Vindication

Vindication of 1 Corinthians 15 and the Early Creed

Chapter 15, 1 Corinthians chapter, we bless our time.

Heavenly Father, once again we ask that you would be with us during this time to help us to hear your word, to understand, to prepare our hearts, to give a reason for the hope that's within us. We thank you for this freedom that we have to gather in the name of Christ.

We ask that you would bless this time with his honoring glory, we pray in his name.

Vindication, vindication.

What does that term mean? When someone has been vindicated, when someone is seeking vindication, what our vindication would be the demonstration of someone's truthfulness. Very frequently it's someone's claim denied.

See this term being used. Even in a sermon, someone would give a vindication of a particular assertion that has been made, a particular theological point that has been made. If you run this term very often, it was for some writers a standard of their presentation to where once a assertion had been made, there would be a vindication.

Sometimes this would be the exegesis of the text. Sometimes it would be the explication of the systematic theology involved. But the point being that a vindication is a demonstration that what has been said is true.

Now this morning, we looked at a particular text of scripture in First Corinthians section once again. And then we will look at a vindication. Brothers of the gospel, I preach to you which you receive and which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preach to you unless you believe in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance, that he appeared to Cephas, then to 12.

Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James and to all the apostles, last of all is to one untimely born, he appeared also to me for I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them although it was not I but the grace of God that was with me. They, so we preach and so you believed.

Now this morning I presented this material to you, this section, we went through it, we interpreted it, we didn't go overly in depth, but we looked at the centrality of this text and we alleged that verses three through seven in particular are an ancient fragment of a confession of the church.

And I mentioned that a number of scholars would seem to indicate that this goes all the way back to some would say within just a few years or even a few months of the crucifixion event itself, that this is one of the earliest windows we have into the first Christians and how they lived, what they believed, what was important to them and that the gospel, the historical event of the crucifixion, the burial and the resurrection of Christ in reference to sins, that this is the very primitive proclamation of the church, that section of scripture.

Critiquing Robert Price and the Dutch Radical School

Well, I do so within a context. Coverture, two weeks, only known of the Jesus Seminar, but you need to understand Dr. Price fully debated and the fact that he identifies himself as a Christian atheist would give you that idea.

He is a former Christian. He was the head of his Ginder Varsity Fellowship Group. He was a member of conservative churches, not so much reformed churches, but conservative Bible believing churches. But then he went to seminary, which has had an odd effect upon a lot of people.

And it was in seminary at Gordon-Conwell Theological. He just decided, and so he began that swing off into liberal Christianity, where you no longer believe the Bible's really true, but you sort of like the stories a bit anyways.

And even he will say he never dreamed he would end up holding the radical positions.

That he does today.

I forgot to bring it with me. Hold up for you a DVD. Actually, I believe it's, if you want to see it later, there was a book called The God Who Wasn't There by another former Christian turned atheist.

And in it, he tells his story of apostasy and he interviews various people. And one of the people he interviews might want to listen this evening because that material is online. It's very popular on your university campuses.

And I've known many people who have seen this and have raised the questions that Dr. Price raised. When I say he's become very radical, I truly mean. Dr. Price does not believe that if you had walked the streets of Jerusalem or Galilee in the first century, you never would have run into someone named Jesus of Nazareth.

The gospels then, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in the second century, no earlier than 120 AD, probably later than that. And so there's no eyewitness testimony whatsoever to anything Jesus said or did.

But even more so, if there was a Saul of Tarsus who became Paul, it never wrote it. None of the Pauline epistles were written by a man named Paul in the first century. Instead, they were written in the second century.

Why you would attach the name of someone who actually didn't do anything to books you'd write 100 years later, even I haven't been able to figure out over the last number of months of study, but that's the theory that is being presented.

It's called the Dutch Radical School, those poor Dutchmen, if you don't have the spirit of God with Calvinism, the result's pretty ugly. And so what does this have to do with 1 Corinthians 15? Well, if it couldn't get any worse, here is Dr. Price's theory.

That 1 Corinthians, when it was written, didn't contain verses three through 11. This is an even later insertion, what we say now, what has come up with as to what the early church was like. For example, the early church could not possibly have had creeds.

They could not have been interested whatsoever in summaries of the faith or any of these things. And besides the Christology of substitutionary atonement and things like that, that had to develop so much later that it would be impossible for this to be any type of primitive belief at all.

And besides, we know that all of these groups were fighting with one another. And so you had the people who follow Peter and they wouldn't have been friendly to the people who follow Paul. And so there was this theory you come up with as to what this early Christian movement was like.

I'm not really sure how it started, if there wasn't any Paul and what the movement looked like or why it started or anything else, but you have these theories and then you work the text to fit that. For example, when you think about Paul's writings and if someone were to say to you, well, why do you believe these were written?

That Paul's writing, 50, go beyond that, what kind of an answer would you give them?

Well, it's interesting.

We find some of the earliest Christian writers outside of the New Testament making reference to Paul's epistle. We have, for example, what's called First Clemens or it's a letter written by the elders of the Church of Rome to the elders, the Church of Corinth.

Corinth historically continued to have problems. It would be, I would like to report to you apostolic letters sent to a local body fixed all their problems. I'd be lying if I did. Because historically we know that right toward the end of the first century, Corinth kicked all their elders out.

Not a single individual. The Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth, fascinating to me, the first is chapter 51, First Clement. Now, Clement's surprised to do about that. How can you have somebody quoting a letter.

That hasn't been written yet?

Well, we've dated. And so you see, any fact, there's gonna be some pressure, there's no question about it, but you do weird stuff. So why are you bothering us with it? Well, I will notice, I will mention to you the fact that I love the patience of this people back when I debated John Donovan Cross.

I think a few of you got tired of listening to John Donovan Cross in Sunday school and you haven't listened to a word of Robert Price yet. So this is the one shot that I'm taking.

About those lessons.

But in reality, I would say to you that if you're familiar with the text, if you read the Word of God for all it's worth and you've become familiar with the outlines of the books,.

And I don't think this is something.

That should be strange to any believer. After, it shouldn't be difficult for us to exposure that we should be having the Word of God.

This shouldn't be difficult for us.

I'd like to suggest to you that aside from the esoteric backdrop, just simply looking at it by a response to something that Price off by himself and on most of his conclusions. But, and so the people grab onto these scholars and what they say, and so this stuff does come to our hearing, it does come to our young people's hearing.

And so I actually do believe that if we were to just look at this text, we might be able to provide somewhat of a response, even if it's not a response to some of the external information. Why do I say that?

Well, let's consider just the text. Now, remember this morning, we looked at these 11 or 12 verses and we did so the way we normally.

Do the interpretation description.

We read the text, I provided you with the necessary background, we looked at the words, we followed the flow of thought. Now, I went through a larger chunk than we normally do because what do we normally do when we look at a text description?

We would have expanded certain points. We would have made practical application in a number of areas of our life, various points as we walk through the text. I made some brief application. When Paul says, by the grace of God, I am what I am, I made a practical application that all of us can say that, that we all need to recognize that where we are in life is where God had placed us.

We made application. There is everything fine and proper in doing this to be able to step back and look at a text in its larger context.

How does this text function?

I said, very issues. And many times, as I have preached here and Pastor Fry has as well, we've mentioned what resurrection means. We've always had to mention, as we've talked about this, what people around the Christians and those who talked about what the Jews believed about resurrection.

And some of the controversies that they had, but we've especially emphasized the fact that belief in salvation was getting the good spirit in you out of this evil fleshly body. That's why in Acts chapter 17, when Paul preaches the gospel on Mars Hill, when he's in Athens, the people listen to him, up to what point?

The point where he mentions the resurrection. Which died, coming to life again, and immediately they begin to mock.

Why?

Because that was fundamentally opposed.

To their entire world view. Their entire understanding of what salvation itself is. And so, keeping those background issues in mind, we look at what Paul is doing here, and he's about to refer to these problems that have cropped up amongst the Corinthians.

There were some people saying,.

There is no resurrection of the dead.

And so to introduce that, notice what he says, now I make known to you, brethren. And remember, Dr. Price says it's verses three through 11. The original writing, which wasn't by Paul anyways, the original writing ended at verse two and then picked up at verse 12.

There is, as the case, he just simply says, yeah, but the earliest manuscripts we have are too late. 120, we're closer than, and so with that aside, we recognize there's no physical evidence of this. There's something in the text that would help us to give an answer, if not to Dr. Price, to someone who's been influenced by him, because his silence.

Well, I think there is.

Paul says, I make known to you the gospel to you, which you receive. If you jump immediately down to verse 12, or I printed this out this morning, and sometimes my dear brothers and sisters here might think that I just point things out that don't really have anything to do with it.

Here this evening, if you get to watch the video of what takes place in a couple weeks, you'll see that it had a purpose.

One of the things I pointed out to you.

Was that in verse one, which I gospeled to you, which I proclaimed to you, which I preached to you, in English translations, very often two Greek words. You are melitzemi, to proclaim the gospel, and keruso, to proclaim, but it's a different word, and it's frequently used more along the lines of the herald of a king, for example.

Would keruso, he would proclaim a new law, or a new holiday, or some decree from the king. Two different words. Now notice that the word that's found in verse one is euangelizemi, that is to proclaim the gospel.

The gospel which I proclaim to you, which also you receive, et cetera, et cetera. And then, again, it's found in verse two as well. If you hold fast to that gospel. Now, if you cut verses three through 11 out, and then just go right down to verse 12, what happens?

That Christ, that's keruso. 11 says, so we preach, and so you believe. The preach here is a different word. It matches what's in verse 12, but if this section, then you would have two different terms, one referring back.

To a different term.

What's more is, you'll notice that we've gone to plurals, because Paul is now talking about the apostles have done these things in verse 12. There's no transition there if you don't have the section verses three through 11.

All sorts of breaks in the text if you just rip this out. But what's more is, and this is where we as believers are really thinking, to read the Bible, it's great to read the Bible regularly, but then sometimes we get tired of that if we don't have more goals.

And I challenge you, be able to take these steps backwards. And when you do so, you take Paul saying, I make known to you the gospel, and he's missing the connection between the centrality of the gospel and the fact that resurrection is inextricably linked to all the actions in the gospel.

What's the core of the gospel again? Death, burial, and what? Acts, starting verse 12. If we preach Christ has been raised from the dead, Christ raised from the dead, Christ raised from the dead. Makes no sense whatsoever if you take verses three to 11.

And so how do we vindicate? How do we provide a vindication push into the history that people can say, well, you know, there just isn't enough to know exactly the nature of the conflicts amongst early, or Paul, or any type of divisions or arguments.

So it seems extremely strange to me that we could have confidence in knowing these theories about the form of the early church, but at the same time, in Australia, even if the gospel narratives had been written 10 minutes after the events took place, we still couldn't know whether they're true.

It would seem that unless you had multiple CNN reporters on site, that has taken place in history at all. This kind of radical skepticism seems very odd for someone who can then come to conclusions like, well, this text wasn't original.

I would think that the best someone like that can say is we just don't have inconsistent. When Christ does play out his allegation, and this is why I never have said what I, when he says, I deliberately never said that because he insisted that the Gospel, and some of his booklets, some are written more for the lay person.

To not just automatically assume that he was a bumbling contradictor, but he, so as I mentioned, received this Gospel, we all stand in the same tradition of the Gospel, and his statement that I, he's not just simply saying, oh, there's no difference between how I received it.

He did, of course, receive that when he met with Peter and the others. He did receive, I'm sure, more information than he had just simply from his encounter with the Lord Jesus, but there is no contradiction between the two statements at all.

Teaching that is out, consistent, are on a chart, but you can spiritualize these things all you want, is a supernatural event. To see Dr. Price is very much wedded to what's, therefore, any ancient document that refers to unusual happenings in the past, especially those that would be supernatural, simply can't, we must reject all presupposition.

Any intrusion of the, in other words, God telling you that your faith, if you would just have the time, make them take some kind of, but there's so much data out there today that no one can be there. I hear people say, oh, all scholars believe, only a small percentage of them have actually ever done original research in the field.

They're going with what somebody else has said, but beyond that, as you peel that layer off, the next layer off, what you're gonna find is a set of presuppositions. Not be conscious of exactly what they look like or what they, but fundamentally, it's gonna get down to a,.

Well, why do you believe that?

Why do you believe that? Why, it's sort of like the second, remember when kids were two years old?

Why, why, why?

And eventually, we're all like,.

It's just the best you can do.

You're just, you know, it's the 47th why question in a row that finally pushes you as the parent back to the, because I said so level. In other words, you get to the ultimate authority level, eventually.

Same thing with anybody,.

The nature of their presuppositions, and right then, I just don't believe. I just don't. Majority of situations. Moms and their families sin in their lives. You accept any evidence. The better they are, garbage, and maybe enough citations to keep.

And so, of indication, there is no reason to accept this. There's no reason to believe that this was inserted at a later time whatsoever. There's no reason to reject that this was written in the middle of the first century, that it actually contained, going back to the time of Jesus.

There is no reason, set of presuppositions that says, that can't be true.

It's consistent.

Work upon Calvary's tree, by the sending of your, that deafness, that glorified opportunity of doing this yet again. You will give me utterance, be with those they might see. And Lord, as we have opportunity of testifying, be first and foremost, we desire to be your witnesses.