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Some Montanists fell into the “Sabellian” heresy, which taught that Father, Son and Holy Spirit were not three distinct persons, but only one person acting in three different ways.18 The majority of Montanists were in fact orthodox in their doctrine of the Trinity; their greatest theologian, Tertullian, was an ardent foe of Sabellianism, and the fierce Roman enemy of Montanism, Praxeas, was a Sabellian himself!19 However unfairly, though, the Sabellianism of the minority of Montanists gave their opponents a perfect opportunity to brand the whole movement as heretical in its doctrine of God.
The modern “New Age” movement has many similarities with Gnosticism, and often makes use of Gnostic sources.
We could also say that the Western Church became “Roman Catholic” in 1054, through the great East–West schism, when the West broke fellowship with all Eastern Christians (see Volume Two, Chapter 3, section 8). However, it could be very misleading for Protestants to think of the Western Church as “Roman Catholic” between the schism of 1054 and the Reformation which began in 1517. In Protestant thinking, the term “Roman Catholic” has acquired an anti-Protestant meaning. It is therefore better to think of the Western Church as “Western Catholic” rather than “Roman Catholic” after 1054 but before
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See the fuller quotation at the end of the chapter. The Catholic Church fathers, it should be said, did not deny that the Holy Spirit might occasionally bestow a genuine gift of prophecy on an outstandingly holy believer, in the “lesser” sense of prophecy – predicting future events, supernatural insight into someone’s character or past life, etc. (but not new revelations about doctrine or moral conduct). What the Catholic fathers utterly denied was the truly prophetic nature of Montanist utterances, ecstasies, and new moral revelations.
influence on the theology
Origen, then, attributed a timeless existence to the Logos; but he said the same about all spiritual beings – every spirit, for Origen, was eternal.
Indeed, Tertullian called the whole Roman world “the camp of darkness”, as against the Church which was “the camp of light”.
By contrast, Tertullian called Christians to be on their strictest guard against Pagan philosophy; it was spiritually dangerous, always threatening to poison and corrupt the purity of Christian truth. In a famous saying, Tertullian asked: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
However, despite Tertullian’s thunderous warnings, Stoicism deeply influenced his own religious beliefs (e.g. about the nature of God and the soul).
Praxeas was a Roman Christian who was putting forward a Sabellian doctrine of the Trinity. He denied that there was any real personal distinction between Father, Son and Holy Spirit; they were all the same person Who simply acted out three different roles.
Against this, Tertullian developed many of the ideas and language which the Church soon accepted as essential to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. He was the first Christian writer to use the word “Trinity” (in Latin, Trinitas) as a description of God’s one-in-threeness. He also employed the Latin words substantia (“substance”) and persona (“person”) to distinguish between God’s oneness and threeness.
He thought that the Logos had not existed as a distinct person from the Father from all eternity, but had become distinct just before the creation of the universe.
Prior to that, the Logos had existed as “Reason” in a non-personal way within the Father.
Cyprian was the first of the early Church fathers to set forth a theological doctrine of holy communion in sacrificial terms, a view which became increasingly widespread.
It is easy to misunderstand Cyprian’s teaching. He did not think that the eucharist was a fresh sacrifice for sins. His teaching was that through the eucharist, Christ presented Himself to God the Father as the One Who had made the once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of His people on the cross; and by eating the bread and drinking the wine, believers were united with that perfect self-offering of Christ, so that He presented both Himself and the congregation to the Father. Cyprian also taught that holy communion mysteriously benefitted the “faithful departed” – believers who have died. This
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(The word “sacrament” was a Western Latin word, from sacramentum, meaning “oath of allegiance”.
Therefore, in one of Cyprian’s most famous sayings, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.”
If anyone was able to escape the flood outside of Noah’s ark, then you can escape judgment if you are outside the doors of the Church.
Cyprian presided over a local Church council at Carthage in 251 and played a leading part in its decision that the lapsed could be received back into the Church, but only after a period of time during which they would be proving their sincerity by doing “penance” (repentance) for their sin.
Cyprian also argued that the bishops alone had the authority to settle this question. Some ordinary Church members called confessors had assumed the right to decide the question themselves.
These decisions led to schisms in the Church. Some Christians in Carthage thought that Cyprian was too strict; led by the presbyter Novatus, they broke away to form a rival church with a softer, more lenient discipline. The opposite happened in Rome, where the church took the same line as Carthage towards the problem of the lapsed. Some Roman Christians led by a presbyter called Novatian broke away from the Roman church, forming a new congregation with a far stricter discipline: they would never readmit any lapsed believer.
In 321 he passed a law making Sunday, the Christian day of worship, into an official day of rest.
He abolished the official observance of Sunday and required all educational establishments to teach Pagan religion.
No-one else but the Saviour, [Athanasius wrote] who
Another powerful objection the Origenists had to the word homoousios was that it could be taken to mean that the divine ousia (nature) had been split apart into two – that Father and Son had the same ousia in the sense that two coins are made of the same metal. But the divine nature is not like a lump of metal which can be split up into two coins. Of course, this was not what the Nicenes meant. They believed that there was only one divine nature which was possessed equally by Father and Son. An illustration of this would be one country shared equally by two races or tribes: not a splitting up
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This experience led Augustine to make a complete break with the Christianity of his youth, and to join the Gnostic sect of the Manichees, who also rejected the Old Testament and claimed they could prove all their doctrines by pure reason.6
He went to listen to Ambrose’s preaching; the eloquence of his sermons, and the way Ambrose made Christianity seem an intelligent and reasonable faith, utterly captivated Augustine’s mind.
Ambrose’s method of handling the Old Testament also helped Augustine overcome his problems with the Hebrew Scriptures.
When Ambrose came across a difficult Old Testament passage, one that seemed unworthy of God, he said it should not be interpreted literally, but understood in a spiritual or symbolic sense. (This was basically the Alexandrian method of expounding the Bible – see section 1.)
Augustine devoted a lot of energy to defending the Catholic Church against Donatist accusations that it was an apostate Church with false clergy, whose spiritual actions (e.g. baptising converts) had no meaning or value in God’s sight.
So we are not free to do what we ought to do.
it is absolutely certain that we will always sin willingly, unless the grace of Christ saves us.
Check out this quote.
The depth of Scripture The Christian Scriptures are so deep that, even if I studied them to the exclusion of all else, from early childhood to worn-out old age, with ample leisure and untiring zeal, and with greater capacity of mind than I possess, each day I would still discover new riches within them. The fundamental truths necessary for salvation are found with ease in the Scriptures. But even when a person has accepted these truths, and is both God-fearing and righteous in his actions, there are still so many things which lie under a vast veil of mystery. Through reading the Scriptures, we
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I really lime this quote.
Gregory declared: “Whoever calls himself universal priest, or desires that title, is by his pride the forerunner of Antichrist.”
As we saw back in Chapter 10, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 rejected the extreme Alexandrian Christology of Eutyches, who said that the divine nature of Christ had swallowed up His human nature.
Pelagius defined God’s grace, not in terms of the inner renewing power of the Holy Spirit, but as the moral law, the example of Christ, and the persuasive power of rewards and punishments.
