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February 14, 2022 12:01 am
The history of the church has shaped who we are as Christians today. The more we understand it, the more we understand ourselves. Today, W. Robert Godfrey explains why church history matters.
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Coming up today on Renewing Your Mind.
Why church history matters. The whole history of the church has shaped who we are as Christians today shape the churches to which we belong today and the better that we can understand that history, the more we can really understand ourselves hello and welcome to Renewing Your Mind and leave them if you tuning into the program for the first time welcome.
We are a listener supported outreach of wood in your ministry.
Dr. RC Sproul founded this ministry in 1971 with the central purpose of proclaiming teaching and defending the holiness of God to as many people as possible. To that end, we offer literally thousands of resources. The deal with that theology, biblical studies, Christian living will viewing culture and church history, and it's that last area of study that is our focus this week why church history. Well, we heard her teaching fellow Dr. Robert Gottfried touching the key reason that the top of the program was $20 he expands on that thought.
This is the first lesson of a 73 part series that he taught entitled a survey of church history some years ago I read a Peanuts cartoon in one of the Peanuts characters was assigned the topic for paper church history, and she paused and thought a minute and she said when writing our church history. You have to begin at the beginning. My pastor was born in 1930 already chose updated that cartoon. It was, but that's the American attitude often.
I think that 1930 is ancient history because most of us weren't there, and it's a long time ago but for us as Christians, we want to bear in mind that Christ has been building his church for a very long time.
In fact, one of the remarkable promises of Christ word was, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The church has had its ups and downs through the centuries it's had times of great strength and great weakness of great faithfulness and great frustration and wandering from the truth but Christ has always fulfilled his promise that he would build his church that he would preserve his church and that the church would never fail, and part of the reason that we study the history of the churches so that we can enter in to that promise of Christ, we can see it being fulfilled and we can rejoice in what he has done in so many places that so many times through literally centuries and centuries, and so were going back together to about the year 100 the time just after the apostolic age and were going to look at about 500 years of history, which means we can move really fast. I hope you're not going to feel the speed but it means we can't cover everything, you may come with some expectations of things you like to learn and we may not be able to get to them, but were going to try to look at the key elements of what went on in ancient church history not only to see God's work in God's faithfulness, but also to help us understand ourselves better because we are the inheritors of the history of the church.
The whole history of the church has shaped who we are as Christians today shape the churches to which we belong. Today, and the better that we can understand that history, the more we can really understand ourselves and the more we can preserve and treasure what Christians who've gone before us have learned and understood from the word of God and in service to Jesus Christ. So that's what were about. That's were hoping to do. We don't want to be Latter Day Saints Latter Day Saints believe that the church was founded and then disappeared for a time and then was restored and sometimes we as Protestants can think that way. There were the apostles. They founded the church and then the church somehow disappeared and reappeared with Martin Luther that Luther believed in us what we should believe sometimes we think about Martin Luther's having lived a long time ago. Don't 500 years ago. That's a long time, but 500 years represents only 25% of the whole history of the church and if we only know the last 25%. We know something very rich, profound, true, but we don't know 75% of our own family history and that's we want to begin to try to recapture for ourselves what we want to try to understand and as we go at that looking at this ancient church. Roughly 500 years were going to look at the number one thing the central thing that we ought to look for is the formation of what I call the Catholic tradition of the church.
The Catholic tradition of the church.
Now some of you may well go to churches that use the apostles Creed in your church services and in the apostles Creed we say.
I believe a holy Catholic church now. Some Protestants get so nervous about that were Catholic that they have changed the created change and so I believe a holy universal church or a holy Christian church, but we shouldn't give up on that were Catholic to actually originally a Greek word meaning universal.
But when we say we believe in the Catholic Church were saying were believing in that church that Christ has promised to found and preserve that Christ has always had a church through the whole history of the Christian movement and that word Catholic belongs to us as Protestants and that's part of what the Reformation said over and over.
In fact, some of the reformer said if you are part of the Roman church, then you're not part of the Catholic Church was a kind of clever rhetorical point to be made because they said Roman is just one city and one city can't be universal and so you have to choose your inner part of the one city church, or your part of the Catholic Church. Now whether we want to continue make that argument or not. It was an argument to say the word Catholic should be handed over to anybody, but should be held onto by Bible believers because we are part of the universal church, the Christ founded and he has always preserved. So when I say we want to look at the Catholic tradition of the church. What I mean is we want to look at that great heritage of Christianity, of which we are the inheritors and that was formed in the ancient church. Now when I say tradition that can make Protestants nervous to so I'm in a beginning at a difficult point Catholic tradition that we want to avoid both things. No, we don't. We want to be part of the universal heritage of the church, but we also want to see an emerging tradition a number of years ago, a scholar, wrote an article in which he very helpfully pointed out the word tradition can be used in at least three different ways they can be used to talk about a school of interpretation of the Bible, a way of interpreting the Bible so we can think about the reformed tradition as the way in which Calvinists interpret the Bible or we can think about the Lutheran tradition is the way Lutherans interpret the Bible or the Pentecostal tradition the way Pentecostals interpret the Bible. None of those groups would ascribe any authority to tradition and yet can be described as having reached a certain consensus a certain understanding, creating a school of interpretation of the Bible. That's what I mean when I say we will look at this Catholic tradition not tradition is authoritative in itself, but tradition as a way of understanding the Bible and the meaning of the Bible for the life of the church in the ancient church itself. The word tradition would take on another meaning, and that would mean the meaning that says there are teachings of the apostles preserved in the life of the church but not recorded in the Scripture, and there were some who would teach later in the ancient church.
That that tradition that apostolic tradition preserved in the oral memory of the church has an authority that we have to honor and follow and is added or is supplementary to the Bible we as Protestants have rejected that notion. I think rightly rejected that notion will come back to talk about it later, but that's a second meaning of tradition that somehow tradition has an authority of its own, independent of the Bible.
That's not what I mean by Catholic tradition. I mean simply the universal study and understanding of the Bible as an emergent in the ancient church. There's 1/3 way in which tradition can be interpreted. It's the theory of interpretation that we find in the 19th and 20th century Roman Catholic church where increasingly there is a sense that new tradition can be embraced and taught as if it were ancient, but recognizing that it's not an Romans argued well you see ancient tradition can evolve in ways that are still authoritative and when Pope Pius IX in the 19th century was asked how do we know what tradition is and how do we know what authority, tradition ought to have Pope Pius IX gave a very honest answer and he said I am tradition what he meant by that is on the definer of tradition.
I'm the only one who can really tell you what tradition is and what its authority. That's not the kind of tradition I'm promoting here either, but were looking at how the ancient church understood the Bible and reached a consensus about the Bible and that's what we mean by the Catholic tradition of the church that we want to seek to understand what were going to find is that in that ancient.
That Catholic tradition came to a clear biblical understanding about some remarkably important things that sometimes were tempted to take for granted. For example there was the ancient church that came to a very clear a very full biblical understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. I think for many of us as Protestants. We have a slight tendency to take the doctrine Trinity for granted one God existing eternally in three persons, how much time and energy to take to figure that out. Say I just summarize the four in one simple sentence that simple is not simple it's it's very very complex. If you get into it and and studied in the early church without others to help them and to guide them. Spent a great deal of time trying to get that doctrine biblically correct and part of the reason that we can sometimes take it for granted almost assume it is that the ancient church invested so much care and time and study and reflection and controversy to understand that we are the inheritors, but of course we know we can't really take it for granted Camry people will knock on our doors and tell us there really biblical and explained to us that the doctrine of the Trinity isn't biblical or try to. And so we have people around. Yet today, who are opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity that are outside the Catholic tradition of the church and we do need to for ourselves understand the Trinity so that we can answer them. Show them out of the Bible that the Trinity is a biblical doctrine will be talking more about that as we go along, but there's a great achievement by the ancient church. Another great achievement is what we call Christology or the doctrine of Christ whom was Jesus exactly and again we can very quickly and easily say while he was God and man hundred percent God hundred percent man there again. That simple statement that we can embrace took a long time. A lot of effort a lot of study for the church to come to understand clearly fully carefully in a biblical way and so we are the inheritors of that Christological orthodoxy that came from the ancient church we think about the New Testament that we possess. Have you ever thought about why are the books that we have in the New Testament there and why are there other books in the New Testament again. That was a matter that the ancient church had to wrestle with head, think through had to reach a consensus about it will talk about as we go along.
How they came to that consensus. But there again.
Think of what a treasure that is for us that we have the New Testament as of a fruit in part of the reflection of the ancient church as to what books God had given to his new covenant people. Another great accomplishment of the ancient church was the foundation of missions.
The ancient church was a missionary church and will see as we go along that there was a remarkable growth under the blessing of God of the church great growth of the church in that ancient. In fact, historians tell us.
We never know whether to trust them or not, but historians tell us that the number of Christians in the world in 500 was about the same as the number of Christians in the world. In 1500 so that numerically the growth of the church in the 500 years was remarkable and that the number of Christians didn't change remarkably for the next millennium now where those Christians were shifted by 500 Christianity had grown around the Mediterranean basin by 1500 the center of population for Christianity had shifted north and Western Europe, but the great missionary work of the church was really in the ancient. And then alive again in the modern.
So that that missionary thrust of the church is another great treasure that was performed and preserved for us in the ancient church.
So we ought to go in with expectation and thankfulness to those Christians who went before us and the remarkable achievements that they one for us. So in these things.
Trinity Christology canon of the New Testament and missions we can embrace enthusiastically and fully what the ancient church accomplished but that's all we can embrace largely if not entirely what many in the ancient church came to think about the doctrine of the church.
The doctrine of the sacraments, the doctrine of the ministry. The doctrine of worship and the doctrine of salvation, I will come back to those things if you didn't get them all perfectly on your list, that's okay. There is no test here but but think about that.
We may not agree with the ancient church and radicals from every integer to noise group itself.
There was lots of discussion and controversy over these things. But on the life of the church, the ministry of the church.
The worship of the church. The doctrine of salvation on those things we significantly are inheritors of what the ancient church thought an experienced and so as we go along. We do want to focus on how what they accomplished has helped us and you know where helped not only by what they got right, but were also somewhat held by what they got wrong to think through as they had to think through these issues to keep going back to the Bible and to use the Bible as a standard of all things. That's part of what the ancient church did and so they encourage us in that as well so that's what were going to look at about 500 years. We can look at it fairly quickly within the big somewhat deeper on certain points than on others and our aim is to sense how Christ is built is church and how we are the inheritors of the Catholic tradition that we very largely embrace and still helps define us now, having laid that foundation, we can turn to the world in which Jesus made that promise I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
That was a world that for early Christians were dominated by two essential realities.
First, reality was the Jewish world in which Jesus and the apostles were born and raised and which significantly form them and then there is as well.
The Roman empire, or the civilization of Greece and Rome. That was the larger context in which the church was born, and in which it had to minister so we wanted take just a little time to think about that Jewish context and then that Roman context. Again, we could spend hours and hours doing that in you might worry that I will but I won't will will just look quickly at these things are Judaism was a major player in the ancient Roman Empire. Some estimates are that as much as 20% of the population of the Roman Empire was Jewish.
It was a big presence in the Roman Empire and it existed in two forms and ascent torn in two ways, one in Palestine itself, which the New Testament reflects for us but also in what was known as the Diaspora. The scattering of Jews throughout the Empire and the scattered Jews largely in the great cities of the Roman Empire had already in one way or another adapted to living a Jewish life outside of the Jewish homeland.
They were often somewhat more flexible.
They had come to terms with their pagan environment in a way that sometimes the Palestinian Jews did not so Judaism tended to be somewhat stricter in Palestine and somewhat more flexible in the Diaspora because Judaism was such a major reality in the Roman world. The Romans had granted to the Jews what they granted to all conquered peoples, namely, the right to follow their own customs. The rooms were pretty smart rulers. They knew the best way to rule was to as much as possible. Allow local nations to continue in their own ways with familiar patterns of government, often with local leaders from their own people whom they knew and not raise any more trouble than was absolutely necessary. The main thing the Romans wanted was power and taxes and as long as they got that they didn't care much else how you live in one of the things the Romans had discovered was that the Jews were peculiar.
They were so fanatically religious that it only made sense to give the Jews special privileges in the Roman Empire. Now the Romans and most in their Empire were polytheists, they worshiped many gods and so all Romans asked is, since you worship many gods added our gods to your God.
You can go on worshiping whatever God you want. If you're an Egyptian. You can go on worshiping Isis and Osiris and literally hundreds of other dogs and just add to your list. The Roman gods and from time to time demonstrate publicly your allegiance to Rome by publicly worshiping the Roman gods. As time went on, that tended to focus particularly on the worship of the Roman Emperor as a living God and the Romans thought this was all very reasonable that they soon discovered the Jews would go along. The Jews from the Roman point of view were fanatically unreasonably ridiculously monotheistic and the Romans again, a very clever people soon discovered. It's much easier just to exempt the Jews from any kind of worship of the Roman gods than to try to make them conform is crazy. Jews are willing to die rather than to put a pinch of incense before the statue of the Emperor. What he gonna do with people like that. The only thing to do with people like that is to give them a special exemption from the law, so Romans did this all way back before the coming of our Lord.
The other thing the Romans did that was unusual for the Jews is that they allow Jews all over their Empire to pay the annual temple tax part of the way that Jews supported the whole system of the temple. The sacrificial system.
The priesthood in Israel was by paying an annual tax and normally the Romans didn't like that because it meant tax money was all flowing from all over their Empire to one place and you know this was a paper flowing. This was gold and silver in hard currency and they didn't much like that they wanted the money if it was flown anywhere flow to Rome, but because of that Jewish insistence of supporting the temple.
They gave us special exemption for that they expected Jewish cooperation with the Roman regime and most Jews found living under Rome relatively comfortable. They could practice their religion they could go about their business and Rome kept life rather stable. There were curse some fanatics that dreamed of a coming Messiah that dreamed of independence from Rome that dreamed of a golden age of Jewish freedom to come but most were content to go along and got along and that's the picture we find in the New Testament.
That's the situation to which Jesus came most of the Pharisees. Most of the Sadducees. Most of the priests were relatively content to live under the Rome system, but there was this group. The zealots they were hoping for freedom and Jesus had to begin to speak had to begin to function in this world and it is also the world in which the church was born in which the church, to then had to figure out how does it relate to Judaism and how does it relate to the larger room that's Dr. Robert concrete.
He introduced us to a series of survey of church history today on Renewing Your Mind. By the end of the week.
We hope you have a better understanding of some of the men and events that shape the church as we know it today we'd like for you to have the message you heard today.
It's the first message in part one of Dr. Grand Prix series which covers AED 100 through 8600 request this 12 part two DVD set when you give a donation of any amount to look in her ministries. Her telephone number is 800-435-4343. You can also make your request in the give your gift online and Renewing Your Mind.org at a recent look in her ministries of that. I sat down with Dr. Godfrey and I asked him why he was eager to get this material out to as many people as possible.
Here's what he said well I think so many people don't know their own history and they don't know the factors that have really made them what they are or who made the church is what they are and I think it turns out a lot of lights for people really helps them understand their spiritual development will I know that was the case for me when I first heard this series, I think it will help you connect the dots is says you look at redemptive history and through the life of the church. So we do encourage you to contact us today with your gift of any amount and request a survey of church history part one by Ligon are teaching fellow, Dr. Robert Godfrey and again her phone number is 800-435-4343 or web address Renewing Your Mind.org and if you do make your request online that you can explore the archive of past Renewing Your Mind programs including today's message.
You can also download the free Ligon air app that gives you access to blog posts, articles, videos, and much more.
Learn about it and download the app and Renewing Your Mind.org what tomorrow will continue exploring church history with Dr. Godfrey will jump from the ancient church to the 1300s, when a very famous series of battles took place, battles to purge the land of a particular religion.
Join us tomorrow as we study the Crusades here on Renewing Your Mind