What Do Protestants Do With the First 1,500 Years of Church History?

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Welcome back to Walking and Talking.
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This is a resource from Emmaus Bible Church, and I'm Josh.
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Ron and Luke.
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And today we actually want to touch on some church history.
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So if you in high school kind of rolled your eyes and had a glaze set over, hopefully it doesn't happen here.
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Hopefully this actually is stimulating.
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It's helpful to understand God's redemptive purposes in history and how he's been working the last 2,000 years.
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But kind of the pointed question is what do we do with pre-Reformation church history?
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For instance, if I want to talk about Augustine, am I kind of reaching over the fence and grabbing something that belongs in the yard of Roman Catholics?
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Or is Augustine actually part of my family history?
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How does that work out?
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What do we do with the church history pre-Martin Luther when he nailed those 95 theses on the Wittenberg church door?
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So, first of all, we kind of want to highlight from, I believe, the book of Jude that there is the faith once for all delivered.
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And so there's a pastor in Kentucky, that's Dr.
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Sam Waldron.
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He has some lectures on church history, on historical theology that were very helpful on this very point.
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And what he talks about is that church history is progressive.
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Now, what he means by that isn't so much that church history is in a liberal sense progressive, but progressive insofar as the church at its inception from the beginning was almost like an infant that was expected to grow over time.
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So, for instance, if you like me grew up in charismatic circles, you might have heard the comments of, oh, if we could only get back to the kind of Acts II church, where that was the pure church and this almost implied idea that over the generations the church has become diluted over time or muddied.
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And we need to go back to that kind of first or second century where the church was at its best, at its peak, at its best performance.
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And this is oftentimes what you might hear from Roman Catholic.
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The Roman Catholics will argue that they want to get back to the patristic fathers, those early church history uh figures in the ranks that they had, with the idea that because they were closer to the apostles, or perhaps even some of them lived with and were discipled by the apostles, that they therefore have a unique authority where church doctrine or the dogmas or the things that we should do were most clearly set forth then, and we need to go back to that point of time instead of trying to progress this way.
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So Waldron's point is that if you want to go back in church history, he expects to hear the the goo-goos and gagas of the early church there because there's a lot of issues.
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And you see that in the New Testament, New Testament epistles when Paul is writing through all the false teaching and trying to encourage whether it's Titus or Timothy, how to navigate these just waves of false teaching and heresies.
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This isn't anything new, but the idea that again church history is going to grow over time, or excuse me, that doctrine will develop and grow over time.
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Not that the church makes new doctrines like in a Roman Catholic sense, but that over time, through the rising of different controversies or heresies, the faith that was once for all delivered will be further clarified and uncovered by the church as it wrestles through kind of these issues of the day.
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So, Pastor Ron, Pastor Luke, how would you kind of work through that yourselves?
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Is that a kind of a framework that you would agree with that church history, that theology is progressive in that sense, or how would you nuance that?
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Yeah, I think I like the way you said it, is it's not that we're creating doctrines out of nowhere, but we are through study of scripture and then through various controversies, having to clarify what's already there.
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And so when you have things like the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where you have bishops gathering from all over to come and settle a controversy, from that study and interaction and debate, they have a great articulation of the Trinity to ensure that Jesus, the Son, is not in some way has a beginning or somehow deemed a lesser deity.
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But it's not as if they that was the this was the first time this group has ever believed that Jesus is God and shares in the essence of Father and Spirit.
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That has always been the case, but they just wanted to further articulate and clarify going forward who's in and out, who's the heretic.
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Well, in that case, it was Arius who was a heretic.
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And so, yeah, I see that then forever was helpful going forward after that.
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Like, we don't have to settle that controversy as much.
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But what we still do need to settle as other heresies come up is like, okay, so if Jesus is God, then isn't he also human?
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So, how do we understand this?
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Like it in it seems very clear that he has he gets tired, he's hungry, you know, he dies.
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Well, that can't be true of God, so how do we think of this?
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Well, then you have the hypostatic union, which is clarified and articulated in the Council of Chalcedon.
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So you get the definition of Chalcedon from that.
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But it's not as if that was the first time anybody held to those.
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It was just like, let's just make this really clear what we all believe, these heretics are trying to, you know.
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So you just get this development that takes place over time, which fits in with this growth of like the infant into maturity and to where we are now.
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If you're in the right place, I think you're able to be familiar with all these past controversies, and so you don't make the same mistakes, and then you're even able to build upon it through other clarifications that have been made.
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So you're hopefully stronger in the 21st century than you were, you know, than was possible in the first or second century.
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Yeah.
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Pastor Ronald, let me set you up for Ephesians 2 and get your thoughts on this.
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So Paul is writing this epistle, and in verse 20, he's referring to the church, and he says that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, that is the church, being joined together, he says, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
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So there's this foundation that's laid by the prophets and the apostles, Christ himself being the cornerstone, but then it's going to grow into the future.
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How how does that kind of picture we talked about this a little bit earlier?
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How would that lead you to think through navigating church history?
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Yeah, I think the way both of you have spoken of the the progression of of history through the church that text there helps us understand that the church was has a foundation, but there is a growing process.
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Doesn't necessarily mean anything new is being discovered.
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It's all a bit written in the scriptures.
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But you already, in your introduction, said the letters in the New Testament were written for a reason, and the reason was there was already a decline uh taking place uh in the church.
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A lot of people think that church history declined gradually.
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It was this slow, slow downward trend, and finally at the Reformation, boom, it got a jumpstart again.
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But you don't have to read very far in uh the Galatians or Romans or the pastoral epistles, the warnings in Hebrews, that the church was already on a rapid slide downward, and so it's been with that foundation, it's it's had to recover even then, looking back at those letters and progressing throughout church history.
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Uh, and like Luke says, all the different councils, the ecumenical councils that had to sort through specific topics, issues, and make sure there was clarity on those things.
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Yeah.
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And so, yeah, I don't think the Roman Catholics have a have the right to say this is our history, uh.
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Although we need to acknowledge that the church, you know, some Baptists don't want to think that we had any connection whatsoever to the Catholics, the landmark Baptists and others like that.
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But obviously there was truth that was working through, and then we still have a lot of uh some not agreement on some major doctrines with the Roman Catholic Church, but the reformers by that time the church was really growing up and the whole doctrine of justification came into view.
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And so yeah, there is I ended, I I think that's a good way to look at history, uh church history.
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So between the two of you, there's about fifty-five years of pastoral care counseling experience.
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Have there been instances where you've had members, whether it's getting off into like a charismatic hyper charismatic view, or whether it's a more Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic view, you've kind of heard some of these arguments that they want to get back to the church fathers, they want to get back to the early church when it was a pure church, that's why they're going off into this new church or new tradition denomination.
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Have you had any experiences with that?
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How'd you work through that with them?
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Well, yes, so if you talked about the charismatic side and wanting to do like liquid church slash house church models and and things like that, because it's early, so you find it in Acts, and so we need to do that, you know.
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I I think there's a simplistic a simplicity, sorry, a simplistic understanding of the book of Acts when they're doing that to not take into consideration, you know, just the development of societies and and how things work and and how the church you know grows in various areas of the world and and all that.
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I don't think you have to just hyper focus on some of those earlier doctrines for the sake that they're early.
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And uh so then if you go into the Eastern Orthodox view of just okay, can I quote a qu church father here?
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Like, you have to realize like that certain church fathers err on certain things, and you always have to be taking the scriptures as the highest authority, and so a Protestant view has sola scriptura, which doesn't mean we don't take into consideration other authorities, which we would include as church fathers, but the scriptures are the highest, and so it doesn't matter if you're quoting Augustine or Pelagius or Origin or what whatever.
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It's like if they don't line up with the scriptures in their own context, then you don't have to uh hold to their position or adopt it.
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And and so yeah, I I don't I I like I think the sweet spot, and of course I'm biased, is when you have the Reformed Baptists who are Protestant and Reformed and Baptist being able to draw from all of church history and yet have sifted through that in such a way that allows Scripture, I think, the highest priority.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I've definitely had uh in both the charismatic house church group, I've had people argue strongly, and also in the in the more classical Orthodox return wanting to return to that believing that's the way it was at the beginning, uh that we need to get back to that.
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But uh the house church charismatics will say that you know that there were no buildings, they met in houses, that's it.
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The end of story.
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There's no progression there, that that's the way it has to be, because that's the way it was then.
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The uh the order of services, very much like the Corinthian church, they were messing up, according to Paul, but these uh the charismatic some of them would say, but but there was that form of worship.
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There wasn't any formal liturgy.
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One had a psalm, one had a doctrine, what you know, so on and so forth.
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There was no real order or structure, even though Paul said do things, all things in decently in order.
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I was gonna say he actually says the very phrase.
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But and then on the other prong, we we homeschooled our firstborn David classically in high school, then he went on in his college training.
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He got two and a half more years within the context of his bachelor's degree of great books reading.
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And along the way, we realized, I mean, there were jumping off points for certain people.
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Sometimes it was a professor, sometimes it was a student.
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When you're reading so much of the classical literature, the church fathers and the uh, you know, all through church history, Quinas and so forth, you're you're really become enamored with some things that they taught, and pretty soon there's a temptation to move in that direction, thinking this is the way it originally looked.
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And what we have now is just this big hodgepodge of you know evangelicalism, and they can't even agree on a lot of things.
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So the high church idea, the the the somber type of liturgy, the the more structured high church feel.
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I just recently talked to somebody who had his whole conversion experience.
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He had so wandered from his early years of faith, and uh he was traveling around Europe just trying to find himself, and he went into one of the great cathedrals, and he had this existential experience in this religious environment that he sort of claims as his born-again experience.
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He didn't use those terms, but that was his this is how I came to Jesus.
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Religious awakening.
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It was in a cathedral, yeah, with the all the sense of awe that was in there, uh, and thinking of that history and all that went into that.
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So yeah.
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Yeah.
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I don't imagine any of us are saying don't read the early fathers.
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But we we love the early fathers, but we don't treat them as infallible interpreters of God's word.
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And that's kind of what I see as possibly an issue here is we say the scriptures are inerrant and they're infallible, but then there's this almost implied view of some of the fathers that again, because of their placement and the timeline of history, they're kind of given this deference as if everything that they stated about doctrine or theology or so on and so forth must be functionally infallible because of where they're situated in history.
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So, how do we approach being open to say, hey, we want to take the meat, but still out the bones of these uh church history figures, especially from the early church era?
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What kind of paradigm would you encourage people from our church to operate out of as they're approaching?
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Maybe they're gonna read uh Aquinas, maybe that maybe they're gonna read Augustine or Athanasius and these early church figures.
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Should we just read them and take everything they said?
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How do we kind of parse through, hey, take this from Augustine, leave that from Aquinas, take that from Aquinas, leave that from Athanasius?
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How would you encourage people in that?
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Well, like you just said, kind of piecing it together, who's the best on which particular topic is the Protestant view of this, because the Catholics, they would have this view of the Medicine.
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The Roman Catholics.
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The Roman Catholics would have this view of the magisterium.
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That's the office of the church that teaches, that is kind of like led by God through the Holy Spirit, that has supposedly been this infallible kind of interpretation of scriptures as well as certain statements that the Pope has been given by God to say, that it's kind of like, and decisions of creeds and councils that make up this teaching ministry that you know, and you have saints involved in there, so like Saint Augustine, and so and so they think, okay, just go to these, and our teaching has never never contradicted itself, and it's just this his history that we all have, and and Luther was quick to point out like that no, the councils have contradicted other councils.
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Uh theologians obviously have disagreed with each other within the Roman Catholic Church, and so it is best as as Protestants to look at it and say, Well, I read Augustine not because he was some incredibly like sainted figure who had but but he was especially brilliant and godly that I want to hear from him just as I would like to hear from like Pastor Ron, for instance, who's but not that I'm not putting you on the same level, but like I respect you, you've been around the block, you're godly, and so I hear and listen and want to learn from, and so I want to do that as well from these these brothers in the in the past whom God definitely used in great ways, however, still being able to disagree with them when it's I think they're erring.
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So yeah, Augustine's you know interesting views on baptism as well as justification, even so it's like but he has my view on predestination and election and gr and grace, and so it's just how that works.
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Yeah, it's funny because parts of Augustine don't agree with Augustine, something of Augustine and he he subscribed to the analogy of scripture, scripture is its own interpreter kind of thing, but there's times where he's giving off a doctrine, let's say baptism, and it's like, well, there's scriptures that clearly teach against what you're saying.
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I think that's one of the things I find as a help for this.
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I heard this from um Tom Askell interviewing a guy on his podcast, the guy just mentioned when I come to read an individual from church history, Aquinas, Augustine, Calvin, Athanasius, I read them within the paradigm of scripture is sufficient, it's authoritative, it's clear, and I operate also from a confessional framework.
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And so when I read Aquinas, I don't read him assuming that everything he says is true.
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I want to find what points is he taking from scripture that are clear, that are brilliant from the mind that God gave him, and taking that meet, but then also he's gonna write over here about a doctrine, whether it's you know, but maybe I want to speak on a tongue out of turn here, but transubstantiation, some other more Roman Catholic doctrines that we would push against on.
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Did he propose uh Marian worship at all?
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Or not so much?
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Not as much, but definitely the perpetual virginity of her, possibly the uh sinlessness of her in some sense.
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But what the guy was kind of saying was we approach reading these figures from church history with the presupposed authority of the Bible, and so we read these figures with them underneath the authority of the Bible, instead of treating these individuals like Aquinas or Augustine or whoever they are as their own kind of individual authorities that are over us and that then lead us to take whatever they write, even if it's actually antagonistic to scripture.
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So we want to read these guys, we want to read Spurgeon, we want to read Jonathan Eddards, we want to read the Puritans, we want to read the Reformers, and we also want to read the early church fathers, but we're gonna read all of them within a framework that has them as a subordinate authority where they're interpreted in light of the true authority which is scripture.
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Yeah.
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And I would say they also help us to deal with modern controversies.
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So if somebody has a view of the Trinity, say, in in the last 10 years, that sounds good, but you go back to the writings of Augustine and Anselm and Aquinas and John Calvin and you name it, that you know, they all kind of agree on this issue, and this newer teaching is kind of different.
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You can use that as a guide, like, whoa, that's that's weird.
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Like how how do I interact with this newer teaching now?
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Who who do I kind of do I go with this guy or these guys?
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And obviously you're looking at the scriptures, but I'm just saying, like you can use church history to that help helpful way dealing with modern controversy.
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Good.
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Let me flix excuse me, let me flip the next two points on the paper for outline so that they go chronologically.
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So let's move now to distinguishing Catholic from Roman Catholic, and then getting into the kind of the trajectory of Roman Catholicism as it came in roughly the 11th century.
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So, Luke, Ron, do you want to kind of give us the the lay of the land on distinguishing Catholic from Roman Catholic and how that played out over time?
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Well, I'll just give the definition and Luke can take it from there.
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But uh, when we talk Catholic, uh, we're talking small c the the universal church, the body of Christ.
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When we're talking Catholic capital C, we need to add the word Roman for because that is the Roman Catholic institution.
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Now they believe they are the universal visible church.
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That's part of their dogma, as I understand.
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It, but uh there is that important distinction.
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We are Catholic Small C in the sense that we do believe the body of Christ is universal.
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All the elect from the beginning of the ages to the end of the ages are are part of that Catholic Church.
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I will say, though this is not the particular topic, but uh that v that Catholic universal church is not visible.
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It has no officers, it doesn't take offerings, it uh it doesn't have any liturgy, it it can only manifest itself in local visible churches, and that's critical.
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There's no such thing as saying I'm a member of the universal church, but I don't really need to go to any particular church.
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Um I I'm already in the church, the the Catholic Church.
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But anyway, Luke, and you take off the different the distinctions there.
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Yeah, so throughout church history, there's no doubt you would say that the the church was more connected with each other than it is maybe now.
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Uh so as uh you have various bishops being in place, there was more and more communication between and sharing of resources and whatever as a larger you would say as like a denomination, it seemed like, but it was just like the church.
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There wasn't really that much outside of it, and this is developing, but there's like there's Greek, there's Rome, branches of this kind of pr big church.
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I mean, similar, like you know, we have the Southern Baptist Church now, you have the Presbyterian Church of the USA, there's like some of these in different parts of the world, but still kind of connected.
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But there's a big schism that takes place in 1044 surrounding, I want to say the the doctrine, well, I mean there's the filioquake or clause, excuse me.
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That was amended in 381, I want to say, in Constantinople, that said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
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And there was a big disagreement between the Roman Church and the Greek Church to where they split over that, Greek taking the original Nicene Creed, which just said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
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There was lots more political involvement there and everything, but the Roman Catholic Church went a certain direction from that time on, and then you have the Eastern Orthodox or Greek Church went another direction.
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And with that there's excommunication going on, there's multiple then popes on different churches, and it then gets its own kind of flavor and starts really moving towards where it is today in the Roman Catholic Church with various doctrines.
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But the Roman Catholic Church, by and large, uh has a view of authority that has scripture and the teachings of the church, including like the oral teachings supposedly passed on from the apostles, the declarations of the popes and decisions of the councils and all that on par with scripture, so that they can even have teachings that contradict scripture.
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Along with using the intertestamental period books, the Apocrypha and drawing from those to formulate doctrines within the church.
00:25:52.559 --> 00:26:02.960
So that Roman Catholic Church now it's all over the world, but it's it's specifically that branch after that schism.
00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:10.079
And we would say in a very negative way, did you want to get into the Reformation right here?
00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:12.960
Or you plan to do that?
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:16.000
A couple more comments on this topic, and then we'll get to the Reformation.
00:26:16.319 --> 00:26:16.640
Oh yeah.
00:26:17.119 --> 00:26:39.279
In the the worst possible way, we would say that the church, Roman Catholic Church, apostasized at the Council of Trent, as long as you're holding to that where it actually anathematized the true gospel by saying if anybody says that they're justified by faith, then they're accursed.
00:26:39.519 --> 00:26:41.039
Faith alone, you would say.
00:26:42.160 --> 00:26:43.519
Which is our position.
00:26:43.759 --> 00:26:44.400
Yeah.
00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:56.960
So for someone who doesn't know a ton about the first 1500 years of church history, let me try to offer some some signposts, some ways to kind of navigate the first 1500 years.
00:26:57.279 --> 00:27:01.839
So the the title Catholic first came out, you know, where's its where does its name come from?
00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:02.960
The Catholic Church.
00:27:03.119 --> 00:27:08.319
So the early one of the earliest heresies against the Christian church was the heresy of Gnosticism.
00:27:08.559 --> 00:27:17.440
And to make a long story short, what they were teaching was that there's this hidden Gnostic knowledge, this hidden knowledge that only select special people have.
00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:32.720
And so that the church, the Christian church, actually didn't have this knowledge, and that's why they wanted people to come to their Gnostic churches to receive this special hidden knowledge of revelation that wasn't in the scriptures and only they had the secret insider info to.
00:27:32.960 --> 00:27:44.079
And so the Catholics stick on the side of Catholic, meaning universal, as Ron mentioned earlier, to say, hey, brother, sister, you you could go to 10 Gnostic churches, you're gonna hear 10 different gospels.
00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:45.680
They don't agree with one another.
00:27:45.839 --> 00:27:49.359
They're all just like these independent, random cults.
00:27:49.519 --> 00:28:04.160
Whereas you can go to 10, 100, 1000 of our Catholic churches, you'll hear the same gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed in every single one of those churches because we're we're shared and we're universal in our understanding of the gospel.
00:28:04.559 --> 00:28:07.599
So that's where the title Catholic were to come from.
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:12.559
But that also gets into that distinguishing from maybe Roman Catholic that comes on later.
00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:17.200
Luke mentioned how there was that schism in 1054 between the East and the Western churches.
00:28:17.279 --> 00:28:28.880
And so before 1054, before that Roman Catholic Church took place, the Catholic Church was both East and West, both the Bishop of Rome, as well as those bishops of Constantinople and Jerusalem.
00:28:29.119 --> 00:28:38.400
So for instance, the papacy, actually, the idea of a pope didn't come until uh third or fourth century, I believe, if not, maybe even a little bit later.
00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:40.160
Maybe a little bit off my dates.
00:28:40.319 --> 00:28:48.720
But originally the Catholic Church esteemed five different bishops as kind of the high college of the bishops.
00:28:48.799 --> 00:28:50.720
There were five bishops, I just named three of them.
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:56.559
There was the Bishop of Rome, Bishop of Constantinople, Jerusalem, and there's two other locations that I'm blanking on at the moment.
00:28:56.640 --> 00:28:59.359
I don't know if either one of you have the names of those.
00:28:59.680 --> 00:29:06.240
So again, one thing that I came to realize was there's there's a lot of anachronisms with Roman Catholicism.
00:29:06.319 --> 00:29:14.400
And what I mean by that is Roman Catholics, whether they do it consciously or unconsciously, I want to give some of them the benefit of the benefit of the doubt.
00:29:14.559 --> 00:29:16.559
Maybe they just don't understand that they're doing this.
00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:24.240
But what they'll actually do is they'll dogmatize a doctrine at a future time in church history.
00:29:24.400 --> 00:29:40.559
So for instance, the worship of Mary was not a formal doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church until the 14th or 15th centuries, but they will then, at the time of recognizing that doctrine in their own dogmas, they will read into previous church history that very dogma.
00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:57.119
A very clear example of this is you have Gregory the Great as one of the early bishops of Rome, who he himself said, if there were to come a time where any man was a single ruler of the church, a kind of pope figure, he called it that would be a device of Satan against the church.
00:29:57.519 --> 00:30:09.839
The funny thing is, because he was one of the first bishops of Rome, when the papacy became formalized, the Roman Catholic Church went back and anachronistically titled him the Pope of the Church.
00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:15.039
So you now have the Pope of the Catholic Church saying the Pope would be a device of Satan.
00:30:15.279 --> 00:30:44.720
So that's a clear example of what I mean when I say whether it's cognitive consciously or unconsciously, the Roman Catholic Church the Roman Catholic Church will systemize a doctrine and then read it back into church history, where either the either one, they didn't believe that thing at all, as in the case of Gregory the Great with the papacy, or two, there will be a seed form of that doctrine, but not nearly to the extent that they the later Catholic Church, excuse me, later Roman Catholic Church would be arguing for.
00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:53.759
And so that's very helpful as I think through the church, is to understand the church in, let's say, 500, that was not the Roman Catholic Church.
00:30:53.839 --> 00:30:55.200
That was the Catholic Church.
00:30:55.359 --> 00:31:12.160
The Roman Catholic Church didn't become a thing until the schism of 1054, when the Church of the West, which was headlined by the bishopric of Rome, come which then came the Roman Catholic Church, when that break happened with the Eastern, more Greek Hellenistic churches.
00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:18.319
So hopefully that gives you some form of a crash course on understanding the first thousand years of church history.
00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:31.200
But once that schism happens and the formalization of the Roman Catholic Church is now uh realized, that's when you start getting a lot of these more Roman Catholic doctrines that we're used to.
00:31:31.279 --> 00:31:41.759
So, for instance, worship of Mary or the veneration of Mary as a co-redemptrix or as someone that we should pray to and ask for help from if you're a Roman Catholic.
00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:45.599
There was some seed form of that in the early church, but it was not widespread.
00:31:45.759 --> 00:31:49.680
It was not popular amongst every church or every Christian.
00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:51.759
That came on much later.
00:31:51.920 --> 00:32:03.680
So again, if you take a Roman Catholic from 1340, you take a Catholic from 800, and you take a Catholic from 300, they're all going to be like kind of looking at each other sideways, saying, You believe what now?
00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:31.279
Because there's going to be this kind of, uh as we would argue as Protestants, a deterioration in doctrine, particularly after the schism in the Roman Catholic Church, because of their elevation of that single office of the of the Pope, and then the power vested to that pope and to create doctrines, to create almost executive orders, if you will, in a theological frame where that just starts getting more and more bad.
00:32:31.920 --> 00:32:32.319
Yeah.
00:32:32.480 --> 00:32:36.880
So to where that just paves the way for the need for reformation.
00:32:37.119 --> 00:32:37.440
Yes.
00:32:37.599 --> 00:32:56.480
And so, Luke, tell us what when actually, or Ron, when Luther and the reformers were giving their case before the cardinals, before the bishops, before the magisterium, and the high officers of the Roman Catholic Church, were Luther and these reformers trying to break off and form a new church where they're saying, Hey, I actually have new revelation.
00:32:56.640 --> 00:33:00.960
What were they arguing for when they were arguing for their doctrines of justification?
00:33:01.440 --> 00:33:03.680
Were they pointing back to church history?
00:33:03.920 --> 00:33:05.200
What was going on there?
00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:15.680
I would just briefly say, and Luke can build on this, that Luther's intention was not to depart from the Roman Catholic Church.
00:33:15.839 --> 00:33:23.200
He wanted to reform it in some very specific ways, mostly the the area of the indulgences.
00:33:23.680 --> 00:33:37.839
But he had no idea that his 95 thesis would end up in this huge battle over the doctrine of justification and some of the other things, uh transubstantiation, some of those things.
00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:43.359
But originally, I mean, initially, I should say he did not really intend to break from the church at all.
00:33:43.599 --> 00:33:47.920
He believed that there was a historical precedent for many of the things they believed.
00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:59.200
And you it's very fascinating that some of the major doctrines that we hold, the Trinity and the deity of Christ, the two natures of Christ, heaven and hell, I mean, we have a lot in common.
00:33:59.359 --> 00:34:14.320
It's just always interested to me that with all of those commonalities, the one major area, I mean, obviously there are other areas, transubstantiation, but uh the doctrine of justification, how one is saved.
00:34:14.400 --> 00:34:28.559
I mean, that's the core of the whole gospel that, you know, from Genesis all the way to Revelation, it's about the revelation of Christ coming to save us from our sins and to uh eternally keep us.
00:34:29.119 --> 00:34:35.679
There's no assurance within the Roman Catholic doctrine, there's no uh justification through faith alone.
00:34:36.159 --> 00:34:40.000
It's just amazing that they have so many other things that we would agree with.
00:34:40.320 --> 00:34:46.800
But the main thing that that was launched eventually in the Reformation was that doctrine.
00:34:47.199 --> 00:34:49.280
Um Yeah.
00:34:49.519 --> 00:35:28.480
Because I think when Rome Luther posted his 95 Theses, and well, you know, he was hoping to have debates and he fully assumed that the Pope, once he heard his arguments, would totally be like Oh yeah, he'd totally come to his senses on this things, or he already probably just agrees with me, but some people don't know, and so there's some abuses happening he just needs to be made aware of while the Pope is like just like straight up rebukes him and then essentially excommunicates him because he he's the Pope was at the center of these papal abuses as he's raising money for larger St.
00:35:28.639 --> 00:35:36.960
Peter's Basilica, and so there was widespread corruption within the church that needed definitely to be dealt with.
00:35:37.119 --> 00:35:53.440
But that corruption and what's called like simony, which is buying offices within the church, or nepotism was a very strong thing where you know, if you were the son of this person, you become a bishop and you're not necessarily converted.
00:35:53.519 --> 00:36:16.960
So they could just brought in all sorts of potential for spiritual abuses and misinterpretations and and all sorts of bad heretical doctrines that you know made it a a need, made it necessary for the true church to arise out of the ashes basically of the Roman Catholic Church.
00:36:17.920 --> 00:36:29.280
It's interesting because when you talk about reaching over much of Luther's understanding of the scriptures, I believe came through the writings of Augustine.
00:36:29.760 --> 00:36:31.440
He really leaned on him heavily.
00:36:31.519 --> 00:36:40.719
He didn't agree with everything, and uh you know, lock, stock, and beryl, but he uh definitely was influenced by those writings, uh, heavily influenced.
00:36:42.239 --> 00:36:55.920
Yeah, so one point is when Luther was making his cases to, I'm blinking on the cardinal's name, Cardinal so-and-so, and his arguments, he wasn't saying that he had a new interpretation of Romans chapter 1 or Romans chapter 3 or the scriptures.
00:36:56.000 --> 00:37:10.559
He was saying, I'm simply saying, and I'm pointing back, I share the same interpretation of this of this text as Augustine, as Athanasius, as Anselm, as Aquinas, and you, Roman Catholic Church, have veered from the fathers.
00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:13.679
And so what Luther, that's why he called it a reformation.
00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:18.480
He didn't want a revolution, whereas let's destroy the Roman Catholic Church, let's build a new church in its place.
00:37:18.639 --> 00:37:35.280
He said, No, like this is Christ's church, but it has waned and been so muddied and brought down by false teaching that we need to go back, reform, and go back to the proper paths that we were walking on so that we can further progress now in the faith.
00:37:35.440 --> 00:37:57.280
And so, what what all the reformers were doing, whether it was Calvin, whether it was Zwingli, but especially Luther as the kind of foremost individual in the Reformation, they were pointing back to actually the church fathers to prove their doctrines and to show, hey, Roman Catholic Church, you have wandered off from what the Catholics before us were saying.
00:37:58.079 --> 00:38:06.239
And I think that's very helpful to understand, as we're this wasn't a new interpretation of Romans chapter one that came in the year 1517.
00:38:06.400 --> 00:38:12.239
It was no no no, I'm going back again to the fathers and saying we've we've lost our way.
00:38:12.400 --> 00:38:13.519
We need to go back.
00:38:16.480 --> 00:38:17.280
Any thoughts?
00:38:18.239 --> 00:38:19.360
I completely agree.
00:38:19.840 --> 00:38:24.320
That's why if you read Calvin's institutes, he's constantly quoting the church fathers.
00:38:24.639 --> 00:38:25.119
Yes.
00:38:28.559 --> 00:38:29.440
Let's see.
00:38:31.039 --> 00:38:36.079
Anything else that you guys want to speak to on this topic of just understanding church history?
00:38:36.159 --> 00:38:36.880
How do we navigate it?
00:38:36.960 --> 00:38:40.880
How we how do we understand the progression of doctrine throughout the ages?
00:38:43.119 --> 00:38:47.039
No, I I just think it's an important study.
00:38:47.199 --> 00:38:56.159
It's it's very difficult to understand your current context without the context of the past to try and say, okay, where are we right now?
00:38:56.320 --> 00:38:59.599
Am I in a healthy state of our of church history?
00:38:59.760 --> 00:39:04.079
Because the the church fluctuates in terms of its overall health.
00:39:04.239 --> 00:39:10.559
The church on earth is what I'm talking about, the church militant and uh a helpful guide.
00:39:10.719 --> 00:39:11.920
Obviously, is the scriptures.
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:24.719
Like, are you reading scriptures, but uh also being able to glean from church history to like, for instance, if you study the Puritan era, you're like, what was different about these people?
00:39:24.960 --> 00:39:37.039
Like, why that seemed like a a sweet spot in terms of theological development, of seriousness, of uh God-centeredness, and devotion and love for Christ.
00:39:37.679 --> 00:39:42.480
Yeah, so like what was happening there, and how does it compare to to our current church?
00:39:42.639 --> 00:39:46.960
And and is there anything we need to kind of tweak to get back to that?
00:39:47.039 --> 00:39:53.679
You know, it just it makes you more aware by studying church history and in theology.
00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:54.639
Yeah.
00:39:55.039 --> 00:40:00.800
Two takeaways I've had just wrestling with this and taking Walden's class on the early church and church history.
00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:08.400
One is that I've kind of changed my tune, especially as a young believer, I viewed Roman Catholics as like the spawn of Satan kind of thing.
00:40:08.559 --> 00:40:20.800
And especially after this class, I view Roman Catholics very much as the the lost brother who was walking on the way for roughly 1,500 years, and then at the Council of Trent apostasized.
00:40:20.880 --> 00:40:26.719
And it's it's I want that wandering brother to come back home, but I don't really expect that to happen.
00:40:27.119 --> 00:40:37.360
So a different perception on the Roman Catholic Church where I don't I'm sure that there might be individual Roman Catholics who are saved in of themselves, but I have a hard time.
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:55.440
I mean the the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church are they they've called the gospel heresy, so it's hard to really get excited about the institution itself and calling that a sister denomination or or sister tradition in any sense or fashion.
00:40:55.760 --> 00:41:06.320
But a second takeaway, uh to again use the previous analogy of am I reaching over the Roman Catholic fence to grab Augustine, to grab these people in church history?
00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:13.760
And actually it's it's not like Augustine, Athanasius, all these people, those are part of our family history as Protestants.
00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:20.480
We don't have to like rob them from a different tree to bring them into our kind of house as Protestants.
00:41:20.559 --> 00:41:28.559
Like we trace our line back to them, to the early church, to the lowercase C or first, you know, several hundred years of the Catholic Church.
00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:32.079
That's that's our people, that's our ancestors, if you will.
00:41:32.480 --> 00:41:34.159
So I found that very helpful.
00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:37.920
There have been any other takeaways that you guys have had as you've kind of wrestled through this question.
00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:47.760
I would just say, and it was just confirming what Luke was saying earlier, that history is valuable, uh, world history, all history.
00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:53.440
I heard someone once say that you know, if if you know history well enough you could rule the world.
00:41:54.079 --> 00:41:58.880
People are so deficient in history of in any form in our day.
00:41:58.960 --> 00:42:07.199
It's it's hardly taught in uh public schools in the way it used to be years and years ago, but so much more so for church history.
00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:12.480
Without having that background, you have no I mean, we are tied to the early church.
00:42:12.559 --> 00:42:34.000
We're tied through hymns, we're tied through their writings, uh obviously we're tied through the inspired scriptures, but I mean we are literally in a long chain of Catholic believers, universal believers, and to lose that sense of connection, I I think you lose uh uh just a sense of true belonging.
00:42:34.559 --> 00:42:47.840
So much of modern evangelicals uh evangelicalism is about us and our church and what we're doing and our little mark in the kingdom, and it's so disconnected from anything in the past, and I think that's a shame.
00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:52.480
I I think it really produces a deficient form of Christianity.
00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:53.199
Yeah.
00:42:53.519 --> 00:42:54.719
And I like that statement.
00:42:54.800 --> 00:43:00.079
The faith once for all delivered, it's delivered to the saints, and it's our job to continue to pass it on.
00:43:00.159 --> 00:43:07.440
So we're just merely this generation and people who own the, you know, have the gospel.
00:43:07.599 --> 00:43:10.159
It's been deposited to us, and we just have to pass it on.
00:43:10.239 --> 00:43:15.119
Yeah, it's been given to us and we pass it on, and yeah, and it's just this long line.
00:43:15.519 --> 00:43:16.880
We're seeing this funny photo.
00:43:17.039 --> 00:43:39.280
It was four generations from a father to his son, to his son's son, to then that great grandson of the original father, and the three adult men, you have the father holding a bottle of beer to the mouth of his son, so it's two generations, two or three generations down, then the youngest father has a bottle of milk going to the mouth of his son, and it's a kind of funny, dumb picture.
00:43:39.360 --> 00:43:52.639
But in my mind, like there's like the the positive faith, the the the faith that was once for all delivered from the apostles to Augustine to Luther to uh Calvin to the Puritans and all the way down to us.
00:43:52.719 --> 00:43:59.760
And there's this, as you mentioned earlier, Pastor Ron, like this chain link, not of beer, as in that photo, but that kind of funny photo.
00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:01.440
comes to mind.
00:44:02.719 --> 00:44:03.679
Interesting.
00:44:04.639 --> 00:44:09.760
Maybe I can be your next uh family photo with your sons and the great grandkids.
00:44:10.400 --> 00:44:12.079
Yeah I'm trying to figure that out.
00:44:12.239 --> 00:44:14.960
Do we go from beer to milk or from milk to beer?
00:44:18.559 --> 00:44:18.880
Great.
00:44:18.960 --> 00:44:24.320
Well as we close, uh any recommended resources if people want to read more or think more about this?
00:44:26.159 --> 00:44:28.719
No, I I think we've said plenty.
00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:37.039
Bob Godfrey's he's at it's it's with the ligioneer series, six DVDs that go through all of church history.
00:44:37.119 --> 00:44:37.920
It's very helpful.
00:44:38.239 --> 00:44:39.599
I highly recommend that.
00:44:39.760 --> 00:44:45.119
Then you have a five volume work by Nick Needham called 2000 Years of Christ Power.
00:44:45.360 --> 00:44:51.679
That's obviously big but it's really really rich with both events, characters and theology.
00:44:52.000 --> 00:45:01.360
So if you can only read one volume that five volume series by Nick Needham read the first volume on the early church that I think is the best book by far.
00:45:01.519 --> 00:45:06.400
Like that's like a gold A plus I like the other ones but they're kind of like the B B plus range.
00:45:06.559 --> 00:45:09.679
That first one he was just what really blessed him I think.
00:45:09.920 --> 00:45:10.400
Yeah.
00:45:10.719 --> 00:45:20.960
Thomas Kidd has a two volume work called Church History that he's put together a guy named Kuiper did a one volume that is really good too.
00:45:21.119 --> 00:45:28.400
So talk to us more offline we can get you some more but yeah you had me watch when I was a resident some lectures from Carl Truman.
00:45:28.480 --> 00:45:31.760
I think it was just on the Reformation though but those are very helpful.
00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:34.400
Yeah those are on masterseminary dot com.
00:45:34.480 --> 00:45:52.400
Those are some of those doctoral lectures really's on YouTube I'm pretty sure yeah you're right there's a real easy read it's an old banner of truth edition of it's called sketches in church history lots of pictures but just sort of an overview you can really skip through it quickly.
00:45:52.960 --> 00:46:02.719
But the first two you mentioned the the Godfrey series and the Needham series though they're very user friendly they're not too complicated.
00:46:03.039 --> 00:46:18.320
No my kids read the Need Him one for school well yeah I kind of want to maybe preemptively land by answering an objection or maybe like a thought maybe that would be posed against us which might be like why does this even matter?
00:46:18.559 --> 00:46:37.599
Why do I need to go back and read or even be remotely have a an understanding of the previous 2000 years of church history we kind of touched on this a little bit but maybe just a full orb like hey someone's listening to this they love us they love the scriptures but there's like what am I what am what in the world am I going to get from 325?
00:46:37.760 --> 00:46:40.960
What in the world am I going to get from 1644?
00:46:41.199 --> 00:47:21.440
How would you kind of passerally gently encouragingly kind of answer that objection I can't think of it in any other way than other you know ignorance is not bliss but also that connectedness I already spoke to I without that sense of harmony between us and the universal Catholic Church I think you're really missing out i i in that what are we calling it a connection you call it a chain it's not the landmark chain where we're tracing church after church after church all the way back to the beginning but you do have that vital connection with the saints through the ages.
00:47:22.639 --> 00:47:32.800
Yeah if you wanted a scriptural principle too you could think of how the church was supposed to be reminded of how Israel failed in the past over and over again.
00:47:32.880 --> 00:47:39.760
Paul keeps told them that so there is that saying we have that those who don't know history are bound to repeat it.
00:47:40.239 --> 00:47:58.320
So that can be heirs from the past doctrinally like you might find yourself holding to a a heresy that has actually been condemned back in the 400 you know 400 ADs or you might have some kind of practice that you're doing that has already proven itself to be a failure and and not good.
00:47:58.639 --> 00:48:32.320
And so like there's just so much you can learn that will help you for the future as you look at church history I'd say yeah two thoughts come from me so I can't help but thinking to some extent and I'm kind of guilty of this in the past I don't I don't say this as if I'm just pointing the finger I've done this I do think to kind of be negligent to those first 2000 years of church history you're you're to some extent I do think you're scoffing at Christ's work in preserving his church.
00:48:32.880 --> 00:48:53.039
So if Christ is the one that is ordering history by his own sovereign hand and he's guiding events heresies heroes of the faith and for you to just kind of like wave your hand at that and go hub a hub or whatever I do think you're scoffing at not those people or not those events you're scoffing at what Christ has actually done in redemptive history.
00:48:53.199 --> 00:48:59.119
Not so much in in Christ in the redemptive work that Christ has done but in the work since then that Christ has been doing.
00:48:59.360 --> 00:49:16.079
So actually I I want to say I want to enjoy ultimately yes the unscripturated events of God's redemptive history but also want to look at the kind of organic way that that's played out since his ascension and what Christ has been doing in his body and how he's been preserving that faith once for all delivered.
00:49:16.239 --> 00:50:14.239
And I think you mentioned you don't want to dive into the heresies that previous generations did you want to be not cognizant of that but also that there's just so much to gain encouragement from I've told you this a couple times but like I I now love this figure of Maximus the Confessor he was the only one in the Eastern church at one point who was maintaining at that point in time a theology of Christ that was under attack and he kind of had his own little Martin Luther moment where he was standing before the emperor with the whole you know officials of the church and the emperor kind of asked him so what you're right and me the emperor and the officials of the church are all wrong and we're gonna go to hell and then the guy Maximus just says this is what the scriptures say I I can tell you yes if you fall on this if you don't uphold this doctrine not just because you're the emperor or those are the highstanding officials behind you but this is what Christ has said and we have to stand what Christ has said.
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And for that his punishment was to have his cut his tongue cut out so he couldn't preach and have his hand cut off so he couldn't write and just to have the this this resolve this steel spine to stand before emperors and before bishops and say no I'm I'm gonna stand with Christ even when the whole world is going against Christ.
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I don't know what the next 25 years holds but I told Lydia I want to name our next son Maximus because there's maybe a chance that he might have to stand and the cost might be his tongue being cut out, his hand being cut off if he were to espouse what 2,000 years of church history is espoused but now it's unpopular because of new cultural shifts in thinking about doctrine or theology or what what whatever would come.
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So he'd probably be afraid to talk back too that made me think of um it's not commonly thought of as church history as the the history books, church history books, but uh Fox's Book of Martyrs that came to mind as you were telling that story very valuable pieces of heroes of the faith.
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Interesting when I was in San Diego many years ago pastoring there used to go to Claremont Library and they had all these wonderful books that nobody used.
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There was a whole section of wonderful writings uh and there was a three-volume set of written by a Roman Catholic refuting the Fox's Book of Martyrs one by one claiming that they were all apocryphal stories but that's that's how you redact church history.
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Any closing thoughts brothers nothing caps of mind great been walking and talking and if you found this podcast helpful or enjoyable or encouraging by any means we just simply ask that you would share it with a friend or fellow member from church and until then we'll see you next time