Warmed-Over Ashes?

What is this page about?

Another page on this site is Dossier 29, Have You Abandoned Your Beliefs Without Meaning To? It says this: a person can grow up in one church and later believe the opposite, and never decide to change. It says that the answer is small. Read a few Bible passages. Read what your own church once wrote down. Ask your teacher one polite question.

Sometimes people answer a page like that with a label, not with a reason.

Three labels are at the top of this page. They are only common examples. (“Baloney” is an American word for nonsense.) This page is not written against any person. It does not describe any person, church or conversation. It is written for anyone who thinks that Dossier 29 is wrong. A pastor may think so. That is a reasonable thing to think.

So here is the question. If the claims in an article can be checked, should a person who disagrees give evidence, and not only a label? And what would that look like?

The short answer

1. You may disagree. You may also say nothing. Nobody must answer any article.
2. A label is a decision with no reasons. It may even be right. But the listener gets nothing to check. The astronomer Carl Sagan wrote a famous test for “baloney”. Even that test begins with checking the facts.
3. The claims in Dossier 29 have numbers. There are eleven. Each one says where to check it. A person who thinks the page is wrong can choose a number and say why. One claim says that no Bible passage praises a hearer for not checking his teacher. One verse could prove that claim wrong.
4. Old does not mean wrong. See Part 2.
5. It is not legalism. See Part 2.
6. There may be a real worry behind the word. Some people fear that creeds and confessions come between a person and the Bible. That is an honest view. Dossier 29 describes it fairly.
7. The Bible tells teachers how to answer when someone disagrees. See Part 3. That standard is for everyone. It is also for people who agree with Dossier 29.
8. Independent churches exist because people once said: we have the right to test our teachers. Luther wrote a whole small book about this in 1523. Catholic and Orthodox documents agree that ordinary believers help to guard the faith.

Label or reason?

Here are six answers to Dossier 29. This page made them all up. Which ones are labels? Which ones give a reason that someone can check? (A reason can still be wrong. That is another question.)

“Ancient” and “legalistic”

“Ancient”

The writer C. S. Lewis gave a name to one mistake. The mistake is to think: this idea is out of date, so someone must have proved it wrong. He called this “chronological snobbery”. In simple words: to look down on something only because it is old.

For any idea that people call out of date, Lewis asked a question:

Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do?

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955)

In simple words: Did anyone ever prove that it was false? If so, who did it, where, and how completely? Or did people only stop liking it, as they stop liking old clothes?

If someone proved that the ideas in Dossier 29 are false, then we can name him and his proof. If the ideas only went out of fashion, their age proves nothing.

And the Bible itself speaks well of old things.

Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

Jeremiah 6:16 · World English Bible

In simple words: Stand at the roads and look. Ask for the old paths. Ask, “Where is the good way?” Walk in it, and your souls will find rest.

Jude tells Christians to fight for “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). That faith was given one time, long ago.

Think about the main texts of Dossier 29. They are Acts, Ephesians and Hebrews. If “ancient” means “proved wrong”, then every sermon on those books must go too. Choose any date and say, “Everything older than this does not count.” You will lose the Bible passages first. Luther’s book of 1523 and the court case from the 1900s will still stand. No date can remove the old church documents and keep Acts, Ephesians and Hebrews.

There is something fair in the word “ashes”. It is possible to love old forms only because they are old. The historian Jaroslav Pelikan said it well:

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

Jaroslav Pelikan

In simple words: “Tradition” is the faith of people who have died, and that faith is still alive. “Traditionalism” is the faith of people who are alive, and that faith is dead.

But Dossier 29 does not ask anyone to honour old documents. It asks people to use them. They are a standard that the hearer and the teacher can both check.

“Legalistic”

It began with one case. Some men taught:

Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you can’t be saved.

Acts 15:1 · World English Bible

In simple words: You must be circumcised, as the law of Moses says. If you are not, you cannot be saved.

Paul answered that a person “is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16). In simple words: a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ. He is not made right because he does what the law says.

So the fair question is this. What rule does Dossier 29 make necessary for anything? None. It makes no rule for anyone’s salvation. It takes no side on baptism. It asks for some reading and one question.

Perhaps “legalistic” has its everyday meaning here: hard and cold. Then it is a fair complaint about the way the page speaks. It helps most when it points to the sentence.

How does the Bible say we should answer?

Every Christian teacher already accepts these passages as the standard. This page does not use them to accuse anyone. They are first of all for this page and its readers.

Paul describes a church elder. He must hold to the true message,

that he may be able to exhort in the sound doctrine, and to convict those who contradict him.

Titus 1:9 · World English Bible

In simple words: so that he can encourage people with healthy teaching, and can show those who speak against it that they are wrong.

He must show them. A label does not show anything.

But refuse foolish and ignorant questionings, knowing that they generate strife. The Lord’s servant must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, able to teach, patient, in gentleness correcting those who oppose him

2 Timothy 2:23–25 · World English Bible

In simple words: Stay away from foolish questions, because they start fights. The Lord’s servant must not fight. He must be gentle to everyone, able to teach, and patient. He must gently correct the people who are against him.

Someone may fairly say, “The Bible tells me to stay away from foolish questions.” True. But the very next words tell him to correct, gently, the people who disagree. What are the “foolish questions”? Paul means arguments without end about things nobody can know (Titus 3:9). “Does this verse say what the article claims?” is not that kind of question. You can answer it by reading.

Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear

1 Peter 3:15 · World English Bible

In simple words: Always be ready to answer everyone who asks you why you have this hope. Answer humbly and with respect.

Peter says this to every Christian.

Here is one more fact. Every independent church exists because Christians once said, “We have the right to test our teachers by the Bible.”

• Luther wrote a small book in 1523. Its title says that a Christian church has the right and the power to judge all teaching.
• The Catholic book of teaching says that ordinary members have “the right and even at times a duty” to tell their pastors what they think, with respect.
• The leaders of the Orthodox churches wrote in 1848 that “the people themselves” protect the faith.

When you ask your teacher a polite question, you use the same freedom in a small way.

The eleven claims

Here are the eleven claims of Dossier 29. Read each one. Is it true? Is it false? Or is it true, but it does not show what Dossier 29 says it shows? If you disagree with a claim, write down why, and name a source that other people can read.

1. Checking is normal. It is not rude. With a house or an operation, you use experts fully and still keep the last word. You check their training. You ask a second expert. You ask what else is possible and what can go wrong.
2. American law says that a doctor must tell you the other choices, and what will probably happen with no treatment.
3. With beliefs, almost nobody does any of this. And this decision lasts the longest.
4. The Bible praises people who check their teacher. The people of Berea are called “more noble” (Acts 17:11). Paul puts himself under the same test (Galatians 1:8). He corrects Peter openly (Galatians 2:11). He tells a whole church: “Test all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
5. No passage in the Bible praises a hearer for not checking.
6. The work of a teacher is real, and checking honours it. Teachers are given so that Christians do not stay children (Ephesians 4:11-14). Hebrews 13:17 commands us to obey leaders, and says that they must answer for their work.
7. The old churches built a protection. When a man becomes a minister, he says in public which written text he will teach under. In one church he promises to report it himself if his views change.
8. Where there is no such text, there is nothing to compare with. A short statement of faith can be fully true and say nothing about baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the church or the creeds.
9. Nobody can see this change. Nothing is announced. Nothing is signed. There is no date. Nothing shows for many years.
10. Each year it becomes harder to ask. In the first month a question costs nothing. In year ten it means saying, “I was wrong.”
11. The teacher does not pay the cost. He keeps his church either way. The hearer pays, and so do the children, who receive the change as the family’s religion.

You can send your answer to anyone. You can send it to the writer of this site.

What is fair to reject, and one question

It is fair to reject these and give no reason:

• every box in Dossier 29 with the title “Where this page stands”. Those boxes are opinion. They try to persuade you. Nobody has to accept them;
• the comparisons with a house and an operation, in the places where they do not fit. Dossier 29 says itself that they do not fit everywhere;
• the way the page speaks, if it feels sharp. That is a fair thing to say.

These need an answer with evidence:

• what Acts 17:11, Ephesians 4 and Hebrews 13:17 say;
• what ministers promise when they begin their work;
• what Luther wrote in 1523;
• whether any verse praises a hearer for not checking;
• whether one exact statement of faith says anything about baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the creeds.

Any teacher, of any church, can answer that in a few sentences. Most teachers would be glad that you asked. A clear answer helps everyone. You know where you stand. And your teacher has been heard in his own words. Perhaps Dossier 29 is wrong, and the question is not important. Then one conversation will show it.

Check it yourself

Here are six things. The first three take one afternoon together. The last one takes five minutes.

1. Read the eleven claims of Dossier 29 again. Ten minutes. The full dossier gives the source for each one.
2. Read Titus 1:5-9, 2 Timothy 2:14-26 and 1 Peter 3:13-17. Fifteen minutes. What should a teacher do when someone disagrees?
3. Read Acts 15:1-29 and Galatians 2. Twenty minutes. See what legalism really was.
4. Read your own church’s statement of faith. Ten minutes. Does it say what baptism is? Who may be baptized? What the Lord’s Supper is? Does the church hold the old creeds? Do not argue with it. Only notice.
5. Read C. S. Lewis, *Surprised by Joy*, chapter 13. Fifteen minutes. This is where “chronological snobbery” comes from. The English is not easy.
6. Give one answer, with one reason. Do this one. If you think that Dossier 29 is wrong, say so. Name the claim and the evidence. If you think that it is right, ask the one question above, in private and politely. In both cases, a label has become a conversation.