In Revelation 2-3 there are two Churches with nothing bad said about them and two with nothing good said about them. Of the three that have mixed reviews a casual assumption is often that Pergamon and Thyatira are little better then the two with nothing good said while Ephesus leans towards being more positive
I feel that’s an oversimplification, I don’t necessary want to argue for looking at it the exact opposite, but what I find notable is that with Pergamon and Thyatira it’s really only some of them who have the problem, the Church as a whole is judged a bit for not dealing with them but it’s mainly just these sub groups who have the problem and so the prophecy of judgment is also on just them. With Ephesus however it is the community as a whole who has “left thy first love” and thus the community as a whole who will have their Candlestick removed if they don’t repent.
What is the sin of Ephesus then? The clues the immediate context itself gives us are unclear, “left thy first love” and not doing what they did in the beginning can be interpreted as referring to a lot of things.
The only other verse of the KJV that uses the words “first love” in sequence like that is 1 John 14:19 which uses them grammatically differently and so I don’t think can solidly be assumed to be talking about the same thing.
The virtue of Ephesus is that they care about being doctrinally sound, they may not actually be more doctrinally sound then anyone else, but they strive to be. That’s why they rejected the Nicolaitans and False Apostles. Maybe their vice is something that often has a risk of going with their virtue. Maybe in their zeal to reject those heretics they’ve accidentally rejected some they were meant to welcome?
Of the things the Early Church was doing in the beginning, the two that were most explicitly their mission statement, were spreading The Gospel and whatever Matthew 16:19 is about. But I don't “spreading The Gospel” means what most Evangelicals think it means, we were told to Be a Witness.
In Matthew 16:19 Jesus quotes Isaiah 22:22, the Key He gives Peter here is the Key of David. To Catholics this is the source of Papal Authority, to the Orthodox and High Church Protestants this goes to all of the Clergy, not just one leader at the top. But to those of us who take seriously the Priesthood of All Believers this is an authority inherited by all Believers, by all who Confess what Peter confessed in verse 16.
I am a Continuationist on the issue of the Spiritual Gifts, but I do feel many Pentecostals and Charismatics are making a mistake in seeing the Binding and Loosing that this verse talked about as being mainly about Spiritual Warfare, benign or losing Demons. There is something else Jesus says in The Gospels that echos Matthew 16:19 in a way that I feel clarifies it, and that’s John 20:23 “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” It’s about our authority to forgive Sins.
In the mid Third Century after the Decian Persecution had subsided there was a controversy in the Church, principally in Italy and North Africa about the issue of readmitting those who had lapsed during the persecution. The mainstream Church sided with allowing readmittance after a penance had been done while the Novatians refused to allow any to be readmitted. Later in the Fourth Century after the Diocletian Persecution and Edict of Milan this issue emerged again but the Donatists were not as extreme as the Novatians for them the focus was simply on allowing a formally Lapsed Christian to be part of the Clergy.
It amazes me that anyone who read The New Testament considered this issue open for debate. Peter himself lapsed, three times, and was under less immediate risk of losing his life then anyone who lapsed during the Decian or Diocletian Persecutions. His penance for these denials is recorded in John 21:15-19, Peter is forgiven and his position of leadership is reaffirmed.
Those who today sympathize with the Novatian position will cite passages from Hebrews 6 or others that are the same ones used by those who say Salvation can be lost, but Hebrew 6 is the core passage. The context of Hebrews 6 is about explaining why some Apostates don’t repent, using it to prove a claimed repentance is insincere misses the point. There are some people The Holy Spirit will for the time being leave where they are (I don’t believe The Spirit gives up on any permanently since I believe in Universal Salvation).
1 Corinthians 12:3 proclaims that no one can confess Jesus is Lord except it be by The Holy Spirit. 1 John 14:15 says anyone who confesses that Jesus is The Son of God, God dwells in Him. Later 1st John 5:4-5 says that anyone who believes Jesus is The Son of God overcomes The World because they are Born of God.
Fake Christians can theoretically exist in the most literal sense, someone can simply lie about what they believe, but the concern so many Conservative Christians have about the existence of people who think they are Christians but are not is invalid, The New Testament assures us such people can’t exist.
So the Novatians were wrong, and even the milder position of the Donatists was wrong. And I think wrong in a way that is at least similar in spirit to how the Ephesus of Revelation was wrong. Since I’ve connected them spiritually can I also connect them historically?
The Catholic Encyclopedia says John Chrysostom shut down some Novatian Churches active in Ephesus in his time. Could it be that it was those Churches who more directly descended from the Christian Community of Ephesus the book of Revelation was addressing?
The main group of Christians active today who desire to claim the Novatians and Donatists were right are the Landmark Baptists. I do not believe in any actual historical continuity between Ancient Novatians or Donatists and contemporary Baptists of any kind, but that the Landmarkists desire to identify with them on this issue means they share their Ephesian vice. So I shall devote the rest of this post to dealing with historical misconceptions about these groups that the Landmarkists perpetuate.
First I should cite someone before me who did similar work. Tyler Robbins on the Wordpress Blog The Eccentric Fundamentalist. But I don’t actually agree with him on everything.
The main thing I disagree with is that I do believe the Novatians were Credo-Baptists. Socrates records that they did not observe the Sacrament of Confirmation which only makes sense if they were Credo-Baptists. It’s well known that he was heavily influenced by Tertullian who argued against Infant Baptism but for the wrong reasons as it is tied to his own belief in a type of Baptismal Regeneration, the idea that Sins committed after Baptism are what can’t be forgiven.
The Church in Rome may have been practicing Infant Baptism already, but it wasn’t yet the rigid Dogma it would become, it wasn’t till the late 4th Century that a belief in Unbaptized Babies being damned to endless punishment in hell began to be popularized by Catholics like Augustine and Pelegius and Cyril of Alexandria. So Novatian could have disagreed with the practice without really seeing it as something so central to his views.
Robbins himself quoted something that contradicts his assertion of Infant Baptism being already Universal, if Novatian himself wasn’t Baptized till his till a time he thought he was about to die then he wasn’t Baptized as an infant. And if he was a convert he wasn’t Baptized as soon as he converted either. It also sounds very in agreement with Tertullian's position.
The Apostolic Traditions are not the solid evidence he thinks it is either, there is increased scholarly skepticism it was even used in Rome and certainly that was the standard universal form. The earliest references to Infant Baptism existing are Origen and Tertullian, Origen defends it and Tertullian is against but both speak of it in a way that only makes sense if it’s a new custom.
The error of Baptismal Regeneration came first and then Infant Baptism came from that, not the other way around.
But Robbins is very correct in pointing out the ways in which Novatian was certainly not a Congregationalist. Novatian was quite Authoritarian and Undemocratic.
However while I oppose Novatianism I’m not as entirely in agreement with Cyprian as Robbins is. You see Cyprian was actually the centrist in this dispute, while Novatian disagreed with him from the right, others like the confusingly similarly named Novatus disagreed with Cyprian from the left. Based on my understanding of John 20 every Believer has the authority to forgive sins not merely the clergy, and based on John 21 the penance is pretty simple actually. Cyprian believed people insincere in their repentance were obvious and easy to spot, in my view even Cyprian would have rejected people he shouldn’t have,
The Landmarkists love to treat Novatian and Donatist as if they were simply different words for the same group, and the fact that many in the Mainstream Roman Church of the 4th and 5th Centuries who viewed both as heretics lumped them together helps them do that. But the Donatists were huge fans of Cyprian, to them they were the more faithful follower of Cyprian then the mainstream Church. Augustine of Hippo when criticizing the Donatists confirms they held to the same Church Polity as the mainstream Church.
The Donatists were condemned for doing Rebaptisms, and that’s the other source of confusion. Because the 16th Century Protestant Anabaptists were doing all their Rebaptisms mainly because of their belief in Infant Baptisms being invalid these Landmarkist pseudo-historians assume that must always be the reason for Rebaptism. Cyprian was a supporter of Infant Baptism but who did call for Rebaptizing those who had been Baptized by people he considered heretics, like the Novatians. Augustine of Hippo when arguing with Donatists said Cyprian was wrong on that issue.
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