Today is Church History Lesson 4, The Ancient Church, Part 3. And this section is the section of the Christian Roman Empire. The Christian Roman Empire. I don't know if those three words strike you as strange. They should, and hopefully today you're going to understand a little bit more of what that means and what that entails. Let me just review briefly, okay? So on the board here, I have the four major sections of church history. It's kind of hard to read in the back, it's this purplish color, but we have the ancient church beginning with the birth of Christ to AD 590. AD 590, does anyone remember what happened in AD 590? Yes, great, we're getting it. Gregory I, later called Gregory the Great, becomes the Bishop of Rome. Marks a major turning point in the history of the church for the next thousand years. The next thousand years we have the medieval church, 590 to 517. What happened in 517? 1517, I keep saying that. What happened in 1517? Martin Luther, there you can get the answer when I ask the question, right? Martin Luther nails his theses to the castle door. The Reformation begins officially to 1648. 1648. Do you remember what it signifies? What happened in 1648? The end of the Thirty Years' War, the war between Protestants and Catholics. And that marks the beginning of this modern period where people realize, wait a minute, we shouldn't fight and kill one another. over the faith. And that brings in the modern era from 1648 to the present. Today is another fascinating time in church history. It really is, and I'm not just saying that. Really what we're gonna learn about today affects the church for the next thousand plus years. In fact, I would argue that today we are dealing with ramifications of what happened in 313, okay? So this is very important. We're gonna cover three topics today. Number one, church-state relations. The church state relations, so kind of political side. We're going to cover theological controversies that happened during this time of 313 to 590. That's the period we're covering, 313 to 590. And the third thing is church organization and practices. What was happening in the church internally. Number one on your handout, church state relations. Up until 313, Christianity had been a persecuted minority. The worst persecution happened during the time of Diocletian, the Roman Empire, around like 300, AD 300. And then in 3.12.13 enters this guy named Constantine. You heard of him before? We've all heard of Constantine. Some significant events in the life of Constantine. We're not going to go into details. This is a survey history course. First of all, there's this Battle of Milvian Bridge. So what happened? Constantine, he's in a battle and he's fighting for political power. He wants to be the emperor of Rome, of the Roman Empire. So he's fighting, he goes to bed one night, he has a dream. He dreams that he sees a cross in the sky and he sees these words, in this sign, conquer. Now you see this sign over here? This is what people guess that Constantine saw. What this is, it's the Chi row. This X is the letter Chi, letter C, our English letter C. And then this, it looks like a P. It's really the Greek letter R. So what is Christ, right? C-H-R-I-S-T. The Cairo symbol. So that's supposedly what he saw. And so this convinced him to march upon his enemy, Maxentius, if I'm saying that right, and he won the battle, rising to the emperor, rising to emperor. And what Constantine did is he attributed his victory to God. And historian Mark Noll remarks, this isn't significant, look at this. Mark Noll says, quote, in the long view, Constantine's victory at Minova, Milvian Bridge, was much more important for the history of Christianity than for the history of Rome. He is spot on. He is spot on, and we're going to see why that is as we unfold this lesson. Constantine, he comes to power. He moves his throne to the east, to a city that originally was called Byzantium. Then he changed the name to Constantinople, the city of Constantine. In 1930, the Turks came in and they changed the name to Istanbul. You know where Istanbul is? That's where Constantinople was during this time period. And when Constantine moved the political throne of the Roman Empire to the east, instead of in Rome, it moved to Constantinople. What this did is it further divided the west and the east. Randy, this gets to your question last time. We start to see here a political division happening. And that's significant as we're going to see as we go along. The third main thing about Constantine is he issued the Edict of Milan. And with this edict, Christianity became legal. Not the state religion, but it just became legal. You could practice Christianity along with all the other pagan and mysterious religions and Judaism and all those others being practiced. Next we get to a major figure, Theodosius. Theodosius, what he did in 391, is he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. And what he did is he actually started persecuting pagans. So it's like reverse. The Christians were persecuted from 70 to 313. In 391, Theodosius reverses it, and the pagans start to be persecuted. Because Christianity is now the state religion. We don't have that here in the United States. But he made Christianity the state religion. So we have Constantine, we have Theodosius. During this time, there was a bishop, a pastor named Ambrose. He was the bishop of Milan. And let me just say a little about Ambrose here. Ambrose is an early church father. Last time I said that the early church fathers are those from the 1st century to about the 5th century. So whenever you read about some figure like Augustine, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Tertullian, those are all church fathers. from 1st century to about the 5th century. And then I said we could break down the Church Fathers into subgroups. So the 1st century is the Apostolic Fathers. The 2nd century is the Apologists. Those defending the faith. The third century is the polemicist. Those making a positive argument for the faith. And in the fourth and fifth centuries, we have these, what I call scholars. Many people call this the golden age of the Church Fathers. So that's Ambrose here. Ambrose was a governor. So he was in politics in Northern Italy. He became Bishop of Milan in 374. He was a magnificent preacher. and he influenced Augustine very deeply. Ambrose was very outspoken on church-state relations. He said, the emperor is in the church, not above it. The emperor is in the church, not above it. Just because you're the Roman emperor doesn't mean that you have more authority than the church. If you sin, you will be excommunicated. That's what Ambrose was arguing. And you see when Theodosius made Christianity the state religion, the lines between the church and the state start to become blurred, don't they? What's the difference between the church and the state? They become blurred. And so the emperor starts to think, wow, I'm the supreme. I have authority over the church. And Ambrose says, no. When it comes to ecclesiastical matters, you don't. Here's what happened. This is a very interesting story. He opposed Theodosius on the Thessalonica massacre. This is very significant, what happened here. So in 390, there's a charioteer. A charioteer is a guy who races horses, like the LeBron James of chariot racing back then. That's who this guy was. He was good. And he was thrown in jail for being a homosexual. Thrown in jail for being a homosexual. And the people, they were incensed by that. And so a riot broke out. And the people, they slew the governor where this race was happening, this stadium. They slew the governor. And they slew a lot of people. And they released this guy, this charioteer. Well, Theodosius, 390, he hears about this. And he is outraged. He is outraged that these people would set this homosexual free. And so what Theodosius does is at the next race, he stations soldiers at the entrance of the stadium. And upon his command, he slew 7,000 people. Theodosius slew 7,000 people because they set a homosexual free. Is that a problem? So Ambrose, he writes to Theodosius. Just listen, that's not on your handout. He writes this. I cannot deny that you have a zeal for the faith and that you fear God, Theodosius, but you have a naturally passionate spirit which becomes ungovernable when you are excited. I call on you to repent. Ambrose, to the Emperor, you need to repent. You can only atone for your sins by tears, by penitence, by humbling your soul before God. You are a man, and as you have sinned as a man, so you must repent. No angel, no archangel can forgive you. God alone can forgive you. He forgives only those who repent. So what Ambrose did is he refused communion to Theodosius. You can't have communion. You're living in unrepentant sin. You slew these people, these innocent people. And so what this did is it granted the bishop this power of excommunication that it would wield for centuries to come. If you're all familiar with history, we see this power being wielded and we see this tension starting to brew between the state and the church because of Constantine. You see, and Theodosius, because of this blurring of the state and the church. And so the main question in this time period is this, what is the relationship between the church and the state? Well, in the Roman Empire, there were some advantages and disadvantages. of it being a Christian Roman Empire. What are the advantages? Number one on your handout, persecution ended for Christians, obviously an advantage. Number two, Christianity spread more easily. They're not chopping off people's heads so that the faith can spread. And number three, Christian morals were promoted in society. Just treatment of slaves. Gladiator shows were eliminated. Legislations became more just. Homosexuals were punished. So Christian morals were promoted in society. Disadvantages. Number one, government What happened was government started to intrude on the theological and spiritual issues in the church. We're going to see this in the Council of Nicaea in just a minute. Secondly, many people came to faith for political reasons. The Roman Empire, is Christianity. I'm a Christian. You hear that? You hear that before? We're a Christian country. And so what happens, I'm serious, what happens here is you start to have the nominalization of Christianity. You start to become a Christian in name only, and there's no real fruit in evidence. That's what happened with Constantine and Theodosius' move to make Christianity the state religion. And thirdly disadvantaged, obviously, you have persecution of non-Christians. The Thessalonian Massacre, as we saw. The decisions letter F of Constantine and Theodosius mark the birth of the Christian Roman Empire, later called Christendom. Speaking of the impact of Constantine's conversion and rule on Christianity, Gonzales writes this, quote, that the impact was such that it has even been suggested that throughout most of its history, the church has lived in a Constantinian era, and that even now in the 21st century, we are going through crisis connected with the end of that long era. Constantine's religious policies had such enormous effect on the course of Christianity that all of, from the Reformation up to the present day, may be seen as a series of reactions and adjustments in response to those policies." That's the impact of Constantine and Theodosius on this idea of church-state relations. Number two, the second main thing we want to look at here is church controversies and councils that were happening. Now, during 313 to 451, there were several significant theological controversies that resulted in several councils to define and to defend orthodoxy. So the church was going through growing pains at this time, and the reason these these controversies weren't happening in the prior period, the age of Catholic Christianity, as we called it, is because people were being persecuted. You don't have time to argue about stuff when you're being persecuted, right? So as soon as persecution ended, all these theological issues started to come out and started to be discussed. There were seven councils that were representative of the entire church, ecumenical church. That is, the East and the West. I've included a chart, you can look at those later, of those seven councils. Now, as we go through these, these issues are so technical. These guys were debating these for many years, so I don't expect you to remember all these terms and remember who said what and that. The point is to introduce you to these things. And so it gives you maybe a framework for you to go back and do later study on these issues. There are four major theological issues during this time, four of them. Number one, letter B on your handout, Donatism. What happened was is there was schismatics, I'll call them schismatics, that believed that the lapsed shouldn't be allowed back into the church. So remember last time we looked at the persecution and what was happening during the persecution? Well, what was happening is some of the Christians were denying Christ. They went to go offer incense to the Roman emperor. And so the church had to deal with them. How do we deal with these people who abandon the faith? There are also Christians who are handing over sacred books so they wouldn't get tortured and persecuted. There are Christians who secretly converted to paganism. So the question is, how do we handle these people called the laps? Well, Donatists, What happened was, there was a bishop who was appointed in Carthage, North Africa, and Donatist didn't accept his appointment as bishop because this guy named Sicilian, number two there, he was appointed by a guy who denied the faith, who was elapsed. So let me put it in modern day terms. Suppose Pastor Jeff was ordained by someone who denied Christ. What would that do for Pastor Jeff's validity of his ordination? That's what they were dealing with. Does that make sense? That's what they were dealing with. What happened, this is very significant, is Constantine came in and he ruled against Donatus. Constantine, he's the Roman Empire. What does he have to do with the church? You see the lines being blurred here between the church and the state? There's another evidence of it. He comes in, he rules against Donatus, and then another council meets in Arles in 314. They rule against Donatus. Essentially what they argued is that The merit of the one doing the ordination does not matter. The sacrament, as they called it, in this case ordination, was not dependent on the moral standing of the minister. Does that kind of maybe ring a bell to you? something about the Roman Catholic Church. Later on in history, what we're going to see is the Roman Catholic Church, this is the seeds of what they adopt as sacramentology, as sacraments working ex opera operato, by the working they work. You perform the sacrament, it works automatically, it doesn't matter the person's moral standing. Does that make sense? It's what they developed later because of this. And this is the seeds of that starting to be developed because of this idea, this issue of Donatism. The second major issue involved discussions around the Trinity. The first big one was Arianism. Arius believed that Christ was the first created being, that Christ was of different Essence from the Father, Christ was subordinate to the Father. Another guy, Athanasius, said, no, no, Christ was co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father. So, how do they resolve this? They needed a council. Who calls the council? Guess who? Constantine. Constantine called for the council because of a Christianity divided, could not keep a crumbling empire together. The Roman Empire at this time was crumbling. It was starting to fall apart. And Constantine saw that and he said, these Christians, if they're fighting, they're going to do nothing for us. We need to get them together and work this out, or else it's going to be a problem for the Roman Empire. That's what Constantine was thinking. So he presided over the first session. They drafted the original form of the Nicene Creed, not its final form that we have today. The council declared the son Homo oustios, what Athanasius said, co-equal, consubstantial, and co-eternal with the Father. And they also opposed another position, Semiarianism, which said that Christ was of similar homoousios, essence, with the Father. Now look at the word homoousios and homoousios. What do you see there? One letter difference. V-I-V-E-O-T-A. These people were debating on the details. And they didn't come to a conclusion. Nicaea did not fully settle the matter, so another council convened in 381, the Council of Constantinople, the second major ecumenical council. Theodosius this time called for the council, because there was no resolution. They revised the Nicene Creed, so it's the Creed we have today, and reaffirmed and extended the teaching at Nicaea. They also affirmed the deity of the Holy Spirit. In the Council of Nicaea, the Creed just said, we believe in the Holy Spirit. At the Council of Constantinople, it made clear that the Holy Spirit is God as well. Over against this idea, this heresy of Macedonianism. So, the first major Trinitarian era is Arianism. The second is Monarchianism. You'll love to say that word, Monarchianism. It's a great word. Monarchianism. Dynamic Monarchianism was the first. We have two kind of subsets of Monarchianism or Adoptionism. It taught that Jesus became Christ at his baptism and he was adopted by the Father after his death. So, what they wanted to do is they wanted to stress the unity of God. They wanted to stress God's unity. Well, this was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381. Then there was another error, another Monarchianism error, Modalistic Monarchianism, also called Sabellianism, Modalism, Patrapassionism. This one you probably heard because you hear about these things today, modalism. This taught that one God revealed himself in three ways or modes at different times. So again, they're stressing the unity of God. This is condemned at the Council of Constantinople as well in 381. Now look at this diagram here. I think some of you have seen this if you've been here a while. This diagram represents the orthodox position on the Trinity and what happens when you embrace error. So you see the three edges of the triangle, not the points, but the edges? You have equality, three persons, and monotheism. You've got to hold those three propositions together to have an orthodox view on the Trinity. God is one, God exists in three persons, and each person is fully God. Now, I want you to all do something with me. Cover up with your finger three persons. Everyone do this. Take one finger, cover up three persons. Take those two arrows, and what does it point down to? Monarchianism. You see that? So what happens is, is when you deny that God exists in three persons, you embrace monarchianism. Monarchism, remember, modalism, is God exists in three different persons at different times, not all at the same time. What happens if you deny Christ is equal with the Father? Cover up equality. It points down to Arianism, subordinationism. It leads you to the era of subordinationism, that Christ is subordinate to the Father. And obviously if you deny monotheism, you're left with polytheism. So this is a really helpful diagram to help you think through and weed through these issues. Basically summarizes what was happening. Third issue was these Christological controversies. And what this was a debate over is the two natures of Christ, His divine nature and His human nature. First, there was Apollinarianism. Apollinarianism taught that Christ had no human spirit, but the Logos replaced it. So they overemphasized the divine nature of Christ. That's key. Remember that. The over-emphasize the divine nature of Christ. You had Nestorianism. Nestorius came along. He said, no, the Logos indwelt the person of Jesus, making him a God-bearing man rather than the God-man. He was a God-bearing man. He was a man who kind of bared God. Thus, it was a mechanical and not an organic union of the two natures of Christ. So they're emphasizing the human nature of Christ. And then you got Eutychius comes along. And he says, the divine nature absorbed the human nature of Christ, thus emphasizing the divine nature. Now I want you to see something here. They go from emphasizing the divine nature, to the human nature, to the divine nature. It's a lesson for us, brothers and sisters. One of the things church history does is it shows us how when we embrace one error and try to react against it, a lot of times we end up embracing the opposite error, don't we? And so church history helps us to come along and it helps us to be balanced. That's why we read church history and study it, so we can be balanced. And we're going to see this as we go out throughout the lessons. Finally, there was monothelitism, an issue that occurred later that said Christ had no human will, just a divine will. Constantinople came along. Another council at Constantinople, not the first one, asserted the two natures. Two wills live in harmonious unity. So we have the Donatus Controversy, the Trinity Controversy, the Christ Controversies, and finally we have the Pelagian Controversy during this time. Who's heard of the Pelagian Controversy? Okay, a lot of you. Good. Pelagius believed that man is born free like Adam, and so man is essentially good. He has no fallen nature. He can do what he needs to do for salvation. He only sins because he follows a bad example. He has no original sin. So Christ came to set a good example for us. Right? That makes sense of how he's describing the problem of man. And Augustine came along and said, man is completely dead in sin and salvation is totally by grace, which is given to the elect. Let's look at Augustine for a moment. He wrote, A lot of good works. The Confessions, The City of God, The Trinity. The Confessions, if you haven't read it, it's just like The Fox's Book of Martyrs. It's another one of those must-reads. I'll mention some of those as we go out. If you're looking for some reading material, pick up The Confessions. It's great. Also, Augustine, he was converted in Milan in 386 after a period of intense struggle with lust. His conversion is really amazing. It's really cool. Sometimes we'll have to talk about it. He was named Bishop of Hippo in 395. In addition to opposing Pelagians, he opposed Donatists. So he was one of the main arguments for this idea of of the ordination being not based on the morality of the person doing it. That was Augustine. And then he rejected the Manichaeans that we talked about last time. Here's a note about Augustine. Everyone loves Augustine. Protestants generally embraces views of salvation and sin. Roman Catholics usually embraces views of the Church. Or they do embrace views of the Church. I shouldn't say usually, I should say they do. The outcome, Pelagian was condemned at the Council of Ephesus. However, the church did not embrace Augustinianism. semi-Augustinian, but before they could do that, John Cassian came along and he argued that the grace of God and the will of man must work together in salvation. This was called semi-Pelagianism, and it was condemned. And they finally embraced semi-Augustinianism, a view that said that God comes to all, enabling a person to choose and perform what is necessary for salvation. So that's the Pelagian controversy. Now, let me summarize, let me give you a take-home here Why are the creeds so important? Why do we need creeds? Brothers and sisters, we need these creeds. Why? Here is a perfect illustration of why. I'm going to read this here in a moment, but don't start reading it yet. Perhaps you've heard people say something like this, I have no creed but the Bible. Well, some insight. into Arianism will help you to see the absurdity of that statement. That statement is absurd, okay? What do you believe about the Bible, right? What do you believe about the Bible? This is so good. Follow along with me, it's an extended quote. Try to follow along with this. When the Council of Nicaea entered on the examination of the subject of Arius' views of the divinity of Christ, it was found extremely difficult to obtain from Arius any satisfactory explanation of his views. He was not only as ready as the most orthodox divine present to profess that he believed the Bible, No creed but Christ, no creed but the Bible. But he also declared himself willing to adopt as his own all the language of scripture in detail concerning the person and character of the blessed Redeemer. But when the member of the council wished to ascertain in what sense he understood this language, he discovered a disposition to evade and equivocate, and actually, for a considerable time, baffled the attempts of the most ingenious of the Orthodox to specify his errors and to bring them to light. Arius declared that he was perfectly willing to employ the popular language of the subject in controversy, and he wished to have it believed that he differed very little from the body of the Church. Accordingly, the Orthodox went over the various titles of Christ, plainly expressive of divinity such as God, the true God, the express image of God, etc., to every one of which Arius and his fathers most readily subscribed. claiming a right, however, to put their own construction on the scriptural titles in question. After employing much time and ingenuity in vain, and endeavoring to drag this artful thief from his lurking places, and to obtain from him an explanation of his views, the Council found it would be impossible to accomplish their object as long as they permitted him to entrench himself behind a mere general profession of belief in the Bible. no creed but the Bible. They therefore did what common sense as well as the word of God had taught the church to do in all preceding times, and what alone can enable her to detect the artful advocate of error. They expressed in their own language what they supposed to be the doctrine of Scripture concerning the divinity of the Savior. In other words, they drew up a confession of faith on this subject, which they called upon Arius and his apostles to subscribe. This the heretics refused and were thus virtually brought to the acknowledgment that they did not understand the scriptures as the rest of the council understood them, and of course that the charge against them was correct. That's why we need creeds. Number three. We've talked about those political issues, the church-state relations. We've talked about these theological controversies. Now, let's look at what was happening in the church and their practice and organization. The first issue I want to talk about is the rise of the papacy. Now, as I mentioned last time, by about the mid-third century, there was this recognition of bishops being above an elder. So the first church started, you had elders and deacons. Then what happened was the bishops started to gain more authority than the elders. So you had one bishop and elders in a church. Then the bishops started to have authority over several churches. That's what happens by third century, bishops over several churches. It's really misleading to think about the papacy before the third century. It wasn't around. People didn't talk about it. You see this development here. So what happens is by the time of the Council of Nicaea, archbishops were acknowledged for their location in major populated cities. So you had elders in a church, bishops over several churches, then you had archbishops in major cities, over the bishops, over the elders. Then, by the Council of Constantinople, special honor was given to five, what we call, patriarchs in five cities. Rome, which is the only city in the West, and Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. So, you see what happened. Five key patriarchs, who were over bishops, archbishops, who are over bishops, who are over elders. Okay, you see the development here? What's happening? And what happens, Leo I comes along, he becomes Bishop of Rome, and this is the first time a Bishop of Rome makes a claim, a theological claim of apostolic succession from Peter. Leo does this, he was a master theologian. Leo the first. And he makes this claim that, you know it from Matthew 16, Jesus says to Peter, upon you, upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So Leo makes this claim that he is carrying on the succession from Peter. Finally, number five, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Leo makes this claim. In 451, what happens is that they recognize the Bishop of Constantinople to have the same authority and power as the Bishop of Rome. So, what happens? The church has two figureheads now, main figureheads. Okay, you got these five patriarchs, but then you got like these super figureheads. The Bishop of Rome and the Bishop in Constantinople. Now, what do you think that did to the church? It further divided it, didn't it? It's a further demonstration of the division. First we saw the political division when Constantine moved his capital, Constantinople. Now we're seeing here a religious, theological division when the Pope, or not the Pope, excuse me, not the Pope, the Bishop of Constantinople is given the same power as the Bishop of Rome. It further divides the Church. But the Church is still one at this time. It's not fully divided until 1054. Now why? was the Bishop of Rome given supremacy. He eventually was. And what happens in 1054 is the church in Constantinople didn't believe the bishop in Rome was the bishop. So that was part of the division. I'm getting ahead of myself. Why did the Church of Rome become so predominant? Why do we have today the Pope of Rome? Well, here's why. Five reasons. Number one, theological. Obviously, Leo argued for this apostolic succession from Peter, based on Matthew 16. We have, secondly, religious reasons. Two here. Two religious reasons. Number one, the Latin-speaking Western Church was able to cut through the theological controversies quicker and faster than the Greek-speaking Eastern Church. So, the Western Church, the Church in Rome, there was only one bishop in the Western Church, remember. There were four in the East, one in the West. They started to have prominence and power because they were able to cut through all the issues and the four over in the East would sit there and argue all day about it because of the preciseness of Greek over Latin. This is another reason why the Bishop of Rome is gaining power. Another religious reason, many missionaries were sent out from Rome to what we would call now today Europe, and they had a lot of success in evangelizing Europe. We see that. But the East had not as much success. So the Bishop of Rome must have some special power because they're having all the success. Third, there are geographical reasons. Rome was the place where supposedly Peter and Paul were martyred. Well, that must be the place then that God wanted to establish his pope because that's where Peter and Paul were. And Mary. No, just kidding. Letter B, geographical reason. Rome was the imperial city. It had the largest church, the largest population. The church was the wealthiest. And you know what? Just like today, numbers equal significance, doesn't it? Same back then. The church in Rome was the biggest, so they had the most power and authority and sway. And letter C, Rome was the only city with a bishop in the West. Like I said, all those other four bishops were fighting. Rome, he had it to himself. Leadership. Rome had great leaders. They had Leo I and Gregory I. We're going to see about him next time. And then political reasons. With the shift of the political throne to Constantinople by Constantine, this left the Bishop of Rome the most powerful person in Rome. You see what happened here? Constantine takes his capital to Constantinople and who's left to rule in Rome? The Bishop of Rome. So the Bishop of Rome becomes the most powerful person in Rome. Do you see? Because the political sphere has shifted to the East. And the second major reason for the political reason is Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem later on in the 6th and 17th centuries are eventually taken over by Islam. You have the Crusades and you have all that good stuff, which we're going to get to later. Okay, so that's a little about the organizational development this time. Finally, the monasticism. Monks. Monks developed during this time period. What are the causes? Two causes. After the period of persecutions, the way to serve Christ was not to suffer at the hands of your enemies, but to suffer at the hands of yourself in removing yourself from worldly pleasures. And this was the case because the church was really influenced by Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, which said that matter, body, flesh is evil and spirit is good. The church was influenced by them. They didn't embrace full-fledged Gnosticism, obviously, but heavily influenced by it. So that's why you had all these people going out into the deserts of Egypt. And the second reason is because Christians retreated to these monasteries. They became monks because they were reacting against paganism that was happening in the church. You know why paganism was happening? Because the church and the state lines were being blurred. Do you see? And so paganism was creeping in and the bishops were starting to get more and more powerful and more and more wealthy. And Christians reacted against that. No. What does Christ say? Pick up your cross daily and follow Him. So monasticism really is a reaction against what is happening in the church because of the state and church becoming one, this paganism evolving, because of the bishops becoming rich, and eventually because of abuses. The abuses of the church that start to happen that we see through the Middle Ages. How did monasticism develop real quick here? Anthony, he's considered the first monk, he probably wasn't, but he took Christ's words in Matthew, he heard a sermon in Matthew 19, go sell all your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, then come follow me. He heard that, Anthony inherited some money from his parents, and so he took up a life of solitude in a tomb in the deserts of Egypt. And some of these early displays of monasticism were rather extreme. One guy, one dude, I feel so sorry for this guy. He was so remorseful for having killed a mosquito that he spent six months in a swamp and he let insects devour his flesh. I feel sorry for him. He had no understanding of the grace of God and of the human nature. Another guy, Simon, he constructed this pillar, a 60-foot pillar, and he spent 30 years on that pillar and denying his flesh of the worldly worldly things around him. Many people were influenced by them. They would come and they would see him up there and they were influenced. He must be a super saint. Now, hear this, brothers and sisters. Don't think that if you weren't in that time, you wouldn't have been a monk too. Okay? These people were people of their time. They were reacting to the paganism. We see it today in some sections of Christianity. Withdrawing from the world, don't we? It comes from the same source. Not that there is a sense in which being unstained from the world is a good thing, but we have to keep balance. That's what history does. You know what I'm saying. Forget that. Number two, Pachamius, he comes along and he institutes the first monastery. So Anthony and the monks before him, they were in solitude. Then this guy comes along and, hey, why can't we live together? We're all doing the same thing. Let's live together. Let's serve one another and do this together. Eventually monasteries became places of scholarship. Jerome, if you've heard of him, he translated the Bible into Latin. the Vulgate, which was the authorized version of the Roman Catholic Church up until just very recently. We can, brothers and sisters, we have Jerome to thank for the English Bible. because Jerome was the first one to translate the Bible into this vernacular, this common language, the Latin, which was in the West, which was gaining predominance in the West. Athanasius, he had a major influence in monasticism. He was exiled because he believed in the orthodox position of Christ. He was exiled, and so he was involved in monasticism. And he wrote a book on the life of St. Anthony. He wrote his biography, and that influenced a lot of people. Finally, we have Benedict. Benedict founded the Monte Cassino, the most famous monastery in Europe, northern Italy. It was torn down, I think, in World War II. I think it's been rebuilt a couple times. But he developed this Benedictine rule, which really lasted in the church for several, several centuries. A thousand years, I believe, in the church. Benedictine rule. It was modified several times. One historian says, by the 5th and 6th centuries, monasticism was so large that every leader in the church was either a monk or was closely linked to monasticism in some form. If you were serious about your faith, you were in some way part of monasticism. Let's look at an evaluation of monasticism as our last thing here. Some pros. The monasteries protected against warfare. They brought in people that were sick. They became kind of like hospitals in this time period. They provided a safe place to study and for scholarship. These monks translated the scriptures. So monasticism did a lot of good. We shouldn't look on it with complete condemnation of monasticism, but ultimately I would say, we as Protenants say that it had a major flaw, and that is it had an unbiblical view of the sin nature and humanity. Have you ever heard, you can take the man out of the world, but you can't take the world out of the man? Right? That's true, right? That's the biblical view of man, and that wasn't very taken into account. And secondly, another con is withdrawal from society contradicts biblical commands to be a light and witness in the world. Evaluating monasticism, and in keeping with the sermon today, Schaff writes, He concludes, without love to God and charity to man, the severest self-punishment and the utmost abandonment of the world are worthless before God. Isn't that a summary of 1 Corinthians 13, 1-3? It's a perfect summary of that passage. So, we're five minutes over. Let me pray. If you have questions, send them to me. Let's talk about them. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this opportunity You've given us to study and to reflect upon the history of the Church. Lord, we thank You for the freedom we have in this country to gather and to do this, to pursue this together. Lord, we pray that You would give us more and more humility as we look at Church history, as we look at these people that sacrificed so much and went through so many struggles. Lord, help us to look at them with humility and help us to be able to learn from what they taught us and what they did. And we pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.