4 comments

1. You mention how the Reformed confessions allow one to have a historically grounded worship that differs from modern evangelical “bible churches.”

   In practice, what does that mean? This may be a longer topic for a video. Because reading what the Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries say about sacraments seems very different to what is said and done in Reformed churches. Ambrose and Cyril of Jerusalem on the sacraments of initiation, Chyrsostom On the Priesthood, and Augustine both on worshipping the eucharist and baptism cleansing babies of original sin are all examples that come to mind.

   If a person wanted connection to that theology and practice because they thought it was the faith of the universal Church, I don’t see why they would go to Reformed churches. And if that’s not what Reformed churches say and do, in what sense is there historical continuity with the patristic age?

   Reply ↓

   • Luke,

     The 4th century was a turning point. It’s then that we really see the doctrine of baptismal regeneration but I don’t see it in the 2nd or 3rd centuries. The Reformed were anxious to imitate the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In the 4th century, the church began to mimic the culture. Ministers began wearing vestments modeled on the dress of secular government officials. Still, the major point of the video (and forthcoming pod series) stands: there are only 2 sacraments in the 4th century. There’s no transubstantiation in the 4th century.

     The Reformed worship, when we follow our own confessed principles, as we did more successfully in the classical period of Reformed theology, piety, and practice, was much more like 2nd and 3rd century Christian worship than any Roman mass is today or has been since the 13th century.

     The Reformed churches have never felt bound by the private opinions of individual fathers. We have felt bound to engage them but we norm them with the Word. Imitating each and every father is impossible. There’s a lot diversity across multiple language groups and five centuries. So, everyone is selective. On what basis? Ours is objective: we’re bound to the Word of God (sola scriptura) confessed by the churches in the Rule of Faith, the Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan, Chalcedon, and the Athanasian.

     FWIW, I should like to see Augustine advocating “worship” of the eucharistic elements. Can you point to a place where he says that?

     What doesn’t happen in the Bible churches or the Big Box churches is any engagement with the fathers.

     Reply ↓

     • Thanks for saying the 4th century was a turning point. I think that’s a big deal. I know the primary point of this video was that there are only two Dominical Sacraments, but the historical continuity point was mentioned here and has been referred to in all your previous videos; and it’s obviously become a big topic in modern online apologetics.

       I’m skeptical of treating the 4th century as a departure for several reasons. First is the Disciplina Arcani where christians explicitly did not explain sacramental practice to non-christians. Ambrose’s sermon on the sacraments of initiation (of which he mentions three, discussing confirmation/chrismation with oil after baptism) was explicitly preached to people after they had received the sacraments, as they were not told what they were before hand. Cyril of Jerusalem also explicitly forbids his Catechetical Lectures to be shared with non-christians. The point is we have very little knowledge of pre-4th century sacramental practice because christians were explicitly not talking about it.

       What we do have is also suggestive. The scholarly consensus of the Roman Canon is that it pre-dates Nicea, or at least large parts of it. It wholly lacks Nicene christological language, and even seems to call the Son an angel (in function not in nature), which no one would have written post-Nicea.

       There’s also the universal agreement of what we see emerge in the 4th century, not just in Rome, but in the other Patriarchal Sees as well as outlying areas such as Ethiopia and Armenia. Many of these areas, such as Syria, Alexandria, Ethiopia, and Armenia, all developed identical sacramental practice despite breaking off from Rome and Constantinople in the 5th century. Such uniformity seems impossible if Rome was just ad-libbing paganism into her worship.

       All this is to say that the Reformed position you are saying is historically grounded worship is practically no different from non-historical Bible churches. Telling people that the church went off the rails in 4th century is hardly the harbor people are looking for when they are seeking historical grounding. Rather then arguing for historical continuity, it seems a more reasonable approach would be to defend the non-authoritative nature of historical worship.

       Because you asked about Augustine, it’s from his Commentary on Psalm 98 speaking about how we can be said to worship God’s footstool. Ambrose has the same interpretation of the same passage. From the New City edition.

       “In hesitation I turn unto Christ, since I am herein seeking Himself: and I discover how the earth may be worshipped without impiety, how His footstool may be worshipped without impiety. For He took upon Him earth from earth; because flesh is from earth, and He received flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because He walked here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped: we have found out in what sense such a footstool of our Lord’s may be worshipped, and not only that we sin not in worshipping it, but that we sin in not worshipping.”

       Reply ↓

       • Luke,

         It’s not just that there were two dominical sacraments but that the five ecclesiastical sacraments weren’t sacraments in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th centuries.They weren’t recognized as sacraments until the 13th century and even then it’s not entirely clear. It’s a reasonable inference. This fact is a huge boulder in the way of the popular conception that what Rome does now is what the church always did. That simply isn’t true.

         Context matters. The legalization of Christianity made a huge difference in the way Christians and the institutional church related to the government and to the culture. We were a persecuted people for 200+ years and now, in the 4th century our religion is legal, our property is returned and more than that the Emperor is calling a Council that is going to define doctrine and practice. It’s hard to over-state what a difference that made. Eusebius illustrates the shift. His tone re the government is very different from that of, e.g., Justin, who merely asked to toleration. Eusebius wants the approval of the empire. We were “out” and now, we’re in and by the end of the 4th century, in the East at least, we’re the state religion.

         As a matter of logic, one may not appeal to 4th and 5th century texts to argue that there’s no great change in the fourth century. The only way to see the change is to know the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Worship changed in the 4th century. The way we talked about the sacraments changed. There were reasons for that.

         We know a fair bit of what was happening the 2nd century. No one was talking like Basil did re tradition. He essentially appropriate a Gnostic argument to defeat the Gnostics et al. When Diognetus says “tradition of the Apostles,” he was referring to the NT epistles not to an unwritten tradition that can be made to justify whatever. The offices and practices Basil mentions didn’t exist in the 2nd century.

         You’re attributing arguments to me that I’m not making. I didn’t say and don’t think that the church “went off the rails” in the 4th century. That’s not how history works but I am saying that context matters and the 4th and 5th centuries aren’t the 2nd and 3rd and we can’t read the Constantinian and Theodosian periods back into the earlier history.

         You’re drawing inferences about my views that don’t follow from what I’ve said. The Bible churches aren’t reading the fathers. Calvin and Oecolampadius were reading the fathers closely. Oecolampadius published an early edition of the fathers. The Humanists were reading the fathers and they realized that what they experienced in the 16th century and what they had inherited from the medieval church didn’t match what they were reading. That’s hardly a Bible-church argument.

         I’m happy to see particulars, citations, and actual evidence. I’m always open to learning. I should like to see the Latin text of the quotation. I’ll find it but at first blush it doesn’t seem to say what you seem to be suggesting it does.

         Anachronism isn’t history. I’m interested in understanding texts in their immediate and broader context.

         Reply ↓

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.