Series Twelve: A Survey of Church History and Historical Theology

by Matt Johnston

Seventh Period: The Evangelical Reformation and the Roman Catholic Reaction: From Luther to the Treaty of Westphalia (1517–1648)

General Introduction to the Period

• “The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history” (Schaff, History, 7:1).
• “The Reformation was preceded and necessitated by the corruptions of the papacy, the decline of monasticism and scholastic theology, the growth of mysticism, the revival of letters, the resurrection of the Greek and Roman classics, the invention of the printing press, the discovery of a new world, the publication of the Greek Testament, the general spirit of enquiry, the striving after national independence and personal freedom” (ibid., 7:2).
• “To set up a mediatorial caste between God and man—to obtain by works, by penance, and by money, the salvation which is the free gift of God—such is Popery. To open to all, through Jesus Christ, without any human mediator, without that power which calls itself the Church, free access to the great boon of eternal life which God offers to man—such is Christianity and the Reformation” (D’Aubigné, History of the Reformation, I:II).

The Excesses of Relics As an Example of the Need for Reform in Calvin’s Satirical: Admonition, Showing the Advantages that Christendom Might Derive from an Inventory of Relics, 1543:¹

• “And yet his natural blood is exhibited in more than a hundred places … . I leave every man to judge what certainty can be had on such a subject, and whether it be not a manifest falsehood to say that the blood of Christ has been found seven or eight hundred years after his death, and in such quantities as to be diffused over the whole world, and this without any mention of it whatever in the ancient Church” (296).
• “There is no town, however small, which has not some morsel of it [the cross], and this not only in the principal cathedral church of the district, but also in parish churches … . If all the pieces which could be found were collected into a heap, they would form a good ship-load, though the gospel testifies, that a single individual was able to carry it” (301–302).
• “In regard to the crown of thorns, it would seem that its twigs had been planted that they might grow again. Otherwise I know not how it could have attained to such a size” (304).
• “The piece of broiled fish which Peter offered to him when he appeared on the sea-shore. It must have been wondrously well salted if it has kept for such a long series of ages! But, jesting apart, is it supposable that the apostles made relics of what they had actually prepared for dinner? Whoever does not perceive that the whole matter is an open mockery of God, I must leave as unworthy of being further addressed on the subject” (313).

Martin Luther (1483–1546)

• July 2, 1505: Luther vows to become a monk. “He was then twenty-one and a student at the University of Erfurt. As he returned to school after a visit with his parents, sudden lightning struck him to earth. In that single flash he saw the denouement of the drama of existence. There was God the all-terrible, Christ the inexorable, and all the leering fiends springing from their lurking places. It was no wonder that he cried out to his father’s saint, patroness of miners, ‘St. Anne help me! I will become a monk!’” (Bainton, Here I Stand, 25).
• November 1510: Luther begins his trip to Rome. In Rome he sees first-hand the excesses of the Catholic Church. “[Luther] was climbing Pilate’s stairs [in Rome] on hands and knees repeating a Pater Noster [Our Father] for each one and kissing each step for good measure in the hope of delivering a soul from purgatory. Luther regretted that his own father and mother were not yet dead and in purgatory so that he might confer on them so signal a favor. Failing that, he had resolved to release Grandpa Heine. The stairs were climbed the stairs were kissed. At the top Luther raised himself and exclaimed, not as legend would have it, ‘The just shall live by faith!’—he was not yet that far advanced. What he said was, ‘Who knows whether it is so?’” (ibid., 39).
• April 1515/October 1516: Luther begins to lecture at Wittenburg: Romans and Galatians. “I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the justice of God,’ because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant … . Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped the justice of God as that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven” (ibid., 49–50).
• October 31, 1517: Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church. “They are no protest against the Pope and the Roman Church, or any of her doctrines, not even against indulgences, but only against their abuse … . The form only is Romish, the spirit and aim are Protestant” (Schaff, History, 7:157, 158).²
• July 4, 1519: Luther Debates Eck at Leipzig and Eck associates Luther with John Huss.³
• June 15, 1520 Pope Leo X ratifies and signs a bull excommunicating Luther, calling for the burning of his books. December 10, 1520 Luther burned the papal bull.
• Last half of 1520: Three Great Reformation Treatises: To the Christian Nobility of Germany, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, The Liberty of a Christian Man.
  • “These three works, taken together, represent perhaps Luther’s most sustained and positive vision for what reformation should be” (Trueman, Luther, 46).
  • “The Word of God cannot be received and cherished by any works whatever but only by faith. Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word and consequently it would not need faith” (Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” Three Treatises, trans. W. A. Lambert, 280).
  • “Although we are all equally priests, we cannot all equally minister and teach” (ibid., 292).
  • “The works themselves do not justify him before God, but he does the works out of spontaneous love in obedience to God and considers nothing except the approval of God, whom he would most scrupulously obey in all things” (ibid., 295).
• April 17–18, 1521: Luther’s two hearings at the Diet of Worms. “Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen … . Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise” (Bainton, 144).
• May 4, 1521–March 3, 1522: Luther is hidden in the Wartburg Castle, in Eisenach, by Prince Frederick. He translates the New Testament into German in 11 weeks, and begins work on the Old Testament translation.
• 1525: Marries Catherine, an ex-nun, and writes The Bondage of the Will.⁴
• October 1529: The Marburg Colloquy, where Luther disagrees with Zwingli over the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper.⁵

John Calvin (1509–1564)

• Initially studied theology, but switched to law when his father ran afoul of the church.
• Calvin’s father died when he was twenty-one (1531) so Calvin felt freed up to study the classics. It was sometime during these years that Calvin was exposed to Luther’s ideas.
• Calvin describes his conversion in the “Preface” to his Commentary on the Psalms: “And first, since I was too obstinately devoted to the superstitions of Popery to be easily extricated from so profound an abyss of mire, God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that although I did not altogether leave off other studies, I yet pursued them with less ardor. I was quite surprised to find that before a year had elapsed, all who had any desire after purer doctrine were continually coming to me to learn, although I myself was as yet but a mere novice.”
• In November of 1533, Calvin’s friend Nicholas Cop preached the opening sermon for the winter term at the University of Paris (filled with Lutheran-like doctrines). Calvin was so close to Cop that it is suspected that Calvin wrote the sermon.
• Calvin fled France entirely, spending his exile in Basel Switzerland between 1534 and 1536
• In March of 1536 he published the first edition of The Institutes of the Christian Religion.
  • “Calvin had done what is now clear no other theologian (not even Melanchthon) was capable of doing at that time. He had not only given genuine dogmatic form to the cardinal doctrines of the Reformation: he had molded those doctrines into one of the classic presentations of the Christian faith” (T. H. L. Park, John Calvin, 72).⁶
  • The work is addressed to King Francis I, King of France, where Evangelicals were fined, imprisoned, had their tongues slit and were even burned alive.
  • Opening paragraph: “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves” (1.1.1).
  • On predestination: “They who shut the gates that no one may dare seek a taste of this doctrine wrong men no less than God. For neither will anything else suffice to make us humble as we ought to be nor shall we otherwise sincerely feel how much we are obliged to God” (3.21.1).
  • On prayer: “For nothing is more contrary to reverence for God than the levity that marks an excess of frivolity utterly devoid of awe. In this matter, the harder we find concentration to be, the more strenuously we ought to labor after it … . But here let us recall how unworthy it is, when God admits us to intimate conversation, to abuse his great kindness by mixing sacred and profane; but just as if the discourse were between us and an ordinary man, amidst our prayers we neglect him and flit about hither and thither” (3.20.5).
• August 1536: Calvin was on his way to Germany for a life of quiet study. He was forced to take an indirect route through Geneva where William Farel demanded he stay.
  • Again in his “Preface” to Commentary on the Psalms, Calvin explains what took place: “Wherever else I have gone, I have taken care to conceal that I was the author of that performance [Institutes]; and I had resolved to continue in the same privacy and obscurity, until at length William Farel detained me at Geneva, not so much by counsel and exhortation, as by a dreadful imprecation, which I felt to be as if God had from heaven laid his mighty hand upon me to arrest me … . And after having learned that my heart was set upon devoting myself to private studies for which I wished to keep myself free from other pursuits, and finding that he gained nothing by entreaties, he proceeded to utter an imprecation that God would curse my retirement, and the tranquillity of the studies which I sought, if I should withdraw and refuse to give assistance, when the necessity was so urgent. By this imprecation I was so stricken with terror, that I desisted from the journey which I had undertaken.”
• 1538–1541: Calvin and Farel were banished from Geneva. At this time Calvin pastored a church of French-speaking refugees in Strasbourg.
• September 13, 1541: “Calvin re-entered the city … never to relocate again … . Upon his return, Calvin hit the town preaching. Reassuming his pulpit ministry precisely where he had left off three years earlier—in the very next verse of his earlier exposition—Calvin became a mainstay, preaching multiple times on Sunday and, during some weeks, each weekday” (Steven J. Lawson, The Expository Genius of John Calvin, 13).
• June 5, 1559: Calvin founded the Geneva Academy, which became known as “The School of Death,” because many graduates went on to martyrdom by ministering in France. “[The Academy was] destined to become the first Protestant ‘university’ in the world and the central educational institution of the Reformed church whose international influence over time far surpassed even the University of Wittenberg during Luther’s lifetime. Calvin became its leading professor of theology, to which in time more than a thousand students from all parts of Europe sat daily to attend the lectures of Calvin and Beza, the Academy’s first rector, and from which went forth missionaries throughout Europe and to the New World” (Reymond, John Calvin, 79).

Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) (Allison, Historical Theology, 758)

• Swiss theologian, pastor and chaplain and Reformer in Zurich
• He arrived at the Reformation principles of justification by faith alone and of Scripture alone independently of, but parallel to, Martin Luther.
• He wrote a foundational work for the Reformation, On the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God, based on a sermon delivered at the Oetenbach convent, 1522 (Zwingli and Bullinger, vol. XXIV of the Library of Christian Classics, 49).
• He held to the memorial view of the Lord’s Supper against Luther.
• The Anabaptists started in connection with Zwingli, but he was eventually against them, arguing in favor of infant baptism.⁷

The English Reformation (cf. Shelley, Church History, 7:264ff.)

• “Reformation came to England during the reign of Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547), but not until the reign of his daughter Elizabeth (r. 1558–1603) did it gain firm footing” (Ferguson, Beeke, Haykin, Church History 101, Kindle Electronic Edition: Location 585).
• King Henry VIII (1509–1547)
  • 1521—Writes Defense of the Seven Sacraments in response to Luther’s attack
  • 1527—Henry asked the Pope to declare his marriage of eighteen years to Catherine invalid.
  • 1533—Henry secretly marries Anne Boleyn, a lady-in-waiting of the court, and later that year an English court declared Henry’s marriage to Catherine null and void. The Pope excommunicated Henry for his actions.
  • 1534—The Act of Supremacy declared: “The king’s majesty justly and rightly is and ought to be and shall be reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church in England called Anglicana Ecclesia.” (Shelley, Church History, 266). Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, held the highest office in the Church of England under the king.
• King Edward VI
  • 1547—Crowned king at age 10. His advisors were sympathetic to the Reformation.
  • 1553—Cranmer produced the Forty-Two Articles, which explained the faith of the Church of England along Protestant lines.
• Bloody Mary
  • 1553—Mary, the daughter of Catherine came to power. Mary was devotedly Catholic and committed to Rome.
  • She saw to it that nearly 300 Protestants were burnt at the stake. John Foxe collected reports of the martyrdoms and recorded them in his Book of Martyrs.
  • “Great indeed would be our mistake if we supposed that they suffered for the vague charge of refusing submission to the Pope, or desiring to maintain the independence of the Church of England. Nothing of the kind! The principal reason why they were burned was because they refused one of the peculiar doctrines of the Romish Church. On that doctrine, in almost every case, hinged their life or death. If they admitted it, they might live; if they refused it, they must die. The doctrine in question was the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated elements of bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper” (J. C. Ryle, “The Special Reason Why Our Reformers Were Burned,” Light from Old Times).
• Martyrdom of John Rogers (1555)
  • “He was the first of that noble band of Christian heroes who suffered martyrdom for God’s truth in Queen Mary’s reign. By his courage and constancy at the stake he supplied a glorious example to all who followed him, and mightily helped forward the English Reformation” (Ryle, Light from Old Times, 56).
  • Rogers was acquainted with William Tyndale and joined him in the work of Bible translation, very likely contributing to what is known as the Matthew’s Bible.
  • He was brought before a council on charges of denying the real presence (transubstantiation) and for marrying as a priest.
  • Before the end of the year 1553 he was a prisoner, first in his own house, and afterwards in Newgate, where he was finally placed in January, 1554. Of his condition in prison we know but little, except that his wife was not allowed to see him, and that his treatment seems to have been very severe” (ibid., 60).
• 1563—The Thirty-Nine Articles are established as the authority in the Church of England with somewhat of a blend between Catholicism and Protestantism.

William Tyndale (1494–1536)

• Tyndale attended Oxford University: “[He] increased as well in the knowledge of tongues [he knew eight languages], and other liberal arts, as especially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted; insomuch that he, lying then in Magdalen Hall, read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen College some parcel of divinity; instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures” (John Foxe).
• Tyndale left Oxford and served as a tutor for Sir John Walsh, a wealthy man of Gloucestershire. During this time, in response to a priest telling him that the Pope was more important that God’s laws Tyndale said “If God spares my life, before many years pass I will make it possible for a boy behind the plow to know more Scripture than you do.”
• In 1524 Tyndale tried to get authorization from the King of England for his translation but was denied and had to flee London.
• In exile (Germany and then Belgium) he translated and published an English version of the New Testament. Before Tyndale there were only hand-written manuscripts of the Bible in English, translated from Latin. Tyndale’s work is the first time the original Greek and Hebrew were translated for the English-speaking world.
  • Tyndale’s John 3:16: “For God so loveth the worlde that he hath geven his only sonne that none that beleve in him shuld perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge lyfe.”
  • Tyndale translated two-thirds of the Bible—all the New Testament (1st edition, 1526; 2nd edition, 1534) and Genesis through Chronicles (The Pentateuch, 1530; Jonah, 1531; however, Joshua through Chronicles was not published until after Tyndale’s death, likely showing up in the Matthew Bible of 1537).
• He was finally captured when he was betrayed by Henry Phillips, the man he thought was his one true friend. He was charged as being a heretic and was imprisoned for eighteen months.
• William Tyndale was killed on October 6, 1536. He was tied to a stake, strangled by an executioner and burned. His dying prayer was, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”
• Not long before his death Tyndale wrote to his friend John Frith: “I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, that I never altered one syllable of God’s Word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches might be given me.”

The Roman Catholic Church Responds to the Reformation: The Council of Trent (1545–1563)

• There are reactions against abuses of indulgences and relics; however, they are still promoted (see the Twenty-Fifth Session, December 1563).
• Decrees on the Bible (Fourth Session, April 8, 1546):
  • The Old Latin Vulgate with the Apocrypha is declared to be the official canon.
  • The tradition not found in Scripture is “preserved in the Catholic Church by continuous succession” and is of equal authority with the Scripture.
  • “Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, it decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall … wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church,—whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures.”
• Baptismal Regeneration (Fifth Session, June 17, 1546):
  • “5. If anyone denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted … let him be anathema.”
• Justification
  • “CANON VII.—If any one saith, that all works done before Justification, in whatsoever way they be done, are truly sins, or merit the hatred of God; or that the more earnestly one strives to dispose himself for grace, the more grievously he sins: let him be anathema.”
  • “CANON IX.—If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified, in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will: let him be anathema.”
  • See also: Sixth Session, January 13, 1547 chs. I, V, VII, VIII.
• Sacraments
  • Anyone who does not hold to seven Sacraments is anathema (Seventh Session, March 3, 1547, Canon I, IV).
  • “If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous … let him be anathema” (ibid.).
  • “Canon III—If anyone saith, that the sacrifice of the mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of thanksgiving; or, that it is a bare commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice; or, that it profits him only who receives; and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pains, satisfactions, and other necessities: let him be anathema” (Twenty-Second Session, September 17, 1562, Ch. IX, Canon III).

Eighth Period: The age of polemic orthodoxy and exclusive confessionalism, with reactionary and progressive movements. From the Treaty of Westphalia to the French Revolution. AD 1648–1790.

Overview of the Period

• “The Age of Reformation was marked by debate among Christians about the way of salvation. The Age of Reason was highlighted by the denial of any supernatural religion, respect for science and reason replaced the Christian faith as the cornerstone of Western culture” (Shelley, Church History, 309).
• “By the eighteenth century, Christian Europe had wearied of constant religious strife and bloodshed. Intellectuals embraced the Enlightenment ideal of reason as the ultimate authority. Theology was made subject to philosophy. Deism taught that God created the world, subjected it to natural law, and let nature take its course. This was not the personal God of the Bible; deism was a rejection of revelation in the name of reason. Rationalism prevailed in the eighteenth century and continues to influence theology today” (Furgeson, Beeke, Haykin, Church History 101, Kindle Electronic Edition: Location 620).
• The First Great Awakening (1730’s–1740’s) was led by men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in colonial America.

The Thirty Years War (1618–1648) and the Treaty of Westphalia (1648)

• “Preparations for war were laid early in the seventeenth century when Protestants formed a league of German princes and the Catholics created a similar Catholic League. Fighting broke out in 1618” (Shelley, Church History, 303).
• “The Catholic forces could not subdue the Protestants in northern Germany and the Protestants could not control the Catholics in the south … . Out of sheer futility the religious zeal of Catholics and Calvinists cooled, and men began to question the territorial idea. Denominationalism was an alternative” (ibid., 304).
• “Perhaps rulers should not allow their decisions to be guided by religious or confessional considerations, but rather by their own self-interest, or by the interests of their subjects. Thus the modern secular state began to develop. And with it there appeared an attitude of doubt regarding matters that previous generations had taken for granted (Gonzáles, Story, 2:140–141).
• “Religious prejudice seemed like a far greater danger than atheism. So a thirst for tolerance and truths common to all men spread” (Shelley, Church History, 313).

Puritansim (1560–c. 1758)

• “That, surely, is the essential and most characteristic note of Puritanism—the feeling that the Reformation had not gone far enough” (Martyn Lloyd Jones, “Puritanism and Its Origin,” The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors, 242).
• “The term Puritan was first used in the 1560’s of those English Protestants who considered the reforms under Queen Elizabeth incomplete and called for further ‘purification’ (from the Greek word katharos, ‘pure’). Its negative connotation derived from its being a translation of the Latin term catharus (Puritan) or cathari (Puritans; from katharos), a title given to medieval heretics … . Throughout the sixteenth century it was used more often as a scornful adjective than as a substantive noun, and was rejected as slanderous in whatever quarter it was applied” (J. R. Beeke and R. J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans, xv).
• “Doctrinally, Puritanism was a kind of vigorous Calvinism; experientially, it was warm and contagious; evangelistically, it was aggressive, yet tender; ecclesiastically, it was theocentric and worshipful; politically, it aimed to be scriptural, balanced, and bound by conscience before God in the relations of king, Parliament, and subjects” (ibid., xix).
• “Between 1629 and 1642 some 25,000 Puritans migrated to New England” (Shelley, Church History, 305).

John Owen (1616–1683) (cf. Beeke and Pederson, Meet the Puritans, 452–63).

• Called “the prince of the English divines” and noted to be “a genius with learning second only to Calvin’s”
• “Throughout his teen years, young Owen studied eighteen to twenty hours per day.”
• 1643 he published A Display of Arminianism, which was a classic explanation of Calvinism that gained him instant notoriety.
• 1650 Owen was appointed the official preacher to the state under Cromwell.
• 1651 Owen became the dean of Christ Church College, Oxford, and eighteen months later became vice-chancellor of Oxford University under the chancellorship of Cromwell.
• Toward the end of his life he fell out of favor with the government.
• The day before his death, Owen wrote to a friend, “I am going to Him whom my soul has loved, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love—which is the whole ground of my consolation … . I am leaving the ship of the church in a storm; but whilst the great Pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable. Live, and pray, and hope, and wait patiently, and do not despond; the promise stands invincible, that He will never leave us, nor forsake us.”
• “A view of Christ as pierced will cause mourning in them that have received the promise of the Spirit of grace and supplication there mentioned … . The more believers are exercised in this view of Christ, the more humble they are, the more they are kept in that mourning frame which is universally opposite unto all the interests of sin, and which keeps the soul watchful against all its attempts. Sin never reigned in a humble, mourning soul … . Can any spiritual eye behold Christ dying for sin, and continue to live in sin? Shall we keep that alive in us which he died for, that it might not eternally destroy us? Can we behold him bleeding for our sins, and not endeavor to give them their death-wound? The efficacy of the exercise of faith herein unto the mortification of sin is known unto all believers by experience” (“The Dominion of Sin and Grace,” The Works of John Owen, 7:520).
• “Nothing but the death of Christ for us will be the death of sin in us” (ibid., 522).
• “Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world” (“Mortification of Sin in Believers,” The Works of John Owen, 7:7).

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)

• “Edwards was extraordinary. By many estimates, he was the most acute early American philosopher and the most brilliant of all American theologians. At least three of his many works—Religious Affections, Freedom of the Will, and The Nature of True Virtue—stand as masterpiece in the larger history of Christian literature” (Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 1).
• He was minister at Northampton from February 15, 1727–June 22, 1750.
• “Edwards was caught up in the Great Awakening, which began in 1740; he became one of the ablest instruments and defenders of the revival. He preached ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (Deut. 32:35) at Enfield, Connecticut, on July 8, 1741. The congregation was profoundly moved. A witness wrote, ‘before the sermon was done, there was a great moaning and crying out throughout the whole house. What shall I do to be saved? Oh, I am going to hell! Oh, what shall I do for Christ!’” (Beeke & Peederson, Meet the Puritans, 199).
  • “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to state of new, and before altogether unexperienced, light and life, are in the hands of an angry God” (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Banner of Truth Edition, 2:9).
• 1750: Edwards was dismissed from the pastorate in Northampton for various reasons that seem to be connected with his rejection of the Half-Way covenant.⁸
• 1751: Edwards settles in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as a pastor and missionary to Indians.
• “All things else, with regard to worthiness, importance, and excellence, are perfectly as nothing in comparison of him. And therefore, if God has respect to things according to their nature and proportions, he must necessarily have the greatest respect to himself. It would be against the perfection of his nature, his wisdom, holiness, and perfect rectitude, whereby he is disposed to do everything that is fit to be done, to suppose otherwise” (Edwards, The End for which God Created the World, 1:98 [published 1765]).
• “The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall in enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what shall be seen of God in them” (God Glorified in Man’s Dependence, 2:5 [preached July 8,1731]).

Ninth Period: The spread of infidelity, and the revival of Christianity in Europe and America, with missionary efforts encircling the globe. From the French Revolution to the present time. AD 1790–

Overview of the Period (cf. Ferguson, Beeke, Haykin, Church History 101, Kindle Electronic Edition)

• “The church awakened once more to her true calling—to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. Missionaries went out from many parts of Europe and North America to build God’s kingdom in Africa, Asia and Latin America” (Location 672).
• “Two German philosophers cast a long shadow over the church during the nineteenth century: Immanuel Kant and Freidrich Shleiermacher” (Location 656).
• Battle for the Bible against Rationalistic Modernism in the 20th century.

William Carey (1761–1834)

• Much of Carey’s denomination was either in bondage to a cold hyper-Calvinism or just beginning to come out of it.
• “Carey had to make the conditions in which his Society could be born. He could not merely apply the match to the tinder, for the tinder itself had to be prepared. When he woke to the missionary vision, he found to his amazement that most of his fellow Christians were fast asleep. He had to create the very desire which at length created the Mission; to provoke the demand which he himself would then supply” (Pearce, William Carey, 10).
• Carey was a poor shoemaker and pastor in a small village churches.
  • “In order to fix the conviction [of the world’s need], to give length, breadth and depth to his thought, he makes a map of the world, with every country he puts whatever statements and figures will set forth the facts concerning its population, their condition, intellectual, moral, etc., and hangs it before him on the wall that he may read and ponder as he stitches and pegs away” (D. L. Leonard, “Carey, the Founder of Modern Missions,” BibSac 049:196 [Oct 1892], 625).
• 1793—“The Enquiry”: The full title is “An Enquiry Into The Obligations Of Christians, To Use Means For The Conversion Of The Heathens. In Which The Religious State Of The Different Nations Of The World, The Success Of Former Undertakings, And The Practicability Of Further Undertakings, Are Considered”⁹
  • “It must undoubtedly strike every considerate mind, what a vast proportion of the sons of Adam there are, who yet remain in the most deplorable state of heathen darkness, without any means of knowing the true God, except what are afforded them by the works of nature; and utterly destitute of the knowledge of the gospel of Christ, or of any means of obtaining it” (Enquiry, 62–63).
  • “As to their uncivilized, and barbarous way of living, this can be no objection to any, except those whose love of ease renders them unwilling to expose themselves to inconveniencies for the good of others … . It is no objection to commercial men. It only requires that we should have as much love to the souls of our fellow-creatures, and fellow sinners, as they have for the profits arising from a few otter-skins, and all these difficulties would be easily surmounted” (Enquiry, 68–69).
• May 30–31, 1792: Preached “The Deathless Sermon” to The Northampton Association of ‘Particular Baptist’ churches gathered in Nottingham. Carey taught Isaiah 54:2–3 and had two headings: (1) Expect great things from God; (2) Attempt great things for God.
• A group of small town pastors, nobodies from nowhere, really, united together to act on Carey’s sermon and his Inquiry. They founded the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Heathen (cf. Pearce, Carey, 84).
• June 13 1793–June 9, 1834: Carey’s Forty Years in India¹⁰
  • He labored for seven years before seeing his first native convert (1800).
  • Carey worked alongside Marshman and Ward (they were known as Serampore Trio).
  • “I am more in my element translating the Word of God than in any other employment” Carey wrote to Fuller in 1804” (Carey; as quoted in Pearce, 234).
  • “Carey was given the opportunity, the power and the joy of rendering God’s Word, or precious portions thereof, into thirty-five languages to a very empire of peoples” (ibid., 10).
• “I have never yet repented of any sacrifice that I have made for the Gospel, but find that consolation of mind which can come from God alone” (Carey, as quoted in George Smith, Life of William Carey, 55).

The Rise of Liberalism

• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) “wrote a famous essay titled What Is Enlightenment? In which he summed it up in the imperative sapere aude!—‘think for yourself.’ For him this applied in religion as in any other realm of culture … . For Kant, authentic religion … was simply living a life in accordance with rationally discernible duty” (Olson, Christian Theology, 541).
• “Under the influence of Kant, liberal Protestant thinkers insisted on reinterpreting all doctrines and dogmas of Christianity in ethical and moral terms, and those that could not be so reinterpreted were neglected if not discarded entirely” (e.g., the Trinity; ibid., 550).
• “Schleiermacher [1768–1734] wanted to find a point of contact for Christianity in his circle of friends, most of whom were quite skeptical of traditional religion. For them he wrote On Religion: Addresses in Response to Its Cultured Critics. In a sense this book laid the foundation for liberal theology to come. In it the author explained that the essence of religion lies not in rational proofs of the existence of God, supernaturally revealed dogmas or churchly rituals or formalities, but in a ‘fundamental, distinct, and integrative element of human life and culture’—the feeling (Gefühl) of being utterly dependent on something infinite that manifests itself in and through finite things” (ibid., 543).
• “Schleiermacher disposed of the need for the revelation given in Scripture … . The Bible is simply ‘the original interpretation of the Christian feeling’, and by means of our own feeling we are free to add further ‘interpretation’” (Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, 8).¹¹
• “By 1857 Charles Hodge believed that the radical ideas Schleiermacher and his school ‘are the life-blood of two-thirds of what passes for orthodoxy in Germany, and the affiliated systems in this country” (ibid., 10).
• “In the words of Fosdick a chief spokesmen for liberalism in 1924: ‘Today there are two parties in the churches. They are active in controversy now, and every day their consciousness of a difference becomes more sharp and clear. The crux of their conflict lies at this point: one part thinks that the essence of Christianity is its original mental frameworks; the other party is convinced that the essence of Christianity is its abiding experiences’” (Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, 15).
• J. Gresham Machen was Fosdick’s main opponent.
  • “Modern liberalism has lost all sense of the gulf that separates the creature from the Creator; its doctrine of man follows naturally from its doctrine of God … . At the very root of the modern liberal movement is the loss of the consciousness of sin” (Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 55).
  • “According to Christian belief, man exists for the sake of God; according to the liberal Church, in practice if not in theory, God exists for the sake of man” (ibid., 129).

Important Events in the Roman Catholic Church in the 19th and 20th Century

• Dec. 8, 1854—Pope Pius IX declared that the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary was a divinely revealed fact in his bull Ineffabilis Deus: “We concluded that we should no longer delay in decreeing and defining by our supreme authority the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin” (Ineffabilis Deus; then he says to deny it is to suffer shipwreck in the faith).
• Vatican Council I (1869–1870) was convened by Pope Pius IX.
  • Against modern liberalism and rationalism (cf. Schaff, Creeds, 1:137).
  • “We teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra … he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals” (Fourth Session, Chapter IV).
• November 1, 1950 Pope Pius XII declared by his own authority that “the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” (Munificentissimus Deus, 44; cf. 45 for the anathema).
• Vatican Council II (1962–1965) was convened by Pope John XXIII and was an aggiornamento (updating) of the Catholic Church. The Council showed a change in the Roman Church’s approach to winning people (protestants and otherwise) to the Roman Catholic Faith.¹²

Inerrancy in the Modern Era (adapted from Allison, Historical Theology 109–119).

• “The ancient geocentric theory of the universe proposed by Ptolemy … was replaced by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus [1473–1543 ]… . The impact on current thinking was immense … . Similarly, the discovery of new worlds and new people—many of whom followed religions other than Christianity—raised questions about their origins, the rightness of their beliefs and so forth.”
• Socinianism (16th–17th century) allowed for errors in portions of the Scripture such as records of historical events, morals, and descriptions of natural or scientific matters. In response, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) explained that by saving faith “a Christian believes to be true whatever is revealed in the Word because the authority of God himself speaks in it” (14.2).
• Isaac La Peyrère (1592–1676) said humans had been around for 50,000 years and Adam was not the first man. He is said to have set off the warfare between theology and science.
• Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) insisted that human reason stands above Scripture and judges Scripture … . [He] followed Descartes in viewing man himself, as a thinking subject as the starting point of human knowledge (thus his famous phrase: cogito, ergo sum).
  • He was the first to deny authorship of the Pentateuch. He pointed to Numbers 12:3 and Moses’ death (Deut 34).
  • Influenced others such as Jean LeClerc (1657–1736), “the father of biblical criticism.”
• “Biblical criticism spread to Great Britain as well and was particularly evident in English Deism. This eighteenth-century movement attacked the truthfulness of biblical statements as part of a larger attack on scriptural revelation itself as being subservient to reason.”
• “Both English Deism and the early development of German biblical criticism were largely a theological attack against Scripture. Full-scale attacks against the truthfulness of Scripture awaited another development known as the documentary hypothesis. This series of theories proposes that the Pentateuch is a collection of selections from several written documents (abbreviated JEPD)… composed by different authors at different places [over time].”
  • Originated in 1753 when Astruc observed that the Hebrew word for God in Genesis 1 is different from that used in Genesis 2.
  • The JEPD theory was introduced to the English speaking world by William Robert Smith in his article entitled ‘Bible’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1875).
• 1859: Darwin’s Origin of Species is first published. In response, many began to distinguish between inerrancy, which means that the Bible is without error and infallibility, which many defined as meaning that the Bible is true in matters of faith and practice. Thus, this distinction allows for historical and scientific errors in the Bible.
• Many seminaries drifted in their commitment to inerrancy, espousing instead infallibility:
  • Fuller Theological Seminary, 1947: “The books which form the canon of the Old and New Testaments as originally given are plenarily [fully] inspired and free from error in the whole and in the part. These books constitute the written Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”
  • Fuller Theological Seminary, 1971: “Scripture is an essential part and trustworthy record of this divine disclosure. All the books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, are the written Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”
• Karl Barth (Neo-orthodox) explicitly denied the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and instead taught that the Bible becomes the Word of God, but that it isn’t the Word of God on its own.
• Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978):
  • It was “an interdenominational joint effort by hundreds of evangelical scholars and leaders to defend biblical inerrancy against the trend toward liberal and neo-orthodox conceptions of Scripture” (Introductory Note).
  • “The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian Church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God’s written Word. To stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority” (Preface).