Two By Twos

Also known as 2x2s, The Truth, & The Way.

This is an international home-based Christian religious movement that was founded in 1897 by William Irvine in Ireland. Mr. Irvine was an evangelist with the interdominational Faith Mission. He began preaching independently that the intinerant ministry outlined in Matthew, chapter 10 (“The Little Commission”) was the only real way of evangelism.

This church grew quickly. It eventually spread outside Ireland. Eventually Irvine began preaching a new order in which the hierarchy developed within the Church would have no placement. This teaching became controversial within the church. This led to his expulsion by the church’s most prominent evangelists. Edward Cooney was expelled 10 years later after Irvine. The church then became much less visible to outsiders for the next 50 years.

Some in the church state it’s a direct continuation of the 1st century Christian church. Others in the church believe that a restoration occurred in the late 19th century. Ministers are itinerant & work in pairs. Hence the name of Two by Twos. Members hold regular twice weekly worship gatherings in local homes on Sunday & midweek. (Like on Wednesday or Thursday. There are other Christian denominations that also have twice a week services.)

The Church also holds annual regional conventions for members & public Gospel meetings. Baptism by immersion, as performed by 1 of the church’s workers, is required to partake in the emblems of bread & wine (or Communion) at the fellowship gathering(s).

The orthodox Christian Trinitarian doctrine is rejected. Doctrine of the church teaches that salvation is reached by attending the group’s home meetings, accepting the preaching of its itinerant, unsalaried ministry workers, & “professing.”

The church teaches that salvation isn’t achieved through faith alone but only through a combination of faith & “works.” Works are considered acts of self-denial such as wearing modest clothes & wearing long hair in a bun (if you’re a woman) or attending all meetings regardless how far away they are. The church doesn’t do any outreach programs or encourage its members to participate in charities.

The church doesn’t have an official HQ or publications. It doesn’t explicitly publish any doctrinal statements, insisting that such tenets may only be directly imparted orally by its ministers, referred to as “workers.” Its hymnbook & various other material for internal use are produced by outside publishers & printing firms. Printed invitations & advertisements for its open gospel services are the only written materials that those outside the church are likely to encounter.

Among members, the church is usually referred to as “The Truth,” “Meetings,” or “the workers & friends.” But members deny an official church/denomination name (like Baptist, United Brethern, etc.).

Those outside the group refer to it as: “Two by Twos,” “The Black Stockings,” “No-Name Church,” “Cooneyites,” “Workers & Friends,” or “Christians Anonymous,” & journalists call it: “2×2” for short. The church has a variety of registered names: “Christian Conventions” (US); “Assemblies of Christians” & “The Alberta Society of Christian Assemblies” (Canada); “The Testimony of Jesus” (UK); “Kristna i Sverige” (Sweden); & “United Christian Conventions” (Australia).

These registered names are used only for specific purposes (like to register for conscientious objection during wartime or taxes) & aren’t routinely used by members.

In 1896, William Irvine was sent from Scotland to southern Ireland as a missionary by John George Govan’s Faith Mission. Because his mission was successful, he was promoted to superintendent of Faith Mission in southern Ireland. Within a few months of his arrival in Ireland, Irvine became disillusioned with the Faith Mission.

Irvine was increasingly intolerant of the Faith Mission’s cooperation with other churches & clergy in various communities of southern Ireland. In 1897, he started independently preaching, saying that true/real ministries must have no home & take no salary. He also held that the manner in which the disciples had been sent out in chapter 10 of Matthew’s Gospel was a permanent commandment which must still be observed.

Irvine’s preaching during his latest mission influenced others who began to leave their respective churches & join Irvine to form an initial core of followers. The church founded by Irvine is the only religion known to have had its origin, & early development, in Ireland.

All the church’s teachings are conveyed orally. The church doesn’t publish doctrine or statements of faith. “Workers” hold that all church teachings are based solely on the Bible. Church members & “workers” will publicly declare that the church doesn’t own any buildings. However, members own rural, or semi-rural, properties dedicated to worship, housing workers, & church gatherings. Its ministers don’t own homes or take salaries.

The King James Version Bible is the only scripture used in English-language services. The Bible itself is held as insufficient for salvation unless its words are “made alive” through the preaching of church ministers. The offhand preaching of the ministry is considered to be guided by God & must be heard directly. Great weight is given to the thoughts of workers, especially more senior workers.

Salvation is achieved through willingness to uphold the church’s standards, by faithfully following in “the way,” & by personal worthiness. Doctrines such as predestination, original sin, justification by faith alone, & redemption as the sole basis of salvation are rejected. The church is exclusivist & salvation is only through the Two by Two ministry & meetings.

Other standards include modest dress, not wearing jewelry, long hair for women & short hair for me, not getting piercing, not dying hair, not getting tattoos, & avoinding activities deemed to be worldly or frivolous (like smoking, drinking alcohol, watching TV & watching movies). The church has actively condemned pre-marital relations & don’t care for LGBTQ+ persons/identities.

The church has rejected the doctrine of the Trinity since its inception. Though the members believe in the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, the have a Unitarian view of Jesus. Jesus is God’s son, a fully human figure who came to Earth to establish a way of ministry & salvation, but not God’s Himself.

Baptism by 1 of the church’s ministers is considered a necessary step for salvation & full participation, including re-baptism of people by other churches. Candidates are approved by the local workers & are baptized by immersion. Baptisms are often scheduled for 1 morning during a Convention & are typically performed in small ponds on the property.

Members state that the church doesn’t have a formal organization. Members don’t participate in, & many are unaware of, the church’s governance. Both expenditures & funds collected remain secret from the membership & no accounting is made public. Funds are handled through stewardships, trusts, & cash transactions.

The church is controlled by a small group of senior male overseers with each having oversight of a specific geographic region. These head workers handle the 2-by-2 pairing & field assignments with the workers for that area.

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Pelagius

He was a Christian theologian known as an ascetic monk & promoting a system of doctrines (termed Pelagianism by the Catholic Church), which emphasized human choice in salvation & denied original sin.

Pelagius was accused of heresy at the Synod of Diospolis in 415. His doctrines were harshly criticized by Augustine of Hippo, especially the Pelagian views about mankind’s good nature & individual responsibility for choosing asceticism. Pelagius especially stressed the freedom of human will.

Pelagius was active between circa 390 & 418. Pelagius was tall & portly in appearance. He was also highly educated, spoke, & wrote Latin & Greek with great fluency. He was well-versed in theology. Pelagius became better known around 380 when he moved to Rome. There, he enjoyed a reputation for austerity. When Alaric sacked Rome in 410, Pelagius & his follower, Caelestius, fled to Carthage, where he continued his work.

The view that mankind can avoid sinning, & that humans can freely choose to obey God’s commandments, is held to have stood at the core of Pelagian teaching. Pelagius stressed human autonomy & freedom of will. For Pelagius, grace consisted of the gift of free will, the Law of Moses, & the teachings of Jesus.

According to Augustine, Pelagius saw baptism of infants as useless because they had no sin. Celestius, who was a disciple of Pelagius, also denied original sin & the necessity of infant baptism for salvation. Seeking to undo his condemnation, Pelagius wrote a letter &statement of belief to Pope Zosimus, Pope Innocent I’s successor, arguing that he was orthodox.

In these, he articulated his beliefs so as not to contradict what the synods condemned. Pope Zosimus was persuaded by Celestius to reopen the case. But opposition from the African bishops & Emperor Honorius forced Pope Zosimus to condemn & excommunicate Celestius & Pelagius in 418. Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Carthage in 418. Augustine, shocked that Pelagius & Celestius weren’t denounced as heretics, had called the Council of Carthage in 418.

After his condemnation, Pelagius was expelled from Jerusalem. St. Cyril of Alexandria allowed him to settle in Egypt. He’s not heard of afterwards.

His death didn’t end his teachings. Although those who followed him may have modified those teachings. Because little info actually remains concerning Pelagius’ actual teachings, some of his doctrines possibly were subject to revision & suppression by his enemies.

Pelagius & Caelestius were declared heretics by the First Council of Ephesus in 431.

Belief in Pelagianism & Semipelagianism was common for the next few centuries. Especially in Britain, Palestine,& North Africa. St. Germanus went to Britain to fight Pelagianism in or around 429 AD. In Wales, St. David was credited with convening the Synod of Brefi & the Synod of Victory against the followers of Pelagius in the 6th century.

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The First Sunday in Lent

Today’s readings

During the Easter Vigil Mass, less than forty days from now, we will be asked three very important questions: Do you reject Satan? And all his works? And all his empty show? The response to each of these questions, of course, is “I do,” and we are called to answer them so that we can remind ourselves of the promises that were made at our Baptism and to recommit ourselves to the single-mindedness our faith requires. We see in today’s Liturgy of the Word first the consequences of forgetting these promises, and then the dedication that keeping them requires.

The first reading gets to the root of the true nature of sin. The man and the woman, that is, our first parents, have been given everything they could ever need or hope for. They were, in fact, made in God’s image and likeness, which gives them an exalted place in all creation. All of the creatures of the earth and all of the plants have been given to them as food, except for the one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They are fine and happy and even care-free when they follow God’s command. But, as often happens, eventually everything they could ever hope for is not nearly enough.

Along comes the cunning serpent, and he convinces the woman, who convinces the man, that if they eat of the tree, they would know everything. So they eventually decide that they need to know everything more than they need to know God, and they eat of the rotten fruit, and with it come all the consequences of a life of sin. The care-free days are gone, and they need to cover themselves with fig leaves. They fear God’s wrath, and hide from him. They have unleashed the horrible cycle of grasping and hiding: longing for more than they need, they grasp at what they should not have; taking what they cannot handle, they hide from the God who is their creator and maker. They have decided they didn’t need God, but find out when it’s too late that God is the only one who can help them.

Repeat the cycle millions of times throughout the ages: grasping and hiding, and you have the true nature of original sin. We inherit from our first parents the desire to grasp for more than we need and more than we can handle, then we get from that the fear that comes with receiving what we should not have and we have to hide from the One who is our only hope. All of sin is grasping and hiding.

And so Satan, cunning serpent that he is, tests Jesus in the desert. Jesus submits to the temptation because that is the only way he can be one with all of us tortured and tempted souls. Satan promises Jesus more than he needs and hopes he will forget who he is, and grasp for it and end up hiding from God, but Jesus sees through the tempter’s empty show, and resists to show us that there is a way out of calamitous desperate cycle of grasping and hiding.

Satan tells Jesus he can stop hungering if he would just turn the stones into bread. The Son of God could certainly do so, and then he wouldn’t be hungry any more. He wants Jesus to decide that he doesn’t need God the Father to give him what he hungers for and to grasp at what would fill him up. But Jesus quotes the scripture saying that bread alone won’t fill up the hungers of the human heart.

But Satan can quote Scripture too, and he tempts him to throw himself off the parapet of the temple, saying that God would certainly send angels to take care of him. He wants Jesus to decide that he can be reckless and ignore the consequences of tempting God, and to grasp at eternity in the vain hope of getting there without God. But Jesus knows his Father is trustworthy and does not need to prove it, and should never be tested.

So now Satan brings out the heavy artillery. He plays on the very human desire to have it all. Jesus need not wait on God’s providence, Satan himself could give him all the kingdoms of the world. All Jesus has to do is grasp at what he does not need and worship the one who cannot save. And Jesus knows that worshiping anyone other than God is foolishness, and that it’s not worth having everything if you give up your soul to get it.

Grasping and hiding, that’s what the devil wants for us. What God wants for us is giving and trusting. If we give ourselves to him, we can trust in God’s goodness to provide everything that we really need, and way more than we could ever hope for.

But giving and trusting is much harder than grasping. Because we have all sorts of hungers. Hunger for foods we do not need to eat. Hunger for relationships that lead us to bad places and away from God and community. Hunger for self-worth that causes us to work ourselves to death. Hunger for euphoria that leads us to all sorts of addictions. Maybe we can’t turn stones into bread, but we grasp at things we do not need all the time.

And we have this idea that immortality is ours for the taking. We may not throw ourselves off the parapet of the temple, but we throw ourselves into making poor investments or gambling or get-rich-quick schemes thinking that there will always be a way to get out of the mess tomorrow. We throw ourselves into risky behavior in driving faster than we should, or drinking, or overeating – in so many ways we grasp at eternity thinking we will never die.

But maybe most of all we want all the things we do not have and maybe cannot have or should not have. We want the latest gadgets, we want the biggest houses, we want the most money, we want it all. And there are lots of easy ways to get it if we are willing to sell our souls. Maybe we’re not actually worshiping Satan, but it definitely isn’t worshiping God.

At the root of our sinfulness is the thought that we do not need God. That we can get what we want by grasping at things beyond us. And then we end up in just the same place as our first parents, all over again, hiding from God lest he find out we have tried to cheat him out of what he wants to give us anyway.

The antidote to grasping and hiding is letting go – giving of ourselves and trusting that God will give us what we need. That can be the treasure of Lent for us. In fasting, we can let go of the idea that we can provide what is necessary for our survival. God can feed our hungers much better than we can. In almsgiving, we can let go of the idea that everything is ours if we would just worship the one who cannot give us what we truly need. God gives us what’s really necessary in life, and also life eternal. And in prayer, we can let go of the cycle of grasping and hiding and return to God in trust and love.

David the Psalmist knew that he had sinned greatly in grasping for what he could not have. And so the Psalm he sings today is a model for us of letting go of all that and trusting in God’s grace to give us what we truly need:

A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
Give me back the joy of your salvation,
and a willing spirit sustain in me.

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A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1884-01-20), “Orthodoxy,” Tabor Opera House, Denver, Colorado

More about this quote: wist.info/ingersoll-robert-gre…

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