Limits On Our Knowledge Of Pre-Reformation History

It's common for critics of Protestantism to claim that various Protestant beliefs are absent in the historical record prior to the Reformation, were only held by a small number of people during that timeframe, etc. For documentation that those Protestant beliefs were more widespread than critics suggest, see here. But another point that should be made is that we sometimes have significantly little record of individuals and groups who plausibly, sometimes probably, held the views in question.

For example, I've written a lot over the years about the beliefs of pre-Reformation groups like the Waldensians and Lollards. Yet, it's often the case that what we know about them comes from their opponents. We're going by trial records, for instance. Think of Norman Tanner's Heresy Trials In The Diocese Of Norwich, 1428-31 (London, England: Royal Historical Society, 1977). In their trial records, the Lollards Tanner wrote about were frequently asked about certain issues: who we should pray to, purgatory, issues pertaining to the sacraments, etc. But there were other issues that were never brought up, at least in the English portions of the trial records Tanner cites. I've documented widespread opposition to and agnosticism about the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary among mainstream patristic and medieval sources, for example, even into the second millennium of church history. How likely is it that Lollards who opposed praying to Mary, opposed venerating images of her, and so on never opposed the idea that she was immaculately conceived or the idea that she was bodily assumed to heaven? But if the church officials who conducted the trials didn't ask them about those issues, and we have no or inadequate records of the beliefs of those Lollards elsewhere, then we don't have any explicit testimony from them on those subjects. We should keep in mind how incomplete our records sometimes are and how plausible it is that the beliefs in question were more widespread than we can document with explicit testimony.

Resources For Evaluating The Enfield Levitations

The BBC recently reaired a television program about the Enfield Poltergeist that came out a couple of years ago. So, there's been another round of media coverage of the Enfield case (e.g., here and here). One of the issues that's come up, as usual, is levitation, including discussion of the levitation photos.

I've said a lot about the evidence for the Enfield levitations in other posts. For an overview, see here. And here's a lengthy discussion of the evidence for the famous December 15, 1977 levitations. Janet Hodgson produced some paranormal results in a scientific experiment conducted in 1982 that was related to levitation. Here's a discussion of that experiment, and here's a lengthy discussion I had with David Robertson (one of the researchers involved) about the experiment and other scientific testing that was done on Janet. You can watch Maurice Grosse discussing the experiment I'm focused on in a 1998 television program here. And there's some photographic evidence for some of the levitations. The post linked above that provides an overview of the levitation issue discusses some of the photographic evidence. Below is a photographic sequence that wasn't mentioned in that post, one that I got from Apple TV's Enfield documentary that came out last year. As Graham Morris explains starting a little after the 30:12 mark in the second part of the documentary, there was one-sixth of a second between the two photos in this sequence:

That's not as good as video evidence, but it's close. (For a discussion of the segment of the documentary featuring Morris' comments, go here and do a Ctrl F search for "30:12". For a discussion of the video evidence for some other Enfield phenomena, see this post. Regarding the common skeptical objection that there isn't more video evidence, start listening here in a 1978 documentary on the Enfield case. The relevant segment is less than three minutes long. You'll hear two professional camera operators, Ron Denney of Pye Business Communications and Graham Morris of the Daily Mirror, commenting on how their camera equipment malfunctioned in extremely unusual ways while they were in the Hodgsons' house and attempting to film the poltergeist's activities. They use the phrases "impossible", "absolutely impossible", and "one chance in a million" to describe the likelihood that these malfunctions would occur by normal means. Their testimony is important for multiple reasons. They're professionals whose jobs involved working with that camera equipment. So, that addresses their competence to assess what's involved and skeptical claims about a need to have professional analysis of such events. Furthermore, the events in question not only provide evidence that something paranormal was going on, but also provide evidence that the entity involved sometimes didn't want to be filmed. The researchers did attempt to film it, though, and were occasionally successful.) For a discussion of the evidential value of some of Morris' other levitation photos, see my overview post mentioned above.

The post here discusses some other levitations. Do a Ctrl F search for "One doctor's" to read about a levitation that occurred while Janet was incapacitated with Valium and, therefore, not in a condition to fake the event. During the course of the Enfield case, a double-digit number of witnesses reported seeing one or more levitations. Do a Ctrl F search for "Edwards" in the post just linked. Read on for a while, and you'll get to a transcript of a discussion between Maurice Grosse and another individual who witnessed some paranormal events, including some levitations. Another subject that comes up in that post and others is audio evidence for these levitations (how tapes of the events corroborate the testimony of the witnesses, a lack of creaking noises from beds and floorboards in circumstances in which those sounds are relevant to fraud, throwing incidents that involved landing with a louder noise than jumping produces, etc.).

I'm just giving several examples here. There's a lot more in the posts linked above and elsewhere. Keep these things in mind when you see skeptics making their typical claims about Enfield and the levitation photos.

What's the significance of the extrabiblical sources?

We need to keep in mind that the significance of extrabiblical sources varies, and can vary widely, from one context to another. On a subject like eternal security, which I've been addressing a lot in recent months, we're in a context in which the Biblical sources provide us with a large amount of information. It's not as though eternal security is some minor issue that never came up or only came up on rare occasions in the Biblical record. It's not something with as little significance as what year Isaiah died or how many times Paul visited a particular city. The potential to lose justification has existed since the time of Adam and Eve, instead of being something that only came up toward the end of the Biblical era or afterward. The Bible provides us with relevant information in dozens of documents from dozens of authors over more than a thousand years. A supposed lack of clarity in one Biblical source can be resolved by consulting another passage or group of passages elsewhere in that source or by consulting one or more other Biblical sources. The nature of eternal security is such that our dependence on extrabiblical sources is much less in that context than it is on other issues.

Something like a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources would give us reason to reconsider our view on the subject, but any conclusion we'd reach would still have to interact with the large amount of Biblical data we have on the topic. But there isn't a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources, as I've demonstrated in my posts on the subject. Since eternal security is addressed so much in scripture and is neither universally nor almost universally absent or contradicted in the extrabiblical sources, we have a situation in which the extrabiblical sources are less significant accordingly.

Whether the topic is eternal security or something else, we need to remember what's involved when people refer to something like "the Bible" or "scripture". There's a sense in which only one source is involved, but there's also a sense in which there isn't. We could similarly refer to the church fathers collectively as "the church fathers" or refer to medieval sources collectively as "medieval sources", for example. But the Bible, like those other collections of documents, consists of many sources who wrote in many contexts. Extrabiblical sources have some value in assisting us in interpreting the Biblical documents, and some people underestimate the value of those extrabiblical sources (because of ignorance, laziness, dishonesty, or whatever other reason), but there's also a danger of overestimating them. And the level of significance they have varies from one context to another.

Remembering William Tyndale And Thomas Bilney

Gavin Ortlund recently produced a good video about William Tyndale. It also briefly discusses another martyr of the Reformation era, one who's discussed much less than he should be, Thomas Bilney. If you go here and here, you can watch a couple of segments on Bilney in a documentary. The first segment is about his conversion. The second is about his martyrdom.

Potential Objections To The Immediacy Of Justification

I've written before about the Biblical theme of the nearness of redemption, the concept that you can be justified at any moment through a means you always have access to. That theme is inconsistent with baptismal regeneration and every other form of justification through works.

But somebody could raise an objection along the lines that what these passages (2 Corinthians 6:2, etc.) are addressing is the nearness of starting the process of getting justified, not obtaining justification itself. There are some problems with that view.

What type of extrabiblical tradition?

Since so many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox evaluations of Protestantism involve criticizing sola scriptura without making much of a case for an alternative, we should consider what's at stake. Not only does rejecting sola scriptura not leave you with Catholicism and Orthodoxy as the only Christian options to choose from, but it doesn't even come close to doing so.

Let's say that somebody found Papias' extrabiblical traditions about premillennialism convincing and added those to scripture as his rule of faith. Would accepting such extrabiblical traditions give you Roman Catholicism? No. Would it give you Eastern Orthodoxy? No. Would it give you the rule of faith of any of the other groups outside of Protestantism that claim apostolic succession, for example? No. Rather, it would give you something different than sola scriptura, but vastly closer to Protestantism than to those alternatives.

We need to keep in mind that there's a large gap separating sola scriptura from something like the rule of faith of Roman Catholicism or that of Eastern Orthodoxy. You can reject the former (sola scriptura) while still being much closer to the former than the latter (the rule of faith of the groups mentioned). When people refer to the importance of sola scriptura, they often have alternatives like Catholicism and Orthodoxy in mind. It doesn't follow that there's so much at stake when alternatives to sola scriptura are considered more broadly. When a Catholic or Orthodox tries to cast doubt on sola scriptura in a way that would still leave you a long distance from those two alternatives to sola scriptura, that long distance is important to note. We should also note the shortness of the distance between sola scriptura and other alternatives. In my example involving Papias and premillennialism, much less is at stake than would be involved in something like a conversion to Catholicism or a conversion to Orthodoxy. Or think of how individuals like Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 1:10:1-2) and Tertullian (The Prescription Against Heretics, 13) defined the apostolic tradition of their day. It was vastly different than what Catholics and Orthodox are advocating in our day.

Often, it seems that those who suggest that there's a narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura have certain assumptions in mind that they haven't articulated or justified, assumptions their opponents don't accept. If the narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura depends on those assumptions, then framing the discussion around that narrower range of alternatives is only as good as those assumptions.

No, Extrabiblical Evidence Isn't Roman Catholic Or Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Reliance on extrabiblical evidence is often equated with dependence on the alleged traditions of a group like Catholicism or Orthodoxy. But it doesn't make sense to equate extrabiblical evidence with tradition as those groups define it in any relevant way.

For example, all of our Bibles are based on many manuscripts produced by unknown individuals. There's no reason to classify those manuscripts as part of the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or some equivalent in Orthodoxy. How we define the terminology used by the Bible, what we know about the surrounding historical context, and so forth are largely shaped by a variety of extrabiblical sources, including many archeological artifacts and documents that come from sources who didn't even claim to be Christian. Getting information from those sources isn't equivalent to depending on Catholic tradition, Orthodox tradition, etc. Even when we're assisted by one or more church fathers or what are commonly referred to as patristic documents, we aren't thereby relying on something like the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or Orthodoxy. There's no reason to think the Didache, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, and other such sources were Catholic or Orthodox. Similarly, when a modern Catholic or Orthodox uses information found in Tacitus, an archeological artifact from an unknown Christian source, or a modern translation of a patristic document produced by a publisher outside his ecclesial affiliation, he isn't thereby violating his rule of faith, obligated to agree with the rule of faith of those sources, or any other such thing.

Reformation Resources

Reformation Day is coming up later this month. Here's a collection of resources on Reformation issues. I occasionally update that post. Since last October, I've added a new link on infant baptism. I also updated the eternal security link to go to a series I wrote on the topic earlier this year. The collection of links on baptismal regeneration has been updated as well. And I added a link to a post about the claim that Luke 1:34 reflects a vow of perpetual virginity Mary had taken. I also added a new link on sola scriptura. A new link was added on Roman Catholic miracles. One of the posts on the perpetual virginity of Mary had a link added concerning ongoing opposition to Mary's perpetual virginity in the late patristic and early medieval eras, from the fourth century onward. And I added a link about how those who believed in some form of justification through works before the Reformation disagreed about which works justify.

The Death Of John Warwick Montgomery

When I was a teenager, shortly before the internet came along, I got a lot of my information about Christianity from television. One of the few individuals on Christian television (and television in general) who spoke highly of the evidence for Christianity and often articulated it well was John Warwick Montgomery. I remember occasionally seeing him on John Ankerberg's program, and I probably saw him elsewhere (maybe on D. James Kennedy's show, for example). Montgomery represented a more intellectual and generally more mature form of Christianity than what you typically encounter in modern Evangelical circles. He had a positive effect on my early thinking about religious issues, and I'm grateful for his influence in my life.

He died last week. Shane Rosenthal posted an article about Montgomery just after his death. In that article, Rosenthal links the audio of a radio program Montgomery appeared on with Rosenthal and others. I recommend listening to it. You can access it here. They interviewed some people at a pastors' conference (pastors, their wives, etc.) and asked the attendees some questions related to apologetics. The large majority wanted to use their conversion testimony or something similar in discussions with non-Christians rather than take an apologetic approach, made derogatory comments about apologetics, etc. Montgomery made a lot of good points in response, and the responses of the hosts of the program are often good. Here are a few examples of Montgomery's comments, but these aren't all of the good ones he made. I recommend listening to the whole program:

Silently Allowing The Master To Be So Insulted

"It is no common zeal for the house of God which ought to penetrate and engross the hearts of believers. When, therefore, the Divine glory was polluted, or rather lacerated, in so many ways, would it not have been perfidy if we had winked or been silent? A dog, seeing any violence offered to his master, will instantly bark; could we, in silence, see the sacred name of God dishonored so blasphemously?...Were a dog to see an injury offered to his master, equal to the insult which is offered to God in the sacraments, he would instantly bark, and expose his own life to danger, sooner than silently allow his master to be so insulted. Ought we to show less devotedness to God than a brute is wont to show to man?" (John Calvin)

Love Starts With God

"So that when He biddeth thee love Him, He then most of all showeth that He loves thee. For nothing doth so secure our salvation as to love Him." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Second Corinthians, 30:4)

Biblical Interpretation In Support Of Eternal Security Before The Reformation

Over the years, as I've read pre-Reformation sources who advocated some form of eternal security, I've noticed that they often cite some of the same Biblical passages advocates of eternal security bring up today. That's significant, given how often critics of eternal security suggest that nobody believed in the concept before the Reformation, that modern interpretations of the relevant Biblical passages are novel and wouldn't have occurred to the pre-Reformation sources, etc. See, for example, my comments in the posts here and here concerning the use of 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 by proponents of eternal security more than a thousand years before the Reformation. In a previous post, I mentioned a book on Gottschalk by Victor Genke and Francis Gumerlock. When I read that book, I repeatedly came across examples of Gottschalk citing certain passages of scripture in the same way or a way significantly similar to how I and other advocates of eternal security interpret those passages (e.g., the citations of John 6:37 and 10:28-29 on page 129, the discussion of Romans 5:9 on page 63 in Gottschalk And A Medieval Predestination Controversy [Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 2010]).

Even when a particular Biblical passage isn't brought up, we have indirect evidence for how the passage was interpreted. As I've said before, if a Jehovah's Witness were to interpret a passage of scripture in a manner that contradicts the deity of Christ, we wouldn't need to have an extant document in which Athanasius comments on that passage in order to conclude that he probably didn't view the passage as the Jehovah's Witness does. Since Athanasius affirmed the deity of Christ, we would assume that he didn't interpret the passage as the Jehovah's Witness interprets it. The same principles apply to how scripture was likely interpreted by the people who held to eternal security in the pre-Reformation era.

James and John, not full biological brothers?

The late Roman Catholic scholar John Meier made a good point about the perpetual virginity of Mary that should be brought up more often. What's our initial impression when the terminology that's applied to Jesus is applied to other individuals? When the New Testament refers to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, as brothers, what's our initial impression about their relationship? That they're full biological siblings. Most likely, we retain that initial impression for the rest of our lives, unless we encounter overriding evidence. Terminology is sometimes applied in unusual ways. The term "son" can refer to an adoptive rather than biological relationship, for example, but that doesn't prevent us from recognizing that the biological meaning is more common. The New Testament qualifies Jesus' familial relationships with the virgin birth, but it never qualifies those relationships with something involving perpetual virginity on Mary's part. The absence of any effort to provide such a qualifier by so many authors across so many contexts is significant. My main point here, though, is that advocates of the perpetual virginity of Mary need to provide an overriding justification for interpreting the terminology the way they do. The way we interpret the relationship between James and John is an illustration of that.

What You Really Get Excited About

"I know that some of you are not the least interested in these [religious] things. You have no emotional resonance with what I am saying at all. What you really get excited about is a new CD. Or a new outfit. Or losing five pounds. Or watching a ballgame. Or adding a room to your house. Or getting a new car or computer. To you – children, teenagers, adults – I plead, along with the apostle Paul, 'Wake up, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light' (Ephesians 5:14). Don't be like the person who goes to the Grand Canyon with a little garden shovel in his hand, and on the precipice of that majesty turns his back to the Canyon, kneels down, and digs a little trough with his shovel and shouts, 'Hey, look at this! Look at my trough!'" (John Piper)