17 - Tertullian and Various

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Number 16 or 17? 17.

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All right. We press forward through church history.

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Last week we stopped in the midst of looking at Justin Martyr.

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We were looking at some of the interesting developments that time.

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I mentioned that he had spent time in Rome where he met and debated the heretic Marcion and where he conversed with Trifo the

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Jew. His writings, especially his dialogue with Trifo the

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Jew, very interesting insights into how the faith was being defended at that time, a time where it seems fairly clear that Justin did not have a complete canon.

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As far as I know, does not quote from Paul. If you can imagine how difficult it would be for us in that situation, it gives you some of the insight of the difficulties of that particular time frame.

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And yet he still, for example, identifies, he uses the argument that there are references to Jesus in the

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Old Testament and the New Testament. There are texts about Yahweh in the

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Old Testament applied to Jesus in the New Testament was part of the argumentation. Of course, Paul does that. But if you don't have

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Paul, then you're looking at other references to be able to do that kind of thing. He returned for the last time to Rome about the year 166, when through the machinations of Crescens, a

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Cynic philosopher, he and six other Christians were scourged and beheaded. Justin bore testimony to the grace of God before the tribunal of Rusticus, and his final words were, quote, we desire nothing more than to suffer for our

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Lord Jesus Christ. This gives us salvation and joyfulness before this dreadful judgment seat at which all the world must appear, end quote.

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So that's where he earned his last name in history anyways.

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His most important writings, as I mentioned, include his dialogue with Trifo the Jew, 142 chapters long, and his two apologies.

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And again, that term, apologies, definitely not the normal utilization that we have that term today.

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Justin was not going around, oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry for being a Christian. That's not what he was doing, though.

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Something tells me that's what a lot of Christians do today, actually. But to give a defense, and hence, why will

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I not bow to the demands of Rome? Why will I follow a lifestyle that Rome finds to be offensive because it rejects the existence of other gods?

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And it's just so narrow and so unloving and sounds familiar. So two apologies, the first 68 chapters in length and addressed to Emperor Antoninus Pius, the second 25 chapters long.

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These works were written around AD 150. So you're talking, you know, if John's writing around 95 -ish, so you're only talking about 55 years after the time of the

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Apostles here, so they're quite interesting. Other writers mentioned that Justin wrote against Marcion as well, but these works have been lost.

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Now, I just sort of chuckled that only in that, like I said, if you wrote in the early church, you wrote a book against Marcion.

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So I sort of wonder if they just said that just so that Justin was part of the crowd and part of the group, I don't know.

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But I just, I honestly, there's nobody in the early church that was more named by name as a heretic than Marcion, big time.

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But we do not have what he wrote against Marcion. It would have been fascinating to have that.

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Remember, this is a period of persecution and there's still 163 years.

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If he's writing around 150, there's still 163 years persecution left. There's a lot of books that are going to be destroyed, a lot of book burning going on.

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And so it's amazing as much as has survived, has come down to us.

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His theology was deeply influenced by Greek philosophy. It would make sense. He wears the pallium his whole life.

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That is the context in which he is thinking and living. This influence will be able to be traced through Clement of Alexandria and Origen as well.

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We get to those individuals. He is not deeply influenced by New Testament writings, especially those letters of the

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Apostle Paul. And as a result, his theology is very legal and very works -oriented when it comes to soteriology.

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It's not a big area of his discussion either, primarily because that's not what he was being challenged on.

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As an apologist, the primary thing he's being challenged on is this whole idea of monotheism, one truth, incarnation,

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Jesus the Son of God. This is the focus. And if you didn't have

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Romans and Galatians, where would you be, is really the question that has to be asked. So why doesn't he get some of that mediated through the preaching of the church?

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Well, have you ever thought? Paul writes the letter to the

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Galatians, right? And you know that Galatians is plural, so it's the

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Galatian churches. So he writes the letter to the Galatians. It's read in the first church.

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It's passed on to the second church, so on and so forth. It's read throughout the churches in Galatia. We'd like to think that all the

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Judaizers and the legalists who are anathematized in that letter just went, we repent.

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We stand corrected. We embrace the truth, right?

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That's all that happens. We go out to Mesa and we pass out tracts of stuff to the Mormons, and they all just repent right there.

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It's just a huge line. And you know, we've seen hundreds of thousands. No, it doesn't work that way.

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And so these people are going to stay around, and they are going to found churches.

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Even if they're kicked out of the churches that they're in, they're going to found churches and try to take as many disciples with them as they possibly can.

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And they're going to continue on. Now, the Judaizers, we have no evidence from looking at the book of Galatians, for example, that the

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Judaizers were unorthodox when it comes to the nature of God. There's nothing, there's no indication that they were denying the deity of Christ or anything like that.

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So they're going to continue on, and they're going to influence people. And we can't necessarily look back and go, okay, this particular church father, he heard from a preacher from this particularly clearly defined group over here.

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We just don't have that kind of information. And so when you combine the zeal of works, righteousness, religions with the natural tendency of man to constantly try to insert himself into salvation,

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I mean, that's just, that's what man does. Don't want to be totally dependent upon God, don't want to be totally dependent upon grace, want to find a place in there for myself, my works, something

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I can boast and glory in. You combine that together, and it's not surprising that you can find in the writings of early church writers stuff that we would consider to be exceptionally problematic.

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But again, does that mean some of these people were unbelievers? Yeah, I mean, if you were in the straight line from the

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Judaizers that Paul had Athematized, yeah, that would definitely mean that there were unbelievers. First John, they went out from us.

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Where do you think they went? They didn't just become the unchurched, they went out and started their own churches, and they're the Antichrist, and they're drawing people away.

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And yeah, there was obviously heresy and falsehood. You can't have heresy and falsehood if there's not a revelation that you can rebel against, or twist, or pervert, or whatever.

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But yeah, there were those groups out there. How big they were? Hard to say.

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You know, there just isn't enough historical documentation to know for certainty.

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But if there was heresy and falsehood, and false teachers, and false

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Apostles in the days of the Apostles, they didn't just close up shop and go away after the last

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Apostle died. It's very clear from what Paul says to Timothy. It's gonna be tough, it's gonna be false teachers, they're gonna deceive, and being deceived, and so on and so forth.

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And so that battle has always existed, and depending on your eschatology, always will exist.

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And I just don't see that it's ever been the Lord's intention that the Church never have to be in the midst of that battle which makes the truth, should make the precious to her.

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And so, if you tried to do battle without Romans and Galatians, satirologically speaking,

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I mean, that's tough. Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, where would that leave you?

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So those are some of the questions that we automatically face when we look at the early

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Church. Now, you start getting into somewhat of a transitional figure when we look at Tertullian.

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He's considered one of the apologists, but he's sort of a little bit later. He was born approximately

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AD 150, so he's born right at the time that Justin is flourishing, so he's a little bit later.

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And he is the main apologist from the West, and one of the things that makes

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Tertullian important is he is called the father of Latin theology, and the father of ecclesiastical

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Latin. In other words, he, up until this time, Koine Greek is the primary language of Christians in general, though they may have their own languages in their own particular areas.

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But starting with Tertullian, there is a clear shift in the West. And again, take the

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Mediterranean, sort of divide it down the middle and the Western portion.

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There is a move toward Latin as the ecclesiastical language, which will only get stronger and stronger.

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And this is actually going to heavily influence the production of New Testament manuscripts. Eventually, Jerome's translation, the

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Latin called the Vulgate, is going to become the standardized Bible, so much so that by the time the

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Reformation, Rome puts forth its own infallible Vulgate, which didn't last very long.

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But the point was, Latin's the language of the church, and if you speak Greek, you're suspect of being a heretic anyways.

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That's what eventually is going to develop, though it certainly wasn't that case early on. So he is, he's converted at age 40, and he dies somewhere between 222 and 225 in that general area.

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He was married and is an early witness to the life of a Christian family. He never rose above the rank of presbyter, though Jerome says he was a priest.

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Now, at this time, you're getting development toward the time of Tertullian, end of his life.

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It's in the third century that you start getting this differentiation of offices.

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And though, initially, presbyter, episkopos, elder, bishop, they're all the same thing in the

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New Testament. Over time, they begin to be differentiated by tradition, and presbyter becomes a lesser office than bishop, and eventually coalesces with the concept of a priest.

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There was no priesthood in the New Testament, there is no priesthood in the primitive years, but it develops over time, and you start seeing the differentiation, the multiplication of offices and things like that.

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Not based upon exegesis, but, well, this is just how we're doing it now, type of a traditional thing.

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So he is fascinating in that you get some idea of what a married

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Christian man looks like, because over the next couple hundred years, if you're a priest, a bishop, anything like that, you weren't married in the first place.

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So there's a sad scarcity of writings from married

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Christian men as far as being truly famous and having great positions of influence over the next lengthy period of time, really until the

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Reformation. And Tertullian is one of the last ones that we have.

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What did he write? Well, first, his apologetic works, including his Apologeticus, which is just a

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Latinized version, Latin transliteration, which he writes around 197 to 200, in which he asserts that religious liberty, but check this out, you wonder where these some of these things came from.

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Religious liberty is an inalienable right given to man by God. Hmm, I wonder if that influenced anybody else down through the centuries.

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Well, might have. Here's something that is relevant along those lines.

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Let me grab it here. This is the book that I was looking for. This is

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Philip Schaaf. Speaking of the Apologeticus, it was composed in the reign of Septimus Severus between 197 and 200.

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It is unquestionably one of the most beautiful monuments of the heroic age of the Church. In this work, Tertullian enthusiastically and triumphantly repels the attacks of the heathens upon the new religion and demands for it legal toleration and equal rights with the other sects of the

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Roman Empire. It is the first plea for religious liberty as an inalienable right which

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God has given to every man and which the civil government in its own interest should not only tolerate but respect and protect.

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He claims no support, no favor, but simply justice. The Church was in the first three centuries a self -supporting and self -governing society as it ought always to be, that's

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Schaaf's comment, and no burden but a blessing to the state and furnished to it the most peaceful and useful citizens.

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The cause of truth and justice never found a more eloquent and fearless defender in the very face of despotic power and the blazing fires of persecution.

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The author of this book, it breathes from first to last the assurance of victory and apparent defeat. So here's a quotation.

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Actually, this is speaking of Tertullian but it's quoting Everett. We conquer, are his concluding words, the prefects and judges of the

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Roman Empire. We conquer in dying. We go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued.

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Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death as Cicero or as my

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Latin teacher said, Kikero, but anyway, most of you have heard Cicero. In the

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Tusculans as Seneca, in his chances as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus.

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And yet their words do not find as so many disciples as Christians do. Teachers, not by words but by their deeds.

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That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptor's. For who that contemplates it is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it.

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Who after inquiry does not embrace our doctrine? And when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fullness of God's grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness by giving in exchange his blood.

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Now there is a question you might want to think about as far as martyrdom goes. For that secures, and again, this is starting to make you go hmm, for that secures the remission of all offenses.

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On this account it is we return thanks on the very spot for your sentences. As the divine and human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you, we are acquitted by the highest.

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So there is a very strong argument being put forward at a very time of persecution that when you condemn us, we are actually being justified by that.

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This work, the apologeticus, had an appendix on the testimony of the soul that was an eloquent plea for the

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Christian faith. He also wrote a prescription against heretics, and five books against Marcion as well.

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He was none too kind to Marcion, and if you'd like,

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I'll give you an example thereof. This is

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Schaff's History of the Church. S -C -H -A -F -F. There's two sets of it in the pastor's office, so I always know that if I have a reference to Schaff, I don't need to bring my own with me.

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Schaff's late 1900s, I believe. Yeah. Still, I think it's eight volumes and generally available.

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Like I said, there's two sets. One of them might be yours, I'm not sure, because you got some stuff in there too.

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No, late 19th century, 1880s, 1890s, somewhere around there.

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Okay, yeah, whatever. He died in 1893. Yeah, he died in 1893, so. Among the heretics, he attacked chiefly the

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Valentinian Gnostics and Marcion. The work against Marcion, around A .D. 208, is his largest, and the only one in which he indicates the date of composition, namely the 15th year of the reign of Septimus Severus, that is so A .D.

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208. He wrote three works against this famous heretic. The first he set aside as imperfect, the second was stolen from him and published with many blunders before it was finished.

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That's interesting, steal somebody's book and publish it. In the new work, in five books, he elaborately defends the unity of God, the creator of all, the integrity of the scriptures, and the harmony of the

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Old and New Testaments. He displays all his power of solid argument, subtle sophistry, ridicule, and sarcasm, and exhausts his vocabulary of vituperation.

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He is more severe upon heretics than Jews or Gentiles. He begins with a graphic description of all the physical abnormalities of Pontus, the native province of Marcion, and the gloomy temper, wild passions, and ferocious habits of its people, and then goes on to say, in other words, tad bit of ad hominem argumentation here, nothing in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born there.

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Fowler than any Scythian, more roving than the

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Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Masajid, more audacious than an

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Amazon, darker than the cloud of the Uxine, colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more deceitful than the

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Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay, more, the true

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Prometheus, almighty God, is mangled by Marcion's blasphemies. Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of the barbarous region.

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For what beaver was ever a greater emasculator than he who has abolished the nuptial bond?

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What Pontic mouse ever had such gnawing powers as he who gnawed the gospel to pieces?

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Verily, O Uxine, thou hast produced a monster more credible to philosophers than to Christians.

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For the cynic Diogenes used to go about lantern in hand at midday to find a man, whereas Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the

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God whom he had found. Yeah, well, you gotta understand, we live in a day of political correctness, and you go back, really, honestly, anything really prior to the 1950s, and you're going to have pretty much that level of, wow, you listen to what

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Luther says to Erasmus, and what Erasmus says to Luther, what Erasmus says to almost everybody.

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I mean, he was considered one of the great writers of rhetoric and the use of sarcasm and insult and everything else.

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They're just, the idea of safe spaces is really new, okay, just so we all know, this triggering and all the rest of this stuff.

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The world's never been so velvet covered as people think it's supposed to be today.

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And so, you read much in history, and yeah, yeah, they went, went after him pretty good.

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Now, Tertullian also is famous for his question. Brother Callahan, what's

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Tertullian's famous question? Oh, sure you do. You even shook your head vigorously when

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I mentioned it before, and you will as soon as I say it. Tertullian asked, what does

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Jerusalem have to do with Athens? What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?

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And why would he ask that question? Well, obviously, because from his perspective, he was very opposed to, for example, what

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Justin did in Justin's position of accepting and utilizing non -Christian philosophy as a means to an end.

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And so, he sees a fundamental division between Jerusalem and Athens, both in the end, as well as how you are to get there.

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So, now, I'm sure there are entire doctoral dissertations that have been written on the influence of Greek philosophy on Tertullian.

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You couldn't, you're influenced by it, whether you know it or not. But there was still a very important divide amongst the writers in the early church on this issue of just how cozy can we get with, for them,

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Greek philosophy. The Romans weren't the most original folks.

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They were very good at copying and improving. So, it was the Greeks that gave them the substance, and if there was such a thing as Roman philosophy, it borrowed its foundations from the

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Greeks anyways. So, Greek philosophy, even though it was the Roman Empire, Greek philosophy and language,

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Alexander still cast a huge shadow and so many

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Christians struggle to this day. It's been an issue for every generation, exactly how the philosophies of men, how do you utilize those things?

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That remains an issue today, and I think most of you who've listened to The Dividing Line, listened to me speaking outside the context here of church, know that I would tend to be more on Tertullian's side than Justin's as far as that issue is concerned, and see some severe dangers to any form of philosophy that does not have as its heart and soul a recognition that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Jesus Christ.

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The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord, and if we don't start there, we're going to end up going wrong.

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And if you don't start there and you have a much more man -centered perspective, but then try to, you know,

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I don't know how I lived the first 50 years of my life without Nutella, but once I discovered it, it now becomes,

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I mean, who needs peanut butter when you've got Nutella? I mean, come on. And so, it's sort of like taking

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Christian truth as Nutella and taking human philosophy and trying to slather it all over it and turn it into something that would be appropriately

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Christian. It'll get all over the place, but it's not really going to change the substance of what's there.

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And Tertullian's whole perspective, at least as he expresses it, as he wants it, whether he was consistent with it or not is another issue, but is to say, look, divine revelation, the

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Old Testament prophets, you know, thankfully at least for Tertullian, the split we're going to see especially happening in Clement of Alexandria origin, where the

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Old Testament starts to just tremendously decrease in its relevance, being understood, it becomes primarily a playground for allegorical interpretation.

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Thankfully for Tertullian, that's not fully there yet. And so, you have the prophets, you have prophecy, you have these things that are more fundamental in foundation from his perspective.

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Now, what's also interesting, what's also interesting, if you've ever listened to any of my debates with Roman Catholics, you may remember that a few times

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I've quoted Tertullian, Gerry Matiticks will pretty much dismiss him, and you've never heard him called

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Saint Tertullian. You'll have Saint Cyprian, you don't have

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Saint Justin, but a lot of, you know,

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Saint Augustine and so on and so forth. But Tertullian is not a saint. And the reason for that is somewhere early in the third century,

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Tertullian left the Catholic Fellowship and joined the Montanists.

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The Montanists. Yes, they came over from Montana, and just seeing how many of you are still awake at this time of the morning, most of you are going, really?

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No, no, no, no, there was no, Montana existed, it just wasn't really called

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Montana at that particular point in time. Montanists was the prophet slash leader of the

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Montanists, which makes sense. And Montanists taught that there were two kinds of Christians.

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You had spiritual Christians, and then you had cold

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Christians. Spiritual Christians and cold Christians. The spiritual ones believed in prophecy and continuing revelation, and the cold ones did not.

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Now, I don't know about you, but if Montanists was around, there's an entire TV network that would have welcomed him with open arms.

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He would have had three hour daily program right after Benny Hinn. So, he believes in prophecy and continuing revelation.

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Montanists was accompanied on his trips by two women prophetesses who danced and spoke in ecstatic languages named

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Prisca and Maximilla. I think I've seen Maximilla on TBN.

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I think I have. I think she might still be around. Prisca and Maximilla, they would have had their own one hour spinoff shows as well.

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So, they danced and spoke in tongues. And so, you have an early movement, and we're going to see this repeated over and over and over and over again through the history of the church.

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There are going to be these movements that arise that basically say, you know what? We look around, and you folks just aren't zealous enough.

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You're not passionate enough. You've gotten too comfortable. Now, realize, this is during a time of persecution when people are croaking, okay?

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People are dying, being eaten by lions, and so on and so forth. So, you still look around.

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It'll be really easy to understand once Christianity becomes cultural why there is a constant rise of Reformation movements and revival movements and stuff like that.

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But this is during a period of persecution, and yet still, they see this division, but it's primarily a theological division.

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You have the old, cold orthodoxy, which clearly does not believe in continuing

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Revelation and in this concept of continuing prophecy, and they're reacting against that.

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And evidently, if you dance and speak in tongues, that's going to be somewhat unusual in that day as well.

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Rather unusual. Now, the seeds of destruction, the

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Montanists did not last long. And you might say, well, our movements sure do last a long time these days.

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How come it didn't last long back then? Well, actually, when you think about it, the modern Charismatic movement isn't that old as far as church history is concerned.

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It's not that old. But any group that adopts this one viewpoint signs its own death warrant, and history proves this over and over again, and that is they were against marriage.

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Now, if you're against marriage, you pretty much guarantee that your movement's not going to last a long period of time, because just by the numbers, you now limit yourself to being completely dependent upon conversions from people who are old enough to have not agreed with you until they had kids, and then came to agree with you.

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Otherwise, you're not going to last long, and these groups didn't.

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And then joined to that, they delighted in persecution and martyrdom, which only accelerates the process.

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We cannot replace those that die in persecution and martyrdom because we're against marriage and therefore run the numbers.

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This is a very fast fading movement. But it did make quite a splash during the period of time it existed.

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They did not last very long. Tertullian's Montanism was more muted than the

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Phrygian variety. He was not a 60 -year -old theologian who all of a sudden decided to start dancing and speaking in tongues, but evidently he did become disenchanted with some level of complacency and lack of fervor and passion in the church as he experienced it toward the end of his life.

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And so, when you look at Tertullian's works, like in the 10 -volume

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Antonycing Fathers set that I think Hendrickson now publishes, which again, if you keep an eye out, ladies, if the husband is a secret bibliophile, he really does like books, things like that.

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They look great on the shelf. Actually, the whole set, which is 38 volumes, again, published by Hendrickson now, it used to be

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Erdmann's, they're really good -looking books. They look great on the shelf.

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They really do. And you can normally find some real steals before the holidays.

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Just suggesting. If you're thinking about wanting to help the guy out and make his library look much better, at least the

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Antonycing Fathers first 10 volumes before the Council of Nicaea, pretty useful stuff.

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A little dated. I mean, they were produced in the late 19th century, late 1800s, but they're still really, really, really useful.

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And Tertullian's stuff is in there. And if you pick up his volume, you will see that the index will divide it between pre - and post -Montanist writings.

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So if you're debating a Roman Catholic, even when I was doing some of the debates on the papacy back on Long Island, I would specifically check and would make reference to the fact when

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I'm using a pre -Montanist Tertullian, that's going to be more binding upon the

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Roman Catholic than the post -Montanist writings are. I mean, they're all relevant to what people believed in those early ages, but just something to keep in mind.

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All right, let's look at someone else. We're making tracks today. We are flying. This is good because it means we'll someday finish church history before there's so much more history to write that we just get stuck in a loop.

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Theophilus, Theophilus, T -H -E -O -P -H -I -L -U -S, Theophilus, lover of God, obviously is what

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Theophilus means. I suppose some forms could be loved by God, but anyway. Theophilus of Antioch was converted to the faith by the study of the scriptures.

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There are a lot. I saw a list once, I wish I had kept it, but there are a lot of people down through the ages, big names, who were not converted by an individual specifically seeking to cause them to convert, but simply through the study of the scriptures, more than you might expect.

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He was converted to faith by the study of the scriptures. He was bishop of Antioch during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and died around 181.

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So again, the end of that second century, tough time period. Really, if you were a

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Christian life insurance salesman, those were the pits. That was a tough time. See, none of you are awake anymore because you're all just sitting there going, yeah, okay, yeah,

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Theophilus, life insurance, right. We know of Theophilus primarily through his only surviving literary effort, that of his three books to Atelicus, an educated heathen friend.

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Unlike Justin, Theophilus is not liberally minded toward the heathen philosophers, so he's going to be more in the vein of Tertullian.

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He felt that the Old Testament already contained all the truths men had to know, so the writings of Socrates or Plato were in fact detractions from God's truth.

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He also, and I didn't grab this one, and I apologize, maybe I will remember to grab it next week.

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The early church father's set is not in the pastor's library, unfortunately. You're not going to be here next week, are you?

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No, that's true, that's true. So, whenever I, I will definitely not remember to grab this three weeks from now, after I get back from Australia and New Zealand.

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But in the Ananisian father's set, volume two, pages 100 to 101, he was the first to use the term triad with reference to the nature of God, not

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Trinitas, which would be sort of the Latinized version of that, but he used the term triad, and his usage suggests that it was not a new or novel term at the time.

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So, if he dies in 181, then if it's not a new and novel term around 160, then we could push that that much farther back as to its usage.

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And the church historian Eusebius, who writes just after, middle of the fourth century, sometime after the

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Council of Nicaea, the church historian Eusebius mentions a book against Martione as well, but it has been lost.

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So, Theophilus probably wrote a book against Martione, but there are so many of them that even some of them have just disappeared into the mists of time, and there you go, it has been, it has been lost.

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We'll just start on this and then I'll remember to pick up on this, because there's some stuff I want to read you that I don't have with me from this particular fellow, and then this will be the last guy before we get to a big, big, big, big name, and that is

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Irenaeus of Lyon. Irenaeus is rather important. Melito of Sardis.

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Now, I'm pretty certain that when I took church history, we didn't cover Melito, and Melito's one of those guys that the winners of theological controversies tend to write the church histories, and therefore, if you happen to find yourself on the wrong end of even sometimes a minor controversy in the ancient church, you could sort of, well, your books might disappear into the mists of time as well, and that was sort of what happened to Melito of Sardis.

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I'll just introduce you here real quickly, and like I said, there's some really neat stuff, especially from his

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Passover sermon that I want to read to you. Hopefully, I'll remember to bring it with me. I have it on this unit.

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I just have to bring up a different program to track it all down. If you've read my book,

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The Forgotten Trinity, I provide a fairly lengthy translation of one of Melito's sections, because it's really fascinating.

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He was the bishop of Sardis, and he was deeply involved. Here is today's word.

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This is the word that you need. This is the password to get out of church today, okay? So, if you don't get this password, then

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George Soto will sit on you before you leave, and, but George gets to leave whenever he wants to, because no one can stop

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George from leaving if he wants to. Here it is. You ready? You ready, George? You got it? The Quartodeciman Controversy.

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The Quartodeciman Controversy. Quartodeciman.

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Quartodeciman Controversy. This is a big controversy in the late 2nd century in Asia Minor.

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What was it about? This was a controversy over the proper date upon which to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.

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Generally, and probably most anciently, the Eastern churches celebrated the resurrection on 14

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Nisan of the Jewish calendar. So, they just follow the

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Jewish calendar, and when 14 Nisan came along, that was the day of the resurrection going by the

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Jewish celebration of the holidays, which was what the New Testament had connected it to. While those in the

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West insisted that Sunday was the only proper day of celebration. So, what would happen then, especially with churches that were close to what you'd call the border of East and West, it's not like there was a line on a map someplace.

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It was considered a rather major scandal that one of the most important days of celebration, the resurrection, which we call

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Easter, which they did not call Easter, might be done on a

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Thursday on one side of the river, and a Sunday on the other side of the river. And so, the

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Quartodeciman Controversy, Polycarp and Anacletus, the

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Bishop of Rome, had discussed the issue years earlier. So, Polycarp and Anacletus, they had exchanged information on it.

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And in 190, Victor, the Bishop of Rome, demanded that the churches in Asia conform to the

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Western way of celebrating the resurrection upon pain of excommunication. Irenaeus basically told

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Victor to cool his jets, but we'll have to pick up with that because we're out of time. But Melito was very much, he was on the wrong side of this, which is why many of his writings end up not being as popular as they would have otherwise, but we'll have to pick up with that because the door is already opening, which means we're really late.

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So, let's close the word of prayer. Father, we do thank you for this day, the opportunity of considering your work with your people down through history.

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Continue to work with us, even in this hour. May you be honored and glorified in all that takes place.