|
Part I – The Fall of Rome and the Early Doctors of the Church
Background: [Cairns], Chapters 11-16. (pp. 115- 163)
1.The World in 400
a.The Roman Empire had been cracking for the past century. Beginning with the Tetrarchy of Diocletian, there had been two “senior” emperors, and two junior emperors. The emperors themselves didn’t rule from Rome, but from the imperial capitals at Trier (in Germany), Milan (in Italy), Nicomedia and Sermium, closer to the borders. This was ended by Constantine I, who ruled as sole emperor. Constantine abolished that and established Byzantium (Nova Roma) as his capital. After his death, the empire would split and rejoin several times.
b.Constantine was the first Emperor to declare himself a Christian, although he didn’t accept baptism until his deathbed. He did, however issue the Edict of Milan in 313 that granted toleration to all religions.
c.The final curtain for the united empire came with Theodosius’s partition of the Empire between his sons in 395. His son Honarius (made Western emperor at age 9) ruled from first Milan, then Ravenna. Conditions worsened as infighting among the generals and the barbarian leaders intensified, culminating in the sack of Rome by Alaric’s Goths in 410.
d.After Constantine the church became more and more associated with the Roman state. All of the emperors after Constantine were nominally Christian with the exception of the notorious “Julian the Apostate”. Theodosius was the emperor who officially made Christianity the state religion of the Empire. There were several effects of this:
i.Until this point bishops had been fully independent and locally selected from members of the presbytery, then approved (by laying on of hands) by bishops from other churches. The bishopric was a completely religious office. Constantine changed that by granting bishops status as Roman officials. He granted some clergy the title of “Illustrious”, second only to the imperial family in rank. This gave them right to arbitrate in legal matters, among other rights and responsibilities. It also gave them insignia (like the staff, mitre and pallium) that long survived past the secular role. This led to abuses of power, and simony (purchasing a bishopric) as a bishopric became a position of significant social standing.
ii.The major theological debates prior to this point had been primarily on the nature of God and the Trinity – the Arian controversy and the other controversies leading up to the Council of Nicea and the establishment of the Nicene creed. Afterwards, at least in the West, debates would tend to center more on the nature of man than of God.
2.The life and times of Augustine of Hippo
a.Biography
i.Born in 354 in Thagaste, in North Africa (then the breadbasket of the roman empire).
ii.Sent to school at 11, at 17 went to Carthage to continue his studies in Rhetoric. In 383 he moved to Rome to teach Rhetoric. He then became professor of Rhetoric for the imperial court in Milan in 384.
iii.Early on he had been an adherent (a “hearer”) of Manichaeism, a syncretic religion that mixed Christianity with the mystery religions and Zoroastrianism. He had become disillusioned with the lack of intellectual rigor there after a disappointing meeting with a Manichean “theologian”.
iv.In Milan he came under the influence of Bishop Ambrose, whose powerful sermons began to have an effect on him. Prompted by these and his own studies he renounced Manichaeism. In 386, he read an account of St. Anthony which inspired him – after a profound conversion experience (described in the Confessions – hearing a child repeat “tolle lege” leading to reading Romans 13:13), he converted to Christianity, and left Rhetoric for a monastic life and returned to Tragaste.
v.In 391 he was ordained and became a famous preacher. In 396, while passing through Hippo, he was beseeched by the populace to become a bishop, and became coadjutor bishop of Hippo, remaining there as bishop until his death in 430.
b.Augustine and the Donatists
i.Augustine’s first major problem upon becoming bishop was dealing with the split in the church in North Africa caused by the Donatists.
ii.During the persecution of Diocletian (almost a hundred years previously), Christians had been required to hand over copies of scripture and to have documented proof that they had offered their yearly sacrifice to the emperor.
iii.Some bishops were accused of having become traitors to the faith (Traditore – from “handed over”). The Donatists (followers of Magnus Donatus) claimed that made everything they did from there on; baptism, Eucharist, and ordination of other bishops, invalid.
iv.Augustine had to struggle with the right relationship between use of the state to enforce orthodoxy and the use of moral persuasion and argument. Would State pressure force people to act hypocritically? His first instinct was to not use the government, but later he changed his position as he saw the results of state pressure, and as the need to use the army to enforce peace (bands of roving peasant Donatists were harassing the Orthodox).
c.Augustine’s “City of God”
i.When Alaric sacked Rome in 410, many pagans decided that it was because the empire had abandoned the old gods and turned to Christianity. Christians, on the other hand, despaired why the protection of St. Peter and St. Paul had not saved their city. In response to this, Augustine began writing his massive discussion on the relation between the “City of Man” and the “City of God”.
ii.A common theme of the City of God is that the heavenly city and the earthly city are mixed, and you can’t either disconnect or too closely connect one with the other here on earth. Even the church (on earth) is a mix of the city of man and the city of God.
iii.Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, Chapter 28
1.“Accordingly two cities have been formed by two loves; the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.”
iv.Augustine, City of God, Book XV, Chapter 4
1.“But the earthly city … has its good in this world and rejoices in it with such joy as such things can afford…the city is often divided against itself by litigations, wars, quarrels and such victories as are either life-destroying or short lived. … For it desires earthly peace for the sake of enjoying earthly goods, and it makes war in order to attain to this peace. … These things, then, are good things, and without doubt the gifts of God. But if they neglect the better things of the heavenly city, which are secured by eternal victory and peace never ending, and so inordinately covet these present good things…if this be so, then it is necessary that misery follow and ever increase.”
v.Augustine, City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 17
1.“The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeds an earthly peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful in this life. The heavenly city, or rather that part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away.”
d.Augustine and Pelagius
i.Pelagius was a British monk who read Augustine’s “Confessions” and became upset over a passage that indicated Augustine’s belief that God’s grace was not only all-sufficient, but compelling – that man has no ability to stop sinning at all, and that any good we do is a direct result of God’s grace working through us.
ii.Pelagius then took the stand (since called “Pelagianism”) that it would not be fair for God to hold us responsible for our sins if we had no ability to stop sinning. He never doubted that we need God’s help, but that it should not stop us from trying to stop sinning. In short, he believed that God helps those who help themselves.
iii.Augustine’s position on this was more that God helps those who cannot help themselves. If we had the ability to stop sinning, then why did Christ have to suffer and die for our sins?
iv.The outcome of this analysis was that Augustine then had to determine where sin enters into man in order to understand the ramifications of predestination. Here he took what evangelicals consider a left turn. He looked at the then-current practice of infant baptism and used it to demonstrate that if Baptism was to wash away sin, that even an infant carried a burden of sin and needed Baptism. He pointed out the selfish behavior of infants to validate this claim. Drawing from his own struggle with sexual sin, and following this line of reasoning, he concluded that the burden of sin was passed on to the child through the sexual intercourse that produced the child.
v.Augustine’s reasoning on original sin has influenced Roman Catholic theology ever since, and has either influenced or led directly to many theological statements with which evangelicals take issue, such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
3.Meanwhile back in Rome
a.The early bishops of Rome – first among equals
b.The papacy ascendant – Peter’s keys become the papal throne
i.Damasus I – Damasus was the first of the Popes to tie the pride of place of Rome as seat of the empire to the bishopric of Rome. He tied the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in Rome to granting Rome a unique place, and emphasized the claim that as bishop of Rome he was heir to St. Peter. Likewise, the historical fact of succession as heir to St. Peter’s seat led to a judicial inheritance of the Apostle’s power to bind and loose. He even went so far as to state that the reason that the decisions of the council of Nicea were valid was because they had been approved by his predecessor, Pope Sylvester.
ii.Leo I – Leo built on the foundation of Damasus in acquiring more prestige to the Roman bishopric. Leo believed that not only was he the historical successor to Peter, but that when he wrote or preached, that St. Peter literally spoke through him and inspired his words. Thus, when he sent his great theological tome to the council of Chalcedon, he forbade the council to debate it.
iii.Gregory the Great and the adoption of the Barbarians
1.Gregory was perhaps the first of the medieval popes. He recognized that the glory of the Roman Empire had passed, and would not return, and embraced evangelizing the Barbarian kingdoms that had replaced it. He sent missionaries to England, brought the Visigoths of Spain into the church, and also both worked with and fought against the Lombards in Italy.
2.Gregory also was a proponent of Christianizing pagan holidays, temples and places in order to help bring the barbarians into the fold of Christianity.
Questions to Ponder:
1.What is the proper relationship between the Church and State? How effective is it to legislate morality in the absence of the “Mind of Christ”?
a.Romans 13:1-7
b.I Corinthians 2: 14-16
2.If a pastor is guilty of moral failure does it invalidate the work they do within the Church?
a.I Timothy 5: 17-20
b.Titus 1: 5-9
3.What does it mean to have a sin nature? Where do we get our sin nature from?
a.Romans 7: 7-25, 8: 1-11
b.Galatians 5: 13-26
|
