The History of the Christian Church

The title of this 48 th episode of CS is “Charlemagne – Part 1.”The political landscape of our time is dominated by the idea that nation-states are autonomous, sovereign societies in which religion at best plays a minor role. Religion may be an influence in shaping some aspects of culture, but affiliation with a religious group is voluntary and distinct from the rest of society. What we need to un...

This week’s episode is titled – “ Challenge .”We’ve tracked the development and growth of the Church in the East over a few episodes. To be clear, we’re talking about the Church which made its headquarters in the city of Seleucia , twin city to the Persian capital of Ctesiphon , in the region known as Mesopotamia. What today historians refer to as The Church in the East called itself the Assyrian...

This episode of Communio Sanctorum is titled, “ Liturgy .”What comes to mind when you hear that word – “ Liturgy .”Most likely—it brings up various associations for different people. Some find great comfort in what the word connotes because it recalls a time in their life of close connection to God. Others think of empty rituals that obscure, rather than bring closer a sense of the sacred. The fol...

This episode of Communio Sanctorum is titled, “ Look Who’s Driving the Bus Now .”As noted in a previous episode, it’s difficult in recounting Church History to follow a straight narrative timeline. The expansion of the Faith into different regions means many storylines. So it’s necessary to do a certain amount of backtracking as we follow the spread of the Gospel from region to region. The problem...

This Episode’s title is – “ Expansion ”.We’re going to spend a little time now tracking the expansion of the Faith into different areas during the Early Middle Ages. We ended last time with the story of the conversion of the Frank king Clovis in 496. When he was baptized on Christmas Day by Bishop Remigius of Rheims {Reems}, 3,000 of his warriors joined him. It was the first of several mass baptis...

This episode of Communion Sanctorum is titled – “ Into the Middle ”Justinian I’s reconquest of Italy and liberating it from its brief stint under barbarian control was even briefer.  Soon after Justinian’s eastern forces regained control of portions of the peninsula and put them back under the Empire’s dominion, yet another Germanic group invaded and put most of Italy under their jurisdiction. The...

This episode of Communio Sanctorum is titled, “ Living It .”For generations, scholars have debated the cause of the Fall of Rome in the West. In his monumental work, The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire historian Edward Gibbon laid a large part of the blame on Christianity. And for decades that view dominated the popular view of the history of 5 th C Europe. Christianity certainly played a r...

This week’s episode of Communio Sanctorum is titled, “ God’s Consul .”One of the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s most important contributions to the Empire was to divide the top-tier leadership up so that it could rule more efficiently. The Empire had grown too large to be governed by a single Emperor, so he selected a co-Augustus & divided their regions of oversight between Western & Eastern r...

This episode is titled – The Divide .I begin with a quote from a man known to scholars as Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite . In a commentary on the names of God he wrote . . .The One is a Unity which is the unifying Source of all unity and a Super-Essential Essence, a Mind beyond the reach of mind and a Word beyond utterance, eluding Discourse, Intuition, Name, and every kind of being. It is the Un...

This episode is titled - Popes. We begin with a quote from Pope Leo I and his Sermon 5 ...It is true that all bishops taken singly preside each with his proper solicitude over his own flock, and know that they will have to give account for the sheep committed to them. To us [that is: the Popes], however, is committed the common care of all; and no single bishop's administration is other than a par...

The title of this episode is “ Barbarians at the Gates – and Everywhere Else ”I live on the coast of Southern California in one of the most beautiful places on the planet – Ventura County. The weather is temperate all year round with an average temperature of 70 degrees. The beaches are pristine and most of the time, uncrowded. The County has several prime surf spots. But every so often, usually d...

This week’s episode is titled, “ Patrick ”Last week’s episode was a brief review of Christianity’s arrival in Britain. We saw how the Anglo-Saxons pressed in from the east coast where they’d been confined by what remained of the Roman army. But when the Roman’s pulled out in 410, the Saxons quickly moved in to take their place, confining the Romano-British Christians to the western region of the I...

This episode is titled – “Did Those Feet?” Why it bears that title is this . . .Have you ever heard the anthem “ Jerusalem ”, whose lyrics come from a poem by William Blake? The song was performed by the 1970’s progressive rock band, Emerson, Lake & Palmer on their album, Brain Salad Surgery .The opening lines are . . . And did those feet in ancient time -- Walk upon England’s mountains green?...

This episode of CS the first of a couple summary reviews we’ll do. My plan is to continue on as we have, pausing occasionally to in one episode catch us up in broad strokes on what we’ve covered so far. My hope is to avoid the whole, “Can’t see the forest for the trees” thing. For those listeners where English is a second language, that phrase is an idiom that means the loss of perspective behind...

This episode is titled – The Great Recession .I usually leave house-keeping comments for CS to the end of each episode but wanted to begin this by saying thanks to all who subscribe, listen regularly, and have turned others on to the podcast. Website stats tell us we have a lot of visitors & subscribers. Far more than you faithful ones who’ve checked in on the Facebook page & hit the “like...

This episode of CS is titled – Monks. We took a look at the hermits in Episode 18 and delved into the beginnings of the monastic movement that swept the Church. The hermits were those who left the city to live an ultra-ascetic life of isolation; literally fleeing from the world. Others who longed for the ascetic life could not abide the lack of fellowship and so retreated from the world to live in...

This episode of CS is titled “ Augustine – Part 2 .”Augustine wrote a work called Retractions in which he lists the many books and treatises he’d penned. Each work is given a summary and additional notes are added charting the development of his thought over time. He wrote some 113 books & treatises, close to 250 letters, some of which are treatises themselves, and 500 sermons. Here’s a rundow...

This episode of CS is titled “ Augustine – Part 1 .”Late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient yet so new; Late have I loved you. You were within while I was without. I sought You out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. These things kept me far from You; even though they’d not even be unless You made them. You called and...

The title of this episode is simply à “ Ambrose .” And once we learn a little about him, we’ll see that title is enough. For Ambrose was one of the most interesting figures in Church History, a hinge around which the course of the Faith swung. Born in 340, Ambrose was the second son of Ambrosius , the imperial governor of Gaul and part of an ancient Roman family that included the famous Marcus Aur...

This episode of CS is titled, “ Syncretism .”Recent episodes have chronicled the growing rift between the Eastern church centered at Constantinople and the Western-based in Rome. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 Eastern bishops elevated the Bishop of Constantinople to near equal status and authority with the Bishop of Rome, giving the Church 2 heads. It was increasingly obvious politics played a...

This week’s episode of Communion Sanctorum is titled – “ Justinian Sayin’” During the 5 th C, while the Western Roman Empire was falling to the Goths, the Eastern Empire centered at Constantinople looked like it would carry on for centuries. Though it identified itself as Roman , historians refer to the Eastern region as the Byzantine Empire & Era. It gets that title from Byzantium , the city’...

This Episode of CS is titled, “ Orthodoxy, with an Eastern Flavor .”We need to begin this episode by defining the term “ Orthodoxy. ”It comes from Greek.  Orthos  means “ straight ” & idiomatically means that which is right or true . Doxa is from the verb dokein = to think ; doxa is one’s opinion or belief .As it’s most often used, orthodoxy means adherence to accepted norms . In reference to...

This episode of Communio Santorum is titled, “ And In the East – Part 2 .”In our last episode, we took a brief look at the Apostle Thomas’ mission to India. Then we considered the spread of the faith into Persia. Further study of the Church in the East has to return to the Council of Chalcedon in the 5 th C where Bishop Nestorius was condemned as a heretic. As we’ve seen, the debate about the deit...

This episode of Communio Santorum is titled, “ And In the East – Part 1 .”The 5 th C Church Father Jerome wrote, “[Jesus] was present in all places with Thomas in India, with Peter in Rome, with Paul in Illyria, with Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Greece, with each apostle . . . in his own separate region.”So far we’ve been following the track of most western studies of history, both secular &...

The title of this episode is, “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” In our last episode, we began our look at how the Church of the 4 th & 5 th Cs attempted to describe the Incarnation. Once the Council of Nicaea affirmed Jesus’ deity, along with His humanity, Church leaders were left with the task of finding just the right words to describe WHO Jesus was. If He was both God & Man as The Nicaean...