Podcasts about latin bible

In our weekly livestream for March 7, 2025, Camden Bucey first speaks with Jonathan Master about the upcoming Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary conference focused on pastoral ministry. They explore the theological significance of the pastoral office and the communal aspects of the conference. In the second segment, Bucey speaks with David Noe, Tyson Watson, and Joan Crist about an innovative project centered on Calvin's Latin Bible. The panel details their collaborative work to make this important historical text more accessible to contemporary readers. They address the challenges of translation, their quality control processes, and the technological solutions they've developed. Joan Crist shares her personal journey to Reformed theology and explains how their project includes resources for learning Latin while engaging with Reformed theological traditions. The conversation highlights the enduring importance of liturgy and Latin in theological education, while offering insights into future developments of their digital platform. To learn more: GPTS Conference: The Pastor: His Call, Character, and Work Calvin's Latin Bible: Latin Per Diem Video Introduction: YouTube

This is part 16 of the Early Church History class. Jerome and Augustine are two of the most influential Latin Christians of the first millennium of Christianity. This episode will introduce you to their lives, personalities, and some of their most important ideas. You'll see how significantly asceticism affected their lifestyles as well as how their particular take on Christianity came to set the norm for Roman Catholic Christianity. Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtNF5-rvmwU&list=PLN9jFDsS3QV2lk3B0I7Pa77hfwKJm1SRI&index=16&pp=iAQB —— Links —— More Restitutio resources on Christian history See other classes here Support Restitutio by donating here Join our Restitutio Facebook Group and follow Sean Finnegan on Twitter @RestitutioSF Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play them out on the air Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library. Who is Sean Finnegan?  Read his bio here —— Notes —— Jerome's Life (347-419) Actual name: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus Excellent Latin education, highly intelligent Learned Greek and Hebrew Lived as a hermit in the Syrian desert 382-385 - served as secretary to Pope Damasus I, bishop of Rome Jerome's Asceticism Believed everyone should be celibate Worked a lot with wealthy widows from the senatorial class and their daughters Thought the only benefit from marriage was the production of more virgins After Paula's daughter Blaesilla died, he moved to Bethlehem. Spent his time engaging in controversies by letter, translating the Bible and other literature into Latin, and writing commentaries on scripture Jerome's Writings Though deeply influenced by classical literature, especially Cicero, he advocated reading only the Bible and Christian literature. Worked on the Vulgate (382-405) Became the dominant Latin Bible for the Roman Catholic Church from 600 onwards; though in Jerome's day, many still preferred a translation of the Septuagint (including Augustine) Translated Origen's On First Principles, Pachomius' Rule, and Eusebius' Historical Chronicle into Latin Lives of Illustrious Men provides short biographies of many early Christians. Commentaries on many books of the Bible Augustine's Early Life (354-430) Grew up in North Africa with a Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan father, Patrick Had an excellent education in Carthage Particularly influenced by Cicero's dialogues, especially his Hortensius Became a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, then Milan Augustine's Sexual Life Stealing pears as a teenager “I was burning to find satisfaction… I ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures.” (Confessions 2.1.1)[1] At Carthage, he said, “All around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.” (Confessions 3.1.1) Took a concubine from a lower class and lived with her for 13 years and had a son with her, Adeodatus His mother convinced him to send his concubine away so he could be eligible to marry a well-born woman. Couldn't live chastely in the interval and took another concubine Augustine's Journey to Christianity Had encountered the scriptures but said they “seemed to me unworthy in comparison with the dignity of Cicero” (Confessions 3.5.9) Became a Manichaean for 9 years Believed in Astrology for a long while Found great satisfaction in Neo-Platonism, especially the writings of Plotinus and Porphyry Checked out Bishop Ambrose just to listen to his rhetoric and was impressed Heard a voice saying, “Pick up and read [tolle, lege]” and opened to Romans 13.13-14 387 - Ambrose baptized Augustine and Adeodatus Augustine's Bishopric (395-430) Became bishop of Hippo Regius and served for 35 years Preached regularly, held court twice a week, counselled people Engaged in many controversies with Manichaeans, Donatists, Pelagians, and pagans. Augustine's Writings Wrote approximately five million words Confessions: an autobiography City of God: responds to Alaric's sack of Rome in 410 as well as lays out extensive interpretation of the Bible and key doctrines On the Trinity: defended the Trinity and explained it philosophically Also, many letters, commentaries, and treatises Augustine's Thought Original sin passed down a corrupted nature incapable of doing good. God predestined the elect to be saved. The elect go to heaven to live eternally. The damned go to hell to be tormented eternally. Augustine's Influence Probably the most influential Christian of the first millennium Codified Catholic doctrine that held sway throughout the Middle Ages Martin Luther was himself an Augustinian monk, and the Reformation was largely a return to Augustinian Christianity. Review Jerome and Augustine were influential Christians who shaped Christianity in the fifth century. Both received excellent educations and voluntarily chose ascetic, celibate lifestyles. Both were influenced by Origen, especially his allegorical hermeneutic. Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin from Hebrew and Greek--the Vulgate--became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine had a fraught and lengthy battle with lust that eventually led him to celibacy. Augustine was a Manichean, a believer in astrology, and a Neo-Platonist before he became a Christian. Augustine battled Manicheans, Donatists, Pelagians, and Pagans throughout his career. He advocated original sin, infant baptism, eternal life in heaven, eternal torment in hell, predestination of the elect, and celibate clergy. More than anyone else in the first thousand years, Augustine's thought influenced Roman Catholic doctrine. To a degree, the Reformation itself was a return to Augustinian Christianity. [1] All quotes from Confessions from Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford, 1998).

In this episode, I explore the concept of the rapture and its Biblical basis, addressing the common question of why the word "rapture" does not appear in the English Bible. I explain that the term is found in the Latin Bible. We then discuss the rapture as an event in Scripture specifically mentioned in relation to the church in the New Testament setting. I delve into the overwhelming rapture verse in the scriptures, as told by Jesus in John 14:1, and discuss the implications of this verse and its connection to the rapture. We also explore the imagery and symbolism found in the Book of Revelation, focusing on the significance of the seven lampstands representing the seven churches. In this discussion, I emphasize the importance of living out our faith in today's turbulent world and encourage listeners to subscribe and share the message of truth with others to help this podcast grow. Stay tuned for part two of our exploration on defining the rapture, its placement in scripture, and why it is essential to our understanding of the end times. Together, let's continue to seek truth and live out our faith in these challenging times.   Visit https://JackHibbs.com for more information and resources.

Bible Study with Jairus- Revelation 2 (part 2)   God's Provision in Difficult Times   Today we will look at the first three letters to the churches in Revelation 2. As we've discussed, these seven letters are structured like a sandwich, starting with praise, followed by criticism, and finishing with encouragement. But we often overlook the opening sentence of each letter, which reveals something about the nature of Jesus Christ.   The first sentence of each chapter of the Bible is often the key to understanding the entire chapter and paragraph, as it reveals the Holy Spirit's summary of each chapter and section of the Bible. Therefore, we should pay special attention to the first sentence of each chapter and paragraph. This will help us understand the Bible better.   In the letters to the churches in Revelation, Jesus begins each letter with a revelation of a specific aspect of his character. This characteristic of Jesus is specifically related to the church's unique trial or sin struggle.   For instance, the letter to the church in Ephesus first mentions that Jesus “holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands” (ESV, Revelation 2:1)[1]. Just like the Old Testament High Priest trimmed the wicks and added oil to make the golden lampstand shine brighter, Jesus trims the wicks of our hearts (removes our idols) and pours oil (the Holy Spirit) into our lives. First John 2:15 says, "if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” so we need Jesus' help to remove these false loves. The seven stars in Jesus' hands are the tools he uses to purify our hearts and make our lamps shine brighter.   The letter to the church in Smyrna mentions that Jesus is "the first and the last, who died and lived again" (Revelation 2:8). The letter goes on to discuss the characteristics of Jesus' resurrection and the ways His resurrection provides for the persecuted church. The letter to the church in Pergamum mentions "a sharp two-edged sword" (Revelation 2:12), which reminds us that "the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). This shows that the church in Pergamum had failed to keep the Lord's word, leading to spiritual struggles. This church needed to learn to rightly handle the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15) and resist heresy and wrong teachings so their witness to Christ could truly begin to shine. Jesus reminded each church of an aspect of his character that could help them in their unique circumstances.   Our Specific Weakness Forces Us to Depend on a Specific Aspect of God's Character     Not only do churches have different weaknesses, but every person has them also. We all wish we were perfect, but we each have different flaws and weaknesses. Did you know that each specific flaw and weakness in your life provides a unique opportunity to depend on Christ in a specific way? For example, a person who is good-tempered by nature doesn't need to learn and experience Christ's patience. But a person who has a short temper has a unique opportunity to learn His patience. When we frequently focus on and pay attention to Christ's patience, we will gradually be transformed into his image. We will experience spiritual transformation and become patient people. Friends around us who know that we are quick-tempered by nature will be astonished when they see the transformation Jesus has provided. "Only God could have done this! He is real,” they will say. In this way, we will become effective witnesses for Christ—even more than naturally good-tempered people.   Many times, our past failures and struggles become an excellent opportunity to be a witness for Christ. For example, a former drug addict sinned who has trusted in Jesus Christ and overcome his drug addiction can be a very good witness to other drug addicts. A woman who transitioned to the opposite gender and later regretted it has a unique story to tell. She can bear witness to the pain of changing her gender after believing the lies of the enemy in a way that other people cannot. She can testify to the beauty of the gender that God created in a way that most could never do.   This brings us to a crucial question: Are our eyes focused on our own failures, or are we focused on God's provision in this area? Are we paying attention to the specific characteristics of God's grace that we would have otherwise missed? I am not denying that our failures, weaknesses, and shortcomings cause pain to ourselves and God. I am saying that our primary attention should be on God's specific characteristics that fill the specific gaps of our weaknesses. In this way, our lives will become a mirror that reflects the glory of the Lord, and gradually transforms us into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18).   Similarly, when many people read the letters to the seven churches, they focus on the shortcomings of each church, rather than on God's provision to help the churches overcome their struggles. We must focus on the characteristics of God's provision and reflect on the ways God's character can help us in our own shortcomings. Only then can we gradually achieve God's calling and His expectations for our lives. Remember, the first sentence of Jesus Christ's letter to the seven churches reveals an aspect of his character that can help the church with its unique struggles.   He Who Holds the Seven Stars In His Right Hand And Walks Among The Seven Golden Lampstands   One of the duties of the high priest in the Old Testament was to trim the wicks of the golden lampstand. When the wick itself starts to burn rather than burning the oil in the lamp, that wick must be trimmed so that it doesn't start to smoke. Normally, when oil from the lamp penetrates the wick, the wick itself doesn't burn—just like the flame in the burning bush did not burn the bush. When our hearts are full of God's love and his oil, we flourish. But when our hearts love something else, our spirit will be not full of oil, and our fire will be dimmed or nearly extinguished. We will give off a burning smell. Therefore, just like the high priests in the Old Testament walked among the lampstands and trimmed the wicks in the sanctuary, the Lord Jesus will also trim the wicks of the church. As our heavenly High Priest, the Lord Jesus walks among our lampstands to trim away idolatrous love.   No one wants to be trimmed. The place where God prunes us is often the place that our flesh cherishes the most. But if God doesn't prune us, those earthly things we cherish will eventually steal our oil and diminish our fire. God's pruning and discipline allow us to learn the lesson of obedience. The Holy Spirit is given to those who obey him (Acts 5:32), so God's pruning allows us to be filled even more with the oil of the Holy Spirit.   Now let's dig into the meaning of the seven stars in the right hand of the Lord Jesus. Although we know they represent the angels of the seven churches (Revelation 1:20), who are the angels? Are they literal angels, or overcoming saints? Are they seven aspects of Jesus' nature that can help the seven churches know how to act here on earth?   We know that in the Old Testament book of Proverbs, "wisdom" is personified as a woman. Proverbs 4:8 says, "Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her." Who is "her"? Yet Isaiah 11:2 prophesies of Christ with similar language: "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord." In this passage, “wisdom" refers to the Spirit of God or to an aspect of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. The church is the body of Christ, and the seven churches are the seven manifestations of Jesus Christ, the head. Wouldn't it make sense to say that the seven churches should manifest the seven divine characteristics of Jesus Christ or the seven aspects of the Holy Spirit?   For a moment, let's set aside the idea that the seven stars are seven literal angels or seven overcoming saints. Wouldn't it be strange to think of Jesus holding seven angels or seven believers in his hand? Wouldn't it make more sense to see that Jesus holds seven manifestations of the Spirit or seven aspects of his personality: the High Priest, the Resurrection, the Word of God, the Judge, the Living Lord, the Holy One, and the True One, Amen? These characteristics of Christ correspond to the unique needs of each of the seven churches and are designed to help them be set free from their various weakness.   Holding the seven stars in His right hand, Jesus begins walking among the golden lampstands. He first illuminates a shortcoming of the church in Ephesus: they have forsaken their first love. The seven stars are not intended only for the church in Ephesus, but for all seven churches. Whenever the Bible mentions a principle, it is intended to be applied later as well. The seven stars are also mentioned in the letter to Sardis, so it's clear that the seven stars are not only aimed at the church in Ephesus. Nor is the picture of Jesus walking among the golden lampstands aimed only at the church in Ephesus. At the same time, the picture of Jesus holding the seven stars in His right hand and walking among the golden lampstands is an excellent way to show how the problems of the church in Ephesus can be solved. The believers in Ephesus need to forsake the things that keep their hearts away from God, accept the pruning and discipline of the High Priest Jesus Christ, and return to their first love. They must be filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit so their golden lampstand shines brighter and is not removed from its place. If they harden their hearts and refuse to repent, God would remove their lampstand and they would lose their testimony.   The First, The Last; The One Who Died And Lived Again   When going through trials, believers and churches often ask, "God, where are You? Why do You allow these things to happen to me?" Jesus said, "In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33). Suffering and trials are inevitable, and they bring victory and maturity in a way that a comfortable life does not. A Chinese brother was imprisoned for several years for smuggling and distributing Bibles. Later, he was about to leave for China and immigrate to the United States. A Christian brother was seeing him off. He said, "If you can continue to love the Lord when you arrive in the United States, you will be victorious." The persecution brought about by suffering in China makes people more committed in their faith, while the comfortable life in the United States tempts them to become lax in their spiritual practice.   A dispensationalist view of this passage equates the church in Smyrna with the persecuted church in the early Roman Empire. This is true to a degree, but it's also true that the persecuted church never goes away. The church will always be persecuted. Persecution and suffering are tools in the hands of God to help the church mature. Over the past few years, persecution of churches in Canada, the United States, and Europe has challenged the faith of many Christians. But it has also strengthened the faith of Christians in many European and American countries. Christians in Europe and the United States have been startled by the rampant oppression brought about by leftists and homosexuals, and they have tried to change this situation through political elections. But they encountered many setbacks. I still believe that the church in Europe and the United States will eventually awaken its power and bring about political reversals. But I also believe that persecution will continue to exist for a long time because God knows that persecution benefits the church. Just like cold weather helps plants grow deeper roots, persecution will help the church take root.   People's natural reaction to persecution is to be discouraged and disappointed. But we must learn not to focus on our political setbacks and failures, or on our enemies, or on our disgrace. Instead, we must focus on God's provision and the aspects of his character that can meet our specific needs. Jesus is "the first and the last, who died and lives again." The church in Europe and America is currently experiencing a time of weakness and death. But one day, they will experience resurrection, and they will be able to testify even more powerfully that Jesus Christ is "the first, the last, who died and lived again." The churches in Europe and America will one day put their enemies to shame with the church's powerful testimony of resurrection.   I experienced a time of emotional death and resurrection during my ten years of infertility. My heartbreak and tears were like an emotional death. I walked through the valley of the shadow of death. But I also experienced God's resurrection power. We must believe that our suffering is short-lived. "We will have tribulation for ten days,” but we will eventually receive the "crown of life.” These rewards are not just something we will receive when we die. They can be experienced today.   Sharp Two-Edged Sword   The sharp sword mentioned in this passage refers to the word of the Lord, which is as sharp and decisive as a double-edged sword. When the church ignores the word of God, demonic teachings will prevail. When we deny that the Bible is the word of God or tamper with His word, we gradually allow the church to become Satan's throne (2:13). What is Satan's throne? It's a dominion of lies. God's word is the truth, and when we ignore the truth, lies thrive.   When a church faces difficulty, it is facing the evil work of a specific evil spirit. For example, the church in Ephesus faced the spirit of indifference. Meanwhile, the church in Smyrna faced the spirit of death, and the church in Pergamum faced a spirit of error.   When the spirit of error operates in a church body, truth is distorted. When the truth no longer guides believers, the church will be plunged into darkness. Any believers who continue to hold onto the truth, will be persecuted by false and evil spirits working through false and religious believers. For example, Antipas of the church in Pergamum, who was called a faithful witness by the Lord, was persecuted and killed. The spirit of error always persecutes those who hold to the truth. For example, Jesus and Paul were persecuted by Judaism, and Martin Luther was persecuted by Catholicism.   A church can fail to keep God's word in several ways. Some fail by allowing people to sin and commit sexual immorality, not taking God's word seriously. This church loses God's blessings because it holds to the teachings of the Nicolaitans and of Balaam. Other times, religious teachers hold a monopoly on the interpretation of God's word, even prohibiting people from studying it for themselves. For example, Catholics historically would not allow lay people to read the Bible. Only the clergy could read the Latin Bible, and then the pope would teach doctrine to the people. God wants all believers to be able to read His word.   Fallen churches that have failed to learn and keep God's word must repent. They must study and hold on to His word. If they do not repent, the Lord will come to them with the sword of His mouth. The sword in His mouth represents his words of provision and judgment. The church in Pergamum failed because it did not hold on to His word. But Jesus' sharp double-edged sword, which represents the living Word of God, could bring health and wholeness to the church.   Recently, the Methodist Church, a large denomination in the United States, went through a major split. The reason for the split was that a liberal faction rejected the authority of the Bible and began to support homosexuality. The conservative faction advocated for biblical authority and opposed homosexuality. Even though this church's inception was influenced by John Wesley, a large portion of the denomination has abandoned not only the traditions of John Wesley but also the Bible as a whole.     Conclusion   In the letters that Lord Jesus Christ wrote to the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamos, He provided specifically for their individual needs. To the failing and indifferent church in Ephesus, the Lord Jesus revealed that He is the High Priest who holds seven stars in His hand. Just like the Old Testament high priest trimmed the wicks with the scissors in his hand, the Lord Jesus will also prune us and restore us to our first love. To a church that had been threatened with physical death (Smyrna), Jesus Christ revealed that He is the resurrection. To a failing church that was abandoning the word of God (Pergamum), Jesus revealed that He is the living Word of God, like a sharp double-edged sword. When we focus on these characteristics of Jesus Christ, we will be transformed into His likeness. The key to victory is to look to and reflect on Christ, and not just look at our weaknesses.   [1] All Scripture quotations are taken from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

The Struggle is Real Cardinal Hugo put chapter divisions into the Latin Bible in AD 1250. Robert Estienne produced a Greek New Testament with verse divisions in AD 1551. The first entire English Bible to have verse divisions was the Geneva Bible in 1560. Read Colossians 2:1-5 The struggle is real Let's Pray! We must exert ourselves to help believers get it right V. 1 No one today is an apostle like Paul was but we all have a sphere of influence – and when we know we are influencing people we should remember them in prayer, encouragement, and exhortation. We must encourage believers to treasure Jesus Christ V. 2-3 That's what should be happening in your growing knowledge of biblical truth – things you didn't understand before should be falling into place as the knowledge about Jesus you are obtaining flows together. We must exhort believers to escape false teaching V. 4-5

Polyglot Jerome (347-420) had a gigantic impact on all subsequent Christian history, leaving behind a huge body of works, including the Latin Bible. Episode 98 Quiz: https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-98-quiz Episode 98 Transcription: https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-098-the-life-and-works-of-saint-jerome Bonus Content: https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/bonus-content Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/literatureandhistory Ancient Greece Declassified Tour: https://www.greecepodcast.com/tour/

Who do we owe for having the Bible in a language we can read and understand? Pastor Steve highlights two brilliant and heroic men in church history: John Wycliffe and William Tyndale. Against the powerful church of their day, they persevered to give the world a Bible in English. May we not take it for granted! Start of Show Notes - (1.) The purpose of this episode is to help you to love and read your Bible - (Psalm 119:97, Slam 19:7-8) (2.) What were things like before? - Low literacy rates (5% in 1300's to 30% in 1600's for males. Too expensive until the printing press - Gutenberg 1440) (a) You couldn't read (b) You couldn't afford a Bible (c) All literature was locked up in Latin (3.) John Wycliffe - 1320 - 1384 (a) Translated from the Latin Bible (b) He did it because he believed people needed to be able to study, preach and love the Bible in their own language (c) Post death, the Roman Church branded him a heretic, his works were burned and his body was dug up and cast into the River Swift (d) His followers were referred to as the Lollards - a derogatory term for the uneducated (4.) William Tyndale - 1494 - 1536 (a) Translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek texts (b) Because of Desiderius Erasmus, the ancient Greek manuscripts were available (c) His translation was able to take advantage of the invention of the printing press (Gutenberg 1440) (d) He was strangled and burnt at the age of 42 (e) His translation would be the basis of the King James Bible of 1611 (5.) Review: You have an English Bible! And you won't be martyred for reading it, so read it! If you're not a reader, have it read to you with an audio Bible Get your children reading the Bible End of Show Notes - So that's it for today. Dead guys who gave us our English bibles. Grounded comes out twice a month, don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Hope you'll join me, and share Grounded with a friend. A podcast of Cornerstone Community Church in Joppa, MD cornerstonejoppa.org (cornerstonejoppa.org)

The word “beatitude” is not found in the English Bible, but the Latin beatitudo, from which it is derived, occurs in the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 ad) version of Rom_4:6 where, with reference to Psa_32:1, Psa_32:2, David is said to pronounce the “beatitude” of the man whose transgressions are forgiven. In the Latin church beatitudo was used not only as an abstract term denoting blessedness, but in the secondary, concrete sense of a particular declaration of blessedness and especially of such a declaration coming from the lips of Jesus Christ. Beatitudes in this derivative meaning of the word occur frequently in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms (Psa_32:1, Psa_32:2; Psa_41:1; Psa_65:4, etc.), and Jesus on various occasions threw His utterances into this form (Mat_11:6; Mat_13:16; Mat_16:17; Mat_24:46, with the Lukan parallels; Joh_13:17; Joh_20:29). But apart from individual sayings of this type the name Beatitudes, ever since the days of Ambrose, has been attached specifically to those words of blessing with which, according to both Matthew and Luke, Jesus began that great discourse which is known as the Sermon on the Mount.

Only one missionary is honored with a global holiday, and only one is known by his own distinct color of green-St.Patrick, of course, missionary to Ireland. Patrick was born in A.D. 373, along the banks of the River Clyde in what is now called Scotland. His father was a deacon, and his grandfather a priest. When Patrick was about 16, raiders descended on his little town and torched his home. When one of the pirates spotted him in the bushes, he was seized, hauled aboard ship, and taken to Ireland as a slave. There he gave his life to the Lord Jesus. “The Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief,” he later wrote, “in order that I might remember by transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God.” Patrick eventually escaped and returned home. His overjoyed family begged him to never leave again. But one night, in a dream reminiscent of Paul's vision of the Macedonian Man in Acts 16, Patrick saw an Irishman pleading with him to come evangelize Ireland. It wasn't an easy decision, but Patrick, about 30, returned to his former captors with only one book, the Latin Bible, in his hand. As he evangelized the countryside, multitudes came to listen. The superstitious Druids opposed him and sought his death. But his preaching was powerful, and Patrick became one of the most fruitful evangelists of all time, planting about 200 churches and baptizing 100,000 converts. His work endured, and several centuries later, the Irish church was still producing hymns, prayers, sermons, and song of worship. In the eight century, an unknown poet wrote a prayer asking God to be his Vision, his Wisdom, and his Best Thought by day or night. In 1905, Mary Elizabeth Byrne, a scholar in Dublin, Ireland, translated this ancient Irish poem into English. Another scholar, Eleanor Hull of Manchester, England, took Byrne's translation and crafted it into verses with rhyme and meter. Shortly thereafter it was set to a traditional Irish fold song, “Slane,” named for an area in Ireland where Patrick reportedly challenged local Druids with the gospel. It is one of our oldest and most beloved hymns even to this day. Be Thou My Vision! The resources used for the podcast include, but not limited to; “How Great Thou Art” written by Robert J. Morgan and Hymnary.org

ST. JEROME I PATRON SAINT OF LIBRARIANS Feast day: SEPTEMBER 30 Our saint for today is the patron of Bible scholars, librarians, and archivists. He studied philosophy, rhetoric, languages and Scripture. He translated the Bible into Latin from its Hebrew and Greek sources. Can you guess who he is? Yes! St. Jerome or Hieronymus, a priest, theologian, historian, and translator. St. Jerome was born in 329 in Stridon Dalmatia. As a young man, he studied in Rome and for some time enjoyed a frivolous and lascivious life. While pursuing secular studies, he started to build a library of pagan literature. But God had chosen him for a special mission and one night he dreamed that he was being dragged to the tribunal of God for judgment. This fearful dream led to his conversion. He set aside his secular studies, asked to be baptized and began to make penance for his misdeeds. He would fast on certain days and often visited the tombs of the Christian martyrs. Then he went to a hermitage in an outskirt of Syria and started to read the Bible. Returning to Antioch, he asked to be ordained as a priest. Afterwards, he went to Constantinople, continued his biblical studies, and came under the tutelage of Gregory de Nazianzen, another future saint. Voice: After two years in Constantinople, he returned to Rome where he became the secretary to Pope Damascus I. Knowing about his expertise in Scripture, the pope asked him to translate the Gospel to Latin. Jerome extended his work to became the official version of the Roman Catholic Bible. Voice: In 385, Jerome went to Palestine, settled in Bethlehem in a cave near the one where Jesus was born. He often visited the cave and drew inspiration from the place. He spent the rest of his life in that secluded place, meditating, praying and writing. He died on September 30, 425. Besides his fame as the translator of the Latin Bible, he is also honored as a Saint and Doctor of the Church.Holy Spirit of God, help us to understand the Word of God and guide us daily and abide by it. Do I give time to read some & verses of the Bible every day?

Jared Brock's Future Faith podcast is also available for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.Hello brothers and sisters, Welcome to Future Faith, a podcast, newsletter, and publication about living faithfully in an age of democratic destruction, ecological collapse, and economic irrelevance. Future Faith is now available for free on Substack, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Jared Brock, and today we're going to discuss the wildly corrupt world of modern money. Grab a coffee and a pen and paper, because it's vitally important that Christians understand how money works so we can make it serve our vision and values instead of becoming enslaved by it.This episode is sponsored by Swanbitcoin. As you'll discover in this episode, government fiat money is wildly corrupt… but “investing” in Bitcoin is highly risky and just turns it into a pyramid scheme. Instead, we need to SPEND and GIVE crypto to achieve rapid global adoption before centralized surveillance currencies monopolize money forever. So head over to swanbitcoin.com/jaredbrock to get $10 in free Bitcoin to spend. That's $10 in free Bitcoin at swanbitcoin.com/jaredbrockToday's episode is entitled Christians and Money. Are you ready? Here we go.Sixteen of Jesus's 38 parables involved money and wealth.Nearly 15% of everything Jesus spoke about related to money and possessions, and the only thing he talked about more was the Kingdom of God.There are over 2,300 Bible verses about money. By comparison, faith and prayer are mentioned about 500 times.Clearly, the writers of the Bible knew it was important that we have a right view and understanding of money. As one pastor put it, “Our attitude toward money is an indication of where our heart is with God.”And on an everyday level, knowing what money is and where it comes from is incredibly important, as it plays a huge role in our future wealth or poverty, as well as our time and earthly freedom.Understanding money is so important that it will never be taught in schools.So let's talk about it.What is money?It's a simple question, but if you ask the average person, they'll have a hard time actually explaining what modern money is, where it comes from, and how badly it's destroying our society and advancing the plans of the enemy.Just as fish are rarely conscious that they're swimming in water, we humans are rarely conscious that we live in a powerful financial stream that's taking us places we don't want to go.So let's dive in. Or rather… dive out?What is money?Money is simply an agreement between two or more strangers to use something as a means of payment.* If 325 million Americans agree to use a tiny green rectangle of paper backed by the full might of the US military as a means of payment, that's money.* If 100 million mostly young adults agree to use digital bits of cryptographic code as a means of payment, that's money.* If all my friend agree to accept IOU homebrews as a means of payment for cooking, carpentry, and car repairs, that's money.Money is an agreement between two or more strangers to use something as a means of payment, and it requires trust between the parties involved — ideally, by making sure the money represents some sort of enforceable underlying wealth.The difference between wealth and moneyMoney and wealth aren't the same thing.True wealth is purely biological. You can eat it. Drink it. Wear it. Drive it. Live in it. Heat your house with it. Power your car or machine or business with it.Money, when it's working well, is an accurate representation of real wealth.True wealth isn't imaginary; it's biological. Bankers, hedge fund managers, and NFT creators aren't “wealth-creators” — they're sophisticated video game players who successfully convince people to ascribe value to digital numbers, which in turn allows the creators to then acquire items of real wealth like mega-mansions, Ossetra caviar, doomsday bunkers, and hyperyachts.So how can you figure out the difference between wealth and money?Quite easily.Remember, money is an agreement between two or more strangers.So to determine if something is money or real wealth, just pretend that you're the last person on earth or alone on a deserted island for the rest of your life.Money in that context immediately becomes worthless. American dollars, Euros, pounds, gold, silver, Bitcoins, beaver pelts… it's all money, and it's all utterly useless without another person to accept it as a means of payment.Real wealth proves itself real in isolation. If you're the last person on earth, you'll value water, food, and shelter far more than Mexican pesos and Chinese renminbi.Jack Sparrow didn't scream for $USD — he hollered for rum.How is wealth created?True wealth is created by applying time, effort, creativity, and sacrifice to the raw materials that God freely gives.* When a carpenter sacrifices time/effort/creativity to turn a tree into a desk, table, or bed frame, she creates wealth.* When a chef sacrifices time/effort/creativity to turn some eggs and lobster into a $1,000 omelet, he creates wealth.* When engineers sacrifice time/effort/creativity to build Elon Musk's Tesla-building robots, they create wealth.On the flipside…* When a landlord extracts rent from a tenant, he isn't creating real wealth.* When a Bitboy's crypto holdings go up in price, he isn't creating real wealth.* When a Robinhood addict's shorts pay off, he's isn't creating real wealth.* When a billionaire's stock goes up in price, he's isn't creating real wealth.But when a minimum-wage worker at one of those portfolio companies applies her time and effort to assemble two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and a sesame seed bun into a Big Mac, she's creating a tiny bit of real wealth.People generally value real wealth. We instinctively understand that the more sacrifice is required, the more it should be worth. That's why machine-assembled Casio watches are five bucks apiece, while hand-made Patek Philippes can run you up to $24 million.Wealth versus valueWealth and value aren't the same thing.To someone with a full bank account and access to a reliable grocery store, a lump of gold jewelry is often more valuable than a loaf of bread. But to a person on the brink of starvation, a lump of gold is often more only valuable if it can be readily exchanged for a loaf of bread.Value is a measure of desire.Value can fluctuate wildly, and it is easily manipulated. We can survive without bankers and insurance brokers, but we're dead without doctors and farmers. Yet brokers and bankers earn far more money than the latter, which suggests the value hierarchy of the elites who control our economy needs a radical recalibration. Elites clearly desire private profits over public health, so they assign more value to extractive professions like financial services.Let's pretend for a moment that value was democratically determined.Even in that fairy tale scenario, not all sacrifice is the same. Bitcoin's proof-of-work is that a specific computational effort has been expended. A house builder's proof-of-work is the 500-unit subdivision he just finished. Both of these sacrifice-created forms of value can be sold as money, though one is clearly more valuable (from a true wealth perspective) than the other.Price versus valuePrice and value aren't the same thing.A house's wealth is comprised of all the material and sacrifice that went into it.A house's value is determined by how useful it is to a potential purchaser.A houses' price is the amount of money charged for it, which is determined by value + manipulation. House prices are often boosted far beyond true value by a purposeful constriction of supply (thanks developers and land-lorders) and a purposeful glut of interest-bearing credit (thanks bankers).Prices can become even more unfair for products when corporations have a selling monopoly (or conversely, when a single buyer has a monopsony.)Prices can spike when powerful elites constrict supply, be it housing, Bitcoin, diamonds, gold, copper, oil — anything where people can at least temporarily corner the market.An easy way to understand the money vs. wealth vs. value vs. price schema is to consider which piece of financing changes most:* Money is the means by which you pay for a house. (This rarely changes — most Americans use $USD.)* Wealth is the materials and sacrifice that go into building a house. (This doesn't change. Once a house is built, it's built.)* Value is the personal usefulness to you. (This doesn't change. You need 365 nights of shelter each year.)* Price is what you're forced to pay by the market. (This changes on a daily basis, suggesting that prices rarely accurately reflect real value or wealth.)This is the problem with our current economy: Prices are rigged.And when prices are rigged, it allows the most powerful people in society to extract real wealth from the masses. By rigging the housing market through limiting supply, boosting demand by bankrolling investors to buy up multiple properties, and offering cheap credit to all with little money down, bankers can extract vast amounts of sacrifice from others without sacrificing anything themselves.There's a word for this practice: injustice.To recapMoney is negotiable.Wealth is objective.Value is subjective.Price is manipulated.How is money created?Brace yourself.Unlike creating real wealth, which is a measure of sacrifice, modern money is created in the exact opposite way — by extracting future sacrifice from others.Today's fiat currencies are created as private debt in one of two ways:* Public debtGovernments and central banks print money out of thin air (via treasury notes or bond-buying) and call it “stimulus” or “quantitative easing.”* Private debtYou go to the bank and ask for a mortgage or a car loan. A banker types on a computer and creates credit in your account. Now you have to pay it back with real cash plus interest. That's it. New money has been created. (If someone deposits $10 in a bank, the bank can loan out $9, then another bank can book that loan as an asset, which allows them to loan out eight more dollars, which allows another bank to book that loan as an asset, loan out $7, $6, $5, etc. It's called the money-multiplier effect, and it's the reason you have to work harder year after year. The end result? Almost all new money is created as debt.)Welcome to the insane fractional-reserve banking system.That's why it's called fiat currency. In the Latin Bible, God's first words were “Fiat lux” — Let there be light. Governments now say, “Let there be money.”That can't be it, right?Surely bankers and governments shouldn't be able to type numbers into a screen and print money out of thin air. Wouldn't that inflate house prices and stock prices and put the squeeze on billions of people who have to work hard to pay back fake loans (plus interest) with the real wealth of their real labor? Wouldn't printing money make currency worth less every year until $100 trillion doesn't buy a loaf of bread?Yep.And yet, 80% of all American M1 money stock in existence was printed in the past 18 months.Modern magical money creation is so simple and insidious that it's downright repellent to most civilized minds.Back in the day, someone would have to show up in London with 500 sheep or 1,000 bottles of Madeira to receive a note of credit that was redeemable at a sister bank across the Atlantic in New York.The value came first.Now, because humans are such a wonderfully hopeful (and often delusional) species, we do it the other way around — we create new money out of thin air and hope the value chain will catch up.It never does.Most people can't believe that most money is created via private debt.Thankfully, Western governments are at least honest about the scam:“Even though I work at the Fed, I really hadn't thought a lot about money creation in awhile so I looked up your question and basically, yes, banks create money by what is called fractional banking. Banks take your deposit, hold a certain % in reserve, and lend out the rest, which then gets redeposited, spent, etc.” — My friend who's worked at the U.S. Federal Reserve for 20+ years“The majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans.” — Bank of England“Private commercial banks create money when they purchase newly issued government securities by making digital accounting entries on their own balance sheets. Money is also created within the private banking system every time the banks extend a new loan, such as a home mortgage.” — Bank of CanadaHow in the world did we let this happen?Well… we, the people never had a choice:America's central bank, called the Federal Reserve, is actually owned by 12 regional reserve banks.Each of these regional banks are owned by private commercial banks.Let's look at the most important of those 12 reserve banks, the New York Fed. A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the biggest shareholders of the NY Fed are… wait for it… Citibank at 42.8% and JPMorgan Chase at 29.5%. Other shareholders include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and even foreign banks like HSBC and Deutsche Bank.So who owns the central bank and the monopoly on money-printing?The richest people on earth.No wonder they're so rich. They're the closest to the money printer.If the GameStop crowd really wanted to have some fun, they should buy a majority stake in America's biggest bank and expose this fraud from the inside.The problems with modern money-printingWhen corporate-captured governments print debt-based money that isn't backed by real wealth and has to be paid back with interest, they create a tidal wave of negative consequences in our lives and the lives of the poor:* They wildly inflate house prices.* They wildly inflate stock prices.* They put the squeeze on billions trying to make ends meet.* They make the masses work hard to pay back fake money loans (plus interest) with the real wealth of their real labor.* They devalue purchasing power by debasing currency. Not only does this straight-up steal money from everyone holding cash, but it discourages savings — making people less antifragile and more dependent on the state.* They detach money from real wealth and value.* They lock us into an unsustainable debt+interest death spiral that bankrupts millions of families on a regular basis and requires all of us to compete against each other.* They use their money power to set the agenda for the whole nation, spending on wars, toppling foreign governments, extracting wealth from poorer nations, sacrifice from their own citizens, stealing trillions of hours of human life.Let's not mince words: The secular, corporate-controlled, central banking money-printing scam is the biggest sin and crime in human history.What about cryptocurrency?Unfortunately, crypto does the same thing as fiat currency — it prints (AKA “mines”) magic zero-wealth-backed money out of thin air.Unlike government currencies, which are backed solely by violence, at least cryptocurrencies are backed by real trust. But trust is easily undermined. Bitcoin relies entirely on the human imagination to give it value.Because when you look at it objectively, what is cryptocurrency? Nothing but bytes in a file, to which people have temporarily assigned extravagant prices due to hoarding and mass hysteria.As one of my commenters put it:“When someone gives ~$40,000 to get 1 Bitcoin, what actually happens is some bytes in a file change their values. People give a pile of cash to have some bytes in a file associated with them. Sounds like a good definition of insanity. Especially bearing in mind that anyone can create such files at will. There are currently thousands of cryptocurrencies, but there could actually be millions or billions, and all of them are backed by nothing. Just files.”Now, to be clear, cryptocurrency has a ton of benefits over government currencies:* Bitcoin is limited to 21 million coins, unlike the $USD, which has no limit.* Unlike the millions of Americans who've endured gold seizures, crypto can't usually be seized by the state.* Unlike the thousands of poor Indians whose 500 rupee notes became worthless overnight, crypto can't be officially canceled by the state (though it can be severely curtailed and outlawed.)Clearly, mined crypto is better than printed fiat. But it doesn't mean the elite powers won't shut it down. In fact, Bitcoiners themselves have given the government the perfect excuse to do so: instead of treating Bitcoin like a regular currency and spending it into the economy to achieve widespread global adoption, they treated it as a Ponzi scheme, hoarding it like a speculative investment, skyrocketing the price.In fact, it gave central banks an idea: What if we ban cash and created our own digital surveillance currencies so we can track and trace every penny in the economy, directly manipulate spending, and bankrupt people at will?So that's exactly what they're building.Thanks, bitboys.How should money be created?Money should be created as a representation of real wealth, and its price should match its unmanipulated value.Right now, the global financial system is essentially a precariously-stacked house-of-cards pyramid of glorified IOUs — we need stable money that is violence-free, value-backed, and vision-loaded. As one of my commenters recently posted:“Not only is the current process of money creation corrupt, but it produces very poor quality money. Money is ideally a neutral, globally fungible trade medium. We need money to be a fixed unit of cost for planning, stable store of value for saving, with global acceptance for maximum utility, and nothing else.”We need to strip money-making power away from private banks and entrust it to democratic, accountable, and transparent processes. We need to create new money free of debt, not by lending money into the economy but by spending it into real eco-assets via democratic, blockchain-built infrastructure banks.But it's extremely likely that this will ever happen, because scam money is far more profitable than sound money.So, where does that leave us now?First, a macro note: Psalm 62:10 is very clear: Don't set your heart on riches. Don't put your hope in wealth. Love others, but don't trust human nature and the money it creates. On a related note, purge the love of money from your heart. The love of money really is the root of all kinds of evil, and Scripture is very clear that we can't serve both God and money. It's either the almighty dollar or the almighty God. Choose this day who you will serve.Second: Prepare for fiat hyperinflation, or your money is worthless.Third: Love your neighbor. Be good to each other. We're going to need each other in tomorrow's economy.Fourth: Get educated. Christians need to have a sound understanding of economics, debt, interest, investment, and power. Fifth: Prepare yourself for the forthcoming social credit system by amassing real, non-centralized, not-easily-seizable wealth with others.Sixth: Be extremely cautious of the crypto bubble. Hundreds of millions of people have made bets on various vision coins, but they're betting against the violence-backed central powers. A bet on crypto is a bet against centralized power. It's a noble act, but an extremely risky investment strategy.Seventh: Instead of hoarding crypto coins or playing the stock market, actually invest in the the kingdom economy.It is my strong belief that Christians need to start building new currencies, new economies, and new sovereignties, and we need to get started yesterday. Churches and denominations need to wake up and re-allocate, building Benedict Option citadels to resist the impending totalitarianism that's coming.Matthew 6:21 says that where our treasure is, there are hearts will be also. We can lead our hearts by sanctifying our money — setting it apart for God's service — dedicating it to things that honor God, be it advancing of the gospel, transitioning to renewable energy and sustainable food production, supporting circular economy businesses that work for everyone, or helping to house the estimated three billion people who will be forced into slums in our lifetime.It's time for Christians to revive our hearts and reform our part of the $400 trillion global economy. Money is a resource, but it's not the source. Instead of amassing temporary dollars here on earth, we have the opportunity to use our worldly wealth to create everlasting impact. As Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”This is our invitation to turn mere money into eternal value.And that's a vision worth investing in.If you want to help grow the Future Faith community, the best thing you can do is email this podcast to some friends and leave a 5-star review.In upcoming episodes, we'll look at eight scenarios for the future of money. Next week, we're going to look into what Christians should be doing with crypto and blockchain technology.As I mentioned at the top, this episode is sponsored by Swanbitcoin. Government fiat money, as you now know, is wildly corrupt, but “investing” in Bitcoin is highly risky and just turns it into a pyramid scheme. Instead, we need to SPEND and GIVE crypto to achieve rapid global adoption before centralized surveillance currencies monopolize money forever. So head over to swanbitcoin.com/jaredbrock to get $10 in free Bitcoin to spend. That's $10 in free Bitcoin at swanbitcoin.com/jaredbrockThanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Get full access to Future Faith at jaredbrock.substack.com/subscribe

In today's episode Drs. Haykin and Pohlman discuss The Venerable Bede. Author of nearly forty books from church history to biblical studies, as well as, major translation works including a magisterial Latin Bible, listen in as our hosts consider why this eighth century English monk has enduring relevance for our time.    Major works discussed:    Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD)  Bede's Letter to Bishop Egbert (734 AD) 

Join Amber, Jayda, and Amy as we delve into media portrayals of Anne Boleyn. Why do people love to slander her? What did she even do wrong? Tangents include Taylor Swift, Thomases, Natalies, the Latin Bible, and costuming in historical dramas

From Greek to the old Latin Bible and the Edict of Milan. A Christian State. Support the show: https://throughoutallagesministries.com/# See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode begins the history of the King James Bible of 1611, starting with the Council of Jamnia and ending with the Latin Itala "Old Latin" Bible of A.D. 157. Topics mentioned include the first bible, the septuagent and what Jesus Christ did on the cross.

Sometimes projects can get away from you and take you to unexpected destinations. Erasmus went on such a journey when he tried to produce a new Latin Bible and ended up producing five versions of a Greek critical text instead. We'll continue our look at the history of the Textus Receptus, a crucial text in the Reformation era. 

Did you know that the Bible has been translated into Latin several times throughout its history? In this podcast, we take a look at Latin's long heritage in European culture. We'll then examine the first Latin Bible, the Vetus Latina. It paved the way to a much more well-known Bible. And we'll tip our hat to author James Hilton and Latin pronunciation.

Will Varner • Genesis 3:15

The Roman Church and the Pope in Rome were under threat due to the Reformation. The idea that reform was needed penetrated into Rome. The Council of Trent met off and on from 1545 -1563. The Protestants refused to go for fear of their arrest for heresy and that they would be burned at the stake. The Council determined that Scripture and Tradition are equal and parallel authorities. They determined that the Latin Bible was to be the only official text. The Apocrypha was declared to be canonical Scripture for the first time. Protestants had objected because these books do not appear in Hebrew. The Latin Vulgate used at the time contained mistakes.

The Latin Bible and language had been accepted as the official text for the Church. The problems with the Latin Bible are mostly due to misunderstanding. The Catholic Church defended itself against Protestantism by defining the Bible. The Council of Trent defined what books were the Bible and the it was at this council that the Apocrypha was declared Canonical.

The Black Plague hit Europe around 1347 AD and killed one third to one half of the population. The Monasteries at the time had a lot of land which could not be farmed. Consider that the Church had failed to prevent the disaster and had been disproportionately affected by it. The underlying spiritual crisis was the most important crisis. People started to think there was something wrong with the Church. Reflect on the translation of the Latin Bible. The first Whitcliffe Bible was printed in 1850. They were never widely used in the Church. Whitcliffe went out on the streets and popularized his views.

Our quote for today is from Albert Camus. He said, "I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is." In this podcast, we are making our way through Garry R. Morgan's book, "Understanding World Religions in 15 Minutes a Day." Garry Morgan is a Professor of Intercultural Studies at Northwestern College. He served with World Venture for 20 years in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania.  Our topic for today is, "Roman Catholic Christianity"  The first Christians had little organizational structure. Although local churches all around the Mediterranean world were in contact and even cooperated in activities (like sending support to Paul’s missionary team or providing financial assistance to the Jerusalem church during a famine), there was no central human authority.  The apostles were a chosen group who established new churches and provided special guidance during the New Testament era. These men, primarily Peter and James in Jerusalem, and Paul, the church planter, were looked to for wisdom and advice on matters of doctrine and practice (e.g., see Acts 15 or Paul’s epistles—letters written to many of the local churches). However, the local assembly of believers in each city believed they drew their authority directly from Jesus Christ, led by the Scriptures and his Holy Spirit. The New Testament describes three types of church leaders, always in connection with a given congregation. The first have traditionally been called bishops. The literal translation of the Greek word is “overseer,” which clearly describes their role. The second, elders, were responsible for teaching, leading, and spiritual care. Deacons primarily provided material care for the congregation, though their qualifications were similar to elders and many, like Stephen, the first Christian martyr, were gifted preachers and teachers. It seems likely there were also deaconesses. While their exact title is not certain, Paul mentions by name a number of women who served in a ministry capacity.  This decentralized leadership aided the church’s survival through the waves of persecution it faced during its first three centuries. By the time the last of the apostles died (c. AD 90), each city where believers gathered had a bishop or overseer. Church buildings weren’t common for several centuries; groups of believers met in homes, usually with an elder present, while large, corporate gatherings were held outside or in rented facilities.  Many bishops, especially in the larger cities, were gifted theologians, speakers, and writers— two of the better known are Athanasius and Augustine, both from North Africa. The writings of these and other influential bishops were circulated as the church refined ways of stating New Testament truths in doctrinal statements and dealt with questions and controversies that came up over the years in specific contexts.  Persecution during the first three centuries was sporadic and sometimes localized. Begun initially by Jewish leaders, after Jerusalem’s fall (AD 70), the Romans became the persecutors. The most severe and widespread wave came under Emperor Diocletian (ruled AD 284–305). His successor, Constantine, abruptly reversed policy (through the Edict of Milan, AD 313) and granted Christianity legal status equal to all other religions in the empire.  Constantine took two other actions that significantly shaped Christianity. In 325, he called the Council of Nicaea, to be held in present-day Turkey, inviting 1,800 bishops from all over the empire to discuss and settle questions regarding the nature of Christ. Several hundred were able to attend, and they produced the Nicene Creed, still used in some worship services today. Then in 330, Constantine moved his political capital from Rome to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). In the western part of the empire, the church filled the political vacuum. The bishop in Rome already held great prestige and influence over the rest of the church, and although the New Testament doesn’t mention it, there’s a church tradition that says the apostle Peter traveled there and became its first bishop.  This influence, increasing significantly after 330, also brought increased conflict with Christianity’s eastern branch, which resisted the Roman bishop’s claim to lead all Christians. Geography, politics, and theological differences all led to a gradual and often acrimonious separation that became complete in 1204, when Crusaders from the west, en route to the Holy Land, attacked and looted Constantinople.  Within a century, the Christian church went from persecuted minority to appointing emperors and running political systems. After the Empire’s collapse, the church became the unifying force in Europe. But with more political influence came declining spiritual fervor. In response, monastic orders were formed by those who wanted to focus on the spiritual aspects of Christianity. Yet the monks did not simply withdraw from society. They taught the people in their areas, maintained centers of learning, and sent missionaries to other parts of the world.  Early in the Middle Ages (roughly AD 500– 1500), the bishop of Rome became the recognized head of the Western church and was called the pope. He claimed authority over all Christians, and thus the church came to be called the Catholic Church, meaning “all-embracing” or universal. It was not until the Reformation, when some Christian groups broke away from the pope’s authority, that Roman Catholic came to describe the section of the church that recognized papal leadership. Today, Christianity is described as having three major branches: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox.  The Reformation produced an often violent reaction (the Counter-Reformation) from the Catholic Church but also brought some positive changes. Over time, the pope’s amassing of power and wealth had led to corruption and other outrages. The Council of Trent (1545) was an effort to stem the tide of Christians leaving the Catholic Church to join the Reformers.  The sale of indulgences and other abuses were restrained, but certain doctrines were formulated to specifically “counter” Reformation beliefs and establish the claim to be the only true and legitimate form of Christianity. Opposing Protestant trust in the Bible’s sole authority, the Council stated that church tradition carried equal weight. Protestants promoted translating the Bible into common languages and providing it to all believers (with help from the recently invented printing press); the Council maintained that the Latin Bible was the only true Scripture, and only the Catholic Church could interpret it. Although some new dogmas (official statements of belief) were added over the centuries, the doctrines established by Trent defined Roman Catholic Christianity until the middle of the twentieth century. The First Vatican Council (Vatican I, 1869) had added the dogma of papal infallibility: that the pope’s official pronouncements (ex cathedra) are without error. In 1962, Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), which met until 1965, and wrought momentous change. Best known for replacing Latin with vernacular languages in the mass, it also recognized Protestant and Orthodox believers as true Christians and allowed ordinary members to read the Bible for themselves. Today, the Roman Catholic Church, with 1.1 billion members globally, remains the largest Christian branch.  Now, for An Extra Minute  The organizational structure of the Roman Catholic Church is often used as a model in business management courses because of its “flatness,” that is, minimal layers from top to bottom. With more than a billion members, there are only six layers from pope to ordinary member (layperson). In between are the offices of cardinal, archbishop, bishop, and priest.

Many of those who deny the doctrine of the Rapture of the church smugly say the word rapture doesn't even appear in the Bible.  And, to a degree, this is true.  Unless you have a Latin Bible, and then everything changes.  You see, the Greek word translated rapture in Latin is harpazo and means:  "to seize upon, to snatch away, to draw away, to carry off, to catch up, to receive, to pluck out, to rescue, to forcefully take away."Rapture is the Latin form of harpazo and is found in the Vulgate which was translated by Jerome in the late 4th century and in the 16th century became the official Bible of the Catholic church.Do you have questions about the coming rapture (harpazo) of the church?  Good.  Then keep listening.The following is a study on the rapture of the church.

The first of three Rosenbach Lectures for 2008, delivered by Paul Saenger. Lecture presented 17 April 2008 in the Rosenwald Gallery, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.

The second of three Rosenbach Lectures for 2008, delivered by Paul Saenger. Lecture presented 15 April 2008 in the Rosenwald Gallery, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.

The first of three Rosenbach Lectures for 2008, delivered by Paul Saenger. Lecture presented 14 April 2008 in the Rosenwald Gallery, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.

The title of this episode of Communio Santorum is A Glimmer of Reform.I assume most listening to this are students of history, or—why would you be listening? Some like history in general. Others find a fascination with certain eras or moments of the past. Whatever your interest, every student recognizes that as time passes, things change. Sometimes that change is merely incidental to the thing changed, a cosmetic difference that does little to the substance. Other change is deep, fundamentally altering the thing changed; and in some cases, doing away with it altogether.Institutions and beliefs held for long periods can be swept away in a matter of days, while others abide for centuries without being touched.Jesus challenged the Guardians of Tradition of His day with the Parable of the Wine-skins. The point of the parable is that while truth doesn't change, the container it's put in and dispensed from will change, it MUST change. The rabbinic and Pharisaical Judaism of Jesus' day had become an inflexible complex of traditions that obscured the Spirit behind the Law. The Rabbis and Pharisees played an important role after the Babylonian Captivity in moving the Jews away from their age old tendency to idolatry. But their exaltation of tradition had become so rigid it ended up missing what the Law of Moses was intended to promote. Jesus came to cut through the thick vines of tradition and make a path back to God.Sadly, some seem to think the parable of the wineskins only referred to 1st C Judaism. They don't realize what Jesus said is an abiding truth with application to every age; including the Church. Historically, God births a fresh move of the Spirit and people are mobilized to maximize the effect of that movement. Spiritual inspiration builds a structure, a vehicle for the movement to take place in and through. But as time passes, man makes policies and procedures regulate the movement. They're needed so people can work together. Leaders want to ensure future members of the movement know where they came from and why. The problem is, those policies and procedures often become a limit, a line, a defining mark that says, “This is us, and beyond that line is NOT us. This is who we are; we are not that. This is what we do, we do NOT do that.”Traditions. à Which can be good and necessary for passing on values and identity; but can get in the way of hearing what else God might say.All of this is crucial to the next phase of Churchy History we're looking at. So bear with me as I use an illustration I hope makes all this clear.Let's say as a young Christian, I'm addicted to TV. I watch TV hours a day. What I watch isn't the issue – just that I spend way too much time on it. At church one day, while in worship, I'm convicted about the TV, so I decide to only watch an hour each night, and spend the rest of the time reading, visiting other Christians and volunteering at the local mission.I experience such amazing spiritual growth, I decided to forego TV altogether.  After a couple months of astounding deepening, I get angry at all the time I wasted and come to loath TV. So I take it out to the dumpster and toss it. I now abhor TV and when invited over to a friend's house on the weekend, when he turns on the TV, I excuse myself and go home. As I drive home I grumble about how immature he is for watching TV. After that I use every opportunity I have to “encourage” others to turn off their TV's and spend that time in more profitable and God-honoring ways. Several of my friends see major spiritual progress and become equally energetic in their anti-TV crusade as I. We form a group that makes watching TV a test as to whether or not someone is a real follower of Jesus. Then something interesting happens. The loss of visual entertainment moves a couple in the group to suggest we start performing dramas that enact Biblical stories and faith lessons. An acting group forms that stages weekly plays. And three years later what's developed is a whole movement of TV bashers who've made mini-plays a part of their traditional church services.When someone in the group suggests they film one of their plays and put it on TV, he's kicked out of the church.The spiritual condition of the leadership of the Western European church had sunk abysmally in the 14th C. The papacy and its supporting mechanism had become little more than a political battlefield. When the papacy was split between three contenders, all claiming to be Peter's legitimate successor, it was a evidence things had gotten completely out of hand.It was time for reform; for a new wineskin to contain and dispense God's Grace and Truth.I want to be clear. While the upper echelons of Roman Catholic hierarchy had become hideously corrupt, thousands of local priests and monks continued to serve God faithfully. Don't forget that the original Reformers were members of the Roman church.The Babylonian Captivity at Avignon and the Great Schism of the Papacy that followed it revealed a grotesque abuse of power. The failure of the counciliar movement made it clear no real reform would come from within the Church. People believed the Pope was essential, not just for providing leadership of the spiritual realm, but as a means of sanctioning political rule as well. By the end of the 14th C, Europeans recognized that the Popes were often grossly self-interested, power-hungry despots.  But they couldn't shake the assumption the Pope was the cornerstone of Christendom.It was two brave souls, an Englishman named John Wyclif, and a Czech named Jan Hus, who got the dialog rolling on what the Church is and ought to look like.  Of course, they weren't the first to broach this important topic. Augustine had done back in the 4th C. His ideas shaped the Roman church's doctrine and polity. It was time to hold them up to the light of Scripture and see if they'd been properly interpreted and implemented.In a word, John Wyclif was a zealot. And, as is typical of zealots, there was no gray with him; it was all black or white. He was a polarizer. People either supported or opposed him. He left no room for no-opinion.There's considerable confusion about the real Wyclif because we know little about him. He had a habit of hiding himself under many pages of scholarly discourse. So we know what he believed but not much about him personally.His early life is hazy; we don't even know when he was born. He was brought up in North England but emerges from the fog when he became a student at Oxford. He attained a doctorate in 1372 and rose quickly as a leading professor there.The hot topic at that time was the nature of authority, specifically as it related to governance. Everyone knew authority comes from God, but the question was HOW it was conferred to men so they could rule.The majority-view said all authority was only just when it was bestowed by the Roman hierarchy. God entrusted the Pope with ‘catholic', that is universal dominion over all things and persons. So, any authority used by civil rulers not under the auspices of the Pope was unlawful and invalid.The minority-view said authority inhered in civil rulers as a work of God's general grace and was not officially bestowed by the Church. As long as a ruler remained within the scope of God's grace, his rule was legitimate. This group went further and said if such grace was the basis of rule by civil authorities, how much more was it necessary for spiritual leaders?Wyclif was in the minority and dove into the debate with an important addition. He said the English government had a divinely assigned responsibility to correct abuses in the church and remove from office those clergy who'd proven by immoral or unethical behavior to be abusers of God's grace. Wyclif went further, saying the State could even seize the property of corrupt church officials.Uhh – you can see where this is going for JohnW, can't you?In 1377, the Pope condemned Wyclif's teaching. But of course he didn't back down. It led to the kind of brouhaha that saw the Church condemn, not just Wyclif's teachings, but Wyclif himself. But powerful friends in England made sure no action was taken beyond threats.Wyclif's teaching on authority was one of the early doctrinal wedges that would eventually lead to the Reformation. It posited the idea of spiritual freedom for all followers of Christ because of God's grace, bestowed by Himself, in Himself, and through Himself, à not via the Church. Everyone, whether priest or layman is equal before God. Salvation doesn't bring someone into the Church so they can get to God, so much as it brings people to God, and so includes them in the Church.  It's crucial we understand how radical Wyclif's ideas were, how revolutionary. What he proposed was a personal relationship between God and man; something modern Evangelicals take as a given.Because of this, it was God in the heart and mind of a person that qualified them to hold office in the Church. Character and Calling were everything. Based on what he found in the Bible, Wyclif said priests did NOT mediate salvation by conducting masses. How could they, He asked, if as it says in Hebrews, Jesus died once for sins? How could they, if Jesus is the ONE mediator between God and man? Wyclif's thoughts foreshadowed Martin Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone. Both men dismantled the medieval barriers between God and man.Wyclif's doctrine of “authority bestowed by grace” was just the first of his theological hammer-blows delivered toward Roman doctrine. The decisive year of his reforming career was 1378, the same as the Great Papal Schism. Seeing the travesty of one pope excommunicating another, Wyclif ramped up his calls for reform.He spent a lot of time critiquing the Pope. He said, following the example of Christ and the Apostles, the Pope should be the shepherd of the God's flock and a preacher who brings men to Christ. His view left no room for the temporal power Popes. The papacy as a political force constantly striving for mastery over men by political means was absurd and detestable to Wyclif. He abhorred trappings of power and denounced the crass worldliness and luxury of some of Church hierarchy.Wyclif rather welcomed the Great Schism precisely because it made obvious to all the problems in the Papacy of the 14th C. But as the Schism went on and the rhetoric of church officials grew more intense, Wyclif became more determined to call for the dismantling of the Papacy.He listed the many ways Popes had departed from the simple faith and practice of Christ and His disciples. He scoffed at the idea that just because Peter died in Rome every bishop of Rome was above all Christendom. He reasoned, by that logic, Muslims might conclude their “sultan in Jerusalem,” where Christ died, was greater than the pope. No, Wyclif claimed, Christ alone is head of the Church and that headship is communicated through the Spirit of God working through the Word of God.Again, remember that Wyclif WAS PART OF THE ROMAN CHURCH at this point. This was an internal discussion, where there were many priests and bishops who found Wyclif's idea thoroughly Biblical. They might not be politically safe, but they were theologically sound.But when Wyclif's call for reform was met with resistance by those who could and should implement it, he took a fateful step. He passed from being an orthodox preacher of reform into a Protester; From Reformer to Protestant.His break with the papacy was part of a new idea he'd formed of the Church.Wyclif's concept of the Church was prescient in its foreshadowing of what John Calvin would later propose. Wyclif said the church was less a visible institution as it was an invisible body of the elect; men and women chosen by God to be saved.  Their salvation was a work of God's sovereignty, and not subject to the ministrations of priests.Building on this, Wyclif challenged a whole range of medieval beliefs and practices: pardons, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages, the worship of images, the adoration of the saints, the treasury of merit, and the distinction between venial and mortal sins.He retained a belief in purgatory and extreme unction. He said if images increased devotion they need not be removed; and prayers to saints were not necessarily wrong. He considered confession to be useful if it was voluntary.  We catch something of the spirit of his revolt when he declared that preaching was “of more value than the administration of any sacrament.”The standard Wyclif used in his evaluation of the practices of the Church was Scripture. He said, “Neither the testimony of Augustine nor Jerome, nor any other saint should be accepted except in so far as it was based upon Scripture.”He maintained the right of everyone to examine the Bible for himself: “The New Testament is of full authority, and open to the understanding of simple men, as to the points that be most needful to salvation.”But in all his protests and call for reform, Wyclif aroused no hostility like that sparked by his attack on the doctrine of transubstantiation¸ which lies at the heart of the Mass.In the Summer of 1380, he published twelve arguments against the idea that the bread and wine of were transformed into the literal, physical body and blood of Christ. He said the early church considered the elements as symbols of Christ's body and blood. So, Christ is present in the elements sacramentally, not materially. The point of the sacrament he said, was the presence of the PERSON Christ in the soul, not the body of Christ in the belly.Wyclif's denial of transubstantiation gave his enemies their opportunity. His support dwindled to just a few at Oxford. A council condemned his doctrines and forbade him lecturing. Then, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, convened a council that condemned ten of Wyclif s doctrines, labeling them heretical. By 1382, Wyclif was persona non-grata at Oxford.He turned to the people for support. He called for the Bible to be produced in the language of craftsmen and peasants so they could read and study and see how far the Church had departed from its roots. He led a handful of scholars at Oxford in the translation of the Latin Bible into English and copied the methods of St. Francis and the friars by wandering around, preaching outdoors, anywhere people would listen.Wyclif sent out priests sympathetic to his cause to win the souls of the neglected. Clad in brown robes of undressed wool, without sandals, purse, or scrip, a staff in their hand, dependent for food and shelter on the good will of their neighbors, Wyclif's “poor priests” soon became a power in the land. Their enemies dubbed them Lollards, meaning “mumblers.” They each carried a few pages of Wyclif's English Bible and his tracts and sermons as they went throughout the countryside, preaching. The movement spread and soon, many became lay-preachers.Wyclif gained enough support that the authorities decided to not move against him. But his followers were hunted, expelled from Oxford, and forced to renounce their views. Wyclif, driven from the university, was left to end his days in peace at his parish at Lutterworth. He died there in 1384.

This 58th Episode of CS is titled – Monk Business Part 1 and is the first of several episodes in which we'll take a look at monastic movements in Church History.I realize that may not sound terribly exciting to some. The prospect of digging into this part of the story didn't hold much interest for me either, until I realized how rich it is. You see, being a bit of a fan for the work of J. Edwin Orr, I love the history of revival. Well, it turns out each new monastic movement was often a fresh move of God's Spirit in renewal. Several were a new wineskin for God's work.The roots of monasticism are worth taking some time to unpack. Let's get started . . .Leisure time to converse about philosophy with friends was prized in the ancient world. Even if someone didn't have the intellectual chops to wax eloquent on philosophy, it was still fashionable to express a yearning for such intellectual leisure, or “otium” as it was  called; but of course, they were much too busy serving their fellow man. It was the ancient version of, “I just don't have any ‘Me-time'.”Sometimes, as the famous Roman orator Cicero, the ancients did score the time for such reflection and enlightened discussion and retired to write on themes such as duty, friendship, and old age. That towering intellect and theologian, Augustine of Hippo had the same wish as a young man, and when he became a Christian in 386, left his professorship in oratory to devote his life to contemplation and writing. He retreated with a group of friends, his son and his mother, to a home on Lake Como, to discuss, then write about The Happy Life, Order and other such subjects, in which both classical philosophy and Christianity shared an interest. When he returned to his hometown in North Africa, he set up a community in which he and his friends could lead a monastic life, apart from the world, studying scripture and praying. Augustine's contemporary, Jerome; translator of the Latin Bible known as the Vulgate, felt the same tug, and he, too, made a series of attempts to live apart from the world so he could give himself to philosophical reflection.Ah; the Good Life!This sense of a divine ‘call' to a Christian version of this life of ‘philosophical retirement' had an important difference from the older, pagan version. While reading and meditation remained central, the call to do it in concert with others who also set themselves apart from the world both spiritually and physically was added to the mix.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' and spend time with 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 to attempt to obey to the full the commandment to love God with all one is and has. In the Middle Ages, it was also understood to be a fulfillment of the command to love one's neighbor, for monks and nuns prayed for the world. They really believed prayer was an important task on behalf of a morally and spiritually needy world 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.A difference developed between the monastic movements in the East and West. In the East, the Desert Fathers set the pattern. They were hermits who adopted extreme forms of piety and asceticism. They were regarded as powerhouses of spiritual influence; authorities who could assist ordinary people with their problems. The Stylites, for example, lived on high platforms; sitting atop poles, and were an object of reverence to those who came to ask advice. Others, shut off from the world in caves or huts, sought to deny themselves any 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 and the physical world were unredeemably  evil.I pause to make a personal, pastoral observation. So warning! – Blatant opinion follows.You can't read the NT without seeing the call to holiness in the Christian Life. But that holiness is a work of God's grace as the Holy Spirit empowers the believer to live a life pleasing to God. NT holiness is a joyous privilege, not a heavy burden and duty. NT holiness enhances life, never diminishes it.This is what Jesus modeled so well; and it's 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. And everywhere 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, we'd have to admit that for the vast majority, holiness is conceived 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 with Divine Wrath and cast thy wretched soul into the eternal flames!”NT holiness is a mark of Real Life, the one Jesus rose again to give us. It's Jesus living in and thru us.The Desert Fathers and hermits who followed their example were heavily influenced by the dualist Greek worldview that all matter was evil and 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 the major force influencing the monastic movement as it moved both East and 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 and 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 and truth of Christ was an error they sought to reform.In the East, while monks might live in a group, they didn't seek for community. They didn't converse or work together in a common cause. They simply shared cells next to one another. And each followed his own schedule. Their only real contact was that they ate together and might pray together. This tradition continues to this day on Mount Athos in northern Greece, where monks live in solitude and prayer in cells high on the cliffs, food lowered to them in baskets.A crucial development in Western monasticism took place in the 6th C, when Benedict of Nursia withdrew with a group of friends to live an ascetic life. This prompted him to give serious thought to the way in which the ‘religious life' should be organized. Benedict arranged for groups of 12 monks to live together in small communities. Then he moved to Monte Cassino where, in 529, he set up the monastery which was to become the mother house of the Benedictine Order. The rule of life he drew up there was a synthesis of elements in existing rules for monastic life. From this point on, the Rule of St Benedict set the standard for living the religious life until the 12th C.The Rule achieved a good working balance between the body and soul. It aimed at moderation and order. It said that those who went apart from the world to live lives dedicated to God should not subject themselves to extreme asceticism. They should live in poverty and chastity, and in obedience to their abbot, but they shouldn't feel the need to brutalize their flesh with things like scourges and hair-shirts. They should eat moderately but not starve. They should balance their time in a regular and orderly way between manual work, reading and prayer—their real work for God. There were to be seven regular acts of worship in the day, known as ‘hours', attended by the entire community. In Benedict's vision, the monastic yoke was to be sweet; the burden light. The monastery was a ‘school' of the Lord's service, in which the baptized soul made progress in the Christian life.In the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, nuns formed a significant part of the population. There were several ‘double monasteries', where communities of monks and nuns lived side by side. Several female abbots, called ‘abbesses' proved to be outstanding leaders. Hilda, the Abbess of the double monastery at Whitby played a major role at the Synod of Whitby in 664.A common feature of monastic life in the West was that it was largely reserved for the upper classes. Serfs generally didn't have the freedom to become monks. The houses of monks and nuns were the recipients of noble and royal patronage, usually because the nobility thought by supporting such a holy endeavor, they promoted their spiritual case with God.  Remember as well that while the first-born son stood to inherit everything, later sons were a potential cause of unrest if they decided to vie with their elder brother in gaining the birthright. So these ‘spare' children of good birth were often given to monastic communes by their families. They were then charged with carrying the religious duty for the entire family. They were a kind of “spiritual surrogate” whose task was to produce a surplus of godliness the rest of the family could draw from. Rich and powerful families gave monasteries, lands and estates, for the good of the souls of their members. Rulers and soldiers were too busy to attend to their spiritual lives,  so ‘professionals' drawn from their own families could help them by doing it on their behalf.A consequence of this was that, in the late Middle Ages, the abbot or abbess was usually a nobleman or woman. She/He was often chosen because of being the highest in birth in the monastery or convent, and not because of any natural powers of leadership or outstanding spirituality. Chaucer's cruel 14th C caricature of a prioress depicts a woman who would have been much more at home in a country house playing with her pet dogs.In these features of noble patronage of the religious life lay not only the stamp of society's approval, but also the potential for decay. Monastic houses that became rich and were filled with those who'd not chosen to enter the religious life, but had been put there in childhood, often became decadent. The Cluniac reforms of the 10th C were a consequence of the recognition that there would need to be a tightening of the ship if the Benedictine order was not to be lost altogether. In the commune at Cluny and the houses which imitated it, standards were high, although here, too, there was a danger of distortion of the original Benedictine vision. Cluniac houses had extra rules and a degree of rigidity which compromised the original simplicity of Benedictine life.At the end of the 11th C, several developments radically altered the range of choice for those in the West who wanted to enter a monastery. The first was a change of fashion, which encouraged married couples of mature years to decide to end their days as a monk or nun. A knight who'd fought his wars might make an agreement with his wife that they would go off into separate religious houses. Adult entry of this sort was by those who really did want to be there, and it had the potential to alter the balance in favor of serious commitment.But these mature adults weren't the only one's entering monasteries. It became fashionable for younger people to head off to a monastery where education had become top-rank. Then monasteries began to specialize in various pursuits. It was a time of experimentation.Out of this period of experiment came one immensely important new order, the Cistercians. They used the Benedictine rule, but had a different set of priorities. The first was a determination to protect themselves from the dangers which could come from growing too rich.“Too rich?” you might ask. “How's that possible if they'd taken a vow of poverty?”Ah à There's the rub.Yes; monks and nuns vowed poverty, but their lifestyle included diligence in work. And some brilliant minds had joined the monasteries, so they'd devised ingenious methods for going about their work in a more productive manner, enhancing yields of crops and products. Being deft businessmen, they worked good deals and maximized profits, which went in to the monastery's account. But individual monks, of course, didn't profit thereby. The funds were used to expand the monastery's resources and facilities. This led to even higher profits. Which were then used in plushing up the monastery itself. The monks' cells got nicer, the food better, the grounds more sumptuous, the library more expansive.  The monks got new outfits. Outwardly things technically were the same, they owned nothing personally, but in fact, their monastic world was upgraded significantly.The Cistercians responded to this by building houses in remote places and keeping them as simple, bare lodgings. They also made a place for people from the lower social classes who had vocations but wanted to give themselves more completely to God for a period of time. These were called “lay brothers.”The rather startling early success of the Cistercians was due to Bernard of Clairvaux. When he decided to enter a newly founded Cistercian monastery, he took with him a group of friends and relatives. Because of his oratory skill and praise for the Cistercian model, recruitment proceed so rapidly many more houses had to be founded in quick succession. He was made abbot of one of them at Clairvaux, from which he draws his name. He went on to become a leading figure in the monastic world and in politics. He spoke so well and so movingly that he was useful as a diplomatic emissary, as well as a preacher. You may remember he was one of the premier reasons the Crusades were able to rally so many to their campaign.Other monastic experiments weren't so successful. The willingness to try new forms of the monastic life gave a platform for some short-lived endeavors by the eccentric. There are always those who think their idea is THE way it ought to be done. Either because they lack common sense or have no skill at recruiting, they fall apart. So many were engaged in pushing forward the boundaries of monastic life one writer thought it would be helpful to review the available modes in the 12th C. His work covered all the possibilities, from the Benedictines and reformed Benedictines, to priests who didn't live enclosed lives, but who were allowed to work in the world—and the various sorts of hermits.The only real rival to the Rule of St Benedict was the ‘Rule' of Augustine, which was adopted by church leaders. These differed from monks, in that they were priests who could be active in the wider social community, for example, by serving in a parish church. They weren't living under a monastic rule which confined a monk for life to the house in which he was consecrated. Priests serving in a cathedral, for example, were encouraged to live in a city but under a code like the Augustinian rule which was well-adapted to their needs.The 12th C saw the creation of new monastic orders. In Paris, the Victorines produced leading academic figures and teachers. The Premonstratensians were a group of Latin monks who took on the massive task of healing the rift between the Eastern and Western churches. The problem was, there was no corresponding monastic group in the East.We'll pick it up at this point next time.Monasticism is an important part of Church History because of the huge impact it had shaping the faith of common Christians throughout the Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance. Some of the monastic leaders are the great pillars of the faith. We can't really understand them without knowing a little about the world they lived in.As we end this episode, I want to again say thanks to all those listeners and subscribers who've “liked” and left comments on the CS FB page.I'd also like to say how appreciative I am to those who've gone to the iTunes subscription page for CS and left a positive review. We've developed a large listener base.Any donation to CS is appreciated.Finally, for interested subscribers, I want to invite you to take a listen to the sermon podcast for the church I serve; Calvary Chapel Oxnard. I teach expositionally through the Bible. You can subscribe via iTunes, just do a search for Calvary Chapel Oxnard podcast, or link to the calvaryoxnard.org website.

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.Our treatment here will be far more summary & brief, in keeping with our usual method.Several of the factors that elevated the Church at Rome to prominence by AD 200 were still pertinent to in the 4th & 5th Cs. Theologically, while at the dawn of the 3rd C Rome claimed an over-riding apostolic authority derived from both Peter & Paul, by the 5th Paul was dropped. His historical role in the Church at Rome was forgotten in favor of the textual argument based on 3 key NT passages that seemed to assign Peter a special place as de factor leader of the church under Christ. For those taking notes, the passages were Matt 16, Luke 22, & John 21.As noted in previous episodes, another factor lending weight to Rome's claim as premier church was the steadfastness of the bishops of Rome during the Arian controversy. Rome simply maintained a reputation for orthodoxy. It's interesting that the bishops of Rome never attended an ecumenical council. By doing so they ostensibly avoided the political maneuvers that often accompanied the councils; as we saw with Cyril & Nestorius, & the nasty schemes that embroiled the churches of Alexandria & Antioch.Administratively, Rome adhered to the tradition of a local & provincial synod twice a year. This group of conservative bishops was the vehicle through which their leader, the bishop of Rome, acted. This stood in stark contrast to the synod at Constantinople, held only when some need pressed & attended only by those bishops inclined to show up. And when they did, the bishops held varying loyalties between Alexandria, Antioch, & Constantinople. You remember the Robber's Council at Ephesus where it became a bloody brawl. And the Eastern Councils even altered each other's creeds & conclusions. With this kind of confusion in the East, it's little wonder Rome appeared a bastion of stability.Geographically, by reason of his location, the Roman bishop had a voice that was heard far & wide. Keep in mind that, Rome was the only patriarchate in the West.Politically, Rome, while still highly symbolic, was no longer the political center of the West. Milan, then later Ravenna were the capitals of the Western Empire. With the royal absence, Rome's bishop became the city's most important figure. Likely for this reason alone, the associations of imperial Rome began to surround the church's government.The word 'pope' derives from a word used by Greek children for their father = papas. It was first used in Latin the beginning of the 3rd C as an informal title for the bishop of Carthage. From there, the bishops of Alexandria picked it up & began to be called "pope" a few decades later. It's still the title of the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria.The first known use of the word for the Bishop of Rome comes from an inscription in 303 for Marcellinus, [MAR-shuh-LEE-noss] but a lack of attribution going forward over the next decades means the word was not a common title till much later in the 4th C. The title then became almost exclusively associated in the West with Roman bishop from the 6th C on.In covering how the Bishop at Rome BECAME the Pope, we need to look at HOW it was that the other bishops came to regard him, not just as first among equals, but as someone ordained by God to be in authority over them; someone they owed obedience to as God's Earthly representative. It's evident to anyone who takes the time to study the subject that while a growing number of bishops came to this conclusion, it was by no means something everyone acknowledged. The issue even led to the great rift between the Eastern & Western churches. // So Let's track, in outline at least, how the bishop at Rome became Pope.In the mid-4th C, during the tenure of the Roman bishop Julius, the 3rd canon of the Council at Sardica in 343 established the rule that a bishop who'd been deposed could appeal to the bishop of Rome. This was an important step in the recognition of his appellate authority.In the mid 4th C, the most important bishop of Rome for advancing the claims of his see was Damasus [Dah-MAH-sus]. He became bishop after a contested election in which there was bloodshed between his supporters and those of his rival Ursinus [ur-ZEE-noos]. Damasus made regular references to Rome as "the apostolic see" & spoke of the "primacy of the Roman see" on the basis of Matthew 16:18. Damasus sanctified the burial sites of previous Roman bishops in the catacombs, marking them with ornate inscriptions, he reformed the Latin liturgy, & commissioned Jerome to revise the Latin Bible.Instead of adopting the posture & accoutrements of a humble shepherd of God's flock, Damasus affected an imperial aura reminiscent of an emperor. So exalted was he that the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus hinted he might become a Christian if he could be bishop of Rome.At the end of the 4th C, Bishop Siricius regarded even his letters as being authoritative edicts & styled them as "apostolic." Shortly after that, Innocent I declared that Sardica' s 3rd canon giving the Roman Bishop appellate power was retroactive to the Council of Nicaea in 325. Innocent said the Church's highest teaching authority belonged to Rome. He extended his authority beyond the realm of the Western Empire into the province of Illyricum and started referring to the Roman Bishop as "vicar."Boniface I prohibited appeals beyond Rome.Leo I, AKA Leo the Great, can rightly be referred to as the first pope in that he embodied what that title means for most people today. He combined authority over councils & emperors with the idea the Roman Bishop was Peter's successor in constructing his theory of the papacy.As we saw in the episode a while back on Leo, his 3rd Sermon, delivered on the 1st anniversary of his election, explained the Petrine theory in terms of the Roman law of inheritance. Leo argued Jesus gave Peter the keys of the kingdom, so authority over the other apostles. He also claimed, after long tradition that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, and his authority was passed on to the subsequent bishops of Rome. Therefore, Leo reasoned, the perpetual authority of Peter is found in the Roman bishop. He dispensed with earlier views of church leadership & made the authority of bishops dependent on the Pope.Since this is a Church History, not a theology or ecciesiology podcast, I'm not going to go into what I, as an Evangelical Protestant, find tenuous in Leo's position.What's important for our purposes here is to realize that now, the bishop of Rome stood between Jesus Christ and other bishops.When Leo's Tome was read at the Council of Chalcedon, the bishops echoed his claim with the acclamation that Peter spoke through Leo. Chalcedon was unusual in that it gave assent to Rome's teaching authority; something previously unknown and later seldom acknowledged in the East.While Rome's primacy was taken as fact in the West, it was a different story in the East. The Council of Chalcedon ranked the Eastern Capital as next to Rome in terms of authority. But Rome never accepted that canon, concerned that by doing so it would degrade Rome's claim to absolute authority.Leo drew a comparison between the 2 natures of Jesus and the 2 parts of the empire; that is, the the religious a7 the civil. Specifically, he referred to the priesthood and the kingship. He compared Peter and Paul as founders of the Roman church to Romulus and Remus as the founders of the Roman city. He presented the Pax Christianum as counterpart to the Pax Romanum.Leo's policy toward the barbarians was to civilize & sanctify them. They called him the "Consul of God." Leo negotiated with the Huns Attila to get them to turn back from Rome. He even claimed the title of the pagan chief priest of Rome, the "pontifex maximus" for himself; chief bridge-builder. He was the 1st Roman bishop to be buried in St. Peter's.It's clear that most of the powers & privileges of future popes were seen in Leo's methods, & policies. He acted as a head of Rome's civil government, checked the advance of barbarians, enforced his authority on distant bishops, preached doctrine, & intervened at Chalcedon.While Augustine provided the intellectual substance for the medieval Western church, Leo laid down its institutional form.At the end of the 5th C, Pope Gelasius took Leo's papal theory even further. He foresaw that the Emperor Marcian's claim to being a spiritual authority & kind of priest-king at the Council of Chalcedon was dangerous. Gelasisus said that the Old Testament functions of prophet, priest, and king, were filled by Jesus Christ alone as the God-Man. Among mere humans, these functions had to be kept separate. And that in the Kingdom of God, priests were superior in authority to kings. This position became a major point of tension throughout the Middle Ages. It will be the crucible that produces much of the history of Europe for the next few hundred years.Pope Gelasius continued the claim it was the office of the Roman church to judge other churches, but could be judged by no human tribunal.By the end of the 5th C, the Western Church virtually equated the kingdom of Christ with the Church. In the East the ideal of a Christianized empire continued on. The reign of Eastern Emperor Justinian seemed an affirmation, even a confirmation of this.As we end this episode, I want to take a little time to try & clarify some words that anyone who studies church history is bound to encounter. It's some titles for church leaders. The problem is sorting out exactly what these words & titles mean; WHO they refer to.I'm referring to the words--pastor, priest, monk, bishop, archbishop, metropolitan, & patriarch.What follows is BY NO MEANS a technical definition for these things. This is meant as a more practical and vastly simplified working definition for those who wants a quick handle on what these things mean as they review church history.Understand right off that these are also words that have been fluid in terms of definition over time.Pastor is a good NT word that's synonymous in the NT with the word's elder & bishop or overseer. All the words refer to the same office & ministry in a local church. And BTW, they do refer to that scope - a local church; not someone who oversees other pastor-elder-bishops.Elder refers to a man's maturity & character as morally & spiritually fit to lead a local church.Bishop refers to his office as a spiritual authority as an overseer,while pastor refers to his task as a shepherd of God's flock.A hundred or so years after the Apostles, pastors were regularly called bishops because they oversaw a team of fellow elders & deacons who served God by serving His people. We ought to think of bishops as equivalent to senior or lead pastors in today's churches.Now, keeping to that analogy, imagine there aren't several dozen churches of different denominational stripes in your town; there's just one church, led by a senior pastor bishop. That church sends out several younger pastors to plant churches in surrounding communities. They are going to look to their sending church and its bishop as a kind of spiritual parent. And if they in turn send out even more pastors to plant more works, that original sending church and pastor takes on a highly respected role of providing guidance, not just for his local congregation, but all the works they spun off. SO, he becomes arch­bishop - because all those local pastors are called, bishops, right?What happened over the first few hundred years of church history was that 5 churches became recognized as canters of church life and authority, 1 in the West at Rome and 4 in the East; Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, & a 4th that varied over time from Jerusalem, to Caesarea, & Carthage. The bishops of these 5 churches were at first affectionately referred to as patriarchs because they were regarded as spiritual fathers to their surrounding provinces. Over time, that title morphed from being merely an unofficial term of affection to an outright title, spelled CAPITAL P - Patriarch.The title "Metropolitan" was applied to the bishops of other large cities and their surrounding provinces beyond the 5 Patriarchates. Metropolitan is essentially synonymous with arch-bishop.A priest was someone who was officially ordained by a bishop to serve communion and baptize converts. That of course was just a very small part of his overall pastoral duties.Monks were people who devoted themselves to the service of God rather than secular employment. They may or may not be ordained as priests. Typically, they lived alongside other monks in a cloistered community.Again, this is a highly simplified description of these roles. But I hope it serves to help those of you doing your own reading in church history to sort out the various church offices.Till next time ...

This episode is titled, “Jerome.”By his mid-30's, Jerome was probably the greatest Christian scholar of his time. He's one of the greatest figures in the history of Bible translation, spending 3 decades producing a Latin version that would be the standard for a thousand years. But Jerome was no bookish egghead. He longed for the hermetic life we considered in the previous episode & often exhibited a sour disposition that showered his opponents with biting sarcasm and brutal invective.His given name was Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius and was born in 345 to wealthy Christian parents either in Aquileia in NE Italy or across the Adriatic in Dalmatia.At about 15, Jerome and a friend went to Rome to study Rhetoric & Philosophy. He engaged with abandon many of the immoral escapades of his fellow students, then followed up these debaucheries with intense self-loathing. To appease his conscience, he visited the graves & tombs of the martyrs and saints in Rome's extensive catacombs. Jerome later said the darkness & terror he found there seemed an appropriate warning for the hell he knew his soul was destined for.This tender conscience is interesting in light of his initial skepticism about Christianity. That skepticism began to thaw when he realized what he was experiencing was the conviction of the Holy Spirit. His mind could not hold out against his heart and he was eventually converted. At  19, he was baptized.He then moved to Trier in Gaul where he took up theological studies & began making copies of commentaries & doctrinal works for wealthy patrons.Jerome then returned to Aquileia, where he settled in to the church community and made many friends.Several of these accompanied him when he set out in 373 on a journey thru Thrace and Asia Minor to northern Syria. At Antioch, 2 of his companions died and he became seriously ill. During this illnesses, he had a vision that led him to lay aside his studies in the classics and devote himself to God. He plunged into a deep study of the Bible, under the guidance of a church leader at Antioch named Apollinaris. This Apollinaris was later labeled a heretic for his unorthodox views on Christ. He was one of several at this time trying to work out how to understand and express the nature of Jesus; was He God, Man or both? And if both, how are we to understand these two natures operating within the One, Jesus?  Apollinaris said Jesus had a human body & soul, but that his mind was divine. This view, creatively called Apollinarianism, was declared heretical at the Council of Constantinople in 381, though the church had pretty well dispensed with it as a viable view of Christ back in 362 at a Synod in Alexandria, presided over by our friend Athanasius.While in Antioch & as a fallout of his illness & the loss of his friends, Jerome was seized with a desire to live an ascetic life as a hermit. He retreated to the wilderness southwest of Antioch, already well-populated by fellow-hermits. Jerome spent his isolation in more study and writing. He began learning Hebrew under the tutelage of a converted Jew; and kept in correspondence with the Jewish Christians of Antioch. He obtained a copy of the Gospels in Hebrew, fragments of which are preserved in his notes. Jerome translated parts of this into Greek.Returning to Antioch in 379, he was ordained by Paulinus, whom you'll remember was the bishop of the Nicaean congregation there. This is the Bishop & church supported by Rome when the Arian church in Antioch was taken over a new also-Nicaean Bishop named Meletius. Instead of the 2 churches merging because the cause of their division was now removed, they became the political frontlines in the battle for supremacy between Rome & Constantinople.Recognizing Jerome's skill as a scholar, Bishop Paulinus rushed to ordain Jerome as a priest, but the monk would only accept it on the condition he'd never have to carry out priestly functions. Instead, Jerome plunged himself into his studies, especially in Scripture. He attended lectures, examined parchments, and interviewed teachers and theologians.He went to Constantinople to pursue a study of the Scriptures under Gregory of Nazianzus. He spent 2 years there, then was asked by Paulinus back in Antioch to accompany him to Rome so the whole issue over who the rightful bishop in Antioch was. Paulinus knew Jerome would make a mighty addition to his side. Indeed he did, and Pope Damasus I was so impressed with Jerome, he persuaded him to stay in Rome. For the next 3 years, Jerome became something of a celebrity at Rome. He took a prominent place in most of the pope's councils. At one point his influence over the pope was so great he had the audacity to say, “Damasus is my mouth.”He began a revision of the Latin Bible based on the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. He also updated the Book of Psalms that prior to that time had been based on the Septuagint; a Greek translation of Hebrew.In Rome, he was surrounded by a circle of well-born and well-educated women, including some from the noblest patrician families. They were moved by Jerome's asceticism & began to emulate his example of worldly forbearance. This did NOT endear him to the rather secular clergy in Rome who enjoyed the attention of such lovely, rich and available women. But Jerome's messing with their fun didn't end there. He offended their pleasure-loving ways with his sharp tongue and blunt criticism. As one historian puts it, “He detested most of the Romans and did not apologize for detesting them.” He mocked the clerics' lack of charity, their ignorance & overweening vanity. The men of the time were inordinately fond of beards, so Jerome mused, “If there is any holiness in a beard, nobody is holier than a goat!”Soon after the death of his patron, Pope Damasus in December 384, Jerome was forced to leave Rome after an inquiry brought up allegations he'd had an improper relationship with a wealthy widow named Paula.This wasn't the only charge against him. More serious was the death of one of the young women who'd sought to follow his ascetic lifestyle, due to poor health caused by the rigors he demanded she follow. Everyone could see how her health declined for the 4 months she followed Jerome's lead. Most Romans were outraged for his causing the premature death of such a lively & lovely young woman, and at his insistence her mother ought not mourn her daughter's death. When he criticized her grief as excessive, the Romans said he was heartless.So in August 385, he left Rome for good and returned to Antioch, accompanied by his brother and several friends, followed a little later by the widow Paula & her daughter. The pilgrims, joined by Bishop Paulinus of Antioch, visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Galilee, then went to Egypt, home to the great heroes of the ascetic life.Late in the Summer of 388 he returned to Israel. A wealthy student of Jerome's founded a monastery in Bethlehem for him to administer. This monastery included 3 cloisters for women and a hostel for pilgrims.It was there he spent his last 34 years.  He finished his greatest contribution, begun in 382 at Pope Damasus's instruction: A translation of the Bible into Latin.The problem wasn't that there wasn't a Latin Bible; the problem was that there were so many! They varied widely in accuracy. Damasus had said, “If we're to pin our faith to the Latin texts, it's for our opponents to tell us which, for there are almost as many forms as there are copies. If, on the other hand, we are to glean the truth from a comparison of many, why not go back to the original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering alterations of confident but ignorant critics, and, further, all that has been inserted or changed by copyists more asleep than awake?”At first, Jerome worked from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. But then he established a precedent for later translators: the Old Testament would have to be translated from the original Hebrew. In his quest for accuracy, he learned Hebrew & consulted Jewish rabbis and scholars.One of the biggest differences he saw between the Septuagint and the original Hebrew was that the Jews did not include the books now known as the Apocrypha in their canon of Holy Scripture. Though he felt obligated to include them, Jerome made it clear while they might be considered “church-books” they were not inspired, canonical books.After 23 years, Jerome completed his translation, which Christians used for more than 1,000 years, and in 1546 the Council of Trent declared it the only authentic Latin text of the Scriptures.What marked this Bible as unique was Jerome's use of the everyday, street Latin of the times, rather than the more archaic classical Latin of the scholars. Academics & clergy decried it as vulgar, but it became hugely popular. The Latin Vulgate, as it was called, became the main Bible of the Roman church for the next millennium.Jerome's work was so widely revered that until the Reformation, scholars worked from the Vulgate. It would be another thousand years till translators worked directly from the Greek manuscripts of the NT. The Vulgate ensured that Latin, rather than Greek, would be the Western church's language, resulting centuries later in a liturgy & Bible lay people couldn't understand—precisely the opposite of Jerome's original intention. It's also why many scientific names & terms are drawn from Latin, rather than Greek which was the language of the scholars until the appearance of the Vulgate.The Latin Bible wasn't the only thing Jerome worked on while in Bethlehem. He also produced several commentaries, a catalogue of Christian authors, and a response to the challenge of the Pelagians, an aberrant teaching we'll take a look at in a future episode. To this period also belonged most of Jerome's polemics, his denunciations of works and people Jerome deemed dangerous. He produced a tract on the threat of some of Origen's errors. He denounced Bishop John of Jerusalem and others, including some one-time friends.Some of Jerome's writings contained provocative views on moral issues. When I say provocative, I'm being generous; they were aberrant at best and at points verged on heretical. All this came of his extreme asceticism. While the monasticism he embraced allowed him to produce a huge volume of work, his feverish advocacy of strict discipline was nothing less than legalistic extremism. He insisted on abstinence from a normal diet, employment, & even marital sex. His positions were so extreme in this regard, even other ascetics called him radical.As far as we know, none of Jerome's works were lost to the centuries. There are a few medieval manuscripts that mark his work in translating the Bible. Various 16th C collections are the earliest extant copies of his writings. Through the years, Jerome has been a favorite subject for artists, especially Italian Renaissance painters.He died at Bethlehem at the end of September of 420.

This episode of CS is titled Luther's Legacy.Long time subscribers to CS know that while the podcast isn't bias free, I do strive to treat subjects fairly. However, being a pastor of a non-denominational, evangelical Christian church in SoCal, I do have my views and opinions on the material we cover. When I share those opinions, I try to mark them as such. So >> Warning; Blatant opinion now ensues …We live in the Era of the Instant. People expect to have things quickly and relatively easily. Technology has produced an array of labor-saving devices that reduce once arduous tasks to effortless, “push a button and voila” procedures. Sadly, many assume such instantifying applies to the acquisition of knowledge as well. The internet enhances this expectation with ready access to on-line information, not just thru a desktop computer, but via smartphones where ever we are.And of course, if it's on the interwebs, it must be true.But knowledge and understanding are different things. Knowing a fact doesn't equal understanding a concept, truth or principle. And many people now want their history in condensed form. They don't really care to understand so much as to “get an A on the quiz” or, be able to answer trivia game questions. They can answer multiple choice but wouldn't have a clue how to write an essay.I say all this as we fill in some of our gaps on Martin Luther for two reasons.First – The very nature of this podcast, short snippets on Church history, can easily foster a cavalier attitude toward our subject. So I need to make a MASSIVE qualifier and say that if all someone listens to is CS, they must never, ever assume they know Church History. My entire aim is to give those who listen reference points, a broad sweep of history with just enough detail to spark your embarking on your own journey of studying this fascinating subject. Pick one era, maybe just 1st C, and one region, then study everything you can find about it. Become an expert on that one span of history. Press in past the dates and people and places, seeking to truly understand. Then use that to expand your study either backward or forward in time.Second – When we think of someone like Martin Luther, we tend to make him an index for a certain idea or movement. “Martin Luther: Father of the Reformation.” The problem with this is that we then tend to assume Luther was born with the intent of breaking away from the Roman church, as our last 2 episodes have shown was not at all the case. The evolution of Luther's thoughts was an amazing microcosm of what was happening in at least hundreds, and probably thousands of people at that time. He just happened to be positioned as the lightening rod of change.In this episode, I want to fill in some of the gaps the previous couple episodes left because of our time-limited routine here on CS. What follows is a bit of a hodge-podge meant to provide a little more context for understanding Luther and how he came to the ideas he articulated and millions ended up embracing.Martin Luther ranks as one of the most influential figures of the last thousand years. While Marco Polo and Columbus opened new lands, Shakespeare and Michelangelo produced some of the most sublime art, and Napoleon and Stalin changed the political face of their times, Luther triggered a change in the human spirit that's reached billions all around the world. The ideas announced in his sermons and written in books have affected virtually every realm and sphere of human activity, from politics to art, work to leisure. Truth be told, Luther's main body of work was a conscious part of the early American character and continued to play a central role until recently. It was Luther who played wet-nurse to the Modern world's emergence from Medievalism. We can neither credit nor blame Luther for the whole of what eventually became Protestantism, but as one who played a critical role in the emergence of a new movement and a new way of life for millions of people, the influence of his actions and beliefs on the past 500 years is beyond calculating. The modern world can barely be understood without Luther and the Reformation he sparked.Once Martin Luther was ordained a priest and settled into his ministry at Erfurt, his    superiors in the Augustinian order decided he should continue with his theological studies. Having gained a Master of Arts, he was qualified to lecture on philosophy. But he knew he needed more study to qualify as a lecturer on the Bible.The first step toward that end was to lecture on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a standard theology textbook of the Middle Ages, which collected extracts from Scripture and the early church Fathers, arranged under topical headings to enhance discussion of theological issues. Under the guidance of Johann Nathin, a Professor of Theology and a senior member of Luther's order, Luther set to work studying texts such as Gabriel Biel's Dogmatics, a commentary on Lombard's Sentences. Luther devoured Lombard's theology.Meanwhile, Johann von Staupitz had been involved with the German Prince and Elector, Frederick the Wise, in establishing a new university in a small town called Wittenberg, 100 miles NW of Erfurt. In the Winter of 1508–9, he invited Luther to move and teach there. Staupitz was himself Lecturer in Biblical Studies in Wittenberg, so the idea was for Luther to help with the teaching of Aristotle's Ethics. At the same time, he would work towards his doctorate, the ultimate qualification to teach theology in the church and university. After a single term, he was recalled to Erfurt for a further two years to fill a gap in the teaching program, but eventually returned to Wittenberg in 1512. Luther was placed in charge of  teaching younger Augustinian friars in the order's house in town. He received his doctorate in mid-October and enrolled as a full teaching member of the university.These years also saw the growth of Luther's profile within the Augustinian Order. In 1510, he was sent with a fellow friar to Rome to try to sort out a complex internal matter connected with the order. They assumed his training as a lawyer positioned him as perfect for the job. The trip proved unsuccessful, but it was Luther's only trip outside Germany.The Modern and mostly uninformed view of the Middle Ages is that it was a time when the people of Europe assumed they knew everything, and that the everything they knew was colossally wrong. But we Moderns NOW know è WE know everything. Ha!It does not take much investigation to realize this image of medieval thought is far from true. Erfurt, like most German universities of the time, was a place of wide theological variety. For several centuries, theology in the universities of Europe had been dominated by The Scholastics.By the time Luther came on the scene, there were three main types of Scholastic theology in operation. The first two, following the teaching of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus were by then known as the ‘old way' or Realists. Alongside this was emerging a new kind of theology, called the ‘modern way', o r Nominalists.One central question medieval theologians often pondered concerned the parts played by God and humans in salvation. The question of how we can come into a right relationship with God or, as the theologians called it, the doctrine of justification, was a hot topic. Contrary to what we might think, no one in late-medieval theological circles believed that a person could earn salvation purely by their own efforts. All agreed that God's grace was necessary for salvation. The point at issue was how much and what kind of help was needed, and what part people played in the process. The Church's teaching on this question was far from clear, and a number of different positions were held, not least among the Nominalist faction.One group took their cue from the great 5th C Bishop of Hippo, St Augustine.  When it came to the doctrine of justification, they held that humanity was helpless. Only God himself, by his sovereign mercy, could intervene and save people. Another group of Nominalists, the group that had an early influence on Luther, such as William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel, thought there was something which could be done to initiate the process of salvation.When Luther read Biel's textbook, he was persuaded by the idea that God has entered into a covenant, or pact, with humanity. If the sinner did what lay within him, then God would not deny him grace. Within the framework of this agreement or covenant, sinners were capable of making a small moral effort on their own, without the help of God's grace. This initial effort was required before God would respond. This might involve feeling a genuine sorrow for sin, or generating a sense of love for God. In response to this, God would give a supply (‘infusion' was the technical term) of His grace to help fan this spark into a flame. But this initial gift of grace was not enough to access salvation on its own. The Christian then had to cooperate with God's grace and, by the exercise of good works done with God's help, perfect this contrition for sin and love for God, so that salvation could truly be attained.At the same time one group of Nominalists was scratching this out, another movement with its origins a Century earlier scorned all these movements within scholastic thought. The Renaissance, which had begun in Northern Italy, spread into Germany. It captured the allegiance of many younger scholars, with its exciting promise of returning to the sources of classical Greece and Rome as a model for literature, art, architecture, law and rhetoric.‘Humanism,' as this program was known, isn't to be confused with modern humanism, that is, secular humanism, which is atheistic. While it did have a high view of human dignity, the 16th C version was religious in character, something most colleges and universities today neglect to mention. Renaissance humanism, or the study of the humanities wasn't so much a set of ideas or philosophical opinions, as a yearning for all things classical. The great motivating desire was to acquire eloquence and skill with words and language. So, everything was devoted towards a new kind of education, which involved making the study of classical texts possible—as these were thought the best models of eloquence available. These texts could be Greek literature, Roman law, classical poetry or early Christian theology. So, the humanists promoted the study of Greek and Hebrew, alongside Latin, the language of all scholarly work in the Middle Ages, so that these texts could be read in the original, avoiding what they felt was the misleading filter of medieval translations.Humanists took particular exception to the methods and products of scholastic theology, of every stripe, Nominalist or Realist. They felt that the scholastic method encouraged the asking and answering of a series of irrelevant questions. They also objected to the method of using medieval commentaries, rather than the original texts themselves. For the humanist, lengthy medieval interpretations simply got in the way of the brilliance of the original authors. Humanists wanted a direct encounter with the original text of classical authors, the Bible and the Fathers, rather than have all that muddied by an extra layer of explanations made by lesser, more recent scholars, writing in crude and verbose medieval Latin.So, using the recent invention of the printing press, humanists reproduced of a whole series of ancient Christian texts, which made a new kind of scholarship possible. Three works in particular were important.First, in 1503, Erasmus published the Enchiridion or Handbook of the Christian Soldier. It laid out a program of reform for the Church.Second, in 1506, an 11-volume edition of the Works of Augustine appeared. For the first time in centuries, it was possible to read the greatest authority in Western theology in full, in context, and without the help of medieval commentators.Third, and most important was Erasmus's greatest achievement, his Greek New Testament published in 1516. Although this edition was not as reliable as it might have been since Erasmus had a limited number of texts to work from—it became the first-ever printed edition of the Greek text, so that, for the first time, theologians all over Europe had the chance to compare the standard Latin Bible text with the original. A number of disturbing things emerged. For example, medieval theologians were unanimous in seeing marriage as a full sacrament of the church, alongside holy communion and baptism, on the basis of Jerome's translation of Ephesians 5:32, which referred to it as a sacrament. When Erasmus's edition appeared, it became clear that the original Greek word really meant ‘mystery'. The scriptural basis for regarding marriage as equal in value to baptism and Communion was shaken. So, the work of Erasmus and the other humanists played a major part in loosening the hold of the church's authority in the minds of many educated laypeople.While they didn't engage in outright warfare, scholasticism and humanism jostled in the lecture halls and universities across Germany in the early years of the 16th C. Erfurt where Luther was, was no exception. The two schools of thought were both present in the university, although relationships between them were, on the whole, fairly amiable. Luther was known for his knowledge of classical writers. He likely attended lectures by humanist teachers.This was the theological landscape at the time Luther's mind was being formed. Taught theology by nominalists, Luther believed as long as he did his best, God would give him grace to help him to become better. Humanist texts allowed him to study the great authorities of the Bible and the Fathers with fresh eyes. From 1509–10, he studied Augustine's works and Lombard's Sentences, and some of the notes he made in the margins of these works have survived to this day. They show him to be a not particularly original adherent of the theology of the Modern Way. He'd followed his teachers well, and there was little sign at this stage of departure from them.Luther was often plagued by bouts of depression. He wondered whether God really did hold good intentions towards him, sensing rather the stern stare of Christ as judge, demanding from him an impossible level of purity. He wondered whether these feelings were evidence he wasn't chosen at all, but that he was among those destined to be damned to eternal suffering.On the shelves of the library of the Augustinian friary in Erfurt were copies of several works by Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard was something of a hero to monks like Luther, having developed a rich spiritual theology in the 12th C, and lots of advice on the spiritual life. Luther read these and heard them read over meals. He noticed Bernard's close attention to Scripture, and a piety which kept returning to the sufferings and humility of Jesus. Bernard advised his readers to meditate on the cross of Christ, especially when anxious or depressed. One of the virtues gained from such meditation was humility, a virtue greatly valued by God. Bernard said humility's abiding image was the crucified Christ, and how God used the experience of suffering, even seasons of doubt, to bring humility to the human soul. à This was a tonic to the oft-tormented Luther.This emphasis on the Scriptures and pondering the cross, passed on by earlier scholars like Bernard and Augustine plowed and planted the field of Luther's mind for the fruit it would later produce in the central doctrine of the Reformation – Justification by Faith Alone.A recent biographer called Martin Luther “A catastrophe in the history of Western civilization.” If we look only at the religious wars which were part of the Reformation, that verdict seems fair. But if we widen the criteria of our evaluation to Luther's role in calling the church to a simpler, more just and communal vision, in puncturing the conceited abuse of power and hierarchical oppression of a moribund institution which nearly all admit was grotesquely corrupt, not to mention the inspiration which his theology has been to countless people over the centuries since, that judgment isn't fair.Luther was a man of immense personal courage, fierce intelligence, and furious stubbornness. A mind steeped in the theology of his time, an ability to see quickly to the heart of an issue, and an eloquence that enabled him to express his ideas with clarity, was a powerful mixture. He inspired deep loyalty, even ardent love on the part of his supporters. He had a capacity to enjoy life in a huge way. He could be both tender and sharp, and his absence left an irreplaceable gap. As Melanchthon put it at Luther's funeral, now they were ‘entirely poor, wretched, forsaken, orphans who had lost a dear noble man as our father'. At the same time, Luther was a man with deep flaws, who made enemies as quickly as friends, and whose brilliant language could be used to hurt as much as to heal.As we end this episode, I wanted to share something I found that I thought was really good in regards to Luther's Enduring Legacy. It has to do with his doctrine of Justification by Faith. These thoughts are sparked by Graham Tomlin's Luther and His World.Our Postmodern culture isn't concerned with the same questions that dominated the 16th C. People today don't agonize, as Luther did, over where to find a gracious God. Modern men and women aren't in the least bit concerned about the demands of a whole series of religious rules. But they do experience the constant demand to live up to standards of beauty set by the glamour industry; to levels of achievement set by business targets, or to standards of talent set by entertainment and sports. How to understand the self is a persistent and difficult problem modern psychotherapy aims to ameliorate.While Luther obviously worked before the development psychology, his doctrine of justification by faith has something to say to modern man. It says that human worth lies not in any ability or quality we possess, but in the simple fact that we are loved by our Creator.At the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, Luther claimed: “Sinners are attractive because they are loved, not loved because they are attractive.” He used to say that our value lies not inside us, but outside us; in Christ himself. The righteousness of the Christian, in which he/she stands before God, is not their own righteousness, but is Christ's own righteousness, received by faith. They can know their true value is found not in any good quality in themselves, nor any good actions they've performed, but in the fact they're loved by God. Luther's location of value entirely ‘outside ourselves', in God's love manifested in Christ, safeguards a sense that our worth is unshakeable. Whether in work or unemployed, able-bodied or disabled; red or yellow, black or white we're ALL precious in God's sight. Even if we experience doubt over our worth through despair at our own capabilities, virtue or reputation, this sense of ultimate value cannot be taken away and can become the foundation of a secure and steady self-image because it's received rather than achieved.But there's more and this is where the doctrine of justification by faith can touch and heal our shattered world. The doctrine reverses the way in which we tend to evaluate other people. If a person's value lies in a quality or feature which they possess, such as a particular skill or ability or ethnicity, it can make distinctions between people. Some people are more valuable and some are less; and we're back to Apartheid, slavery, and the Holocaust. If, however, as justification by faith insists, a person's true value lies not in anything they possess but in something ‘outside themselves'; that they are loved by God—then we can't make such distinctions. Each person has dignity and value, and deserves equal treatment, regardless of age, skills, social utility or earning capacity.The Biblical Doctrine of Justification by Faith utterly upends Critical Theory which carves people into groups and sets worth solely by their identity IN that group. For the Biblical truth of Salvation by Grace through Faith resets human identity in only two groups; the lost and saved = Both of which are loved eternally by God, a love made manifest in the Cross of Christ.There is, however, at the same time a sobering honesty about Luther's doctrine of justification. He insists that the first step to wisdom, to a rock-solid, immovable sense of self-worth, is to take a good look into the depths of one's own soul. It means to face up honestly to the self-centeredness, lack of love for one's neighbor, cowardice and indifference towards those who are suffering that lurks there. This is no easy doctrine which glosses over the reality of sin and evil in the human heart, the capacity to inflict pain and injustice which lies in everyone. For Luther, God has to help us to look into this abyss before we can go any further. This is far from that pleasant middle-class religion which assumes that everyone is good and nice, and which refuses to look beneath the surface. Luther's God insists on facing up to the dark secrets inside, the selfish motivations and hidden desires.But this is only preliminary. Some forms of religion have implied that this is the sum of religion—making us feel bad about ourselves. Luther insists this is merely a necessary first step—a means to an end, but not an end in itself. God breaks up the fragile foundations of a sense of self-worth based in our own virtues, in order to establish a much firmer rock upon which to build. Luther would have been wary of psychological techniques which try to build self-worth by positive thinking and self-talk.Justification by faith is a reminder to Christians that they approach God not on the basis of who they are, but on the basis of who Christ is. Self-worth, value and forgiveness are gifts, not rights. It's nothing to do with achieving an elusive goal of becoming the idealized person they might like to be in their most hopeful moments. It is a reminder that it is only when they stop trying to be someone else, and start being honest about who they really are, that they can begin to receive God's acceptance of them à In Christ.It doesn't get any more Biblical than that!