Complete Grace

 Before there were long Christmas seasons, people used the season of Advent to consider what God was going to spring on us in Christmas. The next few days I will post some of these thoughts from several hundred years ago.

 Grace, God’s undeserved kindness of salvation, is something every Christian loves dearly.  Think of the characters of the Bible—Mary and Joseph, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Ruth, David, Daniel, Peter, John, Paul. All received the grace of God.  But some Christians struggle with their own end of the deal.  Faith and Trust are the same words in Greek and Hebrew.  What if I’m not too trusting? Deep down they hope God is not just some kind of made-up figure that naïve people believe in. Maybe He exists and maybe he is Lord of all, but does he care about me?  Why am I the only one of my age who isn’t married yet?  How come I got laid off?  Why did my health go bad? Why did my kids abandon the faith? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil.4:13) but sometimes I wonder what He can do with me.  Perhaps many regular church attenders have doubts like this too.

            You’re not alone in agonizing with God.  David in the Psalms wrote about it, “How long, Lord, how long? I am worn out from my groaning.  All night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.”Psalm 6:3,6 Habakkuk said it too, “How long, Lord must I call for help, but you do not listen?...Why do you make me look at injustice?  Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?” Habbakuk 1:2,3.

Mercy is not getting what you deserve (hell).  Grace is getting what you don’t deserve, including God’s salvation.  But what we really struggle with is God’s Love. Does He consider me? “But Zion [Israel] said, “God has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her nursing child that she have no compassion on the firstborn son of her womb?  Even these may forget but I will not forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” Is. 49:14-16. (Have Jesus show you His hands some day in heaven.) “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.”Jer.1:5.  Yet how can He love someone as messed up as me? Simple answer: Because He is God.  We must get away from thinking any of this is our own doing.  It’s not about you; it’s about Him.  Should He suddenly appear to Saul of Tarsus amidst seething hate, intent on killing Christians, He can and did.  “Love that found me, wondrous thought!  Found me when I sought Him not,”

God loves you from before time began. He sent His only Son to die for you and pay for your sins.  He gives you faith to believe as a free gift.  His Spirit indwells you, quite stunningly in a relationship with Himself.  He adopts you as His own child, seals you with His Spirit, and will take you home.  This is what Christians in one way or another believe and it gives one a peace that passes all understanding.  But does God really say this? In Ephesians 2:8,9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that, not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” The Greek word that refers to all the previous nouns—the grace, the saving, the faith. Everything was a gift from God. It doesn’t go away. “ In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in Him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,” Eph. 1:13. God has done it all.

Yeah, but what if I screw it up? Consult the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).

What’s this like? Martin Luther had a story.  Imagine you are a child and you pushed your brother down the stairs and he broke his neck.  You are mortified over this.  What will your father say?  Will he say, ‘Get out of my life.  I never want to see you again—you killed my son!’? Apprehensively you go in to see your father and just as you open your mouth to try to explain, in bounds your brother.  He’s perfectly okay!  And he takes over pleading for you with Dad. You had nothing to do with your salvation! So encourage your fellow Christians by asking them, “When you came to faith, who gave it to you, and the faith to believe?” It’s God, is it not! Luther concluded, “If you believe it, you’ve got it.”

   This is enormously assuring.  Don’t worry about what you have done. You did nothing! Don’t worry about the sincerity of some prayer done long ago when you first believed. Or how well you understood.  He’s been there beside you from before you were a twinkle in your dad’s eye or when your mom started her hope chest at age 5. Faced with COVID or some other terminal thing, talk it over with Him, “Lord, my life is in your hands.  If I have done enough, beam me up!  If I have work to do, let’s get cracking!” This is called Complete Grace.

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s Grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.—Luther

Christianity 101--How did it start?

                                 1 How Did Christianity Start?

 

Let’s think about history. How did the Christian movement manage to survive and thrive in the first hundred years?  How did it inspire the believers long term and how did their children not abandon it?  Other than the gospels (first 4 books on the New Testament) and epistles (letters of the New Testament), there is almost nothing written by these earliest followers of Jesus who were perhaps 10,000 people by 100AD. Besides God’s Old Covenant Word, what did those early churches have?

            There were no sermons, a later invention. It is thought the early church spread by quiet networking. Music was not a big thing in ancient Rome.  The early Christians met in their homes built around a central courtyard.  Worship services would remind one more of home devotions than a modern church . Nobody said, “Come hear our great preacher and our wonderful music this Sunday!”

            Jesus died about 33 AD and the first gospel, Mark, wasn’t written until at least 56AD.  For a generation, there was no written New Testament scripture. Yet we know apostles were travelling. Thomas went to India in 52 AD according to royal records. Even 100 years later, a church might own only a partial hand-copied gospel and a couple of epistles.  How did these people not wander away from their first beliefs? Secular historians presume their beliefs evolved or there was a secret text somewhere. That’s unlikely.  We know they had firm beliefs from the earliest days. Moreover, a confused person who doesn’t know what to believe will hardly bring about persecution by the authorities. Moreover, a religion won’t last if it doesn’t remind people constantly of what they are to do. The kids will walk away if it doesn’t solve or put in perspective life’s problems.

An answer is buried in Acts 2:23ff, Peter’s Pentecost address. “Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified…But God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it. (vs. 24)…And they devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. (vs. 42-43), praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number…”(vs. 47)

            From the earliest days, Roman pagans claimed Christians believed the Resurrection.  This was attested to by Julio, the Prefect that succeeded Pontius Pilate.  He wrote home to Rome about a new group of Jews, harmless but weird.  They believed that their leader had risen 3 days after he died.  Romans snickered.  In 3 days a dead body will start to stink.  Roman soldiers knew death! But if Jesus was raised, why? Did Christians simply say he was sinless? That alone would only save a man from God’s eternal wrath and find him a place in heaven. The grave, Peter and the Christians insisted, “could not hold Him.” Hence Jesus must be God. This answers the first of the two fundamental questions of Christianity —“Who was Jesus of Nazareth?” The second question is “What does that mean for me?”  Jesus Died For My Sins. As soon as you claim this you have also said that Jesus is God.  A 3^rd party person can’t forgive 2 people who are at odds. That person isn’t part of what happened.  Only the offended can forgive.  Hence Jews say, “God alone could forgive all sins because all sins offend God.” 

Early Christians had some apostles right there teaching them (if one lived in Jerusalem).  They had the 5 functions of the church (worship, fellowship, discipleship, service, witness) just as today (Acts 2:42ff and the visible signs of the Spirit).  Yet they actually did have the New Testament.  This was not written scriptures, but “This is the New Testament in My blood.”  The Old Testament (covenant) was the Law.  But what if you messed up?  Then a sacrifice was required to make things right. Sacrifices were the atonement--a sacred act, ordained and commanded by God, with physical elements, which required the believer’s faith, worked forgiveness and sometimes brought about other inexplicable benefits from God.  What if you forgot some of your sins? There was a “clean-up sacrifice” at Yom Kippur to forgive all the sins of the prior year.  Jesus claimed in this New Testament, that He was the “forever sacrifice”--forgiveness from a God who loves you so much to come for you in your utter unworthiness. This new covenant brings you extraordinarily close to God.

  Jesus came forward with this New Covenant in the Lord’s Supper, a sacrament (consecrated act) like the OT sacrifices to remind that every day, every second, God was saving them. Was it really His blood and body they believed they ate and drank? They must have. The Romans were horrified by what they heard. Perhaps a Roman asked, what are you doing in there?” Christian: “We are eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ!” Cannibals!, the Romans thought—the worst form of barbarianism! But what if the Christian had said, “Well, we kind of figuratively think this.” The Romans would have just rolled their eyes and laughed had that been the case. In the Lord’s Supper, Christians became forgiven and then amazingly, bonded with God’s family of saved believers.  That’s why Passover is celebrated. Jesus picked up the Passover bread and announced flatly that it was His body, given for them.  (How could that be?  God made it mysteriously happen.) When someone was invited to share bread in that society, it meant, “you will be part of my family for the night.”  When we come to eat His body, we are pledging to be part of His family.  And then Jesus took the Passover cup of blessing and pronounced, “This is the New Covenant in my blood.”  He must have shocked his disciples. Asking someone to share the cup with you was what grooms did to ask a bride if she agreed to marriage! Week after week, the Christians did this, cementing themselves to each other and their Savior. 

So Christians were reminded and partook of forgiveness, but how does one progress in faith and draw near to God? It came by Baptism and the Spirit.  Like Lord’s Supper, baptism is a Sacred Act with elements requiring faith, forgiving sins—a sacrament. To be baptized one has to confess and turn away from sins. Years later, Paul would tell the Roman Christians (Rom. 6:3-4)  “we are buried with him in Baptism, and just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.” Dead to sin, alive to God, our sins forgiven, we are again bonded to Jesus and to God’s family as in Communion. The Holy Spirit, given as God’s sealing gift in repentance at Baptism, will raise the believer and internally walk with Him. Early church fathers wrote that people were sealed by baptism. ‘Sealed’ i.e.,you aren’t getting away; you’re now a child of God.  God often comes during troubles, whether they are your own fault or not. The saving is all His doing. Nothing on earth beats such certainty.  Talk directly like a child to Dad, hang onto His words, pledge your life!

This established what became known as Orthodox (correct, ‘square’) Christianity. If all they’d had was the memory of their leader rising from the dead, within a generation that would have become a distant legend. If sacraments had no power, they would become dull rituals over time.  Christianity would have died out. Later, books were written by the apostles but then other fraudulent books came along too.  Which were right? Christians measured everything against the fundamentals of Orthodoxy.

But how did Christianity spread? Knowing God loved you and saw you from the very beginning, saved you, gave you faith to respond, and now puts His Spirit inside you, changes everything.  All the world was then and is now searching for God.  Christians weren’t. God found me! Sealed me forever!  Yet they faced huge troubles—we know by what’s been unearthed.  30 house churches have been discovered and plaques and stones with names on them-- church members.  2/3 of the names were of women who in those days were treated like sub-humans. Half the names were just a single name, likely slaves. The Hebrew word for struggle means also to wrestle.  When life is a struggle, one wrestles with God in prayers. “Why, God, did you do this?  Why did you make me this way? Help me, please.” Jesus wrestled with God as well, in Gethsemane.  Did God take away his death? No but Jesus became closer to God in his struggle.  God often does not heal a situation but brings one closer. A new door is opened as a new way of knowing God to be close arises.  Through our struggles we learn empathy for others, we become experienced in their difficulties too, we become a witness with love and joy, seeing God’s love for us and behind us all. That is how the early church grew and how modern churches can grow.  Share your life with others.  Listen to their situations. Share the Good News with Love and Joy. This is a kind of compassion that supersedes the worldly politics of doling-out favors.

            More than tradition makes Lutherans love Word and Sacraments.  God comes in many ways, but there’s 2 places He promises--Word (Jn 1:1, Is 66:1-2) and Sacraments (I Cor. 11:23, Rom. 6:3-4).                                 

Christians have much in common.  97% of church denominations agree on 9 doctrines-- Triune God, Salvation by Grace through the death of the Jesus Christ who is both God and man, Virgin birth, Resurrection, real Heaven and Hell and 2^nd coming of Christ, Bible is God’s Word, use of Creeds, practices of Lord’s Supper and Baptism, holiness of the Church. (Baptists omit creeds yet believe in their content.) Doctrine means a belief considered absolutely true and key to faith.  Dogmas are teachings that are considered to be true. Adiaphora (Greek) are issues “free to choose”.  

Europe's collapse into the Dark Ages

 How Europe fell into the Dark Ages is perplexing and complex. England in the 400s still had houses with glass windows and cities had aqueducts and baths, even though Celts (now Romanized) were running things. Yet by 546, a Welsh monk, St. Gildas, first wrote about how a certain “Arthur” was engaged in a desperate war to “break the heathen and uphold the Christ.” (Such was Camelot?)  In Gaul (France), Visigoths and Franks overran the country but assimilated to Roman ways.  In Spain, first Vandals then Visigoths did the same.  Theodoric the Ostrogoth (who was educated in Constantinople), was encouraged by the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno to invade and take over Italy from the former Hunic tribes led by Odoacer that had taken over with the fall of the Roman emperor in 476.  All these barbarians had lived on the edges of empire and admired the Roman system.  What happened to make civilization fall so far? 

            An answer may lie in the turmoil of the church and the climate.  Emperor Justinian in the East was a very able politician, not a warrior, who spent most days administrating.  He started in behalf of his father Justin, a senator who usurped the throne in 518. Justin was frugal, lowered taxes, and limited government leaving a full treasury for Justinian.  Justinian was a spender with an eye towards restoring the empire, winning the West back from the barbarians, and building up Eastern governance.  His capable general Belasarius was dispatched to fight back Persia, then take back N. Africa from the Vandals, then Italy and Illyria (we’d call it Yugoslavia) from the Ostrogoths. But due to Justinian’s big spending on Constantinople, Belasarius was forever shy of troops and pay.  How could he have conquered so much? He had to let his army loot.

             In 535, Krakatoa erupted.  This volcanic ‘hot spot’ lies between Sumatra and Java. A hot spot is a weak spot in the crust where magma can repeatedly break through.  It exploded with a monstrous eruption in 1883 but chronicles left in Indonesia tell of a much greater eruption in 535. It completely obliterated 50 miles around it separating the two large islands with a crater that blew away enough island to make 30 miles of ocean. It created 120’ tidal waves, and, it has now been verified, put so much ash into the upper atmosphere that for 15 years the mean temperature worldwide got colder by about 10 degrees (compare this with a mere 2.5 degree rise predicted by climate scientists by 2200).  Low temps meant meager crops, famines and pitiful economies.  Thus weakened, the defending kingdoms couldn’t hold off Belasarius’ army which foraged and robbed peasants for food. It was an ironic reverse of the old story of barbarians invading Rome.  Add to this, the genius of Belasarius as a general.  Much of the West was reconquered while Justinian spent severely over budget. The conquered peasants were then plunged into famine and ruin and the Dark Ages began when cities, skills and education died.

            Justinian also fashioned himself a musican, architect, poet, lawyer, and theologian.  He rewrote Roman Law into the Code of Justinian that lasted almost 1000 years. In theology, he decided to favor the Trinitarianism of the Western Pope of Rome (perhaps as a way to force-unify the Arian Goths and Egyptian Monophysites).  Arians denied the complete divinity of Jesus; Monophysites, his humanity (was a ghost spirit).  But Empress Theodora (who had a sort of Hillary Clinton co-President role) sympathized with the Monophysites and softened Justinian into tolerance for that heresy. And thus the later part of their reign was filled with riots over famine, religious clashes, and the 542 plague. The plague is also a derivative of a sudden cold climate change.  [Another sudden cold occurred in 1309 according to Chinese records and this caused an 8 degree drop in European temperatures followed by the Black Death.]  When it gets cold, scavengers like rats thrive, and they carry fleas--vectors for bubonic plague.  It is thought bubonic plague occurred in 542 AD as well.

            So while civilization collapsed, orthodox Christianity not only overruled the heresies of east and west, but became the one sure hope of Europeans.  What survived in the West were not pagan verses of Virgil and Homer but Augustine and Patrick of Ireland. Yet it was a faith confused with superstition and un-Christian practices of the barbarians, and a lifestyle of poverty,malnutrition, pitiful technology and illiteracy. So what would one predict from such an outcome? God, through the Dark Ages, preserved the land from conquest and faith played out  through other Christians still to come.  

Pocahontas, the real story

 This is a result of the best research I can muster about, perhaps the most significant person in American history, who made British colonies possible and USA.

Disney made a great movie about her but much of the legend isn’t true at all. The real story is much better! Her real name wasn’t Pocahontas.  That was a nickname which meant “Little Playful One”. Her real names were Amonute and Matoaka. But she liked Pocahontas. Daughter of Chief Powhattan of the Algonquin Indians’, they lived along the Virginia coast.  In 1607 when she was about 12, English settlers landed at Jamestown. She was curious and visited the new people, learning English.

            Why did the English want to settle in Virginia?  Columbus found America and then some other Spanish warriors-of-fortune conquered two huge Indian empires—the Aztecs and the Incas.  They found gold and silver, beans and corn and shipped it back home to Spain making the country very rich.  Other nations wanted to get rich too, so they tried to settle the Caribbean and North, what is now USA and Canada.  In those northern areas, they fished and traded for furs with the Indians. The first time the British tried to settle in America was Roanoke, a small group of people were left in North Carolina in 1584.  But a few years later, their settlement had disappeared.  The Carolina coast is a bad place to choose because a barrier bar reef island off the shore wrecks ships and hides the rivers necessary to find a settlement.  In 1607 the English tried once more, knowing that if they failed, the Spanish would expand into this area.  They settled  63 on the Virginia coast and claimed land from 35 to 45 degrees latitude.  It was named Jamestown after the king, James I.  Here were the Algonquins and Pocahontas.

            Most Indian women had little gardens where they raised vegetables and berries.  That way they didn’t have to go miles to gather these things.  Women did all the “farming”.  Men hunted and fished. There were no farm animals. But the Algonquin men helped a little with planting corn, squash and beans.  They grew these all together with the beans and squash climbing over the corn, called “3 Sisters” agriculture. The English men did the farming.  When they saw a new plant they dreamed of planting a big field. The Englishmen rotated crops, used manure and had iron tools like axes and hoes. This is a big reason why the Europeans succeeded in taking over much of America.

            Pocahontas was thrilled with what she learned.  The new people had cool stuff.  They had interesting food and clothes that would keep you warm in winter.  Algonquins wore nothing above the waist in summer and in winter wrapped themselves in a blanket.  For two years Pocahontas made new friends and learned English.  But Jamestown had troubles.  Most of the settlers were soldiers who guarded the village and they didn’t think they had to work at farming or building.  Only about 20 men and 6 women actually worked to raise crops or hunt.  A year later, Captain John Smith arrived and found the colony starving and idle.  He got tough and told everybody they must work.  He traded for food with the Algonquins, then left.  There is a myth that Pocahontas saved Smith by laying her head on his when the Indians were going to kill him, but it is unlikely, and wasn’t told until over a hundred years later. John Smith kept an official log and never mentioned it.  However, Pocahontas was a spunky girl who served as Smith’s translator.

            Matoaka disappeared from the settlement for 3 years.  The family’s oral story says she was married to another Indian man and had a baby girl.  The baby died and somehow tragically so did her husband.  In 1612 she suddenly appeared at Jamestown again, befriending the women there.  There were some violent disagreements between the Powhattan Algonquins and the English.  Fights broke out and the Indians took several settlers hostage.  In return, the settlers took Pocahantas hostage.  After almost a year, a peace was agreed to and all hostages were released.  But Pocahontas wanted to stay in Jamestown.  While she was under arrest as a hostage, she was guarded by the chaplain of the soldiers, Reverend Whitaker.  When he shared the gospel, that all people sin and that sin gives us a messed-up life, it resonated with the young widow and she deeply wanted to be a Christian, a believer in Jesus.  And on Jan. 14, 1614, she was baptized and took the Christian name of “Rebecca”.  She was the first native American in the lands north of Spanish America to become a Christian, the first Protestant (Anglican is Luther’s theology). Then she met John Rolfe, a young man who had lost his wife and child just as Rebecca had lost spouse and child.   We know that by about the time of Valentine’s Day, 1614, she and John Rolfe decided to get married.  They were married in April of that year.  And in 1615 she had a baby boy, Thomas. 

            Of course everyone knows what happens when a new baby is born.  The grandparents had to come see the new baby! So Powhattan and his two wives came to Jamestown for a visit.  The settlers put on a big feast and other Indians were invited warmly.  Thus began almost 20 years of peace and goodwill between the two peoples.

            But Jamestown still had a problem.  They had no reason to exist since they couldn’t produce anything of value to sell back home.  No gold, no silver were found. Furs and fish were not very valuable.  Rebecca asked John what they could do.  He told her that tobacco was a pricey trade item back in England.  How to grow it? That was a no-brainer for an Algonquin woman! She showed him how to plant, harvest and cure the leaves.  So Rolfe raised a huge amount of tobacco and shipped it back to England where it brought a profit of 12,500%.  Suddenly Jamestown had something to sell and it saved the colony.  In 3 years John Rolfe and Pocahontas grew rich and others started raising tobacco as well.

            The Rolfes grew famous in England. In 1616 they sailed to Britain and were feated as the wonderful people who had made Jamestown profitable.  They met the king. And for the winter, they lived with Rolfe’s family in England.  The English were very interested in how she became Christian and wanted very much to convert the natives of America.  In March 1617, the Rolfes set sail for America but before they even got to the mouth of the Thames River, Pocahontas became very ill.  They stopped and took her ashore where she died of unknown causes.  She was just 21.  Her dying words were, “I am going to heaven but I still have my husband John and Thomas.” It was the tragic story repeated thousands of times as Indians died of Old World diseases when Europeans came.

            Meanwhile, in Jamestown, many things were happening. In 1619, a slave ship which had endured a terrible storm came floating into the bay.  The Jamestown people didn’t like slavery and helped the sailors repair the boat just so they would leave quickly.  As payment, the ship dumped 20 sick slaves for farm labor.  The settlers signed contracts with the Africans to be indentured servants, that is, someone who agrees to work for free for a time period, like a slave.  But things didn’t go well.  The winters were cold and all the Africans died tragically within a few years. 

            That same year, the British crown hit upon the idea that they could exile convicts to Jamestown. Many had mental problems but others were determined to turn their lives around with faith and farming.  A ship of poor women arrived as well, available for the price of 125 pounds of tobacco. Settler-families started to emerge.  And on July 30, 1619, the first General Assembly of Virginia met in the Jamestown Church.  The colony designed a miniature parliament.  There was nothing like it in all the Americas, the First Popular Legislature.  At a time when kings were thought to have divine rights, this was an important telling of America’s future.  And by the way, proud Rolfe descendants are numerous in Virginia today.  Do we know what Pocahontas looked like?  There were no cameras then and no one painted a picture of her.  But there is a picture painted of her niece with her little boy 50 years later.  Everyone said how much her niece looked like Pocahontas.  Here it is.

 

 

 

Colombus the real story

 Christopher Columbus has been so reviled and lauded over the years—what’s the truth?  He was controversial in his own time and with America’s founding fathers, but for entirely different reasons that are being forwarded today.  Modern critiques are that he brought racism, colonialism, disease and capitalism to the Americas.  The ‘colonial charge’ is correct, but that was practiced by virtually every developed society from China to Europe.  The disease charge is correct but who would allege that Eurasians and Americans would have never met.  They were bound to meet and Eurasian diseases would spread at some time. Some say he brought capitalism. Ironically, neither he nor Spain was capitalist but quite statist.

            One cannot understand Columbus without understanding the world in his  era.  The Black Death struck Europe in 1347 and returned every generation thereafter.  1/3 the population died.  People had a sense of doom and predicted the end of the world was near.  Europe was locked in a death struggle with Islam’s states and it looked like Islam would obliterate Europe when Constantinople fell in 1453.  Trade with China and India came to a halt, and desperation led to innovation. But had it not been for a newly invented Muslim ship that could turn and tack easier, the caravel, a voyage across the Atlantic would have been nearly impossible.  The later innovation of  stronger stiffer hulls of galleons allowed larger ships.  The Portugese, a small country, envious of rich Italian merchants and Spanish warriors, began to explore for islands offshore of Africa to literally move population if the Islam came. Indeed they found Madeira and Azores, causing Spain to try the same thing and they discovered Canary Islands. Columbus, born in 1451 was of middle class Genoa where he became a master seaman and influenced by Travels of Marco Polo and Travels of John Mandeville (Christian author who wanted the Faith to expand geographically). He was ambitious and wanted a title, the only way to become wealthy in those days. When he heard of Portugal’s exploits, he proposed a daring trip to secure a route to China by sailing west.  Everyone knew the world wasn’t flat (contrary to Washington Irving’s fiction) but two estimates of its size were argued.  Columbus chose the smaller. Sly dog, King Joao II of Portugal, turned him down and used Colombus’ plan to commission his own fleet under Fernao de Ulma.  Columbus would be a footnote in history had not bad weather turned de Ulma back in 1490.  In 1492, Spanish states defeated Muslim Grenada and suddenly after 7 bloody centuries, Christianity controlled the Iberian Peninsula. Ferdinand of Leon married Isabella of Castile and the exultant Spanish then had one country which could turn its interests elsewhere.  Columbus saw his chance to request a voyage.  But Ferdinand rejected him.  Columbus was ready to leave and pitch his plan elsewhere, England or France, but a friend bolstered his case with Isabella and he won upon appeal. Much has been made about how pitiful his ships were; Santa Maria was only 60 feet long and it ran aground in his first voyage.  Yet they were state-of-the-art vessels.  The crew was Spanish and this caused dissention since Columbus was Italian.  Soon they questioned his judgment about going too far west to return safely. Just in time to escape mutiny, Oct. 12, 1492, land was sighted although a reef, probably Watling Island of Bahamas. They continued on guessing at currents and birds until they found San Salvador naming it after our Savior, planted the flag and left a small colony. A second trip brought a flotilla and he planted colonies on several islands. The original settlers had been massacred by natives.

            In his salesmanship, he suggested they would find gold.  They found beans instead. (How would you like to the be the first Spaniard to discover beans?”Oh, Jose, I got all this gas!”) Columbus was a tremendous sailor who used ‘dead reckoning’ of a compass, currents, clouds, and birds to find the new world.  He did not “sail by the stars” as Polynesians did.  Yet his nerve, planning, and ability to sail 4000 miles and return to the same place 4 times make him a premier captain.  He was as bad as governor as he was good at sailing. The Spanish soldiers of fortune he left behind enslaved Indians that Columbus sought to make free subjects of Spain (according to his letters) Today’s secular scholars also misunderstand the strong role religion played.  He was criticized in his day by those who thought the natives should have converted faster.  One of his underlings, Bartolome Las Casas, wanted to claim the credit and wrote at length of his boss’s failure. Moderns like leftist Howard Zinn have used Las Casas to claim Columbus was cruel and evil.  Ironic because Columbus was far less cruel than the cannibal Carib Indians he met, less than the proud Spaniards who conquered the Moors.  Spain lorded it over the Tianos natives for material gain instead of conversion. Columbus tried to reign in the opportunists, but the Spanish encomienda system was a feudal plantation. Then the Tianos began to die of diseases.  Meanwhile, in Spain, Columbus, the outsider didn’t get much of a title or credit in the Spanish court. He always insisted he discovered India and died in 1506 after 4 voyages to the Caribbean, Central and South America. Unwittingly, he postulated that Africans might work well in the islands.

             He is significant, however. His was a dauntless, risky step to connect two worlds.  The Spanish transported a large number of people to America.  The seeds of the West were planted.  And soon everybody in Europe wanted to explore—England, France, Netherlands, Sweden. Many of the statues in this country were emplaced to honor previously discriminated Italians in the 20s and 30s. But there is a larger push to delegitimize Western civilization in academia.

How Christianity really won in Rome

 

People often say politics and the church should not mix but often there is no choice of involvement.  It is often thought that when Rome turned Christian, Constantine just issued a decree and that was that.  Not true. There are lessons for us.

            Constantine the Great won an epic battle having seen a vision of the Chi-Rho cross and was told to conquer in its image. He had his soldiers paint the chi-rho on their shields and he crossed the Rubicon and won the empire.  His mother was a Christian, but he was a soldier and administrator. Theology was not his thing. So he called a church council at Nicea, 315 AD, to define the faith.  There, the orthodox or ancient Christian beliefs in the Triune God (championed by Athanasius) overrode Arius and Arianism, a heresy that believed Jesus was God’s Son but only a superior being, not divine or coeternal with God. (Trinity doctrine says that the Son and Holy Spirit are “consubstantial” with the Father, loosely meaning, “with Him and equal to Him at the beginning”.)

            But Arianism didn’t die out.  Constantine conferred with Arias after he had banished him. He could find no heresy, and recommended his restoration.  Well, you can’t refuse the Emperor, but on the way to attend mass, Arius died a horrible death where his bowels prolapsed and spilled out.  Constantine then wondered if Arius was indeed a heretic after all.  When the Emperor died, 335, he was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian follower. Arianism continued beyond Roman boundaries until the 600’s.

            Constantine had done a good thing in summoning the Council of Nicea which canonized scripture and adopted our creeds.  But the emperor had a succession problem and anticipated civil war between rival sons.  So he gave each of his 3 sons parts of the empire and 2 cousins as well.  Civil war erupted, his sons and relatives killed one another until Constantius only remained.  Constantius took theology more seriously and adopted Arianism, using puppet church councils to banish Athanasius and ban the Nicene Creed.  Five times Athanasius fled his see, often in peril of his life, wandering in alien lands for 50 years while patiently persuading wherever he could. The Roman “pope” archbishop agreed with Athanasius, but Eastern bishops remained in the sway of the Emperor.  Now while all this was happening, paganism still commanded a diminishing 50% of the empire’s loyalty. It took many forms, chief among which was Neoplatonism.  3 years before Constantine died, a nephew, Julian, was born.  His father and brothers were all assassinated in the succession wars and little Julian was sent to Cappadocia, where his Christian teachers were dour and doctrinal.  But nearby were also banished pagan philosophers with witty, entertaining ideas and Julian secretly converted to paganism. By age 23 he was clever enough to hide his faith views. Summoned by Constantius, he passed muster but was thought to be merely a philosopher by nature. He was sent to Athens, a bastion of philosophy but alsopaganism.  He was summoned again when his brother Gallus proved to be a tyrant and was beheaded.  To his surprise Julian, a shy, celibate thinker  was given administrative duties over Gaul (Celtic forerunner of France).  Gaul was in trouble.  Those dirty, dastardly, barefoot barbarian Germans had taken advantage of civil war and crossed the Rhine to seize territory. Julian, now forced to quickly study how to be a general, routed the German Alemanni and the related tribe called Franks. They were pushed back over the Rhine River.  He then commenced to apply and interpret Roman law in a wise, learned way.  We owe the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” to Julian. In 361, Constantius died and Julian, the secret pagan, became emperor.  He restored the pagan temples and favored their philosophers.  It was an ugly time for many Christians. But the foot soldiers had found a blessed assurance in death of a Savior in the Christian faith.  They named a Christian to succeed Julian when he fell in battle with the Persians, 363 AD, just 2 years after his ascension to the throne.  And yet the war between Christian rulers and pagan ones would go on and on until Theodosius quashed a pagan rebellion in 394. Athanasiua was restored. But the war of faiths broke the political unity and morale of the Western Roman Empire, (perhaps like partisanship split democrats and monarchists in 1917 Russia or America’s present partisanship) soon to be overrun by barbarians.

            Faith is not just doctrine and scholarship but a walk with God, a wild ride, and a wrestling struggle like Jacob knew.  If a church abandons itself exclusively to doctrine, it shouldn’t be surprised if its children follow pop culture instead, like Julian. Yet we are called to defend the true faith, stand in the gap, like Athanasius. 22 years after Julian’s death, the Roman Emperor Valens lost the battle and half the Roman army at Adrianople, one of the great turning points of history.  From that point forward, the wealthy western empire collapsed rapidly, and being a Christian became a life of oftentimes struggles and terror.  That’s when you need Jesus the most.  

Andrew Jackson

 

Andrew Jackson has been rejected by many moderns, though once a hero of the nation and founder of the Democrats.  He was always a controversial figure. He was a slave owner and advocated for the Indian removal.  He was a booster of Tennessee and a land-seller of Indian territories which he had himself conquered.  But he was also a Christian, an orphan who became a brave and brash war hero, who saved the United States and adopted orphan children to give them a chance in life. Jackson’s childhood was destroyed by the Revolutionary War which pitted not just British regiments against Americans but frontier families against one another.  Jackson’s parents and brother died in this conflict.  After the war, a faction of angry Creek Indians, known as the Red Sticks massacred white settlers.  Jackson organized a group of militia members that fought and overwhelmed the Red Sticks.  Following a bloody battle, some of the homeless children were brought to Jackson and he asked the captured Creeks if they would care for a little orphan boy.  The Creeks refused saying all the child’s relatives were gone and he should just be killed too. The situation struck Jackson, himself an orphan, and he adopted Lyncoya. He instructed his wife Rachel to give Lyncoya every advantage, like their own children. (The Jacksons fostered several children along with Lyncoya.)  He tragically died late in his teen years of tuberculosis. 

            Jackson went on to be America’s hero when he organized a rag-tag group of civilians to successfully defend New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812. He spurred Washington to conquer Florida, then did the job himself. He is also charged with genocide against the Cherokees, but the true story of this is complex.  Throughout history, conquered peoples were either enslaved or killed off by newcomers.  And in Georgia, this was coming to a head in the 1820s.  Jackson preferred the Indians be made American citizens, But most Cherokees resisted.  They wanted to preserve their native culture, language and tribal identity.  DC politicians liked the idea of “protected nations”, an armchair utopia that was forerunner of the reservation system.  But the Cherokees were so many, their state-within-a-state would comprise half of Georgia.  Georgians rejected this, saying they would start a war and take the Cherokee land by force. Jackson liked many Indians but hated the tribal governments, dominated by mixed race opportunists who lorded it over the rest of the tribe and were determined to protect their own privileges. “These leaders,” Jackson wrote, “are like some of our bawling politicians, who loudly exclaim, ‘we are the friends of the people,’ but who, when they obtain their views, care no more for the happiness or welfare of the people than the Devil does.” The Georgia situation was headed for war.  Jackson followed Jefferson in advocating Removal to the newly purchased Louisiana Purchase. This idea wasn’t entirely their own.  Many tribal leaders wanted it because they worried about how to keep autonomy amid the fast-growing American states. 

            The issue landed in Chief Justice John Marshall’s Supreme Court.  Some missionaries had violated Georgia law to go into Cherokee lands to preach the gospel.  Marshall ruled that Georgia’s laws were null and void, and Pres. Jackson negotiated the release of the missionaries from a Georgia jail. Meanwhile the Cherokees were split over the notion of going to an area that would become Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Major Ridge, a Cherokee ally of Jackson’s in the Red Stick wars, got half the Cherokees to sign a treaty to move (Treaty of Eschota),  But Jonathan Ross, a large plantation owner who was only 1/8 Cherokee with no desire to pull up stakes, convinced the other half to resist.  Ridge’s Treaty Party then moved about 30,000 people to the West successfully. The Removal Act was then passed in Washington to also affect 4 other large tribes. But many Cherokees held out and hid for years. Under the Martin Van Buren administration, the federal government demanded those holdouts honor the treaty, rounded them up, and used the US Army to force move the people. This Trail of Tears became one of the worst humanitarian disasters in our history.  Of 35,000 removed, only 18,000 made it to Oklahoma. Thousands died as a result of the harsh conditions, greed and corruption of officials and private people taking advantage along the way. As a final act in this sad fiasco, the Ross followers assassinated Major Ridge and the leaders who had signed the Treaty of Eschota.  Was Jackson to blame? True, he was paternalistic towards the tribes. He had acted under the notion that, if left somewhat alone, the Cherokees and others would grow into Christianity and Western culture and merge with USA. Considering the strides of Oklahoma and the Cherokee heritage, of their present Governor, Jackson might have been quite correct.

Salem witch trials and Wenatchee

 

The propensity of people to be gripped by self-righteous panic has been extensively studied.  Salem witch trials, Red Scare of 1920, McCarthyism, Watergate hysteria, have all been implicated.  A major television network is running a documentary of the Wenatchee, Washington child molestation scandal that came at the conclusion of 17 day-care scandals of the 1980s and early 90s --all proven baseless. These hysterias prove an important point.  Neither science, nor politicians, nor media brought an end to the false charges.  Christians, speaking in faith did.

            In the Salem Witch trials of the summer of 1692, two young girls began acting erratically—screaming, hysterical behavior, and rolling on the floor.  Two local women were implicated as witches by the children’s screams. Subsequently, accusations of over 150 people being involved in witchcraft ensued.  The Massachusetts authorities responded with an investigative court that implicated many of them. The newspapers spurred on the hysteria and 19 people were convicted, hung or drowned.  One man who refused to plead guilty was pressed to death with heavy stones--the old English peine forte et dure, contempt of court—the only time it has been used in American history. Cotton Mather, son of Harvard College’s President, was strongly involved with the prosecution. Where was the new thing called science?  Many scientists of the day believed that indeed, witchcraft might be happening. But when Increase Mather, Cotton’s father and President of the Harvard Seminary arrived home from a trip to England, he observed the trials and was appalled that Christians would treat others this way.  He called for an end.  Thereupon, even the Governor’s wife was implicated and that caused the authorities to come to their senses, disband the inquiry, and release those awaiting trial. This was the only ‘witch hunt in American history.  In 17^th century Europe, there were 160,000 witch trials. The anxiety of the local government in MA to confess wrongdoing, make reparations, and search for truth was the singular bright spot in the affair.

            At Wenatchee, like the McMartin daycare and many others in the 80s and 90s, investigators used anatomically correct dolls and ‘dream memory’ to draw out stories from children.  Interviewer bias also influenced child testimony. When an interviewer has a preconceived notion of the truth of the matter being investigated, the questioning is often performed in a manner to extract statements that evidence these beliefs. As a result, evidence that could disprove the belief is overlooked by the interviewer. Records also reveal, that many stories were coerced.  Wenatchee filed 29,726 charges against several dozen people after a mentally disturbed foster child of a policeman said she had been raped. One case worker, Paul Glassen, criticized methodology only to find himself charged with molestation. He fled with his family to Canada.  When Pastor Robert Robertson criticized the prosecution and evidence-gathering in a town hall, he found himself immediately charged with 8 counts of molestation of his church’s children.  He was tried but found not-guilty of all counts and jurors were incensed with the prosecution’s handling saying it should never have gone to trial. Yet the state of Washington steadfastly praised the investigation.  So some Christians from Pastor Robertson’s church formed Concerned Citizens for Legal Accountability and joined by others, filed complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.  Governor Mike Lowry’s hand was then forced to investigate the investigators. But when he asked US Attorney General Janet Reno for help, it was flatly refused. Eventually all those implicated, who fought in court, won.  Wall Street Journal had an expose and a 2001 jury found Wenatchee and Douglass County negligent in “record keeping” and were ordered to pay damages to falsely accused citizens.  However, many of the accused had plea-bargained and were poor or had mental disability.  Some had to fight for years to recover custody of their children.

            Science, stonewalling authorities, even judges proved to not bring down these hysteria scandals.  Christians acting in faith did.  None of the abusive authorities went to trial over their mishandling.  No journalist did a mea culpa of a false story.  Nor did any imaginative case worker or psychologist who coerced improper testimony of a child.  Nobody went to jail over that either.  The same was true for the McMartin daycare, Country Walk daycare, Fells Acres daycare or the other 14 implicated daycare centers in the 1980s. What would the world be without Christians to stand in the gap?

Women's treatment in Islam

 

Much has been noted about Muslim harsh treatment of women. Some of it derives from various and old tribal cultures and is not specified in the Quran or Haditha.  But close study by historians say it derives principally from Arabia, Persia and the Prophet himself.  Arab life before Mohammad was tribal and mostly nomadic.  90% of Arabs were nomadic (Bedouins) and the other 10% settled, raising primarily spices, dates and other fruits. The Red Sea is a tectonic boundary which spawns volcanoes which are a souce for gold near Mecca. Desert clans are small and close-knit, defending resources.  But they fight over more than waterholes and camels.  The Arabs took great pride in their women’s beauty.  Their language is close to Hebrew and gained alphabetic writing early, but most Bedouins had little use for reading and disdained it.  Thus poetry and eloquent stories, especially about their women and war was their passion.  The desert winds made beauty fleeting, however, and the constant struggle for survival made for a lot of drudgery in women’s work.  10 minutes of romance and a lifetime of drudgery. Women’s prime value was in having children and thus men fought to the death for their wives.  Yet women were not partners but chattels.  When a man died, his estate contained his wives for the heir. 

            In this culture, Mohammad was not unusual.  He arranged marriages to gain allies, took in a couple widows of loyal followers as an act of mercy, and engaged in betrothal to Aisha who was 6 years old. He was wealthy so he had 10 wives.  But they quarreled and were demanding of him and Mohammad seems to have soured on his harem, saying in the Haditha that he had seen heaven and few women were there, maybe one in 1000 makes it.  The Quran allowed 4 women in polygamy, and has advice about beatings and other treatment.  His first wife, Khadija, was Jewish, who faithfully recorded the visions of the illiterate Prophet, but her fellow Jews poked fun of him and his strange new religion.  Hence his distrust of women’s faith. Mohammad died in Medina and accomplished some astounding things.  Where Arabs had been idolatrous and worshipped sacred stones—like the Black stone of Mecca’s Kaaba—Mohammad had created a new religion from visions, borrowed heavily from Judaism and linked to Jesus.  Before Mohammad, other Arabs had noted that their cruel feuds and culture seemed low-life compared to Greco-Romans and Persians, and seemingly needed a new faith, but what? This religion was simple and stressed its spread by any means possible, though we don’t think he had designs of world conquest during his life. Yet under his faith,  Arabia went from tribes to a nation.  He left no successor except Abu Bekr who led prayers in his place in the mosque.  The leaders voted Abu Bekr Caliph of Islam over the protest of Ali, Mohammad’s cousin, leading to the major Sunni-Shiite split in Islam to this day. 

            Some Syrian Arabs were resisting Byzantium and another Arab tribe wanted to invade Persia.  The two empires had exhausted one another with war the previous century, and the Arabs found the looting easy. There are a host of reasons why the Arabs kept winning, but soon they had overrun the Persian empire. [Understand Persian Empire to extend from the Indus Valley of Pakistan and Afghanistan through Iraq to Syria and then north to the Caucus Mtns.] Persians were a former nomadic people too. Leaders had mistresses they used as public escorts while wives stayed home and were required facial coverings when they went out in public.  The Arabs adopted a lot of Persian government and culture in order to rule and seem to have adopted this regime with the wives as well. Proof that headcoverings were adopted from Persia is that Muslim women didn't wear them until about 100 years after Mohammad.

    While this follows fundamentalist Islamic rules, modernists have vacated the escorting of women outside the home and even head covering. Apart from the Persian Gulf and 3rd world areas like Afghanistan, most Muslims are monogamous.   

Woke theory and Classical Liberalism

THE ECONOMIST, A BRIT PUBLICATION WITH AN INTERNATIONAL STAFF HAS TURNED IT’S BACK ON THE DEMOCRAT LEFT. Wokeism is a threat and violates the principles of classical liberalism, they say. Amazing—a publication that has always seemingly to been run by lib Democrats is now turning against them! But they explain their split. Classical liberalism (in which they pride themselves) believes that human progress is found in debate and reform, individual dignity, open markets, limited government, and separation of powers.  To an American, this sounds a lot like Conservatism.  How indeed did anyone who believes such things ever start sounding like the LDP of Canada or hate Trump like a lib Dem? And from that perspective are now appalled by the Left?

            The answer to this puzzle is that America and Europe have fought different battles.  Europe began with the confessional state and forced belief.  Spain and Italy had the Inquisition, Calvin’s Switzerland had death for dissenters, and everybody had pogroms for the Jews.  Free-thinking intellectuals were at war with the confessional state throughout the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. Why did the churches behave so autocratically, especially during the Middle Ages?  Well, they learned it from the barbarians who came in the 4^th to 10^th century. Historian Will Durant relates stories of how, even after a surge of barbarians, the Roman citizens still had skills, but the barbarians rejected good physicians preferring magic, rejected good Roman Law in favor of trial by ordeal.  But most tellingly, could not be converted to better practices. They became nominally Christian, practically pagan.  The fire of Christian faith in Augustine, Patrick, Ambrose, and Jerome grew into a sort of dim, illiterate magic even though Europe became Christian.  When one possesses a strong God, dissent is not threatening. Jesus just let disbelievers walk away.  When one believes in a weak God, one must squelch debate and crush dissent.  It carried over. In modern Europe, polls have shown that more people believe in trolls, spells and fairies than the Christian faith.  Hence the French Revolution wanted “brotherhood” while the American Revolution wanted Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  When the consensus of brotherhood (the population or ruling elite) chooses rights they ascribe government as the author.  When they think morality, they think of something fuzzy, personal and hard to define.  A European thinks they are free because the government gives them the right to wear a tee shirt with an obscene hand gesture. An American thinks of freedom as freedom of opportunity, endowed by the Creator which cannot be taken away.

            The 13 colonies,were every bit as much confessional states as the British back home, and equally divided.  But the Great Awakening, a Christian Revival, swept the colonies in the 1740s and everything changed.  It became apparent to most people that finding peace with God was imperative in the harsh wilderness.  And that there were many versions of Christian belief (and others) but each person must work it out to come to grips with not just their faith but with their mission in life. British historian Paul Johnson says that America solved the dilemma of unity vs. tolerance by insisting on a common ethic of public behavior but allowing freedom of religion and free speech, Liberty, for the individual. Johnson, a Catholic, says this has changed American Catholics into a people who concern more with personal belief than Papal dispensations. Thus free speech was not a goal or ideal but a right secured by the Divine.  So while Europeans were happy that Jefferson wrote, “the loathsome combination of church and state” as a root cause of evils, they were tepid over complete religious and speech tolerance.  The upshot of the Bill of Rights was to permanently establish certain rights as bedrock to the American way. Hence others—atheists or Buddhists--could subscribe to America and be in unity with a melting pot nation. Nowhere is this more apparent than the enormous migration of Jews to USA.  Other countries might claim they were welcoming, but in America you get Rights!

            Comes now the woke-o locos.  They arose from an academic society that came up with a vague, malleable theory of racism associated with society’s structure and it has leftist, socialistic goals. Contradictions, for example: if the socialist goal is a universal public education/indoctrination, isn’t the insistence that Afro-Americans attend failing inner city schools a racism structure? Wokeism appeals to the usual alienation of youth and is encouraged by administrations of colleges. (Leftist university administrators outnumber moderates and conservatives 13 to 1)  None of these have to answer for what they create. Since those youth have now arrived as workers and leaders, they demand woke speech, woke business, and strident journalism, Democrat Party rule, and corporations.  Long term, this won’t survive.  No other system of business beats capitalism, but the woke-inistas won’t allow capitalism.  Math classes now have to talk to students about gender choice. Loss of freedom of thought will bring innovation and science to a halt. Weaponizing social media will only drive the opposition forces underground to foment civil war against this new status quo.

            Classical Liberals of Europe see all the evils of the confessional state in the woke movement—imposed orthodoxy, expulsion of heretics, book burning and creeds.  Actually, that’s rather amusing beecause both groups start with a godless premise. 

Icons and John of Damascus

Go to an Eastern Orthodox church and you will see people bowing to a picture and kissing it.  This is very disconcerting to a Protestant. It was just as controversial in the 700s as it is today. It was defended by John of Damascus, one of the prime heroes of the church.  John (ca. 675–749) is known as the great compiler and summarizer of the orthodox faith and the last great Greek theologian. He was born right after the Muslims overran Syria and his father was an administrator in the Byzantine Empire who continued to work for the Umayyad Caliph. His family was Arab-Syrian Christian. John may have had an early job in the Muslim court; we don’t know. He was certainly a polymath (a whiz in many things--math, art, theology and government.)  In that era, Muslims were on a constantly victorious march and could afford to be tolerant and content just to take over rule of formerly Christian countries, using the established officials.

 At age 41, in 716, John entered a monastery outside of Jerusalem and was ordained a priest. When the Byzantine emperor Leo in 726 issued a decree forbidding images (icons), John forcefully resisted. In his Apostolic Discourses he argued for the legitimacy of the veneration of images, which earned him the condemnation of the Iconoclast Council in 754. What needs to be understood about an icon (image) is that it may seem to be just a painted picture, but it is first a written Word of God.  “Icon” is Greek for image, used in scripture repeatedly to signify that Christ was God’s image/icon, and we are too.  God’s Word is an image/icon put in the form of symbols on a page. (Strange way of expressing it. Protestants might choke if told not to bring their Bible-icon to church.) And we confess that Jesus is this image/icon/”real physical matter” that is God in the flesh, John asserted.  In 787, John’s defense was presented to the Council at Nicea and the church ruled in favor of icon use.  But the practice of praying with a picture icon is more widespread in the Orthodox Church than the Roman Catholic Church.

John wrote the first definitive defense of the Christian faith against Islam and was highly critical of the Quran. His Fount of Wisdom was a massive summary of Christian truth from previous Christian theologians.  He wrote treatise after treatise against the heresies that plagued the Eastern world.  His defense of the orthodox faith left a lasting stamp on all of Christendom.  In the Lutheran Service Book are two hymns by John of Damascus, both Paschal (Easter) hymns:  “The Day of Resurrection” and “Come, You Faithful, Raise the Strain”.

John of Damascus is both a saint in the Catholic Church and the leading hero of the Eastern Orthodox faith. But he receives little mention among historians, perhaps a result of their secular bias.

Church changes that demanded Reformation

 

            By the end of the Middle Ages many people had concluded the church needed reform.  What had caused this and where did the church loose it?

            The Germanic Lombards invaded northern Italy in the 500s and began overrunning small Italian principalities down the peninsula which had been formerly retaken by the Eastern Roman Emperor, Justinian.  By 750, Lombards had conquered almost all of Italy (including Ravenna, the new Provincial capital and seat of the Papacy) except the Duchy of Rome.  The Pope had one ally, the Frankish kings.  King Charles Martel had driven back the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732, saving Christendom.  His son, Pepin III then defeated the Lombards and took over central Italy.  He made the Lombards sign a peace and gave the Italian territories to the Pope in 756.  Suddenly Popes had land and politics to deal with, as if they were kings. For 800 years barbarians overran Europe.  Worst were the last two, Magyars (Hungarians) and Vikings in the 10^th century.. But then suddenly Stephen of the Magyars and Canute of the Danes converted to Christianity.  Europeans were stunned to find there were no more barbarians. All of Christendom believed they had been saved by God –much more so than by their own feckless kings. As a result, the Papacy rose in admiration throughout the West.  The Pope in 999 was Sylvester II who was also the First French Pope.  He was a wonderful church father as well as a scholar who had assembled learning from the East.  Use of the abacus in math, celestial globes of the heavens, Euclidean geometry, the astrolabe for ship navigation, Roman surveying and music theory were some of his accomplishments.

            This gave the popes a wedge to open the door to further power.  Pope Gregory, in the mid 1000s, advocated reform for the clergy.  Priests and Bishops should be celibate, could not pay for their offices, and bishops were to be chosen by the pope (rather than popular election or kingly appointment).  This was controversial. But by 1198 when Innocent III became pope, the ideas had become accepted.  He demanded that the papacy be superior to all kings as well as all Christendom.  And since church councils were blessed by the Pope, they were declared to be correct in all judgments.  If a country chose its king by their own succession, not consulting the Pope, he used the Interdict—all people of the realm were excommunicated until they relented. The Fourth Lateran Council was called and declared the clergy were to be celibate and a higher form of human than the laity. Jews were declared blasphemers of Christ and pograms began. Innocent started the 4^th Crusade against the Muslims in the Holy Land.  It didn’t end well, when the Crusaders lost.  On the way home they sacked Constantinople, a Christian ally, and put a Latin ruler in place.  Another papal crusade against the (South France) Albigensian heresy ended in genocide. Innocent established two mendicant orders to do his missions and politics, the Francisans and Dominicans.  Franciscans ran elementary schools and Dominicans ran the colleges and had a monopoly on all teaching.  This was strongly challenged by the Reformation.  Dominicans held that reason could deduce more teaching than the Bible contained. After Innocent died in 1216, St. Lutgarda had a dream in which he cried out for help to her to get him out of purgatory (He had refused to bow his head during the Nicene Creed).  She prayed him out and thus the notion of purgatory went from theory to accepted fact. One of Innocent’s loyal Franciscans, Peter Olivi, advanced the idea of papal infallibility, (when the Pope speaks doctrinally,ex cathedra, his word is held infallible).  This idea too, was controversial. It had advocates and detractors at the time of Luther.  Catejan was a strong advocate who used it to condemn Luther.  Papal Infallibility was not formalized by the Catholic Church until 1870.

            Innocent III, it would seem, was anything but innocent.  Disagreement with many of the assertions of the 13^th century surrounding his papacy formed the heart of the Reformation. It should be noted that while Protestants had a Reformation, Catholics who stayed loyal also had a Reformation in the Council of Trent 1563, and continue to reform in Vatican II and III into the present day. Thus many modern Catholics are critical of Popes on social matters and quite a few, like those who headed an internal investigation of the priest sex scandals, are advocates of abolishment of celibacy.