The History of the Christian Church

This episode is titled “ Cracks .”One of the great concerns of the Roman Church at the outset of the Reformation was just how far it would go, not so much in terms of variance in Doctrines, although that also was a concern. What Rome worried over was just how many different groups the Faith would split into. After all, division wasn’t new. There’d already been a major break between East and West a...

This episode is titled, “ Wars of Religion ”In our review of the Reformation, we began with a look at its roots and the long cry for reform heard in the Roman church. We saw its genesis in Germany with Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon , its impact on Switzerland with Zwingli and later with the Frenchman John Calvin . John Knox carried it to his native Scotland and Thomas Cranmer led it in Engl...

This episode of CS is titled is titled “English Candles.”We’ve spent the last several episodes looking at the Reformation & Counter-Reformation in Europe. In this episode we’ll take a look at how the Reformation unfolded, specifically in England. The story of the Church in England is an interesting one. The famous, or infamous, Henry the VIII was king of England when Luther set fire to the kin...

This episode is titled Point – Counter Point and details The Catholic Reformation . We’ve spent the last several episodes considering the Protestant Reformation of the 16 th C. The tendency is to assume the Roman Church just dug in its heels in obdurate opposition to the Protestants. While the 17 th C will indeed see much blood shed between the religious factions of Europe, it would be wrong to as...

This episode is titled, The Ultimate Fighter; Reformation Edition .The pioneer of Protestantism in western Switzerland was William Farel . Some pronounce it FAIR-el, but we’ll go with the more traditional Fuh–REL.He began as an itinerate evangelist; always in motion, tireless, full of faith and fire. He was bold as Luther but more radical . He also lacked Luther’s genius .He’s called the Elijah of...

This Episode is titled, Knox, Knox, Who’s There? John Knox was born in 1514 in the small burgh of Haddington , south of Edinburgh. At the age of 15 he entered the University of St. Andrews to study, not golf, but theology. After 7 yrs he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and became a notary since his studies specialized in the Law. Being a gifted speaker, he was employed as a tutor for the sons...

This 92 nd episode of CS is titled “ The School of Christ ” and is part 2 in our look at the Reformer, John Calvin .We left off with Calvin back in Geneva after being banished for a few years following a run in with the City Council. They realized how much they needed him to design the reforms they felt they had to make so they asked him to return and accommodated themselves to being the agents by...

This episode is titled, Thrust Into the Game. So far we’ve marked the rise of 2 of the 3 major branches of the Reformation. We’ve considered Lutheranism and the Radical Reformers or Anabaptists . Over the next few episodes we’ll consider the 3 rd branch , called Calvinism , AKA, Reformed Christianity .I begin with a summary of the opening section of Bruce Shelley’s excellent, Church History in Pla...

This episode is titled, Taking It Further. History, or I should say, the reporting of it, shows a penchant for identifying one person, a singular standout as the locus of change. This despite the recurring fact there were others who participated in or paralleled that change. Such is the case with Martin Luther and the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli . While Luther is the “historic bookmark” for the...

This episode of CS is titled Luther’s Legacy .Long time subscribers to CS know that while the podcast isn’t bias free , I do strive to treat subjects fairly. However, being a pastor of a non-denominational, evangelical Christian church in SoCal, I do have my views and opinions on the material we cover. When I share those opinions, I try to mark them as such. So >> Warning; Blatant opinion no...

This episode of CS is titled, Luther’s Struggle. As we saw last time, Luther’s situation after appearing before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms didn’t look hopeful. The majority of officials there decided to apply the papal bull excommunicating Luther and removing his protection. Some of the nobles knew they could incur the Pope’s favor by taking matters into their own hands and assassinati...

This episode of CS is titled, Martin’s List .In the summer of 1520, a document bearing an impressive seal circulated throughout Germany in search of a remote figure. It began, “Arise, O Lord, and judge Your cause. A wild boar has invaded Your vineyard.”The document was what’s called a papal bull —named after that impressive seal, or bulla bearing the Pope’s insignia.   It took 3 months to reach th...

This episode of CS is titled Erasmus .As we begin, I once again want to do a brief, and I promise it will be brief, summary of the threads that conspired to weave the tapestry of the Reformation. Others might refer to them less as threads that weaved a tapestry as those that frayed in the unravelling of the Church caused by a pack of trouble-makers. The reason I’m compelled to do all this summariz...

This 85 th episode of CS, is titled, Dawn. I want to take a brief moment here at the start to say “Thank you” to all those who’ve spread the word about CS to their friends and family. We’ve had a significant bump in subscribers and lots of new likes on the FB page. So—Kudos to all who’ve spread the word. As most of you know, iTunes is by far the major portal for podcasts. So, if you use iTunes, a...

This 84 th Episode of CS is titled Lost & is a brief review of The Church in the East. I encourage you to go back and listen again to episode 72 – Meanwhile Back in the East , which conveyed a lot of detail about the Eastern Church & how it fared under the Mongols and Muslim Expansion in the Middle Ages. Until that time, Christianity was widespread across a good part of the Middle East, Me...

This special episode of CS posts to the sanctorum.us website on Easter Sunday, 2015. I realize many subscribers will hear it at a later time, but since each week’s episode posts early Sunday morning, and this is Resurrection Sunday, a special podcast seemed appropriate. This week, we’ll be taking a look at the place of the celebration of Easter in the Early Church. There’s considerable controversy...

This is the 7 th and last episode in our series The Long Road to Reform .In Italy, the Renaissance was a time of both prosperity and upheaval. Moderns of the 21 st C are so accustomed to thinking of Italy as one large unified nation it’s difficult to conceive of it as it was throughout MOST of its history; a patchwork of various regions at odds with each other. During the Middle Ages and a good pa...

This is the 6 th episode in our podcast mini-series The Long Road to Reform .Much of the reform energy in the European Church of the Late Middle Ages was among the poor. Being poor meant being illiterate . The poor and illiterate don’t, as a rule, write books about their hopes and dreams.  So it’s often from sources hostile to the reforming movements of this era we learn of them. That hostility co...

This is the 5 th episode in the podcast mini-series we’re calling “ The Long Road to Reform. ”What do you think of when I say “ The Inquisition ”?Many shudder. Some get a queasy feeling in their stomach because of the way the Inquisition has been cast in novels and movies. There’s a bit of truth in that portrayal, one-sided and stereo-typed as it may be. We’re backing up yet again in our timeline...

This is the 4 th episode in a mini-series we’re calling “ The Long Road to Reform. ”It was late Spring of 1490 when a Dominican friar stood at the gates of Florence. This was not the first time the 33 year old Girolamo [ger-all-a-mo] had made the 160 KM / 100 miles trip from his native Ferrara to the city of the Medici’s. He’d lived for a spell in the city. The Florentines admired his scholarship...

This is part three of “ The Long Road to Reform .”In our last episode we looked at The Conciliar Movement that formed to end the Great Papal Schism and so many hoped would be a permanent fixture for reform in the Church. As well-intentioned as the movement was, it ended up resurrecting the Schism instead of solving it. In its long battle with the Papacy, Conciliarism eventually lost. We turn now t...

This is part 2 of “ The Long Road to Reform .”Before diving into the THE Reformation, we’ll do some review and add detail to the story of the Church. We do this because I fear too many of us may have the impression Martin Luther and John Calvin were wild aberrations. That they just sprang up out of nowhere. Many Protestants assume the Roman Catholic Church got progressively more corrupt during the...

This episode is the first of several I’m calling “ The Long Road to Reform .” As I mentioned at the end of the last episode, we’ll track the Church’s long march to the Reformation, then pause before picking it up acwith THE Reformation by doing some episodes tracking Church History into the East. Until recently, most treatments of the History of Christianity have focused almost exclusively on the...

This episode is titled “The Witness of Stones.”I’ve had the privilege of doing a bit of touring in Europe. I’ve visited the cathedral at Cologne, Germany on several occasions. I’ve been to Wartburg Castle where Luther hid out. Mrs. Communion Sanctorum and I did a 2-week tour of Florence and Rome for our 30 th Anniversary. We saw lots of churches and cathedrals. No matter what your thoughts about m...

This 74 th Episode of CS is the 2 nd Overview , where we pause to sum up the journey we’ve taken since the last overview in Episode 35. That summary began with the Apostolic Church and ran up through the 5 th C marking the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. This Overview starts where that left off and brings us up to the 15 th C. We’re about to move into what’s called the Reformation and Counter- R...