Answers to Trivia Questions March 2010

1 . Polycarp says that "to deny that Jesus is come in the flesh is to be --" :

a. agnostic

b. Docetist

c. Aryan

d. Antichrist

Answer: d. Polycarp, like Ignatius, uses violent language to denounce the Docetists, who denied that Jesus had a material body, but was a holy illusion. Similar language is used in 1 John 4 "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world." -- and in 2 John 7 "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist."

2. The letter to Diognetus says that Christians behave as if they were -- :

a. soldiers

b. aliens

c. sheep

d. angels

Answer: b: Aliens. "for them, any country is a motherland, and any motherland is a foreign country…… their citizenship is above, in the heavens." This is reminscent of the words in Hebrews 13:14 "Here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the one that is to come."

3. Barnabas writes that the Jews were deceived by --:

a. a prophetess

b. corrupt priests

c. a wicked angel

d. clever philosophers

Answer: c. a wicked angel. Barnabas particularly refers to circumcision. He deduces from passages in the Old Testament that circumcision is a spiritual phenomenon, not a physical one. That Jews do not believe this means to Barnabas that they have been misled by a wicked angel.

Answers to previous questions and fuller quizzes can be found at

http://ccpc.petercombes.com

A blog based on previous bible studies is at: http: //blog.petercombes.com

Texts of the letters are at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/index.html