Podcasts about Donatism

In episode 465 of The Reformed Brotherhood, hosts Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb explore Jesus's parable of the wheat and tares (weeds) from Matthew 13. This thought-provoking discussion examines Christ's startling teaching that good and evil will always coexist within the visible church until the end of time. The brothers carefully unpack the theological implications of Jesus's command not to separate wheat from weeds prematurely, challenging our natural tendency to judge others while offering wisdom about God's sovereign plan for final judgment. This episode wrestles with difficult questions about church purity, assurance of salvation, and how believers should approach the reality of false professors within Christ's church—providing biblical guidance for faithfully enduring in a mixed communion. Key Takeaways The Coexistence of True and False Believers: Jesus teaches that the visible church will always contain a mixture of genuine believers and false professors until the final judgment. The Danger of Premature Judgment: Christ explicitly warns against attempting to completely purify the church before the harvest (end of age) because doing so would damage the wheat (true believers). Proper Biblical Interpretation: Unlike some parables, Jesus provides a detailed allegorical explanation of this parable—the sower is Christ, the field is the world, the good seed represents believers, and the weeds are the sons of the evil one. The Challenge of Discernment: One of the most difficult theological pills to swallow is that it's often impossible to perfectly distinguish between true and false believers. Final Judgment as God's Prerogative: The separation of wheat from weeds is reserved for the angels at the end of the age, not for current church leaders or members. The Reality of False Assurance: Some professing Christians may have false assurance of salvation while genuinely believing they are saved. The Importance of Theological Integrity: Public theologians and pastors have a moral responsibility to be transparent about their theological convictions and changes in their beliefs. Deeper Explanations The Difficult Reality of a Mixed Church Jesus's teaching in the parable of the wheat and weeds directly challenges our natural desire for a perfectly pure church. By instructing the servants not to pull up the weeds lest they damage the wheat, Christ is establishing an important ecclesiological principle that will hold true until His return. This means that no matter how rigorously we apply church discipline or how carefully we examine profession of faith, we will never achieve a perfectly pure communion this side of eternity. The visible church—which can be understood as those who profess faith and are baptized—will always include both true and false believers. This reality should cultivate humility in how we approach church membership and discipline. Jesus isn't suggesting that all attempts at church purity are wrong (as other Scripture passages clearly call for church discipline), but rather that perfect purification is impossible and attempts at achieving it will inevitably damage true believers. This teaching directly refutes movements throughout church history (like Donatism) that have sought absolute purity in the visible church. The Problem of Discernment and Assurance One of the most challenging aspects of this parable is Christ's implicit teaching that true and false professors can appear nearly identical, especially in their early development. Like tares growing alongside wheat, false believers can profess orthodox doctrine, participate in church life, and exhibit what appears to be spiritual fruit. This creates profound implications for how we understand assurance of salvation. As Tony notes, while "assurance is the proper and rightful possession and inheritance of every Christian," there's also the sobering reality of false assurance. Some may sincerely believe they are saved when they are not, raising difficult questions about self-examination and spiritual discernment. This doesn't mean believers should live in perpetual doubt, but rather that we should approach assurance with both confidence in God's promises and healthy self-examination. True assurance must be grounded in the finished work of Christ rather than merely in our experiences or behaviors, while false assurance often lacks this proper foundation. The brothers wisely note that final judgment belongs to God alone, who perfectly knows who belongs to Him. Memorable Quotes "The visible church is set before us as a mixed body. Maybe everybody else's churches, but certainly not my church, like the one that I actually go to on the Lord's day. So it seems like there might be this shocking statement possibly that he has for us, whether you're Episcopalian or Presbyterian or independent or Baptist or Christian life assembly, whatever it is, that no matter what we do to purify the church, our churches, we're never gonna succeed in obtaining a perfectly pure communion." - Jesse Schwamb "I think that's what I find shocking. It is like a massive statement of reality that is at equal points totally sensible. And other times we would think, 'well, surely not in the church Lord, like of all the places, like aren't we talking about a kind of purity of your people?' ...and what I think he's striking at, which I do find a little bit wild, is that Jesus is essentially saying, at least to my ear, anything we try to do, even the purest preaching of the gospel, is not gonna prevent this in every age of the church." - Jesse Schwamb "I'm affirming that assurance is the proper and rightful possession and inheritance of every Christian." - Tony Arsenal Full Transcript Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 465 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I am Jesse. Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother. Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. Guess what? It looks like you and I are taking another trip back to the farm on this episode. Tony Arsenal: Yes. For a couple episodes. Jesse Schwamb: For a couple episodes. Yeah. [00:01:01] Exploring Jesus' Parables in Matthew 13 Jesse Schwamb: Because what, Jesus will not stop leading us there. We're looking at his teachings, specifically the parables, and we're gonna be looking in Matthew chapter 13, where it seems like, is it possible that Jesus, once again has something very shocking for us to hear? That is for all the ages. 'cause it seems like he might actually be saying, Tony, that good and evil will always be found together in the professing church until the end of the world. Like in other words, that the visible church is set before a mixed body. I mean. Maybe everybody else chose churches, but certainly not my church, like the one that I actually go to on the Lord's day. So it seems like there might be this shocking statement possibly that he has for us, whether you're Episcopalian or Presbyterian or independent or Baptist or Christian life assembly, whatever it is, that no matter what we do to purify the church, our churches, we're never gonna succeed in obtaining a perfectly pure communion. Could that possibly be what Jesus is saying to us? I don't know what we're gonna find out. Tony Arsenal: We are. We are gonna find out. Jesse Schwamb: It's gonna be definitive. And if now that makes sense. If you don't even know why we're looking at Jesus' teachings, you could do us a favor even before you go any further. And that is just head on over in your favor, interwebs browser to or reform brotherhood.com, and you can find out all of the other episodes, all 464 that are living out there. There's all kinds of good stuff, at least we think so, or at least entertaining stuff for you to listen to. And when you're done with all of that in a year or two, then we'll pick it up right back here where we're about to go with some affirmations or some denials. [00:02:39] Affirmations and Denials Jesse Schwamb: So Tony, before we figure out what Jesus has for us in Matthew 13, in the parable of the weeds, or the tears, or the tears in the weed, what gets all of that? Are you affirming with, are you denying against, Tony Arsenal: I am denying. First of all, I'm denying whatever this thing is that's going on with my throat. Sorry for the rest of the episode, everyone. Um, I'm denying something that I, I think it is. How do I want to phrase this? Um, maybe I'll call it theological integrity, and maybe that's too strong of a word, but maybe not. So the listener who's been with us for a little while will remember that a while back. Um, you know, we've, we've talked about Matthew Barrett and he was a Baptist, uh, who's heavily involved in sort of the theology, proper controversies. He wrote Simply Trinity, which is just a fantastic book. He was a teacher or a professor at Midwestern, um, Baptist Theological Seminary. And he recently, um, uh, converted is not the right word. I hate calling it a conversion when you go from one faithful Bible tradition to another. But he recently, um, changed his perspective and joined the Anglican Church. And at the time I kind of, you know, I kind of talked about it as like, it's a little bit disappointing, like the reasons he cited. [00:03:57] Theological Integrity and Public Disclosure Tony Arsenal: Where I'm bringing this into a matter of sort of theological integrity. And it's not, it's not just Matthew Barrett. Um, there's other elements of things going on that I'll, I'll point to too is it's often the case when someone who is in some form of professional theological work or professional vocational ministry, that as they start to change perspectives, um, there comes to be like an inflection point where they should notify whoever it is that they are accountable to in that job or vocation, uh, uh, and then do the right thing and step down. Right? And so with Matthew Barrett, um. He continued to teach systematic theology at a Baptist Theological Seminary, which has a faith statement which he was obligated to affirm and hold in good faith. He continued to teach there for quite some time, if, you know, when he, when he published the timeline and he's the one that put all the timelines out there. So it's not like people had to go digging for this. Um, he continued to teach under contract and under that, that faith statement, um, for quite some time after his positions changed. I remember in college, um, sim very similar situation, one of my professors, um, and I went to a Baptist college. It was a General Baptist college. Um, one of my professors became Roman Catholic and for quite some time he continued to teach without telling anyone that he had converted to Roman Catholicism. Um. And I think that there's a, there's a, a level of integrity that public theologians need to have. Um, and it, it really makes it difficult when something like this happens to be able to say that this is not a moral failing or some sort of failure. Um, you know, James White has jumped on the bandwagon very quickly to say, of course we told you that this was the way it was gonna lead. That if you affirm the great tradition, you know, he was very quick to say like, this is the road to Rome. And I think in his mind, um, Canterbury is just sort of one, one stop on that trip. Um, it becomes very hard after the fact to not have this color and tarnish all of your work before. 'cause it starts to be questions like, well, when, when did you start to hold these views? Were you writing, were you, were you publicizing Baptist theology when you no longer believed it to be the truth? Were you teaching theology students that this is what the Bible teaches when you no longer thought that to be true? Um. Were you secretly attending Anglican services and even teaching and, and helping deliver the service when you were, you know, still outwardly affirming a Baptist faith statement. And the reason I, I'll point out one other thing, 'cause I don't want this to be entirely about Matthew Barrett, but there's a big, uh, hub glue going on in the PCA right now. Um, a guy named Michael Foster, who some of our audience will probably be familiar with, um, he and I have had our desktops in the past, but I think he and I have come to a little bit of a, of a uneasy truce on certain things. He, uh, went to work compiling a, a list and there's some problems with the data, like it's, it's not clean data, so take it for what it's worth. But he compiled a list of. Every publicly available church website in the PCA. So something like 1800 websites or something like that. Huge numbers. And he went and looked at all of the staff and leadership directories, and he cataloged all the churches that had some sort of office or some sort of position that appeared to have a, a woman leading in a way that the Bible restricts. And that more importantly, and starting to say it this way, but more importantly, that the PCA itself restricts. So we're not talking about him going to random church websites and making assessments of their polity. We're talking about a, a denomination that has stated standards for who can bear office and it's not women. Um. So he compiled this and people in the PCA are coming out of the woodwork to basically defend the practice of having shepherdess and deacons. There was one that he cataloged where, um, the website actually said, uh, that was the pastor's wife and the title was Pastor of Women. Um, and then as soon as it became public that this was the case, they very quickly went in and changed the title to Shepherd of Women or Shepherdess of Women or something like that. So it's, it's really the same phenomena, not commenting, you know, I think we've been clear where we stand on the ordination of female officers and things like that, but not that all that withstanding, um, when you are going to be a part of a body that has a stated perspective on something and then just decide not to follow it, the right thing to do the, the upstanding morally. Uh, in full of integrity move would be to simply go to another denomination where your views align more closely. PCA churches, it's not super easy, but it's not impossible to leave the PCA as an entire congregation and then go somewhere like the EPC, which is the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which still on the spectrum of things is still relatively conservative, but is in general is in favor of, uh, female officers, elders, and diegans. So I, I think, you know, and you see this with podcasters, there was the big, there was a big fu and Les became a Presbyterian, and then when Tanner became a Presbyterian on the pub, I think it is, um, incumbent on people who do any form of public theology and that that would include me and Jesse when our views change. There comes a point where we need to disclose that, be honest about it, um, and not try to pretend that we continue to hold a view that we don't be just because it's convenient or because it might be super inconvenient to make a change. I don't even want to pretend to imagine the pressures, uh, that someone like Matthew Barrett would face. I mean, you're talking about losing your entire livelihood. I, I understand that from an intellectual perspective, how difficult that must be, but in some ways, like that kind of comes with the territory. Same thing with a pastor. You have a Baptist pastor or a Presbyterian pastor. It can go both ways, I think. I'm more familiar with Baptist becoming Presbyterians. I don't, I don't see as many going the other direction. But you have a, a Baptist pastor who comes to pay to Baptist convictions and then continues to minister in their church for, I've, I've seen cases where they continue to minister for years, um, because they don't, they don't have the ability to now just go get a job in a Presbyterian context because there's all sorts of, um, training and certification and ordination process that needs to happen. Um, so they just continue ministering where they are, even though they no longer believe the church's state of, you know, state of faith statement. So that's a lot to say. Like, let your yes be yes and your no be no, and when we really all boil it down. So I think that's enough of that. It, it just sort of got in my craw this week and I couldn't really stop thinking about it. 'cause it's been very frustrating. And now there are stories coming out of. Doctoral students that, um, that Barrett was teaching who have now also become Anglican. Um, so, you know, there starts to be questions of like, was he actively pros? I mean, this is like Jacob Arminius did this stuff and, and like the reform tradition would look down on it, where he was in secret in like sort of small group private settings. He was teaching convictions very different than the uni. I'm talking about Arminius now. Not necessarily Barrett. He was teaching convictions very different than the, the stated theology of the university he taught for, and then in public he was sort of towing the line. You have to ask the question and it is just a question. There's been no confirmation that I'm aware of, but you have to ask the question if that was what was going on with Barrett, was he teaching Baptist theology publicly and then meeting with, with PhD students privately and, and sort of convincing them of Anglican theology. I don't know. I'm not speculating on that, but I think it, the situation definitely right, brings that question to mind. It forces us to ask it. Um, and had he. Been transparent about his theological shifts sooner than that may not be a, a question we have to ask. Um, the situation may not be all that different, but we wouldn't have to ask the question. Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's totally fair. I mean, disclosure is important in lots of places in life and we shouldn't think that theological dis disclosure, especially like you're saying among our teachers, among our pastors, it is a critical thing. It's helpful for people to know when perspectives have changed, especially when they're looking to their leaders who are exhibiting trust and care over their discipleship or their education to express that difference. If there's been a mark, change it. It's worth it. Disclose, I'm guessing you don't have to over disclose, but that we're talking about a critical, we're talking about like subversive anglicanism, allegedly. Yeah. Then. It would be more than helpful to know that that is now shaping not just perspective, but of course like major doctrine, major understanding. Yeah. And then of course by necessary conviction and extension, everything that's being promulgated or proclamation in the public sphere from that person is likely now been permeated by that. And we'd expect so. Right. If convictions change, and especially like you're talking about, we're just talking about moving from, especially among like Bible believing traditions, just raise the hand and say loved ones, uh, this is my firm conviction now. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I think if someone walks up to you and says, do you think that we should baptize babies? And you're like, yeah, I think so. Then you probably shouldn't be teaching at a Baptist seminary anymore. Like, seems like a reasonable standard. And that seems to be what happened, at least for some period of time. Um, you know, and, and it, that's not to say like, I think, I think there are instances where the church, a given church or um, or a university or seminary or, or whatever the situation might be, can be gracious and recognize like, yeah, people's perspectives change and maybe we can find a way for you to continue to finish out the semester or, you know, we can bridge you for a little while until you can find a new, a new job. Um, you know, we'll, we'll only have you teach certain courses or we'll have a guest lecturer come in when you have to cover this subject that is at variance and like, we'll make sure we're all clear about it, but it doesn't seem like any of that happened. And that's, um, that's no bueno. So anyway, Jesse. What are you affirming and or denying Tonight? [00:13:43] Music Recommendations Jesse Schwamb: I'm just gonna go with something brief. I suppose this is an affirmation of me. I'm saying that like somewhat tongue in cheek, but maybe it's, wait, I'll rephrase. It's because this will be more humble. I'm affirming getting it right, even more than I thought. So I'm just gonna come back to the well and dip it into something that I mentioned on the last episode. So the keen listener, the up-to-date listener might remember. And if you're not up to date, uh, just let this be fresh for you. It'll, and I, it's gonna be correct because now I have posts, you know, I'm on the other side of it. I've clear hindsight. I am affirming with the album Keep It Quiet by Gray Haven, which I affirmed last week, but it came out on the same day that the episode released. And since you and I don't really like record in real time and release it like exactly as it's happening, I only did that with some, a little bit of reservation because I only heard they only released three songs in the album. And I thought I was overwhelmed that they were, they were so good that I was ready to jump in and loved ones. Oh, it, it turns out. I was so correct and it was, it's even better than I thought. So go check it out. It's Grey, GRE, YH, and they are, this is the warning, just because I have to give it out there and then I'll balance it with something else for something for everybody here today. So, gr Haven is music that's post hardcore and metal core. You're getting two cores for the price of one, if that is your jam. It has strong maleic sensibilities. It's very emotional, it's very experimental. But this new album, which is called, um, again, keep It Quiet, is like just a work of arts. It real like the guitar work is intricate haunting, lovely, and it's bold, like very intentional in its structure and very el loose in its construction. It's got hook driven melodies and it's got both heart and soft. It really is truly a work of art. So if you're trying to, to put it in your minds, like what other bands are like this? I would compare them to bands like, every Time I Die, Norma Jean, let Live Hail the Sun. If you just heard those as combinations of words that don't mean anything to you, that's also okay. No worries. But if you're looking for something different, if you're looking for something that's maybe gonna challenge your ear a little bit, but is like orchestral and has all of these metal core post hardcore, melodic, textured movements, there's no wasted notes in this album. It's really tremendous. If that's not your thing. I get, that's not everybody's thing. Here's something else I think would be equally challenging to the ear in a different way. And that is, I'm going back to one other album to balance things out here, and that's an album that was released in 2019 by Mark Barlow, who I think is like just. So underrated. For some reason, like people have slept on Mike Barlow. I have no idea why he put together an album with Isla Vista Worship called Soul Hymns, and it's like a distinct soul and r and b album of praise with like these really lovely like falsetto, harmonies. It's got these minimalistic instrumentation, warm keys, groove oriented percussion, like again, like these false soul driven melodies. It's contemplative. It's got a groove to it. This is also equally a beautiful album for a totally different reason. So I think I've given two very book-ended, very different affirmations, but I think there's something for everybody. So my challenge to your loved ones is you gotta pick one or the other. Actually, you could do both, but either go to Gray Havens, keep it quiet, or go to Mike Bellow's Soul hymns. I do not think you will be disappointed. There's something for everybody on this one. Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I, it was funny because as you were saying the names of those bands, I literally was thinking like Jesse could be speaking Swahili and I wouldn't know the difference. And then you, you, you know me well, yeah. Uh, I haven't listened to Gray Haven. Uh, I probably will give it a couple minutes 'cause that's how it usually goes with songs that meet that description. Uh, I can always tell that the music that Jesse recommends is good from a technical perspective, but I never really, I never really vibe with it. So that's okay. But I mean, lots of people who listen to our show do so check that out. If, if you ever. Want a good recommendation for music. Jesse is the pers so much so that he can recommend amazing music before it's even available and be a hundred percent correct, apparently. That's right. So Jesse Schwamb: affirm with me everybody, because turns out I was right. Uh, it was easy to be correct when of course I had all of that fair sightedness by being able to listen to those. Yeah, those couple of songs, it, this is a kind of album. Both of these, both of these albums. When I heard them, I reacted audibly out loud. There are parts of both of 'em where I actually said, oh wow. Or yeah, like there's just good stuff in there. And the older you get, if you're a music fan, even if you're not, if you don't listen to a lot of music, you know when that hook gets you. You know when that turn of melody or phrase really like hits you just, right. Everybody has that. Where the beat drops in a way. You're just like, yes, gimme, you make a face like you get into it. I definitely had that experience with both of these albums and because. I've listened to a lot of music because I love listening to music. It's increasingly rare where I get surprised where, you know, like sometimes stuff is just like popular music is popular for a reason and it's good because it's popular and it follows generally some kind of like well established roots. But with these albums, it's always so nice when somebody does something that is totally unexpected. And in these, I heard things that I did not expect at all. And it's so good to be surprised in a way that's like, why have I never heard that before? That is amazing. And both of these bands did it for me, so I know I'm like really hyping them up, but they're worth it. They're, they're totally worth it. Good music is always worth it. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I think that is a good recommendation. I will check those out because, you know, you're a good brother. I usually do, and I trust your judgment even though it, you'll like the second one. Yes. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Jesse Schwamb: You'll like the second one. Second one is like, just filled with praise and worship. And like, if, if you're trying to think, like say, here's how I'd couch the proper atmosphere for Mark Barlow's soul hymns you're having, you know, it's, it's a cold and chilly. A tal evening, the wind is blowing outside. You can hear the crisp leaves moving around on the pavement and the sun has gone down. The kids are in bed, the dinner dishes are piled up in the sink. But you think to yourselves, not tonight. I don't think so, and you just want that toneage to put on. You want that music as you dim the lights and you sit there to just hang out with each other and take a breath. You don't just want some kind of nice r and b moving music. You don't want just relaxing vibes. You want worshipful spirit filled vibes that propel your conversation and your intimacy, not just into the marital realm, but into worship and harmony with the triune God. If you're looking for that album, because that situation is before you, then sol hymns is the music you're looking for. Tony Arsenal: See, I'm gonna get the, I'm gonna get the recommendations backwards and I'm gonna sit down with my wife with a nice like evening cup of decaf tea and I'm gonna turn the music on. Yes, it's gonna be like, yes. That was me screaming into the microphone. That was not good for my voice. Well, the good news is it's gonna, it's gonna wake the kids up. That's, I'm gonna sleep on the couch. That's, it's gonna be bad. That's, Jesse Schwamb: honestly, that's also a good evening. It's just a different kind of evening. It's true. So it's just keep it separated again, uh, by way of your denial slash affirmation. Tony disclosure, I'm just giving you proper disclosure. Everybody know your music KYM, so that way when you have the setting that you want, you can match it with the music that you need. So it's true. Speaking of things that are always worth it. [00:21:30] Parable of the Weeds Jesse Schwamb: I think the Bible's gotta be one of those things. Tony Arsenal: It's true. Jesse Schwamb: And this is like the loosest of all segues because it's like the Sunday school segue into any topic that involves the scriptures. We're gonna be in Matthew 13, and how about we do this? So this is one of these parables and in my lovely ESV translation of the scriptures, the, we're just gonna go with the heading, which says the parable of the weeds. You may have something different and I wanna speak to that just briefly, but how do we do this, Tony? I'll hit us up with the parable and then it just so happens that this is one of the parables in the scripture that comes with an interpretation from our savior. It's true. How about you hit us up with the interpretation, which is in the same chapter if you're tracking with us, it's just a couple verses way. Does that sound good? Tony Arsenal: Let's do it. Jesse Schwamb: Okay. Here is the parable of the weeds. Jesus puts another parable before them saying The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sewed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sewed weeds among the weeds and went away. So when the plants came up and bork rain, then the weeds also appeared, and the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds? He said to them, an enemy has done this. So the servant said to him, then, do you want us to go and gather them? Then he said, no. Lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them, but let them grow together until the harvest and at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first, and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn. Tony Arsenal: Alright, so then jumping down. To verse 36. We're still in Matthew 13, he says, then he left the crowds and went into the house and his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. He answered, the one who sows the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angel. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age, the son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom, all that, all causes of sin in all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. It is that in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears let him hear. Jesse Schwamb: So let me start with just like a little bit of language here, which I've always loved in this passage because where else in like the contemporary context, do you get the word tear? Yeah. Aside if you're like using a scale, and that's a totally different definition. I like this. I like the word tear. It force, it forces to understand that what's common to our ear, why that's being used, it often is translated weed. Here's just like my, my little like linguistic addition to the front end of our discussion and is the reason I like it is because here does have a specific definition. If like you were to look this up in almost any dictionary, what you're gonna find is it's like a particular type of weed. It's actually like an injurious weed that is indistinguishable in its infant form from the outgrowing of green. So I like that because of course that is exactly why. Then there's all this explanation of why then to not touch anything in the beginning because one, it causes damage to it looks like everybody else. I just thought I'd put that out there as we begin our discussion. Tony Arsenal: Yeah, yeah. You know, I, um, I am a homeowner and I don't own the land that I'm on, but I'm responsible for the land that I'm on. And we have this really gnarly weed problem. There's this, uh, sort of floor growing, uh, carpeting weed called, uh, I think it's called like a carpeting knob, head weed or something like that. Some really descriptive thing. And I went out there the other day and there's really nothing you can do about this other than to rip it up. But I went out there the other day to start to pull some of it up and it totally wrecks the yard. Like it totally pulls up the grass, it destroys the sod. And when you're done, this is why it's kind of nice that I don't have, I'm not responsible for the land as I'm not gonna have to pay to resod the land. But when you're done pulling up this weed, you have to resod the whole place. You have to regrow all the grass because it, first, it takes over for the grass, and then when you rip it up, it rips the roots of the grass up as well. And so this parable, um, on one level is immediately obvious, like what the problem is, right? The situation is such. That the good, uh, the good sower, right? He's a good sower. He knows what he's doing. He understands that simply ripping up the weeds. Even if you could distinguish them right, there's this element that like at an early stage, they would be very difficult, if not impossible to distinguish from, uh, from wheat. Even if you could distinguish them, you still wouldn't be able to pull up the weeds and not do damage to the grain. And so we, we have this sort of like, um, conflict if you wanna follow like literary standards, right? We have this conflict and as we come to sort of the climax of this, of this plot is when all of a sudden we see that, that the problem needs a resolution and there is a resolution, but it's not necessarily what we would think it would be. Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I think that's what I find shocking. It is like a massive statement of reality that is that like equal points or equal times totally sensible. And other times we would think, well why surely not in the church Lord, like of all the places, like aren't we talking about a kind of purity of your people, the very people that you're assembling together, the chief of which is Christ and the apostles being the building stones and Christ of course being the cornerstone. And I, I think that's what I find and I wonder the people hearing this, if they thought like, well, surely Lord, that not be the case like you are bringing in and ushering in this new kingdom. Isn't this new kingdom gonna be one of absolute purity? And, and what I think he's striking at, which I do find a little bit wild, is that Jesus essentially saying, at least to my ear, anything we try to do, even like the purest preaching of the gospel, is not gonna prevent this in every age of the church. The same state of the things that's existed in that is in the time of the early fathers. In the first century, and the church as it stands right now in the land and the time of the reformers, and of course with the best ministers at this hour right now and on your next Lord's day, and everyone after that, there is always and ever will be a visible church or a religious assembly in which the members are not all wheat. Yeah. And then I like what you're saying. It's this idea that. There's a great harm that's gonna come about if you try to lift them up because you cannot tell. So, and this is what's hard, I think this does influence like how we interact with people online. Certainly how we interact with people in our own congregations, but we are going to have no clear convicted proofs. We might only have like probable symptoms if we're really trying to judge and weigh out to discern the weeds from the weeds, which at most can only give us some kind of conjectural knowledge of another state. And that is gonna sometimes preemptively judge cause us to judge others in a way that basically there's a warning against here. It, it's, it's not the right time. And ba I think mainly from the outside where I find like this parable coming together, if there's like maybe a weird Venn diagram of the way Christians read this and the way unbelievers hear this, the overlap between them is for me, often this idea of like hypocrisy and you know. When people tell me that the church is full of hypocrites, either like Christian or non-Christian, but typically that's a, a, you know, statement that comes from the non-Christian tongue. When people say that the church is full of hypocrites, I do with a little bit of snark, say it's definitely not full of hypocrites. There are always room for more in the church and, and there's like a distinction of course between the fact that there is hypocrisy in the Christian or whether the Christian is in fact or that person is a hypocrite. So like when I look through the scriptures, we see like Pharaoh confessing, we see Herod practicing, we see Judas preaching Christ Alexander venturing his life for Paul. Yeah, we see David condemning in another, what he himself practiced and like hezeki glorifying and riches Peter. Doing all kinds of peter stuff that he does, and even all the disciples forsaken Christ, an hour of trouble and danger. So all that to say, it goes back to this like lack of clear, convicted proofs that I think Jesus is bringing forward here, but only probable symptoms. And I'm still processing, of course, like the practicality of what you're saying, Tony, that in some ways it seems like abundantly clear and sensible that you should, you're, you're gonna have a problem distinguishing. But our human nature wants to go toward distinguishing and then toward uprooting sometimes. And the warning here is do not uproot at the improper time. And in fact, it's not even yours to uproot because God will send in the laborers to do that at the time of, of harvest. And so there will be weeds found among the wheat. It's just like full stop statement. And at the same time it's warning, do not go after them now. Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I, I'm sure this, um, I, I'm sure this will spill over into a second conversation, but we, I think we have to talk a little bit about the interpretation here before we, before we even like talk more about the parable itself, because if you're not careful, um, and, and. I need to do a little bit more study on this, but it, it's interesting because Matthew almost seems to want you to sort of blend these parables together a little bit. Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Tony Arsenal: Right. These, these, there's three, um, there's three, maybe four if you count the parable of the treasure in the field. But there's three agricultural parables that have to do with sowing seed of one, of, one way or another. And in each one the seed is something different. And I, it almost seems to me. And then on top of that, the parables are like interwoven within each other. So like right smack in the middle of this, we have the parable. Uh, is given. Then the next parable of the mustard seed, which we're gonna talk about in a future episode, is given, and then the explanation of this parable of the tears is given. Um, and so we have to talk a little bit about it and sort of establish what the seed is, because we just spent three weeks talking about the seed in the par of the sower. Um, or the parable of the, of the soils. And in that parable, the seed was the word of God in this parable. And this is where I think sometimes, um, and again, this is like the doctrine of election in parable form, right? Yes. I think sometimes we read this and we, we misstep because the seed is not, uh, is not the word of God in this. The seed is the believers. Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Tony Arsenal: Right. So the good seed is sewn into, uh, into the field, which, you know, I think maybe there'll be some, we, we can save this for, for next week. But a little sneak peek is, it's not always clear exactly what the field is. Right. And I think we often, we often talk about the field as though it's the church that doesn't necessarily align a hundred percent with how Christ explains the parable. So we'll have to, we'll have to talk through that a little bit. I affirm that it is the church in, in a, a broad sense. Um, but, but the, the way that Christ explains it slightly different, but the, the seed is sewn into the world. The sons of the kingdom of heaven are sowed into the, into the world. And then the seed of the enemy, the bad seed, is the sons of the devil that's also sewn into the world. And so these two seeds grow up next to each other. If we think about the seed here as though it's the word of God, rather than the, the actual believers and unbelievers that elect in the ate, we're gonna make some missteps on how we understand this because we're not talking about, um, the, the seed being, you know, doctrine being sewn into the world. And some of it grows up good and some of it grows up bad or good doctrine and bad doctrine. We're talking about the believers themselves. Sorry, Jesse is mocking my rapid attempt to mute before I cough, which I, I did. That was pretty good. Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that was, that was pretty good. Listen, this is real. Podcasting is how it goes. Yeah, I'm with you. Thank you for pulling out that distinction. 'cause it is critical. We, we have some overlap of course, with Jesus being really ascribed as the farmer, the son of man, right. He's sowing this good seed, but not the word. It's believers or the sons of the kingdom. And it is into his field, which is the world. Part of that world of course, is necessarily the church, right? But while everybody's sleeping, this enemy, the devil, he comes, he sows weeds or unbelievers, the sons of the evil one among this weed, they grow, go up together. And of course, like if I were servants in this household, I'd ask the same thing, which was like, should we get the gloves out? Yeah. Just pull those bad boys out. Like and, and so again, that's why I find it very so somewhat shocking that. It's not just, you could see like Jesus saying something like, don't worry about it now because listen, at the end of all time when the harvest comes, uh, I'm gonna take care of it. Like it's just not worth it to go out now. Right. That's not entirely The reason he gives, the reason is lest they uproot the wheat by mistake. So this is showing that the servants who are coming before Jesus in the parable, in this teaching here to really volitionally and with great fidelity and good obedience to him to want to please him to do his will. He there, he's basically saying, you are not qualified to undertake this kind of horticulture because you're just not either skilled enough or discerning enough to be able to do it right. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think, um. Maybe just a word of meth methodology too. Um, this parable also flies in the face of all of the, like, parables are not allegories, kind of kind of people. Um, and this is, we talked about this in our introductory episode. You have to take each parable for what it's worth, this parable very much is explained like a traditional allegory, right? Right. [00:35:39] Understanding the Parable's Symbols Tony Arsenal: It's got, it's got several different elements and Christ goes through and the first thing he does is tell you what each element represents, right? The sower is the son of man, the field is the word. The good seed is the sons of the kingdom of the weed. It's like, he's like clicking down all of the symbols and then he explains how all of it works together and like a good, all like a good allegory. Once you understand what each element and each symbol is, the rest of it actually is very self-explanatory, right? When you understand who's what in the parable. The outcome and the sort of the punchline writes itself as it were. And I think this is one of those parables that we would do. [00:36:18] Challenging Our Sensibilities Tony Arsenal: I think we would do well to sort of let marinate a little bit because it does challenge a lot of our sensibilities of what, um, what is real in the world, what is real in terms of our interaction with the world, right? What's real in terms of the role of unbelievers in the life of a Christian, um, whether we can identify who is or isn't an unbeliever. Um, I think we, you know, I, I'm not one of those people that's like, we should assume everyone's a Christian. And I'm certainly not one of those people who's like, we should assume nobody is a Christian. But I think there are a lot of times where we have figures either in public or people in our lives. Like personal acquaintances that have some sort of outward appearance. And, and that's like the key here that that distinction between weeds is a, is not a great translation as you said. Right. Because right. That distinction between wheat and weeds, to go to my analogy, like it's very clear what is grass and what is this like carpeting, knob weed. Like there's no, there's no doubt in my mind, which is the weed and which is the grass. Um, that's not what we're talking about here. And so it does, it does say here, I mean, it implies here that it's not going to be easy to distinguish the difference between exactly. The, a son of the kingdom and a son of the evil one. And I think that's a, that's a. A theological pill that is very difficult to swallow. Yes. [00:37:43] Personal Reflections on Identifying Christians Tony Arsenal: Because a lot of us, um, and this goes back to like what I, what we were saying in the last, the last parable, A lot of us were reared in our Christian faith on sort of this idea that like, you can check your fruit or you can check other people's fruits and you can determine, you can easily identify who's a Christian and who's not. I remember when I was in high school, you know, I got, I was converted when, when I was 15 and, um, I got to high school and it felt very easy to me to be able to identify the people who were play acting Christianity and the people who were real Christians. That felt like the most natural thing in the world to me. Um, it, it's an interesting story, but one of the people that I was absolutely sure was not a Christian. That he was just doing kinda civic Christianity. He was in confirmation 'cause his parents wanted him to. Um, and I had good reason to believe that at the time he was very worldly. He, he, um, did not seem to be serious about his faith at all. There was good reason to make the assessment that I did. And then I ran into him on Facebook like 15 years later and he's a pastor at the Lutheran Church and he's, you know, he loves the Lord Jesus Christ. And he would not explain it as though he had a later conversion story. It's not as though he would say like, well yeah, in high school I pretended to be a Christian. And then, you know, I got through college and uh, I really became like I got converted. He would, would grow this, or he would explain this as slow, steady growth from an immature state that knew the facts of the gospel and in a certain sense trusted that Jesus was his savior and didn't fully understand the ramifications of that. I mean, who did at 15 years old? Mm-hmm. Um. And, and that it was a slow, steady growth to the place that he's in now. [00:39:21] The Difficulty of Distinguishing Believers Tony Arsenal: So I, I think we should take seriously, and maybe this is the takeaway for this week at least, and we can, we can talk about it more, is we should take seriously the fact that the Sons of the Kingdom and the Sons of the evil one in this parable are not only inseparable without doing damage, but in many ways they are not easily distinguishable. Jesse Schwamb: Right. On. Tony Arsenal: Um, and that, that's a baked into the parable. And I think we do spend a fair amount of time and I, I'll. I'll throw myself on on this. You know, this, we, I'm not just saying we, um, we as a genuine statement, like I have participated in this. I'm sure that I still do participate in this sometimes intentionally. Other times, uh, subconsciously we spend a fair amount of time probably in our Christian lives trying to figure out who is a Christian who's not. And it's not as though that is entirely illegitimate, right? The, the, as much as we kind of poke at the, the, um, workers in this who sort of are kind of chumps, right? They're sort of like the idiots in this. They, they don't seem to know how this happened. They propose a course of action that then the master's like, no, no, that's not, that's not gonna work. They can tell the difference, right? They can see that some are weeds and some are are weeds, and they're asking, well, what do we do about it? But at the same time he is saying like, you're not really competent to tell the difference, Jesse Schwamb: right? On Tony Arsenal: a good, uh, a good. Competent farmer could probably go out and take all the weeds out. Just like a really good, I dunno, landscape technician, I'm not sure what you would call it. I'm sure someone could come into my yard and if I paid them enough money they could probably fix this knobby grass, weed, whatever it is. Um, infestation. They could probably fix it without damaging the lawn. Like there are probably people that could do it. I am not that competent person and the workers in this are not that competent person. And I would say by and large in our Christian life, we are not that competent person to be able to identify who is and who isn't, um, a Christian who is or isn't a son of the kingdom versus a son of the devil. Jesse Schwamb: And there's sometimes like we just get history reprised, or it's like, again, the same thing microwaved over and served to you three or four times as leftovers. So it's also gonna remember like any as extension that like any attempt to like purify the church perfectly, and this has happened like donatism in the fourth century I think, or even like now, certain sectarian movements are completely misguided. Yeah. And Jesus already puts that out ahead of us here. It's almost like, do not worry what God is doing because God again is, is doing all the verbs. So here's a question I think we should discuss as we, we move toward like the top of the hour. And I think this is interesting. I don't know if you'll think it's interesting. I, I kind of have an answer, but I, I'll post it here first. [00:42:01] Visible vs. Invisible Church Jesse Schwamb: So the setup like you've just given us is two things. One, we got the visible church, we talk about the visible church. I think a lot across our conversations. Yeah. And we might summarize it, saying it's like the community of all who profess faith, maybe even the community of all who are baptized. Right. Possibly. Yeah. And it's going to include then necessarily as Jesus describes it here, true and false believers. So that's one group. Then we've got this invisible church, which as you said is the elect. Those who are known perfectly to God. So the good seed is those elect true believers. The weeds, then the weeds to me, or the tears, even better, they sound a lot like that. Second and third soils that we talked about previously to some, to some degree. I'm not, I'm not gonna lump them all in because we talked about receiving the word and it taking root, all that stuff, but to some degree, and also probably like a soil one. But here's, here's the way I would define them up and against or in contradistinction to the elector believers. They're the reprobate. They're false professors or they're children of the evil one. Now here's the question, Doni, Alex, I, I think this is very interesting. I'm trying to build this up for like more dramatic effect. 'cause now I'm worried it's not that good. The question is, I'm going to presume that this good seed, the elect, true to believers, the confidence of perseverance of the saints, the justification in sanctification of God's children is in fact though we at some points have our own doubts, it is made fully aware and known to the good seed. That is, we should have, as you and I have talked about before, the confidence that God has in fact saved his elect. So the question that on the other side is for the ta, do the tears always know that they are the tears? Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think, um, I've said this before and I, I mean it, and I think it takes probably more. More discussion than we have time for tonight. And and that's fine because we can do as many episodes on this as we want to. 'cause this is our show and you can't stop us actually. Jesse Schwamb: Correct. [00:43:56] Assurance of Faith and False Assurance Tony Arsenal: Um, I've said before that assurance is the proper and rightful possession and inheritance of every Christian. Jesse Schwamb: Amen. Tony Arsenal: Right. So I, I am not one to say that the technical terminology is that assurance is not of the essence of faith. Um, I think we have to be really careful when we say that it's not, but we have to be equally careful when we say that it is. Because if we say that assurance is of the essence of faith, then what that means is someone who doesn't have assurance, doesn't have faith. Um, the reason I say that we can say that is because there's a sense that that's true, right? If you don't believe you're saved, then you don't believe you're saved and you don't trust that you're saved. But that doesn't mean that you always have full awareness of that confidence. And, you know, I think, um, I think. I think you're, you're right that, um, it may not always be, let me put it this way. I, I think that we have to consider the entire life of a Christian when we're, when we're making that analysis. And in a certain sense, like, I'm not even sure we should be making that analysis. That's kind of the point of the, the, um, the parable here, or at least one of the points. But, um, when that analysis is made, we'll, we'll channel a little bit of RC sprawl. It's not as funny when he's actually, uh, gone. I don't really mean channel RC sprawl. We will, uh, speak in the tradition of RC sprawl, um, in the final analysis, whatever that means. Whenever that is. You have to consider the whole life of a Christian, the whole life of a believer. And so there may be times in the life of a believer where they don't possess that full assurance of faith or that that full assurance is weak or that it seems to be absent. But when we look at the entire life of a believer, um, is it a life that overall is marked by a confident trust, that they are in fact children of God? Um, that a confident, uh, a confident embracing of what the spirit testifies to their spirit, to, to borrow language from Romans, I think in, in the life of a true elect Christian, um, that with the perseverance of the saints, uh, with the persistence of the saints and the preservation of the saints, um, I think that yes, those who are finally saved, those who are saved unto salvation, if you wanna phrase it that way. They finish the race, they claim the prize. Um, that assurance will be their possession in their life as a Christian. Jesse Schwamb: Right on. Tony Arsenal: All of that to say, I think there are, are, there's a good case to be made for the fact that there is also people who have false assurance, right? And this is where it takes a lot more, you know, finagling and jockeying and theological explanation of how can we know we have true assurance versus false assurance. You know, it's kinda like that question, like, does an insane person know they're insane? Well, does a false, does someone with false assurance know that their assurance is false? I don't think, I don't think so. Otherwise, it wouldn't be false assurance. Um, if they knew it wasn't real assurance, then they wouldn't have any kind of assurance. So I, I think I agree with you at least where, where I think you're going is that we do have to, we do have to make some judgements. We have to look at our own life, right? Um, there is an element of fruitfulness in this parable, right? We'll talk about that. I, I think we'll get into that next week. But it's not as though this is entirely disconnected from the parable of the soils. Both of them have a very similar kind of. End point. [00:47:20] Final Judgment and Eschatology Tony Arsenal: At the end of all things, at the end of the harvest, when the end of the age comes, and the reapers, the angels are sent, what they're gathering up are fruitful Christians, right in the parable, he sends out the, it's funny be, I love my dispensational brothers and sisters, but in this parable, like the rapture is the rapture of the unbelievers, right? The angels go out and reap the unbelievers first. The, the weeds are bundled up and thrown into the fire, and then the, the fruitful wheat is gathered into the barns. Um, there is this delineation between the fruitless weeds and the fruitful wheat or the, the grain that has borne, you know, borne fruit. That is part of what the, the outward. Elements of this parable are, so we should talk about that more, of what is this trying to get at in terms of not just the difference between weeds and wheat and how that maps up to those who are in Christ versus those who are not in Christ, but also like what is this telling us about the, the end of the age eschatology. All of that's baked in here and we haven't even scratched the surface of that Jesse Schwamb: yet. Yeah, we, we, I, and we just can't, even on this episode, probably, you're right, we're gonna have to go to two so that, I guess it's like a teaser for the next one. I'm told they're with you. It's interesting. I've been thinking about that, that question a lot. And I do like what you're saying. You know, at the end here, it's almost as if Christ is saying at the time of harvest, things become more plain, more evident In the beginning. The chutes are gonna look really, really similar, and you're gonna go in and you're gonna think you're guessing properly or using your best judgment, and you're gonna get it wrong in the end when he sends out those who are harvesting. I liken this passage here in the explanation as you read to us starting in verse 36, how there's this comparison of heat and light. And so there is the heat and light of the fiery furnace into which, as you said, all of those who are the children of the enemy will be gathered up and burned. And then there's that contrast with in verse 43, then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. So there is like a reward that comes from the bearing of the fruit and that made evidence by a different type of heat and light. So I do struggle with this question because. It's easy to answer in some ways if we're defining the weeds in pirate or the tears in pirates as false professors typically. Let's say false professors of a nefarious kind, then it seems pretty plain that somebody, right, that the enemy has implanted certain people to stir up trouble with the intention to stir up trouble that is in fact their jam. Or they know that even if they're putting on heirs, that they're in fact play acting that the hypocrisy is purposeful and that it is part of like the missional efforts that they're doing to disrupt what God is doing in the world. So I might think of somebody like when we go, when we're looking in, um, Exodus, and we find that at least to some degree, all of Pharaoh's magicians can replicate everything that Moses is doing. Moses doing that by the power of God. But the magicians are so good and whatever means they're using, but they know, I presume they know they're not, they're not using Yahweh, they're not drawing their power or their influence from Yahweh. Tony Arsenal: Right? Jesse Schwamb: But it's so convincing to the people that Pharaoh is like, eh. Obviously I've seen that before because we just, we just did that here. Come back with your next trick until God flexes his mighty muscles in a really profound way, which cannot be replicated. And at some point there's a harvest that happens there. There's a separation between the two, those who are truly professing, the power that comes from God, the one true God, and those that are just replicating the cheap copy, the one that's just pure trickery and smoke and mirrors. So. That's an easy category. I'm with you. And I'm not saying that this is an invitation to bring the kind of judgment here that we've just spoken against. I'm not condoning this. What I do find interesting though is if the enemy is crafty, is it possible that they're always going to be forms of terror in the world that do feel that they have very strong conviction and belief about biblical things? Maybe there's, there's strong hobby horses or there are misguided directions here that pull us apart, that become distractions. Or maybe it's just even attitudes, uh, things that can be divisive, disruptive, derogatory that again, pull us away. For making the plain things, the main things and the main things, the plain things, which in some ways draws us back to like the whole purpose of you and I talking every week, which is we wanna get back to what the scripture teaches. We wanna follow the our Lord Jesus Christ very, very closely. I'm gonna clinging to the hymn of his rob as we walk through life so that we do not fall to those kind of false convictions. So I'm not, please hear me, loved ones. I'm not trying to call into question your faith as Tony just said. I am saying that there, this is kind of scary, just like we talked about. There are elements of the parables of the, of the soil that were equally scary. And so it's just in some ways to say, we gotta keep our heads not theological, swivel. We, we gotta be about the Lord's business, and we gotta be about understanding through prayer and study and communion with him, what it is that he wants to teach us in the purest way, knowing that the church itself and the world, of course, is never going to be entirely pure. At the same time, it is our responsibility to, as you already said, test for ourselves to understand what is that true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because some tears are going to be maybe easy to identify and with without, you know, throwing too much shade or. I was gonna say spilling the TI don't think that works here, but I'm not young anymore, so I'm trying to use or or put on blast. Yeah. I'm looking at you Mormons or Jehovah's witnesses. Like it's, it's easier there to be like, yeah, right, this is wrong. It is a false profession, but we've just gotta be careful even in our own hobby, horses not deviates into ground. I think that doesn't preclude us from being children of the light and children of the kingdom, but can still be disruptive or uh, you know, just distracting. But either way, yeah. I think what's scary to me about this is exactly what you said, Tony, is, is could it be that there are people that are very sincere about the Christian faith, but are sincerely wrong? Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Jesse Schwamb: And what does that mean for God's elected purpose? What does that mean for our understanding of how to interact in our churches in the world? Does that make sense? Tony Arsenal: It does. And I'm not sure whether you were trying to set up the, what might be the first genuine reformed brotherhood cliffhanger, but you did. Because we're on minute 54 of a 60 minute podcast, and, uh, there's no way we're gonna get into that and not go for another 60 minutes. So, Jesse, I, I'm, I'm glad that we are taking our time. Um, I know that sometimes it's easy when you put out a schedule or you put out a sort of projected content calendar to feel like you have to stick to it. But I wanna give these parables, the time they deserve and the effort and the, uh, the, uh, study and the discussion that they deserve. And I think the questions you're posing here at the end of this episode are really, really important. And they are questions that this parable forces us to ask. Right, right. It's not as though we're just using this as a launching pad. Um. If the workers can't tell the difference between the, the seed and the, or the, the weeds and the weeds, it's reasonable to think that the weeds themselves may not be able to tell the difference. Right? The sons of the evil one, um, are probably not in this parable, are probably not the people like in the back, like doing fake devil horns, right? And like, you know, like there's, there's probably more going on that we need to unpack and, and we'll do that next week. Jesse Schwamb: I love it. So we've got some good stuff coming then, because we've gotta, this is like, do you ever remember when you were in, uh, you know, doing your undergraduate postgraduate work, you'd get like a topic or an assignment or a paper and you'd be super stoked about it and you start reaching it, be like, okay, researching it. And you'd be like, all right, I've got some good topics here. And then you get into it, you're like, oh, but I'm gonna have to talk about this. And Oh, like before I could talk, I'm gonna have to explain this. Sometimes when we get into these, as you and I have been talking, that's what it feels li

Satan, Donatism, the reason for bread and wine and more in today's Open Line Friday with Colin Donovan.

Donatism: the corrupt church and its leadership.Apollinarianism: Jesus has a Divine mind, but not body and soul.Collyridianism: Trinity is Father, Son, and Mary!Binitarianism: Only TWO persons in the Godhead.Priscillianism: Gnostic dualistic nonsense.

In this week's episode of Catholic ReCon, I provide a prequel (Less Reasonable) to last week's essay documentary, More Reasonable. ▶MORE REASONABLE video: https://youtu.be/nKKDsP1ZPac Narrated by James Majewksi of @CatholicCulturePod, Less Reasonable: a Schismatic Delusion, critiques all factions through the inspection of the Donatists and Waldensians. Closed captioning available. #Factions #Truth #Church #Christian #Jesus #Donatist #Catholic #Dogma #Doctrine #Video #JesusChrist #Papacy #disobedience #Protestant #Essay ▶To support this channel, visit eddietrask.com/sponsorship ▶https://buymeacoffee.com/eddietrask

One of the story lines that keeps recurring during this election season is the incessant handwringing among the progressive left, worried about the fall of what they call “our democracy.” Pointing fingers, they actually make the claim that conservative evangelicals are the real threat to the survival to the American experiment. Well, let's think about that for a minute and process what it means for democracy to be in danger. Joe Rigney, “Avoiding ‘the progressive gaze' in the voting booth,” August 21, 2024. James R. Wood, “Against political Donatism,” August 9, 2024. Miles Smith, “Whose democracy?” July 24, 2024.

St. Augustine of Hippo (part 2) - From Pope Benedict's audience: After his Baptism, Augustine decided to return to Africa with his friends, with the idea of living a community life of the monastic kind at the service of God. However, while awaiting their departure in Ostia, his mother fell ill unexpectedly and died shortly afterwards, breaking her son's heart. Having returned to his homeland at last, the convert settled in Hippo for the very purpose of founding a monastery. In this city on the African coast he was ordained a priest in 391, despite his reticence, and with a few companions began the monastic life which had long been in his mind, dividing his time between prayer, study and preaching. All he wanted was to be at the service of the truth. He did not feel he had a vocation to pastoral life but realized later that God was calling him to be a pastor among others and thus to offer people the gift of the truth. He was ordained a Bishop in Hippo four years later, in 395. Augustine continued to deepen his study of Scripture and of the texts of the Christian tradition and was an exemplary Bishop in his tireless pastoral commitment: he preached several times a week to his faithful, supported the poor and orphans, supervised the formation of the clergy and the organization of mens' and womens' monasteries. In short, the former rhetorician asserted himself as one of the most important exponents of Christianity of that time. He was very active in the government of his Diocese - with remarkable, even civil, implications - in the more than 35 years of his Episcopate, and the Bishop of Hippo actually exercised a vast influence in his guidance of the Catholic Church in Roman Africa and, more generally, in the Christianity of his time, coping with religious tendencies and tenacious, disruptive heresies such as Manichaeism, Donatism and Pelagianism, which endangered the Christian faith in the one God, rich in mercy. And Augustine entrusted himself to God every day until the very end of his life: smitten by fever, while for almost three months his Hippo was being besieged by vandal invaders, the Bishop - his friend Possidius recounts in his Vita Augustini - asked that the penitential psalms be transcribed in large characters, "and that the sheets be attached to the wall, so that while he was bedridden during his illness he could see and read them and he shed constant hot tears" (31, 2). This is how Augustine spent the last days of his life. He died on 28 August 430, when he was not yet 76. We will devote our next encounters to his work, his message and his inner experience. The post St. Augustine of Hippo, Part 2 – The Doctors of the Church: The Charism of Wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunson – Discerning Hearts Podcast appeared first on Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts.

In the aftermath of the persecutions, controversies arose over the sacraments, which required clarification of the Church's sacramental theology. Out of those controversies, new schisms emerged which had a correct understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, but incorrect understandings of ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church) and incorrect understandings of what makes a sacrament valid and effective. The significance of these schisms cannot be overstated, since it is still true to this day that the practice of rebaptism is one of the most prevalent acts of schism against the universal Church, and one of the greatest barriers to unity. Links To listen to Mike Aquilina's episode 18 on Cyprian of Carthage: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-18-short-happy-life-cyprian-carthage/ To listen to Mike Aquilina's episode 39 (the 2nd of 3) on Augustine of Hippo & the controversies: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/39augustine-part-2-mob-made-bishop-makes-his-mark/ To read the anonymous document On Rebaptism: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=1729&repos=8&subrepos=0&searchid=2390688 To read St. Augustine's treatise, On Baptism, Against the Donatists: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=3294&repos=8&subrepos=0&searchid=2390773 To read St. Augustine's letter, The Correction of the Donatists: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=3296&repos=8&subrepos=0&searchid=2390689 For more on the controversy surrounding the third and fourth century schisms and the implications for the Sacraments, see the book:  Reading the Church Fathers: A History of the Early Church and the Development of Doctrine: https://sophiainstitute.com/product/reading-the-church-fathers/ For all the details on Novatian, see the book: Novatian of Rome and the Culmination of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy: https://wipfandstock.com/9781606087800/novatian-of-rome-and-the-culmination-of-pre-nicene-orthodoxy/ SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's Newsletter:  https://www.catholicculture.org/newsletters/ DONATE at:  http://www.catholicculture.org/donate/audio To connect with Dr. James Papandrea, On YouTube - The Original Church:  https://www.youtube.com/@TheOriginalChurch Join the Original Church Community on Locals:  https://theoriginalchurch.locals.com/ Dr. Papandrea's Homepage:  http://www.jimpapandrea.com Theme Music: Gaudeamus (Introit for the Feast of All Saints), sung by Jeff Ostrowski. Courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed:  https://www.ccwatershed.org/  

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Protestants sometimes describe the Reformation as a sort of return to the early Church, away from what are claimed to be corrupt Medieval Catholic practices. But is that really true? Let’s take a closer look at six major controversies in the earliest days of Christianity,/ (including the fights against Docetism, Gnosticism, Novatianism, Donatism, and the persecution of Christians by the Romans). The results might surprise you! …

Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent Saint of the Day: St. Anastasius I; a Roman by birth, elected pope in 399; he was among the first to condemn the works of Origen; he also urged the church in North Africa to continue its struggle against Donatism; died in 401 and was buried in the cemetery of Pontian Office of Readings and Morning Prayer for 12/19/23 Gospel: Luke 1:5-25

What is Donatism? Who was the founder of Donatism? What were the beliefs of Donatism?

Adult Bible Class discussion of different heresies. This week: Donatism

This episode with be part 1 of 3 discussion between Dr. Stephen Boyce and guest Contributor, Tyler West. They will respond to J.M. Carroll's book from the 1930's and discuss why the history is extremely unreliable. They will also discuss why there are Baptist sects that still use Carroll's chart to trace their belief system back to the Apostles. This episode will consist of two major groups that Carroll uses on the chart for the earliest evidence of Baptist practices.

Today we look at Early Christianity: a Brief History and how the Early Church reacted to Donatism, a controversy involving the people that handed over Scripture to the Roman authorities, which often resulted in torture and execution of Christians in the area. Lynch, Joseph H. Early Christianity: A Brief History. Oxford University Press, 2010. 

Chris Moore talks to Lee Gatiss and Mark Smith about Donatism and its implications for today.

Dr Koontz and Rev Fisk respond to listener messages about the deployment of nuclear weapons in Japan, and the hosts' thoughts about Corey Mahler. Visit our website -  A Brief History of Power Many thanks to our sponsors, Blessed Sacrament Lutheran Church in Hayden, ID, Our Savior Lutheran Church and School in Pagosa Springs, CO, and Luther Classical College Dr Koontz -  Trinity Lutheran Church Rev Fisk - St Paul Rockford and Hebron Collegium Music thanks to Verny

Join TAN Publisher Conor Gallagher and Dr. Paul Thigpen in a discussion about St. Augustine's fight against heresies in part four of an 8-part series of The Spiritual Masters on St. Augustine of Hippo.Almost 1600 years later, St. Augustine's ability to stand up for the Catholic Church against multiple opposing groups and philosophies stands out and inspires today. Discover how the Doctor of Grace stood up to Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism and more.LEARN MORE - USE COUPON CODE MASTERS25 FOR 25% OFFThe Confessions (New Translation from Anthony Esolen Coming Oct. 2023)The Roots of Western Civilization: https://bit.ly/3oP9HGvSt. Monica: Model of Christian Mothers: https://bit.ly/3L7J4nLFor updates about new episodes, special guests, and exclusive deals for The Spiritual Masters listeners, sign up at https://SpiritualMastersPodcast.com.And for more great ways to deepen your faith, check out all the spiritual resources available at https://TANBooks.com and use Coupon Code MASTERS25 for 25% Off your next order.

This class elaborates on my essay on the Donatist movement, in which I explain points of resemblance between modern Wokeness and the new brand of orthodox Christianity we associate with Constantine, the Council of Nicea and the Donatist Crisis of the fourth century.

I read from domino to Donatism.     The domino mask is a simple eye mask and the name may come from the latin word "dominus" which means "lord" or "master". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_mask     Everyone loves toppling over dominoes, but not many people actually PLAY dominoes.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominoes     The etymology of "domino" also seems to come from the Latin word "dominus" but the connection isn't totally clear.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/domino#etymonline_v_13928     "Domino theory" has to do with geopolitics and the idea that if one country turned to Communism (or probably something else), then neighboring or similar countries would do the same. It's similar to The Butterfly Effect or just the idea that when one domino falls, the next ones will too.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory     The word of the episode is "donate".     Theme music from Tom Maslowski https://zestysol.com/     Merchandising! https://www.teepublic.com/user/spejampar     "The Dictionary - Letter A" on YouTube   "The Dictionary - Letter B" on YouTube   "The Dictionary - Letter C" on YouTube   "The Dictionary - Letter D" on YouTube     Featured in a Top 10 Dictionary Podcasts list! https://blog.feedspot.com/dictionary_podcasts/     Backwards Talking on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmIujMwEDbgZUexyR90jaTEEVmAYcCzuq     dictionarypod@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/thedictionarypod/ https://twitter.com/dictionarypod https://www.instagram.com/dictionarypod/ https://www.patreon.com/spejampar https://www.tiktok.com/@spejampar 917-727-5757

Part 4/6 in a Lenten series on Christian heresy. The episode considers Donatism and Pelagianism.

1 John 2:18-27Rev. Erik Veerman1/15/20231 John 2:18-27Knowing that You Know Him: the Doctrine TestOur sermon text this morning is from 1 John 2:18-27. You can find that on page 1211 in the pew Bibles.Before we read our sermon text, there are two concepts which we haven't come across in 1 John before. Without some background, they may be a little confusing, so, I thought it would be helpful to explain them before we read. • The first is the phrase “the last hour.” You'll see that twice in verse 18. John says to his readers that they are in “the last hour.” By it he means that in all of history, they are living in the time right before the end of the world - the end of history on the earth as we know it. The end will happen when Christ comes again. And when he does he will bring a new heavens and new earth. The reason that the phrase “the last hour” may be confusing is that John wrote this 1900 years ago. To us that is a long time, and we may be tempted to think that John was wrong, that it was not the last hour. However, when we look at the New Testament as a whole, we see that the concept of the last hour is referring to the era after Christ's first coming. The last days are a time when two things are happening. First, Jesus is exalted and reigning in heaven, and second, false teachers and false Christs are prevalent on earth. Jesus himself referred to the last times this way in Matthew 24. Also, the books of Hebrews, 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, refer to these last days in that way. In other words, we are in the last times still. Jesus has already come in the flesh and has ascended to heaven, while at the same time Satan is seeking to undermine true faith through false teaching. So, that's the first helpful concept to know in this passage.• Second is the word “antichrist.” Or the plural “antichrists.” The apostle John is the only one who uses that word in the Bible. It literally means against Christ. The Antichrist (capital A) is someone who will come and be the opposite of Christ. The apostle Paul spoke of the man of lawlessness – same idea. Jesus spoke of false Christs and false prophets. And all throughout history, people have been distracted trying to figure out who is the Antichrist (capital A). And let me say, the Protestant reformers were also distracted by this. In fact, in the original version of the Westminster Confession of Faith, it says that the Pope is the antichrist. One of the minor changes to the confession that our church uses today was the removal of that. The more important concept in these verses is the plural antichrists. John uses it in a general sense to mean false teachers who are teaching false doctrines about Jesus. In that sense, they are anti-Christ, against Christ. We'll get into that more but I didn't want you to be distracted thinking about THE Antichrist as I read.Hopefully that will help you as we now turn our attention to God's Word.Stand as you are able. Reading of 1 john 2:18-27PrayerAs you know, this is our third Sunday worshiping in the school here. It's great to have more space to spread out and grow. But one of the drawbacks is setting up every week, and then taking everything down and putting it in the storage closet. The many hands have made that helpful.One of the little things is not having a place for our plants… our pulpit plants. They obviously need sun, and the storage closet is pretty dark. So, we couldn't bring them here.You are probably thinking right now, “wait a second, I see two plants next to the pulpit, what are you talking about?” Well, the thing is, these are not real. They may look real. They appear to be genuine. The leaves are green. They are shaped like a small plant. But they are not a living organism. They don't grow. They don't need light or water. They are fake. In fact, the company name that made them is called Faux Real. That's faux – f-a-u-x. The French word for “fake.” They are not “for real” they are “faux real.” Cute.If you closely examine these plants, you would realize they are fake. Even close up they look good, but when you feel the leaves and look at the stems, it's pretty obvious. Well, in 1 John, chapter 2, the apostle is revealing false teachers. They were faux real – false. They may have looked real and sounded real. Their words may have been smooth, but they were not alive in Christ. They were dead. If I could borrow one of John's analogies, these false teachers were not in the light of God. They did not reflect the light. They did not walk in the light. They were utterly fake.We are nearing the end of chapter 2, and here is where we finally learn what was going on in the church – what John's readers were dealing with. And I want you to notice something. It's past tense. These false teachers, called “antichrists,” were no longer in the church. They had left. Verse 19, “they went out from us, but they were not of us.” But even though they were no longer part of the church, they were still trying to deceive the church. We see that in verse 26, “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.”That's why John needed to write about them. These false teachers were still around – out there. Breathing out their lies. Trying to look real… trying to steal sheep from God's flock.So, it was very important for John to call them out AND to call out their false teaching.Now, before we get into their false teaching, let me first remind you what John has been writing about. Because it directly relates to his words here. John has been giving us life tests. Tests for you and me to examine our faith and our lives – to see if we have an authentic faith.The first test was the test of obedience. The first few verses of chapter 2. Are you seeking to pursue God's commands which are in his Word? It's really important to realize that we do not come to faith through obedience to God's commands. No, John has been clear about that. Rather, the test was about whether you are seeking to live out God's commands, which testifies to a genuine faith.The second test was the love test. A true believer in Christ has a heart that desires to love others and demonstrate that love. We don't have a perfect love for others. No, we still sin (John has also been clear about that, too) but we should be striving to love others which includes forgiving and asking for forgiveness and listening well, among other things.The third test from last week – what Coleman preached on, was the world test. Are you in love with the world? Meaning the things of the world – the various idols in our culture; the cultural entrapments; the things that replace God; all which give empty hope. Do you love the world in that sense, more than you love God?Let me remind you of one very important thing here. John's desire is to give true believers assurance. Remember, if you truly know God in Christ, he wants you to know that you truly know God in Christ. And he has said that in many different ways. He said in chapter 1, “if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with him [God].” Or earlier in this chapter, “whoever keeps his word, in him truly is the love of God.” And also “whoever loves his brother abides in the light.” The apostle is not trying to get you to question your faith if you are a believer. These are pretty cut-and-dry life tests. Because part of giving assurance to true believers in Christ, is revealing what does not reflect true belief.Well, that same assurance is part of John's goal for this fourth test. Look at verse 21. “I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.” So, this test is about truth and error. And John's readers, by in large, know the truth. He wants, therefore, to affirm what is true and what is false. That's why I'm calling it the doctrine test. It's the test of what you believe. And John does not just say that there are false beliefs and false teachers. No, he gets specific about the false teaching. And it boils down to one main question. One central belief. And it's the most important question in your life… In fact, I would say, it's the most important question for everyone in the whole world. The question is this, “who is Jesus?” Who do you believe that Jesus is? There is not a single question more important in your life than that.In other words, the doctrine test is not about secondary matters – like your view on baptism or the end times. To be sure, those are important discussions, but those are secondary matters. They don't determine whether you are a Christian. The doctrine test here is about the center of Christianity, your faith in Christ. Who is Jesus… which by the way, includes his relationship to God the Father and God the Spirit. We'll also see that in these verses.And I don't think I'm overstating the importance of the matter. John calls these false teachers antichrists. He can't be any stronger than that. Even though they claim to be Christians, their teaching reveals that they are totally opposed to Christ. Anti-Christs. And because of that, they are not “of us” even though they came out “from us” as John puts it in verse 19. And in verse 26, as we already considered, John plainly says that they are trying to “deceive you.”Over the last few years, the superhero genre has been dominating the box office. Marvel. X-men, Transformers, DC comics. And of course, there are endless villains. Really evil villains like Thanos, the Green Goblin, Ultron, the Joker, Megatron. My favorite, Doctor Occ. Good versus evil. Light versus darkness. But the thing is, these villains rose to their evil dominance from outside of the superheroes. They don't claim to be superheros. They didn't begin good and turn evil. No, they were evil. They started that way. Now, I'm pretty sure one of the middle school boys is going to correct me. I'll probably hear, “you forgot about so and so. He was good before he was evil.”Well, the difficult thing in 1 John 2, is that these antichrists didn't arise outside the church, no they and their false teaching arose from inside the church. Which, as you can imagine, wreaked havoc in the church. And John was writing them to affirm that their departure was good for the church, and also so that they would be on guard against other false antichrists who would seek to destroy the church from within.But what was it? What was it that these false teachers had been teaching?Give a look at verses 22 and 23. There's a word in those verses that is repeated three times. It's the word “denies.” It says, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who,” again, it says “denies the Father and the Son.” And John says one more time, “No one who denies the Son has the Father.”The central false beliefs of these antichrists, these false teachers, was rejecting Jesus as the Christ. They were denying that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Oh, they believed in a man named Jesus, the person, but they denied that he was God in the flesh. They denied the incarnation. They denied that Jesus was God's Son.Some may have taught that Jesus was born as an ordinary man, but later in life God bestowed upon him his Spirit, and that's when he became the Messiah. But beloved, that is not what the Scripture teach about Jesus. It's not what Jesus taught about himself. No, in Jesus the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily. Colossians 2. He is the Word made flesh, John 1. The baby, the Christ child, is Immanuel, God with us, Matthew 1. God took on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Philippians 2. [Jesus] is the radiance of the Glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Hebrews 1.Any denial of Jesus as God's son or the denial of the incarnation in any way is a rejection of God's truth. And that could be flipped around. A denial of Jesus humanity is also antithetical to true belief.And I want you to notice something. These verses are not just about Jesus, God's Son. They also include God the Father and the Holy Spirit:• The reference to God the Father is clear. He's explicitly mentioned in verses 22, 23, and 24. • The Holy Spirit is also referenced in these verses. Verse 20, “you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you have all knowledge.” The reference to Holy One is a reference to Jesus Christ. He is referred to in the Scriptures as the Holy One or the Holy and Righteous One. And he anoints his people with the Holy Spirit. This anointing, verse 20, is associated with pouring out of the Holy Spirit. In fact, in his Gospel, John is very clear about the giving of the Holy Spirit to those in whom God abides. All true believers. And one of the roles of the Holy Spirit, as John explains in his Gospel, is the giving of knowledge through God's Word. That's also right there in verse 20. And finally, verse 27 continues the theme of this anointing, pointing to the Holy Spirit as our main teacher of God's Word. So all of those elements together – the Holy One, the anointing, the giving of knowledge all point to the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.To summarize, these verses center on a true understanding of who Jesus Christ is, but they also include Jesus' relationship to God the Father and God the Spirit. It teaches about the Trinity. You see, we can't separate a correct understanding about Jesus from a correct understanding of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Spirit.If you look in your bulletin, you'll see that we are going to recite the Nicene Creed in a little bit. Last week we affirmed the Apostle's Creed. We usually use them once a month or every other month. But given this content in 1 John, I thought it would be helpful to affirm them. These creeds have been very helpful to the church over the years. But they were written 200-300 years after John's letters. These creeds summarize what we believe the Scriptures teach about the Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they came about because of a variety of false teaching that had arisen.Like the false teaching that John was experiencing. The early church fathers, in fact, identified several heresies – several false teachings about Jesus. I've mentioned Gnosticism, but there was also Nesorianism, Docetism, Arianism, Adoptionism, and Donatism, plus a couple of others “isms.” And what the creeds do is help bring clarity and unity and protection to the church around the person and work of Christ, including God the Father and the Holy Spirit. And these verses in 1 John 2, tell us why that is important. Because when the doctrine of God is compromised, it strikes at the heart of Christianity.A few years ago, I had an ongoing dialog with a pastor friend. He was very much about holiness… pursuing holiness in our lives. Which is great. God calls us to pursue holiness and Godliness. That's clear in the Scriptures.But when I would preach a passage like this, my friends would sometimes say to me, “you didn't get to any application!” By that he meant more of the behavioral response to the text. To which I would reply “What do you mean, the application in this passage is the doctrine!”You see, the beauty of the Scriptures is that in them we learn who God is, what he has done for us, our hope in him, and our response to his character and love. Our doctrine and our lives both need to reflect the truth. The apostle John is clear about both. You see, the heart of these verses is believing the truth. I'll come back to what it means to believe the truth in a minute.But first, I want you to jump over to the beginning of chapter 4. Give a quick look down at it. The first 6 verses of chapter 4 are very similar to our text this morning. Antichrists, denials of Jesus, false teaching. In fact, I almost preached them together. But I changed my mind on Friday.When we get to those verses, which will be in the middle of February, I plan to apply this doctrinal test to false teaching in the church today. In other words, what teaching has or is arising today, which strikes at the core of Christianity. And they are many, and I plan to be specific. Worldly philosophies that are attempting to hijack the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the reason that I decided to just focus on chapter 2 this morning, so we would have more time at the beginning of chapter 4 on those ideologies.Let's go back to the creeds for a minute …while they have helped the church unify around a true understanding of Jesus as the Scriptures teach, there is still false doctrine about Jesus out there. I think the most obvious example of this are the Jehovah's Witnesses. They claim to be the true church, yet they deny Jesus' divinity. They believe that Jesus was a perfect man, but not God in the flesh. They fail the test of doctrine. Their teachers, as John describe them, are antichrists. Opposed to Jesus Christ.For the last 2-3 weeks, there have been a couple of JW followers on Main Street. Right downtown. They are trying, as verse 26 says, to deceive. I'm not saying they don't believe what they are teaching, rather that their teaching is a violation of the core beliefs of Biblical Christianity about Jesus, as the Scriptures teach.So, to summarize so far:• First, this fourth life test is the test of doctrine• Second, John is writing to the church because false teachers and false teaching had infiltrated the church. These antichrists had left the church, but their impact was still being felt.• Third, John was writing to the true believers to assure them of their truth belief.• And forth, this true belief centers around Jesus as God's son, who is fully and truly God and man. Jesus Christ is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit.So, now you know! These plants are not real. And neither is anyone who denies Jesus' nature as God or as man. They are rejecting the very foundation of our Christian faith. They are small “a” antichrists, rejecting him and rejecting the truth.As we come to a close, John includes for us, one more thing. What to do about this all.He calls you to believe and trust in Jesus.Look at the language at the end of verse 23. “Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.” Confessing is more than just believing. It's taking to heart and professing not just who Christ is but believing in the hope and redemption he offers to you. Verse 24 even expands on that. “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.” Deep within. Why? Verse 25 answer, because of the promise he made to us, “eternal life.”Friends, this is the hope of knowing and believing in Jesus. When you believe in him by faith, when you abide in him, he will abide in you, forever. Forever in his presence.After we sing this next hymn, we will declare together what we believe about God, and then we will celebrate the Lord's Supper, what we believe Jesus has done for us on the cross…. paving the way for that eternal life in him.Will you believe?

In a new podcast for History Reclaimed, Jeff Fynn-Paul a Senior Lecturer in Economic History and International Studies at Leiden University, The Netherlands tells us why he wants historical contributions to be valued on the “quality of the science” not on who's saying it. He calls this a new form of Donatism:

St. Augustine of Hippo (part 2) - From Pope Benedict's audience: After his Baptism, Augustine decided to return to Africa with his friends, with the idea of living a community life of the monastic kind at the service of God. However, while awaiting their departure in Ostia, his mother fell ill unexpectedly and died shortly afterwards, breaking her son's heart. Having returned to his homeland at last, the convert settled in Hippo for the very purpose of founding a monastery. In this city on the African coast he was ordained a priest in 391, despite his reticence, and with a few companions began the monastic life which had long been in his mind, dividing his time between prayer, study and preaching. All he wanted was to be at the service of the truth. He did not feel he had a vocation to pastoral life but realized later that God was calling him to be a pastor among others and thus to offer people the gift of the truth. He was ordained a Bishop in Hippo four years later, in 395. Augustine continued to deepen his study of Scripture and of the texts of the Christian tradition and was an exemplary Bishop in his tireless pastoral commitment: he preached several times a week to his faithful, supported the poor and orphans, supervised the formation of the clergy and the organization of mens' and womens' monasteries. In short, the former rhetorician asserted himself as one of the most important exponents of Christianity of that time. He was very active in the government of his Diocese - with remarkable, even civil, implications - in the more than 35 years of his Episcopate, and the Bishop of Hippo actually exercised a vast influence in his guidance of the Catholic Church in Roman Africa and, more generally, in the Christianity of his time, coping with religious tendencies and tenacious, disruptive heresies such as Manichaeism, Donatism and Pelagianism, which endangered the Christian faith in the one God, rich in mercy. And Augustine entrusted himself to God every day until the very end of his life: smitten by fever, while for almost three months his Hippo was being besieged by vandal invaders, the Bishop - his friend Possidius recounts in his Vita Augustini - asked that the penitential psalms be transcribed in large characters, "and that the sheets be attached to the wall, so that while he was bedridden during his illness he could see and read them and he shed constant hot tears" (31, 2). This is how Augustine spent the last days of his life. He died on 28 August 430, when he was not yet 76. We will devote our next encounters to his work, his message and his inner experience. The post DC10 St. Augustine of Hippo (part 2) – The Doctors of the Church: The Charism of Wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunson appeared first on Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts.

Two Heresies

by Ben Dehart

by Ben Dehart

by Ben Dehart

by Ben Dehart

The guys are starting the new year with some fresh content! Today, inspired by recent conversations, Jens and Lukas explore the "semis" of theology and Christian life. What do we make of terms like semi-Arianism or semi-Pelagianism? What about the term they (likely) coined, semi-Donatism? Tune in to hear their take.   Find us on: Email: doxologypodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @doxologypodcast Instagram: @doxologypodcast

Dr Taylor Marshall discusses the tumultuous pontificate of Pope Saint Melchiades following perhaps papal apostasy, a 2 year sede vacante, and the conversion of Constantine.Watch this new podcast episode by clicking here:Or listen to the audio mp3 here:If you'd like to order a copy of Taylor's new book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within, you can order it in Hardback, Kindle, or Audiobook.Check out Patreon Patron Benefits for Donating to Dr Taylor Marshall's Show!All these video discussions are free. Do you want to recommend a show, get signed books, and show support? Here's how: click on Patreon Patron link: Become a Patron of this Podcast: I am hoping to produce more free weekly podcast Videos. Please help me launch these videos by working with me on Patreon to produce more free content. In gratitude, I'll send you some signed books or even stream a theology event for you and your friends. Please become one of my patrons and check out the various tier benefits at: https://www.patreon.com/drtaylormarshallIf the audio player does not show up in your email or browser, please click here to listen.If you find this podcast episode helpful, please share this podcast on Facebook.Get more from the Taylor Marshall Show:Read Taylor Marshall's historical fiction Sword and Serpent Trilogy.Download the Study Guide at: http://swordandserpent.comTake classed with Dr Marshall at the New Saint Thomas Institute. Please visit newsaintthomas.com for more details.Please Share Your Feedback for Taylor Marshall Show:I'd love to read your feedback: While you listen to today's podcast, would you please take 30 seconds to write a review? Please click here to Rate this Podcast!iTunes: 3,549,958 downloadsYoutube: 10,311,915 downloadsSHOUT OUTS: A huge “shout out” to all 1,692 of you who wrote amazing 5-star reviews at iTunes. Please rate this podcast by clicking here. From there you can leave a review. I appreciate you for this! Thank you!How to Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or Youtube:Apple/Mac Users: Please subscribe via iTunes by clicking here and then clicking on “View in iTunes.” Android Users: For listening to The Taylor Marshall Show on Android devices (free) using:Android Stitcher app.Android Beyond Pod app from the Google Play Store.Android Pocketcasts app.Spotify Users: For listening to The Taylor Marshall Show on Spotify, search in Spotify for “Taylor Marshall.” Our you can listen/watch to the Taylor Marshall Show via Youtube:If you like this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes.7 The post 771: Popes, Sede Vacante, Donatism, and Constantine [Podcast] appeared first on Taylor Marshall.

Dr Taylor Marshall discusses the tumultuous pontificate of Pope Saint Melchiades following perhaps papal apostasy, a 2 year sede vacante, and the conversion of Constantine. Watch this new podcast episode by clicking here: Or listen to the audio mp3 here: If you'd like to order a copy of Taylor's new book Infiltration: The Plot to […] The post 771: Popes, Sede Vacante, Donatism, and Constantine [Podcast] appeared first on Taylor Marshall.

On this Heretics of History episode, Lukas explores the life and times of Donatus Magnus. His name is where we get Donatism from. So what's the deal with this guy? Very little is known about him, but he is certainly worth exploring nonetheless.   Find us on: Email: doxologypodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @doxologypodcast Instagram: @doxologypodcast

Heresy Month continues with this episode on the heresy known as Donatism. What is it? Where does it originate? What are the implications of this heresy today? Tune in to learn more.   Find us on: Email: doxologypodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @doxologypodcast Instagram: @doxologypodcast

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - Pope Francis and President Joe Biden could meet for the first time since Biden's election, as early as June 15, according to sources in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace. Biden and Pope Francis spoke on the phone several days after Biden's election. Although the in-person meeting has not been confirmed, another source from the Vatican Secretary of State said that the meeting “is likely to occur.” https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/247883/pope-francis-and-president-biden-may-meet-on-june-15-sources-say For the second year in a row, Chinese authorities have forbidden people in Hong Kong from gathering at a candlelight vigil on the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Last year, thousands of people in Hong Kong defied the ban and gathered for a vigil, remembering the thousands of people who died in the 1989 massacre. An auxiliary bishop celebrated a memorial Mass in Hong Kong last year, and this year churches across the island will be celebrating Masses for the dead. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/247891/hong-kong-advocacy-organization-condemns-chinas-refusal-to-allow-commemoration-of-tiananmen-square-protests Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising in Germany, has offered his resignation to Pope Francis. The influential cardinal said he is resigning in part because of mistakes he made in handling the abuse crisis in Germany. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/247895/cardinal-marx-offers-resignation-to-pope-francis Pope Francis has hinted at new regulations regarding the celebration of the Mass in the extraordinary form, although he has not yet spoken about the matter in detail. A source at the Congregation for Divine worship told CNA this week that the pope may soon issue a document on the matter. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/247884/pope-francis-believed-to-be-preparing-restrictions-for-the-traditional-mass A historic Catholic abbey in Belgium is brewing beer again for the first time in 200 years. The Grimbergen Abbey, near Brussels, was forced to abandon beer-making, when the abbey was dissolved, following the French Revolution. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/247878/beer-making-returns-to-belgian-catholic-abbey-after-200-years Today the Church honors St. Francis Caracciolo, a 16th-century priest known for his ardent devotion to the Blessed Sacrament; as well as St. Optatus, a fourth-century convert from paganism, best known for his opposition to the heresy of Donatism. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-francis-caracciolo-489 https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-optatus-695

This week we discuss another church heresy known as Donatism and how it relates to our world today.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the theological giant Augustine (354-430AD). Specifically, Andy covers Augustine's early life, conversion, and battle against Manichaeism and Donatism. The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.14: Augustine’s Early Life (354-430) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the theological giant Augustine (354-430AD). Specifically, Andy covers Augustine's early life, conversion, and battle against Manichaeism and Donatism. In the production of this podcast, Andy Davis referenced: Book 1 of John Piper's 21 Servants of Sovereign Joy: Faithful, Flawed, and Fruitful.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the theological giant Augustine (354-430AD). Specifically, Andy covers Augustine's early life, conversion, and battle against Manichaeism and Donatism. The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.14: Augustine’s Early Life (354-430) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the theological giant Augustine (354-430AD). Specifically, Andy covers Augustine's early life, conversion, and battle against Manichaeism and Donatism. The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.14: Augustine’s Early Life (354-430) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the theological giant Augustine (354-430AD). Specifically, Andy covers Augustine's early life, conversion, and battle against Manichaeism and Donatism.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the theological giant Augustine (354-430AD). Specifically, Andy covers Augustine's early life, conversion, and battle against Manichaeism and Donatism. The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.14: Augustine’s Early Life (354-430) appeared first on Two Journeys.

ROUND ONE   1 – CONTESTANT ONE) Which Apostle was a tax collector? A) Judas B) Matthew C) Philip 1 – CONTESTANT Two) Which of the Apostles was a carpenter? A) Philip B) Thaddeus C) None that we know of 2 – CONTESTANT ONE) What is transubstantiation? A) The replacement of the substance of bread and wine with the substance of the body and blood of Jesus. B) The presence of the body and blood of Jesus within the substance of bread and wine. C) The real presence of Jesus along side the bread and wine. 2 – CONTESTANT Two) What is concupiscence? A) The total corruption of the human heart that is a consequence of the fall of Adam. B) Sexual desire that is excessive. C) An inclination to evil. CCC 405   3 – CONTESTANT ONE) Apologist and speaker KARLO Broussard has a brand-new book called Purgatory Is for Real: Good News About the Afterlife for Those Who Aren’t Perfect Yet. What happens in Purgatory? A) Souls not ready for Heaven temporarily pass through hell to have sin burned away. B) Those who died in grave sin get a last chance to repent and receive Heaven. C) Holy souls with remnants of sin are purified. 3 – CONTESTANT Two) Apologist and speaker KARLO Broussard has a brand-new book called Purgatory Is for Real: Good News About the Afterlife for Those Who Aren’t Perfect Yet. In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives an image of purgatory when he says: A) some “spirits are in prison” (actually 1 Peter 3) B) some people “will be saved, but only as through fire.” C) some people are handed over to Satan so that they will learn not to blaspheme God. (see 1 Tim 1:20)   ROUND TWO – 1 – CONTESTANT ONE) Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Psalm 118 says to “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is ____:” A) A jealous God. B) Great. C) Good. 1 – CONTESTANT Two) Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Jesus healed ten Lepers and only one returned to thank him. That man was: A) A Samaritan. B) A Pharisee. C) A Roman centurion. 2 – CONTESTANT ONE) Which of the following is not a heresy? A) Donatism. B) Marcionism. C) 2 – CONTESTANT Two) Which of the following is a heresy? A) Ecumenism B) Adoptionism C) Monasticism 3 – CONTESTANT ONE) Which of these qualities will we have when we are in Heaven and raised from the dead? A) Impeccability B) Omniscience C) Simplicity 3 – CONTESTANT Two) Which of these qualities does God have? A) Mutability B) Passibility C) Incorporeality   FINAL JUDGEMENT FALSE Every adult under 58 and in good health is required to keep the Friday fast in Advent. TRUE The Apostolic Fathers were early bishops, some of whom knew the Apostles. FALSE In some cases it is morally acceptable to use In Vitro Fertilization. FALSE The Church does not consider private revelation to be possible because revelation is complete. FALSE It was absolutely necessary that Mary be a virgin in order to give birth to God’s son. TRUE Salvation is from the Jews. TRUE Jesus loves us with both a human and a divine love. …

Scott and Caleb are joined by Philip Bartelt to discuss Donatism. Phil highlights the history of this condemned teaching, while Scott and Caleb ask about the ways Donatism might show up today.  Show Notes Support the Show Rate the Show Philip Bartelt   

Today's show explores Donatism, considers God's justice and the death of Uzzah and opines on Twitter wars.

Pat offers a few personal reflections on the importance of philosophy, then continues the series on fallacies and heresies, covering the strawman fallacy and theological heresy of Donatism! ... Original episode of Fallacies and Heresies, here: https://www.chroniclesofstrength.com/ep-406-fallacies-and-heresies-part-1/ ... The Pat Flynn Show If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you could subscribe to, and leave a review for, The Pat Flynn show on iTunes HERE or Stitcher HERE. Reading your reviews and hearing your feedback is what keeps me fired up to make The Pat Flynn Show happen. Thank you!

Church is more than a building. It's a people. So is social distancing a church-ending threat? Or is COVID-19 offering the church fresh opportunities for mission? Patrick (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/) discuss the most important threats facing the church today. Interested in more content like this? Go back and listen to Keith's episode Are We Hypocrites? (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/are-we-hypocrites-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-12-1/) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our Twitter (https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo) @TheCrossingCOMO.   Outline 0:20 - How the coronavirus impacts the church 2:40 - Barriers to entry 5:50 - A new mission field: online 8:10 - Early adopters vs. traditionalists 10:15 - The Church: Jesus's establishment ( Acts 20.28 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+20%3A28&version=NIV) ) 12:35 - Local churches vs. Mega churches ( Hebrews 13.7 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+13%3A7&version=NIV) ) 15:50 - Missional churches 16:40 - Missing the real threats to the church 20:20 - Are We Hypocrites? (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/are-we-hypocrites-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-12-1/) 22:50 - Where are the serious Christians? ( Acts 6.1 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+6%3A1&version=NIV) ) 24:40 - Donatism (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Donatists) 27:10 - Is power bad? 28:50 - Division, gossip, and conflict resolution ( Proverbs 18.17 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+18%3A17&version=ESV) ) 34:00 - Connecting Jesus and the Church 36:30 - Acts 20.29-30 (Acts%2020.29-30) 37:00 - Questions to wrestle with 39:20 - Subscribe. Rate. Share.   Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo)   Scripture Ephesians 5.1-2: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5%3A1-2&version=NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5%3A1-2&version=NIV) Acts 20.28: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+20%3A28&version=NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+20%3A28&version=NIV) Hebrews 13.7: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+13%3A7&version=NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+13%3A7&version=NIV) Acts 6.1: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+6%3A1&version=NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+6%3A1&version=NIV) Philippians 4.2-3: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=philippians+4%3A2-3&version=NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=philippians+4%3A2-3&version=NIV) Proverbs 18.17: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+18%3A17&version=ESV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+18%3A17&version=ESV) Acts 20.29-30: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+20%3A29-30&version=NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+20%3A29-30&version=NIV)   Resources Donatism ("Donatist" from Encyclopaedia Britannica): https://www.britannica.com/topic/Donatists (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Donatists)   Related Are We Hypocrites?: https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/are-we-hypocrites-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-12-1/ (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/are-we-hypocrites-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-12-1/) Support this podcast

Today's JCE considers the ancient heresy of Donatism, the Westminster Catechism's affirmation of God's grace to us and how the devil really is in the details.

Augustine's Confessions In Our Time Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Augustine of Hippo's account of his conversion to Christianity and his life up to that point. Written c397AD, it has many elements of autobiography with his scrutiny of his earlier life, his long relationship with a concubine, his theft of pears as a child, his work as an orator and his embrace of other philosophies and Manichaeism. Significantly for the development of Christianity, he explores the idea of original sin in the context of his own experience. The work is often seen as an argument for his Roman Catholicism, a less powerful force where he was living in North Africa where another form of Christianity was dominant, Donatism. While Augustine retells many episodes from his own life, the greater strength of his Confessions has come to be seen as his examination of his own emotional development, and the growth of his soul. With Kate Cooper Professor of History at the University of London and Head of History at Royal Holloway Morwenna Ludlow Professor of Christian History and Theology at the University of Exeter and Martin Palmer Visiting Professor in Religion, History and Nature at the University of Winchester Producer: Simon Tillotson.

St. Augustine of Hippo (part 2) - From Pope Benedict's audience: After his Baptism, Augustine decided to return to Africa with his friends, with the idea of living a community life of the monastic kind at the service of God. However, while awaiting their departure in Ostia, his mother fell ill unexpectedly and died shortly afterwards, breaking her son's heart. Having returned to his homeland at last, the convert settled in Hippo for the very purpose of founding a monastery. In this city on the African coast he was ordained a priest in 391, despite his reticence, and with a few companions began the monastic life which had long been in his mind, dividing his time between prayer, study and preaching. All he wanted was to be at the service of the truth. He did not feel he had a vocation to pastoral life but realized later that God was calling him to be a pastor among others and thus to offer people the gift of the truth. He was ordained a Bishop in Hippo four years later, in 395. Augustine continued to deepen his study of Scripture and of the texts of the Christian tradition and was an exemplary Bishop in his tireless pastoral commitment: he preached several times a week to his faithful, supported the poor and orphans, supervised the formation of the clergy and the organization of mens' and womens' monasteries. In short, the former rhetorician asserted himself as one of the most important exponents of Christianity of that time. He was very active in the government of his Diocese - with remarkable, even civil, implications - in the more than 35 years of his Episcopate, and the Bishop of Hippo actually exercised a vast influence in his guidance of the Catholic Church in Roman Africa and, more generally, in the Christianity of his time, coping with religious tendencies and tenacious, disruptive heresies such as Manichaeism, Donatism and Pelagianism, which endangered the Christian faith in the one God, rich in mercy. And Augustine entrusted himself to God every day until the very end of his life: smitten by fever, while for almost three months his Hippo was being besieged by vandal invaders, the Bishop - his friend Possidius recounts in his Vita Augustini - asked that the penitential psalms be transcribed in large characters, "and that the sheets be attached to the wall, so that while he was bedridden during his illness he could see and read them and he shed constant hot tears" (31, 2). This is how Augustine spent the last days of his life. He died on 28 August 430, when he was not yet 76. We will devote our next encounters to his work, his message and his inner experience. The post DC10 St. Augustine of Hippo (part 2) – The Doctors of the Church: The Charism of Wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunson appeared first on Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts.