Chapter 2 -- Well, what about Novatian?

As Doug has pointed out, Frame's giving his readers the Cliff's Notes to church history, and that involves trade-offs. Readers could do much worse than to use Frame's overview as a sort of topical index to the Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. The Novationist and Donatist controversies provide a lot of insight into the ways that thinking about churches, bishops, baptism, and repentance were changing through this period, and the other disputes he mentions have reams of historical writings concerning them.

I'd like to think, for a moment, about the Novationist controversy. It is, as Frame says, the first point in church history where we see someone excommunicated but not declared a heretic.

I think this is an interesting study because, as best I can tell, there is error on both sides. On the side of the Latin Fathers (the forerunners of Roman Catholicism, who won this argument), there seems to have been grounds for a legitimate criticism that they were treating apostasy as no different from those sins a Christian may commit while still legitimately claiming the name of Christ. Scripture is replete with warnings about those who turn away from Christ, and while it would surely be correct to acknowledge that a moment of weakness under duress is a sin to be repented of, the Novationists were seeing folks who had lived comfortably during persecution as pagans, only to return to the church as if they had been Christians all along and needed merely to confess some particular sin. Surely there is reason to treat someone who has denied Christ and left the church in favor of the world as one treats an unbeliever in need of salvation, and not as a Christian caught in some fault.

Regardless of the merits of this criticism, though, Novation clearly went too far in teaching that such could *never* be restored. This is a misunderstanding of the nature of apostasy--the true apostate will never *seek* restoration, will never repent; the true believer or the false believer who, having withered under persecution, is becoming a true believer--these will *always* seek restoration.

So Novation was in doctrinal error concerning the offer of salvation, and was insistently teaching such and dividing the communion of the church.

Here is where the great failure arises: to have excommunicated Novation while being unwilling to treat him as a heretic was, itself, an error. There is an either/or to church discipline that was ignored here: in a valid excommunication, the church finds that there is a heretical teaching, a teaching (whether it concerns the language or the practice of the faith) against the dogmatic matters of the faith which leaves only two alternatives: *either* the teacher will, if he is a true believer, repent under discipline; *or* the teacher will, by impenitence, manifest that he is not a true believer.

This either/or is the ultimate sanction of church discipline. To use it for anything *less* than such matters as lead the church to believe that impenitence marks an unbelieving heart, is to misuse the authority of the church. To fail to use it when such occasions arise is likewise wrong.

By short-circuiting church discipline in this case--by putting Novation out for concerns which did *not* merit the non-recognition of Novation baptism, as the churches later found--those involved set the precedent for the sort of politicizing of confessional disputes that has plagued the church ever since.

Indeed, on both sides we find a certain sort of hyperzealous "doctrinal purity" masking fundamental errors of doctrine about baptism, about church discipline, and about the offer of salvation.

One thing necessary for unity is an agreement from all sides that confessing truth is a non-negotiable necessity (though it is one of several such, not the only/ultimate one). Another is a proper understanding of church discipline, one which seeks not pragmatic solutions to "problem children" but the restoration of those under discipline, and which recognizes that excommunication, while necessary to "protect the sheep" from false teachers (that is, teachers whose claim to Christianity is belied by their impenitence), is not primarily a way to protect the sheep from teaching with which the church disagrees: it is primarily a way to seek restoration of the impenitent by putting them, ultimately, to the either/or of repentance or condemnation.

I suspect that, if we were to consider the bad example of the Novationist controversy, we might find some insight into the many bad examples of church discipline that have come along since then. And then, we would do well to return to the Scriptures to see what Christ and the Apostles told us it means to deny Christ's name--or to deny the claims of those who call themselves "Christian."

Response to Doug--Chapter 2

What he said. Really, at the moment I see nothing to add to his comments. Perhaps I'll update if something comes to mind later.

UPDATE: not *exactly* a response to Doug, but since he engaged the history survey a bit more than I did, I'll include it here. I think Frame's calling Jeroboam "the first denominationalist" is a bit misguided--in fact, it sounds like a cheap shot.

Jeroboam set up a false temple with a false worship while claiming it was part of the real Temple worship, and did so in order to secure a following to himself. There are few clearer cases of what "heretic" means than his actions. Denominationalism is a failure to draw the right lines which results in drawing the wrong ones; but frank heresy is not the same problem, and does not have the same solutions.

Correction

Humiliating. Simply humiliating. I've probably been misremembering this text for more than a decade. I cited it before as "For it must needs be that divisions and offences come, but woe to him by whom they come!"

I was flat wrong. I just plain didn't remember the text right. My apologies.

I looked it up, and here (in KJV, so you can at least see where I got the *idea* from) is what it says:

Matthew 18:7-9 (KJV)
Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! [8] Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. [9] And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

Not even close. If anything, it's more decidedly on one side of the matter than I recalled. MEA CULPA

Response to Doug -- Chapter 1

(sorry about the multiple posts; such division seemed like a good idea at the time)

I don't see the OT worship as quite so continuous with the NT as you and Frame do (I would not, for instance, call Israel the Church, though I would happily admit the former is a type of the latter). Still, I think that God's calls to unified worship in Israel are there for the good of the church, as well, and it's easy to see that the pattern of "every man did that which was right in his own eyes" versus the central altar of the one true God persists in the problem of many deceiving spirits and one true Christ. We arrive at similar points from different paths, except insofar as the specifically earthly manifestation (e.g. unity of place) is concerned--but that seems like a big "except" for Frame's argument, to me.

I think it's interesting that you're seeing "obsession with" where Frame sees "inattention to" purity of doctrine and practice. I'm conflicted on the point, and it's here that I agree with you that even with best intentions we are far from the point where we could begin to "tear down this wall."

On the one hand, "failure to seek reconciliation" is a failure of doctrinal and practical purity. On the other hand, that failure is often a consequence of a belief on both sides that reconciliation would compromise their doctrinal or practical purity. That belief may even be justified--criticisms of some recent attempts to reconcile evangelicals with Rome seem, to me, to be justified (though not their intemperate nature). At a much more local level, what are we to do when one church has, for example, a habit of remarrying divorcees while another holds to the view taught by Christ, that to remarry when one is divorced (I would grant the exception for adultery, in many cases) is to commit adultery? In modern America with its greater than 50% divorce rate, can we doubt what the practical consequences of two such churches existing side-by-side would be, or that the result of their "agreeing to disagree" while pursuing joint teaching efforts would be that only the broader view would remain?

But if there are hundreds of such issues, where the more "popular" view is wrong, how are we to avoid endless schism?

I find myself thinking of something J. I. Packer writes in his 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God, concerning the existence of such divisions in the one Body. Essentially, Packer views these as each bearing witness to some parts of the truth that would otherwise disappear from the Body. Since the Body exists in this mortal age as a conglomerate of what I like to call "screwed-up people trying to get it right," it seems inevitable that there will be some "loss" in our transmission. The existence of various groups that have "obsessed" over some point or other ensures that those truths persist in the Body, so that there remains hope that one day some groups will regain those truths from the groups that kept a witness to them. Whether those patterns of truth ("we must preserve this teaching of Christ") and error ("we must excoriate all those who don't see it") can be matched up enough to help these groups merge is, as you say, hard to see from here.

Finally, on the matter of the use of the word "church" and "body" in the NT: I would say we have here a microcosm/macrocosm usage. Every local church is a whole church to be built together, as every believer's body, and every body of believers, is the Temple where the Spirit resides and Christ presides, and at every level from the body of the believer, through the local church, through all those who communicate, through all those who believe at any moment in this age, through all those who believe at all times and in all places, who will stand together in the End--the commands and promises of Christ are scalable, with appropriate measures of hope and calls for obedience to each. I think Paul's usage in the Corinthian epistles, where he seems to be keeping up a running pun between "your body" as the body of the believer and the body of believers, is a great example of this, and it's part of why I think Frame's tendency to read this "flat" as referring to a single, all-the-living-believers "church" is a little unfortunate.

OK, now let's start agreeing--and repent

8. To carry the point even further: the New Testament rebukes the mentalities and practices which were later to produce denominational division in the church. These mentalities and practices are:

• (a) autonomy: picking and choosing which leaders in the church will have one's respect (1 Cor. 1:10-17; 3:1-23);
• (b) factionalism: forming partisan groups in the church to advance the program (or supposed program) of one's favorite leaders (same passages);
• (c) lust for power: seeking to be boss (Matt. 20:20-28; Acts 8:9-24; 20:30; Phil. 2:1-11; 1 Pet. 5:1-3; 3 John 9);
• (d) unwillingness to seek reconciliation (Matt. 5:23-26;10 18:15-20; Rom. 12:18; Eph. 4:3; Phil. 2:1ff.; 4:2;1 Thess. 5:13; Heb. 12:14; Jam. 3:17);
• (e) failure to maintain church discipline (Matt. 18:15ff.; 1 Cor. 5);
• (f) inattention to doctrinal and practical purity (1 Tim. 4; 6:11-21; 2 Tim. 1:13ff.; 2:14-4:5; Tit.; etc.);
• (g) failure to help fellow believers in need (Matt. 25:31-46; 3 John).

[15]

[emphasis reproduced from original, list format added]

Here's where the rubber meets the road. As Frame has already foreshadowed, and will develop later, to the (very great) extent that denominationalism represents rancorous division, radical separatism, competition for resources, commodifying of the membership, or even the staid, satisfied comfort of an old prison now grown familiar, the very existence of denominations in the church is a consequence of sin, and quite probably indicates that one or both "sides" of any given "split" are continually living in sin, perhaps even generations later. (see item [d], O ye who live in comfort in your soft pews!)

Again, I see no need to link this to a prior demand for organizational unity. The church that practices rightly in these areas will be led, naturally and necessarily, into cooperation with those other churches that practice rightly; and moreover, I suspect, they will together feel it incumbent on them to seek out those who do not cooperate with them, and find--not subjugation, not conversion, but Biblical unity--reconciliation. Of course, if they do so in a wrong spirit or are rejected, there remains sin between them--let each believer examine himself, and repent of his sin, so long as these divisions remain!

I have to touch, briefly, on Frame's use of "autonomy," above. See my note about "me deacon es su deacon?" for the qualifier: there is undoubtedly some appropriate "autonomy" of the local church, insofar as the leaders of my church are not the leaders of your church, however much we may agree that they are worthy of "respect" in either place. This is, of course, an "independent Baptist" distinctive, but I think it's also a Biblical response to the denominational problem (Frame disagrees, as we shall see later, which is why I insert the caveat now).

Oh, but friends, brothers and sisters, let's weep and mourn for our sins, here. Have any of us, has any church we've belonged to, not been condemned by that list of the things God explicitly warned us against, the things that rend Christ's Body asunder here and now, even as He knits it together toward the Consummation?

To repent these sins, we will need to get beneath the level of even Frame's organizational dream or my local-church response. This is the heart-blood of the Christian life: do we care about Christ, do we love His body, more than our group, our communion, our tradition, our style? Are we committed to that discipline of the church which springs from and insists upon Christ's mission to reconcile all things to Himself?

We are not. We must become so. Help us, Lord!

one Christ = me deacon es su deacon?

This is Christ's church, Christ's church government. If we do not like it, we dare not set up our own government to rival his. Thus, Christ's intention was to unite all his people under his officers – one Lord, one church, one church government.[15]

Brief one: except for apostles and evangelists (who are, in the NT, always sent by either Christ Himself or some particular church to either prospective or already existing churches), all the offices Frame mentions here are the offices found in the local church. I agree that Christ has set forth in each church those He calls to lead (and I think there's a lot we could do to improve our responsiveness to His leadership, and I suspect Frame would agree that denominationalism has done much to dull us to this). Yet it does not follow that, in my church, your pastor has pastoral authority. Even within any given denomination, or among the bishoprics of the Augustine-era church (hardly my model for church-ing, but it'll do for historical purposes), it was a recognized principle that when my pastor visits your church, he is a loved and respected fellow brother and fellow laborer in Christ, worthy of honor and possessed of valuable insight, but not vested with the God-given pastoral authority or responsibility he bears in his own church.

I fail, then, to see how the organizational unity point follows from this logic. (I'm not engaging the Scriptures, here, which uncontroversially point out how the early church was organized, and are therefore as much of God's organizational guidance as He has given us; but rather the meat of the argument, which is a set of inferences Frame makes without Scriptural support.)

one Christ = one Body = deficient local churches?

Continuing with my picking of nits:

2. Jesus does come to build one church. "Church" is regularly used in the singular to refer to the whole New Testament people of God (Matt. 16:18; cf. Acts 2:47; 5:11; 12:5; 1 Cor. 10:32; 15:9; Gal. 1:13; Eph. 1:22, etc.).[14]

Let's all agree with the first sentence. I certainly do.

The second, however, seems to me to touch upon Frame's thesis only insofar as we take these collective uses of "church" to refer to the church in the present time. (I note that of the passages above, I would consider those in Acts to be referring to the church in Jerusalem, and not the universal Body of Christ; 1 Cor 10:32, 15:9 and Gal 1:13 do seem to be collective; Matt 16:18 and Eph 1:22 seem to me to be prospective, the Matthew passage being most obviously so.)

It seems, though, that the true unity of the Body, the Church, of which Christ is the head, is consummated only in the End. In Scripture, it is always in view as a work-in-progress, not a finished work (cf. Eph 4, which nonetheless clearly treats unity in spirit and truth, in the goals of edification and ministry, as a present imperative of a present body with God-sent intrachurch and interchurch ministers). I see nothing in this, however, which suggests that there is an organizational structure Church which exists above and has authority over the local church in the present.

There is one Christ, and there ought to be "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" among all believers everywhere (and woe to us that there is not!), but I see no evidence that we must be bound together as a human-led organization in the present, a supra-church hierarchy, in order for there to be such unity.

one Christ = one earthly hierarchy?

I am broadly in sympathy with Frame's goal, here; I agree with much that he says that could be summarized in Christ's statement, "It must needs be that divisions and offences come; but woe to him by whom they come!" I hope we can see more and more readiness to dissolve the old stumbling-blocks that keep Christ's people arguing with each other when they could be reaching the world.

And yet, I find myself uncomfortable with his case for a unified organization, insofar as it focuses on the organization as such rather than the organization as a by-product of confessional and goal-oriented unity. There are a few nits I'd have to pick before I could jump into the bandwagon, here.

For example, Frame says:

1. As in the Old Testament, the New Testament believer worships at a central altar, for Christ himself fulfills the central altar of the Old Testament, and there is only one Christ (Acts 4:12; 1 Cor. 1:13; 8:6; Eph. 4:4-6). The same is true for the priesthood, the temple, and the sacrifices. The church has a single location in one sense, though it is scattered throughout the earth, for it is seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 1:3,20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12). [14]

Frame interprets this, I take it, as a basis for seeing the church in all places as one organization (which he then suggests is one organization sinfully fractured). And yet, I fail to see how "one Christ" or the eschatologically-oriented "seated with Christ in the heavenlies" (we are obviously not there, cf. 2 Cor 5) is like the central altar in precisely that respect Frame needs it to be: material, earthly organization.

Consider, for a moment, that Israel had One God, to whom they all looked from any place; and also one altar, to which they were to return for the rites related to body, blood, and atonement. Christians have one God in Christ, but we manifestly do not have one altar in that same sense. To have the equivalent of the central altar, God need only have instructed us to return periodically to some one place, where (for example) communion would be held. Yet Christ seems to have specifically pushed us away from any such notion of centralized worship:

Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

(I'll split these into chunks to keep it manageable.) Do consider this passage in light of Frame's thesis, though. At the very least, ought our concern not be first for unity of spirit and unity of truth, or as I suggest confessional and goal-oriented unity, with organizational unity at most a hoped-for byproduct? (though it would be an inevitable byproduct, I think, just as divided organizations are the inevitable byproduct of striving "spirit" and distorted "truth")

[UPDATE: egregious misquoting of Scripture fixed. Sincere apologies for an honest and embarrassing misremembering of the text.]

First things first

(Hi--I'm Peter G. Epps. Click the Profile at the right for more info.)

Doug and I will be attempting to examine the possibilities for unity among evangelical Christians with differing views on a number of issues. I know Doug from having encountered him over the years in various e-mail discussion lists concerning theology, and have always found him to be a rational, careful, serious interlocutor. We have important theological differences, and both of us would, I think, acknowledge that our views continue to change as (we trust) the Spirit leads us through our participation in the Body of Christ and, I think first and foremost, our engagement with Scripture.

I don't speak for him, nor he for me. I'm sure the reader will quickly see where some of our differences crop out. My goal, however, is to be able to state as much as possible of the truth all true believers can and should affirm, with as little disagreement, as possible. Where this is not possible, I hope we can discover that our disagreements are judgments concerning that which is not yet clearly revealed; or that our disagreements are the consequence of errors in the past, the truth of which may not yet be clear to us. May the Lord grant us--Doug and me, and our readers and commenters, and the churches we live in, and the Body whose members we are--the wisdom to negotiate these matters soundly.

Doug and I agreed, at his suggestion, to take as our starting point John Frame's "cry of the heart" titled Evangelical Reunion. The title of this blog is an obvious allusion to that book. I have had the chance to read (in part, sadly--I look forward to finishing someday) and discuss Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God with grad school friends of varying persuasions, and have found Frame to be an articulate, measured, and valuable scholar whose concern for the heart of the Gospel consistently outweighs the various theological contretemps that are his occupational hazard.

I'd like to lead off, then, with an important notice from the very beginning of Frame's book:

This book is not for everybody, though I will not forbid anyone from buying and/or reading it. In this volume I will be speaking to fellow Christians, those who love Jesus Christ, trust him for their eternal salvation, and are seeking to obey his commands. In my vocabulary, and in the teaching of Scripture, "Christian" does not refer to someone who merely holds to high moral standards, or goes to church, or seeks justice in society, or admires the teachings of Jesus. A Christian is rather someone who has a special relationship, a friendship, with Jesus. For Jesus Christ is no mere historical figure. He is a living person, raised from the dead. Moreover, he is Lord, the supreme ruler of heaven and earth.

How do you become his friend? First, by recognizing that no matter how good you may be in your own eyes and in the eyes of other people, you are a sinful person in the eyes of a holy and righteous God (Rom. 3:23). Second, by recognizing that sin against perfect holiness deserves death (Rom. 6:23). Third, by recognizing that you can do nothing to prevent the eternal death that is coming to you, and by throwing yourself upon the mercy of God (Eph. 2:8-9). Fourth, by recognizing that Jesus died in the place of his people (Mark 10:45) and that he offers eternal life to all who trust in that sacrifice (John 3:16). Fifth, by yourself trusting Jesus: asking forgiveness on the basis of his shed blood and seeking to obey him as your Lord, your supreme Master.

Further, this book is written to those Christians who have come to see the need to trust and obey God's written Word, the holy Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Pet. 1:19-21). This book is essentially a Bible study, though it does deal with our present situation as well as with the Bible. My deep conviction is that the Scriptures are God's very voice speaking to us. Unless you share this conviction, you will think my argument is not very strong. Indeed, it is a weak argument, if it is only my argument. But if it is the argument of God himself, then we had better pay attention to it and heed it. If the argument is only mine, then you can dismiss it politely by saying, "That's very nice, but we would prefer to leave things the way they are." But if it is God's argument, then we had better be willing to make disruptive, dramatic changes. What God says, particularly, takes precedence over the warm feelings of coziness we have in our present denominational structures.

If you have not rested from your enmity with God, you will find little here that is of enduring interest to you. You are welcome to read, but will you not trust Christ and stop striving against God?

If you have entrusted yourself to Christ alone for salvation, but have not become persuaded that the Scriptures alone, and the Scriptures in their entirety, are the inerrant and infallible witness to God's self-disclosure to His human creatures, then you will find many aspects of this discussion uncongenial, I think. Again, I ask you to consider your own relationship to the God Who has fully revealed Himself in Christ, as witnessed to in Scripture by the apostles and prophets, through whom the Spirit spoke to those who the Spirit enabled to receive the Truth, Christ Himself.

For more on my own understanding of this Gospel, you could read over at my blog, beginning perhaps with The Simple Gospel: Concisely Put? and perhaps, for those inclined to more detail, continuing with The Simple Gospel: Restatements, Compiled, which is an interaction with a discussion spawned by another evangelical blog.

In the end, though, it is not and must never be my understanding--or yours--which guides any of us. It must be our entire submission to the Christ who was born of the virgin Mary, who was and is God being a man, who walked the earth speaking the truth in love without ever doing less than God's own will, who suffered and died on our behalf for our sins, who was buried, who rose from the dead, and who, with the Father, now lives toward the day when He will return to the earth to judge the living and the dead and consummate the Kingdom His Father intends Him to have.

You must entrust yourself to Christ, and Christ alone, for your salvation from sin, if you are to rest from your enmity with God.

It all begins here.