Transcription
It's not easy to understand what happened a week ago, let alone a thousand years ago. Scripture is our authority, not church history. The church submits to the word of God, not the other way around.
If you've never thought that I was a total buffoon, you will believe it wholeheartedly because I'm sitting next to one of the brightest minds in evangelical Christianity. It is Dr. Nathan Bnitz from the Master Seminary. Welcome, sir.
It's a joy to be here. You also happen to specialize in church history and that is what I would like to talk to you about today, church history. And I want to start out by laying down a couple of principles in studying history because it's my observation. It's not just the secular world that struggles to understand and interpret history. It's also church history because it's not easy to understand what happened a week ago, let alone a thousand years ago. So, as a 21st century believer, how do I look back on church history and glean what's true, what's false, and perhaps most importantly, what the point is, what God is doing in the ark of church history.
Yeah, that's a great question. So, I think it starts with recognizing that church history is about the church. When we think about studying church history, we need to start with recognizing that we're looking for how God has worked through the last 2,000 years to build his church. The promise of Jesus himself, Matthew 16:18, "I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." We see that promise unfold throughout the course of the last 2,000 years. So, it's about the church. And if people love the church, they're going to love church history.
But sometimes it's daunting because I I've I've read enough church history books that it it becomes kind of a litany of dates until you almost feel overwhelmed. And if you don't memorize the dates, you have no idea what is going on. So, this is what I would like to do with you today, sir. I would like to do an overview of this shouldn't be hard for you, just 21 centuries of church history. But specifically, I want you to just tell us in your estimation the big oomph. What's the big point of the first century? Well, the birth of the church, Acts chapter 2, day of Pentecost, book of acts, church history is important enough that the Holy Spirit put a book of it in your New Testament. And so we see the book of Acts as the gospel goes forth to the ends of the earth.
All right. So that's is that's zero to 100. The second century, what's the big happening? So second century is early church fathers and the apologists. Probably the person that sticks out the most to me in the second century is a guy named Justin Martyr. We see with him a clear example of one who is engaged in evangelism and apologetics in a hostile world. We really see the church beginning to thrive even in the midst of imperial persecution. All right. Now, you brought up a church father name, and it's interesting to me that you will regularly see pretty much every sect of Christianity, go back and find a church father, and if you really study the church fathers, Tertullian for instance, um, sometimes they got a little wonky. They said some brilliant stuff. How important is it to glean and understand the author so that I'm not quoting a heretic? While it's vitally important to make sure that we're interpreting these men in their context, it's also supremely important to remember that scripture is our authority, not church history.
Yeah, that's right.
So, we evaluate them against the standard of scripture, just like we evaluate ourselves and others in our own day against the standard of scripture.
The Roman Catholic Church wouldn't agree with that, but as Protestants, we would say we glean from it, we learn from it carefully, but it's not authoritative.
Yeah. Because God is our authority. Therefore, his word is our authority. And his word is the authority even over the church. So the church submits to the word of God, not the other way around.
Yeah. Because the church fathers, it it truly is a mixed bag. And and we can understand and this actually is is related to my first question. When we look back at these guys, we might wonder, well, why didn't they get it? Well, we need to remember the church was young. We didn't have the resources we have today. We can't Google information. So, I think we need to cut them a little slack to some degree and just understand that when we go back in time, there's a context that must be considered. And I see that lacking not just in the world, but in the church that we basically reject anything from our forefathers because they were just dumb. They don't live in the 21st century. They lived in the second century. What could they have known? Were these men idiots? No, not at all. These were the disciples of the apostles or in sometimes just a couple of generations removed. Their proximity to the apostolic age means that we need to take them seriously. They were looking to the same scriptures that we look to. They were seeking to serve the same Lord that we serve. So there's a lot we can learn from them. And I think evangelical Christians would be surprised and encouraged by how close the convictions that we see in the early church are to what we believe today because we're all looking to that same standard, the word of God.
All right. So with that third century.
Third century, I would focus on again the heightened persecution of the Roman Empire against the church. We see during the reign of, for example, an emperor named Decius, empirewide persecution. And you think of something like Fox's book of martyrs. This is the time period in which these faithful Christians are being witnesses to Christ even unto death.
And why were they being persecuted?
They were being persecuted because Christianity was having so much impact in the Roman world that paganism was losing its influence. In fact, Polycarp, an earlier church father, is when he was executed, the crowd as they cried out for his execution, they said he was the father of the Christians and the overthrower of our gods, the destroyer of our gods. That's representative of what Christianity was doing to the influence of paganism. And for unbelieving pagan people, they saw Christianity as a threat. Christianity was illegal as a result. And interestingly, do you see parallels between kind of 21st century modus operandi for persecution being similar to the early church basic? It wasn't that they were being killed because of their doctrine of justification. It was that they wouldn't bow to the emperor. They believed that Jesus was exclusive in a pluralistic world. That was odd. They didn't like babies being left out in the wilderness. They didn't like public education. So they were they were slandered or they were cannibals because they were eating body and blood. Those things were used to persecute them. And I kind of see similarities to that today. We're not getting persecuted so much for our beliefs and our theology, but because we get labeled as something that is considered not very progressive.
Yeah. All sorts of rumors about the early Christians that were completely baseless, but were used as the ground for their prosecution and persecution. I think it's to be expected when we see Jesus telling his followers, "You're going to be persecuted." Paul telling Timothy, "Those who desire to live righteous and godly in the present age, they will be persecuted." So, theologically, we understand why this is happening. It's the world against the truth. Historically, we see it play out especially in vivid ways in the third century.
All right. So, the third century, lots of persecution. And I I find it fascinating that the impact of Christianity was was the tip of the spear of persecution because we're we're we didn't get to Constantine yet. So, it's it's not like the authorized religion. Christianity, Jesus is building his church. And that always needs to be what we remember as we study all the details of centuries. Jesus is building his church. History happens in time and this is what was going on in this century. So let's move to the 4th century, the 300s.
Yeah. So you mentioned Constantine very early in the 4th century Christianity goes from being public enemy number one to actually being a protected and promoted viewpoint within the Roman Empire and Constantine is the catalyst of that change. In the year 312, he was fighting a battle fighting for control of the western half of the Roman Empire and he according to his own testimony says that he was converted because he was asking the Christian God for the ability to win this battle. They won the battle and after that Constantine declared Christianity to be a religion that was accepted within the Roman Empire. Now whether or not Constantine was truly converted is a matter of some debate. Find out as you look back over church history was that a good event or a bad event for the church.
Yeah. So we have starting with Constantine really the marriage of church and state in western civilization and initially the Christians were very excited about this because it meant the end of death persecution right.
So in many ways at least initially there were benefits that came from this kind of protection suddenly coming from the state. Rome's not hunting us down. Rome now is protecting and promoting us. Over the long term though, as we look back throughout the Middle Ages, this is such a significant turning point that it really sets in motion some things that are going to cause problems later on. Things like the politics coming into the church are so extreme that now the church is politicized in a way that becomes unhelpful. It begins to affect the purity of the church. You also have a general sense of nominalism as you mentioned and everyone in the Roman Empire claims to be Christian even though many are not. John Calvin looking back on this would say that the Roman Empire was baptized without being converted. Right.
So they professed to be Christians. You also have a lot of paganism and pagan practices coming into the church again from professing Christians who never really left their paganism and simply being kind of Christianized. And the seeds of that corruption are going to manifest themselves in all sorts of unbiblical traditions.
That becomes almost you can't miss that throughout church history and the Holy Roman Empire. You have to look at it and go, "Okay, was it good the mingling of church and state if anybody should be calling for a correct separation. It should be the church far more than the state because we don't want the corruption of the state inside of the church." And yet we'd like our religious freedom if you don't mind. All right. So that's the 4th century Constantine, a mingling of church and state, which I think we're going to see just have more and more fertilizer thrown onto that seed. So going back just for a moment to the 4th century, we also have the beginning of empirewide church councils. For the first time, the church is able to have all of its leadership from all of the Roman Empire come together and meet to discuss theological issues. That wasn't possible during persecution. The first one is in the year 325. It's called the Council of Nicaea and the main issue there was the doctrine of the deity of Christ. When we get into the fifth century a few key events you have a couple more church councils. The biggest of them is the Council of Chalcedon which is talking about the dual nature of Christ. He's fully God and fully man and yet he's only one person. This is where we have the idea of the hypostatic union discussed among theologians. You also a little bit later in the 400s have the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire. So that a united Roman Empire no longer exists. The sort of fragmenting or vestige of the Roman Empire will persist in what's called the Byzantine Empire. It's the Eastern Roman Empire, but the Western half of the Roman Empire falls to these barbarian tribes that eventually bring us the nations of modern Europe.
And 325, of course, that's when the Bible got assembled. You would fail my class, Todd. Um, I just hear that all the time.
No, not at all. And anyone who has actually studied the doctrine of canonicity and understands the way in which the canon of scripture was recognized by the church, rightly understands that 325 and the Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with the establishment of the canon of scripture. Right. Now don't don't worry about my plagiarism because that's okay these days but I take a line that I heard from you and I went oh that's brilliant let's see if I can lead you into what you said that is so memorable let's see if you remember it that you said that Jesus he was the one who authorized the Old Testament canon but he's also the one who yeah so when we think of canonicity as Protestants Christ determines the canon so he affirmed the 39 books of the Old Testament the canon of his day as scripture and he authorized his apostles to give us the 27 books of the New Testament. So when someone asks you as a Protestant, why do you believe in these 66 books? The answer is because the Lord Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and he affirmed the Old Testament and he authorized the New Testament. When we submit to these books, we're submitting to him.
Right? So when somebody makes the accusation, it wasn't until 325, is it fair to say that the New Testament canon we recognize today was already identified in the first century? The apostolic authority behind it was absolutely recognized in the first, second, third century. When we see the early church fathers talking about what scripture is, it's the Old Testament and it's the writings of the apostles. So the principles of it, absolutely.
All right, we've made our way up to the fifth century, the 400s. Here's here's the generalized question that I think a lot of people have about church history. When did the church start going off the rails? Are we getting close?
Yeah. So, I think the seeds of the corruption that we're going to see the fruit of corruption a little bit later. The seeds of the corruption are really sown in the fourth and fifth centuries because of the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity which brought into Christendom a lot of pagan influences things that kind of got Christianized but they really weren't Christian or biblical concepts and those things are going to bear fruit down the road that's going to be really unhelpful the full manifestation or fruition of that I would say we see in the 12th and 13th centuries. So I think it's kind of a long progression of the corruption growing worse and worse steadily throughout the Middle Ages.
Okay. So from the 4th century to the 12th century, were there any true Christians?
Oh yes, absolutely. We don't want to have an Elijah complex where we think we're the only one left, right? And God says, "I have a remnant." I think God always has a remnant throughout the history of the church. But what is it that defines a true Christian? And a true Christian rightly understands who God is, who Christ is, rightly understands the authority of scripture over tradition, rightly understands that the gospel is that we are saved by grace through faith based on the work of Christ and apart from our own self-righteous works.
So there were always people that believed in grace by faith. Yes.
Throughout the ages, it's just that we see what we know today as the Roman Catholic Church just this I guess it would be to the left just going off course progressively. Which brings us to the 6th century and I'll maybe ask you to summarize about 6 through why don't we do 6 through 10 because it's kind of a quiet season. There were a couple of councils in the 400s but it was kind of a quiet season of the church. What's the what's what was going on for those centuries?
Yeah. So the 6th to 10th century we would call the early Middle Ages sometimes called the period of late antiquity. You have in western civilization again the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire and really the resetting of western culture through what's called the feudal system as these barbarian tribal groups begin to form into eventually the nations of Europe. From a church history standpoint in the Eastern Roman Empire you have the growth of Roman Christendom. You have the rise of Islam in Arabia. So the Byzantine Empire is kind of busy fighting with Muslim armies. In the west you have really the development of the Roman Catholic papacy in a way that is really unhelpful. The papacy becomes very very corrupt. So that by the time we get to the 9th and 10th centuries we could really call those the dark ages. And by that I mean spiritually dark right? But then it almost progresses in darkness. At least inside of the Roman Catholic system it was getting bloody. We have the Crusades. We have the Inquisitions. We have the division between the Eastern church and the Western church. By the way, do you think that that split was actually valid about the person the the three persons of the Trinity and the submission of the Holy Spirit being sent? Was that a big enough issue to divide?
Yeah. So 1054 the theological issue was a debate surrounding what's called the filioque clause. So in the Greek version of the Nicene Creed it says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. In the Latin translation of that it's actually the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed but in the >> we all know that >> in the Latin translation of that they added the phrase and the Son which in Latin is filioque. And so there was debate about that between the East and the West. But the split honestly wasn't really about that theological issue. It was about whether or not the Pope should be considered by the East to be the supreme leader of the church. So it was about papal supremacy. It was about papal authority. And when Pope Leo the 9th sent a delegation to Michael Cerularius who was the Patriarch of Constantinople and demanded that the Patriarch recognize the Pope as having the prime place. The East refused to do that. And the net result of that was that the delegation excommunicated the Patriarch and the Patriarch excommunicated the delegation. So in essence the representatives of each half excommunicated the other side.
Right. And quickly for the sake of young people who are looking for the true church. Which was the true church? The Eastern Orthodox or the Roman Catholic Church?
Yeah. Unfortunately both of them are heading into apostasy which is why we need a reformation and we need it bad.
Yeah. And and and and the point being too that church history isn't necessarily about Roman Catholicism, Eastern. It's Jesus building his actual church. That isn't through a denominational line or a line of sects or whatever the theology is. It's the true church of all born again believers. So if you're looking to figure out your Christian heritage to be a part of something that goes back generationally, don't look to a system. Look to Jesus and all of his followers. That is the true church. And if you're born again, you are connected to that. And you don't need to go sniffing around Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism to find your true Christian heritage.