The Truth War (15 page)

The way Paul dealt with the Judaizers is the only right way to respond to false teachers who corrupt or compromise essential elements of the gospel. They must be exposed for what they are, and their doctrines must be refuted with the clear proclamation of truth from Scripture. That is precisely what Jude is calling for when he commands us to contend earnestly for the faith.

As we have stressed already, Jude, Paul, and the apostle John all
commanded
Christians to fight for the truth (and even to cut off their fellowship with deliberate false teachers) whenever essential doctrines are at stake. The fact that certain serious errors may
appear
slight or insignificant at first glance does not diminish our duty to be discerning, cautious, and critical in our evaluations. In fact, the realization that even an apostle like Peter could be temporarily fooled by the subtlety of these false teachers ought to make us even
more
alert to the potential evils of seemingly “small” errors that can so easily undermine the heart of gospel truth.

This is serious business for every Christian in every era of church history, including ours. The Judaizers were by no means unique to that day and age. Similar threats to the gospel have arisen from within the church in every generation since apostolic times.

THE GNOSTICS

Before the controversy with the Judaizers was completely quelled, another battle had already broken out on a whole new front in the Truth War. Primitive forms of gnosticism began to creep into the church. Most of the later New Testament Epistles argue against ideas that were fundamentally gnostic. The doctrinal arguments John makes in his first epistle, for example, make a fine catalogue of replies to some of the favorite false doctrines of gnosticism.

Gnosticism was not a single, unified cult. Gnostic thinking offered the possibility of “designer” religions, where each false teacher could basically invent his own unique sect. That is why gnosticism as a system wasn't easy to refute and isn't easy to describe. The ideas of one gnostic group weren't necessarily held by other gnostics. It took much labor and diligence to contend against this diverse set of false doctrines. And over several centuries' time, gnostics produced hundreds of varieties of counterfeit Christianity.

THE WAY PAUL DEALT
WITH THE JUDAIZERS IS
THE ONLY RIGHT WAY TO
RESPOND TO FALSE
TEACHERS WHO CORRUPT
OR COMPROMISE ESSENTIAL
ELEMENTS OF THE GOSPEL.
THEY MUST BE EXPOSED
FOR WHAT THEY ARE, AND
THEIR DOCTRINES MUST BE
REFUTED WITH THE CLEAR
PROCLAMATION OF TRUTH
FROM SCRIPTURE. THAT IS
PRECISELY WHAT JUDE IS
CALLING FOR WHEN HE
COMMANDS US TO CONTEND
EARNESTLY FOR THE FAITH.

Every form of gnosticism starts with the notion that truth is a secret known only by a select few elevated, enlightened minds. (Hence the name, from
gnosis
, the Greek word for knowledge.) Gnostics offered a sinister smorgasbord of ideas, myths, and superstitions, all borrowed from pagan mystery religions and human philosophy. Those beliefs were then blended with Christian imagery and terminology. When the gospel accounts of Jesus' teaching didn't fit gnostic doctrines, gnostics simply wrote their own fictional “gospels” and passed them off as more enlightened accounts of Christ's life and ministry.

Gnostic teachers accumulated both wealth and followers by promising their disciples the secret knowledge—for a price, of course. Naturally, most gnostic cults claimed to have a monopoly on the secrets of the universe. Because various groups of gnostics did not necessarily agree among themselves about what the secret knowledge was, gnosticism was a highly competitive brand of heresy, and most of its purveyors were therefore skilled polemicists.

Every major form of gnosticism was actually pagan to the core, but because gnostics had a peculiar tendency to synthesize Christian doctrine and symbolism with their worldly philosophies, they fooled many Christians. They borrowed biblical terminology and elements of Christian teaching. But they redefined all the terms and revamped all the teaching. Then they masqueraded as Christians and advertised their religion as a more enlightened version of Christianity. Gnostic leaders often aligned with established churches to gain credibility. They aggressively recruited followers from within the church itself. Because the gnostics employed familiar Christian terminology and professed faith in Christ, many in the church were uncertain about whether to embrace them as brethren or reject them as heretics.

Major struggles between early gnosticism and the gospel dominated the second century. That is why some of the most important figures who stand out in that era of church history were
apologists
(defenders of the true faith). They were men who responded to the urgent necessity of distinguishing authentic Christianity from all the cultish flavors of gnosticism. The best-known apologists of the second century included Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian. Their main focus was a defense of the incarnation (the truth that God literally became a man)—because that was one of the main doctrines the gnostics always attacked.

In fact, most of the major doctrinal controversies in the first two centuries of church history stemmed directly from the struggle between the gnostics and the Christian apologists. The efforts of gnostics to blend into the church and subvert the truth under the cover of church membership quickly became a far greater danger and a more immediate threat to the long-term health and viability of the church than all the persecutions that were ever carried out by Roman emperors.

Just as the Judaizers' doctrine obscured the gospel by burying it under Jewish tradition, gnosticism altered every distinctive of Christian truth by overlaying it with pagan ideology. Like the Judaizers, the gnostics denied justification by faith and thereby shifted the focus of the gospel. The message they proclaimed instead was all about what people need to do to gain
enlightenment
(the gnostic substitute for salvation)—rather than the truth of what Christ did to save helpless sinners from divine judgment. Since gnosticism attacked truth at the very foundations, every variety of this error needed to be answered and strongly opposed. And this was no easy task.

One example of how gnostics tried to subvert the doctrine of the incarnation involved one of the very earliest gnostic sects, led by a false teacher named Cerinthus. He taught that Jesus (the human person) was actually indwelt by a divine spirit-being known as “the Christ.” Cerinthus therefore insisted that Jesus' deity was an illusion. According to this flavor of gnosticism, Jesus' divine nature was something extraneous to Him—an attribute that belonged to a divine spirit who possessed Him—and not anything essential to His own true nature. In other words, Jesus and “the Christ” were supposedly two distinct beings who simply shared the same body. That doctrine confused many people in the early church, and the apostle John therefore refuted it thoroughly in his epistles. He wrote, for instance, “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?” (1 John 2:22).

Another dominant variety of gnosticism (known as
Docetism)
taught that all the manifestations of Jesus' human nature—including His physical body (and hence His crucifixion and resurrection)—were only illusions. God could not
really
have come to earth in the true material form of authentic human flesh, the Docetists said, because matter itself is evil. The apostle John replied to that error and all others like it when he wrote, “By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world” (1 John 4:2–3).

BECAUSE GNOSTICISM
CONSTANTLY MUTATED
AND METAMORPHOSED
AND SPAWNED NEW ERRORS,
GNOSTIC THOUGHT WAS LIKE
A PERSISTENT VIRUS
ATTACKING BIBLICAL
CHRISTIANITY FOR MANY
CENTURIES. AS A MATTER OF
FACT, GNOSTICISM WAS
NEVER TOTALLY AND
THOROUGHLY
EXTERMINATED. SOME OF
THE MOST ANCIENT
EXPRESSIONS OF GNOSTIC
ERROR ARE EXPERIENCING A
POWERFUL COMEBACK IN THE
CURRENT GENERATION.

Gnosticism (and every error of a similar magnitude) is exactly what John had in mind in 2 John 10–11, where he gave clear instructions about how to respond to a pseudo-Christian teacher who denies the core truths of Christian doctrine: “Do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.” John evidently applied that principle in his own practice too. Irenaeus (who was born shortly after John died and was personally acquainted with people who had sat under John's teaching) records that John once refused to enter a public bathhouse in Ephesus when he learned Cerinthus was inside. So much did John love the truth and hate falsehood that he refused any kind of fellowship (or even casual association) with the peddlers of gnostic notions.

Because gnosticism constantly mutated and metamorphosed and spawned new errors, gnostic thought was like a persistent virus attacking biblical Christianity for many centuries. As a matter of fact, gnosticism was never totally and thoroughly exterminated. Some of the most ancient expressions of gnostic error are experiencing a powerful comeback in the current generation.

You may have noticed quite a lot of publicity lately about early pseudo-Christian documents such as
The Gospel of Thomas
and
The Gospel of Judas.
In 2006 even
National Geographic
released a television special heralding
The Gospel of Judas
as if it were a monumental new discovery hitherto unknown to Bible scholars. Actually, the “gospels” of Thomas and Judas are both well-documented gnostic works. They are pure fiction masquerading as history—full of demonstrably false claims and fanciful mythology. Scholars of every kind (Christian and secular scholars alike) all agree that although these works are authentic relics of early gnostic teaching, they cannot possibly be what the
gnostics
claimed they were. Like virtually all other gnostic writings, they are anonymous frauds, full of gnostic lies.

Furthermore, these books do not really contain any newly uncovered or long-forgotten truths. The existence of these works and many others like them has always been well-known to scholars.
The Gospel of Judas
, for example, was first mentioned at the end of the second century by Irenaeus, who connected it with an especially evil cult of gnostics who had made heroes of Cain, Esau, the men of Sodom, Korah, and all the other villains of Scripture.
⁴
They produced
The Gospel of Judas
in order to portray Judas as a hero. The work turns the biblical account of Jesus' life and ministry on its head, borrowing truth from Scripture here and there—but then poisoning it with out-and-out lies. That is the kind of satanic truth twisting that gnostics have always been best known for.

In a very similar way, the popular best-selling novel and motion picture
The Da Vinci Code
is based on a handful of revived gnostic myths blended with more recent conspiracy theories and held together with some rather inventive gnostic-style historical revisionism. The book is sold as fiction, but author Dan Brown often claims the story is based on historical facts. The premise that “facts” are involved has proved sufficient to create the illusion in some people's minds that the entire Da Vinci conspiracy is not fiction at all, but some deep, secret, long-guarded knowledge that is finally being revealed. That sort of attack on biblical Christianity is classically gnostic.

A CAUTION FOR THE PRESENT TIME

What was happening in Jude's day is still happening today. The enemy's strategy in the Truth War hasn't changed. Therefore Jude's admonition applies to us as much as it applied to the original recipients of the epistle. False teachers still assault the church with quasiChristian ideas. Heretics also still arise from within the church itself, and they still demand recognition and tolerance from Christians, even while they are laboring hard to undermine the very foundations of true faith. They are even repeating all the same lies. Their teaching must be opposed and clearly refuted with the plain truth of God's Word. The apostle Paul said something similar, but in even stronger terms: “[their] mouths must be stopped” (Titus 1:11).

Now, as we have stressed already, neither Paul nor any other New Testament writer ever sanctions violence, physical force, or carnal weaponry in the Truth War. On the contrary, such things are emphatically and repeatedly condemned (Matthew 26:52; 2 Corinthians 10:3–4). Titus 1:11 is by no means an exception to that principle. Paul is in no way suggesting that heretics' mouths must be stopped by physical force. He is very clear about how Titus was to silence the “insubordinate . . . idle talkers and deceivers” (v. 10): Titus needed to confront and refute their lies thoroughly with the clear proclamation of the truth. There is a negative aspect to that: “Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith” (v. 13). And there is a positive duty as well: “As for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine” (2:1).

Even though it is clear from the context that Paul is not advocating the use of any kind of brute violence, his statement about stopping the mouths of false teachers has both a tone of authority and a settled certainty to it that make it sound less-than-politically-correct to postmodern ears. This is not a message well suited for our age.

But then again, Scripture has always been contrary to worldly culture. We need to allow Scripture to rebuke and correct the spirit of our age, and never vice versa. Unfortunately, the visible church today is filled with people who have decided that biblical discernment, doctrinal boundaries, and the authority of divinely revealed truth are worn-out relics of a bygone era. They are weary of the battle for truth, and (in effect) they have already unilaterally ceased resistance. As we've noted from the start, Christians today often actually seem more distressed about believers who think the Truth War is still worth fighting than about the dangers of false doctrine. Their complaint has become a familiar refrain: “Why don't you just lighten up? Why don't you ease off the campaign to refute doctrines you disagree with? Why must you constantly critique what other Christians are teaching? After all, we all believe in the same Jesus.”