07. Chapter 6: The Church Consolidates, 325-451

CHAPTER 6 The Church Consolidates, 325-451

1. The Role of Church Councils In the course of the Church’s history many councils have been held. These are meetings of church leaders where important questions are discussed and advice is care­fully given. The first council ever held was the Council of the Apos­tles in Jerusalem. You will possi­bly remember that it was called to consider problems which arose as a result of the extension of the Church to the gentiles.

There were various kinds of councils. Some represented a larger number of churches than others. A provincial council was a council in which the churches of only one province were represented. In a national council the churches of one entire country were represent­ed. A general council was one in which all churches of all countries were represented. Such a council was also called an "ecumenical council." The Council of Nicaea in 325 was the first general or ecu­menical council. No agency has done more to con­solidate and unify the Church than have the various general church councils. We will take particular note of four of them: the Council of Nicaea (325), the Council of Constantinople (381), the Council of Ephesus (431), and the Council of Chalcedon (451). These four great councils stand out as just so many signposts along the road of church consolidation.

FOUR IMPORTANT CHURCH COUNCILS 2. A Review of the Council of Ni­caea

We have already discussed this council in considerable detail. It would be well for you to re-read that discussion at this time (ch. 3, sec. 9). It was a general council called by Emperor Constantine to decide the all-important question of the deity of Christ. Arius and his followers declared that Christ is not fully God; Athanasius held that if Christ is not God, He can­not be our Savior. It was at this council that there was drawn up and adopted the Nicene Creed. This creed declares that Christ is co-equal with, and of the same sub­stance and essence with, the Fa­ther. Since that date this has been the common faith of all Christians.

3. The Council of Constantinople Declares the Deity of the Holy Spirit The Nicene Council failed to end the Arian controversy. Arius him­self and a few other bishops re­fused to sign the Nicene Creed. There was still a large party of Arians and semi-Arians in the Church, which received strong sup­port from some of the emperors and certain members of the impe­rial court. Until the day of his death, Athanasius had to battle continuously for the doctrine of the deity of Christ as expressed in the Nicene Creed.

After the death of Athanasius the leadership in the struggle for orthodoxy (historic Christian truth) was taken over by three men, who are known as "the three great Cappadocians." They are so called because they came from the province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor and because these three were among the most outstanding men of the ancient Church. They were Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. These three men stood firm and strong in defense of the teachings of Scripture. The Nicene Creed had said noth­ing about the deity of the Holy Spirit. A second ecumenical coun­cil was held in the year 381 in Con­stantinople. This council reaffirmed the belief of the Church as ex­pressed in the Nicene Creed, and also declared its belief in the deity of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is a fundamental article of the Christian faith. The belief of the Church in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the triune God, was now fully established. This was the complete and final rejection of Arianism by the Church. From this time on Arianism disappeared.

4. The Council of Chalcedon Con­fesses that Christ Is Human and Divine

Even so the Church had not yet fully expressed its understanding of the person of Christ. The Scrip­tures reveal Christ as being not only God but also man. In order that Christ may be our Savior, His full and complete humanity is just as important and necessary as His full and complete deity. As there had been many differ­ent views in the Church about the deity of Christ, so there were many differences of opinion concerning His humanity, and concerning His two natures and their relation to each other. It required much hard study and deep thinking to arrive at a common and clear understand­ing on these points. Long and severe controversies concerning the doctrine of Christ developed.

BANNERS OF TRUTH

At last in the year 451 a council was held in Chalcedon near Nicaea. This was the fourth ecumenical council. (The third one, the Coun­cil of Ephesus, we will discuss at a later point in this chapter.) Some six hundred bishops were present. In the creed formulated by this council, which stands on the same level of importance as the Creed of Nicaea, the Church reasserted its belief in the full and complete deity of Christ, but now also con­fessed its belief in His equally full and complete humanity. Further­more the Church confessed the existence of two natures in Christ: the human and the divine. Con­cerning the relation of these two natures to each other the Church confessed that they exist in Christ without confusion, change, divi­sion, or separation. Finally the Church confessed that while Christ has two natures, He is one person, not two persons. The two Creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon are the expression of the most fundamental articles of the Christian faith. The Reforma­tion in the seventeenth century shattered forever the unity of the Church in the West. But it did not reject these creeds, nor did it make any changes in them. These two creeds remain today as the expres­sion of the faith of the Greek, Ro­man Catholic, and most Protestant churches.

5. Ambrose Defends the Truth and Promotes Christian Living In the latter part of the fourth and the first part of the fifth cen­tury there were three great leaders in the western part of the Church. They were Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. These three men played an important part in the consolidation of the Church.

Ambrose was born in Trier, lo­cated in the western part of Ger­many. His father held a high of­fice there in the Roman govern­ment. He was educated in Rome, and early displayed great talents. While still very young he was ap­pointed governor of a large part of northern Italy. His residence was in the city of Milan, where some sixty years before Constantine the Great had issued his famous edict. In the days of Ambrose there were still many Arians in the Church of Milan. When the Bishop of Milan died both the Arians and the orthodox were determined to elect a man of their belief as his successor. The meeting held to elect the new bishop became very disorderly. The young governor Ambrose entered the church to restore order. Suddenly a child’s voice was heard above the uproar crying, "Ambrose Bishop !" Am­brose was not a member of the Church, and had not been baptized. Nevertheless he was elected bishop. He considered this a call of God, gave all his money to the poor, received baptism, and was conse­crated as bishop. This happened in the year 374.

Ambrose was a strong supporter of the Nicene Creed. He wrote many books, and he is classed among the Doctors or great teach­ers of the Church. He also did much to promote Christian hym­nology. He was a very able admin­istrator, and was fearless in up­holding a high standard of Chris­tian living. This is shown in the way he disciplined his emperor.

Emperor Theodosius was a hot-tempered man. Because the people of the city of Thessalonica had murdered his governor, he had thousands of the inhabitants mas­sacred. Ambrose would not permit the emperor to take communion until he had publicly acknowledged his guilt and declared his repent­ance. The emperor submitted to the discipline of the Church. The happy outcome of this affair was a great credit to both bishop and em­peror. Ambrose died in the year 397.

6. Jerome Serves the Church

Jerome, another great leader in the Church, was born in Dalmatia around the year 340. Like Am­brose, he received his education in Rome.

Jerome liked to travel. He made many trips to various parts of the large Roman Empire. The last years of his life he spent in Beth­lehem, the birthplace of Christ.

AMBROSE REBUKES THEODOSIUS
Ewing Galloway

There he lived as a monk (a man who withdraws from the world in order to devote himself entirely to meditation and religious exercise). He lived in a cave next to the cave in which Christ was supposed to have been born. He lived there from 386 until his death in 420.

Some two hundred years before Christ the Old Testament had been translated in Alexandria from He­brew into Greek. This translation is called the Septuagint, because according to an old tradition it was made by seventy men. The Greek New Testament and this Greek translation of the Old Testament had been done into Latin. This translation of the Bible into Latin was not very good.

Jerome was about the only west­ern churchman who knew Hebrew, having learned Hebrew from Jewish rabbis when he lived in Antioch and Bethlehem. Jerome proceeded to make a new Latin translation of the Bible. He translated the Old Testament not from the Greek Septuagint but from the original Hebrew. This Latin translation of the Bible by Jerome is known as the Vulgate. It was Jerome’s no­blest achievement and to this very day it is the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

JEROME TRANSLATES THE BIBLE
Schoenfeld Collection from Three Lions 7. "A Son of So Many Prayers Can­not Be Lost" The greatest of the Church Fa­thers was Augustine. He was born in Tagaste in North Africa in the year 354. Africa had already given two other great leaders to the Church: Tertullian and Cyprian. The name of Augustine’s father was Patricius. He held a good posi­tion, but was not wealthy. He was a heathen and did not become a Christian until late in life.

Monica, Augustine’s mother, was a Christian and is one of the fa­mous mothers of history.

Augustine at an early age showed unusual ability. His parents wanted him to become a great man and, although they had to sacrifice to do so, provided him with the best of educational opportunities. Rut Augustine did not make as good use of these opportunities as he might have done. As a boy he was very lively, and often neg­lected his studies in order to play. One result was that he did not learn Greek when he had the op­portunity. Later when he became older and wiser he regretted this deeply. There were many books which, when he had become a man, Augustine wanted very much to read in the original Greek. Among these was the New Testament. But he could not read them in Greek because he had let his chance to learn that language go by. He had to depend on Latin translations. When Augustine was about six­teen his parents sent him to school in Carthage. This was the largest city in North Africa, and the best schools were there. Carthage was a very wicked city, full of tempta­tions. Augustine studied hard, but he also plunged into a life of wick­edness.

All this time Monica was pray­ing for the conversion of her son.

Notwithstanding the tearful en­treaties of his mother Augustine left Africa and went to Rome. He got away by deceiving his mother. As his ship sailed away he left her standing on the dock stretching out imploring arms in vain. Some­times Monica almost despaired. She was greatly comforted by a Christian friend who said to her, "A son of so many prayers cannot be lost."

Notwithstanding his immoral life Augustine was always search­ing for the truth. He started to read the Bible but did not find it at all interesting. He liked the books of the great heathen poets and philosophers much better. At this time Manicheism, the philosophical system of Manes, a Persian, had many followers throughout the Empire. It was a strange mixture of heathen and Christian thoughts. For nine years Augustine was a Manichean. He still lived an im­pure life. When Augustine had been in Rome one year, he received the appointment to a government posi­tion as professor of rhetoric and public speaking in Milan. At this time Ambrose (sec. 5) was bishop in that city. Augustine was very fond of oratory, and was himself a fine orator. Often he would go to hear Ambrose preach. At first he was not interested in what Am­brose said, but he went to observe how he used his hands and to ad­mire his oratory. At this time his mother, Monica, and his bosom friend Alypius joined him in Milan. A great change in the meanwhile was taking place in Augustine’s views. He was com­ing to see the errors of Manicheism and was now inclined to pay se­rious attention to the teachings of Christianity. He listened to the sermons of Ambrose with a new attitude. A certain Potitianus who had been to Egypt told Augustine about the thousands of monks in that country and what holy lives they were leading. The majority of these monks were ignorant men. Augustine felt ashamed that while these uneducated men had mas­tered their passions he, a learned man, had not been able to do so. He rushed out into the little garden behind the house. The copy of Paul’s epistles which he was carry­ing he laid on the bench beside him. His soul was profoundly agi­tated. He got up from the bench and flung himself down on the grass beneath a fig tree. As he was lying there he heard a child next door sing the ditty: Tolle, lege; tolle, lege, which means, "Take up and read, take up and read."

He got up, returned to the bench, picked up the copy of Paul’s epis­tles, and read: "Let us walk hon­estly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chamber­ing and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof" (Romans 13:13-14). This was the turning point in Augustine’s life. It was his con­version. From this moment on he was a changed man. The learned professor and accomplished public speaker enrolled as a humble cate­chumen to be instructed by the Bishop of Milan in the Christian religion. This happened in the late summer of the year 386. On Easter Sunday of the next year he was baptized.

Soon thereafter he and his party undertook the homeward journey. While they were waiting in Rome’s seaport for their ship, Monica died. The death of his mother made Augustine change his plans. For a whole year he took up his abode in Rome. The year 388 saw him back in his birthplace, Tagaste.

8. Augustine Defends and Ex­pounds the Teachings of Scripture

Augustine in course of time be­came bishop of Hippo in his native country of North Africa. From then on until his death in 430, he devoted himself heart and soul to the service of the Church. He preached, shepherded his flock, took part in the larger affairs of the Church, and founded the first monastery (home for monks) in North Africa. In public debate and with his pen he defended the teach­ings of the Church against here­tics and those who would cause schism, or division, in the church. The controversies which occu­pied so much of Augustine’s time and energy were with the Mani­cheans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians.

We made mention of the Mani­cheans in the previous section, when we traced the steps in Augus­tine’s life. The Donatists were so called after their leader, Donatus. They were not heretics. In doctrine they were entirely orthodox. But they were schismatics, that is, they caused a division in the Church. During the severe perse­cution by Diocletian many Chris­tians had lapsed; that is to say, they had denied the faith. The Donatists thought that the lapsed should not be re-admitted to the Church. Some bishops had sur­rendered their copies of the Bible to the government officials to be burned by them. The Donatists believed that such bishops were not worthy to administer the sacraments or ordain others as bishops. They withdrew and or­ganized churches of their own. There were many Donatist church­es in North Africa.

You will recall from our study of the organization of the Church (ch. 3, sec. 7) that when heretics began breaking away and forming churches of their own, the great Church from which they sepa­rated took the name of the Catho­lic, or Universal, Church.

Now in Hippo, in North Africa, there were more Donatists than Catholics. Against them Augus­tine developed his doctrine of the Church and sacraments. He taught that the Catholic Church is the only church. To the Church he ascribed great authority. Said he: "I should not have believed the Gospel except as moved by the au­thority of the Catholic Church." In the controversies with Arius and others the true doctrine con­cerning Christ had been worked out. The final result had been the establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity. In his controversy with Pelagius, Augustine worked out the true doctrine concerning man and the manner of his salva­tion.

Pelagianism derives its name from its founder, Pelagius. He was a British monk who denied that the human race had fallen in Adam. He denied original sin, the total depravity of man, and pre­destination. Pelagius taught that man is not born corrupt. Babies, he said, are innocent. They be­come bad when they grow up, through the bad example of others. Against him Augustine taught that every man is conceived and born in sin, and can be saved only through the grace of God according to His divine good pleasure. This brings us to the Council of Eph­esus, referred to in sections 1 and 4 of this chapter. The teachings of Pelagius were condemned as heresy by the Gen­eral Council of Ephesus in 431. In 529 the Synod of Orange con­demned the teachings of the Semi­-Pelagians — that it is up to the in­dividual to accept or refuse God’s offer of grace. The teachings of Augustine largely dominated the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, and from this greatest of all Church Fathers Luther and the other Reformers also received their inspiration (ch. 23, sec. 6).

ST. AUGUSTINE
Bettmann Archive
After a painting by Botticelli The two most famous works of Augustine are his Confessions and The City of God. In his Confes­sions Augustine lays bare the se­crets of his early life and the in­nermost depths of his mind and heart. In The City of God he gives his philosophy of history.

9. The Papacy Develops

There was also in the period cov­ered in this chapter a further and extremely important development in the organization of the Church. We have learned, in chapter three, how the system of monarchical episcopal government became gen­eral throughout the Church. Every church, or perhaps it would be bet­ter to say every diocese, had its bishop. At first all bishops were of the same rank. No bishop had any judicial power over any other bishops. You will recall that one presbyter gradually, step by step, acquired power over the other pres­byters, and thus became bishop. In the same way, gradually and step by step, one bishop, the bishop of Rome, acquired power over other bishops and in that way be­came pope. Let us see how that development came about.

First of all the bishops of big churches in the large cities came to be looked upon as being of higher rank than the bishops of smaller churches. They came to be called metropolitan bishops.

Then in course of time the churches of five of the cities came to be regarded as having very spe­cial importance. These cities were Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome. The bishops of the churches in these cities came to be called patriarchs. The first four cities were all in the eastern and Greek part of the Em­pire. Rome alone was in the west­ern and Latin part of the Empire.

Now the bishop of Rome began gradually to have more influence than the other four. It is interest­ing to note how this came about.

All the churches naturally held the church in Jerusalem in very high regard. That church was lo­cated in the city where Christ had been crucified, had died and risen again, and whence He had gone back to heaven. There the Holy Spirit had been poured out, and the Church had been born. There all the apostles had been assembled on that memorable Pentecostal day. There Peter and later James, the brother of the Lord, had been at the head of the Church. A church had been there when as yet there was no church anywhere else. For some time it was the only church. That church was the mother church. There the Christians had first been persecuted. There the first church council had been held. The church in Jerusalem had some­thing no other church had. It was among all the churches unique. Gradually, however, the church in Jerusalem was eclipsed by new churches established in other cities. Especially after the de­struction of Jerusalem by the Ro­mans under Titus in the year 70, and again under Hadrian in the years 132 and 135, the church in that city, as well as all the churches of Jewish Christians in Palestine, declined. The church in Jerusalem continued to exist for a number of centuries, although in a very much weakened condition. Nevertheless, because of ancient hallowed associations going back to the very beginning of the Church, the title of patriarch was accorded to its bishop.

Entirely different was the case of the church in Antioch. There the followers of Jesus had first been called Christians. There as well as in Jerusalem an apostle, Paul, had labored. There the work of missions among the gentiles had its beginnings. The center of gravity in the Church had shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch. The church in Jerusalem had become a grandmother, but the church in Antioch was the mother of a multi­tude of churches in Asia Minor and Greece. Antioch had many notable bishops, and it had become the seat of an important school of theological thought. Besides, whereas Jerusalem was a small provincial town in an out-of-the-way corner, Antioch was next to Alexandria the largest and most important city in the East, and the third city in size and importance in the Empire.

THE PAPACY DEVELOPS
Cities of the five leading bishops, or patriarchs

Although the church in Alex­andria could not claim apostolic origin, the evangelist Mark, ac­cording to an old tradition, had been active in its founding. It was the second city in the Empire, the greatest seat of learning and cul­ture, and for centuries far more splendid than Rome itself. There, too, flourished a famous theologi­cal school, in which Origen, the greatest scholar of the Church up to that time, had taught.

Constantinople had originally been called Byzantium. Byzantium was an ancient town situated on the Bosporus; it had been founded as a Greek colony. Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, had changed his residence from Rome to Byzantium. Then the town was renamed in his honor and called Constantinople. The church there could claim neither apostolic origin nor great antiq­uity. It owed its importance en­tirely to the fact that it was located in the city which had become the residence of the emperor.

Rome was the first city in the Empire. Not only had Paul labored there, but according to tradition the church in Rome had been founded by the apostle Peter. To that apostle Christ had entrusted the keys, and it was claimed that Peter had transmitted the power of the keys to the bishops of Rome. In almost every controversy the churches — east as well as west ­had appealed to the bishop at Rome. In the great controversies about the person and nature of Christ, orthodoxy had gained the victory because of the influence of the West under the leadership of the bishop of Rome. As we have seen, the church at Jerusalem was no longer a leader among the churches; and so its voice bore little weight in these controversies. Between the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople there was ever the keenest rivalry for supremacy, and none of them was willing to acknowledge the supremacy of the bishop of Rome. But in their rivalry for supremacy they often sought the support of the bishop of Rome. The same Council of Chalcedon which per­manently crippled the power of the patriarch of Alexandria, adopted a canon which declared the patriarch of Constantinople to be of the same dignity as the bishop of Rome. In all the western part of the Empire there was no church that could even begin to think of rivaling the church in Rome. As far back as around the year 185 Irenaeus had written in his book, Against Heresies, that every church must agree with the church in Rome. There was strenuous op­position sometimes to the claim of the bishop of Rome, but in the end the churches in the West acknowl­edged his supremacy. With this acknowledgment the papacy had come into existence. The bishop of Rome came to be called pope, a title derived from the Latin word papa, meaning "father"; and the church over which the pope ruled as supreme head came to be known as the Roman Catholic Church. The significance of the develop­ment of the papacy for the further history of the Church can hardly be exaggerated.

Against the canon of the Coun­cil of Chalcedon, which declared the patriarch of Constantinople to be of equal dignity with the bishop of Rome, Pope Leo I vainly pro­tested. Leo I, who died in 461, has been called the last of the ancient and the first of the medieval popes.