Transcripts - Ancient and Medieval Church History

Ancient & Medieval Church History Lesson 1, page 1
Study of Church History
To augment this course you could use both the course syllabus and The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1, by
Justo L. Gonzalez. There are certain themes I will try to emphasize in this survey course. There are
many things I could talk about. I will not even get to everything that is important in ancient and
medieval church history. But there are certain themes that I am concerned about. We will be learning
dates since there is no way we can study church history without having some appreciation for the dates
of church history. I remember a few years ago a man who was giving a concert was talking about a song
based on the life of Saint Brendan of Ireland. He said, “St. Brendan lived in the sixth century…or in the
eighth century…or in some century!” We need to be a little more precise than that in identifying the
flow of church history. Dates are important, and making a timeline, which is something the students of
this class are required to do, helps you learn those dates and see them in relation to each other.
We will now begin the first lecture for this course, “Centuries deep and continents wide: the study of
church history.” For each lesson in this course I will include a Scripture text or two, verses that have
particular reference to the theme we are discussing in that lesson. These verses will come up over and
over again. I will close each of the lessons with one of these verses. The verse for this lesson is from
Hebrews 12:1: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off
everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race
marked out for us.” We are concerned with church history not only to learn what has happened in the
past but also to be able to understand that God has given us a work to do as well. Church history goes on
today in our lives, and we must run with perseverance the race God has marked out for us. Sometimes I
will close with another verse because often in church history the story is not encouraging or inspiring.
Often it is, but it is not always that way. Sometimes we will see the church in the depths of failure, large
parts of the church having backslidden and turned away from the truth. Those lectures will often end
with this verse from Isaiah 40:8: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands
forever.” We will see that even in the church the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the truth of God,
the word of God, marches on, and sooner or later it is picked up by some other more faithful group and
begins to make its way again in the world. All of church history is overwhelming simply because so
much has happened in its history. We will study 1500 years of history in just 35 lessons, so we will be
moving quickly over the subject matter.
The prayer for this lesson comes from a modern church historian, Dr. Ford Lewis Babbles. He was a
Rhodes Scholar who studied with C. S. Lewis. He taught church history for most of his career at
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is best known as the translator of Calvin’s Institutes in the McNeal
and Babbles’ edition of the Institutes. We will start with this prayer from Dr. Babbles. Let us pray
together.
“Oh Father, we have not always been faithful to Thy Word. We have not always taken up our cross to
follow Thy Son. And too often we have forgotten the church we are called to serve. Renew in our hearts
and in our minds the faith that was in Peter and Paul—the faith that strengthened the ancient martyrs,
the faith that moved the pens and lips of the fathers, the faith that built cathedrals and universities, the
faith that moved the Reformers to renew the church in their time. Oh Father, teach us to impart that
faith to Thy people. These petitions we lay before Thy presence in the name of Thy Son, our Lord.
Amen.”
As we think about studying church history we need to give some thought to the basic question, what is
church history? I saw a definition of history that said “history is what historians do.” I suppose if that is
© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

right, which it must be, then church history is what church historians do, what you and I will do in this
class. If that is the case, then the word “church” is very important. What is the church? We are studying
the history of the church. The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 25, gives us this important
definition of the church, both visible and invisible. We will study the visible church, since it is hard to
study the invisible church. But it is important to understand what the invisible church is because that will
always be there as the standard, the ideal—what God expects of the church. The church will always fall
short of the perfection of the invisible church until it is united with the Lord in heaven. But we will
study the visible church, which consists of all those throughout the world who profess true religion. The
Westminster Divines meant Christian religion—and even the protestant religion—by that phrase, “true
religion.” But we will study the history of the Christian church from the post-Apostolic period nearly to
the time of the Reformation, approximately to the birth of Martin Luther. In a separate course,
Reformation and Modern Church History, we study the rest of the church, the 500 years since the
Reformation to the present time. The Confession says concerning the church, “Unto this catholic [that is,
universal], visible church Christ has given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God for the gathering
and perfecting of the saints.” I think that is probably a good, short definition of what I would like us to
do together during this course, and that is study the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of the church, how
the church functions in its worship and ministry. I would also like for us to study the gathering of the
church, how the church grew from a very tiny group of people in an out-of-the way province, part of the
Roman Empire, to a mighty movement that compassed many parts of Europe and reached out to Asia,
Africa, and Latin America even in the years before 1500 AD. We will also study the perfecting of the
saints, the spiritual progress of God’s people through the years. As we study we will see that at times the
church seems to be making progress and at other times it does not. But we will look at the ministry, the
growth, and the spiritual progress of the church.
Where do we begin with all of this? Let us look at the opinions of this from two students of church
history. One young student, in writing a paper on church history, decided that it was necessary to go
back to the very beginning, which is a good thought. But then she began her paper by saying, “Our
pastor was born in 1930…” It will be necessary to go back further than that. Heinrich Bullinger, the
successor to Zwingli in Zurich during the Reformation, wrote a book called The Old Faith. This book
was a polemic against the Catholics who had been telling the Protestants in Switzerland that they had
created something new while the Catholics were holding on to the old church. Bullinger was not going
to let that accusation go without an answer, so in The Old Faith he goes back to Adam and Eve to show
how they would have been Protestants. Whether or not he succeeded in that he did make a good point,
showing that church history begins at the very beginning, with the creation of Adam and Eve. According
to the Westminster Confession of Faith the whole number of the elect are included in the church and that
includes people all the way back to Adam and Eve. But we will not go back that far in this class. Rather,
we will start in the post-Apostolic period, about the year 100 AD. Then we will trace the history of the
church throughout the two millennia in the two courses, Ancient and Medieval Church History and
Reformation and Modern Church History. Sometimes people have called church history the Third
Testament. The Old Testament is the First Testament, the New Testament is the Second Testament, and
church is the Third Testament. I rather like that way of looking at church history because it does
continue the history of the church that begins in the Old and continues in the New Testament. All three
are a record of God’s faithful people and those people who prove to be unfaithful. The Old Testament
has many of those, as do the New Testament and church history. Of course, we do not think that books
of church history are in any sense on the same level with the inspired Word of God as recorded in the
Old and New Testaments, but the history of the church continues, as the New Testament makes very
clear. And as the history of the church continues we continue to study the record of God’s work in the
midst of His people.

Now, church history is fun, I think, and intriguing. We are studying about real people facing real
problems and trying to solve those problems one way or another. Those people are very much like us,
and those problems are very much like problems we face today. I think as we get into church history we
will feel a connection with our extended Christian family, not only extended now throughout the world
but also extended through the past. We will discover our ancestry and our roots, Christian people who
have gone before us and who have run the race with perseverance that God set before them. But there
are some problems, too, which I want to talk about for a moment.
One is the problem of selection. As we study church history we study, according to the Westminster
Confession of Faith’s definition, all those throughout the world who confess the true religion. That is a
big order, and it is impossible to do. The history of the church is everybody throughout the world who is
a Christian. Professor Gonzales, the author of the church history book we are using, has had to select
certain topics as he deals with church history. And I also have to select topics, themes, and people whom
I will focus on. That means I leave out much of the history of the church. Christian History magazine
some years ago did a fairly careful survey of church history teachers, pastors, scholars, and lay people,
and they came up with a list of the 100 most important dates in church history. I thought it was very
wise of the editors of this list as they presented this list to write this sentence: “We would not be at all
surprised if someday we find out that God’s list differs significantly from our list on the 100 most
important events in church history.”
I remember when Edith Schaeffer was speaking and was asked the question, “Who is the most important
Christian in the world today?” Without much hesitation she said, “I do not know, you do not either, and
probably no one does.” We can think of some big names who seem important to many people, but I
think Mrs. Schaeffer was wise in observing that we do not have that kind of wisdom. In saying that, I
want to stress that many people who should not be will be left out of this story. If God were teaching this
class they would not be left out, but I do not know who those people are. So I have to do the best I can. I
will talk about the people who seem significant to me as well as to others. Some will be those who
would be on nearly anyone’s list, such as Saint Augustine, who gets three lessons. Nobody else in all
church history gets three lessons, and I think we will see why as we come to him. But I do want to try
not to forget those who could be called “the forgotten people.” It is too easy to teach church history and
focus on the people who wrote the books, preached the sermons, and did the apparently important
things. Church history is not only the preacher preaching the sermon, but it is also the person listening to
the sermon. That means that we need to at least be aware that church history is much bigger than it is
usually presented. I think that means many things practically. It means that we must work hard to make
sure that we talk about the contribution of women in the history of the church. Women have been and
continue to be very much a part of the church and very important in the history of the church, but so
much of the story of women has been left out until recent years when there has been relatively greater
interest in women’s contributions. The same could be said for children. Certainly there are other people
in church history, slaves, serfs, and others of lower socioeconomic status who have been very important
in church history. But we have to work hard to include those people because they did not write the
books. There are ways historians can try to recover what the “forgotten people” were thinking and
saying. Read the poem, “A worker reads history,” and you will see that point made in a very gripping
way.
We are trying to study the history of God’s people, the visible church throughout the world. So often
church history, particularly as it is taught in the United States, can focus too narrowly on Europe and
North America. I remember reading an account from Professor Andrew Walls who taught at the
universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh in Scotland for many years. Walls was at one time a missionary
in Africa. He said that as he began to teach church history in Africa he followed the traditional Scottish

method of church history, which involved three years of studying. In the first year they studied the early
church, in the second year the Reformation, and in the third year Scotland. He became quickly aware
that teaching church history in this fashion in Africa left much out. This helped him to reorient his
thinking about the history of the church. Much of what we will study will of necessity focus on Europe,
but we need to also be aware of the developments of the history of the church in Asia, for example.
Fortunately, a new book by Samuel Moffat (a long-time missionary in Korea) called A History of
Christianity in Asia, among other such books, help us to understand that the church developed not only
in the West but in the East and Far East as well. We need to also be aware of the developments of the
church in Africa. I am particularly delighted with the book by Mark Shaw, The Kingdom of God in
Africa: A short history of African Christianity. These books are listed in the syllabus with their
bibliographic information. I am still looking for a good book on the history of Christianity in Latin
America. The text we are using for this class was written by a Cuban, Professor Gonzales. He wrote it
originally in Spanish and it was later translated into English. This is an interesting way for a church
history textbook to come to a protestant seminary in the United States. I think you will enjoy reading
this book if you are able to access it. Gonzales is an excellent writer. He keeps the story moving, makes
it interesting, and almost always records the history accurately. I disagree with him on one or two points
and I will try to make that known as we go along. But this is a good, lively history book. Even if you
really do not like history I think you will like this book. If you do like history you will probably love it
and want to read others.
So selection is one problem we will face in our study of church history. We will try to be broad enough,
to have an understanding of the whole history of the church within the compass of a very quick
overview. Another problem is the problem of mixture and error. The Westminster Confession of Faith
notes that “The catholic (that is, universal) church has been sometimes more and sometimes less visible,
and particular churches which are members thereof have been more or less pure. The purest churches
under heaven are subject both to mixture and error and some have so degenerated as to become no
churches of Christ.” This means that as we study church history, at times we will see the church at a
very high point and we will celebrate that, rejoice in that, and be moved by it. At other times we will see
that the church seems to be no church at all, given over to greed, selfishness, war, unbelief, and
apostasy. That is something that is true of the history of the church and there is no way we can change it.
Indeed, there is no way we would want to change it because we want to study what is true. When I was
teaching this class some years ago a women said to me at the end of the course, “Dr. Calhoun, this class
has been a real encouragement to me. I learned something I did not know. I have been so discouraged
about my church because it is in such a mess and there are so many problems. But now I know that the
whole history of the church is like that.” Well, that was not the only point I wanted to get across but it is
an important point. The history of the church is a history of even the best churches being subject to both
mixture and error. This means that while there is much to celebrate, there is also much to forgive. We
can forgive the past and realize the errors of people in the past who did things they should not have
done. Someone once asked Roland Bainton, the great church historian at Yale, “Dr. Bainton, how can
you know so much church history and still be a Christian?” Sometimes that discouraging thought may
come to you when we study the Crusades, for instance. Not much good came out of that and much harm
came that we still live with, and it was all done under the sign of the cross and in the name of Christ.
There is, however, also much to celebrate. We will often see that people did run the race with
perseverance, people who have left us an example to follow.
Another problem we will face is the problem of meaning, or interpretation. It is hard enough to know
what really happened, and the problem of interpreting those events is even more difficult. I will
sometimes disagree with Gonzales’ portrayal of events in his book, though that will not happen often,
and I do think it is a trustworthy account of what happened. But that in itself is a struggle because people

have different ideas of what happened. The only way we can deal with that is by doing the hard work of
research and study, talking together and comparing texts and so forth to try to answer the question,
“what really happened?” But the other question, “what does it all mean?” also must be dealt with. What
is the significance of the events in the history of the church? There are differing answers to this question
as well. Historical study in our time in the modern West is in a rather confused and troubled condition, it
seems to me. There are currently many different approaches to history. If you studied history at the
university you may be familiar with three theories, which are generally viewed as antagonistic. These
include the pre-modern or ideological idea of history. This idea says that history is studied with an
assumption already in mind that history is used to prove, undergird, and establish. The first church
historian was Eusebius of Caesarea. We will study Eusebius a little later. Jaroslav Pelikan, the great
modern church historian who in his old age converted to the Orthodox Church from Lutheranism, said,
“Eusebius is a historian who does not believe in history.” By that he meant that Eusebius had an
assumption that he was working from and the facts were then marshaled to buttress his argument. Then
we came into a period that we could call modern or scientific history. Historians felt that the way to
really do history was to divorce oneself from any ideological conviction and to try to ascertain exactly
what happened, as we do with the physical sciences, and to avoid all questions about meaning. The true
historian now is not the man with a thought in his mind, which he proves through history. The true
historian now is the person who can become objective, detached, and neutral about everything. One
writer has said that to be a good historian it is necessary to be without religion, without country, without
profession, and without political party. People thought they could do that but we have discovered that
you cannot do that. It is impossible to write history in that sort of vacuum. We bring ourselves to the
task. When I study history I am very aware of my personality, background, training, and job. All those
things impact the way I look at and study history. This modern approach to history has been pretty much
discarded and we have moved to the postmodern or deconstructive period of the study of history. This
idea says that historical writing has never been objective. It has always been full of values or bias. Thus
the traditional quest for the truth is impossible. We cannot really study history anymore in a broad or
general way. We have to talk about whose history we are studying— is it the history of men? White
Anglo-Saxons? The history of women? The history of any group, according to this theory, will be a
different history. But this leaves us in a rather dismal place where no one can talk about history in any
sort of overarching sense, as each person’s history is personal, directed toward their group, not toward
(as in our case) the whole church.
What are we going to do? It seems to me that we can use, to some extent, all three of these approaches.
We do have convictions as we start this study. We do want to be as fair as we can be. And we do realize
that certain people have been left out of the recorded history of the church. Thus, with the help of two
great angels, as Martin Lewis Dabney put it—research and meditation—we will try to do this task of
studying the history of God’s people for these 1500 years. What are the rewards? There are great
rewards: God’s glory as we are brought into worship, our profit as we are led into greater sanctification,
and for the good of the church, which will direct us into ministry.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that
hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
(Hebrews 12:1)

Ancient & Medieval Church History Lecture 2, page 1
The Growth of the Christian Church
“There went forth a stream” is the title of this lesson on the growth of the Christian church. That title
comes from the church of the East, The Odes of Solomon hymnbook, which we think was produced in
the church in Syria, perhaps in the second century. The prayer we will use to begin this lecture comes
from one of the church leaders in the West, from the city of Rome, Clement of Rome, pastor to the
church there. He died in about 100 AD. I use this prayer from Clement because it contains so many of
the elements that made it possible for the early church to grow. “There went forth a stream…” and as we
pray with this ancient church father, Clement of Rome, we catch a glimpse of some of the features and
strengths of early Christianity that made it possible for that stream to reach both to the East and to the
West. Let us pray.
Grant unto us, Lord, that we may set our hope on Thy name and open the eyes of our hearts that
we may know Thee. We beseech Thee, Lord and Master, to be our help and succor. Save those
among us who are in tribulation, have mercy on the lowly, lift up the fallen, show Thyself to
those in need, heal the sick, turn again the wanderers of Thy people, feed the hungry, ransom our
prisoners, raise up the weak, comfort the fainthearted. Let all nations know that Thou are God
alone and that Jesus Christ is Thy Son and that we are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture.
We praise Thee who are able to do these and better things than these, through Jesus Christ the
High Priest and guardian of our souls through whom be glory and majesty to Thee both now and
throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Some years ago my son Allen was studying in graduate school at Indiana University, and he was taking
a class in early Christian history from a professor who was not a professing Christian by any means.
And as this professor described the triumph of Christianity he expressed a great deal of amazement that
Christianity, a small sect of Judaism originating in an unimportant Roman province without great power
among its early followers, and of all the possibilities for the triumph of any one religion in the Roman
world, Christianity was the one that did triumph. “How could that be?” he said, “It really had nothing
going for it.” Well my lecture today is an attempt to answer this professor and to understand something
of why Christianity not only grew but eventually triumphed. When we look at the spread of Christianity
we can see it in different ways. First of all we can look at the spread of Christianity as a cultural
movement. As we go through this course and through the Reformation and Modern Church History
course, we will be looking at the six cultural transitions that took place in the spread of Christianity as
identified by Professor Andrew Walls. Professor Walls talks about six cultural frontiers across which
Christianity moved at very critical times in its history. He says that as Christianity moved from one
cultural milieu to the next, it did it just in the nick of time. Without that cultural movement, humanly
speaking, it would have died. The first of those cultural movements was the transition from Judaism to
the Gentile world. The earliest Christians were of course Jews. Because of the resistance on the part of
Jewish Christians, including some of the apostles at first, it is one of the marvels of history that
Christianity entered a second phase at all. To see Christianity move beyond the bounds of Judaism into
the Gentile world is a marvel. But in Acts we have Antioch, the Jerusalem Council, and above all we
have the visionary work of the Apostle Paul, and we see Christianity moving from its Jewish roots into
the next phase of its history, into the Gentile world. As Professor Walls points out, this happens just in
the nick of time because the Jewish state disappeared in the wars of AD 70 and 135. But by the time the
Jewish state disappeared in those wars with the Romans, Christianity was firmly planted in its second
cultural context, the culture of the Greco-Roman world. That is one way to look at the spread of
Christianity, from a Jewish sect to a religious faith embraced by Gentiles far and wide as well as by
Jews.

The second way to look at the spread of Christianity is to see it as a social movement. When Paul wrote
to the church at Corinth he said, “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were
influential, not many were of noble birth.” That continued to be true for the church throughout the
Roman world. The early church was largely made up of common people sometimes called the people of
the lower classes. The opponents of Christianity were not slow to notice this and to use it as an
instrument against the Christians. Celsus was one of the early opponents of Christianity who was
answered by Origen (we will study this later). Celsus said that the Christian message was this: “Let no
one educated, no one wise, and no one sensible come near.” He said, “By the fact that Christians admit
that these people are worthy of their God they show that they want and are able to convince only the
foolish, the dishonorable, and the stupid, only slaves, women, little children.” That was part of Celsus’
attack on the Christian faith. In a sense it was true. Christians did not deny this charge. A Christian
apologist, Minucius Felix, said, “That many of us are called poor is not our disgrace but our glory.”
There were many poor people who were members of the early church. Women were accepted as full
members of the church. It is probable that in the early church, as throughout most of church history,
women made up a larger percentage of the church than men. Even more remarkable, slaves were also
accepted as full members of the church and participated equally in the worship of the community. In
fact, we think that a slave named Callistus became bishop of the church of Rome in the early third
century, perhaps the most important post in the Christian church at that time. Many of the people who
embraced Christ and joined the Christian church were poor people. But there were some, as was also
true in Corinth, who were from the higher classes.
By Nero’s time, the 60s AD, Christianity was beginning to infiltrate the noble families of Rome. Paul,
writing from prison in Rome to the Philippians, said, “All the saints send you greetings, especially those
who belong to Caesar’s household.” So even at that early date there were some Christians who had a
high place in government. There is evidence that in Emperor Domitian’s time, the 90s AD, the
emperor’s cousin and wife were Christians. We are not absolutely sure about all the details of this, but
apparently these two people were banished or put to death and their two young sons have vanished from
history. They had been designated as Domitian’s heirs, and it could well be that the presumptive heirs of
the throne of the Roman Empire before the first century were Christians. What a change! Thirty years
after the fearful persecutions of Nero, the heirs to the throne were brought up in a Christian house.
Clement of Alexandria in the late second century wrote a sermon titled, “What kind of rich person can
be saved?” The very fact that this church father would preach a sermon on this topic shows that people
with wealth were beginning to become part of the Christian church and this was now a question to be
answered. Clement’s writings show that he did not yet have a very clear idea of salvation by faith alone
in Jesus Christ. But Clement’s answer to the question posed in his sermon, “What kind of rich person
can be saved?” is a moderate one: “the person who does not set his heart on wealth and put it first, like
the rich young ruler did.” The person who does not do that certainly can be saved and be part of the
Christian church.
Christianity moves culturally out of Judaism to the Greco-Roman world. It moves throughout the social
levels of the Roman Empire, although the large majority of Christians remain people of the lower
classes, common people. Next we will look at the geographical movement of the church. As we discuss
this it would be helpful to have a map of the Roman world to reference. We will look at the movement
first to the West and then to the East. In Acts we see the beginning of the movement of Christianity to
the West up into Asia Minor, from there to Greece, and from there to Italy, and perhaps even into Spain.
By the end of the first century Asia Minor had become the most Christianized area of the Roman
Empire. Though there are very few Christians in that area now, at the end of the first century Asia Minor
was the center of Christianity. There were other places that had also become Christian in part. By 185

AD Christianity had spread more widely in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, and had also spread all the
way to Gaul. There was persecution in the city of Lyons in Gaul in the year 177 AD, during which a
Christian bishop was put to death. There was a Christian center up in Germania. There were Christian
churches in different parts of Spain. There were also Christians in different locations in North Africa.
North Africa at this time was part of the Roman Empire. North Africa from Egypt to Numidia and
Mauretania were included in the Roman Empire. There is a tradition that Mark first established the
Christian church in Alexandria. It is hard to know how to treat some of these church traditions about the
establishment of the church in different places because almost every church everywhere wanted to claim
a big name. Even Scotland claims Andrew the Apostle, who is also claimed by Russia. If that is the case
then Andrew would have had to travel widely and evangelize in many different places and in many
different languages. Thus I think we have to treat those traditions with some caution. Mark Shaw in his
History of the Kingdom of God in Africa, says, “Until more evidence is produced we should neither rule
out St. Mark’s role in Egyptian history nor endorse the tradition as it stands.” Later, Christianity moved
further south into Africa outside the bounds of the Roman Empire into Nubia and Ethiopia. We will look
at that movement as we get to the later history of the church.
Thus Christianity begins to make its way into the West, and it begins to spread widely by the end of the
second century. It is sometimes forgotten that Christianity moved also to the East. I have a book in my
library by J. C. Wan, History of the Early Christian Church to the Year A.D. 500. This is a very fine
book. But Professor Wan says this: “The birthplace of the church stood on the boundary between the
East and the West. It is significant that this infant religion, as soon as it was strong enough to leave the
cradle, marched straight to the West.” It did not go straight to the West. Acts tells us of the beginning of
that story of the spread of Christianity to the West. But it also went to the East. With Sam Moffat’s
History of Christianity in Asia, we really do not have any excuse now for not knowing something of the
remarkable spread of Christianity to the East. The first New Testament translation was in Syriac in the
East. The first Christian hymnbook, The Odes of Solomon, which I referred to earlier, was produced in
Syria. The first known church building was in the East, in Edessa or Eura Europis—both have claims on
that. An archeology team from North Carolina State University thinks they have discovered an even
earlier church building in Acaba which is also in the East, in Jordan. The first Christian king and state
may have been in Armenia or Eastern Turkey, 100 years before Constantine. I say all that to stress the
importance of not leaving out the history of the spread of Christianity to the East.
I would like to focus on two aspects of the eastern spread of the church. The first aspect I would like to
focus on is the spread of Christianity to India. The tradition is that the apostle Thomas went to India.
Most of these traditions about where the apostles went and what happened to them are probably
legendary, but there is more reason to believe that the tradition of Thomas going to India is a true
tradition. There are Christians in India who still look back to Thomas as the founder of their church.
Samuel Moffat in his book evaluates this opinion by saying, “Most opinions [concerning the tradition of
Thomas founding the church in India] range from possible to probable, with a discernable trend towards
the latter.” Dr. Moffat is a very cautious scholar so if he says it is probable then we can take his word for
it, that Thomas probably reached India. And there is another tradition that in the late second century,
about 120 years after the martyrdom of Thomas in India, another missionary left the Roman world, this
time from Alexandria in Egypt. The head of the catechetical school there (roughly the equivalent to a
president of a seminary now), Vantenis, left his important center in the Roman world “in order to preach
Christ to the Bramans and philosophers in India,” as St. Jerome said in the fifth century. Dr. Moffat
says, “The story of the visit of Vantenis to India is not to be dismissed lightly. There are indirect,
presumptive indications from the period of his mission that tend to support the later references to his
journey.” Not only does Christianity spread very early to India, but it also spreads into Syria, to Edessa,
and the little kingdom of Armenia in Turkey, just across the Euphrates. Armenia we think became the

first Christian state with a Christian king—100 years before Constantine, the first Christian emperor in
the Roman world. From Edessa Christianity spread to Arbela, across the Tigris near ancient Nineveh.
This area produced a very famous Eastern theologian whose name was Tatian. He was chiefly known
for the Diatessaron, that is, The Life of Christ, that he compiled from the four gospels. Then Christianity
spread, amazingly, from Arbela into Persia and all the way into Afghanistan. By the end of the second
century there were churches as far east as Persia and modern-day northern Afghanistan. So the church
spread from Syria to Mesopotamia to Persia to Afghanistan, and down into India before the second
century AD. The Christian faith was unquestionably spreading across the continent of Asia as
vigorously as it spread into Europe.
Now I want to come to another question. Why did Christianity spread? My son’s professor said it had
nothing going for it. He did not understand how this feeble religion with its nondescript followers could
have such an impact on the world. Well, the first answer to the question of why Christianity did spread
certainly has to be the power of the Gospel. It is not an answer that every historian would see at first, but
certainly a Christian historian sees that there is something supernatural about the spread of the Christian
faith. The world into which Christianity came, both in the East and West, was a world full of religions.
Sometimes people have said that Christianity came into a vacuum—people were looking for something
to believe and so they latched on to Christianity because there was not anything else. That is very far
from the truth. The Roman world particularly was filled with warring sects and rival faiths. There were
the traditional pagan religions. This was not the prime of paganism, the Greco-Roman gods, but those
religions were not gone from the Empire. In fact, on the popular level they were still very strong. You
can read Acts and find Paul encountering the pagan religions at Lystra, the worship of Zeus. And in
Athens Paul encounters the worship of many gods and goddesses including an unknown god. Also in
Ephesus Paul finds the worship of Artemis, or Diana as she was called by the Romans. So the traditional
pagan religions were still alive.
There were also the mystery religions. These were a great variety of Eastern religions promising a sense
of belonging and personal salvation, which did not come from the traditional gods of Greece and Rome.
Their worshipers really had no personal relationship with these gods; they just tried not to offend them.
But the mystery religions promised a great deal more: salvation and fellowship with the god or goddess.
There were many of these. From Persia came the worship of Mythrias. From Egypt came the worship of
Isis. From Asia Minor came the worship of Cybele. There were numerous mystery religions. When the
ruins of Pompey were discovered two centuries ago one of the first structures uncovered in that Roman
city was an opulent temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis. In addition to the mystery religions there were
also the philosophies, which provided a kind of religious allegiance for some people. These included
Stoicism, Epicureanism, and others. These philosophies had moved away from theory to practical
religious commitment by the end of the second century. They promised, through rational processes, the
discovery of a good life and even hope beyond death. As part of the religious mix of the Roman Empire
there was the imperial cult. This was the worship of the emperor. Beginning with the death of Julius
Caesar in 44 BC there was a tendency to deify the Roman emperor after he died. But by the time we
come to Augustus the living emperor was beginning to be viewed as a god to be worshiped. Romans
practiced the worship of the emperor. It was really a small thing that was required, simply bowing
before the image of the emperor or taking a little pinch of incense and burning it in a flame before some
symbol of the emperor. This was viewed as a unifying and patriotic act to hold the empire together.
Rome promoted a kind of amalgamation of all these religions. You could believe in all of them if you
wanted to. The only thing that was absolutely required was the worship of the emperor. Edward Gibbon,
in his famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, offered a cynical view of Rome’s attitude toward
all these religions. This is what he said: “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman

world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, by the
magistrates as equally useful, and thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence but even
religious concord.” But then Christianity comes into this and stirs up all kinds of trouble. We see this
beginning in the New Testament and we see it continuing in the history of this time in the Roman
Empire. This is because Christianity and Judaism were the only two exclusive religions of the time. You
could not add anything else to Christianity or to Judaism. This became a source of persecution, not
because Christians were Christians but because Christians were Christians only. The magistrates often
charged Christians this way, “You do not worship the gods. You do not sacrifice to the emperor.” All
they had to do was sacrifice to the emperor and worship the gods and all would be well. Not only was
the exclusiveness of Christianity a source of persecution, but it was also a source of great strength. I
think this was one of the reasons Christianity did spread. One historian has put it this way, “There were
too many cults, too many mysteries, too many philosophies of life to choose from. You could pile one
religious insurance on another and yet not feel safe. Christianity made a clean sweep.” You can see the
appeal of that. Arnold Tionby and many others have said that in the modern world for Christianity to
survive it must give up its claims to exclusiveness and make common cause with other religions. But the
reason it survived and grew, and even flourished, in the early church is that it did not do that. If it had
done that it would have long since disappeared from history.
Not only do we have the power of the Gospel, but we also have the witness of Christians. Christianity
was victorious because the early Christians outlived, out-thought, and out-died the world around them.
The role of the apostles, as I have already said, is somewhat uncertain. It is highly probable that Thomas
made it to India, and we know that Peter died in Rome; we know that John went to Ephesus and was in
prison for a time on the island of Patmos. But the legends about the other apostles are probably just
legends. The Lord gave the Great Commission to the apostles, but He also gave it to everyone. We know
that the ordinary Christians were missionaries. In the early period, the second calling of every Christian
was to be a missionary. The Gospel was carried by merchants along the trade routes and by soldiers
from post to post as these Christians went throughout the empire and also into the East, one loving heart
setting another on fire. These Christians were able to witness by word, but they also witnessed by deed.
Tertullian put it this way, in memorable words: “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many
to put a brand on us.” Tertullian is saying, “This is what the pagans are saying about us. This is not what
Christians are saying about each other, but the watching world says this about the Christian church.
They say, ‘See how they love one another? How they are ready even to die for one another?’” That love
Christians had for one another overflowed. The community of faith reached out to people in the world so
that the church father Ignatius could talk about a love for the widows and orphans, for the oppressed and
imprisoned, for the hungry, the thirsty, for the abandoned babies who were left to die. Christians had a
reputation as people who loved each other and even loved those who persecuted them. The Scottish
historian James Orr said, “The new spirit of self-denying love which Christianity breathed into the world
awoke wonder from its very strangeness.” This was strange and people began to wonder about it and
were brought into the faith because they were so impressed by the conduct of these Christians. And
Christians witnessed also by their deaths, as we will see in the next lecture when we begin to study
persecution. Again, Tertullian put it in famous words: “Blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
Of course not everyone was converted who saw the martyrs put to death, but we have many true stories
of jailers, magistrates, and people in the stands watching the courageous deaths of Christians who
abandoned their faith and joined the Christian church, sometimes to be martyred themselves right on the
spot. Someone has said that martyrdom was the opportunity of the early church for mass evangelism.
They did not hold great rallies and public preaching services, but as thousands watched Christians die,
that was their opportunity for mass evangelism.

It has been asked, what was the role of children in the early church? Women and slaves were fully
accepted, but what was the role of children? The question of infant baptism and whether that was a
practice in the early church is a question that we will look at later. But the question of the role of
children is not one that we can answer as fully as I would like. We do know that baptism marked a
significant change in a believer’s participation in the church. Unbaptized children and adults would take
part in much of the worship of the church, but the Lord’s Supper was reserved for the baptized members
of the church. It has also been asked, what happened to Paul? I suppose that debate will go on until we
are all in heaven and can ask Paul. I am no expert on this, but I tend to think that Paul went to Rome,
was imprisoned, was released, traveled back to eastern Mesopotamia, and then was rearrested and taken
back to Rome and put to death during the persecution in Rome by Nero in the 60s AD, about 64 AD.
According to my interpretation Paul did not make it to Spain. I wish he had made it to Spain. It is nice to
think of Paul evangelizing in the East, going to Rome and saying, “You are already evangelized,” and
then going on to Spain.” There are different ways to interpret the evidence. I am not sure if he made it to
Spain. In my opinion he probably did not, though he certainly wanted to. On the other hand, there are
Christian communities in Spain very early on, by 185 AD. If Paul did not make it to Spain, then
someone else did. But after Paul, as I pointed out, we really do not know the names of the missionaries.
They were traders, soldiers, and ordinary people like Priscilla and Aquilla—an important duo who were
in Rome, went to Ephesus, and then went back to Rome. As merchants they traveled about spreading the
Gospel. I think that is the normal way that Christianity spread as well as through the soldiers in the
army.
hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
(Hebrews 12:1)

The Persecutions
This lesson is entitled “The Martyrs Who Lived.” You might be perplexed by that title. The more
conventional way to say it is, I suppose, “martyrs who died.” But I use that phrase in the title for this
lecture because I read it some time ago in the writings of Aleksandr Menn, a Russian preacher in the
Orthodox Church who was himself almost certainly a martyr for the Christian cause. He wrote these
words, “No living creature except for a man is able to take a risk, and even the risk of death, for the sake
of truth. Thousands of martyrs who have lived are a unique phenomenon in the history of all our solar
system.” He makes the context rather large with that last phrase. As I thought about the expression,
“martyrs who lived,” it appealed to me because I think Aleksandr Menn understood the true nature of
the martyrs’ sacrifice. They do live, these martyrs about whom we will talk today. They live on in the
memories of others, including ours as we read about them, and they live on in their witness. As you may
know, the New Testament word for martyr means “witness.” These martyrs were witnesses who lived in
the early days of the church. But even more important for them is that they live on eternally with God in
heaven. The dates of the deaths of the early Christian martyrs were often remembered in the early
church and even later as birthdays. These were really the days they died, but the church celebrated those
days as birthdays because on the days of their deaths they began their lives in the presence of God in
heaven. I will begin with a prayer from one of the famous martyrs of the church, Polycarp. He lived
from the late first century into the early second century AD. He was a disciple of John. He studied with
John who was a disciple of Jesus. Polycarp was burned at the stake in the year 155 AD. He made that
famous speech, the story of which you can read in Gonzales’ book. When asked to deny the Lord,
Polycarp said, “I have served him for 86 years and He has done me no harm. How could I curse my
King who saved me?” We have an account of the prayer Polycarp prayed at the stake. I will use that
prayer as we begin this lecture. This is not exactly the way Polycarp prayed it because few of us are
facing anything like being burned at the stake today. But there are pressures and problems that we all
have, and we can relate this prayer in some ways to our own situations, I am sure. But as we pray it we
will think of this earnest man, an old bishop, 86 years old, who was not willing to give up his faith to
save his earthly life. Let us pray.
“Thou God and Father of Thy beloved and blessed Son our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have
received knowledge of Thee, O God of the angels and of all creation and of all just men who live in Thy
presence, I thank Thee that Thou hast graciously granted me a portion among Thy people, among the
people of Christ. Unto the resurrection of everlasting life may I be received in Thy sight as a fruitful and
acceptable sacrifice. Wherefore, for all this I praise Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee through the
eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ Thy beloved Son to whom with Thee and the Holy Spirit be all glory,
world without end. Amen.”
That is an amazing prayer. To think of uttering those words, so proper, so complete in the face of
imminent death. As we study the New Testament, particularly Acts and the Epistles—and the Gospels,
all the New Testament—we recognize that the persecution that came to the early Christians came first
from the Jews. Especially in Acts, the persecutors are the Jews and sometimes pagans, and Rome is
often the protector of the Christian church. Paul appeals to Caesar in order to have a fair trial. But as we
move to Revelation, from the decade of the 60s AD in Acts to the decade of the 90s AD in Revelation,
things have changed dramatically. Rome is no longer the protector of the church but rather the
persecutor. Rome has become, as John describes her in Revelation, the great Babylon. Thus we will
move quickly to the Roman persecution.

The Roman persecution lasted from the 60s of the first century to the 320s. So there were about two-
and-a-half centuries of persecution. I have summarized all this on page 14 in the syllabus, giving 8 main
points. I will not lecture through those main points, but page 14 in the syllabus gives you something of
an outline of the major times of persecution. The Roman persecution began in the time of Nero in the
60s AD. The Roman historian Tacitus left us that vivid description of the awful persecution of the
Christians under Nero: “Covered with skins of beasts Christians were torn by dogs and perished. Or they
were nailed to crosses or burned by flames to serve as nightly illuminations in Nero’s gardens.” This is
from Tacitus who was not necessarily sympathetic to the Christians; he was simply describing what
happened. From that first persecution in the 60s, which claimed almost certainly the lives of Peter and
Paul and is described in the great novel Quo Vadis?, we move all the way down to the last persecution
under Diocletian. This was the final and fiercest attack on the Christian faith.
As we think about that two-and-a-half century period, let me make two points that I think are important
for us to keep in mind. One is this: these persecutions were sporadic. We are not talking about two-and-
a-half centuries of intense, consistent, persistent persecution. Actually there were two periods of long
peace in the third century interrupted by persecution in the mid-third century. For much of this period
Christians were not being persecuted. We should not think of this as a consistent period of extreme
persecution. Persecution could break out at almost any time and in almost any place, but many
Christians lived their lives in relative peace during these first centuries of the Christian church. The
other point to emphasize is this: until the mid-third century this was not systematic, empire-wide
persecution. Until the middle of the third century persecution tended to be localized. It might happen in
North Africa, it could happen in Lyon, it could break out in Asia Minor, and it did from time to time
strike Christian people in all those places. But until the first empire-wide, systematic persecution under
Decius in 250 AD, there was no concerted effort to wipe out the Christian church that stretched across
the empire. There are many wonderful accounts of Christians who suffered, who were persecuted, and
who were faithful. There were also many Christians who were not faithful; we will talk about that in a
few minutes. Many people apostatized. Not every Christian was able to stand like Polycarp and say,
“Yes, I serve the Lord and I will serve Him in my death as I have served Him in my life.” There were
many who failed. But there were many who were faithful.
There is the amazing story of Perpetua, a 22-year-old young woman, mother of an infant child. She
wrote her diary while in prison in Carthage, North Africa. The diary of Perpetua is probably the first
writing we have from a Christian woman. That is a wonderful account of courage and faith in the midst
of awful tension and eventual death. There is also the famous story of Polycarp, the old bishop who died
in Smyrna, Asia. One of my favorite stories from this part of church history is the account of the
martyrdom of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste, Asia. These martyrs were from the Roman province of
Cappadocia. The martyrdom of these 40 soldiers happened in the year 320 AD, which is after
persecution had ceased in the western part of the empire because it is after the date of the Edict of Milan
in 313 AD, but persecution continued in the East for some years. Gonzales has a picture, a mosaic of the
40 martyrs, in Story of Christianity, and he speaks of it as “The legend of the 40 martyrs.” But
Cambridge’s Ancient History speaks of it as actual history with undoubtedly legendary aspects added to
it. Many of the stories that we get from this period have been enhanced or elaborated by certain
legendary elements that grew through the years. But I think there is good reason to believe that the story
of the 40 martyrs actually took place.
I have mentioned the book Quo Vadis?, an exciting story. It tells of the persecution of the Christians and
what happened to some of them during the time of Nero. A much more competent book, another novel
but an historical novel that will teach you a great deal about this period, is the book The Flames of
Rome, written by Paul Maier. That is a very enjoyable and accurate book. Dr. Maier is a professor of

history and a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor. If you read The Flames of Rome you will notice that it
includes about 50 pages of footnotes—there is much history in that book, and it is an exciting story as
well.
Let us come to the question of why. Why were the Christians persecuted? Many reasons were given.
There were many charges brought against the Christians at that time, some of which could be easily
refuted. Those charges included cannibalism. It seems strange that Christians would be charged with
cannibalism; it certainly was not true. But Christians did speak in their worship about eating Jesus’ body
and drinking Jesus’ blood. So you can see how rumors might spread that cannibalism was being
practiced in these secret meetings often held before dawn in out-of-the-way places. When Pliny was a
governor in Bithynia, Asia he did not quite know how to handle the Christians in his province. He wrote
to Emperor Trajan to get some suggestions, and he tried to describe the Christians as he saw them. He
said, “They eat only ordinary and harmless kinds of food.” Thus we see that this Roman governor was
careful enough to do research and discover that the charge of cannibalism was grossly unfair and untrue.
Christians were also charged with disruption of business. Perhaps in some way they could be charged
with that. In Acts chapter 19 Paul’s preaching certainly disrupts the business of those engaged in the
worship of Artemis or Diana. Also, as people became Christians they did not buy the sacrificial items or
other items that were used in false worship. Another charge brought against them was “gross
immorality, including incest.” This also came from unfounded rumors. Christians call one another
“brother” and “sister.” They had the habit of greeting one another with a “holy kiss.” And the love
Christians had for one another was transposed in the Roman mind to sexual extravagance and even
incest. Those charges were fairly easily answered.
Christians were also charged with being anti-family. This seems like a strange charge to us, as Christians
are very much pro-family. But what happened here, I think, was that Christians like the young woman
Perpetua were willing to say, “We must forsake father and mother and husbands and wives and take up
our cross and follow Christ.” People could not understand that. In the account of Perpetua her father
pleads with her, “Do not forget me! Do not forget your mother! Do not forsake your sisters! What about
your infant child?” It seems like this woman was not concerned with them. She was concerned about
them, but her allegiance to Christ meant that she could deny her father even to maintain her place in that
family. Christians were also charged with poverty. As we saw in the previous lesson, that was largely
true. But it was more a source of ridicule than of persecution. The Christian apologists like Minucius
Felix whom I already quoted in the earlier lecture said, “That many of us are poor is not our disgrace but
our glory.” Then there was a strange charge: atheism. Christians were considered atheists because they
did not worship all the gods. They did worship one God, but He is invisible and so did not count. To the
Romans, Christians were atheists. At Polycarp’s martyrdom he was in the stadium with the proconsul
and the crowd of people who had come to see what would happen to him, as they often came to see what
would happen to the Christians. The proconsul ordered him to say, “Away with the atheists.” By that the
proconsul meant for this bishop, Polycarp, to say, “Away with the Christians [the atheists].” “Just say,
‘Away with the atheists,’ and we will let you go.” Well this was a feisty bishop and he waved around to
the crowd pointing to them and said, “Away with the atheists!” But he obviously had a different group
in mind than the Christians and as a result he died for his faith.
Another charge against the Christians was novelty. This was a new religion. This is a strange charge
since all sorts of new religions were pouring into the Roman Empire from the East, not only Christianity
but the mystery religions as well. The Christians were well able to answer this and they did, over and
over again: “Our faith goes far back, all the way to the beginning of the Old Testament. This is not new;
this is the continuation of the religion of Israel.” And then the charge was also often made that the
Christians were not patriotic. Christians, it is true, did not participate in some of the city festivals

because immorality was practiced in connection with those festivals, and emperor worship was part of
the city duty in those festivals. Therefore Christians would absent themselves from the festivals, from
the celebrations. And consequently they were charged with lack of patriotism. Their behavior was
considered anti-social, staying in their homes and not associating with other people. This, however, was
not quite true. The Christians were separate and different in significant ways. But Christians said over
and over again, “We live in the same cities, we work side by side with you, we are part of Rome (or
Alexandria, or Carthage, or Thessalonica). But in some ways we have to be different.” But as Tacitus
put it, “These Christians were loathed for their hatred of the human race.” When people are different and
separate themselves somewhat, others will charge them with hatred of the human race.
Then there was a charge that was frequently repeated: “You Christians are the cause of the disasters that
are happening.” This was a charge that more and more affected the Christians as Rome began to
crumble. People thought, “We were strong and doing well until these Christians came in.” That is why
Saint Augustine wrote The City of God, which we will discuss in some detail later. Christians were
blamed for almost anything that happened. Tertullian, the church father, put it this way, “If the Tiber
reaches the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky does not move so that there is drought,
or if the earth does move so that there is an earthquake, if there is a famine, if there is a plague, the cry is
at once, ‘Send the Christians to the lions!” That was a charge that was repeated consistently throughout
this period.
Trajan’s letter to Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia in about the year 112 AD, set forth the policy
that was generally followed until the empire-wide persecution under Decius in 250 AD. That policy was,
“Christians are not to be sought out. Do not go looking for them. But if someone denounces someone as
a Christian, then bring that person in and question them. And if that person refuses to recant and worship
our gods, then they should be punished.” That was the way it worked until 250 AD. So it took a jealous
neighbor or an envious associate or someone who was spiteful to bring a charge. And then the Christian
would be arrested and tried. Thus Christians lived under the cloud of the possibility of persecution
almost all the time. Now, there was a more serious charge that really began to affect the Christians in
every part of the empire. That was, “These people simply refuse to worship the emperor.” And
Christians did refuse to worship the emperor. Jews did as well, but Jews were exempt for reasons I will
not go into in this lecture. The Jews were a nation, but the Christians were everywhere. They came from
all nations, and they were not exempt. The Christians’ response to this was, “We cannot worship the
emperor. We worship God alone. To worship the emperor would mean that we were no longer
Christians. But we respect the emperor as chosen by our Lord. Caesar is more ours than yours because
he is appointed by our God.” That was a good answer but it did not satisfy the Romans. It probably
infuriated them for the Christians to say, “We do not worship the emperor but he belongs more to us
than to you because our God put him on his throne.”
Especially later on in this period, but it was possible at any point during this time, people who were
Christians suffered simply because they were Christians. They suffered because they bore the name of
Christ. And they were prepared for this. In 1 Peter 4:16 it says, “However, if you suffer as a Christian,
do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” You can imagine that this text was often
quoted in church meetings in the second, third, and early fourth centuries. As we read that amazing
account of the witness of Perpetua in Carthage whose father was pleading with her to denounce her
faith, we can feel the tension there. She had to remain a Christian and reject the pleas of her father,
which to Romans was unthinkable for a young woman to do. But she said this, “Father, do you see this
water pot here?” He said, “Yes, of course.” “Well that is what it is. It is not something else. Can it be
called by any other name than what it is?” He said, “No.” She said, “Then I cannot be anything other
than what I am, and I am a Christian.” That is a very moving story, I think, because she really stood firm

at a point where it would have been easy to cave in. She knew she was going to suffer simply because
she was a Christian. There is also the story of Ptolemaeus, who died during the reign of Antoninus Pius.
The judge said, “Are you a Christian?” He said, “Yes,” and they took him out and executed him.
Execution was practiced quickly after the sentence. Someone objected to that so they said, “Are you a
Christian?” He said “Yes,” so they executed him. A third person said, “Well this is not right, to be
executing these people simply because they are Christians!” The judge said, “You sound like a
Christian, too.” The man said, “Yes, I am.” So they executed him. Justin, later himself a martyr and thus
called Justin Martyr, heard about this and in protest wrote a letter to the emperor. The letter is called
“The second apology of Justin Martyr.”
What was the Roman state trying to do in persecuting the Christians? Two things, I think. The main
purpose was to cause the Christians to apostatize. Most of the Romans, the emperors and officials, did
not want to kill the Christians as much as they wanted them to simply stop being Christians. Therefore
pressure was put on in different ways and in various places in the empire to try to produce apostates.
People at large, including Christians if they were to get through the persecutions, were required to have
a little certificate (rather like a U.S. social security card) called a libelus. If you worshiped the emperor,
which was a very simple thing involving bowing your head or burning incense to an image of the
emperor, in this very easy fashion then you got your card. Because this was such an easy thing
Christians were tempted, and some Christians did bow their heads and did burn the incense. What would
you do in a situation like that? Some of them did and they got their cards and went on their way. This
created a problem in the church later, which we will discuss in another lecture, the Donatus controversy.
This controversy arose because after the persecutions were over many of these same Christians were
sorry they had worshiped the emperor. They wanted back in the church and the big question became,
“Can we let them back in?” I will not discuss that more now because it occurred some centuries later
and we will come to it in a later lesson. So the two main purposes of the persecutions were to cause
apostasy and to martyr the obstinate. If people just refused like Perpetua, Justin Martyr, and Polycarp,
then they ought to be put to death. And many were put to death.
Those were the purposes, but what were the actual results of the persecutions? I think we can summarize
the results of persecution in the early church in these two points: persecution purified the church and
persecution extended the church. The results were not really what the Romans planned. Actually, as F.
F. Bruce puts it in The Spreading Flame, “Christianity was organized for catastrophe.” The church was
ready for this. You only have to read the New Testament a little to see that Christians must be prepared,
organized, for catastrophe. Jesus said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” Thus the
Christians were not surprised. They were expecting it. We read also from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
in Matthew 5:10, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.” The church was ready for this. Actually I think we will see a kind of problem
develop because Christians began to want to be persecuted. The church fathers had to say, “If you are
brought before the authorities, do not deny Christ. Die like a Christian. But do not try to be persecuted;
do not try to be martyred.” This may seem strange to us, that people were trying to be martyred, but they
were. The church father Origen when he was a teenager saw his father taken out and martyred. Origen
wanted to be martyred as well. His mother had to hide all his clothes in the house so that he would not
have anything to wear. He was ashamed to go out without anything on so he was not martyred. His
mother did well, and Origen played an important role in the history of the church later on.
But persecution did purify the church. That is easy to see, is it not? If you live in a time or place like
this, where the very fact that you are a Christian could give someone grounds to accuse you and bring
you before the judge—if that is what it means to be a Christian—then people will not consider
Christianity lightly. They will realize that to be a Christian means to take up one’s cross and be crucified

on it. Tertullian, whom I quote so often because of all the church fathers he has the facility of saying
things in the crispest and most memorable way, said that persecution was “God’s winnowing fan, which
even now cleanses the Lord’s threshing floor.” Persecution would blow through, blow the chaff away,
and leave the good grain. Persecution did purify the church. When we come to the time of the end of
persecution under Constantine, the church has a new problem: nominalism. This happened because it
became popular to be a Christian. But before Constantine it was not popular to be a Christian, and
Christians faced very serious threats and even death. And persecution also extended the church. Again
Tertullian says it in a very famous quote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Over and
over again we read stories like that of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste where persecution extends the church.
In the story of the 40 martyrs, 40 Christians were taken out on a frozen lake to die overnight. They were
singing, “40 good martyrs, 40 good soldiers for Christ.” Then in the middle of the night one of them left
the lake, ice, and certain death to go to the heated bathhouse that was available for anyone who would
apostatize. So out on the lake came then the song, “39 good soldiers for Christ.” And then according to
the story the jailer who had been watching all this through the night ripped off his clothes and joined the
soldiers on the lake and the song came again, “40 good soldiers for Christ.” You can see in that story
both the temptation to apostasy and the effect that the endurance of this persecution by faithful
Christians had upon people. Persecution did extend the church. But I think we should say something that
I have not always said at this point in the lesson: it did not always work that way. Reading Samuel
Moffat’s Christianity in Asia, we see that there were times when in Asia persecution just stayed with no
relief, and the church in those places was destroyed. Thus we see that it is not always the case that
persecution extends the church. But in the history of the church in early Rome, by God’s providence and
mercy, persecution did extend the church. Many people came into the church because they saw
something in Christians who suffered that they had never seen before and they could never forget it.
This was like Paul, I expect, who never could forget the stoning of Stephen until it finally broke through
into his mind and heart that God wanted him to go the same way.
Before we close let me just say this: we usually think of the history of the early church as the time of
persecution in the church. It was a time of persecution in church history. But people have said, and I
think they are right, that more people have been martyred for Christ in the last 50 years than in the first
250 years of the church’s history. That is partly because there are more Christians today. We are all over
the world now, and in many places our brothers and sisters in Christ are being persecuted and martyred.
We in the United States and other places of relative safety for Christians should not think that
persecution is something that is finished with, something that is not and will not happen again. We know
that it is happening now in different places in this world.
I have been asked about the libelus, the little cards that anyone who wanted to avoid persecution must
have during this time. These cards were checked from time to time. Let me read you part of a typical
libelus: “To the commission chosen to superintend the sacrifices at the village of Alexander’s Isle, from
Aurelius Diogenis, 872, with a score above the right eyebrow [there had to be some kind of
identification to make sure you were talking about the right person]: I have always sacrificed to the gods
and now in your presence and in accordance with the edict I have made sacrifice and poured a libation
and partaken of the sacred victims. I request you to certify this below. Farewell. I Arelius Diogenis
present this petition.”
This man got his libelus and he would keep it in his house. If he was charged with being a Christian he
could produce it. I expect these cards were checked, but remember that these persecutions were
sporadic. There would be times of intense persecution when a whole city or province would be subjected
to this. It depended on the mood of the emperor back in Rome; it depended on whether catastrophes

were threatening locally. All kinds of things could produce a persecution and then it was important for a
person to have a certificate.
hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us”
(Hebrews 12:1).

The Apologists
This is lesson is entitled, “Athens and Jerusalem: The Apologists.” I want to begin with prayer from one
very famous apologist whom we will talk about in this lecture, Clement of Alexandria. The prayer that I
will use is a hymn, “Shepherd of Tender Youth.” Clement wrote this, we think, around 200 AD. This is
one of the earliest Christian hymns we have, and it is a very beautiful hymn and prayer. As I pray it you
will notice several references to children. There is reference to children in stanza one and to infants in
stanza three. There are more stanzas, but we will use only three. I think this is a wonderful hymn to use
in services of infant baptism. As I pray this, I want you to name some children you want to pray for in
your own heart. You could name your own children or relatives or friends. We will pray for our children
today and those of our family and friends. Think of names of several children, it should be easy. Let us
pray.
Shepherd of tender youth, guiding in love and truth

Through devious ways: Christ, our triumphant King,
We come Thy Name to sing;
Hither our children bring, to shout Thy praise.
Thou art our holy Lord, the all-subduing Word,

Healer of strife: Thou didst Thyself abase,
That from sin's deep disgrace,
Thou mightest save our race, and give us life.
So now and till we die, sound we Thy praises high,

And joyful sing: infants, and the glad throng,
Who to Thy church belong,
Unite to swell the song to Christ our King. Amen.
Christianity not only suffered physical opposition in the persecutions. From the very beginning
Christianity was opposed intellectually by people who attempted to show that it was wrong and to
destroy it by intellectual arguments. The first opposition to Christianity on this level, as on the level of
physical persecution, came from the Jews. We have to look for a moment at Christianity and Judaism. In
the New Testament itself there are answers from Christians to the Jewish attacks on Christianity. These
answers generally are along these lines: “Christianity is a continuation of Judaism, it is the true
fulfillment of Judaism, Christ fulfills the law, and the church is the new Israel.” We see that throughout
the New Testament. One of the primary places in the New Testament where we see Christian apologists
at work is in Stephen’s speech to the Sanhedrin in Acts 7. The whole book of Hebrews takes up that
theme as well. So in the New Testament there are several examples of the apologists answering the
attacks of Judaism on the Christian faith.
As we move outside of the New Testament into church history those Christian apologies against
Judaism continue. The most outstanding of those is a book written by the church father, Justin Martyr,
called The Answer to Trypho. Perhaps a better title would be A Dialogue with Trypho, because it is
really a debate between a very educated, Hellenistic Jew whose name is Trypho and the church father
Justin Martyr. In the debate Justin Martyr has two main points he wants to get across to his Jewish
friend. First he gives his personal testimony, telling how he became a Christian. That is a very important
part of the apologists’ work, not only as they speak to the Jews but also as they speak to the pagans.
Justin tells how he searched for many years for true faith. He explored the Greek philosophies and

finally came to Christianity in which for the first time he found something that truly satisfied him.
Trypho said it was unfortunate that Justin gave up following Plato, a man of great repute, to cast his lot
in with a group of rather insignificant and unimportant people like the Christians. The other part of
Justin’s argument had to do, as you would expect, with Justin attempting to show from the Old
Testament (since the Jewish Scriptures were the Bible they could agree on) that the Old Testament itself
predicted the coming of Christ. Justin becomes quite enthusiastic about this and begins to heap up texts
that he hopes will overwhelm Trypho and convert him to Christianity. One of the texts that Justin was
particularly proud of is Psalm 96:10, which he read as, “The Lord reigns from the tree.” Trypho did not
recognize this verse and could not find it in his Bible. They then realized that Justin was using the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament while Trypho was using the Hebrew Bible. In the
Hebrew Bible those words, “from the tree,” are not there. It says, “The Lord reigns,” but not “The Lord
reigns from the tree.” Apparently a Christian scribe had added those words as he was copying the
Septuagint, thinking it would be a nice idea to make that prophecy more explicit. Thus on that score
Justin was wrong. He did counter by saying, “I think the rabbis took it out because they do not want
prophecies of Christ in their Bibles,” but that was not what happened at all. The Christian scribe had
added it. On stronger ground Justin argued that to see Christ in the Old Testament at all is itself a gift of
the Holy Spirit. In saying this Justin was reflecting the teaching of 2 Corinthians 3:16, “But whenever
anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” There he did present the Gospel, I think, in a very
clear way to Trypho. According to Justin’s book the debate went on for two days, and neither one was
able to convince the other. But it is a very impressive debate because it is so courteous. The church
father and the Jewish scholar argue back and forth but without calling each other names—in fact they
argue with much politeness. Finally Trypho ends his part of the debate this way: “I confess I am
delighted with our discussion. We have found more than we expected, more indeed than we possibly
could have expected. And if we could do this more frequently we should be greatly helped in searching
the Scriptures themselves. But since you are on the eve of departure and expect to sail any day, please
remember us as friends when you are gone.”
That was a very beautiful conclusion to this Jewish man’s argument. Justin is polite as well, though he
does want to get in one more word before he leaves. Justin prays for Trypho and his friends, saying, “I
could wish nothing better for you than this, gentlemen, that you may come to the same opinion as
ourselves and believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” That is probably one of the most famous apologies
written by Christians countering or answering the attacks of Judaism on the early church. It is
unfortunate that the high level of respect did not continue in later centuries. The Babylonian Talmud
added anathemas, curses against Christians. And Christians, including the great teacher Chrysostom of
Constantinople, began to think of Jews as Christ-killers. Thus the level of debate degenerated
significantly in following years, which produced great problems both for Christians and for Jews.
But in the second century the real opponent was not Judaism but paganism, just as by the second century
the persecutions were coming not from the Jews but from the Romans. There were many anti-Christian
writings. Some of those were very crude, and some were very sophisticated. There were crude examples
of graffiti drawn on the walls of the cities attacking Christianity. One example of such graffiti, which I
have, shows the cross, the Christian symbol, and Christ on the cross but drawn in the form of a donkey.
It says in Greek, “Alexander worships his God.” It is interesting that this piece of graffiti comes from the
city of Rome. It shows that even people involved with graffiti in Rome in the first and second centuries
were using Greek rather than Latin. Greek was commonly spoken even in Rome in the first century and
into the second century before it was generally replaced by Latin. This kind of opposition and
persecution was certainly there. We do not know anything about the Alexander mentioned in the piece
of graffiti, but someone disliked him and his God. So they drew this crude figure in Rome on the wall of
a building in order to put down Alexander and his God. There were also some very sophisticated attacks

on Christianity. The most important, I think, was a book written by a man named Celsus. His book was
called True Reason. It is the oldest literary attack on Christianity. It comes from the second century.
Celsus depicts himself in the book as a detached pagan, a kind of neutral observer. He is interested in
religion but does not have any strong feelings about it. But obviously his real purpose in writing the
book is to try to give what he would present as an objective evaluation of Christianity. He uses
practically every argument that has been invented up to the modern time against Christianity and does it
well. We do not have a copy of True Reason by Celsus; they have all been lost. But the church father
Origen in the next century answered Celsus’ writing and thereby preserved about nine tenths of it.
Origen quoted Celsus rather frequently in his rebuttal. Thus by reading Origen’s Contra Celsum
(Against Celsus) we can get a good idea of what Celsus was saying.
Let me talk about some early apologists like Origen, but even before him. These apologists wrote books
to give a defense for the faith. I will mention three of those, all from the second century. The first is The
Epistle to Diognetus. That is an anonymous letter; we do not know the author. He was writing to
someone named Diognetus. He invites this man to consider the superiority of Christianity to both
Judaism and paganism. It is really a very beautiful letter. It is one of the most beautiful and moving
writings from the period of the church fathers. If you have the opportunity to read it I recommend it as
something I think you will enjoy. This letter describes Christians as “the soul of the world.” God has put
them in the world, and there they exist, rather like the soul, to bring truth, light, and honesty into the
world. It is disappointing in reading the church fathers, as I will point out in later lectures, that there is
so little about grace in their writings. Grace seems almost to go underground in the post-apostolic
period, only to reappear with Saint Augustine. When we do find some exception to that it is very
satisfying. The epistle to Diognetus comes closer, I think, to a real understanding of the Pauline doctrine
of grace than any document I have yet read prior to Saint Augustine.
Another writing from this period is The Octavius by Minucius Felix. This is also a conversation, a
dialogue, between a Christian whose name is Octavius and a Roman pagan whose name is Caecilius.
The pagan argues against Christianity intellectually, and the Christian refutes his argument point by
point. The Octavius is rather sharply reasoned but it is also rather winsome. Again the level of courtesy
is high in this writing. It is fascinating to read The Octavius by Minucius Felix to see how almost all of
the arguments that have been used through the years against the church were already there and how
pertinent the replies to those arguments really are. This book could be entirely fiction and it probably
was, though it may have been based on some true incident. In this book the Roman pagan Caecilius is
finally converted by the arguments of Minucius Felix and becomes a Christian. The third example I
would like to give here are the writings of Justin Martyr. So we have Justin in both sections, with his
answer to Trypho against the Jews and his first and second Apologies, which he wrote to defend
Christianity against the pagans. I think most people would say Justin Martyr is the most outstanding of
all the apologists.
I want to think now about two widely different approaches that emerged in the church as to how to
answer attacks on Christianity, and particularly how to understand the relationship of Christianity and
culture. This will bring us into two other apologists, Clement and Tertullian. The question that the
church faced very early on was this: how is Christianity to be presented in the Greco-Roman world?
Christianity had moved out of the Jewish world in that first great cultural move into the Greco-Roman
world. And how should Christians think about this culture? Was it all bad or all good, or was it
somewhere in between? The Christian connection with Judaism was clear but it was not clear at first as
to what the Christian connection was to be with pagan philosophers and pagan culture. It is interesting to
see the church in certain parts of Africa wrestling with the same problem today as first and second
generation Christians try to decide how to view their African past, the ancestors and the traditional

African religions. Should there be a clean break with and total rejection of all of that? Or was there
something there that in a sense pointed toward Christianity and was fulfilled in Christianity? This same
issue that the church in the Greco-Roman world faced in the second century our brothers and sisters face
today. Two quite different answers were given to this question, what do we do with the culture? These
two answers were illustrated by two very different men who both lived in North Africa at about the same
time. Both were passionate with a determination to defend the Gospel against its enemies and to extend
it through evangelism.
One of those men was Clement. We call him Clement of Alexandria since there was a Clement of Rome
who lived earlier, and so it is important to distinguish between them. And I think the “of Alexandria” in
Clement’s name is important also because it gives us some understanding of Clement’s origin, where he
came from. He came from Alexandria, which was the intellectual center of the Greco-Roman world at
this time. It was a great Greek city founded back in the days of Alexander. A great intellectual capital of
the Hellenistic world, it was the city where the Septuagint had been translated. This was the first major
translation project in history, when Jews who were then speaking Greek translated their Scriptures into
Greek so that those who did not know Hebrew, both Jews and others, could read the Scriptures.
Alexandria was the home of Philo, the great Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who attempted to
accommodate Judaism to Hellenistic thought. And it was a place of continuing philosophical
discussions. Neo-Platonism arose here in the generation or two after Clement of Alexandria as the major
intellectual force in the Greco-Roman world. Alexandria had the world’s greatest library. This library
was later destroyed, unfortunately, and much of the collection of great books of antiquity was lost due to
the destruction of the library of Alexandria. But during the days when Clement lived that great library
flourished. Thus Clement was part of that very intellectual center.
When the question was asked, “Should Christians repudiate all this or embrace it?” Clement’s answer
was pretty clear. He said this, “If someone needs food, let him milk the sheep. Let him shear the wool if
he needs clothing. In this way let me benefit from the fruit of Greek erudition.” He liked it. He loved it.
And he was not about to abandon it. “If this learning is of benefit to me then it is important not to lose
it.” He tried to make that point not only for himself but also for the whole church. That was a very bold
move on his part. It was not completely new; we can find something of the same sentiment in Justin
Martyr who said, “Wherever there is truth it comes from Christ and so it belongs to us.” But it was
Clement who really took hold of this and began to crusade for it. Clement took over for the church not
only the Jew’s Old Testament—the Christians said, “That is ours. It is part of the Christian canon.”—but
Clement also says, “Great philosophy is ours too.” This was a kind of “take over” movement, when the
Christians rather than rejecting learning and culture took it over and viewed it as their own. Of course it
was not of equal value with the Scripture, but it was of real value. Philosophy was for the Greeks what
the Law is for the Jews: a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ. Thus it has great value in leading people
toward the truth, and it has great value for Christians to study as well, to see what pagans really did
know and to understand that as part of God’s gift to the church as well. Of course, worldly philosophy is
incomplete. True and full wisdom is found only in Christ. Henry Chadwick puts it in his book, Early
Christian Thought in the Classical Tradition, “Clement’s reverence for the greatest and noblest
achievements of Greek humanism is never unqualified [he understood that it did not stand with the
Bible]. He loves Plato and Homer but he does not read them on his knees.” He studied Plato and Homer,
but then he would get on his knees to read Scripture. So often in Clement’s writings he talks about “that
which the chiefs of philosophy only guessed at, the disciples of Christ have both apprehended and
proclaimed.” Philosophy is very rudimentary, it is very preparatory, it is very partial, it is mixed with
error, but it has value, and Christians should receive it as something of value.

This was a bold move and an important one, but of course it was not without its dangers. When men like
Clement and later Origen began to talk like this in the intellectual center of Alexandria, there was always
the danger that too much of the pagan past would somehow get mixed up with the understanding of
Christianity. The danger of syncretism is always there on that side of thinking. That danger was
something that would cause great distress to the church. In Alexandria before much longer there
developed the Valentinian Gnosticism that we will look at later, which was a kind of amalgamation of
Hellenistic-Greek thought and Christian thought. This became the intellectually respectable form of
Christianity for many people in Alexandria. Thus the danger of syncretism was there and proved to be
disastrous for the church for a certain period of time. The tradition that Clement represented also
continued in Origen and in Eusebius of Caesarea, and we will also see it later in church history.
Let me now go to the other side. There was a very strong voice in opposition to all this about 1000 miles
west of Alexandria in another African city, Carthage. Carthage was the very wealthy capitol of the
province of Africa. A man whose name was Tertullian lived there at about the same time as Clement
was in Alexandria. Tertullian was a very forceful individual and a very important one. He had been
converted in his middle-age years; I think he was about 40 years old. He was a lawyer and a gifted
speaker. He was a very dogmatic individual who saw things very clearly, and he did not see things the
way Clement did. Let me read you his most famous quotation on this topic, and you will see exactly
where Tertullian is coming from: “What then has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the academy
to do with the church? What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction is from the porch of
Solomon who himself handed down that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with those
who produce Stoic, Platonic, and Dialectic Christianity. We have no need of curiosity after we have
Christianity, nor of inquisitiveness after we have the Gospel. Since we believe we desire nothing else to
believe. For the first thing we believe is that there is nothing else we ought to believe.”
Clement was trying to bring Athens and Jerusalem close together, but Tertullian did not like that. It is
pretty clear that he was not going to be tempted by syncretism. He was a combative personality, and I
think you can see that as you read him if you are able to access some of his writings. But the church in
Carthage was facing some serious problems. It was a church where there was a great deal of persecution
and where syncretism was already a problem. There were all sorts of Eastern religions there and it was
all too easy for Christians to slip over into one of those or to agree to worship the emperor in order to
escape persecution. Later, as we come to the Donatists’ problem, we will see that centered right in this
area because many, many Christians were tempted and fell and denied Christ to worship another religion
or to worship the emperor. Therefore Tertullian took a very strong stance against all of that. The
temptation to apostatize or compromise was great, and Tertullian was determined to stand against that
temptation. He thought that since the spirit of the world is so opposed to that of the Gospel the Christian
should withdraw from the world as much as possible.
There is a danger on that side too, of course. The danger is an almost total isolation from culture. In the
book by Celsus, True Reason, he caricatures Christianity, but he may be reflecting some of this
Tertullian attitude when he says, “Christians say, ‘Do not ask questions, just believe.’” That was the way
Celsus depicted Christianity. It was almost what Tertullian was saying: “Do not ask questions, just
believe.” We should not think of Tertullian, though, as an obscurantist individual who takes this stand
because he does not know anything himself. He was not ant-intellectual. He was a great scholar and
theologian. We will see that some of our language for the Trinity and for the two natures of Christ that
we finally come to at Nicea and Calcedon, much of that language comes first from Tertullian. He was
one of the most significant and important church fathers. But we will also see Tertullian becoming a
Montanist for reasons that we will talk about later. Tertullian knew that, as he put it, “Philosophers
knock at the gate of truth”—this sounds almost like Clement. But the way Tertullian explained it was

that they stole any truth they had from the Scriptures, and our reason is limited anyway, so we must
accept what God has made known. Thus his attitude was, “We do not need them. We have it all in the
Bible. And we cannot reason our way into an understanding of Christian truth.” Tertullian gloried in the
unreasonableness of his faith.
Tertullian is on one side and Clement is on another. Clement wants to show some continuity with
culture. Tertullian wants to make a complete break with culture and with human reason. You may know
this famous quotation from Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd. [People have puzzled over that
ever since he wrote it]. God’s Son has died. That is credible because it is foolishness. And He was
buried and is risen. That is certain because it is impossible.” He loved that sort of paradox, and he loved
that way of saying things. The tradition that Tertullian represents also continued. It continued in Tatian
the Assyrian—to an extreme extent. I wondered if anyone could be more extreme than Tertullian, but
Tatian was. And it continued in early Monasticism as Christians were fleeing the world and everything
about the world and isolating themselves in the desert in order to be pure and untainted by both sin and
worldly thought. And it continued, I think, in certain forms of later Monasticism even up into the Middle
Ages. Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, revolves around a monk’s hatred for the writings of
Aristotle. This monk believed that Aristotle and the study of Greek philosophy could so corrupt the
church that he was willing to do anything including murder to prevent a book by Aristotle from being
available in the monastic library where he lived in northern Italy. That is a very interesting novel with
much church history in it, if you can struggle through all the different languages that come up including
one that is a mixture of all languages. One of the monks had learned so many languages that he got them
all mixed up and could not speak any of them.
What will we make of all this? I wish I could give you an answer here and tell you that Clement is right
or that Tertullian is right, or both are right, or neither one is right. But let me try to answer that by
referring to a book you may be familiar with, Christ and Culture, by the American theologian H.
Richard Niehbuhr. Niehbuhr grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was the pastor of an Evangelical
Reformed church, a German Reformed congregation. That denomination is now part of the United
Church of Christ. Niehbuhr’s book is very important and helpful. It gives us paradigms we can use as we
go through church history and come to this particular theme. It also raises more questions than it
answers, so even Niehbuhr will not give us a final answer. Look at the paradigms he creates for us. How
do we think of the church and the world, or Christ and culture? We know that we are to be “in the world
but not of the world,” but what does that mean practically?
Niehbuhr presents five ways the Christian church has tried to answer that question. The first is Christ
against culture. His primary example there is Tertullian. Christ against culture—they are two different
things, and they are in opposition to one another. The opposite view of that is the Christ of culture. That
is when Christianity and culture come so close together that there is really no way to separate them.
They are completely made one. I suppose the greatest example of that would be Eusebius of Caesarea.
We will study Eusebius when we come to Constantine because Eusebius saw in the victory of
Constantine the Christianizing of the Roman culture, which to him was then totally equivalent to the
church. We will see Saint Augustine trying to separate those two again in The City of God. With
Eusebius of Caesarea they had come very, very close together. So far we have Christ against culture,
two completely different things, and Christ of culture, one thing. Then the other three ways Niehbuhr
presents show some tension between Christ and culture but also some connection. There is the Christ
above culture view, and Clement of Alexandria is the primary example here from the early church. Saint
Thomas Aquinas is the example of this from the medieval church. This view says that there is Christ and
there is culture, and Christ is above culture. There is a definite link between Christ and culture, but there
is not a total syncretism or mixture. There is always Christianity or Christ or the church standing above

culture, lifting it up and pulling it on. Then there is the view, Christ and culture in paradox. This view
says that we are to be in the world and not of the world and until the eschatology we just live in the
tension of that situation. We cannot understand it or fully embrace it. Niehbuhr thinks that is Luther’s
view; it is also the view of some of the late medieval scholars. We will study them later as well. This
view was basically “Just put up with a bad situation. You have to be in the world but you have to be
Christian and it is paradoxical.” Then the final view laid out in Christ and Culture is Christ the
transformer of culture. This view says that the church, Christ, Christianity, is in the world to transform
the world, to convert the world. Of course in the early church Saint Augustine is the primary example of
this view. In the Reformation period I think John Calvin is an example of this view. Niehbuhr finishes
by saying, “I cannot choose one above the others. Each one has something to be said for it, some more
than others.” It is hard. I find myself theologically with the last view, Christ the transformer of culture,
because I am a Calvinist. Often I find myself emotionally agreeing with the first view, Christ against
culture, because the world looks so bad and I do not see much conversion or transformation happening.
So I cannot give a final answer either. But at least we have our five categories now. Keep those in mind,
because as we go through the rest of church history there will be occasions when I will refer to views
using these titles.
Let me clarify some points. Tertullian was one of the great intellects of the early church and a fine
speaker and debater. It was not that he was some obscurantist who was mad at smart people. Rather, he
had intellectually made the decision that Clement’s view would not work. Bringing in all that learning
from the world would not help but would actually undermine the church. Now, Clement did want to sift
through the learning of the world, rejecting what was wrong and only accepting what was right. So in
theory he was willing to do that as was Origen. But somehow they did not do that very well, especially
Origen. We see him bringing in all kinds of Greek thought so that he can often sound almost like one of
the Gnostics. These people too would write books like The Christian Gnosticism, using the language or
the cultural context of the Greek world to present a “higher” form of Gnosticism.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Orthodoxy and Heresy
This lesson is entitled “The Rule of Faith: Orthodoxy and Heresy.” The prayer for today will be from
Clement of Alexandria. We have met Clement several times, particularly in the last lecture because
Clement is one of the most important of the apologists of the early church and a very influential church
father. This prayer, which is in the study guide for this lesson, is an interesting one. For one thing, he
uses some unusual names for God such as “teacher” or “instructor,” and “charioteer of Israel.” These are
names for God we may not normally use, but they are not inappropriate names for God. Notice as well
that when Clement is praying about what it means to have come into the Lord’s Church he says that we
have “sailed tranquilly over the billows of sin.” This does not seem to me to be quite the right way to say
it. At least I have not sailed tranquilly over the billows of sin. But we will pray it anyway. In the words
of Clement I suppose there is a certain tranquility, a certain rest—I know there is—that we experience
even in the midst of struggles with temptation, sin, and suffering. So we will think of it that way as we
pray these words from Clement. Notice how he struggles to express in words the doctrine of the Trinity.
We have not yet come to the Council of Nicea, which happened about 100 years after Clement of
Alexandria, when the church was able to put together its faith in the doctrine of the Trinity in ways that
commended themselves to most Christians. But at this point Christians were still struggling to express
that doctrine. We do not fully understand it but at least we have words we can use, orthodox words the
church has approved of after the Council of Nicea. But as I said, this takes place a long time before the
Council of Nicea. With those words about the prayer we will now pray. Join with me as I read these
ancient words from Clement of Alexandria.
Be gracious, O Instructor, to us Thy children, Father, charioteer of Israel, Son and Father, both
in one, O Lord. Grant to us who obey Thy precepts, that we may perfect the likeness of Thy
image, and with all our power know Him who is the good God and not a harsh judge. And do
Thou Thyself cause that all of us who have our conversation in Thy peace, who have been
translated into Thy commonwealth, having sailed tranquilly over the billows of sin, may be
wafted in calm by Thy Holy Spirit, by the ineffable wisdom, by night and day to the perfect day;
and giving thanks may praise, and praising thank the Father and Son, Son and Father, the Son,
instructor and teacher, with the Holy Spirit, all in one, in whom is all, for whom all is one, for
whom is eternity, whose members we all are, whose glory the heavens are; for the all good, all
lovely, all wise, all just one. To whom be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
As we come to this lesson today we will talk about some of the heresies that arose in the second century
that caused great concern for a long time in the early church. One modern writer has spoken of the
second and third centuries as “a time of productive confusion” in the history of the church. As I have
been talking about early church history we do see a good bit of that confusion. But these people were
pioneers, leading the way in doing the great work of defending the faith, stating the faith, and living the
faith. We honor them for that even though they made many mistakes. It was a time of productive
confusion. This is certainly true in the area of doctrine. What should Christians believe? How should
they express their faith? What is right and what is wrong? There were many ideas floating around. Some
ideas that called themselves Christian—not Jewish or pagan, but variations of Christianity—began to
develop. The church had to try to decide what really is allowable, what is true and what is not. Gradually
there was an answer to that question. We call that answer “orthodoxy,” the orthodox position of the
church. “Orthodoxy” means “right belief.” And we call everything else heresies. Originally that word
simply meant “an opinion,” “a party,” or “group.” But eventually it came to mean something that is
wrong, something that is opposed to true teaching.

The question is often asked, which came first? Did orthodoxy come first, followed by the heresies? Or
did the heresies arise first and then the church in response to the heresies moved to create what we call
orthodoxy? One modern scholar has put it this way, “In early Christianity there was no such thing as
orthodoxy but only different forms of Christianity competing for the loyalties of believers.” This scholar
believed that there were many ideas out there and finally some of those ideas won. Either the ideas of
the Roman church, which became the strongest, were imposed on the entire church or, in some way
certain ideas won. So in his point of view the heresies come first. There were many ideas and then
gradually one idea became called orthodoxy. In that particular way of reading history the orthodox are
simply the winners and the heretics are the losers. I describe that not because that is my view but
because I want you to see that this question is one that people have given much thought to. The early
church fathers did not view it that way. The early church fathers said that orthodoxy came first and then
the heresies. The heresies were the innovations, the new things. Orthodoxy was not. Eusebius of
Caesarea put it this way, “Orthodoxy does not have a history. It is true eternally. Heresy has a history,
having arisen at particular times through particular teachers.” You can date the beginning of Montanism
and Marcionism and these other heresies that we will talk about. But orthodoxy does not have a
beginning. You cannot date it. Orthodoxy is eternally true and heresies come later, according to
Eusebius.
We have to think about that critically as well. I think we need to be a little more nuanced in our answer
to this question. Certainly I do not think we should say the heresies came first, that there were just lots of
ideas out there and somehow the church decided to take some of those and reject others. Nor can we go
the other way and say orthodoxy was always there just as it comes to be held eventually in the church.
Eusebius said, “Heresy is the work of the devil to darken the radiance of the universal and only true
Church.” So in his view truth is always there, and the devil is busy trying to create some kind of
confusion by bringing in these heresies. This is a rather negative view of the role of the heresies, and
certainly that is true. Saint Augustine, though, saw it somewhat differently. Augustine said, “The
rejection of heretics brings into relief what God’s church holds and what sound doctrine maintains.”
Augustine certainly saw heresies as bad and destructive, but also as having a place in God’s providential
plan for the church. The church holds truth but perhaps not clearly, not expressed directly and explicitly,
until the heresies attack. Then the church is forced to discover its own truth, to put into words the truth it
has held.
I think we could look at it this way. There was orthodoxy, but it was implicit orthodoxy, which was not
fully spelled out, not understood or stated clearly. An example of this is the doctrine of the Trinity.
Christians believed that Jesus was God. They knew the Father was God. They believed the Holy Spirit
was God. But they had not yet come to understand their faith. That is, they did not yet understand how
they could believe that each of these persons is God and yet there could only be, as they also believed,
one God. That will come because of heresies that develop and force the church to try to understand what
it already believes. I illustrate it this way: “orthodox”—that implicit, early orthodoxy—is there from the
very beginnings of the church, based on the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. But then the heresies
come in. Then in response to the heresies, “orthodoxy” now is underlined. It is clearer. It is more fully
understood and adequately defined.
With that introduction, let us look at the three most important heresies that came into the church in the
second century: Gnosticism, Marcionism, and Montanism. Gnosticism is something we need to think
about for a few minutes because it plays a very significant role in the history of the church. There were
various types of Gnosticisms. Some related more to Judaism, some were anti-Christian. But many of the
Gnosticisms were “Christian” Gnosticisms. Thus a Christian heresy developed—people who held to
some variety of Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a very dangerous opponent of orthodox Christian faith

because it threatened to suck Christianity into the general amalgamation of religious views, a process
that, as we have already said, was going on at that time in the Roman world. Syncretism was a major
issue, and religions tended to put together features from other religions to create a syncretistic faith,
mixing in the teachings of the philosophers and producing something that was considered better. The
Gnostics certainly were doing this. Gnosticism was also intellectually sophisticated and attractive to
many people. It drew on certain elements of Greek philosophy: love for knowledge, depreciation of the
physical and of the human body. These were ideas that were out there in intellectual circles. I suppose
we could get a sense of this by thinking of modern professors in the universities saying, “Well, science
tells us such and such…” Science now is thought to be the final authority—not the Bible or tradition, but
science. The professors back in Alexandria and Athens and other places in the Roman world would hold
up this Gnostic faith in that way. “Gnosticism teaches such and such…” It was dangerous because it was
considered intellectually up-to-date and modern. It was also very diverse. There were many, many kinds
of Gnosticism. It was a broad title that included many religious ideas that had certain things in common
but very different approaches. Gnosticism was dangerous, diverse, and difficult. It was hard to handle
this religion. The church fathers wrote many books against the Gnostics in order to try to answer the
Gnostic religion, which was attractive to many people and was drawing many Christians into its ranks.
Aurenius said, “Gnosticism is like the mythological Hydra.” Hydra was the snake with many heads.
When you cut off one head two more grew to take its place. You could answer one point of Gnosticism
but others would come up.
Having said all that I think we can, for the sake of simplicity, talk about three basic ideas that the so-
called Christian Gnostics held. The first is dualism. The Gnostics believed that there were two powers,
not one. They did not believe in a single God but in a good god and an evil god who were somewhat
equally matched. They also believed it was the evil god and not the good god who created the universe
because the universe is bad; it is full of sin and evil and trouble. This world is bad, the physical body is
bad, and everything material is bad. Salvation is to try to escape being captured in the body and in the
world and rise to the realm of the spirit world. An ancient philosopher has summed up the Gnostics this
way, “The Gnostics think very well of themselves and very ill of the universe.” I think that is a very
good summary. They did not like what they saw in the world. They believed creation is a kind of cosmic
mistake created by a foolish god, a demiurge as they called him. And many “Christian” Gnostics
identified this foolish god with YHWH, the God of the Old Testament, saying, “He is the one who made
this mess in which we live, and he is not the same as the true, eternal God.” But when the demiurge
created the world, the Gnostics believed, he accidentally put in the humans some spark of divinity. Thus
even though we are part of this material world we have a divine nature that is related to that higher
world. And salvation means escaping from the material world into the higher, spiritual world. How did
they think we could do that? The Christian Gnostics said Christ would help us. They believed in Christ,
but not in Christ as a real man.
The Gnostics were docetic in their Christology. That means they thought that Jesus only appeared to be
man but He really was not. He only took the appearance or form of a body, but He is part of the spirit
world. If He took a body then He would be trapped like the rest of us. So they saw Christ not as a real
man but as divine spirit who came down to help us escape from our material bodies and enter the realm
of the divine spirit. They did not think He did this by being crucified for us. The crucifixion had no
relevance for the Gnostics. He helped us escape from our material bodies, they thought, by coming to
teach us the secret way out of this entrapment and into the spiritual world, to help us find our way back.
And that secret way is quite a struggle. If you read the Gnostics it is rather exciting reading in a way
because to make that journey from this world up to that world you have to go through all kinds of traps
and problems and encounters with the rulers of the various stages of that journey. One of the so-called
Christian Gnostics of Alexandria said there are 365 different steps you have take, and you need some

secret word of secret knowledge for each of those steps in order to overcome the ruler of that eon and in
order to advance to the next step. Other versions of Gnosticism did not have 365 stages, but they all had
many stages. Paul Tillig in writing about this describes it this way: “What the savior, what Jesus does in
Gnosticism, is somehow use white magic against the black magic of the planetary powers.” This was
almost like a second century version of the popular American movie “Star Wars,” in which this spiritual
creature against great odds is trying to make his way out of this world. This was a very dangerous
journey but a necessary one to finally escape the world of matter and rise to the world of spirit.
Let me summarize all that. For the Gnostic, salvation is by knowledge. Not by faith, not by God’s grace,
but by knowledge. Jesus is one of the sources of that knowledge. One of the church fathers said that the
key text in Gnosticism was “Seek and you will find.” The Gnostics were always seeking, and they
thought they could find the secret word, the password that would enable them to rise to another level.
Perhaps you have heard of The Gospel of Thomas. It is being talked about a good bit these days. It is an
early “gospel,” not one of the canonical Gospels. It was discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in
1945. The people who promote the Jesus Seminar like to think of Thomas as the fifth gospel, using it
along with the canonical Gospels in order to make their judgments as to what are the true and authentic
words of Christ. The church has never accepted The Gospel of Thomas as a true Gospel. It is really a
Gnostic gospel. But The Gospel of Thomas puts in Jesus’ mouth some of the things I have just been
saying about Gnosticism. It is not a book that we accept as authenticate, but it is a book arising out of
this heresy. It was written to give some legitimacy to the teaching of Gnosticism by saying that Jesus
said certain things that have a Gnostic sound. It might seem that this is all very strange and archaic. But
Peter Jones who teaches at Westminster Seminary in California has written a book called, The Gnostic
Empire Strikes Back. By that title he means that the New Age movement in the United States has many
similarities to ancient Gnosticism. Gnosticism, a heresy of self-deification, has returned with a
vengeance in the New Age movement according to Peter Jones. If you are interested in that topic, in
seeing the links between ancient Gnosticism and this modern heresy, I would certainly commend to you
the writings of Peter Jones.
Now let us come to a second heresy. It is similar to Gnosticism in some ways and was certainly
influenced by Gnosticism. But this heresy created something that caused the church to really begin to
consider clarifying its idea of the canon. You see, until the church was clear on what books it held to be
the word of God it was very difficult to deal with heresies. The Gospel of Thomas was left out of the
canon because it did not qualify, as we will see later. But until the church could make that clear it was an
ongoing problem. The heresy of Marcionism was a heresy that prompted the Christian church to realize
it had to move more quickly in solidifying its view of the canon. Marcion was the son of a Christian
bishop in Asia Minor. He came to Rome in the middle of the second century. In Rome he began to
develop his ideas. His view was a mixture of Christianity, Gnosticism, and Docetism. The hero for
Marcion was Paul. F. F. Bruce has said that only Marcion understood Paul in the early church, and he
misunderstood him. That is a rather bleak statement, but there is some truth to that because no one
seemed to really grasp what Paul was all about until we get to Saint Augustine. But Marcion did at least
see that Paul was against the law. But he misunderstood him by thinking that “the law” was the Old
Testament. Paul was for grace and against works and the law. Marcion got that idea but did not fully
understand it properly. He took some of Christianity and mixed it with Gnosticism. He held that the evil
Old Testament God was the creator and that the true God was the Father, two gods. And the Old
Testament God created a bad world, with insects and fierce beasts and sex and other things Marcion did
not approve of. To Marcion, matter was evil and the flesh was abhorrent. Tertullian, perhaps jesting a
little with Marcion in one of his writings, said, “And yet, O Marcion, in what way were you born?” The
church fathers, Irenaeus especially, wrote much against Marcion. Irenaeus said, “By having two gods
Marcion really has no god.” I think that is an important idea that the church fathers latched onto. If you

have two gods who are more or less equal, you really do not have any god because there is no one then
who is the true and supreme God. Irenaeus said, “Marcion divides God into two and so puts an end to
deity.” Like the Gnostics, Marcion also had a docetic Christ without human birth and without a material
body. It is interesting that when he comes to take the Gospel of Luke, which he believes is the only
authentic Gospel, he combines Luke 3:1 with 4:31 so that his “Gospel of Luke” begins this way: “In the
fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Jesus came down [from heaven] to Capernaum.” He leaves out
everything about the virgin birth. We can see the Gnostic and docetic attitude expressed in this way of
beginning Luke’s Gospel. The most important thing for us in our study of church history, I think, is that
to support these ideas Marcion created a canon. He said, “These are the true books, and these others are
not true books, so we can only use these particular books to base our teaching on.” Of course, with his
ideas there was no Old Testament in his canon. Marcion accepted Luke, altered somewhat, and the ten
epistles of Paul. He rejected the Old Testament and all the rest of the New Testament. Even though the
orthodox Christian church did not accept any of Marcion’s ideas as true, you can see how this heresy
helped to stimulate the church to really consider seriously the question of what the canon is. What books
should we accept and what books should we not accept? We will see what the church did about this in
the next lesson.
The third of these second century heresies is Montanism. Montanism began in Phrygia, an area of Asia
Minor in the middle of the second century. In some ways Montanism does not really belong in the same
list with Gnosticism and Marcionism. Gnosticism and Marcionism were clearly heresies, but Montanism
was more difficult to identify and evaluate. But the church eventually considered Montanist teaching as
a whole to be heretical as well. Let us look at the points of Montanism. There was a stress in Montanism
on the Holy Spirit. By the time we come to the middle of the second century, prophecies had started to
disappear in the church as well as the extraordinary miracles that we see in the New Testament, though
some miracles and prophecies are reported in the early post-New Testament period. By the middle of the
second century they seem to have gone.
Now, there can be two responses to this. There could be the response that many Christians have come to,
that the Lord discontinued these things. They had served their purpose, and as the canon was eventually
created the extraordinary miracles that were there to help undergird the canon and establish the
beginnings of the church dropped off as did prophecies. That is one way to look at it, but that is not the
way Montanists looked at it. Montanists said, “These things have ceased because the church has lost
sight of the Holy Spirit. The church has become worldly. During a period of peace, a letup in the
persecution, people have settled down. They do not really believe the power of God or in the work of the
Holy Spirit anymore.” Montanists began to emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit. Montanis said, “The
dispensation of the Son, Jesus, has now come to an end, and we are in a new age.” We could call that the
dispensation of the Holy Spirit. The Montanists said that the Holy Spirit still speaks and the words He
speaks should be understood as the words of God. Just as the Holy Spirit spoke through Paul He is still
speaking now. Who is he speaking through now? Montanis would answer, “He is speaking through me,
and a couple of my associates”—meaning Prisca and Maximilla, two prophetesses who worked with
him in Asia Minor. Some of the oracles attributed to Montanis or Prisca and Maximilla sound pretty
much like verses in the Bible that we know. But others of their oracles go far beyond, saying, “I am the
mouthpiece of God.” On one occasion Montanis is supposed to have said, “I am the lord god omnipotent
dwelling in man.”
So there was this emphasis on continuing revelations of the Holy Spirit. This comes very early in the
history of the church. The second emphasis is on the end times. The Montanists believed in the
imminent return of Christ. This expectation was apparently waning somewhat in the church. After all, it
had been 100 years. It has been 2000 years now. But then it had been 100 years and Christ had not come

back. People were losing sight of the return of Christ, according to Montanis, so he began to put a great
deal of emphasis on the return of Christ. “He is coming soon to set up His kingdom [of all places!] in
Phyrgia of Asia Minor, my hometown.” Montanism also stressed very strict discipline. If someone
sinned, the Montanists believed that person could not be allowed to continue in the church. This was a
stress on holiness and on asceticism, a rigid lifestyle.
There were many followers of Montanis, particularly in Asia Minor. In fact, in some towns in certain
parts of Asia Minor everyone in the church became Montanists. Then it spread to North Africa, and
many people there became Montanists. Those were the two centers of Montanism. The thing that really
surprises us is that the church father Tertullian became a Montanist. People have puzzled over that all
the way down to the present. Why would Tertullian join this branch of the Christian church? He thought
of it, at least for a while, as a true expression of the church. In The Spreading Flame F. F. Bruce writes
this:” A Dominican scholar once remarked to me in the course of a conversation about Tertullian that it
was amazing that such an intelligent man as he should have been led away by a movement like
Montanism. That is one point of view, but it might equally well be said that there must have been
something of more solid worth in Montanism than is generally supposed since it appealed to such an
intelligent man as Tertullian.”
I pretty much have to leave it there. I am not sure why Tertullian joined Montanism. The way I have
presented it, which is the standard approach to Montanism as I understand it, it does not sound like
something that would have appealed to someone as careful in his thinking as Tertullian. But perhaps
Montanism was in some ways better than I have made it sound. Certainly there were some true concerns
there: concern for holiness, for church discipline, a belief in the coming of Christ, concern that the
church would not lose sight of the coming of Christ. Those are appropriate concerns that the Montanists
may well have focused on. But it seems to me that the way they handled those particular issues led them
into error.
I want to wrap this up briefly, and in the next lesson we will come back to what the orthodox church did
in response to all this. The task of orthodoxy is clear. It is to state the faith. What do Christians really
believe? You see how important it is to do that. And what books do we hold to be part of the Bible? And
who has the right to say what is right and what is wrong? The church had to do that while realizing that
what needed to be done could not, in one sense, be done perfectly and fully. Hilary of Poitiers in his
book, On the Trinity, said, “The errors of heretics [...] force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale
perilous heights, to speak unutterable words, to trespass on forbidden ground, compelling us to err in
daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart.”
The church has to do two things at once. It must see Christianity as a religion whose content can be
defined with words, saying this is what it means to be a Christian. We hold these things. We have a
creed. We say these words that set forth what we hold to be true. But it must do this without thinking
that we have exhausted the mystery, that we have every single thing solved, that we have been able to
cross every t and dot every i. With these heresies—Gnosticism, Montanism, and Marcionism—swirling
about in the second century and winning converts, it was important for the church to state and defend its
views to get to the place where “orthodoxy” is underlined and clear. The church did this in three ways:
by creating a canon, by establishing a creed, and by moving toward government with bishops. In our
next lesson we will look into all of that.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Canon, Creed, and Bishops
This lesson is entitled “To Mark a Path: Canon, Creed, and Bishops.” I will use a very famous ancient
prayer as we begin today. It is called the “Agnus Dei,” which means “the Lamb of God” in Latin. This
prayer is based on some very familiar passages of Scripture where Christ is set forth as the Lamb of
God. We know this prayer was used in the early church. It appears in the form in which we will pray it
in the fifth or sixth century in the worship service of the church in Rome, but undoubtedly it was in use
many years or even centuries before that. It begins with the phrase, “Jesus, Lamb of God, have mercy on
us.” These words have appeared since then in many of the liturgies of the Christian church, both
Catholic and Protestant. As we pray remember we are praying a very ancient prayer that God’s people
used in the very early days of the Christian church. Let us pray together. I will read these words, and you
pray them in your hearts with me. Let us pray.
“Jesus, Lamb of God, have mercy on us. Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us. Jesus, redeemer of
the world, give us Your peace. Amen.”
We have been looking now for some time at the history of the early church. We have seen how the
church grew, not only in the West in Europe but also in the East in Asia. We have seen how the church
endured during two-and-a-half centuries of persecution or the threat of persecution. We have studied
how the church resisted attacks from the outside. The apologists wrote books in order to answer the
attacks on Christianity from enemies of the Christian faith. And we have seen how the church resisted
attacks from the inside, the heresies that began to develop such as Gnosticism, Marcionism, and
Montansim. Today we will look at how the church organized and defined itself. That process was
happening anyway, but certainly the emergence of the heresies forced the church to move more quickly
in this important work of understanding what it really was, what it stood for, what the truth was, and
what Christian people would believe and die for. Irenaeus, the church father of the second century, said:
“The authority of the church rests on three things. It rests on the canon of the Bible, the books that are to
be accepted as the authentic, authoritative books of the Christian church. Secondly, it rests on the
Apostolic Creed as the normative rule of faith. And thirdly, it rests on the episcopate, the bishops as the
guardians and expositors of truth and of Scripture.”
So we have those three points—canon, creed, and bishops—to mark out a path for the early church to
follow in its development and in its life as it went forth to face the world. We will take each of those in
turn. We will talk first about the canon, then about the creed, and then about the bishops.
The word “canon” simply means “the rule that is to be followed.” We could also refer to it as the Bible.
What books are in the Bible? What books are to be accepted? The problem the early church faced was
that there were not only in circulation the books that eventually became known as canonical—the 27
books of our New Testament—but there were other books too. These other books included The Gospel
of Thomas, The Gospel of Peter, The Shepherd of Hermas, First Clement, and The Didache. These
books were being circulated along with Romans, Acts, Luke, Peter, and Revelation. The church faced an
urgent task here. It was urgent that the church reach a decision early on while it was still close to its
apostolic roots. You can see that the matter of establishing the canon was not something that could be
put off for centuries. It had to be done early on when the church still had the possibility of investigating
these books as to their source, their author, and how they were to be accepted. Not only was it important
to do that quickly before too many decades or centuries had gone by, but it was also important to do it
because heresies were raising this question.

Marcion had already created his own canon, a very restricted canon with only a few New Testament
books and none of the Old Testament. Montanis had gone to the other extreme and said that some of the
contemporary utterances given by the Holy Spirit through him and his associates were to be added to the
canon as equivalent to the books of Scripture. The church faced the task, then, of determining what
books were to be accepted as the true books of God to be added to the books of the Old Testament.
Now, “Old Testament” and “New Testament” were not terms that were in use at that time, but I will use
those terms for the sake of simplicity. The idea of a canon or a Bible was something the Christian church
inherited from the Jews. The Jews already had their canon. They had established their own canon, which
we call the Old Testament. So the Christian church coming out of the Jews inherited the idea of the
canon as well as the thing itself. The books of the Hebrew canon became part of the books of the
Christian Bible. Christians were “people of the book,” just as the Jews were. Immediately as the church
came into existence it had a Bible, the Old Testament. This was the Christian Bible. There was never
any question about that except from the Marcionists. The orthodox Christians accepted the Old
Testament Scriptures from the very beginning. There were some other books that were written during
the Inter-Testamental Period, the period between the Testaments. Some Christians thought that these
books ought to be included in the Old Testament canon. Jerome was the translator of the Vulgate, a great
Bible scholar whom we will talk about later. As we come to his time, Jerome clearly distinguished
between the Old Testament books the Jews accepted—the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament—
and these deuterocanonical books that some people thought should be added to the Old Testament. Some
of those deuterocanonical books became part of the Roman Catholic Bible. The Roman Catholic Old
Testament, as you may know, has more books in it today than the Protestant Old Testament. I have a
Catholic booklet whose title is “Who took these books out of the Bible?” These books include
Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Tobit, and some others that come from the inter-testamental period. But the
better question would be, who put those books into the Bible? By the time we get to Jerome it is quite
clear that those books did not belong in the Bible. They began to be accepted in Roman Catholic history
in the medieval period and were officially incorporated into the Catholic Bible at the Council of Trent in
the 16th century. So, the Christian church from the beginning adopted the Jewish Old Testament in the
Protestant form, the same books we have today in the Protestant Old Testament.
What about the New Testament? The church realized that along with the authoritative books of the Old
Testament there were certain books that were Scripture and should be viewed as equal to the Law and
the Prophets. The process of the Christian church in determining exactly what books belong in that New
Testament canon was a process that took some time. And this process did not proceed at the same pace
in every part of the Christian church. One church would have a different list from another church. For
instance, about the year 200 AD there was a bishop of Antioch who wrote some Christians at a nearby
church, saying that he had changed his mind about the Gospel of Peter since his visit with them. He had
apparently been with that church and had told them, “I think you should have the Gospel of Peter as part
of the Scripture.” Then he went back home, thought about it some more and perhaps received more
information, and changed his mind. Therefore he wrote to that church and told them, “Do not add the
Gospel of Peter. It is not part of Scripture.” You can see how this process would have taken some time
and would not have proceeded at the same pace throughout the church. We usually use the date 367 AD
as the date for the church’s completion of its study as to the extent of the canon, in a list drawn up by the
church father Athanasius in Alexandria. That is a pretty late date, 367 AD. But this is kind of the final,
authoritative statement from a church bishop—“These are the books, and only these.” But for all
practical purposes the New Testament church had come to this same decision many, many years before
367 AD.
Now, how did the church come to that decision? How did the church decide what books were to be
accepted and what books were not to be accepted? I think it is important to be clear on this. In a very

important sense the New Testament canon was complete when the last book of the New Testament was
written, when John wrote the Apocalypse (Revelation) in the last decade of the first century. When that
book was written, that was the end of the New Testament canon. So it was not, then, that the church had
to create the canon or make the books into the Word of God by making its decision to accept those
books. But the church had to go through the process, providentially guided by God, of recognizing
which books of all the books out there truly bore the stamp of God’s authority. It was a process of
recognition rather than an imposition. The Roman Catholic view is more with the latter, that it was a
process of imposition. Scripture is Scripture because the church says it is. The church drew up the list,
and by making that list they made those books included in the list to be Scripture. The Roman Catholics
would see the making of the canon as the definitive action of the church putting its stamp of approval on
a book, which then makes it the Word of God. The Protestant view is quite different here. The Protestant
view is that Scripture is Scripture because it is Scripture. It would still be Scripture whether the church
recognized it to be or not. But God in His providence enabled the church to come to so recognize those
books as Scripture. Dr. Warfield has illustrated it this way: Scripture is the road and the church is the
sign or the guidepost. The church says, “This is the right road.” It is not the sign that makes the road a
road. The sign simply indicates to people that this is the road. So as the church drew up the list that
became known as the canon of the New Testament, it was simply recognizing that which is indeed true,
that these books are from God.
Now you might ask how the church did that. I think the church operated on two principles in its work to
establish clearly for itself and all succeeding generations the extent of the canon. The first and most
important is external evidence. Where did this book come from? Who was it written by? Was it written
by an apostle? If it really was written by an apostle then that settled it. That is why the Gospel of Peter
from some time seemed to be accepted as part of the New Testament. After all, it was from Peter. But
then Christians discovered it really was not from Peter. It was named the Gospel of Peter, but it was
written by someone else. So the books were considered for acceptance if they were written by an apostle
or—this had to be expanded a bit—if they were written by someone of the apostolic company. An
example would be Mark. He was not an apostle, but he was certainly part of the apostolic company as he
was an associate of Peter. The church looked for the origins of the book because Jesus had promised His
authority to the apostles. It was to them that He was going to give all truth. He was going to give them
the Spirit that they might understand all things. And as we study the history of this period we see this
principle actually being worked out in practice.
Polycarp was a very early and a very respected church father. There might have been some temptation to
put the writings of Polycarp on the same level with the writings of the apostles because he came so close
after those apostles. But when Polycarp was writing his letter to the Philippians he said this, “Certainly
neither I nor anyone like me can follow the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul who taught you
accurately and firmly the Word of truth.” Not too many years after Paul wrote to the Philippians,
Polycarp wrote to the Philippians and said, “This is a pastoral letter, but it is not on the same level with
the letter you received from Paul. That is the Word of truth. This is my sermon, my advice, my counsel
to you.” Thus we see that external evidence was important. Where did the book come from? Did it come
from an apostle or someone from the apostolic community? Linked with that was the matter of internal
evidence. This was the second principle used by the church in this process. Does the book really in what
it says support, undergird, and expand properly what we knew to be the Word of God? What we knew
then to be the Word of God came both from the Old Testament and from the books that early on were
without dispute in the New Testament, like the Synoptic Gospels and Paul’s letters. One church
historian has put it this way: “What the church has received in the New Testament stands on an
incomparably higher level than all other Christian literature. None of the writings of the apostolic fathers
can even compare with those of the New Testament. None of the so-called New Testament Apocrypha

can remotely be compared with what was accepted in the New Testament.” I think that is true, but I
think that has to be used in connection with the first principle, external evidence. You can find
wonderful statements of truth in other literature, and you can find in the New Testament some
statements that seem difficult and perplexing. So if you were only going by internal evidence you might
make some mistakes. But the church worked on the principles of both external evidence and internal
evidence.
Let me illustrate that briefly by talking about The Shepherd of Hermas. That was a book written in the
second century. I read an article in “Bible Review” some years ago about this book. The title of the
article was “An early tale that almost made it into the New Testament.” The author of this article went
on to say that this book did not quite make the final cut, but it was very close and could well have made
it into the New Testament. Actually, The Shepherd of Hermas was considered to be authoritative
Scripture by Irenaeus and by Clement of Alexandria, two pretty big names in the history of the early
church. This book was even considered to be Scripture by Tertullian for a while, until he became a
Montanist and his theology shifted and he put it out because it did not follow in his new views. But as
the church looked at The Shepherd of Hermas, which was on the list in some areas for quite a while,
there were two things that began to impress Christians generally. One was that it was not written by an
apostle. It was written by someone named Hermas who lived in Rome in the second century. The book
did not have that apostolic stamp on it. And second, the more people read The Shepherd of Hermas the
more people realized that this book was mainly concerned with penance, repentance, and how many
times a person can be forgiven of a major sin. That did not seem to fit with the teaching of the rest of the
Bible that had been accepted. Also, there was some rather dubious teaching about the Trinity that was
not at all in line with what the church eventually came to accept at the Council of Nicea in the fourth
century. Therefore, based on external evidence and internal evidence, The Shepherd of Hermas was not
included in the canon. This was not because the church put it out of the Bible, but because the church
was able to see that this was not an authoritative book inspired by the Holy Spirit to be added to the
canon of Scripture. (This is just a quick overview of this process from the standpoint of church history.)
It was important for the church to establish the canon. Certainly by 367 AD that was done. It was really
done, for all practical purposes, a long time before that.
Something else the church did was to establish a creed. The first creeds were very short statements. We
find some of those even in the New Testament itself. For example, when Peter said to Jesus, “You are
the Christ,” that is a creed. Paul in Romans said, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and
believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” That is also a creed. These
tiny creeds served to identify Christ and also to identify the followers of Jesus. In that way they acted as
passwords among the faithful. These early, brief creeds were known as symbols. One of the most
famous of these was “I believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Savior.” In Greek that formed an
acrostic, which was “Ichthus.” This word means “fish.” Sooner or later Christians began to simply draw
a little symbol of the fish as a confession, a tiny, brief confession of faith. That symbol said, “Christ is
God’s Son, and He is my Savior.” It both said who Christ is and who the person is who made that
confession by either saying those words or by drawing the symbol of the fish on the walls of the
catacombs, or a building in Rome, or elsewhere. That has come down to the present so that today we see
and use this symbol often for the confession of the Christian faith.
But these tiny expressions began to be expanded a bit. The most famous of the expanded versions of the
earliest confessions we call the Apostles’ Creed. By tradition the Apostles’ Creed was written by the
apostles. That tradition was embellished a bit so that it was said that as the apostles prepared to go into
all the world and preach the Gospel as Jesus had commanded them, it was important that they agree on
the message that they were going to preach. And so before they set out, on or around Pentecost, being

filled with the promised Spirit they pieced together the creed that bears their name. Peter began, “I
believe in God the Father Almighty,” Andrew who standing next to him added, “and in Jesus Christ His
only Son our Lord,” James picked it up, “who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,” and on it went around
the circle until Matthew finished by saying, “And the life everlasting, amen.” Then they were ready to
go out and preach. That is a rather attractive story in some ways but it is certainly not true. The
Apostles’ Creed was not written by the apostles. It is called the Apostles’ Creed because it embraced
apostolic teaching, or at least some basic apostolic teaching. This creed grew out of confessions of faith
that would be said at baptisms. As people were baptized into the Christian church they were asked to
state their faith, in a trinitarian formula: “Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in God the
Son? Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?” From Rome came the early pattern that eventually
evolved into the famous Apostles’ Creed. Although, apparently the rather controversial statement in the
creed, “He [Jesus] descended into hell,” was not added to the Apostles’ Creed until much, much later.
We have, then, the creeds developing. We will see how these creeds developed even further as we study
more in the history of the church. And a rule of faith was spoken of by the church fathers. The rule of
faith is the Apostles’ Creed, but it is more than that. It is not something written down that we can read. It
is something passed down from church father to church father. It is not a separate code equal to
Scripture, at least not yet, but it is an affirmation of what the Scripture teaches. The church fathers began
to speak of the rule of faith as that body of belief that summarizes the teaching of the Bible (like the
Apostles’ Creed does but more than that) and that guards the faith from heretical teachings and
perversions. Origen said, “The rule of faith is that which has been handed down from the apostles
through the order of succession.” The rule of faith is something that is passed on not generally in the
church but only from church father to church father, or from bishop to bishop. The rule of faith provides
some way for the church to say to the Gnostics, for example, “You are outside the rule of faith. This is
not what the church has held from the beginning.”
I want to go just one step further on this point and then we will go to point number three. The church
tried to explain this rule of faith. It is nebulous. You are probably wondering, well what is it? You may
not be able to quite understand what I am saying about it, but I cannot be more precise because it was
not more precise. The problem was still there, the problem of discerning what Christian faith was and
what error was. In the fifth century a very famous statement was drawn up by a theologian named
Vincent of Lerins in which he defined the catholic faith as this: “That which is believed everywhere,
always, and by everyone.” Now, you will hear “Vincent’s Rule” throughout church history, and from
time to time I will refer to it. When I say “Vincent’s Rule” this is what I mean: “The catholic faith is that
which is believed everywhere, always, and by everyone.” Thus the catholic faith is defined by
ecumenicity (it is believed everywhere), antiquity (believed always), and consent of the faithful
(believed by all). These three points mark the catholic faith according to Vincent. This is a very nice
formula and it would be nice if it worked. But there are two problems with it. One is the historical
problem. It simply is not true. You might say that in one sense it is true; if you could know the invisible
Church, God’s true people, then perhaps you could apply this rule to the faith of that Church. But I think
we have to say that what comes to be known as the catholic faith was believed almost everywhere,
usually, and by most of the people. This is not quite as neat as Vincent set it up, and we will have to
trace that as we go along. There is also a theological problem with that statement, I think. Universality is
not always the guardian of the truth. In fact, as we move further into the medieval period it will seem as
if the Christian faith is believed by a very few people, in a very few places, and fairly recently. Might
not the true church turn out to be a small church, not the big church? That is getting far ahead of the
story, but as we come to the Middle Ages there will be times when we will ask ourselves, “Where is the
true church now? It does not seem as if what we are studying is the true Christian church.”

Let us move on quickly to bishops. The canon was established, the creeds were drawn up, the rule of
faith—as ambiguous as it was—was at least talked about as guaranteeing or helping to develop the true
teaching of the Christian church and preserving it from error. The third means the early church used to
organize itself and to protect itself from false teaching had to do with church order. In the New
Testament and in the first century, church order appeared quite clearly to be twofold: there were elders
and there were deacons. When the word “bishop” is used in the New Testament it means elder. So there
is only a twofold order of church government. I think it is quite interesting that even those who approve
of the development of the church from this simple twofold order into a more hierarchical style, an
episcopacy—such as Roman Catholics and Episcopalians—those who have studied this admit that in the
first century it was this way. Stuart Hall in his Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church says this,
“One should note that there is no indication that either in Rome or in Corinth there was a single
presiding bishop in the first century rather than a board of elders.” What that means, coming from this
Episcopalian scholar, is that in the first century there were presbyters and a presbytery. It is nice for a
Presbyterian to read that, written by an Episcopalian. But it was not too long before things changed. By
the second century there were bishops. These were not New Testament elders but bishops who stood
higher, in a hierarchical arrangement. Under them were elders (or pastors) and then deacons.
Where did the bishops come from, and why? I will just point out two names from the second century
that supported this development. Ignatius of Antioch early in the century talked about a single bishop
who was higher than the elders or deacons. Thus at the time of Ignatius, at least in Antioch, there was a
hierarchical form of a bishop, elders, and deacons. There was a threefold order rather than the twofold
order of the first century. Irenaeus in the late second century added the idea of apostolic succession to
this. The bishops who ruled the church were said to be able to trace their appointment back to the
apostles. The apostles appointed successors who then appointed successors, and so on. This is the idea
of apostolic succession. That important concept is restricted to the office of bishop. I think historically
we would say the office of bishop developed not from the apostles who did not appoint successors, but
out of the ranks of the presbyters. In a place like Rome there would be a number of presbyters because
there were a number of churches. Eventually one of these presbyters gained ascendance over the others
and became the head of the church of Rome, the bishop. Then he began to be viewed as, in some sense,
the continuation of the apostolate. This will be developed later as we begin to study real Roman Catholic
structure and theology in the medieval period. But I will not go any further at this point than to say that
in the second century we see emerging monarchial bishops. “Monarchial” means that there was only one
bishop in charge of a whole group of churches in a location like Rome or Corinth.
Why did that happen? A writer has talked about one bishop, Cyprian in North Africa. He said that
Cyprian developed the habit of telling other bishops what they ought to do. Thus there were certainly
human factors involved in this. There are people who are more ambitious, better organized, and more
forceful. Presbyters like this began to emerge as more than presbyters, as bishops, because they took the
authority, made the decisions, and told others what to do. There could have been some sinful pride and
ambition mixed up in all of that. Not stressing that point too much let me move on to say that there were
two reasons why the bishops were added to the structure of the church government. One reason was
efficiency. It simply worked better this way, to have one man in charge. We Presbyterians might think
that Presbyterian church government is the most biblical, but I do not know that I would necessarily
argue that it is the most efficient. It takes us a long time to get anything done, whereas a bishop can
decide on the spot, take care of the problem, and move on to something else. Thus the temptation toward
efficiency was certainly a factor. Also, concern for orthodoxy was a reason for this development.
Someone had to stand up for the truth and not allow the church to drift into heresy. Strong orthodox
bishops did stand for the truth and thereby increased their own prestige.

As all of this happened each area began to get its own monarchical bishop. You can see how the
monarchical bishops of certain areas would be more prominent than other monarchical bishops,
depending on the city they served. The most important churches then began to emerge. In the East there
were five such churches: Jerusalem, Caesarea, Antioch—which already in the first and second centuries
were important Christian centers—Alexandria in Egypt was added in the third century, and then finally
Constantinople was added in the fourth century. Thus in the East there were five primary centers of
Christianity. The bishops of these churches were the most important. Eventually the bishop of one of
these churches, who will be called the patriarch, would become the most important in the East—
Constantinople. But at first there were five churches. In the West there was only one, Rome. From the
very beginning of this development the church in the West that others looked to for direction and advice
was the church of Rome. All of this caused huge problems later, particularly between Constantinople
and Rome. This is because as the primary Christian centers narrowed down to two, it became a contest
to see who was the greater of the two. The Roman bishop knew which was the greater; he said it over
and over again. The patriarch of Constantinople did not like his suggestion, and so eventually that was
one of the major factors that led to the division of the church in the East and the church in the West.
Canon, creed, and bishops. You can see how those three factors were important in the consolidation and
definition of the Christian faith. Before we end this lesson, I want us to turn to the Apostles’ Creed. Let
us confess our faith together using these ancient words that I have talked about today. Remember that as
we confess our faith we are not merely repeating the Apostles’ Creed. When introducing the Apostles’
Creed in your churches do not do so by saying, “Let us repeat the Apostles’ Creed.” We are not simply
repeating something someone else believed. We are confessing our faith. We are making a vow
ourselves using these ancient words. As we do so, we do so in the company of a vast multitude of
believers in all times and in all places. These believers at many times were standing in the face of great
persecution and have confessed their faith using these same words. They lived in a time when all sorts of
ideas were going around and people believed all sorts of different things, and we live in a time like that
as well. But let us say together what we believe. O Christian, what do you believe?
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
It has been asked, is there any truth to the proposition that Peter was the first pope? The short answer
would be no. Peter was in Rome, we think. Peter probably was put to death in Rome during the

Neronian persecution. But the Roman church had been founded long before either Peter or Paul arrived.
Paul got there perhaps before Peter did, but as you know he had already written to the Romans. A strong
church was there. We do not know who the first pope, or pastor, of the church in Rome was. There is no
evidence that Peter was really pastor of the church in Rome at any point. He was a visiting brother and
preacher who may have preached in one or more of the churches in Rome. We would expect that he
would. But I would say there is no real, historical evidence for calling Peter the first pope of Rome. I
think Roman Catholics even struggle with that as well. The reason Peter has to be the first pope for the
Roman Catholic Church is a dogmatic reason, not an historical one. They say that Christ gave to Peter
the keys of the kingdom, and those keys are then passed on to successive popes of the Church of Rome.
Thus this is a dogmatic view rather than an historical view.
(Hebrews 12:1).

Early Church Fathers
This is lesson seven, “Witnesses unto the Truth: the Early Church Fathers.” We have been talking for
some time about the early church fathers. Today I want to focus on those early church fathers and try to,
in a sense, introduce them to you. It is hard for us sometimes to keep these church fathers straight. There
are so many of them and they tend to blend together. At least for Protestants, they are not so distinctive
in our minds as Luther, Calvin, Knox, Zwingli, and the other Reformers. We can keep them straight
because we know them and we study them. But the early church fathers, for most of us, are more
difficult to remember. I would like to talk about those church fathers in this lecture and see if we can get
to know them somewhat better. One of the most important of the church fathers was Origen, from
Alexandria in Egypt. I will use a prayer from Origen as we begin this class. Origen wrote a little book on
prayer, one of the devotional gems of the early church. It was a kind of handbook for Christians to help
them know how to pray. This is certainly an important topic for Christians in all ages, back in the early
church as well as for us today. As we begin this class we will pray using the words of the church father,
Origen. Let us pray.
“Lord God, let us keep your Scriptures in mind and meditate on them day and night, persevering in
prayer, always on the watch. We beg you, Lord, give us real knowledge of what we read, and show us
not only how to understand it but how to put it into practice that we might obtain spiritual grace,
enlightened by the law of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord, whose power and glory will
endure throughout all ages. Amen.”
The church fathers, by anyone’s account, are a formidable group. They are distant in time, way back at
the very beginnings of the history of the church. Their writings by which we know them are often
different and distant, both in the way they say things and in the manner of thought that comes through
from these early church fathers. We tend to lump them together as a phalanx of austere gentlemen with
beards and books. The impression of the church fathers as formidable only increases when we cast our
eyes on the amount of books they wrote. One collection consists of more than 400 volumes of writings
from the early church fathers, more than 100,000 pages in Latin and Greek. In those books the writings
of most of the fathers are kept quite safe, under lock and key. This is because not many people are able
or willing to read and understand all of that. There is a much smaller collection that is yet still daunting.
This collection is of the writings of the anti-Nicene fathers, the Nicene fathers, and the post-Nicene
fathers. This collection consists of 38 rather large volumes, which form only a small selection of the
writings of the church fathers before, during, and after the Council of Nicea. I was in a class once at
Princeton Seminary when Professor George Henry challenged us to go stand in the library in front of all
these books. The library at Princeton owned copies of both of these collections, and it formed quite a
wall of books. The professor challenged us to go stand before all those books and be humbled. That was
not a very hard assignment, but to try to read some of those books was something else altogether.
The church fathers, of course, are famous. We talk about them all the time. They are admired. They are
quoted or alluded to often. But like some famous people they are not very well known. They are famous,
but not well known. I think there are some reasons for that. One thing is that the writings of the church
fathers are certainly difficult to read, even if you have a copy of them that has been translated into your
language. This is in part because the church fathers tend to be, dare I say it, long winded. They often
take about five pages to say what we would prefer to say in one page or less. That was simply the way
people wrote in those days, so you have to be patient and listen for a long time, though you may be
thinking that the point has long since been made, but Clement, Irenaeus, or Tertullian go on and on
about it. The church fathers are difficult to read not only because they are long winded but also because

they tend to go into all kinds of digressions. They really do not stick to the point. Gregory the Great,
toward the end of the period of the church fathers, said, “This is how a preacher should preach. A
preacher of the sacred Word should imitate the manner of a river. For if a river as it flows through its
channels comes upon valleys upon its banks it immediately flows with full force into them, and when it
has filled them up it at once returns to its course. This is exactly the way the preacher of the divine Word
should be so that when he is discussing something, if perhaps he finds an occasion near at hand to be
edifying, he should, as it were, force the streams of his tongue to the neighboring valley, and when he
has filled up the plain with his instruction he may return to the course of his main topic.”
Now, you will not be taught that manner of preaching at Covenant Seminary or any place else as far as I
know. Homileticians tell us to have a point and stick to it. But the church fathers did not like to do that.
One topic will raise another topic and they will follow all those ideas. If you want to see this in great
detail you can read The City of God by Saint Augustine, his great writing. Someone has said that it is a
book about everything, which is nearly true. It is wonderful material, but it goes into every direction,
and you are never quite sure why or where the book is headed. Thus the church fathers followed these
trails in their writings and may or may not get back to the main point because one idea leads to another.
That makes it rather difficult for us to read their works.
Another problem with reading the writings of the church fathers is that they loved imagery and
symbolism. Some of this is wonderful and helpful. Sometimes it enhances the topic, if used sparingly.
But often it overwhelms the topic. There is a famous image used by Ignatius of Antioch, who seeks to
describe the Christian life in terms of constructing a building. Thus the image he has in mind is that the
Christian life is like building a building. He says this: “You are like stones of the Father’s temple,
having been made ready for the building, God the Father, carried out to the heights by the engine of
Jesus Christ which is the cross, using the Holy Spirit as a rope. Faith is your windlass and love is the
road leading up to God.” By the time you reach the end of that paragraph you realize the image has
taken over and the point Ignatius is making is lost in the profusion of ideas that he piles, one upon the
other.
All of that is to say that we do not have an easy task when we try to discern and understand and use what
the early church fathers were saying. But this is a task we should endeavor to take on because there is
great value and significance in reading the early church fathers. Before I get into that, let me next try to
tell you who the church fathers were. That is not easy because we do not have a precise list of the church
fathers. We usually think of the church fathers as the leaders of the church after the time of the apostles.
We go back to the first century and view the period of the church fathers as beginning when the last of
the apostles died. The last apostle, as far as we know, was John, who lived almost through the entire first
century. Some of the early church fathers would have overlapped with John. The church fathers were the
leaders of the church, possibly beginning with Clement of Rome. Clement lived in Rome as pastor of the
church there. He was not a bishop then, and certainly not a pope, but he was a pastor in the church of
Rome in the late first century. He wrote a letter to the church at Corinth, like Paul wrote two and maybe
three letters to the church at Corinth. We have Clement’s letter; it is called First Clement. He wrote that
in about the year 96 AD as a pastor in Rome sending a pastoral letter to a sister church to answer some
questions that had come to him, to try to edify and help that church. We could say that the church fathers
began in the period after the apostles. One standard way to divide these church fathers is to call the
earliest ones the anti-Nicene fathers. This means that they were before the Council of Nicea. The council
took place in the year 325 AD, and there were many church fathers who lived before the third century.
The next group is titled the Nicene fathers, people like Athanasius and others who lived during the time
of the Nicene Council. And then there are the post-Nicene fathers, those who lived after the Council of
Nicea. When did the period of the church fathers end? It started just after the time of the apostles, but

how long does it extend? Here it becomes rather artificial. Some people think of the last of the church
fathers as Saint Augustine, in the fifth century. Others, in the Western church especially, view the period
of the church fathers as extending further so that people like Isidor of Seville in Spain, or the Venerable
Bede in Britain are sometimes included in the list of church fathers. In some people’s minds this period
extends all the way to the 12th century when Bernard of Clairvaux lived, who is often spoken of as the
last of the church fathers. There is a kind of openness in terms of the end of this period.
In the Eastern church it is often said that John of Damascus, who lived in the eighth century, was the
church father who ended the period of the church fathers. But an argument could be made that in the
Eastern Orthodox Church the period of the fathers never ended. When I was a student at Princeton I
would see Father Florovski. He was an Eastern Orthodox theologian of fame and preeminence in the
Eastern church who taught at Princeton for a while. I would see him walking around campus with a long
cassock on and a long beard. He had a sort of other-worldly look on his face. But a cigarette always
seemed to be rather carelessly held, with sparks flying. I was always a little afraid that the cassock or the
beard would catch on fire and Father Florovski would disappear from sight. But he was there. Nobody
really talked to him, but we looked at him and wondered about this apparition on a Presbyterian campus.
I did hear once, in an ecumenical gathering—people from different church traditions—someone said the
period of the church fathers was over and irrelevant to the modern age. Father Florovski stood up and
said, “The period of the church fathers is not over. I am still alive.” In the Eastern church there is a sense
that great figures appear and the history of the church fathers continues.
As we try to think about these people, one thing we ought to recognize right away is that the early
church fathers were not Europeans in the modern sense of the word. The church fathers came from what
we would call the Hellenized part of the Mediterranean. That is, the Mediterranean world with Greek
culture, in the north, south, and west, but particularly in the east surrounding the Sea of Galilee. They
came from North Africa, Rome, many came from Asia Minor, and from lands further east, outside the
bounds of the Roman Empire. Most of them spoke Greek because Greek was a universal language in the
Roman world and even beyond during that time. Later some of the church fathers spoke Latin only. In
addition to Greek the early church fathers represented diverse native tongues and different ethnic
identities. Not only were these men “early” church fathers, meaning they came early in the history of the
church, but they are called “fathers.” I think Christian people have called the church fathers “fathers”
because the church tended to look up to these men as examples, leaders, and teachers. Were they godly
and righteous people? Well, yes. But they were like us, with flaws, blemishes, shortcomings, and
failings. Tertullian, for instance, had a very hard, fanatical streak about him. The church father Jerome
who translated the Bible into Latin (we call this translation the Vulgate) had an unpleasant and
unforgiving temperament. I never read Jerome much without thinking, “I really just do not like this
man.” Cyril of Alexander persecuted his theological opponents relentlessly and was often unscrupulous
in controversy.
So we see that the church fathers were far from perfect. It is not that they were super saints or super
righteous that makes them the church fathers. They were far from perfect, but they were characterized
by a kind of holy zeal for the Gospel, for the truth. And also, I think, they had an understanding that
their task was as much to live the Gospel as it was to explain and defend it. They tried to defend the
Gospel, to explain it, to preach it, and to exemplify it as good pastors and church leaders should.
Tertullian, for all his irascibility and hardness, wrote a wonderful little book called On Patience. He
said, “I wrote this book because I do not have patience. I do not know anything about it. But I need it; it
is a Christian quality. And so, rather than writing a book about something I think I am good at, I will
write a book about something I am not good at.” As a result of that, Tertullian’s On Patience is a very
helpful book, written by a man who was not patient.

Gregory of Nazianzus spoke for all the fathers when he said, “Those who dare to speak about God must
have made great progress in contemplation [mediation, study] of the things of the Lord and must have
made great progress in purification [sanctification].” The church fathers realized it was not enough to
speak words about God. One’s life must be committed to the task of living for God, as much as one’s
mind and mouth must be involved in thinking and speaking about God. The church fathers were, of
course, orthodox Christian leaders. We have seen how as the heresies attacked the church the church
fathers wrote treatises, books against the heresies. But as you read the early church fathers, the anti-
Nicene church fathers (those who came before the Council of Nicea), you will discover that some of the
church fathers were themselves guilty of what we would call heresy. They did not fully understand the
doctrine of the Trinity. A number of the early church fathers had the view that Jesus and the Holy Spirit
are somehow subordinate to the Father. Therefore as we read the church fathers everything we read will
not be perfectly right. There are mistakes of various kinds in the writings of the church fathers. Despite
failures, in charity and in orthodoxy the church has come to honor its early leaders. One of the ways you
can tell this is that most of the church fathers are called saints: Saint Clement, Saint Ignatius, and so on.
Two of the church fathers, really the two whom I would call the most brilliant minds among the church
fathers, are never called saints. We never speak of Saint Tertullian or Saint Origen. That is because there
were certain problems in both of those church fathers. There were theological problems in the case of
Origen. There were personality problems and the issue of him moving into the Montanist heresy for a
period in the case of Tertullian.
That is a brief overview—some comments on how to think of these church fathers. Let me next
introduce to you very briefly nine of the most famous of the church fathers and say just a word about
each. First, meet Clement of Rome. He was a pastor. He lived in Rome at the end of the first century.
Like any pastor in any century he was busy and concerned with the affairs of his flock. But he was able
to take time to look at the larger church. He viewed his responsibility not only to the church in Rome but
also to the church in Corinth. He realized that his responsibility as a minister of the church of Jesus
Christ went beyond his own local congregation in Rome. He was a wonderful man who is a delight to
read because you see a real pastor’s heart coming out in Clement of Rome.
Then meet Polycarp. Polycarp was bishop, or pastor, in a town in Asia called Smyrna. We are always
intrigued with Polycarp because he knew John the apostle. Thus when we read the writings of Polycarp
we are reading the writings of someone who had spoken to and knew one of the apostles of Jesus Christ.
He was a disciple of a disciple of Jesus Christ. Polycarp was martyred in the year 155 AD with the
words on his lips, “Eighty-six years I have served Him and He did me no wrong. How can you ask me to
deny Christ my king?”
Another martyr among the early church fathers was Justin. We can remember that this man was a martyr
because we call him Justin the Martyr. He knocked at practically every door of ancient wisdom before
he became a Christian. He was a noble apologist who defended Christianity against both Judaism and
paganism. He had a school in Rome where he taught people.
One of Justin’s students was a man who had come from a long way off, from Assyria, to study in Rome.
His name was Tatian. He was Asia’s first theologian. Tatian was, in some ways, a very radical thinker
and Christian. He was very much into extreme asceticism, which we will look at later as we come to the
Monastic period in church history. He was also a great scholar whose writings—not in Greek but in
Syriac—prepared the way for the Gospel to be taken beyond the Greek speaking areas of western Asia
and further east. Tatian’s Diatessaron is particularly famous. This was the first harmony of the Gospels.

Then we need to meet Irenaeus. Irenaeus was born in Smyrna in Asia. Asia, what would be called Asia
Minor or Turkey, was more or less the Bible belt (location of high concentration of Christian centers) of
that time. Thus many of the church fathers came from Asia, and many of the church councils (as we will
see later) took place in Asia. Smyrna was the home of Irenaeus, where he often heard Polycarp preach—
another link to an earlier period. A wonderful thing about this man was that he was sent as a missionary
from Asia all the way to Gaul, Southern France, the area around Lyon in what we now call France. In
those days this was pagan, unchristian territory. Therefore Irenaeus went as a missionary. He learned to
speak the Gaulic language so as to be able to communicate with those who did not speak Greek as he
did. Irenaeus led the church through a time of furious persecution and defended Christianity from his
distant missionary outpost. In this way he was something like Jonathan Edwards at Stockbridge writing
great books of theology as he served the Indians. Irenaeus was in Lyon preaching the Gospel to the
pagans of Gaul and building the church but keeping his eye on Gnosticism and other heresies that were
afflicting the church elsewhere, writing his famous multi-volume work called Against Heresies.
Then meet Tertullian. Tertullian was a lawyer who became a theologian. Some people think it was a
good thing he was a lawyer, others think it was a bad thing. He did bring into Christianity a kind of legal
mind. He was clear and precise in the way he defined his terms and in the way he wrote about
Christianity. He was the first important Christian writer in Latin. With Tertullian we have the beginning
of the Latin tradition in Christian theology. One fifth century writer said this about Tertullian, “Almost
every word he uttered was an epigram and every sentence was a victory.” That is high praise, but there
is a lot to that. Of all the church fathers I have mentioned, Tertullian may be the most exciting to read
because he has a way of saying things such as, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church,” or “The
pagans say of the Christians, ‘How they love each other! How they are willing even to die for one
another!’” We quote Tertullian all the time even if we do not always remember that it is coming from
him. Tertullian, according to one analysis, was responsible for coining in Latin 509 new nouns, 284 new
adjectives, and 161 new verbs. The language just was not big enough for him, and he kept expanding it.
Alister McGrath writes that, happily, not all of these new words seem to have caught on. But one that
happily did was “trinity.” That was a new word that Tertullian coined because some word was needed to
express that idea and he came up with the word “trinity.” We will see how important that word is when
we study the Council of Nicea.
Next let us meet Clement of Alexandria. He was part of a famous school in Alexandria, perhaps
something like a theological seminary or a church school or an upper-level Sunday school class. One of
the teachers in that school was Pantaenus. Pantaenus was from the island of Sicily, and Clement called
his teacher “the Sicilian bee” because he was so busy studying and writing, like a bee going from flower
to flower always on the move. Pantaenus did continue to stay on the move because as we saw earlier he
went all the way to India, we think, as a missionary to encourage and teach the Christians who may have
been evangelized as early as the time of the apostle Thomas. Clement was a student of Pantaenus. He
was a gentle man. Perhaps of all the church fathers Clement was the one we could feel the most at ease
with, one whom we could feel was a real friend and father. He wrote the hymn “Shepherd of Tender
Youth” that I used as the opening prayer in an earlier lesson. Clement was a man of very broad learning.
He very much wanted to capture the best of the learning that was available in the Hellenized world for
the Christian church.
Then let us meet Clement’s successor in the school at Alexandria, the brilliant Origen. Origen is the
patron saint of Christian theological scholarship, according to one scholar. Origen began his writing
about the year 215 AD. It is interesting that Christian History Magazine in its list of the 100 most
important dates in Christian history includes 215 AD, the year in which Origen started to write. And he
wrote for the rest of his life. He wrote books on apologetics. We have thought about his Contra Celsum,

(Against Celsus). He wrote books on biblical exposition, commentaries. He did an excellent textual
work on the Old Testament called the Hexapla. And he wrote what we could consider the first
systematic theology, which is called On First Principles. Origen was a kind of pioneer. He wrote
systematic theology before the church councils, before Saint Augustine, before John Calvin, and before
all that comes after him. Thus he was a kind of pioneer, like one who builds a road to an untamed
territory. Sometimes he used rubble to fill in the gaps, and the road gave way. But the marvel of it all is
that the road was built at all. Ever since Origen’s time people have had mixed feelings about him.
Someone has said that he was like the poem about the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle
of her forehead. When he was good, he was very, very good; but when he was bad he was horrid. You
can get some very bad doctrines, ideas, and teachings from Origen. One of the worst is his teaching on
universalism. Using just one part of a verse in Acts 3:21, which says, “…The time comes for God to
restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets,” Origen teaches or at least
speculates that eventually God’s love and patience will prevail so that everything will be restored and
everyone will be saved, including the devil. Then he introduces another bad idea and says that because
God preserves free will the devil could fall again and the whole thing could start again. Fortunately the
church has not followed Origen in that particular way of understanding eschatology.
Let us meet just one other early church father. Later we will meet many others. We will study
Augustine, Chrysostom, and Gregory the Great. But we will end this survey with Cyprian. Another
African like Tertullian, Cyprian was from Carthage. He tried to teach people what the church, what the
true church, is. He presided over part of the church, the church in North Africa during one of the great
controversies in early church history—the Donatist controversy that we will study later.
Those are a few, nine among scores of church fathers. But let me end by thinking with you for a
moment, trying to answer this question: how should we view the church fathers? Roman Catholics and
particularly Greek and Orthodox people venerate and elevate the church fathers. Particularly in the
Eastern church, the church fathers are viewed as being close to if not equal with Scripture. That is not
the correct way to view the church fathers. Protestants, except for the Church of England, have tended to
ignore the church fathers. We lump them all together and pay a certain amount of respect to them and
then move on to something else. Sometimes Protestants can think that not much good came out of the
early church and the medieval church, except for Saint Augustine, who is the one person we tend to like.
We sometimes think nothing really good came from the church until the Reformation. But as you read
Calvin you see Calvin quoting the church fathers. He understood the church fathers, he respected the
church fathers. He respected what he calls “the consensus of the first five centuries,” before the church
became, you might say, the Roman Catholic Church. So we should as Protestants try harder to know the
church fathers, to read the church fathers, and to use them.
We are greatly helped in that task by a new set of books, Bible commentaries that have just started to
appear. These are called The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. There are 27 volumes
projected to be published in that series by InterVarsity Press. This series will take Bible books like Mark
and Romans (those two have already been published) and scholars will study through these many
volumes of the writings of the church fathers to tell us what the church fathers said about the Gospel of
Mark, how they commented on Mark. Then as you preach and teach Mark you can turn to that volume
and see what Clement and Tertullian and Origen and Ignatius and Irenaeus said about a certain text. That
will be a wonderful resource. We should use it if we are able to access it because it will get us into the
understanding of the Bible from the earliest commentators on Scripture. The editor of this entire series is
Thomas Oden from Drew University and Seminary. I was reading just last night an interview with
Thomas Oden. The question was asked of him, “How did a study of the early church fathers cause you
to become an evangelical Christian?” This man was in a liberal tradition, as he explains in his answer to

this question, but he became an evangelical. That is important news to many people, that Thomas Oden
is now saying something very different about Christianity than he had been for many years. His answer
was this:
[My study of the early church fathers] literally reshaped me spiritually and theologically. Until
the early 1970s I was a modern liberal theologian, adapting Christian teaching to modern
assumptions. But by that time I began to realize that those assumptions were collapsing and that
classical Scripture and tradition were much more stable and wise. Until then I had been a Marxist
politically, a Freudian psychologically, and a relativist in situation ethics and moral judgments. I
started to read the ancient Christian writers, especially the Patristic teachers such as Athanasius
and Jerome. I had had a good education but no one ever told me about the importance of these
people. Once I began to realize the wisdom in that tradition I knew that the Holy Spirit was
powerfully at work in my consciousness. I believe I did not really become a theologian until that
point, even though I had written many books on theology and had been paid to be a theologian.
This is quite an important testimony from an important theologian. I trust that this lesson has contributed
at least this point: now someone has told you about the importance of the church fathers.
It has been asked, can we be more precise about the end of the period of the church fathers? I would say
the general consensus is maybe the first eight centuries. That is as far as this compilation of the ancient
commentaries on Scripture is going. That would include John of Damascus in the East and go beyond
the time of Augustine in the West.
(Hebrews 12:1).

People of the Early Church
One of my stated goals for this class is to study not only the leaders of the church, the people who
preached the sermons and wrote the books, but also to try to think from time to time about the people of
the church. These are the people who sat in the pews (and before there were pews, stood in the churches)
and listened to the sermons and went out to live for the Lord in their everyday lives. The last lesson,
lesson seven, was on the early church fathers. Now lesson eight is on the people of the early church.
Those people were men and women and children, slaves and free people who met together to worship
the Lord and who went out to spread His word and serve Him in the world.
We will have two parts to this lesson as we look at the people of the early church. The first part will deal
with the worship of the early church. The second part will deal with the life of Christians in the family
and in the community. One of the ancient prayers that was used by these early Christians is called the
Sursum Corda, which means “Lift up your hearts.” It was first given in a form similar to the one we will
pray it in, in The Apostolic Tradition, a Syrian writing from Hippolytus. We think it came from Syria in
the early third century. This prayer has been used in many, many liturgies in the history of the Christian
church and is still used often today. We will pray this prayer.
Leader: “The Lord be with you.”

People: “And also with you.”
Leader: “Lift up your hearts.”
People: “We lift them up to the Lord.”
Leader: “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”
People: “It is right to give Him thanks and praise.”
All: “Amen.”
As we think about the corporate worship of the early church we have a number of important documents.
You may have read about these in Gonzales’ textbook. These are documents that help us to construct to
some extent what it was like to be present in a church service in the second century in Rome or
somewhere else. The Teaching of the 12 Apostles, or the Didache, came from a Christian community,
we think, in the land of Syria. That document has been dated differently, but the latest indication is that
we are dealing with a very, very early document when we study the Teaching of the 12 Apostles or the
Didache, perhaps as early as the first century. The Apostolic Tradition, written by Hippolytus, gives us
the form of worship that was practiced in the church of Rome in the early third century. In addition to
these two very important documents we have the writings of the church fathers. The most important is
the First Apology of Justin Martyr. That writing describes Christian worship in Rome at about the
middle of the second century. And we also have writings from people outside the church, like Pliny,
governor of Bithynia. In his letters to the emperor Trajan, Pliny describes Christian worship as it took
place in his province in Asia at the end of the first century. As we look at all those documents and try to
put them together we realize that there are some common themes but there are also some differences.
Christian worship apparently developed somewhat differently in different places. Therefore we are not
able to come up with one service that would be standard in all parts of the Christian world.
The Christian people certainly remembered the writings of the apostles and read them constantly, as we
will see. These writings of course included Hebrews 10:25, “Let us not give up meeting together, as
some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day
approaching.” Christians met together faithfully in worship on the Lord’s Day. That was considered an
essential time for God’s people, the Christian people, to meet together. In fact, one of the early writings

from the church fathers tells us that if Christians were not present in the service on the Lord’s Day, if
they stayed away from that service, they would tear and rend the Lord’s Body. We know from the
writings of some of these people whom I have just mentioned that in many places that was worship not
only on the Lord’s Day but on other days of the week as well. Hippolytus said this, “Let every faithful
man and woman, when they have risen from sleep in the morning before they touch any work at all,
wash their hands and pray to God and so go to their work.” In this way he was encouraging the
Christians to have a time of private devotions. All the way back in the early centuries of the church
Christians were putting aside a time of prayer before getting up and going forth to work. Hippolytus
added this as well, “But if instruction in the Word of God is given each one should choose to go to that
place, reckoning in his heart that it is God whom he hears in the instructor.” Some places, sometimes
there would be daily meetings. Christians would go forth from their homes after their time of personal
prayer to hear a Bible exposition. As they listened to the preacher preaching the Word of God they were
to know that they were hearing what God was saying to them. Hippolytus went on to say, “If there is a
day when there is no instruction, let each one when he is at home take up a holy book and read it
sufficiently.” If there was no service that day in their community they were to take one of the holy
books, one of the books that became the Old and New Testament canon or some other holy book and
read it. So Christians were encouraged to times of private prayer, and if possible daily gatherings for
instruction in the Word of God.
But they were especially to come together for worship on the Lord’s Day. The first references to Sunday
or the Lord’s Day are often “The First Day.” That expression is used to describe the day of Christian
worship. For instance, Justin Martyr wrote this, “We hold our common assembly on the day of the sun.”
People have often said that was a pagan day. Well, every day was a pagan day. The day of the sun, like
any other day in the Roman Empire, was a pagan day. But it had an intriguing name that Christians
began to use. Justin Martyr said, “We hold our assembly on the day of the sun because it is the first day
[it was the first day of the week] on which God would put to flight darkness and chaos as He did in the
creation when He made the world. And on the same day Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.” So
as early as we can tell in the history of the church Christians were meeting on the first day of the week,
the day of the sun that God made. Even though the pagans did not know the true God, the Christians did,
and it was His day as much as any other day. And it was also of course the day when Jesus rose again
from the dead. Therefore on that day rather than the Jewish Sabbath, the seventh day, on the Christian
first day of the week Christians met for worship. We are told in several of these writings that they met
very, very early, before daylight or “at cock crow,” which would be early. The time of the gathering of
Christians was early. That early meeting time may have been so that Christians would have privacy,
particularly during times of threatened persecution. It was better to meet early and not stir up the notice
and wrath or agitation of neighbors who may have been opposed to them. Also it is probable that
Christians met very early in the morning so that those members who were slaves and did not have the
freedom of the day to do what they wanted during the working hours would be able to come as well,
early in the morning before daylight.
And we are told by Justin Martyr that they met in one place. “Christians come together in one place.” I
think that means that a group of Christians in a community would have one central place where they
would meet. Of course, at first those were not church buildings because there were no buildings built for
the purpose of serving as a church until much, much later. In fact, the great church buildings we are
familiar with, the wonderful cathedrals, come only after the time of Constantine when Christianity was a
legal religion and then later in the century the state religion of the Roman Empire. But early on
Christians met in homes. Probably they did not often meet in places like the Catacombs, although it was
possible that gatherings took place there at times when there was danger. But usually they would meet in
homes. We think that in some of those homes, as in the Jewish synagogues, the leader or pastor and his

family would live in part of the house and the church would meet in a room or two of that private home.
The earliest church buildings we know anything about are really remodeled houses with walls taken out
to make rooms bigger in order to accommodate a larger gathering. The first church building per se that
we have known anything about is the one at Dura-Europos, a town on the Euphrates east of the Roman
Empire. This is a building we think dates to about the year 230 AD, although archaeologists have
discovered another early church building in the land of Jordan that could be even earlier than the church
building at Dura-Europos. The one at Dura-Europos is obviously a private home remodeled to be made
into a larger meeting place. It has a central arch in its primary meeting room, an interesting architectural
feature. It has a very low stone baptistery. We will talk later about how that may have been used. And it
had paintings on the wall. This very early church had certain decorations and embellishments. There was
a painting of the Good Shepherd, a painting of the King who conquers death, the Lord who conquers
death for us, and a painting of the three Marys who came to the empty tomb. Later we will study what
happened after Constantine and the development of church architecture as it becomes a very important
aspect of Christian history.
Christians would gather early in the morning on the Lord’s Day in a place, probably a house somewhere
in their town or community. And then they would read together the Scripture and hear the Word
preached. Scripture reading included both the Old and New Testaments. Justin Martyr said, “The
memoirs of the apostles or the writing of the prophets.” “Memoirs of the apostles” is almost certainly a
reference to the Gospels and “the prophets” would be all of the Old Testament as the Old Testament was
often called the Book of the Prophets. Justin tells us that at Rome that Scripture reading went on as long
as time permitted. I think we should understand that to mean a long time, not just a verse or two and
probably not even just a chapter or two, but perhaps some whole books of the Bible or large portions of
some of the books of the Bible. You see how this would be important when Christians for the most part
did not have access to the Word of God at home, although Hippolytus seems to indicate that there were
available holy books, good books that Christians could perhaps share and pass around. But no one would
have a whole Bible at home, and so they would come together on the Lord’s Day to hear the Bible read
in extensive portions. Then there would be a sermon that the pastor would give, an exposition based on
either the reading of the day or some other passage of Scripture.
There would also be a time of prayer. The prayer time seems also to have been extensive. Some of the
prayers were what we might call free prayers when the minister or the leader, the elder, someone in
charge of the service, would pray extemporaneously. Those could be long prayers. There also seem to
have been shorter prayers in which the people had a part, like the Sursum Corda that we prayed at the
beginning of the lesson. In these prayers there would be prayer by the pastor and then responses from
the people. Thus the prayer time seems to have included both free prayer and recited or set prayers. The
posture in praying was almost certainly standing. That is why I have my students stand when we pray
the Sursum Corda. That was a sign to the early Christians of joy and boldness in the presence of God.
That certainly would also have been an appropriate way to pray. But as the early Christians prayed they
stood with great joy and boldness in order to pray to the Lord. Certain pictures indicate that the whole
congregation extended their hands in prayer.
These things developed even more as we come into later, medieval worship. They became more
complex and detailed. Later people began to turn toward the east, toward the city of Jerusalem, as a sign
that they were expecting the Lord’s return, and signs were added to other elements of prayer. If you
worship in the Free Church of Scotland today they will ask you to stand to pray. They sit to sing and
stand to pray in the Free Church of Scotland, going back to Reformation practices, but also back to the
practice of the early church. Many of the accounts we have of early Christian worship do not mention
singing. Yet, others do and it is almost certain that the early church did sing or chant psalms and, after

the year 200 AD or so, hymns. One of the earliest was the hymn “Shepherd of Tender Youth” written by
Clement of Alexandria that I have referred to several times already. It could be that Justin Martyr and
the others do not come right out and say “We also sing” because in describing prayer they are
considering the singing or the chants of the congregation as part of prayer.
The Lord’s Supper was celebrated every Sunday. By the middle of the second century two things, which
apparently were together at first, were separated: the fellowship meal and the Lord’s Supper. The
fellowship or agape meal was a fellowship meal where Christians would meet together to eat. During
this meal the Lord’s Supper would be celebrated as a part of that common meal. The fellowship meal,
which continued as something on its own, was separated from the Lord’s Supper by the middle of the
second century, pretty much the way we do it today with fellowship meals in churches and the Lord’s
Supper in Sunday worship. We are not exactly sure why that separation came, but at least by the middle
of the second century the Lord’s Supper was more of a token meal that was celebrated in the context of
the liturgy on the Lord’s Day, and the fellowship meal was something else entirely. At the time of the
Lord’s Supper only the baptized Christians were allowed to stay. The cathecumins, those who were
studying and preparing for baptism, were dismissed, as well as visitors. The Lord’s Supper, then, the
second part of the service, proceeded with baptized members only; at least that was the practice in Rome
that Justin Martyr tells us about.
That brings us to the practice of baptism. Let me talk a little bit about that. It is not too long in the
history of the church before we see something rather strange happening. That is, baptism for (adult)
converts to Christianity was often delayed. It did not take place right away. In fact, some people thought
it should be delayed a long time. Tertullian is not always the safest guide in these matters because he
was very idiosyncratic and could go off on his own tangents. But Tertullian said, “If there are any who
understand the weightiness of baptism, they will be more afraid of attaining it than delaying it.” Here is
a church father who said it is best to keep putting baptism off until you really understand the burden of
baptism. In Augustine’s Confessions we read that when he was a little boy he was quite ill. Monica his
mother was arranging to have him baptized. Augustine writes, “But suddenly I recovered. My cleansing
was deferred on the assumption that if I continued to live I would be sure to soil myself and after that
solemn washing the guilt would be greater and more dangerous.” The view was beginning to be
developed that baptism washes away all sin and if it does, if you are going to die you need it but if you
are not going to die it is better to postpone it because you will probably sin some more. You can only do
it once. One baptism is all you get.
This strange and unbiblical view of postponing baptism in order to have it wash away as many sins as
possible became the practice in many parts of the church. So, baptism was often delayed. There were
long times of preparation for baptism, instruction, or study for as many as three years. It was almost like
going to seminary to get ready for baptism. Cathecumins were entitled to use the name “Christian”; they
were Christians and could come to the first part of the service but not the Lord’s Supper. They were not
yet “the faithful,” which was the name that was reserved for baptized Christians. This seems strange
because in the New Testament baptism was often quite prompt. But as some people have pointed out,
baptism in the New Testament (not always, but often) was baptism of Jews or God-fearers who already
knew the Scripture and, you might say, were ready to be baptized. But there were exceptions to that, too.
Now, at this time in church history converts came from paganism, mystery religions, all kinds of
backgrounds and all kinds of false teaching. The church became very, very careful to indoctrinate these
new Christians before they brought them to baptism. As time went on this became more and more
elaborate. It ended with times of special preparation and fasting, all-night vigils. And finally, the actual
baptism frequently took place on Easter Sunday, which was the first Christian celebration apart from the
first day of the week. Decisions on exactly how to set the day for Easter Sunday becomes a real problem

and source of tension between the church in the West and the East. But Easter is quite early observed as
a special day and in many places it was the day when the cathecumins were brought in for baptism using
the Trinitarian Baptismal Confession, which, as we have seen, developed into the Apostles’ Creed.
Let us talk for a moment about the meaning and mode of baptism in the early church. The meaning of
baptism, as far as we can tell from reading the church fathers, is almost always tied with the idea of
remission of sins. Actually, the doctrine of original sin seems to flow more out of the practice of baptism
than vice versa. It is not that the doctrine of original sin was very clearly understood and then baptism
was practiced as a result of the doctrine. The practice of baptism was there, and then, since it had to
mean something, people began to think about it in terms of washing away original and actual sin. That is
why it was often delayed, to give the person the opportunity of having more sin washed away by
baptism. The Didache says that there could only be one baptism. Apparently some thought that by being
baptized again they could wash away later sins. But only one baptism was allowed. That is later
expressed, of course, in the Nicene Creed: “One baptism for the remission of sins.” This seems to tie the
ideas together, “One baptism for the remission of sins.” Well, what about later sins? That was a big
problem. The church wrestled with that and eventually came up with the system of penance, as we will
eventually see in the medieval church.
What about the mode of baptism? We can find evidence for sprinkling, evidence for pouring, and
evidence for immersion. The Didache says that the water should be running water, not still water, and
that it should be cold, not warm. I am not sure of the reason for those restrictions, but there must have
been some meaning implied in all of that. And if only a little water was available, the Didache instructed
them to just pour the water three times on the person’s head. Does that mean if there was a lot of water
they could immerse and if there was a little water they could pour? It seems to say that. Tertullian in
North Africa said “A person is dipped in water and is sprinkled and then rises again.” This seems to
indicate both immersion and sprinkling. Hippolytus in Rome says, “A candidate stands knee-deep in
water while a deacon pours the water over his head or presses his head down into the water.” I think
putting all that together you have to come up with the idea that it just really did not matter. As long as
water was applied in some way the early church felt that it was effective baptism. You can imagine the
drama of the scene when a person who had been saved from a mystery religion or paganism, after long
years of preparation and nights of fasting and watching, finally made it to Easter Sunday. That person
was baptized and given a white robe in Rome to symbolize the cleansing from sin, and then was ushered
into the waiting church for his or her first participation in the Lord’s Supper. Whatever the theology of it
all, it certainly was a dramatic and impressive moment in the lives of Christians.
What about infant baptism? Well, I wish we could be more clear on this, but let me say what I think is
there in terms of evidence from church history. I think it is quite clear that infant baptism was an
uncontroversial practice very early on. How early on, we cannot really say. But the first mentions of
infant baptism, such as by Hippolytus in the early third century, did not report it as something new. It
was not an innovation; people had not just started doing this, rather it had been done for a long time.
The first clear opposition to infant baptism came from the person you might expect it come from,
Tertullian. He opposed it in about the year 200 AD. But he did not oppose it as a novel practice. He did
not say, “This is something that is just started and is therefore to be opposed.” But he opposed it because
he thought it was a good idea to delay baptism. He did not really oppose infant baptism as an invalid
form of baptism. It is real baptism. But if it cleanses sin it is better to have it delayed because infancy is
an age of innocence. Many of the church fathers say that, and that puzzles us because Tertullian did
believe in some form of original sin. But perhaps he was thinking of infancy as a period of innocence in
terms of actual sins.

Later people like Augustine would dispute that. Augustine thought the actual sins start right at birth, that
it does not take long for a baby to sin. But Tertullian had a different idea. So infant baptism was real
baptism, but it was also risky in light of serious post-baptismal sin. Not only did Augustine have a
different idea about that but Cyprian, the famous North African church father between Tertullian and
Augustine, said, “Baptize quickly.” He did not even want to wait eight days as some people were
suggesting because of the analogy with circumcision. “Baptize quickly, because of original sin, so the
baby does not run the risk of dying in sin.” In fact, Cyprian thought that as the baby was born and started
crying, that was not crying because of the shock of coming into this world or of hunger or something
else. The crying was because of the understanding of the child that he or she was a sinner, crying out for
God’s grace. That first cry of a baby is a cry for God’s grace, according to Cyprian.
Well, the question about infant baptism in the patristic age, it seems to me, was not whether to do it. It
was being done, and it was being done early. But the reason for doing it early became the big debate.
Someone has said that the practice was in search of a theology. Now, that is not the only time that has
happened in church history. Sometimes the church practice can help develop the theology. Prayer can
lead to doctrine, as well as doctrine to prayer. Thus it was not necessarily wrong that the church was
practicing infant baptism before it could clearly explain what it was doing in that practice. We will see
this developed later on in different ways. With Augustine it will be linked very, very tightly to original
sin. With the Reformers of the 16th century, like Zwingli, the idea of the covenant and circumcision as
analogous to baptism will be emphasized. This was not unknown in the early church, but it was not
emphasized until the rise of covenant theology in the 16th century. These become explanations for infant
baptism. But early on it was practiced. How early? We do not know. Exactly why the church was doing
it was a kind of mystery. It took a long time for the theology to catch up with the practice.
Now, let me move quickly to other aspects of life in the early church for the early Christians. We will
talk about sex and marriage, and then the Christian out in the world, in community. Many other things
could be added, but we have to limit these lectures somehow. On Christian marriage: Christians read and
believed Hebrews 13:4, “Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure.” There are
two ideas there, and I think the early Christians held firmly to these two ideas, that marriage should be
honored by all. Some Christians, of course, chose not to marry based on the advice of Paul. I think one
reason for avoiding marriage was the unsettled times, the possibility for martyrdom, and the crisis that
Christian communities faced time and time again in early church history. So, as Peter Brown puts it,
“Marriage and children demanded a peculiar and necessary brand of Christian courage.” It may have
taken as much courage if not more courage to get married and have a family than to go to the stake,
because in those times that was a calling Christians honored, so many did get married. But it often
ended, of course, in disaster as far as this world is concerned. Families were broken apart and fathers
and mothers were killed for the sake of their faith. But the early Christians honored marriage. Clement
of Alexandria said, “By all means, then, we must marry, both for the sake of our own country and for the
succession of children and for the completion of the world, in so far as it pertains to us.”
Within marriage, but within marriage only, the early Christians believed sex is proper, right, and good,
and is to be practiced and honored. Christians lived in a world with two extremes. There was the anti-
body, anti-sex world of the Gnostics. Because the body is bad and the material world is bad, sex just
traps more souls in material bodies. Therefore at least one aspect of Gnostic thinking was to deny the
body and to avoid sexual union that would produce children. On the other hand, it was a very licentious
world. Thus you could get two conflicting worlds, one rejecting the material and the other reveling in
sexual orgies and immorality of all kinds. Christians avoided both of those. Sex was good and proper,
but, as Clement of Alexandria along with countless others said, “Sexual activity is to be limited to
marriage and is to be undertaken as a purposeful, reverent endeavor.” This is very interesting way that

he says that. Sex is to be within marriage, and it is a reverent and purposeful endeavor between
Christians. Of course, it was not long before the church, before Christian people, began to see marriage
as not quite so good or at least not the highest form. Asceticism and celibacy become elevated in the
monastic movements—more in the East than in the West, but certainly in the West as well. The ideal
was no longer marriage and a family but celibacy and sexual abstinence as the marks of the complete
Christian. I think Hebrews 13:4 began to be read more this way: “Marriage should be honored by all
[but celibacy even more!].” And eventually it became, “[Celibacy should be honored by all, and
marriage tolerated.]” But that takes us far beyond the limits of our lesson today.
Let me close by saying a few words concerning Christian life in society. Christians read the words in the
Bible that they were to be “in the world but not of the world.” Christians in the early church struggled to
put this in practice. Diognetus explains it this way, “We belong to this world, we are citizens of this
world, we do everything like other people do that we can within the limits of our faith, but at the same
time we are aliens.” So Christians were both at home and not at home in the world. I will give just three
examples of life in society. Early Christians had great respect for life. They were pro-life. They opposed
abortion and they opposed infanticide, which was perhaps an even more frequent practice then. The
practice was to expose infants, to simply let them be born and place them outside to die. A husband in
Alexandria wrote to his pregnant wife in about the year 1 BC. He obviously loved his wife; it is a very
warm letter, but it has this chilling note because she is expecting a baby and he is away some place. He
says, “If it is a boy, keep it. If it is a girl, put it out.” This means, expose her. Put her out on a trash heap
to die or to be picked up by someone. That was not uncommon. Girls were not as wanted as boys
because of economic considerations, but both boys and girls were exposed.
Abortion, too, was practiced, but less commonly because of the danger of death to the mother in that
case. But it was routine in Greco-Roman culture for the welfare of state and family to be placed above
the welfare or rights of the unborn or even the born child. The child was not really a part of the family
until the decision was made to keep it. Then it became part of the family. The Christians totally opposed
all that. Not only did Christians not practice infanticide or abortion, but Christians picked up many of
the children who were abandoned and raised them as Christian children in Christian homes.
Compassion for the needy was also a theme we see in the early church. The church took care of orphans,
widows, and the poor. I did not mention when we were talking about the worship services that
collections were made, people brought money and gifts to the church. And in those days with no
buildings to keep up, no pastors to pay (since pastors were not full-time pastors like we often have
today), and no staff to employ, all the money could go to charitable purposes. Thus the money that was
collected went to the poor, the prisoners, the orphans, and others in need.
Christians also lived in light of a concern for decency. There were many activities, even public
activities, that were marked by obscenity and vulgarity, public festivals and celebrations of different
kinds. Christians would absent themselves from all of that in order to take a stand for purity and decency
in culture. There is a book called The First Urban Christians, which describes all of this in some detail.
It has two main points: radical purity and radical generosity. It seems to me to be a wonderful outline of
and tribute to those early Christians who practiced radical separation from the world in purity, even as
they lived in the midst of an impure world, and radical generosity in being willing to reach out and give
to others. Now, I do not mean to say in this lesson that all Christians were perfect or anywhere close to
it. Many of them fell away in the persecutions, and many of them fell into sin. We will talk about church
discipline later on. But as I have described these early Christians today, I have described many of them
who really lived for the Lord in their time.

(Hebrews 12:1).

The Church in the Fourth Century
This is lesson nine, entitled “In this sign conquer: the church of the fourth century.” To begin our lesson
I want to use a prayer from Eusebius of Caesarea. He was one of the church fathers of this period and a
very important man because he was the father of church history. He wrote the first important book about
the history of the church. The prayer I am using from Eusebius is a very personal prayer. It deals with
attitudes and conduct toward other Christians. I think this is important for us to keep in mind as we study
today. We will see big things that are happening, the conversion of Constantine and the movement of the
Roman Empire from a persecuting state to a state that first favored and then promoted Christianity. As
we look at these events today we need to also remember that people were trying to live as Christians in
their communities, in their relationships with other people. This prayer very much reminds us of that.
Let us pray.
“May I be no man's enemy, and may I be the friend of He who is eternal and abides. May I never
quarrel with those nearest me; and if I do, may I be reconciled quickly. May I wish for all people's
happiness and envy none. May I never rejoice in the ill-fortune of one who has wronged me. When I
have done or said what is wrong, may I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself
until I make amends. May I win no victory that harms either me or my opponent. May I reconcile friends
who are angry with one another. May I, to the extent of my power, give all needful help to my friends
and to all who are in want. May I never fail a friend in danger. When visiting those in grief may I be
able by gentle and healing words to soften their pain. May I accustom myself to be gentle and never be
angry with people because of circumstances. Amen.”
As we think of the church of the fourth century, we of course need to spend some time talking about
events that took place in the Roman Empire. But we do not want to lose sight of the fact that the church
was not only in the Roman Empire, but also in Asia and Africa. We will also briefly look at the church
in Asia and the church in Africa.
First, let us talk about the Roman Empire. As we come to the beginning of the fourth century the Roman
Empire was in some chaos. At one time there were six emperors all competing with one another to see
who would be the supreme emperor in the Roman Empire. Finally it was Constantine who became the
emperor. He became the emperor in a very interesting and significant way. As Constantine was moving
back with his army toward Rome he was facing a very important battle, a battle that would determine
whether he would become one of the main emperors in the West or not. The accounts differ somewhat,
but probably on the eve of that battle he is reported to have had a vision or a dream in which he saw a
symbol. That symbol was a Christian symbol. It had been used before Constantine; it was not new with
him. It was the Greek letters chi (c) and rho (r) superimposed upon one another. These are the first two
letters of the Greek name for Christ, Christos. As Constantine saw this symbol he is supposed to have
also heard the words spoken by God in Latin to him: “In this sign you will conquer.” Constantine took
that as an omen that he would be successful in his battle. He placed the Christos on the shields or
banners of his army and went forth to defeat Maxentius’ much larger army at Milvian Bridge near Rome
in the year 312 AD. That meant that Constantine was now the primary emperor in the West.
The next year, 313, he met with Licinius, who had succeeded Emperor Galerius in the East. These two
emperors, Constantine the emperor in the West and Licinius the emperor in the East, agreed to end the
persecution of Christians. Thus we come to the Edict of Milan in the year 313 AD. It is hard to think of a
more important date in church history than that. The Edict of Milan was when the two Roman emperors
said, “Christians and all others should have freedom to follow the kind of religion they favor.” It was an
© Summer 2006, David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

amazing statement because it meant that now Christians were free to practice their faith in the Roman
Empire, and everyone else could follow whatever faith they preferred. This did not last too long, but at
least for that brief time in history there was religious liberty offered in a modern state, or a state we
could consider a modern state. At that time this was a state where Christianity and all other religions
were to be tolerated. Eventually Constantine won control of the entire empire. The Roman Empire then,
by 324 AD, had one emperor again. Constantine moved the capital from Rome to a city he renamed for
himself, Constantinople. We will look at the impact of that later on. Constantine changed everything by
his attitude toward the Christians.
Was Constantine a Christian himself? People have debated this at some length. Before 312 AD
Constantine seems to have been a worshiper of the sun god. There was a vague, monotheistic religion in
Rome in the third and fourth centuries focusing on the worship of Sol, the sun god. That religion was
particularly prominent in the army. Constantine was in the army, as his father was. Many of the soldiers
in the Roman army worshiped the sun. It is interesting to read that Constantine had a sister whose name
was Anastasia. That may say something, because that is the Greek word for “resurrection.” It could be
that Constantine’s father had at least Christian sympathies to be able to name his daughter for the
resurrection, which is such an important part of Christian theology. We do know, however, that
Constantine became emperor in the West, after 312 AD when he minted coins—thousands of them,
which people have since collected and studied. The coins depicted the Roman sun god. This continued
the trend from before Constantine’s time, when the coins of the Roman Empire most commonly had
images of pagan deities on them. He did not right away change his allegiance, apparently. He may have
come into Christianity more gradually than a quick conversion as a result of his vision. Eventually,
during Constantine’s later reign, the coins mixed both pagan and Christian symbols. But the pagan
symbols, the symbol of the sun god in particular, continued to be used by Constantine for some time.
We do have Constantine telling us in various ways that he had become a Christian. In his testimonies he
sounds like a man who has definitely moved into the Christian faith. In one he said, “Almighty God,
have mercy upon me,” and he said that God had brought him out of sin into salvation. That is
Constantine’s own way of setting forth his conversion. People have pointed to Constantine’s conduct,
however, and said that he really did not live much like a Christian. We can find some problems there. He
was a man who really did not ever adequately understand the Christian faith. He later attempted to
negotiate with different parties in the Arian dispute and even tried to impose his understanding on the
Christian church—and generally it was a wrong understanding of Christian doctrine. But there were
many other people at that time who also did not have a very adequate understanding of the doctrine of
the Trinity. Therefore I think we should not judge Constantine too harshly, though his conduct left much
to be desired. He did not live as we would have wished a Christian emperor to live. He continued to be
very harsh against enemies, and his standards of conduct were often sub-Christian. But again, many
other people were acting the same way. Here is a man who testified to his conversion, but who fell far
short in many ways in living like a Christian. Some people point to the fact that he was not baptized
until the year he died, but that does not mean he had only become a Christian then. The piety of the
period as we saw earlier often delayed baptism because people felt that it washed away sin and so it was
better to wait and not be baptized too soon. I think with Constantine we have a sincere man, as Gonzales
says, who had a rather meager understanding of Christian doctrine. But, coming out of paganism into
Christianity he was trying to both understand the doctrine of the church and live for God, even though
often he fell short of that. One thing that is certainly clear is that Constantine not only tolerated
Christianity—the edict said Christians could now again exist without persecution along with all others—
but also, in his own personal practice Constantine promoted Christianity as one faith among many. For
him Christianity was the faith to be promoted in the Roman Empire. He exempted the Christian clergy
from civil obligations so they could devote themselves full time to religious duties. He claimed that he

thereby conferred great benefit on public affairs. The first day, which had become the Christian Sabbath,
became more and more a holiday under Constantine so that everyone would be free to worship God on
Sunday. He gave many gifts to churches. He also began to build great churches. The beginnings of the
great basilicas of the Roman Empire came during Constantine’s reign. Thus we have here a great ruler,
an important figure—one of the most important in history, and very important in church history, too.
About the same time that Constantine lived there was a great scholar whose prayer we used at the
beginning of this lesson, Eusebius of Caesarea. In fact, he was such a great scholar that it was said that
he was suspected of knowing everything there was to know. I am not sure that is true, but people seemed
to think it was. It was this man who became the father of church history. His Ecclesiastical History is
the single most important resource for the study of church history. That is the ecclesiastical history by
Eusebius of Caesarea. So much of what you may be reading in Gonzales’ textbook and so much of what
I have talked about in these lessons depends on what we learn from Eusebius’ History. He was also a
theologian.
We have a chapter in our text by Gonzales called “Official theology: Eusebius of Caesarea.” I hope you
are able to read that. It tells us that as Eusebius looked at what was happening in the past he saw this
tremendous change in his time. The emperor was now a Christian. I have qualified my statement
somewhat as to whether or not Constantine was a Christian, but Eusebius calls him a great Christian.
And he says that this is a great thing that has happened because the Roman Empire had now become
Christian. Eusebius saw God’s providence in all of this. He said, “Constantine is elevated by God to be
God’s vice-regent on earth. [Constantine] is God’s representative: as in heaven, so on earth.” That is
why Gonzales calls this “official theology.” This is something like what we would call “civil religion.”
Now suddenly the Roman Empire and Christianity were coming together in the writings and the thought
of Eusebius. Before this the predominant view had been “Christ against culture,” but now we have, in
Niebuhr’s understanding of Christ in culture, “Christ of culture.” (See lesson four.) This means that in
Eusebius’ view, the Roman Empire and Christianity came very close together. Christianity was the
culmination of the Roman Empire as the Roman Empire now became the expression of Christianity on
earth. It is unbelievable, is it not, that we could go so quickly from a persecuting empire, “Christ against
culture” as it is often expressed, to a kind of Christian state where Constantine is viewed as the great
Christian and Rome is something of the expression of God’s kingdom on earth. Saint Augustine would
question all that later on in The City of God, which we will talk about when we come to it.
Let me stop for a moment, though, and reflect on what has happened. We have entered a new era in
church history. This is what we could call the Constantinian Era. It lasted 1,000 years, and even more.
How do we view what has taken place? I think we have to look at this both positively and negatively. It
was very good in some ways, and it caused some problems in other ways. There were certainly positive
features in the conversion of Constantine and the promotion of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
People were free to worship without fear. Persecution was over. Christians could exist like everyone
else. And Christian ideals became more and more a part of society.
One example is the observance of the Sabbath on Sunday, which Christians had to do against the culture
until now. As the culture was “Christianized” Sunday suddenly became the official day of worship in the
Roman Empire. Also, laws were passed that promoted Christian standards. Infanticide was outlawed—
and that had been a longstanding practice in the Roman Empire. The abortion laws apparently were not
changed, but ecclesiastical discipline and public opinion moved against the practice of abortion so that
abortion was much less common in the fourth century than it had been earlier. With all of this
happening, avenues opened up for Christians that they could not have dreamed of earlier. Christians
became active now in art and architecture. Great churches were built expressing the Christian faith in art

and architecture. This of course contrasts strongly with the period before this when that could not have
been done. Thus there were many good results of the changes in the Roman Empire.
But some problems were also introduced by these changes. There were some negative features. Peter
Brown talks about the “conversion of Christianity.” Not only did Christianity convert Constantine and,
in a sense the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire converted Christianity. There was a kind of
syncretism, a kind of coming together. This was celebrated by Eusebius as a great thing but there were
some problems with all of it. I think as we study this next phase of church history we will be impressed
and discouraged over and over again by the worldly goals and strategies that were introduced into the
church. Wealth, power, and prestige became very important in the church, whereas before that was not
the case. One historian has said, “The Roman Catholic Church is the ghost of the Roman Empire.” So
much of what was in the Roman Empire was brought into the Roman Catholic Church, which we will
see taking shape now before our eyes.
There is another fact to think about. In one way we can really celebrate it: mass conversions. Thousands,
hundreds of thousands of people, became Christians during this time. When Constantine became a
Christian, probably ten percent of the people in the Roman Empire were Christians. By the end of the
century, that percentage was far more than half. Perhaps even two thirds of the people of the Roman
Empire had become Christians. The question we have to ask is this: what kind of Christians were they?
We have to ask this because before Constantine it was costly to be a Christian; it could mean persecution
or death. Therefore people did not convert quickly or without much thought. There was not very much
nominal Christianity before Constantine. There were heretics and there were all sorts of problem that we
have looked at already, but there was not much nominal Christianity. Persecution took care of that. But
after Constantine, when Christianity was not only legal but more and more favored in the courts and in
the Empire, then it was easy for people to decide to become Christians because of the advantages they
would receive by being Christians. Charles William has written, “It is doubtful whether Christianity has
ever quite recovered from the mass conversion of the fashionable classes inside Rome and of the
barbaric races outside Rome.” Well, I do not want to stress that too much because God does work
through events like this. We have to be patient to see God’s work through a long period of time. As we
come to missions in Northern Europe, we will see that it really took generations for people to move into
Christianity in any sort of significant way. We will try to be patient, too, as we study that. But there is
undoubtedly some truth in William’s statement. Nominal Christianity was a problem, and we will face
that problem again and again.
I think as we live in our time, those of us in the West are a kind of mirror image of the early church. You
see, the early church was a movement before Constantine, quietly challenging the established order. It
was a kind of counter cultural movement, facing the possibility of persecution, and it certainly was not
fashionable or accepted. In the fourth century there was a transition as paganism slowly gave way to
Christianity and the beginning of a Christian era. But people are calling our time now a post-Christian
era. In some ways our transition seems to be going the other way as Christians seem to be in a time of
declining power. It is possible that we may eventually find ourselves more in the position of Christians
in the Roman Empire before Constantine rather than sitting in the seats of power as Christians in the
West have done for so long. We may have to discover again what the early church knew so well. That is,
how to be resident aliens.
While all of that was happening in the West, we need to take a look at what was happening in Asia, in
the church outside of the Roman Empire. The center of Christianity in Asia was now Persia. Christians
had come from Syria and had moved east into the Mesopotamian provinces of Persia. Persia had its own
state religion, which was Zoroastrianism. But in certain parts of Persia the state religion was not very

strong. It was in those areas that the Christian church was able to flourish in Persia. It may be amazing
for us to think of Persia as the center of Christianity, because Iran and the surrounding countries are
certainly not the center of Christianity today. But at this time Persia was an important Christian center.
By the fourth century there was a nationwide community with a graded church structure. The structure
was perhaps more Episcopal than Presbyterian, but it was a national church across Persia. And it was a
very active church, reaching out even beyond Asia into other lands further east, even all the way to
China as we will see later. The leaders of Christianity in Asia are names that those of us in the West are
not as familiar with as we ought to be. I would like to mention three of these leaders: Jacob of Nisibis,
Aphrahat the Persian, and Ephrem the Syrian.
Jacob of Nisibis was an ascetic, a kind of monk. Monasticism was very popular in the East. We will
come to a lesson on that soon. But like many other eastern monks, Jacob “returned to the world.” This
means that he left his cell in the wilderness and went back into the world, which meant the church. So he
returned to the church rather than staying out in a monastery or living by himself. He went back into the
world to become the first bishop of Nisibis. We think that Jacob was perhaps present at the important
Council of Nicea, a council we will study soon, in 325 AD.
Aphrahat the Persian was the greatest eastern theologian of the fourth century. He carried on a kind of
continual dialogue with Jews. Judaism had become very strong in this area as well, and there was debate
between the Jews and the Christians. Aphrahat’s dialogue with the Jews is very thoughtful and very fair.
Samuel Moffat in his History of the Church in Asia says that Aphrahat is the most admirable of the
Christian thinkers of his time, in the East and West. Moffat places Aphrahat very high as a great
theologian and Christian thinker. His major book is called The Demonstrations. According to Moffat
this is “a remarkable blend of straightforward biblical teachings and deep and disciplined personal
piety.”
Ephraim the Syrian is the best-known eastern or Asian theologian and Bible expositor and hymn writer.
So many of the Asian theologians were hymn writers. Some of the western theologians were as well,
such as Clement of Alexandria. But in the Asia context there was hymnology, monasticism, and
theology. All of that was often mixed together in the same person. Ephraim said, “Scripture brought me
to the gate of paradise, and the mind stood in wonder as it entered.” Keep that sentence in mind because
that epitomizes so much of eastern thought.
We come in the fourth century to the Great Persecution. That is the great persecution of Christians in
Persia. That is really very interesting and remarkable because when persecution stopped in the Roman
Empire it started in Persia. There may have been a political reason for this. When Rome became
Christian its old enemy, Persia, became more avowedly anti-Christian. Moffat talks about this fourth
century persecution as the most massive persecution of Christians in history, unequaled for its duration,
veracity, and the number of martyrs. One estimate is that 190,000 Persian Christians died in the fourth
century in the Great Persecution. That may be far more than all the people who died in all the two-and-a
-half centuries of persecution in the Roman Empire. And yet, as we look at the history of those suffering
Christians in Persia, there appears to have been far more faithfulness. Far fewer numbers of people
apostatized in Persia under persecution than those who apostatized under persecution in the West. We
will keep looking at developments in the church in Asia, but this gives us a brief glimpse into the
situation in Asia in the fourth century.
Now we move to Africa, south of the Roman Empire. Egypt and North Africa, of course, were part of
the Roman Empire. But Ethiopia and Nubia were not part of the Roman Empire. Christianity developed
early in both of these areas. We will talk first about Ethiopia, or Axum as it was called in those days.

Christianity became the court religion of the empire or of the land of Ethiopia in the fourth century. In
fact, the king of Axum was converted to Christianity in the year 330 AD. That was just a few years after
Constantine was converted to Christianity. The first coin to have an explicitly Christian symbol did not
come from the Roman Empire. It came from Ethiopia. When the king was converted in 330 AD he
began to mint coins with explicitly Christian symbols. One Ethiopian coin from this time had a little
cross on it. It was a small, silver coin, but the cross was inlaid with gold. It was a very precious coin and
very important because it was the first coin minted with a Christian theme. This is in stark contrast to
what happened in the Roman Empire where Constantine mixed Christian and pagan symbols for some
time after he became emperor.
Christianity spread to the countryside in Ethiopia during the fifth century, largely through the witness of
Syrian missionary monks. They are called the Nine Saints. It is very interesting how international
Christianity was at this period. Some of the heroes of the Ethiopian church were Syrian missionaries, the
Nine Saints who came to preach in the villages of Ethiopia. Linked with Egyptian Coptic Christianity—
which we will talk about later—and armed with vernacular Scriptures, Christian kings and a great
number of local churches, the church of Ethiopia entered the Middle Ages where, in Gibbon’s
exaggerated phrase, “They slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were
forgotten.” But we will not forget these Ethiopian Christians. Several times as we move through
medieval Christianity we will stop to see what was happening in the land of Ethiopia where the strongest
early pre-Muslim Christian church was established in Africa.
The other country where Christianity found root south of the Roman Empire in black Africa was in
Nubia. That is present-day Sudan. In contrast to Ethiopia, Christianity in Nubia spread first among the
poor. It did not spread from the palace to the countryside as in Ethiopia, but among the poor, and then
eventually, in the sixth century, to the rulers. In the sixth century the traditional pagan religion was
swept away, and Christianity took deep root in Nubia. It was not really imposed as it was by the emperor
in Rome. Rather, it spread because common people and poor people had responded to it. It met the
deepest longings of the Nubian heart, and these people became Christians. Then from a kind of people
movement Christianity then moved upward into the palace and to the leaders of Nubia. The Nubian
church had a closer connection with the Byzantine or Eastern church than with the Coptic Church of
Egypt. Thus the Nubian church in its Christology was orthodox, aligned with the Council of Chalcedon
rather than being a church that would favor the Monophysite views of Christology as the Coptic Church
in Egypt did. I realize that last sentence introduced all kinds of words and themes that may be
unfamiliar, but that is all coming in later lessons. We will spend some time talking about the Egyptian
Coptic Church and the Council of Chalcedon and who the Monophysites were and why the Eastern
church tends to go one way and the Western church another way.
It has been asked, where was Nisibis? Nisibis, as you may remember, is the area over which Jacob
became the first bishop. Nisibis was right along the Tigris River. The three important areas I mentioned
in Asia were Nisibis, Syria, and Persia. The Gospel tended to move from Syria to Persia, and then later it
moved from Persia further east. Another question is did the Great Persecution kill off the church in
Persia? No, it did not kill off the church. The church survived with great difficulty. It survived into the
Muslim period, which produced additional problems. But the Persian church did continue and still does
to the present. There are Christians in Iraq who trace their Christian roots back to this church. There are
not many, and they suffer some disadvantages, although Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister was a
Christian—not a Muslim—and he is part of this ancient history.
It has also been asked, what about the churches in Ethiopia and Sudan? The church in Sudan was almost
entirely wiped out. There is a church in Sudan today, but they do not trace their history back to this

ancient church in Sudan. Islam did a thorough job of destroying the church in Sudan. The church there
now is from the modern missionary movement. But the church in Ethiopia continued. The church in
Ethiopia is the strongest example of a Christian church with African roots prior to Islam. I think that is
very important, because I think sometimes people get the idea that Islam is more the indigenous, African
religion. It really is not. There were traditional African religions prior to both Christianity and Islam. But
before Islam won great areas of Africa there was a strong Christian church in Ethiopia, which continues
right down to the present.
It has also been asked whether the Ethiopian church came out of Judaism. The tradition is that it goes
back to the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon in the Temple in Jerusalem, which gives it some Old
Testament links almost like an Old Testament church, if you could call it such. There continued to be
Ethiopian Jews even as there are down to the present. There are communities of black Ethiopian Jews.
But I think all that is back in the area of tradition more than history. I do not know that we can really say
how the church first started in Ethiopia. We can say that it began early and continues to today. It actually
has some interesting connections to the early church in Arabia. The closest Christians to the Ethiopian
Christians were those in South Arabia. You might say, “Well there are no Christians there.” Perhaps not
now, but at one time there was quite a considerable Christian community in southern Arabia. There was
some movement back and forth across the Red Sea, which was not very far; Ethiopia is only a few miles
from South Arabia. The support and fellowship between the Ethiopian and Arabian Christians was
pretty significant at one time. This Christian community in Arabia seems to have been wiped out not by
the Muslims, who came much later, but by the Jews. There was much antagonism between the Jews and
Christians who lived in that area.
Other questions have been asked about Constantine and the bishop of Rome. Constantine was in Rome,
and the bishop of Rome, who was quickly becoming the pope, was also there. Their relationship was
pretty good, I would say. The Christians did not want to upset Constantine after all the many benefits
they had received from him. But Constantine moved his capital to Byzantium, now called
Constantinople, 1000 miles east. Part of the strategy there was political and military. He felt that the
empire needed a strong center further east where things were in turmoil. When he did that it left a kind
of power vacuum in the West. Therefore the Roman bishop began to rise quickly in power because there
was no persecution and no emperor nearby. In some ways the pope of Rome began to fill the empty
space left by Constantine. But there was not much talk about church discipline. Constantine pretty much
did his own thing.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

The Beginnings of Monasticism
This is lesson ten, “Opus Dei: the beginnings of monasticism.” We will use for our prayer these words
from Benedict of Nursia. Benedict was one of the great early Western monastic leaders and of course the
founder of the movement we call the Benedictines. As we begin to think about this subject let us join
together in prayer using these words from Benedict.
“O gracious and holy Father,

Give us wisdom to perceive you,
intelligence to understand you,
diligence to seek you,
patience to wait for you,
eyes to see you,
a heart to meditate on you,
and a life to proclaim you,
through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.”
We begin with an example of monasticism. There was a monk who lived on the top of a pole out in the
desert. He had fled to escape the world and the worldliness of the church, and also to express some of
the martyrdom spirit, which was, after Constantine, not generally a reality. There were no more martyrs,
and so what did people do to set forth their commitment and love for God if they could not be killed for
Him? One idea was to go into the desert, climb up on a mountain, and stay there. This monk’s name was
Simeon Stylites. Simeon was his name, and “Stylites” indicated that he lived on top of a pole. Someone
has said that he showed great sense in the placement of his pole as there were mountains in the
background. He spent his time up there praying and preaching and giving advice to the admiring crowds
that would come and gather way down on the ground below him. This is a very strange thing.
We will be talking today about one of the strange movements in the history of the Christian church, the
monastic movement. Not only a few individuals like Simeon, but thousands of people fled the world
during the fourth and fifth centuries to live alone in the desert, or later in small communities. They did
this in order to, they thought, serve God better and seek God more earnestly. This movement greatly
increased after the time of Constantine, but it began even before Constantine. Back in the third century
there had been a long period of peace before the outbreak of the final time of persecution. During that
time the church, according to some people, was more worldly and less devoted to God than it had been
earlier. Therefore individuals began to seek ways in which they could express greater devotion and
commitment to God than the average way Christians lived in society.
The most famous of the early monks was a man named Antony. He lived in Egypt when he was about
20 years old, which would be about the year 270 AD. This is an important date for the history of
monasticism. He was challenged by Jesus’ words, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have
and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” That is the monastic
text. That text will come up again and again in church history as people read it, pondered it, and decided
to do it in a very literal and dramatic way. Antony did that. He gave away everything he had and went
out and spent the rest of his long life—he apparently lived to be over 100—out in the Egyptian desert
praying and meditating on God. Perhaps we would not have known so much about Antony, who was not
such a famous person, but another famous person whose name was Athanasius, the church father of
Alexandria who is so important for our study of the Council of Nicea, wrote The Life of Antony. This

became a kind of bestseller in the West as people read the story by Athanasius of this monk who had
given away everything and resolved to serve God in the desert. Not everybody has been quite so positive
about his actions. The historian Gibbons said, “It was an awful waste for a man like Antony to spend his
life living in the desert.” But the book by Athanasius certainly made an impact on many people,
including Saint Augustine. As Augustine was attempting to come to some peace and resolution in his
life, one of the books he read was The Life of Antony by Athanasius, and it certainly convicted
Augustine of his worldliness and pushed him closer to his time in the garden in Milan when he heard the
words and read the Scripture and was born again.
Antony was the first of a whole line of the Egyptian desert fathers, as they are called. They were people
like Antony who went out one by one, sometimes in small groups of twos and threes, to live in the desert
and pray and seek God. Collections have been made of the sayings of the desert fathers, and stories
about them were remembered and taught and were finally put together into collections of writings
including the most famous of these books. This was the book by Helen Waddell, the English classical
and medieval scholar who wrote the book, The Desert Fathers. This is an interesting book to read
because it includes many sayings that have been recovered and remembered by people and also some
stories about the desert fathers. For example, Antony is quoted as having said, “He who sits in solitude
and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, and seeing. Yet against one thing shall he
continually battle. That is, his own heart.” So we see that even in going out to the desert where you do
not see anything, hear anyone, or speak to anyone there is still a problem with trying to escape
worldliness, and that is one’s own heart.
In time in the monastic tradition eight demons were identified. These demons were considered to be the
special enemies of the monks. They were gluttony, sexual thoughts, love of money, grief, wrath, sloth,
vainglory, and arrogance. In time these came to be called the deadly sins that the church so often talks
about and warns against. In fact, back in the time I am describing children in Egypt did not play at being
cops [police] and robbers as children in the United States often do. Rather, they played at being monks
and demons. One little child would dress in a black robe to represent the monks. All the others would be
the demons, and they would jump around harassing the poor “monk.” Well, that is certainly something
the monks thought about and struggled with because they all came to realize that by fleeing the world
they did not flee evil thoughts and their sinful nature.
There is another story in The Desert Fathers about a certain brother who had sinned. This is from the
time when the movement had moved beyond just single monks in solitary places to little communities of
monks, what is called cenobitic monasticism or common life monasticism. This story is about a certain
brother who had sinned. The head of the group commanded him to go out from them because he was a
sinner. But another one of the monks, a man named Byzerian, rose up and went out with him as well,
saying, “I too am a sinner.” That story shows how this particular monk realized that everyone is a sinner.
There were more interesting stories like those. In time these stories became very extravagant. Legendary
stories such as this one grew up around the reputation of these desert fathers: one time an old monk
came to another old monk to visit. The senior monk said to his disciple whom he had with him, “Make
us a little lentil broth, my son.” The disciple made the food and brought it to the two old men. One of the
monks said, “Dip the bread in it for us.” So the disciple dipped it in. But the two old monks went on
talking about godly things and praying until the next day. Twenty-four hours later the senior monk said
to his disciple, “Make us a little lentil broth, my son.” The young man said, “I made it yesterday.” They
then rose and ate their food. The point of that story is that these monks were so concentrated on
heavenly things that they forgot for a whole day to eat lunch. One more story; these are rather
entertaining and especially this one: one day a man from the world went to visit a hermit on the top of

the mountain. The hermit said, “How are things getting along in the world? Do people have enough faith
so that they can say to this mountain, ‘Rise up and be cast into the sea’?” Well, as the monk said those
words the mountain on which he and his visitor were sitting began to rise up. “Oh mountain,” said the
monk, “I was not giving orders, I was just quoting the Bible. Sit down.” And the mountain came back
down. There was supposed to be great faith and power in the monasteries and among the monks. The
desert fathers are famous, and you may read about them in various collections of writings about church
history.
A new development, which I have already referred to, took place in monasticism. It began with a man
whose name was Pachomius in Upper Egypt. That is, the cenobitic or common life monasticism. It is a
kind of contradiction in terms because “monasticism” comes from a word that means “single” or
“alone.” And when we talk about cenobitic monasticism we mean communities of monks, of solitaries.
But that is the way these communities are referred to. These communities were small groups of monks,
later larger groups who came together to live under a certain rule that described how they would live
together. It was a simple life of prayer, work, and meditation. One of the promoters of cenobitic
monasticism was Basil of Cappadocia, one of the great Cappadocians whom we will look at later. Even
though he very much approved of the monastic lifestyle, he said, “How can a person test his humility
when he has no one to whom he can show himself the inferior? It is very hard to be humble all by
yourself, out in the middle of the desert. But if there are other people around then you can be. If the Lord
washed the feet of the disciples, whose feet will you wash?” Thus groups would come together to
practice Christian virtues in community. Basil wrote a rule for Eastern monasticism, which became very
famous and influenced developments in the West largely through John Cassian. Cassian was an Eastern
monk who lived for some years among the Egyptian desert Fathers. He later introduced Basil’s rule in
the West.
Before I go on to describe monasticism in the East and the West, let me just say that there were not only
monastic men. There were also monastic women. Antony’s sister became a nun. And Macrina, the sister
of Basil of Cappadocia and Gregory of Nyssa, also became a nun. In fact, Macrina went into the
monastic life before Gregory did. So there were single women and groups of women who also followed
the monastic calling.
Monasticism in the East tended to stay more or less with the solitary ideal rather than the cenobitic
development. Saint Isaac the Syrian said, “The glory of Christ’s church is the light of the solitary.” Thus
in the East it was more common to find solitaries like Simeon Stylites. And also like Simeon Stylites,
Eastern monasticism tended to have an extreme, almost fanatical side to it. People lived on pillars or
chained themselves to rocks or punished their bodies in various ways. The further east you went the
more extreme it was. At the same time (and this seems strange to me) that you have this extreme form of
monasticism in the East, you have coupled with it a very strong missionary spirit. These monastics, we
would almost think of them as fanatics—extreme people who were doing strange things—were also very
concerned to carry the Christian message from village to village and from city to city. In many cases
they were traveling missionaries. Now, the people on the poles or the people who chained themselves to
rocks probably could not move, but the others were traveling through the East proclaiming the Christian
message.
Let me describe monasticism in the West. This lesson is a kind of introductory lesson to a theme that we
will look at for the rest of the semester because monasticism became such an important and major aspect
of medieval history. The most important figure in early Western monasticism was Martin of Tours. You
doubtless know the famous story. Martin was a soldier, and one day as he sat on his horse he saw a very
poor man, a beggar, who was cold. Martin was moved with sympathy for this poor man, but Martin had

only one coat and he was also cold. So rather than giving the poor man his only coat he decided to share
it with him. He took his coat off and cut it in half with his sword, keeping part of it and giving the poor
man the other part. That night he had a dream. In his dream he saw Jesus, and Jesus was wearing the
other part of his coat. That experience so impressed this rather proud and ambitious soldier that he
moved into a monastic life. He then began to call others to give up worldly ambitions and serve God as
he was serving God. If Martin is the pioneer of monasticism in the West, the greatest Western monastic
is Benedict of Nursia whose prayer we used at the beginning of class.
The great center of the Benedictine movement is Monte Cassino. If you drive on the main highway from
Rome down to Naples you will suddenly come to that mountain and huge buildings on the top of the
mountain where the Benedictine movement began and centers even today. Benedict wrote what certainly
for the West and maybe for all monasticism is the most famous rule. He wrote that in the year 540 AD.
It is a masterpiece of practical wisdom and doctrine. You can read Kathleen Norris’ statement from The
Cloister Walk, a modern book from a Presbyterian woman who has spent considerable time in a
Benedictine monastery in Minnesota. The book contains her own reflections about life in the monastery
and the importance of the rule of Saint Benedict. It intrigues me that she says that the rule of Saint
Benedict is sometimes taught in law schools to teach students how to legislate crisply and without
unnecessary verbiage. This is because Saint Benedict in this brief rule, about 100 pages in the English
translation, sets up the rules, the order, the requirements for the Benedictine movement. Let me just read
a few lines from the prologue to give you a sense of what it sounds like, and also to show you how
balanced and concerned Benedict is not to go to extremes but to create a rule that is workable. Actually,
as you read the rule much of it is just his weaving together passages of Scripture, although that does not
appear so much in this quotation from the prologue. He starts this way: “Therefore we intend to establish
a school for the Lord’s service. In drawing up its regulations we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing
burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend
faults and to safeguard love. Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that
leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and faith,
we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the expressible delight of
love.”
He goes on to describe how the monks should live together. Actually, the Benedictine requirements,
their ideal, is pretty much like general monastic ideals. There are to be times of prayer, times of study,
and times of work. In some that sounds like life for many of us at Covenant Seminary: prayer, study, and
work. Prayer was well-defined and organized. This was the liturgy of the hours, or as it is usually called,
the divine office. Benedict has referred to it as “the sanctification of time.” The time was marked not so
much by breakfast, lunch, and dinner or by going to work and getting off work but by these times
through the day and through the night when the community would meet together for prayer. They would
meet seven times a day, beginning soon after midnight with vigils and ending in the evening with
Compline.
Not only was prayer included in the rule, but also study. Benedict spoke of “lectio divino,” “divine
reading” or “spiritual reading.” This was the reading of the Scripture and the church fathers. We would
almost describe this as devotional reading, reading for personal and community edification. That went
on day by day in these Benedictine houses. There were also times of work. Benedict viewed work as a
good thing, not as a very bad thing, as some of the monastics viewed it. Sometimes work could be
viewed as a kind of punishment for falling asleep during a time of prayer or for missing one of the
readings or something like that. But for Benedict work was part of the flow of one’s day with prayer and
study. Physical labor was shared by everyone in the monastery. No one was too good to do the worst
and the least popular tasks. For instance, cooks were appointed week by week. Cooking was apparently

not a favorite of the monks, and they liked even less to wash dishes and clean up. But everyone took his
turn in doing these tasks. To make it clear that this was not something unspiritual, the new lists of chores
were given out during the times of prayer. As the community got together to pray they would also be
given the task that they would do for that next week.
I would like to spend the rest of this lesson reflecting on monasticism a little. How do we view all of
this? I have described some of the highlights of it, and I hope you have been able to read about it in the
Gonzales’ text. Since Martin Luther left the monastery, Protestants have generally been quite negative
about monastic ideas and about the whole history of monasticism. So, let me give you my thoughts on
whether monasticism is a good thing or a bad thing. As you probably could guess, I will say that there
are good things about it and there are some bad things about it. We will start with the good. Certainly it
is hard to condemn a movement that is devoted so earnestly to prayer. “Opus Dei,” “the work of God,”
was the work of prayer. For centuries prayer was being offered, generally in the language of the Psalms.
Some houses would pray through the Psalms every week or even more often. Prayer was offered day
and night. There was a steady outpouring of prayer. In a fourth century history of the monks in Egypt
there is this sentence: “People depend on the prayers of the monks as on God Himself. Through them the
world is kept in being.” God kept the world in being through the Dark Ages because of the billions of
prayers from the monks in the monasteries throughout Europe.
The monks were not only engaged in prayer. They also engaged in learning and good works. The
monasteries became centers of lights and learning, particularly as the great darkness crept across Europe.
When we come to Saint Patrick and the Christian movement in Ireland, we will see that the light of
learning was kept there flourishing in a time when so much of that had been lost in other parts of
Europe. So the monastic movement contributed to learning and to civilization. There was a statement
about the Benedictines in Latin that meant that they came “with a cross, with a book, and with a plow.”
They preached the cross, read and preached the Bible, and took a plow to cultivate land, to drain
swampy areas, and to extend agriculture and farming in different parts of Europe. They also expressed
charity in their own lives and in the institutions that grew up around the monasteries. One of Benedict’s
rules in the famous rule is this: “Every guest who comes to the monastery shall be received as if he were
Christ himself.” That was a warm welcome for many people who were traveling through difficult and
dangerous places to come to a monastery and be taken in for the night.
Another positive feature of monasticism, especially in the East, was its commitment to missions. The
monks were the missionaries. The monastic movement was in some sense almost a missionary
movement. Later that became true also in the West, particularly when the great missionary orders were
founded. We will study the Franciscans later and then the Dominicans, and then in Reformation church
history we will study the Jesuits. These were all great missionary orders committed to the spread of
Christianity throughout the whole world.
Another feature of monasticism—which I think we have to say is both good and bad—is separation from
the world. Certainly the monastic rebuke to a worldly church, to the worldly spirit of Christendom that
became more and more of a problem after Constantine, was certainly something the church constantly
needed to hear. God’s kingdom was not to be identified with any earthly realm or status or possessions
or anything else. Andrew Walls is a Scottish missiologist and church history professor at Wheaton
College. I once heard him in a lecture describe Antony as the first evangelical. By that he meant that
here is a man who repudiated nominal Christianity and insisted on hard Christianity and religion that
was not soft and indulgent. As I was reviewing these thoughts for this lesson last night I was listening to
a radio station. Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring was on. But it got cut off because it was going on too
long and the Wall Street Journal report needed to come on at ten minutes before the hour. This kind of

reinforced something I was thinking about: there is always the worldly emphasis and theme that can
come in even in the midst of our religious and Christian meditations. The monks at their best set
themselves against a worldly Christianity. But at the worst the separation from the world was a kind of
Christ against culture idea that moved part of the church away from engagement with the people and
issues of life in the world. Now, perhaps you could say some people could engage the world and these
other people could go out and pray. That is all right, but if too many people go out and separate
themselves from the world then who will go out and engage the thought of the world? In some ways
perhaps that engagement was not so necessary in the medieval as it became later. In the High Middle
Ages the thought of the world was generally Christian thought, at least in Europe. We will talk about
that later.
But here is a problem with monasticism. That is, the two levels of Christian spirituality that it created. In
fact, the word “religious” in Roman Catholic history began to mean the monks, the monastic ideal.
“Secular” was everybody else. You could be a secular Christian, but if you really wanted to be a good
Christian you should be a religious Christian, you should enter the monastery. That idea of spirituality
continued right up to the time of the Reformation, and in the Catholic Church it continues right up until
today. The monastic ideal is lifted up as the way to be a true, good, and earnest Christian. Now, most
people were not going to do that. Therefore the monks became objects of veneration. They were
admired, and their lives were viewed in some ways as the vicarious performance for the ordinary person,
the ordinary Christians who continued to live in the world. The Reformers would take a very strong
stand against this by claiming that there is only one way of spirituality, wherever you are and whatever
you are doing. It is the same for everybody. Ministers, lay people, men, and women—it is all the same,
there is no difference. There is not a category for super Christians like the category of monasticism.
Another serious problem with monasticism is that it could so easily degenerate into a system of salvation
by works. It constantly did that, as thousands of monks down to and even beyond Luther discovered.
Luther was a monk—a good monk. “If ever a monk could get to heaven by his monkery it was I,” he
said. He tried to make the system work, but it was his own works, not his faith in God’s grace that he
was depending on. Actually, as you read Benedict’s rule and some of the writings by the monastics, to
be fair I think you would say grace is not altogether missing. Benedict says, “If we wish to dwell in the
tent of God’s kingdom we will never arrive unless we run there doing good deeds.” That seems to set it
pretty clearly that we will reach the kingdom by doing good deeds. But then later in the rule he says this:
“These people who do these good deeds fear the Lord and do not become elated over their good deeds.
They judge it as the Lord’s power, not as their own that brings about the good in them. They praise the
Lord working in them and say with the prophet, ‘Not to us O Lord, not to us give the glory but to Your
name alone.’” There is a sense of grace there as well. But I think a principle in our study, particularly in
the study of doctrine, is that with the emphasis comes the theology. Your emphasis will become your
theology. If you read the whole rule and much of the writings of the monks, the emphasis is certainly on
the idea that you must do good works to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Grace is there, but it tends to be
placed in a less prominent position. Saint Augustine, of course, would place it in a very central and
strong position. But you know that the greatest opposition to Augustine came from the monasteries
because the monks said, “If it is by God’s grace that we are saved, what are we doing here? Why are we
spending all our time trying to get to heaven if this is not the way to get there?” The semi-Pelagian
teachings that afflicted Augustine in his old age came right out of the monasteries in Southern Gaul.
Well, monasticism could become, and often did become, corrupt. A movement that started with
principles of giving away everything to help the poor, this movement often in its various expressions
became wealthy, corrupt, and worldly. But there was always within the history of monasticism a kind of
reviving movement. We will see how one order arose, lost something of its original intent, and

something else came along, the Cistertians or the Fransicans or some other movement to say, “Now that
this original movement has gone bad we will start it over and do it right.” But our history will reveal that
constant reform movements were required, and the tendency—so dramatically expressed in the time of
the Reformation—was for the monastic movement not to be a positive factor in the church but rather
something of a drag on the life and teaching of the church.
It has been asked if systematic theologies come out of the monastic movement. Not really. Nothing like
a systematic theology was produced by this movement. But perhaps I should qualify that because later
there was a great intellectual monastic movement. That was the Dominicans. Thomas Aquinas was a
Dominican. So certainly from the Dominicans came systematic theologies, but not so much from the
Benedictines or other earlier movements. We do not even get any from the Cistertians with Bernard of
Clairveaux, though some strong and good theology came from Bernard. Actually, the one anchor Calvin
had after Augustine was Bernard. When people asked, “Where did you get this doctrine of grace?” he
could say, “From Augustine.” They would say, “Where else?” And he would say, “From Bernard.” They
would say, “Where else?” Well, he did not have much else. Bernard was both a mystic and a theologian.
Thomas Aquinas of course was a great theologian. So in time there were theologies that came from the
monasteries, or at least from the monastic movements. But early there were not really any. The writings
were more mystical, certainly in the East. But let me qualify that again. The great Cappadocians, who
were very much involved in monasticism, were also important theologians, helping to develop the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit and so on. John Chrysostom, who became the great preacher of
Constantinople, was a monastic. Almost everyone important in the East had some tie to monasticism.
Some of them broke those ties to go back into the world and serve the church in some capacity. Having
said all that—which may have confused you entirely—let me say that the major emphasis in writings
that came out of the monasteries was more what we would call devotional writings or spiritual writings.
They were not philosophical or theological writings.
It has also been asked if the monks came together with the idea of preserving the church in society. I
think they had that in mind. It was like a purer church. Within the monasteries there were priests who
served the monks. Some were non-ordained, lay brothers, but some were priests. One of the problems
that developed as this movement grew strong was that it had a life of its own. You had the normal
Catholic hierarchy with the pope and the bishops and so on, but then kind of dropped into that are the
monasteries. They are able, in a sense, to do their own thing because they do not have to relate always
directly to the diocesan hierarchy. They have their own direct link with the pope. The pope was called
upon later to authorize the movements. He was always very concerned about this problem. If he let these
Franciscans do what they wanted to do, would they take over too much power and kind of upset
everything? So the popes were not eager to accept new movements. They had to be persuaded that this
would be good for them and for the church. But as we move on in this study we almost have to keep our
eyes on both things now: the regular church arrangement and the monastic orders, which both support
and, in some cases, compete with the regular hierarchy.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Donatism
This is lesson 11, “The Wheat and the Tares: Donatism.” With the conversion of the emperor
Constantine that we looked at in an earlier lesson, things changed radically. People reacted differently to
the new situation that they found themselves in. The persecuted church was no longer the persecuted
church, but rather the tolerated church, and before too long it became the official religion of the Roman
Empire. There were different responses to that situation because as the church became the official
religion of the Roman Empire of course many wealthy, prominent people joined for all sorts of reasons.
Some people, like Eusebius of Caesarea in viewing what was happening, were so grateful for the
freedom and prestige that had come to the church that they found it difficult to take a critical stance
before the government or society. Others were dismayed at what was happening, at the growth of
nominalism, a kind of lukewarm Christianity as they saw it. Many of those people fled to the desert or
other remote places to take up the monastic life. There were others, the Donatists, whom we will learn
about in this lesson, who simply broke away from the larger church and called themselves the true
church. And there were others, whom we will look at later, who really longed for the good old days
before Christianity took over. A pagan reaction set in that caused so much concern for some like
Augustine. He wrote his largest book, The City of God, as a kind of answer to the pagan reaction of
people trying to establish the old Roman religion after the days of the toleration of Christianity. The
heart of the Donatist heresy had to do with forgiveness and restoration. So the prayer I will use today
does not come from the Donatists but from the larger church from the middle of the fifth century. It is a
prayer for mercy and forgiveness. Let us join together as I pray these words.
“Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to
give more than either we desire or deserve, pour down upon us the abundance of Thy mercy,
forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things which we are
not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.”
Marcion and Montanis, back in the second century, had founded separate churches. They broke away
from the main church and started their own movements. In the third and fourth centuries two very
similar movements arose and broke away from the established church. These were the Novationists in
the third century and the Donatists in the fourth century. The issue that motivated both of these schisms
was this: what really is the nature of the true church? Those movements were very similar, and we will
study them together. We will try to understand the problem these Christians wrestled with and what
answers they brought to the problem. The struggle to answer the question, “What really is the true
church?” helped establish the doctrine of the church. We have noted already, and we will note again,
that when an issue came up, a question came up, a heresy arose, then the church tended to become very
active in trying to deal with that problem. Here we have another example of a heresy or a schism that
motivated the church to think seriously about the issue that was at stake. This whole struggle would also
further the development of the Catholic Church into what we will soon be able to call the Roman
Catholic Church. I have resisted saying when the Roman Catholic Church started because I do not know.
But if I had to give one answer to that, which I do without much enthusiasm, I would say it started with
Pope Leo in the latter part of the fifth century. But the history we will look at today certainly leads
further toward developments that we can see as the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church from the
early Christian church that we have been studying up until this point.
Well, what was the problem that caused all this controversy in the third and fourth centuries? The
problem began with a long debate on how to view post-baptismal sin. We have already seen that the
early church tended to view baptism as the sacrament that washes and cleanses away sin. But what about

sins committed after baptism? Different people had come up with different ideas on this. The Shepherd
of Hermus, the second century book that we have referred to from time to time, had the rather odd view
(to us) that God forgives one major sin, and one major sin only, after baptism. After that one major sin is
forgiven there is no more forgiveness for major sins after baptism. Origen, the third century church
father, believed that idolatry and adultery and fornication were three sins that could not be forgiven.
Tertullian, also in the third century, had taken a more lenient view. But he changed his mind. As you
remember, he became a Montanist and they are very, very strict on these things. He changed his mind
and saw the Shepherd of Hermus, which had said one sin could be forgiven, and thought the Shepherd
was too lax. In fact, he now called The Shepherd of Hermus the Shepherd of the adulterers. Tertullian
held an even stricter view that forgiveness could not be granted to those guilty of adultery and
fornication. Apparently the sins that worried the church fathers in this early period were sexual sins.
How should they deal with people who had fallen into sexual sins and wanted to be restored to the
fellowship of the church? Well, that issue was never really solved. Before long another sin was viewed
as even more perplexing.
The problem of this emergence of another sin, we would call it apostasy, came in the third century. The
middle of the third century you may recall was the time when Decius required all people to sacrifice to
the Roman gods. Before about the year 250 AD, persecution had been present from time to time, but it
had been sporadic. Now the first systematic, empire-wide persecution came. There were throughout the
Roman world 18 months of terror during which Christians faced death if they did not comply to the edict
of Decius. Many Christians did die during that time, but also many apostatized. The church soon had to
deal with the problem of the lapsed. When persecution ended there were many who had made the
sacrifices or who had bribed the officials to get the document saying they had sacrificed even if they had
not, but they had survived through compromise. When it was all over many of these felt very bad about
what they had done. They were sorry for what they had done and they wanted to come back into the
church. The numbers of those who had apostatized and wanted back into the church were so great that
the problem threatened the very identity of the church. Could the Christian church let all these people
back in? Was it possible for all these fragments into which the church had divided to be re-gathered?
Could the lapsed be restored to the church? And if so, how could they be restored to the church?
One interesting thing that started to happen at this time was that some people, not church officials—not
bishops and presbyters, but people called confessors—began to rise in importance. A confessor was
someone who had stood true during the persecution, who had refused to sacrifice, who had honored the
name of the Lord. These were often people who had been persecuted, injured, but for one reason or
another had not been killed during the persecutions. These were people who had stood true and had lived
through the persecutions. You can see that these confessors would become heroes to the Christians and
greatly venerated in the churches. The tradition developed that it was the confessors who could forgive
the lapsed. If someone had failed under persecution, they could go to a confessor and ask for
forgiveness. The confessor in many cases, perhaps in most or even all cases, would grant forgiveness.
That situation, though, was problematic. For one thing, it brought a new level of power into the church
that was not in the official government of the church, these charismatic leaders with their reputation for
courage and sanctity. Some people believed that all of this was too easy. After all, others had suffered
and died during the persecution. Was it possible for a person who had fallen to simply go to someone
like a confessor and be forgiven and restored? That seemed like cheap forgiveness. The people who
most strongly said, “All this is too easy,” were the Novationists. Novatian was a Roman presbyter who
became a rival bishop to another bishop. He supported a very rigorous position that basically said the
lapsed could not be forgiven. He believed the church must be a pure church, with people who had stood
true. The church could not be compromised with people who had failed during the time of the
persecution. The dissident church began to grow all across the Roman Empire, from Asia Minor to

Spain. But many of the Novationists were in North Africa. The Novationists were concerned about this
issue and about the conversion of the multitudes into the church. They felt the standards were being let
down and that the church was no longer a pure and holy church.
It was in the midst of all this debate and dissension that we have the great North African church father
Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage. Cyprian was not a Novationist. He was a part of what we could call the
Catholic Church. Cyprian gave a lot of thought and concern to the question, what really is the church?
Many of the ideas that we will think about for the rest of this course we can trace back to Cyprian.
Cyprian believed there was one church only. There could not be two churches. There could not be a
Catholic Church and a Novation Church. Because Christ has only one body and because Christ has only
one bride there is only one true church. Cyprian held that outside that true church there is no salvation.
Consequently, baptism outside the true church—Novation baptism, for instance—is no true baptism at
all. It is invalid. Therefore a person being converted from the Novation Church into the Catholic Church
would have to be baptized into the Catholic Church. Cyprian held that the real authority in the church
belonged to the bishops, not to the confessors, although he did greatly honor the confessors. Actually,
when persecution came Cyprian fled. He always felt bad about that because he was afraid that he had in
some way let down the church by fleeing. But that was not considered the same thing as compromising
his faith. He simply left and lived in a safer place until the persecution ended. Later, however, he was
martyred. So if he was sorry that he had escaped from the earlier persecution, he did honor God by his
martyrdom at a later date.
For Cyprian, the authority in the church lay with the bishops and not with the confessors. However, he
said the bishops had to be spiritually qualified men. If you were not a good man you could not be a good
bishop. You could not be sinful and be a bishop. Christ’s Spirit could not be where Christ’s law was
broken, and God would not hear the prayer of a guilty priest. That will become a very important point in
a few moments as we come to the next step in the Donatist controversy. The authority in the church
belonged, then, to the bishops. Therefore restoring lapsed clergy, clergy who had defined the faith, was a
very serious matter. To restore that person was difficult and serious because the clergy must be holy in
their lives. But Cyprian thought members of the church who were repentant could be properly
disciplined and restored with care to the church. Cyprian did not make it too easy. But he did admit that
God forgives sins, at least in the lives of church lay members, and they can be restored to the fellowship
of the church. Actually, all of this is what we would consider a rather moderate position. Cyprian tried to
make his way between what he saw as the two extremes, those who were too strict and those who were
too lax. He was then greatly criticized by people on both sides. Some thought he had gone too far, and
others felt he did not go far enough.
But all of this died down. Cyprian died, the persecution ended, and there was another long period of
peace. The issue seemed to have been forgotten. But the problem came up again, intensified because of
another persecution, the last of the great persecutions—the persecution of Diocletian. This began in 303
AD and lasted about 10 years. The requirement this time was not sacrifice but the surrender of the
Scriptures. People were required to give over the Scriptures that they had in their homes or in their
churches, and those were burned. Many people did exactly what they were asked to do. They were
called traditors, or “traitors,” by the Christians. That is where we get our name “traitor” from. It was a
title for people who had handed over things. These members of the church handed over copies of the
Scripture. Sometimes they handed over books that were not really copies of the Scripture because the
canon was being solidified and there were some books that were clearly outside the canon, but the
Roman officials did not know the difference between canonical and non-canonical books. So some
people escaped by handing over a non-canonical book. The problem was a real problem. There were
others who handed over real copies of the Scriptures to the authorities. Finally we come back to the

same problem we had before. After the persecution was over people were sorry for what they had done.
Could they be allowed back into the church? The leader of the strict group this time was a man named
Donatus. The strict movement was largely in North Africa. We call it Donatism. Donatus was a rival
bishop of Carthage. His movement began because when a bishop of Carthage was ordained, Donatus
claimed, he was ordained by a bishop who himself was a traditors. This bishop had handed over the
Scriptures during the persecution, and then he ordained the bishop of Carthage. This, according to
Donatus, was an invalid act because a sinful bishop who was really a traitor had no power to ordain a
bishop. Therefore Donatus claimed to be the true bishop of Carthage as over against the bishop who had
been ordained by a lapsed bishop.
Both sides claimed Cyprian’s support. There was something from Cyprian that the Donatists could take
and something from Cyprian that the Catholics could take. So, claiming Cyprian’s support, the Donatists
insisted that they were the pure church. The Catholic Church was the mixed multitude. The Donatists
said, “We are the church of the martyrs, a pure and holy church” as over against the worldly church of
the Catholics. The debate became more than a debate in North Africa. The theological issue here was
fueled by social and economic discontent. There was much anti-Roman sentiment in North Africa, and it
was easy for the Donatists to capture this anti-Roman feeling, this feeling of not really liking the
Romans and the Roman rule. This feeling was mainly found among the native Punic population of North
Africa. This struggle, which became even a war, had many different elements involved. There was a
religious element, a social element, and a political element. We will discover as we look at church
history that religious wars are almost never purely religious wars. There are always other issues that
complicate the situation. If you look at the history of Northern Ireland in the last several hundred years
you will see that illustrated so clearly. By the middle of the fourth century the Donatists had become
increasingly fanatical and violent. The radical Donatists were sometimes called Circumcellions. These
were people, according to their name, who lived in tents. They would surround a church or a village and,
living in tents, they would raid Catholic settlements, often destroy the Catholic churches, and put
Catholics to death. These Circumcellions were careful not to use swords in their fighting against the
Catholics because the Lord had forbidden the use of swords. But they got really big sticks, clubs, which
Christ had said nothing about, and used those in their fight against the Catholics.
I want to skip ahead now about 100 years and talk about a man whom we will spend much time with.
We have not really introduced Augustine yet, though we will. But it is necessary in this lesson to skip
ahead to Saint Augustine because the Donatist problem was one he inherited. He was a bishop in North
Africa. By the time we come to Saint Augustine, Donatism was a very active force in North African life
and had been for almost a century. Perhaps the majority of Christians in North Africa were Donatists.
This was not a small movement. It was, particularly in North Africa, a major movement. The church in
the very same street in Hippo as Augustine’s church was a larger, more impressive church with another
bishop and a larger congregation. Perhaps it seems commonplace to us in the West to have churches all
over the place, even on the same street, but you can imagine how strange it was at that time to have a
Catholic church and a Donatist church in the small town of Hippo on the same street. While Augustine
was preaching in his church he said he could hear the singing in the other church. He did not like that
singing much; he called it “the roaring of lions.” He was biased, undoubtedly, against this rival church
and its singing.
This was a real problem. The church was split in two. How would that issue be solved, if it could be
solved? Augustine had much to do with solving this issue. I want to talk a little about Augustine’s views
of the church here at the end of this lesson. Augustine insisted that the visible church is not perfect but is
a pilgrim church. The Donatists had taken their stand on a pure church, with saints not sinners.
Augustine disagreed. The church is a pilgrim church, not a perfect church. In his anti-Donatist writings

Augustine could point out that even the churches of the Donatists were filled with sinners. Despite their
claims to being a pure church, there were people in those churches who were drunkards, adulterers, and
even some guilty of apostasy. But that is not the major point Augustine made. He does not say, “Our
church is better than yours,” or “You are just as bad as we are.” He does point out that there are sinners
in both the Donatist churches and the Catholic churches. Augustine said, “It is like Noah’s ark. There
were clean and unclean animals on the ark.” The Donatists used Noah’s ark as an example as well. “As
the ark was pitched to keep out the water, so we keep out the sinners. Our church is like Noah’s ark, too,
but in a different way than Augustine’s church.” What Augustine really argued here was that the
holiness of the church is not based on the lifestyle of its members but on the purity of Christ. That is
what makes the church holy. We are “one holy, apostolic church” not because we are so good, but
because of Christ’s holiness. This is his church and therefore it is holy. Of course it is right for us to try
to be holy as He is holy. But Augustine, I think, was always afraid that the Donatists’ insistence on a
pure church would lead into legalism. That was another battle he was fighting at about the same time
with the Pelagians, as we will see. There was too much in Donatism of a tendency to revert to the law, to
say, “If we are good and righteous and holy then we find favor in God’s sight.” There was too much of
that for Augustine. He said, “The church is holy because Christ is holy. We are a pilgrim church walking
through this world, but we are not by any means a perfect or pure church in the sense of our own
holiness.” Along with that, Augustine insisted that the unity of the church must be maintained. He said,
“We must never neglect severe discipline in the maintenance of unity. But we must not by intemperate
correction break the bond of fellowship.” There is a place for church discipline. It could even be severe.
He tried to find a way that there could be standards and discipline but not excessive discipline that
would “break the bond of fellowship” in the church. Augustine liked to quote Cyprian. As I said, both
sides liked to claim Cyprian. But one of Augustine’s favorite quotes from Cyprian was, “Let a man
mercifully correct what he can. Let him patiently bear what he cannot correct. And let him groan and
sorrow over it with love.” Not only did Augustine love that quotation but John Calvin did as well.
Calvin quoted it in the Institutes.
As time went on, the Catholics, including Augustine, felt that something had to be done. Donatism was
finally condemned in a church council, which by this time really meant a state church council, in the
year 411 AD. Augustine agreed with others that it would be right and proper to use force if necessary to
cause the Donatists to forsake the error of their ways. After all, Jesus had said, “Compel them to come
in.” And therefore they thought they should compel the obstinate to come into the true church.
Unfortunately this began a long history that led to some very disastrous events in the history of the
church where force was used for conversion and conformity. As you read Augustine on this it is really a
little softer than it may sound from the way I have described it. I think Augustine felt it was necessary,
but he was reluctant and heartbroken over all of this. He wrote this letter to the Donatists, saying, “You
too are Christ’s sheep. You bear the Lord, and the Lord’s Supper you have received. But you have
strayed and gotten lost. There is no reason for you to be angry with me because I am bringing back the
strays and seeking the lost. It is better for me to do the Lord’s will—it is He who counsels me to compel
you to return to His fold—than to give my consent to the will of the straying sheep and allow you to be
lost. Do not say then what I always hear you saying, “I want to stay, I want to be lost.” It is better for me
not to allow that at all so far as it is possible.” He did not really want to use force but he felt it was
absolutely necessary to do everything possible to bring back the Donatists into the fold.
Well, Donatism was broken by this action. It did not disappear all at once, in fact Donatist churches
remained in North Africa all the way until the seventh century when the Muslims came in and destroyed
both the Catholic and the Donatist churches. Some people think that the reason that Christianity so failed
in North Africa, collapsed so completely, was that several centuries of antagonism existed between these
two groups of Christians. That made it much easier for Islam to totally overrun the churches in North

Africa. You know it is strange to us because I have been talking now for a long time, a good many
lessons, on the history of the early church, and so much of this took place in North Africa, which is not
an area that we think of as being Christian today at all. It is now a Muslim area except for a significant
Christian minority in Egypt, but nowhere else. We will come later to see that Muslim onslaught and its
results in North Africa. Let me say one more word about Augustine’s view of all of this. As you can tell
from the quotation I just gave, Augustine held that the sacraments had an objective validity unaffected
by the spiritual state of the minister. The person being baptized or the person receiving the Lord’s
Supper does not have to worry, asking, “Is my minister right with God? If he is not, then this will not do
me any good.” Augustine said, “The spiritual value of the sacrament is like light. Although it passes
among the impure, it is not polluted.” He noted that in a real sense all ministers are traditores because
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Any minister who is administering the sacraments is a
sinner because all have sinned. But the sacrament is not thereby lessened or made invalid because of the
person who is giving it. For someone who is dying of thirst it makes little difference who is carrying the
water—clean or dirty, intelligent or ignorant. The essential thing is not the bearer but the water.
The outcome of all of this is something we will study right through the Middle Ages and up until the
Reformation. The church is now saying, “There is one, holy and apostolic church outside of which there
is no salvation.” Cyprian had said that. Cyprian said, “You cannot have God for your Father unless you
have the church for your mother.” Augustine quoted that. John Calvin also quoted that, and agreed with
it. Of course, by the time we get to Calvin we have to ask, which church is he talking about? This is
because the insistence that there is one church did not solve the problem permanently. By the 11th
century there were two churches, the Eastern church and the Western church. Then in the 16th century
the Western church divided into the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. Then almost
immediately the Protestant Church divided into many Protestant churches. So the issue is still with us.
What is the one, true church? The church is a holy church. This has to do with God’s gift to the church,
not with the inherent sanctity of members or ministers. Most of Christendom has come to embrace this
as true. A church is not the church because of the higher level of sanctification of its members than any
other church on the face of the earth. Rather, the church is the church because God has given the
sacraments to the church and given the ministry to the church and given the Word to the church. This
means that generally in church history baptism has been viewed as a valid sacrament wherever it is
given so that it does not need to be repeated as a person moves from one church to another. Of course,
not everybody agrees with that. The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) has refused to require re-
baptism of Catholics coming into the PCA, but our denomination does allow the local church session to
make a decision with the person as to whether that person will be re-baptized or not. In some ways we
are somewhat on the fence on this issue. But we have not been willing to declare the Roman Catholic
Church apostate or Roman Catholic baptism invalid. There are some Protestant churches that do require
re-baptism. Some Protestants require re-baptism of people coming from other Protestant churches. But
the general stream of church history has not gone in that direction.
So for the next 1,000 years after this we will think about one church. About halfway through that 1,000
years there will be two churches, the Eastern church and the Western church, both claiming to be the
true church because of history and continuity. This continues until the Reformation, when another way
of looking at the church will be introduced. The church is not based on age or size. Rather it is based on
the presence of marks, generally described as the true preaching of the Word of God and the proper
administration of the sacraments.
It has been asked, how were the people who lapsed during the persecutions disciplined? It was mainly in
terms of excommunication or being kept from the Lord’s Table. This was often an exclusion that lasted
for years; it was not often a short time. So they were excluded from the Lord’s Supper for years during

which time there would be teaching and prayer. This was not yet the time of mechanical penance of the
later Roman Catholic Church, where people had to say so many prayers, make pilgrimages, or buy
indulgences. We have not come into that period yet.
It has also been asked, what did Cyprian mean when he said that you cannot have God as your Father if
you do not have the church as your mother? Cyprian and Augustine would always qualify that by
saying, “ordinarily.” I think they viewed some possibility of this not being true in rare cases. Generally,
where there is the church a person must be part of that church to be a Christian. You cannot really be a
Christian all by yourself. Part of the definition of what a Christian is is a person in fellowship with
God’s people on earth. So this was their way of discouraging any individual or private Christianity.
Calvin also held that, but I think Calvin as well as Augustine thought it was possible—possible—for a
person to be a Christian without being a church member, but not ordinarily. And it is certainly possible
for church members not to be Christians. Calvin believed that, as did Augustine and probably Cyprian as
well. This is a rather difficult quotation to understand, especially for us Protestants in the West. We
Protestants tend to diminish the role of the church, to see it as not so important. I think that is a mistake.
Then when we hear a quotation like this it startles us that you could say that you have to be a member of
the church to have God as your Father. Of course, we may be thinking of being a member of a
particular, local church, and that was true back then, too. But when there was one church you were either
in the church or not in the church, and Christians were in the church.
“The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

The Council of Nicea
We are at lesson 12, “As it was in the Beginning: the Council of Nicea.” I want to begin before we have
the prayer by reading a little bit from an article from the magazine, Sports Illustrated. This is an article
about the Olympics. It says this: “In Los Angeles in 1984 it became evident that the games had a
remarkable resilience. The once bitter battle over professionalism now seems as archaic and irrelevant as
the Christian church’s once virulent debate over the Arian heresy.” That is Sports Illustrated, a very
popular magazine in the United States. If you have not found a good reason to take church history,
perhaps I should suggest that you study church history to understand Sports Illustrated. And actually, to
correct Sports Illustrated, because the statement that the debate over the Arian heresy is archaic and
irrelevant, certainly is not true. In 1977 a book came out called The Myth of God Incarnate, published by
seven English theologians. Six of these were members of the Church of England in which the old Arian
heresy was brought up again and affirmed by these modern Protestant theologians.
The prayer we are going to pray is a very familiar one. Let me just read it and comment about it, and
then we will pray it. “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” Let us be sure we understand what we
will pray in a moment. “As it was in the beginning,” what does that “it” refer to? As what was in the
beginning? “As it was in the beginning,” what do you think that means? It refers to the doctrine of the
Trinity—as the Trinity was in the beginning. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were always there—“in the
beginning,” that means “always.” And it ends with the phrase that is curious to us, “world without end.”
That does not mean that the world will not end. “World without end” simply means, “forever and ever.”
This is the earliest liturgical prayer we have; it comes from the second century. These early Christians
were affirming their faith in doctrine of the Trinity, that God existed as Trinity in eternity past and will
continue as Trinity forever. Well, with those comments let us pray this prayer, remembering that we join
with millions of Christians who have prayed this prayer throughout church history, from the time of the
second century. Let us pray.
“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and
ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
As we come into the fourth and fifth centuries we are entering a time of great development in Christian
theology. The church councils began, and certain important issues of church doctrine were studied,
debated, argued about, fought over, and finally settled in the history of the church. The first of the great
councils we will study today. It took place in the year 325 AD, certainly one of the great dates in church
history. It is in everyone’s list of the 100 most important dates, and it probably should be among the top
10 or so of the most important dates in church history. This is the time of the Council of Nicea. It was
that council and several successive councils that formulated and set forth the doctrine of the Trinity. In
the middle of the fifth century in the year 451 AD—another very important date—the Council of Nicea
was the definitive statement on the church’s understanding of the two natures of Christ. So between 325
and 451 AD much theological thought took place and some important events happened that help us
understand how the church formulated these crucial doctrines. Certainly we have to be clear on the
doctrine of who God is, and the church got to work on this in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Today we will talk about the doctrine of the Trinity and particularly the deity of Christ. The earliest
Christians held that there was one God. They were monotheists like the Jews. But unlike the Jews, they
held that Jesus was God. And apparently they were able to believe both that there was only one God and
that Jesus was God without knowing quite how to express that. We know that faith in the deity of Christ

came very, very early. In fact, it dates back to the New Testament and continues right from the time of
the New Testament. One scholar has said, “The deity of Christ is professed in the oldest surviving
Christian sermon, in the oldest surviving report of the death of a Christian martyr, in the oldest surviving
pagan report of a church service, and in the oldest surviving liturgical prayer”—the Gloria Patri, which
we prayed a few moments ago as we opened the class. So from the very beginning we have good
evidence that Christian people believed in the deity of Christ and believed in the doctrine of the Trinity.
As another scholar has put it, “Christians lived trinitarianly before the evolution of Nicene orthodoxy.”
Before 325 AD, when certain words were used to set forth what the church considered orthodox
teaching about the Trinity, long before that people believed in the Trinity and worshiped the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. But I think it is true that as we look at the earliest of the church fathers, they
appeared more as witnesses to this faith than interpreters striving to understand it. They just accepted it,
preached it, and lived it. They did not try to explain it. But eventually, in the history of the church,
people wanted to understand it more. I think, as we will see, most people realized it was impossible to
understand it in any full and significant sense. But at least the church could make an effort to express the
Trinity in words people could agree on.
The earliest efforts to explain it, to understand how Jesus is related to the Father, led in two different
directions. One could be called subordinationism. Subordinationism shows God, who is the Father, and
somehow closely related to Him but under Him is Christ, and under Him again is the Holy Spirit. You
can see from the word “subordinationism” how that concept works itself out. There has to be someone at
the top, and that is God. And then subordinate to God the Father is the Son and then the Holy Spirit is
subordinate to the Son. Well that particular conception of the Trinity preserved the diversity. You
certainly have a three-ness there. But you can see immediately that it denies the equality and the unity of
the Trinity. And even though some Christians began to think in these terms, others felt that this was
quite wrong and went to what we would call the opposite extreme, sometimes called monarchianism, or
in one particular form, modalism. Monarchianism said there was one God, but that one God has
appeared in different modes of being. When He appears as the Father we call Him the Father. When He
appears as the Son that is the name we give the one God. And when He appears as the Holy Spirit we
call Him the Holy Spirit. So there is only one God. That certainly preserves the oneness. That is what the
word “monarchianism” means—there is just one God. It preserves the equality and the unity of the
Trinity. But there is no real diversity here. These are just different names for the same person.
We see the church struggling with this, and we can sympathize with them. We have the whole
inheritance of church history helping us formulate the way we express the Trinity, but people were at
this time just beginning to try to put it together in some sort of way; it is no wonder they struggled with
it. Tertullian, who is important for so many things, was also very important in this discussion because
prior to the Council of Nicea he was almost certainly the theologian who did the most to create ways of
thinking and expressing (through his own words) this concept. We think Tertullian actually invented the
word “trinity.” He also came up with the words “substance” and “person.” The Greeks would have other
words, and that created some trouble between the East and the West because it was hard to know exactly
how to translate the words. How the Greek word “ousia” related to the Latin word “substantia” was a
difficulty as the theologians on both sides of the linguistic divide wrestled with the topic of doctrine of
the Trinity. Well, any word would be a problem. And these words were certainly problems. “Substance”
could be misused; “person” could be misused as well. But the church began to take hold of these words
and put its own meaning into them. So we really need to know the theological meaning of “substance,”
not just what it says to us in English but how the church meant for it to be understood. So Tertullian is
an important landmark and help on the way. But the real concentration on this document came with the
challenge of Arianism. A debate took place in the city of Alexandria, a very important Christian center
with many Christians in the early third century. The debate was on how to express the doctrine of Christ.

Who really is Christ? This question began to be focused on in a very heated debate. The bishop was an
older man whose name was Alexander. He began in his teachings to say things like this: “Always God,
always the Son.” That certainly implied the equality and eternity of God and Christ. Or Bishop
Alexander would say, “At the same time the Father, at the same time the Son.” So he used expressions
that pointed to full equality.
But there was a very brilliant and perhaps ambitious younger man, a presbyter in Alexandria whose
name was Arius. And he very much objected to that because he felt that “there is only one God. If you
start talking like this, you will end up with two gods.” So Arius began to say things like this in his
sermons and writings: “If God and Christ were equal then Christ should be called God’s brother, not
God’s Son.” People puzzled about that. They were hearing now something different from this presbyter
than they were hearing from the bishop. And Arius also created the very famous saying, “There was a
time when He was not.” “There was a time when the Son did not exist.” So in his view, Christ became
what we could call a third thing. He is neither God nor is He man, but something in between. There is
God and there is the Son and there is the rest of creation. So rather than having two things you have a
tertium quid, a third thing—neither god nor man. The Arian Christ, as J. C. Wan puts it, “was an
incarnation of what is not God in what is not man.”
This was a rather popular view, though, because in the Greek world at that time, particularly in
Alexandria where all the Gnostic influence was, people believed in all kinds of half-gods. The Gnostics
had a whole series of descending deities between the true god and matter. So the idea of a half-god, a
demigod, something between god and man, was very popular and understandable. Pretty soon this
debate became very intense. The debate was conducted, according to one historian, with the violence of
a political convention. Some of the church fathers like Gregory of Nissa talk about how people got into
this. This was the most heated issue of the day. Gregory said, “Everyone entered into it. Men who met to
transact business neglected their bargaining to talk theology. If one said to the baker, ‘How much is that
loaf of bread?’ the baker would answer, ‘The Son is subordinate to the Father.” If one sent a servant on
an errand he would reply, ‘The Son arose out of nothing.’” Arius helped to contribute to the intensity of
the debate because he put his views forth in verse and set them to popular tunes that were sung around
the town, in the bars and elsewhere. They were sung and whistled in the streets, and pretty soon the
songs were punctuated by fights. Fists and clubs were used to win this theological debate. One of Arius’
songs went like this: “Arius of Alexandria, I am the talk of all the town. Friend of saints, elect of heaven,
filled with learning and renown. If you want the Logos-doctrine, I can serve it steaming hot. God begat
Him and before He was begotten He was not.” Arius was not particularly humble about it all. Well, that
came to be a rather popular song.
This situation could not continue. It was the occasion for the church to call what we know as the first
ecumenical council. “Ecumenical” of course simply means “the whole church.” There were
representatives from all over the Christian world. They came to the town of Nicea in Asia Minor.
Constantine was the emperor, and he was very concerned about this theological problem. He decided he
had to do something about it, like presidents and leaders today are concerned about worldwide financial
troubles so that people are trying to figure out what to do. Well, the big issue at that time was not
financial but theological. Constantine called the council, which was attended, according to tradition, by
318 church fathers. That probably is not an accurate number. We think it really comes from Genesis
14:14 and the fact that Abraham had 318 servants. So for some reason the council was supposed to have
318 members, but several hundred people were there and maybe more. Out of the council came the
Nicene Creed. Despite the situation and the worldliness and all the things that were mixed up in this
council, these people, according to Sabatier, were “courageous priests and pastors.” They were really
concerned about the truth, and they attempted to get at the heart of the matter so that they might express

in some clear words what the church believed about the deity of Christ. The Nicene Creed is very
famous in church history, adopted by all parts of the Christian church. It really sets forth in expanded
language that Jesus Christ is truly and fully God. If you summarized the Nicene Creed in just a few
words, that would be it, that Jesus Christ is truly and fully God.
Let me just comment on this section of the creed referring to Jesus: “begotten, not made, of one
substance with the Father.” “Substance” there is the Greek word homoousios. What that means is to say
that Christ is homoousios with the Father, of one substance with the Father, or one essence with the
Father—however that word is to be translated into English. Of course, that is a non-Scriptural word. We
do not find that word in the Bible, describing for us the relationship between the Father and the Son. But
these church fathers thought it was necessary to create a non-Scriptural word to control people’s
understanding of Scriptural language. In other words, the church fathers believed that homoousios, even
though it is not found in the Bible, taught what was in the Bible.
It was important to have one word like this that the Arians could not misinterpret. If you said Christ was
homoousios with the Father, you could not be an Arian. The Arians really could not accept that. They
had various ways of pointing to their Bible texts and misunderstanding what others were saying. But
homoousios was the word that was chosen to separate the Arians, who did not believe in the full and
complete deity of Christ, from everyone else. The Arians had constantly said, of course, that if the Son is
begotten, that means He came into existence at some point. So there was a time when He was not. But
the Nicene fathers looked at it this way in this famous statement, which does not really explain the
mystery, rather it simply states it: “Christ was begotten, not made.” We know He was begotten because
that is what the Bible says, but He was not made because the Bible says He was not made. Thus the
church began to express its faith this way. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, was begotten
but not made. When we say that the second person was begotten we do not mean that there was a time
when He was not. Now, what does that mean, then? I am not sure that theologians have ever really
explained what that means. Gregory of Naziansas, who lived just a little after this time, put it this way,
“The begetting of God must be honored by silence. It is a great thing for you to learn that He was
begotten. But the manner of His generation we will not admit that even angels can conceive, much less
you.” You accept it. Christ was begotten not made. There is no real way to probe further into that
mystery, according to the church fathers of this time.
Now I want to talk about Athanasius. I both need to and want to talk about Athanasius because he was a
great hero of the early church. He was a young man, a very small man with dark skin. People called him
the “black dwarf.” He lived in Alexandria. He was just 25 years old at the time of the Council of Nicea,
so he did not play a major role there except behind the scenes as assistant to the bishop. Later he became
bishop of Alexandria himself when the bishop died in 328 AD. It was Athanasius who saw this
controversy through from beginning to end. The Council of Nicea did not end the controversy. There
was much debate after that; it looked like the Arians were still going to win. Athanasius stood for
Nicene orthodoxy during this whole period. This meant that he was exiled in Egypt from his church and
home on five different occasions when his opponents seemed to be winning the battle and he had to flee
for his life.
There is a famous story that on one of these occasions he was on a boat in the Nile River, trying to get
away. Enemies came up in a boat and, not recognizing him, asked, “Where is Athanasius?” Athanasius
himself replied, “Not far away,” which was true. Of course they did not understand what he really meant
so they took off up the river to try to catch him. The expression, Athanasius contra mundum, became
almost a proverb in church history from this time on, meaning “Athanasius against the world.” The
whole world might go the other way but he was going against the world.

The name of Athanasius has come up before in these lessons. Let me sum up briefly Athansius’ three
great contributions to the early church. They are three important ones. The first is the closing of the
canon of Scripture. He was the first to give the list of the books that we have in our New Testament and
only those books. The second is the promotion of monasticism. That has some bad parts as we have
already said, but also some good parts. Athanasius wrote The Life of Antony, the famous Egyptian monk.
That book was an influence in the conversion of Augustine. Most important of all is his third
contribution, the doctrine of the full deity of Christ. His little book On the Incarnation of the Word is
certainly one of the great books in church history and one of the great books on this topic. It is inspiring
and helpful to read it, even today. So in the aftermath of Nicea we have Athanasius contra mundum.
After Nicea a compromise was suggested. That is, the church settled on another word: homoiousios,
which means “of similar substance.” You can see how the Arians would like that better than
homoousios, which is “of the same substance.” Thus the debate now was raging between those who held
to homoiousios and those who held to homoousios. Some who held to homoiousios were fairly orthodox.
They felt that it could have an orthodox meaning. But Athanasius said no, it was too slippery. To say
Christ the Son is similar to the Father is not to say Christ the Son is equal to the Father. Athanasius
insisted the church not abandon homoousios. The skeptical historian Gibbon made a lot of fun of this.
After all, the only difference here is a diphthong. So Gibbon said, “Imagine the whole world torn apart
because of a diphthong, people fighting over one letter.” To him it was stupid. But of course, as
Warfield put it, “The whole doctrine of the Trinity in unity and of the proper deity of Christ resides in
that iota.” One letter can be extremely important because what that one letter said is that “Jesus is fully
God.” If you took it out it would say, “Jesus is something like God.”
The Arians had the support of the government, who felt the Arian solution was the better one. Now after
the time of Constantine there was the problem of church and state coming too close together because the
state could tell the church what to say and do. Because of that support the Arians seemed to be winning.
Jerome, who was now in his monastery in Palestine, wrote the famous sentence, “The whole world
groaned in amazement at finding itself Arian.” Well, that was not quite true. Athanasius was still alive
and fighting for Christian orthodoxy along with others. By the time of Athanasius’ death in 373 AD the
tide had turned again. Arianism was on the decline and was again condemned at the second ecumenical
council, the Council of Constantinople, in 381 AD. Although, strangely in the history we will study
later, very active missionaries had already gone out to evangelize the barbarians up in the north, what we
call Europe. These missionaries went out during the heyday of the Arian movement, so they were
Arians. The Arian theology declined and passed away within the Roman Empire, but these newly
evangelized barbarians outside the Roman Empire were Arians. And in the next century they poured into
the empire and brought Arianism back. Thus the fight had to resume. But during the lifetime of
Athanasius, at least within the empire, Nicene orthodoxy became the teaching of the church. Arianism
began to die out except among the barbarians in the north. It came back in when they invaded and then
began to die out again. But it is not altogether gone, of course. We can find Arianism even in the modern
world in cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses and, unfortunately, among liberal Protestant theologians like the
people who wrote The Myth of God Incarnate.
It has been asked, was the ecumenical council just the Western church? No, it was Eastern and Western.
At this time we really cannot speak of an Eastern Orthodox Church yet. Fairly soon after there came
tensions that began to pull the East and the West apart, but the break really did not come until the 11th
century. Another question is was the council limited to the Roman Empire? It was pretty much so,
though we think there were representatives from the church further east in Asia. At least a few came. We
know there were representative from as far west as Spain. So it covered the Roman Empire and a few

people beyond. It really was a church council and not a Roman Empire church council. But it was
largely people from the Roman Empire.
It has also been asked, how did Athanasius’ exiles in Egypt impact his theology and views? He really
stayed the same all the way through it. You see a man who is convinced—his opponents would say
stubborn. But he was convinced, and it really did not matter what happened to him. He was chased out
of town, but he still held to homoousios. When he came back he started preaching it again. Wherever he
was he stayed the same. I think he is a real hero of the Christian faith because without Athanasius what
would have happened—looking at it from the standpoint of history and not God’s sovereignty for a
moment—was the emperors would have compromised; they were for compromise. I do not think the
emperors cared which way it was solved as long as it was solved. The issue created many problems for
them. But Athanasius would not compromise.
Another question is how did Constantine react to the settlement of the Council of Nicea? He seems to
have accepted it. But he almost immediately changed his mind because the opponents of Nicea got to
him and seemed to have more influence. Constantine was not a great theologian by any means. So I
guess it may have seemed simpler to him to say, “You have God, and you have this Son of God.” But to
have one God where the Father and the Son are both God, he could not understand that. We cannot
either, but he just felt maybe the homooisios solution was the sensible one. He waffled on it some, but
generally he was against Athanasius on the other side of the issue.
It has been asked, what was the term “Patripassionism?” This was a term created by Tertullian as a kind
of nickname for modalism or monarchianism. Patripassionism means “Father suffered.” If you just have
one God who appeared in different guises, then when Christ was on the cross it was the Father who
suffered there. The opponents of this view often pointed to the baptism of Jesus where you have the
voice of God, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, and the Son. There were three, not one, and right at the
same time.
It has also been asked whether it is correct to translate monogeneis in John as “only Son” rather than
“only begotten Son.” I think that is correct. The term there means that Jesus is the only Son God has;
there is no other. But we still have the Old Testament references in the Psalms that say, “This have I
begotten you.” So the begotten language, even though it may not have come from both John and Psalms,
is definitely there in Psalms. And in Psalms it does not have the same meaning as the Greek word
monogeneis. So this is a biblical idea, particularly in the Old Testament language. What this really
served to do in the history of the church is to say that “The Father is not the Son.” That is really all you
are saying when you say that the Son is begotten of the Son. You are saying, “They are not the same.
The Son is not the Father and the Father is not the Son. They are equal but not the same.” It is a word to
imply the distinction. We need words to emphasize the unity and equality in the Trinity, but we also
need words to explain the distinction without leading us to go too far and view it as different. So I do not
try to understand “begotten” in any way except as teaching us that there is distinction in the Trinity. The
word the church will adopt for the Holy Spirit is “proceeding,” “proceeding from the Father.” What that
word means is that the Holy Spirit is not the Father. The Western Church adds, “and from the Son,” and
the Eastern Church gets very upset about that. When we get to the division between the East and the
West we will see that the “and the Son” addition to the Nicene Creed and Constantinople Creed was one
of the sticking points, and still is between the East and the West.
“The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Cappadocians and Constantinople
This lesson is entitled “Three Theologians, Two Emperors, and a Church Council.” As you can tell from
the title, I am trying to combine a number of ideas together, which are important items that we need to
consider. By the fourth century Rome was the most important church in the West. But Constantinople,
which was the most important church in the East, was in some ways even more important than Rome at
that point. The three theologians I am going to talk about are the Great Cappadocians, who come from a
land very close to Constantinople. The two emperors ruled in the new capital of Rome, which was
Constantinople. And the second ecumenical council took place in Constantinople. So as far as
geography is concerned, our topics today are people and events that took place near the great city of
Constantinople.
One of those theologians whom we will study is Gregory of Nazianzus. As we begin I will use the words
of a prayer, which we sometimes use as a hymn, from this ancient Eastern church father, Gregory of
Nazianzus. Let us pray.
“O Light that knew no dawn, that shines to endless day, all things in earth and heaven are lustered by
Thy ray. No eye can to Thy throne ascend, nor mind Thy brightness comprehend. In supplication meek,
to Thee I bend the knee. O Christ, when Thou shalt come in love, remember me. And in Thy kingdom by
Thy grace grant me a humble servant’s place. Thy grace O Father give, I humbly Thee implore. And let
Thy mercy bless Thy servant more and more. All grace and glory be to Thee, from age to age eternally.
Amen.”
We speak of “the Great Cappadocians.” Cappadocia was an area on the Black Sea not far from
Constantinople in Asia. These men—one of whom was Gregory of Nazianzus—along with a woman
named Macrina, were great people who led the church in many ways during the fourth century. We
think of the fourth century as the golden age of Greek—or Eastern—orthodoxy because during that time
were Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and John Chrysostom, the great preacher of Constantinople. So
even today when the Greek or Eastern Orthodox Church thinks of their golden age they are likely to
focus on the fourth century. In the Western church on the Roman Catholic side, it is probably the
thirteenth century that they think of, with Thomas Aquinas and the other great medieval theologians. On
the Protestant side in the West, it is certainly the sixteenth century, during the time of Luther and Calvin,
which is thought of as the golden age. But for the Eastern church, even today, it is the fourth century.
And these Cappadocians continue to be honored and revered names in the Eastern church.
There were two brothers among the Great Cappadocians, one named Basil and the other Gregory. We
call Basil, Basil of Caesarea, since he spent part of his ministry there and was bishop of that city. And
we call Gregory, Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory was born in 335, which puts him just 10
years after the great council in Nicea. Gregory is the fellow who gives us that unforgettable account of
the way in which everyday life in the fourth century was permeated with theology, particularly
discussions about the issues raised in Nicea. Everyone had an opinion, it seems. Gregory said about
Constantinople, “Garment sellers, money changers, food vendors, they are all at it. If you ask for
change, they philosophize about the begotten and the unbegotten. If you inquire about the price of bread,
the answer is that the Father is greater and the Son inferior. If you say to the attendant, ‘Is my bath
ready?’ He tells you that the Son was made out of nothing.”
For a long time Gregory seemed to drift through life without much focus or aim, without either a career
or much religion. But he eventually found a very deep faith and became a theologian. He is a kind of

poet-theologian. When you read the theology from Gregory of Nyssa, it is hard to know whether you are
reading theology or poetry. One of his books is called The Life of Moses, and it is a very intriguing book.
It is not only about Moses, but also about many other things. Gregory said, “Moses entered the darkness
and then saw God in it.” It is language like that that makes me describe Gregory as not only a theologian
but also a poet.
Gregory’s older brother by about six years was Basil. And Basil had a friend who was also named
Gregory, so we call him Gregory of Nazianzus to distinguish him from Gregory of Nyssa. Basil and
Gregory of Nazianzus met as students while they were studying in Athens. Later they lived together as
monks in Cappadocia. Basil wrote the rule for monasteries that is still the standard rule for monasteries
in the Orthodox world today, just as the rule of Benedict of Nursia is the standard rule for monastic life
in the West.
Basil and Gregory of Nyssa had an older sister whose name was Macrina. It was actually Macrina who
did much to shape the faith and the callings of her two brothers. She too wrote books on theology. Her
brother Gregory wrote The Life of Macrina in which he tells of this remarkable woman who was his
sister. Macrina also founded monasteries just as her brother Gregory did.
That is a quick biographical sketch of these four people whom we can call the Great Cappadocians. Let
me summarize very briefly some of the themes in their writings. One of the important themes that comes
through when reading the Cappadocians is the mystery of the Godhead. Nicea had already happened and
had given us words to use when we think about the Trinity, which was itself a new word—one God in
three persons, homoousios, begotten not made. All those words came into orthodoxy as important
descriptions of the doctrine of God. But most theologians, including the Cappadocians, insisted that
those words do not empty the Godhead of its mystery. The words simply point to parameters that we
must use to understand orthodox teaching about God. But the mystery of God, the depth of God, and the
mystery of the Trinity is still there.
There was one fourth century theologian, though not a very important one, whose name was Eunomius.
He taught that you can know almost everything that can be known about God. But people did not follow
him in that teaching. The idea remained that the Godhead is still full of mystery and that we know God,
not in His essence, but in His works and in His revelation. That was the prevailing view both in the East
and the West. Particularly in the East, however, the emphasis on the mystery and the hiddenness of God
became very central to theology. It was so much the case that apophatic theology, or a theology of
darkness, or negative theology, became an important aspect of Eastern theology. That is an issue we will
consider later. Eastern theology always insists that Western theology knows too much and that we
should have stopped long ago in attempting to probe into the mysteries of the Godhead. So the idea of
the mystery of the Godhead and the importance of protecting that from curiosity is clearly set forth in
the quotations of Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus.
A great contribution of the Cappadocians was to help the church, after it had focused on the person of
Christ and His relationship to the Father, begin to think about the Holy Spirit. The Council of Nicea did
not say much about the Holy Spirit. It just said, “We believe in the Holy Spirit.” The focus was on the
homoousios of the Son and the Father. The Holy Spirit was simply affirmed as an object of faith, but not
explored more fully. As we come to the writings of the Cappadocians, particularly the writings of Basil
of Caesarea who wrote a book called, On the Holy Spirit, we see the church beginning to think of
exactly how the Holy Spirit relates to the other two persons of the Godhead. The writings of the
Cappadocians help to prepare for the decision of the second ecumenical council in Constantinople in
381 that the Holy Spirit is of the same substance as the Father and the Son.

Another important contribution of the Cappadocians was to help the church begin to think about the
person of Christ. We will soon notice in our study that, after the doctrine of the Trinity, it was the
doctrine of Christ that agitated the church. Various heresies developed and finally a consensus was
reached at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. But much of the background for that consensus came from
the writings of the Cappadocians. Gregory of Nazianzus, for instance, wrote, “That which He has not
assumed, He has not healed. But that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” That sentence
insists on the full humanity of Christ as a guarantee of our salvation. It is interesting that, in terms of
soteriology, Athanasius wrote, “If Christ is not God, we are not saved.” That is one of the important
points of his book, On the Incarnation of the Divine Word. If Christ is not God, we are not saved,
because it takes God to save us. So the doctrine of the deity of Christ is tied to soteriology. Gregory
agrees with that, but he adds, “If Christ is not man, we are not saved.” And I am sure Athanasius would
have agreed with him. So the church begins to move toward a better understanding of the full deity of
Christ but also of the necessity for the full humanity of Christ. Those two ideas brought together will
find their classic expression in the middle ages in the writing by St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, Why the
God-Man. Certainly the writings of the Cappadocians helped prepare the way for the decision of
Chalcedon, which did affirm the true and complete humanity of Christ.
One other aspect of the lives of the Cappadocians that I would like to mention is their care for the needy.
Basil was called Basil the Great. Many people in church history are called “the Great,” and I have
always been interested in how they got that name. Sometimes later church historians determined that a
particular person was very important so they started calling him “the Great.” Or important figures in the
contemporary world will look on a certain figure as great and so he will be called “the Great.” But Basil
was called “the Great” not by the great and mighty but by the poor and needy. He was called Basil the
Great by the people who lived in Caesarea because he was so concerned about them. He founded
hospitals, orphanages, and houses for the poor. Shortly before becoming bishop of Caesarea he gave
away much of his inheritance in famine relief and served food to the destitute. So, poor people said,
“This is a great man.” From that point on, Basil has been called Basil the Great. Gregory of Nazianzus
wrote a book called On the Love of the Poor in which he supported Basil’s soup kitchens by asking the
rich to express their gratitude to God in gracious giving to the poor without prejudging the needy. With
the Cappadocians you have theology, poetry, and social concern mixed in intriguing ways.
We also need to consider the emperors. We know that Constantine became a Christian, baptized on his
deathbed. He legalized Christianity in the Roman world and everything changed. But Constantine died
in 337, and there was a period of great agitation and confusion after his death because he had three sons,
all of whom wanted to be emperor. For a while, the empire was divided among the three sons.
Eventually one of the three, Constantius, became the sole emperor. When Constantius died in 361, he
was succeeded by a close relative whose name was Julian. And we always add something to Julian’s
name. He is Julian the Apostate. This man, born in a Christian family, grew up as a Christian, but when
he was 20 years old he publicly renounced Christianity and converted to paganism. That was 10 years
before he became emperor. We have seen many people converting from paganism to Christianity, but
here is a man who went the other way, from Christianity to paganism.
Why did he do that? One church historian has explained that Christianity fell apart for Julian when he
realized the contradiction between the words of Constantine’s sons and their actions. The sons of
Constantine were all professing Christians, as their father had been. But they did not act like it. For
example, the sons of Constantine saw to it that all of Julian’s family was assassinated because there was
a claim to the throne from that side too. In order to protect their own succession, they simply eliminated
Julian’s parents and relatives. No wonder he did not think much of Christianity when he saw professing

Christians acting that way. It is a sad story, although there is one tiny bright spot about it. According to
tradition, Julian was saved as a baby because some Christians took him and hid him so that the sons of
Constantine could not kill him. But he grew up to despise Christianity, and he worked very hard to try to
overthrow it. He wanted to reestablish the old syncretism that had ruled before the Christians. He even
wanted to bring Judaism into the mix. He thought it would be fine to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple
and have Jehovah as one of the pantheon of other gods and goddesses. He worked very hard to try to
accomplish his aim, but he found it extremely difficult. He said that the problem with trying to
overthrow Christianity was that Christians, whom he called “impious Galileans,” were so much involved
in good works. That was in contradiction to what he saw in the family of Constantine. But he could see
that all Christians were not like those Christians. He said, “They not only take care of their poor; they
take care of our poor as well.” He saw that they not only provided love and food and care for Christians,
but they also took care of those who were not Christians. That set him back in his attempt to overthrow
Christianity.
In the providence of God, Julian the Apostate was not an emperor very long—only about two years. He
died in battle in 363, fighting the Persians. The Persians were the most formidable opponent of the
Romans during the fourth century. That was one reason why Constantine moved the capital east to
Constantinople, in order to be closer to the eastern border of the empire to try to keep the Persians out.
Julian was leading his army in battle with the Persians when he received a mortal wound. According to
tradition, in his last moment in life on the battlefield he cried out, “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean.” I
am not sure that he said that, but it was certainly true. As soon as Julian died, the empire went back to
protecting Christianity as it had done before he took the throne.
We need to think of one other emperor in the fourth century. The three big names in the fourth century
are Constantine, Julian, and Theodosius. There were other emperors, but those are the important ones.
Theodosius became emperor in 379. With Theodosius we have another important change. Constantine
had simply legalized Christianity. Theodosius established Christianity as the only official religion of the
Roman Empire. By the time we come to Theodosius at the end of the fourth century, the tables are
totally turned. At the beginning of the century, Christians were outlawed and persecuted. By the end of
the century, Christianity was established and the pagans were persecuted. Theodosius destroyed the
pagan temples. He passed laws against heresies. So it was not only necessary to be a Christian, but also
to be an orthodox Christian. With Theodosius we move into a period that we can call “Christendom,” in
which state and religion are very closely allied, and in which laws will prohibit the practice of other
religions or even the practice of heretical Christianity. Christendom extends all the way to the time of
the Reformation and beyond.
I have introduced three wonderful theologians, or four counting Macrina, and two emperors. One
emperor tried to destroy Christianity. The other, in trying to protect Christianity, actually did more to
damage it that Julian did. That combination of church and state is going to have serious repercussions in
the years to come. Now we come to the second ecumenical council. It is important to know these early
church councils. Nicea was the first, in 325. The second is the Council of Constantinople in 381. It was
called by Theodosius, the emperor.
The main issue that was discussed there was the deity of the Holy Spirit. The Council of Nicea simply
added the words, “And we believe also in one Holy Spirit.” It did not explain further how the Holy
Spirit relates to the Father and the Son. It was at the Council of Constantinople that we receive some
very familiar words, which are now part of the Nicene Creed that we use in our churches today. When
we use the Nicene Creed today, it is not the creed of Nicea in 325. It is rather the expanded version of
381. It is the creed of Nicea and Constantinople. It includes these words, “The Holy Spirit, the Lord,

Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son, is together worshiped and
together glorified.” That statement was intended to say, and it does say, although people continued to
add to it in various ways, that the church applies the concept of homoousios now to the Spirit as it had
already applied that concept to the Son.
That statement also uses the word “proceeds” to describe the relationship between the Holy Spirit and
the Father. Remember that at Nicea part of that creed was that the Son is begotten of the Father. I have
said that statement serves to show the distinction between the Father and the Son. The word “begotten”
does not mean “made.” The Son is eternal and equal to the Father. But that word “begotten,” which can
conjure up other images in our mind, was used in Nicea to simply say that the Son is not Father. The
word that is used for the Holy Spirit to make that distinction is the word “proceeds.” The Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father. These words do not indicate differences in the divine essence, but simply help
us understand something of the distinction among the divine persons or the relationship in which they
stand to each other.
I have said that our commonly used Nicene Creed is the creed that was affirmed at Constantinople.
There is another creed, the Athanasian Creed, that is easy to confuse with the Nicene Creed. You may
have heard of the Athanasian Creed. It is also known by its opening words in Latin, Quicumque vult,
which is, “Whoever wishes to be saved.” According to J. N. D. Kelley, an expert on early Christian
creeds, we know two things for sure about the Athanasian Creed. First, it was not by Athanasius.
Second, it was not a creed. Although it bears his name, it was not by Athanasius, for it is composed long
after his life, probably in the fifth or sixth century by some highly skilled theologian, maybe in France or
Spain. It was composed in Latin. And it is not really a creed in the sense that it is not really a short
summary. It is a longer summary. It is a kind of technical summary of the teaching of the councils and
the church in the first five centuries. It also has a very negative tone. Nicea and Constantinople insist on
orthodoxy, but the Athanasian Creed begins with warnings against apostasy or heresy. In other words, in
the usual way in which it is said, the creed begins by saying, “Whoever wants to be saved should above
all hold fast to the true Christian faith.” That statement is often followed with a kind of response that
says, “Whoever does not keep this faith whole and pure, without a doubt, will perish eternally.” The
creed goes back and forth that way with many warnings about not holding to Nicene orthodoxy. I am not
saying that is a bad thing. But there is a different tone in the Athanasian Creed than the more positive
and perhaps more joyful ascriptions of the teaching of the doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the
earlier statements from Nicea and Constantinople. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of
our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
Now let me address some remaining questions about some of the topics I have covered in this lesson.
Sometimes people ask how the pagans were persecuted during the time of Theodosius. This was done
mainly in the destruction of their temples, which sometimes caused riots. You can understand the pagans
would resist that sort of thing as the emperor would order the destruction of a temple in Greece or Egypt.
When there was resistance, the arm of the state came down heavy upon the pagans. Thus pagans were
killed in those clashes with authorities. The persecution of pagans was not exactly like that carried out
by Diocletian or some of the other emperors before Christianity was accepted. There was some physical
death as a result of clashes with the police. But mostly it was that pagans found themselves like
Christians had been earlier in the century, shut out of public office or disadvantaged in some other ways.
It is rather strange that the fourth century started one way and ended another way. As we go through the
rest of the middle ages, the laws against heresies will become ever tougher. Eventually Justinian will
close the philosophical schools in Athens. That is an important landmark in this history that comes in the
sixth century.

Some have asked if there were any emperors other than Julian who opposed Christianity. Immediately
after Julian there was an emperor named Jovan. He restored everything to what it had been under
Constantius, the son of Constantine. So with Julian, there was only a two year break in which the
emperor was not Christian, and he tried very hard to revert the empire back to paganism. After that two
year period, all the remaining emperors supported Christianity. After a while, there were no more
emperors in Rome. During this time, while the main emperor ruled in Constantinople, there was a sub-
emperor in Rome. He was supposed to hold together what was happening in the western part of the
empire, but without much power. Into that Roman vacuum will step the pope, who will gain a great deal
of temporal power, and not just spiritual power. The pope will become the most important figure in the
West after the emperor has moved far away to the city of Constantinople.
Some wonder if there was a Christian response to the pagan persecution. In other words, were there
Christians who tried to stop the persecutions of pagans? Yes, there was some response. Ambrose, the
great bishop in Milan, even rebuked an emperor for persecuting the Jews. There were some Christians
who did not approve. Fortunately, we know that some raised their voices against the persecution of Jews
and pagans. I expect that even Ambrose would not have opposed the idea of laws requiring Christian
commitment. But he did not want physical persecution against those who did not follow those laws. For
the most part, however, such persecution was accepted. Christians liked being in power, and at least it
was much better than being persecuted. At this time begins the growth of the nominal Christian state,
which becomes a problem for us, because it becomes difficult to separate that from the real church and
real Christianity. Everything that goes by the name “Christian” is not Christian, and that goes for church
history. You must understand that from this point on when I say, “Christian,” I do not always mean born
again, devout, Bible loving, or Calvinist. The word becomes generalized, and for that reason it becomes
despised by many people, and sometimes for proper reasons.

Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom
The fourth century of the history of the Christian church is a very important time because there were so
many great Christian leaders. I expect that we will not have anything like the fourth century until we
arrive at the sixteenth century with Calvin and Luther and John Knox and many great Christian leaders
of the Reformation period. But prior to the sixteenth century, the fourth century is the time when in
God’s providence there were many outstanding theologians, pastors, preachers, and Christian leaders.
The great Athanasius died in 373. When Athanasius died in 373, the three Cappadocians whom we
considered last time were all in their 40s. There were two other Christian leaders in their 30s, Ambrose
and Jerome. And Chrysostom was 28. And there was a young man living in North Africa whose name
was Augustine, who was only 19 in 373. It would be another 12 years before Augustine would even
become a Christian. You can understand by merely hearing those names how important the fourth
century is for the history of the Christian church.
This lesson will focus on Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom. The next three lessons will focus on
Augustine, because he was such an important figure. I give him more attention than anybody else in the
history of the Christian church. Calvin and Luther each get two lessons, but Saint Augustine gets three.
Ambrose is a very important figure in the West. Jerome, who was born in Italy, moved to Bethlehem,
and so he is an important figure in both the East and the West. And Chrysostom is a very important
figure for the East. He was the patriarch of Constantinople and the creator of the liturgy that is still
widely used in Orthodox circles. But Chrysostom is also important for the West because of his
wonderful preaching and his biblical exegesis.
As I begin I will select a prayer from Ambrose. So let us now pray in the words of this fourth century
church father, Ambrose. “O Lord, You who are all merciful, take away my sins from me and enkindle
within me the fire of Your Holy Spirit. Take away this heart of stone from me and give me a heart of
flesh and blood, a heart to love and adore You, a heart which may delight in You, love You, and please
You, for Christ’s sake. Amen.”
As we think of Ambrose, we think of a churchman, pastor, preacher, and a man who not only led his
congregation in worship but also developed styles of worship that influenced the church all the way
down to the present. Ambrose was born in Rome. He was an aristocratic Roman. He made his way as a
politician or statesman and was appointed governor of northern Italy. He was a Christian, though not
particularly committed. He certainly did not feel called to the priesthood. But the church in Milan, where
he was stationed as governor, was in a certain amount of turmoil, partly because of a dispute between
orthodox and Arian Christians in that church. Ambrose, as governor, was concerned to bring some
stability to the situation. He was actually present in the great cathedral that had been constructed in
Milan when a new bishop was being chosen. It was a very tense and important time. Both sides were
very much at odds, and it was difficult for them to come to any kind of agreement. Suddenly in the
uproar of that situation, a little child began to shout out, “Ambrose for bishop.” Nobody knows why that
child said that, and certainly Ambrose had not thought of himself as bishop. Maybe nobody else had
thought of him as a potential bishop either, but at that moment it sounded like a good idea. Ambrose was
a popular governor, and he had brought order to the region. So perhaps he could bring order to the
church. Before long, everybody was shouting, “Ambrose for bishop.” And he became bishop. He had
not been baptized yet. So he was baptized, ordained, and consecrated bishop within eight days, which
was certainly a record for someone going from baptism to a high church office like bishop of Milan.

Ambrose proved to be a good administrator. His first writings as bishop spoke of the need for silence,
discretion, and kindness. He had seen the church torn apart by the agitation that had come to Milan and
northern Italy. Then he went on to defend the independence of the church against the control of the state.
A new problem had arisen in the history of the church. The Roman state was no longer persecuting the
church. That was finished. This is the time of Theodosius, the emperor who made Christianity the legal,
official religion of the Roman Empire. But the new problem is that the state wants to interfere with the
church and control it. This is the beginning of a long history of tensions between the church and the
state. We will study those all the way through the end of this course, and it continues into the class on
Reformation and modern church history as well.
On several occasions Ambrose clashed with Theodosius, the emperor, who lived in Constantinople, not
Milan. But the emperor did visit Milan from time to time, and he had representatives there. Ambrose
was not afraid to stand up to the emperor and say when he thought he was wrong. Sometimes
Theodosius was indeed wrong. And there may have been occasions when the emperor was right and
Ambrose was wrong. But at least he was an example of a church leader who stood up to the emperor and
who wanted to assert the independence of the church from imperial control.
This effective bishop was also an effective, eloquent preacher. We know that when Augustine went to
Milan, he went to hear Ambrose preach. It was not because Augustine was interested in Christianity, but
he was interested in eloquence. Augustine was a rhetorician, and he wanted to see it done well. Ambrose
was doing it well in the cathedral at Milan, so Augustine went in order to revel in the beauty of the
words of this great preacher. Before long, Augustine found himself listening to what Ambrose was
actually saying, and that was a very important step along the way to Saint Augustine’s conversion.
Ambrose was an effective and eloquent preacher who defended Christianity on two fronts. There was a
neo-paganism that was arising. Paganism did not die out despite Christianity’s status as the official
religion. There were many people, particularly in the upper echelons of society, who either secretly or
openly worshiped the old pagan gods. There was a resurgence of paganism at the time. Ambrose set
himself to preach against that and assert the truthfulness of Christianity against the pagan past of Rome.
On the other hand, Ambrose had to fight against Arianism. Even though the Arian heresy had largely
been put down in the Roman Empire, it began to seep back in from the Barbarians in the north who were
coming across the border. Those Barbarians had become Christians, but they were Arian Christians
through the work of Arian missionaries. So Arianism became a problem again. The question arose again,
is Jesus really homoousios with the Father, or should we use the word homoiousios? Ambrose set
himself to defend Nicene orthodoxy against the Arians.
It was Ambrose, in the process of doing this, who spoke the clearest of anybody up to this time about the
doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of God’s grace. Augustine would later build on that. But we are
grateful to Ambrose for his emphasis on those two great doctrines, which were not expressed all that
clearly in the history of the church from the time of Paul through the time of Ambrose and Augustine.
Listen to these words from a prayer from Saint Ambrose: “O God, who looked down on us when we had
fallen down into death and resolved to redeem us by the advent of Your only begotten Son…” You can
tell by the beginning of that prayer that there is going to be a strong emphasis on what sin really did
produce, which was death. And there is the necessity of God’s grace to bring us to life again. We will
have thorough discussion of all of that when we study Saint Augustine and the Pelagian controversy.
Another aspect of the career of Ambrose that is of great importance is his work as a liturgist. He was
very concerned that the worship of God be carried forth in a proper way, but also in a dramatic, public

way. The great dramatic cathedral services with readings, liturgy, and music—particularly music—all
take a large step forward in the work of Ambrose of Milan. When Augustine went to the services in
Milan to hear the rhetorician and eloquent preacher, Ambrose, Augustine was also very impressed, and
perhaps even more impressed, with the music. Augustine said, “How greatly did I weep in the singing of
the hymns of the church.” He was deeply moved by the voices of the sweet singing church. He was a
restless man who heard the music and was overwhelmed by the wonder, sweetness, and beauty of it all.
Ambrose wrote hymns. Come Holy Spirit was one that he wrote in order to teach orthodox doctrine. For
Ambrose, the singing of hymns was both the worship of God and the teaching of the people. That is
evident in the opening lines of that hymn, which reads, “Come Holy Spirit, who, ever One, reignest with
Father and with Son, unsubstantial, coeternal, while unending ages run, ever more and ever more.”
There is much theology in that hymn. And people were singing hymns like that, which Ambrose wrote.
Ambrose said, “Thus are all become teachers who were scarcely able to be disciples.” As soon as people
were in the church he taught them with the hymns that were sung. Another of Ambrose’s hymns is O
Splendor of God’s Glory Bright, which we still sing sometimes. It has a number of wonderful verses,
including, “Come very Sun of heaven’s love, in lasting radiance from above, and pour the Holy Spirit’s
ray on all we think or do today.” That is a wonderful hymn for us to pray, even at this very moment. The
hymn, At Cock-Crowing, talks about the importance about praising God early in the morning. As the
cock rises early in the morning so we rise to praise God. It also reflects on Peter’s fall and recovery. One
verse says, “Jesu, look on us when we fall. One momentary glance of Thine can from her guilt the soul
recall to tears of penitence divine.”
Ambrose was a very important figure in the church. One great thing that he did was to move Augustine
along the way to faith and give him a model for faith in many ways. Ambrose was one of the great
church fathers of the fourth century.
I want to talk about Jerome now. He was also born in Italy, in Dalmatia, which is in northeastern Italy,
and he was from a very wealthy, prominent family there. If you think of Ambrose as a pastor, preacher,
and churchman, then you should think of Jerome as a scholar. This man was first, last, and always a
scholar. He was educated in Rome. He often said that he had three wishes. One was to have seen Christ
in the flesh. Another was to have heard Christ preach. And the third was to have seen Rome in its glory.
By the time he got there, the glory days had passed and Rome was beginning to face decline. It would
not be long before Rome would fall to the Barbarians. So the great time of Rome was in the past. But
Jerome loved Rome, and he wished he could have been alive during the time of Rome’s prime.
Jerome learned Latin, which was easy because it was a native language to him. And he also spoke
Greek. And he also learned and spoke Hebrew, which was unusual at the time. It was not until the
sixteenth century that Hebrew became a common study among pastors and Bible commentators.
Augustine never learned Hebrew, and he envied Jerome’s ability to use Hebrew, though he sometimes
put it down as unnecessary by saying that the Septuagint was sufficient. But Jerome learned Hebrew,
and as a translator and commentator of the Bible he set an important example for scholars of the future.
We know that Jerome had one of the most impressive personal libraries of anyone who lived during his
time. He loved books and he collected them, including all kinds of books, especially the pagan classics
such as Cicero, which he loved to read. In spite of the fact that Clement of Alexandria and Origen had
said it was all right to read the pagan writers, Jerome felt a certain guilt about reading such works. He
wrote a letter about his library that is known as On my way to Jerusalem to wage my warfare. That
meant that he was going from Rome to Jerusalem—and he finally ended up in Bethlehem—to become a
monk. To him that was waging his warfare. As he reflected on this step in his life, he said it was very

difficult to leave Rome and to leave home, and it was harder to leave the dainty food he was used to, but
it was really impossible to leave his library. It was the one thing that this man who wanted to become an
other-worldly monk held onto with all of his might. We know that Jerome would fast in order to
afterward read a bit of Cicero. He thought that if he inflicted himself with a fast, he would deserve a
reward, which was to read something from Cicero.
Justo Gonzalez, in his book The Story of Christianity, tells the famous story of the dream Jerome had
when he was sick during lent. He was about 28 years old at the time. In the dream he watched
preparations for his own funeral. Then he came before a judge who asked him, “Who are you?” And
Jerome said, “I am a Christian.” Then the judge said, “You lie. You are a follower of Cicero and not of
Christ, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” That was a startling dream for Jerome.
He said, “Thenceforth I read the books of God with a zeal greater than I had given to the books of men.”
But much later, we find that Jerome still read Cicero. And even when someone reminded him of his
dream, he said that you cannot pay too much attention to dreams. So he continued to love and read the
pagan classics as well as the Bible.
The greatest thing that Jerome did as a scholar was translate the Bible into Latin. That translation is
known as the Vulgate. It was not the first translation into Latin. There were old Latin translations
already, but they were not very well done. Jerome, however, did it very well. He completed his
translation in 405 after working on it for 22 years. That provided for the first time in church history a
competent translation of the Bible in Latin. It is a strange thing that the Vulgate eventually became a
kind of prison for the Bible because the Roman Catholic Church held onto that translation even when
Latin was no longer spoken by anyone but clerics. But in Jerome’s day, Latin was the common language
of the people. What he was doing was translating the Bible into the vernacular of the people. Not all
people could read Greek and very few could read Hebrew. So a good translation of the Bible into the
common language of the people was needed. Jerome’s Vulgate was a very skillful translation. He
translated the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. The older Latin translations were translations
from the Greek Septuagint. The Vulgate also became a great piece of literature. It was quoted, loved,
and used throughout the middle ages.
Jerome also made it very clear that only the Hebrew books were canonical. Those are the 39 books that
appear in the Protestant Old Testament. The other books, some of which the Roman Catholic Church
accepts as canonical parts of Scripture, Jerome felt could be read for edification but not to establish
doctrine. So on the issue of the canon, Jerome was very much a Protestant and not a Roman Catholic.
Jerome also wrote many commentaries. They were very influential throughout the middle ages.
Augustine wrote to Jerome, “I bless you for your writings because God has given someone like you to
yourself, to me, and to the whole church.” Augustine was able to praise God for this fellow scholar, even
though there were some tensions and even disagreements between the two from time to time. Those
arose particularly because Jerome was not an easy man to get along with. He had a very touchy temper.
He could put people down easily if they did not agree with him, or if they were not too smart. He was
not a very pleasant soul. But he was a great scholar. Despite the defects in his personality and his
sanctification, God did use him in a great way to set forth the Bible in the common Latin language and
to write important commentaries. In writing his commentary on Galatians, “We do not think that the
Gospel consists in the words of Scripture, but in its meaning.” I do not think he meant by that to set
meaning against words, but you have to view the words as they are meant to be viewed. So you read the
words, but you must understand the words properly. According to Jerome, Scripture is useful for the
hearers when it is not spoken without Christ nor presented without the fathers. We must see Christ as the
center of all Scripture, and we must look to the tradition of the church so that we do not interpret

Scripture as individuals but in the stream of church history. And those who are preaching Scripture
should not introduce it without the Holy Spirit. That seems to me a wonderful description of exposition
and exegesis. We look for Scripture’s meaning in its words. We look to see that Christ is central. We
present it in the context of the history of the church. We preach it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
There is another side to Jerome that is not as helpful. He was not only a scholar, but he was also a monk.
Even though Jerome wanted to be a monk, with the communal life of the monastery, and he did spend
most of his life as a monk in Bethlehem, he did not want to have a regime that was too rigorous. He
wanted to be a comfortable monk. He wanted to be one who could get away from the hubbub of the
world in order to study. So while he was a monk, we was not one out in the desert, or up on a pole, or
beating his body. He was a monk who wanted to enjoy life.
As a monk, Jerome began to think and write more on celibacy. There had been a growing interest in
celibacy and virginity in the church at that time, even though earlier church fathers had honored and held
marriage in high esteem. They did not denigrate marriage in favor of celibacy, although the church
fathers would say that celibacy is a proper call for some, as Paul says. With Jerome, however, there is a
shift to the view that there is something good about celibacy itself or even something better about it. If
Jerome was rating the various states of life, he would give virginity a 10, widowhood a 6, and marriage a
3. Marriage may not be bad for Jerome, but it is not the best. In one of his writings, The Perpetual
Virginity of Blessed Mary, the idea of which was already being taught in the church, although not
everybody would agree with Jerome on it, Jerome reflected on why it is better to not be married. He
says, “Is the sofa smooth? Is the pavement swept? Are the flowers in the vases? Is dinner ready? Tell me
where amid all this is there room for the thought of God.” The idea is that if you get married and have a
family you will not have time to think about God. An answer will come to Jerome’s question of where is
room for the thought of God, but it will not come until Luther and Calvin offer answers to it. And an
answer will not come from the Roman Catholic side until Brother Lawrence offers an answer to it in his
writing, The Practice of the Presence of God. That little book by Brother Lawrence states that as you
wash dishes and as you serve in the monastery or in the home and as you do any of those kinds of tasks,
they are things done in the presence of God. Washing dishes is also prayer. Brother Lawrence had to
wash many dishes, and he did not like that task. So he wrote that book to teach himself that such tasks
do honor God and should not be put on the side as something inferior to meditation and prayer. But
Jerome makes his point, and that emphasis on the importance of celibacy and the argument that in order
to really be spiritual you need to be a monk and be celibate becomes a stream in the history of the
Catholic Church, which is not corrected until the time of the Reformation.
Our third great fourth century church father is Chrysostom. He was the bishop of Constantinople. We
usually speak of him as Chrysostom, rather than by his name John, because Chrysostom means “golden
mouth.” He was given that name quite early because he was such a wonderful preacher. He was
eloquent and powerful as a preacher. This man John was born in Antioch and was converted through the
influence of Basil, one of the Cappadocians whom we already covered. His mother was a woman named
Anthusa. She became a widow when she was very young after John was born, and she had a great
influence on the life of her son. She kept him in the Christian faith and guided him through the perils of
growing up and into his teenage years and beyond.
People recognized right away that Chrysostom had unusual gifts as a speaker. Speaking was probably
considered the ultimate gift in the ancient world. If you could speak, you could do almost anything. A
great rhetorician of the time, a man named Libanius, very much wanted this man to be his disciple and
successor. Stephen Neill in his book A History of Christian Missions talks about Libanius and says, “He
was the last of the famous Greek orators. He really had nothing to say, but he said it interminably with

consummate skill.” But because of Anthusa, John kept his focus on a Christian calling and not a calling
as a rhetorician. So Libanius made the famous statement, “What women these Christians have.” He must
have been surprised by somebody so strong-willed and determined and influential as the mother of John.
I think it would be better to say, “What Christians these women are.” There were some great Christian
women of the time. We have already considered Macrina and Anthusa, and later there will be Monica
and many others.
John became a preacher, and a great one. His language is vivid. His illustrations are memorable, even as
we read them today. He offered very searching applications. Of all the people that we have studied thus
far in the history of the church, his sermons are the most readable and edifying. If you want to read
sermons from anybody up to this point, you should choose the sermons of John Chrysostom. Saint
Thomas Aquinas of the thirteenth century said he would rather possess a copy of Chrysostom’s homilies
than be master of Paris. He said that while approaching Paris during some travels when a friend pointed
out the beauty and glory of the city. But Aquinas said he would rather have Chrysostom than all that.
The contemporary writer Kathleen Norris said in her book The Cloister Walk that even today John
Chrysostom goes over really well in North Dakota. So if people in North Dakota can read Chrysostom
and enjoy him, then we can too.
Even though Chrysostom was a wonderful preacher, he did not get everything right. Charles Spurgeon
admired Chrysostom, but he also wrote that “there is enough of solid truth and brilliant utterance in
Chrysostom’s homilies to justify his title of ‘Golden Mouth,’ but still all is not gold which fell from his
lips.” Spurgeon was particularly disappointed in the fact that you cannot find a consistent and clear
doctrine of God’s grace and justification by faith alone in this great preacher of Constantinople. You can
find hints of it, but you can also find hints of something else. So despite his greatness as a preacher, the
central doctrine of grace is not prominent in what he says.
Chrysostom is, however, remembered and admired as a great exegete. Calvin believed that Chrysostom
was the supreme exegete of Scripture. Calvin loved Augustine and quoted him far more than he quoted
Chrysostom, and even far more than he quoted everyone else put together. But Calvin believed that
Augustine was over-subtle in his interpretation of Scripture. That is because Augustine followed the
Alexandrian school of interpretation, which was the allegorical approach to Scripture. Their tactic was to
get quickly through the literal meaning, or maybe even ignore it, in order to penetrate deeper into a
mystical, spiritual meaning of the text. That approach became the primary way that people read the
Scripture in that period and all the way through the middle ages up to the time of the Reformation in the
sixteenth century. So as we read expositions of Scripture from the people of that time, there are some
interpretations that seem astounding to us. Even Augustine can go into flights of fancy from a rather
simple text of Scripture. The competing view of Scripture was that of Antioch, which was the literal
view of Scripture. It was the school of interpretation that looked for what we might call the “natural”
sense of the text. If we visited ancient Antioch or Alexandria, we would feel much more at home in
Antioch. Antioch represents much more closely the way we are accustomed to handling Scripture today.
And our primary example of Antiochene exegesis is Chrysostom. So as we read Chrysostom, we see the
natural sense of Scripture coming forth, as opposed to the more mystical sense of Scripture that was
coming forth from Alexandria. That has always left me with a problem that I have never been able to
solve. Why was Chrysostom the better exegete but Augustine the better theologian? You would think
that the person doing the best exegesis was also the best theologian, but that was not the case. Calvin
makes the same point with some wonder.
Before I close I want to speak about Chrysostom as a pastor. One of the great books of church history is
Chrysostom’s On the Priesthood. He actually wrote that book before he was ordained as a priest. He

was already a deacon in the church. And as he contemplated a career in the church as a priest he wrote a
book to prepare himself for the task. It is a book of pastoral theology. It is a wonderful book that we can
even read with great profit today. Chrysostom writes about the various qualifications in order to be a
pastor. Anyone thinking of a career as a pastor would do well to read Chrysostom’s On the Priesthood.
He writes that great discretion is needed along with great zeal. When he covers the nature of the work,
or what the pastor is going to do, he provides much valuable information and reflection for us. He breaks
it down into two points. He says there are two jobs: people and preaching. He says a pastor must give
equal attention to both. A pastor must give attention to the people he preaches to in order to understand
them and communicate with them. And a pastor needs to study how to preach in order to be an effective
minister of God’s covenant.
I have given you a little bit about these three important figures so that they stand out in your minds and
so you can see their significance in the history of the church. “Since we are surrounded by such a great
cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).
I have heard it asked if the way Ambrose dealt with Theodosius had an effect on the rise of the papacy. I
argue that it did. Ambrose, at that point in his career, was in some ways more influential than the pope.
Rome was a less important town at that point compared with either Milan or Constantinople. With
Ambrose asserting the independence of the church, that is something the popes would assert all the way
through the middle ages, as we will study in more detail later. The murder of Thomas of Becket in the
cathedral at Canterbury really had to do with the church and state relations. The question was whether
the king would be on top or would it be the church. At different times in the West the issue sways
different ways. In the East the matter stays consistent with the emperor on top. After all, the emperor
lived in Constantinople and the patriarch was there too. And while there was sometimes tension between
those two in that city, there was not the fluctuations of power that we see in the West, where there were
fluctuations between strong emperors and later strong popes, with both claiming temporal power.
Everyone admitted that the popes had spiritual power, but sometimes they asserted temporal power to
control the politics of nations.

Augustine’s Confessions
This lesson is entitled “Restless Heart, the Confessions of Saint Augustine.” The last lesson covered
three great figures of the Christian church: Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom. Jerome was a very
important scholar. And this lecture will focus on a great scholar, Augustine. If Jerome is a scholar, then
Augustine is a scholar, pastor, preacher, and churchman.
This lesson will focus on the life of Augustine, particularly his great writing, The Confessions, in which
he gives us the story of his early life in his own words. It might seem a little unusual to use an entire
lesson to talk about the life of one person. But I think it is important to do that with Augustine because
there are so many great themes that come out in his Confessions, and I want to share those with you so
that we can better understand Augustine. Those themes will not only help us consider the next two
lessons, which are also about Augustine, but they will help us during the rest of the course because
Augustine is undoubtedly the most important figure that we will study in this course. He is probably the
most important figure in the history of the church after the time of the Apostle Paul.
Augustine wrote many letters. In one of his letters written to a widow, which was a long letter in answer
to questions about prayer she had asked him in a previous letter, Augustine carefully and with great
wisdom responds to her questions. I will read a few sentences from his long letter to her, before we
begin with a prayer from Augustine. He says to the widow,
Why the One who knows what we need before we ask Him should urge us to ask and
seek and knock may puzzle us. We realize that our Lord and God does not want us to let
Him know what we want, since he cannot be ignorant of that. What He wants for us is to
exercise our desire in our prayers so that we are capable of receiving what He is
preparing to give us. His is a great gift, and we are little and limited in our ability to
receive. He tells us to widen our hearts. Our ability to receive His great gift, which eye
has not seen, since it has no color, nor ear heard, since it has no sound, and which has not
arisen in a human heart, since the human heart has to rise up to it, will grow in proportion
as we believe more trustfully, hope more firmly, and desire more ardently.
So we are to pray not because God does not know what we are going to ask, but so that our hearts will
be prepared to receive the gift that He will give to us.
It is difficult to choose prayers from Augustine because there are so many. The whole of The
Confessions is cast in the form of a prayer. It is a wonderful resource for us as we pray. Let us come to
the Lord now, and I will use some words from Saint Augustine as we begin our lesson today. “O Lord
our Savior, You have warned us that You will require much of those to whom much is given. Grant that
we, whose lot is cast in so godly a heritage, may strive together the more abundantly to extend to others
what we so richly enjoy, and as we have entered into the labors of others, so to labor that others may
enter into ours, to the fulfillment of Your holy will, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
I have already said something that Alister McGrath said in one of his books, that Augustine is probably
the greatest and most influential mind of the Christian church throughout its long history. We know
much about him. We know about the way he thought and the way he spoke because he has told us, first
of all in his famous Confessions, which gives his own understanding of his intellectual and spiritual
development. The whole book is addressed to God in the form of a prayer. But it is a prayer that is

intended to be overheard. In the Confessions Augustine is praying to God but he wants other people to
hear what he is saying to God.
The first nine books of the Confessions, what we would call “chapters,” are autobiographical. He tells us
about his story, from his birth up through his conversion and even beyond. The great theme there is sin
and grace—Augustine’s sin and God’s grace. Then books 10 through 13 are quite different. Students
have often tried to figure out how those latter books connect with the first books. By book 10 Augustine
is dealing with some difficult issues, philosophical and theological issues like memory, time, and
eternity. He says he knows what time is, until he tries to explain it, and then he does not know any more.
But he continues trying to explain it. And we continue trying to follow him and his reasoning. Then he
turns to write about creation and begins an exposition of Genesis 1 in his symbolic, allegorical style of
biblical exposition.
Someplace Augustine says that new converts are to be taught the Scriptures, beginning with Genesis 1
and continuing right through the Bible. Some scholars have speculated that that is what Augustine was
beginning to do. After describing his own conversion to the Lord he begins to set forth an exposition of
the Scriptures. But if that was what he was planning to do, then he did not get very far with it because he
stopped after Genesis 1. You can imagine how big the confessions would be if he had provided an
exposition of all of Scripture. Perhaps a more reasonable suggestion regarding what Augustine was
doing in those last chapters of The Confessions comes from Chadwick in his introduction to his
translation of The Confessions. He says, “The last four books make explicit what is only hinted at in the
autobiographical parts, namely that the story of the soul wandering away from God, and it in torment
and tears, and finding its way home through conversion, that story is also the story of the entire created
order.” So the story of Augustine wandering away from God and then being brought back to God and
restored is reflected in the greater picture of all of creation restored to God in God’s own time. We do
not know completely what was in Augustine’s mind in those latter books. I do read The Confessions at
times because I love the book, but I must admit that I generally read the first nine chapters with a great
deal of enthusiasm and then slow down in chapter 10 and never finish the last few chapters. The theme
in all of this is our need for God’s grace. That will be one of the dominant themes in the life and work of
Saint Augustine. And I will explain in the next lesson how Augustine is the champion of God’s grace.
In this lecture I want to talk more about his own life as he sets it forth for us. And I will point out some
things that I think are significant for us to think about. The first thing is his family. Augustine was born
in Tagasta, which would be Algeria today. He was born in 354. His father was named Patricius and his
mother was named Monica. Monica is a Berber name, not a Latin name, which probably indicates that
Augustine’s mother was of the indigenous North African stock. We know that she spoke Latin with a
strong accent, which indicates that she learned Latin as a second language and not a native language.
She was probably a woman of dark skin, as Augustine may have had. But very little is mentioned about
that because skin color was so irrelevant in the Roman world that it is rarely discussed.
Monica was a very strong influence in the life of her son. They had a stormy relationship, very close but
also at times there was the possibility of strong disagreements and strong feelings. Monica was certainly
a wonderful Christian. She was a woman of prayer. Augustine says in The Confessions, “My mother,
Your faithful servant, wept for me before You more than mothers weep when lamenting their dead
children.” She was weeping before God for her son not because he was dead, but because he was not a
Christian. Augustine rejected her faith and lived a very worldly life in his early years and even beyond
his teenage years. On one occasion when Monica was talking to her pastor about Augustine and how her
heart was broken that he was not following the Lord, she began to cry, and the bishop said to her, “It
cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.” In other words, God would save Monica’s son

because of her weeping and prayers for him. I do not know how the bishop could really say that, because
we do not know that kind of thing. But in this case, he was right. Through the prayers and earnest
endeavors of Monica, along with some other factors that God brought into his life, Augustine was finally
converted. Fortunately she lived to see Augustine converted and died the following year after his
conversion.
We know that Monica was a very faithful woman not only in prayer, but also in witnessing to her
family. Her husband, Patricius, was not a Christian. His mother, her mother-in-law, who came to live
with them, was not a Christian. Even though it seems that Monica and Patricius did respect and love
each other, Patricius did not always make it easy on Monica. And the mother-in-law certainly did not.
The Christian woman Monica found herself living in a house where it was difficult to live consistently
as a Christian. Eventually, however, she won both her husband and her mother-in-law to Christ.
Augustine tells us in The Confessions how she did it. He says of her efforts to win her husband that “The
virtues with which you had adorned her, and for which he respected, loved, and admired her were like so
many voices constantly speaking to him of You.” So it was her wonderful life, not her speaking or her
words. She was able to witness to him by being a loving and faithful wife to this man. All her good
deeds in that situation, which was a difficult one, spoke like voices from God to Patricius. She also won
her mother-in-law. Augustine says “her dutiful attentions and her constant patience and gentleness”
finally broke through the defenses of the older woman, and she became a Christian too. I always think of
Monica as the supreme example of how to witness in a family, through love, gentleness, courtesy, and
concern for others. Augustine pays tribute to his mother when he calls her “a servant of the servants of
God.” That title has come to be used of the pope today, but it was used first, not of a pope, but of the
Christian woman Monica.
Early on in his life Augustine rejected the faith of his mother. He plunged into a life of sin. In The
Confessions he tells us that he was sinning as soon as he was born. Some people think that he has a vivid
imagination and is exaggerating things with that statement. But he had a theological conviction that this
was true, that he was born in sin. And he was somehow able to remember sin in his life, selfishness,
jealousy, and things like that. He said, “So tiny a child, so great a sinner.” As we read through The
Confessions he tells us about other episodes in his life. The famous one is when he was a little boy and
he would steal apples from a neighbor not because he was hungry and wanted to eat them, but only
because he wanted to steal the apples. He enjoyed doing that. And he set that forth as an example of his
sinfulness.
Then as he moves away from home and goes to the big city of Carthage, he falls into a life of
immorality. He writes, “I came to Carthage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.” You
can hear that he was a master of words. He began to feel that this was not the way to live. He wanted
somehow to escape from it, but he really did not want to escape from it. He prayed the famous prayer,
“O Lord, give me chastity, but not yet.” So he continued to wallow in the sins of the flesh in Carthage.
But later he recognized that all along God was with him, keeping him from more sin. Augustine said, “I
attribute to Your grace whatever evil acts I have not done.” So God’s grace was at work in Augustine’s
life even before he was converted, keeping him from deeper sins that would perhaps lead him to destroy
himself. He also said, “God touched with a bitter taste all my illicit pleasures.” Everything he did had a
bitter aftertaste to it.
Thus he was a young man given over to the pleasures of sin in the city of Carthage. But God begins to
awaken within him a hope, and he begins to search. He said he was seeking pleasure not in God, but in
himself and in God’s other created beings, but what he found was that he plunged into miseries,

confusions, and errors. The further he plunged into the problems, confusions, and disappointments of
life, the more he began to wonder if there was something else. You might think that he would remember
his mother’s belief in the Bible and would thus turn to the Bible for answers. But Augustine had a
difficult time believing the Bible. This was partly because of the style of the Bible. It was too crude, and
he was too sophisticated to believe it. He liked the classical writings with their smooth Greek and their
beautiful words. The Bible seemed inferior to him as a piece of literature. So he did not turn to it yet.
He writes about his “vagabond” mind, following everything he could find. He began to think about
philosophy and that he could perhaps find answers to his questions there. When he was 19 years old he
read Cicero’s Hortensius. That book is no longer available because it has been lost, so we do not know
exactly what is in it. It was a book that awoke Augustine to the life of the mind. It awakened in him a
desire for truth. He said, “That book changed my feelings.” Now there was something beyond the flesh.
There was the mind and truth out there somewhere, if he could only find it.
Philosophy did not help him much. It led him to astrology. In those days that was considered a fairly
respectable way of searching for truth. He said, “I openly consulted those imposters called astrologers.”
From there he moved into a relationship with a cult called Manichaeism. Manichaeism was a third
century Gnostic movement that came from Persia. For a time, it was popular in the Roman world.
Manichaeism was made up of a little Christian symbolism, a large dose of Zoroastrian dualism, and
some of the quiet refinements of Buddhism. The main problem that Manichaeism tried to address was
the problem of evil. Where does evil come from? That is a problem for everybody. It will be a problem
that Augustine later deals with and solves in quite a different way than Manichaeism. The Manicheans
said that evil is somehow related to the physical, the material—to this world—but not to God. They
could not see God as the God of this world, because of all its sin, suffering, problems, and disasters. This
world is not worthy of God. So it had a view of God that He is separate from it all. But as Augustine
finally realized, that is no answer at all. God is protected from association with evil, but He becomes a
very weak god. He would be hardly worth calling a god at all if He had nothing to do or nothing to say
regarding the evil of this world. So like the Mormons or like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Manicheans
were full of assertions, but they could not offer a doctrinal system that could satisfy a great mind like
that of Augustine. Or they could bring forth no truth that could calm a miserable heart.
After he was in the Manichean movement for a while, he began to ask some very searching questions.
The local Manichean could not answer him, so they put him off and said the main teacher was coming
soon and Augustine should wait for him. But when he arrived, he could not do much better than the
local people. So Augustine left the movement, and he plunged into a time of skepticism. He thought that
perhaps there were no answers. He had tried philosophy and the religion of the Manicheans. Yet he
came to a time of disillusionment that drove him to skepticism and caused him to lose hope that truth
could be found.
Then came another stage that he was brought to by his vagabond mind. He began to read the Neo-
Platonic philosophers, and he began to see some glimmers of light in that teaching. The Neo-Platonic
philosophers saw afar off a land of peace. There was a vision there that Augustine could relate to and
that he began to long for. But he said they could not show him the way to the land of peace. As he read
their writings, many of the things he read reminded him of the prologue of Saint John’s Gospel. What
was missing in the Neo-Platonic philosophers, however, was the way to get to the peace, the hope, and
the life. They had no place for the incarnation. It was the incarnation of Jesus Christ that was missing.
He said, “That the Word was made flesh I did not read there,” in the Neo-Platonists.

God was bringing Augustine to where He wanted him. The “Hound of Heaven” was after him. It would
not be long before God would triumph in His grace in the life of Saint Augustine. Let me go back and
talk about God’s providence in his life as the Lord led him to the place God wanted him to be so that
God could bring to him His truth. We followed the search of Augustine, now I will offer some
comments on his career and the places he lived.
Augustine had decided that he would make a career out of rhetoric. It was a very promising career for
someone in those days like Augustine who had the ability to use words. He describes his profession as a
vendor of words. He realized later that teaching rhetoric was also a kind of “chair of lies,” because he
was not concerned with the truth of the words but only their effect. God used that career experience in
His providence. He gave Augustine his gift with words and provided him with training because he
would later use words not to tell lies but to tell the truth of God in some marvelous ways.
After a while, in North Africa, Augustine began to get restless. He felt that if he was ever going to reach
the pinnacle of his career he had to leave the remote lands and go to the big city; even Carthage did not
satisfy him. He wanted to go to Rome. He decided to move to Rome when he was 29 years old. His
mother did not want him to go to Rome. She argued and pled with him not to go because she believed
that as long as he was close to her she could keep her eye on him and try to convert him. It was bad
enough for him to be in Carthage, but if he went all the way to Rome, who knows what would happen to
him. Actually, Augustine had to slip away. He would sometimes tell her he was going and sometimes
tell her he was not going. Then he got on a boat and left before she knew it. And she was dismayed.
Later Augustine said, “By her flood of tears, what she was begging of You, my God, was that You
would not allow me to sail to Rome. Yet in Your deep counsel, You heard the central point of her
longing, though not granting her what she then asked, namely that You should make me what she
continually prayed for.” Augustine is saying that God did not answer his mother’s words—“O Lord, do
not let him sail”—in order that He might answer his mother’s prayer—“O Lord, save him.” Going to
Rome became a very essential step in the conversion of Augustine. Sometimes God does not answer our
words in order that He might answer our prayer, which is deeper than those words.
When he got to Rome he realized that it was not the place he should be. He should be in Milan. By that
time Rome was not as important as Milan. He went to Milan in 384, and there he met a man who
became a great influence on his life, Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Augustine wrote in The Confessions,
“All unknowing, I was brought by You to him, that knowing, I should be brought by him to You.” God
was getting him closer to Ambrose because he was the person God had chosen to be a significant
instrument in the conversion of Augustine.
The reason he became interested in Ambrose was that Ambrose could speak. He was a great orator.
Augustine would attend the services in the church in Milan in order to hear the sermon. Augustine said,
“My pleasure was in the charm of his language.” He reveled in the flow of the elegance and eloquence
of this preacher. He also became interested in Ambrose himself. That has always impressed me because
Ambrose was a great church leader and a great man, and there were plenty of things that Ambrose could
have spent his time doing rather than getting involved with a relatively unimportant newcomer to the
city. Augustine said, “I began to like him. At first, indeed, not as a teacher of the truth, for I had
absolutely no confidence in Your church, but I began to like him as a human being who was kind to
me.” So Augustine was in Milan, not interested in the content of the sermons but rather in the words of
the preacher. And he did not have any confidence in the church, but somehow he liked this preacher
because he was kind. That should be a great example for all of us.

As Augustine lived in Milan he was hearing the sermons, going to church, hearing the singing that so
deeply moved him, and other people were friends to him and were testimonies to him. Then he read the
famous book by Athanasius, The Life of St. Antony. Reading of the dedication of this man who left
everything and went to the desert so moved Augustine that God also used that to gently push him to the
place where he would find new life. Finally, and mainly, he was reading the Bible. It was beginning to
be a book that looked differently to him than it had at home in North Africa.
The climax of all this is the famous story of when Augustine was in the garden and he heard the voice of
a little child saying, “tolle lege, tolle lege,” which means “take and read, take and read.” He tried to
think of a children’s game in which that expression was used but he could not think of one. But
somewhere outside the garden wall that little voice kept saying, “take and read.” He happened to have
with him a book of the Bible, the book of Romans. He opened it the way we are told not to read the
Bible. He put his finger on a verse, which read, “Let us walk honestly, as in the day, not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.” Those words came with
great power into Augustine’s mind and heart. The text continued, “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ
and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof.” And that did it for Augustine. It was a
long process, and that was just the climax of many influences upon Augustine. But in 386, at the age of
32, Augustine had become a new creature in Christ Jesus. He said in The Confessions, “I have learned to
love You late.” It seemed like 32 years wasted. But it was not really so because God’s providence was in
all of it. Yet Augustine regretted that it had taken so long.
He spent the months between his conversion, which was in July 386, and his baptism by Ambrose the
next Easter, in retreat at the country estate of a friend not far from Milan, near Como in the beautiful
lake district of Italy. He wrote about the loveliness of God’s evergreen paradise. He was there as a
Christian with friends, and yet there were some friends there who were not Christians. There was one
non-Christian friend whom Augustine was particularly close to and he said, “My conversion did not put
an end to our friendship.” Monica was there. She had come up from Africa. Augustine’s son, Adeodatus,
was there, who was his son by his concubine whom he had in North Africa. And some other friends
were there. Augustine said, “We rested in you from the heat of the world.” It was a delightful time in a
beautiful place.
Augustine enjoyed that period in his life. He began to write some books based on some conversations
among that circle of friends. In his book, Retractions, which he wrote later in life, he tried to put
everything together that he had said or written and tried to take back some things and explain some
things. He said in Retractions, “The books that I wrote there were indeed now written in Your service,
but they still breathed the spirit of the school of pride.” As an old man he looked back at those early
works as Christian, but he thought there was too much of him in those books.
In the summer of 387 Augustine left Milan for Africa. He could not go back directly because of war. He
stopped for a while at Ostia, the town near Rome. Monica died there. If you read The Confessions you
will find a lovely passage describing the lovely conversations Augustine had with his mother there,
talking about heaven.
Augustine stayed in Rome until the next summer and then returned to Africa. Soon he was ordained, in
391. Then he became bishop in 395. When Augustine was ordained, he wept, not for joy, but because he
had a feeling he was entering into something that was going to be difficult. While preaching on the
anniversary of his ordination he once said, “To preach, to rebuke, to correct, to edify, to care for
individual souls is a great burden, great work, great labor. Who would not avoid that labor? But the
Gospel frightens me.” He had to do it, even though he could see that he was bringing upon himself many

tears and much labor. The first thing he did after being ordained was to ask for a sabbatical, in order to
spend some time getting ready for the task ahead. He wanted to spend some time studying the Bible
praying and weeping over his sins.
Ordination was a great thing for Augustine. It focused him. It screwed him down and kept him
committed to something. He was such a great man that he could have done so many things, which might
have dissipated his energies. As an ordained minister and then as a bishop, he had his task before him.
He was now a man under authority, a servant of God, and like his mother, a servant of the servants of
God.
He spent the rest of his life after he was ordained as bishop of Hippo in that rather out-of-the-way town.
It was not an important place, though it became important because Augustine lived there. For 35 years
he lived there and carried on a ministry, including preaching great sermons. It has been remarked of his
preaching that he never held back for fear that some of his ideas might go over the heads of some of his
hearers. His sermons fed the soul but also held great ideas that he preached even though many of the
people in his congregation would not have been able to grasp those ideas. He spent much time
counseling. He governed the church as a bishop. He spent much time writing. He said, “If the Lord will,
I will labor in doing that which I think I may, to be of some service even to future generations.” So he
wrote many books.
That was the story of a very significant man. He died in 430, just before the city fell into the hands of the
Vandals, who had come across from Spain into North Africa. As Augustine was dying he had the
penitential psalms of David written out and fixed to the wall of his bedroom, where he could read them
repeatedly so that he could confess his sins and praise God for His mercy to him in the words of the
Psalms.
“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is
set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

Augustine and Pelagian Controversy
This lesson is entitled “God Himself is our Power: Saint Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy.” In
the last lesson I read from a letter that Augustine wrote to a widow named Proba. It was a letter
Augustine wrote in response to some questions she had about prayer. He answered her in considerable
detail, telling her how to pray. I will read another section from that letter now, before I use one of
Augustine’s prayers to begin the lecture. Augustine writes, “This being so, to allow yourself a great deal
of time for prayer is neither wrong nor unprofitable, if you are not hindered by other responsibilities
involving good and necessary activity. But even during these, we ought, as I have said, always to be
praying by our desire. To pray long is not, as some people think, to pray with much speaking. Many
words are one thing. A prolonged disposition to prayer is another.”
With those words in mind about prayer, let us pray to God using one of Augustine’s prayers. “O God,
You are the light of the minds that know You, the life of the souls that love You, and the strength of the
wills that serve You. Help us so to know You that we may truly love You, so to love You that we may fully
serve You, whom to serve is perfect freedom, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
The topic of today’s lesson will finally bring us to a discussion of the doctrine of grace. I have
mentioned a number of times in previous lessons that we do not find much emphasis on the doctrine of
grace prior to Augustine. It is certainly present in the Bible, and particularly in Paul. But as we read the
church fathers, except for some glimmers in Tertullian and some of the others, there is not a strong and
concerted emphasis on grace. F. F. Bruce, in his book The Spreading Flame, says, “The biblical doctrine
of grace seems almost to go underground in the post-apostolic age, to reappear only with Augustine.” I
used to think that statement was an exaggeration, but I have been testing it now for many years.
Unfortunately, I think F. F. Bruce is right. B. B. Warfield says, “There is no other such gulf in the
history of human thought as that which is cleft between the apostolic and the immediately succeeding
ages.” You might think that the message of grace would be so clear to people from the Bible, and
particularly from the writings of Paul, that the early church would pick it up from there and continue to
stress it as Paul did.
Augustine was not the first person in the post-apostolic period to believe in the doctrine of grace. Many
people, those who came to the Lord for salvation, believed in grace. They believed that they were
sinners. They believed that they needed God’s help in order to be saved. And they believed that as God’s
people it was important and necessary for them to live good, holy, and godly lives. B. B. Warfield said,
“No doubt the essence of evangelical religion remained the implicit possession of every truly Christian
heart.” We find it difficult to think of people being saved without some understanding of what it meant
to be saved by grace. But in those early centuries, despite the fact that this was not a prominent theme
among the church fathers, the understanding of salvation by grace was present in the lives and hearts of
people who came to the Lord.
It is a situation similar to that of the doctrine of the Trinity before Nicea and the doctrine of the two
natures of Christ before Chalcedon. People believed in the Trinity, but they did not have the words to
express their faith properly. And they believed in the two natures—Jesus is both God and man—but they
could not find a good way to say that. The church would eventually struggle with those important
doctrines and come up with formulas that could be used to express biblical teaching on the Trinity and
the two natures of Christ. The same thing is going on with the doctrine of grace. People believed in
grace, knew about grace, and they were being saved by grace, but they did not know clearly how to
express their belief in grace. They placed a great deal of emphasis on good works. I would not say they

placed too much emphasis on good works, because it is impossible to place too much emphasis on good
works. In their emphasis on good works, however, there was a kind of imbalance as they failed to
understand fully how to express the doctrine of grace and relate the doctrine to the Christian life.
I can illustrate the situation by quoting one of the church fathers prior to Augustine. He is someone I
highly respect, John Chrysostom, the great preacher of Constantinople. He was the greatest exegete in
the history of the early church. Chrysostom said this about grace: “All depends indeed on God, but not
so that our free will is hindered. God does not anticipate our choice, lest our free will should be
outraged, but when we have chosen, then great is the assistance he brings to us.” That was a common
way to explain grace in the church prior to Augustine. God was described as our helper. We do what we
can, and we can use our free wills to turn to God, and then God turns to us and helps us with our
salvation so that we can become Christians with God’s help. Augustine said no, God is our power, not
our helper. We can do nothing. He must give us everything because we lack everything.
That brings us to Augustine and grace. While Augustine was not the first person in the post-apostolic era
to believe in grace, he was one of the first to clearly teach it. And he learned much of his thinking on
grace from Ambrose. Augustine gave Ambrose credit, and Ambrose deserves our thanks for moving
Augustine further along the line, which Augustine would follow through his career as the doctor, or
theologian, of grace. Like Esther in the Old Testament, Augustine was raised up for such a time as this.
God providentially prepared him and set the stage for Augustine to be able to express in such
memorable ways the biblical teaching of grace.
Augustine’s own experience led him to his ideas. He was a born-again man. After struggling a long
time, not being able to find the answers or peace that he desired in his own life and heart, God finally
miraculously brought him to Himself. To many people, then as well as now, the religious life was the
toilsome search for God. Augustine as a young man certainly experienced that as he went through his
various stages of search for God or for inner peace. As Augustine came to realize, however, God is
really the seeker, rather than the sought. From his own experience, Augustine knew that God takes the
initiative. Augustine would fully have understood Francis Thompson’s story of his flight from the
Hound of Heaven, as Augustine had that same flight, from Tagasta to Carthage to Rome to Milan.
Finally he was captured in the garden in Milan. Augustine’s experience of coming into the Christian
faith, being sought after by God and captured by God, his born-again experience, prepared him in his
own life for his teaching on the doctrine of grace. He was not a man who could see his life as a good one
getting better and better. It was a life in rebellion against God until God found him and turned him
around and made him His own son.
Along with his experience comes Augustine’s study of the Scriptures. What he found in his own heart,
that he was a sinner—as he tells us in his Confessions, from his very first day he was sinning, and as far
as he knew he was sinning before he was born—he found that same idea in the Bible. Then he
discovered that he could not do anything about his sin. First of all, he did not want to, and then he could
not. “Give me chastity,” he said, “But not yet.” He realized that he was captured by that sin, and he
could not break with it. Then he found that idea in the Bible, too. We are unable to change our sinful
condition. Then he found in the Bible what he could not find in the Neo-Platonic philosophers. He found
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Then he eventually found in the Bible that God
saves us by faith, and that faith is itself a gift of God. We believe the good news and accept God’s gift of
salvation, and that belief itself is God’s gift. Then he came to find in the Bible that if God provides the
faith for us to believe, then He had in His great mercy from all eternity planned to give us that faith and
bring us into His family.

Along with his experiences and his lifelong study of the Bible, especially the epistles of Paul, there was
something else important for Augustine to focus on this issue of grace and bring his mind to bear upon
it. It was his clash with Pelagius. Pelagius had come to Rome from the British Isles. We are not sure if
he was from Ireland, Wales, or Britain. We are not sure if he was a layman or a monk. We really do not
know much about him. He has been called a “respectable gentleman.” When he arrived in Rome, he set
out to work with the urban poor and the dockworkers. He wanted to teach them and enable them to live
good Christian lives. Pelagius soon received two great shocks. First, the people who claimed to be
Christians certainly did not behave like Christians. Their low level of Christian life shocked him. They
were church members, but they were not living good Christian lives. Then before he could get over that
problem, he was shocked by something else, which was Augustine’s Confessions. He read such
statements of Augustine as “Give me the grace to do as You command, and then command me to do
what You will.” Pelagius could not believe what he was reading. He thought that if you start telling
people that they cannot do what God commands until God gives them the grace and strength to obey
then people will not obey. It will be an excuse for passivity. People will think that they cannot do
anything without God anyway, so they will not do anything. Pelagius felt that it was a very bad teaching.
He set out to teach a doctrine that would challenge people to live good lives. He would tell them that
they could indeed do it if only they would.
I can summarize Pelagius’ teaching in three points. First of all, he said that everyone born into this world
is born neutral. We are not born sinners. We become sinners because we choose to sin, not because we
are born sinners. Our wills can go either way. We can choose to do good or we can choose to do evil. He
said that practically everybody chooses to do evil, but the reason they do that is that there are so many
bad examples around. We look at other people and see them doing evil so we follow their examples. But
it is not necessary for us to do evil. We actually can do good. Thus the second point is that we have the
possibility within us to do good or bad. He called this free will, and sometimes he called it the grace of
free will. That was partly because Augustine and others criticized him for not talking about grace very
much. So he started talking about grace, but his meaning of grace was quite different from what
Augustine meant by it. Grace, according to Pelagius, was the gift to give us this wonderful free will to
enable us to do whatever we choose to do. There were some other gifts for Pelagius, too, including the
gift of Scripture, with its commands, and some examples of good lives on the parts of saints and holy
people. Those were all helps to enable us to make good choices. Augustine described Pelagius’ view of
God’s grace, if we can call it that, by saying that all of this grace does not enable us to will or act, but it
helps us to the possibility of willing or acting. Adam’s sin did not affect us except by setting a bad
example. Nobody’s sin affects us, for we are free agents, able to choose to do what we want to do.
Pelagius said, therefore, in his Bible teaching in Rome to the people who claimed to be Christian but
lived very worldly lives, goodness is possible. Even perfection is possible. If you choose to do so, you
can live not only a good life, but also a perfect life.
That was the gospel according to Pelagius. F. F. Bruce said that Pelagius was the spiritual father of all
those who profess the popular English creed of justification by decency. That is not only an English
creed but also an American creed and a creed all over the world. Many people believe that if they only
do enough good things then they will get to heaven. So they try to do those good things. I remember
hearing a story about a man preaching to some poor, homeless people, people without much hope in this
world. The preacher used some lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If”: “If you can fill the unforgiving
minute with sixty seconds worth of work, well done, you will be a man my son. And if you can keep
your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you will be a man my son.” And
the poem continues with more suggestions for how we ought to live good lives. That is a Pelagian
message. As the preacher continues to quote the poem, he is finally interrupted by a voice from a man in

the back of the room, “But what if I cannot?” That is the Augustinian response, at least part of it. We
cannot.
Augustine set forth his own teaching, based partly on his own experience, but primarily on his reading
of Scripture. He said we cannot do what Pelagius said we can do. We are both unable and unwilling to
do good. How did we get this way? Adam was created perfect, but Adam sinned and lost the freedom of
his will. Augustine would always say that Adam could choose. In one sense, he had free will. But he
could only choose what he now wanted to do, which was to do evil. So free will is still there in one
sense, but it is a will enslaved to evil. It is not free now to do either good or evil, because it does not
want to do good. Adam was created perfect, but by sinning he lost the freedom of his will to do good,
and that all got passed down to us. As the children of Adam we are born corrupt. We inherit his guilt and
his corruption, which is called original sin.
Augustine is not quite sure how that works. It was possibly through a representative idea, that Adam was
viewed by God as standing for the whole race and so God treats the race as He treated Adam, who
sinned for us. Or it was possibly a kind of realism, in which we are implicitly in Adam as he is the
biological head of the race. He is the root and we are the branch from that root. Augustine sets forth both
views, as Calvin does, and he does decide on one view or the other, although Calvin leans more toward
the federal headship view. In some way, Adam’s sin is passed down to us. So we are not born neutral.
We are born sinners. This world does not start over every time a baby is born. It just goes on. So we are
born sinners and therefore we sin.
That seems like bleak news to this point, but Augustine goes on to say that we do have God’s grace,
therefore God’s grace is necessary. He puts it this way in one of his writings called On Admonition and
Grace, “The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, must be understood as that by which alone we
are delivered from evil, and without which we do absolutely no good things.” So God’s grace is not
there just to help us. It is there to save us. Without God’s grace, we could not believe or do anything
good. We could not take one step toward God.
We get God’s grace by God giving it to us. Augustine never tired of talking about the fact that grace is
gratis, which means grace is “free.” Grace is a gift. It is not by works, so we cannot boast. And God
gives it out of His sheer mercy. It is not because He sees anything in us to deserve it, nor is it because
He foresees anything in us. God does not see that we will believe and then give us His grace in response
to our foreseen faith. Foreknowledge, according to Augustine, is God’s foreknowledge of what He is
going to do, not foreknowledge of what we are going to do. We cannot do anything worthy of merit
anyway, so we are not going to do anything. Augustine further says that God does not give this grace to
everybody. He gives it to some people and does not give it to others. We do not know why He only
gives it to some and not to others. One of the most incisive, clear, short statements of this comes from
the book Descent of the Dove, by Charles Williams, who wrote, “God, as it were, determined and
predestinated Himself to do good in certain lives. This is His grace. And what of the lives in which He
does not determine and predestinate Himself to do good? Well, He does not. Those lives then are lost?
Well, yes. God saves whom He chooses and the rest are lost.” Then Williams quotes a statement from
Augustine: “[God’s] equity, God’s justice, is so secret that it is beyond the reach of all human
understanding.” God’s wisdom, equity, justice, and acts, are all so secret that they are beyond the reach
of all human understanding. Then Charles Williams adds, “It is of the highest importance to realize that
in that sentence Augustine, from the bottom of his heart, meant ‘equity,’ ‘justice,’ and he meant ‘beyond
human understanding.’”

Does all of this mean that, since God gives us the gift of grace and predestines those who receive it by
faith, we can then do whatever we want to do? That was the argument of Pelagius. He said such ideas
would be the end of exhortation to Christian living, to godliness. If God does it all, then there is no point
in us trying to do anything. Augustine said no, because Christian conduct is rooted in a lifelong response
of love for God and obedience to His will as thanksgiving and gratitude for His grace. There is growth in
grace. It is often slow, with many painful setbacks. But a Christian grows in grace, and must grow in
grace. A true Christian will grow in grace.
Pelagius had the view that the church should be like a big monastery, full of super-Christians, all of
whom are living perfect or almost perfect lives. If we only chose to do that, then we could. Augustine
said no, the church is more like a hospital. All of us are sick, and some of us are seriously sick and
injured, but we are all getting better, slowly, even painfully. Complete perfection will come only in
heaven.
The church responded to Augustine’s teaching. Remember, this kind of teaching had not been heard
before, at least, not the way Augustine set it forth with the power and clarity that he expressed in his
writings and sermons on grace. Officially, the church accepted it, at least in several church councils,
including the Synod of Carthage in North Africa in 418. That council condemned Pelagianism. The third
ecumenical council in Ephesus in 431, which was centered on the Christological debates, condemned a
variety of Pelagianism that was relevant to that council, because it was particularly centered in the East.
Despite these early official stamps of approval for Augustine’s teaching, there was soon after a
significant revolt against what he was saying. It even started in his lifetime. The latter part of his life was
taken up with a very bitter struggle to some opponents to his doctrine of grace. The revolt came
primarily from the monasteries for two reasons. One line of opposition came from traditional theology.
Augustine’s teaching seemed new, because people were not used to hearing it. Ambrose was teaching it,
but he was one among many. John Chrysostom was not teaching it, and most of the church fathers did
not teach it, at least not very consistently or clearly. So it seemed like something that was different and
new, and the traditional church was not ready to embrace something so new. It was in the context of this
controversy that we have the famous statement by Vincent of Lerins, in Gaul: “Catholic doctrine is what
is taught always, and everywhere, and by everybody.” Augustine’s doctrine of grace did not seem to fit
those categories. Actually, not much else did either, but that did not seem to bother Vincent too much.
But the fact that Augustine’s teaching came to the church seeming like something new was startling, and
it was a problem. People had to come to realize that the teaching was actually something old. The church
had merely lost sight of it for a while, as the church can in various places in church history. We will see
the same thing during the time of the Reformation. They said that the Catholic Church had the old faith
and the Protestant church had some kind of new faith. That is why Bullinger in Zurich wrote a book
called The Old Faith, in which he traced Protestantism back to Genesis 3:15 in the Garden of Eden, and
he said that Adam and Eve were the first Protestants. So the same problem faced by the Reformers had
been faced in the aftermath of the writings of Augustine on grace.
There was another part of the revolt in the monasteries, which was from ascetic Catholicism. After all,
the people in the monasteries were there because they thought that by being there they could earn credit
toward their salvation. That salvation became more prevalent as time went on, especially during the
medieval period, but it was already present in the time of Augustine. But Augustine’s teaching destroyed
the meritorious nature of good works. Those in the monasteries had to ask, if Augustine was right, why
were they living that way in order to earn God’s favor and blessing? That was hard for the monks to
take. Some of Augustine’s most bitter opponents are from the monasteries. They objected to Augustine’s
teaching on grace.

We can glance ahead to grace after Augustine. I mentioned that before Augustine there was some
teaching on grace, but not very much clear expression of the doctrine of grace. Then when Augustine
began teaching, his name became closely connected with the doctrine of grace. The church after
Augustine did approve Augustinianism in the councils held at Carthage and Ephesus. The monasteries
revolted and then the church struggled for a long time over the issue. Then in a very important council,
the Synod of Orange, in 529, 100 years after Augustine’s death, Augustinianism was embraced, almost,
in the Western church. But it was not fully embraced. The Synod of Orange left the door open for some
kind of compromise. That compromise is what we call semi-Pelagianism, or perhaps we should call it
semi-Augustinianism, but it is semi-something. It did not advocate either pure Pelagianism or pure
Augustinianism. I will cover that in more detail in a later lesson. There would be some outstanding
voices raised in opposition to semi-Pelagianism, such as Gottschalck and Thomas Bradwardine, but not
many. Most of the flow of theology after the Council of Orange, until the Reformation, would be a
compromise between Pelagianism and Augustinianism. The teaching was that God saves us, but He does
not do it without our help. It is what I call “percentage theology.” You do your part and God does His.
He may do 99%, but if you do not do your 1% you will be lost. There were different ways the medieval
church tried to put together the percentages. I will talk more about that as our course moves on.
The Reformation was a great revival of Augustinianism. Luther’s Bondage of the Will draws heavily on
Augustine. Calvin’s Institutes relies heavily on Augustine. At one point Calvin exalted, “Augustine is
totally ours.” He was quoting Augustine so much that he felt that Augustine was on the side of the
Protestants. On the issue of grace he was. But there is another side to Augustine that I will talk about in
the next lecture, regarding his doctrine of the church, and there it is not so clear that Augustine was on
the Protestant side. That is why B. B. Warfield said the Reformation is really Augustine versus
Augustine, the Catholic Augustine versus the Protestant Augustine.
After the Reformation there is a slow but steady slide away from Augustinianism into the confusion of
modern Christianity, much of which is either Pelagian, semi-Pelagian, or at least semi-Augustinian.
Thank God, however, that the message of grace is still heard. And we pray that there might be in our
time a great revival of the biblical doctrine of grace so that people far and wide will hear it. “The grass
withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
Upon hearing all of this, many people often wonder how people in the early church could become
Christians without understanding the doctrine of grace. We are not saved by being able to quote the
catechism. We are saved by God’s grace. Our understanding of God’s grace, and even Augustine’s
understanding of God’s grace, is not complete and perfect. So people can be saved with some very
wrong ideas. There are some basic ideas that have to be understood. There is a God. I am a sinner. And
God is a Savior. God has sent Christ as a Redeemer for me. At least that much can be understood. But a
person can be saved upon hearing and believing just that small summary of the Gospel, and then spend
the rest of his or her life understanding what that means.
The same thing is true for Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, or anybody today. If people respond to that
much of the Gospel, then there is salvation, regardless of the false teaching that we hear in different
churches. The Lord can work in very faulty and imperfect situations, with very limited understandings.
When I say that nobody was teaching about grace before Augustine, I do not want you to think that
nobody was saved for 300 years. B. B. Warfield has said that we can piece together a mosaic of different
teachings from the church fathers, pulling out a little from here or there and ignoring some other things,
and from that we can get to the truth. But with Augustine it comes together in one person at one time
with great clarity. As I said earlier, people in the first years of the church believed in the deity of Jesus,

and they also believed that there was only one God. So they were trinitarian before the word was
invented. They believed that the Holy Spirit was God, but they did not know how to say such things or
express them clearly. They had never heard of homoousios, but they could still believe in a simple way.
We need to have a view in church history that God works in very imperfect situations. At the same time
we should give God great thanks and praise for the accomplishments that came to help us know more
and see more deeply into the teachings of the Scripture.

Augustine’s Theology of History
This lesson is entitled “The City of God, Saint Augustine’s Theology of History.” I have used several
prayers of Saint Augustine, and I have been reading some excerpts from a letter that Augustine wrote to
a widow who asked him how to pray. One thing that Augustine told her was this: “We are to avoid much
speaking in prayers, but not much praying. Much speaking in prayer is to do what we have to do using
superfluous words. Much praying is having our hearts pulsing with prolonged and reverent fervor
directed toward the one to whom we are praying. Most of the time this will consist more in sighing than
in speaking, more in tears than in words. God has placed our tears in His sight, and our sighs are not
hidden from Him who made all things through His Word and has no need of human words. But still we
pray, using human words, even though those words must fall far short of what is in our hearts.”
Let us pray today using a prayer, again, from Saint Augustine. “Blessed are all Your saints, O God and
King, who have traveled over the tempestuous sea of this life and have made the harbor of peace and
felicity. Watch over us who are still on our dangerous voyage, and remember those who lie exposed to
the rough storms of trouble and temptations. Frail is our vessel, and the ocean is wide. But as in Your
mercy You have set our course, so steer the vessel of our life towards the everlasting shore of peace, and
bring us at lengths to the quiet haven of our heart’s desire, where You, O God, are blessed and live and
reign forever. Amen.”
There were three great events in Saint Augustine’s life. Each of those in God’s providence led to his
focusing on an issue of theology. The first was his struggle with the Donatists. That had happened long
before Augustine was even born, but the continuation of that struggle in North Africa took his attention
to the doctrine of the church. Then his struggle with Pelagius and the Pelagians caused him to focus
many years on the study of the doctrine of grace, which I covered in the previous lesson. Augustine also
lived in the time of the fall of Rome. That great event in history, one of the greatest events in western
history, caused him to reflect very much on the doctrine of providence and on the meaning of history.
The occasion for Augustine writing one of his greatest books, certainly one of the biggest books he
wrote, The City of God, was the fall of Rome. Rome was sacked, conquered, and partly destroyed by
Barbarian forces in 410. That created shock all over the empire. Rome was the “Eternal City” and was
going to be there forever as far as anyone at the time knew. But then it fell. Even over in Bethlehem in
his monastery, Jerome wrote, “The whole world perished in one city.” It is difficult for us to imagine the
shock that came to the Roman world as Rome began to totter and then fall. We always say that Rome
was not built in a day, and neither did it fall in a day. There is not one date that we can assign to the fall
of Rome. The year 410 is an important step along the way to the collapse of the Roman Empire, because
the city was conquered by Alaric and his western Gothic army on that occasion. But there were many
stages in the fall of Rome. The last western emperor died in 476, so we can think of Rome as falling
through the fifth century, and particularly between 410 and 476.
Saint Augustine died between those two dates, in 430. When Augustine died, while living in North
Africa, the Barbarians were moving down into North Africa. They had moved through Spain, across
Gibraltar, and then began to siege the cities of North Africa. Soldiers of the Barbarians were nearby
even as Augustine lay dying. He realized the trouble and the problems. At that moment the Roman
general who was head of the Roman armies in North Africa, a man named Boniface, thought it was a
good time for him to retire. He went into a monastery to seek the salvation of his soul. Augustine heard
of that and said, “Not now.” He said it was not a good time for a general to become a monk. He said

they needed all the soldiers they could get and all the leadership they had in order to withstand the
onslaught of the Barbarians.
As Augustine lived his latter years in that very changing world and everything seemed to be in tumult,
he began to write his big book in order to understand what was happening and to explain it to people,
both pagans and Christians. Augustine spent 12 years working on The City of God. The Scripture text
that was in Augustine’s mind as he titled his book was from Psalm 46. Psalm 46:4 says, “There is a river
whose streams make glad the city of God.” Depending on the translated edition you find, the book is
over 1000 pages. I had been lecturing on Augustine and The City of God for many years before I
finished the book. I would read parts of it and then lecture about it. I finally decided it was not good for
me to lecture about a book I had not really read, at least not all the way through. Some years ago I made
a definite plan to read the whole book, and I succeeded. Now I can say I have read it. As I try to describe
it to you in this lecture, I can do so with a little more confidence than I could earlier.
When Augustine gets to the end of the book, he writes, “Now as I think I have discharged my debt with
the completion by God’s help of this huge work, it may be too much for some and too little for others.
Of both these groups I ask forgiveness. But of those for whom it is enough, I make this request, that they
do not thank me, but join with me in rendering thanks to God. Amen. Amen.” As I talk about The City of
God today, I want to join in with Augustine in rendering thanks to God, because that is what he asks us
to do in our response to his book.
It is a great book, not only in size, but also in importance. I could spend much time, although I am not
going to do so, reading statements that people have made about The City of God. I will quote George
Grant, a columnist from “World” magazine, who closed his review of the book by saying, “This rather
ancient tome is the most up-to-date book I have read in recent memory.” So we are dealing not only a
big book, and an important book, but also an up-to-date book.
I will try to describe for you what is in the book. Augustine lived at a momentous point in history.
Things were changing quickly. Augustine knew of several ways people had of trying to make sense of
all of the changes that were part of the impending collapse of Rome. There were pagans still around.
Peter Brown has called the time a “post-pagan period.” We now live in a post-Christian period, but that
was a post-pagan period. But that did not mean that there were no pagans. During Augustine’s lifetime
there was a neo-paganism revival of paganism. Some people wanted to go back to the older gods and
goddesses of Greece and Rome. As the pagans viewed Rome and its impending collapse, they blamed
Christianity. After all, Rome in its heyday, when it was strong, had been devoted to the pagan deities.
Having forsaken those deities and turning to Christianity, the pagans said that is was the vengeance of
the gods of Rome, who felt slighted and left out, which was creating the turmoil in the empire. That was
one view. There were Christians who took the opposite view. They thought that Rome was still too
pagan, too wicked, and too worldly. In their view, since Rome still tolerated paganism, it was the
vengeance of the Christian God, who was punishing the halfway-Christian city and empire, which was
the explanation of the turmoil. In between, there were many people who were just confused and in
despair over what was happening.
Augustine in The City of God set out to answer some of those questions. He wanted to counter the
criticisms of the pagans, who said that Rome was strong and blessed in its pagan day and then became
weak and demoralized in its Christian phase. At the same time, Augustine attempted to discredit the
“Rome-theology” of people like Eusebius of Caesarea, who had identified the Roman Empire, after
Constantine had converted to Christianity, with the kingdom of God. Those two ideas were held very
close together in his official theology. Popular expressions of that idea said that Rome was God’s city

and He would take care of it. But when He did not, apparently, that official theology was gravely
shaken. If it was God’s city and it was falling to Barbarians, where was God in it all? So Augustine set
out to defend what he calls “the glorious city of God” against those “who prefer their own gods to the
Founder of that city.”
Augustine organized his book in a number of different books within the whole book. The first 10 books
can be described as apologetic and polemic. He replies to the polytheist who wanted to return to the
worship of many gods. He pointed out in great detail that those pagan gods did not protect Rome. Rome
had many crises, catastrophes, and disasters during its pagan period. Not only that, but the pagan gods
debased the Romans. He described the lifestyle of pagan Rome, with its excesses, sins, lusts, and evil.
Henry Chadwick, in his book on Augustine, said that in that section of The City of God there is
“exhausting erudition on the most trivial aspects of pagan culture.” In chapter after chapter, and page
after page, Augustine explained exactly what the pagans believed, how they lived, and what they
thought. One of the greatest sources for an understanding of Roman paganism comes from the pages of
The City of God. He finishes the section by saying that, not only were the pagan gods ineffective, but
those gods did not even exist. So paganism was equal to atheism. At one time pagans criticized
Christians for being atheist. Now Augustine criticized the pagans for being atheist because they
worshiped figments of their own imagination.
There was another religious movement. It was one that Augustine was much enamored with for a time,
neo-Platonic philosophy. The neo-Platonists were able to move away from the concrete ties to paganism
of Greece and Rome to a spiritualized pantheon, with virtues and spiritual ideals as being that which we
look to for guidance in our life rather than actual gods and goddesses. For a number of pages Augustine
said such a philosophy was insufficient for eternal life. His main criticism of neo-Platonic philosophy
was that, though it saw the goal much more clearly than other religious constructs, it did not have a way
of getting to the goal, because it did not know anything about the incarnation.
There is another theme that is present in the first 10 books. Many Christians, following the Eusebian
way of looking at things, believed that since Rome was Christian, God would protect it and bless it.
Augustine takes a great deal of pain to disabuse people of that notion. Nowhere does God promise to
safeguard the possessions and the peace, or even the lives, of Christians. One of the most impressive
repudiations of a “health and wealth” gospel is found in The City of God, and it is very relevant to our
modern world. Augustine breaks the link between providence and prosperity. Those two ideas cannot be
held together, as many people did back then and some people do today. The thinking is that when things
go well, God is with us, and when things go badly, God has abandoned us. Augustine says repeatedly
that such thinking is not right, not biblical.
The next large section of The City of God begins in book 11. It is the theological section in which
Augustine sets forth his interpretation of history. He does so by presenting a huge account of the flow of
salvation history from the creation of the world to the final resurrection. In the process of doing that,
Augustine deals with much history. History is linear. There is a beginning. There are certain points
along the way. And there is an end to human history. He repudiates the Greek cyclical idea of history,
that history simply repeats itself and is without a true beginning or end. For Augustine, history is also
very real. Much of the book is history. Augustine felt it is very important for us to know history, both
biblical and secular history, in order to understand something of how to interpret history.
As he begins to interpret history, or present his theology or philosophy of history, he sets it up by saying
there are two cities in the flow of history, both in the Bible and outside of the Bible. He begins by
writing about the origin of those two cities. One is the city of God, and the other is the city of this world,

or an earthly city. To understand him, however, we must not think of a city, like Rome or some other
actual city. Augustine is using the term “city” in a figurative, spiritual sense, which refers to two
allegiances, or two loves—the love of God and the love of self. The two loves, or two allegiances, are
what produce the two cities. Augustine goes all the way back to the fall of the angels to show how, even
before the creation of Adam and Eve, there are two cities. There are the angels who persist in their love
for God. And there are those angels who fall away from God because of their self-love. Those same two
cities find earthly expression in Cain and Abel—love for God and love for self. Then throughout the
flow of history we see that same division between the city of God and the city of this world.
As Augustine was writing The City of God, he was also battling the Pelagians. He was very aware that
God created the two cities by His own predestinating grace. He does not stress that theme in this work. It
is not because it is unimportant to Augustine, but in The City of God he is stressing the fact that to
believe in grace and to believe in election does not mean that we should not urge people to faith and love
for God.
The members of the city of God maintain their identity, but not by withdrawing from the world and
living some kind of separate life. The city of God exists wherever there are people who love God. And
those people are everywhere in the world as resident aliens. In the review of The City of God by George
Grant, he writes, “According to Augustine, cultures are not reflections of a people’s race, ethnicity,
folklore, politics, language, or heritage. Rather, cultures are an outworking of a people’s creed. In other
words, culture is the temporal manifestation of a people’s faith. If a culture begins to change, it is not
because of fads, fashions, or the passing of time. It is because of a shift in worldview, a change in faith.”
As Augustine viewed it, what produces the division in the world, what creates culture wars, is a
commitment to a faith, to a belief. Augustine was fighting a culture war in his time, with the culture of
the Christian faith being opposed by the culture of this world.
As the two cities began and developed and progressed through human history, they found partial, visible
expression in the empire and in the church. But at that point, Augustine’s thought becomes very
complex. It is not always easy to grasp what Augustine is saying, but I will attempt to give you some
ways of thinking about it. The first issue he deals with is how we should view the state. First of all,
Augustine says, Rome is not the source of all evil. We should not view the state as the totality of evil, as
the Donatists were attempting to do. Rome was always evil to the Donatists, because Rome was
supporting the Catholic Church against the Donatist church. That was a “Christ against culture” idea that
the Donatists practiced. Their concept was that the state was satanic. Evil would come from the state that
would persecute and oppress the true church. Augustine makes it clear that we should not view the state
as the source of all evil.
Yet neither should we view the state as Eusebius of Caesarea did as God’s chosen instrument of
salvation, or the source of all good. If the Donatists had a satanic view of the state, Eusebius had a
messianic view of the state. That led to a “Christ of culture” approach that Augustine also rejects. For
Augustine, the state is the creation and instrument of God. So it could be and had been the source of
much good. Augustine recognized that Christianity had greatly profited from the Roman state. The
conversion of Constantine and all that went with it led to great blessing and profit for the church.
Because of sin, however, the state can degenerate, and often does degenerate, into a city of this world. It
can be a city that aims at dominion and holds nations in enslavement.
Augustine made some very clear criticisms of Rome, such as the lack of justice. He wrote, “If justice be
absent, what is a kingdom but a crowd of gangsters.” The other major criticism that Augustine leveled
against Rome, and which is always a potential criticism of any state, was a lack of compassion.

Augustine quoted the writer, Sallust, saying Roman society was characterized by “private affluence and
public squalor.” The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. Augustine saw that as
something seriously wrong with the state. Augustine thus offers a nuanced view of the state. It is neither
altogether good, nor altogether bad. It could be a good instrument that God uses. And God does even use
a wicked state as His instrument. But the state, because of the fallen sinful people who are in it, can
easily become a crowd of gangsters.
For Augustine, the church is the primary manifestation of the city of God on earth. It is not the only
manifestation. The Christian family is also a manifestation of the city of God on earth. And every
individual Christian is a manifestation of the city of God on earth. But Augustine could never conceive
of Christianity as being individual Christians. He wrote that one cannot have God as Father without
having the church as mother. He viewed the church as the people of God on earth. It is important to
notice this point, because Augustine does not completely equate the visible church with the city of God.
In later medieval theology that equation would be made. Roman Catholic theology would view the
church as the city of God. Augustine did not view the city of God as being identical with the church. He
saw that the city of this world is still at work within the church. So the church has some mingling of
good and evil, as the state does.
There are visible and invisible aspects to the church. Augustine was one of the fist people in church
history to use those ideas. There is the visible church, the outward church, the church we see. And there
is the invisible Church, known only to God, the church of the elect. Many times in The City of God
Augustine makes the point that some people who are united with the church, in participation in the
sacraments, are not true members of the church. He tells us that out in the world there are some
predestined friends among our most open enemies. Augustine said that we ought to remember that when
we look out on the world and see our enemies, some of them are our friends. They do not know it yet.
And we do not know it yet. But some day they will be with us in the church and with us forever in
heaven. So it is as important how we treat people in the world as how we treat people in the church.
Augustine thought of the world in this way: “There are wolves within, and there are sheep without.”
There is another point that Augustine makes about the visible church. He writes about the diversity of
the visible church. He makes a remarkable statement in The City of God. “This heavenly city, then,
while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all
languages. It is so far from rescinding and abolishing these diversities that it even preserves and adopts
them, so long only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is thus introduced.”
If we had taken hold of that sentence in the history of the church, particularly in the missionary history
of the church, we would have saved ourselves from many problems and embarrassments as missionaries
tried to impose foreign culture on newly evangelized peoples and suppress the culture of those people.
Augustine, on the other hand, celebrates the diversity that he finds in the church. It is “a society of
pilgrims of all languages,” preserving and even adopting those diversities.
As Augustine looks at the two cities, which began in the two loves and find partial but imperfect visible
manifestations in the state and in the church, he then comes to the outcome and goals of the two cities.
Christ is ruling now, in the world, but He is ruling in a special sense in the church. Augustine moved
into what we sometimes call a “realized” eschatology, abandoning the chiliasm or “millennialism” of
some of the church fathers prior to him, which said that Christ would return to set up His kingdom on
this earth and rule for 1000 years. Augustine, in The City of God, argues against that 1000 year reign of
Christ to come. While Christ is reigning over everything now, Augustine was thinking of His reign in a
special sense. The special reign of Christ, which might be called His “millennial” reign, is not taking
place in the state, or even in the Christian society, but in the church. He writes, “We are like pilgrims on

the way to our fatherland. Christ is our king, and there are two goods that are set before us, the good
which is to be used and the good which is to be enjoyed.” That is a rather famous distinction that
Augustine made. It may perplex us at first. That which is to be used is always a lesser good, such as
creation, other people, or the blessings of this life. Augustine is reserving only one thing as that which is
to be enjoyed, and that is God. We use every legitimate thing that God gives us, and so we can
appreciate the beauty and usefulness of all created things. But those are always lesser things, to be used
for our spiritual advancement and for the blessing of the world. They are not things to be enjoyed for
their own sake. In Augustine’s way of thinking, we enjoy God only. Man’s chief end is to glorify God
and to enjoy Him forever. Augustine did not write that, of course, but he would have said “Amen” to
that point from the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
As we move through this world the two cities are interwoven and intermixed, and they await separation
at the last judgment. Augustine warns us against trying to do that ahead of time. We cannot separate the
wheat and the tares, as the Donatists believed they could. The Donatists believed they could have a pure
church. They could get all of the worldly people out of it and have a pure church. Augustine said that
they would not attain a pure church. They would perhaps have a church of sinners who are sinning
different sins. Most of us are sinning, but in some cases the same sins. The fiction of a pure church that
the Donatists set up was indeed that—only a fiction. We await the judgment, and then the perfect city of
God in heaven will come forth.
Before I comment briefly on some other aspects of the book, let me close this section with a sentence
from a modern historian. “Augustine does achieve a vision, which carried the church through the next
great crisis of its history. Having won the Roman Empire, it had to find a way of surviving its collapse.
He directed people to a city which could not be shaken when Rome fell. That is the heart and soul of this
great book.”
I want to say something else about The City of God. The translator of my particular edition has written,
“The City of God is as notable for its delightful digressions as for its central theme.” I have provided a
“central theme” approach. But if you read the book, you might spend 100 pages without reading
anything about the city of God or the city of this world. Augustine often moves on to something else.
One never quite knows what is coming next. It has the fascination of a book about everything. Let me
give you a few examples to whet your appetite.
One example that may amaze you is Augustine’s allegorical use of numbers, which can get wild.
Augustine would take a biblical number and begin to expound it—dividing it, adding it, and coming up
with all kinds of lists and speculations as to the significance of that number. Whenever Augustine saw a
number he got excited, and he would do his best to explain the meaning of that number, which was
almost never what it really meant. You can read in book 15, section 20, about Augustine’s view of the
inner meaning of the 153 fishes in the last chapter of Saint John. You will not be disappointed in his
imagination.
You can read book 19, section 7, for a moving statement about a man and his dog. Augustine describes
what a dog means to a man. He says that sometimes it is better to have a dog with you than another
person. It is a tribute to dogs.
Augustine speculates on the immortal flesh of a peacock. He is dealing with the question of how a
human can go to hell and burn forever without being consumed. His answer is to look to the peacock,
which after it dies, its flesh never disintegrates. That is not true, of course, but that was Augustine’s
view. Someone had told him that, and he thought it was right. He not only thought it was right, but he

did an experiment on a peacock. In his experiment, he did not notice the flesh of the dead peacock
disintegrating. It got tough and hard, but it was still there after a long time.
Augustine includes reflections on childhood. He said childhood is the worst time in life. He said if
anybody had a choice of a time in life to go back and pick one’s life again, nobody would start over as a
child. After all, children have to go to school, and teachers give them exams and discipline them.
Augustine said that all children are born into the world crying because they know what is coming.
According to Augustine, the only person who was not born crying was Zoroaster. Supposedly, he smiled
when he came into the world, but he turned out to be a heretic.
Augustine also said that the age of our resurrection bodies will be 30 years old, for all of us. That is
because that was the age of Christ at His resurrection. And beside that, after 30, a man begins to go
downhill. That particular point was discouraging to me, because I have long since gone downhill.
Augustine also describes some of the wonders of nature. Some of the most beautiful and poetic passages
of The City of God have to do with Augustine reveling in nature. He looks at the clouds. He looks at the
sea. Augustine loved the sea. He could see the Mediterranean from his study. He was fascinated by the
different tones of the colors of the sea. He particularly liked to watch the sea when there was a storm at
sea, because he was not out there. He was safe in his study. And he rejoiced in the beauty of God’s
creation. He said, “With such wonderful consolations in this world to all of us of the city of God and the
city of this world, what will the rewards of the blessed be?” If this world is so full of gifts like the beauty
of nature, what will heaven be like? “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will
stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

The Council of Chalcedon
This lesson is the last one in this section of the course. The title is “Two Whole, Perfect, and Distinct
Natures—the Council of Chalcedon.” Before I introduce what this lesson will cover, let us join in prayer
using an ancient collect, or prayer, from the fifth century about the time of the Council of Chalcedon.
“Bless all who worship Thee, from the rising of the sun, unto the going down of the same. Of Thy
goodness, give us. With Thy love, inspire us. By Thy Spirit, guide us. By Thy power, protect us. In Thy
mercy, receive us now and always. Amen.”
I have spent some time talking about Saint Augustine. While Augustine was doing battle with the
Donatists, Pelagians, and the pagans, there was another issue that was troubling the church. It was
another theological battle. Augustine lived and worked in the West. This other theological problem
affected both the East and the West, but particularly the East. The West was able to settle it at the
Council of Chalcedon, but the issue lived on in the East, and it even continues to be a matter of
discussion and controversy in certain parts of the church in the East in our present day. This lesson is
going to be a roadmap to help us get through the theological thicket of Christology in the fourth and fifth
centuries. This is not an easy topic, but I will attempt to say some things that will help us make our way
through this history.
When the apostolic fathers talked about Christ, they were concerned to assert that He was God, even
though before the Council of Nicea the language was not established for them to know exactly how to
say it. On the other hand, and even more so at first, they were very concerned to say that He was a real
person. The earliest heresy related to the person of Christ was that of the Gnostics, what is known as
Doceticism. This heresy said that the real Christ could not come into contact or into union with a
material body. Their fear was that Christ would be contaminated by contact with a body that was
material. Even though it was not necessarily a sinful body, it was still something that some people could
not conceive. So the apostolic fathers continually said, in opposition to Gnosticism and Doceticism, that
Christ had a real body, just like us.
Then came the Council of Nicea, in the early fourth century, which was in opposition to those who said
that Jesus Christ is similar to the Father but not at the same level as the Father. This brought forth the
great word, homoousios, which clarified that the Son was of the same substance as the Father. In the
aftermath of that council, however, another question arose. If Jesus is a real person, and if He really is
God, then how do the manhood and the deity unite in the one person of Jesus of Nazareth? That debate
lasted for several centuries. It is called the “two natures” debate.
One of the early attempts to answer the question came from a church leader named Apollinaris, whose
teaching we call Apollinarianism. He was from the city of Laodicea in Asia. As an Apollinaris thought
about this issue, he concluded that if there are two perfect entities—perfect deity and perfect humanity—
they cannot combine. There cannot be two whole perfect things coming together in any way. Apollinaris
did not find that in the Bible, but it was a philosophical concept that guided his thought. With that in
mind, then, he concluded that Christ’s human side must have lacked something, a place for the divine to
fit in. The more he thought about it, he decided that while Christ had a human body, the man Jesus did
not have a human soul. The human soul of the man Jesus was missing, but it was filled by the divine
Christ, the second person of the Trinity. One of the best ways to illustrate the teaching of Apollinaris is
that of slipping a letter into an envelope. The letter represents the divine person of Christ, and the

envelope represents the human body of Jesus. So the divine is placed into the human and serves as the
soul, or the rational part of the human.
For some time, people thought that might be an acceptable way to explain the issue. But it was not too
long before others pointed out that there are serious problems with that teaching. It would mean, if you
follow Apollinaris, that Christ is not a complete human being like us, but only a partial human being of
some sort, with a divine part that fills up what is lacking in the human part. Jesus would then be a kind
of God enfleshed. To many people that seemed too much like the old Docetic heresy. Such a teaching
does not present a real person but merely a divine person who has taken on a human body for a
particular use.
The teaching of Apollinaris was attacked by the very determined group of theologians known as the
Cappadocian fathers, whom I talked about earlier. They saw that his teaching would lead the church into
some very serious problems. Gregory of Nazianzus said, “What was not assumed was not healed.” In
other words, if Christ did not take our human flesh, our human body, our humanity in its totality in His
incarnation, then He did not provide salvation for whatever He did not assume. He has to be fully human
in order to be our savior. It was similar to when Athanasius had said that Jesus had to be fully God to be
our savior.
In the ecumenical council that met at Constantinople in 381, the second ecumenical council, the church
condemned Apollinarianism and said that Jesus Christ is truly human, not just partly human. That
stopped that heresy, or at least it answered that heresy. But it did not answer the question of how the
true, full humanity of Jesus united with His true, full divinity.
Before I continue with how that question was eventually answered, let me make one important point.
What was happening in this Christological debate was not pure theology. There was much personal
rivalry and jealousy between church leaders. And there was also rivalry between cities. In particular, the
cities of Alexandria, in Egypt, and Antioch, in Syria, and later Constantinople, were in rivalry with one
another. Alexandria and Antioch were very bitter rivals. Alexandria espoused the spiritual interpretation
of the Bible, while Antioch taught the literal interpretation of the Bible. Alexandria stressed the divine
side of Christ, His divinity, while Antioch stressed the human side of Christ, His humanity. Those two
cities were quite different in how they thought of the Bible and how to interpret it and how much
emphasis they would place in their teaching of the person of Christ.
As this rivalry was going on another city became very prominent. Just five years after the Council of
Nicea, Constantine founded his new capital of Constantinople. The Council of Nicea had established an
understanding of precedence of the churches. The church of Rome was to be viewed as number one. The
church of Alexandria was number two. And the church of Antioch was number three. Then there were
other churches that were thought of as important as well. But it was not long before Constantinople had
pushed ahead of Alexandria and became number two. So you can see why rivalry existed between those
cities. Soon the rivalry between Alexandria and Constantinople expressed itself in a personal rivalry
between two church leaders, one from each city.
Nestorius was bishop of Constantinople. He had been trained in the Antiochene tradition, and he very
much insisted on the full integrity of Christ’s human nature. As Nestorius thought of the question of the
two natures of Christ, he was particularly disturbed by an expression that was used in Alexandria. The
expression was theotokos, which was a word used about Mary that meant “bearer of God” or “mother of
God.” Alexandria insisted on using this phrase, not to elevate Mary, but to make very clear that the

person who was born of Mary was indeed God. So the Alexandrians saw it as an orthodox statement that
insisted on the full deity of Christ as set forth in the Council of Nicea.
Nestorius was afraid that such an expression would confuse people’s understanding of Christology. He
said that if you are going to use the expression theotokos then you also need to use anthropostokos,
which means “bearer of man.” He said that it would be best to avoid both expressions and simply speak
of Mary as christostokos, “bearer of Christ.” The person who was born of Mary was Christ, who is both
God and man. Nestorius also said that in order to be safe, it would be wise not to use the word “union.”
He said that the idea of “union” of the human and the divine might promote an improper understanding
of how the human and divine natures of Christ are related in His person. He was concerned that there not
be a mingling or confusion of the human and the divine. When speaking of the divinity and manhood in
Christ, he said that it would be better to use a word such as “conjunction.” So, one would say that the
human and the divine “conjoin” in Christ, rather than unite.
Nestorius was opposed in all of this by Cyril, who was the bishop of Alexandria. A great battle ensued
between Nestorius, the bishop of Constantinople, and Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. It is not very
edifying to read about this point in church history. The debate on the two natures is probably one of the
most bitter in all of the history of the church. Cyril certainly did not help matters. Cyril was an
intelligent and acute theologian. He was more often right than wrong. But he was a stubborn and
belligerent type of church leader. It is difficult to admire or like Cyril because of his personality, but one
may admire his intellect and intelligent writing.
Cyril accused Nestorius of so stressing the independence of the two natures that he was in effect
teaching a doctrine of two sons. If Nestorius felt that the Alexandrians were pressing the two natures
together so much that they destroyed any distinction between them, then the Alexandrians felt that the
Nestorians were pushing the two natures apart in such an extreme way that the result was two sons. One
illustration that has been used of Nestorianism in order to understand what it stood for is that of oil and
water. The two substances may be put together, but they never really mix. The oil is always there and
the water is always there, but they do not mix. Even if they are in the same container, the oil and water
never mix.
Cyril was able to win the battle with Nestorius. The Council of Ephesus in 431, which also condemned
Pelagianism, condemned Nestorianism and asserted that Jesus Christ is one person, not two. That was
the right decision, but it was a rather disgraceful affair. The Council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical
council, was a kind of farce. The membership of the council was stacked on one side, against the
Nestorians. The Nestorians actually arrived a bit late and Cyril had actually started the council and
condemned them before they even arrived. There was not a real discussion of the issues.
At this point, let me ask and answer a few questions. First, was Nestorius a Nestorian? It might seem
that it is obvious that he was. But church historians since his time who have studied the period have felt
that Nestorius was probably greatly misunderstood. He was trying to avoid an error, and his enemies
pressed his views to radical conclusions. Paul Tillich wrote, “If we say that Nestorius became a heretic,
we could say that he was the most innocent of all heretics. Actually he was a victim of the struggle
between Byzantium [or Constantinople] and Alexandria.” John Young wrote, “Nestorius himself
vigorously denied that he was a Nestorian, as his enemies described Nestorianism. He died a man
misunderstood by the Western church, rejected by the Eastern church, and unjustly condemned by the
politics of both.” Most people now think that Nestorius was indeed misunderstood and that his teaching
can be judged as orthodox by the standards of Chalcedon. If that is true, however, and while giving him
the benefit of the doubt that his intentions were good in trying to protect the integrity of the two natures,

it can be said that many of his statements were at least provocative. He did not always explain himself
very well, and his ideas and terms were often open to misunderstanding. We can summarize the battle
between Cyril and Nestorius by saying that Nestorius’ ethics were probably superior to his theology,
while the theology of Cyril was certainly superior to his ethics.
Some Christians, particularly those outside the bounds of the Roman Empire, in the Persian Empire, the
areas that are today in Syria and Mesopotamia, broke away from the Catholic Church. That is why we
now have a church we can call the Nestorian Church, a church of the East. That church was heavily
influenced by the theological school of Edessa, one of the main centers of Antiochene Christology, and
influenced by Theodore of Mopsuestia, who was a teacher of Nestorius. The Nestorians are centered
now in Persia. It was the Nestorians, as I will describe later, who first conducted the mission into China.
The Nestorians spread Christianity into the Far East over the next several centuries. The adherents of the
Nestorian Church should probably not be viewed as true heretics, just as Nestorius himself is not really
viewed as a heretic by many church scholars, but rather as a person misunderstood and misrepresented.
With Nestoriansism put down, there was the opportunity for the Alexandrian to emphasize the oneness
and the divinity of Christ. That is what happened with a monk named Eutyches, whose teaching is
known as Eutychianism. This monk was pro-Cyril, but he went further than even Cyril. As a result, he
fell into the chasm that exists on the extreme edge of Alexandrian Christology. He essentially denied the
reality of the two natures. Eutyches said that the human nature was absorbed into the divine nature at the
incarnation. He said, “Before the union of the two natures, I recognize two natures, but in the
incarnation, after the union, there is only one nature.” He went on to say something that people could not
let stand: “The flesh of the Lord is not like ours.” He described it as a divinized nature, a human nature
that has become divine. We can use the illustration here of wine and water. If you mix wine and water,
you get something else altogether. The two do not stay apart. It is not like oil and water. Wine and water
Christology is Eutychian Christology. In the incarnate Lord, according to Eutyches, the divine and
human merge into one single unique nature, which is not like ours.
For a time it seemed that the Eutychian view might prevail. There was a church council that met at
Ephesus in 449 that supported Eutychianism. But the teaching very much angered the pope in Rome,
Pope Leo I, one of the first great, strong Catholic popes of Rome. Leo called the council at Ephesus a
“robber synod” and a “den of thieves.” He understood, correctly, that Eutychianism was not orthodox
theology. Leo intended that his writing on the subject, called the Tome, be read at the council and be
heeded. When the council just ignored him and his Tome, he was understandably irritated and set out to
reverse what had happened at the Council of Ephesus in 449. Nestorius, who had been exiled to the
Egyptian desert, read Leo’s Tome and he was greatly encouraged. He felt that Leo was saying what he
had said, or something close to it, against the Christology of Eutychianism, which is now often called
the Christology of the Monophysites. The Monophysites are those who advocate “one nature.” The
result of Leo’s determination to reverse the decision of Ephesus was the Council of Chalcedon in 451,
which condemned Eutychianism and stated that Jesus Christ has two distinct natures.
All of these complex and confusing proceedings that I have been describing are the background of the
Council of Chalcedon. It was the fourth ecumenical council and the largest that had met up to that time,
with over 500 bishops present. All but four of the bishops came from the East because the West was in a
state of disarray resulting from the barbarian invasions. Most of what happened in Chalcedon was the
result of the work of bishops and theologians of the East.
The Council of Chalcedon created the statement that most of the church has accepted to the present. In
that way, it parallels Nicea in 325. Nicea in 325 dealt with the Trinity. Chalcedon in 451 dealt with

Christology. The council determined that “Christ is one person in two perfect natures.” That statement
speaks against Apollinariansim, which said that the human nature of Christ was imperfect, that it had a
vacuum into which the divine nature entered. But Chalcedon said no, Christ was one person in two
perfect natures. It also added the words “without confusion or conversion.” That means that the two
perfect natures are not confused; they are not mingled. That part of the statement speaks against
Eutychianism. No “water and wine” view was to be allowed. Then Chalcedon went further to say that,
not only is Christ one person in two perfect natures, but also those natures are “without division or
separation.” That was meant to speak against Nestorianism. And finally, the two perfect natures of
Christ come together in a real, basic, hypostatic union. Defining the word “hypostatic” is difficult. It
basically means that the union is real. It is not simply “voluntary.” Perhaps one way to explain it is to
say that you have a hypostatic union of your body and your soul. You did not decide to unite those two
things. They are just united. And so, the union of the divine and human in Christ is a real union.
Chalcedon does not explain how the union works. It certainly does not solve the problem of how the
divinity and the humanity were united in the one person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is something that is
inexplicable. We can illustrate the heresies: a letter in an envelope, oil and water, or wine and water. But
we cannot provide a fitting illustration for the true doctrine of the union of the two natures of Christ. It is
always difficult to illustrate truth in theology. It is much easier to illustrate heresies in theology. I am not
saying there is no illustration that can be used, but it is difficult to think of a way to illustrate this truth
because we are dealing with a mystery. Chalcedon acknowledges that. It does not explain how the
divinity and humanity were united in Christ, but it states that they were united, really united. And they
were united without confusion, change, division, or separation. I like the way the Dutch theologian G. C.
Berkhouwer wrote about this. He said, “The Chalcedonian pronouncement was comparable to a double-
row of beacon lights, which mark off the channel in between and warn against the dangers which
threaten to the left and to the right.” If you go too far to one side, you will fall into Eutychianism. If you
go too far the other way, you will crash on the rocks of Nestorianism. But between those lights there is a
safe channel. Even though Chalcedon does not empty the doctrine of its mystery, it at least tells us that
there are bounds that we ought not to go beyond on either side.
It would be nice to say that Chalcedon solved everything. Unfortunately, history is never quite that
simple. The battle raged in the East for a long time after 451. The West accepted Chalcedon, so it was
not a problem with Rome in the West. The Far East, the church in Persia, had already become Nestorian
and broken away. The Near East continued to struggle with the issue, however, at it was a dismal story.
Church leaders and political leaders were all involved in the struggle. It was both a religious and
political struggle. As often as not, the emperor in Constantinople was trying to settle things, usually on
the wrong side.
The battle was between the Chalcedonians and the Monophysites. The Chalcedonians were ones who
said Christ is one person in two natures. The Monophysites were ones who said Christ is one person in
one nature. The key point is obviously the question of two natures or one nature. Eventually another
church council, Constantinople II in 553, said that Chalcedon was right and the Monophysites were
wrong. But even that did not settle things. Over 100 years later, in 680, another church council,
Constantiople III, once again reaffirmed Chalcedon. That did not totally settle things either. By that
time, some churches, beside the Nestorian Church, had broken away to form their own Monophysite
Church. And also by that time, some unsavory things had taken place in this long dispute over
Christology. One pope of Rome had excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople over the issue.
The patriarch of Constantinople in turn excommunicated the pope of Rome. Another pope of Rome was
kidnapped by agents of the emperor in Constantinople and brought to Constantinople, where he was
flogged, imprisoned, and starved until he finally died. Then there was a theologian and monk whose

name was Maximus who was arrested by the emperor. His tongue was torn off because he said the
wrong thing. And his right hand was cut off because he signed a document that the emperor disagreed
with. All of that surrounded the discussion of the two natures of Christ. It is rather overwhelming to
think of the bitterness and the extremes to which people went in order to make their point in this debate.
By the time the dust settled, as it eventually did, there were separate Monophysite Churches, primarily
in Egypt and Syria. There were also some in Armenia, Ethiopia, and India. Those churches are now
called the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The Monophysite churches still exist. They make the sign of the
cross with one finger in order to indicate the one nature. Around the time of the end of this dispute there
were four churches: the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Nestorian Church in
Persia, and the Monophysite Church in Egypt, Ethiopia, Armenia, and India. The Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox had not technically split yet, which would not happen until 1054. But with popes and
patriarchs excommunicating one another, it would not be long before the final division between those
two major bodies of the church.
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
When we think about these disputes that took place, sometimes we wonder if those on different sides
were saying the same things but simply using different words. That is possible. The words involved in
these disputes are difficult ones to use clearly. Another problem in the disputes over this issue was that
some people were using Latin words and some were using Greek words. That makes things more
confusing. Furthermore, any view can be pressed to its extreme conclusion and be shown to lead to
heresy. It may be that Copts and the Monophysites misunderstood Chalcedon. And it may be that the
Chalcedonians misunderstood the Coptic view. But when we read the Copts’ explanation of the two
natures of our Lord, they say, “We believe that He is perfect in His divinity and He is perfect in His
humanity, but His divinity and His humanity were united in one nature.” That final phrase “in one
nature” is the problem for anyone who accepts Chalcedon. The Copts wanted to stress the union so
much that they did not like to think of two natures, so they said one nature. They thought if you say two
natures you will fall to the Nestorian side and create two persons. The Chalcedonians thought if you said
one nature then you were mingling the two like Eutyches did.

The Early Middle Ages
We are now at lesson 19—the early Middle Ages, the second 500 years. So far I have covered the first
500 years of the history of Christianity. Now I am going to cover the second 500 years, though more
briefly. Even though this was not an unimportant time, it was not nearly as important as the history of
the early church. I will use a prayer that comes from around the year 500. It is from the Gelasian
Sacramentary, named for the pope Gelasius, who died in 496. He wrote liturgies for the church
including the following prayer.
Let us pray. “Thou who has taught us that we are most truly free when we lose our wills in Thine, help
us to gain that liberty by continual surrender unto Thee, that we may walk in the way which Thou has
prepared for us, and in doing Thy will may find our life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
This lessonl provide a wide angle picture. I want to talk about the whole period of the second 500 years
of Christianity, which itself is the first 500 of 1,00 years that we can call the Middle Ages. The first 500
years of Christianity we usually call the early church. The next 1,000 years are known as the Middle
Ages. Today I want to focus more specifically on the first 500 of that 1,000-year period. Later I will
lecture on the third 500 years of Christianity, which will bring us to the end of this course. The fourth
500 years is the whole of the Reformation and modern church history, which brings us to the present.
The expression “Middle Ages” became common during the time of the Renaissance to refer to the
period between the ancient world and the modern world. Of course, the people of the Middle Ages were
not aware that they were living in the Middle Ages. They thought they were living in the modern world.
As we look back on it, however, most people think of that long period of time as the Middle Ages. There
was the classical world, or the Christian world, of Greece and Rome, and then there was the modern
world that came out of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. Between those two worlds
there was the world of the Middle Ages.
Sometimes people have called the period the “Dark Ages.” I do not think that is the best term for it. One
reason is because, while there were times of comparative darkness, there were also great times of light,
progress, and learning. It is not accurate or appropriate to label the whole period the Dark Ages, even
though there were some dark times during that 1,000-year period. If we want to use the expression
“Dark Ages” for any part of that 1,000 years, we might use it for the last century before the year 1,000.
That might be the true period of the Dark Ages, the tenth century. People began to worry about the idea
that they were coming to the year 1,000. They wondered what was going to happen. It seemed to them
there was something ominous about the year 1,000. That year came and went, however, without much
difference in the lives of people. There were the same sins, turmoil, and controversies in the new
millennium as in the old millennium.
I will come to the tenth century later in the course. For now I will begin covering the 500-year period
between the end of the early church and the real “Dark Ages.” In that period there was a new map of
Europe that emerged. It was no longer a map of the Roman Empire. Europe was divided among many
barbarian tribes—Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Saxons, and many others. As we know, Rome finally
fell. It took a long time, and it was a gradual fall. Most people during the time that Rome was falling did
not know that Rome was falling, although they knew there were some serious problems. Throughout the
fifth century, Rome gradually collapsed. The great writing of Saint Augustine, The City of God, tried to
put that great, cataclysmic event in perspective for Christians.

While the Roman Empire no longer existed, modern Europe had not yet emerged either. England, Italy,
France, and Germany were not on the map yet. Europe was divided into barbarian kingdoms. The
barbarians were nomads. As they moved, they encroached on someone else’s territory and in turn forced
those people to move. Generally those people were forced down into the Roman Empire. That was
sometimes attractive to people, because Rome had great buildings, schools, learning, and books. The
barbarians coveted those interesting things. They did not want to destroy Rome. They simply wanted to
gather for themselves some of the benefits that Rome had produced.
All of those movements were prompted by the movement of a great Asiatic tribe called the Huns. They
were a very warlike people. The Huns pressed into Europe and upset everybody there, who then began
to move and migrate around Europe. Most of the mass migrations throughout Europe at the time were
prompted by the Huns. The most famous of the leaders of the barbarians was Attila the Hun. He was
somebody who got things done, but with a rather strong hand. Some time ago a book came out called
The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. It is not a book I particularly recommend, at least not for
pastors. You would do better to get your leadership secrets from the Bible. Attila moved his people into
Europe and conquered vast areas of central Europe.
Within the larger areas controlled by various barbarian peoples, smaller units gradually developed. This
is described as the time of feudalism. Larger tribal areas were subdivided into small areas, and even
smaller areas, with a lord and his vassals. A great estate and the land surrounding it would be occupied
by servants loyal to a particular lord. The most important figures of that system of feudalism were
farmers and soldiers. Scholars were not as important. The period of scholarship was hindered for a
while. Although, as I will describe later, scholarship still existed, but it was in the Celtic fringe, in the
monasteries of Ireland, and in other places, but it was not much in the central life of the people. It was a
period of farmers and soldiers. It was the period of King Arthur and his famous knights of the round
table. Knights went out to fight for their lord. They went to win honor and glory for themselves, but also
to protect themselves from the neighboring kingdom. Farmers were needed to provide food. Soldiers
were needed for protection. There was not much time left for scholarship or learning. For some time,
there would not arise any great names such as Augustine, Jerome, or Chrysostom.
In all of this, after the fall of Rome, there was one unifying factor. There were then many competing
tribes and feudal units. The only thing that held society together was Christianity. Christianity had
spread beyond the cultural bounds of the Roman Empire into barbarian Europe just in time so that when
Rome fell, Christianity did not fall with it. Christianity was already the religion of many of the
barbarians who were invading the Roman Empire. Kenneth Clark said in his book Civilization, “If you
had asked the average man of the time to what country he belonged, he would not have understood you.
But he would have known what bishopric he belonged to.” The idea of belonging to England or France
or Germany would not have been a thought of someone of that time. The unifying factor in all of the
confusion of the Middle Ages was Christianity.
There were some great popes during the period, although not all of the popes of the period were great.
You can know which popes were great because they are called “the Great,” like Leo the Great and
Gregory the Great. Not every pope is called “the Great”; only a few are. If you have a pope with “the
Great” after his name, you know there is something significant about that pope. A pope did not call
himself that, but either a contemporary or, more often successors, noted the greatness of his
achievement.
As we look at the second 500 years of the history of Christianity, we can begin to talk about the Roman
Catholic Church. Up until this point, I have resisted precisely identifying the first 500 year period with

the Roman Catholic Church. There were some factors during that period that led to Roman Catholicism.
Yet there were some things that could have led a different way. By the time of the year 500, however,
we can accurately speak of the Roman Catholic Church.
The bishops in Rome by that time were popes in the modern sense of the word. They believed they were
successors of Peter. They believed that the Lord gave His authority to Peter to plant the church. They
believed that the keys of the kingdom were given to Peter and that the pope represented Peter and speaks
for, not only Peter, but also for God Himself, in both what the pope says and does. Leo the Great was a
great pope of the fifth century. It was he who made the connection between the office of the pope and
the authority of Peter. In Leo we see a very strong statement of Roman Catholicism. Leo the Great
concentrated, elevated, and glorified the power of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregory the Great was of
the sixth century.
If Leo elevated the power of the Roman Catholic Church, Gregory was concerned to extend the limits of
the church. He was the great missionary pope. When a new pope takes office he takes a new name. That
name always signals something of what he hopes to do during his pontificate. When later popes took the
name Gregory, that usually meant that pope was going to put an emphasis on missions and the extension
of the church. That is because Gregory the Great was the great missionary pope. He was one of the first
examples since the days of Paul of someone who had a carefully planned and calculated mission. He
was a missionary strategist. He sent Saint Augustine to England. That is not Saint Augustine of Hippo,
but rather Saint Augustine of Canterbury. Gregory promoted the spread of Christianity in the continent
of Europe.
Rome was a great center of Christianity during this second 500-year period. The other great center of
Christianity was Constantinople. It became known as the “second Rome.” Constantinople became a
great city when the emperor Constantine moved the capital to that city in the fourth century. Eventually
the Roman Empire was divided into an eastern part and a western part, although both parts were ruled
by an emperor in Constantinople. There were other great centers of Christianity, but at that time no other
cities could compete with Rome in the West and Constantinople in the East.
The patriarch in Constantinople was the counterpart to the pope in Rome. I will describe in a later
lecture that the two parts of the church gradually pulled apart and finally broke in 1054. The division
was partly over who would have more control, the pope or the patriarch. There were other issues, too.
During this 500-year period, even though there were strains and stresses, the two parts of the church in
the East and West were still united.
In the East it was not so much the patriarchs who were great as some of the emperors. One of the great
emperors was Justinian. He lived in the sixth century. He was a great emperor because he tried to re-
conquer some of the areas in the West that had been lost to the barbarians. He succeeded in doing that, at
least temporarily. He extended again the boundaries of the Roman Empire. He was a great emperor
because he was a man who set forth laws. In the Princeton University chapel there is a window devoted
to the great lawyers, the great lawmakers, of history, and Justinian is one of those. Justinian was also
great because he built many great buildings. He beautified and expanded the city of Constantinople. The
greatest of the buildings was the great Church of Holy Wisdom, Santa Sofia. For many years, until the
Muslim invasion and conquest, it was the greatest of the churches of the Eastern empire, and perhaps the
greatest Christian church of all. The church was dedicated in the year 537. According to tradition, when
Justinian walked into the church and saw the final product, that great soaring church with its huge
circular sanctuary, he supposedly said, “O Solomon, I have outdone you.” He meant that the church was
greater than the temple of Israel.

This second 500 years that I have been talking about was also a time of the expansion of Christianity.
There was great expansion in Europe with Gregory’s mission. Gregory sent Saint Augustine of
Canterbury to the pagan English. Earlier than that, there was the expansion of Christianity beyond the
limits of the old Roman Empire into Ireland. Then there was expansion from Ireland into Scotland
through the mission of Saint Patrick. There had been expansion from England to Ireland through Saint
Columba.
Later, around the year 1,000, a very significant event in the history of the Christian church was the
expansion of the faith into Russia. The spread of Christianity occurred not in its Western form but in its
Eastern form into Russia. Even today, the Russian Orthodox Church is by far the largest of the Orthodox
churches in the world.
As we think of that second 500-year period, it is appropriate to say that two men affected the course of
that history more than anybody else. One was Charlemagne, and the other was Mohammed.
Charlemagne was the first great political leader in the West since the collapse of Rome. Popes had been
great, but they were not political leaders in the West. The emperors were in the East in Constantinople.
Charlemagne, in central Europe, was able to put together a great kingdom. It was nominally a Christian
kingdom, which meant that Europe was almost completely Christianized eventually through the efforts
of people like Charlemagne and the missionaries whom I will describe later.
On Christmas day in 800, Charlemagne was crowned by the pope as “Holy Roman Emperor.” That was
the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted almost 1,000 years in one form or another.
Somebody has said that the only problem with the name “Holy Roman Empire” is that it was not holy,
not Roman, and it was not an empire. It was certainly not holy in the sense of consistent godly living.
Many brutal and awful things took place under the name of the Holy Roman Empire, and even under the
name of Christianity. It is also true that it was not really Roman. It was German. But it was an empire. It
was not as big as the Roman Empire, but it was certainly a significant kingdom that embraced part of
France, part of Germany, and part of northern Italy. Charlemagne’s court was a center of learning and
evangelism. It was there on the continent that Christianity not only survived but was also able to spread
to surrounding kingdoms, just as Christianity survived and spread from the monasteries of distant
Ireland.
While the northern part of the Western world was struggling to get over the fall of the Roman Empire
and to organize and preserve itself, a new anti-Christian force was arising in the south. That force was
Islam. It was the strongest and most determined enemy that Christianity would have for the next 500
years, and the 500 years after that, and perhaps even the 500 years after that. Mohammed died in 632. In
the 100 years after the death of Mohammed, Islam, as his religion was called, spread with great force
and speed. It spread all the way across North Africa, wiping out the Christian centers that were the
strongest concentration of Christians in the world except for the part of Asia that is modern-day Turkey.
In a few generations, those Christian centers were gone, except for the church in Egypt. Islam also
quickly wiped out and controlled the areas of Christianity’s birthplace, the land of Palestine and the old
Roman province of Asia, which is modern-day Europe.
Islam was finally defeated in Europe. If Islam had not been defeated in Europe, the second 500 years of
Europe would have been the story of Islam and not the story of Christianity. In 732, Muslims were
finally turned back when they were defeated at the Battle of Tours in France. They already controlled
Spain at the time, and they were driven back into Spain, which remained Muslim, or Moorish, for
several more centuries, almost to the time of the Reformation. The Muslims were also defeated in the

East. They were not able to conquer Constantinople and were defeated in 718. There had been almost
100 years of fast and vigorous movement, and then there was a temporary setback. Constantinople
eventually did fall to the Turks and then to the Muslims. Islam then moved up into eastern Europe.
Muslims controlled areas from the borders of Spain, across North Africa, and up to the Black Sea.
Christians controlled areas from Scotland down through Italy and east, west, and central Europe.
During this rapid survey of the second 500 years of Christianity, it is also important to consider Asia and
Africa. I do not want to leave out what happened in those two great continents. Roman Asia was lost to
Islam. Those were the Asian lands around the Mediterranean, the lands of the old Roman Empire. There
was already a strong church in Persia at the time. It was a Nestorian church, which did not accept the
Council of Chalcedon, although as I said before, it may have been more of a matter of theological
misunderstanding. It was a church outside the bounds of the old Roman Empire that centered in Persia.
It was a church that was greatly persecuted, and it produced many martyrs during its history. When the
Muslims entered Persia, the modern countries of Iraq and Iran, Islam began to dominate that area. But
Christianity was not wiped out. It survived in Persia. In the second 500 years, Christianity not only
survived in Persia, but it also spread vigorously all the way from Persia to China. By 635 Persian
missionaries had reached the capital of the T’ang dynasty in China, which they considered the end of the
world. We need to be aware that Christianity, and churches, were in China—and great churches were
built there—before the days of the modern missionary movement.
The other significant place in Asia that Christianity existed in the first 500 years was India. It was
founded perhaps by Thomas. It also received the Alexandrian scholar and missionary Pantaenus. The
Mar Thoma Church in India, which is still there today, was able to survive in the second 500 years as a
tiny community in a vast non-Christian sea. It was surrounded by Hindus, Buddhists, and eventually
Muslims as well.
By the end of the second 500-year period, in the ninth and tenth centuries, Christianity experienced
some drastic setbacks in Asia. By the year 800 it looked as though Christianity would spread throughout
Asia, and that many people in Asia would become Christians even as people in Europe were becoming
Christians. Dr. John M. L. Young, a missionary to Japan, wrote in his book By Foot to China that “by
the year 800 there were more Christians east of Damascus than west of that city.” That is a remarkable
thought. The first time I read that I thought it was preposterous. I wondered if it was true then why have
we not heard of all those Christians. I have found there are two answers to that question. First, most
church histories that we study are written by Westerners, and they take a Western orientation and mainly
ignore developments in Asia. There has been a provincialism in the writing of church history that has
described the flow of events in the movement of Christianity from the Roman Empire up into Europe,
then to England, then to Scotland, then to New England, and that becomes the end of the story. Church
history, however, is much broader than that, and we need to have a global perspective on the history of
the church. The best answer to a narrow focus on church history is to read about Christianity in Asia.
Some of the best resources are Dr. Samuel Moffett’s books, A History of Christianity in Asia, volumes
one and two. The other reason we do not know much about Christianity in Asia is that it practically
disappeared during the second 500-year period. The church was growing, and then suddenly it was gone.
It was not like Europe where there was a continuity of Christianity from the apostolic period down to the
present. By the year 850, Dr. Moffett said, “The church was wounded, perhaps fatally, and declining.”
Why did Christianity suffer such a great setback in Asia? Was it persecution? Was it oppression? It is
certain that Christians in Asia suffered more persecution, or suffered persecution longer, than Christians
in any other part of the world. Persecution can take its toll. The Bible teaches us, however, that there is
no force in the world that can destroy the church. The church has survived through persecution in other

times and places. Dr. Moffett believes that persecution alone cannot be the answer to why the church in
Asia disappeared. There were many complex factors involved. One idea is that the church in some
places became to closely identified with the state. Christianity in China became identified with the T’ang
dynasty, and when the T’ang dynasty fell, the church fell with it. The church had not penetrated beyond
the power and support of the T’ang dynasty as it had penetrated beyond the power and support of the old
Roman Empire in the West. Dr. Moffett also suggests that the comment of a Persian Christian from the
ninth century is another factor to explain the turn of events in Asia. That ninth century Persian Christian
said, “The monks are no longer missionaries.” The church began to retreat into monastic mode, into
survival mode, and it was not reaching out as it had for so long.
There is also a history of Christianity in Africa in the second 500 years. I already explained how
Christianity was destroyed in North Africa, in the old Roman Africa. North Africa today is solidly
Muslim and fiercely anti-Christian. Until this second 500 years, many of the prominent figures of early
Christianity came from North Africa, like Augustine and Tertullian. Today, however, there are very few
Christians in North Africa. There may not be any place in the world that is more fiercely anti-Christian
than the Islamic countries of North Africa. The only exception was Egypt. Egypt had a strong Christian
church. Even though Islam dominated Egypt, as it did the rest of North Africa, it did not completely
obliterate the Coptic Church. The Coptic Church is the Egyptian church that was there long before Islam
was there, and it continues today as a vigorous Christian community. In Nubia, the land south of Egypt,
which is modern-day Sudan, Christianity not only survived, but it also grew vigorously during the
second 500-year period. Unfortunately, during the third 500-year period, Christianity practically
disappeared from Nubia, and it was not to return until the modern missionary movement. During the
second 500-year period, however, Christianity continued to grow there. Then in Ethiopia, which is
further south near the present-day country of Ethiopia, was the most vital expression of African
Christianity. It is important to stress this because Ethiopian Christianity was there long before Islam.
There are some who say that Christianity is a Western importation into Africa. Those people need to be
reminded that before Islam reached Africa there was a vigorous, strong Christian church in Ethiopia.
That church continued during the second 500-year period, and also during the third 500-year period, and
down to the present. The church in Ethiopia remained a vigorous expression of Christianity.
I have presented an overview of this 500-year period. In the following lessons I am going to concentrate
on some of the themes I have mentioned. I hope this gave you a wide-angle picture of some of the
important things that happened during that time.

Medieval Missions
In this lesson I will focus on one of the aspects brought up in the previous overview of the second 500
years of the history of Christianity, which is the topic of missions. Gregory the Great was one of the
important missionary popes of the medieval period. I will begin with a prayer from Gregory the Great.
“O Christ, our King, Creator, Lord, Savior of all who trust Thy word, to them who seek Thee ever near,
now to our praises, bend Thine ear. Thou didst create the stars of night; yet Thou hast veiled in flesh
Thy light, hast designed a mortal form to wear, a mortal’s painful lot to bear. When Thou didst hang
upon the tree, the quaking earth acknowledged Thee; when Thou didst there yield up Thy breath, the
world grew dark as shades of death. Now in Thy Father’s glory high, Great Conqueror, nevermore to
die, us by Thy mighty power defend, and reign through ages without end. Amen.”
Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette has referred to the nineteenth century as “the great century of missions.”
That was the title he used for three of his books in his famous seven-volume history of the expansion of
Christianity. It is certainly true that the nineteenth century was the great century of missions. The
medieval church was involved in missions as well. In this lesson and the next I will present the activity
of the medieval church in missions. I will introduce people such as Ulfilas, Patrick, Saint Augustine of
Canterbury, Boniface, and a host of others. Some will be known to you but many will be unknown. They
faithfully took the Gospel into the world during that period of the Middle Ages.
I have not talked about missions for a while. As we think of the spread of the Gospel to the limits of the
Roman Empire and beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, we do not know most of the missionaries.
Most of the missionaries of that earlier period are unnamed and unknown. At least they are unknown to
us, although certainly not to God. They were men and women who went out with the Gospel. As they
went for various purposes—business, the military, or something else—they faithfully took the Gospel
with them. In that way, the Gospel went to the limits of the Roman Empire and even beyond. John of
Damascus spoke of “unarmed, poor, unlettered, persecuted, tormented, done-to-death men [and
women]” who were the missionaries. As they went forth, God blessed their efforts. By the power of His
Spirit others were brought into the Christian faith. Because of the work of those people, when the
barbarians began to enter the Roman Empire, they had already heard of Christ. The missionaries had
gone beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, and so when the barbarians attacked Rome, if they were
not already Christians, they had at least been evangelized.
In the later period, from the fourth century through the Middle Ages, we know many of the names of the
great missionaries. For example, we know the name of Ulfilas. He was a fourth-century missionary who
was instrumental in the conversion of the Goths, one of the barbarian groups north of the Danube.
Ulfilas has a Gothic name, which means “little wolf.” Yet his ancestry was not Gothic, it was Greek.
Ulfilas’ grandparents had lived in Cappadocia, in Asia, the land of the church fathers, the great
Cappadocians. His grandparents had been captured by the Goths in a raid that the Goths made into that
territory. The Goths took some slaves back with them to the north. Those grandparents were Christian
people, and their grandson Ulfilas, as he was called by the Goths, was appointed bishop of all the Goths
north of the Danube.
One of the great things he did was to translate the Bible into the Gothic language. It is the oldest literary
work in any German language. His work of translation is an interesting story, because he translated all
of the books of the Bible into Gothic except 1 Kings and 2 Kings. He said the Goths did not need 1

Kings and 2 Kings because they knew how to fight already. He thought if they read those books it would
encourage them more in their warlike nature. So Ulfilas omitted those books from his translation.
While Ulfilas was a great missionary, unfortunately he was an Arian. He had learned Arianism, and
many people of the fourth century were Arians until orthodoxy prevailed in the Roman Empire after the
Council of Nicea in 325. As Ulfilas went back to his homeland, north of the Danube, he took with him
and preached there the Arian creed. He taught that there is only one God, and that God has only one
Son, who is the maker of all creation, and there is no one else like Him, but He is not homoousios with
the Father. That message appealed to the Goths. One reason it appealed to them was that it was very
simple. There is one God and that God has a Son and that Son is next to God in importance and the Holy
Spirit is next to those two in importance. That was a very simple message that they could understand.
The Goths also liked the idea of Christ the Son as a kind of hero, a super-man, like a military leader.
Thus Arian Christology was the basic form of Christianity that was preached to the Goths. Arianism
spread from the Goths throughout the Germanic tribes and down into the Roman world. The result was
that 200 years after the Council of Nicea the old Roman Empire was theologically divided. There was
Catholic territory, in the east, west, and north, but in other areas, such as in Italy and North Africa,
Arianism was prevalent. Arianism was still very prominent in the Roman world 200 years after the
Council of Nicea because it first went to the north, to the Goths and others, and when they invaded the
Roman world they brought an Arian form of Christianity back into the old Roman Empire.
The fact that Arianism did not finally prevail everywhere was due largely to the conversion of another
barbarian group called the Franks. The Franks were converted directly to orthodox Christianity. The
story of the conversion of the Franks, which took place around 500, has to do with a queen named
Clotilde and a king, her husband, Clovis. Clotilde was an orthodox Christian. She married the king of
the Franks, Clovis, and she began right away to try to convert him to Christianity. It was not easy, but
she eventually prevailed. Clovis became a Christian in 496, and when he became a Christian all the
Franks became Christians. In those days, when the king made a choice about a religious allegiance, the
people were forced to join him, whether they wanted to or not. The idea of individual conversion was
not as prevalent as that of group conversion. So the king, Clovis, and the people of the Franks, were
converted in 496.
There is a story about the baptism of the Franks. They were a warlike people. All of the barbarian tribes
were warlike. It was what they were good at. At the baptism of the Franks, a mass baptism of the
Frankish army and people, as the soldiers were being baptized, they held up their right hands. It was not
a salute to the Lord, but rather it was so that their right hands would not be baptized as the water fell on
them. They wanted to continue to fight. So even though they were baptized, they tried to remain not
totally baptized so that their right hands could continue to do what they did best, which was fight. In the
providence of God, even that worked out for good. The Franks helped to convert the Arian tribes to
orthodoxy. It was somewhat by persuasion, but mainly by the sword. So the Arians gradually
disappeared, and western Europe became entirely orthodox in its theology.
The missionary movement during the second 500 years of Christianity had four centers. One center was
Rome. Rome was primarily sending missionaries to the north. The most important of those missions was
that sent by Gregory the Great to England. The missionary was Saint Augustine of Canterbury. By the
time Saint Augustine arrived in England, there was already an important missionary-sending area, which
was Ireland. That is surprising because Ireland was considered to be on the fringe of the European
world. Patrick went from England to Ireland. Then missionaries such as Saint Columba and Columbanus
went from Ireland to Scotland to England and then down to the continent of Europe. So Rome was a
center of missionary activity. Ireland and England were centers. Persia, in the East, became a center as

Persian monk missionaries traveled the old Silk Road all the way to China. They established the
Nestorian church in China in the seventh century. The fourth great center of missionary activity in the
medieval period was Constantinople, with missionaries going north to the Slavs and north and east into
Ukraine and Russia. So there were four distinct centers of missionary impetus. There were other minor
centers, but the four significant centers of missionary activity were Rome, England and Ireland, Persia,
and Constantinople. The entirety of the next lesson will cover the Christianization of Great Britain.
I want to focus now on providing some detail about the Persian, Nestorian missionary efforts to China in
the seventh century. I mentioned it in the previous overview lesson, but I will focus on it again because
it is something we should not ignore. Missionary expansion was not only to the north. It also went to the
Far East, to the nomads of central Asia, and then all the way to China. The Old Silk Road went all the
way from the Roman world to China. It was one of the several routes that merchants took in order to
travel to China to get silk to bring back to the West. People were constantly on the move on that Old
Silk Road, including missionaries. The road provided a route for the missionaries to China, just as the
old Roman roads had provided routes for Paul and the other early missionaries to travel throughout the
Roman Empire.
The Persian missionary Alopen reached Chang-an, the capital of China, in 635. Chang-an was the
largest city in the world at that time. It was one of the most prosperous and advanced cultures. So as the
missionaries went to China they were not going to a backward place. They were going to a cosmopolitan
world capital. It was a place much more advanced in arts and sciences than the European capitals of that
time. When Alopen arrived in Chang-an in 635 it was the time of the T’ang dynasty, which is one of the
most famous of the ruling dynasties of China.
The first Christian church was built in Chang-an in 638. So only three years after the first missionary
arrived, there was already a Christian church in the largest city in the world, the capitol of one of the
most advanced cultures in the world. Despite persecution from Buddhists, Christianity grew. It seemed
that China would become a great center for Christianity, as Constantinople and Rome had become. The
Nestorian church almost totally disappeared, however, in the ninth century. After such a promising
beginning, with high hopes that Christianity would have a strong Eastern base, the church in China
virtually disappeared.
Scholars have debated the reasons for the disappearance of the church in China. Some have pointed to
persecution. Certainly there was persecution, particularly after Buddhism was declared the state religion
in 698. Others have thought that it was theological compromise. There was some syncretism in the
Nestorian church. Overall, however, it seems that the church maintained its orthodoxy. In the interests of
contextualizing Christianity to Chinese culture, the church may have at times passed over the line from
contextualization to syncretism. That is easy to do. Another factor that is brought up is the foreign
orientation of the church. It was originally a Syrian church that had found its base in China and had then
been transported to China. As people have looked at the records of that Nestorian church in China,
however, those writings were not in Syriac—the official language of the Persian church, as Latin was of
the Roman church—but rather the writings were in Chinese. It seems that the Nestorian church was not
totally viewed as a foreign church.
Many people have agreed that the real problem for the church in China was that it had allied itself very
closely with the T’ang dynasty. That Chinese noble imperial house that ruled China for some time had
become the promoter and protector of Christianity. There were, however, other houses and other forces
at work in China. Eventually those forces brought about the fall of the T’ang dynasty in 907. It appears
that Christianity fell with it. Thus we may point to the main reason for the fall of the church in China,

that it was viewed as an arm of that imperial house, something like a department of religion of that
house. When the T’ang dynasty fell, the church fell too. It is not the only time in church history that we
see that dependence upon the government for the survival of the church is a very dangerous thing. It
provides an uncertain foundation. A discouraged Nestorian monk living in Baghdad in 987 said, “There
is not a single Christian left in China.” He may have been right, or he may have been wrong, but there
was not a church left in China. When missionaries returned to China centuries later, they knew nothing
about the earlier Christian church that had existed there.
About the time that Christianity was disappearing in China it was beginning to take new life in the other
end of Asia, in Russia, Ukraine, and among the Slavic peoples of Europe. Missionaries were pressing
from Constantinople up into the north among the Slavic people. Constantinople was at the time the
center of the Eastern part of the church, even though the church was not officially divided between the
Eastern and Western halves until 1054. The differences were there long before 1054. We can begin to
think of Eastern Orthodoxy when we think of the church in Constantinople even in the tenth century.
The missionaries from Constantinople were restricted in their movement to the east and the south by
Islam, which was pressing in on the very borders of Constantinople at the time. Missionaries from the
Eastern part of the church were restricted in their movement west by Roman Catholicism. Thus the
natural direction for the movement of Christian missionaries from Constantinople was to the north.
Two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, were sent by the emperor in 862 to preach in Moravia, which
is modern-day Austria. These two missionaries who moved to Austria produced an alphabet and
translated the Bible into Slavonic. They also translated liturgies, or a service book, into Slavonic. This
was quite different from the missionary strategy of Rome. The missionaries of Rome took Latin with
them and taught the people to read the Latin Bible, and they conducted Mass in Latin. The Eastern
missionaries, however, did not usually use Greek, but rather they translated the Bible and the liturgy into
the language of the people to whom they were ministering.
One other missionary in the north is worth mentioning. His name was Ansgar. He was not from
Constantinople. He was from the Roman church. He was appointed bishop in Hamburg in Germany. His
ordination or appointment was actually focused on Denmark. The Scandinavian area was not yet
Christian. The church began to look for ways to reach Scandinavia. Ansgar planted several churches in
Denmark in the ninth century. When he died in 865, however, those churches disappeared. Nothing
came of his work. In my view he is worth mentioning because sometimes we do not have great stories to
tell. A missionary can be faithful and do the work he is supposed to do and yet not have any great results
from it. That was the case of the first mission to Denmark. Stephen Neil said it well in his book, A
History of Christian Missions, “Ansgar pushed against a door that was not yet ready to open.”
Eventually that door would open, but it was not ready at that time. I believe that in the providence of
God it was important that this missionary bishop push against that door even though it did not open at
that time. We do not know how his pushing against that door may have contributed to the eventual
evangelization of the Scandinavian people.
If that door into Scandinavia was not yet ready to open, there was a very large door that was opening as
Ansgar was pushing against the door that would not open into Denmark. The large door that was
opening at that time was Russia and Ukraine. The history of Christianity in Ukraine and Russia is traced
back to a decision that Prince Vladimir in Kiev made in 988. Once again it was an example of a prince
making a decision and his decision becoming that of the people. According to the legend, Prince
Vladimir wanted to find a new religion for his people. So he sent emissaries to check out Islam, Roman
Catholicism, and Greek Christianity centered in Constantinople. Of course, they all came back with
various reports. Vladimir turned down Islam. He considered Roman Catholicism. Yet he liked what he

heard about Greek Orthodoxy. Partly this was because when the emissaries from Kiev arrived in
Constantinople and saw the Hagia Sofia they were overwhelmed by the beauty of it, as well as by the
liturgy. They came back to Vladimir and said when they went to church they did not know whether they
were still on earth or whether they had gone to heaven. Vladimir thought that sounded like a good
religion to have. Thus according to that legend, he adopted Eastern Orthodoxy.
In reality, there is more to the story than that. There were missionaries going out from Constantinople.
They preached the Eastern version of the Gospel, which was much like the Western versions, only with
certain differences that I will describe later. The vast area of Russia and Ukraine then converted to the
Orthodox faith. One Orthodox writer said, “The decision to embrace the Eastern form of Christianity
determined the destiny of Russia. The whole Russian mind and heart was shaped by this Eastern
Christian mold.” The best way to get a feel and picture of all of that is to read the novels by Dostoevsky.
In them you will see what Christianity in its Orthodox form has done to shape the Russian mind and
soul.
I want to turn to describing some of the reasons that people were converting to Christianity in the
medieval period. Andrew Walls has said there was a “slow, painful, and far from satisfactory spread of
Christian allegiance.” You should not have the idea that people became Christians and were mature,
faithful Christians from the first day. You can tell by the way that I have told some of these stories that
things did not happen that way.
Some people became Christians because they were forced to become Christians. There were Franks
forcing Arians into Orthodoxy. There were kings and princes who made decisions that were then
required to be followed by all of the people. I read one story about the conversion of the people in the
Orkney Islands, which is part of modern Scotland, but was originally part of Norway. Those
Scandinavian countries did eventually become Christian, although it was not through Ansgar’s ministry.
King Olaf of Norway, who became a Christian, wrote to Earl of Orkney, which was a vassal kingdom of
Norway at that time. Olaf said, “I want you and all your subjects to be baptized. If you refuse, I will
have you killed on the spot. And I swear that I will ravage every island with fire and steel.” That was
Olaf’s evangelistic message to the Orkneys. So Earl of Orkney and all of the people of Orkney were
baptized. They got the message. You can understand why that sort of conversion of an entire nation
would require much work in the future. It would be necessary for those islanders to be converted again
in a more serious and real way.
Some people were converted because of perceived advantages. Sometimes those advantages were
spiritual. The Gospel really does meet the inner needs of human beings. People saw that and found relief
from sin through conversion. Sometimes, however, they perceived that there were physical, material
advantages to conversion. When Christianity was supported by the T’ang dynasty in China, it was
important for people to take advantage of the status that came with being Christian in that kingdom. That
was also true in places in Europe.
Sometimes people were also converted by what we now call a “power encounter.” One of the real
concerns that people had in the medieval period was which god they should be allied with in order to
take advantage of that god’s power. One wanted to be in connection with the power of an earthly lord
who had strength. In spiritual matters, the same idea followed. People wanted to know which god was
the strongest. Missionaries realized that people were asking that question. The question was not so much
“What is true?” or “What does the Bible say?” The question was “Is this God of the Bible stronger than
the gods we have been worshiping?” “Is it better to be allied with Him than these other gods?” So the
Gospel was sometimes presented in the context of this power encounter.

Saint Patrick did that in Ireland, the land of the Druids. Patrick was often talking about the “strong name
of the Trinity.” His message was that the trinitarian God had a name that was stronger than the pagan
gods of Ireland. Saint Boniface, who went from England to Germany, found it difficult to found a
Christian church in Germany until he cut down a large oak tree that was dedicated to the worship of the
god Thor. It was believed that if anyone damaged that tree then terrible things would happen to that
person. When Boniface found he was not making much progress, he had the idea to take an axe and cut
the tree down. It was a sensational event that everyone watched while they expected him to be struck
dead immediately. Yet once he cut it down, nothing happened to him, so everyone became Christian.
They believed they had found a God stronger than the god Thor. I have personally seen instances of
power encounters in my travels and work in Haiti. People there are concerned about the voodoo gods
and whether the Christian God is superior in power and might to the gods of voodoo.
With all of those reasons for conversion to Christianity, there were obviously people who were not truly
converted to real faith. The Bible says the message of the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
The message was going forth. Sometimes the message was obscured, and sometimes it was not
presented in the best way possible. Still there was the message that God saves sinners through Christ as
we receive the gift of salvation by faith. Somehow that message was going forth. People heard it and
were converted.
In all of that, God’s providence was at work. The Roman Empire was able to be used as a wonderful
instrument in God’s providence. In the early church a vast area of relative peace and ease of travel
allowed the Gospel to move quickly and easily from one end of the empire to another. Even the
barbarian raids, which one would not normally believe God would use as missionary instruments, were
part of God’s providence. The grandparents of Ulfilas were captured and taken back to the land of the
Goths so that little boy was raised speaking the language of the people and knowing their culture.
Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and taken back to Ireland as a slave, and God used that to bring the
Gospel to Ireland. There was the Old Silk Road. People thought that it was there so that silk could go to
the West, but God used it to take the Gospel to the East. As Calvinists we can say that in all of these
circumstances God had His people and He used His acts of providence and the faithfulness of His
missionaries to take His message to those people. The Venerable Bede, the monk who became the
historian of the English church, ascribed the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria to
predestination. There are some interesting stories surrounding the conversion of Northumbria that I will
tell in another lesson. The Venerable Bede was making an important point in saying that in all of this
God has His people.
Age number one in the history of Christianity is the period of Jewish Christianity. It was centered in
Jerusalem. Christians were Jewish people. They were struggling to know whether to take the Gospel to
the Gentiles or not. We know that history from the New Testament. Finally they did, and we might say it
was in the nick of time, because the Jewish nation collapsed. If Christianity had been part of that, and
part of that only, Christianity would have collapsed with it as it collapsed in China with the fall of the
T’ang dynasty.
By the time the Jewish nation collapsed and was destroyed by the Romans, Christianity had moved
across a cultural frontier and was transmitted to the Greco-Roman world. It made a home in the Roman
Empire, which was age number two of Christian history. That is what I have been talking about for
much of this course. Eventually the Roman Empire also collapsed. Christianity did not collapse with it,
because by the time it happened Christianity had moved beyond the borders of that cultural, political
entity of the Greco-Roman world, into northern Europe, temporarily into China, and it was already in
Persia. Christianity had found new centers of influence in the formerly pagan countries of northern

Europe. Such movements have happened a number of times in the flow of Christian history. It is still
happening today. We see the transmission of the Gospel from its more recent centers of influence in
Europe and North America into the southern hemisphere in Africa and Latin America, and then Asia. It
appears that those will become the next centers of the Christian faith as the old centers either fall or
Christianity is lost or weakened in those old centers. Age number three of Christian history is the story
of the faith in lands beyond the old Roman Empire. The remaining lessons of this course will be
concerned with this third age of Christian history.
“Since we are surrounded with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that
is set out for us” (Hebrews 12:1).
It is important to remember that wherever Christianity goes it changes that culture. The culture is not
only the secular culture, the ordinary style of peoples’ lives, but also their religious culture. The other
thing that happens is that the influence goes the other way, too. The culture influences Christianity. One
of the places this is seen the most clearly is in early China. Confucianism mingled with Christianity and
there was a certain amount of syncretism.

The Christianization of Great Britain
Let us join in prayer using the words of Saint Patrick.
“May the strength of God pilot us. May the power of God protect us. May the wisdom of God instruct
us. May the hand of God protect us. May the way of God direct us. May the shield of God defend us.
Amen.”
During the Roman period in British history, the first through fourth centuries, the people of Britain were
Christianized. Many converted, or at least heard the Gospel, from the soldiers who came from Rome,
from merchants, from women, and from others who traveled up from the Roman Empire to settle in
Britain. When the Romans withdrew and the empire began to shrink and fall apart in the fourth century,
it left a vacuum in Britain. That vacuum was filled by Germanic invaders, called Anglo-Saxons. The
Angles and the Saxons began to pour in. Those people were not Christians. They were still pagans. The
old Romanized, Christianized Britons were then pushed into the corners of the country, mainly into
Wales, Cornwall, and into the north.
The Christian Britons understandably, but sadly, did not try to evangelize the invaders. That would have
been a difficult thing, to preach the Gospel to someone who was taking your land and pushing you away
from the place where you had always lived. The Britons did not preach the Gospel to the Angles and the
Saxons. The Venerable Bede, the church historian of England, whom I will talk more about later, said,
“God in His goodness did not utterly abandon the people whom He had chosen.” That is, God did not
abandon the Christian Britons despite their lack of missionary response to the pagan invaders. Neither
did God forget the invaders. They too were converted in due time.
Before those Anglo-Saxon tribes were converted, something else happened in the history of those
islands, which was quite amazing. We would not have been able to predict what happened. On the fringe
of Europe was a large island called Ireland. It was to Ireland that the Gospel went, and it was from
Ireland that the Gospel returned to England and even to the continent.
Ireland was a dark land beyond the reaches of Rome. It was outside the bounds of the Roman Empire
and never was part of it, just as the northern part of Scotland was never part of the Roman Empire.
Ireland was a land in which people worshiped spirits and practiced human sacrifices. It was just about as
dismal a place as one could find in Europe at that time. Amazingly, over about a century, it was
transformed from that dark and dismal place to an island of saints and scholars.
In God’s providence the person used to bring that about was a man named Patrick. Even though Patrick
is the patron saint of Ireland, and Irish people love and respect Patrick, he was not actually Irish. Rather
he was English, or maybe even Scottish. He was born on the coast closest to Ireland, not far from the
beautiful lake district of England. He grew up as part of a Christian family. It was one of the Romanized,
Christianized British families. It is interesting to think that, when Patrick was growing up in that part of
England, a Romanized African was living in North Africa—Augustine.
Young Patrick was captured by Irish raiders who periodically came over from Ireland in order to steal
what they could and take slaves if they could. Patrick was taken to Ireland as a slave. He was sold in a
slave market in Ireland, and he became a shepherd for his master. He spent six years as a shepherd. In
his writings he said that he was not very religious until that point, when he started praying. He said he
prayed 100 prayers per day and as many at night. He realized that he was in a desperate situation and

needed some help. Eventually he got some help, and he was able to escape from Ireland. He went to the
continent via a ship that was taking some Irish hounds there. Eventually, a couple of years later, he made
it home to Britain. So this still young British man who had been a slave in Ireland and then escaped was
hoping that he would never see Ireland again.
One night, however, he had a dream or a vision. In the dream, an Irish man came to Patrick and gave
him a number of letters. He took the letters in the dream and began to read them. One of the letters
began by saying, “The voice of the Irish—we beg you to come and walk with us once more.” He had
that dream, and in it he had an invitation to return to Ireland where he had been a slave. He said he was
stabbed in the heart by that letter and was unable to read further. He tried to forget it, but he could not
put it out of his mind. Eventually he realized that it was more than a dream, and he thought it was also
more than the voice of the Irish. It was the voice of the Lord calling him to go back to Ireland. He heard
the voice of Christ saying, “He who gave His life for you, He it is who speaks within you.” So with that
rather dramatic call, Patrick went back to Ireland and spent the rest of his life there.
He preached a new message to the Irish, which was the good news of the God of the “three faces.” That
was the phrase He used, which was a reference to the Trinity. It is not the best way to refer to the
Trinity. You can sometimes find pictures of one person with three faces, although that is not the proper
way to depict the Trinity. It was Patrick’s way of setting forth for very simple people an understanding
of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He was also able to preach to the Irish a new message. He not only
told them about a new God, but also a new message. It was not a message from an angry Celtic god who
demanded human sacrifices, but rather a message from a loving God who Himself provided the sacrifice
that was needed for the sins of people. Soon that message began to be heard all throughout Ireland.
Patrick said, “We preached it everywhere. We preached it all the way across Ireland until we reached the
ocean and we could not go any farther.” So in Patrick’s time, through this man and his followers, the
Gospel came to Ireland and converted many of the Irish to Christianity.
We do not have a large amount of writing from Saint Patrick. He tells us that he was a relatively
uneducated person. He felt that very keenly. He wished that he had a better education when he became a
great preacher and leader of the church in Ireland. He did the best that he could, however, so he wrote
slowly and with difficulty. We do have his testimony, his autobiography, and also the lovely work, Saint
Patrick’s Breastplate, as it is sometimes called. Sometimes Saint Patrick’s Breastplate is called A
Morning Prayer, and sometimes it is called The Cry of the Deer. The reason it is called Saint Patrick’s
Breastplate is that it was the protection that Patrick put upon himself. His faith was his breastplate, and
he was able to protect himself from the pagan gods and goddesses of Ireland by calling on what he
called “the strong name of the Trinity.”
The most familiar part of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate begins saying, “Christ be with me, Christ before
me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me.” That is the famous prayer
from Saint Patrick. A modern adaptation of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate is sung in the hymn Be Thou my
Vision, which begins, “Be Thou my vision, O, Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me, save that
Thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.”
Someone was inspired to take those words by Patrick and write that hymn. The third verse of that
modern adaptation is a very interesting one, which is “Be Thou my battle shield, sword for the fight. Be
Thou my dignity, Thou my delight, Thou my soul’s shelter, Thou my high tower. Raise me to
heavenward, O, Power of my Power.” In an earlier lesson I mentioned the “power encounter” concept,
which is certainly in the writings of Patrick and in the preaching of the Gospel in Ireland.

Patrick began many monasteries. The church in Ireland was organized around monasteries and abbots. It
was not like the church in the rest of Europe, with a structure of the pope, archbishops, and bishops.
Rather it had monasteries and abbots. When the Irish wrote to the pope in Rome, they wrote to him as
the “abbot” in Rome. The monasteries in Ireland often had a high tower, like the one mentioned in the
hymn, which was necessary in order to keep a lookout for enemies and danger. When Patrick prays, “Be
Thou my high tower,” it is the equivalent of Luther referring to God as a “mighty fortress.”
One of the enduring treasures of the coming of Christianity to Ireland was the establishment in the
monasteries of centers for the copying of books, particularly the Scripture. As the Dark Ages began to
descend on the continent, the light of learning was kept alive in Ireland by the monks who sat in their
small places each day and copied Scripture. They produced some of the most beautiful and significant
copies of the Scriptures. For instance, the Book of Kells, which is now kept at Trinity College in Dublin,
is one of the great treasures of Christianity. The Irish scribes did not merely copy the Bible, but they also
did it beautifully with amazing depictions and illuminations of the letters.
The monks evangelized Ireland. They copied the Bible and other books, thereby preserving learning for
future generations, as Thomas Cahill reminds us in his book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. That is
an impressive title, but it is probably not an exaggeration because the Irish did play that role. They were
the saviors of European civilization during the Dark Ages. Not only did they accomplish all of that, but
soon the Irish also sent missionaries out to England, to Scotland, and then even to the continent. They
preached the Gospel to places where the Gospel had once been known but had been lost for one reason
or another. The Irish church became almost at once a missionary church. It was very much like the
Korean church in our day. When the Korean church came into existence, it was not long before they
began sending out missionaries. The Irish church did the same thing.
The closest land to Ireland was Scotland. Scotland was not evangelized except partially by Ninian, who
came in the fifth and sixth century. He was a British missionary trained in Rome, who worked among
the people of southern Scotland, called the Picts. That was the Roman name for those people; it meant
“painted people,” because they fought with their faces painted in grotesque colors. Ninian was able to
come up from Rome through England and into the southern part of Scotland to preach the Gospel to
those people. The Gospel also came more permanently to a larger part of Scotland through the preaching
of Columba.
Columba was one of the Irish monks. His first name was something like Fox, but Columba means
“dove.” We do not know exactly what happened to him in Ireland, but he got into some sort of trouble.
It may have been with the church, or with the state, or with both. He was exiled, or he may have exiled
himself, from Ireland because of the trouble that he caused. Apparently, leaving Ireland was considered
the worst possible fate for an Irishman. Columba was not happy about leaving, but he did not go far. He
only went a few miles from Ireland to a Scottish island called Iona. He settled there and built a
monastery, very much like a monastery in Ireland. Sometime later he wrote, “Thou to the meek and
lowly, Thy secrets dost unfold. O God, Thou doest all things, all things both new and old. I walk secure
and blest in every clime or coast, in the name of God the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost.” So this man
learned to be happy wherever he was, because he could be there in the blessing and with the presence of
God.
It was from Iona that Columba and his disciples began to evangelize further into Scotland. The Picts
were indigenous to Scotland. Interestingly it was the Irish colonists who had come over to Scotland to
settle who were called the Scots. So the Scottish people came from Ireland and settled in the land of the
Picts. Later Scots would go back to Ireland, and we know those people as Scotch-Irish. There was a

certain interchange between those two lands, which were very close together and were both part of the
Celtic fringe of Europe. That tiny island of Iona became the source of missionaries who were going
throughout the length and breadth of Scotland. They also went into northern England where they
evangelized the Angles of Northumbria. A missionary from Iona who went to England was named
Aidan. Out of his work came the famous monastery at Lindisfarne, or the “Holy Isle,” which still exists
today as a monastery, although it is more intended for tourists now. You can only get there when the tide
is low, because when the tide is high the road is covered. It is an island part of the day and not an island
the rest of the time. Lindisfarne was another place where the Bible was copied with beautiful script. It
was the beginning of the “Lindisfarne Gospels,” as they are called, which are now in the British Library.
Even from Iona, missionaries went further afield, out to the continent of Europe. Columban, or
Columbanus, as he was called in Latin, was not the same man as Columba, but he was also from Iona,
and he went into the heart of the European continent. He was part of the first wave of Irish, Scottish, and
English monks who left their homelands to cross the channel over the following two centuries to do
missionary work on the continent. If you read the modern novel The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco,
which is a very interesting story, it includes the story of Columbanus and the Irish who went all the way
to Switzerland and northern Italy in order to preach the Gospel in those lands. We know where those
Irish and Ionan missionaries went because almost everywhere they went we can find an “Iona Cross.” It
is a cross that has a circle, which stands for eternity. The cross is God’s eternal plan for the salvation of
those who believe. That type of cross is found everywhere in Ireland and Scotland. And these crosses
were built throughout the continent, and they can be found in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. They are
often found with pictures carved into the cross itself, illustrating the passion of our Lord.
By this time the Gospel had come from the Romans to the Britons. The Anglo-Saxons then came into
Britain and pushed the Britons into the extremities of Wales and the west. The Anglo-Saxons were
pagans. In the meantime, a Christian Briton went to Ireland, and Ireland was evangelized. Then Ireland
sent missionaries to Scotland, England, and down to the continent. But the pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders
created a new pagan civilization. So, a land that had been Christian again became pagan. Just because a
country is evangelized, that does not mean it is going to stay Christian. It can revert to paganism or
become something else. Because of the power of the Anglo-Saxons in the heart of England, Christianity
was pushed to the west and north, and their access to the continent of Europe was blocked. All of that
was eventually changed. The mission that evangelized the Anglo-Saxons did not come from the British
Christians. Neither did it come primarily from Iona. It came from Rome. It came from a mission that
Pope Gregory the Great established by sending Saint Augustine from Rome to England.
Before I talk about that, however, I should mention a man named Bede. We usually call him the
Venerable Bede. This man is important because so much of what I am going to describe I would not
know, and nobody would know, if it were not for the Venerable Bede. He was the father of English
history and particularly of English church history. The Venerable Bede lived in the north of England. He
spent his life there writing commentaries and writing history. He was kind of like a medieval Luke. He
chronicled the progress of the kingdom of God as it spread throughout the British islands. His books
cover the years between 597, when Augustine arrived in England, until 731. Bede died just a few years
after that. He was thus able to write about the seventh and early eighth centuries. The themes of his
books of history are providence and predestination. God has prepared the way, and God has His people
that He has chosen. Yet mixed with a formal Augustinianism was a very Roman Catholic sounding
emphasis on the merit of good works. It was not unusual in that period to give lip service to Augustine.
Then when it came to describing salvation, however, they tended to sound much more Pelagian, or at
least semi-Pelagian, in their theological convictions.

Bede tells the story of people like Augustine. Do not confuse Augustine of Hippo and Augustine of
Canterbury. They are two different people. Augustine of Canterbury was sent to England by Gregory the
Great, one of the famous missionary popes of the middle ages. Augustine was a prior in a monastery in
Rome. Gregory believed that somebody needed to go to England to evangelize the Angles and the
Saxons, so he chose Augustine to do that. Augustine set off with some of his companions. It is
interesting to read the correspondence between Augustine as he traveled to England and Gregory,
because Augustine was not sure he wanted to go. It may not sound bad to us to go to England. Back in
those days, however, it was a rough place. For a person from a civilized city like Rome to think of
spending the rest of his life among savage people whose language he did not know, and without
knowing how he would be treated when he got there, it was fearful. He had the trepidation that many
missionaries have when they realize they are on the way and they will have to learn the language and
live in a new culture. Gregory, back in Rome, sustained Augustine with a steady stream of
correspondence. Gregory did not give Augustine a chance to back out. He encouraged Augustine and
told him how important his work was. Gregory should be given much credit for getting Augustine all the
way to Canterbury.
Canterbury was one of the old centers of religious life in southeastern England. Augustine reached
Canterbury in 597. I cannot describe everything that happened next, although some wonderful things did
happen. Some kings were converted through the preaching of Augustine and the others who went with
him. King Ethelbert of Kent was converted in 601. Later, after Augustine died, King Edwin of
Northumbria was converted in 627. Those two very strong kings who represented both the south and the
north of the Anglo-Saxon England were converted to become Christians.
When the Anglo-Saxons became Christians it meant that there were two Christian churches, or two
Catholic churches, in England. They were not on very good terms with each other. The older British had
their church established by the Romans, and it was made up of the British people who were mostly in
the north and in Wales and Cornwall. And there was the newer Anglo-Saxon church, established by
Saint Augustine and Gregory the Great. There was much tension between those two churches. The
issues that divided them might not seem important to us, such as the date of Easter and how monks
should cut their hair. Those issues did separate the two churches and cause much distrust. Many people,
both in England and in Rome, wanted to see the two churches brought together. It took a long time
because there was so much suspicion. Finally at the famous Synod of Whitby in 663, the Roman and the
old English Christians were at last reconciled, and all England came under the control of Rome.
Before ending this story I want to emphasize one more important point, which is the English mission to
the continent. There was the Irish mission, which included Patrick going to Ireland, Columba going to
Iona, missionaries from Iona going to Lindisfarne, and finally Ionan and Irish missionaries going into
the heart of central Europe, planting their Iona Crosses and preaching the Gospel. Then from Rome
came Saint Augustine to Canterbury, and from Canterbury the Gospel was preached to the Anglo-
Saxons in the heart of England. Among those Anglo-Saxons who were converted, some of them became
missionaries to the Netherlands and to Germany. It is interesting how quickly those new churches
became missionary churches. The British missions to the continent included famous missionaries such
as Wilfrid and Willibrord, who went to the Frisians in what is now modern Belgium and Holland. The
most famous missionary was Wynfrith, or his more usual name, Boniface, who went to Germany. He is
called the “apostle to Germany.” He was the man who cut down the oak tree in order to demonstrate to
the Germans that the God of Christianity was stronger and mightier than Thor, the god that the Germans
worshiped.

It is interesting and even a little amusing to think of those missionaries and great leaders of the church.
Patrick is identified with Ireland, but he was actually English. Columba is a great hero of Scotland, but
he was actually Irish. Boniface the apostle of Germany was actually English. That is probably the way it
should be. God sends His people into the entire world. National boundaries are not very important in the
sight of God when planting and establishing His church.
“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is
marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1).

Learning & Theology
This lesson is entitled “Eternal Wisdom, Learning, and Theology.” The prayer I will use is from Alcuin
of York, who lived in the eighth century. He was from England but served for most of his life on the
continent of Europe.
“Eternal light, shine into our hearts. Eternal goodness, deliver us from evil. Eternal power, be our
support. Eternal wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance. Eternal pity, have mercy upon us, that
with all our heart and mind and soul and strength we may seek Your face and be brought by Your
infinite mercy to Your holy presence, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
We are now in the second 500 years of the history of Christianity. I have presented another of the
themes related to that long period. I do not spend as much time covering it as I did the first 500 years,
nor as much as I do the third 500 years. I will examine some of the important topics of this second 500
years. I talked about the spread of the Gospel into different parts of Europe and into Asia. There was
progress of the Gospel into Africa at that time. In this lesson I will focus on learning and theology. You
will soon be aware when I start talking about people like Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, and John Scotus
Eriugena that this was not the great day of theology. It was not the period of Augustine, Ambrose,
Jerome, and Chrysostom. The people I will refer to from this period do have some significance and
importance. We ought to understand what was going on in the realm of learning and theology during a
period that most people refer to as the Dark Ages. I will focus first on learning and then on theology.
Those two things flow together in the Middle Ages. There is little difference between them. All learning
had to do with theology, and all theology had to do with learning at that time. For the sake of
convenience, I am dividing the lesson into two points: first, great scholars, and second, great
theologians.
The first of the great scholars of the period was a man who lived in the late fifth and early sixth century.
His name was Boethius. Boethius came from a prominent Roman family. By his time, however, Rome
had fallen, so Rome was no longer the city that it had been earlier. It was ruled by Ostrogothic kings,
barbarian kings. Those kings often made use of people from the prominent families from Rome in their
service. Boethius was one of the leaders of the state under Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king. Something
happened to Boethius through which he fell out of favor with that king, and he was put in prison. We are
not sure of all of the circumstances.
Boethius wrote a number of books, both before and while he was in prison. His fame rests upon those
books. One book in particular that he wrote in prison, called The Consolation of Philosophy, was very
famous. Most people have not heard of that book today. For centuries, however, The Consolation of
Philosophy was a great text for people to read in school for studying Latin. To become at home in The
Consolation was to become at home in the medieval Latin world. What Boethius set out to do in The
Consolation of Philosophy was to examine the misfortune that had befallen him. He attempted to come
to some resolution of that misfortune. He had been a good man, doing what was right. Then much
trouble came upon him. Interestingly, he tried to do that without reference to God or the afterlife. People
have puzzled over that, because Boethius was a professed Christian. Yet he wrote about trouble purely
from the standpoint of philosophy. He tried to find some consolation in philosophy itself.
In my doctoral studies at Princeton University I had two seminars during my first semester. All of my
work focused on those two classes, one of which was on Boethius. I was rather dismayed that I had
never heard of Boethius, but I was going to spend a whole semester studying him. I wrote a long paper

on a famous sentence from Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy, which was “Virtue is its own
reward.” It was my semester’s work to try to analyze that sentence. That is what Boethius set out to do.
He tried by simple rational processes and philosophical reflection to come up with some view by which
he could be consoled by philosophy. I am not sure why he did not bring up God. Perhaps he believed
that if he wrote it that way he could help others who were not Christians. Perhaps it was some other
reason.
For whatever reason, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, and through it Boethius became a major
channel through which Aristotle and the Greek philosophers entered the Middle Ages. There were only a
few of those channels. Without Boethius and a few others, Aristotle and the other Greek philosophers
may have been lost to the Christian West. That was very important because the preservation and
rediscovery of Aristotle was essential for the development of the scholastic method, which is so
important for the study of medieval theology.
Another famous man of the time was Isidore of Seville. He wrote a book of sentences and origins, or
etymologies. The Book of Sentences became the theological text of the middle ages until the twelfth
century. After the Book of Sentences from Isidore came the Book of Sentences from Peter Lombard, and
later there was Thomas Aquinas. Isidore began the progression of medieval theology. The Book of
Sentences was his way of trying to arrange a systematic theology. He collected ideas from Augustine
and the church fathers and put them together in a systematic way. Origins, or Etymologies, is Isidore’s
expansion of his writing to include secular learning. So the importance of Isidore is that in one man we
find theology and almost everything else. He wrote both a systematic theology and an encyclopedia.
Origins, or Etymologies, became the principle source of knowledge of antiquity for the Middle Ages.
These two people, Boethius from Rome and Isidore from Seville, were important educators and scholars
who tried to capture something of the knowledge of the past, put it into written form, and preserve it for
the future.
The third scholar was quite different. His name was Dionysius the Areopagite. Today he is known as
Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. That might seem to be a rather odd name for a scholar. He used the
name Dionysius the Areopagite in his writings. Dionysius was the man that Paul met in Athens, which
was recorded in Acts 17. By tradition, Dionysius was the first bishop of Athens. When the writings of
Dionysius the Areopagite were first found, many people thought that they were from Paul’s disciple who
was traditionally viewed as the first pastor or bishop of the church in Athens. It was much later that
scholars applied textual criticism to this writing and discovered that it could not be written by a first-
century Greek. It was probably written by someone from Syria in the fifth or sixth century. Thus
Dionysius the Areopagite became known as Dionysius the Pseudo, or false, Areopagite.
In Dionysius we find a blend of Christian and Neo-Platonic ideas. Much of the school of Neo-Platonism
came into some expressions of Christianity through the writings of Dionysius. His significance can be
summarized in two ways. First, Dionysius stressed that the negative is the way to do theology. That
means that what should be stressed is what we do not know. Theologians often talk about what we do
know about God, but Dionysius spent his time talking about what we do not know about God. That is
called apophatic, or negative, theology. The Orthodox mainstream maintained the abiding mystery of
God. Augustine and the others never said that we could completely understand God or that we could
exhaust the meaning of God. Yet the Orthodox mainstream believed that there was true revelation, true
knowledge. They affirmed that what we do know, we know truly, but that we do not know God
exhaustively. Dionysius stressed more the side of our lack of knowledge, our ignorance, or the darkness.
His negative theology became an important factor in both the East and the West. Charles Williams said
in his book, The Descent of the Dove, “The theology of Dionysius soars into the great darkness, lit

faintly by the very phrases it rejects.” That is a good attempt by Williams to summarize what it feels like
to read Dionysius. Dionysius continually rejected the knowledge he was talking about. Yet there is some
faint lighting of his understanding through the very phrases that he rejected.
The importance of Dionysius was twofold. For mystics everywhere, East and West, they drew heavily
from Dionysius. Mysticism would move away from a rational approach to theology to a personal
encounter, to an experience. Second, the influence of Dionysius is particularly prevalent in the Eastern
churches. The Eastern Orthodox Church and other eastern churches drew upon Dionysius for mystery. I
will describe later that the Eastern Orthodox Church always thinks that the Western church is too
rational. We are always trying to explain things, understand things, and write books of systematic
theology. It does not matter whether we are Catholic or Protestant in the West; we all have the same
fault according to the Eastern church. The Eastern church, which drew heavily upon Dionysius, went in
the direction of mystery and the negative way to God.
The other thing that Dionysius is remembered for is his celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is
probably the case that the word “hierarchy” was invented by Dionysius. He wrote two works. One was
called Celestial Hierarchy, in which he arranged the angels into three orders of three each. It is a long
book about the angels in which there are nine orders of angels. In Celestial Hierarchy Dionysius set
forth a Neo-Platonic theory of the great chain of being. The Neo-Platonic philosophy had a way of
looking at God at the top and man at the bottom with many intermediary beings between them. The
angels form that ladder in Dionysian theology, a hierarchy of spiritual creatures, rank upon rank, up and
down the ladder of heaven. John Calvin occasionally referred to Dionysius in his Institutes. Calvin did
not think much of him. He said, “If you read that man’s book, you would think a man fallen from
heaven recounted, not what he learned, but what he had seen with his own eyes.” Calvin said that
because Dionysius was so precise and exact in the way he created the orders of the angels. It is rather
curious that someone who so much emphasized a negative view of God could know so much about
angels. John Calvin points that out too.
The importance of Celestial Hierarchy was its link to a second book called Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. In
the Middle Ages it was often believed that things on earth reflected things in heaven. Thus, if in heaven
there was a well-graded celestial hierarchy, so also on earth it must follow that there is the same well-
graded ecclesiastical hierarchy with the pope, cardinals, arch-bishops, bishops, and so on down the line.
In the eyes of the bishops and other church authorities it did not harm his cause at all that he wrote the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy after the Celestial Hierarchy and that he traced parallels between the celestial
hierarchy and the church on earth. The church was already moving in that direction, and Dionysius’
work was another step in the direction of the evolution of the Roman Catholic Church with its great
stress on hierarchy.
On the topic of learning I have talked about Boethius and Isidore. They were people through whom the
learning of the past was passed on through the Middle Ages. I talked about Dionysius, an Eastern
theologian who was very influential. His name will come up again later in the course. There were two
great movements of education or learning in this second 500-year period of Christianity. One was Celtic
Christianity. In a previous lesson I talked about Saint Patrick and the influence of the Celtic church in
Ireland and from Ireland. Celtic Christianity had its heyday in the sixth and seventh centuries. Their
impact was celebrated in a book by Thomas Cahill called How the Irish Saved Civilization, in which
their story is told in a lively and interesting style.
The other movement of education occurred on the continent. We call it the Carolingian Renaissance. It
had its heyday in the eighth and ninth centuries. Carolingian refers to the reign of Charlemagne, the

Holy Roman Emperor who was crowned in 800. Charlemagne, although he was not a great scholar
himself—he was anything but a great scholar—had a great appreciation for learning. He tried to create
in his capital at Aachen a center for study and learning. He was able to do that. Thus in the Carolingian
Renaissance, as Steven Osmet said, “We have a true shaft of light within the relative cultural darkness of
the early Middle Ages.” One of the great teachers in Aachen was an Englishman. People from England
and Ireland were going to the continent at this time in order to teach and take the Gospel to areas it had
never gone before, or to areas in which it had been lost. Alcuin of York was a scholar and a Benedictine
monk, and he was the head of Charlemagne’s palace school in Aachen. It was an important school, and
Alcuin was an important teacher because people from all over the continent came to that school, and
they were taught by Alcuin and the other scholars there. Then they went out and attended monastic and
cathedral schools in other parts of Europe. It was not yet the time of the universities. But these monastic
and cathedral schools were the beginnings of that trend. After the palace schools the universities would
be the next step, such as Oxford and Milan. Scholars in those schools, and particularly at Aachen,
studied and wrote. We do not have evidence of great books coming out of those schools. Rather they
were copying the books of antiquity. The scribes of Alcuin created beautiful and effective texts that
were copies of the Bible and other books.
Moving on from the general topic of learning to the specific area of theology, I want to mention John
Scotus Eriugena. He was a theologian of the ninth century. The name John Scotus meant “John the
Scot,” which meant that he was an Irishman, because that is where the word was originally used. He was
a scholar who, like Alcuin before him, taught in Carolingian Europe. He was an impressive scholar with
extensive knowledge of Greek. He attempted something like Dionysius, reconciling Neo-Platonic
philosophy with Christian ideas. John Scotus Eriugena always seemed to walk on the edge of things. He
walked very closely to pantheism at times, and even perhaps falling into pantheism at times.
The important debate of the ninth century was over the Lord’s Supper. There were two theologians
involved in the debates. Both were associated with the celebrated monastery of Corbie, one of the most
important Carolingian theological schools. One was Radbertus, and the other was Ratramnus. They
debated the nature of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. They discussed what it meant for Christ to
say, “This is My body.” They dealt with the question of what we actually partake of in the Lord’s
Supper. That also became a huge debate later during the Reformation period. The first important debate
on this topic, however, was during the ninth century between Radbertus and Ratramnus.
Radbertus held to the view called “real presence.” It is the view that became the Catholic doctrine. In
this view the wine and the bread are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ. It is no
longer wine and bread but now body and blood. Ratramnus answered Radbertus by holding the view of
the “spiritual presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. This view sounds much more like the Reformed
doctrine of Zwingli or Calvin than anything else we can identify it with. The view of Ratramnus was
condemned by the view in 1050. The church considered the two views, and the debate took place before
there was a view set in stone by the church. But in 1050 the church decided to take a stand, and the view
of Radbertus became known as the Catholic view. Transubstantiation was then fixed as dogma by the
Lateran Council in 1215. That meant that after 1215, if you were a Catholic, it was necessary for you to
believe that you partake of the actual body and blood of Christ.
The other debate of the period is that over predestination. That debate took place during the time of
Gottschalk and Florus of Lyon. Before describing this debate, I want to go back and talk about what has
happened to the doctrine of grace and the doctrine of predestination since the time of Augustine. During
the Pelagian controversy, Augustine rescued the biblical view of grace from obscurity or neglect and
brought it back to center stage in his theology. What happened to grace since Augustine? The Council of

Orange met in 529, and it taught a view that some people think is totally true to Augustine and some
people think is almost true to Augustine. I identify the Council of Orange as almost Augustinian, but not
quite. Irresistible grace was omitted, although the Council of Orange did make a strong statement that
prevenient grace is necessary. Reprobation was not included in the statement of the Council of Orange.
Some people argue that reprobation is not included in Augustine either. In my view, the implications of
Augustine’s teaching clearly lead in that direction. Thus after Augustine there was a struggle in the
church with the semi-Pelagians, including John Cassian. Even during Augustine’s own lifetime he was
fighting that battle. He had fought the battle with the Pelagians. Then he fought the battle with the semi-
Pelagians. Then the Council of Orange came along and seemed to place the church on the side of
Augustine in this debate. The semi-Pelagianism expressed in the writings of John Cassian, however,
such as his book The Conferences, began to influence and undermine Augustinianism and the decree of
the Council of Orange. By the time of the Middle Ages, pure Augustinianism was very scarce. It was
practically unknown in the church.
One man who did stand for what Augustine also stood for was Gottschalk. He was the son of a Saxon
count. It was not the last time that a Saxon would raise his voice in defense of this doctrine. Gottschalk
was a Benedictine monk. He was a scholar who had studied under Ratramnus at Corbie. Mainly he read
Augustine. By actually reading Augustine, not commentaries on Augustine, nor the semi-Pelagian
writings, Gottschalk absorbed the teaching of Saint Augustine. Augustine was very much honored in the
church, but he was not much followed by the church on this point of his theology.
Gottschalk wrote sentences such as “God, prior to the creation of the world, unchangeably predestined
all His elect to eternal life, and all of the rejected who shall be condemned to eternal death for their evil
deeds on judgment day according to His justice and as they deserve.” That is a well thought-through
sentence, and it is balanced in different ways. It is certainly double predestination. The words “double
predestination” came first from Isidore of Seville, who apparently also held that view. The teaching of
double predestination is also a logical inference from Augustine’s teaching. It is certainly present in
Gottschalk.
Florus of Lyon was a defender of Gottschalk. He wrote, “None of the elect can perish because of the
hardness and impenitence of their hearts. None of the reprobate can be saved.” Both Gottschalk and
Florus spoke of the fact that the chosen are predestined to heaven and others to hell, though not to sin.
Neither of them wanted to say that God predestines people to sin. People sin because of their own
choice. Double predestination, irresistible grace, and limited atonement are present in the writings of
these two theologians in the Middle Ages.
That kind of teaching fell like a bombshell on Carolingian Europe. The church would not countenance it.
Gottschalk was defrocked. Not only that, but he was also severely beaten. And not only that, but he was
also put in prison, where he spent the last 20 years of his life. He continued to study and write, but his
writings were little known and little used until the time of the Reformation when people began to
rediscover this medieval Augustinian. Interestingly, he was also a religious poet of high order. It is not
common for a theologian such as Gottschalk to be able to write sensitive and beautiful poetry.
The difference between Augustinianism and Pelagianism and the various views in between came up
often in church history. One might characterize it this way: Pelagius would say to a new convert,
“Congratulations, you did it. You have cleaned up your life, became a Christian, and you did what was
required of you.” Augustine, upon meeting a new convert, would say, “Thank God, you have been saved
by grace.” Others, especially during the Middle Ages, would try to say something in between the two,
such as, “Thank God, and congratulations. This was a cooperative effort. Praise is due all around.” That

is what I call “percentage theology.” The Middle Ages struggled with how to set the percentage. They
wondered how much God does and how much we are required to do. Almost everybody during that
period viewed salvation as some sort of cooperative effort between God and us. With very few
exceptions, such as Gottschalk and Florus of Lyon, and later Thomas Bradwardine, John Wycliffe, and
John Huss, that was the predominant view. In my view, Pelagianism is the persistent heresy in church
history. There may be more than one persistent heresy in church history, but Pelagianism is certainly one
of them.
In the flow of church history, one can think of grace on one side and works on the other. As you go
through church history, the doctrines of grace in the Old Testament were lost. That led to the works of
Pharisaism. Then the doctrines of grace were recovered in the New Testament. Then they fell away into
Pelagianism. Grace was brought back from its biblical foundations in Augustine. Then in the period of
the Middle Ages, semi-Pelagianism brought back works. During the time of the Reformation the church
was brought back to the grace side. Then rationalism during the post-Reformation period went in the
opposite direction. The revivals of Whitfield and Edwards during the first Great Awakening emphasized
grace again. Then liberalism took the church back to the side of works. As you think of church history
you can consider how that one doctrine has been treated in different epochs.

Eastern Orthodoxy
This lesson is entitled “The Church of the Seven Councils, Eastern Orthodoxy.” For the first 1,000 years
of Christianity, the time period we have covered so far, when I have referred to the “Eastern church” I
have meant the Eastern part of the one Catholic Church. There was not a separate Eastern church until
1054. In this lesson I will describe the events that led up to the separation of Eastern Orthodoxy from the
Roman Catholic Church and some of the repercussions that resulted from that separation. In the second
1,000 years of Christianity the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church have been
separate churches.
The prayer that I will use to begin this lesson is taken from the Orthodox liturgy. It is a rather famous
prayer to Orthodox people, and it is a wonderful prayer that we can pray as well. As we begin to think
about the history of Orthodoxy, let us pray in the traditional words of the Orthodox liturgy.
“Set our hearts on fire with love to Thee, O Christ our God, that in its flame we may love Thee with all
our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength, and our neighbors as
ourselves, so that keeping Thy commandments we may glorify Thee, the giver of all good gifts.”
As we think of the pulling apart of the two parts of the Christian church, there was much cultural
influence at work there. The Western church became increasingly Latin speaking. The Eastern church
remained Greek speaking. Thus even in the use of two different languages there were certain differences
that came to bear upon the two parts of the Christian church. Someone has said that the Eastern church
and the Latin church could not understand each other because they spoke two different languages, and it
was always difficult to know exactly what each side was talking about.
The Eastern church has always taken great pride in the fact that it is the church of the seven councils.
The Western church also believed and held to the teachings of the seven ecumenical councils. Those
councils are very important in the history of the church. I have described some of those in some detail,
but let me review them for a moment. The first council was Nicea in 325. The second was
Constantinople in 381. One word that could be used to summarize those first two councils is “Trinity.”
They both dealt with the doctrine of the Trinity. The next four councils—Ephesus, Chalcedon,
Constantinople II, and Constantinople III—all dealt with the doctrine of Christ. The seventh ecumenical
council was Nicea II, which met in 787, and it dealt with the controversy over icons. If you learn those
seven councils, divide them into their three categories, and add a few dates, then you will know much
about church history. Those councils were important for both Eastern and Western church history.
All of those councils met in the East, as you can observe from the cities, which are all in modern
Turkey. The Eastern church views those councils as particularly the possession and treasure of the
Eastern church. The Eastern Orthodox Church grudgingly shares them with the West, but it views itself
as the church of the seven councils. The Eastern church has been very concerned not to change anything
that the church fathers wrote in the documents of those seven ecumenical councils. John of Damascus,
the greatest of the Eastern Orthodox theologians, wrote, “We do not change the everlasting boundaries
which our fathers have set, but we keep the traditions just as we have received them.” One thing will
become plain as you study Eastern Orthodoxy—it does not change. Its theology does not change. At
least, that is what the Eastern Orthodox Church claims. It has certainly been able to verify that claim
more often than the Western Catholic Church in making that same claim.

Most of the lessons thus far have focused on the West, and so we have become more familiar with
Western names such as Augustine, Ambrose, and from the Middle Ages people like Boethius and
Isidore of Seville. This lesson will focus on some of the important names of the East. The East and the
West shared the early church fathers. Until about the time of Augustine, both churches claimed the same
tradition. Augustine was a transition, however, because Augustine belongs to the West. The Eastern
church does not like Augustine much because they think he is the beginning of the problem. Before
Augustine there is a shared tradition. Increasingly the West developed its own theological history and
tradition with Ambrose, Jerome, and preeminently Augustine, and also Gregory the Great, down to
Thomas Aquinas, and into the Reformation. The East had its own particular favorites, who were people
that the West honored as well. They were people like Athanasius, the Great Cappadocians, and John
Chrysostom. Those were Eastern theologians. If you read much of the history of Eastern theology, you
will find Athanasius quoted repeatedly along with the Great Cappadocians and John Chrysostom. Like
people in the West quote Augustine, people in the East quote those theologians.
There are some other names that we should know. John Climacus lived in the sixth and seventh
centuries. He was an abbot of a monastery in Sinai. He wrote a book called Ladder of Divine Ascent. It
was one of the most widely read manuals of monastic and mystical spirituality during the time. He set
the book up as 30 steps up a ladder, representing the 30 years of the life of Christ. It included prayer,
meditation, and various other things to do and think and pray as the soul slowly, and with difficulty,
ascends the ladder. The ladder became a strong image in both the Eastern church and in Western
mysticism.
There was also Maximus the Confesssor, who lived mainly in the seventh century. He is considered by
many to be the father of Eastern Orthodoxy. He was an opponent of Monothelitism, which I have not
talked about before. Monothelitism is an offshoot of Monophysitism. Maximus held to Chalcedonianism
against any attempts to merge the two natures of Christ. He lived a very ascetical lifestyle, as many
Eastern theologians practiced. He was also very liturgical in his writings. As you read the Eastern
theologians, liturgy tends to merge with theology, more so than it does in the West. In the West we tend
to think of theology as one thing and liturgy as another. In the East it is difficult to separate those two.
Theology and worship blend. As a principle, that is a very good one to have. The Eastern mind tends to
think that the West is too concerned to separate worship from theology and therefore is tempted to
become too rational in its understanding of theology. The East rejects that sort of rationality, particularly
as it was developed in the medieval scholastic theology of the Western Catholic Church.
The most important of all the Eastern theologians may have been John of Damascus. He was from a
distinguished family. By the time John came along, living in Syria, that part of the Eastern church was
under the control of the Muslims. So John grew up in a distinguished Christian family, but in a Muslim-
controlled country. He served in the government of that country. He was remarkably bold enough to
write a treatise against Islam, which he called the “Ishmaelite heresy.” He did not lose his life because of
it. John of Damascus retired from public office and entered the great monastery of Mar Saba, and there
he began to write on theology. His most important book is The Orthodox Faith. Someone has called it
Orthodoxy’s “first, most important, and by some accounts, only systematic theology.” Thus John of
Damascus is important to remember for the Eastern church as a parallel to Thomas Aquinas, who was
the great theologian of the medieval Western church. John of Damascus also wrote hymns such as “The
Day of Resurrection” and “Come, ye Faithful.”
Much of the theology of the Eastern church was shared with the West. Yet there were certain distinctive
emphases in Eastern Orthodox thinking, which are still present in that church. Those emphases can be
summarized under four points. In the West there were emphases on sin, grace, justification, salvation,

and the sacraments. The list of emphases in the East, however, is apophaticism, tradition, theosis, and
icons. Simply in making those two lists it is evident that theology was moving in different directions or
at least assuming different emphases. To the Western mind, that list from the Eastern church sounded
strange, as though the Eastern church had lost the main direction of theological understanding. Those
emphases deserve to be considered in more detail, which can hopefully lead to a better understanding of
why the Eastern church maintained those emphases.
Apophaticism is simply the use of negative theology, such as Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite created.
It involves an emphasis on the mystery of God, focusing on the shadow and the darkness rather than the
light. There is light, but there is also darkness. There is revelation, but there is also mystery. The Eastern
church emphasizes, celebrates, loves, and adores the mystery. In the Western church, we are always
trying to solve the problems and understand the mystery. The Eastern church does not really try to solve
the problems. It does not try to understand much. It simply adores and worships, rather than trying to
explain.
The second emphasis in the Eastern church is on tradition. These are relative emphases. The Western
church preserves mystery, too—to some extent. Yet the Eastern church revels in it. Both the Eastern
church and the Western church have a role for tradition. The Western church has so much emphasis on
tradition that the Reformers thought it had gone too far. Luther, Calvin, and some of the other Reformers
rejected some of the Roman Catholic tradition and its emphasis on tradition along with Scripture. In the
Eastern church, however, there has never been a check on the high estimate and value placed upon
tradition. In the Eastern church, tradition is the witness of the Spirit. The Spirit spoke the Word and
spoke in the ecumenical creeds, and the Spirit speaks now in the tradition. In the living voice of the
church, in the community of the faithful, the Spirit still speaks. For the Eastern church, at each true
council, the miracle of Pentecost is renewed—when the Spirit descends and truth is renewed. Despite
the confusions in those councils, and the presence of people who were not worthy people, still the
miracle of Pentecost repeated and the Holy Spirit spoke and the words of the council became the words
of the Spirit. With a view such as that, the ecumenical councils rose almost to the level of Scripture. In
some expressions of Eastern Orthodox thought, the councils are the same as Scripture, which is why
they do not abide any tampering with the words of the councils, for it would be the same as tampering
with Scripture. The Eastern Orthodox mind does not think that God promised to speak only in the
Scripture. Therefore they do not have the idea of Scripture alone, but rather the idea of Scripture plus the
continuing revelation of God through the church. They do not believe in revelation through the pope,
since they do not have a pope. The revelation is through the community, the whole church, which grows
into the truth as God speaks continually in the church.
A third emphasis in Eastern Orthodoxy is theosis. That Greek word means “deification” and refers to the
deification of humanity. That word sums up salvation in the Eastern church. In the West we talk about
sin and justification as a way of understanding salvation. In the East the emphasis is on theosis, or
deification. The idea is that we are changed so that we become like God. The Eastern theologians will
say it even more strongly. Athanasius said, “God became man, that man might become God.” That is
theosis, or deification. That strikes the Western mind as a problematic way to understand theology and
the transforming effect of grace. The Eastern mind, though, sees that as the real purpose of Christ
coming into the world, to so transform us that we become like Him. In some ways we can see that. We
talk about union with Christ and becoming more like Christ or more like God. In the Eastern expression
of theosis, it is stated so strongly that most Western thinkers pull back from that because it sounds like a
heresy of some sort. A closer examination of the Eastern idea of theosis will reveal that the Eastern
theology does not go over the line, although it uses language that Western Christians would want to
avoid. In the West there are people who pick up on that idea—these are the mystics, but they were

constantly being accused of pantheism. To the Western mind, that kind of language and expression goes
too far because it tends to blur the distinction between God and His creation.
Finally, the fourth great point of emphasis in Eastern theology is the use of icons. They are the images of
Christ and of the saints. When a Protestant goes into an Eastern Orthodox Church, the first things he
notices are the icons. They are all over the place. The central icon is usually an image or a painting of
Christ. The Western church was more likely to picture Christ suffering on the cross, so the crucifix
became important in Western piety. The Eastern church often depicts Christ as the king and the judge.
He is not usually pictured as the suffering Christ but as the almighty Christ. Icons were important in the
Eastern church, but their use caused a controversy. There was a century of controversy over whether it
was appropriate or not. It was known as the “iconoclastic controversy.” The iconoclasts were people
who wanted to destroy the images. The church struggled for a long time over that, and I will later
describe that controversy in more detail.
First I want to describe the conflict between the East and the West, the “primacy conflict.” The
iconoclastic controversy took place in the East, but the primacy conflict was between the two parts of
the undivided church. Some of the ecumenical councils, particularly Constantinople and Chalcedon, had
not only dealt with issues of Trinity and Christology, but also some other points as well. One point was
the relative significance of the two major churches or cities that existed, Rome and Constantinople.
Those ecumenical councils acknowledged Constantinople as “the new Rome, with equal privileges and
equal rank in ecclesiastical matters with Rome.” So the unchangeable church councils had said that
Rome had great authority and so did Constantinople. The problem was that the Roman popes never quite
accepted those statements. The Roman popes believed that Rome had the ascendance and that Rome was
the number one place and the number one church. Constantinople could be number two, but it could not
be the same as Rome. You can see how that would lead to stress and strain between the two parts of the
church as a result of that. The Orthodox Church was willing to acknowledge the “primacy of Peter,”
which was the term that was used. Peter was the leader of the apostolic band and the first bishop or pope
in Rome. In a personal sense, they could acknowledge his supremacy, as a first among equals, as a place
of honor. They could not acknowledge, however, the supremacy of Peter, and likewise of Rome, in
power or authority in an institutional sense. In other words, the Eastern church would acknowledge
Rome as first in an honorary sense, but not in a real sense.
The Roman Catholic Church became increasingly monarchial through the Middle Ages. Authority was
vested in the pope. That did not happen unchallenged. There was a conciliatory movement in the West
that tried to work against that monarchism and make the Western church more like the Eastern church.
Yet that movement failed. So the Western church became more monarchial with authority vested in the
pope. That was not finalized until Vatican I in the nineteenth century.
The Eastern church became conciliar, which meant it was a church of councils. It was not a church with
authority vested in one leader. The patriarch of Constantinople has an honorary position among the
patriarchs of the various Eastern churches. Yet those churches remain independent. They are
autocephalous, meaning they have their own head. There is a church of Russia, a church of Ukraine, and
various churches in Europe, such as the Greek Orthodox Church, and each one has its own head. There
is no one like the pope in the Eastern church, even today.
Beside the primacy conflict, another problem was the filioque controversy. It became a major issue with
debates and books and all kinds of arguments in all kinds of language over that one word. It would take
someone far smarter than I am to figure out what it was all about. I will give you the best summary I can
of the issue. The word filioque is a Latin word that means “and the Son.” The Nicene Creed had said,

“The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.” Eventually, however, the Western church added “filioque”
to its Latin version of the Nicene Creed. So their version would say, “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Father and the Son.” That is called “double procession.” From about the time of Augustine on, the
Western church used the Creed that way. Officially, the word was added to the Creed by Pope Benedict
VIII in 1014, but long before 1014 and Benedict VII the filioque was part of the Nicene Creed in the
West.
The East objected to that addition. It is easy to understand why the East would object to it. They
believed that nothing could be added to the creeds, just as nothing could be added to the Bible. The
Eastern church was greatly offended because the Creed was authoritative and fixed, and it was not right,
nor even possible, to the Eastern mind to change the Creed. The west viewed the Creed as a human
document, not a divine document. It was a providentially arranged document, according to the West, in
that they believed God was involved in its formation. The creeds were not viewed as infallible, however,
and it was not impossible to change them and state truth more fully as more truth was revealed. Thus, on
one ground, the East objected simply because the West changed the creed.
There was also a doctrinal issue involved. In the Eastern view of the Trinity, the Father begets the Son
and the Father breathes the Spirit. The Father is the one source of divinity. He is the one principle of the
Godhead within the Trinity. Thus they would argue there must be a particular emphasis on the role of
the Father, which would safeguard the unity of the Trinity. The favorite text in the East on this issue is
John 15:26, which says, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you, from the Father.” Thus
the Holy Spirit comes from the Father. The East does add “through the Son,” because the Son sends
Him, but He is from the Father, not from the Son. The emphasis is on the unity based out of the role of
the Father as the source of divinity or the principle of the Godhead.
The West, after Augustine, viewed the doctrine of the Trinity in a different way. In their view the Father
begets the Son, and the Father and the Son are the two who breathe the Spirit. That emphasis safeguards
the equality of the Father and the Son. The text that was often used in the West was John 20:22, which
says, “Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” In that text Jesus seems to be
the source of the Spirit.
Much debate has occurred over that issue. It is an important issue, and it was the key issue that separated
the Eastern church from the Western church. Jaroslav Pelikan said in his book, The Melody of Theology,
“If there is a special circle of the inferno described by Dante reserved for historians of theology, the
principal homework assigned to that subdivision of hell for at least the first several eons of eternity may
well be the thorough study of all the treatises—in Latin, Greek, Church Slavonic, and the various
modern languages—devoted to the inquiry: Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father only, as
Eastern Christendom contends, or from both the Father and the Son, as the Latin Church teaches?”
Pelikan, who is probably the greatest historian of doctrine in the modern church, was a Lutheran until he
recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.
I want to return now to describe the iconoclastic controversy. It was a 100-year struggle in the East, and
it did have repercussions in the West. Charlemagne in the West, the Holy Roman Emperor, carried on a
tirade against the icons. It was mainly an attack on the Eastern church because Charlemagne had designs
to increase his power in the East, and the Eastern church was an obstacle to that. Eventually, in the
sixteenth century, there was another emphasis on this issue in the Protestant Reformation when Luther,
and particularly Calvin and later the Puritans, objected to the use of images in worship. Luther was not
as concerned about it, but Calvin and the others were.

In the East, however, there was a violent reaction against the veneration of icons. Icons had been used
for some time. It then seemed that suddenly there was a reaction to the practice. Icons had been used
throughout the Eastern church, and their use was prevalent in worship. The use was extreme in many
ways. For example, they sometimes added flecks of paint from the icons into the Eucharistic wine, as
though it would increase the efficacy of the Eucharist because there were little bits of gold paint added
to the wine. Suddenly, however, there was a reaction to that practice. There are different explanations
that have been given for why some people in the East spoke up to say that the practice was not right.
One explanation is that the emperors in the East, who were in Constantinople and were the successors of
the emperors of Rome, believed that too much power resided in the monasteries. The monasteries were
the places that the icons were drawn up, painted, venerated, and promoted. So in order to put down the
power of the monasteries that threatened the authority of the emperors in the East, there were a number
of emperors who tore down the icons. The emperors sent their soldiers out to destroy the icons, which
often created riots because the monks and the people would try to defend the icons and they would be
killed in the process. A second reason that may have influenced the reaction against the icons was the
rise of the Muslim period. Much of the area of the Mediterranean, where the Eastern Orthodox churches
were, was controlled by the Muslims. The Muslims are very committed against any kind of image in
worship. As a protection against Muslim criticism that the Eastern Christians were idolaters, there may
have been a reaction against the use of icons. Third, it may be that some people simply decided the use
of icons was theologically wrong.
After a long period of dispute, the controversy was finally settled at the Second Council of Nicea, the
last of the seven ecumenical councils, in 787. At that council the icons were defended. In the Eastern
Orthodox tradition, that was a great moment. It is still called the Feast of Orthodoxy. Once per year the
Eastern Orthodox churches will celebrate the Second Council of Nicea when the icons were defended
and supported. The argument for the icons was that they were of equal benefit with the written word.
The church has revelation from the written word and it has revelation from the pictures. They are
mutually revelatory. There is the Gospel by word and the Gospel by color. In order to understand icons,
you need to see their color. Thus icons are a way of receiving truth by a picture, and that picture can
reveal something to you about the Gospel. Another stress at the Second Council of Nicea was that if the
incarnation is genuine, if Christ is really a man, then He can be depicted as any other man can be
depicted. Thus the use of icons became a defense of the real humanity of Christ. Those who attacked the
icons were accused of not believing that Christ was really human, which would have been a case of
doceticism. The council at Nicea also said that the use of icons promotes sanctification. They helped
people grow in their love for Christ and the church. Not only did the Second Council of Nicea defend
the icons, but so also did John of Damascus in many of his writings.
The actual practice of people using the icons was also clarified. The Eastern church, the council at
Nicea, and John of Damascus all made a distinction between the absolute worship that is to be given to
God alone and the relative worship, or veneration, or respect, that can be given to any number of things,
such as the Bible. In the Eastern church it is often a practice for people to kiss the Bible as sign of
respect. Such veneration then is also given to Mary, to the saints, and of course also to Christ. To a
Western Christian, such practice may look like idolatry. It does not look like that at all, however, to an
Eastern Christian. At least it does not look like idolatry to an Eastern theologian. What an Eastern
Christian is really thinking I do not know. Eastern theologians make a distinction between veneration of
icons and the worship of Christ. One of the Cappadocians said, “The honor given to the image passes
over to the prototype and then it becomes worship.” So honor is given to the image, but not worship. A
different word is even used there, both in Greek and Latin, for what is occurring with the image. Yet
somehow that act is transformed into worship, not of the image, but into the worship of Christ. The
outward form of veneration can look the same as absolute worship, but the inward intention is very

different. It may look like worship, but it is not. It is veneration. My question is whether that is really
true in actual practice. What does the Eastern Orthodox Christian really do when that person kisses the
icon, or even the Bible? Does that person make that rather fine theological distinction in his or her own
mind?
In my view, the attempt to establish patristic authority for icons has not succeeded. One certainly cannot
establish biblical authority for the veneration of icons. There are not many biblical texts quoted on the
Eastern side of the debate. Even the church fathers of the first 300 years did not lend much credence to
this practice. There is not a single unambiguous text that mandated icon veneration in the first three
centuries of Christian literature. There is an almost unbroken succession of early writers who equated
the use of external images with paganism. In light of a lack of evidence in Scripture and the early
fathers, the Eastern church at the Second Council of Nicea moved toward an acceptance of the use of
icons as a proper way to worship.
While we do not know what will happen in the future, there has been a “permanent” division, from 1054
until the present time, of the Eastern and the Western churches. There was a temporary division in the
ninth century called the Photian schism. The mutual anathemas of 1054, however, marked the official
break within the church. The pope excommunicated the patriarch and Eastern Christians. The patriarch
responded in kind by excommunicating the pope and Western Christians. They each pronounced
anathemas condemning the other side. Those anathemas were actually revoked by both churches in
1965. It took a long time for the anathemas to be removed, and the schism still exists.
The final blow was the attack on Constantinople in 1204 by Catholic crusaders. Rather than going on to
the holy land to fight the Muslims, the Catholics from the West settled down and fought the Eastern
Christians in Constantinople and stole many of the Eastern Orthodox treasures and moved them to
places like Venice. That certainly did not help the relationship between the two parts of the church.
There is still that division today.
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Old Testament History Lesson 24, page 1
The Late Middle Ages
This is lesson is entitled “The Late Middle Ages, the Third 500 Years.” You might think that I covered
the second 500 years quickly, and that is true. The second 500 years was a relatively undistinguished
period. That is not to say it was unimportant, but compared to the first 500 years, the third 500 years,
and the fourth 500 years, it is probably of less interest to us. Some very important events took place in
that 500-year period, which I described. There was the spread of the Gospel in Asia, Africa, and Europe.
I focused on the Christianization of Great Britain and how from Britain missionaries went from Ireland
to Scotland to England and then back to the continent. I also described the preservation of learning and
theology that took place in the monasteries and important centers of education such as the court of
Charlemagne. Finally, I focused on the church in the East leading up to the schism in 1054.
The last century of that second 500-year period could be viewed as the true Dark Ages. While the whole
500 years is often referred to as the “Dark Ages,” it would be more accurate to use that term for the
shorter period of time, about the year 900, and through the tenth century. With the near approach of the
year 1000, people began to get nervous. They wondered what would happen when that fateful year
came. Charles Williams wrote in Descent of the Dove, “In the eyes of Christendom, everywhere
expected the end.” People thought it would be the end of everything as the year 1000 approached.
Williams also wrote, “The end did not come. The first millennium of Christianity closed, and the second
opened with no greater terrors than ordinary robberies, murders, rapes, burnings, wars, massacres, and
plagues. So people sighed a sigh of relief, and life went on as usual.”
It is now time for me to present an overview of the third 500 years. I will cover this period in more detail
for the remainder of the course. I want to use this lesson to present an overview of the entire period and
introduce some of the important things that I will describe in more detail in later lessons. Before I do so,
let us look to the Lord in prayer. I will use a prayer from the “Sarum Plainsong,” the liturgy of the
church of Salisbury in England.
“Creator of the stars of night, Thy people's everlasting light, O Christ, thou Savior of us all, we pray
Thee, hear us when we call. Come in Thy holy might, we pray. Redeem us for eternal day from every
power of darkness, when Thou judgest all the sons of men. Amen.”
In this survey I am going to talk first about Christianity in Africa and Asia. Then I will give a brief
glimpse at Eastern Orthodoxy, and then I will turn to Roman Catholicism in the West. Christianity in
Africa from the years 1000 through 1500 could be described by the term survival. The Christian church
in Egypt, the Coptic Church, survived despite great disadvantages under Muslim rule. That has been the
fate of that ancient Egyptian church ever since the Muslim conquest. Yet the church was not obliterated
as it was in other parts of North Africa. It continued to live on. Sometimes it lived with vigor and
sometimes in decline. Nevertheless, it survived, as it has done to the present.
I have also talked about Nubian Christianity, which is Christianity south of Egypt, in present-day Sudan.
That early African church reached its peak of greatness during this time. The greatest expression of
Nubian Christianity came during the third 500 years. As Mark Shaw said, however, in his book, The
Kingdom of God in Africa, “The moment of greatness was like the flash of a comet across the night
sky.” Nubian Christianity not only reached its moment of greatness during that time, but it also faced its
decline and collapse. After 1500 we do not hear any more of Nubian Christianity. There was no longer a
church in that part of Africa until the modern missionary movement. Nubian Christianity, which was so

strong for so many years, suddenly collapsed in part due to factors we have noticed elsewhere. Nubian
Christianity was very dependent upon a favorable government. As long as that government was in
power, the church in Nubia enjoyed prosperity. When that government collapsed, however, that church
did as well. There was another reason why Nubian Christianity failed to live on. The Christians in that
area were not able to effectively reach out in evangelism to their neighbors. For one thing, the Nubians
had made themselves unpopular with their neighbors by engaging in a slave trade. They took Africans
from other countries to sell them as slaves in Egypt in order to pay for various treaty obligations that the
Nubians had with the Egyptians. You can understand why it would be difficult for the Nubian church to
be aggressively evangelistic and at the same time raiding their neighbors for the slave trade. For at least
those two reasons, and perhaps others, Nubian Christianity disappeared. It reached a high point during
the thirteenth century. Then a couple hundred years later it was gone from the face of the earth.
The third center of African Christianity was Ethiopia. Ethiopian Christianity survived. It not only
survived, but it also became almost a legend that inspired many African religions and cultural and
political movements in the twentieth century. Ethiopia in the Middle Ages bears eloquent testimony to
the fact that Christianity is deeply rooted in African history and culture. There were some ups and downs
in the history of Africa. The situation in Ethiopia, however, remains the primary example of the success
of the Gospel in Africa. By the fifteenth century, under King Zara Yaqob, the Ethiopian church reached
the pinnacle of its cultural, literary, and spiritual attainments.
That was a brief overview of Christianity in Africa. Now I will turn to a brief overview of Christianity in
Asia. This will be a look at the third 500-year period in Asian Christianity. The word that I used for
Christianity in Africa during that time was “survival.” The several words that I would use to describe
Christianity in Asia are “growth,” “decline,” and “almost eclipsed.” It was not a great period of
Christianity in Asia.
At the end of my survey of the previous 500 years of Christianity I described how Christianity expanded
greatly in China during the time of the Nestorian missions in T’ang, China. By the tenth century,
however, Christianity had all but disappeared. As the T’ang dynasty fell, Christianity fell with it. Yet
that was not the end of Christianity in China. Christianity returned in Mongol China. That was during
the period of the fabled Kublai Kahn in the thirteenth century, the greatest of the Mongol rulers of
China. Undoubtedly he was the most powerful man in the world at his time. His empire stretched from
Korea to Burma and over to the Euphrates, which indicates something of the extent of his great empire.
Kublai Kahn, who was not a Christian, was nonetheless a friend of Christians. Thus during the reign of
this Mongol ruler in China and elsewhere throughout the Orient, Christianity faced an opportunity that it
tried to move into. There was widespread Christian presence at the Mongol court. We know that from
the visit of Marco Polo, who went from the West and discovered Christians in the thirteenth century in
China. So Christianity prospered during the T’ang dynasty. Then it was almost obliterated. Then it
recovered and returned during the reign of Kublai Kahn in the thirteenth century. Again, however, it was
the same story repeated with the death of this friend of Christians in 1294. Christianity radically
declined when Kublai Kahn, the protector of the church in China, died. Soon there was the second
disappearance of the church in China. When John of Montecorvino, an Italian missionary and the
greatest of the Roman Catholic missionaries of the era, reached China shortly after the death of Kublai
Kahn, he was still able to receive a warm welcome. He became the first Catholic archbishop in China.
He was also the last until the modern period.
With the fall of the Mongol dynasty the Chinese Christian churches disappeared for the second time. For
the next 300 years the new China would be isolationist and nationalist and orthodox Confucian. It would
be ruled by a completely China-centered dynasty called the Ming dynasty. That meant that very few

Christians were left in China by 1500. While some great things took place in China, and two strong
Christian movements had existed—including one in this period—by the end of the third 500-year period
almost nothing of Chinese Christianity was left.
You might wonder what was happening to the ancient church in Persia. That church reached its prime in
the thirteenth century. Then, however, much like the church in Nubia, its prime was followed soon by
decline and collapse. By the end of the fourteenth century, Persian Christianity was clearly in decline.
Why did that happen? It was not because the church became syncretistic. Christians in Persia sharply
distinguished themselves from Muslims. It was not because it was a foreign movement. The Persian
Christian culture that expressed itself in the church was ancient. Rather, a failure of intellect, doctrine,
and study led to the decline of the church in Persia. There was also the same story of too much
dependence upon the government. Christians had to learn not to put their trust in princes. And they have
had to learn that repeatedly. When the Mongol ruler of Persia converted to Islam in 1295, the year after
the death of Kublai Kahn, it marked the final blow to the church in Persia. That church survived, but
only in small numbers and under difficult circumstances.
In central Asia the victories of the religiously tolerant Genghis Kahn of the thirteenth century opened the
opportunity for the spread of the Gospel. The empire of Genghis Kahn extended from the Yellow Sea to
the Black Sea. Christian missionaries began to move into those areas. A second wave of Mongol
conquest in the fourteenth century, however, came from the fiercely Muslim ruler, Tamerlane. He is
often called “the scourge of God and the terror of the world.” He certainly had no love for Christians.
Thus the momentary opportunity in central Asia soon disappeared with unparalleled destruction of
churches. Central Asia by that time was turning hostile.
By the end of the third 500-year period, Christianity had received some major setbacks in Asia. There
were still Christian churches and communities of Christians in central Asia, what we would call the
Middle East. Byzantine Orthodox Christians, Syrian Jacobites, Nestorians, and others were all under
Muslim rule. There were also some ancient Thomas Christians in India who survived, and even thrived
in some ways. Yet they were relatively limited in numbers and quite isolated from the rest of the
Christian world.
That was a quick overview of 500 years of Christianity in Asia. You can read much more about it in
Sam Moffett’s A History of Christianity in Asia. Now I will move to Eastern Orthodoxy. I already
presented one lesson on how Eastern Orthodoxy developed as a separate church. That division from the
West took place in 1054, at the beginning of the third 500-year period. We can use two dates for Eastern
Orthodoxy as we think about the third 500-year period. The whole period can be summarized by the
terms “gain” and “loss.” There were some gains and there were some losses for Eastern Orthodoxy
during that time.
The greatest gain, which was a major event in the history of Eastern Orthodoxy, was the conversion of
Russia. The traditional date for that event is 988. Near the year 1000, Russia became Christian. They
became Christian in the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity. That greatly expanded Orthodoxy,
which could not move to the West because of Roman Catholicism, it could not move to the south
because of Islam, and it could not move to the East because of Islam. It could, however, move to the
north, and it did, mainly through the conversion of Russia in 988. That was the high point, at the
beginning of the third 500-year period.
The low point in Eastern Orthodoxy during that 500-year period was the fall of Constantinople to the
Ottoman Turks at the end of the period, in the year 1453. Constantinople was the great capital of the

Roman Empire after Rome, which had flourished for 1,000 years. Yet it fell to the onslaught of the
Muslims in 1453.
Further west the history of the Roman Catholic Church was unfolding. By the third 500-year period of
Christianity, it could properly be called the Roman Catholic Church. The way to summarize that 500-
year period is to speak about the consolidation of Christianity in the West. It was a period in the West
that we can characterize by the word “Christendom,” which is a union of church and state and culture.
There was not only the consolidation in that 500-year period of Christianity and culture under the
concept of Christendom, but there was also by the end of the period the breakup of that concept.
I will present some sketches of ideas regarding the period, some of which I will cover in more detail in
later lessons. This will help give you an overview of the period. First of all, think of the diversity of
Roman Catholicism. Sometimes we have the idea that Catholicism was very unified, or monolithic. Yet
there were all sorts of people with all sorts of ideas during the period. One of the best ways to get insight
into that diversity is to read The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. That book presents different outlooks on
the Bible, the church, salvation, and truth through the different characters. They were all within the
scope of the Roman Catholic Church.
The next topic I need to mention from that period is the struggle with Islam. That struggle had been
going on since the seventh century. Islam had moved into Europe and had been defeated at the Battle of
Tours. Yet it still controlled Spain. It more greatly grieved Western Christians that Islam still controlled
the Holy Land. During that 500-year period, Christians in the West decided to do something about
Islam. They decided to engage in the Crusades. Thus it was a disastrous period for Western Christianity.
For about a century-and-a-half, churches in the West were engaged in one crusade after another. They
were military adventures into the East in order to attempt to defeat the Muslims’ militarily and to re-
conquer Jerusalem and other sites dear to the hearts of Western Christians. All of that did nothing to
strengthen Christianity, but it did much to heighten the antagonism of Muslims toward the Christian
faith.
Another struggle that took place during that 500-year period was what is often called the Investiture
Controversy. It is a way to talk about the relationship between church and state. In Europe during that
time there were two interacting authorities. One was the church. The other was the state, or the various
states that made up Western Europe. The question was who had ultimate authority. The investiture
controversy relates to the problem of who was going to appoint bishops and church officials in countries
such as France or England. Would the pope do that? Could the king do it? Of course, the kings claimed
they should do it, and the popes claimed they should do it. Each claimed authority over the other. I will
describe in some detail that struggle within Christendom, which had been going on since the days of
Constantine, between church and state, or pope and emperor.
There were some great achievements during that period. It was a great period for books, theology, and
many things that were created or developed and have lived on. I did not know until recently that golf
was perhaps invented during that 500-year period. Other things were done, too, during that period. It
was a great period of theology. If the second 500-year period did not produce much theology of note,
then the third 500-year period certainly did. It culminated in one of the greatest books of systematic
theology ever written, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas.
It was also a great period of piety. Monastic orders were revived, and new orders were created.
Literature of devotion and piety came from the Benedictines, Cistercians, Franciscans, and Dominicans,
which were the great medieval orders of the time. The popular piety of the people also increased, yet it

went in some unfortunate directions. The veneration of saints and prayers to the Virgin Mary increased.
Piety was often expressed in crass and mechanical ways.
In general culture it was also a great period. It was the time of the rise of universities, by the twelfth
century. The first schools tended to be operated by the monasteries. Education was preserved in the
monasteries. The fathers and brothers and nuns in the monasteries taught in the schools. From monastic
schools there was the development of cathedral schools, which were schools in the great towns where
there were large cathedrals. Then out of the cathedral schools the universities developed. There were
universities in Milan, Cologne, Paris, Oxford, and other places.
It was also a period of the building of churches, great churches, and cathedrals. There were churches
such as those at Chartres and throughout Europe. The style of church architecture shifted from the
heavy, dark Romanesque to the style we call Gothic, which had flying buttresses supporting the weight
of the walls and rooms. That allowed, for the first time, great areas for windows, stained glass, and light.
The look of the great churches shifted from the older Romanesque to the more modern Gothic.
It was also a wonderful time for literature. People began to write, not only in theology but also in many
other areas. Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in the fourteenth century. At the same time Chaucer was
producing his Canterbury Tales in England.
It was also in that 500-year period that many people became aware that all was not right with the Roman
Catholic Church. It was a period of reform. As the period progressed, the need for reform became more
evident. Some of that reform came from the papacy itself. There was the Gregorian reform, named for
Pope Gregory VII. Gregory wanted to strengthen, invigorate, and clean up the church. He wanted to set
it on a better foundation. The reforms during his reign were notable. He tried to do away with some of
the financial and moral corruption in the church. Gregory insisted on clerical celibacy. It was the first
time that practice became a requirement rather than a recommendation. Due to so much of the
corruption that Gregory found in the church, he believed that the solution was to insist that every priest
be celibate.
There was also the famous Lateran Council of 1215. It was an attempt before the Reformation to get the
church back on track. That council, which met in Rome, had some important doctrinal elements. One
was the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was made official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.
Earlier there had been a famous debate between Radbertus and Ratramnus over this issue. The church
had been moving toward transubstantiation for quite some time as its official and only view. At the
Fourth Lateran of 1215 that position was taken. The Fourth Lateran also said that every Catholic should
go to confession once per year. By making annual confession a requirement it probably indicated how
lax many people were about the matter of confession.
The period was also a great period for the development of the orders. The old orders, going back to Saint
Benedict and the Benedictines, experienced a number of revivals and renewals. The most famous took
place under Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians. In the thirteenth century two great new
orders were established, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. I will describe those two orders in some
detail in a later lesson.
From the standpoint of the official church, particularly as the end of that 500-year period approached, it
was a time of heresy. Heresies began to arise. There were the Cathari, or Cathars, in southern France.
They presented a serious challenge to the church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We would say it
was a real heresy. It was dualistic, Gnostic-like, Manichaean-style religious expression that dominated a

large part of southern France and Lombardy, or northern Italy. The church did everything it could to put
it down, largely due to the use of force. The word “heretic” in the thirteenth century almost always
applied to the Cathars.
There were other people, however, who were called heretics with whom we generally find ourselves in
line. I will describe those so-called heretics in more detail. There was the movement of the Waldensians
in Italy. It was a reformation before the Reformation. So much of what was later established by
Protestant Reformers was put into practice by those Italian reformers 500 years before what the
Waldensians call the second reformation. In England Wycliffe and his Lollards were preaching grace
and translating the Bible. They were also suffering persecution. That message spread to Bohemia and
John Huss. He was a preacher in Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. Huss was finally taken to the Council of
Constance, where he hoped to only defend himself but also present the true Gospel. He was not allowed
to do that. He was condemned to death and burned at the stake in 1415. As the fifteenth century moved
on, down in Florence, in Italy, Girolamo Savonarola was preaching and reforming the church of the city
of Florence. He died, burned at the stake as well, in 1498. With the death of Savonarola, the third 500-
year period was almost at an end. In 1498 Martin Luther was a boy of 15 living in Germany, although he
was not yet thinking anything about 95 theses or a Protestant Reformation. But the church was very
close to the beginning of a new period.
Some people wonder if the church historians of Africa and Asia view the history of the church in their
continents differently than we do, as a decline and revitalization through the missionary efforts of those
from other places. Generally they view it in the same way. My major source of information for Asia is
Sam Moffett. He is a fair and very Asian-minded historian. He was born in Korea, and he served in
China and Korea. He feels that he is Asian. Mark Shaw was a missionary in Nairobi, in Africa, and he
writes very sympathetically to African ideas. He has extensively read the African writers. Using those
two sources, I doubt there would be much difference in the presentation of the development of
Christianity in those two continents.
Another important topic to mention is the preaching during the third 500-year period. Did the preaching
emphasize grace? I wish that I could say that the Gospel of salvation by grace was preached, but it was
not. The church had that message, and then largely lost it, or it went underground. The message was
recovered by Augustine. But then the church lost it again. It was not until Luther, Calvin, and the other
Reformers that we read a clear expression of salvation by grace. There were a few places along the way,
including Gottschalk, Wycliffe, and Huss. Yet those people were viewed as heretics in the Western
church. Most of the preaching of that period, from the standpoint of the Reformers, was quite defective.
I will later describe the sacramental system, which relates to how the common person of the medieval
period conceived of salvation. Even though the messengers often got the message wrong, with the
emphasis in the wrong place, they did preach the Bible. They used the Bible. God has a way of working
through very defective means to get His message across. We cannot say that nobody was saved for
1,000 years. Some people take that very hard-line view, but I do not believe that is the way it happened.
It may be that there were many people, whom we do not know about, who were preaching a purer
Gospel. We primarily know about what the theologians, patriarchs, popes, and leaders of the church
produced. Yet much of the message of that time was spread by common people. Of course, the message
coming to them was from their leaders. I believe, however, that there could have been a purer message
preached. Sometimes theologians can get it wrong and the people can get it right.

Medieval Monasticism
This lesson is entitled “Loving God: Medieval Monasticism.” In the last lesson I presented an overview
of the last 500 years of the ancient and medieval period of church history. In this lesson I will begin to
describe some of the important events that took place during that time. The prayer is from Saint Bernard,
one of the great figures of the medieval church. As we prepare to think about medieval monasticism, let
us pray in the words of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
“O Lord, come quickly and reign on Thy throne, for now often something rises up within me and tries to
take possession of Thy throne; pride, covetousness, uncleanness, and sloth want to be my kings; and
then evil speaking, anger, hatred, and the whole train of vices join with me in warring against myself
and try to reign over me. I resist them, I cry out against them, and say, ‘I have no other king than
Christ.’ O King of Peace, come and reign in me, for I will have no king but Thee! Amen.”
It has been some time since I have mentioned monasticism in the West. It all goes back to Saint
Benedict of Nursia, who lived in the fifth and sixth centuries. From that point on, from the seventh
century to the tenth century, we can speak of that period as the “Benedictine centuries.” Monasticism
began and flourished. Communities continued to be created in different places in Europe, which were all
following the Benedictine Rule. According to Benedict, each monastery was to be a self-contained unit
under the direction of its own abbot. Benedict did not envision great orders, highly organized and
centralized. Rather he intended individual monasteries that each had their own abbot. In due time in the
West, however, a more centralized approach to the monasteries developed, particularly during the tenth
and eleventh centuries. That was not true in the East. Eastern monasteries continued to be independent
units. Monasticism in the East, which continued to be an important part of the Orthodox Church, never
developed the centralized structures that it did in the West.
Benedict had envisioned the monastic life as a group of laypeople coming together to pray and work
with their hands and to serve God as a community. That pattern has largely continued in the East. More
often in the West, however, the monks became priests. The monastic orders in the West were orders of
priests. The monasteries were colleges of priests. In the West there was often a second order that would
be an order for women. There would be an order for men, with many priests and perhaps some
laypeople, and then a second order for women, and sometimes a third order for laypeople. In the West
there were often those three orders.
There were three main duties for a person living at the monastery. The first was prayer and worship. If
you would have gone to one of those medieval monasteries, you would have found that for three or four
hours each day the monks were engaged in prayer and worship. It was generally communal prayer and
worship. They would read through the Scriptures together. They sang the Psalms together. Then some of
that time would be in private prayer. Then for five hours their time would be spent in study. They
preferred to call it “spiritual reading.” Their study was always of a devotional nature. They read the
church fathers, and they read the Scriptures with the purpose of developing their own love for God and
knowledge of Him. Then for six or seven hours each day they worked, doing manual labor. They took
care of the building, farmed to produce food for the monastery, and went out into the community to
carry out works of charity.
During the tenth and eleventh centuries there were some definite movements that took place in order to
revive and renew the monastic movement flowing out of the Benedictine history. Many of those new
movements took place in central France. In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries France became the

great center of monastic life and reform in the Catholic Church. First came the establishment of the
Cluniac order, which was a reform movement based on the Benedictine Rule. During the tenth and
eleventh centuries, Cluny represented almost everything that was vital and progressive in Western
Christianity. The greatest figure in the Cluniac movement was Bernard of Cluny. He lived in the twelfth
century. He wrote a great poem called “De Contemptu Mundi,” which means “Contempt for the World.”
It was a 3,000 line poem that satirized contemporary monastic corruption. He was a monk who wrote a
poem about how other monks were corrupt and how the monastic movement needed to be reformed and
brought back into line with its original ideals. The poem contrasts monastic corruption and the transient
pleasures of this life with the glories of heaven. So much of the poem is about heaven. It has served as
the base of several hymns, including “Jerusalem the Golden.” A line from that hymn says, “O sweet and
blessed country, the home of God’s elect; O sweet and blessed country, that eager hearts expect; Jesus in
mercy bring us to that dear land of rest, who art with God the Father and Spirit ever blessed.” In that
writing of Bernard of Cluny there is evidence of a longing for heaven, and it speaks of God’s elect, and
there is some emphasis on the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity.
A rather dreary pattern can be observed throughout the history of monastic movements. They begin with
high ideals, but they will soon decline. Then something else will have to come along to reform that
movement, which itself was a reform of monasticism or the church. The Cluniacs built a great abbey at
Cluny. It was the greatest church in Europe. It was destroyed in the nineteenth century, and it served as a
quarry for people for some time. People took stones from the great church and built their own houses
with them. Yet in its heyday, it was greater than any church anywhere in the world. The largest enclosed
space on earth today is the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. In the eleventh and twelfth century the largest
enclosed space on the earth was the church at Cluny. It was a church of great splendor and
magnificence. It seems strange that a monastery would produce a building of such grandeur, but that is
what happened at Cluny. The order of Cluny came to an end in 1790 during the upheavals connected
with the French revolution. It has not continued to the present.
Cluny eventually fell into a worldly spirit. It produced great and splendid churches, but it no longer
maintained its zeal for the monastic ideal. Thus another order was formed, not too far from Cluny. It was
called the Cistercian order. A new order is sometimes referred to as a reform of the reform. Cluny was a
reform of the Benedictine movement. Then the Cistercians were a reform of the Cluniac movement. It
was started in Citeaux. Its leader was another Bernard, Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard of Clairvaux was
one of the major figures of the Middle Ages. He is sometimes called the “last of the church fathers,”
because of his importance as a church leader. He is also sometimes called the “uncrowned emperor” of
Europe. He seemed to have more influence than any king or emperor, and often more than the pope.
Justo Gonzalez has said that Bernard’s personality dominated his time.
Let me summarize the life of Bernard of Clairvaux and emphasize his importance. He was a great
reformer. We know something of his concern for church reform from his book, On Consideration. He
wrote that book for one of his own monks who was being promoted to a high office in the church. That
monk was actually becoming the pope. So Bernard wrote a book as a guide for him so he would know
how to be a good pope. It is a very good book. He told the new pope that “Lordship is forbidden.
Ministry is bidden.” In other words, do not rule over people. Serve people. Luther said that all popes
should know that book by heart. He believed, quite correctly, that most popes paid no attention to it, but
that if they did, things would have been very different in Rome. This all shows that Bernard had an ideal
to not only reform the monastic movement, but also the whole church. He wrote books and letters. He
advised people. It has been said that he was constantly giving advice. He was rather dogmatic about his
advice, but he believed that people needed to hear what he had to say. They did need to hear what he had
to say.

As a reformer, Bernard may remind us of a medieval Puritan. He believed the church was too rich, too
extravagant, and too given over to pomp and ceremony. He wanted to see things quite changed. Bernard
once said, “We must not pass over in silence the decay in the church. Better to provoke a scandal than to
abandon the truth.” That is an interesting comment from a medieval church leader. He did not want to
cover over the things that were going wrong. He thought it was better to create a scandal than to
abandon the truth. People did not follow that advice very often, until the sixteenth century when people
such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox created a scandal. They divided the church because they
could not abandon truth. Bernard was an early reformer, working hard to bring the church more into line
with a Christian understanding of what the church ought to be.
He was also a great preacher. He was sometimes referred to as “Dr. Mellifluous,” which meant the
doctor whose words were like honey. He could preach with eloquence and power. He often used for
himself the motto pasce verbo, pasce vita, which means “feed with the word, feed with the life.” A
minister should feed people with the Word of God but also demonstrate through living the truth of the
Word of God. It should be our life as well as our preaching that commends the Gospel and draws people
to Christ.
Bernard was a great mystic, in the best sense of that word. I will describe medieval mysticism in a later
lesson. There are some things we can learn from the mystics. There are also some errors that they fell
into. For the most part, Bernard managed to stay on the good side of mysticism. One of the great books
of the Middle Ages is the book On Loving God. It is a book that we can still read with a great deal of
profit.
Bernard was also a great theologian. His greatest writing on theology is the book On Grace and Free
Choice. In that book, we finally find a true Augustinian. In the midst of many semi-Pelagians and semi-
Augustinians of the medieval church, Bernard was a full Augustinian. Bernard of Clairvaux’s book On
Grace and Free Choice is the best book on grace between Saint Augustine of Hippo and Thomas
Bradwardine of Canterbury. That is a span of 900 years. I will describe Bradwardine in another lesson.
For almost a millennium, however, On Grace and Free Choice is the great work on grace. John Calvin
in his Institutes praised the book by saying, “Bernard agreed with Augustine when he makes the church
speak thus, ‘Draw me, however unwilling, to make me willing. Draw me, slow-footed, to make me
run.’” That indicates that Bernard covered irresistible grace, election, the teaching of Augustine, and the
Bible.
The Clairvaux community did not continue permanently. It was broken up, and the property was
confiscated by the state in 1790, during the French revolution when there was so much anti-clerical
activity in France. The house at Clairvaux still stands, but for the last 200 years it has not served as a
church but as a prison. One of the successor movements to the Cistercians was the movement of the
Capuchins. They were a revival of the Cistercian movement. The Capuchins wore brown robes with
white cassocks and hoods. For that reason, Italians call coffee “cappuccino,” meaning “little Capuchin”
because it is brown with a little white top. It looks like a little Capuchin monk.
So far I have been talking about a history of the Benedictines, as that movement spawned certain
developments at Cluny, Citeaux, and other places. Two entirely new movements arose in the thirteenth
century. The first was the Franciscans. Francis of Assisi, in Italy, was born in 1181 and died in 1226. In
that short life, Francis was able to impact the church of his day and of successive centuries as well.
Francis was a worldly young man who was dramatically converted and then went on to a life of
dedication to God. In his life, as G. K. Chesterton said, “he found a freedom almost amounting to

frivolity.” Francis was a unique individual. There is nobody quite like him in the history of the church.
He was not a scholar. He did not write much. Except for a few prayers, some of which became hymns,
the only thing that he left was his testament. In that testimony he told in a few pages why he did what he
did. His testimony was written shortly before his death. It was not long after his death that his followers
produced a book called The Little Flowers of Saint Francis. In that book are the stories, highly
imaginative stories, about the life of Saint Francis, which one writer has said “may not be totally
untrue.” The stories were certainly embellished. Francis lives on in our memories because of The Little
Flowers. In that book are all the stories about Francis preaching. Francis was a preacher, and he often
preached to the animals that he would find as he wandered about in Italy. Francis not only preached to
nice animals, like birds, rabbits, and sheep, but according to The Little Flowers he also preached to the
bad animals such as the fierce wolf of Gubbio. That wolf was creating a great deal of disturbance by
eating things, including people, and the people of Gubbio sought out Francis to do something about the
terrible, fierce wolf. Francis went to Gubbio and met the wolf and called out to it, “Come hither, brother
wolf. I command you in the name of Christ Jesus that you do no manner of evil either to me or to
anyone else.” According to The Little Flowers, immediately after Saint Francis made the sign of the
cross, “The terrible wolf closed his jaws, gave over running, and came meekly as any lamb and laid
himself down at the feet of Saint Francis.” There are many more stories from The Little Flowers, and
they are entertaining stories.
The life of Francis was a life of poverty and service. That was what Francis wanted to do. He wanted to
be poor, and he wanted to have people around him who believed as he did that life is not made up of
what we have but of what we can give. That was his principle to which he was dedicated. Some people
thought that he was unbalanced in his dedication to his principle. He did not want to have anything. He
continually refused to take anything. It is not certain that a Franciscan could own a Bible. If you owned
one book, The Bible, you might want two books. If you owned two books, you might want three books.
Soon you will have a big library and you will be proud of it. Then you will begin to drift away from
God. Francis would say it was better not to start down that slippery slope.
Franciscans were not so much reformers as innovators. They created a new force in the church to
minister to spiritual and physical needs. Something new and different was breaking forth in the church.
Their movement was a contrast for the church, which boasted the great church at Cluny and the splendor
and pomp at Rome. Francis was a poor little man wandering about who said none of that mattered. More
than that, he said it was all bad. He said that the only thing that matters is to love God and to love
people. Francis prayed a great prayer that we still use, “Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.”
That is what he wanted to be. He wanted to bring peace to this world.
His life was also filled with praise. The hymns that he wrote are all hymns of praise. The most famous
hymn he wrote is “The Canticle of Brother Sun.” It is not a song about pantheism. He is not worshiping
the sun. It is not a canticle “to brother sun.” It is “The Canticle of Brother Sun.” He is calling on the sun
to join with him and join with all creation in the worship of God. There is a paraphrase of that canticle
by William H. Draper, which is a well-known hymn that says, “All creatures of our God and King, lift
up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia, Alleluia. Thou burning sun with golden beam, thou silver
moon with softer gleam, O praise Him, O praise Him, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.” It is a very
scriptural idea. The Psalms call upon all creation to praise God with us, as does Saint Francis.
The order that Francis created was called the Order of the Lesser Brothers. We usually refer to them as
Franciscans, but the official name is the Order of the Lesser Brothers, or OFM, Ordo Friars Minores. If
you see OFM after a person’s name, you know that person is a Franciscan. The second order, the order

for women, was founded by Saint Clare. That order still exists alongside of the Franciscan order. A third
order was also established for laypeople.
Even during the end of Francis’ life, there was a struggle within these orders to maintain Francis’ rule of
absolute poverty. It was difficult for his followers to really believe that he meant what he said. These
monastic orders, even the order of the Franciscans, could quite quickly develop into wealthy orders.
People admired the monks and wanted to give to them. They wanted to give money and land and all
sorts of things. Francis died in 1226. He was canonized only two years later in 1228. That is a quick
canonization. Almost immediately, Francis’ followers began to build a great basilica in his honor. It is
there in Assisi today, and you can go to the great church in Assisi. It became the richest church in Italy.
It was a strange memorial to the poor, little man, whose favorite saying was, “Foxes have holes, and the
birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” I will not go into detail
about the history of the Franciscans, but some very bitter controversies developed among the
Franciscans because of the difficulty that Francis’ followers had in trying to decide what to do. Should
they become wealthy and prominent, as they had opportunity, or should they avoid those things?
The last order I want to describe is the Dominicans. It was quite a different order. It came into existence
about the same time as the Franciscans, but it had a different purpose, a different ethos, and a different
contribution to the history of the church. Dominic was a Spanish monk, living in Spain, in a monastery
that was trying to follow the rule of Saint Augustine. He became interested through a couple of journeys
he made in thinking about how Catholics could evangelize to both reach pagan people and reclaim
heretics. The heretics that he particularly had in mind were the Albigensians of southern France. They
were a Gnostic, Manichaean cult that controlled much of southern France. Dominic began to plan a new
order that would be a missionary order. It would be an order of preachers. He established the Order of
Preachers, which we call the Dominicans, but their abbreviation, OP, stands for Order of Preachers.
They stressed teaching and preaching. They did not stress poverty, although the Dominicans did take a
vow of poverty. They did not, however, see poverty as essential to their spirituality as Francis did. They
did not put much emphasis on manual labor, as the Benedictines did. They did not think they should
spend most of their day cutting wood, drawing water, and washing dishes. They even limited their times
of prayer. They did not pray for so long in the day as some of the other orders. They wanted to study. It
was an order that dedicated itself to books. Each order of the Catholic Church has its distinctives, and
the distinctive of the Dominicans is that they are an order of scholars. They are people who are studying
and planning to be teachers and preachers. Many did develop into great preachers. Some of the great
preachers of the medieval church were Dominicans. They punctuated their sermons by rhyme or
alliteration. They also used illustrations and even humor. The Dominican sermons sound quite modern
to us. They used those methods because they wanted to communicate to people. They found that those
were effective ways to make people hear what they had to say.
They also became great scholars. They realized that it was important for them to enter the universities
and infiltrate them and become teachers. If they could teach then they could persuade. Before long there
were Dominicans teaching in Paris, Bologna, Cologne, and all the universities. They also started schools
down to the level of young children. The Dominicans became the educators of Europe and of the
Catholic Church. A movement like this was able to produce great scholars. Thomas Aquinas was a
Dominican. His parents wanted him to become a Benedictine, but he wanted to become a Dominican.
He did become a Dominican, and he became the great theologian of the High Middle Ages.
Interestingly, not only were there great scholars among the Domincans, but some of the great mystics of
the Middle Ages were also Dominicans. One of those was Meister Eckhart. One other thing to say about

the Dominicans is that they became the inquisitors of the Middle Ages. They were the people on the
lookout for heresy. They developed schemes, plans, and programs to identify and root out heretics. Their
nickname was the “watchdogs of the Lord.” Domini canus sounds like Dominican, or Dominic, but it
was their nickname as the “watchdogs of the Lord.” Soon Cathars and Waldensians, and later
Protestants, would feel that watchful eye of the Dominican inquisitors. As the great inquisitors of the
Middle Ages, they were followed later by a sixteenth century order called the Jesuits.
It is possible for Protestants to dismiss the history of monasticism as worthless. That would be a false
impression. It is possible for Catholics to glamorize it all as wonderful. That would be a false impression
as well. Nobody would accuse Robert Lewis Dabney, a southern American Presbyterian, of being soft
on Catholicism or on monasticism. He wrote wisely, “Monastic life, with all its perversions, produced
not a little of the moral heroism in the Middle Ages.” By the time of the Reformation, much of that was
lost. Monasticism was not nearly as noble in the sixteenth century as it was in some earlier centuries.
Like much of church history, we try to see the good with the bad and learn from both.
I will end this lesson with the last verse of a song by Bernard of Clarivaux, which we know as “Jesus,
Thou Joy of Loving Hearts”: “O Jesus, ever with us stay. Make all our moments calm and bright. Chase
the dark night of sin away. Shed over the world Thy holy light.”
The Dominicans became the inquisitors because they were concerned about Catholic doctrine, about
orthodoxy. They were concerned about heretics. As they traveled about preaching, one of the things they
wanted to do was to discover heresy and to try to eliminate it. The Albigensian movement in southern
France was a massive movement. It cleared Catholicism from half of France. The church, and
particularly the Dominicans, believed that if the church did not do a better job of preventing heresy then
the whole church would fall. So it became very important to take on that task. The work of the
Inquisition was later than this time period. That was a highly structured approach to heresy. It included
what questions to ask, what force to use, and what to do if a person recanted. All of that developed
during the Counter-Reformation. The Dominicans were in the front of that movement.

Crusades or Missions?
This lesson is entitled “God Wills it: Crusades or Missions?” I will begin with a prayer, although not one
from a crusader, but from a man who lived in the time that those events were taking place. That man’s
name was Richard of Chichester, which is in England. This is a very wonderful prayer that you might
know, but you might not know that it came from Richard Chichester. Let us pray.
“Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which Thou hast given to me, for all the
pains and insults which Thou hast borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, friend, and brother, may I
know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly, day by day. Amen.”
If there is one lesson in this course that I would like to leave out it would be this one. I would at least
like to leave out the first part of this lesson, because it is embarrassing. It is hurtful for me to have to talk
about the crusades. There is not much good that I can say about that event in church history. It is part of
the record, however, and it is something we need to know about. These things took place in the name of
the Lord. Perhaps they were not done by true Christians, but they were done in the name of the Lord,
with the sign of the cross. The crusades were a disastrous period. People went forth into battle not
realizing that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace and not the leader of a battle. There are times when we
encounter something like this in church history and our only response can be to study and to forgive.
There is not much that we can celebrate, although the second half of this lesson will have brighter
moments.
Before beginning to describe the crusades, I will offer a brief review of the interaction of Christianity
and Islam. In the year 622 was the flight of Muhammad, so we can use 622 as the beginning of the
period of Islam. It was not too many years later, in 638, when Jerusalem, the holy city of the Christians,
was conquered by the Muslims. Then the Muslims spread quickly across North Africa, into Spain, and
all the way up into France. There they were turned back at the Battle of Tours in 732. For centuries after
that, Islam also threatened the great eastern Roman capital, Constantinople. In the eleventh century the
end of that great city appeared to be approaching.
That was the context of the crusades. The crusades were really an attempt to do something about Islam.
There were seven crusades. If you count the children’s Crusade, then there were eight. It all began in
1095 when Pope Urban II began to preach the First Crusade. He called upon Christian people in the
West to leave their homes and to make the long journey to Jerusalem to fight against the Muslims and to
free that city from their control. Somehow it became a popular notion. As Urban made his appeal the
people began to respond by saying, “Deus vult,” which means, “God wills it.” Soon that cry went out
across Europe. It was not only professional soldiers, but also regular people who began to prepare for
the crusades. There was almost a mass migration of those people from Europe, making the long walk to
Constantinople and then on to Jerusalem.
For 200 years there was crusading activity. That time can be divided into three parts. First was the attack
of the Franks. The early leaders of the crusades were the Franks. That first 50-year period, in terms of
military accomplishment, was the most successful. It was really the only successful time in the period of
the crusades. Those early crusaders did capture Jerusalem, and they set up some Latin kingdoms there.
That was much to the dismay of the Eastern Byzantine emperor, who wanted any captured lands to be
added to his empire. The crusaders were from the West, however, and they were not going to give the
Eastern emperor what they had won. So for about 50 years there was some small success accomplished
by the crusaders. Then Islam produced a great military leader named Saladin. For the next 50 years

everything was the reverse of the first 50 years. The Muslims re-conquered the territory they had lost.
They defeated every crusading army they fought. Then for the next 100 years a downward spiraling
occurred. The people of Europe tried to recover some of the early enthusiasm for the crusades. They
launched other crusades that hoped to accomplish what they had failed to do in the first 100 years. The
second 100 years, however, were even less successful than the first 100 years. The last crusade was led
by Louis IX of France, the man who is known as Saint Louis; the city in which Covenant Seminary is
located is named after him. Saint Louis was killed in an attack on Tunis in 1270, and that was essentially
the end of the crusading period.
Why did people do this? Why were Western Christians so intrigued and inspired by the idea of the
crusades? First was the concern to honor Christ. It was a very mistaken idea, but the idea was that Christ
had been insulted by the Muslims. So the thought was that any real Christian would take up His cause
and fight for His honor. That was the appeal that the saintly Bernard of Clairvaux made when preaching
the Second Crusade in 1147. It might surprise you that Bernard of Clairvaux was the preacher of a
crusade. Bernard wrote the wonderful book, On Loving God, but he was also concerned that Christians
go on a crusade. Bernard said, “Our King Jesus is accused of treachery. It is said of Him by the Muslims
that He is not God, but that He falsely pretended to be something He was not. Any man among you who
is His vassal ought to rise up to defend his Lord from the infamous accusation of treachery. He should
go to the sure fight, where to win will be glorious and where to die will be gain.” With that kind of
preaching coming from people like Bernard of Clairvaux, saying the honor of Christ was at stake, there
were many people who responded to that. They joined in the crusading movement.
Another motive was the recovery of the Holy Land. It was important for Catholic Christians at that time
to make pilgrimages. They went on pilgrimages to sacred sites, particularly Jerusalem. For many years
preceding the First Crusade, it was not possible to do that. In the early period after the Muslims had
conquered Jerusalem, they did allow pilgrims to make those journeys to the sacred sites of Christianity.
From 1079, however, they cut off that access to Jerusalem, and they ambushed Christian pilgrims en
route. Thus one concern for Christians was to recapture Jerusalem and make it possible for Christians to
again visit the Holy Land. They were not merely tourists, because a visit to the Holy Land had great
significance to one’s spiritual status.
Another motive was to try to reunite the two halves of Christianity. The Eastern church broke with the
Western church in 1054. The idea for crusades began when Alexius, the emperor in the East, sent a letter
to the pope in Rome asking for some help against the Muslims who were approaching his great city. The
pope responded by preaching the First Crusade. Alexius got more than he bargained for. He thought he
would receive a few hundred well-trained soldiers whom he could have at his disposal to help his army
against the Muslims. What arrived, however, was a huge ragtag company of people, most of whom were
not soldiers. Alexius did not know what to do about this group that he viewed as a new barbarian
invasion from Europe who had arrived on the doorstep of his capital. The relationship between the East
and West grew worse during the crusades. If the crusaders could not find Muslims to fight, then they
settled for Eastern Orthodox Christians. In 1204 the crusaders attacked and sacked the city of
Constantinople, which was a greater city than all the cities of Europe. It was also a city of great
ecclesiastical treasures. Most of those were taken to Venice. If you go to Venice today you will see
many great treasures that were originally in Constantinople. So instead of helping reunite those two
branches of Christianity, the crusades actually made the situation far worse.
There was also the matter of personal salvation involved as a motive for the crusades. The popes used
every means to motivate people that they could. Pope Urban said at the beginning, “The sins of those
that set out thither, if they lose their lives shall be remitted in that hour.” So sinners saw an opportunity

to go fight the Muslims, and if they died, then automatically and immediately all their sins were
forgiven. That was a tempting offer. Many people who believed they did not have a good chance in
Europe, because their sins were many, were willing to leave and take the risk. Some perhaps even
looked forward to being killed in battle and going straight to heaven.
Mixed in among all those motives were ambition, a desire for adventure, and an opportunity to do
something different. The popes made no secret of the fact that European Christians were spending too
much time fighting one another in that hectic feudal period of European life. The idea was that it was far
better for them to refrain from fighting one another and instead go fight the Turks and the Muslims.
They could deflect some of their military energy in that direction. There are some great figures, romantic
figures, in that history. The Third Crusade, for instance, had Richard I of England, called the
“lionhearted,” and King Philip Augustus of France and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who were all
romantic figures of history. Nothing resulted from that crusade. The emperor drowned and Richard and
Philip spent most of their time fighting each other.
One of the most curious events of that history is what is called the Children’s Crusade. That took place
in 1212. Perhaps as many as 30,000 children were involved. They may have been teenagers. It is not
certain what their ages were. A crusading spirit gripped all of Europe with such fervor that thousands of
young people decided they would go on a crusade. There were different branches of that crusade. The
first left from France, and another left from Germany. The children felt that their elders had failed and
that they could succeed. They went without arms. It was not an armed crusade. It was simply a large
company of young people who believed that God was in it all. They had heard various prophecies, and
they set out to go to North Africa or the various lands around Jerusalem. It is not known what their
motive or goal was. Perhaps they intended to convert the Muslims. It may be that they did not know
themselves. They did not even know how they were going to get there. They went as far as Marseille,
and then they found a large sea before them. They could not walk any further, but that did not disturb
them. They believed that if God had made a dry path for Moses and the children of Israel, then He could
certainly do it again for them. They waited for a while, but nothing happened in the Mediterranean.
Some of them went home at that point. Others got on ships. There were seven ships who claimed to be
willing to take them where they wanted to go. Two of the ships were lost at sea. The other ships met
some Muslim ships in the Mediterranean and then transferred all the children to the Muslim ships so
they could be sold as slaves to the Muslims. There were several episodes of that Children’s Crusade, but
they all ended the same way.
You might wonder whether anybody objected to the crusades at the time that they were occurring. Some
people did object. We do not know what the objections were precisely. Our best evidence is the answers
of churchmen to those who objected to the crusades. There were some who objected.
The crusades fell far short of achieving their goal. There was a brief success in the First Crusade. Even
the small Latin kingdoms that were set up in the Holy Land were soon lost. Some new monastic orders
were established in the Catholic Church, such as the Knights of the Temple, the Teutonic Knights, and
the Knights of Saint John. Those were military orders. For the first time there were orders established
that had the usual marks of poverty, obedience, and chastity, but they also added military service. They
were crusading orders.
The real result of the crusades was a long legacy of bitterness. There was bitterness on the part of Jews,
Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Muslims. Quite often the crusaders would attack Jews along their way.
They would sometimes wipe out whole communities of Jews in Europe. The crusaders believed they
were going to the Holy Land to liberate it from the Muslims. Somehow they also had the idea that the

Jews, who were closer to them, were responsible for the death of Christ anyway, so they thought it
would be proper to eliminate them as well on their way to the Holy Land.
The crusaders had little intention of converting the Muslims, even by force. The idea was to defeat the
Muslims, and generally to kill them, but not to convert them to Christianity. There were a few people,
however, who were thinking that the Lord sends us out to the world not to kill people but to love them
and bring the message of Christ’s redemption to them. In the second part of this lesson, I will talk about
missions during the time of the crusades.
One example of a person who took a very different approach to the Muslims was the poor little man of
Italy, Francis of Assisi. Francis not only wandered about Italy preaching to the animals and helping the
poor and taking care of lepers, but he also made a journey to Egypt. It was his own personal mission. He
was able to meet Sultan al-Kamil. It is amazing that he was able to simply wander in and have an
audience with the sultan. Francis was guileless and had no weapons, and he looked very insignificant.
The Muslims may have thought he was slightly insane. Some of them had the idea that God speaks
through people like that. When he got there, he said, “I am not sent of man, but of God, to show you the
way of salvation.” He had many conversations with the sultan and with other Muslims there. They were
not converted to Christianity, but they were converted to Saint Francis. They liked him. He preached to
them, taught them, and expressed love to them. Sam Moffett said in his book, A History of Christianity
in Asia, that “a model of innocent faith, unarmed witness, and a complete willingness to die for his Lord
inspired the members of his order in the same century and with the same utter disregard of their own
safety to become the first Europeans to preach to the Mongols and the Chinese.” So with Saint Francis
and the Franciscans was the beginning of a missions movement, not only to the Muslims, but also to
other lands.
The greatest of the missionaries of this period, and one of the greatest missionaries to Islam in all of
history, was a man named Raymund Lull. It is important for us to know about him. He was born in
Spain, on the island of Mallorca, which is a tourist island today. Like Francis, he was a worldly young
man. He had much ambition, and he was showy in dress and in life. He wrote love poetry to various
women. He enjoyed himself greatly. When he was converted he dedicated himself to one singe goal for
the rest of his life. As he grew up on Majorca, and living in Spain, the Muslims were still there. He was
in a Muslim context. Later the Muslims were driven out of Spain, but that did not happen until the
sixteenth century. Raymund Lull decided that God was calling him to be a missionary to the Muslims.
He was going to proclaim in the very home of Islam, in the speech of the people, the Gospel of Christ.
He wanted to go somewhere into a Muslim area, probably in North Africa, and he wanted to be able to
speak to them in Arabic and preach the Gospel. It took him nine years to learn Arabic. He said it was an
awful sounding language that sounded like the grunts and groans of beasts. Yet he worked hard at it. Not
only did he learn Arabic, but he also wrote some books in Arabic. One book that he wrote in Arabic was
his own spiritual biography. He also traveled through Europe, talking to popes and whoever would listen
to him about his vision for missions to the Muslims. He started missionary colleges, where people could
study languages, apologetics, and how to preach in a Muslim setting.
Three times in his life he ventured down into Muslim countries. The first two times he barely escaped
with his life, and the last time he did not escape. As an old man of 85 he was stoned to death in modern-
day Tunisia as he attempted to preach to the Muslims. Lull did not lack boldness. He would simply
arrive, stand up and denounce Islam, and preach Christ to whoever would listen to him. And he did not
lack brilliance. He was a wonderful scholar who wrote some intriguing books, which no one since that
time has been able to fully understand. He wrote other books, too, in which he set things forth more
clearly. As a man of boldness, brilliance, and scholarship, he would have benefited from adding tact. We

can admire him as a person who knew what had to be done. Raymund Lull said that if God would
convert the Muslims, then it would be very easy for Him to convert the rest of the world. He realized
that the Muslims were a very resistant people. It would take a great miracle of God to convert them. Not
much has changed since the day of Lull. Among his many books, he wrote on scholastic theology,
mystic religion, allegory, apologetics, and polemics. He tried to devise ways that Christianity could be
presented, argued, and defended in the Muslim world. One book of verse that he wrote was called The
Hundred Names of God. In the preface to that book, Lull says that in the Qur’an it says that there are 99
names of God and that he who knows the hundredth name will know all things. I have not been able to
read this book, but I imagine that the hundredth name is the name of Christ. Lull died as an old man
preaching the Gospel.
One writer has said, without too much exaggeration, that over the next 500 years no human voice
proclaimed Christ publicly to the Muslims. The silence was not broken until the saintly Henry Martin
stepped on Arabian soil in 1811. I talk about Henry Martin in the Reformation and Modern Church
History course. I expect that Raymund Lull is rejoicing in heaven if he knows that Christians are
becoming more aware of the Muslim world and sending more missionaries to that world. One book
called God Has Chosen Me for Everlasting Life contains the testimonies of a number of converts from
Islam to Christianity. One of those converts, an Indonesian man, testified that he took his initial step
toward faith in Jesus Christ when he began to pray and ponder a verse he read in the Qur’an. That verse
was, “Say, O people of the book,” that is an expression referring to Jews and Christians, “You will be
nothing unless you uphold the Torah and the Gospel and all that is revealed to you from your Lord.” It is
too bad the crusaders did not hear that verse from the Qur’an. “You will be nothing unless you uphold
the Gospel.” That Indonesian man became interested in the Gospel, and he wanted to find out what it
was that Christians should believe and uphold. The basic ingredients in the accounts of the various
coverts to Islam were three things. One was the Scripture. They finally read the Bible. The second is
almost always a very good friend who is a Christian. That friend must stay with the person throughout
the experience. The third ingredient is biblical teaching about sin, grace, and salvation.
As we wonder about the motives of the crusaders, there were probably some individuals who were
motivated out of true sincerity. At that time, what the church, bishop, or pope said was the word of God.
So there were very sincere people who believed they were hearing the voice of God in the calls for the
crusades. There was also much superstition that was common at the time. There was a story about an
inspired goose that people believed God communicated with, and people believed that goose would lead
the crusades. For a few miles they followed the goose, but it did not work out too well in the end. There
was much superstition and much sinfulness. Yet there were surely some people with high ideals who
genuinely believed that God wanted them to recover some very precious things for the church that they
believed were in the hands of the “infidel,” which is the term that was often used of the Muslims.
Some people wonder about the formation of the nation of Israel in the land of Palestine in the twentieth
century and how that relates to the crusades. I believe there is one analogy that can be made. Israel
claims that it was their land originally. They were not taking somebody else’s land, but rather they were
taking back land that somebody else had taken from them. The crusaders felt the same way. They did
not see the Holy Land as Muslim land but as Christian land. It never really was Christian land, however,
it was Jewish land. Yet it is a separate issue to argue that it was wrong for Israel to return to their land
because we think it would have been wrong for the crusaders to take back the Holy Land from the
Muslims.

Whatever we think about that issue, it is not legitimate for Christians to say to the Muslims, “You started
it all.” We can make a case that the Muslims were rather ruthless. They did wipe out many Christian
churches, although some of that has been exaggerated. The idea that Muslims forced Christians to
convert has been exaggerated. Many of the Christian settlements in North Africa and the Middle East
were already disillusioned with both Rome and Constantinople, and they welcomed Muslim control.
They wanted to be free from those other Christians. With the complexity of that history, we cannot say
to Muslims, “You started it.” We ought to say, “We are sorry.” There is no way we can defend the
crusades, and we ought to be sorry that it was done in the name of Christ because it does not reflect
Christ and His Spirit and His Gospel.

Waldensians
There is a catechism that was written in the Middle Ages that has this question, “Do you believe in the
holy catholic church?” And the answer given in this catechism is, “No, for it is a creature, but I believe
that it exists.” And then the next question is, “What do you believe regarding the holy church?” And the
answer in this catechism is, “The holy catholic church is made up of all God’s elect, from the beginning
to the end, who according to the grace of God, by the merits of Christ have been gathered together by
the Holy Spirit and previously ordained to eternal life, their number and names being known only to the
One having chosen them.” What is going on here? This is obviously not a Roman Catholic catechism. It
sounds more like Saint Augustine or actually the Westminster Confession of Faith than the typical
sacramental theology of the Middle Ages. What we have in this catechism is a catechism from the
Waldensians. In this lesson I am going to try to answer the question, “Who were the Waldensians?” This
is a lesson I do look forward to giving. I said last time that I never was very happy when I had to come
to the Crusades, but I am always happy when I can talk about the Waldensians. This is because with this
group of believers we see something of a steady light shining in the darkness. Actually that is the motto
in Latin that the Waldensians use often. Lux lucid in tenebrous—the light shines in the darkness. There
is a drawing by a modern Waldensian with a light, a candle. It is illuminating the Word of God, which is
so important to Waldensian faith and Waldensian history. And that light shines in the darkness. As we
pray today we are going to pray together the Lord’s Prayer. The Waldensians, as other Christians, used
the Lord’s Prayer in their worship. As we pray together in the words of the Lord’s Prayer we can
remember that we are joining with these ancient believers. They were sometimes called the first
Protestants or the first evangelicals. So let us pray the Lord’s Prayer as we begin.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as
it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the
glory forever. Amen.
The Waldensians liked to talk about what they call the first reformation. That took place 300 years
before what we Protestants who are not Waldensians usually call the Reformation of the 16th century of
Luther and Calvin. But the Waldensians are rightly proud of the fact that a long time before Luther and
Calvin there was an earlier reformation in the church. We need to go back to the 12th century for a
moment and talk about that period. The 12th century was a time of great activity in the Roman church. It
was a time of religious reform and all sorts of unrest and new movements. It was the time of the
Crusades, as we saw last time. The Crusades were still going on, although not producing very much in
the 12th century. It was also a time in which the papacy had for some time tried to improve the teaching
and morals of the Catholic Church without too much success. The Gregorian Reforms of the 11th
century came and went and made some mark on the church, but many of the problems persisted. Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux died in the middle of the 12th century. A little bit later in that century Dominique
was born, the founder of the Dominicans. Then just a little later, Francis, the founder of the Franciscans,
was born. So much is going on, a lot of ferment, a lot of turmoil, in the Catholic Church. It is also a time
of the churches having to deal with a very serious heretical movement in the south of France. It was the
movement of the Cathars or the Albigensians, as they are sometimes called. It was a Medieval sect that
reached back to the ancient gnostic or manicium dualism. It taught that the created world was all evil, it
could not have consequently been made by a good God. There were many Cathars in southern France,
and the Roman church organized itself against these people. They produced a crusade, not against the
Muslims this time, but against Christian heretics in southern France. Before too many years they wiped
out that entire movement, largely by putting to death many of the people who belonged to the

Albigensian heresy. That all took place in southern France from Toulouse over to Lyon. This was an
area of concentration of the Cathars. That movement was obliterated. Nothing remained of it. But in a
similar geographical area, between Lyon and Turin, between this town in modern France and this town
in modern Italy, in this part of the Alps, another movement arose. It was the Waldensian movement. The
Waldensians are the only Medieval sect (we could use the word “sect” to mean a group not part of the
Catholic Church) that survived the persecution of the Middle Ages. Actually the Waldensians have
survived all the way down to the present.
Let us talk about how these people came into being and what they believed. Sometimes scholars have
argued that the Waldensians have their own particular heritage, their line of descent, all the way back to
the New Testament. They say there was an underground church, secret church, or trail of blood that was
separate from the Roman Catholic Church. You can read some books in church history that argue that; I
do not think they are successful. I do not think we can find a separate pure church from the New
Testament down to the Waldensians down to the present. Certainly we have not been studying that
church in this class. Most of the time we have been talking about the Roman Catholic Church. I think it
is more accurate historically, as modern Waldensian scholars admit, that the Waldensian movement was
a movement that came out of the Catholic Church. It did not have its own separate history back to the
New Testament period. It began with a man named Waldo. He lived in the city of Lyon in France. He
was a wealthy merchant. It is interesting to see this emerging social class. They were neither the
aristocracy, the elite, nor the peasants, but a new class of merchants. They were of some means, and
Waldo represented this particular new class in society. He became convinced that God was calling him
to give away his money and take up preaching. He was not a priest, of course, he was a layman. He
followed that leading and was converted to a life of apostolic poverty. This happened about the year
1170, which would have been about 10 years before Saint Francis was born. So before Francis is doing
something very similar down in Italy further south, Waldo has adopted a lifestyle of poverty in Lyon.
Pretty soon people began to be gathered around him. He not only gave away his money to the poor, but
he also memorized portions of Scripture in the vernacular language of the people. He also memorized
portions of some of the writings of the church fathers such as Augustine. Waldo would go out and
preach, mainly reciting the Scripture and quoting the church fathers. People joined him in this venture,
called the Poor Men of Lyon. That was the first name that they used, not the Waldensians but the Poor.
As the movement began to grow a little bit they did what every movement in the Middle Ages
eventually had to do. They sent somebody to Rome to tell the Pope about it and to get papal permission
to exist as a movement or an order within the Catholic Church. Some of these Waldensians went down
to Rome. The pope was Alexander III. The popes were always quite reluctant to endorse a new
movement like this. Some movements got approval, like the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Other
movements were turned down because the popes did not want too many movements like this around.
This kind of movement could gather its own momentum and actually challenge the authority of the
church in some ways. So it was not automatic that a movement like this would be approved by the pope.
There would be some lengthy questioning and examination of the views of the people who were
proposing to begin a new movement. We have a very interesting account of what happened when those
Waldensians arrived in Rome because different people were appointed to question them in the
delegation of the doctors and scholars of the Roman Catholic Church. It was one English bishop whose
name was Walter Map who was asked to question the Waldensians. Map said, “I was actually quite
nervous because this was my big chance to put down these heretics and to establish my reputation as a
theologian and an inquisitor.” So he wanted to make the best impression that he could on everybody
who was listening. So he said, “I knew these people were very simple and illiterate.” They really were
not; that was his description of them. They had memorized large portions of Scripture, and they were
using those Scriptures in their preaching. But thinking them to be untutored, at least in the ways of

theology in the church, he set out to question them. He said, “First I proposed the very simplest
question: Do you believe in God the Father?” They replied, “We believe.” And then he said, “Do you
believe in God the Son?” Again, “We believe.” “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” “Yes, we believe.”
“And do you believe in the mother of Christ?” And once more they said, “We believe,” where upon
everyone present broke out into a roar of laughter. And they retired in confusion, as well they might.
They had fallen into a trap. Perhaps you can identify the trap that they fell into. “Do you believe in the
mother of Christ?” What would a good orthodox Roman Catholic answer to that question? “No, I
believe in the mother of God.” To say I believe in the mother of Christ indicated something of the taint
of the Nestorian heresy that we have already talked about.
So the Waldensians, according to Walter Map, with Map’s own brilliance in questioning them in this
way, failed the test. They were not approved as an order in the Catholic Church. The pope did not care if
they wanted to be poor. They could give away everything that they had if they wanted to. But the pope
did not permit them to carry on preaching. That is really what they had come to Rome to ask permission
to do. He said they could not do that unless the local clergy would allow them to do that. So they went
back home to Lyon, disappointed in that verdict. But they did not hesitate to begin preaching again when
they got back to France. They believed that the authority to preach did not come from the pope or from
the bishops but from Christ. The local archbishop refused to give them permission, but Waldo replied,
“It is better to obey God than man.” He chose a very good text for his answer because those were the
words of Peter when he and the apostles in Jerusalem were forbidden to preach. Waldo is later called
Peter Waldo. We think that he gets the name Peter because he often used this text. He was quoting Peter,
“It is better to obey God than man.” Peter was not his original name. Later Waldensians called him Peter
Waldo, probably in reference to his frequent use of that text.
Waldo and his followers were then expelled from Lyon by the archbishop. Like those early Christians in
Jerusalem when they were scattered by persecution, they went everywhere preaching the Gospel. It was
not long before Waldensians were all over Europe. They had to move and act in secrecy, but they turn
up in many places. The English monk, Walter Map, who had questioned them in Rome said, “Their
beginnings are humble in the extreme for they have not yet much of a following. But if we should leave
them to their devices, they will end by turning all of us out.” So the Roman church, even though this was
a very small, seemingly insignificant movement, had some fear that a movement like this could grow
and could become a very great movement. They feared it would oppose the teaching of the Catholic
Church.
Early in their history the Waldensians did not form a separate church. They did not build their own
church buildings until the middle of the 16th century. The first Waldensian church building was in about
1555, we think. Formerly they were still part of the Catholic Church. They had their children baptized in
the Catholic Church. They took communion (or mass) once a year in the Catholic Church, as was the
custom of the time. Within the Catholic Church in southern France and northern Italy, there were these
groups of Bible-based Christians who were led by people. They called the leaders Barbers; it is the
Italian word for “uncle.” Perhaps because the Catholic Church used “father” for their priests, the
Waldensians used “uncle” for their leaders. Little groups of people in different places, but mainly in the
mountains, in the Alps between France and Italy, were meeting with their leaders. They met for the
study of the Bible and for the discipline of their Christian lives.
The Waldensians were persecuted. Even though the Roman Catholic Church recognized that the
Waldensians had not formed a separate church, they realized that this was really a church within a
church. The Catholics did everything they could to exterminate these Waldensian believers. As I have
already said, they were not only able to survive by hiding in the Alps and in the valleys there in northern

Italy and southern France, but they also moved into Europe where they had great influence in preparing
for the later Reformation. We will study John Hus a little bit later. He was the reformer of Bohemia.
There is a 1558 confession of faith of the Bohemian brethren, and on the title page of that 1558
confession of faith, Hus’ followers are called Waldensians. They probably were not really Waldensians,
but they had come to view the Christian faith so much like the Waldensians that the word “Waldensian”
had become a general word for Christians or evangelicals by the time we come to John Hus.
Now let us think a little bit about the theology of these people and their practice. What did they really
believe? There is some diversity in this movement, but we can summarize the movement in a number of
major points. One point is poverty, which I have already mentioned. The Waldensians gave away their
money in order to follow Christ. This was not an unusual occurrence at this time. Steven Ozment, in one
of his books, says large numbers of laity and clergy were gripped by the biblical ideal of apostolic
poverty. There were some people who were gripped by the ideal of going on a crusade. There were
others who were gripped by the ideal of trying to live as Jesus and the apostles lived. The Waldensians
were very much part of that second ideal. Peter Waldo said, “We have decided to live by the words of
the Gospel, essentially that of the Sermon on the Mount and the commandments. That is to live in
poverty without concern for tomorrow. But we hold that also those who continue to live their lives in the
world doing good will be saved.” So Waldo does not say it is necessary for everybody to give up
everything like we have. People can continue to live in the world—that is, without moving out into a
special community or order like the Waldensians—and can be saved as well. But the Waldensians felt
called to give up their possessions. They were described by Walter Map this way (and this was a
common way that the Waldensians were spoken of), “Naked, following the naked Christ.” Map did not
use that as a compliment for the Waldensians, but they viewed it as a testimony to their faithfulness to
Christ. That statement, “Naked, following the naked Christ,” a kind of startling way of describing these
people, probably had two meanings. One is that they were materially poor. As Christ had nothing, so
they had given away all that they had to follow Him. But it can also mean, as it probably did, that they
were stripped of religious trappings and followed Jesus and Jesus alone.
The Waldenesians focused their understanding of what it meant to be Christians on a very strict and
literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. And they attempted to put all of that into practice in
their everyday lives. And so that meant poverty, giving away what they had. It meant a repudiation of
violence in every form. The Waldensians were totally opposed to the Crusades and would not support
that movement at all. They would not take oaths because they said that the Sermon on the Mount did not
allow them to do this. So this kind of lifestyle would have made them stand out as unusual in the area in
which they lived. There is a story about a man who was suspected of being a Waldensian. He was
brought before the bishop for a trial. In his defense, he said of himself that he was not a Waldensian. He
said, “Everybody here knows that I am not because I swear and lie and drink like any good Catholic! I
could not then be accused of being a Waldensian.”
Poverty, a literal following of the Sermon on the Mount, and the many statements of Scripture, not only
there but elsewhere, mark the Waldensian movement. A very strong commitment to the Bible certainly
is part of the Waldensian movement. The Waldensians turned directly to the Bible, placed it in the hands
of the people, translated it, and preached it in order that people might hear it for salvation and
discipleship. We know that one method that the early Waldensians used in getting the Bible out was to
go about as merchants. They sold things, like precious jewels, books, or cloth, and this helped them
make a living. But they really were more concerned to distribute the Scriptures as they were traveling
from town to town as merchants selling their wares. John Greenleaf Whittier has a beautiful poem about
this, which I have included in the syllabus. The old merchant is selling this pearl of great price to a noble
lady. When she purchases the pearl, he tells her he has something even greater than that pearl, even

more beautiful, more wonderful. He brings out a little copy of the Bible, and she wants to pay him. He
says, no, this is free. “Here lady fair is the pearl of price / May it prove as such to thee / Nay keep thy
gold / I ask it not / For the Word of God is free.” And Whittier captures in that beautiful poem
something of the spirit of these early Waldensians who spread the Bible far and wide. We know, too,
that as the persecution came to the valleys of the Waldensians often Roman Catholics, troops, and
soldiers would move into the valleys. Many of the Waldensians were killed, and the Scriptures were
taken away from them. Some few would be able to escape to the higher mountains in the Cottian Alps,
on the border of Italy and France. According to this tradition, and I expect it is true, Waldensians had
memorized the entire Bible. Different families were responsible for different books. So when they were
stripped of all their Bibles, they would come together again and recite the whole Bible. By memory as a
community they had the Bible, and they were able to write it again as a result of their having memorized
it.
Another emphasis of the Waldensian movement, and you would expect this from their history, was an
emphasis on lay preaching. These people preached—all of them preached. They were lay people, but
they believed that every Christian should both know the Bible and be able to preach it. So wherever they
went they preached. They were simple sermons but sermons that included the message of the Bible. The
modern Waldensian movement in Italy and South America, which we will talk about in a few minutes,
is true to this heritage in that it still allows lay people to preach and to administer the sacraments even
though the Waldensians have ordained clergy today.
Let us talk about the Waldensian view of the sacraments. That will bring us into some understanding of
how the Waldensians view salvation. The Waldensians rejected the Roman Catholic sacramental
theology. We are going to go through all of that in more detail a little bit later. As we think of how a
Roman Catholic person in the Medieval world thought that he or she could be saved, we call that the
sacramental system or sacramental theology. The Waldensians did not accept this. Some sources
indicate that the Waldensians held to only two sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This would
bring the Waldensian movement right in line with later Protestant belief. It is probably true, as people
have often pointed out, that the 16th century reformation stressed more justification by faith that may
not have been as central to the Waldensians as their emphasis on the Bible alone. They certainly wanted
to stress the fact that it is the Bible—not the church and not tradition—that is the source of our faith.
You can find in reading Waldensian source documents some emphasis, too, on justification by faith. For
instance, one of the early Waldensian poems puts it this way, “It is God alone who pardons and no one
else.” If you take that in a very strong sense as I think it was intended, then it is clear that salvation is not
going to come through the sacraments of the church. But it will come through God’s pardoning grace,
which is received by faith alone.
What did the Waldensians think about the church? We have already seen that early on this group did not
formerly break with the church. But with spirit and in temper the Waldensians were far from being in
accord with the contemporary standards and understanding of the Catholic Church. I have a book written
by a modern Waldensian called A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the
Middle Ages. The Waldensians opposed the idea of Constantinianism. They did not accept what was
called the donation of Constantine. We have already passed that in our study. You might remember that
one of the popes, Pope Sylvester, is supposed to have received from Constantine, the emperor, a
document. The emperor, while in the process of moving from Rome to the new capital in
Constantinople, turned over the whole of Italy to the pope and some other territory as well. That is called
the Donation of Constantine. Later that was proven to be a forgery. It was written in the 8th or 9th
century when the popes were in a bitter dispute with the Carolingian rulers of the old Roman Empire as
to who was actually going to have temporal power and control over what used to be the old Roman

Empire. The Donation of Constantine was drawn up to give some support to the popes who said they
owned all of it because the emperor Constantine gave it to them. In the 15th century that document was
proven to be a forgery, but the Waldensians did not know that in their earlier history. They rejected it
anyway. They said, “This is not the way a pope ought to act, to receive power and earthly dominion
from an earthly ruler. Sylvester’s acceptance of worldly political power is a denial of the humility and
poverty fundamental to obedient Christians who are followers of Christ and the Apostles. We must
reject all forms of compromise of the church with the world.”
So we have, created by God’s Spirit and power, a small group of faithful believers who impact not only
their time but later history as well. Before I end this lesson on the Waldensians, let me trace that history
briefly. At the time of the Reformation, the Waldensians realized that what was going on in places like
Geneva represented much of what they had already accepted and believed. In 1532 representatives of the
reformed part of the Reformation, including William Farrell, went down to the Italian Alps and met with
Waldensian leaders. The Waldensian church then formerly became part of the Protestant church, and
particularly of the reformed Protestant church. From that time on the Waldensians separated themselves
from the Catholics. They built their own church buildings and had their own life independent of the
church of Rome. This did not introduce a peaceful period. As you know the Reformation was followed
by at least a century and a half of what we call the Wars of Religion. As Catholics and Protestants
fought each other throughout Europe the Waldensians suffered greatly during this time. You have John
Milton’s great poem written in defense of the Waldensians. Milton was Cromwell’s Secretary of State.
Cromwell tried to do what he could in order to protect fellow Protestant Christians from the great
suffering that the Waldensians were experiencing at the hands of the leaders of Savoy and Italian
Catholics. The situation got so bad that surviving Waldensians finally had to flee their beloved
mountains and valleys. They went for a few years to Geneva, where the Waldensian church was a
church in exile. In 1689 they returned in what is called a glorious return in Waldensian history. This is
the return of the few Waldensians who still existed from Geneva back to the valleys. The church was
able to exist there, not without persecution, but with some measure of peace from time to time.
Like so many of the Protestant churches, during the time of the Enlightenment, the Waldensians were
influenced by liberal, rational thought. And then there was a period of revival coming out of England
through Geneva in the days of Robert and James Haldain. The evangelical revival in Switzerland
reached down into the valleys and renewed the old Waldensian church and brought life to it once again.
Then in the 19th century, not so much due to religious persecution but to lack of economic opportunities
in the valleys, many Waldensians migrated to South America and to the United States. The Waldensian
church today that exists in Italy also has a strong part of that church in Uruguay. The Waldensians
settled along the river plate between Uruguay and Argentina. That forms the province of the Waldensian
church in South America. The Waldensians who came to the United States settled in various places but
have not maintained a separate Waldensian church. Most of those Waldensians became Presbyterians.
There is a little town in North Carolina called Valdese, North Carolina. You can tell from the name that
Valdese is a Waldensian settlement. There is a Waldensian Presbyterian church in Valdese and a
museum of Waldensian history. In the summer time there is an historical drama that is given by the local
people. It tells the history of the Waldensians from the early beginnings in Italy to the migration from
the piedmont of Italy to the piedmont of North Carolina in the early 20th century. There is also a
settlement of Waldensians in Missouri in a town called Monett. And there are Waldensians in other
places as well.
The Waldensian church in Italy in 1979 merged with the Italian Methodist Church. That did not help the
Waldensians much because the Methodists did not represent the reformed history and theology of the

Waldensian movement. They also brought in much more of an emphasis on social activity as the core
and heart of Waldensian life in Italy. But within that ancient church there are still Bible believing
people. We can pray that there might be a renewal of this church, which has such a significant and
wonderful history. Therefore, seeing that we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us
run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us.
In some ways I have simplified the Waldensian theology for the sake of the lecture. I have tried to make
it accurate. But you can probably get different expressions of theology as you read Waldensians. Some
are going to sound more Catholic, some are going to sound more Protestant. The weight, I think, is
toward the later Protestant position. They are very much in line with Augustine and with Calvinism as
that develops later. It is right to say there is some difference there on the church. The Waldensians
formerly stay within the church, but there is more of an emphasis on the sacraments in Augustine than
you will find in the later reformers. Certainly the Waldensians are going to be more on the side of the
reformers there.
It is a great story. You would not find this much emphasis given to the Waldensians in a general history
of the church. Gonzalez does not say a whole lot about the Waldensians, but since I get to choose the
topics that I am going to lecture on, I can spend a whole period on the Waldensians. I think it is
important because these people are part of the movement that we will call the pre-reformers or the
forerunners of the Reformation. We have got John Wycliffe to go, John Hus, and the Italian Gerolamo
Servanarola. With Peter Waldo, you have got the four great pre-reformers. But we will talk about those
others later.

Scholastic Theology
One of the great scholastic theologians is Anselm. I will talk about Anselm a little later in this lesson,
but we will begin now with a prayer from the church leader and theologian, archbishop of Canterbury,
Saint Anselm. Let us pray.
“My God, I pray that I may so know You and love You that I rejoice in You. And if I may not do so fully
in this life, let me go steadily on to the day when I come to that fullness. Let me receive that which You
promise through Your truth that my joy may be full. Amen.”
You all have heard the question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Perhaps you do
not know the answer to that, but there is a pin and a sign that says, “Occupancy by more than
3,820,712,681 angels on the head of this pin is unlawful.” That question is not going to be on the exam,
so you do not need to try and memorize that number. That is my introduction to this lesson on scholastic
theology. It is probably not a very fair introduction, but nonetheless it is an introduction.
The question that we want to start with is, “What is scholastic theology?” A simple answer is that
scholastic theology was the way that theology was done in the Middle Ages. It was the approved
method, the standard approach to theology. Theology had not always been done this way, in fact this is a
creation of the Middle Ages. It would have great impact, not only on its own time, but all the way down
throughout the rest of church history. Let us try to understand what it is, first of all. Then we will talk
about some famous scholastic theologians.
When we get into the matter of scholastic theology, we have to get into the whole matter of philosophy.
Scholastic theology was very concerned to relate its work to a philosophical system. Philosophy was
viewed as a valuable asset to Christian theology in a couple of ways. One, it could demonstrate the
reasonableness of faith and thus defend the Christian faith against non-Christian critics. By using
philosophy, theologians hoped to be able to show that Christianity really had some rationality to it. It
made sense; it was not ridiculous. It could answer these questions, and it could answer them in terms of
the philosophical system that was being employed. Another reason that Christians wanted to use
philosophy was that it enabled theologians to systematically arrange and order their theology. When you
are going to write theology you have to have some sort of order, some kind of outline. The Bible does
not give us that. To make a systematic theology, there has to be some way of putting it all together in a
coherent and organized form. Philosophy seemed to offer some help in enabling Christian theologians to
systematize their writings. Their purpose in all of this was to set forth theology in a systematic, orderly
way so that Christians could better understand it. Philosophy was viewed as an ally, as something
important to be used. It was to be studied and used by theologians. The problem, of course, was which
philosophy?
Early on the teaching of Plato appealed to theologians, and Plato was often used in some way as a
philosophical background or context for the teaching of Christian theology. The appeal of Plato for
Christian theologians is clearly seen in the very first sentence under Plato in the New Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophy. The first sentence under Plato says this, “Plato was a preeminent Greek
philosopher whose chief contribution consists in his conception of the observable world as an imperfect
image of a realm of unobservable and unchanging forms. And his conception of the best life has one
centered on the love of these divine objects.” I will not take time to exegete that sentence, but I think
you can see in my reading it how Christian theology would find some sort of affinity with the
philosophy of Plato.

Aristotle was not well known in the early Middle Ages. Plato was the philosopher. Aristotle was, in
many of his writings, unknown in the West. Those writings had not come over into the West. They had
not been translated into Latin. So the full corpus of Aristotle who is, of course, viewed as the second of
these great Greek philosophers was not known. He was known in part. Boethius, you remember we
mentioned for a couple of minutes, was a channel through which part of Aristotle was transmitted into
Western culture. But the full understanding of Aristotle and his philosophical system was not known
until the Middle Ages. It came into the West in a rather strange way. Aristotle’s teaching, unknown to
the West, was known to the Muslims who had conquered much of the East. So the study of Aristotle was
taking place in Persia when Aristotle was not being studied in Rome and Paris and Oxford. As the
Muslims conquered other areas, they took their knowledge of Aristotle with them all the way to Spain.
Muslim philosophers in Spain became the preeminent channel by which the full understanding of
Aristotle was then brought into the Christian West. When people began to read Aristotle, they
discovered a different sort of philosophy at work. It was a rational, empirical, hard-headed concentration
on the data. It was a more scientific approach to philosophy as over against Plato’s more mystical,
subjective approach. Reality, according to Aristotle, is explained by observation and by logic. It is not so
much by meditation as by study of the data. Many people in the West adopted Aristotle then. The
Aristotelian system, particularly Aristotelian logic, became very important for the expression of
Christian theology for presenting, organizing, and defending Christian truth. The problem with Aristotle,
though, was that Aristotle was not a Christian. Plato was not either, although some people tried to get
him very close if not into the kingdom of heaven because he was saying so many things that seemed
right to Christians. So he must have been a Christian if he got that right. But Aristotle is more of a
problem because in Aristotle’s teaching there is some very definitely, strongly stated non-Christian
positions like the eternity of the world. Aristotle believed in the eternity of the world, he seemed to
believe in the mortality of the soul. He does not have a high view, if any view at all, of providence. His
concentration on empirical, visible reality could be opposed to an acceptance of tradition and authority
in God and the Scripture. Christian theologians, as much as they could Christianize Aristotle, took his
system, tried to adjust his teaching, and overlooked some things. But in terms of how to think, how to do
philosophy, which in this period is the same thing as doing theology, Aristotle became the philosopher.
Not everybody was happy with that. I have included in the syllabus a long quotation from the library in
the novel by Umberto Eco, Name of the Rose, (I will not give the plot away because it was a very
exciting book), but the whole plot has to do with this man’s hatred for a certain book written by
Aristotle. It was the second book of Aristotle. The book was already out, but he was trying to stop the
damage. He feels that if that book gets in the library, gets out to people, and they start reading Aristotle,
they will lose sight of some of the wonderful truths of the Christian faith. This man felt that Aristotle,
rather than being an ally, was really an enemy of the Christian faith. But nonetheless, there he was.
Aristotle had come back in. He was the big name. His system of philosophy was the going system of the
day. Most Christian theologians accepted it and used it.
While all this was going on, we have the rise of the universities. At first there were no universities.
There were monastic schools where the monks taught groups of students. Out of the monastic schools
grew the cathedral schools in the large cathedral towns where people would come and study. Out of
those cathedral schools came the universities. By the time we come to the high Middle Ages, which we
are talking about now, the university is part of the landscape of Europe. In the monastic schools, and
somewhat in the cathedral schools, the way of study could be described as devotional. It was like going
to chapel all the time and hearing the Word of God read, hearing devotional writings read. They studied
these things with a view to one’s own heart and the application of all of this to one’s life. In the
universities, that began to shade over into scientific theology, philosophical theology, and academic
theology. The method that was used in the universities was the dialectical method. That was in large

measure based on Aristotle’s way of doing philosophy and based on Aristotelian logic. It was a certain
prescribed method. If you wanted to do theology you did it this way. You learned how to do it in the
university this way. Books were written this way. Everything was set up this way. It was a formal
procedure in which a question was posed. That question became the issue of debate. Theology really
became a matter of debate. A question is proposed like, “Is the world eternal?” Then answers would be
given on both sides of that issue. Of course Aristotle could be quoted on one side and the Bible could be
quoted on the other side. The authorities, philosophers, and theologians would be lined up on the two
sides of a question like that. Arguments would be given for and against those positions. Finally there
would be some sort of conclusion. If you were studying to be a theologian in a university, this would be
the way your classes would be conducted, and this would be the way that you would be expected to
perform as well. State the question, give the arguments on both sides, and come up with a conclusion.
That was the dialectical method. Not everybody thought that was a good idea, but it was the prevalent
approach to theological work in the Middle Ages. One Christian writer of the 11th century said, “That
which is from the argument of the dialecticians cannot easily be adapted to the mysteries of divine
power.” He was not sure that you could take what he called the mysteries of the Word of God and fit it
into that kind of straight jacket approach of question, countering arguments and conclusion. But most
theologians thought it could be done that way, and they did it that way.
Who were those theologians? Let us start with Anselm. Anselm was an Italian monk who went to the
Abbey of Beck in Normandy. Then from Normandy he became archbishop of Canterbury. He can be
considered the first truly great theologian of the period. In some ways he is the greatest name between
Augustine and the Reformers. Anselm carried on the older devotional approach to theology, but he
combined it with the new scholastic approach. So with Anselm you get a bridge from the older way of
doing theology to the newer way. He wrote his theology in the form of a prayer. That certainly reflects
the older approach. He said, “I am not trying, oh Lord, to penetrate Thy loftiness.” But then he goes on
and seems to try to penetrate God’s loftiness. So he has those two sides to him: the devotional side in
which authority in the Word is so prominent, but the scholastic side in which rationality and logic are
becoming more and more significant.
Anselm is known for two great contributions to theology. The first is found in his book called
Proslogion, in which his starting point is “I believe in order to know.” He did not create that statement.
Saint Augustine and many other theologians had said the same thing, but you see what he is saying
there. It starts with faith: I believe in order to know. He starts with faith, with belief, and then in the
context of faith and belief he moves to heaven and earth to use logic and rationality in order to better
understand what he already believes. From Proslogion we get the great cosmological arguments for the
existence of God. Those are arguments that move from the creation to the Creator. Anselm was not the
first person to think of all of this, but he organized it and stated it in a very compelling way. You start
with creation, with what is here, and then you argue to the Creator. There are various ways to do that.
For instance, you can start with the idea of design. As we look around us things seem to have some
pattern, some organization, some design. It is not haphazard. It is exquisitely put together. Then you can
argue from that idea found in the created world to the fact that there must be a designer, someone to put
it all together. It could not have happened accidentally. Thomas Aquinas will say the same thing. People
had said this before and after Anselm, but Anselm is famous for his emphasis on these arguments from
creation to the Creator.
Anselm wanted to go further. He wanted to see if he could “prove” the existence of God by just shutting
his eyes and not looking out at the creation. From thought alone could he prove that God exists? He
thought he could. That is a famous argument from Anselm: from thought to God. It is called the
ontological argument. Sometimes it is called Anselm’s argument. Anselm reflected on how self-evident

the idea of God had become for him. It was just there in his thought. He wondered if he could move
from the self-evidence of that idea to some proof of the existence of God. He wanted to see what the
implications of the fact that God was self-evident to him would be. Crucially important to his argument
is his definition of God. “God is that then which nothing greater can be conceived.” He thought starting
with that definition he could prove the existence of God. I am not going to try to explain that, mainly
because I cannot! If I tried I would get into a hopeless morass and spend the rest of the class trying to get
out of it. Let me read a couple of sentences from our textbook because Gonzalez does the same thing I
am going to do: he avoids the whole issue and tries to come up with a sentence or two that shows the
significance of what is going on. Gonzalez says the exact interpretation, significance, and validity of this
argument have been discussed by scholars and philosophers through the ages. Book after book has been
written on the ontological argument of Anselm. What is important for our purpose, however, is to note
the method of Anselm’s theology, which applies reason to a truth known by faith (that is the key) in
order to understand it better. Anselm by faith knows that God exists, and then he applies reason to what
he knows in order to try to understand better what he already believes.
There is another important contribution of Anselm to theology on quite a different level. It comes out in
the famous book that he wrote Cur deus Homo (Why the God-man). It deals with the matter of
atonement. Ideas of atonement in church history up to this point had varied greatly, and after this point
they vary greatly too. Cur deus Homo is a classic on attempting to understand why God became man
and how that is necessary for our salvation. One of the older views was the ransom to the devil view. As
far as the atonement is concerned, there was a ransom paid to the devil, and that was the sacrifice of
Christ on the cross. So the devil would let people go who could then be redeemed through Christ. Some
of the church fathers held to that in a rather crude way. The more sophisticated approach was the Cristus
Victor approach. Christ simply overcomes by His power over the forces of evil. He conquers hell and
Satan and wins a great victory. Church fathers held that too, and that view can be held in connection
with other views of the atonement. I think when we are finished studying Anselm we would say he has a
very clear insight into what the atonement means, but it means even more than this. So Cristus Victor
and the substitutionary concept of Anselm do not need to be held as opposites but as complimentary
views of the atonement.
I will talk about Abelard in a moment. Abelard came up with a moral influence view. He said the
atonement was simply a great example of Christ’s love which then passes onto us and influences us to
love God and man as well. But it is Anselm who makes crystal clear the important biblical concept of
Christ’s death as payment for our sin. Christ’s death is payment to the Father for the people, the elect.
That was not new. Others had said it before Anselm, but Anselm put it together in a very compelling
way. It is the classic formulation of Christ’s death as a work of deliverance from the penalty of sin. Man
must pay because man is the sinner. But only God can really pay because He is sinless and infinite. So
salvation depends upon the God-man. Man has obligation but no ability. God has ability but no
obligation. So in Christ, who is the God-man, both obligation and ability come together. Anselm sets
forth wonderfully His perfect infinite sacrifice on the cross for His people. I was reading recently in
Books in Culture an article by Jacob Neusner called “The Cross and the Holocaust.” Neusner is a Jewish
scholar. He was criticizing a series of sermons preached by the pastor in the Episcopal cathedral in
Glasgow. It was preached during Easter season in 1995 by the pastor of that Episcopal Church in
Scotland who was also a Jew converted to Christianity. Neusner says, “For a Jew who practices
Judaism, the book called Jesus and the Holocaust, Reflections on Sufferings and Hope by Joel Marcus,
(the Episcopalian priest in Glasgow) constitutes unrelieved blasphemy, committing a profound offense
against the sanctity of the unique suffering of holy Israel. One man, that is Jesus, against six million. If
that is Marcus’ ratio, it is beyond this Jew’s comprehension.” But what Anselm says in Cur deus Homo,
that is not a ridiculous idea if the one man is God. That is exactly what Cur deus Homo says.

While Anselm is writing great books and teaching theology in Normandy and in Canterbury, to read
what was going on in Paris about this time makes one’s head spin. At the center of it was the brilliant,
enigmatic figure of Peter Abelard. He was the invincible arguer, the magnetic teacher. Abelard was the
star. Like a great prizefighter, he expressed his contempt for anyone who met him in the ring of open
discussion. He would win these debates hands down. This was the most exciting show in town. People
would turn out to hear Abelard debate theology. The older medieval philosophers like Anselm said, “I
must believe in order that I may understand.” Abelard took the opposite course. He said, “I must
understand in order that I may believe.” He said by doubting, not by reciting, affirming or quoting, but
by doubting we come to questioning. And by questioning we perceive the truth. You can see how
Abelard has made a massive shift in the way theology was being done. These are strange words to have
been written in the year 1122. Of course they got him into trouble. Abelard was good at getting into
trouble. His life that he wrote, his autobiography, is called History of Calamities. He summarizes his
whole life that way. You will have heard about his love affair with Heloise, his student and the niece of
the canon of the cathedral in Paris. This resulted in Heloise’s pregnancy and Abelard’s castration by
Heloise’s enraged uncle. That is just the beginning of the calamities that happened to him.
His book on theology has a strange name. It is called Sic et Non. It means “yes and no.” What Abelard
does in this book is follow the dialectical method of setting up questions and giving lists of contradictory
answers to those questions. But he does not try much to resolve it all. He is better at setting up the
questions and letting people wrestle with those questions. It is probably a very modern idea, but
certainly not an idea that was prevalent in the high Middle Ages. The emphasis now is more on the fact
that perhaps we cannot know. The Bible contradicts itself, or it seems to. The church fathers contradict
each other. What are you going to do? Here is an Abelardian pig resolving a yes and no question. It is
not exactly the way Abelard did it, but nonetheless you can see that approaching theology this way, he
has moved it away from the realm of authority and moved it much more into the realm of rationality. We
have got to do the best we can to try to decide these matters. Abelard’s purpose may have been to force
deeper reflection and so greater understanding. But it had the effect of prizing theology away from
authority and exposing it to the scrutiny of reason. All of this kept getting him into trouble with other
theologians and with the church. Personally, deep down he would continually express his submission to
the Bible, to the tradition, and to the church. In fact, he wrote to Heloise after she had become a nun, “I
would never be a philosopher if this is to speak against Saint Paul. I would not be an Aristotle if this
were to separate me from Christ.” But despite statements like that he keeps on doing it. He finally died a
rather friendless man and a rather sad man in a Cluniac monastery in 1142.
Let me talk about a number of other important scholastic theologians just to get their names before us.
Another very important figure is Peter Lombard. His book of theology is called Four Books of the
Sentences. In it he divides theology into God, creation and Old Testament, salvation through Christ, and
sacraments and last things. Lombard simply organizes theology this way: he collects a lot of references
from a lot of sources and tries to come up with some kind of understanding of theology through this
approach. Alister McGrath says that Four Books of Sentences is perhaps one of the most boring books
that has ever been written. I must admit I have not read much of it but enough of it to see what is going
on. It may have been a very boring book, but at the same time it was a pretty important book. Lombard
became the standard theological text for the Middle Ages. If you wanted to be a theologian, you had to
master Lombard and you had to produce something similar to Lombard. There were numerous
commentaries on The Sentences. All of this set forth, as you would expect, standard medieval Catholic
theology. I am going to talk more about that later when we come to the sacramental system. Exactly
what was that theology, and how did people view the church’s answer to the question, “What must I do
to be saved?” You can find all of that in a highly organized system in Peter Lombard. Calvin in the

Institutes refers to Lombard at least 100 times, but he does not quote Lombard the way he quotes
Augustine. He quotes Augustine hundreds of times, almost always favorably. Calvin says about
Lombard, “When Augustine says anything clearly, Lombard obscures it. And if there was anything
slightly contaminated in Augustine, Lombard corrupts it.”
Another medieval theologian was the Franciscan minister General Bonaventure. After the death of Saint
Francis, the Franciscan order fell into turmoil. This is because there were different ideas as to how the
order could and should continue. It was Bonaventure who led in settling the internal dissensions of the
order. He was a great Franciscan theologian, faithful to the Augustinian-Anselmic tradition with some
sympathy for the new Aristotelian philosophy. Bonaventure’s greatest influence as a writer was as a
spiritual writer. He was one who dealt with matters of faith and love to God as so many of the monastic
writers did. Bonaventure constantly treated the matter of the relation between philosophy and theology
in setting forth his spiritual writings. One of his most interesting books is Retracing the Arts to
Theology. Like Augustine, like Anselm, he begins with faith. His premise stated in his own words in this
book is, “The manifold wisdom of God, which is clearly revealed in sacred Scripture, lies hidden in all
knowledge and in all nature.” It is a rather striking and important sentence. You can find the same kind
of sentiment in the church fathers and in Saint Augustine. But when Bonaventure deals with this in
Retracing the Arts to Theology, he attempts to prove all of this with some pretty hefty intellectual
arguments.
Next is Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas is such a big name that I am going to skip him altogether and dedicate
the next lesson to him. I am not ignoring Aquinas but putting him off because in so many ways he is the
culmination of this whole process that I have been talking about.
I would like to come to reflect with you for a few minutes on this whole matter of scholasticism. Was it
a good thing or a bad thing? People have argued about this for a long, long time. You can get different
views depending on how you look at scholasticism. Theology during the scholastic period certainly was
center stage. It was the queen of the sciences. Medieval universities did not have separate buildings for
separate departments, but if these universities had done that the department of theology would be right
in the center of the campus. They did not have campuses either, but that building would have been a
massive building. And the administration building would have been a little shack around back and the
other departments small buildings surrounding this great center building dedicated to the study of
theology. The brightest and best minds of the period went into theological study. So with scholasticism
we have a sophisticated theological system. At the end Gil Saul has described it as a cathedral of the
mind. About the same time all of this is going on, there are people building all those wonderful
cathedrals in Charte and other places in Europe. Scholasticism is like a cathedral of the mind: massive,
impressive, and powerful. In many ways theology greatly benefited through all of this—the attention of
the best minds of the age on every conceivable question related to the Bible and to theology and the
production of precise, thorough, and detailed answers. Of course, one of the problems is that much of
this was in the service of a church that had moved away from the authority of Scripture as its center and
as its reason for existence.
If we can say some good things about scholasticism, there were also some problems. That is that under
the scientific, university-led, dialectical, scholastic method theology could move away from the church.
It could move away from the monastery. It could move away from the common people and become a
domain of the intellectuals. It could become, as it did, academic and abstract. How many angels can
dance on the head of a pin? Not really a burning question that the average person wanted an answer to. It
could well be that that question was never debated in the universities, although some people think that
maybe it was. After all, it has to do with the whole idea of the immateriality of the angels in the spiritual

world. I suppose if you conceive of it that way, then the answer that I gave earlier was not accurate
because there would be no limit to the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. But if that
question was never really raised or debated, there were other questions that people spent a lot of time
talking about. In fact, at the university in Belgium in 1493 there was a debate over this question, “Do
four five-minute prayers on consecutive days stand a better chance of being answered than one 20-
minute prayer?” And some very great scholars spent eight weeks debating that issue! That was longer
than it took Christopher Columbus to sail to America the preceding year. All of this, and perhaps I am
exaggerating a bit, all tended to tie theology too much to philosophy and to rationality. In some ways it
made it a game and removed it from its service to the church and to the Gospel. There was one late
medieval thinker who compared the scholastics to physicians, who having learned their trade then sit
down and talk about it while people are dying of the plague. The plague was the big problem during this
time too.
Again, I am trying to balance this somewhat. There are some good things about it, but it could easily
lead to excesses and to problems. This was a great period of theology. Unfortunately it was not a great
period of preaching. I think that was the problem. The theology stayed in the universities, in the
textbooks, and in the academic circles. People were beginning to become interested in preaching. There
were some great preachers. Some of the Dominicans and others and great preachers were well respected
and well known. But there were not many of them, and the average person in his or her parish never
heard a sermon, at least not a very good one. And there were some questions about the theology, too,
because it was producing some wrong answers as well as many right answers. There was no way for that
theology to get to the people. So the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will
stand forever.

Thomas Aquinas
We are going to talk today about Thomas Aquinas. We will begin with a prayer from Thomas as it
appears in the syllabus. Let us pray.
“Grant me grace, oh merciful God, to desire ardently all that is pleasing to Thee, to examine it
prudently, to acknowledge it truthfully, and to accomplish it perfectly. For the praise and glory of Thy
name, Amen.”
This lesson is going to be on the angelic doctor, and the first point is the dumb ox. So you might wonder,
which was he? Was Thomas a dumb ox or was he an angelic doctor? His early schoolmates called him
the dumb ox. Fellow students sometimes have a way of giving one another uncomplimentary names.
Thomas’ schoolmates gave him this nickname. It was because he was a very large man, so he looked
like an ox. He was big. He really was not dumb, but he did not say much. He was very quiet. So he
became known as the dumb ox. But the Christian world today, certainly the Catholic Christian world,
knows him as the angelic doctor.
I would like to talk a little bit about the life of Thomas Aquinas, and then we will try to understand
something of the thought of Thomas. As we think about this man’s life, we need to go back to a wealthy
and prominent family in southern Italy. Thomas was born in the town of Aquino, so the Aquinas part of
his name simply refers to the town he came from. That town was very close to the famous Benedictine
monastery at Monte Cassino, and Thomas grew up in that monastery. He was taken there by his parents
so that he could have first-class education. He studied there, but when he got a little older he decided to
join a new order. It was not the Benedictines. The Benedictines were, by this time, a famous,
established, historic order with that splendid house at Monte Cassino. And some reputation would come
to a person who was a Benedictine. The new order was the order of the Dominicans, and we have
studied that so you know something about the order of the preachers. This was new and untried, not
nearly so famous, but Thomas wanted to be a Dominican. His parents, who had a great deal of desire
that he excel in this world, as parents always do for their children, did not like that decision. They felt
that Thomas was consequently going to be unknown as part of a new, rather nondescript order in the
Catholic church. So they tried everything they could to keep him out of the order. In fact, they arranged
to kidnap him for a year. They took him away and tried to discourage him from joining the Dominicans.
The Dominicans had been given papal approval in 1216, so just a few years before Thomas was born
this order had come into existence. But Thomas could not be dissuaded. The ox part certainly comes out
here—he was very stubborn. He was determined to become a Dominican, which he did. He studied in
Paris under the great Dominican, Albert the Great of Germany. Then Thomas began his career as a
Dominican scholar and teacher. He taught in Paris, and he taught in Italy.
We have the dumb ox, the Dominican scholar, and the third point in this outline of Thomas’ life: the
systematic theologian. If everybody could read Thomas, they would understand what systematic means
in “systematic theologian.” Of all the theologians that I ever look at, that word comes to mind when I
look at Thomas Aquinas. I read recently that a Lutheran said that Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther
are arguably the greatest theologians in the history of Christianity. I would like to expand that list a little
bit; certainly Augustine has to be in there somewhere. And, as a Calvinist, I would want to put John
Calvin in that list. Maybe Jonathan Edwards should be on the list, and some people would argue that
Carl Barth should be there. But rather than trying to decide who the greatest theologians in the history of
the Christian church really are, maybe we should just say anybody’s list should have Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas wrote a lot of books, but the two that are the most famous are the Summa Contra Gentiles and
the Summa Theologiae, the summa against the Gentiles and the summa of theology. The word summa
simply means “summary,” so these are summaries. One of these summaries, the Summa Contra
Gentiles, is more of a work of apologetics. You might say that the emphasis in this summa is
philosophical and theological. The Summa Theologiae, the summary of theology, is a book not primarily
about apologetics but primarily about theology. The emphasis there is theological and philosophical.
You can see what I have done there. Thomas operates in a similar manner in both books, but when he is
writing a book of apologetics, the emphasis is on philosophy and theology. When he is writing a book
on theology, of course, the emphasis is on theology and philosophy. There is the same cyclical pattern
that is obvious in both of these great works. A systematic theologian always has a kind of way of
thinking about theology. John Calvin begins the Institutes by saying it is knowledge of God and of
ourselves. That is what he is going to talk about. Whenever Thomas does theology, it is always the
going out from God; God is the origin of all things. He tries to show how everything derives from God.
Then there is the return to God. The cyclical principle is the methodological principle that Thomas uses
in his writing. It is the principle of departing and returning, the issuing of all things from God and the
return of all things to God. You might say there are always two points in Thomas. One is God as origin
of all things and the other is God as the goal of all things.
Even though the general outline is the same for both of the summas, Thomas has quite a different
purpose in mind. When he wrote the Summa Contra Gentiles, he was really writing a book that
Christians could use to debate Christianity with opponents of Christianity. By Gentiles, he had
particularly in mind the Muslims, but also the Jews and heretical groups. In this summa Thomas
operated largely on the level of natural reason. This is because these people would not accept the
revelation of the Scripture. The Summa Theologiae is the greater, more famous of the two great books.
When I say these are two books, I do not mean two single volumes. The Summa Theologiae is many
volumes. One rough translation of the title Summa Theologiae is “everything you ever wanted to know
about theology” is found in Thomas’ work. The thing that always amazes me as I stand before those
books somewhat staggered by the size and number of them is the fact that Thomas said he was writing a
book for beginners in theology. There are 512 questions. Thomas operates according to the scholastic,
dialectical style. He is the prince of the scholastics. He took these 512 questions and answered them in
more than 4,000 pages. I am thankful that Peter Kreeft has recently written a book called The Summa of
the Summa (the Summary of the Summary). So with Peter Kreeft you can get a more manageable
version of Thomas’ summa.
Let me talk a little bit about the first summa, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and then we will come back to
the second summa. Here Thomas sets forth the famous five arguments. He did not invent these. We saw
already that Anselm used these same five arguments, but Thomas does go into this in some detail. He is
famous for the five ways to argue for the existence of God. You can find that in the Summa Contra
Gentiles. The basic thought in these five arguments is that creation mirrors the Creator. God, who made
all things, stamped His image in some way upon all these things that He made. So you have the five
arguments. I will read them briefly as they are stated in the syllabus. Things in this world are in motion,
everybody admits that. So Thomas says that there must be a cause for that motion, maybe a lot of
causes. But there is a final cause, something that gave it the first “push.” Things began to move, and the
word that Thomas uses for that final cause is the word “God.” Then he says effects have causes. Any
effect has behind it a cause, perhaps a series of causes. But there is an original cause that starts the whole
thing. Thomas calls that original cause God. Then he says we are contingent beings; we are not
necessary beings. It is not necessary in a philosophical sense that we bare here. Why are we here then?
Contingent beings must have or must depend on a necessary being. There cannot be contingent beings
without a necessary being somewhere. That necessary being, Thomas says, is God. He also talks about

values, human values, like truth, honesty, integrity, nobility, and the like. Where do all these things
come from? Thomas says they come from an original truth or goodness. That, we call God. Then
Thomas says as we look around in the world we see traces of intelligent design. It does not appear that
things are made in an unintelligent way. Things work together; there is evidence of design. There must
be a designer. That designer we call God. You can see all five arguments are basically the same. All five
depend on taking a causal sequence back to its origin and identifying this origin as God.
There have been, since Thomas’ time, many arguments against the arguments. People have disagreed
with Thomas that this can actually be done or should be done. From the medieval period we will study
Duns Scotus and the late medieval nominalists who opposed Thomas on this point. They felt that reason
could not be used in this way at all. Down to the present, there have been many people who have not
liked the so-called theistic arguments. Many Christians feel that these are not worthy or useful. I would
suggest that you read in the syllabus the statement from the Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga
concerning the argument from design. In addition, Richard Muller, who teaches at Calvin Theological
Seminary, has written a defense of Thomas’ arguments. As Muller puts it, demonstration neither
replaces nor subverts faith (so Thomas is not saying we can just forget about faith, and we can argue
about these things), but demonstration rather shows us that faith is capable of sustaining itself in
argument. That is Muller’s way of trying to understand what Thomas is up to. It is not that we start with
this and this helps us into faith. But we believe, and because we believe we can talk about it in a rational
way.
Thomas completed the Summa Theologiae in 1272. Most lists of important dates in church history will
have that date, 1272, the completion of the Summa Theologiae. If you were doing a timeline it would be
a good idea for you have that date in your timeline. Let me try to characterize the Summa Theologiae in
three ways. I am not going to tell you Thomas’ theology but something about his methodology. First, it
is true that Thomas attempted to use both faith and knowledge, or reason. To do that, he depends a great
deal on Aristotle. Aristotle, according to Thomas, got a lot right. But he did not know everything. He
started along the way, but he did not go all the way. That is not the same thing as going the wrong way,
so Thomas can place a great deal of value in reading Aristotle. For example, it is not wrong to say that
Athens is in Europe. It is not particularly precise. People can do better than that, but it is not wrong to
say Athens is in Europe. Thomas would say that Aristotle could make and did make some basic, true
statements about how to understand things.
There are many questions about which the Bible and reason say exactly the same thing. Here Thomas
was quite willing to argue philosophically and to use the philosophers like Aristotle to try to argue for
the existence of God, His nature, His providence, the immortality of souls, and certain ethical insights.
Thomas was also aware that the philosophers, even if they start along the right path, cannot go very far.
Philosophy, reason, does have is own authentic sphere, but so do faith and authority. The Bible tells us
many tings that the philosophers could only dream about. They could not even imagine these things. As
Thomas works this way, he does have two separate spheres of authority and knowledge. It is a two-story
view, the lower story and the upper story. The one level you can understand through reason, philosophy,
and rationality. The other level you can only understand through faith and through the revealed truth of
the Bible. There are natural truths and there are revealed supernatural truths such as the doctrine of the
Trinity, the incarnation, our first and last state, the Fall, redemption, and the like. Thomas saw this
second-level truth as beyond reason. It could not be proved rationally. We accept it on the basis of the
authority of the Bible. But all that is not irrational, and so it cannot be refuted rationally.
I could sum up all of this briefly by saying what Thomas was struggling to have a place for human
learning, rationality, and philosophy. He wanted a real place for all of that but also an essential and

dominant place for revelation and authority. It is philosophy and theology. When you think of Thomas’
teaching, you need to stress both. They are not to be separated since they speak of the same God. But
they are to be distinguished because they speak of that same God from different standpoints. They are to
support each other. They are compatible. They are both ultimately from God. I think I can sum this up
by quoting from Etienne Gilson, the famous Thomist philosopher who said, “In Thomas’ thought,
reason and revelation can neither contradict each other nor ignore each other nor be confused with each
other.” Not everybody would agree that Thomas was successful in this. But a Thomist like Gilson
praises Thomas for understanding the role of reason and the role of revelation.
I will come back to that point in a few minutes as we look at some Protestant critiques of Thomas, but
let us move on to a second principle or characteristic of Thomas’ methodology. The first principle is a
great emphasis on both theology and philosophy. Second, Thomas struggled with the problem of how
we can talk about God at all. How is it possible for us to use human language to say anything significant
or meaningful about God? Someone once said, “If human words are incapable of describing the aroma
of coffee, how can we explain anything really complicated?” It shows something of the problem that we
have with language. Philosophers and theologians are always struggling with this. Teachers struggle
with this, too. How can words communicate truly, particularly, when the subject is God? Thomas
developed and used what he called the principle of analogy. It is similar to John Calvin’s use of the
principle of accommodation. By “analogy,” Thomas meant that God can and does reveal Himself in
ways that we can understand by using analogous statements. These are statements that tell us something
about God, but statements that also have very definite limitations as to what they tell us about God. For
instance, God says that He is our father. That tells us something about God that is very important, but it
does not tell us everything about God. And there are some things about fathers that would not be true
about God. Saying that God is like a father communicates to us in some way, but at the same time it
does not completely tell us who God is. God reveals Himself in images and ideas that lie within our
world, and yet we must not reduce God to that world. The principle of analogy is always at work. This is
important because we can understand these things. It is also important because the way God puts it in
the Scripture is memorable. For instance, think of the expression, “The Lord is my Shepard.” That is an
analogy. Think of how much that communicates to us. We have to draw certain limits there, but it is so
memorable. If God had tried to describe Himself to us in more direct language, you can see how difficult
it would have been for us to grasp that language. It would not have been nearly so memorable. If God
had tried to speak to us in direct language it may have meant that the Bible would have read much more
like Thomas’ Summa.
A third methodological principle from Thomas is his love for and use for precise definitions. Thomas
loves to have headings and subheadings. He gives very clear, terse, precise definitions. You may have
noted that one of the brief sermons that I included in the syllabus, the one on the armor of God, is only a
page and-a-half. It has 3 main points and 15 subpoints! So you can imagine what Thomas would do with
4,000 pages in the Summa. He is concerned to speak very clearly, technically, and scientifically. There is
one rather amusing distinction that Thomas tries to make when he is deciding if there is a difference
between perfect obstinacy and ordinary obstinacy. He works on those two concepts with definitions. He
decides that perfect obstinacy is found only in hell. That is where a person is totally and perfectly
stubborn. But there is an obstinacy in this life as well on the part of those who become so stubborn
against grace that they have hardly the slightest impulse to repent and turn to the good. I do not know
that it is a particularly significant distinction, but you can see that Thomas is interested in definitions.
Thomas and the Summa is a perfect example for the scientific university theology that we have been
talking about. It is scholastic theology. As you read Thomas, you will get the impression that it is rather
impersonal and monotone. You will certainly think this as you compare Thomas to Luther and Calvin,
and even as you compare Thomas to Augustine earlier. It is scientific, it is academic, it is scholastic. It is

great theology, but not much comes through in terms of a warm, living, personal faith. Luther said that
“Experience alone makes one a theologian.” He perceived in Thomas’ theology the total absence of any
experiential dimension. So Luther felt that Thomas was powerless to speak to real spiritual needs. That
aspect of his theology is so totally missing; it is almost mathematical. It is dialectical and scientific in
the way that it is set forth. It is interesting that Luther, who could criticize Thomas’ theology this way,
knew that Thomas in his own life was a man who did experience the spiritual presence of God. Thomas
tried to live that out as best as he could.
Let us come to the next point: Thomas the Christian. Luther held up Thomas for his students as a model
of humility. Luther would often point out to his students that when Thomas Aquinas heard himself
praised as a great scholar or a great thinker or a great theologian, he would secretly make the sign of the
cross under his cowl in order to remind himself of the sin of pride. Luther also spoke of the fact that,
according to one of the stories that was circulated, God said to Thomas, “You have written well
concerning me, what will you now have as a reward?” Thomas is supposed to have replied, “Only
Yourself, Lord.” This story about Thomas Luther told at least five times in a couple of years. He told
about how the great Thomas Aquinas at the time of his death felt that he could not hold out against the
devil until he said, picking up his Bible and holding it, “I believe what is written in this book.” Whether
Thomas had a sola scriptura view or not, we could talk about in some detail. I doubt that he did, but at
least at this point, according to this story, which Luther loved, Thomas relied upon the Bible and the
Bible alone. For Luther, Thomas seems to have been an example of how a great person can be seriously
mistaken.
On December 6, 1272, after morning Mass, Thomas stopped writing the Summa. The Summa is really
not complete. He did not get through the third part; he stopped in the middle of his discussion of the
sacrament of penance. He was not yet 50 years old, yet he had written many, many books. But he told a
friend that he could not go on any longer, he could not complete this book. “Why?” said the friend,
“Why can you not write it? You must write it.” Thomas said, “I can do no more, for all I have written
seems to me like straw.” It seemed worthless. So he stopped. He only lived another four months, but he
did not write another word of theology. What happened? Historians and scholars of Thomas have
puzzled over this experience. Did he have a nervous breakdown that kept him from continuing because
of the vast demands that this effort had put upon his mind and his soul? Or was it, as some Catholics
maintain, an ecstatic experience in the Mass he had received? Did he have a divine vision in which he
had seen God in some way so that anything he would produce and write would seem inadequate and
meaningless? His Summa is certainly a tremendous piece of thought about God, but Thomas constantly
was aware of the limits of his understanding.
Let me finish this up with some evaluations of Thomas. First we will discuss some Catholic evaluations
before we talk about Protestant evaluations. Of course, Catholics are going to be very high on Thomas
Aquinas. We can expect that. In 1567, about 300 years after his death, Thomas was formerly elevated to
the status of Teacher of the Church. Not too many people have received that honor in the Catholic
Church. But 300 years after he died, Thomas was one of the Teachers of the Church. In the 20th century,
Thomas has become the Teacher of the Church. He is not one among several, but he is the preeminent
theologian of Catholicism, like John Calvin is the preeminent theologian of the Reformed faith. Let me
quote two modern Catholics on Thomas Aquinas. The first one is the short story writer and novelist
from Georgia, Flannery O’Conner. Flannery O’Conner wrote, “I could not make any judgment on the
Summa except to say this: I read it every night before I go to bed.” That says something about Flannery
O’Conner and her ability to grapple with theological issues. She said, “If my mother were to come in
during the process and say, ‘Turn off that light, it is late,’ I, with lifted finger and broad, bland, beatific
expression would reply: ‘on the contrary, I answer that the Light being eternal and limitless cannot be

turned off: shut your eyes!’” She learned to talk like that from reading Thomas. Flannery O’Conner said
she feels she can personally guarantee that Saint Thomas loved God because for the life of her she
cannot help loving Saint Thomas.
Another Catholic evaluation is from Peter Kreeft in The Summa of the Summa. He says, “Saint Thomas
Aquinas is certainly one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. To my mind he is the greatest for at
least eight reasons: truth, common sense, practicality, clarity, profundity, orthodoxy, medievalism, and
modernity.” If you want to understand all that, you can read The Summa of the Summa.
Now let me give a few comments on how the Protestants view Thomas Aquinas. We have already seen
that Luther admired the Christian but did not think much of the theologian. John Calvin amazingly was
able to pretty much ignore Thomas altogether, although some of Calvin’s followers began to study and
use Thomas. Somebody has called him peeping Thomas because it was not really acceptable for
Reformed theologians to be reading Thomas Aquinas, but they did it anyway. One of the most famous
evaluations of Thomas Aquinas came in recent years from Francis Schaeffer. If you have read much of
Francis Schaeffer, you will know that he does not agree much with Thomas Aquinas. In How Should We
Then Live, Schaeffer says, “Aquinas held that man had revolted against God and thus was fallen. But
Aquinas had an incomplete view of the Fall. He thought that the Fall did not affect man as a whole but
only in part. In his view the will was fallen or corrupted, but the intellect was affected. Thus people
could rely on their own human wisdom, and this meant that people were free to mix the teachings of the
Bible with the teachings of the non-Christian philosophers.” That is a pretty strong indictment against
Thomas. Schaeffer was saying that Thomas did not think that the will is affected so that reason can
operate. We can pull in truth from many sources and mix those statements of philosophy with the
teachings of the Bible. Schaeffer later said in How Should We Then Live, “Thomas’ view, the will was
fallen but the mind was not, eventually resulted in people believing they could think out the answers to
all the great questions beginning only from themselves.” This is an even stronger indictment on Thomas.
Schaeffer was saying that to follow Thomas will eventually lead to people being able to answer the
questions without the Bible, using only their unfallen reason. Is this what Thomas really did? Did he
fragment reality the way Schaeffer said that he did? He certainly had an upper story and a lower story.
But did this result in Thomas mixing Christian and pagan ideas? There was a cartoon that appeared in
Christianity Today sometime ago with Francis Schaeffer reaching heaven and Saint Peter there at the
gate. “Oh, yes, Schaeffer, Dr. Francis, I believe Thomas Aquinas would like to have a word with you!” I
am going to leave it up to Schaeffer and Aquinas in heaven to work all that out. But be aware of
Schaeffer’s critique and of some others who feel that Schaeffer has not properly understood Thomas
Aquinas.
Other conservative Protestants, Presbyterians even, view Thomas Aquinas as a hero. If Thomas Aquinas
was the problem to Francis Schaeffer, he was a hero to John Gerstner and to R. C. Sproul. You can often
hear R. C. Sproul say that Thomas was a great theologian. I think he even says he is his favorite
theologian. John Gerstner wrote an article for Table Talk; it came out in 1994 before Dr. Gersner died,
and the title of the article was “Aquinas was a Protestant.” That struck a lot of people as a surprising sort
of thing for John Gerstner to be saying. This is what he said, “Thomas taught the biblical doctrine of
justification so that if the Roman church has followed Aquinas, the Reformation would not have been
absolutely necessary.” Others disagreed rather vehemently with that assessment of Thomas Aquinas,
particularly Robert Raymond. He answered Gersner in an article that he wrote in the Westminster
Theological Journal entitled “Dr. John H. Gersner on Thomas Aquinas as a Protestant.” Raymond tried
to prove that Thomas was a long way from being a Protestant in his view of justification by faith.

What is my experience with Thomas? I am constantly surprised when I read Thomas on election and
grace, that he is so good. He teaches election, he says some wonderful things about grace. And on many
other things, Thomas is so good. But I am almost always disappointed in the end. Thomas may reduce
the human part in salvation to 1% and attribute 99% to God, but in the end it is still percentage theology.
And it will take Luther and Calvin and the Reformers to get rid of that remaining 1%. Salvation is
indeed a free gift of God; it is all of God. Thomas was a great mind, and he was a great heart. I would
like to close this lesson with another prayer from Thomas Aquinas.
“Give me, oh Lord, a steadfast heart which no unworthy affection may drag downwards. Give me an
unconquered heart which no tribulation can wear out. Give me an upright heart which no unworthy
purpose may tempt aside. Amen.”

Sacramental System
We know by now that there were many errors that developed in the medieval church. We are going to
see some of those errors in this lesson. They were errors in doctrine and errors in life. But there was true
faith there also. That true faith emerges from time to time, particularly in prayers. The prayer that I am
going to use to begin this lesson comes from the 11th century, and it is a prayer that we can pray in
confidence that this is properly asking for God’s blessing and help. Let us pray.
“Save me, Lord, King of eternal glory, You who have power to save us all. Grant that I may long for, do,
and perfect those things which are pleasing to You and profitable for me. Lord, give me counsel in my
anxiety, help in time of trial, solace when persecuted, and strength against every temptation. Grant me
pardon, Lord, for my past wrongdoing and afflictions, correction of my present ones, and ordain also to
protect me against those in the future. Amen.”
The main question of the medieval world was the old question of the Philippian jailor: what must I do to
be saved? There was no question that was more urgent, more pressing upon medieval people than that
question. Their deepest concerns were expressed when they asked that question and tried to discover the
answer to it. What I would like to do in this lesson is to imagine a dialogue between a sincere layperson,
a man or a woman in the medieval world, in Europe, and a priest or a spiritual advisor. This person is
asking his or her priest for help to try and understand how to be saved. This person would say, “Tell me
how I can be saved from my sins.” The priest has a ready answer, “The church has the answer. Do not
worry.” Facere quod in ce est is the answer. It is Latin for “do what lies in you.” Or you could say do
your very best. That is what the church is telling you: do your very best, and God will not deny His
grace to those who do their best. In plain language it means that God will help those who help
themselves. “What do I do to help myself? Please be specific about this because I am really concerned to
get the right answer and to know how to be saved from my sins and to go to heaven.” The priest says,
“The answer is easy. There is a system in place. It is called the sacramental system. The church offers
these sacraments to you, and as you make good use of them you will work your way to heaven
eventually.” “What are the sacraments, what are we talking about when you say there are sacraments
available for me?” The priest says, “The sacraments are religious activities that the church has approved
of. These activities are things that you do, and as you do these God’s grace is conferred upon you.”
How many sacraments are there? There used to be a lot of sacraments; Saint Francis talked about 30 or
40. But the great Peter Lombard was able to reduce that list to seven. So the church now views the
sacraments as seven. You know them. They are baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance, extreme
unction, marriage, and ordination. Those are the seven means of grace that the church uses to confer
God’s grace upon you so that you can go to heaven. Of course, most people are going to experience only
five, or, at the most, six of those sacraments. The church views marriage as a sacrament, but not
everybody is going to be married. Ordination is also a sacrament, but a priest does not marry. So you
cannot have all seven sacraments, but can have at least six of them. You can have five sacraments,
whether you are ordained or married or not. As you use these five or six helps, this is going to be the
road to heaven for you.
“What do I do first, then? I certainly want to go to heaven. Tell me how to get started on this road.” The
priest says, “The first sacrament is not something that you do. It is something that is done for you
because the first sacrament is baptism. You were baptized as an infant. Baptism is very important
because it is necessary to remove original sin. You were born in this world in a state of sin, and baptism
is the sacrament that removes sin. It makes it possible for you to eventually go to heaven if you do some

other things along the way. By the way, the church considers this sacrament so important that it allows
anybody to baptize in an emergency. You know, in our world, many babies die at birth. And it is so
important for those babies to be baptized because without baptism there is no hope of heaven. Therefore
the church says that it is not necessary for a priest to be there to baptize a dying baby. Anyone can do it;
even a midwife can do it. The midwife should have clean water available so that if the baby appears to
be dying she can actually do the baptism. Normally it is the father and the godparents who will bring the
baby to the church when the baby is about six weeks old. The mother does not come because the mother
does not attend public worship for a number of weeks until a time has passed. Then the mother comes
for a service that is called ‘churching.’ It is a service of purification. The baptism needs to happen at
least by the time the baby is six weeks old, preferably even earlier. That way the baby can be baptized as
early as possible. That baptism that you received as a baby put on you an indelible stamp. You are
stamped with that baptism. It is never to be repeated.” “Does it mean that I am going to heaven? Does it
mean that I am guaranteed heaven?” “Not exactly, but without it you would never make it to heaven.
With it, you have got a good chance. So thank God for your baptism; you have made a start on the way
to heaven.”
“What comes next?” “The next sacrament is confirmation.” “What is that?” “Confirmation is a
sacrament in which the child confirms the vows that were made for the child at baptism. When you were
baptized as an infant some vows were taken. You did not know anything about those because you could
not understand them. You were just an infant. But as you grow up you begin to understand something of
what was involved in your baptism. So there is a time of confirmation in which you are brought into the
church, asked some questions, and you take the vows yourself. Now it is you on your own embracing
those vows that were made by your father and your godparents.” “When should I do this?” “You do it
when you are about 3 years old, 6 years old, 9 years old, or maybe even later. But you will probably
never go through confirmation. There is a problem here. This is because the Catholic Church teaches
that only the bishop can confirm. And the bishop does not come to this little town very often, so most
people are never confirmed. It is a sacrament of the church, but it is not very frequently practiced in our
time. But do not worry. There are some other sacraments.”
“There is the Eucharist. That is the Lord’s Supper or Communion.” “How does that help me?” The
priest says, “As food that you eat strengthens you and enables you to grow physically, so the food that
you eat in the Eucharist, the sacramental food of the bread and the wine, strengthens you spiritually.”
“How often should I do this?” “The Fourth Lateran Council that met in 1215 said you had to do it once a
year. Every Catholic, every believer, should partake of the Eucharist once a year.” “That sounds rather
strange because if it is food, why do I eat it only once a year? I would not do very well if I ate physical
food just once a year. I need food more often than that.” “Let us not get into that. I am not quite sure
how to answer that, in fact. The church says once a year, so once a year it is.” This sincere layperson
said, “But there is something else that bothers me about the Eucharist. That is, why the bread only?
When people receive the Lord’s Supper, they never receive the wine. They just receive the bread. It is
the priest alone who drinks the wine. The people get the bread only.” “You have touched on something
very important here. You realize that when the bread and the wine are consecrated, those elements
actually become the body and blood of Christ. They still look like bread and wine, but they are not really
bread and wine any longer. That is now the body and blood of Christ. It is an awesome thing that has
taken place. You can see why the church does not want to pass the cup among laypeople. This is
because some of you are rather clumsy and careless. It is possible to drop it or to spill some of it. What
you have done then is spill the blood of Christ. That would be an awful thing if that would happen. So
you are given the bread. Sometimes it is just put on your tongue. That way you cannot lose even a fleck
of it because that is the body of Christ. Do not worry about that either, though. The church has a doctrine
called con cobatens, which means that if you receive either one of the consecrated elements you receive

them both. If you receive the consecrated bread, in effect, you are receiving both bread and wine.
Actually it is enough just to watch all of this taking place. You do not really have to receive the bread or
the wine. The church says once a year you should, but it is just enough to see it happen. It is enough to
observe the consecrated host, the Lord lifted up. Years ago when the priest would say the words that
would make the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ, some laypeople would shout out
for him to hold it up high so they could see it. That has become part of the Mass now, the priest will
elevate the host and hold it up high. You can see it. You can see the real body of Christ there. That is
really all that you need to do.” “It does seem strange to think that one could receive any good from just
seeing food and not eating it, but I will take your word for it.”
These two friends probably have to take a little break from this intensive theological conversation and
have a glass of wine or something at a local tavern. But they later continue discussing these things.
The layperson says, “Tell me, what else is there? We have talked about baptism and the Eucharist as
well as confirmation. But there are other sacraments.” “Yes, there are other sacraments. Let us talk now
about penance.” “Why do I need penance?” “You need penance because of your sin.” “But I thought my
baptism took care of my sin.” “It did; it took care of your original sin and any sin that you had
committed up to the point that you were baptized. But that is not the end of sinning. Actually baptism
wipes away all those sins before the sacrament, and it does give you some strength to resist future sins.
But it does not guarantee that you will not sin again. You have sinned many times since your baptism.
Think of your Christian life like this. Think of it as a very dangerous journey on a ship. As soon as you
get on that ship, it has a shipwreck. You are thrown into the water, and you are in danger of drowning.
That is a picture of how you come into this world as a sinner. You are tossed into this icy, stormy ocean.
But there is a plank—baptism—that you can hold on to, and you can be saved from drowning. But the
storm is pretty fierce, and the chances are that you are going to fall off of that plank at some time. You
need a second plank, as we call it. That is penance. It is a way to get back on when you fall off.” “How
does penance work?” “There are a number of parts to it. First, you have to feel sorry for your sin. That is
called contrition. You cannot just pretend to be sorry. You really have to feel sorry for your sin and
experience contrition. Then you must go and confess to a priest, telling him what you have done. He will
pronounce absolution or forgiveness on you. You will be forgiven until the next time you sin, then you
will have to do it all over again. But that is not quite the whole story. Even though the priest pronounces
absolution on you, which gives you God’s forgiveness, because of your sin you have earned certain
temporal punishments. You have to make satisfaction for those. You have to do some things that the
priest will tell you to do. As he tells you what to do, then you can make satisfaction, you can make up
for those sins. You can remove the threat of punishment, or at least reduce it.”
Then the layperson responds, saying, “I suppose I can understand that. But it is a little hard to put
together the idea that God forgives my sins, and yet I have got to do something to make up for those
sins. I accept what the church says, so I will do it. What are some of the things that I will be required to
do to make satisfaction?” The priest says, “There are a number of things. First you might be required to
say some prayers, like the Lord’s Prayer, many times. There are other prayers, too. Those are good
things to do, and this will help to balance your account. Or the priest may say that you should fast for a
certain number of days. Probably he will say it is necessary for you to give some alms (money) to the
church or to the poor. He might possibly say that you should go on a pilgrimage.” “That last one sounds
sort of interesting. I always like to travel, so where should I go? What is a pilgrimage?” “Pilgrimages are
available to many places. You have to go to a sacred place, to a shrine, to some place where there is the
name of a saint, the Virgin Mary, or even Christ Himself connected in some way. The church believes
that God answers prayer everywhere, and the saints help us with our prayers. The saints can answer
prayer, too, wherever you are. But the prayers of the saints are more effective at their shrines. So if you

want to get greater credit for what you are doing and a better chance of getting your prayers answered, it
is necessary to go to the very place where these saints are remembered. The most important places to go
are Jerusalem and Rome. You might not want to go to Jerusalem right now because the Crusades are
going on, and you know all about those. It is pretty risky. But you might want to go because if you go to
Jerusalem, especially with the Crusades going on, you have a chance of getting a lot of blessing and a lot
of credit. At least go to Rome. If you cannot go to Rome, there are hundreds and hundreds of shrines
much closer where you can go. By visiting one of these places, two ideas are brought together. One is
the need for penance for sins, and pilgrimages are penitential acts. They require sacrifice of time and
money. So these are acts of penance. But the other good thing about going on a pilgrimage is that you
come in contact with the relics of the saints. People want to pray right at the place where the bones of
that saint are placed in often a very beautiful and great container. They are made of gold and precious
jewels. Sometimes not all the bones of a saint are there, but only one bone is there. After all, everybody
wanted relics, and there were not enough skeletons to go around. So these bones were reverently taken
apart. One bone would be given to one church, and one bone would be given to another church. Some
rather frivolous people have said that as a result there are 13 heads of John the Baptist in different
churches in Europe. But do not pay any attention to them. It does not take the entire skeleton of the
saint. Just one bone will do to make that a holy place. Even something that is associated with that saint
can make it a holy place, like a garment, a piece of the cross that that saint was crucified on, or part of
the sword that was used to execute that saint.” The sincere seeker says, “This is all getting pretty
complicated and very difficult it seems. Is there not an easier way to get to heaven than to do all of
this?” The priest says, “God has not promised to make salvation easy, my friend. The church is doing all
it can to make it attainable. But you still must do your part.”
The priest continues, “Have you heard of indulgences?” “Yes, I have heard of indulgences. Everybody is
talking about indulgences, but I am still not quite sure what they are talking about. Tell me about the
indulgences.” The priest says, “For about 100 years now the church has taught the doctrine of the
treasury of merit. Have you heard of that?” “Yes. The treasury of merit.” “In this life, most people do
not do enough good works for themselves. Their bad works are greater than their good works, so their
spiritual account is always in the arrears. But there are some people in this life who not only do enough
good works for themselves, but they do some extra good works.” “That is pretty impressive—extra good
works. Who are those people?” “They are the saints, whose relics you observe in various places. They
have done extra good works. Especially Mary, think of all the good works of the Virgin Mary. They are
far more than are required for her own salvation. Think of the good works of Christ Himself. This
produces a huge treasury in heaven. Thanks be to God this heavenly treasury is available to the pope. He
can draw on this heavenly bank account. He can take some of those excess good works. Do not worry,
there is so much in that heavenly bank account that it will never be exhausted. He can take some of
those good works, and he can use them for people like you who do not have enough good works.” “That
is good news, indeed, that the pope is willing to do that for me. When is he going to do it?” “He will not
do it unless you buy an indulgence. You have to get an indulgence; you buy an indulgence. When you
buy this, this will enable the pope to pray that God will give you some of the extra good works of Christ
and Mary and the saints. Do not think you are buying forgiveness because you are not. You are really
giving alms. Most people I know think that this is buying forgiveness. That is all right if they want to
think that. But technically you are giving alms. You are doing the good work of alms-giving when you
buy an indulgence.” “That is very interesting. Where does all this money go?” “It goes mainly to Rome.
It goes to the pope.” “What does he do with it?” “He builds big churches, and he gets a great artist to
decorate those churches. It is expensive to run a church, and we have to get money somehow. This is a
good way to bring in money. But do not worry about where the money goes. What you have to worry
about is where you are going. We are trying to get you to heaven, so you leave it up to the church as to
what it is going to do with all the money it gets. You worry about your own soul’s salvation.”

The sincere layperson says, “That is what I am worried about; that is why I am talking to you. I am
trying to get some help on this question. I am still confused, though. How much credit do I really need?
How can I know when I have done enough, when I have done enough good works, when I have
confessed enough, when I have bought enough indulgences? How can I know that?” “That is not easy to
say. It is very complicated. Theologians have worked on this, but you probably would not understand. In
fact, I do not really understand myself much of what they have said. Let us just say this: the more the
better. It is, of course, better to be safe than sorry. By the way, we have touched on this, but you have a
lot of help along the way. Do not ignore it. Think of all the saints. The saints want you to get to heaven
and so does Mary. There are hundreds of saints. We have 55 special saints’ days in our calendar. We
have an All Saints Day on October 31st. Those are important days for you to pray to the saints. There is
a saint for almost every problem. There is even Saint Jude, who is the saint of last resort. If you do not
know who else to pray to, and you are at the end of your rope, pray to Saint Jude. Saint Jude is used to
hearing prayers from people at the end of their ropes. He knows how to help. Do not forget Mary, too,
because Mary is kind and compassionate. She will take your prayers directly to God. She is always
ready to help you.”
“Have we finished yet? We have talked a lot about these things. Is there anything else I need to do?”
“No, not really. There is one more sacrament, but it is not something you can do. It is extreme unction. It
is your last rights. It will be done for you, just like baptism, when you are dying. Hopefully a priest will
be there. He will anoint you with oil and pray for you. It is the one last thing that can be done for your
soul.” “Then what happens?” “Purgatory takes place.” “Purgatory? You mean after all this I am going to
end up in purgatory?” “Yes, I am afraid so. Heaven is only for those who have made full and faithful use
of the church’s sacramental graces. Have you done that?” “No, I guess not.” “The wicked and the
excommunicated go directly to hell. Most of the rest, most of the baptized, go to purgatory. They will
eventually be cleansed of their remaining sins and then enter heaven. But there is some recent good
news on this front. The popes have decided that the indulgences assist people not only in this life. In
other words, you can buy an indulgence for yourself, and that removes some of your sins. But the popes
have said now, quite recently, that you can also buy an indulgence for someone who is dead and in
purgatory. Is that not good news? Rich people have, for a long time, endowed continual masses for their
souls. Their mass is going on all the time. These are private masses for the souls of people. Money was
left to a monastery. That monastery takes that money and provides these masses. The mass is the most
powerful form of prayer. That helps those rich people who are in purgatory. But most people, people
like you, cannot afford that. This is really good news that after you are dead a friend or a relative can
buy an indulgence. Some are cheap, some are not so cheap. Even the cheap ones help some. They can
buy this indulgence, and that will reduce your time in purgatory.”
Let us imagine that our sincere inquirer has one more question. He asks, “Where is God’s grace in all of
this? I do not know much about the Bible because I do not have one. I do not hear it read very much, but
I have heard something about the Bible. I do not know much about Saint Augustine, but I have heard
something about him. Like the apostle Paul, he talks about God’s grace.” “You are getting into some
tough theological questions here. Let me try to help you. Maybe if I would draw a little diagram for you,
you could understand this. Actually there are two views on this matter of how God’s grace fits in with
our works. Different theologians have presented this differently. You have heard of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, right? Let me show you how Thomas viewed this. Thomas thought that this whole matter, this
process of salvation, begins with grace. We cannot do what is within us until God energizes us by His
grace. So God comes first in grace and gives us enough grace to enable us to add to that grace the merit
of good works. Consequently God’s grace plus our works will bring us to salvation. That is one way to
see it. You probably know that some of the theologians around now, like William Avacome, Duns

Scotus, and Gabriel Biel are viewing things a little bit differently. They say that we cannot think that we
start with God’s grace and do what is within us in a state of grace. We cannot add merit or works to
grace to earn salvation. Instead they say we do what is within us in our own natural ability. They say we
start with works, and we do what we can. Then God adds His grace. Either way, it is both grace and
works. Whether we start with grace, as Thomas said, and add works, or whether we start with works, as
the nominalists say, and add grace, it pretty much comes out to the same thing. You are going to be
saved by God’s grace. None of this is possible without God’s grace, but you are going to be saved by
adding to God’s grace. You add those good works that the church has told you about and that you can do
as you seek to do what lies in you.”
“I have one last question. Does everybody see it this way? Are there any other people who see it another
way?” “Yes, there are some who see it another way, but they are heretics. There are some Waldensians
around. They do not quite agree with the church on this matter. Then there is that heretic John Wycliffe
in England. His bones have been dug up and burned because of the church’s horror at his teaching. His
disciple, John Hus of Bohemia, was burned alive at the Counsel of Constance in 1415, just a few years
ago. So, you are going to be better off if you avoid all of that and stick with what is clear and what is
sure.”
Though most people in the Middle Ages tried to earn God’s forgiveness by good works, some others, in
addition to these so-called heretics, saw that this was not the message of salvation as given in the Bible.
One Carthusian monk wrote, “Salvation cannot be had by one’s own natural powers but is by the free
gift of God.” Of course before too much longer, Luther would be saying that, Calvin, would be saying
that, and the Reformers would be saying that. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our
God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
Let us talk about marriage and ordination. These were viewed as sacraments, which meant that grace
flowed through them. The view was that marriage was an enablement toward heaven. Ordination was
also viewed this way. With the church’s conception of the sacrament as anything through which God
confers grace, the traditional number was set at seven by Peter Lombard. In a way, though, there is no
way to limit it to seven. Saint Francis said there could be 30 or 40 sacraments. There are actually many
more ways than that which could be avenues through which God confers grace. The Protestants, of
course, say that the sacraments have to be defined differently. They have to be established in the Bible
as sacraments. They cannot be just anything that we might think God would use to confer grace. But the
church’s view was that marriage did help toward heaven. It did not mean that the person who was not
married was losing out, because grace could be had in other ways too. But marriage and ordination were
sacraments that conferred grace.
When I did this imaginary conversation today, I was really trying to keep myself within the medieval
world of Catholicism. Perhaps others of you could answer whether or not this sounds like modern
Catholicism. Some would say that it does sound the same in many ways. I was just recently looking at
some little cards that I have in my folder on indulgences. You would think that the indulgence would
have long since disappeared. It is more controlled now and limited than it used to be. Somebody gave
me a card in this class a few years ago of a prayer for President John F. Kennedy. You pray for the soul
of President Kennedy. I read that prayer this morning. I do not think I prayed for his soul, but I read the
prayer. It says at the bottom of the card that if you do that every day for a month, you get 500 days’
indulgence. Whether modern-day Catholics do much of this or not, I do not know. But it is still there.

Church & State
The prayer comes from Stephen Langton. Stephen Langton was an Englishman who served as
archbishop of Canterbury. Before he was appointed archbishop of Canterbury, he spent about 20 years
in Paris as a student and as a teacher. He was a first-class scholar. Although hardly anybody knows this
about Stephen Langton, I expect that he is most famous and most remembered because he is the man
who divided the Bible into chapters. Until Stephen Langton, whole books of the Bible would be copied
without any chapter divisions. The chapter divisions of Stephen Langton were taken over when printing
began. Thus, every copy of the Bible has become a memorial to this archbishop of Canterbury. He also
wrote some commentaries on the Bible. And he wrote a poem directed to the Holy Spirit called “The
Golden Sequence.” The prayer that I want to use now is a wonderful prayer that emphasizes God’s
grace. It comes from Stephen Langton and “The Golden Sequence.” Let us pray.
“Our strength renew, / On our dryness pour Thy dew / Wash the stains of guilt away, / bend the
stubborn heart and will / Melt the frozen, warm the chill / Guide the steps that go astray. Amen.”
There was no issue in the Middle Ages more vexing to people than the issue of authority. Where does
ultimate authority and power reside? Does it reside in the church or does it reside in the state? Does it
reside in Paris or does it reside in Rome, to put it another way? That struggle between the church and the
state goes all the way back to the time of Constantine. In the Middle Ages it has some very dramatic
episodes. I am not going to try to talk theoretically about all of this history, the church-state struggle, as
to who is going to be superior. Instead I would like to illustrate it in describing the struggle between
Thomas Becket and Henry II. There were two views that were common in the Middle Ages. One view,
which the pope would advocate, is that God is above all things, but under God there is the pope. Under
the pope is the king, and under the king and the pope are the people. So the pope has authority not only
in the church, but in the state as well. Not everybody agreed with that, namely the kings. Another way of
thinking about ultimate authority is that there is God, and under God there is the king. Under the king
are the pope and the church. Under both the king and the pope are the people. So that sets up the conflict
between church and state. Of course in the Middle Ages there is no division of church and state like we
have today. The question of who was going to have the last say about something was always there. At
times it really did not matter. But when the policy of the king conflicted with the will of the pope, there
was a showdown and a conflict. This resulted in much struggle and unhappiness in the whole period of
the Middle Ages.
Let us illustrate that struggle from this episode in English history: Thomas Becket, the archbishop of
Canterbury, and Henry II, the king of England. For this we go back to the 12th century. You can see the
dates of Becket: 1120-1170. Thomas Becket at first was the chancellor, the king’s right-hand man. He
was a very good chancellor. King Henry and Chancellor Becket were good friends. They liked each
other, and they trusted each other. Becket did everything he could to serve his king. For eight brilliant
years he was the chancellor under Henry II. He was a polished gentleman, not particularly noted for his
piety. He was not very worldly either, though. He was able to lead a decent life despite his high office in
the kingdom. But in those days there was another important office. It was even more important than
chancellor. This more important office was archbishop of Canterbury. It was the most important church
office in England. When that office became vacant, the king decided to appoint his trusted friend and
chancellor, Thomas Becket, to that post.
The problem was that Becket was not even a priest. He had not been ordained as a priest. He had not
been interested in a clerical life. He was quite happy serving in the state. But Henry was so concerned to

get his man in that position that he appointed Becket. That happened from time to time in the Middle
Ages. It is called lay investiture. Rather than the church, namely the pope, appointing someone like the
archbishop, the king would. The king was a layman. He made the appointment here despite the fact that
the church claimed that only the church could appoint an archbishop. But the king did it anyway. This
created a problem. Lay investiture had been a practice in England for a long time. The strong kings in
England and France and elsewhere would try to get their own people into these high clerical offices. If
they were really going to control the kingdom, they had to control these offices. Issues would arise that
made the king want this control. For example, when the king wanted to raise taxes, he would levy taxes
to raise money. Sometimes he would tax the clergy. The pope said you cannot tax the clergy. Only the
church can tax the clergy. So there would be a conflict between the king and the pope over an issue like
this. The king wanted to have a sympathizer in an office like the archbishop of Canterbury in order to be
able to further his program in England. So he appointed Thomas Becket, thinking that Thomas would
serve him as archbishop just as he had served him as chancellor.
Something happened when Thomas became archbishop. He took it seriously as a church office and not
an office of the state. In fact, Thomas went to Rome and resigned as archbishop of Canterbury so that he
could receive that office back from the pope’s hands. His hands were holier than the king’s hands. You
can see now the scene is set for a clash between these two friends. Thomas appeared to be a man who
would do the king’s bidding in the highest clerical office in England. It turns out that he was not the
king’s man but the pope’s man. We do not know why Thomas Becket made that dramatic and sudden
change. King Henry could never figure it out either. He felt that Thomas had let him out. He kept hoping
that Thomas would come to his senses and come back to his side. But Thomas Becket never did. The
scene was set for a clash between the archbishop and the king. It was a clash set between the hammer
and the anvil. That is the title I used for this lesson. It comes from the play by T. S. Elliot called “Murder
in the Cathedral.” It is the story of Henry II and Thomas Becket. One writer on English church history
said, “Becket was determined to be as magnificently the hero archbishop as he had been the hero
chancellor.” Maybe that explains it, maybe not. The only thing we know for sure is that for eight years
Thomas Becket was a hero chancellor. And for eight years he was a hero archbishop. When he was
chancellor, he did everything he could to promote the cause of Henry. When he was archbishop, he did
everything he could to oppose the policies of Henry that he felt conflicted with the interests of the
church. The result you know perhaps from reading Gonzales or because it is a famous moment in
history. In the year 1170 Thomas Becket was murdered in the Canterbury Cathedral. He had been in
France for some time. He left England in order to escape the wrath of the king. He then felt at last he
should return to England to fill the office that he served as archbishop. He was murdered in the cathedral
by four zealous knights of Henry II. They had overheard Henry say, “I wish somebody would get rid of
that troublesome priest.” Henry probably did not mean it exactly like that—he did not think anybody
would take him literally. He should have known better, though, because he was king. The four knights
rode to Canterbury and confronted Thomas Becket right in the cathedral.
T. S. Elliot wrote the play “Murder in the Cathedral.” It was first performed in Canterbury Cathedral in
1935. I saw it performed in 1988. I would recommend that you read “Murder in the Cathedral”
sometime. When Thomas goes to the cathedral and the priests are there, they know the enemies are
coming. The priests and Thomas go into the interior of the cathedral. The priests say, in the words of
Elliot in the play, “Bar the door, bar the door. The door is barred. We are safe, we are safe. They dare
not break in, they cannot break in. They have not the force. We are safe, we are safe.” Something like
this did seem to happen. It is not the same cathedral that is there now at Canterbury, but the priests
locked the doors of that great church. They felt they could resist. Elliot then has Thomas say some
magnificent words that have more meaning than just for that moment in history in 1170. He says,
“Unbar the doors. Throw open the doors. I will not have the house of prayer, the church of Christ, a

sanctuary turned into a fortress. The church shall protect her own in her own way. Not as oak and stone,
stone and oak decay. Give no stay, but the church shall endure. The church shall be open, even to our
enemies. Open the door.” That was a great speech. The door was opened and the result was that the four
knights came in and, near the altar, killed Thomas Becket.
We have the chancellor, the archbishop, and now the saint. It was not long, just three years after he was
killed, that he was canonized. He became Saint Thomas Becket. The king himself did penance three
days after he heard of the death of his former friend. Henry stayed in his room, fasting and weeping. It is
hard to know what was going on in Henry’s heart. Is there genuine repentance here? Or is there
frustration? Exactly what happened? Eventually Henry went to Canterbury and stood before the shrine
of Thomas Becket and did public penance. Henry may genuinely have repented, but think of what
happened here. This is conflict between the church and the state. The church has some very strong
weapons. The king can kill the archbishop if he wants to. But the church can retaliate, and Henry knew
that the church could retaliate. One way the church could retaliate was by excommunication. Henry
could be excommunicated, which meant that he would be cut off from the sacraments of the church. We
saw in the last lecture how important the sacraments were for medieval Roman Catholics.
There was another method that the church had that was even more powerful. It was the interdict. The
pope could not only excommunicate the king, but he could also place the whole kingdom under and
interdict. This meant that no services could be held, none of the sacraments could be performed, and
nothing could take place in the churches. The sacramental system would be stopped, and the whole
kingdom would be shut off from the means of salvation for as long as it took. When the people really
believed that that was happening, the king would not dare risk an interdict because it would create a
popular revolution. It would make for great trouble in the kingdom. The interdict was used frequently in
the Middle Ages. Not only popes for nations and bishops for smaller areas used it, but there were even
frivolous uses of the interdict. For instance, a bishop imposed an interdict on the people of a certain area
in the Holy Roman Empire because they would not permit a monastery to have the exclusive right to
make and sell beer in that area. People did not like the monastery’s product and wanted to make their
own. The bishop then pronounced an interdict upon the people of that town. It was a powerful weapon,
even if it was frivolously used. If you believe that salvation comes from the exercise of the sacraments,
and those sacraments are cut off, then salvation is cut off. So King Henry may have been genuinely
repentant, but he was also fearful, I am sure, of the reprisals of the pope.
Thomas immediately became a hero. He was a martyr, hero, and saint. He was canonized in 1173. He
became a popular figure in the religious piety of the people of England. We were talking in the last
lesson about the importance of pilgrimages. In England after 1173 the place to go was Canterbury. There
was the pilgrim’s way through the south of England. Occasionally people still use the pilgrim’s way to
go to Canterbury. Pilgrims went to Canterbury in order to visit the shrine and tomb of Thomas Becket.
Chaucer’s Canterbury tales is the story of a group of pilgrims on the pilgrim’s way going to Canterbury.
They spend the time entertaining themselves by telling different stories as they go.
I think there are two reasons why Thomas Becket became such a Christian hero to the English people.
First, he did not resist. He was not a saint before he died in one sense of the word. He could be a very
sharp-tongued person. He had his animosities and his bitterness. But at the last moment he did not resist.
He opened the door. Christ’s church should be opened, even to its enemies. People remembered that.
Second, when he died it was discovered that under his robe he wore a hair shirt. That was a particular
kind of garment that some particularly pious people would wear in the Middle Ages. It made them
become more uncomfortable. Apparently it was a very uncomfortable thing. It scratched; it was not
something you would want to wear next to your skin. In order to afflict the flesh and suffer somewhat,

some people wore hair shirts. When it was discovered that the archbishop of Canterbury did that, it was
viewed that he was a particularly holy man. Stephen Langton, whose prayer we used to begin the lesson,
became a later archbishop. He promoted the jubilee of Becket’s death so that the shrine of Thomas
Becket became very central in the piety of the people of England. That is a famous story. It illustrates
the point of this lesson. Will the king dominate the church, or can the church dominate the king?
Let us move on to 1294. Thomas Becket died in 1170. In 1294, an 80-year-old man became pope. He
took the name Boniface VIII. He reigned until 1303. Someone has written of him, “He came in like a
fox, he reigned like a king, and he died like a dog.” Perhaps this is not a very complimentary or kind
sentence to utter about Boniface VIII, but it does touch on some elements of his life. Boniface had his
battle too, not with the king of England but with the king of France. Boniface struggled with Philip IV of
France. It was over some of the same issues that we talked about earlier in England: taxation of the
clergy, appointment of people to clerical offices, and a papal bull called unum sanctum ecclesiam: One
Holy Church. It is a classical formulation of the papal claim to supremacy of the preceding centuries as
well as of the following centuries. It sums up the view that under God is the pope, then the king, and
then the people. It is sometimes described as the two swords. Boniface and popes before and after him
would talk about the two swords. The church has one sword and the state had one sword. But the church
had the superior sword. The sword of the church was superior to the sword of the state. The bull, One
Holy Church, says, “Since spiritual power exceeds the temporal in honor it may be used against the
temporal and it must be used if the temporal is in error.” If there is an error in the state, if the king does
something wrong, then spiritual power is above temporal power. It must correct the temporal power. If
the spiritual power errs, he or it will be judged by the supreme power, who is the pope. If there is a
mistake, an error, on the spiritual side at some lower level, the pope judges that. If the supreme power
errs, that is the pope, he can only be judged by God. He is responsible to no one but God as illustrated in
the chart. All of that was not new, but Boniface stated it with great force. Then he added something that
was new. He said salvation requires subjection to the papacy. The church had said for a long time that
there could be no salvation outside the church. Now this pope was saying there could be no salvation
without subjection to the papacy. It sounds strong, and it was strong. It was a bit hollow, though.
By the time Boniface wrote these famous words the pope was not in much of a position to enforce them.
A new phenomenon had arisen in Europe. We have not talked about this yet but eventually we will. We
could describe it as nationalism. People were beginning to think of themselves as English, French, and
Spanish. They were no longer just part of the church. Nationalism was going to favor the king and not
the pope. Boniface VIII tried to suppress Philip IV of France by this bull and by threats of
excommunication and the interdict. But with nationalism on the rise those threats were not as strong as
they had been in the past. Phillip simply responded by encouraging Italian and French nobility to raise
an army. He said they should go down to Rome and deal with the pope. The pope was attacked by this
coalition. He was made a prisoner and quite soon died in humiliation.
Then began a long line of popes, seven of them, who did not live in Rome. Instead they lived in France.
France took over the papacy and moved the location of the head of the church from Rome, where it had
been for centuries. It was moved to southern France, to Avignon. This is called the Babylonian captivity
of the church. Seven popes lived in Avignon for about 70 years. That is why it is called the Babylonian
captivity of the church: for about 70 years the papacy was “captured” by the French kings. There were
seven popes and French colleges of cardinals. The papacy became French at this point. It centered in
unmistakable extravagance in Avignon until finally Gregory XI, the last of the Avignon popes,
reluctantly returned the papacy to Rome. He then promptly died. This created an even bigger problem.
Gregory XI went back to Rome and died. The College of Cardinals met, and under pressure from the
Roman people who wanted a pope in Rome again, they elected an Italian to serve as pope. But as soon

as most of these cardinals got out of town, they were sorry about what they did. They annulled that
election, and they elected someone else as pope. But that meant that there were two popes. The pope in
Rome stayed in Rome, the other pope went back to Avignon. Now there were two popes. We call this
the Great Schism in the history of the church from 1378-1417.
With all these problems, and these are huge problems, the people were beginning to think that the
church was not organized correctly. Something was wrong. One of the people who came up with a new
idea as to how church and state should be organized is the famous poet of Florence, Dante. He wrote not
only The Divine Comedy, but also On Monarchy. In it he set forth ideas that we could diagram this way:
neither the pope nor the king is head of the other. Both are responsible to God. Under God is the pope,
who is over the people as far as the church is concerned. Under God there is also the king, who is over
the people as far as the state is concerned. That is a much more modern view. Dante felt that it was
necessary for the papacy to surrender its temporal claims. This would mean the papacy would become
simply a church. In the view of the popes, the papacy was both a state and a church. It had its own tax,
its own armies, and its own ambassadors just like any other state. Dante said the church should be a
church and the state should be a state. Both are responsible to God and to God alone. I do not know how
many people read The Divine Comedy anymore, but it is worth reading. One excellent version is
Dorothy Sayer’s translation, especially because of her footnotes. If you read through The Divine Comedy
you need the footnotes because there are a lot of names. It is difficult, but Sayer’s footnotes are a
wonderful way to become at home in the political and ecclesiastical world of the Middle Ages. There
have been more recent translations of The Divine Comedy, but I do not think any are superior to Dorothy
Sayer’s. Nobody has come close to her notes in setting forth the theological significance of what Dante
wrote about.
In the 19th canto of “Inferno” (Hell), Dante and his guide find the popes. Dante was a medieval Italian
scholar and poet who wrote about hell. He put the popes in hell. They were in hell in unusual
circumstances. One was head down in a crack in the earth with his legs pointed upward. They see this
person with his head in a crack in the ground. Someone asks, “Oh wretched soul, who so thou art that
keepest upside down, planted like a stake? Say a word if thou canst.” Who are you there with your head
in the ground like a tree or a stake? He cried out, “Art though already standing there Boniface?”
Boniface was the pope I was just talking about who produced the bull, One Holy Church. What Dante is
saying here is that the next pope would come and press the earlier pope on down through that fissure
totally into hell. Then another pope would do the same thing for that pope. This was the way a pope was
being punished. He was waiting, and his successor Boniface VIII would push him more deeply into hell.
That is striking, it is strong. That is not Luther, Calvin, or John Knox. It is a medieval catholic poet,
Dante, describing the popes that way.
There was another Italian from Padoa named Marsilio. He later became rector of the University of Paris
and wrote a book called Defender of the Peace. It is even more radical than Dante’s view. Marsilio of
Padoa said that people should begin to think that God is on the top (He never changes), but the people
are no longer on the bottom. They have always been on the bottom, and Marsilio says they are right
under God. God gives authority to the people who, through an assembly, can elect the king. Through a
council it can set forth its will for the pope. God is working through the people in the state and in the
church. The people work through an assembly and a council to direct the officer of the assembly and the
people, the king, and the officer of the council in the church, the pope. Understandably neither kings nor
popes cared for Marsilio of Padoa’s book. One of the popes said it was the most heretical book he had
ever read. You can see why. That is an amazingly modern view. It does not get out of the abstract area in
the Middle Ages. In modern times it will become much more significant as actual practice. New ideas
are occurring.

People were trying to determine how to solve the great problem that the church had gotten itself into.
One of the ways in which the church tried to solve the problem was through counciliarism, the idea of
the council. If the popes could not solve the problem of the church, then a council could meet and solve
the problems of the church. The problem was that one pope would excommunicate the other pope and
then place under interdict all the people who were following that pope. This meant that eventually
everybody in Christendom was excommunicated.
Let us talk about how The Great Schism worked out. If you have two popes, you have to decide which
one to go with. There were lands giving allegiance to Avignon. You would expect France to do that, as
well as parts of Spain, the kingdom of Naples, and Scotland. Scotland was linked with France in the old
alliance. England was going to go the other way, and whatever England did, Scotland did the opposite.
There were lands giving allegiance to Rome. This included part of Italy, Eastern Europe, and
Scandinavia. The Holy Roman Empire and Portugal could not make up their minds as to which way to
go. It was an important decision. If you chose the wrong pope, you got an invalid sacramental system.
The system depended on the pope being the right pope and being able to guarantee the efficacy of all the
sacraments. We must attempt to imagine what it meant for people at that time. It seems ludicrous to us,
certainly unfortunate. It was a tragedy for the people in Europe, for Christianity, and the people who
were taking the church seriously.
The idea was to bring in a council. If the popes could not get it right, maybe a council could. So a
council was called at Pisa, Italy. It elected a new pope, opposing both the Roman pope and the Avignon
pope. Neither of those popes was impressed with the decision of the Council of Pisa. Rather than ending
up with one pope, they made the situation worse by not resigning. The church was now divided among
three popes. The Pisan pope, Alexander V, soon died. He was succeeded by John XXIII. John XXIII
was a very interesting character. He was not an incompetent man, although he had a reputation that he
brought with him to the papacy. He had been a pirate! He ruled as the third pope. You might recall that
Giuseppe Roncalli, when he became a pope in 1958, a beloved pope, took the name John XXIII. For
almost 500 years no pope had used the name John. Until the second Pisan pope there had been 22 popes
named John. John is such a beloved name in Christian history. But no pope dared risk the name John
after John XXIII. There is a second John XXIII because the first John XXIII is not considered the true
pope by the Catholic Church today. This is because he was a Pisan pope and not a Roman pope. When
the modern John XXIII took that title, it said something to people that his pontificate was going to be
something unusual. He dared risk taking a name that was honored but dishonored. His short reign of five
years was very unusual. Vatican II was called during that time with all the changes that it brought to the
Catholic Church. To go back to this period, there were now three popes. People talked about the “cursed
trinity” rather than the blessed trinity because there were three popes: Pisa, Avignon, and Rome.
Finally another council was called. The Council of Constance was one of the most important councils of
the late Middle Ages. It met for over four years. This council did a number of things. We will see later
something else that it did. The main point that I want to make now is that in the Council of Constance,
counciliarism triumphed. The council was able to force all three popes to resign. They established the
idea that the church would now be ruled by a council. It would not be ruled by a pope. You can read in
the syllabus the heart of the statement of the Council of Constance. It says that the Roman Catholic
Church is a counciliar church, governed by the council. The council would meet periodically in order to
govern the church. It started off well, but the new pope, Martin V elected at Constance, almost
immediately prohibited appeal from the pope to any other court. Before too many years Pope Pious II
prohibited any and all appeals to a council over a pope. When the popes were weak and divided, the
council was strong. When there was one single pope again, the council became divided and weak. The

papacy was able to reestablish its supremacy in the Roman Catholic Church, which has continued down
to the present.
There was the Council of Trent in the 16th century. But that had to be ratified by the pope before any
decision could be accepted. There was Vatican I in the 19th century. That set forth the dogma of papal
infallibility. Once that was clearly in place, what was the role of a council? The pope is infallible when
he speaks ex cathedral. There was Vatican II in the 1960s, but Vatican II was clearly a council called to
advise the pope. It had no independent authority.
Even though counciliarism failed in the Catholic Church, it was not without effect. We are close to the
Protestant Reformation. The Protestant churches organized themselves quite differently from the
Catholic Church. Counciliarism viewed the church as a community of believers. It set forth some idea of
representative church government. It stressed the importance of lay people. Even though those ideas
failed in the Catholic Church, the counciliar ideas would prevail in different forms in the Protestant
churches of the 16th century. “The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our God will
endure forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Wycliffe & Hus
We will use a prayer from John Wycliffe as it is printed in the syllabus. Let us pray.
“Lord, give me grace to hold righteousness in all things that I may lead a clean and blessed life and
prudently flee evil and that I may understand the treacherous and deceitful falseness of the devil. Make
me mild, peaceable, courteous, and temperate. And make me steadfast and strong. Also, Lord, give Thou
to me that I be quiet in words and that I speak what is appropriate. Amen.”
There is a statue of Martin Luther at Concordia Seminary. It is a wonderful statue; I really love that
monument of Luther. You might know that that statue of Luther is a copy of the statue of Martin Luther
at Barnes in Germany, where Luther made his famous “Here I Stand” speech before the diet. That statue
at Barnes has four other figures seated at the corners of the statue. The one at Concordia Seminary has
Luther only. But if you went to Barnes to see the original, you would see four other figures. They are
pre-Reformers. They are people who came before the 16th century but whose teaching and whose
emphasis anticipated much of what Luther and the 16th century Reformers were going to say and do.
One of those four is a man we have already studied: Peter Waldo. He was the Frenchman whose
ministry created the Waldensian movement. He lived in the 12th century. Today we are going to study
two other figures seated at the base of the statue: John Wycliffe of England and John Hus of Bohemia.
Wycliffe lived in the 14th century and Hus also, although Hus lived on into the 15th century. The fourth
figure is that of the Italian Girolamo Savonarola. He was burned to death on the Piazza Signoria in
Florence late in the 15th century after Martin Luther was already born. Luther was a boy at that time,
growing up in Germany. With that introduction of four of the great pre-Reformers, we will come today
to the study and story of Wycliffe and Hus. Wycliffe is often called the morning star of the Reformation.
We can make that a plural and think of both Wycliffe and Hus as morning stars of the Reformation. John
Wycliffe was from England.
As we think about Wycliffe, I would like to speak for a moment about England in the 14th century.
What was England like during the lifetime of John Wycliffe? As we think of the church in England
during the 14th century we think of an institution in chaos and in serious trouble. The church was very
disorganized at this time. The 14th century marked the century of what is sometimes called the
Babylonian Captivity of the Church. The popes were not even in Rome anymore. They were in Avignon
in southern France. People spoke of that period of about 70 years as the Babylonian captivity of the
papacy. The papacy was now dominated largely by French kings. The Babylonian Captivity ended not
with improvement, but with the situation getting worse. In 1378 there was the Great Schism, which
meant there were two popes. There was a pope in France, and there was a pope in Rome. You can image
what kind of chaos that would produce in the church, because various countries had to make choices
between Rome and Avignon.
Not only was the church terribly disorganized because of the confusion at the head, but a great deal of
worldliness had filtered down. It came all the way down to the level of the parish priests and the monks.
Standards of conduct were abysmally low, not only in head, but in members. In fact, a church council in
1215 ordered that all clergy be required to wear distinctive dress. This was not to elevate them as more
important people but to mark them so that they could be seen if they were frequenting taverns and
houses of prostitution, etc. People would know they were clergy, so perhaps this would help them to
avoid some of those places. That indicates something of the level of conduct that marked the clergy at
this time. The greatest problem was the problem of the church’s teaching. As we have seen when we
studied the sacramental system, there was no clear message of grace. A mechanical system was in place,

which brought to people no real comfort and very little hope. It was a bleak period. I have painted it in
rather dark colors, but I do not think I have exaggerated the situation that we find in the church in
England and throughout Europe at this time.
As we think of England in the 14th century, it was not only a time when the church was going through
some very serious problems, but there was a great deal of suffering in the nation as well. This was not a
happy century. There was trouble of all kinds. Many crises, particularly three, were happening. It was
the century of plague and disease. The Black Death, as it was called, swept across England several
times. It produced many sudden deaths, a lot of suffering, and a lot of despair. It was also the century of
war. We talk about the Hundred Years War between England and France. It does not mean that that war
went on for 100 years without stopping. But for 100 years, more or less, England and France were at war
with each other. That produced great suffering and the loss of many lives. It was also a century of
domestic unrest. There were riots, rebellions, and violence in the country. There was a brief peasant
revolt in England. The poorer people rose up because of their suffering. That revolt was put down, but it
indicated the trouble that faced England during this time. It was not a bright and happy period. But it
was the time of John Wycliffe.
Wycliffe was born during the 14th century and lived his life during that century. Most of John
Wycliffe's career was connected with Oxford. Wycliffe was a scholar and a very good one. Modern-day
scholars are just discovering how brilliant a man Wycliffe was. He wrote in Latin, and many of his
works have not been translated into English right down to the present. As people work on Wycliffe
today, they begin to realize that they are dealing with a first-class mind. He was a man who thought
deeply about many things. Oxford was the leading university in Europe at this time. John Wycliffe was
the leading scholar of Oxford University. We are talking about a very prominent and important man. He
was called “the jewel of Oxford.” He was a kind of shining and brilliant jewel of Oxford.
More important than that is the fact that as we study what Wycliffe was teaching and saying, we realize
that this man was saying some very different things from what most churchmen of that time were
saying. He was saying some very controversial things. For instance, Wycliffe was saying, over and over
again, that all authority is a gift from God. It can be forfeited. He was talking about papal authority,
ecclesiastical authority, or secular authority. The king reigns, not because he is the king but because God
has made him the king. But he can lose that right to reign if he does not reign wisely. The same thing in
the church: the pope is the pope, but the pope is not really the head of the church. The head of the church
is Christ. The pope is the spiritual leader of the church, but if he is to be the spiritual leader of the
church, he must act like the spiritual leader of the church. If he does not act like that, he is no longer
Christ’s representative. He is anti-Christ. It was not Luther and the Reformers who used the idea of anti-
Christ first. Wycliffe had already used it. In fact, the popes had used it themselves in denouncing the
other pope who was reigning during the days of the Great Schism. Wycliffe was very definite on this,
though. His views, understandably, created a great deal of concern in Avignon and later in Rome as
well.
Another strong note from Wycliffe was the authority of the Bible. Wycliffe moved from his earlier
views in which church tradition had a high role along with the Bible. He came to understand that it is the
Scripture and not the church, not tradition, that is the preeminent authority for every Christian. Wycliffe
believed that the Bible and the Bible alone is the authority for every Christian. As Wycliffe thought
about that, he began to realize that it is important for every Christian to be able to have a Bible and to
read the Bible. This meant that it must be translated into the language of the people, into English. The
Catholic Church had not promoted this. In fact, often the Catholic Church very much resisted the
translation of the Bible into vernacular languages of Europe. As Wycliffe pointed out, though, in order

that people might read the Bible in their own language, Saint Gerome labored and translated the Bible
from diverse tongues into Latin. People could not read Hebrew and Greek, so the Latin vulgate was
made by Gerome. Then it might afterward be translated into other tongues. The Bible had been captured
and frozen in the Latin vulgate. As far as the Catholic Church was concerned, that was all that was
needed. It really did not matter that the people could not read it. The priest could read it, at least they
were supposed to be able to read it. By this time, though, many of the priests did not know Latin either.
The Bible was a closed book. But Wycliffe did all he could in England to make it possible for
everyone—the plowboy, the milkmaid, the housewife, the merchant—to read the Bible in the English
language. Wycliffe and his colleagues translated the Latin vulgate of Gerome into the English language.
Chaucer was living at this same time. Chaucer was one of the great writers of English literature. It was
Chaucer through his Canterbury Tales and other writings and Wycliffe with his Bible that helped to
form modern English. The midlands English dialect of Oxford and London became standard English
because of the writings of Chaucer and the translation of Wycliffe. So we know and honor John
Wycliffe as the translator of the Bible. There is an organization that uses his name, Wycliffe Bible
Translators. These people are dedicated to the same task that Wycliffe dedicated his life to. They give
the Bible to people in their own language.
Something else coming from Wycliffe was startling to many people. Wycliffe rejected the Roman
Catholic sacramental system that we talked about earlier. He denied transubstantiation. This is the view
that when the priest says the words, “Hoc est corpus maum,” the bread is transubstantiated into the body
of Christ. Wycliffe believed that the bread and the wine remain unchanged. He believed that Christ was
present in the bread, but He was present with His power, not in His physical body. Wycliffe also
believed that faith was necessary to receive the sacrament. In notes like this, we are coming very close to
John Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper. We hear it first from John Wycliffe.
Another theme in John Wycliffe was his stress on preaching. Preaching had fallen onto bad times in the
medieval church. Sermons were infrequent and not very helpful. The liturgy, the Mass, was the center of
the service, and the sermon occupied a very small place in the medieval service. With John Wycliffe, the
sermon came into its own. Preaching became once again a very important part of the life of the church.
Wycliffe said, “Preaching the Gospel exceeds prayer and administration of the sacraments to an infinite
degree.” It strikes me that Wycliffe could have gone a bit too far in that statement. He is not meaning to
put down prayer and the sacraments so much as he means to stress the importance of preaching.
“Spreading the Gospel has far wider and more evident benefit. It is thus the most precious activity of the
church.” That is a new note; preaching was not widely practiced. But with Wycliffe, we have the
emphasis on proclamation of the Word of God in preaching.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of what Wycliffe was doing, teaching, and saying was that, at last,
we had an Augustinian. He was someone who understood the doctrine of election and grace as taught by
Saint Augustine. Augustine was still greatly honored in the church, but he was not closely followed in
his teaching on grace. As we think about salvation by grace, which was the heart of the preaching by
Wycliffe, we have to mention another Englishman.
This man is a very important figure from whom Wycliffe received much of his information in this area.
This man is Thomas Bradwardine. He was called Dr. Profundus because he was such a profound scholar
and teacher. He wrote very influential books on physics and mathematics. Far more important than all of
that, this man, who became archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a book on the grace of God. It is called On
the Cause of God Against the Palagians. With Thomas Bradwardine, we have a high-ranking
churchman taking up the cause of grace. This is about the first time we have had someone do anything
like this since Gottschalk in the 9th century and Saint Augustine much earlier. Bradwardine said that he

had accepted the common, semi-palagian views until he himself was “visited” by the grace of God. He
was visited by God’s grace, and that transformed his understanding of the nature of grace. He then held
that grace is given freely, according to the will of God apart from our works. That work of Bradwardine,
On the Cause of God Against the Palagians, is a very important book. It is one that we honor because it
helps to begin the recovery of a full Augustinianism and a proper emphasis on God’s grace. This
emphasis would come to fruition not only in Wycliffe but also in the Protestant Reformers. Bradwardine
was archbishop of Canterbury only for 40 days. The Black Plague struck in the middle of the century.
The year 1349 was a very grave one; it was a disastrous year. Many people died, including the
archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine. Wycliffe was 19 years old when Bradwardine died.
You can see something of how clearly Wycliffe embraced the doctrine of grace as taught by
Bradwardine and Augustine in looking at his Short Rule of Life. I have quoted briefly from that in the
syllabus. He says, “At the end of the day, think about how you have offended God.” Many people were
thinking about that, but here is the wonderful and hopeful note: “and think how graciously God has
saved you, not for your own desert, but for his own mercy and goodness.” Contrast that statement with
the lecture that I gave on the sacramental teaching of the church, and you will see the beauty, simplicity,
and wonder of the doctrine of grace. It had been set forth once again by one of the leaders of the church.
There were many people in England who heard the message of Wycliffe and rejoiced in it. They began
to follow this Oxford teacher. The followers of Wycliffe were called Lollards. We are not actually sure
how they got that name, but it stuck. We are not even sure what it meant. Before long, these Lollards,
Wycliffites, were throughout England. According to one contemporary report, they were everywhere.
“A man could scarcely meet two people on the road, but one of them was a disciple of Wycliffe.” We
meet one of those Lollards in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. He tells the story of a number of people on
their way to Canterbury on their pilgrimage. You can get a good survey of medieval religious thinking
by reading the Canterbury Tales. “The parson, a Lollard in the wind,” someone has described him in
Chaucer, is the kind of priest that Wycliffe longed for, prayer for, and hoped for. Wycliffe’s teaching
was listened to, and it produced good results.
Wycliffe might be the jewel of Oxford, but to the pope he was the master of errors. The pope issued
numerous bulls against Wycliffe and even against the chancellor of Oxford for allowing such a bold
heretic to teach in his prestigious university. The pope said, “Through negligence and sloth on your part
you allow cockle to spring up among the pure wheat in the field of your glorious university.” There was
a lot of pressure coming from Avignon and later from Rome as well on Oxford to do something about
this daring priest. Wycliffe felt that pressure, and he left Oxford in 1381. He moved to his parish church
at Lutterworth, where he continued to preach. He worked on his translation of the Bible there, too. The
Catholic Church was able to call a counsel the next year, in 1382, to condemn the teachings of Wycliffe.
We know that counsel in church history as the Earthquake Counsel. This is because about the time it met
there was a serious earthquake in southern England. Church steeples fell down and buildings were
destroyed. People had different views as to the significance of that. Some who were opposed to Wycliffe
felt it was God’s sign of judgment on Wycliffe. Those who favored him, the Lollards and others, felt it
was God’s sign of judgment on the counsel. But Wycliffe was able to live on somewhat in peace. He
died a natural death in 1384. England had an anti-papal government at this time. And the Great Schism
was deflecting the interest and attention of the Catholic Church from the problem in England. Therefore
Wycliffe died without being executed by the church. The church, though, did what it could to try to
remove the influence of Wycliffe. His bones were dug up some years later, in 1428. The bones were
burned and the ashes were scattered in a nearby stream. There is a very famous quote that I have
included in the syllabus: “They burned his bones to ashes and cast them into the swift and averring
brook. The swift conveyed them into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow
seas, and they into the main ocean. Thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which is

now dispersed the world over.” Not too long ago I was in England traveling from London up to
Yorkshire. I was driving on the highway and passed all of these streams and rivers. I kept thinking of
Wycliffe and his influence as a great servant of God. He was also a great teacher of God’s grace.
The Counsel of Constance, which met in 1415, condemned Wycliffe’s teaching. They burned one of the
followers of John Wycliffe at the stake. His name was John Hus. Hus was not English; he was from
Bohemia in central Europe, which later became Czechoslovakia. He was only 12 years old when
Wycliffe died, but Czech students returning from Oxford to Bohemia brought Wycliffe’s ideas,
doctrines, and books back to that land. John Hus began to read those books, and he was greatly
influenced by the teaching of John Wycliffe. In those days, Anne of Bohemia was married to King
Richard II of England. As a result, there was a steady movement between England and Bohemia,
particularly with students going from Prague to Oxford and then returning to Bohemia. Hus studied at
the University of Prague. He became a teacher there, then he quickly became rector of the university. He
also became a very popular pastor of a church called Bethlehem Chapel. The chapel had been built by
two wealthy people who wanted a place where the Word of God could be preached in the language of
the people. Fortunately they were able to secure John Hus as the preacher. Hus preached great sermons
at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. He preached in the Bohemian language to hundreds of people who
would crowd into that church. Perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 people were able to hear John Hus preach at any
given time in the chapel in Prague.
On the major issues, John Hus perfectly agreed with John Wycliffe. At his trial at Constance, John Hus
said he did not agree with Wycliffe on the major issues because of Wycliffe’s doctrine. He believed
because it is Christ’s truth. One of the major themes of his sermons was that Christ is the head of the
church. Hus (and Wycliffe, too) said, “There is no other such pontiff except the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, our pontiff. Christ is the only head of the church, and Christ preserves His church during
difficult and dangerous times so that, even now, while there are three so-called papal head, she remains
the one spouse of the Lord.” The Great Schism produced two popes, but the Counsel of Pisa met in 1409
in Italy in order to try to deal with that problem. They hoped there could be one pope again. Two popes
make for disaster. There can only be one head of the church. But the problem at the Counsel of Pisa in
1409 was that it did not solve that dilemma. It elected another pope to be the true pope, but the other two
popes refused to resign, so after Pisa there were three popes: the Avignon pope, the Roman pope, and
the Pisan pope. In Bohemia Hus said it did not matter how many popes there were. Christ is still the
head of the church. He preserves His church through all of these times of disastrous problems.
Hus also in his preaching stressed the Bible alone, not tradition, and grace alone, not the works that the
Roman Catholic Church was insisting are required for salvation. It was the time of the indulgences, as
we have already talked about. Indulgences were sold in every church in Prague, but not at Bethlehem
Chapel. Hus said a man can receive the pardon of his sins only through the power of God and by the
merits of Christ. People in Bethlehem Chapel were hearing that being preached. The other churches
were selling the indulgences. “Let who will proclaim the contrary. Let the pope, or a bishop, or a priest
say, ‘I forgive thy sins; I absolve thee from their penalty. I free thee from the pains of hell.’ It is all vain.
It helps thee nothing. God alone, I repeat, God alone can forgive sins through Christ. He pardons those
who truly repent.” Great preaching was taking place in that church. Of course it produced great
problems.
Hus was excommunicated. Prague was placed under the interdict. That means that all religious services
had to cease. Nothing could transpire as long as a city was under the interdict. Nothing could take place
in terms of the sacraments or religious activities. This was in order to try to bring pressure upon

someone like John Hus. Hus left the city in order to free the people from that kind of pressure. He
continued to preach, however, in rural areas.
Then the great counsel was called at Constance. They tried to solve all of these problems that were
bedeviling the late medieval church. Hus was urged to come to the counsel. This was to make his point
of view known. Many of the friends of John Hus thought that he should not go. They thought it was
dangerous and risky to go to that counsel. He was going to be surrounded by his enemies, not by his
friends. The Holy Roman Emperor, who was a friend of Hus’ and had promoted Hus in Prague, assured
him that he would give him a safe conduct. This meant that he could go to Constance and safely come
back home regardless of what happened there. Hus went; he wanted to go because he felt if he could
only preach the Gospel there in his defense, people would understand it and believe it. Hus did realize
that it was going to be a dangerous journey. He wrote to his friends in Bohemia, “Now that I have
started on my journey, I shall be opposed by more foes than our gracious Redeemer: bishops, doctors,
princes, secular and canons regular.” He was right. A real hearing never took place. The church officials
did not want Hus standing before the counsel and preaching with the power and conviction that they
knew he had. Hus finally appealed his case to Christ and God alone. He said, “Not to the counsel or to
the pope…” He offended both great parties in the church: those who believed the counsel was the most
important thing and those who believed the pope was the most important person. Sigismund, the
emperor, under pressure from the Catholic Church, revoked his promise of safe conduct. The church
convinced Sigismund that you do not have to keep your word to a heretic. You can safely revoke that
promise. It was revoked, which meant that Hus then had no chance to return home. He was condemned
to death and died there at Constance in 1415. He was burned at the stake. We have some wonderful
letters, some of which are in the syllabus, and some wonderful prayers from John Hus toward the end of
his life. He died singing on July 6, 1415. He was singing in Latin the words, “Christ, Thou Son of the
living God, have mercy upon me.”
Over 100 years later, Martin Luther brought out an addition of letters of Hus. Luther said, “Observe how
firmly Hus clung in his writings and words to the doctrines of Christ. With what courage he struggled
against the agonies of death. With what patience and humility he suffered every indignity. And with
what greatness of soul he at last confronted a cruel death in defense of the truth, doing all these things
alone before an imposing assembly of the great ones of the earth like a lamb in the midst of lions and
wolves. If such a man is to be regarded as a heretic, no person under the sun can be looked on as a true
Christian.” There is an old hymn book that was discovered at the University of Prague in the library. It
has three pictures in it. One shows John Wycliffe striking some sparks from a stone. The second shows
John Hus kindling some coals from those sparks. The third shows Martin Luther brandishing a flaming
torch. Luther often acknowledged his debt to Hus. In 1529 he said, “I have hitherto taught and held all
the opinions of Hus without knowing it. We are, all of us, Hussites without knowing it. I do not know
what to think for amazement. There is a cartoon that is often used from the Reformation period. It shows
Martin Luther writing his 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenberg. There is a goose, which stands
for John Hus. The word “hus” in Bohemian means goose. When you get a little picture of a goose in a
16th century cartoon, it shows that the teachings of Hus are there. Hus is there in the background. Luther
is writing with a quill, which is a feather from a goose. It is a very long feather. It goes all the way
across Germany down to Rome. The other end of that goose feather knocks the pope’s crown off. The
tiara of the pope is being knocked off, and the pope is throwing up his hands in horror. The point is that
the influence of Hus was so important for the teaching and reform of Luther.
Hus was executed, but the Hussite movement continued. Eventually it emerged in the post-Reformation
period as the Moravian church. That is a church that still exists today. When I lived in Jamaica, I would
preach in Moravian churches. Moravians were great missionaries. There old whole churches in Jamaica

where the Moravians had come as missionaries. I had the Moravian hymnbook with services because
this is a liturgical church. I would use this book in leading worship. On the Sunday nearest July 6, the
date of Hus’ death, there was always a service in the Moravian churches called “In Memory of Martyrs.”
It was to remember not only Hus, but all the martyrs throughout church history. That service ends with
these words that I would like to use as I close this lesson today, “The God of all grace, Who hath called
us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, will make you perfect,
establish and strengthen you. Amen.”
Hus was very much in line with the Bohemian people and the Bohemian movement. The Holy Roman
Emperor was over a larger territory. Hus is a Bohemian—or today, a Czech—hero. There is a statue of
John Hus in Prague. People look upon Hus as one of their great national heroes. For one thing, Hus
insisted on using the local language. There were a lot of other people, particularly Germans, who were
dominating the scene in Bohemia. Hus was very concerned to have a freedom for the local people. He
wanted to promote them and help them. They were somewhat pressed down during this time. So he is a
local Czech hero as well as a great man.
The church was not very helpful in response to the plague. Some of the things that were said were right.
Nobody quite knew what was going on there. One of the problems was that the Jews, as often in the
past, were blamed for it. A great deal of anti-Semitic activity took place, and a lot of Jews were killed as
a result of the plague. Some people today think that the Jewish areas, the Jewish ghettoes, were
apparently not struck as fiercely as other parts of these European cities. Some modern scholars have said
Jews had more cats, and the cats killed the rats, and the fleas on the rats caused the Bubonic Plague. But
nobody knew that in those days. There were some voices that were trying to speak of moderation. But
everybody thought this was a judgment of God except those who thought the Jews were behind it.

Reform in Italy
The title of this lesson is “The Dignity of Man, the Glory of God, Reform in Italy.” One of the people I
am going to be talking about in some detail in this lesson is the famous pre-Reformer, Savonarola of
Florence. We will begin with a prayer from Savonarola. He is a man who suffered a great deal in his
life; he was martyred. This is a prayer that he prayed. Even though we do not face the same problems
that Savonarola faced, we face problems in our lives, too. So we can certainly join in this prayer. Let us
pray.
“Lord, we pray not for tranquility, nor that our tribulations may cease. We pray for Your Spirit and
Your love, that You grant us strength and grace to overcome adversity. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.”
As we think about reform in Italy, coming toward the close of the Middle Ages, we need to talk about
the word “renaissance.” Renaissance is a word that means rebirth. It is a movement that began in Italy in
the 14th century. Then it was well established by the 15th century. It began to move northward and
influence northern Europe in the 16th century.
There were people in Italy in the 14th century and in the 15th century who began to look back to the
previous millennium, the previous 1,000 years. They saw that period of history as a dark period. It was
the period after the decline and fall of Rome until their own time. It was about 1,000 years, and they saw
it as a dark period of history. It separated their time from the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. So the
idea of the renaissance, or the rebirth, of learning comes into play. The Renaissance was characterized
by a renewed interest in the classics. In fact, the slogan ad fontes, which means “to the source,” was
used to describe the attention that the people of the Renaissance began to pay to the ancient Greek and
Roman classics. These were the ancient writings of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and also the
Scriptures. Classics were the old writings of the Greeks and Romans, including the writings of the
Scriptures. These people began to emphasize the classics, not the more recent writings of the scholastic
theologians, but the ancient writings, both Christian and non-Christian. They also emphasized the
importance of reading these writings in the original languages. So the study of Hebrew, Greek, and
ancient classical Latin, not modern church Latin, became very important to the men of the Renaissance.
It was said by 1500 in Europe and many places that a good Latin teacher could find students, an average
Greek teacher could find students, and even a mediocre Hebrew teacher could find students. There were
fewer Hebrew teachers, but there was now interest in the study of Hebrew as well as in the study of
Greek and Latin. These teachers were needed in order to be able to read the classics, both pagan and the
Scriptures, in the original languages.
It is from this interest in language that we get the word “humanities” and the word “humanism.” The
humanities refer to the study of languages. In Great Britain, even today, the word humanity means the
study of Latin. It is almost as though if you are really truly going to be human, you need to know Latin.
The humanities become more generally known as what we now call the liberal arts.
The Renaissance was devoted to the study of the classics. That led to a new study of the text of the
classics. Not only is there interest in the original languages in which these great books are written, but
there is interest in the text itself. How accurate is it? How much can we understand about the writing
through the study of the text? Textual criticism, for the first time in history in the West, became an
important concept. The great name in that regard is Lorenzo Valla. He lived in the 15th century. Lorenzo
Valla subjected a number of the famous writings to the scrutiny of textual criticism. He came up with
some startling ideas for people at that time. For instance, he said that the Apostles’ Creed was not

written by the apostles. He was right; people had believed for a long time that the Apostles’ Creed was
written by the apostles. It was also Lorenzo Valla who established that Dionysius, the Areopagite who
wrote various things that we studied earlier, could not have been a 1st century Greek apostle or follower
of the apostle Paul as was claimed by whoever wrote the writings of Dionysius. Lorenzo Valla subjected
that writing to some historical textual study and established the fact that Dionysius, whoever he was,
was not Paul’s convert at Athens. Instead he was a much later writer who probably came from Syria.
After this, Dionysius became pseudo-Dionysius, a false Dionysius.
You may remember, too, the donation of Constantine. It was an alleged document that stated that the
pope was making a gift of Rome, the territory around Rome, and all temporal power. It was actually the
emperor who was making that as a gift to the pope. Ever since then Rome had insisted on the validity
and the importance of the donation of Constantine to establish the fact that Rome had claim to the
territory of Rome and the so-called papal states. But as Lorenzo Valla studied that document, he studied,
quite rightly, that it could not have been a document from the 4th century written by a Roman emperor.
He said, “What have satraps got to do with the case? Do caesars speak thus? Are Roman decrees drafted
thus? Who ever heard of satraps being mentioned in the counsels of the Romans?” The word “satrap”
was used in the Donation of Constantine. Lorenzo Valla noticed that; it is a wonder others had not
noticed it before. He said that Romans do not write and speak like that. It had to come from another
source and from a later date. Perhaps the most significant thing that Lorenzo Valla did was to subject the
vulgate Latin translation of the Bible to some very careful attention. He pointed out that at many places
the Vulgate had mistranslated the Hebrew and the Greek. This caused great concern in the Catholic
Church, both then and later.
We are talking about the Renaissance, the importance of the classics, the study of languages, and the
ability to subject the text to historical and textual criticism. There was another emphasis of the
Renaissance, which was a stress on rhetoric. The rhetoric, or eloquent speech, became important. In
church history there are some very eloquent speeches and books. For instance, Saint Augustine was a
very eloquent writer. But after Augustine, theology tends to be much more dry. The theology of the
scholastics is especially dry. The men of the Renaissance began to want to recover some of the strength,
power, and beauty of language. According to the Renaissance figure Petrarch, “Words can sting and set
a fire and urge toward love of virtue and hatred of vice.” The words of the sentences of Peter Lomard do
not really do that. They are not beautiful and powerful language. But the emphasis on rhetoric came
through in the Renaissance and would influence theology in times to come. We will see this particularly
as we come to The Institutes of John Calvin. We will see rhetoric playing a very natural and wonderful
role in theology.
The importance of the classics, rhetoric, new art, and architecture come out of the Renaissance. Let me
illustrate that last point in three ways. First of all, let us talk about the Pazzi Chapel built in Florence by
Brunellesco in 1430. As you look at this chapel, if you have already been familiar with the great gothic
architecture in the cathedrals in France, England and elsewhere, you will notice there is something quite
different about this. The style has been called the architecture of the Renaissance or the architecture of
humanism. I will explain a little more about the word “humanism” in a moment. I have used it already to
say it is the study of the liberal arts. What is impressive about this chapel is that it is not very impressive,
at least not compared to some of the great churches like Chartres or some of the cathedrals of England. It
does not try to impress us or crush us by its size or weight as all God-directed architecture does. It is
much more limited. It has a human scale. If you walked into this chapel in Florence, you would not be
overwhelmed by it. You might be impressed by its symmetry, its orderliness, and its neatness, but you
would not have the same feeling walking into this chapel as you would walking into one of the great
gothic cathedrals.

About the same time that the Pazzi Chapel was built, another building in Florence, the Library of San
Marco, was built by Cosimo de’ Medici. The interior of that library is eloquent and elegant. It is a cool,
harmonious place, not a dark place of mystery, as in some of the churches. It is a place of knowledge. It
is not pointing to how much we do not know, but the books, light, harmony, and proportions of this
library point to how much we do know and how much we can know.
The third illustration, and there could be hundreds of these, is the David, also in Florence. This is the
great sculpture of the famous Michelangelo. Michelangelo, according to one of the encyclopedias, was a
man whose giant talent dominated the High Renaissance. You probably know something about him in
the many works he did in addition to this one. His giant David in the Academia in Florence is a giant—it
is 14 feet high with outsized head and hands. It dominates that building. If this is Michelangelo’s statue
of David, the shepherd-boy, you wonder what the giant would have looked like. Some people,
particularly Francis Schaeffer, have seen in the David a statement of man’s belief in himself. The way
Schaeffer put it was, “The David was the statement of what the humanistic man saw himself as being
tomorrow. In this statue we have a man waiting with confidence in his own strength for the future.”
I would like to use that to lead into the second word. We have been talking about the Renaissance, the
new birth. It put special emphasis on the classics, rhetoric, new expressions of art, and architecture. We
can also speak of this period of history and of this development as humanism. I think it is important for
us today to define that clearly. We tend to think of humanism as secular and atheistic humanism.
Humanism in the 14th and 15th centuries was not necessarily anti-God or anti-Christian. At times it
could seem to be anti-institutional church, though.
There were other movements that were opposed to the institutional church as well. As we think of
humanism, we are to think of the Renaissance and the people of the Renaissance who were coming up
with some new emphases without rejecting the old emphases. There were two new emphases that could
and did eventually undermine the old emphases. One is a this-worldliness, and the other is an emphasis
on the greatness and essential goodness of human nature. It is impossible to look at this statue of the
David, whatever Michelangelo was attempting to do there, without being impressed with the grandeur,
dignity, and the potential of human beings. Fifteenth century humanism did not reject or attack
Christianity directly or intentionally. Michelangelo was producing biblical themes, not only here, but in
the Sistine Chapel and elsewhere. He tended to mix those with mythological and classic figures, though.
These two new emphases came through during the Renaissance. There was a this-worldliness, a focus
on the here and now, against the other-worldliness of much of medieval life and thought. If you look at
other medieval art, particularly earlier expressions of medieval art, you will often find the dance of
death. One of the themes of medieval art is the picture of death coming and taking people at all stages of
life and at the most inopportune moments. Death was very much in the mind of medieval men and
women. But the Renaissance was not the dance of death anymore. It was a celebration of life. It was a
new beginning, the rebirth. There is potential for life in this world. That tended to move the emphasis
and the interest away from preparation for life in the next world.
One of the themes of humanism and the Renaissance is the goodness and greatness of human beings. It
is type of Palagianism, although the people of the Renaissance did not have interest in putting it in
theological terms; they just knew that human beings have great significance and importance. Let me
illustrate that in three ways through three different figures. The first is Petrarch, a man who lived in the
14th century. He was called by Kenneth Clark the first modern man. Petrarch lived during the time of
the Avignon papacy. He was very concerned with the way the church was going, with scholasticism and
the scholastic theology. He was also, and more importantly, concerned with the worldliness of the

Avignon papacy and the worldliness of the church in general. He said, “I am now living in France, the
Babylon of the West. The poor fishermen of Galilee have strangely forgotten their origin. I am
astounded as I recall their predecessors. To see these men, loaded with gold and clad in purple, boasting
in the spoils of princes and nations, to see luxurious palaces and heights crowned with fortifications,
does not look like the beginning of Christianity.” It did not look like the disciples, the followers of
Christ in Galilee, to see the wealth and worldliness of the church as it centered in Avignon and France.
Petrarch was critical of scholasticism and of the worldliness of the church.
As we move to the next figure we get a much more humanistic emphasis. Leon Battista Alberti is
famous for a number of statements. He was a 15th century figure. He is often quoted as having said “A
man can do all things if he will.” That does not sound like Augustine or even the medieval theologians.
It is a new note of human potential and possibility. Kenneth Clark said, “That statement of ‘man can do
all things if he will’ could be the motto of the early Renaissance.”
We have a portrait of Alberti; it is one of the first portraits that we have. The modern portrait came into
existence during the Renaissance. Before the Renaissance, it really did not matter what people looked
like. They could all look the same. The pictures that we have seen of the church fathers and others have
looked somewhat the same. It was not all that important to distinguish between them. You would simply
paint a person. But with the Renaissance there was a concern that the individual be depicted truly to
express his or her uniqueness, importance, and psychological complexity. So with Alberti and others’
portraits from this time, we have the modern man. It was the modern portrait depicting the modern man.
Alberti addressed his fellow men by saying, “To you is given a body more graceful than other animals,
to you power of apt and various movements, to you most sharp and delicate senses, to you wit, reason,
and memory like an immortal god.” Kenneth Clark comments that it is certainly incorrect to say that we
are more graceful than other animals. We do not feel much like immortal gods at the moment, but in
1400 the Florentines did (at least some of them). This was the Renaissance; this was the springtime, the
rebirth. The darkness of the past was going to pass away. New light would come.
I will give one other illustration of this attitude from Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola. His book was
Oration on the Dignity of Man. Mirandola was a young man; he was very brilliant, handsome, wealthy,
and energetic. He had everything going for him. He seemed to know everything; he seemed to learn
everything. He came up with the plan and the idea to try to combine Christianity, the ancient classics,
and even Islam. It was a new synthesis of truth. When he was 24 years old, he went to Rome and
published 900 theses for debate. It was not 25 like Luther, but 900. He created something of a sensation
and the debate never came off. The pope said, “That young man is looking for someone to burn him.”
Pico decided it would be better not to stay in Rome much longer!
That gives you a sense of what was going on in one place, Florence, and some of the other cities of
northern Italy. Something else was going on in Florence, too. As we think of reform, it is not only the
Renaissance. We have to think of a very different type of reform that came from the life and teaching of
a Dominican monk whose name was Savonarola. He is the fourth of our pre-Reformers: Waldo,
Wycliffe, Hus, and Savonarola. They are all seated at the base of the Luther statue in Barnes as
important pre-16th century reform leaders. Savonarola was born in 1452; he was born, not in Florence,
but in the Italian city Ferrara. There is a very lovely account of his childhood, particularly of his
grandfather. His grandfather was a famous doctor in Ferrara. For some reason the grandfather had a
particular contact with the little boy and responsibility for him; he brought him up and taught him along
the way. What he taught him was very much the truth of the Bible. This famous doctor had a small
notebook in which he wrote down different ideas that he came up with. He gave that notebook to his

grandson. In the notebook there were statements like, “Neither the pope nor their vicars have a right to
teach anything contrary to the things instituted by God. All that we need to know is found in the Word
of God.” So Savonarola grew up hearing that kind of teaching.
He had a disappointing love affair as a young man. He did what many young men of that time did after
disappointing love affairs: he became a monk. He was a Dominican monk at the age of 23. Eventually
he was brought to Florence by Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was the virtual ruler of the city of
Florence. The wealthy family of the Medici controlled the city of Florence. Savonarola came to Florence
in 1482, and he became friar of the famous monastery of San Marco in 1491. There is a story in the
syllabus concerning the relationship between Lorenzo, this magnificent ruler of the city of Florence, and
Savonarola, the Dominican monk. Savonarola worked away in his cell in the monastery of San Marco.
There is a drawing depicting him working in his cell. He is writing a book. It was a book called On
Christian Simplicity. He became a great preacher. At first Savonarola was not a very good preacher, but
he became a great one. Florentines did not like him at first because they felt he had a very bad accent. It
was not from Florence, it was from Ferrara, which they considered an inferior city. So he preached long
sermons for about two hours. He shouted those sermons in a very ungraceful accent. His friends urged
him to go and hear another preacher in town who was a very famous and eloquent speaker. He was the
Augustinian Fra Mariano who was filling Santo Spirito, the church across the Arno River. Some years
ago I lived in Florence for a year and studied Italian at Eurocentro. It was on the same piazza with Santo
Spirito. So during the break in language class I would go over to Santo Spirito and look around at that
church. That was where Fra Mariano preached. When his friends told Savonarola he should go hear
Mariano, that he was a great preacher, Savonarola replied that he had already heard Mariano. He said,
“He preaches from Cicero and the poets and not from the Holy Scripture.” He was a Renaissance figure
who emphasized the classics but not the Scripture. Savonarola said, “You reproach me for my lack of
style. What has style to do with it? Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the
secret of preaching.” I am not sure style is totally unimportant, but having something clear to say and
saying it clearly is certainly important.
The thing that is interesting is that Savonarola became a great preacher. We can be encouraged. His
Lentan sermons in the Duomo, in the cathedral in Florence, moved the whole city. Not only did he have
something to say because he was preaching the Gospel instead of Cicero and the poets, but eventually he
also developed a style that was moving and powerful. One of the people who heard Savonarola preach in
the Duomo was Michelangelo, the artist. He said, “Oh, that voice, that voice. It can never be forgotten.”
It is interesting to read that when Michelangelo was doing the painting in the Sistine Chapel on the
ceiling, the painting of the Last Judgment, as he worked for five years on that painting he had with him
only one book. It was a book of Savonarola’s sermons. Somebody has said that the Last Judgment in the
Sistine Chapel is essentially a Sevonarolian sermon in color. In the syllabus we have one example of
Savonarola’s preaching in the sermon on the ascension of Christ.
Not only did he become a great preacher, but Savonarola also became an important reformer in the city
of Florence. Florence became what we could call a Christian city with a Christian constitution in 1494.
The battle there was between Lorenzo and Savonarola. Each tried to pull the city in a different direction.
Savonarola preached, “Florence is a spiritual wilderness, and it will be punished for worldliness and for
the injustices inflicted on the poor.” It was a sermon he was preaching week by week in Florence.
Lorenzo said, “I do not like to hear of anyone talking politics in the pulpit or anywhere else.” Lorenzo
had his own ideas about what he wanted to make the city of Florence. It was not in line with the vision
and dream of Savonarola. I will not go into the long, complicated history of the power struggle between
these two and others. The outcome of it all was that Savonarola eventually became the leader of the city.
He was not only the chief preacher of the city, but he was also the political leader of the city as well. I

think that was probably a mistake. It was not a mistake that the Reformers would make later. Luther
never became a political figure, nor did Calvin. People think Calvin was a type of autocrat of Geneva,
but that was not the case at all. John Knox was not a political figure either. They remained in their
calling as preachers and spiritual leaders. Savonarola won the people, and they made him the leader of
the city. He said, “Florence, Jesus Christ, who is the king of the universe, stands before the door and He
knocks. He wants to come in. He wills to become your king in this very hour. Will you have Him as
your king?” And the people shouted, “Yes, we will.” They tried to create a theocracy, a Christ city,
God’s city on earth, with Savonarola as the leader of that city. One of the things that happened in
Florence was what is called a burning of the vanities. People brought all sorts of things into the main
piazza of the city, and there was a great bonfire. They threw into the bonfire cards, dice, jewelry,
cosmetics, lude books, and pictures. Some of the paintings of Botticelli, for instance, were thrown into
the fire. Botticelli himself threw them in. He had been moved by what was going on in Florence, as were
Pico Della Mirandola and some of the other humanists whom we have talked about already. Of course
the burning of the vanities has not made Savonarola popular with art students and artists through history.
He was concerned that worldliness had captured the city. He felt that something had to be done in order
to bring Florence back to a place of godly living.
That kind of vision and concern will produce many enemies. Savonarola made many enemies: the pope,
the aristocrats, the Medici. Finally, through a serious of miscalculations and misfortunes, the people lost
confidence in him. He was arrested, hanged, and burned with several fellow Dominican monks on May
23, 1498 in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. If you can risk crossing that piazza on foot, just about
in that place in the center of the piazza you will find a bronze marker on the pavement. It indicates the
place where Savonarola and the other monks were martyred. Machiavelli was also a Florentine. He was
29 years old when Savonarola died. He would later write a very famous book called The Prince. His
comment was “Unarmed prophets are bound to fail.” Savonarola could not expect to succeed because he
did not have an army.
When Savonarola died in the flames in Florence in 1498, there was another young man growing up in a
little town in Germany. Martin Luther was only 15 years old. It shows how close we are to the
Reformation because Luther was already 15 years old when Savonarola died. Luther said about this
Florentine martyr, “Whereas anti-Christ [Luther’s word for the pope] has damned Savonarola, God has
canonized him in our hearts.” “Seeing that we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us
run with perseverance the race that it marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1).

Mysticism and the Modern Devotion
There is a drawing from the Middle Ages of a woman at prayer. We do not know who this woman is,
but she is representative of many women in the church during the Middle Ages. She rather looks like a
modern woman in some ways because she has three rings on her fingers on one hand. I wanted to begin
with that picture because I will begin with a prayer from one of the women mystics. She is a very
famous mystic and a very famous woman. She wrote the first book written by a woman in English. Her
name is Julian of Norwich in England. We will be talking about her during this lesson. I would like to
begin with a prayer from Julian of Norwich. It is a very short prayer as we think about souls of great,
quiet mysticisms and the modern devotion. Let us pray.
“God of Your goodness, give me Yourself, for You are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything
less to be worthy of You. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In You alone do I have all.
Amen.”
There were various ways in which people attempted to live out their Christian faith in the Middle Ages.
One was the way of the scholastics. They did theology, trying to understand the faith. Another was the
way of the humanist that we talked about in the last lesson. They were Christian but with emphases that
were somewhat new and different. A third way was the way of the mystics. That is what I want to talk
about during this lesson. The humanists put emphasis on the classics and on rhetoric, and the scholastics
put emphasis on theology and learning. The mystics put emphasis on love and virtue. It is not true that
the other two groups did not have any concern about love and virtue, but these are particular themes that
you find constantly emphasized in the mystics. For instance, if you are going to have love and
knowledge, it is good to have both, but it is better to have love. You will find that in the old English
book Piers Plowmen, Conscience gives advice to the monks and the friars, saying, “Give up studying
logic and learn to love.” That might sound like good advice to you at this point in this class or in your
study at seminary this semester. It was an emphasis that the mystics went back to again and again. It is
not so much what you know, but it is how you love. The Cloud of Unknowing, one of the great books of
the mystics, put it this way, “Smite upon the thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing
love.” The writer is talking about God and theology. It is a thick cloud, and how are you going to get
through that cloud? Do not get through it with dialectics, disputations, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or the
classics, but with the sharp dart of longing love. The emphasis on love was certainly central.
The interest and emphasis on virtue was also central. What good does it do you to know things if you do
not do those things? You could find this coming out again and again in the famous book The Imitation of
Christ that we will talk about. “What good does it do you to speak learnedly about the Trinity if lacking
humility you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes man holy and just, but a virtuous
life makes him pleasing to God.” There is concern, first and foremost, for love, conduct, good living,
and virtue.
If you had to choose three points to summarize the emphases in the writings of the mystics, it would be
these three: union with God, love for Christ, and denial of self. Not every mystic put equal emphasis on
each of these. There are some mystics who were more into the union with God theme. Others focused
more on love for Christ, but all of them talked about denial of self. I think the best way for us to
understand the mystics is for me to describe some of these mystics for you and try to illustrate these
points through the lives and work of some of the famous mystics of the Middle Ages.

Let us start with Johannes Meister Eckhart. He was a German, and like so many of the mystics he was a
monk. Eckhart was a Dominican monk. His book is simply called The Sermons. I have that book in my
library in my seminary office. Every time I come to this lesson I try to read one of the sermons of
Eckhart, but I have never been able to understand any of them! I came across this statement once that
made me feel a little better. Someone complained to Eckhart that no one could understand his sermons.
He said, “To understand my preaching five things are needed. The hearer must have conquered strife, he
must be contemplating his highest good, he must be satisfied to do God’s bidding, he must be a beginner
among beginners, and deny himself. He must be so a master of himself as to be incapable of anger.”
Maybe that is why I do not understand Eckhart’s sermons. You see the answer there is not that you need
to concentrate and figure out what I am saying. The answer is that you need to be a better person to
understand my sermons. One of the statements that you will find in Eckhart’s sermons, which is very
characteristic of Eckhart and the mystics, is the statement in the syllabus. He says, “A flea to the extent
that it is in God ranks above the highest angel in his own right. Thus, in God, all things are equal and are
God Himself.” He is saying even that flea, to the extent that that flea is in God, is equal to man and the
angels. And the flea, man, and the angels are God Himself. This is not uncharacteristic of how the
mystics sounded. They were always pushing toward a union with God in which the individual would be
lost in being absorbed into the greatness and wonder of God.
A lot of people said his union with God statements sounded like pantheism. Eckhart was charged with
heresy, and he was rebuked for this teaching. Eckhart admitted that he had been extreme in some of his
statements. He tried to modify his statements, but there is still a very strong emphasis in Eckhart on
being absorbed into God so that there is no difference. I came across a statement very recently from
Eckhart, which I did understand. It seems rather profound and important to me. It is also in the syllabus.
It might seem a little shocking when you first read it, but let us read it all the way through. “We are all
meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the Divine Son takes place
unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I
am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to His Son if I do not also
give birth to Him in my time and culture? This then is the fullness of time, when the Son of God is
begotten in us.” I will keep working with Eckhart and maybe I will find more statements like this. This
does seem to emphasize something very central and important for us to hear. Eckhart is usually known
as the person who came very close to becoming a pantheist. The church had to rebuke him for that
teaching.
Another mystic is a man named Walter Hilton. He was an Augustinian monk and was English. His book
is called The Ladder of Perfection. The idea of a ladder is one that the mystics liked. So many of the
books of mysticism will have the idea of a ladder: start down low and climb; as you climb you get
higher and higher. Many of the books of mysticism will give you steps in which you can move from the
lowest level of spirituality to the highest level of spirituality. That has some problems connected with it,
which you can imagine. But in Walter Hilton’s book there seems to be a lot of truth and a lot that can
benefit us. He says you start on a lower level, the level of knowledge of God by study. You want to
know more about God, so you study the Bible and the writings of the church fathers. Study in a
seminary, we would say today, although that was not what Walter Hilton had in mind. But he says at one
point in his Ladder of Perfection, “For one who has always been ardent of the knowledge of God and of
spiritual things it can sometimes seem that he increases after a certain point relatively little in love for
God.” So what he is saying is that you can be very ardent for the knowledge of God but you find after a
while that your love for God does not increase correspondingly. He is concerned about that, as he should
be. So he moves to the next level, which is love for God. That goes through various steps. First, there is
a transitory love, love that comes and goes, increases and decreases. We might think that is the way our
love for God always is and always will be. But Walter Hilton wanted to advance to a subtle love for

God. It was not so transitory. It could not be shaken, but it would be there in all circumstances of life.
Then he goes from knowledge of God, up through transitory love for God and subtle love for God, and
finally to the top level, which is both knowledge and love. That is where he wants us to be because he
did not demean knowledge. Sometimes the mystics do, but Hilton did not. Knowledge is important. But
love must keep up with the knowledge. The final analysis, the perfection that we seek, is both to know
God and to love God.
Let us come to Julian of Norwich. Julian was an English Benedictine. She became what was called an
Anchorist. That was a person who no longer lived in community but lived alone in a cell. Julian, after a
time of illness, entered a cell that was built adjoining the church in Norwich in England. There she had a
window opening into the church to receive the Eucharist and administrations of the priest. And she had a
window opening out into the street to receive people who would come. She was not just shutting herself
off from life. She could look one way into the church and another way into the street. But she lived in
that cell. The idea of an Anchorist was to be an anchor for people. She became an anchor by her prayer,
her meditation, and her teaching. As I have already mentioned, this woman was the first woman to write
a book in English. That book is called The Revelations of Divine Love. The word “revelations” is
important. When she was about 30 she experienced this life-threatening illness. This was probably the
occasion for her entering the cell as an Anchorist. During a short period of some days or weeks, she
received 16 revelations. She said God revealed Himself and spoke to her directly in these 16 revelations.
She meditated on those revelations for about 15 years. Then she wrote the book Revelations of Divine
Love. The two words, “divine love,” are important as well. You might say the theme of all these
revelations is the divine love. Julian said, “I could see no sort of anger in God however long I looked.”
She is famous for that quote. There is no anger in God; there is no wrath in God. Everything I see in God
is love. That was quite different from medieval theology. This is not Cur Deus Homo, where God’s
wrath appears against sin and necessitates the coming of the God-man to appease the wrath of God.
Julian says, “There is no wrath in God, there is only love.” The long quotation in the syllabus has to do
with her vision of the hazelnut. This is probably the most famous of the revelations. There is picture of
Julian. You can see she has in her fingers a little hazelnut. She looks at it in her meditation, and she says,
“What is it?” The answer comes to her, “It is all that is made.” She said, “I marveled how it might last,
for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for littleness.” It is so small, insignificant, and
unimportant, it seems like it would just disappear. But then she wrote, “And I was answered in my
understanding. It lasts and ever shall last because God loves it.” God loves the hazelnut, so that is what
makes it last. That is what gives it stability, significance, and importance. “So all thing hath the being by
the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that
God loves it, the third is that God keeps it.” That is the theme of the revelation. God made everything,
God loves everything, and God keeps everything. “But what is to me verily the maker, the keeper, and
the lover.” He is my maker, He is my keeper, He is my lover. “I cannot tell, for till I am substantially
oned to Him I may never have full rest nor very bliss.” There was a push and desire in Julian, just like in
Meister Eckhart, to be substantially one with God so that she could rest in bliss knowing Him as the
maker, the keeper, and the lover.
I want to highlight one other quotation from the book Revelations of Divine Love. This is probably the
most famous quotation: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
The church in Norwich was destroyed during WWII by German bombs, but it was rebuilt with the cell
of Julian. In that present cell of Julian in Norwich there is a window with Julian hearing from Christ
with the words, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” You
may have heard that quotation and never heard the Revelations of Divine Love because that appears in
one of the poems of T. S. Elliot. Elliot quoted from Julian here in the words, “All shall be well, and all
shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” The Irish missionary to India, Amy Carmichael,

read The Revelations of Divine Love frequently. She was greatly inspired by that book, particularly by
the description of prayer given by Julian of Norwich, which I have included in the syllabus.
Let us move on to Catherine of Siena. Siena is in Italy. Catherine was a member of an order. She was a
Dominican tertiary, the third order of the Dominican movement. There are two things that are very
striking about Catherine of Siena. She brought together mystical rapture and active service. Most of the
mystics were not out there in the world, mixing up in the world and doing things. Mystics withdrew and
lived quiet lives of meditation and prayer. But Catherine seemed to be able to do both. There are many
stories about the mystical rapture that Catherine claimed to have experienced. She referred to these times
as times of abstraction, times of prayer. She would not really know that she was in the world, not know
what was going on around her. These were times of abstraction in her devotional life. The central theme
of her writings is Christ crucified, especially His blood. Her writings are collected in a book called The
Dialogue, a short excerpt of which is in the syllabus as well as an excerpt from Julian of Norwich. As
you read Catherine, the focus is on Christ crucified and the blood; a rapture came as she contemplated
the sufferings of Christ until she experienced these times of abstraction. Strikingly, she was also very
active. She was very involved in the care of the sick and the poor. And she was preaching to sinners. She
tried to convert them. On a higher level, she even became a mediator between the warring cities of Italy.
She is given credit, not only for that work, but for the work of helping to persuade Pope Gregory XI to
transfer the papacy from Avignon back to Rome. It seems that her influence and her persuasiveness was
the crucial factor that made him make that move. As we know, that did not solve the problem of the
papacy but produced the papal schism. About that time Catherine died. She was only 33 years old. Some
have said that her heart was broken because her efforts to reunite the church had not succeeded. She is a
very important figure. She was declared a doctor of the Catholic Church in 1970. When she was given
that title, she joined about 30 other people. Not many people have been named to that high position in
the Catholic Church.
Let us move on to Johannes Tauler. He is another 14th century mystic. He was also a Dominican, but a
German. We have in the syllabus a writing from Tauler called The Way of Prayer. It is from his German
theology, as it is called. It is a short prayer, “May Jesus Christ, the King of glory, help us to make the
right use of all the suffering that comes to us and to offer to Him the incense of a patient and trustful
heart for His name’s sake. Amen.” Of all the mystics, Tauler is my favorite. There is a lot of spiritual
blessing that can come from reading the sermons and conferences of John Tauler. I started reading
Tauler because Luther advised people to read Tauler. Luther brought out several additions of the
German theology with his own recommendation and introduction to Tauler. Luther said, “The German
theology of Tauler does not float on top like foam on water. It is rather been fetched out of the rock
bottom of Jordan by a true Israelite. Next to the Bible and Saint Augustine, no book has ever come into
my hands from which I have learned more of what God and Christ and man and what all things are.”
That is pretty high praise for this German Dominican from a fellow German Augustinian and Reformer,
Martin Luther. I think what really appealed to Luther in Tauler was his humility and lowliness. He was
small, nothing before God, to whom all the honor belongs. Luther, who very much disliked the proud
and boastful scholastics who felt they had all the answers, returned again and again to the quiet, humble
teaching of Tauler. But Tauler was not perfect. Luther, in a marginal note that he affixed to one of
Tauler’s sermons, struck out the word “humility” and put in the word “faith.” We are not justified by
being humble; we are justified by faith. It was not that Tauler did not come very close to saying that, but
Luther wanted him to say it even more explicitly. Justification is indeed by faith.
Then we finally come to the most famous of the medieval mystics and the most famous of the books.
We will now look at Thomas a’ Kempis and The Imitation of Christ. The Imitation of Christ was the
most widely read book of the Middle Ages. The writings of Thomas a’ Kempis and others collected in

The Imitation of Christ is what is called the modern devotion. These are the writings of Thomas a’
Kempis and others from the Brothers of the Common Life. That was a movement that began in the
Netherlands and spread to various places. It was like an order, but it was a lay movement. They were
laymen and women. They were not bound in the same way as the monks were by vows, but they were
brothers and sisters who came together to share with each other and to practice good works. In
particular, they set up schools. The Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life established schools for the
teaching of children in many places. One of these brothers was Thomas a’ Kempis. We know very little
about his life. He had an uneventful life as brother in one of the brother houses. When the plague struck
down most of the members of the house, Thomas had to pitch in and do different jobs to keep things
running. He became the monastery cook. Someone wrote of him, “He made the kitchen a house of
prayer, for he knew that God was everywhere.” I hope you will read The Imitation of Christ sometime.
There is a brief selection from The Imitation in the syllabus, but it is well worth reading it all. It is not
the kind of book you pick up and read right through. It is more like reading the book of Proverbs. You
get short, pithy statements. They are often gems of expression and extraordinarily fresh with some of the
power and appeal of the Proverbs and other portions of Scripture. I have quoted a few of those in the
syllabus. Note the first, “Jesus says, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.’ Without the Way there
is no going, without the Truth there is no knowing, without the Life there is no living.” That is the kind
of thing you find in The Imitation of Christ. I think this book, so widely read, was a book that allowed
many people to understand at least something of what was in the Bible. People were not able to read the
Bible for themselves. As you study The Imitation of Christ the title might seem to suggest that the book
is going to stress imitating Christ and trying to be like Christ. In some ways that is true. There is often a
real display of grace in The Imitation of Christ. It is not perfect; at times Thomas can lapse into
sacramentalism or even a works righteousness. But taken as a whole, The Imitation of Christ is more
Augustinian than semi-palagian. But people have differed on an analysis of The Imitation of Christ.
Rabbi John Duncan, a Scottish theologian, said of Thomas a’ Kempis, “A fine fellow, but hazy and
weak at times.” What he meant by that is that the Gospel does not always come through. I think that is
true. Another Scottish theologian, Thomas Martin Lindsay, wrote, “Despite wrong notions of the
sacrament, Thomas a’ Kempis had a clear conception that God’s grace was freely given and not merited
by what man can do.” You read The Imitation and decide whether Duncan or Lindsay was right.
Let me come to a summing up of mysticism. I will do an evaluation: how do we look at this medieval
movement? There are some very good things about it and some problems. One of the good things is
stress on loving God. That is an emphasis that should always be there. We cannot say that too much.
One of the descriptions of mystical theology that comes from the Middle Ages came from the chancellor
of the University of Paris. It is an illustration that I think is very good because this man, in writing on
mystical theology, said, “As honey requires honeycomb, so devotion needs to be structured by our
learned and orthodox mind. As honeycomb needs to be filled, so ideas of the mind must also warm the
heart and lead to activity in the world.” That just about says it all. You need the structure; you need the
honeycomb. You need the theology; you need the orthodoxy. But you also need the honey; you need
something to fill it and not only to enlighten the mind, but to warm the heart. From an enlightened mind
and a warm heart we can go out to activity in the world. Not all the mystics got it right. Some demeaned
learning; some were not very active in the world. But this statement expresses mysticism at its best. It is
a concern that we not only understand, but that we love God and that we serve Him.
Another striking characteristic of the mystics is their concern for quietness and humility. I quote the
Princeton theologian, a Presbyterian minister, J. W. Alexander. He wrote this 150 years ago, but it
applies to our time as well as to his. He said, “It seems to me that in our day we take the pattern and
measure of our religion too commonly from what is popular, that is bustling outward and full of éclat.

But it may appear in another world that some of the mightiest influences have proceeded from souls of
great quiet.” Think about that—it is worth pondering.
There are two real problems with the mystics. One of the problems is individualism. This may not be
true of all the mystics. It certainly was not true of Catherine of Siena, and it is not true in the quotation
above from John Gersone. As the German historian, Kurt Allan, puts it this way: “To a certain extent the
mystic lived in a glass jar from which the world was banished and in which there was really nothing but
a private conversation between God and the soul.” You do not have a lot of development of a Christian
world and life view. The mystic might say, “It is about my relationship to God; even the church is not all
that important.” It was a very personalized, individual relationship to God that the mystics pursued. Not
all of them did this, but mysticism in general took that direction.
There was in mysticism, as there was in humanism and even in scholasticism, a tendency toward self-
righteousness and works righteousness. Richard Lovelace says, “The writings of the mystics are full of
nervous instructions to believers trying to cross the gap between man and God on their own footpaths.”
That is the old problem all over again. There is a way that seems right to us, and we think by doing these
things we can enter into favor with God. Not all of the mystics went that way, but there was the
tendency for them to do so. As I have said, there are glimpses of grace in the mystics. The Imitation of
Christ and the German theology of Tauler give us some of these glimpses. John Newton, who wrote
Amazing Grace, as a young sailor casually picked up a copy of The Imitation of Christ. He was not
interested in being a Christian. He was actually very much opposed to it. But he carelessly read The
Imitation. The more he read it, the more troubled he became, thinking that it might indeed be true. If it
was, he was in trouble. So it was through The Imitation of Christ that the evangelical experience of John
Newton was first developed.
I want to close this lesson with a prayer from Thomas a’ Kempis. I think it is a very appropriate one
because it is a prayer for all teachers and students. We are all students, and in one sense we are all
teachers here. So let me pray these words with you as we conclude: “Grant, oh Lord, to all teachers and
students to know what is worth knowing, to love what is worth loving, to praise what pleases You most,
and to dislike whatsoever is evil in Your sight. Grant us with true judgment to distinguish things that
differ and, above all, to search out and do what is well pleasing to You, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.”
The term “modern devotion” is an expression that is used for the piety of the Brothers of Common Life
and for The Imitation of Christ. You could say it equals The Imitation of Christ.
I suggest in the syllabus that if you want to read a modern preacher who has a love for the mystics and is
an evangelical, A. W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy is good. He will quote Julian of Norwich and
Cloud of Unknowing, Tauler. Almost all of the mystics I mentioned are quoted by Tozer. He was a
Christian Missionary Alliance pastor in Toronto for many years. He was a great preacher.
The term “mystic” was used by these very people, like John Gersone, who wrote On Mystical Theology.
They did not reject this word; they felt it was a good word and it described them.
I could see some connections in the mystics being forerunners of modern-day charasmatics, especially in
terms of revelations and ecstatic experiences.

The Waning Middle Ages
“The grass withers” (from Isaiah 40:8)… the waning of the Middle Ages. This prayer comes from the
late Middle Ages, which is the period covered by this lesson. It is from a man named Heinrich Von
Laufenberg. He lived in the 15th century. I do not actually know anything about this man except that he
wrote this prayer. It is a very wonderful prayer and very appropriate. We will use this as we begin this
lesson. Let us pray.
“Lord, Jesus Christ, our Lord most dear, as Thou wast once an infant here, so give this child of Thine,
we pray, Thy grace and blessing day by day. Amen.”
I want to start with the idea of the medieval synthesis. I think one of the most astounding things about
the third 500 years of Christian years that we have been studying is this synthesis. It is a coming together
of Christ and culture, theology and philosophy, faith and learning. It is a harmony of life that brought the
sacred and the secular together in culture in Europe. It is something we have not experienced in history
since then. It is hard for us to know exactly how it would have been to have lived in that culture when
we live in a culture that is so fractured. In the medieval period there was a coming together, a synthesis.
Let me illustrate it in three ways: a book of theology, a book of poetry, and the example of the
architecture of the cathedrals.
First let me talk about a book from theology. That has to be Thomas Aquinas and the Summa
Theologiae. It is the great summa of Thomas in which all learning is united to the devotion of Christ and
the presentation of His truth. You can think of the Summa as a great building, a magnificent structure. It
is like one of those wonderful gothic cathedrals rising to the praise and glory of God.
As you move over into poetry, the great book is The Divine Comedy by Dante. It is a vision of divine
order and heavenly beauty. It incorporates everything on earth, in hell, in purgatory, and in heaven. I
trust that you will read The Divine Comedy. If you have not, you have probably at least read portions of
it. Read it again. There is an illustration of Dante with the Comedy, his book, being depicted. It is not an
easy book to read. But as you read it you will become more at home in the Middle Ages than anything
else you can do. Read it in Dorothy Sayers’ translation. There are many translations of The Divine
Comedy, but I think the one by Dorothy Sayers is the best. The footnotes from Dorothy Sayers are by far
the best of any of the editors and translators of The Divine Comedy. Dorothy Sayers was a very
competent theologian. She is more noted today for the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories, The Nine Tailors,
Murder Must Advertise, and The Five Red Herrings. I have read them many times because I can never
find any detective stories quite up to Dorothy Sayers. So I keep rereading her stories. But she wrote
those stories to make money so that she could translate The Divine Comedy into English and do the work
on the footnotes.
The third illustration is the glory of the cathedrals. In Thomas Aquinas there is a synthesis, in Dante
there is a coming together of many tings. The cathedrals illustrate the same point. Our textbook says,
“The final outcome was and still is impressive. Stones seemed to take flight and rise to heaven. The
entire building, inside and out, was a book in which the mysteries of faith and all creation were
reflected.” Perhaps you have seen the cathedrals and you know something of the beauty and significance
of those great constructions. For instance, the cathedral in France at Chartres has its twin towers pointing
upward to heaven. This is certainly God-directed architecture in contrast with the chapel in Florence,
which is an indication of renaissance- or humanistic-style of architecture. You enter the cathedral and
your eyes and spirit are immediately lifted up. The cathedral, like the Summa and like The Divine

Comedy, is a work in which learning, understanding, theology, Old Testament, New Testament, and
often many other sources of knowledge are brought together. There are at least 1,000 separate statues
carved into Chartres Cathedral. You can see a few of those in the main west entrance with its three
portals representing the Trinity. Everything stands for something in a cathedral. By walking through one
of those cathedrals, you can be impressed with the significance of this medieval synthesis. Dr. Hans
Bayer is a professor at this seminary, and he has written in his testimony, “During the first 17 years of
my life, there was little conscious interest and concern to consider the existence of God. Increasingly,
however, I became curious about transcendent realities which might underlie the reality perceived by
natural senses. A significant factor in this development was the study of the history, architecture, and
message of the Chartres Cathedral in France. As a result, I began theological studies out of mere
curiosity.” So Hans Bayer’s spiritual pilgrimage was begun and inspired by a visit to this church. That is
a very interesting and important statement.
We are talking about the medieval synthesis. There is another picture on the cover from Christian
History Magazine, Issue 49. This issue was called, “Everyday Faith in the Middle Ages.” It shows the
bishop blessing the Linden Fair in France. The bishop is in the church in the center of everything. Life is
surrounding the church: selling, people practicing various crafts, couples getting together and sharing
with one another, and all kinds of activity. Right in the center of it all is the church. It is a coming
together of life in the Middle Ages. That was the 13th century. But it was not long before the synthesis
began to break apart.
As we look at the very end of the Middle Ages, the last lesson before we move next semester into the
Reformation of the 16th century, we have to think of the breakup of the medieval synthesis. The
Reformation came, not at the point of the height of the medieval world, but during the period called the
waning of the Middle Ages. There are three theologians of significance. The first one is a transitional
figure who can belong to the earlier period but transitions into the later period. Then there are two
figures who are clearly in the later period. They are late medieval theologians.
The first theologian is John Duns Scotus. He was a Scottish, Franciscan scholastic theologian. He was in
many ways like Thomas Aquinas, following the teaching of Aquinas. In other ways he strikes out on his
own. He lived in different places. On his tomb in Cologne, Germany, are the words, “Scotland gave
birth to me, England received me, France taught me, Cologne retains me.” He was born in Scotland and
died in Germany. His contemporaries called him the Subtle Doctor. Once you have a great theologian
like Thomas Aquinas then about all you can do is refine some of the small points after Thomas. The
same thing happened after Calvin. The same thing happened after Carl Barth. Theologians became more
precise in attempting to refine and clarify the teachings of the master. Others, particularly the later
humanists who had very little sympathy or patience for scholasticism, found the theology of Duns
Scotes too subtle, too dense, and too obscure. It is interesting that we get the word “dunce” from Duns.
John Duns Scotus. He was not a dunce in the sense that we use the word. He was very brilliant. He was
so brilliant that people thought he was stupid. They did not understand what he was saying. So that word
comes into English curiously from this brilliant man who was not at all a dunce.
William of Occam was a true late medieval theologian. He was an English Franciscan. He got into a lot
of trouble with the church because he was in the strict movement of the Franciscans. The Franciscans
had divided into Franciscans who felt it was appropriate for the order to own property and Franciscans
who insisted on the absolute rule of Francis, which was not to own anything. William of Occam was of
the belief not to own anything. He faced the excommunication of the pope over that issue. William was
not loath to criticize the pope either. One of the famous things from William of Occam is what is called
Occam’s Razor. We read about that in our text, and perhaps you have heard about it. It is a principle in

philosophy and theology that Occam expressed in various ways. He said, “Whatever can be done with
fewer assumptions is done in vain with more.” If you can drop out some things, drop them out and do
not add them. The way I would translate that is “Keep it simple.” Just like a man shaves off his beard
because it is not needed, so the Occamist is shaving off all these principles, attitudes, and concepts that
are not needed. We will see in a few minutes what some of those were.
Gabriel Biel is called the last of the scholastics. He was German, a member of the Brothers of Common
Life, and a teacher of Luther. I wanted to get those three names before you. Then we will talk about late
medieval theology. It comes out of these late medieval theologians.
Theology became divided into two types of theology. There was the via antiqua, the old way, and the
via moderna, the new way. By the time just before the Reformation, there were theologians in both
camps. There were old way theologians and there are new way theologians. The turning point was in
1350. Paul Tilley calls it the turning point in the history of Western thought. We will answer why it is so
important and what happened by looking at three points. We will look at volunterism, nominalism, and
how salvation was understood.
Volunterism is the view that developed in the via moderna, the late medieval theology. It is the view that
the divine will take precedence over the divine intellect. The primary characteristic of God that people
used to think about was the divine intellect, what God knows and how He knows. They focused on
God’s rationality. In Thomas Aquinas you get a theology that is based on the rationality of God. He
gives us minds so that we can understand Him. We cannot exhaust Him or understand Him completely,
but there is a nice fit between what God is and how He made people. There is a fit in how God acts and
thinks and how we can understand how God acts and thinks. That view was challenged by volunterism,
which means that the divine will becomes primary. If you are going to think about God, do not think
first about God’s intellect. Think about God’s will, what He chooses to do. That shift took place so that
the divine will became the heart of theology over the divine intellect. Then suddenly God appeared to be
not so knowable as He was in the theology of the via antiqua. There were theistic proofs and other ways
in which we can know God and understand Him. The old way said, “Can we prove by human reason
that God exists?” The answer was, yes, even by human reason we can prove that God exists. It makes
sense for us to believe that God exists. There are the five theistic arguments; there was the ontological
proof of Anselm.
The modern way, though, said that we cannot, by thinking, studying, and developing arguments, prove
that God exists. God is unknowable. That might seem to lead into agnosticism, but it does not. The
modern way said that we do know God, but we only know Him by faith in the Bible. We do not know
Him by anything that we can do by human rationality. We can know a lot of other things: science,
history. But we cannot know God. There are two worlds: the world of rationality and the world of faith.
Those two came together in Thomas Aquinas in this great medieval synthesis. They were not the same,
but they supported each other. Now they are pulled apart. You have one world on one side, which is the
world you live in. It is science and history. Then there is the world of faith, which you believe and
accept on authority. Those two worlds do not touch. In Thomas Aquinas, they not only touch, but they
come close together even though they do not merge completely.
The other point of volunterism is that God should be defined as absolute power. This means God does
anything He chooses to do. Why does God do what He does? The old way would say that God wills
something because that is right, good, reasonable, and it makes sense. Cur deus homo. The incarnation
comes because of human sin and the necessity for a divine savior. So there has to be a God-man. The
God-man comes and He provides the atonement. Only God could provide this, but only man could pay

it. You can see how that makes sense. But the new way said that God wills something because He wills
it. There is no reason for the divine will other than the divine will. God did not have to save people
through the incarnation of Christ. He chose to do it what way, but He could have done it any way that
He chose. There was not just one way; there were an infinite number of ways.
Volunterism in the via moderna taught that the divine will takes precedence over the divine intellect. It
undermined rational arguments of the knowledge of God. It is not that God is hidden like the mystics
said; it is that God is unpredictable. God can do anything He chooses to do. All sorts of illustrations
were brought forth to try to illustrate this point, some absurd, some thoughtful. There was not complete
confusion, though, because the via moderna theologians were not heretics. They said they believed, but
they believed on the basis of sheer revelation and faith in the Bible. They could not understand or figure
it out. It is not faith seeking understanding. It is just faith believing. Understanding comes in the other
world; we understand science and other things. We can understand things there. We do not understand
anything with God; we just accept it and believe it. The result that you see is a breech between faith and
authority on the one hand and reason on the other hand. You live in two worlds. In the time of the
medieval synthesis, there was no division between those two worlds. You could think and believe at the
same time. Now you must think rationally in one world, but in the other world you must accept and
believe. The result is that what we know and what we believe, those two worlds, are being pulled apart.
There was a secular-religious division. The via moderna theologians were not saying not to be religious.
They said how you can be religious and how you live the rest of your life. Kenneth Clark, in the book
Civilization, says, “Medieval man could see things very clearly, but he believed that these appearances
should be considered as nothing more than symbols or tokens of an ideal order which was the only true
reality.” That leads us into another point, which is nominalism. Volunterism, as we have talked about, is
the view that the divine will takes precedence over the divine intellect.
Now we are going to talk about nominalism. “Medieval man could see things very clearly, but he
believed that these appearances should be considered as nothing more than symbols or tokens of an ideal
order which was the only true reality.” The second emphasis of the via moderna was nominalism, to
challenge the realism of that quotation from Kenneth Clark. Realism puts an emphasis on the importance
of universals. There is a universal concept, and individual things adhere to that universal concept. It is
important to know the concept and to understand the concept. It is not so important to study the
individual things. They just make up the universals. Universals are real; that is realism. It is ideas,
universals, and ideal order. Nominalism would challenge that. The nominalist and medieval theologians
like Occam would say universals are just words. They are just figures of speech. They are not real; they
exist only in the human mind. They are just names. Realism says these universal concepts are real.
Nominalism says these universal concepts are just names.
Let me illustrate that with pigs. There is a realist pig and a nominalist pig contemplating an ear of corn.
The realist pig sees the ear of corn, and he says, “That is part, just one individual thing, but what really
is important is the concept of corn. That is real.” The nominalist pig says, “The word corn is just a name,
and what is important is that individual ear of corn.” The nominalist pig is just about ready to eat that
corn! Realism affirms that there is a universal concept that could be called “cornness” somewhere. A
realist could never quite decide where that concept resided, but it was somewhere. The important thing
was to grasp that idea. Nominalism said that the idea of “cornness” was not really necessary. So
Occam’s Razor comes in here: cut off these things that you do not need. You do not need the idea of
“cornness” to understand an individual ear of corn. What difference does it make which way the corn is
viewed? Strangely enough, it made a huge amount of difference because the shift was from putting
stress on categories and universals to specifics and individuals. The medieval world was taken up with
these universals. Remember that Kenneth Clark said, “Medieval man could see things very clearly [he

could see corn and all kinds of things], but he believed that these appearances should be considered as
nothing more than symbols or tokens of an ideal order [what is really real there is not the ear of corn, but
the ideal order] which was the only true reality.” That is going to mean that corporate experiences are
central. This includes the idea of church, state, an order, and community. Individuals are not so
important. They are only part of that which is important.
The nominalist turned that completely on its head. They said to do away with the categories because
they are not real. They do not make any difference, and we do not need them. Let us concentrate on
individuals: this person, this ear of corn. That is going to make a difference, both in society and in
science. People began empirically to study individual things rather than theorizing about what holds
these things together in some sort of universal concept. Paul Tilley says, “Medieval realism maintains
the powers of being which transcend the individual. Medieval nominalism preserves [emphasizes] the
value of the individual.”
We have two big points. Volunterism was a different way of thinking about God in theology.
Nominalism was a different way of thinking about the world and things in it. The doctrine of salvation
in both the via antiqua and the via moderna was a mixture of grace and works. We have looked at that
already. Both are meritorious and semi-palagian. The old way differed from the new way significantly at
this one point, though. Thomas Aquinas said of the old way that you must do something in order to be
saved, but God starts the process. It is God’s grace plus your cooperation that produces more grace and
consequently enables you to cooperate further with that added grace. The new way is more palagian, not
less. This is because the new way says that you start the process with your own natural ability. You do
what lies within you, and added to your effort, feeble as it is, is God’s mighty grace. This enables you to
do something better, which produces more grace, and so on. In both systems there is a percentage
theology even though the old way is preferable to the new way.
There was also, however, a modern Augustinian school that rejected both ways in terms of theology. It
went back to the teachings of Augustine. We have already noted that in Thomas Bradwardine, who died
in 1349, and Gregory of Rimini in Italy, who died in 1358. In the 14th century there was a renewed
emphasis on the teaching of Augustine that salvation is by grace alone and not through our human effort.
In the 16th century was another mighty Augustinian revival in the teaching of Luther and Calvin.
That is a description of the breakup of the medieval synthesis regarding its theology. The church was
breaking up, too. We have studied this, so I will note those points in passing. There was the Babylonian
Captivity of the papacy in the 14th century. There was the papal schism of the late 14th and early 15th
centuries. There was failure to reform in head and members. This was an expression that was used
constantly by the church. They were saying that there was need to reform the church through and
through, from the pope all the way down to the least member of the church. There was much concern on
the part of many, many people. The church was breaking up and collapsing under its own ineptitude and
worldliness. Years of intrigue, infighting, and corruption had taken their toll on the papacy and the
church. The Italian poet Boccaccio told a story about a Jew who came to Rome and embraced
Christianity on the basis that any religion that could survive such iniquities of its leaders must be the true
faith. If Christianity could still exist after all of this, there is something amazing about it. Reform was
attempted, but it was too little and too late.
We now come to human life. As we come to the late medieval period, there are some great crises in
human life. You could say that is always true in every century, and it would be a true statement. But
seemingly on the eve of the Reformation, the troubles of human life were greater than before. Steven
Osment says, “As never before, not even during the century of the Roman empire’s collapse, Western

people walked through the valley of the shadow of death.” You can find crises and dangers, longing and
despair, illustrated in so many different ways, from the ancient Piers Plowman, the story of the collapse
of Christian culture, to the modern book by Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous 14th
Century. In her book she says, “It is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse
before.” What she does in that big and intriguing book is write a history of the 14th century and see that
as a distant mirror. In this 20th century, we can look back to the distant mirror and see that many of the
same problems that our culture faces today were problems that were faced in that calamitous 14th
century.
It is not a very good place to end a course, and the only thing I can say is, “To be continued…” next
semester in Reformation and Modern church history. Let me end this lecture and this semester’s work
this way: Barbara Tuchman said, “It is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through
worse before.” I do not find that particularly reassuring as I look at the next century soon to begin. But I
do find this reassuring from Isaiah 40:7-8, “The grass withers and the flowers fall because the breath of
the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the
Word of our God stands forever.”

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Ancient & Medieval Church History Lesson 1, page 1

Study of Church History

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

The Growth of the Christian Church

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© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

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Shepherd of tender youth, guiding in love and truth

Thou art our holy Lord, the all-subduing Word,

So now and till we die, sound we Thy praises high,

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

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Orthodoxy and Heresy

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Canon, Creed, and Bishops

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I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

Early Church Fathers

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People of the Early Church

Leader: “The Lord be with you.”

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© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary

© Summer 2006, Dr. David Calhoun & Covenant Theological Seminary