in our previous history session we began with acts and we looked at the role of spiritual gifts in the churches not just in corinth where we often assume we should look but in corinth in ephesus and caesarea accessory and antioch recognizing that luke's just recording little snippets but giving us these clues of what was going on when it comes to spiritual gifts and the role of the holy spirit empowering the church with signs and wonders to spread the gospel the reality is is that though we have some trajectories we see in acts our sources as we discussed from say 7080 to 135 those two generations after the apostles are pretty scant what we did was we made the argument that in the age of the apostles spiritual gifts were present not only in outliers like court but all across the christian world whether in greece or anatolia or syria uh or north africa we argue that the spiritual gifts were the price of spiritual gifts were normative in the early church but beyond that in that shadowy age those two generations after the death of the apostles we also argued from the limited documentary evidence that existed today and first clement we argued that there is a continued practice you can almost just imagine that you know we talked about the church in corinth get a letter for paul and then a generation later getting a letter from clement and they're both referring to the same spiritual gifts present in that group of christians in multiple generations and in the k we learn about wandering prophets itinerant prophets similar to agamis that we see throughout acts where he travels he pioneers mission but he also encourages churches and the real question is not whether there are prophets in those in say in the early first century or the early second century in the church the question is how do you discern between false and true prophets so today where we're going to pick up where we let fall what pick up where we left off we'll be in the second century and we're going to walk through what's called typically the patristic era we'll talk more about the church fathers in detail in your historical theology class but i'm going to refer to a few of them as we think about these key figures key leaders keith theologians key thinkers in the early church and this era roughly from the second century to the fifth century these people were deep deeply important in shaping the theological and ecclesial foundations of the church and we're going to engage and i'll just go ahead and give you a a caveat it's not going to be comprehensive you have the hyatt book and he actually goes through in more um not a ton of detail but he goes through person by person walks through lots of other church followers we're not going to cover here i'm assuming you're reading that and there's even more than what hyatt has in other resources i'm just gonna try to pick a few individuals and make a few points and the question we're asking of course is on the ground from the second to the fifth maybe sixth century what's going on what's the holy spirit doing in the church we know from other courses how it's spreading during this time but what do we know about the practice of the spiritual gifts the work of prophecy look at the holy spirit supernaturally in these churches in this time and so this is a really important error to dial in on because it's been a common assumption among protestants for 500 years that these spiritual gifts ceased in this age yes they were there in the apostolic age it's a question in the post-apocalyptic age but in the church fathers this is when things go some people have sort of a slow decline but by the time you take constantine maybe they're over others have a sharper decline perhaps one of the strongest proponents of the cessation of spiritual gifts cessation of charismata in the early church was d.b warfield warfield was a princeton theologian really prominent very influential uh protestant evangelical thinker i think he's a calvinist presbyterian thinker he worked at princeton for half a century died about a hundred years ago and warfield wrote a book called counterfeit miracles and he engaged this question of when did miracles and the charismatic cease and he writes this and you're the first sentence you will heartily agree with because on the one hand he wanted to argue for the presence of the supernatural in the life of the early church contra liberal protestantism that was saying oh those that's all fake he said no no it was real and he's already says b.b warfield writes everywhere the apostolic church was marked out as itself they gift from god by showing forth possession of the spirit and appropriate works of the spirit miracles of healing and miracles of power miracles of knowledge whether in the form of prophecy or the discerning of spirits miracles of speech whether the gift of tongues or of their interpretation here's a key line the apostolic church was characteristically a miracle working church here's a question he asks how long did the state of things continue it was the characterizing peculiarity of specifically the apostolic church and it belonged therefore exclusively to the apostolic age although no doubt this designation may be taken with some latitude so what's he saying warfield fundamentally argues that there is no credible account of miracles beyond the apostolic age he's even arguing that in the early church a lot of people couldn't grant like maybe there may have been some miracles they slowly did he's no no there's nothing beyond the apostolic age it was unique it was real he lists all these things right the absolute church was a miracle-working church and it was exclusive to that era it was a thing that god was doing to establish his church and it was no longer necessary no longer um present beyond that though he gives himself a little bit of wiggle room by saying you know we'll give ourselves a little latitude what we mean by apostolic age so we're going to test that thesis in the next few minutes and we're going to look at the two or three centuries beyond the way the church was founded and it's kind of broken up in two ways right there's first what's called the anti-niceae in church not anti but it's auntie a-n-t-e means pre-nicaea it's the church fathers that are writing before the council of nicaea before the conversion of constantine and then post we'll spend more time pre uh because the post uh age after constantine that's when a lot of discussion about things ceasing happens we'll we'll engage that debate in a minute so look at some of the the church fathers in the second and third centuries and we'll move on from there and what we find is again we're in the early periods of christianity fragmentary evidence we don't find lots and lots of data but that's just the nature of working with things that are almost 2 000 years old don't be concerned by that that's just the nature of historical work you don't have everything uh just think about it your tweets or whatever it is that you leave behind one day your written record not much of it's going to be here in 2000 years jesus doesn't come back by then we'll be lucky to find almost anything of your existence so so the fact that things don't survive 2000 years is not not shouldn't bother us an absence of of of sources doesn't mean there's an absence of activity so let's just look at a few of these church fathers again i'm not going to go exhaustively i'm just going to select a few read a few quotes comment on and kind of walk through this period so first we're going to begin with justin martyr justin martyr is very very close to the apostolic age he was born on the rough of the year 100 dies in year 165 so what that means right is that he probably uh knew people who were discipled by the apostles that makes sense he's like sort of two generations removed from those guys he probably he may have even when he was a child met someone who was a disciple of the apostle you know he's pretty close but far enough away where he doesn't know any apostles personally but just to give you a quick run of of justin martyr he was a greek pagan from samaria ding ding ding ring a bell think about the exciting things that happened in samaria in the book of acts the evangelist phillip breaking ground there but he's a greek pagan from samaria he was a philosopher conversing all the schools of greek and latin philosophy but he converted to christianity as a young man and ends up moving to rome to establish a school to teach christianity and he was most well known for writing apologetic works kind of bridging greek philosophy with christian doctrine really really important that he died as a martyr in rome with some of his students so you say what on earth does justin martyr i've heard of him unfamiliar great guy what does he have to do this conversation well first he's quite early like i said he's in the first half of the second century but second he actually refers to the presence of spiritual gifts in the church in passing in one of his apologetic works and this is a really early account so we'll begin here so in his dialogue with trifo he's talking primarily about the relationship between jews and christians right there's an antagonism on both sides and what happens when jews convert to christianity how how many jews despise christians he's kind of working through this issue he was never a jew right he was from samaria he was greek he was a pagan but he understands the dynamics and he talks about jewish christian jewish jews converted christianity and what happens to them and one of these is in passing it's nothing really the main part of his argument he's just referring to the dynamics he says some referring to jewish converts of christianity are also receiving gifts each as he is worthy illumined through the name of this christ for one receives the gift the spirit of understanding another of counsel another of strength another of healing another foreknowledge a lot of teaching another of the fear of god and later on in the same dialogue he says for the prophetical gifts and this is the greek is right here's prophetica charismata remain with us even to the present time when he's saying even in the present you talk about the middle of the second century keep in mind he's writing from rome what's interesting here just a few observations one he and you'll see this over and over and over these people are steeped in the scriptures and often when you see a reference of spiritual gifts in the church fathers they're invoking lists similar to romans 12 and first corinthians 12. they're not identical it's neither neither paul's or identical either but when they work through spiritual gifts they often will begin running down these lists he invokes that list and he mentions right a variety of gifts that are being received by disciples during this time and the thing that he notes is that these remain with us even to the present time he's not speaking in the past tense what was happening a hundred years earlier when the apostles were doing this when paul was writing a hundred years before this time he saw what's happening right now in rome in the middle of the second century in the church it's a fragment but it's significant because of its early date and the fact that it's mentioned in passing it's just something it's it's a historical you know historian's clue is when someone is mentioning something in passing uh in historical document you can almost be certain they're not trying to fabricate it and it's just not like crucial to what they're doing it's just sort of oh of course that you know this is happening so it's a really interesting data point to think about let's now let's go to origin of alexandria he was a generation after uh after justin martyr he's late second century to uh early mid-third century but an entire generation later and he was not riding from rome he was actually from alexandria from egypt uh he was a very influential christian theologian philosopher apologist he was actually born in a christian family when he was a young boy his father was martyred during one of the persecutions and he like justin other apologists started a school a theology school was deeply influential and wrote many apologetic works against critics of christianity his most famous work was against celsius or one of his most famous apologetics was called again celsius was a significant critic of christianity uh he actually at one point and you'll read about it in the hyatt book references what appears to be sort of a charismatic prayer meeting with people praying in tongues and spiritual gifts happening people singing in languages that that celsius didn't understand so he's criticizing christianity and origen addresses these things but one of the interesting things he does is in his argument rather than like justin mentioning spiritual gifts and passing he actually mentioned them specifically as a proof of the truth of the gospel the truth of christianity he says this after talking about the way god worked miracles through jesus and through the apostles in the early church origen writing again in the middle of third century almost a 100 years after justin in another continent he's he's in north africa traces of that spirit they've been referring to works done in in the bible who appeared in the form of a dove are still preserved among christians they charm demons away and perform many cures and perceive certain things about the future according to the will of the locus elsewhere in that same dialogue he says for by these means we too have seen many persons freed from grievous calamities and from distractions of mind and madness and countless other ills which could not be cured neither by men nor demons so here origen remarkable theologian philosopher is arguing against celsius saying no there's actually something powerful about christianity and there's a demonstration of the power that proves its truth jesus did this in his ministry the apostles did this in their ministry and traces of that are still present today 200 years after it was happening in the book of acts it's interesting his use of the word traces because origin actually does reflect on why it doesn't seem to be happening as often it happens but not as often it's an interesting thing to reflect on and he he makes sure right whether he talks about demons being cast out or people being healed or prophecy of things about the future being spoken by the logos it's interesting he makes makes it clear we too have seen this it's not just i heard about it over there in syria or in rome i'm in alexandria later he lived he actually lived in caesarea later on we've seen this but what we can take from these early church fathers these early data points about a century apart and they're sort of moving through time and space is that both of them seem very clear on the active practice of spiritual gifts prophecy tongues healing miracles uh in their specific times and places if you map this out you think okay uh mid-second century rome and then mid-third century alexandria like we're talking about pretty far-flung places across time which gives you again this sense of yes we don't have every data point but you can begin to extrapolate it's not like it's happening in one place at one time we're still moving through time and space and seeing this uh with you know very little documentation we only have these because these were apologetic works but it's interesting there and perhaps the most significant figure in this period to talk about this who was a contemporary of origin but he was further west in north africa and in modern day in carthage modern day tunisia was tertullian tertullian was a theologian and church leader in carthage uh he wrote his theological works in latin compared to others wrote in greek and he wrote against prevailing heresies during the day narcissism martianism uh and again recorded in an apologetic work against marcy and we have this quote from tertullian let marcion then exhibit as gifts of his god some prophets such as such as have not spoken by human sense but with the spirit of god such as have predicted things to come and made manifest the secrets of the heart let him produce a psalm a vision a prayer only let it be by the spirit in an ecstasy that is in rapture whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him now all these signs are forthcoming from my side without any difficulty so here again the apologetic goes a step further where justin you have kind of a passing reference uh you have origen who's saying these signs in the past confirm the truth of the gospel and these signs of presence today certainly goes a step further he says okay marcion you are espousing a certain doctrine a certain creed a certain direction for the church if you're really if you really are true and an authentic follower of jesus then produce the signs produce prophecy produce tongues show me a spiritual gift on your side because as he says these signs are forthcoming on my side without any difficulty what's really interesting about this is that tertullian for all of his fame as an apologist theologian he was the first person to really uh conceptualize and coin the concept of the trinity right the trinity exists in scriptures but not as a as a coherent doctrine it was tertullian who mapped that out what's interesting about tertullian is not only did he advocate for spiritual gifts but he joined a very very controversial sect called the montanists that arose in the second century and he is this doctor of the church an early church father and we read him and we love him but then he did this very strange thing and he joined a very very fringy and fanatical sect of prophets and the montanists were incredibly polarizing and i'll talk briefly about them but it's a fascinating thing that sort of mid-career he jumps he's like he started with him on this and left them behind when he got smart he was a prominent theologian and churchill and he joins this group called the montanist so let's talk about them just for a minute and reflect on what this means for our present day when you think about some of the debates about modernism montanist began actually generation before tertullian in the late second century in asia minor but the group spread really quickly as you can see tertullian's in like northwest africa and they're mountainous there generation later they referred to themselves not as montanus that's the their founder months was their founder but it's the new prophecy and they were led by montenus who was a prophet and two female prophetesses prisca and maximilla and they basically their goal was to renew prophetic gifts in the church in the late second century right you're about 100 years removed from the age of the apostles and they're feeling like there's been a decline in prophecy and they want to renew prophetic gifts they want to renew prophetic charisma they want to see tongues and miracles happening in their time and they're incredibly polarizing um they're polarizing because of their claims of charismatic authority over and against institutional authority or this is a time when the churches begin to institutionalize get a clear hierarchy and you have these prophets these three prophets a male and two females who are arguing that their prophetic utterances are from the holy spirit and they are revelation i think it would be overstating to believe that they were that they believe the revelation was on par with the scriptures but keep in mind during this time no one had a bible with all the canonical books in at the same time scriptural texts were still circulating and they weren't all collected so it was still a unique time but what's interesting is tertilian defends you know there's a lot of rioting a lot of debate they weren't declared heretic still several centuries later which is again we'll talk about that but totally initially defends the montanists he actually wrote several books that painfully don't exist anymore they've been lost to history where he recorded the oracles of the montanists and began reflecting on each one of their prophecies and kind of reflect on what they meant he began joining a mountainous worship uh worshiping community in carthage uh where he actually writes about female prophets getting a word and then submitted to the elders how they how they adjudicated the the word and what it meant i mean he was all in in this group uh you'll see hyatt rights as well about the montes there's a lot of writing and thinking about them but the group if you think about the characteristics of the group obviously new the new prophecy was a big thing for them and they believed they were sort of connected with their eschatology they believed they were nearing the end of the age the return of jesus was coming and this prophetic gift was sort of was sort of bringing in the end of the age they sense the imminent return of jesus they believed in speaking in tongues and often sort of in this exten it's the ecstatic state where they're not quite fully conscious or fully there that was also quite controversial because some people actually argued against them saying that well a real prophet or a real tongue speaker is doing it in their right mind whereas the montanists think you can kind of be you know almost convulsing and not fully there almost in a trance it was an interesting debate they actually had about that we'll set that aside and two other things that made them controversial right the ordination of women actually believed in they ordained women priests and and bishops and when they began having their own hierarchy they had uh sort of a you know your sons and daughters of prophecies they had sort of this egalitarian uh church structure and finally they were really really legalistic and ascetic right they they believed in these uh heightened purity codes that many of them came from prophetic oracles basically saying the spirit is speaking to me saying that here is a new way we ought to live as a community whether it had to do with sort of female dress codes uh or dietary codes or kind of how they live as a community and there's a lot of interesting things there and i'll just i'll just comment on this we could gosh if we were in an in-person class the mountainous we could talk with them for a long time there's lots on there if you want to read about the martinis but in the current debates about sort of rehabilitating the monuments you have a few things going on right you have traditionalists who say nope eusebius called them heretics they are declared heretics in the sixth century their heretics let's move on and if you're a cessationist protestant you feel very comfortable calling them heretics but then there are secular scholars who really love to write about fringe groups whether they're gnostics or montanists or you know actual heretics or maybe not so much not so heretical groups so secular scholars are rehabilitating montanus just as sort of a fringe expression of christianity that deserves to be understood there's a lot of great scholarship out there but perhaps more interestingly pentecostals like hyatt and others are re reconsidering the monsters saying man that sure sounds a lot like 1920s pentecostals whether it's the eschatologies or the imminent return eschatology whether it's the sort of hyper uh hyper vigilant ascetic culture thinking about sort of not sort of refraining from being polluted by the world and having a sort of heightened legalism with how your community runs whether it's men and women uh having the opportunity to minister just based on the gift of god coming out of them so there's a lot of interesting debates um we we won't go into in too much more detail here we could i was going to do an entire lecture on them but i i thought i'd save you guys all the historical detail i will admit you can find their some of their sort of surviving oracles mostly from their critics but they're preserving what they said you mean that's part of the difficulty of moltenism it was an early movement it died out and most of what we know about them is not from their own voices but from their critics so it's really hard to assess them and even orthodox evangelical theologians have looked back and said i'm not sure they're heretical like there's no clear christological heresy there's no clear uh denial of the of the divinity of jesus it's more this question it's really the questions we raised earlier is these questions of ecclesial authority is it fundamentally institutional right an official role was it fundamentally charismatic is it about sort of a gift that god gives someone to lead and obviously the montanist said no if god gives us these gifts we're going to do what we're going to do i don't really care what the bishop says right that caused tension secondly we think as we said about sort of the nature of divine revelation yes it comes from the word but to what extent does it come from the spirit particularly the spirit working through people in prophecy and there was this question of were the mountainous elevating prophecy often through an ecstatic state to the level of scripture that's again a difficult debate because they did not have a bound bible in the second century they had letters from paul letters from peter epistles circulating not all together so it was definitely a different time and then finally there's this question of human participation who actually gets to lead and minister in the church and montana said men and women can uh lay ordained can they kind of broke it all down in a very very sort of level flat playing field at a time when the church was really beginning to bring the hierarchy and the sort of the uh the official roles into clear sort of you know some would say uh too rigid infrastructure but a clear structure we could talk a lot about the montanus but i'll just say this i don't think any card-carrying charismatic pentecostal can look at them and not go gosh that sure sounds like a cousin of mine they feel like family uh but on the other hand they were very weird i think we should be careful about rehabilitating them all the way because they were super strange and there's reasons why they were ostracized or they were divide they were divisive and i'll say you know which montanists are you talking about right maybe montanus over in in asia minor over in the east were really problematic and then mountainous over in north africa where tertullian was going to church were pretty solid right there's a pretty far geographic and even time spread between different modsness groups in the same way that there are people who sociologists call pentecostals and you'd go yep that's my family right there and you look at another and you go nope that's really weird like i have no idea what they're talking about so i think we need to be aware of some of those dynamics when we're reflecting back i think hyatt might be a little overzealous sort of rehabilitating the modernist and not recognizing that there was some stuff that would probably trouble most of us would consider certain things they're up to so i would say if i were to conclude you know about the monsoonists they were weird read some of their oracles some of them were great quoting scripture others are like that's strange they were legalistic at times they were sectarian but they were not heterodox there's no evidence of heterodoxy in their theology it was really a question of authority and revelation finally let's move to the post-nicene church and let's think about the significance of the conversion of constantine especially in these discussions about spiritual gifts so constantly converts in the early 4th century this is significant not only because you have an emperor who's a christian but you have an emperor who's ending persecution you have an emperor who's lending administrative institutional weight to the church a lot of things happen there's a lot of debates on what you know what the implications were the domino effects were what was good it was bad what was ugly but a few things are clear in terms of what would how would affect the practice of spiritual gifts in the church one there was a solidifying of church hierarchy once you have the institutional machinery of rome church hierarchies which they've already been you know coming into shape in the second and third century they really do in the fourth century because you have the uh the administrative apparatus of the roman empire uh to help set that up solidify it make sure it's well organized but again you can see how this would be in tension with this notion of charismatic authority that kind of moves uh beyond or uh in the opposite direction of church hierarchy the tension there with sort of some of the more charismatic types in this post-constitution shift there's also the solidifying of the kin right obviously the scriptures were written in the first century they're circulating in the second century and third centuries but not everyone has them all collected and sort of finalizing the list of what's in the canon is happening around this time in the fourth century so again there's this tension so that's revelation and what do we do with prophetic revelation so there's a there's something of a diminishment uh even kind of a default diminishment and you see the mountainous really get tamped down after the fourth and fifth century uh because there's a sense of no no here's a revelation from it's in the scriptures and there's tension's gonna you see that potential persists right to the present day with what we do with uh prophecy inspired by the holy spirit from somewhat in time how do we square that and i think every evangelical would say every charismatic would say no it's not the level of scriptures but it is still revelation from the holy spirit it's just not the same level the assumption that many church historians had was that maybe not as extreme as warfield was that you know at least by the air the constantinian era the gifts had ceased right if we give it kind of a slow three century decline two half century decline by constantine they're done and this was the assumption of augustine my beloved theologian augustine he's on many ways known as the first cessations right he's he's he writes uh he sort of spans the the late fourth early fifth century prominent theologian writes against here sees augustine is a towering figure we'll we'll talk about more historical theology but this is an assumption in early writings he writes about the fact that yeah this happened a long time ago but it doesn't happen today anymore at least not here in hippo and he tries to explain why he thinks about sort of different ages of the spirit what the spirits do at different times and most people assume well augustine has this really good vantage point looking back at the first few centuries of church history and looking forward into what's coming ahead and we can just see he's kind of this this hinge point but that's not the whole story we'll find out in the next lecture that's really not the whole story but just look at augustine for a second we often people see people referring to his early writings where he clearly articulates i think prophecy's over tongues have ceased and we don't see miracles anymore he tries to explain why but in the city of god which is probably his last work he worked on it late in his life took him a very long time to write it very significant work of theology and political theology and a variety of things that he does that are very important i'll probably make everyone read it at some point he begins to change his view not necessarily on prophecy and miracles i think he was kind of his prophecy in tongues i think he wasn't he wasn't expecting that but on miracles and there's a portion of the city of god where he begins talking about how he started hearing accounts of miracles in the vicinity in his region not like way over in syria he's thinking about he's in like modern day tunisia and he begins recording said i just took it by myself to begin recording the miracles that i'm hearing about he gets up into the dozens and dozens of dozens begin writing down accounts of miraculous healings accounts of signs and wonders and he changes his view late in life and says no no this is clearly still happening and the fact is i haven't even had the time to record all the miracles that i've heard about i can't even get them all down there's now once i begin looking they're everywhere but we'll end with just an account he recorded from his own church of two siblings who were healed of something that looked like parkinson's maybe epilepsy it's not clear but they had this uncontrollable shaking he's attributed to extra curse they'd received from a family member what's interesting though and i'll read the account it's kind of long portions of it but you want i want you to hear it from augustine's mouth in the early 5th century this is late it's way late it's not just justin in the second century it's not just origin in the third it's not uh this this sense that well in the fourth everything changed here we are in the fifth century it's not just the montanists sort of carrying on this fringe fanatic flame of miracles we're in the fifth century augustine is this master theology perhaps the greatest of all the patristic fathers one of the great probably top five theologians of all time begins with a cessationist position begins investigating the evidence and he begins recording dozens and dozens of miracle accounts in his own region and then he says this happened at my church one easter arrived and on the lord's day in the morning there was now a large crowd present and the young man was holding the bars of the holy place where the relics were in praying and suddenly he fell down and lay precisely as of asleep but not trembling as he used to do all present were astonished some were alarmed some removed a pity while some were lifting him up and others prevented them and they said they should rather wait to see what would happen and behold he rose up and trembled no more for he was healed and stood quite well scanning those who were scanning him who then refrained himself from praising god the whole church was filled with the voices of those who were shouting and congratulating him then they came running to me where i was sitting ready to come into the church so i'll just pause her august is about to come preach his easter sermon a miracle has happened in the church before the service starts one after another they throng in the last comer telling me as news what the first had told me already everyone's telling him and while i've rejoiced and it really gave thanks to god the young man himself also enters with the number of others falls at my knees is raised up to receive my kiss we go into the congregation the church was full and ringing with shouts of joy praise be god everyone joining and shouting on all sides i've healed the people and there was still a louder voice shouting again silence last being obtained uh being last obtained the customary lessons of the divine scriptures were read it basically says okay once they all calmed down we started the service and when i came to my sermon i made a few remarks suitable the occasion and the happy and joyful feeling not desiring them to listen to me but rather to consider the eloquence of god in his divine work the man dined with us and gave us a careful account of his own his mothers and his family's calamity according accordingly on the following day after delivering my sermon i promise that the next day i would read his narrative to the people and when i did so the third day after easter i made the brother and sister both stand on the steps of the raised place from which i used to speak and while they stood there their pamphlet was red to this extraordinary account from augustine of someone who either has epilepsy or parkinson's or some issue and they're healed miraculously in the church no one's even praying for them this guy's just praying at the church it disrupts the service augustine makes it through he sort of preaches him i really talked about this guy the guy shares his full testimony with us and then augustine three days later gathers the church again and has this guy share his testimony that is a remarkable thing and this is happening keep in mind right in the early 5th century so as we conclude we think about this early period second third fourth fifth century the patristic era while your evidence is still thin not as thin as the earliest their evidence is still thin and while there are feel reflecting whether it's origin saying it seems like it's not you know it's not happening as often as it is traces now or augustine's saying it's not happening anymore actually oops it is i think the evidence is is overwhelming it's seeing the holy spirit working whether we're talking about justin in rome or origen in alexandria or tertullian in carthage or or augustine and hippo or the mountain is sort of all across the christian world the holy spirit's moving and i think if anything and other theologians commenters have thought have kind of come to this illusion if we see a decline or a perceived decline in the work of the spirit the charismata in the church in the majestic era could it have been just possibly their failure to incorporate the mountainous renewal in the church into the larger body could it have been the fact that there is sort of that split where the monsters kind of went uh separate and ultimately underground and ultimately killed you know killed off as a group could it be that there were things that god was trying to do in the church that were stretching the church that were sort of creating tensions that were healthy tensions and certain moves to institutionalize certain moves to emphasize the scriptures to the exclusion of prophecy certain moves to emphasize certain church hierarchies and who could be participants compared to others certain things sort of this by necessity excluded those elements from church practice and those kinds of gifts from practice church practice could it be that if things had turned out a little bit differently in those early centuries where they were kind of grappling with the montanists and other groups like that that maybe there wouldn't have been a perceiver perhaps even a real decline and the reality is is though i would argue in church history the spirit is moving where he wishes and doing things uh perhaps beyond our imagination we may just not know we don't have the sources it is an interesting question but as we conclude here and i'll pray i hope we're uh looking through history and just imagining uh what that was like what would it have been like to be in one of those services in rome in the second century or to be at tertullian's mountainous uh gathering in the in the uh in the early third century in carthage what would have been like to be in augustine's church and see that miracle happen i hope those stories build your faith and give you confidence the holy spirit is at work in the church and he's not going to stop because he has work to do in and through us on his mission let's pray lord i thank you for this opportunity just to walk through a few centers of church history i thank you for the exciting things you did then and i thank you as origen said those traces of the same spirit are with us today i think we've all had the occasions to see the work of the spirit whether we feel like it's plentiful or we feel like we haven't seen in a while we feel like we wish we could see more when i pray that these stories in church history build our faith they would provoke our conscience or they would give us wisdom we consider how do you deal with those real tensions when it comes to institutional authority and charismatic authority when it comes to how do you privilege the scripture but also make place for prophecy i pray you'd give us wisdom i pray that we wouldn't make mistakes that have been made in the past but i pray we'd learn from both the good and the bad examples in church history i thank you for your holy spirit illumining our understanding and empowering us for mission in jesus name amen [Music] you