Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, and Soli Deo Gloria. These are the five solas of the Protestant Reformation, and they convey to us the basic tenets of the Protestant Reformation that we were just praying about. It's October, of course, and as we approach Reformation Day, which we have toward the end of this month, I'd like to revisit these tenets with you. And because all of these things are not just dead facts, but are living and were provided to us within a certain context, I'd like to paint for you that background, that context, to the end that we can better understand not only the basic tenets of the Reformation, the Christian faith, but the way that it was given to us, the context in which these things were understood and championed, and how much people suffered to give these things to us today. So there's a lot of places where we can start. if we consider the story and the background of the five solas in the Reformation. But I like to start with a man who was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was not somebody who was from a princely lineage. He was what you might call a man of the people. of common stock. By his work, he was able to get into the university and earn advanced degrees. Later, he taught in the university itself, and he became a great preacher. He came to stand for some of the ideals of the Reformation, and in that, he stood on the basis of scripture alone and Christ alone, a couple of the key solas that we talked about earlier. He protested many of the things that the later reformers would protest. And for his efforts, he suffered, he bled. The man that I'm speaking about is, of course, Jan Hus. You thought I was going to say Martin Luther, didn't you? Jan Hus. So, well, for the convenience of our discussions, we'll be using the anglicized name John Hus. So John Hus was not a German like Martin Luther, but he was from Bohemia, which if you think where is Bohemia today, that's the modern day, more or less the modern day Czech Republic. And so he was from the city, around the city of Prague. Hus lived from 1369 to 1415. So remember, this is long before the Reformation took place in the 16th century. So I want to think a little bit, before we get into all of his ideas, I want to think about the context in which he lived. From a cultural standpoint, he taught in the university and he preached. That university was dominated by German professors, as Bohemia in turn was kind of dominated culturally by the Germans themselves. And of course, when we talk about Germans, we're not talking about the modern day Germany, because all of these little principalities had not yet collected themselves into a single nation of Germany, but they were all part Germanic states, nation states within the Holy Roman Empire. From a religious standpoint, this was the time of the three popes. So you might remember within your study of history that at one point there were three popes. And this is of course not normal. And what happened there was that the cardinals who elected the popes decided to elect a certain man. They later regretted that decision, so they elected another guy. So now you had two popes. This, of course, was not good. So a council convened to settle the matter. They elected another guy, and the first student stepped down. So now you had three popes. So what are you going to do? They can't all be speaking ex cathedra. So you've got three popes. You've got the setting in which the Bohemians were dominated by culturally and from an educational standpoint by the Germans. And so there was a nationalistic pride there that was kind of bubbling up and that was suppressed a bit by the influence of the Germans. Many of the Czechs were actually very enthusiastic about religious reform. And these ideas of religious reform were being introduced through the writings of Wycliffe. And Wycliffe, if you recall, was from England. And he championed some of the same ideas that we associate with the Protestant Reformation, the ideas of Solus Christus, the idea of Sola Scriptura. He came to look at things like the papacy and question the papacy. He looked at things like indulgences and questioned indulgences and so on. He did not go all the way to some of the teachings of Martin Luther and Calvin and others, but was a forerunner of the Reformation in that some of these, he questioned some of these things that the reformers later built upon. So these ideas of Wycliffe were taking root in Bohemia. The Germans were kind of anti-reform, and the Czechs were kind of reform, and we're gonna get to the basis for that in a few minutes. But before we do that, let's consider a little bit the economical situation. The church at the time was a massive landowner in Bohemia. In fact, as I understand, the church owned something like more than half of the land in Bohemia, and the church was known among the common people as being kind of a heavy tax master. They owned the land, they taxed the people who lived there, and so the people felt very much under the thumb of the Roman Catholic Church. They weren't too happy about it. From the secular viewpoint, the people of Bohemia at that time were ruled by a man named King Wenceslas. This is not the good King Wenceslas that you know. So before you start thinking about that song, this was not the good King Wenceslas. That guy lived a couple of centuries before, and he was actually not a king, but just a duke. Though he was actually later elevated to the position of king by the Emperor after his death. What good that did him, I do not know. In any event, this was not good King Wenceslas, this was kind of bad King Wenceslas. He wasn't all bad, but we're going to get into this in a little bit, but he kind of he was straddling both sides of the fence. On the one hand, he relied on Czech nationalism or Bohemian nationalism. On the other side, he was not exactly pro-Reformation for reasons we'll get to soon. So this is what was going on. There was a lot of instability, right? There was this nationalism that was bubbling up, this feeling of domination by foreign forces, large foreign powers. The situation with the three popes all kind of beating each other over the heads. and each one trying to claim primacy over the Roman Catholic Church, this situation with the church demanding heavy taxes on the people, the situation with this king who was kind of pursuing his own political agenda, sometimes at the expense of the people in the Reformation, and so there was a lot of instability because of all of these things, and this was the backdrop in which John Huss came to be, in which he studied, in which he pursued his early career. So who was John Huss and what did he believe? Well, John Huss, as I said earlier, was the child of people who were rather poor, common people of Bohemia. His father died when he was young. His mother loved him dearly, was a very devout woman, prayed for him without ceasing, managed to get him into the university where he studied as a charity scholar. And he did fairly well for himself in the university. In fact, he was known for his eloquence. He eventually earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, graduated, and eventually became a professor within the university, and I think he was even the chair of the philosophy department, if I'm not mistaken. And in addition to all of these accomplishments, he also became preacher of a chapel known as Bethlehem, the Bethlehem Chapel. One of the things that was interesting about that, this was not a cathedral, this was not a parish church, this was a chapel, and the preaching was done in the language of the people. So you might be hearing this and thinking, wow, this sounds kind of familiar. The ideas that this person had were similar to some of those that we've heard about, especially when we think of people like Wycliffe and Luther. And you'll notice that that is going to be more and more and more so as we go through our study today. Like Luther, Huss had, early on, no intention of leaving the Catholic Church. He had no intention of even significantly altering the doctrines of the Catholic Church. But he looked around himself, much like Luther did. Remember this story about Luther when he made his pilgrimage to Rome, and he looked around, and he saw the priests were living large, and he saw prostitution, and he saw all this corruption, and he came back, and was totally disillusioned, right? Well, Hus kind of went through a similar situation. He looked around himself, Bohemia, and said, well, we've got three popes here. They're kind of beating each other over the head. they're issuing indulgences, and they're using these indulgences to fight each other, right? So Huston come along and say, indulgences are bad. We believe in salvation by faith. We're saved through grace by faith. No, he did not decry indulgences as a form of penance initially, but he looked at the abuse and said, this is bad. So months ago, we talked about indulgences as kind of how they came to be and what they were supposed to mean. And if we think about this in historical context, why did people have indulgences? What did they really mean? Well, they were part of the sacrament of penance, and penance simply meant this. When you sinned, you had to repent. And a true repentance doesn't just mean, I'm sorry, you go do the same thing again. No, a true repentance means that you are genuinely sorry, that you confess your sin, and that by your life and your actions, you show that you are sorry. That is the heart of penance. And so historically, in the ancient church, remember we talked about the fact that the church was persecuted, and some of the people held fast, they suffered and bled and even died for the faith. While other people, when they became persecuted, what did they do? They made incense to the emperor, they did whatever was needed to be done in order to not be persecuted, and those people were called the lapsed, right? So there's a big question about what to do with the lapsed. And within that context, the doctrine of penance came to be. And you can see historically why simply saying, I'm sorry, what we might call easy believism was unacceptable. It's not acceptable in our day, of course, either. But in those days, the people were under persecution. And if you were being persecuted, what were you to say to the person who lapsed after you've lost perhaps loved ones after you've been persecuted and so on. So I don't want to get off into too much of a tangent there, but this is just to say that the doctrine of penance had good intentions, and there was a historical basis for really wanting to demonstrate the notion of penitence. But there's a slippery slope, it would seem, between that notion and the sales of an indulgence which would amount to the forgiveness of sins. So again, you have three popes, they're fighting against each other, they issue these indulgences to the people who are, of course, mostly poor. People are giving much of what they have to buy these indulgences and then relying on them for their forgiveness, right? Huss himself purchased an indulgence when he was a young man. He forked over a lot of money to do so, and so this was in his mind as he decried this. He saw what was going on, and he was very understandably upset about it. Corruption. The archbishop at the time actually purchased his position as Archbishop when he was 25 years old for whatever sum of money it was. For a large sum of money, he paid that, and through this payment, he obtained the title Archbishop. So Huss looked at that and said, you know, this is not good either. He looked at what the popes were doing, you know, fighting each other. He said, this is not good. He looked at the church, which owned most of the land, was heavily taxing the peasants. And of course, he said, this is not good. So the church is not exactly living up to its ideals, he recognized this, and this was his beef. This was his problem with the church. In fact, he referred to the priests as the Lord's fat ones. I thought that was kind of funny. All right. So, a lot of people kind of agreed with him that they didn't like these abuses, and I don't think it was, people were largely fooled. I think people looked around and they saw these abuses going on, and a lot of people were upset about it, especially the Czech people who were suffering, or the bohemians, we should call them. However, the leadership was not amused. So, the people in power, the church leadership, the secular leadership, were not amused. Well, why? Because of course they are the ones benefiting from this, right? They're the ones collecting the rent, the taxes, they're the ones being paid the indulgences, and by the way, this so-called Bad King Winsless was on the payroll too. So these payments that came in the form of indulgences, Bad King Winsless would also cash in on this. So you can see how this deck was stacked. And it was not stacked in such a way to further the ideals of the church. And so this was the background and what was going on in Hassas Day and this is the problem that he had with the church. So he spoke about these, he spoke against these things. And In addition to these concerns, there were a number of other things that distinguished Hus and made him persona non grata in the view of the leadership of the church and of the land. One of those things was that he preached in the Czech language rather than in Latin. He refused to wear the clerical garb he believed that contributed to an illegitimate distinction between the laity and the clergy. He favored congregational singing. So again, congregational singing was not a thing before the Reformation, at least in medieval times. And he desired reformation of the church. So all of these things contributed to making him popular with the people, but very unpopular with their leaders. So what are they gonna do about that? Well, Archbishop, his name was Zibnick, he's not pleased with this, so he seeks assistance from the Pope to silence Hus, which he achieved through the payment of a large bribe. And this response from the Pope resulted in an investigation into the spread of Wycliffe's doctrines, And in order that preaching should take place only in cathedrals, parish churches, and monasteries, remember, Huss did not preach in a cathedral. So when you and I think about cathedral, I think, what do we think about? These big fancy churches with the flying buttresses and tall spires and all the statues and whatnot, and maybe the Tiffany windows, right? That's what we think about when we think about cathedral. Think about that word, cathedral. What does that mean? Cathedral comes from the word cathedra, it meant chair or throne. The throne was where the bishop sat, okay? It was a symbolic seat of his power. So the cathedral was the seat of the bishop's power. In other words, the archbishop was saying, I'm taking control of the situation and I'm going to silence this guy, he's not going to be able to preach anymore because he can't preach in chapels, right? That was the goal. What do you think Huss did? Huss thought about this, and he determined that, I can't stop preaching. I'm doing what I have to do. I'm doing what I'm called to do. So he continued to preach in the language of the people at the chapel. So this escalated into something of a conflict between Hus and the leadership of the church. Archbishop Zibnick responded by burning Wycliffe's books. The public was so outraged by this that they were after the guy's blood, and he had to flee for his life to a local castle to keep his skin. Hus continues preaching. And not surprisingly, as he's preaching, he's looking at what's going on. He sees the action of the pope in trying to silence him. He sees these crusades being called by the pope against the other popes, these indulgences being issued to finance his whole business. And he says, you know what? An unworthy Pope is not to be obeyed. Jesus Christ, not the Pope, was the head of the church. Does that remind you of a certain sola? Solus Christus, right? One of the solas of the Reformation, Solus Christus. Christ is the head of the church, not the Pope, because when we observe the actions of the Pope, we must come to the conclusion that this is a person that can't be completely relied upon, especially when there are three of them. All right. So as this debacle involving the three popes continued, he came to that conclusion about sola scriptura, what I'm gonna call sola scriptura, I don't think he called it, but he simply said that Christ is the head of the church. He also observed the abuse of these indulgences, as we said, and led him to the conclusions that these were wrong and that only God could grant forgiveness. And he said, you know what? If the pope and if the church are in a position to forgive people's sins who are suffering in purgatory, why don't they just do it? Why do people have to pay for them to do it, right? So, another thing that made him popular with people and also popular with people who were getting paid by the people for doing this. So indulgences were bad. Solus Christus, Christ is the head of the church. Indulgences are sinful. So King Wenceslas sees this, and of course he had been interested in some of what Jan Hus was doing because he relied on Czech nationalism or Bohemian nationalism to support his own power. But when Hus starts preaching against indulgences that Wenceslas relies upon for his own revenue stream, Well, that was kind of the end of the support from bad King Winsless. And that was that. So, what is the result? Hus is excommunicated. By the way, I didn't mention this before, he's actually excommunicated before when he refused to stop preaching. Now he's excommunicated a second time. This time, not for just disobedience, but for heresy. So now he is being regarded as a heretic because of the things that he was saying. So he keeps preaching. The situation escalates. The leadership of the church places the city of Prague under an interdict, and basically what that means is the sacraments were withheld from that city during that time, and if you know anything about the Catholic Church, it is a church of sacraments, and so these sacraments are regarded as being extremely important. For example, you know, last rites. If somebody passes away, they're provided last rites. These things are are regarded as giving grace, right? That is important to salvation. And so if these things are being withheld, that is, the church is bringing a massive leverage to bear and putting a lot of pressure on the city to give up Hus, to make Hus stop, to make him go away. So Hus looks at all this and he says, you know what, I need to keep preaching, but the people are suffering because of this, so I'm gonna leave. So he leaves Prague. And he goes about the countryside preaching. He continues to preach. The situation continues to escalate. A great council is called in the city of Constance. So this council was not specifically to deal with John Hus. It was to deal with a number of things, including the issue of the three popes. So it was going to try to put that issue to rest, right? Because that was really a crisis of the day. I think as Protestants, some of us don't really understand the significance and importance of the Pope. I remember when I was a young boy, when the Pope John Paul was shot, and around the same time President Reagan was shot, I asked my dad, who is more important? And my dad said, well, to us, the President is, but to the Catholics, maybe the Pope is. But this issue with three popes was a critical issue, as you can well imagine. So, there is this council in Constance, and it's dealing with that issue, and it's also dealing with Hus. So, should Hus come or should Hus not come? Because he knows what's waiting for him if he does, or at least he fears what's waiting for him if he does, as you and I can well imagine what the church would like to do with him if it can get his hands on him. But the emperor, his name is Sigismund, the Holy Roman Empire, He's, by the way, half-brother to bad King Launceless. Holy Roman Emperor grants him safe passage. Does that remind you of anything? Great counsel, safe passage from the emperor. Okay, the great reformer goes to defend himself. Just to remind you a little bit of Luther, his story. Anyway, Huss says, okay, he goes to Constance, and when he arrives, he's taken by the church leadership and he is told to recant. So instead of appearing before the Grand Council and being able to defend himself, the church tries to kind of manage him separately. He's really not given much of an opportunity to speak. He's placed in confinement, and so this whole safe passage that he was granted, which normally would convey the idea that you would be safe, you could speak, you could return, that was thrown out the window. So Emperor Sigismund is kind of standing there with a certain amount of egg on his face because he granted safe passage. So a hundred years later, when this happened to Luther, the Kaiser at that time granted safe passage, and safe passage was given. But at this time, Sigismund saw the lay of the land. This guy's kind of unpopular with leadership of the church, I kind of need the church. So he did what was politically expedient for himself, and he kind of washed his hands of Huss. and he didn't do anything to help him. And in fact, certain historians say that he actually worked against him and even went beyond what the church was doing in terms of confining him and preventing him from speaking and so on. So Hus is placed in a secure cell and he's brought before the leaders in chains They ask him about his so-called heretical views. He, of course, responds and says that he doesn't hold heretical views. The debate goes on for a while, and eventually he sees the way things are, and he knows that he's not going to get a fair hearing, and he says what you can imagine he would say in that situation. Again, kind of reminds me of Luther's statements a little bit. I appeal to Jesus Christ, the only judge who is almighty and completely just. In his hands I place my cause, since he will judge each, not on the basis of false witnesses and erring counsels, but on truth and justice. So that really reminds me of some of the last statements, not the last statements, but the statements of Luther as he defended himself in Worms, in the famous Diet of Worms. So on July 6th, all this comes to a head. Hus is dragged to the cathedral. He's adorned in his priestly garments, which were then torn from him. So if you ever wondered what defrocking means and where that comes from, this is kind of the idea here. He was in his frock and they defrocked him. So they pulled off his priestly garments and they put on his, they shaved his head, So you no longer have this tantra that the people wore, the priests wore, and they replaced that with a paper crown that was decorated with demons. This almost reminds me of the persecution of Christ himself, doesn't it? The throne of crowns. Huss's last words, he prayed, Lord Jesus, it is for thee that I patiently endure this cruel death. I pray thee to have mercy on my enemies. Reminiscent once again of Christ himself in some of his last words on the cross. As he died, he was heard reciting the Psalms. But his executioners took little heed of this and took little pity on him. They burned him at the stake. After he was burned, they took his ashes and threw them in the lakes so that nobody could take those ashes and bury them and have them. They eradicated or sought to eradicate him from the face of the earth. So what happened? As I was reading about this, I was reminded a little bit of that movie Braveheart. I'm not really recommending this movie to you, but if you have seen it, you remember in Braveheart, or if you know the story of Braveheart, that the hero there was persecuted and he was killed, and then after he was killed, you kind of expected that was the end of things, but then the people stood up and they fought for the independence. So here, what would you expect to happen? The leader has been killed, the emperor and the church both stand united against his ideas and against those who practice them, you would expect that that might be the end of things, right? But no. Soon after, 452, 452 noblemen, this is a large assembly of noblemen, gathered in an assembly and announced their agreement with Hus in opposition to the teachings of the church in these matters. Members from all the classes came together to support the movement, and they developed four articles as the basis for this resistance, and this included, number one, the word of God was to be preached freely throughout the kingdom. Right? Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Communion. both bread and wine would be given to the laity. And here's something that surprised me a little bit. I think a lot of us are pretty familiar with the story of the Reformation. And I have been to masses any number of times, and it never really occurred to me. But within communion, the laity were not given the bread and the wine. They were given the bread only, or a wafer only. The wine was withheld for the priests. So you had kind of this double standard of communion, and that was one of the key things that Huss stood against. He said the normal people should be receiving the bread and the wine, the sacraments, as they were supposed to be given, not just the bread. And so, as I understand, there are various arguments as to why the people would be given the bread only, and I'm no great authority on this, that which I read, some arguments stated things along the lines of their concerns about the people dropping the wine. And if you think about what people believed that the wine was, that it really was turned into the blood of Christ, obviously you won't want it to be spilled. Other people pointed out that the body itself has blood in it, so if the people eat the bread, then In effect, they're also getting the cup in a certain sense. But Huss looked at this and, you know, he called nonsense on that. And he said the people should have the bread and the wine. And so that was one of the main issues that he was preaching against. So this was one of the four points. Both the bread and the wine would be given to all the church. The clergy should be deprived of its wealth and live in apostolic poverty. You can imagine how well that one went over. Gross and public sin, especially simony, would be properly punished. So again, people like the archbishop that had purchased their position, and it's by no means an isolated incident, that that would be not okay. That would be dealt with, right? So what do you think the leadership of the church said to this? Sounds good? No, they said, we've killed your leader, and now you are going to obey, right? So there was war. And you might look at Hussites and the people of Bohemia and say, you know, they have this vast army arrayed against them. Do they stand a chance? the church leadership called for a series of crusades against the Hussites and those who believe in the teachings of Wycliffe. One might think that could have been the end of them, but it was not. The people bonded together, they stood together against those forces of these crusades, and they won resoundingly. And here's what's interesting. They were opposed by an army that amounted to around 100,000 soldiers. 100,000 in the 14th century or the 15th century. You know, the 13th, the 1400s, this was a lot of people. You think about the American Revolution. How many British were sent to quell the American Revolution? General Howe had within his forces, I believe, 30,000 people, 30,000 soldiers. That was one of the largest expeditionary forces ever sent. 30,000. All in all, within the American Revolution, Britain employed around 50,000 soldiers. This is 100,000, right? And they're being resisted by the people. So here's another thing that's interesting and that I learned in preparation for today's lesson. They employed interesting battle tactics and they developed something called a battle wagon, which is they took a peasant's cart, they armored the sides of it, they created slits from which they fired cannon. So they used cannons, they put these cannons in these peasant's wagons which they armored And they created slits also where you could shoot bows and crossbows. And so think about these things as medieval tanks. So they developed these medieval tanks. And this is fascinating, right? And quite unintentionally, I learned as I was reviewing this, The Hussite Battle Wagon, as it came to be called, is actually a feature in the video game, I think it's called Age of Empires, if you've ever heard of that or played that. The Hussite Battle Wagon is one of those elements that you can bring to bear with in your battle. So I'm not a big video game guy, but I just thought it was funny that even in the 21st century computer games, you have Hussite Battle Wagons. Funny, so the people led by these noblemen, they took these battle wagons which they devised and they employed them to great effect against the crusades sent by the church and the state to the end that they overwhelmingly crushed the forces of Emperor Sigismund in 1421, 1422, 1427, and 1431. So they came back again and again and again and again to try to overwhelm the followers of Hus, and they could not. So finally, after blooding their nose for a decade, they said, well, I guess we're not gonna beat them in war. I suppose we have to talk to them. So after all of these defeats, the forces of the church and state came together with these quote-unquote Protestants, and they came to a reconciliation whereby these four articles would be maintained and implemented within the church, and whereby the Bohemian Church would once again be within the Catholic fold. So peace was achieved. and a certain degree of reformation was achieved. Not everybody was completely convinced by this. So some people said, no, I don't believe it, I'm not convinced by this council. So they maintained their separation. And one of those groups went on to to form a body called Unitas Fratrum. That means the union of the brethren. And this movement went on in time to be known as the Moravian Church. I don't know all that much about the Moravian Church, but I know it's still around. And maybe you've seen them. So this is an ancient denomination. Another remnant of this joined later with the Calvinist movement during the Protestant Reformation. So we have close ties to these, some of these folks. Now not everybody that called themselves a Hussite was let's say, very orthodox. In fact, some of the most extreme people to take part in this engagement were folks that were very far from being orthodox, and they preached things like what amounted to communism, what amounted to, we'll call it free love, what amounted to chaos and anarchy. So We cannot view this in a simplistic way in which it was, let's say, the forces of good versus evil, because I think it was a bit mixed. But in any event, we can see a close line between our own historic faith and our own roots and these people. All right. Hus is forerunner of the Reformation. Hus was said to have made a certain statement just before his death when he was burned at the stake. He was said to have said to his captors, you can burn this goose, but in a hundred years, a swine will come whom you will be incapable of killing. So Hus' last name, Hus, it means goose. Okay, so he says, you can kill this goose, but in time, a swan will come whom you will be incapable of killing. And of course, historically, the reference there is to Martin Luther. Well, he probably didn't say this. It was probably something that was made up later to support the Lutheran cause. But at any rate, it's interesting that he did say that because one of his key nemesis name was Johannes Zacharias. That man was actually buried within an Augustinian monastery in Erfurt. A century later, a young priest was ordained in that monastery, and he knelt down prostrate on the floor over the bones, as it were, of Zacharias. and he was ordained into the priesthood. That man's name was Martin Luther. So he may not have said it, but it did somehow come to pass, which is interesting. So in a sense, in many ways, Hus was something of a Protestant and definitely a forerunner of the Reformation, and in that he kind of paved the way for the Reformation. All right. That was meant to be an introduction originally. But when I was studying this, I got so carried away with and so fascinated by this history that I wanted to share it with you. But I do want to get into not only the people that brought us the solas, but the solas themselves. So we're not going to be able to get through all of the remaining material today, but I would like to start to introduce it, and the next time we'll continue on with this. What is Reformed Theology? Well, Reformed Theology has various characteristics. One of those characteristics is that it is systematic. So one of the things that Reformed theology is known for is the way that it regards the entirety of Scripture and it regards the continuity of God's promises throughout Scripture in the Old and New Testament. We can think about that in terms of covenant theology and the covenant that God established with his people throughout the Old and New Testaments. The primary assumption there is that the Bible is coherent and that every doctrine of Christianity touches every other doctrine in some way. The whole thing is intricately related. Next point, reformed theology is Catholic. Now when we hear the word Catholic, we of course think about Roman Catholic, don't we? But some of us know from past teachings that the word Catholic doesn't only refer to the Roman Catholic Church, but it refers to the idea of the church as the universal church of Christ, the people of Christ. And so I think that is something that is fairly well known among us. But the word Catholic has meanings beyond this, which are relevant to this body of the church. It doesn't simply mean universal. The meaning goes beyond that to also indicate according to the whole. Now I'm going to quote to you from a book that I've been reading that's been very informative and helpful throughout these studies, written by Justo Gonzalez. It's called The Story of Christianity. And he says it better than I could, so I'm just going to quote here. The word Catholic means universal, but it also means according to the whole. To separate itself from the various heretical groups and sects, the ancient church began calling itself Catholic. This title underscored both its universality and the inclusiveness of the witness on which it stood. It was the church according to the whole, that is, according to the total witness of all the apostles and all the evangelists. So do you remember months ago when we were talking about the Gnostics? What are the, this is a basic Gnostic belief. Gnostics believe in some sort of secret tradition, right? Some sort of secret knowledge. Gnosis, that's what it means. The secret knowledge. that to really be saved and to be somebody who was in the know, you had to have this secret knowledge that was not available to everybody, but it was supposedly passed down through this or that teacher or apostle or evangelist. And so today I think you can go out and buy the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, and I think there are any number of Gnostic Gospels. But that was the idea of the Gnostics, that there was this special revelation, it was not widely available. The Catholic tradition, by contrast, received its teaching from the whole of the Church Fathers, the Apostles, the Evangelists, and so there was no business with special knowledge. It was the teaching of the whole of the Apostles that they based their witness upon. That was what it meant to be Catholic. The various Gnostics groups were not Catholic because they could not claim this broad foundation. Indeed, those among them who claimed apostolic origins did so on the basis of a hypothetical secret tradition handed down through a single apostle. Only the Church Catholic, the Church according to the whole, could lay claim to the entire apostolic witness. This was the warranty of the Church's orthodox. I think it should be the church's orthodoxy, and was the reason why Catholic eventually became a synonym for orthodox or correct teaching. Of course, we call ourselves what? The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, right? Which also calls upon that word orthodox meaning true or correct teaching. Ironically, This, through an evolution that took centuries, debates regarding the true meaning of Catholic, came to be centered on the person and authority of a single apostle, Peter. Right? So we can think about the church the way that it established the pacacy on the basis of this apostolic, sense of apostolic continuity, that Peter was supposedly the first pope and that the popes that came after that were in this apostolic chain. So it kind of went through a change, didn't it? This notion of Catholic from meeting the whole to being identified very strongly with the witness of St. Peter. So these common core doctrines are the foundations upon which the others rest. There's a whole body of doctrine and belief that we share in common, not only with each other within this church, within our denomination, but within many other denominations, too. So there are distinctives within the Reformed faith and the Reformed confession, which not everybody holds. But there is a very large body of truths that we all hold in common. And these are the core foundation upon which the others rest. All right, Reformed theology is evangelical. We're going to have to wait with that till next week's lesson, but I hope and pray that the material that we went over today was interesting and helpful to you, because when we think about things like Solus Christus, Sola Scriptura, and the rest of the Solas and the basis for the Protestant Reformation and Christian thought, We need to understand, I think, the context in which this was handed down. Okay. Thank you for that, and let's close with prayer.