BOOTED FROM THE BIBLE?

Booted from the Bible?  Not quite ... but some books had a rough journey.

The internet is chock-full of articles about books “Banned from the Bible!”  This is not one of those articles.

Instead, it’s an article about the New Testament books that almost didn’t make it in … and why.

 

Those Who Made It In Early

If you’re one of the (sadly, small) minority of Christians who regularly reads the Bible for devotion and study, you’ve definitely noticed the stylistic differences between the various authors of the New Testament:

• John’s gospel soars to near-mystical heights with its language, as if rising on high to honor Christ’s declaration “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
• Paul’s style, while achieving John’s heights now and then, is usually pragmatic, feet firmly planted on the ground of practical matters.
• Luke sports an “international” flavor, with an abundance of stories in his gospel about Gentiles who interacted with Christ.
• Matthew, on the other hand, reveals a solid Jewish education, with far more references to the fulfillment of Hebrew Scriptures than the other gospels.

Spirituality.  Practicality.  Broad outreach.  Depth of scriptural knowledge.  It’s easy to see why the gospels, the book of Acts, and the letters of Paul found early acceptance in the growing canon.

But reaching canonical status wasn’t as easy for other writings we now love and preserve in our Bibles.

 

Books in Dispute

If you had a chance to read last month’s blog, you’ll remember that several books of the New Testament made it into the canon by the skin of their teeth (a fun saying that’s derived from the Bible itself, Job 19:20).  The church father Eusebius dubbed this small collection of books the antilegomena, a word basically meaning “disputed.”  Which books made which church father’s disputed lists varied, but their doubts tended to include:

• Hebrews (questioned by churches of the West)
• James (accepted early by the East, but only very slowly by the West)
• Second Peter (perhaps the most disputed of all NT books)
• Second and Third John (too short, and no named author)
• Jude (probably not the apostle, so there’s that issue)
• Revelation (doubted for being just a bit wacky)

Complicating matters were the ancient books that were included in very early editions of the New Testament, ones no longer accepted as part of our canon.  They weren’t rejected for being heretical; they simply turned out not to be “apostolic” enough in nature to win a spot in the final New Testament:

• The Codex Sinaiticus, the name given our most ancient, complete edition of the New Testament, includes two books called The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, neither of which is accepted any longer as inspired text.  I’ve linked to online versions of them above, should you ever want to give them a read and consider why they may have been appealing to some early church fathers.
  
  
• The Codex Alexandrinus, compiled mere decades after the manuscript above, tacks on the epistles 1 Clement and 2 Clement (Clement’s second letter has always struck me as moving and poetic – “For He called us, when we were not, and from not being, He called us to be” (2 Clem. 1:8).
  
  
• The second-century Muratorian Fragment, our oldest existing “list” of approved NT books, which speaks highly of Shepherd of Hermas (hello, again) and mentions acceptance of the Apocalypse of Peter by some, rejection by others.  Interestingly, the Fragment also references Wisdom of Solomon, popular among Greek-speaking Jews who followed Jesus early on, as part of the Old Testament.  It retains a spot in the Roman Catholic canon to this day.
  
  
• Numerous lists and writings of the earliest church fathers cite other books as Christian scripture – the Acts of Paul, the fragmentary Gospel of the Hebrews, the much-respected Didache, and others.  They were all considered at least briefly by some church fathers for a role in the New Testament’s canon but in the long run were left behind.

 

Phew – Made It!

Obviously, there was final canon acceptance of Hebrews (the epistle, not the Gospel mentioned above), James, Second Peter, Second John, Third John, Jude, and Revelation.  They all appear in the 27-book list famously created in 367 CE by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and confirmed as canon by the church’s Council of Rome in 382 CE.  Those are the two dates, incidentally, most often cited as “We have a Bible!” moments.  But what hurdles did those books face, and how did they overcome their status as “disputed”?

I covered Hebrews and James last month, so let’s tackle the others.  I’ll put most of my effort into explaining how Peter found its way into the text, since its pathway to canonization will shed light on the paths of all the others.

 

Peter, Peter, Who Are You Really?

Maybe, said the church fathers amongst themselves, Second Peter wasn’t really written by the apostle Peter.

Second Peter had numerous obstacles to overcome before it was universally acknowledged as part of the New Testament canon.  Each concern it raised was a straw that might have broken the camel’s back on its long journey to acceptance:

• Would Peter Use That Word?  The ancient church fathers doubted that the vocabulary in Second Peter matched the vocabulary in 1 Peter, the more accepted of the two works.  That’s a fascinating linguistic observation, and I promise not to belabor it, but consider – if someone texted you, “I have received an additional convocation whose appointed hour coincides precisely with that of your own meeting, and thusly regret being unable to attend,” you wouldn’t expect the next text to read, “But yo, gurl, ain’t seen you inna minute, so hit me up on the flip side!”  As they read the vocabulary differences between the two letters, our Greek-speaking church fathers suspected different people were writing those two texts attributed to Peter.

• Much More Stylish.  Beyond just the words, the layout and rhetoric of Second Peter is vastly different from 1 Peter.  The ancients noted this with concern.  You can probably appreciate their apprehension if you consider different sermon styles by different modern-day preachers you’ve listened to.  One preacher might prefer grabbing a topic and bouncing all around the Bible to talk about his chosen theme.  Another may prefer to take a passage and do a deep-dive walkthrough of what the scripture writer is saying.  Yet a third may quote just one verse and spend the full sermon relating that to modern Christian life.  Listen to enough preachers, you’ll be able to tell when one is reading a sermon written by someone else who doesn’t match their style. 😊

• Are the Apostles Gone?  Second Peter has a few places where it sounds too late in time to be written by a living apostle.  The writer’s discussion in 2 Peter 3:15-16 make Paul’s letters sound like collected works.  The problem is, it seems Paul’s letters weren’t passed around in a collected form until a generation after his death.  That means Peter was gone already, too.  In addition, 2 Peter 3:3-4 mentions those who mock the long delay of the Second Coming of Christ, prompting the writer to explain that to the Lord a day is as a thousand years.  That “long delay” further raised the ancients’ suspicions that it wasn’t Peter doing the writing.

• Plagiarism: Second Peter’s second and third chapters copy nearly the entire epistle of Jude.  For the church fathers weighing the canon of the New Testament, that was a red flag.  Was the author trying to make himself seem apostolic by copying a better-known text?

• Nobody Quotes It: Very few church fathers quoted Second Peter or referred to him as having written a second letter.  One exception, Origen, wrote in the early 3^rd century: “Peter has left one acknowledged epistle; perhaps also a second, for it is disputed.”  Was this the same “second letter” as what we call Second Peter?  It’s impossible to say, since Origen quotes nothing from it.  With no undisputed 2^nd century quotations and very thin 3^rd century attestations, it’s unsurprising that 4^th century church fathers raised an eyebrow at the text.  As my young son might have said: “Bruh, that’s sus.”

 

The Writer of Second Peter

It’s no spoiler when I tell you Peter’s second letter did, in fact, get into the canon.  But how?  What changed?

If you’ve gone to Bible college or browsed entries at online apologetics sites, you’ve likely run into the “Silvanus” explanation of why Second Peter has such stylistic and vocabulary differences from 1 Peter.  In fact, 1 Peter 5:12 actually mentions Silvanus (also called Silas) as the vehicle through which Peter’s letter is presented to the readers and listeners.  That could explain the vocabulary and style differences between the two letters – Silvanus helped Peter write the first one, while the second one (which doesn’t mention Silvanus) was written by Peter alone.

However, did you notice how carefully I worded that?  I said, “The vehicle through which Peter’s letter is presented.”  Some Bible translations will directly say “Silvanus helped me write this letter,” while other translations will say “I had Silvanus deliver you this letter.”  You can see the variations here for yourself.  But the Koine Greek is simply dia Silouanou, “through Silvanus.”  The word-for-word Greek of the verse is actually: “To you through Silvanus, the faithful brother as I regard (him), through few words I have written …” and so on.  It’s not clear at all whether Silvanus helped with the writing or whether it was through him, by his delivering the letter, that the words came to the readers … thus the differences among a number of translations.

Modern interpreters who are keen to maintain Peter’s authorship are likely to insist that it means he wrote it with Silvanus as his secretary.  This helps them preserve the idea that an apostle must be the author of a Bible text – they could use backup writers as designated scribes.  But that simply creates a new problem: if the style and words are Silvanus’s, and that’s what we have today, then the inspiration of the Holy Spirit came to Silvanus, not an apostle, and Peter’s original words of dictation were cancelled out.  Are we ready to make a claim that the Holy Spirit had to cancel an apostle to get the words right through a non-apostle?  And should we ignore all the other issues – timing, literary borrowing, and Paul’s letters appearing as collected works?

It turns out all of this discussion is moot when it comes to the topic of our church fathers refining and finalizing the canon.  The Silvanus explanation is largely a modern apologetic and does not appear to have played a role in the early church’s canonical deliberations.  They actually took a less confounding path.

 

“Written by an Apostle” vs. “Apostolic”

As the time of Athanasius’s fourth-century canon list and the Council of Rome’s imprimatur drew nearer, Second Peter’s use in churches spread widely.  Its acceptance seems to have created a more flexible mindset among the church fathers of that age, almost as if they had started asking themselves whether there was any reason not to have Second Peter in the canon.  Being allowed in became less a matter of a resounding “Yes!” and more a recognition that there was no compelling reason to exclude it.

After all, nothing in Second Peter contradicted established doctrines received from the apostles.  It didn’t have any false teachings, and it did a solid job supporting existing beliefs, particularly in its insistence on combating false teachers and embracing the hope of a true Second Coming.  Even if it weren’t the apostle’s direct creation, it was very much in the tradition of the apostles.  It was apostolic in nature.

So, the test question changed.  No longer were the church fathers asking, “Did Peter write this?”  Instead, they asked, “Is this orthodox?  Would Peter have written it?  Is it respectfully within a Petrine tradition?”

No, I’m sure they didn’t use that language specifically.  As I said in last month’s post, they had no checklists.  But those kinds of ideas were behind the adoption of the text of Second Peter and the acceptance of other books of the New Testament, such as:

• Mark’s gospel compilation, reasoned to be a record of the preachings of the apostle Peter
• Texts by Luke (who wrote more words than any other single author in the New Testament), thought to reflect the teachings of the apostle Paul and based on interviews with other apostles
• John’s second and third letters, finally adopted as being within the community and spirit of the apostle John, even if not claimed as his work directly in the text
• Jude’s epistle, judged orthodox and beneficial despite the actual identity of “Jude” being a bit nebulous and not universally accepted as the apostle Jude

 

Even the widely doubted book of Revelation overcame the requirement of proof it was penned by an apostle.  The church fathers were split on its authorship.  Dionysius of Alexandria and Gaius of Rome rejected outright that John the apostle had a role in the writing.  Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian embraced John’s authorship wholeheartedly.  Origen and Eusebius straddled the middle, simply noting that there was a lot of disagreement about whether this John of Patmos was the same John as the Gospel writer.  Its connection to apostolic tradition won the day, however (a recognition lasting until Martin Luther’s doubts about the book emerged a millennium later).

 

So, What Do We Do with All This?

Let’s wrap up with some questions that this kind of in-depth investigation might call to mind.

The Bible speaks in many voices — soaring, practical, poetic, urgent. When other believers worship or serve differently than I do, do I assume something is wrong? Or do I remember that unity does not require uniformity?

Some New Testament books were questioned before they were embraced. When I look at other Christians – or myself – and wonder whether we measure up, do I remember Who it is that makes any of us worthy?

Not every book was written by one of the inner circle.  When I feel outside the spotlight, outside the in-crowd, do I remember that the widow’s penny, the smallest seed, the quietest faithfulness still matter deeply in God’s kingdom?

And not every question about the Bible was neatly resolved.  Do I allow that same grace in my own faith? Can doubt coexist with devotion? When uncertainty creeps in, do I still pray, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief”?

The canon took time.  So do we.

 

Until next time, next topic,

YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx

 

 

 

How Your Bible Got Its Books

This month, I’ve been thinking about how God used real communities, over real time, to recognize the sacredness of early writings that would one day be canonized as our Bible.  The process took more time than you might guess.  Some books were disputed longer than others … and that story might surprise you.

But let’s start with a parable:

There once was a woman who walked into her dining room and unexpectedly beheld a beautiful German Chocolate Cake on her table.  Thrilled, she immediately sat and helped herself to a delicious piece of that scrumptious dessert.

In time, her husband entered the room and asked with surprise, “Where did that come from?”

“It’s a German Chocolate Cake,” said his wife between mouthfuls, “so, obviously, Germany.”

“No, no,” said her husband, “I mean, where did that particular cake come from?  And if you don’t know, why are you eating it?  How do you know what’s in it?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said his wife, “’cuz it’s so yummy!”

 

THE OLD TESTAMENT: A CONUNDRUM

When we were born, the Bible already existed.  Or, in the terms of our story above: It was there on the table when we walked in the room, and it looked beautiful, delicious, downright scrumptious to those of us who have become believers.  But if one of our fellow humans walked into the room and posed the question “Where did it come from?” are we prepared to give a reason for our hope and faith in it (see 1 Peter 3:15)?

Let’s spend this month doing a little history.  I’ll try not to make it boring (that’s a chore for me, since I’ve never found history boring).  I’ll adopt a light, chatty tone to take you on a journey through the evolution of the New Testament.

A couple points up front, though: First of all, I’m only going to deal with the New Testament.  The canon (a fancy word for “official list”) of the New Testament is universally accepted by all Christian groups.  However, inter-tradition agreement on the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, remains fuzzy at the edges.  You might think I’m talking about the differences between the Protestant Old Testament and the Roman Catholic inclusion of deuterocanonical works like Tobit (a very cool book, by the way) and additions to Daniel (some awesome detective stories, not kidding).  But I also mean:

• The Eastern Orthodox canon (featuring 2 Esdras, Psalm 151, 3 Maccabees, and others)
• The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon (starring 1 Enoch and Jubilees)
• The Armenian Apostolic Church canon (including Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs)
• The Samaritan Pentateuch canon (containing only Torah, the first five Hebrew books)

 

Those groups account for a quarter to a third of Christians worldwide (I’m not counting the Samaritan community since they don’t identify as Christians).  When you add in Roman Catholics with their deuterocanonical texts, it means well over half, and perhaps as high as two-thirds, of all people worldwide who call themselves Christian use an Old Testament canon that is not identical to that of Western Protestantism.

Yeah, two-thirds.  When I ran those numbers, I was surprised, too.  So, I’ll leave aside discussion of the Hebrew Scriptures (in all honesty, I can only juggle so many flaming chainsaws at once) and focus on the more universally accepted canon of the New Testament.

Oh, and I said I had a couple points to make up front.  Here’s the second one: German Chocolate Cake is not from Germany.  It’s a 1957 recipe crafted by Mrs. George Clay of Texas, USA , using a sweet, dark chocolate developed by American chocolatier Samuel German.  We should be thankful Mrs. Clay named it after Mr. German and not after herself.  No one would eat Clay Cake.

And that last paragraph is a parable, too.  It's about expectations.

 

THE NEW TESTAMENT: HOW IT WASN’T MADE

I’ve run into more than one scoffer who’s said some version of this, either in part or in full: “Why do you follow an ancient book that was written in the Iron Age?  Talk about outdated ideas!  It’s a bunch of rules whipped up for a slaveholding, autocratic society.  And the parts that aren’t rules are bizarre hallucinations by writers who were probably under the influence of mind-altering drugs.”

I suppose I could argue each of those points.  In my opinion, they’re founded on ignorance (after all, Aristotle and Plato were products of that same Iron Age, and their ideas still inform modern-day philosophers.)  But I'm only restating cynical arguments here to demonstrate how extreme some views can get -- definitely the far end of a “view-of-the-Bible” spectrum.

That spectrum has another extreme, though.  I’ve also met Christians who believe some version of the following, either in whole or in part: “The Bible was spoken by God directly into the ears or minds of human beings, word by word with no human participation in the text.  There were no other influences, only the dictation of God.  Upon completion of each part, the pieces were added to the Scripture until it was all closed up by the words of Revelation 22:18-19, then translated into King James English, then printed by the Gideons, and then distributed into hotel-room drawers everywhere.”

I have examined a number of these claims in other blogs, so I won’t rehash them too much here:

• The Lord is clearly working with humans through their individual minds and voices.  That point’s obvious even in translation to anyone who’s read and compared the styles of John’s Gospel, Luke’s Gospel, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs.  I explore the unique and all-too-human style of Ecclesiastes here.
• Human writers freely borrow (guided, I believe, by the Spirit) from existing human, nonbiblical sources regularly in both the Old and New Testaments, as I will discuss in detail in a future blog post (although I mention it in passing in this essay).
• And, while the King James Version is rendered in beautiful, poetic English, I discuss fully here how King James Onlyism is a stance even the translators of the King James Version would reject.

That leaves me one extremist stance to address from the collection above (since I was only kidding about the Gideons and the hotel drawers): that the New Testament didn’t begin its existence as a book-by-book, set-in-stone creation compiled without doubt, debate, or revision to its canon.

 

THOSE GUYS WHO “BUILT” THE NT

There’s an “easy” version of how the New Testament was assembled.  It’s usually shared with freshman-year Bible students.  In this version, students are told that the books of the Bible were assembled centuries after they were written and subjected to a checklist-like test by 3^rd and 4^th century church councils to see if they should be allowed into the church’s canon.  That “checklist,” reimagined today, usually includes items like

• Book/letter was written by or for one of the original 12 apostles
• Text contained no unacceptable, non-Christian ideas
• Most local churches already accepted it and used it
• It was inspired by the Holy Spirit
• It was really old (from a 3^rd and 4^th century perspective)

That list is an adequate summary as summaries go, but it leaves the impression that the early church fathers had a systematic approach to declaring, “This one’s in, this one’s out!”  It also leads to a number of questions … for example:

• How did they know it was really written by or for an apostle?  Was it signed and notarized?  Three hundred-plus years had passed, which made the texts older than the constitutions of any modern nation on Earth except the Republic of San Marino (I thought I’d give you something to look up).
  
  
• How did they evaluate whether the texts had “non-Christian ideas”?  Today, we judge an idea as Christian or non-Christian based on the New Testament which, no surprise, they didn’t have.  Were Christians using oral tradition and ecclesiastical authority to make their judgment calls about doctrines (something Protestants tsk-tsk Catholics for today)?
  
  
• How did they judge that local churches were already using most of these letters and books, since, by the 4^th century after Christ, Christianity had spread as far west as current-day Spain and Ireland, as far east as Turkmenistan, north beyond the Black Sea, and south into Algeria and Libya?  Communications were limited in ancient times.
  
  
• What tests did they apply beyond “gut feelings” to determine a work was Holy Spirit-inspired?  That feels as if it needs a checklist of its own.
  
  
• How did they decide a work was “really old"?  They likely had very few “autographs,” original first-draft manuscripts, in the 4^th century.  Parchment, handled for regular liturgical use, has a 150-year lifespan in a first-  and second-century Judean environment, if we’re being generous.  Papyrus for scrolls was more fragile still.  Thus, the church fathers would have had much newer copies (of copies, of copies) as their references.

 

All of those questions have (tentative and debated) answers, of course.  Unfortunately, those answers fill up multiple bookshelves in texts written by scholars who are way more qualified than I’ll ever be.  My point in showing you the questions is to encourage you to ask them yourself, and to understand that, no, the ancient councils did not have a formulaic checklist.  In fact, those checklist categories weren’t even defined until after the Reformation in the 1600s CE, when it became more important to ask, “Does this book really belong in our Bible?”

 

HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED.  MAYBE.

In his book The Question of Canon, American Reformed New Testament scholar Michael J. Kruger argues convincingly that much of the New Testament was accepted by believers as authoritative and God-breathed from the very start.  Rather than being crafted by councils, he sees the canon as arising organically, affirmed by the new and growing Christian community over decades.  Council declarations simply rubber-stamped, centuries later, what believers had already widely agreed upon.

Kruger’s argument is compelling.  As an amateur, I can’t do it justice here.  If you’re not going to read his book, you can get a much less time-consuming summary of his ideas by watching him on video here while enjoying what has to be the best hair and beard amid the ranks of modern biblical scholars – modest coiffing complementing his softly tailored, textured sports coat over a palette-restrained button down, projecting an air of … um.  My bad.  I think my mind wandered there.

Ah, yes, how it really happened!  Here we go, moving beyond Kruger to some scholarly consensus about when and why various Christian writings started being accepted as authoritative and on their way into a later-declared canon.  Keep in mind, these are scholars' findings we’re talking about, so there will be outlier opinions in the world and new discoveries that shift things around in the future.  But this, as best as I can tell, seems to be the consensus so far for the historical order in which parts of the New Testament were accepted by believers as authoritative, even Scriptural:

 

Paul’s epistles to churches  – shared & revered, 60 – 100 CE

Probably the first scrolls being copied and passed around congregation-to-congregation were the church letters written by Paul, former enemy of the believers.  The honor of being accepted as authoritative earliest is an ironic one for Paul.  He started his apostolic career later than the other apostles as “an untimely birth,” (1 Corinthians 15:8), referring to his arrival with the Greek word ektromati, meaning a miscarriage or even an abortion.  He positions himself as the least of the apostles, but his letters to churches were the first to rise to the canonical top.

One interesting note: also accepted at this time was Paul’s personal letter to Philemon.  It is, in fact, one of the least controversial entrants into the canon, accepted early on and lumped in with Paul’s letters to full church congregations as early acceptable Pauline writing.  Stay tuned, because that won’t be the case for Paul’s pastoral epistles below.

 

The Gospels & Acts – spotlighted as central, 90 – 150 CE

The Gospels grew out of oral tradition, collections of the sayings of Jesus, and interviews with first-century followers of the Lord.  Two of them, Matthew and John, claim direct authorship by original apostles, while the other two, Mark and Luke, are once-removed from direct apostolic penning.  Luke’s material in his gospel came from multiple interviews and eyewitness sources, as he says in the gospel’s opening (Luke 1:2-4).  Mark's gospel is claimed to be based on the preaching of the apostle Peter, whom Mark followed.  Our only evidence of that, however, is a claim and citation made by the church father Eusebius of Caesarea, two and a half centuries after Christ’s death.  Regardless of the status of Mark’s connections to Peter, the early church accepted the writings as solid apostolic tradition, and it became one of the four most revered attempts at capturing the life of Christ.  There were many other attempts, as Luke records (Luke 1:1).  But only four rose to the top.

 

Paul’s Pastoral Epistles – gradual acceptance, 100 CE – 180 CE

Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus were slower to be acknowledged by the Christian community.  This could have been for one basic, understandable reason: they were written to private individuals, not churches, and so weren’t being read liturgically or copied for distribution to others early on.  Unlike Philemon, which seems to have been distributed by its recipient, these epistles remained in the hands of those who received them.  Their spiritual value was not missed later on, though, and by the writings of church fathers Irenaeus (around 180 CE) and Tertullian (around 200 CE), they were clearly considered part of NT Scripture.

Fun history fact: Tertullian is the dude who formalized the concept of “New Testament” and “Old Testament” in his 207 CE work Adversus Marcionem.  The canon wasn’t yet, um, canonized, but the playing field boundaries had at last been defined.

 

The “Hmm, Maybe” Books – struggled for acceptance, 120 to 200 CE

Four epistles – Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, and 1 John – had a tougher time being embraced by the church at large. 

Hebrews was accepted widely in the eastern churches of Central Asia but doubted in the western communities aligned with the church of Rome.  The issue: It wasn’t tied, directly or indirectly, to any specific apostle.  Claims that it was written by Paul fell flat because of different Greek style, vocabulary, and its way of approaching theology.  In the end, though, its sustained use and theological consonance prevailed.  Some attempted to associate it with Paul … although it’s placed after Paul’s contributions as a “probably-not-Paul entry” to the NT.

James, on the other hand, suffered from a distribution issue.  It was trusted less because fewer churches had access to it.  In addition, the book itself makes no claim to having apostolic authority, simply listing its author by the then-common name Iakobus, which could be rendered either as James or Jacob in English script.  There were early content fears as well, with James’s emphasis on works.  As acceptance grew that the teachings were clearly apostolic, the book gained acceptance.

1 Peter circulated pretty well in early churches, but, suspiciously, not in geographical areas where Peter was known to have travelled.  That was the first strike against the church fathers believing it was actually authored by Peter.  The second strike was the Greek itself – polished, elegant, highly educated in style, and not likely the work of a Galilean fisherman.  But then there's Silvanus, whom Peter mentions is doing the actual writing of the letter (1 Peter 5:12).  Clearly, the reasoning went, the high quality of the Greek was Silvanus's contribution.  As later church leaders came to appreciate the apostles’ use of amanuenses (Latin for “secretaries”), the compelling Christology of 1 Peter won the day.

1 John suffered the same affliction as Hebrews – no named author.  We may think it has an author’s name, since it’s right there in the table of contents, but we need to remember that the titles of books in Scripture are later additions.  Nowhere does the writer of John call himself John or identify himself as an apostle.  Oddly, though, 1 John never suffered the same level of doubt Hebrews had to overcome.  Church fathers noticed the anonymity and considered it little more than an oddity.  The letter's close ties to the theology and style found in the Gospel of John earned it recognition as being, at the very least, in the apostolic tradition, probably preserved by John’s community.  It was in.

 

We’re left with a group of books called the Antilegomena … a term used by the ancients for 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.  “Antilegomena” means “disputed” or “spoken against” … and these books certainly were spoken against by some of the ancients.  They had to fight to earn their spots.  For the record, there were other disputed books, too.  Those didn't earn a spot at all, and we need to explore why.

However, I am over my monthly word count, and the Antilegomena story takes a bit more nuance.  How did these final, much-doubted books finally win their spots in canon?

I guess I know what next month’s topic will be!  Until then --

 

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez

 

 

 

And All the Other Antichrists

 

Maybe the church was never meant to think of “Antichrist” as an evil, world-ruling baddie of the End Times.

And maybe we should question the assumption of so many modern-day preachers that “the Antichrist” is “the Beast” of Revelation, the “man of lawlessness” of Paul, and the “little horn” of Daniel.

Wait, wait – don’t click the little X up there in the right-hand corner to close me out just yet.  Even if those two sentences triggered you – even if you grew up in a church that printed impressive diagrams of apocalypse timelines with ripped-from-the-headlines annotations -- you may be interested in a couple of the facts that scripture has to offer.

 

THERE IS NO SINGULAR “ANTICHRIST”

The term “antichrist” appears only in the epistles of John.  I realize there’s a lot of insistence that an antichrist appears throughout the book of Revelation (more on that later), but the term itself pops up in only three places in John’s letters.  Read these two hundred words carefully.  They’re everything the Bible has to say about antichrists:

1 John 2:18-22 – Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.

1 John 4:3 -- By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

2 John 7 -- For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

John starts his discussion of antichrists by reminding readers that they’ve heard an antichrist is coming.  He doesn’t mention the source of this idea.  John immediately shifts his readers’ anticipation of a singular, future antichrist to the reality of many antichrists in their own present time.  Those antichrists are the immediate concern.

Where did those antichrists come from?  From the church itself.  They “went out from us” (v. 19), having started as false believers who lacked God’s anointing and true knowledge of Him (v. 20).  Here are the markers of the antichrists:

• They are liars (v. 22)
• They now deny Jesus is the Christ (v. 22)
• They deny the Father and the Son (v. 22)
• They deny Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:2 and 2 John 7)
• They are spirits already in the world in John’s time (1 John 4:3)
• They deny Jesus came from God (also 1 John 4:2)
• They are deceivers who went out into the world in John’s time (2 John 7) 

What I find intriguing about John’s discussion is that he seems to be clarifying a misconception.  “You have heard an antichrist is coming, and I’m telling you it’s many, many antichrists, and they’re already here.  You have heard he is coming from somewhere, and I’m telling you it is a spirit that came from among us, spreading out from our ranks as false teachers and deniers of the incarnation of Christ in the flesh.”

Ekousate, John writes in Greek, “you have heard …”.  The format reminds me of Jesus’ use of the same term four times in Matthew 5: “You have heard it said you shall not murder … you have heard you shall not commit adultery … you have heard you shall not break your oaths … you have heard you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  For each of those points, Jesus had clarifications.  He had new information to make His listeners’ understanding more detailed and profound.  John seems to be using a similar technique.  “You have heard about a future antichrist, and I tell you … they are plural, they are here now, and they are everywhere.”

Antichrist is not, for John, an individual.  It is a class of individuals.

Missing from John’s discussion: any mention of a world leader promoted by a False Prophet whose domination of nations portends the Second Coming.  That isn’t what John wants his readers focused on when they hear the term “antichrist.”

 

BUT ALL THOSE OTHER ANTICHRISTS!

All right, fine – no one else in the Bible writes down the word “antichrist.”  But that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t there, does it?  After all, that movie The Omen had three sequels, and Tim LaHaye squeezed out a dozen core Left Behind novels.  Where’d they get all that material if there’s nothing about an antichrist in the rest of the Bible?

Simple answer: From a guy named Irenaeus of Lyons.  In 180 C.E.  Question answered.

But that’s not very satisfying, so let me break it down a little more clearly.

 

The Little Horn

Way back when, well before Jesus was born, the writer of the book of Daniel talks about “the little horn,” the symbol of a figure who oppressed the Jewish people by halting their sacrifices, set up profane, pagan abominations in the temple of the Jews, and ultimately was destroyed by means of divine judgement.  For millennia, scholars universally understood this figure to precisely match Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the oppressor whose story is told in the intertestamental books of the Maccabees.  Antiochus becomes, for Jews, a symbol of all future oppressive conquerors.

 

The Man of Lawlessness

Enter Paul’s envisioning of the man of lawlessness (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12).  This character embodies utter rebellion against God, rejecting the rule of law (as his name implies) and exalting himself above all other gods.  He even sets himself up in God’s temple.  He deceives his lie-loving followers, a delusion permitted by God.  He works false miracles to assert his authority.  He’s a tool of Satan.  Jesus will destroy him “by the breath of his mouth” at His coming.  Most important: he is in Paul’s future, not in the past, despite Paul’s extensive borrowing of imagery from Daniel’s little horn character.

 

The Beasts

And finally, from the Revelation, we have the two beasts, one rising from the sea (this is the one who gets to reign over the Earth for 42 months) and one rising from the land who enforces worship of the sea beast and who introduced the infamous number 666.  These two are so interconnected that it’s difficult to judge where one’s atrocious actions end and the other’s actions begin.  The difficulty isn’t in the text itself, but in how later readers have collapsed the two figures into one.  Some commentaries irresponsibly combine the actions and attributes of both beasts into a single entity.  That’s happened in ancient times (I haven’t forgotten you, Irenaeus of Lyons) and it still happens today (hi again, Tim LaHaye).

Revelation is no easy book to parse.  I have four detailed blogs (1) (2) (3) (4) talking solely about how it’s been approached over the centuries, and I don’t even get into interpretation of the text – hermeneutics versus exegesis for you Bible-scholar nerds out there.  Let’s keep it simple here, though.  If “the antichrist” were a singular being identical to “the beast,” he’d have to be just one of them.

• He must either be the one miraculously saved from a head wound who rules the globe for forty-two months while warring on the holy ones and blaspheming God,
• or he must be the one who works false miracles, enforces the worship of the sea beast, implements economic sanctions on those refusing the mark of the beast, and executes believers.

 

BADDIES IN A BLENDER

We’re humans.  Life gives us lots to think about.  We get pretty busy.  So, we like things kept simple.

When things aren’t simple, we dumb them down.  Easier still, we let others dumb them down for us, and we sit there quiescently absorbing their summaries.  Perhaps that is what’s happened here over the centuries: commentators have shoved all these biblical baddies into a blender and turned out one “Antichrist” for our simplified viewing pleasure.

Full disclosure: This isn’t an original idea, birthed in the imagination of a former-street-punk Latina New Yorker who’s learned a little Greek.  A diverse group of evangelical biblical scholars – for example, G.K. Beale [Reformed], I. Howard Marshall [Methodist], Craig S. Keener [Baptist], and Ben Witherington III [Wesleyan] – all contend that blending together all apocalyptic adversaries into a single End Times nemesis is just bad Bible interpretation.

Yet blending them is exactly what Irenaeus of Lyons did in his essay “Against Heresies,” scribbled down a century and a half after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended.  In Book Five of that writing, he connects Daniel’s little horn, Paul’s man of lawlessness, and “the beast” (singular) of Revelation into a single entity and then borrows the term “antichrists” from John to declare this merging “the Antichrist” of an End Time.

To be fair, a number of other writers before Irenaeus had started this process, trying to tie together different bad guys from different ages of Hebrew and Christian eschatology.  But it was Irenaeus who inserted all the ingredients, hit the high-speed purée button, and blended us a single, simplified Antichrist.  It caught on, used thereafter as a linchpin of End Times ideologies.  Writers in the early church continued to acknowledge the plural term “antichrists,” to be sure.  But they added a new character about whom John never wrote in his epistles.  This idea of a singular End Times “Antichrist” is a post-biblical construct, a later theological creation that is not a demand of the Bible text itself.

 

CALMING THE STORM

If you have an End Times ideology that requires a Big Baddy, I want to assure you that I haven’t taken that away.  Even if I tell you that most Bible scholars consider the beast of the sea to be the Emperor Nero (his name adds up to 666 by gematria calculations of John of Patmos’s time), or that many feel Paul’s man of lawlessness was Emperor Caligula (who ordered his image erected in the Jerusalem Temple), I still haven’t deprived us (exegetically) of an embodiment of evil for the end of our age.  You don’t need to agree with any of these scholarly identifications to follow my main point.  If the ideas here are making some waves for you, allow me a moment to somewhat still those waters.

A question: Ever notice how every modern decade seems to see itself as a candidate for the End Times?  For you baby boomers it was Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, for us millennials it was the year 2000 and the follow-up 2012/Planet X nonsense, and for you Gen Z-ers who might have tripped over this post, it was 2025’s Tik Tok Rapture insanity.

A second question: Ever notice, historically, how every generation also saw itself as likely to be living in the End Times?  Christians confidently declared the imminence of the End Times at the fall of Rome in the 5^th century, at the end of the millennium when the 11^th century dawned, during the Black Death of the 14^th century, during the millennial craze of the English Civil War in the 17^th century, and countless more that I've skipped.  The End Was Near!  For All of Them!  Every Single Time!

A third question: Ever notice how the authors of the New Testament were convinced they were living in the last days, the final hours?  Paul thought so (1 Corinthians 10:11), as did the epistle writers John (1 John 2:18), Jude (Jude 18-19), James (James 5:8-9), Peter (1 Peter 4:7), and our other John of Patmos (Revelation 1:1).

And a summary question: What if they are all correct?  Not about the Second Coming, of course, which is a definite, single-event occurrence in our future (and which will probably occur anywhere from later next year to 14,000 years from now; just my guess).  But what if the scripture writers, and the medieval Christians, and the baby boomers, and all believers right up through today are absolutely right that we have been living in the last days, the last hours, for about twenty centuries?  And what if we, like the wise maidens in Jesus’ parable, are called as a church to bring enough oil to keep our lamps burning for thirty centuries more?  Is it unthinkable that the life of the church, its entire era of salvation by the loving sacrifice of Christ, could itself be exactly what the epistle writers say it is – an era of last days, of final hours?

 

WHY HAVE A BOOK OF REVELATION?

Before the days of Martin Luther, there was a way of reading the book of Revelation that endured more than a thousand years and continues to today: that it deals anew with every generation of the church, a continuous cycle of hope overcoming persecution, each generation with its own plagues, its own judgments, its own Big Baddies and men of lawlessness, its own falling away from the faith – in effect, the spirit of antichrist gone out into the world (1 John 4:3), just as Paul’s man of lawlessness already has secret power at work in the world (2 Thessalonians 2:7).  The cycle will continue, says this way of approaching Revelation, until the final Coming of Jesus in glory, when every knee will bend joyfully and proclaim Him Lord.

Maybe that ruins Left Behind for some of us (although I’m more of a Good Omens girl myself), but think about it: What did the book of Revelation mean to a Germanic believer in the year 622 C.E.?  What did it mean to a Celtic believer in 1066 C.E.?  What did it mean to a Native American convert in 1876 C.E.?  And, frankly, what does it mean to us if our Bridegroom tarries until the year 3526 C.E.?

This continuous-cycle hermeneutic – the oldest and most enduring approach to Revelation in the church age – brings to life a part of the Bible that’s otherwise irrelevant for 2,000 years of our fellow believers and perhaps even for us.  I can’t detail the approach the way I did in my earlier blogs (again, found at (1) (2) (3) (4)… seriously, take a morning and read those some weekend).  But I can invite you to consider the time-honored idea more deeply.

More deeply?  Yes.  Because, while our salvation itself truly is a simple concept, there is much more to our growth in wisdom and sanctification that requires harder work from us.  Proverbs 2:4-5 says it better than I ever could:

If you seek it like silver,

     And search for it as for hidden treasures,

Then you will understand the fear of the Lord

     And find the knowledge of God.

 

Maranatha,

YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx

 

Predators and the Pulpit

In blog posts, I usually ease my way toward my conclusions.

Not this month.

I won’t sugarcoat it: I consider the concepts of “youth ministry” and “youth ministers” to be nonbiblical.  I consider those ideas to be spiritual and physical threats to the safety of children in this current era.  I would never allow my young son to attend breakout “children’s church” sessions or, when he’s older, any denomination's teen-targeting “youth groups.”

 

THE ABUSERS

Maybe you thought church-related child abuse and clergy sexual misconduct were mainly Roman Catholic issues.  But it turns out we non-Catholics can be rather selective in our perceptions of such things.

YES, ROMAN CATHOLICS: Scrutiny of Catholic child sexual abuse by clergy erupted in the late 1990s, confirming decades upon decades of whispers and, sadly, "jokes" about the atrocities.  Catholic church membership has been dropping dramatically throughout the western world since the media exposed the scandals (although Catholic membership has continued to rise in areas where the abuses are less reported, namely Asia and Africa).

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS: Scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) of the United States were outed by a 2019 Houston Chronicle / San Antonio Express-News report titled “Abuse of Faith” that documented cases of sexual assault by nearly 400 youth pastors, senior leaders, and adult volunteers in that denomination.  Subsequent investigations revealed decades-long internal coverups by SBC church leaders who tried to hide abuse information from the very congregations where abusive pastors served, as well as from the wider public eye.

PENTECOSTALS: Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, are currently facing scrutiny over system-wide coverups of sexual abuse reports made by their own members.  Many of the accounts involved child sexual abuse, alleging misconduct by over 200 pastors, church employees, and other adult volunteers.  The stories we know so far seem only to scratch the surface.  The abuse reports and the subsequent coverups date from the 1970s through to today.

ANGLICANS: A 2020 report by the Church of England and Wales details years of reported sexual abuse committed by priests, ordinands, and adult volunteers.  Like other denominations, the church covered up the accusations, prioritizing the reputation of the institution over the safety of victims, many of whom, again, were children.  A wave of resignations by upper-level clergy, including bishops and archbishops, followed the revelation of the coverups.

It's heartbreaking that I could go on.  And on.  Megachurches like Hillsong and the Gateway Church.  The Independent Fundamental Baptists movement.  The Foursquare Church.  The Presbyterian Church.  Ever-increasing abuse reports about nondenominational gospel churches throughout the United States (the nation where such independent unaccountability is most prominent).  The pattern is gut-wrenchingly similar in most scenarios: children and vulnerable adult victims are entrusted to the oversight of powerful men who then abuse them, cover up the abuse, engage other leaders to help them with the coverup, and then tearfully repent in the face of exposure.

Then, somewhere else, another round of parents sends their little ones off to a breakaway session of children’s church.

 

WHAT’S “BIBLICAL” AND WHAT ISN’T

You may have noticed I haven’t cited any scripture yet in this blog post.  I did, though, make a claim that breakout “children’s church” and teen youth groups are nonbiblical.  Let’s pause my rant to explore that.  Language study always calms my nerves.

I selected the word “nonbiblical” carefully, since it’s different from “unbiblical.”  The term I used is neutral in tone, meaning simply that something doesn’t occur in the text of the Bible.  “Nonbiblical” covers a lot of things – jet airliners, soufflés, the Emmy awards, your Spotify account.  “Nonbiblical”  simply means something isn’t mentioned in the bible.  It’s easy to justify “nonbiblical” behaviors or material possessions.  You simply say, “It didn’t exist in Bible times.  Of course it’s not mentioned.”

The word “unbiblical” has a not-so-neutral meaning.  It refers to anything that conflicts with the Bible, either going against particular texts or going against general biblical principles.  “Unbiblical” behaviors are clear scriptural violations, things like worshipping idols or hating foreigners or eating lobster.  Actions or possessions that are unbiblical require deeper explanations if you’re going to hang on to them or call them acceptable.

As you might guess, I find children’s church and teen youth groups to be more than just nonbiblical, despite my initial use of that more-neutral term.  But permit me to consider the other side of the argument.  There are obviously plenty of churches that think nonbiblical youth ministries are a noble thing, not at all unbiblical, despite what I see as real-world evidence that they’re church breeding grounds for groomers and abusers.

 

THE SPIN

Adults leading youth ministries tend to defend such groups' existence by means of a handful of scriptures about teaching the young the ways of the Lord:

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 – “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Psalm 78:4-6 – “… tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders he has done.  He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel , which he commands our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children …”

Joel 1:3 – “Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.”

Adults running youth ministries further emphasize the importance of teaching the young by highlighting Jesus’ command to allow the little children to come to him (Mark 10:13-16) and by insisting that welcoming a child is the same as welcoming Jesus into your presence (Matthew 18:2-5).  If Jesus didn’t want young people to be taught by their elders, why would he put such emphasis on how the kingdom of heaven is modeled on their very innocence (Matthew 19:14)?

Other rationales offered in support of youth ministry are more general:

• That we’re to make disciples of all peoples (Matthew 28:19) and to preach the gospel to all creatures (Mark 16:15) ... and our children, being both creatures and people, need us to do that.
  
  
• That Timothy was young and was encouraged by Paul not to let others despise his youth (1 Timothy 4:12), showing that young people needed ministry, too.
  
  
• That older women are to be examples to younger women in the ways of the Lord (Titus 2:3-4), thus modeling a “youth group”-type ministry.

 

GO NOW, SPIN NO MORE

The examples above aren’t my own random grabbing of verses.  I’ve seen each of them used in articles justifying the idea that independent youth ministries are “biblical” and that they justify (to some degree or another) the existence of “youth programs” and “youth groups” in churches.

And here’s where I move from my “nonbiblical” stance toward an argument that these programs and practices are unbiblical.

1. Each of the Old Testament citations I referenced earlier describes children learning about the Lord in one of two settings: either in the home from direct family, or in the faith community at large, mixed into an intergenerational gathering (and not broken out from them).
   
   
2. The quotations from Jesus likewise took place in intergenerational crowds.  He is always calling a child or multiple children forward from the group, not sending them off on their own to be taught by younger disciples.  Jesus makes them the center of a crowd's intergenerational attention.
   
   
3. The quotations from Paul (which baffled me the most whenever they appeared as part of youth-group rationales) were always about adults – the older women were teaching younger women who already had husbands and children of their own (Titus 2:4), and Timothy was already old enough to be teaching whole congregations (as in 1 Timothy 4:13).  I'm not sure at all how those verses related to youth ministry, but each appeared in multiple articles I reviewed.

Paul expected his letters to be read aloud to congregations during their services (Colossians 4:16 and 1 Thessalonians 5:27 make this practice clear).  He expected the young members of the congregation to be present, listening along with adults and not broken off into separate learning groups or independent church worship areas.  We know this because he speaks to children directly in such places as Ephesians 6:1-3

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you might live long in the land.’”

and Colossians 3:20,

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”

just as his fellow believers do in 1 Peter 5:5

“Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.”

and 1 John 2:12-14.

“I am writing to you, little children … I am writing to you, fathers … I am writing to you, young men …”

Yes, children are to be taught the ways of the Lord – and the biblical model is for them to be taught within the family unit and within intergenerational church settings while they worship and learn with their family.  Sending them off to learn our faith separately from non-family adults is a practice that steps away from the realm of the neutral nonbiblical and into the realm of the unbiblical.  What fruit does that kind of practice bear in far too many churches?  We answered that above.  We are putting our children in harm’s way.  We risk delivering them into the hands of predators, both the ordained type and volunteer laymen.

 

A BIT OVERSTATED?

Surely, I don’t think that everyone in youth ministry is a child predator, do I?  And not every pastor or preacher is a slave to his sexual-domination impulses simply due to the presence of a Y-chromosome, right?

Of course not.  And when I go to a concert, I don’t lock my car doors because I think everyone in that neighborhood is a car thief.  And I don't secure my home at night, protecting my family, because I imagine our city is fully populated by murderous maniacs only.  No, I don't protect against the many.  I guard against the few.

Most of those involved in youth ministry are likely to be good, kind, caring Christians who want to bring the messages of Christ to the young.  But there is a reason scripture so often warns us about false prophets and false teachers who are also noted for their perversity and sexual immorality (e.g., 2 Peter 2:10-14; Jude 4; Jeremiah 23:14; Hosea 4:14; I’ll let you look up all the others).  Simply knowing that there are “good ones” out there doesn’t excuse us from keeping our guard up against predator preachers and perverts of the cloth.

So, I conclude that youth programs that separate children from parents for any amount of Christian discipleship time is more than nonbiblical.  In my mind, I demote it to unbiblical.  Yes, I confess we Christians do plenty of church-related, nonbiblical things that don’t raise my ire.  “Prayer-warrior groups"?  If someone needs to feel that militaristically macho, I can pretend “prayer warrior” is a biblical term.  Women-only bible studies?  I guess if one wants to research ancient scriptural disgust with monthly periods, that would be the place to do it.  Men’s retreats?  No harm done to me if they decide testosterone needs a weekend off from the other half of humanity.

I draw the line – the unbiblical demarcation -- at children.  We are parents.  We teach our own young the ways of the Lord.  Church leaders can be overseers, watching us do that well from where they stand.  But we keep our children with us in the community of the faithful.  That’s where our scripture says they are to learn our faith.  Right there at our sides.  The biblical way.

As one trustworthy source told me: “Treat youth ministry as a high-risk context … not as a casual, informal church program.  That’s the smart thing to do, the safe thing to do.”

Marana Tha,

YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx