George Washington And Christianity

Mary Thompson, a research historian at Mount Vernon:

Catholics Contradicting Each Other About Eternal Security

I recently saw a Catholic claim that no Christian believed in eternal security before the Reformation. Supposedly, only Gnostics believed in it during that timeframe. See the comments section of the thread here. And Trent Horn repeatedly denied that there was any pre-Reformation support for eternal security in his debate with Ryan Hemelaar (of NeedGod.net). Go here to watch Trent say that no "notable" Christian held to eternal security before the Reformation. He goes on to refer to how the concept is "absent" before the Reformation. And here he refers to how "nobody" held the view during that timeframe. Later he asks Ryan to name "any individual" from the second to the fifteenth centuries. Near the end of the debate, Trent comments that even "named heretics" didn't hold to eternal security, and he refers to it as a "radical, novel" concept.

The Evidence For Fulfilled Prophecy In Revelation

I've occasionally been posting about evidence for the book of Revelation (here and here, for example). Another line of evidence for the book is fulfilled prophecy. I'm a futurist and premillennialist, so I think most of the prophecies in the book haven't been fulfilled yet. Somebody who holds a different view, like some form of preterism, could argue for the fulfillment of a larger portion of the book. But what I want to do here is discuss a line of evidence that Christians in general should agree about.

Some of the prophecies in Revelation are supposed to have been fulfilled near the time of the writing of the document even under the most futurist sort of perspective. I'm thinking of some predictions in chapters 2-3 about the churches to whom the book is addressed. And those churches would have been in a good position to know whether the predictions had been accurate. The stronger the evidence for the early acceptance of Revelation in those regions of the world, the more likely the accuracy of the predictions is.

See my post here that discusses the early reception of Revelation. Irenaeus refers to how "those men who saw John face to face" had commented on a textual issue in Revelation, which suggests that those eyewitnesses of John held the book in high regard and continued discussing it after its initial circulation (Against Heresies 5:30:1). The post linked above also discusses how some comments of Tertullian suggest that the seven churches addressed in Revelation 2-3 accepted the book. The evidence for Revelation's early acceptance, including among the seven churches addressed in the book, is early, comes from sources who were well positioned to judge the subject reliably, and is widespread.

That situation is best explained if the prophecies of Revelation 2-3 were accurate.

Papias' Acceptance Of The Synoptics And John

Another early example of what I discussed in my last post, though a less significant example, is Papias. It's well known that he thought highly of the Synoptics, as cited in Eusebius, Church History 3:39:15-16. Something that gets discussed much less is how various phrases and concepts found in the Johannine literature are found in Papias' writings as well, including in forms very unlikely to be merely coincidental. In all likelihood, Papias was familiar with the Johannine documents in the New Testament and thought highly of them. As I wrote in a post several years ago, "I've already noted Papias' use of 'the elder', a term that John applied to himself. In most lists of the apostles, Peter's name appears first. But in Papias' list, Andrew comes before Peter, followed by Philip. That order (Andrew, Peter, Philip) is identical to the order in which Jesus calls the disciples in John's gospel (John 1:40-41, 1:43). The same passage in Papias uses the phrase 'truth itself' (3 John 12), which is somewhat unusual." For a discussion of some other evidence for Papias' high view of both the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of John, see the sixth paragraph here. Just after discussing Papias' high view of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Eusebius noted that Papias "uses testimonies from the first Epistle of John" (Church History 3:39:16). And he was a premillennialist and is reported to have corroborated the book of Revelation in some sense (see section E2 here). The sort of high regard for the writings of John suggested by all of these lines of evidence is furthered by Papias' reference to an elder named John who seems to have still been alive for some part of Papias' life and whose testimony Papias is interested in (Eusebius, Church History 3:39:3-4). For an argument that the John Papias refers to there was the son of Zebedee, see here. And see my recent post here for evidence that Irenaeus likely had the son of Zebedee in mind when he referred to Papias as an eyewitness of John (Against Heresies 5:33:4). Papias was a bishop in Asia Minor, the region where the seven churches of Revelation resided. He and the audience for whom he wrote provide further examples of what I referred to in my last post, people who seem to have held views that harmonized what's found in the Synoptics and the fourth gospel. Papias was closely associated with John in a variety of ways (as an eyewitness of John, as somebody who lived in an area of the world where John lived and had a lot of influence, as somebody who thought highly of the New Testament's Johannine documents, etc.), and he held a high view of the Synoptics.

How The Book Of Revelation Corroborates The Synoptic Gospels And John's Agreement With Them

Critics of the fourth gospel often fault it for its differences from the Synoptics. But there's a long history of Christians arguing that John wrote with a knowledge of and agreement with the Synoptics and an intention to supplement them.