“God’s ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own Son”

Orthodoxy from the time of Christ

Continuing with a discussion I am having at Green Baggins with a writer named CD-Host:

CD-Host 206:

Carson’s argument that you quote is that John’s Logos can’t be a reference to Philo’s Logos even though both represent an ideal man because Philo’s Logos never became incarnate.

Carson is arguing that John was fully aware that he used the word, while knowing full well that he intended to co-opt it and affix the Old Testament meaning to it.

But of course that is precisely the entire point of the Johanne prologue that the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us. That’s seems to be precisely what the Johanne community is claiming as their unique contribution.

You’re making an assumption here, and that would be Bauer’s “thesis” about multiple origins and multiple Christianities. It seems as if you’re failing to take into account the work of Hurtado and others who do take the time to peg “orthodox Christianity” to a singular event, and then to trace it chronologically through the first century. In fact, one of the key contentions that Kostenberger and Kruger make in their work “The Heresy of Orthodoxy” is that Bauer and his followers seem to have failed to take into account the whole first century. Certainly, in the second century, Christianity was in multiple locations, and its adherents were influenced by multiple kinds of influence. But that does not exclude that orthodoxy of the first century, and that orthodoxy in the first century is the downfall of Bauer.

So I don’t see how that doesn’t prove derivation. It shows development from Philo, but that is to be expected. Philo is preaching Hellenistic Judaism, John is preaching some form of Christianity.

Again, some early Christians may have had sensibilities that were influenced by Philo, but that does not exclude the “singular event” of the Resurrection that Hurtado writes about.

Kostenberger and Kruger describe this in their work “The Heresy of Orthodoxy”. In the midst of the second century heresies (and other heterodox influences) … :

One may trace a central orthodox doctrine, such as the deity of Christ, back in history in order to establish which group originated first and which one deviated from the other. Larry W. Hurtado, professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and theology at the university of Edinburgh, masterfully does this in his work Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. In essence, Hurtado demonstrates the swiftness with which monotheistic, Jewish Christians revered Jesus as Lord. This early “Christ devotion,” which entailed belief in Jesus’ divinity, was amazing especially in light of the Jewish monotheistic belief that was deeply ingrained in Jewish identity, worship, and culture. The revolutionary nature of the confession of Jesus as Lord and God, especially in such chronological proximity to Jesus’ life, cannot be overstated. The study of early Christian worship of Jesus thus further confirms that heresy formed later than, and was parasitic to, orthodoxy….

Hurtado’s study of early Christian belief in the deity of Christ begins with Paul’s writings (limited to the “undisputed Pauline Epistles”) because they were written prior to other New Testament documents.

A common date for Jesus’s resurrection is 33 AD. Paul wrote letters to various churches between 40 and 60 AD. Whether or not Hurtado believes that Paul’s “disputed” letters are authentically Paul’s is irrelevant. By focusing on only the “undisputed” letters, Hurtado is able to cull

On another side of the “orthodoxy” coin, I’ll say that writers like R.T. France (in his commentary on Mark), Richard Bauckham, and Martin Hengel trace “orthodox” doctrine to Peter and his eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s life. In fact, it is possible to trace Paul’s conversion to within a year of Jesus’s resurrection. There is not much space at all here between the life of Jesus Christ and “orthodoxy”.

Again, I’ve relied on writers like Torrance and Cullmann to trace some of the initial heterodoxies in the writings of 1 Clement and some of the other Apostolic Fathers.

Kostenberger and Kruger note the progression of various heresies through the period we are talking about:

AD 40s-60s: Paul writes letters to various churches; orthodoxy is pervasive and mainstream; churches are organized around a central message; undeveloped heresies begin to emerge.

AD 60s-90s: the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament are written and continue to propagate the orthodoxy that preceded them; orthodoxy continues to be pervasive and mainstream; heresies are still undeveloped.

AD 90s-130s: the New Testament writers pass from the scene; the apostolic fathers emerge and continue to propagate the orthodoxy that preceded them; orthodoxy is still pervasive and mainstream; heresies begin to organize but remain relatively undeveloped.

AD 130s-200s: the apostolic fathers die out; subsequent Christian writers continue to propagate the orthodoxy that preceded them; orthodoxy is still pervasive and mainstream, but various forms of heresy are found; these heresies, however, remain subsidiary to orthodoxy and remain largely variegated.

AD 200s-300s: orthodoxy is solidified in the creeds, but various forms of heresy continue to rear their head; orthodoxy, however, remains pervasive and mainstream.

Consider these more extended explanations:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/05/weakness-of-living-voice-in-2nd-century.html
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/06/kruger-vs-ratzinger-4-four-different.html

Just because Philo was writing during that period, and just because some Christians may have been influenced by his thoughts and writings, doesn’t mean that there is any kind of “derivation” at all.

So I’m basically not finding the argument all that convincing. To argue that John’s Logos had no connection with Plato we would want to see a much stronger conflict that just whether it was incarnate. A good example of what we would want to see is something like morality. The Good for Judaism is tied to ceremonial cleanliness , while Plato’s notion of the Good is tied back ultimately to Happiness. That’s a separate derivation and that’s the sort of thing you would want to see.

So I don’t find Carson’s argument convincing.

Aside from the fact that you got Carson’s argument wrong. Neither Carson nor the others I cited say “John’s Logos had no connection with Plato”. But John is most highly, most radically influenced by the notion that Christ (as God) is “God’s ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own Son” (and this is the conclusion of Carson’s argument, which I cited in 194).

I would disagree with the tie between Wisdom personified, Torah and salvation in the old testament. I don’t see that at all. I see his comment as a huge jump.

There is no need to cement this “tie” because John’s primary referent, again, “God’s Word”, is directly tied to “God’s ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own Son”. That was the overriding orthodoxy that John had in mind as he used this Greek word and concept.

[regarding “Wisdom personified”] Once you assert the evidence there are two possibilities:

There is actually that third possibility, which you fail to acknowledge, that of “the swiftness [and overwhelming depth of conviction] with which monotheistic, Jewish Christians revered Jesus as Lord.”

Dr Wallace’s Problems with Protestant Ecclesiology

Dr. Daniel Wallace has recently put up a blog post lamenting “Protestant Ecclesiology”. Of course, he starts off by affirming his Protestant identity: “I am unashamedly a Protestant. I believe in sola scriptura, sola fidei, solus Christus, and the rest. I am convinced that Luther was on to something when he articulated his view of justification succinctly: simul iustus et peccator (‘simultaneously justified and a sinner’).”

That’s a good start, to be sure. But then, he brings in a not very good concept when he says, “Jaroslav Pelikan had it right when he said that the Reformation was a tragic necessity. Protestants felt truth was to be prized over unity, but the follow-through was devastating. This same mindset began to infect all Protestant churches so that they continued to splinter off from each other. Today there are hundreds and hundreds of Protestant denominations. One doesn’t see this level of fracturing in either Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. Not even close.”

The real tragedy of the Reformation was not that “Protestants splintered”. The real tragedy of the Reformation was that Rome had become what it had become. The Protestants of the time didn’t “splinter”. They did what had to be done. They headed away from Rome. They were unified in their agreement: what the Roman Church had become was a tragedy.

While I greatly admire the work that Dr. Wallace has done regarding our understanding of the manuscripts of the New Testament, I tend to think that he has done a bad thing here, lamenting “Protestant Ecclesiology”. The Reformers did what they had to do at the time; the results are in the Lord’s hands.

Meanwhile, some of what he says, I think, is manifestly unhelpful.

* * *

Dr. Wallace notes that “three events have especially caused me to reflect on my own ecclesiological situation and long for something different.” I’d like to take a look at these.

First, he cites a positive reaction from his associations with “Greek Orthodox folks”:

It doesn’t matter what Orthodox church or monastery I visit, I get the same message, the same liturgy, the same sense of the ‘holy other’ in our fellowship with the Triune God. The liturgy is precisely what bothers so many Protestants since their churches often try very hard to mute the voices from the past. “It’s just me and my Bible” is the motto of millions of evangelicals. They often intentionally forget the past two millennia and the possibility that the Spirit of God was working in the church during that time. Church history for all too many evangelicals does not start until Luther pounded that impressive parchment on the Schlosskirche door.

In Protestantism, one really doesn’t know what he or she will experience from church to church. Even churches of the same denomination are widely divergent. Some have a rock-solid proclamation of the Word, while others play games and woo sinners to join their ranks without even the slightest suggestion that they should repent of anything. Too many Protestant churches look like social clubs where the offense of the gospel has been diluted to feel-good psycho-theology. And the problem is only getting worse with mega-churches with their mini-theology. This ought not to be.

To be sure, I wish more Protestants had a firmer grasp of church history, prior to the Reformation. But that’s not to say that the sameness of Orthodox liturgy is always a good thing. God didn’t make two billion unique individuals only to paste them all into the same mold when it comes to worship. I admit that there’s some benefit to be gained from being able to see what a fourth century liturgy was like. But by the fourth century, Christian worship had already evolved a great deal from its first century origins (and from its second and third century struggles as well). Eastern Orthodoxy has its attractions, but it is wrong to focus on these without considering the doctrinal weaknesses that are inherent in that church as well.

Second, he points to a lack of accountability within some Protestant churches he has encountered:

a man whom I mentored years ago became a pastor of a non-denominational church. Recently and tragically, he denied the full deity of Christ and proclaimed that the Church had gotten it wrong since Nicea. He got in with a group of heretics who were very persuasive. The elders of the church had no recourse to any governing authority over the local church; they were the governing authority and they were not equipped to handle his heterodox teaching. It smelled wrong to them and they consulted me and another evangelical teacher for help. It took some time before they could show the pastor the door, and they were bewildered and troubled during the process. The congregation wasn’t sure which way was up. Doubts about the cornerstone of orthodoxy—the deity of Christ—arose. This cancer could have been cut out more swiftly and cleanly if the church was subordinate to a hierarchy that maintained true doctrine in its churches. And the damage would have been less severe and less traumatic for the church.

This is a tragedy, but again, even individuals who do have “a hierarchy that maintains true doctrine”. In fact, this man’s relatively swift exit from the church, at the hands of “the elders of the church”, may be seen as a blessing. Consider the anguish that someone like Peter Leithart, and a like-minded group in the Northwest Presbytery, is continuing to cause the PCA.

But worse than that, consider the ultimate “hierarchy that maintains true doctrine”, Rome. Consider how that “hierarchy” has gone off the rails, and the infinitely greater trouble it has caused the church of Christ than even that wrought by individuals like Leithart.

A more effective response to this would be to assure that not only elders, but whole congregations full of “non-denominational” Protestants, continue to understand Biblical teaching on “the full deity of Christ”.

Third, he appeals to “the shape of the canon in the ancient church”:

a book by David Dungan called Constantine’s Bible makes an astounding point about the shape of the canon in the ancient church. Dungan discusses the passage in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (6.12) when this church father famously spoke of four categories of literary candidates for the canon—homolegoumena, antilegomena, apocrypha, and pseudepigrapha. Dungan mentions that for Eusebius to speak of any books as homolegoumena—those twenty books that had universal consent in his day as canonical—he was speaking of an unbroken chain of bishops, from the first century to the fourth, who affirmed authorship and authenticity of such books. What is significant is that for the ancient church, canonicity was intrinsically linked to ecclesiology. It was the bishops rather than the congregations that gave their opinion of a book’s credentials. Not just any bishops, but bishops of the major sees of the ancient church. Dungan went on to say that Eusebius must have looked up the records in the church annals and could speak thus only on the basis of such records. If Dungan is right, then the issue of the authorship of certain books (most notably the seven disputed letters of Paul) is settled. And it’s settled by appeal to an ecclesiological structure that is other than what Protestants embrace. The irony is that today evangelicals especially argue for authenticity of the disputed letters of Paul, yet they are arguing with one hand tied behind their back. And it has been long noted that the weakest link in an evangelical bibliology is canonicity.

It’s on this score that I think Dr. Wallace’s comments are weakest. It’s been known and acknowledged many times that the “unbroken chain of bishops” that Eusebius was talking about, simply didn’t exist much further back than the middle of the second century. The “unbroken chain of bishops” was rather an apologetic tool, developed in the second century, to deal with growing Gnostic movements that were encroaching in various cities. Eusebius was merely looking to the status of the church in his day, and assuming that this existed all the way back to the first century.

As Jason Engwer has noted here (and others have noted elsewhere), “We have many lines of evidence for the widespread acceptance of the books of the Protestant canon, such as Eusebius' comments about the degree of acceptance of the books among the churches.” In fact, Oscar Cullmann wrote extensively about the relationship between “tradition” and the canon of the New Testament (see here and here, for example). Eusebius isn’t the only early church writer who talked about the canon. So Dungan’s point about “the shape of the canon in the ancient church” really isn’t “astounding”. It may be new to Dr. Wallace (though given his work in textual criticism, it’s hard to believe this concept is new to him), but the reality of it is that he is conflating a number of issues – “succession”, “canon”, early church ecclesiology, and other issues that require far more explanation than he can give in a short blog post by a single author.

Most importantly, for the canon of the New Testament, is something noted by Herman Ridderbos, and cited by Andreas Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger in their The Heresy of Orthodoxy, pg 171, citing Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, pg 25:

When understood in terms of the history of redemption, the canon cannot be open; in principle it must be closed. That follows directly from the unique and exclusive nature of the power of the apostles received from Christ and from the commission he gave to them to be witnesses to what they had seen and heard of the salvation he had brought. The result of this power and commission is the foundation of the church and the creation of the canon, and therefore these are naturally unrepeatable and exclusive in character.

As Ridderbos says, “The attempt to retain some form of ongoing oral tradition as a supplement to the written canon (as in Roman Catholicism) in fact relativizes the latter and makes illusory the church’s intention in adopting the canon in the first place. By accepting the canon, not only has the church distinguished canonical from noncanonical writings, but it has established in general the limits of what it is able to acknowledge as the apostolic canon. The written canon, then, is the boundary between the history of redemption and the history of the church” (26).

In other words, the fixing of the canon necessarily excludes from the “apostolic witness” what “the unbroken chain of bishops” proposes to bring to it. “The establishment of the Christian written canon indicates that the Church itself at a definite time drew a clear line of demarcation between the time of the apostles and the time of the church, between the time of the foundation and the time of the superstructure, between the apostolic church and the church of the bishops, between the short apostolic [tradition] and the ecclesiastical tradition. This occurrence would be meaningless if its significance were not the formation of the canon (citing Cullmann on Tradition). 

In short, Dr. Wallace’s problems with Protestant ecclesiology aren’t solved by an appeal to Eusebius.