Crumbs from the Table

By the mid to late 100s, the Christian faith had spread to places such as Carthage, North Africa (180?), Lyon in what is now France (140?), and Pityus on the Black Sea (a place of refuge from persecutions). The next chapter in the history of the Christian church unfolds in the city of Lyon in what is now France. The Christian church in that city began shortly before 177 thanks to trading links with the province of Asia, and the first bishop of the Lyon church was someone called Pothinus.  One of the young believers at the Lyon church was called Irenaeus. He himself born in Smyrna, in the Roman province of Asia, where he had been discipled by none other than Polycarp. One day Irenaeus met up with someone who had once been a member of the Lyon church but was now "into" Gnosticism. This troubled Irenaeus and he made it his life's work to combat the new false teaching which was making in-roads into the church. Interaction with this and other rival teachings help to formulate ...

The next phase of history in the Orthodox East was overshadowed by the break with the western church (the Great Schism) in 1054, the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, and the threat of conquest by the Turks which finally materialised in 1453. The place which encapsulates this time is Mount Athos, a concentration of monastic settlements in Greece. In 963 the first monasteries were founded on Mount Athos, and this become the centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. A seminal figure at this time was Gregory Palamas from Thessalonica who spent time at Athos. His practice of silent prayer epitomised Orthodox spirituality. Palamas undergirded this mystical experience by a theology which differentiated God's essence from his energies. God-in-himself in his divine essence is unknowable, however we can participate in God's uncreated "energies" (action) - a process of gradual participating in the divine energies culminating in the goal of "theosis". ...

After the fiery passion of the Protestant Reformation "cooled down" and solidified into a new "orthodoxy", there was a need to rediscover inner spiritual life and to get beyond the formalism of church services and rigid theologies.  The next chapter in the history of the Christian church began in Germany in the Lutheran churches. The pioneer was Jakob Philip Spener and the movement he began is called "Pietism". Philipp Spener was and remained a Lutheran and held to all the tenets of his Lutheran faith, including the belief that the body of Christ is literally chewed in the mouth at Communion. However, the focus of his life and work was elsewhere - namely, on spiritual vigour and the need for Christian community. His famous book, Pia Desideria, published in 1675, identifies six important points. For example, the importance of preaching being edifying not merely polemical. Spener put this into practice, first at Strasburg, then in Frankfurt and finally in Dr...

The Roman Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation is called the "Counter Reformation".  Even before the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, others in the Catholic church held views which had much in common with Martin Luther. Luther's spiritual mentor, Von Staupitz, had directed Luther to look to the mercy of God. While Von Staupitz never became a Protestant himself, he did remain in contact with Luther and shortly before his death in 1524 they exchanged letters. In Italy, there was a movement known as the "Evangelical Catholics" associated with the Oratory of Divine Love. It was Evangelical Catholics who compiled the 1537 report into abuses in the Roman Catholic church ( Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia ). A leading figure in this movement was Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542). Between 1521 and 1541 there were various attempts and meetings which sought to overcome the divisions between the two. In many cases, Evangelical Catholics shared the Reformation beli...

Shortly after the western Catholic church achieved the height of its authority and influence in the 1200s, it experienced a sudden decline particularly during the 1300s.  The tumultuous 1300s saw the spread of the Plague and other natural disasters. During this time, the Papacy underwent two major crises, namely the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and the Great Western Schism. At the Council of 1215, Pope Innocent III had asserted the absolute power of the Pope, conceptualised as the Vicar of Christ on earth. However, the King of France then asserted his power and the Pope became his subordinate. The King of France even went to the lengths of relocating the Papacy from Rome to Avignon. This lasted from 1309 until 1377. However, no sooner had this crisis been overcome, than a second crisis followed on: the Great Schism of the western church which lasted from 1378 to 1417. During this second crisis, two and at times three different people claimed to be Pope, mobilising finance and...

The Protestant Reformation of the 1500s began in Germany and Switzerland, and soon spread to many countries across Europe, particularly northern Europe. The German Reformation of Luther took root in parts of Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The Swiss Reformation of Zwingli and Calvin took root in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scotland, as well as having a minority presence in France, Poland and Hungary. (England was a special case; the Church of England was in some ways like the Lutheran churches and in other ways more like the Swiss Reformed Churches.) The Radical Reformation or Anabaptists, a third arm of the Reformation, mainly thrived in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, and later Poland.  By the 1560s, the initial "fire" of the early years had cooled down, and over the next 100 years or so, the various iterations of Protestant Christianity solidified into new "orthodoxies" (rigid beliefs and practices).   The period from 1580 until into the 17...