Before the invention of modern transport, it was actually quicker to travel by sea than by land. Although the Romans did build great roads, shipping was the main means of transporting goods. So, while by road, northern Africa man seem far from Rome, by sea it is much closer.
Northern Africa was a
Roman province known simply as Africa, and Carthage (located now in Tunisia)
was the main city. Northern African
Christianity was strong until just before the 8th century when the
region was overthrown by the Arabs.
The earliest writing (around
A.D. 180) we have from the church in north Africa is of a church that is
suffering persecution. We see in these
writing that the north Africans were wrestling to form a theology of
persecution. They concluded that
persecution is to be welcomed. They saw
persecution as a sign of faithfulness.
But what do you do about
the many people who fall under persecution?
These people were regarded as a problem in north Africa in a way that
they were not in other places. The
northern African church is known for its strictness. One of the answers given to those who had
‘lapsed’ under persecution was, ‘if you really want to show us that you are
sincere, then next time persecution comes along, go out and get yourself
martyred.’
This strict line towards
those who ‘lapsed’ is known as the ‘rigorist’ view. One of these rigorists was a man called
Tertullian.
Tertullian
(A.D. 155-240)
Tertullian was the most
significant theologian of the second and third centuries in northern Africa,
but as we will see his views were far from what we would consider evangelical
theology.
Tertullian had a sharp
tongue and could be cutting in his writings.
He also had a very clever turn of phrase and some of his sayings have
lasted to our time. It was Tertullian
who said that ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.’
Tertullian was very
strict. He believed that Christians
should cut themselves off from the world.
He wrote against Christians partaking in or watching sports. He told soldiers that they should not salute
the emperor (as such a salute was acknowledging the emperors claim to be the
son of god). In fact, he didn’t think
Christians should be in the army. He
also thought that Christians didn’t think that Christians should be involved in
politics.
Tertullian developed a
three-fold view of virginity. The first
virginity was what we were born with.
The second virginity was what we commit to when we become a Christian
(we commit to seeking to be sexually pure).
But the third virginity, that he thought to be the best of all, was
virginity in marriage—he advocated getting married, but not having sex with
your spouse. He thought married
virginity this was most commended because it involved constantly resisting
temptation.
He believed that the
persecution that the church was experiencing was a sign that Jesus was very
close to returning. For that reason, he
believed it was very important that his wife should not get pregnant, for he believed
that if she was pregnant when Jesus returned then she would be pregnant for all
eternity.
Why did Tertullian have
such strange views?
I was listening to a
lecture about Tertullian, where I got the material for this talk, and one of
the students asked, ‘did he read his Bible at all?’ The answer was that he was an avid reader of
the Bible, but he came to the Bible with certain wrong assumptions.
For example, he was
influenced by Stoic philosophy that believed that the spiritual was actually a
highly developed form of mater. This is
seen in his understanding of baptism.
Tertullian believed that what happened at baptism was that when a priest
blessed the waters the Holy Spirit entered the water. Then waters of baptism then penetrated the
pores of the person being baptised and cleansed them from their sin. As a result of such thinking about baptism he
argued against infant baptism—for if you baptised a baby then the chances are
that the baby will later commit some serious sin and lose their chance of
salvation. Their only hope then would be
to be saved through martyrdom. He argued
that people should not be baptised until they are around thirty because then
they will have done all the sinning that they want to (as if!). In fact, this belief that it is baptism that
saves you, with no clear understanding of how to be forgiven for sin after
baptism, led to the later practice of death-bed baptisms. This idea of needing some rite of cleansing
at the end of one’s life is still seen in the Roman Catholic teaching of
‘extreme unction’ (the last rites).
Tertullian believed that
the Old Testament was that it was not strict enough. He believed that was why the Law of Moses
could not save you. He felt that Christ
came to give us a stricter law. His
thinking can find some justification in Jesus’ teaching on divorce and
marriage. Moses had allowed for divorce
in many circumstances, but Jesus now limit divorce to situations of
adultery. He explained that Moses’ more
liberal view on divorce was a concession to the hardness of the people’s hearts
(Matthew 19:8). Tertullian actually went
further than Jesus’ words in the gospel and allowed for no divorce—he argued
that Jesus’ words were a concession that was in place until the gospel was
fully established in the church. This is
part of the reason why the Roman Catholic church does not allow divorce in any
circumstances even though Jesus allowed it in the case of adultery.
Tertullian also began the
idea that a saint was not every ordinary Christian (as it is in the New
Testament) but that saints were an elite class of Christian. Tertullian was not made a saint by the
church, probably because he was later associated with the Montanist sect.
While
I have highlighted the unusual nature of Tertullian’s teaching it should be
noted that he made a significant contribution to our understanding of the
doctrine of the Trinity. Although the
concepts behind the Trinity are clearly taught in the Bible, they are not
formulated into a systematic theology there and the term trinity is not
used. Tertullian leaned on his training
in law and explained that God exists in one substance, or essence, and yet God
is three persons. He is also credited as
the first of the church fathers to use the term trinity.
Augustine
(354-430)
If
you are only going to read one book from the church fathers, you would probably
do no better than Augustine’s Confessions. His ‘Confessions’ is the story of how Augustine
became a Christian, and also has some chapters of his thoughts on some
issues. Its opening passage contains the
immortal words, ‘you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until
it rests in you.’ Augustine is a
champion of God’s grace. The book is
written in the form of a prayer that we are invited to listen in to.
Augustine was born in what is now
modern Algeria in 354. His father was
Patrick and his mother Monica. He had a
very close relationship with his mother, although it could be stormy. Monica was a Christian, but Patrick was
not. Augustine rejected the faith of his
mother.
Patrick’s mother also lived with the
family and Monica did not always find this easy. However, Monica was a wonderful witness, and
Patrick and her mother-in-law did come to faith. Augustine explains that she won them through
her gentleness, courtesy and love.
Monica prayed very hard for her son’s conversion. He would not come to faith until he was
thirty-two, a year before Monica died.
As Augustine looks back on his life
in ‘Confessions’, he sees a story that is all about his sin and God’s
grace. He agrees with the doctrine of
the sinful nature and how we are sinful from birth (Psalm 51:5). He tells of how he enjoyed stealing pears
from his neighbour’s orchard, not because he was hungry, but because of the
enjoyment of sin. He would though the
pears away once he had them. He comments
of his childhood, ‘such tiny a child, yet so great a sinner.’
At
the age of sixteen, Augustine moved to Cartage to study rhetoric. He became someone who lived in lustful
pleasure. Of arriving in Cartage, he
says, ‘I came to Cartage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.’ He was deeply sexual and yet struggled with
his conscience. He famously prayed,
‘Lord, make me chaste [sexually pure] but not yet.’ He had a concubine with whom he had a son.
He
was searching, but he went down some dead paths. He became involved in a cult called
Manicheism. The main issue that
Manichaeism addressed was where does evil come from. Like other groups influenced by Gnosticism,
they saw the material world as evil.
Their concept of a god was something that was detached from his
creation.
Augustine
asked the local Manichean leaders questions, but they could not answer
him. They told him that the main leader
was coming to visit, and that he would be able to deal with Augustine’s questions. However, Augustine was not satisfied with his
answers and left the group. He became
sceptical and began to lose hope that truth could be found. But he did not give up looking.
When
he was twenty-nine Augustine decided that if he wanted to reach the pinnacle of
his career in rhetoric he would need to go to a more influential city. Monica was heart-broken when she heard his
plans. It was bad enough that he was
away in Cartage, but so much worse that he would be even further away in
Rome. She feared that she would lose
influence over him and that it would be less likely that he would become a
Christian.
He
told her that he was going and then he changed his mind and said that he would
not go. This went on for a while until
he eventually slipped away on a boat before she knew about it. While this may have seemed a disaster to
Monica, it was actually a part of God’s bringing Augustine to himself. Augustine writes, ‘by her flood of tears,
what she was begging of you, my God, was that you would not allow me to
sail. Yet in your deep counsel you heard
the simple point of her longing.’ God
goes deeper than our words as we pray and answers the heart cry that prompts
those words.
Milan
was actually a more significant city than Rome at that time, so Augustine went
from Rome to Milan. There he met someone
who would be used very influentially in his life—Ambrose the bishop of
Milan. He writes, ‘all unknowing I was
brought by you to him, that knowing I should be brought by him to you.’
Augustine
had looked down his nose at the Bible.
He felt that the language of the Bible was not sophisticated
enough. He did, however, start attending
church in order to hear Ambrose. It was
not to hear the truth but to listen to Ambrose, who he had heard was a
wonderful communicator. ‘My pleasure was
in the charm of his language.’ He also
began to be moved by the music in the church.
Ambrose
befriended Augustine. Again, it was not
truth that attracted Augustine to Ambrose but the fact that Ambrose was kind. ‘I began to like him as a human being who was
kind to me.’
His
attitude to the Bible was changing and it was when he was outside in the garden
of a friend in Milan that he was brought to faith. There he heard a child repeatedly say ‘tolle
lege’ (meaning ‘take and read’). He
wondered if this chant was a part of some game, but he could not think what
game it could be. He took it as a word
for himself and opened the book of Romans at random. What he read changed his life: ‘Let us behave decently, as in the
daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and
debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy’ (Romans 13:13). He was thirty-two. He regretted that he took so long to come to
faith, writing, ‘I have learned to love late.’
He
would return to north Africa and become bishop of Hippo (in modern
Algeria). Later, when he was dying, he
had the words of the Psalms of confession posted on the walls of his room,
where he would spend his time confessing his sin and thanking God for his great
grace.
While Augustine had a great concept of the God of grace, there are some areas of our thinking where we may want to disagree with him, for example, Augustine believed in purgatory and praying for the dead.
Pelagius
verses Augustine
One
of the debates that will occur right throughout the history of the church
relates to the nature of the human will after the fall of Adam. In particular, in what sense is our will free
and to what sense are we slaves to our sinful nature. Two of the first figures to debate this issue
were Augustine and Pelagius.
It
is not entirely sure where Pelagius originates from. Jerome thought that he was Irish, saying that
he was stuffed with Irish porridge—he was tall and heavy. He became better known when he moved to
Rome.
Pelagius
argued that the sin of Adam, called original sin, was not passed down or
imputed to the rest of humankind. He
said that Adam and Eve simply provided the bad example that was followed by
their offspring. Because he believed
that the will on humankind was completely free, Pelagius believed that grace
simply helped humans to know what to do to live holy lives and that human
beings were by nature capable of following God’s commands.
On
the other hand, Augustine, argued that the sin of Adam affected the will of
every human being that followed, and that by nature we are incapable of loving
God or following his commands.
Therefore, grace not only shows us the truth but enables us to follow
the truth.
Pelagius’s
thinking also meant that he believed that Jesus did not come to pay the price
of our guilt on the cross, but simply to set a moral example for us to
follow. This meant that human beings
were responsible for their own salvation.
Pelagius’s
views were condemned in a number of church councils.
Augustine
believed that salvation depended on God rather than humankind. Augustine believed the whole debate hinged on
Pelagius’s rejection of original sin. If
humankind is free for sin’s grip, then grace would never be necessary. Augustine argued from Psalm 51 and Romans 5
and pointed out that the results of Adam’s sin is that ‘there is none who seek
after God’ (Romans 3:11).
Augustine
explained the effect of the fall and redemption with the following Latin
phrases:
Posse
peccare—before the Fall humankind
had the ability to sin.
Posse
non peccare—before the Fall
humankind had the ability not to sin.
Non
posse non peccare—after the Fall
humankind is not able not to sin.
Augustine’s understanding of grace was that God
took the initiative to save people. It
is not just that humankind cannot choose to obey God, humankind will not. Humankind is responsible for their evil
because in doing wrong we are doing what we want to do. We will not choose him unless he gives us
faith. Augustine spoke of a captive free
will (liberum arbitrium captivatum). It
is only by grace we can have a liberated free will (liberum arbitrium
liberatum). Grace works in the depraved
nature to bring about a new nature.
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