A Yorkshireman Delivers a Blow to Rome and a Bible to England – Part 1

John Wycliffe (born approx.1320’s – 1384)

Born near Old Richmond, Yorkshire, educated and established as a leading theologian and educator at Oxford University in the fourteenth century, Wycliffe has been called the ‘morning star’ of the Reformation.

He won the favour of the English King by publishing a pamphlet arguing that the Pope had no right to levy a tax against England to be sent to Rome. An argument that the King liked!

However, he was unpopular with pretty much the whole church because of his criticism of their idolatry (worship of images and relics), the mass and the sale of indulgences (expensive certificates issued by Rome and said to ensure the release of a dead person’s soul from purgatory).  He was particularly concerned about the arrogance of the pope: ‘The Gospel is the only source of religion. The Roman Pontiff is a mere cut-purse and far from having the right to reprimand the whole world, he may be lawfully reproved by his inferiors, and even by ‘lay-men’!’ (Quoted in d’Aubigne, The Reformation in England, Banner of Truth, Vol 1, p.82)

He was incredibly popular with the common people but when he attacked the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation both University and the King began to withdraw support from him.

The idea behind transubstatiation was that during the Mass service, the bread and wine are transformed by the priest into the literal body and blood of Jesus. The English phrase ‘hocus pocus’ comes from the Latin phrases the priests uttered in order to make this so-called transformation take place and is a fine early example of dry, derisive English humour.

But Wycliffe, like later Reformation heroes, had public proclamations issued against him from Rome. A formal declaration issued by the Pope at that time was known as a papal Bull. Not one, but five Bulls were issued against him. He was finally called by one of the two then existing popes to appear at Rome. (Houghton cannot resist telling us that both Popes declared the other to be ‘the Antichrist’, a dilemma if one believes in the infallibility of papal statements. (Houghton, Sketches From Church History, Banner of Truth, p.67)

Wycliffe stayed home, studied the Scriptures and trained preachers.  He equipped and sent out large numbers who successfully reached a great proportion of England (they were mockingly called ‘Lollards’).  At one point it was said that ‘every second person is a Lollard!’

To be continued…

You can purchase ‘Sketches from Church History’ and ‘The Reformation in England’ here

© 2008 Lex Loizides

Radical Forerunners to the Reformation: The Waldensians

Unrest and a desire for change

Increasing unrest and desire for both political and spiritual liberty grew throughout the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, and the prayers of God’s children were finally and astonishingly answered in what has come to be called the Protestant Reformation.

J.H.Merle d’Aubigne in his moving and powerful work on the Reformation in England, in a chapter entitled ‘Christ Mightier than Druid Altars and Roman Swords’, writes:

‘Those heavenly powers which had lain dormant in the church since the first ages of Christianity, awoke from their slumber in the sixteenth century, and this awakening called the modern times into existence.’
(J.H. Merle d’Aubigne – The Reformation in England (Banner of Truth) Vol. 1 p.23)

The Waldensians (12th Century on)

About 1170 Peter Waldo (or, Valdes) employed a priest to translate the gospels into French.  As he and many others read the Scriptures they were converted and a great evangelising force was raised up by God.  They taught about the Christ of the Bible and planted many churches, quickly spreading from France to Italy and Germany.

The Waldensian church planters believed they were genuine apostles, and renounced lavish living for a life of devotion to Christ, evangelism and church planting. They rejected Roman Catholic superstitions. Essentially they became a mediaeval apostolic church planting movement!

At first the Roman church tolerated them but as their numbers and influence grew they were first pressurised to not read and teach the Bible privately, then savagely persecuted and executed.

In 1229, at the Council of Valencia, the Bible was forbidden to be read by any except priests and then only in Latin.  The notorious Inquisition began hunting the Waldensians down from the 1230’s onwards. Some of the Inquisitors report that illiterate poor Waldenses were able to recite large parts of the New Testament accurately from memory. They were a Bible people. (see Churchill, The Age of Knights, Authentic p.240)

The Waldensians were in deep trouble right up until the Reformation.  And even as late as the 17th century a cruel persecution overtook them in Western Piedmont in the Southern Alps.  It was only through the courageous and vigorous intervention of Oliver Cromwell and his threat of naval and military action that brought the persecution to a close. Cromwell also championed fund raising on their behalf, personally donating £2000 for their support.  (See S.M. Houghton – Sketches from Church History (Banner of Truth) p.64)

The dominant religious and political organisation of the day was seeking to suppress the Christian faith. Yet when ordinary people discovered the truth of the Bible in their own language lives were changed and churches were planted. The word of God is powerful and can have true and redemptive impact even in the most difficult situations.

You can purchase ‘The Reformation in England’ here

© 2008 Lex Loizides

Breaking News: America was discovered by the Vikings!!

Ah, but is it church history? It is according to Leigh Churchill, who in his 2004 volume, ‘The Age of Knights & Friars, Popes & Reformers’ (Authentic, UK) notes that it was Christian leaders from Scandinavian countries who were the first Europeans to ‘discover’ North America.

Leaders of Denmark, Norway and Sweden had all embraced the Christian faith by the 11th Century. The government of Iceland declared Christianity to be the national religion in 1000AD. Greenland received missionaries in the same year and, while the message was resisted by its founders, the second generation of Viking settlers in Greenland embraced the Christian faith.

As the drive to colonise new islands continued, it was one of these Vikings who led the exploration of what is now Newfoundland, Canada.

Our hero’s name? ‘Leif the Lucky!’ (that’s true!). To those familiar with the story he will, of course, be remembered as the son of ‘Erik the Red’ (also true)!

He called the newly found ‘island’, ‘Vinland’, or Wineland, because of the profusion of vines there. The first group of settlers built houses and spent a winter there. Other groups from Greenland followed.

‘Many small pioneering parties made temporary settlements in Vinland – most in fact used Leif’s vacant houses – but they invariably returned to Greenland within a few years of their arrival. The days of Viking exploration were at an end, and this last outpost was just too far from the rest of the Norse world to really blossom.

Within twenty years the Norsemen left Vinland for the last time; none of them had any idea of the significance of the colony that never quite happened…It was to be five hundred years before Europeans again set foot upon its shores, but it is fascinating to reflect that Christianity was first brought to the New World by these ancient Viking seafarers, themselves the first generation of converts among their people.’ (Churchill, p. 3)

For those of us not familiar with early American Christian history, this ‘breaking news’ may come as a surprise. Our earliest picture of Christianity coming to North America tends to have been one in which a thoroughly decent, modest English puritan held the Bible in one hand and tentatively raised his other hand half way up to heaven, pointing men to God. However, we may need to revise that picture and replace our puritan friend with a hairy, war-like bearded Viking booming out both the wrath and mercy of God!

Kind of like replacing John Stott with Mark Driscoll!

(I love them both, by the way)

© 2008 Lex Loizides

From cessationism to joy – how a healing increased Augustine’s understanding of God’s grace

The turnaround from sin to grace, from worldliness to trusting Christ, wasn’t the only change Augustine experienced.  Earlier in his Christian life he had believed that miracles had ended when the first apostles died, but he rejected his former position as untenable following the dramatic and supernatural healing of a friend of his who had cancer. From then on he felt duty bound to publicise accounts of healings.

He was shocked that his close friend had kept her healing a secret and wrote:

“I was indignant that so astounding a miracle, performed in so important a city, and on a person far from obscure, should have been kept a secret like this; and I thought it right to admonish her and to speak to her with some sharpness on the matter.”

Bruce Shelley, Senior Professor of church history at Denver Seminar, writes:
‘Augustine’s hope was that, as apostolic miracles had aided the growth of the early church, miracles in his own day would draw people to Christianity.

Augustine’s exuberance for true miracles in City of God [one of Augustine's many books] shows that he no longer saw them as sham spirituality but as physical manifestations of God’s work in the world.

He wrote, “What do these miracles attest but the faith which proclaims that Christ rose in the flesh and ascended into heaven with the flesh? … God may himself perform them by himself, through that wonderful operation of his power whereby, being eternal, he is active in temporal events; or he may effect them through the agency of his servants… Be that as it may, they all testify to the faith in which the resurrection to eternal life is proclaimed.”’ (Bruce Shelley, Christian History Magazine, Issue 67)

The Dark Ages

Throughout the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ many evangelising monks spread the gospel, some with signs following (eg, Bede and Cuthbert) and brought the grace of God to many.

At this time fervent Christianity was often found amongst those believers, including monks and nuns, who had personally experienced the grace of God, but their books and documents are not always easy to read being so intermingled with extra-biblical references and practices.

Nevertheless, the light was still shining (see John 1:5) and an increasing number of individuals were beginning to speak up against the growing abuses of privilege amongst the priesthood and a gradual call for reform began to be heard across Europe.

© 2008 Lex Loizides

‘Lord make me pure but not yet!’ – Augustine’s wayward prayer!

Augustine was a radical convert! He was born in Tagaste (modern Souk Ahras, Algeria) in 354 and died in Hippo Regius (modern Annaba) in 431.

Augustine’s confessions make interesting reading!  He was the young man who prayed “Lord, make me chaste (sexually pure) – but not yet!”  He became a great intellectual, a professor of Rhetoric in the city of Milan. He lived in relative luxury and enjoyed a life of sin.  His mother, Monica, was a committed Chrstian and prayed earnestly for his conversion calling him ‘the son of so many tears’.

One afternoon as he was sitting in his garden he overheard some children singing ‘Take up and read!  Take up and read!’  He became inwardly convinced by the Spirit that he should read the New Testament.

He began reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, received powerful revelation of God’s grace in the gospel and was converted.  He then became the most zealous exponent of grace of his era, finally settling in Hippo where he became bishop.

F.F. Bruce writes:
‘It has often been remarked that the Biblical doctrine of divine grace, God’s unmerited favour shown to sinful humanity, so clearly (as we might think) expounded in the teaching of Christ and the writings of Paul, seems almost to go underground in the post-apostolic age, to reappear only with Augustine.

Certainly the majority of Christian writers who flourished between the apostles and Augustine do not seem to have grasped what Paul was really getting at in his contention that God’s forgiveness and salvation are bestowed entirely as a free gift, by His unconditioned grace.’  (‘The Spreading Flame’, Paternoster  p.334)

Augustine is a notable example of many who had nevertheless grasped the truth of God’s grace and sought to preach it consistently. Next time we’ll see how Augustine’s presumption that the age of miracles had ceased was radically changed – by an unexpected act of God’s power.

© 2008 Lex Loizides

The Light Shines in the Darkness – an introduction to the ‘Dark Ages’

Church history is the record of God’s ability to break in and bring change. And my goal is that you would be so inspired by the past, and so motivated by accounts of God’s faithfulness and power, that you would re-engage in the great commission with refreshed faith for your world today.

Knowing that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8) gives us great confidence as we seek to glorify His name and be a genuine blessing in the various nations in which God has placed us.

Focussing on highlights also means that we can jump to the heroes and heroines quickly rather than merely run through dates and names and so, for some, lose interest.

In this post we enter a period which has been called the ‘Dark Ages’, dating roughly from the fourth to the sixteenth century. I seriously doubt, however, that they were totally dark! I say that because of what we read in John 1:

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ (John 1:1-5 ESV emphasis added)

Notice the change of tense in verse 5. Verses 1-4 are all past tense, but verse 5 propels us into the historical present with the statement that ‘the light shines in the darkness’. No matter what period of history, no matter what cultural context, the light shines – that is, the unstoppable power of the life of Jesus Christ keeps shining! We need to remember that as we look at periods of history when the church was persecuted, outlawed or where reliable sources are hard to find. And maybe that’s an encouragement to you in your current context.

During these ‘dark ages’ many zealous and effective Christians were at work, preaching the gospel, planting churches and seeing many come to Christ.  How effective they were will probably not be known until Heaven.

Some commentators have sought to help us understand these times by suggesting that there existed the ‘Institutional Church’ and the ‘Inspirational Church’, or the ‘Pilgrim Church’ (see E.H. Broadbent – ‘The Pilgrim Church’, Pickering and Inglis).

As the spread of the institutional church increased so, tragically, what we would now understand to be evangelical Christianity was systematically suppressed.

We’ll look at some of the incredible stories of heroes who stood valiantly for Christ. When you have a single denomination that declares itself to be the only means by which salvation can come to the world, and the only guardian of the Christian gospel then you know you’re in trouble. And trouble there was!

But before we get there we’ll briefly look at one young man whose influence was immense once his conversion was complete – and once he realised that his now famous prayer would not be answered by a holy God!

The prayer? ‘Lord, make me chaste (sexually pure), but not yet!’

The man? Augustine

© 2008 Lex Loizides

Freedom and Temptation – the Church as Pilgrim and Politician

Or, the First Signs of the Confusion of Secular and Church Authority

By 311, the Roman Empire was divided into east and west with a struggle by rival would-be emperors to gain control.  One of these rivals was Constantine who, as he became increasingly hungry for power lost faith in the traditional Roman gods.  They weren’t delivering as promised.

Finally, at Milvian Bridge near Rome, Constantine won a vital battle and became the new Emperor.  The important thing for us to note is that shortly before the battle Constantine is said to have seen a vision. In this so-called vision a flaming cross appeared in the sky with the words inscribed on it “By this conquer”.

Constantine promptly ordered crosses to be painted on to all his soldiers’ shields and went to war fancying he had the approval of the Christian God.  It was an important victory for him. Assessing the nature of Constantine’s ‘conversion’ is obviously difficult. His story and some of his later conduct (he is also said to have built temples to Roman deities in Constantinople some years later) make us tend to think his was a religious, outward ‘conversion’ rather than regeneration by the Spirit, producing repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, there were clearly many great benefits of Constantine’s gratitude to the Christian’s God.  Persecution, which had raged for so long practically ceased.  The churches enjoyed peace and even a new found admiration from society.  But the terrible dangers of nominalism soon flooded in upon the community of faith.

One historian writes:
‘The vibrant evangelism that was conducted during the first two centuries of the church began to wane in the early fourth century during the reign of Emperor Constantine.  Christianity became a state religion, and as a result the churches were flooded with nominal Christians who had less concern for spiritual matters than for political and social prestige.

Christianity became the fashion.  Elaborate structures replaced the simple house-churches, and creeds replaced the spontaneous testimonies and prayers.  The need for aggressive evangelism seemed superfluous – at least within the civilised Roman world.’  (Tucker ‘From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya’, Zondervan p.28)

As the Roman church began to form itself, often yielding to the temptation to align its authority with the Roman state, (with eager help from Constantine, who presumed himself to be a kind of spiritual overseer to the church) so the spread of the church tended to parallel Rome’s political advances.

Although many believers and self-sacrificing leaders continued in communion with the Roman church, and even though the Greek churches and other church movements eventually excommunicated the church of Rome, the spread of the Christian message across the world was often less than spiritual in its progress and nature.

Tucker continues:
‘From the beginning, Roman Catholic missions were closely tied to political and military exploits, and mass conversions were the major factor in church growth.  Political leaders were sought out and through promises of military aid became nominal Christians, their subjects generally following suit.  In some instances the need for military aid was mixed with a superstitious belief that the Christian God was a better ally in battle than a pagan god or gods.’ (ibid p.43)

It is critical for us to remember where the source of the church’s spiritual influence lies. Although it is important to see Christians active in every sphere of life, including the political sphere, we must never forget that the influence and spread of authentic Christianity is essentially, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit’ says the Lord.’ (Zech 4:6)

That means we continue to look to God to raise up gifted leaders: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers (see Ephesians 4), to preach His word in the power of the Spirit, make disciples, plant churches, train leaders and go on until the knowledge of the glory of God covers the earth like the waters cover the sea.

© 2008 Lex Loizides

Miracles, Morality and the Power of the Local Church

We’ve been enjoying Edward Gibbon’s references to the Christian church in the latter years of the Roman Empire. We’ve seen that he emphasised three factors which assisted the growth of the Church and the influence of Christianity through the Roman world.

Firstly, he mentioned their zeal, their passion. They were on a mission to reach the world. Secondly, he emphasised that their confidence in their eternal security made them courageous even in the face of danger. Thirdly, he noted that these Christians were not only zealous and bold, but that they also prayed for the sick successfully, moved in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and were able to evangelise not with persuasive words of wisdom but in a demonstration of the Spirit’s power that clearly showed to a pagan world that Jesus Christ was indeed ‘Lord’. (see 1 Cor 2:4)

Before we leave Gibbon I want to draw on his further two observations as these will serve as a safeguard to us. Having shown us the impressive nature of their gifts and works, he also mentions the morality of the believers. He notes that there was a harmony of charismatic passion and personal integrity. Indeed, in beautifully quaint Victorian language he points to ‘the reformation of manners which was introduced into the world by the preaching of the Gospel.’ (ibid. p.283)

This process began, obviously, in evangelism: ‘The friends of Christianity may acknowledge without a blush that many of the most eminent saints had been before their baptism the most abandoned sinners.’ (ibid. p.284)

But the conversion of a person to the Christian faith produced not only an immediate moral impact in their lives but an ongoing one, so that they turned from their past sins, sought to support the social and economic structures of the society of which they were a part, became reliable workers, fair in business, honest in labour, modest in behaviour and faithful to both spouse and family. This notably different Christian lifestyle commended itself to those who were living close to them.

Lastly, Gibbon mentions the unity and discipline of the local churches as a factor in the sustained growth and spread of the Christian faith. The believers were locally organised under spiritually qualified elders, who cared for them, teaching them and supporting them in their new found faith. There were miracles but there were relationships and pastoral oversight.

Interestingly, Gibbon notes, ‘Independence and equality formed the basis of their internal constitution.’ (ibid. p.293) Somewhat different from the view that a single ecclesiastical power-structure oversaw all the churches, it seems that the churches were led by their own elders who drew on the wisdom of those who were apostolically or prophetically gifted.

Indeed, as we will later see, the local church has always been a key in the spread of the Christian faith in a nation or time period, and a sustainer of those powerful impulses in revival that have so impacted the world.

But, before we get there, we must look at some questions around the relationship between church and state. Just imagine if you were a Christian living in those days, wouldn’t you have prayed for the conversion of those in authority – and even the conversion of the Emperor himself? Well, early in the fourth century, after so many years of persecution, it happened!

The conversion to the Christian faith of Emperor Constantine brought a sudden and much longed-for release from persecution and an elevation and respect for the Christian faith. This was indeed an answer to prayer – but was it all good? And, what was the nature of his ‘conversion’?

We’ll see next time.

© 2008 Lex Loizides