Church History Story Time with Uncle Jimmy: Road Trip Edition (Audio Only)

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August 4, 2022

After a few minutes about the importance of self discipline in the Christian life, I read through three sections from Dr. Nick Needham's 2000 Years of Christ's Power series, one dealing with the Robber Synod, one dealing with the Marburg Colloquy, and the last about the death of Chrysostom. Enjoy!

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00:26: Well, greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line Road Trip edition and also audio only again.
00:32: I'm in the same location I was at before. I'll be leaving tomorrow this particular spot as I head up toward Colorado and the internet is still not sufficiently present here to do anything else.
00:50: And to be honest with you, it just seems to me that for a lot of this stuff, there's just no reason to have, you know, unless I'm doing graphics or something like that, using the big boards like that, you don't really need to see my ugly mug or anything like that.
01:13: The content today will be 100 % audible only and so there we go.
01:19: So hopefully that won't be a problem. You may hear a little bit of noise in the background. I mean,
01:24: I'm 100 yards from an interstate, which all RV parks seem to be. It's sort of like it's a law or something.
01:31: You have to be within 100 yards of a railroad track or an interstate or both, preferably it seems for many
01:40: RV parks. And to be perfectly honest with you, I can sleep with that now. I've sort of gotten used to it.
01:46: You know, it's sort of the song of the RVer is the semi -truck or the train, either one.
01:54: It's okay, it doesn't really wake me up anymore. Anyways, you might also hear some pitter -patter on the roof because we have weather coming through and I don't mind that at all.
02:09: But you may, if that's what you hear or something in the background, that may be what you're picking up. Anyway, on the program today,
02:17: I want to start off with just a, there are so many proverbs that we could draw from.
02:25: I would so highly recommend to our homeschoolers and to those of you who are being homeschooled, and if you are being homeschooled, once again, let me emphasize to you the blessing that is yours.
02:42: Do not allow the world to, in any way, shape or form, make you feel like you're missing out on anything.
02:51: All you're missing out on is having your humanity destroyed in an educational system that will tell you that you're nothing but an animal that should focus solely upon its own feelings.
03:06: But I would highly recommend to those who are homeschooling, to just Christian families in doing your worship together, whatever, spend time in the proverbs daily.
03:23: You don't have to read a whole chapter. Many of them, especially later in the proverbs, are singular units.
03:30: But there's just so much wisdom to be found there that will not be found any longer in our society or in the speech of our society.
03:44: And I just happened to open up my text to Proverbs chapter 16, verse 32.
03:54: He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his own spirit than he who captures the city.
04:04: So, once again, Hebrew parallelism, Hebrew poetry, there are certain aspects of the
04:12: Hebrew language and forms, grammar, syntax, structure that need to be recognized so you can see he who is slow to anger and he who rules his own spirit are in parallel to one another and then is better than the mighty and then he who captures a city are parallel to one another.
04:36: And so there is a primary assertion that is being made and that is self -control makes you a greater person than having a might, power, political authority, social authority, whatever it is, whatever better than the mighty and then he who captures a city.
05:03: Self -control, he who is slow to anger, he who rules his own spirit.
05:11: Now, why do I emphasize this? Well, it's not just because I, like anybody else, has walked through a department store and seen the result of the secularization of our society as it impacts parenting and you see these unruly, undisciplined, and I would say to you that means unloved children who themselves will grow up and produce more of their own kind.
05:43: I'm not saying just because we all see that all the time, but it's because our society has thrown off the depth of beauty and wisdom that comes from a recognition that we are the creatures of God and we are made by God for a purpose, for transcendent reasons, and we have transcendent meaning and that means that unlike brute beasts, which is what secularism tells you you are, a purposeless cosmic accident, that in opposition to that lie, and it is a lie, you are a creature created by God to fulfill his will for your life and you have meaning and you have purpose and that means you are to be self -disciplined.
06:46: Does not mean that you are to lack emotion or feeling. There is a place for anger.
06:53: There is righteous anger in the human experience, but you are to rule your own spirit.
07:01: You're not to be ruled by your spirit. You're to rule over your emotions, over your desires.
07:10: I am very thankful that my parents instilled that concept in me very, very, very early on.
07:21: I don't remember exactly how they did that, but I know that I was taught that, and I just accepted as a simple reality that I needed to have as my goal from my youngest age, my goal to be a mature adult and honestly,
07:54: I expected to have to do that by the time I was about 18 years of age.
08:01: I've mentioned a number of times. I was 19. My wife was 18. We got married at 18 years of age.
08:06: I had been working for years by that point and hence knew what
08:13: I wanted, and when I saw that girl, I knew that was the girl that I wanted and went about, took me a few years, but went about working on that and succeeded.
08:26: We've been married for over 40 years now. But that was just how
08:31: I was raised, and self -control, self -discipline, it's all through the
08:38: Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It is.
08:43: It's everywhere. Sophronosmos, the Greek term for disciplined mind, being disciplined, self -controlled, this is an act of the
08:56: Spirit of God. It is something we should be practicing each and every day to be disciplined.
09:06: Few things would make us more different from the world around us than that, that's for sure, because what is the world saying today?
09:13: Lack of discipline. Go with your feelings. There is no external right or wrong for you.
09:24: You get to determine all these things for yourself. And the result is destruction.
09:30: We see it all around us. Destruction of lives, destruction of futures, families, people, individuals. The number of drug overdoses in our country is absolutely epidemic.
09:43: The sexual destruction, sexual dysfunction, it's all around us.
09:51: And yet we just continue to press forward into the abyss of nihilism.
09:58: And the ancient words told us long ago, he who is slow to anger, he who rules his own spirit, that person is better than the mighty, that person is better than he who captures the city.
10:14: And this should be our daily goal. The Scripture provides us with everything we need to experience this godly discipline and it should be our prayer, and I hope it is your prayer this day, that God would move your heart and your soul to desire to glorify him in your self -discipline, in your control.
10:45: That's what God has made us as beings that, yes, experience emotion, but can rule over those emotions.
10:56: That's how God made us, that's how we should be. What I want to do today is
11:03: I want to spend a little, do a little story time with Uncle Jimmy.
11:09: It works well when you don't have to worry about what you're wearing and what the background looks like.
11:17: I can tell you that Ultraman has made a reappearance. He's in the background here now.
11:24: And for those who don't know, Ultraman was given to me by Chris Honnold when he and his family visited me here in the
11:31: Mobile Command Center when I was up in Nevada. And so I have given
11:40: Chris, you know, out of the deep respect and love of my heart,
11:46: I've given Chris an elf doll, and others have likewise joined in their expression of love for Chris by blessing him with a great deal of elf paraphernalia.
12:04: And so he reciprocated by giving me an Ultraman figure who is gesturing behind me.
12:13: And I think I saw an Ultraman episode once many, many, many, many years ago.
12:19: It is the quintessential, I think, I think quintessential Japanese style thing.
12:26: I don't know. I wouldn't even know how to find it. I suppose I could probably find it on YouTube. I don't know.
12:32: But Chris is into it. That's cool. That's great. No mockery of Ultraman allowed. That's great.
12:39: So he's in the background. But I'm going to shamelessly be reading today.
12:51: Now, you know, Storytime with Uncle Jimmy normally is me reading some Gnostic wackadoodle stuff from history.
13:00: But today I'm going to be reading from one of my favorite church history resources.
13:06: Two Thousand Years of Christ's Power by Dr. Nick Needham. And I've already, you know, let the cat out of the bag in years past that Dr.
13:20: Needham and I know each other. I'm thinking of the first time we met in Scotland.
13:30: And how I just didn't, I just didn't know how to interpret Nick at all.
13:35: That from that first meeting, it was a very casual meeting. We were eating at someone's home, actually.
13:43: And then the second time we met, that's when I discovered his sense of humor.
13:50: And ever since then, I'm just straightforward.
13:56: I am so thankful that before the virus hit, one of the last trips that I got to make is
14:04: I took an overnight train from London up to Inverness and I surprised
14:14: Nick. He did not know I was coming. I surprised him.
14:21: And the look on his face was amazing. And we got to walk around there in Inverness.
14:27: And there's a little restaurant that we would eat at.
14:33: And we've had hours and hours of wonderful conversation. And we also got to go up to search for Nessie.
14:41: We went up and walked around Loch Ness and some of the ruins there in the castles.
14:49: And just had a wonderful time together. And so it's pretty obvious I think
14:56: Nick Needham is just a really, really super guy. And he is a dear, dear, dear, dear brother.
15:02: I don't know if I'll ever get to see him again. But that's the way the world is these days.
15:09: And so when people ask me for church history resources,
15:16: I always refer them to his currently four -volume series, 2000 Years of Christ's Power.
15:23: And it's not nearly as extensive as Schaff. And it's not meant to be.
15:29: He intended the writing level and style and content to be the person in the pew.
15:39: Not the fellow scholar in the university. And as such, it's much more enjoyable.
15:48: Though it does, thankfully, correct what is often found in many church histories.
15:57: And that is, Nick has a real expertise and interest in Eastern Christianity.
16:04: And so it doesn't just ignore all of that. A lot of church histories that are written in the West just sort of tip their hat toward, eh, something happened over there, but we're not really sure what.
16:15: And he doesn't do that. So that's very helpful as well. But I've recommended the book to, the series, to so many people.
16:23: And they've all reported that they've really been blessed by it and things like that. So I highly recommend.
16:30: And I discovered, Nick didn't even know this, volume one, anyway. I haven't even looked to see if the rest are.
16:36: I don't think they are. But volume one is available on Audible.
16:41: And I've actually been listening to it, as I have chance between other things, myself.
16:49: And the fellow who recorded it once in a while,
16:56: I think twice, has read immortality as immorality.
17:04: But they look a lot alike. I get that. But it's well done.
17:10: It's very easy to understand. So I'd recommend that to you as well. But what I wanted to do is
17:15: I wanted to just read some fairly lengthy sections and make some comments. So it's sort of a church history dividing line today.
17:24: Make some good application of church history.
17:32: And hopefully that will be a blessing to folks as well. I want to start off talking a little bit about the inevitable role of politics and worldly ambitions and nations and kings and emperors and everything else, not only in the history of the church, but we have to be honest, in the theology of the church as well.
18:07: Because you have to close your eyes and your ears to not recognize, if you do any serious reading in church history, the impact in the
18:22: Reformation. I mean, why did Luther die of a heart attack?
18:30: So natural causes, rather than tied to a stake.
18:36: Whereas so many others did die tied to a stake. Politics. Now, is
18:43: God sovereign in that area? Of course. But you have to recognize that Frederick, you know, we're so thankful for Elector Frederick's protection of Luther.
18:56: But at the same time, he didn't do that solely out of the goodness of his heart as if he was some eagle -eyed prophet that knew how important Luther would be to, you know, the entire thing called the
19:10: Reformation, which they didn't know anything about, obviously. You know, he had his own desires and his own goals and his own agenda.
19:24: And God used all of that. And a lot of times, and I, again, told the story before that when we did our
19:34: Reformation tour, the year of the Reformation in Germany, the folks who went with us were surprised at how blunt
19:42: I was in painting an honest picture of church history. And the reality that Luther or Zwingli or Calvin would not have even extended the right -handed fellowship to most of us in that group because of our beliefs.
20:02: And people are really shocked. They're really surprised at how clear
20:09: I was in emphasizing those things and expressing those realities.
20:16: But you have to tell the story the way it actually happened, especially if you want to make meaningful application in our day.
20:25: Otherwise, you have a caricature, you have you have cartoons. I think a lot of people have a cartoonish view of Luther or Calvin or Zwingli or Bucer or Melanchthon or whatever.
20:37: It just seems to be, you know, sort of a cartoon type thing rather than the reality.
20:43: So with that in mind, I wanted to, yesterday,
20:50: I got a chance to go out and my neighbor's pulling out behind me, probably hear them.
20:57: They normally do gravel in these places. I understand why, but it does tend to make a little more noise. Anyway, I wanted to, yesterday,
21:08: I got a chance to ride, and this was a section that I was listening to on the ride.
21:14: And I thought, you know, this is important to recognize. I've never had a real high view, personally, of Cyril of Alexandria as an individual, as a theologian, his behavior toward others, things like that.
21:39: And in reading Dr. Needham's work, I was once again reminded of what that was.
21:47: When you get into the fifth century, you really start having to deal with the reality that the interplay between the now institutionalized church, because remember,
22:05: Constantine's converted Council of Nicaea 325, Peace to Church 313, so now you're 130, 140 years down the road into the middle of the next century, and so you have already an institutionalized church, and the power plays are taking place between the church and the state.
22:38: It's just, it's inevitable, it's clear, it's right there in front of us. And the impact that has in that early period is immense.
22:55: And so, councils are called, and it's interesting, we get to, in hindsight, sort of edit the councils.
23:08: And, you know, we look at Council of Nicaea, oh yes, the first ecumenical council.
23:16: Nobody at that time even had a clue as to what in the world that would even mean.
23:23: They really wouldn't. Ecumenical council, what's going on here? And for many decades after Nicaea, for many decades after Nicaea, it was not even certain that Nicaea would survive as something that was considered to be orthodox.
23:46: So it's only hindsight that has invested Nicaea with the authority it has, or Constantinople, or Chalcedon.
23:56: But then you have the story of the robber synod. And so let me just pick up, this is all, the first two things, well, this one
24:07: I'm going to read is from the first volume. I'm going to read a section from the third volume on a more modern topic, and then we'll finish off with hopefully an section back in the first volume of 2 ,000
24:20: Years of Christ's Power. So again, what I'm reading, Dr. Nick Needham, 2 ,000 Years of Christ's Power, highly recommend it to you.
24:27: The set looks really nice, but like I said, you can get, it's in Lagos as well. In fact, I'm reading it from Lagos.
24:32: I have the first volume with me, but I'm, quite honestly, the font is three times larger on my screen than it is in the text.
24:43: That's just one of the benefits. Until the big EMP hits, and then I won't be able to see anything anyways.
24:50: All right, so I'm picking up in the middle of a story, and you'll sort of have to move along from there.
24:58: Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople from 447 to 449, was a moderate
25:04: Antiochian. Now this is a discussion of the Christological controversies and the,
25:12: I'm commenting here obviously, the contrast between Antioch and Alexandria.
25:19: The Alexandrian tendency was to a hyper -emphasis upon the deity of Christ, the expenditure of his true humanity.
25:33: The emphasis in Antioch tended toward a, because of the necessary emphasis on both biblically, tended toward division.
25:49: So many, all of the Christological controversies, whether it's Nestorianism, Apollinarianism, Eutychianism, these all have to do with how we understand the relationship of the divine and human in Christ, and all of that is forced upon us by scripture.
26:08: And with Nicaea's definition, now you have to deal with, okay, if Christ is homoousius with the
26:16: Father, the Bible has told us he's Yahweh in human flesh, so how are we to understand the relationship of the divine and human in Christ?
26:25: And let's just be honest, the only meaningful answers to those questions are going to be biblically given to us, because that's, what else do we have?
26:35: And one of the great dangers is when the church in the ancient context and the modern context decides that there are questions that we must answer that God never intended us to have answers to, and that means we have to pull stuff in from outside to come up with those answers, and that's very, very dangerous.
26:54: So, you have Antioch and Alexandria going back and forth.
27:00: So, Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, now, I keep stopping. The Patriarch of Constantinople, again, for the development over time, these are called the
27:10: Apostolic Seas, the cities that claimed to have been founded by apostles, and they have special authority at this point in history.
27:22: Flavian was a moderate Antiochian and condemned Eutychius, Eutychianism, for his extreme
27:29: Alexandrian teaching, but Eutychius had powerful friends at court, that is, the court of the emperor, and the new
27:36: Patriarch of Alexandria, Dioscorus, strongly supported him. Dioscorus had all of Sarla of Alexandria's violent hostility to Constantinople and the
27:45: Antiochians, but none of Sarla's thoughtful mind or penetrating spiritual insight. In fact, Dioscorus, this is,
27:51: I found this description rather interesting. Dioscorus was little better than a theological thug, a gangster strutting around in a bishop's robe.
28:01: Well, Nick, why don't you tell us what you really think? It's so cool to sit here because I can hear this in Nick's voice.
28:13: Was little better than a theological thug. I'm sorry. To settle the controversy,
28:20: Emperor Theodosius summoned another council at Ephesus in 449. Dioscorus and his
28:27: Alexandrians controlled its proceedings like a band of triumphant revolutionaries.
28:33: In an anti -Antiochian rampage, they reinstated Eutyches, outlawed the formula of union of 433, and deposed
28:43: Patriarch Flavian and several other leading Antiochian bishops, notably the great
28:50: Bible commentator Theodorus of Syros and Bishop Ibis of Edessa, who had tried to mediate between Nestorius and Cyril.
28:59: They also refused to listen to an important statement of Western Christology, which Pope Leo I of Rome sent to Flavian.
29:07: Flavian, the statement was known as Leo's Tome. History remembers
29:13: Pope Leo as Leo the Great, Pope from 440 to 461, born in Tuscany, northern
29:18: Italy in about 400. He was the most outstanding theologian who had so far occupied the
29:23: Episcopal throne of Rome and in many ways was the founder of the papacy. Leo believed that Christ had appointed the
29:30: Apostle Peter as the senior bishop and final court of appeal for all Christians, and that the whole church should accept all doctrinal statements by Peter's successors, that is, the popes of Rome.
29:54: This was one reason why Leo was so upset by the Council of Ephesus' refusal even to read out the statement that he sent to Flavian.
30:04: However, Leo was personally a very gentle and moderate man, a great preacher and a brave spokesman for the
30:09: Roman population against invading armies of Huns and Vandals. He twice saved the city of Rome from destruction by pleading with the
30:17: Hunnish and Vandal chieftains. The Second Council of Ephesus, then, was a total victory for the extreme
30:24: Alexandrians. Once again, the Patriarch of Alexandria had toppled the Constantinople.
30:30: In fact, some Alexandrian monks whose zeal outstripped their common sense beat up Flavian of Constantinople so badly that he died of his injuries a few days later.
30:48: Flavian is deposed by the Council, by the Alexandrians.
30:54: Now, you know, you just stop and go, do they have the right to do this? Notice what is being told here.
31:04: At this time, you have Leo making grand, grand, grand claims for the papacy, but clearly the people of the
31:16: East don't buy his claims, or they wouldn't be having this council and doing this against, they didn't read his tome, and they are deposing
31:29: Flavian, and then you literally have
31:37: Alexandrian monks and they beat
31:43: Flavian so badly he dies a few days later of his injuries. This is, this is what's going on at Council?
31:55: His replacement as Patriarch of Constantinople was Anatolius, an
32:00: Alexandrian and a friend of Dioscorus. Oh, how would that work? Oh, you mean there's politics involved here?
32:08: You're not choosing the best person for the job? However, the
32:13: Alexandrians had triumphed at Ephesus only because imperial troops and gangs of violent
32:20: Alexandrian monks had backed them. So, so they are making theological assertions.
32:29: They're saying you're not to use this formula, and you are to use this, and what's the fundamental power behind it?
32:37: Imperial troops and gangs of violent Alexandrian monks. Pope Leo positively glowed with rage and thundered against the wicked council as a synod of robbers.
32:52: The name stuck, and the council is still referred to today as the robber synod. The decisions of Ephesus were beyond remedy as long as Emperor Theodosius II lived.
33:07: See that? So, here is a council, and its theological decisions are, cannot be challenged as long as the emperor behind it lives.
33:23: As luck or providence would have it, he was killed in a riding accident in 450, and the new emperor
33:28: Marcian, not Marcion, O -N, but I -N, Marcion, was favorable to the cause of Rome and the
33:36: Antiochians. In 451, he summoned a fresh council at Chalcedon near Constantinople.
33:43: There were some 400 bishops present, almost all from the east, together with ambassadors of Pope Leo. It proved a difficult gathering.
33:50: Most of the bishops were disciples of Cyril of Alexandria, but opponents of Eutyches and Dioscorus, and they did not know how to express
33:58: Cyril's Christology in a way that would exclude the teaching of Eutyches. At first, they simply agreed to a formula which stated that Christ was incarnate from two natures, using the word fusis for nature.
34:12: Unfortunately, Eutyches and Dioscorus could accept that. They took it to mean that from the two natures being united, one nature resulted in the incarnation.
34:23: Yet Cyril had used the phrase from two natures, so it seemed orthodox enough to the majority.
34:29: At this point, the ambassadors of Pope Leo intervened, backed up by representatives of Emperor Marcion. They gave the bishops an ultimatum.
34:37: Either they reconsider the formula, or Leo would refuse to recognize their proceedings. The formula was sent back to a committee.
34:44: Eventually, a compromise was reached by replacing the phrase that Christ was incarnate from two natures, which
34:50: Eutyches and Dioscorus could accept, with the phrase he was incarnate in two natures, which
34:56: Eutyches and Dioscorus certainly could not accept. The new formula satisfied Leo, the emperor, and most of the eastern bishops, including
35:03: Antullius of Constantinople, who shamelessly abandoned his friend Dioscorus. In fact, it pleased all the parties except the
35:12: Alexandrians and some of the Syrians. The council officially published this formula as a new creed, called the
35:18: Creed, the Formula or Definition of Chalcema. The Creed combined the Christologies of Antioch and Alexandria and reads as follows.
35:27: The words in capital letters express the concerns of Alexandrian theology. The underlined words express the concerns of Antiochian theology.
35:34: Well, you can't really see that, now can you? And in fact, I just realized that in the
35:41: Logos edition, you don't have the underlined part. So, hmm. Okay, but let's read a little
35:47: Chalcedon here. We all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ, one, the same Son, at once complete in deity and complete in humanity, truly
35:55: God and truly man, consisting of a rational soul and body, of the same essence as the Father and his deity, of the same essence as us and his humanity, like us in all things apart from sin, begotten of the
36:06: Father before all ages as regards as deity, the same born of the Virgin Mary, the birth giver of God, that's
36:11: Theotokos. I know many, many, many of my fundamentalist friends that would never, ever use that term because that's what's also translated as Mother of God.
36:23: But there is a perfectly orthodox understanding of that. It has nothing to do with Mary.
36:28: It has everything to do with Jesus. The birth giver of God as regards his humanity in the last days for us and our salvation, one and the same
36:39: Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.
36:48: The distinction of the nature is being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and one apostasis.
37:00: He is not split or divided into two persons, but he is one, the same Son, and only begotten,
37:06: God the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, as formerly the prophets and later Jesus Christ himself have taught us about him and as it has been handed down to us by the creed of the fathers.
37:18: That's the end of the quotation from Kalsar itself. Dr. Needham continues.
37:24: The creed accepted the Alexandrian view that Christ was one single person and it implied, if it did not explicitly state, that this person was the only begotten,
37:32: God the Logos. It also affirmed the Alexandrian belief that the divine Son underwent all the human experiences of Jesus Christ, so it was proper to say that God the
37:42: Son was born of Mary, the virgin Mary was the birth giver of God. But the creed also accepted the
37:47: Antiochian view that Christ's human and divine natures each kept their own distinctive qualities and properties. Christ's humanity was as real and complete as ours.
37:55: It was not swallowed up or absorbed by his deity. Christ had two complete, distinct natures, fully and truly human, fully and truly divine.
38:02: Finally, the creed made it clear that fusis and hypostasis were no longer to be understood in the same sense in the doctrine of the incarnation.
38:09: Fusis meant nature, not person, and hypostasis meant person, not nature. In this way, the unclear language which had confused the whole debate between Alexandria and Antioch was decisively settled.
38:20: Christ was one hypostasis into fusis, one person into natures.
38:28: The council had not yet finished its work. It overthrew the decisions of Ephesus taken only two years previously.
38:35: It deposed and banished the Oscars of Alexandria. It restored to office most of the Antiochians whom the council of Ephesus had deposed.
38:43: It sanctioned a new standard of orthodoxy made up of the Creed of Chalcedon, the Creed of Nicaea, and the
38:48: Council of Nicaea in 325, the Nicene Creed from the Council of Constantinople in 381, two letters of Cyril of Alexandria, and Leo's Tome, the doctrinal statement which
38:56: Pope Leo had sent to Patriarch Flavian in 449. So, what is the reason for looking at something like this?
39:08: Well, God is Lord of History, and God was behind Constantine's conversion.
39:20: He was behind the persecution before that. He was behind the
39:27: Arian resurgence that took place after the Council of Nicaea. He was behind Athanasius' having to battle and battle and battle for decades on end for Nicaea.
39:42: He even had a purpose for rampaging Alexandrian monks, for crying out loud. But the reality is that when you simply look at how these events transpired in church history, you have to recognize that the formulae, creeds, confessions, there has to be a standard beyond them.
40:16: If they become the standard, then the ultimate authority behind them is one of random history.
40:33: What if someone didn't die in a riding accident? What if, and this is, and you go, well, but there aren't any what -ifs.
40:41: Everything is sovereignty of God. Okay, fine. Just be very careful as to where that leads.
40:48: Just be very, very careful as to where that leads. Because if you give in to the embracing of external sources of authority that fundamentally determine how you are to even interpret scripture, and what scripture is to mean, and then you start using the, and God made sure that Constantine was there at that time, and then he brings this emperor in, and God's behind all this stuff, then you are fundamentally saying that there is an external tradition creation mechanism coming from God that is necessary to the fundamental understanding of scripture itself.
41:42: Whatever you do, you know, Rome does this. The East does this.
41:49: It's nothing new, but you need to recognize that once you elevate that lens through which you're saying you must look at scripture, and you start saying, yeah,
42:05: Chalcedon, there is a spirit -born authority that comes from the actual council itself, and what gave rise to it, and what comes after it.
42:23: You're going to have a really hard time not eventually subjugating the text of scripture to the opinions of those who came before.
42:34: Because someone, you know, you can have a great, great, great theologian that has 99 % of everything spot on right, but that 1 % is going to grow over time if you simply repeat the opinions of those who came before.
42:54: That's one of the things that truly bothers me about reading medieval types of interpretation, where you can see that the opinions of an
43:07: Augustine, or, and you can fill in lots of other folks, of a Jerome, or you can go earlier, you can go to a
43:14: Chrysostom, whatever, those opinions are given a weight of authority that, in medieval exegesis, has much greater authority than the grammar of the text itself, especially when we come to both, well, both
43:36: Testaments, because in Western medieval interpretation you have almost no one who's actually dealing with the original languages any longer anyways.
43:45: They're focused almost completely upon Latin. And so, just think about how vitally important it is, um, in Colossians 2 .9,
43:56: to recognize that theatetos is a different term than theates, which is used in Romans 1.
44:04: The theatetos means that which makes God, God. It is, it is the very essence of deity itself. And this is what is being asserted, it dwells in Christ, somaticos, bodily.
44:18: Those are lexical and grammatical observations that would be replaced in most medieval interpretation by the opinions of earlier writers, many of them not having access to the original languages, even if you're quoting from someone who originally wrote in Greek, at least that's better, but very, very few of the early fathers,
44:45: Origen and Jerome, almost exclusively, had access to the original language of the
44:52: Old Testament. And so, what, what functionally happens to Sola Scriptura when a body of exegetical tradition ends up having a greater impact on the interpretation of Scripture than the original languages themselves?
45:16: I think that is something that should be given consideration, thought about. And likewise, when we do look at councils, even when we look at Chalcedon, if you are going to invest
45:36: Chalcedon with the authority of fellowship, in other words, you don't agree with what
45:44: Chalcedon said, then, then you are a formal heretic and will not be a part of the church.
45:51: All right? On what grounds? Now look, again, vast majority of my fellow believers have never read
46:01: Chalcedon, have never functioned along those lines. 99 .9
46:08: % of the churches in the United States have never engaged in church discipline based upon a denial of the
46:13: Council of Chalcedon. But you do have there a definition of who
46:20: Christ is as the God -man. So, if the authority of Chalcedon is based upon the authority of the church that called it and promulgates its teachings and enforces its provisions, that is highly problematic.
46:51: But if Chalcedon's authority is fundamentally that it has correctly understood the biblical testimony to the person of Christ, that all the fundamental foundational biblical truths that go into Chalcedon are there in scripture, then that's a different foundation to stand on.
47:21: And I think we have somewhere on the website a paper
47:27: I wrote in seminary, Definition of Chalcedon and Oneness Theology, where I went through all of that type of stuff and made the argument that it is a biblically accurate definition.
47:41: It is not authoritative because of the people involved, the emperor's input,
47:51: Leo's tome, his self -claimed position as, you know, vicar of Christ or whatever terminology he was using at that point in time.
48:04: Its authority comes from its being biblical, being consistent with biblical revelation.
48:11: If you change that, well, there you go. So these early, you know, roving bands of monks and having to wait until you get a new emperor because one emperor has one theological perspective and the next emperor has a different theological perspective, and this results in differing councils with differing conclusions.
48:41: Yeah, if you don't have an objective foundation upon which to put all that stuff, you're stuck with something other than a transcendently true faith.
48:58: You have something that has been historically constructed and might have gone a different direction.
49:08: And so, with that in mind, yesterday
49:14: I noticed all during the day, Steve Meister posted a quote from Luther and I saw people repeating it and commenting on it, but I never saw anyone giving its context.
49:31: And so, you look it up and what I discovered was what
49:39: Luther was doing, everybody does, and Luther was wrong to do what he was doing. He was wrong in what he was saying, but it sounded so good.
49:51: It sounded so nice and that is, he would say, you should not go against what has been believed in the church for 1 ,500 years and da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da.
50:02: And making the assertion that whatever it was he was talking about has been universally believed by all
50:09: Christians. It reminds me a little bit of Vincent of Lorraine. You've heard of his maxim,
50:17: I'm sure you have. Quod ubiqui, quod semper, quod ad omnibus credunti est.
50:26: What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. That's your standard.
50:32: It has to have been believed everywhere, always, and by all. I'll be honest with you. If that really is the standard,
50:39: I don't think you can get past monotheism and the resurrection.
50:49: That might be about all that would literally follow if you followed that maxim.
50:56: But it has been very common, and of course it was urged against Luther repeatedly, that he was violating this very thing.
51:06: Their doctrine of justification has not been believed everywhere, always, and by all. Come on, your doctrine of the church has not been believed everywhere, always, and by all.
51:15: And of course the same is true about the papacy, and doctrines of Mary, and cardinals, and sacraments, and just all sorts of stuff.
51:27: That maxim sets up a standard that if you spend any time at all reading church history you know is never going to be fulfilled by almost anybody.
51:38: But when you are like Luther on one particular subject you will, how shall we say, exaggerate.
51:52: And on this subject he did. Because what was the subject he was writing about in this letter?
51:58: He was writing about his understanding of the real presence of Christ in the supper.
52:06: Now I think I told the story when I got back from Germany.
52:12: We went to Marburg where the famous Marburg colloquy took place in 1529.
52:18: Now both Zwingli, I remember Zwingli is going to die in 1531 at the Battle of Kappels I recall, and Luther is going to make it into the next decade beyond that.
52:30: But there is already a great conflict between the
52:35: Zwinglians and the Lutherans, and they can draw up a confession of faith where they agree on everything but one issue, one point.
52:48: And so Philip of Hesse gathers them at his castle in Marburg, and it's quite a group that was there.
52:59: I'll read it to you in a second. But I've stood in that room where for all intents and purposes the
53:09: Reformation could have died. And I think as people left that room on that final day
53:19: I think a lot of them had in mind that it probably had. They couldn't see what the future would be, but they had not been able to come to agreement.
53:30: And many of them thought if we can't come to agreement on just these 15, 14, 15 points, we're doomed because the other side is going to have unity and we're not and we're just going to be, we're going to be taken apart.
53:46: And so I want to read the section. So anyway, I made the comment, sorry,
53:53: I made the comment about the citation from Luther that what he was talking about, what he was claiming had always been believed for 1500 years hadn't been.
54:08: It just wasn't a true statement. And that every Baptist disagrees with Luther on this very issue.
54:14: In fact, Luther would have minimally banished, probably imprisoned, and in the case of the recalcitrant ones would have allowed the execution of every
54:28: Baptist who retweeted Steve Meister's tweet. It's just, you know, from a church history perspective it's humorous that the
54:39: Baptists are doing that without recognizing the irony of their position in so doing.
54:50: Well, Pastor Sommer jumped into it and decided that, well, what he was really doing was defending the idea of real presence.
54:58: And we all agree with real presence. Well, that depends on who you're talking to and what they think that means.
55:09: And no, the London Baptist Confession of Faith does not have Luther's view.
55:15: And so it was an awesome example of somebody saying, well,
55:21: I'm going to continue to believe this is true. And I'll just pick and choose my points and make it fit. And Luther would have looked at Pastor Sommer either with tremendous anger or just gales of laughter that, well, you know,
55:38: I'm just making a distinction here. He didn't let Baptists make distinctions. Okay, that wasn't allowed.
55:45: He didn't get to do that. The citation of Luther at that point being done by a
55:55: Baptist is just a church history joke. It should cause us all to go, really?
56:04: Okay. Because there are just so many things that at the time of the
56:11: Reformation, the institutional church would be able to look at a
56:20: Baptist and say, you are going against centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries.
56:27: You're going against Augustine. You're going against this council. You're going against that council. And we have always said there is a higher authority than those councils.
56:37: So now when you sit around going, but in some areas there isn't. When people go, you're being inconsistent.
56:45: You were consistent before when you said scripture is the ultimate authority.
56:51: It is the only unchanging authority. It's the only theanoustos authority. And when we do accept what councils say, it's because of their consistency with scripture.
57:01: But once you start playing around and wanting to become crypto Anglicans or something and, you know, start into that realm of things, you're going to contradict yourself right, left and center.
57:17: And the result, which we're already seeing, we've already seen people saying this, the result will inevitably be, and this is what is taking place.
57:25: Well, we only mean this tradition stuff in regards to the doctrine of God. The definitional stuff, not the gospel, not sacramentology, ecclesiology, soteriology, all the rest of that stuff becomes secondary, almost adiaphora.
57:48: But doctrine of God, we've got a absolute. So God somehow protected a tradition about theology proper, but he didn't protect it about what
58:00: God did in Christ on the cross. So he didn't protect the gospel, but he did protect theology.
58:08: So he didn't protect justification by faith, but he protected the extended assertions of divine simplicity and inseparable operations, which
58:16: I can guarantee you, you cannot even explain to 98 % of people in your congregation in less than half an hour.
58:23: You can't do it. And you know, you can't do it, but he protected that, but he didn't protect justification by faith.
58:32: Is that what you're Really? Interesting position to take. Interesting position to take.
58:40: So let's continue on with our quotation here.
58:47: Let me see where we are. Oh my goodness, I'm almost up to an hour. Oh, I don't have the recording program at the top of the screen.
58:54: So there you go. All right. Volume three,
59:00: Luther, Zwingli, and the communion controversy. By the close of the 1520s, the anti -Roman forces of reform had flowed apart into two separate streams, the magisterial, largely statist at this point, and the radical.
59:12: However, it was also clear that the magisterial reformers themselves had divided theologically into two parties, the
59:18: Lutherans and the Zwinglians. Once again, the trouble was over the sacraments, just as it was their differing understanding of baptism that divide the magisterial from the radical reformers.
59:27: You might have heard those called Anabaptists. So it was their differing understandings of Holy Communion that split the
59:33: Lutherans and the Zwinglians, or the reformed, as the Swiss reformers and their allies came to call themselves.
59:40: But Luther and Zwingli had indeed abandoned the later medieval concept of the mass and were united on the following points.
59:47: They both rejected transubstantiation and the special power of the priest to perform this so -called miracle. They both rejected the idea that the
59:54: Eucharist was a sacrifice which had the power to secure God's grace for those for whom it was offered, even when they did not take part, e .g.
01:00:02: souls in purgatory. They both rejected the medieval Catholic practice of adoring the sacramental bread after the priest had pronounced the words, this is my body.
01:00:10: They both demanded the cup to be given to the laity. Despite these broad areas of agreement, Luther and Zwingli divided over the question of how exactly
01:00:18: Christ was present in the Eucharist. Luther held that Christ's flesh and blood were objectively present in the bread and wine, although without converting or abolishing their essence, the body and blood of the
01:00:31: Savior were, he argued, mysteriously present in, with, and under the bread and wine, and were eaten and drunk by everyone who took part in communion, whether they had faith in Christ or not.
01:00:43: Luther felt the words, this is my body, required that Christ's body must be objectively present in the bread.
01:00:49: His fear was that a rejection of Christ's bodily presence in the Eucharistic elements would lead to a belief in Christ's absence, or to the idea that human faith created
01:00:58: Christ's presence, which made faith more central than the Savior. Luther set forth his views vigorously in such books as that these words of Christ, this is my body, etc.,
01:01:09: still stand firm against the fanatics, 1527. Notice that date, by the way. Zwingli disagreed very strongly with Luther on this matter.
01:01:17: The Swiss reformer maintained that the word is, in this is my body, meant represents, this represents my body.
01:01:24: Christ's flesh and blood, Zwingli argued, were in no sense physically present in the bread and wine. His risen body was in heaven and not on earth.
01:01:30: As for eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood, this, for Zwingli, simply meant believing in Christ. A view summed up in the
01:01:37: Latin phrase to eat is to believe. In Holy Communion, therefore, believers alone ate
01:01:45: Christ, that is, exercised faith. Any unbelievers who took part received only bread and wine. Christ was present in the
01:01:51: Lord's Supper, Zwingli argued, not as man but as God, not in his humanity but in his omnipresent deity.
01:01:58: Zwingli set forth his view in books like A Clear Exposition of Christ's Last Supper, 1527.
01:02:05: Hmm, okay. The German -Swiss controversy became even more explosive and divisive when
01:02:10: Luther tried to defend his view of Christ's presence in the bread and wine by an argument from Christology.
01:02:16: The union between Christ's divine and human natures was so close, Luther said, that each nature communicated its properties to the other.
01:02:25: Christ's humanity imparted to his deity the capacity for suffering and death. His deity bestowed in his humanity its omnipresence, the divine quality of being everywhere.
01:02:37: This is called the Doctrine of Ubiquity, by the way. Christ was therefore everywhere, not just as God, but as man.
01:02:44: He was omnipresent in his human nature. So it followed that his body and blood were present in the bread and wine of communion.
01:02:53: Zwingli passionately rejected this argument. He did not accept that Christ's two natures conferred their properties on each other.
01:03:00: He accused Luther of reviving the ancient heresy of, who would that be?
01:03:06: What we were talking about earlier. Eutyches, condemned by the Council of Chalcedon. That is, the heresy of denying the reality of Christ's human nature by teaching that in the
01:03:15: Incarnation his deity swallowed up and absorbed his humanity. A human body, Zwingli argued, cannot be everywhere without ceasing to be a real human body, because it is the nature of a human body to occupy a particular place.
01:03:27: He also told Luther that if the German Reformer's view was correct, Christ's body would be present in every slice of bread, not just the bread of the
01:03:33: Eucharist. Luther's response was that while Christ's body was indeed present in every slice of bread, it was only in the
01:03:40: Eucharistic bread that it was present as a sign of God's grace, just as God is present everywhere, but he is not graciously present everywhere, outside the
01:03:49: Gospel. God is present purely as Creator and Lord, with no saving benefit, no promise of forgiveness.
01:03:55: Lutherans also felt that Zwingli's Christology was Nestorian, separating the divine and human nature so far as they ended up not being really united at all, merely placed alongside each other like two persons.
01:04:07: The controversy between German Lutherans and Swiss Reform became extremely bitter. Luther refused to recognize the
01:04:13: Protestants of Switzerland as fellow Christians. They were depraved heretics to be resisted at all costs. Luther had the sort of personality that sees life in starkly black and white terms.
01:04:23: Something was either of God or Satan. There could be nothing in between, and, to his critics at least, he seemed to have an unfortunate habit of assuming that people were of God if they agreed with Martin Luther, and of Satan if they did not.
01:04:34: By the way, I stopped my quote for just a moment. This is 1529, and his book 1527, and if you've listened to my talk on the two
01:04:44: Luthers, where's the dividing line? 1525. That's when
01:04:49: Luther changes, and this black and white, irascible
01:04:55: Luther. My understanding is that at Marburg, Zwingli treated
01:05:03: Luther with great respect, referred to him as a Christian, as a brother, someone from whom he had learned much, and Luther did not return the respect to Zwingli at all.
01:05:16: And at Marburg, Zwingli convinced the majority of the people of his views.
01:05:25: It wasn't Luther. Luther was obstinate, but his arguments were not biblical.
01:05:32: They could not deal with the presentation that Zwingli himself was making, and part of that was simply due to Luther's being nasty.
01:05:43: He was just being very, very nasty. On top of this,
01:05:50: Luther remembered that his radical enemy, Andreas Karlstadt, held the view of communion that Zwingli was now teaching.
01:05:58: So Luther had already learned to link this view with a satanic attempt to undermine the Reformation from within.
01:06:04: The religious chaos Karlstadt had unleashed in Wittenberg in 1522 haunted Luther's mind.
01:06:10: Zwingli then simply became a Swiss Karlstadt in Luther's eyes. Luther therefore condemned the
01:06:16: Swiss reformer in the most forthright words, I cannot regard Zwingli or any of his teachings as Christian at all.
01:06:22: He neither holds nor teaches any part of the Christian faith rightly, and is now seven times more dangerous than when he was a papist, end quote.
01:06:34: Luther warned people to shun Zwingli's books as the poison of the prince of hell, and even said he would rather drink blood with the papists than wine with the
01:06:47: Zwinglians. Um, this is the second
01:06:52: Luther. This is the irascible Luther. This is the incalcitrant Luther. This is not a
01:06:58: Luther that was bringing peace and harmony in any way, unfortunately. And you know what?
01:07:05: We see people like this today. I mean, think about everything they agreed on regarding the supper.
01:07:13: But one area of disagreement, and Zwingli's not even a Christian. He neither holds nor teaches any part of the
01:07:22: Christian faith rightly. That's, and is now seven times more dangerous than when he was a papist.
01:07:30: Cancel culture. Uh, Lutheran version. 1500s version. It's even worse today.
01:07:37: Luther's attitude stirred Zwingli, Ocolum Patius, and the Swiss reformers to deep anger. The Swiss wanted both religious unity and a political alliance with the
01:07:45: German Lutherans to deter Roman Catholic rulers from trying to reimpose Roman Catholicism by force on Protestant lands.
01:07:51: They recognized Lutherans as fellow Christians and were appalled that Luther should be splitting the Reformation movement in the face of the common enemy,
01:07:58: Rome. Ocolum Patius summed up the exasperated feelings of the Swiss toward Luther, quote, since he has lost all control of himself, he now believes that the greatest sin and unfairest act in the world is to criticize him.
01:08:10: We have here a miserable creature who smashes up heaven and earth merely because we have told him that he too, as a man, might go wrong and that those who put their faith in him might miss the mark.
01:08:20: Thus, according to him, we overthrow the entire faith. Not so my brother, but we must not get it into our heads that the
01:08:26: Holy Spirit is bound to Jerusalem, Rome, Wittenberg, or Basel to yourself or to any other man.
01:08:32: End quote. Amen to that. This kind of language flying back and forth between Lutheran and Swiss reformers is not surprising to Roman Catholics who began laughing at the
01:08:41: Reformation as a movement doomed to self -destruction.
01:08:48: Well, here's the whole story of Marburg Colloquy, I guess
01:08:56: I need to read it. Efforts were made to reconcile the Germans and the Swiss, especially by Philip of Hesse, the young Lutheran prince of Hesse in Western Germany.
01:09:03: Philip had sympathies with Zwingli's doctrine of communion. He also believed strongly in the need for a political alliance between German and Swiss Protestants, especially after the
01:09:10: Diet of Spire in March of 1529, where the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had canceled religious freedoms previously granted to German Lutherans.
01:09:18: At Philip's insistence, therefore, the Swiss and German reformers met at Philip's castle in Marburg in October 1529 to hold a colloquy, a conference in the doctrine of Holy Communion.
01:09:28: It was one of the greatest gatherings of Reformation theologians. The German delegation was led by Luther, Melanchthon, and Justice Jonas from Wittenberg, and three other distinguished
01:09:36: Lutheran reformers, Johannes Brenz of Swabia, Andreas Osiander of Nuremberg, and Johann Agricola of Augsburg.
01:09:43: The reformed delegation was led by Zwingli from Zurich, Ocolum Patius from Basel, and three eminent reformers from the
01:09:49: South German imperial city of Strasbourg, Martin Bützer, Caspar Hedio, and Jacob Sturm. The colloquy achieved nothing.
01:09:56: At its very outset, Luther took a piece of chalk and wrote on the table the words, This is my body. He then informs
01:10:01: Zwingli and his colleagues that he would understand these words literally unless the Swiss could prove beyond doubt that is did not mean is, but represents.
01:10:09: Over the four days of debate, 1st to 4th of October, the Swiss reformers could not shake Luther from his position.
01:10:15: Philip of Hesse and Zwingli were bitterly disappointed. Zwingli begged with tears in his eyes that the two parties should unite and spare their disagreement, but Luther refused even to admit that the
01:10:24: Swiss reformers were Christians. As an attempt at uniting Protestants, therefore, the colloquy was a spectacular failure.
01:10:30: However, from the Swiss standpoint, it made two gains. Philip of Hesse was won over to a Moorish -Zwinglian view, which heralded the future growth of reformed faith in southwestern
01:10:38: Germany. Ocolum Patius had persuaded Melanchthon that the early church fathers did not support Luther's doctrine of communion, which heralded
01:10:45: Melanchthon's acceptance of the reformed view as stated by Bützer, John Calvin, and Peter Martyr, an event that was to ignite consuming fires of controversy within Lutheranism after Luther's death.
01:10:59: So, there's much more here. A few paragraphs down.
01:11:07: With the Zwingli and Lutheran concept of Eucharistic signs so radically opposed, there could be little hope of mutual understanding.
01:11:13: Later, under the impact of Martin Bützer's post -Marburg thinking, elaborated by John Calvin and Peter Martyr, a third view would develop, which saw the bread and wine as signs not only of a past event but a present reality,
01:11:23: Christ's body and blood offered here and now as spiritual food and drink. The signs and the things signified would be kept closely together in this view, but without being confused.
01:11:32: A sign pointed not to the absence, but the presence of things signified, even though the sign should not be identified with that thing.
01:11:39: From the frustrated efforts of the Marburg Colloquy, we can date the lasting division of the Magisterial Reformation in two separate theological branches, the
01:11:46: Lutherans or Evangelicals, and the Reformed. The Reformation movement, unwilling to accept anything but Scripture as its authority, had been unable to agree on what
01:11:56: Scripture taught about the supper of Christian brotherhood. But I would add to that that I don't think that was due to a lack of clarity on the
01:12:09: Scripture's part, but due to a lack of charity on Luther's part, primarily, in regards to that particular issue.
01:12:19: So, once again, the issue of tradition, biblical authority, all these things, front and center in what we have to be considering as we look at these things.
01:12:38: It's an important background to understand what Luther said in that quote that was posted.
01:12:46: And then again, the biggest disappointment for me, to be honest with you, was that I saw it retweeted over and over again, but nobody had any idea what the context was, or what it was actually talking about, or how ironic it was for a
01:13:02: Baptist to post that statement. It's just like, eh. All right, let's finish up with something encouraging, hopefully edifying to everybody.
01:13:13: I could tell in, I was listening, as I said on the ride, listening to Dr.
01:13:20: Needham's words, that Christendom has a very special place in his thinking.
01:13:30: And I've seen him quote John Christendom many times. And he tells, he gives the life of major events, his being brought to Constantinople from Antioch, and just his preaching, and the power that he had, but the fact that he was not a political individual.
01:13:49: And he did not have it within himself to do the political stuff. And I get that.
01:13:55: Okay, I get that. I can't do the political stuff either. And he, since he's in Constantinople, this of course is where the emperor is now in the divided, you know, the west is pretty much fallen.
01:14:12: Well, not, okay, not fallen. It's falling. It's coming apart under the invasions from the north, and it's in its last literally years at this point in history.
01:14:27: But Constantinople is still strong. And so the eastern part of the Roman Empire is still standing.
01:14:34: And so he's in Constantinople, and that puts him way too close to people in power.
01:14:42: And so he's already been gotten crosswise with the emperor and his wife once, and he's been brought back.
01:14:51: And so I pick up with that. However, Chrysostom's victory was not to last. Just a few months later in November 403,
01:14:58: Eudoxia had a silver statue of herself set up near the Church of the Holy Wisdom, and wild games and festivities around the statue disturbed the services of worship.
01:15:07: Chrysostom broke off from his prepared sermon to express his strong disapproval of the ungodly tumult, and to condemn those who had organized it.
01:15:15: A report of Chrysostom's utterances was sent to the court. Eudoxia was once again enraged against Chrysostom, and again began scheming for his downfall.
01:15:24: The breach of relationships between Chrysostom and the imperial couple was so deep, they refused to receive
01:15:29: Holy Communion at his hand in the special Christmas service that year. Theophilus of Alexandria scented his chance to intervene again and wrote to Arcadius and Eudoxia, dredging up an old ruling by a council held in Antioch sixty years previously, which stated that a bishop deposed by a council could not resume his responsibilities without first being exonerated by another council.
01:15:54: Chrysostom had resumed his responsibilities in defiance of this ruling, therefore he had no right to act as bishop and must be summarily removed from office.
01:16:03: Theophilus's argument carefully ignored the fact that his council at Chalcedon that had deposed
01:16:08: Chrysostom had itself possessed no validity in church law and that its sentence had not been carried by the church but by the government.
01:16:16: The imperial couple, however, seized on Theophilus's argument as a pretext for ridding themselves once again of Chrysostom.
01:16:22: First, Arcadius had Chrysostom put under house arrest, but Easter was fast approaching, the time in the early church calendar when all new converts were baptized en masse.
01:16:32: Chrysostom, the clergy loyal to him and the great body of his people, decided together that the baptism should go ahead despite Chrysostom's absence.
01:16:40: The clergy hostile to Chrysostom persuaded the authorities to put a stop to these proceedings. They were determined not to let
01:16:46: Chrysostom's church function in his absence. As Saturday evening fell and the baptismal service began, a detachment of 400 soldiers broke into the church.
01:16:55: Scenes of mayhem and bloodshed followed. The next day, Easter Sunday, the desecrated church stood deserted.
01:17:03: The congregation had gathered instead in the public baths, but once again the imperial stormtroopers attacked them and drove them out.
01:17:11: Some of the clergy and even more lay people were thrown in prison. Chrysostom himself remained under house arrest for a further two months, during which at least one attempt was made to assassinate him, not by the emperor or emperors, but, almost unbelievable, by his clerical enemies.
01:17:27: The government seems to have been paralyzed over this period, shaken to the core by the mass popular support for Chrysostom.
01:17:33: Eventually, however, Chrysostom's foes among the clergy persuaded Arcadius to send him away into exile again.
01:17:40: Chrysostom could have raised the mob against the emperor, but he meekly submitted to the injustice. There was an emotional farewell in the church of holy wisdom between Chrysostom and his committed followers among the bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and a more private parting in the baptistry between himself and faithful Olympias and three other deaconesses.
01:17:59: Then the soldiers escorted him to a ship and to his second exile. By the way, just in passing, you can't get that many people into the baptismal font in a
01:18:10: Presbyterian church. Just think about it, you'll get it.
01:18:17: The ship took Chrysostom once again along the southern coast of the Black Sea, at length to Armenia, where he was to remain under constant military guard for three years, dragged about from one city, town, or village to another.
01:18:29: The situation in Constantinople was grim during Chrysostom's exile. A new bishop of the church of holy wisdom had been appointed, but the majority would have nothing to do with him, remaining loyal to Chrysostom and meeting in the open air for worship.
01:18:42: Many of Chrysostom's supporters were subjected to brutal government persecution, including Olympias, who was punished with a crippling fine when she steadfastly refused to acknowledge the new bishop.
01:18:52: The divisions in the church spread far beyond the capital city, with clergy and people lining up either behind Chrysostom or behind his opponents, splitting many a congregation.
01:19:01: These divisions were not to be fully healed for another 30 years. Early in 407,
01:19:09: Arcadius and Eudoxia decided to intensify the misery of Chrysostom's exile by deporting him to the remote inhospitable fortress town of Piteas on the furthest eastern extremity of the empire.
01:19:20: The military escort was instructed to show no regard for Chrysostom's well -being, and so he was forced to march the great distance on foot and was deliberately exposed to a deadly combination of scorching sun and lashing rain.
01:19:34: After three weeks of this treatment, Chrysostom collapsed still some way from Piteas at a hamlet called
01:19:39: Biseri. Wracked with fever, his skin baked as red as a brick, Chrysostom died within hours of his collapse, aged 58.
01:19:48: His last words were, Glory be to God for all things. Thirty -one years later, in 438, the
01:19:55: Emperor Theodosius II, son of Arcadius and Eudoxia, brought Chrysostom's remains back to Constantinople.
01:20:02: He publicly begged forgiveness for the terrible sin of his parents and had the saints' bones buried in the imperial capital in the
01:20:09: Church of the Holy Apostles, a traditional burial place for bishops and emperors. The whole city turned out to celebrate the vindication of their beloved bishop's memory.
01:20:18: The tables had turned conclusively. No one could now be found to vilify Chrysostom. The homecoming of his bones ended the divisions in the churches of the
01:20:27: East. From that time to the present day, the universal church has recognized
01:20:32: Chrysostom as one of its most luminous stars, a bishop of pure character and steely integrity, a patient martyr for his
01:20:39: Lord, a biblical preacher never surpassed in holy eloquence, John of the Golden Mouth. Certainly, Chrysostom was the most gifted preacher and Bible commentator of the
01:20:49: Eastern Church in the patristic age. His fate, however, showed that no bishop in the
01:20:54: Eastern Empire could hope to stand up against the power of his emperor, in contrast to the
01:20:59: West, where Ambrose of Milan had forced Theodosius I to bow to his will.
01:21:06: Much that could be said there, much to ponder. I was especially thinking about the fact that he could have gotten, he could have forced violence rather than being deported, exiled, but he chose not to do that.
01:21:30: That's something that these days I think we need to be considering and thinking about. What is the proper
01:21:37: Christian role? And that's not, that is not an easy thing to discuss. I am well aware of that.
01:21:44: But I just say that in passing, that is something that there are plenty of examples on both sides of the line to look at when it comes to that particular subject in church history.
01:21:58: There truly, truly is. And so that'd be one thing for us to look at.
01:22:06: Okay. All right. Well, that was a lot longer than I expected it to be. But there you go.
01:22:14: Hopefully a little story time with Uncle Jimmy will be useful to everybody and give you some background to think about.
01:22:22: And I love talking about church history anyways. So looking toward the future,
01:22:28: I seem to recall doing some programs from my next major stop in the past, but that would actually only possibly be on Mondays.
01:22:40: I don't know. I don't know. Doing it this way is easy because it's, you know, an audio file is a lot smaller to upload than a video file.
01:22:52: So I could literally do that through my phone if I needed to without blowing up my monthly use, you know, if it's an audio file.
01:22:59: So, you know, we will stay in touch. We'll continue doing programs. But I know that I did numerous programs in Denver and I'm staying at the same park that I stayed in Denver last time.
01:23:10: And so we shouldn't have any issues at that point. We'll be able to fire up the extra monitor and get back into accordance and do some things like that.
01:23:20: So that's where we'll be going. And right now, the only thing in Denver that I have nailed down right now is the conference with Jason Lyle at Redemption Hills Church.
01:23:34: We're looking at something for the next week. But that hasn't gone through yet.
01:23:43: I'm not sure if it's the result of the cancel culture movement against me right now. The absurdity of neo -Sassanianism and silliness like that.
01:23:53: I don't know. But we will see what comes of all that.
01:23:59: But as I've said for a number of weeks, I'm really looking forward to being with Jason up there at Redemption Hills Church.
01:24:06: So just go to Redemption Hills Church. If you just put Redemption Hills Denver, it'll come up and schedule and what the topics are and stuff like that.
01:24:17: We'll all be there for you. And so we look forward to seeing our friends up in that area. And thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.