Hope

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Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It opened the door to direct union with him , as the only Mediator between God and man, and made his gospel accessible to every reader without the permission of a priest. It was a return to first principles, and for this very reason also a great advance. It was a revival of primitive Christianity, and at the same time a deeper apprehension and application of it than had been known before. There are three fundamental principles of the Reformation: the supremacy of the Scriptures over tradition, the supremacy of faith over works, and the supremacy of the Christian people over an exclusive priesthood. The first may be called the objective, the second the subjective, the third the social or ecclesiastical principle.7 They resolve themselves into the one principle of evangelical freedom, or freedom in Christ. The ultimate aim of evangelical Protestantism is to bring every man into living union with Christ as the only and all-sufficient Lord and Saviour from sin and death. § 6. The Authority of the Scriptures. The objective principle of Protestantism maintains that the Bible, as the inspired record of revelation, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice; in opposition to the Roman Catholic coordination of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, as the joint rules of faith. The teaching of the living church is by no means rejected, but subordinated to the Word of God; while the opposite theory virtually subordinates the Bible to tradition by making the latter the sole interpreter of the former and confining interpretation within the limits of an imaginary consensus patrum. In the application of the Bible principle there was considerable difference between the more conservative Lutheran and Anglican Reformation, and the more radical Zwinglian and Calvinistic Reformation; the former contained many post-scriptural and extra-scriptural traditions, usages and institutions, which the latter, in its zeal for primitive purity and simplicity, rejected as useless or dangerous; but all Reformers opposed what they regarded as anti-scriptural doctrines; and all agreed in the principle that the church has no right to impose upon the conscience articles of faith without clear warrant in the Word of God. Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures, which has "first, second, third, infinite draughts." While the Humanists went back to the ancient classics and revived the spirit of Greek and Roman paganism, the Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in the original languages and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity. They were fired by an enthusiasm for the gospel, such as had never been known since the days of Paul. Christ rose from the tomb of human traditions and preached again his words of life and power. The Bible, heretofore a book of priests only, was now translated anew and better than ever into the vernacular tongues of Europe, and made a book of the people.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  VOLUME VII. MODERN CHRISTIANITY -THE GERMAN REFORMATION ———— This is a reproduction of the Second Edition, Revised ———— PREFACE. –––––––– I publish the history of the Reformation in advance of the concluding volume on the Middle Ages, which will follow in due time. The Reformation was a republication of primitive Christianity, and the inauguration of modern Christianity. This makes it, next to the Apostolic age, the most important and interesting portion of church history. The Luther and Zwingli celebrations of 1883 and 1884 have revived its memories, and largely increased its literature; while scholars of the Roman Church have attempted, with great ability, an ultramontane reconstruction of the history of Germany and Europe during the period of the Reformation. The Cultur-Kampf is still going on. The theological battles of the sixteenth century are being fought over again in modern thought, with a slow but steady approach to a better understanding and filial settlement. Protestantism with its freedom can afford to be fair and just to Romanism, which is chained to its traditions. The dogma of papal infallibility is fatal to freedom of investigation. Facts must control dogmas, and not dogmas facts. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is the aim of the historian; but truth should be told in love (Eph. 4:15). The signs of the times point to a new era in the ever onward March of Christ’s kingdom. God alone foreknows the future, and sees the end from the beginning. We poor mortals know only "in part," and see "in a mirror, darkly." But, as the plans of Providence unfold themselves, the prospect widens, old prejudices melt away, and hope and charity expand with our vision. The historian must be impartial, without being neutral or indifferent. He must follow the footsteps of Divine Providence, which shapes our ends, and guides all human events in the interest of truth, righteousness, and peace. I have collected much material for a comprehensive history of the Reformation, in the libraries of Europe, during several summer visits (thirteen in all), and digested it at home. I have studied the Luther literature in Berlin, the Zwingli literature in Zuerich, the Calvinistic literature in Geneva and Paris, the English and Scotch Reformation in London, Oxford, and Edinburgh. Two years ago I revisited, with great satisfaction, the classical localities made memorable by the Reformation,—Wittenberg, Eisleben, Eisenach, the Wartburg, Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha, Heidelberg, Zuerich, Geneva,—and found kind friends and Christian brethren everywhere. At Marburg, Coburg, Augsburg, I had been before. By way of contrast I made in the same year an interesting tour through Roman-Catholic Spain, the land of Ferdinand and Isabel, Charles V., Philip II., and Ignatius Loyola, and compared her former and present state with the Protestant North. In Italy I have been three times, including a three-months sojourn in Rome. A visit to the places of events brings one nearer to the actors, and puts one almost into the position of a witness. This volume embraces, besides a general introduction to modern church history, the productive period of the German Reformation, from its beginning to the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and the death of Luther (1546), with a concluding estimate of the character and services of this extraordinary man. I have used the new Weimar edition of his works as far as published; for the other parts, Walch and the Erlangen edition. Of modern Protestant historians I have chiefly consulted Ranke (my teacher), and Koestlin (my friend), with whose views, on Luther and the Reformation I am in essential harmony. I have also constantly compared the learned Roman-Catholic works of Doellinger, and Janssen, besides numerous monographs. The reader will find classified lists of the sources and literature in all leading sections (e.g., pp. 94, 99, 183, 272, 340, 399, 421, 494, 579, 612, 629, 695, 706), and occasional excursions into the field of the philosophy of church history (as in the introductory chapter, and in §§ 49, 56, 63, 79, 87, 99, etc.). In these I have endeavored to interpret the past in the light of the present, and to make the movements of the sixteenth century more intelligible through their results in the nineteenth. For we must judge the tree by its fruits. "God’s mills grind slowly, but wonderfully fine." I am conscious of the defects of this new attempt to reproduce the history of the Reformation, which has so often been told by friend and foe, but too often in a partisan spirit. I have done the best I could. God expects no more from his servants than faithfulness in the use of their abilities and opportunities. The Author. New York, September, 1888. THE REFORMATION. FROM A.D. 1517 TO 1648. ––––––––––

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The conflict is still going on with increasing strength, but with the sure prospect of the triumph of truth. Christianity is independent of all critical questions on the Canon, and of human theories of inspiration; else Christ would himself have written the Gospels, or commanded the Apostles to do so, and provided for the miraculous preservation and inspired translation of the text, . His "words are spirit, and are life." "The flesh profiteth nothing." Criticism and speculation may for a while wander away from Christ, but will ultimately return to Him who furnishes the only key for the solution of the problems of history and human life. "No matter," says the world-poet Goethe in one of his last utterances, "how much the human mind may progress in intellectual culture, in the science of nature, in ever-expanding breadth and depth: it will never be able to rise above the elevation and moral culture which shines in the Gospels." Notes. The famous close of the Preface of Luther’s edition of the German New Testament was omitted in later editions, but is reprinted in Walch’s ed. XIV. 104 sqq., and in the Erlangen Frankf. ed. LXIII. (or eleventh vol. of the Vermischte Deutsche Schriften), p. 114 sq. It is verbatim as follows: "Aus diesem allen kannst du nu recht urtheilen unter allen Büchern, und Unterschied nehmen, welchs die besten sind. Denn, naemlich, ist Johannis Evangelion, und St. Pauli Episteln, sonderlich die zu den Römern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel der rechte Kern und Mark unter allen Büchern; welche auch billig die, ersten sein sollten, und einem jeglichen Christen zu rathen wäre, das er dieselben am ersten und allermeisten läse, und ihm durch täglich Lesen so gemein mächte, als das täglich Brod. "Denn in diesen findist [findest] du nicht viel Werk und Wunderthaten Christi beschrieben; du findist aber gar meisterlich ausgestrichen, wie der Glaube an Christum Sünd, Tod und Hölle überwindet, und das Leben, Gerechtigkeit und Seligkeit gibt. Welchs die rechte Art ist des Evangelii, wie du gehöret hast. "Denn wo ich je der eins mangeln sollt, der Werke oder der Predigt Christi, so wollt ich lieber der Werke denn seiner Predigt mangeln. Denn die Werke helfen mir nichts; aber seine Worte, die geben das Leben, wie er selbst sagt (Joh 5.V.51). Weil nu Johannes gar wenig Werke von Christo, aber gar viel seiner Predigt schreibt; wiederumb die andern drei Evangelisten viel seiner Werke, wenig seiner Worte beschreiben: ist Johannis Evangelion das einige zarte, recht(e) Hauptevangelion, und den andren dreien weit fürzuzichen und höher zu heben. Also auch Sanct Paulus und Petrus Episteln weit über die drei Evangelia Matthai, Marci und Lucä vorgehen. "Summa, Sanct Johannis Evangel. und seine erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus Epistel(n), sonderlich die zu den Römern, Galatern, Ephesern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel. das sind die Bücher, die dir Christum zeigen, und alles lehren, das dir zu wissen noth und selig ist ob du sohon kein ander Buch noch Lehre nummer [nimmermehr] sehest and horist [hörest].

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Very few of them are even mentioned in our historical sources, except as a grisly footnote. Even those who think the evangelists were in fact very clever inventors of large-scale fictions designed to revive a Jesus movement that might not otherwise have survived the death (and continuing deadness, so to speak) of its founder are bound to admit that even within these cleverly designed myths the resurrection plays the vital role in opening the question up again, so that what looked like defeat, like yet another failure of a kingdom dream, was in fact a victory. The resurrection, in short, is presented by the evangelists not as a “happy ending” after an increasingly sad and gloomy tale, but as the event that demonstrated that Jesus’s execution really had dealt the deathblow to the dark forces that had stood in the way of God’s new world, God’s “kingdom” of powerful creative and restorative love, arriving “on earth as in heaven.” That is why the bodily resurrection matters in a way that it never quite does, even to the devout who insist that they believe it, if all one is interested in is a kingdom “not of this world.” The resurrection is, from Mark’s point of view, the moment when God’s kingdom “comes in power.” From John’s point of view, it is the launching of the new creation, the new Genesis. From Matthew’s point of view, it brings Jesus into the position for which he was always destined, that of the world’s rightful Lord, sending out his followers (as a new Roman emperor might send out his emissaries, but with methods that match the message) to call the world to follow him and learn his way of being human. From Luke’s point of view, the resurrection is the moment when Israel’s Messiah “comes into his glory,” so that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” can now be announced to all the world as the way of life, indeed, as they say in Acts, as The Way. Once we put kingdom and cross together in the manner we have, it is not difficult to see how the resurrection fits closely with that great combined reality. It is the resurrection that declares that the cross was a victory, not a defeat. It therefore announces that God has indeed become king on earth as in heaven. To understand the ascension requires that we recall what was said about Israel’s Temple theology.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  By the time Littman’s study was finally published two years later, ROGD had already been uncritically discussed in numerous mainstream publications and cited by gender-disaffirming practitioners in academic journals. The study itself was roundly critiqued for its obvious sampling bias, the fact that it interviewed only parents and not their trans children, its inability to distinguish ROGD from regular gender dysphoria, and its mistaking correlation for causation (Littman presumed that trans peers and trans-themed social media sites were causing children to adopt trans identities, rather than the more likely scenario that the children were seeking out said peers and social media because they were trans).20 In fact, there were so many problems with Littman’s study that the journal that published it later issued a correction and apology. As I write this, at least nine peer-reviewed studies have tested ROGD and “transgender social contagion,” and all yielded results inconsistent with, or that directly contradict, these hypotheses.21 Despite having been refuted in the scientific literature, these concepts continue to persist in the public imagination. I often see people use “social contagion” as shorthand for “the increased number of trans children today relative to the past” without a shred of evidence that trans identities have suddenly become “contagious.” Indeed, the very concept of “social contagion” has long been critiqued for being poorly defined and conflating several potentially distinct social phenomena.22 One such phenomenon is a reduction of restraints: If there is a social norm prohibiting a particular behavior, many people who are inclined to engage in said behavior may refrain from doing so—in queer communities, we colloquially call this “being in the closet.” But once that social restraint is lifted, these people may start expressing that behavior publicly for the first time (which onlookers may misperceive as a “rapid increase” due to “social contagion”). There is no “transgender social contagion.” What we are witnessing is simply an across-the-board increase in all LGBTQ+ identities because the stigma targeting us is gradually diminishing. As I argued in a 2017 essay, these dynamics are strikingly similar to the rise in left-handedness (from roughly 2 to 13 percent of the population) in Western countries over the course of the twentieth century as the stigma associated with left-handedness receded and the practice of coercing children into being right-handed abated.23 If “social contagion” (or “80 percent desistance,” or trans identities being a mere “trend,” or any of the other alternative hypotheses promoted on these anti-trans parent websites since 2015) were indeed true, then we would expect that by now there would have been a large exodus of teenagers and young adults renouncing their trans identities. But that hasn’t happened. The most recent research studies continue to show that gender-affirming care remains highly efficacious and the rates of regret or detransition remain very low.24 In other words, there is no credible evidence that kids today are adopting trans identities spontaneously, capriciously, or frivolously. “Just Asking Questions” and the “Cisgender People Turned Transgender” Trope

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Perhaps that is why twentieth- century scholarship has tried to split that passage off from the perceived Paul of Protestant imagination. Anything, rather than take seriously the utterly biblical concept of kingdom and cross. Third, if the cross is to be interpreted as the coming of the kingdom on earth as in heaven, centering on some kind of messianic victory, with some kind of substitution at its heart, making sense through some kind of representation, then the four gospels leave us with the primary application of the cross not in abstract preaching about “how to have your sins forgiven” or “how to go to heaven,” but in an agenda in which the forgiven people are put to work, addressing the evils of the world in the light of the victory of Calvary. Those who are put right with God through the cross are to be putting-right people for the world. Justification is God’s advance putting right of men and women, against the day when he will put all things right, and thereby constituting the justified people as the key agents in that latter project. From this there flows both a new missiology, including an integrated political theology, and the new ecclesiology that will be needed to support it, a community whose very heart will be forgiveness. There is much more to be said about this, but not here. I suspect, sadly, that this is the point at which my overall argument will encounter some fairly solid resistance, for the same reasons that the kingdom-and-cross split happened in the first place, but now with the added incentive of the implicit Enlightenment divide. Our culture, including much of our Christian culture, doesn’t want to know about this kingdom and prefers a cross that takes us safely away into another sphere. The burden of my song is that to think like that is to be radically unfaithful to scripture, to the very heart of scripture, to the four inspired books through which we encounter the Messiah, Jesus, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Kingdom, Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension A word, in conclusion, about the immediate sequel. I have written extensively about the resurrection elsewhere (The Resurrection of the Son of God, Surprised by Hope) and a fair amount about the ascension too (in addition to the above, see Acts for Everyone). * This is not the place to plunge back into that kind of detail.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  But it is not enough for us to empower femaleness and femininity. We must also stop pretending that there are essential differences between women and men. This begins with the acknowledgment that there are exceptions to every gender rule and stereotype, and this simply stated fact disproves all gender theories that purport that female and male are mutually exclusive categories. We must move away from pretending that women and men are “opposite” sexes, because when we buy into that myth it establishes a dangerous precedent. For if men are big, then women must be small; and if men are strong then women must be weak. And if being butch is to make yourself rock-solid, then being femme becomes allowing yourself to be malleable; and if being a man means taking control of your own situation, then being a woman becomes living up to other people’s expectations. When we buy into the idea that female and male are “opposites,” it becomes impossible for us to empower women without either ridiculing men or pulling the rug out from under ourselves. It is only when we move away from the idea that there are “opposite” sexes, and let go of the culturally derived values that are assigned to expressions of femininity and masculinity, that we may finally approach gender equity. By challenging both oppositional and traditional sexism simultaneously, we can make the world safe for those of us who are queer, those of us who are feminine, and those of us who are female, thus empowering people of all sexualities and genders. PART 1 Trans/Gender Theory 1 Coming to Terms with Transgenderism and Transsexuality MOST NONTRANS PEOPLE are unfamiliar with the words that we in the transgender community use to describe ourselves, our experiences, and our most pressing issues. Books and websites that discuss transgenderism and transsexuality often include some kind of glossary, where these terms are laid out and defined in a nice, orderly, alphabetical fashion. However, a potential problem with the glossary approach is that it gives the impression that all of these transgenderrelated words and phrases are somehow written in stone, indelibly passed down from generation to generation. This is most certainly not the case. Many of the terms used these days to describe transgender people did not exist a decade ago. Conversely, many of the terms that were commonly used a decade ago are now considered to be out of fashion, outdated, or even offensive to many people in the transgender community. Even the terms that are used frequently today are regularly disputed, as individual transgender people may define words in a slightly different manner or have aesthetic or political preferences for certain words over others. So in lieu of a glossary, I will use this chapter to define many of the transgender-specific terms used throughout the book and to explain why I chose these particular words and phrases rather than others.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He turned his steps again to Friesland where order had been restored, and assisted Willibrord, archbishop of Utrecht, for three years. In 722 he returned to Thuringia in the wake of Charles Martel’s victorious army and preached to the heathen in Hesse who lived between the Franks and the Saxons, between the middle Rhine and the Elbe. He founded a convent at Amanaburg (Amöneburg) on the river Ohm. In 723 he paid, on invitation, a second visit to Rome, and was consecrated by Gregory II. as a missionary bishop without a diocese (episcopus regionarius). He bound himself on the grave of St. Peter with the most stringent oath of fealty to the Pope similar to that which was imposed on the Italian or suburban bishops.117 From this time his work assumed a more systematic character in the closest contact with Rome as the centre of Christendom. Fortified with letters of commendation, he attached himself for a short time to the court of Charles Martel, who pushed his schemes of conquest towards the Hessians. Aided by this secular help and the Pope’s spiritual authority, he made rapid progress. By a master stroke of missionary policy he laid the axe to the root of Teutonic heathenism; with his own hand, in the presence of a vast assembly, he cut down the sacred and inviolable oak of the Thunder-God at Geismar (not far from Fritzlar), and built with the planks an oratory or church of St. Peter. His biographer, Willibald, adds that a sudden storm from heaven came to his aid and split the oak in four pieces of equal length. This practical sermon was the death and burial of German mythology. He received from time to time supplies of books, monks and nuns from England. The whole church of England took a deep interest in his work, as we learn from his correspondence. He founded monastic colonies near Erfurt, Fritzlar, Ohrdruf, Bischofsheim, and Homburg. The victory of Charles Martel over the Saracens at Tours (732) checked the westward progress of Islâm and insured the triumph of Christianity in central Europe. Boniface was raised to the dignity of archbishop (without a see) and papal legate by the new Pope Gregory III. (732), and thus enabled to coerce the refractory bishops. In 738 he made his third and last pilgrimage to Rome with a great retinue of monks and converts, and received authority to call a synod of bishops in Bavaria and Allemannia. On his return he founded, in concert with Duke Odilo, four Bavarian bishoprics at Salzburg, Freising, Passau, and Ratisbon or Regensburg (739). To these he added in central Germany the sees of Würzburg, Buraburg (near Fritzlar), Erfurt, Eichstädt (742). He held several synods in Mainz and elsewhere for the organization of the churches and the exercise of discipline. The number of his baptized converts till 739 is said to have amounted to many thousands.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But the progress of secular and ecclesiastical history has run chiefly in Protestant channels. In many respects the Roman Church of to-day is a great improvement upon the Mediaeval Church. She has been much benefited by the Protestant Reformation, and is far less corrupt and far more prosperous in Protestant than in Papal countries. She was driven to a counter-reform which abolished some of the most crying abuses and infused new life and zeal into her clergy and laity. No papal schism has disgraced her history since the sixteenth century. No pope of the character of Alexander VI. or even Leo X. could be elected any more. She lives chiefly of the past, but uses for her defence all the weapons of modern warfare. She has a much larger membership than either the Greek or the Protestant communion; she still holds under her sway the Latin races of both hemispheres; she satisfies the religious wants of millions of human beings in all countries and climes; she extends her educational, benevolent and missionary operations all over the globe; she advances in proportion as Protestantism degenerates and neglects its duty; and by her venerable antiquity, historical continuity, visible unity, centralized organization, imposing ritual, sacred art, and ascetic piety she attracts intelligent and cultured minds; while the common people are kept in ignorance and in superstitious awe of her mysterious authority with its claim to open the gates of heaven and hell and to shorten the purgatorial sufferings of the departed. For good and evil she is the strongest conservative force in modern society, and there is every reason to believe that she will last to the end of time. Thus the two branches of Western Christendom seem to hold each other in check, and ought to stimulate each other to a noble rivalry in good works. The unhappy divisions of Christendom, while they are the source of many evils, have also the good effect of multiplying the agencies for the conversion of the world and facilitating the free growth of every phase of religious life. The evil lies not so much in the multiplicity of denominations, which have a mission to fulfil, as in the spirit of sectarianism and exclusivism, which denies the rights and virtues of others. The Reformation of the sixteenth century is not a finale, but a movement still in progress. We may look hopefully forward to a higher, deeper and broader Reformation, when God in His overruling wisdom and mercy, by a pentecostal effusion of His Holy Spirit upon all the churches, will reunite what the sin and folly of men have divided. There must and will be, in the fullest sense of Christ’s prophecy, "one flock, one Shepherd" (John 10:16).1 §3. Necessity of a Reformation. The corruption and abuses of the Latin church had long been the complaint of the best men, and even of general councils.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But after settling in Hungary, where they were surrounded on all sides by Christian nations, they were compelled, in 950, by the emperor, Otto I., to allow the bishop of Passau to send missionaries into their country; and various circumstances contributed to make this mission a rapid and complete success. Their prince, Geyza, had married a daughter of the Transylvanian prince, Gyula, and this princess, Savolta, had been educated in the Christian faith. Thus Geyza felt friendly towards the Christians; and as soon as this became known, Christianity broke forth from the mass of the population like flowers from the earth when spring has come. The people which the Magyars had subdued when settling in Hungary, and the captives whom they had carried along with them from Bulgaria and Moravia, were Christians. Hitherto these Christians had concealed their religion from fear of their rulers, and their children had been baptized clandestinely; but now they assembled in great multitudes around the missionaries, and the entrance of Christianity into Hungary looked like a triumphal march.133 Political disturbances afterwards interrupted this progress, but only for a short time. Adalbert of Prague visited the country, and made a great impression. He baptized Geyza’s son, Voik, born in 961, and gave him the name of Stephanus, 994. Adalbert’s pupil, Rodla, remained for a longer period in the country, and was held in so high esteem by the people, that they afterwards would not let him go. When Stephanus ascended the throne in 997, he determined at once to establish Christianity as the sole religion of his realm, and ordered that all Magyars should be baptized, and that all Christian slaves should be set free. This, however, caused a rising of the pagan party under the head of Kuppa, a relative of Stephanus; but Kuppa was defeated at Veszprim, and the order had to be obeyed. Stephanus’ marriage with Gisela, a relative of the emperor, Otto III., brought him in still closer contact with the German empire, and he, like Mieczyslav of

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Religious persecution arises not only from bigotry and fanaticism, and the base passions of malice, hatred and uncharitableness, but also from mistaken zeal for truth and orthodoxy, from the intensity of religious conviction, and from the alliance of religion with politics or the union of church and state, whereby an offence against the one becomes an offence against the other. Persecution is found in all religions, churches and sects which had the power; while on the other hand all persecuted religions, sects, and parties are advocates of toleration and freedom, at least for themselves. Some of the best as well as the worst men have been persecutors, believing that they served the cause of God by fighting his enemies. Saul of Tarsus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic saint and philosopher on the throne of the Caesars, have in ignorance persecuted Christianity, the one from zeal for the law of Moses, the other from devotion to the laws and gods of Rome. Charlemagne thought he could best promote Christianity among the heathen Saxons by chasing them through the river for wholesale baptism. St. Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, and Calvin were equally convinced of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish heresy. A religion or church established by law must be protected by law against its enemies. The only sure guarantee against persecution is to put all churches on an equal footing before the law, and either to support all or none. Church history is lurid with the infernal fires of persecutions, not only of Christians by heathens and Mohammedans, but of Christians by Christians. But there is a silver lining to every cloud, and an overruling Providence in all human wickedness. The persecutions test character, develop moral heroism, bring out the glories of martyrdom, and sow the bloody seed of religious liberty. They fail of their object when the persecuted party has the truth on its side, and ultimately result in its victory. This was the case with Christianity in the Roman empire, and to a large extent with Protestantism. They suffered the cross, and reaped the crown. Let us now briefly survey the chief stages in the history of persecution, which is at the same time a history of religious liberty. 1. The New Testament furnishes not a single passage in favor of persecution. The teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are against it. He came to save the world, not to destroy it. He declared that His kingdom is not of this world. He rebuked the hasty Peter for drawing the sword, though it was in defense of his Master; and he preferred to suffer and to die rather than to call the angels of God to aid against his enemies. The Apostles spread the gospel by spiritual means and condemned the use of carnal weapons. For three hundred years the church followed their example and advocated freedom of conscience.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Luther left Worms after a stay of ten days, April 26, 1521, at ten o’clock in the morning, quietly, in the same company with which he had made his entrance under the greatest popular commotion and expectation. His friend Schurf went along. The imperial herald joined him at Oppenheim so as not to attract notice. In a letter to his friend Cranach, dated Frankfurt, April 28, he thus summarizes the proceedings of the Diet: "Have you written these books? Yes. Will you recant? No. Then get thee hence! O we blind Germans, how childish we are to allow ourselves to be so miserably fooled by the Romanists!"412 In the same letter he takes leave of his Wittenberg friends, and intimates that he would be hidden for a while, though he did not know where. He says that he would rather have suffered death from the tyrants, especially "the furious Duke George," but he could not despise the counsel of good people. "A little while, and ye behold me no more; and again a little while, and ye shall see me (John 16:16). I hope it will be so with me. But God’s will, the best of all, be done in heaven and on earth." At Friedberg he dismissed the herald, and gave him a Latin letter to the Emperor, and a German letter of the same import to the Estates. He thanked the former for the safe-conduct, and defended his course at Worms. He could not trust in the decision of one man or many men when God’s word and eternal interests were at stake, but was still willing to recant if refuted from the Scriptures.413 At Hersfeld he was hospitably entertained in the Benedictine convent by the Abbot Crato, and urged to preach. He did so in spite of the Emperor’s prohibition, obeying God rather than men. "I never consented," he says, "to tie up God’s word. This is a condition beyond my power."414 He preached also at Eisenach, but under protest of the priest in charge of the parish. Several of his companions parted from him there, and proceeded in the direction of Gotha and Wittenberg. From Eisenach he started with Amsdorf and Petzensteiner for Möhra to see his relations. He spent a night with his uncle Heinz, and preached on the next Sunday morning. He resumed his journey towards Altenstein and Waltershausen, accompanied by some of his relatives. On the 4th of May, a company of armed horsemen suddenly appeared from the woods, stopped his carriage, amidst cursing and swearing, pulled him out, put him on horseback, hurried away with him in full speed, and brought him about midnight to the Wartburg, where he was to be detained as a noble prisoner of state in charge of Captain von Berlepsch, the governor of the castle. The scheme had been wisely arranged in Worms by the Elector Frederick, whom Aleander calls "the fox of Saxony." He wavered between attachment to the old faith and inclination to the new.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At his first consistory Gregory made a good beginning, when he asserted that, for the sake of the good cause of securing a united Christendom, he was willing to travel by land or by sea, by land, if necessary, with a pilgrim’s staff, by sea in a fishing smack, in order to come to an agreement with Benedict. He wrote to his rival on the Rhone, declaring that, like the woman who was ready to renounce her child rather than see it cut asunder, so each of them should be willing to cede his authority rather than be responsible for the continuance of the schism. He laid his hand on the New Testament and quoted the words that "he who exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." He promised to abdicate, if Benedict would do the same, that the cardinals of both lines might unite together in a new election; and he further promised not to add to the number of his cardinals, except to keep the number equal to the number of the Avignon college. Benedict’s reply was shrewd, if not equally demonstrative. He, too, lamented the schism, which he pronounced detestable, wretched, and dreadful,265 but gently setting aside Gregory’s blunt proposal, suggested as the best resort the via discussionis, or the path of discussion, and that the cardinals of both lines should meet together, talk the matter over, and see what should be done, and then, if necessary, one or both popes might abdicate. Both popes in their communications called themselves "servant of the servants of God." Gregory addressed Benedict as "Peter de Luna, whom some peoples in this wretched—miserabili — schism call Benedict XIII."; and Benedict addressed the pope on the Tiber as "Angelus Correr, whom some, adhering to him in this most destructive—pernicioso — schism, call Gregory XII." "We are both old men," wrote Benedict. "Time is short; hasten, and do not delay in this good cause. Let us both embrace the ways of salvation and peace." Nothing could have been finer, but it was quickly felt that while both popes expressed themselves as ready to abdicate, positive as the professions of both were, each wanted to have the advantage when the time came for the election of the new pontiff to rule over the reunited Church. As early as 1381, the University of Paris appealed to the king of France to insist upon the calling of a general council as the way to terminate the schism. But the duke of Anjou had the spokesman of the university, Jean Ronce, imprisoned, and the university was commanded to keep silence on the subject.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His more distinguished pupil, Plotinus, also an Egyptian (204–269), developed the NeoPlatonic ideas in systematic form, and gave them firm foothold and wide currency, particularly in Rome, where he taught philosophy. The system was propagated by his pupil Porphyry of Tyre (d. 304), who likewise taught in Rome, by Jamblichus of Chalcis in Coelo-Syria (d. 333), and by Proclus of Constantinople (d. 485). It supplanted the popular religion among in the educated classes of later heathendom, and held its ground until the end of the fifth century, when it perished of its own internal falsehood and contradictions. From its love for the ideal, the supernatural, and the mystical, this system, like the original Platonism, might become for many philosophical minds a bridge to faith; and so it was even to St. Augustin, whom it delivered from the bondage of scepticism, and filled with a burning thirst for truth and wisdom. But it could also work against Christianity. Neo-Platonism was, in fact, a direct attempt of the more intelligent and earnest heathenism to rally all its nobler energies, especially the forces of Hellenic philosophy and Oriental mysticism, and to found a universal religion, a pagan counterpart to the Christian. Plotinus, in his opposition to Gnosticism, assailed also, though not expressly, the Christian element it contained. On their syncretistic principles the Neo- Platonists could indeed reverence Christ as a great sage and a hero of virtue, but not as the Son of God. They ranked the wise men of heathendom with him. The emperor Alexander Severus (d. 235) gave Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana a place in his lararium by the side of the bust of Jesus. The rhetorician Philostratus, the elder, about the year 220, at the request of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, and a zealous patron of the reform of paganism, idealized the life of the pagan magician and soothsayer Apollonius, of the Pythagorean school, and made him out an ascetic saint, a divinely inspired philosopher, a religious reformer and worker of miracles, with the purpose, as is generally assumed, though without direct evidence, of holding him up as a rival of Christ with equal claims to the worship of men.84 The points of resemblance are chiefly these: Jesus was the Son of God, Apollonius the son of Jupiter; the birth of Christ was celebrated by the appearance of angels, that of Apollonius by a flash of lightning; Christ raised the daughter of Jairus, Apollonius a young Roman maiden, from the dead; Christ cast out demons, Apollonius did the same; Christ rose from the dead, Apollonius appeared after his death. Apollonius is made to combine also several characteristics of the apostles, as the miraculous gift of tongues, for he understood all the languages of the world. Like St. Paul, he received his earlier education at Tarsus, labored at Antioch, Ephesus, and other cities, and was persecuted by Nero.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Is. Aug. Dorner: On the formal, and the material Principle of the Reformation. Two essays, first published in 1841 and 1857, and reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1883, p. 48–187. Also his History of Protestant Theology, Engl. trans. 1871, 2 vols. Phil. Schaff: The Principle of Protestantism, Chambersburg, Penn., 1845 (German and English); Protestantism and Romanism, and the Principles of the Reformation, two essays in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York, 1885. p. 124–134. Also Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I. 203–219. Dan. Schenkel: Das Princip des Protestantimus. Schaffhausen, 1852 (92 pages). This is the concluding section of his larger work, Das Wesen des Protestantismus, in 3 vols. K. F. A. Kahnis: Ueber die Principien des Protestatismus. Leipzig, 1865. Also his Zeugniss von den Grundwahrheiten des Protestantismus gegen Dr. Hengstenberg. Leipzig, 1862. Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures for 1883. London, 1883. A Unitarian view, written with ample learning and in excellent spirit. Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim: First Principles of the Reformation, or the 95 Theses and three Primary Works of Dr. M. Luther. London, 1885. The literature on the difference between Lutheran and Reformed or Calvinistic Protestantism is given in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, l. 211. The spirit and aim of evangelical Protestantism is best expressed by Paul in his anti-Judaistic Epistle to the Galatians: "For freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage." Christian freedom is so inestimable a blessing that no amount of abuse can justify a relapse into a state of spiritual despotism and slavery. But only those who have enjoyed it, can properly appreciate it. The Reformation was at first a purely religious movement, and furnishes a striking illustration of the all-pervading power of religion in history. It started from the question: What must a man do to be saved? How shall a sinner be justified before God, and attain peace of his troubled conscience? The Reformers were supremely concerned for the salvation of the soul, for the glory of Christ and the triumph of his gospel. They thought much more of the future world than of the present, and made all political, national, and literary interests subordinate and subservient to religion.6 Yet they were not monks, but live men in a live age, not pessimists, but optimists, men of action as well as of thought, earnest, vigorous, hopeful men, free from selfish motives and aims, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, equal to any who had preceded them since the days of the Apostles. From the centre of religion they have influenced every department of human life and activity, and given a powerful impulse to political and civil liberty, to progress in theology, philosophy, science, and literature. The Reformation removed the obstructions which the papal church had interposed between Christ and the believer.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The opposition came partly from the anti-Catholic sects, which, in spite of cruel persecution, never ceased to protest against the corruptions and tyranny of the papacy; partly from the spirit of nationality which arose in opposition to an all-absorbing hierarchical centralization; partly from the revival of classical and biblical learning, which undermined the reign of superstition and tradition; and partly from the inner and deeper life of the Catholic Church itself, which loudly called for a reformation, and struggled through the severe discipline of the law to the light and freedom of the gospel. The mediaeval Church was a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. The Reformation was an emancipation of Western Christendom from the bondage of the law, and a re-conquest of that liberty "wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. v. 1). § 5. Periods of the Middle Age. The Middle Age may be divided into three periods: 1. The missionary period from Gregory I. to Hildebrand or Gregory VII., A.D. 590–1073. The conversion of the northern barbarians. The dawn of a new civilization. The origin and progress of Islam. The separation of the West from the East. Some subdivide this period by Charlemagne (800), the founder of the German-Roman Empire. 2. The palmy period of the papal theocracy from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., A.D. 1073–1294. The height of the papacy, monasticism and scholasticism. The Crusades. The conflict between the Pope and the Emperor. If we go back to the rise of Hildebrand, this period begins in 1049. 3. The decline of mediaeval Catholicism and preparation for modern Christianity, from Boniface VIII. to the Reformation, A.D. 1294–1517. The papal exile and schism; the reformatory councils; the decay of scholasticism; the growth of mysticism; the revival of letters, and the art of printing; the discovery of America; forerunners of Protestantism; the dawn of the Reformation. These three periods are related to each other as the wild youth, the ripe manhood, and the declining old age. But the gradual dissolution of mediaevalism was only the preparation for a new life, a destruction looking to a reconstruction. The three periods may be treated separately, or as a continuous whole. Both methods have their advantages: the first for a minute study; the second for a connected survey of the great movements. According to our division laid down in the introduction to the first volume, the three periods of the middle ages are the fourth, fifth and sixth periods of the general history of Christianity. FOURTH PERIOD –––––––––– THE CHURCH AMONG THE BARBARIANS FROM GREGORY I. TO GREGORY VII. A.D. 590 to 1049. ––––––––––

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  across the North Sea to that little kingdom which was to become the chief bulwark of Protestantism. In vain did Leo X. set himself against the free circulation of literature.1349 The Greek edition of the New Testament and the printing-press,—that invention which cleaves all the centuries in two and yet binds all the centuries together—were the two chief providential instruments made ready for Martin Luther. But he had to find them. They did not make him a reformer, the leader of the new age. Erasmus, whom Janssen mercilessly condemns, remained a moralizer. He lacked both the passion and the heroism of the religious reformer. The religious reformer must be touched from above. Reuchlin, Erasmus and Gutenberg prepared the outward form of the Greek and Hebrew Bible. Luther discovered its contents, and made them known. Such were the complex forces at work in the closing century of the Middle Ages. The absolute jurisdiction of the papacy was solemnly reaffirmed. The hierarchy virtually constituted the Church. Religious dissent was met with compulsion and force, not by persuasion and instruction. Coercion was substituted for individual consent. Popular piety remained bound in the old forms and was strong. But there were sounds of refreshing rills, flowing from the fresh fountain of the water of life, running at the side of the old ceremonials, especially in the North. The Revival of Letters aroused the intellect to a sense of its sovereign rights. The movement of thought was greatly accelerated by the printed page. The development of trade communicated unrest. But the lives of the popes, as we look back upon the age, forbade the expectation of any relief from Rome. The Reformatory councils had contented themselves with attempts to reform the administration of the Church. Nevertheless, though men did not see it, driftwood as from a new theological continent was drifting about and there were prophetic voices though the princes of the Church listened not to them. What was needed was not government, was not regulations but regeneration. This the hierarchy could not give, but only God alone.1350 The facts, set forth in this volume, leave no room for the contention of the recent class of historians in the Roman Church,—Janssen, Denifle, Pastor, Nicolas, Paulus, Dr. Gasquet—who have devoted themselves to the task of proving that an orderly reform-movement was going on when the Reformation broke out. That movement, they represent as an unspeakable calamity for civilization, an apostasy from Christianity, an insurrection against divinely constituted authority. It violently checked the alleged current of progress and popes, down to Pius IX. and Leo XIII., have anathematized Protestantism as a poisonous pestilence and the mother of all modem evils in Church and state.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The four gospels together demand a complete reappraisal of the various avoidance tactics Western Christianity has employed rather than face this challenge head-on. It simply won’t do to line up the options, as has normally been done, into either a form of “Christendom,” by which people normally mean the capitulation of the gospel to the world’s way of power, or a form of sectarian withdrawal. Life is more complex, more interesting, and more challenging than that. The gospels are there, waiting to inform a new generation for holistic mission, to embody, explain, and advocate new ways of ordering communities, nations, and the world. The church belongs at the very heart of the world, to be the place of prayer and holiness at the point where the world is in pain—not to be a somewhat “religious” version of the world, on the one hand, or a detached, heavenly minded enclave, on the other. It is a measure of our contemporary muddles that we find it very difficult to articulate, let alone to live out, a vision of church, kingdom, and world that is neither of these. What happens if we ask the question the other way around? What, in other words, do we learn about the cross when we discover that the gospels present it as the means by which God (in Jesus) becomes king of the world? Again, I see three immediate answers to this challenging question. First, the way we have normally listed options in atonement theology simply won’t do. Our questions have been wrongly put, because they haven’t been about the kingdom. They haven’t been about God’s sovereign, saving rule coming on earth as in heaven. Instead, our questions have been about a “salvation” that rescues people from the world, instead of for the world. “Going to heaven” has been the object (ever since the Middle Ages at least, in the Western church); “sin” is what stops us from getting there; so the cross must deal with sin, so that we can leave this world and go to the much better one in the sky, or in “eternity,” or wherever. But this is simply untrue to the story the gospels are telling—which, again, explains why we’ve all misread these wonderful texts. Whatever the cross achieves must be articulated, if we are to take the four gospels seriously, within the context of the kingdom-bringing victory. This is the ultimate redefinition-in-action of the messianic task, the kingdom-bringing messianic vocation.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Within this context, the “forgiveness of sins” gains an entirely new dimension. It includes, of course, just what it says to most of us: we are all overdrawn at the moral bank, and need to know again and again that God wipes out the debt and fills the account with his own freely given treasure. But when we step back from our own personal anxieties and awareness of guilt, we recognize that the world as a whole needs, longs for, aches and yearns and cries out for forgiveness—for that collective, global sigh of relief that means that nobody need seek vengeance ever again; that nobody will bear a grudge ever again; that the million wrongs with which the world has been so horribly defaced will be put right at last; that in God’s ultimate new world there will be no moral shadow, no lingering resentment, no character warped by another’s wrong. “Forgiveness of sins” is not a purely negative term, getting rid of the moral stain and guilt that we all incur, though it is that too. It is the positive presence of God and the Lamb, the Lamb whose shed blood has wiped the record clean. …the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. And so, finally, we come to the “resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Here we must “festoon” around the well-known words the great New Testament hope: “the life of the age to come,” the “coming age” in which the whole creation will be transformed to share the liberty of the glory of the children of God. And, within that new creation, the coming together of heaven and earth of which Paul spoke (Eph. 1:10), God’s people are promised new bodies. I have written about this elsewhere, but it is perhaps worth reiterating it. If you belong to Jesus the Messiah, if his Spirit dwells in you, if you are a worshipper of the one true God, maker of heaven and earth—then however you may feel at the moment, whether you are sick or healthy, handsome or jaded, you are simply a shadow of your future self. God intends to transform the “you” you are at the moment into a being—a full, glorious, physical being—who will be much more truly “you” than you’ve ever been before. Sin, by distorting and downgrading our specific God-given capacities and vocations, makes us more and more alike in our degradation. Jesus makes us more and more alive in our uniqueness, and the resurrection will complete that in a great act of new creation. Thomas à Kempis put it like this in his great hymn “Light’s Abode, Celestial Salem” (translated here by J. M. Neale): O how glorious and resplendent, Fragile body, shalt thou be; When endued with so much beauty, Full of health, and strong, and free; Full of vigor, full of pleasure That shall last eternally.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The problem of forgetting what the gospels are about is not confined to one segment of the church. Different branches—Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, charismatic, evangelical, liberal, social-gospel, and the many segments of church life that bear two or more of these rather misleading labels at the same time—come at things from different angles. Naturally. But it is my belief that all of them, over many centuries now, have backed off from facing the full challenge of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It would be fascinating to chart the ways in which different parts of the church have read (and, in my view, misread) the gospels. But that would require a different sort of book and is in any case way beyond my competence. Instead, I want to come at the question from the angle of the parts of the church I know best. After nearly twenty years in senior ministerial roles in the Church of England, seven of them as Bishop of Durham, and with fairly wide experience of traditions very different from my own, I think what I have to say reflects not a narrow or idiosyncratic viewpoint, but one at which many Christians from many traditions will nod with recognition. The question, then, is not only: Can we learn to read the gospels better, more in tune with what their original writers intended? It is also: Can we discover, by doing this, a new vision for God’s mission in the world, in and through Jesus, and then—now!—in and through his followers? And, in doing so, can we grow closer together in mission and life, in faith and hope, and even in love? Might a fresh reading of the gospels, in other words, clear the way for renewed efforts in mission and unity? Is that what it would look like if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven? That, after all, is the story all four gospels tell. I am aware, of course, that there are other documents that have been called “gospels,” and I shall say something about them in passing. But I am here dealing with the four that were recognized, from very early on, as part of the church’s “rule of life,” that is, part of the “canon”: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the story that the four evangelists tell is the story, as in my title, of “how God became king.”