18 - Melito and Irenaeus

Well, it has been a little while since we have been looking at church history.

I've been away. In fact, I would appreciate your prayers for my friends down in New Zealand.

We were just commenting that if it had happened, there was a 7 .5

earthquake north of Christchurch this morning. It was just after midnight their time.

And that's not a good thing. Christchurch had been devastated by an earthquake in 2006 -2005.

It seems like a long time ago, but everyone tells me they are still rebuilding, which is amazing.

And so 7 .5, it wasn't actually in Christchurch.

It was a little ways away. So I'm hoping that maybe there wasn't quite as much devastation as before, but don't know.

Anyway, Wellington, which is where I was, was affected.

And in fact, there's a tsunami warning. And since I was in a hotel within probably not a full kilometer from the waterfront, because I ran along the waterfront down there, they were saying that I would assume that I would have been standing on the street and then evacuated somewhere.

The Wellington Airport is right on the beach. And so I don't even know if that's even open.

And we flew back on Monday. So let's just say I'm praying for my friends there, but not really sure that I want to be there with them right now myself, given that I would be a long ways from home at that particular point in time.

So that would be a little bit difficult. So pray for them and pray that there weren't any lives lost or anything like that in that particular situation.

I'm looking up a citation in one of my books that I wanted to read to you. Last time we were together, my recollection is that we had made it to a gentleman by the name of Melito of Sardis.

I'm getting a nod of the head from someone on that one. And I had mentioned that he was involved in a controversy that you've probably...

Most people have never heard of this particular controversy. It's called the Quarta Deciman Controversy.

So just put Quarta O'Deciman if you want to write that down.

Kelly tells me that she Googles all the phrases that I come up with that she's not heard of before, and that that sometimes can be rather interesting.

But the Quarta Deciman Controversy. You know, we might think from our perspective today that some of the controversies of the early church were almost incomprehensible.

But one of the things you have to remember is there was a... Well, let me illustrate it this way.

If you've ever spoken to one of Jehovah's Witnesses for a lengthy period of time, one of the things that holds

Witnesses in the Watchtower Society, even when they've been sort of abused, and it can be a rather abusive religion and things like that, is in their mind the unity that exists, the sameness that exists throughout the entire organization around the world.

And from their perspective, that is a sign of divine authority and approbation.

In their mind, when they're sitting there... And I imagine there's probably almost no one in here who's ever...

How many of you have ever attended a service at a Watchtower? Kingdom Hall? Oh, a couple people. All right.

They're not the most thrilling experiences. You know, you don't walk out just going, wow.

And if you do a Watchtower study, you know, they'll ask a question.

There'll be these questions at the bottom of the page, and they'll put this microphone down the row for you to answer the question.

And the questions are, you know, pretty straightforward. The answer is pretty obvious, stuff like that.

But what you need to remember is that very article and those very questions are being studied in every single

Kingdom Hall around the world on that day. Lockstep unity.

And for many people thinking that's a sign that God is with us.

Well, in the early church, remember we already talked about the scandal of the early schisms, the scandal that you would have in North Africa, Catholic churches and Donatist churches.

And they're separated from one another, and there's no fellowship between them. And now it's interesting, once the

Muslims came through, the Muslims couldn't care less whether you were of one brand or the other.

That didn't make any difference, and that tended to somewhat change the dynamic of things for everybody.

But the point being that the early church had the idea that the unity that we have, and how far that unity extend, that's always been the issue.

Because, like I just said, I just got back from the other side of the world, and I had wonderful unity with the brothers and sisters down there.

But what was it based on? It was not based upon, well, you know what?

We sang Come Thou Fount in New Zealand. From what

I heard, a little bit better than had been sung here around the same time.

But, however, they had, now don't tell anybody, they had drums, and a guitar, and a keyboard.

And it was pretty much the same tune, but it was modified a little bit, you know?

So, did we really have unity? Well, I would say, yes, but there would be others who would say, no, never.

Okay, all right. So what are the limits of unity?

What is unity and what isn't unity? To me, if we're both singing the same song with the same desire to the same

Lord, that's unity. For other people, well, if you don't do it, you know, well.

Well, other people would say, that's a hymn, can't do that, so don't have unity with you. You know, there's all sorts of ways we've found of sort of dividing from one another.

But, it's the definition of what we need to have unity on, and what we can have difference in, that has always been one of the biggest controversies.

And so, the Court of Decimal and Controversy, to us, seems odd, because all it was, was when do you celebrate the resurrection?

Now, I don't remember anything in the New Testament about having to celebrate the resurrection on a particular day of the year.

It seems to me that the, what's called the Kuriakei Hemera, the Day of the Lord, was a weekly celebration of the resurrection, and that was what we call the

Lord's Day. But the idea of the annual celebration is very, very early.

What we would call Easter or Resurrection Sunday, but how do you figure that out?

Well, the Eastern churches claimed that John the

Apostle specifically delivered to them, apostolic tradition, they didn't use that term, well, yes, they would eventually, but that John taught the

Eastern churches specifically, that they were to celebrate the resurrection on what we would call

Nisan 14, which is the Jewish calendar, 14th day of the month of Nisan, which is

Passover. Ironically, interestingly enough, that's when Jehovah's Witnesses have what's called their

Memorial Supper, which we don't have time to get into today, but which in and of itself is a fascinating thing.

The Western churches used a different form of calculation to determine the

Sunday upon which Easter would be celebrated. And you may notice it bops around between March and April, and moves back and forth depending on the particular year.

Well, this would create tremendous division amongst the churches.

For example, Irenaeus, who we're about to get to, one of the biggest names near the church,

Irenaeus, rebuked Victor.

Victor was the Bishop of Rome over this very issue, because Victor became so dominating that he threatened the

Eastern churches with excommunication if they did not bow to the Western method of determining the date of the celebration of Easter.

Irenaeus said, cool your jets, dude. That's not a quote, by the way. That's sort of a modern, living

Bible version of what he would have said in Latin, probably, or something like that.

He basically told the Bishop of Rome, you don't have the right to divide the church, this type of thing.

But it is an early indication of the Bishop of Rome sort of feeling like he's got something special going.

But Irenaeus said, no way, don't do it. But it shows the depth of the division, and it's something to put in your notes.

East -West, East -West. Because eventually, it's going to take until the year 1054.

That's one of those, you need to memorize this date to pass the final dates. 1054 is the date of the schism, the great schism between East and West.

And that didn't happen starting in 1053. There were cracks, there were fissures.

There really is a different way of thought in the East and the West. And it's going to be seen all the way back to,

I think, this early time period. And it just grows over time. So Melito Sardis was on the wrong side, basically, of this particular issue.

And hence, in the West especially, his writings were pretty much ignored for a lengthy period of time.

And have only recently been appreciated once again. It's interesting that Polycarp and Anacletus, Bishop of Rome, had discussed the issue years earlier.

But in a much more collegiate way than would happen later on. So, it is probably due to his involvement, as I said, with the

Coridescent Controversy. We sort of forget about things like that. It's a shame, because he is a wonderful early witness to the strong belief in the full deity of Jesus Christ in the early period.

And that's why I ran into the room, wanted to read a couple sections for you. He wrote a commentary, interestingly enough, on the

Apocalypse, on Revelation. Now, why is that interesting? Well, because the

Book of Revelation struggled for inclusion in the New Testament canon. And there were many people who rejected it.

He was certainly one who did not. And he wrote a commentary on that book.

So, the loss of this and his books on the church and on the

Lord's Day are perhaps to be regretted most. So, he wrote books on the church. That would have been interesting to see what a,

I mean, Sardis, a major city, a lot of apostolic content there.

It would have been interesting to see what he wrote on the church before the end of the second century. On the Lord's Day, that would have been really interesting to have.

How do we know he wrote these things? It's because other people mentioned them, but we don't have them. We don't possess them any longer. Still could discover an ancient manuscript someday.

You never know. Among the Syriac fragments of Melito published by Curitin is one from a work on faith, which contains a remarkable

Christological creed and eloquent expansion of the regula fide, the rule of faith.

The Lord Jesus Christ acknowledges the perfect reason, the Word of God, who was begotten before the light, who was creator with the

Father, who was the fashioner of man, who was all things and all, patriarch among the patriarchs, law in the law, chief priest among the priests, king among kings, prophet among the prophets, archangel among the angels.

He piloted Noah, conducted Abraham, was bound with Isaac, exiled with Jacob, was captain with Moses. He foretold his own sufferings in David and the prophets.

He was incarnate in the virgin, worshipped by the magi. He healed the lame, gave sight to the blind, was rejected by the people, condemned by Pilate, hanged upon the tree, buried in the earth, rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles, ascended to heaven.

He is the rest of the departed, the recoverer of the lost, the light of the blind, the refuge of the afflicted, the bridegroom of the church, the charioteer of the cherubim, the captain of angels,

God who is of God, the son of the Father, the king forever and ever. Yeah, that's one long sentence, too.

And similarly to that, right here, this is

Shaft's History of the Church, Volume 2. There's two sets in the pastor's office, and I'm sure that if someone asks kindly, as long as you bring them back by Sunday so I can steal them.

I included, this is so cool, I included a, I had forgotten,

I thought we were on Irenaeus this morning, and then I started laying on it. And so one of the things

I wanted to read to you was a quotation from Alito that's in my book on the

Trinity. And so I want, I think I probably own my own book on the

Trinity on Kindle. And so when you have one of these devices that Pastor Frye does not understand,

I quickly grabbed it, downloaded it, and happened to guess pretty carefully as to where it was in the book.

And voila, here it is. This is a quotation from Alito's book on the

Passover, or his sermon on the Passover, I should say. And this is my translation of it.

Here's what Alito said. And so he was lifted up upon a tree, and an inscription was attached indicating who was being killed.

Who was it? It is a grievous thing to tell, but a most fearful thing to refrain from telling. But listen as you tremble before him on whose account the earth trembled.

He who hung the earth in place is hanged. He who affixed the heavens in place is fixed in place.

He who made all things fast is made fast on a tree. The sovereign is insulted. God is murdered.

The king of Israel is destroyed by an Israelite hand. This is the one who made the heavens and the earth and formed mankind in the beginning.

The one proclaimed by the law and the prophets. The one enfleshed in a virgin. The one hanged on a tree. The one buried in the earth.

The one raised from the dead. The one who went up into the heights of heaven. The one sitting at the right hand of the

Father. The one having all authority to judge and save. Through whom the Father made the things which exist from the beginning of time.

This one is the Alpha and the Omega. This one is the beginning and the end. The beginning indescribable and the end incomprehensible.

This one is the Christ. This one is the King. This one is Jesus. This one is the leader. This one is the Lord. This one is the one who rose from the dead.

This one is the one sitting on the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is born by the Father. To him be the glory and the power forever.

Amen. So, again, when you hear people saying, Well, you know, as some

Jehovah's Witnesses said to me years and years ago when they accidentally wandered into the offices of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I don't think to this day they knew where they were. But, well, all this

Trinity stuff wasn't invented until the 12th century. Well, most of them won't say that.

That was way down the road. But, well, it wasn't until the Council of Nicaea. Well, nope, that's not the case either.

Here you have another. You know, we read all that stuff from Ignatius. Melito is after Ignatius but certainly continues in the exact same line of Ignatius in regards to his clear belief in the deity of Christ.

So there's one that Melito honestly was sort of a little bit forgotten to history and his contributions minimized.

It sure would be nice if some of those books would turn up, you know, buried in a library somewhere.

And that's a distinct possibility. It could happen. There's lots of stuff sitting in archives in places that hasn't been identified, translated, things like that.

As we're going to see when we look at origin, a vast majority of works yet to be translated into English. So who knows?

It might be very helpful, very useful, but very early and very clearly

Trinitarian. And I'll just mention this just briefly in passing. Eventually we're going to have to spend a fair amount of time talking about the canon of Scripture and what was accepted, what was not.

And, of course, there's two aspects to that. That is, the primary area of controversy isn't about the

New Testament. And when you think about any possible books that have come down to us from history that anyone ever thought should have been part of the

New Testament, we know all of them. We possess all of them. And it's a really open and shut case that any other possible works.

Clement of Rome was considered by some. Shepherd of Hermas, things like that.

They're open and shut cases that they were never universally accepted. And there's a clear and obvious difference between these books and what we have in the

New Testament. The controversy, especially between Protestants and Roman Catholics, of course, has to do with the

Old Testament, not the New Testament. The books that we call Apocrypha, which they call

Deutero -canonical, secondarily canonical. I'm not sure how that even is a meaningful word, but that's where the controversy lies.

Melito of Sardis, that name will come up again. Because, we won't do it right now, but you will be able to discern a very clear line of...

Let's put it this way. The more knowledgeable a writer was of the history of the

Jewish people and the history of the Old Testament, the less likely they were to accept the apocryphal books of Scripture.

The more ignorant they were, the more likely they were to accept the apocryphal books of Scripture. And it's the ignorant position that ends up being canonized at the

Council of Trent in 1548. And the more knowledgeable line being rejected at that particular point in time.

Melito inquires into Palestine over this issue. He does research.

He inquires of the people in Palestine who would have access to Jewish understanding, the history of the

Jewish people. Maybe he looked at Romans 3. Hmm, to whom the oracles of God have been entrusted.

Maybe we should ask them. And discovered that Jewish people never accepted the apocryphal books as being

Scripture. And so he rejected them as well. And so he will be one of many that will be in that line that do not accept the apocryphal books as being

Scriptural. So keep in mind there as well. All right. Switching gears now.

And we probably, I'm not sure that we will get through all of this because he's a pretty major figure.

And one of the reasons he's a major figure is because so much of his writings have not only come down to us, but they've been known to us all along.

So in other words, even though Melito, some of Melito's writings have sort of been rediscovered, there hasn't been all that much work done on them.

Irenaeus of Lyon, different story. His writings have been known.

He was quoted extensively. And major works of his have come down to us.

And so he has a rather important standing. He was born near Smyrna between 115 and 125.

So obviously early 2nd century writer.

He was a student of Polycarp. So what would that make him? Third generation.

I mean if apostles to, you know, John to Polycarp to Irenaeus.

Okay, so sort of only two steps there. Keep that in mind. Because Irenaeus is going to be one of the first people to utilize the phrase apostolic tradition.

Apostolic tradition, which is going to become a key term for us here in the early period. And if he could mess something up along those lines, it really makes you wonder just how safe the concept of apostolic tradition, quote unquote, is depending on what you're calling it.

We'll talk a lot more about that in the future. He was a missionary to southern Gaul and was a presbyter in Lyon during the great persecution of 177.

The bishop, Pothinus, died in the persecution and Irenaeus took the position. He was very involved in the

Montanist disputes. Remember? We haven't talked about it. Yes, we did. No, we didn't. Just a little bit?

Thank you. The Montanist disputes. We haven't gotten to. Oh, we did.

Yeah, we did talk about. Okay, we've done Tertullian. Okay, we did the Montanist though. Okay, good.

So you know what the Montanist disputes were. So he was involved with that. And he took a less than hard line, always emphasizing love even in the midst of dispute.

He worked with zeal in Lyon. We lose sight of him after 190 and are not sure of the date of his death.

So 177, he basically becomes the leader of the church in Lyon. There is persecution in that area for quite some time.

Most believe that he died a martyr's death under one form of that persecution or another.

Irenaeus' theology was more aware of the New Testament than some earlier fathers, though still primarily legalistic in character.

He was a millennialist, as Papias had been. Now, please don't misinterpret what that means.

One must differentiate between dispensational millennialism and historical millennialism.

They're not identical things. He simply believed in a literal millennium.

He, like so many before, was strongly opposed to Marcion. Like I said, from the next century, anybody who writes a book, got to write a book against Marcion.

And his writings are an important witness to the development of the New Testament canon. Because since we have so much of his writings, and he's engaged in so much dispute, including with people who are trying to use

Scripture, you can find out how much Scripture he had and what he viewed as canon

Scripture fairly easily. With some people, you sort of have to guess, because you only have a few letters or something like that.

We have his Against Heresies. He has a four -volume set called

Against Heresies. It's huge. You write that much literature, and it's going to become fairly clear what you're working with as far as your sources of authority.

And so, he wrote a refutation of Gnosticism in five books.

That was four or five books around 180. It's called Odd Heresies, but Against Heresies, which is one of the most important sources of our knowledge of Gnosticism and the

Church's response. Well, let me expand on that. Until we found the Nag Hammadi Library in the last century,

Irenaeus's work was the primary source we had. And that's not always the best source to have.

It's a sad reality that even amongst Christians, when you write a book against someone else's religious belief, it's going to have biases to it.

And sometimes, some of the books we read in the early Church about Gnostics, way out of line.

So, there were questions as to exactly how accurate Irenaeus was until we found the

Nag Hammadi Library. And then we now possessed, for the first time, in direct versions, many of the books that he himself was refuting.

And so we were able to get a greater appreciation of just how accurate he was.

Mainly, mainly. Not in any super major way.

I mean, given how we do things today. Let's just put it this way.

He was better than the mainstream media is to a conservative. How's that?

Is that something we all can understand today? Yeah, okay. What? Well, yeah,

I suppose. Anyway, the type of Gnosticism that he is refuting is called

Valentinian Gnosticism, named after Valentinus, who taught in Rome around AD 140.

So, Valentinian Gnosticism, you know, now Gnosticism is really becoming identifiable.

And part of that's because it's now in conflict with the Orthodox Church. And so that's going to cause a delineation of beliefs as well, very frequently.

It is because of his interaction with heresy that we find one of the most important developments in Irenaeus, which will have tremendous impact in the rest of the

Christian era. And that is his concept of apostolic succession. Apostolic succession.

If any of you saw the last dividing line I did, after giving a brief report on, well, relatively brief report on my trip down under,

I played a video that had just been posted, a very strange video, where the three antagonists, the three people who were being exposed as false teachers, were myself,

Daniel Wallace, and Bart Ehrman, which is strange to put the three of us together, since both

Dan and I have debated Bart. But this is being put together by an ecclesiastical text group, and one of the things that they were talking about was this concept of apostolic succession.

And I honestly admitted when I first started watching the videos, since you couldn't tell until the end what their point is, well, you still can't really tell, but they quoted someone, it sort of gives away where they're coming from.

I thought I was reading something from, or listening to something from a Roman Catholic, because, obviously, the statements of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others, in regards to the concept of apostolic succession, central and primary to Rome's apologetic for her own claims, that the

Bishop of Rome has inherited an authority, there's been this power transfer from Peter down through the apostles, and so on and so forth.

And what apostolic succession means today to a

Roman Catholic, you cannot simply assume, because they use the term today, that they're using it in the same way that Irenaeus used it.

Irenaeus had no concept of the Bishop of Rome being the vicar of Christ, and infallible, and the head of the visible church, and all of that stuff.

Like I said, he told Victor, who was the Bishop of Rome, cool your jets on the issue of the court of decimals controversy.

He wasn't functioning on the idea that the Bishop of Rome headed up the church, but he was functioning on the idea that the bishops of the churches that were established by apostles had a special authority that the

Gnostics didn't have. The Gnostics could not claim the apostles as the source of their doctrine, and the

Orthodox churches claimed that they could. And this was the issue.

So what is the nature of apostolic succession? What does that give as an advantage to one side over the other is the issue.

Irenaeus, upon facing those who would interpret the scriptures in a different way than the Orthodox, claimed that the line of authority went from God to Jesus to the apostles to the bishops.

So here's the line of authority. And if you're outside that line of authority, then you don't have an authority to interpret scripture anyway.

Now you can understand why someone in Irenaeus's position would do this.

I mean, you've got the Gnostics coming along. You don't have church history as yet.

It's barely been 100 years since the apostles died. There's not much in the way of, you know, you don't even have the first commentary on the atonement having been written.

The church is under persecution. And the Gnostics come along and they claim a special authority, a special spiritual authority, a special spiritual enlightenment that you don't have.

That was one of the things the Gnostics did. They looked at the Orthodox and said they're spiritually dead. All they have are their doctrines.

And we have so much more. We have the living spirit and so on and so forth. It's always an easy way to go.

And so you don't even have what you're eventually going to have in the sense of a firmly established character of the

New Testament canon as yet. I mean, most of it's already agreed upon. And it's, you know, the

Gnostics did reject certain books, but they didn't really, well, some of the weirder ones did bring in some of their own stuff, but they weren't really trying to claim the apostles wrote other weird books.

So the issue came down to the interpretation of the text itself. And it has been the controversial issue of the church throughout its age.

If it's written, it has to be interpreted. Now, it's real easy to say, well, that's why you need to have a living voice to interpret it.

One little problem with that, if you've got a living voice that interprets it, as soon as the living voice speaks, guess what you have to do?

You have to interpret what's said. And a clear example of this is

Vatican II was an allegedly ecumenical major council of the

Roman Catholic Church that took place only, finished up what, 50, about 50 years ago.

60, what was it, 64, 67, somewhere around there. So about 50 years. Not that long.

I mean, lots of people, you know, Ratzinger, the former pope, was involved heavily there and stuff like that.

So as far as church history is concerned, very recent memory. So you would think, if you just had an ecumenical council, that there should be really no disagreement amongst

Roman Catholics concerning Roman Catholic teaching because the church just spoke. It just had an ecumenical council.

You've got these volumes of commentary and apostolic constitutions and all the rest of this stuff, so that should have clarified everything, right?

The answer is no. All it did was vastly increase the amount of literature over which you can now have disagreements of interpretation.

That's all it did. And if anything, it broadened the scope of possibilities.

It didn't diminish the scope of possibilities, especially because of the nature of the council. So this issue, every single generation has to struggle with, and you have struggled with it whether you know that you did or not.

It's always better to know the issues you're struggling with than to not know the issues that you're struggling with anyway. It gives a lot of clarity to actually know, oh, that's the issue of authority to interpret scripture.

Well, you and I assume a bunch of stuff about that.

And the conclusions you've come to, which lead you to this room, rather than to a

Roman Catholic church or to an Eastern Orthodox church or a Mormon church or a Buddhist temple, you've come to those conclusions.

Whether you can identify them or not is really the issue, and that's one of the wonderful things about church history.

It's also one of the things that can be a little bit uncomfortable about church history. I can't tell you how many people that I know who grew up in evangelical churches, never looked at church history, went off, maybe got really fascinated by a person in church history, started realizing there was earlier and earlier church history, and once they start reading people like Irenaeus and stuff, for the first time they are consciously faced with issues like authority to interpret scripture, apostolic succession, what's the role of tradition, all the rest of this stuff, and once they start reading, if they only read in one particular stream of things, all of a sudden they're off into some strange belief because they lose their foundations, and their foundations were never really firm in the first place.

And so for some people it's very troubling to go, oh, there were people in the early church that claimed that instead of their sound, consistent, thorough exegesis of the text of scripture, they claimed that they were doing that, but that they had a special authority to come to the conclusions as to what it taught because they were ordained by someone who taught them things that came from the apostles down to this special line.

And on a functional level, I mean Rome still claims this, but Roman Catholic historians are going to be honest enough to say that there's been a lot of interruptions in that line down through history, and so if that's really what's needed, then there are a lot of folks who just throw their hands up in the air and say,

Who knows? Who possibly could? And so when you encounter a theological liberal that didn't start out as a theological liberal, and you ask yourself the question,

I wonder what happened to them? For a lot of them, what happened was they start studying this stuff, and they start looking through the early church, and they start going, well, that's a good question.

I never thought about that. That's a good question. I never thought about that either. And the conclusions they end up coming to basically are, well, it was a mess back then, and it's more of a mess now, and if they couldn't figure it out back then, there ain't no way we can figure it out now, and so let's just all shake hands and sing kumbaya, and let's not worry about any of this doctrine stuff, because nobody has a clue anymore.

That's basically where they end up coming down. And part of the reason for this is that Irenaeus is dealing with a situation very early on, and we can appreciate the pressures he was facing, but that doesn't mean that we have to agree with the conclusions he came to.

It doesn't mean we have to agree with the methodology that he then adopted in that particular context, in that particular situation.

But I also think we need to be very careful in looking at what he actually thought apostolic succession meant, and that's what we will,

Lord willing, two weeks from now, continue on with the concept of apostolic succession.

I'm actually preaching in Tucson next Lord's Day, so two weeks from now we will look at what apostolic succession meant, how that played itself out.

Let's close our time in a word of prayer. Our Gracious Heavenly Father, once again, we thank you for this privilege that is ours to look into our own history.

We ask that you would give us guidance and direction that we may learn both what not to do and what to do to learn from those in whose lives you worked in the past.