Alright, so Ambrose of Milan, we're moving to a different category. Remember, we've kind of been categorizing these men three and four at a time as the apostolic fathers and then as the apologist fathers. then as the Cappadocian Fathers, the African Fathers. So this is a new group. And Ambrose was one of four men that came to be known in history as the Latin Fathers. The Latin Fathers. And they were called this because they wrote in Latin. Nothing too fancy or special about that, but the Cappadocian Fathers largely wrote in Greek. and the Latin fathers largely wrote in Latin. So that's just why we kind of categorize them that way. These four men, I don't, you're not going to have to know this for a a test or anything, but just for your curiosity's sake, if you're interested, were Hillary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome of Rome, and Augustine of Hippo. And Hillary is probably the least known of those four men, but you've probably heard of Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. And so those four men largely are known as the Latin Fathers. They lived within a hundred years time of each other, maybe even a little less than that, all wrote in Latin. And so they've come to be known as the Latin Fathers. The Latin Fathers were known. Remember, each category of men also kind of had their own little niche in history that they were known for defending the faith in one way or another. And kind of what these four men became known for was defending the supremacy of Christ over the church. So these four men said, Jesus Christ is the one who's over the church, and even the emperor doesn't get to usurp that. Christ is the head of the church. The emperor is not the head of the church. No man on earth is the head of the church. But the ascended Christ is the head of the church. They also continued to combat Arianism. We're still in the 4th century. We're still in the 300s. Arianism is not dead yet. And we all remember what kind of the main tenet of Arianism was, right? That Jesus is not co-sovereign with the Father. He's not of one essence with the Father. And so this was still going on, and these four men were all adherents to what has come to be known as Nicene Christianity. They followed the Nicene Creed, what the council at Nicaea said, which was that all three in one are equally God. So they continued to combat Arianism. These four men helped finalize the church's recognition of the canon of Scripture. So they didn't tell us what the canon of Scripture was, but they kind of helped the church really finally at last come to universal agreement that these 66 books are what we know as the canon of Scripture. These four men were kind of the last nail in the coffin of any argument against that canon of Scripture, and they took systematic theology to a new level. You remember particularly at the very first when we were talking about the apostolic fathers and even the apologist fathers, we said they weren't really systematizing theology. They weren't teaching theology in a really systematic way. They were dealing with really practical things within the church. But now we get toward the end of the 4th century, the end of the 300s, and these Latin fathers really start writing books and sermons that systematize theology in a way that we've become much more familiar with in these following centuries. Ambrose and Augustine in particular were in many ways the the fathers, the forerunners of what came to be known as the doctrines of grace in a systematized way. Now obviously we know that the doctrines of grace are taught in scripture. The doctrines of grace, we're not saying that they invented them. They came from the Holy Spirit through Paul and John and the other New Testament and Old Testament writers. But as far as actually breaking them down into a systematized way to say, we believe this about it, and if that's true, then we must believe this about it, and breaking down what's come to be known as the doctrines of grace, Ambrose and Augustine were kind of the first to really make that a focal point of their writing and preaching. It's been said that Ambrose was the one who delivered the final death blow to the heresy of Arianism. He died, I think Ambrose died in 397, if my memory serves me correctly. He died right at the end of the 300s. And that was kind of the end of Arianism being accepted in the church. Now it wasn't the end of Arianism. Arianism has continued to survive and plague the church throughout history, but as far as like bishops within the church holding to Arianism, that kind of thing, by the time Ambrose died, that was pretty much gone. And so many have recognized that his influence, his teaching, were crucial in delivering kind of that final death blow. He also, although he was a Latin father, he wrote in Latin, he was educated, and we're going to get into this in just a minute about his education and his early life, but he knew Greek and Latin. He was fluent in both. He'd studied both. And so he was able to study a lot of what the Cappadocian fathers had written, and a lot of these early church writers who were writing in Greek. And he was able to take what was going on in the Eastern Church and bring it to the Western Church, because he was in Milan, which is in Northwest Italy. And so he took what was going on over toward Constantinople and in the Eastern Church, and he was able to bring a lot of that into the Western Church and kind of create a bridge there. between the two churches. You didn't at this point have a whole lot of discourse and intercourse between the two areas. And Ambrose did a lot to unite the Western church to what the Eastern church was already doing and believing because of his fluency in both Latin and Greek, such as Nicene Orthodoxy, that God was a trinity, was already kind of settled and accepted in the East. You'd had the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople, which both happened in the East, and they'd kind of settled for a lot of churches, in large part, the controversy of Arianism, and yet it was still flourishing in the West. And so he was able to bring a lot of that teaching over, but not just in doctrine, but also in practice. He brought I hope I'm pronouncing this right, antiphonal singing or chanting to the church, which was already going on in the East, but he brought it to the West. And all that means is that's where one part of the congregation sings one part and the other sings the other part. We might call it responsive singing, that kind of thing. That was going on in the East and Ambrose brought it over to the West. But perhaps among all his writing and influence, perhaps as significant, I won't say more significant, but perhaps as significant as anything else that happened in Ambrose's life, is that Augustine was converted under his preaching. And we're going to hear about Augustine here in a couple of weeks. He was one of the very most influential men in all of church history, not just early church history, and he was converted under Ambrose's preaching. I think we'll see this when we talk about Augustine, but early on in Augustine's life, he despised gospel preaching, because the only preaching he had ever heard had been very coarse to his ears. very eloquent speaker. He knew a lot about rhetoric and things of this nature, and all the gospel preaching he'd ever heard had been very basic. And so he thought, oh, those Christians, they don't know anything about eloquence and delivery. And Ambrose preached with such eloquence and such delivery that he kind of opened the ears, obviously the Holy Spirit did, but in a sense he opened the ears of Augustine to sit and listen to the gospel and it was under his preaching that Augustine was actually converted. Anna and I were just talking about this the other day, which is that the style of speaking. To be able to speak in a way, and when I say eloquent, I'm not talking about speaking with such big words in lofty ways that it goes over everybody's heads. The core component of being an eloquent speaker is that you hold everybody's attention. That's the idea behind when you want to speak eloquently, you want to speak in a way that everyone is captivated by your speaking. And that's something that a preacher ought to be giving himself over to learning how to do. Eloquent preaching or speaking, I think it was John Piper who said, doesn't save the soul, but it might hold someone's attention or keep someone awake to hear the Word which can save someone's soul. And so that's the idea. We don't want to ever be so dry or unskillful in our use of words that it's hard for people to hear the Word preached. We hope to make it easy, and apparently Ambrose was able to do this in an incredible way. And that's a little bit of an overview. Now let's dig into his life a little bit. He was born in Gaul. Does anybody know what Gaul is called today? Where that is? France today, but in Roman times, in these early centuries, it was known as Gaul. That's where he was born. It was part of the Roman Empire. And he was raised in an aristocratic Christian family. So his family was Christian, but they were very wealthy. They were very influential. In fact, his father was the prefect of the entire northwest portion of the Roman Empire. So that's why he was born in Gaul, in France, because his father was the man who was in charge of all what is today Britain, France, Spain, and Germany. That whole section of the Roman Empire, the guy in charge of all of it was Ambrose's father. So he was really high on the food chain of Roman politics. However, it was just shortly after Ambrose's birth that his father died. And when his father died, his mother moved back to Rome. So early on, as an infant, Ambrose lived in France. He was born in Gaul, but really the only life he could remember as a young child was in Rome. And because he was in Rome, he was able to receive the best education. Obviously in Rome at this time, for the most part, is where some of the best schools in the world were. And because Ambrose was part of such a wealthy and influential family, he had access to all of these. And so he studied the classics. He studied Latin. He studied Greek. And as we've already mentioned, these came to serve him very well later on in his life, knowing both of these languages so well. He followed in the footsteps of his father and he began to study law. And after studying law, he was appointed as consul which at this point in history was just a judge. I'll rabbit trail here for just a minute. Early on in Rome's history, in BC times, the consul was almost like the emperor. It was the president or prime minister of the senate and of the the council there in Rome. But as the years went by, and the emperor kind of came to the throne, and he was the one who had all the power, the council became less and less important. And after a while there were two councils, and then there were eight councils. And by the time Ambrose came along, a council wasn't really anything like an emperor at all. It was more like what we would think of as a judge. Just matters of the law would come to them to be argued before them and they would make a judgment call on it. And so he was appointed in that position in what is today Serbia. Now, if you look on a map at where Serbia is, you'll see that it's roughly halfway between Rome and what is today Istanbul and what was in that day Constantinople, which were the two seats of influence in the Roman Empire at that time. And so he was serving as a consul geographically kind of smack dab right in the middle of those two places between Rome and Constantinople and once again this would come to serve him well as he acted as kind of a bridge between the East and the West. And he became very highly regarded for his integrity. He became known as a man who gave just judgments, who would defend the poor and the needy even when they couldn't bribe him or help him. But he was known for his justice. He was known as a judge for being very fair and a very high integrity. And so it didn't take him long to be named the imperial governor of a province in northern Italy. So he became not quite as high up as his father was, like over the whole continent almost, but a large section there in northern Italy. He was named the governor of this area and the center, the central city in this area of the world was Milan. Now, I don't know about you, maybe I'm speaking out of turn here, but when I just speak for myself, when I think of history and important cities in history, I don't really count Milan all that high. I think of Rome and I think of Constantinople and areas like this. But actually in the 200s, about 100 years before Ambrose came on the scene, the Emperor Diocletian had moved the judicial center of Rome, the empire of Rome, from the city of Rome to the city of Milan. Milan was actually the legal capital of the Roman Empire at this point when Ambrose came. So to be named the governor of that area would be pretty important. It would hold a place of very central importance in the world at that time. And so he was the governor of this whole area, but obviously Milan was kind of the center of everything that was going on there in that part of the world. And at this point in time, the Bishop of Milan was an open, avowed Arian. He was a man who completely embraced Arianism, was teaching Arianism from the pulpit, was influential in getting other bishops appointed who were Arians. He was doing everything opposed to what the Nicene Orthodox Christians were trying to accomplish. And so when he died in 373, there was a lot of civil unrest in the city and all the area around Milan, as everyone began to wonder, what's going to happen now? Is the next bishop going to be an Arian? Is the next bishop going to continue to promote Arianism, or is the next bishop even going to tolerate Arianism? If a Nicene bishop is appointed to this post, are all the Arians who have been propped up for all these years going to be castigated and sent out of the church, and nobody knew exactly what was going to happen. And so there was a lot of tension, a lot of underlying unrest there in the city. And so a meeting came together to appoint the next bishop, and as the governor of that area, Ambrose attended this meeting. And he gave an address to the crowd there, trying to calm their nerves, encouraging everyone to be peaceful, to exercise charity, to not become disruptive. And in the middle of his address, the crowd began to chant, Ambrose Bishop. Ambrose Bishop. Ambrose Bishop. The idea was, from the crowd, we want Ambrose to be our next bishop. Now, Ambrose had been raised in a Christian family. From all accounts, he was a Christian, but he didn't have any theological training. In fact, from what we can tell from some of his writings and other writings, it doesn't appear that he had even been baptized at this point in his life. He wasn't active as an under- bishop or a presbyter as it was called at that time in the church or anything like that. And so Ambrose felt like he wasn't in any way, shape, or form qualified or prepared to be the bishop of a church, much less the church in the city that was the capital of the Roman Empire at that time. And so he attempted to flee the city. He didn't want any part of this. And he went and holed himself up in the house of a friend of his. And eventually the public pressure reached the heights that the emperor himself was saying, you need to serve as the bishop here in Milan because the people are so determined to have you as their next bishop. So after eight days of resisting, Ambrose relented and said, this must be God's call on my life. I didn't want it. I didn't ask for it. I've tried to run from it. But the people all the way up to the emperor himself are having no part of it. They want me to be the bishop here in Milan. So he stepped down from his governorship. He sold all of his goods and all of his lands, which he had much of, you can imagine, being part of such a wealthy aristocratic family. And he set aside a sum to care for his sister, who was not married, and all the rest he gave to the poor. And this only made him more popular with the people. And he found a local pastor, a local presbyter, and he dedicated himself to learning theology. He took that pastor and he said, teach me everything there is to know about being a bishop. And he began to dive into the scriptures and what these other church fathers before him had already written. He began to study the Nicene Creed and Nicene theology and the scriptures. And once again, having learned Greek and knowing it fluently, served him well. He was able to read the scriptures in the original language. He was able to read these writings from these Greek fathers in their original languages, and this began to show up very quickly in his sermons. As he turned around and began to preach, he would preach sometimes weekly, and at different seasons in his life he would actually preach daily, as was common in the church throughout history, that there would actually be a daily sermon given. It wasn't long before his hard work began to pay off as he had devoted himself so intensely to the study of God's Word and to theology and theologically sound books and works that it's reflected. You read his sermons today and you can see how well read he was, how much he quotes from different people. There came a point in Ambrose's life that the Emperor's wife demanded that Arianism be taught in the church. The Emperor didn't have a whole lot of opinion one way or the other, but his wife was an Arian. And as the Empress, you can imagine the kind of pressure she could put on bishops and people in the empire, and she demanded that Arianism be taught in the church. But Ambrose resolutely responded that no emperor or empress can dictate what the church believes or teaches. That the ascended Christ is the sole head of the church. And the next emperor that came along was a Nicene Christian. He actually held to Nicene Orthodoxy. He believed in the Trinity, as it had been clearly stated in the Council of Nicaea and later at the Council of Constantinople. In fact, this emperor was the one who called the Council of Constantinople. And that had brought about the decree that kind of amended the Nicene statement on the Trinity, and had soundly rejected Arianism. And yet, while he seemed to have his doctrine right, this emperor didn't have his life under control. This emperor was known for fits of passion and rage. Have you ever known anyone like that? Seemed to have all their theology right, but didn't have the actions to back it up. Well, that's what this emperor was like. And this emperor received a bit of news that over in Thessalonica, there had been a mob, a riot. And this mob had killed the governor and his officials. And actually, I don't know if they ended up storming his household or what happened, but in one way or another, this mob had ended up killing the governor and all his officials. And when this emperor got the word that this had happened, he commanded that his army march on Thessalonica and kill every person in the city. kill every man, woman, and child in that city. And when Ambrose heard about this, he went to the emperor. And he said, don't do this. Wait till your head cools. This is a rash decision. But the emperor was in no mood to be given any kind of advice other than this. And so he sent his soldiers out to Thessalonica to carry out this massacre. And by the time he had cooled off after, I don't know, some time, a day or two I guess, he cooled down, he saw the folly of his order, and he sent to his soldiers to call off the attack, but it was already in progress. They didn't end up killing everyone in the city, but by the time the call got to them to call off the dogs, so to speak, over 7,000 Thessalonians had been massacred by order of the emperor. And so Ambrose sent a letter to the emperor, and he called his hand on it. This is part of the letter that he sent the emperor. He said, I cannot deny that you are zealous for the faith and that you fear God. So Ambrose realized he had an ally in this guy. He believed in Nicene Christianity. So he said, I can't deny that you're zealous for the faith and that you fear God, but you have a naturally passionate spirit. And while you easily yield to love when that spirit is subdued, so when you're in a good mood, you easily give in to love, yet when it is stirred up, you become a raging beast. I would gladly have left you to the workings of your own heart, but I dare not remain silent or gloss over your sin. No one in all human history has ever before heard of such a bloody scene as the one at Thessalonica. I warned you against it, I pleaded with you, you yourself realized its horror and tried to cancel your decree, and now I call you to repent." He sent that letter, strongly worded, to the emperor, and he said, you've sinned, and in an incredibly public and obscene way, and you need to repent. Well, the emperor pretended he never got the letter. And he showed up to church, just like he'd been wont to do in times past, and when Ambrose heard he was on his way to church, Ambrose met him at the door and barred his entrance to the church. And this is what he said to the emperor when he showed up. He said, how will you lift up in prayer the hands still dripping with the blood of the murdered? How will you receive with such hands the most holy body of the Lord? How will you bring to your mouth His precious blood? Go away and dare not to heap crime upon crime. So he said, you've murdered these people, you haven't repented of it, and now you're going to come in and try to take the Lord's Supper while you're in sin that has not been repented of. It's of the most open and public and egregious sort. That would just be adding crime to crime, be adding sin to sin. The emperor, who was named Theodosius, he told Ambrose, he said, I've repented. And Ambrose said, words are not enough. There must be works which follow." And so the emperor said, okay, what works need to be done. He said, you need to go up and down the streets of the city of Milan, and you need to publicly confess your sin to the people who know about it, and you need to confess to them that you've sinned. So the emperor did that. He went and openly confessed his sins publicly in the streets of Milan. And Ambrose said, well that's good, but I want to give a waiting time to make sure you're not just going to turn around and do something like this again next week. Because apparently he had been known for these fits of passion. And so Ambrose put him on parole, I guess you might say. He banned him on probation for eight months from the church and from taking communion. And at the end of the eight months, he told the emperor, you can be readmitted into good fellowship with the congregation and taking the Lord's Supper again if you will on your knees before the congregation repent and ask God for forgiveness for your sins. So the emperor did. Went in front of the congregation, got on his knees, and publicly asked God to forgive him of his sins. And so he was reunited with the church there in Milan. Now can you imagine the kind of backbone it took to stand nose to nose with the emperor and call his hand on that. It's sad to me that this has become almost unheard of. I remember a couple of years ago when our governor was caught in an extramarital affair And his pastor actually told him he couldn't be in good fellowship with the church if he wouldn't repent of that. He ended up going to a different church because he wasn't willing to publicly repent of that in front of the church. But when you hear stories like that, it kind of surprises you because of so many who have office and power and influence that claim to be and deacons in their church, and Sunday school teachers in their church, and you know that they're just in public and open sin in politics one way or another. But Ambrose wasn't going to have any of it. Ambrose said, the church belongs to God, therefore it cannot be assigned to Caesar. The emperor is within the church, not above it. So he said, if you're a Christian emperor, then you're part of the church, but you're not over the church. The church belongs to God, not to Caesar. And Ambrose served as the bishop there of Milan for 22 years until his death at 57 years old. He died with his hands crossed and several hours of uninterrupted prayer. From what we know, that's how he passed away. So what about his works? What about his writings? Ambrose wrote many books, both theological and ethical in nature. So he wrote on theology, or books about God and about Christian doctrine. But he also wrote about ethics, about how Christians should live, and what is right and wrong. He also wrote several exegetical commentaries, commentaries on books of the Bible and on passages of the Bible. He was also a prolific hymn writer. A prolific letter writer, he actually exchanged letters with Basil, we heard about a couple of weeks ago. And obviously on top of that, his many sermons and public addresses that he wrote. But here are some of his most influential works. One was titled, Of the Faith. Of the Faith was written at the request of another Roman emperor, Gratian. I think that's how you pronounce it. Gratian, maybe. G-R-A-T-I-A-N. This was a Roman emperor who believed in Nicene Christianity and was looking to combat Arianism. And he asked Ambrose to write a book, write a treatise on the deity of Jesus Christ. And so Ambrose wrote this book titled, Of the Faith, in which he distinguishes true and false Christianity. Later he wrote a sequel to that book titled On the Holy Spirit. Now we've heard of other men writing books named On the Holy Spirit. Apparently these men weren't all that interested in being new or novel. They just wanted to be clear about what they were writing about. So he wrote a book called On the Holy Spirit and it was written as a sequel to Of the Faith. And it's comprised of three books. So it's one book, but it's made up of three sections of three books. The first one in particular sounds really interesting to me. I'm really planning on looking this one up and reading it. It's an allegory based on the story of Gideon. And it compares the story of Gideon with the Holy Spirit and the works of the Holy Spirit. That was the first part of that book of the Holy Spirit. The second book demonstrates the deity of the Holy Spirit, showing that all three persons of the Trinity have worked together in the creation of the world and the regeneration of man. And the third book shows that the Spirit's mission is the same as the Father and the Son, and demonstrates His co-equality with them. So the book is titled, I'm the Holy Spirit, but it's made up of these three books, these three sections within the book. And along with these books, we mentioned that he was a prolific hymn writer. He changed the face of public worship in the Western church by his introduction of Eastern singing, not only in mode, but in content. He taught them to sing that I forgot what it's called now, antiphonical? Is that what it was? Antiphonal? Singing, that response is singing in method, but he also wrote hymns for the church. Again, this seems to have been a common theme already in the Eastern church. Pliny the Younger wrote a letter to the emperor in 112. in which he said that the Christians sang hymns to Christ as to a God. So this pagan recognized that the Christians were singing hymns about Christ and to Christ as to a God. And Ambrose seems to take this, and he combated Arianism in the Western Church by writing many hymns about Christ's equality with the Father. And so we have many of his hymns extant to this day as well. Now what do we learn from Ambrose's life and writings? One, and I guess probably the most famous, that many have taken away from Ambrose's life, is the importance of the separation of powers in church and state. This has become a Baptist distinctive throughout history and it's something that's completely misinterpreted and misunderstood, I think, in today's culture in America, what we mean when we say the separation of church and state. We're not talking about no one should be able to pray in a public place, none of God's laws should be displayed in a public place. That's not what we mean. We mean the emperor's not over the church. The president's not over the church. The king's not over the church. Nor does the church bear the sword. But there's a separation of those duties that God has given to the state to bear the sword against evildoers and to reward the good, and he's given to the church to teach and promote righteousness and theology and doctrine. Certainly, as time went on, unfortunately, even though Ambrose is hailed among the Roman Catholic Church, we see the melding of church and state that came in later years. But this was something that at this point in history, Ambrose was firmly against. He said, the emperor or empress doesn't get to decide those things for the church. Secondly, I think something we can learn from Ambrose's life is that when possible, without compromise, be a bridge. Be a bridge. We've been given the ministry of reconciliation, and Ambrose certainly was not a compromiser. And yet, history seems to show that one of the reasons that the whole city wanted Ambrose to be their next bishop, even though he was a Nicene Christian, where they'd been used to an Aryan Christian, it was because Ambrose had shown so much charity in his life up to that point, that they knew if Ambrose was the next bishop, he wouldn't just come in and start chopping the heads off the Aryans or doing anything rash like that, but rather that he would exercise charity and justice and truth. He seemed to be a bridge between the Arians and the Nicene Christians. He seemed to be a bridge between the Greek and the Latin writing and theology. He was a bridge between the civic duty and the religious duty as he went from being a governor to a bishop. He was even a bridge between the pagan and the Christian. It was said at his death that the pagans mourned as much as the Christians did, because they recognized what a good man he was. And so seek to be that peacemaker, that bridge between those who might be at odds. But do it without compromise. I mean, Ambrose put his neck on the line. He wasn't a compromiser. And yet, he somehow was able to navigate those waters in such a way that he seemed to be without enemies in his life. And thirdly, when called to a task, work at it with all your might. I find it amazing that Ambrose is recognized as one of the most influential bishops, fathers, writers in early Christianity, when that wasn't at all what he studied for or planned to do. But when called to do it, he dove in with such fervor, with such intensity, that his study of the scriptures and his study of theology under a local presbyter there led him to become one of the most influential writers and preachers in the early church at that time. And I think that that ought to be an example for all of us. So that's what I have on Ambrose. Do we have any questions or comments before we close? Sir? I don't know if he knew anything about Pliny the Younger. That's just kind of the way we know about what was going on in the Eastern Church. And I'm saying he seemed to be, yeah. That's a good question. I don't know. Again, I know he started to get into a more systematic view of the doctrines of grace, of the sovereignty of God, the depravity of man, that kind of thing. We see them still battling Arianism and the Trinity and that kind of thing. So, I haven't studied the regulative principle in depth enough to know when that kind of became a systematized doctrine. I don't really know when that first came on the scene in that kind of a You know what I'm trying to say? Probably so. It was probably later on, closer to the Reformation, I would guess. But I may be wrong. I may find in the next chapter that it was somebody before that. But no, to answer your question directly, I didn't come across anything by him directly on that. Alright, let's go ahead and take about a five minute break. Refill your coffee, use the bathroom,