Questions From Our Viewers - Ask David Anything Q&A

Hi, I'm David Burso, and tonight we are going to be looking at some biblical questions that some of our listeners have sent in. So our first one is from a listener, his name is Richard Bassett, a question that is probably on the minds of just about all Christians. He asks, "There are many acts of violence in the Old Testament. Is it a fallacy to state that at least a few were done with the support of God? When the state church emerged in the Roman Empire, the Old Testament provided resources for misguided leaders to justify killing and torture of even fellow Bible believers.

From the Reformation to the settlement of the New World, many used the Old Testament as a guide of how to spread the faith through the sword and slavery. Were some of the acts of bloodshed and slavery in the Old Testament that of man alone, or that of man through faith and righteousness? Did God grant moral support for a handful of these now objectionable acts, as is sometimes interpreted?"

Okay, as I said, a great question that so many Christians have asked over the centuries, and tonight I'm not going to try to answer it in any great depth. I'll just give a few comments on it, and perhaps that can be a subject of a future just message devoted just to that alone.

As I think we all know, God didn't reveal His perfect or ultimate will to humans until the time of Christ. For example, Jesus tells us that God allowed divorce because of human hard-heartedness, not because it was His actual will. Likewise, God allowed polygamy. He allowed war, etc.

Similarly, He permitted the Israelites to have a king even though He specifically told them it was not what He Himself wanted. Yet God then personally picked and anointed several of their first kings. So yes, there were times in the Old Testament where people shed blood and did many other things with God's permission. I mean, sometimes it was even at God's command.

So these people were acting in faith and righteousness because God had not forbidden the things that they were doing. In Old Testament times, God was often willing to work with people where they were. On the other hand, when He gave specific commands, He expected His people to obey them. I mean, He is the Lord of the universe, and He can modify His ultimate laws to make allowance for our human weaknesses whenever He wants.

And He doesn't owe us any explanation when He does so. I mean, after all, we as human parents, we allow our children to do many things that aren't our ultimate will. Now, if we're good parents, we have fixed boundaries which we will never allow our children to cross. But we will allow them some freedom and leeway in other areas, even when we would desire them to make a different choice in their conduct than what they do. I mean, it's part of raising them to adulthood, and it was part of God's way to lead mankind to the perfection of Christ.

Okay, our next question is from Hadassah Beechie. In fact, she sent three questions. They're all interrelated back to our discussion on the early Christian view of the atonement, the view that's sometimes called Christus Victor, although it encompassed a whole lot more than just that motif. So her first question is, and this is based on comparing it to the penal substitution model of the atonement. So if we're not going to go with the penal substitution, she's asking, "What does it mean?" And she quotes, "Without shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins." And that's, she's paraphrasing Hebrews 9:22-26. And let me just read that. It says, "And according to the law, almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood, there is no remission.

Therefore, it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifice than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the most holy place every year with blood of another. He then would have to have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."

So according to the scriptures, Christ's blood has the supernatural ability to not only cleanse away past sin, but to heal our fallen nature and strengthen us with divine eternal life. Hebrews 10:1 says in part, "For the law can never with the same sacrifices make those who approach perfect. For the worshippers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins." So notice what the blood of Jesus does. It cleanses us from sin, and it purifies us. It doesn't cover over our sin that we just keep on doing it over and over. And again, Hebrews says, "We have been sanctified through the offering. He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified."

So it's an ongoing process. We are being sanctified through His sacrifice. His blood can perfect us or complete us. Again, Hebrews 13:12 says, "Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate."

As Jesus Himself said on another occasion, He said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My body is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." That's John 6:53-56. So under the early Christian model of the atonement, everything is relational. Christ's blood doesn't appease an angry God. It cleanses and sanctifies us so that we can be reconciled to a holy God.

Christ's blood didn't give some benefit to the Father. Rather, it gives an incredible life-sustaining benefit to us, as He said there in that passage in John. And all those passages we've quoted talk about what His blood does for us. It changes us. It does a work on us. It doesn't say anything about changing the Father or doing some kind of work on the Father's heart.

So Hadassah then asks, "What were the animal sacrifices for in the Old Testament? Were they also some sort of sacrifice to Satan?" Okay, again, very good questions. So the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament were a pedagogue leading the Israelites to Christ and to His perfect sacrifice.

But most of us have to make a paradigm shift in our minds. In the past, most of us, including me, viewed these sacrifices in the Old Testament as being for the purpose of placating an angry God. We thought that God obtained some kind of enjoyment or satisfaction out of animals being killed and their blood being poured out.

I mean, we should realize that this is almost exactly how the Baal worshippers and the other pagans looked at their sacrifices.

You see, there are two kinds of sacrifices. One is the pagan kind, where you kill an animal to placate an angry God up there in the sky. The other is the heroic sacrifice, where somebody lays down his life in order to save the life of somebody else. It's like a man on a sinking ship who gives up his place to somebody else on the only lifeboat there is, or on the last lifeboat, in order to save their life. He sacrifices his life for them. That's the kind of heroic sacrifice Jesus made.

Now, under the early Christian understanding of the atonement, the purpose of the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament was twofold. First, they pointed to the fact that it was going to cost the life of an innocent victim for mankind to ever be free from the power of Satan, sin, and death, and to be fully reconciled with God.

An innocent victim would have to die. And of course, that was Jesus Christ. So that was one purpose of those sacrifices. Secondly, the Old Testament sacrifices pointed to the wondrous healing and sanctifying power that we would one day receive from Jesus' blood.

Now, not all the Old Testament sacrifices were blood sacrifices, but most of them were, particularly the more important ones, because it is Jesus' blood that saves us. Likewise, that was the whole purpose of the Passover lamb. When the Israelites applied the blood of the Passover lamb to their doorposts, it pictured how Jesus would die as an innocent, unblemished lamb, and then we would have His blood applied to us so that we can be sanctified.

So having said all that, let's look at that passage again in Hebrews 10:1. It says, I'm going to read it, "For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect." That was supposed to be the point of a sacrifice, Paul says, or whoever wrote Hebrews. It was to make those who approach perfect.

So here, perfect doesn't mean to be totally without sin, but rather to be complete, to be whole, to live a holy life. That was the purpose of the Old Testament sacrifices, but they were wholly unable to accomplish that purpose.

Hebrews goes on to say, "But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year." So the Old Testament sacrifices couldn't take away sin, but they did remind the Israelites of the fact that they did have sins that needed to be taken away.

Now, in contrast, the blood of Jesus Christ can actually cleanse us from sin. So again, God gained no personal benefit or pleasure from the animal sacrifices the Israelites offered up. I mean, please, we don't worship a vampire God who has this insatiable appetite for blood, whom we can placate with blood. I mean, Hebrews actually tells us, "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me." This is Jesus who's talking about. "In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, you had no pleasure." That's Hebrews 10:5-6.

So these sacrifices did not placate God. They did not give Him any pleasure. They were a reminder to the Israelites of their need to be cleansed from sin. I mean, how could the scriptures make it any more plain? God received no pleasure from the blood sacrifices. It was the contrite heart and the obedience of the persons who made the sacrifices. That's what pleased Him.

Now, at the same time, the sacrifices under the law were not sacrifices to Satan. They were definitely made to Yahweh or Jehovah, but they were types, symbols pointing to the death of Christ by whose blood our sins are cleansed. Okay, and Hadassah had another question. These are all related together. Still dealing with the early Christian view of the atonement. And I know for all of us, it's a major paradigm shift. I grew up with the penal substitution view, and it was very hard for me. It took me literally years to kind of just change my mind where I could suddenly focus a different way, and then it all suddenly made sense what the early Christians were saying.

So she asked, "Why does it say that it pleased God to bruise the suffering servant in Isaiah 53:10?" And she says, "I know it's different in the Septuagint, but why would it say that in the Masoretic?" So the Masoretic text in Isaiah 53:10, a lot of you know it by heart, it said, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." That's the Masoretic text, which almost all of us grew up with, and probably most of you listeners, it's the Bible you still read from.

But the Septuagint, which I personally use for my Old Testament because that's what the apostles used in the early Christians, it says something entirely different. I mean, this is one of those key times where the Septuagint reads very differently than the Masoretic text. In the Septuagint, that same verse, Isaiah 53:10, says, "The Lord is willing to cleanse him of his wound. And if you give an offering for sin, your soul will see long-lived seed." So it's just the opposite that God, it didn't please Him to bruise Jesus.

It pleased Him to cleanse him. He cleansed him from the wound that he received. So your question, why would the Masoretic text say that? Well, of course, no one knows why the Masoretic text reads differently, not only here, but in thousands of other places.

My guess personally is that it was a copious error. I mean, often all it takes is a switching or omission of just a few Hebrew letters, and you have a completely different meaning. I mean, in this case, it was probably a series of copious errors over a period of time, but no one knows.

Now, the errors made by copious were amplified in ancient Hebrew in contrast to what they would be if the Bible had been written in English, because in ancient Hebrew, there were no written vowels and no punctuation. In fact, there was no separation between words. I mean, they all ran together without spaces between them. So wow, just a few letters difference can totally change the meaning of a verse.

We apologize for the interruption. You are currently engaged in one of the enlightening sessions of Ask David Anything, a part of the Historic Faith online courses. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all those who have joined us in this profound journey to deepen our comprehension of Christian history. We extend an open invitation to everyone who aspires to seek God in truth, to join us in this expedition toward becoming more devout followers of our sovereign King, Jesus. Our aim is to gain richer understanding of His gospel centered on the Kingdom of God and to passionately defend the timeless faith that has been transmitted to us, as clearly articulated in Jude 3 and 4, which says, "Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints, for certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ."

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I hope I'm pronouncing your last name correctly. He says, "I've been going through David Berceau's series on Romans, and there was something that stuck out to me. Berceau interprets the Pauline usage of the Greek term justified to mean something along the lines of being declared righteous in the sense of a legal or forensic acquittal.

This interpretation of justify was popularized during the Reformation era when Protestants insisted that justification is only a forensic change of status, in other words, external, and not an ontological change inside the man, internal." However, he continues, "The prenicing Christians consistently interpreted justified in an ontological or factative sense, that is, becoming or being made righteous with the result of interior transformation."

Okay, thanks, Dakota, for contacting us about your concern of what I said in those messages on Romans. However, I think there's a misunderstanding here. I definitely don't embrace the evangelical teaching of imputed righteousness. I think where the confusion comes in is that there are two phases of salvation, and in conjunction with that, there are two phases of justification.

At the time of our baptism, we are justified or declared righteous by God based purely upon the blood of Christ and upon our faith and repentance. All past sins are washed away, and we're given a new righteous status. And this is totally apart from our works or obedience to Christ. And Paul is talking about that stage of salvation when he says that a person is justified by faith and not by works.

Now, once we are baptized, then we become a branch on the vine of Christ, according to what we read in John 15. However, once we're a branch on the vine, Jesus tells us we must bear fruit or we will be lopped off of the vine.

And speaking of this phase of salvation, James tells us that we are justified by works, not by faith alone. And as you pointed out, the early Christians clearly believed that once we are baptized, our righteousness has to be actual, not merely a fictitious status imputed to us. We can't live an ungodly life and imagine that God is still going to declare us to be righteous.

So again, in my messages, go back and listen to them, and I was describing the first phase of salvation. When we first come to Christ, when we repent and in faith we're baptized, we are justified or declared righteous, and that is a status given to us that we don't deserve.

But the second phase after that, then our justification is based on how we live. There has to be holy godly conduct in our life for God to still declare us to be righteous. Now, having said all this, we have to still remember that our being justified by our fruits and through godly obedience is still a matter of grace. I mean, first of all, God gives us the enabling power to live by Christ's commands.

I mean, we don't get it totally from our own power or mainly from our own power. We cooperate in our salvation, but the enabling power comes from Christ. But we have to be willing to crucify the flesh and make use of this power. It's not an automatic thing. We have to surrender to it, and that's a day-to-day battle. Secondly, in the end, no matter how godly of a life we have lived, we still have fallen far short of absolute righteousness. So when God declares us to be righteous, when He justifies us based on how we have lived, He is still being gracious in declaring us to be righteous because in an absolute sense, we are not, and we should always remember that.

But it doesn't mean it's okay to live however we want because God's grace is going to cover it. As William Law puts it, "God only expects from us the love and obedience that a fallen human is capable of giving, but He does expect that level of obedience and love." So justification has to be based on actual conduct, as you have pointed out, but we're never justified apart from God's grace.

Okay, the next question. Which writings of Tertullian are from after he became a montanist? Can we still gain value from those writings? Well, if you go to the very beginning of the writings of Tertullian in the Anti-Nicene Fathers, which is volume three, and before you get to the very first work and read the foreword, you'll see there are two lists. These are by two different scholars which try to categorize which of Tertullian's works are pre-montanist and which are post-montanist or montanist.

And you'll see there's only partial agreement between these two lists. In other words, there's no perfect consensus among patristic scholars on which works of Tertullian are montanist and which are not. I think there's agreement on certain ones. They're definitely not montanist. There's no trace of montanism in them. And then there are certain ones that's crystal clear that they were written after he had been influenced by the montanist.

In general, I'll give you just a little hint here that you don't have to be a patristic scholar. You can kind of discern for yourself.

You can tell a work is written after Tertullian had been influenced by the montanist. I'm saying influenced. I'll explain that a little bit in a few minutes. Because in those works, he will sometimes refer to the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, or he will make mention of the new prophecy movement, which is what the montanists call themselves. So look for those terms. If you see him referring to the Paraclete, which is the Holy Spirit, and there's nothing wrong with using the term Paraclete, but that was the specific way the montanists referred to him. So when you see that term, or if he talks about the new prophecy, then you know he was influenced by the montanists when he was writing that work.

If Tertullian doesn't use those expressions or make other similar statements contrasting the spiritual against the church, which were written when he was totally in the montanist movement, then there is absolutely no grounds to classify a writing of his as being montanist.

However, I'm going to tell you what some scholars do. They try to destroy the witness of Tertullian by labeling most of his works as montanistic and then claiming that what he says doesn't represent the position of Christians in general at that time, which is untrue.

And the reason they do this is because they don't like what Tertullian teaches concerning Christian living on subjects such as entertainment, divorce, modest dress, the head covering, war, the two kingdoms, etc. Yet in all of those matters I've just mentioned, Tertullian is in complete agreement with what the other early Christians say. There's nothing different about what he says.

I mean, for example, you can compare his position on these matters with Clement of Alexandria, and you'll see that they are in complete agreement. Furthermore, you have to understand that at the beginning, the montanist movement was a movement within the church. It was not a separate sect. Their theology was orthodox.

The main issue were their prophecies. And the question was, were these prophecies from God, or were they just made up? Well, eventually, the church decided they were not from God, that the montanists were not true prophets and prophetesses.

And after that, the montanists left the church, and then they did become a separate sect eventually. So generally speaking, Tertullian's works that were written after he was influenced by the montanists, but before the montanists left the church and became a separate sect, they're all still perfectly orthodox. In fact, several of them are extremely valuable to Christian history and to Christian theology in general. I mean, one of these works, Against Praxis, he wrote it under montanist influence, but in it, Tertullian gives one of the clearest explanations of the Trinity I've ever seen.

In fact, it was in this very work that he coined the term Trinity, which everybody uses. And what he says about the Trinity in that work is the same thing that everyone else says, but I think Tertullian says it may be a little better.

Similarly, his work entitled The Veiling of Virgins, it provides historical information on the head covering, which is not available anywhere else. So in all these works I've mentioned and in so many others, Tertullian writes as a member of the church, and he's defending the teachings and practices of the church against heretics. So they're extremely valuable, even though he had come under the influence of the montanists.

But now, as I said, the church eventually rejected montanism, and it became a separate sect. And Tertullian seems to have joined the montanist sect. After that, he became more and more antagonistic toward the main body of believers. And this animosity is reflected in his last three or four works. These are found in volume four of the Anti-Nicene Fathers. For example, in the work entitled On Fasting, he criticizes the orthodox Christians for ending their fasts at 3:00 PM in the afternoon. The montanists continued to fast until 6:00 PM.

Okay, none of us today particularly care. That work, though, is interesting because from it we learn, oh, so when Christians fasted, they didn't go necessarily until nightfall like we would under our calendar. They, in the church, ended their fast at 3:00 PM.

And that's one of the reasons perhaps they could fast two days a week, the fact they were ending it at 3:00 PM. But the montanists, being more spiritual, well, they went all the way till 6:00 PM. Like I say, tests, that's no big deal. And then he wrote another one. It's there in volume four entitled On Flight and Persecution.

And in it, he says it's wrong to flee from persecution, even though Jesus said, "If they persecute you in one city, flee to another." And then another one of those is entitled On Monogamy. And there, Tertullian says, "It is wrong to remarry after your spouse dies." And we know the scriptures say the exact opposite.

So in these three works, the position Tertullian takes is that of the montanist sect. And this position is contrary to what the church taught. And at least in two of those situations, it is directly contrary to scripture. So you don't want to read those works and think they represent the early church. Yet even those three works are historically valuable if you want to read them. That's because by contrasting the montanist practices to those of the rest of the Christians, Tertullian reveals what the practices of the church were. We also learn about some of the peculiar beliefs that the montanists eventually embraced. They didn't embrace them originally, but they eventually came to that. Okay, our next question.

And I've been asked this a number of times. When you were studying the beliefs of the early church, what kept you from going Catholic or Orthodox? Well, when I first read the early Christian writings, I was searching for the historic faith. I wanted to know what the Christians believed who lived close to the time of the apostles, like one or two or three generations removed. I also wanted to be able to verify that their beliefs matched the clear language of scripture. Now, once I got a good grasp on what the early Christians believed, particularly in the second century, and verified it from scripture, I then began searching for churches that taught the same doctrines and lived the same lifestyle as those early Christians.

Because one of the things I learned from reading the early Christian writings was that they emphasized lifestyle over theology. In fact, there was very little defined dogmatic theology in the pre-Nicene church. Now, to my surprise, I found that many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches can be traced back to the pre-Nicene church. I hadn't expected to find that.

On the other hand, there is a serious contrast between their lifestyle and the lifestyle of the early Christians. And particularly, their history of embracing war, torture, and persecution of other Christians led me to conclude that they had strayed in a serious way from the historic faith. And just as disturbing was their practice throughout most of their history since the time of Constantine until very recent times of joining church and state together.

And they still have that in some places today. Furthermore, it was obvious to me that most Catholics and Orthodox don't even attempt to live by New Testament teachings. And these churches don't require their people to. They're satisfied with largely nominal Christians who simply follow the rituals of those churches and don't question their teachings.

Now, coupled with all those matters I've mentioned was the fact that both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches have added false doctrines and ecclesiastical practices that were not there in the beginning. I mean, the major one is the extreme veneration that they give to Mary. I mean, regardless of what their apologists say, I witness with my own eyes the degree to which these churches practically worship Mary.

In practice, they definitely elevate her to a position only one slight step below the Trinity itself. I mean, she supposedly was taken up to heaven at the time of her death. She supposedly now reigns as the Queen of Heaven. She supposedly lived her life without sin. I mean, etc., etc.

None of these teachings are scriptural, and none of these teachings are the historic faith. You don't find them there in the second century or the third century. And from attending Orthodox services and reading their literature, I found it's Mary, Mary, Mary all the time. More emphasis often on Mary than it is on Jesus Christ.

And then on top of that are the popes and patriarchs, the mandatory veneration of icons, prayer to saints and to Mary, ecclesiastical vestments, priests and bishops praying with covered heads, etc., etc. I mean, it's a long list. So although my study of the early Christians has allowed me to relate to the Catholics and Orthodox on a different level than I was before, I came to the ultimate conclusion that the Anabaptists of today and other kingdom Christian groups are a far better replication of the early Christians than are either the Catholics and Orthodox.

And I firmly believe that living by Christ's teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount and throughout the New Testament is the key factor that makes us one with the apostolic church of the first century. It's not enough that a few monks and nuns live by the Sermon on the Mount. It has to be the entire church, and that needs to be what is taught to the entire church.