On Labels: Pre-Augustinian - Grecian 2000

Thanks to Augustine of Hippo and some others, most of the last 2,000 years have seen the church influenced largely from Athens rather than Jerusalem.  Western Christianity is largely a fusion of Greek philosophy and Biblical thinking.

Here are a couple of examples from our British culture.

Our traditional Universities like Durham, St Andrews, Cambridge and Oxford.  Originally built on a collegiate system with Christian foundations, the idea of a 'University' is a Greek one.  Some would argue that the world's first one was founded by Plato in Athens.

Our school system has an uncanny resemblance to the system of state education described in Plato's Republic.  Children were to be given guardians and separated from their fathers and mothers and taught reading, mathematics, music and physical education from the age of six.  In Hebrew thinking, children were taught in their local community, either in the home or at the local synagogue.  You could argue that a Christian School or a 'Faith School' is a fusion of Biblical and Greek thinking.

I am now going to give you a list of differences between a Greek and a Hebrew thinker.  Which one are you?

Greek Thinkers	Hebrew Thinkers
Separate the physical from the spiritual.  Hence, baptism and communion are empty symbols with no spiritual consequence.	Integrate the physical from the spiritual.  Hence, as in 1Corinthians 11, some people died by taking the Lord's Supper for the wrong reasons.  In 1Kings 13, Naaman was healed by being 'baptised' seven times in the River Jordan.
Separate clergy (priests, vicars, pastors, ministers) from the laity using academic degrees, titles etc.	See us as a royal priesthood.  Brothers and sisters.
Send children away from the family into academic institutions with qualified teachers and age segregated classes	Teach from father and mother to son and daughter.
Teach through catechisms and systematic theologies	Teach through parables, stories.
Teach by lecturing an audience through wisdom and oratory	Teach by the power of the Holy Spirit, interacting with an audience
Teach that a disembodied soul goes to a spiritual heaven	Teach the resurrection of the dead, the existence of a new body and a new heaven and a new earth
Read the Bible allegorically, looking for the spiritual meaning behind narratives	Read the Bible literally, noting people and places in their most straightforward meaning
See the church as the 'new' Israel	Differentiate Israel and the Church
Limit musical worship to standing up and singing	Extend musical worship to clapping, kneeling, shouting, silence, dancing and other physical expression Value family and community
Value institutions Separate 'Christian' service (pastors, evangelists, missionaries) to 'secular' service, like teaching, manual trades, medical professions.	See all work as sacred.
See God as perfect, but impersonal.  Don't expect God to speak through visions, prophecy or other forms of revelation	Listen to God as well as speak to Him in Prayer
Think in terms of social democracy, state power	Think in terms of Kingdom

I want to put it to you that we need to rid ourselves of the Greek thinking and go back to a more Hebrew mindset if we are to recover the power of the early church.  We need the church to be pre-Augustinian.

For a fuller explanation of what I have written here, may I recommend David Pawson's talks on De-Greecing the church.

On Labels: Pre-Augustinian

I am now going to invent a term.

Pre-Augustinian

I want to suggest to you that Augustine of Hippo, St Augustine the Bishop of Hippo, has caused more damage to the Christian cause than almost anyone else in history.

Why single out this man?

Here are my reasons:

1. He is very influential on the teaching of the church – both Catholic and Protestant.  To the Catholics, he is their most important theologian.  And he is hugely important to Protestants too!  Calvin’s system of theology is largely drawn from Augustine’s teaching.  In his ‘Institutes’ he is quoted over 400 times.  Martin Luther (originally an Augustinian monk) studied and quoted Augustine more extensively than any other non-Biblical figure in his lifetime.
2. Augustine taught that Christian heretics should be physically attacked and persecuted.  Because of the churches privileged position, it was able to use secular political powers to use drowning, burning and a host of tortures on those whom the church regarded as heretics over many centuries.  Augustine was frequently cited as an authority for doing this.  In addition, he advocated the use of force to make people attend church.  And Reformed brethren cannot point the finger here.  Protestant leaders presided over these activities as well as Catholic.  Lord, please forgive us!
3. Much of Augustine’s teaching was thoroughly what we would regard as Roman Catholic.  Examples would be:

• Prayers for the dead
• Exaltation of Mary
• Baptismal regeneration
• Infant baptism.  Hence it was taught that a baptised baby goes to heaven and an un-baptised baby who dies goes to hell
• The superiority of singleness.  All sex, including within marriage, is sinful.

4. Finally, Augustine followed some of his predecessors in merging Greek philosophy (particularly that of Plato in his case) with Christian theology.  The effect of this, among other things, is to separate the physical from the spiritual.  I will list some of the effects of this in the next section, but in essence, the mindset of the average Western Christian is heavily influenced by Greek philosophy.

I believe that the Reformation served to correct some serious errors in the church.  And yet, it did not go far enough.  Many groups of true believers over the years, who have sought to return to a simpler, more biblical model of Christianity, dating from long before Augustine was on the scene, have been heavily persecuted by the state church, including the Reformed part of it.

By the time Augustine was on the scene, the church had detached itself from much of the simple Christianity that thrived in its early years and had picked up a great deal of 'baggage' in its teaching and practice.

It is significant that following Augustine's time we had the 'dark ages' in which little history is recorded, but it is a time of cultural and economic backwardness.  Most people in Christendom were poorly educated.  Groups of Christians that tried to exist outside of church structures were heavily persecuted.  Yet Jewish communities thrived culturally, economically and educationally.  The biblical principal of maintaining home worship and the tradition of passing on literacy and spiritual knowledge from parents to children was a key here - something that the church had long abandoned.  So the Jews suffered their own dose of persecution from a jealous church.

What would Jesus say?

'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.'
Matthew 23:13

In order to find a form of Christianity that is more Christlike, we must of course study scripture - that goes without saying.  It helps also to be aware of the false teaching and practise that has developed when the church became a rich and powerful institution.

So the church in its thinking, actions and methods needs to be pre-Augustinian.

On Labels: Pre-Augustinian and Why Sinai isn't in... er... Sinai

I don't usually write on archaeology, and this is possibly a one-off.  The purpose of this is twofold.  I'll explain later.  But for now, sit comfortably and hopefully enjoy.

The Egyptian tourist industry won't thank me for this post.

If you have a set of maps at the back of your Bible, they probably look a bit like this:

There will probably be a set of lines showing you the route of the Israelites through this area.  There's Sinai, the triangular wedge of land between Egypt and Israel, right?

A bit of an issue here is that what we call the Red Sea could consist of either the body of water that now forms the Suez Canal on the left half of the map above or it could mean the body of water that ends with Aqaba on the right side.  When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, it could have been either branch.  This is a list of reasons why I believe it was the Gulf of Aqaba, not the Gulf of Suez.

Here are my reasons:

1. It is accepted that Midian, where Jethro lived is on the right of the above map, where it says 'Saudi Arabia'.  Why did Moses wander 100-200 miles to pasture his sheep, all the way to where it says 'Mount Moses' above?  Would this make any sense?  See Exodus 3:1-12.
2. Outside of the account of the Israelite crossing, the only other passages in the Bible that refer to the Red Sea, specifically refer to the Gulf of Aqaba.  See 1Kings 7:26, Jeremiah 49:21.
3. The topography of the narrative suits an Aqaba crossing.  See for Example, Exodus 14:3.
4. Strong evidence that what we call Sinai was a part of Egypt in the Bible.  Firstly, it is easy to get to.  Much of the water is shallow.  Trading routes to Egypt cross this area.  Why would the Israelites feel safe there, for a full 40 years?  Secondly, the Biblical 'River of Egypt' is in the North of what we call Sinai, near Canaan, suggests Egyptian control.  See Numbers 34:5, Joshua 15:4, 47.
5. No archaeological evidence for the Israelites having spent any significant time in the area.  No burial sites for the 1 million+ Israelites who died during the 40 years wandering.
6. The meeting with Jethro in Exodus 18:5-12 suggests they were in or near Midian, east of the Gulf of Aqaba.
7. Galatians 4:25 specifically states that Sinai is in Arabia.  In scripture, Arabia is always east of Aqaba.
8. The existence of a land bridge across the Gulf of Aqaba that fits the narrative with the remains of chariot wheels at the bottom of the Gulf.

To me, the scriptural evidence is completely compelling.

So why do our Bible maps put Mount Sinai where they do?  And why is modern Sinai called Sinai?  Tradition tells us that it dates back to a dream the Emperor Constantine had, which became church teaching.  In those days, the institutional church had control over the education system and the training of church leaders.  So it was widely taken that Sinai was where the above map says, in spite of the scriptural and archaeological problems.  There is no evidence, no tradition within Judaism to back the churches claims.  As simple as that really.  And our Bible maps and tourist firms stick to the traditional line to this day.

Let's think through the implication of this.

• Somebody who has an important position in the church 1,500-1,600 years ago says something incorrect.
• Everybody listens to them for the following few centuries due to the control the church has over the education system.
• Believers to this day don't question it, because it is enshrined in church tradition.
• Unbelievers pour scorn on Christianity because they hold a view that cannot be sustained by the evidence.

The above is not an isolated example.  I'll give you two more.

1. BC and AD.  A monk called Dennis the Little (should we call him Dennis the Menace?) invented this dating system based on when Christ was born.  The thing is.... he was born a few years earlier than that - maybe 4 BC.  But the dating system (first popularised by Jarrow's most famous son, the Venerable Bede) has stayed.
2. The dating of Egypt's history is based on 1Kings 19:25 which says that Shishak, king of Egypt attacked and plundered Jerusalem.  It has been assumed since the early 1800s that this was the Pharaoh Shoshenq I.  It has enabled many academics to dismiss the Bible as myth because (for example) it leaves Solomon reigning in Israel during a time of deep poverty rather than prosperity.  A secular British archaeologist, David Rohl (I highly recommend his books and videos) has argued persuasively that the conventional dating is out by over 300 years and that it was actually Rameses II who attacked Jerusalem.  This dating system is far more in line with the Biblical evidence and Rohl has made a number of startling discoveries based on his dating which would confirm the accuracy of scripture (evidence for Joseph in Goshen, the Egyptian palace Solomon built for his wife the daughter of Pharaoh, the thick walls of Jericho destroyed during Joshua's campaign etc).  A simple misreading of names has led to the Bible being dismissed as inaccurate.

So can the kind of situation described above apply to theology too?  Suppose an important church leader teaches something that is incorrect and not backed up by the Bible.  Then it becomes widely accepted, but... wrong.  Can that happen, and can it damage the church for centuries afterwards?

You bet it can!

Watch this space.

On Labels

“Don't swear!”, a friend once said when I used the term 'evangelical'.  It was the 1980s.  He was very much on the charismatic wing of the church and it was fashionable at that time for some to dismiss the churches evangelical heritage as irrelevant.  I don't follow the soap opera of which Christian leader has said what to whom very closely, but I suspect that the boot is now on the other foot.  To call yourself 'Charismatic' in some circles it to put your head well above the parapet.

I am not keen, however, to abandon a label just because there has been a serious attempt to discredit it.  In fact, insults can be a badge of honour.  The terms 'Christian', 'Methodist', 'Puritan' were coined as terms of abuse.  Spurs supporters have confused the authorities by defiantly calling themselves 'Yids'.  My daughter was asking some time ago for a t-shirt labelled 'Geek'.

Blessed are you when...

The next phase of my blog explains to some degree where I am doctrinally, or to be more exact, my ecclesiology – my view as to how church should be.  It is not to say I won't ever change my mind, but I have firm convictions which are are carefully thought out.

I think that in the UK, terms are less nuanced than they are in the US where, for example, 'Reformed', 'Evangelical' and 'Fundamentalist' are separate terms with their own well defined adherents.  I'm not as sophisticated as that.  Apart from fundamentalist or 'fundy', which has been almost completely discredited over here, I could be happily defined as Reformed or Evangelical.

So the best thing, I think, is to use a term and then define it with my own personal interpretation.

So, very simply, I am going to go through four terms which represent 'where I am', and what foundations a church should be built upon.  Some of my views are 'mainstream' and others are 'radical'.  The church I have a vision for would be pretty unique in the North of England.  Possibly unique in the UK.  Maybe unique in Western Europe.  But I will be bold enough to say that in order for the church to thrive in the 21st century, we need churches like this!

Blessings