Church History in Plain Language (Plain Language Series)

by Bruce L. Shelley

Western Christians are inclined to understand the fundamental relationship between God and man in legal terms. Man is obliged to meet the demands of a just God. Roman Catholicism, in particular, elaborated this idea through its system of justification.

Orthodoxy represents an interesting contrast to Roman Catholicism. The great theme of Orthodox theology is the incarnation of God and the re-creation of man. According to Orthodoxy when man sins he does not violate the divinely established legal relationship between God and man; he reduces the divine likeness—he inflicts a wound in the original image of God. Salvation, therefore, consists of the restoration of the full image. Christ, the incarnate God, came to earth to restore the icon of God in man. The major themes of Orthodoxy, then, are rebirth, re-creation, and the transfiguration of man. The church is not a formalized institution, it is the mystical body of Christ constantly renewed by the life of the Holy Spirit flowing through it. And it is within this community of love that man is restored to the likeness of God.

Constantine’s conversion was vital for the development of Orthodoxy because he created, for the first time, an alliance between state and church, and he made purity of Christian doctrine a central concern of the empire. Few events have introduced greater change in the church.

Constantine discovered, however, that Christianity itself was divided and torn over differences in traditions of doctrine and practice. He was superstitiously anxious that God would hold him personally responsible for these divisions and quarrels among the Christians. If Christianity lacked cohesion and unity, how could it be a proper religion for the empire? Thus, Constantine and the emperors who followed him made every effort to secure agreement about the Christian faith.

In official Byzantine doctrine, however, the state was compared to a body not in this early Christian sense, nor because all subjects of the empire had become genuine church members. The figure of the imperial body arose from pagan thinking. The state itself was conceived to be the only community established by God, and it embraced the whole life of man. The visible representative of God within it, who performed his will and dispensed his blessings, was the emperor. Thus, the old boundaries of the church were gradually effaced; the Christian community increasingly coalesced with Byzantine society as a whole.

The fragile balance of these major elements in Eastern Christianity was easily upset. The power of the Christian emperor, the state concern over purity of doctrine, and popular belief in icons as windows into the unseen world—all tumbled in violent disarray during the famous (or infamous) iconoclastic controversy.

On the surface this conflict, which raged for over a century, was a disagreement over the use of icons. But at a deeper level it was a disagreement over which things were sufficiently sacred or holy to deserve worship.

From the sixth century, the church and the imperial government as well encouraged the development of both Christian icon-making and the honoring of monastic holy men. They did not realize that the uncontrolled multiplying of icons and holy men would make people confine their Christian devotion to local shrines and figures. Most ordinary Christians failed to distinguish between the holy object or holy person and the spiritual reality it stood for. They fell into idolatry.

The iconoclasts (or image-breakers) wanted to replace the religious icons with the traditional Christian symbols of the cross, the Book (Bible), and the elements of the Lord’s Supper. These objects alone, they insisted, should be considered holy. Beyond this, only ordained clergy and dedicated buildings possessed a kind of holiness.

“John Mansour (about 730 –60), in a monastery far away in Arab-controlled Palestine, formulated the ideas that were eventually used to justify religious icons. Mansour, better known as John of Damascus (his birthplace), was the greatest theologian of the eighth century. He is recognized today by the Orthodox churches as the last of the great teachers of the early church, the so-called Fathers. “John explained that an image was never of the same substance as its original, but merely imitated it. An icon’s only significance is as a copy and reminder of the original. His argument is based on Plato’s notion that everything we sense in this world is really an imitation of the eternal, original ‘form,’ which can be known only by the soul in the nonmaterial world. “To deny, as the iconoclasts did, that any true icon could depict Christ, was, in effect, to deny the possibility of the Incarnation. Although it was wrong to worship an icon, the presence of an icon of Christ could instruct and assist the believer in the worship of the true Christ. Icons should be honored and venerated in much the same way as the Bible, or the symbol of the Cross.”

Over the years Russia made the aesthetic glories of Orthodox Christianity her own. Gradually Moscow came to see herself as the leader of the Orthodox world. A theory developed that there had been one Rome, in Italy, that had fallen to the barbarians and to the Roman Catholic heresy. There had been a second Rome: Constantinople. And when that fell to the Turks, there was a third Rome: Moscow. The emperor took his title from the first Rome—Tzar is the same word as Caesar—just as he had taken his religion from the second.

Missions can proceed in two ways. One is the way of individual conversion with a period of instruction prior to baptism. In general this is the method used by Protestant missions under the evangelical movements of the nineteenth century, with their emphasis upon individual change of heart. The disadvantage of this method is that the Christian converts in a pagan culture become, by reason of their change in faith, uprooted from their own culture and compelled to move into an alien enclave. The other method is mass conversion, and it was this method that converted Europe. Kings like Clovis embraced the faith, and their people followed them into the spiritual City as into the earthly. This meant that individuals were not uprooted from their culture, but it also meant that the converts brought with them into the church their superstitions and behavior.

After Gregory, the pope was no longer only a Christian leader; he was also an important political figure in European politics—God’s Consul.

In opposition to these high-sounding titles, Gregory called himself simply, “the servant of the servants of God.” This became one of the standing titles of the popes, although it sounds like irony when linked with later astounding claims. When a churchman addressed Gregory himself as “universal pope,” he strongly repudiated the title, saying: “I have said that neither to me nor to any one else ought you to write anything of the kind. Away with words which inflate pride and wound charity!”

Gregory attempted to go to England himself, as a missionary monk, but was hindered by God and the pope. But once on the papal throne himself he sent the Benedictine Augustine and forty monks to replant the gospel on English soil. The success of that mission in Kent, as we have seen, provides a direct link for all Anglo-American Christianity with the early church.

In his doctrine of man Gregory stressed that Adam’s fall affected all his descendants, weakening but not destroying their freedom of will. Thus, once man has been moved by grace, he may cooperate with it and win merit for himself by his good works, which are the joint product of divine grace and human will. In baptism, God grants forgiving grace freely without any merit on man’s part, but for sins committed after baptism man must make atonement by penance, which is simply a form of punishment inflicted by the man himself instead of by God. “For either man himself by penance punishes sin in himself, or God taking vengeance on him smites it.” Penance involves repentance, which must be sincere and of the heart, and also confession and meritorious works.

The belief in the intercession of the saints and the custom of appealing to them to use their influence with Christ did not originate with Gregory; both the belief and the custom were much older than he. But he emphasized them and made them central for Christian piety. “Behold,” he wrote, “the severe judge Jesus is about to come; the terror of that mighty council of angels and archangels is at hand. In that assembly our case will be tried and yet we are not seeking patrons who will then come to our defense. Our holy martyrs are ready to be your advocates; they desire to be asked, indeed if I may say so, they entreat that they may be entreated. Seek them as helpers of your prayer; turn to them that they may protect you in your guilt.”

the supreme miracle, the key to all the other expressions of divine power was the Holy Eucharist. According to Gregory, the eucharist is a communion with Christ whose body and blood are really present in the bread and wine. Feeding upon them we nourish and strengthen our spiritual life.

For all such it has the same effect as penance, taking the place of a certain amount of suffering which they would otherwise have to undergo because of their sins. It may benefit the dead as well as the living, the dead, that is, in purgatory not in hell. If offered for anyone in purgatory, it will hasten the time of his release.

Modern times are marked by the idea of autonomous, sovereign states without religious affiliation and by the concept of the church as a voluntary association apart from the rest of organized society. But neither of these ideas existed in the Middle Ages.

When Charles succeeded his father in 768 his mind was set on three goals—military power to crush his enemies, religious power to direct his people’s souls, and intellectual power to instruct both souls and minds. Charlemagne’s success in these areas made Europe—the new political order—nominally Christian, for better or for worse, for a thousand years.

Later popes added little to Gregory’s theories of the office. They, like Gregory, insisted that Christian society was organized under the pope, its visible head, and he was guarded against all possibility of error by the presence of Peter perpetually present in his successors, the bishops of Rome.

Gregory and his powerful successors stood for two principles that to the Christian are incontestable: (1) In the loyalties of men, the spiritual has the primacy over the secular. And (2) the families of men can find true unity only in Christ and in obedience to the law of God.

Innocent was like Gregory VII, however, in holding an exalted view of his office. “The successor of Peter,” he announced, “is the Vicar of Christ: he has been established as a mediator between God and man, below God but beyond man; less than God but more than man; who shall judge all and be judged by no one.”

Unfortunately the popes never held two basic truths that we must never forget: Christianity’s highest satisfactions are not guaranteed by possession of special places, and the sword is never God’s way to extend Christ’s church.

The Gothic cathedral, therefore, displayed the spiritual tension of the Christian drama: the highest aspirations of man and the condescending light of God. Man, in effect, ascends while God descends. Such language is, of course, figurative. God is no more above than below in any spatial sense. But man has always described his need in terms of reach, and God’s truth in terms of descent.

Since sin remains a problem for the baptized Christian, God provided penance, the sacrament of spiritual healing. According to Thomas it consists of three elements: contrition or sorrow for the sin; confession to the priest as the spiritual physician who can apply the appropriate remedy and pronounce absolution; and satisfaction, by which the Christian makes good the evil effects of the sin—usually called an “act of penance.”

Earth alone is not enough! The pope and his priests not only mediate the grace of God to sinners on earth—by the miracle of the Blessed Sacrifice and by their prayers for the dead—they reach beyond the grave to minister to suffering souls.

Innocent III’s claim that the pope is the judge of the world, “set in the midst between God and man, below God and above man.” The boast did not go unchallenged. A growing host of unlettered laymen remembered the apostolic testimony: “There is one God and one Mediator.”

The medieval poverty movement is a timeless reminder that political Christianity is only partial Christianity.

The gospel of voluntary poverty drew its strength from a deep and widespread resentment of a corrupt and neglectful priesthood. The back-to-the-apostles movement was often allied with political and economic restlessness in a rapidly changing and expanding society. But at its heart was the spiritual hunger of people. At a time when it was desperately needed, pastoral care was a lost art. Robert Grosseteste, the able bishop of Lincoln, England (1235–1253) decried the covetousness, greed, and immorality of the clergy.

Modern Christians find it all but impossible to understand the medieval attitude toward heresy. We believe deeply that religious faith is a matter of personal choice but we seldom think of religious beliefs as life-and-death matters. Why should anyone either die for his own faith, or kill another for his?

heresy in Christendom was no more acceptable than cancer in the flesh. But what is heresy? In the twelfth century, it was the denial—by a baptized person—of any revealed truth of the Christian faith. Among these truths were the unity of the church and the divine appointment of the pope as head of the Christian body. Therefore, disobedience to established authority was itself heresy.

In dealing with heretics then, the church had two primary objectives: first, the conversion of the heretic and, second, the protection of Christian society. But how far can the church go to protect society? Is it right to take a life in order to protect other lives? Heresy drove the Catholic church to her most serious internal conflict: How can the church employ violence to safeguard a peaceful society?

She created the Inquisition, not only to execute heretics but to subject them to deliberate and prolonged torture. In driving out one devil the church opened the door for seven others.

contradiction was not widely apparent at the time. The same church that sent crusading armies against the infidels could command the burning of heretics. Almost everyone agreed that a pure church was the will of God.

a series of sermons at Brescia, Arnold insisted that clerical vice was a result of the church’s attempt to control the world. He urged the church to surrender its property and secular dominion to the state and return to the poverty and simplicity of the early church. The true church and its ministers, he said, should shun wealth, for wealth and power nullify salvation.

The Waldenses were so clearly a back-to-the-Bible movement that over the years many evangelical Christians have tried to present them as “reformers before the Reformation.” Compared to the Roman church’s doctrine of papal authority, the Waldensian call to return to the Bible does indeed sound like Luther or Calvin. But their view of salvation, a life of penance and poverty, lacks the clear note of God’s grace that sounded so powerfully in the Reformation.

Charles Williams once observed, not one mind in a thousand can be trusted to state accurately what one’s opponent says, much less what he thinks.

In 1220 the Dominican mission and life-style gained official approval. The new preaching order that we know as Dominicans, was called “mendicant” meaning “begging” and the term “friar” (or brother) distinguished them from monks because, unlike monks, they went forth to live among people to preach and teach. Just as monastic houses had once arisen to minister in the countryside, so the mendicant friars now emerged to meet the spiritual needs of townspeople.

In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council, under Innocent III’s leadership, provided for the state’s punishment of heretics, the confiscation of their property, excommunication for those unwilling to move against the heretic, and complete forgiveness of sins for those cooperating.

The inquisitor was subject to no law, only to the pope. He was prosecutor and judge. The “trial” was secret, and the accused had to prove his innocence—as in all courts following Roman law—without the benefit of counsel or knowledge of his accusers.

1252. Pope Innocent IV authorized torture as a means of getting information and confessions from accused heretics. Popes, saints, and theologians had in the past rejected with horror the very thought. But no such reserve remained after Innocent III had ascended the papal throne and the Catholic church had achieved its majestic and powerful unity.

weakness. It could amputate, but it could not heal. The ministry of healing arose in a village surrounded by vineyards eighty-five miles north of Rome. Assisi was the hometown of Giovanni Bernardone; we know him as St. Francis of Assisi.

Christendom was made possible by the harmony of two ideas, the Christian empire and the Catholic church. The image of a Christian empire— so useful in creating a unified Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries—slowly faded in importance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the papal influence spread.

What is the significance of the Anagni episode? It reveals that European Christians no longer accepted papal interference in what they regarded as purely political matters. No one could say with certainty what a purely political matter was, but a king’s power within his own country was a generally accepted fact.

Thus, even when they had no political terms for it, men in the early fourteenth century were beginning to distinguish secular and religious authority and to recognize the rights of each in its own place. And that was new.

In the thinking of European people, Rome, the Eternal City, stood not only for the idea of the apostolic succession of the church founded upon St. Peter, but also the concept of western universality, Roman imperium. Avignon, on the other hand, was surrounded on all sides by the French kingdom and was a mere tool in the hands of one nation, the power-hungry French.

The long-range significance of Wyclif ’s teaching on dominion lies in its link with the Reformation. It was the English reformer’s way of emphasizing the spiritual freedom of the righteous man. He is a possessor of “a dominion founded on grace.” “God gives no lordship to His servants without first giving Himself to them.” Every man, therefore, priest or layman, holds an equal place in the eyes of God. This personal relation between a man and God is everything; character is the one basis of office. The mediating priesthood and the sacrificial masses of the medieval church are no longer essential. Thus Wyclif anticipates Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. Both men destroy the medieval barriers between the individual and God.

In one sense Wyclif welcomed the Great Schism. The spectacle of two rival popes excommunicating each other seemed to him to be a confirmation for all to see of the spiritual bankruptcy of the office and the need to put something else in its place. As the schism continued, however, Wyclif ’s view hardened. He came to believe that the pope was Antichrist. If there were two of them railing at each other, they simply shared the unholy title.