Welcome to another episode of FAX.

I'm your host, Steven Boyce.

Today we're going to be doing a very controversial episode, especially for Christianity in a modern age that speaks of eternal security and once saved, always saved.

Especially somebody like me who grew up in the independent Baptist world, which taught you make a prayer at an altar or you go down at some evangelistic campaign, all of a sudden you're saved.

You have nothing to worry about.

You're totally fine in your your life.

Your eternity is set.

Doesn't matter what you say, it doesn't matter what you do.

This became very striking to me, especially when I was doing my PhD work at a Baptist seminary and I started reading the 2nd century Fathers, started reading a lot of the Apostolic Fathers.

I started seeing really quickly, especially in the writings of the Shepherd of Hermes as well as Second Clement, that these things are not true.

In fact, they were teaching something completely different than theology that I learned on the Reformed side of things.

So as I had to readjust this, I had to go through a lot of chaos and insecurity about my eternal security and think deeply about what it means to truly be saved.

And how did those who were under persecution, those who died for their faith under a heavy Roman regime, living a Christian life in a Pagan world, how did they view the Christian life?

And it was really, once I got to the epistle of Diagnetus, to Diagnetus himself, where a Christian apologist of some sort made a defense of why Christians do what they do, why they say what they say that I became completely convinced that I needed to change my theology here.

So what I decided to do is bring on a special guest today.

I have Jack Bull with me.

Doctor Jack Bull's been here before, and we're glad to have him again.

And we're going to have this discussion together.

One of his most notorious works is on Ignatius, but he loves the Apostolic Fathers about as much as I do.

So Jack's good to have you back to have this, I would say controversial conversation, but I think it's an important 1A.

100% and it's an important one for me in the same way as it is for you coming from a Calvinist background and going through similar steps of someone challenging me.

And our priest said, find these doctrines that you believe in the early church.

You know, much of the Apostolic fathers, you say, ah, problem.

And so I'm excited to, to, to talk about this as well.

So I think you and I had that similar background, very reformed in some senses.

I didn't even go to a school that in my undergrad that accepted reformed theology.

They were more extreme on the other side of that.

So this idea that you can come to a faith moment and believe in something completely with all your heart and then just go out and become a mass murderer kind of situation.

They might question if the decision was genuine, but they would still say, well, I mean, as long as you trusted Christ.

I mean, it's, we call it a lot of times around here, easy believism is a term that we use because faith isn't hard.

Jesus said faith is that of a child.

So as long as you had the child capacities to believe, you're eternally set.

So these became important discussions in my life.

But it really was the patristics looking at the Apostolic Fathers and going away.

That kind of theology did not exist in their vocabulary.

And so I'm either wrong or they're all wrong, which is a problem.

As one of my followers had posted in a comment section recently, some of these men had the voices, the apostles, still echoing in their ears.

And so I have to conclude that they misrepresented the Apostolic teaching on this, and that I, many, many years later, have discovered the real meaning.

And I'm just not willing to go down that road.

So what we're going to do, Jack, is we're going to bring up some slides here.

We're going to start with a few that I think are important, that this is not an extensive list by any stretch.

And Jack, I want you to give commentary as we go through this.

But even in the Dedique, and I want to say this about the Dedique itself, you know, I think it's a late 2nd century document, but the whole document, it's kind of like a liturgical manual, but it starts out, this is the summary, the very end, this apocalyptic ending that comes into play from Matthew's Gospel, I think.

And at but at the beginning, it's all about here's the way of life, there's the path, this is what it looks like, here's the path to death, here's the way of death.

And so it's already Speaking of these two paths that are rivaled by the conduct of a person known by the way that they live their morality or their lack thereof.

And so by the end of this entire letter, we have the words.

Then mankind will come to the fiery Trier trial and many will fall away and perish, but those who persevere in their faith will be saved by the curse himself.

So just on that initial idea, in your study of the dedicate itself, this deep rooted beauty of liturgy, there is a theological side of this as well.

Jack, what do you say?

I couldn't agree more.

I think that one of the really interesting things that we spoke briefly about in the preparation for this podcast was the dating of these texts.

And I think that one of the avenues that some Protestants might use to dodge or weave around these comments from the DDK or any of the other texts.

And the reason why we, Steve and I, even met was because of the controversy that James White caused on Ignatius and whether he existed or not or what he wrote.

Irrespective of how much we can dodge and weave on these things, one of the issues that we're going to constantly have as we go through these texts is that even if the late 1st century dating there is wrong, we're still looking at texts.

That is probably at the very latest, late 2nd century.

So this is still super early in a milieu of the sub Apostolic era and I think that this could not be a better text to introduce our our our topic with.

And important to know that irrespective again of who we believe wrote this, the attribution is that this is the teaching of the apostles, right?

This is what they taught.

Now, again, it's unlikely that they wrote it, but whoever does write it thinks they're writing with their authority.

And I don't think they licked this off the ground or created an exit hello on the top of their heads.

This is something that they heard, something they were aware of, and they plugged it in to create this new text so that people could learn the truth of the apostles and what had gone.

On And so when it comes to the paths that it introduces, it's interesting.

That's where it starts.

There's this way of life and this way of death.

In that relationship between life and death, do you find any intriguing aspect to the idea of, well, once saved, always saved?

Why would you introduce these two paths and then conclude that everyone who chooses A or B path A or B will be brought under fiery trial?

Some will fall away.

So we see the idea of apostasy, which is taught through all the New Testament, particularly especially the epistles.

But even Jesus taught the idea of falling away.

Even at the parable of the soils, you find that Jesus uses in Luke's Gospel a form of the word apostasy where there was one that faded out and died off and showed that they walked away.

They fell away.

So even Jesus, this introduced the idea that there was an apostasy that would come from people who follow him.

Amy experienced it first hand with one of his 12 Judas Iscariot.

So here's a writing dedicated to the authority of the apostles themselves, claiming to be the apostles in the beginning, but yet they're instructing churches who are under liturgical practice to consider the two ways of life and death.

And that at the end of their letter they've introduced judgment and that people will fall away.

And that in that those who persevere in their faith will be saved by Christ himself who took the curse.

So it's interesting, those who persevere in their faith will be saved, not those who made claim of faith or had faith just one time or a few times.

So how does that relate to the subject of teaching?

Well, once you're saved, you're always saved.

You got your ticket punched into heaven, you're fine.

It doesn't seem like that's the the mindset of the writers.

I I always found it a funny one in many ways because you and I both made that same article decision to become Christians and inverted commas.

Many.

Times, Yeah, and now we're sacrificing our whole lives in the Catholic Church.

Go to confession regularly and be aware of our sin.

It seems like such a waste of time if you just have an article.

But I think in particular with the dedicate, again, I don't know if you disagree with me on this, you may do, but I think that the dedicate is a composite text, that it goes through a couple of redactions.

And for those of you that are familiar with my work, you know that that's one of my favorite phrases.

Everything's a redaction at some point.

It's like a buzzword or something for you.

Yeah, it's it hits, it just hits all my buttons.

But one of the things I think about it is that this two ways discourse is going on and it's by no means me who first saw this is is a pre Christian text that the authors are using.

What is a known a known concept of choosing a good or a bad path and adopting it into a Christian understanding and making Jesus the choice of Jesus the constant good or the constant not choosing him bad.

And I think this again reinforces the idea that this is not a once saved, always saved concept, that in the pre Christian history of it, it was always certainly the case that it was a constant moral choice to be good and to not do evil.

And so to now in a Christian setting, it's a constant choice to choose Jesus and not perish.

And as you mentioned, we now have an additional element that Christians have attached again, which is that there's going to be a judgement of this as well.

So it's not just the case that your peers might hate you.

It's not just the case that you might get yourself into trouble with the authorities.

This is going to have a very big consequence at the end.

Note the judgement's not made at the beginning.

It's going to be, it's the end where the judgement's made.

And that's that's a real problem.

For once saved, always saved.

So that's, that's a great point.

And I've, I've been intrigued by your work on the dedica as it relates to where did these paths teachings come from more early Jewish thought that has been progressed into Christian thinking and so forth.

There's a lot of interesting points about that, which would teach that the dedica has earlier forms to itself that go back to earlier teachings and traditions.

But that's not for the point of today.

The point is that you do see these rival paths, that each Christian is challenged to make sure you're on that right path of life, not the path of death.

And that will be evaluated at the end.

And those who persevered on the path of life will not fall under judgement of fire.

And so that's an interesting point in of itself just from a, a liturgical manual, deep theology in that of itself.

By the way, if you're listening, thank you for joining this episode of Fax.

Make sure you hit that like and subscribe button.

We'd really, really appreciate it.

Also, I'm going to have a link to Doctor Bull's channel so that you can go click it.

So you need to go over there.

Also make sure you subscribe to his channel.

In fact, we'll just pause and wait for you to do that right now.

No, I'm but seriously, make sure you're hitting the like button on this.

Share this video with others.

Hit the subscribe, go over to the link, hit Doctor Bull's channel.

Make sure you're doing the same thing there.

If you like deep theology or deep historical evaluations of texts, especially Ignatius.

As much as Doctor Bull and I have a little bit of a disagreement on Ignatius, we love having our conversations, even in disagreement because they're always fun.

So good stuff there.

I'm going to bring our screen back on here, and I'm going to bring up another quote that I think is important.

It's a longer one.

It's a big section here from Clement of Rome.

Now again the dating here some try to put this really really early.

I've I have argued with so many Christians about why this isn't pre 70 but I would I personally dated to the late 90s or mid 90s.

But once again, we have no reason to deny that perhaps this is an early Christian text representing the thinking and the perspective of Clement himself, the 4th Bishop of Rome.

He says in chapter 32 over into 34 and we'll take this para 2 into two paragraphs.

The first one and we 2 being called by his will in Christ Jesus are not justified by ourselves, nor by our wisdom or understanding or godliness or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart.

Now I have seen Jack multiple times where this quote is left isolated and people say, see, the early church didn't believe that persevering through works or anything of sacraments had anything to do with somebody's salvation because Clement of Rome himself said that you can't do anything in your own wisdom, your own understanding, your own works, your own godliness or holiness in your heart to produce justification.

It is simply by faith.

There it is, Solafi day, day over.

Don't talk anymore to me about the new early church.

That's how they end it.

But it's like, wait a minute, like, can we read the whole section please?

Like, but it's right here.

Keyword.

But by that faith through which from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men, to whom being glory and forever and ever, Amen.

What shall we do then, brethren?

Shall we become slothful and well doing and cease from the practice of love?

God forbid that any such core should be followed by us, but rather let us hasten with all energy and readiness of mind to perform every good work for the Creator.

And Lord of all Himself rejoices in His works.

For by His infinitely great power He established the heavens, and by His incomprehensible wisdom He adorned them.

Having therefore such an example, let us without delay according to His will, and let us work the works of righteousness with our whole strength.

See it.

It changes things when you actually read all of what he's saying, because He has a conclusion to his statement about justification.

And by the way, those that are listening to see, the Roman Catholic belief is that you are saved by works.

We've had this conversation multiple times.

In fact, even Doctor Ortland, who's a Baptist, has conceded a few months ago in a video that all we've done is talk over each other.

We actually hold the same position of justification.

We just use different terms and that has come together in Lutheranism and Catholicism where there was actually a joint document put together showing that they actually do not disagree on the subject of justification.

So before we run to these justification wars, we need to understand that we've a lot of people have talked over each other for years, including with Luther and many of those at the later in the Council of Trent.

It's come to fruition that salvation and being justified is by faith, but that it is an inseparable thing to have works involved here.

And even Clement, who gets used by the Solafide crowd, has completely missed the whole context of what he's saying.

What is?

What say you, Jack?

Well, I think it's also important to use the word grace.

I mean, you know, if we're saved by my faith or by my works, I'm definitely hell bound and I think probably most people are as well.

So, you know, it's a shame because you wonder whether if Luther had said the words sort of solo Grazia and then through faith maintained by works or something like that, then we would have a lovely order rather than the Jesuits of Lutheran religious in our church.

But he just, he just went a bit too far on the Clement passage.

I think there's a really important lesson for us to learn about how we reference either biblical texts or the absolute fathers.

And that is, as you just said, that when we see the text come up on the screen on someone else's channel, we go straight to the text itself and make sure that that text has not been quoted in isolation.

We look at it within its paragraph.

We then look at it within the letter.

And then we also look at it in the context of the time and the subsequent interpretations of it by people who are closer to the source text than us.

And so, for example, if we then bring up 1 Clement 21 Take heed, beloved, lest his many kindnesses lead us to the condemnation of us all.

For this will happen if we fail to live worthily of Him, and do not sorry and do not do what is good and pleasing in His sight.

And a little bit later, let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those who wait for Him, so that we may share in His promised gifts.

So in the Diderque we've got endure.

In the 1 Clement we've got words like strive and maintain.

If we're once saved or we're saved, what we're striving for, What are we enduring?

And why do we need to wait for something?

Ding Ding Ding, winner Bell already buzzed.

Right What, what is what is it that we have to hold on for?

And so then when we take Clement in the round, even if you could somehow have a solar feed day understanding of what you just read.

And then once they've always said as a consequence, when you read one comment in the round, that's that's not the context within what that letter is saying, irrespective of who wrote it and when it was written, the final redactor of that text who would have read the whole thing from start to finish does not view things in that way.

So, and that's a good point, as well as when you're looking at the meta narrative that's going on in the entire epistle.

This writer specifically, and I've spent many, many hours in his writings, he looks at things through, He's trying to draw a single line through the whole epistle, and he's attaching all of these things to that single line.

The one thing that he's dealing with is schism issues in the church.

Remember, first, Clement's riding on the fact that these people have removed leaders from their church wrongly.

They've done so in a way that's not right.

And here the Bishop of Rome is addressing them in the same way Paul had to address them years before and even references that letter.

It's like Paul already had to talk to you about this kind of stuff.

Like, I mean, they had issues with people with their stepmoms and all kinds of sick, twisted sexual sins.

And, and then, then they overacted in discipline and 2nd Corinthians.

It's like, well, OK, they repented, let him back.

What are you doing?

Like, you know, so, so he's back doing the same thing.

The Corinthian church has extreme issues.

They're, they're either all or nothing.

And so that hadn't changed in this time period of 50 to 60 years.

And so one of the things that he points out throughout this whole thing is that our unity in Christ is the.

Wholeness of all that we do it everything that we do with Christ and how we look at him and how we live for him and how, what he has done for us, all these other things are attached to that.

That's like the passages that Jack just read to us.

It's like that's why you need to be striving for this to maintain these things.

So he's not dismissing the idea that justification is a is is a thing that comes by faith.

He's saying that that faith is not an isolated category.

It is attached to the greater message of the gospel, which is our unity to Christ and our unity with one another and that's why he emphasizes the idea which the early Church of this all these early documents love the Lord your God and your neighbors yourself is replete in these sects because that was the simple gospel living is how do you examine a Christian?

What does he look like?

Well, he looks like somebody who's fully dedicated to God, who who takes regularly the body of Christ, who is all around the people of God, living in unity with them and striving for peace in their community.

That those were the essentials at this time.

And so again, we cannot leave these things completely isolated.

All right, let's go to second Clement.

Not to be confused with the same rider, I think, and I've written a whole thing on that.

You can go, I'll have that in the link as well.

I'll have a lot of links in this one where you can go back and forth between Jack's work and my work as well, because we've written a lot through this and I have a whole section in my paper on 2nd Clement that deals with the salvific side of things.

That is very shaky.

It's not as secure as we'd like it to be, but I'm fine with that and I think we need to wrestle on that.

Here's one of, I think about 7 or 8 places.

Again, we're doing a short segment here folks, so forgive us for not pulling up everything, but we're taking main points.

And I wanted to bring Second Clement 7 into this, which I think is around the mid 2nd century.

You know, somewhere in that time peered around the Shepherd of Hermes as well.

It states.

Wherefore then, my brethren, let us struggle with all earnestness.

You see that terminology continually being repeated in this era, knowing that the contest is, in our case, close at hand and that many undertake long voyages to strive for corruptible reward.

Yet all are not crown, but those only that have labored hard to striven gloriously.

Let us therefore so strive that we may all be crowned.

We must remember that he who strives in the corruptible contest, if he has found acting unfairly, he's taken away in scourge and cast forth from the lists.

This is ancient day.

Steroid users OK with then think he If one does anything unseemingly in the incorruptible contest, what shall he have to bear?

For those who do not persevere or preserve this?

Excuse me, preserve the seal unbroken.

The scripture says the worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh.

Now this is interesting.

The seal unbroken.

The seal is commonly defined by others.

As Jack was saying, we got to look at like what is the seal?

In early interpretations of these texts, the seal is always connected to baptism just about or at least a nuance to our baptisms.

Here's an interesting point.

He uses analogy of races.

People that are running and and striving for certain things.

Well, you obtain a crown, but there's also cheaters who act unfairly.

What happens if you're found cheating or you did something to give you an unfair advantage?

Well, you're taken out, you're beaten, you're scourged and you're cast force from the list.

You're not able to be ranked, you're not able to obtain anything.

And so he likens that to our lives that we need to be going as best as we can and striving and earnestness contesting because we know that the the end is at hand.

And so those who do not preserve the seal that were initiated into this race, the Scripture speaks that there's people that are cast into outer darkness where the worm does not die, which is an Isaiah passage that Jesus used regularly for Hadais and places like the great fire that comes the later in Gahanna.

And so this is interesting that a spectacle will be made of a person who didn't run the race worthily.

What's your thoughts on this citation?

Well, I I agree with you about the author of second Clement and and some of the difficulties we have with that, but again, still early and the the passage that stuck in my mind when we were thinking about two Clement was in Chapter 4.

Because I think this speaks very deeply to you and me as the article people in Chapter 4.

He says, let us then not only call him Lord, for that will not save us, for he says he's talking about Jesus here, quoting Matthew.

Not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord shall be saved, but he that works righteousness.

Wherefore, brethren, let us confess him by our works, by loving one another, by not committing adultery or speaking evil of one another or cherishing envy.

And he continues with another couple of things to do.

Literally, it is not the case that I can walk forward to the altar call, say I confess the Lord Jesus is God and get away with it.

There has to be the response of works that need to come with that.

They are inextricably linked and some of them are pretty low bar, I think, although in the modern age not committing adultery has become harder for people than it was previously perhaps, I don't know, but some of those things are quite challenging for us, right?

He tells us we do not speak either of one another.

We have to not cherish or envy.

We have to confess him by our works.

We have to keep living out our faith in a practical manner.

So it cannot be the case that, as Jesus said, not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord will be saved.

It has to keep going and it speaks against that reading to Clement in the round.

But you'll see then that they are clearly following one another in their theology of their understanding of Once They've always saved or the role of works within faith, right?

These are a series of authors coming together and agreeing the same thing in different time periods.

And important to note that there are also heretics at this time, like Marcion and Valentinus and Apeles and people like that.

And what's really interesting about their understanding of Once They've always Saved is that even they don't really have this doctrine in the same way.

It's slightly muddled for all of them in terms of the role of works, but the cause of the Once They've Always Saved is also not really present.

So even among heretics, like this just isn't a conversation that's happening.

But all of the early Church fathers that most Christians I think could agree on are largely Orthodox, by which I mean you can spot a trace of their understanding of the Trinity or their understanding of the importance of baptism, whatever it might be.

They're the ones who are upholding the same Orthodox tradition that we are today in the Catholic Church.

And OK, even if you're Protestant, you might disagree about these early church figures interpretation of communion, but you're certainly closer to these guys than you are to the heretics.

And these guys are agreeing that once I've always saved is not a thing.

And so it, it, it dawns on me then, at least as you mentioned earlier, that God has been really spiteful and a little bit selfish to keep the doctrine of once I've always saved very secret from his people for maybe 1500 years before letting them know that actually I was just spinning you a yarn previously.

Don't panic that.

That to me is such a cognitive dissonance and a problematic place to be in.

And, and all the, of all the people that would have needed that kind of security would have been the people before Christianity was legalized, not those that are living comfortably in Christianity, not in the sense of like just full comfort.

But let's just take the 1st 300 years of the church and what they had to do to be Christians in a Pagan society at the as opposed to today, for example, in most countries in the Western world.

I mean, if there was a generation that God should have revealed this special security to it was those that needed it the most.

And he left them without it, but told them through his holy apostles as well as through their successors, earnestly contend, persevere, stay on the right path, all these kinds of things.

So I, I just don't think that our message.

I don't think we're that special of a generation.

If I was the apostles and I think about being, you know, do I want to be crucified upside down?

No, not really.

Well, I'm saved anyway.

So what's the point?

And we'll come on to our friend Ignatius in a moment.

But his concept of what he needs to be saved.

I I mean, he's certain about what it's going to take him to be saved.

And it certainly isn't the altar call.

So.

So again, we're building this picture.

We're half an hour in so far.

Consistency.

Who's next?

We'll bring up the Epistle of Barnabas, and as I'm bringing up the Epistle of Barnabas, please make sure you like and subscribe.

Thank you for joining us on fax.

As we persevere through the Apostolic Fathers, we're now bringing up an epistle known as the Epistle Barnabas.

Neither Jack nor I believe Barnabas had anything to do with this.

He was dead long, long before, although it was very, very important to the early Church.

They love this little epistle kind of teaching that the Jewish understanding of the law ceremonially was completely off, especially the dietary law that these animals represented certain kinds of sins that you were supposed to abstain from.

So if there was ever a letter that was proving our point here, you can't get any better than the epistle Barnabas, because at the end of the day, it's like you should abstain from everything and all these animals are images of things you should abstain from because they'll destroy you.

They will bring you out of the covenant of God, which brings us into the epistle Barnabas.

4 says give heed to yourselves now and not to liken yourselves to certain persons who pile up sin upon sin, saying that our covenant remains to them also.

So here's what the writer saying.

He said, look, don't, don't be like these people in Israel because he's going to use Moses example who say, Hey, we're in the covenant.

We we, we followed covenantial ceremonial technique that got us into this.

He's like, oh, don't say that.

If you keep piling sin upon sin saying I'm, I'm in the covenant.

He says ours it is, but they lost it.

He's talking about the people of this room in this way forever when Moses had just received it.

He's talking about what they did with the golden calf.

He's referring back to the story in the Exodus when Moses was receiving the law of God that people were corrupting themselves in idolatry.

Wherefore let us take heed in these last days.

So he's using them as an example in these last days.

We need to take heed to that message, right?

For the whole time of our faith shall profit us nothing, unless we now, in the season of lawlessness and the offenses that shall be as become become sons of God, offer resistance that the black one may not affect our entrance.

Let us flee from all vanity.

Let us entirely hate the works of the evil way.

Do not entering and privately stand apart by yourselves as if you were already justified, but assemble yourselves together.

Consult concern in the common welfare.

For the Scripture says woe unto them that are wise for themselves and understanding in their own sight.

Let us become spiritual.

Let us become a temple perfect unto God as far as it lies in US.

Let us exercise ourselves in the fear of God.

Are you hearing these buzzwords, folks?

And let us strive to keep His commandments, that we may rejoice in His ordinances.

The Lord judges the world without respect of persons.

Each man shall receive according to his deeds.

If he is good, his righteousness shall go before him in the way.

If he be evil, the recompense of his evil doing is before him.

Lest perchance if we relax as men that are called, we should slumber over our sins and the Prince of evil receives power against us to thrust us out of the Kingdom of our Lord.

Now, Jack, I'm going to leave that one up there for a little bit because it's a bigger paragraph, but I want everybody to read especially the parts that have underlined in this paragraph.

He is saying that you most certainly can get yourself taken out of the covenant and lose your positioning.

But do you see a lot of the same wording?

Strive, obey, exercise yourself perfection.

These are terminal.

We've already seen this terminology.

Now I I put the epistle Barnabas about mid 2nd century, which is consistent with the theology we just read the sun Clement.

So here's another example, Jack, that shows us these people are actually not secure.

He's in fact, he says if we relax as men that are called, we should slumber in our sins.

He's saying don't get comfortable in your Christianity and feel good about yourself because the Prince of evil can receive power against us and kick us out of the Kingdom.

That's a pretty bold statement.

I, I find it really hard to even add much to the text you have on the screen.

I mean, what can you do?

I mean that, that there's the text.

I mean, I don't think you need to be a theologian or a biblical scholar or another Christian scholar or church historian to be able to read those words and see something that Stephen hasn't already explained.

I mean, I don't even think Stephen needs to say a word.

I almost stopped you actually after you said Kingdom of the Lord, because I just think, let it be left on the screen.

Let it be.

I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe the only addition that needs to be said is that, yeah, we both agree it's not by Barnabas, but we also both agree that it's 2nd century, so early and consistent.

Same theology we're seeing elsewhere.

This, this is the so there was two major killers for me in setting the Apostolic Fathers.

It's been renewed since.

I've been working on another document on the two towers that are mentioned, and they're one tower, but in two different visions.

The tower shows to me an amazing thing that that just cannot be argued.

You have to argue the Shepherd of Hermes is way, way off because in this there are people that are baptized.

They're initiated.

Remember the tower in the vision is built on the water and the water is explained by the old woman as baptism.

These are those who have gone through the water, similar to the Exodus story going through the water.

These are baptized.

Hermes is concerned about intentional or if you would a what we would call mortal sin after baptism.

This is why some people said well like was he into the same stuff Tertullian got into?

Well, no, no, no, because there's actually repentance after baptism, and Tertullian bought into teachings that would later say that once you've intentionally sinned after baptism, there is no forgiveness of sin.

So they were delaying baptisms.

I don't want to get into the theology of that.

We've talked about it dozens of times in different episodes on this program.

But just to say, there was a major concern in this writing, in these visions and the similitudes, that when you look at a person who's been initiated through baptism, but they are committing mortal and intentional sin, Hermes was really concerned about what would happen if somebody did so.

And then they're standing with God being taken away from this tower.

So understand the background.

When we read these words in the writing, it says, If you do not guard yourself against anger, you and your house will lose all hope of salvation later in similitude.

80 says many according who have heard the commandments repented, and those at least who repented at their dwelling in the tower, but some of them at last fell away.

These according have not repentance for an account of their business.

They blasphemy the Lord and denied them.

These are people who are under persecution and instead of persevering to death, they recant.

They therefore lost their lives through the wickedness which they committed.

Many of them doubted.

They still have repentance in their power if they repent speedily.

He's saying some have the ability to bring back restoration here through repentance.

Now notice what he goes on to say.

If they repent speedily, if they if they do it quickly, they don't delay in this and their abode will be in the tower.

But if they are slow and repenting, they will dwell within the walls.

Now, we don't have time to break that down today.

But it says and if they do not repent, they too have also lost their lives.

The shepherd to me is a no doubter, Jack, It's a no doubter.

Looking at just two of these quotes, and I'm sure we could bring many, many more in here.

We see this idea of losing all hope of salvation and people losing their lives through wickedness that they've committed or denial of their associations with Christ.

What say you?

Yeah, and and and the other reason I really like Shepherd is has a, a semi hint at mortal sin again, a conversation that's really maybe neglected when we talk about once saved away saved because mortal sin is a super important doctrine.

Because if we don't separate out between venial sin and mortal sin and have that, that, that understanding of the, the sins that killed the grace that, that make us separate from God and the sins that don't, then it's very easy to see how one saved, always saved can be a thing actually, if we just accept God into our hearts and there's nothing we can do to separate ourselves from him.

With venial sin, let's say only one type of sin exists.

It's sort of venial.

Then you could see how one might get to that conclusion.

But the shepherd actually speaks of a type of sin where if you do that, then the Spirit will depart from you.

And I wonder whether there he's looking into the Jahannah and epistles where John says there are sins that kill and there are sins that don't.

And if there are sins that do kill, then ultimately it has to be the case that one can lose their salvation because what does it mean for a sin to kill?

Obviously we don't mean physically here.

You know, if I go out and commit an armed robbery tomorrow, that really doesn't kill me.

So John is not referring to a physical death.

He's referred to a spiritual death.

They're both shepherd of a mass and the jihadi epistles have this concept.

There was things that we could do to separate ourselves.

Now again, one of the beauties, I think then of that is we can then connect that back to, to decay.

1 Clement, 2 Clement, etcetera.

Because that's why the perseverance and the striving is necessary to avoid the mortal sin.

To protect one's salvation, to keep intact the sacrament of baptism in some sense that renews us and regenerates us.

It's really interesting.

I was recently at a talk about marriage, and the same applies for our baptism and our confirmation.

He says that God gives us the sacraments like a brand new Rolls Royce, straight off the line from the factory.

It's beautiful and it needs to be cared for, serviced, loved.

And this is exactly what our friends the Apostolic Fathers are telling us, that we have been given this relationship with God, this new ability to come close to him through the sacrifice of Jesus.

But it's up to us to care for this Rolls Royce.

The Rolls Royce will not continue to move on its own.

It has to be serviced.

You can't just reverse it into the wall.

You got to be careful when you go down to Tesco or in the US or Walmart or whatever.

This is the same story here.

Endure, persevere.

But not just avoid bad stuff, actually pursue the good stuff as well.

To love one another, to pray, to serve the poor, to receive communion.

And therefore this little little tidbit here in in the shepherd that there are some sins that the Holy Spirit will then depart from us.

That has to cover such a wake up call to Christians that we could do things that will remove God.

Think about.

I mean, there's that great line, you know, if if if the relationship between you and God seems distant, it's not you that's moved.

Well, yeah, that's true.

God's always been in the same place.

It's us as walking away, but the Holy Spirit, if we walk away, sort of is on an elastic band.

He's going to leave as well.

And the Shepherd is so clear about that.

And if we're not alive to that fact, it's so detrimental to our faith journey.

Actually, the doctrine of one saved always says because it can lead us into a false sense of security, that our salvation has always and we'll always be assured irrespective of what we do.

And that is not the message the Shepherd is getting at.

And that's the thing, the shepherd takes those concepts that you made and he he gets this repeated in different forms, parable, vision, all these forms keep coming back over and over and over again.

It's almost on repeat because the Shepherd of Hermus is long.

It is a long writing.

It's not something you typically just read in one setting.

And he gives examples.

He calls a major sins which we would call mortal or the idea of going into mortal sin.

Now notice notice this because he says for if you exercise self-control regarding what is good with the result that you do not do it, you commit a major sin.

He States and mandate 8.

He says, listen, he said adultery, fornication, lawless, drunkenness, wicked luxury, many kinds of foods, extravagance of wealth, boasting, snobbery, arrogance, lying, slander, hypocrisy, malice, blasphemy.

I mean he gives a whole list and then he he's like, well, that's not enough, I'm going to keep going here.

He says over which the servants of God must exercise self-control, theft, lying, robbery, perjury, greed, lust, deceit, vanity, pretentiousness of what else of those that are things like this.

He's saying the same thing over again.

He's saying like a servant of God must exercise stealth, control over these things, and he talks later how, if not, it would destroy the soul.

And so one of these things that we find in the shepherd that's indisputable in my mind, is that you have to continue to persevere and live out your baptism to stay attached to the tower.

And when you remove yourself from the tower, there needs to be a speedy repentance that comes to stay attached.

And if you don't, you are cast out.

You're like these stones that were on the ground, you're picked up and you're cast away and you're never allowed into the tower.

And so there's an amazing illustration through visionary form, the shepherd demonstrating it's a serious, serious thing.

All right, so let's go to the next one.

We're going to look at Polycarp to the Philippians.

Polycarp wrote around that same time period of this this period between around the second Clement epistle Barnabas.

I think they're all within about a 30 year range, in my opinion.

I do believe the actual Polycarp was with John wrote this.

There's many, many discussions about that.

And even if he did, how much of this is him versus redaction?

I mean, we're we're looking at it from that perspective as well.

But notice what He says here Now He that raised Him from the dead will raise us also, if if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love the things which He loved, abstaining from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing.

But remember which the Lord spoke as He taught.

Judge not that you be not judged forgiven.

It should be given forgiven to you.

Have mercy, that you may receive mercy.

Blessed are the poor, for they are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

So Polycarp, writing to the Philippians, instructs that we will be raised with him if we walk in his commandments and love the things that Christ loved.

And he gives examples of what that looks like by abstaining from all these things, following the teachings of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount concepts.

So here's Polycarp.

What do you think about his statement, Jack?

Well, I mean, we have agreement here that I think Polycarp wrote basically all of this epistle except 1 chapter.

So, you know, there's good agreement there.

And dear viewer, you must be pretty sick of being beaten over their head with the same content again and again because it's, we are here interesting with Polycarp.

And it's what I want to draw attention to as I will with Ignatius as well, particularly because I think that their background story is to my mind, some of these, it's not easy to verify, it's the wrong way, but to put it.

But some of the more trustworthy cases in that they were probably, almost certainly disciples of apostles, right?

They had good contact with and knowledge of apostles first hand.

And therefore when Polycarp speaks, and again, I believe this is him speaking, he can't be ignored.

And when you have that such connection, you then have to make a very bold claim to not trust him or to say that he's misinterpreting the apostles, that he was dealing with that somehow within the space of the apostles death John probably liked in the case of Polycarp and Polycarp writing, his brain has fallen out the side of his head and he's begun to completely misunderstand the doctrines that the apostles taught only 20 years prior or 30 years prior.

In addition to that, then you can see why some of our Protestant fellows, cousins, let's call them, would want to dismiss the authority of these things because as Calvin says, and I like Calvin for this, he just basically says, we'll come to him in a minute.

But Ignatius didn't write anything.

It's just you just say it's ridiculous.

Because if you accept that he does write these things well, then you have to also accept that disconnect, that either he's a malevolent actor who has purposely corrupted the teaching of the apostles that once I've always saved by faith alone, whatever else you might say.

Or that he's so stupid that he didn't remember right.

That they're the two options, really.

And so that's why the Catholic position and the Calvin position are the only two consistent ones.

Either they're lies or they're true and they're real.

I don't, I don't see a way around that.

If they're real and not true, that's a complete nightmare that that's a real problematic statement.

And so Polycarp is is echoing and helping to define further the the teaching of the apostles.

And if I may again, we then see that passed on once more to people like Irenaeus, who also knows Polycarp and we're not going to have time to get into him today, but he knows Polycarp, funnily, that he teaches them the same things that Polycarp teaches.

It's almost like there's this handing down of tradition and dogma and doctrine and practice that is going on from man to man, community to community, and that the interpretation of Polycarp of the apostles is that there's a constant ongoing renewal of the faith that needs to happen through works and practice.

And then Irenaeus takes from that a very similar thing to what Polycarp took from the apostles.

And in the catechisms that you'll find today, you'll find that message repeated too.

And hopefully, you know, over the last 15 minutes, repeating ad nauseam, you'll see that the Catholic position has not been one that's again manifested external and.

That's the issue.

If this was some sort of conspiracy or Ignatius decided to corrupt something because there were wayward disciples and the apostles, if he was The Lone Ranger who did this, well, then we should find a disagreement with all these other texts.

But we don't.

We find consistency, as you said, as nauseam.

I mean, we're sitting here, it feels like we're on repeat and it feels, it feels like we're actually just copying, pasting 1 and putting it in the other when they're all saying the same exact thing.

So that brings us to the grand finale.

We save the best for last.

If you're a big fan of our friend Ignatius, because I know how much you love Ignatius, I did too.

He radically helped change my perspective on things.

But notice what he says now there's two sides to this and I'm going to read the middle retention and then I'm going to have Jack kind of interpret and give the short retention of this because the key concept is existing in both this.

He says you will not overlook any of this if you have a thorough belief in Jesus Christ and love him.

That is the beginning and the end of life.

Faith.

The beginning and love the end.

And when the 2 are united, you have God.

OK, faith without love is important here in the theology.

Again, remember even if you don't believe this is Ignatius and you believe the short recension is the correct like my friend Jack here, this is still 2nd century theology consistent with the times that we showed up to this point.

Now he states, when love and faith are united, you have God, and everything else that has to do with real goodness is dependent on them.

No one who professes faith falls into sin, nor does one who has learned to love hate.

The tree is known by its fruit.

Similarly, those who profess to be Christ will be recognized by their actions.

For what matter is it not a momentary act of professing, but being persistently moted, motivated by faith, Being persistently motivated by faith which is united with love?

And when you do that, you have God.

If you don't do those two things that are married together, you don't have God.

Look how Ignatius brings us into the discussion, Jack.

Yeah.

And again, I mean, I agree with you.

No matter what happens, this text is 2nd century.

And in the shorter attention, which I think, which I think is the more genuine, I mean, it says the work is not of promise unless a man be found in the power of faith, even to the end, not even to the altar call.

That's not that's not present, not even to the short prayer that we say in our hearts the first time we read the Bible.

It's even to the end.

The tell us it's the final moment of your life.

And I think that perhaps more instructive than any words that Ignatius might be able to tell us is the life that he leads.

You know, we could talk about how we're going to be saved by faith alone, by works, by grace, hopefully by the last one, because we're going to need that one the most.

But Ignatius is absolutely clear that for him, the only way he'll be worthy of God is by to suffer a martyrdom.

Just like Jesus.

He thinks that the only way that he is going to reach salvation to be with his God is to die for his faith.

Now call him a loony all you like, and he is, he's a lunatic.

He's desperate to die for the faith he is, but in his lunacy he's telling you something so clear.

It wasn't the moment where he first heard John or whoever it was speak if odious or or Peter or whoever that made him a Christian.

The thing that he says that when he'll be not just found a Christian but be one, as he puts it, is at the moment when you cannot see his body because it's been consumed by the lions in the arena.

That's the point for him where the rubber meets the road and his relationship with God will come together and he'll be saved.

Now again, he's not saying that that's too void of the cross and the grace that comes with juice and sacrifice.

He says actually the cross is the mechanism by which we even can be saved, but it's the way that's going to be accessed for him.

The way that he is going to meet the requirement of Jesus is to give his whole life, quite literally his body to the the lions for the death through sacrifice.

And again, he's not earning it.

It's it's still not it's still not it's meritorious absolutely, but he didn't earn it still grace.

But the idea that somehow he doesn't have to do that or that it would be fine for him to just go Joe what?

I'm out.

Just Jesus business.

It was good while it lasted.

But the trip to Rome too hard.

Quite the opposite, he says.

Actually, I've got to be found to the end until my body disappears because it's been eaten by the lions.

Then I won't just be called a Christian.

I may be found one found a.

Christian and the man's.

Living what he preaches, right?

That's the only thing you can say about Ignatius for damn certain is that that guy is not a hypocrite.

He follows that stuff through to the end, yeah.

Yeah, his writing, he says that to the Roman church.

And in the sense it's almost like he was almost suicidal in some sense, like, OK, brother, all right, We, we, we got you.

We, we, we, we see your passion here.

But yeah, I mean, this, this goes to prove that they didn't take the easy Rd.

of security.

They always took the High Road of pain and suffering and ultimately, like Ignatius death.

So kind of in the last minutes here, we see all these examples.

I think they're indisputable.

So what do we tell our audience?

What should we look at?

So there is a security in our faith, but it's rooted in things that are not simply a prayer or a moment or an experience by itself, independently and isolated.

So what should our message be, Jack?

What should somebody go to and say, hey, this is the truth about salvation, this one saved, always saved idea is absent, but here's what they did teach and this is what we hook our anchors into.

This is what we're securing.

What would that be if we could say that in one statement?

And I'll give my final.

Oh, I wanted to give three.

Sorry, go.

For it, go ahead #1.

Number one, I'll give them a brief #1 don't have a cognitive distance that God allows for 1500 years for the church to teach, preach, understand, develop a theology, and then through a couple of guys in Europe think otherwise.

Number #2 I think actually it's quite seriously the, the ramifications of once I've always saved are really detrimental.

The pastoral element of that is really complex to navigate because how do you convince people to maintain the life of the faith and not feel disenfranchised?

And the third one, and actually, I think it's the most positive and it's really quite beautiful for me.

The beauty of the Catholic faith is that God continuously pours out his grace to us and invites us to cooperate with him throughout our lives in his mission, even though he doesn't need us in any way to do that.

And only if we believe what Catholics believe that salvation is, or not just Catholics, I should say.

Maybe there's some problems who think this too, but there's a constant renewal participation in the life of grace.

That is what we're called to and that's not once I've always saved.

That's growing closer to God until the end till I may not just be called a Christian but be found one.

I think that's the beauty of the of the message that the church has well said.

Well said and I, and the only thing I would add to that is those graces can be found in the sacraments themselves and that abiding in God's grace is to abide in the sacraments.

So when we do sin, we will sin, we go to confession and we receive forgiveness and absolution of those sins.

Well, we are distancing ourselves from Christ.

We come to the Holy Mass and we receive of the body and blood of Christ, where we are abiding in Him and He and us, because whoever does not eat his flesh and drink his blood has no part in him.

And so when we are distancing ourselves from God, we confess that we have sinned against you and thought word and deed by what we have done about what we have left undone.

You know that those kind of lines that we see even a public confession, we go to private confession.

Even mortal sin can be forgiven through the power of of confession.

The same writer, first Sean, that we've brought up multiple times.

If we confess our sin, he's faithful and just forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So that we have on earth the graces that are needed to live out our baptism, to stay attached to Christ and his church in the fullness of it.

And also to receive the absolution of forgiveness of sin so that when we leave the path of righteousness, we can make sure that we are on the path of life and not continue down a path of death or to remain in the tower as it is taught in the Shepherd of Hermes.

Jack, thanks so much for coming.

We appreciate you once again.

Always a special guest and a good friend.

If you have any more questions about what Jack believes and stuff again, link is in the description, go to his channel, make sure you like and subscribe on his videos as well.

If you haven't done that here yet, we're still waiting for you to do exact what the screen just said, like and subscribe.

Do not wait any longer.

All right, folks, Jack, say goodbye to everybody and we'll close this thing out.

God bless you.

All bye, bye.

All right, all right folks, that's all we have time for today.

And as always, grace and peace to you.

God bless.