‘Eminent Christians’ Category

Among the leading painters of the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite school of artists was Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). And among his finest paintings is that entitled Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850; Tate Gallery, London) in which Rossetti depicts the Virgin Mary being addressed by the Angel Gabriel. If one looks closely at the woman depicting Mary, and one is familiar with what Rossetti’s sister looked like in her younger years, one would clearly see that the model for Mary is none other than Christina Rossetti, the finest poetess of the Victorian era. There appears to be a sadness to Christina’s face which says more about her life than it does necessarily about Mary’s.

Her life—a sketch

Christina was born into a remarkably gifted family in London, December 5, 1830. Her parents, Gabriele and Frances Rossetti, were emigrés from Italy. Though the family was gifted artistically, they had little money and seem to have struggled financially, despite the fact that her father was a Professor of Italian at King’s College, London. It was from her mother that she imbibed her Evangelical faith.

As a teenager Christina was quite beautiful. In 1848 she became engaged to James Collinson, one of the minor Pre-Raphaelite painters, but Christina ended the engagement in 1850 when he re-joined the Roman Catholic Church. Collinson went on to enter a Jesuit college, though he would leave without being ordained. It was that same year that Christina sat for her brother’s painting Ecce Ancilla Domini.

When her father’s failing health and eyesight forced him to retire from teaching in 1853, Christina and her mother attempted to support the family by starting a day school, but had to give it up after a year or so. In the early 1860s she was passionately in love with a man by the name of Charles Cayley. Cayley had a remarkable facility for languages, being a master of Hebrew, Homeric and classical Greek, and Italian. He even oversaw a translation of the New Testament into Iroquois. In 1864 he proposed to Christina, but according to her brother William Michael, she refused to marry him because “she enquired as to his creed, and she found that he was not a Christian; either absolutely not a Christian, or else so far removed from fully defined religious orthodoxy that she could not regard him as sharing the essence of her own beliefs.” Thereafter she led a very retiring life, interrupted by recurring illnesses. Her final three years—she died on December 29, 1894—were spent suffering from breast cancer, which involved surgery at home in 1892 and much pain and suffering.

Expressing her faith in poetry

Her faith was deeply tested by these illnesses, and though there is sometimes a morbid, introspective streak in statements she made at this time and in her poetry, her Christian faith—to some degree influenced by Anglo-Catholicism, but having a decidedly Evangelical cast—shines through in her poetry. Ponder, for instance, this poem, written in 1893, near the end of her life. It is a poem that echoes the watch-cry of the Reformation—Christ alone.

None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other Hope in heaven or earth or sea,
None other Hiding-place from guilt and shame,
None beside Thee.

My faith burns low, my hope burns low,
Only my heart’s desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art Life tho I be dead,
Love’s Fire Thou art however cold I be:
Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but Thee.

In the bleak mid-winter

Evangelicals are probably most acquainted with Rossetti through her Christmas carol, In the bleak mid-winter. It first appeared in Scribner’s Monthly, a New York magazine, in January 1872. It was written in the midst of Christina’s suffering from a condition known as Grave’s disease.

Christina sets the birth of Christ against the backdrop of the bleakness of a chilly English winter, and gives a series of vivid contrasts between his heavenly state and that to which he stooped when he became a human being.

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Throng’d the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

An exposition

What is the key-word in the first stanza? “Bleak.” Christina is not merely describing the weather, but speaking of an inner winter. And the word “bleak” prepares the reader for the intense images that follow: the wind that “made moan,” the earth as stiff and solid as iron, and the water so frozen it was like a stone. And the way she drops these intense images one on top of another is like what is described in the second half of this verse: layer upon layer of snow. The repetition of the first line reinforces the picture that Christina wishes to depict: the utter bleakness of the winter.

The second stanza comes “seemingly out of nowhere.” From a picture of bleak winter we are taken to the theme of the governance and upheaval of the universe. The first two lines come from 1 Kings 8:27, and Christina is seeking remind us of the greatness of God—the awesomeness of his person. Lines 3 and 4 are from Revelation 20:11: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away.” Here, from another angle, the awesomeness of our God is being stressed. Before him the universe will melt.

Commonly linked to Christmas in the Christmas tradition is the Second Coming. The link obviously is the fact that both involve the coming of Christ to this world. But how different they are: at his Second Advent, Christ will come as an awesome warrior-king who will re-create the entire universe. But at his first coming: a stable was sufficient to house him—this One whom the universe cannot contain (note the reference to Jesus as “Lord God Almighty,” drawn from texts like Revelation 1:8, 11, 17; 21:22). Finite earth and heaven are far too small a container for the Infinite God. Yet, when he comes as the Incarnate One, he enters this world in the cramped quarters of a stable.

In stanzas 3 and 4 there is again a vivid contrast. In heaven the angelic worship of Christ’s glorious being is never-ending and unceasing. But when he comes to dwell on this earth, Christina depicts him as content with the worship of animals—though we might well ask, did the animals worship?—and of his virgin mother. Were there angels to worship at the birthplace of Christ? We are not told so in the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. But, in this regard, see Hebrews 1:6. Also note that Christina makes it clear that his mother worshipped him, a clearly Protestant note.

But central to Christina’s meditation on the meaning of Christmas is not simply its mysterious paradoxes, but this question: how should we properly respond to the coming of Jesus Christ, the Lord God Almighty, into our world? The shepherds and the Magi have gifts that match the parts they play in the Christmas story—but what of us, what can we give? Christina sees herself as having nothing to give, for she is “poor.” Her poverty is her whole self.

But she, and we, can give to him something unique and therefore doubly precious: our hearts, the centre and core of our beings. As she wrote in A Carol for Children:

I must be like those good Wise Men
With heavenward heart and look:
But shall I give no gifts to God?
What precious gifts they took!

Lord, I will give my love to Thee,
Than gold much costlier,
Sweeter to Thee than frankincense,
More prized than choicest myrrh…

Constantinople

When Gregory of Nazianzus came to Constantinople in 379 he found the orthodox community in the city both fragmented and extremely tiny, not only because Arianism had long dominated the city, but also because other parties, inimical to orthodoxy, had established themselves within the city, e.g., the Eunomians, the Apollinarians, the Novatians, and the Pneumatomachi. Consequently, upon his arrival at Constantinople, Nazianzen commenced the re-organization of the small orthodox community and to this end, he dedicated a private home to be used as their church.

From this small church, which Nazianzen called Anastasia, the theologian, combining his rhetorical education and innate love of words with a deep desire to proclaim the truth, expounded the Nicene faith to “enraptured audiences.” Central in his exposition of orthodoxy and attack on “the new theology” of the Eunomian and the Pneumatomachi, were the Theological Orations, delivered between July and November of 380.

Prior to Theodosius’ triumphant entry into Constantinople on 24 November 380, Nazianzen’s position had not been official. But upon the Emperor’s arrival, the Arian bishop Demophilus was expelled and Nazianzen installed as bishop in the Church of the Apostles. Theodosius was determined to establish the eastern Church on the bedrock of Nicaea. To this end he convened a council in Constantinople in the spring of 381. This council re-affirmed the Nicene Creed (in a confession of faith no longer extant), and added clauses directed against various heretics, including Eunomius, the Pneumatomachi and Apollinaris. Furthermore, the Council recognized Nazianzen as the rightful bishop of Constantinople.

But Nazianzen’s episcopacy was to be very brief, cut short by the ecclesiastical squabbles and intrigue that attended this council. The first president of the council was Meletius of Antioch, a major protagonist in a schism that had divided the Nicene community of Antioch for a number of years. When he died, shortly after the opening of the council, Nazianzen was made president, and, in an attempt to placate the two Antiochene parties, he proposed that Paulinus, Meletius’ rival claimant to the see, be recognised as Meletius’ successor.

This proposal brought a storm of criticism, in which Nazianzen’s own position as bishop of Constantinople was called into question. Timothy of Alexandria declared that Nazianzen, by transferring his see from Sasima to Constantinople, had technically violated the Nicene canon that prohibited the transference of sees. Nazianzen, wearied and disgusted by the endless intrigue and dissension, decided to quit the eastern capital and retire to his family estates at Arianzus. Now, his sole desire was to spend the remainder of his life in quiet seclusion. But the days of his pastoral ministry were not yet at an end.

Responding to Apollinaris and final days

Upon his return to Cappadocia, he had to administer the still-vacant see of Nazianzus (vacant since his departure for Seleucia in 374). This brief period of pastoral administration witnessed Nazianzen’s growing concern with the spread of the teachiong of Apollinaris—who had fought for Nicence orthodoxy alongside Athanasius, but whos understanding of the Incarnation was deeply flawed. At least two of the three Theological Letters belong to this period. Nazianzen’s great longing for permanent retirement was finally realised when Theodore, archbishop of Tyana, appointed a successor to Nazianzen, his cousin Eulalius.

On his family estates in Arianzus, Nazianzen spent the last years of his life in spiritual contemplation, in writing poetry and in an extensive correspondence with his friends. He died in 390.

Personality

For some scholars the motif of “flight from and return to the world” best characterises Nazianzen’s life. Yet, this motif is but the external form of Nazianzen’s attempt to synthesize both his longing for the contemplative life and his desire to be of practical use to the Church.

The failure to attain this synthesis is all too evident in, e.g., Nazianzen’s flights from pastoral ministry in 362 and 372, and then again in his decision to leave Constantinople in 381. On the other hand, the success of the synthesis is best seen in the classic statement on the ministry (Oration 2), in the Theological Orations and the Theological Letters, in the spiritual counsel evident in the letters of his final retirement and in his doctrinal poems. These writings show that Nazianzen, concerned for the nurture of the Church of his day, drew upon a deep well of spirituality, the source of which lay in contemplative solitude.

Denis Meehan has described Nazianzen as a man “almost abnormal in his capacity for being hurt.” It was this characteristic which was largely instrumental in provoking the argument with Basil over the bishopric of Sasima, and which, later, hastened his departure from Constantinople.

The other side of this characteristic must not, however, be overlooked, i.e., his great capacity for “filial, fraternal and friendly love.” Far from being a drawback, this characteristic enabled Nazianzen to achieve a large measure of success in his endeavour to synthesize the active and contemplative modes of life. On the one hand, his hypersensitivity prevented him from becoming enmeshed in the ecclesiastical politics of his day. On the other hand, his great need for friendship would not allow him to withdraw permanently into seclusion but gave him the desire to benefit the church with his theological learning.

Early life

Gregory Nazianzen (c.329-390), was the eldest son and namesake of a member of the Cappadocian curial class. After he had completed his early education in the didaskaleia of Cappadocia, Nazianzen went on to study philosophy and rhetoric at the university of Athens. He had been there but a short time, when a former acquaintance, Basil of Caesarea (c.329-379), arrived. Although opposites in temperament, these two Cappadocians shared a common view about the ideal Christian life, and they became fast friends.

After his return to Cappadocia (c.356-357), Nazianzen joined Basil at the latter’s retreat at Annesoi in Pontus, where Nazianzen devoted himself, on and off for a couple of years, to the practice of coenobitic asceticism. Eventually, the literary fruit of the two friends’ endeavour was to be the Philocalia, a selection of choice passages from the works of the third-century exegete Origen. However, Nazianzen’s contemplative way of life was rudely interrupted when his father, now aged and desirous of aid in carrying out his pastoral duties, had his son forcibly ordained presbyter, c.361-362. Grieved by what Nazianzen later called “this act of tyranny” [De Vita Sua, 1ines 545-549 (PG 37.1067)], Nazianzen fled to the solitude of Basil’s Pontic retreat. He returned to his father’s diocese before Easter 362 to assume his presbyter duties and gave a lengthy sermon explaining the reasons for his flight and return, which became a classic study of the ministry.

Later forcibly compelled by his friend Basil of Caesarea to accept the see of Sasima. Nazianzen again fled this time to the solitude of a nearby mountain range. Refusing to accept the see, he returned to Nazianzus, where he remained as auxiliary bishop until his father’s death in 374. When his mother died shortly thereafter, Nazianzen, still an earnest seeker after the contemplative life, decided to retire to the monastery of St. Thecla at Seleucia in Sauria.

Called to defend the Trinity

However, eventually Nazianzen left retirement to go to Constantinople and into the eye of the theological storm that was raging regarding the doctrine of the Trinity, the great theological debate of the fourth century. Why?

In his De Vita Sua, he gives the following reasons:

“The grace of the Spirit sent us
For many bishops and sheep were calling us
To be a helper of the people and assistant of the Word…”
[De Vita Sua, lines 595-598 (PG 37.1070)].

On the one hand, he was called by the orthodox community of Constantinople, and on the other, by the “bishops.” Some scholars understand the latter to be not only the bishops of the district surrounding Constantinople, but also Basil and Meletius of Antioch. Pierre Batiffol builds on this, when he writes: “It is not improbable that he (Nazianzen) was the envoy of Meletius, the bishop of Antioch, or else that of Basil in his final days.”

X. Hürth has further asserted that Nazianzen arrived in Constantinople even before Basil’s death on January 1, 379. Both Paul Gallay and Christoph Jungck have, nevertheless, decisively shown that Nazianzen went to Constantinople only after the death of Basil, although it is probable that Basil in his final days advised him to go.

But why did the orthodox believers of Constantinople and the bishops call Nazianzen to be the pastor of the Nicene community in that city? A couple of reasons are clearly discernible. First of all, there was the death of the Emperor Valens, the protector of the Arians, in the disastrous rout near Hadrianopolis in Thrace (August 9, 378), and the succession to the purple by the orthodox Spaniard, Theodosius. The orthodox communities of the east once more began to re-assert their strength, so that by the year 379 nearly every important ecclesiastical centre, except Constantinople, was in the hands of orthodox bishops.

Second, although the Arians in Constantinople, under their bishop Demophilus, possessed authentic popular support, the orthodox community had received fresh hope with the accession of Theodosius; they lacked only a leader. Basil or Meletius of Antioch, the foremost leaders of the Nicene party in the east, would have been ideal choices, but both were attached to their respective sees, and by 379 Basil was dead. But Nazianzen, a friend of both Basil and Meletius, was as good as either of these men, and furthermore, he was not formally attached to any see.

Consequently, Nazianzen was invited, and after initial refusals, he accepted. It may be asked what was the major reason behind Nazianzen’s acceptance, for the forceful insistence of the delegation from Constantinople was certainly not the sole, nor prime, reason for Nazianzen’s acquiescence. It has been suggested that the thought of doing good was a sufficient reason for him to go. At the deeper level it is possible that after Basil’s death Nazianzen saw himself as the heir of Basil’s labours in the defence of the truth about the Trinity, and that this was the decisive factor which led him to leave his cell to go to Constantinople.

Although my list of Eminent Christians has focused on well-known figures (and some not so well-known), I would not wish to give the impression that only such are vital for the kingdom and its advance.

I take it as a cardinal rule of doing church history—see Romans 16:1-16 and 1 Corinthians 12 for corroboration—that every believer’s life is of value and has meaning and plays a role. I suspect that this is why I am just as interested in men like Eusebius of Samosata, Hercules Collins and William Fraser as I am in Basil of Caesarea, Benjamin Keach and Robert Haldane.

Just a word about the series “Eminent Christians.” It started in this blog back on Janaury 30, 2006, as a response to The Church Report’s list of what they considered to be “The 50 Most Influential Christians in America.” As was said then, “It is a surprising list, to say the least, both with regard to those who made the cut and those who did not!”

Eight months later this alternative list is only up to #12. But, Deus vult, I do hope that this alternate list will be populated with 50 names of truly influential believers.

The facts of Augustine’s early life are well-known, because he wrote them down in his Confessions, one of the most famous of his books. Augustine was born on November 13, 354, the son—perhaps the eldest; we know of a brother Navigius and a sister—of a pagan father, Patricius, and Christian mother, Monica. The fourth century was an age of mixed marriages at this level of society, in which devout Christian women like Monica were often to be found praying for the conversion of their irreligious husbands. Her prayers were not unavailing; Patricius accepted baptism on his deathbed.

Patricius was a municipal official and small property-holder at Thagaste in Numidia. Aspiring to better his lower middle-class family, Patricius sacrificed in order to give his son the sort of liberal education that would lead him into an honoured position in Roman society.

Augustine thus studied first at Thagaste, and afterwards at Carthage, where he went to university in 371 at the age of 17. He was to remain there until 383. His father, who became a believer late in life, seems to have had little influence on his son. On the other hand, his mother Monica was a devout Christian, one whose prayers were used of God to bring her son to Christ.

Before he left for Carthage, Monica warned him earnestly not to engage in fornication and above all never to contemplate committing the sin of adultery. But, Augustine said, “I went to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust… My real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul. I was not aware of this hunger.”

Given a love for wisdom

In his first year at Carthage Augustine led what many might regard as a typical life of a student: enjoying the bawdy theatre of the day, using sex in search of love, consorting with a group called the Eversores—“the Smashers.” Within two years all had changed though. He had taken a concubine to live with—this arrangement was not regarded as scandalous by pagan Roman society, since many pagans of the upper and middle classes would have such an arrangement with a social inferior until the complicated arrangements for a financially advantageous match with some girl of their own class could be made. He had a son by her—Adeodatus (“Gift from God”). And he had been smitten by a desire to find the truth after reading the dialogue Hortensius by Cicero. This book, since lost and known only from fragments quoted by Augustine and other ancient writers, was a protreptic, that is, a treatise designed to inspire in the reader an enthusiasm for the discipline of philosophy. Through all his other vagaries of interest and allegiance, until the time of Augustine’s conversion to Christianity Cicero would remain the one master from whom the young African learned the most in terms of literary style.

Seeking for wisdom and truth, Augustine fell prey to a cult called Manichaeism. Founded by a Persian named Mani (216-276), who claimed that the Holy Spirit had come upon him in such a way as to reveal hidden mysteries to him and with the result that Mani was wholly united with the Spirit. The end result? Mani was the promised Paraclete of John 14-16 and the Holy Spirit spoke through him.

The views promoted by the Manichaens familiar to Augustine were very similar to Gnosticism—combining a radical cosmological dualism with ascetic practices. Little fragments of God were scattered throughout the universe, in both animals and plants, a result of the war between good and evil. Melons and cucumbers were considered to contain a particularly large amount of divinity, and were therefore prominent in the Manichaean diet. Mani, moreover, regarded the lower half of the body as the disgusting work of the devil, and thus viewed sexuality as the devil’s invention. Celibacy was encouraged, and having children frowned upon.

Augustine was a member of this cult for roughly 9 years, from 372 to 383. Augustine was too brilliant to settle for such vacuous theology for long. His most poignant moment of disillusion is recounted in the Confessions, when he finally met Faustus, the Manichee sage who would (Augustine had been promised) finally answer all the questions that troubled Augustine. When the man finally turned up, he proved to be half-educated and incapable of more than reciting a more complex set of slogans than his local disciples had known.

The impact of Ambrose’s witness

In 383, at the age of 28, Augustine moved to Rome to reach the apex of his career ambitions. Rome of the fourth century was no longer a city with political or military significance for the Roman empire, but nobody at the time dared say such a thing.

Augustine was seeking academic prestige, the emptiest of glories. But in Rome everything went wrong: his health began to suffer, his students would not pay their fees, and soon he became quite discouraged. Finally, hearing of a professorship in Milan he moved to northern Italy in 384 and rented a home belonging to a man named Verecundus. There his mother Monica joined him along with his common-law wife (whom he never names), Adeodatus, his brother Navigius, and two life-long African friends, Alypius and Evodius.

At the same time he started to go back to church. The pastor of the congregation with whom he was worshipping was Ambrose (c.340-397), the bishop of Milan and a famous preacher. Augustine found in Ambrose a man whose piety was fused with an intellect matching his own. Here Christianity began to appear to him in a new, intellectually acceptable light.

Slowly God began to bring conviction regarding his sinful ways into his heart. Describing Ambrose’s preaching, Augustine says this: “I was all ears to seize upon his eloquence, I also began to sense the truth of what he said, though only gradually. …I thrilled with love and dread alike. I realized that I was far away from you…and, far off, I heard your voice saying I am the God who IS.”

This experience, though, was not yet what we would call conversion. In Augustine’s own words: “I was astonished that although I now loved you…I did not persist in enjoyment of my God. Your beauty drew me to you, but soon I was dragged away from you by my own weight and in dismay I plunged again into the things of this world.”

Wrestling with sin

The central thing in what Augustine calls “the things of this world: was his relationship with his concubine/common-law wife. Now, Monica, his mother, had come to Milan with the express purpose of persuading her son to give this woman up and preparing for a proper marriage with a well-to-do Christian woman. Augustine gave in to his mother’s sinful suggestion and sent his concubine of fifteen years back to Africa. “The woman with whom I had been living,” Augustine later wrote in his Confessions, “was torn from my side as an obstacle to my marriage and this was a blow which crushed my heart to bleeding, because I loved her dearly. She went back to Africa, vowing never to give herself to any other man. …But I was too unhappy and too weak to imitate this example set me… I took another mistress, without the sanction of wedlock.”

This is the immediate background to Augustine’s conversion in 386. One day in August of that year, while Augustine was labouring under deep conviction of sin, a fellow North African, Ponticianus, came to see him. In his Confessions 8.6-12 he tells the story of what transpired that day as God converted him to himself (Confessions 8.12). It really needs to be read entire, for no adequate summary can do it justice.

In the spring of 387, at the Easter vigil service on the night of Holy Saturday, Augustine was baptized by Ambrose. Many people at that time, when Christianity was the fashionable road to success in the Christian empire, may have taken such a step casually and returned to their old ways, but Augustine was not one of them.

Presbyter and bishop

That autumn Monica died at Ostia, rejoicing in the knowledge that her son was safe in Christ. In 388 Augustine made his way back to Africa, hoping to establish a kind of philosophical monastery for himself and his friends at Thagaste.

But God had quite different plans. When, in 391, he was visiting the coastal town of Hippo Regius, some 150 miles from Thagaste, he was grabbed by the congregation and ordained as elder/presbyter. In a sermon that he preached in the city much later, Augustine recalled this important event:

“A slave may not contradict his Lord. I came to this city to see a friend, whom I thought I might gain for God, that he might live with us in the monastery. I felt secure, for the place already had a bishop. I was grabbed. I was made an elder…and from there, I became your bishop.”

He broke into tears as they laid hands on him in the church and his calling became clear. Agustine asked his new bishop, Valerius, for a little time to prepare himself for his duties. Now, he devoted himself to the mastery of Scripture that made him a formidable theologian in the decades to come. His abilities were quickly recognized, and by 393 he was being asked to preach sermons in place of his bishop, who was a Greek speaker by birth. The old man died in 395 and Augustine assumed responsibility for the church at Hippo the following year. He would remain at this post until his death thirty-four years later.

Augustine the author

Conventional accounts sketch Augustine’s career in terms of the controversies in which he took part. But at the centre of his ministry was daily preaching; presiding at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper; the leadership of elders and other clergy in Hippo; extensive travel in North Africa to minister to Christians and debate with heretics; copious correspondence with Christians throughout the Empire; and a life-time of writing and commenting on Scripture. He produced the largest corpus to survive of any ancient author. This corpus was catalogued a few years before Augustine’s death by Augustine himself in his Retractiones, best translated Reconsiderations. As Otto Bird has noted: “Augustine was…a very bookish person. Reading and writing meant a great deal to him. [“Saint Augustine on Reading”, The Great Ideas Today (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1988), 135].

Of his vast amount of books, three are central to understanding his thought and the impact of that thought upon the history of the West: the Confessions (397-401), the City of God (413-426) and On the Trinity (399-419). Outside of Scripture, the books of no other figure had a greater impact on Christian thought down to the time of the Reformation than Augustine. It can be said of him with regard to the realm of theology what Cassius says of Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar: “he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs” [Julius Caesar Act I, Scene 2, lines 135-137].

Augustine died on 28 August, 430, with the city of Hippo Regius being besieged by a Germanic people known as the Vandals, who were originally from the region of the Baltic Sea. We are thankful to God that they did not destroy the greatest North African theologian’s library in their sack of the city.

Pick almost any recent hymnal, look in the index that lists the authors of the hymns, and the name “Isaac Watts” will usually have a long list of hymns beside it. During his life, Watts penned over 600 hymns, and through them has powerfully shaped the way English-speaking Evangelicals worship God.

Early years

Watts was born to Christian parents in Southampton, England, on July 17, 1674. His father, who was also named Isaac, was a prosperous clothier as well as being a schoolmaster. A deacon in the local Congregationalist church, later known as Above Bar Congregational Church, the elder Watts suffered imprisonment at least twice for refusing to give up worship with this church. From 1660 to 1688 the Congregationalists, along with other groups outside of the Church of England, found themselves in the fierce fire of persecution, when a series of laws were passed which made it illegal to worship in any other setting but that of the Church of England. Of Watts’ mother, Sarah Taunton, we know little beyond the fact that she was of French Huguenot descent and after Isaac’s birth would nurse him while visiting her husband in prison.

The younger Watts experienced what he later described as “considerable convictions of sin” when he was fourteen. Happily, they issued in a sound conversion in 1689. The following year he went to London to spend four years studying in a theological seminary. After graduation in 1694 he went back to live with his parents in Southampton for two years or so. Apparently it was during this time in Southampton that he began to write hymns.

London pastor

In October of 1696 he took a position as the tutor of the household of a wealthy Nonconformist by the name of John Hartopp (d.1722), one of the most eminent English Congregationalists during that era. Watts preached his first sermon in 1698 and four years later was called to be the pastor of what was the most influential and wealthiest Congregationalist church in London, Mark Lane Congregational Church, which he served for the rest of his life.

A serious illness in 1712 brought Watts to the home of Sir Thomas and Lady Mary Abney, at Theobalds, near Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. Watts had intended on staying only until he recovered his health, but he ended up remaining with this family till his death thirty-six years later, tutoring the children and pastoring his nearby church when he was physically able.

An assistant minister, Samuel Price, was appointed early on in Watts’ pastorate, enabling Watts to give significant amounts of time to study and writing when he was not ill. Watts never married. After a proposal of marriage was turned down by Elizabeth Singer (d.1737), also an accomplished poet, he never again seriously contemplated the married estate.

Writing hymns

Watts’ literary activity up until around 1720 was primarily in the realm of poetry. By way of contrast, during his final twenty-eight years Watts almost exclusively devoted himself to writing prose. According to reliable tradition, his first incentive to write hymns came when he complained to his father of the general poverty of the psalmody in their Southampton church. His father’s response was a challenge to his son to do better. As history attests Watts did indeed do better, so much so that he is often called “the Father of English hymnody.”

In 1707 Watts published his first collection of hymns, entitled Hymns and Spiritual Songs, one of the earliest English hymnals. It was in this collection that such great hymns as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” first appeared. Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, a recasting of the psalms in the light of the New Testament for the purpose of public worship, came in 1719. In Watts’ words, in this particular book he chose not “to express the ancient Sense and Meaning of David, but have rather exprest myself as I may suppose David would have done, had he lived in the Days of Christianity.” Good examples of such “Christian paraphrases” of the Psalms would include “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” based on Psalm 90 and “Jesus Shall Reign,” drawn from Psalm 72.

Watts & George Thomson

A small idea of the impact of Watts can be found in a letter written to him by a certain George Thomson (1698-1782), the Anglican vicar of St. Gennys, a windswept village in North Cornwall perched atop cliffs overlooking the Atlantic. Writing to Watts in 1736, Thomson said:

“Poet, Divine, Saint, the delight, the guide the wonder of the virtuous world; permit, Reverend Sir, a stranger unknown, and likely to be for ever unknown, to desire one blessing from you in a private way. ’Tis this, that when you approach the Throne of Grace, and lift up holy hands, when you get closest to the Mercy-seat, and wrestle mightily for the peace of Jerusalem, you would breathe one petition for my soul’s health. In return I promise you a share for life in my unworthy prayers, who honour you as a father and a brother (though differently ordered) and conclude myself,

Your affectionate humble Servant,
George Thomson.”

[Cited Donald Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 49].

It may well have been something of a surprise to Watts to have received this letter of adulation from an Anglican minister. Thomson’s remark about his being “differently ordered” reflects this ecclesial difference between writer and recipient. As such, the effusive, and by our standards far too flowery, praise that Thomson lavishes on Watts is particularly noteworthy. In fact, Thomson confesses, Watts’ hymns were the medium by which God made him a “father” and mentor in the Christian life for the Anglican vicar.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born into a godly home in the heart of rural Essex on June 19, 1834. Spurgeon’s forebears originally came from the Netherlands, which they had left in the 1500s due to religious persecution. Both Spurgeon’s father, John Spurgeon, and his grandfather, James Spurgeon, were Congregationalist preachers, and it was during an extended stay over a number of years in the home of his grandfather that Spurgeon discovered a library of Puritan folios.

Despite Spurgeon’s tender years and the fact that as a young child he found it very difficult to lift these large and weighty Puritan volumes, he would later write that as a boy he was never happier than when in the company of these Puritan authors. In time Spurgeon would be rightly convinced that commitment to the Calvinism and the spirituality of the Puritans was vital for the orthodoxy and well-being of Baptist churches.

However, despite such godly surroundings it was not until January, 1850, that Spurgeon was soundly converted. Four months later, Spurgeon, with the agreement of his Congregationalist parents, was baptized in the River Lark not far from Isleham in Cambridgeshire. After his baptism Spurgeon found an unquenchable desire to serve Christ. He began to speak in more public settings, and his compelling preaching soon led to an invitation to pastor the Baptist church in Waterbeach, a small hamlet a few miles northeast of Cambridge. Spurgeon laboured here from the autumn of 1851 to April, 1854. In those two and a half years the membership of the small Baptist chapel more than doubled, going from 40 to 100.

Hearing of his scintillating preaching, the deacons of Park Street Chapel, an historic London Baptist congregation, invited him to preach on December 11, 1853. The congregation who heard Spurgeon that Sunday were thrilled with his preaching and the deacons quickly arranged for Spurgeon to return three Sundays in January, 1854. He was subsequently invited to supply the pulpit for several months, and in April of that year, at the age of nineteen, he accepted a call to be the pastor of the church.

The church was built to seat 1,200, but it soon proved far too small for the crowds that sought to sit under Spurgeon’s preaching. In 1855 the chapel was consequently expanded to seat 1,500. A year later, however, this renovated chapel had also been outgrown, and the decision was made to build what would become known as the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Completed in 1861, the Tabernacle could seat 5,000 and accommodate another 1,000 standing. For the rest of Spurgeon’s pastorate the Tabernacle saw an average of 5,000 at each Sunday morning and evening service. And while Spurgeon and his fellow elders were careful not to make a huge membership their goal—indeed Spurgeon had a healthy distrust of all such statistics—14,691 were added to the church during Spurgeon’s time there, of which roughly 10,800 were by conversion and baptism.

Spurgeon’s success as a preacher certainly owed little to his physical appearance, for he was of average height, fairly stout as he grew older, and had two unduly prominent front teeth. In the words of a certain Monckton Milnes: “When he went into the pulpit, he might be taken for a hairdresser’s assistant; when he left it he was an inspired apostle.” Augustine Birrell records that when he went to hear Spurgeon preach the only seat he could find was in the topmost gallery, between a woman eating an orange and a man sucking peppermints. Finding this combination of odours unendurable, he was about to leave, when, he said, “I heard a voice and forgot all else.” In the words of recent biographer Mike Nicholls, Spurgeon possessed one of the great speaking voices of his age, musical and combining compass, flexibility and power.”

Spurgeon, though, looked to quite a different source for the blessings which attended his ministry. In a speech which he gave at a celebration held in honour of his fiftieth birthday in 1884, the Baptist preacher forthrightly declared that the blessing which he had enjoyed in his pastorate “must be entirely attributed to the grace of God, and to the working of God’s Holy Spirit…Let that stand as a matter, not only taken for granted, but as a fact distinctly recognized.”

Spurgeon died in 1892 at Menton, a resort on the French Riviera not far from the Italian border, where he had annually taken vacations since the mid-1870s. Spurgeon had come there as an ill man with his wife in October of that year in the hope that a change of scenery and weather would facilitate a recovery of health. It was not to be. The Prince of Preachers died in the last hour on the final day of January, 1892.

And although Spurgeon’s voice was stilled in 1892, through the ongoing publication of his sermons the Holy Spirit continues to honour Spurgeon’s ministry and to draw sinners through them to know and to worship the Triune God. Little wonder that the twentieth-century Lutheran preacher and theologian Helmut Thielicke once suggested with regard to Spurgeon’s sermons: “Sell all you have…and go buy Spurgeon.”

We know more about Basil of Caesarea (c.330-379) than any other Christian of the Ancient Church apart from Augustine of Hippo. Central to our knowledge of his life is a marvellous collection of some 350 letters.

Basil was born around 330 in the Roman province of Cappadocia (now central Turkey). His family were fairly well-to-do, his father, also called Basil, being a teacher of rhetoric (i.e. the art of public speaking), and his mother, Emmelia, coming from landed aristocracy. The family’s Christianity can be traced back to Basil’s paternal grandmother, Macrina, who was converted under the preaching of Gregory Thaumaturgus, one of the students of the Alexandrian exegete Origen (died c.254). The family thus had a predilection for Origenist spirituality and thought.

Of Basil’s eight siblings we know the names of five: Macrina (c.327-c.379), Naucratius, Peter, later the bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, and Gregory of Nyssa (died c.395), one of the leading theologians of the fourth century.

Friendship with Gregory of Nazianzus

Basil went to school in Caesarea, as well as in Constantinople, and then, in 350 or so, he went to study in Athens, where he became a close friend of Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329-c.389), who, along with Basil, and his brother Gregory of Nyssa, are sometimes called the Cappadocian Fathers. Nazianzus later recalled his friendship with Basil during this time together as students:

“In studies, in lodgings, in discussions I had him as companion. …We had all things in common,… But above all it was God, of course, and a mutual desire for higher things, that drew us to each other. As a result we reached such a pitch of confidence that we revealed the depths of our hearts, becoming ever more united in our yearning.” [De vita sua 225ff., trans. Denise Molaise Meehan, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: Three Poems (The Fathers of the Church, vol. 75; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 83-84].

Given this estimation of friendship, it is no surprise that Gregory could also state: “If anyone were to ask me, ‘What is the best thing in life?’, I would answer, ‘Friends’.” [Carolinne White, Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 70].

Conversion and a monastic calling

In 356 Basil returned to Caesarea, hoping to open a school of rhetoric. His older sister Macrina, however, challenged him to give his life unreservedly to Christ. So it was in that same year that Basil was converted. In his own words:

“I wasted nearly all of my youth in the vain labour which occupied me in the acquisition of the teachings of that wisdom which God has made foolish. Then at last, as if roused from a deep sleep, I looked at the wonderful light of the truth of the gospel, and I perceived the worthlessness of the wisdom of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to destruction. After I had mourned deeply for my miserable life I prayed that guidance be given to me for my introduction to the precepts of piety.” (Letter 223.2).

Basil’s conversion to Christ was also a conversion to a monastic lifestyle. Basil never had the impression that the monastic lifestyle was for every believer. Yet, he did believe that in fourth-century Graeco-Roman society—where, since the toleration of Christianity by Constantine, many were now flocking into the church for base motives—monasticism was a needed force for church renewal.

In time, during the 360s, Basil became a leading figure in the establishment of monastic communities, which he sought to model after the experience of the Jerusalem church as it is depicted in the early chapters of Acts.

Labours as a bishop

After founding a number of monasteries, he was ordained an elder in the church at Caesarea, Cappadocia, in the mid-360s. He became bishop of Caesarea in 370. As a bishop Basil was an ardent activist for personal and ecclesial holiness:

• He was fearless in denouncing evil wherever he found it within the Church. For instance, he fought simony.

• He was also fearless in denouncing evil in society as a whole. For example, he was not afraid to excommunicate those involved in the prostitution trade in Cappadocia.

• He established hospitals—the first hospitals in the ancient world apart from those attached to the Roman army

Inheriting the mantle of Athanasius

But Basil was not only a Christian activist. He was also a clear-headed theologian. Basil inherited the mantle of Athanasius (died 373), the great defender of Trinitarian Christianity. Arianism, which Athanasius had combatted, was still widespread in the eastern Mediterranean. There is little doubt that Basil played a key role in the victory of orthodox Trinitarianism over Arianism, which denied the deity of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, in this region of the Roman Empire. For instance, in one of his earliest books, written around 363 or 364, Basil attacked the views of Arian theologian by the name of Eunomius (c.335-393/395), and defended the full deity of the Son and the Spirit.

His great Trinitarian achievement, though, lay in the realm of pneumatology. While there are a number of books on the person and work of Christ in the early centuries of the Church, it was not until Basil wrote his On the Holy Spirit in 375 that there was a book specifically devoted to the person of the Spirit of God.

The break with Eustathius of Sebaste

In the early 370s, though, Basil found himself locked in combat with professing Christians, who, though they confessed the full deity of Christ, denied that the Spirit was fully God. Leading these “fighters against the Spirit” (Pneumatomachi), as they came to be called, was one of his former friends, indeed the man who had been his mentor when he first became a Christian in 356, Eustathius of Sebaste (c.300-377).

Eustathius’ interest in the Spirit seems to have been focused on the Spirit’s work, not his person. For him, the Holy Spirit was primarily a divine gift within the Spirit-filled person, One who produced holiness. When, on one occasion at a synod in 364, he was pressed to say what he thought of the Spirit’s nature, he replied: “I neither chose to name the Holy Spirit God nor dare to call him a creature”!

For a number of years, Basil sought to win Eustathius over to the orthodox position. Finally, in the summer of 373 he met with him for an important two-day colloquy. After much discussion and prayer, Eustathius agreed to sign a statement of faith in which it was stated that:

“[We] must anathematize all who call the Holy Spirit a creature, and …all who do not confess that he is holy by nature, as the Father is holy by nature and the Son is holy by nature, and refuse him his place in the blessed divine nature. …We have been taught that the Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father, and we confess him to be of God without creation” (Basil, Letter 125).

A second meeting was arranged for the autumn of 373, at which Eustathius would sign this declaration in the presence of a number of Christian leaders. But on the way home from his meeting with Basil, Eustathius was convinced by some of his friends that Basil was theologically in error. For the next two years Eustathius crisscrossed what is now modern Turkey denouncing Basil, and claiming that he was the heretic, one who believed that there were absolutely no distinctions between the persons of the Godhead.

Basil was so stunned by what had transpired that he kept his peace for close to two years. Finally, he simply felt that he had to speak. His words were those of the one most important books of the entire patristic period, On the Holy Spirit.

On the Holy Spirit (375)

After showing why Christians believe in the deity of Christ (chapters 1-8), Basil devotes the heart of the treatise to demonstrating from Scripture why the Spirit is to be recognized as God (chapters 10-27). The Spirit gives insight into divine mysteries, since he plumbs the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:10), something only that One who is fully divine could do. He enables men and women to confess the true identity of Christ and worship him (1 Corinthians 12:3). He gives spiritual gifts “as he wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11), an indication of his sovereign lordship over the church. He is omnipresent (Psalm 139:7), an attribute possessed only by God. He is implicitly called “God” by Peter (Acts 5:3-4).

In the words of chapter 9, which introduces Basil’s study of the Spirit’s person and work in Scripture, Basil states by way of anticipation what he will seek to show:

“He perfects all other beings, but he himself lacks nothing… He does not grow or increase, but is immediate fulness, firmly established in himself, and omnipresent… From him comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, comprehension of hidden realities, distribution of spiritual gifts, the heavenly citizenship,…everlasting joy, abiding in God… Such then, to mention only a few of many, are the conceptions about the Spirit which we have been taught by the oracles of the Spirit themselves [i.e. the Scriptures] to hold about his greatness, his dignity and his activities.”

Basil died in 379, worn out by hard work and illness, the latter probably associated with the liver.

Basil and the Creed

Two years later, the Council of Constantinople (381) incorporated Basil’s defence of the Spirit’s essential deity into the credal statement known as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed or what is simply called the Nicene Creed. The article on the Spirit, deeply indebted to Basil’s On the Holy Spirit, was probably written by Basil’s younger brother Gregory of Nyssa.

This article is a landmark statement in the history of the church and runs thus: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, who spoke through the prophets.” Thus did Basil’s faithful witness to the Spirit bear fruit that has stood the test of time, for it is solidly biblical.

In an article that appeared in a 1999 issue of the National Post entitled “Scotland’s Gifts to Canada,” author David Olive noted that “few countries have felt the impact of the Scottish diaspora more powerfully than Canada.” He went on to list sixteen Scottish pioneers who came to Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries and made enormous contributions to this country. What is striking about Olive’s list, though, is the omission of any Christian leaders. And yet the majority of the Scottish emigrants who crossed the Atlantic were deeply religious individuals and passionate about their Christian faith. Consider the eminent Gaelic-speaking Highlander William Fraser (1801-1883), who emigrated to Glengarry County, Ontario, in 1831.

Converted in 1817 in the Scottish Highlands, Fraser had studied for a couple of years in the 1820s, and then became for a period of time an itinerant preacher. He appears to have had “a herculean physical frame.” Trekking over the wildest of hillsides in all types of weather would have built up further reserves of physical fortitude and stamina, which would serve Fraser in good stead later during his pastorate in the Ottawa Valley.

Between the last quarter of the eighteenth century and 1870 various waves of emigration swept over the Gaelic-speaking Highlands which transplanted entire communities of Highlanders to the American continent. It has been estimated that during this period some 185,000 Scots left their homeland for Canada. Among them was William Fraser. While many of those who emigrated did so for land and worldly aspirations, the motivation that led Fraser to Canada was the opportunity to expand the Kingdom of Christ.

Fraser arrived at Breadalbane Baptist Church in the Ottawa Valley in the summer of 1831. But things were not well in the church and by 1834 Fraser had become quite despondent. A fellow Scotsman and Baptist minister by the name of John Gilmour visited him in the summer of 1834 and sought to encourage him. There must be fire in the pulpit, Gilmour admonished his friend, before there will be a blaze among the congregation. Fraser evidently took this admonition to heart. Fraser threw himself back into the work at Breadlabane. That fall and winter, the year 1834, there was a large-scale awakening throughout the region around Breadalbane. Between August and December, 1834, Fraser baptized fifty-eight new converts. By the fall of 1835 over one hundred had been converted and brought into the membership of the Breadalbane church.

Fraser also took extensive preaching tours throughout Glengarry county, often preaching in Gaelic since many of the settlers in this region were from the Highlands. In the Breadalbane church itself Sunday services were held in both Gaelic and English, the services following each other with only a few minutes’ interval. Both services together would take three hours, and sometimes more on special occasions.

Ever the pioneer church planter, Fraser made the decision to leave Breadalbane in 1850 and head west to Illinois. But he got no further than Bruce County. Initially, he lived on a farm adjoining Kincardine, where he held services in his own home in Gaelic and English. Eventually he moved to Tiverton, where he gathered a congregation of Baptists. When Fraser resigned this pastorate due to age and infirmity in October, 1875, the church membership stood at 354, a figure which would not have included members dismissed to form other Baptist churches in the area or those who might either have died or moved away from the district altogether. It is an amazing feat given the fact that Tiverton at the time was but a small village. About twenty years later, T.T. Shields preached some of his first sermons in this church.

Fraser died in 1883 after he had gone out to Manitoba to evangelize a community of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. The trip proved too much for the old man. To his last breath the kingdom of Christ and its extension were his passion.