Sermon Tone Analysis

Augustine believed that God was sovereign over all aspects of his creation.

Faith precedes and is the means by which we arrive at true knowledge of God.

Free-will is inevitably subordinate to divine sovereignty.

Original sin and total depravity after the fall.

All Christians are predestined to salvation.

Pelagius believed humans are born sinless.

Adam’s fall did not corrupt human nature.

Sinless perfection in this life is possible.

Death is not the result of sin.

Adam was created to die even in his original state.

John Wycliffe

Oxford University Theologian.

Religious advisor to King Edward III.

In 1378-80 he began publishing works that contradicted the Roman Church and the pope.

Gave us the first English translation from the Latin Vulgate, even though it was completed after he died.

Died in 1384.

34 years after his death, the church dug up his bones, burned them, and dumped them in the river Swift or at sea depending on who you talk to.

Believed God delated authority over secular matters to the state and spiritual matters to the church.

The only source for sound doctrine is the Bible.

Every claim, regardless of who makes it, must be subject to Holy Scripture.

The church is the body of Christ, rooted in God’s eternal predestination, infallibly known to God alone.

The papacy is of human origin.

Rejected transubstantiation

Transubstantiation: Beneath the medieval concept of a eucharistic sacrifice lay belief in the real presence of Christ in the elements.

By consecration, it was held, the bread is substantially the body of Christ and the wine his blood.

Naturally we still see, touch, taste, and smell bread and wine, for the so–called accidents remain intact.

But the substance has supposedly changed (transubstantiation). Hence the priest offers Christ’s body and blood on the altar, and communicants receive them by receiving the elements.

All who receive the elements receive Christ.

Properly the Supper should be administered at least once a week.

Non-communicating attendance makes no sense.

How important is the Protestant Reformation in the grand scheme of things?

The inquisitions employed water boarding as a torture technique on accused heretics.

The inquisitions employed water boarding as a torture technique on accused heretics.

11/20/1500]

How should the church deal with the obstinate heretic & immoral person?

3 John

The Historical Context of the Reformation

7 minutes

Constantinianism first became a problem in the church in the fourth century and has continued to threaten the mission of the church ever since.

This is the Identification of the Church with, in that age, the Roman Empire.

In our age, its called the Christian America.

It is the attempt on the part of the church to use the coercive power of the state to enforce Christian morality and values.

It is a tendency toward exuberance due to the rise of Christianity, sometimes called Christian triumphalism.

It is also called the Great Apostasy or the Constantinian shift.

The Political Landscape

The Geographical Extent of Roman Catholicism - everywhere there was Christianity, there was Roman Catholicism.

The Political Setting

The significance of the year 313 and Constantine.

In 247 Christians made themselves very unpopular by refusing to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Rome.

In 248 Goths began a series of invasions that shook the Roman Empire.

The Emperor, Decius blamed Christians for this saying that the gods were angry.

Persecution broke out.

Large numbers of Christians committed apostasy.

Constantine’s dream - Χρ with the Chi on top of the Rho.

By this sign you will conquer.

He prayed to the Christian God for victory and beat the anti-Christian emperor of the East, Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge.

Constantine’s conversion altered both, the Roman Empire and the course of Christianity down to this very day.

In 313, Constantine and Licinius met in Milan and granted Christianity full legal status.

But by 320 Licinius was back at persecuting the Christians.

In 321, Constantine made Sunday, the Christian day of Worship, into an official day of rest.

He made Christian bishops into part of the Empire’s legal structure.

Constantine also created a form of welfare to help the poor which discouraged the common Roman custom of killing unwanted children at birth.

It was presumed that part of the Emperor’s responsibility was to use his authority to uphold and worship Rome’s traditional gods if the Empire was to have peace and prosperity.

Constantine transferred this belief to Christianity.

The Financial Situation

The spiritual authority of the church was used to abuse even the poorest among them.

The Religious Authorities

Because the pope was the head of the church, everywhere the church was, came under his rule.

If an emperor feared the pope, and feared excommunication enough, the pope could manipulate everyone under his power.

How might political issues distract from the mission of the holy Christian Church in modern American society?

The Theological Context

10 min = 17 min

Heresy: The infection of grace with depraved human works, effort, and natural cooperation.

Epistemic Authority

The Pope

Head of the church.

Infallibility - Infallibility belongs in a special way to the pope as head of the bishops (; ).

As Vatican II remarked, it is a charism the pope "enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (), he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals.

Therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly held irreformable, for they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised to him in blessed Peter."

(ex cathedra: from the chair)

The Magisterium

This is the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

The magisterium consists of the bishops of the Church under the authority of the pope.

The Magisterium gives the infallible interpretation of Scripture.

The magisterium consists of the bishops of the Church under the authority of the pope.

C. Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 72.

Tradition

The Council of Trent: “this truth and instruction are contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions, which have been received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the apostles themselves, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down to us.” [Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 180.]

“this truth and instruction are contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions, which have been received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the apostles themselves, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down to us.”

Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 180.

Salvation

Justification: If anyone shall say that man’s free will moved and aroused by God does not cooperate by assenting to God who looses and calls . . .

let him be anathema.”

[Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 224.]

If anyone shall say that man’s free will moved and aroused by God does not cooperate by assenting to God who looses and calls . . .

let him be anathema.”

Catholics believe that baptism represents initial justification, but then penance and the eucharist pertain to progressive justification.

[Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 224.]

Purgatory

If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged, either in this world or in Purgatory, before the gates of Heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.”

i. Catholics quote from ; ;