#3 “The Golden Slipper Age” and The Fall of Rome

hello Heroes before I begin with today's lecture I would like to thank Everton for doing such a great job my three Tas your Tas for doing such great jobs and for my videographer Nick who has been doing and will continue to do such a great job okay today we're going to be looking at series one lecture three the title is the Golden Slipper age and the fall of Rome we will be working through the Christian faith in the early centuries looking at boundaries and Orthodoxy and I believe on Moodle you have the required or guideline

reading and supplemental reading suggestions I hope by the time you are hearing this that Walton chart number 19 will have been deleted that turns out to be in a later lecture here's your devotional have you ever noticed how well children learn Bible verses or anything else like The Alphabet Song by singing you can learn many things children and adults when they're put to music when I was eight years old my father played a record called that was the year that was and to this day I still have so much memorized from that album most of

the words I did not understand but because it was put to music I remembered the words can you think of a favorite Melody and words hopefully a Christian tune sometimes you can't get out of your head and that's a good thing but again it shows the power of music and teaching of the Bible and theology have you heard of Martin Luther who helped with the Protestant Reformation or some would call the Christian Reformation reforming of the Catholic church but then moved on beyond the Roman Catholic Church Martin Luther took a popular pub Melody and put

Christian words to it and we have it as a Mighty Fortress Is Our God a bul workk never failing I believe it is based on Psalm 46 and I bring this up because the great in terms of influence over the church for a while heretic Aras put his heretical views into musical form they were very popular among the people as they hummed and sang his songs as they went about their business it took the brilliant minds and writings of Augustine of Hippo athanasius and others to begin to put an end to people believing in aras's

views that Jesus Christ the Christ was not fully God we sing God in three persons Blessed Trinity because God the Father God the son God the Holy Spirit are fully God Jesus as the God man was and is both he started as a human in Mary's womb and will be human and fully God through the rest of Eternity like to look first after that devotional at the Golden Slipper age while there were occasional sporadic persecutions of the the church after the religious tolerance Edict of in ad 313 under emperor Constantine Christianity became more and more

accepted politically until in 381 under Emperor theodosius a year before the Council of Constantinople the Roman Catholic Church was recognized as the official religion of the Roman Empire Christianity had come come a long way from its Beginnings through occasional persecutions and it had grown so much even in the midst of persecutions one Church father said the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church additionally the bishop and historian eus states that Constantine was marching with his army when he looked up to the Sun and saw a Cross of light above it and with

it the Greek words uto Nika in this conquer a phrase often put into Latin as inhu signno winus in this sign you will conquer at first Constantine did not know the meaning of The Apparition but on the following night he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should used the sign of the cross against his enemies many centuries later the Crusaders and the Portuguese and Spanish conquerors in the Western Hemisphere would use the sign of the cross here is an image of Portuguese Sals with the cross on them so conquering in

the Name of Christ is it best a mixed bag because Jesus was the Prince of Peace the Portuguese and Spanish brought Catholicism to the Western Hemisphere along with looking for gold and doing some enslaving of people made in God's image but in our time there is revival going on in many places in the Western Hemisphere at the church where I and my wife are now members it is a great joy to me to see the youth the young adults be very involved they're very active in Christian leadership evangelism and in other things and I did

a little bit of research I see that for many years there has been a great Revival especially among young people in Brazil I see in 2022 an amazing work of God with some people on the Amazon if I have the privilege of teaching church history too I plan on having one lecture that will be a case study on Christianity in Brazil with the emphasis being on that Revival over the last few decades and I believe some of you perhaps many of you are part of that Revival but I return to the theme of this part

of the lecture what is meant by the phrase the Golden Slipper age it has to do with Christianity being the popular religion to join if you want to to get ahead in the emperor's Court declare yourself a Christian this is in stark contrast to the times of persecution when you knew who the real Christians were because there were no worldly benefits to being a Christian one such contemporary example is a man in the Middle East let's call him Frank as far as persecution goes he and a friend of mine I will call him Oscar began

only with prayer now they have a team of two or three Christians who minister to over 1,000 children and several churches have been started Oscar reports that Frank was called in by the state security service and told to stop preaching the gospel he told them in a respectful way as they did in the book of Acts that he needed to do what God told him to do they told him he needed to go to the capital city to meet with security people he did and he said it went well then he returned home that is

in contrast to the situation from Constantine onward for years that turned into centuries people said they were Christians so they could get ahead anytime and anywhere that that happens it is called a Golden Slipper age when the first such age started there was a reaction how could people show they were true Christians instead of I want to get a job Christian from Constantine onward there was a decline in Christian commitment so you had the development of the monastic and aesthetic response to official Christian Christianity people withdrew from society to live lives of worship and Service

as groups Andor individually Andor lived with minimal material things here is what Bruce Shelly writes or says this is somewhat of a paraphrase in his church history John the Baptist lived an aesthetic life a life of self-denial Jesus told at least one young man to get rid of his possessions if he wanted to find eternal life but Jesus realized that this man had made his possessions his Idol and um he does say elsewhere if anyone come after me let him deny himself pick up his cross and follow me but he doesn't tell everybody to give

up their all their worldly Goods but the apostle Paul also in Galatians 5:17 argued that the flesh less against the spirit and the spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary the one to the other that's from the King James version of course Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding and said he was of accused of being a wine Biber one who drank too much wine and Paul encouraged people to live regular lives while living in the Light of Christ and Jesus encourages us to be Salt and Light where we are the first writing

where we have two levels of morality comes in The Shepherd of Hermos written approximately ad140 some Christians called for self-denial especially celibacy but Paul calls singleness a gift and a rare one and Jesus affirmed marriage one of my 20th century Christian Heroes was John stot God gave him the gift of celibacy he has told people or he did tell people you know there were times where he was close to marriage but it didn't happen but he used his gift of singleness to welcome individual young men and he discipled them and they were kicked out of

the vicarage or the parsonage uh when they got married and one of those was Dr David Wells whom I had the privilege of taking contemporary theology from and he told me that John stot was one of those people whom you get to know him down to his innards he's one of the few who was the same outside as he was inside so and he gave away the money he earned through teaching speaking writing publishing books he spoke at bbana many times a one-third went to uh help educate majority World Episcopalian now Anglican uh people to

be teachers in their countries onethird went to help get books basic books for pastors in the majority world I forget what the third one was I think it was another Foundation that he had so he lived very simply but he was in the world but not of it so that is a kind and then in a sense you could say it was a Protestant Monastery but again they were not fully withdrawn in the men who lived there eventually got married the first kind of manast icism was actually an individual Hermit the word hermit comes from

the Greek word for desert and hearkens back to the first one in the Egyptian desert his name was Anthony he was born in 250 he sold all he had and lived by himself his example was contagious athanasius wrote in a somewhat exaggerated way the sign of Sol solitary Aesthetics rules from one end of the Earth to another so it was very popular the church historian Bruce Shelly writes that the hermit often fled not So Much from the world as from the world in the church and that's what I've been communicating to you getting away from

the Golden Slipper Christians but a Hermit was in danger of extreme individualism and I would remind you that pretty much everything including this lecture is on PDF I do add some things to it sometimes but the large majority is in the PDF that is on the Moodle page for this class one hermit named Simeon styes dislike people so much that he put up a pillar and made the top of it its home his home for 30 years and yet people still came and hollered up to him asking him for advice or Council monastic groupings eventually

became the norm instead of individual Hermits athanasius helped develop that with his work the life of St Anthony athanasius actually started a group during one of his Exiles monasteries grew their own food food had intense prayer Bible reading and worship times there would also be medical help to the community sometimes they started serving the community in which they live through Education Health or in other ways an example of this was the organization Maria Francesca Cabrini started she was born and grew up in Italy and became a nun there and she wanted to be a missionary

to China but the pope sent her to minister to Italians in New York City but sometimes God's will can be like a pinball so she obeys goes to New York City but she wounds up organizing to minister to the poorest of the poor in New York City regardless of ethnic background she founded One hospital and eventually there were many Cabrini hospitals around the world including in China so God helped her reach her goal but not quite the way that she had anticipated as Greg Glory with Harvest is uh an evangelist but God called him to

start a church and he eventually realized some of the church members can help him with his Harvest Crusades and the there is a movie about Cabrini called Cabrini that you might want to see the monastic life got its strongest start through Benedict but we will learn about him on a later lecture I turn now to a further discussion of heresies and the Orthodox response do you remember what my theology professor said we are defined by our opponents I would like to back up to the Apostles Creed which could have been first developed and I believe

it was in ad150 it's based on the Bible have you heard the news boy song I believe in God the father and if you hear it you have just heard We Believe by the news boys and they were inspired by Billy Graham to put together that song and it is based on the Apostles Creed the form of the Apostles Creed that was eventually developed could have been in response to marcion who did not like the Old Testament or Old Testament God or anything he thought was Jewish the Apostles Creed is so biblically based that even

my Mormon friends tell me they agree with it one came to a worship service of mine in elsewhere in Southern California and we as a congregation said the Apostles Creed together and he said I agree with that it's the later Creeds that I disagree with and do you remember that Mormons or maybe you don't know much about the Mormons they say that they are latterday Saints because the original Church got too influenced by Greek philosophy well while you do not want to give what was Excuse me while you do not want to give into the

spirit of the age you do need to interact with the culture you find yourself in I have adapted a Rick Warren saying on preaching to say it is presenting the Timeless truths of the Bible to meet the everyday needs of people in an everchanging Society of course preaching is first of all meant to glorify God and declare God's glory in the fourth and fifth century more heresies developed that needed a response while some of the words used might not be directly in the Bible you can see evidence of them in the Bible for instance the

word Trinity technically is not in the Bible but there are references in the Bible to the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit and it is clear that Jesus is fully God and fully human here are the heresies that led up to the Council of NAA and most of these are talked about in Walton's charts monarchianism included adoptionism and sanism and these are important not because there's some dusty heresy and they're important to learn which they are but they keep showing up because there's nothing new Under the Sun and I'll talk about that some more

in this lecture or future lectures or both adoptionism taught and still teaches through some groups that Jesus became the Christ Messiah at his baptism and that he was adopted by the father after his death this goes against the clear teachings of the gospels namely that before he assumed bodily form in the womb of Mary the one we called Jesus the Christ was the son of God and word of God from before all eternity selus lived in the early 3rd Century he taught the strict Unity of the godhead that God was one person three names or

one God reveals himself in three ways and this is instead of God in three persons Blessed Trinity which we believe there would be shades of civilianisation in the 1500s but by far the greatest threat to the Christian faith in the early 4th century was aryanism named for Aras from Alexandria in Egypt he taught that Christ is the first created being which is a misrepresentation of Colossians 1 15-17 which is so important that I hope you will listen to it now look it up in your Portuguese Bible if you wish the son is the image of

the invisible God the firstborn over all creation for in him all things were created things on earth visible and invisible whether Thrones or powers or rulers or authorities all things have been created through him and for him he he is before all things and in him all things hold together thanks be to God arus basically lifted one part of this passage and used it out of context Jesus the Christ is the image of the invisible God or you could say he shows us god with skin on in him all things were created he could not

therefore create himself he is before all things meaning he never had a beginning but what made Aras even more dangerous was his ability to put his theological views into popular songs as I shared during the devotional have you ever heard a song or a Melody that was hard to get out of your head I know I have I mean there's wonderful Christian songs where it's that way uh there are a couple pieces of class classical music that are that way with me for instance the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony or the Fourth Movement of

brahm's First Symphony I'm not putting this into this lecture recording because of its length but you can listen to those if you wish well Aras had people singing humming and whistling his tunes and if you want to read more about the nature and influence of of aras's songs Take a Look online at a Blog that writes about the poisonous songs of Aras I provide the entire URL in the PDF that you have on Moodle here is what OJ Brown writes about aryanism leading up to the Council of NAA the Theology of Aras seems to be

inspired by two different concerns or motifs one spiritual one moral the other philosophical or theological so there's two within the one and two within the other the spiritual moral Motif was aras's conviction that Christ does not possess deity by nature but develops into it by virtue of his constant and growing more moral unity with God Jesus is an example which is a common teaching among liberal Christians and others to this very day one day some years ago I was speaking with a dear Mormon friend she was the wife she came with her husband that day

to my church but we were outside in the parking lot and of the church and uh there was a class of uh Mormon students homeschooled that met at my church week before every week uh and it had been there before I came and they asked me to share My Views one time so I had it I had earned the opportunity for that kind of dialogue so I was sharing with her how much I like Augustine or Austine she said I like that other guy I said you mean Aras she said yes so here was someone

in the 21st century identifying with an early church heretic her church does not View knew him as heretical but in line with her group's views we are defined by our opponents we continued and continued to be friends but that brief conversation was very eye openening to me so back to Constantine after trying to settle the theological dispute through tact and appealing to sympathy emperor Constantine called together the two Sid at a place called NAA in what is today turkey it was not I think we'll call it the nyine Creed just made up a name now

that was where they met Aras and his supporters arriv feeling cocky expecting Victory Aras was apparently a pretty proud person the Aryans made the mistake of opening NAA by presenting their own statement of faith that flatly denied the deity of Christ and this startled even the least understanding members of the uncommitted majority the Caledonian Creed that was adopted was quite explicit excuse me the nyine Creed and the Caledonian but primarily the nyine it was quite explicit about Jesus Christ calling him the word of God God of God light of light life of Life the only

begotten firstborn son firstborn of all creation begotten of the father before all ages the Creed teaches that the son is of the same substance as the father the Aryans taught that the son is of a different substance from the father that is created further the Aryans taught that the son was subordinate to the father in other words he was not equal to him Constantine threw his full support behind the Creed he did not allow Aras to go back to Alexandria Egypt where he had many supporters he also ordered the burning of aras's writings and immediately

began to take repressive measures against his supporters to summarize NAIA and caladon declared the Son of God this would have been niia homo Usos that is co-equal well actually caladon was the Creed of caladon was also against Aras uh and let me back up to caladon declared the Son of God as homo usas that is co-equal consubstantial of the same substance and co-eternal caladon directly condemned areas later in the fourth Century the Brave and Brilliant athanasius would write four discourses against Aras between ad. 356 and 360 during his third Exile athanasius provided these four orations

in installments his Focus was always on soteriology or the fact that Jesus is our savior listen to his words from the opening of his first discourse so while those who are far from the true faith may continue to shun it Those whom it has deceived May repent and opening the eyes of their heart May understand that darkness is not light nor falsehood truth nor aryanism good no that those who call these men Christians are in great and Grievous error as neither having studied scripture nor understanding Christianity at all and the faith which is it contains

close quote you can find the full discourses using key words uh that you can find in this part of the lecture someone else who wrote powerfully against athanasius was Augustine he was arguably the greatest Christian mind after Paul origin was great also Martin Luther John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards were also amazing Minds who brought every thought captive to the glory of God Augustine combined head and heart in everything he wrote and I really like the image that you're seeing on the screen now as it combines both mind and heart I would like to share more

about his life before talking about his response to aryanism Augustine or augustinus or Aurelius AUST Inus hippon nus was born in ad. 354 to a Roman soldier father and a Christian father hippon NIS simply means of Hippo which is where he lived and led much of his life I will return to that later ethnically he was a Berber a group indigenous to Africa and south of the Mediterranean Coast as a young man he departed from the Christian faith both with regard to right belief which we now know as Orthodoxy and right living called orthopraxy he

was attracted to the heresy of manism which was a dualistic religious system with Christian Gnostic and Pagan elements founded in Persia in the 3 Century by Manis around 216 to 276 the system was based on a supposed primeval conflict between light and darkness so it combined elements of Christianity heretical faith and non-Christian Pagan elements that is called syncretism and the Roman Catholic church today including in Brazil in some areas with some tribes has elements of syncretism Augustine also lived with a woman who was not his wife he wrote openly about his beliefs and his life

after he returned to his Christian faith in his classic book entitled confessions but before I share with you about his return to the Christian faith I would like to tell you about his mother named Monica she had a vision where she heard that her son would return to Faith before she died that is what happened actually they were able to have some time in mutual Christian Fellowship so when parents come to me concerned mainly about their teenagers maybe young adult children who have departed from the historic Christian faith I tell them I will pray with

them and for them but also to remember Monica an example of how God did bring someone back to himself Augustine had several influences on establishing a new the ancient Faith as his contemporary named Jerome put it those influences included disillusionment with manism the sermons of Ambrose reading the life of Anthony the Monk and especially a personal experience while reflecting in a garden Augustine hears a child's voice chanting take up and read he picked up a version of Romans 133 and 14 which was available at that time there's a certain kind of translation that is mentioned

he reads that passage he opens it and it says not in rry and drunkenness not in debauchery and wantedness not in strife and jealousy but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and as for the flesh take no thought for its lust end quote this action confir confirms his conversion to Catholicism according to Wikipedia after this experience Augustine seeks to live a quiet life of contemplation to the south of the Mediterranean Sea he's basically starts a monastery but in 391 he visited hippo on the coast he attended a sermon by the bishop valerus who said we

need Augustine to be the bishop of Hippo so the gathered around him and despite his saying I don't want to be the bishop he was ordained Bishop on the spots and that's the only mob ordination of a bishop that I'm aware of in church history again before looking at Augustine's direct and indirect writings against Aras and arianism let's look at some of Augustine's other writings after Rome fell in 410 to the Visigoths Augustine responded to Pagan accusations that the decline of Empire and the fall of Rome were because the pagan gods were being disrespected by

writing the city of God Augustine contrasted the spiritual city with the human City Augustine developed the Biblical teaching of original sin in his work by the same name Wayne gudum a great contemporary Theologian calls inherited sin whatever you call it Christians believe that sin originated by the original sin committed by Adam and Eve and that it is inherited it comes down in the human spiritual DNA in every generation when it comes to Augustine's sermons he drew upon his previous training in rhetoric and speaking he gave between 6,000 and 10,000 sermons all of which which were

recorded by stenographers 500 have survived he started he would start his message a few steps up at the front of the church but he came down to the level literally of those who were listening to him and he would ask questions he would take questions he wrote about five times concerning the Book of Genesis a subtext of all of Augustine's writing on Genesis was his deter DET mination to validate the goodness of God and of creation itself against manak and dualism when it comes to his writings against Aras and Aryans here is the opening of

that work with a connection to early Genesis and it's important to hear all of this and to read it of all other heresies which have departed from the truth it is owledge that they have but devised a Madness and their irr religiousness has long since become notorious to all men for that their authors went out from us it plainly follows as the Blessed John has written in his first letter that they never thought nor now think with us where as says the Savior and that they gather not with us they scatter with the devil and

keep an eye on those who Slumber that by the second and sowing of their own mortal poison they may have companions in death but whereas one heresy and that the last which is now risen as harbinger of antichrist the Aryan as it is called considering that other heresies her Elder sisters have been openly prescribed put away in other words in her craft and cunning affects to array herself in scripture language like her father the devil and is forcing her way back into the church's Paradise that with the pretense of Christianity Christianity her smooth sophistry for

a reason she has none may deceive men into wrong thoughts of Christ n since she has already seduced certain of the foolish not only to corrupt their ears but even to take and eat with Eve till in their ignorance which ensues they think Bittersweet and admire this loathsome heresy on this account I have thought it necessary at your request to unrip the folds of its breastplate and to show the ill saavor of its Folly so while those who are far from it may continue to shun it Those whom it has deceived May repent and opening

the eyes of their heart May understand that darkness is not light nor falsehood truth nor for arianism good nay that those who call these men Christians are in great and Grievous error as neither having studied scripture nor understanding Christianity at all and the faith which it contains close quote as was the case with all his writings Augustine made a very powerful case for his time and his influence spread far beyond hippo and has come down through Through Time his work on the Trinity also exposes the falsehoods of aryanism I find it interesting that both Catholics

and Protestants look back to Augustine for theological and biblical support or at least theological Protestants look to his writings on Grace interestingly Martin Luther was an augustinian Monk and could well have read Augustine's teaching on Grace salvation by grace alone was a major part of Luther's teachings but Augustine was also a strong supporter of the Catholic structure and he looks back the Catholic Church looks back to that he wrote against the adonus who today might be simply charismatics but they were outside the norm of the Catholic hierarchy and therefore in Augustine's view to be condemned

by the way in our time the Catholic Church welcomes charismatics within its fold here are two examples the associate Supreme Court Justice is a Catholic in good standing and is a charismatic Amy Cony Barrett the second example is an image in 2019 when Pope Francis met with representatives from the Catholic Charismatic renewal International service Augustine also wrote and spoke against another heresy called pelagianism it is named for Pelagius who was a British monk who taught in Rome just before the fall of Rome he taught that man is born is born essentially good and capable of

doing what is necessary for salvation here is some of what Augustine wrot writes against in in two letters against Pelagius Augustine shows that both heresies that of the manans and of the pelagians are opposed and equally odious to the Catholic faith whereby we profess first that the nature created by a good God was good but that nevertheless it is in need of a sa savior because of original sin which is passed into all men from the transgression of the first man the the law is good but in such wise as only to manifest sin not

to take it away that Free Will is assuredly inherent in the nature of man but that now however it is so enslaved that it does not available Avail to the doing of righteousness unless when it shall have been made free by grace in conclusion he brings forward the testimonies of cyprien and Ambrose on behalf of the Catholic faith some concerning original sin others about the assistance of grace and the last concerning the imperfection of present righteousness close quote before concluding with two heresies or controversies I would like to walk you through a spectrum of views

on pelagianism it's very helpfully put together in Walton's charts pelagianism teaches that humans are born essenti good and capable of doing what is necessary for salvation semipelagianism teaches that the grace of God and the will of man work together in Salvation in which man must take the initiative semi augustinianism holds that the grace of God comes to all enabling a person to choose and perform what is necessary for salvation augustinianism teaches that every human is dead in sin salvation is totally by the grace of God which is given only to the elect while this is

not a theology or Bible study I will let you know that I agree with what Augustine teaches not because it is Augustine but because I find it to be most in line with the Bible as did Calvin Jonathan Edwards and as does John Piper in our day along with many others one minor yet important heresy to discuss is called Macedonian ISM because it originated in Macedonia which is just North of Greece it is also called Numa tomak ISM Numa means Spirit the heresy taught that the holy spirit is a created being many fathers wrote in

opposition to Macedonian ISM including athanasius the great basil the great Gregory of Nisa and Gregory of nazianzen Macedonian ISM was condemned at the second ecumenical council which inserted the following words into the nying Creed and I believe in the Holy Spirit the Lord The Giver of Life who proceeds from the father who with the father and the son together is worshiped and glorified who spoke by the prophets close quote there is one other controversy that I want you to know about for many centuries it was viewed as a heresy but new information has come to

light it is not called a heresy anymore I will address it in the next lecture which will begin to look at the history of Christianity in Asia it is called the nistoran controversy until next time heroes go forth and minister in the name of Jesus Amen