A Reason for Contending

Today, proponents of a technocratic worldview can be found even within Protestant churches. This is sad given that Protestantism has historically opposed the tyrannical exercise of civil and, more importantly, ecclesiastical authority. Yet under the guise of moving away from the “expressive individualism” of the world, some prominent putatively Reformed men have begun to embrace and promote communitarianism,¹ “a 20th Century political and social ideology emphasizing the interests of the community over those of the individual.”² Applied within a Christian context, communitarianism endorses a form of ecclesiastical authority that has more in common with the authoritarianism of Romanism than it does with the Reformed teaching of the priesthood of all believers.

This may account for the popular view today that the accusation of heresy against a professed minister of the Word of God can only be made by an ecclesiastical body after many days, months, or even years of debate, and not by an individual believer — especially one who does not hold ministerial office. This may also account for the popular misinterpretation of Romans 13 that led numerous professed Christians to bow the knee to Caesar over the past two years, and neglect their duties to Christ and his people.

But what do the Scriptures teach? Is it the case that only an ecclesiastical body can pronounce a professed minister of the Word of God to be a heretic, and that only after much deliberation? Thankfully, the answer from Scripture is a very clear “NO!” And to see this, we need look no further than the small epistle of Jude.

Jude’s Audience

While the book is only a chapter long, it is extremely dense with teaching. This is the case as respects its content, but also as respects its intended addressees. Jude’s epistle is known as a catholic epistle, i.e. a general epistle, which was written for all Christians from all churches. Unlike the epistles to the Corinthians, or those to the Thessalonians, which have a subsequent universal audience (i.e. all Christians who would read them after their original audience had received them), Jude was written with no geographically specific people group in mind. This means that when Jude tells his audience to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,”³ he is telling all Christians the same thing. Unlike the admonitions to pastors or husbands or children found in other epistles, this directive applies to all Christians.

A Common Faith, Salvation, and Responsibility

Jude begins his epistle by first acknowledging that Christians possess a common salvation (v.3a). He then moves on to appeal to all Christians to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (v.3b). The phrase “the saints” is universal, applying to all Christians, and this once again reinforces the identity of his audience, the recipients of his appeal and command to contend for the faith. What is common, then, is not only the salvation by grace and mercy from God alone (vv.1-3a), but also the responsibility of all Christians to contend for the faith we have in common.

Common Enemies

Jude explains that the enemies of the church are men who

…have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.⁴

They are men who, like their spiritual and typological predecessors in the Old Testament (viz. they enemies of Israel), “[rely] on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.”⁵ Moreover, “these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.”⁶

These enemies of the church are further characterized by Jude as

…grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.⁷

What is important to note here is that these men are false teachers within the church. Jude does not mention this explicitly, but it is implied by his description of how these false teachers “creep” into the church and pervert the grace of God. We see this when we compare Jude's description of the false teachers to Paul's description of the false teachers in his epistle to Timothy. The apostle described them to Timothy as men who

…those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.⁸

Similarly, the apostle Peter writes —

…false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.⁹

Jude is describing, warning against, and commanding Christians to contend for the faith against false teachers within the church.

The Reason for Our Contending

The church as a whole is to strive for the faith against false teachers. Jude is not ambiguous about this, and he says nothing about ecclesiastical trials and hearings. Instead, he states the truth clearly — false teachers will come into the church sneakily, but they will be known by their doctrinal and behavioral fruit, and it is the duty of all Christians to recognize these wolves in sheep’s clothing. Elsewhere Paul echoes this teaching, stating that it is the church’s responsibility as a whole to “watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught[, and] avoid them.”¹⁰

While we are to respect and honor and support our elders, we are not called to blindly and unthinkingly submit ourselves to them. We are nowhere told that we have no right or responsibility to call out false teachers, men who meet the qualifications laid out above and elsewhere in the New Testament. Rather, we are told the exact opposite. And lest someone say that non-ministers identifying false teachers as heretics is the cause of ecclesiastical division, let Jude offer this correction —

…you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.¹¹

We are called to contend for the faith because false teachers are now, or will be in the future, among us, and their teaching and behavior is divisive, destructive to the loving unity and fellowship we are to have in our common faith.

—h.

1. In some cases, this is very plain to see. For instance, Baptist Russell Moore has openly advocated that it is time to “replace moral majoritarianism with moral communitarianism” (source). Similarly, CREC minister Peter J. Leithart has argued that Puritan theological giant William Perkins embraced and promoted, in an imitable manner, a version of puritan communitarianism (source). Likewise, Presbyterian Tim Keller has openly embraced and promoted a swath of unorthodox sociopolitical and economic views derived from Marxism & Critical Theory which, when applied to Christian ethics, reduces to, again, a form of communitarianism, thus leading discerning Christians identify him, rightly, as a Marxist (source).

In other cases, however, the promotion of communitarianism is more subtle. For example, Reformed professor Carl R. Trueman works within the space afforded to him by ambiguity regarding certain sociopolitical theories in order to recast Reformed theologians like Luther as falling in line with their communitarian beliefs. For example, in Trueman’s essay “A Man More Sinned Against than Sinning? The Portrait of Martin Luther in Contemporary New Testament Scholarship: Some Casual Observations of a Mere Historian,” he argues that Martin Luther cannot correctly be called an individualist or one who promotes individualism due to the fact that “Luther combined his understanding of justification by faith with a high view of baptism as means of union with Christ and thus entry into the church” (source). In good Foucauldian fashion, Trueman first problematizes the idea of individualism, and then moves on to insinuate that Lutheran and Reformed theology places a higher degree of value on the collective than that of the individual, while simultaneously remaining neither collectivistic (in the secular sense) nor indivdualistic.

In a similar manner, Trueman’s book Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative also serves to problematize the absolute distinction between liberalism and conservativism, a strategy that, as Michael Bird writes, in turn allows him to “indigenize British communitarianism within libertarian America in the name of Christian political responsibility” (source). And in his latest work to date, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Trueman explicitly argues against “expressive individualism,” largely depending on sources that are all openly or implicitly communitarian (e.g. Alisdair McIntyre, Charles Taylor, O. Carter Snead, Philip Rieff), subtly wedding reformed orthodoxy to communitarianism, painted as being in line with reformed orthopraxy (which it is not).

2. “What is Communitarianism? Definition and Main Theorists,” Thought Co, https://www.thoughtco.com/communitarianism-definition-and-theories-5070063.

3. Jude 1:3.

4. Jude 1:4.

5. Jude 1:8.

6. Jude 1:10.

7. Jude 1:16.

8. 2nd Tim 3:6-8. (emphasis added)

9. 2nd Pet 2:1-3. (emphasis added)

10. Rom 16:17.

11. Jude 1:17-23.