Hands down...

If you guys are ever interested in Church History, hit up Jnorm....real talk, he is the point man on this forum. He seems like a walking Church History Book. Plus he is one of the most stabled and humbled minds on here. You want to learn about Calvinism, Coptic Christians, Eastern Orthodoxy, Jnorm is ya boy....


Thank you J for your knowledge and wisdom.

John is a good dude him and I have had a lot of good discussions/debates over the years and I have learned from him.

Mabye J can get a list of books for beginners...

Praise God for all the family members in the household of faith holding it down by getting into some solid resources. Let their example spark you to likewise hit the books and expand your understanding to the glory of God. So don't just deluge him (Jnorm) with questions ask him perhaps for some good resources.

Check out writers like

Iain Murray (writes history w/ a purpose, each book seems like a book on sanctification)

Stephen Nichols (writes history that puts you there, draws out the humor and all the other emotions, very readable)

Mark Noll (deep pensive...detail packed)

Philip Schaff (informative and thorough)

just to name a few.

Originally Posted by CCordero

If you guys are ever interested in Church History, hit up Jnorm....real talk, he is the point man on this forum. He seems like a walking Church History Book. Plus he is one of the most stabled and humbled minds on here. You want to learn about Calvinism, Coptic Christians, Eastern Orthodoxy, Jnorm is ya boy....


Thank you J for your knowledge and wisdom.

c/s

i been saying this forever

Jnorm's good on church history in many areas.

Disagree with him on doctrine, but he's good on church history on many issues.

I would say that his knowledge on Church history makes him credible when it comes to doctrine as well. Doctrine has a historical context to it and knowing that history helps in better understanding doctrine whether opponent or exponent.

Knowing church history doesn't necessarily mean you're good on doctrine.

Alexander Campbell was good on church history, but rejected much orthodox doctrine.

anyway..... moving on.....

Originally Posted by G.R.A.C.E. Preecha

Knowing church history doesn't necessarily mean you're good on doctrine.

Alexander Campbell was good on church history, but rejected much orthodox doctrine.

anyway..... moving on.....

I agree...true, it does not automatically make you "good" about doctrine but knowing the historical context of how doctrines are formed does help you view doctrine in a better more informative light. For instance, knowing the historical context of the ecumenical counsels concerning the Christological controversies lets you know that it was heavily politically motivated as well as religious. For me, it makes me less dogmatic about certain doctrines.

I was always a history buff, but never really got into church history until I started arguing with Seventhday Adventists & Oneness Pentecostals (back in 1997). So it all started over doctrinal issues. Over the Sabbath, and the Trinity.

That's how I started really getting into church history, for our arguments over scripture were at a stand still. They had scriptures they used to support what they were saying, and I had scriptures I used to support what I was saying (which mostly came from Hank Hanegraff for I followed him heavily back then.....back in those days). So one day they both came to me and told me that either the Pope or the Emperor Constantine was the reason for me believing in the doctrine of the Trinity or for going to church on sunday (back then I believed sunday was the christian sabbath).

I told them I couldn't just take their word for it, and for the SDA, I told them I couldn't just accept what their scholars said without double checking for my self. The SDA's were more scholarly,.......they have their own schools and their own scholars.

And this is how it happened. I started reading the works of the christians around the time of the Emperor Constantine as well as before his time (Pre-Nicen/Ante-Nicene & Nicen Christians) Now what I found out, really didn't change them that much..well wait. It did one person, he left PAW and became a Baptist...only to go to a liberal seminary, but that's another story. (although it did put an end to our arguments about the doctrine of the Trinity and the Sabbath.....well almost, we still argued a little about the sabbath because when one scholar didn't work, they found another SDA scholar with a slighty different twist, but eventually the arguments about that topic stopped).

What I found out eventually changed me. I was a Baptist on paper, but I was no longer a Baptist at heart. I tried to Join EO back then 1997/1998 but the Parish didn't return my phone call. I was eventually sidetracked to some form of "continual Anglicanism" when I ran into the website of David Bercot. He is no longer Anglican, he reverted back to a form of Mennonite Anabaptist. I stopped following him in 2003 when his fellowship in Tyler Texas fell apart and when he started to change some of his core beliefs (that drew me in back in 1997/1998). But there was one good thing I kept from that movement, and it was the focus on reading the primary sources for yourself. The Idea that you can't really trust tertianary (3rd) sources, and that sometimes even secondary (2nd) sources can get some stuff wrong.
So you always have to go back and read the primaries if you want to be as accurate as possible. In 2002 I joined an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Pittsburgh diocese of the ECUSA (back then the Pittsburgh Diocese were still in the ECUSA, they recently split from the denomination). I had a choice of joining a charismatic parish or the Anglo Catholic parish. I joine the Anglo-Catholic, but I still visited and helped out (alot) with the charismatic parish. I decided to leave the ECUSA in sempembter of 2006 when I saw the Charismatic Episcopal Church split in many pieces in America. I only joined the ECUSA in pittsburgh because there were no ICCEC or CEEC parishes near by (at least back then).

Bercot(back in the 1990's when I was drawn to his movement), Bishop Thomas, the CEEC, the ICCEC, and the EOC all came out of a movement called The Convergence Movement or The Convergence of the Streams movement.

It's basically where you try to blend the Evangelical with the Catholic/Sacramental with the Charismatic. and depending on the group, one aspect will always be more dominant than the other, or one aspect will almost be ignored, but the ideal was to have a healthy balance of all three........in practice it was never really like that......but that's the gist of it.......it was basically a conservative form of what would later be known as the "Emergent movement". In the Emergent movement, you can look outside of christianity to find things to suppliment your worship style and lifestyle. In the Convergence movement, you only look at those 3 streams.....the evangelical, the Catholic, and the Charismatic.......and choose from that, what you want in your worship preference and christian lifestyle.

I don't know when the emergent movement began, but the convergence movement began back in the 1970's.

Well, there is more to the story of why I became EO, I wrote about it some two years ago. But when I saw the ICCEC fall apart back in 2006, that's when I called an EO priest I found on a Roman Catholic website where some former ICCEC became Roman Catholic. I called him and he put me in touch with an EO priest in Pittsburgh and I started visiting in December of 2006 and was chrismated on April of 2007.

So it took about 9 or 10 years for me to become EO. I first tried in 1997/1998, got side tracked, and ended up being EO anyway some years later.

And it all was because of an argument I had with SDA's and PAW's back in 1997. Now if I argued with Roman Catholics back then, then maybe I still would be Protestant, if I argued with a different group that wanted me to look at a different historical timeline, then maybe I still would be Baptist or Charismatic(of some stripe).

But it didn't happen that way. I was told that the Emperor Constantine did this and did that, or that the pope of that time did this or did that, and their was pressure put on me to reject what I was raised to believe in as a Baptist, and since the Doctrine of the Trinity is a salvation issue (that's what I said back then, when I was arguing with PAW), I told them that I couldn't just take their word for it. I had to see for my self.


And this is the only reason why I am a church history buff. When I started in 1997 I just couldn't stop. Doctrine and history to me are like a matrix.....like RNA & DNA. They go together because they are always connected in some way.

Now Alexander Cambell started his own church......his own movement. I have no desire to start my own church nor my own movement. Alexander Cambell rejected creeds. I don't. I accept creeds. So yes, you can be into church history and be wrong on doctrinal issues, but you can also be into church history and be right on doctrinal issues as well.

I'm not saying I'm right or wrong......eventhough I personally believe I'm right.....but I also understand that other people feel that I'm wrong......and I don't see a problem with that.

But the truth is, I made personal decisions in my life that lead to what I believe right now.....whether right or wrong. And I own up to my decisions in life. Now maybe if I was in a different environment with different groups arguing with me then maybe I would of turned out differently, but I turned out this way.......with the cards I was dealt. (I believe in the limited freedom of the will, so this is why I am saying what I am saying. There are some things I can control and there are some things I just can't....I have no control over alot of things in life.)

I had to throw in a little bit of Arminianism in there..........please forgive me if you were offended.






JNORM888

Thanks J. your posts are always appreciated and the tone that you come in is refreshing. You are a great leader on these forums.

Interesting that David Bercot reverted back to a form of Mennonite Anabaptism.

Yes, history and doctrine are a team. Docrine and creeds do not fall from heaven, they are developed here on earth not by divine beings but by human beings. They do have a social-political-economic context to them that helps to understand the nature of the doctrines.

Thanks for sharing your spiritual journey.

J-Norm for Mod!!!!! LoL...

so JNorm tells us about Montanists and is that movement or any variation of it alive today ??

Good points, Cruz. But although some were politically motivated, if they are biblically accurate then it gives me reason to be very dogmatic about a particular doctrine.

For example, does it matter that most of the Nicene council were lying when they signed the creed, since there was an Arian resurrgence from 326-378 and you barely found a Trinitarian church anywhere ? Not really. The doctrine is there in scripture - clearly. So whether it was politically motivated or not doesn't matter in the final analysis.

If it's taught clearly in scripture, we should be adamantly dogmatic about it - scripture is.

Now you may object and say that the historical context may have been what drove the interpretation..... and in some cases, that may have been true (for example, the Song of Solomon has, for the most part, been allegorically or spiritually interpreted as poetry about Christ and the Church....when it's really just a love poem about a husband and wife). The culture of the day did indeed drive the interpretation. But looking at the words in context according to their original meanings, one must strain and ignore the meaning of words to actually come to that conclusion.

On other things like the Trinity, whether politically motivated or not, Isaiah 48:12-16 teaches the doctrine. 1 Thess. 3:11-13 teaches it. The opening of 1 Peter teaches it. Matthew 28:18-20 teaches it. Acts 5:3-4 teach it. It's clearly there, so whether the Nicene Council was politically motivated or not doesn't matter. It's there - so I believe it and I believe it with all that is in me as God gives me strength to do. I remain dogmatic about it and zealous for it, as God is Himself zealous for His name and His glory and will not have it be given to idols like the 'god' of Oneness theology (who is only one person) or the three gods of Mormonism.

Originally Posted by CCordero

Thanks J. your posts are always appreciated and the tone that you come in is refreshing. You are a great leader on these forums.

Interesting that David Bercot reverted back to a form of Mennonite Anabaptism.

Yes, history and doctrine are a team. Docrine and creeds do not fall from heaven, they are developed here on earth not by divine beings but by human beings. They do have a social-political-economic context to them that helps to understand the nature of the doctrines.

Thanks for sharing your spiritual journey.

J-Norm for Mod!!!!! LoL...

You can't ignore the Divine aspect of creeds

Acts 15:28
"28It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:"

As long as the Holy Spirit is around and breathing in the Church and communicating, then there will always be a Divine aspect. Sometimes it takes time .....because you have to test the spirits, but eventually the Church will come to know if a creed is true or not.

So yes, there will always be two aspects......the Divine and Human. There will always be issues of culture and politics when dealing with the human side. We can see that with the very first council in Acts.......well, we see the cultural influence in that council, But God was still there.

Likewise, until the second Advent, The Holy Spirit will always be present in some form or degree when two or more gather in Jesus' Authority.

If the council is a true council then the Church will know in time....It took time for Nicea to be fully embraced....like decades... It took 70 something years for the 2nd council to be embraced. It took Rome almost a 1,000 years to embrace all of it's decrees. So sometimes it takes time.


When looking at Scripture.....both the Old and New Testaments......we see both culture and politics at play, but we also see God move and work in the mist of that. It didn't stop God from working in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is mostly political.......there is alot of politics in the Old Testament, and it didn't stop God from working in the New either when you had the politics of Rome and the Sanhedran.......God was still working in the mist of that......so the Divine can still work in the mist of politics and culture when it comes to creeds as well.



Take care and God bless!




JNORM888

Originally Posted by G.R.A.C.E. Preecha

Good points, Cruz. But although some were politically motivated, if they are biblically accurate then it gives me reason to be very dogmatic about a particular doctrine.

For example, does it matter that most of the Nicene council were lying when they signed the creed, since there was an Arian resurrgence from 326-378 and you barely found a Trinitarian church anywhere ? Not really. The doctrine is there in scripture - clearly. So whether it was politically motivated or not doesn't matter in the final analysis.

If it's taught clearly in scripture, we should be adamantly dogmatic about it - scripture is.

Now you may object and say that the historical context may have been what drove the interpretation..... and in some cases, that may have been true (for example, the Song of Solomon has, for the most part, been allegorically or spiritually interpreted as poetry about Christ and the Church....when it's really just a love poem about a husband and wife). The culture of the day did indeed drive the interpretation. But looking at the words in context according to their original meanings, one must strain and ignore the meaning of words to actually come to that conclusion.

On other things like the Trinity, whether politically motivated or not, Isaiah 48:12-16 teaches the doctrine. 1 Thess. 3:11-13 teaches it. The opening of 1 Peter teaches it. Matthew 28:18-20 teaches it. Acts 5:3-4 teach it. It's clearly there, so whether the Nicene Council was politically motivated or not doesn't matter. It's there - so I believe it and I believe it with all that is in me as God gives me strength to do. I remain dogmatic about it and zealous for it, as God is Himself zealous for His name and His glory and will not have it be given to idols like the 'god' of Oneness theology (who is only one person) or the three gods of Mormonism.

I don't know if they were lying. Most of them were against modalism/Sabelism and after Nicea they saw a defender of Nicea openly teach Sabelianism.

You have to remember that in the Christian East, they were mostly against Modalism, this is how Arius overreacted. He was trying to fight modalism, but ended up in the extreme, in the other direction.

So most of the signers were not lying. They just hated modalism so much that they thought they were fooled by Nicea. You have to also remember that the word "homoousious" was first used by Modalist.

And this is the real reason why most people at Nicea didn't want that word in the creed. They used the Bible as an argument to keep it out the creed, but the real reason was because the Modalists used that same word for their doctrine. It took the arguments of Athanasius to convence them that "homoousious" could be interpreted in a non modalist fashion. He showed that it could be scriptural and Orthodox.

This is why they signed their names. But they changed their mind when they saw a defender of Nicea openly teach modalism.....so they sided with the Arians....at least until Athanasius was able to win them back (again).

And what made it easier was that the Arians started to show their true colors and were open about Jesus being created and a creature. The Semi-Arians rejected that idea, and so they eventually came to terms with Athanasius.




So the whole issue had to do with Modalism. Most of the people who changed their minds were called "semi-Arians", but they really weren't Arians......they were just scared of modalism......and this is why many of them came back some decades later.


Something similar happened with Chalcedon. The reason why the Armenians changed their mind about Chalcedon, was because they heard that Nestorius said that that is what he believed, so all the nonchalcedonians thought that those who held to the creed of Chalcedon were Nestorians. It wasn't until after the 7th Council that all the Nestorians were kicked out, and this is why many Coptics, and Armenians are able to accept the creed now. But their are other issues at stake....like Saints.







JNORM888

The word "homoousios had a long history as we have previously indicated and, even though accepted in the creed, it was objectionable to the majority of the bishops for at least four reasons. First, the term, despite Constantine's statement, had strong materialist overtones which would connote that Father and Son are parts or separable portions of the same "stuff." Secondly, if Father and Son were of one numerically identical substance, then the doctrine of the creed could well be Sabellian, Father and Son being identical and indistinguishable. Thirdly, the term was associated with heresies since it had been coined by the Gnostics and had, in fact, been condemned at the Council of Antioch in 268 as used by the Adoptionist Paul of Samosata. Fourthly and importantly for many of the more conservative bishops, the term was not scriptural."

page 62

The aftermath

"The Church historian Socrates (380-450) describes the failure of mutual understanding: "The situation was like a battle by night, for both parties seemed to be in the dark about the grounds on which they were hurling abuse at each other. those who objected to the term homoousios imagined that its adherents were bringing in the doctrine of Sabellius and Montanists. So they called them blasphemers on the ground that they were undermining the personal subsistence of the Son of God. On the other hand, the protaganists of homoousios concluded that their opponents were introducing polytheism, and steered clear of them as importers of paganism........Thus while both affirmed the personality and subsistence of the Son of God, and confessed tht there was one God in three hypostases, they were somehow incapable of reaching agreement, and for this reason could not bear to lay down arms."

[2] page 82


How Athanasius eventually won over the semi-Arians/moderates.

"Amid the disturbances of Julian's rule, the doctrinal differences within the Church continued. In 361 the radical Arians met at Antioch under the leadership of Euzoius and declared their belief in a Son unlike the Father. In 362 Athanasius, before his exile, called a peace conference at Alexandria consisting of representatives from Egypt, Palestine and Italy along with delegates sent by the fanatical Nicene Lucifer of Cgliari, Apollinaris of Laodicea and the priest Paulinus, chief of the Nicene community at Antioch. Athanasius' main concern was to reconcile the moderates and the Nicenes by getting behind party catchwords to the deeper meaning of each position. He recommended asking those who held three hypostases if they meant three in the sense of three subsistent beings, alien in nature like gold, silver and brass, as did the radical Arians. If they answered no, he asked if they meant by three hypostasis a Trinity, truly existing with truly substantial Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and if they acknowledged one Godhead. If they said yes, he allowed them into communion. Then he turned to those who spoke of one hypostasis and asked if they meant this in the sense of Sabellius, as if the Son were not substantial and the Holy Spirit impersonal. If they said no, he asked them if they meant by one hypostasis one substance or ousia because the Son is of the substance of the Father. If their answer was yes, he accepted them into communion. Finally, in a statesmanlike fashion Athanasius brought out the truth each side was fighting for and showed that between the moderates and the Nicenes there was really no ground for disagreement. The results of these deliberations were sent off to Antioch divided into three factions: the Arians led by Euzoius, the imperially recognized bishop, the Homoeousians led by the exiled Meletius and the old Nicenes led by the priest Palinus, loyal to the long-dead Eustathius. The way seemed open for peace.But the way was proved long and ruff. For while Athanasius was laying the groundwork for reconciliation at Alexandria, Lucifer of Cagliari had gone to Antioch and made things worse. Instead of attempting to reconcile the moderate bishop Meletius who had already declared for the Nicene faith. Lucifer consecrated the Old Nicene Paulinus as bishop. The two parties which Athanasius had been attempting to reconcile were now separated by rival bishops, while the old Arian Euzious held the churches of the city. This schism at Antioch would impede reconciliation between moderates and Nicenes for years to come as Athanasius and the bishop of Rome came to support Paulinus, while the rising leader of the East, Basil of Caesarea, remained loyal Meletius.

page 102-103





JNORM888

[1]page 62, [2]page 82, [3]pages 102-103 from the book the first Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology

Originally Posted by iron_jae

Mabye J can get a list of books for beginners...

Church History in Plain Language by Bruce Shelley

Heresy: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church by Harold O.J. Brown

Originally Posted by simply seth

so JNorm tells us about Montanists and is that movement or any variation of it alive today ??

They died out around the 5th or 6th century. I will have to review to go into more detial. From what I recall they never ....well, from the primary sources I read (Tertullian in his later years) from what I read, I never saw where it said they spoke in tongues. I know that some sources online or in books may say that, but from what I can recall, it was mostly about the gift of "prophecy" and them being in a state of ecstasy or spazzing out or twitching in the process of giving a prophecy......or something like that. I will have to re-read it again just to make sure. But from what I can recall, speaking in tongues was not involved.


But you can always read the latter works of Tertullian for yourself, for much of what we know about them comes from him. Others may talk about them as well. but for now, all I know about is Tertullian after the year 200 and something.




JNORM888

kerry: "im smart to... im smart to!!!"