Episode 100: Interview with Ross Twele
This podcast continues two recent initiatives in the our work. We interview a scholar on the history of a particular location in the ancient world. Ross Twele, a doctoral student at Catholic University of America, gives the history of Christianity in Gaul, modern day France. Ross and I also talk about the shared history of protestant and Catholic Christians. Being looking out for future episodes on the Evangelical and Baptist retrieval of the Great Tradition.
Timestamps:
8:29- Christianity’s Origins in France
46:15- Helpful Historical Texts
48:55- Protestants and the Patristic Period
Charles Kim 0:00
Hello and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. With me this week will be Ross tweli. Ross is a PhD candidate at the Catholic University of America. He has also studied at St. Louis University. And I came across Ross through Twitter. And he had done an interesting tweet thread about the history of Christianity and modern day France, which is known as Gaul. And I thought that it would be a helpful way to summarize some of the the threads and the streams of thought that we've gone through in the podcast. So Ross brings a wealth of knowledge from his doctoral studies at the Catholic University. Ross was also interested in the fact that Protestants were doing sort of patristic studies that they were interested in what the fathers had to say about Scripture and about the Creed's and about how to do theology. So our podcast mainly focuses on the history of Christianity in France. However, we do end with a little discussion of how Protestants and Catholics can both find a sort of shared heritage and shared history in studying the church fathers. So this has become something of an interest of mine. And just as a way of looking forward to a future podcasts. I'm going to have Matthew, Dr. Matthew Emerson, who's the director of the Center for Baptist renewal, which is a project by started sort of founded by Dr. Emerson, that's that's seeking to have Baptist Theological life, be influenced, and recognize their shared heritage with the broader church and Catholic small see tradition. So look forward to that. We're also be doing a podcast with Matthew Wilcoxon, Dr. Wilcoxon, wrote a book on divine humility. So and that is also a kind of, I mean, he's not Baptist, but again, are sort of Protestant interested, broadly speaking in the heritage of the church. So be looking forward to those podcasts, which should be coming in the future. Thank you for listening. And please find us on iTunes, or Yeah, rate us and review us on iTunes. Find us on Facebook, and drop us a note on Twitter or Facebook, on Twitter. We are at theology, EC cn that is at t h e OLOGYXIA. n. And then if you search for a history of Christian theology on Facebook, our page will pop up as well. Thank you for listening, and we will talk to you soon. This week. On the podcast, we have Ross tweli. Ross is a doctoral candidate at Catholic University of America. Actually, most of this podcast started because of a tweet thread that Ross had done on Christianity and gall. And this question of cathedral schools. And I think it was in response to a particular Saints Day was actually what started it in this question of POCZTA. So where Hillary of plaatse A is the town that he is associated with. And it just made me think that we hadn't done a lot on Christianity in France, which is also gall. And so just, I thought, hey, this would be fun for a different kind of conversation. Also, I've been working on some stuff that Hillary have pots EA had written on the Psalms. And so I was like, Oh, this will be fun. And I'll learn some more from from Ross about this. And it'll help us just sort of, and I think one angle the podcast had maybe been going towards was talking a little bit about the history of Christianity in different places. So he talked a little bit about Christianity in Africa. We've done some podcasts on Christianity in like Syriac Christianity, early sort of Asian Christianity. And so now we're going to do a little bit of Gaul. And so Ross has some expertise in this area. I guess you could tell me your dissertation is maybe not so much focused on Hillary Poitier. Although you, as I understand, really enjoy reading him, but but what is your dissertation itself actually on?
Ross Twele 4:05
Yeah, that is all true. And actually I on the side, I'm trying to work through Hillary's Psalms commentaries as well. Okay, which is, you know, that 800 pages of Latin so that's, and it's Hillary's Latin, which is a slow go in the first place. But yes, strictly speaking, my dissertation is on the decade that Hillary spends when he first becomes Bishop of PTA, and then when he is sent into exile, so that's the decade of the 350s. It's right smack dab in the middle of the beginning of the Aryan controversy with Arias himself, and the final resolution of it in the 380s. Under Theodosius and Ambrose. It's a time when the Emperor one of the emperor is in between constant teams son contentious is trying to enforce one specific kind of form formulation of the Creed across the Roman Empire, which many of the bishops that whose writings we still have, from the Latin West consider it to be a light form of Arianism. Because it tries to forbid anyone from using Substance language to describe any of the persons of God at all, because it's not a scriptural term. So I'm looking at three or four Bishop theologians from that decade who are responding to this movement. And it includes the very beginning of Hillary's career. But it does not include most of his statement, attach a on the psalm commentaries that he wrote after we came back from exile.
Charles Kim 5:53
Okay. Very good. And so what part of what's interesting about studying this period, that kind of late fourth century, as as you bring out, in in some of this stuff that we've been talking about online, but it's also just this, that nothing that there's a lot of conversations, it wasn't just as simple as, here's the Creed, everybody agrees, let's move forward. There's back and forth, there's pushback, there's a lot of writing. And it's a very and, and also part of what makes Hillary so fascinating, is the overlap between the East and the West. So Hillary in exile is spending a lot of time in Constantinople and other places, getting to know what what kind of theological conversations are being had in the Greek East. And so then he's able to return bring some of that back to the Latin West. And so there's a little bit of overlap of overlap. And we can say cross pollination between these two different areas. I think, you know, sometimes, like Athanasius is contra mundum. So we've done a little bit of Athanasius on this podcast, but he's, you know, often regarded, included by including by CS Lewis, as this champion of orthodoxy and the Nicene Creed. And some have seen Hillary is maybe a little bit of a lesser form, or less, or well, I should say, less well known, but similar kind of proponent of of the Nicene Creed, but even that has to be nuanced a little bit, because of his influence of basil of inchyra. And some of the other theologians that he was actually talking about.
Ross Twele 7:29
I think we actually underestimate how much east west contact Hillary brings with him back from exile. Okay. You generally, I think, most people will think of Ambrose as the first one who really brings Greek thought into Latin theological language. And in a Platanus sense, that's definitely true. I don't know that we're quite ready to call Hillary in exile, a Platanus when he comes back, but he certainly brings a lot of origins, style of biblical commentary with him. And that, I think, in some ways, paves the way for the kind of commentary and the kind of treatises that Ambrose writes to get traction in the 370s into the 80s. Because it's not totally new to some of that Latin West audience. I see.
Charles Kim 8:29
Yeah. And of course, for me, I did my dissertation on Agustin. So all of this is again more paving the way for for him so that this is not so foreign, that he can be engaged in this and and be wowed by Ambrose who and also you know, he mentioned Hillary as well. Hillary is not unknown to Agustin. So this is part of his kind of theological education. So I'm going to turn to so I sent to Ross, just a few questions. And so we're gonna Okay, so we've been talking about the fourth century, we've been talking about how Greek thought in this kind of later period of Christian history, you know, what the theological conversations were, but I wanted to go back and this is mostly why I wanted Ross on here was to help us think through a little bit the how Christianity came to Gaul came to France. Gallia is the the Latin word for France, or at least that's the way that the Romans referred to this province, Caesar's Gallic war and these sorts of things, right. So so when we say Gaul, we're we do mean, generally speaking, broadly speaking, roughly speaking, this area that's similar to modern day France. And we talked about Aaron as many moons ago on the podcast, but so he is in East Iran as of Lee also, he's from a city in France, and he may be one of the first well known figures in modern day France, in France, It's in Gaul. So I just I asked Ross if he'd give us a little bit of a, of a history of how Christianity originally came to France and how people like urine as came to be so influential. And, and then also that plays into this sort of there was another. We have a few letters about these, some martyrdoms in the area that we think was probably written by Iran as so. So there's some martyrdom to be considered in the area, and then Iran as but then there's kind of a silence. And then we've been talking about Hillary as we got started. But I kind of wanted to see how does this process happen? So Ross, I'll I'll turn that over to you. What can you tell us about Christianity's origins in France.
Ross Twele 10:47
So we've got two very separate and very distinct in the origins of the sources that they use to put their narrative together two very different accounts of what Christianity looks like in Gaul. Before the time of Constantine, we've, we've mentioned Eusebius, already, he is aware that there is a Christian community along the Rhone River, which flows into the Mediterranean at Marsay. In the 170s, and into the early 200, the 200 arts, I guess that first decade centered on erroneous and his his predecessor at Leon puffiness. Okay, he has received a letter, at least the East has received a letter from Aaron as about the martyrdom that happens during the year on 177. In case your listeners need reminding, and Renee is is originally from West Central Asia Minor, the province of Phrygia. And we have no idea how it comes to be that he transfers to southern France of all places, and becomes a presbytery in that community. But we do know that he is promoted to Bishop after puffiness, is martyred in 177. We've got this letter, which we presumed to be by Irenaeus himself, telling about how in the 170s, the local administration in that province of Gaul had banned Christians from any overt open gatherings in the Bad's in the markets, and also in homes. If it were known that people were going to a home for Sunday service, that would be reason enough for the local government to step in and break it up. erroneous seems to suggest or at least Eusebius seems to suggest through the erroneous letter that Marcus Aurelius is CO Emperor Varus was behind this, that he had some sort of persecuting policy at the time. Unfortunately, Varys is dead eight years before this particular monitoring event actually happens. So we know that's not true. And we know that Marcus Aurelius is not in the business of ordering persecutions. He's most likely following the example set by Trajan, where if someone reports, a Christian sect, congregation, and it turns out that they admit to being Christians, then you have to punish them, but don't go seeking them out. So Christians are banned from these public gatherings. And probably the local government was induced to make this decision by unrest among the populace, the pagan majority populace in Vienna and Leon because immediately mass gatherings and as calls from mobs start gathering up the questions that they personally know. And beating them stoning them in the public squares. The military Tribune, for that province steps in cooperates with the City Council, rounds up Christians brings them into the forum of Leon to be questioned. As usual, and Torontonian talks about this as well. They are accused of what erroneous calls thigh yesterday and banquets and ADA podi and intercourse, which aren't Greek mythological references to child cannibalism and incest And on these charges, the Christians are imprisoned until the provincial governor whose identity we do not know from the era 177 arrives and under the direction of the devil, of course. It is equally intent on torturing these questions, and ultimately brings them into the town amphitheater to be publicly whipped torn shard with other sorts of instruments mauled by wild beasts, at least one female Christian is tied to a stake,
not to be burned, but to be mauled. And then when that fails to kill her and she's tied up in a fishnet bag, and left in front of starved and wild bowl to have its way with her. We know that the deacon of the city of vn whose name was Sanctus, was a martyr and during this and then Leon's Bishop Plotinus via and may not, strictly speaking have had a bishop at this time, the deacon may have been a sort of mission representative from Leon because he's just a little bit off the river. From that community, Aaron is also says that the bodies of the Christians weren't withheld from their families and friends, they weren't denied burial. They were left to rot through a week and then burned and the ashes were dumped into the realm. So that any claims that the Christians might make about the resurrection of their bodies would be stymied. So that's the Eusebius story ended in the 170s. There is a well established Christian community that then goes on for another 25 years under the illustrious and learned episcopate of Uranus, who also gets involved in the debates over the date of Easter and so on. The Roman story, which is recorded in the the book of the pontiffs, the history of the Pope's that's put together mostly in Gaul and foreign Gall, but in the seventh and eighth centuries, is that there was not a serious attempt to evangelize Gaul until the year 250. In the midst of what truly was an empire wide persecution by the emperor and DCS, in which Pope Fabian sends missionaries to seven cities across the Gauls orals in our bond to lose Claremont, limos torn and Paris. So form of them along the southern and western coasts and then three inland. And then each. Each local diocese keeps its list of successes from those bishops, which sometimes we use that local diocesan source, sometimes, Gregory of Torah, the famous historian of Christianity and goal has collected them and lists them in his writings. But there are no contemporary late third century or early fourth century witnesses to any of those early successions of Bishops until we get to Constantine's rule in the West, when he is approached to adjudicate the donatist schism in Carthage, and summons some gallican bishops to look at the evidence on both sides and make a decision. And then we actually started getting lists of bishops who participate in these Senate's and we end up with a list of 18 known diocese Episcopal sees by by 360, by the end of the decade that I particularly focus on 13 by the 310s, and then another five that we know exist by the 350s. That doesn't mean of course, that each was founded in the 310s, or the 350s. It just means that the earliest record we have of a named Bishop being there comes from those decades. And then over the rest of the fourth century, there's just a logarithmic expansion of known bishops in the gods halls. That's partially because gall seems to have a unique practice of appointing an A Pisco POS someone with the title of Bishop, for every individual congregation, not putting together provincial arrangements, as say the bishops of Italy do. So there's just there are more bishops in Gaul because they're every community has one. They don't just have a president or a deacon, leaving their community, but making reference to some metropolitan city.
Charles Kim 20:36
So that seems, and I think I mentioned this earlier, but that's somewhat similar to what happens in North Africa, at least according to the numbers for for Agustin in the early fifth century, as he is trying to settle the donatist problem. So this is 100 years later than what you're referencing with Constantine. But the data says, data just problem is still quite prevalent. And Augustine is period. But he'll mentioned, I think the number that he gives us 286, the number of bishops in North Africa. And so it seems much more likely that if there were that many bishops, probably what they meant was, you know, head of a church, rather than head of a diocese or head of a larger area, which is, you know, if you if you hear a Catholic person talk about bishop in the modern day, that's usually what they mean, someone who's the head of a few different churches have a larger span of space, but maybe in these early communities and Gaul, and in North Africa, it was a like a sort of a lesser title almost, but more like almost more like head pastor of the church rather than necessarily the head of a whole bunch of churches, which is usually what is meant. And it's also possible that existed. Yeah, Agustin in the North African Christians, that that one of the ways that they tried to settle the Donatists debate is by saying, Who has more bishops? So some people think, maybe this isn't a very fairly counted number. But
Ross Twele 22:03
yeah, it's not until you have emperors who are sympathetic to Christianity. Personally sympathetic to Christianity, like Constantine, obviously, was that bishops can really start to make use of the secular way that the willmann Wald is organized into provinces and vicariates. And start to organize themselves along that model. And when Constantine allows bishops to take on secular, judicial, administrative, you know, public works kinds of, of duties within their provinces within the empire era. And as Yeah, he seems to be very unique in that he was so learned, and such an extensive writer, and had connections back to the Greek East when he was sending his writings out there, that his reputation stands as high as it does in the broader scheme of Western Christian history.
Charles Kim 23:13
Yeah, well, it's also just sort of interesting, again, trying to like take a step back and have kind of a big vision here. You know, it over the course of the podcasts. We have episodes about like Christianity in Alexandria, we have some we did some episodes about the martyrdom of perpetuated felicitous, which is a little bit later, but fairly close to the martyr drums of Leon and VN, the ones that we think were the stories we think we were told by Iran as. So we have, but we have like some part of martyrdom since the persecutions that are around the same period, but also a lot of gaps. So like, you know, we can't we don't exactly know, okay, how did this Christian community appear in Carthage? And how are they, you know, obviously, there were enough structures that they were there were deacons, and there were presenters, and they were gathering to learn the faith and some sort of catechumen it and, you know, there was at least enough structure for this to go on, but we don't really have a lot of evidence for how that became so strong in that period. And so kind of what you're telling us a little bit about is how this happened in France. So, you know, Iran as is we're again, talking the late second century. So 150 some odd years after the death of Christ. And and then there's this period where and well, even Iran, as is kind of interesting. Again, we talked about this momentarily in the podcast, but he at least is says that he has heard Polycarp preach, and so Polycarp has a connection to John. And so some of these people, we can tell a little bit of a story that does go back to Christ. But how is it that yeah, Iran as it goes, so So far west from across the Mediterranean makes this kind of a, it just an interesting moment and to think about what it means for historians to talk about, you know, the period in between, like, you know, a lot of us want to know, the early church, a lot of us want to know about the Bible, but it's also, you know, really necessary to know how the story continues. So what goes on in between the creed of Nicaea, the Council of Nicaea, and the Creed, the Nicene, Constantinopolitan creed, and, you know, these sorts of things. But, but yeah, so this is pretty. This is pretty, pretty interesting you gave us. So you, you've kind of told us what of my questions was about what the persecutions looked like, and you gave us a little bit of that information already. So I made jumped down. Okay, so we've been talking about Iran as and then we talked about who told his story. So you told us Gregory of tour, and we talked about Eusebius. So these are the sources that we have. Okay, I want to move on to another figure who we haven't talked about at all, and get a little bit more into Hillary of pop Poitier. And so, like, so the, in the timeline of events, there was this persecution, there was this great figure in a US and then there was kind of a little bit of a an eerie evangelization almost in the mid third century. And then we have Hillary is there. So could you give us a, this is like closer to number question number three, but I said, Could we say that the persecutions were successful? Could we say that the you know, the Romans who tried to push down the Gauls, there was a little bit of a time of, of lapse of Christianity. So so how were they did they did it work? Did the persecutions work and Gaul. I'm gonna take a quick break from our podcast to tell you a little bit about our sponsor the upper room. There are some daily comforts that just make you grateful and feel more grounded in life, petting the dog, hitting that snooze button, and of course, that first cup of coffee. These are things that you count on every day to help you get where you want to go. Things like the Upper Room, daily devotional guide, you can count on the upper room for daily inspiration, daily community and daily prayer. It is the only daily devotional magazine written by readers, ordinary people, people who have encountered God and daily situations. The upper room is here for you every day through your email, a custom app or a printed magazine, enjoy a free 30 day trial of our email or app service by visiting upper the upper room.org/welcome that is, u p, p e r r O M dot O R G slash w e l c o m e, upper room.org/welcome To get your first 30 days free. It is interdenominational and written by readers. And it has 80 years of history and 5 million readers around the world. So this is a well established organization. So I encourage you to go check them out and get their emails and devotional guides from their website.
Ross Twele 28:14
It seems like no, if we're talking about the the great persecution begun by Diocletian and his fellow members of the tetrarchy it seems pretty clear that Constand Seamus, who was an emperor and his provinces from Britain and Gaul, under the Tetrarch ik system, had no stomach for instigating persecutions they're doing only the bare minimum when Christian communities when just to vocally against pagan existence in the empire even to be ignored. And in fact, the reason why, at the beginning of the donatist schism, they appealed specifically to the bishops have gall and not to the bishops of Italy, to adjudicate for them is because there was persecution in Italy under Maximian. And there were many bishops, including some bishops of Rome who may have been tainted by by threats or accusations of being shredded to our base of having handed over and scriptural texts or sacred vessels to the relevant authorities. Whereas in Gaul, that had pretty much not happened because consensus had no stomach for it. And Constantine was from the beginning. Apparently quite sympathetic to the Christian cause even before he had his his vision in the sky. and potentially also because his, the teacher he hired for this on Christmas was like contentious who was an African native originally. So they may have thought that there was extra sympathy between Gaul and Africa to be had there. What I think we've got is a bunch of congregations, particularly in the coastal regions in the south and west of France now that puttered along, without any real, institutional bureaucratic arrangement amongst themselves. They each had, as you said, a lead pastor and overseer, a bishop in that sense. But it's not until the rise of Constantine and the rise of the Donatists schism, that there are reasons for them to come together and start to network. They are not represented at Nicaea. As far as we know, no bishops from Gaul travel there. They are not represented at the next big Western Synod, which is at Seneca in the Balkans in the 343. There were only two bishops from Gaul represented there. So they seem to be minding their own business. And in fact, at the beginning of Hillary's exile, which begins in 356, he claims that he had never even heard the Nicene Creed before one of his fellow bishops tried to advance it as an alternative to this. This white paper and create the damn brand contentious was trying to get approved, as I mentioned earlier, seems like each each diocese was just using whatever creed was common for their baptism liturgies at Eastern Time, and that's just what they had.
Unknown Speaker 31:54
Hillary, who
Ross Twele 31:57
is raised to the title of bishop in 350, in the city of Poitier, which is an Aquitania. And is potentially the first bishop party ever had. In that first period, we know that he is doing some writing, he's writing a commentary on Matthew. But he doesn't become a major player until he is exiled to, you know, conveniently enough Phrygia, the same place the DNA is came from, where he starts to travel around the Greek east, meet the leading theological lights of the day there and then start to write back to his brother bishops in the West. And he insists that he is still there, brother, bishop, he was exiled but never deposed. So he considers himself very much still one of their number one of their community, writing back to them what is going on in the east, and how it relates to the theological positions on the relationship between God the Father and God, the Son that they hold in Gaul. And when he comes back from exile, when consensus is distracted by a warring Persia, and he'll and he takes that chance to sort of sneak back home, which anyone who's familiar with emanations of story will not be surprised by that sort of thing. That's when he writes Old Testament commentaries, he writes some commentaries. So between the stuff he writes in exile, which includes his statement, attache, and the stuff he writes, when he gets back, he seems to bring with him a spirit of institutional leadership, a spirit of really setting the agenda of theological conversation exegetical conversation for the rest of his province, that had not existed in Gaul before then,
Charles Kim 34:04
I was just gonna say, Oh, the, you know, we were talking about like the Golic churches, kind of minding their own business, and how Hillary probably only knew the baptismal Creed's of sort of whatever was in use before Nicaea. And I was just thinking, the the idea of a universal church and sort of, like looking, looking at ways in which there was overlap between the churches in the East and the churches in the West, and you're saying Hillary kind of brought some of that bigger vision back with him. It just is, as a you know, it's kind of like, on the one hand, like Augustine wants to think of himself as part of the universal church. That's a big part of his theological work. But But even that, like is a little bit of a you know, he has to fight for that. The Donatists kind of sounded a little bit like the Gaul Almost like the data scientists seem to have wanted to be a little more to themselves and not so worried about what was going on outside of them. And I don't know, it's sort of, I never really thought about that fact, that being maybe a common phenomena that a lot of these little churches were less concerned with what overlap there was. And, and maybe Hillary being, at least at the vanguard. I mean, he has a he has a predecessor in era, Inez, who is who has worked across but but still there being a large gap. In time, you have a you have a sort of an interesting just reiterates your point that you also brought up, which is the influence of origin and Greek thought in the West, predating Ambrose and Augustine and really having a kind of a beginning with, with with Hillary.
Ross Twele 35:58
And I think it might be worth noting, too, that sure. UCBs obsessive RIA has a concept of the universal church that's baked into the cake of his his church history. But that's not put into Latin until the 390s. So obviously, Italy has a sense of that, because the bishop in Rome has been a reference point for quite a while by then for the Greek East. But no reason to think that the goals would.
Charles Kim 36:28
Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's helpful. Interesting, well, one thing that I've been kind of like, so at SLU, we do work a lot on the interpretive schools of Alexandria and Antioch. And that's a big, you know, Peter Martin's has taught us to be very suspicious of those labels and trying to connect people and you know, how Faasil they can be and, and this sort of thing, but I, you know, they're one of the things that you said in your tweet, you use the phrase, Cathedral School, was there a Cathedral School at Poitier? And I know that these are separate concepts, but you could, you could forgive me for being mistaken straightaway, if I think, okay, they're calling these cathedral schools, what, you know, I was just trying to think of like other names for things that we could call it part of part of what Peter Martin's has this question is really how much overlap there are, how much like, direct connection, there was an answer, like a school of Antioch, rather than really what people are identifying are what they take to be patterns, rather than necessarily a direct connection. So I sort of I heard Cathedral School, and I was like, oh, no, that's a separate thing. But But could you tell us a little bit more about like, what what is a Cathedral School? Exactly? And why Why might people think that there was a Cathedral School at POCZTA? And and why is that not actually really a fair way to assess what was going on at Poitier under Hillary,
Ross Twele 38:04
at least in Gaul, and Western Germany, in the time leading up to and including Charlemagne. But in the time of the Merovingian, that first Frankish dynasty that that fills the void there after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. So the late four hundreds up to about 800. Cathedral schools as far as we know them, and by then, bishops aren't institutionalized. The church that they govern is the Cathedral of the area. Those schools seem mostly to just be training schools for aspiring clerics. They aren't taught a rudimentary amount of the liberal arts enough to be able to read and interpret the scriptures the way the fathers would. And then they aren't trained in reading and interpreting the scriptures the way the fathers would. They are trained in preaching, they are trained in missionary work to the barbarians. They aren't trained in a Benedictine semi monastic manner of life as much as that can be put into secular use. And so they would not be all that different from the monastery schools. Except that, you know, the particular content and training of life might be more or less rigorous, based on that setting. It's conceivable, though, this is probably more done, both at the monastic level and at the sort of individual parish level that the cathedral schools also served some catechumen all purpose that the master there on one of the leading pupils there or might go out and help instruct the catechumens being brought into the Christian church during Lent. And to that extent, there would be a connection between the early school in Alexandria that supposedly existed as early as the 190s. Which origin is said to have been the, the head of the sort of provost of it, and may be at the end of his life, Clement of Alexandria was beforehand that was primarily a catechumen or school, it to may have done some clerical formation, certainly the Bishop of that time and Alexandria Demetrius was a very centralizing Bishop and would have been interested in in seeing that happen. And in both cases, Gaul and Alexandria, the the sort of central, the essential reference point would have been the master himself, who would have a sort of charismatic appeal sort of charismatic authority by virtue of being a good model of biblical interpretation being a good model of Christian life that made him want me to train others in that. And certainly in the Gauls, that sort of personal modeling of sanctity, would be more important in the clinical formation than the strict content of their intellectual education. If we're getting into, you know, this the schools of biblical interpretation, talking about Alexandria versus Antioch in that sense, that's not necessarily even strictly connected to this catechetical school that I've been mentioning those trends in interpretation. While origin is a reference point, as he can't not be in the Greek east. It's really the generations following Athanasius like patriarch, the awfulness and Patriarch Cyril whose exegetical approaches define the Alexandrian school the way we used to and still sometimes describe it. And then similarly in in Antioch dunamis, the blind is a mid 14th century, right? exegesis. So even then, it's not a very strong connection. It may be, we have no way of knowing this for sure, because we don't have the curricula of the cathedral schools in Gaul that Hillary's commentaries weren't a part of that.
That curriculum that way of interpreting. When know he had a predecessor, in not a Poitier in the Gauls, there's a tiki as of tune, who wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs. And then, after Hillary, we know that Augustine Augustine's sermons and commentaries make their way to Gaul very early on across the Mediterranean to the extent that some, some bishops whose sermon collections we possess and now recognize, had their sermons. Right, wrongly identified as being Augustine sermons and included in his collections because they were mostly just copying the main content of his sermon for a particular scripture passage, and then lightly adapting it for their their own congregation. Yeah. So it becomes a very Augustinian educational method and Benedictine life training. Yeah, there.
Charles Kim 44:01
Yeah, I mean, it's it is again, I just can't I like so trying to think of these schools and things. It's sort of funny, I one of the things that when I do when I review a lot of literature on Augustine, and one of the things that sometimes people will compare, like, I was just reading a book where they were talking about the the monastic life of basil of Surya and how influential that was in his theology, but Augustine is not looked upon as a monk or a pastor almost ever. He's, she's just the theologian, like or he's just the writer of the great treatises. And I was like, Well, wait a minute, I mean, he considered himself some kind of a monad, you know, in a monastic life, and he was like, and he has people who are influential, who maybe not as influential but prosper of Aquitaine or a row CEUs or post Sidious. There are people there's a little school that's built up around HIPAA, we know that he was doing some kind of training. We also know that he did it poorly, at least in the case of Ansan ninus So, it's not always like he's doing great things. But you know, a lot of these things could be said about Augustine, just as well. And and he thought, you know, I don't know. Like, it's, it's just interesting how we have to characterize these different people to try to show what makes them sort of worth studying or influential or something like that. And Augustine just gets, you know, and he should, I mean, the confessions of the city of Ghana and Daytona shots and whatever, are wonderful. But like, you know, it really one of the fun things about studying him in depth was what was going on in his day to day life. Like he spent a lot of time trying to help pastors and help them learn how to read scripture, and you know, some of the things that you're describing of a Cathedral School. You know, there's, there's some some similarities in even what he was trying to do in hippo. But I digress on that. If you and we
Ross Twele 46:00
know that, that deacons from Carthage who aren't in charge of catechumen, or formation, they're all writing to him for advice. And he's sending very long letters of, of interpretation back to them, for them to use as well.
Charles Kim 46:15
Yeah. Well, one thing I mentioned that we read, so we just recently did a podcast on Ambrose. And I had my friend Drew talk about Ambrose a little bit and he did his PhD on Ambrose at Marquette. But we talked a little bit about his on the duties of the clergy. And I was thinking like, oh, yeah, no, this, this would have been a great thing. And it appears that that was even in use in a lot of these cathedral schools. Is that right?
Ross Twele 46:42
Yes, I mean, as far as we know, that wasn't another Latin father, who tried to really systematize what a bishop does what a pastor does, in the the nitty gritty of of day to day engagement with parishioners. I mean, Gregory the Great, obviously, the past rule that he writes, gets into circulation in the early six hundreds. But as far as we can tell, even in the Cathedral School, at at Paris, all right, at x under Charlemagne, it's Ambrose's, on the duties of clergy that is being used that Allahu in New York is modifying from a new imperial situation. Up there, yeah.
Charles Kim 47:42
Yeah, I was trying to think of other texts. So I love reading Pat, the Gregory the Great's pestle rule, when I was in doing my some of the early work coursework in my PhD program, so you have that you have on the duties of the clergy. And then Chris Austin has a book on the priesthood. But I don't know when, or when, or if that was translated into Latin. So you know, but I was just trying to think of other texts that could be used. And you could like it just be it could sort of be an interesting kind of lateral comparative study of different ways in which clergy are trained in the fourth, fifth or sixth centuries or something, you know, what, what did they use? What did they do? How did that go? I guess Cassiodorus, even a little bit in the divine in secular learning, although nuts, I mean, it, of course, is clerical that he has somewhere in mind, but it may be broader as well. It's not directly like how do you administer a parish or whatever, but,
Ross Twele 48:38
but has Cassiodorus does a lot of his writing after and he moves east. Yeah. To escape the the Gothic area and corn. Yeah. So it's unclear and even how much of that makes its way back home?
Charles Kim 48:55
Yeah, yeah. Interesting lot to think about. Well, we are running out of time. And one thing that you mentioned to me that was sort of interesting that you you enjoyed about the podcast or sort of made you curious about the podcast was specifically specifically Protestant interest in the patristic period. That was somewhat peculiar to you, or at least, like you didn't really, you know, maybe knew that it was happening, but it was interesting to listen to Protestants have conversations about it, because you you know, from, from a Roman Catholic standpoint, of course, this stuff is important. Even Even if, as you pointed out the way that maybe the average Roman Catholic, what they know about the church fathers differs from what like we might do in a doctoral seminar, the kind of like research that we're doing is very specific historical, it's not even necessarily the exact sort of thing that may happen on a weekly basis in the parish. But what sort of what kind of things surprised you about Protestant interest in the church fathers? And or I don't know, is there any kind of response that you'd like to give to, to what that's been like as a Catholic listening to Protestants sort of look through the church fathers for some some sort of resource model or inspiration or something?
Ross Twele 50:20
Well, I certainly am glad that it's happening. That sort of shared heritage that we all have well, before. Even the Orthodox split, much less than you have the Protestant splits. That that is, at least in some circles, coming back into into interest in Protestantism is welcome. I think we're all probably in the same boat that the average member of a congregation doesn't know much, personally about the foreigners, except that Augustine is a big one. And that, as a nation, maybe that Athanasios is a name you should know. And that there are a lot of them named Gregory. When you do at least get Catholics who know something about the fathers, it's usually one of two ways. Either they use the Catholic prayer book called the Liturgy of the Hours, which is a set of some readings and the scripture readings for various times of the day. And has one early morning hour that includes a reading from one of the patristic fathers or medieval scholastic masters, and sometimes later in 20th century Vatican texts, as well. And they will recognize some names and at least the spirit of that kind of writing from that. Or they will have done a deep dive into ways that Protestants are wrong about the Eucharist or wrong about what baptism does are wrong about Mary and saints and Pope's and things and they will have gone back and done their improved texting in the following days. To see how to how to prove the antiquity of these beliefs and the rightness of these beliefs. And I occasionally in my own research, I have found like a late 19th century Anglican cleric user and as to try to prove that he didn't have a Eucharistic theology, stuff like that. But I don't know personally, whatever. That has also been a Protestant Scotland the approach in the past century or two, to go back to the foreigners and say, what's the Catholics? They didn't actually think what you thought you'd have to enlighten me on that? Yeah.
Charles Kim 52:59
Well, I mean, so one person that I know there was a book by a Southern Baptist guy at the undergrad that I went to a Southern Baptist School, Oklahoma Baptist University, and he just did something with InterVarsity press on the descent to the dead. And so, you know, he did some sort of resource mount kind of things, trying to like look for the fathers for why where this came from, it was not specifically used as a polemic, though. So it was in so it was more just what usually happens for Protestants, who, like myself, who are interested in the church fathers is usually not trying to necessarily like to make it an attack on a belief, but really is just trying to show like, you know, I, I've probably made this joke on the podcast before, but the way that I was raised, you know, we just sort of assumed that church history went, Jesus, Billy Graham, and my pastor, and then you and then I went to high school with Presbyterians, and they were like, Oh, we study history. Well, what does that mean for them? Well, that means we study Jesus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and then up to the present day. So but no one wants to talk about well, what about Aquinas, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe a Presbyterian says, I know that Augustine is important. But let's say anything in between Augustine and Luther just sort of seemed to be glossed over and overlooked and really not part of our shared heritage, as you say. So I think probably the spirit in which I and a lot of other contemporary Protestants are looking at the church fathers is to strive to say like, Yeah, this is our shared tradition. So like, you know, like it's not not just trying to look for how we can prove the other wrong as much as what we can learn. Like, I mean, I think if a lot of contemporary pastors read Gregor the Great's pastoral rule, we'd be a lot better off if that if there was like that sort of spirit of how to lead people and train People and you know, prayerful life, you know, the way that he models it. So, you know, I just, I guess I look at it, as, you know, how can I look at this as part of what makes Protestant Protestants even even if there's a rejection of some of the way that it's used or something, it's still part of our it's part of who we are. So Calvin's commentaries, I mean, he writes a commentary on every book of the Bible. And in nearly every book, he sort cites various Church Fathers, not just the Gustin. And actually usually, it's more favorably Cyril of Alexandria or St. John Chrysostom. Or, you know, he's actually much more amenable in the biblical commentaries to some other church fathers, especially Chris Austin, but then even Augustine, which would surprise some people. Because, yeah, because he seems to be, you know, Augustine seems to be his champion. But in a way, we can lay that to the side. Yeah, that's just it's fun to, you know, it's cool that it's cool that this can be a shared way, like way of investigation. And, and like I say, I mean, for me, I hope it's always a, you know, I'm learning how to, I'm learning about God through these men. For me, this is always like, and women, I should say, men and women, I'm looking, I'm looking for, you know, I'm looking for ways in which the broader tradition has thought about the overlap between revelation of the Scriptures and Jesus Christ. And, you know, and how, that that that we can use that as a way to have a shared vision of God, you know, ultimately. So that's, that's really that's my sort of hope for it. Even if it's a little bit scholarly, more scholarly at times.
Ross Twele 56:56
We had a period in the 80s, maybe early 90s, when Pope John Paul the Second, released an instruction to colleges and seminaries, asking them, not so much to back off the Aquinas, but to rediscover the fathers. And to look to them as a model of understanding scripture in a way much closer to the way its authors understood it as they were writing it. to developing a habit of Christo Centricity putting the Lordship of Jesus at the center, reading the whole of Scripture as an organic whole with a to shed light on each other Old Testament and New. And following that we had quite an academic Catholic revival, looking at the spirit of the fathers and what it means to think patristic Lee, yeah. That I don't know how much of that has gotten into the seminaries. Exactly. But at least in the, the sort of Jesuit academic, walled and other diocesan and religious run universities. It's been good, it's been positive.
Charles Kim 58:06
Well, I really appreciate it. And I'm gonna have to run to teach some Latin here in about 30 minutes. So I need to get on my tie and get over it a slew Celsius. I really have appreciated talking to you. And yeah, hopefully we can do this again, and maybe do a deeper dive into some of the stuff that you're doing. You know, whatever you've been working on. In the meantime, maybe, you know, figuring out what Hillary is up to and his songs, commentaries or something.
Ross Twele 58:33
I'd love that. Thanks. Very good. Well, thank you for this opportunity.
Charles Kim 58:38
Absolutely. Thanks so much, and I will, hopefully we can talk soon. Thank you for listening to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. And we will be back next week with some more interviews and probably a podcast or two with Tom and Trevor as well. Be well
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
