All right, why don't we get started? Let's open in prayer. Thank you. I'm getting signs from both Rose and Elder Terpstra to raise the volume of my voice. Please do continue to remind me. I have a tendency to trail off. Dear Lord God, maker of heaven and earth, sovereign over all creation, we gather today to study your word and the history of your people, that we may better understand your revelation to mankind, both in the scriptures and more generally through your acts of providence. May you bless this lesson in our discussions, that we might grow in knowledge and grace, not unto our own glory, but unto your glory, that we may be evermore conformed into the image of your Son, our dear Savior and Redeemer, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Over the next couple weeks, we're going to be looking at two debates in the early church, which were prominent in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, if you want to follow along in your timeline. Unlike the debates that we've covered thus far in church history over the Judaizers, or the Gnostics, or the various views of the Trinity, these debates did not start as Christological debates, but largely as ecclesiological ones. Ecclesiology is the study of the nature of the church. As we'll see in a moment, going from an oppressed faith to a state religion was not necessarily an easy transition for the Christian faith. As the toleration of Constantine, who we looked at the last few weeks, gave way to the establishment of the Christian church as the only valid religion in the Roman Empire, many questions arose around the meaning of the church and the meaning of the Christian life if it was free from suffering at the hands of the civil magistrate. In particular, we're going to look at issues around the meaning of the sacraments and their administration, as well as issues around how we are to understand God's law and the state of fallen men. In many popular views of Christian history, these are considered the side debates, in part because they don't have any great counsels attached to them. A lot of history books give them short shrift and little coverage, if any, being sandwiched between the chapters on Nicaea, which we looked at the last few weeks, and the chapters on Chalcedon, which we'll cover later. Personally, I think this characterization is grossly unfair, however. These questions of what it means to be a church and what it means to be a Christian are perhaps some of the most universal questions of our faith. There are also questions that, frankly, we still debate in our day far more often than we debate things like the begottenness of the Son or the two natures of Christ the God-man. This period is also important because of whom God used in the debates of this day. Just as in spring we saw Irenaeus give the most eloquent defense of Orthodox Christianity against Gnosticism, and last week we saw Athanasius defend the Trinity against Arianism, today we're going to see another great theologian. Augustine was one of the preeminent theologians of this time period, and he was so influential that over a thousand years later, at the time of the Reformation, both sides were still claiming him as their own. Over the next two weeks, we're gonna see him grappling with essential questions of the faith. Like what's the relationship between the sacraments and salvation? What makes the sacraments valid? What is the natural state of man? And may man in his natural state be saved, and how so? These are especially important questions, because as we've said, there's still disagreement and confusion in the broader church to this day about them. In understanding the historical development of these doctrines, we hope to both be strengthened by the wisdom that God revealed to the saints who went before us, as well as better understand the other viewpoints and where they came from and their effects on the church. Before we get into the particular debates, we'll again need to cover some historical backdrop, as the theological debates of this era were in part spurred on by new political realities. After Nicaea, the Roman state continued taking an increasingly active role in promoting and defining Christianity. As we saw in our discussions on Nicaea, not all of Constantine's successors had particularly orthodox Trinitarian views. By God's providence, the oppression of Trinitarian orthodoxy ended with the reign of Emperor Theodosius in the late 300s. A strong defender of Trinitarian Christianity, he said non-Trinitarian Christian sects were nothing but, quote, foolish madmen. In 381, he called a church council in Constantinople to reaffirm Nicene orthodoxy and to clarify the co-equality of the spirit along with the father and the son. As we saw last week, it was at this council that the final form took shape of what we refer to as the Nicene Creed today. Theodosius went further than his forebears, however. He wished not only to stop suppression of Trinitarian Christianity, but to institute it as the state religion of Rome. He made this official in 380 in the Edict of Thessalonica, just like Constantine had tolerated Christianity in the Edict of Milan about 70 years earlier. We're going to spend a moment and unpack what this meant for the church. Within a short span of under a century, the Orthodox faith had seen its status in the Roman state whipsaw back and forth multiple times. At the beginning of the fourth century under Diocletian, like we talked about a number of weeks back, the Orthodox faith was blamed for the ills of Rome and was singled out for state oppression. Then, as we looked at, following Constantine's vision, Christianity became a tolerated religion. Throughout his life, he took an ever more active role in Christianity, culminating in the convening of the Council of Nicaea. Under his successors, many of whom were Arians, the Trinitarian Church was viewed as an unbending group, which needed to be marginalized for the sake of peace and unity within the empire. We saw that in this period, while Christianity was generally the proclaimed religion of the political elite, defenders of the true Christian faith, such as Athanasius, suffered greatly, like we talked about last week. Now as we come to the close of the fourth century, under Theodosius, The shoe is on the other foot. Trinitarian orthodoxy has become the sole tolerated religion of the empire. And all other religions or Christian sects will now be made to feel the wrath of the Roman magistrate. Unlike Constantine, whose edict mandated tolerance for all religions in 313, Theodosius explicitly banned pagan practices, such as blood sacrifice, divination, and celebration of pagan holidays. Some pagan rituals were even made to carry the punishment of death. The toleration of Constantine and the mandate of Theodosius in many ways represent two poles of thought on Christian governance. Namely, that of a state without official religion and of tolerance, and on the other extreme, an establishment of a state church that enforces church doctrine. Even Presbyterians are divided on this issue and spend just a moment going over the controversies that even Presbyterianism has had over this issue. We're going to look at quotation number one in the handout. So in the original drafting of the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 23, on the civil magistrate, I've excerpted it here. It writes, it is his, that is the civil magistrate's duty, to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship, and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed." So what were the original Westminster divines trying to say about the role of the civil magistrate of government? Would they have agreed more with an edict of Milan toleration for all religions, or were they more in the Theodosius camp? Yeah, they believed in an establishment of a state religion, of state Presbyterianism, right? So it's clear that the text affirms here that they see a role for the civil magistrate in suppressing heresy and maintaining unity and enforcing religious observance, not unlike Theodosius. He also wished to protect the church and suppress blasphemies outside her pale. Now, that's not the only view within Presbyterianism, however. In 1788, the American Synod of New York and Philadelphia amended that same chapter, and it reads as follows, and that's quotation number two in the handout. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person in good name of all their people in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever, and to take order that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. So how does this American revision differ from the original what's its view of the civil magistrate and its role in the church? It's well, yeah, so to repeat the answer you're saying it's it's like it's protecting the people from religion I would I would I would maybe argue it's it's protecting the church from the state Right, I think it's protecting, it's saying that the church should be free from outside disturbance by the state. Yeah, it is more like Constantine, right, in the sense that while I don't think we want to hold up Constantine as a paragon of Christian governance and virtue, the view that the American Synod had, in my view, is that the state should not interfere in church affairs, right, but should allow the free exercise of religion. So rather than exhorting the civil magistrate to enforce religious observance, it calls upon the government to protect all people and to keep the church free from government intrusion. I'm not going to wade into personal views on either of these two camps, but I just wanted to highlight that Often in our modern views of these things, we forget that these debates on the roles and responsibilities of civil magistrates stretch all the way back to the fourth century, to some of the very first examples of Christian civil magistrates. So back to the fourth century, how did the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire turn out? Well, did we just have righteous Christian rulers thereon after and live happily ever after? Maybe not. What do you think are some of the unintended consequences that might have happened in the church when Theodosius mandated that Christianity was the only tolerated religion? What would happen if you went from an oppressed church where it was just people there who were willing to suffer for their faith and stand up for their faith to now something where everyone in a sense was being forced to join? What sorts of pressures would that put on the church? That's right, it became more about a performance for the government, right, to some people. To some people, faith came secondary to outward observance. Unfortunately for Theodosius, it turned out that making laws was a lot easier than turning hearts to Christ. While he rightly ended the state's support for paganism, these side effects sent shockwaves through the church. Pagans and other unbelievers wanting access to the halls of state power, or at a minimum wishing to steer clear of state punishment, started to fill the churches. Likewise, Christians who had hidden their faith, and in some cases even publicly renounced their faith in order to avoid punishment, now went back to church openly. This influx of lukewarm Christians and unbelievers into the church brought great upheaval, and the conflicts we'll look at today came to the fore in these unique circumstances. These conflicts raised critical practical questions like how do we allow someone to re-enter the church after falling into grievous sin like denying the faith? With such a variety of people in the visible church, who may administer the sacraments? And what implication can we draw from that decision with respect to the power of the sacraments? And how is the church to teach the importance of good works? And what do we say about how good works pertain to salvation? Having set the political backdrop, it's also important to briefly look at the life of Augustine, who will feature prominently in these debates as probably the most influential theologian of late antiquity. It's been said that the Reformation itself can be viewed as a struggle between Augustine's views on the church and sacraments on one hand, and his views on grace and the sovereignty of God on another. Over the next couple lessons, we'll see both sides of his teachings and writings. In many cases, the details of his life will indirectly shape the contours of the debates. Augustine is known to us as the bishop of a town called Hippo, but he was not a Christian from his youth. Despite the instruction and wisdom he received from a Christian mother, Monica, Augustine lived a licentious and immoral life in his youth. He sought first wisdom outside the church, following a cult called Manichaeanism, which had similar views to the Gnosticism of centuries earlier. As he increasingly felt pulled toward the Christian God, he struggled with his sin greatly. Augustine's reigning sin was sexual immorality. And as much as he wanted to live in accordance with God's law, he wanted to fulfill his fleshly desires even more. The manner of his conversion is such a seminal event in Christian history that I feel we need to briefly cover it. This is gonna be quotation number three. And I'm gonna read a little piece before the quotation, didn't have space for all of it. To set it up, this is from his book, The Confessions, and he's weeping over his own sin here. He writes, to this effect, spake I much unto thee, but thou, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord? Wilt thou be angry forever? Oh, remember not against us former iniquities, for I felt that I was enthralled by them. I set up these sorrowful cries, how long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness? I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when lo, I heard a voice, as of a boy or a girl, I know not which, coming from a neighboring house, chanting and oft repeating, take up and read, take up and read. Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any kind of game to sing such words. So restraining the torrent of my tears, I rose up, interpreting it no other way than as a command for me to read from heaven, to open the book, and to read the first chapter I should light upon. And this is where the quotation starts. I grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. No further would I read, nor did I need, For instantly, as the sentence ended, by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart, all the gloom of doubt vanished away. For thou didst so convert me unto thyself. And with that passage, Augustine found peace in Paul's letter to the Romans, that he was to make no provision for the flesh, but rather to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. So in the passage, what did we see preceded Augustine's conversion? How did it come about? What was he doing at the moment that God converted him? That's right, he was pondering his own sin, right, and the depths of his own unrighteousness. And how did Augustine view his conversion? A lot of people talk about making a choice for Christ. Did Augustine make a choice for Christ? Exactly, he's saying that God converted him, right? And if you look at it throughout the text, God is the actor, right? And Augustine is the subject. So that's gonna be a, that view of his conversion and transformation is gonna be very important as we look at debates later in the church. So with this conversion began the faithfulness of a great theologian of the church, whose impact on Christian history can scarcely be overstated. He was instrumental in combating both the Donatists and their view of the church, which we'll look at today, as well as the Pelagians and their view of justification, which we'll look at next week. While we won't dwell on his other major works, he made contributions throughout theology and philosophy, ranging from just war theory to the doctrine of election. In perhaps his greatest book, The City of God, he sought to give peace to Roman Christians, who could not comprehend how Rome, the great city and capital of the empire, had just fallen to the Goths. Rather than viewing the city as the pinnacle of human achievement, which was popular in that time, He instead implored his readers to view human history and Roman history as a subset of it in the greater context of God's redemption of his people. Contrasting the city of fallen man destined to destruction with the city of God which remains forever. With all that backdrop behind us, let's turn our attention to the Donatist controversy. As we saw, the church was oppressed under Diocletian, and many Christians, rather than suffering for their faith, recanted in some form or another. Some did this by worshiping pagan gods. Some gave up or even helped the state confiscate copies of the scriptures. A common route was to bribe officials into producing a document saying you had done these things without actually doing them. With the advent of toleration under Constantine, many of these lapsed Christians wished to reenter the fellowship of the church. Some had previously been ordained officers of the church and wished to come back to their office. At this time, there was an established tradition for how to deal with these cases. Lapsed Christians would appeal to the confessors of the church. These were people who had suffered physical punishment for their faith. Upon examination, lapsed Christians who exhibited true repentance could be readmitted. A church leader about we know relatively little named Donatus Magnus taught that this was a dangerous practice that undermined the faith. Donatus and his followers furthered the following line of arguments. The first, that the church is to be God's holy body of his holy elect. The second, that those who fall away cannot be readmitted to church office. And three, therefore, the sacraments administered by church officers that had been readmitted are thus invalid. In response, the Donatists set up their own churches, and by Augustine's day, the Donatists were the majority in many parts of northern Africa where he was bishop. So let's take a look at those points one by one. Unlike in other lessons, we're not gonna give extensive original source quotations here. Unfortunately, few writings from the Donatists survive to our day. First, let's look at their views on the nature of the church. As we noted, the primary point that Donatists held was that the church is a holy body of God's elect. All their other disagreements with Augustine and the Orthodox Church stemmed from their ecclesiology, or their view of the nature of the church. Now, what's potentially wrong with that view, that the church is the body of God's chosen people? Is there a sense in which that's right and a sense in which that isn't? That's exactly right. So just to repeat the answer, John is saying that one has to be careful in separating how we view the visible and the invisible church. And you're right that the Donatists weren't making a proper distinction. And to maybe cut them a little bit of slack, it's this debate that, in part, illuminated that doctrine. So it was Augustine who's going to separate the visible and invisible church and their different properties. So Augustine argued against the Donatists as follows, and this is quotation number four in the handout. There are some in that number, that is the visible church, who now live wickedly. They may even be sunk in heresies or in pagan superstitions. Yet even there, the Lord knows those who belong to him, referencing 2 Timothy 2.19. For in the ineffable knowledge of God, many who seem to be outside are actually within, just as many who are within are in reality outside. So what's Augustine saying here about the visible and invisible church? Yeah, that's right, just to repeat your answer that not everyone who is in the visible church is in God's elect. He's saying there's a distinction between the visible and invisible church, and the visible church is a mixed body. So what does visible church mean? Let's try to put some definitions here. So what does it mean to be in the visible church? That's right, to be in an earthly church body, exactly. And I think Rose already touched on it, but what does it mean to be in the invisible church? How does the invisible church differ from the visible church? Yeah, to be in the invisible church is to be one of God's elect, right? So how are these two groups different? So I think Rose touched on one of the cases, and Augustine did as well, where there are people in the visible church who may receive the sacraments, may hear the word, and yet may not truly believe. Right? And Augustine is saying that that's a reality of the visible church here on earth. Are there also cases where there are people who are in the invisible church but not in the visible church? That one's a little stranger maybe. What are cases where someone may be amongst God's elect but may not be in the visible church? Exactly, yeah, so to repeat Pastor Cassidy's answer, one who's yet to be converted, right? So it's important to remember that election doesn't happen at the moment of our conversion, right? Election happens before the foundation of the earth, and therefore, God's elect is a body that encompasses both believers and those yet to believe. Go ahead, John. Yeah, and that's a really excellent point actually. So just to repeat John's point that there are churches that teach both truth and error, right? And the Westminster Confession affirms that in quite a bit of detail that every church on earth has some admixture of error, some, forget the precise language, some to the point to which they become synagogues of Satan. Right, but I mean all churches do teach some amount of, you know, no church is visible church is perfect, right? And that that is an important point to remember as well. Now, how did the Donatists view all this? Well, they thought that by fencing the church enough, they could make sure that the church, the visible church, only encompassed the body of God's elect. They thought that they were God's elect and everyone else wasn't. Now, why is that doomed to fail, right? Obviously, we fence the table rightly at our church, and obviously, there are procedures to discern whether someone is, before someone partakes membership in the church, but going as far as the Donatists did to say that we're gonna be a church of God's elect, why is that doomed to failure? Seems like a worthy goal. Yeah. Yeah, and so just to repeat Laura's excellent two points for the sake of the audio, there are a number of problems, right? One is that in our human fallenness, God has not revealed to us who's elect and who's not. The elect don't have a little E on their foreheads or something that makes it easy to sort them. And then the other problem, of course, is that the issue of the outward call, I think, was what you're getting at. That given that we don't know who God's elect are, we're to call all people to repentance, right? And that's part of what God has called us to do as a church. That's one of the major roles of the visible church. So let's look briefly at the scripture that Augustine referenced. If you turn in your Bibles with me to 2 Timothy 2, we're gonna look at verses 19 and 20. But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal. The Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. Now, in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use. Set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. So what's being said here in the letter to Timothy? That's right, that the church is mixed, right? So initially in verse 19 it's saying I think exactly what Laura said, right? That the Lord knows those who are his, right? It's not for us to know, it's for the Lord to know who are his and who are not his. And then in verse 20, it says exactly what Pastor Cassidy is saying, right? That there's a mixture in the great house, right? There are some vessels of gold and silver, and there are other ones of wood and clay, right? The gold and silver are set for honorable use, and the wood and clay ones for dishonorable use. As is often the case, the Westminster Confession itself describes this doctrine both succinctly and very precisely. So let's take a quick look at that, and that's quotation number five. I'm going to read from the Westminster Confession, Chapter 25 on the church. The Catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that having been, are, or shall be, gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof, and is the spouse the body, the fullness of him that fills all in all. The visible church, which is also Catholic and universal under the gospel, not confined to one nation as before under the law, consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. So does this visible-invisible church distinction make sense to everybody? All right. The remaining few minutes, let's try to cover the second point of the Donatists. This one's pretty easy to refute, thankfully. So the second point we had looked at was that they said that lapsed Christians could not be readmitted to church leadership, even after repentance and examination. Now, where do we see this one just openly and flatly refuted in scripture? That's right, that the Lord calls us to repent and promises forgiveness for those who do, right? Are there any particular examples in the church of a leader who did that? Who fell and repented and was reinstated? Yeah, Peter, right? So looking at John 18 verse 25, now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, you also are not one of his disciples, are you? He denied it and said, I am not. One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, did I not see you in the garden with him? Peter again denied it, and at once a rooster crowed. So remember that Peter denied Jesus, right? And yet, at the same time, later in John, in John 21, verse 15, it is written, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. Now what is Jesus saying as he continues to exhort Peter to feed his sheep and to tend his sheep? What does that shepherding metaphor mean? What promises had Jesus made to Peter? Yeah, that Peter was the rock, right? And what did that mean, that he was the rock? It's right, that he was going to be a leader in the church, right? And so this shepherding metaphor is a metaphor for church leadership, right, for shepherding the flock. So, while we may admire the Donatist's zeal for purity, I think it's clear that they went further than scripture allows, right? In that, if our dear Lord himself was willing to readmit Peter and install him as a leader in the church, how are we to deny other people that same privilege? Now remember that as we saw in Augustine's testimony, he had not always been a model Christian before his conversion and frankly wasn't a model Christian always after his conversion. But his opponents often brought up his former belief in Manichaeanism and his long struggles with lustfulness. At the same time, as we read in his accounts of his conversion, his earnest concern over his sin, which, as we saw, he was weeping over, and how God took away the burden of his heart, gave Augustine a personal understanding of the blessings of God's redemption for sinners. Through his confessions, he endeavored to show the church how God can and does transform even the vilest of sinners. Now, next week we're gonna cover the Donatists and their view of baptism. I'd hoped to cover that today, but it's a longer theological point that I think we probably best not break up into pieces here. Before we conclude in prayer, does anyone have any questions or comments? So to recap, today we looked at how Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of the empire, and some of the impacts that this had on the church. One of those impacts was to feed a schismatic sect, the Donatists, who wanted to maintain a pure church. In their quest for purity, however, they erred on their view of what the visible church meant, as well as their view of repentance. And as we'll see next week, they also erred on their view of what makes baptism effective. Their errors provide us an opportunity to better understand what our faith does actually teach, namely that the church can be understood in two senses, that there is both a visible and an invisible church. That God is long-suffering, showing kindness towards repentant sinners. The Lord God is like the prodigal father awaiting the return of his rebellious son and rejoicing when he does return. And we'll look at next week that baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace to believers and their covenant children. That the act of baptism does not itself imbue saving grace. With that, let us close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the time we were able to spend studying your word, your nature, and your works of providence. We thank you for the testimony of those who were pilgrims before us, that in their conversions, we see that you save even sinners like us through your son, Jesus, having borne our iniquities. We thank you for the church and for your holy sacraments that you've called it to administer, which are verily signs and seals of the everlasting love you show your covenant people, whom you have chosen before the foundation of the world to share in Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Amen.