Week 4 · AD 301–400
Peace and the Son of God
Emperors grant peace, and the church fights over Christ
This week
Peace brings new questions
- Persecution ends, and Constantine grants religious freedom
- Councils confess Christ as true God
- Arius, the Donatists, and others challenge the faith
- Monks, missionaries, and preachers shape church life
- Bishops list the books of Scripture
The Dream of Constantine
Piero della Francesca, about 1452–1466, Arezzo. Constantine’s dream before the battle of AD 312.
Church life
What Christians endured, taught, and practiced
AD 303–313
Persecution, then religious freedom
- Emperor Diocletian begins the last great Roman persecution in AD 303
- Churches are torn down, and Bibles are burned
- Those who die for Christ are called martyrs (witnesses)
- Constantine says he saw a cross of light before a battle in AD 312
- In AD 313, Constantine and Licinius agree to give religious freedom to all
Christ and the sacraments
Cyril on Baptism and the Supper
- Cyril of Jerusalem teaches people who are preparing for Baptism
- Baptism is God’s gift that joins a believer to Christ
- Five mystagogical lectures (teaching for the newly baptized) come down under his name
- The fourth lecture says the bread and wine are Christ’s body and blood
Monks and missionaries
Monks, missionaries, and the cross
- Church writers say Helena, Constantine’s mother, found the cross in Jerusalem
- Monks live apart from society to pray and to fast
- Pachomius (died about 346) gathers monks into shared communities in Egypt
- Ulfilas (about 311–380), a Gothic bishop, translates the Bible into Gothic
- Frumentius, held captive in Axum, brings the faith there
- Athanasius makes Frumentius the first bishop of Axum, in today’s Ethiopia
Controversy
Was the Son created? What makes a sacrament valid?
Arianism
Was the Son created?
- Arius, a pastor in Alexandria, taught that the Son was created
- Arianism is this teaching: the Son is not fully God
- Alexander, his bishop, condemned it in about AD 319
- The dispute attacks the heart of Christ’s person and saving work
Christ and the sacraments
Donatists: what makes a sacrament valid?
- Donatists denied that a bishop who gave up the Scriptures under persecution gave a valid sacrament
- They broke from the church over Caecilian, bishop of Carthage
- The dispute asks what makes Baptism and the Lord’s Supper valid
- Augsburg Confession VIII: a sacrament works by Christ’s promise, even through an evil minister
Apollinaris, Pneumatomachi, Julian
Christ’s mind, the Spirit, and Julian
- Apollinaris said that Christ had no human mind
- The Pneumatomachi (“Spirit fighters”) denied that the Holy Spirit is God
- Both groups were condemned in AD 381
- Julian the Apostate (one who leaves the faith), emperor AD 361–363, tried to revive pagan worship
Councils and events
Emperors call bishops together, and their verdicts differ
AD 314 and AD 325
Arles and Nicaea I
- Arles, AD 314: Constantine calls Western bishops, who side with Caecilian
- Lutheran classification: Received. Augsburg Confession VIII agrees and condemns the Donatists.
- Nicaea I, AD 325: the creed confesses the Son as true God, begotten and not made
- Consubstantial means the Son shares the Father’s divine essence
- Lutheran classification: Received. The Book of Concord prints the Nicene Creed.
AD 335–359
Tyre, Serdica, and Rimini
- Tyre, AD 335: a synod hostile to Nicaea deposes Athanasius on false charges
- Lutheran classification: Spurious. The synod punished the chief defender of the Son’s full deity.
- Serdica, about AD 343: the Easterners leave, and the Western bishops clear Athanasius
- Lutheran classification: Mixed. The appeal canons clash with the Smalcald Articles.
- Rimini and Seleucia, AD 359: a creed calls the Son “like the Father”
- Lutheran classification: Spurious. The Confessions reject its central doctrine.
AD 367–397
Constantinople I and the book list
- Constantinople I, AD 381: reaffirms Nicaea and defends the Holy Spirit’s full divinity
- Lutheran classification: Received. Augsburg Confession I confesses the Trinity in its words.
- Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397) list the books of Scripture
- Lutheran classification: Mixed. The curriculum judges Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees not canonical.
- Athanasius’s yearly Easter letter (AD 367) lists the same 27 books as ours
- Ambrose, bishop of Milan, keeps Emperor Theodosius from Communion after Thessalonica (AD 390)
Major people
Teachers and preachers who shaped the church
Major people
Teachers, monks, and preachers
- Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, taught that the divine Word truly took on human nature
- Eusebius of Caesarea wrote the first long history of the church
- Basil of Caesarea defended the Holy Spirit’s full divinity
- Gregory of Nazianzus argued that Christ must have a human mind
- Anthony of Egypt lived as a hermit in the desert
- John Chrysostom preached at Antioch and was bishop of Constantinople
- Jerome revised the Latin Gospels against Greek manuscripts, about AD 383
- Augustine of Hippo turned to Christ in Milan in AD 386
Wider world
Empire, borders, and the Goths
Wider world
Constantinople, the Goths, Theodosius
- In AD 330, Constantine dedicates Constantinople, the enlarged city of Byzantium
- In AD 376, the Goths flee the Huns and ask to cross the Danube into Roman land
- In AD 378, Gothic forces defeat the Roman army at Adrianople, and Emperor Valens dies
- Emperor Theodosius dies in January AD 395, and his sons Arcadius and Honorius succeed him
Confessional Lutheran connection
What the Lutheran Confessions say about this century
Confessional Lutheran connection
Set the history beside the Confessions
- Christ’s deity: the Son’s full deity matters for his saving work (Augsburg Confession I, III)
- Christ’s person: the Son is true God and true man (Augsburg Confession III)
- Baptism: compare Cyril with Augsburg Confession IX
- Lord’s Supper: compare Cyril and Chrysostom with Augsburg Confession X
- Sacraments and the Donatists: a sacrament rests on Christ’s word, not the minister’s worth (Augsburg Confession VIII)
- Monastic discipline: separate service to neighbors from works that claim to earn forgiveness (Augsburg Confession XXVII)
- Scripture: separate recognizing biblical books from creating their authority (Formula of Concord, Rule and Norm)
- Church and state: keep the two kinds of authority apart (Augsburg Confession XVI and XXVIII)
For discussion
Why does the Son’s full deity matter for his saving work?