All right, so today we're gonna study two main church fathers. One of them is Augustine, the other one's John Chrysostom. I'm sure you've heard about Augustine before. And then John Chrysostom has the coolest name in church history, so we'll remember him too. But I thought it'd be kind of helpful to review a little bit, kind of where we've been. Not dive into it deep, but just try to lay that foundation. Do y'all remember the very, Well, not the one Logan did, the first one I did, though, where we had that picture of the church building. So we've been going. Thank you, Alyssa. We've been, this whole time, kind of laying that first floor. And if you remember, that house that we were building was four floors. Each is really easily kind of, if you think about it, within 500 year increments. Right now we're still on the first floor, but we always have to remember, again, those three pillars that hold everything up that kind of define what it means to be a Christian, which are, I like to simplify it and just say the right God, the right gospel, and the right revelation. So the right God being, you know, the true God who's actually there, that's who we have to worship. The right gospel meaning, you know, I'm saved by grace through faith, not by works. And the right revelation meaning our right view of scripture. So those are kind of our three pillars that that guide everything that we look at in church history. That's what we're seeking because you might have different sects and branches, but if they're grossly departing from these pillars, then that's not really church history. That's different history. So that kind of helps us define what exactly church history is. But if you remember, Logan went through the first century. He went mainly through Acts. Most of what we know about church history in the first century through the Book of Acts, Logan went through that. And then we also talked about Clement and Polycarp and the Didache, the letter to Dionysius. That's what Logan went over, that one. That was mainly the second century. Last time I taught, we were going over mainly the 2nd and 3rd century with Tertullian and Justin Martyr, Origen, those guys. That was mainly the 2nd and 3rd century. Logan last week talked about the Council of Nicaea. That is mainly the 4th century, so the 300s. Well, today we're going to kind of finish off that first 500-year increment and talk about Augustine and John Chrysostom, and these were both present in the late 4th century and into the 5th century. So we say first 500 years, but they really, church historians kind of define that second stage by the year 473, which is when the Roman Empire fell. So that's kind of the marker that people use to distinguish, okay, now we're out of the early church and into the Middle Ages. So we're going to kind of finish up that early church today. But yeah, the two people we're going to talk about are Augustin and I meant to put this on the resources list, but I didn't get it on there in time. Slogan sends them out super fast. It was just a silly thing, but on the pronunciation of Augustin. I'm saying Augustine for a reason. A lot of people say Augustine. Technically, it doesn't really matter. It's kind of two ways to say his name in Latin, but to be more faithful to the Latin, technically, you say Augustine. So, fun fact, if you ever hear anybody say Augustine, you can be like, it's Augustine. But we're gonna talk about Augustine. He is the main, he's from the west, the western half of the church, and then we're gonna talk about John Chrysostom, who's from the eastern half of the church. And it's also, I know I've mentioned this before, but we really have to start Remembering in our minds that as church history progresses, and it's already happening in the people we're talking about today, it's really being divided up into this western half and this eastern half, both politically and church-wise. In this time frame that we're in right now, The, let me think, the, I always have to picture it in my mind. The Western half is, and I'll bring a map. The next one I do, we're going to be doing the Middle Ages. I'm going to pass out some maps just to help you visualize it a little better. But the Western half of the Roanoke Empire at this time is starting to get weaker and weaker politically. Not the church, but politically in the Roman Empire. And by the time 473 rolls around, it's actually done. It's not even part of the Roman Empire anymore. And the eastern half remains as what they call the Byzantine Empire, which is still kind of the Roman Empire. But since there is this division politically, there's also this division church history-wise. The church kind of is functioning a little bit different in the west than it is in the east. It's actually the church seems to be flourishing more in the West, where politically it's not going so well. In the East, the church is kind of having trouble, where politically it's more solid, which I thought was kind of interesting. But that'll be especially important, not Logan's lesson, but the next one when we start talking about the Middle Ages, this kind of geographical divide. But yeah, we're gonna jump into Augustine. He was born in year 354, so we're in, that's the 4th century, and then he dies in the year 430, so into the 5th century. He was born in North Africa, close to the Mediterranean coast in modern-day Algeria. So, I wish I had this map. Honestly, I should have printed it out this time. But, Northwest Africa. So, part of this Roman Empire had the top kind of shelf of the African continent, and that was very much a part of this Roman Empire. He's on this western side. Then you'll hear a lot about the city of Alexandria, which is in modern-day Egypt. That was part of the eastern side. But, so Augustine is in the west. See, I almost said Augustine. He was in the West. He had a mother, and actually John Chrysostom did too. I wanted to kind of point this out. Both of the guys we talked about today had really godly mothers. To me, that was kind of an encouragement to moms. And I'm going to talk about Monica real quick. Monica was Augustine's mom, and she was a devout Christian and just prayed relentlessly for her son. Augustine didn't become a Christian until he was an adult, but she was praying over and over. And there was one story I read where she went to talk to one of the bishops and was saying, like, please help teach him away from this error that he was in. And like, what can we do to convince him that Christianity is true? And he eventually got tired and said, go. It cannot be that the son of such tears should perish. So he just saw her immense devotion and prayers. And I thought that was encouraging how we can pray for people we want to see saved because she saw the fruit of it. The Lord was kind and not only saved him, but, you know, it's Augustine. But her name was Monica. I'm sure you guys have heard of Santa Monica in California. It's actually named after this Monica. Santa is actually a, I guess, I don't know if it's Spanish, for Saint. So Santa Monica, California is named for her. So Augustine left home around the age of 16. He went to study rhetoric in Carthage. Carthage is kind of modern day Tunis, Tunisia. So again, still in the northwest, just a different little city. As he was growing up, he actually had a 15-year relationship with a woman that he never did marry to his mother's—or that, yeah, he didn't ever marry her to his mother's dismay. They did have a son, but around the same time Augustine was saved, his son was actually saved as well. But sexual promiscuity was kind of a theme in Augustine—ah, I keep almost saying Augustine—a theme in Augustine's life. And we'll see that as we talk about his conversion here a little bit. But he was buried, you know, in a lot of sexual sin. But one of the things that characterized Augustine is he was... Always searching for the truth. He wanted to know things. He was seeking it out. He wasn't Christian, but he was one of those guys that was like, what is the meaning of life? I want to know. He saw his mother's Christianity and just didn't like it. To him, it was too restrictive. He didn't like that it ethically had these boundaries. But then, intellectually, he was a very smart guy. He thought it was just some simple thing. So it was like, well, a simple thing that keeps me from doing things I want to do. He just didn't like it. So he actually embraced some teaching called Manichaeism. We won't get super into it, but do y'all remember what Gnosticism is? Remember Gnosticism is the one that is anti-physical material world and special knowledge, exactly. Manichaeism was kind of a mixture of that, or it was a Christian version of that with something called Zoroastrianism, which is like, you know, weird cosmology things. But it had this guy named Manny who claimed he was the final prophet, Jesus was just another prophet, and it had this idea of light versus dark and, you know, Christ's influence there. Kind of wacky, but he embraced that for a little bit. During this time, he was teaching in Carthage, so he was a brilliant teacher, a brilliant orator, he just wasn't doing it as a Christian. Eventually he abandoned this Manichaeism and began to explore Neoplatonism. So I'm sure you guys remember Logan talking about the Greek philosophy last time. I think I mentioned it in the time before that. It's hard to overstate how important this Greek philosophical thought was to the people in this time period. So Neoplatonism is another, so Plato. There's a difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism, just kind of different spins on it. The details don't specifically matter, but what is important is to know he was influenced by this Greek philosophical thought in a way. And I wanted to read I wanted to mention this first. This is Confessions. Have y'all heard of Augustine's Confessions? This is a book you guys should read. It is fantastic. It's very, very devotional. What it is is him praying his autobiography. So the whole thing is a prayer, but also him describing his life. And it's really crazy. This was written in the, I don't remember the exact date, but yeah, in the 400s, the early 400s. And it is beautiful. I mean, it's, I consider it one of those just Christian absolute classics like, you know, Pilgrim's Progress. Well, here's your early church version classic. I think any Christian would benefit from reading it. I read it a few years ago and it was very moving, but I wanted to read a portion of this. And part of what he's doing in this book is giving his testimony, or praying his testimony, so that other people can benefit from it. So I'm going to read this little part that he talks about when he was struggling, not struggling, but what he saw in Neoplatonism. And I'll just let you listen. With what passion, my God, with what great passion I longed to fly away from earthly things to you, and I did not know what you would make of me. For with you is wisdom. Now the love of wisdom has in Greek the name philosophy, and it was this love that those writings set aflame in me. There are those who lead others astray through philosophy, using that great and alluring and honorable name to whitewash their errors and wrap them in a false beauty. And nearly all such people, both in those days and earlier, are identified and exposed in that book. The healthful admonition of your spirit through your good and dutiful servant is also made manifest there. He's quoting scripture here. See to it that no one deceive you through philosophy and empty seduction according to human tradition, according to the elements of this world, and not according to Christ. For in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In those days, as you know, O light of my heart, these words of the apostles were unknown to me. No, what delighted me in that exhortation was just this. It encouraged me not to follow this or that sect, but instead to love wisdom itself, whatever it should turn out to be, and to love it and seek after it and pursue it and hold on to it and to embrace it with all my strength. And the book stirred in me and set me aflame, and I was filled with passionate longing. But in my great ardor there was just one thing that held me back. The name of Christ was not there. For by your mercy, O Lord, my tender heart had drunk that name, the name of my Savior, your Son, with my mother's milk, and still it retained that name deep within. Whatever lacked that name, however literate and polished and truthful it might have been, could not capture me altogether. I thought that was beautiful. He's basically saying, I see in this Neoplatonism this idea of seeking the truth, because Neoplatonism was a teaching that saw this idea of the One behind everything. They all had different names for it, you know. I think we talked about last time of, you know, the Logos was behind everything. Well, Neoplatonism had the One behind everything. Augustine saw that and loved it, and he wanted to seek after it, but he read there, well, the name of Christ was missing. And if the name of Christ is missing, then you don't have it. So I thought that was interesting that he went from this wacky thing to Neoplatonism, where he's just getting kind of closer and closer, and then when the name of Christ is there, you know, he has it. But that was before he was officially converted. When he was in Milan, oh, I didn't mention he did go to Milan, which is in modern day Italy, or it's in Italy. He went to Milan because he was seeking out a guy named Ambrose. We didn't talk about Ambrose. He was kind of right before this, you know, obviously he was in the same time period as Augustine, but we didn't talk. Logan didn't mention him much, but he is, he was a famous preacher, orator, very famous. Many people wanted to hear him speak. Augustine was one of them. He went to go listen to Ambrose's just ability to speak. But Ambrose was a great Christian man, a great preacher. Well, he heard his ability and also not just convicted of how good he was, but of the substance that he was preaching. And that really convicted him and kind of stirred his heart. And along with his mother and some friends, he's just in turmoil. He's like, what is this? Maybe Christianity is true. Well, one day he's sitting outside, and this is all recorded in the confessions, by the way. This is kind of from his own mouth. He was just sitting under a tree and he heard over there some kids playing. One of them said, pick it up and read it. I don't know if that was a vision or what, but he took that to be from the Lord and just picked up a Bible that he had nearby and opened it. And it went to Romans 13, 13 through 14. It says, let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. And Augustine said, when he read that passage, the scales fell from his eyes and he knew he was a Christian from then on. And that's kind of his testimony of conversion. So from that point on, he went and ended up to be a bishop in a town called Hippo. So Augustine of Hippo, that's kind of his name. That's also in Northwest Africa, close to where he grew up. And that's where he became one of the most influential teachers that we have had. We can think a lot of the way we think even right now, especially stuff in the Reformation to Augustine. There he wrote a bunch of books, his confessions. He wrote one called On the Trinity. He wrote another one called The City of God. Many of you may have heard of The City of God. That's a big tome book. You can find that one in Barnes and Nobles. But that was an interesting book. The City of God was written for, Christians in this Roman Empire who were... I remember I mentioned that western part of the Roman Empire was kind of falling and faltering. A lot of people blamed the Christians for that. He was defending them, saying, no, Christianity is true, and it's called the City of God because the whole defense is that there's an idea of the City of God and the City of Man. And he's saying, look, if you're a Christian, you belong to the City of God. It doesn't matter if the world is falling around around you. This is your heavenly home. The City of Man is, you know, government. In it, that City of God book is very dense. It has a lot of, you know, deep philosophical and, you know, political aspects to it, but that's kind of the main emphasis of it was to encourage Christians that our home is with the Lord and it's in heaven. It's in that City of God always, no matter what the City of Man is doing. So a little bit more about Augustine. One of the two big things that he combated was two main errors. He did a whole lot, but these two errors are important and interesting. One is called Donatism. Donatism is not in your workbook. I just wanted to talk about this one because I thought it was fascinating. So we talked a lot about persecutions in the church. And last week, Logan mentioned Constantine and how Constantine was maybe converted and made Christianity part of the state religion. Well, if you can imagine, persecutions kind of went down quite a bit from the Roman Empire if the state religion's Christianity. Well, the church was in a very interesting predicament because of this. Many people that were being persecuted, if they weren't martyred, But they still made it through. They were what they called confessors. Well, if you can imagine, a lot of people didn't confess. They were persecuted and, you know, renounced the faith because they didn't want to get persecuted. Well, now the persecution's over, and these people want to come back and be a part of the church again. So the church is like, what do we do here? You know, you guys, you abandoned the faith. Like, do we just let you back in, that type of thing? Well, it wasn't just lay people, it was also, you know, people of officers in the church, clergy and bishops and those type of people. Well, there was this group called the Donatists that thought, okay, these people are not allowed back. They're Dunskies, you know, they're not allowed. Other people disagreed and did let them back. Well, what would go on is these bishops that did come back and started performing baptisms and giving out the Lord's Supper and that type of thing. The Donatists held, okay, well, anything that that bishop did is, you know, it's invalid. They're not even, you know, Christian. They renounced the faith. They're done. So that person's baptism, you weren't even baptized because somebody that wasn't a Christian did it. So that's making this whole controversy. And I mean, you can imagine like a scenario in our day would be, you know, my brother's saved and he gets baptized by a pastor. And then three years later, the pastor commits adultery, renounces Christianity and runs off. Does that person need to be baptized again? What would y'all say? No, it wouldn't. That's what we would say now. A lot of that is from help from people like Augustine to help us see that the validity of something like baptism or the Lord's Supper doesn't rest in the holiness of the person administering it. That's what Augustine was saying. So he fought against that. And that error, you'll hear it now, a lot of people call it the Donatist error. put the validity of a sacrament or an ordinance into the hands of the one administering it. We say we don't do that. God is the one that gives any validity that it has. But along with that, the Dionysus just held this whole idea of the church being very, that was just kind of one aspect of it. They were a whole different little sect. They had a bunch of different little beliefs, but one of them was on the nature of the church. They kind of thought, The church had to be completely holy and pure and perfect and, you know, any sin kind of puts you out of the camp. Another key component to this is the Donatus party was very, it was the major party in this Northwest Africa spot, but it was not the major party overall. So it was very much in Augustine's radar, but it wasn't part of the whole church. So Augustine despised that. He was, and if you read some of his writings, he was an extremely devout member of the, or he really embraced the unity of the church. So this Donatist group that comes in and they're kind of trying to be divisive and say these different things that doesn't go along with what the whole church says, he hated that. He was all about the unity of the church. Even at one point, this is kind of a debate, he justified the use of the state to come in and, not necessarily persecute, but correct the Donatists and say, no, you need to go back and be part of the broad church at large. So, you know, is that good? Do you have the state involved in such a way? And one of the kind of fallbacks to that is in the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church pointed to a lot of Augustine's writings on the Donatist and said, Well, the state needs to persecute these reformers because they're sex, they're branching off. The state needs to persecute them and get them back into the church. So it's kind of a two-edged sword when we start getting the state involved, but Augustine was okay doing that. A lot of people defend his use of that, and I won't get too into it, but I thought that was fascinating. Another error that Augustine helped fight was something called Pelagianism. This one is in your workbook if you want to look at it. Does anyone know what Pelagianism is? It's kind of a common, or not a common, but it's a... Yes. Yes, exactly, yep. Pelagianism denies original sin. Another way to think of it is it denies the fact that Adam fell. It denies that that happening had any effect on our nature. So, yeah, we don't, when we die you're born, according to Pelagius, you're born inherently good. Pelagian, you know, you take that You keep going with that, and he believed that, essentially, that you're saved by works. So if you're not marred, what do you really need to be saved by from? Or if your nature is not corrupt, what do you need to be saved from? Well, what you're saved from is doing good works and pleasing God by your own merit, by anything that you can do. He admitted that we needed God's grace to be saved, but he defined that grace in two different ways. One was that we have a natural free will. That was God's grace to give us this natural free will. And two, that Christ was given to us, not necessarily as an atonement for our sins, but as a great moral example of how we should live. You know, the fact that he died for us was not necessarily that he died for us, but that he would willingly die for someone. So we should follow that type of example. So he held that, you know, he was big on free will. You use this free will to choose to do right, and to do good, and to follow Christ's example, and if you do that, you'll be saved. That was Pelagius' view. Totally denied original sin, exactly. So Augustine, you know, fought against that. He said, no, we do. And Augustine was very helpful to us to think about human nature and what it means to be fallen. I mean, obviously we have scripture, but he's one of the guys that helped combat Pelagianism and helped clarify these things for us. And he taught a lot about predestination. being a human fallen and combined with that meaning we don't, we can't do anything to save ourselves. The way that we are saved is purely by the merits of Jesus Christ dying on our behalf and there's nothing that we can do to contribute to that. That's the heart of the gospel. And so he's one of the, he's really used by Calvin in the Reformation era to point back to these things, because that's essentially one of the errors of the Roman Church at the time was forms of being saved by works. He's saying, no, no, no. And he would quote Augustine a lot all the time. In fact, Calvin's Institutes, it's kind of this big systematic theology book that he wrote, he quotes Augustine more than anybody else. And he also quotes John Chrysostom. Just almost as much, and we'll talk about him here in a minute. There's also another era that Augustine helped, which was called semi-Pelagianism. You might have heard of that. It's kind of like a step in the right direction away from Pelagianism. In fact, Pelagianism we can just denounce as heresy. If you believe that, that is non-Christian. Semi-Pelagianism is kind of a way, it's kind of like the Calvinism versus Arminianism debate. Semi-Pelagianism would be the Arminianism idea. where we're still marred by Adam's fall, we still need to be saved from this corrupt nature, but there's a very cooperative working with God's grace that's there, which is a lot of what kind of Arminianism would teach. So that's semi-Pelagianism, and those guys were actually present in Augustine's time after Pelagius. But Augustine called the actual Pelagianism heresy, damnable heresy, but he only called semi-Pelagianism as just an error. And I think that's kind of helpful for us today. If someone denies original sin, denies that we are, or says that we are saved by works or something that we can do, that's not the gospel. But we can embrace Arminians for sure, because they recognize that Christ has to come in to save us. So, yeah, I kind of went over this. Augustine really, I can't emphasize enough how impactful he was for the gospel and the Reformation. He taught over and over that we are saved based on our own merit. We're saved by grace. I've got a couple quotes here. This is from Augustine. We conclude that a man is not justified by the precepts of a holy life, but by faith in Jesus Christ. In a word, not by the law of works, but by the law of faith. Not by the letter, but by the spirit. Not by the merits of deeds, but by free grace. Another thing Augustine emphasized was that the Old Testament saints were also saved by faith. So a lot of people at this time considered, okay, the New Testament were saved by grace. Well, the Old Testament people had to, they must've had to obey the works of the law. And Augustine said, no, here's a quote of him. And he's speaking directly about Old Testament saints here. Of whatever virtue you may declare that the ancient righteous people were possessed, nothing saved them but the belief in the mediator who shed his blood for the remission of their sins. Another thing that he taught is even the worst of sinners can be saved. And this is all just stuff that's at the heart of the gospel. Anybody can be saved. And Augustine taught this. It doesn't matter how, what you've done. It doesn't matter what anybody's done. You know, if Hitler had survived and repented at the end of his life, God's grace is so massive, so mighty, that Hitler could have been saved and we could worship with Hitler in heaven. Doubt that's what happened, but God's grace is sufficient and able to do it, and we should be praying for these people. Augustine said the same thing. Augustine, there is another sense in this verse. For nothing you will save them. With none of their merits going before, you will save them. All in them is rough, all foul, all to be detested. And though they bring nothing to you whereby they may be saved, for nothing you will save them. That is with the free grift of your grace. And I was also against the Donatists. They were teaching a form of perfectionism and saying, look, if you didn't do this, you can't be saved. Well, Augustine's combating them, saying, no, God's grace is able to save anybody to the uttermost. So another thing that we always have to be careful of when we're thinking about these early church people and fathers, and Augustine's one of them, is despite the absolute clarity which he is giving here on the meat of the gospel, if you read real particularly, he's not going to be able to give He doesn't give a very precise definition of justification and stuff that we might find in the Reformation. And a lot of that is just because of the way this church history has unfolded. As heirs come in, we refute them with Scripture. discuss it, and find out what Scripture teaches, and use that to clarify what the Bible is actually saying. It's no different here. It's obvious that Augustine has the meat and the absolute substance of the gospel, and being saved by grace alone, through faith alone, by no merit. I mean, that's obvious by the quotes I read. But it is, like if you ever get in debates with a Roman Catholic, like I have a friend, we get in debates about this a lot, He'll bring up certain quotes and stuff by Augustine, and be like, boom, see? Well, you have to remember, he's not going to articulate it the exact same way we do now, because he wasn't in the same context. He wasn't dealing with the same attacks. So he might be clarifying something in a different way than my Catholic friend wants me to clarify, because we're kind of operating on two different wavelengths in a way. That's just always important to remember for these guys. I think we should really be giving a lot of them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to some of this stuff. We can't read them through our lenses now when they had different lenses. But what we always have to find are those three pillars. They still have to be there. Augustine obviously had it. Another thing that's important to talk about, Augustine, is his view of scripture. It's always really encouraging to see that these people, way back in the 400s, had a lot of the exact same views that we do with regards to some of this stuff. Augustine held that scripture is totally inerrant, free from errant. Here's a quote. I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of scripture. Of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. Another quote, the scriptures are holy, they are truthful, they are blameless. Another quote, it seems to me that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books. So he held up that scripture is absolutely without error. He also upheld its inherent authority. He said, So he really upheld this idea of scripture being of very high authority. Now, I will discuss this a little bit. There is debate about, not necessarily debate, but Augustine had an extremely high view of the church. I think I mentioned that earlier. He loved the unity of the church. He has a quote here. I'm going to read it. For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So he has quotes like that. He obviously really had extremely high, what we call ecclesiology, or view of the church. Now, I'm just saying this because people might point stuff like this out to you guys, but even Calvin took that quote and kind of said, well, we have to look at it in its context. So Calvin had a quote on this quote that Augustine said about being moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. He said, Augustine, therefore, does not here say that the faith of the godly is founded on the authority of the church, nor does he mean that the certainty of the gospel depends on it. He merely says that unbelievers would have no certainty of the gospel, so as thereby to win Christ were they not influenced by the consent of the church. So Calvin there is just saying Augustine's just giving credence to the validity and influence that the church has and how important it is. So it's kind of important to remember. A lot of people, there's kind of an old quip that says the Reformation was Augustine's soteriology, which means how we're saved, how one is saved. So what we were discussing earlier about original sin and stuff like that. It was Augustine's view of soteriology that triumphed over his ecclesiology. So they're just saying, wow, he had a really kind of wacky view of the church, but he had a great view of soteriology. The Reformation was just this one beating out that one. It kind of simplifies it way too much, but just to give you an idea of his views of the church. Yeah, so that really, for the most part, wraps up Augustine. It's hard to understate or overstate his importance to the church, his importance to theology, his importance to the Reformation especially. He was, I mean, there's really a whole lot that could be said about him, but he was very, very, very influential. But, can't talk about him forever, so we'll jump into the next one. His name is John Chrysostom. Christostom means golden mouth. So you know how I've been trying to give like these guys these names. Christostom, call him the golden mouth. John the golden mouth. Christostom's not his actual name. Just again, for some reason we don't know any of these guys' last names and give them to him. That's a good point. I didn't give him one. Augustine of Hippo. I mean, shoot, we could make one right now after everything I said. What do you guys think? Oh, the Doctor of Grace. Sorry. There he is. We'll call him that. There he is, the Doctor of Grace. Yep, yeah. When you think of Augustine, what I want you to think about, this is a good thing to do actually, when we think of each of these fathers, just to have a very simple little thing to think about, and we don't have to remember the details, but just to have some little quip. When you think of Augustine, think of the gospel. He really just knew the gospel and helped in the Reformation period, or he was helping in the 400s. So it influenced our history all the way to right now. People are always going to Augustine to say, well, look what he did. Think of the gospel. When you think of John Chrysostom, think of preaching, which we haven't really talked about him yet, but that's what we should think about with him. He was a masterful preacher. And I guess another thing to think about with him is scripture. We'll talk about that. So like I said, his name was Chrysostom, or what we call him is Chrysostom, which means golden mouth. So if someone says like, wow, that guy's What's that saying? A silver tongue? A silver spoon or something? Oh, to emphasize how well they speak. Same thing. So he was trained in rhetoric and he excelled in oratory. So he was just another brilliant speaker. And I'll give, even before he was a Christian, I was gonna read this little blip from the book. So like I said, he was a brilliant orator, could speak really well. Before becoming a monk, he was a lawyer. This is talking about John Chrysostom. Trained in his native Antioch by the famous pagan orator, Libanius. It is said that when someone asked the old teacher who should succeed him, he responded, John, but the Christians have laid claim on him. I thought that was cool because It brought to me the mind that, well, the Christians didn't lay claim on him. Christ laid claim on him. That's the beauty of it. The Christians didn't do anything. Christ did. And what he's doing is using his profound skills to the glory of God. That's helpful for all of us. What do we have? Christians didn't lay claim on us. Christ laid claim on us. What can we do? What do we have to offer? And let's give it to him. Because that's what John Chrysostom did. He was masterful at rhetoric while he's doing this. He's like, well, forget that. He's doing it to the glory of God. So he was very zealous. He was a very zealous guy. He actually lived as a monk in the wilderness for about two years. And we haven't really talked about monasticism too much, have we yet? So I'll give a little brief overview of monasticism. It was... Well, monasticism in this period was gaining a lot of ground in these 400s because, like I said, the persecutions had started to seize. Well, think about it, in this time period, or throughout all of church history right now, Christians have just been getting persecuted all the time. So it was hard for them to even imagine Christianity without persecution. Well, now we get away from the persecution, the Christians don't really know what to do with themselves. They start thinking, well, shoot, I need to suffer, you know, that's all we've ever known. So they start developing these, and these had been part of the church for a long time, so I don't want to misrepresent. But it really gained ground in this time period after Constantine, because they decided, well, to be a true devoted Christian, I need to follow a more ascetic lifestyle. Ascetic meaning like you kind of purposely bring on suffering for yourselves. So they would, you know, starve themselves and, you know, only eat bread or, you know, once a week, or they'd allow themselves a sip of water once a day, like stuff like that. And they were doing this all of complete devotion, saying like, this is what the Lord wants me to do. You know, we'd look back on that now and say that that's not what we're called to do, obviously. But that was a mark of devotion back then. So John Chrysostom, he was one of those guys. He was a monk for two years and he did this to such an extent that it really hurt his health and he almost died. So he ended up coming away from his monastery off in the wilderness and coming back to the city and using his teaching skills again. So he was a preacher in the main church of his hometown, and his main contribution thing we always, that should stick in your mind when we talk about John Corsostom is exegetical expository preaching. They call him the father of expository preaching. You can, and this is actually really cool, I encourage you all to do this, you can go online and look up what they call homilies. A sermon. You can go through and he's, I think he's preached on 17 books of the New Testament. So in the same way we, you know, we can go online and find MacArthur's going through the whole entire New Testament, you can almost find the exact same thing with John Chrysostom, which is fascinating. He's in the 400s. So you can do it yourselves. Go on Google, type on John Chrysostom on Matthew. I know he did one on Romans. I mean, I think it was 16 or 17 books of the New Testament, and you can see it. You can go scroll down and find homily number 32, and you click on it, and well, there it is, Matthew 15, verse 3, and you read what he says about Matthew 15, verse 3. It's really cool. So if you ever get stuck on a passage, you might go see what John Chrysostom had to say, which is wild. But what also allows us to do that is his hermeneutic. So what hermeneutic is, is how do we interpret Scripture? What is kind of the study, the method by which we interpret Scripture? Well, he had a very literal, grammatico-historical literal hermeneutic. He started at the literal meaning of the text and had that to be the foundation of what the text meant. So really, even though it was in the 400s, you can go back and look at what he said about, you know, Matthew 14, I don't know, just picking a random chapter, and you can find that we'll honestly probably agree with most of what he's saying. He even gives good insights. Maybe not all of it, because again, it's, you know, the 400s, but it's crazy. If you start with the literal meaning of the text, how similar our views would end up being. So that's the main point of emphasis with John Chrysostom is that right there. In 397, he was appointed the Bishop of Constantinople. So again, remember here we are in the east. Constantinople is modern-day Istanbul, so Turkey area. And John Chrysostom was actually originally from Antioch, the same Antioch that we see in scripture, modern-day Syria. Well, now he moved to Constantinople again. He's just one of these leading figures in the eastern half of the church. Constantinople is actually the capital of this eastern empire. Well, he ended up being a bishop there. He was a very humble guy. He was nominated as bishop. He didn't even know it. One of his friends put his name in and everybody loved him so much and basically said, you're the bishop. And he was like, what? I didn't know that. He didn't even really want to be it, but he was. So one of the things that Christopherson was preaching against was kind of nominal Christianity. The Roman Empire at this time was very kind of similar to, you know, the Bible Belt of America. probably not anymore, but 30, 40 years ago, where everybody is just kind of culturally Christian. You may have zero, you don't go to church, you don't do anything, but that's just what you call yourselves, because it gives you this kind of cultural capital to just call yourself a Christian. The Roman Empire was similar. It was politically Christian. So people were like, yeah, I'm Christian. I mean, what else can you be? It's a similar scenario here in the Roman Empire at this time. So he would see people, he really preached against flaunting wealth, people that just spent tons of money and had all these amassed riches for themselves. And if you can think about it, people back then, what did they see as completely holy and devotional were these monasteries where you went to the wilderness and only drank water once a week. Compare that to, oh, that person's a Christian, to this person over here who's just, you know, rolling in the dough. So he was really preaching against those people. Well, the emperor's wife, the empress, took that very personal and was very offended by that, and thought he was preaching directly to her, which maybe he was. But she went to her husband and was like, we need to get this guy out of here, and had him exiled. Kind of more to the story ends up coming back a little bit, but eventually, long story short. He's exiled from Constantinople. The whole church ends up dying in exile in the year 407. A lot of it from his wounds that he had done damage to himself when he was in the monastery, but also just from being exiled and not getting enough food there. So that's how he died. But Chrysostom, again, he had a great view of the gospel as well, just like Augustine. Nathan Busenitz, he's the guy that actually wrote this workbook. He has a really cool story on John Chrysostom and a student in one of his classes. I don't know how this student got there or why he was there, but there was a guy taking one of his classes that was planning to become a Roman Catholic priest. So Nathan's like, I'm not sure why this guy's going to be in my class, but I'm glad that I know he's coming because I'm going to prepare for it. Well, what he ended up doing, knowing that a Roman Catholic would be very impressed or would give a whole lot of credence to what an early church father would say, just did a whole class and let John Chrysostom walk through the book of Romans through his homilies. He didn't really expound on it and preach on it. He just let John Chrysostom, his sermons on Romans, share the gospel. That way this Roman Catholic priest would be like, This is an early church father. These are who my people are supposed to be. But I was gonna go through a couple of these. These are, again, these homilies that you guys can go look up on Google. Chrisostom on Romans 3, 27. But what is the law of faith? It is being saved by grace. Here he shows God's power, and that he has not only saved, but has even justified and led them to boasting. And this too, without needing works, but looking for faith only. Chrysostom on Romans 5, 2. And listen for the gospel in these words. If then he has brought us near to himself when we are far off, much more will he keep us now that we are near. And let me beg you to consider how he everywhere sets down these two points, his part and our part. On his part, however, there'll be things varied and numerous and diverse, for he died for us and further reconciled us and brought us to himself and gave us grace unspeakable, but we brought faith as our only contribution. I mean, there it is. And I'll do one more. This is on Ephesians 2.8. Even faith, Paul says, is not from us. For if the Lord had not come, if he had not called us, how should we have been able to believe? For how, Paul says, shall they believe if they have not heard? So even the act of faith is not self-initiated. It is, he says, the gift of God. So important to remember, John Chrysostom, he had the gospel. And again, I've kind of already talked about this, I jumped ahead of myself, but he also had scripture. So when you think of John Chrysostom, when you think Augustine, or Augustine, think of the gospel. When you think of John Chrysostom, think of a literal hermeneutic and preaching. He's kind of the father of expository preaching. So here's some of his quotes on scripture. Again, he affirmed that it was without error. So he's commenting here on John 17, 17. Your word is truth. That is, there is no falsehood in it, and all that is said in it must happen. He affirmed the authority of scripture. He said, these then are the reasons, but it is necessary to establish them all from the scriptures and to show with exactness that all that has been said on this subject is not an invention of human reasoning, but the very sentence of the scriptures. For thus will what we say be at once more deserving of credit and sink the deeper in your minds. And last one, he also spoke on the sufficiency of scripture. For this is the exhortation of the Scriptures given, that the man of God may be rendered perfect by it. Without this, therefore, he cannot be perfect. You have the Scriptures, he says, in place of me. If you would learn anything, you may learn it from them. And if he thus wrote to Timothy, who was filled with the Spirit, then how much more to us? And again, I've already mentioned this numerous times, but the literal interpretation of scripture. You guys remember Origen? He's Mr. Crazy Allegory. Now, I wanted to make a point. We want to emphasize this literal hermeneutic. That doesn't necessarily mean that we don't see, you know, typology. Sometimes in the Old Testament there are types, and I mean, Scripture speaks of it, there are types and shadows in the Old Testament that point to the greater reality of what it is. When we speak and emphasize this literal hermeneutic, that doesn't mean that those aren't present, that those aren't there. I mean, Christ speaks of things in the Old Testament as pointing to Him. The problem is when we let something else be the foundation of our hermeneutic, We have to remember, we always first go to the literal meaning of the text. What did the author mean to say here? And that's the foundation for how we interpret it. So we don't be like Origen, who said, oh yeah, it says this, but what does it really mean? That's not how we want to approach scripture. So, as Chrysostom explains, proper Bible interpretation involves a clear understanding of what the passage means. Sound Bible study involves looking... Ah, Chrysostom didn't say this, by the way. I'm speaking about Chrysostom. Sound Bible study involves looking at the details like the words, the flow of the argument in its context, the sense, the author's intent, the aim of the speaker, and the historical setting. So those are the foundations by which we should approach scripture for sure. Doesn't mean there may not be some allegorical meaning in there, but we never go to that first by any means. So that really wraps it up for the most part. Always remember these three pillars. So whenever we're talking about any of these guys, and it's going to get harder as we get farther. Now, once we start entering the Middle Ages, more and more, you know, wacky errors are going to start. coming in, and it's going to be harder to find that meat and bones in these people. People like Augustine and Chrysostom, we have it brilliantly right there, but especially in the Middle Ages, it's a little harder to find. It was still there. It was always there. The gospel has always been present in the church, so I'm not saying it wasn't, but a lot of error is going to be really starting to be introduced. So always remember those three pillars. The right God, the right gospel, the right revelation. Next week, we're going to kind of depart from, actually, I don't think it is actually next week, I don't remember the exact date, but when Logan teaches next, he's going to be talking about the councils. So we're going to kind of move away from, just for the time being, this kind of literal walkthrough of time period, and he's going to give kind of a more broad overview of of years, because he's going to go over the various councils that have happened in church history and how we should think about them and that type of thing. And then the week after that, I'm going to get into the Middle Ages. And that's when that East versus West thing is really going to hit home. But what I am going to do, well, before I do, y'all have any questions? I don't remember the end of the story. I'm going to assume yes. I don't know. I have no idea. Well, I actually think that he might have said something about he didn't end up pursuing the priesthood, if I remember correctly. Don't quote me on it, but maybe he was just throwing that in there. Any other questions or anything? And if I don't know the answer, we can look it up. So Robin Hood. What year is Robin and I have no idea? That's a good question. I was just thinking, yeah, when I picture like... It would probably be Middle Ages. Yeah, probably Middle Ages. For some reason, I picture like a lot of these... I know when you think of castles and, you know, like the moats. Yeah, I was reading like the early church stuff with the bishops and all that. For some reason, I was thinking, I was picturing like the same era. I think that's honestly, I think what you're picturing is probably a little later. in this time period. I was like, I don't know anything about Robin Hood. Yeah, when I picture, yeah, because I, when I think about the Middle Ages, I think about castle battles, you know, where they're like, you know, pouring oil on the guy's head trying to climb up the thing. Sorry, that's gruesome. But that's, yeah, that's what it is. Right, right, yeah. Some of these early church leaders, they get run out of their churches, and the churches get burned up. What did the churches look like? What did the... That's an interesting... Actually, that is a great question to look at the architecture. Yeah, in fact, I didn't, I have it in my notes here, but one of the, yeah, I forgot to go over it a little bit. The church that Chrysostom preached at, one of them was called Hagia Sophia. You can go look at that now, yeah. He preached there. It's an architectural masterpiece at this point. I don't think it was when he was there, but now it's like a beautiful place. It went from being a church to a mosque, because this is in Palestine area, and then became a museum. And I was actually reading about it. It's back to a mosque as of 2020. Do you know more about it? Well, I mean, I think it was built by Justinian. That's after Constantine. So I don't know what it was like for him when he was preaching, but it was always beautiful. And so it got burned down a few times because of like, just different battles that happened, and so nothing is original, I don't think, anymore. Sure, sure. But it's still absolutely phenomenal. And it was a church, and then a mosque, and then a church, and then a mosque. It's back to a mosque as of 2020, not long ago, two years ago. Yeah, when I was trying to look it up, I think when John was preaching there, I don't think it was built to the elegance that it is now, but it was the same location for sure. Anything else? Well, what I'm going to let us do is let Augustine pray us out. So again, this is from his confessions. And I just want to say one more time, y'all should actually go buy this. It's really good. It's very devotional. It's very encouraging. Don't get caught up in details about it, but it's very, you know, just listening to this man pray and give God his heart and describe what God did in his life. It's beautiful. He wrote it in Latin, so you have to find different, there's different translations. I really like this one. The one I read, I haven't read through this one, but the one I did read through, this one, I tend to like the way it speaks a little better. The cool thing about when you're having to buy a translation from someone like Augustine, it's not like we're looking for a Bible translation, you know, where, you know, we're trying to get it. In a Bible, we want, you know, exact, this is the word of God. Here, it's like, well, what sounds the prettiest? What's gonna encourage my soul the most, you know? All right, Augustine's gonna praise out here. Accept the sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue which you formed, which you have roused to give thanks to your name. Heal all my bones and let them say, Lord who is like you. Those who make their confession to you do not teach you what is going on within them, for a closed heart is not hidden from your eye, and no human hardness can rebuff the touch of your hand. Know you melt it whenever you please, whether by showing mercy or by exacting punishment, and there is no one who can hide from your burning heat. But let my soul praise you that it might love you. Let it give thanks to you for your acts of mercy that it might praise you. The whole of your creation never ceases to praise you. Never grow silent in singing your praises. Every spirit whose mouth is turned towards you speaks your praises. Every animal and every bodily thing speaks your praises through the mouths of those who pay them heed, so that our soul might shake off its weariness, leaning upon the things you have made and passing over from them to you, who made these things in the most wonderful way and find in you refreshment and true strength. Amen.