The regulative principle and the Apostles

Two days ago, I wrote an article on the regulative principle, the Old Testament, and Church History. It forms the background to this addendum and can be found here.

There is a problem with those who speak of the loss of the teaching of the Apostles as early as the beginning of the second century AD. This is the theory that the Church post-100 AD no longer truly reflected the full teaching of the Twelve Apostles, and is found in the Trail of Blood lectures by Dr. James Milton Carroll, which lectures took place in the 1920s. However, the original theology dates to the mid-1800s to three Baptist pastors: James Robinson Graves, James Madison Pendleton, and Amos Cooper Dayton.

Dr. Carroll agrees with the pastors of the 1800s and positions the beginning of the fall of the “official” Church shortly before 100 AD. According to him, even before Christianity became the official state church of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the persecution of true believers by the false Church had already started over two centuries before. He cites the “persecution” of the Montanists, Novatians, Cathari, etc. They may have mistaken beliefs in some areas, but allegedly preserve the True Church in their main approach. The official Church’s condemnation of those groups as heretics is proof of the rise and takeover of the False Church. One name for this is Landmark theology.

The problem is that ultimately those who follow that theology are saying that the Twelve Apostles (with Paul being the Apostle who replaced Judas) were insufficient teachers. I realize that those who hold Landmark theology would simply claim that Satan had not just infiltrated, but also taken over the Church. However, if the alleged takeover happened that quickly, then it points to a stunning failure by the Apostles to properly teach and prepare those under their care.

More than that, this stunning failure calls into doubt not only whether the Apostles properly passed on what they had received but also calls into serious doubt the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. The Holy Spirit, which is supposed to lead the Church into all truth could not even keep the Church correctly on course past the first generation. It is not sufficient to argue that the Holy Spirit kept a few believers on course in a hidden manner, for God had kept Israel basically on course through centuries, bringing her back to sanity again and again, yet never deserting official Israel for centuries. Now, supposedly, God is unable to keep the Church on course past the first generation? Apparently, he did better work with Israel!

But, this begins to add a whole layer of doubts that are eventually seriously picked up by the classic Liberals of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. If the Apostles are that incapable of training a corps of people to lead the Church correctly, how do we know that the teachings that they recorded in their writings are correct? In fact, the classical liberals did not believe that the Apostles recorded Jesus’ teachings correctly. That is why you have people like Thomas Jefferson putting out a Bible in which he has cut out all that was probably not accurate testimony about Jesus. After all, the Apostles already showed their incapacity!

This argument over what is really of Jesus and what belongs to mistaken records by the Apostles is an argument that goes on to this day. I am leaving out the arguments by the skeptics and full-on atheists because they make the mistake of the other extreme, that of attributing no truth to the narratives. That is a different type of error than what is being discussed here. But, there is little doubt that the argument of the failure of the second generation leads to the argument of the inadequacies of the Apostles which leads to severe doubts as to the narrative content of the New Testament.

In order to produce the regulative principle, those who follow it have to discard the second century AD and its developments. Frankly, they have to discard the late first century AD. In discarding that, even if they are not Landmarkians, they inevitably damage the reliability of the Apostles. In damaging the reliability of the Apostles, they damage the reliability of their writings. In damaging those writings, they leave us with no clear picture of Jesus and what he intends for us. It really is a set of dominoes falling in a row.

Even worse for the Landmarkians who make the argument of the fallen Church of the second century is that the collection of books known as the New Testament is not a settled collection until the fourth (maybe the fifth) century AD. That is rather late, in comparison to the time of the Apostles, and it is settled as a collection by the supposed False Church that the Landmarkians reject. Even the non-Landmark theologians have to argue that a state church with bishops and a liturgy that they reject somehow correctly collected the very New Testament on which they rely for their regulative principle.

In order to argue for this, various versions of a theology called the Testimonium of Scripture developed. That is, somehow the books themselves were so imbued with the Holy Spirit that even the False Church (or the mistaken Church in the milder version of the testimonium) was forced to recognize them by the power of the Holy Spirit. But, here is the problem. If the Holy Spirit was going to exert that much power, why did he allow the worship, structure, and theology of the Church to undergo such a complete collapse?

Frankly, the theology of the testimonium turns the New Testament into a collection of almost magically powerful writings that sap the will-to-destroy-the-books from any who would dare keep them from being recognized as Scripture. But, the theology goes a step farther because not only were the correct books collected, but any incorrect books were kept out. Again, if the work of the Holy Spirit is that powerful, why was none of it used on the second generation of Christians?

But, we Orthodox say that of course, the work of the Holy Spirit was that powerful on the second generation of Christians, and so on. The development seen in the first few hundred years of the Church was a Holy Spirit guided development, just as the writing of the New Testament was. It is that Spirit-guided, but imperfect, Church that recognized the Spirit-guided writings, collected them, treasured them, and passed them on to future generations. This makes more sense than either Landmark theology or some type of testimonium theology.