So tonight we are doing what sounds like a really formidable topic, but it isn't. It sounds formidable because it has the word medieval in it. Anything medieval must be tough, right? No, it isn't. So, the eclipse of grace in medieval Catholicism. So this is the background to the Reformation. This is why there was a Reformation. Because the Reformation is essentially the rediscovery of the gracious God of the gospel. Now that God had gone away, he hadn't. Now that the church was no longer a church, no, it was. But that grace had been eclipsed. Now, we just had a solar eclipse in this continent not very long ago, and perhaps some of you were able to observe that wonderful event. We didn't quite have the full 100% eclipse here. You had to go down to Tennessee or some other southern stretch or out in the West to see the entire 100% solar eclipse on that particular day. But in an eclipse, is the sun absent? It isn't. It's obscured. And it's not the darkness of midnight at an eclipse. There's a shadowing, a shading of the world, but not the darkening of the world. So my metaphor for the late medieval Christianity of the West is the eclipse of grace. The eclipse of grace. So to begin, I want to read from 1 Timothy, a great, great text. And I just want to read the first two verses. 1 Timothy 1, the first two verses. And often in the Pauline letters, we find that in the opening lines, Paul gives the major theme of the letter. And we have something like that here in 1 Timothy. So hear then the word of the Lord. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God our Savior, and of Jesus Christ, our hope. To Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." Christians hear that, what do Christians say? Amen, right? You're allowed to say amen now. You're Presbyterians, I know, but you're allowed to say amen. Okay, Christians worldwide hear this, and we say, at least in our hearts, amen. Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is core Christian faith. This is worldwide Christianity. This is Christianity in all its ages. All right, so maybe you're a medieval Christian, and it's 1350 A.D., and what do you sing? Okay, you sing lines like this about the grace of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You sing the Gloria Patri, an ancient, ancient hymn. The glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Okay, so the praises of the triune God, they are characteristic of Christianity. These kinds of words never disappear. from Christian worship and from Christian prayer. And so in 1350, what do you sing? You sing words like this. What do you hear in church? You hear words like this, and there is the call then to faith and to hope in the grace of this God who does declare peace with us through our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who is our Savior. So fundamental themes in Christian piety, they do not go away from the true Church of Jesus anywhere. However, in late medieval Christianity in the West, there is an eclipse of grace, not its absence, but its darkening. And so tonight's talk is about that theme. Tomorrow night, is it seven o'clock, Mark? Okay, same time, same bat channel. Okay, same bat time, same bat channel, seven o'clock. There we'll be looking at the next phase, which really does begin the Reformation, and we're calling that Martin Luther and the quest for a gracious God. martin luther in the quest for a gracious god then sunday morning at sunday school i don't know what time nine thirty sunday school okay martin luther in the ninety five theses and then sunday morning worship service eleven o'clock okay uh... justification by faith and by faith alone the most characteristic idea of the protestant reformation And then in the evening, John Calvin and the sum of Christian piety. Okay, 6.30 Sunday night. So that's the schedule. Five talks. So one on more or less the preface to the Reformation, that's tonight. Three on Luther. One final talk on Calvin. That's the agenda. So I hope that I'll be able to carry your interest through the whole set of five. I hope I can. And you pray for me, and I'll pray for you. All right? So here we go. So the eclipse of grace in medieval Catholicism. In the tapestry here, that is a photograph of a very, very old tapestry, Pope Gregory the Great. He was born Roman. He was born aristocrat. He was born to nobility. He was born to a fine and wealthy family. He had become a very high administrator in Roman government when he was suddenly tapped to become ordained and more or less filtered into the papacy. And in 590, the man becomes pope. So 590-604, Gregory the Great, Gregory I, out of many Gregories of that office. And we have to thank Gregory for a number of things that are marvelous and a few things that are not marvelous. One of Gregory's ideas is to cover all of Christendom with churches within walking distance of every farm. What do you call this? The parish system. Okay, you go down to Louisiana, one of the counties, they're called parishes. Okay, you walk through Europe in 1100 AD, and Gregory's vision of a church within walking distance of almost every person has been largely achieved. The Lithuanians resisted, okay? Far northern Europe, okay, some of those were still in resistance against it. But by 1000 AD, that was largely achieved. The Christianizing of Europe and pastoral care within walking distance of nearly every person. Gregory's best book is called On Pastoral Care. That book is still in print. It's still one of the best books on pastoral ministry written around the year 600 AD. But Gregory also has problems. Gregory we blame for the doctrine of purgatory. Purgatory. Two centuries before, Augustine had asked the question, is it possible that a particularly sinful Christian might at death suffer a time of cleansing and preparation before being admitted to the fullness of heavenly bliss? And Augustine does not know the answer to the question. Augustine raises the question in a great book called On Faith, Hope, and Love. I think you've heard of those three things, right? Okay, so Augustine writes a book with that title. Its other title is more obscure. It's called the Enchiridion. That sounds formidable, doesn't it? The Enchiridion is the Greek word for handbook. This was his handbook to the Christian life. So, the Enchiridion, or On Faith, Hope, and Love. And this book was written to a simple fellow named Laurentius, who said, Bishop, can you explain this Christian stuff in simple words for an idiot like me? And Augustine says yes, and he writes 140 pages on Christian faith. It's called the Enchiridion. One of the questions that he cannot answer is, is it possible that particularly sinful Christians might, at their death, have a delay before entering heaven. Augustine does not know. Gregory knew, or rather claimed he did. All right, so purgatory. And in the Martin Luther crisis of 1517, the 500 year now we're in, it was a crisis over preaching about the doctrine of purgatory that started the Reformation. So there is Gregory, whom we both praise and blame. I've also mentioned St. Augustine. He did not really look like that. We don't really know what St. Augustine looked like. This is a portrait by, I think, Tatian, the Renaissance artist of the 16th century. He's imagining what Augustine may have looked like. We have no life portraits of St. Augustine. All right, so we're guessing. But Augustine became the most important Christian teacher in history after the death of the apostles. Augustine was converted in his early 30s out of various paganizing philosophies and became the most important bishop in all the Latin-speaking world, and maybe even in all the Christian world. And so when I rank the great theologians and go to the top five, okay, who are my top five? Augustine is certainly on the list. And one reason he's on the list is because Martin Luther considered himself an Augustinian. And John Calvin considered himself an Augustinian. And Jonathan Edwards, America's greatest theologian, considered himself an Augustinian. And R.C. Sproul and John Gershner consider themselves Augustinians. And that little pipsqueak guy named Curtis, he also considers himself to be an Augustinian. All right, so in Augustinian theology, the idea is this, that by our own power, We cannot break the bondage of sin. We are so in love with ourselves, this idolatry of self cannot be broken from inside. It must be broken from outside, that is, from the power of God. Unless God breaks it, it cannot be broken. But in the gospel, what does God do? He breaks it. He breaks open the prison cells of our hearts. He breaks through the bars of iron, and grace enters the heart and transforms the character, and faith arises by gift. Augustine's theology is essentially a theology of grace by gift. And so we have in the fifth century a controversy over this. Pelagius is the fellow on this side of my screen. We don't really know what Pelagius looked like either. That's a much later portrait of Pelagius by some imaginary, some imaginative artist. But the first part of our story begins with a controversy over between Augustine and Pelagius. So if you will pass these out, this is my outline for the evening. By the way, Mark, how much time do I have before? How much time do we have? About an hour. Okay, good. I think I can do this in an hour. So Pelagius arrives in North Africa fleeing the barbarians who have sacked Rome in 410 AD. And he arrives in North Africa, which is Augustine's domain. He's the bishop of a town called Hipporegius. on what is now the Algerian coast. He's the most important bishop in the world for teaching, but not the most important bishop for city. Hipporegius is no big city. It means the king's horse town. The king's horsetown, so there the Roman Empire bred horses on the African coast, the grasslands there, which were a bit like Kentucky. And off they go across the Mediterranean for service in Spain or France or Rome or elsewhere. And Augustine's the bishop there. And when the barbarians sack Rome, as they do in 410 AD, all kinds of people in Italy flee. including a British monk, a very stern and disciplined character named Pelagius. And as he's fleeing, he comes to North Africa by ship, and he encounters the bestselling book of the time. What's the bestseller? The thing hot off the presses? Well, not the presses, but hot out of the scriptoria? It's Augustine's Confessions, which is Augustine's life story, the story of his conversion, and a book-long prayer addressed to God. It's one of the great, great books. How many have read at least some of Augustine's confessions ever, ever? I recommend it. I recommend it. And in Book One of the Confessions, Augustine has this prayer. Lord, give what you command and command whatever you will. Give what you command and command whatever you will. For Augustine, the prayer means this, Lord, in myself, in my own imprisonment, in my self-love idolatry, in the prison house of my self-love, I do not have the ability to obey you. Give me the ability and then command whatever you want. Give what you command and command whatever you will. Augustine was a great phrase maker. The phrase rhymes in Latin and the reversal of terms. It's a brilliant phrase. When Pelagius reads this, he gets furious. Why does Pelagius get furious? He thinks that anyone who actually believes that prayer may then blame God for their sin because God did not give them the ability to obey. Okay, so I sinned, but whose fault is it? It's God's fault. So Pelagius enters into controversy with Augustine starting in 410 A.D., and for the rest of their natural lives, they are engaged in it. And when Augustine dies in 430 A.D., the controversy is not solved. In fact, it'll be solved only 100 years later at the Synod of Orange. in southern France. Did you know there was a town called Orange? That's how we get the word orange, because they grew a certain fruit. It takes the name of the city. It was a Roman provincial capital for southern France, which should not be all too galling. And there the Western bishops met to deliberate a controversy between some followers who were still hanging on to shreds of Pelagius' teaching versus other followers of St. Augustine. So let me expound a bit of Pelagius, our British monk. And, okay, shocked as he was by Augustine's prayer, give what you command, command what you will, Pelagius basically says this. This is not quotation, but this is his teaching. We already possess the grace we need to obey the commands of God. We have everything we need to serve Christ in the facts of creation, the fact that we are made in the image of God, and in the facts of the good moral lives of the saints and the teachings of the Church. All right, so create the human race in the image of God, set them free, okay, even have them sin, but human beings still possess the power to obey if only they will. And what hope do they have? The lives of the saints, the teaching of the church, the example of Christ and the apostles. Notice how all those helps are exterior to the soul. They are outside of you. He claims it's grace, but it is exterior to the soul. Augustine will have a different theology of grace, interior to the soul. What is grace for St. Augustine? A divine power that enters into your life, redirecting your love. and giving you a new spiritual ability from within. So an exterior theory of grace versus an interior theory of grace, which one would you rather have to be true? If you could pick only because of preference, which one would you rather have? One outside of you or one in? Pick one. I think you want the one that's inside, right? And it so happens that that's the one that's actually true. The Bible teaches it. So the controversy goes on, and Augustine, in answering the Pelagians, has a bit of phrase-making that's brilliant. Now, Augustine spoke Latin, wrote in Latin, thought in Latin. He was multilingual. His mother was Berber. So the native language of Morocco and Algeria and parts of Libya, before the Muslims ever conquered the place in the late 600s, Berber language still persists today. And I was blessed to teach some Berber and Arabic-speaking Christians back in June in North Africa for a week of illegal seminary there. So Berber still exists as a language. And when I quoted St. Augustine, all of a sudden they were all attentive because they know. that his mama was Berber. They know. So I began my course with a quote from Augustine. I didn't realize how that would play to the balcony in that particular audience, but it certainly did. All right, so here's Augustine, and he says that in the Garden of Eden, Adam unfallen was posse non peccare. Everyone say posse non peccare. It's easy to say. Now it sounds like posse. Okay, we're going to get the posse and head them off at the pass, right? Posse is a Latin term in law for a group that is enabled to enact law or to enforce law. Okay, so the sheriff deputizes people. They're now the posse. It's a Latin term. They are enabled to enforce the law. Okay, temporary enablement, passe. Okay, so get your passe together. But back in Augustine's time, 400 A.D., passe non peccare. Non is, of course, not, and peccare is the verb to sin. So was Adam able not to sin in the garden? Yeah, he was. Was Adam created with moral integrity, with spiritual innocence? Yes, he was. So Adam had posse non peccari, the ability not to sin. But what happens if Adam had passed the test of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden? Okay, so the temptation happens. There's the serpent, okay. There's that fruit, whatever it might have been. Maybe it was prunes. I don't know. If it was prunes, I could have resisted it more thoroughly, perhaps, and not have as wrinkled a human history. But, okay, so what if Adam had resisted successfully? Well, Augustine says he would have been promoted to a higher spiritual level. And not only would he have had unbreakable immortality, never die, he would more importantly have non passe peccare. Everyone say non passe peccare. Okay, now you see the brilliant phrase maker. Passe non peccare. Now let's change the order of words. Non passe peccare. If you are passe non peccare, you are able not to sin. If you are non passe peccare, you are not able to sin. That's a great promotion, isn't it? And so Adam would have been confirmed in his innocence, and his innocence would have become experience, and the experience would have been virtuous, and he would have been wiser and better, and his virtue would never have been broken. Non possibit car. That's the Christian in heaven, isn't it? Can you fall in heaven? Well, I suppose gravity might affect that if you're an astronaut, you know, an airplane. Okay, gravity. But no, saints in heaven do not fall. Why do they not fall? Because their spiritual love is perfected, and the love of God rules and cannot be broken. That's the final state of the Christian. So, not able to sin. But in fact, something nasty happens. In fact, Adam does fall. He takes the forbidden fruit. And now the brilliant phrase maker again comes in. Not non passe vicare, not passe non vicare, but two nons now. Non passe non vicare, not able not to sin. All right, so I've got this satirical essay I'm writing for my students. I haven't finished writing it yet. It's about three pages. And it expounds the fact that I've only sinned once. Hey, that's admirable, isn't it? Aren't you envious of me? I've only sinned once. Truly, I'm really quite serious. I really have only sinned once. Some of my students say, well, Dr. Curtis, what's the sin? Well, it started before I was born and I'm not finished with it yet. So what's the sin? What is the sin? Have I yet loved God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strengths? I have not. So I've only sinned once. and tomorrow I will complete my 63rd and 9-month year of it." Okay, so tomorrow is my birthday, I turn 63, but okay, nine months and 63 years of the same sin, of not yet loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. All other sins flow from that one. And even in my best moment of devotion, maybe even I'm offering the sacred supper of the Lord, to a congregation. Even in my best moment of devotion with tears in my eyes, I have not yet loved God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and neither have you." All right. So every action of my mortal life since my conception has been fraught with some degree of sin, even my best moment. non posse, non peccari. Now that's the fact. What do we need? The last word on the screen. We sang about it already. We need grace. And is Pelagius' view of external grace enough? The example of Christ and the apostles, the teachings of the church, the teachings of Holy Scripture, the fact that we are made in the image of God. Are these things enough to sustain a life of faith and obedience? No, says Augustine. But nonetheless, various versions of Pelagianism persist. And so, in Pelagius, grace is creational and external, but in Augustine, grace is internal and enables and transforms the character. Augustine's favorite word for this inherent sin is concupiscence. You ever hear the word concupiscence? It's got the word Cupid in the middle of it, the Latin word for love. Concupiscence means that you love yourself. And in saying that, you now know it's true, isn't it? All right. The inordinate love of self is the problem with the human race. A proper self-love is limited. We are meant to love ourselves, and the very commandment, the second of all the great commandments, is this, love your neighbor as yourself. That is, love your neighbor as you have loved yourself. Love your neighbor as much as you have loved yourself. That's tough to do. All right. So a degree of self-love is warranted and necessary and healthy. But if I love myself above all others, and even more than God, I'm an idolater, and that is concupiscence." All right. How do you break that? Even in the midst of concupiscence, I might have the fear of hell and the fear of God's wrath. But what's my motive in the fear? Self-preservation. And if I repent merely for self-preservation, then that repentance is damnable, because it is not yet the love of God. Okay, my desire to escape hell is just selfishness, and concupiscence is not broken. Wow. Okay, that's St. Augustine. Is he worth reading? Oh, you better believe it. All right, so this is why Augustine is the great theologian for Luther and Calvin and Edwards and the other great theologians of Christian history, Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas' favorite theologian was Saint Augustine. All right, so unless grace enters in, enables, and transforms our love, we cannot. love God in the right way. So now, 99 years after the death of Augustine, the Western bishops meet at this Roman capital in the Aquitaine, southern France, and there's the Roman gate that still stands. The entry into that city from the 5th century BC. The bishops would have entered through that gate. And at the Council of Orange, they condemned the various versions of Pelagianism, including a version called Semi-Pelagianism. What's Semi-Pelagianism? Oh, it's still alive and well in the evangelical world. Here it is. You ready? That God is gracious and the gospel is grace. But until you open your own heart to it, Jesus will not come in." How many have heard that? I've heard it from very important people. When I was a boy, I heard it from Billy Graham, who said that salvation—well, I think he changed his opinion later. He became more Calvinistic later, more Augustinian. But I heard Billy Graham say that salvation is 99% God and 1% man. Now wait a minute. 1% man? So here's that 1%. But for me that 1% is a vast chasm and it's this big. And how do I cross that 1% when I am locked into the idolatry of concupiscence, my own self-love? The 1% is unbridgeable unless God breaks through. And so that opinion is actually a semi-Pelagian opinion. Maybe you've seen the famous evangelical painting of the human heart as if it is a door to a house surrounded by the ivies of an English garden, and there is Jesus knocking at the door. You ever see that painting? The artist painted no knob on the outside. And the implicit sermon in that painting is that unless you turn the knob from the inside, Jesus will not come in. In a whole lot of evangelical preaching, it has been said that Jesus is a gentleman. He will not force His way in. I don't want Jesus to be a gentleman because if He is, I'm damned. And so are you. All right, so unless grace enters in, we are in trouble. So at the Synod of Orange, the Western bishops taught this. Not only is grace necessary within the Christian life and to sustain the Christian life and to bring the Christian life to its goal, grace is necessary even to begin the Christian life. And so the people who taught that salvation is 99% God and 1% man, those people are condemned. at the Synod of Orange in 529 A.D., and even the initial act of faith is described there as totally given by God. What does St. Paul say, by the way? By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves. How does the rest of it go? It's the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2.8. Now, often the rest of the sentence is not quoted, but the sentence goes on for two more verses. For we are His, anyone know? Workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Look at God's workmanship. The Greek word there is poiema. We get our English word poem from that. It means craftsmanship, artful, skillful work. We are God's poiema, his artful, skillful work, and God created us, or rather we can say we created us, in conversion for this new life of faith and obedience, the good works in which we walk, prepared beforehand. Total gift then, faith and the Christian life and obedience. So the Synod of Orange is reading St. Paul pretty well at that point. However, however, I've just moved to Massachusetts, okay, however, no, not really. The Synod of Orange also had certain distortions and here's one of them. Right now, in 529, infant baptism had become the standard practice throughout the ancient church. Scholars might debate whether infant baptism was practiced in 120 AD in a certain location or something. Okay, there are legitimate debates about that. The photograph here, by the way, is the earliest known baptistry, and it happens to be an infant baptistry from a city on the northern Euphrates River in Mesopotamia called Dura Europos, 300 A.D. for that church. It's one of the greatest Christian buildings from that era, and there's a baptistry inside it. And the baptistry was excavated about, I think, 50 years ago or 60 years ago or something. It's about this long, and there's a basin in it about this long, and a little shell carved into the stone for the infant's head. This is a baptistry for children. Okay, so in 300 A.D. in Mesopotamia, Christians are baptizing children. In the City of Orange, baptism is said to forgive all prior sin. And infant baptism then removes the guilt of original sin, breaks the power of concupiscence, and enables that soul to believe and repent in years ahead. That's the sense of the Synod of Orange. And so baptism regenerates, making us able to believe and obey. And here's one of the most interesting sentences in that document from the Synod of Orange. Salvation comes to all the baptized, quote, if they labor faithfully. If they labor faithfully. So that sentence will haunt the church for the next 1,000 years, and still to this day, if they labor faithfully. Now, their sense of laboring faithfully means this, faith and obedience, faith in the grace of God, and obedience enabled by grace. This is not sheer naked obedience that earns grace. It is obedience that comes from grace. So without the gift of baptism, you lack the grace to do this. That was their sense. Baptism was not viewed as a work by them, but as a gift of God, and it granted the first gift of grace to awaken the soul to enable it to believe and obey. All right, so you've been given a gift of grace, so continue faithfully. and you shall be saved at the end. That was the teaching of the Synod of Orange. And now already, we see a conflict building up in the Church, which will come to power in the time of the Protestant Reformation, where we have two big fat words, one of them you probably know pretty well, and one of them you do not know, probably. The big fat word on my right, your left, evangelicalism. What in the world is meant by evangelicalism? Not as social movement, not as American political party, not as something trashed by the media, but as a pure theological term. What does it mean in pure theology without any particular social agenda? What is evangelicalism? Here it is. is grace ministered through the power of faith. Faith in what? The evangel. The evangel is our English word, a Middle English word for gospel. In Greek, euangelion. In Latin, evangelium. In Middle English, evangel. In modern English, good news or gospel. Okay, so faith in the gospel. Evangelicalism is salvation through faith in the gospel. The other column is sacerdotalism. How many have heard the term? Oh, bless you. Okay. All right. So I'm surprised. I'm pleased. Okay. Sacerdotalism. In Latin, a sacerdotus is a priest who sacrifices at an altar. Okay, so Julius Caesar actually was a sacerdotus, one of his offices in ancient Rome. He did preside at certain sacrifices. So a Roman priest does that in pagan Roman religion, and in Christian religion under Roman Catholicism, a priest is still called a sacerdotus in Latin. Someone who officiates at the altar, namely at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. a sacerdotist. So sacerdotalism then is about sacraments and the power of sacraments. And if you believe that salvation is grace ministered by the power of sacraments, then you are a sacerdotalist. Okay, so we have two competing versions of Christianity, evangelicalism versus sacerdotalism. But wait, do evangelicals believe in sacraments? Do they believe in baptism in the Lord's Supper? Do sacerdotalists believe in the necessity of faith? Yeah. So there's a bit of overlap, a bit of cloud. So which is principle? Which is the main deal? If you think the main deal is faith in the gospel, you are technically an evangelical. If you believe that the main deal is sacraments granting grace and the ability to believe, then you are a sacerdotalist. What churches are sacerdotalists now, officially? The Roman Catholic Church, most famously. The Eastern Orthodox Church, to some degree. Missouri Synod Lutherans, who hold that without baptism you cannot believe. Are you ready for this one? This one's weird. The Christian Church, that is the Churches of Christ, who hold that without a Dor baptism for the forgiveness of sins, you cannot be saved. a sacerdotal view of adult believers' baptism. They look like evangelical Baptists, but they're actually sacerdotalists. It's weird. How many know people from Christian churches or the churches of Christ? Okay, they look like evangelicals, but they are sacerdotalists. It's weird. All right. So those are some samples of sacerdotal churches. So if salvation is principally ministered by the sacraments, if baptism grants the entry into the life of faith, then guess what happens in the rest of the Middle Ages? A vast attention to the doctrine of the sacraments. So for instance, the doctrine of penance, which will be crystallized by about 1200 AD. at the Fourth Lateran Council meeting outside of Rome in 1215 AD, the doctrine of penance that still exists in Roman Catholicism was crystallized. And here's what it is. By penance, God forgives all sins committed after baptism. What does penance involve? Contrition, that is, sorrow for sin because of the love of God. Now, if you have sorrow for sin because of how it hurts, That's not contrition. If you have sorrow for sin because you were caught, that is not a contrition. Contrition is sorrow for sin for the motive of the love of God. You offended God in your sin. If that's your motive for repentance, you have contrition. Anything less is called attrition, and it's not sufficient. So you go to the priest and you confess your sins. And the priest does not see your heart, does he? So the priest is instructed to trust the penitent and to pronounce the absolution. Te absolve is the Latin phrase. Not I forgive you, but you are forgiven. Forgiven by whom? By God. And so the forgiveness is instant. in Roman liturgy. How many were Roman Catholic at one point in your life? Okay, you were baptized Catholic, raised Catholic, and you went to confession, and the priest said, te absolver. Maybe he said, you are forgiven. But what language did he use? Latin. Okay, te absolver. Remember the phrase? Okay, you are forgiven. So the forgiveness is instant. However, since sin is a sickness of the soul, the priest then must prescribe medicines for the soul. And what are the medicines typically prescribed? Prayers, alms, sometimes vigils, sometimes fastings, sometimes for those who are wealthier, pilgrimages. Yeah, money, okay, alms for the poor, money. Okay, so you say 10 Our Fathers, okay, the Lord's Prayer, or you say the Hail Mary, and the prayers are said to be medicines for the soul. And is prayer, godly prayer, a true medicine for the soul? It is. All right. So the forgiveness is not based upon the deeds that are commanded. The forgiveness is based upon the fact of contrition rooted in the grace of God. This is a gracious gift, isn't it? The grace of God is not gone from the sacrament of penance. But can it be compromised and obscured? Yes, and here's how it happens. Because the works the priest prescribes will be called works of merit, and they will be called satisfactions. All right, so you're not going to be like Mick Jagger, and you can't get no satisfaction. All right? You might be knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door with Eric Clapton, but you're going to have satisfaction. That is, you're going to do the deeds, and when you do the deeds, God is satisfied with them, and your account then is clean with God. But here is the problem. The Roman Church will say by 1215 AD that penance is incomplete without works of merit. Now, if you're reading Thomas Aquinas and the best theologians of that 13th century time, you will learn that the deeds that you do are not really meritorious. They are, well, he'll nickname them half-merit. But the technical term is congruent merit, and my friend Dean can tell us what congruent triangles are because he's taught math for 50 years or something. What are congruent triangles? Okay, but could one be much larger than the other? Okay, so what if it has the same angles, the same proportions? Okay, similar triangles. Okay, but maybe on my mathematical terms I've been forgotten by from 10th grade back in 1968 at Penn Hills High School. Okay, for congruent he means that these things are smaller scale versions of real merit. So insofar as our deeds are inspired by the Holy Spirit who grows the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, we can say that these things have condign merit, genuine merit, truly earned, because they are the works, the fruit of the Spirit. And what the Spirit does is certainly meritorious. Okay, so if our good deeds are the fruit of the Spirit, let's call that really, really meritorious, and that's condign, but that's earned by the Spirit, not by you. What might you earn? Only the congruent merit, granted the undeserving by grace, and so God deigns to receive them as if they are meritorious. You follow? Okay, so congruent merit is not really the real thing. Here's the trouble. Teach that to peasants, and will they get it? All right, so the church will label them merits, and the church will label them satisfactions. And so you pray your prayers, give your alms, make your pilgrimage, keep your vigil, and you will tend to believe that your account is now even with God. You've made up for your sins, and God's wrath is now satisfied because of your deed. You like the picture? This was the dominant view by the 13th century. in the Western Church. So merit completes penance. Careful readers of Thomas Aquinas will know that that is not formally true. but most were not careful readers of Thomas Aquinas. And we have further help of grace, the intercessions of the saints, and so you offer to the saints honor and to Mary the highest honor. In Roman theology, Roman Catholic theology, worship is given to God alone, but you honor the saints. And the saints are conduits of grace to you, so you pray through the saints to God. And one of the issues here is that often in medieval preaching, especially late medieval preaching, Jesus is viewed as the stern judge of the world. Anybody been to the Sistine Chapel in Rome? And on the apse, Michelangelo painted a huge painting of the Christ. Is it friendly? It's a beardless Christ who is casting sinners into hell. It's called the Final Judgment. And Christ is titanically huge on that 60-foot wall. And on one side, some saints are ascending to heaven, and on the other side, sinners are cast into hell. And it's a wrathful, scowling Christ, painted in about the year 1505 by Michelangelo. All right. So who then in heaven is gentle? Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed be Thou in the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. Amen. The Hill Mary. Half the words come from the angel Gabriel's greeting to Mary in Luke chapter 1 or 2. So Mary is widely viewed then as a successful mediator, one who will receive you because she is kind. or as Jesus, stern judge of the world. But will Jesus refuse any prayer from His mother? Nope. Okay, so get Mary to pray for you, and in the official Roman view, the saints are not the ends, the goals of prayer. They are the conduits of prayer, and they convey your prayer to God the Father. Problem. How many mediators does the New Testament have? All right, there's one God and one mediator between man and God, the man Jesus Christ. To treat saints or Mary as a mediator and to trust them as somehow closer, more available than Jesus, is to undermine the mercies of Jesus. And so Roman theology once again obscures the grace of the gospel. Jesus becomes the stern judge, Mary becomes the gracious intercessor, and we are one step further away from the New Testament gospel. Oh, by the way, at its worst, what happens? Mary becomes a goddess, and on your knees praying to her, you worship her at its worst. We'll call that folk Catholicism, not approved by the bishops. They'll view that as heretical, a sinful deed, but nonetheless it's vast in its practice. All right, so holy relics. Does anyone know what the photograph is here? Shroud of Turin, okay, which is probably the oldest photograph in the world. The carbon 14 dates on that fabric date it to the late Middle Ages. It is not a first century cloth. It is not the burial shroud of Jesus. That is not true. It might be the face of the artist, and it might be a particular chemical brew that flashed, and it might be the world's oldest photograph. The linen might in fact be a negative image in a flash of chemical brilliance. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe. All right. This was the most famous relic in Europe. Now it's in Turin, Italy. It was at Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, which was the most important pilgrimage spot in Europe for many, many centuries. Yes, yes, Santiago is St. James. Yeah, yeah, so somehow James, even though he ended up in northwestern Spain. And Iago is Jacob, but in Spanish. and Italian, and so Jacob is James. So through a whole series of linguistic twists we get from Yaakov, James' Hebrew name, to Iago in Spanish and James in English. It's a weird linguistic journey, but it's all the same name. Alright, so pilgrimage sites. Canterbury, England. Okay, so the tomb of Thomas a Beckett. assassinated by four knights under Henry II in 1180 or something AD. Okay, so these are places where you can gain merit by being in contact with the objects and relics and maybe even the bodies of those who've been sanctified. These are sources of merit in the Roman view. All right, now purgatory. And what then is purgatory? St. Augustine asked the question, is it possible that a particularly sinful Christian might have a delay at death in entering into the fullness of heaven? Okay, Augustine did not know the answer. He raises it. The question does not answer it. Gregory knew 200 years later, yes, sinful saints, sinful believers have a delay. And the church then has the opportunity to pray for them so that their delay can be made more brief and that heavenly bliss be granted them. So the church makes intercession for the souls of the dead. In Protestant Christianity, do you pray for the dead? Why not? Why not? Okay, for those in hell, too late. For those in heaven, they're already completely blessed. Okay, so we thank God for the saints. We thank God for the Christians who have now passed into their glory. We do not intercede for their needs because they have no need. Those who are in hell are beyond our help. And those who are in heaven do not need it. But in the Roman view, some do. And so based on certain dreams of Gregory and other monks in his connection, a doctrine of purgatory is then taught and becomes the standard view. Interestingly, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Greek-speaking church, purgatory is not asserted. So if you're a Greek Orthodox Christian, Eastern Orthodox Christian, Russian Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, no statement of purgatory there. It's Roman Christianity that has the doctrine of purgatory. The Lord's Supper. In 1215 AD, the same council that defined penance in that kind of detail that we had also defines the Lord's Supper in a far more thorough way than any church council ever had up to that point in history. And that definition still stands as the official Roman view. What is the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, the communion? Well, it contains the real presence of Christ. Wait a minute. Luther thought that too. Wait a minute. Calvin thought that too. Wait a minute. The Book of Common Prayer in Anglicanism says that too. And some guy named Curtis also says that. Presbyterianism says that. The presence of Jesus is truly there. The question is what's the manner of the presence of Jesus? And at 1215, at St. John's Lateran Church, just outside the walls of the city of Rome, the bishops and the pope at that time, Innocent III, declared that when the priest says the words, Hoc est corpus meum, this is my body, a miracle happens. And that which had been bread, and that which had been wine, become the incarnate Christ, the God-man. It retains the appearance of bread and the appearance of wine in all physical ways that you can discern. It is bread and wine, but it is not. Its appearances stay the same, but its substance has been chained by miracle. And so when the priest says the words, hulk est corpus meum, a sacristan, usually an altar boy, has a bell and the bell chimes. And what does the congregation do when the bell chimes? Does anyone know? When you were a boy, what did you do when the priest said those words and the bell chimed? Okay, well at that moment you would have bowed the knee. you would genuflect. And you're not bowing the knee to God in heaven, you're bowing the knee to Jesus in the bread, because Jesus is now physically, incarnationally, the substance of the bread. All right, so all kinds of Christians assert the real presence of Jesus in the Lord's Supper, but the manner of His presence is vastly debated. So at the Fourth Lateran Council, it's declared that Jesus in His incarnate life from heaven is now physically And so there are all kinds of Roman stories of that. Okay, so you take the bread, the wafer, and you bite it and it bleeds. How many have heard that kind of legend? You bite the wafer and it bleeds because it's really Jesus. Okay. And, of course, the Roman Church then withheld the cup from the laity because it was too easy to spill. How do they warrant taking the cup away from the congregations? Because a body has blood. Take the wafer and you get the blood too. That's how it was warranted. So only the priest drank the wine. And one of the elements of the Lord's Supper is robbed away from God's people. And the notion here is that in receiving the Eucharist, the communion, the Lord's Supper, you are strengthened by a very literal grace in that Jesus in his incarnate life enters your body by the mouth. And this sanctifies you more than any other sacrament after baptism. All right. You follow the argument. It's impressive, isn't it? Is it biblical? All right. So when you bow the knee, are you bowing to Jesus or are you bowing to bread? Protestant reformers said, you're bowing to bread and that is idolatry. And so the Mass was viewed as a gross superstition and idolatrous sin by the Reformers. And that idea is contained not only in the Heidelberg Catechism, but also the Westminster Confession of Faith and the larger and shorter catechisms, our own Presbyterian standards, that the Mass involves a sinful idolatry. In the Roman view, it increases grace. And so in the medieval system taught at the center of the Fourth Lateran Council, seven sacraments then guide you through the end of mortal life, from baptism, which might be the day of your birth, all the way to the day of your death, each moment enabling you by a further sacramental grace to love and obey God. So the sacraments are the conduits of salvation. And this is sacerdotal salvation, that the sacraments enable the life of faith and obedience. So if our pilgrimage on earth gains merit, and if this merit is necessary for final salvation, Do you have confidence that you will be saved? In fact, St. Augustine said, the one who claims confidence sins. The one who claims confidence sins. Now what did Paul say to Timothy? Remember our reading at the beginning? What's the text say? Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God, our Savior, and of Jesus Christ, our hope. To Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. If I must approach God at every moment in fear for my own salvation, Am I free to love and serve my neighbor? Am I free to love God well? Perfect love casts out fear, right? But if lack of confidence is the hallmark of the godly person, as this system teaches, where is my freedom to love my neighbor? Instead, I will burrow into my own soul and tend to it, lest I be damned." And so in July, 1505, a certain young student in law school is traveling home on summer break. A lightning storm comes over the mountain. lightning strikes right near him on the ground. He's knocked to the ground by the electrical force or by the fear, we don't know which, and he cries out, Saint Anne, help me, I'll become a monk. You know the young man's name, Martin Luther, okay. Why the vow to become a monk? Because this was the way to best guarantee your own salvation. Abandon law school, abandon service to the world, abandon ordinary laity life, the life of marriage and family and all the rest, and enter the monastery to tend to your own soul." And in this way, Martin Luther hoped that he would be saved. Did this grant him confidence in God? In fact, the opposite. And so the young Luther in the monastery is even more anxious and disturbed than before. He quote, I could not believe that God was pleased with my works of satisfaction. And it's out of this crisis of spiritual confidence that the Protestant Reformation comes. You like the story so far? Okay, let me show you one more, two more screens and we'll be done for the night and I'll take questions. Is that, are we in okay time for this? Okay, so I think I'll skip that one. I think I'll skip that one. I won't skip this one. Okay, how does God grant grace? You've seen this before. And this is the real point of the whole story so far. Evangelicalism, salvation ministered by the power of faith. the gospel of grace. Sacerdotalism, salvation ministered by the power of the sacraments of the church. One of these is true, but only one of them. And so by the end of the 16th century a new Protestant consensus had arisen, and we'll hear more of that story in the talks ahead. Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone as the only infallible authority. Among the many authorities that God has placed in the world, one infallible authority, not church, not pope, not councils, not kings, not reason, not experience, not feeling, Scripture the only infallible authority. The next one is even more important, sola gratia, grace alone. Can you merit even a smidgen of this favor from God? Not even a half merit. Grace alone. This is the Reformers' answer to the doctrine of merit. Third, sola fide. That is the assertion of faith alone. That is the hand that grasps this grace. This is the statement of evangelicalism rather than sacerdotalism. It is faith. that latches a hold of this grace. Faith is the empty hand that brings no merit but grasps the gift. Faith alone, sola fide, faith alone the instrument by which we lay hold of God's grace, not words. And who alone is the Savior? Not Mary, not the saints, not the church. Solus Christus, Christ alone, the mediator and the source of all the merit by which we are received by God. The Protestant Consensus of Faith, the Four Solas. There is one more sola sometimes named a Fifth Sola. Does anyone know what it is? Soli Deo Gloria. And that's the text of the anthem I'm writing now for the Genevans Choir. So I hope they'll sing some of it in December. If you come to Genevans Choir concerts in Beaver Falls or elsewhere, you might hear a Byron Curtis anthem on the text, Soli Deo Gloria, which means, to God alone be the glory. That, by the way, is from the middle verse in 1 Timothy 1. Verse 17, now to the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. In Latin, soli deo honore et gloria, the last four or five words of the Latin verse here in 1 Timothy 1.17. That was Jonathan Edwards' favorite verse. I love it too. To God alone. The story is salvation by God alone. Questions, perplexities before we close for the night? Tell me your name, sir. Dale. Go ahead, Dale. The Council of Orange kind of mystifies me. It seems like the conclusions that they came to kind of refer to each other. They start the Church upon a trajectory of collision with itself. And that's what your question is, right? Doesn't it do it? That's exactly right. Exactly right. So Benjamin Warfield, about a hundred years ago, very astutely wrote that the Protestant Reformation is the victory of Augustine's doctrine of grace versus Augustine's doctrine of the Church. Augustine versus Augustine. All right, so the Synod of Orange, a doctrine of grace and faith, but wait. the ministry of the sacraments for the church. Is it evangelical or is it sacerdotal? Okay, there's conflict there in the decrees of the Council. There's an inconsistency that will take a thousand years to work itself out, and the Protestant-Catholic split will be the result of what's already written in 529 at the Synod of Orange. Good question. Another question before... How many questions can I take, Mark? Three or four, okay. Anyone else? Be bold. Would you say that the Catholic point of view is like the use of illustrations, pictures, that's what the picture's in, also has more appeal to the Well, that will be the claim. Okay, so you're building a medieval cathedral. Maybe the cathedral at Chartres or Notre Dame in Paris or something. And what do you put? Well, all this art that depicts the gospel, the stories of the Bible, one whole rank of windows of Old Testament heroes, another whole rank of windows of the apostles or of the martyrs. And at the center, at the end of the church, at the apse, okay, Christ and the apostles or Christ enthroned in heaven. these sorts of things. And so the gospel is taught, the scriptures are taught by picture, and the Roman claim will be that this is the best way to teach the ignorant. And of course most people are not literate, even kings sometimes in the 13th century are not literate. They can be well-educated, but education is sometimes not literate education. It's oral education. You can have a very astute oral education, but literacy surely helps. So yeah, there is the claim. However, most storefront churches that I've ever seen, what are they? Protestant. Evangelical congregations and storefronts in urban centers The vast majority of them are Protestant. That's interesting. It's kind of rare to find a Roman Catholic storefront church with a street people ministry. But Protestants do it all the time, especially Pentecostals. Pentecostals and Baptists. I preached in Presbyterian storefront churches. I like it. So the question is, what really is effective? I think the Gospel is effective. The gospels are there. Lady over here, you had your hand up. Tell me your name, please. Marty. Go ahead, Marty. Well, of course, this comes first. So without the grace that opens the heart, this can't happen. But the purpose of the sola fide line is to say that we do not gain Christian life by works or any endeavor, but rather by an act of trust. And the act of trust is not meritorious. You can trust immensely the wrong Savior. Immense faith in the wrong Savior dance. Tiny faith in the right Savior saves. Okay, so Jesus says, if you have so much faith as even a grain of mustard seed, you'll say to this mountain, be moved into the sea, it'll be done for you. Jesus is not really interested in us moving mountains. It's much more difficult to save a person than to move a mountain. He's talking about salvation. Even tiny faith in the right Savior saves. So, of course, unless we are laid hold of, we cannot lay hold. And you're asking an Augustinian question. It's an Augustinian question. So you're a good Augustinian too. But notice that in the list, this, gratia, comes before fide. And that's important. That's really important. One more question. Is that all right, Mark? One more. Tell me your name, sir. Tom. Tom, go ahead. I'm not sure how to say it, but I anchored. Presbyterian pastor, but I'm asking him about what I've done with my hands and knees in crime and asking God, if I wanted to go to heaven, what would you say? I was testing him. And he would not answer me, nor would he interview a gentleman. Nor would he give me any answer whatsoever. And my question to you is, I know that I was born miraculously by God in an instant. At a particular time, I won't go into all that. But it was a miracle because I didn't like God very much. So I know that. But I'm also an evangelist. in heart, which means, in a recent convert to the Presbyterian Church, I've raised them. That means nothing. Except that where does the evangelist get his message in the Presbyterian theology? I don't get it. I'm stunned. Okay, so sastradotalism, it comes through the sacraments. Evangelicalism, it comes by the gospel. So unless they preach, unless someone preaches, how will they hear? And if they do not hear, how can they believe? Romans 10, the great world mission chapter. Notice that Romans 10, which is the chapter on mission, is tucked between Romans 9 and Romans 11, which are the two great chapters on predestination. They're a sandwich deal. Chapter 9 is the one that says that it's not of man who strives or man who does, but God who has mercy. So, Jacob I've loved, Esau I rejected him, Pharaoh's heart I hardened, that I might demonstrate my power. That's all Romans 9. Chapter 11 of Romans, verse 28, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. As God calls, it doesn't go away. That's why there's still a future for Israel in the Bible's story, because God called Abraham long ago. It doesn't go away. So there's a sovereignty of the divine call in both Romans 9 and Romans 11, but in chapter 10, how can they hear without a preacher? So in evangelicalism, we must have the declaration of the message, because the message is the way in which the Spirit works. Preach the word and the spirit accompanies. So in Romans 13, I'm sorry, in Acts 13, Paul has been preaching the gospel in the Jewish synagogue in Pisidian Antioch for three Sabbath days. And by the third Sabbath, the Jewish leaders are furious. They're rejecting this message. But also by the third Sabbath, all kinds of Gentiles are pouring into the synagogue because it's the best show in town. And Paul is a spellbinder. And it becomes clear by the end of the third sermon that the Jewish leaders are going to reject this gospel. So Paul says to them, okay, you don't consider yourselves worthy of everlasting life, so we're going to turn to the Gentiles. Because God has appointed us as a light to the nations. And he quotes Isaiah about the light to the nations. And the text then says, when the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced. They rejoiced. And were glad. and as many as had been appointed to everlasting life believed." Oh. Okay, so there's the evangelistic moment. There's the message being preached. There is the Spirit accompanying the Word and enabling hearts to hear and receive by divine power. It's not Paul's persuasiveness that does it. It's God, the Holy Spirit, that does it. So in a few chapters later, the story of Lydia, how does Luke say it? Paul preached and the Lord opened her heart. All right, so the work of the spirit accompanying the preaching of the word. The Word and the Spirit, the Word and the Spirit. So, in Reformed theology, the Spirit works in and through the Word. The Word works in and through the Spirit. The two are never separated, because the Word is the inscripturated text, the truth of the Gospel. The Spirit inspired it to begin with. The Word will not return empty. The Spirit inspires it still. And so, preach the Gospel, and expect the Holy Spirit to open hearts. And that's what you've done for 50 years or something like that, right? Okay, longer. God bless you. And the Spirit has opened people's hearts, right? Yeah. It's not you, is it? That's Calvinism. Okay, pardon that final word. I don't really like the word Calvinist. I don't like it at all, actually. And neither did Calvin. But it's the tag that we have in our world for that particularly Presbyterian distinctive that God calls by his own sovereign grace. Are we done for the night, Mark? Shall we stand for prayer? So here's the question, is God good? Is grace rich? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the grace of God, the grace by which we stand. We know, Lord, that we cannot stand by any other power, and that unless grace enables us, we will not be enabled. So grant us, Lord, great hope and love and confidence, knowing that you indeed have loved us with an everlasting love and you've called us in a plan constructed before all eternity, whatever that means, and enacted then through the life of the gospel, the ministries of the church, and the ways in which we've heard and received the gospel. So bless us then with an abiding hope that does not falter. knowing that faith grasps the gift. Hear us through Christ who died for us and rose again that these things might be true. In his name and by his spirit we pray. Amen. Tomorrow night, Martin Luther and the quest for a gracious God. The Lord be with you all.