Trail of BloodStudies

Church History As It relates To Missionary Baptists

Week 3 and 4 Century 101 – 200Review of the HistoryThe Church Jesus BuiltDoes it really make a difference?How do we know the Church Jesus built is still here today?Assignments: Trail of Blood, Introduction, Pages 3-6

Week 5 and 6 Century 201 – 300Review of the HistoryMANY LOYAL CHURCHES DECLARE NON-FELLOWSHIP260 MONTANISTS and TERTULLIANSchool at Alexandria, EgyptSchool at Antioch, IsraelBaptism and paganism The New Testament Church consists only of Believers in ChristWho should be baptized?None added but those capable of believing in JesusBaptized only after profession of faith in JesusBaptized by immersion onlyA Memorial and a TestimonyRestrictedAssignments: Trail of Blood, Introduction, Pages 6-10, Study Trail of Blood Chart

Trail of Blood

Modern Map of Same Area

Tertullian (ca. 150-225), classified as one of the early church fathers, was a notable early Christian apologist. He was born in the city of Carthage in North Africa. Both of his parents were pagan, and his father was a centurion. Tertullian received a thorough education in the knowledge of the Romans and the Greeks, and he apparently practiced law in Rome before his return to Carthage and conversion. His writings indicate that he did not become a Christian until he was in his thirties or forties. Tertullian apparently served as an elder or presbyter in Carthage, completely devoting his life to the ministry of Christ. Not only did he write apologetic works to the Romans, but he also composed a considerable number of writings in which he defended orthodox Christianity against various heretics. Tertullian also wrote exhortations for the Church itself. He lived during an era in which the Church was coming to grips with the reality that Christ had not returned within the expected time frame of the earliest Christians. Tertullian often felt that the leadership of the Church was growing complacent as it sought to find its place in a secular world which would be its home for the long haul. A number of his works speak out against capitulating not only to the direct pressures of Roman persecution but while the Church waits for Christ that it should not trade hope in God for dependency in the power of the Empire, including its economic, political and military power.

Like Paul, he rejected earthly power and advantage, including worldly education and social rank as "dung" in relation to the things of Christ, even concluding that Christian discipleship was incompatible with military service.

Tertullian (ca. 150-225) Continued: Until the time of Tertullian nearly all Christian works had been written in Greek. Although Tertullian was fluent in Greek and wrote several works in Greek, he penned most of his works in Latin--in order to benefit the growing number of western Christians who knew only Latin. This effort has often earned him the title of "The Father of Latin Christianity." In this effort Tertullian often developed Latin terminology to express ideas of christian theology that had previously been unique to the Greek language. He is well known for being the first to use the words "substance" and "person" to define God. Because of his fiery temperament and forceful convictions, nearly all of Tertullian's writings have polemic overtones. Church historian Phillip Schaff said of him: "He resembled a foaming mountain torrent rather than a calm, transparent river in the valley. His vehement temper was never fully subdued, although he struggled sincerely against it. He was a man of strong convictions, and never hesitated to express them without fear or favor. ...His polemics everywhere leave marks of blood. It is a wonder that he was not killed by the heathens, or excommunicated by the Catholics.” In his later years, having become ever more disturbed with the complacency he saw within the Church's leadership, Tertullian joined the charismatic Montanist sect.

His attraction to the Montanists was that they shared many of his views regarding that aforementioned ecclesial complacency, as well as a strict moralism fueled by their maintenance of the early Christian hope in the imminent return of Christ.

Tertullian (ca. 150-225) Continued: It is unfortunate that in subsequent decades after Tertullian's death the Montanists became extremely radical, if not outrightly heretical, causing latter theolgians to often dismiss him and his works.

Tertullian’s Apology (Apologeticus) is one of the best-known works of the pre-Nicene era. In it, he provides not only a stirring defense of Christianity to the Roman rulers, but takes exhaustive measures to show that Roman culture and religion is inferior and hopeless when compared to Christianity.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

The Montanists

Montanus lived in the Phrygian area of Asia Minor at the back end of the 2nd Century AD. He declared that the Holy Spirit was giving new revelations to the church, and named himself and two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, as prophets, although there were others. This was referred to as the New Prophecy. In the west, among the Montanist leaders was Proclus, with whom the Roman presbyter Gaius published a Debate.4

The emphases of the New Prophecy seem to have been on resisting persecution, fasting, and avoiding remarriage, together with hostility to any compromise with sin. Few of these points were controversial when judged against the ascetism of the next century. Tertullian tells us (in the quote by 'Praedestinatus' and in De Ieiunio) that the Spirit proclaimed no innovation in doctrine, but only gave directions about matters of church discipline, which were coming to be the prerogative of the bishop. It would seem that the Montanists were orthodox in all matters of doctrine.3

Responses to this were quite mixed in the church. After all, prophecy was a genuine gift of God, according to the New Testament. A reading of the anti-Montanist writers in Eusebius' Church History reveals a great deal of uncertainty among Christians at all levels as to whether the new prophecy was genuine or not. It seems also possible that Montanism in its homeland may have been heretical, but that it masked a genuine move of the Holy Spirit which in other places was entirely orthodox, and would today be regarded as pentecostal. In reality, it is very difficult to tell from the surviving remains, which include some wild rumours of the sort that circulate, albeit in good faith, where there is little real information and no means to check what is going on.

The Montanists

In Africa there was a lot of interest in the new prophecy, and Tertullian came to believe that it was genuine, accordingly mentioning it and defending it strongly in his later works. Unfortunately his work in defense of it, De ecstasi, in 7 books is lost. Tertullian fiercely attacks those who condemned the new prophecy, and in attacking the church authorities as more interested in their own political power in the church than in listening to the Spirit, he foreshadows the protestant reaction to papal claims.

Eventually Montanism was condemned by the bishop of Rome, and the Montanists were pushed out. They lingered on in Asia Minor for some centuries, some growing definitely heretical. Later fathers of the church wrote an occasional polemic against them.

Some modern pentecostals see the Montanists as the last flicker of the apostolic gifts of the spirit, although it seems that the apostolic age was already over before the Montanists began.. Whether they were or not, thereafter no-one claiming to have the gift of prophecy was likely to be well-received in the church, and any genuine move of the spirit was certainly quenched.

School of Alexandria, the first Christian institution of higher learning, founded in the mid-2nd century ad in Alexandria, Egypt. Under its earliest known leaders (Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen), it became a leading centre of the allegorical method of biblical interpretation, espoused a rapprochement between Greek culture and Christian faith, and attempted to assert orthodox Christian teachings against heterodox views in an era of doctrinal flux. Opposing the School of Alexandria was the School of Antioch, which emphasized the literal interpretation of the Bible. Until the time of Constantine, Alexandria blossomed as the second city of the Roman Empire, after Rome itself. It took pride in its famous library and its reputation as the center for Greek philosophy and learning. We have seen that Philo strove to integrate Greek philosophy with Judaism; early Christians followed his lead, as they worked to integrate philosophy with Christianity.

Around A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria (a Church Father, c. 150-215) taught that just as God gave the Law to the Jews, so he gave philosophy to the Greeks--as an instrument to lead them to Christ. God’s eternal Word (Logos) was the source of both. Clement believed the truth was to be found in Scripture, but sometimes it was hidden, and could only be discovered through allegorical interpretation.

The School at Alexandria

Clement did insist, however, that the Scriptures had a literal, historical sense--a primary meaning--that had to be respected. But allegorical reading could find further, "spiritual" meanings containing universal and eternal truths, an idea reflecting Plato.

Clement’s idea of God as transcendent, beyond all knowledge or definition, is also Platonic, although his Christian faith affirmed God’s Word (Logos), the source of all creation and all knowledge, especially the knowledge of God. The Logos was incarnate in Jesus, the Son of God. The Holy Spirit functioned to attract the believer to God, to seek true knowledge. Such knowledge was the true gnosis, characterized by faith, not to be confused with the false gnosisof the heretics, which was incomplete because it was not grounded in knowledge of the Scriptures.

The School at Alexandria

Modern Map of Same Area

The School at Antioch

School of Antioch there were those who did not follow the method introduced by the School of Alexandria. Gilbert notes: Theodore and John may be said to have gone far toward a scientific method of exegesis inasmuch as they saw clearly the necessity of determining the original sense of Scripture in order to make any profitable use of the same. To have kept this end steadily in view was a great achievement It made their work stand out in strong contrast by the side of the Alexandrian school. Their interpretation was extremely plain and simple as compared with that of Origen. They utterly rejected the allegorical method. Of the value, significance, and influence of this school, Farrar says: . . .the School of Antioch possessed a deeper insight into the true method of exegesis than any which preceded or succeeded it during a thousand years . . . their system of Biblical interpretation approached more nearly than any other to that which is now adopted by the Reformed Churches throughout the world, and that if they had not been too uncharitably anathematized by the angry tongue, and crushed by the iron hand of a dominant orthodoxy, the study of their commentaries, and the adoption of their exegetic system, might have saved Church commentaries from centuries of futility and error. Diodorus of Tarsus must be regarded as the true founder of the School of Antioch. He was a man of eminent learning and of undisputed piety.

He was the teacher of Chrysostom and of Theodore of Mopsuestia.... His books were devoted to an exposition of Scripture in its literal sense, and he wrote a treatise, now unhappily lost, "on the difference between allegory and spiritual insight“ But the ablest, the most decided, and the most logical representative of the School of Antioch was Theodore of Mopsuestia(428). That clear-minded and original thinker stands out like a "rock in the morass of ancient exegesis.“

The School at Antioch

... He was a Voice not an Echo; a Voice amid thousands of echoes which repeated only the emptiest sounds. He rejected the theories of Origen, but he had learnt from him the indispensable importance of attention to linguistic details especially in commenting on the New Testament.

He pays close attention to particles, moods, prepositions, and to terminology in general He points out the idiosyncrasies. . . of St. Paul's style. . . . He is almost the earliest writer who gives much attention to Hermeneutic matters, as for instance in his Introductions to the Epistles to Ephesus and Colossae. . . . His highest merit is his constant endeavor to study each passage as a whole and not as "an isolated congeries of separate texts.

He first considers the sequence of thought, then examines the phraseology and the separate clauses, and finally furnishes us with an exegesis which is often brilliantly characteristic and profoundly suggestive.

We would have a different history of interpretation had the method of the Antioch School prevailed. Unfortunately for sound interpretation, the ecclesiasticism of the established church, which depended for its position on the allegorical method, prevailed, and the views of the Antioch School were condemned as heretical.

The School of Antioch Versus The School of Alexandria: Source of Christology Issues

Different individuals emphasized either Christ's divinity or his humanity, just as they had done before.

Those who emphasized his divinity tended to ignore his humanity: the theological School of Alexandria.

Those who emphasized his humanity did not deny his divinity, they simply made a distinction between divinity and humanity: the School of Antioch.

Theologians of the School of Alexandria argued that one could not distinguish clearly between Christ's humanity and divinity because a) Christ was fully divine [council of Nicaea] and b) divinity was infinite and could not be limited and human in any way.

The School of Antioch was one of the two major centers of the study of biblical exegesis and theology during Late Antiquity; the other was the catechetical school of Alexandria. This group was known by this name because the advocates of this tradition were based in the city of Antioch, one of the major cities of the ancient Roman Empire.

While the Christian intellectuals of Alexandria emphasized the allegorical interpretation of Scriptures and tended toward a christology that emphasized the union of the human and the divine, those in Antioch held to a more literal and occasionally typological exegesis and a christology that emphasized the distinction between the human and the divine in the person of Jesus Christ. The school in general tended to what might be called, in a rather loose sense, an Adoptionist Christology.... Nestorius, before becoming Patriarch of Constantinople, had been a monk at Antioch and had there become imbued with the principles of the Antiochene theological school....

The School of Antioch is best divided into three periods: the early school (270-early fourth century) the middle school (350-433) the late school (after 433)

Is it from pagan origin. No,,,,, 1.)The word of God was written by prophets. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2.) The same was in the beginning with God. 3.) All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4.) In him was life; and the life was the light of men. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 5.) Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.Acts 2:39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. 40 And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizes thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?26 John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able. 23 And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father. Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? 48 And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then prayed they him to tarry certain days.

Baptism and Paganism

Baptism and Paganism

Trail of Blood Studies

– Admit where we are on this journey!

– Knowing the history helps

– Study the history and bible

– Build confidence

– Commit to serving Jesus

– Tell others

THE MESSAGE OF THE PROPHETS OF THE OLD

TESTAMENT WAS

2000 A.D.

1400 B.C..

Moses

Creation of world 2500

B.C.400 B.C..