“[Jhn 20:30-31 NASB20] 30 So then, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that by believing you may have life in His name.”
A pair of apologists debate another pair of detractors, who have doubts about the quality and intent of the Gospels. They’re dissatisfied with the historical requisites they would hope to expect from a truly historical record, as a sort of ancient Roman biography. But that totally misses the forest for the trees. They’re looking for all of the wrong features, and not finding them because what the Gospels are is not a series of biographical documents strictly, but are instead, very blatantly Evangelical, in the most technical sense of the term. This is not merely a dry recording of some facts for later generations to read, and obtain some level of satisfaction from. The Gospels are a project directly addressed to every human who will contemplate its subject matter, with the desired result being, as stated by the author of John’s Gospel, after having processed the material, is to convince the reader, or the hearer, to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, for which the reward of such a believer will have life in His name.
That very dense phrase, among its many rich depths of meaning, is to have life. That’s the simple promise that the author assures to the believer. With such a powerful declaration, it would have to be assumed that such a case might occur. It seems to be a fairly simple process, which work very sensibly with my Protestant proclivities. I think that’s the romance in the Protestant ethos. The truth that there’s a very simple, and very accessible salvation for any repentant sinner, through the mere belief of this first century Jewish rabbi being “the Christ”, which is a very strange word for our day and age, and still even more strange in it’s own day and context. To be “covered in pig fat”. Which is a very odd thing to say about someone who is supposed to be the “King of the Jews”.
The crude and insensitive word translation doesn’t quite capture that “pre-Christian” understanding of the Hebrew word, “Meshiach”, which means to be anointed with oil. Not just any oil, but a very specific oil recipe outlined by the texts of the Torah. it should be very immediately and quickly understood that in the Greek speaking gentile world, there was no other word to compare to the Hebrew/Israelite Davidic promised anointed King, Ruler, Prophet who is promised by Moses to be the one, after himself, who should be heard and obeyed. And not just to hear, but to understand, and assess. He’s to be accepted on His own terms when He presents himself. This seems to be a key point from which spill out all other complications that obstruct that initial pure simple vision, first seen through the eyes of the child, when they get the glimpse of God, as their creator. A Father which, although unseen, is so near as to reflect the wonder you sense of Him back to you in your own sense so as to realize that you’re not really alone. You have a friend that sticks closer than a brother, and that friend, as you come to find out, as you learn and grow, is in fact this person who lived in the first century, named Jesus, who died on a cross, having been executed by the Roman state, upon the insistence and request of the Judean/Jerusalem religious establishment, who had a vested interest in reinforcing their authority among the people to keep the grift going as long as they could.
Those Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes, much like the intellectual elite of the modern American academies, were and are, in on a very insidious and hostile sedition, who have been trading in the holiness and dignity of a people, in order to garner for themselves political and imperial prestige and power. They were not at all concerned about any Messiah, unless they were forced to trifle with a Messiah they could or could not control. Such was the case with many such Messiahs that rose and fell, and when they fell, they were not heard of again thereafter. Not so in the case of the Gospel of Jesus, whose followers all went to the grave presenting, declaring confessing and confirming, that full Gospel of Jesus as the Messiah, risen from the dead, and seated at the right hand of power, as promised by Daniel 7.
Grace is the universal confession of the faithful follower and believer in Jesus, as the Messiah of Israel. This is the foundational breaking point between those first century Jews who trusted in the name of the Nazarene, which provided for them the assurance of their salvation from the corruption of the world which was at that time ruled by the pagan Roman Imperialist forces. The dividing line for the issues separating the Judean followers of Jesus, and the elite religious establishment of Pharisees and Sadducees, is marked by their understanding of grace. The bulk of the Jewish population had been shown by their rabbis to be the inheritors of the Grace of God, on account of their genetic heritage. They received God’s Grace as a matter of their bloodline. Sure, there was grace left over for others beside them, but as Jesus says, they saw themselves as being the valve of the kingdom, shutting everyone else out as they saw fit, according to their man made rules.
These “works of the law” were a failing argument, according to Paul and the Jerusalem believers, such that when they assembled in Jerusalem, for the first time since Pentacost, they would conclude that, “… it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…”. Somehow, they felt it their prerogative, and their authority to determine and explicate what seemed good to the Holy Spirit. It must then be the case that through the course of their collective consensus observation that these conclusions were not merely their personal opinions, but a clear directive from the divine, “…to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from [acts of] sexual immorality; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well….”. This sort of language is quite unlike what you read in the prophets of the Tanakh, who seem to act on the authority of a particular office from which they were directed to dictate the commands of God. After Pentecost, this office is distributed to the entirety of the council participants in Jerusalem.
This would be the second time such a directive would be sustained by a gathering of fellows in the same Holy city. The first time was a different situation, and it’s found in the opening paragraphs of the book of Acts. “[Act 1:4-5 NASB20] 4 Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” [He said,] “you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”” So it is Jesus Himself who gathers them together, and while they’re waiting in the “upper room”, Peter begins to exhibit his leadership in this new context. After some time of prayerful devotion, that a certain Psalm comes to mind for this modest fisherman, which says, “[Act 1:4-5, 20 NASB20] 4 Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” [He said,] “you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” … 20 “For it is written in the book of Psalms: ‘MAY HIS RESIDENCE BE MADE DESOLATE, AND MAY THERE BE NONE LIVING IN IT’; and, ‘MAY ANOTHER TAKE HIS OFFICE.’” Peter recognizes something that seems like the right direction to take things with the time that they’ve had to process and pray. Judas had betrayed Jesus, and had taken his own life for the scandal his life had become for his treachery. For some reason two particular passages come to mind in this moment, the first being Psalm 69:25, and the other being Psalm 109:8. These are the liturgical prophetic words of David for the Temple worship of the God of Israel. The “pequda”, would be understood as the priestly ministries which David, the King of Israel, had distributed to the sons of Eleazar and Ithamar. There was a majority and minority party among those offspring of Eleazar and Ithamar, and to distribute their offices of “governors of the sanctuary, governors of the house of God,” there was a casting of lots.
The Twelve Apostles of Jesus were not Levites, and yet they are reflecting on their positions through a priestly lens. So to “..occupy…” the “…ministry and apostleship…” of Judas, who had gone his own way, the Apostles saw that it was the Lord who was choosing Matthias, as they cast their lots of determination. Thus their was a seat of “ministry and apostleship”, which was recognized to be empty, which had a certain understood obligation and priority and there was a requirement, from the Lord, to see that it was filled. All via the crude chance game lottery style tactic of casting lots. A very peculiar means of interfacing with the divine, however it will be that in the next chapter the tongues of fire will descend and rest upon each of those disciples that were gathered there, each of them being filled with the Holy Spirit, and given the “ability to speak out”.
This is not to say all was completely random. There was an element of randomness, but there were requirements for any who would be eligible for consideration in the running. Yet being that God was and is inside of all of creation, it would be through the randomness of casting lots that His decree would be established, through the reasoning of those Apostles and disciples.
Even this moment is an echo from the moments in the past when Elijah the prophet had called down the fire to consume the water on the altar in his exchange with the prophets of Baal, or when the Temple of Solomon was consecrated, and the fires of the altar were lit, or when God Himself descended on the mountain of Sinai in fire and smoke. This shows a preference of employing the use of fire to signal to His people where He is, what He’s doing, and what are His preferences. If there were any problems, or anything wrong with the decision to appoint Matthias to that position as Apostle, there would have been no fire, and no person would have been any the wiser. There would have been no Christian church, as the promise of Jesus would never have come.
Yet it is the confession of most Christians today that they are the inheritors of that fire. They claim, themselves, to have tasted and seen the powerful effects of being filled by that same Holy Spirit which filled the disciples on that day of Pentacost, just fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, just the Pesach before. All of these confessing Christians claim that it was at Pentacost that the Church was born, tasting the fruits which are available today to enjoy. Only, the problem now is that there are different communities who are deemed as separate “denominations”, and each one claims to be the legitimate progeny of that event, and that all others are imposters. Determining which is which is a matter of such significant consequence as to who will be truly saved in the Ark which the Church of Christ is intended to be, and all others without are condemned for their contemptible heresies which have distorted, corrupted and mutilated the truth, to their own shame and disgrace.
Paul, the “least of the Apostles”, commended to his fellow devotees, to “hold to the traditions”, which he had handed down to them. This would be the foundation stone laid for the Christians of later generations who would codify this community body as the, “One Holy Apostolic Catholic” church, or “ecclesia”, it is called in the Greek. The “ecclesia” of Greece was a form of local community government which was born in the democracies of Athens, and was popularized by the Hellenization process of Alexander’s empire in the 4th century B.C., and utilized in the dissemination of the Roman Imperial bureaucracy. It was upon the rock of Peter’s confession of, “Christ, the Son of the Living God”, which Jesus said He would build His own, “ecclesia”. The book of the Acts of the Apostles give us the entire narrative the whole history which developed the record for just how that happened.
It was in light of this history, and in the shadow of that memory the Patriarchs of the Church, before and leading up to Nicea, held a number of local synods in every corner of the known world which set the precedent leading up to that first “Ecumenical Council”, as it is now called, and remembered, in 325 A.D. It was in those “Ante-Nicene” sagas, that the church would contend with schismatics and heretics, detractors, and apostates who would deny the orthodox faith, in the face of persecution. In that age of martyrs, the soul of the Church would be tested, tried, and purified to become what would be canonized by the fathers in the 4th century A.D. That First Ecumenical Council was the climax which would produce the most preeminent confession for trinitarian Christians, called the “Nicene Creed”, which became a rallying cry of relief after so much destruction. After three centuries of being put to death by craven power hungry Caesars, the Fathers of the fourth century agreed to Constantine’s request seeing it necessary to articulate the qualities of the confessions for which so many had suffered bled and died.
It was under this banner that Christianity would maintain a unity as a governing Spiritual authority over the Christian world for another 700 years before the first great schism in 1054, which would be the result of the an attempt to amend that creed with the addition of one word. There after Christianity would be maintained through a more and more diverse array of expressions, confessions, cohesions, schisms and denominations which now make up the global community of some near 50,000 expressions. The question remains among them all as to who it is that is holding fast to the traditions handed down by Paul. Each communion has their own particular way of explaining how this is for which each are embroiled in competition to convince the uninitiated for their particular case.
The economy of these confessions is Grace, each one dolling out as much as they see fit for themselves, and leaving the rest for those outside. Yet this Grace, if it is eternal, then it must exist outside of the mere material. The Spirit of Grace being the Holy Spirit of the Trinity, must of necessity be the One who, “are at all times and in all things present”. Such Grace cannot be localized to any particular point to the exclusion and at the expense of its presence in any other time and place. Grace is transcendent, and as such, it’s local inhabitations and incarnations must be distinguished in a matter wherein that transcendence cannot be dismissed, denied or negated. In such a state, one will quickly observe that in all things, it has always been the divinely inspired scriptures of Tanakh, the four Gospels, and the Epistles of the Apostles of Christ, as well as the Apocalypse, have been the bedrock of what may be parsed out as the genuine and authentic testimony of the original eyewitnesses at the time of the events. Only they know what they saw, and we are entirely at the mercy of what has been preserved to those who now live to ascertain the substance of that content.
In the wake of the unfolding pages between then and now, we have the option either to allow the supporting material which is most directly connected to that tradition to inform the way those texts were read, and interpreted. Or, we can cast all caution to the wind, and see what we can determine individually according to our personal perceptions without the guidance of those most directly effected and involved. There might not be as much content as we like, from as many sources or the right sources that we would want, and still, what is there, and what is provided, is more than enough to sketch a fairly concise image of what it was those people were believing and teaching. What becomes crystallized in the canons thereafter on in to the 11th century, is a body of work which requires every lover of the doctrine of the church to contemplate, meditate upon, and equip themselves with in order to formulate any opinions on any particular topic, or doctrinal persuasion.
Unfortunately, far too much energy is put in to what can be justified through the clever employment of mental gymnastics and games with semantics, at the expense of the tradition which the scriptures on to which believers are encouraged to hold fast. Without such tradition, there would be no Christian doctrine, or faith, to speak of. “[Rom 10:14 KJV] 14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” The very reason for which the wise and virtuous Peter discerned the necessity to fill the position of the seat of Judas. Their mission was not dead with him, but it remained alive, with Christ, who is risen, and many play fast and loose with the truth as though no one will no with what mischievous deceit they wax intellectual with vagaries on details that are long settled by the teaching of the Apostles and Bishops of the Church.
[Psa 1:2 KJV] 2 But his delight [is] in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
“What seemed good to the three hundred holy bishops (that is, the members of the Nicene Synod) is no otherwise to be thought of than as the judgment of the only Son of God " - Constantine the Great
“Besides, since with the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, I confess that I receive and revere, as the four books of the Gospel so also the four Councils: to wit, the Nicene, in which the perverse doctrine of Arius is overthrown; the Constantinopolitan also, in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is refuted; further, the first Ephesine, in which the impiety of Nestorius is condemned; and the Chalcedonian, in which the pravity of Eutyches and Dioscorus is reprobated. These with full devotion I embrace, and adhere to with most entire approval; since on them, as on a four-square stone, rises the structure of the holy faith; and whosoever, of whatever life and behaviour he may be, holds not fast to their solidity, even though he is seen to be a stone, yet he lies outside the building. The fifth council also I equally venerate, in which the epistle which is called that of Ibas, full of error, is reprobated; Theodorus, who divides the Mediator between God and men into two subsistences, is convicted of having fallen into the perfidy of impiety; and the writings of Theodoritus, in which the faith of the blessed Cyril is impugned, are refuted as having been published with the daring of madness. But all persons whom the aforesaid venerable Councils repudiate I repudiate; those whom they venerate I embrace; since, they having been constituted by universal consent, he overthrows not them but himself, whosoever presumes either to loose those whom they bind, or to bind those whom they loose. Whosoever, therefore, thinks otherwise, let him be anathema. But whosoever holds the faith of the aforesaid synods, peace be to him from God the Father, through Jesus Christ His Son, Who lives and reigns consubstantially God with Him in the Unity of the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.” -Gregory the Great