In this thought-provoking episode, Steve Gregg opens the lines to discuss burning questions on early Christian writings and historical theology. Through poignant conversations, Steve analyzes the historical context and theological shifts that have shaped modern Christian thought, including a deep dive into the letters attributed to early church figures and their implications for understanding biblical texts.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon, including today, and we take your calls throughout the entire hour. If you have questions about the Bible you want to ask on the air or about the Christian faith or anything related thereto or Maybe you have a difference of opinion. You’d like to balance comment. This is a good place to do that. You have the opportunity. Right now, there’s a few lines open, which means you could get through, if you call at this moment. The number is 844-484-5737. Now, all those fours and eights are a little confusing. I’ll give it again slowly. 844-484-5737. And… So, yeah, right now it looks like two lines open. If you want to call, you can very probably get through if you’re quick about it. Now, I’ve been mentioning that my travel schedule is filling up, and the reason I say that is because I’m traveling to areas that we have lots of listeners and speaking in those areas. And let me just run quickly through. And, by the way, if you live in any of these areas and you’re not only perhaps interested in coming to one of the events that I’m speaking at, But maybe you want to set one up. Again, it’s a rather simple thing to do. If you have a building somewhere, it might even be your living room. It could be a church. It could be, you know, some public access building. But if you can get a building where some people can gather and then you get in touch with us, and if we’re not already booked there, I mean, that day, we’ll book it. And it doesn’t cost you anything, at least from our end. So just, you know, I don’t want you to think, oh, well, we’d love to have a meeting here, but we just don’t have any budget. Well, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t need a budget. I pay my own way, but the point is that you would have to have some place. But just get in touch with us if you’re in one of these areas and see if we have some uncommitted days. I usually spend about a week in each place. So the first week of next month, March, I’ll be in Tennessee. We’ve got several places booked, but I think I have a few days still open. So the first week of March, Tennessee. The last week of March, Arizona. The first weekend of April, I’m going to be in Fresno, California, debating Dr. Michael Brown about the subject of Israel. And then the fourth week of April, I’ll be in Texas. And then a little later on, mid-May, I’ll be in Seattle for at least a week. And then in mid-October, of course, we skip over June, July, August, and September simply because we haven’t booked anything for those months yet. But in mid-October, I’ve got an itinerary for me in Oregon, Salem, Portland area, et cetera, in mid-October. Okay, so those are just a heads up if you want to set something up or if you just want to make sure that you mark your calendar. All the appointments, that is all the speaking engagements, will be found announced at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says Announcements. All right, our lines are full, so let’s go to the phones and talk to Steve in Parker, Colorado. Steve, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes, Steve, how are you doing?
SPEAKER 02 :
Fine. You’re probably talking through a speakerphone, it sounds like.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, can you hear me now?
SPEAKER 02 :
Probably better that way. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, yeah, I heard you talking the other day about folk preterism. And I came across something on the Internet that I thought was pretty interesting. It goes back to like 1845 or something like that. A guy named Robert Townley wrote a book called The Second Coming. And some people were claiming he was the first preterist, full preterist. But another thing that I thought was pretty interesting was that shortly after he wrote the book, he became a universalist.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, some preterists go that way. I mean, once you feel free to disattach yourself from historical Christian doctrines, and that’s what a full preterist does. A full preterist believes there’s no future second coming, no future resurrection, no future new earth or new heavens, no future judgment. They believe all that happened in 70 AD. Now, of course, doing that is a complete departure. from historic Christianity. And once a person has been bold enough to do that, in some cases, they don’t, you know, they have frankly no misgivings about going any direction they want to in their theology since they’ve already dislodged themselves from historic Christianity. Now, as far as universalism, there are forms of universalism that were around in the early church and that were not considered heretical at the time. So, but there were no full preterists in those days. So, Universalism actually has, that is a Christian form of universalism, does have some pedigree going back to the early church fathers, but full preterism does not. And, you know, you said 1845 or so, that’s around the time that there were actually a number of Christians putting forward full preterism. In 1833, a little earlier than the guy you mentioned, A guy named John Humphrey Noyes embraced full preterism, and he may have been the first. We don’t know. But the man you mentioned, I didn’t know his name, but he may be another one. James Stuart Russell was also in the mid-1800s, as was Milton S. Terry and Ernst Hampton Cook. These were all pretty famous or pretty major full preterist authors, and they were all in the 19th century. And now you have another name for me that I didn’t know.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, well, I’ll look up some of those that you mentioned, too. I just thought it was really interesting because, at least from what I’ve learned about full preterism, is if you really do adhere to it 100%, you pretty much have to be a universalist because everybody born after AD 70 is born in the same condition that Adam was created in. So there would be no hope for anybody to even be saved anymore.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, you know, when we say full preterist, we’re talking about a big umbrella here. Full preterist just means people who don’t believe there’s any future fulfillment of prophecy left. But once you’re under that umbrella, like I said, people depart from historic Christianity in a lot of different directions once they feel free to make that move. It’s sort of like breaking free from historic Christianity and And in the movement, under that umbrella, there are lots of different strange moves. Some of the full predators embrace Trinitarianism and some don’t. Some embrace universalism and some don’t. Some of them are what they call Israel only and think the only people who can be saved are Israel. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of strange directions that people can go. Once they are, they feel dislodged from the bonds of historic Christianity. And so there’s actually a lot of different full preterist, you know, strange groups. Some of them are, you know, practice immorality and support the idea of living immorally, but not most of them, I don’t think. So there’s all kinds of different groups. Full preterist. So the term is a big umbrella for just anybody who takes the position that all prophecy was fulfilled no later than AD 70, and that there is no future prophecy to be fulfilled, so no future second coming. But it’s weird stuff. Most of them are the ones I know of, don’t believe the world will ever end, though some of them might, but it’s primarily the mainstream full preterists, I think, don’t think the world will ever end, but there will just be infinite generations of humans living and dying, and some of them going to heaven and some not. So you’re going to get a lot of different variations within the group. But, yeah, it’s not unusual when you find somebody who has embraced full preterism to later hear that they’ve gone off into some heresy or some definitely unorthodox position on other subjects, too. I appreciate your information. Thank you, brother.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, thanks a lot, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, Paul. Have a good night. Okay, Jim from Bremerton, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, Steve, thank you for taking my call. We actually met in Poulsville in one of your outreaches, Poulsville, last August. It was nice meeting you. You were coming up the hill just as I was arriving and going down the hill, so it was great to meet you. Okay. Yeah, my question is, well, in the spirit of Romans 7.15, where Paul says, For I do not what I want to do, but the very thing I hate. And then, you know, I’m trying to match that with 2 Corinthians 12, 9 and 10. It says, where my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. And you would think that power would be perfected in strength, but Paul goes on to say, he says, when I am weak, then I am strong. So could you kind of unpack that for me, please?
SPEAKER 02 :
You mean the contrast between those two? Yes. In 2 Corinthians, of course, what Paul’s talking about is the sufferings he’s gone through, and particularly what he calls the thorn in his flesh. I mean, that’s the context of the statement in 2 Corinthians. He says that he’s had lots of visions and lots of revelations, and there might be a tendency for him to be a little proud of all the privileged information God has given him. But he says, to avoid my being exalted above measure, I’ve been given this thorn in the flesh, which torments me. And it’s a messenger of Satan that buffets me or beats me up, is what he means. And he says, I prayed three times that this thing would go away. And Jesus said, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. Now, the weakness in this case, he’s not referring to moral weakness, as we might think in Romans chapter 7. But here, he’s talking about his physical weakness, his being sickly, his having medical problems that don’t seem to get healed. And he’s asked to be healed, but Jesus said, you know, this is actually going to work out. And Paul himself in the passage says, this is so that I would not be exalted above measure because of the abundance of the revelations I’ve had. So it’s keeping him humble. He sees God as using it to keep him humble. And when he’s humble, then, of course, God can use him without it seeming that Paul will get the credit. In 1 Corinthians, the first letter Paul wrote to the same people, In chapter 1, he says that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things to confound those who are strong so that no flesh would glory in his presence. That’s 1 Corinthians 1, verses 27 through 29. The idea being, God doesn’t choose the most beautiful, the most brilliant, the most talented, the most, what should we say, the best specimens of humanity always to use. Sometimes he uses people that the world would look at as inferior because then when God does something important through them, it’s not likely that the world’s going to say, well, obviously, they could do that because they’re so brilliant or they’re so you know, whatever, special, talented, but that God uses people who are weak and uses people who are viewed as foolish. And that’s so that no flesh would glory. And that’s the idea he had in 2 Corinthians 12 also, that he was made weak through this thorn in the flesh so that the power of God would be seen in him rather than it looking like, you know, all these great things Paul was doing were somehow because he was naturally talented or whatever. Now, the Romans 7 passage is talking about something else. He’s talking about sin. He’s not talking about physical weakness or physical humiliation. In Romans chapter 7, he’s talking about how he desires with his mind to keep the law of God, but he finds another law in his members, which is the law of sin, he says. which brings him into captivity to sin. Now, this is not something that Christians have to settle for, he’s saying. He’s just saying this is the way it is, except, as he points out in the opening verses of the next chapter, except when we’re walking in the Spirit. Because he said in chapter 8, verse 2, he says, The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Now, he’s just said at the end of chapter 7, This law of sin and death is in me. It’s in my members, and it makes me weak toward temptation. It makes me fall into sin, even though I don’t really want to. There’s another part of me, obviously, that does, and that’s not the part that I identify with. It’s not my dominant desire, but at times it gets the better of me, and I wish it wouldn’t. I don’t know why it does, he said. But he says the Spirit of God, the law of the Spirit, makes me free from the law of sin and death. And he says in verse 4, Romans 8, 4, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled. Okay, that’s what Paul wishes would happen. He says, with my mind, I agree with the law that it’s righteous, but I don’t find myself living up to it. He says, well, that righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. So he’s saying the flesh is weak. Jesus said that too. Remember when his disciples couldn’t stay awake when he told them to and they were weak? And he said, well, in Matthew 27, I think it is, Jesus said the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. That’s true. And Paul says, I do have weak flesh. All of us have weak flesh. There’s the law of sin that makes our flesh weak with reference to living a holy life. But when we walk in the spirit… The righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in our lives as we do fulfill the righteous behavior when we’re walking in the Spirit. Paul said the same thing in Galatians chapter 5 in verse 16. He said, I say therefore walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Now, in the next verse of Galatians, he says, For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary to one another, so you don’t do what you want to do. Obviously, it’s a shorter form of what he said in Romans 7 and 8. In Romans 7, he says, I want to do good, but I don’t do it. I don’t do what I want. Well, Paul says in Galatians 5.17, that’s because the flesh and the spirit are against each other, and that’s why you don’t do what you want to do. But both places… Romans 8.4 and Galatians 5.16 say, if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. You will fulfill the righteous requirements of the law. So what Paul is saying is that humanly, we may have the best of intentions to live a good life. I mean, think of how many people make New Year’s resolutions and how many actually keep them. I never did make New Year’s resolutions, but some people do, which means they want to do better in some way in their life. But the fact that they often do not keep them means they don’t do what they want. Why not? Well, because the flesh and the spirit are at war with another. But if you walk in the spirit, Paul says, then you do overcome the power of the flesh in your life. You do live up to the code that God has for you to live by. So that’s a different subject, really, because 2 Corinthians 12 is talking about a physical impediment, a physical weakness, a sickness probably. And that in that state of weakness, God can get the glory from his life. Whereas in Romans 7, he’s got something else in mind. He’s talking about living a holy life or not. And the… the weakness of the flesh to be able to do that. And you can’t do that, he said, except by the Spirit of God. But it’s a different thing. Now, enduring the physical sickness also requires help from God. He says the grace is given to him. Jesus said, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. So while one passage is talking about moral weakness and the other is talking about physical weakness, Both of them, in their own way, talk about how we need God to successfully live the Christian life. Romans and Galatians saying we need the Holy Spirit. And, you know, 2 Corinthians mentioned the grace of God given to us. And it makes us strong enough. And, by the way, in Hebrews chapter 10, we read of the spirit of grace, which is another term for the spirit of God. Both places he’s really talking about the ministry of the Spirit enabling us. All right, let’s talk to Mark in Sacramento, California. Mark, welcome to The Neuropath. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. The reason I’m calling is I got an email today, and it’s from an ad partner of my local Christian radio station here. And I’ve never heard of the author before. His name is Michael Y. Malachi, and he’s purported to be a 50-year-old Bible scholar. At any rate, the title of the book is Wisdom from the First Christians, Reconstruction of the Original Faith. And if I could read a short list here of some of the contents, it says, In this book you’ll find the Epistle of Barnabas, 1st and 2nd Clement of Rome. five epistles of Ignatius, the Shepherd of Hermas trilogy, Polycarp to the Ephesians, and then two long-lost epistles of the Apostle Paul, one that is referenced in Colossians 4.16, and so on and so forth. And I was just wondering if you could tell me anything about this person, if you’ve ever heard of him before, before I investigate this book any further.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Well, I don’t know the person, but I know those books. Those books, he didn’t write them and he didn’t discover them. Bible scholars have been familiar with them for centuries, actually, most of them. Some of them, maybe more recently, but nothing very recently. Certainly, these books have all been known for my whole lifetime, and I’m in my 70s. So they’re not, you know, a lot of times people will present these things because a lot of Christians have never heard of them and say, oh, look, here’s secret wisdom that was recently discovered or that was concealed and the church didn’t want you to know. I don’t know if this guy’s doing that. You know, I don’t know his name. I don’t know where he’s at. I don’t know if he’s, you know, is he just issuing the publication of those documents you mentioned or is he commenting on them? Is he using them to…
SPEAKER 03 :
I think it’s a commentary about him. The title of the book is Wisdom from the First Christians, Reconstruction of the Original Faith. And it’s like he’s presenting them and elaborating on what they mean. I’ve never read the book. The book was just published, apparently. And again, his name is Michael Y. Malachi, M-A-L-A-C-H-I.
SPEAKER 02 :
I don’t know anything about him, but I do have a little Michelle, or at least most of them. You know, it mentions one of the epistles of Paul alluded to in Colossians, what it was, 418 or something. That’s a reference. That’s where Paul says to the Colossians to make sure that the letter from Laodicea that he wrote comes to them and that they read it in their church and that the letter of Colossians be read in the church of Laodicea. So there were apparently two letters sent, one to the church of Laodicea, one to Colossians. They were supposed to read them and then exchange them. You know, this is… Nobody has the letter to the Laodiceans. So if this collection has one that claims to be that, it’s not it. Bible scholars, the church fathers didn’t know what it was. Marcion, one of the early heretics in the church, he believed that the book of Ephesians might be the one that Paul was referring to as the letter from Laodicea. But there are orthodox scholars who think it could be, too, that he’s just alluding to what we call Ephesians. But, yeah, I have heard that some people have a letter to the Laodiceans that they say is Paul’s letter. But the thing is, mainstream scholarship, knowing very well that it exists, has never accepted it as authentic. And the early church didn’t either. That’s the thing. You know, all the first three centuries, while they were trying to decide what books were available to put into the collection of the New Testament canon, none of them had access to Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans, or they would have put it in there. But the thing is, if the letter to the Laodiceans exists anywhere, it would have been preserved by the churches, and they would have known of it. I mean, it’s not like Paul wrote a letter to the Laodiceans and someone buried it in a jar in the desert somewhere. without anyone knowing about it, and then someone discovered it. That never happened. So, as far as other missing epistles of Paul, we know that Paul wrote at least three epistles to the Corinthians, though we only have two of them. In 1 Corinthians 5-9, he mentions, now that’s in our 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 5-9 that he had written an earlier letter, but no one has it. Now, if this guy has in his book collection allegedly the first real letter to the Corinthians and the letter to the Laodiceans and so forth, he must be mistaking forgeries for the real thing, because those letters would have been kept very much by the churches, if at all, if they were available. I mean, no one else is going to have them. Now, as far as Barnabas or Shepherd of Hermas or 1 and 2 Clement or the letter of Polycarp and some of these, those are well-known to scholars. I have them all on my shelf. Clement, 1 Clement, was written by Paul. a Christian in Rome to the Church of Corinth about some divisions in the church, and it is known to have been written by a genuine leader in the Church of Rome in the first century. Last I heard just yesterday, I was accessing F.F. Bruce’s book, The Canon of Scripture, and he mentioned the year 96 when he thought 1 Clement was written. Now, most scholars don’t believe that 2 Clement is really written by Clement, But it’s a genuinely early Christian document, but no one knows who really wrote it. It was attributed to Clement because they didn’t know who did it, and they just kind of put his name on there. The letter that Polycarp wrote has been around. It’s genuine. I mean, he genuinely wrote a letter. Barnabas, no one knows who Barnabas was. Of course, there’s a Barnabas in the Bible, but he didn’t write the letter that was written in the second century of Barnabas. Shepherd of Hermas. That was a book that the early church really respected. Some wanted it to be in the canon of the New Testament, but it was not put there because it was not apostolic. It wasn’t written by an apostle. So each of these books have their own history. Each has their own familiarity to all scholars. So this guy, if he’s just saying, well, I’ve got some books no one has ever seen, and I can give you early Christianity from it. Well, a lot of people try to say that. when they publish these books, sometimes people publish collections of these books and say these are the lost books of the Bible or something. Well, first of all, they weren’t lost. And secondly, they aren’t books of the Bible. So that’s a false way of looking at it. Now, if he is saying, well, I’ve learned a lot from these books, these apocryphal books from the early church, and here’s what I think we can learn about the early church from these books. Well, I’ve got nothing wrong with that. I mean, they are true ancient books. They don’t belong to the Bible, but they’re true ancient books. But I’d stick with the Bible pretty much for anything authoritative, I wanted to say about the early church. Hey, I need to take a break, but I appreciate your call, brother.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you so much. God bless you and your ministry.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you. We’ve got to take a break. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming, so don’t go away. I’ll be back in 30 seconds.
SPEAKER 01 :
Everyone is welcome to call the narrow path and discuss areas of disagreement with the host, but if you do so, please state your disagreement succinctly at the beginning of your call and be prepared to present your scriptural arguments when asked by the host. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t have the last word or if your call is cut shorter than you prefer. Our desire is to get as many callers on the air during the short program, so please be considerate to others.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour. We’re taking your calls, and we’ve got actually several lines that are open right now. If you call right now, I can pretty well guarantee you’ll get on the air before we’re done in a half hour from now. If you wait, there can be no guarantees about that. The number is 844. 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And I didn’t get to say this at the end of the last half hour because we were bumping up against a hard break. But if you’d like to learn more about this ministry, if you’d like to access the things we offer on our website, if you’ve never been to our website, oh, you definitely should check it out. It is thenarrowpath.com. And you’ve got something like 1,500 of my lectures are there. You can listen to it for free. There’s other resources, too. And I’d like you to know that if, because I need to mention this once in a while, there’s an incredible website called called Matthew713.com, Matthew713.com, which has over 25,000 past calls that have come into this show over the years, 25,000 calls, and somebody has topically arranged them. There’s over 2,000 topics. Obviously, some of the topics have many calls that have come in on the subject. But if you want to go to Matthew713.com and look at the topical index, you can look up almost any subject you have a question about, and it’ll take you directly to phone calls from the past where those questions were asked and answered on the program here. A new feature has been added just in the last week to that website, Matthew713.com, and that is it’s now possible to look up calls directly. not on their topic, but from the scriptures in them. If you have a scriptural reference you put in there, now I haven’t done this, but this is what I’m told it now does. You can find the calls that have that scriptural reference. Either the question was about it or it was used in connection with answering a question, but that’s there now. And the whole page, if you’re familiar with the older, the original version, has been reworked. It looks different than before. It’s just been posted, I think, last weekend, if I’m not mistaken. So it’s brand new, Matthew713.com. If you start using that, I think you’ll decide that may be one of the more useful websites available to access at least this kind of material. All right, we’re going to go to the phones now and talk. Let’s see, we’re going to talk to Brian from San Francisco. Brian, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, Steve. It’s an honor and a pleasure to talk with you. I just wanted to commend everyone who is listening right now because you are really a delight, my brother. I was listening to a debate between you and Matt, and I think you mentioned something where you said that you didn’t agree with one of the early, early theologian that didn’t know the greek and he only spoke latin i wanted to i wanted you to speak to that that’s my first question and my second question is um there’s some scriptures that speak of hell or you know hades and it says utter darkness but then it also says fire i just want to do the square that really quick for me and then um you could also just have people just uh do like Jeopardy and say, my question starts with. But other than that, I love you, and I just love your ministry, and I just want everyone to know that you are an honor student right now by listening to Steve Gregg in Christendom. And I’ll take it off the air because I know you’ve got a lot of people to get to, and I really appreciate you and Dana and everything you do. Your humility, your humbleness is just, like I said, I’m not going to toot your horn any longer. uh, take over my brother.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Well, Hey, thanks. Thanks for, for your call. Uh, the, the theologian that I mentioned was Augustine. Now, Augustine was a primary, uh, Western theologian. We call him Latin theologian because, uh, the Latin church was the Western church of the Roman Catholic church. Um, he was the most influential theologian probably, uh, in history. Um, He’s the father of the Roman Catholic Church. He’s the father of the Protestant Church, both. That is to say, the Protestants, like Luther and Calvin, were Augustinians, following Augustine’s teaching. The Roman Catholic Church also followed Augustine’s teaching in many important respects. He was, like I say, at the end of the 4th century, the beginning of the 5th century, and he did not read Greek, he said. He said he only really knew Latin, so he used the Latin Vulgate. Now, my disagreements with him were on probably more than one thing. I don’t remember what I was talking to Max about. It might have been hell. It might have been Calvinism. Basically, the five points of Calvinism are derived from Augustine. And no church father before Augustine held to Calvinistic views. At least, they seemed to refute them rather than agree with them. They saw them as heretical. They saw them as belonging to Manichaeism, a heresy. And it was Augustine who came out of Manichaeism who introduced them and convinced the church, much of the church, of their validity. So the Calvinist doctrines, five points, came from him. Certainly not from Scripture, at least if they were in the Scripture somewhere. I haven’t found them, and none of the church fathers in the first three and a half hundred years ever saw them. Now, he also, in his day, there were different views of hell that were popular. And it was he who took one of them and made it the official doctrine of the Western Church. And that is, of course, the idea that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment. Prior to Augustine, there were some Christians who taught that, but there were also Christians who taught alternative views of hell. But Augustine being so influential, since he championed one of them, the one he championed became the standard view of the Catholic Church. and it was carried over into the Reformation by the Reformers. Now, the Eastern Church didn’t accept Augustine, didn’t follow him, and in many cases did not hold to his, they didn’t follow his Calvinism, or what we call Calvinism. Some of them did and some did not, except his views of hell. There were different views in the Eastern Church. But Augustine was, frankly, influential out of proportion to his values. though he was a very prolific writer and no doubt a good theologian, he also pretty much formulated the doctrine of original sin, as most Western Christians understand it. So he had a lot of doctrines that he introduced, and so that. Okay, then why do some passages about hell talk about fire and others call it outer darkness? Well, probably both phrases are symbolic. because fire is not only used in scriptures about hell, it’s used throughout the scriptures as a judgment motif. I mean, Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, were destroyed by fire and brimstone, which are images that are later used of hell, that is the place of fire and brimstone. The prophets spoke of God’s wrath as an unquenchable fire that burns, even when they’re talking about God’s wrath upon Babylon or Assyria or even Jerusalem, that when the destruction, the judgment he brought is likened to fire that is unquenchable and so forth, although these are historical nations that were destroyed and are not still burning today. This is imagery that the Bible uses a lot before it ever talked about hell. There’s no reference to hell in the Old Testament, but at least not if by hell we mean the final place of the wicked. It’s not mentioned in the Old Testament, but the New Testament does talk about a final judgment of the wicked, and it uses the same imagery that the Bible previously used for just general judgment. So it’s not easy to argue that fire, when referred to hell, is any more literal than it is when it’s used figuratively of judgment in the Old Testament. I’m not saying that hell in the New Testament… corresponds to the various judgments of the Old Testament. I’m just saying that whenever judgment is being talked about, fire is a very common motif in Scripture, Old and New Testament, even when it’s not talking about hell, and also when it is. Now, as far as darkness, that’s in other passages. These are passages that don’t mention the fire, but use as another motif, and that is darkness. Also in the Old Testament, nations that are destroyed by other nations are are sometimes said to be driven into darkness, or that God puts out their lights, or even talks about the sun and the moon and the stars going dark for them, or falling. In other words, darkness instead of light is seen as an agonizing judgment coming on people. And it’s used figuratively, both fire and darkness are used figuratively in different passages in the Old Testament, talking about earthly judgments of earthly nations. and not talking about hell. But when hell is talked about in the Bible, it uses those same kinds of images. And they’re not to be taken literally, in my opinion. I mean, some people try to make it literally. It’s literal fire, and it’s also literally dark. Well, if you want, I don’t care. You can say that if you want. I’m not going to fight you over it. But I believe that both darkness and fire are different figurative images that the Bible uses for God’s judgment in different passages. And likewise, when applied to hell, they are used in different passages. They’re not used in the same passage. So in my opinion, we don’t have to kind of harmonize it. How can it be fire and also be dark? I don’t think the fire or the dark are necessarily literal. So that would eliminate the difficulty. On the other hand, if people say, no, I’m going to take those literally. Shame on you for not doing so, Steve. Well, okay. I’ll do what I do. You do what you do. You be you. You do you. I’ll do me. Okay. All right. Let’s talk to who’s next here. It’s going to be Kyle from Vancouver, B.C. Kyle, welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hello, Steve. Long-time listener, first-time caller. Really grateful to be able to speak to you finally, and I really appreciate you and your ministry. Thank you. So my question has to do with the incarnational sonship of Christ and where Christ actually becomes the Son of God once he took on flesh, as opposed to being the eternally begotten Son of God. And I’m just curious what you think the Scriptures would, how you can make a, for which view you can make a stronger argument from the Scriptures, and even where you tend to land on this issue.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Well, I’ll be glad to address that. The doctrine that is considered to be orthodox, and by orthodox we mean that the bishops who got together at certain councils in the early centuries of the church hashed it out and came to certain conclusions on this point. And the majority vote of the bishops is what became orthodoxy. The view that is considered orthodox is that Jesus was eternally begotten of God as the Son. which means that if you go back as long as God existed, Jesus existed too and was the Son of God even back then. That he was begotten of God before time began, eternally begotten. Now, this is a bit of a problem. For one thing, the Bible doesn’t say that anywhere. I mean, that’s a theological description of something that someone decided would be the best way to glorify Christ and say it that way. But While the Bible does say that he’s the Son of God, there’s no question about that, that he’s begotten of the Father. We don’t actually, in the Old Testament, read about him being begotten of God. Except in passages that are talking about the New Testament. For example, Psalm 2, 7. You are my son, this day I have begotten you. Okay, well, that’s in the Old Testament, but it’s talking about the resurrection. Let’s not talk about Old Testament times. It’s a prophecy about Jesus being resurrected from the dead. How do we know that? Because Paul said so. In Acts chapter 13, verse 33, Paul said that Christ is risen from the dead as it is written in the second psalm. You are my son, this day I begot you. So Paul quotes that verse. and says that’s about him being begotten from the dead. He’s the firstborn from the dead, as it says in Colossians 1.18, or as it says in Revelation 1, that Jesus is the first begotten from the dead. And so this day I begotten you is referring to his being begotten from the dead, and that’s at least how Paul understood it, and Paul was an inspired apostle, so I’ll go with him. So, you know, you’ve got that, and you’ve got some other references in the Old Testament to Jesus as the Son, not very many, but they’re always referring to his lifetime on earth. That is to say, if he became the Son at his birth in Bethlehem, these passages would not be written any differently, because they’re talking about post-incarnation phenomena, Their time frame they’re predicting is post-incarnation, and they refer to him in that context as God’s son. Now, I would have no problem saying that Jesus is begotten eternally, except, first of all, the Bible doesn’t say that anywhere. And secondly, I’m not sure how that makes sense. It might, but, I mean, if the Bible said it, I’d have to accept it whether it made sense or not. Lots of things I’ll certainly submit to the Bible. on things rather than just common sense or logic, but the Bible doesn’t say it, and I’m not sure how a person could be eternally begotten, because begotten seems to mean that someone became the son of someone else, or someone begat or became the father of someone else, but that has to happen at some point, doesn’t it? I mean, I have five children, but I became their father at a certain point in time. I’m not eternally their father. And they’re not eternally my children. So I’m not sure how birth and begetting takes place without it happening at some point in time. Now, I will say this. There’s a possible way of understanding it that agrees with what’s called the Orthodox position. And that is like what the Eastern Orthodox Church has suggested, that the Trinity is to be understood like the solar disk, the sun in our solar system. The sun being like the father. the light that comes from the sun being like the sun or the word Christ, and the heat being like the spirit. Now, obviously, by that way, we could say that the sun has begotten the light that comes from it. And as long as the sun existed, that light has been coming from it. So if we’re speaking that figuratively, that since the sun is the origin of the beams of light that come from it, then, of course… It’s been the origin of those beams of light as long as it’s existed. So, I mean, that could be the case, and it’s okay. I mean, I have no problem with that suggestion. Again, we don’t have anything like that exactly stated in Scripture, so we’re kind of theorizing here. But the one thing that makes it sound like Jesus was, before his incarnation, was something other than the Son, is, for one thing, John chapter 1, which says, “…in the beginning was the Word.” And the word was with God, and the word was God. And later it says in verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten son of a father, it says. Now, so the first, Jesus is said to be the word through whom all things are made. And then the word became human, and then he appeared to us as the son of the father. Okay? Now, he could have been the son of the father before that, but John doesn’t give us any hints about that. He just says he was the word. And when he was born on earth, we come to know him as the son. Now, when the angel announced to Mary that she was going to have a child in Luke chapter 1, verse 34, Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I don’t know a man? That’s how am I going to have a son? I don’t get it. You know, I’m a virgin. How am I going to have a baby? And the angel said to her in verse 35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. And the power of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore, also, that holy one who is to be born of you will be called the Son of God. Okay, so why is he called the Son of God? Because even though you have not known a man, you will be impregnated by a supernatural act. The Spirit of God will come upon you. The power of the Holy One will come upon you and overshadow you. And for that reason, that’s what the word therefore means. Therefore means for that reason, the one that is going to be your child will be called the Son of God. So it strikes me as the most natural reading of the Scripture to say the reason he’s called the Son of God is not because of some eternal beginning back in eternity past. I do believe Jesus has existed in eternity past as the Word, because that’s what the Bible actually says. He is the Word in the beginning, and all things were made through him. So I’ve got no problem with the deity of Christ. I’m absolutely on the train with the deity of Christ. But to say he was the son before he was actually born anywhere strikes me as an unusual way to speak. And unless the Bible tells us this, I don’t see any obligation to hold it, even if bishops voted that that was the right way to look at it. So, on the other hand, I mean, this is not diminishing in any way the deity of Christ. It’s simply saying that before he was born, he was the word. When he was born, he became the son. He was not Joseph’s son. He was not the son of any man. The reason that he will be called the son of God is because he won’t have a human father. God will be his father. The power of God is going to come upon you, and that’s how you will become impregnated. And so that’s why he’ll be called the son of God. So I don’t know that anything is at stake here, except what I’ve just described, is not in keeping with what’s usually called orthodox teaching. But I’m not sure why it isn’t. It’s got the Bible on its side, and the alternative view doesn’t. So, you know, I’m just okay. I mean, if someone says, well, I believe Jesus is eternally begotten, well, okay, fine, I’ve got you. We can fellowship. I’ve got no problem with you. But I’ll tell you the reason I rethought this is because I held to the more orthodox view in my early life, And I argued with Jehovah’s Witnesses a lot in those days. And they don’t believe Jesus is God at all. They believe he’s simply the Son of God. And they believe that he was begotten of God before he came to earth. And I said, no, he’s eternal with God. They said, no, he is begotten of God. If he’s begotten, he wasn’t eternal. He had a beginning. And, you know, I was arguing what was, I thought, the Orthodox view, that Jesus had no beginning. And they were saying, yeah, but how do you become a son of someone else if you have no beginning? Don’t sons begin from their fathers somehow? And I realized that, okay, this is either a very great mystery in Scripture or else I’m getting it wrong. And so I decided to research that very thoroughly, which I did. And I found there’s nothing in the Bible that says that Jesus was the son prior to his incarnation. He was the word. It’s the only thing we read in the Bible about it. And then he’s called the son. According to the angel, he’s called the son because of the nature of Mary being impregnated supernaturally by God. And so her baby is God’s son, not man’s. So that’s how I… That’s how I see it. But if someone, again, finds that unacceptable, I don’t have any problem with them finding that unacceptable. I don’t have any ax to grind about it. But you asked what my position was. And I am, in fact, the world’s best authority on my own opinion. All right. And so that’s that. Let’s talk to Adrian from Phoenix, Arizona. Hi, Adrian. Welcome. Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Earlier you were talking about some books that you were talking about, early church fathers or letters that had written in some, not having authoritative authorship, but some of them did. I was wondering if you could list those for me so that later I could listen to them. I can’t write them down at the moment, and I’ll take the answer off the air, but Could you list some of the letters, early Christian letters or church father books that haven’t written and we know that the authors are who they say they are?
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, I’ll do what I can. We don’t know for sure who the authors of some of them were. The earliest known work from the first century that is written by a church father who was mainstream is 1 Clement. That is beyond the books of the Bible. 1 Clement. Clement was a leader in the Church of Rome probably a generation or two after Paul. Some people think he’s the same Clement that Paul greets. I think it’s in Colossians that he greets Clement, but I’m not sure. It might be in Rome. But anyway, many scholars don’t believe it’s the same Clement, but he’s an early leader of the church in Rome. And we have one authentic epistle from him called First Clement written to the Corinthian church. There’s also a second Clement. But most scholars don’t believe that Clement wrote it. It’s a book that is thought to have been mistakenly attributed to him. But it’s also an early document, probably from the early 2nd century. Now, another very early document, probably the next earliest to 1st Clement, is called the Didache. D-I-D-A-C-H-E. It’s as if you combined our two English words, did, ache. The word did and ache put together is didache. And that’s a genuine early church document that was actually considered for inclusion in the New Testament canon, but it’s not written by the apostles, and therefore it didn’t pass that test. But nonetheless, the early church respected it. It’s very authoritative as to what the practices were of the early church. It just doesn’t have apostolic authorship. The Didache is that early one. There was around the early part of the second century, there’s the Book of Barnabas. It’s an epistle, the Epistle of Barnabas, which is not written by the Barnabas that we know of from the Book of Acts. There was the Shepherd of Hermas, also probably early first century. Hermas was a person who allegedly had visions a little bit like the Book of Revelation. I believe it’s kind of… kind of apocalyptic in style, but it was also highly respected. There were some who would have liked to see that put in the canon of the New Testament, but it was not because it wasn’t written by one of the apostles. These are the earliest ones. Then you begin to get the letter of Polycarp. That’s genuinely written by Polycarp, I believe. There’s also something called the Martyrdom of Polycarp, which was written by the church of Smyrna or the leaders of the church of Smyrna about how Polycarp died. That’s also an authentic early document. So you’ve got the letter of Polycarp. You’ve got the martyrdom of Polycarp. There are seven letters that were written by Ignatius, probably around 110, some would say maybe 115 A.D. Ignatius wrote some letters. There was not much longer, not very far into the second century, you’ve got people like Tertullian, Philemon, You’ve got Justin Martyr. They wrote a number of things. Justin wrote a number of works, but his dialogue with Trifle the Jew is fascinating. Now, you wanted a complete list, but actually… What you’re talking about is the anti-Nicene fathers, the fathers of the first three centuries. I’ve just given you the very earliest ones I know. But you can buy all the fathers. But, you know, the set, I’m looking at it on my shelf. It’s got like 30-something volumes of hardback books that have all these fathers. Anyway, those are some of them you can look into if you’re curious. I’m sorry I’m out of time. I wish I was not. We’ve got people waiting still. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Reagan. We’re on Monday through Friday at this same time. You can also go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. You can donate there if you want, or you can just use the resources for free there. That’s thenarrowpath.com. Let’s talk again tomorrow.
