People You Should Know #4 "Anselm"

Anselm

Reluctant bishop with a remarkable mind

“No one but one who is God-man can make the satisfaction by which man is saved.”

In the Middle Ages, it was customary for bishops-elect to make a show of protest to signify their modesty. When Anselm, an Italian monk from Normandy, was chosen to become archbishop of Canterbury, he protested too. The episcopal staff had to be held against his clenched fist. But his refusal was sincere: for Anselm, becoming the archbishop meant less time for his studies. His instincts, in fact, have proved correct: Anselm is remembered today not merely as a great archbishop but as one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages.

Pulled to higher office

The struggle between the scholarly life and that of high office began in Anselm’s earliest years. His father, Gundulf, wanted to see him in politics and forbade him from entering the local abbey. When the abbot refused to accept the 15-year-old without his father’s consent, Anselm prayed to become ill: he reasoned he could enter if he was in danger of death. He actually became seriously ill but was still refused admission.

After wandering Europe for years, looking to stretch his mind, Anselm settled at Bec, Normandy, to study under Lanfranc, a renowned scholar. Anselm felt here he could live the monastic life in obscurity, since the fame of Lanfranc would outshine his possible accomplishments.

But Anselm shined nonetheless. After three years, Lanfranc left the abbey to become archbishop of Canterbury, and Anselm replaced him as prior. He spent his time reading and reflecting on theological mysteries. Under his leadership, the monastery became famous for its scholastic excellence. When administrative duties interfered with his desired calling, he begged the local bishop to relieve him of some of his duties. Instead, the bishop told Anselm to prepare himself for higher office.

A proof of God

At Bec, Anselm made his first great intellectual contribution: he attempted to prove the existence of God. He set out his famous ontological argument in his Proslogion. God is “that which nothing greater can be thought,” he argued. We cannot think of this entity as anything but existing because a god who exists is greater than one who merely is an idea. The argument, though contested almost as soon as it was written, has influenced philosophers even into the twentieth century.

Anselm also thought deeply on the relationship of faith and reason. He concluded that faith is the precondition of knowledge (credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order to understand”). He didn’t despise reason; in fact he employed it in all his writings. He simply believed knowledge cannot lead to faith, and knowledge gained outside of faith is untrustworthy.

Squaring off against the king

In 1066 the Normans invaded England, and William the Conqueror gave the monastery at Bec several tracts of English land. Following the invasion, Anselm was summoned across the channel three times, where he impressed the English clergy. When Lanfranc died in 1089, they pressed William II to appoint Anselm to the archbishopric (formally the prerogative of the pope, but in practice the archbishop of Canterbury was the king’s appointee). Anselm was reluctant, as was William II for political reasons, and the position went unfilled for four years. Then, one day, the king fell seriously ill and, fearing hell, appointed Anselm against his repeated pleas.

Anselm immediately exerted pressure on the king: he refused to do anything priestly for William until the king restored lands to Canterbury, recognized the archbishop as supreme in spiritual matters, and pledged his allegiance to Pope Urban II (who was embroiled in a power struggle with England). The king, also called William Rufus, agreed, but reneged on his promises when he recovered from his illness. In fact, he would not even let Anselm visit Rome. When Rufus denied permission the third time, Anselm blessed him and left England anyway.

Productive in exile

Anselm no doubt felt relieved. He had hated his position at Canterbury. He had avoided getting involved in disputes and often became ill when he was required to arbitrate disagreements. On the other hand, if one of his monks drew him aside and asked a theological question, he at once became enthralled and, as he explained his answer, his spirits rose. So while in exile, he again begged the pope to relieve him, but the pope replied that he needed Anselm’s theological mind.

While in exile, Anselm wrote Why Did God Become Man?, which became the most influential treatise on the atonement in the Middle Ages. He argued for the “satisfaction theory.” Early theologians, like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, held to the “ransom theory”: humankind was held captive to sin and death by Satan, at least until Christ paid the ransom through his death, and in the Resurrection, broke the power of Satan’s chains. Anselm argued instead that it wasn’t Satan who was owed something but God. In Adam, all human beings had sinned against divine holiness. Furthermore, being both finite and sinful, people were powerless to make proper restitution. That could only be accomplished by Christ: “No one but one who is God-man can make the satisfaction by which man is saved.”

With the ascension of Henry I in 1100, Anselm was invited back to Canterbury. But when the king demanded homage from the bishops, Anselm refused and would not consecrate bishops who had done so. The controversy raged for six years, but Anselm eventually won.

For his last two years, he was able to study in relative peace. On his deathbed, Palm Sunday, 1107, Anselm told his monks he was ready to die, but before he did, he wanted to settle Augustine’s question of the origin of the soul. “I do not know of anyone who will be able to do the work if I do not,” he told them. But by Tuesday morning of Holy Week, he was dead.^[1]

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^[1] Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 27-29.

131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference) 

People You Should Know #3 "John of Damascus"

John of Damascus

Image-conscious Arab

“I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God.”

Visitors to an Orthodox Church are confronted with many unfamiliar elements of worship: for example, the use of incense and Byzantine chant and the custom of standing throughout the service. But perhaps the most perplexing element is the icons, especially when Orthodox worshipers bow before and kiss them. Isn’t this idolatry?

This very question raged through the Christian world in the eighth and ninth centuries, and it occupied the attention of two of the seven ecumenical (worldwide) church councils. The strongest defense of the practice came from a Christian living in the heart of the Islamic empire, John of Damascus.

Responding to the imperial volcano

He was born John Monsur, into a wealthy Arab-Christian family of Damascus. Like his father, he held a position high in the court of the caliph. About 725 he resigned his office and became a monk at Mar Saba near Bethlehem, where he became a priest. In this secluded place at the relatively advanced age of 51, John’s lasting legacy began to unfold. It began when Emperor Leo III, in 726, outlawed the veneration of icons.

The conflict had been brewing for decades. It wasn’t a question of bowing and kissing icons; this was a culturally acceptable way to show respect. The basic question went deeper: are Christians allowed to paint pictures of Jesus, or other biblical figures, at all? As Islam spread through the Mediterranean region, bringing its absolute interdiction of images, Christianity was feeling pressure to rid itself of images.

The main threat to icons came not from the Islamic caliph but from the heart of the Byzantine Empire. A few bishops from Asia Minor (now Turkey) believed the Bible, particularly the second commandment, forbade such images:

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”

The bishops’ argument convinced Byzantine Emperor Leo III, who set about to convince his subjects to abandon iconography. But a natural disaster changed his approach. In 726 a violent volcano erupted in the middle of the Aegean Sea and terrorized Constantinople, the capital. Afterward, tidal waves buffeted the shores and volcanic ash extinguished the sunlight. Leo reasoned that God was angry about icons. That’s when he outlawed their use.

In 730 Leo commanded the destruction of all religious likenesses, whether icons, mosaics, or statues, and iconoclasts (“image smashers” in Greek) went on a spree, demolishing nearly all icons in the Empire.

From his distant post in the Holy Land, John challenged this policy in three works. He argued that icons should not be worshiped, but they could be venerated. (The distinction is crucial: a Western parallel might be the way a favorite Bible is read, cherished, and treated with honor—but certainly not worshiped.)

John explained it like this: “Often, doubtless, when we have not the Lord’s passion in mind and see the image of Christ’s crucifixion, his saving passion is brought back to remembrance, and we fall down and worship not the material but that which is imaged: just as we do not worship the material of which the Gospels are made, nor the material of the Cross, but that which these typify.”

Second, John drew support from the writings of the early fathers like Basil the Great, who wrote, “The honor paid to an icon is transferred to its prototype.” That is, the actual icon was but a point of departure for the expressed devotion; the recipient was in the unseen world.

Third, John claimed that, with the birth of the Son of God in the flesh, the depiction of Christ in paint and wood demonstrated faith in the Incarnation. Since the unseen God had become visible, there was no blasphemy in painting visible representations of Jesus or other historical figures. To paint an icon of him was, in fact, a profession of faith, deniable only by a heretic!

“I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter,” he wrote. “I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God.”

Eastern theologian for the whole church

While the controversy continued to rage, John spent his days at Mar Saba monastery in the hills 18 miles southeast of Jerusalem. There he wrote both theological treatises and hymns; he is recognized as one of the principal hymnographers of Eastern Orthodoxy. His most important theological work, The Fount of Wisdom, is a summary of Eastern theology.

Tradition says that his fellow monks grumbled that such elegant writing was a distraction and prideful; so John was sometimes sent to sell baskets humbly in the streets of Damascus, where he had once been among the elite.

After more dissension and bloodshed over icons (the decade after John’s death, over 100,000 Christians were injured or killed), the issue was finally settled, and icons are an integral part of Orthodox worship to this day. His other writings were major influences on Western theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. In 1890 he was named a doctor of the church by the Vatican, and in this century, his writings have become a fresh source of theological insight, especially for Eastern theologians.^[1]

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^[1] Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 24-26.

131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference) 

Japan quake also shook Edwards Aquifer

It really is amazing how everything in creation is so connected.  As I told you Sunday the Japan earthquake also shook Edwards Aquifer here in south central Texas. Just fifteen minutes after the quake hit our aquifer started fluctuating up and down for hours due to the quake in Japan. There is a spiritual lesson here for us as well.  Just as things in our physical world are connected it is the same for us spiritually.  Events, circumstances, and situations that seem totally unrelated to our spiritual condition can cause great fluctuations in our spiritual lives. This weekend we focused on the Sabbath and making sure we all take time to rest.  Rest may not seem important and is frequently something we put off for another day, but everything is connected.  If we refuse to rest, if we resist the Sabbath it won't be long before our disobedience to one of God's greatest commands catches up to us.  Take time to rest this week!

People You Should Know #2 "Augustine of Hippo"

Augustine of Hippo
ARCHITECT OF THE MIDDLE AGES


“Mankind is divided into two sorts: such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities.… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth”

Barbarians surged into the empire, threatening the Roman way of life as never before. The Christian church also faced attack from internal heretics. The potential destruction of culture, civilization, and the church was more than an occasional nightmare—it was perceived as an immediate threat. And Augustine answered with such wisdom, his responses are still considered by some to be the church’s most important writings after the Bible.

Sex and fun
From his birth in a small North African town, Augustine knew the religious differences overwhelming the Roman Empire: his father was a pagan who honored the old Punic gods; his mother was a zealous Christian. But the adolescent Augustine was less interested in religion and learning than in sex and high living—like joining with friends to steal pears from a neighbor’s vineyard “not to eat them ourselves but simply to throw them to the pigs.”
At age 17, Augustine set off to school in Carthage—the country boy in the jewel of North Africa. There the underachiever became enraptured with his studies and started to make a name for himself. He immersed himself in the writings of Cicero and Manichaean philosophers and cast off the vestiges of his mother’s religion.
His studies completed, Augustine returned to his home town of Thagaste to teach rhetoric—and some Manichaeism on the side. (The philosophy, based on the teachings of a Persian named Mani, was a dualist corruption of Christianity. It taught that the world of light and the world of darkness constantly war with each other, catching most of humanity in the struggle.) Augustine tried to hide his views from his mother, Monica, but when she found out, she threw him out of the house.
But Monica, who had dreamt her son would become a Christian, continued to pray and plead for his conversion and followed him to Carthage when he moved there to teach. When Augustine was offered a professorship in Rome, Monica begged him not to go. Augustine told her to go home and sleep comfortably in the knowledge that he would stay in Carthage. When she left, he boarded a ship for Rome.



Darkness vanquished
After a year in Rome, Augustine moved again, to become the professor of rhetoric for the city of Milan. There he began attending the cathedral to hear the impressive oratory of Ambrose the bishop; he kept attending because of Ambrose’s preaching. He soon dropped his Manichaeism in favor of Neoplatonism, the philosophy of both Roman pagans and Milanese Christians.
His mother finally caught up with him and set herself to find her son a proper wife. Augustine had a concubine he deeply loved and who had given him a son, but he would not marry her because it would have ruined him socially and politically.
Added to the emotional strain of forsaking his lover and the shift in philosophies, Augustine was struggling with himself. For years he had sought to overcome his fleshly passions and nothing seemed to help. It seemed to him that even his smallest transgressions were weighted with meaning. Later, writing about the pear stealing of his youth, he reflected, “Our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden. The evil in me was foul, but I loved it.”
One afternoon, he wrestled anxiously about such matters while walking in his garden. Suddenly he heard a child’s sing-song voice repeating, “Take up and read.” On a table lay a collection of Paul’s epistles he’d been reading; he picked it up and read the first thing he saw: “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites” (Romans 13:13–14).
He later wrote, “No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”

From monk to bishop
Augustine’s conversion sent shockwaves through his life. He resigned his professorship, dashed off a note to Ambrose telling of his conversion, and retreated with his friends and mother to a country villa in Cassiciacum. There he continued discussing philosophy and churning out books in a Neoplatonist vein. After half a year, he returned to Milan to be baptized by Ambrose, then headed back to Thagaste to live as a writer and thinker.
By the time he reached his home town (a journey lengthened by political turmoil), he had lost his mother, his son, and one of his closest friends. These losses propelled Augustine into a deeper, more vigorous commitment: he and friends established a lay ascetic community in Thagaste to spend time in prayer and the study of the Scriptures.
In 391, Augustine traveled to Hippo to see about setting up a monastery in the area. His reputation went before him. The story goes that, seeing the renowned layman in church one Sunday, Bishop Valerius put aside his prepared sermon and preached on the urgent need for priests in Hippo. The crowd stared at Augustine and then pushed him forward for ordination. Against his will, Augustine was made a priest. The laity, thinking his tears of frustration were due to his wanting to be a bishop rather than priest, tried to assure him that good things come to those who wait.
Valerius, who spoke no Punic (the local language), quickly handed over teaching and preaching duties to his new priest, who did speak the local language. Within five years, after Valerius died, Augustine became bishop of Hippo.

Orthodox champion for a millennium
Guarding the church from internal and external challenges topped the new bishop’s agenda. The church in North Africa was in turmoil. Though Manichaeism was already on its way out, it still had a sizable following. Augustine, who knew its strengths and weaknesses, dealt it a death blow. At the public baths, Augustine debated Fortunatus, a former schoolmate from Carthage and a leading Manichaean. The bishop made quick work of the heretic, and Fortunatus left town in shame.
Less easily handled was Donatism, a schismatic and separatist North African church. They believed the Catholic church had been compromised and that Catholic leaders had betrayed the church during earlier persecutions. Augustine argued that Catholicism was the valid continuation of the apostolic church. He wrote scathingly, “The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak ‘We are the only Christians!’ ”
In 411 the controversy came to a head as the imperial commissioner convened a debate in Carthage to decide the dispute once and for all. Augustine’s rhetoric destroyed the Donatist appeal, and the commissioner pronounced against the group, beginning a campaign against them.
It was not, however, a time of rejoicing for the church. The year before the Carthage conference, the barbarian general Alaric and his troops sacked Rome. Many upper-class Romans fled for their lives to North Africa, one of the few safe havens left in the empire. And now Augustine was left with a new challenge—defending Christianity against claims that it had caused the empire’s downfall by turning eyes away from Roman gods.
Augustine’s response to the widespread criticism came in 22 volumes over 12 years, in The City of God. He argued that Rome was punished for past sins, not new faith. His lifelong obsession with original sin was fleshed out, and his work formed the basis of the medieval mind. “Mankind is divided into two sorts,” he wrote. “Such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities.… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth.”
One other front Augustine had to fight to defend Christianity was Pelagianism. Pelagius, a British monk, gained popularity just as the Donatist controversy ended. Pelagius rejected the idea of original sin, insisting instead that the tendency to sin is humankind’s own free choice. Following this reasoning, there is no need for divine grace; individuals must simply make up their minds to do the will of God. The church excommunicated Pelagius in 417, but his banner was carried on by young Julian of Eclanum. Julian took potshots at Augustine’s character as well as his theology. With Roman snobbery, he argued that Augustine and his other low-class African friends had taken over Roman Christianity. Augustine argued with the former bishop for the last ten years of his life.
In the summer of 429, the Vandals invaded North Africa, meeting almost no resistance along the way. Hippo, one of the few fortified cities, was overwhelmed with refugees. In the third month of the siege, the 76-year-old Augustine died, not from an arrow but from a fever. Miraculously, his writings survived the Vandal takeover, and his theology became one of the main pillars on which the church of the next 1,000 years was built.















Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 20-23.
131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference)

Slain pastor laid to rest

Over the past few months several local churches in our area have been robbed.  Thankfully no one was hurt, and the thieves came and went without contact with any church staff or members.   But those events serve as a great reminder to all churches. We are not exempt from evil, pain, or hardship, in fact we can be certain that our enemy will inflict it upon us whenever he gets a chance.  Why people rob churches is beyond me.  Very few churches in the entire world have large amounts of money in savings and even fewer keep more than $50 cash on hand in the offices.  Like everyone else these days churches use banks to hold their money, debit cards, and checks are then used to spend money.  But still church robbery seems to be a growing trend in our area and around the country as our economy struggles.  Churches are not good targets for robbery for the above mentioned reasons, but they are soft targets.  It is much easier to rob a church, versus a bank.  Cowboy Fellowship has always sought to protect our staff and members.  You might not know this but there is live video surveillance inside of all of our buildings and parking lots.  We have recently increased our surveillance capabilities with additional cameras as well. Our church also hires uniformed and undercover officers for our events and  services.  Our church is also equipped with a state of the art alarm system that is monitored 24/7. We have recently initiated a new policy to better protect our staff as well.  Our doors are now kept locked  during the day and visitors are buzzed in through the office entrance.  This ensures that we know who is in our building at all times.  I know this has come as an inconvenience for some and a few have expressed disapproval over this decision.  I believe with time most will come to see the value of the security measures we have in place at our church. While these measures don't guarantee that we will be able to avoid some tragic incident it will move us from a soft target to a more difficult one.  I would ask to to say a prayer for Clint Dobson's family and NorthPointe church.  Clint and the church secretary were robbed on March the 3rd.  The two alleged robbers killed Clint and left the secretary, who barely survived, for dead. I have included the news article below to help you pray for the family.       


ARLINGTON, Texas (ABP) -- Mourners filled First Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, March 9 to celebrate the life of a young mission pastor cut short by murder, while more than 500 others watched live on the Internet.
Clint Dobson, 28, was laid to rest six days after his suffocation death during a robbery at NorthPointe Baptist Church, a satellite of First Baptist Church and part of the congregation's expansive mission outreach to the poor.

Clint Dobson

Dennis Wiles, pastor of First Baptist Church in Arlington, reminded worshipers the funeral service fell on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent celebrated for centuries by Christians worldwide to turn from worldly concerns to focus on 40 days leading up to remembrance of Christ's death on the cross.
"This year my journey will be deeper and richer because of Clint Dobson," Wiles said. "My life will be more closely linked with Jesus as I journey to the cross this year, because of the sacrifice of a servant of God."
Friends, family and mentors in ministry remembered Dobson as a fun-loving and gifted young minister devoted to his young wife, Laura.
"I take great hope in the promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ," said Robert Creech, Dobson's former pastor for 15 years who now teaches pastoral ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary. "I believe in the resurrection of the dead. I believe in life everlasting. I mean that. But honestly I have to say … we feel robbed, pillaged to have Clint taken out of our world. The church and the world feel poorer for it, and many in our seminary feel the same sense of loss that the people of North Pointe Church surely do and his family most of all."
Dobson graduated from Baylor University in 2004. He enrolled at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, but after Hurricane Katrina temporarily closed the school, he transferred to Baylor's Truett Seminary. Professors there described him as a star pupil not only sharp enough for doctoral studies but also rare in his love for others demonstrated in ministry to the poor.
"Clint Dobson's life was lived well. Whatever he did he gave his all and his best," said Jeff Waldo, associate pastor for discipleship at University Baptist Church in Houston who supervised Dobson as a ministry intern working at a low-income apartment complex in 2005. "In what time he lived he got it right. He loved people and he loved God and he communicated God's love with clarity."
After earning his master's degree from Truett in 2008, Dobson joined the staff of First Baptist Church in Arlington as mission pastor of NorthPointe Baptist Church.
"I remember his excitement about coming to NorthPointe and the excitement that sustained during his time here," Waldo said. "He was very thankful and appreciative for the opportunity that was extended to him."
Others said between his ministry and marriage, the last few years were the happiest of Dobson's life -- a life cut short by a senseless murder allegedly committed during a robbery of items including credit cards later used to buy jewelry at a nearby mall.
"We're not going to talk about why," said Dobson's father in law, Philip Rozeman. "Why is too hard. We really want to talk about the question 'who?,' who Clint is."
"Clint's a man who lived God's word, a man whose life had tremendous impact, even if it was only 28 years," Rozeman testified.
Wiles make a similar point. "Since Thursday afternoon our minds have been filled with questions," he said. "That is true of all of us. We have asked hard questions and they have challenged each one of us. Why? How? How could anything good come from something so evil? Those questions will haunt us for a while. In fact it just may be that they are so deep and profound for us that we might live out our entire lives with those questions unanswered."
Wiles encouraged mourners to move forward living in faith and not by sight.
"This world is fleeting," Wiles said. "Sometime it goes by in only 28 years. God has created us for eternity."
In his closing prayer Wiles thanked God for "a life well lived" and "a gospel that is sturdy enough for days like today."

People You Should Know #1 "Athanasius"

Athanasius

Five-time exile for fighting “orthodoxy”

“Those who maintain ‘There was a time when the Son was not’ rob God of his Word, like plunderers.”

“Black Dwarf” was the tag his enemies gave him. And the short, dark-skinned Egyptian bishop had plenty of enemies. He was exiled five times by four Roman emperors, spending 17 of the 45 years he served as bishop of Alexandria in exile. Yet in the end, his theological enemies were “exiled” from the church’s teaching, and it is Athanasius’s writings that shaped the future of the church.

Challenging “orthodoxy”

Most often the problem was his stubborn insistence that Arianism, the reigning “orthodoxy” of the day, was in fact a heresy.

The dispute began when Athanasius was the chief deacon assistant to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria. While Alexander preached “with perhaps too philosophical minuteness” on the Trinity, Arius, a presbyter (priest) from Libya announced, “If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not.” The argument caught on, but Alexander and Athanasius fought against Arius, arguing that it denied the Trinity. Christ is not of a like substance to God, they argued, but the same substance.

To Athanasius this was no splitting of theological hairs. Salvation was at issue: only one who was fully human could atone for human sin; only one who was fully divine could have the power to save us. To Athanasius, the logic of New Testament doctrine of salvation assumed the dual nature of Christ. “Those who maintain ‘There was a time when the Son was not’ rob God of his Word, like plunderers.”

Alexander’s encyclical letter, signed by Athanasius (and possibly written by him), attacked the consequences of the Arians’ heresy: “The Son [then,] is a creature and a work; neither is he like in essence to the Father; neither is he the true and natural Word of the Father; neither is he his true wisdom; but he is one of the things made and created and is called the Word and Wisdom by an abuse of terms.… Wherefore he is by nature subject to change and variation, as are all rational creatures.”

The controversy spread, and all over the empire, Christians could be heard singing a catchy tune that championed the Arian view: “There was a time when the Son was not.” In every city, wrote a historian, “bishop was contending against bishop, and the people were contending against one another, like swarms of gnats fighting in the air.”

Word of the dispute made it to the newly converted Emperor Constantine the Great, who was more concerned with seeing church unity than theological truth. “Division in the church,” he told the bishops, “is worse than war.” To settle the matter, he called a council of bishops.

Of the 1,800 bishops invited to Nicea, about 300 came—and argued, fought, and eventually fleshed out an early version of the Nicene Creed. The council, led by Alexander, condemned Arius as a heretic, exiled him, and made it a capital offense to possess his writings. Constantine was pleased that peace had been restored to the church. Athanasius, whose treatise On the Incarnation laid the foundation for the orthodox party at Nicea, was hailed as “the noble champion of Christ.” The diminutive bishop was simply pleased that Arianism had been defeated.

But it hadn’t.

Bishop in exile

Within a few months, supporters of Arius talked Constantine into ending Arius’s exile. With a few private additions, Arius even signed the Nicene Creed, and the emperor ordered Athanasius, who had recently succeeded Alexander as bishop, to restore the heretic to fellowship.

When Athanasius refused, his enemies spread false charges against him. He was accused of murder, illegal taxation, sorcery, and treason—the last of which led Constantine to exile him to Trier, now a German city near Luxembourg.

Constantine died two years later, and Athanasius returned to Alexandria. But in his absence, Arianism had gained the upper hand. Now church leaders were against him, and they banished him again. Athanasius fled to Pope Julius I in Rome. He returned in 346, but in the mercurial politics of the day, was banished three more times before he came home to stay in 366. By then he was about 70 years old.

While in exile, Athanasius spent most of his time writing, mostly to defend orthodoxy, but he took on pagan and Jewish opposition as well. One of his most lasting contributions is his Life of St. Antony, which helped to shape the Christian ideal of monasticism. The book is filled with fantastic tales of Antony’s encounters with the devil, yet Athanasius wrote, “Do not be incredulous about what you hear of him.… Consider, rather that from them only a few of his feats have been learned.” In fact, the bishop knew the monk personally, and this saint’s biography is one of the most historically reliable. It became an early “best-seller” and made a deep impression on many people, even helping lead pagans to conversion: Augustine is the most famous example.

During Athanasius’s first year permanently back in Alexandria, he sent his annual letter to the churches in his diocese, called a festal letter. Such letters were used to fix the dates of festivals such as Lent and Easter, and to discuss matters of general interest. In this letter, Athanasius listed what he believed were the books that should constitute the New Testament.

“In these [27 writings] alone the teaching of godliness is proclaimed,” he wrote. “No one may add to them, and nothing may be taken away from them.”

Though other such lists had been and would still be proposed, it is Athanasius’s list that the church eventually adopted, and it is the one we use to this day.^[1]

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^[1] Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 17-19.

131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference) 

SOMETHING NEW!

OK. We promised change and here it is... What we have done is determine a goal to create a sort of cyber scrapbook within the blog . In the early years of our church our friend and fellow member, Brianna, kept an extentive hardcopy scrapbook. It is so much fun to go back and look at the progress the Lord has made with this group! But, over time we all became so busy that we allowed our scrapbook to fall by the wayside and unfortunately we have probably lost memory of a good bit of our history. My name is Phyllis and Pastor Pete has asked me to help him maintain this site. I would like to ask that anyone who has materials or information about goings on within Cowboy Fellowship at anytime to please feel free to let me know. If you would like to put your information in story form, that's great. If you are more comfortable just supplying dates and number of lives touched, and/or photographs that's fine too. We'll take that information and turn it into an entry for our scrapbook. Our objective with this project is not to brag, or just "publish the numbers", but to offer a reminder of what God can and will accomplish through His people. The devil would love nothing more than for us to live with defeat and the idea that we can do little. This scrapbook should be a reminder to us all the we "Can do All Things Through Christ Who Strengthens" Philippians 4:13. He is the source of all power and the author of love. It's God's work we want to boast about, remember, and record! So if you are a leader or member of a group, or you just catch someone in the act of glorifying God whether through worship, fellowship, missions work, or whatever... please let us know so we can get the information we need to record this action as a means of encouragement toward future involvement. Please invite others to follow this blog. Our hope is that everyone will see themselves represented in it! You can get in touch with me through this page, or email me at filisw@aol.com, catch me at church on Sunday mornings, or leave things off at the church office. I look forward to hearing from you!

"And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward acts of love and good deeds." Hebrews 10:24

Have Faith in God

I read this challenging devotion yesterday from Charles Spurgeon and I have been unable to get it out of my mind since.  Maybe it will stir your heart in a simular way. 

 

“Have faith in God.”
Mark 11:22

Faith is the foot of the soul by which it can march along the road of the commandments. Love can make the feet move more swiftly; but faith is the foot which carries the soul. Faith is the oil enabling the wheels of holy devotion and of earnest piety to move well; and without faith the wheels are taken from the chariot, and we drag heavily. With faith I can do all things; without faith I shall neither have the inclination nor the power to do anything in the service of God. If you would find the men who serve God the best, you must look for the men of the most faith. Little faith will save a man, but little faith cannot do great things for God. Poor Little-faith could not have fought “Apollyon;” it needed “Christian” to do that. Poor Little-faith could not have slain “Giant Despair;” it required “Great-heart's” arm to knock that monster down. Little faith will go to heaven most certainly, but it often has to hide itself in a nut-shell, and it frequently loses all but its jewels. Little-faith says, “It is a rough road, beset with sharp thorns, and full of dangers; I am afraid to go;” but Great-faith remembers the promise, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; as thy days, so shall thy strength be:” and so she boldly ventures. Little-faith stands desponding, mingling her tears with the flood; but Great-faith sings, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:” and she fords the stream at once. Would you be comfortable and happy? Would you enjoy religion? Would you have the religion of cheerfulness and not that of gloom? Then “have faith in God.” If you love darkness, and are satisfied to dwell in gloom and misery, then be content with little faith; but if you love the sunshine, and would sing songs of rejoicing, covet earnestly this best gift, “great faith.”

You Can Count on Satan...

 Did the title of this post catch you eye?  It should have, but the fact is you can count on Satan...to make your life miserable!  The Bible says he wants to kill, steal, and destroy you, and I promise you can count on that!  We have been talking about "How To Waste Your Life" this past month at Cowboy Fellowship.  So far we have looked at Worry, Doubt, and Fear.  If you have missed any of the messages you can listen or download them by clicking here. Today while I was reading I came across the following commentary and I thought I would post it.  I think it will help you understand just how crafty, and dangerous our enemy really is.

 Believer's Bible Commentary : Old and New Testaments
The serpent that appeared to Eve is later revealed to be none other than Satan himself (see Rev. 12:9). Those who seek to “demythologize” the Bible believe that this account of the fall is allegorical and not literal. They cite the talking serpent as proof. Can the story of the serpent’s deceiving Eve be accepted as factual? The Apostle Paul thought so (2 Cor. 11:3). So did the Apostle John (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). Nor is this the only instance of a talking animal in Scripture. God gave a voice to Balaam’s donkey to restrain the madness of the prophet (Num. 22), and the Apostle Peter accepted this as literal (2 Pet. 2:16). These three apostles were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write as they did. Thus to reject the account of the fall as literal is to reject the inspiration of Holy Scripture. There are allegories in the Bible, but this is not one of them.
Notice the steps that plunged the human race into sin. First Satan insinuated doubt about the Word of God: “Has God indeed said?” He misrepresented God as forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of every tree. Next, Eve said that they were not to eat or “touch the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden.” But God had said nothing about touching the tree. Then Satan flatly contradicted God about the inevitability of judgment on those who disobeyed, just as his followers still deny the facts of hell and eternal punishment. Satan misrepresented God as seeking to withhold from Adam and Eve something that would have been beneficial to them. Eve yielded to the threefold temptation: the lust of the flesh (good for food), the lust of the eyes (pleasant to the eyes), and the pride of life (a tree desirable to make one wise). In doing so, she acted independently of Adam, her head. She should have consulted him instead of usurping his authority. In the words “she took of its fruit and ate” lie the explanation of all the sickness, sorrow, suffering, fear, guilt, and death that have plagued the human race ever since that time. Someone has said, “The wreckage of earth and a million billion graves attest that God is true and Satan is the liar.” Eve was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), but Adam acted willfully and in deliberate rebellion against God.
Secular humanism perpetuates Satan’s lie, “You will be like God.”
3:7–13 The first result of sin was a sense of shame and fear. The aprons of fig leaves speak of man’s attempt to save himself by a bloodless religion of good works. When called to account by God, sinners excuse themselves. Adam said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me …” as if blaming God (see Prov. 19:3). Eve said, “The serpent …” (v. 13).
In love and mercy God searched after His fallen creatures with the question “Where are you?” This question proved two things—that man was lost and that God had come to seek. It proved man’s sin and God’s grace. God takes the initiative in salvation, demonstrating the very thing Satan got Eve to doubt—His love.
3:14  The Lord God cursed the serpent to degradation, disgrace, and defeat. The fact that the serpent is cursed more than all cattle or any other beast of the field suggests that reptiles are primarily in view here rather than Satan.
3:15 But verse 15 switches to the Devil himself. This verse is known as the protevangelium, meaning “The First Gospel.” It predicts the perpetual hostility between Satan and the woman (representing all mankind), and between Satan’s seed (his agents) and her Seed (the Messiah). The woman’s Seed would crush the Devil’s head, a mortal wound spelling utter defeat. This wound was administered at Calvary when the Savior decisively triumphed over the Devil. Satan, in turn, would bruise the Messiah’s heel. The heel wound here speaks of suffering and even of physical death, but not of ultimate defeat. So Christ suffered on the cross, and even died, but He arose from the dead, victorious over sin, hell, and Satan. The fact that He is called the woman’s Seed may contain a suggestion of His virgin birth. Note the kindness of God in promising the Messiah before pronouncing sentence in the following verses.
3:16–19 Sin has inevitable consequences. The woman was sentenced to suffering in childbirth. She would be subject to her husband. The man was sentenced to earn his livelihood from ground that was cursed with thorns and thistles. It would mean toil and sweat for him. Then at the end of life, he himself would return to dust. It should be noted here that work itself is not a curse; it is more often a blessing. It is the sorrow, toil, frustration, perspiration, and weariness connected with work that are the curse.
3:20, 21  Adam displayed faith in calling his wife’s name Eve … the mother of all living, since no baby had ever been born up to this time. Then tunics of skin were provided by God through the death of an animal. This pictures the robe of righteousness which is provided for guilty sinners through the shed blood of the Lamb of God, made available to us on the basis of faith.
3:22–24 There was a shade of truth in Satan’s lie that Eve would become like God (v. 5). But she and Adam learned by the hard way of experience to discern between good and evil. If they had then eaten of the tree of life, they would have lived forever in bodies subject to sickness, degeneration, and infirmity. Thus it was God’s mercy that prevented them from returning to Eden. Cherubim are celestial creatures whose function is to “vindicate the holiness of God against the presumptuous pride of fallen man.”
Adam and Eve had to decide whether God or Satan was lying. They decided that God was. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Thus their names are missing from the Honor Roll of Faith in Hebrews 11.
The ideal environment of Eden did not prevent the entrance of sin. A favorable environment is not the answer to man’s problems.


 
William MacDonald and Arthur Farstad, Believer's Bible Commentary : Old and New Testaments (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), Ge 3:1–24.Believer's Bible Commentary

SOMETHING'S UP!!!

Change is coming... Watch for updates!!!
(prw)

Facing the Future Fearlessly

“You have a past. It’s no secret. You may have done things out in the open that people have rightly condemned you for, or you may have tried to bury away deep dark secrets in back of your mind and far down in your heart. But the past is there and it’s not all pretty.


While this is true, it’s important that you don’t let the devil convince you that you are the only person in the world who has problems in your past. It’s just not true. You are not the only person to experience pain, who has gone through a divorce, or who has seen the horrors of war, made a mistake, served time in prison, deeply hurt someone you love, or has fallen short of the mark. Everyone has a past, and everyone’s past is full of problems, mistakes, and heartache. But sometimes we let the devil convince us that we are the only person in the world who has a past. Worse yet, sometimes we think that our past is so hideous that nothing can make us right again. That’s just not true.”

This past weekend Pastor Pete Pawelek told the folks gathered at Cowboy Fellowship that even though we all do have a past filled with sin, we may look at that past in different ways. One may fear that he, and therefore his sin, isn’t important enough to bother with, while another fears theirs is so horrible that they are beyond any hope of forgiveness. Truth be told, both are wrong. Sin is sin, and the wages of any sin is death and eternal damnation. The devil wants you to know only this in order to cause you to fear the past, so he can control you, and manipulate your life. When he does that you will begin to fear your past and He will WIN!

“There is only one way to overcome the fear of your past and know that you have hope for a future. And hope is possible even in a world that appears to be filled with some pretty scary stuff. There are riots and wars going on all over the world today. The price of oil has risen, and the cost of gas has increased greatly in just the last seven days. Unemployment is high, economists are predicting a second recession, or even depression may be in our future. But no one really knows what the future holds except God. God knows our past and holds our future. He has given us a means to leave our past behind and to move without fear into the future. We can live in fear of the possibilities the future holds and waste our lives, or we can trust God, have faith, and be fearless despite the future. Fear of the future can be a powerful force that can keep us on the sidelines and cause us to waste our lives.”

Only God is bigger than our problems, He is stronger than any hold Satan can ever have on our lives. His forgiveness is more solid, sure, and sustainable then any guilt Satan can throw in our paths. God gave His Son, Jesus Christ, for you and for me. His perfect blood was shed in order for us to be blameless before God. To consider your past sin either too insignificant or too horrific, and your future too uncertain to trust with Jesus, is a foolish and costly move. Please don’t let your fear of the past cripple your hope for the future. To learn more about the forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ come to a place where you will be welcomed no matter what your current state or circumstance is. Cowboy Fellowship offers teaching messages Saturday evenings at 7 and Sunday mornings at 10:45 as well as various small group sessions during the week in the big metal building out on FM 3350. You are important enough to Jesus for Him to die for, isn’t he worthy of your trust?

submitted by:  P Weatherston