THE CAMBRIAN PESHER
THE VOICE OF THE DESPOSYNI TO THE AMERICAN DISPERSION
Day of William Tyndale (October 6, 2000 vulgar)
Beloved:
Typically, it is the case, that humankind will only change its ways when the old ways result in death or some other tragedy. For example, in our town, it took the death of a bicyclist on an important and busy street to prompt the city fathers to build a bicycle path, finally, after many requests.
It took the massacre of Branch Davidian children in 1993 to prompt the U.S. Attorney General to enroll in a "Hostage Rescue" class. I'm sure you can think of many examples.
People do not pay attention until blood is spilled. William Tyndale is honored in the Anglican Church because he gave his life for the cause of the Holy Scriptures. He authored the first modern English translation of the Scriptures, contrary to the wishes of the Church and King. As the flames engulfed him, he cried out to the Lord - "open the King of England's eyes!". The Lord did. Shortly thereafter, English translations were permitted.
I am sometimes baffled at the logic of some liberal theologians. They want us to believe that the Bible is a fraud, the work of clever opportunists who invented the whole story. The Church, we are told, has covered up the truth; the Bible is unreliable, at best.
If the Bible is so corrupted, so untrue, so edited and interpolated ("redacted" is a favorite term with them) why is it that "the Church" and its respective governments - the alleged conspirators - hid it, burned it, buried it, and killed any who tried to make it available to the people? Why did Rome and the pagans in general do the same thing? If the Scriptures were corrupted, surely they would have furthered the ends of Rome to be distributed. To the contrary, the Scriptures stand alone in judgment upon all men; thus, all men hate them. God alone has preserved their integrity as a witness to the sinfulness of all and of His saving grace. Those who are changed by them, love them and, thus, become a stumblingblock of offense to the world - hence, the martyrs.
Today, we are awash with new translations and now, new scriptures. We have the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library. And while they are of extreme importance to our understanding of the early Christian period, I don't tell people to read them for purposes other than research. Most people cannot understand or obey the Scriptures they have now in the Bible. How do they imagine that they can benefit from these new Scriptures?
Frankly, they cannot. The Scrolls and the Library require understanding of Old Testament law. Most people haven't gotten past the Beatitudes.
Yet on the other hand, I have heard conservative Christians denounce these new documents. They argue that these are "spurious" texts which are destructive to our Christian experience. What fallacious reasoning! These same people will spend hundreds of dollars on "Christian" libraries which contain books by their favorite preachers and theologians, but they have no respect for teachers close to our Christian origins. The Gospels of Thomas and Philip may be corrupted texts (by copyists, etc.), but they do not contain any less of the Word of God than your typical Pastor's Sunday sermon. Have we no respect for antiquity?
Ought these new Scriptures be read in the Church? Yes, of course, when appropriate. If we can quote Luther or Calvin, Wesley or Finney, we can certainly quote Thomas, Philip, or James. We can certainly quote the Apostolic Fathers - Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius, and so on.
Has Christianity been corrupted? Indeed, it has. But it has been corrupted in every age, from the earliest times. Consider these words of the great Celtic father, Hilary of Poitiers:
The faith has been corrupted - is reformation possible? The faith is sought after as if it were something not in our possession. The faith has to be written down, as if it were not in our hearts. Having been reborn by faith, we are now being taught the faith just as if our rebirth had been without faith. We learn about Christ after we have been baptized, as if there could be any baptism at all without a knowledge of Christ.
- Hilary to the Emperor concerning synods, "Epistle to Constantine II", 6, in PL 10:567-68 (Patrologiae Cursus Completus . . . Series Latina (Paris:J.-P. Migne, 1844-1864) 221 volumes.
These words could have been said in Luther's Germany, Tyndale's England, Knox's Scotland, Calvin's Geneva, Huss' Bohemia, and so on. They can be said today. Yet, they were said - with foreboding and despair - in the 4th Century, to men who thought they were the champions and guardians of the faith.
Again, Hilary says in defending Nicea:
It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous that there are as many creeds as opinions among men, as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us; because we make creeds arbitrarily, and explain them arbitrarily. . . The homoousion is rejected, and received, and explained away by successive synods. . . Every year, nay every month, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries.
- Ibid, 4-5
But Nicea opened a pandora's box. Remember, the Council was called by the Emperor to restore peace to the Empire. It was in a state of unrest over theological squabbling. This followed after the massive influx of new converts into the Church when it became the new, fashionable, state religion.
The pandora's box was the recourse by Apologists and Bishops to use philosophical terms (e.g. homoousion, among others) not found in the Scriptures to explain doctrine. Such terms have no Biblical definition; consequently, no authority can be ascribed to them except to call another synod to explain and defend them. To use them as tests of fellowship, rather than as aids in understanding, is utter folly and tyranny.
While we at the Cambrian Episcopal Church of the Grail stand with Nicea, and teach its Creed, yet, we do not use it as a test of orthodoxy. We can only use the language of the Holy Scriptures for that purpose.
We respect the thoughtful heretic who is struggling to understand, yet is unwilling to accept a truth simply on blind faith in an authority figure or from peer pressure. Thomas Jefferson stands as an example of the thoughtful heretic, who I quote at length from his Private Letters:
I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigm of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I AM A REAL CHRISTIAN, and that is to say, a DISCIPLE of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature.
- To Charles Thomson, Monticello, January 9, 1816.
Again, referring to his little book,
The result is an 8 vo. of 46. pages of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and acted on by the unlettered apostles, the Apostolic fathers, and the Christians of the 1st. century. Their Platonising successors indeed, in after times, in order to legitimate the corruptions which they had incorporated into the doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow the primitive Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth of Jesus himself, of his Apostles, and the Fathers contemporary with them. They excommunicated their followers as heretics, branding them with the opprobrious name of Ebionites or Beggars.
- To John Adams, Monticello, October 12, 1813
(The above is one of two places known to me, where Jefferson identifies himself with the Ebionites.)
But also notice Jefferson's personal interest in the spread of true Christianity:
Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian.
- To Dr. Benjamin Waterhous, Monticello, June 26, 1822
He likens organized Christianity with demonism,
I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshiped by many who think themselves Christians.
- To Richard Price, Paris, January 8, 1789
And with stronger language, likens Churchianity with the Antichrist:
. . . but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Antichrist.
- To Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, January 19, 1810
Finally, on the matter of Greek philosophy in Christian theology, he says,
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from it's indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and preeminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.
To John Adams, Monticello, July, 1814
Although Jefferson did not believe in the Virgin Birth - a view which we believe is heretical - one must not necessarily believe in it to be a Christian. Christ's Deity does not depend upon the Virgin Birth, but upon His permanent union with the Divine Logos. This union the Adoptionists do believe.
Doctrinal deficiencies aside, Jefferson's point is well-taken; namely, that Christianity has been swallowed-up in metaphysical speculation to reconcile irreconcilable principles, while the Bible as an ethical system and foundation for law and social customs lies neglected. We will explore particulars of the Hellenizing of Gentile Christianity another time, but I will close with these words from Moses, who warned exactly against this sort of thing:
The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.
- Deuteronomy 29:29
A servant of Jesus,
James Wesley Stivers