11 - Ignatius to Smyrneans, Romans, Ephesians

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okay we are this is lesson 10 I think 11 lesson 11 we are setting new records for slowness and and are working through church history

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I hope you don't mind that too much we are reading through some of Ignatius and trust me we will pick up the pace after this

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I just think it's important to spend a little time with the earliest sources we have there are just so many other sources later on that we would not be able to spend much time with them but I think these are the most important and as you may recall we got sidetracked a little bit last week and I I could

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I almost did predict it but I was contacted

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I did get a Twitter message from a Lutheran and I told you so there's some

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Lutherans that will complain wildly about this but the general term used to describe

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Luther's doctrine is consistent well it doesn't matter how clearly you go the general term used there are

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Lutherans who disagree doesn't matter as long as you say it are you talking about and like I said with Luther and they also objected the idea that there are many

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Lutheran isms or that Melanchthon and it's like I'll leave that to you guys I think it's just really obvious and but I'm not interested in arguing with you about it

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I've had one there's one Lutheran guy that's just been hankering for a debate on baptism with him forever on the

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Lutheran view of baptism it's like I just don't have any interest I don't I don't feel any compulsion to to debate every topic known to man if I don't have if I don't have an interest in it why you know find somebody who actually finds it to be interesting

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I don't want to debate baptism with Lutherans you know I mean just the amount of time it would take to define which

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Luther we're talking about would be you know would pretty much exhaust our time I'm just not interested to find somebody who is but I have to be interested in whatever

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I'm told to be interested in so anyway we had jumped the track because we had read the section in Ignatius's epistle to the

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Smyrnians about the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ and and the abuse of that text in modern

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Roman Catholic apologetics and once we provide the background then we understand why the

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Gnostics refused to view the Lord's Supper appropriately is because they rejected the physical incarnation of Jesus Christ and so they did not believe the

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Christ had taken on human flesh and therefore the idea of memorializing flesh and blood is is going to be rejected by them and so once again just when you when you see things well if you see anything online and I'm a person who post a lot of stuff online but if you see anything online 99 .9

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% of it's being cut and pasted from someplace else and it's it's pretty rare you know

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I mean I have you know this is this is a pretty decent source here but I'm reading a translation of the

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Greek text you know we can go into the Greek text but the Greek text has been passed down and there can be textual variance in the

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Greek text and things like that so almost all of us you know we have to deal with secondary sources but we need to keep that in mind and I just I just encounter so many people today and it really concerns me they'll contact me and I love everything you do but this guy told me

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X Y & Z and man he's just totally blown me away like like one thing and all of a sudden they're they're teetering

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I it reminds me a little bit anybody ever been to Mexican Hat is it Utah you know what

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I'm talking about there near Monument Valley and it's really not anything big and major it's a big old hat on top of a little it's big old rock on top of Little Rock which eventually some big old storms gonna probably knock over and there won't be any

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Mexican Hat left but but it's just it's just a big round I look like it's a sombrero okay and so it's a big old rock that's sitting on a little rock which you wouldn't expect it to have been that way and so they have a little you can pull off and buy a coke and you know this is really about all there is there but that's that's sort of that's sort of you know people making a really huge big deal out of just a little thing and and and they seem they just seem really tenuous in their faith that easily blown about like one big old storms gonna knock that thing right off that what it's sitting on and that concerns me

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I'm not saying we shouldn't think about challenges and think about them seriously and stuff like that but the speed with which people are just I saw something on Facebook okay it does make me start wondering if maybe that's what

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Jesus was referring to will I find faith on the earth and you really start you really start wondering okay one other thing to mention here since we're in the

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Smyrnians and we will see this developing later on this becomes really important and again

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I've noticed something whenever I mentioned Roman Catholicism we jump track because everybody has all sorts of questions many of you have family members or are yourselves former

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Roman Catholics or I should mention on Tuesday Lord willing we're gonna be doing something on the dividing line

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William Lane Craig just put out a video with comments on Roman Catholicism that I think are really illustrative of the really the collapse of evangelical distinctives when it comes to the gospel that we're experiencing in our day and I'll be addressing that on on Tuesday so it's it's a live topic there's there's no two ways about it and as we get pushed closer and closer to the

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Roman Catholics in the sense that in our society the space for us to exist and express ourselves is gonna become smaller and smaller we already know

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Facebook is editing things and deleting posts and YouTube does the same thing and and it's it's just gonna become more and more overt over time and as we get pushed closer and closer we're gonna have to think more and more clearly about our relationship and for the majority of those who call themselves evangelicals today since they've adopted a since they don't even realize this but when it comes to what the the dividing line soteriologically speaking was in the

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Reformation they've already crossed over to the wrong side of that they're already synergists they already believe in a universal atonement they they already have you know

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Luther in his debate with Erasmus on the nature of the will said you alone of my my critics have put your your finger upon the real issue the the hinge upon which it all turns was the sovereignty of God and the gravity of man and they recognized it and the vast majority of evangelicals have already paddled over to the other side of the

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Tiber they just haven't bothered to get out any other side because they don't like the smells and bells and and the funny hats and stuff like that but on the real issue they've already crossed over that side and so as we get pushed closer and closer this mere

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Christianity stuff is going to take more and more hold I think so it is relevant for us to understand some of the key issues and the very next section section 8 of Ignatius's epistle to Smyrnians reads as follows but shun divisions as the beginning of evil of evils do do you all follow your bishop as Jesus Christ followed the father and the

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Presbytery as the Apostles and to the deacons pay respect as to God's commandment that no man do out of things pertain the church apart from the bishop let that be held a valid Eucharist which is under the bishop or one to whom he shall have committed it whatsoever the bishop where so ever the bishop shall appear there let the people be even as where Jesus may be there is universal church it is not lawful apart from the bishop either to baptize or hold a love feast but whatsoever he shall approve this is well pleasing also to God that everything which you do may be sure and valid so here we have a term that we don't generally use a whole lot but it's obviously a biblical term and it brings us back to the issue of what is the

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New Testament form of the church and recognizing that within a fairly short period of time there were other forms of church government that developed why did that happen what were these other forms of church government and how do we handle all these things now we generally don't spend much time thinking about church government unless we run afoul of it the vast majority of people join churches not giving a second thought the vast majority of Baptists for example have been accustomed to a single pastor model where you have a single pastor and then you have deacons that's certainly what

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I was raised with and I had never really been challenged about it until I got in the seminary and some seminary class probably church history

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I was again forced to I was forced the first time actually to think about it and I started reading the

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New Testament it's like well every time it talks about these what became very quickly very easy to see that Bishop Paul used the term

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Bishop and bishops here and here it's presbyter and presbyters and pastor and pastors it became very clear very quickly these were interchangeable terms they may have had slightly different nuances depending on the context they're being used but the the requirements for the eldership the elders the presbyters the bishops they all mean the same thing they're interchangeable and deacons ministers who minister to the needs of the people in the church it's similar requirements but but not the same they don't they have the same function and it became really clear to me very quickly just by looking at the

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New Testament that the New Testament model was a plurality of elders not just one

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I've been raised with a different perspective but it wasn't like in most of those situations you're raised with a perspective and it's what you imbibe but you're never really told what the other perspectives are you're just told you just sort of imbibe the idea of distrusting any any other way of doing it so the assumption is they're wrong but I've never really thought and figured out why they are now

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I'm not gonna take time to go into all the biblical stuff if you want to read that I don't know if we have them in the back but I don't know ten years ago twelve years ago

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I forget how long ago it was a five views of church government book came out from Brodman Holman and I'm the one that wrote the plurality of elders perspective and the book as a whole is okay unfortunately there were only two of us that were actually really committed to our perspective and everybody else is sort of like I sort of think it might be that it might be that but I sort of think this is the best way to go type thing and it's like okay whatever but there were two of us who were who really sort of debated each other and had the longest responses to each other and stuff like that it was myself and Robert Raymond the late

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Robert Raymond the Presbyterian scholar who joined the OPC before his death and so he and I went went back and forth because that was the real debate was is there a a level of church government above the local church above the the presbyters and deacons and you know he went to Acts chapter 15 and la la la la so if you want to if you want to read a discussion of all of that that's available in the five views of church government book that's still available out there if you want to if you want to track that down so just starting with the

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I think that and if you want to see another perspective of it sometime in the early 2000s

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I think was one of the last of the great debates on Long Island so you know 2003 2004 somewhere around there

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I debated Mitch Pacwa on the priesthood and so there you have an interesting discussion in regards to from the

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Roman Catholic perspective how the office of bishop became disconnected from the office of presbyter even though biblically they're just they're absolutely interchangeable and how presbyter turned into a priest there is simply nothing in the

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New Testament to either make that distinction or to give any indication of presbyters or priests sacramental priests and I knew

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I'd forget to do this and I'll still forget to do this even though I'm gonna ask Kelly to remind me to do this when we get home but and it's probably too late to grab it but I think it was a week ago

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Friday so maybe I still might be able to grab it there was a guest on Catholic answers live talking about the priesthood and he was talking about how if you're ordained as a priest there's this mark placed upon your soul and even if you cease being a priest even if you leave the

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Roman Catholic Church you can still validly do the Eucharist remember I told you about that last week I think and I I wanted to grab that so we could play it on on the program and if I can remember to do it before Tuesday that would be a good thing to add to the

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Roman Catholic discussion even though right now the program on Tuesday would have to be about they'd have to go to Wednesday just to cover everything we're having to do so that probably wouldn't be a good idea anyways you have this you know just incredible sacramental concept that has developed in Roman Catholicism there's just absolutely no way you can look at the

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New Testament say yeah that's what the Apostles had in mind and no it's it's very very very clear so how do you go from well what do we see in Clement in Clement we saw a group of elders there is no bishop in that letter writing as the bishop to the bishop at the

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Church of Corinth this is the Church of Rome so the the the moral authority the

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Church of Rome was found the church not in the bishop what you need to understand today is the Church of Rome's authority is found in its bishop it's reversed it's not what it was in the early church and every time a

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Pope dies well of course we got spared this the last time I'm not sure I'm not sure that we will ever have that happen again

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I'm a part of me really wonders if a whole new paradigm has been introduced with the resignation that took place a few years ago and I'm next to certain that unless something really hokey happens that that's what

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Francis will do too but back when John Paul the second was about to die and had died and then they have the election the white smoke and all the rest of that Fox News especially it was just you know had every

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Roman Catholic apologist in the planet on for his 15 minutes of fame and all you kept hearing about was 2 ,000 years of history to this is you know this is the way

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Christ found the church blah blah blah but anybody who knows history knows that you did not have the for the first 700 years minimally the

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Bishop of Rome was chosen by the people of Rome you didn't even have Cardinals develop until a later period of time the amount of evolution and change and development is massive to anybody who knows church history most people don't so people can get away with all this silliness about this is you know the

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Church of 2 ,000 years blah blah blah so how do you go from what you have in Clement where you have elders in Rome and history tells us there was no single

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Bishop of Rome till about 140 so basically it took a hundred years after the death of Christ maybe a little bit more than that maybe 90 years after the founding of the

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Church of Rome before you have the switch over from a plurality of elders to a single

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Bishop over that Church in Rome so when Clement is written you have multiple elders you have a plurality of elders and it's very clear that their big problem was the

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Corinthians had kicked out their elder or elders elders it's all in the plural wasn't there was one guy over the church

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Corinth one bishop and they kicked their one Bishop out no it was the elders and they were being told they needed to reinstate them because they had done all this all wrong and they're in rebellion blah blah blah so how do you go from the plurality of elders to one

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Bishop well Ignatius coming from Antioch in these first decade of the second century he dies 108 so it's first decade second century shows us the development the beginning of what's called the monarchical episcopate so by this time in Antioch there was one

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Bishop over the church in Antioch and that's Ignatius and it's very very interesting that he he writes to a fellow

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Bishop polycarp but when he writes to the Romans when he writes to the

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Romans check out how the beginning of Romans begins Ignatius who is also at the office under her that hath found mercy in the bountifulness of the

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Father Most High and of Jesus Christ is only son to the church is beloved and enlightened through the will of him who is who willed all things that are by faith and love towards Jesus Christ our

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God even under her that hath the presidency in the country of the region of the Romans being worthy of God worthy of honor worthy of felicitation worthy of praise worthy of success worthy in purity and having the presidency of love walking the law of Christ and bearing the

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Father's name which church also I salute in the name of Jesus Christ the Son the Father unto them that in flesh and spirit are united unto his every commandment being filled with the grace of God without wavering and filtered clear from every foreign stain abundant greeting

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Jesus Christ our God in blamelessness what is missing is any address to the

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Bishop of Rome there is no mention of a singular Bishop of Rome because we know historically there was no singular

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Bishop of Rome in that day Rome had a different form of church government Rome still had a plurality of elders

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Ignatius represents what will eventually become the predominant view in the monarchical episcopate but they existed side by side and we have evidence of it within the very letters of Ignatius himself so once again the the the

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Church of Rome has the presidency in the area of the Romans but it's the church not the bishop over the next couple of centuries especially with Bishop Stephen you're gonna see a huge step toward flipping that on its head to where the power of the

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Church of Rome is invested in the Bishop of Rome but the early evidence is it was the reverse of that it was the size of the church it was the fact that the

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Church of Rome would have more contact with almost any other church than any other church because what's the old saying that we all know even this day all roads lead to Rome and Rome was the head of of the

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Roman Empire obviously hence there is tremendous amount of travel legal business the arts

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Rome was was central in all of these things and so you would have a large church there because it's one of the largest concentrations of population anywhere in in the world at that time and so that church is going to have communication with more people there are going to know people from other places and hence have more communication with them than than any other so that popularity of the church was one thing but then once one bishop develops then that becomes focused upon that person what we're going to see is that the office of the papacy develops very slowly over time and in baby steps and it takes quite some time certainly to reach the pretensions of the 11th and 12th centuries when we see the height of papal power but it is a it is definitely a slow development over time so what you see in Ignatius is the focus upon the bishop as a source of unity and for us we may go well it sounds dangerous well not necessarily

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I mean we we don't believe that people should ignore the local church and just go out and have baptism parties and pools the fun of it we don't think that people should ignore the local church and go out and buy some some grape juice or some wine and some matzah bread and have the

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Lord's Supper just for the fun of it someplace that's sort of you know there's there's churches that think you that that's okay we view these things as ordinances of the church and in the

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New Testament they are they are a part of the actual practice of the church and church discipline involves exclusion from these things which if they aren't up aren't being done under the organization of the church you can't exclude people from doing it just anybody can just go on do it for the fun of it now maintaining that balance is going to be difficult and we're going to see all sorts of falling off on both sides of that down through the history of the church but remember in 108 ish you do not have a

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New Testament as yet has it been written yeah has it been collected into one place no there's there's no faxes there's no telephones there's no way to have the kind of communication that we have today and so there's going to be a time period just as there was for example in the collecting of the canon between the ending of the writing of the last book of the

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Old Testament which we would think chronologically would be around Malachi and second

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Chronicles which is the last of the Hebrew canon since they organize it differently than we do and the coming of Christ we call it the intertestamental period and there weren't any angels that came down from heaven there were there was no time and a prophet was walking along looked up in heaven and the clouds had formed you know the

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Hebrew canon and you know and he was able to then report this to everybody else and so they they came up with the

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Hebrew canon there was a process amongst God's people or that canon became recognized and certain books were excluded other books were laid up in the temple that was how their holiness was recognized and the only books that were ever laid up in the temple or the very books that we possess in the

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Old Testament today and so if you if there is about a 400 year period for the

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Old Testament well historically when we look at the

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New Testament the first full canon list that we have in the

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New Testament historically full exactly as we have today is around 369 so about 400 years a little bit less than that we have some partial lists to go back to about 180 they're about 85 90 % complete but full list as we have today is

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Athanasius is 39th Festal letter about 369 as I recall off the top of my head I don't have that in front of me at the moment but so you have a similar development of that going on that very same time period and so this is what we're looking at when we look at these early movements and and start seeing developments and that so you can have two different view perspectives existing side -by -side and there's nothing

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I don't see anything in the nation's letters where he's trying to convince the Romans they've got it wrong but there would have been a recognition on his part there is no corresponding single bishop to my office in Rome so they would have recognized that there were two different perspectives at that particular point in time so that will become important in its development later on yes well officially the

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Bishop of Rome right yes but they don't but they wouldn't view it that way he is he is the

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Bishop of the Church of Rome but they do not accept the idea that bishop and elder are the same thing biblically it is biblically yes yeah but the by by definition there is no one else equal to him so you can't have a plurality of okay

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Wow I'm you I'm abusing poor Ignatius because I keep mentioning other things we'll get to a little later on as we see them in Ignatius but I think that that's okay let's go to Ephesians Ignatius who is also

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Theophorus by the way Theophorus means theos God the the forest is is from Pharaoh to bear so it literally means

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God bear the one bearing God and so it would mean the idea that God dwells within someone or something along not in the sense that they're incarnate or something like that but the idea of the indwelling presence of Holy Spirit like that Ignatius who is also

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Theophorus under her which hath been blessed in greatness to the plenitude of God the Father which hath been before for ordained before the ages to be forever unto abiding and unchangeable glory united and elect in a true passion by the will of the

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Father and of Jesus Christ our God even under the church which is in Ephesus of Asia worthy worthy of all felicitation abundant greeting in Christ Jesus and in blameless joy once again no single bishop mentioned certainly when we read the epistle well the letter to the church at Ephesus in Revelation same thing in Acts 20

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Paul does not call the bishop of the Church of Ephesus to him he calls the elders the Church of Ephesus but important thing to see you saw it in Romans we'll see it again you have it here in Ephesians Jesus Christ our

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God you for if you've never spent much time with Jehovah's Witnesses or Muslims or whoever else that may not say much to you and you may be like okay great but I just I just remember when a couple

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Jehovah's Witnesses years and years ago we used to have an office down on Camelback around 7th

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Avenue I don't know how they did this but these two Jehovah's Witnesses were going door -to -door and decided to wander into a business decided to wander into our offices which

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I found very humorous and so started talking to these folks and in a very short period of time they actually had the temerity to say well no one really believed in the

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Doctrine the Trinity until the 12th century now normally what I hear is the Council of Nicaea that's what you hear all the time you know it's because it's on the web you know it's it's probably in Wikipedia somewhere that's what you hear all the time well the

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Doctrine the Trinity was made up the Council of Nicaea but it really blew me away no one really lived till the 12th century and I probably grabbed this very book because you know the date on it was yeah pretty early

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I probably grabbed this very book and read him a few quotes of Ignatius and you know he is 11 centuries before that you know and but I emphasize this because of how often it is it is pounded into our minds this stuff is all later development and so on so forth and it's and it's right here there is interesting the name of one of the deacons of the church is known to Ignatius Burrus was his name and there actually there is a bishop but he's not named

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I'm sorry seeing then that in God's name I received your whole multitude oh okay this is this is actually someone else that is mentioned

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Onesimus is a bishop there seems to be other bishops there but they are to honor the bishops there's more talk about bishops and the importance of bishops yeah there seems to be a bunch of people that he knew by name

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Onesimus, Burrus, Eupolis, Fronto and they are encouraged to be in submission to them but notice there's a number of people listed there but what

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I want to get to is simply one in section 9 you have this but I have learned that certain persons passed through you from yonder bringing evil doctrine whom you suffered not to sow seed in you for you stopped your ears so that you might not receive the seed sown by them for as much as you are stones of a temple which were prepared beforehand for a building of God the

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Father being hoisted up this is prepared beforehand for a building of God the

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Father being hoisted up to the heights through the engine of Jesus Christ which is the cross and using for a rope the

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Holy Spirit while your faith is your windlass and love is the way that leadeth up to God so then you you are all companions in the way carrying your

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God in your show and your shrine your Christ and your holy things being arrayed from head to foot in the command of Jesus Christ we talk about the church not the church in buildings because they didn't really have buildings at this point in time obviously if you're talking about building this church it's stones and people and so the stones of the people and so on so forth but notice the notice the phraseology

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God the Father being hoist up the heights of the engine of Jesus Christ which is the cross and using for a rope the

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Holy Spirit so you have the same kind of easy

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Trinitarian language that you find well interestingly enough in Ephesians it's very plain that Ignatius did know the epistle of the

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Ephesians he he's making purposeful allusions to it in his in the language that he's using but you have father the

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Son and the Holy Spirit here in their different roles in building up the church in section 9 but before section 9 comes what

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I think is is one of the most important sections just for your notes for our

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God Jesus Christ was conceived in the room of Mary is in section 18 section 19 the ancient kingdom was pulled down when

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God appeared in likeness of man unto newness of everlasting life so there's a number of places where just in ease of language

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Ignatius refers to the deity of Christ there can be no question remember I told you I think last week that when the

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Jehovah's Witnesses tried to misrepresent Ignatius years and years ago they only quoted from the pseudo Ignatian epistles they didn't quote from the real epistles because there was just no way around the fact that this this guy was not one of Jehovah's Witnesses okay there's nothing about Jesus being

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Michael the Archangel or anything else so they just completely lied to their people and obviously have never repented of such such things but for me

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I think one of the deepest Christological statements in all of the patristic writings is found in section 7 of Ignatius's epistle to the

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Ephesians here's here's the phrase here's the sentence there is only one physician of flesh and of spirit generate and ingenerate

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God in man true life in death son of Mary and son of God first passable and then impassable

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Jesus Christ our Lord so there is only one physician of flesh and of spirit generate that is the physical aspect of Christ is not eternal but came into being at a point in time and in generate but the

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Son has eternally existed as God God in man

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I mean that is that's as close to God man as you're going to get and yet this is what a hundred and almost a hundred and twenty years prior to the

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Council of Nicaea and anthropo the us in man

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God God and man is is the phraseology is used there

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God and man true life in death so once again you remember in the section 9 being hoisted up the heights of the engine of Jesus Christ which is what which is the cross and so guess who's brought that up a few times when debating

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Muslims who deny the crucifixion and say that this is something developed a later time and never really happened well all all of the earliest sources are unanimous that Jesus Christ died on a cross under Pontius Pilate all of the

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Koran is completely in opposition to all of the for the first hundred years anything that was written on the subject and then the only time there's a denial that after that is due to Gnosticism and why would that be they don't deny the cross took place they don't believe

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Jesus had a physical body so it couldn't have been him that was up there anyways there's a weird theological reason for denying it there was no no reason to historically deny the cross whatsoever true life and death son of Mary and son of God I mean we believe in the hypostatic

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Union we believe that Jesus Christ was one person with two natures and here you have one physician but he's son of Mary and son of God so you have the physical you have the divine first passable and then impassable passable would be subject to to suffering so he takes human flesh and is therefore subject to suffering but then impassable resurrected no longer subject to death

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Jesus Christ our Lord I think it would be pretty rare if we ask most modern theologians to express in a single sentence the great truths of the person of Jesus Christ I don't know how you could really improve upon this very much and this is 108 this is not a man who graduated in seminary this is not someone who has all the reflections of Augustine and the

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Cappadocian fathers and Athanasius and all the rest is the idea that once you get to the

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Council of Nicaea well just now people started thinking about the deity of Christ just now it became you know it was just this you know these people were taking the

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Christian faith away from the simplicity of the of the you know human Jesus stuff this is what you can be told in the universities and sadly seminaries and everything else

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I don't know how they come up with it in light of the not only the biblical evidence but the historical evidence but there you go one more time there is only one physician of flesh and of spirit generate and in general

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God and man true life and death son of Mary and son of God first passable and impassable Jesus Christ over that's worthy of memorization and that is

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Ignatius to the Ephesians section 7 followed by section 9 with God the

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Father Jesus Holy Spirit you have the Trinitarian language certainly in many debates that's where I have gone immediately when challenged give us some evidence that this is ever believed before the

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Council of Nicaea okay how about in the first generation after the apostles it's it's right there and yes sir oh they ignore it just just because you give an answer doesn't mean there's going to be a response generally if you give a strong answer they will pretend they asked you a different question so I've I've not gotten it but the only thing

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I could and it didn't happen in a debate but the only thing that I've seen is on the part of some folks to try to argue that Ignatius was a modalist and I just go what he makes clear differentiation between father and son it's he's the idea he's a modalist just seems absurd to me but that's about the only thing

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I've anyone's ever come up with a modalist is a person who believes who denies the

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Trinity by saying that there is only one person of God who exists in different modes of being and so one form of modalism would be that God existed as the father then he then he began to exist as the son and now he exists as a spirit that's the most simple version of modalism modalism exists today primarily in what's called the

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Jesus only or one this Pentecostal movement the United Pentecostal Church International based in st. Louis and their view is that there is only one person of God the father the son was just the human aspect of Jesus the sun's not eternal so Jesus was two persons he was the father and the son the father indwelt the physical body and therefore

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Jesus prayer life was him talking to himself and now the father has transitioned into the role of the spirit in dwelling us but there's just one person so it's called it we'll get into this but dynamic monarchy and ism and modalism civilian ism there's all sorts of different terms that are used and unfortunately in my experience the vast majority of evangelicals out of ignorance not out of conviction are modalists because they don't know it's not because that well it's just that's just obvious what the

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Bible teaches no it's not but out of ignorance if you think the water if you think that I'm a father

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I'm a son I'm a brother illustration illustrates Trinity you are a modalist guess what your heritage we will deal with you later and I think we're reading the section on the

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Trinity in the confession next week which should helpfully hopefully correct you anyways but don't worry we're good we'll get into all that stuff as we as we move through this okay all right let's go the time for father would you thank you once again for this freedom and opportunity we have we thank you that we are not the first generation that we have so many who've gone before us and have left us testimony of their faithfulness may we live lives that will give signposts and encouragement to those who come after us be with us now as we go into worship praying