Chapter 6 - God Never Stops Working

Book Outline (pg 61):




  1. The City of God Among Missionaries and Monks
    1. Monasteries were the missionary outposts in medieval times
      1. Authentic Christian conversions (unlike modern movie portrayals)
      2. By the late 800’s many nobles controlled them or they were destroyed by Vikings
    1. The Duke who Lost His Dogs (Berno of Cluny)
      1. Duke William III of Aquitaine, France founds monastery
      2. Gives total control to the Abbot (head monk): Berno
      3. Cluny property is deeded to the monks.
        1. Berno asks for William’s hunting ground in Cluny to build the monastery
        2. William first objects then relents
        3. Releases hunting dogs (symbols of wealth and status)
        4. By deeding the property to the monks, the community was freed from immediate outside control: nobles or the church
      4. Stress: obedience to Scripture and Benedict’s Rule
      5. This monastery feeds a growing hunger in Europe for true Christianity and Reform of the Church
    2. The Maimed Monk (John of Damascus)
      1. Serves as a high official to the caliph of the now Muslim country
      2. Brilliant Christian thinker 
        1. writes against Leo III in the icon debate
        2. his writings affect the outcome of the second Council of Nicaea
        3. chronicles much of Christian thought before him
      3. Convicted of treason on false charges on conspiracy
        1. Leo not happy with John’s influence in the icon debate falsifies documents
        2. Caliph has John’s right hand chopped off and hung outside the palace.
        3. John’s hand miraculously restored
          1. asked for his hand back from the caliph
          2. prays and God restores his hand
        4. Hears a call to become a monk.
        5. (Some question the truth of this story: the whole story not just the hand part)
      4. Wrote hundreds of hymns for the church
      5. Did not get along well with his Abbot and was treated harshly
        1. God gave the Abbot a vision in which the Abbot was rebuked
      6. John gives his time to writing poetry, theology, and refuting heresy.
        1. His songs are still sung in the Eastern Orthodox Church
    3. The Magnificent Moravian Failures (Cyril)
      1. King of Moravia requests missionaries (862 AD)
        1. Eastern Emperor sends Cyril (because he was Slavic)
      2. Slavic Alphabet
        1. Cyril creates a Slavic alphabet
        2. Wants to translate the Bible into the Moravian language.
      3. Many western clergy oppose the translation
        1. they believed church worship should be translated only into holy languages
        2. Cyril appeals to the Pope 
          1. (remember the Eastern Emperor sent him)
        3. The Pope allows the translation
          1. Condition: Cyril must place his mission under the Pope’s control
          2. Again, we see Rome trying to centralize and solidify its power
      4. Cyril dies before returning to Moravia
      5. Methodius (Cyril’s brother) continues the work
      6. The Moravians had difficulty understanding Cyril’s translation
        1. remember, they are learning to read a new alphabet
      7. Bulgaria becomes center of Slavic Xnty
        1. Hungarians invade and Cyril’s successors flee Moravia to Bulgaria
        2. They modify the alphabet for Bulgarian
        3. Cyrillic becomes the common way of writing for the entire region
        4. Within 5 years, Bulgaria became the center of Southeastern European and Russian Xnty
        5. the brothers never saw the fruit of their work
  1. The City of God Among the Mystics
    1. St Bernard—You’ve Met the Dog; Now, Meet the Monk
      (Bernard of Clairvaux 1090 – 1153 AD)
      1. The Constant need for reform
        1. The fame of the Cluny communities (900 AD) spread
          1. Nobles want to sponsor them and send lavish gifts
          2. Many want to be associated with what God is doing
        2. Monks and Nuns no longer made an effort to care for the poor
          1. Churches that become successful often have this problem as well
      2. 21 monks from Cluny return to Benedict’s emphasis on poverty and labor (1098 AD)
        1. monastery founded near Cistertium, France
          1. Cistercian monks
        2. white robes: refused to dye the robes to avoid the appearance of wealth
      3. 31 men show up at Abbot’s front door wanting to be monks—one is Bernard
      4. Focused on personal communion with Jesus
        1. Bridal paradigm of Christianity
        2. Had many visions and mystical encounters with the Lord
        3. “On Loving God” and “Sermons on the Song of Songs” both still popular works
      5. Extremely Popular
        1. Excellent speaker
        2. Lots of healings attributed to him
      6. Extremely Influential
        1. Against his will
        2. Drawn into church debates
        3. Picked a Pope when there was a controversy
        4. Settled disputes between Kings
        5. Kings, Bishops and Popes sought his advice
      7. Not Perfect
        1. Preached the Second Crusade
          1. asked to by the Pope
        2. Developed theology of Mary
    2. A Renaissance Woman in the Middle Ages (Hildegard of Bingen 1098 - 1179)
      1. Musician, mystic, artist, author, preacher, prophet
      2. Experienced visions of Jesus at 5
      3. In a religious community at 8
      4. Abbess of a convent at 38
      5. Was a public preacher (even though preaching by a woman was banned at this time)
      6. Conversed with several Popes and was sought after for advice by many
      7. Problem with the Bishop of Mainz over a political issue.
        1. He denounced her visions as a result
      8. We still have over 100 letters, 72 songs, 70 poems, and 9 books from her
  1. The City of God Among the Mendicants
    1. Mendicant—a traveling preacher
    2. Where’s Waldo (Peter Waldo)
      1. Peter Waldo: a French merchant turned traveling preacher
        1. financed a French translation of the Bible
        2. 1st European translation outside Latin
      2. Preached in the people’s common language (a radical idea at the time)
      3. Focused on what Scripture said above tradition
        1. rejected: ‘purgatory’ and ‘supreme power of Pope’
      4. “Poor Folk of Lyons” his of followers
        1. also called Waldensians
        2. all followers (including women) learned the Bible and preached in the streets
      5. Pope approves on condition they only preach when invited by a Bishop
      6. Waldo preaches anyway
        1. says he must obey God rather than man
      7. Becomes a heretic for refusal of church authority
        1. It didn’t help that his followers said the Catholic Church was the Harlot from the Book of Revelation
      8. Later the Waldensians withdraw from the formal church and set up their own church system
        1. which draws the unwanted attention of Rome and of the Inquisition
    3. The Knight Who Stripped for a Bishop (Francis of Assisi)
      1. Francis’ conversion
        1. Francis saw a vision of Jesus while marching against a rival city.
        2. Felt God’s call to the poor
        3. Started giving away all of his and his Father’s possessions (cloth)
        4. Father was angry and took him before the Bishop
          1. it would have been the magistrate except Francis did it for spiritual reasons
        5. Stripped in front of the Bishop, giving his Father his clothing
        6. Claims that his Father is his Heavenly Father
      2. Took a vow of poverty
      3. Extremely joyful man even in destitute poverty
      4. Franciscan ‘friar’ (brother) was allowed to own only two tunics
        1. prevent the pitfall of wealth like the Cluny abbey
      5. Miracles:
        1. Many recorded miracles
        2. Nature miracles: taming of birds, wolves, etc
        3. Stigmata (bleeding from hands, feet, and side like Christ)
      6. Clare—Franciscan Nun (Poor Clares or Claires)
        1. Fought with the Pope to have women continue being part of the order
  2. The City of God Among the Scholastics
    1. Changing Medieval Dynamics
      1. Society began stabilizing in the late 1100’s
      2. Traveling scholars went from town to town teaching
        1. there was no public education
      3. Scholastic: trying to fit reason together with human experience and with God’s revelation in Scripture.
    2. The Scholastics’ Exiled Ancestor (Anselm)
      1. Archbishop of Canterbury, England (1093)
      2. Fight for control of English churches
        1. King William II of France wants to control the English churches
        2. Anselm refuses to conform and is a vocal opponent
        3. Anselm spend 1/3 of his career in exile
        4. King Henry inadvertently had Anselm’s successor murdered
      3. Writings earn him the title “Father of the Scholastics”
      4. Proofs of God’s existence
        1. Anselm was the first to attempt this using logic
        2. ontological arguments
      5. Believed God works within logic and reason.
        1. God doesn’t contradict logic
        2. i.e. Can God create a rock so heavy that God can’t lift it?
      6. “I do not try to understand you so I can trust you, I trust you so I can understand you”
    3. From Dumb-Ox to Doctor of the Church (Thomas Aquinas)
      1. Wanted to join the Dominican monks
      2. Family disagreement
        1. Parents wanted him to have power and influence
        2. They were willing to buy a church office for him (i.e. Archbishop)
        3. Aquinas refused
        4. His brothers kidnapped him and held him prisoner.
        5. Escapes and goes to University of Paris
      3. Taught at the University (11 years later)
        1. His teachings transform Christian theology
        2. He integrated logic of the Greek philosopher Aristotle with God’s revelation
          1. reminiscent of the apologists
      4. All truth is God’s truth
        1. philosophy and the physical world are full of signs pointing to the Creator
      5. Summation of Theology
        1. even unfinished, this book changed how Christians think about the world
        2. 7 years after starting the book, he has an experience at a communion service
        3. “All that I have written seems to me nothing but straw, compared tow hat I have seen and what has been revealed to me”
        4. Refuses to work finish his book
  3. Caution! God Working Ahead!
    1. God is always working
      1. “My Father is always at his work” (Jn 5:17).
      2. God is working even when the church is corrupt and becomes a political power to rival any country.
      3. Even when the church loses sight of the cross
      4. God always has a remnant through which He is extending the Kingdom.