Answers for a Friend – Summary
January 5, 2003
Dear Friends,
We have spent several weeks trying to show what the early church believed using the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers. How closely did they match the teachings of the Christadelphians?
Something that was not discussed, but is obvious to anyone who takes the time to read these writings is how much the early church saw itself as an extension of the Jewish Church. They constantly refer to the Old Testament. They use Jewish themes such as the Kingdom of God on earth and the resurrection. The texts are void of the later Neoplatonist philosophies that later engulfed the church such as the immortality of the soul, the Trinity and heaven-going. We can only imagine the uproar had these doctrines been introduced during this period of time to body of people so instilled with the teachings of the Old Testament. The explosive clash between the old church with its origins in the Old Testament and the new church with its origins in Greek mythology and philosophy was still at least fifty to one hundred years when most of these writers were alive.
Our approach has been to show areas that agreed with or contradicted both the teachings of the Christadelphians as well as those by popular Christianity. In other words, the same burden of proof was used for each. We tried to view each verse from the perspective of how an unbiased judge would view it. Would the verse naturally support the Christadelphians or naturally support orthodox Christianity? This does not mean that the verses cannot be explained (or explained away) by the “losing” party, but they would begin on the defensive.
The most prominent and consistent area where the Christadelphians would have a set back is in the area of the Devil. Several of the texts refer to Satan in one name or another. Typically, the Christadelphian would defend this by claiming that the word Satan or Devil in any form is simply a personification of sin in the flesh. Another would be to challenge the original text. At least in one instance without much research we demonstrated that the translator had simply inserted the devil into the text without just cause. To a lesser extent, the documents also contain several verses that lend themselves to the preexistence of Christ. Once again, the Christadelphians are familiar with these ideas.
Orthodoxy, on the other hand, has to deal with much more than two possible conflicts in doctrine. There is evidence for a Kingdom of God on earth rather than heaven-going. There is evidence of God as Father and Jesus Christ as His son, but none for God the Father and God the Son (the Trinity). There is evidence of conditional salvation rather than “once saved, always saved.” There is evidence of a lay ministry rather than a paid class of clergy. There is significant evidence for adult baptism as a requirement for both acceptance into the body and salvation as opposed to infant sprinkling or simply “calling Jesus into your heart.” Even some of the more obscure Christadelphian teachings such as the Seven Thousand Year Plan of God are found in these early writings. With such a bounty of evidence against the Neoplatonist church, it is no wonder than people such as Athanasius simply dismissed the Apostolic Fathers as “unworthy of the mysteries of the fourth century.”
From the third century until the nineteenth century, you will from time to time catch glimpses of those in the tradition of the Apostolic Fathers (such as the Vaudois, the Brethren or Sir Isaac Newton), yet for the most part, they obscured by the wholesale slaughter of dissenters that began in the third century with the institution of the Neoplatonist church. We commend everyone, both Christadelphians and non-Christadelphians, to the study of the historic record of Christianity from Christ until now. It is a huge understatement to say it is enlightening to show the diversity of doctrine and practice of the people who claim to follow Christ and how those differences came to be.
Have a great week!
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