A Beginner’S Abc of Christian History

By Bernard Thorogood

If you have some interest in the story of the Christian church through the ages but have not tackled any of the large, comprehensive volumes that seem daunting, this is a starting point. It provides a brief introduction to over a hundred topics, from Adam to Zionism. The author provides a vivid glimpse of the great movers in church history and of the movements that have created the church as it is today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543401547

Bernard Thorogood

Bernard Thorogood is a retired minister in the Uniting Church in Australia. His first ministry was in the islands of Polynesia from 1953 to 1970, with emphasis on the training of pastors. From 1970 to 1980 he was General Secretary of the London Missionary Society/ Council for World Mission, and from 1980 to 1992 he served as General Secretary of the United Reformed Church in the UK. He was awarded OBE and DD (Lambeth) in 1992. He lives in a suburb of Sydney

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Copyright © 2017 by Bernard Thorogood.

Library of Congress Control Number:         2017908849

ISBN:                     Hardcover               978-1-5434-0156-1

                               Softcover                 978-1-5434-0155-4

                               eBook                      978-1-5434-0154-7

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Rev. date: 07/11/2017

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Contents

Introduction

Topics

A Beginner’s Abc Of Christian History

INTRODUCTION

Most church history is written in very large books which are daunting for readers who are just exploring this subject. This ABC is intended for such readers. It is obviously incomplete; I have been selective in limiting the number of topics, but I hope that many of the main influences are mentioned, and may lead to much fuller reading.

I have included some opinion as well as fact and the reader will need to note the distinction. My own background is in the Reformed tradition, so that has been an inescapable bias and comes as a warning.

In making this selection I have been struck again by the fact that all the upheavals, schisms and failures of the church, which have affected greatly the senior leadership, have not shifted believers from their commitment to Christ. We do not record the steadfast faithfulness of the laity. Leaders need to listen to the people.

When I reflect on the two millennia, the two great schisms stand out as tragic events which at the time seemed inevitable. The break between Eastern and Western Churches meant that through all the second millennium the two strong streams of faith could not meet and enrich each other. The Reformation, 500 years later, broke Europe into Catholic and Protestant, with untold pain and misunderstanding. These divisions could only have been avoided by leaders with generosity, humility and wisdom. At the critical times they were missing.

We can notice, through the years, the swings in theology. The Gospels emphasise the sort of life we are to live, the kind of characters we become, the commitments we make and the confidence we have in God. In the church of the fourth and fifth centuries the emphasis shifted towards a faith which is assent to doctrine; you must believe the right things, as in the creed. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Enlightenment brought an individualism to faith, with an emphasis on what you personally feel. Your inner assurance was the key. Now, in recent years, the mood has swung towards a socially conscious faith to be expressed in the constant struggle for social justice. Faith is indeed a broad river.

How paradoxical the story of the church has been – at once a tottering edifice and a strong bulwark; marred by all sorts of corruption and cruelty, blessed with every variety of martyr, apostle, saint and visionary; defensive and introspective yet sending missionaries to every part of the world; claiming to be the spiritual home of all humankind, yet divided into exclusive domains. Perhaps it is best to say that it is a very human institution that is always beset by the Spirit of God and the inescapable calling, ‘’Follow me.’’

NOTE: Bible quotations are from The Revised English Bible, Oxford University Press 1989

TOPICS

Quakers

Xavier

A BEGINNER’S ABC OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY

A

Adam        In the ancient legends of creation in many cultures the characters are symbols representing the life that is given and the god who gives it. So most Christians read of Adam as Man and Eve as Woman, the symbols of our humanity. We can only regard them as historical if we also deny all the evidence of geology, palaeontology and biology – which some Christians still feel able to do.

The two Hebrew narratives of creation in chapters 1 and 2 Genesis reveal humankind as both part of nature and apart from nature. At home in the natural world, man is formed of the dust of the earth. Alone in awareness of the divine, man is set apart to oversee and cherish the world of nature. This vital balance – part and apart – was largely neglected by the Christian church until stirred by the scientific revolution and latterly by the Green movement.

Humanity is also revealed to us as the unsatisfied being. The garden may be lovely but that is not enough, for if something is forbidden then that is what we seek. The knowledge of good and evil was forbidden for the intention of the Creator was for humanity to rejoice in singleness of vision. It is precisely the loss of that singleness, so Genesis suggests, that makes us people with divergent possibilities – but also with the richness of experience that makes us interesting and creative.

Adam was taken to be a historical figure who begets a marred humanity. So it was possible to understand Jesus as the second Adam who restores humanity to fellowship with God. It is, perhaps, an unhelpful description for readers in an age when the follies and failures of churches have been on display, the old Adam still very much alive.

Arius and Athanasius        were great contenders and debaters in the early church, both of them utterly convinced they were right about the incarnation, ready to do battle for the truth. It all seems remote to us. Arius fought for the doctrine that the Son was created by the Father and was subordinate to the Father. Athanasius held that Father and Son were eternal, one divinity, so that Jesus Christ was divinity in flesh. The difference between ‘’of like nature’’ and ‘’of one nature’’ became the war of words. The issue was settled at the Council of Nicaea in 325 where Athanasius prevailed. Neither man came to a happy end for their bellicose nature did not win them friends. But they remind us that points of doctrine were vital to those who were shaping the life of the church in its formative years.

Architecture        The earliest model that we know of for a church building was the Roman basilica, the hall of justice in every Roman town. In small places it was a simple hall with a platform at one end for the judges; in the post-Constantine period, this could be used for worship with the clergy or elders occupying the seats on the platform, with the table or altar before them. When the growing church developed its own buildings, the Roman technology for domes was used to create larger spaces and this technique reached its apogee in Byzantium where the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was an awe-inspiring construction. The Russian Church developed intricate and colourful domes and often built in wood. In the Western Church most of the significant building was associated with the monastic movement. Part of the monastery complex was a church designed for the religious community, with the monks seated facing across a central aisle, so that the psalms and prayers could be sung or spoken responsively. The public area, the nave, was secondary to this choir, often with a screen separating the two sections.

Buildings became more complex, with cross sections or transepts to accommodate more people. The key to height was the stone column and the round arch which could lift the ceiling high above the worshippers. The Norman style, in the 10th to 12th centuries, was for massive columns and simple decoration and relatively small windows. A major change came in the 12th century when Abbot Suger in a Benedictine monastery north of Paris designed his church with pointed arches and windows. Greater height and larger windows became possible, so that, with the development of coloured glass, the space could be flooded with light and the ceiling raised to 25 or even 30 metres. The style, called Gothic, was elaborated with complex pillars, fan vaulting, complex ground plans and tall towers. Village churches were often small, simple variations on the major theme. All kept the focus on the altar.

Those who departed from the Roman tradition at the Reformation tended towards another emphasis, that of preaching and so the pulpit. Their buildings were designed for the speaker and hearer. This often meant a square plan with a gallery on three sides and the pulpit on the fourth, with little decoration. This pattern endured, proving effective for hymn singing as well as preaching. Modern buildings use much greater flexibility, are often circular or octagonal, and incorporate striking coloured glass.

As in the temples of other faiths, the aim of Christian architecture was to provide a lasting, distinctive, significant building which spoke of the wonder of God and called the worshipper to kneel and pray.

Augustine        was born in 354, grew up as a clever lad, behaved with the freedom of all young men at that time – stealing pears from a neighbour’s orchard (he made a great deal of that in his writing) and, in his early twenties, taking a mistress and having a son by her – finding favour at court as a public orator; then having a religious experience, a conversion from a worldly life to a religious life of celibacy. His brilliance in writing and speaking led to him becoming bishop of Hippo (in what is now Algeria). He became the outstanding teacher of theology for the church.

Looking back at his own experience he was obsessed with sin, and spent much of his book ‘’Confessions’’ thinking about this corruption of God’s creation, which was called ‘’original sin’’, and the Christian answer to sin in the offering of Christ on the cross. He came to see sex as temptation, the way in which the devil perverts human life. He came to believe that men and women can do nothing entirely good, that all human effort fails to save us, so that we are entirely dependent on the grace of God. He wrote about the Trinity, the devotional life and the broad range of church order. His greatest writing was in ‘’The City of God’’, written at the time when the Roman world was beginning to disintegrate and the barbarians were at the gates. He saw the divine city as the church, holy and eternal, existing regardless of what happened to the city of Rome and all the learning of the philosophers.

Augustine set the tone of Catholic teaching for most of the two millennia, and his discounting of human progress led the Catholic Church to oppose much modern knowledge and discovery from Galileo to Darwin, with very unfortunate results.

Abelard        Born about 1080, Peter Abelard is the romantic among the great theological thinkers. He was an academic teacher and delighted in asking awkward questions of the ancient writers. He revealed many errors in the translations of the Bible that were available at that time. He preached that Christian morality is not about obedience to the laws of the church but is responding to the love of God. He