Church History – Table of Contents (tentative) Session Topic Scripture Page References 1 History & Modern Man Luke 1:1-4; 2 Evolutionary Perspective Acts 1:1-3 Viewpoints on Church History Holding Hands with the Past 2 Analysis of the Acorn Acts 2:1-4 15 Pentecost – the Birth of the Church Eyewitness News Filling in the Gaps 3 Authority & Structure Titus 1:5-9 28 Foundation of the Church Those Who Rule Over You Elders & Deacons 4 The Rise of the Episcopacy II Timothy 2:2 41 Clement & Ignatius Irenaeus & Cyprian 5 The Development of the Canon II Peter 3:14-16 54 Apostolic Succession Challenges to Orthodoxy Rule of Faith 6 Danger from Within Acts 20:27-31 66 History is Written by the Victor Gnosticism 7 Early Reform Movements I Timothy 4:1-11 79 Marcion Montanus & Tertullian 8 The Development of Theology 90 Antioch to Alexandria Carthage to Rome 9 The Mystery of the Trinity I Timothy 3:16 107 The Divine & Human in Jesus Christ 10 The Council of Nicæa Romans 9:1-5 119 Constantine‘s Troubles Arius versus Athanasius 11 The Doctrine of the Trinity Matthew 28:19 129 The Holy Spirit at Nicæa One Essence, Three Persons 12 The God-Man Jesus Christ Philippians 2:5-11 139 Christological Controversies The Divine & Human in Christ Church History 13 The Rise of the Papacy Matthew 23:8-10 154 Defense of the Faith Ubique, semper, ab omnibus 14 The Rise of the Papacy – Part II 167 Popular Popes Highs & Lows of Romanism 15 Augustine & the Sovereignty of Grace Romans 9:6-24 179 The First Catholic Theologian Augustine vs. Pelagius The Sovereignty of Grace 16 The Church and the World I Corinthians 7:29-35 195 The Decline & Fall of the Empire De Civitate Dei - Augustine 17 The Travail of Grace Ephesians 2:8-10 205 Hegel‘s Synthesis How Strong is Grace? 18 The Means of Grace Matthew 28:18-20 215 Baptism Matthew 26:26-30 The Lord‘s Supper 19 The Rise of Neo-Judaism Colossians 2 228 Sacerdotalism & Sacramentalism Sacraments of the Catholic Church 20 Everywhere, Always, and by Everyone II Timothy 3:1-9 239 Settlement of East & West Sliding into the Middle Ages 2 Church History Session 1: History & Modern Man Text Reading: Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-3 ―The New Testament is from start to finish a proclamation of what God will do, His purpose for mankind and the world.‖ (Adolf Schlatter) A recent news article reported the sudden wave of ‗tweets‘ on the social media Twitter as people all across the country (and perhaps the world) discovered that The Titanic was more than just a movie starring Leonardo de Caprio and Kate Winslet – it was a marine disaster that actually happened in history! As events are scheduled to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the tragedy (April 15, 1912), the reality finally dawned on thousands of 21st Century technogeeks that the movie was actually taken from an historical event. One person tweeted, ―Is it bad that I didn‘t know the Titanic was real?‖ Another responded, ―Yes, I‘m afraid it is bad.‖ Now there is an understatement of epic proportion. But this manifestation of historical ignorance is nothing new to modern man. Reports are legion concerning the dearth of knowledge among the most recent generations concerning some of the most commonplace events of American history – to say nothing of history beyond the life of our own country. It was never expected of people that all should possess a thorough knowledge of the events of the past – the names, places, and dates of infamy from High School History exams. There are, however, certain events from the past that are high- or low-water marks of man‘s own progression from the ancient past to the present. All events of the past are formative, impacting the path of the present and future in ways often hard to perceive even in retrospect. But some events are more formative than others (like the loss of the unsinkable ship). Such occurrences are 3 Church History at times indicative of the spirit of an age, or of the death of that spirit and the transition to another. The Progress and Triumph of Man was for the late 19th Century what Germans call the ‗zeitgeist‘ – the ‗spirit of the times.‘ Technological advancement, the eradication of war through diplomacy, the liberation of slaves and women from millennia of bondage and political isolation – all pointed toward a ‗Brave New World.‘ A world of which the unsinkable super-liner RMS Titanic was the proud herald – until she hit an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage across the North Atlantic. Within two years Europe and the world would be plunged into a senseless and bloody conflict – the Great War – initiating a century of warfare and death unparalleled by any previous century in mankind‘s history. The sinking of the Titanic was epochal in that it manifested both the epitome and the end of an era: the death of a zeitgeist, the passing of the spirit of an age into oblivion. During the same era in which the Titanic was being launched, philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, ―Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.‖ Winston Churchill later modified the expression, adding the necessity of learning from the past in order to avoid repeating its mistakes. But the modern ignorance of such epochal events as the sinking of the Titanic seems to indicate that Santayana‘s observation was more elemental, and thus of greater danger to mankind. How can one learn from a past one cannot even remember? The modern detachment from history is itself matched by an equally disturbing detachment from reality, evidenced by the ease with which people slide into the world of film as encompassing the atmosphere of their existence. Another example of this trend was exhibited at the premiere in 1994 of the movie, The Madness of George III. One person interviewed after the showing wondered aloud how it happened that he missed the first two films in the trilogy! In the world of Rocky IV and Shrek Infinity, is it any wonder that 4 Church History someone would fail to remember that George was the third king of that name to rule England, and that during the very birth of this nation? History is no longer a popular study among modern Americans, and it has not been for many years. Church History, beyond the seminary, is a non- existent study within modern churches. This neglect of History is itself indicative of a new zeitgeist, one whose seed was planted back in the 18th and 19th centuries. The two men most responsible for this new ‗spirit‘ of our age would probably be appalled by the unintended consequence of their teachings and philosophy. Charles Darwin, in the 19th Century, and Immanuel Kant in the 18th, provided the philosophical framework onto which would be built modern man‘s ignorance and disdain of history. The evidence of the conjoined philosophies of these two unbelievers is present in variegated form in the church today. Briefly, Kant was the foremost philosophical mind of the Enlightenment who effectively divorced the mind‘s perspective with reality from any objective connection to the world around it. In Kant‘s view, reality becomes so only through the operation of the mind‘s sensory faculties, and the reality thus created belongs solely to the mind that created it. The fact that so many of us may share common realities was to Kant a coincidence of having similar mental faculties, but not indicative of an objective reality that exists outside of one‘s own mind. Kant‘s emphasis on a self-created mental reality became the foundation of what is now known as Post-Modernism. With respect to modern man‘s association with history it is easy to see how events of the distant past would fade into ignorance, considering the philosophical viewpoint that even events of the immediate present are not objectively real. They only become so inasmuch as they are developed within one‘s own mind. Darwin‘s unwitting contribution to this phenomenon came primarily through his disciples, who extended his teaching on biological evolution to various other fields of study. Sociologists of the late 19th Century adopted 5 Church History Darwinian Evolution into the development of a progressive view of human history. In this view Man is continually improving, leaving behind the mistakes and ‗lesser organisms‘ of past civilizations and pressing onward to greater knowledge, greater freedom and, generally, a greater future. Despite the fact that this Pollyanna philosophy ran in the wall of the First World War, the damage vis-à-vis the study of history was already done. It became an ever- increasing perspective of 20th Century scholars that no more could modern man learn from mankind‘s past, than a vertebrate learn from a single-cell amoeba. The ‗evolution‘ of human civilization rendered all prior ages of no exemplary or intellectual value. Coupled with the man-centered reality of Kant, Darwinian Evolution completed modern man‘s divorce from his own past. One would think, or perhaps merely hope, that those who profess faith in a historic religion such as Christianity – one that is fundamentally based on events having occurred in history – would resist and reject the tendencies that slowly moved Western civilization into a present-focused, history-blind paradigm. But sadly professing Christendom has not displayed a solid and consistent relationship with its own history over the past twenty centuries. Indeed, in some of its forms and denominations, Christianity predated Darwin‘s evolutionism and anticipated Kant‘s separation of Truth from Objective Reality.