COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Sometimes I ponder the surprising direction my life has taken. A consummate “people pleaser” as a student, I would never have thought I might end up doing any type of apologetics. Then I think about the fact that God says He knew my days before I came to be:
Your eyes have seen my unshaped substance; And in Your book all of them were written The days that were formed [for me], When as yet there was not one of them.—Psalm 139:16 LSB
Even more, Paul tells us that God even prepared the work He intended for us to do:
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.—Ephesians 2:10 LSB
It was never my intention to help people see the hidden deception within Adventism, yet I see that in so many ways the Lord taught me and prepared me to do the work I do. Furthermore, I see His hand on all my colleagues who engage in similar work. The Lord asks us to speak the truth and to shine the light into the darkness, helping the deceived to see reality, and helping those who know Jesus to perceive the deception intended to soothe them into acceptance when their Adventist friends (or others caught in other false belief systems) assure them that they know Jesus.
Apologists, I have learned, are often marginalized at the edges of Christian society. Often they speak about things the general Christian population does not want to know. They call believers to account and make them aware of the dangers confronting Christian fellowships. At the same time, apologists encourage their brothers, reminding them that the Lord has called and equipped them to live with an integrity that the average population does not have or understand.
An Apologetics Legacy
A couple weeks ago I “met” an early apologist who wrote sometime around the mid-second century. This anonymous early Christian left a manuscript known as The Epistle of Diognetus. The author called himself “Mathetes”, but “Mathetes” simply means “disciple”. Diognetus is also unknown, but because he is addressed as “His Excellency”, it’s possible he had significant social rank. Although this epistle is dated somewhere between the mid-second and third centuries, the oldest known manuscript of this epistle, which contained 12 chapters, dated from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but unfortunately it was destroyed in a fire in 1870.
This entire epistle was dedicated to describing the differences between a Christian and a non-Christian. The author also contrasts the Jewish religion with the fulfillment of Judaism accomplished by the Lord Jesus and practiced by Christians. He even calls the Jews “foolish” who continue clinging to the letter of the law instead of living in the freedom brought by Christ’s completed atonement.
In Chapter Five of his epistle, this early Christian apologist described the kind of life the Lord Jesus calls His true believers to live.
I had never heard of this early defense of Christianity before our pastor Gary Inrig quoted from it near the end of his sermon a couple weeks ago. He read this as he ended his July 5 sermon in which he reminded us that we are citizens of an earthly nation, but we are concurrently citizens of the Kingdom of God which is not of this earth.
The passage Gary read was compelling, and I admit it not only clarified our role and position in the world as true Christians, but it also made me think of how differently I see the Lord’s call and commission on my life now than I imagined it to be when I was an Adventist. I will share below the quote from the Epistle of Diognetus that our pastor Gary read to us in his sermon:
For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they seek some unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric lifestyle. This teaching of theirs has not been discovered by the thought and reflection of ingenious men, nor do they promote any human doctrine, as some do. But while they live in both Greek ad barbarian cities, as each one’s lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. They marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not expose their offspring. They share their food but not their wives. They are “in the flesh,” but they do not live “according to the flesh.”
They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws, indeed in their private lives they transcend the laws. They love everyone, and by everyone they are persecuted. They are unknown, yet they are condemned; they are put to death, yet they are brought to life. They are poor, yet they make many rich; they are in need of everything, yet they abound in everything. They are dishonored, yet they are glorified in their dishonor; they are slandered, yet they are vindicated. They are cursed, yet they bless; they are insulted, yet they offer respect. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when they are punished, they rejoice as though brought to life. By the Jews they are assaulted as foreigners, and by the Greeks they are persecuted, yet those who hate them are unable to give a reason for their hostility.
As I’ve pondered this quote, I realize that in spite of the passage of two millennia, nothing has changed. Christians look like “normal” people. God places His people in the nations. Unlike Israel, which was God’s nation in the world where Yahweh revealed His glory and His faithfulness, Christians are saved as individuals and placed among the nations. The church is largely a gentile reality, although there is a steadily growing number of Jews who are also coming to faith.
What sets Christians apart is not a unique national identity as it had been for Israel. Now what sets God’s people apart is the fact that we are literally new creations. When we trust the finished atonement of the Lord Jesus and believe that He has completed everything necessary for our salvation, He causes us to pass from death to life (Jn 5:24). He gives us a new heart and a new spirit, as He promised to do in Ezekiel 36:26, 27, and He places His own Spirit in us.
When we are born again by the work of God, we become new creations, and Jesus’ personal righteousness is credited to us. We are completely new inside—but we are still living in mortal bodies.
We still live among the spiritually dead, yet we bring the life of Christ with us wherever we go. We think, act, and behave differently. In fact, our spiritual life and our Spirit-led reactions and decisions and love confound those who do not share our Life. Christians today become targets of hatred and persecution just as they did in the second century!
But the Babies…
The passage from the quote that really hit my heart, though was this: “They marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not expose their offspring. They share their food but not their wives.”
“Exposing babies” was a common practice in the ancient world, and it was a way people handled unwanted children. Below is an explanation of the practice of exposing babies taken from the online source ThoughtCo.com:
One aspect of Roman society that tends to horrify modern people, an aspect that isn’t limited to the Romans, but was practiced by many others, excluding the ancient Jews and Etruscans, is the practice of abandoning their infants. This is generally known as exposure because the infants were exposed to the elements.…
Exposure allowed poor people to get rid of extra mouths to feed, especially the mouths of baby girls who were also a dowry liability.
Children who were imperfect in some way were also exposed.…
Exposure was also used to get rid of children whose paternity was unclear or undesirable, but the exposure wasn’t the only method that was available. Roman women employed contraceptives and received abortions, as well.
The paterfamilias technically had the right to get rid of any infant under his power.
Exposed infants might be snatched by wild animals for food, or they might be taken by slavers who made money providing children to be sold as slaves for whatever purposes the purchaser might desire. What was certain was that the exposed children were abandoned by their families for reasons of convenience or social impact—and the children suffered or died as a result.
The fact that the Epistle to Diognetus specifically mentioned that Christians did not expose their children hit me with a deep emotional force. At a fundamental level, Adventism does not value children. Adventism allows abortions, and Adventist doctors perform abortions. As an Adventist I had no problem with the idea of abortion. In fact, I couldn’t understand those who did!
My Adventist worldview taught me that the unborn were not fully “viable”. We believed that people were bodies that breathed; when a person ceased to breathe, he ceased to exist, and his body went into the ground. In fact, in Adventism’s exposition of their 28 Fundamental Beliefs, Seventh-day Adventists Believe, on page 94 it states: “[A] new soul comes into existence whenever a child is born, each ‘soul’ being a new unit of life uniquely different and separate from other similar units.” Notice that a new soul comes into existence not at conception but when the baby is BORN.
I was thoroughly physicalist. I did not believe nor understand that a person’s identity is a spiritual reality separate from the body, that at conception a full person came into existence, body and soul. Even though the baby had to grow, the entire identity of that new person existed from conception.
As an Adventist I almost resented people who felt squeamish about abortion. Yet I struggled with the idea, and I finally admitted to myself that it felt somehow wrong to abort a baby when it had developed enough to be able to survive if it were born early. Yet I couldn’t define the difference that a few weeks made.
When I became a true believer and realized that humans have spirits, that “we” live in mortal bodies, and we go to be with Christ when our bodies die, my grief at my cavalier attitude about abortion overwhelmed me. In fact, the issue of the babies still moves me to speak out against the Adventist physicalist worldview. The heresy that Adventists teach—that humans are merely breathing bodies with nothing that survives death—and with nothing identifying them personally before they breathe at birth—this heresy twists all of Scripture!
The anonymous epistle to the unknown Diognetus impacted me with the realization that one way Christians are different from pagans is that they see their babies—at every age and stage—as people created in God’s image with unique identities known to God—just as Psalm 139 confirms. Christians treasure and protect the lives of their babies—and the babies are witnesses of God.
Furthermore, Christians treasure and protect their marriages! When people are new creations, made alive with the resurrection life of Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, God equips them to live above the consequences stated in Genesis 3 after Adam and Eve sinned. Only in Christ is there hope of having love and respect in a marriage that protects and nourishes the husband and the wife.
Two thousand years ago, an unknown apologist stated the ways the new birth changes Christians and makes them different in the world—and two of the ways this new spiritual life makes them different is in their protection of babies and children, and in the protection and valuing of their wives.
God has always had His people, and He has always raised up His apologists to both defend the faith and to remind God’s people that living for Him is counter-cultural while remaining embedded within the culture. I thank Him for revealing reality to me, and I thank Him for revealing to me the truth about the babies. I pray that He will keep me faithful to help others shaped by Adventism to see the truth about who God is and who we are—and the babies are His most unexpected witnesses! †
Sources
Gary Inrig, “Dual Citizens”
https://www.gotquestions.org/Letter-to-Diognetus.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/roman-exposure-of-infants-118370
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