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 many 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 church.  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 are 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

 

The Pastor-Centered Church

STORY #1:

As is my habit when practicing my hobby of wandering virtual worlds, I visited a newer church in Second Life that had advertised its regularly scheduled service.  Over a dozen people gathered, waiting for the pastor to arrive.  From their conversation, I could tell they were regular attendees and staff of the church.

The pastor never arrived, due to technical difficulties beyond his control.

The congregation left.

Because, you see, you can’t do church without a pastor up front delivering a sermon.

 

STORY #2:

Many moons ago, I was a staff member at a virtual church in that same Second Life world.  One of the Evangelical pastors didn’t show for his midweek scheduled event, so after waiting with the small crowd for a time, I spoke up and shared my testimony of how I came to know the Lord.  I invited others to do the same, and several did.  After a closing prayer led by one of the brothers in Christ, we all parted.

The next day, the missing pastor called several of us in individually to chide us for our assumption that we could “take over” his scheduled talk time.  I apologized.  So did the others.

 

Der Pastor Über Alles

“The Pastor, Over All.”  When did we, as followers of Christ, shift our gatherings from bread-breaking, worship-sharing prayer affairs to pastor-directed, sermon-centric spectator rituals?  Drop randomly into any US or European church, and the elements of the service are startlingly similar:

• Opening prayer (led by the pastor) with a congregational hymn or two
• A short Scripture reading (usually led by the pastor)
• A long sermon by the pastor (followed by the collection)
• Symbolic communion (but only once a business quarter)
• A closing prayer and/or song

 

To be fair, Anglicans and Lutherans deserve a nod for doing communion weekly.  Still, the pastor's sermon stands as the main event of most gatherings.  Without the pastor's sermon, it just wouldn’t be church, would it?

 

Imagine There’s No Sermon.  It’s Easy If You Try.

Imagine you show up at church next Sunday and discover the pastor has assigned a scripture reading to four or five of the congregants.  Each one gets a chapter of Luke’s gospel to read aloud, four or five long chapters in sequence.

After that reading session (which is almost as lengthy as last week’s sermon!), the pastor stands and says, “Wasn’t that something?  Those were words about the life of our own Savior, Jesus Christ.  Let’s just think about that a little.”

Then he sits back down and is silent for ten minutes.

After those ten minutes, the pastor remains seated and says, “If you have any reflections on what we read today, please stand and share them.  One at a time; the Lord likes us to be orderly.”

Then, after six people get up the courage to share what was going through their heads – speaking, mind you, without any follow-up commentary from the pastor – there’s another time of silence.

The pastor notes that it seems all have shared as the Spirit has moved them, then announces, “I asked our brother George’s daughter to pick out a few spiritual songs she felt related to the readings we heard today.  Let’s listen to her sing them, a capella.  We can even join in if we know the songs!”

After that, there’s a small offering collection.  (The pastor will distribute what’s collected to Maria, the recent widow, and to Laurence, who's just been laid off from work.  Some will go also to Frank and Jessica, since they can’t afford health insurance to cover their son’s yearly checkup.)

And then, of course, everyone eats.  It’s not church if there’s no potluck supper!

 

Stop Imagining

Those with strong faith and good hearts will say, “Yes, I can imagine that happening at my church!”  But let’s be honest: If that really took place without warning in our real-life churches this weekend, we’d be dizzy with confusion.  Some of us would even protest openly.  “Where was the sermon?  Why were things changed up so much?  Why wasn’t the pastor doing the pastor’s job?  Why didn’t we have church?”

But this service wasn’t imaginary.  It was simply outdated, an anachronism.  It was a church gathering similar to those during New Testament times.  We wouldn’t recognize it, and that’s our fault as members of our congregations.

Oh … did you think I was going to lay all the blame on pastors for running a sermon-centered service with themselves in the spotlight?  My apologies for the misunderstanding.  This doesn’t just fall on the pastors.  I’m to blame, too.  You’re right there with me.  We’re responsible, because it isn’t the pastor’s church.

We are the church.

If church is going wrong, we are to blame.

 

Real Bible Churches

Many churches call themselves “Bible-believing” and “Bible-centered.”  Some even have the word “Bible” in their very names.  You would expect such institutions to have services that reflect biblical worship services.

So what are the elements of a service conducted by the believers we meet inside the Bible itself?

Stopping by a first-day-of-the-week gathering of believers in, say, 52 C.E., we could probably expect to run into:

• A hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue with interpretation, several prophesies, all done by a variety of members in an orderly fashion (1 Corinthians 14:26-33)
• Fellowship of mutual encouragement and building up of each other, practiced by all present, not just by a group leader (Hebrews 10:24-25)
• Shared feasts in memory of the Lord’s supper (Acts 2:24), with all members dining equally and no one getting more than others or overdrinking (let ‘em go home if they’re going to do that, 1 Corinthians 11:21-22)
• Multiple lay teachers admonishing one another with wisdom from the Lord (Colossians 3:16)
• Multiple generations in attendance, with no breakout “children’s church” or “youth groups” -- the kids are all there and being addressed when hearing Paul’s letters read (Ephesians 6:1–4 and Colossians 3:20–21)
• Worship with Psalms and other spiritual songs (also Colossians 3:16)
• Public reading of the Scriptures with teachings based on them (1 Timothy 4:13)

 

Aha!  We Found A Sermon!

Did you notice the last element?  Yes, there was a sermon in there – as part of many other expected elements.  Clearly teaching and exhortation can’t take place without that item we call a “sermon.”  Yet it wasn’t the longest, dominant part of Christian gatherings, just as the preacher (here called an overseer) was not the sole or even dominant presenter of truth.  The overseer kept watch over the congregation (Acts 20:28), apparently helping everyone participate in ministry.

Does scripture have long sermons in it given by leaders?  Indeed, it does!  However, the longest of them on record are almost never given in the private home-church setting:

• Peter’s longest sermons took place in the public area of the Temple (Acts 2), in the portico of the Temple (also public, Acts 3), and in the non-church home of Cornelius (Acts 10).
• Stephen gave his long sermon in front of the Sanhedrin (a judicial setting rather than a house-church, Acts 7).
• Paul loved a long sermon, including one in the synagogue at Pisidian (Acts 13), one in the pagan Areopagus in open-air Athens (Acts 17), and one in Traos on the first day of the week when there was a gathering to break bread (Acts 20).

There we go.  That last one was likely taking place at a house-church, the only one that does in this mix of Acts’ Longest Sermons.  But take note: That sermon was lethal.  Paul talked so long that one of the young listeners sitting on a third-story windowsill fell asleep and dropped to his death (Acts 20:9).  Paul had to bring him back to life before continuing.

Fair warning, you long-winded televangelists out there.

 

I’m A Linguist, Can’t Help Myself

As ever, I can’t do a blog post without squinting at some of the words and pondering their hidden histories.  Unlike other times, though, this part isn’t just for Word Nerds.

 

"Sermon"

The word sermon derives from the Latin term sermó, a speech or discourse.  No surprise there, since a sermon is pretty much a speech.  But in Latin, sermó also meant “a conversation,” a meaning it most certainly lost on its journey through French and into English.  Yes, a sermon can be a one-way speech, but it could also be a back-and-forth discussion with more than one speaker.

So, I ask: What if that word took a journey back to its original meaning?  What if some of our sermons became conversations again, discussions between congregants and their minister, or even between each other in wisdom-sharing sessions, as a revived act of doing church in a biblical way?

 

"Minister"

I haven’t used the word “minister” in this blog yet, opting for the shepherdly resonance of “pastor.”  The word minister comes from Latin as well and was spelled exactly the same as it is in English.  In Latin it meant “servant” and “attendant.”  These days, our word for a church attendant is “usher” and our words for church servants are “receptionist,” “collection plate passers,” and “lady who vacuums after we all leave.”  Many ministers consider their “service” to be the writing and giving of the weekly sermon as their congregation's Talk Boss.  But real service that really serves?  Is there enough of that from ministers?  Is there hope for a Ministers Revival back into service roles?  I don't mean symbolic, ritualistic service (“Last week, the minister washed our feet during the Easter observance!”) but real service (“Last week, our minister came for dinner … and insisted on bringing the food and cooking it!”)

 

"Congregants"

Like half of all English words, congregants and congregational also owe their origin to Latin, but I’m more fascinated by their English usage.  Before English used it to mean a flock of people herded together for church, "congregation" was a 15^th century medical term for “an accumulation of bodily fluids.”  That triggered the metaphor-ometer in my brain.  Fluids coming into the body, fluids going out, fluids flowing through, a dynamic stream that keeps the body viable – and we are the Body of Christ.  We accumulate as a “congregation” in English’s oldest sense, and our regular flow, the movement of our words and wisdom among one another, keeps dispersing the nutrients and the oxygen that keep the whole alive.

When we stop flowing?  Well, the metaphor turns dark.  We have terms for when a body’s fluids accumulate, turn sluggish, lose their motion and participation in the corporeal flow: edema, ascites, pleural effusion, cardia tamponade, cerebral fluid, a whole bunch of terms you don’t want to hear coming out of your physician’s mouth.  We aren’t stationary observers of the Body.  We are its lifeblood, and we’d better get moving.

 

I Have A Fantasy …

Can congregations ever grow to a point where lay members are willing to carry their biblical share of the praise, worship, speaking, teaching, singing, heart-building and meal-sharing?  Can pastors ever grow to let them?  Sure, there are “worship leaders” in the music ministry and teachers in the Sunday School programs, but what about the myriad other roles that don’t just contribute to a Christian gathering, but make it a Christian gathering?  I can’t help but imagine a movement in the churches that empowers congregants and unburdens pastors by freeing the Body to act as a Body.  It would require laymen to take hold of responsibilities, and it would require clergy to let go of some.  It's a fantasy in which no part of the body is greater than any other part … with Christ as the head.

I know that this vision of the church sounds like a fantasy.  It sounds like commune-building.  It sounds like a bunch of hippies.

It sounds like the Bible.

 

Marana Tha,

 

YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx

 

P.S.: Bet you thought “shepherdly” was a world I made up.  It isn’t.  It was in common use in the 15^th century, and I was feeling 15^th-ish today.