When Protestants Handle Debates Poorly

I'm not just referring to formal debates, though they're part of the problem. The bigger problem is how Protestants in general handle certain debates in general, whether formal or informal ones.

Bede On Opponents Of Mary's Perpetual Virginity

I've written before about how opposition to the perpetual virginity of Mary persisted beyond the earliest centuries, into the late patristic and early medieval eras. Bede, writing in the eighth century, uses the present tense to refer to opponents of the perpetual virginity of Mary:

There's Not Much Apostolic Disunity In The Gospels

Critics of Christianity often allege that there was widespread disunity among the early Christians: Paul disagreeing with the Twelve, a Petrine community opposing a Johannine community, and so on. There's a large amount of evidence against such claims. I've written about the evidence for apostolic unity in 1 Corinthians 15:11, in the earliest patristic documents, and elsewhere. I've been struck lately, though, by how much material there is against these claims about disunity in the gospels. In John 13:10-11, for example, why would the author have Jesus commenting on how all of his rivals (or rival communities, etc.) are "clean"? Or think of the sitting on twelve thrones in passages like Matthew 19:28. That isn't just an expression of unity, but even unity in an eschatological context, which rules out a future falling away. (Judas is explicitly and repeatedly referred to as not being included in such comments in one way or another, whereas nothing comparable is said of any other apostle. The authors were capable of communicating that they had exceptions in mind if they wanted to, as their comments on Judas demonstrate.)

Look Beyond Your Contemporaries

A common mistake in the Christian life is to get overly focused on our contemporaries. Neglect of God is the most significant form that takes, but it's also relevant in other contexts. How we live affects past generations (e.g., preserving and advancing their work). It also impacts future generations. The psalmist referred to how he was writing "that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord" (102:18). Neither the people yet to be created nor the Lord are the contemporaries we're so often too focused upon. We're even told to be concerned about angels (Hebrews 13:2). And I see no reason to think that the only rational beings other than God are angels and humans. When you think of life more expansively like this, it heightens your view of life in general and provides more motivation to persevere in the face of opposition from your contemporaries.

Even as far as your contemporaries are concerned, you frequently don't know much about how you're influencing them. If you benefit, say, a hundred people in a certain context, you could easily only notice the benefit in a few of their lives or only be thanked by a couple of them, if any. That's the nature of this life, because of sin and other factors. But my main point here is that before we even get to these factors regarding how to evaluate our influence on our contemporaries, there are many other people and issues to take into account. In fact, our contemporaries are outnumbered by the others involved.

Another Reason To Reject The Baptismal Regeneration Interpretation Of John 3:5

In other posts, I've discussed some of the problems with taking John 3:5 as a reference to baptismal regeneration. The exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus is set in an Old Testament context, and baptismal regeneration isn't taught in the Old Testament. Even advocates of baptismal regeneration frequently admit that it wasn't in effect at the time when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus (thus explaining why so many people are justified apart from baptism in the gospels while nobody in the gospels is justified at the time of baptism). The claim that everybody agreed with the baptismal regeneration interpretation of John 3:5 prior to the Reformation is far from true. And so on. You can go here to find links to some of the relevant posts in our archives. What I want to do in this post is focus on another line of evidence.

The terminology of being born again is also used in 1 Peter. I've written elsewhere about how 1 Peter contradicts baptismal regeneration, including in 3:21. 1 Peter 1:23-25 tells us that people are born again in the context of preaching, which is distinct from the later context of baptism (1 Corinthians 1:17). I've discussed the importance of distinguishing between the preaching context and the baptismal context at length elsewhere, like here. So, not only is John 3:5 poorly explained by a baptismal regeneration interpretation in its own context, but such an interpretation also poorly explains the other New Testament passage that uses the language of being born again.

Protestants Are Being Consistent About Canonical Issues

I recently came across a critic of Protestantism who made the common assertion that we need an infallible source to tell us what canon of scripture to follow. Apparently, we're supposed to think that fallibly applying some general principles from an infallible source in order to arrive at a canon isn't enough. This critic of Protestantism seemed to be suggesting that we need an infallible source to do something like list the canonical books for us. Supposedly, it's too difficult to discern a canon without such guidance. And so on.

Part of what we should keep in mind when issues like those come up is that the manner in which Protestants handle those canonical issues is substantially the same as how they handle canonical issues in contexts other than scripture and how such critics of Protestantism handle canonical issues in many contexts in their lives. We all accept canons for the writings of various historical figures (Tacitus, Justin Martyr, George Washington, etc.) without any sort of infallible ruling on the subject, for example. There are ongoing disagreements among critics of Protestantism about which extrabiblical traditions are part of the Christian rule of faith and which aren't, such as which papal teachings qualify as an exercise of papal infallibility and which don't. Those non-Protestants aren't relying on an infallible list, just as they arrive at a lot of other canons in other contexts in life without any infallible list. For further discussion of topics like these, see here and here, among other posts.

More About Zeitoun And The Resurrection

Cameron Bertuzzi just posted a video responding to Gavin Ortlund regarding the Zeitoun Marian apparitions. I want to address several of the issues involved.

Three Problems With Baptismal Regeneration

There are more than three, but here's an easy way to remember three of them. Baptismal regeneration is inconsistent with:

- The freeness of justification (the exclusion of works).

- The immediacy of justification (you can be justified at any moment through a means you always have access to).

- The context of justification (the prebaptismal context of believing while hearing the gospel proclaimed).

You can click the three links above for further discussion of each.

Bede On Jesus' Opposition To Mary In Luke 8:19

"Allegorically this text [Luke 8:19] harmonizes with the one above, where it is said of the Jews who attend only to the letter of the Law: And whoever has not, that also which he thinks he has, will be taken away from him. For the Synagogue from whose flesh he was begot is the mother and brothers of Jesus and the Jewish people. Because the Saviour is teaching inside they are unable to enter in, even though they come, since they neglect to understand his sayings spiritually. The crowd in anticipation enters his house, because, with Judea abandoning him, the Gentiles flocked to Christ, and being more mentally receptive the nearer they were in faith, they drank in the inward mysteries of life, in accordance with what the Psalmist says: Come to him and be enlightened." (Bede, Calvin Kendall and Faith Wallis, translators and editors, Bede: Commentary On The Gospel Of Luke [Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2023], 324-25)

I've written elsewhere about Bede's ignorance of the assumption of Mary.

Exercising The Soul

"For as inactivity hurts the body, so also inactivity as to what is good renders the soul more supine and feeble." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews 10:5)

What should we make of the Zeitoun Marian apparitions?

I've discussed the subject in other threads over the years, but only briefly, and the Zeitoun case has been getting a lot of attention lately. So, I want to expand upon my previous comments.

How many ways are there to be justified?

There are some Biblical passages that can seem to support justification through something other than faith if the passages are taken in isolation. For example, Matthew 19:16-21 could be taken as evidence for salvation through selling your possessions and giving the money to the poor. John 6:53, if it's thought to refer to the eucharist, could be taken to prove justification through participation in the eucharist. John 13:8 teaches salvation through foot washing. Acts 2:38 teaches baptismal regeneration. Acts 8:17 teaches that we're justified through the laying on of hands. Etc.

Early Interest In Mark's Authorship

When critics of the traditional gospel authorship attributions discuss the subject, they sometimes distinguish between the two earlier gospels, which they consider to be Mark and Matthew, and what they take to be the latter two, Luke and John. They'll concede that there are significant internal indications of authorship in the latter two sources, such as the "we" passages in Acts and the reference to the author of the fourth gospel in John 21:24. But it's suggested that we don't have anything like that for the other two gospels.

Where's the fulfillment of Mark 10:39?

In my last post, I referred to how John 21:18-19 lines up well with what other sources report about Peter and Mark's use of Peter as a source. Something similar can be said of the apostle John, but with another element that adds further credibility to what's reported about him.

The Gospel Authors' Witness To Each Other

We often think of the evidence for the authorship of the gospels in terms of internal evidence and external sources of the patristic era, like Papias and Irenaeus. But we should also think in terms of the testimony of earlier sources, including the evidence the gospel authors provide for each other.