Scripture Alone

There is a popular proverb amongst mushroom foragers that says, “All mushrooms are edible; but some only once.”  Mushrooms like ‘Death Caps’, ‘Webcaps’,  and, ’Destroying Angels’ are examples of such mushrooms that fall into the category of  “edible but once.’  Whilst all poisonous mushrooms might not kill a man immediately, there are long term effects that might build up in the system if mildly poisonous mushrooms are continually consumed.  In fact, the more immediate the ill effects of a mushroom is to the one who eats it, the more positive the outlook for survival; whereas, the longer the ill effects take to manifest in the person who has et of a poisonous mushroom, the more grim the prognosis may be.

Also, for those who ‘mushroom hunt’, there are some 10 to 15 thousand mushrooms that might be found in the wild, depending on what part of the world one might be in; and, on the flip side of this fact, there are a mere 2,000 that are edible; so, anywhere from 13 to 20% may be edible, again, depending on where you might be.  And, it might be objected that some inedible mushrooms are obviously inedible, this is not entirely true.  Some that might seem entirely disgusting in appearance may be entirely delicious and nutritious, whilst others may look like a white capped button mushroom from the grocer and in fact be a ‘Destroying Angel’;  the very edible ‘Straw’ or ‘Caesar’s’ mushroom that you think you’ve just eaten may very well be the infamously most poisonous of all, the ‘Death Cap’.

Is there a way to know for certain that the mushrooms of which one forages and collects is indeed edible, before consumption that is?  For the most part, yes.  Is it easy and simple? I would say no.  Like any discipline,  ‘mycology’ is a study, it takes hands on experience; and is best learned from someone who has much experience in the field, and who is also apt to teach.  Besides, mistakes and misinformation can literally be deadly to a mycologist.  

So, why this illustration of ‘mushroom foraging’?  I believe that the illustration between ‘mushrooming’ and the knowledge of Christian doctrine is very cohesive.  Let’s say someone comes to you and hands you a basket of mushrooms and says, “Here’s a present, I just picked these in the woods over yonder.”, and, you say, “Oh, that’s wonderful, what kind of mushrooms are they?”, and your friend says, “I don’t know, but I’ve been eating them and I reckon that they are just fine.”, you may say, “Well, how do you know they are fine?”, and the answer may be, “Well, they taste alright and I’m not feeling any worse than before I began eating them.  Besides, they look alright, and they’re not slimy or overtly disgusting in their looks; I stay away from anything that looks strange”, they say.  So, you say,”I’m not sure that’s conclusive enough for me, there are a lot of poisonous mushrooms in the woods, I do like mushrooms, but I think I’ll have to investigate wether these are truly edible or not.”  This same friend, says, “You know, I think a lot of this information that is in the internet is nonsense, I don’t trust anything that I read on a screen, I’m a sceptic when it comes to things I might read online.”, then you may say, “That may be fair to say about some things, but, surely not all things can be passed off as being misinformation.”, your friend then hands you a pocket sized mushroom hunting field guide and says, “Here, have a look at this.”, so, you look at the book and say, “This is great, I’ll have a look through this book and see if I can identify the mushroom, I’ll give it back to you the next time I see you.”  Your friend departs.  

So, you then go to the book and begin to look for the mushrooms that your friend just brought to you.  You look, you read about some mushrooms that you are aware of, and notice that there are what are called ‘look a-likes’, viz. mushrooms that look like these edible ones, but they themselves are not edible.  Then on all the other pages are mushrooms after mushrooms with their descriptions — There’s a picture, followed by 6 to 9 key features, then other features, then where they are found, and then there is a heading that reads “Edibility”.  It is here that your eye falls on as you flip through the pages.  You read things like — “one of the most sought after of all mushrooms”, “highly prized for its aroma and flavour”, “delicious fresh, but sweeter dried” , “tasty as well as colourful”, “poisonous”, “not recommended”, “bland”, “mediocre”, “poisonous to many people”, “too slippery to be of value”, “excellent”, “presumably edible”, “deadly poisonous!’, “tempting but bitter”, “Poisonous, causes sever gastrointestinal distress”, “Insipid and slimy”, “not worth eating”, and other comments of these sorts.  So, many minutes go by, much study, and what you learn is that there are a lot of mushrooms to be found and some are very good and highly sought after, but most are not.  And, after it all you find out that the mushroom that your friend brought by is not in the book!  This seems odd, you think, it looks common enough; why can it not be found? This seems like a fairly comprehensive book after all.  Then you see it!  The subtitle on the cover says “A hip pocket guide to Western mushrooms”, the first page reiterates this “is a pocket-sized field guide to the most distinctive wild mushrooms of Western North America.  Stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast and from the deserts of northern Mexico to Alaska.”  Ah, here’s the thing, you live in Ontario Canada just north of Lake Superior; this is 1,500 miles from the Rocky Mountains and 2,100 miles from the Pacific Coast; not to mention, 2,200 miles from northern Mexico and 3,400 miles from Anchorage Alaska.  So, It seems as though there may be a reason as to why this particular mushroom is not in this book.  Perhaps it is in the book and you just can’t find it, or perhaps it is not; perhaps it is edible, perhaps it is not.

So, what does this have to do with Christian doctrine?  Much in every way.  Let’s begin with the proverb “All mushrooms are edible; but some only once.”  Are there doctrines that are edible? most certainly; are there doctrines that are so poisonous that they may only be eaten once? yes there are!  Any doctrine that is a rank heresy will cause eternal death if believed whole heartedly unto the death of the temporal body of the ‘so called’ believer.  We say this with reverence, for God is the judge of the quick and the dead, and we as created beings do not have the knowledge of God concerning every individual and their salvation; but, we do know that Scripture is clear as to the ultimate destiny of rank heretics, so, we put forth our list of rank heresies and their effects on the souls of men as though those who die believing these heresies did not receive repentance from God concerning each heresy; ie. we put forth each heresy as though God has judged the dead man as being a believer of these heresies.  So, though we do not know for certain who is judged guilty of these heresies, we do know that if it is true that God has judged men guilty of any of these heresies listed henceforth, that, according to Scripture, God finds them guilty of unbelief.  

Here are the most deadly doctrines with a short description; that, if believed unto death, will certainly result in eternal perdition:  

• 2nd Century
• Docetism – Belief that the Lord Christ did not have a physical body, but a phantom body.
• Montanism – Belief in the continuing role of the Holy Spirit in bringing ‘New Prophecy’, ie. New revelation that no one else has.  In other words, Scripture could be contradicted by a ‘New Prophecy’, and this ‘New Prophesy’ would be superior to Scripture.
• Adoptionism – Belief that Jesus Christ was not the eternal Son of God, but was adopted by God at some point in his life.
• Sabellianism – Belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not three distinct persons, but are different manifestations of the same divine being
• Gnosticism – Belief that the material world is evil and that salvation comes via knowledge.
• Marcionism – The belief that the Old Testament God and the New Testament God are two different God’s
• Monarchianism – God the Father is only God, the Son and the Spirit are not divine and separate from God.
• Modalism – Much like Sabellianism; the three Persons of the Trinity are three separate modes of the one God and can only exist in one mode at a time.
• Patripassianism – The belief that the Father and the Son are the same and both suffered on the cross at Calvary.
• Psilanthropism – The belief that Christ Jesus is a mere human, not divine, and not existing in eternity.  Just another man born of a woman.
• 4th Century
• Arianism – The belief that Christ is a created being and not fully divine.
• Donatism – Donatists believed that the Church was corrupt and that they were the only true Church.
• Apollinarianism – The belief that Christ only had a human body, His mind and soul were divine.
• Tritheism – The belief that there are three separate Gods, not one God in three Persons.
• Collyridianism – The belief that the Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Mary; and that the Son is the result of the marital union of the Father and Mary.
• Binitarianism – Only two Persons in the Godhead, the Father and the Son; the Spirit is an aspect of  one or the other.
• Subordinationism – The belief that the Persons are not co-equal; the Father is above Bothe the Son and the Spirit in nature and in role.
• 5th Century
• Nestorianism – The belief that the Lord was two persons; both, Jesus of Nazareth and the Son of God.
• Pelagianism – The belief that man can save himself by his own efforts; without the grace of God.
• Eutychianism – The belief that Christ is one nature and of two; that his humanity is subsumed, ie. absorbed into His divinity.
• Monophysitism – The belief that Christ has but one nature, the divine.
• Miaphysitism – The belief that Christ is fully divine and fully human in one nature.

So, there are the major heresies that emerged within the Church in the first 350 years after the life, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is notable that 

most all of them are misunderstandings of who God is, what His nature is, and the facts about the Holy Blessed Trinity.  In fact, these very heresies are what has caused the Holy Spirit to work in the Church to root these heresies out; and this was done through, what are known as ‘ecumenical councils’; not ‘ecumenical’ by todays meaning (which is accepting any belief that calls itself Christian as being Christian), but, in its original meaning, which meant the entire Church in a ‘united belief’.  And, from these ‘ecumenical councils’ the great ‘creeds’ of the Christian faith were established; like the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasius Creed.  These creeds are doctrinal statements; they are definitions and descriptions of what the truth of Scripture is.  God used the early Church to establish the essential facts about Himself, and what all these councils and creeds have done is to provide clarity to the foundation of what we as Christians believe.  They by no means replace Scripture as the final authority of all Christian faith and practice; it’s the opposite, they affirm what Scripture asserts.  And these were created to defend the faith against the heresies and the heretics which taught them.

These early century Christian creeds and councils are not the end all be all of Christianity, of course; throughout the centuries more creeds and confessions have come along.  The history of the Church, her creeds, and her confessions from the Reformation era alone are an entire study unto themselves, and in essence they are the most important ones for us as Christians today.  For, in the creeds and confessions of the Reformation, we have the most concise descriptions of the Christian faith as taught by Scripture.  Documents like the Westminster Confession of Faith with its Shorter and Longer Catechisms, the Belgic Confession, The Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort, these are the doctrinal ‘field books’ that have been compiled for our use as Christians.  And, I would argue that, though they are not above Scripture in authority, these particular documents concerning the doctrines of the faith have not been surpassed in the four to five hundred years that they’ve been in print.  These documents were created to help Christian people and their God called teachers to navigate the great number of heresies and false doctrines that a Christian person might come across in these great woods of what we call the Visible Christian Church.  And there are many false doctrines and those which a ‘mushroomer’ might call ‘look-alike’ doctrines; they look like doctrines of the Reformation, but there are some elements that are all wrong.  This is more common today than most think.

Just as any old mushroom that one might come across in the wild may be entirely delicious and nutritious, deadly poisonous, mildly poisonous, intoxicating, distasteful, without value, or of unknown effects; so too are Christian doctrines.  And, so we come to heart of the matter.  There are far too many Christian people who are picking up all sorts of wild Christian doctrines and freely ingesting them into their lives.  And, if you ask them what they believe they really don’t have a clear answer.  It’s like the man with the mushrooms from the wild, I say “what kind of mushroom is that?’, and he says, “I don’t know, but, it tastes good and I’m still alive.”  Well, that man may be alive today, but, three days from now, or even three years from now, the effects of the poison might kick in and the story might change dramatically.

Doctrines and mushrooms are very similar in many ways.  And, one other way in which they are similar is in the fact that there are so many that are poisonous, useless for consumption, and disgusting to the taste.  For this reason, in the world of mushrooms, out of say, 15,000 types of mushrooms, there are but a couple of hundred of  mushrooms cultivated for human consumption; and of these, about 60 varieties throughout the entire world that are commonly sold to consumers.  This, of course, solves the problem of having to be able to identify edible mushrooms in the field, and this is a positive result of  being civilized.  There is nothing wrong, of course, with mushroom hunting, but, in a civilized world, where anyone can cultivate mushrooms for themselves in a safe manner, there is no real need to do so.  As a hobby and for enjoyment purposes ‘mushrooming’ may be satisfying; especially if highly prized, sought after, and expensive to purchase mushrooms are available in the wild.  But as a source of sustenance, gathering and hunting takes far too much energy to be successful in the long term.  There are many in the world who believe in the false invention of the idea of the ‘hunter gatherer’.  This is a pagan idea that is no where to be found in the Biblical history of man, let alone secular history.  We know that the very first men outside of the Garden of Eden were cultivators of animals, fruits, and vegetables (Genesis ch.4).

In a like manner to the ‘mushroomer’, so, too, are the doctrines of Scripture.  A man comes to me with a doctrine of the atonement, and I say, “What is this doctrine of which you believe?”, he says, “Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and now I am forgiven.”, and I say, “ Is that all?”, and he says, “Well, no, now I can live my life as though I have never sinned; in, fact,”, he continues, “Every sin I’ve ever committed in the past, or today, and every sin that I’ll ever commit in my entire life has been forgiven.”, “That’s true.”, I say, “But, what is it about Christ’s death on the cross that makes this true?”, “That He died for my sins.”, is the response, “I understand that,”, I say, “What I’m asking is, why is Christ’s death on the cross sufficient to forgive you of all of your sins, past, present, and future?”, and perhaps I hear a response like this,“Because, He loves me.”, or, “Because my sins were laid upon Him, therefore they have been paid for by His blood.”, or perhaps, “His death on the cross was sufficient for the payment of my sins, because, I deserved to die for being a sinner and He took my place on the cross where sinners deserve to die.”  You see, none of these explanations answer the question.  This is a man handing me an unidentified mushroom.  It looks like it might be edible, but it cannot be found in the field book of mushroom identification.  Nor can this explanation of the doctrine of the atonement  be found in the field book of doctrine identification.  And, this is a real problem in the Church today.

So, what is the doctrine of the atonement then, what would it take for me to take of this mushroom found in the field to eat of it?  This is a satisfactory description for myself:  The doctrine of the atonement is near the heart of the gospel message, the heart being the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is where the gospel must always begin, with God and not man.  Gospel means “good news”, and this “good news” is about God; and it is about what God has done.  This is the definition of “news” — that which has happened.  So, what has happen?  What has happened is that through Adam all of mankind has fallen into sin and are separated from their marvellous, majestic, amicable Creator.  Not only is all of mankind separated, but he is guilty of sin and of being a willing and joyful sinner.  God, from the very beginning had set forth His laws, and, these laws are what God’s character is and what He requires of His greatest creation, namely man.  These laws were created within Adam as the image of God within him, Adam was entirely aware of them; he then broke these laws by listening to the devil through the voice of his wife Eve, and it caused him to commit an unrighteous act, namely, eating the fruit from the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”.  Adam was created perfect and all of humanity was represented by him, so when he fell, all humanity fell.  It was God’s plan to redeem mankind and destroy the works of the devil; for with the fall came sin and death into the world, along with an entire slough of other evil things, like beasts, monsters, bloodsuckers, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, natural disasters of every sort, weeds, thistles, and on and on.  This plan of God’s redemption of, both, man and the world, was determined in eternity in what we know as the Covenant of Redemption.  This was a covenant created between God the Father and God the Son.  This covenant is exemplified in the doctrine of ‘the atonement’.  For, the atonement is how the redemption of God’s creation is made possible.

Man in the Garden was under a covenant with God, this covenant is called the ‘Covenant of Works’.  What this means is, that man, meaning Adam, if he could live a perfect life keeping God’s commandments for an allotted probationary period of time, then all of mankind would be the beneficiary of the reward, namely, eternal life and peace within the kingdom of God.  But, this was not God’s plan, God’s plan was for something far more glorious than this; and this plan is the ‘good news’.  For, the gospel of God, is Jesus Christ His Son, and there is nothing greater than God; and Christ is God, and He is man, two natures in one.  He was God manifest in the flesh, sent forth by His Father, made of a woman, made under the law, that mankind might receive the adoption of sons.  So, in order for man to be adopted into the family of God, some conditions needed to be met; and this is where the news gets really, really good.

As a men born in the sinful image and nature of Adam we are all guilty of what Adam did, and we are guilty living unto ourselves and breaking all of God’s 10 commandments, for there “are none that are righteous, no not one”(Rom 3:10), and “There is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God.”(Rom. 3:11)  And, being guilty of sinning against the almighty Creator is no small thing.  God, being holy and righteous can’t just wink at the evil in mankind, there is a debt to be paid; and it is a debt that man is unable to pay.  A creature cannot repay the Creator, it is not possible.  And, that which must be satisfied is twofold.  First, the commandments of God must be satisfied, the same commandments written on the soul of Adam, which are the same commandments that were given by God to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai.  Second, the punishment of breaking the commandments in the first place, viz. God’s justice must be satisfied as well.   So, until these conditions are met there can be no forgiveness of sin.  And, since it was man who broke the covenant with God, it must be man which repays the conditions of the covenant with God.  Yet, man is unable to keep the commandments of God perfectly, in the Garden he was a perfect creation and failed, so it is absurd to think that anyone from Adam onward would be able to keep the commandments; in fact, only God can keep these commandments.  After all, the commandments are both His own character and His expectations for His created beings.  So since man owes the debt and only God can pay the debt, “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”(Gal.4:4-5)

And, this is the meaning of the atonement — that God, sent forth His Son as our Saviour to do what was necessary to appease God’s hatred of sin, whilst at the same time to meet the demands of God’s eternal law; the ten commandments.  What happened on the cross was one thing, but we can look at this one thing as having two parts; but, the two can never be separated.  The one thing was ‘the atonement’, the two aspects of this one thing are the Lord Christ’s ‘active obedience’ and His ‘passive obedience’.  His ‘active obedience’ is His perfect obedience to the law of God, namely, the Ten Commandments; and His ‘passive obedience’ is His satisfying the punishment of what those who break the law of God, this is His death on the cross.  Christ Jesus was completely righteous, He was innocent of all accusations; not just from man, for, He was pronounced innocent by Pontius Pilate; but by God the Father Christ was pronounced innocent, for, He was resurrected from the dead.  He was a spotless lamb, accepted by the Father on behalf of all those of whom He died for; and we reiterate that this accepted sacrifice was sealed by the Lord’s resurrection from the dead.  The sacrifice pleased God, the full punishment due to man was meted out upon His only begotten Son, the eternal 2nd Person of the Holy Blessed Trinity.  

It was Christs blood that made the payment!  There is no atonement without the blood of Christ.  This is as essential an aspect of the atonement as any.  Any mention of the atonement without the blood of the Lord is an insufficient one.  His death on the cross is not enough, God the Father demands blood for the forgiveness of sins and nothing less. “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”(Heb.9:12-14)

“For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.”(Heb.9:16), “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”(Heb.9:22)  

This doctrine of the atonement is essential to the faith of all Christians.  Without the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary’s Hill, not a single soul is able to stand before God the Father.  The atonement is the cause of  the ‘propitiation’ of God’s wrath, viz. the justice of God’s punishment necessarily being poured out upon sin; this in turn is the cause of the Christian persons ‘expiation’, viz. the forgiveness of sins; and, this forgiveness of sin is based on the imputation of Christ’s perfect righteousness, which is His perfect obedience to the keeping of God’s law, which is the ‘ten commandments’.  This last aspect of the atonement is what the Scripture calls ‘justification’, which is God’s judicial declaration of “innocent”, concerning the sinner, who by the blood of Christ has been washed clean of all guilt of sin; now, in the eyes of God the Father, this one time sinner is now righteous, not of the sinners works, but of the work of Christ on the cross — the atonement.  

The Lord Jesus Christ was a perfect spotless lamb, given as a sacrifice, to appease the wrath of God against the sinful sheep, of whom were chosen from the foundation of the earth for this very purpose — to receive the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ’s perfect righteousness to their account.  And, from this very moment forward, every Christian person is then adopted into the glorious family of God and brought into a true spiritual union with Christ the Lord.  They are also regenerated in their souls unto eternal life by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and, they are then gradually transformed, according to God’s determination and timing, into the express image of the very righteousness of Christ by which they are clothed.

So, in conclusion, as a wild mushroom with great culinary desire is sought for and must be carefully identified as being the true mushroom, not a deadly ‘look-alike’, so to do the doctrines of Scripture.  Unlike a false mushroom, however, which might cause physical death, a false doctrine concerning something as essential as the atonement could very well cause a death that is never ending.  As Christian people we must be certain of these essential doctrines, there are very many false ‘look-alike’ doctrines, and, this is not anything new to our time; the devil continues in reinventing the heresies that have plagued the Church since the first several centuries and presenting them as though they are something new; playing them off as something that everyone in the past has missed, something novel, the ‘true understanding’, as it were.  

Well, we have a guide book for these doctrines and it goes by the name of the Bible.  We also have before us many of God’s chosen saints who have tested these words of Scripture in knowledge, experience, and practice; and what we have is not just God’s inerrant Word to guide us, but the practical example of thousands of saints who were made victorious in their lives; saints who now rest in the heavenlies with our Lord; saints who believed exactly what we believe.  

In summing up that great chapter 11 in Hebrews, where we read of so many of our Old Testament fellow saints and God’s gift of faith towards each one of them, we read in Hebrews 12 verses 1 and 2, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

So, let us not be fooled.  Not only do we have God’s very own Word to show us what the true doctrines of our faith consist of, but we also have so many of whom our God has sent before us to try these doctrines, that we might know them to be true of a surety.  And, like those very saints did themselves, so we too, should live according to these very same doctrines and be able to express exactly what they are, that we might join with them, whose spirits are already glorified in heaven, in praising our God for bringing us into His eternal kingdom through the precious blood of our Saviour, our King, our High priest, — the Lord Jesus Christ.