Gospel Simplicity, Austin Suggs Interviews David Bercot. Why Did You Choose Anabaptism?

Lesson Transcript

So we've touched on that a bit. Another thing that seems to me to be maybe one of the biggest themes in your work, uh, outside of this as well, would be this idea of the church's separation from the world. That with Constantine and from there, we get something happening that it does not quite look like separation. It seems to me that kind of relationship to power is a big dynamic that the Anabaptists are pushing back on and that are saying, "Hey, this isn't how it was in the earliest church." Is that fair to say?

And what do you see as kind of the problem with that relationship with power that we have with Constantine and from there on? Well, today I am joined by David W. Berceau. David Berceau is an attorney, author, and international speaker. He has written various books and magazine articles about early Christianity and Christian discipleship.

His best-known works are "Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up?", "The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down," and "The Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs." David, thank you so much for being here today. I'm honored that you asked me to be here. I'm looking forward to our talk. I'm really excited for it as well.

I, you know, I failed to mention this as we were talking prior to this, but I actually came across your work because one of someone who watches my videos sent me your "Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs" and said, "You need this book. What's your address? Can I send it to you?" I was like, "Sure, I'll always take free books." And so it was a joy to do that. And then I've read some of your other work since then, but glad to have you here today.

And I'd love to know just how did you get interested in studying church history? Okay, it all started, of course, I've always been a history buff. I mean, so I had read a lot of Christian history books just in my walk as a Christian. But what got me specifically, I was on a radio, a Christian radio program, an interview, and it was about Jehovah's Witnesses. And the radio commentator made an interesting comment at the end. He said, "Now, this is a non-denominational Christian radio program.

We don't try not to bash anybody." Of course, the interview was a little, you know, hard on Jehovah's Witnesses. I doubt any of them were in the audience, but he said, "But the fact is, Jehovah's Witnesses have departed from the historic faith." And when I was driving home, I kept thinking about that, the historic faith. Yeah, what is the historic faith? Because I had lots of theological questions myself. And I thought, you know, I'd like to see for myself.

I had, I guess, through college and just my own course in life, I had learned not to trust secondary sources. So I wanted to go to the primary sources. What did the Christians who lived right after the apostles, what did they believe? So I bought a set of the Anti-Nicene Fathers. I spent a year. I did work part-time as an attorney during that time and read, read, read in every bit of spare time I had, every evening, every weekend. And yeah, it was quite a journey.

I was finding all sorts of things I did not expect to find. I mean, I'll tell you, my main question was on eternal security. I was attending a Bible church. That was part of our statement of faith. Once you're saved, you cannot lose your salvation. That did not seem to me to be what the Bible taught. Yet I didn't want to put my own views ahead of what might be the historic faith.

So I thought, huh, if that is a historic faith, yeah, I want to submit to whatever the church has historically taught, but I want to see it for myself. So that was the main question on my mind. I had a few others. The Trinity, that was a doctrine I could never fully grasp. I mean, it's easy enough to say, yes, I believe in it, but wow, I had no way I could really explain it. I had never had anybody explain it to me in a way that made any sense. I was curious what they had to say on the Trinity.

So it was more to answer my theological questions. I never dreamed it would lead to writing a book, let alone many books, that it would change the whole course of my life, which it has. Like I say, I just wanted to get some answers to some theological questions. So that's how it started. That's really interesting. And that really is such an amazing set, the Anti-Nicene Fathers.

I've had several people come on the show who have similar stories of they wanted to get interested in church history and they picked up that multi-volume set. And I mean, now it's easier than ever. People can read them online for free, which I'd always encourage people to do. But that's really neat to hear how you kind of went and said, you know, I want to read the sources for myself. And that is something that's going to resonate with so many people who watch this channel. Most of them are church history nerds.

I mean that in the most loving way. And I identify with that myself. But something that's happened for a lot of them is a lot of them were maybe out of a Bible church, evangelical, I'd say largely most of them. And then they found this famous dictum of John Henry Newman to kind of prove true for them that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. And they ended up journeying along to become Catholic, Orthodox, or maybe some in like a high Anglican or Lutheran setting.

But for many people, it radically changed their faith in that way. Did you ever consider traveling down the road to Rome or to Constantinople, or did that ever come across your mind? Oh, definitely. I think, like you say, everybody who reads the Anti-Nicene Fathers probably, yeah, it crosses their mind. And it did radically, totally radically change my spiritual landscape, but in a different direction than that. Now, see, this is, I guess it's what you focus on when you read the Anti-Nicene Fathers.

Of course, I was looking for answers to theological questions. I got the answers on eternal security and the Trinity. The Trinity was eternal security. It's what I had thought. So that was reassuring. The Trinity, I'd never heard it explained the way the early Christians did. It made total sense. I could finally say, not just I believe in the Trinity, but yeah, I really believe in it. I mean, I grasped it. It makes sense.

I mean, not that any human is ever going to even remotely understand the spiritual realities, but at least the way they explain it, it's a way that we can resonate with as human beings. But what I particularly saw was the lifestyle. That is what got my attention more than the doctrines. Now, the doctrines, I was taking down everyone, and it discouraged me. I mean, I wanted answers on those two things, eternal security and the Trinity.

I wasn't expecting to find all these other things, things that are, you know, more Roman Catholic than Protestant. And I got discouraged. I finally put them back on the shelf and I thought, man, I can't handle this. And that lasted maybe two nights at the most. And I thought, I don't have to believe what these guys believed, but I owe it to myself to know what they did believe. And then, yeah, I can make my decision from there.

So I decided, okay, if I'm going to really read these guys, I've got to start with a blank slate. I've got to put my own beliefs on the shelf for however long it takes to read these. And when I'm done, I can take all my own beliefs back and ignore these guys, or I can adopt what they believe or anywhere in between. So, but as I was noting all the doctrinal issues, I was noticing probably more the lifestyle issues. And that got my attention.

Their views on war, their views on separation from the world, on basically taking the Sermon on the Mount and, okay, this is our manual for Christian living. And that is, like you say, what got my attention the most. I looked at my life. I was an attorney. I mean, I was a Sunday school teacher in the church. I would have been considered, I think, a very above-average spiritual person in our church.

I realized in the early church, I would have been viewed as a very backslidden, pretty mediocre, less than mediocre Christian. And I decided their view was correct and I needed to make some major changes in my life, one of which was suing people. The early Christians would not take anyone to court. And fortunately, I was not mainly a trial lawyer.

I did a little bit, but I got out of that entirely, ended up doing just title work, which is the most boring, least appealing section of law, but it's something I could do with a totally clear conscience before God. I talked with my wife, shared with her what I was seeing, talked with our children. We decided we needed to make some changes in our entertainment. We finally got rid of television altogether. I'm not saying it's a sin to have television or anything.

It just, we felt it was not having a good influence in our life. So those were the things that got my attention. So whereas others head down towards Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, I was looking for churches that still taught the same things on lifestyle. And so that was where my search mainly took me. But yeah, I did take a look into all the ancient churches. I met with Roman Catholic priests, a number of them, talked with them, met with a number of Eastern Orthodox.

Quite a few of them looked me up and, you know, asked to come out and talk with me. And I said, "Sure." You know, I said, "There's no chance you're going to convert me to Eastern Orthodoxy, but yeah, sure, come out." Well, I was surprised. They've got some very good apologists. Now, most of them are former evangelicals. They're good apologists. But yeah, I was impressed by what they had to say. And I looked into it very deeply. I came very close to maybe going that route.

I also looked into briefly the Coptic Church, the Indian Orthodox Church, and then the Church of the East, which history knows as the Nestorians. It's definitely a false label. I think it's been clarified now. I think that's all been cleared up with, at least with Rome, that yeah, they never were Nestorians. That was just a false label from day one. And I was very impressed with them. I felt like theologically they were the closest to the pre-Nicene Church.

And so by then, I was meeting in a house church with a number of people who had read my books, and we were all searching together. And so we looked into them. They have a few churches here in the United States. They probably have a lot more now. At that time, most of them were in Iraq, but the Iraqi war ended up driving most of them out, caused a lot of persecution over there for them.

But I flew up to Chicago where their main church was, met with their bishop there, and then met with another bishop out in California. We actually applied to join their church and got turned down. We were so Anabaptist in our lifestyle, and I shared that with the bishop. You know how we live. I mean, we dressed more like Anabaptists. It really was more our lifestyle.

And he said, "I really admire what you're doing, you know, your whole lifestyle, wanting to live by the Sermon on the Mount." He said, "It's just not going to work." I mean, he said, "You're headed one direction. You're trying to get back to the first and second century. We're trying to get into the modern age." And he said, "We may look like we're at a similar spot, but we're headed two different directions." Now, that would not necessarily be the view of their patriarch.

That was the view of that bishop who later ended up becoming Roman Catholic, I found out years later. So in fact, the patriarch was very upset when he learned that we got turned down. But anyway, we did. So it was after that that I looked seriously into Orthodoxy. We did, our group ended up joining the continuing Anglicans, the conservative Episcopalians who had left the Episcopal Church and were hoping to connect with the main Anglican communion. I think that has happened to some degree since then.

I got actually ordained as an Anglican minister in there. And that's where I was when I wrote the Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. So we were content for a while. The Anglican Church in general is so liberal. I think anyone who's going to decide to be part of one of the ancient churches is not going to be, for the most part, satisfied with the Anglican. It doesn't have to be that way.

I'm just saying that is what has been my experience of what I saw with other people, that they would just be too disappointed with different things going on in the Anglican communion. So we eventually left that. And I continued my journey. And I guess my conviction is lifestyle trumps theology.

And I would rather be in a church that supports the lifestyle, teaches a lifestyle that I believe a Christian should live, and would not forbid me to hold on to my own theological beliefs that would not, you know, say, "You cannot believe this or that," just that this is not what we teach as a church. So I was able to find that within the Anabaptist world. And so that's where I've been the last 17 years. And it's ended up being a fairly good fit. That's really interesting.

And there's a couple of things I want to dive into here to follow up with that. And this is skipping down a bit on the outline I gave you. But for those that aren't familiar, and it might be more people than I think, because Anabaptists aren't a super well-known group in a lot of places. Could you just clarify, like, what does it mean to be an Anabaptist? Yeah, that's probably the best illustration of the point you're saying. I was in France about 10 years ago. I was speaking at a conference there.

And we were doing a little sightseeing. And we were in the city of Tours. And my wife wears a head covering. And my daughter and another friend were there. I mean, you know, we looked very Mennonite. And she saw us. She came up, which was nice. Most French people are not particularly friendly, had been my experience anyway. So it was nice to have someone come up and talk. And she knew just a little English, but she was pointing to the dress and all that.

And I said, "Oh, we're Anabaptist." She like, "I said Mennonite." You know, the same thing. I said, "Amish." "Oh, Amish." And you know, of course, we're not exactly Amish, but yeah, everybody has heard of the Amish. So yeah, they would be one part, one segment of the Anabaptist movement. It's sometimes called the Radical Reformation when it started. Anabaptist just means rebaptizer. It was a name their enemies gave them because they believed in believers' baptism. And so they didn't accept infant baptism.

And so they were persecuted not only by the Roman Catholics, but equally as much by the Lutherans, by Calvin, by Zwingli, put to death by all three of those, the reformers and their followers. So yeah, they lived in persecution until they finally came to America. And most of them ended up moving to the United States to escape persecution because yeah, it continued all the way into the 1700s.

They weren't being put to death at that point, at least by the Protestants, but they were still being jailed and things like that. So William Penn invited them to settle in Pennsylvania. So that's why there's so many Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. So yeah, those are the Anabaptists. But baptism, even though that was the flashpoint, that really wasn't the, it was only one facet of what they stood for. Now, it's interesting.

Just yesterday in our Sunday school class, we were going over the Schleithaim Confession, which was one of their earliest statements of faith. There's no theology in it at all. What bound them together was not a point of your view of salvation or this or that. It was seven points. The first three deal with the church. What is the church? And it's called out people, you know, who have been baptized as believers. That communion is for those who are walking a separated life with Christ.

Where in the state churches, it was everybody in the whole nation was a member of the church. And then the third one was on church discipline, that they would rebuke somebody or put them out of fellowship if they were violating Christ's teachings. And then the last four were on lifestyle, on separation from the world, on what is called the two kingdoms. That was a term Luther gave to it.

In the Anabaptist world, the doctrine of the two kingdoms means there's a kingdom of God that citizens are, I mean, Christians are citizens of. And we're separate and distinct from the kingdoms of this world. We can't mix the two kingdoms. And so the Anabaptists, like anyone who's read the pre-Nicene Christians, will see the same thing, that they would not serve as magistrates. They did not go to war. They would not swear oaths. And so the Anabaptists took all of those same positions.

So they weren't reading the early Christians. They were just reading it from the Bible. That's what was exciting to me, is that they didn't come to these convictions from reading the early church. They came to it from reading the Bible. And so it was like, okay, this is very exciting because, yeah, I want to follow what Jesus taught, not so much follow what the early Christians said. But to me, the early Christians are the best commentary we have on scripture.

I do read the scripture through their eyes, unless there's just no way to be able to coincide it with scripture. And I can't think of anything in the pre-Nicene church that was dogma that does not fit scripture. So anyway. That's really interesting. I want to dig in here a little more and talk about, because when I was reading Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, this seemed to be a big theme, and it's come out several times in this conversation already. That is the relationship between theology and lifestyle.

How was it that you began to kind of pull these things? Well, that might not be a fair way of putting it, but when you were going through this process, at some point you said you kind of saw that lifestyle was more important to you than theology. Could you explain a bit more how you came to that conclusion? It may have been part of my spirituality before. You know, I'm not sure on that question. I certainly saw lifestyle as being equally important. I'll put it that way.

It was looking at the early Christian statement of faith. I mean, it's just the Apostles' Creed that virtually everybody who uses the name Christian, you know, agrees with that. I mean, there's a few who don't, but I mean, it's like, that is all the theology you had to believe to be a member in good standing of the early church. Now, they had a lot of teachings beyond that, which I focused a whole lot of my life on. I mean, I do enjoy theology. I mean, it's something I can get very excited about.

But yeah, I mean, I think reading the Apologists, when they were explaining what Christianity was to the Romans, yeah, there's a little bit of theology on, you know, who Jesus is and that sort of thing. But they mainly talk about how they lived. And that got my attention. Reading Apologist after Apologist after Apologist, they're all saying basically the same thing. So that's what got my attention on the lifestyle.

And the fact that there were the only theological dispute I can think of, and someone else may refresh my memory. I may be wrong on this, was on the doctrine known as Sabellianism. I mean, it goes by a lot of names, modalism, dynamic modalism, etc. But the idea that the Son and the Father are one and the same person, it's a misunderstanding of the Trinity. And that, but there wasn't any worldwide council on it, but there were local councils that condemned that as being erroneous. That's about it.

I mean, the other councils dealt with church issues on, you know, rebaptizing if you came over from the heretics, some things like that. So yeah, until we get to the time of Constantine, I do not see theology being this big central thing that it is today, where particularly you are being labeled as not being a Christian. You're outside the church because you don't hold to this particular dogma. I don't see very much of that. Now, again, I'm not saying that from a liberal perspective.

Anyone who has read very many of my books knows that I am pretty, yeah, I'm very far from liberal. I mean, I would hold to a very, you know, go by what the scriptures say and on matters of theology. And like I say, the Apostles' Creed, those were matters that were not debatable. I mean, yeah, that was set and fixed. This is what we believe. But how much the average early Christian could explain beyond the Apostles' Creed, I don't know.

You know, they were not a highly educated group of people for the most part, but they had highly educated people among them. Yes, that is a really interesting dynamic. And I was having a conversation with a friend the other day who was looking at a church history and was expressing just kind of the struggle in it. In his reading, it seemed as though the history of the church was drawing, you know, narrower and narrower circles around who's in and who's out as far as all the controversies that come up.

And he was expressing the same thing. At the beginning, it didn't seem like there was, I mean, and he wasn't trying to be liberal in this either, but just like, this seems to get defined more and more narrowly. And we're going to talk a bit about what I think in the book, I forget if it's like the decline or what adjective you use for it. But essentially, you know, it seems like all Christians have at least some idea of the early church being this thing that we want to, we want to model ourselves off of.

We look to the early church, whether that's just the church in Acts or a little longer. But where people seem to differ is how long it took for things to go wrong. So I might say things never went wrong. The church has just been getting better and better. It's just like, it's like a fine wine getting better with age. And others would say not quite. It was doing well and then some things happened. In reading some of your work, it seems like one of the pivot points that you point out is the conversion of Constantine.

Is that fair to say? And if so, what do you see as kind of some of the main changes happening with this conversion of Constantine? And of course, that is another reason why I didn't end up going Orthodox or Roman Catholic or those. The Orthodox, they view Constantine as a saint. And certainly the Roman Catholic Church, I mean, it is built on what happened with Constantine and afterwards. Now, Constantine as a person, I mean, I would say he was well-meaning. He was trying to help the church.

He got baptized on his deathbed. So I think he himself sensed he was not living the life that a Christian should live. But, you know, after I read the pre-Nicene church, the Anti-Nicene Fathers, the question in my mind was, what happened? If this is the way things were, and this seems pretty good to me, what happened? Why don't we see that anywhere today? So I got the next two sets, the Nicene, post-Nicene Father, and I started reading all those guys to see what was going on.

And it was reading the church histories of Eusebius, and particularly Sozoman, Socrates, Jerome, the things that happened after Constantine. And I don't think anyone can read those church histories unless their eyes are just closed and not see that there has been a radical change in Christianity, not so much in theology in the fourth century. I mean, there's a little bit of change, but there's not a radical change in theology. But in what constitutes a Christian? I mean, it's shameful.

I mean, it's like, and these historians don't seem to be that embarrassed by it. But I mean, I think I related in the heretics book that one of the emperors wanted to install an Arian bishop. And by that date, it's hard to know. People were being labeled as Arian, who certainly were not true Arians. They maybe did not want to accept the Nicene Creed, the word Homo Ousian. But regardless, even let's say the guy was a straight-out Arian.

So he brings him to Constantinople to install him, and a mob surrounds the guy's house that night. It sets it on fire. I mean, and when he comes out, you know, reeling from the smoke, they grab him, drag him through the streets, and then beat him to death. You know, it's like, and the historian just says, this is a Christian historian. When I mentioned Socrates, I'm not talking about the philosopher. There's also a church historian by that name. I'm sure you know, some of your listeners may not be aware.

And yeah, he doesn't seem to be that appalled by it. He says, yeah, this kind of thing tends to happen in those situations. And it's like, this is horrible. I mean, and there's just lots of instances of that, just mobs of monks that, you know, kill people either over church politics, over clashes with people in the world. And it's like, okay, yeah, this is not the kind of church I read about in the first three centuries. It's not the kind of church I read about in Acts and in the New Testament.

So yeah, that is why, yeah, I came to the conclusion, okay, this is a major, the major turning point in Christianity. Now, that doesn't mean that there's no real Christians after that. I've never felt that way. Just, yeah, the church took a major left detour that it never repented from until you get, you know, finally groups like the Anabaptists, the Waldensians who just break away from the institutional church and do something different. But yeah, the ancient churches have generally, yeah, held to all of that.

Yeah, that's great and fine and good. So yeah, that's my reason for feeling that way. Then, of course, after that, the Council of Nicaea was very bothered when afterwards, I have no problem with the Nicene Creed. I think it's a very accurate summary of what Christians believed before Nicaea. They wouldn't have been that dogmatic. They would have never insisted that you have to use the word Homo Ousian, a word that's not in the Bible. That bothered me that now Orthodoxy turns on a word that's not even in scripture.

Now, I think the word is very valid. I have no issue with that word at all if you're just using it as a description of the Father and the Son. But yeah, the minute we say Orthodoxy turns on something that's not even in scripture, we've taken a major step. And then they started saying that the Creed was inspired of God. That really bothered me. Okay, so now we have another source of authority beyond the scriptures.

And if the early Christians had been saying that from the beginning, yes, the church has authority to amend what was handed down, then yeah, that would have made sense. But they were saying the opposite, that no, we can accept nothing new as doctrine other than what was handed down by the apostles. So yeah, things have now really changed, not only in the way Christians lived, but in what they were seeing as a source of authority.

And then you keep having more creeds and more councils and more things keep getting added. They're not necessarily heretical or unorthodox, but they certainly try to explain the incarnation well beyond what the early Christians would have ever required anyone to believe. I mean, they don't contradict the early Christians, but oh, the early Christians would have never said, you've got to define the incarnation exactly like this or you're not even a Christian, that that's what things turn on.

And then you start getting into, you have to venerate icons. You have to refer to Mary as Theotokos or Mother of God or Godbearer, however you want to define it. Yeah, I just see, okay, things have really, really changed. So yeah, that's where I decided I want to look, did somehow the pre-Nicene church continue on underground somehow?

And I read a little bit, you know, I read well into the Middle Ages, but then I stopped and I jumped to the Reformation to say, okay, did Luther and Calvin, did some of these guys wingily maybe bring everything back to the way it started? And when I read them, I saw, well, no, this is, they kind of returned to Augustine, not to the pre-Nicene church. And then I just, you know, I happened to pick up the writings of Menno Simons. I was reading everybody I could.

And when I read his writings, it's like, now, wow, now this, hey, I'm hearing a lot of the same things, not everything, but yeah, this is a lot of the pre-Nicene church, particularly on lifestyle. So that's what then got me interested in that direction. That's why I talk about them in the heretics book. The irony is when I wrote the book, I never dreamed that I would be joining them. I just wanted to, you know, give them, you know, kudos for, hey, what they've done and let other people know about them.

But I honestly at that point had not seen it as the direction I would be going. That's really interesting how that kind of came about, that it was just a neat thing when you wrote the book. And then years later, this is something that is very much part of your life. I think people will be curious about this. So I want to kind of ask for clarification.

And you mentioned that you certainly think there were Christians in this period, but between Nicaea, which is like 325, and Menno Simons, like early 1500s, we've got like 1200 years. What do you see when you look at the church in that period? Is it bankrupt? Is it like got a lot going for it, but it is hindered by a few things? And I know that's kind of probably hard to put a label on, but what do you see when you see the church in that period?

The church as an institution I would see as corrupted, not bankrupt, not outside of God's grace, but certainly not the way the Catholics or the Orthodox would look at it. I mean, I see it as a very corrupted church, a church that has compromised in many areas, a church that does wicked things, tortures people, encourages crusades, Christians killing Christians. I mean, things that have brought so much shame on the name of Christ. On the other hand, as far as the people, to me, the church is the people.

Just like Israel wasn't particularly the government. In fact, God's choice was for there never to have been a king. It was he would be the ruler. I see the church as the people. So when we look at the people, there were some neat Christians during those centuries, Christians that I read like imitation of Christ. I mean, I've read that for many years. I look at the life of St. Francis and it's like, I don't come close to him.

So I am grateful that reading the early church did open my eyes that the Roman Catholics aren't so far removed as I had imagined. I mean, I always wondered how could a guy like Francis be a Roman Catholic and yet obviously be living the Christ life. Yeah, it helped me to understand, okay, these guys are not as far off as I imagined. And we Protestants aren't as close on as I imagined either. But I would say neither are those churches as right on as they would view themselves as being.

But yeah, they produced saintly people, not as the general Catholic or the general Orthodox member, but yeah, there were some fantastic Christians during those years. And there were fantastic Christians in groups outside of the Anabaptists. I mean, there are Lutherans that I look up to, Anglicans. One of my favorite Christian writers, teachers outside of the early church is William Law, who was an Anglican. He was ordained as an Anglican clergyman, or at least studied to be.

He didn't, I guess, ever get ordained because he wouldn't recognize King George. And so he, since it was a state church, he was never ordained. But he had a major impact on John Wesley, and John Wesley would be another figure I would respect, looked up to a lot. A lot of the Lutheran Pietists are people I read. So I do see God as a very generous God that I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to have a church that is as close to the model Christ set up, as disciplined, and as pure as we can humanly do.

But I think we should also recognize that none of our churches, including the Anabaptists, and Anabaptists do not look at themselves as the one true church, or I wouldn't be part of them if they did. That, yeah, God works in other circles and we can learn from other people. But on the other hand, I do see Jesus setting forth a narrow way that I think all of us, we don't have to be Anabaptists to walk down that way. But I think wherever we are, we are called to walk on that same path. That's well said.

And I appreciate the nuance that you gave there. In your book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, you talk about four pillars that the early church was kind of protected by. And one you already labeled was kind of this like ultra-conservative spirit that didn't believe in new revelation and equated change with error. So they were not prone to accept new teachings. They were very conservative to what had been handed down to them. That was something that protected them.

And you said at Nicaea, we start to maybe see that eroding a bit, and then with icons and different things, see it going further. So we've touched on that a bit. Another thing that seems to me to be maybe one of the biggest themes in your work outside of this as well would be this idea of the church's separation from the world. That with Constantine and from there, we get something happening that it does not quite look like separation.

It seems to me that kind of relationship to power is a big dynamic that the Anabaptists are pushing back on and that are saying, hey, this isn't how it was in the earliest church. Is that fair to say? And what do you see as kind of the problem with that relationship with power that we have with Constantine and from there on? You know, if you want to be friends of the world, you know, you make yourself enemies with God, not because you necessarily want to.

It is, it would, on paper, yeah, it would seem nice if, if let's Christianize the world. Let's the Roman Emperor wants to be a Christian. And Constantine brought about some very good things. I mean, they outlawed abortion, they outlawed prostitution, they outlawed the gladiator games. I mean, they, they just to name a few things. I mean, and then later emperors, yeah, there were a lot of good godly laws that were enacted. So it's not like Christians had no impact on the world.

The problem was the impact the world had on the church. Once it became a state church, but even before then, once Constantine endorsed Christianity, then if you wanted to climb the political ladder, the way to do that was to become a Christian. And so you have all kinds of people flocking into the church that seem to be unregenerated. They certainly don't live a regenerated life.

Like you say, they have no qualms about killing a religious opponent, killing a pagan that they don't like what they're doing or teaching. And before very long, they have no qualms about killing each other and torturing people, persecuting people who dissent. Yeah, you just can't mix the world and the church. I mean, that's Jesus, as he said, you know, my kingdom is not of the world. And I don't think that's a principle that can ever be changed. Maybe it's good.

And I think God obviously allowed that to happen, that we can see the results. Now, of course, 2000 years later or whatever, 1700, 1600 years later, a very large percentage of Christians have come to that conclusion. Yeah, church and state have to be separate, you know. So it's no longer just the Anabaptists saying this or the early church or the Waldensians or something, but it took a long time for people to wake up to that. So yeah, that to me is a pillar that you just cannot compromise on. Thanks for that.

Another pillar that you have is that referring questions to apostolic churches or to the elders of apostolic churches, I think is the way it was written. I want to ask that kind of in relationship to Nicaea because I think a lot of people that are going to watch this are people who are interested in theology and historical theology and how doctrine is developed and whatnot. And so when you get to Nicaea, you've got this controversy over the deity of Christ or his relation, the Trinity. Is he homoocean?

Is he, you know, of one substance with God or kind of of like substance or these different questions? And there's lots of controversy going around at that point. And you note in your book that kind of bringing together the whole church and making this authoritative claim for like an inspired teaching on the matter was hurtful. And we've talked about that a bit.

In relation to that kind of early pillar of referring questions to the elders of apostolic churches, if you could kind of go back in time to 325 and you've got this issue that's broiling up, what do you think would have been a more productive way of solving that? Okay, the most productive way and to me the last voice of the early church before it ends, I don't mean Christianity ends, but the kind of Christianity you had was Bishop Hosius from Spain. Constantine consulted with him. What is this controversy about?

What should I do? And Hosius's advice was they just need to drop it. Quit arguing about it. Just drop it. Now, if you said that in the year 150, that would have been eminently doable. Christians would have said, okay, yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's there's things we don't understand. Yeah, we don't need to explore there. And he sent Hosius there to talk to Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, and said that very thing. He said, he told him, you should not have asked the questions you did.

You started this thing by asking these questions about God that we don't know the answer. And Arius, you shouldn't have ever given the answers you did. And you both need to just back off from it and drop this. And that would have been doable, I think, even in the year 250 or so. But see, you've got a different church makeup even by 325. You've had all these other people come in. And now, yeah, they're not going to drop it. I mean, and it was a horrible feud.

So yeah, it starts with now you've got a body that is not made up of just regenerated people. And I think that's the crux of the problem. So now, yeah, you settle it. And like you say, what they came up with as the answer is certainly what the early church taught. But see, right from the start, something was very wrong because Constantine then issued a declaration, a legal decree that anybody who's got any of the writings of Arius needs to bring them forward to be burned.

And if anyone is found hiding them, he'll be put to death. That's the, if those bishops to me were anything like the prenicing church, if they were anywhere where they should have been with God, there should have been an immediate outcry. Absolutely not. That is not the way we treat heretics. We don't burn them. We don't burn their books. We don't persecute them. We don't put them to death. We label them as heretics and we excommunicate them. And that's where it stops.

And if they had done that, it would have passed. I mean, look at Sabellianism. I mean, there never was a communal council that addressed it. It survived through the years. It's still around. I mean, you run into it. In fact, Orthodox Christians who belong to, let's say, a Baptist church or whatever, if you ask them to explain the Trinity, that's often the explanation they'll give. You know, when I was trying to understand the Trinity, I'd asked a Presbyterian minister. I mean, this guy's gone through seminary.

Would you please explain the Trinity to me? I want to not just say I believe it. I want to understand it a little bit because it makes no sense. And he said, okay, David, you're a father, aren't you? You know, I had a, what, two-year-old son at that point. And I said, yes. He said, but you're also a son, aren't you? I said, yes. He said, well, that's the way it is in the Trinity. You know, father, and he's sometimes the father and sometimes he's the son. That's the way it is.

And it's like, okay, I didn't argue with him, but I didn't know, you know, but I thought that doesn't make any sense. I'm not my own father. I'm not my own son. There is a distinction between me and my son and between me and my father. And of course, that's heretical, what he said. But he thought he was teaching, he was just giving me Orthodox Trinitarian. And this guy's gone through seminary, you know, and Presbyterians are not ignorant people. I mean, you know, it's like, wow.

But I've heard that all the time, you know, from people. So did the church fall apart because these people have a wrong understanding of the Trinity? No. I mean, should it be corrected? Yes. But not by persecuting people and that sort of thing. So yeah, I think it would have died away. I mean, Arius, he had five people who stuck with him at the council. I don't know that if they would have just let it go, that it wouldn't have just died away, been a background thing that might have popped up here and there.

Of course, it's popped up now with Jehovah's Witnesses. So I mean, you know, they didn't make it go away in the end anyway, you know. And yeah, I think if you just do things Christ way, you can declare somebody a heretic, but you end there. You don't use the power of the state. It would have turned out, I think, a lot better. Would it be fair to say that more problematic than the holding of the council was the carrying out of the decision or the implementation of that decision?

If it had just been a council of bishops, the only thing unprecedented would have been the fact it was the whole Roman world and even beyond the Roman world. Because they had had councils before, they were just local. It's the fact the emperor called it and the emperor presided that I see a big problem with. And this guy's not even baptized. It's not just that he's the emperor. I mean, he's not a baptized Christian. What business does he have convening the bishops of the church?

See, to me, again, the bishop should have said, wow, thank you for helping. It's a great idea. We will convene a council ourselves. Thank you for your suggestion, Constantine. We appreciate it. And yeah, they should have done that. But no, they, and like I say, he ended up, it was his wording of the decree. He obviously grasped, a lot of books say he didn't grasp what was at stake here. No, I think Constantine understood it very well.

And I think he displayed more of a Christian attitude than most of the representatives at that council on either side. But maybe because he wasn't a Christian, his idea of inserting this word homoocean, yeah, that came from him and I think was a very bad idea because now you've added to scripture, even though, like I say, it's a perfectly orthodox term. Thanks for that clarification.

The last of the four pillars that you lay out, so we've gone over the kind of ultra-conservative spirit and equating change with error, the church's separation from the world, the referring questions to the elders of apostolic churches. The last one you give is the independence of local congregations. I think this one might be surprising to some of my viewers who have gone into much higher churches, they call, you know, like with a more ecclesiastical structure there with bishops and whatnot.

Could you explain this one to me a bit? What do you see as the problem or, yeah, the problem that comes about when the local congregations are not independent? The benefit, of course, is you could have organizational unity and we see that, although it was state-enforced, you know, to what degree you could have had that without the state behind it, I don't know. I mean, those institutions now don't need the state, but this is 1700 years later. Heresies often were more localized, and so they died out.

They were dealt with locally, and they eventually died out. It would have been harder. You couldn't just in one fell swoop, okay, everybody has to venerate images. If you refuse to do that, you are anathema. You're out of the church. You couldn't have done that in the year 200. Too many churches would have rejected. There was nobody with that kind of authority. The bishop of Rome had a lot of influence in the West, but if he had tried to make a declaration like that, there's no way he would have gotten cooperation.

The bishop of Alexandria certainly carried a lot of weight in his region, but again, didn't have that kind of leverage. And so, yeah, you were going to have to actually convince the people in introducing a big change. But when you get people together in a council, it's one or two voices that dominate. That seems to have been at every council, and often the dominating voice was the emperor. I don't think in this case, I don't think Constantine was the dominating voice.

He was just more of the coordinator and the one who suggested the wording of the decree. But yeah, you have a bunch of yes men. You've got a few people who are going to sway the rest of the crowd, and you've got a lot of sheep, and nothing wrong with that. But yeah, it's not really like you've got 300 bishops who are independently weighing this and all of that. No, you've got a few voices. Yeah, Nicaea was an easy call because there was so much written on that subject in the first 300 years.

Yeah, I mean, they could easily look at what is our church always taught on this and all of that. When you start getting beyond that, you start getting into definitely unchartered territory, and it's a different thing. But now this wasn't an ecumenical council, but like the Council of Carthage that condemned plagiarism. I mean, Augustine totally dominated that. That was purely his doing. I mean, yeah, there's a bunch of bishops putting their name to it, but they were so easily swayed.

If Augustine had been arguing the exact opposite position for free will against predestination, they would have gone along with Augustine on that too. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever on that. So yeah, I don't look at these councils as, oh, these eminent learned men inspired by God. I see them as, yeah, people very easily swayed and who will bend and say yes to whatever the emperor, particularly in the later councils, whatever the emperor or the pope, whoever it might be, would declare.

That does get into some really interesting points about just group dynamics and group psychology of when you have a really domineering voice at something, you tend to be able to sway people. And certainly, there were many charismatic people throughout the, in the terms of like charisma leadership throughout the history of the church, and especially when you supplant that with power as well, like someone from the emperor. There's certain benefits of going along with the more popular decision in that case.

That's an interesting point there. As we begin to wrap up, I kind of want to bring it full circle. So you began looking into church history, and it was somewhat of a winding road, and you ended up kind of grasping on to this idea of the lifestyle of the early church as something that was largely lost in a way and that we need to reclaim. And after reading through the anti-Nicene, the Nicene, the post-Nicene, and up into the Middle Ages a bit, you land on Menno Simon's and this movement of the Anabaptists.

And there you begin to see they're doing something right. I think many people that are going to watch this are on a similar journey of trying to figure out what is the historic church and how can I be faithful to like the earliest vision of what Christianity was meant to be? How can we reclaim that? If you were speaking to them, what would you say to them that the Anabaptists got right that they should really consider adopting into their life? Yeah, I would say look at the teachings of Jesus.

Make the Sermon on the Mount the central piece of the Bible, of Christianity. And that's on Judgment Day. I mean, Jesus tells us what he's going to look at. And of course, his criteria, you're going to find people in every kind of denomination who have excelled in those areas. The things he mentions in Matthew 25. But yeah, the things he mentions in Matthew 5, Matthew 6, Matthew 7, a lot of churches, including the ancient churches, I mean, have just thrown out the window totally.

So I would say, yeah, wherever you end up, I mean, I'm not promoting the Anabaptists as this is the one true church or the answer for everybody. There is a cultural bridge to cross, which is why I didn't immediately go that area. They've preserved what they've had for 500 years by also creating sort of a subculture that has helped them in binding together that way.

Now, what has happened since the writing of the Heretics book, as you yourself, just the fact that there is this podcast that has nothing to do with me, that a lot of people are discovering the pre-Nicene Christians, and a lot of people are discovering what I would call today kingdom theology, theology that centers on the teachings of Jesus, what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom of God. And so these people don't all become Anabaptists. There's other churches like the Brethren.

There's a new movement called Followers of the Way. They're located in Boston. And I'm not part of them, but I'm friends with them. I mean, we've had a lot of interaction together. And they actually have started a college. We looks like are in line to become accredited this fall. And it's a Christian college that is not pushing any denomination, not pushing Followers of the Way. I said they started. It was actually the founder came from within Followers of the Way.

But we are trying to educate people to what the early Christians believed. And what the students do with that, you know, will of course be their decision. But so exciting things are happening. You know, when I wrote the Heretics book, I mean, it looked like a shot in the dark. I mean, I wondered, I was writing to evangelicals. I mean, that's who my intended audience was. And I didn't get a lot of traction there, as it turned out, at least not at any official level.

But yeah, a lot of people, there's a lot of people seeking and are finding the early Christians. And yeah, I would say don't give up on this. Don't just grab the easiest answer, whatever that might appear to be. I mean, you know, take some time. God's not ever in a rush. You can walk with God, you know, in whatever setting you are. And I just say don't be hasty in the decision that you come to. But yeah, rejoice at the things you learn. Don't let it stumble you. In other words, yeah, go back and search it out.

Is this in the scriptures? And that's what I did. I mean, I thought a lot of this, this is nonsense, you know. And I went back, this was like halfway while I was reading the Anti-Nicene Fathers. I just took off a day and I just read through the whole New Testament, you know, start to finish. You know, I don't know how late up I stayed up that night till two in the morning, four in the morning, whatever. And I couldn't believe I was seeing all these things in the Bible I'd never noticed before.

And I realized, wow, everything these early Christians are saying, it is the most literal reading of the New Testament. And it takes into account the totality of the New Testament. It's not built on proof texts. It's built on what the totality is. And that really excited me. And after that point, I went after them with gusto and started, yeah, telling people what I was learning.

And they're the ones who said, "David, you ought to write a book about this," which, you know, at first I laughed off as like, "Oh, yeah, sure," you know. And then I finally felt like, yeah, I ought to let people know at least what I've seen. I can't go to my grave never having, you know, said anything about this. And I'm glad now. And there were probably people at that time as well. I just didn't know about them, you know.

But yeah, that a lot of people are making the same journey and seeing some of the same things. And it's exciting. That I'm sure has to be very exciting to see others walk that same path. It has been a privilege having you on the show today. I really appreciate your time. I would love for you to just close by letting people know if they've enjoyed this, where they can find some more of your work. We've referenced some of your books. If you want to say anything about Scroll Publishing, I believe it is.

But yeah, the floor is yours to let people know where they can find more. Okay, so Scroll Publishing, it's our website, it's www.scrollpublishing.com. There's a Scroll Publishing YouTube. Probably if you Google my name, you would find that. And then the local church I go to, we have a YouTube channel, SoundFaith. Well, I guess there's not a dot on a YouTube channel. So SoundFaith, you can find that. And my sermons would be there. I preach like once a month in our church. Other people from the church preach.

We have guest speakers and things like that. So yeah, those would be some of the sources if somebody wants to explore more, just the journey I've taken and if in any way will help them on their journey. Well, I want to thank you again for your time. And I thank all of you who watch this sometime in the future, whenever it is, you're watching this. I don't take your time lightly. And I'll close as I always do by saying, until next time, be on the lookout for more videos.

But most importantly, go out and love God and love others, because truly, above all else, that will change the world. God bless.