Orthodox Church Reliance on Church Fathers

Apologists and polemicists for the Orthodox Churches invariably invoke the writings of pastors from the first few centuries to promote their beliefs.

The implied premise of the question is that the standard for judging doctrine is the beliefs of second, third, and subsequent early generations of Christians. It must assume that those who had closest access to the apostles were more spiritual or had more thorough teaching. Nevertheless, that premise is illogical and leads into heresy.

The church was not born with as complete an understanding of doctrine as we can know it today.

Just as the prophets searched and studied diligently — and mostly, futilely — to understand their own prophecies (1 Peter 1:10–12), the apostles had to study and debate to apply what they had learned. 

When Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, the Jews needed a major improvement to their worldview. God destroyed their nation because their theology remained frozen and they refused to repent. Freezing doctrine at the point defined by the primitive church commits the same sin. 

Study and debate have always focused on the issue of the day. At Pentecost, the prime issue was the Jews’ rejection of their Messiah. As Acts records, the next major issue was acceptance of gentiles into the church (Acts 11) and freedom from the Mosaic Law (Acts 21, Galatians 2). 

Doctrines form an ontology, and the fleshing out of that ontology took centuries. The assignment of superior authority to writings of the primitive church comprises a rejection both of known authority, the scriptures, and of what was discerned, debated, rejected, and built upon by equally holy men in later generations. Forming a standard out of what was written at the beginning of the learning curve can only lead to error. The standard cannot be the changing interpretations of men whose writings we do not trust to be inspired and who had yet to wrestle with many great questions. 

Disagreements abounded among the church fathers. 

Heresies abounded even among the apostles’ contemporaries. Even among the most orthodox of the church fathers, there were major disagreement about vital issues, and where disagreement exists, error exists. 

How do we judge those disagreements without turning to the scriptures? If the scriptures are sufficient for teaching doctrine, how can they fail to be sufficient for determining doctrine? The proper use of early church writings, then, is as commentary, and dated commentary at that.

The inspired writings of the New Testament warn us not to embrace teachings that run contrary to Scripture. Of which church father did the Spirit say, his writings are given by inspiration of God, and are profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works”? None. 

The standard cannot be the changing interpretations of men whose writings we do not trust to be inspired and who had yet to wrestle with many great questions. This is not to say that we cannot consider earlier or later writings, but merely to correctly identify our Standard and warn against overemphasis on other sources.

Third, the reliance on the “church fathers” implies that we should bypass Scripture and instead resort to the early Christians’ writings.

This implies that Scripture is insufficient. It argues from borrowed authority and replaces the Spirit’s illumination with men’s opinions. It also implies an injection of a priesthood between God and believer, a continuation of the Jewish religious hierarchy in Christianized form. That low view of Scripture is heretical because it opens the door to other heresies and inserts a barrier between God and His people. 

The psalmist did not say, How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to the writings of priests who interpret your Word for me. At the cross, God destroyed the veil of partition between the area accessible only to the priest and the court of the ordinary believer. He made of all believers a royal priesthood who all have access to God and His gifts (1 Peter 2:9). Though the heresy may be unintentional, it is what it is. When you devalue the Word, you disrespect the Author of the Word.

Metaphorically, if you want adult-level knowledge, would you read a book written by people who have studied the subject for generations, or by children who have not even finished first grade? The scriptures form the Christian’s objective standard of doctrinal truth, not cherry-picked quotations from members of the primitive church.  

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal and non-profit use, but please give credit where credit is due.

Christ's Ransom, Bribe, Substitution, or (Irrelevant)?

For over a thousand years, Christians believed that Christ’s sacrifice was a ransom paid to the devil. Much of Christian doctrine has been developed in response to new ideas. This idea did not become an issue, so nobody studied it in depth for a long time.

The word ransom does appear once in the New Testament (Mark 10:45), and Satan is said to be the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), but that’s not enough to support the theory. The theory was discredited by Anselm of Canterbury in the twelfth century. Anselm argued that instead, the sacrifice was a gift from God the Son to God the Father that restored God’s honor, which had been insulted by the Fall. In turn, God would simply forgive the sins of Jesus’ followers.

Anselm’s explanation fit the scriptural evidence better than the ransom-to-the-devil theory, but the Protestant Reformers, having been freed from Roman Catholic group-think, modeled scriptural evidence even better. They pointed out that Anselm’s theory created a violation of God’s Justice.

The current theory, held by most Christians, is that God could not simply forgive sins without violating one of His major attributes, Justice. Justice, not God’s ego, had to be satisfied. Therefore, God the Son, like a big brother, stepped in to bear our punishment (2 Corinthians 5:21). The gift of justification is sufficient for all and available to all, but only those who fully recognize their need for the gift and submit to God's free bestowal of His grace receive it. 

• (Tangents: 
• (Submit to God's free bestowal means accepting the gift as a free gift. This excludes thinking that we deserve the gift due to parentage, due to our own efforts such as good deeds (that are already owed to God) or participation in ceremonies, by the efforts of others (such as parents and priests baptizing us or saying prayers for us), or by our own perseverance.
• (Hyper Calvinism disagrees about the order of events in conversion. It claims that the gift is sufficient only for those God chose, and that people do not need to actively receive redemption because God takes the initiative in applying it to His chosen. Afterward, they submit because they have received redemption and enlightenment, not in order to receive it.)

Jesus was uniquely qualified to die on behalf of others.

• Being fully human, He could represent man.
• Being fully God, He could live a sinless life and had no sins of His own for which to be punished.
• Being infinite God, the value of His death was sufficient to pay for the sins of all humans.
• Being fully God, He could survive the punishment.

Unfortunately, we see a massive departure from basing theology on biblical evidence. Theologians who are more Marxist than Christian introduced the idea that Christ’s sacrifice was an example of love and not an act of redemption. Ideas like sin, guilt, sacrifice, and repentance offend their advanced, civilized sensibilities — not to mention their egos. 

That idea shows up in the teaching of many “New Evangelical” and mainline churches. They want to be "current" and "relevant," so they avoid offending people with messages about sin and Jesus's blood. The message focuses instead on how a relationship with God makes life better, safer, healthier, and especially, more prosperous. In this gospel, you don’t need God because your guilt would defile heaven and you could not bear to be in God's fiery presence; you need God because He wants to be your friend and provider.

Some call this recent message “sloppy agape,” wherein agape (ah-GAH-pee) is the Greek word for the highest level of love. In stead of obeying scripture's command to balance truth and judgment against love, they focus on love alone. Whereas the message of redemption portrays Christ's sacrifice as the elixir that cures sin's deadly disease, sloppy agape delivers a mere energy drink.

So we’ve gone from redemption being a ransom to the devil, to the sacrifice being a bribe to God, to a substitution for us in our punishment... and if we don’t correct the trend, to irrelevance.

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal and non-compensated use, but please give credit where credit is due.