Category Archives: Church History

Archaeology, Church History

Christians on Cyprus Strive to Keep Jesus’ Language Alive

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I ran across a fascinating article about a small group of Christians who have preserved the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke.

Here is a an excerpt:

The Aramaic language of the earliest Christians lives on in the church services of a tiny village on the Turkish Cypriot side of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where a hybrid dialect of Aramaic is commonly spoken by just 1,000 people who are striving to keep it alive.

The language is dying out, but the Maronites in Cyprus are trying to prevent it from being completely lost.  I’m certainly rooting them on, as it would be a tragic loss if they failed.

Church History, Essential Beliefs, Jesus as God, Theology, Trinity

What Were They Arguing About at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In A.D. 325, an ecumenical council of Christian bishops gathered to discuss a theological issue that was tearing apart the unity of the church. A common misconception about this council was that the argument was over whether Jesus was God or man. In fact, this idea has become so popular that one of my skeptical friends, who usually knows his stuff, made this mistake recently in a discussion we were having.

He said, in effect, that the church was arguing about whether Jesus was a man or God all the way up to and including the Council of Nicaea. This view, however, is completely false.

The two major positions presented at the council were proposed by Arius and Athanasius. Arius believed that Jesus was created by God the Father in eternity, but that he did not share eternality with the Father. Athanasius believed that Jesus and the Father both existed from eternity, that one never existed without the other.

Please note that the issue was not about whether Jesus was merely a man or God, but what kind of God Jesus was. Both parties agreed he was divine, that he was much more than a mere man, but they disagreed about how he was divine.

The council sided with Athanasius against Arius, declaring that Jesus always existed along with the Father. The debate about Arianism, however, did not subside until the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 provided further clarification of the terms used at Nicaea and united the church around its understanding of the nature of Christ.

Atheism, Church History, Existence of God, Human Nature, Philosophy, Religion, Skeptics

Does Mankind Really Need God?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In studying church history, I’ve  been looking at the period often called the Enlightenment.  During this time, a movement swept through Europe which attempted to throw off the authority of divine revelation and place man on his rightful throne as the center of all knowledge and wisdom.

Historian Clyde Manschreck suggested that:

Man’s rational powers in league with science made dependence on God seemingly unnecessary.  Men were confident that they had the tools with which to unlock the mysteries of the universe.  Former distrust of human reason and culture, as seen in the traditional emphases on depravity, original sin, predestination, and self-denial, gave way to confidence in reason, free will, and the ability of man to build a glorious future.

Enlightenment values have continued to this day.  Many of the skeptics I know have a deep distrust of authority figures and tend to think of their own abilities as more than adequate to get them through life successfully.  One skeptical friend of mine told me that the only person he could count on to solve any of his problems was himself.  If all you need is yourself, then what need have you of God?

The Enlightenment, in some respects, strikes me as a philosophical temper tantrum against the authority and rightful rule of God over man.  Is man truly able to go it alone?  Is the world getting better due to secular human wisdom?  How you answer these questions has a lot to do with whether you believe in or trust God.

If man needs no authority over him, if he can get the job done on his own, than the Enlightenment was correct.  God, as another friend of mine recently told me, is unnecessary.  We can get along just fine without him.

I don’t know about you, but I think that coming out of the 20th century, a century with more killing of human life than all other centuries combined, you have to be nuts to think we can solve our own problems.  But that’s just me… maybe we just hit a little bump in the road.

Church History, Free Will, Grace, Polls, Salvation

What Is the Cause of Our Salvation?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This question first came to a dramatic head in the church in the fifth and sixth centuries.  There were four main protagonists.

Augustine of Hippo argued that salvation is totally and causatively of God’s grace.

A contemporary of Augustine, Pelagius, argued that salvation is totally and causatively of man’s free will.

Following these two was Cassian, who argued that salvation originates in man’s free will, but then proceeds as a cooperation between both man and God.

Finally, we have the Second Council of Orange (A.D. 529), a group of bishops who argued that salvation originates in God’s grace, but proceeds as a cooperation between both God and man.

The position of the Council of Orange (commonly called semi-Augustinianism) became the quasi-official position of the church until the Reformation in the 16th century.  The Reformers, especially John Calvin, felt that the church had drifted, since A.D. 529, to the position of Cassian (his position is commonly called semi-Pelagianism), and wanted to bring the church all the way back to the Augustinian position, rejecting the semi-Augustinianism of Orange.

This debate continues today in the Protestant world among Calvinists who are closer to Augustine, and Arminians who are closer to Cassian.  There are also those who reject these two views and land in the middle; these moderate Calvinists would be closer to the position that the Council of Orange took.

What do you think is the cause of our salvation?  Which of these four positions do you think is closest to being correct?

Church History, Historical Christ, Jesus Christ, Skeptics

Did Ancient Non-Christians Write about Jesus? Part 4

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In parts one, two, and three of this series of posts, we discussed the writings of Josephus and Tacitus, who are both non-Christians.  They each provide historical confirmation of key components of the history recorded in the New Testament.  Before ending this series, I want to look at one more writer from the ancient world who gave us a window into what Roman officials thought of Christianity.

Pliny the Younger was a Roman author and administrator.   He wrote a letter, as governor of Bithynia in northwestern Turkey, to the Roman Emperor Trajan in about A.D. 112 where he describes early Christian worship practices:

They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to do any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food—but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. [Letters 10:96]

Pliny’s letter to Emperor Trajan identifies several historical facts about early Christianity:

  1. Christians were meeting on a fixed day of the week.
  2. They worshiped Christ as God (this one sentence destroys the claim that the deity of Jesus was a late fourth century addition to Christianity).
  3. They maintained high ethical standards.
  4. They gathered to eat meals together.

Pliny’s letter also provides further evidence that Christianity had spread far and wide around the Roman Empire, and that government administrators were having to deal with them.

There are certainly other ancient non-Christian sources which speak of Jesus and early Christianity.  If you would like to do more research, there are several excellent introductory works to this topic.  Two that I used for this series of blog posts are The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and The Historical Jesus by Gary Habermas.

If we circle back around to the skeptic that I introduced in the first post of the series, we can see that his view that the existence of Jesus is not supported by early non-Christian writers is simply mistaken.  There are certainly a small number of historians who cast doubt on the authenticity and interpretation of the writings we’ve analyzed, but I must stress that they are in a tiny minority, as far as I can tell.  The overwhelming consensus of history is that Jesus did indeed exist.

Church History

A Very Brief Overview of the Crusades

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The Crusades are one of the most frequently mentioned historical events nowadays, but the vast majority of people who mention the Crusades know virtually nothing about them. In his excellent book Church History: An Essential Guide, Justo Gonzalez briefly outlines what happened in the Crusades and when they occurred.

First, the motivation. The most obvious motivation, according to Gonzalez, was religious, “to recover the Holy Land . . . from the ‘infidel’ Muslims; to go in pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine; and to gain the remission of suffering in Purgatory that was promised the crusaders.”

There were also economic and political reasons. “The Crusades were a vast outpouring of landless peasants and equally landless nobles hoping to carve a better future in the lands to be taken from the Muslims.”

The First Crusade was proclaimed by Urban II in the year 1095. The first wave was composed mostly of peasants, but they were followed by military contingents in subsequent waves. In 1099 they actually took control of Jerusalem from the Muslims and formed the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. This Kingdom lasted until 1187 until Jerusalem was re-taken by the Muslims.

The Second Crusade was proclaimed in 1144 when the Muslim Turks took Edessa. According to Gonzalez, “Its military achievements were negligible.”

The Third Crusade was launched in response to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187. This crusade included the famous King Richard the Lion Hearted of England. Their only military achievement was the taking of Acre. However, King Richard did negotiate an agreement with Sultan Saladin to allow Christians to go in pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

“The Fourth Crusade was a disaster.” Instead of the crusaders reaching the Holy Land to fight Muslims, they sacked the Christian city of Constantinople in 1204, the seat of the Christian Byzantine Empire. It was formed into the Latin Empire of Constantinople until 1261 when the Byzantine Empire was reestablished.

“The Fifth Crusade (1219) attacked Egypt, but only managed to take the port of Damietta, which was retaken by the Arabs two years later.”

“The Sixth and Seventh were led by King Louis IX of France (Saint Louis), and had practically no results.” These occurred in 1248 and 1270.

There you have it, a very brief overview of the Crusades. If you want more information, there are certainly volumes written about the Crusades. One book, in particular, that has come highly recommended to me, is Christopher Tyerman’s God’s War: A New History of the Crusades.

Church History

Did Paul Invent Christianity? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

We pick up from part 1 of this post to see why Paul could not have invented a version of Christianity foreign to Jesus’ teachings.

McFarland continues making his case:

The point is this:  the key teachings of the Gospel (Jesus is the sinless Son of God; He died for our sins and rose again; we receive Him as Savior through repentance and faith) pre-date Paul.  Paul taught these things, expounded on these things, and was used by God to write much of the New Testament.  But the core of the Gospel was being widely spread even before Paul was a believer.  In the final words of I Corinthians 15:8, Paul seemed to acknowledge that he was late getting to the party!

Look at Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, found in Acts 2:14-40.  Peter presents the core facts of the Gospel, including Jesus’ Deity, death, and resurrection.  Peter preaches the same truths again in Acts 3:12-18.  In Acts 5:29-33, Peter addressed Jewish leaders, and again gives the key facts of the Christian message.  By Acts 5:42, we read, “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.”

So what can we conclude?  The core teachings of Christianity predated Paul’s conversion and his later writings.  Paul did not invent Christianity.

But there is one more important point to be made.  If Paul’s teachings contradicted those of the other disciples, the disciples that spent 3 years under Jesus’ tutelage, then surely they would have called him out.  In fact, just the opposite occurred.  The apostle Peter, who was one of Jesus’ closest companions and a recognized leader of the early church, had this to say about Paul in 2 Pet. 3:15-16: “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Take note of the fact that Paul is a “dear brother” and that his words are compared to “other Scriptures.”  Peter is effectively endorsing Paul’s teachings, so the idea that Paul hijacked Christianity from the true followers of Jesus is refuted.  We can be confident that the entire New Testament, including Paul’s writings, were inspired by one and the same God.

Church History

Did Paul Invent Christianity? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Recently I’ve run across people who believe that the apostle Paul effectively hijacked Jesus’ teachings and invented most of what we today call Christianity.  Even though this seems to be a view with few advocates, it is still an important charge that is being made.  How do we answer this question?

Southern Evangelical Seminary President Alex McFarland wrote about this very topic in a December 2009 newsletter.  I will quote heavily from his article, as he did an excellent job of analyzing this issue.  McFarland’s approach is to show that the essential truths of Christianity were established before Paul began to write his epistles.  McFarland begins:

Saul of Tarsus–a passionate persecutor of the church–became Paul the believer about AD 35.  The book of Acts (written by Luke) records Paul’s salvation experience in chapters 9, 22, and 26.  In his own writings, Paul also explains his conversion to faith (I Corinthians 9:1, 15:3-8, and Galatians 1:11-18).  From about AD 48 until his death around AD 68, Paul wrote at least 13 of the New Testament’s books.

The fact that Paul had originally opposed and persecuted the church proves that he could not have “invented” Christianity.  Paul’s use of the words “received” and “passed on”–rabbinical terms for the handing down of teachings–is significant in I Corinthians 15:3-8.   In relating these facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul is saying that what it presents is existing truth that he himself had received.  Scholars recognize that this passage contains an early church creed (or statement of belief) that was recited by believers in the days before the New Testament had been written down.  Other Scriptures that preserve the early, verbal Christian creeds include I John 4:2, Philippians 2:6, II Timothy 2:8, and Romans 1:3-4.  Another notable passage is I Timothy 3:16.  Not only is this a confession of belief, it may have actually been part of a hymn that was sung by early believers.

In part 2 of this post, we will conclude McFarland’s argument and look at some additional evidence that he does not cover.  See you next time!