The Old Ways — The Ancient Paths

^{Apostolic Age Followers of “The Way” (ἡ ὁδός - hė hodós) c. AD 30 to c. AD 100 (1st Century). See Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22 (c. A.D. 61 – 64).}

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The true Church has existed in every generation since the time of Christ, when He proclaimed: “upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it” (New Living Translation, 2015, Matt. 16:18). Many generations have passed since Christ walked the earth over twenty centuries ago, but the truth has been with us since the very beginning — preserved not through institutional infallibility but through faithful transmission of apostolic doctrine across every generation, however embattled.

¹⁸ So I tell you, you are Peter [^Cthe Greek petros, like the Aramaic cephas, means “rock” or “stone”]. On this rock I will build my church, and the ·power of death [^Lgates of Hades/the underworld] will not be able to ·defeat [overpower; conquer; prevail against] it (Expanded Bible, 2011, Matt. 16:18).

The basis for Catholicism’s contention that the Church is built on Peter’s leadership is that his name means “stone.”¹⁴ For sure there is wordplay going on in Peter’s confession, but I would suggest there is also an important double entendre: the “rock” refers to the mountain location where Jesus makes the statement. When viewed from this perspective, Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, at “this rock” (this mountain—Mount Hermon). Why? This place was considered the “gates of hell,” the gateway to the realm of the dead, in Old Testament times.¹⁵

The theological messaging couldn’t be more dramatic. Jesus says he will build his church—and the “gates of hell” will not prevail against it. We often think of this phrase as though God’s people are in a posture of having to bravely fend off Satan and his demons. This simply isn’t correct. Gates are defensive structures, not offensive weapons. The kingdom of God is the aggressor. ¹⁶ Jesus begins at ground zero in the cosmic geography of both testaments to announce the great reversal. It is the gates of hell that are under assault—and they will not hold up against the Church. Hell will one day be Satan’s tomb (Heiser, 2015, pp. 284-5).

Consider this: Do your current beliefs have roots in every generation since the time of Christ, or can you trace them only to a specific historical period? If your beliefs cannot be linked to earlier generations, they may be false, lacking the historical foundation that the true Church has upheld since Christ’s declaration. The Word of God instructs us to turn to past generations in our pursuit of truth:

Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you (ESV Study Bible, 2008, Deut. 32:7).

Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ (ESV Study Bible, 2008, Jeremiah 6:16).

This is what the Lord says: “Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls. But you reply, ‘No, that’s not the road we want!’ (New Living Translation, 2015, Jer. 6:16 NLT).

The Order of Light takes this charge with utmost seriousness. The ancient paths are not a romantic metaphor for us — they are a confessional and historical commitment. The Union-Centered Transformationist Anglican tradition the Order retrieves does not begin with the Order of Light. It begins with the apostolic deposit itself — in Paul’s forensic justification and John’s vital union with Christ — and runs through Augustine’s sovereign grace, Anselm’s satisfaction theology, the English Reformers’ confessional Anglicanism, Davenant’s hypothetical universalism at the Synod of Dort, and Edwards’ Edwardsian enrichment of the union with Christ tradition. This is not a new path. It is the oldest path — the one that was always there, that the gates of hell have never succeeded in extinguishing, and that the Oxford Movement’s Anglo-Catholic drift in the 1830s temporarily obscured from prominence.

The Challenge of Our Generation

Christianity today is populated by individuals who have chosen to abandon the old ways and ancient paths, instead accumulating teachers who entice them with new things and deceive them into believing they can live lives of antinomian license contrary to Scripture (1 Jn 3:4-10; 5:18), satisfying their itching ears while forsaking the wisdom of the past:

For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. And they will turn away from hearing the truth, but on the other hand they will turn aside to myths (The NET Bible: Full Notes Edition, 2019, 2Tim. 4:3-4 NET).

The essential question becomes: How can we shield ourselves from the new things that cultivate ignorance, lead to destruction, and ultimately result in apostasy? How can we be confident that we are adhering to the old ways and ancient paths?

The Order of Light’s answer is confessional retrieval — not the invention of something novel but the recovery of something ancient. We do not ask you to follow a new system. We ask you to follow the oldest confessional Anglican tradition available — the one that predates the rigid Calvinist-Arminian binary of the seventeenth century, that was articulated at the Synod of Dort by England’s own delegate, that is enshrined in the Thirty-Nine Articles, and that runs from Cranmer through Davenant through Edwards to the present moment.

The Proper Context for Interpretation

Dr. Michael Heiser (2015), biblical language scholar and master of Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Egyptian, reminds us of a principle the Order of Light takes seriously:

1. We’ve been trained to think that the history of Christianity is the true context of the Bible

We talk a lot about interpreting the Bible in context, but Christian history is not the context of the biblical writers. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is not Augustine or any other church father. It is not the Catholic Church. It is not the rabbinic movements of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is not the Reformation or the Puritans. It is not evangelicalism in any of its flavors. It is not the modern world at all, or any period of its history.

The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers—the context that produced the Bible [Second Temple period].¹ Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. … (p. 16).

1. We do not share the cognitive framework of the biblical writers. While the implications may seem uncomfortable, it is hermeneutically pointless to pretend otherwise. … (p. 16).

This principle does not lead the Order of Light away from confessional standards — it leads us toward them. The confessions we uphold — the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Declaration of Principles — are not impositions of alien frameworks onto Scripture but faithful summaries of what Scripture itself teaches, developed by scholars who took the biblical text with the utmost seriousness. The Apostle Paul himself understood the importance of transmitting received doctrine faithfully:

“What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (ESV Study Bible, 2008, 1Cor. 1:12-13)

Paul’s point is not that doctrine is unnecessary or that confessional standards are inherently divisive — he himself articulates some of the most precisely formulated theology in the canon. His point is that no human teacher is to be elevated above Christ as the ultimate source and authority. The Order of Light holds this conviction: our confessional standards are not lords over Scripture but servants of it, and every claim made in them is subject to the canonical witness above all.

The Ancient Path the Order Retrieves

The Order of Light is a Confessional Anglican fraternal order whose soteriological heart is union with Christ — a position not invented in the twenty-first century but retrieved from the deepest wells of the historic Anglican tradition. Here is the ancient path we walk:

From the Apostolic deposit: Paul’s forensic justification (Romans 3:20-28) and John’s vital union with Christ (1 John 3:6-10; John 15:4-5) hold together the complete biblical picture of salvation — declared righteous and being made righteous, both freely given, neither purchased by human effort.

From Augustine: Sovereign grace, monergistic regeneration, and the Augustinian insistence that God alone initiates and sustains salvation — the patristic foundation of the entire Reformed tradition.

From the English Reformers: Cranmer and Jewel enshrined forensic justification and union with Christ in the Thirty-Nine Articles, grounding Anglican identity in Scripture alone against Roman appeals to tradition.

From Davenant: England’s delegate to the Synod of Dort articulated the hypothetical universalist position — Christ’s atoning work genuinely provisioned for all humanity, efficaciously applied to the elect through sovereign grace — demonstrating that this position was considered within the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy at the defining moment of Protestant confessionalism.

From Edwards: The Edwardsian enrichment of union with Christ — the new spiritual sense, religious affections as the intrinsic form union takes in the regenerate soul — developed the organic and transformative dimensions of salvation that balance the forensic without replacing it. This is the old way. This is the ancient path. It was walked before the Calvinist-Arminian controversy hardened into the binary that still dominates Protestant debate today. It was walked at Dort. It was walked in Canterbury. It is walked by the Order of Light today — not as a novelty but as a retrieval.

Resources for the Ancient Path

The Order commends the following resources for those who wish to walk these ancient paths with scholarly seriousness and confessional integrity:

Confessional Standards

Ecumenical Creeds

• Nicene Creed (A.D. 381)
• Apostles’ Creed (A.D. 650)
• The Athanasian Creed (A.D. 800)

Foundational Documents

• Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1562) — Primary confessional anchor
• Declaration of Principles (1873) — Explains the Reformed Anglican distinctives and explicitly rejects sacramental regeneration, including the error that regeneration is inseparably connected with Baptism

Reformed Confessions

• Heidelberg Catechism (1563) — Union with Christ centered devotional and doctrinal standard; of such genuine Protestant breadth that even Jacobus Arminius subscribed to it, demonstrating its character as common ground for all seriously Reformed and evangelical Christians
• New Hampshire Confession (1833) — Warm Calvinist confession rejecting both hyper-Calvinism and Free Will Baptist positions; cited as a theological forerunner in the Edwardsean tradition

Liturgical

• REC Book of Common Prayer (Traditional Language) — Confessional use
• REC Book of Common Prayer (Modern Language) — Practical use
• A Tenebrae Service — Holy Week observance befitting the order’s theological emphases

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Resources

Primary Sources — Scripture

Note: Study Bible editions are listed here for their textual content. Their commentary apparatus constitutes secondary source material. The NET Full Notes Edition is exceptional in that it spans all three categories—primary (biblical text), secondary (exegetical and translational commentary), and tertiary (text-critical and linguistic annotation).

• ESV Study Bible — Primary recommendation for comprehensive Bible study
• NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible (ed. D.A. Carson) — Canonical and biblical theology focused
• NET Full Notes Edition — An unparalleled treasure trove of textual criticism from world-renowned scholars; non-sectarian and inter-denominational
• NLT Filament Compact — Recommended for pure leisure reading and maximal reading comprehension

Secondary Sources — Scholarly and Academic Works

Confessional Anglican

• J.C. Ryle (BA, Christ Church, Oxford; Bishop of Liverpool)
  • Holiness
• John Davenant (Bishop of Salisbury)
  • De Morte Christi / A Dissertation on the Death of Christ — Foundational Reformed hypothetical-universalist treatise on the death of Christ; a major historical witness within the Anglican and broader Reformed tradition.
• Alister E. McGrath (PhD, Molecular Biophysics, Oxford; DD, Theology, Oxford; DLitt, Intellectual History, Oxford)
  • Mere Apologetics
  • The Dawkins Delusion

Broadly Evangelical Anglican (Broad-Church / Central, creedal)

• C.S. Lewis (Oxford; Professor at Oxford & Cambridge)
  • Mere Christianity
• John C. Polkinghorne (PhD, Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge; PhD, Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics, Trinity College; Professor of Mathematical Physics, Cambridge)
  • Quarks, Chaos & Christianity (Note: included for science-faith integration)

Moderately Reformed Evangelical

• D.A. Carson (PhD, University of Cambridge)
  • Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility — A major evangelical treatment of theological compatibilism, carefully arguing that God’s sovereign rule and genuine human responsibility are fully compatible without collapsing into fatalism or denying meaningful moral agency.
  • The Gospel According to John
  • The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God
• Bruce Demarest (PhD, University of Manchester)
  • The Cross and Salvation — Comprehensive soteriology affirming universal atonement provision with particular application; the closest available contemporary systematic treatment to the order’s Union-Centered Transformationist hypothetical universalist position
• Hugh Ross (PhD, Astrophysics, University of Toronto)
  • Beyond the Cosmos — A science-informed apologetic exploring how God’s transdimensional existence helps reconcile divine sovereignty with genuine human freedom, offering an indirect but suggestive model for theological compatibilist accounts.
• Ron Rhodes (ThD, Dallas Theological Seminary)
  • The Extent of the Atonement (Note: included for 4-point apologetics value only)

Tertiary Sources — Critical and Linguistic Tools

1. BDAG and HALOT Lexicons — The world’s most authoritative Greek and Hebrew lexicons
2. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Bruce M. Metzger, UBS4) — Essential for textual decisions and variant analysis.
3. NET Full Notes Edition — An unparalleled treasure trove of textual criticism from world-renowned scholars; non-sectarian and inter-denominational
4. Daniel B. Wallace (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary)
   • The Basics of New Testament Syntax — Concise companion/overview of the larger grammar.
   • Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament — Core intermediate Greek syntax reference.
   • A Workbook for New Testament Syntax (with Grant Edwards) — Guided practice companion.
5. ESV Reverse Interlinear — Essential for mapping English translations back to original languages
6. KJV Parallel Bible (kjvparallelbible.org) — Digital resource for comparative textual criticism

The gates of hell have not prevailed. The ancient path is still there — worn smooth by centuries of faithful feet, marked by the confessions of those who walked it before us, illuminated by the light of Christ himself. The Order of Light does not blaze a new trail. It recovers the old one. Veritas Vincit — Truth Conquers.

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References

• ESV Study Bible (ESV Text Edition: 2016). (2008). Crossway.
• Heiser, M. S. (2015). The unseen realm (1st ed.). Lexham Press.
• Heiser, M. S. (2021, July 12). Can an Apostate Turn Back to God? [Video]. Dr. Michael S. Heiser. https://youtu.be/0vgF6UMdm6Y&t=526
• NET Bible: Full Notes Edition. (2019). Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C.
• New Living Translation. (2015). Tyndale House Publishers.
• The Expanded Bible. (2011). Thomas Nelson.
  

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