Chapter 5 – Birth of Islam, E. vs. W. Church split, Crusades

The time between about 500 and 1500 AD is called the ‘Middle Ages.’ The middle of what? In the middle of (between) the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. The early middle ages (ca 500-1000) is also called the ‘Dark Ages’ because society was floundering in Western Europe.

• government was feudal (or futile, p49), poor record-keeping
• no educational system, vast illiteracy, decline in the arts
• Church was intermingled with secular powers (see chapter 4)

The church, in order to spread the essential teachings in an illiterate world, began using icons. These icons were eventually mistaken for idols, leading to a bloody 60+ year conflict between iconodules and iconoclasts (p50). Eastern Empress Irene convened the 7th Church-wide council (2nd Nicene council) in 787 to deal with the issue of icon-use vs. idolatry. They ruled against the iconoclasts, saying that icon-reverence was a good thing but icon-worship was unacceptable.

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Not all was ‘Dark.’ The Church continued to prosper and spread:

• In 496, the Franks (powerful secular big-dogs), became Christian.
• In 754, the Franks gave all of Central Italy to the church.
• ca 800, a document called the Donation of Constantine, gave the Roman Pope control over all the other western popes. This was allegedly a gift from Constantine to Sylvester for teaching him and baptizing him (remember chapter 3). The donation was shown to be a forgery in the Early Renaissance and Reformation.
• In the 780’s Frankish King Charles (later Charlemagne) began conquering throughout Germany and France with this ‘convert or die’ campaign.

In 799 some Italian nobles tried to assassinate Pope Leo in a power struggle and he fled to Charles for refuge. King Charles declared Leo innocent of the nobles’ charges and in return, Pope Leo declared Charles to be Charlemagne the ‘Holy Roman Emperor.’

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The power dynamic turned around and the secular powers that had been the lapdog of the Church (p38-39), now held the Church on a leash. The Roman Pope’s office became a corrupt thing with secular nobles as Pope or controlling the Pope (e.g. Marioza, p52).

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The Eastern and Western churches had long argued over the Nicene Creed. Each accused the other of changing the Creed in a small but significant way (the filioque clause). The Western (Spanish) Christians had actually changed it first, followed by the rest of the Western Church, but the Western Pope accused the Eastern Church of changing it, and in the ensuing chaos, effectively excommunicated the entire Eastern Church (p54).

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While the West was dealing with the "dark ages", in the East the church faced the birth of Islam (ca 610 AD). Followers of the new prophet, Mohammed, spread like wildfire through the Middle East, Southeast Europe, and North Africa. Why did they spread so rapidly?

• Amazingly enough, the Muslims allowed some religious freedom. This was definitely not equal status, but they didn’t kill folks that wouldn’t convert.
• The Eastern Church had a long-standing theological feud with the North African Coptic churches and many of them simply converted to Islam.

In 1095 Pope Urban II sparked the First Crusade, preaching that the Eastern church needed the West’s help against the infidels, who controlled Jerusalem and the routes to it. Within 9 months, Peter the Hermit had gathered 20,000 peasants and had marched to Constantinople (their jumping-off point). Here they floundered (pillaging Eastern European homes) until they were killed in a Muslim ambush. Western crusaders finally made it to Jerusalem and the streets ran ankle deep in Muslim and Jewish blood.

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In 1198, the 4th crusade set out with the objective of destroying a Muslim base in Egypt, but they had no transportation. The merchants of Venice agreed to provide ships if the crusaders would dethrone the Eastern Emperor while they were at it. They jumped at it against the Pope’s permission. They attacked Constantinople (Christians killing Christians now) and the Merchants of Venice stranded them there. This was the beginning of the “indulgences” associated with the crusades.

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This went on for centuries, and gave the Christian church a very bad name. The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church eventually split for good. These Crusades are the source of a lot of the distrust between Jew, Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox now.

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The bottom line:

Christians must always be kind, but being kind does not mean being silent. Sometimes we must point out religious error (Acts 18:24-28). Three attitudes should rule: 1) compassion, 2) understanding, and 3) desire to lead others to the truth of God’s nature. Did this happen in the Middle Ages?
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Name some groups that you consider Christian-but-different or even not-Christian. How can these three attitudes rule your conduct toward these groups (1Pet3:15)?
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Write down the name of a group that you don’t have compassion for or don’t understand. This week, do something to increase your understanding of their beliefs (www.wikipedia.com is a good start) and pray for God to send his Holy Spirit onto you to give you compassion for this group.

Next Week: Chapter 6: God is still working among the corruption

Chapter 4 – Leaders and servants in the 4th-7th centuries

Last chapter we began to see Christianity gain more worldly security and influence. Constantine made Christianity his personal religion and the Empire’s defacto religion in 313 AD. Later, (391) Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. As the empire dottered into decline, Church leaders began assuming secular powers and secular leaders began assuming church oversight.
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Examples include:

• Ambrose was governor of Milan. When the church overseer died, he assumed the role of overseer to avoid a riot over succession. Emperor Theodosius required him to rebuild an Arian church (a popular form of Gnosticism at the time) that had been burnt. Ambrose refused, excommunicated Theodosius, and made him grovel in sackcloth and ashes for weeks to be readmitted to the church.
• Olympias, the richest young woman in the world at the time didn’t want to marry Theodosius’s cousin, Theodosius confiscated all her wealth. She tricked him into returning it and donated much of it to the church.
• Secular officials made John Chrysostom overseer in Constantinople thinking that they could control the church through a debt of loyalty. This backfired because of Chrysostom’s piety. John C. demanded that priests remain chaste and condemned the Emperess’ lifestyle. She donated a large gift to the church to shut him up but he thanked her for the gift and kept on preaching.

In Chapter Two we saw that Gnosticism was a popular form of error because it played to people’s longing for something different. Something simpler and more spiritual than the awful, hard life they faced. Some individuals, and later groups of people, began choosing ascetic lifestyles, and monasticism was born. As the Empire declined, the monks played a large role in preserving Christian tradition.

• One important early monk was Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate bible (AD 405). Jerome was also the first to propose the idea that Mary remained a virgin all of her life. A later monk, Jovinian, denied that idea and was excommunicated over it.
• Scholastica and Benedict destroyed a pagan altar and built a monastery. Benedict’s rules for running a monastery became the standard.
• Gregory was a powerful politician but became a monk and helped plague victims. His form of plainsong (Gregorian chant) became the standard. He also came up with the idea of purgatory.
• Augustine of Hippo was a secular scholar, and a cult member, who converted and became one of Christianity’s most influential thinkers. He opposed Pelagianism (the idea that it is possible for people to be holy on their own effort) but he also preached that the Bible was all allegory and symbolism with vast hidden meaning.
• Hilda of Whitby was one of the most influential religious leaders in Celtic Ireland.

In summary: As the empire declined, the Church and the Secular Empire began mixing in unhealthy ways. The Empire became the lapdog of the Church (e.g. Theodosius and Ambrose) and the Church began getting distracted by inessentials (e.g. purgatory, lifelong virginity of Mary, etc…). Everyone became distracted over who was going to serve and who was going to lead. A remnant of the church (the monks and nuns) mostly stayed on the right path (as servant-leaders).

Next week – Chapter 5 – Birth of Islam, E. vs. W. Church split, Crusades

Thankful, by Caedmon's Call

I love this song! One of my new favorites. This is not the best recording of it, but the video of the studio version on Youtube has embedding disabled, so I couldn't copy it over here. Go check out the studio version - the words are much clearer!

Chapter 3 – Growth vs. purity in the 3rd-5th centuries

During this time a lot of Christians’ fondest wishes came true – and they found this was not all good.
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AD 247-251 persecutions under Decius in retaliation for Christians not celebrating Rome’s 1000th birthday. Remember Origen from last class – he died during this persecution.
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The persecutions ended but this brought up the question of how to deal with Christians who had sacrificed to the Roman gods to avoid persecution but wanted back in the Christian church later?

• Cyprian’s position – Let them back in when they show signs of contrition (prayer and fasting) (p28)
  Donatus’ position – Any elder who'd sacrificed to a Roman god would invalidate all of the sacriments he'd given - so you can't let them back in (p28)
• Your position – What would you want to do with a really bad ‘backslider’ whose misdeeds were really bad for the church and other Christians?
• The Presbyterian position...

They, whom God hath accepted… can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace ... This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon …the free and unchangeable love of God ... Nevertheless, they may … fall into grievous sins…whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves. (Westminster COF 17.1-17.3)

Church censures are necessary…
the officers of the church are to proceed by admonition, suspension from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper for a season; and by excommunication from the Church, according to the nature of the crime, and demerit of the person. (Westminster COF 30.3-30.4)

In 284, Diocletian divided the Roman Empire in half, East and West, ruled by co-emperors. Later, Emperor Galerius, realizing the persecutions were ineffective, made Christianity legal, “so long as they didn’t disturb the peace.”In 312, Constantine and Maxentius were fighting for the position of Emperor. The truly remarkable thing about this was that Constantine claimed to have had a vision from God the day before the battle. He claimed to see the Greek letters Chi-Rho (a monogram for Christ) in the sun and he said he heard a voice saying, “By this sign, you will win.” So Constantine had the Chi-Rho (p29, sidebar) painted on his army’s shields. Constantine routed Maxentius’ army and drove them into a river.
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Constantine made Christ his personal patron, and in the Edict of Milan (313 AD) declared Christianity to be not only legal, but effectively the state religion of the Empire and himself an overseer in the Church.
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• Constantine called the Council of Nicaea in 325 to rule on a theological squabble.
• Arius’ position: Jesus was not coexistant with God from the beginning, but was god's first creation (p30)
• The conservative position (p30,2nd full ¶) resulted in the creation of the Gloria Patria, which we sing every week.
• We call the Council’s position statement the Nicene Creed (p30, sidebar) - though this creed would be revised at other councils in subsequent years.
• Constantine’s enforcement included excommunicating and banishing anyone who refused to sign the creed. But to preserve the peace, he overturned Arius' censure. One of Arius' followers baptized Constantine on his deathbead years later. (p30-31)

Constantine vs. Athanasius:

• The Black Dwarf’s position: I will not reinstate Arius because he is a heretic. (p31)
• Constantine’s response: banished Athanasius and hunted him for years (p31)

Possibly the greatest tragedy in the whole chapter is the story of Constantine’s successor, Julian. Which of the Ten Commandments did Constantine break in this particular case (Ex 20:7)? He painted Christ's name on his shields, made himself a representative of Christ, then lived such a secular life that he made his successor hate Christianity. had it not have been for Constantine's actions, Julian might have been Christian. See the sidebar at the top of p32. Pray for God to save us from Constantine’s mistake.

Discussion: purity vs. growth and security (Acts 2:41-42, 1John2:19)

Sunday School - Church History

Chapter 2 – Second and third centuries

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The church began to mature and change form as it faced opposition from Gnostic heretics. Gnostcism was varied, but most all Gnostics shared two common beliefs:

• To have salvation you must have their group’s secret, proprietary knowledge.
• The physical world is corrupt, evil, and detestable. Something to be avoided or transcended (which you could only do if you had their secret knowledge).

Gnosticism was a very marketable heresy for several reasons.

• They could claim to be Christian or not, as convenient to them.
• They claimed to have “The Secret Knowledge ®” that nobody else had. This appeals to everyone’s intellectual vanity.
• In a decadent society where life was hard, Gnosticism was popular because it suggested the possibility of transcendence to a purely spiritual realm.

A major problem for Gnostics was the fact that you cannot make Gnosticism consistent with the Apostolic writings (e.g. John 1:14, 1Cor 6:19, 1Cor 7:3-5, John 14:6), so they tended to write their own “gospels” or abridge the pre-canonical scriptures (e.g. Marcion, p18-19)

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Another interesting example is Origen, a child preacher who often slipped into Gnostic teachings while trying to denounce Gnosticism (p19).

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The Christians responded in three ways to Gnosticism (p20 1st ¶):

• A Canon of scriptures (p20) a group of perfectly self-consistent scriptures of widespread use and apostolic origin. There were debates until about 300 AD but for the most part the Canon was complete by 200 AD. (canon, incidently, means measuring stick. The implication is that we are to measure things against this specific group of scriptures)
• A Rule of faith (p21 sidebar) Though we call it the Apostle’s Creed, it was not actually apostolic in origin, but was developed in the second century as a set of baptismal questions. “Christian, what do you believe? …" This was a statement of hte Essentials of the Faith. The things you had to confess to be called Christian.
• A Priesthood of overseers (p21 last ¶). Early in the first century the church was led by lay elders (A.K.A. presbyters, overseers, or bishops) but as the church grew, a hierarchy began to grow up within the church. Regional head-elders started telling other elders what to do. (e.g. Philemon) They eventually became a class of Priests that ran the church and protected the apostolic traditions.

In addition to dealing with Gnostic heresy, there began to be questions of authority. What was to be our rule of faith and action? There were three basic ideas:

• Canonical scriptures (p20)
• Apostolic traditions (see the Easter debate, p22)
• Holy Spirit (see New Prophets p23-24)

The Catholic church grew into the use of canonical and apocryphal scripture as interpreted by a priesthood of overseers using church traditions as a guide. The Gnostics used non-canonical texts and/or Holy Spirit (how they felt) as their guide.

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What do we as Presbyterians believe about these issues?

There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof. (Westminster COF 25.6; WCOF 25.6 originally stated that the pope was Antichrist, but that was later removed.)

The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of His Church, hath therein appointed a government, in the hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate.(Westminster COF 30.1)

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word: and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. (Westminster COF 1.6)

And the bottom line, the thought that the author leaves us with...

So, how should we love and deal with Christians who have differing beliefs without tolerating heresy?

Christian conflict resolution

I teach aikido and judo, two Japanese martial arts that besides being good exercise and a really interesting hobby, make for great self-defense, especially aikido. Aikido is all about avoidance, evasion, pushing the guy off of you, disengaging from violence in a safe manner. It has been called "the Art of Peace."

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A couple of days ago one of the bloggers that I read regularly, reviewed a book by an American aikido master. The book is about creative, nonviolent resolution of conflict and the use of aikido strategies in everyday life. The reviewer called this the "most Christian" response to conflict he'd ever seen, based upon "turn the other cheek" and all that.

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I thought I'd cite some of the scriptures that relate to conflict...

• "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Mat 5:38-42)
• My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. (James 1:19-21)
• We put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. (James 3:3-12)
• When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?" And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him. (Luke 22:49-51)
• For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (2Cor10:3-4)

Does this mean that Christians must be passive?

• Your wives, your children and your livestock may stay in the land that Moses gave you east of the Jordan, but all your fighting men, fully armed, must cross over ahead of your brothers. You are to help your brothers (Joshua 1:14).
• And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand (Acts 7:24-25).
• The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables (John 2:13-15).