The Tower of Babel Method

What this page is asking

The author of this site set down a thesis to be tested: “Many modern churches offer a ‘Tower of Babel’ method, climbing up to God on our own terms, where historic Christianity teaches that God comes down to us on his terms.”

His core claim was this. “Traditional Christianity teaches that God reveals himself only on his own terms: in the person of Christ, through the Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. God comes down to us. Many modern churches offer what I call the ‘Tower of Babel’ method. If we climb high enough, we can reach God. Those who climb are promised mysterious revelation and new spiritual highs that other ‘nominal’ Christians cannot fathom. The climb is measured by dedication, compliance, and not asking questions, and it is often set by the pastor rather than by Scripture.”

He gave ten examples of the climb, each in his own words. They are the rungs this page examines.

These are the author’s descriptions of things he has heard taught or implied. They are not quoted from any named church, and nothing on this page depends on which church or pastor said them. A description of a teaching is not a recording of it. The page tests the pattern the ten examples share, and it does not judge any person.

He put the question in a form that can be checked: “Does Scripture teach that believers reach God, or a higher spiritual level, by climbing: proving dedication, complying without questions, and separating from the ‘unspiritual’? Or does it teach that God comes down to us in Christ and gives himself through Word and sacraments, equally to all believers?”

Two positions, labelled so they can be told apart

Two accounts are compared all the way through. They are given letters so that the page can refer to them briefly.

Position L is stated here in its plain form. Few people who hold it would put it so baldly, and many would deny that they teach a ladder at all. What the page tests is whether the ten rungs, taken together, add up to one, and whether Scripture supports that ladder.

What both positions agree on

So the disagreement is not about whether Christians should attend, give, pray or grow. It is about what those things are. Are they gifts used and duties done by people God has already reached? Or are they rungs, which show where a person stands and who is above whom?

What the page concludes, stated up front

The prompt behind this page

Everything below was produced by giving the following brief to a frontier language model with web search, which assembled and checked the sources. It is published so you can run it yourself, change it, sharpen it, or reverse it and see what comes back. Three experiments are worth more than reading this page. First, reverse it: ask for the strongest biblical case that some believers attain a higher spiritual level than others by greater dedication and obedience to their leaders, with every text its defenders use, and see how far it gets. Second, narrow it: ask only for every place in the New Testament where money given to the church is handled, and what each says about who carried it and who could see the accounts. Third, make it a test: write down what your own church asks of a committed member, remove the names, and ask which items Scripture commands and which it does not mention.

Write a detailed, source-first, interactive article, in British
English, for a general reader who is willing to work. Quote Scripture
from the Authorised Version. Date and attribute every other quotation:
give the work, the edition or translation, and the section. Verify
every quotation against a reliable published source; where a
quotation cannot be verified, cut it, or say that it is given at
second hand. Do not invent quotes. Do not take verses out of context:
where a text is being applied beyond what it first addressed, say so.

  TITLE. The Tower of Babel Method

  THESIS TO TEST. Many modern churches offer a "Tower of Babel"
  method, climbing up to God on our own terms, where historic
  Christianity teaches that God comes down to us on his terms.

  CORE CLAIM. Traditional Christianity teaches that God reveals
  himself only on his own terms: in the person of Christ, through
  the Word, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper. God comes down to us.
  Many modern churches offer the "Tower of Babel" method: if we
  climb high enough, we can reach God. Those who climb are promised
  mysterious revelation and new spiritual highs that other
  "nominal" Christians cannot fathom. The climb is measured by
  dedication, compliance, and not asking questions, and it is often
  set by the pastor rather than by Scripture.

  TEN EXAMPLES TO EXAMINE (the author's own descriptions; attribute
  them to no church):
   1. Come to the mid-week service to prove your dedication.
   2. Don't ask questions about theology and you will be rewarded
      with ever higher understanding; God will not open your eyes
      if you ask questions.
   3. Don't associate with people the pastor does not like.
   4. Don't waste time with people who are obviously not spiritual;
      God is done with them and you should be too.
   5. Spend more time at church and less at work; work has no
      eternal consequence; the more you work for the church, the
      higher you climb.
   6. Give more money without asking any questions.
   7. Get re-baptized; your earlier baptism does not count.
   8. Pray ever more eloquent prayers so that others can see your
      spiritual level.
   9. Send your children to all the activities the church deems
      useful.
  10. An overseas project budgeted at 100k ends up costing ten
      times more. Don't ask questions; if you do, you lack
      "spiritual eyes." Agree with the majority, as in "The
      Emperor's New Clothes."

  QUESTION. Does Scripture teach that believers reach God, or a
  higher spiritual level, by climbing: proving dedication,
  complying without questions, and separating from the
  "unspiritual"? Or does it teach that God comes down to us in
  Christ and gives himself through Word and sacraments, equally to
  all believers?

  TWO POSITIONS, labelled and used consistently.
   D, THE DESCENT (held): God comes down in Christ and gives him
      through Word, Baptism and Supper, the same to all believers;
      growth is real but confers no rank; teaching is tested and
      money handled openly; work and neighbours are where faith is
      lived.
   L, THE LADDER (under test): believers rise towards God and a
      deeper revelation by visible dedication, compliance and
      separation, on rungs set and judged by the pastor.

  POINTS TO TEST.
   1. Babel (Genesis 11:1-9): a building project to reach heaven
      and "make us a name"; "the LORD came down to see." Read it
      whole, with Genesis 12:1-3 and Isaiah 14:13-14.
   2. God comes down: Jacob's ladder (Genesis 28:10-22) and John
      1:51; John 3:13; Romans 10:6-8; Philippians 2:5-11; Pentecost
      as the reversal of Babel, with preaching and Baptism as its
      result (Acts 2:1-11, 38-42). Use the Fathers who saw the link.
   3. Climbing is the theology of glory: Luther's Heidelberg
      Disputation (1518), theses 19-25 and 28. Apply it to each
      example, saying where this is application.
   4. Hidden knowledge for an elite was opposed by the early
      Church: Colossians 2:18-23; 1 Corinthians 8:1; the Gnostic
      teachers in Irenaeus, Against Heresies. Note where the
      parallel holds and where it does not.
   5. Asking questions is commended: Acts 17:11; 1 John 4:1;
      1 Thessalonians 5:21; 2 Corinthians 8:18-21 and 9:7; the
      Didache on travelling prophets and money. Is "don't ask
      questions" about theology or finances biblical? Connect to
      the site's earlier treatment of "divisiveness."
   6. Ordinary work and ordinary people: Colossians 3:23; Acts
      18:3; 1 Thessalonians 4:11; Mark 2:15-17; Luther on the
      "spiritual estate" (1520). Connect to the site's earlier
      treatment of a personal "project" from God.
   7. God's gifts are not a ladder: Ephesians 4:5 (link the
      earlier dossier on re-baptism); Matthew 6:5-7; Luke 18:9-14;
      Galatians 3:3.
   8. The costs: a ladder has no top, and someone at the top
      decides who is "spiritual," which shields leaders from
      accountability. Contrast the same Christ given to every
      believer, with assurance resting on his promise.

  ADDITIONS.
   9. The best texts for the Ladder (Psalm 24:3; 1 Corinthians
      2:14-3:4; Hebrews 5:12-14 and 13:17; 2 Corinthians 6:17;
      Philippians 3:12-14; Luke 24:49), given their full weight.
  10. A closing table answering each of the ten examples.
  11. A diagnostic for a congregation.

OBJECTIONS. Answer them inside the argument. Grant what the position
under test gets right: attendance, giving, growth and pastoral
authority are all commanded. Where the evidence corrects the brief,
say so in a marked box.

NAMING. No living individual named as an example of anything, and no
church identified. Deceased writers quoted only from dated published
works. Every remark attributed to a pastor or a churchgoer is
composed for illustration and labelled as composed.

EXCLUDED. Deciding between the traditions on what Baptism and the
Supper are. Assessment of any actual church or pastor. Practical
advice on whether to stay in or leave a church. Ground covered by
earlier dossiers (knowing God, vocation, giving, re-baptism, silencing
dissent, the pastor's "covering," children's activities) is kept
brief and linked.

INTERACTIVES. A priors quiz. A sort of the ten rungs by what each
measures. A sort of the clauses of Genesis 11-12 by who acts. A
finish-the-verse quiz on descent. A sort of things a pastor might say
by which position they assume. A quiz placing sentences in the second
century or the twenty-first. A quiz on questioners in Scripture. An
objection drill the reader answers in his own words first. A sort of
claims about work and company. A sort of gifts given to all against
rungs. A diagnostic for a congregation. A closing quiz matching each
rung to the text that answers it.

OUTPUT: a single self-contained interactive HTML page, professional
and readable, light theme by default with a dark switch, stating the
question at the top, publishing this prompt in full, repeating the
key points in prominent boxes for readers who skim, explaining every
technical term in a box where it is used, and giving the reader
something to do in every major section. Also produce a plain-English
quick version of about fifteen minutes with three short exercises,
and a Simple English version with no exercises.

The page you are reading is the output of that brief after the sources were checked. The brief quoted Scripture from a modern version; the page gives the same verses from the Authorised Version, as it does everywhere on this site. Six things qualified the brief, and each is marked in a box where it arises.

What do you currently think?

Ten questions. Each has a determinate answer, and you can check every one yourself in Part XIII. Answer them before reading and lock them in. They come back in Part XII with the sources beside them.

What follows

Ten rungs, one ladder

Taken one at a time, most of the ten examples sound like ordinary church life. A midweek meeting. A collection. A children’s club. Prayer in public. It is only when they are put side by side that they show a shape, and the shape is the author’s word for it: a ladder.

A ladder has four parts, and each of them can be found in the examples.

The parts depend on one another. A rung that could not be seen would be no use for measuring height. Height that had a top would let people stop. And someone has to judge the climbers, or the ladder would be no more than private piety. With all four parts together, a church can rank its members.

The same couple, answered twice

Here is how the two positions sound to a young couple with a baby of four months. Both work full time. They came on Sunday and want to belong. Both pastors care about them.

Both pastors would like to see them on Wednesday. The first makes Wednesday the evidence of where they stand and treats the question as a symptom. The second tells them they already have what Wednesday offers, and answers the question.

Try it: what does each rung measure?

The ten rungs from the author’s examples. Sort each by what it lets an observer see.

0 of 10 sorted

“Let us make us a name”

The author’s image comes from nine verses at the start of Genesis 11. They are worth reading slowly, because the story is told with care and most of its point is in the details.

What the builders said

And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11:3–4

Three times they say “let us.” The project is theirs from start to finish: their materials, their city, their tower, their name. And they say what it is for. It is to keep them together, “lest we be scattered.”

That last phrase matters more than it first appears. Two chapters earlier God had told Noah and his sons, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (9:1). Spreading out was the command. The tower is an attempt to avoid it. The builders wanted a centre that would hold everyone in one place, around one achievement, under one name.

Many scholars connect the tower with the stepped temple-towers of Mesopotamia, the ziggurats. One at Babylon was called, in its own language, the house of the foundation of heaven and earth. They were understood as places where heaven and earth met. The city’s own name, in Akkadian, was Bāb-ili, “gate of god.”

What the LORD did

The next verse is the turn of the story: “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded” (11:5). The narrator does not comment, and does not need to. The tower whose top was to reach heaven is so small, seen from heaven, that God has to come down to look at it.

Then God answers their “let us” with his own: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (11:7). The builders said “let us” and went up. God says “let us” and goes down. The result is the very thing they built against: “So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city” (11:8).

The last verse gives the city its name in Hebrew, and it is a pun. “Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth” (11:9). The Hebrew balal means to confuse. The city that called itself the gate of god is renamed confusion.

He and his people therefore, erected this tower against the Lord, and so gave expression to their impious pride … The safe and true way to heaven is made by humility, which lifts up the heart to the Lord, not against Him.

Augustine, The City of God XVI.4 (c. 420); trans. Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 2 (1887), as edited for New Advent.

The name that was given

The story of Babel ends at 11:9. A genealogy follows, and then, at the start of chapter 12, God speaks to one man from that region:

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 12:1–3

The builders said, “let us make us a name.” Here God says “I will” four times, and one of the things he will do is “make thy name great.” What Babel tried to build, Abram is given. The builders wanted to stay together and were scattered. Abram is sent away from his country and his kindred, and through him “all families of the earth” are to be blessed. The scattered nations of chapter 11 are the families of chapter 12.

The Bible returns to Babylon more than once, and it keeps the same picture. Isaiah puts a song in the mouth of the king of Babylon:

For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Isaiah 14:13–15. The song is addressed to “the king of Babylon” (14:4).

Five times “I will,” and two of them are “I will ascend.” The answer is a single verb, “thou shalt be brought down.” In Genesis and in Isaiah alike, the one who climbs is brought down, and the one who is given a name is the one who did not build.

The objection: “this is only about pagans”

Someone will say that Babel was a pagan city building a pagan temple, and that comparing a church to it is unfair. The church in question preaches Christ, and its midweek meeting is a Bible study, not a ziggurat.

That is true, and the page does not say otherwise. The comparison is not between the beliefs of the builders and the beliefs of a church. It is between two kinds of project. In one, people decide what will raise them, build it together, and gain a name by it. In the other, God decides what he will give, and gives it. The Bible itself applies Babel’s shape to people inside the covenant. The Pharisee in Luke 18 was no pagan, and Part IX shows that his prayer has the shape of a tower.

Try it: who is acting?

Ten clauses from Genesis 11 and 12. Sort each by who does what it describes.

0 of 10 sorted

The ladder that comes down

Seventeen chapters after Babel the Bible shows another structure that reaches to heaven. The Hebrew of 28:12, “the top of it reached to heaven,” uses the same words as the builders’ “whose top may reach unto heaven” in 11:4. The reader is meant to compare them.

The ground of this Part is also covered, more briefly, in Dossier 55, Part V, which tests whether knowing God is a quest. This page takes the same texts further, because here the question is rank.

What Jacob had done

Jacob is not climbing anything. He is running away. He has just deceived his blind father and taken his brother’s blessing, and his brother means to kill him (27:41). He leaves home alone, and stops for the night in the open: “he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep” (28:11).

That is the man to whom the ladder is shown. He does not build it, and he does not set foot on it. The angels go up and down. The LORD speaks from it, and what he says is all promise:

I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed … And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

Genesis 28:13, 15

No condition is attached. Nothing is said about Jacob’s dedication, which at this point is nil. And Jacob’s reaction is the reverse of the builders’ pride: “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not … this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (28:16–17). Babel called itself the gate of god. The real gate of heaven turns out to be a patch of open ground where a fugitive fell asleep, because God chose to speak there.

What Jesus said the ladder was

When Nathanael is amazed that Jesus knew him before they met, Jesus tells him he will see greater things: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1:51). The angels of Jacob’s dream went up and down the ladder. Now they go up and down on Jesus. He is the ladder: the place where heaven and earth are joined. And he is not reached by climbing. He has come.

Two chapters later he says the same thing to a teacher of Israel:

And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

John 3:13. Spoken to Nicodemus, “a ruler of the Jews” and “a master of Israel” (3:1, 10).

Nicodemus is the most qualified climber in the Gospel: learned, devout, respected. He is told that the only one who has gone up is the one who came down. Paul gives the same rule in Romans, quoting Moses: “Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) … The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach” (10:6, 8).

The name, again

Paul’s hymn to Christ in Philippians follows the same line all the way down and back up:

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name.

Philippians 2:6–9

Babel tried to make a name by going up. Christ “made himself of no reputation” by going down, and God “gave him a name.” Paul introduces the hymn with an instruction for the Church: “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (2:3). He is not telling them to climb towards Christ. He is telling them to go the way Christ went.

The objection: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD?”

Position L has a real text here, and it uses the very word. “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 24:3–4). Does that not say that the pure climb, and others do not?

Read the psalm to the end. The next verse says what the one who ascends does there: “He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation” (24:5). He receives righteousness; he does not bring it. And the psalm ends with the gates being told to open, not for the worshipper, but for someone else: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in” (24:7). The ascent of the psalm is a procession behind the King.

Who has clean hands and a pure heart? The New Testament’s answer is that one man has, and that others enter on his account: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus … let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:19, 22). The entry is by his blood, and the washing is Baptism. Every believer is told “let us draw near,” and nobody is told to wait until he has climbed.

The objection: “I press toward the mark”

Paul does describe effort: “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). Growth is real, and Position D does not deny it.

But look at what Paul presses for and why. Five verses earlier he has said he wants to be found in Christ, “not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ” (3:9). He presses on “that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus” (3:12): he is reaching for what has already taken hold of him. And he does not rank anyone by it. Of his own spiritual record, which was impressive, he says, “I count all things but loss” (3:8). The race of Philippians 3 is run towards a prize that is given, by a man who has thrown away his ranking.

Try it: finish the verse

Six verses about going up and coming down, each with a piece missing. Choose the words the text actually has.

Babel undone

At Babel one language became many, and people could no longer understand one another. At Pentecost the apostles spoke, and people of many languages understood. “Every man heard them speak in his own language … we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God” (Acts 2:6, 11). Luke lists the nations present, as Genesis 10 had listed the nations scattered from Babel.

The Church noticed the connection early. Gregory of Nazianzus, preaching in Constantinople around 380, put it like this:

But as the old Confusion of tongues was laudable, when men who were of one language in wickedness and impiety, even as some now venture to be, were building the Tower; for by the confusion of their language the unity of their intention was broken up, and their undertaking destroyed; so much more worthy of praise is the present miraculous one. For being poured from One Spirit upon many men, it brings them again into harmony.

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 41, On Pentecost, §16 (c. 380); trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 7 (1894), as edited for New Advent.

Notice what Pentecost does not do. It does not restore a single language. The nations stay scattered and keep their tongues, and the gospel comes to each of them in its own. Babel’s answer to division was a centre everyone must come to. Pentecost’s answer is a gift that goes out to everyone where they are.

Which direction?

Every movement at Pentecost is downward or outward. The sound comes “from heaven.” The tongues of fire sit “upon each of them” (2:3). Peter explains it from the prophet Joel: “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” (2:17). Poured out, from above, on all.

And Joel’s list is the opposite of a ladder: “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit” (2:17–18). Sons and daughters, young and old, servants and handmaids. Every category a society uses to rank people is named, and the gift falls on all of them alike.

What the crowd was told to do

Peter preaches Christ crucified and risen. The crowd is “pricked in their heart” and asks, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” This is the moment at which a ladder would be offered, if there were one. Here is what Peter says:

Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

Acts 2:38–39

“Every one of you.” “Ye shall receive.” “The gift.” “To you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off.” There is no inner circle and no stage beyond. “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (2:41). And Luke describes what the three thousand then did: “they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (2:42). Teaching, fellowship, the Supper, prayer. The same four things for every one of them.

The objection: “they tarried and prayed for ten days”

Someone may answer that the disciples did not simply receive the Spirit. Jesus told them to “tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49), and they spent days in prayer before it came (Acts 1:14). Should not believers today press in, wait and pray until they are lifted to a higher level?

Three things tell against it. First, the disciples were waiting for a fixed event on a fixed day: the coming of the Spirit that Jesus had promised, which had not yet happened. “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1:5). Second, when the Spirit had come, nobody was told to tarry again. Peter did not send the three thousand away to wait. He told them to be baptised and promised that they “shall receive.” Third, the waiting disciples did nothing to make the day arrive. The Spirit came “when the day of Pentecost was fully come” (2:1), on God’s schedule. The ten days are a picture of waiting for a promise, and the promise has since been kept.

Calling the thing what it is

In April 1518 Luther, then an Augustinian friar, presented a set of theses to a meeting of his order at Heidelberg. Among them is a contrast he never stopped using. He called it the difference between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross.

19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened.

20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

21. A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.

22. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.

Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation (1518), theses 19–22; trans. Harold J. Grimm, Luther’s Works vol. 31 (1957), as reproduced at bookofconcord.org.

The theologian of glory looks for God in what impresses: power, success, works that can be seen. He expects to find God at the top. The theologian of the cross looks for God where God has put himself, in a crucified man, where nobody would have looked. In his explanation of thesis 21, Luther says what the first kind of person does with that: he “prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil.” Such people, he says, are those “whom the apostle calls ‘enemies of the cross of Christ’ (Phil. 3:18).” And of the others: “Therefore the friends of the cross say that the cross is good and works are evil.”

Four theses and ten rungs

Read with the ten examples beside them, four of Luther’s theses do most of the work.

Thesis 28 deserves a moment more. Luther explains that “rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good.” It flows down. That is the whole difference between the two positions in a sentence. Position L teaches love that rises towards what is spiritual and withdraws from what is not. Position D teaches that God’s love came down to people who were nothing to look at, and made them his.

The Emperor’s new clothes

The author’s tenth example uses Hans Christian Andersen’s story of 1837, and it fits Luther’s twenty-first thesis closely. Two swindlers sell an emperor a suit of cloth they say is invisible to anyone unfit for his office or unusually stupid. Nobody can see it, and nobody will say so, because to say so would be to confess oneself unfit. The emperor walks in procession wearing nothing, and the crowd praises the clothes, until a child says what everyone can see.

The swindlers’ trick is the structure of the tenth rung. A quality is defined so that only the worthy can perceive it (“spiritual eyes”), and whoever fails to perceive it has shown that he is unworthy (“still carnal”). After that nobody can question it without condemning himself, and so nobody does. The child in the story is not wiser than the courtiers. He simply has no rank to lose. That is what the theology of the cross does to a ladder. It takes away the rank, and then people can say what they see.

The same practice, two directions

Very few of the rungs are bad things in themselves. A midweek Bible study is a good thing. So is giving, and so is prayer. What makes the difference is which way the practice points: down, as a gift received and a duty done for others, or up, as evidence of height. The sorter below has pairs of sentences about the same practices.

Try it: which way does it point?

Ten things a pastor might say. All are composed by this page. Sort each by which position it assumes. Two could be said by either.

0 of 10 sorted

Perfect, and the elect seed

The ladder promises something at the top: “mysterious revelation and new spiritual highs that other ‘nominal’ Christians cannot fathom.” That divides a congregation into two kinds of Christian. Below are the ordinary members, who attend and believe. Above are those who have climbed and been shown more. The early Church met this division, and it has a long record of what it said about it.

What Paul told the Colossians

The church at Colossae was being told that faith in Christ was a beginning, and that a fuller experience lay beyond it, reached by visions, by strict rules and by severe treatment of the body. Paul’s letter is his answer.

Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, And not holding the Head … Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.

Colossians 2:18–19, 23

Three things in the passage bear on the ladder. The teachers claimed to have seen things others had not, and Paul calls them “puffed up.” Their programme had “a shew of wisdom”: it looked serious and demanding. And it was “will worship,” worship devised by human will, which is what the brief means by climbing “on our own terms.” Paul’s answer is not a higher programme. It is that nothing is left to reach: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him” (2:9–10). They had all of Christ already. The one thing Paul says they lack, if they follow these teachers, is the Head.

What Irenaeus found in Gaul

A century later Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, wrote five books against the Gnostic teachers of his day. Their doctrines were elaborate and are not the point here. What matters is how they described ordinary Christians. Irenaeus reports that they divided people into classes, and put the members of the Church in the lower one, the “animal” men:

Animal men, again, are instructed in animal things; such men, namely, as are established by their works, and by a mere faith, while they have not perfect knowledge. We of the Church, they say, are these persons. Wherefore also they maintain that good works are necessary to us, for that otherwise it is impossible we should be saved. But as to themselves, they hold that they shall be entirely and undoubtedly saved, not by means of conduct, but because they are spiritual by nature.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.6.2 (c. 180); trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1 (1885), as edited for New Advent.

And he describes how they treated the people below them:

They run us down (who from the fear of God guard against sinning even in thought or word) as utterly contemptible and ignorant persons, while they highly exalt themselves, and claim to be perfect, and the elect seed. For they declare that we simply receive grace for use, wherefore also it will again be taken away from us; but that they themselves have grace as their own special possession.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.6.4 (c. 180); same translation.

“A mere faith.” “Not perfect knowledge.” “Contemptible and ignorant persons.” Rules for the lower class and freedom for the higher. Grace that the ordinary member may lose, and the elite possess by right. Every one of these has a modern counterpart in the language of “nominal” Christians who “cannot fathom” what the climbers have.

Irenaeus’ answer was that the Church has no secret teaching. What the apostles taught, they taught in public, and handed on in public, to every church:

It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world … For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries, which they were in the habit of imparting to “the perfect” apart and privily from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the Churches themselves.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.3.1 (c. 180); same translation.

“Within the power of all.” “In every Church.” The faith is available to anyone who wants to look, and it can be checked, because it was given in public. A knowledge open only to those who have climbed, and closed to those who ask, is exactly what Irenaeus said the apostles never had.

The objection: “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit”

Position L has a text that seems made for it. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him … But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (1 Corinthians 2:14–15). There are spiritual people and unspiritual people, and the spiritual are judged by nobody. Is that not a ladder, with Paul’s authority?

Read on into the next chapter, where Paul applies it to the church in front of him:

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ … For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

1 Corinthians 3:1, 3–4

Paul does use the words “spiritual” and “carnal.” But his evidence that the Corinthians are carnal is not that they asked questions, or missed meetings, or kept bad company. It is that they lined up behind teachers. “I am of Paul.” “I am of Apollos.” The mark of carnality in this passage is party loyalty to a leader, and the leaders Paul names are himself and his closest colleague. He refuses the role: “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed?” (3:5).

And the “natural man” of 2:14 is not a lukewarm church member. He is one who does not have the Spirit at all, and to whom the cross is “foolishness.” Paul has just said who has the Spirit: “we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (2:12). We, all of us. The things freely given.

The objection: “strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age”

Hebrews does distinguish milk from meat, and rebukes its readers for needing milk when they “ought to be teachers” (5:12). Is that not two levels?

It is two stages of growth, and the writer says what the mature are like: “strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (5:14). Maturity is the trained ability to discern. It is reached “by reason of use,” by practice in testing and telling things apart. A church that rewards those who do not ask questions is training the opposite of what Hebrews calls maturity.

Try it: which century?

Eight sentences about two classes of Christian. Four are from Irenaeus’ report of the Gnostic teachers, about the year 180. Four are composed by this page in a modern idiom, and are quoted from no one. Place each.

Whether those things were so

Two of the ten rungs are silence: about theology (“God will open your eyes. This will not happen if you ask questions”) and about money (the overseas project). This Part asks whether “don’t ask” has any footing in Scripture.

The Bereans checked an apostle

When Paul preached in Berea, the Jews of the synagogue did not simply accept what he said. They “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” The teacher they were checking was the apostle Paul, and Luke calls them “more noble” for it. Their questions did not stop them believing: “Therefore many of them believed” (17:12). The faith that followed the checking was their own.

The rest of the New Testament says the same in commands:

Galatians 1:8 tells ordinary Christians to measure even an apostle, or an angel, against the gospel they have received. First Timothy 5 assumes that an elder can be accused, and sets a rule of evidence for doing it fairly. And in Galatians 2 one apostle publicly opposes another over a question of theology and practice. None of this would make sense in a church where questions are a sign of being carnal.

The oldest surviving manual of church order outside the New Testament, the Didache, from about the year 100, gives churches tests for travelling teachers. One of them is about money: “And when the apostle goes away, let him take nothing but bread until he lodges; but if he ask money, he is a false prophet.” And again: “But whoever says in the Spirit, Give me money, or something else, you shall not listen to him” (Didache 11.6, 11.12; trans. M. B. Riddle, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 7, 1886). To be fair to the text, the same chapter also says that a prophet speaking in the Spirit is not to be tested or judged. Then it says that “not every one that speaks in the Spirit is a prophet,” and gives tests of conduct by which to tell. The Didache’s churches did not question the Spirit. They did check the man.

The objection: “Obey them that have the rule over you”

This is the strongest text for silence, and it should be quoted in full. “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you” (Hebrews 13:17).

The verse is real, and Position D accepts it. A church is not a democracy, and a Christian who treats every instruction from his pastor as an opening bid has misread it. But the verse gives a reason for obedience, and the reason limits it. Leaders are to be obeyed because “they watch for your souls,” and because they “must give account.” The obedience is owed to men who are watching over souls and who will answer for it. It is not a promise that understanding will be given to those who do not ask. And the same letter, ten verses earlier, has just told its readers how to judge a leader: “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation” (13:7). Considering. The congregation is told to look at the leader’s life and teaching and decide whether it is worth following.

The text that most often accompanies the demand for silence, “Touch not mine anointed” (Psalm 105:15), is treated at length in Dossier 15. Briefly: it is about the patriarchs, who were not priests or preachers, and it forbids harming them, not questioning them.

Paul’s collection was handled in the open

The largest sum of money in the New Testament is the collection Paul raised from the Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem. He tells us how he arranged it, and why:

And not that only, but who was also chosen of the churches to travel with us with this grace, which is administered by us to the glory of the same Lord … Avoiding this, that no man should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us: Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.

2 Corinthians 8:19–21

Paul did not say that because his conscience was clear before God, nobody else needed to see. He said the reverse: honest “not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.” The man who travelled with the money was “chosen of the churches,” not by Paul. Elsewhere he lets the givers choose the carriers: “whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem” (1 Corinthians 16:3). And the giving itself was to be free: “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). Dossier 08 works through the collection in detail.

The Old Testament’s great building appeal ran the same way. When the people brought materials for the tabernacle, the craftsmen came to Moses and said there was more than enough, “and Moses gave commandment … Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing” (Exodus 36:6). Afterwards the whole was totalled: “This is the sum of the tabernacle … as it was counted, according to the commandment of Moses” (38:21), and the weights of gold, silver and bronze follow. The project had a budget, the giving stopped when it was met, and the accounts are in the Bible.

Is asking divisive?

The usual answer to a question about money or doctrine is that asking it divides the church. Paul does warn about division, and in a sentence that says what division is: “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). The test of a divisive person in that verse is the doctrine, not the person’s rank. Someone who asks whether a teaching agrees with “the doctrine which ye have learned” is applying Paul’s test. Someone who adds rungs the doctrine never mentioned, and ranks the church by them, is closer to the description. Dossier 29 takes the “isn’t this divisive?” objection apart at length, and Dossier 06 reads the texts used to silence dissent, including the one man in the New Testament condemned for putting critics out of the church.

Try it: commended, answered or rebuked?

Seven people in Scripture who asked questions of God, of an angel or of a teacher. What happened to each?

Out of the world

Four of the rungs concern life outside the church building: work kept to “eight hours,” children sent to every activity, and two kinds of people to be avoided, those the pastor dislikes and those who are “obviously not spiritual.” Each assumes that what happens outside the church is lower than what happens inside it, and can pull a climber down.

Work

Paul wrote to slaves, people whose work was not chosen and not glamorous, and told them that it was service to Christ:

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.

Colossians 3:23–24. Addressed to “servants,” that is, slaves (3:22).

“Ye serve the Lord Christ.” The rung says that work “has no eternal consequence.” Paul tells the people with the least choice about their work that they will receive “the reward of the inheritance” for it.

Paul himself made tents. “And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers” (Acts 18:3). He did not regard it as time lost to the gospel. He made it a pattern for others: “that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without” (1 Thessalonians 4:11–12). He told a thief to stop stealing and “labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Ephesians 4:28). And he put providing for one’s household at the level of the faith itself: “if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Timothy 5:8).

No text sets a figure for hours of work, and none ranks Christians by the hours they give the church instead. The New Testament’s complaint about work is against idleness, not industry: “if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

“The spiritual estate”

The idea that church work is higher than ordinary work had a name in the late Middle Ages. Clergy and those in religious orders were the “spiritual estate,” and everyone else was the “temporal estate.” Luther attacked the division in 1520, in an open letter to the German nobility:

It has been devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate; princes, lords, artificers, and peasants, are the temporal estate. This is an artful lie and hypocritical device … all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone.

Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520); trans. C. A. Buchheim, as printed in J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History vol. 2 (1906).

In the same year he wrote of works done in faith: “In this faith all works become equal, and one is like the other; all distinctions between works fall away, whether they be great, small, short, long, few or many. For the works are acceptable not for their own sake, but because of the faith” (Treatise on Good Works, 1520; trans. W. A. Lambert, Works of Martin Luther vol. 1, 1915). Dossier 12 traces this doctrine of vocation, and the medieval scale it replaced, in full. The fifth rung, more hours at church means a higher place, is that scale rebuilt with a different set of offices.

The author’s brief links this to an earlier dossier on finding God’s “project” for one’s life. The connection is direct. If a person’s real calling is a special project to be discovered, his job and his family are a distraction from it. If his calling is where God has put him, they are the calling. Dossier 55, Part X, shows that the New Testament calls only a short list of things “the will of God,” and that none of them is a personal blueprint.

Children

The ninth rung sends children to every activity the church deems useful, so that “your children and you can both climb.” Church activities for children are good things, and Position D has nothing against them. What the New Testament puts first is not the programme but the home: “ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Moses told Israel to teach God’s words “when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:7). Dossier 52 treats the related claim that a child’s other activities crowd out Christ.

People

The third and fourth rungs say whom to avoid. Here Jesus’ own conduct is the plainest evidence, because it was what his critics complained about:

And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Mark 2:16–17

The scribes and Pharisees held the fourth rung: do not waste time with people who are obviously not spiritual. Jesus did the opposite, on purpose, and gave the reason. Luke says the complaint went on: “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them” (15:2). His answer was three parables about God going out to look for what was lost.

As for the claim that “God is done with them”: Scripture says that God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), and that he is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Nobody is told that he may decide for God which neighbours are past saving.

The objection: “Come out from among them, and be ye separate”

Scripture does command separation, and Position D must say where. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers … Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:14, 17). “Evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Do these not justify keeping away from the unspiritual?

Each has a context that limits it. The “unequal yoke” passage is about idolatry: “what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” (6:16). It forbids sharing in pagan worship, not eating with neighbours. The “evil communications” verse comes in the middle of Paul’s argument with people inside the church who said “there is no resurrection of the dead” (15:12). It warns against false teaching, not against the unchurched.

And Paul says directly that Christians are not to withdraw from the immoral of the world. He had written to the Corinthians “not to company with fornicators,” and they misunderstood him, so he corrected it:

Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous … with such an one no not to eat.

1 Corinthians 5:10–11

So the separation Scripture commands is narrow. It applies to a professing Christian living in open and unrepentant sin, after the church has dealt with it publicly (5:4–5; Matthew 18:15–17), and to false teachers (Romans 16:17; 2 John 10). Even then the aim is restoration: “count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” (2 Thessalonians 3:15). None of it is separation on a pastor’s private dislike. James calls that “respect of persons,” and asks, “Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?” (2:4).

Try it: does Scripture say it?

Ten claims about work, children and company. Sort each by what the New Testament says about it.

0 of 10 sorted

One baptism, one bread

Two rungs take things God gives and turn them into steps. One is Baptism, done again so that the climber can rise. The other is prayer, made more eloquent so that others can see how high the one praying has climbed.

One baptism

Paul lists the things that make the Church one: “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4–6). Baptism is in the list because it is something every member has in common and nobody has more of. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free” (1 Corinthians 12:13).

A second baptism used as a step up changes that. It makes Baptism something that divides the members into those who have done it twice and those who have not. And it implies that the first was not God’s act, or that God’s act needs improving. Dossier 21 sets out what the early Church, the Reformers and the historic traditions said about re-baptism, and why they treated a baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as done once.

Prayers to be seen

Jesus spoke directly about the eighth rung:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward … But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Matthew 6:5, 7

Two faults are named: praying to be seen, and praying at length in the belief that length impresses God. A prayer made eloquent “so that others can see your spiritual level” is the first fault exactly. Jesus says what it earns: “They have their reward.” The reward is being seen, and that is all. Then he gives his disciples a prayer of some sixty-five words, in the plural, to say together. Dossier 35 examines the related habit of announcing one’s own humility and sacrifice.

Two men who went up to pray

Luke introduces a parable by saying whom it was for: “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others” (18:9). Those two things, trusting in one’s own height and looking down on those below, are the ladder in a sentence.

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Luke 18:10–12

The Pharisee’s prayer is a report of his position on the ladder. He names the people below him, including one standing a few yards away. He lists his rungs: fasting twice a week, which the law did not require, and tithes on everything. Every item is true, visible and beyond what most people did. The prayer is addressed to God, but it is made, Luke says, “with himself.”

The publican lists nothing. He “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven.” He asks for one thing, mercy. And Jesus’ verdict uses the language of direction: “this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (18:14). The man who would not look up went down justified, and the one who was climbing did not.

Begun in the Spirit

Paul’s sharpest sentence on the subject was written to churches that had believed the gospel and were then offered something further: circumcision, the calendar, a higher standard. “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you … This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1–3).

“Made perfect by the flesh” is the ladder’s promise: you have begun, now climb to completion by what you do. Paul calls it foolish. The Galatians received the Spirit “by the hearing of faith,” by something preached to them and believed. They do not finish by a different route.

One bread

The Lord’s Supper makes the same point in the plainest possible way. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16–17). The newest member and the oldest elder eat the same bread. Nobody receives a larger portion of Christ for having climbed.

When the Corinthians did turn the Supper into a display of rank, the rich eating well while the poor went hungry, Paul’s rebuke was severe: “despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?” (11:22). And in the next chapter he describes how God arranges the body: “those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary … God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked” (12:22, 24). In the body as God made it, the honour goes downward.

Try it: given to all, or a rung?

Eight things. Sort each by whether the New Testament gives it to every believer alike, or whether it appears only as a rung on the ladder.

0 of 8 sorted

What a ladder costs

The author’s brief ends with the practical costs. A ladder has no top, so no one knows if he has done enough. And a ladder has someone at the top, deciding who is “spiritual” and who is “carnal.” Each cost has a third alongside it, which the brief implies: the people at the bottom.

No top, so no rest

None of the ten rungs comes with a number. How many meetings prove dedication? How much giving is enough? How eloquent must a prayer be? A ladder that had a top would let people stop. Because this one has none, nobody on it can know that he stands well with God. He can only know where he stands relative to others, and that changes with every new rung.

Jesus’ invitation is the opposite: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28, 30). It was spoken to people already carrying a religion of rungs, the “heavy burdens” of Matthew 23. Rest is the thing a ladder cannot give.

Position D puts assurance somewhere a person can find it. A baptism has a date. The Word preached says “for you.” The bread is put into the hand. These are the same on a person’s worst day as on his best, and the same for him as for anyone else. Dossier 23 looks at what happens to assurance when it rests on an inward decision instead.

Someone at the top

A ladder needs someone to set the rungs and judge the climbers, and the person who does so cannot easily be judged himself. If questions show a lack of spiritual eyes, nobody with spiritual eyes will ask him anything. If he decides whom to avoid, those who disagree with him can simply be avoided. Accountability is lost by the same arrangement that sets up the ladder.

The New Testament knows the type. “I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not … and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church” (3 John 9–10). Peter tells elders to serve “neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3). And when the apostles themselves argued over rank, Jesus forbade the ladder outright:

And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.

Luke 22:24–26. The dispute took place at the Last Supper.

“Ye shall not be so.” The disciples were arguing about who stood highest. Jesus did not give them a better ranking. He turned it upside down and told the chief to serve.

Who is at the bottom

Look at who falls behind on the ten rungs. It is not the wicked. It is the nurse on night shifts, who cannot come midweek. It is the father with two jobs, who cannot give his evenings. It is the widow with little money, the mother of three under five, the man caring for a parent with dementia, the convert from another church whose baptism “does not count,” the shy believer who cannot pray in public, and the accountant who noticed the overrun. A ladder of visible dedication rewards those with the most time, money and confidence. It penalises duties that God himself has given.

Jesus watched people giving at the temple, and singled out the one who gave least: “this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had” (Mark 12:43–44). On any ladder of giving she would have been at the bottom.

Ten statements about a congregation

Think of a church you know well. Answer for that church, as it actually is. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere, and the result is a prompt for thought and nothing more.

The ten rungs, answered

Here are the author’s ten examples again, each set beside what the page has found. Where a rung is a good thing turned into a step, the table says what the good thing is.

Try it: which text answers it?

Each rung again, now with four texts. Choose the one that answers it most directly.

Your answers, revisited

Here are the ten questions you answered before reading, with what the sources say. If you skipped them, go back to the quiz, lock in your answers, and return.

Check it yourself

Twenty items. Nearly everything here is free and online. If you read only three, read the first three. If you do only one thing, do the last.

1. 1. Genesis 9:1; 10:32–12:9; Isaiah 14:3–15; Deuteronomy 1:28. Read this first. Fifteen minutes. Underline every “let us” and every “I will,” and write beside each who is speaking.
2. 2. Genesis 27:41–28:22; John 1:43–51; 3:1–17; Philippians 2:1–11; Romans 10:1–17. Read this first. Twenty minutes. Ask what Jacob had done before Bethel, and what Nicodemus was told about going up.
3. 3. Acts 1:1–2:47. Read this first. Twenty minutes. Count how many times something comes “from heaven” or is poured “upon,” and note what “every one of you” was told to do.
4. 4. On questions: Acts 17:1–12; 1 John 4:1–6; 1 Thessalonians 5:19–22; Galatians 1:6–9 and 2:11–21; 1 Timothy 5:17–21; Hebrews 5:11–6:3 and 13:7–17; Luke 1:5–38; John 3:1–15; Acts 8:26–39; 15:1–31; 1 Corinthians 7:1. Forty minutes.
5. 5. On money: 2 Corinthians 8–9; 1 Corinthians 16:1–4; Exodus 35:20–36:7 and 38:21–31; Mark 12:41–44; Acts 5:1–11. Thirty minutes.
6. 6. On two classes of Christian: Colossians 2; 1 Corinthians 1:10–4:7 and 8:1–3; 1 John 2:18–27. Thirty minutes.
7. 7. On work and company: Colossians 3:17–4:1; Acts 18:1–4; 1 Thessalonians 4:9–12; 2 Thessalonians 3:6–15; Ephesians 4:28 and 6:1–9; 1 Timothy 5:8; Mark 2:13–17; Luke 15; 1 Corinthians 5; 2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1; 1 Corinthians 15:12–34; James 2:1–9; Deuteronomy 6:4–9. Forty minutes.
8. 8. On the gifts: Ephesians 4:1–16; 1 Corinthians 10:14–17; 11:17–34; 12:12–27; Matthew 6:1–18; Luke 18:9–14; Galatians 3:1–5. Thirty minutes.
9. 9. On rank: Matthew 11:25–30; 20:20–28; 23:1–12; Luke 22:24–27; 3 John 9–11; 1 Peter 5:1–5; Psalm 24. Twenty minutes.
10. 10. Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation (1518), theses 19–28 with their proofs; trans. Harold J. Grimm, Luther’s Works vol. 31 (Muhlenberg Press, 1957); reproduced at bookofconcord.org. Twenty minutes. Read the proofs of theses 21 and 28.
11. 11. Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), the first “wall”; trans. C. A. Buchheim, in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation (1883), and reprinted in J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History vol. 2 (1906), online at Hanover College’s historical texts. Treatise on Good Works (1520), part I; trans. W. A. Lambert, Works of Martin Luther vol. 1 (1915), free at Project Gutenberg. Thirty minutes.
12. 12. Irenaeus, Against Heresies (c. 180), I.6 and III.3; trans. A. Roberts and W. Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1 (1885); free at New Advent. Twenty minutes.
13. 13. Augustine, The City of God (c. 420), XVI.4–5; trans. Marcus Dods (1887); free at New Advent. Ten minutes.
14. 14. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 41, On Pentecost (c. 380), §§11–16; trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow (1894); free at New Advent. Fifteen minutes.
15. 15. The Didache (c. 100), chapters 11–13 and 15; trans. M. B. Riddle, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 7 (1886); free at New Advent. Ten minutes. The whole is short enough to read in one sitting.
16. 16. Hans Christian Andersen, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (1837). Any translation; five minutes. Notice exactly what the swindlers say the cloth does.
17. 17. On Babel’s setting. Any standard Bible dictionary under “Babel,” “Babylon” and “ziggurat,” for the stepped temple-towers of Mesopotamia and the Akkadian name Bāb-ili. Ten minutes. Check, too, how your own Bible translates Genesis 28:13, and whether it has a footnote.
18. 18. Earlier dossiers on single rungs: 55 (the direction of knowing God, and the “project” for one’s life), 12 (vocation), 08 (the giver’s responsibility), 06 (silencing dissent), 29 (“isn’t this divisive?”), 21 (re-baptism), 15 (covering), 35 (performed humility), 52 (children’s activities), 43 (church boards), 46 (Ananias and Sapphira).
19. 19. Verify the quotations. Every non-biblical quotation on this page was checked against the online edition named beside it. The Heidelberg Disputation is quoted as reproduced at bookofconcord.org, which gives thesis 21 as “a theology of glory”; some printings read “a theologian of glory.” Check the printed page before relying on exact wording.
20. 20. One list. Do this one. Write down everything your church expects of a committed member. Beside each item, write the text of Scripture that commands it. Then mark which items are things God gives or commands for everyone, and which are measures of how far up someone is.

No living individual is named on this page as an example of anything, and no church is identified; the ten rungs are the author’s own descriptions and no judgement of any person is intended. Living scholars are named only as the authors of published work. Apart from those, every individual quoted is deceased, or biblical, and is quoted from a dated, published source. Every remark attributed to a pastor or a churchgoer, and every person described, is composed by this page for illustration and does not describe any real person. This page gives no pastoral, legal or financial advice.