Blog: Finite Reflections of Infinity: The Argument From (Dis-)Similarity

I read this great blog post today on Finite Reflections of Infinity. It was shared by Paul Pavao on his facebook page, Christian History for Everyman. Please take the time to read the blog, even though it's long. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the conclusion. The author's premise is that all churches/denominations are different from each other and from the original historical churches in leadership structure, worship services, theology, architecture, spiritual gifts, and devotional practices, therefore the argument that 'my church is best because it is most like the original church' is not a valid option for determining what the church should look like. Therefore, the author states, we have 4 options, of which the 4th is the only valid one according to his arguments. Please let me know if you agree with his conclusion. Enjoy!
P.S.: Here is the comment I left under the blog post, which also might be food for discussion.
 "paulfpavao and theophiletos,
I agree with Paul that this article is phenomenal. I like how you put it, Paul, that ‘the folks who embrace this conclusion of yours…will let the Holy Spirit out of the various cages we have put him in…’
Being concerned about unity in the church as a whole and hoping that the world will see us loving one another, rather than assuming the high ground and attacking one another, I keep making the statement in discussions with Catholics...that: Instead of seeing the diversity of denominations/groups within the church as a ‘bad’ thing, maybe one reason God has allowed this separation is to encourage us to love one another in spite of our differences, which I see as mainly over non-essentials.
theophiletos, I truly love your conclusion that the invisible qualities of loving one another as Christ has loved us, and the presence of the Spirit of God and His fruits and gifts, is the hallmark of the church. Thank you for this article, and Paul, thank you for sharing it."

Unity and the Roman Catholic Church

Here's an interesting post on unity from Paul Pavao, basically saying unity comes from believers enacting love within the local church.


Unity and the Roman Catholic Church

1 Corinthians 3 and Works Burned Up By Fire

1 Corinthians 3 and Works Burned Up By Fire

We are having an interesting conversation about faith, works, and salvation on 'The Rest of the Old, Old Story" blog. The conversation actually includes the 2 earlier posts on that blog as well, and is related to the 2 posts before those too, even though I didn't comment on them. I hope that's not too confusing, but the last five posts are related, ending so far with the link above.

The Church and the Work: The Rest of the Old Old Story/Paul Pavao

The Church and the Work

This post by Shammah (Paul Pavao) was from an email sent to me as part of a conversation about the way the body of Christ should work and why it doesn't often work the way it should in most congregations. As Shammah said, I think the main reason is fear. Fear stems from pride which is the greatest sin. The opposite of these sinful emotions is love and humility. The word of God says 'The truth shall set you free' and 'Perfect love casts out fear.' We can only be set free from our sinful fear by the truth of God's word and the power of His spirit working in us. We can only love God and each other by that truth and power as well. The Word of God and the Holy Spirit work in each believer and each congregation to unite us into the Body of Christ.
The Lord has been stirring up alot of things in me that need to be dealt with from the past; there were issues in my marriage that had changed for the better but I recently realized I had not dealt with the feelings and effects from those earlier times. This has all come together with the realization that the church as a whole is failing to function as a body united by one Spirit, loving one another unconditionally, even as we know each other in all our faults and failures. The Body (church) has to work together with the Word of God (who is Christ Himself revealed in Scripture) and the Holy Spirit (who is in us) in order to function as Jesus intended. My failures can be healed and my gifts can be used only as I allow myself to be vulnerable within the church that God has put me and my family in. My extreme introversion makes me one of those who fails the most at this, but it also gives God the glory when He makes His strength perfect in me. To God be the glory!

A Conversation About the Eucharist: Paul Pavao

I had an email conversation recently with Paul Pavao (Shammah) about baptism which led to this conversation about the Eucharist:

Jennie,
The Lord's Supper is a lot harder than baptism because there are less Scriptures on it. Not only that, but I'm firmly convinced that the Scriptures that do mention the Lord's Supper/Eucharist/Communion are often at least partially symbolic.

My argument would be that in John 6, when Jesus says to eat his body and drink his blood, he is talking in the present tense, not in the future. They were already supposed to be eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Since that didn't mean biting him, it's obviously symbolic.

In fact, Jesus sort of says so in Jn. 6:35: "I am the Bread of Life; he that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes in me will never thirst."

Does this not strongly suggest that coming to him is eating of him and believing in him is drinking of him?

It's just a chapter later when he says, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He that believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of belly rivers of living water will flow" (7:37-38).

Now, keep in mind that I am aware that Ignatius, a man chosen by the apostle John to lead the church in Antioch, says that communion is "the medicine of immortality, the antidote which prevents us from dying, and a cleansing remedy driving away evil so that we should live in God through Jesus Christ."

He adds that the gnostics don't eat the Eucharist because they don't agree that it's the flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The fact is, none of us like the priestly hocus pocus [hoc est corpus] that goes on in the Catholic Church. I was raised Catholic, and I can tell you that if the Catholic Church were the church of our Lord Jesus Christ and if its Eucharist were the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, then there ought to be a lot of sick and dead Catholics (1 Cor. 11:30). The fact is, though, that the Catholic Church has awful fruit, it is not the church, its communion is not the body of Christ, and its priestly hocus pocus is as false as it seems to be.

But ...

I've never met a free Christian that didn't love the idea that the bread of communion is "the medicine of immortality."

Think about it. If communion can make an unworthy partaker ill or dead, shouldn't it be able to communicate grace to the worthy partaker?

Like baptism, there's no indication that anyone considered the Lord's Supper to be purely symbolic until at least the Reformation. Zwingli did not believe it to be the actual body of Christ, but I don't think he considered it purely symbolic, either.

However, there's so much more to be said on the subject of the Lord's Supper that it makes me tired to think about it.

For example, the word "communion" is a silly word. The Greek word it comes from is koinonia, the word for fellowship. If we want to speak English, then we ought to translate 1 Cor 10:16 should be translated, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the fellowship of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the fellowship of the body of Christ?"

I don't believe this is referring to physical eating. I believe it is referring to the fellowship of the church. The blood of Christ not only forgives sin and cleanses us from our weaknesses, but it also gives us fellowship with one another (1 Jn. 1:7-9).

Paul also entirely puts the context of the Lord's Supper into the fellowship of the church. We have discern the Lord's body, he says. What was he rebuking them for? He was rebuking them for not taking care of each other. Some went hungry, others were drunk. This is what it means to not discern the Lord's body. That intense self-examination people go through is not what God is after. He wants us to eat and drink as participants in the fellowship of the body of Christ, joined to one another by the body and blood of Christ.

So I don't think the Eucharist is purely symbolic, but I believe the effect of it is spiritual. There's no physical transformation. That's ridiculous, and it could be tested by science, anyway.

I believe all of God's "symbols" are not mere symbols. They convey power.

Baptism does something because it is, as you say, an act of obedience to the Word of God. It is our response to the Gospel, the answer to God from a good conscience or the appeal to God for a good conscience. Either way, it was meant to be our "sinner's prayer" or our initial act of obedience.

The Eucharist, too, is both an act of fellowship for the body and a meal that brings grace from heaven, the product of our faith and worship, not the product of the bread and wine itself. The bread and wine is to remember him, but in remembering him, he responds. God inhabits the praises of his people.

The early churches universally took those things seriously. Speaking for them, it was important to them. It was so important that if a person was sick when the Lord's Supper was served, the deacons brought some to the sick person's home after the meeting.

Of course, back then it was a meal, not a tiny cracker. So it's possible that they delivered it to the sick person as food, a meal they needed, not just as a ceremony.

I've been forced to ramble a bit because that's all I know to do on this subject. It's so wide, and there's areas that seem to me to be free for interpretation. I can say that the early church clearly did not see the meal as symbolic, and I can say the Catholic Church has gone too far and gotten silly and powerless, but where in between we should land? Now that's a question, and I've only thrown out some bits of evidence to help decide.

Shammah


My response (so far):
Paul (Shammah),
Your answer is very helpful, even though you thought it was rambling. I have a thought about the Eucharist being partly symbolic. Could it be that the bread of the Eucharist, like the water of baptism, is symbolic, but that the act of faith of the believer in response to God is the part that brings the benefit? In other words, the believers fellowship together in faith by obeying Jesus' command to 'do this in remembrance of Me' and God in turn is with us and gives us His grace and goodness in a special way in return. But are we missing out on this by not understanding the nature of the Supper? Are we missing out on the benefits of it by thinking it's symbolic, and also by not really being in full fellowship as we are meant to?
Thanks for taking the time to address my question.
In Christ,
Jennie

UPDATE: Paul's response:
I found a neat quote on this just today from the Anabaptists:

"Those who believe receive remission of sins, not by but in baptism. ... They trust in the merits of the blood of Christ. Then they receive the sign of obedience, water baptism, as proof before God and his church that they firmly believe in the remission of sins through Jesus Christ as it was preached and taught to them from the Word of God. When all this takes place, they receive remission of their sins in baptism."

That's from Menno Symons. If I'm translating the Dutch title correctly, it's Explanation of the Christian Baptism.

That's to say, I agree wholeheartedly with your "the bread of the Eucharist, like the water of baptism, is symbolic, but that the act of faith of the believer in response to God is the part that brings the benefit."

In addition, I assure you that you are correct and modern believers are missing out on lots of things because of unbelief. We have grown used to a powerless Christianity. I have been learning to walk in faith for 25 years, but America is bathed in unbelief, and I have a long ways to go to be the kind of faith-filled believer that Stephen and others were in the early church.

Paul/Shammah

A Discussion About Baptism

Following is a discussion I had with Paul Pavao after reading his views on baptism on his website, Christian History for Everyman, on this page.


Hello Paul,
I have a sincere question about baptism being more than a symbolic act of obedience, which as a Baptist for most of my life I've always believed. I have been talking to Catholics on my blog and have always stressed that faith in the gospel comes first and then baptism as a sign of faith. I don't understand how baptism can actually confer salvation, because one has already been regenerated by faith, isn't that so? What exactly happens at Baptism? Has faith not completed justification? I want to understand this. Catholics teach that Baptism is what justifies. I think they say regeneration occurs then if the person has faith. How is what you are saying different than what they are saying?

Paul Pavao's response:
The thing that helped me most with baptism was comparing it to the sinner's prayer, something I believe Peter does in 1 Peter 3:21. Peter says baptism now saves us, and then he explains how it saves us. It saves us by being the appeal to God for (or from) a good conscience.

The KJV and other versions have answer or pledge in the place of appeal, but after reading through several lexicons, I would argue that the NASB's "appeal" is the only reasonable translation there.

So, baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience.

That fits very well with the verses on baptism in the NT. In Acts 2:38, Jews ask Peter what they should do since they are convicted about crucifying Christ. He tells them repent and be baptized for (eis - into) the remission of sins, and they'll receive the Holy Spirit. See how that fits with 1 Pet. 3:21? They wanted a clean conscience. He told them to be baptized, and their sins would be forgiven, and they'd receive the Holy Spirit.

Baptism was the way they carried out their faith. It was their "sinner's prayer."

Of course, you know there's no sinner's prayer in the NT. Read through Acts, and you'll see that everyone was baptized immediately, the same day. Baptism was the apostles' sinner's prayer. The Philippian jailer was baptized in the middle of the night!!! (Acts 16)

When Paul had been convicted by Christ on the road to Damascus, Christ sent him to wait there. Ananias came and told him, "What are you waiting for? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord!" (Acts 22:16).

So Paul, too, washed his sins away in baptism, despite having seen the Lord 3 days earlier. Baptism was his sinner's prayer.

The early church believed the same way. All Christians believed in baptismal regeneration, including the Reformers, all the way into the 17th century. A symbolic baptism has to be the worst-attested doctrine believed by any large group of Christians ever. It's new, it obviously violates many Scriptures on baptism.

Baptists and others like them deal with this by using verses on faith to teach about and argue for their version of baptism. They have to. Pretty much all the verses on baptism clearly disagree with them. Church history disagrees with them--100%, across the board--all the way until a century AFTER the Reformation.

So here's how what I teach differs from the Roman Catholics. One, the Catholics baptize babies. That's an indication that they think baptism does something spiritual even apart from faith. I don't believe that.

I believe baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience. Babies can't do that. We believe, and then we join ourselves to Christ in baptism. In the beginning, it was really that simple. It wasn't that baptism was a magic rite. It was the baptism was the proper response of a believer to hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believing.

Okay, so here's the real difficult issue:

What about those that don't know?

What about me personally? I was witnessed to by pentecostal believers. They believed, like the Baptists, that baptism is symbolic. So rather than have me respond to God with baptism, as the Bible teaches, they had me pray a prayer. Of course, even the prayer was ineffectual, because like Cornelius in Acts 10, I had received the Holy Spirit as soon as I heard the Gospel and said I believe it. The power of the Spirit fell on me, gave me a good conscience, and changed my whole world as soon as I said, "Yes, I believe."

I was baptized a month later, wondering what good such an act was, because doing the "public testimony" seemed so meaningless as to be ridiculous. What sort of public testimony is baptism nowadays? Lots of people have been baptized. Many of them repeatedly. Most of them live lives that are a testimony AGAINST Christ.

So baptism is a lousy public testimony. Live a holy life! That's a great public testimony.

And, Scripturally, how does one explain Paul baptizing the Philippian jailer in the middle of the night? What sort of public testimony was that? How about Cornelius with Peter? It seems clear Cornelius was baptized in his house, on the spot. What sort of public testimony was that?

I believe God makes exceptions. I believe he made an exception for the thief on the cross. I believe he made an exception for Cornelius, pouring out the Spirit on him before baptism.

I believe he makes exceptions for us ignorant 21st century Christians who think baptism is symbolic and can be waited on. He forgives our sins and fills us with the Spirit because we ask him to by a sinner's prayer or a prayer to be filled with the Spirit. Being merciful, loving, and kind, he answers that prayer.

Scripturally, though, the example set for us--and the command of Christ--is that baptism be the appeal to God for a good conscience, not something else, not even an actual verbal prayer.

I hope that answers your question. Justification does come upon faith, but faith always acts. So responding to the Gospel by an act of faith, such as baptism or the sinner's prayer (one being biblical and one being the tradition of Charles Finney and D.L. Moody) does not contradict justification by faith. Instead, it shows us what justification by faith looks like.

Remember, Peter didn't say in Acts 2:38, "You don't have to do anything. You have already believed, so you're justified." No, he said, "Repent and be baptized."

Clearly, those Jews believed . How could the be cut to the heart, as the Scripture says, unless they had believed what Peter taught? Yet, Peter still told them to repent and be baptized.

One needs to perform an initial act of faith.

I'd love to say more about Peter's initial act of faith, but this email is long enough. The first time Peter received a command of the Lord, it was to throw his nets on the other side of the boat (Luke 5). When he did so, the effect was incredible. He acknowledged he was a sinner, and then, when the boat got to land, he forsook everything and followed Christ.

Amazing, isn't it? Jesus didn't tell him to be baptized, to read the Scriptures, or any such thing. Instead, he told him only to throw his nets on the other side of the boat. Peter said, "At your word, I will do it."

He did it. The response to the Word, by obeying it, was like eating it. The Word was implanted in his heart like a seed and he was born again (Jam. 1:21 w 1:18). At that point, because he responded/obeyed, he didn't need to be told he was a sinner. He didn't need to be told to follow Christ. The Word of God was now in him, and so he knew what he was supposed to do!

Of course, I know there's issues with me saying he was born again there and not later, after he repented for denying Christ. But Jesus said that Zaccheus was saved (Luk 19) right there on the spot. There, once again, the Word of God (Jesus) told Zaccheus something simple. He told him to hurry, to come down, and that Jesus would eat with him. Zaccheus complied, and the Word of God was planted in his soul. Jesus didn't have to teach him to repay those he'd cheated. He knew already because the Word was in him.

Then, as I said, Jesus said that salvation had come to him that very day. It had! And it was because of his positive response to the Word of God.

Baptism is our positive response to the Word of God. It's like eating it. When we respond, the Word of God will go down in us like a seed, saving our souls.

Well, I guess I did say all of that about Peter. Sorry for the long email. I hope it's a blessing to you.

Paul Pavao

Paul,
Lots of ideas have been going through my mind since I read your email, and I've also read a few more things on your websites about baptism and other things that have helped clarify the issue. I think I'm understanding what you have said, though its possible I'm interpreting it through my own perspective, so I want to tell you what I think you are saying and see if I'm understanding.
You mentioned 1 Peter 3:21 in which he says baptism saves us, not by the water washing our bodies, but by the appeal from or for a good conscience toward God. I'm thinking that you and Peter are saying that the water isn't doing anything, but it's what's happening in the person and between the person and God that is effective. It's the faith that brings forth
obedience that is what saves the person, not the water itself. When thinking of baptism I always get stuck wondering how water can do anything, and end up saying that it's the faith that does it, by the power of God, and that it's the first act of obedience, 'to fulfill all righteousness' as Jesus said. I always say that baptism is a sign of faith. I guess that falls short of the whole truth; maybe I should go further and say that it is an act of obedience that completes our saving faith....

This is getting long, but i wanted to say something about what you said about Peter obeying Jesus about casting the nets, that when he obeyed the Word, it was like eating it, and it went down into his heart like a seed and saved him. That reminded me of John 6 at the second half of the chapter, where Jesus calls Himself the bread of life. I have talked to Catholics about this on my blog because they believe that passage is about the eucharist and say that eating the bread is what saves us. I argued that eating the bread, or the body of Christ, really means believing Him by faith and living on His word. It also reminded me of a study I had just started reading about the Lord's Supper, which i just posted a link to this week, which says that we as believers are one loaf of bread and communion should emphasize this unity with each other and Christ, as we are His body. So Peter eating the word, or the bread of life, unites him with Jesus and with the rest of the loaf, the other believers too. Of course, after you said that baptism isn't just symbolic, then it occurred to me that you might have a different perspective on the Lord's supper than the Baptists who say it is symbolic. I've been wondering about that for a while because the way it's done isn't right to me....
I have many thoughts, but they'll have to wait. Thank you for taking the time to share. I believe it has blessed me as you hoped.
In Christ,
Jennie

Cardinal Sadolet and John Calvin: a Defense of The Call for Reformation: Christian History for Everyman

Here is an article from Paul Pavao's site, Christian History for Everyman, that quotes Calvin's defense of the call to reformation against Cardinal Sadolet. I agree with Paul Pavao when he says "I have my own problems with John Calvin's doctrines, but surely no one can argue with this defense of his call for reformation."

Please click on the link below:
Cardinal Sadolet and John Calvin

Is the Roman Catholic Church the One True Church? Paul Pavao

Is the Roman Catholic Church the One True Church?

When Protestants Become Catholic: Are the Church Fathers a Danger to Born Again Christians?: Shammah (Paul Pavao)

Here is a blog post on Shammah's (Paul Pavao's) blog (whom I posted about in the last post), The Rest of the Old, Old Story. The post is called 'When Protestants Become Catholic: Are the Church Father's a Danger to Born Again Christians?' It's very compelling; he concludes that only the local church, which is pliable, open to the Spirit's leading, and has believers working together in unity, can be 'the pillar and support of the truth' as scripture describes it. I have said something similar in comments and posts here, but he takes it much further, and has personal experience of this, whereas I mostly only have hope of it, having seen so many examples of failure of it in myself and others.

Christian History for Everyman: Apostolic Succession

Here is a page on Apostolic succession from an interesting web site called Christian History for Everyman, by Paul F. Pavao.

Apostolic Succession in Early Christianity