Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

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Donatus led a protest group on the election of a bishop to the see of Carthage, North Africa. This was on the grounds that the bishop had been consecrated by a „traditor‟, that is, one who in the heat of persecution had handed over copies of the Scriptures to the Roman authorities, who destroyed them. As in the case of the Novatians, Donatus‟s followers wanted to see the church purged of compromise and to see it following a rigorist life-style. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) saw the danger of Donatism and wrote strongly against it. The Christians of Hippo where he had become bishop were divided into Catholic and Donatist factions. Theologically the two sides had much in common, but they differed strongly on the nature of the church. Some extreme Donatists in North Africa took to violence against the Catholics and so brought the Donatists as a whole into disrepute. The question at issue was, is the church a company who are holy, pure, and untainted by any compromise, as the Donatists held it to be, or is it a company of less than perfect, failing sinners, as Catholics held and Augustine taught? These differences of view are still with us today, though it seems that the Donatist view is still a minority one among the mainline churches. The church is a school for sinners, not a sanctuary for saints. Sabelianism About 250 AD the Church in Rome had to deal with a view of the relation of Father and Son in the Godhead which was decidedly unorthodox. The catholic doctrine was that the Godhead comprised three distinct Persons in one unity of Godhead. A teacher called Sabellius proposed that there is no real distinction between the Father and the Son, that the two are modes or aspects of the One God. His aim was to safeguard the oneness of Deity and, by blurring the distinctions between the Father and the Son, show that the Father could be said to have suffered on the Cross. Arianism Arianism was the most important and persistent heresy which came to a head in the early 4 th Century. In Alexandria, Egypt, an ancient city of learning and Greek culture, the Christian Church had become well established. It upheld a high view of the full deity of Christ. But a presbyter of the city, Arius, taught otherwise. Jesus could not be equated with deity and though he could be called both Son of God and logos (John 1.1), he was a created being and not eternal with the Father, not sharing his deity. Arius probably taught that there was a time when the Son „was not‟. His views were refuted by many, especially a champion of orthodoxy, Athanasius (c.296- 373 AD). Arius‟s views were condemned at the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), called by Emperor Constantine, who suggested that the term „homoousios‟ (of the same substance) should be applied to Christ‟s relationship with the Father. The term was embraced by the Council and became, for subsequent Councils and Creeds of the Church, the classic way of defining the relationship of Father and Son. Page 19
The fortunes of the Arian party in the Church were to fluctuate during the next centuries, sometimes seeming to become the new orthodoxy, but eventually relegated to the role of a minor but persistent heresy, surfacing from time to time in history, even into the 20 th Century. If Arianism had won the day, no doctrines of incarnation and atonement would have remained in the Church. Athanasius in On the Incarnation (c.318 AD) pointed out clearly that those two truths were inextricably linked together. Macedonianism The doctrine of the Person of the Holy Spirit also came under attack. The early Apostles‟ Creed has little to say about the Holy Spirit, simply asserting, „I believe in the Holy Spirit‟. The later Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381 AD) says more: „I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. Who spake by the prophets.‟ (Book of Common Prayer) Some asserted that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son and was thus subordinate to the Father and the Son. (In Orthodox Christian theology, God is one in essence but three in Person – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who are distinct and equal.) Those who accepted the heresy were called Macedonians, but were also and more descriptively known as pneumatomachians, the „spirit fighters‟. Some sources attribute leadership of the group to Macedonius, a semi-Arian who was twice bishop of Constantinople (died c.362 AD). Today there are sects and cults which continue this heresy. Pelagianism In the early 5 th Century, as the Goths began to press on the boundaries of the Roman Empire to the north, another heresy, Pelagianism, appeared, which threatened the very basis of salvation as taught in the New Testament. The question raised was, can a person in any way save himself? An ascetic theologian from Britain, Pelagius, living in Rome, was concerned about the moral standing of Christians. Pelagius wanted to safeguard man‟s free will, with each person responsible for his own actions as the basis for judgement. But he went further and denied original sin and taught that by right choices and good living a man could justify himself before God. This was strongly opposed by Augustine, who saw it as undermining the free grace of God in salvation. Pelagian ideas, in some form or other, were to survive right through Christian history, probably acting as a corrective to those extreme doctrines of grace which deny any free will in man. Page 20
Page 1 and 2: Digging Out the Embedded Church Dis
Page 3 and 4: The Maranatha Community comprises t
Page 5 and 6: Introduction CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chr
Page 7 and 8: ead, nicely browned on top. He plac
Page 9 and 10: HOW DO WE DIG OUT THE EMBEDDED CHUR
Page 11 and 12: That the Church should express this
Page 13 and 14: For Alfeyev, „Faith is a gift, th
Page 15 and 16: „heresies„ of the Early Church
Page 17 and 18: Traditionally, the Church has made
Page 19 and 20: CHAPTER 1 CHRISTIAN UNITY IN THE EA
Page 21 and 22: A certain Docetic teacher, often id
Page 23: Novatianism When the persecutions o
Page 27 and 28: An attempt was made in 482 AD (29 y
Page 29 and 30: was development in the interpretati
Page 31 and 32: CYPRIAN AND AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO The
Page 33 and 34: position would see baptism as not t
Page 35 and 36: The Eastern Church‟s relationship
Page 37 and 38: insisted from the second Lateran Co
Page 39 and 40: There is so much that Orthodoxy sha
Page 41 and 42: we do not talk to each other. Our t
Page 43 and 44: The question of heresy does not com
Page 45 and 46: They were missionary-minded and the
Page 47 and 48: Lollard ideas lingered in English r
Page 49 and 50: CHAPTER 4 THE SECOND GREAT SPLIT: W
Page 51 and 52: unity‟s sake in subsequent centur
Page 53 and 54: Erasmus wrote he asserts, through o
Page 55 and 56: attle-cry, is perhaps the most famo
Page 57 and 58: Regulations for the good ordering o
Page 59 and 60: Eucharist was not just a commemorat
Page 61 and 62: CHAPTER 5 QUOTATIONS ON THE THEME O
Page 63 and 64: How rare then it is to meet a man w
Page 65 and 66: are often much bigger divisions bet
Page 67 and 68: St Germanus of Constantinople - 8 t
Page 69 and 70: manner. He declared that men could
Page 71 and 72: S L Greenslade - 20 th Century: „
Page 73 and 74: CHAPTER 6 HOPES FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY
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imminent return of Christ (Komensky
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a concern that merchant adventurers
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also anti-Socinian. Calixtus himsel
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The Eastern Churches were not rent
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everyone - from outward forms to in
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Women were not usually members of t
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work in America, shows him, though
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The aim of the conference was to br
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From 1768 Harris‟s home at Talgar
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twice more to congregations of Whit
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denominations was not their distinc
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It was from the overseas Protestant
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THE OXFORD TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT Anot
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the Church of England‟s doctrinal
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„We pray that… all who desire t
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thereof, in prayer, in the remembra
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honours the Lord and his Word; the
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apostolic church enjoyed, and that
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episcopate were too radical for mos
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Denominations began to form their o
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In this Shanghai Conference‟s Rep
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With so much talk of unity and coop
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„The liturgical movement in weste
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• Sharing a corporate life of wit
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• Our acknowledgement of the Apos
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(h) The Evangelical Church in Germa
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It changed nothing in respect of do
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Some Evangelical Protestants want t
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• It is in continuity with the
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But things have changed. Richard Ma
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evangelism - (and) state what the r
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Repentance and faith are at the hea
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outcome of being justified. Agreeme
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Virgin‟s salutary influence on me
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h) Confession The sacrament of pena
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demanding way would be sin. The que
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If the opportunity for the Church t
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Ministers, priests and laypeople in
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West Kirby, near to my home, the Si
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n) Shared Study Courses There is a
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Even some Protestant churches today
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Vincent de Lérins spoke of a „pr
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It is not likely, in the foreseeabl
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Christ and are trying their best to
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upon the name of our Lord Jesus Chr
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Perhaps this dying process is now b
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economic factors giving rise to suc
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deeper ecumenism, one that does not
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APPENDIX 1 THE NICENO-CONSTANTINOPO
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APPENDIX 2 FOUR BIBLICAL TEXTS ON T
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The „apostles and elders‟ of th
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„The purpose of the Reformation C
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What all three traditions have in c
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Cromwellian period, in a treatise o
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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS
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Cullman, Oscar, The Earliest Christ
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McCarthy, Tim, The Catholic Traditi
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Letter concerning the civil princip
Page 191 and 192:
Coptic Orthodox Church, 10 Council
Page 193 and 194:
Parousia, 24, 68, 93 Paul VI, 10, 1
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