Celebrating the Burning of Heretics

May 19, 2021 By Gene Veith

I’m interested in Christian art, and I just became aware of a remarkable–and twisted–example.

I was reading Ray Keating’s new Pastor Steven Grant thriller, Vatican Shadows–more on that later, when I review it–and figuring in the novel is a work of art in the Church of the Gesù in Rome, the mother church of the Jesuits, where St. Ignatius of Loyola is buried. It’s an over-the-top baroque sculpture by the French artist Pierre Le Gros the Younger (1666-1719) titled “The Triumph of Faith Over Heresy.” (Also known as “The Triumph of Religion Over Heresy” or over “Heresy and Hatred,” or “Religion Overthrowing Heresy,” or “Heresy and Hatred.”)

The sculpture, made between 1695 and 1700, depicts a female figure, looking like the Virgin Mary, but evidently an allegorical figure for “Faith” or “Religion,” brandishing in her left hand a cross like a weapon and holding in her right hand fire. She is trampling on two figures, who are writhing in terror and agony, with a serpent wrapped around them as they are falling into Hell.

The figures are identified as Martin Luther and the proto-Reformer Jan Hus. They don’t look like either of those individuals. Then again, in 1695, in that era before visual images could be mass-produced and broadcast far and wide, people didn’t necessarily know what important figures looked like. Still, it might be better to understand these two (one of whom some commentators say is an old woman) as allegorical figures representing heresy in general (or perhaps heresy and hatred). But, lest there be any doubt about the work’s application, underneath the heretic who is spilling down into the viewer’s space is a book with a binding that says “Martin Luther.” Other books are depicted as being by “Calvin” and “Zwingli,” whose book is being ripped apart by a putto, or baby angel.

I understand that Ignatius Loyola, buried nearby, is the founder of the Jesuit order, whose purpose at the time was to carry out the “counter-Reformation,” which involved suppressing the Reformation. I concede too that the Reformers could also get harsh in their depictions of the Pope and the theology he presided over. I just find this depiction jarring as a devotional object in the setting of a church.

What really struck me, though, in this religious sculpture (which I reproduce here) is the way “Faith,” or “Religion,” is dealing with these “heretics.” With the cross in her left hand, but with her right hand wielding fire. This is referring for the devotional benefit of the faithful, to the practice of dealing with heretical ideas by taking those who believe them and burning them to death.

For the heresy of believing that the laity should be allowed to receive the wine in Holy Communion, Hus had his promise of safe conduct to the Council of Constance violated, whereupon he was tied to a stake, wood was piled around him up to his neck, and he was set on fire.

Luther, somewhat to his surprise, avoided this fate, but many Lutherans did not. Henry VIII of England also liked to burn heretics, including after he himself broke away from Rome so that he could head the Church of England. Henry burned the English Lutheran Robert Barnes. He also colluded with Catholic authorities in Belgium to burn William Tyndale for the heresy of translating the Bible into English, along with the heresy of criticizing the king for his many marriages.

When a subsequent English monarch, Queen Mary (aka, “Bloody Mary”) tried to bring her dominion back to Catholicism, many more Protestants were burned. Thomas Cranmer emulated Luther’s liturgical reforms in Wittenberg in his Book of Common Prayer, which, in turn, influenced the English-language liturgy that we American Lutherans use, in particular the Collects that we pray every Sunday. For that heresy, he was burned, something that we should remember when we take our worship for granted.

Luther himself said that heresy should be dealt with by the Word, not the Sword (or the torch). In his writings, Luther upheld the freedom of conscience and rejected coercion in matters of faith. Not that he was a religious libertarian by today’s standards. He urged the Princes to use force to put down the peasant rebellion led by “enthusiasts,” who taught that the Holy Spirit inspired them directly, with no need for the Bible. And he advocated that the Anabaptists should be driven out of Lutheran territories. Although Calvin presided over the burning of Michael Servetus for not believing in the Trinity, I am not aware that the Lutherans burned anyone at the stake. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

But how horrible was this practice. And yet, this work of religious art celebrates the burning of heretics as a pious act. Indeed, the Inquisition–that investigative arm of the Counter-Reformation–called its tortures and heretic burnings an auto-da-fé, an “act of faith.”

Also striking is that I too, along with my fellow Lutherans and all of us Protestants would also be considered heretics in need of burning. To be sure, the Roman Catholic church today has changed its tune, considering us “separated brethren,” though some of that sentiment remains, though the statue remains in Rome and some Catholics still praise its sentiments.

Last Sunday, our Gospel reading included this saying of our Lord: “The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).

Next Sunday, on Pentecost, our granddaughter is being confirmed, a rite that will ask her to make this promise:

P Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even
death, rather than fall away from it?
R I do, by the grace of God.

Sometimes it comes to that.

(For other discussions of this object d’art, see what Philip Jenkins has to say about it. Also Tim Challies, who notes that an adjoining chapel offers a 300-day indulgence for those who enter it “in a contrite spirit.”)

Illustration: “Religion Overthrowing Heresy and Hatred” by Pierre Le Gros the Younger (1695), photo by Tetraktys, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Esolen Brings Back Poetry by Bringing Back Christian Poetry

April 21, 2020 By Gene Veith

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The Christian author and cultural critic Anthony Esolen has written a remarkable new book entitled The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord.

Rev. Harold Senkbeil of DOXOLOGY: The Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care and Counsel asked me to review it for the journal that organization puts out, which I was happy to do. The review will appear in SEELSORGER: A Journal for the Contemporary Cure of Souls Vol. 6, published by DOXOLOGY. The issue will be available later this year from Lulu.com. Other issues of Seelsorger, a term for a pastor engaged in the cure or the care of souls, can be purchased here.

My review is posted here. Rev. Senkbeil gave me permission to also publish it on my blog in its entirety. So here it is:

Review of Anthony Esolen, The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2019. 224 pp. $17.95

Anthony Esolen is one of the most scintillating Christian cultural critics of our time. Instead of simply showing that the ideas and practices of secularist progressivism are wrong, he also shows how—unlike Christianity—they are lifeless and soul-numbing. A long-time literature professor, Esolen showed his poetic talents in an acclaimed translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Now in The Hundredfold, Esolen has written a Christian poetic masterpiece of his own.

Today, in this lifeless and soul-numbing culture, hardly anyone reads poetry anymore. In the Introduction to The Hundredfold, Esolen blames the rise of free verse for the decline in poetry’s popularity, going on to give us a seminar in meter, rhyme, and poetic form that can teach us how to read poetry and how to appreciate it once again.

I blame not just free verse for our current loss of poetry but also the tendency, encouraged by both modern poets and my fellow literature teachers, to turn a poem into a puzzle, something to be first deciphered and then interpreted, with the goal of finding the poem’s “hidden meaning.” Such an approach changes poetry reading from a pleasure to a drudgery. Other modern poems are just an effusion of emotions, a mere expression of subjective feelings. Then there are the poems, which pretend to be traditional but are not, that are sing-songy, sentimental, and idealized.

Esolen’s poems are nothing like any of these. Like all poems, they must be read slowly, with concentration and close attention. But the insight they give the reader comes from the language, the imagery, and the form of the poem, not some abstract meaning extracted from it. These poems are personal, even passionate sometimes, but they are objectively focused. They are wonderfully crafted formally, but the music of the verse is in service to its meaning, rather than distracting from it. And far from being sentimental and idealistic, they are tough-minded and grounded in reality, both that of the physical and the spiritual realms.

The Swiss Christian literary critic Denis de Rougemont has defined poetry as a “trap for meditation.” A poem is a work of art, made of words like a painting is made of daubs of paint, that forces the reader—by means of its imagery and structure—to meditate on something. That might be the twinkling little stars in the night sky, as in the children’s song, or stopping in the woods on a snowy evening as in Robert Frost’s poem of the same name, or the Fall of Man in Milton’s Paradise Lost. In each case, the poet is contemplating a truth, an experience, or an object, evoking it and reflecting on its meaning in such a way that the reader will meditate on it as well.

In this case, Esolen is trapping us into meditations on the Bible; that is, on Christ. That is, the Christ who saves us. The Hundredfold consists of 67 mostly-short lyric poems, each one based on a text of Scripture; 12 longer dramatic monologues depicting someone from the New Testament or its era who encountered Christ; and 21 hymns that the church can sing in worship to Christ. Add up the number of poems, and you get the 100 referred to by the title.

Some might be surprised to find work so Biblical, so Christocentric, so evangelical coming from a Catholic like Esolen, but there it is. While his Catholicism is evident sometimes, there is little to bother other Christians, and Lutherans will pick up on motifs of Law and Gospel, the theology of the cross, and the sacraments.

The intricately crafted lyric poems, with their enveloping rhymes, demonstrate how much meaning a good poet can condense into just a few lines. Each one begins with a text of Scripture as its heading. In ten lines or so, we jump from Eve to Mary, from the death of Isaac to the death of Joseph. Sometimes we jump from the Bible days to today, from child sacrifice to Moloch to today’s “terror” of birth. Or from the Bible text to the poet’s—and our—personal lives.

Interspersed with these lyrics are longer dramatic monologues. This genre, pioneered by the great Victorian poet Robert Browning, depicts a fictional or historical person speaking, telling something about his or her life. Thus, the poet is creating a character and telling a story, much like a novelist. Esolen writes his monologues (along with one dialogue and one trialogue) in blank verse, the unrhymed iambic pentamenter (“which is, please repeat three times, not free verse, and not even close”), the form that Shakespeare, Milton, and most other major English poets used.

Esolen depicts Mary, watching her young Son sleep; a grandfather who turns out to have been the boy who brought Jesus the loaves and fishes; Bartimaeus exultant in now being able to see; the healed demoniac from Gadara; Paul writing to his old teacher Gamaliel; and others who knew Jesus and can help us know Him.

Mixed in with these poems are hymns. These are actual texts written to classic hymn tunes (including some Lutheran gems, such as Luther’s “Christus Lag in Todesbunden” and Johann Franck’s “Jesu, Meine Freude”). Esolen, who has written a book on hymns (Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church), knows that while song-lyrics are poetry, they are poetry of a special sort, designed for collective devotion and collective performance, with metrical qualities that must tie-in to the music. These hymns measure up, and a congregation could sing them with great profit and delight. Their effect in this series of Biblical reflections and meditations on Christ is to give them a liturgical context, a response of praise, so that the whole collection is something like a worship service.

In the Introduction, Esolen says that The Hundredfold, while made up of individual poems, is itself one poem. And, indeed, the various poems come together into a unity. The Bible verses with their accompanying poems take us from Genesis through the Epistles. There is a progression in the dramatic monologues from Christ as a boy, through His ministry, through His passion, to Resurrection, and then to the proclamation of this Gospel by the Apostles.

The final poem of that series is entitled “Two Disciples of Saint John, on Patmos.” This dramatic Browning-style character study has three voices, not just one, making it, I suppose, a dramatic trialogue. The two young men are talking together as they watch the Beloved Disciple of Jesus, now elderly and close to death, sleeping. This ties together with the first monologue, in which Mary watches the young Jesus sleeping. This brings the sequence of poems full circle into a unity, even as it shows a movement from youth to age, from Jesus to the proclamation of Jesus. In the poem, as St. John sleeps, his mind is filled with memories of his days with Jesus, with snatches of his Holy Spirit-inspired gospel, and with vivid imagery that he would soon write down as the Book of Revelation. His two young followers think the old man is dying, but he surprises them by waking up and calling for parchment so that he could write out “the terrible apocalypse of love.”

The volume closes with this account of the writing of the last book of the Bible, followed by three lyrics on texts from that book, and, finally, a longer poem to conclude them all. Like the monologues, it portrays a person and his story, but this character is the author himself, telling about his encounter with Christ. Like the lyrics, it is intricately rhymed, but this rhyme scheme is the terza rima of The Divine Comedy, the three-line stanzas with interlocking rhymes with which Esolen’s literary mentor Dante wrote about his spiritual journey.

One of Esolen’s dramatic monologues is entitled “The Blacksmith to St. Luke,” in which an ordinary working man reports on his dealings with Jesus to the Evangelist researching his gospel. He tells about hearing Jesus talking about a sower whose seed produced “a hundredfold.”

The title of the book—that is, to the larger poem of which the others are a part—refers not only to the number of poems it contains. It is an allusion to Christ’s Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:8). The seed is “the word” (Matthew 13:18-23), the Word of God that is the Gospel, which, received rightly, bears much fruit.

The implication is that, for Esolen, these poems represent “the Hundredfold” that the Word of God has produced in him. And that he hopes the words that he has sown in this book produce a “hundredfold” in those who read it.

Gene Edward Veith

Photo ILFamily Institute / YouTube via The Federalist.

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An Ancient Description of the Early Christians

April 20, 2018 By Gene Veith

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An article at Aleteia entitled This is How Christians Lived in the 2nd Century by Philip Kosloski put me on to a remarkable document that attempts to explain Christians to citizens of the Roman empire–those strange people who don’t expose their infants but let all of their babies live; who reject sex outside of marriage; who endure cruel persecution cheerfully; who do good even to those who hate them.

The text is a part of the Epistle to Diognetus written, in Greek, as one of the first works of Christian apologetics. The author, whose pen name is “Mathetes,” or “disciple,” is described as possibly a “Johannine Christian”; that is, a disciple of the Apostle John or his immediate successors. The work dates to as early as 130 A.D., making it one of those extremely early Christian testimonies that we have been blogging about. (See our posts about very early testimonies to the deity of Christ, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Staurogram.)

The entire Epistle has 12 sections, but here is the part entitled Christians in the World:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body’s hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution.

Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.

From a letter to Diognetus (Nn. 5-6; Funk, 397-401)

These Christians do not withdraw from their cultures, but rather, on the surface, are “indistinguishable” from everyone else. “They follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in.” “And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives.”

Do you think Christians could become this way again? How much persecution would it take?

Illustration: An Agape Feast, Catacomb of Sts. Peter and Mark. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=566560

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“Only Let Me Get to Jesus Christ!”

March 21, 2018 By Gene Veith

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In his sermon last Sunday, here in Australia, Pastor Pfeiffer quoted some fascinating words from St. Ignatius of Antioch, which he wrote just before being thrown to the lions in Rome.

Ignatius was one of those very early second-generation Christians that we blogged about who confessed the deity of Christ (disproving the liberal contention that such beliefs were the product of a long period of doctrinal development). The date of his birth is uncertain. Though a tradition says that he was the child whom Jesus used as an object lesson in Luke 9:47, that would make him much too old when he died in 107 or 108 A.D. Scholars say he was probably born in 35 A.D., five years after Christ’s crucifixion, or as late as 50 A.D.

But there is agreement that he was a disciple of the Apostle John. Ignatius became the third bishop of the church in Antioch, after the Apostle Peter and Evodius. According to tradition, he was installed into this office at Peter’s direction.

He was arrested under Emperor Trajan’s persecutions and was sentenced to die because of his faith. He was sent to Rome to be devoured by wild beasts in the Colosseum. En route, he wrote seven remarkable epistles to various churches and to his friend St. Polycarp.

These letters, written with an vivid personal voice, included warnings against the “Ebionites,” who taught that Christians must obey the Old Testament Law to be saved, and the Docetists, who denied that Jesus had come “in the flesh” but was a purely spiritual being who only “seemed” to be human (cf. 1 John 4:2-3). Ignatius comments that because the Docetists deny that Christ had a physical body, they also deny His presence in Holy Communion. This is an extremely early testimony to the doctrine of the Real Presence, evidence that the first Christians did not have a merely symbolic view of the Lord’s Supper.

In his Epistle to the Romans, Ignatius directly addresses his upcoming martyrdom. Apparently, some members of the church in Rome thought that they could arrange for Ignatius’s death penalty to be commuted, that they could save him from the grisly death to which he had been sentenced. But Ignatius begs these well-intentioned Christians to let his martyrdom unfold.

In words bearing on our other blog discussion about the fear of death, Ignatius passionately embraces his martyrdom, making light of the beasts that are going to eat him (becoming his “tomb”), saying that his death will bear greater fruit for God’s kingdom than if he stays alive, and eagerly longing to be with Christ.

From St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Romans:

2 I do not want you to please men, but to please God, just as you are doing. For I shall never again have such a chance to get to God, nor can you, if you keep quiet, get credit for a finer deed. For if you quietly let me alone, people will see in me God’s Word. But if you are enamored of my mere body, I shall, on the contrary, be a meaningless noise. Grant me no more than to be a sacrifice for God while there is an altar at hand. Then you can form yourselves into a choir and sing praises to the Father in Jesus Christ that God gave the bishop of Syria the privilege of reaching the sun’s setting when he summoned him from its rising. It is a grand thing for my life to set on the world, and for me to be on my way to God, so that I may rise in his presence.

3 You never grudged anyone. You taught others. So I want you to substantiate the lessons that you bid them heed. Just pray that I may have strength of soul and body so that I may not only talk, but really want it. It is not that I want merely to be called a Christian, but actually to be one. Yes, if I prove to be one, then I can have the name. Then, too, I shall be a convincing Christian only when the world sees me no more. Nothing you can see has real value. Our God Jesus Christ, indeed, has revealed himself more clearly by returning to the Father. The greatness of Christianity lies in its being hated by the world, not in its being convincing to it.

4 I am corresponding with all the churches and bidding them all realize that I am voluntarily dying for God — if, that is, you do not interfere. I plead with you, do not do me an unseasonable kindness. Let me be fodder for wild beasts — that is how I can get to God. I am God’s wheat and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts to make a pure loaf for Christ. I would rather that you fawn on the beasts so that they may be my tomb and no scrap of my body be left. Thus, when I have fallen asleep, I shall be a burden to no one. Then I shall be a real disciple of Jesus Christ when the world sees my body no more. Pray Christ for me that by these means I may become God’s sacrifice. I do not give you orders like Peter and Paul. They were apostles: I am a convict. They were at liberty: I am still a slave. But if I suffer, I shall be emancipated by Jesus Christ; and united to him, I shall rise to freedom.

Even now as a prisoner, I am learning to forgo my own wishes.

5 All the way from Syria to Rome I am fighting with wild beasts, by land and sea, night and day, chained as I am to ten leopards (I mean to a detachment of soldiers), who only get worse the better you treat them. But by their injustices I am becoming a better disciple, “though not for that reason am I acquitted.” What a thrill I shall have from the wild beasts that are ready for me! I hope they will make short work of me. I shall coax them on to eat me up at once and not to hold off, as sometimes happens, through fear. And if they are reluctant, I shall force them to it. Forgive me — I know what is good for me. Now is the moment I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing seen or unseen begrudge me making my way to Jesus Christ. Come fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the devil — only let me get to Jesus Christ!

6 Not the wide bounds of earth nor the kingdoms of this world will avail me anything. “I would rather die” and get to Jesus Christ, than reign over the ends of the earth. That is whom I am looking for — the One who died for us. That is whom I want — the One who rose for us. I am going through the pangs of being born. Sympathize with me, my brothers! Do not stand in the way of my coming to life — do not wish death on me. Do not give back to the world one who wants to be God’s; do not trick him with material things. Let me get into the clear light and manhood will be mine. Let me imitate the Passion of my God. If anyone has Him in him, let him appreciate what I am longing for, and sympathize with me, realizing what I am going through.

Read the rest of his Epistle to the Romans, as well as his other epistles. They will give you a vivid picture, from the inside, of the first Christians and their faith.

Illustration: Icon of the Martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch by anonymous (http://days.pravoslavie.ru/Images/ii897&3009.htm) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Extremely Early Testimonies to the Deity of Christ

March 6, 2018 By Gene Veith

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The conventional wisdom among liberal theologians and higher critics of the Bible is that the deity of Christ was a concept that grew up out of a long oral tradition that gradually elevated the historical Jesus, culminating in the Council of Nicaea, which defined the doctrine in 325 A.D. But there are references to the deity of Christ long before Nicaea.

A mosaic table, apparently used for Holy Communion in a house church at Tel Megiddo (a.k.a. Armageddon), is going on display in Israel. First discovered in 2005 in the excavation of the earliest place of Christian worship that has been discovered, the table is dated 230 A.D. An inscription on the table reads, “The god-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.” See the inscription and details about it in the article Ancient mosaic describing Jesus Christ as ‘God’ to be unveiled in Israel, which calls it “one of the earliest-known testaments to early Christian belief in the divinity of Christ.”

But that is only 100 years before the Council of Nicaea. We have writings that go back far earlier than that.

Tim Barnett at Stand to Reason has compiled these statements from early church fathers, some of whom were second-generation Christians, coming to faith through the ministry of Christ’s apostles:

Polycarp (AD 69-155) was the bishop at the church in Smyrna and a disciple of John the Apostle. In his Letter to the Philippians, he writes,

Now may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the eternal high priest himself, the Son of God Jesus Christ, build you up in faith and truth…and to us with you, and to all those under heaven who will yet believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his Father who raised him from the dead.[4]

Ignatius (AD 50-117) was the bishop at the church in Antioch and another disciple of John. He wrote a series of letters to various churches on his way to Rome, where he was to be martyred. He writes,

There is only one physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and unborn, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first subject to suffering and then beyond it, Jesus Christ our Lord.[5]

For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit.[6]

Justin Martyr (AD 100–165) was a Christian apologist of the second century. He boldly states,

And that Christ being Lord, and God the Son of God, and appearing formerly in power as Man, and Angel, and in the glory of fire as at the bush, so also was manifested at the judgment executed on Sodom, has been demonstrated fully by what has been said.[7]

Permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts.[8]

Irenaeus of Lyons (AD 130–202) was bishop of what is now known as Lyons, France. Irenaeus studied under bishop Polycarp, who in turn had been a disciple of John the Apostle. He writes,

He received testimony from all that He was very man, and that He was very God, from the Father, from the Spirit, from angels, from the creation itself, from men, from apostate spirits and demons.[9]

…Christ Jesus our Lord, and God, and Savior, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father.[10]

Clement of Alexandria (AD 150–215) was another early church father. He wrote around AD 200. He writes,

This Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first (for He was in God) and of our well-being, this very Word has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man….[11]

Tertullian (AD 150-225) was an early Christian apologist writing around a century after John. He said,

For God alone is without sin; and the only man without sin is Christ, since Christ is also God.[12]

Hippolytus of Rome (AD 170-235) was a third century theologian. He was a disciple of Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. He writes,

The Logos alone of this God is from God himself; wherefore also the Logos is God, being the substance of God.[13]

For all, the righteous and the unrighteous alike, shall be brought before God the Word.[14]

Then there are the first generation accounts in the Bible from the Apostles (e.g., John 1:1, Colossians 1:15-20), and the words of Jesus Himself (e.g., John 10:30, 14:9), and the prophecies before Jesus was born (e.g., Isaiah 9:6).

Of course, higher critics of the Bible date the New Testament documents that affirm Christ’s divinity very late, assuming that they must have been written in post-apostolic times after the doctrine had been developed. Such circular reasoning is a hallmark of liberal Biblical criticism.

But as more and more ancient manuscripts have been discovered, the dates of the composition of the books in the New Testament are being pushed farther and farther back.

The point is, there is not enough time for a long oral tradition or for the evolution of doctrine. Jesus is Lord, in the words of one of the earliest confessions of faith (Romans 10:9), and all Christians throughout time have always believed that.

Illustration by dimitrisvetsikas1969, via Pixabay, CC0, Creative Commons

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The Reformation as a restoration of catholicity

October 31, 2016 By Gene Veith

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Even some Protestants are saying that we shouldn’t celebrate Reformation Day. Why celebrate the breakup of the catholicity of the Church? In his excellent Reformation Sunday sermon, our pastor quoted the distinguished seminary professor and theologian Norman Nagel, who maintained that the Reformation was actually a restoration of the Church’s catholicity.

Read why after the jump.

UPDATE: Dr. Nagel made a rare mistake in crediting Irenaeus for the quotation when it should have been St. Ignatius of Antioch. (HT: Steve)

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