Church History. Summer Week 9. The Age of Progress ( ) BACKGROUND. Week 1 Biblical Church History

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1 Church History Summer 2015 Week 1 Biblical Church History Week 9 I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Mat 16:18 ESV) The Age of Progress ( ) BACKGROUND The Age of Enlightenment came to a head (and in some sense to a crashing halt) with the French Revolution. Reason had lead to a sense of personal independence and a confidence in the educated man to create free societies. Emboldened somewhat by the American Revolution, the French Common Estate sought independence from their own monarchy and the religious estate (the Catholic Church). The French Revolution was supposed to be the triumph of the common man. However, the tyranny of the elite soon gave way to the despotism and endless military crusades of Napoleon. Liberty had become the new religion and it too lead quickly to bloodshed and disillusionment. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church was almost all of its physical territory and power within Italy. The Papal States, held for over 1000 years, were seized by those who would organize an Italian nation leaving only the Vatican in Rome as the physical headquarters for the Pope. However Pope Pius IX would not accede to the new age of Progress. Instead, he would wage a war of ideas beginning with the release to all Bishops of the Syllabus of Errors, a compilation of eighty evils in modern society. In no uncertain terms, he declared war on socialism, rationalism, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, public schools, Bible societies, separation of church and state, and a host of other demons 1 This was met with a great deal of sympathy by those who had been disillusioned with the results of the French Revolution and growing nationalism in Italy and, to a lesser extent, Germany. Maybe organized religion could be a satisfying refuge of certainty (and conservatism) in an age of tumultuous change. It was at this time (1870) that the Pope convened a council to affirm papal infallibility. 1 Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, p

2 Church History at-a-glance The Age of Progress ( ) London Missionary Society founded 1795 World War I Papal Infallibility promulgated Prominent Personalities and Movements William Wilberforce ( ) One of the Oxford men who did much to bring Christian social action to prominence in England in the early 19 th century. Wilberforce is best known for his work in the abolishing of the slave trade and eventually the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire. William Carey ( ) Often thought of as the father of the modern mission movement, Carey was the champion of foreign missions for Great Britain in the early 19th century. In 1792 Carey published An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen. It created an epoch. In it Carey took up the five objections that people raised against missions to heathen lands: their distance, their barbarism, the danger that would be incurred, the difficulties of support, and the unintelligible languages. One by one he answered those. The same obstacles had not prevented merchants from going to distant shores. It only requires, he wrote, that 2

3 we should have as much love to the souls of our fellow-creatures, and fellow sinners, as they have for the profits arising from a few otter skins, and all these difficulties could be easily surmounted. 2 The Evangelical Missionary Movement The evangelical awakenings revolutionized preaching and its objectives. Traditional churchmen usually limited the minister s task to nurturing the seed of faith planted at baptism in virtually all members of the parish. Such men could not imagine preaching the gospel in a tribal society. At the same time those Christians who held a rigid doctrine of predestination never seemed to concern themselves with the elect in India or China. Evangelicals, however, like Carey, saw preaching as calling sinners to God through faith in Christ. They felt a personal responsibility to do this and saw no difference in principle between baptized heathen in Britain and non-christian peoples overseas. 3 Again, Carey proved the pioneer. When he wrote his Enquiry he asked, what would a trading company do? From this he proposed the formation of a company of serious minded Christians, laymen and ministers. The group should have a committee to collect and sift information and to find funds and suitable missionaries to send to foreign lands. The voluntary society, of which the missionary society was one early form, transformed nineteenth-century Christianity. It was invented to meet a need rather than for theological reasons, but in effect it undermined the established forms of church government. It made possible interdenominational action. Anglican, Baptist, Congregationalist, and Methodist could work together for defined purposes without raising troublesome questions of church structure. It also altered the power base in the church by encouraging lay leadership. Ordinary Christian men, and later women, come to hold key positions in the important societies, something thought impossible elsewhere in the church. 4 In a few years Baptists, Presbyterians, and other major denominations followed the Congregationalists in creating missionary agencies. The conversion of the heathen became one of the major concerns of local congregations in every city and town in the country (America), stimulated by the continuous activity of local societies and women s organizations, children s days for foreign missions, occasional visits from missionaries on furlough, periodical campaigns for offerings, and, more recently, the inclusion of support of foreign missions as a large item in regular church budgets. 5 a wide variety of humanitarian ministries accompanied the widespread preaching of the gospel. Mission agencies established schools, hospitals, and centers for training nurses and doctors. They reduced many languages and dialects to writing and translated not only the Bible but other Western writings into these languages. And they introduced public health measures and better agricultural 2 Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, p Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, p Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, p Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, p

4 techniques. In some cases these activities were closely related to the goal of conversion, but many sprang simply out of the recognition of social and physical needs that no Christian could in good conscience ignore. 6 Liberalism Beginning in the late 19 th and early 20 th Century, doubts about the historical accuracy and authenticity of the OT and NT (arising from Higher Criticism) lead some within Christian circles to turn to a moralistic understanding of Scripture. There may be historical inaccuracies in Scripture, but it is still morally authoritative. Or, to say it another way, those miracles and other stories recorded in Scripture were accommodations to more primitive understandings of the world. Now, after the Enlightenment, through reason, we know better. So, there may be natural explanations of what is going on in the miracle stories, or those stories may just be myths formulated to help people experience something they couldn t explain without highly developed reason. Some would go so far as to say that Scripture is not a supernatural book that comes from God, but a human book that helps one encounter God. There may be other books or experiences that also can lead to encounters with God. You ought to say plainly that you do not believe the Gospel of Christ. For to believe what you please, and not to believe what you please, is to believe yourselves and not the gospel. (Augustine, Against Faustus, 17.3 Faustus was a leader of the Manicheans In Augustine s day.) Friedrich Schleiermacher ( ) Probably the most influential of the founders of Liberalism, Schleiermacher grew up with a father who was a German Lutheran Pietist. In fact, Friedrich himself attended a Moravian school. When he got to Halle University, he ran headlong into the challenges to faith presented by the Enlightenment (rationalism, naturalism, secularism, etc.) and it overwhelmed him with doubt and skepticism to the point where he abandoned the faith of his childhood. He became convinced that Scripture was not true, that there was no incarnation, no vicarious atonement, no literal physical resurrection of Christ. However, he wanted desperately to hang on to personal relationship with God. Rationalism leads him away from historical Christianity, so he turns to Romanticism to resolve his dilemma. He came to understand Christianity (or religion) as man s feeling (or consciousness) of absolute dependence. This is completely subjective, completely emotional, and completely immune to the arguments of Rationalism. Schleiermacher attempted to rehabilitate religion among intellectuals, insisting that the great debates over proofs of God and the abstract doctrinal descriptions of faith were, at best, a secondary expression of religion. At the heart of religion was an awareness of our absolute dependence and vulnerability before the grandeur of God. 7 6 Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, p Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, p

5 Excursus: Is it either or? Do I have to give up reason (become irrational at least in some things) in order to embrace Christianity? Often times, I still hear the person in the pew saying, I just have a strong feeling that this is true. I don t know (or care) about all the fancy arguments, my experience tells me this is true. But I would argue that Mormons make the same argument. If there is no factual, historical evidence for the objective truth of the claims of Scripture, we are lost. 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. (1Co 15:13-20 ESV) 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. 18 "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isa 1:16-18 ESV) David Friedrich Strauss Father of the Historical Jesus movement, Strauss aimed to show the Jesus of history vs. the Jesus of faith. In many ways, this was an offshoot of Higher Criticism which aimed to demythologize the life of Christ. His hypothesis was that the early church took the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth and made him into the Son of God of faith. Readers must peel back the layers of myth to understand who Jesus really was: a semi-controversial rabbi, but nothing more. Albert Ritschl ( ) Ritschl located the value of religion in the good that it does for society as a foundation for moral values and action. This is an exposition of the social gospel for which The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man was a slogan. So, whether or not Scripture is true (and Ritschl doesn t believe that it is), the value of religion and especially Christianity is in its example to us of how we ought to treat one another. 5

6 Fundamentalism As a reaction to Liberalism, fundamentalism arose to differentiate and defend orthodox evangelical Christianity from those who were abandoning it or criticizing it. Historically and theologically, then, fundamentalists are those Protestant Christians who defend entire, detailed systems of very conservative doctrines against perceived modernist, liberal encroachments and dilutions, and they often call for and practice separation from Christians who are guilty of participating in or condoning modernism in theology. More often than not, fundamentalists insist on belief in the supernatural, verbal inspiration of the Bible, absolute biblical inerrancy with regard to historical and natural as well as theological matters, a literalistic biblical hermeneutic, and strong opposition to any and all deviations from these principles or fundamental beliefs of conservative Protestantism. 8 Restorationism A product of the Second Great Awakening (19 th Century) lead to development of cults like Jehovah s Witnesses (Charles Taze Russell), Mormonism, Christian Science (Mary Baker Eddy), Seventh Day Adventism (accept prophecies of Ellen G. White as authoritative revelation, second work of atonement being done by Christ in heaven now). The idea of Restorationism was that the creeds and organized denominations of church history were all a corruption of the original faith of Christianity. What was needed was a return to the primitive roots of the faith before all of that. This lead to attempts to reunite all Christians under a single group The Church of Christ (baptismal regeneration). Soon these groups would begin to claim new revelation (often through new prophets ) which would bring the church back to its basic roots by bypassing all of church history. What they actually return to in large part are the various heresies of the early centuries. 8 Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, pg