Again, my appreciation to Patti Christensen for organizing the collaborative effort among all of us to prepare for this, and the outline I am using for the "skeleton" of this part of the series is the effort of two of my classmates, Sister Andrew Marie, and Nancy Duey. They both did a fantastic job with the effort they put into condensing the material into a systematic form, and as with the other sections I will be using their outline as the framework to write this article.
The history of Christianity is complex, and it entails a lot of very specific information that addresses key issues and events in the growth and development of the Christian faith. In the particular course, the professor divided that history into four distinct eras, and they each had their own challenges, their own key figures, and each also entailed the development of essential doctrines and schools of thought that impacted Christianity for centuries to come. The purpose of the first part of this is to focus on some key issues from each era.
The first era to be discussed is the era of Patristics, which lasted from roughly the Ascension of Christ until the 9th century AD. This was an era that was shaped by two main things. In the earlier centuries of this era, persecution had an impact on the growth of the Church, and the overarching testimony is its amazing growth and spread despite tremendous adversity from the ruling Roman authorities of the time. As Christianity eventually did "conquer" the Roman Empire and persecution ceased, a new issue came up as the Church was now able to codify its beliefs, and that was the rise of heresies. In this outline, we'll deal with those first, and then come back to the effects of persecution.
Heresies tended to bear both good and bad fruit. The bad fruit was that many people embraced doctrines and practices that were in contradiction to what the Bible and the Church held, and therefore many people either left on their own accord as a result or they were excommunicated and condemned for that heresy. However, the good fruit of heresy is that it helped the Church define her doctrines better, and therefore the scourge of heresy may have been used of God to give the Church an idea of what she truly believed, as well as weeding out "tares" in the "field of harvest." There are at least three major heresies that were addressed by major Ecumenical Councils that were called in the 4th and 5th centuries, and those are the source of the discussion now.
The first major council that dealt with issues of doctrine was the Council of Nicaea which was convened in AD 325. The main purpose of this council was to address a new heresy that was being spread by a bishop named Arius, and that heresy entailed two different aspects. Arius (250-336AD) was actually a presbyter of the Church in Alexandria, and in 318 he began to trigger controversy over his unorthodox views on the Trinity (Prokurat, Golitzin, and Peterson, ed. Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996. p. 42). Therefore, the heresy of Arius focused on how we understand three Persons being in one God. The problem was complicated by not so much common convictions of the time, but rather how they were articulated - the East, for instance, emphasized the distinction of the three Persons. While correct in doing that, the weakness here was in the formulation; it was couched in language that made the Persons of the Godhead subordinate rather than equal. Likewise, in the West, the problem was not how the West believed - the West rightly emphasized the unity of the Godhead. But, there was a problem here as well - the West's language in articulation of that essential fact could be weakened potentially in that it could insinuate splitting the Godhead into three separate beings (or tritheism) rather than keeping them as one. Arius's approach to the problem was to take away the deity of Christ the Son, which led to outright heresy and rightly garnered condemnation. Arius's reasoning was that the Son was created by the Father to serve as the latter's instrument in creation and redemption (ibid.). This centered as well around the term Homouisios, which articulated that the Father and Son were of the same substance, an idea that Arius had problems with and that his issues garnered support for him from many Alexandrians. However, the language of the Homouisios was adopted in AD 381 at the Council of Constantinople, and this was incorporated into what is commonly called the Nicene Creed that many of us confess at Mass every Sunday. The one important thing about heresies is that they never are original, and they tend to emerge in different forms in later centuries - we then call the resulting movements cults. In the case of the Arian heresy, it has resurrected in the past couple of centuries in the form of a number of cultic groups, and here are some examples. In the Mormon religion, for instance, they teach that the three Persons of the Godhead are three separate beings, and that God is only an exalted man, and the Holy Spirit is depersonalized totally - The Holy Spirit is subordinate to Jesus, but Jesus is subordinate to the Father (Mark J. Cares, Speaking the Truth in Love to Mormons. Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Publishing, 1993. p. 273). This is articulated in Mormon theology as what is called the "Adam/God Doctrine." Jehovah's Witnesses likewise hold to some Arian convictions, including that Jesus pre-existed as Michael the Archangel, and is thus a created being - he is for Jehovah's Witnesses, the Son of God but not God the Son (Everett Hullum, ed. Beliefs of Other Kinds. Atlanta: Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, 1983. p. 81). Another cult, the Way International, denies Jesus's preexistence and says that the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 was the result of "pagan influence," and thus they also deny Christ is God and the Holy Spirit is a person (Hullum, p. 92). Another group that also carries on the Arian heretical tradition is the Unitarian-Universalist Church, which doesn't view Jesus as divine, and therefore there is no salvation in Christ according to them (Hullum, p. 60). Unitarians are perhaps the most Arian of all these cults, in that much of their own theology can be traced back to the 16th-century Spanish Arianist Servetus. The views of Arius, however, are rightly condemned by all actual Christian traditions - Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. We owe much today to St. Athanasios, as well as the Armenian Saint Gregory Nazianzus, for rescuing the Church from Arius and his heretical teachings, and they were instrumental in getting the Council of Constantinople to codify orthodox Trinitarianism as well as the deity of Christ in the Creeds.
St. Athanasios of Alexandria, champion of Trinitarian Orthodoxy
The next major issue that arose involved the question of how Jesus could be both fully human and fully divine, and this would lead to a codification of the hypostatic union of Jesus as both human and divine at the Council of Ephesus in AD 431. Again, the question centered around how two theological schools within the Church defined the doctrine. The Alexandrian School, for instance, emphasized a close union between Christ's divinity and His humanity, while the Antiochene School emphasized a distinction between the two natures to avoid confusion. In the midst of this debate rose a bishop of Ephesus named Nestorius, who was a pupil of the more orthodox Assyrian Theodore of Mopsuestia, but Theodore was weak in his explanation of the completeness of Christ's humanity, which cast doubt over the hypostatic union of Christ as fully human and fully God. In AD 428, Nestorius denied that the Virgin Mary could rightly be called the Theotokos, and thus should only be considered the Christotokos (Prokurat, Golitzen, and Peterson, p. 85). Many Alexandrians were converts to Nestorius's views, and it caused such a problem that in AD 431 the Council of Ephesus was called to address the issue. The Council condemned Nestorius's view that Mary was only the mother of Christ's human nature and not His divine nature, and affirmed Mary as the Theotokos and mother of the person Jesus, who is fully God and fully man. Nestorius's followers, mostly in Mesopotamia and largely ethnic Assyrians, formed their own Church at that point which today is still known as the Assyrian Church of the East. However, as a positive note, in 1995 Pope St. John Paul II and the Assyrian Catholicos Mar Khananiah Dinkha signed a Common Christological Agreement which established a sort of Communio in Sacris between both Churches, and for the most part the Assyrian Church now accepts orthodox Christology.
The third major issue was related to Christology but sort of went opposite of Nestorius, and this led to an issue that was addressed at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. That council centered around the teachings of Eutyches, an archimandrite of the Church in Constantinople who advocated a union of God and man in Christ (Prokurat, Golitzen, and Peterson, p. 85). Although Eutyches was a very vocal opponent of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus, he went to the other extreme of even denying Jesus was truly human, but rather a unique "God-man" who transcended humanity. His followers would later be called "Monophysites" and would encompass a large portion of the Syriac-speaking Christian community (Western Assyrians), the Armenians, the Copts in Egypt, and their daughter Churches in Ethiopia, India, and Georgia (although Georgia later accepted the Chalcedonian decision). Prokurat and cohort in their text say though that this was not so much a heresy as it was a schism, and in 1973 the Coptic Pope Shenouda III signed a common Christological agreement with Pope Paul VI, and for the most part the "Oriental" Churches today embrace a more orthodox Christology as a whole. Much of the credit for clarifying the doctrine, however, was to go to Pope Leo the Great, whose response to Eutyches served as the basis for the doctrinal definition of the Council.
Pope St. Leo the Great, who helped define orthodox Christology at the Council of Chalcedon by his refutation of Eutyches
Now that we have dealt with heresies and schisms, we come back to the early adversity faced by Christians in the formative centuries of the Church's existence. There were many reasons why Christians encountered persecution first from Jewish authorities in Judea, where it started, and later from Roman authorities as it spread throughout the Empire. The one thing noted in the outline was that although Christians performed commendable works, they were also suspected of being a secret society. Secret societies made the Roman authorities a little gunshy because the true secret and clandestine groups (one being the Essenes in Judea) had a potential to incite unrest against Imperial authority. Also, because of their doctrine of the Eucharist, Christians were wrongly assumed to be "cannibals" due to the fact they took Jesus's command to "eat His Body and drink His Blood" seriously, and this was often misunderstood as literal rather than as the mystery of faith that the Church taught. Ironically though, Christians would later accuse Jews of the same thing - rumors in medieval times, for instance, alleged that Jews kidnapped Christian children and used their blood to make matzoh (Deborah Wigoder and Rabbi Ben Isaacson, eds. The International Jewish Encyclopedia. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. p. 16, 234), also known as "blood libel." One of the unfortunate side effects at times of the Church gaining acceptance is that some among its professed members spread horrific allegations in order to sanctify and justify anti-semitism, but anti-semitism has always been condemned by the Church, and these actions in no way constitute official Church teaching. And, for those professing Christianity who would believe such garbage, they need to look at how pagan Romans used to view us. It sheds a whole other dimension on this issue for sure. A third unjust allegation against Christians by the Roman authorities was sexual immorality, which is ironic due to the fact that many of the accusers were more debauched than any Christian ever was. However, sex rites were actually a part of what were called "mystery religions" of the time, including temple prostitutes at Ephesus in Diana's temple (the same one Paul encountered in Acts) and also rampant ritual homosexual acts by such cults as the Mithraic sect. Due to the fact that Christians were often persecuted, they had to meet in secret, and were often due to their isolation thought of as just another one of those "mystery religions," which in reality they had little in common with. Another allegation that was brought against Christians often was a trumped-up charge of "atheism." This stemmed from two things. First, the refusal of Christians to worship Roman state gods or the Emperor made them suspect. Secondly, as former Anglican writer David Bercot points out in his book Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up (Tyler, TX: Scroll Publishing, 1989), Christians at that time had no organized temples or images of any god, so they were assumed to be atheistic as a result (Bercot, p. 2). These allegations naturally intensified persecution against the Christians, but it also served to make them grow, as it encouraged two things we will discuss next.
First, with persecution came martyrdom for many Christians, as many were so committed to their faith that they accepted death rather than denying Christ. A vivid example is recorded by David Bercot regarding St. Polycarp when he was martyred in an arena. When the procounsel who was "judging" his case threatened to unleash wild beasts on St. Polycarp, his response was simply "Unleash them then! Who has heard of repenting from what is good in order to follow what is evil?" Keep in mind that St. Polycarp was 86 years old at this point, and when the procounsel saw that a fear of wild animals didn't work on the old saint, he threatened fire instead, to which St. Polycarp said, "You threaten me with a mere fire that burns for an hour and then goes out. Have you not heard of the fire of coming judgment and of the eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly? Why do you keep delaying? Do whatever you want with me!" (Bercot, p. 3). Rather than being a means of intimidating other Christians, martyrdoms like this inspired them instead. Another fruit of the persecution was the development of the discipline of apologetics. With so many allegations about what Christians were alleged to be doing, the need for a sound defense was evident in light of many false accusations. Through the efforts of those like St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus, and others, the discipline of apologetics became integral to the Christian faith, and would also play a role later on in refuting heresies.
Artistic rendering of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp
We now move forward many centuries to the Protestant Reformation, and as discussed in Part IV, much of what the Protestant Reformation has birthed has also led to a rise in secularism as well concerning a philosophical/social context. The main impetus of Protestant Reformers was a protest against what they perceived (correctly, in some cases) as abuses within the Church. However, the problem was, with the possible exception of the English Reformation, that the Reformers took this to an extreme and even a rejection of all things "Popish," even discarding the good with the bad. The whole thing started with Luther, who we will discuss first.
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Although the Eastern Orthodox differ on this, the Protestant Reformation was not so much a heresy as it was a schism, and as such there are actually many cardinal doctrines of the undivided Church that the Protestants maintained. However, there were also major differences, and one of those centered around the justification vs. works issue. Luther, like many of his theological descendants, believed that only Christ could justify, and that works had no part in it. This was actually a misunderstanding on his part of the definition of salvation itself as well as the role of works - Luther, and more radically in later centuries his disciples, would reduce salvation from a process to an event, equating it with conversion. In doing this, the need for works was either ignored or written out completely, and this led to some other problems. Luther was essentially failing to understand that works did not make salvation, but rather were a fruit of supernatural grace that should be manifest as a result of conversion and the pilgrimage of salvation. Instead, as he redefined salvation as a one-time event, for him it was only gained through Christ alone (which is partially correct) and (also correctly) was a free gift offered by Him. While there is much truth in that conviction, it fails to commit the individual Christian to the task of willingly submitting to God's will to allow supernatural grace to aid in the transformative process - this was something Wesley tried to correct later, but was still largely lacking with his followers as well. Luther also rejected indulgences as a whole due to some abusive practices associated with them, and he also rejected the Scholastic tradition that had rich roots in the works of Aquinas and others. As a matter of fact, education actually began to suffer as a result of Luther's schismatic revolt, and as Fr. John Laux notes in his book Church History (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2012), a gradual decay of education resulted from Luther's actions, although he himself lamented it in his writings (Laux, pp. 435-436). In a sort of Newtonian process, Luther's reaction against legitimate excesses of the Church would later lead to a rejection of both Papal authority and the Ecumenical Councils, as they were replaced with the idea of Sola Scriptura. The problem with this, however, was that now it was not so much Sola Scriptura as it was the various interpretations of Scripture that conflicting opinions were allowed to run rampant with, and this would lead to both Enlightenment-era rationalism infecting theology, as well as the theological liberalism that would contribute to the downfall of many mainline Protestant denominations in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their "conservative" heirs, the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, are starting to be likewise affected by this same mindset in the 21st century. If one takes away grounding and moorings, the resulting adrift state of theology and Biblical studies then begins to have disastrous consequences. Compared to other Reformers though, Luther would be mild, as we will now see.
Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)
In 1516, a Swiss priest from Einsieden, Switzerland, began preaching some radical and negative doctrines - he preached against the Virgin Mary and against pilgrimages to holy places. He was then banished for his abherrent views and found his way to Zurich, where he began preaching his own version of Sola Scriptura (Laux, p. 434). Zwingli would become the "herald" of what would be called the "Radical Reformation" as he would go further than Luther did to divorce himself from the Church, and his convictions are largely similar to many Evangelical Protestants today. On many things, Zwingli did remain orthodox in doctrine - for instance, although he railed against Mary, he also did believe her to be Ever-Virgin, which is what the Church had historically taught (Luther did likewise, as later did Wesley). But, it was in other areas where Zwingli was problematic, and those are what we will deal with here. First, Zwingli launched a crusade to essentially eliminate anything not specifically found in Scripture - this was now taking Sola Scriptura to an entirely new level, in that many things the Church did practice were not specifically mentioned in Scripture, but were part of the Tradition of the Church that was handed down by the Apostles. This of course would later mean a radically altered interpretation of some aspects of Scripture (again affirming that true Sola Scriptura does not exist, but is rather the whims and fancies of the one reading the passage) to the point that certain "Catholic" practices (the use of incense, for one example) would be allegorized, and even a quasi-Gnostic understanding of signs and symbols that viewed anything material as "worldly" and "evil" would become a hallmark of Zwingli's successors, in particular the Anabaptists and later Evangelicals. This being said, sacramental grace was irrelevant to Zwingli, and therefore the Eucharist, infant baptism, and other sacraments were radically redefined to mesh with his reading of Scripture. The Eucharist in particular suffered Zwingli's scrutiny in that he reduced it to a mere memory-meal and denied the Real Presence. His views still carry implications to this day, as the modern "Emerging Church" proponents among Protestant Evangelicals - people such as Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and others - have taken this to new depths. And, it has caused a disconnect among Protestants that has also fostered a sort of "spiritual amnesia" that is reflected in their prayer life and worship.
A third group of "Reformers" were more or less modern Arians, and owed much to the legacy of Michael Servetus and others - these would be the Socinians. The Socinians rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ as well as His Incarnation, and unlike other Reformers they actually did become heretical. They grew from a movement called the Polish Brethren that in turn grew out of the work of one Fausto Sozzini (1539-1604), after whom the movement was named ("Socinianism," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socinianism, September 7, 2017. Accessed October 20, 2017). Sozzini was an Italian theologian who eventually settled in Poland, and with Servetus in Spain he could also be considered a key figure in the development of Unitarianism later. He and his followers denied almost every cardinal Christian doctrine, including original sin, and in time Sozzini was beaten up by mobs in 1598, and died in 1604 from an illness resulting as a complication of those beatings.
Fausto Sozzini (1539-1604)
The final Reformer to discuss probably had the most impact negatively on the Reformation, and that of course was John Calvin.
John Calvin (1509-1564)
Protestant Evangelicals - at least 50% of them - revere John Calvin as almost a saint, and his role on the Reformation and influence on Protestantism for decades to come cannot be underestimated. Calvin was also one of the first to codify his doctrine by what is known as the "TULIP" acrostic, and it looks like this"
Total Depravity
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement
Irresistable Grace
Perserverence of the Saints
That whole scheme would define Calvin's convictions for centuries to come, and although some (such as Baptists and more moderate Presbyterians) have softened it somewhat, that scheme still remains cardinal to the theology of many Evangelicals. The one in particular has to do with the L in the "TULIP," and without getting into a lot of biographical details of Calvin or other specifics, we will address this one first. Limited atonement, to Calvin and many of his later disciples, translated to one thing - double predestination. What that meant was that some were predestined to spend eternity in hell, while others are elected to go to heaven, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that. This second aspect of double predestination then led to the U in "TULIP," which is unconditional election - no matter what one does, if you are predestined to heaven you are going, and that is why the "P"- perserverance of the saints - comes into play here; to redefine it in modern terminology, perserverance of the saints translates as "once saved, always saved." And, as free will and chance were looked at by Calvin as illusionary, this meant that the sovereignty of God was over-emphasized to the extent that free will was not even possible. And, naturally that followed that nothing is reversible - if it is predestined, then it has to be. There are many, many problems with this scheme, and it really creates a conflict with a believer in Sola Scriptura, as verses like John 3:16 stand in utter contrast to this scheme. That is why more moderate Calvinists - such as many Baptists - have had to redefine some of Calvin's "TULIP" to fit with evangelistic endeavors, and in the 18th and 19th centuries that caused some problems among Baptists in particular when the "Primitives" who were strict Calvinists split from the more evangelistic-minded "Missionary" Baptists.
The bottom line here is that the Reformation created a whole hornet's nest of theological and later political and social issues, and much of the fruit is still being seen today. But, thankfully, there were true Catholic reformers as well, and those will be discussed briefly.
St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
One thing the Reformers did bring to light was the fact that there were indeed some abuses and problems in the Church, and they did need to be addressed. It must be understood that the Church, although a holy institution, is also subject to the human limitations of her leaders at times, and it is important to understand that human beings, even among the clergy, can and do fall. Many faithful Catholics who were loyal to the Church saw this too, and one of those was St. Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish military man who later was consecrated to religious life. When he was engaged in a military campaign, Ignatius received a bad injury and was forced to recover. While in convalescence, he began his own independent study of the lives of the saints and of Christ, and it led to a personal conversion. As a fruit of his conversion, Ignatius was led to found a religious order that we know today as the Jesuits, and it was an order marked at its beginnings by loyalty to the Church and to the Pope in particular, as well as producing great educators and missionaries. They became, in a true sense, warriors in defense of the Faith. Unfortunately, in recent decades many Jesuits have fallen into theological liberalism, and no longer reflect St. Ignatius's vision, and that can be evidenced in some of the institutions of learning they founded. One in particular is a Jesuit college in my home state of West Virginia, and I can testify of classmates who went into that school as altarboys and came out atheists. Now, not all Jesuits are guilty of this, as there are still many fine priests who are faithful to the Magisterium - Fr. Mitch Pacwa comes to mind here. But, as an order, the Jesuits don't often reflect the great heritage of St. Ignatius, and that is unfortunate.
There were other stellar figures of the Counter-Reformation as well, such as St. Peter Canisius, who authored a magnificent Catechism that even garnered the respect of Protestants for its Biblical fidelity. Additionally, there was St. Robert Bellarmine, who participated in the Council of Trent and also had many influential works that he had written. And, there was St. Philip Neri, who led perhaps what was one of the greatest renewal movements in the Church. Also of note were mystics, such as the reforming Carmelite St. Teresa of Avila and also St. John of the Cross. France likewise produced St. Francis de Sales, whose prolific writings contributed much to the Church, and St. Vincent de Paul, who as "Champion of the Poor" is still synonymous with the virtue of charity. However, St. Vincent was also known as a proponent of priestly renewal as well, as he organized retreats and also addressed ways to alleviate growing ignorance and abuse among clergy. Many seminaries as well could be attributed to his work. These and many others show an effort of the Church to take responsibility for where it had fallen short in some areas, and perhaps the one positive fruit of the Reformation was an awareness that the Church needed to present a better witness of itself to the society it was called to reach out to. Therefore, good fruit resulted from even the scourge of schism.
This is pretty much a summary of the two areas I wanted to focus on, although there is a whole other section to this question I didn't address. Next week, I will have Part VII ready to share.
