On the Journey with Matt and Ken, Episode 1: The Early Church

part of that was because of various scandals I saw going on in the 1980s and 90s in mainstream evangelical Christianity and thinking to myself well why don't we just do it like the early church did I'm looking at the book of Acts and they just they just all were in one Accord right not vehicle you know but the mindset [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to on the journey I'm Matt Swaim along with my colleague Ken Hensley from the coming home Network if you're not familiar with what we are we were founded by Marcus Grodi about 27 years ago to help people from every background imaginable in pastoral care as they explore questions about the Catholic Church can I don't know about you but I'm excited to dig into today's topic yes I am quite excited as this is the first episode of a new show we're doing yes and looking at some of the major issues that Protestants have about Catholics or the Catholics sometimes have about Protestants and bringing our own experience to bear kin just the short version of my story a lifelong Christian I was United Methodist the Nazarene and free Methodists went to Asbury College played a bunch of Christian rock and roll bands and eventually started a Bible study that ended up as a house church along the way reading lots of GK Chesterton and Flannery O'Connor and Tolkien and discovering among other things church history and came into the church in 2005 after a lot of exploring you were you had a little bit more that was on the line when you were when you have a greater journey that was quick but I have to ask you were you actually in a band that was titled throw Jezebel down it was actually fling down Jezebel oh but you being you being the reformed guy I was also a Christian a Christian metal band called death through Adams so I know that your reformers love the book of Romans okay well my story I'll give the simple version as well came to Christ in a totally non-denominational evangelical environment in fact it was a House Bible study where I learned about the Lord and and during that time that I came to it I had a radical conversion to Christ when I was 22 I wound up going to Bible College to getting a degree in Bible and theology going to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena where I got a master's degree then I was ordained into the Baptist ministry so I was an evangelical Baptist pastor for about 11 years what happened to me is that I learned that an an old friend had become Catholic and this was someone that I couldn't ignore this was someone's conversion that I couldn't ignore because he was just a very bright guy and someone that I had very much respected so listening to his conversion story beginning to debate with him to talk with him beginning to read and learn I just became extremely curious with the case for the Catholic faith and the realization that as far as I'd gone in my own studies and all because I was a serious student I did not really know the case for Catholicism so my curiosity that I see now is being born of the Holy Spirit it was God's working me my curiosity led me to begin to rethink my whole world view in terms of the Bible in terms of history theology and all that and I wound up resigning my ministry to enter the Catholic Church in 1996 a long time it so you beat me in by nine years yes so I'm ahead of you you got nine more years of expertise to be able to bring to this discussion yeah well today's topic is church history and our various views on it and how digging into it was a big part of what led both you and I from two very different Christian traditions into the Catholic Church I mentioned that I started off United Methodist Nazarene Free Methodist you know nondenominational house church I went from bigger to smaller denominations progressively and a big part of that was because of various scandals I saw going on in the 1980s and 90s in mainstream evangelical Christianity and thinking to myself well why don't we just do it like the early church did I'm looking at the book of Acts and they just they just all were in one Accord right not the vehicle you know but the mindset everybody just clearly did what Jesus said they didn't invoke their political agendas they did they all were sharing everything in common they just met in people's houses and shared everything why can't we just do that and the assumption was that that's how the church operated until some unspecified time when they decided that they were going to get guys and funny hats to make all these decisions you know and I never really thought to explore that because my general impression of church history was that it looked a lot like the thing that I wished church was like now I wonder for you what your what your impressions were of church history even the importance cuz for me at Asbury I took like scripture classes that's like theology classes I never took a church history class hmm well um okay well mine is a little bit different how did I understand the early church when I was a Protestant and I would have to say that like most evangelicals that I have known in my many years as an evangelical I had a at best a hazy view of the earliest centuries of Christian history I had taken church history courses both in college and then again Matt in seminary and yet when I think back to those courses the early church course is they mainly focused on the rapid growth of Christianity spreading throughout the Roman Empire all the way to England and whatnot they focused on the waves successively of persecutions that Christians had had experienced and when they focused on doctrine they focused pretty much on the development of the doctrine of theology proper and Christology that is the doctrines of the Trinity the doctrine of Christ as the God man you know and all the Arian crisis and all the other permutations of that I didn't remember much of a focus on other issues that is what did early Christians really believe and so basically what I thought this is this is the assumption that I was operating up under all those years was that the church that had been founded by the Apostles was pretty much like my church it was an evangelical Baptist Church in terms of theology and practice and whatnot and that somehow over the course of three or four hundred years it had deformed itself into this monstrosity that we refer to as Catholicism you know most of the time the name constantine comes up when it when the emperor constantine made Christianity legal and that's when it really started to warp itself out but that's sort of the basic image that I had it had to slowly degenerated and deformed itself into Catholicism so I had an unexamined assumption and we're gonna dig into some more of that here in just a second I had this unexamined assumption I knew that the letters of st. Paul and the Gospels were compiled and and officially established the New Testament sometime in the fourth fifth centuries but I also believe that the church fell away before Constantine did I don't think I ever examined the the inconsistency in my own mind that I believe that the church fell away completely before we ever got the Bible I mean these are the kinds of questions I didn't even ask but to give you an idea of you know of how much I just assumed that you know we figured out the Trinity we figured out these other things the divinity of Jesus and when I said we I guarantee you I did not mean the Catholic Church right I wonder what it was that that sort of triggered a sort of train trajectory for you well for me you know as I said earlier I became curious about Catholicism and so I began studying everything in kind of all at the same time I was listening to tape debates I was looking at the biblical material the theological material but in order to tell the story you can't just shoot it out like a you know like a confetti in all directions so history was one of those issues and it was an important one and this is what happened I was reading conversion stories at that time and I picked up a conversion story by a certain gentleman named John Henry Newman you're in the danger zone now man his book apologia pro Vita sua which was his conversion story I read that and then I read his very famous classic essay on the development of Christian doctrine okay I knew this guy was smart I mean you can't read three pages of Newman without realizing you're dealing with a genius here and I knew that he was one of the most well the most famous Anglican convert to the Catholic Church of the 19th century maybe the most famous convert of the entire 19th century I don't know but here's what happened Matt I'm reading his book the essay on the development of Christian doctrine and early on page 5 or 6 I run into this and I'm gonna be reading a few passages from Newman for you so you can get the feel I run into this quoting Newman history is not a Creed or a catechism history gives lessons rather than rules still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter whether he accepted or stumble at it bold outlines and broad masses of color rise out of the records of the past they may be dim they may be incomplete but they are definite and this one thing at least is certain the Christianity of history is not Protestantism if ever there were a safe truth it is this ok so that's a hard thing for someone who has thought that we were just getting back to the basics that we were well you weren't a primitive map just but there are primitive Baptists who'd say we're doing it just like they did in the days of Paul the Apostle well yeah I mean of course I assumed that what that my theology was simply a reflection of the New Testaments teaching and we always want to get back to the New Testament and the old-time religion yeah and because of that we had a tendency to not look very seriously or very closely at what Christians of the second century believed or the third or the fourth of it so I'm reading Newman and and I hear this and I'm thinking what so I flip over like one more page and I run into this to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant I'm like this guy is like I I had never heard anybody state something that bluntly and that boldly but he went on to to elaborate I flip over one more page or so and this is what I read Matt again quoting Newman this utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is a plain fact whether regarded in its early or in its later centuries so much must the Protestant grant that if such a system of doctrine is he would now introduce ever existed in early times it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge suddenly silently and without memorial so I I'm reading this and at this point my mind is beginning to race and I'm thinking have I heard this guy I mean clearly yeah is this what he's saying I mean it is Newman actually saying to me an ordained Baptist minister is he saying that if the system of doctrine that I hold and that I've been teaching in my church if this system of doctrine ever existed in the early centuries of the church it has been clean swept away and there's no evidence of it yeah it's quite a challenge yeah more than a little bit of a challenge and I even remember running into some people who would say well the fact that it doesn't exist just proves how draconian the early Catholic Church was and wiping it away with that man that beggars a lot of belief because we still have records of the Manicheans we still have records of the Gnostics we still have records of every other kind of heresy that was rolling around how is it that only the Baptist's only the Nazarenes only that strain got squashed out completely and erased that's a good question I mean that is a standard question I mean even if you were able to demonstrate to a even when I'm able to demonstrate to one of my Protestant friends at the early church seems awfully Catholic that's a standard one well who knows maybe the church just departed from the truth really early on and why do we have so much Donatists stuff out there Dossett ists or people or the Catholic Church buried the evidence of the Baptist's right that kind of thing well anyway so I'm mad I'm being struck by what I'm reading in new frankly Kent I don't know about you but for me when I came to this point that you're describing right now I was kind of embarrassed you know I felt like I kind of a I just felt sort of stupid about the whole thing I felt some of that too because truly among my friends I thought that I was someone who read really deeply into history because I went all the way back and read the Puritans because I was deep in Jonathan Edwards and John Owen and whatnot yes oh my said father you're thinking Calvin yeah I was reading Calvin and I was reading Luther and so I thought yeah I'm deep in history and suddenly this guy's saying no no I'm talking about the second century and the third and the fourth and the fifth and again I had graduated from a fairly well-known protestant seminary i had been ordained for a number of years but like a typical evangelical i just hadn't spent time i have to admit and it is kind of embarrassing i haven't spent time wrestling with the question what did christians believe in the second century the third the fourth i i knew some of their names i could tell you you know there's clement of rome there's there's Ignatius of Antioch there's Justin Martyr there's irony acai I could name some of and here was one of the most brilliant Christian Minds of the 19th century though insisting telling me that if I were to actually read these guys I would realize they were not Baptists yeah it was like Newman was throwing down the gauntlet in front of me and so this kind of moves to the next step because what happened was I took up the challenge and I began to read the the early fathers pretty much straight through and as in in chronological order as best as we know sure and I had to admit that what Newman was saying seemed to be essentially true when the early fathers talked about the church it didn't sound like the way I talked about it when they talked about tradition when they talked about the sacraments when they talked about the rule of bishops in the church they did not sound at least Baptist okay at that point I would say I mean maybe they sound like a the Orthodox Church or maybe they sound like high Anglican maybe even high Lutheran but they certainly didn't sound like and even jealous or front Baptist no they didn't sound that way this brings up a great point and someone's brought this up on the journey home and of course the the coming home network among other things produces the journey home with Marcus Grodi on EWTN and a guest recently said something that struck me like a smooth stone from David struck the the giant and he fell dead but he said these things you know there are a lot of divisions among Christianity in the present day but the things that we agree on the Trinity the divinity of Jesus those were major debates in the early church and now those are the things that all Christians hold in common the things that we're debating these days that we have differences on like Baptism ask 10 Christians what baptism is and you'll get 10 different answers those were unquestioned unifying principles in the early church that is a quite a point you're making there yeah it's true the things we agree on are the things that that had to be fought through with many permutations of various heresies Arianism and pollen arianism nest or all the rest and yet there are which leads to a good illustration if I can give an illustration of what I'm talking about the illustration would be baptism the doctrine of baptism now this is something that as you say within the Protestant world there are at least four or five different positions that are held in my parents Church there at least three and that's one congregation oh and even one congregation yeah well baptism in the early father's let me give this as an illustration okay because this is one that really did hit me since I was a Baptist and as a Baptist of course to summarize this very briefly I took baptism to be a purely symbolic Rite of initiation kind of nothing happens when you're baptized is this it's a symbolic it's a way of making public profession of faith to the congregation okay well I start reading the early father's I'm reading this little letter called the letter of Barnabas one of the earliest writings that we have post Apostles the subject of baptism comes up and this is how he describes baptism he describes it as quote the washing which confers the remission of sins unquote and then quote we descend into the water full of sins and defilement but we come up bearing fruit in our hearts and at this point I'm just saying what a weird way what a strange way to talk about baptism I mean I I would never have used those terms but you know who does use those terms well the Catholic st. Paul the st. Paul when he's talking to Timothy about the bath of rebirth right there are passages like that in the scriptures but we had so filtered them to got to match whatever it was that we were already doing yeah that they though they didn't even register with us and and that's the thing in our series here this class this um this show that we're doing we're gonna come back to that point Hardcore we're gonna look at the biblical material for baptism and you're exactly right there are all kinds of passages in the New Testament that just jump out once you see this in the early fathers but but I'm focusing here on the father's so I read Barnabas so then I go on it and I read a little book called the Shepherd of hermas another very very early Christian writing and I run into another passage on baptism this is what Hermus says I have heard sir said I from the teacher that there is no other repentance except that which took place we went down into the water and obtained the remission of our former sins and again I'm thinking obtained we went down into the water and we obtained so I I keep writing and all of a sudden I'm in Justin Martyr the first great apologist writing around 150 AD this is what he says as many as are persuaded and believe that what we say and teach is true and undertake to be able to live accordingly are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting for the remission of their sins that are passed to entreat God with fasting while we pray and fast with them then they are brought by us where there is water and they are regenerated in the same manner in which we ourselves were regenerated for in the name of God the Father the Lord of the universe Jesus Christ our Savior and the Holy Spirit they then receive the washing with water for Christ said unto us unless you are born again you cannot you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven so here's Justin describing what happens in baptism by using the word regeneration and tying it into John chapter 3 which I never thought had anything to do with that I never I would have never connected when Jesus is telling Nicodemus you must be born again of water and the spirit I would have just thought well he just means pray the sinner's prayer right yeah you don't because if you don't if you're not already thinking sacramentally you just kind of gloss over things like that but again you're highlighting something that I think is so important because so many of our traditions especially if if you're coming from a tradition that was founded in the 17th 18th 19th century if it was founded in the last 50 years mm-hmm you are learning from someone who is reading scriptures based on what they've been taught by people who are alive or people who have been born in the past 500 years mm-hmm but if you're reading it through the lens of the people who were one generation to generations three generations moved from the Apostles themselves you see that they're there they're looking at a whole bunch of things that we're not looking at and if they were passed on these things in this way you know if you listen to the Catholic Rite of baptism any Protestant would get excited about what they hear because as the baptism is being described they're hearing about the spirit hovering over the waters at creation they're hearing about Noah being saved through water they're hearing about you know naming the Syrian being washed in the Jordan they're hearing about literally every form of water and life as it's mentioned in the Old Testament and I would have never so people sometimes if you were if you're from a tradition like I was when we would say well where is this in the Bible we'd say okay let's do a word study and find the word baptism in the Bible whereas the Fathers didn't look at it that way they looked at every time that water was involved with anything and God was involved and saw baptism and that was really in the spirit yeah yeah that to me was like this is how the early Christians thought of the scriptures why is it that I'm looking at it trying to just do proof text you know and and the point you make about them being closer we are talking about people here that were one generation away some of them were actually disciples of the Apostles and you know what I'm saying here is that this is the view of baptism that comes out let me hit you with a couple more I go to clement of alexandria again one of the early Christian writers he's writing in the second century and this is what he says when we are baptized we are enlightened being enlightened we are adopted as sons adopted as sons we are made perfect this work is variously called grace illumination perfection and washing it is a washing by which we are cleansed of sins a gift of grace by which the punishments do our sins are remitted it's an illumination by which we behold the holy light of salvation I read Tertullian and he says happy is our sacrament of water in that by washing away the sins of our early blindness we are set free and admitted to eternal life baptism itself is a Kippur oil act by which we are plunged into the water while its effect is spiritual and that we are freed from our sins and I'm not going to go on with big quotations here but I could go on I could read Saint Agustin who said baptism washes away all absolutely all of our sins I could read st. gregory of nazianzus who said baptism is God's most beautiful and magnificent gift it is called gift grace anointing enlightenment garment of immortality bath of rebirth it's hard for me to to describe the feeling that I had as a Baptist pastor I'm reading all of these early fathers and they're all describing baptism as conferring the remission of sins as the time when we obtain the remission of sins as when we are back when we're regenerated when we're enlightened when we're given grace and this is what was most striking to me and that's why this is such a powerful illustration it's not as though I found some of the early fathers talking about baptism in these sorts of ways basically every single time you run into one of the early fathers talking about baptism this is the kind of language that they have and the impact of that Numan he just said if there was any evidence of people who thought what you thought about baptism it had been completely erased you know yes so at this point I'm thinking to myself what about the great church historians you know what what do they have to say because this is pretty powerful so anyway just one I want to read to you quickly I picked up J and D Kelly's classic work early Christian doctrines which is a book that is used as a textbook all over the world and I I I riveted in on the section on baptism and this is what he said he says from the beginning baptism was the universally accepted right of admission into the church okay I think I understand that as regards its significance it was always held to convey the remission of sins it is that washing with water with living water which alone can cleanse penitence and he goes on to say a few other things but you know at this point you know I remember coming home one day when I was reading this stuff and I say to Tina I said you know honey I've been crawling around the early church for a while and I've been looking under every Rock I've been looking behind every green tree and every leafy bough and believe me I can't find a Baptist anywhere yeah that's what I said you were and if and and it was true and and I want to get back to the point that you've raised because it's such a good one one of the things that someone could say is well you know the Catholic Church won the battle in the end so they have erased all the evidence you know there were Baptist churches there were Presbyterian churches there were you know nondenominational they weren't all that but that theology was there yeah that theology was there and it's been erased by the Catholic Church just like you know the the Victor writes the history type idea except the point you make is dead-on if that's the case how come we know about all of these heresies from the early church Arianism donatism manic you know in other words there's no evidence that the church sought to hide various groups that existed in fact the church confronted these groups and that's how we know all about them yeah and in addition to that gosh I wish we had like two hours to discuss this because this is really one of those big view things and we're just taking the example of baptism you know you could use any kind of example you could you could spend three times as long on the Eucharist and how that's talked about in the father's and there is no symbolic discussion of the Eucharist as mere bread and wine and the Father you can't find it it's not there or try reading the early father's on tradition and how it relates to Scripture and authority and the church yeah I mean all these subjects will come back to one at a time though you know so that we can so that we can treat them but I can tell you this when I have conversations with you know Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses especially because they're the ones who kind of more formally hold to this idea of a great apostasy that everybody fell away they don't necessarily have a hard date as to when that happens some will say after the death of the last apostle whatever happens to be but in order to believe that you have to believe that Saint John the Beloved Disciple who was the only one left at the foot of the cross who leaned his head on Jesus breast in the Last Supper was absolutely incompetent at relaying what he learned to the people in his Sunday School class right and that means that are in all the risk all in let's just take John because he's a direct connection to Polycarp Ignatius and Irenaeus you know three of the strongest witnesses we have from that generate right after the apostles in the generation right after that they either had to have willfully corrupted what John did or John was just an incompetent teacher I mean that's what you have to believe you have to believe that I can trust John Calvin from 500 years ago or I can trust John Wesley who is probably more trust where they let's be honest yeah but you have to believe I can trust those guys but I can't trust the guys who were taught by the Apostles themselves and you know that this is something that that hit me along the way I had always thought that the you know the the groups that we as Protestants refer to as the cults you know the Mormons the Jehovah's Witnesses and whatnot I I always thought that they were insane for arguing that there is this immediate apostasy I mean it's so immediate in the church's history and it's so universal that there's no evidence of it even you know there's no evidence of a debate and then and then they say that the that the true doctrine was restored you know there formerly referred to as restoration of business or just they were restored when when a you know when I'm you know Joseph Smith comes along or when judge Rutherford comes along you know in the 18th century something or LLS or 97th day Adventist yeah yes 19th century and I remember when it kind of dawned on me that as a Protestant I wasn't really much different you know that my position also was that the church had apostatized and had done so so early that you just don't really see it you just have this kind of early church that that is shaping up as the Catholic Church and then it wasn't restored until the 16th century with Lutheran with Calvin with malonic your day to swing learned what not to beso who you like you know and so it seemed to me that the burden of proof now you know once I saw what I saw in the early fathers it seemed to me that the burden of proof should rest not with me or not with the Catholic to prove that this is what Christianity actually teaches you know as you said to prove that this is what John actually taught you know that is what the church is holding the burden of proof really would be on those who are trying to argue that somehow the beliefs of the early church are not do not do not reflect what the Apostles had taught if one thing I fall exactly what you're saying I mean and I think about this now it's one of the last questions that I asked myself which is the burden of proof is not on the Catholic Church to prove that it's the ones through church founded by Jesus Christ the burden of proof is on me to prove why my weird idiosyncratic twenty-first century version of Christianity is Yeah right that's the that's when it hits you between the eyes and I wish out or Luther's or whoever happens to be in the thousands of denominations that have sprung up since I know that we've probably sparked a few conversations that will you know continue in the comments and I want to encourage people to do that I also can before we go want to encourage people to look at some of your articles at the coming home network they can search your name and find especially how you applied this question to Sola scriptura how you applied it to baptism how you applied it to a few other things and again CH network organ just do a search for Ken Hensley and if you're in the middle of this story if this is if you're actively in the middle of these questions right now and thinking you know what ken and I were thinking we were having those moments that you know maybe we didn't we were in we were in the wrong camp please know that the coming home network works with people like you all day every day and in a pastoral care situation can you work directly with people who are actually clergy in other denominations sorting through these problems yeah and I work with people who constantly are having the same experience that we've described here you know which which to me I could summarize as that once I actually listened to Newman and once I actually read the early fathers it just became much more difficult for me to try to insist that the early church really had been a Baptist Church mino' it had to be something else maybe it wasn't Catholic maybe it was the Orthodox Church maybe I would end up the high-angle can at that point but I knew that I was not looking at your typical non-denominational evangelical but Newman even gives you the out because Newman doesn't say to be deep in history means that you're Catholic he just says to be deep in history means that you cease to be bright yeah and I talked to Protestants every day I talked to Protestant ministers just yesterday had a long conversation on Skype with a young Baptist minister in Scotland who is sweating it out over these same sorts of issues so anyway I can't believe we're out of time I look forward to our happen episode next week where we'll take on another issue and continue the conversation yeah ch network.org come see us and please add your comments to the conversation below we'd love to hear from you I'm Matt Swain thanks Ken Hensley we'll talk to you next week god bless [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

Views: 10,074

Rating: 4.9378643 out of 5

Keywords: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Bible, Prayer, Faith, Religion, Spirituality, Baptist, Nazarene, Methodist, nondenominational, Protestant, Catholic, pastors becoming Catholic, Church history, early Church, Church Fathers, Baptism, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, John Henry Newman, Roman Catholic, Marcus Grodi, Journey Home, Papacy, Born Again, Heresy, Coming Home Network, Converts, Catholic Convert, Becoming Catholic, Reformation, Baptismal regeneration, Bible Interpretation

Id: RFVAyO6AJok

Length: 32min 29sec (1949 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020