Chapter 11: Who Better Understands the Apostles. I think all Bible-believing conservative Christians today think that they're following apostolic Christianity, and the early Christians thought that they were, too. Yet, as we've seen, the beliefs and practices of the early church varied quite a bit from what most so-called Bible-believing churches teach today. So how can we know who is more closely following the pattern set by the apostles?
A tempting but simplistic solution would be to say, well, let's simply compare their beliefs and modern beliefs to what the Bible teaches. The problem is that the early Christians based their beliefs on the Bible, as I think I've already demonstrated, the same as do modern so-called Bible-believing Christians. They quoted scriptures that support their beliefs the same as Christians do today. The real issue is one of Bible interpretation.
The most that a Christian can do today is to compare his interpretation of scripture with their interpretation of scripture, and that in itself doesn't prove very much. So the real question becomes, whose interpretation of scripture is more likely to be correct, theirs or that of modern-day Christians? Our first subheading: The Advantage of Time. Interestingly, the early church faced a standoff with the Gnostics that was similar to our stalemate with the early Christians.
Both the church and the Gnostics claimed that they had the true gospel. Tertullian wrote, "I say that my gospel is the true one." Marcion, who was a leading Gnostic teacher, says that his is. "I say that Marcion's gospel is adulterated. He says mine is." Now, how can we settle this standoff unless we use the principle of time? According to this principle, authority lies with the one who is prior in time.
It's based on the fundamental truth that corruption of doctrine lies with the one who is shown to have originated later in time. Since error is a falsification of truth, truth must necessarily precede error. Actually, Tertullian's principle of time is one of the main criteria modern historians use to evaluate conflicting historical accounts. The one written closest to the actual events is normally given credence over one written much later. The same principle is true of Bible manuscripts.
After all, how much confidence would you have in a New Testament manuscript that differed from others and yet was produced 1,400 years after the apostles had died? Particularly if you had available a New Testament manuscript that was compiled within a few decades after the apostles had died. Why then do we choose doctrines that were first taught 1,400 years or more after the deaths of the apostles over ones that were taught within a few decades of their lives?
Our next heading: The Cumulative Effect of Small Changes. A copy of anything is rarely a perfect duplication of the original. As Christianity has been duplicated from generation to generation, it has undergone many changes. From generation to generation, most of these changes have been very small, almost imperceptible. However, the cumulative effect of small changes over hundreds of years can be quite significant. Take, for example, the English language.
From generation to generation, our language changes very slowly. In fact, the change is so slow that we can barely discern any difference between the way we speak and the way our grandparents spoke, for example, except maybe for matters of slang. However, over hundreds of years, the accumulation of these small changes is quite noticeable. For example, when we try to read 13th-century medieval English, well, it's almost like reading a foreign language. The same is true of Christianity.
I'm sure that 2nd-century Christianity wasn't a perfect duplicate of apostolic Christianity, but the 2nd-century Christians were basically only one generation away from the apostles. We're 19 centuries away. How reasonable is it for us to argue that after 1,900 years, evangelical Christianity is basically unchanged from that of the apostles? Particularly when, at the same time, we claim that orthodox Christianity had radically changed only 50 years after the apostles died.
Our next heading: The Advantage of Language and Culture. But the element of time is not the only advantage that the early Christians had over us. They were also in a much better position to accurately interpret the apostles' writings. To begin with, the early Christians could read the New Testament scriptures in the original Greek of the apostles. How many of us can say the same?
Our pastors have to study ancient Greek for several years as part of their seminary training, yet very few of them can speak ancient Greek fluently. Most can't even read and comprehend a Greek text without the aid of a Greek-English lexicon. The early Christians, however, didn't have to study ancient Greek. It was their native tongue. They not only spoke in Greek; they thought in it. What about the culture barrier?
Most Christians today know extremely little about the cultural or historic setting in which the New Testament was written. As often as not, what today's Christians think they know is more myth than fact. Even scholars who devote their entire lives to studying the cultural and historical background of New Testament Christianity can never understand it as well as the people who lived in it. So once again, the early Christians had an important advantage over us when it came to correctly interpreting the scriptures.
Our next subheading: Have you ever talked to the apostle John? Lastly, the first generation of early Christians had the opportunity to hear the apostles in person and to ask them questions. Clement of Rome is an example. He was a personal disciple of both Paul and Peter.
Paul specifically mentions Clement by name in his letter to the Philippians, saying, "I urge you also, true companion, help these women who labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life." That's Philippians 4:3. Now, how likely is it that Clement, Paul's coworker, misunderstood what Paul was teaching about salvation? Why would Paul have spoken so highly of Clement if he were teaching an error?
I've already mentioned Polycarp's relationship with the apostle John, who appointed him as overseer or bishop of the church at Smyrna. If the angels of the seven churches in Revelation refer to the overseers of those churches, it's quite possible that Smyrna's angel was Polycarp. And in Revelation, Jesus says nothing about the church in Smyrna teaching wrong doctrine. In fact, Jesus had no words of correction at all for the church in Smyrna.
Evidently, the church of Smyrna was on the right course under the leadership of Polycarp, or else Jesus would have stated otherwise. But hearing the apostles explain their own writings wasn't simply a nicety; it was a necessity.
After all, Peter himself commented about Paul's writings, "Speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which those who are untaught and unstable twist to their own destruction." Peter was writing to Christians who spoke Greek fluently and who shared the same cultural setting as Paul. But even with those advantages, Peter admits that some things in Paul's writings were hard to understand.
Yet we who live nearly 2,000 years later and speak a different language act as though it were impossible that we may be misunderstanding his writings. Unfortunately, Peter does not explain what the untaught and unstable people were teaching. Were they perhaps interpreting Paul's writings the way that Christians today do? After all, the deceivers who were so widespread at the end of the 1st century were the Gnostics.
And as we've seen, their interpretation of Paul's letters were in many ways identical to that of the modern so-called Bible-believing church. Our next subheading: The Primary Teaching of the Apostles Was Oral. All of Jesus' teaching was oral. He didn't leave even a single word of written instruction for the church. When the church was founded on the day of Pentecost, the only Christian teaching it had was oral. In fact, our New Testament wasn't completed until nearly the end of the 1st century.
So the 1st-century church relied largely on the oral teachings of the apostles because the apostles primarily taught orally. After all, do you really think that Paul, the tireless evangelist and teacher, had nothing more to share with the early church than the 13 or 14 brief letters in our New Testament? Of course not.
Paul exhorted the Thessalonians, "So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter." Paul wanted the Thessalonians to adhere to his oral teachings just as much as to his written teachings. What about the other apostles? Do you think that the sum total of Peter's teaching was merely seven pages of writing? Do you really think that Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, and Thomas had nothing whatsoever to share with the church? Preposterous.
These were handpicked men who had spent three years of personal training in the close company of Jesus himself. The testimony of the early church is that all of the apostles were actively preaching and teaching the gospel. Paul told the Corinthians, "Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions as I delivered them to you." Paul goes on, however, to rebuke some of the Corinthian women who were not wearing prayer coverings.
Yet there had been no prior written command from the apostles for a Christian woman to cover her head while praying or prophesying, but there was definitely an apostolic custom or tradition, as Paul testifies, "If one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God." But please don't jump ahead of me. I'm not saying that there were any additional doctrines, moral commandments, or revelations that were handed down orally to the early Christians.
In fact, the writings of the early church are the strongest evidence we have that there were no extra doctrines or commandments. Our New Testament contains everything necessary for salvation. All of the essential doctrines and commandments were eventually witnessed to in the written scriptures. Does that mean that apostolic tradition, that is, the oral teaching of the apostles, has no value? No, it's of great value, for it served two primary functions.
First, it established ecclesiastical practices such as church government, methods of worship, and the mode of baptism. In fact, most of the practices of the 1st-century church in these areas were matters of apostolic tradition or custom, not written direction. For example, nowhere in the New Testament are Christians told when they should meet together or how often they should observe communion.
But the testimony of the early Christians shows that there were some very definite traditions that had been handed down by the apostles or their associates in these matters. The scriptures sometimes provide us with glimpses of these apostolic customs, but not always. Church government itself was established by the oral teachings of the apostles. When Paul gave Timothy and Titus instructions about selecting elders and deacons, he was not instituting a new form of church government.
He was simply describing the type of men who should fill the positions of oversight that had already been implemented. The second function of apostolic tradition was the clarification of matters that were discussed or that would later be discussed in the New Testament. The apostles never intended that the church try to interpret their writings in a vacuum apart from their extensive oral teaching.
Because the early Christians clung to the wealth of apostolic oral instruction, they had an enormous advantage over us in interpreting the scriptures. But please don't confuse apostolic tradition with the later human tradition that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches adopted. Most of their traditions originated after the time of Constantine and were unknown to the early Christians.
But of course, all I've shown is that the early Christians were in a better position than we to correctly understand and imitate the apostles. I haven't shown that they didn't deliberately change the teachings handed down to them by the apostles. Did they do so? The answer may be crucial to our relationship with God.