Communio Sanctorum – History of the Christian Church is a short-form podcast on the history of the Christianity Church from the First Century to the Modern Era. The podcast began as a desire to find a Church History podcast similar to the excellent podcast by Mike Duncan, The History of Rome. My hope was to find short episodes that can be easily listened to while doing chores, working out, going for a run, or listening on the way to work. As I searched the internet, I found long lectures of an hour or more taken from classes offered in schools. A few were interesting, but as continued listening, they often grew tedious. So I decided to do my own podcast. Here we are many years later and CS has had a notable growth in followers. In a desire to satisfy the needs of a growing audience, we’ve improved the website and I am in the process of re-recording the episodes of the first season.
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I was recently asked by a subscriber to my Church History podcast, Communio Sanctorum: History of the Christian Church, what the seven most important moments or events in Church History were. I decided that would be a great topic to write a blog post on. So here goes . . .
Narrowing major moments in Church History to just seven is a chore. It’s also going to reveal the personal theological bias of the one who attempts it. It probably inevitable that no matter how fair I am, I’m going to pick events that helped steer the course of history into a path I consider significant and jives with my particular theological slant. Nevertheless, I’ll try to steer a neutral course through the ages to highlight those moments that saw the Church either turn a major direction, or avoid that turn in favor staying in line with what’s come to be understood as Biblical orthodoxy.
I’ll start the list in the Post-Apostolic era. Listed in order by date, not importance . . .
The Council of Nicaea • AD 325
There had been councils prior to Nicaea, but because Christianity was under imperial ban, they were small and hasty affairs. Nicaea was convened by the Emperor Constantine after his supposed conversion some years before. His Edict of Milan in AD 313 officially brought an end to nearly three Centuries of sporadic, but often intense persecution. In a bid to unite his far-fling and disparate empire, Constantine hoped the new faith that was spreading rapidly, would help unify realm. But a recalcitrant bishop from Egypt named Arius had created a firestorm of controversy by fiddling with the nature of Jesus. His ideas were popular with some and had set church leaders against one another in a doctrinal tussle. The Council at Nicaea was convened by the Emperor to address the issue.
Nicaea was important for two reasons. First, a Roman Emperor, for the first time in 300 years, gave official sanction to The Church, rather than seek to wipe it out. Though Constantine didn’t weigh in on any of the Council’s decisions, he did convene the council and encouraged the bishops to their work, then threw a sumptuous banquet before sending them home. Second, the Council addressed Arius’ error by developing the first round in what would end up being a long process to produce precisely the right words to describe both the Trinity and the nature of Jesus. They declared that Jesus, as God’s Son was both fully God and fully man; that He was “of the same substance” as the Father.
The Council of Chalcedon • AD 451
This was the fourth of what are called the “Great Ecumenical Councils.” But by “ecumenical” don’t think of it as it’s come to be used in modern parlance; an attempt to unite various religions around a common set of values. In the early centuries of Church History, “ecumenical” referred to councils that called together church leaders from all across the Christian world. Their ecumenism was located, not in an attempt to find things to agree on, but because they already were united in them.
Chalcedon was located near Constantinople, the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire. The Council was called to finalize a debate that had been going on for several decades over exactly how to describe the nature of Jesus. A Council in Ephesus twenty years before had been a tragedy when the two sides in the debate seemed driven more by sectarian ambitions than concern for doctrinal orthodoxy. Chalcedon was convened in the hope of cleaning up the messy Ephesian aftermath. The Council settled on the formula that in the Incarnation, Jesus was fully God and fully Human. He had two natures in one person and these natures, the divine and human, were neither mixed nor in conflict.
While Chalcedon is notable for setting the orthodox understanding of Jesus’ dual nature for all time, it’s also the point at which the Church enforced a breach that would have long lasting consequences. Twenty years before at Ephesus, Nestorius, bishop of the church at Constantinople, who’d lost out in the debate with Cyril over how to understand the natures of Christ, was declared a heretic and banished. It’s doubtful Nestorius advocated what Cyril accused him of. But Cyril had more friends and argued more persuasively. Nestorius’ followers hung around after their champion was banished, hoping that the Ephesian tragedy would be reversed at Chalcedon. When it was instead reinforced, they followed their leader into exile. Banished from the Church in the West, they went East where they founded a long and rich tradition and churches stretching all the way across Asia to China. Sadly, this history of the Nestorian Church of the East is largely ignored by modern treatments of Church history.
The Benedictine Rule • AD 540
While monasticism began as a popular movement in Christianity with the life of Anthony in Egypt in the mid-third century, it wasn’t till the mid-sixth century that it was organized into a system that could be reproduced in many places.
Benedict of Nursia was born around 480 and educated at Rome. Offended by the rampant immorality he found there, he left his studies to live as a hermit in a cave 40 miles away. His piety impressed others so he was invited to lead others in a kind of communal hermit lifestyle. But his discipline was more extreme than they could endure. Learning from each of these failures, Benedict tried again in forming a new work at Monte Casino. He spent the rest of his life there. About 20 years after founding the monastery, he penned the Rule for the monastery. It became the constitution for many other monasteries which became part of the growing Benedictine order. Every monastery was directed by an abbot and was to be self-supporting, rather than depending solely on the charity of others. Benedict hoped to provide a place where ordinary people could serve God by serving one another and grow spiritually through a balanced life of work, study, and prayer.
Later monastic movements arose seeking to update the Benedictine Rule, or to reform abuses that crept in over time. But it’s Benedict’s work that established a clear pattern for monastic life that became a major feature of the Church scene. During the Middle Ages, monasteries became storehouses of the scholarship of the past; learning restored in the Renaissance.
The East-West Schism • AD 1054
Many students of Church History are confused over the term “The Great Schism.” The cause of that confusion is that it refers to two different events with historians arguing vehemently over which event it belongs to. The first was a split that occurred in 1054 when the Eastern Orthodox Church officially split from the Western Roman Catholic Church. The second was an internal squabble in Roman Catholicism over where the Pope ought to ruler from—France or Italy. Since the first split divided the church between two massive groups that’s continued to today, and the second was eventually patched up and only lasted several decades, the title “Great Schism” seems best applied to the 1054 break.
The break-up came about from the Roman’s pope’s over-reach. The churches at Rome and Constantinople vied with each other for supremacy for years. Rome was the seat of the Empire’s original glory. Constantinople was the new capital, where the seat of government lay. Rome claimed it held prime place because its leader was the direct spiritual descendant of Peter. Constantinople countered that its leader’s was no less a spiritual descendant of the Apostle’s, and so of Christ, than Rome’s. When the Roman pope sent emissaries to Constantinople demanding the church there honor his universal authority over church affairs, they balked. Constantinople, which had honored the Roman pope as a “first among equals,” held that church matters ought to be settled by a council of bishops rather than the autocratic rule of s single man. They refused to grant Rome’s bishop undisputed dominion. So, denying the ultimatum, the pope’s emissaries slapped a writ of excommunication on Constantinople’s bishop! He responded in kind. The break between East and West was now official.
The rift became wider as the years passed. At the time of the rift, the cultures and theologies of the East and West were already markedly divergent. Now that there was no longer any ostensible connection, the differences became even more distinct. The Eastern church developed into the Eastern, Greek, and Russian Orthodox Churches while the Western Roman Church became the Roman Catholic Church. Relations between East and West depended on the attitudes of the various leaders at Rome and Constantinople. They remained friendly enough during the 11th Century that the Eastern Emperor appealed to the West for help in beating back the Seljuk Turks who’d conquered a large part of the Middle East and Anatolia, the Byzantine Empires homeland. The West reply was the first three Crusades. But the fourth in 1204 ended up conquering Constantinople itself and made for a centuries long break between East and West.
Peter Abelard Pens Sic and Non • 1122
Whereas the remarkable moments we’ve considered so far are likely to be familiar to those with a passing acquaintance with church history, this one may be more obscure. I chose it as a notable moment because of the far-reaching impact Peter Aberlard had. His work, along with a few others, was instrumental in the development in medieval theology known as Scholasticism. Scholasticism then produced two far reaching outcomes; the Reformation, a reaction against a Scholasticism run amuck, and much later, Theological Liberalism, which took the central idea of Scholasticism to an absurd end.
As a young man, Abelard roamed France learning from the master teachers of the day. He did more than listen. Being of keen intellect, he challenged those he caught in factual or philosophical error. He eventually settled in as a lecturer in Paris, where he attracted a host of students.
In a tract titled Sic et Non, meaning Yes & No, he posed over a hundred questions from Christian teaching, then answered them using quotations from Scripture, the Church Fathers, and pagan classics. His point was that there were many fronts for discussion and inquiry that needed to be resolved. Abelard said, “The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning.… For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at the truth.” This idea of using doubt to fuel the quest for knowledge was common among the ancient Greeks but dangerous ground to medieval Europeans. Abelard had a few fans but many more detractors alarmed by his bold questioning of tradition. When the heat of opposition increased, he decided it wise to lay low for a while and retreated to a monastery.
But his supporters eventually persuaded him to return to his pursuit of reason as a tool to develop theology. Abelard again fell out with the religious conservatives, most notably, the widely respected Bernard of Clairvaux who managed to have Abelard branded as a heretic and excommunicated.
Though he was now out of the way, no one could stop the growth of the seeds he planted. Schools popped up all over Europe employing his dialectical method of addressing literally every aspect of theology. Less than a century after his death, universities flourished at Paris, Orleans, and Montpellier in France; across the English Channel at Oxford & Cambridge; & at Bologna & Padua in Italy, all of them aflame with the ideas Abelard had sparked.
Along with lectures, teachers used what were called disputations. Two or more masters debated a text using Abelard’s question-&-answer approach. This was how Scholasticism developed. It arose from the pain-staking process of arriving at logical conclusions through questioning, examining, and arranging details into a system of logic. Scholastic disputations often caused heated clashes and bitter feelings. Wars of logic ran for years between different scholars, with supporters of each cheering their hero on with loud whistling and stomping of their feet. The point was, students were learning to think. The unquestioned acceptance of traditional authorities was no longer assured. Now, conclusions had to square both with accepted doctrine AND reason.
But the further these discussions went the more they departed from the realm of the common person and the concerns of their daily lives. Theology used to be the master science that sought to connect God and man. Under Scholasticism, theology became an esoteric intellectual playground for academics who debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Scholastics became detached hermits in ivory towers the average church goer could not relate to. This preoccupation with an opaque theology colored the church with a reputation that it was disinterested in the affairs of its people. Farmer Joe couldn’t care less if God could make a rock so big even He couldn’t lift it, and the Scholastic priest eventually couldn’t care less about Farmer Joe’s need for rain. Upshot: Priest and people were alienated. The result was the Reformation.
Then, much later, Protestants themselves adopted Abelard’s emphasis on reason in their own version of Scholasticism, that morphed into an anti-supernaturalism that redefined historic orthodoxy into Theological Liberalism.
Abelard and his work Sic et Non reveal the far reaching consequences of an idea. For this reason, I count Abelard’s career as a major moment in Church History.
Martin Luther Posts 95 Thesis at Wittenberg • 1517
Since so much has been written on this and it is a moment most readers will have a familiarity with, I’ll keep my comments brief.
What makes October of 1517 in Wittenberg of major importance isn’t just what came after. Martin Luther’s posting of his theses and the firestorm it generated was preceded by a couple centuries of reform movements and groups. The Conciliar Movement, Brethren of the Common Life, the career of Bohemian priest Jan Hus, as well as a handful of reform-minded popes all leant weight to the call for change. Luther was able to accomplish what he did because of these pioneers and early advocates for reform.
The change affected by the Reformation is so dramatic it’s difficult to calculate it all. It didn’t just see the emergence of a major new movement within Christendom. It led to a major revamp of the Roman Church. Modern Catholicism is in many ways the result of the Council of Trent.
The Second Great Awakening • 1800
There are several periods of remarkable revival that could be pointed to as key moments in history. I select the Second Great Awakening both for its surprising commencement and its global impact.
When the breeze of revival began in 1792, things were desperate on the religious scene in both the Europe and the USA. On college campuses, once devoted to training ministers, it was now difficult to find a single student who openly identified as a believer. Notre Dame cathedral was turned into a Temple of Reason, a notorious prostitute queened as the goddess of reason on her altar. Critics rejoiced in the assumption the Christian Faith was about to be ushered out of human affairs. Their celebration was premature. A sweeping renewal waited in the wings.
While there had been several small prayer meetings and movements in the decade prior to the revival, there was little organization prayer. Revival began in various places among relatively unknown preachers. Slowly but surely the revival spread until the entire American frontier was ablaze with revival and its expression in often raucous camp-meetings. While the revival followed a different form in Europe, it was not less intense and impactful.
Millions were added to existing denominations. New denominations were born as well. Mission movements were launched and social transformation was propelled. Effects of the Revival were felt all over the world over the following decades.
While many more moments and movements could be listed as significant for the course of Church History, these stand out in my mind as the more significant.
Enjoy your on-going study in this fascinating subject.
Think I’m on safe ground when I say à Those listening to this are mostly likely students of history. Your knowledge of the past is probably more comprehensive than the average person. And of course, the range of knowledge among subscribers to CS spans the gamut from extensive to, well, not so much. Yet still, more than the average.
If asked to make a list of the main thinkers of the past; philosophers, theologians, and such like, of Western tradition, we’d get the usual. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Seneca, Cicero, Virgil. Clement, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas.
A name far less likely to make that list is the subject of this episode. Though he’s not oft mentioned in modern treatments of church and philosophical history, his work was a major contributor to medieval thought, which was the seedbed form which the modern world rose.
His full name was Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus. But he’s known to us simply as Boethius.
Born to a Roman senatorial family sometime between 475 & 80 in Italy, Boethius was left an orphan at an early age. He was adopted by another patrician, Memmius Symmachus, who instilled in the young man a love of literature and philosophy.
Symmachus made sure Boethius learned the vanishing skill of literacy in Greek. With the split between the Eastern & Western Roman Empires now settled, and the Fall of the Western Empire to the Goths, it seems Greek, primary language of the East, fell to disuse in favor of Latin. In the West, Greek became increasingly the language of scholars and those suspected of lingering loyalty to the East.
Nevertheless, Boethius’ familiarity with the classics commended him to the new rulers of the West – the Ostrogoths. Their king, Theodoric the Great, appointed the 35 year old Boethius as consul. While the office of consul was technically linked to the ancient Roman Republican Consul, by the 6th C, it was an office far more of image than substance. Still an important position politically, but wielding none of the authority it once had. By Boethius’ time, that is the early 6th C, being a senator meant little more than, “This is someone to keep your eye on as a potential future leader.” Being made a consul was like making the finals in the last round of the playoffs. But with an emperor seated on the throne, all rule and authority was concentrated in the royal court. A 5th & 6th C Roman Consul was more a political figurehead; a polite fiction; a nod to the glory of ancient Rome and her amazing feat of world conquest. From Augustus on, the Roman Senate and her consuls steadily lost place to the new imperial bureaucracy. After Augustus, who moved swiftly to relocate and consolidate all power within his executive office, Roman emperors turned to the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard as the new go to guy in executing Imperial policy. By the time of Boethius, that office had evolved into what was called the Magister Officiorum; head of all government and judicial services.
When Boethius’s term as consul was up, his two sons were appointed co-consuls in his place, one for the West, the other for the East. He was then promoted into the role of Magister Officiorum – the highest administrative position in King Theodoric’s court.
And that’s where the fun begins. à Well, it wasn’t so fun for Boethius. I probably ought to say; that’s where the political shenanigans and devious machinations began. For it was there, serving Theodoric, that Boethius ran afoul of the ambitions of powerful men.
They used Boethius’ faith to bring him down.
And here we’re back to the old Arian-Nicaean Controversy. You see, while Arianism had been debunked and expelled from the Western Church long before all this, it found a home among the Goths of the East; the Ostrogoths, who now ruled what was left of the Western Roman Empire. King Theodoric was an Arian, as were his Ostrogoth pals, many of whom were jealous that an outsider like Boethius had the highest post they could aspire to. Oh, and don’t forget that Boethius is fluent in Greek, the language they speak over in the Eastern Empire. Whose Emperor, Justinian I was openly known to aspire to reclaim Italy from Theodoric. Oh, and to add fuel to the fires of controversy & suspicion, those Easterners are also Orthodox, Nicaean Christians, people who’ve systematically wiped out Arians.
Boethius’ was doing a stellar job as Magister Officiorum, so they knew they couldn’t attack him directly. They went instead after his less well-connected friends, accusing them of conspiring with Justinian in his designs on Italy. They knew Boethius would come to their defense, and that would be enough to cast a pall over his imperial favor. The ruse worked, and Boethius was arrested, hauled off to an estate in Pavia, where he spent a year in confinement, then quietly executed when the news cycle shifted to other more pressing matters. Ha! Today, the news cycle is down to about 5 days. Back then, it was several months.
Now, you may be wondering, what does Boethius have to do with CHURCH history? I’m so glad you asked.
Boethius’ main contribution to history in general and to Church history in particular lies in his impact on the relationship between theology and philosophy. He’s regarded by many as the last of the ancient philosophers.
Boethius adored the ancient Greeks. It was his life’s ambition, to translate the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin. He died before he was able, but he made a good start. His singular contribution to history is his serving as a bridge between the classical and medieval ages for understanding Aristotelean thought, especially as it regards Aristotle’s work in LOGIC. Boethius recast Aristotle’s principles in terms that Medieval Europeans could grasp. His work then was foundational to many other theologians and philosophers for hundreds of years. One can argue that without Boethius, Roman Scholasticism, might not have happened, or at least it would have adopted a very different form. Boethius provided much of the vocabulary of medieval theology and philosophy. He’s sometimes called “the first scholastic” because in his work titled Opuscula Sacra, written to defend orthodox theology, he applied Aristotelian logic, seeking to harmonize faith & reason – the great task of later Scholastics.
But it was during his year of imprisonment in Pavia, as he awaited execution that Boethius wrote his most well-known volume, The Consolation of Philosophy, regarded as the single most influential work on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, & the last great Western work of the Classical Period.
Written in 523, The Consolation of Philosophy presents a conversation between himself and Lady Philosophy, who’s come to console him. It’s essentially a theodicy; an examination of the age-old dilemma addressing the challenge posed by the dual proposition of the existence of evil & God’s omnipotence and love. A theodicy seeks to answer the question: If the God of the Bible is real, why is there evil in the world; a potent question for a man like Boethius, an innocent man awaiting execution by the wicked.
During Lady Philosophy’s discourse, subjects like predestination and free will are examined. The Consolation isn’t an overtly Gospel centered work. Jesus isn’t even mentioned. A rather generic God is assumed; a deity who certainly aligns loosely with The God of Scripture; but a distinctive Christian Trinitarian God isn’t defined. For this reason, some historian claim Boethius wasn’t a Christian. But that assessment simply doesn’t square with the rest of his life, his other writings, or why he was accused of treason. His enemies went after him precisely because his orthodoxy raised Arian suspicion.
So, what are we to make of the Consolation’s lack of Gospel content? Surely the answer is found in Boethius’ intended audience. He wasn’t writing to or for Christians, showing them how to link faith and reason. He wrote to convince pagans that real philosophy, the kind that led to a better life, the BEST life, doesn’t flow in tandem with paganism. The best life is a moral life, where justice and moderation are virtues. It was no doubt Boethius’ hope, once pagans realized pagan religion hindered a better life, they’d investigate Christianity, because at that time in Europe those were the only two options, the only available worldviews: Christianity & Paganism. Take down paganism, and people would move to the only thing left – The Gospel.
Taken as a whole, leaders demonstrate a wide array of skills and talent. While great leaders often exhibit some consistent marks, there’s simply no set script they follow. No inventory of essential traits all must possess to excel. Indeed, some great leaders demonstrate contradictory traits from each other. One is gregarious, another reserved. Once is upbeat and energetic, another taciturn and subdued.
Many of the Church’s great leaders have been brilliant, their intelligence ranking them as a genius. Others, while being astute, could not be given that lofty epithet. Some had skills that enabled them to accomplish so much, their influence was felt for decades, even centuries, after. Pope Gregory I was of that category. Bruce Shelly says Gregory combined great executive ability with a warm sympathy for the needs of others. Gregory was such a good leader and man, history has given him the title “Gregory the Great.” His tenure as Pope laid the foundations for Medieval Christianity. Since religion played such a central role in European society, Gregory was one of the main architects of Medieval Europe.
Born in 540 to a well-established Roman senatorial family, Gregory was groomed from a young age for civil service. But a career in politics at that time was an inordinately difficult proposition. The City of Rome and the lands it had once held hegemony over in the Italian peninsula were like a torn-up soccer ball kicked back and forth by one group after another. The Visigoths were replaced by the Byzantines, who were booted by the Lombards, who did their best to leave Italy a smoldering wreck.
As Gregory’s father had been Prefect of Rome & Gregory had trained for govt service, the Eastern Emperor Justin II appointed Gregory to replace the prefect when he retired. He was 33. In all likelihood, it was Justin’s wife Sophia who made the appointment, since the Emperor had gone insane and she was ruling in his place. Not long after Gregory took the office, the Byzantine governor of the region and the reigning Pope, died.
Like many young men who train for a position because it’s expected of them, Gregory found that worldly power didn’t appeal to him in the least. He much preferred the solitude of the monastery. So after a few years as prefect, he resigned. When his father passed, leaving Gregory as the heir to a wealthy estate, he used a good part of his fortune to found 7 monasteries, gave the rest to the poor, and turned his mansion into yet another monastery dedicated to St. Andrew; following the Benedictine order. Eschewing all trappings of worldly power that had attended his rank as prefect, Gregory devoted himself to a rigorous asceticism; his diet consisted solely in raw vegetables & fruit. He wore a hair-shirt, prayed most of the night, and applied himself to a diligent observance of his monastic duties. His asceticism was so extreme, it began to weaken his physical frame.
Then, in 579, at the age of 39, Pope Pelagius II made Gregory a deacon in the Roman church. This was a position of tremendous influence because the 7 deacons were commissioned with administrative oversight of the Roman Church. Gregory was sent as a papal ambassador to Constantinople, which of course at that time was the new center of what was left of the Roman Empire.
He returned to Rome 6 years later and was appointed as abbot over the St. Andrew monastery. Gregory was more than content to serve out what was left of his life in that role. But wider events hijacked his plans.
Early in 590, Rome, already hammered by war and flood, found itself in the teeth of a new pestilence; the Black Death, Plague. Rome’s streets emptied as the carts piled higher with the dead. Even Pope Pelagius succumbed.
The papal chair remained empty for half a year. Then, Gregory was elected as the new Pope. Instead of rejoicing in his selection, he fled, taking refuge in a nearby forest. Trackers were sent to find him and haul him back. Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be consecrated in the Fall of 590 with Constantinople’s approval.
Gregory immediately called for several processions over the next 3 days to demonstrate the City’s repentance and make a plea for divine intervention. Not long after, the plague seemed to make a reversal. Slowly but surely, life made halting strides of returning to normal. But no sooner did hope rekindle than it was once again squashed under the hooves of the Lombard’s who ransacked Italy and laid siege to Rome.
The Lombards shattered what little was left of the old Roman order. By the time they rode away, the only institution still standing was The Church. All civil govt had been swept off the board, while the Church was still lead by an organization staffed with capable men. Gregory threw himself into the task of restoring order and providing for the needs of people wherever that order was needed.
The power & influence of the Medieval Papacy is in large part due to Gregory’s prolific work during this period of recovery. He was literally, everywhere, doing everything. By everywhere, I don’t mean geographically; I’m referring to the fields into which he stepped. Though never aspiring for the position of Pope, when once there, he USED the position to bring order out of the chaos of the previous years. He took a lead in civil affairs; a hand in economic & military matters.
As the Lombards moved on Rome, Gregory had to address the defense of central Italy. He appointed a military governor, and arranged a truce. This positioned the Pope as the most important Italian representative to the Lombards. It also inserted the Church squarely into Italy’s political fortunes. That influence would only grow from that point forward, spreading till it touched most of Europe during the Middle Ages. Beginning with Gregory, the pope became an important political figure.
The Church of Rome owned some 1800 sq miles of land in southern Italy. The administration of all this property had been simple when it was productive. But after the devastation left by the Lombards, the survivors were left without a means of support. The survival of thousands in whole cities and communities became the responsibility of Pope Gregory. A task he managed to pull off with aplomb.
He engaged the role of being a leader & inspiration to church leaders everywhere. He wrote a manual on church leadership called the Pastoral Rule – exhorting bishops to be a good example of the truths they taught.
The amount of work he accomplished is all the more remarkable when we’re confronted with his age and health. His previous and concurrent asceticism saw him often confined to bed. In 601 he wrote a friend, “For a long time, I have been unable to rise from my bed. I am tormented by the pains of gout; a kind of fire seems to pervade my whole body: to live is pain; and I look forward to death as the only remedy.” But Gregory kept such comments limited only to a few close confidants.
It was also during Gregory’s term that the power & centrality of the Roman Papacy took another leap forward. This began in earnest with Leo the Great 150 yrs before Gregory’s time. Gregory moved the ball further down the field. It all took place in a skirmish with the Eastern Patriarch, John IV.
The Patriarch of Constantinople liked to refer to himself as the “universal bishop” and often did so in official correspondence. The title had been fixed to the Patriarchate by the Eastern Emperors Leo and Justinian, and confirmed in the Synod of Constantinople in 588.
This irritated Gregory to no end. He condemned such approbations as the sinister outworking of a demonically-inspired pride. Gregory urged the Emperor to revoke such titles and refused further communiques with John till he renounce such exalted terms.
Historians have debated whether Gregory was provoked by the lack of humility such titles evinced, or that it was only the Roman Pope who deserved them. The jury’s still out on the matter. It is true that there was a centuries long contest between Popes and Patriarchs over who was the rightful leader of the Christian Church & Faith. That debate led to the eventual E/W Rift manifest today in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
The fact that Gregory preferred to be known simply as “the servant of the servants of God,” does suggest he simply rejected lofty titles, rather than John’s sole claim to them. When he was once addressed as “universal pope,” he quickly and vehemently denied the approbation, saying: “I’ve said that neither to me nor to any one else ought you to write anything of the kind. Away with words which inflate pride and wound charity!”
Gregory’s favored title ended up becoming a standard title for subsequent Popes. Though it seems rather forced when the man it’s attributed to stands decked out in his complete papal regalia; jewel encrusted stole, hat, crozier; the value all of which would buy a whole kingdom.
It’s fascinating that while eschewing lofty titles, Gregory expanded the power of the Pope to the extent he did. So influential did the Popes become that they began to take on ever more elevated labels.
Gregory was the first Pope to have been a monk. Moving from the monastery to basilica in no way changed his habit of personal austerity. He moved many fellow monks he knew ot be men of marked integrity into leadership positions.
Earlier in Gregory’s life, he’d desired to replant the Roman Church in England as a missionary monk. Once he became Pope, he sent 40 brother Benedictine monks under the leadership of Augustine to accomplish the task. They did so, at Kent. It’s that work that provides the British-American Church with its connection back to the early church.
A few moments ago I said Gregory may not have possessed the intellectual chops as some other church leaders. His talent lay far more in his administrative abilities. But that’s not to say Gregory was a theological slouch. Far from it. He took quite seriously his call to defend the faith. He looked to Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose as His primary theological influences. Though Gregory devised no new theological formulas, he played the role of amalgamator. He took the common faith of the day as expressed by the councils and creeds, & expanded it to incorporate some of the more popular beliefs, practices, even superstitions of the common people. This then became the Christianity of Medieval Europe.
Gregory said The Fall affected all Adam’s descendants; it weakened but did not utterly destroy their moral and spiritual freedom. Once someone is moved by grace, she/he can cooperate with it to perform genuine good works.
Gregory said through baptism, God forgives sin previously committed. But sins committed after baptism have to be atoned for by doing penance, which includes sincere repentance, confession, and doing good works. BUT, the believer could not know if she/he had done enough penance for sin until they arrived in heaven.
In that needed atonement for sin, people had the potential help of the martyrs & saints, who could be invoked to plead for them with Christ. This belief arose long before Gregory, but he popularized and made it a central feature of medieval church practice. Gregory cast Jesus as a stern judge, the angels arrayed around Him as agents of divine retribution, while the saints, by virtue of their humanity, were more inclined to assist poor mortals.
Gregory also encouraged the veneration of relics; the supposed remains of saints. Things like locks of hair, teeth, fingernails, clothing. All these were deemed to possess special power & efficacy to provide protection.
If proper penance wasn’t provided before death, then sins could always be expunged in Purgatory after death, Gregory claimed.
Gregory regarded the Mass as the supreme miracle of the Faith. In which the bread and wine were turned into the literal body and blood of Christ. Feeding on them imparted grace directly to the soul & nourished the streams of eternal life. The power of the Eucharist lies in its being understood as a present atoning sacrifice. The priest offers it for sins; not the sins of all people as Christ did at the Cross, but only for those who participate in the Mass. It has the same effect as penance, offsetting a certain amount of suffering generic penance would require. So, Masses could benefit the dead suffering in Purgatory since it would lessen their debt.
Gregory, along with the earlier Popes Celestine I & Sixtus III, was one of the first church leaders to organize the Roman liturgy and its music. He established a center for the learning & singing of plainsong in Rome called the Schola Cantorum. Plainsong, or chant, as it’s more commonly called, was already in use since the time of Celestine I. Gregory’s work in finalizing the style of plainsong has been memorialized in the phrase Gregorian chant. But recent research has cast doubt on Gregory’s contribution to the tradition of plainsong in Church use.
During the early-mid 19th C, an interesting phenomenon spread over the thinking of parts of Western Europe and the US. It was a general negativity about the present, but a strong optimism about the future. In some places, it was almost giddy. The current political and economic situation might be a mess and the number of social ills piling higher. But the Enlightenment’s promise of a bright new day gripped the imagination of thousands. The recent boom in technological progress with things like steam engines, cotton gins, and spinning machines promised endless new products, markets, and employment. Medicine was making dramatic steps forward, promising less pain and longer life. Trains & steamships conquered distance in a way the generation before could not have imagined.
“Yeah, today might be tough; but hang on, because tomorrow is going to be awesome.”
While that mentality was spotty in Western Europe, it was pretty much a blanket across the United States. European immigrants remarked on the nearly euphoric positivity of their new homeland. This positivism was largely the product of the pervasive Evangelical Revivalism that owned most American churches and a good portion of the population. That Evangelicalism conveyed the idea that conversion to Faith in Christ conveyed a new heart that sought after holiness. People began to reason that that new heart ought to pursue holiness in a new world shaped by holiness. All this spilled into numerous reform efforts; attempts to remedy past grievances and address the growing number of new challenges industrialization had produced. For progress did not come cheap. As Charles Dicken’s wrote, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”
So, Evangelicals went to work on reforming society.
Charles Finney championed abolition as being part & parcel of the Christian faith. He went so far as to refuse Communion to slave-holders.
Stephen Caldwell called for new tariffs to protect American wages and to fund the Christianizing of the public school system.
In 1816, the American Bible Society proposed distributing Bibles as a moral and spiritual antibiotic aimed to eradicate Theological Liberalism and any goofy ideas brought over by Immigrants.
The American Sunday School Union set up dozens of schools in urban centers to educate the growing pool of child laborers.
By 1858, Evangelicals in NYC had established 76 missions to minister to the needs of the urban poor.
While most reform-minded Evangelicals engaged the culture, a smaller group decided to pursue holiness by withdrawing from society to form separatist communes. Nathaniel Hawthorne labelled these religiously-motivated separatists “Come Outers.”
One example is a group known as the Shakers. Their original name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. They began in the mid-18th C as a splinter group from the Quakers who at the time were moving away from their reputation as enthusiasts of ecstatic forms of worship. The Shakers didn’t just want to maintain that reputation; they wanted to ramp it up. So they became knowns as the Shaking Quakers. They were lead by the ardent and eloquent preaching of Jane Wardley who said the Millennium was about to begin with the Return of Christ. In preparation for the Return of Christ, they gave themselves to strict celibacy and a remarkable egalitarianism that saw a notable influence of women in the leadership of the group.
Shakers settled in colonial America but never saw many members until this era of reform in the mid-19th C when their community grew to its largest number, about 6000. The policy of celibacy as well as changes in society saw the eventual dwindling of the Shaker movement to just a single community today.
Another group of Come Outers were the Millerites.
William Miller was a well-off farmer and Baptist lay preacher in NE New York. He became convinced Christ would return sometime between 1843 & 44. His calculations convinced a large number of people across many churches and denominations. They set the date of March 21st, 1843 as the likely day Jesus would Return.
But Millerism, as it came to be known, was rejected by most clergy. By the beginning of 1843, the movement had hardened around enthusiasts and those who opposed it. Advocates of Millerism left their churches to form a new group of like-minded supporters. It hardened even more when after the evening of March 21st, Millerites donned special ascension robes and waited the big event. Some had gone so far as to give away their property. When the morning of the 22nd dawned, they were supremely bummed out. Because – and I don’t think I’m giving anything away here – Jesus in fact had NOT returned!
Miller did some quick figuring and said, he’d missed some minor calculations and needed to revise the date to April 18th. On April 19th, he re-upped by saying it wasn’t the days he’d gotten wrong, but the year. It would be March 21st, 1844; then Oct. 2nd. But by then the Millerites were a laughing stock and no new dates were set.
But instead of calling it quits and going back to their old denominations, the Millerites formed a new one – called the Adventists. In a bit of revisionism, they said that Christ really HAD come at the aforesaid & appointed time, but in Spirit, rather than in flesh. By 1863, the Adventists had 125 churches. They made themselves odious to many Americans by declaiming the US as the Great Whore of Babylon, doomed to the plagues of Revelation.
But the most extreme form of come-outerism was the 1830 emergence of the Mormons, under the leadership of Joseph Smith. Taking the name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Smith claimed to have unearthed a record of a Pre-Colombian group of immigrants who’d had travelled all the way from the Middle East to settle in the New World. They fashioned an extensive civilization in the Americas but were wiped out by other Native Americans.
The Golden Plates Joseph Smith unearthed contained the record of that lost civilization, with a proper understanding of the Christian Faith. Smith claimed the Church as it was, was a horrible corruption – something God had never intended it become. Mormonism claimed to restore the Gospel Jesus and the Apostles taught.
But there was little connection between Joseph Smith’s vision of the Gospel and the Bible, so most churches and denominations opposed Smith’s emerging movement. They moved from New York to the Midwest. But when hostility broke out there, in 1847 they decided to make the big leap and head to a place all their own in the consummate come-outer move. They headed west and settled along the Great Salt Lake in what would one day be the State of Utah. They might as well have settled on the moon.
While each of these come-outer sects was radically different in its theological leanings, what united them was their short term pessimism about the world in which they lived. That’s how they justified their break with society. But they maintained a long term optimism about their ability, once they’d come out of a corrupt society, to found a healthy & holy community that could achieve it’s grand vision of establishing, if not heaven on Earth, then at least an outpost of it.
And each reprised a story that dates all the way back to the Desert Fathers we talked about early in Season 1. The hermits, who, having swallowed the dualism of Greek philosophy, fled the City to dwell alone in caves for years or sit atop a pillar for weeks. They understood holiness as physical separation from the world.
If that’s what Jesus had meant by being holy, that’s what He’d have done. It’s not. Jesus was to be found with people; often the kind of people least likely to show up at synagogue or church. Yes, Jesus spent time alone in the wilderness, but only in preparation for the City. He wasn’t a man OF the City, but He was IN it; where the love of God for needy souls could be seen and passed off to others. His strategy for reform wasn’t to withdraw FROM the world, it was to enter INTO it.
Secular reform movements copied religious come-outers in creating communes dedicated, not to a religiously-fueled spirituality, but a philosophically-based morality. Transcendentalists founded Brook Farm as an experiment in communal living. The Northampton Association organized an economic industrial cooperative. Oberlin, Ohio, was organized as a colony and college, with the college based on a philosophy of self-sufficient manual labor.
The American obsession with reform drew criticism from some. They saw it as the dark side of democracy. Brownson thought all the enthusiasm for reform was the logical consequence of Protestant individualism. Author Nathaniel Hawthorne who coined the term “come outers” said most reform was based on an overestimation of human nature.
Alexis de Tocqueville, by far the shrewdest observer of Americanism in the 19th C regarded the reform impulse as a mark of the health of American democracy.
In this episode of CS, we’ll take a look at something many of our listeners are familiar with; at least, they think their familiar with it – Evangelicalism. Not a few of them would describe themselves as Evangelicals. But if pressed to describe what exactly that means, they’d be hard pressed to say. And they have little to know awareness of the historical roots of the movement they are indeed a part of. // So, let’s start off with a little definition of terms.
Evangelicalism is a global movement within Protestantism that crosses denominational lines. Instead of Evangelicals having a comprehensive and extensive list of doctrinal distinctives, they rally round a core of just a few. At the heart of their faith is a conviction that the Gospel, or Evangel, from which they draw their name, is that salvation is by God’s grace, received by faith in Jesus Christ’s atoning work. Salvation commences with a conversion experience called, being “born again.” They hold to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word and the priority of sharing the Gospel message.
As a discernable movement, Evangelicalism took form in the 18th C. But it didn’t rise out of a vacuum. There were numerous trends that merged to for m it. Most important to Evangelicalism’s rise was John Wesley and the Methodists, the Moravians under the leadership of Count Zinzendorf and their community at Hernhutt, and Lutheran Pietism.
As we saw in Season 1, Pietism emerged in Germany in the 17th C as a reaction to a moribund Lutheran church. It protested the cold formalism the institutional church had adopted under Protestant scholasticism. Pietists called for a faith that experienced a real relationship with God. It set high standards of piety for both clergy and laity. Pietism crossed all lines in terms of those who embraced it; from those who stayed in the State Church and followed the old rituals, to separatists who rejected such trappings.
Pietism jumped its Lutheran hothouse to influence other groups. When it entered the Presbyterian realm in Britain, it took on a concern for Protestant orthodoxy, as well as an openness to revivalism, a tradition that went all the way back to the 1620s. Puritans added an emphasis on the need for personal experience of conversion to be a part of the church, as well as a dedication of individuals to the study of Scripture.
With this involvement of Lutherans, Pietists, Presbyterians and Puritans, we’d assume High-Church Anglicans would have stayed far away. But the movement’s appeal attracted even some of them. They brought to the burgeoning movement of Evangelicalism several traits that would mark the movement. One was a concern for recapturing the essence of “primitive Christianity,” manifest mainly in imitating the ascetic practices of early Christians, as well as a more frequent celebration of Communion than either he Presbyterian or Puritans followed. Anglicans also encouraged the forming of voluntary religious societies and groups.
It was in the 1730s when Evangelicalism emerged as a distinct movement. It was a product of revivals in Old & New England. While the Church had witnessed revivals before, those of the 18th C seemed more fervent and far reaching. It began with the First Great Awakening in the 1730s in New England. Then it hopped the Pond and broke out in England & Wales. This was the time of the careers of such famous revivalist as George Whitefield and the Wesleys. Pietism entered the Evangelical stream through several ports, but primarily through John Wesley, who was deeply impacted by the example of the Moravians.
Established Christians and New Converts alike were emboldened with confidence and enthusiasm to share the Gospel, leading to the conversion of thousands more and the planting of hundreds of new churches.
If we’re looking for the real dynamism that infused Evangelicalism and made it such a pervasive trait of Protestantism during the 18th & 19th Cs, we could say it was the conviction of those converted to the Faith that they’d really had a supernatural experience of salvation. Their conversion had not just gained them heaven after they died; it ushered them, then and there, into a new relationship with God that became the new center and ordering principle of their lives. And while pastors and other church leaders might have a unique role to play in leading the local church, each individual Christian had equal access to God without the need for the mediation of a priestly class or ritual. Each and every Evangelical felt a very real connection to God and owned a sense of their personal responsibility to apply themselves to the practice of their faith. In other words, the dutyof religion for the medieval Christian was traded in for the privilege of relationship for the modern Christian.
The dawn of the 19th C was a time of increased outreach both locally and abroad with several mission societies being started. The Second Great Awakening spanning the transition from the 18th to 19th Cs, was centered largely in the US. It boosted the ranks of Methodist and Baptist churches. Charles Finney was a major figure in this revival.
19th C Evangelicalism in England carried a distinct social justice flair. British Evangelicals bore the conviction that their Faith ought to be more than a privately held affair. To be real, it ought to impact the world for good. They became leaders in the movement for reform and the end of corruption in government and commerce. They led the charge for Abolition under such notables as William Wilberforce.
Toward the end of the 19th C, that party within the Methodists who’d long argued for what they called “entire sanctification” started a Holiness Movement that separated itself from the rest of Methodism. While it was never popular in England, certain portions of rural America proved fertile soil for it.
It was during the 19th C that an Irish-Anglican minister named John Darby popularized an emphasis on End Times Prophecy, a subject that had languished in obscurity for hundreds of years. This interest in the End Times was layered over Darby’s system of dividing history into different eras, called dispensations, in which God’s overall plan went forward with a different focus in the various dispensations. Others took Darby’s ideas and edited them to their own taste, but Dispensationalism proved to be a convenient way for people to better understand both the Bible’s story and how it related to history at large. It became a part of the emerging energy within Protestantism now called Evangelicalism. What kicked Dispensationalism into high gear was the publication of the popular Scofield Reference Bible, a King James Bible with a comprehensive set of notes that helped readers parse Scripture, along Scofield’s framework, that is. Through Scofield’s influence, Evangelicalism adopted a literalist view of interpreting Scripture.
Notable figures for the last half of 19th C Evangelicalism are CH Spurgeon & Dwight Moody. These men began a trend in Evangelicalism to see the movement led & represented by well-known religious celebrities, whose fame was tied to their ability to preach to large audiences.
Founded in 1812, Princeton Theological Seminary stepped into the role of being the intellectual center of Evangelicalism from 1850 to the 1920’s. Under the guidance of Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander, and BB Warfield, Evangelicals were armed with an erudite defense of conservative orthodoxy in that face of the challenge presented by European Liberalism. When in the 1930’s, the governors of Princeton decided to open the school to Theological Liberalism, the conservatives left to start Westminster Theological Seminary. But the theological work of the Princeton theologians continues to shape the core of conservative Evangelicalism.
Church h istorian Mark Noll, describes this as influence as including, a devotion to the Bible, concern for religious experience, sensitivity to the American experience, Presbyterian confessions, Reformation systematics, and Common Sense Realism, which we talked about in Season 1.[1] Common Sense Realism was a push-back by several Scottish philosophers to the skepticism of David Hume.
As Theological Liberalism pressed in to challenge the centers of Evangelicalism in the early 20th C, a reaction rose that came to be known as Fundamentalism. It drew its name from its insistence there were certain fundamentals that could not be negotiated, essentials of The Faith apart from which no one had the right to say they were a Christian. The main point of contention with Liberalism was over the inerrancy of Scripture. This became the main point of contention because Evangelicals regard God’s Word as the ultimate authority. Everything else flows from Scripture. Theological Liberals honor the Bible as a record of humanity’s progress. It’s instructive, but not ultimately authoritative. It’s ideas at points may be inspired and it is certainly inspirational, but no more than that. Human reason, aided by the scientific method, is a superior source of knowledge. Fundamentalists replied that not only is the Bible inspired, that inspiration extends beyond its ideas to its words. The Bible isn’t just the ideas of God filtered through bumbling scribes, it is the Word & words of God Himself, transmitted through human agents, who when they penned, infallibly reported what God wanted written.
Needless to say, the contest between Liberals & Fundamentalists was fierce. It lives on to this day. Every decade or so, Theological Liberalism hoists its battering ram and makes another raid on the fortress of Evangelicalism’s tenacious clinging to Scripture’s Inspiration, Infallibility & Inerrancy. They batter the door of this Evangelical group or that denomination. And while mainstream Evangelicalism still adheres officially to the doctrine of Inerrancy, the long-range effect of the contest has been a softening round the edges, so that many Evangelicals are barely aware what’s at stake in the whole debate.
Up to the dawn of the 20th C, Evangelicalism was largely a white church deal centered in North America and the UK. A major boon to the energy of Evangelicalism and a subsequent movement into world missions came about after the Welsh Revival of 1904-5. The Revival swept across Europe and reached into far-flung regions across the globe. The Azusa Street Revival of 1906 in Los Angeles birthed Pentecostalism which added even more spiritual energy and motivation to Evangelicalism.
Following WWII, Evangelicals split between those who wanted to engage the culture and those who felt the best way to live was to withdraw. It seemed a reprise of the old Anglican argument between the Puritans and Separatists. In this case, the Separatists were the Fundamentalists while those who wanted to engage culture were mainstream Evangelicals. Many Evangelicals had come to regard Fundamentalists as narrow-minded moralists wed to traditions that were no longer relevant . While this is an oversimplification, let me illustrate this way . . .
Fundamentalists had staunchly defended the doctrine of inerrancy, right? What they defended of course, at least in the popular sense, for the Fundamentalist on the street at least, was the King James Bible. THAT Bible was inspired & inerrant. So any other translation or version was suspect. Fundamentalists were determined defenders of The Reformation; they adored the Reformers, but were suspicious of more modern authors & theologians. That suspicion grew to be a kind of general negativity to the wider culture and society. The world was wicked, under God’s wrath; something to be shunned. The result was that Fundamentalists began to be viewed by society as misanthropes. They became the subject of jokes.
Most Evangelicals saw what was happening to Fundamentalism and set another course. Called Neo-Evangelicals, they adopted a positive posture of engaging the culture through dialog and exchange. They intentionally backed down from the combative militancy that marked Fundamentalists. Instead of retreating to a theological ghetto where the only people they talked to were like them, they re-applied themselves to an intellectually-astute and Biblically-sound response to the issue facing society. They reasoned that the Gospel was a message of hope for All People, and needed to be shared in as many ways as possible; by deed, as well as in word.
This led to a split between Fundamentalists & Evangelicals. Evangelicals came to regard Fundamentalists as something of an ugly cousin they wanted to avoid & disavow. Fundamentalists regarded Evangelicals as sell-outs, wishy-washy compromisers more concerned with the world’s approval than God’s.
Over time, the ranks of Fundamentalists dwindled while those of Evangelicals swelled.
The Charismatic renewal of the 1960’s and early 70’s saw a resurgent Pentecostalism cross denominational lines. It even swept a number of Catholic churches.
Until the Charismatic Renewal, most Protestant churches were affiliated in some way with a denomination. The Renewal saw large numbers of Christians who’d previously identified with their denomination, now identifying as a Charismatic. When local pastors and denominational leaders resisted the Charismatic Renewal, those church members who were part of the renewal often left to start new churches. They established independent, non-aligned or un affiliated works. So the trend of non-denominational churches exploded. They didn’t identify as Protestant so much as Evangelical because it best described their overall theological framework. As the number of non-denominational churches grew and aged, many saw a need for connection to a larger movement and began forming voluntary associations. They became a kind of non-denominational denomination.
As the 20th C closed out and moved into the 21st, Evangelicalism faced a new challenge from it’s old nemesis – Liberalism. Once again Liberalism morphed into a new form called Post-modernism. If classical Liberalism assailed the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, Post-modernism went after Truth as a whole.
[1] Mark A. Noll, The Princeton Theology 1812–1921 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 13.
In this Episode of CS we’ll take a look at a figure of church history anyone who’s done any reading in such has likely encountered – Eusebius of Caesarea. He’s a prominent figure because he’s known as the Father of Church history for his classic work Ecclesiastical History which charts the course of the early church from its inception to the late 3rd C.
His history of the Church was originally composed in 10 volumes. He began it during the Great Persecution of 303–313 and completed it around 315. Over the next 10 years he edited and revised it several times. It charted the course of primitive Christianity from obscurity in the backwater province of Israel to the favored faith of the new Emperor Constantine. Along the way, Eusebius does future generations a great service by giving careful lists of church regions and their sequence of leaders. He quotes early Christian authors; writings long since lost to us but now preserved by the pen of Eusebius. He describes the early church’s labor to define and understand the Trinity as over against the various heresies that sought to hijack orthodoxy. Though Eusebius began his chronicle during the Great Persecution, he lived to see The Faith’s emergence from the catacombs during the time of Constantine, to stand on the threshold of a new world in which Christ could be envisioned as triumphant over Caesar.[1]
While Eusebius is honored today as the Father of Church History for his literally ground-breaking work, his generation knew him simply as the bishop of Caesarea and a friend of Pamphilus, a scholar who fought valiantly against the Arian heresy.
Little is known of Eusebius’ life prior to his tenure as lead pastor at the important church of Caesarea. He seems to have been born in the Roman province of Palestine around 260. He became a pupil of Pastor Pamphilus at Caesarea, then his chief assistant. Pamphilus had come from Alexandria and made at Caesarea one of the greatest libraries of Christian writings. Just before Pamphilus arrived, the great scholar Origen had centered his work at Caesarea and composed the famed Hexapla there, a Bible in 6 side-by-side languages. It was kept in the library there. Though Pamphilus expanded Caesarea’s library, it was Origen who’d started it with volumes he’d collected during his many travels. Eusebius so revered his teacher he called himself “son of Pamphilus.” Pamphilus was imprisoned in the last days of the Great Persecution and died a martyr in 310. Eusebius wrote a 3 volume biography of his mentor.
The persecution that claimed Pamphilus continued to wreak havoc among the Christians in Caesarea, so Eusebius fled to Egypt for a few yrs where things were less dicey. When he returned to Caesarea in 313, the church elected Eusebius as bishop. The city had a population of 100,000; no small number of a city of that time and place. There he wrote 3 of his longest works;
1) A refutation of paganism in 15 volumes he titled Preparation,
2) A 20 volume look at Old Testament prophecy’s fulfillment by Christ titled Demonstration of the Gospel,
3) And something he titled Chronicle which was a record of world history to 303, which Eusebius intended as a preface to his magnum opus, Ecclesiastical History.
A few yrs after Eusebius became bishop at Caesarea, the Arian Controversy broke out in full force, threatening to tear the church apart. It seemed what persecution had been unable to do during the reign of Diocletian, an argument over theology would accomplish when persecution was over.
As the student of Pamphilus, Eusebius did not support Arius’ idea that Jesus wasn’t God. But Eusebius would not go along with the movement to declare Arius a heretic and toss him and his many supporters from the church. For this, Eusebius himself was excommunicated in early 325 aby an Anti-Arian synod at Antioch. At the Council of Nicea later that year, he defended himself before the Emperor by bringing forth a copy of the baptismal creed used in his church at Caesarea. It stated an orthodox view and proved Eusebius was no Arian. What he was, was a church leader who felt the Arian controversy had been turned by some into a grievous black-mark on Christian unity. He though it would be better to keep Arius and his many supporters IN the Church and deal with them as men who needed correction, than to cast them out and see them agitate for their position there where the world would look on it all as a shameful display of pettiness.
The Caesarean baptismal formula was such a clear affirmation of an orthodox view, it was apparently used as the template from which the Council of Nicaea crafted its final position and developed the Nicaean Creed. But some members of the council found the Caesarean formula a tad too vague. Then sought to remedy that vagueness by adding the controversial term homoousios that we talked at length about in Season 1.
Eusebius reluctantly voted with the rest of the Council in approving the creed, though he was one of many bishops less than thrilled by the inclusion of that word. Over the next months and yrs, controversy raged over the word homoousias, and the condemned Arius returned to favor. The tables turned and orthodoxy seemed to go down to defeat at the hands of a resurgent heresy. And it would have too, were it not for the courageous stand of Athanasius, who refused to allow the Truth of God’s Word to be edited by the prospect of pragmatic church politics. Sadly, Eusebius sat on the board that condemned Athanasius. Again, not for doctrinal reason, but because Eusebius judge Athanasius an divisive agent who hindered unity. What Eusebius had been reluctant to do with a heretic, that is, oust him, he was willing to do with a man who was orthodox.
The Emperor Constantine was impressed with Eusebius and asked him to produce a speech to be given at the 13th Anniversary of the Emperor’s ascension. Eusebius followed that up with a grandiloquent eulogy of Constantine when he died in 335.
Eusebius himself died 4 yrs later.
One of the works Eusebius produced that has been a source of much help to historians is called the Onomasticon. It was something of a ground-breaking innovation on Eusebius’ part. In modern terms, we’d call it a Bible atlas, or a geographical gazette. His goal was to provide an easily referenced list of all the places the Bible mentions and give a short description of where they were located. He used Roman miles as a measure of distance, and listed them alphabetically and by book of the Bible.
When Eusebius was an assistant to his mentor Pamphilus, they’d worked on the challenge of textual criticism with the Septuagint, the Common Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, as well as manuscripts of the NT. Jerome tells us Origen had already collected the Septuagint and that was the text Pamphilus and Eusebius worked on. Eusebius also set about to produce a kind of harmony of the 4 Gospels so that people could read the story of Jesus in a collected format. This work was a favorite text of Medieval scholars and became the source of many illuminated manuscripts.
Besides these major works of Eusebius is a plethora of shorter & lesser works; letters, short treatises, notes and such that all bear his distinctive mark. Eusebius is recognized by no one as an author of great prose or eloquence. His writing is classically workman-like. What distinguishes his style, in everything except his praise of Constantine, is its refusal to embellish or fabricate. Not everything he wrote was factual, but whatever he did pen was a careful and faithful transmission of what he’d been told or had researched. For that reason, scholars tend to give Eusebius general credence in his recording of history.
[1] Walter, V. (1992). Eusebius of Caesarea. In J. D. Douglas & P. W. Comfort (Eds.), Who’s Who in Christian history (pp. 239–240). Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.
In his marvelous one volume book on Church History, Bruce Shelley relates how the World Council of Churches came up with its motto.
In 1962, its General Secretary, Willem Hooft, met a delegation of Russian Orthodox leaders in a Leningrad hotel over breakfast. The Russians complained the current WCC motto left out a crucial element of their theology, without which they couldn’t join. They needed to see some reference to the Trinity, however brief.
From discussions with many Protestant groups, Hooft knew what kept them from joining; an absence in the motto of any reference to the importance of the Bible. In a flash of insight, he grabbed the breakfast menu and penned, “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Holy Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of one God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
That revised motto was adopted in the New Delhi meeting of the WCC later that year and has remained the organization’s credo to this day.
Let’s go back a bit, to the end of the 16th C. Overlooking the plethora of smaller groups that developed following the Reformation, the major branches of the Christian Faith were four. Europe had both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Middle East & Asiahad Eastern Orthodoxy and the Nestorian Church of the East, which, after the depravations of Islam and the Mongols was a scant shadow of its former self.
The Protestant church was further split into 4 main groups; Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican. As the 16th C folded into the 17th, Protestantism continued to fracture into different movements and groups. These new groups were most often the result of an emerging emphasis on some point of doctrine or practice. By the 20th C, there were hundreds of denominations, and thousands of movements and churches claiming to be non-denominational.
Jesus’ prayer that His people would be one, seemed to be forgotten by the very institution that claimed to be the Earthly manifestation of His will. Seeing this, a new movement began, one seeking to bring Christians and churches from all these various groups together. That movement was Ecumenism.
The word “ecumenical” means general, universal. It was adopted by leaders of this movement to bring about unity among disparate Christian groups. As early ecumenists set out to establish unity, they quickly realized the monumental task they’d set themselves. Unity’s a great idea. Forging it means convincing people the things they believe, and that led to the launching of their movement generations before, aren’t really worth clinging to. That’s a tough proposition. If people were willing to depart their parent group over an issue at the group’s inception, how much more wed to that idea, teaching, whatever, are they likely to be when tradition reinforces it?
So, the early Ecumenical architects realized their only hope of achieving their goal was to devise a creed on which all Christians could & would agree.
On what subjects do all people think alike? The list is small. And it’s no surprise to anyone listening when I say, Christians aren’t unanimous on all aspects of their Faith. They hold differences in doctrine, worship, organization; even issues of morality. Most don’t regard their distinctives as mere opinion either. They’re deeply cherished convictions. Individual believers as well as entire denominations even disagree over what constitutes the divisions that separate them. Some defend their distinctives while others regard them as a scandalous failure to heed Christ’s call to unity. That scandal, and the sensitivity of some t the way disunity in The Church was a glaring black-mark hindering the Gospel and Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations is what fueled the early ecumenists.
If the Middle Ages can be called the Era of Catholic Christianity, the 16th-18th Cs, the Era of Protestant Proliferation, the 19th C, The Challenge of Rationalism, then the 20th could be labeled the C of Ecumenism.
The first effort to secure cooperation among Protestants took place in 1846. Leaders from 50 Evangelical groups from England & the US met in London to hammer out guidelines for fellowship. They called themselves the Evangelical Alliance. Their work was promising and soon there were nine branches in Europe. They stood for religious liberty and encouraged their various groups to engage in joint activities and events that would give visible proof to an emerging unity. After a flurry of success at this, enthusiasm cooled toward the end of the C.
Other leaders lamented the growing apathy of the Evangelical Alliance and decided to try again. Some thirty American denominations formed a Federal Council of Churches in 1908. The Council issued a string of official statements on political, economic, & social issues, to the dismay of conservative Christians who found them to be little more than the rants of liberal theology. In 1950, the Federal Council re-branded under the name, the National Council of Churches of Christ.
But the most widely known expression of 20th C Ecumenism is the World Council of Churches which began in Amsterdam in 1948. When I say “began,” what I mean is, “emerged,” for the WCC was really the coming together of three previous groups.
In 1910, The International Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, gathered a thousand delegates from all over the world to address the task of world missions. Setting aside their difference in favor of the massive challenge of winning the world to Faith in Christ the delegates realized a profound sense of unity. This whet their appetite for more.
One of the delegates at the Conference was a young man of charismatic nature named John Mott, an American Methodist layman whose zeal for God was infectious and positioned him as a nexus for on-going work. He was appointed as the chairman of the committee that would continue the work of the conference. He served in that capacity for the next 20 yrs and became one of the key ingredients to the eventual emergence of the WCC.
Another major contributor was a Canadian Anglican named Charles Brent who’d served as a missionary to the Philippines. If Mott was driven by a deep love of God, Brent was amped by a commitment to doctrine. He knew the chief obstacle to unity among the various denominations was the doctrinal disputes that had split them in the first place. Brent advocated setting these disputes into two categories, essentials and non-essentials. While denominations could continue to affirm those things that differed between them on incidentals, they ought to rally round and unite over those beliefs considered essential for salvation.
Brent left the Edinburgh conference with a conviction to call his fellow Anglicans to become leaders in urging unity around the Essentials. They agreed and issued an invitation to another conference to be called “The World Conference on Faith and Order.” When WWI broke out, the conference was delayed till 1927. Then 150 reps from nearly 70 denominations met in Lausanne, Switzerland to pass a set of resolutions laying the foundations for the yet to come World Council.
The third movement that gave rise to the WCC was led by a Lutheran archbishop in Sweden named Nathan Söderblom. Söderblom may have been Charles Brent’s theological polar opposite. His appointment by the King of Sweden was a shock to conservatives because Söderblom was a well-known liberal who openly rejected the orthodox understanding of the dual nature of Jesus as Divine and human; two elements of the faith Brent set in the essentials category.
As an advocate of the Liberalism then sweeping many churches in Europe, Söderblom wanted to shed many of the tenets of orthodox Christianity he and his peers considered unacceptable to modern man. He said revelation was ongoing, and that the faith of the Apostolic Age was to be reinterpreted in light of Rationalism. He contended that true religion isn’t located in what we believe about God but in our moral character. It’s not what a person believes; it’s in what they DO!
Söderblom’s impetus toward unity was centered in his conviction that as the different groups learned to respect one another, over time, progressive revelation would lead all to a single Faith. His was an evolutionary ecumenism; the inexorable result of forces no one could stop.
Söderblom’s contribution to Ecumenism was in his organizing of the Conference on Life and Work held in Stockholm in the Summer of 1925. 500 delegates from 40 countries and 90 denominations agreed that the moral challenges facing modern society were simply beyond the scope of individual effort. They had to address them together or no lasting headway would be made.
Brent & Söderblom were strange bed-fellows indeed. But by 1937, they and their organizations realized the task of Christian unity required a more inclusive organization. They issued a call for the formation of the World Council of Churches.
As WWI had delayed The World Conference on Faith and Order, WWII delayed the creation of the World Council. It finally met in 1948 in Amsterdam, bringing together 350 delegates representing almost 150 denominations & 44 countries. Those opting out were Roman Catholics, some conservative Evangelicals, and the Russian Orthodox Church.
Willem Adolph Visser’t Hooft was made the General Secretary. It was he who secured the membership of the Russian Orthodox church and several Protestant groups in 1961. Under his leadership, WCC conventions were a carefully orchestrated mosaic of different cultures and concerns.
It was never the aim of the WCC to produce a new Super-Church. It aimed simply to affirm and give voice to the central purpose for the Church; to rightly represent God and The Gospel in the world. It was able to achieve its objective in the early years by following Brent’s plan of unity around the Essentials and charity around non-essentials. But as the years passed, secularism and the influence of Söderblom’s liberalism asserted themselves. The demand for social justice replaced the Gospel Mandate. The WCC seemed to many to become little more than a shill for such important causes as overcoming racism, war, poverty, alcoholism & drug addiction. Instead of working for unity, the WCC issued statements that divided people. It became an organ of the all too oft repeated slogan, “Unity’s what we say it is,” & “We can be in unity, as long as you agree with us.”
Indeed, today’s WCC is likely something neither Mott, Brent, nor Söderblom would want to be a part of.
The title of this episode, Part 6 in the Series 500 Yrs, in commemoration of the Half-Millennial anniversary of The Reformation, is “The Way It Was;” a brief look at popular religion of the Middle and Late Middle Ages in Europe.
As we come up to the 500 year anniversary of Reformation Day, when Martin Luther tacked his revolutionary list of exceptions to current church practice and belief to the Castle Church door in the German town of Wittenberg, we’re faced with the realization that the Reformation embraced many more people than the popular telling of history enumerates. Many more.
His family name was “Black Earth,” as in the rich, fertile soil around his hometown. In German, Schwartzerdt. His first name was Philipp. He was born in Feb of 1497 at Bretten in SW Germany. His father was an armorer for an important German Count.
By necessity due to time, we ended the last episode in the middle of recounting Luther’s great conversion experience, where he realized the righteousness God requires isn’t one borne of good works, but is the righteousness of God Himself, which He gives freely to those who put their faith in the atoning work of Christ.
