Why did Christians celebrate the Birth of Jesus on the 25th of December?

Why did Christians celebrate the Birth of Jesus on the 25^th of December?

In my previous post, I talked about how Hippolytus of Rome (around the year 200) took for granted that Jesus was born on the 25^th of December.  This places the dating of Christmas well before Theodosius made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire (380), before Constantine made Christianity a legal religion in the Roman Empire (312), and also before Sol Invictus became the Pagan holiday on December 25^th (274).  This of course leads to the natural question, where did early Christians get the idea of celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25^th.

I believe the answer to such a question can be gleaned from the New Testament.  The Day of Atonement/ Yom Kippur takes place on the 10^th day of the month of Tishrei, which is nine days after Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year).  The joys of working with a Jewish calendar versus the Julian or Gregorian calendars is that there is not a one to one correspondence.  This means that, according to the calendars of the goyim, Yom Kippur falls somewhere between middle September to middle October.  All of this is relevant because of some dating in Luke’s Gospel.

If we take that Yom Kippur happens sometime around the beginning of October or late September, and we add that the priest only entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, then we can do simple math to figure out the date when Jesus was born.

In Hebrews 9:7, we are told about the Holy of Holies that “only the high priest goes, and he but once a year.”  This means that only once a year would a priest enter the Holy of Holies to burn incense and sprinkle blood on the altar inside the Holy of Holies.[1]

Turning to Luke, we find that Zechariah was “was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense” (Luke 1:9).  Luke goes on to tell how “the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.” (Luke 1:10).  At this moment, Zechariah saw the angel of the Lord standing on the right of the altar of incense.  The angel announced that Zechariah and Elizabeth would have a son in their old age.  This all happened between the middle of September and the middle of October.

 Then we arrive at the important (for the purpose of their inquiry) statement in Luke 1:23–24:

“And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.  After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived.”  This is important because Elizabeth conceived after Yom Kippur.  But how soon?  This is the weakest part of the argument.  I think that the best understanding for the phrase “after these days” is that the conception of John the Baptist took place directly after Zechariah’s time of service.  If this is the case, then we can plot out the timeline fairly easily.

“Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, "Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people." In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary.”  (Luke 1:24–27)

Following the timeline, Elizabeth was six months pregnant when Mary conceived Jesus.  Now for the math:

John the Baptist was conceived somewhere between middle September to the middle of October (tradition puts this on the 23^rd of September).

Six months later, Mary conceived sometime in March or April (tradition puts it at March 25^th)

Nine months after March or April puts us into late December or early January.

This is terribly imprecise, but it shows that December 25^th is a biological and mathematical possibility for the birth of Jesus.  Thus when taken together with early Christian attestations for the birth of Christ being on December 25^th, the onus is put squarely on those who argue for a date other than December 25^th for the birth of Jesus.  It is an argument against Scripture and Tradition.

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[1] See also: Leviticus 16:12–13 “And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the LORD, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil and put the incense on the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony, so that he does not die.”

The Date of Christmas

The Date of Christmas

It seems as though every year I encounter the assertion that  the 25^th of December was chosen to be celebrate Christmas because this day coincided with a major pagan holy day.  This assertion is even found in “scholarly works.”  Not too long ago when reading Strauss' Four Portraits One Jesus, I was struck by his statement “the traditional date of the Western church is December 25, and in some eastern Churches January 6^th.  The former seems to have arisen in the time of Constantine (circa 325).”[1]  Sadly, this is both wrong and oft repeated in both “scholarly” and unscholarly works.

            
This argument has several flaws.  Firstly, with a little effort, one could find a pagan celebration occurring on every day of the calendar during the Early to Middle Roman Empire.  The Romans accepted every religion of the peoples they conquered (with the exception of religions that practiced human sacrifice, those were ruthlessly crushed) and practiced some interesting syncretism with the various pantheons.

Secondly, Struss is completely unaware of the change in calendars and how January 6^th is still December 25^th according to the Julian Calendar, which continues to be used in some ecclesiastical bodies in the East.  Therefore, everyone is still celebrating on December 25^th, they are just relying upon pre-Gregorian Calendars.

 Thirdly, his view utterly fails to account for how early Christians viewed the date of Christmas.  Hippolytus, writing sometime around 200, provided a rather exact dating for the birth and the death of Jesus:

“For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.”[2]

Hippolytus here completely dismantles the erroneous assertions about the date of Christmas being a syncretistic practice to make the newly legalized Christian religion more syncretic with Ancient Paganism.  Indeed, Hippolytus is simply stating the facts as he had received them at a time when Christianity was still illegal and violently persecuted.

This fact then forms the basis for how he interpreted the "days" in Daniel as referring to the entire history of the world.  

But one will always say, “How will you demonstrate to me whether the Savior was born in the five thousandth and five hundredth year?  Be easily instructed, O man. For in the desert long ago under Moses there were models and images of spiritual mysteries which concerned the tabernacle and they fulfilled this number, so that having come to the fulfillment of truth in Christ you are able to apprehend these things which are fulfilled.  For he says to him, “And you will make an ark of incorruptible wood and you will cover it with pure gold inside and outside and you will make its height two cubits and a half and its breadth a cubit and a half and its height a cubit and a half.” The measure of which added together makes five and a half cubits, so that the five thousand five hundred years may be demonstrated, in which time the Savior comes from the Virgin, and then he offered the Ark, his own body, into the world, covered in pure gold, inside with the Word, outside with the Holy Spirit, so that the truth may be shown and the Ark may be manifested.  And so from the generation of Christ it is necessary to count the remaining five hundred years to the consummation of the six thousand years, and in this way the end will be. But because in the fifth and a half time the Savior arrived in the world bearing the incorruptible ark, his own body.  John says, “and it was the sixth hour,” so that half of the day may be demonstrated, a day of the Lord is thousand years. And so the half of these is five hundred years.[3]

Hippolytus' exegetical argument for his dating which in itself is quite revealing.  He does not provide an argument for the birth of Jesus on December 25th, but argues that the birth of Jesus was at a set point in the history of the world.  He treats the birth of Jesus on December 25th as a given.  Whether or not we follow Hippolytus’ numerology and exegesis (he clearly was wrong about when the world will end), his argument for the date of Christmas is not based upon finding a means to relate the celebration of the birth of Christ to a pagan holy day, but it is a blanket assertion that he ues to construct a interpretation of an ambiguous passage.  This in itself is an important clue that Hippolytus was not dealing with a recent alteration to the Church calendar, but something that predated him.  This means that one cannot point to Constantine (over 100 years after Hippolytus) as the time when the date for Christmas was set.  Rather one finds an early practice of celebrating the birth of Christ on the 25^th of December even when the Church was still an illegal and persecuted entity within the Roman Empire.

            
The point from all of this is that the next time you encounter someone who states that December 25^th is a pagan influenced date for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, you can now be aware that the assertion is silly and baseless.  

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[1] Strauss, Four Portraits One Jesus, 406.

[2] Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel, 23.3.

[3] Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel, 24.1-5

Second Language Acquisition: by Grammar or by Speech?

Second Language Acquisition: by Grammar or by Speech?

I have spent almost the last 4 years of my life teaching Latin to middle-school students.  As I have sought to improve my Latin and teaching abilities, I have looked more broadly at the movements in second language acquisition and how they can help me improve as a teacher.

One of the big movements in second language acquisition is Comprehensible Input.  C.I. teaches grammar subconsciously.  The expectation is that the learners will understand how the grammar of the new language works through repeated examples of the correct grammar.  Often times, C.I. is experienced in a partial immersion of spoken language in the class room.  The goal is to produce students who can speak the language.

The school I teach at uses a grammar based approach to teaching Latin. The grammatical approach teaches the grammar concepts first.  Often times, this is done in the first language of the students and not in the target language.  The Grammatical Approach relies upon grammatical rules to produce precise renderings into and out of the target language.  The goal is to produce students who understand the target language.

There is yet an older method of total immersion.  I like to think of it as incomprehensible input.  In this manner, everything is conducted in Latin.  This is how Martin Luther learned Latin (complete with students wearing donkey masks for speaking German instead of Latin in class).  Both the teacher and the students were expected to speak only in Latin and the grammar rules were taught using the Latin language. The goal was to produce someone who was fluent in Latin.

As I have reflected upon these methods of second language acquisition, I also reflected upon first language acquisition.  The first several years of my life English was incomprehensible.  I entered into the world and knew none of it.  To be fair, I had no language skills at birth except for assorted levels of crying.  Moving into the early childhood years, I entered a stage of comprehensible input through children’s books and my own family communicating with me.  Yet, for some reason C.I. did not subconsciously produce a correct use of grammar let alone a correct understanding of grammar.  I needed to be taught the grammar of the language I had already been speaking for years. 

How I learned English ought to influence how I teach students to acquire a second language. C.I. was the way I first truly learned English.  However, C.I. in English only taught me to understand English at a grade school level.  Likely around the 3^rd grade level.  Even though I was immersed on a daily basis in the English language, my grammar was poor.  I needed to be taught grammar in order to become truly adept at the use of English.  And, for some strange reason, schools that promote C.I. as THE way to learn a second language still teach English Grammar as a part of English acquisition.

Now, the real question is what is the goal of second language acquisition? 

If we merely want people to converse and read at the level of elementary students, then C.I. will meet your needs on its own.

If we merely want students to be masters of grammar, then the grammatical method suffices.

If we want people to master the language, then we really ought to teach both in the same manner that was done historically: immersion, C.I., and grammatical instruction. 

The real question that must be answered is, what is the goal of learning a second language?  If the goal is to actually know and use the language, then all three of these teaching methods ought to be utilized.  It seems to be a silly expectation that a second language will be taught to mastery apart from these same methods that were used to teach a first language.

Therefore, I am supportive of C.I. and an immersive Latin experience, but, at the same time, I am supportive of teaching grammar.  I want to teach to mastery, and mastery requires immersion and grammar.

Some Thoughts on Second Language Acquisition. Part I: Why Learn a Language?

Some Thoughts on Second Language Acquisition.

Part I: Why Learn a Language?

Language is a necessity.  Apart from language we lack the most nuanced and versatile means of communication with our fellow humans.  Despite the centrality and necessity of language, language is incredibly complex and difficult to master.  This is true for both a first language and a second language.

In recognition of this, the powers that be have determined that all students ought to learn another language before graduation from high school.  The difficulty is that truly learning a language is incredibly difficult.  Therefore, in America (other countries do this much better), we have settled on the practice that requires just a basic introduction to a language and possibly offer an elective when the actual content of the language becomes more difficult.  The truth is, our system does not require competency in another language, but a mere exposure to another language.

Moving beyond the failures of the American education system, there are many benefits to learning a second language. 

Learning a second language improves one’s understanding of language in general.  The things which were often half understood implicitly are now encountered and understood in an explicit manner.  It was not until I took Greek that I actually understood the difference between a gerund and a participle (they look exactly the same in English). 

Learning a second language to a level of fluency allows one to think differently.  I am functionally fluent in Latin.  There are ways of speaking and thinking in Latin that a mind structured in English would have a difficult time processing.  The inverse is also true.  This means that being able to think in another language opens up one’s mind to think in different manners.

A second language also opens up a world of literature in another language.  Latin has done this for me.  I am ever amazed at what can get lost in translation when I read a work in Latin which I had previously read in English translation (this goes back to my statement about the ability to think differently in another language).

The benefits of learning a language are locked behind a door of ignorance which can only be opened with the key of hard work.  There are very few people who can learn a second language without great efforts.  Some teaching styles may lessen or increase the amount of effort required to learn a second language.  However, the sheer amount of work and time that it takes to achieve a functional level of fluency makes learning a second language a difficult and long-term proposition.

Funeral Oration for my Grandmother

The passing of my Grandmother, Mary Sue Bennett, on August 21st has been an emotionally difficult time for myself and my family.  Long before she passed, she had told me that I was to preach at her funeral.  Grammie must have seen something in me as a teenager to entrust me with that task.  Of course, at the time, I just told her that I would tell several embarrassing stories about her.  Being a man of my word, about half of those stories were included or referenced in this oration.

Composing her funeral oration was equal parts grieving and smiling.  The sorrow and joy are mingled throughout this work.  I offer it here as a tribute to my Grammie.  May her memory be eternal!

Funeral Oration for Mary Sue Bennett:

Mary Sue Bennett was known to most as Sue, but she was always Grammie to me.  Sometime in my teenage years, Grammie asked me to preach at her funeral.  Asked is probably not a strong enough word.  If you knew my Grammie, her asking had all the authority of a divine command.  And, if for whatever reason, I might balk at one of her requests, she would give a brief encouragement often concluding with “cha cha cha.”  Once “cha cha cha” was uttered, we were committed to whatever plan of action Grammie had in mind.

I, being utterly committed to preaching at her funeral, told her that it would come at the cost of my telling some stories about her.  And being of the same stubborn stock as my grandmother, allow me to share some stories about Grammie.

My earliest notable memory of Grammie was when I spent the night at her house when I was three.  Apparently I felt a little homesick when I woke up.  However, Grammie knew that ice cream for breakfast was the surefire cure for homesickness.  By the time my mom called to see how I was doing, life was great because I had ice cream for breakfast!  I believe that my pleasure was offset by my mother’s displeasure.  I cannot say for certain…  What I do know is that Grammie understood the power of ice cream and shared her love of ice cream with all her grandchildren.

Grammie showed love to all of her grandchildren equally.  Each one of us could tell you about the trips and adventures she took us on.  One of my most memorable trips was our trip to Alaska.  Grammie was driving the motorhome as we were in the Yukon Territory.  Grandad was playing a card game with Thomas and me in the kitchen area of their motorhome.  Then Grammie asked us what a “Can O” was.  All three of us guys were stumped.  The card game came to a stop as we were working through just what that could be and what would Canadian slang be like.  She told us there was a billboard saying that there were “Can O’s” for sale.  We asked her how to spell “Can O” and she said, “C A N O E.”  We started laughing and said, “You mean canoe; the little boat you paddle.”  At that moment, with her mistake known to all, Grammie replied, “Oh hush.”

Now, having been told in no uncertain terms that I would need to preach, I need to talk about Grammie’s faith in the Triune God.  I am faced with a great difficulty in this task.  Because her faith so pervaded her life, I am forced to leave out important things and so do an injustice against my own grandmother. 

After retirement, Grammie and Grandad decided to give away or sell most of their possessions and travel around the country serving others.  While many might have struggled in a similar situation, Grammie was ever ready to give.  She even gave away furniture twice.  Once she gave the kitchen table away and they ate off of a cardboard table.  Several years later, she gave the couch away to a family who did not have a couch.  Grandad retorted, “Well, now we do not have a couch either.”  But, Grammie had the gift of giving and was blessed for it.  Her possessions never possessed her.  It was more than one occasion that I questioned Grammie about giving something.  I do not remember how many times this happened.  I do remember her reply, however, “Well no one else needs to know.  It will be our little secret.”

Now, if you have spent any time with Grammie, you know that her idea of a secret was; only telling on person at a time!  Yet, our family talked freely about our lives with her.  I guess I always knew that everything I told Grammie could be shared with the family, but I never considered her to be a gossip.  She loved every one of us and was just happy to tell us all about the people she loved.  I remember meeting people who knew me very well simply because they were friends of Grammie.  She always wanted to know about our lives because she cared about our lives.

Somewhere below family and yet still linked to her love of God was Grammie’s love of singing.  While she would sing around the house, she loved to sing at Church.  Now Grammie always liked to have herself put together.  Her basic approach was “brush your hair and put on some lipstick.”  Yet, when Grammie sang in church she carried herself with all the professional seriousness of an opera singer performing with a philharmonic.  Because Church was a special place that she treated seriously.  Church is where we went to worship the Uncreated Creator, Jesus Christ.

As Grammie aged, her faith never waned.  She has read through the Bible every year for much of my life.  Her favorite book was the prophet Isaiah.  In the rather long book of Isaiah, she found beautiful promises that shaped the way she viewed the world and understood all that happened in life.  Her favorite passage was Isaiah 40:28–31. 

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.  He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Then shortly after this passage, and connected to it in her mind was Isaiah 41:10

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Grammie was formed by these verses in so many ways that I cannot recount them all.  The God she worshipped and trusted was the God who created all that exists out of nothing.  It is this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Grammie, who does not grow weary or lack understanding.  Indeed, we cannot fathom his knowledge or His power.  Yet this God is not far removed, but He helps those who hope in Him.

The metaphor of soaring on wings like eagles became a guiding metaphor for Grammie.  Grammie loved eagles.  She had dozens of figurines and pictures of eagles.  But Grammie did not love eagles simply because they were eagles.  For her, eagles are a symbol of the promises of God that He is with her in her weakness and that He will lift her up, as He has done.  Grammie put the eagles anywhere she could; from gravestones, to a scholarship fund, to her own house.  Whenever possible she would also write Isaiah 40:31 as a reference or as a full quotation.

Grammie was uncompromising.  Whether it was her standard of what constituted clean, or her faith, or her morals.  Grammie practiced her faith.  Her faith was a lived faith and a clearly defined faith.  This was especially evident in moments of disagreement.  Grammie did not bend what she believed to get along with others.  And, at the same time, she continued to love and care for those with whom she disagreed.  This was yet another of the ways she lived out her hope in the living God.

Even after Grammie’s stroke, her faith was not shaken.  She continued reading through the Bible every day.  She regularly went to Church on Sunday.  She did this even though she could not hear much of what was said because she disliked wearing her hearing aids.  In many ways, her stroke took away much of her personality.  Yet her faith remained as did her love of ice cream.

Grammie is now free to, once again, sing the praises of her savior Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with the eternal Father and the life giving Holy Spirit.  She has moved from our company to the companies of angels and the faithful of the ages past. She has joined them in enjoying the uncreated light, the very glory of God; and worshipping the only God with them forever.  She also joined her beloved husband Bill, or Grandad as I knew him.  Together they await the resurrection of their bodies and the final judgement, whereupon they will be like the angels in that they will not marry or be given in marriage, but their love for each other remains.  This is just as the Apostle Paul said, “now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”  These three things: faith, hope, and love, the things that made Grammie who she was and is yet remain with her for eternity.

There are some stories which Grammie strictly forbade me to tell at her funeral.  I cannot tell you about the time that the gray water backed up into the motorhome bathtub and got the clean laundry extra dirty.  And the word which Grammie said when she found that mess.  I cannot tell you about the time she misspoke while ordering and received hot water and freshly brewed decaf instead of hot freshly brewed decaf and a glass of water.  There are many, many other stories which time does not permit me to share.  The importance of these stories is found in the fact that Grammie lived her life with her family.  We have our Grammie stories because she was present with us sharing in our lives and loving us as much as she was able.  We remember these stories because we loved her in return.              

Becoming un-Baptist Part 7: Becoming Orthodox

Becoming un-Baptist Part 7: Becoming Orthodox

At the end of my theological journey, I found myself facing two choices: Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy.  I bumbled around and found myself listening to Ancient Faith Radio and Scott Hahn.  I admit that Scott Hahn had some compelling arguments for Roman Catholicism.  However, his most compelling arguments did not lead me to Rome.  My study of Church History showed me that Rome had made some moves away from Biblical and Early Christian thought and practice.[1]  This then left me with one valid option: go to an Orthodox church.

So, I went to an Orthodox Church and shocked the local priest by telling him that my wife and I had come for the purpose of becoming Orthodox.  The priest replied that we should start by coming to liturgy first for a few weeks, which we did.  I had already reasoned my way to the conclusion that Orthodoxy was true and I needed to be a part of it.

The first thing I noticed was how much Scripture I encountered in the Liturgy.  Not only that, but some exegetical work I had done in my earlier studies actually showed up in the liturgy, translated into English just as I had earlier argued that it should be translated.[2]  I was stunned.  At the same, I found that reading the Fathers became less and less like I was reading a foreign text and more like I was reading someone who shared in the same things in which I was sharing.  I did not feel the need to read the Fathers with an implicit distrust of their conclusions and methods as I once had done.

After my initial impressions, I realized something quite important; becoming Orthodox was not a mere rearranging of my mental assent about various points of doctrine or practice.  It was an entrance into a way of life that was quite distinct from what I had experienced as a Protestant.  I found myself with set fasting, which we practiced as a community.  I entered into a worship that did not cater to my feelings, but was centered upon the worship of God. 

Becoming Orthodox was also a significant shift in my world-view.  One example of this is how I lost my Baptist Salvation Calculus Formula that allowed me to determine the state of another person’s salvation, and I found myself praying for God’s mercy upon others and upon myself.  I began to practically understand that God is the Judge and that I will be judged along with everyone else.

I would like to say that since becoming Orthodox, I have purged myself from all sin and am a resplendent example of how all others should be.  Such is decidedly not the case.  I managed to maintain all my personal flaws.  However, I have entered into an ancient (yet new to me) way of living as a Christian with a set and proven pattern for spiritual growth.

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[1] The first thing that comes to my mind are the liturgical deviations which have come to pass since Vatican 2.  To these I would add the addition of the Filioque to the Nicene Creed, forced clerical celibacy, the ability to merit God’s grace, and Papal Supremacy.

[2] In particular the passage from James 1:17.  The ESV reads “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” I argued that the text ought to be translated as: “All good giving and every perfect gift…”  Then to my amazement, the priest comes out and states exactly what the Greek actually states!

Becoming un-Baptist 6: When Protestant Theology Crumbles Or, How Gerry Breshears Helped Me Become an Orthodox Christian

Becoming un-Baptist 6: When Protestant Theology Crumbles

Or, How Gerry Breshears Helped Me Become an Orthodox Christian

In my previous series of posts entitled “Becoming un-Baptist,”[1] I recounted how I went from being a confessional Baptist to no longer even being baptistic in my theology.  The crumbling of my Baptist theology was not the end of my reconsideration and shifting of my theological views.  Indeed, it was part of a larger shift in my theological paradigm.

I consider myself to have been privileged to have studied at Western Seminary.  One of the professors there who helped me become a better thinker was Gerry Breshears.^[2]  Sometimes this came through my own disagreement with some of his positions.  However, this came primarily through his practice of Sola Scriptura (even though he would likely be displeased by my use of a Latin phrase instead of the English “Scripture Alone”).  Gerry constantly and helpfully pressed me and others to support our beliefs and opinions directly from Scripture. 

I still remember one comment he made on a doctrinal statement I submitted.  Gerry’s
brief comment was, “Do you have a Bible verse for this?”  The fact was, that I did not have a Bible verse.  I had reached a point where I could not find a passage of Scripture that would clearly support limited atonement.  While I know it is very dangerous to speculate about another’s feelings and thoughts, I strongly suspect that Gerry took no small satisfaction in compelling his students to completely reevaluate their theological positions in light of the biblical texts.  He set me upon a trajectory of critically examining every doctrine I had held in light of Scripture.  Ideally, I suppose that I should have figured this all out during my 5½ years that I was a student at Western Seminary.  This was decidedly not the case. 

I found that reading the Bible continued to crumble my doctrinal views.  At the same time as this process was ongoing, I entered into a journey of studying the Church Fathers.  This resulted in even further problems for my doctrinal positions.  The Fathers were quoting verses and interpreting them in ways that were often utterly foreign to my doctrines.  This led me to reread the Bible and find that those verses which I had overlooked (or interpreted around) suddenly came to bear upon my understanding of doctrine. 

I went through a theological crisis.  As one doctrine crumbled after another, I found that I was less certain of more and more things which led me to question ever further and find even yet more questions.  This was a ridiculous time in my life.  I found that simply reading the Bible became difficult because I was constantly beset with the problem of a shifting paradigm.  Passages which once made sense, suddenly did not; and passages which were once overlooked gave answers which were not compatible with what I had believed.

Being beset with questions, I decided to find answers.  The answers I found were significantly unsettling.  It was my journey to find answers that led to the collapse of my Protestant theology.  At first my questions and answers in no way threatened my Protestant beliefs.  I should note that none of my questions arose from any sort of perniciousness.  These were sincere questions as I was attempting to discern the Truth which I should believe.

The first issue that I had was imputed righteousness.  I could find no textual support for this understanding of righteousness.  The answer I was given was that if righteousness is not imputed, than it must be imparted, and that view is clearly wrong.  Meanwhile I was thinking that perhaps both were wrong.

There were several other fairly significant theological questions that I had.  However, the most important came when I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the New Testament in the Greek, and I realized that I could not support Sola Scriptura from Scripture alone.  This was troubling, and doubly so, because I realized I could make a better argument for tradition from the New Testament (especially when I was reading the Greek) than I had previously thought possible.  In fact, by following Scripture, I ended up realizing that Paul taught that He had handed down an unwritten tradition.  This can be seen in:

2^nd Thessalonians 2:15 “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.”

and

1^st Corinthians 11:2 “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.”

I looked at these and other verses and I realized that the Bible taught that that unwritten traditions handed down from the Apostles were to be kept. This then was the moment when it all imploded.  The very exegetical method I had been taught led me to a point where it killed itself and thrust me into the arms of Tradition.  I found myself pondering the probability that there was an Apostolic Tradition beyond the books of the New Testament and I began reading the writings from the Early Christians with an eye towards discerning what these unwritten Apostolis Traditions were.

This was all happening while I was almost Anglican.  However, as I was entering into the Apostolic Tradition, Anglicanism seemed less and less like a valid option, I was left with two real choices: Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. 

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[1] Ecclesiology, Theology of Baptism,  and Practice of Baptism

[2] There were several others, but this post is about the formative effect that Gerry’s methodology had upon my own way of thinking about theology.

Becoming un-Baptist Part 5: Almost Anglican

Becoming un-Baptist Part 5: Almost Anglican

In my previous posts, I discussed how I had ceased to be a Baptist (church leadership, theology of baptism, and the practice of baptism).  As I was departing the Baptist fold, I nearly became an Anglican.  In the Anglican Church, I found a more ancient from of liturgy than is practiced among Baptists.  The worship was centered upon the Eucharist.  There was a prayer book that provided a vocabulary and a direction for my prayers.  I also had (and still have) friends who are Anglican.  Even more important for me, I found pieces of the Fathers in the worship service and was able to feel something of a connection with the Christian Tradition.

My wife and I enjoyed our fellowship within the Anglican churches we attended.  However, we never quite became Anglicans (for which I am thankful).  At the same time that we were attending Anglican churches, I was continuing to undergo some significant doctrinal disruptions.  Not only was I finding myself being un-Baptist, but in some ways, I was becoming un-Protestant.  This can be problematic when attending a Protestant church.

Could there have been room for me in the Anglican Communion?  Probably, if I had found a conservative Anglo-Catholic parish and remained there for the rest of my life.  However what I found was a Professor of Church History at an Anglo-Catholic Seminary talking about how we should reconsider the conclusions of Chalcedon (the fourth ecumenical council) and the remainder of the ecumenical councils.  In the parishes I attended, I found Anglicanism to be a rather low church affair because the worship was tailored to have people feel comfortable.  The doctrine seemed more like the Reformers than it did the Fathers.  Luther’s Law Gospel hermeneutic (this hermeneutic is prone to divide Scripture into the categories of Law, which condemns, and Gospel, which gives life.  Luther even opined that the Epistle of James: “was a right strawy epistle…for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.”) was on display along with a dash of Calvinism (this was probably more to a living out of the 39 articles than anything else).  These points grew a little troubling for me.  I was becoming less and less convinced of the Reformation and the Anglican world is decidedly part of the Reformation.

Coming from Southern Baptist land, I liked the Anglican Church in North America.  They were conservatives starting a Church with true doctrine and practice as opposed to the Episcopal Church which well… um… would allow anyone to believe anything and remain a bishop.  As I spent more time, I began to feel as though the ACNA was simply resetting the theological capitulation to culture clock back to the 1970’s and doing so through a functional schism.  As a Baptist, schism is not a negative.  However, for an un-Baptist, schism is troubling, and it gave me a little more pause.

The breaking point for me was listening to Anglican Unscripted and hearing Kevin and George talk about how the Anglican Church followed the canons of Nicaea.  Then on Sunday I went to church and saw a deaconess pushing around an old priest at the altar because he was moving too slowly for her.  As I was sitting there, I realized that this deaconess would be ordained as a priestess and that the canons of Nicaea were not followed when they were inconvenient or at odds with modern sensibilities.

The very things that I loved about the Anglican Communion was the very thing that they were doing their best to down play or ignore.  I loved the pre-Reformation streams of thought.  However, as I encountered it, these came through a Reformation grid and a further American evangelical grid.  There was a liturgy that at times was strikingly beautiful, yet was also divorcing itself from the shared worship practices of the Old Testament and the Early Church.  This was not the place I was looking for.  However, during my time there, I began to appreciate the formative nature of liturgy and written prayers.

On Becoming un-Baptist Part 4: Why I am glad to have been a Baptist

On Becoming un-Baptist Part 4:

Why I am glad to have been a Baptist

In my previous posts, I have explained how I ceased to be a Baptist (ecclesiology, theology of baptism, and practice of baptism).  I do not want to give anyone an impression that I have nothing but stones to hurl.  I am very grateful for many things that I learned and experienced in baptistic circles.  There are virtues and practices I observed in others which I continue to admire and aspire to attain.

Knowledge of the Bible

While I may differ on how I interpret and understand the Bible, Baptists (at least most the ones I was exposed to) placed a great emphasis on knowing and reading the Bible.  I often find myself whispering along with Bible readings in church because I have the entire passage nearly memorized from repeated encounters in my youth.

Love of God and neighbor

I met many people who loved God and their neighbors far better than I did or do now. 

Tithing

This may sound strange to some, but it was quite a culture shock when I was in church and we were given pledge forms for how much we were going to give in the calendar year (this has happened in more than one non-baptistic church I have attended).  From my youth I had learned and practiced that I ought to give 10 percent.  That is tithing 101, which I heard explained from the pulpit on several occasions.

Importance of owning one’s faith

Baptistic circles stress the importance of owning your faith.  I was taught that it was important to know what I believed, make it my own, and live it out.

Sincere people and good friends

I met many people of simple and pious sincerity.  I made friends that will last a lifetime.  Even if I disagree with them on many points, I know that they come to their views honestly and without any maliciousness. 

Becoming un-Baptist Part 3: Baptism Continued

Becoming un-Baptist Part 3: Baptism Continued

In my previous posts on becoming un-Baptist, I wrote about how my ecclesiology shifted, and then how my theology of baptism shifted.  In this post I provide a sketch of how my understanding of the practice of baptism shifted.

Valid Baptism

On my journey out of a baptistic understanding of baptism, I reflected on the practice of baptism as well as the theology of baptism.  I was asking questions about what made a valid baptism, who ought to be baptized, and when they ought to be baptized.  What I found in Scripture ended up having more correspondence to the practices of the Early Church than I had expected.

The question of what made a valid baptism came up for me when I was considering doing missionary work (theological education overseas) through the International Missions Board (the Southern Baptist missionary agency).  Technically, I would have had to have my baptism regularized, which means that I would have to be (re)baptized because I was not baptized in a church that was Southern Baptist and also did not affirm the “perseverance of the saints.”  I was adamant that my baptism was valid; I was baptized by immersion in water, by a believing Christian, after a confession of personal faith, and in the name of the Trinity.[1]

As I dug into this, I found that often times Baptists would leave out any statement about the person doing the baptism.  Even when Grudem wrote about baptism in his Systematic Theology, he did not state that a baptism needed to be administered by a believer for it to be valid.  Instead he states, “Scripture simply does not specify any restriction on who can perform the baptism ceremony.”[2]  The problem I found here is that this does not comport with the way I had been taught to reason from the Bible.

I had been taught that since there was no (overt) example of an infant ever being baptized in Scripture, then the practice is unbiblical.  Using that same logic, I found that every example of Christian baptism in the Bible had an already baptized person performing the baptism.  This means that, logically, it takes a baptized person to baptize biblically (i.e. validly) another person.  If I had left it at this point, I may very well have remained a Baptist.  However, I connected the dots:

1.      Biblical baptism requires a baptized person to baptize.

2.      Only someone who is baptized after coming to faith has a valid baptism (from a Baptist perspective).

3.      For at least 1,400 years of Church History (likely longer), only converts would be baptized after a profession of faith (the practice was to baptize infants and at times delaying baptism until the deathbed).

These points led to a problem.  Unless one can trace a line of baptized converts baptizing other converts (which cannot be done),[3] then there is no one, at the present, who can validly baptize another person.[4]  This lack of a succession of "biblically" baptized people means that Baptist churches are unchurched (along with every other denomination of Christians).  However, if infant baptism is valid, then there are valid baptisms at the present, but this would also mean that I (and all other Baptists) was wrong about who can be properly baptized.  This left me with either affirming infant baptism is true and right, or affirming that no one at the present is validly baptized.

Mode of Baptism

Growing up, I remember my dad (a Baptist pastor) had baptized people on a couple of occasions by means other than full immersion because of the particular needs of that moment.  This is in contrast with many Baptists who would hold such baptisms to be invalid because the baptized were not fully immersed in the water.  My position was cemented when I took a trip to Greece with The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  We stopped at the place in ancient Philippi where Paul (probably) baptized Lydia.  There as I listened to a lecture on baptism and how it always meant full immersion I was looking at the creek where Paul did his baptizing.  It was nearly full to its banks and maybe would come up to my knees in the deepest location.  And what should there be but an icon showing Lydia kneeling in the water as Paul scooped water and poured it on her head.  One of these views comported with reality.  The other did not comport with reality.[5]

I still agree with my dad.  The meaning and symbolism of baptism is best captured through immersion.  However, immersion is not necessary for a baptism (done in the name of Trinity with water) to be valid.

Household Baptisms

The Apostles did things which no clear thinking Baptist would do.  They baptized entire households.  And following the text of Scripture, these households were not entirely composed of believers!  This practice of household baptisms did not appear to be an outlier but is a fairly common theme in the New Testament (at least when speaking about who was baptized).

With household baptisms recorded in the Bible, it is not possible to prove that infants or toddlers were present in the households who were baptized.  It is probable, but not demonstrable.  At the same time, it appears that not everyone in the household necessarily believed prior to their baptism. 

In Acts 18:8 there is an example of an entire household believing and being baptized:

“Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized.”

This demonstrates that Luke can speak of an entire household believing and being baptized.  So, when he does not mention it, we can either read into the silence that the household believed and Luke just failed to mention it, or we can read the silence as intentional (but authorial intent is so passé these days). 

There are two instances in which the text states the household was baptized, but does not state that the entire household believed.  There is the example of Lydia in Acts 16:14–15.[6]  The text does not say anything about her household believing, only that they were baptized with her.  A more explicit example is found in Acts 16 with the baptism of the Philippian jailer.  Paul and Silas used a singular imperative “believe” when they said “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31).  There is no apostolic command for his household to believe only for the jailer.  We read that the jailer “was baptized at once, he and all his family” (Acts 16:33).  Then the singular faith of the jailer is again revealed in 16:34, where we are told that the jailer “rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.”  Luke was quite capable of saying “that they had believed in God.”  However, Luke did not record that they believed, only that the jailer believed, yet he and his household were baptized.  It does not appear that personal faith is necessary for each person baptized in a household.[7] 

I cannot prove that there were infants/toddlers in these households that were baptized.  However, slaves were baptized as part of the household (for Lydia to have a household, she would have had to have slaves).  This leads to the question of how would a slave (who had not made a profession of faith) would receive baptism as part of the household and an infant would not?  Slaves were considered part of the household in both Roman and Hebrew society (In fact, according to Torah, the slaves of a priest could eat the food that the laity were forbidden to eat because it was reserved for the priests[8]).  Slaves were culturally considered part of the household, but the children were considered a significantly more important part of the household.  It does not make sense that a slave (as part of the household) would receive baptism and an infant would not receive baptism (as part of the household).

Evangelism Separated from Baptism

Baptism was not always immediate.  Paul appears to have made this very clear in 1^st Corinthians 1:14–18:

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)  For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.  For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

If baptism was something that was consistently practiced upon belief, then we would expect Paul to have baptized a lot of people.  Paul was in Corinth for a year and a half,[9] but he only baptized 3 (households).  Yet he has the audacity to refer to himself as the father of the Corinthian Christians,[10] when he (if we were to follow the expectation of immediate baptism upon belief) left Corinth with only three baptized households constituting the church in Corinth.  Further, Paul understands his call to proclaim the Gospel (even for one and a half years in the same place) to be a separate thing from the call to baptize.  This runs into a significant problem in that if baptism was supposed to immediately follow a profession of faith, then Paul should have been a baptizing machine because it would have been a necessary fruit of preaching the Gospel.

That Paul did not view Gospel proclamation as requiring him to be involved in baptisms is an important point.  I am certain that someone could explain it away (with varying degrees of success).  I think that it is best understood as the basis for the practice of the catechumenate (the period of learning about the faith before one was baptized and became and Christian) in the early Church.  The only individual who was immediately baptized that we do not know for certain had been spiritually formed by Judaism is the Philippian jailer.  Every other convert immediately baptized upon their belief, for lack of a better term, had a biblical worldview.[11]  There is no clear example of a rank polytheist converting and being immediately baptized in the entirety of the Biblical text (the Philippian jailer being a possibility, but not clearly stated as such).

These conclusions about the practice of baptism along with my theological conclusions (see my previous post here) led me to the point where I uncomfortably accepted the premise and validity of infant baptism.  This moved me from the periphery of baptistic circles to a camp outside in a land unknown to me.  In many ways, I had left my father’s house and set out for a land that I had not seen in a direction that I did not know.

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[1] This experience was part of the catalyst for me to think carefully through the topic of baptism.

[2] Pages 983-984.  This was the standard Systematic text used at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  The Baptist Faith and Message (as revised in 2000) likewise is silent on who can be the baptizer:

[3] A movement known as the Landmarkist movement who argued that Baptists were the true Church and were always a distinct entity from the Roman Catholic Church.  Here is a chart of their interpretation of Church History.

[4] Some Baptists, such as John Smyth (the first Baptist), argued that the local congregation has the full authority and autonomy to carry out the biblical commands as they saw fit.  In my estimation, such a practice removes that body of people from anything that could be considered a historical or ontological connection to the Church which Christ founded.

[5] The Greek word baptizo often means full immersion.  This does not necessitate that the Christian practice of baptism slavishly followed the technical meaning of a word they utilized for a distinctly religious action.  Thus is should not surprise anyone when the early Christian manual on Church practices, the Didache, provides both immersion and affusion as valid means of baptism (Didache 7).

[6] One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.  And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay." And she prevailed upon us (Acts 16:14-15).

[7] The baptism of households ought to be examined in light of Cicero’s De Domu 109 and De Officiis 1.54-55 to see how Roman culture understood how religion and the family unit worked.  Likewise, one could consult the Old Testament.  There is little doubt that a biblically faithful Jew would have the entire household following the prescriptions of Torah because that is what they were commanded to do (Regarding children there is Deuteronomy 4:10 and 11:19; regarding slaves there is Exodus 12:44 and importantly Leviticus 22:10–11).

[8] Leviticus 22:10-13: “A lay person shall not eat of a holy thing; no foreign guest of the priest or hired servant shall eat of a holy thing, but if a priest buys a slave as his property for money, the slave may eat of it, and anyone born in his house may eat of his food. If a priest's daughter marries a layman, she shall not eat of the contribution of the holy things. But if a priest's daughter is widowed or divorced and has no child and returns to her father's house, as in her youth, she may eat of her father's food; yet no lay person shall eat of it.”

[9] Acts 18:11, “And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.”

[10] 1^st Corinthians 4:15, “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

[11] Lists of those baptized in Acts:

Acts 2, practicing Jews; Acts 8, Samaritans; Acts 8 Ethiopian Eunuch; Acts 9, Saul; Acts 10, Cornelius the Centurion; Acts 19, the disciples who had not heard of the Holy Spirit;