of family covenant. Those who have never accepted the covenantal terms, and those who have turned from the covenant, shall be disinherited. It is the faithful covenant keepers who may expect the inheritance. And what is our family inheritance?
Mt 19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
Right from the lips of our Lord Himself. Eternal life is an inheritance. Those who remain in the family, keeping the covenant they made by oath (sacramentum) with God, shall indeed inherit their full blessing. But the earnest we have now is just the foretaste of better things to come.
If we are still in the transitional millennial period, the Paraclete is still actively revealing new Scripture and giving out charismatic gifts in Christ’s absence. The Paraclete is to operate until Christ’s return (which Gentry believes will occur after the millennium which is still in progress). One of the main functions of the Paraclete was to reveal new information about the plan of redemption. (cf. John 14-16)
The problem here is that
Brother Ed assumes that the promises which are made in John 14 -16 are to be
promiscuously applied to every believer of every age. Yet there are
several qualifiers in these three verses that we would do well to consider:
Joh 14:25 ¶ These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
Not unto the whole world
of believers, but unto The Twelve, unto those
who were the replacement for the twelve tribes of
Joh 14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
What a singular promise
this was! If these men were anything like the rest of us, they would be confused and short of memory regarding
the teachings of the Lord by which the New Covenant believers were to be
led. Here is a most comforting promise that the Holy Spirit would
bring to them, the men right there with Christ, all
truth and all that He had taught and said to them. This couldn't possibly
be a promise to all believers of all time and the proliferation of
denominations, sects, and cults in the world, all claiming to be led of the
Holy Spirit and all disagreeing, is mute testimony to this truth. This is
a specific promise to specific men who were about to embark upon the leadership
of the Church without their beloved Master.
Joh 16:2 They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.
Another verse showing us the localized and specific application of this discourse to those gathered together with Christ in the Upper Room. This is just as locally applicable as Matthew 16:28, where it says that those who are standing there listening to Christ will not all die before His return. Brother Ed should appreciate this, since I know that he, like I, has to fight with people who want to take this distinctly local promise and make the word generation apply to something other than those standing there listening to Christ.
Joh 16:12 I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
14 He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
These promises are being specifically given to the leadership of the Church. Can you imagine the chaos that would have been in the first century if everyone treated the words of our Lord as the Protestants do today?
"AND AHHHHHHHH KNOWS I HAVE A WORD FROM THE LAWD!!"
Yeah, right!
The only problem with your "word from the Lawd"
is that it is heresy! Other than that, fine. No. This
promise was given to The Twelve only and the
As such, one can still refute the Charismatic nonsense running around without necessarily abandoning the Preterist position. Christ's return in AD 70 did indeed end the revelation. It is most noteworthy to see that all the epistles which we have as the canon of Scripture were not written after that time. The depositum fidei was complete with The Twelve and faithfully passed on. We can still be in the millenium without having to be subject to the whims of the Charismatics by understanding that the promise of revelation was to The Twelve ONLY.
You see, by being part of the Presbyterian assembly, Brother Ed by his actions admits that which he denies in his writings, that the Holy Spirit is still giving out further revelations of truth. His membership in the Presbyterian assembly says to the world "John Calvin was led of the Holy Spirit to revelations of truth which I must follow" Yet if the revelation of truth by the Holy Spirit was finished by AD70, and the Church which developed after that by the passing on of oral tradition was distinctly Catholic in practice, then Ed needs to be consistent with his position of revelation of truth and join the Catholic Church.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CREEDS
Who says anyone’s orthodoxy must be judged by conformity with uninspired documents that came into existence many years and even centuries after inspiration ceased? Gentry has put himself in close proximity to the Romanist position (the pope above or on a par with Scripture) by allowing the creeds to be the standard by which we judge orthodoxy (“straight doctrine”). That is putting uninspired human interpretations into a position above or on a par with Scripture.
Oh boy! Here's where the rubber really meets the road. Authority. Who has it? Where is it located? How do we know?
I simply cannot imagine a "church" without authority. I wonder if Brother Ed can. Probably, since it is the legacy of the Protestant Rebellion for every man to consider himself an authority unto himself, responsible to no one but his own understandings of what Holy Scripture is saying to him. It is amazing that Protestantism can look at the ecclesiastical train wreck they have created and not stop and say "Wait a minute! Something is desparately wrong here. THIS cannot be what our Lord had in mind as a way to run His Church!"
Perhaps some will try to say the
same thing of the Catholic Church of Luther and
Calvin's day, but there is a difference between wickedness and
authority. One only needs look at our current Whoremonger in Chief in the
White House to see how this works in practicality. His perfidies in
the Oval Office and elsewhere may make him one of the worst scoundrels who ever
sat at
In like manner, the perfidies of Eli's sons did not take away their authority, and they reaped what they were sowing in their disrespect for that office. King David's dalliances with Bathsheeba did not take away his kingship, but he did reap the bitter harvest of those seeds of sin.
Ecclesiastical authority is given and taken away by God alone.
The Church, the nation of covenant people, is NOT a democracy. It is not up to the people in the Church to decide that they have had enough of bad rulers, which in this case meant bad Popes and wicked prelates, and start another body for themselves. The only recourse they had was to prayer and patience, of which Luther had absolutely none.
Mt 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Anyone who heard these words of our Lord would have realized that an incredible authority had just been conferred upon The Twelve. Only with the Protestant Rebellion did there start to be so-called "exegesis" which denied the authority of both St. Peter and the Church as the administrators of the kingdom of heaven. But, of course, if you are going to rebel against that seat of authority which our Lord established Himself, you better develope what you think are a real good set of reasons to take with you the Judgement Seat of Christ. After all, He is going to ask you from where you got the idea that you or your set of beliefs were more authorative than the Church He set up. The testimony of the Early Fathers is quite clear that they understood these words to mean that St. Peter held the seat of honor and authority among his equals. The Papacy was called upon more than one time to settle ecclesiastical disputes and depose heretical bishops, and no one questioned for a second the authority of the early popes to do such disciplinary work in the Church, East or West!
It was in this promise of verse 19 that the Church met in Council. Would our Lord promise such binding and loosing and then FAIL to send His Holy Spirit to attend to the councils of the Church? Of course, if the Church was only around from AD 30 to AD 70, then we have a rather handy out for this, don't we? The authority, the teaching, the leading of the Apostles, all stopped in AD 70. But if this is what Brother Ed is insisting upon for the time we live in, we are left with an ecclesiastical free-for-all regarding the truth and any sort of authorized ability to come to proper understanding of the truth. I would ask Brother Ed this:
If the Church was only around from 40 to 70AD and we are now in the eternal kingdom, then what is the point of having any church at all? If Jesus is our King and reigns among us, why can't we just have our own services in our own houses and be our own authorities. Why must I be anything in the kingdom?
Da 2:44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
Never be
destroyed. Never. Stand
forever. I say that this promise of God means that the
kingdom which began with Christ's cry "It is finished" (meaning the
Old Covenant) and found fullness of application with the destruction of
What we do not
understand in
Which of the councicular decisions would Brother Ed like to say are
correct and which are not? If the creedal statements of the Church
are erroneous in one area, then the entire structure of what we believe is a
toss up. I know Brother Ed will try
to say that Scripture is clear enough that we should be able to easily figure
out what is true and what is not , but just the opposite is true. The
very need for councils and creeds came from the fact that there were numbers of
dissenting opinions regarding the Deity of Christ, his nature and person,
the Trinity, and a host of other doctrines, despite the presence of
the epistles of St. Paul's and others. I well note in the writings of St.
Clement of
These dissenters came in with Scripture, and in the case of St. Athanasius, almost took over the whole Church. Brother Ed owes his allegiance to the Trinity to the councils and to the unbending steadfastness of St. Athanasius ("Athanasius conta mundum) and the Pope (whom he despizes) of that day who supported Athanasius. Elsewise we would all be damned Arian heretics.
That is putting uninspired human interpretations into a position above or on a par with Scripture.
But Brother Ed's uninspired Preterist doctrines are sure fire orthodoxy! Again, he paints himself into a corner by his insistence that there is no sure authority in matters of correctly interpreting the Word of God, thereby leaving the door open for any and all of the 28,000 Protestant denominations to claim equal orthodoxy to his. And by what authority will he rebuke all comers? The Word of God? They will appeal to it also. The leading of the Holy Spirit in teaching him proper interpretation? They will claim the same thing (some with the added touches of supposed tongues and miracles).
If Christ established a Church by the ordaining of leadership and the giving of authority to The Twelve, by what possible dint of imagination could we believe that He would abandon the Church right at the point when it was necessary to set out kingdom orthodoxy? I cannot believe that you can't see the problems this causes. If the Church was allowed to go into heterodoxy or apostasy, then She would cease to be the Church and the promise of Daniel 2:19 goes down in flames. The promises of Matthew 16: 18-19 also crash and burn.
And please, please don't
try to "spiritualize" the Church. Please don't try to make it
that vast unseen body of "true believers". How then do
you possibly tell who is a true believer among the 28,000 sects? How do
you know among them who has been given the authority to define and properly
interpret the Word of God when you cannot even tell who is a true believer
(unless you can see the hearts of men -- a perogative
given to the Holy Spirit alone!). The Early Fathers didn't
understand the Church in this way and neither will the Scriptures. It is
a visible body just as
Heb 9:23 ¶ It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:
Yes, the true is Heaven (study revelations to see the heavenly realities) but there is a representation of the heavenly right here on earth. It is seen, it has authority, and it is a pattern of that eternal state in which the covenant keepers shall worship the Father in love and praise. An "invisible" church cannot do this. It represents nothing and it has NO AUTHORITY over the lives of men. And if reconstructionism is true, an unseen Church will not be able to rule over the world, for there will be no hierarchy and no seat of authority and no headship over the world. Reconstructionists look for a visible Church to "christianize" the world as per Ezek. 47. What a laugh that is going to be when they finally figure out that it is going to be the historic Catholic Church if they are correct.
The claim that the "Romanist" pope (by the way, Brother Ed, WHO is your pope? -- we all have one, you know!) is above Scripture is just laughable. Obviously Brother Ed has not read the Catholic Catechism. Obviously he is unaware that the Pope cannot speak without the Magisterium ruling first. The Pope is not a dictator in the sense that Ed is speaking of. He is the shepherd among shepherds and the Patriarch of the Church. It was not the Pope who dictated that the doctrine of the Trinity was orthodoxy. It was the council and then the Pope closed the council by putting his imprimateur upon the rulings of the council of Nicea. I suppose this would be okay, but when the Pope misses the Preterist viewpoint, then he is an uninspired scoundrel of the worst sort. Make up your mind, Ed. We cannot pick and choose what we like of Church history and teachings and call that orthodoxy and jettison the rest. Or do you like the schism, the arguings, the anathemas being lobbed around like grenades as each one picks and chooses his own orthodoxy under his own authority?
It was not necessary to define the Trinity until the Arian heresy came along. It was then that the Council of Nicea convened and brought forth, in its authority, the definitive doctrines of Christ's person which we adhere today. Perhaps in the future there will be an eschatological council to settle this issue. If there is, I assure you that such council will be binding upon all believers, or else there is no authority binding upon anyone and the earthly corpus of professing believers will stay in schism for the rest of time.
Oh, and by the way, if they are uninspired HUMAN interpretations from the councils, then so is yours and you have no right to bind my conscience as such. Stop complaining then that no one bows down to your interpretation of Scripture in regards to the full preterist view. You have no more authority than the councils do, therefore, you have no right to bind anyone's conscience.
Ed then writes of Gary North:
Of course, North is not advocating changing any of the Biblical content of the creeds or confessions, but rather merely the interpretations and applications that have been added to the Biblical material, the same way full preterists are. Are the Reformers and reconstructionists the only ones who have the right to formulate new creeds, catechisms and confessional statements? And if the earlier creeds, confessions and catechisms were such infallible bastions of orthodoxy, why did the Reformers in various European countries compose new ones or make changes to them?
The answer to this is rather obvious. They were REBELLING. Not only against the Church of Rome, but finally against each other. They didn't like the current corruption of the Church (which I probably wouldn't have liked either), but rather than stay in the Church and work and pray towards reformation within , which Erasamus did, they decided to allow full vent to their carnal nature and fleshly lusts to be their own authorities and leave the Church.
Ga 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings,
and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have
also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit
the
You can try to call the reformers noble all you want. The obvious conclusion from their strife, seditions, and heresies is that they were in the flesh, not in the Spirit of God. Unless you can show me a verse of Scripture giving them permission to sever the Church and rend it into thousands of pieces, then they were wrong.
And as to your fallacious statement regarding Gary North's (this is, by the way, the same genius who proclaimed the end of the world in Y2K -- how inspired is this guy?) statements on developement of Church epistomology :
To sum up: North says that if there is really ethical/epistemological/cultural progress in history because of Christ's favor and gifts in behalf of His Church, then there must necessarily be “improvements” and “revisions” in the creeds, even in the ecumenical creeds! To deny this one must be a “fool or a heretic.”
This is just a pure crock. Sorry, I just can't say it any other way. The idea of epsitomology does not take a foundational and germinal truth, such as an oak tree in seed, and make it grow up into a fig tree! The Church established baptismal regeneration (covenantalism by Sacraments which work ex opere operato), the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the mediatorial priesthood, and a number of other distinctly CATHOLIC seeds which North, in his Calvinist blindness, insists must grow and mature into something else? This is patent nonsense. Oak seeds do not produce lemon trees and the Real Presence of the Early Fathers doesn't become the Real Absence of Presbyterian "sacramentalism". Luther's "justification by faith alone" was not, according to Anglican theologian and historian Alister McGrath, not even known before Luther brought it forth from his tormented mind. What seed did that grow out of, having never been taught for 1500 years? Reformed people make some strange statements when they are trying to justify the rebellion of 1517.
To be “outside creedal orthodoxy” is not the same as being outside biblical orthodoxy. One can be biblically orthodox without being creedally orthodox if the creeds have any biblically un-orthodox “interpretations and applications” in them.
Once again, you step on a land mine without realizing it! "IF the creeds have any biblically un-orthodox 'interpretations and applications' in them". Well, if they do, then you and I are reduced to having no other authority over our spiritual lives than our own understandings. Bad news for those who are not as well trained and possesive of a fine mind like you, Brother Ed. Not everyone has the time and the training to spend years parsing the Greek and doing textual evaluations to determine which of the Creedal statements should be considered true and which false. But worse than that is this: if even one part of the Creed is false, the whole ship sinks with it. You have, in fact, no guarentee that the whole thing isn't a marvelous pack of lies or that the Arians, the Monophysites, the Donatists, the Nestorians, ad infinitum, aren't really right after all. The Creed is like a chain and when you sever one link, the whole thing lets go and the ship of the Church is set adrift to the whims of every one who THINKS that the Holy Spirit is leading him in a new direction and into new truths.
That is exactly the case here. Gentry and I both subscribe to the same list of biblical events and doctrines in the creeds. The difference is the time and nature of fulfillment “interpretations” that have been applied to those doctrines. Gentry seems to think full preterists are tampering with the biblical material in the creeds, when in fact we are only correcting the erroneous interpretations that have crept into them. There is a big difference
Indeed there is a big difference! It is the diference between truth and lies! Where is YOUR pedigree for infallibility? What evidence do I have that you are above the rest of the massa damnata in your ability to infallibly interpret Scripture and set forth your own creedal statements (remember: creedum simply means "I believe" -- this whole paper by Brother Ed is a rather lenthy creedum) as binding upon the Church and infallibly correct? I have shown above that Christ DID give a certain body of men that authority and promise of leading into all truth. Brother Ed, I don't remember seeing you name among them! I did show that the charism of this authority was passed down by the laying on of hands. Are you part of that lineage? No? Then I can more easily charge you with error than I can the Nicene Creed, although this is not what I am trying to do. I am trying to show you that either we have a single authority upon earth which we respect, even if in disagreement with it, and obey, or we have a free-for-all. Once you toss out the authority of the Creeds and make it subject to your interpretation, you open the door for the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, and every other screwball cult to claim the same thing. You destroy the foundations of the faith.
Finally, though the Church Fathers are “fathers” in a sense, and are of real value to us, they are also the “Church Babies” in another sense. All this should be born in mind when it comes to their haphazard testimony... [emphasis added]
I accuse Jim Jordan of
setting up straw men with this statement. Yes, they were "babies in
the faith", but Brother
When the Church Fathers
made private statements, like the one about Christ living to be 50, no one ran to convene a council because it was
understood that this was a private idea and not part of Church dogma as defined
by the depositum fidei.
But when heretic Arias started spouting off and contradicting that deposit of
faith which The Twelve had received, the response was to call a council
to AUTHORITIVELY settle this issue so as to protect the Church from
heresy. Brother
How much confidence and authority can we place upon the church “fathers” and their creeds in those doctrinal areas (like eschatology) that they really spent little time with?
They were not concerned with eschatology, they were concerned with heretic Arias. And we do not put confidence in THEM, we put our confidence in the Holy Spirit's protection and leading of the Church, meeting in the authority vested in them, according to the promise of Christ that the Church would not be overrun by the gates of hell. It is not man, but God we trust to keep His promise. If the Full Preterists keep making the amount of noise they are making, and it begins to infest the Church, I do guarentee that the Church will hold an Eschatological Council to settle this some day. I do hope Brother Ed or one of his eschatalogical descendants will bring his argumentations and reasonings before them for consideration. Who knows? Maybe there will be an answer from the Holy Spirit which will make all sides happy.
You state that Creedalism inevitably leads to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. But not just Creedalism leads there, but several other factors, the first of which for me is a proper understanding of the covenant and how it works. Calvin's paradigm of the covenant is seriously warped by his strictly judicial view of it. He forces the covenant into the mold which Luther formed with his idea of "forensic justification" and by doing so strips it of being a family covenant between God and his children. It is reduced to a mere contract between man and God, which it is not. Biblical covenantalism is a relationship between two people in which then give themselves totally to one another with certain terms to the relationship. A "john" and whore can make a contract, which is what Calvin's understanding of the covenant reduces man to - a contract maker. But the Church is a family in which we give ourselves to our loving Father and He gives Himself in intimacy to us. THAT is a Biblical covenant!
It is not without reason that the intense study of the covenant led Scott Hahn back to the Church our Lord founded. There are some who treated Scott Hahn with deference and respect for the depth of his studies who now talk about him as if he couldn't think his way out of a paper bag! I would assume that such a statement as "creedalism inevitably leads to Romanism" would be reflective of the idea that Scott and others were mindlessly herded into the Church of Rome by the creeds. No, we have been drawn by the love of a wonderful Father who offered us a place in the family by dint of the covenant of Blood His Son purchased for us.
There is also the issue of authority and chaos, church history, and promises of our Lord to The Twelve and to the Church. There is an awful lot to sweep under the rug if one wants to remain reformed, and the pile just got too big for me to ignore or try to explain away with twisted hermeneutics and historical ignorance anymore.
I am at a loss to explain how Montanism, chiliasm, sacerdotalism, the doctrine of purgatory, indulgences, Maryolatry, baptismal regeneration, Arianism, Pelagianism, and a host of other departures from biblical orthodoxy could ever develop in the church
This is a completely misleading statement. Arianism did not develope in the Church. The Church rejected it. It is not a part of the Catholic Catechism. Neither is Pelagianism, Nestorianism, Montanism, and a host of other heresies which cropped up and were stomped out by the Church acting in her authority. Baptismal regeneration is a Biblical doctrine which the reformers cast out (actually, it was the Puritans, since we know that Luther taught it). Sacerdotalism is the reality of John 6:53, the need we have to meet with our Lord through the Sacraments. This would take another whole set of writings to defend, but it is highly covenantal in nature. The theological novum of "forensic justification" is in conflict with the Sacraments, but that does not mean that either Calvin or Luther is right. The Sacraments are right and they are our life in Christ as He ministers grace to us through them. Brother Ed sets up strawmen and knocks them over to prove that his interpretation of Eschatology is infallible and the councils, who acted in the promise of Christ's guidance through the authority of the Church, are not.
Why haven’t the Roman and Greek churches abandoned all their errors in view of the great reforms clearly delineated by the Protestant Reformers?
Specifically because these "great reforms" were not reforms of the abuses prevalent, such as selling God's grace as Tetzel was doing, but were teachings which denied the covenantal work of God, destroying the foundational doctrines of the Church and replacing them with theological novums that the Church had never known. In other words, these were heresies, which is why the Church still refuses to adopt them. As long as we are recommending books, I would recommend the following:
NOT BY FAITH ALONE by Robert Sungenis (Justification)
JESUS PETER AND THE KEYS by
A FATHER WHO KEEPS HIS
PROMISE by Scott Hahn
(Covenant)
BIBLICAL PERSPICUITY
Whether you are a preterist or a futurist, this continuation of the imminency idea is embarrassing and destructive to the church’s integrity as interpreters
Not at all. Partial Preterists are not continuing the immanency idea. We know that the immanency of Scriptures referred to AD70. It is the premillenialists who constantly wind up with egg all over their faces, especially those who just cannot resist setting dates based on Jewish numerology and reading the newspapers.
There is a huge
difference between denying an event and not understanding the how of its
happening. For instance,
In like manner, the Church did not have to understand the time elements of the coming of Christ to acknowledge the truth of that event. Their infallibility rests on the depositum fidei, of which part the return of the Lord was an essential. Had the Church come to the conclusion of Hymaneus and Philetus, then we would have serious reason to doubt the integrity of the Church as keepers and interpretors of the truth.
Furthermore, there is real evidence, as I will show later, that the graves are going to be opened and all within will come out to final judgment. Is this just a localized idea which only applied to all who were buried before AD70? Or is the language that of the general resurrection of the dead? According to Rev. 20, there are two resurrections, the first of which is only participated in by those who are blessed to eternal life, and the second of which is the resurrection where the wicked are condemned. This second resurrection takes place at the end of the thousand years. The Councils, in forming the Creeds, may not have understood the timing perfectly, but they did understand the Scriptures which say that the graves will be opened and all come forth to the final Judgment. As long as I can dig up the remains of those who have died before me, this hasn't happened yet!!
For the preterist it is only somewhat puzzling, but for the futurist it is fatal. If Jesus and the apostles taught imminency (as in fact they did), then a non-fulfillment destroys the inspiration and integrity of Christ and the apostles.
This goes a long way to proving my point. Jesus and the Apostles did indeed teach the immanency of His return. Preterists such as Brother Ed are eager and willing to take Christ's words at face value and not rearrange them by using esoteric interpretive grids or other theological gymnastics. Would that they would be so eager to take the rest of Scriptures, especially Christ's promises to St. Peter and the Church in such a simple and direct light. Surely the Early Fathers understood things in this fashion, as attested to by their writings which honor the seat of St. Peter in the Church of Rome. Brother Ed wants us to believe that Christ was reliable when He promised to return before all those of "this generation" died off, but that He is a little bit less than reliable when He promises that the gates of hell will not corrupt the Church, especially in regards to the Creeds. Sorry, brother, but you can't have your cake and eat it.
All branches of Christendom (except maybe those who worship the creeds) recognize that our understanding of Scripture is getting progressively better. We did not start out with a perfect understanding. We instead started out with a perfect revelation, but a very imperfect understanding of it.
This is called "developement of doctrine" and is a good thing.
But development of doctrine does not destroy the
foundational doctrines which were part of the depositum
fidei. When the reformers developed their ideas
of the Real Absence of Christ from the Eucharist, they
were destroying the foundations laid by Christ in John 6 and understood by the
Church as expressed by the
Note the words of Schaff in the quote above: “In the best case a human creed is only an approximate and relatively correct exposition of revealed truth, and may be improved by the progressive knowledge of the Church.”
I will concur only to
the point of saying that improvement of the Creeds is not the same as
destroying foundational truths. Would it be an improvement of the Nicene
Creed for the Jehovah's Witness to trot out his Biblical proof texts and prove
that Christ was only a created being rather than the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity? Why not? After all, if the creeds are
subject to revision and have no authority, then they are not only not binding
upon the consciences of believers, they are subject to wholesale revision and
even possibly being totally scrapped in favor of some "new
revelation" which comes by study. Without the Creeds having
authority, who is Ed Stevens, Phillip Schaff, or anyone else to bind our consciences to the parts
that they like? Without authority, tell me
why the JW's can't insist upon their
interpretation? And please, once again I beg you,
don't say that the Bible teaches so because the existence of 28,000+
sects of "Christians" proves otherwise.
It proves that the Scriptures, far from being perspicuous, are very murky to the human mind, even the best trained mind. Do you see the problems that stripping the creeds of authority creates?
And we must never forget that some of those same people formulated other doctrines and practices that have since been found to be in error,
I'm not about to let you get away with that, Ed. Suppose you NAME those doctrines for us so that we can check the veracity of that statement!! You show me where the Church put into Creedal format that which She later had to backpedal on and say that it was in error. The Church might have meted out certain disciplines, such as not eating meat on Fridays as a discipline for its members to practice self-sacrifice and self-denial in the hopes of spiritual growth, but that was not a creedal statement, that was a discipline. Do you know the difference between a discipline and dogma? Doesn't seem so.
and went to extremes in dealing out cruel punishments upon those who disagreed with them. They condemned and killed men and women whom we now know to have been saints. This should be cause for pause before we enshrine these men’s opinions on a level with or above Scripture.
You mean like the
Protestants, right? Remember how they spent all their free time --
drowning Anabaptists. Or if they were Puritans,
imprisoning Presbyterians. This is an ad hominum
attack which dissappoints me. I thought that
Brother Ed was far above this kind of nonsense when trying to discuss
ISSUES. Such attacks are the last resort of people in a weak position to
defend their ideas and I have never thought of Ed Stevens as not being able to
defend what he believes.
Some creedalists with whom I exchanged email stated that this whole issue of creedal orthodoxy is a matter of authority. I agree with them.
So what is your authority? Be careful now, Ed, because when you say "sola scriptura" you begin a slippery slide down the slope. There are multitudes of godly men who disagree greatly with us Preterists who claim the same thing. By what authority are YOU right and they wrong? Can you prove this to me and others? Where is your imprimateur of infallibility?
I would go even further to assert that ultimate authority is bound up with inspiration and infallibility. Nothing can be ultimately authoritative unless it is infallible and inspired. The Roman Church knows this and that’s why they had to develop the doctrine of the infallibility (inspiration) of the Pope.
Again, you show your lack of understanding of the whole issue. But that's okay. I used to think the same thing. Look, if our Lord gave the authority to St. Peter, and by extension, his successors, to rule over the Church with binding edits and pronouncements, do you really think that He would let that weak-willed fisherman rule out of his own abilities. C'mon!! Do you think he would allow St. Peter's successors, men with feet of clay, to hold office over the Church and not give them a charism of infallibility? We see very, very visibly what happens when this DOES HAPPEN. Look at Protestantism. It is the direct result of the flesh ruling without the leading and protection of the Spirit of God. Thousands of doctrines and understandings.