31 - Tertullian and Baptism in Early Church

All right. Well, welcome to those of you who are visiting. This is our regular Sunday school hour, but it's actually 45 minutes, but it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, only modern people have defined hour as 60 minutes, by the way. I mentioned that in a sermon last week, that in the ancient days you just took the amount of daylight you had, divided it up into 12 equal segments, and that was an hour.

So that could be a small amount or a large amount, all dependent. Anyway, we are working our way through church history.

I've even lost track of which episode it is, but somewhere past 30. It is 31.

Okay. Well, Sean, someone beat you to it. That's pretty sad. You're really falling down the job there.

But I'm actually stepping out of my notes to do something that, it is interesting that when

I took church history, this was not a separate topic that was addressed. But I've said that we needed to do so, and obviously we could quite literally spend a tremendous amount of time on this particular subject.

There are entire tomes that have been written on this subject, and in my experience, unfortunately, those tomes are probably amongst the most biased historical books that I've ever read.

I'm referring to the subject of baptism in the early church. It's my experience that you find in the writings of the early church what you want to find in the writings of the early church when it comes to the subject of baptism.

And it is a field that I think for most

Baptists, especially if you've been raised as a Baptist, you just sort of assume, well, it's just really obvious.

You look at the New Testament, and this is how they did it in the New Testament, and that's just how it needs to be done, and that's how it's always been done.

But the reality is that as we look at the first number of first four centuries of the church, there are all sorts of different perspectives that are expressed within those writings.

And since this was not an area of focused debate such as you had with the deity of Christ, you end up with some really interesting things that are presented.

Obviously, we as Reformed Baptists have more interest in this subject than I think most

Baptists do who are not Reformed. I have read a number of Baptist works, and obviously the non -Reformed ones don't really have much of a concern about history.

They're not concerned about whether anyone before them believed these things or interpreted the

Bible the way they did. It's just a straightforward matter. You just read the text. It says this. That's it. Well, I can understand why many of my

Presbyterian friends don't really take much time to read

Baptist works on the subject, even some of my best Presbyterian friends. I can count on one hand those who have actually taken the time to read, review

Reformed Baptist works. There are a number of them that present a covenantal perspective of credo -baptism or what we call credo meaning believer's baptism, the baptism of disciples alone.

But what is interesting is I have never had one of my Presbyterian brethren that I was debating on the subject of baptism,

I've done a few public debates on that subject, always as a result of their challenging me, by the way.

I've never had any one of them dispute my statement that the specific form of covenantal infant baptism that is enshrined primarily in the theology of John Calvin but then coming through to the

Westminster Confession of Faith, that that understanding of infant baptism was a theological novum.

What is a theological novum? Never been heard of before. If you look back at the development of infant baptism, and there's really no question about this, infant baptism developed.

It was not an apostolic tradition. It was simply not a part of the most primitive centuries of the

Christian experience. When it does develop, it does not develop out of someone coming up with the idea of the

Abrahamic covenant and circumcision and all the rest of that stuff. It develops from other reasons and in fact it develops from a view of baptism that we and the

Presbyterians together would reject as being unbiblical, unbiblical developments in that concept.

The idea that Calvin develops and presents in the middle of the 16th century,

I have up on the board here centuries, 1st century, 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century.

If we kept going like this, Calvin's idea would be over near the door, that far down the church history.

That was the first time anybody had come up with that. The infant baptism that exists before that had different purposes and different reasons for coming into existence.

What's more is, what you have during this time period is a development and it is not an even development in all places.

A lot of people mistakenly assume that when you talk about church history, I've warned you before, we have those lists found in books where it says, you know, gives a year and purgatory developed here.

Purgatory developed over a long period of time in a number of different strands. You can't do that with church history.

If you have any of those books that say date, date, date, date, it's extremely simplistic and probably downright wrong.

The same thing is true here. We will see Tertullian and Cyprian, who are within decades of each other, having different reasons as to why they take differing views while all claiming, all claiming that they are going by traditions that were passed down from the apostles.

What I want to do, given that entire tomes have been written, what I want to do to try to make this brief and yet usable in a short space of time is to look at Tertullian, who is converted in 193, so this is approximate time frame around the year 200, give you what he says on baptism, examine one statement he made that has been used by many, especially by Jeremias, who is probably one of the primary writers who sees infant baptism in the earliest period, and look at how that sort of functions, and then just make some general comments about the development of baptism and what we see in the early church.

Here are some words of Tertullian who, by the way, specifically rejects the baptism of infants, and you'll be able to see why by some of the things that he says.

Quoting from him now, If no passage of scripture has prescribed it assuredly custom, which without doubt flowed from tradition, has confirmed it, for how can anything come into use if it has not first been handed down?

Even in pleading tradition, written authority, you say, must be demanded. Let us inquire, therefore, whether tradition, unless it be written, should not be admitted.

Certainly, we shall say, that ought not to be admitted, if no cases of other practices which, without any written instrument, we maintain on the ground of tradition alone, and the countenance thereafter of custom, affords us any precedent.

To deal with this matter briefly, I shall begin with baptism. Now, realize, he's arguing against the position we would take.

He's arguing for the acceptance of tradition, which is developing at this time, especially the concept of apostolic tradition, over against the heretics.

When we are going to enter the water, but a little before, in the presence of the congregation, under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil and his pomp and his angels.

So, this is almost completely ubiquitous. There was a, and it's going to become more and more complicated over time, but there was a open disavowal, a disowning of the devil, his pomp, and his angels.

Very often, there's another book called Didaskelia, which comes out of, may have been written by Theodore of Mopsusia, down in Egypt.

Similar time frame, maybe a little bit later, but there was also very often associated, in Egypt especially, with the preparation of baptism, exorcism.

I haven't ever seen that done in a Presbyterian church, but that's just another issue. Nor here.

There's that little door back there, but I don't think that's where it happens. Anyway, when, now hereupon, we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the

Lord has appointed in the gospel. This is some admission of that. How this happened, there's evidence of a lot of different ways.

If there was enough water, then immersion was the standard. We can find third and fourth century churches to this day, and the baptismal font ain't no little thing this big.

It's big enough for people to get down in there and do a little swimming around. So, very commonly, the immersion was done three times, and it's not difficult to figure out where that came from,

Father, Son, Holy Spirit trying immersion. This goes way back very early, which again, you might be sitting here just thinking about baptism, but hmm, that sounds like Trinitarian belief was pretty early too, if you're doing baptism three times.

But, it also was very commonly done forward, not backwards.

So, face first, instead of the other direction. Three times, very, very common.

And well into this time period over here, I can give you quotes of people saying, this is passed down from the apostles, so on and so forth.

Hereupon we are thrice immersed, when we get somewhat ampler pledged, and the Lord's appointed the gospel. Then, when we are taken up, we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey, and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week.

Is that particularly humorous? Okay, all right, well, all right. We take also in congregation before daybreak, and from the hand of none but the presidents, the sacrament of the

Eucharist, which the Lord both commanded to be eaten at mealtimes, and he enjoined to be taken by all alike.

So, in other words, only after this baptism, then are you admitted into the celebration of the supper.

And so, what you clearly do not have at any period of time in the primitive church, that I've ever seen any evidence of, was the concept of paedo -communion.

So, if the partaking of the bread, the partaking of the Eucharist, is directly associated with baptism, then who is it that is being baptized?

It's people who can answer the questions that are asked by the president, it's the people that can disavow the devil and his works, and so on and so forth.

These are minimally individuals of speaking and understanding age.

These are not infants. You may have young children, but you do not have the concept of infants in this description whatsoever.

Tertullian says elsewhere, Lest anyone think that we are dealing in mere argumentative subtleties,

I shall turn to that highest authority of our seal itself, seal being baptism.

When entering the water, we make profession of the Christian faith in the words of its rule. We bear public testimony that we have renounced the devil, his pomp, and his angels.

So once again, there is the emphasis upon the fact that there is a profession of faith that is being made on the part of those who are being baptized.

He's not talking here about, well, in the rare instance where we have converts because of mission work, because all the rest of us have been baptized as children, no.

In fact, when we look carefully at many of the conflicts, especially happening in this period here, when the

Novationist controversy, remember I mentioned one of the schisms in the church around Rome was the

Novationist controversy, well, one of the arguments that was used in that was that one of the leaders of the schism had been baptized by effusion rather than by immersion.

So it was only a half baptism. But the point was he had been baptized as an adult.

There's never any argumentation during this time period at all that even raises the possibility of the normative experience of a person having been baptized as an infant.

Now what you do have, and before I read some more of tradition, what you do have are called clinical or emergency baptisms.

And the driving force in the development of traditions and rituals regarding baptism in this time period, unfortunately, is not exgesis.

It is an identification of baptism as a right that accomplishes something in and of itself.

And as the idea develops that this is the means of washing away sin, one of two divergent streams developed.

One we see as late as Nicaea, which was 325

AD. You were the first one on that one. Sean is obviously off his game today.

Very clearly. Very clearly. And brother, is it just so far back there that the sound takes too long to get back to you, or what?

I mean, for those of you visiting, going through church history, I have mentioned numerous times that to pass my final exam, you must know—oh, you don't think there's a final exam?

You get the special one now, brother. You get the one that takes about four hours to finish.

That'll be really great. Everybody else only has about 40 minutes, but yours is going to be special. And Sean's is a week long.

But to pass my final exam, you must know the date of the Council of Nicaea, and it's 325.

So just write that one down. There's other dates you'll need to know, but that one's very, very important. So anyway, remember with Constantine, when we talked about Constantine, what did he do?

He put off baptism until much later in life. Why? Well, the idea, once the idea being that baptism cleanses you, and if you combine that with a theology that that's the only thing that can cleanse you, then you need to pile up your sins and then get them all washed away at one shot, and hopefully as close to death as possible, so you don't mess things up.

Now you and I sit here and go, weren't they reading Romans? Well, here, as in many areas, we really start to see the power of tradition, and how tradition is going to start encrusting the key elements of the gospel itself.

Now this isn't for everybody, but it's happening, and we see it happening. So one of the divergent things was, put baptism off as long as possible, so that you have the best shot at not living long enough afterwards to mess up really badly and lose your shot at eternal life.

But then the other development was, remember infant mortality was huge.

I mean, there have been many time periods in church history where you'd have to have ten live births to get one child through to adulthood.

And so, clinical or emergency baptism, if someone all of a sudden comes down with a problem, you know, you're 40 years old, you're expected to live to about 60, but you come down with something everybody else has been coming down with, you haven't been baptized yet, better get baptized, because you only got one shot at it.

Same thing with children. There are numerous inscriptions, tombs that have been found, of little children who were baptized, but they were baptized because they became sick.

And so it was an emergency or clinical baptism, and it was the abnormal situation, not the normal situation, it was because of sickness.

So you've got two different tendencies coming in at the same time. And nobody at this time, anywhere, is going, yeah, but if you just understood covenant theology, then you would know that it just was not there anywhere.

So, Tertullian, for example, here's some of his language.

Happy is our sacrament of water, in that by washing away the sins of our early blindness we are set free and admitted into eternal life.

A treatise in this matter will not be superfluous, instructing not only such as are just becoming formed in the faith, but them who, content with having simply believed, without full examination of the grounds of the traditions, carry in mind, through ignorance, an untried, though probable, faith.

He also says, so that from the very fact that with so great simplicity, without pomp, without any considerable novelty of preparation, finally without expense, a man is dipped in water, and amid the utterance of some few words is wetted, and then rises again, not much or not at all cleaner, the consequent attainment of eternity is esteemed more incredible.

So he's talking about the simplicity of the act, but it is an act that brings about eternal life and cleansing of sin, and so on and so forth.

But notice as well, in the midst of all that, who's being baptized? Adults are. They are making profession of faith.

They are saying words. They are repeating the words of faith, so on and so forth.

And then after baptism, there was also, yes sir? You said a president, is that the pastor, the lead in the

Presbyterian? Well, I will read a section here as to who gets to do that, so we'll get to that in just a moment.

But it would be the lead elder in the group, yeah. He also says, there's also after baptism, something that some of you probably heard of just recently in regards to conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy, chrismation, anointing with oil.

And I think that's why George always comes back here right afterwards, you're doing the anointing with oil,

I think that's what he's doing. Boy, the look on his face is interesting.

After this, we have issued from the font, we are thoroughly anointed with a blessed unction. Thus, too, in our case, the unction runs carnally, i .e.

on the body, that would be the oil, but profits spiritually in the same way as the act of baptism itself, too, is carnal in that we are plunged in water, but the effect is spiritual in that we are freed from sins.

So what does the oil represent but the reception of the Holy Spirit? That is there as well.

So here, in answer to your question, here's a lengthier quotation from Tertullian, which is also interesting in our day in regards to gender issues.

This comes up, and it's a long time ago. For concluding, our brief subject remains to put you in mind also of the due observance of giving and receiving baptism.

Of giving it, the chief priest, who is the bishop, has the right in the next place to presbyters and deacons, yet not without the bishop's authority, on account of the honor of the church, which being preserved, peace is preserved.

Besides these, even laymen have the right, for what is equally received can be equally given, unless bishops or priests or deacons be on the spot, other disciples are called to the work.

The word of the Lord ought not to be hidden by any, in like manner to baptism, which is equally God's property, can be administered by all.

But if the writings which wrongly go under Paul's name claim Thecla's example, there was a writing in the early church about Thecla, allegedly with Paul, and it was recognized as being untrue, without authority, claim

Thecla's example as a license for women's teaching and baptizing, let them know that in Asia, the presbyter who composed that writing, as if he were augmenting

Paul's fame from his own store, after being convicted and confessing that he had done it from the love of Paul, was removed from his office.

For how credible would it seem that he who has not permitted a woman even to learn with over boldness, should give a female the power of teaching and baptizing?

Let them be silent, he says, and at home consult their own husbands. This is Tertullian.

Also there were specific times when baptisms would be done. Reading again from him, the

Passover affords a more than usually solemn day for baptism. When with all the

Lord's passion in which we are baptized was completed, nor will it be incongruous to interpret figuratively the fact that when the

Lord was about to celebrate the last Passover, he said the disciples who were sent to make preparation, you will meet a man bearing water.

He points out the place for celebrating the Passover by the sign of water, after that Pentecost is a most joyous space for conferring baptisms.

However, every day is the Lord's, every hour, every time is apt for baptism. If there is a difference in the solemnity distinction, there is none in the grace.

So it did eventually over time become very common, it is within both

Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism today, to receive people in church at a particular time of the year.

Now, again, you say, but how does that work with an emergency baptism?

Well, again, that would be considered unusual. So the baptism of the children, unusual.

Generally, you would do it at a certain time, a solemn feast day or some type of celebration going on along those lines.

But then, in regards to this idea of delaying baptism, here is what Tertullian says,

Moreover, a presumptuous confidence in baptism introduces all kinds of vicious delay and neglect with regard to repentance.

For feeling sure of undoubted pardon of their sins. See here you have the mixture,

Tertullian is, we would say is in error in his sacramental view of baptism, but he also is still recognizing without faith, it doesn't matter anyways.

So he is decrying those people that just view baptism as simply a mechanical thing, just a washing away of sins without faith and repentance.

So you can see, when we try to look into people's hearts back then, things like that, you judge the teaching, but you recognize there is a real mixture.

And there will be a real mixture for a long, long time in where people are in their teaching.

For feeling sure of undoubted pardon of their sins, men, meanwhile, steal the intervening time and make it for themselves into a holiday time for sinning, rather than a time for learning not to sin.

Further, how inconsistent it is to expect pardon of sins to be granted to a repentance which they have not fulfilled.

That baptismal washing is a sealing of faith, which faith is begun and is commended by the faith of repentance.

We are not washed in order that we may cease sinning, but because we have ceased, since in heart we have been bathed already.

Now, you could actually make an argument there, that he is saying that the real regeneration takes place in the heart.

You probably could at that point. Yes sir? With the act of baptism, does that introduce the ex operante?

Well, no, that's going to become an issue shortly after Tertullian as to the state of grace of the person.

Tertullian himself is saying even lay people can baptize. So Tertullian doesn't have the view of the need of sacramental ordination or anything else to actually baptize.

So he would definitely be, well he's before that whole issue comes up.

So you can't try to shove him into a particular place. You know, the recent controversy with the federal visionaries,

Doug Wilson and people like that. I know when that controversy was really hot and heavy a few years ago, they were always quoting

Calvin on the efficacy of baptism and things like that. What is your understanding of what

Calvin is? Outside of our range for the day, we'll get to Calvin and baptism probably somewhere around 2019

I would say. At least the speed that I'm going at.

So, no, sorry, we're back here in the third century. That's 1 ,200 years down the road and lots of water is going to go under the bridge before we get a chance to get to Calvin.

I wouldn't want to make any comments on that as yet. Now, here's the one quote.

Joaquin Jeremias, a great scholar, a great church historian.

But like I said, it just seems to me that, you know, I've got all these big tomes and stuff like that.

When it comes to the subject of baptism in particular, man, you've really got to know where your author is coming from because how they view the early church and how they interpret stuff is all going to be determinative.

We've read a bunch of stuff about Tertullian and you haven't heard a word about infants.

You haven't heard a word about any type of basis for baptizing infants after eight days or before then or whatever else.

It's going to be developing, but not on the basis of the idea of covenantal theology.

So how in the world can you come to the conclusion, Jeremias says clearly, and I haven't read the quote yet, but here's what

Jeremias can say about it. Clearly, Tertullian here does not only presuppose the practice of infant baptism, but he advocates it.

All right, well, let's see what he says. It was from this circumstance that the apostle said that when either of the parents was sanctified, the children were holy, and this as much by the prerogative of the seed as by the discipline of the institution.

I'm a soul 39. Now I don't know about you, but I've seen that kind of interpretation of biblical passages a few times in the past.

That's what you do when you mess up 1 Corinthians 7 and what marriage is about, and you just make these huge, huge leaps.

The reality is that what Tertullian is talking about specifically is that he was talking about pagan converts and Christian converts, and a child that grows up in a

Christian home is going to have significantly greater opportunity of being exposed to the truth, and hence escape the corruption of the world, than those who grow up in a pagan home.

That's all he was talking about. So to take everything that he says. I mean, he wrote a book called On Baptism, and said nothing about it.

To ignore all that, and on that one quote say, see, he's advocating infant baptism.

Well, explain why there are so many books that you can purchase in various venues that will say that this was apostolic, or that this went all the way back to the earliest period, and so on and so forth.

Because if you're willing to read history with that thick a set of lenses on your eyes, well, you're going to see what you want to see.

And am I saying that people do that? Yeah. Yeah. And have I been in debates where once we got down to the nitty -gritty, the other side was, well,

I remember one, a few of you I think were in attendance, I remember one where a very well -known church historian basically came down to finally saying, well, but if you're right, what am

I supposed to tell my kids? Now, that's not a historical argument. That's an emotional argument.

I get it, but it shouldn't be an argument that we actually have taking place.

But it happens. So, what should we conclude when we look at this time period?

Well, Cyprian's going to be promoting the idea of infant baptism.

Not on the basis of anything other than the forgiveness of sins.

It's not on the basis of joining them to a covenant. It is directly where, so he's going against the delay of baptism thing.

But remember, all the way down here, you've still got a large portion of people, at least the people around Constantine in Rome, that are going to be telling him to delay his baptism.

And all the way back here, you've got someone going, no, you need to do it as early as possible. Though, even when we start seeing people promoting this, there are some people that say eighth day, try to connect it to circumcision.

And then others saying, as early as possible, because children died a lot very, very shortly after birth in the ancient world.

It was an experience that was not all too common. So, you still end up, you can go past here and still have churches that we uncover archaeologically that have full size fonts for baptism taking place.

It's not, you can't look at the entire quote unquote

Christian world and go, ah, they woke up this morning and stopped baptizing adults and started baptizing infants.

It doesn't work that way. There are numerous streams that a lot of us would not even think about in regards to clinical baptism, emergency baptism, the developments in the theology of baptism in a particular area.

So, Cyprian's in North Africa, but Constantine's in Rome. Tertullian is in North Africa as well.

So, you've got two different streams here. And so, Cyprian might have a real strong influence for a particular while in a particular area.

But what if that influence butts up against Tertullian's influence that has a different bent to it?

And so, you may end up getting some compromise between those two. And they're all going to be called apostolic tradition.

I mean, no one ever goes, you know what? The apostles had nothing to do with what we believe.

We're just going to throw this out there for fun. No, everyone's always saying it has something to do with apostolic tradition.

That's the problem with this form of argumentation, is that you don't have an objective standard by which to analyze these things.

And so, what you have all across this area during this time is, you know, basically from here onward, you have clear instances from Cyprian onward of infant baptism existing right next to continued normative adult baptism.

And it's not just, oh, okay, starting here we're going to baptize all the kids, and only adult converts get baptized.

No, because all the way to here you still have people as adults putting off their baptism later in life.

So, you've got a massive mixture. And it's not until probably down here someplace that you end up, well, can anybody guess what probably one of the most important developments that allows for a primary, a primero, how do

I put this, that allows for one perspective, the infant baptism perspective, to become absolutely predominant.

What development do you think allows that to happen? Well, the point that I see is a watershed, right?

And what's the seed planted here? Sacralism, state church. And so, again, it's not until about here that you have the official proclamation of Rome, the

Roman Empire, being a Christian empire. But still, it's not like everybody woke up the next morning and started changing everything.

But what you see is development at this point, and once you have the establishment of sacralism, then you see a growing of the concept of infant baptism and a diminishment of adult baptism.

Except, again, still in the context of converts from, say, another religion, they will still be baptized, and primarily by immersion for quite some time.

And in many places, baptism by immersion always continued, simply because that was what it meant.

But then, once you have an entire culture down here that everybody in this country is

Christian, well, how'd they get that way? Well, infant baptism becomes the simplest way, not only to be a member of the church, but to be a part of the nation as well.

Yeah? I'm Clay Presbyterian Advocate. I almost said Devil's Advocate. That would be unfair to our brothers and sisters.

We go by Scripture alone. And so even if it appears, if you lay out the case, there's no evidence that there was any concept of a covenantal baptism as a new circumcision back in the 3rd or 4th century.

Well, that doesn't really matter, because we derive that from Scripture, and so we can talk about history all we want, but at the end of the day, that doesn't really, it's not relevant to the discussion.

Well, it does make you wonder why, well, let's just put it this way. I think my

Presbyterian friends do feel the weight of the fact that we can go back to the

Didache, and you have baptism of adults professing faith in the earliest extra

New Testament writings that we possess. And if this is where we have historical evidence of our interpretation of the

New Testament text, their interpretation of that same New Testament text is somewhere over here.

Okay? If that's the timeline. And those of you listening by audio don't know what I just did, but I walked halfway across the room.

So, they feel the weight. I'm not saying that because I can point to baptism by immersion of professing believers in the earliest documents, that makes it right.

Obviously, my argument is scriptural. But when you can't find anybody who gave your interpretation until over there someplace, that does place an extra burden upon you to explain why that is.

You know, majority rules has never been a good way of interpreting anything.

But it'd be nice to have at least somebody who said, yeah, I think it's that way. That's sort of helpful.

Yes, sir? I've been told with a straight face by several people that infant baptism was such an obvious and unambiguous teaching of the

New Testament that it didn't need to be mentioned ever in any extra biblical writings.

Well, there you go. Argument from silence. And if you find that a compelling argument, more power to you.

It does, you know, make you go. And so, in all the discussions of baptism, in entire books on the subject of baptism, it was just so obvious that they only discussed the unusual elements of baptism, not the, okay.

It's so obvious it's not in the New Testament. Yeah, well, you got that too. Yes, sir? There was a hand back there. Yes, sir?

Well, there are those who would say that as, there are some who identify a growing understanding of that, which of course would make me go, well,

Romans has been there all along, but they're clearly, in this time period,

I mean, we have right around here, we've got Justin Martyr, who shows no evidence of having any access to Paul's writings.

What would your theology look like if you didn't have Paul's writings? So, if that's, if you have places where that's the case, then there is a growing understanding of that aspect of things, and there are many who have identified that as actually pushing toward infant baptism, so that you would avoid that very issue, and you would be able to bring about remission of all sins, not just, you know, because obviously the child, who was it?

Down here, we have John Chrysostom, who in many ways just says incredibly deep stuff, but believes all children are born innocent.

So, again, what it shows you is the fragmented nature of doctrinal development over time in different places amongst different people, and the big error that people have is we just sort of assume that everybody was just walking along the same way.

They didn't have social media back then, you know. You didn't have sermon audio to listen to what

John Chrysostom was saying, that kind of stuff. So, it was a little bit slower, and not everybody was literate either.

That obviously made a huge difference as well. So, what do we learn from all this?

Obviously, from my perspective, the most important thing that we see here is, when we go back to Tertullian, he's talking about tradition, custom, the importance of these things, and once you go there, the results are going to be universally negative over time.

Maybe not immediately, but remember,

I've said before, the earliest example we have anywhere in Christian writings of someone claiming a tradition that was passed down by the apostles, remember

I told you it was Irenaeus, and Irenaeus argued that he had been taught by people who had been taught by the apostles that Jesus was more than 50 years old when he died, and Irenaeus used this as an argument against the

Gnostics. Well, hey, those Gnostics were nasty folks, so we need good arguments, right? Well, but they need to actually be truthful and good arguments, because I don't know anybody today that can look at the

New Testament and go, yeah, we can fit 20 years into that ministry period, sure. No, it's ridiculous.

But that's the earliest example of someone in a post -New Testament writing saying, the apostles taught us this.

It's not in Scripture, but the apostles passed this down to us. And the funny thing is, everybody who depends on apostolic tradition, as an entire body, agree, that first instance was wrong.

So what does that do for the reliability of all the other instances after that?

It really makes you wonder, just a little bit, about that particular aspect of things.

And so, for a lot of folks, you just go, you know,

I never even heard what people did back then. I didn't mention this, but in Egypt, baptism was done naked.

And so, anybody who wants to do the apostolic tradition thing, well, you really want to go back there?

No, I don't think so. But, you know, it's good for you to be aware of these aspects, because, again, when you're not aware, people use them to slap you upside the head and say, see, what you're doing doesn't have historical precedent, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Good to have the entire canon of the New Testament, and to have a commitment to allowing that to be the final authority in defining those things.

Now, like I said, entire tomes. I can direct you to various books on the subject if you want to go into more detail, but wanted to cover that while we're still generally in this area, before we start pressing on into other subjects in our seemingly never -ending study of church history.

So, with that, our time is exhausted. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, once again, we thank you for the opportunity of looking back into history and trying to learn from how you've worked with your people in the past.

May we drive wisdom. May we have the opportunity of looking at ourselves with greater objectivity than we could have before.

ask that you be with us now as we go into worship. May your name be honored and glorified, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.