A Roman Catholic reader insists that I discuss Matthew 7:21-23 and John 5:28-29 and I've decided to take up the challenge.  It's always good to remember that no Scriptural portion stands by itself. They are all connected to one another. Thus, the Epistles (which predate the Gospels in terms of writing) often explain the Gospels.  It would also be well for my RC reader to recognize that the interpretation of the Church at Rome is not necessarily what the Bible teaches.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name?’  Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!’

Paul did not waste time with addressing the heresy at work in the church at Galatia.  He barely wrote an introduction before he launched into urgent argument.

 

“I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from Him who called you by the grace of Christ, to a different gospel—  not that there is another, but there are some who are troubling you and want to change the gospel of Christ.

"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! As we have said before, I now say again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!” Galatians 1:6-9

 

The heresy of Judaizing required that Gentile Christian must become Jews before they could be saved. This required, of course, circumcision, the outward symbol of Judaism.  Paul wasted no time in assuring his readers that this was not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which preached grace through faith, but a heresy that replaced faith with works. He told the Galatian Christians in no uncertain terms that they should not listen to anyone who preaches a gospel other than what they had already learned from the apostles. Paul makes it clear that even if he were to return to Galatia and preach something else, they should ignore what he said.  He pronounced a curse on anyone preaching this heresy.

 

I don’t know how much clearer Paul would have needed to be to assure his disciples that they had already received the fullness of the gospel, but he spent some time expounding upon what he was saying.

 

 “We are Jews by birth and not “Gentile sinners”; yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.”  Galatians 2:15-16

 

Again, Paul spoke clearly that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ, not by anything we do in the flesh.  Human beings will never be justified by our own actions or the rituals we create.  Only Christ holds the keys to the kingdom.  Peter and Paul and the other apostles were set as ushers toward the gates, but they were not the Shepherd to decide who gets to enter in.  That job was given solely to Jesus Christ.

 

“I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”  Galatians 2:21

 

“Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?” Galatians 3:2b

 

It is often amazing to me how people can read about the Judaizers and not see that some churches ARE Judaizers.  Do we think this heresy just disappeared when Paul died?  Of course it didn’t.  It changed and adapted and sprang up as something that sounds somewhat different, but is really the same.

 

Paragraph 1266 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church – “The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification:
- enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues;
- giving them the power to live and act under the prompting of the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Holy Spirit;
- allowing them to grow in goodness through the moral virtues.
Thus the whole organism of the Christian's supernatural life has its roots in Baptism.

Paragraph 1277 of CCC – “Baptism is birth into the new life in Christ. In accordance with the Lord's will, it is necessary for salvation, as is the Church herself, which we enter by Baptism.

 

Wow, the Judaizers were alive and well on the catechism committee for these words say the same thing as was spoken in the First Century:  “And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved."  Acts 15:1

 

We know the response of the church at Jerusalem, for they replied after a lengthy discussion:  “Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, "You must be circumcised and keep the law"--to whom we gave no such commandment—“  Acts 15:24

 

What more is there to say?  Substitute baptism in the place of circumcision and you have the same argument and the same answer.  Some sects insist upon an outward sign of salvation, but no such commandment was ever given that you must be baptized in order to be saved.

 

Baptism is an important first step of obedience FOLLOWING salvation, but to put the ritual before the regeneration is to deny the power of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  Baptism holds power only to those who have already submitted to that power, which means that infants and those older who are unregenerate will not be changed one wit by getting wet and having special words spoken over them. Baptism has no saving power in and of itself.

 

We will once more revisit salvation and baptism as a practice of the early church in order to more fully understand what it was meant to be, rather than what we would like it to mean.

To the Judaizers of the First Century, be they Jewish Christians still clinging to their Judaism or Pharisees pretending to be Christians, nothing was more important to God than that your foreskin had been removed. This was a mark of the flesh, a seal of the soul, which promised you to God and brought you within the covenantal community of God’s chosen nation, Israel.  The rites and rituals and laws of Judaism were so much a part of their worship, seemed so very right, that they could not conceive of Christians who might not know this system and embrace it.

 

Make no mistake; the Jews of the First Century were devout in their worship. The Pharisees made up about 20 percent of the population of Israel, a substantial portion of any culture.  They focused tightly on following the Law in all its aspects and devoted much of their time to parsing and rationalizing it so that they could be absolutely sure they were doing as God wanted.  They saw it as their duty to assure that the rest of society walked in the same way, because God’s blessings on Israel depended upon their following the Law.  They were such sticklers that rabbinic commentaries of the time discussed whether moving a chair on the Sabbath was forbidden because most homes had dirt floors in those days and if the chair accidentally scuffed the dirt you might make a furrow and that would be plowing – a violation against the day of rest.  It was all very complicated and stringent and there were a lot of Pharisees around to make sure everybody did as they were required.

 

In this atmosphere, Saul of Tarsus thrived. Clearly a devout student of the Law, he saw the rightness of it and the need for others to follow it as well as he did.  Thus, the new “cult” of Christianity (though it wasn’t called that at the time) seemed sinister to him and he vowed to stop it in its tracks.  I seriously doubt he did this to be cruel.  Saul saw every Jew falling away into this “cult” as someone lost to God and as he reckoned righteousness by the flesh, not the spirit; he saw it as absolutely imperative that he seek to control the flesh of others.  If he couldn’t rescue the Jews who had already become Christians from their insanity, he’d silence them so they couldn’t infect others.  We first met Saul holding the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen, but within a few years he’d gained enough power to be granted the authority to pursue Christians and arrest them to bring them back to trial. This would have been similar to the trial that Stephen underwent and we all know how well that turned out for Stephen.  Saul was absolutely certain he was correct in enforcing Judaic Law among his fellow Jews who had become Christians that he never stopped to ask himself if God approved of his actions.

 

A funny thing happened on the road to Damascus, however.  Saul met God and found out that he had been wrong.  And, this was where we see that Saul did not persecute Christians because he hated God. He loved God and desired to follow Him in all his ways.  He simply hadn’t recognized God in the Christian movement because he was so set on his preconceived notion that Judaism was the only way to God.  Once set straight by Jesus, Saul went from persecutor of Christians to Christian in a matter of days.  In Galatians 1-2 Saul who had become Paul wrote about his process of reprogramming after his salvation experience. He had a lot of stuff to evaluate and some stuff to let go – attitudes, beliefs, and dogmas.  He spent three years in Arabia before he even went to Jerusalem where he met with James (the brother of Jesus and pastor of the church in Jerusalem) and Peter before returning to Tarsus where he spent a number of years apparently growing in Jesus before Barnabas asked him to join him in the work in Antioch.

 

“If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so:  circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.  Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”  Philippians 3:4b-11 

 

Paul put no stock in his former position as a really good Jew. He knew that the mark of Moses on his body meant nothing to God.  What was important (and remains important to Christians to this day) is “not having my own righteousness” (which is from the law), but that which is “through faith in Christ”.  Righteous that is faith based is knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection.

 

My reader of the Orthodox faith (he who challenged me to not consider the rightness or wrongness of my beliefs, but the source of them) perhaps fails to understand that the source of what I believe is the New Testament. In this case, in discussing salvation by faith, the source is the God-breathed writing of the Apostle Paul.  I have considered the source of my beliefs and the rightness.  Paraphrasing Paul, there is righteousness of the flesh, which is no more than skin deep, and there is the righteousness of the spirit, which comes from faith in Christ Jesus.

 

“For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.”  Romans 2:28-29

 

Replace the word “circumcision” with {baptism) and you will see a message to Christians today.  “For he is not a Christian who is one outwardly, nor is baptism that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Christian who is one inwardly; and baptism is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men but from God.”

 

Baptism as taught by the ecclesiastic churches is a mark of the flesh. Much as circumcision entered you into the covenant community of Israel, you enter an ecclesiastical church through baptism a few days after birth and are claimed by it for the rest of your life.  My spouse remains a Catholic, according to the RC church, even though he was not attended mass in 24 years and was rebaptized into a Baptist church 23 years ago.  It does not matter to the RC that he was unregenerate during his entire time as a Catholic. He did not know Christ, but he knew his catechism and that was good enough to assure that, provided he didn’t commit some mortal sin, he would go to heaven.  It does not matter to the RC that it was a choice his parents made for him when he was an oblivious nine-day-old infant and that he simply went along with what he was taught until the usual rebellion of adolescence when most people begin to question whether they believe the same things their parents believe.  The rituals of Roman Catholicism did not offer any answers to the emptiness of his soul. “My spirit cried out for something it had never known yet somehow knew it was missing,” BJ said.  “I didn’t know what I wanted, but I wanted God, to know Him, to be known by Him.  And no matter how many times I said the rosary, or went to confession, or took communion, I felt like there was something ELSE, but I didn’t know what.  Then I met Jesus.”

 

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  Ephesians 2:8

 

There are ways that seem right to humans because we believe we are so smart.  While among created beings we are very smart, we are mere ants before the One True God.  Anything we can conceive of is pedestrian compared to what He knows to be the Truth. He sets the rules and we are wise if we follow. 

 

While having an outward sign of our salvation seems good, that is not what God has ordained.  Paul counted his outward symbol of salvation (his Jewish circumcision) as “loss” compared to knowing Christ.  Write it off! Toss it in the trash! It meant less than nothing compared to that salvation experience in Damascus. It was a debt owed, not a credit paid and Paul understood this very clearly.  Being a Jew meant he’d lived a good life as the Jews counted good living, but that wasn’t what God wanted from him.  God did not want his works, but his soul.

 

“But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:4-11

 

Nowhere in this passage did Paul mention that regeneration comes from baptism or participation in some other sacrament.  He wrote that we were saved through the regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, that we were justified by His grace, not by a ritual imparting grace.

 

I think that in the First Century, the Christianity of the Gentiles – simple, unceremonial worship and teaching – seemed too easy for the Judaizers and those who had been influenced by them.  Judaism was a hard religion, a strict religion.  Gentile Christianity was not.  And, it just seemed right to those of a Pharisaical bent to bind the new believers in the safe yoke of religious slavery that Paul addressed in the Letter to the Galatians.

Sacramental regeneration (or grace, as some prefer) is the notion that the sacramental rituals of the church confer grace (the favor God gives man just because He loves us) in and of themselves, making them necessary for salvation as well as the means to salvation.  A belief held by most high ecclesiastical churches (Roman Catholic, Orthodox and some Episcopalians), it is opposed to the justification by faith to which most Protestant and Baptist believers ascribe.  In our view, the sacraments are a symbol of grace and a testimony of faith, but are themselves mere reflections of the inward change that God alone can provide.  Without salvation, baptism is merely getting wet and partaking of the Lord’s Supper is merely eating. To do either without salvation is to defy God, to say that human rituals have more power than God’s own redeeming work upon the cross.

 

Sacramental grace or regeneration is not mentioned in the Bible.  Unlike Trinity, which is suggested in the Bible by prominent verses like John 1:1 and John 10:30 and throughout John Chapter 8 (just to name a few), Scripture does not suggest sacramental regeneration, unless you do a fair amount of cherry picking.  So, if this dogma is not found in the Bible, how did it enter the Christian church and become such a central part of its doctrines that the majority was willing to oppress and even kill anyone who might suggest that the Church of Christ ought to follow His Scripture rather than their own traditions?

 

The answer lies in the Old Testament and in the heresy of Judaizing.  Remember that the New Testament did not exist in its current form until around AD 160, which was just about the time that the first controversy centered around infant baptism would emerge.  For some time after that, even church leaders might not have access to the whole New Testament and few of their parishioners could read them for themselves.  Thus, local church leaders relied on the Old Testament and the epistles of the apostles that they had in their possession or that the early church Fathers quoted. More often than not, they probably relied on what their predecessor had taught them and, therein rested the genesis of a problem, because within 25 years of Jesus’ resurrection, the church was already dealing with its first heresy and it was a compelling one.

 

Remember that all early Christians were Jews, steeped in Mosaic Law and Temple rituals.  It is clear from reading Acts that these Jewish Christians did not stop attending synagogue and Temple when they became Christians.  They remained Jews who had become Christians and continued to observe some or all aspects of the Jewish law, probably because they knew it was from God and held its authority as sacred, valuing it for its antiquity, but moreover, they had been raised in the observance of it.  It is probable they were often deeply affected in their attendance of Temple rituals; they therefore kept them up after they were baptized into the Christian church, maintaining the distinction of meats, using the ceremonial purification ceremonies as visible signs of their piety, attending the temple service, and celebrating the feasts of the Jews.   They continued to meet God as they knew Him, just with a deeper understanding of the redemptive role of God through Jesus.

 

The problem came when Gentiles began to become Christians.  Gentiles were from an utterly foreign culture that the Jews had avoided for generations.  They had no background in the worship of the One True God of Israel and their system of religious rites was anathema within the Christian church, as well it should be.  Some Jewish Christians like Paul and Barnabas easily understood that Gentiles were not Jews and that they should not be bound to the Mosaic Law because Christ gives freedom, not bondage.  But other Jewish Christians, including Peter, appear to have had problems with this.

 

It is not known if those spreading the heresy (whom we call Judaizers) were actually Jewish Christians who still felt passionate toward the rites of their forefathers or if they were Jews of the Pharisees who only pretended to be Christians in hopes of sowing dissention within the church at Antioch. I suspect there may have been a mixture of the two.  In essence, the heresy of judaizing stated that a Christian must also be a Jew and that Gentiles must become Jews before they could be saved by Christ.  Of course, to become a Jew, a Gentile must submit to circumcision and the keeping of the Mosaic Law.  Although it was not unheard of for Gentiles to become Jews through baptism, an insistence upon circumcision was not an uncommon stance among Jews of the 1^st Century – Josephus wrote about such Gentile conversions to Judaism.  The Pharisees strongly argued against this, believing that circumcision was the only way to become a Jew.  Thus, it is not surprising if some Jewish Christians, particularly those of the Pharisees, carried this belief into Christianity. 

 

To the Jewish Christians, the Temple rituals and Mosaic Law were God-ordained and seemed right.  Jesus had lived as a Jew, so should not they also continue as Jews after they had accepted Christ. The patterns and rituals of Judaism no doubt gave comfort and familiarity to their worship and daily lives.  The Jewish Christians felt comfortable in their cultural zone, but once confronted with Gentiles entering the Church, they were required to stretch beyond their comfort zone.  Gentiles had never been Jewish and it was necessary for them to learn to live as Christians, with the moral conduct that entailed.  To some Jewish Christians, it likely seemed simple – embrace Jewish law and custom and learn all you need to know about living a moral life.  Yet Paul, Barnabas and others rightly saw this as bondage and heresy.  Whether it was truly Jewish Christians caught up in their devotion to the Jewish law to the point of heresy or if it were Jews merely pretending to be Christians in order to corrupt the Christian church, a very dangerous message was being sent to the Gentiles in Antioch.  “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses, you cannot be saved!” Acts 15:1b. 

 

Circumcision was more than just a physical act. It was a ticket into the covenant community of Judaism.  It was, to the Jews of the Old Testament, a badge that said “You’re going to heaven.”  We know that Christ told the Pharisees and scribes that they were wrong in their confidence in this mark of the flesh as a seal for their ultimate destination (John, Chapter . He told Nicodemus in John 3 that even good Jews like him must be “born again” in Christ.  The mark of the flesh was not sufficient.  Yet, this heresy would occupy much of Paul’s attention throughout his ministry.  Most of the Letter to the Romans is devoted to arguing for salvation by faith, not through works or circumcision, but he also wrote to the Christians at Galatia (who seem to have already begun to accept Judaized Christianity) and to the Ephesians and others.  In nearly ever letter he wrote, Paul warned his disciples not to listen to teachings that were different from what he or one of the other apostles had taught and to even be suspicious if Paul or the others started teaching something different.

 

Ask an Orthodox or Roman Catholic what infant baptism (the ultimate symbol of sacramental grace) signifies and you’ll likely hear something about entering the covenant community of the Christian Church.  I asked a older friend who studied for the RC priesthood before discovering that he really liked women too much to keep a vow of chastity and his answer, I think, is fairly close to what most RC and Orthodox believe.  He remains a devout RC member to this day.  What he said is certainly similar to what my Orthodox reader wrote.  “Infant baptism signifies the child’s admission into the covenant community of the Church, setting a seal upon his character that assures he will belong to God, provided he does not set up any insurmountable obstacle (mortal sin).  It is a first step toward a lifetime of sanctification that starts in infancy and continues until death.  Salvation is a process, not an event that occurs at a finite point in time,” said Hugh C.

 

Now, I ask, how is this substantially different from circumcision?

 

Jewish circumcision signified the child’s entry into the covenant community of the Hebrews. It was expected that parents and community members were to provide necessary education to bring the child to an understanding of his responsibilities toward God as a Jew. Salvation, for the Jew, was a process of a lifetime, not an event. 

 

I submit, based upon observation, that Judaizing did not die out after the Jerusalem Council. Paul continued to deal with it, so we know it didn’t die out. I don’t think it faded away. I think it simply changed.  Instead of making a painful operation the focus of grace, the heretics shifted their focus to a less painful ritual.  They did this, no doubt, with the purest of motives.  They likely did not see faith as all that tangible compared to keeping the Jewish Law.  Faith is deceptively simple and from the view of those who were used to rituals and liturgy, it seemed as though something was missing.  “Unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved” did not win the day in Jerusalem, but baptism was already a part of the Christian church and it is far less painful.  I believe the Judaizers returned to their communities chastened and corrected, but not changed.  In their hearts, they knew faith could not be a simple as accepting Jesus’ death on the cross as a payment for their sin. They must DO something to be worthy, because for the whole of Judaism, Jews had to DO something to be worthy.  Deprived of circumcision as that outward symbol of having DONE something, they changed their focus to something already existing in the Christian church – baptism.  Thus, instead of an outward testimony of an inward change, some congregations under the sway of the Judaizers began to teach that baptism was necessary for salvation.

 

I can see it happening, because I have had conversations with prospects (those who have heard the gospel, but not made a profession of faith) and some of them thought they needed to be baptized in order to be saved.  My next posting will flesh this out, why baptism (as a substitute for circumcision) is not necessary for salvation, but is an important first step in what follows salvation.  We will return to the Bible for that discussion, primarily to the letters to the Romans and Galatians.

I stumbled into this discussion on sacramental grace when I was challenged by a reader to consider, “not the rightness or wrongness of the doctrines” I hold, but “their source.”  I always love a challenge and so I did some research and read some books and spent a good deal of time in prayer.  I have spent a bit of time considering the source not only of the doctrines I embrace, but of those my reader apparently holds dear, and considering the history that the Catholic Church (meaning both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic sects) would rather not discuss.  There were possible reform attempts throughout the history of the catholic (little “c” intended) Church that were labeled heretical, though some groups held beliefs very similar to the New Testament Church and many non-catholic groups of the last four hundred years.  Although it is hard to know exactly what these groups believed because what we know about them is largely what the organized church of the day said about them (and nobody says nice things about those who tell us we’re wrong), in many cases, these groups seemed to take issue with some time-honored traditions in the catholic church – namely sacramental grace and catholic church authority, basing their objections upon perceived disagreements from the Biblical text. For their reliance on the Bible rather than church tradition, they were labeled heretics.

 

Basically, there are two types of redemption that Christendom (those claiming the name of Christian) embrace. They use similar vocabulary, but they are, in fact, essentially opposite.  If one is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the other cannot be, because they really are that far apart.

 

The first theory of redemption is held by the high-ecclesiastical churches – Roman Catholic, Orthodox and liturgical Episcopalians.  When I use the term “sacramental grace”, this is the theory to which I refer. This theory endeavors to make sacraments essential to grace. It holds as a cornerstone a succession of authority from the Apostles to a modern-day priesthood, teaching that the Apostles transmitted their special office by ordination of priests through laying on of hands (as a seal of the Holy Spirit) and that such ordination formed a depository of spiritual energy to be used for the impartation of the redemptive gifts in the same way in which Jesus redeemed mankind.  In essence, this theory holds that Jesus provided redemption to future generations simply by instituting on earth a successive, prelatic hierarchy who act as His proxies, empowered to work through the sacraments, to distribute salvation.  In this one belief rests the whole foundation of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and liturgical Anglican churches – the priest has authority to remit sins because someone in authority gave it to him and someone gave it to that superior and so on and so forth all the way back to Peter and Paul.

 

Within these churches rests a dogma that the priest can confer grace upon anyone – including a days-old infant – and that grace is set like a seal upon the character of that person, so that they are bound to come to Jesus, provided they don’t commit some mortal sin before death.

 

The second theory of redemption holds that Jesus is the High Priest of God’s Church, that He deals directly with His people, even two thousand years after His resurrection, and that His primary means of communication with those who would have faith in Him is the Bible. Thus we feel comfortable with flying in the face of 2000 years of tradition and saying “Where is that in the Bible?” Not that Protestants (I’ll include Baptists in that term for brevity’s sake, recognizing that Baptists existed before the Reformation and some take issue with the inclusion) deny any drop of grace in all sacraments, but generally we think the actions and rituals of mankind are pretty much as “filthy rags” to God and should be so to us.  We see no evidence of sacramental grace in the New Testament, and so we do not believe in it.  Why is it important what people believe about how they receive grace?  The fruit of grace is salvation and if a seed is not planted correctly, then the crop produced won’t be a good crop.  This is a fundamental discussion not only of the nature of God, but His relationship to mankind.  It also matters a great deal because the ultimate topic of discussion in this arena is the final destination of the human soul.  What if, in all innocence and just doing what you’re told, you’ve bought a ticket on a train headed somewhere you don’t want to go?  Wouldn’t you want to know that so you could correct your error?  I would and my spouse did and that’s why it’s very important to us to touch on this subject.

 

As this touches on fundamental truths of the gospel, the question should be asked – from whence comes “sacramental grace”?  If it doesn’t come from the Bible, where did it originate?

 

In answering that question, we will turn our attention to the Letter to the Romans and other epistles that deal with the first heresy of the Christian Church.

    There is a long history, going back to the 2nd Century of Christian groups leaving the catholic church because of doctrinal differences.  The church at the time labeled them heretics and so little is known of these groups beyond what their opponents said about them, but it's really hard to know if they really were. It may well be that some of these "heretical groups" were seeking not to corrupt the church, but to bring it back to its roots in the New Testament as the catholic church more and more relied on the writings of the early church Fathers rather than on the New Testament.  As the New Testament became available, it would have been scriptural to correct errors found in the main body of the church (called catholic), but a doctrine of majorism because the norm, whereby to disagree with the majority was seen to be error rather than reform, even if the reforms were based upon the New Testament.

Most Roman Catholics and Orthodox will point to 1054 as the date of "schism" for the catholic church and both will claim to have taken the right side of things.  Protestants would claim that neither had been right at the time, that the church had deviated from the Bible a long time before the two halves split with one another.  RC and Orthodox adherents take exception to the idea that salvation by faith was "rediscovered after 1500 years," as they will say.

Nonsense!  There were groups all along who were attempting to reform the Catholic Church, but found themselves labeled heretics. After Constantine gave the Catholic Church the unimaginable power of the Roman Empire behind  it, the Church used that power to crush any opposition voices, any reform attempts.  There were groups throughout the period from the official sanction of the Catholic Church until Schism in 1054 who were labeled thusly and disappeared into the dust bin of history. Paulicans, Bogomils, Novatians -- we don't know enough about these groups to assume they were either legitimately heretics or actually reformers.  We only really know what their enemies said about them.

After the Great Schism of 1054 -- when you might say the RC and Orthodox each seperately discovered the other was a "heretic" -- the Roman Catholic Church continued its campaign against "heretics."  As we move closer to the Protestant Reformation, there were a number of groups who tried to reform the RC Church.  St. Bernard, for instance, spent most of his career hounding "heretics" and either killing them or driving them away into mountain strongholds -- particularly in the German and Swiss highlands.

It must be recognized that men like St. Bernard were not cruel monsters. They honestly believed that every soul lost to a "heretical" group was a soul lost for ever from God's kingdom.  When I write about them, it is not in anger or malice, but simply to show that the idea of catholicism -- a universal Christian church united in a visible and organized way -- drove the majority to oppress and even murder those holding minority opinions. They were doing it for the purest of motives, but the end never justifies the means.

In many cases, these reforming groups were Biblically-based. They'd read the Scriptures for themselves and noted that the RC church was not adhering to the New Testament.  Had the RC Church been willing to reform its practices, the Protestant Reformation may never have occurred.  The difficulty with the called-for reformations were that they often centered around the idea of sacramental grace. The reformers over and over again noted that only the regenerate were church members in the New Testament, that infants were not included, and that the laity were the actual ministers.  When they pointed out these discrepancies from Scripture to church practices, they found their efforts not only rebuffed, but worthy, in many cases, of the Inquisition and death.

The Reformation did not "rediscover" the Bible. The Bible had been read and acknowledged by a number of groups throughout those 1500 years. The catholic church was just unwilling to reform.  The Reformation of the 16th Century was successful for a number of different reasons.  One, groups of "anabaptists" had been building in the highlands of northern Europe.  Two, the printing press had been invented.  Three, Martin Luther was willing to keep some dearly held doctrines in place, creating a partial reformed church rather than something so radically different that people really had to leap to join it.  Four, the Roman Catholic Church was weakened by loss of political power during the Renaissance and truly did not have the political strength to maintain its grip on northern Europe.  Fifth, Henry the VIII, though a vile atheist by all accounts, wanted a divorce and couldn't get it any other way but to kick the RC Church to the curb.

Previous attempts at reform might have worked, but the conditions were against the reformers.

I know a lot of Baptists who would like to believe that there is an unbroken line of baptists from the apostolic church to today, but the evidence for that is spotty. There were a lot of sparks that rarely became bonfires (though some flared up to good sized camp fires), but it took enough fuel and enough time for them to really spring into flame.

The Reformation was 1500 years in the making, but it would not be denied!

It is clear from a reading of the New Testament that the Catholic Church as it grew into being between AD 100 and AD 313 gradually turned from the teachings and practices of the apostolic church toward embracing sacramental grace, catholic ecclesiastic polity and a hierarchy of church officials.  Some of this had genesis in the writings of the early church Fathers, who while contending for the faith, also created new extra-Biblical doctrines. Some of this, no doubt, grew up from the error made possible by the New Testament not being in wide circulation. Without the touchstone of Scripture, tradition became the guide.

It is worth noting that the early church dealt with heresy.  Paul and Barnabas contended against the Judaizers and the apostles sided them that, saying that Gentiles need not become Jews in order to become Christians. The Judaizers were nullified, but they did not cease to operate, as evidenced by the Letter to the Galatians.  Paul told Christians to not listen when heretics taught, to cling always to the teachings of the apostles and Jesus Christ. Of course, some were bound not to listen.

Although found nowhere in Scripture, the concept of a catholic church arose in conjunction with the concept of clergy holding the doctrines of the church.  In the same vein grew up an idea of sacramental regeneration – the idea that baptism was itself the vehicle of salvation rather than merely a symbol of the inward regeneration.

These ideas are found scattered throughout the writings of the early church Fathers.  While we owe a great debt to these men of faith who contended with pagans over the beliefs of the church in the days before the New Testament was readily available, they were merely human and subject to error.  Origen, particularly, erred in his attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy to Christian doctrine.  Toward the end of the 2nd Century, coinciding with a fairly firm establishment of the canon of the New Testament (AD 160), Tertullian argued against infant baptism. It should be noted that infant baptism was an outgrowth of the concept of sacramental regeneration. Tertullian first published the idea of the Trinity, explaining in non-Biblical terms what "in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God" meant.  This was a great man of God, a defender of the faith and a thinker who understood Scripture.  Whether he had access to it all, we don't know, but we can surmise from his extensive writing that he had access to a lot of it.  Tertullian expressed concerns that infants, since they were unable to reason and believe, were receiving baptism prior to regeneration. He was accused of heresy by his opponents. In the region of Carthage, where he lived, were a group known as the Montanists who proclaimed themselves the true church by virtue of a belief in spiritual regeneration and an intense focus on the speedy return of Christ. They embraced other ideas that are not found in the New Testament, but they apparently were close enough to what Tertullian believed that he joined them.  Later, the Donatists (also centered around Carthage) would argue with the catholic church about the character of a bishop that had been raised in their area.  In the end, finding no support from Rome, they declared that Rome had no say in the workings of the local body.  These groups seem to have melded into one loosely defined group operating in Asia Minor.

In the 4th Century an issue arose about what to do with those Christians who had not held to the faith during a recent persecution. Novatian, Roman priest, held they should not be readmitted to the altar.  The main body of the Catholic Church believed they should be.  He was excommunicated. He and his followers continued as a community, holding as their tenets the rejection of their opponents' authority and an emphasis on spiritual regeneration. Because they rejected the authority of the Catholic Church, they rebaptized those who joined their community. Called Novatians by the catholics, they called themselves Cathari ("the pure"), a name that would reappear much later in church history.  It seems they joined with the Donatists in Asia Minor and the conjoined community continued into the 5th Century.

In a completely different part of the Roman Empire, Patrick (we call him St. Patrick) was laboring for the Lord, quite distant from the catholic church. By the time of his birth, Rome had sanctioned Christianity as the official religion of the empire, but Patrick was anything but a Catholic.  He held several beliefs that, had they been known, would have been labeled heretical.  He baptized by immersion regenerate believers (since it was a new mission field, most of his work would have been with adults anyway). He held a reverence of Scripture that would result in the Irish monks being some of the most literate clergy in existence during the coming dark ages.  He never appealed to church authority, but always to Scripture.  Many of his teachings continued in the Irish churches until well into the dark ages.

It cannot be certainly said that all of these groups followed the letter of the New Testament. Certainly the Novatians and Donatists appear to have accepted the Catholic error of sacramental grace. However, they had the gist of the gospel in their emphasis on the spiritual nature of the church quite apart from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the necessity of regeneration and the godly life following it. They failed to follow the truth to its logical implications and return to the New Testament faith and practices in all things, but they were closer to their catholic opponents to the apostolic church.  Thus, while considered heretics by the catholic church, which could not countenance any schism, they might well be considered reformers.

With the development of the idea of sacramental grace, vital faith decreased within the Christian church. This happened a long time before Constantine officially lifted the ban on Christianity. It was a gradual process that happened over centuries and it was as much a function of lack of reliance on the New Testament as it was any sort of deliberate attempt to draw the church away from its roots.  Sacramental grace had as its result the introduction of a multitude of unregenerated hearts into the church. Hearts unchanged by the Holy Spirit sought worldly aims and goals, particularly to advance their own power and importance.  Ceremonialism increased because outward rituals are so much easier to embrace than inward change. The idea of sacramental grace flowed from baptism into the Lord's Supper as the early church Fathers developed the idea of the real presence. This was not at all what Paul had taught as he described the simple memorial ceremony with its emphasis on spiritual inventory, but with the belief that one communicated with God through the eucharist, the Lord's Supper quickly became obscured in ritualism. With Clement of Rome and others placing the clergy above the laity, it became natural to think that the priest controlled the believer's access to God.  And all this happened before Constantine came on the scene.

The Roman Catholic and Orthodox point to the "antiquity" of their beliefs as their touchstone, placing much emphasis on the early church Fathers. In fact, if given the choice, they will point to the early church Fathers and the traditions that grew from their writings as "scripture" rather than the New Testament. This is because the catholic church departed from the New Testament sometime in the 2nd Century and neither of these ancient sects can support their doctrines and practices based upon apostolic practices. They agree on very little, except that tradition is equal to, if not superior to Scripture and that those who do not hold their beliefs are apostate.  Both object to the idea that the Reformation "rediscovered" the Scripture and the apostolic church after 1500 years and they want us to believe that their very antiquity should be taken as proof of their correctness.

The New Testament is far more antique than the writings of the early church Fathers and therefore, to those of us who do not hold Roman Catholic or Orthodox beliefs, is considered far more trustworthy.  We are not finished with this discussion of church history, but suffice it to say that I (and many others who have studied history) see a long line of schisms and attempts to reform the catholic church, even long before Constantine created it as the official religion of the empire.

The apostolic church (universal), which can be known through the Book of Acts and the Epistles, saw itself as a spiritual entity. All Christians were members of Christ in a spiritual sense and therefore, the church at Jerusalem sought to aid and strengthen the church at Antioch, which sought the aid and strengthen the church at Ephesus, etc.  Membership in the individual assemblies (churches) of the church (universal) was based upon personal spiritual regeneration  followed by believer's baptism.  This is the pattern seen throughout the New Testament.. There was no other pattern.  There was no visible organized church beyond that of the local church bodies, which might work in voluntary association with one another

So, how did the apostolic church of the First Century become the Catholic Church of the 4th Century.  The answer is, gradually, but unsurprisingly.

The early church was faced with intense persecution.  It was constantly under attack by Roman authorities seeking to kill believers, whom they saw as disruptive of the public peace, and by pagan scholars who tried to challenge the very doctrines of the church.  They questioned the veracity of Scripture, its historical accuracy, its claims to miracles, and its doctrinal tenets. The early church Fathers wrote much of their libraries in defense of Christianity.  Recognizing that the canon of the New Testament was still under development and wasn''t known in its current form until around AD 160, one must also recognize that the early church Fathers may not have had access to the complete New Testament.  Also, what they were writing was often focused on particular attacks of particular doctrines and not on the whole of Scripture.

What is known, largely from their writings, is that the early church while under persecution clung tightly to the idea of unity as Jesus had prayed for his disciples to have and as Paul had written about.  Perhaps it is understandable human beings, being so finite, would think of that unity as a physical unity rather than as a spiritual unity.  And, it is certain that many believers were still understanding the Scripture correctly and embracing spiritual unity. However, there were enough who sought an ecclesiastic unity that throughout the 2nd Century we see a growing tendency toward catholicism (universalism) in church polity.  It's a lot easier to tear apart people who don't agree on all issues than it is to attack a cohesive group. So, ecclesiastic unity prevailed as a extra-Scriptural doctrine.  It came to be seen as so extremely important that any schism (division along doctrinal lines) was seen as the worse sin a Christian could commit.  By the second century, when Tertullian spoke out against the increasing practice of infant baptism, it was already viewed as heresy to disagree with the catholic order.  He was labled a heretic and joined the Montanists (who may or may not have been heretics themselves) and catholicism won the day.

About this same time, some began to embrace the idea of sacramental regeneration.  Some no longer saw baptism as being a symbol of an inward regeneration. They saw it as the vehicle of salvation itself.    In truth, if one takes a handful of verses from Scripture out of context, one could derive this doctrine.  John 3:3, I Peter 3:14, and Acts 22:16 have all been used to compell the acceptance that faith alone without baptism doesn't save. This ignores the greater body of the New Testament that asserts that faith precedes baptism and does not depend on it in favor of a handful of verses taken out of context.  Baptism soon became, in the minds of the majority of the church, so necessary to salvation that it couldn't be left to wait upon belief.

I don't think these Christians meant any harm. They meant to obey Christ's command to be baptized, but in their zeal they missed that this change in doctrine was not based upon Scripture.  Remember that many of them did not have access to the complete body of the New Testament at the time, so error was not unexpected.

It logically followed that, if those unbaptized were unregenerate (meaning they couldn't go to heaven), those who died in infancy were unsaved. Nobody wants their baby to die, but worse that the child wouldn't be in heaven with you.  So, with the best of motives and emotions, infants began