Chapter 21: Did the New Testament Church Collapse? About a year ago I received a letter from a man who claimed that not only was the 2nd century Church apostate, but the 1st century Church was as well. As evidence of this, he pointed to the presence of the Judaizers and to the rebukes given the seven churches described in Revelation. In referring to the Judaizers, he claimed that, by the middle of the 1st century, the churches had already lost the gospel and had to be corrected by Paul. But that's not true.
The problem with the Judaizers was not that they had changed the gospel, but that God had changed the gospel. Now, what I mean by that is that there was a change from man's perspective. God's eternal purpose, of course, has never changed. After all, Jesus had said, "Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill" in Matthew 5:17. The law was given to mankind by God; it was not a human work.
When the church was initially founded, persons had to become Jews and live by the law in order to become Christians. Male converts had to be circumcised. But then God changed the rules. He broke down the wall of separation between the Jews and the Gentiles. Yet it took a miraculous vision and a direct voice from the Holy Spirit to first bring this change about in Acts 10:9-22. The problem with the Judaizers was not that they were innovators of a new, corrupt gospel. It's just the opposite.
They refused to change even when God instituted a change. They had not lost the original gospel. Instead, they clung to the original gospel and refused to accept God's modifications to it. And although it took a lot of work on the part of the apostles, they did eventually silence the Judaizers. By the beginning of the 2nd century, the church was predominantly Gentile. The Judaizers had either left the church or had become a silent minority. They were no longer an issue by the 2nd century.
Next subheading: The Seven Churches of Revelation. But what about the seven churches of Revelation? Weren't they theologically apostate? Some have asked. It's certainly true that the letters or messages Jesus sent to those churches reveal that most of them had spiritual problems. However, their problems were not theological. Rather, their problems were moral. It was their works that were at fault. That's in Revelation 2:5, 3:1, 2, and 15.
There has been some confusion about this because, in the language of the King James Version, Jesus rebuked several churches for holding to the doctrines of the Nicolaitans, Balaam, or Jezebel. In the days of King James, the word "doctrines" commonly meant teachings. Today, we normally reserve the word "doctrines" to refer to theological teachings. But in the days of King James, the word was used in a broader sense. The teachings of the Nicolaitans, Balaam, and Jezebel were not theological teachings.
They were teachings of immorality and/or idolatry. As to the teachings of Balaam and Jezebel, Revelation itself makes this clear, saying, "You have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit acts of immorality.
You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, as she teaches and leads my bondservants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols." Revelation 2:14-20. A couple of the 2nd century writers describe the Nicolaitans' force. They reveal that this sect taught and practiced wife-swapping and other immoralities. Their erroneous doctrines or teachings did not involve theology.
So Scripture does not indicate that the church had become theologically corrupt by the time Revelation was written. In fact, it discloses just the opposite. It indicates that at the close of the 1st century, Jesus had no corrections to make to the theology and ordinances of the churches. Their primary problem was that they were lax in their church discipline. Immoral and/or idolatrous people like the Nicolaitans and the woman Jezebel needed to be put out of the church.
The record of the 2nd century church indicates that the churches took Jesus's words to heart and corrected this laxity in discipline. Jesus told the church in Thyatira, "But I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them, I place no other burden on you; nevertheless, what you have, hold fast until I come." In Revelation 2:24. And that "teaching" there is referring to the teaching of Jezebel.
He didn't tell them to correct what they had. No, he told them to hold fast to it until he returns. He told the church in Philadelphia the same thing in Revelation 3:11. Have we held fast to those same beliefs and practices? Furthermore, Jesus had no correction whatsoever for two of the churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia. He described the church at Smyrna as being spiritually rich. That is significant because one of the personal disciples of the apostle John at Smyrna was a man named Polycarp.
He was almost certainly part of the church at Smyrna when Revelation was written, and he very likely was an elder there at the time. Polycarp lived until the year A.D. 155 or later. He was at least 86 years old when he died as a faithful martyr. The churches to whom the 2nd century Orthodox writers belonged were all churches that were in communion with the church at Smyrna.
In his letter to the Philippians, Polycarp specifically mentioned one of those writers, Ignatius, saying, "I am sending you Ignatius's letters, as you requested, the ones he wrote to us, and some others that we had in our possession. They are enclosed herewith.
You will be able to derive a great deal of benefit from them, for they tell you all about faith and perseverance and all the ways of self-improvement that involve our Lord." As I have mentioned, another 2nd century bishop and writer, Irenaeus, was a personal student of Polycarp. He testified that the church of his day—circa 180—was still holding to the same gospel as that known by Polycarp. He was in communication with the church in Smyrna, and he had personally visited the church in Rome.
He quoted approvingly from one of the works of Justin Martyr, evidencing the fact that Justin's gospel was no different than that of Irenaeus in France or that of the church in Smyrna. In short, neither history nor common sense nor Scripture supports the conjecture that the entire church went apostate shortly after the apostles died. Next subheading: Were there other groups? But maybe the entire church didn't become apostate, some have conjectured.
Maybe there were some other groups in the 2nd century about whom we don't know, but who believed like we do today. What would make a person speculate about something for which there is no evidence? It's because they instinctively realize that apostolic Christianity could not have simply vanished into thin air within a few decades after the apostles died. They realize they must find a historic link.
Yet their mind is closed to the possibility that apostolic Christianity might have been different from their Christianity. There is essentially no room to speculate about the existence of 2nd century splinter groups that held to beliefs just like all of those commonly taught today. That's because about a third of the early Christian works pertain to the heresies of their day.
One of them is even entitled "The Refutation of All Heresies." So we know the teachings of the groups that were not part of the main body of believers. In addition, in those days, Christians neither persecuted heretics nor ordered their books to be burned. Therefore, a fairly large amount of heretical writings from the 2nd and 3rd century have survived to our day. The most famous example is the collection of Gnostic writings found near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
So we know what the early heretics taught from their own writings. And I'm quite certain that few Christians today would want to claim any of those groups as their ancestors. In summary, there simply is no historic primitive church other than the one we have been talking about. So where does this leave us? It leaves us with a hard choice that few of us want to face.