Defending Faith: Early Church Responses to Heresy

Gnosticism is a movement derived from the Greek word gnosis for knowledge. The Gnostics claimed that they had special knowledge, that they had more knowledge. The Gnostics appealed to several factors in the ancient world. One was the sense that some people are a lot better than others. And the Gnostics would sometimes make the argument, "Well you know the church you're going to is okay for common people, but if you want the fuller truth, if you want the deeper truth," often, "if you want the secret truth, we have that, and they don't have it. So you better come to us. We can do for you what nobody else can do for you." [00:01:01]

This characterized almost all the very many different kinds of Gnosticism -- a spirituality that fundamentally denied the importance of history, the importance of the physical world, that said the action is really always in the spiritual. And in this regard they connected with things to be found in ancient philosophy, particularly amongst Plato and some of his followers. The really important thing is the spiritual. And that may surprise us in some ways, but what's fascinating about what went on in the ancient world is there are always similarities in the modern world. [00:02:10]

Irenaeus was eager to make the point the true and eternal God created the world and He created it good. Physicality is not something to be rejected and overcome, but it's the way God created us to be. And because of that, history is important. Irenaeus could almost be the patron saint of historians. He said, "You know, the Bible is not a book of myths, it's not a book of spiritual lessons hiding behind history, but the lesson is the history that our God is at work in history to accomplish His saving purpose and to bring His Son." [00:05:49]

Irenaeus comes to stress the Scriptures. "We don't need secrets, we don't need speculation, we have what we need in the Bible. The Bible tells us God created, that creation is good, although it fell into sin, and that history is important because it's in history God works and in history God brought His Son to be the Savior." And then Irenaeus very importantly for the history of the church said, "And by the way, if you're confused who is the reliable teacher in the history of the church, who can you trust as a teacher? You have this Gnostic, and you have that Gnostic, and you have another kind of heretic. The guy to trust is your local bishop." [00:06:22]

Bishops above all were teachers and preachers. They were not administrators in the ancient church. And they weren't so much over many churches -- that developed much later in the ancient church period -- they were primarily pastors in a local church. And so when Irenaeus says, "When in doubt, stick with the bishop," he's really saying, "When in doubt, stick with your local, reliable preacher, the guy you've known, the guy who opens the Word, the guy whom the church more broadly approves of," and as a sort of practical bit of advice, it was very valuable. [00:08:29]

There is this danger amongst Christians to want to find certainty in the wrong place. We want to find certainty by the Holy Spirit still guaranteeing that we're right, or we want to find certainty by an infallible bishop that is always reliable no matter what happens. And the truth is when we look into the Word of God we discover there's only one place for certainty, and that's in the Bible. And we might say, "Well, you know that's kind of annoying," because there are a lot of people who find a lot of different things in the Bible. [00:12:55]

Jesus, when He faced the devil, the devil quoted the Bible. Jesus said, "It is also written…" Jesus is directing us, you see; always go back to the Bible. Always compare Scripture with Scripture. That's the only way forward, that's the only way to be assured of the truth. It's the Bible that is the source of our certainty. Now these Montanists, as I say, were really pretty orthodox in their theology, except for their notion that the Holy Spirit directed and guided them, and then, as is the case with many, they began to think that other folks were not as strict, and were not as insightful as they were. [00:13:34]

Tertullian, who lived and ministered in the late second and early third century, was one of the great thinkers and one of the very best early writers of the church. He was a great Latin writer, and in the Latin world the way you wrote made a big difference to people. They were deeply moved when the Latin language was written elegantly and eloquently, and Tertullian was a great stylist as well as a remarkable theologian. And in his writing he accomplished great things in advancing the cause of Christianity, but was drawn to the Montanists because Tertullian himself was a rigorist. [00:14:36]

It was Tertullian who came up with some of the phrases that we still remember. It was Tertullian who first said, "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Let's not be corrupted by pagan thinking, let's just focus on the Bible." And so Tertullian was one of those who spoke so passionately, so firmly, so eloquently in defense of the faith, and was a really great figure in terms of defending the truth, and the later church had trouble with Tertullian because technically he died as a schismatic, he died outside of the church, as they saw it, because he identified with the Montanists. [00:16:11]

Origen raised so many critical questions for the church. He began the process of theology in such a profound and helpful way. The only problem is he was wrong in an awful lot of the conclusions that he reached. But the questions he asked were really important ones, and he asked them in quite brilliant ways. He's a child of Alexandria, and Alexandria was arguably the most important city in the ancient Mediterranean world, and it was a center of great commerce, but also a center of great learning. Only Rome and Athens could challenge it as a center of learning, but by our day certainly Alexandria has surpassed them both. [00:18:31]

Celsus was an eminently thoughtful and philosophical man, and as a typical pagan, Celsus had said, "Those Christians, you know, if you wanted to gather just a group of thugs, you wouldn't do any better than the local church. They're stupid, they're not well-educated, and for them to go around constantly saying that God is interested in them, they're like a bunch of frogs croaking in a pond, trying to get attention to themselves." And Origen took on this critique of Celsus, this elitist attitude on the part of Celsus, and answered it brilliantly. [00:21:00]

Christians aren't much. And the glorious thing about Christianity is you don't have to be much to come to Christ, because you don't have to change yourself in order to come to Christ, but you come to Christ in order to be changed." And it's a brilliant turning of the argument on its head. Christianity is a glorious religion because it's for everybody, and it's a glorious religion because it's for smart people and dumb people. It's for moral people, and immoral people, at least as they come to Christ, find forgiveness in Him, and find transformation in Him. [00:21:54]