Antique Christianity

Many bad ideas sport the halo of approval simply because they are old. There’s nothing whatsoever biblical about this.

Mar 18, 2026

A dear friend recently took me to the largest indoor antique mall I’ve ever encountered. I’ve walked through the massive, blocks-saturating antique fair at Spittlefields, England, but this indoor mall was the size of a Super Walmart. As I surveyed the treasures, some expensive, some cheap, some ordinary, some strange, but all old(er), it occurred to me that the quest for acquiring antiques is a metaphor for the resurgence of a common version of Christianity. Let’s call it “Antique Christianity.”

Why do so many people frequent antique stores and collect antiques? The driving motivation is not the quality of the products, though many searchers do look for high-quality antiques, particularly antique jewelery and furniture and cars. It is not mainly the quality or price of the product, but rather the age — antiquity [!] — that motivates antique aficionados.

Antique Christianity Described

In much the same way, Antique Christianity values the Faith principally because of its old age, and it particularly exalts older expressions of the Faith. It is this evaluation that has driven the surprising number of conversions from Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy, whose unique selling proposition to moderns is that it preserves and champions the doctrine and life of early undivided Christianity (though there was actually no such idyllic thing).

Antique Christianity Versus Modernist Christianity

That Antique Christianity would re-emerge in recent decades is entirely unsurprising. We live in a deep modernistic era, and actually have since the late 19th century. The modernist mantra was never stated better than by the modernist poet and fascist promoter Ezra Pound: “Make it new!” Modernism began in the art world, but quickly fanned out to affect almost all of life and even the theology and the church. This is where we get the name, theological modernism. It essentially holds that every new age demands a rethinking of core principles and practices. The older ways are simply unsuitable for the contemporary world.

The distinctively Christian answer to modernism is that there is nothing inherently superior about the new. The first and fundamental criterion is God‘s revelation, which means his word. We do not judge any idea, practice, philosophy, or theology by its chronology, but by its conformity to God’s standard. It’s precisely for this reason that so many Christian churches explicitly confess the ancient ecumenical creeds, like the Apostles and Nicene, and Protestant churches pledge to Reformation confessional standards, like the Three Forms of Unity, the Westminster Confession, the Augsburg Confession, and the London Baptist Confession. Truth doesn’t need to be revised every new generation. Truth resists revision.

But if you’ll think about it, the same logic applies in critiquing Antique Christianity. Just as the recent is not inherently superior, neither is the older and ancient. As John Frame once pointed out, many bad ideas sport the halo of approval simply because they are old. There’s nothing whatsoever biblical about this.

We sometimes hear the well-meaning exhortation, “Christianity doesn’t start with the Bible, but with Jesus Christ.” This might very well be true, but Christians must embrace biblical truth anterior to Christianity, and that is creation as the Bible describes it. Put another way: the Bible is bigger than Christianity. We will not understand his person and work in their greater depths if we bypass creation. This is a small book about not bypassing creation. It’s a book about thinking in creational categories, and purging contra-creational categories that infect our culture and, in too many cases, our churches.

You can order the e-book or paperback here.

Danger of the “Old-Time Religion”

Take the Christian Faith itself. From our historical vantage point, Christianity is old. It began 2000 years ago with the death, resurrection and ascension of its Founder, the eternal Son of God. But it was at one time a new Faith. In fact, this undergirds the message of the book of Hebrews. Today we often speak of returning to Christianity as “the old-time religion,” but for many of the Hebrews in the first century, old covenant Judaism was the old-time religion. They were in danger of either abandoning Jesus Christ under hostility from their Jewish relatives and friends, or of trying to fit Christ into an old covenant framework. The author of the book makes clear that the old covenant was temporary, and was always meant to be temporary. As Walter Kaiser once said, it had a built-in expiration date — it pointed to the final revelation of and redemption in Jesus Christ. The Hebrews mail was a warning against returning to the old-time religion.

There is in fact no intrinsic benefit to the old-time religion. There’s only intrinsic benefit in biblical religion, and often this means criticizing long-cherished beliefs and practices by bringing them under the searing searchlight of the word of God. Let’s take the Eastern Orthodox view of Christ’s death. It preserves the theory of a number of leading early Eastern church fathers (like the Cappadocians) that Christ’s death was not a satisfaction for sin or a substitutionary atonement as Protestants and Roman Catholics believe but rather it is the means of healing the corruption and degradation of sin. For the East, sin is ontological rather than ethical: sin made man less than a man. For biblical faith sin is rebellion against God. The fact that the Eastern fathers held to a differing view is meaningless, despite the fact that the view is antique. Sin is very old indeed.

Protestant Antique Christianity

Protestants themselves, despite their formal commitment to the Bible as their final authority, must be on guard against Antique Christianity, which is a form of chronological snobbery. Protestant churches, for example, must not hold their confessions in high regard because they are old, but rather because they are biblical. There’s nothing authoritative about the fact that conservative Presbyterian churches have held to the Westminster Confession for hundreds of years. What is authoritative is that the Westminster Confession substantially (but not infallibly) preserves the Bible’s teaching. That is the only reason for holding it, not because it is old. If the Westminster Confession is merely an antique, it is useless. If it is biblical, it is invaluable.

Achilles’ Heel of Antique Christianity

The Achilles’ heel of Antique Christianity is that it resists reformation by the word of God. It is ironic when today’s Protestants practice it, because had the original reformers embraced Antique Christianity, there could never been a Protestant Reformation. Their standpoint was not one of throwing out all tradition whatsoever. For example, they were happy to affirm traditional formulations of the Trinity. Rather, they subjected all teachings to the Scriptures. The reason they embraced the traditional Trinity is precisely because they were convinced the Bible teaches it, and it does. But they purged many other practices like transubstantiation, prayer to the saints, and indulgences, despite the fact that these were traditional practices.

In the end, Antique Christianity is no better than modernist Christianity. Both are useless chronological lobbies. Modernist Christianity is snobbish toward the past, and Antique Christianity is snobbish toward the present. Both are wrong.

The Bible is always the final authority and it judges just as decisively older beliefs and practices as it does modern beliefs and practices.

Avoid the temptation of antique Christianity.✞

Prayer, Church and Culture

My interview on the Feminine Glory podcast about the meaning and power of prayer and the necessity of answered prayer, and how these relate to the church and culture is below.

The ladies of Feminine Glory are exceptional interviewers and faithful women of God.