Christianity's Most Toxic Idea [and Its Ancient Origins]

when i left christianity there were plenty of arguments and accusations i expected to encounter from christians you believe everything came from nothing you have blind faith and science you misunderstood this passage in the bible etc one popular accusation really caught me by surprise though drew you're lying you didn't leave the faith because you were no longer convinced of it there's one reason why anyone rejects the gospel you know it's all true but you want to sin yes me the guy who was and is married and living happily in accordance with god's purity standards the guy who didn't have his first sip of alcohol until he was 22 and had been an atheist for over a year the guy who had exclusively christian friends family and employers who were so devout that leaving faith meant risking every relationship in his life professional and personal it would have been so much easier for me to stay christian and i had no sinful incentive for leaving christianity saying that i disagree with christianity because i want to sin was not only entirely unfounded but quite obviously far from the truth as i've listened to the ongoing dialogue between christians and non-christians i continue to see this attitude among many anyone who disagrees with my theology secretly knows i'm right but denies that because of their own moral failings after a while i started to wonder where exactly this idea comes from why do so many christians from some of my own christian commenters all the way to many well-known christian apologists espouse the view that those who say they disagree with them do so dishonestly for the sake of selfish personal gain i decided to dig into this issue to see if there was some underlying cause behind the popularity of this view and i think i might have actually found something something pretty big okay so this one view represents a big topic with quite a wild history so i'm going to have to take you guys on a bit of a journey into the past for this one i'll be diving into where this attitude likely came from historically first though i'd like to introduce you to my collaborator on this topic who will discuss contemporary apologist display and justification of this attitude later in the video those of you with good taste are already subscribed to his channel of course but those of you who could still use some quality content in your feed meet palgia hello everyone i'm paul from apologia where a former christian takes a look at the claims of christians that's something i say at the start of each of my videos having been a christian i knew the reaction of current christians would be to accuse me of never having been a christian at all what i wasn't prepared for was the constant call to defend the christian doctrine that i held back when i held christian doctrine they want me to explain my orthodoxy orthodoxy in the modern sense so that they can identify my heresy heresy in the modern sense and so discover exactly what belief i held that was keeping me from jesus all along as an apostate i'm obviously a heretic in the modern sense but did you know that according to today's orthodox in the ancient sense are also modern versions of heretics in the ancient sense he in romans 1 makes it clear over and over and over again every single person knows god exists confused well for this one we're going to need a bit of a history lesson from drew and it's a strange one but i'll be back to show you how what we have learned applies to our lives today as mentioned earlier i came across something big that informed my understanding of why so many christians hold to this attitude that thing was the classical view of orthodoxy and heresy as propagated by a specific group of christians from the second century onward back in the second century ce there existed a certain group of christians who gained power fighting other christian groups tooth and nail for theological and political dominance in the enormously theologically diverse christian world of the time over centuries they came to establish among other things a creed describing their beliefs called the nicean creed a scriptural canon based upon their theological beliefs known as the new testament and a school of thought surrounding the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy this group is who new testament scholar bart ehrman calls the proto-orthodox why do i use the term proto-orthodox well there's one group of christianity that ended up winning out deciding what's to be believed the other groups were declared at that point to be heresies what about the people who believed that view before it became orthodoxy that's what i call proto-orthodoxy this is the group that gave us the terms orthodoxy and heresy as we know them a look at the etymology of these terms gives us a clue as to how the proto-orthodox viewed those with theological differences the word orthodox comes from two greek root words one meaning right or true and the other meaning opinion so taken literally orthodoxy refers to having the right opinion meanwhile heresy comes from a greek word meaning choice or choosing for oneself so what this etymology seems to suggest is that in using the terms of orthodoxy and heresy the proto-orthodox define themselves as the group with the theologically right opinion while defining anyone who disagreed with them as those who chose not to believe the right opinion yeah that heresy definition is a little odd huh i mean implicit in the definition is the idea that so-called heretics choose not to have the right opinion so let me get this straight according to this view heretics choose to be wrong for some reason implying that they know orthodoxy is right it also logically follows that if a person chooses to have a different opinion than an orthodox person that implies that that person knew of the orthodox view before they chose to reject it so did these definitions imply that the proto-orthodox asserted that their detractors knew proto-orthodox theology was right but chose to reject it because they wanted to i don't know sin maybe they do imply that maybe they were even meant to based on those definitions alone however i don't think that we can definitively say whether or not the proto-orthodox did see so-called heretics as dishonest willfully wrong morally weak people however we do have quite a bit of literature from the proto-orthodox an examination of some of their literature might even reveal a bit about their attitudes towards so-called heretics and whether or not they upheld the implications of the definitions we discussed so let's take a look at some of that literature we'll start in the new testament book of acts chapter 20 the apostle paul's final lesson to the elders of the church at ephesus before he leaves them to maintain their church on their own we'll read verses 28 to 31 keep watch over yourself and all the flock of which the holy spirit has made you overseers be shepherds of the church of god which he bought with his own blood i know that after i leave savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them so be on your guard remember that for three years i never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears so the question here is whether or not paul a genuine apostle according to the proto-orthodox actually saw so-called heretics as dishonest willfully wrong morally weak people how does he describe them here then as ravenous wolves who will arise to distort the truth in order to draw disciples into following them instead of the church paul has apparently even warned them of this night and day with tears it sounds like paul may have taken the view that christians of any other persuasion than his own were willfully wrong knowing the truth but distorting it for their own selfish gain let's explore further though and see if this view was held more widely moving on to acts chapter 8 the story of a pesky magician simon magus i'm going to editorialize a bit for the sake of time then dig into what the proto-orthodox hairstylist had to say about this story now for some time a man named simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of samaria he boasted that he was someone great and all the people both high and low gave him their attention and exclaimed this man is rightly called the great power of god they followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery but when they believed philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of god and the name of jesus christ they were baptized both men and women simon himself believed and was baptized and he followed philip everywhere astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw next apostles peter and john come to samaria to give the people there the gift of the holy spirit through a process of prayer and laying on of hands when simon saw that the spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles hands he offered them money and said give me also this ability that everyone on whom i lay my hands may receive the holy spirit peter answered may your money perish with you because you thought you could buy the gift of god with money you have no part or share in this ministry because your heart is not right before god repent of this wickedness and pray to the lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart for i see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin then simon answered pray to the lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me that's all we hear about simon magus in the bible but early christian apologists like justin martyr and heresyologist like irenaeus wrote about him further their take on the guy pretty scathing as we're about to see okay on to our next piece of proto-orthodox literature the earliest written account of the orthodox church history simply titled what can be translated to the church history discussed these views among the proto-orthodox authored by eusebius bishop of caesarea in the 4th century the church history provides a 10-volume account of the history of christianity from the so-called beginnings up to eusebius on time the account actually begins before the birth of jesus and discusses both the pre-existence of jesus as well as his nature as god and man this reveals the account's theological foundations and eusebius probable bias toward the proto-orthodox narrative that's not a bad thing for our purposes though we want to see how the proto-orthodox frame their historical encounters with other christian groups in a chapter titled simon magus eusebius recorded the proto-orthodox view of the very beginnings of heresy referencing the work of his fellow heresyologists throughout but faith in our savior and lord jesus christ having now been defused among all men the enemy of man's salvation contrived to plan for seizing the imperial city for himself he conducted thither the above-mentioned simon aided him in his deceitful arts led many of the inhabitants of rome astray and thus brought them into his own power this is stated by justin and after the ascension of the lord into heaven the demons put forward certain men who said they were gods and who were not only allowed by you to go unpersecuted but were even deemed worthy of honors one of them was simon a samaritan of the village of gito who in the reign of claudius caesar performed in your imperial city some mighty acts of magic by the art of demons operating in him and was considered a god and as a god was honored by you with a statue which was erected in the river tiber between the two bridges and bore the inscription in the latin tongue simoni de osanto that is to simon the holy god justin relates these things and irenaeus also agrees with him in the first book of his work against heresies where he gives an account of the man and of his profane and impure teaching we have understood that simon was the author of all heresy from his time down to the present those who have followed his heresy have feigned the sober philosophy of the christians which is celebrated among all on account of its purity of life eusebius doesn't stop his description of these so-called heretics here though he goes on about their moral character and his opinion on them becomes quite clear but those matters which they keep more secret than these in regard to which they say that one upon first hearing them would be astonished and to use one of the written phrases in vogue among them would be confounded are in truth full of amazing things and of madness and folly being of such a sort that it is impossible not only to commit them to writing but also for modest men even to utter them with the lips on account of their excessive baseness and lewdness for whatever could be conceived of viler than the vilest thing all that has been outdone by this most abominable sect which is composed of those who make a support of those miserable females that are literally overwhelmed with all kinds of vices the narrative set up regarding heresy here seems to take the attitude of paul in acts chapter 20 and intensify it this so-called heretic simon magus isn't just viewed as a ravenous wolf who distorts the truth but as a literal demon-infested madman with deplorable moral failings and a god complex and apparently all heresy stands on the foundations he laid this makes all other so-called heretics similarly corrupt in the eyes of a proto-orthodox to simon himself wait you might say if simon magus was really treated as a god and he wasn't one isn't their attitude somewhat justified well about that remember how justin martyr said that simon was worshiped so fervently that a statue was erected on tiber island in his honor with the inscription simone de osanto that is to simon the holy god well that statue was found in 1574. the inscription actually read simone sanco sanctodeo this senko changes the identification of this altar from potentially being for simon magus to definitely being for the pagan god of trust called semosankus who had been worshipped in rome for centuries so the proto-orthodox weren't entirely accurate in their portrayal of simon magus maybe he was a con man maybe he was greatly venerated i'm not sure further details of his actual nature are a bit beside the point here though because we can see that after interacting with him at least the proto-orthodox spun exaggerated tales of his story and then allowed those tales to inform their perspective on so-called heretics going forward the proto-orthodox thought according to a narrative framework that said they were the only true representatives of the gospel and that anyone who came along and disagreed with them were the willfully wrong morally repugnant ravenous wolves which paul warned of worse still they might even be under the influence of demonic forces set out to claim god's glory for their own if you continue to read through eusebius church history you see that he constructs a narrative wherein morally deplorable willingly wrong men who purposely distort the truth for the sake of personal gain attack the proto-orthodox only to be swiftly defeated by god and his faithful servants the evil power who hates all that is good and plots against the salvation of men constituted simon at that time the father and author of such wickedness as if to make him a mighty antagonist of the great inspired apostles of our savior wherefore neither the conspiracy of simon nor that of any of the others who arose at that period could accomplish anything in those apostolic times for everything was conquered and subdued by the splendors of the truth and by the divine word itself which had but lately begun to shine from heaven upon men and which was then flourishing upon earth and dwelling in the apostles themselves we're pretty sure this isn't how things actually happen now that we've recovered more literature from other early christian sex by the way other christian sex continued to exist in produced literature a lot of people just don't know that because the proto-orthodox wrote the history books until more recently it turns out that there's more than one side to the story who would have thought right it's quite clear at this point though that definition of heretic we covered a person who chooses to believe the wrong opinion really seems to be in play among the proto-orthodox at the same time it appears that they thought moral failings were to blame for the contrary ideas of others the fact that these ideas have been in circulation so to speak since the early days of christianity makes one wonder is that ancient theological position preserved in the attitudes of theologians and apologists today well apologia can explain why and how we think it might just be fast forward to today and the words orthodoxy and heresy are still as popular as ever in christian circles for a christian when he or she hears some doctrine that they disagree with to label it heresy but notice that this type of modern heresy varies greatly from the ancient heresy in drew's history lesson the essence of this ancient heresy phenomenon was once described by legendary christian theologian c.s lewis you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong the modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this the only real issue by busily explaining how he became so silly in fact lewis found this vice so common that i have had to invent a name for it i call it vulvarism now undeniably we see the centuries and millennia-old orthodoxy wars continue today in certain corners the authority claims of the catholic church are really vapid but did you know that this fundamental doctrine of protestantism is incoherent eastern ways of thought are not as wedded to logical categories but in general with our world more interconnected than ever young christians are able to instantly look things up for themselves and no longer be limited to the ideas and perspectives of their local pastor in church pure tradition assertion and black and white heresy orthodoxy thinking isn't going to cut it with his group and we are now in the era of online mega ministries that are attempting to span the globe and therefore reliant on crossing denominational lines in order to meet numbers and budgets they can't afford to alienate swaths of believers and so the heresy rhetoric is toned down if we use the word heresy to describe merely bad theology that might be heterodox or just different from what other people think is right well then we kind of water down the word and it can't do the work it needs to do when we really need the word now certainly there are some ministries that continue to brandish the heresy word with great vigor spending more time attacking fellow believers than they do non-believers just making a quick video to expose one of the false teachers of our day a guy by the name of pastor greg locke a lot of these pastors and a lot of these academics that you know so-called christian colleges but these kind of exclusionist groups like the young earth advocates king james only groups and ifb and others those that utilize an extreme us versus them strategy even against other christians to maintain cohesion in numbers are more of the exceptions that prove the trend in public at least modern apologists do everything they can to avoid mentioning differences rather minimizing them whenever they can and so it's that common ground that makes us christians and then the smaller distinctions makes us interesting i'm not willing to divide and maybe i should be but i'm not willing to divide this point i think i this is not what i would consider to be a christian essential and that's where i think we need to spend our time on the essentials is jesus god ask most apologists about the age of the earth whether believers will face tribulation methods of baptism how sanctification works or any number of controversial denomination dividing topics and they'll avoid and harmonize but this doesn't mean that today's christian spokespeople have given up the time-honored tradition of avoiding argumentation by instead attributing motive this is health live and well just no longer pointed at fellow christians instead this bulvarism is aimed squarely at the non-believer she's invoking a moral law and she's invoking words which basically tells me she's actually borrowing from the judeo-christian worldview in order to debunk it the reason people reject god is not because of science and to reject the bible it's not because of science it's because of sin every single time we know what the truth is we know there's a god we know there's a creator god we know there's a moral god it's written on our hearts but we suppress that because we want to do our own thing you can't know anything for sure whenever you're right you're just borrowing from my world view you just want to sin you're suppressing the truth these are but a few among the charges of heresy leveled at every non-believer but regardless of who's doing it these tactics serve only to obfuscate not to illuminate i don't say this often but we should heed the warning of c.s lewis but of course it gets us not one inch nearer to deciding whether as a matter of fact the christian religion is true or false as that question remains to be discussed on quite different grounds a matter of philosophical and historical argument however it were decided the improper motives of some people both for believing it and for disbelieving it would remain just as they are paul is right we get no closer to the truth when we assume and assert the motivations of our interlocutor in place of actually contending with their ideas no matter who you are and regardless of the precedent set by early christian leaders bulvarism will only serve to separate you not only from the people you'd like to convince of your points but also from the truth itself i highly recommend checking out and subscribing to apologia it is in my opinion simply the most thorough consistent fair and compassionate counter-apologetics channel on youtube if you liked this video you should definitely check out paul's video where he responds to william lane craig engaging in some good old-fashioned vulvarism toward paul himself that the intellectual life of this person was just allowed well it was it was stagnant it was he was had a brain dead christian faith brain dead wow this is a full-on attempt to poison the well against what i haven't even said yet if what i'm about to say is so obviously wrong why all this preamble attempting to analyze me and frame my position finally much of this video echoes the points within chapter 8 of dr bart ehrman's fascinating book lost christianities i read it a couple of months ago i loved it and i ended up reading it again just a few weeks later the book discusses the reality of early christianity as an incredibly diverse phenomenon that could hardly be described as a unified or single religion it examines gospels not included in the biblical canon the sects that produce them christian theology you've almost definitely never heard of and the brutal mudslinging that occurred across groups did you know many christians in the ancient world thought the apostle paul had a female sidekick did you know many christians back then believed in multiple gods did you know that there were entire christian groups who thought jesus didn't even have a body but with some kind of magical maybe holographic projection and did you know some christians even thought yahweh was actually evil probably not because the early christian history most of us know was written by the theologically motivated proto-orthodox if you'd like to dig into lost christianities you can listen to its audiobook like i did on audible i'll spare you guys the details because i'm sure you know how this works you can click on the link in the description and pin comment that's audibletrial.comgmskeptic to get a one month free trial of audible where you can listen for free of course to lost christianities and any other books of your choosing every trial you guys get directly supports me in my channel and you can cancel at any time i only recommend it legitimately because i actually use audible every day myself alright guys thanks for watching i've been drew a genetically modified skeptic a special thanks to my patrons who are always incredibly supportive and make great company in our hangouts if you want to hear more from me subscribe and follow me on social media at the handles below as always if you're an apostate in need there are resources linked in the description to help you find community and mental health support remember to be kind to others in the comments as always and until next time stay skeptical

Channel: Genetically Modified Skeptic

Views: 609,004

Rating: 4.8352017 out of 5

Keywords: atheism, atheist, agnostic, skeptic, skepticism, genetically modified skeptic, gm skeptic, Simon Magus, Simon the Sorcerer, Eusebius, The Church History, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Christian Gnosticism, heresy, orthodoxy, orthodox, what is heresy, heretic, Greg Koukl, Frank Turek, Ravi Zacharias, William Lane Craig, atheist because you want to sin, atheists want to sin, paulogia, counter apologetics, Bart Ehrman, Gnostic, A Wild Story From a Gospel Excluded from the Bible | Gospel of Judas

Id: 78NQtotfdJI

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020