Theology – Page 6 – Anthony G. Flood

What Is Truth? Reflections on Christian Individualism.

Cover of the original 1961 publication, which Sam Marrone graciously sent me. Thanks, Sam! A.G.F.

Today is the 44th anniversary of the two-hour dinner at Lüchow’s on Manhattan’s 14th Street to which Otis Q. Sellers treated his students, yours truly included, during his visit to my city. I was fortunate to be seated next to him for this first meeting. Sam Marrone told me (April 26, 2023) that I had sat at Sellers’s left, Sam at his right. I’d love to hear from anyone else who was there that day! See the photo (from the year before, 1978) at the end of this post. A.G.F.

When entertaining a proposition, Otis Q. Sellers’s first question was: Is it true? It guided all subsequent questions. Not: “Is it the scientific, scholarly, or ecclesiastical consensus?” Consensus be damned.

He took his cue from the apostle John who, carried by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), wrote that he had no greater joy (χαρά, chara) than hearing that his children walk in the truth (τῇ ἀλήθεια, tē alētheia) (3 John 1:4). This confession invites the sure inference that John’s pleasure was analogous to God’s.

That is, seeing His children walk in the truth is a divine delight second to none.

But what is truth? That’s what Pilate asked Jesus, his divine prisoner (John 18:39).

Jesus had just affirmed to Pilate the coming of His Kingdom and therefore His Kingship (vv. 36-37) to whom he’d soon intimate the heavenly source of the earthly authority (ἐξουσίαν, exousian) he had over Him (19:11).

During His ministry Jesus had told others that He is (among other things) the truth (ἡ ἀλήθεια, hē alētheia) (John 14:6); there’s no reason to think He’d have withheld that answer from Pilate—had he but stayed for it. The challenge, however, of placating a bloodthirsty mob and keeping the office he held at Caesar’s pleasure had concentrated his mind wonderfully, and so off to the balcony of his residence he repaired.

Continue reading “What Is Truth? Reflections on Christian Individualism.”

When Otis Q. Sellers Invoked Ayn Rand: More on Christian Individualism

I recently acquired the new edition of Otis Q. Sellers’s 1961 booklet Christian Individualism: A Way of Life for the Active Believer in Jesus Christ (CI) which, to my surprise, I did not already own. [Learning of this gap in my collection, Sam Marrone, my friend and brother in Christ, graciously sent me a copy of the 3.5″ x 5.5″ original, which arrived April 10th. Thanks, Sam!—A.G.F.] The text was reset by the folks at The Word of Truth Ministry, which makes nearly all of Sellers’s writings and recorded messages available, mostly free of charge. The publication is available for sale on Amazon.

What caught my eye was his quotation of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), playwright, novelist, and philosopher of individualism. I doubt he would have cited her on individualism (or anything else) had he known she was an enemy of Christianity.

In 1957 Rand had published Atlas Shrugged, her magnum opus, but even in 1961 she was probably best known for The Fountainhead, a 1943 novel that was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper six years later. In the year that novel came out, Rand began working on “The Moral Basis of Individualism.” A “condensed” portion (which you can read here) appeared as “The Only Path to Tomorrow” in the January 1944 issue of Reader’s Digest.[1] When he cited it, it was already 17 years old and something that would have been collected in the war-related scrap drives. I’m inclined to think he had bought it when it came out and kept it from the paper salvagers.

Continue reading “When Otis Q. Sellers Invoked Ayn Rand: More on Christian Individualism”

What is Christian Individualism?

On my Amazon author page I begin by describing myself (in the third person) as a Christian Individualist and end by referring to my study of Bible teacher Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), a work-in-progress since 2017: “It [the prospective book] will explain what Flood means by ‘Christian Individualist,’ if anyone is interested.”

That’s too long to wait for an explanation; thus, this site. Its log line is “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days (2 Tim. 3; Eph. 3:2).” God’s present administration or dispensation being characterized exclusively by grace, or so goes the Sellersian thesis to which I subscribe, “Christian Individualism” stands for what is required of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ today.

And what is not required, namely, membership in a “church,” the English mistranslation of ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia) that we’re apparently stuck with. Being a Christian Individualist does not prevent one from engaging in any given activity that one might associate with being a church member. Any similarity, however, is purely coincidental, for no organization today corresponds—could correspond—to what ἐκκλησία signifies in the New Testament.[1]

Continue reading “What is Christian Individualism?”

The Divinely Inspired Satire of the Rich Man and Lazarus

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The story of the rich man and Lazarus is a divinely inspired satire …. It is as much the Word of God as any other portion of Scripture. It was not given for the purpose of teaching men about the ways and works of God. Its purpose was to turn the light upon the Pharisees. It is not the place to go to find what our Lord taught about death, the state of the dead, future punishment, or future bliss.”[1]

It bothered Otis Q. Sellers when writers would take a biblical passage that was about one thing to support a doctrine not at all under consideration. Nowhere was this abuse of Scripture more egregious than in the deployment of Luke 16:19-31 to support the doctrine of eternal conscious torment of the lost.

In 1941, he offered an interpretation under the title The Rich Man and Lazarus. Following his What Is the Soul? (1939), it was just as radical a break with tradition. That Lucan passage is the prooftext for the traditional church doctrine of “hell” as the destiny of the damned, a place or state of interminable suffering. It was not enough to show that “hell” in English Bibles translates a Hebrew word (sheol) and three Greek ones (hades, Gehenna, and tartaros.) It was also necessary to deprive tradition of its favorite prooftext.

In 1962 Sellers reissued his study after “the whole matter could be carefully reconsidered and rewritten.” Much church doctrine hangs on this passage: “Many preachers are no longer able to distinguish between their sermons … and the record written in the Word of God ….”[2] When Sellers decided to do for “hell” what he had just done for the soul, he began by taking Luke 16:19-31 off the table.

… it has been my happy and fruitful labor to examine with microscopic exactitude every one of the 859 passages in the sacred Scriptures that give testimony concerning the soul. Careful analysis of every one of these passages has resulted in the inescapable conclusion that the Bible teaches that man is a soul—not that he has a soul as is generally believed. That man has a soul is the Platonic theory; that man is a soul is the Biblical testimony. Furthermore, these studies have demonstrated that there is no such thing in Scripture as an immortal soul, or a never-dying soul. However, in seeking to present these findings to others I discover that with many the effort is useless, for they firmly believe that the story of the rich man and Lazarus, which does not even mention the word soul, stands in opposition to all that I have found to be true and try to teach (3).

Continue reading “The Divinely Inspired Satire of the Rich Man and Lazarus”

Sellers on translating Colossians

Rather than let February slip away without at least one post, I’m reproducing Otis Q. Sellers’s thoughts on how he went about translating a portion of Scripture, in this case Paul’s letter to the Colossians. His verse-by-verse commentary is available in his tape library, TL081-TL087. (Go to this page of his site.) Here’s my lightly edited transcription of TL081 (from about the 16:00 mark to about 21:33).

On Translating Colossians

When we get into this, we want to do the research. We want to see if we can come to some understanding of what is meant by the actual words here. For thousands have made a study of Colossians as far as the King James Version is concerned without any reference to the original Greek. But those who desire the knowledge of what Paul said, and not just a version of what he said, they’re forced to go back of its renderings. They’re forced to go back and consider the Greek text.

Some will do this and come to a conclusion concerning a few words, and thus a word here and there is straightened out. Others may give careful consideration of every word in the Greek text and come to certain conclusions concerning all of them. These conclusions concerning single words will then be linked together, and they can form phrases and sentences.

I have given such consideration, to every word in the Greek text of Colossians. The result is what I will present to you in an honest attempt to tell you what Paul meant by what he said when he wrote this epistle. In the past two centuries, an almost unbelievable amount of Biblical expository material has been put into print since the King James Version was translated. The research worker can find on his shelves page after page of the most critical discussion that covers every one of the more than fifty-five hundred Greek words that are found in the New Testament, including the proper names.

I look about my study here; I’m surrounded on two sides by books, and in them I can find the discussion of every single Greek word in the New Testament on which some man has concentrated and done the work. Every important word in Colossians has been discussed at great length by men whose goal was to get at its meaning. Some of this material is nothing more than one man just seeking to step into the footprints of those who have preceded him.

But some of it will be found to be the efforts of men who have made the most minute inquiry; their findings are of great value. When I think of the works of men like Herman Cremer and of Moulton and Milligan, and when I think of Thayer, then I’m setting forth examples of this. I will draw freely upon the labors of such men. But, when it comes to the final analysis, the conclusions as to what this word means has to strictly be my own.

What I do, as a rule, is to take each word in the Greek and write it a vertical column, one word after another—the big words, the little words—in a vertical column. Then in a parallel column, I take the word and parse it. I check all the authorities in doing this to make sure that I do not go wrong. We can parse these words. We’ll know whether it’s past or present or future; we’ll know if the verb is in the aorist tense or not. A number of authorities have worked on these; we can check one authority against the other. Then in the third column after I have done this, I give a tentative English rendering.

Every word has to be checked in every possible way a word can be checked, with supreme consideration given to the use of the word in other passages in the New Testament. Then I also give due consideration to the translations that have been made by others. In working on Colossians I am sure I have referred to at least 25 different versions of the Colossians epistle; I would say about the same number of commentaries have been searched for material that may be of value in translating and interpreting this epistle.

The commentaries as a rule are a little disappointing, but we find also that sometimes a commentator has made a drive for the truth; it’s just evident that he went into this word, and not repeating something that was said before (although it’s good to repeat things said before if those things prove to be true). All of that is brought together, and this is what we give to you as being the meaning of what was said in the Greek when Paul wrote Colossians.

* * *

For a detailed written example of the application of the precepts, see Sellers’s work on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in six issues of Seed & Bread SB058-SB063.

I hope to have more substantial posts next month.

Links to other posts on Otis Q. Sellers

Conceived on December 25th, born on September 29th

Given the season, I’m reposting what first appeared here last July 19th under the wordier title, “Having become flesh on 25 December, 5 BC, He began tabernacling among us on 29 September, 4 BC.” I highlight evidence buried in the notes of E. W. Bullinger’s The Companion Bible, first published a century ago. Don’t miss the notes appended to this post. (If you have difficulty falling asleep, they should do the trick.) Merry Christmas! —A.G.F.

“And the Word became (ἐγένετο, egeneto) flesh (σάρξ, sarx) and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, eskēnōsēn) among us . . . .” John 1:14

In “The Divine Purpose,” Otis Q. Sellers wrote:

In all the work that God has done for mankind, is now doing for mankind, and will yet do for mankind, there is a definite goal, a fixed purpose. To state it as simply as possible, His object in all His work is to produce a people who know Him, who understand Him, who love and appreciate Him, a people with whom He can joyfully dwell, and among whom He can center Himself in view of a greater program for the universe.

If the Bible is read carefully from Genesis to Revelation, it will be found that this end is reached and becomes a reality in Revelation 21. There under a new order of things described as “a New Heaven and New Earth,” the tabernacle of God is seen as being with men, He is dwelling (tabernacling) with them, they are His people, and He is their God. This is as far as Revelation takes us, yet we can rightfully go a step beyond this and envision a great divine program in which mankind will be vitally involved as those who are working and not those upon whom God is working. A tabernacle (skenos) in Scripture when used figuratively always denotes a center of activity, and it could not be that God would bring about such a center and then not use it.[1]

To “become flesh” is to be, not born, but rather “begotten,” that is, conceived. The root of ἐγένετο (egeneto) is γίνομαι (ginomai), to come into existence.

The one who is born, who exits the womb, is already flesh, which precedes “dwelling among us.”[2] (She who “can’t bring a baby into this world” and so procures an abortion only achieves the death of an already begotten and in-the-world baby.)

The English “to dwell” doesn’t capture the Greek ἐσκήνωσεν (eskēnōsēn), the form of σκηνόω (skēnoō) in John 1:14. The root is σκηνή (skēne), originally the hut or tent where players changed masks and costumes behind the stage; later, the stage itself. (Our “scene” descends from this.)

When Jerome translated into Latin the Hebrew הַסֻּכּ֛וֹת (hasukkoth) of, say, Deuteronomy 16:16, he used tabernaculum, the diminutive of taberna. (Our “tavern” echoes this.) He rendered that verse’s Hebrew as in solemnitate tabernaculorum, that is, “in the feast of the tabernacles.”

Tabernacles are booths. Annually, Jews today set up booths where they commemorate סֻכּוֹת‎, Sukkot, one of three Torah-commanded pilgrimages to the Temple which was destroyed in 70 A.D. (The other two are פסח, Pesach, “Passover” and שבועות, Shavous, “Pentecost.”)

In 5 BC, the angel Gabriel announced two conceptions, that of John (the “Forerunner”: Luke 1:13), and then of his cousin, Jesus (Luke 1:31). Gabriel addressed the first to John’s father, Zacharias; the second to Jesus’ mother, Mary. According to E. W. Bullinger: Continue reading “Conceived on December 25th, born on September 29th”

Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part III

Otis Q. Sellers, 1921, the year he attended Moody Bible Institute.

[See Part I, and Part II for notes documenting points this three-part dogmatic summary makes. It was written for those interested in “the big picture” whose details are found in previous posts.—A.G.F.]

“And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together . . . .” Isaiah 40:6

All flesh has not yet seen the glory of the Lord together. One day they will, however, and that prophecy, according to Otis Q. Sellers, is the theme of the Bible: divine terrestrial rule, prophesied from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22.

By “rule” Sellers did not mean merely God’s ceaseless upholding of creation, but His injection of Himself into the flow of human history in a manifest way.

Jesus will inaugurate His rule from His throne, not from earth, His footstool (Isaiah 66:1, Acts 7:49). He’ll do that for centuries before returning to earth “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 1:8) and then continuing to reign for a thousand years. He’ll be personally present (parousia) with believers, present because of Who He is and What He is.

That’s the Millennium. We’re living premillennially, as will the denizens of the future manifest Kingdom, which is the divine dispensation that will follow the present one of grace and precede the Day of the Lord when Christ will descend from His heavenly throne to crush a rebellion against that Kingdom. Sellers wished he had grasped the truth of the pre-advent (or premillennial) Kingdom much earlier than he did.

The Kingdom—for whose advent we pray in “the Lord’s Prayer”—is future to us, but its initial centuries will be in the past of Christ’s Second Advent. That is, there will be a premillennial Kingdom. Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part III”

Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part II

Otis Q. Sellers in 1921, the year he studied at Moody Bible Institute

[This brief series began in Part I. Readers should consult the notes for links to posts that document many of my dogmatic assertions.—A.G.F.]

Otis Q. Sellers’s work was effectively, although not explicitly, rooted in sola Scriptura. It was his presupposition. No alternative view of Scripture attracted him. A possible reason why he never referred to this doctrine was that sola Scriptura is a “church” doctrine that defines the criteria by to which Christians should accept or reject other doctrines.

If Sellers concluded that no individual or group today answers to ekklēsia, he could hardly have been interested in a doctrine that was formulated to guide the ekklēsia. Ironically, sola Scriptura is a doctrine by and for Christian individuals living in the Dispensation of Grace who are “shut up” to the Bible. As Sellers once put it:

I believe that God’s word to me is encompassed in the Bible, and that in this dispensation we are shut up to the written Word. So for sixty years I have made it a practice to study this book and then to take God at His Word and respond accordingly. I know that faith without works is dead, and I want nothing to do with a dead faith. To me the work is that I respond in harmony with what has been said. Sometimes the “works” part requires only that I so think. At other times it means that I must act.[1]

He was trained by those who had been leaders in the Bible Conference Movement, forerunners of American Fundamentalism, who shared that presupposition. As we shall see, however, he took it further than even the most radical scripturalists among them were willing to go.[2]

Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part II”

Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part I

Otis Quinter Sellers (1901-1992) was a lifelong Bible student and, for his last sixty years, an independent Bible teacher. My work on his life, a work-in-progress since 2017, will introduce you to his teachings, which he never systematized, and to as much of his life as I’ve been able to uncover. Sellers didn’t see his research and teaching as historically significant. He left that judgment to others.

The 16th-century Reformers prepared the way for John Nelson Darby’s 19th-century articulation of dispensationalism.[1] (Clarifying the plan of salvation had to come first.) Darby’s flawed dispensationalism prepared the ground for C. I. Scofield and the Bible conference movement,[2] from which emerged The Scofield Reference Bible, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Moody Bible Institute. Otis Q. Sellers’s thought was formed in this matrix without his giving much thought to his historical position, but it represents, in my view, an unheralded breakthrough.

Lewis Sperry Chafer’s copy of the Scofield Reference Bible, first printing 1909, from the first box of Bibles delivered to Scofield during his preaching ministry with Chafer in Florida. On the flyleaf Scofield inscribed these words: To Lewis Sperry Chafer, my brother in the precious truths which, as editor of this edition of God’s Holy Word, I have endeavored to set forth, with grateful love, C. I. Scofield

What follows is a revised overview of his ecclesial and eschatological ideas written a few years ago, annotated where possible with links to previous posts. In this one and those that will follow, I state his position dogmatically, not critically. For the scriptural references, an earlier post will be helpful.[3]

* * * * *

Fort Thomas, Kentucky, newspaper notice, November 12, 1928, of the purchase of a home by “the Rev. Otis Q. Sellers, pastor of Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, Newport [KY].” It also notes that “Dr. [sic] Sellers and family have been residing in Mariemont, O[hio]” in Hamilton, Ohio’s southwestern county.

By “independent Bible teacher” I mean Otis Q. Sellers wasn’t affiliated with a church after 1932, the year he left a Baptist church in Newport, Kentucky which he had led for four years. He had begun to question the commonly accepted view that the apostolic power on display during the Acts dispensation and the miraculous signs of that power continued thereafter—what we would generally label Pentecostalism today. Sellers barely survived a vote to remove him as pastor over these issues. Seeing the writing on the wall, he left.

Sellers also began to question the meaning of βαπτίζω (baptizō) which virtually every English-language Bible transliterates as “baptism,” but never translates. When he concluded he had no authority to bring about the reality to which the ritual of “baptism” referred—that is, “an identification amounting to a merger”—he could no longer identify as a Baptist, at least not with integrity.[4]

A few years later, Sellers reached another conclusion no less radical: not only that “church” is a bad translation of ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia), but also that this governmental term pertains to God’s purposes in heralding and establishing His Kingdom, purposes He has suspended during the current dispensation of grace. The ekklēsia, or “out-positioned ones,” is what Christians were from Matthew 16 until Acts 28:28 and will be again when God resumes those Kingdom purposes. But not now. Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part I”

Otis Q. Sellers and the “Facts of Scripture”: The Primacy of Historical and Grammatical Interpretation

Stained glass image of Myles Coverdale, Exeter Cathedral

Otis Q. Sellers rarely wrote about hermeneutics, but presupposed there are such things as the “facts of Scripture,” data or “givens” one must first observe and then interpret accurately.[1] By accurately, Sellers meant historically and grammatically, following the precept of Myles Coverdale (1488-1569):

It shall greatly help ye to understand the Scriptures if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after.[2]

This is necessary if one would discern the divine intention behind the symbolic expressions of God’s meaning. This assumption followed from Sellers’s belief that Scripture’s human words are θεόπνευστος (theopneustos), that is, God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16):

My conviction in regard to the Old and the New Testament is that they are the verbally inspired Word of God, that they are without error in their original writings, that they are of supreme and final authority in regard to all matters of faith. By “verbal inspiration” I mean that supernatural work of the Holy Spirit by which, without setting aside the personalities and literary abilities of the human instrument, He constituted the words of the Bible in its entirety as His written word to you and to me. I believe that every word of Scripture was produced under the guidance of God’s Spirit, that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). This conviction has stood the test of more than a half century of personal Bible research and study.[3] Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers and the “Facts of Scripture”: The Primacy of Historical and Grammatical Interpretation”