We thought that this interview would be the best way to introduce our readers to the many heresies which started with, or at least were promulgated by Augustine, the bishop of Hippo. His influence can not be underestimated. Not only did this Roman Catholic theologian's strange ideas shape the Roman Catholic Church, but the Protestant Reformation as well (with the exception of the Anabaptists)! His heretical ideas are still taught as doctrine in the vast majority of Protestant churches today and are at the core of many of the modern trends that are disintegrating Christian churches all over the world. Because this interview is quite lengthy, we have divided it into several parts.
PART I
Apostolic Christian Church Information Center: Welcome! Let me introduce you to the folks who do not know you. You are our chief researcher and have contributed to some of our more weightier articles on this website. Your help has been indispensable. We've brought you here to discuss some of the major heresies that are afflicting Christian churches today and where they come from. I think this may well become the most important article we have ever posted to our website to date!
Chief Researcher: Oh my, I hope I can live up to your expectations! But I do agree that this is an extremely important topic. Thousands, no, millions are being deceived by heresies that have been promulgated by the church for centuries; heresies so obviously un-Scriptural that there is no excuse for them not being thrown out upon their inception, but they remain, nevertheless.
ACCIC: Now you have suggested a working title for this interview to reflect the heresies of Augustine. Many may wonder why an Apostolic Christian website would spend time considering the heresies of a Roman Catholic theologian who lived over a thousand years ago!
CR: Ah, yes. A good question. Well, let me tell you. As you know, I am a very inquisitive person, I like to get to the bottom of things. Now I knew the basic facts about the heresies we'll discuss today, but I wanted to see where they came from. I am sure you are like me and others who grew up in the Apostolic Christian Church. As with other conservative Anabaptist churches, we place a great deal of importance on the principle of sola scriptura--that is, looking only to the Bible for instruction on how to live as a Christian, how the church should be run, how we receive salvation, how God interacts with man--you get the picture. Every sermon in our church starts out with a lengthy reading from the Bible, followed by exposition on what was just read. And of course, when we become converted, reading of the Scriptures becomes part of our daily routine--
ACCIC: Yes, I am astounded at so many who call themselves "Christians" yet have so little knowledge of what is in Bible! It is obvious that they rarely open it--they are totally dependent on their church to spoon-feed them Christian doctrine.
CR: I agree, it is a very sad situation. But the point I am getting at is that the way we learned our "theology," if you will, is by our familiarity with the Scriptures. When we hear Christians claiming that infant baptism or once saved, always saved, for example, are based on the Bible, we are totally mystified, because we know that Bible supports no such doctrines! We could point to dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of verses to refute these things, yet intelligent people continue to believe these things! How can this be?!
ACCIC: I know the feeling! So if these heresies do not come from the Bible (and of course, they do not), where do they come from?
CR: Errant theologians.
ACCIC: Ah, Augustine was a major Roman Catholic theologian.
CR: Yes, indeed. Now let me elaborate a little on the point I just made. Anabaptists are often criticized for not having a sophisticated, systematic system of theology like the Calvinists, or Catholics or even the Lutherans or the Dispensationalists. We do not rely on some man's theology to understand God, instead, we rely on the Bible. This is what made Anabaptists "radical" during the Reformation. Luther and Zwingli were reformers, but these reformers, as it turns out, just wanted to fix some of the errors they found in the Roman Catholic Church; they were quite happy in keeping a large part of the Roman Catholic traditions and even much of their theology.
ACCIC: Right! Luther, I recall, originally had no intention of starting a new church; he thought the Roman Catholic Church could be reformed.
CR: Yes, Luther, even more than Zwingli, was quite happy to keep most of his Catholic heritage. However, what the reformers did not want to do is to wipe away all of the old and start over from scratch. That is exactly what the Anabaptists did--they saw that there were over a thousand years of corrupt theological baggage accumulated in the institution of the Roman Catholic Church--and they saw no reason for keeping any of it. They wanted to start with a clean slate and then build their church--their theology--and their personal and spiritual lives on what the Bible has to say--and only the Bible; they saw the Bible as their only authority, not theology and traditions passed down from the Roman Catholic Church.
ACCIC: Yes, that is an important point. I would like to invite our listeners--I mean, our readers, to go to our History page [at the top of this page] to get an overview of Christian history and the Reformation, including Luther and Zwingli.
CR: Good idea. For those who don't know, Luther started the Protestant Reformation in Germany and became the founder of Lutheranism and Zwingli started the Swiss Protestant Reformation and was the founder of so-called "Reformed" churches and churches with a Calvinistic bent--Calvin was a successor of Zwingli.
ACCIC: And first the Anabaptists actually started with Zwingli, but later left to form their own movement--after it became clear that Zwingli was not serious about sola scriptura.
CR: Yes, we will get into more of those details later in our discussion. However, as will become clear, the vast majority of Christian churches today have based their doctrine on the theology of either Luther or Calvin. Most on the ideas of Calvin, such as most of the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the so-called Reformed churches [if a church has the word "reformed" in its title, it usually indicates a church based on Calvinistic theology], the Episcopalians, the Anglicans and the Puritans of old and the Congregationalists to name a few.
ACCIC: That sounds like the vast majority of churches! Are there any which do not follow Calvinistic theology?
CR: Well, before I answer that, let me say that the Baptists have had undue influence through their seminaries and so-called Bible colleges and universities. Many well-meaning Christian parents have sent their children to these places, only to have them indoctrinated in Calvinistic doctrines and other heresies. But back to your original question; obviously, the Anabaptists have not, or to be clear, the conservative, traditional Anabaptists have not. Some of the Mennonites have drifted so far, they are now virtually indistinguishable from the run-of-the-mill Baptists or Evangelicals. And probably the biggest movement rejecting Calvinism, or at least the worst of it, was the Methodists.
ACCIC: That might surprise some, they are so liberal, so un-Christian-like these days...
CR: I agree. However, in their early days, with some major exceptions like their practice of infant baptism, I think most of their theology was fairly sound. They emphasized being born again, repentance, reconciliation with your fellow man, humility, holiness, modesty and so on. Wesley [the founder of Methodism] rejected most of Augustine's ideas. I think it is why they were so successful with their evangelism in their early days. But unfortunately, about everything that was good about them has been gutted; they tried to conform their church to the secular, godless culture around them and ended up with just of mere shell of what they used to be.
ACCIC: It is sad to see that happen. They were doing something right in the beginning, that is for sure. I suppose that would make a good case study, that is the decline of the Methodists--a good case study for us, to learn not what to do, so we can preserve our own church!
CR: Yes, you're probably right. That reminds me, the so-called "Holiness" movement was a later offshoot of the Methodists--that really took off in the 1880's or so. The Holiness groups had already seen the decline in the Methodist church by then and wanted to return to striving for holiness instead of worldliness (hence the name). There were later splits off of the Holiness movement which came to be known as the Pentecostals or Charismatics; so most of those denominations do not follow Calvinistic theology. But in the process, many of them added some other theology which is highly questionable, to say the least. Discussing them could fill yet another entire interview!
ACCIC: I agree.
CR: Did we forget Luther? Obviously, Lutherans are following the theology of Luther. However, many Lutheran denominations have dropped some of Luther's more controversial theology and have adopted what we would consider better, more Scriptural theology. This is not to say there aren't a lot of problems with many of their beliefs, there are, of course! But their doctrines have improved since the time when Luther was alive. We'll talk about the immediate consequences of some of his theology later in this discussion. However, you see a lot of Evangelicals going back to Luther's original theology, especially when they are trying to find support for their once saved, always saved doctrine. It is rather ironic that Evangelicals are seeking to follow the excesses of Luther, the very doctrines that many Lutherans have rejected!
ACCIC: That does sound crazy! But you are right, I have noticed that many Evangelical pastors fall all over themselves to heap praise on Luther, as if he was an angelic messenger, or something, especially the die-hard once saved, always saved preachers. I wanted to interject here for those who may not be familiar with some of the terminology we are throwing about here--the term "Evangelicals" has come to mean conservative Protestants, at least in the U.S.
CR: That's correct. Evangelicals used to be call themselves "Fundamentalists," but the former Fundamentalists later rejected this term for "Evangelical," because it seemed to have more of a positive connotation than the meaning that had come to be attached to the word "Fundamentalist." For instance, the "bad guys" in the Scopes monkey trial were known as Fundamentalists at the time, which had come to represent backwards, uneducated, ignorant people in the eyes of the world. The Fundamentalists originally chose that name for themselves because they believed in the "fundamentals" of Scripture, as opposed to the liberal Protestants who had lost faith in the Bible and what it stands for.
ACCIC: Many of them did not even believe that Jesus was divine or in miracles or--
CR: The liberals you mean? You're right--and it has only gotten worse with time. Some of these trends can now be found in what used to be Evangelical churches. Now Apostolic Christians do not identify themselves as Evangelicals because there are many things they believe which we do not believe--many of them can be traced back to Augustine. And in recent years, a lot of Evangelicals have sacrificed many of their beliefs in order to conform to the world--just like the Methodists did. But the media would probably classify us as "Evangelicals" because of our conservative views.
ACCIC: Yes, I have seen surveys where all Christian denominations are lumped into three categories; Catholics, liberal or mainline Protestants and Evangelicals--and that's it!
CR: Yes, that's quite an oversimplification! It is interesting when you look at the overall trends of church growth, that for the last 50 years or so, there has been a steady decline in the liberal Protestant churches and steady increases in the more conservative churches!
ACCIC: Sounds like people are not being fed in the liberal churches.
CR: Yes, they most certainly go away empty in the liberal churches. But before we get too far afield, I wanted to talk about some inherent problems in theology.
ACCIC: Okay.
CR: Theology is fine if all you are trying to do is summarize the teachings of the Bible. But most theologians don't stop there. There is always the temptation to "tidy up" the messy loose ends in the Bible. Let's be honest, there are some parts of the Bible that are just very difficult to understand. Theologians devise theories to in an attempt to turn these so-called problems into something we can understand. And another thing common among the theologians is to use their theology to repackage Christianity into a form that they think secular masses can identify with--this is especially prevalent today; you can always find some theologian claiming that Christian doctrine is found in the latest ideological fad. But probably the biggest problem with theology is the presumption that man, with his little, finite brain, can understand all the ways of God. They assume that we can understand how God thinks and predict what He will do and how He will do it and in some cases, even when He will do it!
ACCIC: That takes a lot of nerve, when you think about it. What's that verse from the Old Testament, "'My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' saith the Lord." (Isaiah 55:8)
CR: Exactly! Now let's be clear, we are not saying we should not search the Scriptures for answers, because usually we will find an answer if we look. We are not finding some kind of value from maintaining ignorance about the Scriptures--far from it; but that's not what theology is about anyway--most theology is not derived purely from exegesis of the Scriptures. My point is that there will always be some questions that simply can not be answered until we get the chance to ask the Lord when we get to heaven.
ACCIC: I agree. Most of theology is just pure speculation--who wants to build their faith on that? Will that get them to heaven? Of course, one man's theology is almost guaranteed to be different from the next man's because theology comes from that man, not the Bible.
CR: Yes. If all theology was based purely on the Bible, you would think that they would all be nearly identical--but that is not the case! Now when I looked at the various theologians and their theology over the years, I saw a pattern; theologians, in an effort to understand one thing, or answer one question about God, would develop a theory. Sometimes it was just based on a hunch of theirs, sometimes they might find a verse or two that seemed to back their theological theory, and more often than not, I found that the foundation of their theology was based on a pagan or secular philosophy that they had been exposed to! The early church father, Tertullian, was one of the few who resisted this trend, as it was gaining popularity in his day. He said, "What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? Between the [philosophy] Academy and the church? Our system of beliefs comes from the Porch of Solomon, who himself taught that it was necessary to seek God in the simplicity of the heart. So much worse for those who talk of a "Stoic" or "Platonic" or "dialectic" Christianity! We have no need for curiosity after Jesus Christ, nor inquiry beyond the Gospel."
ACCIC: Excellent quote! Now Athens, of course, was the headquarters for many of the various schools of pagan philosophy during that time. When I read Tertullian's writings, I always get the picture that he was a very sincere, Christian man. And I agree with you 100%--it is so obvious that so many of the theologians were incorporating the secular theories of the day into their theology. Conformity to the world. I am reminded of the words of Paul, in 1st or 2nd Corinthians, I believe, where he said, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Corinthians 3:19).
CR: And the theologian's love affair with the "wisdom of this world" was not just a phenomenon of Augustine's day--you can see this same pattern right into our own day!
ACCIC: Yes, I think that most Christians would be shocked to hear some of the things the modern theologians are teaching in the seminaries today!
CR: No doubt about it. However, the heresies that are most commonly found in the churches today actually can be traced back to the time of Augustine. It takes a while for new theology to be picked up by the Christian colleges and universities and then be learned by the students and then to be taught to the faithful by the graduates of those institutions.
ACCIC: Oh boy, it is bad enough now, I hate too see what they've got cooked up for us in the future!
CR: Yeah, but let me get to the main point I wanted to state about theology. As we just discussed, all of the major denominations are steeped in some manmade theology of one kind or another. Here's where the problem comes in; typically, the theology comes first and the Bible comes second. The Bible is only there to fit their theology. They may deny that, but that is exactly what happens. Their theology determines which verses they teach on and which verses they ignore. Now think on what happens to the poor soul who is brought up in one of these churches. What happens to them when they are confronted with Scriptures they have never seen before?
ACCIC: Like those on the holy kiss?
CR: Well, I had in mind verses with more theological impact, but that would work as an example. For sure, most churches ignore that these verses about the holy kiss even exist. And if they are forced to confront them, they try to rationalize them away as obsolete traditions or whatever. But what I am getting at is their indoctrination is a filter in which they see the Bible (if they look at it at all). The only way in which this might be remedied is if they read the Bible from verse to verse, chapter to chapter, book to book and cover to cover, many times--that would force them to deal with what the Scripture says--in its proper context. But what are the chances of that? Very slim. So many Christians never bother to dust off their Bibles and read them. We here in the Apostolic Christian Church are so fortunate that we do not screen out those "hard" verses or chapters or books of the Bible--our extemporaneous preaching takes care of that! [Editor's note: Read our articles "A Bible Believing Church?" and "What To Expect" for more information on Apostolic Christian Church preaching practices] We are so fortunate that our preachers don't spend their time teaching theological gobblety-gook, with a Bible verse or two thrown in to give it an air of legitimacy--instead they stay close to the Word.
ACCIC: Yes, I don't think we can fully appreciate it until we have heard the way others preach. I heard a sermon once based on the topic that Jesus had a sense of humor. Now where in the Bible is there anything said about this subject? Jesus may have had a sense of humor, although I get the impression that he was usually stern and serious from the reaction of those around him in the Gospels. Anyway, he based his entire sermon on something that did not exist in the Bible! As you might imagine, he did not have a lot a Bible verses to back it up.
CR: It is a travesty on what passes for preaching in most churches these days...
ACCIC: Yet these differences can be traced all the way back to the Reformation; the Anabaptists, I mean--
CR: Ah, yes. When we get to reviewing Luther and Calvin, we shall see the heavy influence of Augustinian theology on them. And they definitely did not see the Bible as the Anabaptists did. Luther--well, the Lutherans, as you know, claimed to live by "sola scriptura"--Scriptures only--but that was far from the truth. Luther literally despised whole books of the Bible. Why? Because they directly contradicted the theology he had formed about grace, works and justification. It is a wonder that he even bothered to translate them at all and put them in his German Bible translation. However, he did rearrange the books of the Bible--he put James and Hebrews just before the book of Revelation. Maybe he hoped that you would be too tired of reading the Bible before reaching that point!
ACCIC: Didn't he put long introductions before each book of the Bible? I thought I read that he called James an "epistle of straw."
CR: Yes he did--and you are right. There is some disagreement about what he meant by "straw"--may that it was "flimsy" or of little value or something to be burned up or as something for animals to defecate on--what ever he meant, it was not good! He did not like the Gospels either, I mean Matthew, Mark and Luke--I think if it were up to him, he would have thrown those out along with Hebrews, James and a few other books. There were too many calls for discipleship and holy living in those Gospels to suit his taste. But he did like John--that was the only one.
ACCIC: You get the distinct picture that the Bible was there only to serve him and his doctrines.
CR: That was exactly his approach! And this was really a long-standing practice in the Roman Catholic Church--he was just following in their footsteps. And I find it interesting that the very first Anabaptists pointed this out--they said that Zwingli, Calvin and Luther first started with their pet doctrines--and then tried to force the Scriptures to fit them.7
ACCIC: The Anabaptists put much more emphasis on the New Testament, didn't they?
CR: Yes they did. And for good reason, at the last supper, Jesus announced that holy communion was to be done in remembrance of the new covenant--in the King James version, the new covenant is translated "new testament"--yet elsewhere, they chose to translate the Greek word behind "testament" as covenant. Even Paul talked about this in his letters. I think the best explanation is in the book of Hebrews, where we learn that the old covenant has passed away, to be replaced by the new covenant [see Hebrews 8]. You have a glazed-over look in your eyes--
ACCIC: Well, no, I just--
CR: You'd be surprised at how much Scripture goes into detail about the old and new covenants--in the New Testament, I mean. Paul goes on endlessly in his books about it. The bottom line is this--the New Testament books take precedence over the Old, Jesus takes precedence over the old, pre-Christian ways. Let me be clear, we are not saying we should throw out the Old Testament, only that where the New Testament and Old Testament consider the same subject, we should take the teachings of Jesus, not Moses.
ACCIC: It's common sense, you would think it would be obvious to anyone who has read and understands the Bible. If the Old Testament had equal value, that would make Christ's sacrifice on the cross practically meaningless--why would the cross be necessary, if the Old Testament way to God was sufficient?
CR: Right! There is a difference between the old covenant ways and the new covenant ways, the Old Testament ways and the New Testament ways--Jesus made the difference. In the Old Testament, you see war and violence, in Jesus, you see peace. There are many contrasts. The Lutherans and the Calvinists made fun of the Anabaptists because of their Christ-ocentric theology; the primacy they put on Christ's teachings and the New Testament.
ACCIC: As if that was a bad thing?!
CR: Oh, yeah. And there is still a long tradition in most faiths of picking a verse here and a verse there--one from the Old Testament when it is convenient or one from the New when it suits their purposes--to back up one of their doctrines. The first Anabaptists pointed out this error--they accused the Calvinists and the Lutherans of basing their heretical doctrines on Old Testament verses--even when those verses directly contradicted the clear teachings of Jesus! And they were right, of course--that is exactly what Calvin and Luther did, on a regular basis.
ACCIC: You are so right. Calvin backed up infant baptism by claiming that it was an equivalent to Old Testament rite of circumcision. Now you would think that if anyone has read any of Paul's letters at all--or even the book of Acts, you would know how appalling--how contradictory to New Testament Scripture this was!
CR: Yes, that famous line from Galatians: "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you" (Galatians 3:1) came about because Paul discovered that the Galatians had become convinced that they should reinstitute the Jewish rite of circumcision. If there was anything that Paul was against, it was anything that smacked of circumcision!
ACCIC: And yet Calvin was not the least bit uncomfortable about putting the Old Testament above the New Testament!
CR: Not in the least. I was listening to the radio a while back and heard a conservative preacher talking about forgiveness. And he had even written a book on the subject--I don't remember the title. You have an excellent article, by the way, on this subject on your website--it gives the real New Testament view of the subject. Anyway, I thought, this is going to be good, because I don't ever recall hearing a preacher outside of our faith giving a good overview of what Jesus has to say on the subject. He said that his views were firmly based on the Bible. Well, I was shocked when he ignored most of Jesus's teachings on the subject and instead based his book on the Old Testament story of the imprisonment of Joseph. If you remember that story, Joseph took great enjoyment in toying with his brothers when they came to Egypt begging for food--he even set them up and falsely accused them of theft! I hardly think that he was the best example of what Christ taught about forgiveness and reconciliation. Well, it would not surprise you to know that some of his conclusions about what the Bible teaches about forgiveness were directly contrary to what Jesus taught.
ACCIC: You gotta wonder what is going through their heads--why would you take the example of Joseph over the teachings of the Son of God? I mean, we're talking about the Son of God here, who came on this earth to teach us the ways of God in plain language!
CR: It's an ingrained part of their culture, their theological indoctrination. It's the way they are used to doing things. The Bible is something to be used, it is not their master.
ACCIC: Okay, before we get too far off track, let's get back to Augustine. I take it that you have traced many heresies to him. What can you tell us about Augustine?
CR: Before we get into the details of his life, just let me say that I have read some of his writings. I think he was well-meaning and sincere, but he was dead-wrong on many of his assumptions. And he probably isn't personally to blame for all of his errors, some of them can be traced to heretical teachings taught to him by the church.
ACCIC: Such as?
CR: Well, for instance, early in his life, he came under the tutelage of Ambrose. Now Ambrose was popularizing the idea of allegorical interpretation of Scripture. This can be traced back to the church father Origen.
ACCIC: For those unfamiliar with the term, what is exactly is "allegorical" interpretation.
CR: Unfortunately, this kind of interpretation became very popular and caused a lot of errors. Allegorical interpretation is the assumption that there is a hidden "spiritual" part of practically every verse in Scripture. Ambrose would take a verse where the meaning would be very clear to each of us and come up with a bizarre "spiritual" interpretation based on his method. This method of interpretation assumed that there were hidden symbols and signs to be found in most verses, which would unlock the hidden meaning of that verse.
ACCIC: Hidden meanings? Sounds like Gnosticism! One of the heresies the early church fought.
CR: Yes, some have suggested that this is exactly where this kind of interpretation came from. And of course, it is completely subjective, since there obviously is not a hidden meaning in every verse; the allegorical "interpreter" could come up with almost any kind of interpretation he wanted! This continued right up to the time of the Reformation and even in Calvinism, to some degree. And you can see a lot of this kind of interpretation even going on today, especially by those who have developed theories about the end times. But it was much worse before the Reformation. I love a quote from William Tyndale--
ACCIC: The English Bible translator?
CR: Yes, he was responsible for the first English translation directly from the Greek and Hebrew.
ACCIC: Wycliff translated from the Latin Vulgate--that was earlier than Tyndale. [Editor's Note: Click on History on the menu above to read more about this subject]
CR: Yes. However, most people don't realize that the King James Bible translators took the vast majority of Tyndale's translation, lock, stock and barrel, and passed it off as their own. They couldn't improve upon it. He did a phenomenal job on the translation--and it is a good thing, because so much of our translations--even the more modern ones, use a lot of his wording. Here's what he said, I have made a few [word] substitutions to make it clear to our modern ears: "The greatest cause of ... the decay of the faith and the blindness wherein we now are, sprang [up] first [from] allegories. For Origen and the theologiansa of his time drew all the Scripture unto allegories . . . till they last forgot the order and process of the text, supposing that the Scripture served but to feign allegories upon; insomuch that twenty theologiansa expound one text twenty ways. . . Then came our philosophersb with their mysticalc and philosophicald sense and with an antitheme of half an inch, out of which some of them drew a thread nine days long.8
[Original words: a=doctors b=sophisters c=anagogical d= chopological]
ACCIC: Oh yeah, I like that: "twenty theologians expound the text twenty ways"! That's true today!
CR: My favorite part is the last line--I don't know exactly what an "antitheme" is, but when he says they "drew a thread nine days long," I am sure it was not something said in reverence of their work!
ACCIC: I am sure it isn't!
CR: To show you how ridiculous this had become by the time of the Reformation, well, by then, most theologians believed there were not two separate interpretations of any given verse, a spiritual and a literal one, but four! But we won't get into that. Let me give you an example of how this allegorical interpretation worked. Bernard of Clairvaux, a famous Roman Catholic scholar came up with an allegorical interpretation of the phrase "the beams of our houses are of cedar and the panels are of cypress." That's from the Song of Solomon, chapter one, verse sixteen--sounds pretty straight forward, doesn't it? Well, here's his interpretation: the "houses" are a great mass of Christians, the church rulers and government and church law are the "beams" which hold the Christians together, along with the "panels" which represent the clergy and the rites of the Catholic church!6
ACCIC: You've got to be kidding! It says nothing of the kind! And people took this kind of interpretation seriously?!
CR: Oh, yes, they were dead serious about it! And this is the kind of exegesis--that is, Biblical interpretation, that Augustine based much of his theology on!
ACCIC: Wow! Sounds like Augustine was led down the wrong path...
References:
1 Beyond Calvinism And Arminianism, 2002, C. Gordon Olson, pages 165-167
2 Augustine And African Manichaeism, 1998, Ligon Duncan
3 Augustine's Poisoned Chalice, 200?, Peter Nathan.
4 Adam, Eve And The Serpent, 1988, Elaine Pagels; cited in Pagel's Augustine: The Dark Prophet Of Grace, Christian Century Magazine, November 2, 1988, page 985.
5 Quoted in Historical Theology: An Introduction To The History Of Christian Thought, 1998, Alister E. McGrath, page 205.
6 Ibid, page 146.
7 The Dictionary Of Historical Theology, 2000, Trevor A. Hart, General Editor, page 15.
8 From the introduction to Tyndale's New Testament: A Modern-Spelling Edition Of The 1534 Translation With An Introduction By David Daniel, 1989, David Daniel, page xvi.
