The History of the Christian Church

This Episode is simply titled “Leo”While there’d been several bishops of the church at Rome who’d been capable leaders and under their guidance had established Rome as the premier church, if not the whole Christian world, at least in the western portion of the now declining Roman Empire, it can be fairly said that for most of the earlier bishops the person was eclipsed by the office. Bishops Callistus, Stephen, Damasus, & Innocent I all added significant authority to the Roman See. But it was Leo the Great who saw the Bishop of Rome become what we might call the first real Pope. It was with Leo I that the idea of the Papacy became real.While previous bishops at Rome had certainly been theologically astute, as befitted their office, Leo can be classed as a first-rate theologian, arguably the greatest theologian of any who came before in that office and for a century & a half after. He battled the Manichæan, Priscillianist, & Pelagian heresies, and won enduring fame for helping to finish codifying the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ.Leo’s early life is shrouded in mystery. The chief source of information about him comes from his letters & they don’t commence till AD 442 when he was already an adult. Leo was mostly likely a Roman who became a deacon, then a legate under Bishops Celestine I & Sixtus III. A legate is a special messenger, sent by a bishop, to carry messages to civil rulers. Think à Church ambassador to the king. Leo was so astute in his task as a representative for the Church, Emperor Valentinian III sent him on a special mission to settle a dispute in Gaul between a couple feuding generals. This was at a time of great turmoil in the north due to the barbarian threat. While Leo was on this peace-making mission, Bishop Sixtus died and Leo was chosen to take his seat. He served for the next 21 years.Leo describes his feelings at the assumption of his office in a sermon;“Lord, I have heard your voice calling me, and I was afraid: I considered the work which was enjoined on me, and I trembled. For what proportion is there between the burden assigned to me and my weakness, this elevation and my nothingness? What is more to be feared than exaltation without merit, the exercise of the most holy functions being entrusted to one who is buried in sin? Oh, you have laid upon me this heavy burden, bear it with me, I beseech you be you my guide and my support.”Leo’s papacy faced 2 immense problems.First:  The emergence of heresies threatened the integrity of the Church; and àSecond: The political disintegration of the Western Roman Empire.Leo offered 3 tactics in dealing with these difficulties à1)    Actions to provide essential church doctrine with a clear, orthodox position;2)    Efforts to unify church government under a sovereign papacy; and3)   Attempts at peace by negotiating with the Empire’s enemies.On the doctrinal front, Leo theologically refuted the era’s main heresies & utilized imperial criminal prosecution & banishment to get rid of unrepentant heretics. Leo’s finest achievement was probably the formation and acceptance of an orthodox Christological dogma.Though Arianism was in retreat, the 5th C battled with what’s called Eutychianism. We’re going to get into this in more depth in a soon coming episode so for now let me just say that Eutychianism was one of the 4th & 5th Cs’ attempts to understand the nature of Jesus. Was He God, Man or both? And if both, how do the 2 nature relate to each other? Eutychianism said Jesus had 2 natures, human & divine, but that the divine had completely dominated the human, like a drop of vinegar is overwhelmed by the sea. Later it will come to be known by a label you may have heard = Monophysitism.Leo’s manner of dealing with this aberrant teaching was brilliant. Rather than rely on suppression, he brought it’s main advocate, Eutychus, to Rome for lengthy discussions and, after painstaking research & deliberation, issued a carefully written letter, the famous Tome of Leo. It set forth a clear exposition of Christ’s 2 natures in 1 person & became the basis in 451 for the Council of Chalcedon’s enduring formulation of Christological doctrine.This alone would mark Leo as worthy of the honorific “Great” but he did more, much more. He rescued the city of Rome from destruction, not once, but twice! When Attila & his Huns, known as the “Scourge of God,” destroyed the Italian city of Aquileia in 452 & everyone knew Rome was next on the barbarian’s hit list, Leo, with a couple companions, travelled north, entered the hostile camp, and persuaded Attila to leave off sacking the City. Think of it; a bishop’s simple word accomplished what the waning might of the once mighty Rome could not, convince the barbarian hordes to go home.Then, 3 yrs later when the Vandal king Genseric was poised to do what Attila had been deflected from, Leo was able to obtained a promise the Vandals would relieve the city of its wealth but not burn it or slay its people. The sacking lasted for 2 wks – but when the looters finally left, the city still stood and its citizenry, though badly shaken were still alive; and eternally grateful for Leo’s intervention.He died in 461, and was buried in the Church of St. Peter.The literary works of Leo consist of nearly a hundred sermons and over 170 letters. His collection of sermons is the first we have from a Roman bishop. He declared preaching to be his sacred duty. His sermons were short and simple.Leo was a man of extraordinary activity. He took a leading part in all the affairs of the Church. While his private life is unknown, there’s not a hint of anything that would give us cause to think he was anything other than pure in both motive & morals. His zeal, time & strength were all devoted to the interests of the Faith. If Leo saw the Faith primarily through the lens of the life & outreach of the Church at Rome, we ought to attribute that to his conviction Rome was meant by God to be THE Home Base for the Church; its headquarters.As Church historian Philip Schaff said, Leo was animated by an unwavering conviction God had committed to him, as the successor of Peter, the care of the whole Church. He anticipated all the dogmatic arguments by which the power of the papacy was later established. Leo made the case that the rock on which the Church is built, mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 16, meant Peter and his confession of faith, that set the cornerstone for THE Faith. Leo claimed that while Christ himself is in the highest sense the Rock and Foundation of the Church, His authority was transferred primarily to Peter. To Peter specifically, Christ entrusted the apostolic keys of the Kingdom. Also, Jesus’ prayer that Peter be strengthened so he might strengthen others established Peter’s role as leader among the Apostles. Jesus’ post-resurrection affirmation of Peter’s call, “Feed my sheep,” makes Peter the pastor and prince of the Church Entire, through whom Christ exercises His universal dominion on Earth.But Leo went further, He said Peter’s primacy wasn’t limited to the apostolic age; it endured in those subsequent bishops of Rome to whom Peter passed the authority Jesus endowed him with. Leo asserted only Rome could serve as the center of the Church because it was both a political & religious center. Sure, Constantinople was political headquarters but it lacked Rome’s spiritual ancestry. Alexandria & Antioch were religious, but not political centers. Only Rome provided a sufficient political and spiritual weight to be the center of the Earthly manifestation of the Kingdom of God.While Leo made much of Rome’s place as premier among the churches, he himself remained humble. This personal humility was offset by his determination others would honor his office as though he were indeed a modern Peter. Each year a special celebration was called to commemorate his ascension to Peter’s seat. He took such confusing titles as, “Servant of the servants of God,” “vicar of Christ,” and even “God upon earth.”As an aside, if you’ve read my bio on the sanctorum.us site, you know I’m a non-denominational, Evangelical, follower of Jesus. As I’ve shared in a previous podcast, it’s been interesting reading reviews by listeners that I’m obviously è Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Reformed, Pentecostal, & a few other flavors of the faith. I guess people mistake what my personal view is because I’m trying, albeit haltingly, to treat the material in as fair & unbiased a fashion as possible. So, I suspect here’s what’s happening in a lot of listeners minds right now after sharing Leo the Great’s apologetic for the primacy of Peter; they’re wondering if I’ve gone RC!Let me respond to that by sharing this . . .While Leo did make a good case for the Bishop at Rome being the spiritual successor to Peter, what about the fact that Peter himself passes over his primacy in silence. In his NT letters he expressly warned against hierarchical assumptions while Leo used every opportunity to affirm his authority. In Antioch, when Peter played the role of hypocrite, he meekly submitted to the junior apostle Paul’s rebuke. Leo, on the other hand, declared any resistance to his authority as an impious pride and sure way to hell. Under Leo, obedience to the pope was a condition to salvation. He claimed anyone not in harmony with Rome’s See as the head of the body, from which all gifts of grace descended, was in fact not IN The Church, and so had no part in grace or the Body of Chrsit.Schaff wrote,This is the fearful but legitimate logic of the papal principle, which confines the kingdom of God to the narrow lines of a particular organization, and makes the universal spiritual reign of Christ dependent on a temporal form and a human organ.Another important point: Crucial to the idea that the Bishop of Rome was & is the spiritual heir to Peter’s apostolic authority is the assumption Peter founded & led the Church at Rome. There’s simply not a shred of evidence for that. Sure, Peter went to

This episode is titled “Who Do You Say He Is?”We begin this episode by reading from the Chalcedonian Creed of AD 451, the portion devoted to the orthodox view of Christ.We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.Compare that to the simple words of the Apostles Creed quoted by many Christians from memory 300 years before.I believe in . . . Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.Quite a difference. What caused the Church to draw such exacting language regarding who Jesus was between the early 2nd & mid 5th Cs? That’s the subject of this and the next episode. Along the way, we’ll see of interesting developments in the Church and learn of some colorful characters.In the 16th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, we read of a time near Caesarea Philippi in Galilee when Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people think I am?” After hearing what the popular talk was, Jesus asked them “Who do YOU say I am?” That set the stage for Peter to confess his faith in Jesus as Messiah.We might think Jesus’ affirmation of Peter’s reply would put an end to the controversy. It was only the beginning. That controversy raged over the next 500 yrs as Church leaders wrestled with HOW to understand Jesus.We’ve already touched on this subject in previous episodes. I’ve mentioned we’d return to deal with it specifically in a future episode. This is it; and here’s why we need to slow down a bit and take our time reviewing the history of the controversy over how to understand Who Jesus was. We need to camp here for a bit because this issue consumed a good amount of the Church’s intellectual energy during the 4th & 5th Cs.Today, we accept the orthodox view of the Trinity & the Nature of Jesus as God and Man readily; not realizing the agony the Early Church Fathers endured while they labored over precisely HOW to put into just the right words what Christians believe. One theologian said Theology is the fine art of making distinctions. Nowhere is that more clear than here; in our examination of how orthodox theologians described a Christ.The first great Ecumenical Council was held at Nicaea in 325 at the urging of the Emperor Constantine. Some 300 bishops representing the entire Christian world attended to hammer out their response to Arianism; the idea that Jesus was human, but not divine. As the Council dragged on, Constantine, itching to get back to the business of running the Empire, pressed the bishops to adopt a Statement that affirmed Jesus was both God & man.  But many of the bishops left Nicaea discontented with the wording of the Nicaean Creed. They felt it was imprecise. It failed to capture the full truth of Who Jesus is. This lack of support for the Nicaean Creed opened the doors for many of the later controversies that would wrack the Church. The Council of Chalcedon 125 yrs later tightened up the language on Nicaea but didn’t fundamentally alter the Creed. Let’s take a look at the time between Nicaea & Chalcedon . . .Sometimes, in an attempt to bring clarity to a complex situation, we over-simplify. I run the risk of doing that here. But for the sake of brevity, I beg the listeners’ indulgence as I chart the path from 325 to 451.Following Nicaea, with the affirmation that Jesus is both God & Man, the Church had to first harmonize that with the Biblical reality there’s ONE God, not Two. And wait, someone asked, what about the Holy Spirit; doesn’t the Bible says He’s also God? The classic, orthodox statement of the Trinity, that God is 1 in substance or essence, but 3 in persons wasn’t something everyone immediately agreed to. It wasn’t like at the Council of Nicaea they took a vote and agreed Jesus is both deity & humanity. Then someone raised their hand & said, “Isn’t there just one God?”Yes. à Well, how do we describe God now? They waited in silence for 14 seconds, then someone said, “How about this: We’ll say God is one in substance & 3 in person.” They all smiled & nodded, slapped that guy on the back and said, “Good one. There it is; the Trinity! Our work here is done. Let’s go for pizza. I get shotgun.”No; it took a while to get the wording right. What made it difficult is that they were working in 2 languages, Greek & Latin. A formulation that seemed to work in Greek was hard to bring over into Latin, and vice versa.It took the work of the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil the Great of Caesarea, his younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their close friend Gregory of Nazianzus who worked out the wording that satisfied most of the bishops and framed the classic, orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. The Council of Constantinople was called in 381 to make this Trinitarian formulation official. This was just a year after Emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity the official State religion.So, with that piece of important theological business out of the way, they moved on to the next topic. And this is where it gets messy.If Jesus is both God & Man – how are we to understand that? Does He have 2 natures, or does 1 of the natures trump the other? Or is there a 3rd way: Did the human & divine natures fuse into a new, hybrid nature? And if Jesus IS a hybrid, do Christians get to drive in the chariot-pool lane?Lots of different camps put forward their scheme and fought hard to see their doctrinal formulation become the official position of the Church.The Council of Ephesus in 431 came out with a position that elevated 1 nature, while the Council at Chalcedon 20 years later altered that by affirming Jesus’s 2 natures.It became obvious to church leaders after the Council at Constantinople that the turmoil they saved in solving the problem of the Trinity was just added to the Christological problem that rose next.To understand how this issue was settled, we need to take a look at the rivalry that grew between 2 churches; a rivalry sparked in large part by Christianity being liberated from persecution and elevated to the darling of the State. Those 2 churches were Alexandria & Antioch.The debate over how to understand the Person & Natures of Jesus was staged in the Eastern Empire. The West wasn’t as involved because Rome simply did not see as much challenge on its belief in the dual nature of Christ. So while it wasn’t the scene of so much theological turmoil, it did play an important part in how the controversy was settled.Political rivalry between Alexandria and Antioch had been going on for some time. Being in the East, both churches vied with each other to provide Bishops to Constantinople, the New Rome & political center of the Eastern Empire. Getting one of their Bishops promoted to the capital meant bragging rights and could result in additional power & prestige for the Alexandrian or Antiochan sees. Two bishops from Antioch that were drafted by Constantinople were John Chrysostom, who we’ve already looked at, and Nestorius, who we will.In addition to their ecclesiastical jealousy, was the very different cultural and theological traditions in play at Antioch and Alexandria. The church at Antioch had a closer tie to the Jewish roots in Jerusalem. It had a stronger tradition of rational inquiry. It was at Antioch that church leaders had dug deeply in the OT to find many of the great types that pointed to Jesus. They studied Scripture through the lens of literal interpretation, rejoicing that God became Man in the Person of Jesus.The Church at Alexandria was different. It grew up under the influence of philosophical Judaism as seen in Philo and passed on to scholars like Clement & Origen. The Alexandrians had a tradition of contemplative piety, as we might expect from a church near the Egyptian desert where the hermits got their start and had been such stand-out heroes of the Faith for generations.  In interpreting Scripture, the Church at Alexandria developed and was devoted to the allegorical method. This saw the truest meaning of Scripture to be the spiritual realities hidden in its literal, historical words.While the leaders at Antioch saw Jesus as God come as man, at Alexandria they agreed Jesus was a man, but His divine nature utterly overwhelmed the human so that He effective had only 1 operative nature; the divine.The differences between Antioch and Alexandria had already surfaced in their different approaches in refuting the error of Arianism. That they never reconciled them set the stage for all the acrimony to ensue over the debate on Jesus. The Arians made much of the NT passages that seemed to suggest Jesus’ subordination to God the Father. They liked to quote John 14: 28, where Jesus

The title of this episode is, “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”In our last episode, we began our look at how the Church of the 4th & 5th Cs attempted to describe the Incarnation. Once the Council of Nicaea affirmed Jesus’ deity, along with His humanity, Church leaders were left with the task of finding just the right words to describe WHO Jesus was. If He was both God & Man as The Nicaean Creed said, how did these two natures relate to one another?We looked at how the churches at Alexandria & Antioch differed in their approaches to understanding & teaching the Bible. Though Alexandria was recognized as a center of scholarship, the church at Antioch kept producing church leaders who were drafted to fill the role of lead bishop at Constantinople, the political center of the Eastern Empire. While Rome was the undisputed lead church in the West, Alexandria, Antioch & Constantinople vied with each other over who would take the lead in the East. But the real contest was between Alexandria in Egypt & Antioch in Syria.The contest between the two cities & their churches became clear during the time of John Chrysostom from Antioch & Theophilus, lead bishop at Alexandria. Because of John’s reputation as a premier preacher, he was drafted to become Bishop at Constantinople. But John’s criticisms of the decadence of the wealthy, along with his refusal to tone down his chastisement of the Empress, caused him to fall out of favor. I guess you can be a great preacher, just so long as you don’t turn your skill against people in power. Theophilus was jealous of Chrysostom’s promotion from Antioch to the capital and used the political disfavor growing against him to call a synod at which John was disposed from office as Patriarch of Constantinople.That was like Round 1 of the sparring match between Alexandria and Antioch. Round 2 and the deciding round came next in the contest between 2 men; Cyril & Nestorius.Cyril was Theophilus’ nephew & attended his uncle at the Synod of the Oak at which Chrysostom was condemned. Cyril learned his lessons well and applied them with even greater ferocity in taking down his opponent, Nestorius.Before we move on with these 2, I need to back-track some & bore the bejeebers out of you for a bit.Warning: Long, hard to pronounce, utterly forgettable word Alert.Remember è The big theological issue at the forefront of everyone’s mind during this time was how to understand Jesus.Okay, we got it: àThe Nicaean Creed’s been accepted as basic Christian doctrine.The Cappadocian Fathers have given us the right formula for understanding the Trinity.There’s 1 God in 3 persons; Father, Son & Holy Spirit.Now, on to the next thing: Jesus is God and Man. How does that work? Is He 2 persons or 1? Does He have 1 nature or 2? And if 2, how do those natures relate to one another?A couple ideas were floated to resolve the issue but came up short; Apollinarianism and Eutychianism.Apollinaris of Laodicea lived in the 4th C.  A defender of the Nicene Creed, he said in Jesus the divine Logos replaced His human soul. Jesus had a human body in which dwelled a divine spirit. Our longtime friend Athanasius led the synod of Alexandria in 362 to condemn this view but didn’t specifically name Apollinaris. 20 Yrs later, the Council of Constantinople did just that. Gregory of Nazianzus supplied the decisive argument against Apollinarianism saying, “What was not assumed was not healed” meaning, for the entire of body, soul, and spirit of a person to be saved, Jesus Christ must have taken on a complete human nature.Eutyches was a, how to describe him; elderly-elder, a senior leader, an aged-monk in Constantinople who advocated one nature for Jesus. Eutychianism said that while in the Incarnation Jesus was both God & man, His divine nature totally overwhelmed his human nature, like a drop of vinegar is lost in the sea.Those who maintained the dual-nature of Jesus as wholly God and wholly Man are called dyophysites.  Those advocating a single-nature are called Monophysites.What happened between Cyril & Nestorius is this . . .Nestorius was an elder and head of a monastery in Antioch when the emperor Theodosius II chose him to be Bishop of Constantinople in 428.Now, what I’m about to say some will find hard to swallow, but while Nestorius’s name became associated with one of the major heresies to split the church, the error he’s accused of he most likely wasn’t guilty of. What Nestorius was guilty of was being a jerk. His story is typical for several of the men who were picked to lead the church at Constantinople during the 4th through 7th Cs; effective preachers but lousy administrators & seriously lacking in people skills. Look, if you’re going to be pegged to lead the Church at the Political center of the Empire, you better be a savvy political operator, as well as a man of moral & ethical excellence. A heavy dose of tact ought to have been a pre-requisite. But guys kept getting selected who came to the Capital on a campaign to clean house. And many of them seem to have thought subtlety was the devil’s tool.As soon as Nestorius arrived in Constantinople, he started a harsh campaign against heretics, meaning anyone with whom he disagreed. It wouldn’t take long before his enemies accused him of the very thing he accused others of. But in their case, their accusations were born of jealousy.Where they deiced to take offense was when Nestorius balked at the use of the word Theotokos. The word means God-bearer, and was used by the church at Alexandria for the mother of Jesus. While the Alexandrians said they rejected Apollinarianism, they, in fact, emphasized the divine nature of Jesus, saying it overwhelmed His human nature. The Alexandrian bishop, Cyril, was once again jealous of the Antiochan Nestorius’ selection as bishop for the Capital. As his uncle Theophilus had taken advantage of Chrysostom’s disfavor to get him deposed, Cyril laid plans for removing the tactless & increasingly unpopular Nestorius. The battle over the word Theotokos became the flashpoint of controversy, the crack Cyril needed to pry Nestorius from his position.To supporters of the Alexandrian theology, Theotokos seemed entirely appropriate for Mary. They said she DID bear God when Jesus took flesh in her womb. And to deny it was to deny the deity of Christ!Nestorius and his many supporters were concerned the title “Theotokos” made Mary a goddess. Nestorius maintained that Mary was the mother of the man Who was united with the divine Logos, and nothing should be said that might imply she was the “Mother à of God.” Nestorius preferred the title Christokos; Mary was the Christ-bearer. But he lacked a vocabulary and the theological sophistication to relate the divine and human natures of Jesus in a convincing way.Cyril, on the other hand, argued convincingly for his position from the Scriptures. In 429, Cyril defended the term Theotokos. His key text was John 1: 14, “The Word became flesh.” I’d love to launch into a detailed description of the nuanced debate between Cyril and Nestorius over the nature of Christ but it would leave most, including myself, no more clued in than we are now.Suffice it to say, Nestorius maintained the dual-nature-in-the-one-person of Christ while Cyril stuck to the traditional Alexandrian line and said while Jesus was technically 2 natures, human & divine, the divine overwhelmed the human so that He effectively operated as God in a physical body.Where this came down to a heated debate was over the question of whether or not Jesus really suffered in His passion. Nestorius said that the MAN Jesus suffered but not His divine nature, while Cyril said the divine nature did indeed suffer.When the Roman Bishop Celestine learned of the dispute between Cyril and Nestorius, he selected a churchman named John Cassian to respond to Nestorius. He did so in his work titled On the Incarnation in 430. Cassian sided with Cyril but wanted to bring Nestorius back into harmony. Setting aside Cassian’s hope to bring Nestorius into his conception of orthodoxy, Celestine entered a union with Cyril against Nestorius and the church at Antioch he’d come from. A synod at Rome in 430 condemned Nestorius, and Celestine asked Cyril to conduct proceedings against him.Cyril condemned Nestorius at a Synod in Alexandria and sent him a notice with a cover letter listing 12 anathemas against Nestorius and anyone else who disagreed with the Alexandrian position. For example à “If anyone does not confess Emmanuel to be very God, and does not acknowledge the Holy Virgin to be Theotokos, for she brought forth after the flesh the Word of God become flesh, let him be anathema.”Receiving the letter from Cyril, Nestorius humbly resigned and left for a quiet retirement at Leisure Village in Illyrium. à Uh, not quite. True to form, Nestorius ignored the Synod’s verdict.Emperor Theodosius II called a general council to meet at Ephesus in 431. This Council is sometimes called the Robber’s Synod because it turned into a bloody romp by Cyril’s supporters. As the bishops gathered in Ephesus, it quickly became evident the Council was far more concerned with politics than theology. This wasn’t going to be a sedate debate over texts, words & grammar. It was going to be a physical contest. Let’s settle doctrinal disputes with clubs instead of books.Cyril and his posse of club-wielding Egyptian monks, and I use the word posse purposefully, had the support of the Ephesian bishop, Memnon, along with the majority of the bishops from Asia. The council began on June 22, 431, with 153 bishops present. 40 more later gave their assent to the findings. Cyril presided. Nestorius was ordered to attend but knew it was a rigged affair and refused to show. He was deposed and excommunicated. Ephesus rejoiced.On June 26, John, bishop of Antioch, along with the Syrian bishops, all of whom had been delayed, finally arrived. John held a rival council consisting of 43 bishops and the Emperor’s representative. They dec

This episode of Communio Santorum is titled, “And In the East – Part 1.”The 5th C Church Father Jerome wrote, “[Jesus] was present in all places with Thomas in India, with Peter in Rome, with Paul in Illyria, with Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Greece, with each apostle . . . in his own separate region.”So far we’ve been following the track of most western studies of history, both secular & religious, by concentrating on what took place in the West & Roman Empire. Even though we’ve delved briefly into the Eastern Roman Empire, as Lars Brownworth aptly reminds us in his outstanding podcast, 12 Byzantine Emperors, even after the West fell in the 5th Century, the Eastern Empire continued to think of & call itself Roman. It’s later historians who refer to it as the Byzantine Empire.Recently we’ve seen the focus of attention shift to the East with the Christological controversies of the 4th & 5th Cs. In this episode, we’ll stay in the East and follow the track of the expansion of the Faith as it moved Eastward. This is an amazing chapter often neglected in traditional treatments of church history. It’s well captured by Philip Jenkins in his book, The Lost History of Christianity.We start all the way back at the beginning with the apostle Thomas.  He’s linked by pretty solid tradition to the spread of Christianity into the East. In the quote we started with from the early 5th C Church Father Jerome, we learn that the Apostle Thomas carried the Gospel East all the way to India.In the early 4th C, Eusebius also attributed the expansion of the faith in India to Thomas. Though these traditions do face some dispute, there are still so-called ‘Thomas Christians’ in the southern Indian state of Kerala today. They use an Aramaic form of worship that had to have been transported there very early. A tomb & shrine in honor of Thomas at Mylapore is built of bricks used by a Roman trading colony but was abandoned after ad 50. There’s abundant evidence of several Roman trading colonies along the coast of India, with hundreds of 1st C coins & ample evidence of Jewish communities. Jews were known to be a significant part of Roman trade ventures. Their communities were prime stopping places for the efforts of Christian missionaries as they followed the Apostle Paul’s model as described in the Book of Acts.A song commemorating Thomas’ role in bringing the faith to India, wasn’t committed to writing till 1601 but was said to have been passed on in Kerala for 50 generations. Many trading vessels sailed to India in the 1st C when the secret of the monsoon winds was finally discovered, so it’s quite possible Thomas did indeed make the journey.  Once the monsoons were finally figured out, over 100 trade ships a year crossed from the Red Sea to India.Jesus told the disciples to take the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. While they were slow to catch on to the need to leave Jerusalem, persecution eventually convinced them to get moving. It’s not hard to imagine Thomas considering a voyage to India as a way to literally fulfill the command of Christ. India would have seemed the end of the Earth.Thomas’s work in India began in the northwest region of the country. A 4th C work called The Acts of Thomas says that he led a ruler there named Gundafor to faith. That story was rejected by most scholars & critics until an inscription was discovered in 1890 along with some coins which verify the 20-year reign in the 1st C of a King Gundafor.After planting the church in the North, Thomas traveled by ship to the Malabar Coast in the South. He planted several churches, mainly along the Periyar River.  He preached to all classes of people and had about 17,000 converts from all Indian castes. Stone crosses were erected at the places where churches were founded, and they became centers for pilgrimages. Thomas was careful to appoint local leadership for the churches he founded.He then traveled overland to the Southeast Indian coast & the area around Madras. Another local king and many of his subjects were converted. But the Brahmins, highest of the Indian castes, were concerned the Gospel would undermine a cultural system that was to their advantage, so they convinced the king at Mylapore, to arrest & interrogate him. Thomas was sentenced to death & executed in AD 72. The church in that area then came under persecution and many Christians fled for refuge to Kerala.A hundred years later, according to both Eusebius & Jerome, a theologian from the great school at Alexandria named Pantaenus, traveled to India to “preach Christ to the Brahmins.”[1]Serving to confirm Thomas’ work in India is the writing of Bar-Daisan. At the opening of the 3rd Century, he spoke of entire tribes following Jesus in North India who claimed to have been converted by Thomas.  They had numerous books and relics to prove it. By AD 226 there were bishops of the Church in the East in northwest India, Afghanistan & Baluchistan, with thousands of laymen and clergy engaging in missionary activity. Such a well-established Christian community means the presence of the Faith there for the previous several decades at the least.The first church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, to whom we owe so much of our information about the early Church, attributed to Thomas the spread of the Gospel to the East. As those familiar with the history of the Roman Empire know, the Romans faced continuous grief in the East by one Persian group after another. Their contest with the Parthians & Sassanids is a thing of legend. The buffer zone between the Romans & Persians was called Osrhoene with its capital city of Edessa, located at the border of what today is northern Syria & eastern Turkey. According to Eusebius, Thomas received a request from Abgar, king of Edessa, for healing & responded by sending Thaddaeus, one of the disciples mentioned in Luke 10.[2] Thus, the Gospel took root there. There was a sizeable Jewish community in Edessa from which the Gospel made several converts. Word got back to Israel of the Church community growing in the city & when persecution broke out in the Roman Empire, many refugees made their way East to settle in a place that welcomed them.Edessa became a center of the Syrian-speaking church which began sending missionaries East into Mesopotamia, North into Persia, Central Asia, then even further eastward. The missionary Mari managed to plant a church in the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, which became a center of missionary outreach in its own right.By the late 2nd C, Christianity had spread throughout Media, Persia, Parthia, and Bactria. The 2 dozen bishops who oversaw the region carried out their ministry more as itinerant missionaries than by staying in a single city and church. They were what we refer to as tent-makers; earning their way as merchants & craftsmen as they shared the Faith where ever they went.By AD 280 the churches of Mesopotamia & Persia adopted the title of “Catholic” to acknowledge their unity with the Western church during the last days of persecution by the Roman Emperors. In 424 the Mesopotamian church held a council at the city of Ctesiphon where they elected their first lead bishop to have jurisdiction over the whole Church of the East, including India & Ceylon, known today as Sri Lanka. Ctesiphon was an important point on the East-West trade routes which extended to India, China, Java, & Japan.The shift of ecclesiastical authority was away from Edessa, which in 216 became a tributary of Rome. The establishment of an independent patriarchate contributed to a more favorable attitude by the Persians, who no longer had to fear an alliance with the hated Romans.To the west of Persia was the ancient kingdom of Armenia, which had been a political football between the Persians & Romans for generations. Both the Persians & Romans used Armenia as a place to try out new diplomatic maneuvers with each other. The poor Armenians just wanted to be left alone, but that was not to be, given their location between the two empires. Armenia has the historical distinction of being the first state to embrace Christianity as a national religion, even before the conversion of Constantine the Great in the early 4th C.The one who brought the Gospel to Armenia was a member of the royal family named Gregory, called “the Illuminator.” While still a boy, Gregory’s family was exiled from Armenia to Cappadocia when his father was thought to have been part of a plot to assassinate the King. As a grown man who’d become a Christian, Gregory returned to Armenia where he shared the Faith with King Tiridates who ruled at the dawn of the 4th C. Tiridates was converted & Gregory’s son succeeded him as bishop of the new Armenian church. This son attended the Council of Nicea in 325. Armenian Christianity has remained a distinctive and important brand of the Faith, with 5 million still professing allegiance to the Armenian Church.[3]Though persecution came to an official end in the Roman Empire with Constantine’s Edict of Toleration in 313, it BEGAN for the church in Persia in 340. The primary cause for persecution was political. When Rome became Christian, its old enemy turned anti-Christian. Up to that point, the situation had been reversed. For the first 300 hundred years, it was in the West Christians were persecuted & Persia was a refuge. The Parthians were religiously tolerant while their less tolerant Sassanid successors were too busy fighting Rome to waste time or effort on the Christians among them.But in 315 a letter from Constantine to his Persian counterpart Shapur II  triggered the beginnings of an ominous change in the Persian attitude toward Christians. Constantine believed he was writing to help his fellow believers in Persia but succeeded only in exposing them. He wrote to the young Persian ruler: “I rejoice to hear that the fairest provinces of Persia are adorned with Christians. Since you are so powerful and pious, I commend them to your care, and leave them in your protection.”Th

This episode of Communio Santorum is titled, “And In the East – Part 2.”In our last episode, we took a brief look at the Apostle Thomas’ mission to India. Then we considered the spread of the faith into Persia. Further study of the Church in the East has to return to the Council of Chalcedon in the 5th C where Bishop Nestorius was condemned as a heretic.As we’ve seen, the debate about the deity of Christ central to the Council of Nicea in 325, declared Jesus was of the same substance as the Father. It took another hundred years before the deity-denying error of Arianism was finally quashed. But even among orthodox & catholic, Nicean-holding believers, the question was over how to understand the nature of Christ. He’s God – got it! But he’s also human. How are we to understand His dual-nature. It was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 that issue was finally decided. And the Church of the East was deemed to hold a position that was unorthodox.The debate was sophisticated & complex, and not a small part decided more by politics than by concern for theological purity. The loser in the debate was Bishops Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. To make a complex issue simple, those who emphasized the unity of the 2 natures came to be called the Monophysites = meaning a single nature. They regarded Nestorius as a heretic because he emphasized the 2 natures as distinct; even to the point of saying Nestorius claimed Jesus was 2 PERSONS. That’s NOT what Nestorius said, but it’s what his opponents managed to get all but his closest supporters to believe he said. In fact, when the Council finally issued their creedal statement, Nestorius claimed they only articulated what he’d always taught. Even though the Council of Chalcedon declared Nestorianism heretical, the Church of the East continued to hold on to their view in the dual nature of Christ, in opposition to what they considered the aberrant view of monophysitism.By the dawn of the 6th C, there were 3 main branches of the Christian church:The Church of the West, which looked to Rome & Constantinople for leadership.The Church of Africa, with its great center at Alexandria & an emerging center in Ethiopia;And the Church of the East, with its center in Persia.As we saw last episode, the Church of the East was launched from Edessa at the border between Northern Syria & Eastern Turkey. The theological school there transferred to Nisibis in Eastern Turkey in 471. It was led by the brilliant theologian Narsai. This school had a thousand students who went out from there to lead the churches of the East. Several missionary endeavors were also launched from Nisibis – just as Iona was a sending base for Celtic Christianity in the far northwest. The Eastern Church mounted successful missions among the nomadic people of the Middle East & Central Asia between the mid-5th thru 7th Cs. These included church-planting efforts among the Huns. Abraham of Kaskar who lived during the 6th C did much to plant monastic communities throughout the East.During the first 1200 years, the Church of the East grew both geographically & numerically far more than in the West. The primary reason for this is because in the East, missionary work was largely a movement of the laity. As Europe moved into the Middle Ages with its strict feudal system, travel ground to a standstill, while in the East, trade & commerce grew. This resulted in the movement of increasing numbers of people who carried the Faith with them.Another reason the Church in the East grew was persecution. As we saw last time, before Constantine, the persecutions of the Roman Empire pushed large numbers of believers East. Then, when the Sassanids began the Great Persecution of Christians in Persia, that pushed large numbers of the Faithful south & further East. Following the persecution that came under Shapur II, another far more severe round of persecution broke out in the mid-5th C that saw 10 bishops and 153,000 Christians massacred within a few days.When we think of Arabia, many immediately think of Islam. But Christianity had taken root in the peninsula long before Muhammad came on the scene. In fact, a bishop from Qatar was present at the Council of Nicea in 325!  The Arabian Queen Mawwiyya, whose forces defeated the Romans in 373, insisted on receiving an orthodox bishop before she would make peace. There was mission-outreach to the south-eastern region of Arabia, in what is today Yemen before the birth of Muhammad by both Nestorian & Monophysite missionaries. By the opening of the 6th C, there were dozens of churches all along the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf.The rise of Islam in the 7th C was to have far-reaching consequences for the Church in the East. The Persian capital at Ctesiphon fell to the Arabs in 637. Since the Church there had become a kind of Rome to the Church of the East, the impact was massive. Muslims were sometimes tolerant of religious minorities but only as communities of the disenfranchised known as dhimmi. They became ghettoes stripped of their vitality. At the same time, the Church of the East was being shredded by Muslim conquests, it was taking one of its biggest steps forward by reaching into China in the mid 7th C.While the Church of the West grew mostly by the work of trained clergy & the missionary monks of Celtic Christianity, in the East, as often as not, it was Christian merchants & craftsmen who advanced the Faith. The Church of the East placed great emphasis on education and literacy. It was generally understood being a follower of Jesus meant an education that included reading, writing & theology. An educated laity meant an abundance of workers capable of spreading the faith – & spread it they did!  Christians often found employment among less advanced people, serving in government offices, & as teachers & secretaries. They helped solve the problem of illiteracy by inventing simplified alphabets based on the Syriac language which framed their own literature & theology.While that was at first a boon, in the end, it proved a hindrance. Those early missionaries failed to understand the principle of contextualization; that the Gospel is super-cultural; it transcends things like language & traditions. Those early missionaries who pressed rapidly into the East assumed that their Syrian-version of the Faith was the ONLY version & tried to convert those they met to that. As a consequence, while a few did accept the faith & learned Syrian-Aramaic, a few generations later, the old religions & languages reasserted themselves and Christianity was either swept away or so assimilated into the culture that it wasn’t really Biblical Christianity any longer.The golden age of early missions in Central Asia was from the end of the 4th C to the latter part of the 9th. Then both Islam & Buddhism came onto the scene.Northeast of Persia, the Church had an early & extensive spread around the Oxus River. By the early 4th C the cities of Merv, Herat & Samarkand had bishops.Once the Faith was established in this region, it spread quickly further east into the basin of the Tarim River, then into the area north of the Tien Shan Mountains & Tibet. It spread along this path because that was the premier caravan route. With so many Christians engaged in trade, it was natural the Gospel was soon planted in the caravan centers.In the 11th C the Faith began to spread among the nomadic peoples of the central Asian regions. These Christians were mostly from the Tartars & Mongol tribes of Keraits, Onguts, Uyghurs, Naimans, and Merkits.It’s not clear exactly when Christianity reached Tibet, but it most likely arrived there by the 6th C. The territory of the ancient Tibetans stretched farther west & north than the present-day nation, & they had extensive contact with the nomadic tribes of Central Asia. A vibrant church existed in Tibet by the 8th C. The patriarch of the Assyrian Church in Mesopotamia, Timothy I, wrote from Baghdad in 782 that the Christian community in Tibet was one of the largest groups under his oversight. He appointed a Tibetan patriarch to oversee the many churches there. The center of the Tibetan church was located at Lhasa and the Church thrived there until the late 13th C when Buddhism swept through the region.An inscription carved into a large boulder at the entrance to the pass at Tangtse, once part of Tibet but now in India, has 3 crosses with some writing indicating the presence of the Christian Faith. The pass was one of the main ancient trade routes between Lhasa and Bactria. The crosses are stylistically from the Church of the East, and one of the words appears to be “Jesus.” Another inscription reads, “In the year 210 came Nosfarn from Samarkand as an emissary to the Khan of Tibet.” That might not seem like a reference to Christianity until you take a closer look at the date. 210! That only makes sense in reference to measuring time since the birth of Christ, which was already a practice in the Church.The aforementioned Timothy I became Patriarch of the Assyrian church about 780. His church was located in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Seleucia, the larger twin to the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. He was 52 & well past the average life expectancy for people of the time. Timothy lived into his 90’s, dying in 823. During his long life, he devoted himself to spiritual conquest as energetically as Alexander the Great had to the military kind.  While Alexander built an earthly empire, Timothy sought to expand the Kingdom of God.At every point, Timothy’s career smashes everything we think we know about the history of Christianity at that time. He alters ideas about the geographical spread of the Faith, its relationship with political power, its cultural influence, & its interaction with other religions. In terms of his prestige & the geographical extent of his authority, Timothy was the most significant Christian leader of his day; far more influential than the pope in Rome or the patriarch in Constantin

This Episode of CS is titled, “Orthodoxy, with an Eastern Flavor.”We need to begin this episode by defining the term “Orthodoxy.”It comes from Greek. Orthos means “straight” & idiomatically means that which is right or true. Doxa is from the verb dokein = to think; doxa is one’s opinion or belief.As it’s most often used, orthodoxy means adherence to accepted norms. In reference to Christianity, it means conforming to the creeds of the early Church; those statements of faith issued by the church councils we’ve looked at in recent podcasts and we have a series on in Season 2.In opposition to orthodoxy is what’s called heterodoxy; other-teaching. Heterodoxy deviates from the Faith defined by the Creeds. Specific instances of heterodoxy, that is - deviant doctrines are called heresy; with those who hold them known as heretics. When heresy causes a group of people to remove themselves from the Communion of Saints so they can form their own distinct community, it’s called a Schism.But there’s another, very different way the word Orthodox is used in Christianity. It’s the name of one of the 4 great branches of the Church; Roman Catholic, Protestant, & Eastern Orthodox. The fourth is that branch of the Faith we’ve been looking at for the last couple episodes – The Nestorian Church, AKA The Church of the East.In the West, we’re familiar with Roman Catholicism & Protestantism. We’re less aware of Eastern Orthodoxy and most people haven’t even heard of the Nestorian Church. Ignorance of Eastern Orthodoxy is tragic considering the Byzantine Empire which was home to the Orthodox Church continued to embody the values & traditions of the Roman Empire until the mid-15th C, a full millennium after the Fall of Rome in AD 476.It’ll be many episodes of CS before we get to the year 1054 when the Great Schism took place between the Eastern & Western churches. But I think it helpful to understand how Eastern Orthodoxy differs from Roman Catholicism so we can stay a little closer to the narrative timeline of how the Church developed in upcoming episodes.One of the ways we can better understand the Eastern Orthodox Church is to quickly summarize the history of Roman Catholicism in Europe during the Middle Ages as a contrast.In the West, the Church, led by the Pope with cardinals & bishops, oversaw the spiritual & religious aspects of European culture. The affiliation between church & state that began with Constantine the Great & continued for the next century & a half was at best a tense arrangement. Sometimes the Pope & Emperor were close; at other times they were at odds & competed for power. Overall, it was an uneasy marriage of the secular & religious. During the Middle Ages, the Church exerted tremendous influence in the secular sphere, & civil rulers either sought to ally themselves with the church, or to break the Church’s grip on power. Realizing how firm that grip was, some civil rulers even sought to infiltrate the ranks of the church to install their own bishops & popes. The Church played the same game & kept spies in many of Europe’s courts. These agents reported to Rome & sought to influence political decisions.The situation was dramatically different in the East where the church & state worked in harmony.  Though foreign to the Western Mind, & especially the Modern Western Mind which considers a great barrier between Church & State, in the ancient Byzantine Empire, Church & State were partners in governance.  They weren’t equivalent, but they worked together to shape policies & provide leadership that allowed the Eastern Empire to not only resist the forces that saw the West collapse, but to maintain the Empire until the 15th C  when it was finally over-run by the Ottoman Turks.In our attempt to understand Eastern Orthodoxy, we’ll look to the description Marshall Shelly provides in his excellent book, Church History in Plain Language.The prime starting point for understanding Orthodoxy isn’t to examine its basic doctrines but rather its use of holy images called icons. Icons are highly stylized portrayals of one or more saints, set against a golden background and a halo around the head. Icons are crucial in understanding Eastern Orthodoxy. Orthodox believers enter their church and go first to a wall covered with icons called the iconostasis. This wall separates the sanctuary from the nave. The worshipper kisses the icons before taking his/her place in the congregation. A visitor to an Orthodox home will find an icon in the east corner of the main room. If the guest is him/herself Orthodox, they’ll greet the icon by crossing themselves & bowing. Only then will they greet the host.To the Orthodox, icons are much more than man-made images. They’re manifestations of a divine ideal. They’re considered a window into heaven. In the same way grace is thought to be imparted through the Roman Catholic Mass, grace is thought to flow from heaven to earth thru icons. Protestants can better understand the importance of icons to the Orthodox by considering how important The Bible is to them.  As Scripture is the written revelation of God’s will & truth, so icons are considered as visual representations of truth that have as much if not more to impart by way of revelation to believers. In fact, icons aren’t painted, they are said to be “written,” conveying the idea that they fulfill the same role as Scripture. The Bible is the Scripture in words; icons are scripture in images.As I said, an icon is a highly stylized portrayal of saints or Bible scenes on panels, usually made of wood, most often cypress which has been prepped with cloth & gesso. The background is gold leaf, depicting the glory of the divine realm the image is thought to come from, with bright tempura paint making the figures & decoration. When dry, the panel is covered in varnish. Some ancient icons are amazing pieces of art. Icon artists consider the writing of icons as a spiritual act & prepare by fasting & prayer, after having completed laborious technical training.Strictly speaking, Eastern Orthodox theology says icons are not objects of devotion themselves. They’re thought to be windows into the spiritual realm by which the divine is able to infiltrate & effect the physical.  Though that’s the official doctrinal position on icons, they are kissed & venerated at the beginning & at various points during a service.  Icons aren’t worshipped, they’re venerated; meaning while they aren’t given the worship due God alone, they are esteemed as a medium by which grace is bestowed on worshippers. While this is the technical explanation for the use of icons, watching how worshipers use them and listening to how highly they’re regarded, I’m hard-pressed to see how in a practical sense, there’s any difference between veneration & worship. To many objective observers, the use of icons seems a clear violation of the Second Commandment prohibiting the use of images in the worship of God.Scholars debate when Eastern Christians began to use icons. Some say their use began in the late 6th or 7th C. Before icons became popular, relics played an important part of church life. Body parts of saints as well as items connected to Biblical stories were thought to possess spiritual power.Caution: I know opine à All of this was superstitious silliness, but it framed the thinking of many. Since there were only so many holy relics to go around and each church made claim to one to draw worshippers in, icons began to be used as surrogates for relics. If you can’t have a piece of the cross, maybe a golden painting of Mary holding the baby Jesus would do the trick. If you can’t have Stephen’s index finger, how about his icon? Miraculous stories hovering round relics & icons were legion, each claiming some special connection to God & saints. Relics were said to bring healing. Icons were said to weep tears or bleed. The fragrant scent of incense was said to attend many of the greatest icons. The tales go on & on.The question in all these claims is; where do we find the use of such things in Scripture? By way of reminder, Evangelical Christians determine what defines Biblical as opposed to Eastern Orthodoxy by this set of questions –1) Did Jesus teach or model in in the Gospels? 2) Did the Early Church practice it in the book of Acts? 3) Do the NT epistles comment on or regulate it as normative for faith & practice?Using this 3-fold filter, the use of relics & icons isn’t orthodox.The Eastern Orthodox church refers to itself as the Church of the 7 Councils. It claims a superior form of the Christian Faith because it draws its doctrine from what it says are the main Church Councils that defined normal Christian belief. The last Council, Nicaea II in AD 787, came about as a response to the Iconoclast Controversy which we’ll talk about later. The point here is that Nicaea II declared the veneration of icons to be good & proper. What we’re to glean from this is that claiming to be a church that adheres to the creeds of the 7 Councils doesn’t mean much if those councils were just gatherings of men. It isn’t their Creeds that are important & that define the Faith; It’s Scripture alone that has that role. Creedal statements are only so good in as much as they are proper interpretations of the Word of God. But they are not themselves, that Word.Another important distinction between the Eastern & Western Church is how they view the object of salvation.Western Christians tend to understand the relationship between God & man in legal terms. Man is obliged to meet the demands of a just God. Sin, sacrifice, & salvation are all aspects of divine justice. Salvation is cast primarily in terms of justification.In Roman Catholicism, when a believer sins, a priest determines what payment or penance he owes to God. If he’s unable to provide enough penance for some especially heinous sin, then purgatory in the afterlife provides a place where his soul can be expiated.In Protestantism, penance & purgatory are set aside for t

This week’s episode of Communion Sanctorum is titled – “Justinian Sayin’”During the 5th C, while the Western Roman Empire was falling to the Goths, the Eastern Empire centered at Constantinople looked like it would carry on for centuries. Though it identified itself as Roman, historians refer to the Eastern region as the Byzantine Empire & Era. It gets that title from Byzantium, the city’s name before Constantine made it his new capital.During the 5th C, the entire empire, both East & West went into decline. But in the 6th  Century, the Emperor Justinian I lead a major revival of Roman civilization. Reigning for nearly 40 years, Justinian not only brought about a re-flowering of culture in the East, he attempted to reassert control over those lands in the West that had fallen to barbarian control.A diverse picture of Justinian the Great has emerged. For years the standard way to see him was as an intelligent, ambitious, energetic, gregarious leader plagued by an unhealthy dose of vanity. Dare I say it? Why not: He wanted to make Rome Great Again. While that’s been the traditional way of understanding Justinian, more recently, that image has been edited slightly by giving his wife and queen Theodora, a more prominent role in fueling his ambition. Whatever else we might say about this husband and wife team, they were certainly devout in their faith.Justinian's reign was bolstered by the careers of several capable generals who were able to translate his desire to retake the West into reality. The most famous of these generals was Belisarius, a military genius on par with Hannibal, Caesar, & Alexander. During Justinian's reign, portions of Italy, North Africa & Spain were reconquered & put under Byzantine rule.The Western emperors in Rome's long history tended to be more austere in the demonstrations of their authority by keeping their wardrobe simple & the customs related to their rule modest, as befitted the idea of the Augustus as Princeps = meaning 1st  Citizen. Eastern emperors went the other way & eschewed humility in favor of an Oriental, or what we might call “Persian” model of majesty. It began with Constantine who broke with the long-held western tradition of Imperial modesty & arrayed himself as a glorious Eastern Monarch. Following Constantine, Eastern emperors wore elaborate robes, crowns, & festooned their courts with ostentatious symbols of wealth & power.  Encouraged by Theodora, Justinian advanced this movement and made his court a grand showcase. When people appeared before the Emperor, they had to prostrate themselves, as though bowing before a god. The pomp and ceremony of Justinian’s court were quickly duplicated by the church at Constantinople because of the close tie between church & state in the East.It was this ambition for glory that moved Justinian to embark on a massive building campaign. He commissioned the construction of entire towns, roads, bridges, baths, palaces, & a host of churches & monasteries. His enduring legacy was the Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Cathedral of St. Sophia, the main church of Constantinople. The Hagia Sofia was the epitome of a new style of architecture centered on the dome, the largest to be built to that time.  Visitors to the church would stand for hours in awe staring up at the dome, incredulous that such a span could be built by man. Though the rich interior façade of the church has been gutted by years of conflict, the basic structure stands to this day as one of Istanbul’s premier attractions.Justinian was no mean theologian in his own right. As Emperor he wanted to unite the Church under one creed and worked hard to resolve the major dispute of the day; the divide between the Orthodox faith as expressed in the Council of Chalcedon & the Monophysites.By way of review; the Monophysites followed the teachings of Cyril of Alexandria who'd contended with Nestorius over the nature of Christ. Nestorius emphasized the human nature of Jesus, while Cyril emphasized Jesus’ deity. The followers of both took their doctrines too far so that the Nestorians who went East into Persia tended to diminish the deity of Christ, while the Cyrillians who went south into Egypt, elevated Jesus’ deity at the expense of his humanity. They put such an emphasis on his deity they became Monophysites; meaning 1 nature-ites.Justinian tried to reconcile the Orthodox faith centered at Constantinople with the Monophysites based in Egypt by finessing the words used to describe the faith. Even though the Council of Chalcedon had officially ended the dispute, there was still a rift between the Church at Constantinople and that in Egypt.Justinian tried to clarify how to understand the natures of Jesus as God & Human. Did He have 1 nature or 2? And if 2. How did those 2 natures co-exist in the Son of God? Were they separate & distinct or merged into something new? If they were distinct, was one superior to the other? This was the crux of the debate the Council of Chalcedon had struggled with and which both Cyril & Nestorius contended over.Justinian had partial success in getting moderate Monophysites to agree with his theology. He was helped by the work of a monk named Leo of Byzantium. Leo proposed that in Christ, his 2 natures were so co-mingled & united so that they formed one nature, he identified as the Logos.In 544 Emperor Justinian issued an edict condemning some pro-Nestorian writings. Many Western bishops thought the edict a scandalous refutation of the Chalcedonian Creed. They assumed Justinian had come out as a Monophysite. Pope Vigilius condemned the edict and broke off fellowship with the Patriarch of Constantinople because he supported the Emperor’s edict. Shortly thereafter, when Pope Vigilius visited Constantinople, he did an abrupt about-face, adding his own censure to the condemned pro-Nestorian writings. Then in 550, after several bishops criticized this reversal, Vigilius did another & said the writings weren’t prohibited after all.Nothing like being a stalwart pillar of an unwavering stand. Vigilius was consistent; he consistently wavered when under pressure.All of this created so much controversy that in 553 Justinian called the 5th Ecumenical Council at Constantinople. Though it was supposed to be a counsel of the whole church, Pope Vigilius refused to attend. At Justinian's demand, the Council affirmed his original edict of 544, further condemning anyone who supported the pro-Nestorian writings. The Emperor banished Vigilius for his refusal to attend, saying he would be reinstated only on condition of his accepting the Council's decision.Guess what Vigilius did. Yep. He relented and endorsed the Council's finding. So the result was that the Chalcedonian Creed was reinterpreted along far more Monophysite lines. Jesus’ deity was elevated to the foreground while his humanity was relegated to a distant backwater. This became the official position of the Eastern Orthodox Church.But Justinian's desire to bring unity wasn't achieved. The Western bishops refused to recognize the Council of Constantinople's interpretation of the Chalcedon Creed.  And while the new spin on Jesus’ nature was embraced in the East, the hard-core Monophysites of Egypt stood their ground. They’d come to hold their theology with a fierce regional loyalty. To accept Justinian's formulation was deemed a compromise they saw not only as heretical but as unpatriotic. They vehemently refused to come under the control of Constantinople.What Justinian was unable to do by theological compromise and diplomacy, he attempted, by force. After all, as they say, a War is just diplomacy by other means. And as Justinian might say, “What good is it being King if you can’t bash heads whenever you want?”The Emperor also sought to eradicate the last vestiges of paganism throughout the Empire. He commanded both civil officials & church leaders to seek out all pagan cultic practices and pre-Christian Greek philosophy and bring an immediate end to them. He closed the schools of Athens, the last institutions teaching Greek philosophy. He allowed the Jews to continue their faith but sought to regulate their practices. He decreed the death penalty for Manichaeans and other heretics like the Montanists. When his harsh policies stirred up rebellion, he was ruthless in putting it down.Toward the end of his reign, his wife Theodora’s Monophysite beliefs influenced him to move further in that direction. He sought to recast the 5th Council's findings into a new form that would gain greater Monophysite support. This new view has been given the tongue-twisting label of Aph-thar-to-docetism.According to this view, even Jesus' physical body was divine so that from conception to death, it didn’t change. This means Jesus didn’t suffer or know the desires & passions of mortals.When he tried to impose this doctrine on the Church, the vast majority of bishops refused to comply. So Justinian made plans to enforce compliance but died before the campaign could begin, much to the relief of said bishops.Justinian took an active hand in ordering the Church in more than just theology. He passed laws dealing with various aspects of church life. He appointed bishops, assigned abbots to monasteries, ordained priests, managed church lands and oversaw the conduct of the clergy. He forbade the practice of simony; the sale of church offices. Being a church official could be quite lucrative, so the practice of simony was frequently a problem.The Emperor also forbade the clergy from attending chariot races and the theater. This seems harsh if we think of these as mere sporting and cultural events. They weren't. Both events were more often than not scenes of moral debauchery where ribald behavior was common. One did not attend a race for polite or dignified company. The races were à  well, racy. And the theater was a place where perversions were enacted onstage. That Justinian forbade clergy from attending these events means had been common for them to do

This episode of CS is titled, “Syncretism.”Recent episodes have chronicled the growing rift between the Eastern church centered at Constantinople and the Western-based in Rome. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 Eastern bishops elevated the Bishop of Constantinople to near equal status and authority with the Bishop of Rome, giving the Church 2 heads. It was increasingly obvious politics played a greater role in church affairs than the quest for doctrinal purity or faithfulness to the Gospel–mandate. East & West were moving in opposite directions.Since Constantinople as the “New Rome” was the political center of the empire the Eastern church grew increasingly linked to Imperial power. In the year 380, on Feb. 27th in his Edict of Thessalonica, Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official state religion and banned paganism. Since the Church had no authority or power to enforce compliance to the Faith or to punish unconverted pagans, Imperial power was lent to enforce the Emperor’s will.This forced-conversion of vast multitudes of pagans saw an influx of new church members whose commitment to the Gospel was doubtful. Priests were now in the uncomfortable position of having to lead people they knew were at best, only nominally-committed.Since the Christianity of the 4th C had moved away from its roots in Judaism with its knee-jerk hostility to idolatry, a growing number of priests, who’d themselves been idol-worshiping pagans before conversion, though it might facilitate the assimilation of new converts to the Faith if concessions were made to the old forms. Why not take age-old traditions and direct them toward new ends? The veneration of angels, saints, relics, pictures, and statues was an attempt to bring ex-pagans into a more familiar form of worship and accommodate their religious sensitivities. Of this process, Philip Schaff writes, “The Christianizing of the State amounted in great measure to a paganizing and secularizing of the church. The world overcame the Church, as much as the Church overcame the world, and the temporal gain of Christianity was in many respects canceled by its spiritual loss. The mass of the Roman Empire was baptized only with water, not with the Spirit and fire of the Gospel, and it smuggled heathen manors and practices into the sanctuary under a new name.” [1]It’s a risky venture attributing motive to those removed from us by such a long distance in time, but I suspect for many church leaders the assimilation of pagan forms into the liturgy of the Church was seen as a necessary concession to the large numbers of barbarians now required to convert. The hope was that as these new, nominal church members learned the Gospel, the truth would set them free from their superstitions and the Church could return to a pure and orthodox liturgy. No doubt the reasoning went something like à God had become man to reach sinful men. Why could not the Church become, to use Paul’s words "all things to all people in order to win the more?"The problem is, if that was the rationalization for adopting pagan forms of worship, it didn't work. The Church didn't temporarily materialize its liturgy to accommodate nominal members; it institutionalized those pagan forms, making them into new traditions, some of which continue to this day.Another unfortunate development during this time was the distance that developed between the clergy and laity. For the first 3 Cs, lead pastors or bishops as they were called, were honored as God-ordained leaders by their congregations, but they weren't regarded as special. The elevation of bishops and priests into a special class developed slowly during the 4th & 5th Cs.  By the dawn of the 6th they were regarded as being unique; part of a distinct category. The reason for this elevation differed in the East and West. In the East, Church & State were joined in a religio-political union. Because of the close of affinity between priest and politician, clergy adopted the lavish trappings Eastern officials affected. Constantine began this trend when he moved his capital to Constantinople.  He adorned himself as a traditional opulent Eastern monarch rather than an austere Western Emperor.For the first 2 Cs, Western clergy wore clothing similar to their congregations. But as the monastic movement began providing more priests for the church, the monk’s habit became more prominent. This continued for some time among the priesthood, but as the political structure of the Western Empire fell apart and church leaders were increasingly looked to, to provide civil governance, some bishops adopted garments that marked them as civil rulers, flavoring their robes with religious symbols. But the message was clear à Church and State had merged in the office of Bishop.At General Councils, when Western bishops observed the sumptuous regalia of their Eastern peers, they aspired to wear similarly elegant gear and began to don the Eastern fashions. All this only served to further distance the clergy from the laity.Another carry-over from paganism was the observance of special days. Constantine set Sunday as the official day of Christian worship. In the mid-4th C, Christmas became a regular practice, taking over the pagan December festival of Saturnalia. Epiphany celebrated either, in the West the visit of the Magi, or in the East, Jesus' baptism.The annual commemoration of notable martyrs became Saint’s days.More rituals were added to the Church calendar. The only 2 sacraments in the New Testament call Christians to practice Baptism & Communion. By the end of the 6th C, 5 more were added.The development of the doctrine of original sin encouraged the practice of infant baptism. The emergence of Communion as the centerpiece of worship saw a deepening of its meaning from a commemoration of Jesus’ death to a re-enactment of.The Church father Cyprian taught that the priest acted in Christ's place at Communion and that he offered a true and full sacrifice to God. Pope Gregory I emphasized the sacrificial nature of Communion. By the dawn of the 7th C, Sacerdotalism was well on its way.Sacerdotalism is the belief that grace is literally & actually bestowed on worshipers through the mediating influence of an ordained priest, officiating the sacraments. Think of it this way à The Bible says we are saved by grace through faith. The official position of the Church was that by the faith of the officiating priest, working in harmony w/the worshipper, the sacraments were vehicles by which grace was bestowed & salvation was renewed. è Spiritual vitamins to keep one healthy.All this led to a further separation of clergy and laity. Later it became the means by which Church leaders manipulated civil officials. When clergy have the power to bestow grace via sacraments, they can threaten a ruler to comply or risk the torment of hell.The veneration of saints grew out of a long tradition that held the martyrs in the highest regard. It’s not difficult to see how those who’d died during persecution were esteemed as heroes and examples all could aspire to.  The anniversary of their martyrdom was made a day of commemoration, eventually morphing into Saint’s Days. Since pagans were in the habit of lauding their heroes by marking them with special celebrations, attributing them with special powers, Saint’s Days were substituted for these celebrations, and the saints were accorded special-access to God. What had been prayers by Christians at the tomb of martyrs for the peaceful repose of the martyr’s soul, turned into prayers TO the saints for their intercession with God and requests of the saints to assist them in their special area of expertise. Going on a journey? Ask St. Cristofer for protection. Starting a new business venture? Ask St. Bartholomew for prosperity.  On and on it went.The veneration of saints was endorsed by the 2nd Council of Nicaea in the 8th C. Churches and chapels were built over saint’s graves and became destinations for pilgrims. Festivals associated with their death were placed on the calendar, and legends of miracles associated with them developed rapidly. Traffic in relics, including parts of a saint’s body—teeth, hair, and bones, became so great a prob­lem, an Imperial order stopped it in 381. These relics became the focal point of the many cathedrals built across Europe and were ultimately the goal of the millions of pilgrimages people embarked on during the Middle Ages. Think of a cathedral as merely a large ornate box that held some saint’s shin-bone and you get the idea.The use of images and pictures in worship expanded rapidly as increasing numbers of barbarians came into the church. Images gave substance to the invisible reality of deity for these superstitious worshipers. Pictures also had a decorative function in beautifying churches. The Church Fathers tried to make a distinction between reverence of images and worship, but it’s doubtful this distinc­tion prevented peasants from conflating an image with the thing it was meant to represent.Government aid after Constantine led to ex­tensive church building.  These imperial churches followed the basilica architecture Romans developed for their public buildings.Constan­tine's mother, Helena, visited Israel in her later years and was thought to have discerned both by the Spirit’s leading and local reports, the location of several Biblical events, leading to the construction of churches right over where those events were supposed to have occurred.The earliest singing in the church was conducted by a leader to whom the people gave response in song. Antiphonal singing, in which 2 choirs sing alternately, developed in the East at Antioch. Ambrose intro­duced the practice of antiphonal sing­ing in Milan, from which it spread throughout the Western church.The veneration of Mary was also pretty well in place by the close of the 6th C, though the Roman Church didn’t officially adopt the doctrines of her immaculate conception and miraculous assump

The title of this episode is simply à “Ambrose.” And once we learn a little about him, we’ll see that title is enough.For Ambrose was one of the most interesting figures in Church History, a hinge around which the course of the Faith swung.Born in 340, Ambrose was the second son of Ambrosius, the imperial governor of Gaul and part of an ancient Roman family that included the famous Marcus Aurelius. Not long after Aurelius, and his disastrous son and heir Commodus, the family became Christians who provided not a few notable martyrs. Ambrose was born at Trier, the imperial capital of Gaul. While still a child, Ambrose’s father died, and he was taken to Rome to be raised. His childhood was spent in the company of many members of the Christian clergy, men of sincere faith with a solid grasp on the theological challenges the Church of that day wrestled with; things you’re familiar with because we’ve spent the last several episodes dealing with them; that is, the Christological controversies that swirled first around Arius, then the blood-feud between Cyril & Nestorius.Now would be a good time for me to toss in some place-markers so we can get a sense of what was going on as Ambrose grew up. Donatus is the bishop of Carthage. The Cappadocian Fathers, Basil, and the 2 Gregory’s are hammering out the proper verbiage to understand the Trinity. Athanasius has his long run as THE chief defender or Biblical orthodoxy. When Ambrose was 16, the famous Desert Father Anthony of Egypt died. The Goths ran rampant over Northern Europe, causing great consternation in the Roman Empire. When Ambrose was 38 the Goths defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in a loss so thorough, the Emperor Valens was killed.During Ambrose’s lifetime, Pope Damasus will rule the Church at Rome. Jerome will move to Bethlehem and complete the Vulgate. John Chrysostom will serve as Patriarch at Constantinople.Clearly, a lot with major import was going on during Ambrose’s lifetime.When he turned 30, Ambrose, based in the capital at Milan, became governor of all NW’n Italy. He was charged with the responsibility to officiate church disputes.  This was at a time when Nicaean & Arian believers were at war with each other; a war not fought with literal weapons but with words. Ambrose was no friend to the Arians, but he was so fair-minded and well-regarded, both sides supported him in his role as governor. When the Arian bishop of Milan died, Ambrose attended the meeting to elect his replacement, hoping his presence would forestall violence. To his surprise, both sides shouted their wish that he be the replacement.Ambrose didn’t want it. He was doing quite well as a political leader. Following the practice of many at that time, he hadn’t even been baptized yet. But the people wrote to Emperor Valentinian, asking for his approval of their selection. Ambrose was placed under arrest until he agreed to serve a Milan’s new bishop.Now, if the Arians had hoped to gain favor by supporting Ambrose as bishop, they were destined to disappointment. Their new bishop helped define what the word ‘orthodox’ meant. He soon took the Arians to task & refused to surrender a building for them to meet in. He wrote several works against them that went on to prove instrumental in ultimately bringing an end to Arianism.Trained in rhetoric and law, and having studied Greek, Ambrose became known for his knowledge of Greek scholars, both Christian and pagan. In addition to Philo, Origen, and Basil of Caesarea, he quoted the Neo-platonist Plotinus in his sermons. He was widely regarded as an excellent preacher.In many of his messages, Ambrose expounded upon the virtues of asceticism. He was so persuasive that noble families sometimes forbade their daughters to attend his services, fearing they’d trade their marriageable status withy its potential for a bride price, for the life of nun.One piece of his pastoral advice became a maxim for the clergy: “When you are at Rome, live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere, live as they live elsewhere.”Ambrose also introduced congregational singing, and was accused of “bewitching” Milan by introducing Eastern melodies into the hymns he wrote. Because of his influence, hymn-singing became an important part of Western liturgy.While Ambrose was a fierce opponent of heresy, as seen in his stand against Arianism, his opposition to religious issues didn’t morph over into how people were treated civilly. Arians & pagans were still citizens who possessed rights as citizens. As human beings, they were still objects of God’s love and desire for salvation. Respect needed to be shown them, even while opposing them theologically. That was a rare perspective for the time; inordinately rare. And it earned Ambrose tremendous respect from all quarters.While the people of Ambrose’s time credited his writings and worship innovations as the most notable feature of his life & ministry, history attributes two other momentous events to his impact on the Church.First is in the realm of church-state relations. Second would be his influence on a young pagan who visited his church and became a follower of Jesus. His name was Augustine.Let’s consider first, Ambrose’s impact of church-state relations.His relationship with Emperor Theodosius, who finalized a long-running political trend of folding the Roman Empire into a Christian state, was a dramatic shift from the first 200 years of Church history that saw an on & off persecution.An example of the change from paganism to Christianity occurred in 390, when local officials imprisoned a charioteer of Thessalonica for homosexual behavior. The public rebelled against this action because the charioteer was a major celebrity, a sports hero & crowd favorite. Riots broke out w/a loud cry for his release. Not a few of the rioters and innocent bystanders were killed, including the governor. The mob took over the prison and the prisoner was freed.The Emperor was enraged by the melee. He was determined to exact revenge against the people of Thessalonica for such a flagrant disregard for the law and the disrespect he felt at having his hand-picked governor so casually relieved of life. So he slyly announced another chariot race. When the crowds showed up & settled into their seats, the gates were locked, the people inside—massacred. Over the following 3 hours, 7,000 were put to the sword.Ambrose was stunned! Once he recovered from his shock, he sat down and composed a letter to Theodosius, demanding the Emperor repent. As chief ruler, Theodosius wasn’t inclined to follow some far-off bishop’s counsel. Ambrose was merely a clergyman in Milan, Italy; Theodosius was the mighty ruler headquartered in the East at Constantinople.But Theodosius didn’t stay in Constantinople. Wouldn’t you just know it? Imperial business took him, guess where! Yep – Milan. As a Christian Emperor of a now Christian Empire, Theodosius went to church, and expected Pastor Ambrose to serve him Communion. Ambrose refused! His letter calling for the Emperor to repent had gone unheeded. Who did this guy think he was that he could just waltz into the church in Milan and line up for Communion as though everything was hunky-dory? The nerve of the guy!Ambrose repeated the condition: Unless the emperor repent of his gross abuse of power, & do so publicly, no Communion would pass his lips! Either Ambrose was gutsy or had a death wish! An Emperor who’d ordered the execution of thousands probably wouldn’t think much of offing a lone, obstinate bishop. But Ambrose demonstrated he would not compromise his calling to save his life and Theodosius realized his best course was to do as instructed and repented by setting aside his royal garments & emblems of State, wearing humble sackcloth, & a face streaked w/ash as a sign of penance.Ambrose never intended this humiliation of the Emperor as a way to elevate himself or other church officials. It was simply something he believed Theodosius, who claimed to be a Christian, was required to do as a sign of sincere contrition before God. Ambrose would have been appalled at how later bishops used their office & power to administer the sacraments as a way to manipulate civil rulers, and by doing so, use civil power to accomplish church ends. Or we should say, their own ends hidden ‘neath a thin veneer of religion.Though Ambrose could not have foreseen the consequences of this episode with the Emperor, it introduced the medieval concept of a Christian emperor as the compliant “son of the church serving under orders from Christ.” Over the next millennium, secular and religious rulers vied with each other over who was sovereign in the different spheres of life.Though we might expect Emperor Theodosius to leave Milan with an axe to grind as it related to Ambrose, legend says he was so impressed with Ambrose’s courage & quality of Christian witness he said, “I know no bishop worthy of the name, except Ambrose” When the emperor died, it was in Ambrose’s arms. Of Theodosius’ death Ambrose said, “I confess I loved him, and felt the sorrow of his death in the abyss of my heart.”Two years later, Ambrose himself fell ill. The worries the entire Italian countryside felt were expressed by one writer as; “When Ambrose dies, we shall see the ruin of Italy.” On the Eve of Easter in 397, Milan’s beloved bishop breathed his last.Only one name is more associated with Ambrose than Theodosius’. And that leads us to the second impact of his ministry, the one historians reckon as most important. That one name is the student who outshined this teacher: Augustine. But that’s the subject of our next few episode . . .

This episode of CS is titled “Augustine – Part 1.”Late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient yet so new; Late have I loved you. You were within while I was without. I sought You out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. These things kept me far from You; even though they’d not even be unless You made them. You called and cried aloud, and opened my deafness. You gleamed and shined, and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrant odors and I drew breath, and now I pant for You. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.Wrote Augustine of Hippo in his classic Confessions.We turn now to the life and work of a man of singular importance in the history of the Church due to his impact on theology. I’ll be blunt to say what it seems many, maybe most, are careful to avoid when it comes to Augustine. While the vast majority of historians laud him, a much smaller group are less enthused with him, as I hope becomes clear as we review the man and his impact.Augustine is the climax of patristic thought, at least in the Latin world. By “patristics,”  I mean the theology of the Church Fathers. If you’ve ever had a chance to look through collections of books on theology or church history, you’ve likely seen a massive set of tomes called the Ante & Post Nicene Fathers. That simply means the Church Fathers that came before the Council of Nicaea and those who came after and helped lay the doctrinal foundation of the Church. Augustine was THE dominant influence on the Medieval European; so much so, He’s referred to as the Architect of the Middle Ages. Augustine continues to be a major influence among Roman Catholics for his theology of the church and sacraments, and for Protestants in regard to his theology of grace & salvation.Augustine’s back-story is well-known because there’s plenty of source material to draw from. Some say we know more about Augustine than any other figure of the ancient world because—not only do we have a record of his daily activities from one of his students; Possidius, Bishop of Calama; we also have a highly detailed record of Augustine’s inner life from his classic work, Confessions. We also have a work titled Retractions where Augustine chronicles his intellectual development as he lists 95 of his works, explains why they were written, and the changes he made to them over time.Let me begin his story by laying the background of Augustine’s world . . .The end of the persecution of the first 2 centuries was a great relief to the church. No doubt the reported conversion of Emperor Constantine seemed a dream come true. The apostle Paul told the followers of Christ to pray for the king and all those in authority. So the report of the Emperor’s conversion was a cause of great rejoicing. It was likely only a handful of the wise who sensed a call to caution in what this new relationship between church and state would mean and the perils it might bring.During the 4th Century, churches grew more rapidly than ever. But not all those who joined did so with pure motives. With persecution behind them, some joined the Church to hedge their bets and add one more deity to their list. Others joined thinking it would advance their social status, now that being a Christian could earn them points with officials. Some sincere Christians witnessed the moral and spiritual dumbing down of the faith and fled to the wilderness to pursue an ascetic lifestyle as a hermit or into a monastery as a monk. But most Christians remained in their cities and towns to witness the growing affiliation between the church and earthly institutions. The invisible, universal or catholic church began increasingly to be associated with earthly forms and social structures.I need to pause here and make sure everyone understands that the word Catholic simply means UNIVERSAL. Historically, this is the Age of Catholic Christianity – not ROMAN Catholic Christianity. Historians refer to this time and the Eastern Orthodox Church as Catholic, to differentiate it from the several aberrant and heretical groups that had split off.  Groups like the Arians, Manichaeans, Gnostics, and Apollinarians, and half a dozen other hard to pronounce sects. But toward the end of the 4th Century, the Institutional replaced the Communal aspects of the Faith. The Gospel was supplanted by dogma and rituals in many churches.Jesus made it clear following Him meant a call to serve, not be served. Christians are servants. They serve God by serving one another and the world. During the first 3 centuries when the church was battered, the call to serve was valued as a priority. The heroes of the faith served by offering themselves in the ultimate sense-with their lives. But when the Church rose out of the catacombs to enter positions of social influence and power during the 4th Century, being a servant lost priority. Church leaders, who’d led by serving for 300 years, began to position themselves to be served. Servant-leaders became leaders of servants.This change escalated with the disintegration of the Western Empire during the 4th & 5th Centuries. As foreigners pressed in from the North and East, and civil authorities fled from the frontiers, people look more and more to the bishops and church leaders to provide guidance and governance.We’ve already seen how the Church and Bishop at Rome emerged as not only a religious leader but a political leader as well. The fall and sack of Rome by the Vandals in 410 rocked the Empire, leaving people profoundly shaken. One man emerged at this time to help deal with their confusion and anxiety over the future.Augustine was born in 354 in Tagaste, a small commercial city in North Africa. His father Patricius was a pagan and member of the local ruling class. His mother Monica was a committed Christian. Though far from wealthy, Augustine's parents were determined he should have the best education possible. After attending primary school in Tagaste he went to Carthage for secondary education. It was there, at the age of 17, he took on a mistress with whom he lived for 13 years & by whom he had a son named Adeodatus. While this seems scandalous, realize it was not all that uncommon for young men of the upper classes to have such an arrangement. Augustine seems to have had a genuine love for this woman, even though he fails to give us her name. It’s certain he did love their son. And even though Augustine loved his girlfriend. He later wrote throughout these years he was continually hammered by sexual temptation and often despaired of overcoming it.Augustine pursued studies in philosophy in general; picking no specific school as the focus of his attention. When he was 19 he read the now lost Hortensius by the Roman orator Cicero & was convinced he should make the pursuit of truth his life's aim. But this noble quest battled with what he now felt was a degrading desire toward immorality. For moral assistance to resist the downward pull, he defaulted to the faith of his mother’s home and turned to the Bible. But being a lover of classical Latin, the translations he read seemed crude and unsophisticated and held no appeal.What did appeal to Augustine was the Manichaeans with whom we’ve already treated.  By way of review, Mani was a teacher in Persia in the mid-3rd Century who mashed a Gnostic-flavored religion together with ancient Persian ideas as embodied in Zoroastrianism. Augustine was an intellectual, the kind of person Manichaeanism appealed to. They disdained faith, saying they were the intellectual gate-keepers of reason and logic. They explained the world in terms of darkness and light. Light and Spirit were good, darkness and the physical; evil. The key to overcoming sin was an early form of the campaign used on public school campuses in the US years ago regarding drugs: “Just say no!” Augustine was told if he just employed total abstinence from physical pleasure he’d do well. He was a Manichaean for 9 yrs until he saw its logical inconsistencies and left.His record of this time reveals that while he remained within their ranks, he had problems all along. Assuming he just needed to learn more to clear up the problems, the more he studied, the more problems popped up. When he voiced his concerns, other Manichaeans told him if he could just hear the teaching of Faustus, all his concerns would dissolve. Faustus was supposed to be the consummate Manichaean who had all the answers.Well, Faustus eventually arrived and Augustine listened in the expectation that everything he’d been doubting would evaporate like dew in the morning sun. That’s not what happened. On the contrary. Augustine said while Faustus was eloquent of speech, his words were like a fancy plate holding rotten meat. He sounded good, but his speech was empty.Augustine spent time with Faustus, trying to work through his difficulties but the more he heard, the more he realized the man was clueless. So much for Manichaeanism being the gate-keeper of reason.At the age of 20, Augustine began teaching. His friends recognized his intellectual genius and encouraged him to move to Rome. In 382, closing in on 30, he and his mother moved to the Capital where he began teaching.As often happens when someone’s religious or philosophical house is blown over like a stack of cards, Augustine’s disappointment with Manichaeanism led to a period of disenchantment & skepticism. Remember; he’d given himself to the pursuit of truth and had assumed for several years Mani had found it. Now he knew he hadn’t. Once bitten, twice shy works for philosophy as well as romance.Augustine was rescued from his growing skepticism by Neo-Platonism and the work of Plotinus who fanned to flame his smoldering spark of longing for truth.In 384, Augustine was hired as a professor of rhetoric at the University of Milan where his now widowed mother Monica and some friends joined him.More out of professional court

This episode of CS is titled “Augustine – Part 2.”Augustine wrote a work called Retractions in which he lists the many books and treatises he’d penned. Each work is given a summary and additional notes are added charting the development of his thought over time.He wrote some 113 books & treatises, close to 250 letters, some of which are treatises themselves, and 500 sermons.Here’s a rundown on some of them …The best introduction to Augustine’s thoughts is his Enchiridion – also known as On Faith, Hope, & Love.  The section on faith is an exposition of the Apostle’s Creed. Hope is captured in the Lord’s Prayer, while Love is the summary of the Commandments.On Christian Teaching is Augustine’s theology of Scripture; what it teaches, how it ought to be understood, and a practical theology on how to share it. It’s here he developed the foundational principle of the analogy of faith. It establishes the rule that no teaching which is contrary to the general tenor and story of the Scriptures can be developed from any particular passage. The history of heresy and pseudo-Christian cults makes clear most of them violate this basic rule of hermeneutics.On Catechizing the Uninstructed gives both a long and short form for how to deal with inquirers.Augustine’s On the Good of Marriage affirms the benefits of marriage as bringing children into the world, protecting fidelity, and serves as a picture of Christ and the Church. Although, keeping with the sensibilities of the time, it made clear the superior position of celibacy.Shortly after arriving back home in Tagaste, around 389, Augustine wrote what is probably his most famous work – Confessions. The word meant more then than it typically does today. Yes, it bears his confession of sin, but Augustine also meant the word as his profession of faith and a declaration of the goodness of God. Com­pleted by 401, it lays bare his soul. He describes his life before conversion, the events leading to his conver­sion, and his path back to North Africa. The Confessions of St. Augustine is counted as one of the greatest autobiographical works of all time. It contains the oft-quoted “You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee" in the first paragraph. Scholars & students of ancient literature are moved by Augustine’s remarkably candid and perceptive analysis of his struggle with sin. At one point he shares the struggle he had with lust this way. He cried out to the heavens, “Give me chas­tity and holy desire; Only—not yet.”After the Confessions, Augustine’s most important work, and one he labored on for 14 years is The City of God. This is arguably the climax of Christian Latin apologetics and became the blueprint for the Middle Ages.It began as a response to the Sack of Rome by the Goths in 410. Though Rome was no longer the capital of the Empire, it remained the enduring symbol of it. Pagans loudly protested Rome was sacked because the old gods were furious they’d been forsaken; thrown over for this new deity out of the Middle East name Jesus.Augustine began the work as a reply to this damning charge. It grew into a comprehensive philosophy of history; an eloquent apologetic for what would come to be known as the Providential View of History.Augustine posited 2 cities; One of the world, the other of Heaven. These 2 cities are the result of 2 kinds of love; the love of self and the love of God. It begins with a negative and apologetic part that attacks paganism and its claims against the Faith. The next section is positive and describes Augustine’s philosophy of history. He describes the origin, progress and terminus of both cities. When I say “city” think society, for that is what Augustine meant.Such a description as this, and most others may make it appear Augustine posits the 2 cities as ever distinct. That’s not the case; rather, they are, at least as they are manifest in the world, always confused and mixed; yet ever at odds.In earlier works, Augustine laid out a pattern for history as progressing from . . .Before the Law,Under Law,Under Grace,& In Peace. These corresponded to the individual believer’s spiritual path as well. Augustine also charted 7 periods of history based on the Creation-week. Five of them fell under the Old Testament, one in the new, and the 7th was the Millennium, which in this earlier work he described as coming after Jesus’ Return.But in The City of God, Augustine’s idea of history was Amillennial. He cast the 1000 years of Rev 20 as symbolic either of the Church age or the ultimate summation of history. THAT view replaced the prior, literal millennial eschatology that had been the position of the Church to that time. The Amillennial position became the dominant view in Western Christianity thru the Middle Ages and beyond.The City of God is so noble in its treatment of theology and philosophy it’s endured as a classic statement of Christians’ views on a wide range of topics. Augustine treats with such subjects as rape, abortion, and suicide.Many historians consider Augustine the most important and influential Christian thinker from the Apostle Paul to the Reformers Luther and Calvin who both drew heavily from his work.When he became Bishop at Hippo, the Donatists still thrived in North Africa, in some places forming the majority. Augustine supported the Roman position against them.By way of review, the Donatists argued for a pure church, one led by bishops who’d not caved to persecution, recanted their faith, or surrendered Scriptures to be burned, then, when persecution passed, were allowed to return to their post. Rome said such lapsed bishops and priests could be restored. The Donatists said they could NOT and that any service they performed was invalid. The Donatists were deeply upset that the Bishop at Rome welcomed these lapsed priests back into their positions as leaders.Augustine argued against the Donatists, saying that according to Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares, the Church was a mixed multitude; holding both the lost and saved.Now: I have to admit I’m at a loss to see how that justified allowing apostates to regain leadership positions in the church.Let’s cast that in light of a far sometimes problem today. Should a pastor who commits adultery, and is caught in it, not from which he repents before being caught; should he be allowed back into his role as a pastor just because he breaks up with his mistress?For Augustine, the issue wasn’t so much that these lapsed priests and bishops were allowed back into their roles; it was the question of whether or not their religious service held any efficacy for those they were served by; things like Communion and baptism.Augustine differed with the Donatists on the validity of these baptisms and communion served by lapsed priests. Donatists claimed an apostate had lost authority to administer these rites. Augustine said the moral and spiritual standing of a priest wasn't important, only that he be aware he bestowed God's grace on others by baptizing and serving communion.While no doubt many of us would agree that it isn’t the moral excellence of the officiating minister that determines the value of communion and baptism, what surely some of our listeners will find difficult is the idea that a special grace is communicated BY a priest, through these rituals.You see, this brings us right up to a much later controversy that will surface during the Reformation. Do the sacraments convey grace or are they meant to be memorials that point to a historical event we renew our faith by? Notice I did NOT say, they are MERELY memorials, for that goes too far and misrepresents the position of the radical Reformers, But that is a subject for a much later episode.Augustine's argument at this point laid the foundation for the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine that an ordained priest becomes the channel of grace to church members. Next stop on that train is Sacramentalism and Sacerdotalism.Augustine’s support of the Roman church and Bishop in the Donatist controversy included the use of force to suppress rivals and coerce them to accept church policy. In another example of his misuse of Scripture, he quoted Luke 14:23, wherein the parable of the banquet the host said: “Compel them to come in.” Augustine used this to justify forcing opponents to comply. This again seems an odd application of a passage that’s self-explanatory. For the servants of the host didn’t go out into streets and beat people; driving them with whips into the banquet.Now: I recognize the historic weight and significance assigned to Augustine of Hippo. He was a towering intellect who made a major contribution to Christian theology. There’s no denying that. But there’s much in his work that seems to some, and I am one, that is inconsistent, even contradictory. For instance, a moment ago I mentioned Augustine developed the hermeneutical principle of the Analogy of Faith, a rule he shatters by justifying the use of force to compel adherence to church policy by using Luke 14:23.Following his refutation of Donatism, Augustine turned his impressive intellectual attention to the teaching of a British monk named Pelagius. Pelagianism was a Christianized form of Greek stoicism. Pelagius said humans aren’t sinners by nature; that they’re free moral agents who become sinners by sinning and that it was possible to live without sin apart from the empowering of the Holy Spirit. Pelagius believed Jesus's death atoned for sins but that humans possessed the power in themselves to live holy lives. Augustine's own experience with sin proved Pelagius wrong and he argued forcefully against his ideas. Augustine said the entire human race was in Adam so that when he fell, all fell with him and sin passed to everyone. Sinners, Augustine argued, are not only saved by God's grace, but they’re also kept by it and can only live God-honoring lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. He taught that God chooses only so

This episode of CS is titled – Monks.We took a look at the hermits in Episode 18 and delved into the beginnings of the monastic movement that swept the Church. The hermits were those who left the city to live an ultra-ascetic life of isolation; literally fleeing from the world. Others who longed for the ascetic life could not abide the lack of fellowship and so retreated from the world to live in sequestered communes called monasteries & nunneries.The men were called monks and the women; the feminine form of the same word – nonnus, or nuns. In recent episodes, we’ve seen that the ascetic lifestyle of both hermits & monks was considered the ideal expression of devotion to God during the 4th & 5th Centuries. We’re going to spend more time looking at monastery-life now because it proves central to the development of the faith during the Middle Ages, particularly in Western Europe but also in the East.Let’s review from Episode 18 the roots of monasticism . . .Leisure time to converse about philosophy with friends was highly prized in the ancient world. It was fashionable for public figures to express a yearning for such intellectual leisure, or “otium” as they called it; but of course, they were much too busy serving their fellow man. It became hip to adopt the attitude, “I’m so busy with my duties, I don’t get much ‘Me-time’.”Occasionally, as the famous Roman orator & Senator Cicero portrayed it, they scored such time for philosophical reflection by retiring to write on themes such as duty, friendship & old age. That towering intellect & theologian Augustine of Hippo had the same wish as a young man, & when he became a Christian in 386, left his professorship in oratory to devote his life to contemplation & writing. He retreated with a group of friends, his son & his mother, to a home on Lake Como, to discuss, then write about The Happy Life, Order & other such subjects, in which both classical philosophy and Christianity shared an interest. When he returned to his hometown of Tagaste in North Africa, he set up a community in which he & his friends could lead a monastic life, apart from the world, studying scripture & praying. Augustine’s contemporary, Jerome; translator of the Latin Vulgate, felt the same tug. He too made an attempt to live apart from the world.The Christian version of this yearning for a life of philosophical retirement had an important difference from the pagan version. While reading & meditation remained central, the call to do it in concert w/others who set themselves apart from the world was added.For the monks and nuns who sought such a communal life, the crucial thing was the call to a way of life which would make it possible to ‘go apart’ & spend time w/God in prayer and worship.Prayer was the Opus Dei, the ‘work of God’.As it was originally conceived, to become a monk or nun was an attempt to obey to the full the commandment to love God with all one is & has. In the Middle Ages, it was also understood as a fulfillment of the command to love one’s neighbor, for monks & nuns were supposed to be primarily praying for the world. They really did believe they were performing an important task on behalf of lost souls. So among the members of a monastery, there were those who prayed, those who ruled, and those who worked. The most important to society were those who prayed. Ideally, while monks & nuns might have different duties based on their station & assignment, they all engaged in both work & prayer.But a difference developed between the monastic movements of East & West.In the East, the Desert Fathers set the pattern. They were hermits who adopted extreme forms of asceticism, and came to be regarded as powerhouses of spiritual influence; authorities who could assist ordinary people w/their problems. The Stylites, for example, lived on platforms on high poles; an object of reverence to those who came to ask their spiritual advice. Others, shut off from the world in caves or huts, denied themselves contact with the temptations of the world, especially women. There was in this an obvious preoccupation with the dangers of the flesh, which was partly a legacy of the Greek dualists’ conviction that matter was inherently evil.I want to pause here & make a personal, pastoral observation. So warning! – Blatant opinion follows.You can’t read the New Testament without seeing a clear call to holiness. But that holiness is a work of God’s grace as the Holy Spirit empowers the believer to live a life pleasing to God. New Testament holiness is a joyous privilege, not a heavy burden & duty. It enhances life, never diminishes it.This is what Jesus modeled so well, and why genuine seekers after God were drawn to Him. He was attractive! He didn’t just do holiness, He WAS Holy. Yet no one had more life. Where He went, dead things came to life!As Jesus’ followers, we’re supposed to be holy in the same way. But if we’re honest, for many, holiness is conceived of as a dry, boring, life-sucking burden of moral perfection.Real holiness isn’t religious rule-keeping. It isn’t a list of moral proscriptions; a set of “Don’t’s! Or I will smite thee w/Divine Wrath & cast thy wretched soul into the eternal flames.”New Testament holiness is a mark of Real Life, the one Jesus rose again to give us. It’s Jesus living in & thru us. The holy life is a FLOURISHING life.The Desert Fathers & hermits who followed their example were heavily influenced by the dualist Greek worldview that all matter was evil & only the spirit was good. Holiness meant an attempt to avoid any shred of physical pleasure while retreating into the life of the mind. This thinking was a major force influencing the monastic movement as it moved both East & West. But in the East, the monks were hermits who pursued their lifestyles in isolation while in the West, they tended to pursue them in concert & communal life.As we go on we’ll see that some monastic leaders realized casting holiness as a negative denial of the flesh rather than a positive embracing of the love & truth of Christ was an error they sought to reform.Indeed, one of the premier teachings of Jesus adopted by monks & applied literally was  Matt. 19:21, “Sell your possession, give to the poor.” Jesus & the Twelve Apostles were cast as ideal monks.The early Church also faced the challenge of several aberrant groups who espoused a rigorous asceticism & used it as a badge of moral superiority. So some Christians thought a way to refute their error was by showing them up when it came to austere devotion.Even those believers who rejected the error of dualism justified asceticism by saying they renounced what was merely good in favor of what was best; a higher spiritual mode of living.Understood this way, the monasticism began as a protest movement in the Early Church. Church leaders like Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea & even Augustine co-opted & domesticated the monastic impulse, bringing it into the standard Church world.In the East, while monks might live in a group, they didn’t seek for community. They didn’t converse & work together in a common cause. They simply shared cells next to one another. Each followed his own schedule. Their only contact was that they ate & prayed together. This tradition continues to this day on Mount Athos in northern Greece, where monks live in solitude & prayer in cells high on the cliffs. Food is lowered to them in baskets.Monastic communities and those seeking to be monks or nuns exploded in popularity in the 4th Century. This popularity was born out of a protest on the part of many at the growing secularization they witnessed in the institutional church. The persecution everyone was so ready to be over not long before was now looked back upon almost nostalgically. Sure the Church was hammered, but at least following Jesus meant something and the seriousness with which people pursued spiritual things was palpable. Now it seemed every third person called themselves a Christian without much concern to be like Jesus. The monastic life was a way to recover what had been lost from the glory days of the persecuted but pure Church.One of the first set of rules for monastic communities was developed by someone with whom we’re already familiar, Basil the Great, leader of the Cappadocian Fathers who hammered out the orthodox understanding of the Nicene Creed. Basil was born into one of the most remarkable families in Christian history. His grandmother, father, mother, sister, & two younger brothers, were all venerated as saints. Wow – imagine being the black sheep in that family! All you had to do to qualify for that dubious title was fail to make your bed.Besides taking the lead with his brother Gregory of Nyssa and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus in hammering out the exact terminology that would be used to define the Orthodox position on the Trinity, Basil was an early advocate & organizer of monastic life. Taking a cue from his sister Macrina, who’d founded a monastery on some of the family’s property at Annessi, Basil visited the ascetics of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, then founded his own monastery, also at Annessi around 358. For the monks there he drew up a rule for their lives called Asceticon; sometimes referred to as the Longer & Shorter Rules. It consisted of 55 major regulations & 313 lesser guidelines. While each monastery during this time followed its own order, more and more began adopting Basil’s template.The first rule to present a rival to Basil’s was the Rule of Augustine.In our last couple episodes on Augustine, we saw that when he returned to Tagaste, he and his friends formed a community committed to serving God. At the bishop of the church at Hippo, Augustine founded a monastery, turning the episcopal digs into a monastic community specifically for priests. It became a spiritual nursery that produced many African bishops.These priest-monks were a corporate reflection of Augustine’s ideal of the whole Church: a witness to the future kingdom of God.

This episode is titled – The Great Recession.I usually leave house-keeping comments for CS to the end of each episode but wanted to begin this by saying thanks to all who subscribe, listen regularly, and have turned others on to the podcast.Website stats tell us we have a lot of visitors & subscribers. Far more than you faithful ones who’ve checked in on the Facebook page & hit the “like” button. Can I ask those of you who haven’t yet to do so?Then, if you’re one of the many who accesses the podcast via iTunes, you probably know how difficult it can be to find what you’re looking for there. Millions use iTunes as their podcast portal yet the search feature is clunky. So tracking down what you want can be a challenge. What helps people find content on iTunes is reviews. So, if you’re an iTunes user and like CS, you could be a great asset by writing a brief review for the podcast. Thanks ahead of time.Okay, enough shameless self-promotion . . .Christianity more than proved its vitality by enduring waves of persecution prior to Constantine the Great. When persecution was withdrawn & the Faith climbed out of the catacombs to become the darling of the State, the question was whether it would survive the corruption political power inevitably brings. While many thousands of pagans professed faith because it was the politically expedient thing to do, some sincere believers marked the moral corruption that took place in the church & forsook society to practice a purer faith in monasteries, as we saw in our last episode.The institutional Church, on the other hand, organized itself in a manner that resembled the old Roman Imperial system. When the Empire crumbled under the weight of its own corruption, that fall accelerated by barbarian invasions, the question was, would Christianity fall with it?The story of Christianity in the West is a remarkable tale of survival. So often in history, when a culture is swept away, so is its religion. Christianity has proven an exception. As often as not it endured when the culture changed. Such was the case in Europe and the events that followed the Fall of Rome at the end of the 5th Century.When the Gospel first came to those urban centers which were the cultural heart of the Roman Empire in the late 1st & early 2nd Centuries, it was regarded as a Jewish reform movement. Its first converts were Jews scattered around the Empire and those Gentiles who’d attached themselves to the Jewish synagogues. But once these God-fearing Gentiles came to faith, they evangelized their Gentile friends. Following Paul’s example in speaking to the philosophers on Mars Hill, these Gentile Christians recast the Gospel in Greco-Roman terms, using ideas & values familiar to the pagan mind.When I say “pagan” don’t think of it as the insult it is in our modern vernacular; someone void of moral virtue. By pagan, I mean those who practiced the religion of the Greeks & Romans with its pantheon of gods. In that sense, Plato & Aristotle were pagans. Zeno, the philosopher who developed Stoicism, was a pagan. These were all men who developed the philosophical framework that shaped the worldview of Greco-Roman culture & society. They asked some penetrating questions that provided the intellectual backdrop of the 1st & 2nd Centuries. Gentile Christians picked up these questions & used them to say they’d found their answers in Christ. Many other pagans found these arguments convincing & were won to faith. Some of the Early Church Fathers even appealed to the ancient philosophers in the formal letters they wrote to the Emperors on why persecution of Christians was bad policy. They argued for a promotion of the Faith as a boon to the health of culture, not a harm to it. Their defense of the Faith was couched in terms the Emperors were familiar with because they shared the same philosophical language.My point here is that Christianity made an appeal to the Greco-Roman worldview it was growing in the midst of. So, what would happen when that society fell?Also, the Church’s organizational structure increasingly came to resemble the Imperial structure. What would happen when that was dismantled? Would the Faith survive? Had Christianity grown too close to the culture?The answer is à Yes & no. The Empire’s demise did pose a set-back to the Church. But we might ask if maybe that was good. The institutional Church had in many ways deviated from its purpose & calling. Not a few bishops were far more concerned for their political power than for their role as spiritual shepherds. In many minds, spiritual & earthly power had merged into the same thing.Rome’s fall allowed the Faith to break away from the political attachments that had corrupted it for a century & a half.  But there’s little doubt that from the 6th through 9th Centuries, Christianity suffered a kind of spiritual declension. Over that 400 years, the total number of people who claimed be Christians dropped, fresh movements of renewal declined, & moral & spiritual vigor flagged.  While there were exceptions, overall, Christianity lost ground, giving this period of time in Church history the title, as Kenneth Scott Latourette calls it, the Great Recession.Following the timeline of Church history at this point becomes difficult because so much was going on in various places. So for the balance of this episode, I want to give a quick sketch of both the many reversals & few advances Christianity saw from the 6th thru 9th Centuries.When the Goths, Visigoths, & Ostrogoths moved in to pick clean the bones of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th Century, something remarkable happened. While they helped themselves to the wealth of the Empire, they also adopted some of the Roman customs they admired. But nothing was so surprising as their embrace of Christianity. In truth, these barbarians were already what we’d have to describe as nominally Christian. Their invasion of & settling into Roman lands greatly furthered their identification with the Faith.Remember that in the ancient world, war was more than just an attempt to take land & plunder; it was a contest of faiths. The ancients believed armed conflict was a kind of spiritual tug of war. The mightiest god gave his or her people victory. This is why when one people defeated another, the loser’s religion was often wiped out.But the Germanic barbarians tended to embrace Christianity rather than destroy it. There was something different in the message of Christ from their ancient folk faiths that drew and converted them. So when they took down the Roman Imperial structure, they left the churches intact. Bishops continued to exercise oversight in their flocks.Unlike other religions, Christianity was super-cultural. It wasn’t just the faith of one group; it potentially embraced all. Even those who rejected the Gospel recognized it wasn’t merely the spirituality of a specific ethnic group. Its message transcended culture to encompass all humanity.That was the situation on the north & northeastern borders of the Empire. The situation in the south was very different.  In the 7th Century, Islam swept out of Arabia to conquer the Middle East & North Africa. The Muslims managed to get a foothold in Spain before the armies of Charles Martel stopped them pushing any further North in 732. Where Islam conquered, it replaced native religions. Enclaves of determined Jews & Christians eked out an existence but by & large, the Crescent replaced the Cross throughout the Middle East & North Africa.While there’s no specific date or event that marked the onset of the Great Recession, we’ll set the year 500 as the starting point.  Here’s why …In 476 the last Roman Emperor was deposed by the Goth leader Odoacer. This marks the end of the Western Roman Empire. The capital then shifted undisputedly to Constantinople in the East.20 years later, in 496, the Frank king Clovis was baptized. This marked a new era in which Germanic rulers became the standard-bearers of the Faith instead of Romans.Then in 529, the Eastern Emperor Justinian closed the Schools of Athens. These academies were the last official symbols of Greco-Roman paganism. Justinian ordered them closed to signal the final triumph of Christianity over paganism.In that same year, 529, Benedict built his monastery on Monte Cassino as we saw in our last episode. The Benedictine Rule was to have a huge impact on the course of the Faith in the West.While Christianity seemed to stumble in many of the places where it had been installed 3 & 400 years before, it continued its relentless spread into new territory. It was during the early 6th Century that the Faith went up the Nile into Sudan. In the latter part of that century, Pope Gregory sent missionaries to Britain and in the early 7th Century the Gospel reached China.But the 7th Century was when the Arab conquests began. In less than 20 years after Mohammed’s death, Islam had raised its banner over, Israel, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, & Egypt. Before the end of the Century they’d conquered all North Africa, including the capital at Carthage and by 715 had taken Spain.If you’ve been listening from the earliest episodes, you know that these lands the Arabs conquered had a rich Christian history, especially in North Africa. Alexandria & Carthage were home to some of the most prominent Christian leaders & theologians – Athanasius & Arius, Alexander, Cyril, & Augustine, to name a few.At the same time, the Arabs were spreading Islam across Christian lands, up in the Balkan peninsula & Greece, pagan Slavs moved in. In 680, Asians called Bulgars crossed the Danube River & set up a kingdom in what had been the Eastern frontier of the Empire.Between these losses to the Arabs in the South & the Slavs & Bulgars in the East, about half the total land area that had been Christian territory was lost.The 8th Century saw large numbers of German tribes come to Faith. But the 9th & 10th Centuries were marked by repeated invasions of pagans from the distant north. The

This episode of CS the first of a couple summary reviews we’ll do. My plan is to continue on as we have, pausing occasionally to in one episode catch us up in broad strokes on what we’ve covered so far.My hope is to avoid the whole, “Can’t see the forest for the trees” thing. For those listeners where English is a second language, that phrase is an idiom that means the loss of perspective behind too many details.Though I want to give a clean straight narrative for our story of the Church, we can’t help but bounce around ab it between times & places. It’s just the nature of trying to examine all of church history, instead of its course in one location. Still, I hope to build a basic sense of historical flow. To that end, stopping every so often to step back and provide a quick summary of the material we’ve covered so far seems appropriate.Overviews won’t have nearly the detail as a regular episode, but they will have a lot more names & dates since it’s a culling & gleaning of what the last so many episodes have covered.Okay, here we go with our first Overview . . .While the Christian Faith began as an inordinately tiny sect within 1st Century Judaism, it grew rapidly, first among Jews, then among Gentiles. This growth can be attributed to two main causes. First, was the generally lethargic spiritual condition of the ancient world, most especially in those regions dominated by the Roman Empire. Several factors conspired to make people ripe for the message the Gospel proclaimed. Second, was the spiritual dynamic provided by early followers of Jesus. They demonstrated an exceptional lifestyle that attracted others. Even while Rome followed an official policy of opposition to the Faith, the number of its adherent grew.Early Christianity is divided by historians into 2 periods: the Apostolic & Post-Apostolic.The Apostolic lasts from the mid-1st Century to the early 2nd when the last of the Apostolic Fathers died. The Apostolic Fathers are counted not only as the original disciples of Jesus and their peers but their direct followers; men like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch & Polycarp.The Post-Apostolic period stretches from the early 2nd Century to the beginning of the 4th. During this time the leadership of the church moved from direct dependence on the Apostolic Fathers to local church leaders, known as pastors. As the decades passed, these local lead pastors morphed into bishops who oversaw a growing episcopal structure.This period was marked by episodic & regional persecution of Christians in Roman lands. It wasn’t until the mid to late 3rd Century that persecution became a widespread policy. It ended with the arrival of Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan in 313. Names associated with this time are Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen.Besides persecution, the main challenge the Post-Apostolic church faced was presented by heresy.Early Christians heeded the New Testament’s repeated call for maintaining correct belief and refuting false teaching. The Faith wasn’t just the philosophical ramblings of a sun-burnt sage. It was rooted in historical events both ancient & recent. When aberrant teachers attempted to hijack core & cardinal doctrines, bishops gathered to study what their Scriptures said and arrive at a consensus. In this way, they refuted the challenge of such groups & teaching as Docetism and its later evolution, Gnosticism.  They rebuffed Marcionism, the Ebionites, Manachaeists & the aberrant teaching of Montanus. The greatest threat rose from a Bishop named Arius who denied Jesus’ deity.  Though Arianism was officially quashed at the First of the Great or what are called Ecumenical Councils held at Nicaea in 325, it continued to be espoused in many regions for the next century and a half. The Council of Nicaea established the orthodox Christian position today known as Trinitarianism, which holds that God is one in essence while three in persons. While 300 bishops signed the Nicaean Creed, many of them went away from the Council unsettled about the terminology used in the Creed to define the correct view of God. The task of sharpening the terms & arriving at the proper description of the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity was left to the Cappadocian Fathers some time later.The Post-Apostolic period is also when the Church Fathers realized the need to provide a definitive list of books that comprised the Bible. The work of several councils finally closed the Canon during this time.The Post-Apostolic Period was followed by what’s often called Catholic Christianity; not to be confused with ROMAN Catholic. The term ‘catholic’ means universal and stands in contrast to the many often subtle doctrinal challenges that arose following the Council of Nicaea. This period, stretching from the beginning of the 4th Century to the end of the 5th saw 7 major Church Councils that all met to address some new or renewed challenge to orthodoxy, specifically as it related to the theological can of worms the First Council at Nicaea opened, and maybe we should say, sought to close. You see, once the Church settled on the Trinity as the right way to understand God, the main questions were;1) How do the persons of the Godhead relate to one another?2) How are we to understand the person of Jesus? How do we reconcile Him as both God & Man?This second issue ended up in sometimes bloody brawls as advocates of different positions used the debate to secure political favor & religious prestige.During this period of Catholic Christianity, 4 cities rose as the gravitational centers of the Christian world; Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, & the new capital of the Empire, Constantinople. Alexandria, Antioch & Constantinople were all in the East while Rome was alone in the West. The main contest for prestige & power was between Alexandria & Antioch which used 2 different ways of interpreting Scripture and understanding the Person & Nature of Christ. Alexandria had a long reputation as a center of scholarship but Antioch continually produced excellent preachers. Since the Church at Constantinople, being near the royal palace, was the premier church in terms of securing imperial favor, whoever was the bishop there tended to secure favor for his side of the debate. It infuriated many of the bishops at Alexandria that Antioch kept providing new leaders for the Church at Constantinople. The supreme example of all this is the verbal and at times physical brawl that took place between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius from Antioch, who became Bishop at Constantinople.It was during this time as well that the Church at Rome emerged to become, not just the lead church in the West, but over the entire Empire. One of the reasons for this is the generally excellent leadership the Roman Bishops provided. When the Eastern churches were wracked by debate, Rome often played a mediating influence or lent a perspective that resolved the issue.What encouraged Rome’s emergence as the lead church in the Faith was the claim of some Roman Bishops that they were spiritual heirs to Peter’s spiritual hegemony. That claim was not without considerable push-back by many, but it eventually proved persuasive so that Rome was given tacit, if not outright honor as the lead church.Again, it was during this era the Ecumenical Councils were convened. They were concerned largely with settling the Christological disputes tearing apart the Church. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 & First Council of Constantinople in 381 condemned Arianism. The Council of Ephesus in 431 condemned Nestorianism and affirmed Mary as the Theotokos; that is the "Mother of God."The Council of Chalcedon just 20 years later affirmed that Christ had two natures; He was fully God and fully man, yet was one person. It specifically condemned Monophysitism, the belief that Jesus’ divine nature overwhelmed his human nature. Following Chalcedon, several groups broke with the orthodox, or what we would call from this time, Catholic position; again, not Roman Catholic. The term simply means what was the accepted position of the Church & churches of the Roman World. The churches of Egypt, headquartered at Alexandria tended to be Monophysite while the churches that moved into the East followed a distorted view of Nestorius’ & began to adopt the idea that Jesus was not only of two natures, He was two persons in a single body. As we’ve seen in previous episodes, it’s unlikely Nestorius himself believed that, though his opponents claimed he did, and his later followers do seem to have moved in that direction.One of the most significant events of this period occurred in late February of 380. Emperor Theodosius I signed the Edict of Thessalonica which made Catholic, Trinitarian Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Prior to this the Emperors Constantius II & Valens favored Arian flavors of the Faith. Theodosius I declared the Trinitarianism of the Nicene Creed as the perennial position of the Empire. While there were going to be all kinds of problems associated with making Christianity the State religion, what ensured it would really go awry was that Theodosius went further and in effect outlawed unbelief; any belief but Catholic Christianity was deemed heretical. Heretics weren’t just put out of the Church, they were put out of life!It didn’t take long for the Church to avail itself of the Imperial organizational structure, adopting similar geographical borders. They even kept the old imperial name – Diocese. Bishops oversaw the various dioceses. The bishop’s home was known as a seat, or see.Back-tracking a bit, when Christians were being persecuted during the 2 and 3rd Centuries in the West, many of them fled for refuge to the East and the Sassanid Empire, the long-time enemy of Rome. Though the Sassanids were Zoroastrians, they welcomed the Christians because, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.When Rome became a Christian State, the Sassanids feared the Christians would

This episode is titled – “Did Those Feet?” Why it bears that title is this . . .Have you ever heard the anthem “Jerusalem”, whose lyrics come from a poem by William Blake? The song was performed by the 1970’s progressive rock band, Emerson, Lake & Palmer on their album, Brain Salad Surgery.The opening lines are . . .And did those feet in ancient time -- Walk upon England’s mountains green?And was the holy Lamb of God -- On England’s pleasant pastures seen?A mysterious riddle for those not aware of the ancient legends surrounding Britain’s entrance upon the Christian faith.For centuries England prided itself that the church there was founded by Jesus himself. This tale was invoked in British disputes with France over preeminence & in late Protestant claims that Rome had nothing to do with the English church. It’s unclear how much the mystic, artist, and poet William Blake believed the tale, but his question remains famous.In the Council of Basel in 1434, the Council decreed, “The churches of France and Spain must yield in points of antiquity and precedence to that of Britain, as the latter church was founded by Joseph of Arimathea immediately after the passion of Christ.”Uh, huh?!!?Okay, so à We all know this is supposed to be a history podcast, not a wild, flight of fancy, let’s repeated every crazy thing people have believed, podcast. So, why am I sharing this? It’s illustrative of how many, maybe even most, of the churches of the ancient world laid claim to a special origin and identity. By way of illustration, let’s look at the legends surrounding England’s embrace of the Faith.According to well-established legend, Joseph of Arimathea, the Jewish leader who petitioned Pilate to bury Jesus’ body, was also Mary’s uncle. When Mary, Joseph and 12-year-old Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover, it was at Uncle Joseph’s place they stayed. Sometime later, Uncle Joe took the teenage Jesus on a tin-trading trip to Glastonbury, in England.Other legends put the adult Jesus in Glastonbury, using his constructions skills in making a house and working as a ship’s carpenter. Older and even less reliable legends leave Jesus in Israel but send Uncle Joseph to Britain alone 30 years after Jesus’ ascension.In the 12th Century, a monk named William of Malmesbury made a record of the history of the Church at Glastonbury. In the introduction added a century later, the story goes that the Apostle Philip sent Joseph & 11 others to Britain where they were allowed to build a church there. Then, after yet another century, John of Glastonbury said Joseph of Arimathea was an ancestor of King Arthur & bringer of the Holy Grail to England.Okay, enough of the legends. What is certain is Origen’s reference to the Gospel having been received among the Britons in the early 3rd Century. And the faith hadn’t just come there, it was widely accepted. Even the North African apologist Tertullian wrote in An Answer to the Jews some time around ad 200 that the Faith had taken root and was growing in Britain. The first church historian Eusebius notes that “some apostles passed over the ocean to what are called the British Isles.”In AD 43, 2 years after Claudius was hailed Emperor of Rome, 40,000 Roman soldiers finally achieved Julius Caesar’s plan to invade Britain. Times had changed; Claudius invaded the island mainly because he could, and he needed the prestige of a military victory. Having landed on the coast of Kent, the legions subdued Wales and England, but found themselves overextended after a few victories against the Picts of Scotland.The British Celts adapted quickly to the lifestyle of their Roman conquerors. Celtic languages were abandoned in favor of Latin, and Celts began bowing to the gods of the Roman pantheon.It was because of this new Romanized British religion we learn the name of a British Christian: Alban.Alban was a pagan, but a friendly one. He welcomed a Christian priest fleeing persecution into his home. Which persecution is uncertain but the Anglo-Saxon church historian the Venerable Bede says it was under Diocletian at the end of the 3rd Century. It didn’t take long for the priest’s devotion to influence Alban. He renounced idolatry and put his faith in Christ. But no sooner had Alban knelt in prayer than soldiers appeared at the door, having been informed of the priest’s location. The new convert swapped clothes with the priest. It wasn’t until Alban was brought before the judge that his identity was revealed. The judge said Alban would bear the priest’s punishment. He had only one out à to sacrifice to the idols. Alban refused.The judge asked, “What’s your family and race?’Alban replied, “What does that concern you? If you want to know the truth about my religion, know that I’m a Christian and practice Christian rites.’The Judge blustered à “I demand to know your name!”Alban answered, “My parents named me Alban. And I worship and adore the living and true God, who created all things.”Again the judge ordered him to sacrifice to the pagan gods, & again he refused, saying whoever did so was “doomed to the pains of hell.” When beatings and whippings couldn’t change his mind, he was sentenced to death.The story of Alban’s martyrdom goes on. While it’s difficult to sort out fact from legend, his tale gives us an idea of the high regard the martyrs were given in the Early Church. Supposedly on the way to the hill where Alban was to be executed, his guards were unable to cross a bridge because of the crowd that had gathered. So Alban parted the river as Moses had parted the sea. This was too much for his executioner, who instantly became a believer himself and joined Alban at the block where his head was removed from his shoulders.Alban became Britain’s first, but by no means only, martyr. Turns out Alban & his former executioner weren’t the only ones martyred that day. So were 2 others.One of the challenges historians face when reviewing the history of Christianity in England is the syncretism that often seems to mark its early years. Syncretism refers to the blending of different things. Religious syncretism is something the Church has had to deal with since its earliest days. In many places around the Roman Empire, while Christianity supplanted paganism, in a few places, pagan ideas and rituals were taken up and adopted by the Church. Old feast days were gutted of their pagan origin & made to represent Christian commemorations, and so on. It’s in England such syncretism stands out. Several artefacts reveal that conversion out of paganism into a clear NT Christianity was a slow process. Pagans and Christians worshipped side by side in the same building in Kent. Several British churches were built in imitation of pagan temples and shrines. A mosaic in Dorset includes both pagan and Christian themes. The same situation appears in Ireland, where pagan and Christian statues are found side by side.While the assumption of most historians is that all this points to a syncretistic blurring of the lines between pagans & Christians, an alternative position sees the close proximity of pagan & Christian elements as evidence of a remarkable tolerance between the two groups. It may have been that the two groups shared the same location without conflating their faiths.In 314, 3 bishops from Britain: Eborius from York, Restitutus of London & Adelphius from Lincoln, attended a church council at Arles, in southern Gaul. The Council was called to decide the issue of the Donatists in North Africa, which we’ve dealt with in an earlier episode. It was at this council Donatists were officially labeled heretics. British bishops were also present at Sardica in 343 & Armininum 16 years later.That these British church leaders were able to attend these councils suggests they were organized early, well before Constantine’s Edict of Milan. It also means they had contact with the Church on the Continent. Monasticism, which would find such a prominent place in England, was a product of the Church in North Africa.Monasticism came to England via the work of Martin of Tours. Martin was a military veteran from Hungary who, after his conversion to Christ, seems to have a hard time deciding whether he wanted to work in a church or a monastery. His real passion was evangelism. So he preached Christ to the unconverted & the asceticism of monastery-life to the already converted. One of those was a Briton named Ninian.Ninian’s story, like so many from church history, is a shadowy tale clouded in legend. We’re not even sure that’s his real name. He was a missionary to the Picts in Scotland. Probably not the first to take the Gospel north of Hadrian’s Wall, he was the first to get credit for it. Martin urged several masons to go with Ninian to build a monastery at Whithorn. Venerable Bede says it was named The White House. It became a center of monastic activity, drawing students from Ireland & Wales.Needing the legions to defend the empire from hostile Germanic tribes, in 407, Emperor Honorius recalled them to the Continent. Within just a few years, Roman rule of England was completely dismantled.  In less than a generation nearly all traces of Roman culture, from philosophy to architecture was in ruins. And while many of the native Britons rejoiced as the Eagle flew south, they certainly did NOT appreciate the consequences as wave after wave of invaders washed over the land. The Picts came south from their highland homes. Scots invaded from Ireland. You might say, “Wait - Scots are from Scotland, not Ireland.” And that’s where a little known fact of history proves important. It wasn’t called Scotland at that time. Scot was the word used for the Irish. When they invaded and settled among the natives of northern Briton, it became known as the Land of the Scots.The real change for Britain came when the Saxons invaded from Germany. Then the Saxons were flowed up by the Angles & Jutes from Denmark. Foreign cultures overran Britain, snuffing out the last vestiges of Roman cu

This week’s episode is titled, “Patrick”Last week’s episode was a brief review of Christianity’s arrival in Britain. We saw how the Anglo-Saxons pressed in from the east coast where they’d been confined by what remained of the Roman army. But when the Roman’s pulled out in 410, the Saxons quickly moved in to take their place, confining the Romano-British Christians to the western region of the Island. It was from that shrinking enclave of faith that a spark of faith leapt the Irish Sea to land in the dry tinder of Celtic Ireland. That spark’s name was Patrick.While there’s much legend surrounding Patrick’s life, there’s scant hard historical evidence for the details of his story.  We have little idea when or where he was born, where he lived & worked, when & where he died, & other important specifics. What we do have are incidental clues & his own records, vague as they are.The record of Christianity in Ireland prior to Patrick is sketchy. A bishop named Palladius was appointed by Pope Celestine to the island, but he didn’t stay long. He left the same year Patrick arrived.Patrick was born into an affluent & religious home. His father was a deacon; his grandfather a priest. The family was likely of the Romano-British nobility & owned minor lands along the shores of western Britain. Several locations claim to be Patrick’s ancestral home.  At the age of 16, he was captured by Irish slavers who regularly raided Britain’s coast. He was taken back to Ireland & sold into captivity.Patrick recounts little of his 6 yrs as a slave except to say he was a shepherd or swine-herd who spent long periods tending his charges. Being a slave, he endured long periods of hunger, thirst & isolation. This trial moved him to seek God in earnest. The faith of his parents became his own.Years later, in writing what is known as his Confessio, Patrick said he believed his slavery was discipline for spiritual apathy. Not only did he attribute his own slavery as the chastening of the Lord, he said thousands of fellow Britons also suffered for the same reason.  He came to see the discipline as God’s grace because it led him to God. He wrote -More and more, the love of God and the fear of Him grew in me, and my faith was increased and my spirit enlivened. So much that I prayed up to a hundred times in the day, and almost as often at night. I even remained in the wood and on the mountain to pray. And—come hail, rain, or snow—I was up before dawn to pray, and I sensed no evil nor spiritual laziness within.At 22, Patrick said he heard a supernatural Voice calling him to fast in preparation for returning home.  Not long after, the Voice spoke again: ‘Behold! Your ship is prepared.’ The problem was, Patrick was 200 miles from the sea. Confident he followed the direction of God, he struck out for the coast.  When he arrived & informed the captain he was supposed to board, the captain recognized him as a runaway slave and refused. Patrick realized now his situation was precarious and looked for a place to hide. Seeing a nearby hut he began to make his way there when one of the crew shouted at him to hurry up and board. It seems the crew was short-handed & thought to use Patrick as extra a novice seaman, paying for his fare by the hard work of a lowly deck-hand.The ship set sail & 3 days later landed. Where is a bit of a mystery as Patrick is vague at this point. The best guess was northern Gaul. He says once they landed the crew wandered in a kind of wilderness for nearly a month. We do know that between 407 & 410, the Goths & Vandals ran amok across this region. Things grew desperate and the captain began to berate Patrick, mocking his trust in an all-powerful, all-loving God. Where was all that power and love now that they were in danger of starving to death? Patrick wasn’t intimidated by the challenge. As we’ll see, this kind of opportunity called forth from Patrick an even more determined faith. He told the captain, “Nothing is impossible for God. Turn to Him and He will send us food for our journey.” In desperation the crew obeyed. And as they prayed, a herd of pigs suddenly appeared. The sailors feasted & thanked Patrick, but they balked at embracing his faith in God.There’s a break in Patrick’s account at this point so we’re not sure what happened next. A couple years pass and he’s back home in Britain with his family. They pleaded with him to stay but he’d learned enough of the will of God to know not to make such promises. A short time later he heard the call back to Ireland. He says he had a visionary dream in which an Irishman invited him back to the land of his slavery. Patrick writes in the Confesso -His name was Victoricius, and he carried countless letters, one of which he handed over to me. I read aloud where it began: ‘The Voice of the Irish’. And as I began to read these words, I seemed to hear the voice of the same men who lived beside the forest of Foclut, which lies near the Western sea where the sun sets. They seemed to shout aloud to me as with one and the same voice: ‘Holy boy, we beg you, come back and walk once more among us.’ I was utterly pierced to my heart’s core so that I could read no more.Realizing God was calling him back to the Green Isle, Patrick began to prepare. He understood the call to evangelize the Irish but didn’t think himself properly equipped to do so. He sought training in the form of theological study & official ordination. Since both his father & grandfather had followed this course it seemed proper for him as well.  There’s some confusion at this point on where Patrick went to get his education. One biographer sends him to Rome while others say he went to northern Gaul to study under Bishop Germanus.How long Patrick spent in training is unknown but he was eventually ordained as a deacon. One notable event from this time that would later be important to his life was his confession of a youthful sin to a close friend. It was something Patrick had done about a year before the Irish raiders captured him. It troubled him ever after and moved him to confess to a friend there in Gaul. The friend told him he thought it not that important an issue to fret over and that it would not prohibit him from being used by God. The friend even assured Patrick he would one day be made a bishop. Though the sin is left unspecified to us, it would later come back to haunt him.How Patrick evangelized Ireland is an important case study because it opens to us the mind of Christian missionaries during this period. It may also help us understand the troubling religious syncretism that infected the medieval church.The native Celtic religion of Ireland when Patrick returned was dominated by a pagan priesthood called the Druids.  What we know of this Celtic religion is sketchy at best. Julius Caesar is one of our main sources from his encounters with them in his conquests of Gaul and Britain. The Romans loathed and at times feared the Druids. This was due to their near complete control over their people, a control enforced by abject terror. That terror may very well have been put in place by their being empowered by demonic spirits. Human sacrifice was a regular feature of the druidic system and they were attributed with the power to work the miraculous, often in cruel fashion.As I mentioned, there was some limited Christian presence on Ireland prior to Patrick’s arrival but the church had made little headway against the domination by the Druids. Patrick’s 6 year foray as a slave prepared him to know what he faced in the way of religious opposition when he returned. His plan was to confront the Druid’s on their own turf. He understood the only way to make headway among the people was by freeing them from their fear of the Druids. To do that, he’d need to look to the power of God to trump any demonstrations of demonic power the Druids conjured up.This is where the stories of Patrick’s life become difficult to discern the truth of. His medieval biographers take this kernel of truth and spin elaborate yarns about his confrontations with the Druids. Most of those stories are probably fictional, while a few may be based on real events. The larger lesson for us to glean is Patrick’s method of evangelism.The idea had grown among theologians that pagan religions weren’t so much anti-Christian as they were pre-Christian.  Drawing from the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:20, they believed that “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes were clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” Paul himself applied this in Athens when spoke to the philosophers on Mar’s Hill. Paul was disturbed by the many idols he encountered in Athens, yet used them to evangelize the Athenians. He said, ‘I see how ultra-religious you are in every way. I even found an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god’. What you worship as unknown, I’m here to make known to you.” In Ecclesiastes, Solomon said God has written eternity on people’s hearts. Patrick & those who followed after looked for how to bring the Truth of Christ to the lost by using whatever elements of their native faith they could, converting it to the Truth of Christ.Patrick and his contemporaries in no way approved of paganism or considered it an acceptable variant of the Gospel. They believed there were supernatural beings behind the idols & ideals of paganism; demons who kept people in spiritual bondage. They believed miracles and magic did occur. After all, Pharaoh’s magicians used supernatural power. But à & here’s the key to Patrick’s methodology à the God of Moses was more powerful, & used His power to bring good while demonic power served only to promote ruin.So when Patrick arrived in Ireland and proclaimed the Gospel, the druids came out in opposition. Their hegemony over the Irish was imperiled. They thought nothing of moving swiftly to kill him. They were the law and could do what they wished. But: They found it harder than they thought. None of their plans or

The title of this episode is “Barbarians at the Gates – and Everywhere Else”I live on the coast of Southern California in one of the most beautiful places on the planet – Ventura County. The weather is temperate all year round with an average temperature of 70 degrees. The beaches are pristine and most of the time, uncrowded. The County has several prime surf spots. But every so often, usually during the Winter, storms throw up huge waves that trash the shore. Some of these storms are local and wash down huge piles of debris from the hills that then wash up on the beach. Others are far to the south, off the coast of Mexico but they roll up waves that travel North and erode tons of sand, altering the shoreline.In the 5th and 6th Centuries, waves of barbarian invasion from the North and East swept across Europe to alter the political and cultural landscape and prime Europe for the Middle Ages.When Bishop Augustine of Hippo died in 430, the Vandals were laying siege to the city. While the Council of Chalcedon was meeting in 451, Pope Leo negotiated with the Huns to leave Rome unmolested.European history of the 5th and 6th Cs was dominated by the movement of mostly Germanic peoples into the territory of the old Roman Empire. The subsequent displacement and population shifting had a major impact on Christianity in the West. Medieval civilization was a result of this barbarian upheaval coupled with the vestiges of late Roman society and the impact Augustine had on the theology and practice of the Church.The incursion of Germanic tribes into the Roman Empire was just the first of 4 massive waves of migration.The Germans came in the 5th C. The Vars and Slavs swept into the Balkans in the 6th. The Muslims in 7th. And the Vikings in the 8th to 10th Cs.The resulting societal changes created by these invasive migrations had a monumental effect on the Church. We’ll take a look now at just the first of these population shifts - the Germanic invasions.The 5th C saw the climax of what was really a long process of mostly controlled immigration by the Germans. They settled land at the Empire’s frontier and served in the military. In truth, while the Romans referred to the Germans as barbarians, they often preserved the Empire by filling gaps in the declining population of Roman lands and by manning the legions. It was the Perfect Storm that saw things figuratively go south for Rome. Factors combining to generate this Perfect Storm were à1) The Germans were pressed by invaders out of central Asia,2) Key treaties between the Romans and Germans were broken,3) The warm weather that had seen a population boom in Northern Europe was followed by bitter cold so that the Germans were forced to move South in search of lands to sustain their larger numbers. It didn’t help Rome that the Germans now knew Roman military tactics and bore Roman arms.Note to Self: If you don’t want your neighbor to take over your house, don’t give him the keys and alarm code.Certain dates in the first half of the 5th C are important àIn 410, Alaric, leader of the Western Goths, or Visi-goths, sacked the city of Rome. This was an understandably traumatic event for the Western Empire. His successor, Ataulf, married the Emperor Honorius’ sister.In 430, Augustine, attempted to explain Rome’s Fall to the Visigoths in his classic work The City of God. He died the year before the Council of Ephesus and the fall of his city, Hippo in N Africa to the Vandals.In 451, Attila and the Huns from central Asia, swept thru Western Europe, then were defeated by an alliance of Romans and Germans led by Aëtius.In 455, Aëtius and Emperor Valentinian III were assassinated, and the Vandals under Gaiseric again sacked Rome.The first contact the Romans had with the Goths came during the reign of the Emperor Decius. During Constantine’s reign they became allies and often entered the Legions at elevated ranks. The Visigoths were being pressured from the East by the Huns, and in 376 sought refuge on the Roman side of the Danube. The emperor Valens granted their request, and there began a mass conversion of the Goths to Arianism. Due to mistreatment by Roman governors, they revolted in 378 and killed the Emperor Valens in the famous Battle of Adrianople.   Thus began the real Germanic invasions of the Empire. By 419 The Visigoths had subdued Southern Gaul and all of Spain.As we’ve noted in previous episodes, when the Goths invaded the Western Empire in the 5th C, for the most part, they came, not as pillaging pagans but as Arian Christians. A Goth Bishop named Theophilus had attended the Council at Nicaea in 325.The missionary who carried the Gospel to the Goths was Ulfilas in the mid to late 4th C. Ulfilas had amazing success in seeing the Germans won to faith for 2 reasons . . .1) Their native religion was in decline. Simply put, their gods seemed rather old and shabby.2) The many German tribes shared a common language.Realizing translating the Bible into German was a key to successful evangelism, Ulfilas spent considerable time on the project before his death. He left the books of Samuel and Kings out of his translation because he figured the Goths à Well, they already knew enough about warfare.In 406 when Rome recalled the Legions from the Rhine to protect Italy, another Germanic tribe called the Vandals poured into Gaul, then SW into Spain, and eventually jumped the Strait of Gibraltar to harass North Africa. Their King Gaiseric led them to Carthage which he conquered in 439 and made the capital of an Arian Vandal kingdom. Gaiseric was intolerant of other forms of the faith. In 455 he sent ships across the Mediterranean to sack Rome.At first, the Donatists in North Africa rejoiced at the coming of the Vandals. Remember they’d been labeled heretics by Rome. But it didn’t take long for them to realize that the enemy of my enemy isn’t always my friend. The Vandals were not friendly. So in 484, a Donatist-Catholic synod met to try and patch up their theological differences.Catholics were persecuted under some of the Vandal kings in the late 5th and early 6th Cs. It was this persecution that gave the Vandals a bad name far more than any actual acts of “vandalism.” Really, the Vandals were no more barbaric than other Germans.Justinian’s famous general, Belisarius, repulsed the Vandals and reoccupied North Africa for the Byzantine Empire in 534.The Visigoths and Vandals were followed up by Suevians, the Burgundians, and the Franks.The Franks were the least mobile of the Germanic tribes. They settled in northern France and expanded their rule from there. They joined several other German tribes along with the Romans to stave off the common threat of the Huns in 451.Of all the German tribes, the Franks were the least inclined to heed the work of Christian missions. They seemed immune to conversion until their king Clovis in the mid 5th C.Clovis’s conversion to the Faith was a significant moment in the history of Europe. Since the Vandals, Goths and Burgundians were Arian, it seemed likely Arianism would take over the West. Alone of the Germanic kingdoms, the Franks under Clovis embraced what we call Catholic or Nicean Christianity, the majority faith of his European subjects.In 492, Bishop Avitus of Vienna arranged the marriage of a Burgundian princess named Clotilda to Clovis. Clotilda was a committed Christian of Nicean-flavor. The Royal couple had a son, who was baptized but died while still in his baptismal robes. Clovis, who at that point was still a pagan, loudly declared his gods would not allow such a thing to happen. Later they had another son. This one thrived.Then, in battle with the Alemanni and things not going in his favor, the desperate Clovis asked for the aid of the Christian God. The battle turned in his favor. When the Alemanni were defeated, Clovis submitted to baptism. Bishop Remigius of Rheims performed the rite on Christmas day in 496.The source for all this is a work by Gregory of Tours titled History of the Franks. This book gave the Franks their identity and shaped their understanding of the future they were to have in forging European history.Following his baptism, Clovis was anointed in his role as monarch. This anointing of the king by a bishop became a custom among the Franks. The resulting aura of sacred Christian kingship seemed to justify Frankish control of the Church. Sadly, Clovis’s character remained little changed by his official acceptance of Christianity. It seems he adopted the religion as a matter of political expediency, but he didn’t receive the Gospel.In 493, Odoacer, the German general who’d forced the abdication of the last Western Roman Emperor a little less than 20 years before, was killed by the Eastern or Ostro-goth king Theodoric. Next to Clovis, Theodoric was the most important ruler of the barbarian kingdoms. Theodoric made Ravenna in Italy his capital. He was an Arian who adopted Byzantine culture. Though he was personally tolerant, his Nicean-Catholic subjects weren’t so much. His rule saw the last flowering of late Roman culture in the West. The Ostrogothic kingdom continued until 553, when the Eastern general Belisarius retook much of Italy for the Byzantine Empire.The cultural revival that occurred during the first half of the 6th C  has been called the “Indian Summer of Christian Antiquity.” This period saw a number of influential persons who laid the foundation of Early Medieval society.Boethius was a from a leading Roman family who became a philosopher and statesman in the court of Theodoric. Although loyal, Boethius came under suspicion and Theodoric had him imprisoned and executed. While in prison, Boethius wrote his most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy. This work is important because it marks the transition from the Church Fathers or what’s called Patristics to the Scholastics, who we’ll talk more about later.  Through his translations, Boethius handed to the Middle Ages, the ethics and logic of Aristotle. The Scholast

This episode is titled - Popes.We begin with a quote from Pope Leo I and his Sermon 5 ...It is true that all bishops taken singly preside each with his proper solicitude over his own flock, and know that they will have to give account for the sheep committed to them. To us [that is: the Popes], however, is committed the common care of all; and no single bishop's administration is other than a part of our task.The history of the Popes, AKA the bishops of Rome, could easily constitute its own study & podcast. Low & behold there IS a podcast by Stephen Guerra on this very subject. You can access it via iTunes or the History podcasters website. (more…)

This episode is titled – The Divide.I begin with a quote from a man known to scholars as Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite. In a commentary on the names of God he wrote . . .The One is a Unity which is the unifying Source of all unity and a Super-Essential Essence, a Mind beyond the reach of mind and a Word beyond utterance, eluding Discourse, Intuition, Name, and every kind of being. It is the Universal Cause of existence while Itself existing not, for It is beyond all Being and such that It alone could give a revelation of Itself.If that sounds more like something an Eastern guru would come up with, don’t worry, you’re right. Dionysius isn’t called Pseudo for nothing.We’ll get to him a bit deeper into this episode.The late 5th & 6th Cs saw important developments in the Eastern church. It’s the time of the premier Byzantine Emperor, Justinian. But 2 contemporaries of his also made important contributions to the most important institutions of the medieval church in the West. One of them we’ve already mentioned in brief, the other we’ll devote an episode to; Benedict of Nursia & Pope Gregory the Great.By the end of the 6th C, the unique characteristics of the Eastern and Western churches had coalesced in two different traditions. While the West remained loyal to the pattern held at Rome, the East emerged in 3 directions.The major Councils held at Ephesus & Chalcedon to decide the issue raised by the debate between Cyril of Alexandria & Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, over the nature of Christ, produced a 3-way split in the Eastern church. That split continues to this day and is seen in what’s called the . . .(1) Chalcedonian or Byzantine Orthodox church(2) Those called Monophysites or Oriental Orthodox, which follows the theological line of Cyril &(3) The Nestorian Church of the East.Without going into all the intricate details of the debates, suffice it to say the Eastern Church wasn’t satisfied with the Western-inspired formula describing the nature of Jesus adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. In a scenario reminiscent of what had happened all the way back at the first council at Nicaea in 325, while they concluded the council at Chalcedon with an agreed creed, some bishops later hemmed & hawed over the verbiage. To those Eastern bishops beholden to Cyril, Chalcedon sounded too Nestorian to swallow. Chalcedon said Jesus was “1 person in 2 natures.” The balking bishops wanted to alter that to say he was “out of 2 natures” before the incarnation, but after he was 1 nature.Now, for those listening to several of these podcasts in a row rather than spaced out over several weeks, I know this is repetitious. In a brief summary let me recap Cyril’s & Nestorius’ views. Regarding how to understand who Jesus is; that is, how His identities as both God & Man related to each other . . .Cyril said he was both God & Man, but that the divine so overwhelmed the human it became virtually meaningless. The analogy was that his humanity was a drop of ink in the ocean of His divinity. Therefore, Mary was the Theotokos – the mother of God.Nestorius, balked at that title, saying Mary was Jesus human mother who became the means by which Jesus was human but that she should not be called the mother of God. Nestorius said Jesus was both human & divine and emphasized his humanity and the role it played in the redemption of lost sinners.Because Nestorius reacted to what he considered the aberrant position of Cyril, and because he lacked tact and a knew when to shut up, his opponents claimed he taught Jesus wasn’t just of 2 natures but was 2 persons living in the same body. For this, he was branded a heretic.But when the Council of Chalcedon finally issued its official stand on what compromised Christian orthodoxy regarding the person & natures of Christ, Nestorius said they’d only articulated what he’d always taught.So it’s little wonder post-Chalcedon bishops of the Cyrillian slant rejected Chalcedon. Their view left the humanity of Christ as an abstract and impersonal dimension of His nature. Because they SO emphasized His deity, at the cost of his humanity, they were branded as “Monophysites” or sometimes you’ll hear it pronounced as “muh-noph–uh-sites.” Sadly, just as those labeled Nestorian weren’t heretical as the name came to mean, the term Monophysite is also inaccurate because they did not DENY Jesus’ humanity.The Greek prefix mono implies “only one” nature. A better descriptor is monophysite. Hen- is the Greek prefix meaning one, but without the “only” limiter.But the Eastern push-back on Chalcedon wasn’t just theological; it was also nationalistic. The church in Egypt went into revolt after the Council because their patriarch Dioscorus was deposed!Then in Canon 28 of the Council’s creed, Constantinople was elevated as 2nd only to Rome in terms of prestige, so both Alexandria & Antioch got their togas in a bunch. Those bishops who supported Chalcedon were labeled “Melchites,” meaning royalists because they supported the Imperial church.We’ve noted that while the Western Emperor was out of the picture by this time, so that the Roman pope stood as a kind of lone figure leading the West, the Eastern Emperor at Constantinople still wielded tremendous authority in the Church. We might wonder therefore why they didn’t step in to settle the issue about the nature of Christ.  They wanted to. Several of them would have liked to repudiate Chalcedon, but their hands were tied, because there was one part of the Council they wanted to keep – Canon 28, setting up Constantinople as technically Rome’s second, but in reality, her equal.Now, as I studied the material that follows the debates between the Henophysites & Chalcedonians I found myself at a loss on how to relate it without boring the bejeebers out of you. I spent quite a bit of time working, editing, re-editing, deleting, restoring, and deleting again before deciding to just say that in the East during the 5th & 6th Cs, just about everybody was caught up in this thing. Emperors, bishops, patriarchs, metropolitans, monks, priests, & the common people. There are technical words like Encyclion, Henoticon, Severan, Acacian that are employed to define the different sides taken in the debate, and those who tried to forge a compromise. And let me tell you – THOSE guys failed miserably in working a compromise. They got hammered by BOTH sides.Regarding the long debate over the natures of Christ in the East, Everett Ferguson says that the irony is that the Chalcedonians, Henophysites, and the Church of the East were really trying to say the same thing about Jesus. He was somehow at the same time 2 somethings, but a single individual. Their different starting points gave different formulations their opponents couldn’t accept for theological reasons and wouldn’t for political reasons.Switching gears: Around 500 one of the most influential thinkers in Greek Orthodox spirituality made his mark, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. His real name is unknown. He claimed to be Dionysius, one of Paul’s Athenian converts mentioned in Acts 17. His contemporaries accepted his writings as legit. We know now they weren’t.Pseudo-Dionysius combined Christianity & Neoplatonism into a mish-mash slap-dash theology that appealed to both Chalcedonians and Henophysites. Probably because when you read it you inwardly say, “What?” but had to nod your head saying how amazing it was so you wouldn’t appear stupid. Like when I read or listen to Stephen Hawking waxing eloquent on some tangent of astrophysics; I say, “Wow! That guy’s brilliant!” But don’t ask me to explain what I just heard. He speaks English, but it might as well be ancient Akkadian.Besides being a Neoplatonist, Pseudo-Dionysius was also a mystic, meaning someone who claimed to have had an experience of union with God, not just a deep sense of connection to Him, but an actual uniting with the essence of deity. Pseudo-Dionysius became the author of a branch of Christian mysticism that was hugely influential in Eastern Christianity. When his work was translated into Latin in the 9th C, he became influential in the West as well.Pseudo-Dionysius writings stressed a tendency already found in Greek Christian authors like Origen, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa who said the goal of human salvation was a kind of making humans divine.We need to be careful here, because as soon as I say that, all the Western Christians say, “Wait! What?!!?!? Back the truck up Billy Bob. I think we just ran over something.”There is in Eastern Orthodoxy a different understanding of salvation from that of Roman Catholicism & Classic Protestantism.Eastern Orthodoxy understands that the saved are destined to a level of glory in heaven that is on an order of existence that can only properly be described as divine.No; humans don’t become gods; not like the one true and only Creator God. But they were created in His image and will be restored to & completed in that image so that they will be as much LIKE God as a created being can be and still not be God.This quasi-deification is attained by purification, illumination, and perfection, meaning union with God, which became the three stages of enlightenment espoused by classic mysticism.Okay, hang with me as we go deep. Pseudo-Dionysius identified three stages in how someone seeking the fullness of salvation can describe God:1) Giving Him a name was affirmative theology.2) Denying that name was negative theology. And …3) Then reconciling the contradiction by looking beyond language was superlative theology.The way of negation led to the contemplation that marks mystical theology, which was considered a simpler and purer way to understand God. In other words, it’s easier to know who and what God is by concentrating on what He’s not. And if that seems backward and nonsensical – welcome to the club of those who aren’t mystics and just scratch their heads when the mystics start talking.Pseudo-Dionysius’ arrangement of angels into nine leve

This week’s episode of Communio Sanctorum is titled, “God’s Consul .”One of the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s most important contributions to the Empire was to divide the top-tier leadership up so that it could rule more efficiently. The Empire had grown too large to be governed by a single Emperor, so he selected a co-Augustus & divided their regions of oversight between Western & Eastern realms. Since the issue of succession had also been a cause for unrest in previous generations, Diocletian also provided for that by assigning junior Caesars for both himself & his co-Augustus. When they stepped down, there would be someone waiting in the wings, pre-designated to take control. The idea was then that when their successors stepped into the role of being co-Augusti – they’d appoint new junior Caesars to follow after them. It was a solid plan and worked well while Diocletian was the senior Augustus. When he retired to raise prize-winning cabbages, the other rulers decided they liked power & didn’t want to relinquish it.Over the years that followed, rule of the Empire alternated between a single Emperor & Diocletian’s idea of shared rule. The general trend was for shared rule with the senior Augustus making his capital in the East at Constantinople. This left the weaker & subordinate ruler in the west with increasingly less power at the same time Germanic tribes pressed in from the North.What eventually spelled doom for the Western Empire was that Rome had forged treaties with some of those Germanic tribes; turning them into mercenaries who were armed & trained in the Roman style of war. When Rome stopped paying them to fight FOR Rome against their Germanic brothers & the Goths, it was inevitable they’d join them to fight against the rich pickings of the decaying Empire who could no longer field armies against them.We’ve seen previously, as the barbarians pressed into the Western Empire from the North & East, civil authorities had diminishing ability to do anything about them. People began looking to the Church to provide order. Because the Church was gifted with some remarkable leaders who genuinely cared about the welfare of the people, they managed to hold the decaying Empire together for a time. Pope Leo even managed to meet with the Hun leader Attila as he prepared to march on Rome. Leo persuaded the Huns to turn around, leaving the City intact. But Leo didn’t have as much luck with the Vandals who arrived a few years later. He did manage to persuade them to limit their sack to plunder & pillage. The population was saved from death & rape. After a 2 week loot-fest, the Vandals boarded their ships & sailed away - leaving the city otherwise unmolested.Historians mark the year 476 as the date when the Western Empire fell. It was then that the Goth leader Odoacer deposed the last Western Emperor, Romulus Augustulus. Odoacer is called a barbarian, but he was, in fact, a military leader in the Roman army; a mercenary who led a revolt against the very people he’d once fought FOR. While historians mark 476 as the year of Rome’s fall, for the people living at that time, they would not have seen much if any difference between the reign of Augustulus & Odoacer. Things carried on much as they had from the previous decades. Which is to say – it was a mess!With the Fall of Rome, the Western Empire moved into what we know as the Middle Ages. This was a time when the Church played an ever-increasing role in society. The form that influence took varied over the centuries; sometimes being more religious & spiritual in nature, at other times being predominantly political. But there’s no denying that in Europe during the Middle Ages, the Church played a major role.During the 5th & early 6th Centuries, as civil society disintegrated, people looked to alternatives. Some found an answer in monastic communities.  There’d been communes of Christians since the 3rd Century, but the number of monasteries began to grow during the 5th. Some were highly structured while others were more loosely organized.The monastic movement took off due to the leadership of Benedict of Nursia whom we’ve already talked about. Benedict’s early attempts at being the leader or abbot of a monastery didn’t go so well; the monks tried to poison him. But as he matured, Benedict applied the lessons learned from his previous mistakes & founded a monastery on Monte Cassino in Italy that became the proto-typical monastery for years to come.Benedict was a genius for administration and organization. He formulated a simple plan for monastic living that was easily transferred to other communes. Known as the Rule of St. Benedict, it became the organizing & governing principle for monastic life & under it, hundreds more monasteries were begun. The Rule held forth a daily routine of Bible reading, prayer, and work. Benedict’s sister Scholastica adopted a similar formula for convents.Monasteries became repositories & treasuries of the learning and scholarship of Greece and Rome. As the rest of Europe plunged into what some refer to as The Dark Ages, many monasteries remained places of scholarship. The monks read, studied and spent considerable time copying ancient texts of both scripture and classical antiquity. The Renaissance would eventually be fed by the work of those monks and their hundreds of years of work.What we know about Benedict comes from his biographer, Gregory, known to us as Pope Gregory I, or Gregory the Great, a title conferred on him by the Church shortly after his death.Gregory was born into a wealthy and ancient Roman senatorial family around 540. Following family tradition, he was trained for civil service. But the political landscape was uncertain. During his childhood, the rule of Rome passed through several different regimes. While in his mid-teens, control of Southern Italy was wrested from the Visigoths by the re-conquest of the Eastern Emperor Justinian. But it was only a few years till the Lombards began their campaign of terror. They burned churches, murdered bishops, plundered monasteries, and turned the verdant fields of Italy into a weed-strewn wilderness.When he was 33, Justinian appointed Gregory as the Prefect of Rome, the highest political position in the territory. Gregory was responsible for the economy, food provisions, welfare of the poor, reconstruction of the now ancient and badly decayed infrastructure; things like baths, sewers, and streets. His appointment came in the same year both the pope and Imperial governor of Italy died.A few years later Gregory resigned his office. It’s rare when someone who wields great power walks away from it – but that’s what Gregory did. The death of his father seemed to be the turning point. One wonders if it wasn’t his father’s dreams FOR his son that had moved Gregory into a political career to begin with. Once the father was gone, there was nothing holding him to his position and Gregory followed his heart, which was to become a monk. With his considerable fortune, he founded seven monasteries and gave what was left to the poor. He then turned his family’s home into a monastery. As Bruce Shelly puts it, “He exchanged the purple toga for the coarse robe of a monk.” He embraced the austere life of a monk with full devotion to the Rule of St. Benedict.As much as Gregory desired to dissolve into obscurity and live a life of humble devotion to God, his outstanding gifts as an administrator had fixed a reputation to him he was unable to dodge. In 579, Pope Pelagius II made him one of seven deacons for the church at Rome. He was then sent as an ambassador for the Pope to the imperial court in Constantinople. He returned to Rome in 585 and was appointed abbot of the convent that had once been his house.Gregory was quite content to be an abbot and would aspire to no higher office, content to finish his sojourn on earth right there. But The Plague swept thru Rome, killing thousands, including the Pope. Unlike most monks who hid behind their commune’s walls, Gregory went into the city to help the sick. This earned him great admiration. After Pope Pelagius died, it took church leaders six months to settle on Gregory to replace him. He balked and fled Rome to hide in the countryside. When he was eventually located they persuaded him to return and take up the Bishop’s seat.Gregory seemed ill-suited to the task. He was 50 and frail. 50 would be young for a pope today, but when the average life span was a mere 40 years, 50 was already an advanced age. Gregory’s physical condition had been made worse by his extreme austerity as a monk. Drastic fasting had enfeebled him and contributed to the weakening of his heart. But what some might assume his main disqualification, was Gregory’s lack of ambition for power. He simply did not want to be Pope. Coming to the belief it was God’s will that he take up the task, it didn’t take long for him to learn how to wield the influence his office. He began his term by calling for public demonstrations of humility of what was left of Rome’s plague-decimated populace. His hope was to avert more disaster. And indeed, after a while the plague abated.Gregory hadn’t been Pope long when the Lombards laid siege to Rome. This was a time of chaos throughout Western Europe. Many otherwise cool heads thought it was the end times; Gregory was one of them. In a sermon he said,Everywhere we see tribulation, everywhere we hear lamentation. The cities are destroyed, the castles torn down, the fields laid waste, the land made desolate. Villages are empty, few inhabitants remain in the cities, and even these poor remnants of humanity are daily cut down. The scourge of celestial justice does not cease, because no repentance takes place under the scourge. We see how some are carried into captivity, others mutilated, others slain. What is it, brethren, that can make us contented with this life? If we love such a world, we love not our joys, but our wounds.It seemed every aspect of civilization was be