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Romans 13, verses 13 through 14. Hold on to that. Okay. Alright, so we're into the area of talking a little bit today about heresy. Remember, heresy defined as incorrect belief. The problem is who gets to decide what incorrect belief is? And of course, back in this day, it's those group of Christians that are called Orthodox.

And Orthodox is a word meaning correct. In other words, they would have church councils, they would sit down, hash out whatever the issue was, and then they would declare whatever group or person that was bringing up stuff that they thought was incorrect, they declare that a heresy. And so, of course, by the fourth century, Christianity had gone from a minority religion.

It was competing with all these different pagan religions that we've already talked a little bit about, and Mithrism, of course, ISIS worship, all some of these pretty strange way out there religions. And of course, it had to compete against the various pagan religions. And by the fourth century, Christianity becomes the state-recognized religion with Constantine.

In fact, let's see, did I get to that last time? Got to turn this thing on. Always forget that. Let's see. Let me back up. So, I think we probably covered this last time, but let me just, as a little bit of a recap, you got Constantine, Milvian Bridge, Battle Milvian Bridge, which indeed was pretty miraculous.

His opponent was behind the walls of Rome, which was pretty impregnable. And the night before the battle, he had this vision: you know, paint this sign, this sign on your shields. It's now known as Constantine Cross. And by this symbol, you know, you will win the victory. And next morning, lo and behold, his opponent, of course, whoever wins this battle gets to be the next emperor.

His opponent comes out from behind the walls of Rome, and they have this big battle. They call it the Battle Milvian Bridge. And Constantine wins the battle, and he was convinced that the person who gave him this vision was, of course, from God, the Christian God. And Constantine subsequently converts to Christianity.

There's some debate about that. We talked about the fact that Constantine waited to the very last to be baptized, but I think I explained to you that there's a particular teaching at that time you won't delay your baptism, unlike the Church of Christ, where you have to get baptized immediately, you know, after you make a profession of faith.

But anyway, I personally, from the documents I've seen, I'm convinced that Constantine was sincere, but there's other people that say he did for purely political reasons. Now, of course, a few decades after that, you got the Emperor Theodosius, who goes the next step, and he makes Christianity the only legal recognized religion.

And so Christianity goes from being a hated, despised, persecuted religion. We've already covered the empire-wide persecutions of Diocletian and Galerius. And now, shortly thereafter all this persecution, Christianity is the favorite religion. And as I mentioned last time, this brings a big problem, the problem of what should be the relationship between church and state, which I really don't think is fully figured out until you get to the United States of America, how we figured out how to handle that.

And then you also have the problem that you got a bunch of people wanting to come into Christianity now for all the wrong reasons. And it becomes very politicized. And you have people that are not real Christians coming into the church. And a lot of these people wind up being in leadership.

And that's going to cause great, great problems, particularly that should help you understand the medieval period. So, getting back to our story here, Constantine, of course, moves the capital from Rome to Constantinople, which is today Istanbul. And this is very important because of its strategic location. You know, you have the Black Sea.

Going into the Mediterranean, there. You also have Asia. You look across there, you see Asia. He's in Europe there. That's how close the two are. So it was a real crossroads. That's where he's going to move the capital. And he adopts this new religion, which he, I'm sure, was hopeful would help to unify the empire.

The Roman Empire has got a lot of problems during the late period. And yet, everything blows up on him, and because you're going to have the biggest of the heresies arrive at this juncture in time. And so, but before we get into this huge heresy that's about to pop up here that almost divides the church, let's just talk about heresy in general.

And, of course, heresies were appearing in Christianity from the very beginning. You read the letter of Galatians, you know, they're probably dealing with this one, which is Gnosticism. We talked about this very briefly last time. This comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge. It's usually one of these ladder-type religions.

You know, you've got to go from this rung of knowledge to this rung of knowledge. Use their secret knowledge that only this little club gets to know. And so that makes it kind of attractive because only I know this, you know, type of stuff. And we talked about last time, if you want to know what a modern form of Gnostic religion, Scientology is a perfect example.

Example of that, you know, Gnostic religion. So that was already appearing, you know, while the New Testament's being written, you have various types of Gnostic religions arising. This one really, I think I'll come back to it because this is really kind of out of chronological order there. Not all the heretics were doctrinal.

This group was in North Africa. They merged right after the persecutions. And in some ways, you could say they were supreme legalists. They were upset because after the persecutions, you had some Christians during the persecutions had denied Christ or had left the church. And now that the persecutions are over with and Christianity is the favorite religion again, or is for the first time, they come back begging to be readmitted to the church.

And so basically the church of the time says, okay, you know, you publicly confess what you did, you repent, and we will accept you back into the church. Well, the diocese, nuh-uh. Those guys, they messed up and they can never be forgiven for what they did, and we're not going to accept that.

And they broke away from the mainstream Catholic church of that time, and they refused to forgive. Now, I don't know if you know much about Christianity, but Christians are supposed to what? Forgive. Okay, and so they had this church council. They say, if you guys aren't going to forgive your brothers, then you need to leave.

And so that's the Donas. Manichaeism is another one that popped up and it was a competitor. In fact, we're going to see today that one of the famous fathers of the church was at one time a Manichaean. Founded by this guy named Manai. Actually, he came from a Christian background, but he abandoned Christianity, formed this new religion, which was kind of a dualistic religion.

I think it certainly shows influences of Zoastrianism. Basically, there's a good God and a bad God, but they're pretty much equal, which is what Zoastrianism teaches. And they would take Christian scriptures, but they cut out tons of it that they don't like. But then what they have left, they use in ways that are totally not Christian because they would basically teach that Jehovah is a bad God, and Jesus is a good God, and Jesus is Spirit.

And, of course, Jehovah is a bad God because all matter is evil. And so that's a they're not going to go into too much detail about that. But anyway, let's get to our main event today, which is Arianism. Arianism, of course, was begun by a presbyter, churchman in Alexandria.

Egypt. Alexandria, Egypt is now one of the leading centers of Christianity. One of the biggest theological schools was there at the time. And you have this priest, Arius, who had problems with the concept of the Trinity. And basically, what he wanted to do was argue that Jesus was not really co-equal to God.

He would argue, we'll just lay his own words there. He wrote a letter to the Bishop of Alexandria, at the time was Bishop Alexander, and Alexander and Alexandria, how about that? And he says, We know one God, alone unbegotten, the Son begotten by the Father, is created and was not before he was begotten.

All right. Would you classify that as heresy? I hope you would. Okay. And this caused a huge stink. Okay. And by the way, he was really into music and he put some of his heresy to music. This is something we as Christians should be careful about. That's why we vet the songs we do here very carefully.

That's why some groups are very popular out there on radio. We don't do some of their songs. Because I guarantee you there are some on some of the mainstream radio. If you really look at some of those lyrics, they're outright heretical, you know, particularly when they talk about the Holy Spirit.

Okay, all right, but anyway, Arius, he started teaching this, and it split the church throughout the Mediterranean basin. This began, I mean, congregations were having fights over this. It splits the church, and it gets all the way up to the emperor. Constantine, you know, here he is, adopts this new religion that he's hoping he's going to unify the empire, and the new religion starts splitting, you know, and he is very concerned about it.

So he calls a church council. And now, of course, Alexander, back in Alexandria, Egypt, tries to, you know, put this down. He's not able to do it by himself. He's going to die, and he's replaced by even more dynamic personality. And this is Athanasius. Athanasius becomes the new bishop of Alexandria, and he's going to very strongly champion the Trinitarian view, which, by the way, has always been out there.

The problem a lot of people have with Trinity is it's not nowhere in Scripture, the word itself. But the concept is clearly there in Scripture. And so. And it all comes down to this one word. Brother Clyde, you want to pronounce that word for me up there? Well, I don't know if you can see it, though.

Let's see. Homoousius. Is that right? Homoousius. And that's what the argument's all down to: substance, same substance. That's what the Greek word means. And of course, Arius says, you know, it's not homoousius. And he argued that, so basically, they're going to have this big argument. They're going to have this council in 325 AD.

And a lot of people, you can go to YouTube and they'll say that this whole thing was just made up, the government's coercing these people to accept the Council of Nicaea. And Constantine wasn't really a Christian. This is all political deal. Well, let me explain who's at the Council of Nicaea.

They're mostly bishops who have recently been released from prison. You had some people there. I understand there's one guy there that his tongue had been cut out. You had people that had their limbs pulled off. You had people that bore the marks of torture. Okay? Now, if these guys had defied two emperors prior to this, do you think the new emperor is going to tell them what to do?

That is utterly absurd to want to say that these guys were puppets and palms. Of Constantine. These guys, they were proven. My little local community college, they had this big study and they spent thousands of dollars to come up with a slogan, and they came up with the word proven.

Well, these guys were proven, and they had to go through some study to figure that out. All right, well, anyway, you got they come together and they're going to reject the Aryan view, okay? And they're going to draw up an authoritative statement, which is known as the Nicene Creed.

All right, and so here we are. This is 325 AD, and this is the final results of what they come up with. Actually, what we call the Nicene Creed is really the revised Nicene Creed. They're going to clean up the language a little bit further, and that's going to be 381 at Constantinople.

And the one that is used today actually is the, you could say it's the Constantinople Creed, really, but it's basically the same creed. They just, there's a few little tweaks they did to it in 381. So, I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things invisible and invisible.

Kevin, take the next one. Loud. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through him all things were made.

That's one of the key parts of the Nicene Creed. What are they obviously hitting at there? Yeah, they want to get across that Jesus. And of course, how Aries could argue this, all you have to do is read Gospel John. In the beginning was Word, Word became flesh, dwelt among us.

How in the world Arius got off from that? I don't. Well, anyway. All right, who wants to take this? Keep going. A-Rob. For us men, for our salvation, he came down from heaven. By the Holy Spirit, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man. For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures. Okay, Effie, you want to take that? He ascended into heaven, and he is sitting on the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

Anyone? Yes. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. All right. Now, who can tell me that in red there, and the Son is called?

That's added, huh? Filioque, yeah, filioque. Filioque. Alright, well, that was added in the West as early as 410. We actually think it was first added in the East, all the way in Persia. But the people who added it were concerned that they were not keeping the Son equal to the Father, and that's the reason they stuck that in there.

And that little clause, filioque, is going to cause a big stink with the Eastern Church. They want to say only from the Father. And that's going to be one of the causes for the split, which is incredible to think. Three words, one of the major causes for the split between the Eastern and the Western Church.

When the Eastern Orthodox do this creed, they will leave those three words out. Alright, so anyway, just be aware of that. Alright, who wants to go on? Josiah, why don't you take it? I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church, confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen. Now, of course, most Protestants, we get our ears back. You really want to have fun get a church. I say, hey, you're Catholic. Oh, no, Catholic. Okay, but I want you to understand, these words, Catholic, back in that day, you wouldn't have a problem with it because the original meaning of Catholic was universal body of Christ.

And if you are a Christian, you're part of the universal body of Christ. So, in that sense of the word, I know it really upset Protestants to hear this, you are Catholic, all right, in that sense, in the original meaning of the word, okay, and that's what that meant back then.

You see, the Roman Catholic Church, as we know it today, did not even yet exist, all right, and so this, you know, this was mainstream Christianity. Now, this is an Icene Creed, and of course, we're Southern Baptists, and Southern Baptists famously say, we have no creeds, we are non-creedal.

All right, well, but we do have the Baptist Faith and Message. Have y'all ever read it? I bet you most of you haven't. And here you are sitting here, and you're a Southern Baptist, and you haven't read the Southern Baptist Faith and Message. Well, I just want to tell you a little secret.

Every point of this creed is in the Baptist Faith and Message. All right, they just get around to it a different way, but they're all in there. And really, this is the definition. See, anytime any religion gets up to a certain size, At some point, you got to define what you are.

And the Nicene Creed sort of did that. And, you know, mainstream Christianity today is most of those groups out there that we consider to be truly Christian, they're Nicene Creed. And if you want to use that as a good measuring stick, take the beliefs of Mormonism and put to the Nicene Creed where you're going to find out.

No. Take Jehovah's Witnesses. No. You know, it is the measure. And it has been ever since. Now, the original Nicene Creed went a little bit further. This is taken out of the Constantinople Creed because it's no longer necessary. But it says, But those who say there was a time when he was not, referring to Jesus, and he was not before he was made, and he was made out of nothing, and he is of another substance or essence, or the Son of God is created, or changeable, or alterable, they are condemned by the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church.

And actually, the word there is anathema. They are anathema. They are anathema. They're anathetized, which means, you know, you're going to go to hell if you continue to believe this way. They were rather blunt. Okay. And so that, obviously, that was supposed to end the controversy. It doesn't.

All right. You're going to have after Christmas. Constantine, some of his family members who succeed him, they go Aryan. Athanasius, he had to flee Alexandria, Egypt, I think, something like three times. They were chasing him. They want to arrest him because he stood up for the Trinity, stood up for the Nicene Creed.

There's one famous incident where he's on the Nile River and it's very foggy or something, you know, over the river, and the soldiers are passing by his boat and they say, Have you seen Athanasius? And Athanasius shouts, yes, he went that way. Anyway, he winds, before it's all over with, though, the Nicene Creed does triumph because the main, you know, my sheep, says Jesus, will hear my voice.

Yeah, the true church, there's a self-correcting there, you know, and the Nicene Creed is ultimately going to win out. Okay, but Arius was condemned. He's sent into exile. Unfortunately, he goes up there where the barbarian tribes are, and a bunch of the barbarian Germans convert to Arianism. So, anyway, all right, well, now, let me just say, whenever you have something like this, you have some folks, and my thing's not working.

Why is that? Did I turn it off? Well, I don't know. Can you back it up for me? Go back to Nestorius. The Nestorians. It's entitled Nestorians a slide. And maybe Ruben can run up here and get this and put me a new battery in, maybe. All right, so it's terrible when you're not in control.

Okay. Can you find the slide? Just go back, I'll tell you when to stop. There, you just passed it. Nestorians. Okay, there. All right, so you got the Nestorius. He totally accepted that Jesus, you know, was co-equal to God. But he, and therefore, he is strongly opposed to Arianism.

But then he goes too far, the opposite extreme. He decides that the humanity of Jesus threatened the divinity of Jesus. And so he comes up with this idea that Jesus is not unified man and God. He's not, you know, God incarnate. He had trouble with that. And he said there are two composite natures.

They're two different natures. That Jesus somehow comes beside the Son, God, the Son, comes beside Jesus and takes over his mind. But there's a separation between the divinity and the human side of Jesus, basically. It's more complicated than that. But anyway, and so, of course, the problem with this is, and really, I think Athanasius handled this better than anybody else.

He very clearly understood Jesus comes to earth, incarnate. God inhabits the bodies of Jesus. I mean, you know, at birth, it is immaculate conception. Now, why is this necessary? Well, we have all sinned, have we not? I think we're pretty clear on that. And we need a sacrifice for our sin.

And if Jesus is just a human, all right, if he's not God, and this is the problem with Arius, you know, Arius said that Jesus was a created being, that he's not God. Well, if he's just a human and he dies, whose sins can he cover? Yeah. Okay.

The problem is you need an infinite. Infinite sacrifice. What's one times infinity? What's three zillion times infinity? You understand? So the death of Jesus Christ had to be an infinite death, which mathematically blows our little brains. We cannot even concept of it. That's why he's God. Okay? All right.

And that's why he can cover every single person's sin. He was infinite. And to say that Jesus was created, you cannot have that. And that's what Athanasian, you know, he explains this at the church council. Of course, these other bishops, they had died, you know, they'd been tortured for this.

They understood this. And that's why they overwhelmingly confirmed the Trinitarian view. And so you cannot mess with the mystery of the Godhead. There is mystery there. And the trouble with people like Arius and now Nestorius, they won't explain it. The finite mind can never explain the infinite. And so he goes off in this other direction.

And you notice almost all heresies, they have problems with understanding who Jesus is. That's going to be the center of the heresy. And so, Nestorius, in fact, he was even at one time bishop of Constantinople, and they're going to have another council. His views and Nestorian views are going to be condemned, and he flees out towards the east.

And the Nestorian heresy continues out in the East. In fact, most of the Eastern Church in Persia was Nestorian. And you still have some sects of Nestorians to this day. Okay, so let's see if I'm working now. Yeah. So, and by the way, all these talks, James and guys back there, the tech guys have recorded them.

And if you're interested in seeing the whole series, he can give you the address on YouTube for him. Okay, so they're declared heretics 431. So let's jump through all this, keep on going. All right, y'all recognize this guy? He was at the Council of Nicaea. By the way, he was tortured.

He's one of these bishops who had gone through torture. And when Arius was given his opportunity to give his views, he was very upset. And he did something that an elder is not supposed to do. He lost his temper. In fact, he almost had to step down as being.

Bishop for what he's about to do. But anybody knows who he is? Who is he? This is St. Nicholas. This is the person upon which the mythical Santa Claus is based upon. Yeah, we're looking at Santa Claus here. Okay. All right. And so he's Bishop Myra. And we have a recording of it.

He's about to slap Arius. And he does. He was so upset. He goes to Arius and he slaps him, Bill Grey. You know, because he's a heretic. So, anyway, I thought y'all liked that a little tidbit. Okay, so let's get now to the formation of the Catholic Church.

Now, I'm focusing more on the Western Church. There's so much about the Eastern Church that is very important, and I wish I could cover it. There's a guy on YouTube, Ryan Reeves, has some previous church history. You want to go in far, far greater detail than I have time to go into.

But he'll tell you about Origin, Tertullian, you know, a whole bunch of other guys that are very important in the Eastern Church. But anyway, let's get to this term Catholic. Simply meant originally, you know, universal. And if you said you're, everybody would say they're Catholic. Catholic back then, if you belong, it is almost synonymous saying you're a Christian, really, back in those days.

And the term Roman Catholic and then Eastern Orthodox Catholic, that starts arising as the first big split in Christianity begins to develop. And the first split is not the Protestant Reformation, folks. That's the second big split. Okay, but the first big split is going to be over several hundred-year period, really, between the Eastern and Western Church.

And part of this goes to the fact that in the East, the Eastern Church, and you've got to remember all the major churches, Jerusalem was very important, even though it's not that large of a city compared to the rest of the Roman Empire, but is considered to be one of the major church centers originally, simply why?

That's where Jesus was crucified. That's where Jesus is resurrected, you know, and for that reason alone. Then you've got Antioch. Then you're going to, of course, have, well, you have a whole bunch of different churches there, churches mentioned by Paul in Asia Minor, and then later on, Constantinople is going to develop.

And, of course, Rome is a major center. All these have bishops. You know, the Bishop of Rome is at first that's what he's called to. Only later do they call him a pope. And In the East, sometimes they're called bishops, sometimes they're called patriarchs. And when they would have these disputes, as I've already shown you, they would come together, have church councils to hash it out.

But the church in the West, the Roman church, is going to start developing in a different direction. And there are several reasons why the Bishop of Rome, later starts to call himself the Pope, is going to become dominant in the West, and the Eastern churches lose out in their influence.

Of course, one of the big things in the East is the rise of Islam. And most of the Eastern churches are areas where Islam conquers. And so obviously that weakens their position in Christianity because they're under Islamic domination. Only Constantinople holds out. And actually, Constantinople is on the European side of things, but it's as far Eastern Europe as you can get.

And the Byzantines for centuries would hold back Islam from Eastern Europe. Of course, ultimately, Islam will take over Constantinople and all of Eastern Europe goes Muslim as well for a while there. But back in the West, of course, you have increasingly the rise of Rome and the rise of the papacy.

Now, Of course, as time goes on, the bishops of Rome will start calling themselves popes. And this pope, in particular, Pope Leo the Great, is going to enunciate an idea, a doctrine, that is going to claim that the popes should be the leaders of the entire church worldwide.

And this is known as the Patrine doctrine. The Patrine doctrine. Now, this is about the middle of the 5th century BC. Pope Leo the Great claimed to be supreme religious leader of the church. And this goes to Matthew 16:18. Somebody look that for me, just read it out loud.

Matthew 16, 18. I got the gist of it there, but somebody read the whole passage for me. Who's got it? Just verse 18. Yeah, 16, 18. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Okay, look what happened previous to that. What's going on there? A-Rob, what's going on just part of that? About three verses back, read that. So, 15, Jesus talking to them about who, talking to the disciples about who they say to. He is. He said to them, But who you say that I am, Simon Peter, and glad you write, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered them, Blessed are you, Simon Bardona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Okay. All right. So, in Latin, it reads pretty much the same way. You know, I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

That's NIV. And in the Latin, it sounds the same thing. Now, what the Latin Western church began teaching is that Peter is the rock upon which the church is built. Okay? Now, they reinforce that also with the idea that Peter is the first bishop of Rome. Now, we've already talked a little bit about this idea that developed during the persecutions.

The bishops, you know, who were the guys who put their lives on the line, they stood for the faith. And as time goes by, they naturally, more and more power accrues to the office of bishop. And they come up with this, I would argue, non-scriptural doctrine of apostolic succession.

That the bishops have special imbued powers because they were originally descendants in an unbroken line of succession. They had this apostolic. Whammy put upon them by the original apostles who laid hands upon the first bishop of that city, you know, and then that bishop before he dies lays hand on the next bishop and he gets that apostolic whammy.

And this goes from generation, generation, generation. And so they got this special authority. And so the Pope in Rome says, well, my whammy is better than anybody else's whammy because mine comes from Peter himself. And so the church in Rome was founded by Peter. The church is founded on the rock, Peter, and therefore I, the Pope, have all authority over all the church.

You got that? Okay. Anyone want to tell me what's the problem with saying that Peter's the first bishop of Rome? Truth never gets in the way of Rome. What's that? Truth never gets in the way. No, how about historically? We can historically disprove the idea that he's the first bishop of Rome.

Peter was dead long before the Catholic Church, Polito had ever started before. Well, no, he's going to be crucified in Rome by Nero. But who founded the church in Rome? Excuse me. Y'all have not read your book of Romans. The letter to the Romans is written by Paul.

But who's he writing it to? The church in Rome, which tells you the church in Rome existed before either Peter or Paul got there. And oh, by the way, Paul got there before Peter did. Right? Now, the funny thing about this is actually, you won't argue apostolic succession, they got double whammy.

They got Paul and Peter. But you see, they don't want Paul to be the first bishop of Rome because of this verse right here. You see? Are you getting me now? And the next problem is the Greek Orthodox Church, or the church in the East, I should say, because it's not fully, you know, that wording's not there yet, they laugh when they see this interpretation by Leo.

Why? They read Greek, they speak Greek, they talk Greek, and they know that that doesn't say what it sounds like it's saying in Latin or English. Because it's actually saying, thou art Petros, and upon this Petra I will build my church. And the best interpretation I would argue is the confession of Peter that you are the Christ.

Ultimately, it's Christ who's the big rock. Peter, you're a little rock. Upon this big rock, I'm going to build my church. And it's very obvious. Actually, if you're honest, it's obvious even in the reading here, he's not saying he's building the church on. Peter. But don't try to tell a Catholic that, okay?

Because they insist that the church is built from Peter. It's a mistranslation. You see? And of course, that's why the Greek Christians would never accept this, because they can read Greek. They know what it's actually saying. You see. And it's also a historical misinterpretation, too, because we all know, well, I'll put it like this: we don't all know who found a church in Rome because really nobody knows.

But that should be pretty incredible to know that even without the apostles getting to Rome first, you had Christians arrive, evangelize, and start a church in Rome, and it was big enough that Paul felt like he needed to write them a letter. And by the way, there's a bunch of folks there that he already knew.

Okay? So, isn't that interesting? You see? But now, hopefully, you know, if a Roman Catholic tries to make this argument to you, be real nice to them. But, you know, you say you're wrong historically, and you're wrong in your interpretation of language here. You're just wrong, wrong, wrong.

All right, so anyhow, now, let's go on. So, now, having said this, though, the popes in Rome, they did kind of have it over the Eastern church because the head of the church in the east starts gravitating towards Constantinople, and there you have the patriarch, right? So the patriarchs kind of sort of like the pope to the Eastern Orthodox Church, although they don't like that terminology.

One's Latin, one's Greek. And they do have a problem in ascendancy in terms of saying which one should be the leader of all the church because there's an embarrassing situation for the patriarch in Constantinople. You know, here you've got the Pope says, hey, you know, we had both the apostles Paul and Peter in Rome.

And the patriarch in replied, well, we had the apostle. What's the problem? No apostles ever made it to Constantinople. Now, by the way, they made up one later on. But historically, there is no apostle. Constantinople didn't exist at the time of the apostles. You see? Now, there's a little B village there, Byzantium, where she later get the name Byzantine Empire.

So the patriarchs had a problem. But here's another problem, too. The patriarchs in Constantinople were always subject to the emperor. You see, the head of the church in the East really wasn't. The patriarch, it was the emperor. In fact, one of the titles for the emperor in the East, which is now a thoroughly Christianized empire, is the anointed one, the first of the apostles.

They had all these very Christian-sounding names for the Eastern Byzantine Emperor. And so, what you have in the East is what is known as Caesaropapism. That's a really wild concoction there. You've got that Caesaropapism. In other words, the patriarch was always under the authority of the Emperor, and usually the Emperor had a big say as to who the patriarch is going to be in the first place.

And so he's subject to the Emperor, which helps to explain why in Eastern Orthodoxy, there is this incredible submission to governing authority, even if that governing authority is telling them to do things that they know they shouldn't be doing. And this was a big problem with the Eastern Orthodox Church in Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church, which is very similar to the Eastern Orthodox Church.

They're very submissive to the czars. And that's one reason why, in the Russian Revolution, so many people left the church during the Russian Revolution is because they felt like the church didn't really care about them. There's a big, big problem there. But in the West, you don't have that.

Anyone want to tell me why the popes tend to not be that subject to the emperor? Emperors in the West? Yes, ma'am. You got it. Now, later there will be. They're going to call him the Holy Roman Emperor. That's a new concoction, which we'll get to. But even there, sometimes the Holy Roman Emperor of the West would have control over the Pope.

Sometimes he wouldn't. In other words, the Popes in the West are much more independent. And in fact, with the barbarian invasions of Western Europe, the Pope was one of the last clear symbols of unity and political stability left in the West. And that's another reason why so many people look towards the Pope in the West, because things seem to be so falling apart.

And this meant that the Popes in the West were a lot more powerful in the long run. Okay, how are we doing on time? Ten minutes. All right. So let's now talk about some of the Western leadership that's going to be developing here. And then we'll get back to yet more growth of the Western Church.

Now, these are some of the Western church fathers. And one that I think I need to talk about is Ambrose, 340, 397. He's way up there in Northern Europe where he's born, Ligurgia. It's actually. Right on the border of what's later Germany. But he was born to a very wealthy family and was Christian.

This is a guy who, you know, there's no dramatic conversion story about him. He's raised in a Christian family, apparently very strong Christian from childhood. Parents were fairly well off, and yet he was a very sincere Christian. He goes down to Milan, which is the actual functioning governing capital of the empire at that point in time.

Rome was more symbolic capital, but the administrative offices and the seat of the emperor was Milan. And so he's down there. He's appointed to a high government position. He's apparently very, something, you know, he is climbing the governmental ladder. He had apparently been very successful in his duties, but he always very faithfully attended church.

And so he has to go off on some of his government duties. In his absence, the bishop of Milan dies. And this may be a shock to Roman Catholics. They were holding election for the new bishop. Notice holding election, the congregation would get together and they would elect.

All right, and words that are very congregational at this time. But unfortunately, they got into a fight, not the fist fight, but an argument fight. And big division in the Church. And you got to remember, you still got paganism at this time. You still got, of course, Manichaeism was pretty big in the city as well.

Had all these competing groups. And they're kind of laughing at the Christians. Look at these Christians. You know, they're fussing and fighting on who they're going to pick as a new bishop. Well, Ambrose shows up, and he's just, he's just, this is so embarrassing. So he goes and asks to speak to the congregation, symbols of factions together.

And he basically just dresses them down. You know, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You know, you do this. He basically, you know, reads them the right act. And then when he gets through, they all kind of look at each other and say, huh, we want you to be bishop.

No, no, I don't want to be bishop. And they elected him bishop. And he, you know, felt that this was from the Lord and he submits to it. He becomes a bishop of Milan, which is a very prestigious place. And of course, you know, a lot of important politicians come to church there, including the emperor Theodosius.

And Theodosius had recently put down a rebellion, apparently a riot at a horse race, of all things. And he had several thousand people got killed in the repression of the riot. And he comes, you know, take the Lord's Supper. And Ambrose says, no, you can't partake in that.

You have sinned. You need to repent, you need to apologize to the people for what you did, and don't do it anymore. And Theodosius is pretty upset and threatens them. And he doesn't, nope, you can kill me, do whatever. You're not going to take part in the sacraments.

You know, of course, they call them sacraments. And because of how you behaved yourself. And so Theodosius publicly repents, apologizes, and then he's admitted to the sacraments. And so he's a pretty gutsy guy, obviously. And he preached incredible sermons. And he was, you know, Brother Jeff was preaching about rituals and how, you know, sometimes you make too much of rituals and stuff.

There's these little petty fights breaking about how you did this or how you did that. And he says, listen, all that sort of stuff doesn't matter. When I go to Ligurgia and the church has some little different ways of doing things, if it's not violating scripture and they're sincerely worshiping the Lord, I'm not going to worry about stuff like that.

And some of them got upset with him about that. A new style of singing occurred at this time. In fact, they call it Ambosian music style. Something kind of like Gregorian chants. And he got credit for it. He really wasn't the one that started it, but he embraced it.

This will assist in worship. And praise the Lord. What's wrong with this? Let's do this. And, you know, I guess you could say this is an initiation of the music wars, which church has always had ever since. I was totally unaware of it myself. I remember one time when the manual was pretty small, the two musicians were myself and my wife and her guitar.

And so when we had another musician show up that could play this instrument, well, sure, you know, and nobody minded because they remember we always just had Letty, myself, and her guitar. And so we now have Letty, myself, guitar, and a piano. And then Letty, myself, guitar, and a keyboard, Letty, myself, two guitars, Lady, myself, bass guitar.

And it kind of correctly happened. Nobody, you know, was upset about that. Went to one of these music, Tom dragged me into one of these music conferences, and I remember sitting there and they're talking about these music wars. And oh my gosh, the musicians were going at each other.

They're using chords now. They should be classically trained. And only classically trained. And I mean, they were just going at each other. And the guy that started the seminar, he handed out this thing and it talked about sheet music. And it's for a newspaper clipping. And it was a critic.

He's saying, this music is too modern. The lyrics are too repetitive. And I forget some of the other things. Oh, too simplistic, you know, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And everybody's trying to guess, you know, what piece of music it's talking about. You know what piece it's talking about?

Turns out the newspaper was a modern newspaper, it's from London, England, and it was an article after the first production of The Messiah. So, this has been going on for a long time, folks. Apparently, even the time of Ambrose, they were having music wars. So, anyway, Ambrose is going to be also very important because he is the preacher that you're going to have this later, somewhat important person in the church by the name of Augustine going to sneak in there to listen to him, actually, to gather ammunition to try to have a debate to beat him.

And it doesn't turn out the way he thought it was going to turn out, but that's later. Let's get to this next one: Saint Jerome. Now, Saint Jerome, he too was from a Christian family, loved literature, very highly educated. Goes on a trip, a tour finally of the Holy Lands, becomes deathly ill.

In fact, at one point there, they thought he was dead. He later relates. And sort of sort of like one of these life after death experiences type things. And he apparently subsequently has a vision and says, You care more about pagan literature than you do the Bible. Now, some of us might could have that vision today: you care more about secular movies than the Bible or video games than the Bible.

Okay, well, anyway, he was really crushed by this, and he decided to devote the rest of his life to study scripture. And oh my gosh, does he? Jerome loved scripture. His failing as a Christian, though, was he had a problem loving people. He is something of a curmudgeon.

But he tried. Several times he tried to start these monastic fellowships, but he is such a legalist, most of the people would leave, you know, after he'd start them up and then they'd leave, but he really didn't try. Finally, he goes to Bethlehem and starts a monastic community there, and he devoted to improving Scripture.

Now, he even tried being a hermit one time. I guess he couldn't even live with himself, but he eventually is asked by Pope Damascus to write a Latin version of the Bible. I mean, Old and New Testament, everything. The Latin. Latin versions, and there are several this time, were terrible.

They were just bad translations. There were no really good, and they had variant readings and all this. So they want him to go gather some of the best manuscripts in the Greek, translate them into Latin. And well, he starts this, and he's not satisfied with the Old Testament because his translation at first is going to be based on the Septuagint.

That's the Greek translation of the Old Testament into Greek. And so he befriended some rabbis and learned Hebrew himself so that he could come up with a much better version to translate into Latin. And the guy was linguistically a genius. He's just an incredible, incredible genius. And the result is the Latin Vulgate.

Now, the trouble with the Latin Vulgate, and this, hang with me here, it was too good. And I'm glad it was, don't get me wrong. But because it was such a good translation, it became almost like sacrosanct. You know, the only parallel I can think of, and it doesn't work now because most of y'all are too young now.

But in my day, it was the King James Version. In fact, the King James Version was so good, and the language, I would still argue in English, is still the most beautiful. It is without doubt the most beautiful translation of the Bible in English. You can't argue against that.

But some also made it too sacrosanct. I can remember literally some of these old radio preachers on the radio saying, if you don't read the King James Bible, you're not reading the Bible. If it's good enough for Peter and Paul, it's good enough for us. So the thing Latin Vulgate is sort of like the King James version to the Latins, to the Romans.

But what's the problem with that after the barbarian invasions? Latin ceases to exist except in the church. The church continues to use it. And so the problem was the Roman Catholic Church starts teaching that you must use the Latin Vulgate, even though nobody understands Latin anymore except for the priests.

And half of them didn't really. They just memorized a few phrases and faked the rest, and who's going to know? So anyway, he does this Latin Vulgate. And the word vulgate comes from the word vulgar, and that sounds pretty vulgar, vulgar, right? But I want you to know what vulgar originally meant.

It's not quite the same day. Back then, it simply meant common, ordinary. So when you say, Latin Vulgate, we're saying the common Latin language Bible. The man in the street could read it. That's what it was originally intended for, for ordinary Christians to be able to read the Word of God.

The trouble is, even after no one's speaking Latin, they're still using the Latin Vulgate. And so, in the medieval period, which is technically the most Christian period in world history, which is really not true, you have all these medieval Christians go to church and they do readings out of the Latin Vulgate, and the people sitting in the pew have no idea what's being read to them.

Okay? And so, which is a real tragedy, which Saint Jerome himself would have been horrified at. You know, he wants a translation that ordinary people could read. Now, there's one other little thing, and some of you already heard me say this previously. There's a little issue about some books that some people wanted him to translate that he didn't want to translate.

And that is the Apocrypha. In fact, he's the one who coined the phrase apocryphal, which means it's not canonical, it's not true scripture. He originally refused to translate these, and he got a big argument with the next guy we're going to talk about, which will probably be next time, Augustine, over this.

Augustine begged him to. Translate the Apocrypha. He actually agreed with Jerome that, you know, they're not scriptural, but he thought they were, you know, worthy books to translate. Some of this was information in the intertestamental period. For example, 1st, 2 Maccabees, excellent history of what happened between the Old and New Testament.

And so he wanted these, and some of them, wisdom literature. Jerome writes a letter back to Augustine very famously, in which he, and this is Johnson translation here, paraphrased more like it. He says, if I translate the Apocrypha, some idiot after we're dead is going to come along and say that this is Scripture.

And now this is one of the most famous saints in the Roman Catholic Church. And guess who comes along later and says that this is scripture? Members of the Roman Catholic Church later on come along. It really happens after Council of Trent. You know, Luther, very wisely, says, this is not Scripture.

We Protestants reject this. And so the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent says, well, if you Protestants reject it, we accept it. Okay, you know, sort of like this type deal. And that's been going on ever since. We're out of time.