Topic Archives: Pre-reformation

Augustine, the son of a Roman official, was born at Tagaste in North Africa in A.D. 354. Endowed with brilliant talents, strongly motivated by vain glory and the desire of praise, he was by the age of nineteen studying and teaching rhetoric in the ancient city of Carthage. Here, with his mind bent on the […]

‘I will build my church,’ Jesus declared (Matthew 16:18). And what a magnificent and agonizing process has unfolded for two millennia. Essential to this work is the formation of living stones — men and women drawn from the quarry of sin, whose lives now testify to gospel grace. But how does Christ construct his church? […]

This is the second half of a two part article. The first part can be found here. Semi-Pelagianism Yet the death of Pelagius was not the end of his speculation; not only were there still those who followed him, but there were those who tried to develop a ‘middle way’ between the strict Biblical teaching […]

Pelagianism can be regarded as the last of the ‘Great Heresies’; after Pelagius, heretics have, for the most part, been either reworking old heresies, or have been very limited in their influence. Pelagius, on the other hand, created a false teaching that challenged the Church to consider issues that had previously been taken for granted, […]

A Trip to Prague I had never been to Prague and had the scantiest knowledge of the Czech Republic, but one day I was reading a newspaper and in the Travel section saw a cheap three day excursion offered to Prague. I thought about it and booked a flight and an hotel there. The Czech […]

We have made these studies of the so-called Great Heresies because they represent significant false steps in the history of Christian teaching; in each of them a true teaching is distorted, and so becomes false. Each precipitated a crisis that forced the Church to look deeper into the Scriptures and consider the fullness of God’s […]

Augustine of Hippo is without doubt one of the most significant figures of the early Church, and perhaps the most important of all those to write in Latin. It has been said that, ‘Apart from the Scriptural authors, no other figure had a greater impact on Christian life and thought up to the time of […]

The Reformation of the Church stands out in our minds as having started on 31 October, 1517. On that day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the chapel door at Wittenberg in Germany. That will be 500 years ago in two years’ time. However, the roots of the Reformation were already alive and well […]

This is the first book of the series and starts with a brief overview of Jesus’ life and teaching, introduces the reader to his disciples and particularly to John, who as an old man came to know and befriend both Ignatius and Polycarp, young men at the time. This book tells the story of Ignatius, […]