Good evening. This evening's discussion is episode three of the series, " How to Arrive at Truth Through Critical Thinking. " This evening, we're going to be looking at some common fallacies that prevent us from thinking critically and honestly. Now, although we'll be looking at maybe two or three different fallacies this evening, the main one we're going to be focusing on is a fallacy called presentism. Well, what is presentism?
Well, Webster's dictionary defines it as an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences. In other words, it's looking at the past through glasses of today. And in today's world, it's become a huge problem in the sociopolitical realm. It's what has prompted this sudden change where we used to look at heroes of the past like George Washington as you know these tremendous people. We were aware they had faults, and we knew that they lived in a society different from our own.
And we read that into that. But today, people look at it like, " Well, wait a minute. George Washington had slaves. So therefore, that made him a bad person. We shouldn't be upholding him as a hero, you know tear down his statue, " etc. And it's just become a riot almost of attacking people from the past simply because they lived in the past. So presentism encourages modern Christians to be self-congratulatory. In other words, it's not just in the secular realm.
It works the same way, but tonight we are concerned about it in the Christian realm. And presentism means that we look at ourselves like, " Mm-hmm, yeah, we've got everything together. " When we interpret the past in terms of the present, we usually end up concluding that today we are morally and doctrinally superior to the early Christians and to most Christians who lived before us. When it comes to morality and church standards, if the early Christians were stricter than us, then that means they were too strict.
And if we're stricter than the early Christians, in certain matters, well, then they were too lax. It's always, " We're the ones who have it right. We're never the ones in the wrong. It's always the early Christians. " One of the things I wanted to be able to do when I got to the discussion of fallacies was to have some real-life, concrete examples in front of me that I could point to. And tonight, I have that.
The examples we're going to be looking at come from a magazine article in a recent edition of a Christian magazine. Now, the magazine is published by a conservative Mennonite church. I'm not going to mention the name of the magazine as my point isn't to attack the magazine or to ridicule the author or anything like that. Instead, I want to point to the examples of presentism and other fallacies in the article.
And this way, when you've identified them tonight, then when you're reading other articles in other magazines or when you're reading books, listening to sermons, then you'll be able to recognize other examples of presentism. Or we're going to mention, like I say, two or three other fallacies tonight. In some of the future lessons, we'll get into other fallacies.
Now, the article in question is attacking the notion that we can learn anything particularly worthwhile from the early Christians, or that they were in a better position to understand Scripture than we are. And I'm going to be examining several direct quotations from the article. I'll read them and then we'll analyze them. So let's get started. The first one says this, " Christianity has always had a few radicals among its followers.
Since radicalism is nothing new, today's radicals can often find support for their ideas in church history. For instance, most of us would consider the following ideas to be radical and without scriptural foundation. Then he gives list five things. Number one, white is the only consistent color for Christians to wear. Number two, it is not wrong to beat slaves for making mistakes as long as you do not injure them.
Number three, a Christian can continue to serve in the army if he became a Christian while he was in the army. Number four, all cloth should be left in its natural color. Thus, we should not wear clothing that has been dyed. Number five, it is wrong for men to bathe in warm water, to use a mirror, or to comb their hair. Now, just at a glance, I see three fallacies that stand out in the passage that I just read to you. The first one is name-calling.
Name-calling is a fallacy because instead of attacking the substance of what your opponent says, you're pinning a label on it that's going to prejudice people against what that person has to say. Now, here you probably noticed he pinned the label radical. Now, in some Christian circles, radical is not a bad term. In fact, I often talk about radical Christianity, radical kingdom living, something like that. But in a conservative Mennonite setting like that of this magazine, radical would be a bad term.
This is a troublemaker, something like that. So by smearing it with that label, it automatically prejudices the audience of the magazine. The second fallacy I noticed was cherry-picking. We talked about this in the previous two lessons on critical thinking, but it was in the context of cherry-picking favorable verses out of the Scriptures, picking verses that fit your point of view and hiding passages that don't fit your point of view. Well, in this, it was kind of the reverse.
It was cherry-picking negative things that would make the early Christians look foolish at ignoring all of the many magnificent things they say, things that would fit this particular Mennonite group, you don't quote them. You just quote things that look ridiculous. And then three, the big one is the fallacy of presentism, which like you say, we're going to be talking about the most this evening.
So as I said, the author produced five examples to show how ridiculous it would be to take the early Christians seriously. His use of these five examples is just a classic case of presentism. The examples only look foolish because they're being read through modern eyes. They wouldn't have seemed absurd to anyone living in the first or second century. They would have thought, " Okay, maybe I don't agree with that, but what's ridiculous about it? " So let's look at these five points, as I said.
And in each one, I want to point out where the author's error lies. It's not, again, to attack him, but so that you can learn to analyze these kind of things for yourself in the future when you come across things in other articles. Now, we're going to start with his first example, and I'm going to combine it with his example number four because they're actually dealing with very similar issues. And those two points were, number one, white is the only consistent color for Christians to wear.
And number four, all cloth should be left in its natural color. Thus, we should not wear clothing that has been dyed. Now, as I said, if these sound strange to a 21st-century Christian, they didn't sound strange to a first or second-century Christian. So yeah, let's remove our glasses of presentism and look at these to the glasses of the second century when they were spoken. Now, to begin with, I want to make one thing very clear.
The early church never required its members to wear only white, never required its members to wear undyed clothing. We know they wore clothing with different colors. So what this author has done is to cherry-pick a handful of select quotes. In fact, these aren't even quotations. They are summaries of quotations. And these represent the viewpoints of only a few early Christian writers, some of the more, what should I say, austere or conservative writers when it comes to these points?
Now, neither I nor anyone I know has ever suggested that we should follow the views of these two or three writers who express these opinions. Nevertheless, I do want to demonstrate that their views were not absurd. Now, again, they may sound strange to some modern Christians only because these Christians are blinded by presentism. The writers who argued for white clothing were basing their view on a lot of scriptural support. And let me just give you some of the scriptures they would have looked at.
The first one is from Ecclesiastes 9:7 through 8, where it says, " Go. Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart. For God has already accepted your works. Let your garments always be white and let your head lack no oil. Another one, Isaiah 1: 18, " Come now, and let us reason together, " says the Lord. " Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
" So in the Old Testament, white is a symbol of purity or righteousness. So again, fitting for Christians to be clothed in white garments. What about in the New Testament? Well, we find in the New Testament, white is even more a symbol of purity and righteousness. For example, when Jesus was transfigured, his garments, they were probably already white, but they were made of brilliant white. The two angels who appeared at the tomb, they were both clothed in white.
When Jesus ascended to heaven, the angels who were there who spoke to the apostles, they were clothed in white. Revelation 3:5, Jesus said, " He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life. " And he said a similar thing to the church in Sardis and also to the church in Philadelphia, each time mentioning clothing them in white garments. As we go further, the 24 elders around the throne. Guess what? They're clothed in white garments.
The martyrs under the throne. They were given white robes. The great crowd of Revelation 14, what are they wearing? Go check. They're wearing white robes. The armies of heaven in Revelation 19, these are the angels, the archangels, whatever. They're clothed in white garments. Jesus is pictured as riding a white horse. His throne in Revelation 20 is described as a white throne. So everywhere in Scripture, particularly in the New Testament, white is the clothing of righteousness. It symbolizes holiness.
It's the clothing of Jesus, the clothing of the angels, the martyrs, and the faithful in the book of Revelation. So was it absurd for some of the early Christians to suggest that other Christians should clothe themselves in white? Of course not. Now, at the same time, as I said, the early church never made it a law that anyone had to wear white, but it certainly was an appropriate color to wear.
Furthermore, two of the most common fabrics worn in the ancient Mediterranean world were wool and cotton, which are both white. And the other common fabric, in fact, almost all clothes except for the rich were either cotton, wool, or linen. And linen is often referred to as white, although it tends to be more of a maybe beige or sand color.
So when the early Christian writers talk about wearing white clothing, they are also usually talking about wearing clothing that is undyed, just in its natural state, the way that God made it. Now, is it absurd to suggest that Christians should wear undyed clothing? I mean, we kingdom Christians don't dye our hair, do we? Rather, we say that we should accept our hair with the color that God has given it. Well, why not accept God's fabrics with the color he's given them?
He gave the world three natural fabrics, and they are white, or in the case of linen, maybe a little beige. Furthermore, in ancient times, you had to pay a lot more if you wanted fabric that was dyed a certain color. So why spend the extra money instead of just wearing it the color that God made it? Again, I'm not arguing for this viewpoint. I'm just saying that it's not something ridiculous. It's not something to laugh at. But again, the church never made it a law that Christians had to wear undyed clothing.
And you've never heard me teach that Christians should wear white or clothing that's undyed because I'm a firm believer in the principle that if something is not a law in the New Testament, then it doesn't become a law just because some of the early Christians espoused it. We can certainly respect their viewpoint, but we shouldn't make it a law binding on other Christians.
Now, the incredible irony is that I said the article that I have been quoting, this appeared in a magazine published by a very conservative Mennonite church. And this church requires its members to drive black cars. It also requires them to wear black hats to church on Sunday. Now, the individual early Christians who argued for white clothing, at least they had strong scriptural reasons for their view. But what possible reason could anyone use to argue that Christians should drive black cars and wear black hats?
If white is the symbol of purity in the Bible, what is black the symbol of? I mean, here there is no scriptural precedent whatsoever. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the men in this particular Mennonite church, they're required on Sundays to wear white shirts to church and black pants.
So the irony that, okay, you're laughing at the early Christians for some of them saying, " Oh, we should dress in white, " which has a biblical basis, but you don't think that it's silly for you to say, " Oh, well, we should drive black cars. " Now, again, I'm not ridiculing this practice, but isn't it rather inconsistent for someone who belongs to a church with these standards to poke fun at an individual early Christian who argued that Christians should wear white clothing or undyed clothing?
Isn't that a double standard? And of course, it's the fruit of presentism, this horrible concept of looking at everything through the eyes of today. What my church requires today is never absurd. But someone who espoused something back in the second century, well, that's ridiculous simply because it's different from what our church practices. You know A person can never hope to see God's truth on any subject as long as he is bound up in the trap of presentism. And that's why I want to talk about it so much tonight.
Okay. Now, his second example was, " It is not wrong to beat slaves for making mistakes as long as you do not injure them. " Now, I'm going to say at the very outset, there's no quotation that I'm aware of in the early Christian writings that says that. Now, you might gather something from their writings that would make you think that it's okay, but I don't think there's a specific quote to that effect. I certainly don't have it in anything in my research. But this is another example of presentism.
We don't live in a society with slaves. So anything involving slavery sounds evil and unjust to us. And it's easy to judge everybody else who lived throughout history almost in every century. Because we have to remember that slavery has existed from the earliest times until just about a century ago when it finally permanently ended or nearly permanently ended.
But presentism makes us imagine that we're morally superior to just about everyone else who has ever lived because either they had slaves or they accepted slavery as something normal. Well, what does the Bible say about slavery? Well, here is what the Old Testament teaches. If we're going to be ridiculing something and I don't think any of us want to ridicule the Bible, Proverbs 26:3 says, " A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the fool's back.
" Now, here it's talking about a slave or a hired servant. People didn't go around and say, " Well, that guy's dumb. Let's take a stick and beat him. " You'd end up in serious trouble for that. But no, it's talking about if you have a foolish slave, the Bible is saying a rod is for his back. Or how about Proverbs 29:19? It says, " A servant will not be corrected by mere words, for though he understands, he will not respond.
" In other words, you're going to have to use a rod on him or he's not going to do what you tell him. That's the Old Testament. So slavery and punishment of disobedient slaves isn't an issue that pertains particularly to the early Christians at all. I mean, it existed in Jesus ' day, and Jesus didn't end slavery. He never spoke against it. In fact, he treated it as an ordinary thing. Many of his parables involve slaves, and he sometimes pictures himself as the master of slaves.
He represents himself as ordering his unprofitable slaves to be beaten. Likewise, some, if not many, of the New Testament Christians were slave owners. And God didn't forbid this. Did the New Testament Christians use corporal punishment against disobedient or dishonest slaves? I think almost certainly they did. I mean, stop and think for a moment. What would an employer today do to an employee who refused to do what he was told to do? Well, today, you would fire him, wouldn't you?
But a master back in the first or second century, he couldn't just fire a slave. I mean, the slave would be happy. Great. Now I'm free. You just fired me. No, if a slave refused to do what he was told, corporal punishment was practically the only thing the master could do to get him to do his job. Now, I realize this sounds ghastly to us because we live in a different society. And presentism tells us to, well, let's judge everyone else based on our modern standards. But that's not fair.
I mean, 300 years from now, if Christ hasn't returned, a lot of things will be different in society than they are today. Do we feel it would be right for people to judge us based on whatever the new norms are 300 years from now? Realism means that we judge people based on the standards of their day and also on the standards of the New Testament. And as I said, the New Testament does not condemn slavery.
I mean, parents back then used corporal punishment against their own children, just like mainly godly parents do today. Now, do we imagine that parents back then used corporal punishment on their children, but oh, they refused to do it against disobedient slaves? I don't think so. At the same time, the New Testament did teach that masters are to deal gently with their slaves and to treat them as brothers and sisters. And we see this attitude reflected in so many of the early Christian writings.
And this went considerably against the culture of their day. So the New Testament really raised the lot of slaves, at least the slaves who were owned by Christians. So here I want to read to you some of the quotes that you'll typically find in the early Christian writings. The first one is from Barnabas. It says, " You will not issue orders with bitterness to your maidservant or your manservant who trust in the same God.
" Another one, " Do not disdain either male or female slaves, yet neither let those slaves be puffed up with pride. " That's from Ignatius. Another one, if any Christian have male or female slaves or children out of love towards them, they persuade them to become Christians. When they've done so, they call them brothers without any distinction. That's from Aristides, one of the earliest Christian apologists we have. Clement of Alexandria said, " A man in health is not to use his servants as horses to carry him.
" Something that the pagans would have done. He also said, " Domestic servants too are to be treated like ourselves, for they are human beings as we are. God is the same to free and slave. " And then Cyprian said, " Servants, when they have believed, should serve their fleshly masters, the better. " In the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, it says, " Servants, obey your fleshly masters with fear and trembling. " Of course, if there was no corporal punishment, why would they fear and tremble?
And Cyprian goes on to say, " Moreover, masters should be the more gentle. " Also, in the same place, it says, " And you masters do the same things to them, forbearing anger. " So what you generally see in the early Christian writings are admonitions to be gentle to slaves, to treat them as fellow brothers and sisters. And this was revolutionary teaching back then. Again, I don't doubt that there was corporal punishment. I know of at least one example where it came up.
But you're not going to find any quotes that encourage Christians to beat their slaves or necessarily any quotes that say it's okay to beat them for mistakes. It's one thing to beat them or punish them if they refuse to do what they're told to do or if they're steal or something like that. But there's nothing that I know of that suggests it was right to use corporal punishment just because a slave maybe made an honest mistake or something like that.
Okay, let's look at the third example that this brother uses to ridicule the early Christians. He says, " A Christian can continue to serve in the army if he became a Christian while he was already in the army. " Now, this is another example of presentism. It is actually an accurate representation of the early Christian view, but it's being looked at through modern eyes.
Now, of course, today, if we witness to somebody and they come to kingdom convictions and they're in the armed forces, we tell them that they need to get out. And of course, today they can do that. They can immediately apply to be discharged as a conscientious objector, and they, by law, will have to be discharged. And we know of a number of people like Dean Taylor who've gone through that and were discharged from the army. But that wasn't the situation back when the early Christians were dealing with this issue.
What they were dealing with was the situation in the Roman army, which was basically hereditary. So if your father was a soldier, then you had to be a soldier as well. It was a hereditary employment. It went from generation to generation to generation. And so you had to serve once you reached the age of majority or whatever age they would enlist you in the army, then you had to serve I believe it was 20 years. I may be mistaken. It may have been longer than that. And then you were finally allowed to retire.
You couldn't say, " I just came to kingdom convictions. I want to apply to get out as a conscientious objector. " No, there was no option to do that. So you either had to not be allowed to become a Christian. The church could have taken that attitude. Sorry, if you're a soldier, boop, you're locked out of the kingdom. That's it. You can never come to Christ. Or you could have been martyred on the spot and say, " I refuse to obey any further orders. I'm going to take off my uniform. I am leaving the army right now.
" And you would have been put to death on the spot. And that's, I guess, what this brother is saying the early Christians should have done. Well, I'm glad to know that they were a little bit more merciful than that. In fact, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Roman soldiers came to Christ and were converted. And the church took a realistic and merciful attitude towards them that I think sets a good example for us.
Of course, they didn't allow them to continue to use the sword and to kill because that would go against Christ's teachings. But what exactly did Jesus teach? He said, if we look at the verses, he said, to love your enemy. He said to turn the other cheek. And then you know Paul says, " We do not wage war according to the flesh. " And there are some other principles in there as well of doing good to others, etc.
But there is no specific law in the New Testament, either from Jesus or from the apostles saying, " You cannot be in the army. " Now, I totally support the position today that a Christian cannot be in the army, that he has to get out. But it is an application of a principle, and it's something that can reasonably be done today, at least in the United States. But again, it's not a specific law in the Bible. The law was to love your enemy.
In other words, you couldn't kill him or do something that would be inconsistent with loving him. But at the time, the church made this rule for people coming in who were already in the army, they were living during the Pax Romana. There was not a lot of war going on. There were you know skirmishes along the border of the Roman Empire, but that was about it. For the most part, if you were a soldier, oh, you were serving keeping a crowd control, perhaps.
Building roads, building walls was probably the most of your time. Different tasks like that. So it would have been very easy for a soldier to have remained in the army and never to have violated Jesus ' teaching, to have never used the sword. Now, the church was not lax. If you were a soldier and you came for baptism, then they stopped you right there and you had to make three commitments. One is that you would never use a sword. And number two, well, I said three, I guess, two commitments.
Number two, that you would never take an oath, okay? Because in the military, there are often oaths that were required, just like there was in civilian life, but you were more apt to have to do it as a soldier. So if you would agree that you would not do those two things, then you were allowed to be baptized and to become a Christian.
Now, if you were already a Christian and you went and joined the army, then you were excommunicated and put out, and you might have stayed out, I guess, forever, since now you were in it. You were probably in it for 20 years or something like that. So they took a very firm stance for non-resistance, but they also showed some humanity for people who were caught in a position that they couldn't possibly get out of. Okay. But like I say, presentism looks at it like, " Well, today you can just get out of the army.
" Well, yeah, you can today, but you couldn't back then. It's not fair to judge their church standards based on the situation that exists today. And his fifth example was, " It is wrong for men to bathe in warm water to use a mirror or to comb their hair. " And I think it's talking about men as males, not females. Now, I was unable to find any quotations to the effect of this statement, but you know I trust the honesty of this brother.
I assume there's maybe something or a collection of things that this was pulled out of. It actually sounds a lot like things that Clement of Alexandria might have said in one of his works. But I can tell you this, it certainly was not a general teaching of the early church. And Clement gave it as advice, not as a law. It's very dishonest to take the personal view of a single early Christian and represent it as a general teaching.
I mean, you could do that with any individual, with any of the early Anabaptists, any of the present-day Anabaptists. You could do it with me. Take something I said somewhere, a view maybe I hold to, and hold it up to ridicule, particularly 1,900 years from now when culture has totally changed and things might be very, very different. And you have to understand one thing about Clement of Alexandria.
One of his largest works and called the instructor well, there's two, the instructor, and there's another one called the Miscellaneous or Stromata. In here, he gives all kinds of general advice. He was a teacher of new Christians, a teacher of young people, and he gives advice on all kinds of subjects, not just Christian law, but like good manners at eating how to behave when you're at the table. Don't eat with your mouth open. Don't laugh while you're eating.
I mean, things like that, that he's not pretending these are laws from Christ. This is just how to properly conduct yourself when you're in public, when you're with other people. And so to read his writings as if these are laws binding on all Christians would be to make a very grave mistake. Now, he talks about he says a man should not use a mirror or a comb on his hair. Now, again, the problem of presentism, we look at today, well, yeah, there's a mirror in my bathroom. There's a mirror in my bedroom.
I look at a mirror every time I shave. I comb my hair in a mirror. Yeah, I've got you know combs in different places in my house. It would be the normal grooming of today. But what about in the second century? Did most men use a mirror? Apparently not. Or did they comb their hair? They may have brushed it you know with their hands or something like that, but we don't have any evidence that men you know pull the comb out of their pocket and comb their hair like they do today.
So he's very likely talking about practices that would have been very effeminate for a man to do this because he doesn't say it's wrong for a woman to do that. He says for a man. He's saying this is a feminine behavior, maybe something that would be associated with being a homosexual. And then as far as not taking a warm bath, I don't know. I don't remember that quote. But you have to remember in ancient culture, taking a bath was a luxury. It's something the average person didn't do.
Now, the Romans were very big into bathing. It was part of their culture. It was not the culture of most other ancient people. If you lived in a big city, then there were free public baths that even slaves could use if their master gave them permission. But if you weren't in the city, there probably wasn't a public bath, and it wasn't easy to take a bath period, particularly a warm one. It was a lot of work to take a warm bath in ancient times if there wasn't a public bathing place.
So if you had slaves, well, then, yeah, you had them heat the water and come and bring it in and dump it into a tub. And he's saying, " Look, you're a man. You can just take a bath in ordinary regular water. You don't have to put your slaves to work heating it up for you or going through the trouble yourself. " Again, this is just advice, counsel. Nothing that the church ever made any rules concerning that. Okay. So I've gone through his five examples that he uses to ridicule the early Christians.
It's based purely on presentism. This sounds silly because we're looking at an ancient culture through modern eyes. All right. Let me take one more of his quotes. It's a fairly long quote, and we're not going to examine all of it tonight, but we're going to look at just part of it. He says this. Some people feel and I think he's talking about me, to be honest, some people feel that it is important to study the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers in order to understand the Bible.
Several reasons are usually given to support this. First, the Ante-Nicene Fathers were much closer in time to the writing of the New Testament than we are. And therefore, they must have had a better understanding of the New Testament setting than what we have today. Secondly, he says, " The earliest of the Ante-Nicene Fathers either were students of the apostles themselves or had heard the apostles preach, or at least they were students of the men who had had these advantages.
This gave them access to the oral teachings and traditions of the apostles. Presumably, this too would have made it easier for them to understand the New Testament. And again, I think he's getting these arguments from my writings. He goes on to say, " Probably, there were a few advantages of being close to the New Testament era. " He acknowledges that much. However, as we study the writings of these men, it becomes obvious that the advantages were not so great as we might suppose.
False doctrines such as sacramentalism crept into the church very early in its history. He goes on to say, " Apostasy rose early in the church, and it is impossible for us to know how far-reaching that apostasy was. However, already in A.D. 150, about 50 years after the death of the last of the apostles, there are indications in the writings of Irenaeus that he believed in the saving merits of the sacraments of baptism and communion.
" This belief became more common as time went on until by AD200, Tertullian took baptismal regeneration for granted, end quote. So what does this quote represent? Well, here we have an example of doctrinal presentism. Every group likes to quote the early Christians when the early Christians agree with them. But when their church has a different view than the early Christians, then it's always the early Christians who are in error.
Now, what's strange is that the Anabaptists should be the one group to loudly trumpet the early Christians. That's because the early Christians support 90% of what we Anabaptists teach and practice. So I mean, we should be the ones that say, " Hey, look, go and read the early church. " You'll see that we're not as strange as people think we are. That we have a sound historical basis for doing and teaching the things we do.
But no, most Anabaptists end up attacking the early Christians because of that little 10% where the early Christians differ from the Anabaptists, such as on baptism. And of course, on that 10%, it's always the early Christians who are wrong, never the Anabaptists. But see, the thing is, is that that works with every other group as well. For example, the Church of Christ, well, they applaud the early Christians for holding to the correct position on baptism.
They point to them and say, " See, this is what the Bible teaches. This is the historic faith. " But then they say, " Oh, well, the early Christians, they were wrong about the head covering, " or they're wrong about divorce. Modern Church of Christ would say, " Oh, they're wrong about war. " The United Pentecostals and I'm saying these things because I've had conversations with all of these groups. Well, they say the early Christians, they're right on baptism.
Oh, but they're wrong because they believed in the Trinity. Instead, we should believe in oneness that the Father and the Son are one and the same person. I know from experience that Jehovah's witnesses would say that the early Christians are wrong for believing in the Trinity. And they also say the early Christians are wrong for not holding to the Arian view of Christ.
So they agree with the Pentecostals that the early Christians are wrong for believing in the Trinity, but they have the opposite view as the Pentecostals. The JWs also say the early Christians are wrong for believing that we have a soul. Well, then when it comes to the evangelicals, they would say the early Christians are wrong on salvation. They're wrong about eternal security. They're wrong about war. They're wrong about the two kingdoms. You name it. They're wrong on just about everything.
Of course, to them, there's no possibility that maybe it's the evangelicals who could be wrong. Then if you talk to the seventh day Adventists, they say, " Well, the early Christians are wrong because they threw out the Sabbath and they quit keeping the dietary requirements of the Mosaic Law. " So you see, all of these churches, they all conclude, " Yeah, the early Christians are wrong, but they can't agree with what they're wrong about.
" All of these churches say that the early Christians became apostate as soon as the apostles died. But you know they're just like the witnesses, the false witnesses who were brought against Christ to testify against him, but then they couldn't agree on what it was he was supposed to have done wrong. And it's likewise, these churches, none of them can agree on where the early Christians went apostate. They all have a different view on that. But they all agree, " Well, yeah, they were apostate.
" And the fact we can't agree with where that doesn't make any difference. We do all agree that it's the early Christians who are wrong, not us. Well, this is the fruit of presentism. We judge the past based on what our church teaches today instead of assessing our own beliefs in light of how the early Christians understood the Scriptures. Instead, we assess the early Christians ' beliefs based on how we understand the Scriptures.
And again, as I said, the fact that none of us can agree on what the Scriptures mean or where the early Christians are wrong seems to in no way dampen our spiritual pride that we have it right. At least our particular group has it right. Everyone else, including the early Christians, have it wrong. Now, the author states this. He says, " Sacramentalism crept into the church. " And here's another example I mentioned earlier about name-calling. Again, he resorts to name-calling.
Because for many churches, including the Anabaptists, sacramentalism is a bad word. Now, it's not for some churches, like you know the Catholics, that's not a bad word. And there would be other churches that would not view it negatively. But certainly, the Anabaptists do, and that's who this man was writing the article. So by giving the early Christians the label of, " Oh, they believed in sacramentalism, " that automatically puts them outside the boundaries of orthodoxy.
However, instead of resorting to name-calling, let's present what the early Christians taught about baptism and what they taught about communion. Let's present it honestly. Now, if we're honest, we have to acknowledge that the early Christians took the New Testament teachings on baptism and communion at face value. They gave them a very literal interpretation. Now, we might argue that all of those scriptures should be taken figuratively, not literally. Okay, fine. But let's not resort to name-calling.
Let's represent the early Christian understanding honestly that, " Hey, they took these verses literally and our church doesn't. " And also, before we go any further, let me correct the error that was in the magazine article that says that this view of baptism had just kept growing until 200. Everyone believed it. No, it didn't grow from the very outset. The earliest quotations we have from the early Christians, they all held to the same view of baptism. It never changed. It never grew beyond that.
They held to literally what the Scriptures say, and that's what they stuck with from the beginning to the end. Now, because our time is short tonight and we're very close to the end of our time, I'm not going to go into communion. We're just going to look at the Scriptures on baptism. But I do want to just read to you the passages on baptism from the New Testament. The scriptures that the early Christians were interpreting. Let's just ask ourselves as we read these. And as I said, they take these literally.
Is it absurd to take these scriptures literally? Okay, the first one is Jesus. He said, " Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. " That's John 3:5. And the early Christians understood that there he's talking about baptism in water and baptism of the Holy Spirit. Mark 16:16, Jesus said, " He who believes and is baptized will be saved. " That's why they believed that baptism was necessary for salvation.
In Acts, it says then Peter said to them, " Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission or forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. " That's Acts 2:38. Again, this is Paul speaking in Acts quoting what happened to him. Jesus told him, he says, " Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.
" Paul also writes in his letter to the Galatians, " For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. " That's Galatians 3:27. Again, Paul writes to the Romans, " Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so also, we should walk in newness of life. " Romans 6:3 and 4.
Again, Paul writes, " According to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. " Titus 3:5, " And the early Christians understood washing of the Holy Spirit or rather washing of regeneration. This is water baptism and renewing of the Holy Spirit is Holy Spirit baptism. " Finally, from Peter, we read, " There is also an anti-type excuse me, there is also an anti-type which now saves us. Baptism, not the removal of the filth of the flesh.
" In other words, not the ordinary washing of yourself, but the answer of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's 1 Peter 3:21. Now, based on all of those verses, the early Christians believed that in order to be saved, a person had to first have personal faith in Christ. Second, he had to repent. He had to be converted, and then he had to be baptized. Now, without faith, repentance, and conversion, water baptism can't save anyone.
However, the crowning event of getting saved is baptism. In the normal course of things, a person isn't saved until he is baptized. It is in baptism that God grants forgiveness of sins. And the new birth, which begins with faith and repentance, is not complete until a person receives baptism with water and the Holy Spirit. Now, what I just said is that I'm explaining to you what the early Christians believed about baptism based on those verses.
Now, I'm well aware that a person can take every one of those verses and find a way to spiritualize them or to explain them away, saying that, " Oh, they're not really talking about baptism. " I mean, let's be honest, you can do that with every verse in the Bible talking about any subject. But is it intellectually honest to take so many verses, in fact, every verse in the New Testament that talks about baptism and refuse to take them at face value? Is that intellectually honest?
I mean, let's ask ourselves, is it absurd to interpret those verses at face value like the early Christians did? Is it ridiculous to take any Scripture at face value? I mean, as kingdom Christians and as Anabaptists, we take most of Scripture at face value. We take it literally whatever it says. So is it fair to then turn around and accuse the early Christians of apostasy? Because they simply take those verses about baptism to mean just what they appear to say.
Now, for the sake of argument, let's suppose that the modern Protestants and Anabaptists are correct about baptism. Let's suppose that those verses should actually be taken figuratively. We shouldn't take them literally like we take most of Scripture. Let's suppose that the Anabaptists are right. But shouldn't spiritual humility at a minimum cause us to say you know I can see why the early Christians held to the view that baptism is more than a symbol.
But even though it's normally proper to take Scripture literally at face value, when it comes to baptism, we're supposed to take what it says figuratively. So the early Christians were mistaken on that. I mean, can't we at least say that instead of being so judgmental that we accuse them of apostasy or sometimes even with heresy?
No, what happens is our presentism, the fallacy of presentism, it gets us in the way, and it causes us to judge them based on our interpretation of Scripture and then to accuse them of apostasy simply because they took the Scriptures literally. And that is so, so unfair. And then how do we explain the fact that the Gnostics, the very ones of the Apostle John, called the Antichrist? How do we explain that they got it correct when the rest of the church got it wrong?
Because the Gnostics said that baptism has no saving power, just like Christians today say. In other words, the big question is, does the literal view of baptism, does it represent error that crept into the church, or is it actually the historic faith? We should be asking ourselves that question. Now, the author of this magazine article never proved or even offered any evidence that our literal view of baptism represents corruption that crept in the church. He presented no evidence of that.
But because of his presentism, he just takes it for granted. Well, of course, they're wrong. They're teaching different from what our church teaches. So how could they possibly be right? But the truth of the matter is, is that if someone wants to claim that the early Christian position on baptism was apostasy and that therefore the Gnostic position was correct, I mean, he has an enormous burden of proof he has to overcome.
He can't just brush it off and say, " Well, they were obviously wrong because that's not what our church teaches. " No, he had better come up with some really substantial evidence. And to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever presented that evidence. I don't know of any evidence to indicate that was some kind of heresy that crept into the church.
So at a minimum, we should be so humble and so slow to judge others and to call them names like apostates or heretics because they're teaching something that's actually the most literal interpretation of Scripture. So that is the problem with presentism. And if it wasn't a word in your vocabulary before tonight, perhaps, and I hope it will be after this, but more importantly, that you'll notice it because it crops up all the time.
Like I say, it's out there in the social-political realm, particularly nowadays, but it's been there for a long time in the Christian realm. Okay. Now, next week, I'm not going to go to the fourth lesson on critical thinking. Instead, what I want to do is take a little break, and I want to hear from you all.
We've gone through three lessons now, including tonight's, and you probably have some questions, things that maybe you're wanting to say back, or some objections to what I've said, or, " Well, what about this, David? " Or, " What about that? " So what we want you to do, and you can start right now, is send in any feedback that you have, particularly feedback in the form of a question, " Well, what about this, Dave? You said this, or is this true, or you want more clarification? " Something like that.
Maybe you have some example of fallacies you want to submit. If you've already submitted some like a couple months ago, go ahead and resubmit them just so we don't have to dig through the files to find them. And yeah, let's just have an old-fashioned question and answer next month when we meet together again. Thanks for your attention. God bless you.
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