Welcome to another episode of Engage the Faith. My name is Zach Johnson. I'm a colleague of Clark Ray. We both work at Sattler College. Clark and his wife are actually having a funeral for one of their an unborn child that passed away at 21 weeks. So you can say your prayers for Clark this week and all of that. But I just wanted to also take some time to introduce David. David, it looks like you know everybody here on the call. But do you want to introduce yourself?
I have a note just to ask you, what's the most recent book you authored? Well, the most recent was the Matthew commentary. It covers the first 13 chapters of Matthew. Right now, I'm working on an early Christian commentary on Romans, how Romans was understood before Augustine and Luther. And I started last September and it has proved to be a gigantic project. But I do see the light at the end of the tunnel. And hopefully it will be a useful resource for the kingdom. Great, thank you.
And just thank you for joining us and all your work you do with Scroll Publishing as well. And so today, we're just going to this is called an Ask David Anything session, where we'll be asking questions that you submitted online. We have a list that we compiled here. And then as well as a couple of questions that we didn't get to in the last session, and anybody who is in the audience, if you have any questions as they come up, feel free to chat them to me. My name is Zach. You can find me in the Zoom.
And we'll sort of log those. And if we have time, we can get to those during the session or afterwards. So David, are you ready to get started? I am ready, yes. Great. So I have a couple questions from last time I'll ask you, and then we can hop into some new ones. So I have a question from Alan Barrientos. All right, I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name. It sounds right. So what does it mean in the apocrypha that alms maketh an atonement for sins?
I believe some early church fathers mentioned talk about this. OK, this is a good question. In fact, all of these, when I went through them, I think yesterday morning I got them. And I thought, these are all really thoughtful questions. Some of them are topics I might prefer to avoid. But I think part of this forum is, okay, we talk about whatever.
So this is a question on alms that I'm surprised I haven't been asked more often because anyone who reads the early Christians, you see right away, they talk a lot about alms and they quote from, I think he was quoting maybe from Sirach and Tobit has a lot to say on it and that sort of thing. Alan, I assume, and most of you hear as you have listened to my CDs about the Septuagint and the Apocrypha. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on that.
The books that are called Apocrypha, these were just books that were part of the canon of the Septuagint that had been there long before Christ. And that, as far as I knew, the Jews accepted as canonical until the end of the first century. And then the rabbis decided to get rid of the Septuagint because so many of the Messianic prophecies are much more clear in the Septuagint than they are in the Masoretic text. In fact, a lot of them don't appear in the Masoretic text. They only appear in the Septuagint.
So they dumped the Septuagint, even though it was a Jewish Bible, not a Christian Bible, but Christians had adopted it as their Bible. And they limited the canon then to what we know as the Protestant canon today. So these books all got dropped out in the Jewish canon, but Christians continued to use them and they quote for them quite often.
And when you had some early councils, this would have been after the time of Constantine, the first councils that decided the question of the canon, these books were all included in the Old Testament canon. There was no dissension on that that I'm aware of. The Council of Carthage is the one I have in mind, which would have been dealing just with the Western churches, not the Eastern ones.
So the fact that these then were part of the canon, Jerome didn't like him because he's the one who, in his Latin Vulgate, went back to the Masoretic text and dumped the Septuagint. And then, of course, he had all these books that didn't fit. He had to include them because they were part of the canon. But he gave them the name Apocrypha, which only means hidden, but it was meant sort of as a pejorative term. But they were part of the canon until Luther.
And of course, the thing that set off the Reformation was the selling of indulgences. And he saw legitimately there was a huge problem with what had developed in the Roman Catholic Church of people committing all kinds of sins. And then, oh, I go out and I buy an indulgence. I give alms and I get a freedom from purgatory, or at least an indulgence for a certain period of time from purgatory. And it became a very mechanical thing. And so it was an abuse.
Unfortunately, Luther's cure was worse than the problem because his cure was, let's just dump all of those books of the Apocrypha. I think many of them he wouldn't have minded that they were very useful like Maccabees. But it was hard to just pick and choose. It was easier just saying none of these are in the Hebrew canon. Just dump them all because he wanted to get rid of Sirach and he wanted to get rid of Tobit. Those were the two ones that he didn't like. So we have all grown up.
I assume none of you grew up Roman Catholic. If you did, then it's different for you. But I know myself and most of you, we grew up never reading these books. They were the apocrypha. They were something I was told the Roman Catholic Church added. And so then when we come across these teachings in Tobit or Sirach, it's kind of shocking. Alms make atonement for sin. Huh, we've never heard that. That can't be right. And yet the early Christians quote it all the time. None of them had any issue with it whatsoever.
So yeah, let's maybe analyze the problem. Like I say, it developed because of Luther's overreaction. And then of course theologically he overreacted by saying we're saved by faith alone. Nothing we do has any effect in our salvation. So certainly giving alms will in no way do anything for you. I mean it's a good work. It's fine. You know, you should do it, but it will not in any way affect your salvation. And I think we would all understand you can't buy your salvation with alms or with any kind of works.
You can't earn it. But now I'm going to give you a quote and see what you think of this. Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness. Foolish ones. Did he not who did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But rather give alms of such things as you have, then indeed all things are clean to you. Raise your hand if you're familiar with that quote. Okay, I see some hands there. I'll give you an A+ on that.
If you'd asked me, I don't know, maybe even 10 years ago, I might have said, I don't think I've ever heard that before. Who said that? You know, well, of course, that was Jesus. I think the context makes that clear. That's from Luke 11:39 through 41. And Jesus says, give alms of such things as you have, then indeed all things are clean to you. That's Jesus saying that. This isn't Sirach or Tobit or whomever. This is Jesus Christ Himself. Now that's not a verse you hear quoted hardly ever.
I've never heard a sermon on it to my knowledge. If you were going to rank the statements of Jesus by familiarity on a scale of one to 10, John 3:16 would be a 10. Everyone's heard that. This one wouldn't even be a one. It'd be a zero, maybe a minus 10. I mean, very few Christians have ever heard this. Or if they've heard it red, it would have just been brushed over and so that it would never sink in anyone's mind. So obviously Jesus says there is something to giving alms.
And that's why when he gave his instruction on the sermon on the mount, he didn't say if you give alms. He said when you give alms to do it in secret. And he said the same thing about fasting. And I see that in the literature is that fasting and giving alms of course are both things we should do as part of our regular Christian life, but they were also special things we should do to demonstrate repentance.
When we want to humble ourselves before God to exhibit repentance, fast, of course it needs to be in the heart. But in addition to the heart, fasting was an external demonstration of this and giving alms was as well. So yeah, I think we should recognize that Luther has given us all this negative view of alms. In fact, usually in our circles, we don't even use that word alms. It has a bad connotation. Well, there's nothing wrong with alms. Obviously, Jesus's blood is what atone for our sins.
And so it's not talking there, if that's from Sirach, in the sense of, oh, without Jesus's blood, we could somehow obtain the Atonement through alms. It doesn't mean that. It is a way to express sorrow for your sins, to demonstrate your repentance before God is what it's saying. And it's a real thing. Like you say, Jesus Himself says that. So it's more we need to change our thinking than that there's something wrong with what it says. Now, all of this, we can never forget 1 Corinthians 13:3.
Paul says, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. And that's what was wrong with the Roman Catholic system. Just giving alms in order to get some benefit in return, to buy your way into heaven, to shorten your period of time in purgatory under Roman Catholic teaching. That's a total waste. Either you love people, you want to help the poor. And so you are doing that. That is your primary motive for doing it.
But you might do more than what you normally do as a way to express repentance to give maybe more sacrificially than what you would on a regular basis, whatever. And I think that's a legitimate thing. Okay. Maybe we can go to Mark's question next. Yeah, thanks, David. The next question is from Mark Zair. And he said, I've often wondered about this verse, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil. That's from Ephesians 4:26 and through 27.
He's asking, is Paul saying this in satire? Is there some kind of righteous anger that we should have? Do the early Christians shed any light on this? Okay, excellent question that probably all of us have wondered about many times in our life. The early Christians talk about this some. I mean, it's not a central verse that is quoted all the time. But there are a number of writers who talk about it. The first thing that I noticed, now the Greek there is in the imperative.
And so we would think of this that Paul is giving a command to be angry. None of them are understanding it that way. And to me, it's one of the values of the early Christian writings. We get to see how people who spoke Greek as their native tongue, spoke coiné Greek as their native tongue. They didn't study it in school as a second language. It was everyday language to them. And so since it is the language of the street, it's not some classical language, classical Greek with a lot of fixed rules.
There is a lot of feel of what something means. Is that way in American English, and I'm sure British English or Australian English, whatever, that somebody 2,000 years from now trying to understand written, something written in English by one of us could easily misunderstand it because we don't say everything exactly the way it would literally mean or appear. So none of them took this as a command to be angry, like Paul is telling us to do that.
They are all understanding it as when you get angry, if you get angry, then do not sin. The do not sin is the imperative. And maybe to make it consistent in the Greek, you put them both as imperative. You know, I'm not a Greek scholar. But yeah, that's their understanding. And something I had forgotten, these aren't really Paul's words. He's quoting from Psalm 4:4. So he's just pulling him in a quote from the Old Testament, which he does so much in his writing and quoting it as a proverb, as something to remember.
So this is their takeaway from it. Anger is used in a couple of ways in the scriptures. One, there's the sense in which everyone gets, well, there's the righteous anger of God, but we're not going to worry about that. I'm not sure to what extent we are entitled to righteous anger. So none of them interpreted it that way. But there's the anger that we all have as fallen humans of being provoked or irked when somebody does something wrong to us, or we think we've been wronged, that we're going to be annoyed at it.
We're going to have that kind of anger. It's maybe something would be good not to even have that, but Paul is not assuming our God, who this is from, assuming that we would ever reach that level. Now there's a second kind of anger that the scriptures say we are not, you know, to put all anger away from us. And that's the anger of being furious to being really upset, enraged, that kind of thing. That's always sin. We're never entitled to give way to rage and lose our temper or something like that.
We might be justified in being provoked when we're wronged. It's a reaction God has built into us. But Paul is saying, okay, fine. Yeah, get angry. Somebody has done you wrong, but do not sin. And then he goes on and he says, don't let the sun sit down on your anger. So we are also commanded to forgive. So someone wrongs us. Yeah, it's human. We're going to be provoked. Hey, we've been wrong. We're going to have a sense of indignation over that. But Paul says, hey, take care of it.
Don't let it last more than a few hours. I mean, get it out of your system. Forgive before the sun goes down. So in other words, Chrysostom uses the illustration of a physician who tells a patient what to do, you know, such and such. But then the patient, yeah, is going to have trouble doing that, you know, you know, stay in bed, whatever. And then he comes back and says, okay, and take this medicine as well, knowing, okay, the patient is not going to follow the first one perfectly.
He might try, but it's going to be difficult. And so he backs up. He doesn't just, okay, if you don't do what I say, I'm through with you. No, he comes back patiently and says, all right, I know, I know you're going to get provoked. You're going to have that kind of anger. But take care of it before the sun sets. In other words, within a few hours, forgive and be done with it. Don't let it go to the next day. And certainly don't let it turn into rage. So that's their wisdom. It's not mine.
It was a very good question, Mark. Thanks, David. Well, so those were the questions from the last session. And now we'll be moving into some questions from the new session. And I'm just going to start right from the order that they came in, and we can work our way through them. So we have a question from Brett Schrock, and he asks, was the early church government style like today's conference, fellowship, or unaffiliated or independent, or none of the above? If so, explain sort of an open-ended question there.
Yeah, no, an excellent question. Of course, in the New Testament, everything isn't crystal clear. People who say, you know, our church goes just by the New Testament, nothing else. And there are a number of churches who do that, and yet they end up with different kinds of church government. So I don't know that it's crystal clear in the New Testament.
What I see, or at least my interpretation would be, once things were settled, let's say during the time of Paul's ministry, you know of course, it started off with just the apostles. There was no church government beyond the 12. But then you know they started, you know they appointed the seven to wait on tables, and then I'm sure it grew from there. But normally, what we see is you have one level, that's the apostles. There was the 12.
And then there was Paul, who was not one of the 12, but he had authority, I would say, pretty much the same level as the 12. And then you had apostolic men like Timothy and Titus, Barnabas, who did the work of an apostle. They weren't quite at the same level as the 12 or even Paul, but they did have oversight over churches. So you had that one level of apostles and apostolic men. And then in the local church, you had a body of bishops or a body of elders. It seems to be plural in the New Testament period.
And then you had deacons. So I see those three levels in the New Testament. I'm not being dogmatic. That's just how it comes across to me. All right. By the year 100, the last of the apostles have died. And probably the apostolic men, if they survived a little beyond that, it wasn't for very long. So you now have a different situation. You don't have that third level. So what did come in, some people say, well, this is a corruption that came in the church.
And my personal view is, no, this is something John set up, the Apostle John, to replace that third tier that had always been there. And so what you start seeing, and why I say John, is that you see this model first in the churches where John had his ministry in the final years of his life, like in Ephesus, Asia Minor, that area. That's where you see the model of a bishop over a city. And then elders in that city, I assume different elders would be over different congregations.
Maybe a congregation would have a body of elders. And then you had deacons. Again, each congregation would have some deacons in it. The bishop then gave a central figure in the city who could speak for the city, who could help coordinate everything. So you could talk about the church in Ephesus, and it wasn't just a conglomeration that had no connection. They were centrally connected to one another, not just as brothers and sisters, but through a bishop who was speaking. But this didn't happen universally.
I say most church historians think maybe it became universal around the year 150, 160, something like that. Why we might have objection is we know that later on, the bishops became way overly exalted. And then next thing you have archbishops and you have patriarchs, popes, you know that whole thing. But because something ends up, people overreact and go too far, doesn't mean that the initial thing that there was anything wrong with it.
Because even today, when there's a group of churches and they have any kind of degree of unity, there usually is some third kind of level in addition to the local elders and deacons. But be that what it made. So the question was, yeah, what do you see in the Early Church? That's what you see. It doesn't fit any of the Mennonite models that you've named exactly because the big difference is it was one church. It wasn't a group of churches here and there, a bunch of fragmented churches. You didn't go to a city.
And if you wanted to speak to the Christians, you would have a bunch of different churches who didn't answer to each other, who maybe didn't even recognize each other's discipline. That did not exist in the pre-Nicene church. You start getting some systems in the third century, like the Novatianists. But altogether, it's a unified body. I'm not talking about the heretics, of course.
So again, locally, if it was a city with more than one congregation, you have a bishop in the city who may or may not have very much authority. I think his authority depended a lot on his own abilities, gifts, and that sort of thing. You had elders in that city and you had deacons, and they together made up the church authority underneath them. It wasn't democratic, but the people did select when a bishop died, it was the people who selected his replacement.
He was not appointed by other churches or anything like that. It was the people in that city who selected and ordained the next bishop. Now, when he was ordained, bishops would come from neighboring churches to be present to show that the church was one. This wasn't an independent church in Carthage or something. It was part of one body. So it was wonderful. Unfortunately, there is no way possible outside of a miracle of having that today.
In every city, you have a conglomeration of churches who don't answer to each other. Even if you narrow it down to kingdom Christians or to Anabaptists, whatever, you still have the same situation. We may cooperate in certain levels, but there isn't that, since it's one church body in that city, unless we're real small and we don't acknowledge anyone else. And so this is what has happened. All kinds of little groups or sets form, and they say, we are the one true church, and there is no other church.
So yeah, we're united. We're just like they were in the beginning. And I reject that as just playing games. It's not. We are unfortunately divided. And so in the local church, our local church here, we have a group of elders who exercise governance in the church. Most major decisions are made in a meeting with the heads of the households. And right now, we don't have any deacons just because of our size, but we will as time progresses. Right now, the elders are taking care of those functions as well.
The congregation actually asked they wanted one person they could think of or point to as this is the head elder, this is the bishop, something like that. So because the brothers asked for that, the elder said, sure, if that's what people want. And so Kevin Breckville was, I think, kind of our unanimous opinion on that. And so he serves as head elder. He didn't want to take on the title Bishop. So that's what we do here.
But I'm just saying in trying to apply, we can't recreate it today because we don't have one single unified church. So whatever we do, we're having to do somewhat makeshift. I think we should try to at least follow what we see in the New Testament as closely as we can. Great. That's the best I can do with that one. Yeah, thanks. Well, we'll keep going here. So Hadasabi asks a question.
Is there evidence that the early church thought part of the purpose of the head covering was to cover the woman's glory, referring to her hair? What was the practice of the early church? Did they consider uncovered hair to be immodest? Okay. Again, another excellent question. I was glad I had time. I knew there were quotes I remember reading and I had time to be able to pull them before this session so I could read them. Now, I know the Anabaptists, you hear it all the time.
You know Paul says a woman's hair is her glory. And the common saying in our circles is, and so she should cover her glory. You don't hear that expression among the early Christians, but the intent behind that is definitely there. It was an issue, not just of what Paul said about praying and prophesying. That was one reason for the head covering. But another very big reason was modesty that they did view it as immodest for a woman to have an uncovered head out in public. And it's my understanding.
This is still the view of the Orthodox Jews today that at least a married woman always covers her hair, either with a scarf or what has become, I don't know if it's a 20th century innovation. Some Jewish women wear a wig over their hair. It seems somewhat self-defeating, but I don't want to comment on what the Jews do. But at least they still respect the ancient standards of modesty. I will say that. So that was the thought. Here's some quotes. This is in Hermas. He's just describing this.
If you've read Hermas, it's like an allegory. You have these different figures who appear in it. And he says, " A virgin meets me, adorned as if she were proceeding from the bridal chamber. She was clothed entirely in white and wore white sandals. She was veiled up to her forehead and her head was covered by a hood. So in some of the Eastern Christians, you see this, that they wore a face veil that we associate mainly with Muslims today, but that was actually a practice of the Arabs before Muhammad.
He's not the one who introduced that. But I noticed in that I don't know if, again, that it was common to always wear a face veil. You don't see any pictures in Rome in the catacombs of that. I think it was more in the Mid East. But he mentioned she wore a hood over her head. So she covered her head entirely. The pictures we have of head coverings in the catacombs tend to be a fairly large covering. Now, these next two quotes, one is from Clement of Alexandria and one is from Tertullian. And Clement says this.
And this is interesting. He says it's been commanded, and it's maybe how they were understanding the Scripture. He says, " It has also been commanded that the head should be veiled and the face covered. " Again, certainly the New Testament doesn't command the face to be covered. Now, they may have read Paul's words about veiling to include that, which I thought was interesting. It's not something I'm promoting. Don't misunderstand me.
Anyway, he continues on, " For it is a wicked thing for beauty to be a snare to men, nor is it appropriate for a woman to desire to make herself conspicuous by using a purple veil. " So again, there was a matter of modesty and veiling. It wasn't just the sign of headship that it was a matter of modesty.
And it's why women until you get into the 19th century that women in Europe and any of the Christian countries normally covered their heads in public, not necessarily in the home for modesty's sake, but anytime they were in public. And then we see that in all kinds of cultures around the world that are not Christian. Muslim, you see it in a lot of Hindu practices. African tribal women often cover their head. There seems to be an innate sense built into humans of covering for modesty a woman's head.
And then one more Tertullian says this, and this is in his essay or letter about the veiling in 1 Corinthians 13. So his subject is 1 Corinthians 13, what Paul says about veiling. And the virgins were not veiling. They were saying, " Since I'm a virgin, I don't have to veil because Paul says women. " And that word there in Greek could either mean a married woman or it could mean a female. And Tertullian is arguing it means a female, not just a married woman.
He says, " Why do you uncover before God what you cover before men? Will you be more modest in public than in the church? " I thought that was interesting. He's saying, in other words, these virgins who when they got in the church building, then they would remove their veil. Daddy's saying, " You're more modest in public.
" In other words, they were wearing it in public, not necessarily because of a command, just out of a sense of modesty that when they went outdoors, they would cover their head with some kind of veil or scarf. And then in the church, the virgins, not the women, but the virgins were saying we don't have to cover in the church. That wasn't a widespread argument.
I don't know how many people, how many churches the virgins didn't, whatever, it didn't last because after a while, it seems to be universal that all women covered their heads in the church anytime they were praying and also out in public. So in answer to your question, yes, it wasn't just the headship issue. It was also a matter of modesty was one of the reasons for the covering. Great. Thanks for that conclusive, conclusive summary right there at the end.
And then Mark Derek asks a question, and I'm reading these as verbatim as possible here. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Is it correct that the name Jesus, that's in quotation marks, only starts to appear in Bibles after the 1610 King James Version. And if it is a construct of Greek, Latin or English, should we be using it or be faithful to the Hebrew name, if indeed we know the correct Hebrew name? Okay, thank you for the question mark. I'm sorry, the question comma, Mark.
I've been asked this before, and it's been a growing thing today that we should say Yeshua, not Jesus, or something like that. So yeah, let me clear up some of the things you say that you had heard that it only began to appear in the 1611 King James. Okay, that is false. The English Bible I consult the most when I'm working on my commentary is the Wycliffe Bible. I tend to find it is more faithful to how the early Christians are understanding the text. And no, you find Jesus in the Wycliffe.
You find it in the Tyndale. You find it in all the Bibles before the King James. That was not something that started with King James. So whoever's putting that out is putting out false information. But beyond that, as to when it started in English, the fact is the Bible was given to us in Greek. Now, there are a few instances in our Greek New Testaments where the writer will use an Aramaic or Hebrew word, like Maranatha or Abba, or something like that.
So when they want to insert Aramaic, they can, and they felt free to do that at certain times. And yet they never insert it for the name of Jesus. It is always the Greek, which in Greek, and I'll butcher this, Easus, something like that. In Spanish, it's Jesus, very similar to the Greek and the Latin. So what is a recent innovation is this idea that we should go back and use Jesus ' Hebrew name when God purposely had the New Testament written in Greek. He wanted it in the language of the people.
And then when it went to other languages, however they formed the name Jesus in their native tongue is how it was. So it was a little different in Latin. Maybe the Aramaic Christians might have used Yeshua or something like that. I don't know. But they would have used whatever was common in the Aramaic language. And the same with Coptic and so on. I mean, the New Testament began to be translated right away.
I mean, certainly by the second century, the New Testament is available, and maybe the whole Bible in Latin, Aramaic, in a number of other languages. Georgian was a very early one. Coptic was another early one and all of that. And nobody, absolutely no one says, " Oh, we need to go back and find his Hebrew name, " which we don't even know if he went by the Hebrew name, he may have gone by the Aramaic, which would probably be slightly different in pronunciation than the Hebrew.
In fact, it's more likely he would have gone by the Aramaic. But on the other hand, there were a lot of Greek-speaking Jews as well as Greek-speaking Gentiles in Galilee. And so we don't know. In fact, I personally think it's very likely that much of Jesus ' teaching was given in Greek as well as in Aramaic, because he was speaking to people who would have spoken both languages. I mean, one language or the other. When he was speaking before a Pilate, it doesn't mention an interpreter.
And so I would feel quite certain Jesus was speaking to Pilate in Greek. And we know Peter, John, Jesus ' brother, James, that they wrote Greek. We have their letters. So this idea that we should get back to the Hebrew like it is something more holy than the Greek. That is just not the historic faith. That is something very new. It's tied in with dispensationalism. And it's tied in, I think, with the myth that Hebrew is somehow a particularly special holy language. That's how the Pharisees viewed it.
And that's one reason they would not allow themselves for there in Palestine. They would not use the Greek translation. They would not even use the Aramaic. In the synagogue, it was read in Hebrew. Well, at least in the ones that the scribes and Pharisees controlled. And then it would be orally translated into Aramaic so people could understand it. Some Jews understood Hebrew, but not most of them. But yeah, the Pharisees had this idea. It's got to stay in the Hebrew. Well, that wasn't God's idea at all.
In fact, he didn't even complete the Old Testament in Hebrew. Some of the books are written partially in Aramaic. And then, of course, another reason probably why the Pharisees didn't like works like Sirach is because I think it was written in Aramaic, but it was translated in Greek, and the Greek is what we have. So you don't see that with God, that, oh, Hebrew is my special holy language that yeah, he made use of Greek, and yet Greek wasn't his holy language either.
Christians translated the New Testament and all the scriptures as soon as they could into the language of the people. So I think if we're going to be serious about the historic faith, yeah, this new teaching that we should try to use Jesus ' Hebrew name, like there's some significance in that, I can just simply say that's not the historic faith. That is something new that has come in. But thank you for asking the question mark. I do appreciate having that opportunity to discuss it. Great. Thanks again.
And then our next set of questions, some people submitted more than one question. And if they did that, I'm just going to read their first question and then skip to the next question. And if we have time, we'll go back to their second question. So Mark Zert asks the question, " I believe that the church made a very great compromise by joining with the state in Constantine's day. But from Jesus ' teachings, it sounds like his kingdom would continue to expand throughout the world.
So if the whole church, except for a few small groups, became unfaithful, this seems to be contrary to the way he said it would be. Does this mean that God was still working in certain ways through the institutional church, even after Constantine? OK. Again, excellent question. Like I said, when I went over these, I was maybe even half hoping there were a number of bad ones I could maybe throw out or stick at the end that we may not have time to get to. But yeah, everyone, I thought, yeah, this is really good.
I might actually record some CDs this year based on some of these questions because I think they're all so good. My answer to your question is, I think what you are, the conclusion you've come to yourself. And that is, yes, God continued to work within the institutional churches, but he also worked with the Christians outside the institutional churches. In other words, once you got a state church, that was certainly not God's perfect will. It wasn't what he desired.
And it was sin, and it led to all kinds of sin, like embracing war, embracing all kinds of things. Once you lost the two kingdoms, it necessarily meant you were going to compromise a lot of Jesus ' teachings. But that doesn't mean that every single Christian made those compromises. Most Christians were not in the army. Many of them for a long time, like I do read John Chrysostom a lot in the commentaries I'm working on because we have his sermons and they make a nice very early commentary.
But you know he became a Christian after the time of Constantine. So he never even knew a day when there wasn't a state church. So when it comes to the two kingdoms, I don't ever look to Chrysostom because he doesn't fully grasp it because that had already been lost before he came on board. But he's very strong about Christians not taking oaths and the other teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. He doesn't compromise on those. But other people like Augustine, they compromise.
If not personally, they compromise in their teaching. They told others it's okay to persecute, it's okay to go to war and that sort of thing. But yeah, you had a lot of very fine Christians during that time. It means, yeah, they had wrong understandings of certain doctrines. And as you go further and further through the centuries of history, then more new doctrines, false doctrines are added, like the veneration of Mary, eventually the worship of Mary, the worship of icons, lots of things like that.
Trying to get more specific about the incarnation, about the deity of Christ than what the scriptures tell us, not being content to just stay with the language of Scripture, that sort of thing. But again, it doesn't mean every single Christian imbibed those false doctrines, nor does it mean that the ones who did, that any of those were in themselves the unforgivable sin. So no, I see God at work among Christians in the institutional church. I don't know if he guided the institutional church.
My gut feeling would be no. I think he was maybe largely done with it as an institution at that point. But he didn't just abandon all of the people. It's the people who make up the church. The church was never an institution. It was always a body of people. And so likewise, he was working in these other groups that the institutional church would have unchurched the Novatianists and the Montanists and those groups, the Donatists. And no, God was at work in those churches, but none of them were perfect churches.
The same with the Nestorians who were given that name, they weren't Nestorians. The Church of the East is what they're known by today and what they've always called themselves, and it's the most accurate designation. So God was at work anywhere where there were people who loved him, who gave their life to Christ, and who were serious about walking with Christ. And those people were within the institutional church, and they were also in groups that had left the institutional church. And I think he worked with both.
Now, eventually, you had large numbers after the Reformation, then you had large numbers outside of the institutional church. And I think that is primarily the direction where God is overseeing things. But I don't think He's abandoned. I don't think because somebody is Catholic or Orthodox that they're automatically outside of God's kingdom and that sort of thing.
So yeah, the growth that Jesus talked about, as you've aptly noticed, the implication when you see the parable of the mustard seed and the woman who hid the leaven in a batch of dough, is that Christ's teachings were going to expand and fill the earth. And we've seen that has happened. There's probably no place, well, I know there is no place on earth where the name of Jesus has never reached. There are places where it has to be kept secret like in North Korea, but it has reached there. I mean, it is there.
There are Christians in North Korea today and everywhere else. So his prophecy has been fulfilled. But again, it doesn't mean saying that, yeah, those people are Christians, that they have acknowledged Christ. It doesn't necessarily say that they are going to permanently stay on the vine, that we will see them inheriting eternal life. That I don't know. I just think we need to guard against this exclusivity. We are the One true Church. And I know you definitely aren't saying that. You're saying the opposite mark.
So I appreciate that. No, I think it's been fulfilled through everybody who has faithfully walked with Christ, no matter what label is put on them. And it is those people who have filled the entire earth. Great, thanks. And then we're going to go ahead to a question from Casey Burns, and I'm smiling at this question, David, because we've had a dialogue about this. I'm having trouble understanding how to apply Jesus ' command not to take oaths in our present day.
When Jesus commands us not to take oaths, he specifically references taking an oath by something, such as by heaven or by one's head. James's command not to swear is similar. Before a person signs an affidavit, a notary often will ask the person making the affidavit to solemnly swear that the statements to be made are true and correct under the penalty of perjury. But the swearing is not by anything, though. It does acknowledge criminal liability for false swearing.
Does such a statement violate Jesus ' command not to take oaths by something in parentheses there? When somebody takes an oath of office or a military oath that clearly seems to violate Jesus ' command, other than those example, what constitutes an oath or swearing in American society? Is an affirmation any different and unacceptable? How is an oath or swearing distinguished from a promise? For example, signing a contract promising to perform something or signing a promissory note promising to repay a debt. Okay.
Yeah, excellent question. In fact, I had planned since last fall to do a CD this year on what the early Christians believed on swearing. I wasn't sure in the past if I had enough material that I could fill up a whole CD is the only reason I've never done one on that subject. So I'm glad you asked because it tells me that that's still floating out there. Yeah, Zach and I had to laugh because he actually preached on this topic in our church. And you can find it online. It's our church.
The YouTube is called Sound Faith. And yeah, just do a search there. You'll find Zach Johnson. And he gave an excellent message on it. I'm going to be scrambling to have enough new material that he hasn't already covered when I do a CD. I'll probably be more focusing on what the early church had to say. So back to your question. Okay, so we know it's wrong to swear. I don't understand everything about it. In fact, even you know the definitions will say that you are calling in the sacred name or something like that.
Yeah, but Jesus said, " Don't swear by the hair of your head. " And I think the reason for the prohibition on that, I was reading Philo, the Jewish writer who was a contemporary of Jesus. And he and other Jews, and certainly the early Christians, understood the, is it the first commandment, thou shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain? To be talking about swearing, not the kind of cursing, like we think of it as cursing.
And yes, that would be using God's name in vain, but they thought of it more as taking an oath in God's name that you have no right to invoke God because he isn't necessarily going to back up what you're saying, even if you think you're telling the truth. I mean, this happens all the time in courtrooms, that people swear that they're telling the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And they are not intentionally lying, but they give very false, incorrect information because they are mistaken.
I mean, it happens all the time, misidentifying somebody as being the criminal because he looked like somebody else, or yeah, your memory is faulty, that sort of thing. So that's one reason we don't bring God into it. And the other is it implies we have two standards of honesty. Oh, yeah, I'll lie like anything to you, but oh, if I take an oath, well, then you can believe me. No, a Christian, when we say something, people should be able to believe that. Now, what about affirm? And Zach and I had a good discussion.
We're on the same page on it. So that came in thanks to the Quakers because they refused to swear oath. And the Anabaptists did as well. But because since America, our heritage comes through England and the Quakers were in England, the Mennonites weren't, we get it through the Quakers. So they would refuse, but they would affirm. Affirm means the same thing as Confirm. In other words, someone says, " Are you telling the truth? " Yes. I verify I'm telling the truth. I confirm, yes, I'm not lying.
Yes, I'm telling the truth. You're not calling in anyone else. You're saying, yeah, I affirm. I confirm that what I say is true. That is not forbidden. I mean, Paul does that a couple times in his letter, his various letters. So you know that is not forbidden in Scripture. I mean, if somebody, if it does violate their conscience, then that's fine. I mean, you know they should follow their conscience.
Now, Zach made the point in his message to our church that just because we're affirming to something, it doesn't mean that that is something we should affirm. I mean, if we are taking an oath in the sense of a vow, this may be, you know, like I'm swearing allegiance to the United States. Well, the fact that you affirm instead of swear, yeah, you still shouldn't necessarily be doing that if you're not able to get the language changed in the affirmation. So just because you're affirming doesn't mean that it's okay.
You got to look at what it is you're saying. But normally, you sign your name to a deed, a will, the notary says, yeah, here in Pennsylvania anyway, do you affirm that that is your signature? Yes, I do. That's my signature. That's all you're saying. And I see your point if it says you swear that it is, and you don't call in God or anything else. Personally, I'd like to, if the scripture says something, let's just do what it says. In my mind, I could say, " Well, it doesn't mean anything here.
" I would say, " No, I'm not gonna use the word swear. " Thankfully, in most states now, like say in Pennsylvania, you usually say swear or affirm, and you can just cross off the word swear. In other places, in Texas, now in Texas, it's usually that way. But when I first started practicing law, and when I came to these convictions, I would just cross off the word swear and write in the word affirm.
And when I was before the notary, I would say I affirm it's my signature just to make sure it wouldn't be misunderstood that I was swearing. And now the good news, and when you point this out, a lot of legal documents that I have seen lately, it doesn't say a swear or affirm. It just says, " Under the penalties of perjury, I state that what I'm saying is true, " something like that. What I am saying is true. And I'm glad we're going that way. So now you're taking out everything.
They're just saying, they're assuming you probably don't believe in God, and it probably doesn't violate your conscience to swear falsely, but we're going to put you in jail if you're lying. You can lie other places, and maybe it's a sin, but it's not against the law. But if you lie on this document or in this situation, you're going to go to jail for it. So yeah, this is now Caesar's law. He's going to put a penalty on it. And I don't have any problem.
Yeah, since I'm going to say the truth, no matter whether I go to jail or not, I mean, I certainly would have no issue with that. And like I say, that seems to be the direction everything is headed just because a lot of atheists have brought up objections to swearing and using the Bible and all that. So that works to our benefit as kingdom Christians, not usually the things atheists do are not things that we support or approve.
In this case, I don't approve of their reason behind it, but like you say, it is going to make it where a lot of people won't be violating the teachings of Christ inadvertently because their church doesn't uphold what he says. Great. Thanks, David. And then the next set of questions are from Sean Tanner. His first question there is, what did the early church believe about the story in John about the adulterous woman who Jesus said, " Go and sin no more. " Did they believe this was a legitimate story? Okay.
And this gets more back to the question of the textual criticism. It's an excellent question. Very good question. I was curious myself when I started reading the early Christians the first time. I was curious, will I find that among the early Christians? I also wondered if I would find the ending of the Lord's Prayer for thine is the... Well, I know it when I say the Lord's Prayer. How does it go? Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Forever. Yeah, would I find that in there?
And the answer is you see both and or either/or, I should say. So these variations, like the story of the adulterous woman, those were in the Bible text before the year 200. Almost all of the major textual questions were around before the year 200 in both forms, in both forms. So like when Tertullian discusses the Lord's prayer, he doesn't know anything about for thine is the kingdom, the glory, the power forever. But then other ones, like in the Didache, it appears there. So those two forms were out very early.
The same with the adulterous woman. Some of them talk about her and others don't. Of course, silence doesn't necessarily prove anything, but we pretty well know that there were different textual types out you know by the year 200. And there's some pretty significant, what should I say? Not doctrines missing. I mean, you could use either one and you would still have the full kingdom gospel to the best of my knowledge.
But there are some passages, some of them lengthy, like the story of the adulterous woman, that are missing from many very ancient Bible manuscripts or how they are quoted by the early Christians. So that's all I can tell you, that we don't have anything definitive, but that account or story was there very early, but it wasn't in all of the manuscripts. So it may be a true story that somebody added just because it was true.
And so in other words, we may use it perfectly legitimately, or it may be a pious story that somebody invented. I would lean towards that it is scripture, or if somehow it's not, that it's something true that was written in there and maybe even written in there with God's permission. I myself prefer the majority text. I know I've got everything that way. Now, it's possible there may be some things that weren't in the original version the way, say, Matthew or John wrote it.
And maybe they were put in later and, like I say, accurately, but they weren't in the original way John or Matthew or somebody else wrote it. I don't know the answer. I would rather know I don't have anything missing from my Bible because none of these things, even if that wasn't a true story, it hasn't taught anything wrong. I mean, Jesus says, " Go and sin no more. " I mean, that is his message. He forgives, but he says, " Sin no more. " So I like the account, and I personally view it as scripture.
You want me to just do his other one? Do you want to read him, Zach? I'm sorry. Yeah, sure. And then I'm just going to point out it is 2:30 p.m. Eastern time. And then I know that these usually end right now, but do you have time for a few more questions, David, for this session? Yeah, let's kick Sean's his next two to the next time. Boaz, we won't read the whole thing. Just a quick answer. Boaz has translated some of Menno Simons' his work on the doctrines of the church into contemporary Dutch.
It's available in ancient Dutch. And Boaz, who lives in the Netherlands, is translated into Dutch. So he wanted to know if anyone is interested in a Dutch version. And if so, maybe you could get word to the historic faith and they can put you in touch with him, or you may see him in the chat room or something like that. And if you're interested, definitely let him know. I will ask around in the Mennonite world.
There aren't too many, of course, the people called Mennonite in the United States are from Switzerland, not from Holland. And so they don't speak Dutch. What they call Dutch is German. It's not what's spoken in the Netherlands. But I'll ask on that. And then you were asking about some of the quotations from the early church. That is not something I've studied in detail.
When I read Menno Simons 30 years ago, I noticed he sometimes quotes the early church, but I've never gone back and made a list of the quotes, either from him or from other early Anabaptist writers. If you get time to do that sometime, Boaz, that would be, yeah, a work that would be very handy to have. Let's see. Have we already answered one from Sean? I think we have, right? Yeah. Sean has asked several.
So maybe next time we can get back to your other question, Sean, on the second marriage qualifying to be a bishop. And then, Mark, I can very briefly answer yours. It's a very perceptive question. If we receive forgiveness of sins in baptism at the time of our baptism, or even if you want to say in an altar call, it doesn't change it. Does that mean that people in the Old Testament, before any of this was around? Does that mean that their sins weren't forgiven? Or what about the other people in the days of Noah?
What about people today who aren't yet baptized, a child, or somebody who's just coming to Christianity? Does that mean if they sin that their sin isn't forgiven? Excellent question. And the answer is, no, it does not mean that. God forgives sins. And you see all throughout the Old Testament, like David, I mean, it would be the example that most of us would think of, but there's many others that people repent. And God wants us to freely forgive others. So he does forgive our sins.
And it doesn't just happen at baptism. What happens at baptism is all of the sins we've ever committed, assuming you know we're doing it properly, that they are washed away. We are given, we're justified. We're given a new slate, clean slate, saying that we have a righteous standing before God at that moment. All the past is behind us, and we can go forward from there. But when we commit new sins, they aren't pre-forgiven in baptism. We have to ask forgiveness, and God forgives based on our repentance.
Now, all of the forgiveness is made possible through Jesus ' death, through His blood, even the ones before He died. In other words, God could forgive all of those sins. All of it was made possible, the whole arrangement through Christ, but it worked in both directions. So yeah, as you pointed out, yes, a person can have their sins forgiven before they're baptized if they repent and they're truly sorry. It's just that they don't get a whole new clean slate until they become a Christian before and are baptized.
I think that's all. Is that it, Zach? Does that get all of them covered? Yeah, I think we covered most of the questions. And we'll post a few to the next session here. But I just wanted to thank you again for your time here, David. I know all of us learn something every time from listening to you speak. So I know the audience members will probably echo that. So maybe we can give a little Zoom Zoom snap or however we want to thank you. Thanks, David.
And then the team at the Historic Faith wanted me to mention a few things here is that there's a new course on the historic faith by Chuck Pike about the Holy Spirit. Make sure to check that out. And I know David is also making a course or somebody's making a course on the gospel according to Matthew. And there's some giveaways going on. So make sure to stay up to date there. David, are there any other announcements that you wanted to share with the audience? No, I think you've covered it.
Like you say, I've been recording sessions on Matthew, just hitting some of the highlights from the commentary that you might have missed, or maybe you haven't got to yet, or if you don't have the commentary, yeah, you might, from listening to it, learn a number of things. We've recorded all, we have one more session to do, and then they'll all be recorded. That'll probably be done sometime this month. And so they will all be up there. And then we'll have to decide next year what additional course that I'll do.
But as you mentioned, Chuck and others do courses as well. Great. Perfect. And then just wanted to thank, personally, I want to thank the team behind the scenes, Clark Ray and his team. They do a lot of work to make this platform possible. I know that I just wanted to thank them. And then thank everyone for joining us today. If you have any questions or anything at all, I know you can get a hold of us through the platform. So we'll be hearing more from you on there and have a wonderful rest of your day.
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