David Bercot
David W. Bercot is a lawyer, author, and authority on early Christianity. He has written the book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up?, [1] and edited the Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs [2], as well as other books. He was central to the founding of the Scroll Publishing company.
David is a conservative American Christian and lives in Pennsylvania, United States.
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See also
Brief Biographical Background
David Bercot is an Anabaptist convert. Originally he was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. Then he converted to Liberal Protestant for a brief period, but being dissatisfied, solidified for an extended and fruitful period as an Evangelical Christian. At some point, outside of his law practice as a title attorney in the gas and oil industry chiefly, he began a non-profit Christian bookshop in the Tyler Texas area, and during this period he received a catalogue advertising the sale of the "Ante-Nicene Fathers" volume set. The idea of Early Christian writings outside of the New Testament interested him. He purchased a set at a very good price and began reading. What he found both fascinated and horrified him. It looked terribly "Catholic" in many ways. Over a period of a year he read through the set and eventually gravitated toward the Eastern Orthodox Church, but settled on the Anglican Catholic Church. Both of these Churches were options to him because they both rejected the Pope's Authority and Roman Catholic doctrine which he continued to reject and yet they both reflected selected practices and doctrines universally (ie. at a Catholic level) attested to in the Early Christian writings: namely, that church government is passed on by Apostolic Succession of the Bishops who, in turn, alone can appoint priests, and deacons; sacramental theology (that grace and salvation are communicated chiefly through the visible means of grace, baptism, Holy Communion, and unction, as well as the other four chief sacraments); infant baptism; obedience, simplicity, and poverty as a lifestyle choice; the intermediate state after death (Purgatory in the Catholic Church, or simply, Abraham's Bosom, in Judaism and the Eastern Orthodox Church); and the intercession of saints, and the commemoration of Mary as Ever Virgin, or her perpetual virginity.
After being ordained as an Anglican priest, David Bercot eventually fled the Traditional Anglican Communion because of their Catholic practice of venerating the Virgin Mary, a practice not evidenced in the Apostolic Patristic writings until the late second century, and because of their advocacy of Just War theories, and the use of images or religious art as an expression of relative worship, and that women have stopped covering their heads. He eventually settled on a compromise with the Anabaptists as his religious affiliation since they follow some (but not all) of the Early Christian practices which he held particularly dear. Chiefly they practice: headcoverings for women, believer's baptism, regular Lord's Supper (non-sacramental Communion), pacifism, and believe that faith and obedience as requisite for salvation.
Strengths and Weaknesses in Bercot's Positions
Strengths would be his defence of Apostolic lifestyles (simplicity, modesty, purity of word and lifestyle, suffering for the gospel). Also, he advocates an approach consistent with Scripture when looking at family issues (though this is sometimes coloured with Fundamentalist misconceptions). To his credit he desires to elicit ardent passion and uncompromising love for Christ in his readership, and the desire to live according to the Gospel in a worthy, authentic and beneficial manner to the watching world. All of this is consistent with an honest appreciation of the Scriptures and patristic writings in their own right.
Weaknesses would be that by joing the Anabaptists he has renounced or relinquished solidarity with the Early Church and has even acquiesced to positions contrary to those solidly found in all the Early Christian Writings. Most problematic is his willingness to sweep the absolute necessity of Apostolic Succession and a valid Sacramental Life, and the universal practice of infant baptism under the carpet. The Anabaptists whom he has joined reject all these practices and beliefs, and there are plenty of David Bercot tapes and editions of his most popular and well known book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, out there that show he solidy and strongly defended these Apostolic non-negotiables, which they are indeed. In fact, his book has gone through several versions. There is the First Edition which is written as an inquiring, questioning, and self-critical Evangelical; there is an Anglo-Catholic Edition where he defends the Anglican Church in its traditional form as the truest Christian Church today; then there is a reverted edition that is a quasi-return to the First edition, which tends in its conclusion on the question of ecclesiology to sound as confused and unsure as he is at that point; and then there is the most recent edition (but probably not the final one!) which concludes and instructs the reader that the Anabaptists are the best bet out there today in laying claim to being the most faithful and apostolic church. This problem of instability is rooted in David Bercot's unwillingness to own up to what John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote extensively about for a Protestant readership, in his work, An Essay On the Development of Christian Doctrine. Bercot cannot fathom the valid distinction between innovations and departures on one hand and development of a seed into a tree with much fruit on the other. The Apostolic Church grows because it was born to grow and fill the Earth. Unless we're talking about God himself, the only things don't grow or change with time are things that are dead. The forms may change, the level of understanding may deepen and new applications may be found to solve new questions or express a deeper meaning, but the DNA is the same, the inner life has not changed. From simple innocent infancy to the battle-scarred but seasoned wisdom of old age, the form is greatly altered but the person is One and the Same. This idea is wholly foreign to Bercot's entire corpus of works, and shows both in his logic, his handling of patristic texts and history, and in his own life, a certain lack of balance and stability that is so very necessary and natural to the Church which the gates of hell shall not prevail against but is to climb higher, dig deeper, grow wiser, advance farther, and to prevail unconquered, until the end of time.
External links
Critique of Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up? http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/bercot.aspx
On Patristics and the Development of Christian Doctrine http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/index.html