The History of the Christian Church

This episode is titled “ Who Do You Say He Is? ”We begin this episode by reading from the Chalcedonian Creed of AD 451, the portion devoted to the orthodox view of Christ. We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul a...

This Episode is simply titled “ Leo ”While there’d been several bishops of the church at Rome who’d been capable leaders and under their guidance had established Rome as the premier church, if not the whole Christian world, at least in the western portion of the now declining Roman Empire, it can be fairly said that for most of the earlier bishops the person was eclipsed by the office . Bishops Ca...

This episode is titled – “ The New Center .”Spread over 3 pages in Vol. 3 of his monumental work History of the Christian Church, author Philip Schaff makes a compelling argument for why it was inevitable Christianity would eventually emerge from the Roman catacombs to join the State in governing the hearts & lives of the people of the Empire. And while it was inevitable, Schaff describes how...

The title of this episode it “ Golden Tongue ”His preaching was so good, they called him the Golden-mouthed. John Chrysostom was raised by a widowed mother in the city of Antioch. During the mid-4 th C, Antioch was a major city of the Eastern Roman Empire & a major center of Christian thought & life. Coming from a wealthy family, John’s young mother decided to remain a widow & devoted...

This episode is titled, “ Jerome. ”By his mid-30’s, Jerome was probably the greatest Christian scholar of his time. He’s one of the greatest figures in the history of Bible translation, spending 3 decades producing a Latin version that would be the standard for a thousand years. But Jerome was no bookish egghead. He longed for the hermetic life we considered in the previous episode & often exh...

This week’s episode is titled “ Hermits .”A few episodes back when I introduced Athanasius, I mentioned the religious hermits he visited in the wilderness near Alexandria in Egypt, bringing them food. As a young man, Athanasius honored these men who'd forsaken the ease of city life to pursue an undistracted but difficult life of devotion to God. Who were these hermits , and what moved them to such...

This 17 th episode is titled “ What a Difference a Century Makes. ”During the mid-4 th Century, the history of the Church walked apace with the history of the Roman Empire. With the death of Constantine the Great, the rule of the Empire divided among his 3 sons, Constantine II, Constans, & Constantius. In the power-hungry maneuverings that followed, they did their upbringing in a Christian edu...

This week’s episode is “ The Daggers Come Out .”The Council of Nicaea dealt with more than just the Arian controversy over how to understand the nature of Christ. The 300 bishops who gathered in Nicaea also issued a score of rulings on issues of church life that had been subjects of discussion for years. Chief among these was setting the date for the annual celebration of the resurrection of Chris...

This week’s episode is titled, “ Contra Munda ”In our last episode we noted how the Emperor Constantine hoped Christianity would be a unifying influence in the far-flung & troubled Roman Empire. But as soon as he & his co-emperor Licinius passed the Edict of Milan granting religious tolerance to all the Empire’s subject, the doctrinal & theological debates that had been in place for ye...

This week’s episode is titled, “ Keeping a Record ”The first 3 Cs of Church History are at times a difficult puzzle to sort out because no coherent historical narrative was being kept. Luke’s account in the Books of Acts recounts a time span of about 30 yrs & roughly narrates the spread of the Faith from Jerusalem to Rome. The next narrative doesn’t come till the writings of the Christian hist...

This episode of is titled, “How Close?” One of the things modern Christians want to know is how close their church is to the primitive church of the 1 st & 2 nd Cs. Congregations and entire movements claim their particular expression of the Faith is closest to the original. So, what were early church services like? Where did they meet and what did they do? Until the end of the 2 nd C, Christia...

This episode of CS is provocatively titled “ The Lapsed Dance. ”In the 4 th episode titled “ Martyrs ”, we examined the persecution Christians faced at the hands of the Roman authorities. We noted that persecution, while at times fierce, wasn’t one, long campaign of terror that lasted for a couple centuries. It tended to be spasmodic & regional, based on the whim of the current emperor, enforc...

This Episode is titled, “What Shall We Call Them?” The survival of the Christian church in the 2 nd & 3 rd Cs is surely a testimony to the favor of God. Any objective consideration of the challenges faced by the Christian community during this time has to wonder at the tenacity of the followers of Christ. This was a 200 yr period when they faced constant challenges from heretics & false te...

This week’s episode is titled “ Hammering out the Details. ”That group of guys known as the Early Church Fathers for the most part were pastors. They were leaders of churches who had a pastoral concern for both the Faith & their people. The later 1 st through 3 rd Cs saw the Church expand around the Mediterranean basin, in a few places up into central Europe, across North Africa, across the Mi...

This episode is titled, “Striving to Give an Answer” In his first epistle, the Apostle Peter urged Jesus’ followers to always be ready to give a defense, an apologia , of their faith to anyone who asked. That word meaning an articulate, reasoned position. It was used of the arguments lawyers carried into court to argue their case. Peter added that the Christian must share his/her defense of the Fa...

This episode is titled, “Not Really an Apology.” Anyone who embarks on a study of church history and starts at the beginning will soon run in to a pile of church leaders known as the Church Fathers . They’re often divided into the Ante -Nicean and Post -Nicean Fathers; meaning the church leaders who lived ante - before the First great Ecumenical Church Council of Nicea in AD 315, and those who liv...

This episode is titled, “The Spreading Tree “ Tertullian, pastor of the church of Carthage in North Africa, addressed unbelievers at the beginning of the 3 rd C, saying à“We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace, senate and forum; we have left to you only your temples.”That introduces our theme for this episode; the expansion of the Faith in the ear...

This week's episode is titled “ Buy One, Get One Free .”In the last episode we touched briefly at a heretic named Marcion . He was one of the first to introduce a false teaching that would evolve into a major challenge to the emerging Christian Faith; that errant movement was known as Gnosticism .Marcion was the son of the pastor of the church in Pontus, on the Southern coast of the Black Sea. He...

This episode is titled “ Writings .”The history of the Christian Faith & Church inevitably has to deal with the importance of Books . From its earliest days the Faith has been intimately linked to the Scriptures. At first, Scripture was the Hebrew Bible or what is known today as the Old Testament . But other writings were added to the Church’s Bible as the years passed. The question of what wr...

This 4 th Episode is titled, “ Martyrs .”Modern marketing tactics first produced , and now feed contemporary culture's obsession for “the latest thing.”  The slogan & label " New & Improved " is a frequent feature in packaging. The opposite was the case in 1 st Century Rome. That Eternal City, and really most of the ancient world, was suspicious of anything new and novel, especially when i...

This week’s episode is titled " Strategic ."We ended the last episode with a look at the different perspectives of 1 st & 2 nd Generation Christians. The debate centered on what role the Jewish law held for Jesus’ followers. Culturally-immersed 1 st Generation Jewish believers tended to cleave to the law, while the more Greco-Roman acculturated 2 nd & later generations adhered to the Gospe...

This episode of CS is titled – “ Transitions ”We ended the previous episode with Jesus on the cross just outside the walls of Jerusalem late Friday afternoon. The Jewish leaders & Romans thought that was the last of the enigmatic trouble-maker from Galilee. For that matter, His followers thought that was the end as well. If that HAD BEEN the end of Jesus’ story, how might history have labeled...

This 1 st episode of CS is titled, “ It Begins .”The best place to start is at the beginning. But with Church History, where is that? Where do we begin? Most MODERN Christians would probably start with Jesus. That seems pretty straight-forward. But where would the FIRST Christians have begun? They were Jews , and considered what they believed as a purified form of Judaism ; a faith Moses would hav...