[This material is excerpted from our television series, “The Battle to Dethrone Jesus,” with Dr. Darrell Bock and Dr. Daniel Wallace. The entire series is available in our online store.]
Dr. John Ankerberg: Some people say that there was a conflict inside the church, and so we had differing views of Christianity right inside the church recorded in the New Testament. What do you say to that?
Dr. Darrell Bock: Well, we do see some evidence in the New Testament of some points of tension. When you bring together a Jewish community that has certain ways of living with a Gentile community that has different ways of living, there was tension as they tried to put these two groups together. And we see that. But generally what was being fought over were issues of what we call orthopraxy, how you practice orthodoxy, and not so much orthodoxy* itself.
[*Orthodoxy is defined as “authorized or generally accepted theory, doctrine, or practice.”]
Now, there were some Jews who were associating with Jesus who said, “Judaism doesn’t change at all. All you do is add Jesus on top of it. So you have got to live the same way otherwise,” etc. And the church made a decision after some conflict that that wasn’t the case. What we do have in the book of Galatians is evidence of this tension even between Peter and Paul. [Galatians 2:11ff] But at the same time there is the declaration that the right hand of fellowship existed between the various key players, because their theology was the same. [Galatians 2:9] They were wrestling with how do we practice this?
Dr. John Ankerberg: Our friend Craig Evans was picked by National Geographic to investigate The Gospel of Judas. He wrote a book, Fabricating Jesus, about this idea that there were different kinds of orthodox belief. He said, the basics, okay, if you didn’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel; if you didn’t believe that Jesus Christ actually died on the cross and paid for our sins; claimed to be the Son of God; that He rose from the dead; you were not a Christian. Do you agree with that?
Dr. Daniel Wallace: I would say amen to that, absolutely. That was the core of what they believed. I think there were some other things where they were wrestling with. For example, what is it that I have to do to come into faith? What do I have to do to get in, if you will. And others were looking at the Christian faith in terms of, what do I have to do to continue on as a Christian? And those were some of the struggles that I’d say were dealing with the fringes of orthodoxy. But Darrell is right that it is also dealing with orthopraxy.
Dr. John Ankerberg: So, Jesus dies, let’s say 30 AD, and in this period in between you’ve got the living apostles that can correct unorthodox belief. They are going around to the churches. And these fellows lived approximately how long, Darrell?
Dr. Darrell Bock: Well, most of them lived at least to the 60s [AD], and then we have evidence of a few of them extending all the way up into the 90s [AD].
Dr. John Ankerberg: So, they start dying off before we get to 100 AD, all right. But you have those guys walking around and teaching and correcting. You have the doctrinal statements, the creedal statements, that can be dated very early by scholars, that goes right back to the mid-30s. And you have these hymns, Philippians 2 and Colossians and so on, that are just loaded with theology. And then you have the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. What is the doctrine that comes out of the baptism and the Lord’s Supper that they were practicing all the time?
Dr. Darrell Bock: Well, the doctrine that comes out of the baptism is the picture of the new life, that your old man dies; and there is also the picture of washing, so there is a picture of cleansing alongside that, and then you are raised up to new life. It is the old Baptist expression of being “born again.” So they were born again. And it is a picture of the new life, the new start, the spirit in the person that represents this reestablished relationship with the living God. And then when you come to the Lord’s Supper, of course, what’s being portrayed is, “This is the new covenant in my blood” [1 Corinthians 11:25], that Jesus Christ has started what God promised that He would start one day, and that is a new covenant relationship with His people in which He does a work from the inside out. And in fact, it is this work on the inside that is so necessary, because without it we are not the people God created us to be.
Dr. Daniel Wallace: I would like to add that on the baptism it focuses really on the beginning of the Christian life. You are making a commitment to Christ and He is making a commitment to you by giving the Holy Spirit. Water baptism and spirit baptism were so seen as synonymous, virtually, that it was difficult to separate them. And then the Lord’s Supper, or communion, was something of continued fellowship with Him. And that was the thing that the church continued on every week. Baptism, a person got baptized once, but they would continue in communion every week as a reminder of who the Lord was and what He had done for them.
Dr. John Ankerberg: And what did He do for them?
Dr. Daniel Wallace: He died on the cross for them; He paid for their sins; He rose again. But the key thing, I think, in the Lord’s Supper is the organic connection that people have with Christ. “You will eat my flesh, you will drink my blood.” [John 6:56] And that is part of the portrait that we have of early Christianity that sometimes is lost among Protestants. The Orthodox and the Catholics have followed this one well. But it’s an organic connection that I have with Christ who is now the living head of the body of Christ. And that is why they practice communion weekly and Protestants typically don’t.
Dr. Darrell Bock: And, in fact, I think it is very, very important to appreciate that the gospel is not merely forgiveness of sins. The gospel is the reestablishment of this broken relationship with the living God. The forgiveness of sins is the means by which that is achieved. But if you simply have a message that the gospel is having your sins forgiven, you have sold short all that God is doing through that forgiveness.
Next up: Part 4 – How did the New Testament describe what they wrote?