Machen’s Warrior Children (Full Article)

Machen’s Warrior Children

JUNE 6, 2012 By John Frame

by John M. Frame

Prof. of Systematic Theology and Philosophy

Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Florida

 [“Machen’s Warrior Children,” in Sung Wook Chung, ed., Alister E. McGrath and Evangelical Theology ( Grand Rapids : Baker, 2003).]

 

Abstract

From 1923 to the present, the movement begun by J. Gresham Machen and Westminster Theological Seminary has supplied the theological leadership for the conservative evangelical Reformed Christians in the United States. Under that leadership, conservative Calvinists made a strong stand against liberal theology. But having lost that theological battle in the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., they turned inward to battle among themselves about issues less important—in some cases, far less important—than liberalism. This essay describes 21 of these issues, with some subdivisions, and offers some brief analysis and evaluations. It concludes by raising some questions for the Reformed community to consider: Was it right to devote so much of the church’s time and effort to these theological battles? Did the disputants follow biblical standards for resolution of these issues? Was the quality of thought in these polemics worthy of the Reformed tradition of scholarship? Should the Reformed community be willing to become more inclusive, to tolerate greater theological differences than many of the polemicists have wanted?

 

Orientation

J. Gresham Machen, a lifelong bachelor, left no biological children but many spiritual ones. The story of American conservative evangelical Reformed theology1 in the twentieth century is largely the story of those children.

Machen (1881-1937) took degrees at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton Theological Seminary, then studied for a time in Germany. He returned to teach New Testament at Princeton Seminary. His faith and theological stability had been somewhat shaken by his experience with liberal German Bible critics and theologians, particularly Wilhelm Herrmann. But in time he became a vigorous and cogent defender of the confessional Presbyterianism taught at Princeton by such stalwarts as Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and Geerhardus Vos. InThe Virgin Birth of Christ2 and The Origin of Paul’s Religion,3 he attacked (mostly German) critics of Scripture, arguing the historical authenticity of the New Testament. In 1923, he published Christianity and Liberalism,4 an attack on the liberal or modernist theology espoused by those critics and by many in American churches. This book argued, not only that liberalism was wrong, but that it was a different religion from Christianity. According to Machen, Christianity and liberalism were antithetically opposed in their concepts of doctrine, God and man, the Bible, Christ, salvation, and the church. The liberals taught that doctrine is secondary to experience, that God is father to all apart from redemption, that the Bible is a book of mere human testimonies, that Christ is merely a moral example, that salvation is to be found by following that example, and that the church should accept this liberal gospel as orthodox.

Princeton Seminary was under the authority of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. (henceforth PCUSA). In 1928, that body determined to reorganize the seminary to make it represent a broad range of opinion in the church, including the liberalism against which Machen had written. In response, Machen left the seminary, together with colleagues Robert D. Wilson and Oswald T. Allis. These scholars founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and added to its faculty such younger men as R. B. Kuiper, Ned B. Stonehouse, Allan A. MacRae, Paul Woolley, Cornelius Van Til, and John Murray. Machen intended that Westminster would continue the confessional Presbyterian tradition of what would then be called “Old” Princeton.

In 1936, Machen left the PCUSA after the denomination suspended him from the ministry for his involvement in the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Machen and others had created that Board to send out missionaries that could be trusted to preach the biblical gospel without any compromise with liberalism. Rather than accepting his suspension, Machen founded a new denomination, known first as the Presbyterian Church of America, later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (henceforth, OPC).

Machen’s movement represented numerically only a small proportion of Reformed believers in the US. Many conservative Reformed people remained in the PCUSA. Many belonged to older, smaller denominations, such as the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA) and Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) that descended from the Scottish Covenanters. There is also a major wing of American Calvinism with Dutch roots. The Reformed Church in America (RCA) goes back to the founding of New Amsterdam (later New York) in 1626. The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) originated in a split from the RCA in 1822 and retained a more conservative stance than that body through much of the period since that time. In the last forty years, however, it has been troubled by debates over biblical inerrancy, women’s ordination, and homosexuality, leading many of its more conservative members to leave and form other denominations such as the Orthodox Christian Reformed Church (OCRC) and the United Reformed Church (URC). These Scottish and Dutch groups, together with the conservatives in the PCUSA, respected what Machen and Westminster were doing, though they also supported their own denominational seminaries.

A small Reformed denomination of German background, the Reformed Church in the U. S. (RCUS) used Westminster for many years as the main institution for training its pastoral candidates.

There are also in the US a number of people with Reformed convictions in Congregational, Independent, and Anglican churches (both the large Protestant Episcopal Church and smaller bodies like the Reformed Episcopal Church). Many Baptists also embrace Reformed soteriology, with, of course, differing levels of appreciation for traditional Reformed views of covenant and church government. Some students from these traditions attended Westminster, and the seminary had some influence within these communities.

In 1973 there was a split in the Presbyterian Church U. S. (PCUS), the southern counterpart of the PCUSA from which Machen departed, essentially for the same reason as the Machen split: opposition to liberal theology. Many of those who left the PCUS formed the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).5

Machen’s movement did not represent all of these elements of Reformed Christianity, but it had a major influence on all of them. Indeed it can be argued that it provided their theological leadership. Machen himself made an effort to bring together American, Scottish, and Dutch traditions at Westminster. The original faculty included R. B. Kuiper, Ned Stonehouse, and Cornelius Van Til, all of whom were raised in the CRC. Another major influence on the seminary was biblical theologian Geerhardus Vos, another Dutchman from the CRC who taught at Princeton and remained there after 1929, though he had strong sympathies with Westminster. The Scots were also represented on the early faculty by systematic theologian John Murray, who maintained his British citizenship, though he taught in America until his retirement in 1967. Murray held to some of the distinctives (such as the exclusive use of Psalm versions in worship) of the groups in America influenced by Scottish covenanters, such as the RPCNA, though he himself was a minister in the OPC.

There was also theological diversity in Machen’s movement, which I believe he cultivated intentionally. Allan A. Macrae of the Westminster faculty was premillennial, later serving as an editor of the New Scofield Reference Bible (1967) a major work of dispensational theology. Paul Woolley was also premillennial, but without dispensationalist sympathies. Machen himself was postmillennial, which was the majority position on the Old Princeton faculty. The rest of the Westminster faculty was amillennial, so far as I can tell, though John Murray leaned in a postmillennial direction in later years. Other premillennialists served with Machen on the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. The premillennialists served as a link between Machen’s confessional Presbyterianism and the broader currents of American evangelicalism.

This diversity, both ethnic and doctrinal, brought many influences to bear on Westminster and the OPC. It also helped Westminster to have significant influence upon many Reformed bodies and upon American evangelicalism generally. Old Princeton had already been regarded by many evangelicals as their theological leader. Even many non-Calvinists looked to the writings of Princeton professors B. B. Warfield, Robert Dick Wilson, and Machen himself, for scholarly defenses of biblical authority and inerrancy. Lewis Sperry Chafer, president of Dallas Theological Seminary, corresponded with Machen urging closer ties between the two seminaries (a desire that Machen did not reciprocate). Westminster also had a major influence upon the conservative wing of the CRC (and later the OCRC and URC), upon the Reformed Episcopal Church, among the Scottish bodies like the RPCNA, upon the PCA, and upon individuals and churches of Reformed Baptist persuasion.

Westminster graduates taught at seminaries such as Covenant, Gordon-Conwell, Trinity, Biblical, Mid-America, and Reformed Episcopal. When Fuller Theological Seminary was organized in 1947 it used at first a curriculum very much like that of Westminster, and severalWestminster graduates served on the early faculty. Reformed Theological Seminary, founded in Jackson Mississippi in 1966, now with three campuses and numerous extension centers, readily acknowledges a large debt to Westminster, in curriculum, theological emphasis, and faculty.

Westminster faculty and graduates have continued to provide leadership to the Reformed theological world. I believe it can be said that although Machen’s Westminster was not a large seminary it was one of the most important influences, perhaps the most important institutional influence, upon conservative Reformed theology in the twentieth century.

Machen died of pneumonia in 1937, disappointed that his new denomination was already showing signs of division. Machen’s children were theological battlers, and, when the battle against liberalism in the PCUSA appeared to be over, they found other theological battles to fight. Up to the present time, these and other battles have continued within the movement, and, in my judgment, that is the story of conservative evangelical Reformed theology in twentieth-century America. In the rest of this essay I will discuss that theological warfare, distinguishing 21 areas of debate.

 

1. Eschatology

The first theological battle in Machen’s new denomination concerned the order of events in the last days, particularly the nature of the millennium, the thousand year period mentioned in Rev. 20:4-6.  Classic premillennialists, following some of the early Church Fathers, teach that the return of Christ will precede a thousand years of peace in which Christ would reign upon the earth. Dispensational premillennialists hold that Christ’s return will be in two stages: (1) secretly to rapture his saints, leaving all others behind, and (2) publicly, after seven years of tribulation, to institute his visible millennial reign. They also teach that during the millennium God will literally fulfill his promises to Israel, promises not given to Gentile believers. Amillennialists believe that the thousand years of Revelation 20 is a figurative number, indicating the whole period between Jesus’ Resurrection and his Return, in which Christ rules from heaven and brings people to know peace with God through the preaching of the Gospel.

In December, 1935, John Murray began in The Presbyterian Guardian, then the organ of the Machen movement, a series of articles called “The Reformed Faith and Modern Substitutes.” These articles attacked dispensational premillennialism, as well as modernism and Arminianism, as heresy. They offended a number of people in the Machen movement who either (1) sympathized with dispensational theology, (2) were unable to regard it as heresy, or (3) who thought the debate about dispensationalism could lead to an attack upon non-dispensational premillennialists. This issue, together with the next to be mentioned, led to a split within the Machen movement, producing after Machen’s death yet another new seminary (Faith Theological Seminary) and another new denomination (the Bible Presbyterian Church, BPC), which revised the Westminster Confession of Faith to make it premillennial.

Debate over eschatology has continued since that time among conservative American Calvinists. In 1957, Loraine Boettner’s The Millennium6 appeared, renewing discussion of the postmillennial position, which had been relatively unpopular in Reformed circles since the days of Old Princeton. Postmillennialists today usually agree with amillennialists that the thousand years of Rev. 20 designates the age between the Resurrection and the Return of Jesus. But they emphasize that during this period, or toward the end of it, the Gospel will triumph, not only in bringing individuals to salvation, but also in dominating culture. In the 1960s and 70s, postmillennialism became the dominant view of the Christian Reconstruction movement, led by R. J. Rushdoony, Gary North, and Greg L. Bahnsen. The Reconstructionists argued that amillennialism and premillennialism, since they were pessimistic about the possibility of Christian cultural dominance, bore significant responsibility for the modern decline of Christian influence in society.7

Postmillennialists tend to hold preterist interpretations of many biblical texts dealing with the “last days” such as Jesus’ Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) and the Book of Revelation.8 Preterism holds that many (or, in an extreme form of preterism, all) of the events predicted in these passages have already taken place, in the “coming” of God to judge Israel, resulting in the destruction of the temple in 70 A. D. Recently, preterists (some affiliated with the Christian Reconstruction Movement, some not) have become very active, forming organizations, holding conferences, producing literature.9 The extreme form of preterism, sometimes called “full” preterism, denies that Scripture promises a coming of Christ that is future to us.

In my judgment and that of many others, extreme preterism is unorthodox. But partisans of the other eschatological views have exaggerated the importance of adopting one such position over another. It is not evident that Scripture is precise enough in this area to decisively establish one of these as the truth, let alone as a test of orthodoxy. And, contrary to the Reconstructionist postmillennialists, I think that eschatological positions have had very little to do with the cultural pessimism or optimism of their proponents. Many of the most politically active Christians in the US have been premillennialists (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson) or amillennialists (James Skillen, the Association for Public Justice), contrary to the postmillennialist claim that these positions foster cultural irrelevance and impotence. For many Christians, biblical admonitions to seek justice in society are sufficient reason to become culturally and politically active, and these are far more weighty than the supposed implications of any eschatological view.

By the 1970s, for the most part “eschatological liberty” prevailed in most American Reformed denominations. Even the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPES), an offshoot of the BPC, which maintained the premillennial revisions to the Westminster Confession, came to hold that all three major positions could be tolerated in the church. But this developing consensus was not sufficient to erase the effects of the breach of 1937, which is still reflected in the denominational alignments.

 

2. Christian Liberty

The other main issue that divided the OPC in 1937 was the issue of whether Christians should totally abstain from alcoholic beverages. Machen held that Scripture permitted moderate use of alcohol. Others in the Machen movement, however, held that the use of alcohol had produced so many evils in the modern world (such as destruction of individual lives, destruction of families, auto injuries and deaths) that conscientious Christians had no option but total abstinence. The moderationist position was the majority view of the Reformed tradition, abstinence the majority view of broader American evangelicalism, which had supported the prohibitionist amendment to the US Constitution. To the moderationists, the abstainers violated the principle of sola Scriptura, elevating a cultural prejudice to the status of doctrine. To the abstainers, the advocates of moderation were refusing to apply broader Scriptural principles to a major social evil.

My impression is that the moderationists have pretty much won the day, although even now many American Reformed churches (usually in deference to recovering alcoholics) use unfermented grape juice in the Lord’s Supper. One rarely hears the arguments for abstinence any more in Reformed circles, though the discussion continues in other forms of American evangelicalism.

 

3. The Incomprehensibility of God

From around 1944 to 1948, the OPC was troubled by a controversy between followers of Cornelius Van Til, Westminster’s Professor of Apologetics, and those of Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, later at Butler University and CovenantCollege. The Presbytery of Philadelphia of the OPC ordained Clark to the ministry in 1944, but followers of Van Til complained against his ordination. Several issues entered this controversy, the main one described as the issue of the “incomprehensibility of God.” Both sides agreed, of course, that God was incomprehensible to human beings. But they disagreed on the relation of God’s thoughts to man’s thoughts.10 To Van Til, when God thinks “this is a rose,” the “contents” of his thought are “qualitatively different” from the contents of any human mind thinking “this is a rose.” To Clark, the contents of God’s thought and a human being’s in this case are identical: both God and man are having the same thought. Van Til was trying to guard the creator-creature distinction by saying that just as God radically differs from man, so the contents of God’s mind radically differ from the contents of man’s mind. Clark was trying to avoid skepticism: for if God’s thought is true, and human thought necessarily differs from it in every respect, then human thought cannot be true.

The debate was vigorous and voluminous. The key terms “contents” and “qualitative difference” were never very well defined, and the two parties regularly talked past one another. I think that in this discussion personal issues impeded conceptual clarity. And we must ask, to what degree of precision may theologians seek to define the incomprehensibility of God without violating that very incomprehensibility?

As I see it, however, Van Til, though he sometimes expressed his view in confusing language, did not deny what was most important to Clark, namely that God and man can believe the same proposition and thus can agree as to what is objectively true. Similarly, Clarkexpressed, in his discussion of the “mode” of God’s knowledge, what was important to Van Til, namely the radical difference between the nature and workings the divine mind and the human.

The result of the controversy was that the General Assembly of the OPC did not revoke Clark’s ordination, but Clark himself and many of his disciples left the denomination later over issues related to the controversy. Another battle, another split.11

 

4. Apologetics

Clark and Van Til battled over epistemology and therefore also over how people come to know God. Both men were “presuppositionalists” in that they believed that God’s revelation was ultimately authoritative for all human knowledge, rather than being subject to the higher authority of factual evidence. Becoming a Christian involves accepting God’s Word as the supreme criterion of truth, that is, as one’s ultimate presupposition. So the Word of God validates factual evidence, not the other way around.

Clark held that Christian theism, like other world-views, was like an axiomatic system in mathematics: presupposing certain “axioms” but validated by the criteria of logical consistency and adequacy for its tasks. The axiom of Christianity is the truth of the Bible, but the apologist can persuade inquirers that the Bible is logically consistent and is adequate to its redemptive task. Van Til resisted Clark’s view of logic as a test of revelation, holding that logic itself, like factual evidence, is validated by Scripture rather than Scripture by logic.12 To Van Til, Clark was a rationalist. To Clark, Van Til was an irrationalist.

Others in Reformed circles rejected presuppositionalism altogether for more traditional apologetic approaches. Dr. James Oliver Buswell, one of the premillennial group who broke with Westminster and the OPC, questioned Van Til from a largely empiricist perspective,13 and several writers from the Christian Reformed church questioned whether Van Til’s approach was genuinely Reformed.14 The “Classical Apologetics” of John Gerstner, R. C. Sproul, and Arthur Lindsley rejects Van Til in favor of an approach based on natural theology and historical evidences, presupposing certain “basic assumptions” including “the law of noncontradiction,” “the law of causality,” and “the basic reliability of sense perception.”15 The debate continues into the present, with additional alternatives being offered and new voices being heard.16

One of those voices is that of philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who describes his position as “Reformed Epistemology.”17 This position says that people are rationally justified in believing in God without evidence or argument, though such rational beliefs are open to refutation by evidence and argument. In Plantinga’s view, we come to know God when our faculties of knowledge, working rightly and placed in the proper environment, come naturally to form a belief in him. This position, I think, is largely right, but it seeks to answer different questions from those of Van Til, Clark, Gerstner, and others. Therefore it isn’t really an alternative to these other views, though many consider it to be that. To borrow a distinction of William Lane Craig, Reformed epistemology is more concerned with how we can know the truth, whereas presuppositionalism and evidentialism are more concerned with how we can show it.

The discussion has, I think, been a useful one, leading the church to ask important questions (rarely asked in past centuries) about how Reformed theology bears upon epistemology and apologetics. But, as with the debates over eschatology, Christian liberty, and incomprehensibility, the discussion has been far too shrill. It has led to the formation of factions in Reformed community, each assured that it has the truth about apologetics and that the other factions have denied crucial aspects of Reformed theology. Van Til himself questioned the Reformed commitment of those who disagreed with his apologetic approach, and his opponents spoke equally strongly against him.

One may argue that the theology of Calvin and the Reformed confessions has apologetic implications. But the confessions do not deal specifically with apologetics or epistemology, so these should be regarded as open questions in the Reformed churches. Further, it seems to me that this is a subject on which more thinking needs to be done, before we attain a position worthy to be a test of Reformed orthodoxy.

 

5. Philosophy

Until about 1960, Van Til was associated fairly closely with the Dutch philosophical school of thought known as the “philosophy of the idea of law.” The most famous member of this school was Herman Dooyeweerd,18 but many others followed more or less the same approach, including D. Th. Vollenhoven, S. U. Zuidema, K. Popma, J. P. A. Mekkes, H. Evan Runner, H. Van Riessen. Around 1960, however, it became evident that Dooyeweerd disagreed with some aspects of Van Til’s apologetic system and, more broadly, with the whole idea of making philosophy subject to the “conceptual contents” of Scripture. Van Til, therefore, began to distance himself from the movement.

In the late 1960s, some younger members of this philosophical school, including James Olthuis, Hendrik Hart, and Calvin Seerveld, founded in Toronto the Institute for Christian Studies.19 The ICS group published, not only technical, but popular articles on philosophical, political, social, and theological issues. Conferences were held in many locations. As with other movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a radicalism about the presentations that inspired great zeal. The young audiences got the message that traditional Reformed theology was “scholastic,” “dualistic,” and thus not worthy of the Reformers. The only path to true reform, they thought, was to make theology, ethics, politics, and all other spheres of life subject to a Christian philosophy, namely that of Dooyeweerd and his disciples. So the Reformed community went to war again, fighting battles in churches, seminaries, and Christian schools over these issues.

The ICS leaned toward socialist politics and liberal views on many social and theological issues, but other followers of Dooyeweerd took more conservative positions. My impression is that by the late 1970s the battles in churches and institutions had petered out, though views on these matters continue to be exchanged in academic contexts.

 

6. Sabbath

Differences over the Sabbath began very early in the history of the Reformed community. Calvin held that in the New Covenant there was no special day divinely mandated for worship and rest. The Puritans and Scots, however, believed that the New Testament “Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10) is identical with the Old Testament Sabbath except that it is observed on the first day of the week rather than the seventh.20 Calvin’s view is reflected in the Heidelberg Catechism, the Puritan view in the Westminster Standards. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the OPC disciplined two ministers who held essentially Calvin’s view of the Sabbath. These cases raised the question of whether Calvin himself would have been sufficiently orthodox to minister in that denomination and the more serious question of whether even the main historic divisions of the Reformed community are capable of ecclesiastical fellowship.

 

7. Charismatic Gifts

Most Reformed believers hold that the New Testament gifts of tongues and prophecy ceased at the end of the apostolic age. The view that these gifts continue in the church has been thought to conflict with the Reformed view of sola Scriptura, particularly the statement in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1.1) about “those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.” Nevertheless, some have argued that although Scripture is our sufficient standard of faith and life, God continues occasionally to reveal himself in other ways. John Calvin says Paul applies the term prophet in Eph. 4:11 “not to all those who were interpreters of God’s will, but to those who excelled in a particular revelation. This class either does not exist today or is less commonly seen [emphasis mine].”  These prophets were “instrumental in revealing mysteries and predicting future events” that “now and again [the Lord] revives them as the need of the time demands.”21 Later in the same discussion, he says that God even raised up apostles (probably Calvin refers to Luther) in Calvin’s time, for extraordinary purposes. Samuel Rutherford, a member of the Westminster Assembly, reports supernatural predictions of the future among the Reformers.22 Vern Poythress also cites reports of such extraordinary prophecies from John Flavel, various Scottish covenanters, Peter Marshall, Cotton Mather, and others.23 Poythress argues that even given the cessation of the apostolic gifts it is still possible to recognize extraordinary works of the Spirit today that are significantly analogous to the apostolic gifts.24

Nevertheless, two OPC pastors have been disciplined for thinking it possible that the Spirit might do such things today, and many more in various Reformed denominations have been denied ordination on such grounds. A frequent argument is that the Reformed churches must “bear witness against the modern charismatic movement.” It appears, however, that in taking this position the Reformed churches are also bearing witness against a part of their own history.

 

8. Theonomy

The publication in 1973 of Rousas J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law25 and in 1977 of Greg L. Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics26 created still another controversy. These books revived a position often held in Reformed history (but never unanimously) that present-day civil states should be governed by the Law of Moses. Specifically, the theonomists argued, the penalties for crimes in Old Covenant Israel should be applied to the same crimes today. So, now as then, adultery, homosexuality, and blasphemy should be capital crimes. The theonomists were very militant in promoting their positions, and those in opposition were equally militant, if not more so. Churches and presbyteries were divided over this issue.

Opponents argued that God’s relationship to Old Testament Israel was unique and that the specific laws given to Israel were not intended to rule all other nations. A moderate position27 is that we must look at each of the laws God gave to Moses, to determine the function of each in redemptive history and civil society, and thus to determine the precise relevance of each statute for our society.

The theonomists, also called Christian reconstructionists, sometimes seemed to be offering a political program for immediate implementation. Opponents were rather horrified at the idea that someone could take over the government and immediately institute death penalties for any number of actions that had until that time been treated lightly in society. As the discussion proceeded, however, it became evident that the theonomic thesis was actually somewhat more moderate, because (1) in their view, the Old Testament laws could not, and should not, be implemented in modern society until, through preaching of the gospel, those societies were dominated by regenerate people who loved God’s law. Since most reconstructionists were postmillennial, they believed that one day Christianity would dominate human culture, but that that might not happen until many centuries into the future. And (2) they believed in a very limited state government, incapable of instituting anything like a reign of terror. In their view, the dominant government in society should be that of the family and the self-government of regenerate individuals.

My sense is that this controversy, like earlier ones, has wound down somewhat, though it continues to be much discussed in classrooms of Christian colleges and seminaries. More moderate positions, like that of Poythress referenced earlier, seem to be winning the day.

 

9. Covenant and Justification

John Murray taught that the essence of covenant is God’s gracious redemptive promise.28 A younger colleague, Old Testament Professor Meredith G. Kline, argued in his article “Law Covenant”29 that the essence of covenant is law, not grace, though in the New Covenant Christ bears the penalties of the law as a substitute for his people, thus fulfilling the law covenant by grace. Thus our relationship with God is based strictly on merit: either our own merits, which lead only to condemnation, or the merits of Christ imputed to us and received by faith, which bring us forgiveness and eternal life.

In the 1970s, Norman Shepherd, one of Murray’s successors in Westminster’s systematic theology department, championed Murray’s view of covenant. Shepherd emphasized especially that in the covenant God’s grace and human responsibility are inseparable, as by God’s Spirit we are united to Christ. In his view, our relationship to God is not based on merit: indeed, “the very idea of merit is foreign to the way in which God our Father relates to his children.”30 Rather, God “promises forgiveness of sins and eternal life, not as something to be earned, but as a gift to be received by a living and active faith.”31

Since saving faith is living and active (James 2:17), Shepherd emphasized that works are a “necessary” evidence of justification by faith. The word “necessary” led to much controversy at Westminster Seminary from 1974 to 1982, and the reverberations from that controversy continue today. Shepherd’s opponents said that he was making works necessary to salvation, compromising the heart of the Reformation, the doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works. His defenders argued, however, that although works do not in any sense save us, any faith without works is a dead faith, a non-saving faith. Faith doesn’t save because of the good works associated with it, but only because it embraces Christ alone as savior. But neither is saving faith ever without good works. To profess Christ with no interest in serving him is “easy believism” or “cheap grace.”32

A number of bodies (Westminster’s faculty, its board, Philadelphia Presbytery of the OPC) studied Shepherd’s position and did not officially pronounce him unorthodox. But the controversy would not quit, and in 1982 Shepherd was asked to resign his position for the good of the seminary community. In my view, that decision was an injustice.

Though Shepherd left Westminster for pastoral positions in the CRC, the controversy continues to this day.  The web site www.trinityfoundation.org has published several articles accusing followers of Shepherd of denying the gospel. Westminster’s California campus is now dominated by those (including Meredith Kline, W. Robert Godfrey, Michael S. Horton, and R. Scott Clark) who think that Shepherd’s position is a serious error.33 But some faculty members at Westminster in Philadelphia, which dismissed Shepherd in 1982, still endorse the main thrust of Shepherd’s position.

 

10. Law and Gospel

A number of Reformed writers in the 1990s have been attracted to a rather sharp dichotomy between law and gospel, a view historically more typical of Lutheran than of Reformed theology. On this view, the law consists exclusively of commands, threats, and terrors, the gospel exclusively of promises and comforts. There are no comforts in the law, no commands in the gospel. Those who maintain this view say that without a sharp distinction between law and gospel, the law is softened, and the gospel is no longer good news.34 Such a distinction between law and gospel, they believe, is implied by the doctrine of justification by God’s grace through faith alone. These writers think that the views of Norman Shepherd mentioned earlier confuse law and gospel. The publication Modern Reformation has consistently maintained this position, and it is the dominant view of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and Westminster Theological Seminary in California.

Opponents of this position in the Reformed community argue that the Bible itself does not take pains to separate law and gospel, though it does teach justification by grace through faith alone. The classic biblical statement of the law, the ten commandments, begins by proclaiming God’s gracious deliverance of Israel from Egypt and tells Israel to keep the law out of gratefulness for that deliverance (Ex. 20:1-17). Among the commandments themselves are promises of blessing (verses 6 and 12). God is gracious through his law (Psm. 119:29). Similarly, the “gospel” in Scripture is the good news that God reigns; thus it includes the authority of God’s law (Isa. 52:7). It includes the command to repent and believe (Mark 1:14-15), and the belief it commands is a living faith, one that does good works (James 2:14-26).35

Those holding to the sharp distinction between law and gospel have been known to accuse their opponents of denying the gospel itself.36 As with the other issues discussed here, this discussion has created a partisan division in the Reformed community.

 

11. Counseling

Jay E. Adams joined the Westminster (Philadelphia) faculty in the late 1960s, and in 1970 he published Competent to Counsel,37 setting forth his theory of “nouthetic” (later often called “biblical”) counseling. Adams was skeptical of secular psychology, believing that Scripture alone was sufficient for pastors to deal with the problems of counselees. He questioned whether there was any such thing as “mental illness,” arguing that illnesses were either of the body (the sphere of medicine) or of the soul (the sphere of pastoral care). The biblical counseling movement grew rapidly. Now there are a number of churches, counseling centers, and seminaries that maintain this viewpoint. Adams’ movement seeks to bring the Bible to bear on counseling as Van Til brought the Bible to bear on apologetics and philosophy.

But like the other movements we have discussed, Adams’ has provoked opposition. His opponents (sometimes called “integrationists” or “Christian”38 counselors) say that his counseling is not sufficiently responsive to the data of general revelation. His defenders argue that other forms of counseling substitute worldly wisdom for the teachings of Scripture. Differences also exist concerning the nature of science: is psychology a religiously neutral discipline, or does it operate on religiously significant presuppositions (note the Van Tillian term), antithetical to biblical teaching? The two schools also commonly differ as to the institutional status of counselors: Nouthetic counselors argue that counseling is part of the pastoral ministry of the church. Integrationists often maintain that counselors should be state-licensed professionals outside of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

I do sense some movement on both sides, especially in the last ten years or so: Integrationists seem to be more and more impressed with insights from Scripture relevant to the problems of people, and nouthetics seem to recognize more and more the importance of general revelation.39 Adams has always admitted the importance of medical care for physical problems. But the science of the last thirty years has found more and more links between the body and the mind, such as in the treatment of schizophrenia. But for all this rapprochement, the mutual suspicion and partisan divisions have been formed, and they do not seem to be going away.

 

12. The Days of Creation

As in the broader evangelical world, the interpretation of Genesis 1 has been controversial in Reformed circles. Nevertheless, there has been relative peace and tolerance over this issue until recently. A number of Old Princeton professors, including Charles and A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, and Oswald T. Allis, held that the days of creation were not literally twenty-four hours long. Edward J. Young, who taught Old Testament at Westminster for many years, held that the days referred to long ages of time.40 In 1957, Meredith G. Kline published an article, “Because it Had Not Rained,”41 arguing not only that the days were non-literal, but that the narrative does not even teach a temporal sequence of events. Following N. H. Ridderbos,42 Kline argued that the list of days is a literary framework that has no implications for the length of time or the sequence of events. So in the Reformed community, some have held to literal days, others to age-long days, and others to symbolic days. These positions coexisted fairly comfortably in Reformed churches until around 1980.

But since then many have taken up the cause of twenty-four-hour-day creation,43 and their disciples have followed the twentieth-century Reformed pattern of being militant about their views. Many Christian Reconstructionists have embraced a literal position, joined by many strict subscriptionists (see later discussion) who base their argument on what the writers of the Westminster Confession are likely to have believed. Some presbyteries in the OPC and the RCUS have denied ordination to candidates who reject the literal view of Genesis 1.

Should one’s view of the length of the creation days be a test of orthodoxy? I think not. The exegetical questions are difficult, and I don’t believe that any other doctrinal questions hinge on them. A non-literal interpretation does not entail, for example, that Adam was anything but a real person, or that human beings evolved from animals.

 

13. Worship

The “worship wars” of evangelicalism have also divided the Reformed community. Debate has centered on two specific issues:

(1)   The Regulative Principle: This phrase denotes the way God regulates the worship of the church. Reformed theology has claimed to maintain a stronger view of sola Scriptura, the sufficiency of Scripture, for worship, than the Lutheran and Anglican traditions. That is the view that all elements of worship must be “prescribed” in Scripture.44 Not everything done in worship has the status of “element.” The Westminster Confession of Faith says,

…there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God… common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.45

But what, precisely, is an element, and what is a circumstance? Is the use of musical instruments an element, or a circumstance? And what about the specific words of sermons, prayers, and hymns? These are neither prescribed in Scripture, nor are they “common to human actions and societies.” Reformed theologians have taken various positions on these issues.

Some continue to defend the traditional Puritan-Scottish approach which leads to the exclusive use Psalm-versions as worship songs (without musical instruments),46 or some variant of that approach, with less drastic consequences.47 Others hold that the “prescriptions” of Scripture are fairly general, leaving a broader range of freedom than the tradition has recognized.48 Those holding the latter view argue that although God’s prescriptions for the sacrificial ritual of the tabernacle and temple are very detailed and specific, the Bible prescribes nothing specific about the synagogue worship, and little about the worship of the New Testament church.

(2) Worship Style: Some in the Reformed community advocate a very simple style of worship, focused on preaching, emulating the Puritans. Others have advocated a more elaborate ceremony, adapting the liturgies of Geneva and other Reformation churches. Still others have introduced elements associated with contemporary evangelicalism: three or four songs in a row, use of guitars, synthesizers and drums, use of contemporary worship songs, attempts to be sensitive to unchurched visitors. The first two groups have characterized the third as non-Reformed; advocates of contemporaneity accuse the traditionalists of ignoring the Pauline imperative that worship should be edifying (and therefore understandable) to the congregation, even to non-Christian visitors (1 Cor. 14; note especially verses 22-25).49

 

14. Roles of Women

As with other traditions, the Reformed community has been much concerned with the roles of women in family, church, and workplace. The ordination of women to church office has been particularly controversial. As I mentioned earlier, many conservatives left the CRC in the 1990s because that denomination opened all the offices of the church to women. Most of those I defined earlier as “conservative” reject the ordination of women. But one group, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), which left the PCUSA over its liberal theology, has women elders in some churches, though unlike the PCUSA the EPC does not require congregations to have women officers.

Even those denominations that reject women’s ordination have not escaped controversy. One large congregation recently left the PCA because of controversy over their use of women in worship. A woman stood behind a pulpit and used Scripture in a way that some described as “preaching.” So the controversy in the PCA has come down to the question of whether some biblical restrictions pertain to women that do not pertain to unordained men. That question turns largely on the interpretation of 1 Cor. 14:33-35 and 1 Tim. 2:11-15. Some argue that these passages exclude women only from the teaching and ruling offices of the church. Others say that in addition to this, women should either be entirely silent during meetings of the church, or at least should not be permitted to teach God’s Word to a group that includes men.50

There has also been controversy over recent attempts to translate the Bible into “gender-neutral” language, avoiding such things as generic masculine pronouns and the generic “man.”51 In 1997 there was an agreement between a group of evangelical leaders and the International Bible Society, together with Zondervan publishers, that the IBS would not proceed on a plan to revise the New International Version in a gender-neutral direction. But in 2001 IBS and Zondervan announced that they had not abided by this agreement, but were completing work on a translation called “Today’s New International Version” (TNIV) that follows a gender-neutral policy. This decision caused a great stir among evangelicals generally, the Reformed among them.52

Proponents of gender-neutral translations say that gendered generics are no longer understandable to contemporary readers of English. Opponents say that (1) these generics are understandable, though politically offensive to some, and that (2) replacing them inevitably depersonalizes the biblical message, replacing masculine generics with plurals and abstract terms.

 

15. Preaching and Redemptive History

Though Geerhardus Vos, Professor of Biblical Theology, stayed at Princeton after Westminster was founded, many Westminster faculty members admired him and were highly influenced by his teaching. Vos taught that Scripture was not a book of doctrinal propositions or ethical maxims, but a history of redemption, narrating the mighty acts of God from creation to consummation.

In 1961, Edmund P. Clowney, Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster, published Preaching and Biblical Theology53 in which, following some Dutch writers of the 1930s and ‘40s, he argued that the main purpose of preaching is to set forth that redemptive-historical narrative. Negatively, Clowney argued that sermons should not present biblical characters as moral examples (called “exemplarism” and “moralism” in the Dutch discussion), but rather should present the role of each character in the historical drama that leads to Christ. Thus preaching should always be centered on Christ and the Gospel. This position was carried to an extreme by others who, unlike Clowney, argued that a preacher should never “apply” the Scriptures to moral issues.54

Still others are not convinced by this argument. Though grateful for Clowney’s drawing our attention to the redemptive-historical drama of Scripture and the centrality of Christ, some have noted that (1) Scripture contains not only narrative, but also laws, proverbs, songs, letters, and apocalyptic, all of which have distinct purposes that preachers should bring out. (2) The intention of biblical writers in describing biblical characters is in part, indeed, to present them as positive or negative examples for human behavior (as Rom. 4:1-25, 1 Cor. 10:1-13, Heb. 11, Jas. 2:21-26, 5:17-18, 2 Pet. 2:4-10, Jude 8-13). (3) Scripture explicitly tells us to imitate Jesus (John 13:34-35) and Paul (1 Cor. 11:1, 2 Tim. 3:10-11), indeed to imitate God the Father (Matt. 5:44-48, 1 Pet. 1:15-16). And Paul tells Timothy also to be an example (1 Tim. 4:12). Imitation is an important means to the believer’s sanctification. (4) The whole purpose of Scripture is application: to our belief (John 20:31) and our good works (2 Tim. 3:16-17). (5) Redemptive-historical preachers have sometimes been criticized for interpreting texts arbirtrarily to maintain an artificial Christ-centeredness.55

 

16. Subscription

The long-standing Reformed debate over the nature of subscription to confessions continued through the twentieth century. Reformed churches are traditionally confessional, requiring all officers (in some communions, all members) to pledge agreement with historic Reformed confessions, such as the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, the Belgic Confession, etc. The controversy over liberal theology convinced many conservatives that the confessions should be taken more seriously. Some warned, however, that there are dangers in a form of subscription that is too strict: If subscription means that one may never teach anything contrary to the confession, then, for all practical purposes the confessions are unamendable and are placed on the same level of authority as Scripture. Reformed theology embraces sola Scriptura and therefore must allow practical means by which the Bible can lead us to revise the confessions if need be.

Theologians have advocated different views of subscription, some more strict than others.56 In my judgment, this debate has focused too much on history, not enough on theology. It has stressed too much the attempt to define the historic view of American Presbyterianism, too little the theological question of what kind of subscription is desirable: both to maintain orthodoxy in the church and to maintain the supremacy of Scripture above all secondary standards.

 

17. Church Unity

Among the Reformers, Calvin was most concerned with the unity of the church, specifically with the visible unity of the Protestant movement. Resisting the tendency of Protestants to divide into Calvinist and Lutheran camps, Calvin subscribed to a revised version of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession. More recently, however, some Reformed thinkers have subscribed to the notion of “pluriformity,” the view that denominations are, on the whole, a good thing. On this view, denominations are God’s way of dealing with diversity in temperaments, gifts, and doctrines. They maintain peace in the body of Christ in the way that good fences make good neighbors.

Other Reformed theologians, however, have rejected pluriformity, believing that God never ordained denominational division and that he intends for differences among believers to be worked out within the church, not over good fences.57 That position became more influential in the late twentieth century. Reformed denominations have formed organizations, such as the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, the International and American Councils of Christian Churches,  the World Reformed Fellowship, and the National Association of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches. They have sought “fraternal” or “sister church” relationships with other bodies. Some denominations have discussed union with others.

In 1982, the RPES “joined” the PCA and was “received” by them.58 But the PCA turned down the application of the OPC to be received into the larger denomination. Four years later, the OPC, lacking the necessary two-thirds vote in the General Assembly, rejected a renewed invitation to union with the PCA. Pro-union and anti-union parties engaged in much ecclesiastical warfare during this period.

It seems to me that although Reformed churches are committed in theory to seeking union, there is a notable tendency for them to shy away from any actual union, and indeed to create new divisions unnecessarily. Reformed churches tend to glory in their distinctives: their history, their ethnic origins, the theological battles of the past that have made them different from others.

Further, when groups of people leave a denomination over some issue, they tend to form new denominations, rather than to join denominations that already exist. So those who left the CRC over the issue of women’s ordination did not, for the most part, join other Reformed or Presbyterian denominations, but formed new bodies. In my judgment, these new denominations were unjustified and therefore add to the divisions in the body of Christ.

In the 1990s, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE) brought together Christians from various confessional traditions: Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, Anglican, and others. Their emphasis was on the Reformation solas: by Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. The Alliance showed promise of bringing Christians together. However, to some extent it has itself become divisive, for it has become a party in evangelicalism advocating certain distinctives: a sharp distinction between law and gospel, a “two kingdoms” view of Christ and culture, a history-centered approach to theology, strict subscription, and traditional worship.

 

18. Tradition in Theology

More should be said, therefore, about the role of tradition in the work of theology. Reformed theology has embraced sola Scriptura, a principle which Luther and Calvin used to carry out a radical critique of the ideas and practices of the church of their time. But these Reformers did respect their predecessors, making much use especially of the Church Fathers and Augustine. They accepted the teachings of the early creeds, and they purified worship in a thoughtful, cautious way, critical of the violent change advocated by others.

For thirty years or so there has been a movement in American evangelicalism to recover the past, to remedy the “rootlessness” that many have felt in evangelical churches. In the 1950s and ‘60s, the intellectual leaders of evangelicalism were for the most part biblical scholars, apologists, and systematic theologians. But at the end of the twentieth century, church historians, and theologians who do their work in dialogue with ancient and recent history, have become more prominent. Reformed theology has participated in this development, so that many of its most prominent figures, such as David Wells, Donald Bloesch, Mark Noll, George Marsden, Darryl Hart, Richard Muller, and Michael Horton, do theology in a historical mode. Many of these also advocate strict subscription and traditional worship, and they seek to renew an emphasis on Reformation distinctives: hence the discussions of covenant, justification, law, and gospel, noted earlier. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals has supported this emphasis.

Though this emphasis has done some good by revitalizing interest in the Reformed heritage, some have found deficiencies in the theology emerging from this movement. The main issue is sola Scriptura. The Reformed tradition consists, not in merely repeating previous Reformed traditions, but, as with Calvin, in using the Scriptures to criticize tradition. The history-oriented theologians tend to be uncritical of traditions and critical of the contemporary church. But their arguments are often based on their preferences rather than biblical principle and therefore fail to persuade. The Reformed community, in my judgment, needs to return to an explicitly exegetical model of theology, following the example of John Murray.59 The exegetical approach is also (perhaps paradoxically) the most contemporary approach, for it applies Scripture directly to our lives today. This question is, of course, one of emphasis. We should never ignore our past. But my view is that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of a historical emphasis.

 

19. Sonship

C. John Miller taught practical theology at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and planted the New Life Church (originally OPC, later PCA). He emphasized the importance of evangelistic, outward-facing ministry in the church and founded World Harvest Mission.60 He also began a ministry called Sonship, which through conferences and tapes presents a distinctive view of the Christian life: not only justification, but sanctification too is by faith. The way to victory over sin, according to Miller, is not by the law, but by the gospel: looking to Jesus as the one who has born the full guilt of our sins, “preaching the gospel to yourself.” That involves a life of repentance, but also the recognition that Christ has set us free from sin to be his sons and daughters. Some have criticized the Sonship teaching as failing to understand the positive uses of the law in the believer’s spiritual growth.61

Sonship has become a major renewal movement in conservative Presbyterian circles, especially the PCA. Those who have taken the Sonship course often emerge with a far more vital relationship with Christ. Nevertheless, advocates and opponents of Sonship have fought the typical Reformed battles. As with many of the movements and ideas discussed in this paper, I tend to agree with what Sonship affirms (the benefit of preaching the Gospel to ourselves) but not with what it denies (that reflecting on God’s law and striving to obey are somehow harmful to our sanctification).

 

20. Christian Hedonism

John Piper’s writings62 have made a large impact on Reformed and other evangelical believers in the late twentieth century, and their influence continues unabated. Building on some ideas of Jonathan Edwards, Piper argues that the Christian life is essentially an enjoyment of God, for God is glorified when his people enjoy him. The Christian life gets out of kilter when we find ourselves enjoying other things in the place of God. Piper’s work has generated a renewal movement similar to that of Sonship, though with a somewhat different message. Piper has been criticized for failing to recognize the theme of the Heidelberg Catechism, that our obedience to God is motivated by gratitude for what he has done for us.

 

21. Multi-Perspectivalism

Emerging from these battles, it has occurred to some of us that perhaps at least some of these conflicts have resulted from misunderstandings. Some of the disagreements may not be straightforward differences over truth vs. falsity, but to some extent have resulted from people looking at biblical content from different angles or perspectives. The story of the blind men and the elephant is relevant here: one describes the elephant as shaped like a tree trunk, another like a great boulder, another like a thick cable, because one focuses on the leg, the second on the torso, and the third on the trunk. Were they able to see, they would understand that there is truth in all three descriptions, that no description captures the whole animal, and that there is no cause for disagreement.

So I suspect, for example, that the disagreement over the incomprehensibility of God is a difference between some who focus on the continuity between God’s thoughts and ours and others who focus on the discontinuity. I see no reason why we cannot affirm both, if we can escape our movement loyalties and read Scripture afresh. On the issue of confessional subscription, I think it possible to establish a form of subscription that will guard the church against heresy, while at the same time allowing Scripture to function as the church’s primary standard, so that the church can, if necessary, revise the confessions according to the Word of God. On the issue of the dynamics of the Christian life, I’m inclined to think that Scripture teaches a number of factors in sanctification: not only reviewing the Gospel (Miller) and scrutinizing our pleasures (Piper), but also asking God’s grace to give us thankful hearts (the Heidelberg Catechism), seeking godly models to imitate (as discussed earlier), and reviewing the law to see how our Father wants us to behave (not only theonomy, but the traditional Reformed “third use of the law”).

Not every theological difference, of course, is a difference of perspective. Sometimes one must simply choose between one view that is true and another that is false. For example, either women should be ordained to church office, or they should not be. There is no middle ground on this specific issue, and the difference is not merely a difference of perspective. Even here, however, perspectival differences enter into nature of the disagreement. Advocates of women’s ordination tend to view the biblical data largely from the perspective of Gal. 3:28: “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Opponents tend to focus on 1 Cor. 14:33-35 and 1 Tim. 2:11-15. I doubt that unity will be restored on this issue until each group takes the perspective of the other group more seriously.

The main point of multiperspectivalism is that only God is omniscient, seeing reality simultaneously from all possible perspectives. Because of our finitude, we need to look at things first from one perspective, then another. The more different perspectives we can incorporate into our formulations, the more likely those formulations will be biblically accurate.

Several of us have expounded this approach to theology in various places.63 But alas, multi-perspectivalism itself has become a focus of controversy in Reformed circles.64 The usual criticism is that multi-perspectivalism is relativist, but multi-perspectivalists deny that criticism emphatically. On our view, there is one objective truth: the truth as God has made it. We can know much of that truth with certainty, based on God’s revelation. But there are some matters, even in theology, about which many of us are uncertain. And especially in those cases it is important for us to cross-check our ideas by looking at the data from different perspectives.

 

Observations

1. I have enumerated 21 areas of conflict occurring in American conservative Reformed circles from 1936 to the present.65 Under some of those headings I have mentioned subdivisions, subcontroversies. Most of these controversies have led to divisions in churches and denominations, harsh words exchanged between Christians. People have been told that they are not Reformed, even that they have denied the Gospel. Since Jesus presents love as what distinguishes his disciples from the world (John 13:34-35), this bitter fighting is anomalous in a Christian fellowship. Reformed believers need to ask what has driven these battles. To what extent has this controversy been the fruit of the Spirit, and to what extent has it been a work of the flesh?

2. The Machen movement was born in the controversy over liberal theology. I have no doubt that Machen and his colleagues were right to reject this theology and to fight it. But it is arguable that once the Machenites found themselves in a “true Presbyterian church” they were unable to moderate their martial impulses. Being in a church without liberals to fight, they turned on one another.

3. One slogan of the Machen movement was “truth before friendship.” We should laud their intention to act according to principle without compromise. But the biblical balance is “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). We must not speak the truth without thinking of the effect of our formulations on our fellow Christians, even our opponents. That balance was not characteristic of the Machen movement.66

4. Reformed people need to do much more thinking about what constitutes a test of orthodoxy. Is it really plausible to say that, say, Gordon Clark’s view of incomprehensibility was unorthodox, when neither Clark’s nor Van Til’s positions are clearly set forth in the Reformed confessions? But again and again through the history described above, writers have read one another out of the Reformed movement (and even out of Christianity) on such dubious bases. The assumption seems to be that any difference of opinion amounts to a test of fellowship, that any truth I possess gives me the right to disrupt the peace of the church until everybody comes to agree with me. But surely there are some disagreements that are not tests of orthodoxy, some differences that should be tolerated within the church. Examples include the disagreements over days and the eating of meat described by Paul in Rom. 14, and the disagreements about idol food which he discusses in 1 Cor. 8-10. In those passages, there is no suggestion that people holding the wrong view should be put out of the church. Rather, Paul condemns the party spirit and calls the disagreeing parties to live together as Christian brothers and sisters. In my judgment, the Machen movement thought little about the difference between tolerable and intolerable disagreements in the church.

5. Scripture often condemns a “contentious” spirit (Prov. 13:10, 18:6, 26:21, Hab. 1:3, 1 Cor. 1:11, 11:16, Tit. 3:9) and commends “gentleness” (2 Cor. 10:1, Gal. 5:22, 1 Thess. 2:7, 2 Tim. 2:24, Tit. 3:2, Jas. 3:17). The Reformed community should give much more attention to these biblical themes.

6. With many, though not all, of the issues described above it is possible to see the positions as complementary rather than as contradictory. I believe that is true of the Van Til/Clark controversy, the counseling controversy, the Sonship controversy and some others. As I said earlier, I find these positions more persuasive in what they affirm than in what they deny.

7. With other issues, there are genuine contradictions between the positions of the parties. But even in those cases, I think that often these parties are trying to express complementary biblical truths. Theonomy, for example, emphasizes the continuity between Old and New Testaments, anti-theonomy the discontinuity. A more adequate account will seek to do justice to both.

8. Overall, the quality of thought displayed in these polemics has not been a credit to the Reformed tradition. Writers have gone to great lengths to read their opponents’ words and motivations in the worst possible sense (often worse than possible) and to present their own ideas as virtually perfect: rightly motivated and leaving no room for doubt. Such presentations are scarcely credible to anybody who looks at the debates with minimal objectivity.

9. The various anniversary celebrations and official histories in the different Reformed denominational bodies have been largely self-congratulatory.67 In Reformed circles, we often say that there is no perfect church, that churches as well as individuals are guilty of sin and liable to error. But Reformed writers and teachers seem to find it almost impossible to specify particular sins, even weaknesses, in their own traditions or denominations, particularly in their own partisan groups. A spirit of genuine self-criticism (prelude to a spirit of repentance) is an urgent need.

10. Nevertheless it is important to remember that there are some theological issues that really are matters of life and death for the church. In the PCUSA as of the time of this writing, there are controversies over whether church officers should be expected to observe biblical standards of sexual fidelity and chastity, over the ordination of homosexuals, and over whether Jesus is the only Lord and Savior. The outrageous fact that such issues can actually be debated within the church places other controversies into perspective. The Confessing Church Movement within the PCUSA is fighting a courageous battle, and they deserve the prayers and encouragement of all Reformed believers.

11. My assignment was to write on Reformed theology. But I should note that the remedy for the divisions above is not merely better theological formulations. The almost exclusive focus on doctrinal issues in many Reformed circles is itself part of the problem. As Tim Keller advises, Reformed Christianity needs a vision that encompasses not only doctrinal statements, but also our piety, evangelistic outreach, and missions of mercy.68

 

An Unrealistic Dream

1. That Reformed thinkers continue to have bright, fresh ideas, but that they present these ideas with humility and treat with grace and patience those who are not immediately convinced.

2. That Reformed thinkers with bright ideas discourage the rapid formation of parties to contend for those ideas.

3. That those initially opposed to those bright ideas allow some time for gentle, thoughtful discussion before declaring the bright ideas to be heresy.

4. That these opponents also discourage the rapid formation of partisan groups.

5. That those contending for various doctrinal positions accept the burden of proof, willing to bear the difficulty of serious biblical exegesis.

6. That we try much harder to guard our tongues (Jas. 3:1-12), saving the strongest language of condemnation (e.g., “denying the gospel”) for those who have been declared heretics by the judicial processes of the church.

7. That Reformed churches, ministries, and institutions be open to a wider range of opinions than they are now—within limits, of course.

8. That we honor one another as much for character and witness as we do for agreement with our theological positions.

9. That occasionally we smile and jest about our relatively minor differences, while praying, worshiping, and working together in the love of Christ.69

 

1 I apologize for the large number of adjectives in this phrase, but it does state concisely the range of theology I will seek to analyze in this paper. “Conservative” and “evangelical,” of course, are terms variously defined. Here I will restrict my attention to those types of Reformed theology that credibly subscribe to historic Reformed confessions such as the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity. The theology of Karl Barth, though often described as conservative, evangelical, and Reformed, does not fit this restriction, because of Barth’s view of Scripture, his denial of God’s eternal decree, and his refusal to identify the events of salvation directly with events of calendar time, among other things.

2 New York: Harper, 1930.

3 Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1925, 1947.

4 Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1923.

5 These names and initials can be confusing of course. The denomination founded by Machen was originally called the Presbyterian Church of America, which differs from the PCA only by a preposition. In the present-day PCA, my own denomination, we try to remind people that as the church is in the world but not of it, the PCA is in America, but not of it. Not that Machen would have had any other vision for his own denomination!

6 Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed.

7 See Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), Rousas J. Rushdoony, God’s Plan for Victory: The Meaning of Postmillennialism (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1977).

8 See, for example, David Chilton, Days of Vengeance (Ft. Worth: Dominion Press, 1987), a commentary on the Book of Revelation.

9 See, for example, www.preteristarchive.com.

10 In my judgment, therefore, “incomprehensibility” is a misleading term to describe the issue of the debate.

11 For a more thorough description and analysis of the controversy, with bibliography, see John M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishers, 1995), 97-113.

12 For Clark’s position, see his A Christian View of Men and Things (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), and Religion, Reason and Revelation (Phila.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961). For Van Til’s position, see my Cornelius Van Til, esp. 141-184.

13 See Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Phila.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1955), 239-267.

14 Ibid., 4-20, 267-302. This and the previous section were dropped from later editions of The Defense of the Faith. See also James Daane, A Theology of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), and Van Til, The Theology of James Daane (Phila.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1959).

15 John Gerstner, R. C. Sproul, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 70-90. See also my review of this book, published as Appendix A of my Cornelius Van Til, 401-422, and also as Appendix A of my Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1994), 219-243.

16 See, for example, Steven B. Cowan, ed., Five Views on Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000). Prof. Alister McGrath, whom we honor in this volume, has made some helpful contributions to this literature, such as Glimpsing the Face of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), Explaining Your Faith Without Losing Your Friends (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989) and Intellectuals Don’t Need God and Other Modern Myths (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993). If I may say so, however, I think he is not at his best in the Appendix to the latter book that deals with Van Til.

17 For the apologetic development of his ideas, see his Warranted Christian Belief (NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000). Kelly James Clark, a follower of Plantinga, has used this approach in Return to Reason (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990) and in Cowan, op. cit., 265-312.

18 Dooyeweerd’s magnum opus is De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, translated into English as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1953), four volumes. A more popular presentation of his ideas is In the Twilight of Western Thought (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1958).

19 Some writings from the early North American phase of the movement: Hendrik Hart, The Challenge of Our Age (Toronto: Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship, 1968), Hart, Understanding Our World: An Integral Ontology (Lanham, MD: Univ. Press of America, 1984), L. Kalsbeek,Coutours of a Christian Philosophy (Toronto: Wedge, 1975), Calvin Seerveld, A Christian Critique of Art and Literature (Toronto: Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship, 1968). For my critique, see Frame, The Amsterdam Philosophy: a Preliminary Critique (Phillipsburg, NJ: Harmony Press, 1972) and Cornelius Van Til,  371-386. For an attempt to apply Dooyeweerdian ideas to systematic theology, see Gordon J. Spykman, Reformational Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992).

20 For a discussion of these positions, see Richard B. Gaffin, Calvin and the Sabbath (Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor, 1998). Still others hold that the New Covenant abrogates the Sabbath, but replaces it with the Lord’s Day, a first-day celebration of the Resurrection, but not a day of rest. See Donald A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).

21 Calvin, Institutes, 4.3.4.

22 Rutherford, A Survey of Spirituall Antichrist… (London: Andrew Crooke, 1948) 1.7, 42-44, cited by Poythress; see following note.

23 Poythress, Modern Spiritual Gifts as Analogous to Apostolic Gifts: Affirming Extraordinary Works of the Spirit within Cessationist Theology (Glenside, PA: Westminster Campus Bookstore, n. d.). See also Greg Barrow, A Reformation Discussion of Extraordinary Predictive Prophecy Subsequent to the Closing of the Canon of Scripture (Edmonton, AL: Still Waters Revival Books, 1998). The latter author and publisher represent the Puritan Reformed Church, an extremely small and highly traditionalist denomination that regards most conservative Presbyterian groups (such as OPC, PCA, RPNA) as apostate because they do not subscribe to the Scottish Solemn League and Covenant. In this case, ironically, their very traditionalism leads them to a position considered in the OPC to be a concession to the modern charismatic movement.

24 Poythress, Modern Spiritual Gifts.

25 No place of publication listed; Craig Press. I reviewed this book in Westminster Theological Journal 38:2 (Winter, 1976), 195-217.

26 No place of publication listed; Craig Press. A second, expanded edition, including responses to critics, was published in 1984.

27 For a more balanced discussion of the relevance of Old Testament law to the Christian, see Vern Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Brentwood: Wohlgemuth and Hyatt, 1991).

28 See his pamphlet, The Covenant of Grace (London: Tyndale Press, 1954). See also “Covenant Theology” in his Collected Writings (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1984), 4.216-240. In his lectures on systematic theology, he says that “covenant in Scripture denotes the oath-bound confirmation of promise,” Collected Writings 2.49.

29 Westminster Theological Journal 27 (1964-65), 1-20. See also his Treaty of the Great King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), By Oath Consigned (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), and The Structure of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972).

30 Norman Shepherd, The Call of Grace (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2000), 39.

31 Ibid.

32 This controversy somewhat parallels the controversy in broader evangelical circles over “Lordship salvation,” the debate over whether one can confess Jesus as savior without confessing him as Lord. Shepherd’s reasoning implies that one cannot.

33 An error “of Galatian proportions,” according to one Westminster/California professor in correspondence.

34 See, for example, Michael Scott Horton, “The Law and the Gospel,” at www.alliancenet.org/pub/articles/horton.LawGospel.html.

35 For more discussion, see my “Law and Gospel,” at https://www.reformationrevival.com/WeeklyE-News/Semper%20Archive/LawandGospel.html, or https://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/0201/020104frame.shtml.

36 My basis for this statement consists of email exchanges and personal conversations.

37 No place of publication listed: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishers.

38 As opposed to “biblical”!

39 For a review of developments since Adams’ original work, describing recent rapprochement between the two schools and specifying the remaining differences, see David Powlison, “Questions at the Crossroads: The Care of Souls and Modern Psychotherapies,” in Mark McMinn and Timothy Phillips, eds., Care for the Soul: Exploring the Intersection of Psychology and Theology (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001), 23-61. See also Powlison, “Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling,” Journal of Pastoral Practice, 11:3 (1988), 53-78.

40 See Young, Studies in Genesis One (Phila.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964).

41 Westminster Theological Journal 20 (1957-58), 146-157. Later he amplified his views in “Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony,” in Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith 48 (1996), 2-15.

42 Ridderbos, Is There a Conflict Between Genesis 1 and Natural Science? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957).

43 Some recent examples: Noel Weeks, The Sufficiency of Scripture (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1988), 95-118, Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 392-94), James B. Jordan, Creation in Six Days (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1999).

44 Westminster Confession of Faith, 21.1. Compare 1.6, 20.2. Lutherans and Anglicans argue that we may do anything in worship that Scripture does not forbid, keeping in mind the overall biblical purposes of worship.

45 1.6.

46 For example, Michael Bushell, The Songs of Zion (Pittsburgh, PA: Crown and Covenant Publications, 1980).

47 As in D. G. Hart and John Muether, With Reverence and Awe (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2002).

48 See my Worship in Spirit and Truth (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1996) and “A Fresh Look at the Regulative Principle” in David G. Hagopian, ed., Always Reformed, forthcoming.

49 The earlier-referenced book by Hart and Muether argues for traditional worship. My Contemporary Worship Music: a Biblical Defense (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1997) argues for a more contemporary approach.

50 For these views and others, see Bonnidell and Robert Clouse, Women in Ministry: Four Views (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1989). The most helpful treatments of these issues in my view are James Hurley, Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981) and John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991).

51 Some feminists have advocated that God himself be designated without gender or even as a female. Zondervan and IBS did not go this far.

52 For different viewpoints on this question, see D. A. Carson, The Inclusive-Language Debate (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), Mark L. Strauss, Distorting Scripture? (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), and Vern Poythress and Wayne Grudem, The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 2000. The last is most persuasive to me.

53 Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961.

54 For this more extreme position, see the publication Kerux.

55 For a longer discussion of these points, see my “Ethics, Preaching, and Biblical Theology,” at www.thirdmill.org.

56 The case for “full” subscription is made by Morton H. Smith in The Subscription Debate (Greenville, SC: Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, no date listed; published 1993 or later). A less conservative view is William S. Barker, “System Subscription,” Westminster Theological Journal 63 (2001), 1-14. Four elders participated in a debate on subscription before the PCA General Assembly of 2001, which was published in the denominational web magazine, PCA News, at https://www.christianity.com/pcanews.

57 See John Murray, Collected Writings 1.269-287 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), Edmund P. Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove: IVP, 1995), John Frame, Evangelical Reunion (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991, also available at www.thirdmill.org).

58 The process of “joining and receiving” was a procedure designed to minimize pre-union negotiations, the idea being to work out differences after union rather than before. Arguably this is a more biblical procedure than the conventional negotiation, since Scripture tells Christians to work out their differences within the church rather than to shout at one another over denominational barriers. In practice, however, the RPES and PCA did engage in much negotiation and discussion before the union was approved.

59 I have argued these points at greater length in “In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism,” Westminster Theological Journal 59 (1997), 269-318, with responses by Richard Muller and David Wells, reprinted as an Appendix to Contemporary Worship Music. See also my “Traditionalism” atwww.thirdmill.org and in Chalcedon Report 434 (Oct., 2001), 15-19, and 435 (Nov., 2001), 14-16.

60 Among his writings are Repentance and Twentieth-Century Man (Phila.: Christian Literature Crusade, 1980), Outgrowing the Ingrown Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), Powerful Evangelism for the Powerless (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1997).

61 For a positive exposition of Sonship, read Neil H. Williams, Theology of Sonship (Phila.: World Harvest Mission, 2002). For a critique, Jay E. Adams, Biblical Sonship (Woodruff, SC: Timeless Texts, 1999).

62 See especially his Desiring God (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1996).

63 See John Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1987), Perspectives on the Word of God (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), Poythress, God-Centered Biblical Interpretation (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1999).

64 Mark Karlberg, “On the Theological Correlation of Divine and Human Language: A Review Article,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 32:1 (March, 1989), 99-105, and his review of my Cornelius Van Til (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1995) in Mid-America Journal of Theology 9:2 (Fall, 1993), 297-308. I have replied to both Karlberg pieces in Appendices to my Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2002).

65 Of course, between 1900 and 1936 the chief battle was over theological liberalism. There was also a major conflict in the CRC over the doctrine of common grace, leading to the formation of the Protestant Reformed Church. I cannot enter into that controversy here, but I have addressed it in myCornelius Van Til (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1995), 215-230.

66 Machen, like others in the Reformed tradition, emphasized the “primacy of the intellect.” See his What is Faith? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1925, reprinted 1962). As Ulrich Zwingli eliminated music from the worship service, turning it into a teaching meeting, Reformed leaders through history have tended to value intellectual rigor at the expense of people’s emotions. In my judgment, this intellectualism is a mistaken emphasis and needs to be overcome. See my Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1987), 319-346.

67 See, for example, Darryl Hart and John Muether, Fighting the Good Fight (Phila: The Committee on Christian Education and the Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1995). Though there is much useful information and reflection in this book, there is far too little recognition of possible inadequacies within the tradition.

68 See Keller, “The Vision of PPLN,” available at https://www.pastoral-leadership.org/articles/PPLNvision_Keller.pdf.

69 Thanks to Steve Hays, D. Clair Davis, David Powlison, John Muether, and Greg Welty, who read an earlier draft of this paper and made helpful suggestions. I take all responsibility for the final formulation.

copied from: 

https://frame-poythress.org/machens-warrior-children/

Machen’s Warrior Children by John M. Frame

Abstract

From 1923 to the present, the movement begun by J. Gresham Machen and Westminster Theological Seminary has supplied the theological leadership for the conservative evangelical Reformed Christians in the United States. Under that leadership, conservative Calvinists made a strong stand against liberal theology. But having lost that theological battle in the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., they turned inward to battle among themselves about issues less important—in some cases, far less important—than liberalism. This essay describes 21 of these issues, with some subdivisions, and offers some brief analysis and evaluations. It concludes by raising some questions for the Reformed community to consider: Was it right to devote so much of the church’s time and effort to these theological battles? Did the disputants follow biblical standards for resolution of these issues? Was the quality of thought in these polemics worthy of the Reformed tradition of scholarship? Should the Reformed community be willing to become more inclusive, to tolerate greater theological differences than many of the polemicists have wanted?

Please read the full article at:

https://frame-poythress.org/machens-warrior-children/

Orthodoxy and heresy in earlier Christianity

Orthodoxy and heresy in earlier Christianity

I Howard Marshall

In April 1975 the Historical Theology Group of the Tyndale Fellowship held a conference at Dunblane, Scotland, at which they considered the theme of ‘Heresy’. This paper, first delivered at that conference, and subsequently at a meeting of the Scottish Divinity Faculties, examines the view, which has gained a wide following since the publication in English of Bauer’s important book, that the categories of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ are a later development, foreign to New Testament Christianity. Dr Marshall, Senior Lecturer in New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, was for several years editor of the TSF Bulletin.

 

There is a story, possibly apocryphal, which tells how the Roman Catholics once advertised a public meeting in Sydney, Australia; on their posters they presented their claim to be the upholders of pure Christianity by means of the slogan ‘The Faith of our Fathers’. Not to be outdone, the Protestants arranged a rival meeting with the redoubtable T. C. Hammond as their speaker, and they advertised as their title, ‘The Faith of our Grandfathers’. The title of this essay is somewhat similar to the Protestant parody. It is a secondary elaboration of a more famous phrase, and will be readily recognized as a parody of the title of a well-known book by Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. As with a number of other significant German books, the importance of this one was not recognized in this country until long after its original publication. English-reading students have had to wait until the last twelve years to see translations of the works of William Wrede, Wilhelm Bousset and Rudolf Bultmann, and with them of W. Bauer, first published in 1934 and not available in English until 1972 (in America, 1971).1 Unlike the others, however, which hit the headlines on the Continent at the time of publication, Bauer’s work came at a time when the German church was preoccupied with other more pressing issues, and it had to wait till after the war for due recognition.

 

Bauer’s basic thesis was a polemical one and is best summed up in his own words: he argued that, according to the generally accepted interpretation of the situation, ‘Jesus revealed the true teaching to his apostles who in their turn went out into all the world after the ascension to hand on the unadulterated gospel to the peoples. It was only after their death that obstacles arose for the preaching from the Christian side. For now some people who were misled by the devil gave up the apostolic preaching which had been the means of their conversion and put in its place their own human ideas. Thus in the post-apostolic period there arose heresies of various kinds which could certainly be very annoying to the church but never in any form really dangerous.

 

‘This conception (he went on) must be tested for its accuracy by means of history. Did the order: unbelief, orthodox belief, false belief, which is said to have been the case everywhere, really correspond with the facts or not, or was it the case to a limited extent that must be worked out and expressed?’2

 

In order to settle this question Bauer thought it best to start outside the disputed area of the NT writings. And so he proceeded to do a package tour of the world of early second century Christianity in order to discover whether the rise of what came to be called heresy was always preceded by orthodox teaching from which it had deviated. A close study of the rise of the church in Edessa and Alexandria suggested to him that in the beginning so-called unorthodox groups were predominant; what was later regarded as orthodoxy was represented at best by small groups, so that from the very beginning so-called heretical and orthodox forms of the faith existed side by side. The churches were more ‘orthodox’ in Asia Minor, but various arguments suggest that there were strong pockets of unorthodox Christianity in this area. If the position was different in Corinth, where the church certainly began with strong heretical tendencies, this was due to the influence of Rome imposing its views on the church. It could be said that ‘the form which Christianity gained in Rome was led to victory by Rome and thus established as orthodoxy’.3 Bauer then went on to show how Rome established its own doctrinal position as the orthodox one. It was largely because the heretics were independent of one another and unable to unite with one another in opposition to Rome that they eventually succumbed to her influence. The great mass of middle-of-the-road Christians who might well have been won over by either wing of the church in fact threw in their lot with Rome.

 

Bauer thus concluded that what later came to be regarded as orthodoxy was only one of several competing systems of Christian belief, with no closer links to any original, so-called ‘apostolic Christianity’ than its rivals, and that it owed its victory in the competition more to what we might call political influences than to its inherent merits.

 

The corollary to be drawn from Bauer’s discussion is that things were no different in the first century. Thus R. Bultmann, who fully accepted Bauer’s arguments, stated: ‘The diversity of theological interests and ideas is at first great. A norm or an authoritative court of appeal for doctrine is still lacking, and the proponents of directions of thought which were later rejected as heretical consider themselves completely Christian, such as Christian Gnosticism. In the beginning, faith is the term which distinguishes the Christian Congregation from Jews and the heathen, not orthodoxy (right doctrine). The latter along with its correlate, heresy, arises out of the differences which develop within the Christian congregations.’4 It is interesting, however, that Bultmann proceeds to say, ‘In the nature of the case this takes place very early’.

 

The argument was taken further by G. Strecker in an investigation of Jewish Christianity in an appendix to the 1964 edition of Bauer’s book; he argued that Jewish Christianity was diverse in character and that what must be considered as historically primary in the first century was seen to be heretical when compared with what later was regarded as orthodoxy.5

 

A somewhat similar point of view appears to be represented by Stephen S. Smalley in his examination of ‘Diversity and Development in John’. He submits that in the Gospel of John, as distinct from the Epistles, we have a considerable diversity of views expressed, some of which could be seized upon as supporting their cause by later, orthodox writers, others of which could be seized upon by the heretics. He therefore states that: ‘John’s diversity can hardly be regarded as consciously orthodox or heretical; it is neither one nor the other. If such considerations had influenced John’s writing, it is very unlikely that he would have left so much on the “orthodox” side unsaid, and so much on the “heretical” side open to misconstruction, to be used eventually in evidence against him.’6

 

The scope of the present essay, confined as it is to the first century, enables me to side-step a discussion of the correctness or otherwise of Bauer’s thesis as it applies to post-apostolic Christianity—although it must be observed that if it is inapplicable to the second century, it can hardly be applied to the first century. On the whole, it seems to have been subjected to considerable modification in detail, but few have been willing to contradict its main lines. If it has done nothing else, it has emphasized the prevalence of diversity in the second century church and the difficulty that existed in attempting to draw clear boundaries between what was orthodox and what was heretical.7 My starting-point is rather the fact that Bauer had the effrontery to label the second century as ‘earliest Christianity’, and I want to look at the period which is in fact earlier than this, the period of the New Testament itself.

 

 

 

1. Unity, variety and diversity

 

 

 

In the essay which I have already quoted, S. S. Smalley suggests that the key to our problem in John’s Gospel may lie in the categories of diversity and development. These two terms give us a set of co-ordinates against which the ideas of the early church might be plotted in such a way that the variety of ideas at any one given time may be seen, and also the differences in ideas between one period of time and another. A recent book of essays by H. Koester and J. M. Robinson has used the term ‘trajectories’ to give expression to this kind of approach, although it is obvious that the name, like the word ‘canon’, is simply a new invention to describe a concept of which scholars have long been conscious.8

 

 

 

Granted that there is diversity and development in the theologies expressed in the New Testament, the question is whether this is the same thing as saying that no distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was being made, or that this concept did not exist prior to the development of a vocabulary to describe it. And at once it is obvious that the two things are not the same. It is possible, in other words, for there to be a variety in presentation of the Christian faith without the varied presentations being incompatible with one another. It is probable that in the church at Corinth different cliques attached themselves to the names of Paul, Apollos and Cephas. No doubt these three men presented the gospel in different ways, and it may well be that their followers developed their own individual ideas, but Paul was quite clear that there was no fundamental incompatibility between himself and his colleagues in the presentation of the gospel. ‘We are fellow workers for God’; ‘All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, … all are yours’ (1 Cor. 3:9, 21f.). In the same way, while it was judged politic for there to be two Christian missions, one to the circumcised and one to the uncircumcised, they were in fellowship with one another, and there is no suggestion of any fundamental disagreement between them (Gal. 2:7–9). Bauer’s attempt to interpret Paul’s statement otherwise is somewhat mischievous.

 

 

 

The fact of such a basic unity was emphasized by A. M. Hunter in a book which is of importance out of proportion to its size. In The Unity of the New Testament9 he argued that the major writers of the New Testament show a basic unity in their testimony to one Lord, one church and one salvation. Writing in 1943, Hunter was working against a background of stress on the diversity within the New Testament. This was presented in another product of Scottish theology by E. F. Scott in The Varieties of New Testament Religion.10 He was equally rightly concerned to emphasize the lack of uniformity in the New Testament: the writers ‘are all inspired by the one faith, but every teacher interprets it differently, as he has known it in his own soul’.11 Both of these points of view need to be heard, but perhaps it is the voice of Hunter which has had less attention than it deserves in our own day. Where Scott is distinctly woolly in his survey and makes generalizations do duty in place of hard facts, Hunter is careful to give evidence for his statements and to argue a case which is the more impressive by reason of its restraint and caution.

 

 

 

But Hunter was concerned with the writers of the New Testament. He made no attempt to claim that Paul and his opponents in Galatia had a basic unity in their theology. The question that now arises concerns the degree of variety in the life and thought of the early church which is reflected in the New Testament: at what point, if any, does variety become a deviation from the truth?

 

2. The later books of the New Testament

 

We shall now make an attempt to look at the evidence relevant to this second question, and like Bauer, it may be helpful to begin with what are usually thought to be the latest writings in the New Testament, then turn to the generally accepted letters of Paul, and finally to the Gospels.

 

In the Pastoral Epistles12 we have a writer who is confronted by teaching which he regards as false in the churches for which he has a responsibility. At the outset of 1 Timothy there is an instruction not to allow people to teach ‘different doctrine’; it is associated with speculation about myths and genealogies and it leads to vain discussion instead of growth in faith. Such teaching appears to have rested on what the author regarded as a misunderstanding of the law, and to have led to an intellectual type of religion which ignored the claims of conscience. Over against it the author places ‘healthy doctrine’, which he characterizes as being in accordance with the gospel (1 Tim. 1:3–11). This basic theme is repeated throughout the Pastorals, most clearly in 1 Timothy and Titus. It is probable that the writer was confronted by a type of Gnosticizing teaching with strong Jewish elements, which laid stress on knowledge and which led both to asceticism and to moral licence. What is important is that he is clearly aware of its existence and of its distinction from what he regards as the truth. The lines are firmly drawn. The teaching is ‘other’ and does not conduce to spiritual ‘health’. It produces moral behaviour which is incompatible with godliness. Over against it the writer places healthy teaching, and he clearly reckons with the existence of traditions in the church, such as the ‘faithful sayings’, which enshrine the truth of the gospel. He regards the church as being the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

 

It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that in these Epistles the writer is conscious of being the defender of truth and that he is prepared to take disciplinary measures against those who persist in erroneous beliefs. The very word hairetikos is used in this connection. It is perhaps not unfair to say that the Pastorals were composed in a situation of false teaching threatening the truth, and that their basic purpose is to deal with this situation by outlining the true nature of Christian living, and by equipping the church with leaders who will be able to promote the cause of orthodoxy.

 

This understanding of the Pastorals was, of course, shared by Bauer, but it did not basically affect his thesis because he was prepared to put them at a rather late date and to see them as directed against Marcionite teaching. If this late dating is wrong, an obvious weakness in Bauer’s case is opened up. The trend in recent scholarship is in fact to date the Epistles in the first decade of the second century, and this is a significant shift in placing them historically.13 Even this date is probably too late, and there is good reason to place them considerably earlier. But the commonly accepted date is sufficient to allow us to make our point, that a distinction between orthodoxy and heresy had come into existence by the end of the first century or just after.

 

The Revelation can probably be dated in the last decade of the first century. Its author’s main concern was to strengthen the church to face persecution, but in order to achieve this aim he realized that the church must be purified of false belief and immorality; otherwise it would fall under the judgments of God on the world at large. His attack is directed mainly against attempts to combine idolatry and idolatrous practices with Christian faith. The apostolic decree requiring abstinence from food sacrificed to idols and from immorality (Acts 15:29) was evidently being flouted. There were people around who called themselves apostles, and there was a prophetess who gave the weight of her authority to idolatrous practices and immorality (Rev. 2:2, 20). The implication is that the upholders of this position felt it necessary to claim support for their views by appeal to ecclesiastical office and to Spirit-inspired revelations. It looks as though they formed a definite group in the church. Their teaching may well have had a Gnosticizing tinge, as is suggested by the allusion to the deep things of Satan (Rev. 2:24). The other members of the church are said to have tested the false prophets and found them wanting; they are criticized for not throwing out Jezebel as well. But what is perhaps of greatest interest is that the group attacked by John are referred to as Nicolaitans, followers of Nicolaus (Rev. 2:6, 15). They are thus known by the name of their leader, real or imaginary, in the same way as later groups of heretics were identified. This is to my knowledge the first example of such a procedure, and it is highly significant as showing that already within New Testament times it was possible to identify and label a group regarded as heretical. In other words, the lines were already being clearly drawn. Unfortunately, much is left obscure; we should like to know how the heretics saw themselves, how they established their claim to authority, and how they regarded their opponents.

 

We are not surprised to find the word hairesis being used in its developed sense in what is often regarded as the latest writing in the New Testament, 2 Peter (2:1). The writer is concerned about the rise of false teachers in the church. Their behaviour was licentious; it appears to have involved a rejection of the morality enshrined in the law, and to have questioned some aspects of Christian teaching, including the hope of the parousia. Above all they despised and reviled the accepted authority in the church. They evidently appealed to the writings of Paul in support of their teaching, and imposed what the author regarded as a false interpretation upon them. They also claimed prophetic inspiration. The picture is similar to that in Revelation, but the heresy appears to have gone further, and to have taken the step of claiming Pauline support. We should naturally like to know how they interpreted Paul. It seems probable that some of his teaching may have been understood as sanctioning antinomianism, although it is hard to find passages in his existing Epistles which give much support to such views.

 

The situation reflected in Jude appears to have been similar to that in 2 Peter. Here again opponents of the writer are to be found in the church, and have not yet been ejected. They are castigated for their immorality and contentiousness which have caused divisions in the church. We learn nothing about the actual content of their teaching. The author’s reply is to call his readers back to the tradition which they have received, to the faith once for all delivered to the saints; he has no doubt that this stands in opposition to the teaching which he is criticizing. This may reflect a slightly earlier stage than in 2 Peter, since the heretical appeal to tradition may well have followed the orthodox appeal by claiming that the orthodox were misinterpreting it.

 

A clear consciousness of differing opinions in the church is found in 1-3 John. In 2 John the writer speaks of deceivers who deny the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. There are people who do not abide in the doctrine of Christ. It is probable that some off-beat christological teaching is in mind, possibly a docetic denial that Jesus really was the Christ, or that the Christ really became incarnate in Jesus. In 1 John the group has come out into the open and begun a separate existence. Three important facts characterize the Elder’s reply. One is that he attacks this point of view on the intellectual level by asserting that the doctrine of God is jeopardized by this teaching. One cannot truly believe in the Father without also believing in the Son. In other words, a heresy which may have seemed innocuous or marginal is shown to affect understanding of basic doctrine. This point is stressed throughout 1 John. Second, the writer’s stress on the need for love, shown in practical ways, is a flank attack on his opponents’ position, but he does not indulge in empty abuse against them; rather he invites his readers to apply the test of ‘By their fruits you shall know them’. The third point is that the writer holds that fellowship should not be extended to those who maintain this point of view; we may compare the similar command in Titus 3:10f. Those who adopt such teaching are equated with antichrist (i.e. the opponent of Christ, rather than somebody taking the place of Christ). A distinction between different groups with different doctrines is consciously taking place.

 

It is not clear whether a situation of heresy is reflected in 3 John. It is well known that E. Käsemann has proposed that Diotrephes was really the champion of orthodoxy, attempting to stifle the influence of the unorthodox Elder, but there is good reason to reject this interpretation.14 On the other hand, there is no proof that Diotrephes was unorthodox; at the most he appears to have been ambitious and curt with his possible rivals.

 

We can quickly pass over James and 1 Peter in our survey. The writer of the former letter, it is true, has been thought to be critical of Paul, but his real bone of contention is with Christians lacking in the works of love who probably claimed Paul in support of their own position. From both James and 2 Peter it can be seen that appeal was made to Paul in support of opinions that were denied by other New Testament writers; but both 2 Peter and James regard Paul as being on their side, and James does not give the impression of regarding the people whom he is criticizing as heretics.

 

We may summarize our conclusions so far by noting that in the late first century church there was a consciousness of the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy. Appeal was made on both sides to the teaching of the apostles and to the voice of prophecy. There was a consciousness of an inherited body of belief, ‘the faith’, and excommunication was beginning to be used as a weapon. There is no reason to suppose that these ideas developed without previous preparation: we are justified in examining the other New Testament documents to see whether they reflect a development towards this position.

 

3. Paul

 

We turn, therefore, back to Paul. Almost everywhere in his writings we can detect the presence of opponents who questioned his teaching or put up some other teaching instead of it. To be sure, it is unlikely that this is the case in 1 Thessalonians where such problems as arose were probably due simply to the inadequate grounding which his converts had had in his teaching before he was forced to leave them. The situation is one of questions and uncertainties rather than opposition to his teaching. The situation in 2 Thessalonians is at first sight very similar, but it is interesting that in attacking the view that the day of the Lord has already arrived Paul should refer to the possibility of a spirit or word or letter purporting to be from himself, and that he urges the readers to hold fast to the traditions which he has taught them orally or by letter. Further, he lays stress on the importance of what he says in this letter to the extent that anyone who does not accept its teaching is to be solemnly warned and disciplined. Such strict discipline is not unparalleled in Paul (1 Cor. 5). The significant facts are rather that Paul considers the error which he is opposing to be so serious and that he suspects that his own authority has been used to defend it. It is not surprising that this Epistle has been thought to be post-Pauline, and to reflect an attempt by the orthodox to claim Paul’s authority for their own position instead of that of their rivals. There appears to be an organized opposition against the Pauline position. But the situation is comprehensible if the life of the church is in danger of being crippled by an apocalyptic enthusiasm which has upset normal daily life. Nor would it be surprising if a prophet claimed to speak in the name of the Lord, and even claimed the authority of Paul (cf. Acts 19:13). The Pauline situation remains the more probable, and, if correct, it shows that at an early date teaching opposed to that of Paul was being promulgated with a false appeal to his authority, and that the answer to this teaching was for Paul himself to claim that he had been wrongly interpreted. It was presumably because of this direct misrepresentation of his own views that Paul spoke out so strongly against those who rejected his authority in Thessalonica.

 

Nobody denies that Paul himself faced opposition when he composed Galatians, but the situation is more than a little complex. We need to distinguish between the opposition in Galatia itself, and that which Paul experienced in Jerusalem and Antioch. Then we must assess correctly the nature of the opposition experienced by Paul. There are two main views of this, namely that it was either Judaizing or Gnostic, but the case that it was Judaizing is the stronger of the two. If so, this means that the same type of opposition was prevalent in Galatia and on the home front. The opposition in Galatia was Jewish or Jewish-Christian in inspiration, and it received the full force of Paul’s opposition because it compromised the doctrine of faith in Christ which he regarded as all-important. Acceptance of the contrary point of view called the mission to the Gentiles in question. Paul’s defence, as is well known, rested on an appeal to history, to experience and to Scripture. He was able to claim that his message had been accepted by the leaders of the church in Jerusalem; the weakness in this argument was the strange case at Antioch where Peter and Barnabas sided against him, and Paul never says that they changed their minds, although the friendly allusions to them in 1 Corinthians would imply that they did in fact do so. But, while it is possible that Paul passed over their initial reaction with a discreet silence, it is more likely that he was simply carried away by the force of his own argument. His second appeal was to experience, both his own and that of his converts; he could point to his own revelation of Jesus at his conversion, which for him had immediate authority, and he could also point to the way in which his converts received the gift of the Spirit apart from the law. His third appeal was to Scripture, showing from the Old Testament that God’s principle of working with men, even in the era of the law, was by faith. Since his converts had not yet apparently succumbed to what he regarded as error, he was able to address them in terms of appeal rather than condemnation; but he spoke in no uncertain terms about those who were leading them astray. He called down God’s curse on anybody who was doing this. There could be no other gospel than Paul’s gospel. There is no appeal to apostolic authority here other than his own; Paul argues from his own experience of Christ.

 

By the time of 1 Corinthians, however, Paul is more conscious of the significance of tradition, to which he makes appeal more than once. His bases for argument include the commands of the Lord, as well as his own consciousness of inspiration by the Spirit. He can appeal to the practice of other apostles. This suggests that the opposition to Paul stood outside the mainstream of the church, even if there was appeal to Apollos and Cephas. Basically, Paul appears to have been confronted by two groups in the church, one Jewish Christian and the other incipient Gnostic. The former were ‘weak’ in faith, but not heretical; Paul thinks they are wrong, but does not condemn their error, and indeed seeks a sympathetic approach to them from the rest of the church. On the point at issue, he tended to side with the strong Christians. But the impression we gain is of a church with tendencies that could lead to error, judged by Pauline standards, rather than with full-blown heresy. There was immoral and licentious behaviour to be corrected. There was an over-emphasis on spiritual gifts unaccompanied by love. There may have been a false understanding of the resurrection. But the whole tone of the letter is that of a wise pastor, rather than that of someone determined to stamp out organized opposition at any cost. The extent of the opposition to Paul in Corinth at this point can easily be exaggerated.

 

The fact of opposition is clearer in 2 Corinthians 10–13, but in this middle period of Paul’s work the problems of interpretation are complex. Here we do hear of preaching of another Jesus, a different spirit and a different gospel which did not lead to reformation of life (2 Cor. 11:4). There was opposition to Paul by persons who claimed apostolic status, who regarded themselves as engaged on a mission similar to his own and under superior auspices. They were in danger of assuming control of the church at Corinth. Paul was strenuously opposed to them, as they were to him. He speaks of them in the strongest terms as servants of Satan, and it may well be that they regarded him in similar terms. There is no doubt, then, that lines were being drawn between opposing sides. But what was the basis of the disagreement with them? I am not convinced by the theory that they were Gnostics, nor that they thought of themselves as divine men preaching a Jesus who was similarly a divine man. The truth is that the nature of the doctrinal disagreement scarcely comes to the surface in this section of the Epistle. They were Jews, possibly claiming special credentials from Jerusalem, people whom Paul regarded as proud of their position and making extravagant claims and demands for themselves in virtue of it, people who claimed spiritual visions and revelations. But it is extraordinarily hard to discern exactly what they believed and taught. Paul simply places his own claims over against theirs and attacks their claims rather than their message. Nor is it clear why they were so opposed to Paul. Did they regard his teaching as false, or were they simply jealous of his success, or what? And suppose some third party came along: how could he tell which group was ‘orthodox’? These questions can hardly be answered for lack of information.

 

In Romans we have evidence of people who create dissensions and stand in opposition to the doctrine which Paul taught; they are not in Paul’s eyes true servants of Jesus, but they serve their own carnal natures. Schmithals regards them as Gnostics, but it is doubtful whether the evidence takes us that far. But it may be that the same sort of rival mission as we found in 2 Corinthians is reflected here, and that Paul feared persons travelling around in his footsteps and contradicting his teaching. Once again we note that their teaching is not detailed nor refuted by Paul; he simply warns against them, and their deceitful methods of establishing their views. This is significant as regards the later Epistles which, it is sometimes said, reflect a lack of argument with heresy in contrast to Paul’s own earlier attempts to deal more rationally with it.

 

In Philippians again there is danger to the church from persons who uphold circumcision. Here the most plausible identification of the opponents of Paul is as Judaizers. But the situation is complicated by the mention of people who claimed some kind of perfection and those whom Paul regarded as enemies of the cross who pandered to their own fleshly desires. This wording is similar to that in Romans and suggests that the same group were on their rounds. They could be antinomians. The danger comes from outside the church, and perhaps this is why Paul does not deal with its errors in detail; it may be a potential rather than a real situation.

 

The same is possibly true of Colossians. Here it has been traditional to find evidence of a developed Gnostic heresy, but recently M. D. Hooker has strongly challenged this assumption, and shown that it is doubtful whether there was a coherent, organized heresy.15 Paul’s teaching, it is said, ‘seems to us to be quite as appropriate to a situation in which young Christians are under pressure to conform to the beliefs and practices of their pagan and Jewish neighbours, as to a situation in which their faith is endangered by the deliberate attacks of false teachers’.16 Whatever be the situation, Paul’s reply is to call the church back to the way in which it received Christ as Lord, and to the gospel which it preached throughout all the world. The doctrines of the person of Christ and of union with him leading to ethical behaviour are his reply to false versions of the gospel.

 

4. The Gospels

 

We turn, finally, to the Gospels before attempting to draw some conclusions. Traces of polemic have been found in all of them. This is least obvious in the case of Luke along with its companion, Acts. Certainly there is one clear warning against the rise of heresy in the church in the post-Pauline period, which may well reflect earlier struggles, but on the whole little is said about the nature of such troubles. The attempt by C. H. Talbert to find Gnostics under Luke’s bed seems to me singularly unsuccessful.17 What we do have is the early struggle of the church to deal with Judaizing tendencies, and this struggle is regarded as being successfully resolved in favour of the Pauline position. There is a point of view which is resisted and shown to be wrong, and the proof is found in the manifest willingness of God to accept the Gentiles and bestow the Spirit upon them apart from acceptance of circumcision. The argument is not dissimilar to that in Galatians.

 

In Matthew E. Schweizer has found opposition to a group of enthusiasts who sat loose to the ethical teaching of Jesus.18 It is this Gospel more than any other which bears witness to the fact of a mixed church with true and false believers in it. But the nature of a Gospel prevents direct address to such people, and all that can be done is to present the relevant teaching of Jesus, in some cases carefully underlined to bring out the significant points for the situation.

 

It is chiefly in Mark that recent students have found polemic against heresy. Especially in the work of T. J. Weeden19 and N. Perrin20 we have the suggestion that the disciples are identified with a false view of the person of Jesus over against which Jesus himself presents the truth. They were tempted to think of him as Messiah and Son of God in terms of a divine man working miracles, whereas Mark insisted that this view must be qualified by the preaching of Jesus as the Son of man who must suffer and die before being glorified. The main essentials of this position are accepted by R. P. Martin, who, however, does not identify the disciples as the carriers of the false view.21

 

With respect to John something similar has been claimed, John being seen as the corrector of a too simple view of Jesus as a docetic figure, a worker of signs, but there is too much uncertainty here for us to offer any assured conclusions.22

 

5. Historical conclusions

 

We have now surveyed the evidence relative to the positions of the writers of the New Testament. What have we found?

 

1. We have found that teaching regarded by them as false was extremely common. In nearly every book of the New Testament this has been evident. The significance of this must not be over-estimated. Van Unnik has rightly observed that we must not seek heresy everywhere as the determinative factor in the composition of the New Testament.23 Alongside the need to combat it there was what is probably more important, the proclamation of the gospel. ‘The development of the earliest church was not set in motion by the almost unbridgeable tensions between Christians, but by the positive task of being witnesses of Jesus Christ in a world whose demands continually summoned them to provide answers.’ Nevertheless, it is clear that from New Testament times the New Testament writers were conscious of rivalry and teaching opposed to their own.

 

2. There is a development in the presence of false teaching. The New Testament writings reflect an early stage in which the church was formulating its attitude on the question of circumcision and the Mosaic law. But from Galatians onwards Paul regards that issue as settled, and is intolerant of any who impose Jewish legalism on Gentiles. He does not object to Jews keeping up their own practices, although on the whole he thinks them unnecessary and a source of possible danger. But from the period of his letters onwards various types of problems arise. (a) There is sheer rivalry in the proclamation of the gospel. This Paul was prepared to put up with, but he drew the line when his own mission and apostolate were called in question. (b) There was unethical behaviour, which Paul condemned, especially if it arose from false teaching. (c) There was the possibility of Christians being misled as a result of pagan ideas, through lack of Christian instruction, through false deductions from the gospel. (d) There was the possibility of teaching which differed from Paul’s understanding of the gospel. This included Judaizing, which jeopardized faith in Christ, and antinomianism, which went contrary to Paul’s understanding of the nature of the new life in Christ. There may have been erroneous views of the work of the Spirit, especially in relation to spiritual gifts, and false views of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Another Jesus, another gospel, another Spirit—these three phrases sum up the dangers faced by Paul. This was how he saw heresy. Similar dangers are found in the other New Testament writings.

 

3. Paul’s method of treatment varied. Sometimes he was simply warning his churches against possible influences, and we do not learn much about the character of the problems faced. At other times, the error seems to have got a firmer hold on the church. Then there may be a full-scale argument to show its falsity, as in Galatians, or a restatement of doctrine, as in Colossians. There is appeal to the nature of Christian experience, to the gospel as he preached it, and as he had received it, and to his own calling. Those who persist in false teaching may be removed from fellowship in the church. The church needs to appoint teachers who will stand firmly in the succession of sound doctrine and themselves be apt to teach others.

 

Now if this survey is sound, it shows that certain people in the first century, namely the writers of the New Testament, were conscious of the existence of opinions different from their own in the church, that they wrote and used other means to state or show that they were incompatible with the gospel which they believed themselves to have inherited, and that certain groups of people were regarded by them as deviationists and were excluded from the church or took themselves off to form their own groups. And this in my opinion is evidence that Bauer’s thesis does not work when it is applied to the first century. Smalley’s version of it with regard to John cannot be applied to the rest of the New Testament, and I am doubtful whether it is true even of John. For Bauer said in effect that there was considerable variety of belief in the early church, and that what later came to be regarded as orthodoxy was not conscious of being such at first, nor were there clear boundaries between different sorts of Christian belief, nor was what later came to be regarded as orthodox necessarily first on the ground. But the only valid point in this is that there was variety of belief in the first century. The New Testament writers one and all regard themselves as upholders of the truth of the gospel, and they often see quite clearly where the lines of what is compatible with the gospel and what is not compatible are to be drawn. And while it is possible that in some places the beginnings of Christianity came from people later regarded as heretical, it is not the case that orthodoxy was a later development.

 

6. Areas for further exploration

 

What factors might be placed over against this conclusion?

 

1. Basically, there is the question whether the New Testament writers were in fact in such agreement that any one of them would have recognized any other as ‘sound in the faith’. Did James think that Paul was sound? If Paul had read Revelation, would he have agreed with it? Did John write his Gospel because he thought the others needed correction or even supersession, and did any of the other Gospel writers think the same way? These questions cannot be given a facile answer in the brief space left at my disposal, but I make bold to say that they would have recognized one another as brothers and colleagues in the defence of the gospel.

 

2. What were the groups criticized by the New Testament writers as heretical really like? Until a sort of first century Nag Hammadi library comes to light, this question cannot be fully answered. But it may be worth noting that when the Nag Hammadi library was first discovered, H. Chadwick expressed his opinion that it would not cause any major alteration in our assessment of the nature of Gnosticism as we had learned it from the church fathers who wrote against it. The same may well be true of the New Testament. Thus I find no reason to doubt that Paul was justified in his accusations of immorality against those who rejected his gospel. Did such people regard themselves as the defenders of truth? We have seen that some did, but this reinforces the view that the idea of orthodoxy was prevalent in the first century.

 

3. How did such groups regard persons like Paul or John? Were they regarded as heretical, if so, by whom? and in such cases how do we decide which was right? Was Diotrephes the defender of ‘orthodoxy’ against the Elder? The church’s answer was to canonize Paul and John, and not their opponents. But how did the situation seem during their period of ministry? One answer is that Paul evidently had some respect for the Jerusalem church, and he wanted to have its assurance that he was not, as he puts it, running in vain. But he was accepted by it, and could build on that fact. It was to the apostles that appeal was made. And if a Peter or Barnabas could deviate from Paul on occasion, it was only temporary and an inevitable risk during the growing period. There must undoubtedly have been a growing period during which the situation was flexible and ideas were not hard and fast, but some basic essentials were probably settled quite early, certainly earlier than Bauer suggests.

 

4. Perhaps the biggest problem concerns the relations between the various groups which lie behind the New Testament writers. There is the problem of the relation between Hebrews and Hellenists in the Jerusalem church, and the whole question of Jewish-orientated and Gentile-orientated types of Christians. This has been stressed by U. Wilckens in an essay discussing the place of Jesus-traditions in the church; he suggests that there were two communities, one passing on these traditions, and the other comparatively unaffected by them; the one orientated to the earthly Jesus, the other to the exalted Christ. These were later brought together, but at first there were in effect two quite different types of Christianity.24

 

Somewhat similar is the attempt of H. Koester to show that there were four different types of Gospel material in the early church, effecting different christologies. These were (1) the collection of sayings of Jesus, assembled by those who thought that the essence of Christianity was to perpetuate the teaching of Jesus as a teacher of wisdom. (2) The aretalogy, presenting Jesus as a divine man who performed supernatural actions. (3) The revelation, in which the risen Jesus gives esoteric instruction to his disciples. (4) The kerygma of the death and resurrection of Jesus historicized into a narrative form. Our canonical Gospels represent to some extent corrections of these earlier outlooks—a feature we have already noticed in the case of Mark.25

 

The question would then be how far these different points of view represented varieties of Christian belief, and how far they required the rejection of other points of view as heretical. But a more basic question would be how far this is a correct analysis of the position in the early church, and I would suggest that Koester’s view is in fact a misleading description of the situation. This point cannot be developed in detail here. But if Koester’s view contains elements of truth, it poses questions for us.

 

These four problems indicate that I have not provided all the answers to the historical questions posed by orthodoxy and heresy in New Testament times. None of them, however, is sufficient in my opinion to call in question my basic thesis, namely that the first-century church was conscious of the difference between orthodoxy and heresy, and that from an early date there was a body of belief which could be regarded as apostolic and orthodox.

 

7. The theological consequences

 

I have left myself no space to discuss the theological and contemporary significance of the material we have been discussing. It must suffice simply to pose some questions that arise.

 

1. We have travelled thus far without raising the basic question of what we are talking about. What in fact is heresy? It is dangerous to work with undefined terms. W. Bauer at one point speaks of a heretic as ‘a fellow Christian concerning whom one is convinced that his divergent stance with regard to the faith bars him from the path of salvation.’26 That is perhaps an extreme definition. At the opposite extreme there have been those who regard any deviation from their particular brand of Christianity as heresy. I can think of one distinguished writer on baptism who certainly came near to thinking that anybody who had doubts about the validity of infant baptism ought not to be a candidate for the ministry in his particular denomination. Somewhere in between these extremes there may be the idea of heresy as teaching which is regarded as contrary to the basic confession of the church in some central point or points, such that the confession is endangered by it.

 

2. A second question concerns the rise of heresy. H. Koester suggests that it arises from two possible dangers: either the time-bound historical shaping of the Christian revelation was absolutized and the quality of revelation was credited to a temporary form, or as a result of the consciousness that the revelation had a supra-historical quality, the link with its historical origin was surrendered, and foreign ideas were able to claim admission.27 One might see Judaizing as an example of the first of these dangers and Gnosticizing as an example of the second. The question then arises as to whether heresies in general can be subsumed most fruitfully under these two headings.

 

3. The early church took up a stance against heresy, and in some cases acted against heretics. Does this provide a pattern for the church today to follow? In a brief article written at the time of the Pike controversy, J. Macquarrie suggested that the category of heresy was no longer applicable in the church today. Christianity can exist in a variety of forms, and the lines between orthodoxy and heresy cannot be drawn sharply. Excommunication for heresy is no longer a viable possibility, especially when today’s heresy may become tomorrow’s orthodoxy.28

 

This approach certainly suggests the need for caution, but it may well be that it does not take the New Testament seriously enough. For the essence of heresy is that it presents itself as a form of the real thing, as distinct from, say, an atheistic position which is confessedly anti-Christian, and therefore it presents the greater danger to the faith since, from the point of view of orthodoxy, error is masquerading as truth. A church which takes its confession seriously must surely be prepared to speak out against what it believes to be error, and if necessary to discipline those who profess to uphold its confession while effectively denying or contradicting it. A confessional church has a right and necessity to do so. Whether the same thing is possible in a non-confessional church may be more difficult to argue; perhaps indeed it is an argument against a non-confessional church that it is unable to apply the categories of orthodoxy and heresy.

Heresy

 Heresy. The formal denial or doubt of any defined doctrine of the Catholic faith. In antiquity the Greek word αἵρεσις, denoting ‘choice’ or ‘thing chosen’, from which the term is derived, was applied to the tenets of particular philosophical schools. In this sense it appears occasionally in Scripture (e.g. Acts 5:17) and the early Fathers. But it was employed also in a disparaging sense (e.g. 1 Cor. 11:19) and from St *Ignatius (Trall. 6, Eph. 6) onwards it came more and more to be used of theological error. From the earliest days the Church has claimed teaching authority and consequently condemned heresy, following Christ’s command: ‘If he refuse to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican’ (Mt. 18:17). On the other hand the need to rebut heresy has sometimes stimulated the formation of orthodox Christian doctrine.

In the early centuries heresy was mainly a matter of erroneous attempts to understand the nature of the Person of Christ (e.g. *Docetism, *Apollinarianism, *Nestorianism, *Monophysitism, *Monothelitism), of the Trinity (e.g. *Monarchianism, *Tritheism, *Subordinationism), or both (e.g. *Arianism). These heresies were condemned at the *Oecumenical Councils. After the Church had become a highly structured and incidentally wealthy institution, many of the heretical movements were inspired by a desire to return to what was seen as the simplicity of the apostolic Church. They thus had much in common with the orthodox reform movements, such as the *mendicant orders, some of whose members (esp. among the *Franciscans) were charged with heresy. Many of the heretical bodies in the Middle Ages (e.g. the *Bogomils, *Cathari, *Waldensians, the followers of *Henry of Lausanne and *Peter de Bruys) came to reject the sacraments as well as other institutions of the Church. The *Inquisition was established to secure the conversion of heretics, and punished the obdurate. With the Reformation, the establishment of Protestant state Churches ended the power of the RC Church to coerce heretics in much of Europe, though in France the hierarchy long continued to regard the *Huguenots as heretics rather than granting them the toleration promised in the Edict of *Nantes; *Calvinists in Switzerland burnt those Protestants whom they regarded as heretics.

Acc. to RC canon law, heresy is defined as the obstinate denial or doubt, after Baptism, of a truth ‘which must be believed with divine and catholic faith’ (CIC (1983), can. 751). This ‘formal’ heresy is a grave sin involving ipso facto excommunication. Catholic theology distinguishes it from what is termed ‘material heresy’. This means holding heretical doctrines through no fault of one’s own, ‘in good faith’, as is the case, e.g., with most persons brought up in heretical surroundings. It constitutes neither crime nor sin, nor is such a person strictly speaking a heretic, since, having never accepted certain doctrines, he cannot reject or doubt them. Heresy is to be distinguished from *apostasy and *schism (qq.v.). See also BURNING, DE HEARTICO COMBURENDO and individual heresies.

W. Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, 10; 1934; 2nd edn. by G. Strecker, 1964; Eng. tr., Philadelphia, 1971; London, 1972). M. Simon, ‘From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy’, in W. R. Schoedel and R. L. Wilken (eds.), Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition in Honorem Robert M. Grant (Théologie Historique, 53 [1979]), pp. 101–16. A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la Littérature grecque, IIe–IIIe siécles (2 vols., Études Augustiniennes, 1985).

W. L. Wakefield and A. P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated (Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies, 81; 1969). [J. J.] I. von *Döllinger, Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters (2 vols., Munich, 1890). G. [A.] Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250–c.1450 (2 vols., Manchester and New York, 1967). J. Le Goff (ed.), Hérésies et sociétés dans l’Europe pré-industrielle 11e–18e siècles: Colloque de Royaumont, 27–30 Mai 1962 (Civilisations et sociétés, 10; 1968), with bibl. of post-1900 studies on medieval heresies, pp. 407–67. N. G. Garsoïn, ‘Byzantine Heresy. A Reinterpretation’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 25 (1971), pp. 85–113. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (eds.), The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th–13th C.): Proceedings of the International Conference, Louvain May 13–16, 1973 (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, 1st ser., vol. 4; 1976). M. D. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus (1977; 3rd edn., Oxford, 2002). G. G. Merlo, Eretici e Inquisitori nella Società Piemontese del Trecento (Turin [1977]). R. Kieckhefer, Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany (Philadelphia and Liverpool, 1979). Y. Stoyanov, The Hidden Tradition in Europe: The secret history of medieval Christian heresy (1994; rev. edn., The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, New Haven and London, 2000).

H. Schlier in TWNT 1 (1933), pp. 179–84 (Eng. tr., 1 (1964), pp. 180–5), s.v. αἱρέομαι. A. Michel in DTC 6 (1920), cols. 2208–57, s.v. ‘Hérésie, Hérétique’; A. Patschovsky in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 4 (1989), cols. 1933–7, s.v. ‘Häresie’. See also works cited under CATHARI and other heresies mentioned in the text.

F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford;  New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 762–763.

HERESY

 HERESY Opinion or doctrine not in line with the accepted teaching of a church; the opposite of orthodoxy. Our English word is derived from a Greek word that has the basic idea of “choice.” In ancient classical Greek it was used predominantly to refer to the philosophical school to which one chose to belong. Later, it came to be associated with the teaching of philosophical schools.

The word had a similar usage in Jewish writings. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century from whom we learn much of what we know about the Judaism of NT times, used the word to refer to the various Jewish parties (or schools of thought) such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. Jewish rabbis employed the term in a bad sense applying it to groups who had separated from the main stream of Jewish teaching.

The word has several usages in the NT but never has the technical sense of “heresy” as we understand it today. It may be classified as follows:

(1) Most frequently, especially in Acts, it has the same meaning as Josephus. In Acts 5:17; 15:5; and 26:5, where it refers to the Pharisees and Sadducees, it simply means party or sect.

(2) In Acts 24:14 and 28:22 it is used in a slightly derogatory sense, referring to Christians as they were viewed to be separatists or sectarians by the Jews. This usage conforms to that of the rabbis.

(3) Paul used the term to refer to groups that threatened the harmonious relations of the church. In 1 Cor. 11:19, where he was writing about the disgraceful way in which the Corinthians were observing the Lord’s Supper, the word has to do with the outward manifestations of the factions he mentioned in verse 18. In Gal. 5:20 it is one of the works of the flesh and is in a grouping including strife, seditions, and envyings. It apparently has to do with people who choose to place their own desires above the fellowship of the church. Titus 3:10 speaks of a man who is a heretic. Since the context of the verse has to do with quarreling and dissension, the idea in this passage seems to be that of a fractious person.

(4) In 2 Pet. 2:1 it comes closest to our meaning of the term. It clearly refers to false prophets who have denied the true teaching about Christ. Since the remainder of 2 Pet. 2 refers to the immoral living of the false prophets, the word also refers to their decadent living. The reference to the heretic in Titus 3:10 may belong to this category since the verse mentions disputes about genealogies, a doctrinal matter.

It is clear that in the NT, the concept of heresy had more to do with fellowship within the church than with doctrinal teachings. While the writers of the NT were certainly concerned about false teachings, they apparently were just as disturbed by improper attitudes.

In the writings of Ignatius, a leader of the church in the early second century, the word takes on the technical meaning of a heresy. Most frequently in the writings of the early church fathers, the heresy about which they were concerned was Gnosticism, a teaching which denied that Jesus was fully human. See Christ, Christology; Gnosticism.

W. T. Edwards, Jr.

W. T. Edwards Jr., “Heresy,” ed. Chad Brand et al., Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 751.

Heresy

 Heresy—from a Greek word signifying (1) a choice, (2) the opinion chosen, and (3) the sect holding the opinion. In the Acts of the Apostles (5:17; 15:5; 24:5, 14; 26:5) it denotes a sect, without reference to its character. Elsewhere, however, in the New Testament it has a different meaning attached to it. Paul ranks “heresies” with crimes and seditions (Gal. 5:20). This word also denotes divisions or schisms in the church (1 Cor. 11:19). In Titus 3:10 a “heretical person” is one who follows his own self-willed “questions,” and who is to be avoided. Heresies thus came to signify self-chosen doctrines not emanating from God (2 Pet. 2:1).^[1]

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^[1] M. G. Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary and Treasury of Biblical History, Biography, Geography, Doctrine, and Literature (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893), 324.