Expert: Andrew Foley - 9/3/2006

Question

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Followup To

Question -
Have you not studied what the church of christ believes? We believe that there should be no divisions because Christ is not divided. We believe that we should only use the bible for authority -not some man made creed book. I cannot vouch for those who are experts on this site, but the church of Christ is seeking to be exactly what the first century church was in all ways that are now possible. Of cousre we don't have prophets etc since we now have the confirmed complete revelation of God than holds all that we need for life and godliness 2 Peter 1:3. Where the debating comes from is the same place it came from in the first century, people not subjecting themselves to God's word as the only authority. There will always be false teachers and we must always stand against falsehood. Debating should always be to the intent that you help that person, not just prove them wrong. People who debate with the intent of making you look stupid for opposing their teaching are not worried enough about the soul of the one they are debating with. Maybe you can expain more where exactly you are comin from. For now may God bless you with truth.
L.J.

Answer -
Hello! Thanks for writing. First of all, I'm not sure which "Church of Christ" you're referring to, since there are myriad "Churches of Christ" all claiming to be the most faithful extant representative of the Early Church. For the sake of argument, I would assume you mean the Church of Christ founded in the early 1800s by men such as Barton Stone and the Campbells. If that is the church you are referring to, then let me say first that I admire and agree with your church's belief that Jesus established one church, not 30,000 churches, which is the number of current Protestant denominations. Christian disunity makes a mockery of our Faith. The question is which church is the one church that Jesus established? How do we know truth? What is our authority as Christians?

Let's take the question of authority- the church of Christ, like every other Protestant denomination, (I know the church doesn't like the words Protestant or denomination, but those are entirely accurate words to describe the church of Christ) says that its ultimate religious authority is the Bible. Although I too believe that the Bible is the infallible and divinely inspired word of God, I recognize that no book or document can interpret itself or exercise its own authority. (Can you imagine what our country would be like if we all just interpreted the Constitution or our civil laws as our fancy suits us?) The doctrine of Sola Scriptura just doesn't work, as the thousands of Protestant denominations attest- all of them claiming the Bible as their ultimate authority and all of them claiming their own unique interpretation to be the only correct one, with wide disagreement on such important questions as the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the authenticity and necessity for salvation of the charismatic gifts, predestination, what exactly is required from us for salvation, whether a believer can lose his salvation, the existence of Hell, continuing revelation, demonology, whether all churches are now controlled by Satan (Camping), the correct method of interpreting the Bible, whether certain things are sins or not (abortion, contraception, divorce, blood transfusion, war, Sunday Sabbath, etc.), how one is "born-again", the Atonement, End Times etc. (2 Pet 3:15-16). Even the church of Christ has experienced a rich history of schism and church splits because of disagreements over Biblical interpretation. In my opinion, there has to be some human authority, divinely appointed and guided by the Holy Spirit of course, to interpret the Bible and judge doctrinal questions. Otherwise, how do we really know what to believe? As the Ethiopian said to Philip, how could he understand Scripture unless some man instructs him? (Acts 8:31) And that kind of authority is the Church.

I would say that of necessity Jesus had to establish one united, visible, human authority-the Church-that would forever preserve the true Faith through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and pass it down from generation to generation. I don't think Jesus intended that Christianity be an eternal debating club or an everlasting college bull-session or a supermarket of competing ideas. We are able to know God's whole truth on this earth! I believe that Jesus established one church against which He promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail (MT 16:18). The church is "the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim 3:15) built on the "foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Eph 2:20). Jesus gave us apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers so that we may no longer be swept along by every wind of human teaching arising from human trickery. (Eph 4:11-14). Bishops/overseers/elders (episkipos/presbuteros) were appointed by the apostles to preach sound doctrine and refute opponents, and were considered stewards of God (Tit 1:5-11). The Apostolic faith was transmitted by both oral and written means and passed down through properly appointed people (2 Tim 2:2, 2 Thess 2:15, 1 Cor 11:2).  The Church came before the Bible, decided which of the many early writings deserved to called Scripture, and it, not the individual believer or man-made churches founded many hundreds of years after Christ, is the rightful interpreter of the Bible. The writings of the early Church- several written by men who were taught by the apostles themselves- confirm that their only valid belief system was that peopled by those men who could trace their authority, bishop by bishop (properly annointed), back to the apostles. That was the early church's gold standard of truth in its battles with Gnostics, Marcionites and all manner of heretical movements which were started by men or which claimed to possess hidden knowledge from the apostles or Jesus. And I think that makes sense. The Church that Christ founded must, of necessity, be able to trace its history back to Christ Himself. And in my opinion, the Roman Catholic Church is the only church that can claim that lineage as a historical fact.

Of course it's a ridiculous leap of faith, a major stretch of logic, to believe that God endowed a human institution, with the authority and ability to faithfully preserve His truth down through 20 centuries. (No greater a leap of faith though than the assertion that God became man in a Roman backwater 2000 years ago, was killed, came back from the dead and ascended to Heaven and that it all had to do with me somehow.) But the alternative theory and ecclesiology is for me an even greater stretch, and makes Jesus a liar or incompetent in my opinion. A Protestant (or church of Christ member) would say that even if the Catholic Church could trace its earthly lineage to Jesus Christ it doesn't matter because the Church soon (their estimates vary between 100 AD and 350 AD or so) fell into doctrinal error and the true Faith was lost until the Reformation in 1517 or the founding of the church of Christ in the early 1800s or maybe until the Pentecostal birth in the 20th century. To me, if the true Faith was lost for 1400 or 1700 or 1800 years and if the church He established was subject to doctrinal error like any other human institution, that would make a lie of Jesus' promise of establishing a Church that would resist the gates of Hell, that He would be with us always and that He would leave us teachers and overseers who would protect us from false human teaching. And if that's true, then I'm supposed to now believe solely in a Bible (which I'm supposed to trust completely even though its books were compiled, sanctioned and preserved by a supposedly corrupt and humanly fallible church) as interpreted in thousands of different ways by men whose churches were started by men on specific dates in recorded history (no earlier than 489 years ago) and who (most of them) would readily admit that their interpretations enjoy no divine infallibility. That just does not seem like a good way to me. That's an admission that we have no ability to really know the Truth, and a surrender to a life of incessant church-shopping, church splits, and uncertainty. I trust Jesus' promises and believe that He would not leave us to our own fallible human devices to understand His truth. I believe that the Catholic Church can trace its history, bishop by bishop and Pope by Pope, back to Jesus Christ Himself and that it is the Catholic Church alone which can claim the infallible teaching authority He left to the apostles.

I'll be going on a week-long trip tomorrow afternoon, so if you have a follow-up please send it tonight or wait until next Sunday. Thanks.

Well first off I would like to thank you for a quick response and to say I hope your trio goes well. Now to the issue of the foundation of the church of christ: 1800 is not when it was founded. Paul mentions it in Romans 16:16. Our practices are from the bible, not man made traditions that are pawned off as authoritative. When the church is to told to hold fast to the traditions passed down to them it had no reference to man made traditions, but rather to divine ones. Paul said that bishops would come in later and lead others astray in Acts 20:28. Paul said that some would fall away from the faith and forbid marriage and eating certain meats in I Timothy 4:1-5. Isn't that what your church does? Your priests cannot marry and you can't eat certain meats certain days? If your church is the true church then explain why you call your teachers father when Jesus said not to? You put your traditions above scripture and are sinning in doing so. 2 John 9 tells us that you teaching and practicing things beyond what has been divinely revealed as Christ's will are separating you from God. Your big claim is that you think the church of Christ wasn't in existance until 1800. Besides Paul mentioning it in Romans he also mentions it everytime he says the body of Christ since the body is the church. THe gates of hell have never prevailed against the church of Christ, you are mistaken. The known world fell into apostacy through the false teaching that took place through the bishops that Paul mentioned would later come in, but the Apostles went into all the world and we have no record of what ws going on in places outside of the mainstream. The restoration as it is called now is about restoring the church in the known world, with no reference to every where else outside of where this took place. Let's examine a fact or 2 about the restoration and see if you feel so confident afterwards in an apostate church. For many years even yopur priests didn't have bibles of their own, which makes them unqualified since they were not exposed to the one they were teaching. Later the print press was invented. oops now we have priests actually reading bibles and then they start seeing all of the unbiblical and down right sinful practices and teachings of the church. You said not all could understand the bible or did I misunderstand? Ephesians 3:1-4 says we can all understand it if we read it. 2 Thess 2:10-12 makes it clear we can know truth if we love it. As to even calling priests by that name is completely unnecessary since all who are born again are called priest in the new testament 1 Peter 1:3: 2:9. Peter is never called a pope and neither was any one else until hundreds of years later. All the apostles are on equal grounds in the foundation of the church. Paul opposed Peter Galatians 2. Would you claim he was infallible as your church holds to? You are a part of an apostate church not the church we can read about, but if you want to know about the true church I would love to teach you. Thank you for listening, L.J.  

Answer
Well, if the United States government decided tomorrow to change the name of the country to "The Roman Empire", that act wouldn't create an actual historical connection with the Roman Empire of ancient times. So it is with the church of Christ. It's one thing to claim that your church is most faithful to early Christian practice (which I would still dispute) but it is ahistorical prevarication to claim that the church of Christ, as a visible organization and as a body of doctrine, existed from the time of Jesus Christ until today. If you could find any historian to back up that claim, I would be very interested. Show me the historical evidence of the church of Christ's existence in, say, the years 1700 or 1500 or 1300 or 1000. The simple historical fact is that the church of Christ was founded in the early 1800s by men, which must mean that Jesus was either kidding or mistaken when He told us that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church, that He would leave us teachers, overseers, etc. to protect us against false doctrine.

To clarify some of your misconceptions, it is indeed_Divine_Tradition that we hold up as doctrinal truth, not manmade traditions. And I would say that probably the most important example of Divine Tradition is the makeup of the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it say which books make up "The Bible". That decision is a part of our Divine Tradition. Sola Scriptura is a contradictory theory. How can you say that Scripture is your_only_means of divine knowledge if the makeup of that same Scripture was decided by an extra-Scriptural authority? As far as fasting goes, we do refrain from meat on Fridays as a pious practice to remind us of Christ's Passion and discipline the body and spirit. For the same reasons some Catholics may choose to fast during the 40 days of Lent (excluding Sundays). I don't understand what your objection is. Fasting is an ancient and holy Christian practice. Christ Himself fasted for 40 days and nights (MT 4:2) (LK 4:2). He also mentioned fasting during the Sermon on the Mount (MT 6:16-18) The prophet Anna fasted (LK 2:37). Fasting is mentioned in Acts (Acts13:2) and I could go on and on. The extra-Biblical writings of the early church also mention fasting. The verse you mention from Timothy refers to people (probably the Judaizers)_forbidding_certain foods and marriage, which we do not believe. We might fast for a time, but we don't forbid any foods. As for marriage, no one is forced to be celibate. It's just that those men who_choose_to be priests in the Roman Rite (particular liturgy) of the Catholic Church want to devote their entire lives to God, rather than just a part of their lives, as with the married Protestant clergy. Didn't Paul say that it was best to remain celibate? (1 Cor 7:7-8) (1 Cor 7:32-35). Jesus said that some people have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven (MT 19:12) and that those who have given up lands and family for His sake will be rewarded (MT 19:30). We recognize that historically, the early church didn't_require_celibacy for its bishops and priests (although it was widely practiced) and indeed many Rites of the Catholic Church today do not require it, but the Roman Rite views the rule as a holy standard for our priests to follow which allows them to be undivided in service to God.

As for calling no man father, that is an example of hyperbole. In the same verse He also says not to call any man "teacher" or "master". In the church of Christ, do you forbid those words? What does one call the man who impregnated one's mother? Don't you know that whenever you call anyone "Mister" (a form of "master"), you're violating Jesus' command? What do you call the person who stands in the front of a classroom and imparts education? If Jesus' words are to be taken literally in this verse, then He and His apostles violated the rule throughout the Bible. A better exposition than I can give might be found here: http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/father.html

As for our priests not having Bibles until the printing press, that's not true. I just attended an exhibition in NY of medieval Bibles. It was truly amazing to see that love and care that went into creating these books from 800 to 1300 years ago. Of course, the Bible was not widespread before the printing press. Most people couldn't read, and the cost to make one was probably equivalent to making a Boeing 747 today. However, every church had one, for public readings.

Of course the Bible is not crystal clear and cannot be infallibly understood by the individual. Doesn't the existence of 30,000 Protestant denominations prove that? Are you saying that everyone except the members of your particular branch of the church of Christ do not have the love necessary to understand the Bible?

As for Peter being the head of the Apostles, I think that's pretty undeniable. In the Bible, Peter is given a more prominent role and more authority than any other disciple. MT 16:13-19, JN 15:15-19, Acts 1:15, Acts 2:14, Acts 15:7-12 are just a few I can come up with, since I have to run right now. In the history of the early church you should read the first letter of Clement to the Corinthians, in which the bishop of Rome in circa 96, gets himself involved in the disputes of the Corinthian church and pronounces judgement. Yes, Paul denounced Peter to his face for his cowardice, not really for any false doctrine he was preaching. We don't believe everything that comes out of the Pope's mouth is Gospel truth, only when he pronounces a solemn judgement on a matter of faith and morals.

Have to go! Talk to you next week if you want.