Church History to the Reformation CH506 ormation ef o the R t ory Church Hist … · 2019. 9....

Church History to the Reformation

Transcript - CH506 Church History to the Reformation © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 04 of 24CH506

Early Christian Life and Faith

Church History to the Reformation

This is lecture 4: Early Christian Life and Faith. Greetings once again in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and join me in a moment of prayer as we begin our session together. Let us pray. Eternal God, we ask for your guidance as we think together about your church and its development in these early centuries. Help us to understand that which we need to understand so that our ministries can prosper in your name. For it’s in that name we pray, amen.

I’d like to ask for us to focus together in this class session upon the fascinating changes which took place in the Christian church between its founding at Pentecost—about which we’ve been speaking—and the coming of Constantine in the early fourth century. Those first three centuries in the life of the church produced fascinating developments and enormous changes; and we want to begin exploring that in our class together today.

There’s little question that the structures, organization, and practices of the Christian community by the time of Constantine were vastly different from what they had been in the first century. As we explore these shifts, some of you will see them as unfortunate at best or even evil at worst. Others will view the changes as inevitable—perhaps even beneficial. In either case, we need to understand what the changes were and why they took place, for they form the basis of much of our understanding and practice of Christianity across the years.

Now in exploring such a vast array of divergent changes, I want to try to structure our thought around two major pivots. First of all, the church gathered together for fellowship, training, and worship. I’d like to look with you at the development of leadership in church, at the emergence of councils, the use of manuals, the understanding of discipline, and the practice of worship. Then after we’ve looked at the church gathered together, I want to look with you at the church scattered into the world for service. What about its missionary outreach? How did it view jobs and

Garth M. Rosell, PhD Experience: Professor of Church History

and Director Emeritus, Ockenga Institute at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary



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vocation? What was its family life like? What were its social contacts and involvements? So we’ll look first at the church as it gathers together; and then we’ll look subsequently at the church as it spreads out in service and ministry throughout the world.

Now as we look at this area, let me remind you once again that—as we’re reading through Kenneth Scott Latourette’s first volume of his History of Christianity—that pages 112–220 focus particularly on the subject that we’ll be dealing with in this session, focusing on Christianity taking shape in its organization and doctrine, the admission, worship, and discipline of the church and so on. During this lecture, we do also want to focus our attention upon the writings in the little collection by Cyril C. Richardson, Early Christian Fathers. You might want to keep that handy, because I will be referring to it regularly as we talk about the development of the church’s life as it is portrayed in these early Christian writings.

Let me just say a word about this wonderful collection by Richardson of early Christian materials. Here in this collection we have a variety of different kinds of writings. We have letters which read almost like Paul’s letters in the New Testament. We have sermons. In fact, the very earliest sermon outside of Scripture itself that we know of is in 2 Clement. We have philosophical treatises. We have apologies—those who will argue the faith for people outside of the faith; and we have manuals of how to run the church and how to conduct church life and ministry. And here in this collection, we have portrayed for us many of the writings that exist in the first two centuries in the life of church; and we want to view those along with the scriptural materials as resources for us in understanding the development of the life of the church. And so, I’ll be referring to those as we move through this lecture today—and subsequently in perhaps a lecture or two additionally—and you may want to follow those and even take a pencil or a pen or a marker or highlighter to note the passages that I will point out. And I’ll try to note each of the pages as we go through, and then you can go back and reconstruct those for yourselves at a more leisurely pace later on.

The first area I’d like for us to look at and examine—as a kind of example of how we might be doing this—is the leadership of the church. How did leadership develop? How did the distinction between clergy and laity emerge? Why did the structure become so hierarchical? And as a matter of fact, we are going to see that between the founding of the church at Jerusalem—in which



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the structures were very fluid and simple—and the coming of Constantine in the early fourth century—at which time the leadership structures were very tightly defined in a very hierarchical pattern, we are going to see that kind of movement, however we might feel about it. And that movement replicates in many ways what we have seen in the Jewish context in terms of the Levitical priesthood with the high priest, priest, and the Levite forming a kind of structure of church leadership, and also, perhaps even more pervasively, the Roman government structures, the political realities which seem to press upon the church. And in fact, we find in the emperor and the emperor’s functionaries and the lower functionaries the kind of hierarchical structure which we are ultimately going to see in the bishop, the priests, or the presbyters and the deacons emerging in the life of the church across its early centuries.

But what I would like to do is to try to describe how all of this takes place, and to do so from the actual materials which we have from the life of the early church. Now what we are going to begin to see is that three offices emerge as the major offices in the church: the episcopoi (these are the overseers or bishops), the deaconoi or the deacons, and the prebyteroi (who are the presbyters, also known as elders or later on in contracted form the term priest). All three of these emerge within the biblical materials themselves. Let me turn your attention first of all to the Pastoral Epistles, to 1 Timothy, beginning in chapter 3; and here at the first verse of chapter 3, we are introduced to the bishop. “Here is a trustworthy saying,” we read, “if anyone sets his heart on being a bishop or an overseer, he desires a noble task,” (this is the term episcopoi). “Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a recent convert or he may be conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace or the devil’s trap.” There you have the very demanding requirements for being a bishop or overseer.

Then we have in the eighth verse of the first chapter of Timothy, the second office introduced, that of deacon (the deaconoi). “Deacons, likewise, are to be men worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, not pursuing dishonest gain. They must keep hold



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of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. They must first be tested and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons,” and then there’s some additional instructions with that.

Then, when we turn over to 1 Timothy 5, we have introduced for us in verse 17 the third of the church offices; namely, the office of elder or presbyter. The elders who direct the affairs are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching, for the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain, and the worker deserves his wages. Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly so that the others may take warning.”

Here then, in the Scripture itself in 1 Timothy, we have all three major church offices that are going to come into play spelled out for us. Not with full job descriptions or clear indications of all that they are to do and all of the capacities that they are fulfill, but we do have the three identified. And those now are going to reemerge in the writings of the early church again and again, increasingly identified with particular tasks and duties and ultimately structured in this very hierarchical pyramid-like structure which we discover fully in place by the early fourth century.

Now let me describe some of how this has taken place. In the earliest communities, the tasks of preaching and teaching were not clearly confined to a particular class. Every Christian who had the gift could pray or teach or exhort the congregation. We see this in Acts 8:4, Romans 12:6, and 1 Corinthians 12:10. This followed the practice of the Jewish synagogue, of course, where even a stranger could deliver a discourse on the Scripture reading of that day—and remember I read to you that section of Luke 4 when Jesus came to His hometown in Nazareth to the synagogue there and was asked to make comment on the text. No special priesthood was established to mediate between God and His people. There was only one High Priest, and that was Christ. There was a universal priesthood of believers; an idea, of course, recaptured in the sixteenth century by the great Protestant Reformers. Ministers were, therefore, the entire body of Christians, not simply the identified clergy leadership. During the first three centuries, however, distinction increasingly emerged between the officers of the church that I have identified and what is then called the laity. And this gap becomes deeper and wider as the centuries progress so that in recent times we have had to recapture the ministry of



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the laity and begin to build bridges across that enormous chasm which has been built between clergy and laity. Now we’ll talk more about that later on.

Now how do we see this actually developing? Well turn in your Richardson, if you have that with you, to page 62. This is in Clement’s first letter, written probably around AD 96, still in the first century, very early in the life of church. Clement himself is the leader of the church in Rome, and he is writing to the church up in Corinth. Now remember, Paul had a lot of problems with the people up in Corinth; and we read about that in the Corinthian correspondence in the New Testament. This letter writes to the very same church, and they’re still having problems. But the problems that they’re having now focus upon younger folk in the church who are trying to usurp the authority and leadership of some of the early established leaders—some of the older folk in the church who are in positions of authority but whom they want to see thrown out of that authority. And Clement is very angry about the fact that this is taking place, and he calls for unity. He calls these younger members to respect the authority and the ministry of those who have been placed in that authority by vote of the congregation. And you see in this discussion some reflections of early church development in life now by the end of the first century.

First of all, Clement picks up this Old Testament Levitical structure, which I mentioned is part of that Jewish context that affected the structure of the church. And on page 62 in chapter 40, verse 5 of the first letter of Clement, he writes, “The high priest is given his particular duties, the priests are assigned their special place, and the Levites are given particular tasks.” You begin to see those divisions of jobs within the Old Testament structure which he’s referring to and now he’s going to see replicated. Following that statement is this very interesting sentence—the very first time we have in the church literature the distinction between lay and clergy—and the phrase reads: “The layman is bound by the layman’s code.” Now that tantalizing comment is one that is not expanded upon, but you begin to see very early on now by AD 96 some perceived difference between laypeople and clergy.

And then moving down to chapter 42—still on page 62—you have these interesting words, “The apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Christ, was sent from God; thus, Christ is from God and the apostles are from Christ. In both incidences, the orderly procedure depends upon God’s will.” You



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see what is happening here. This new hierarchical structure is emerging even in the first century—God at the top, Christ sent by God, and the apostles sent by Christ. “And so the apostles,” we read on, “after receiving their orders and being fully convinced by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and assured by God’s Word, went out in the confidence of the Holy Spirit to preach the good news that God’s kingdom was about to come. They preached in country, and they preached in city. They appointed their first converts after testing them by the Spirit to be (and here are two of the offices) bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this any novelty, for Scripture had mentioned bishops and deacons long before.” And what he’s referring to here is Isaiah 60 in which those patterns are picked up not only from the Old Testament, but now with the Roman structures are recapitulated in the growing church offices of the early church communities.

So here you have bishops and deacons mentioned by Clement, and these are to be appointed. And in chapter 44—now on the bottom of page 63—he picks up the theme again. “Now our apostles, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, knew that there was going to be strife over the title of bishop.” My goodness, if there’s any prophecy that is true, that one has been. There has been bloodshed over the title and the use of bishops in the church. “It was for this reason and because they had been given an accurate knowledge of the future that they appointed the officers we mentioned; namely, bishops and deacons. Furthermore, they added a codicil to the affect that should these die, other approved men should succeed in their ministry.” Now there’s the first phrase (AD 96) that we have of the later debate over apostolic succession. Now there are a variety of interpretations to this very simple reference. Some have argued a very Episcopal form of church government from this structure. Others have argued a more Presbyterian form. Others will argue the case for a more Baptistic or Congregational form. All of them look back to this very same phrase, this very same section in Clement as one of the early writings and interpret it in light of the three major strains of church organization and governance that we have—the Episcopal, the Presbyterian, and the Congregations. Now we’ll be seeing those emerge again and again across church history; and the same folk who are arguing the cases across those centuries are going to come back again and again to the very passages of early Christian writings that I’m referring you to here. So I would ask you, if you get interested in this, to go through and look at these specific references and think about them and weigh them in light of your own understanding of church governance and of church offices.



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We have here then—growing out of the struggles that are occurring in Corinth—we have this writing of Clement which argues for a much more rigid form, even in the first century of church offices and church structures. From this we move to the Didache—and I ask you to turn to page 178 of the Richardson collection. Now the Didache is a very interesting document. It is probably a document that is written in rural Syria in the late first and early second century. There has been an ongoing, very heated debate over the actual dating of The Teaching of the Twelve of the Didache as it’s called, but it certainly comes from a period early in the life of the church, and it reflects much of the church structure and life of this period.

Now I refer you on page 178 to chapter 15 of the Didache and this very interesting paragraph. Let me read it for you. “You must, then, elect for yourselves,” and it’s important to point out that church officers, the church leadership was by election of the congregation in those early centuries, almost without exception. “You must elect for yourselves then,” (and here are the two offices popping up again), “bishops and deacons who are a credit to the Lord, men who are gentle, generous, faithful, and well tried. For their ministry to you” (and here’s a very interesting phrase) “is identical with that of the prophets and teachers” (which they already knew). “You must not, therefore, despise them, for along with the prophets and teachers they enjoy a place of honor among you.” So you see here the two of the three offices emerging again, that of bishops and deacons. They are to be elected; and their tasks, part of their job description, is to be identical with the prophets and the teachers.

Now if we carry from there to the letters of Ignatius and move from now late first/early second century to about AD 117—because we can date the letters of Ignatius; turn to page 95—we have some interesting additional features to the development of the structure of leadership and organization within the church. Picking up from the very bottom of page 94, chapter 2 of Ignatius’s Letter to the Magnesians , “Yes, I had the good fortune to see you, in the persons of Damas your bishop (he is a credit to God!), and of your worthy presbyters, Bassus and Apollonius, and of my fellow slave, the deacon Zotion.” Now here you have in this letter, AD 117, the mention again of the three basic offices of the church—bishop, presbyter, and deacon—the ones we found in the Pastoral Epistles. And these are actually elected and operating within the life of the Magnesian church and the names of the actual recipients of those offices are listed here.



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Now if you move down to the bottom of page 95 to chapter 6, you have this very interesting arrangement of those offices. “Let the bishop preside in God’s place, and let the presbyters take the place of the apostolic council, and let the deacons (my special favorites) be entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ who was with the Father from eternity and appeared at the end of the world.” You see what he’s talking about here is a hierarchical structure with the bishop at the top, taking the role of God symbolically; the presbyters (the elders), taking the role of the apostles; and the deacons, taking that ministry of Christ Himself.

Now this is picked up again in his Letter to the Trallians , page 99, chapter 2 and following. Let me read that for you. “It is essential, therefore, to act in no way without the bishop, just as you are doing. Rather submit even to the presbytery as to the apostles of Jesus Christ.” You see the themes that he’s picking up. “He is our Hope, and if we live in union with Him now, we shall gain eternal life. Those too who are deacons [that third office] of Jesus Christ’s ‘mysteries’ must give complete satisfaction to everyone. For they do not serve mere food and drink, but they minister to God’s church. They must therefore avoid leaving themselves open to criticism just as they would shun fire.” And then in chapter 3, you have this interesting paragraph, “Correspondingly, everyone must show respect to the deacons. They represent Jesus Christ, just as the bishop has the role of the Father, and the presbyters are like God’s council and an apostolic band.” Then listen to this phrase: “You cannot have a church without these.” So, here you have by AD 117 a clear indication from one of the leading churches (that is, the church in Antioch), not only the three offices organized in somewhat hierarchical form, but the fact that all three offices are necessary in order to have a church. Now that’s pretty early to begin to see that kind of hardening and structuring, but there it is in AD 117.

By the end of the second century, if we pick up an illustration from Irenaeus who is the head of the church in Leone in Southern France (pages 370 and following), we see that tendency toward a structured hardening of church offices is carried through even more strongly. And this very fascinating section from page 370 to 373 or 374—which I would encourage you to read—has a variety of hints as to church structure now clearly defined by the end of the second century.

In chapter 1 on the top of page 370, he focuses first upon the writings of the Gospels. “So Matthew among the Hebrews issued



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a writing of the Gospel in their own tongue, while Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church.” An interesting phrase because it’s very unlikely that Peter and Paul actually founded the church in Rome, but here’s a part of that growing understanding which is picked up in the Roman Catholic tradition of that founding. “After their decease, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what Peter had preached. Then Luke, the follower of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel as it was preached to him. Finally, John, the disciple of the Lord, who had lain on his breast, published a Gospel while he was residing at Ephesus in Asia. All of these handed down to us that there is one God, Maker of heaven and earth, proclaimed by the law and the prophets, and one Christ Jesus, the Son of God.”

Now when you go from that early reflection of the writings of the Christian faith (and in a later lecture I’m going to be focusing upon the development of the Scriptures and how the New Testament came into being and to go through that whole fascinating process of describing canonization, as it’s often called, within the life of the early church; so we’ll come back to that), but we have here an indication in this passage of some of the developments of these materials which begin to circulate in those early years among the Christian community—the writings of Paul, the Gospels, the other writings of the New Testament—which begin to be circulated and by the power of the Spirit were not only written, but also accepted as authoritative in the life of the church. And we’ll talk about that process of canonization later on.

If we move to the bottom of page 371, we begin to get this notion of apostolic succession, which now is increasingly hardened by the end of the second century. “The tradition of the apostles made clear in all the world can be clearly seen in every church by those who wish to behold the truth. We can enumerate those who were established by the apostles as bishops in the churches and their successors down to our time.” And then he goes back to name all of those folk; and in fact, on page 373, you’ll see all of those people named beginning at the bottom of 372 and continuing primarily on 373.

Then turning to 372, you have this interesting series of comments. “But since it would be very long, in a volume such as this, to enumerate the successions of all the churches, I can do so by pointing out the tradition which is true of that very great oldest and well-known church founded and established at Rome by those



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two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.” Now that’s a very interesting and controversial statement, and I’ll leave it to you to give some further thought to that. And we’ll pick that theme up later on in the course as well. “For every church,” (this is the end of the second century, remember) “must be in harmony with this church; namely, the Roman Church, because of its outstanding preeminence; that is the faithful from everywhere, since the apostolic tradition is preserved in it by those from everywhere.” Even though the church was founded in Jerusalem, remember that by AD 70 in the destruction of Jerusalem, that the power centers, the major focus of the growth of the church moves from Jerusalem into places like Antioch and Rome. Now you have by the end of the second century this emerging centrality of Rome, again reflecting the centrality of the Roman government since the seat of government is there. It’s very obvious that the seat of the church in some folks’ minds ought to be there as well. But here we have one of the early salvoes in an ongoing battle which has taken place across the centuries.

What we see reflected then in Irenaeus in the end of the second century is an even further hardening of the principle of apostolic succession built upon a very Roman governmental model of church organization and governance. Three offices then emerge in the life of the church: the bishops, the presbyters or priests, and the deacons. And these then take this increased hardened form over the first three centuries in the life of the church.

Now let me say a few things that grow out of that. What about ordination? What about those whom we come to call the clergy or the professional ministry—those who are satisfied by solemn ordination through the laying on of hands? What we see emerging with the kind of structural process that we’ve just looked at, the movement toward ordination of the three major offices in the church—ordination to the deaconate of deacons, to the presbyteriate of the elders or priests, and to the episcopate, the bishops. By the mid-third century other offices were added as well, and we begin to see these as the suboffices or the minor offices of the church. Seven of them are particularly important in these early centuries. There are the subdeacons, who are the under-helpers. These are the assistants to the deacons, the only one of the seven which actually requires ordination. Second are the readers. These help read Scriptures in worship and have charge of the church books. There are the acolytes. These are assistants to the bishops in official processions and duties. There are the exorcists who by prayer and laying on of hands cast out evil spirits



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from the possessed. They also assist in baptisms. There are in the fifth place, presenters. They help with the music in worship. There are in the sixth place, the janitors or sextons who take care of the meeting rooms and later the churchyards. And finally there are the catechists. These are the teaching assistants in the larger churches where there are teaching ministries going on.

So that you have emerging in these early centuries not only the three major offices, but you have a number of minor offices which are to aid in the structure and work of the church. Four of them, by this time, are to be set aside by ordination by this solemn service, setting them apart for their duties. The laity, meanwhile, which we began to see reflected very early in the life of the church, consists increasingly of two orders: the faithful on the one hand, who are the baptized communicant members, and the catechumens, those who are preparing for baptism and the life of the church. There’s also this growing distinction between the professional ministry and the laity in the life of the church. Also, clergy are increasingly set aside not only for their task, but from their secular occupations and businesses. So that by the third century we see the church now beginning to support full-time professional ministers. Some of them are set aside from marriage, and you have emerging now what is going to become hardened and in fact ordered by law in the Middle Ages—the practice of celibacy. They became an increasingly separate class sociologically and functionally, devoted wholly to ministry supported by the church treasury, by voluntary contributions and weekly collections, elected by vote of the congregation, which was true up until the Middle Ages. Though we have no evidence of official clerical garb in the early century, by the fourth century we have special clerical garb beginning to emerge to set them aside visibly from the laity in their ministry.

Now, of course, not everybody was happy with this growing tendency, the distinction between clergy and lay. Tertullian, again from North Africa, wrote, “Are not all laymen priests also? It is written, He hath made us kings and priests in Revelation 1:6. It is the authority of the church alone which has made a distinction between clergy and laity. Where there is college administers to administer the sacrament, you baptize, you are a priest for yourself alone. And where there are three of you, there is a church, though you be the only laypeople. For each one lives by his own faith and there is no respect of person with God.” This is one of a number of voices that increasingly were raised against the practice of moving toward not only a greater structure in the church, but a



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greater distinction between those ordained offices of the church and the laypeople who were originally intended to be ministers of the Christian church. But that principle was quickly lost, and those voices were quickly drowned out. And, in fact, the practice of the church became increasingly structured, hierarchical, and divided between clergy and lay.

We see in Rome, for example, in a letter from Cornelius who headed the church there in AD 252, the various church offices spelled out in form in this letter as forty-six presbyters or priests. We know that there were about that number of meeting houses or congregations in Rome at that time, so it may be that the presbyters—these elders or priests as they are later called by the end of the second century—were actually the pastors who oversaw individual congregations. In Cornelius’s letter he also mentions seven deacons who cared for the poor and the sick, who baptized, who distributed communion to the infirmed, who preached, and who counseled. That’s an interesting collection of tasks which are identified by Cornelius in this letter. There are seven subdeacons—remember that sub-office that I mentioned to you a moment ago. There were forty-two acolytes and fifty-two assorted exorcists, readers, and janitors. Now we wish we knew more from that letter, but at least we have a reflection of how these offices have now settled in and taken hold in one of the central cities of the Empire by AD 252.

Well, where did the episcopate emerge? During the second century the office of bishop came to be more and more the center of church life as the most important spiritual office. And this, of course, is retained to this day in traditions such as Eastern Orthodoxy, in Roman Catholicism, the Anglican, Episcopalian, Methodist communities, and there are a variety of theories as to its origin. Some hold that it has its roots in the teaching of the apostles. Others hold that it developed later—groups like the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and lower church Episcopalia. Others hold that it shouldn’t have developed at all—it’s an aberration of an understanding of the faith—and we have that taught by certain Baptist groups and others. History gives us no clear answer to the question of origins.

The practice probably varied, in fact, from place to place with the dominate pattern being this one: that in the cities (such as Antioch, for example), the several congregations—most of them house churches at this time because there was very little church building until the third and fourth centuries—most of the



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Christian communities met in houses, and those were limited by the size of the houses. In a city like Antioch, then, there would be a number of these house churches and several of them would be governed by a local elected presbytery. They would be overseen by this board of elders. These presbyteries gradually came to view one of their number (whom they called a president in this case) as their spokesperson. That one was increasingly seen as the bishop or the overseer and then set aside or ordained as such in that area, such as Ignatius whose letters we read a moment ago. In the larger cities, due to the need for unity in the face of persecution and heresy, they tended to become the pivots of power, and their bishops became eventually metropolitans or patriarchs. Rome itself emerges as the most powerful in this organization of monarchical episcopate structures in the empire, and in fact the pope as the chief of the bishops emerges then as a part of that ongoing process as well.

Regardless then of whether we feel it ought to have taken place this way, the fact is that between the founding of the church in Jerusalem and the time of Constantine in the early fourth century, the laity and clergy were seen increasingly as separate classes with distinct functions. The distinctions among the clergy and ordained clergy offices and minor nonordained offices were set; and a very hardened Episcopal system of church organization was established, which replicated not only the Old Testament practice, but even more precisely the Roman governmental practice.

Let me say just a word or two about councils. As the church expanded, there was enormous need to find some means of maintaining unity, and in fact determining major questions of faith and discipline. The rise of the Episcopacy probably aided in part that quest for unity. The tighter the structure, the more careful the government, the easier it would be to maintain unity and control and structure within the life of the whole church. The rise of councils, on the other hand, helped with the second, that of discipline and doctrine, and we see a variety of church gatherings or councils emerging. First, at the diocesan level or the local level, these are made up of bishops, presbyters, deacons, and sometimes lay folk who are gathered together to decide various points of dispute. We have a good example of this in the early Synod of Elvira in Spain in AD 306; and the real concern there was the matter of the persecutions under Diocletian and the fact that many of the Christians had lapsed. They had denied the faith under persecution. What do we do with these folk? Well, as a result of the discussion at the Synod of Elvira, they decided that those


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who had denied the faith under persecution should be forbidden to take communion. There they had a practical problem in a local meeting in order to deal with that.

Provincial or larger metropolitan areas began to have their council meetings; and eventually even the whole of the church in the great ecumenical councils which started at Nicea in 325 and which continued right down to the Vatican II Council of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s. We’re going to look more specifically at those ecumenical councils when we look at the development of doctrine in the life of the early church. And we’ll pick up that theme, along with some of the other themes that we’ll be coming to in the use of church manuals and church discipline in the life, as we come to our lecture in our next class.

May God bless you as you consider all of these things. And let me encourage you once again to take this fascinating collection of Richardson along with the materials of the Scriptures themselves and look at them in light of some of the issues and developments that we’re talking about and begin the process of working those through yourselves. And I think you’ll find it a great benefit and encouragement to your faith.

Church History to the Reformation CH506 ormation ef o the R t ory Church Hist … · 2019. 9....

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