Father, we thank you for your kindness to us again in bringing us together on a Thursday evening as we strive to learn more about your providence in history and our role in that. And so we pray that you give us understanding this evening, help our minds to be sharp after a long day. I pray that we take this knowledge and use it in our minds and in our lives in a way that would keep us humble rather than puffing us up with pride. That we would recognize through this how little we really know and that through it we might also learn how to be a better tool in your hand in this age in which you've placed us. Help me to be clear and understandable in my instruction this evening and I ask all this in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. All righty. No quiz. I figure it's been three weeks since we were together, and that might be asking a little bit much of you. So I figured rather, instead of doing a quiz, I'd just do a quick overview of what we talked about last semester, since we're jumping into a new semester, if you want to split it up that way, 2019, 2020. So we talked about five groups of, quote unquote, fathers last And I think I mentioned a couple of times, Jesus talked about not calling any man on earth your father. And certainly when we think about the Pope demanding to be called father and things of that nature, that's a misuse of that term. But we don't mean this in that kind of reverential. way, but rather we're talking about, like you might say, Edison was the father of electricity or something of that nature. We're talking about men who were pioneers, who were some of the first to put these things in systematic ways. So please don't get hung up on that term. That's what we mean when we say it that way. So the first was the Apostolic Fathers. They're called Apostolic because they were actually contemporaries with the Apostles. These were the men who learned from the Apostles themselves, who learned from Peter, Paul, John. Men like this. This was Clement and Ignatius. They lived in the first and second centuries. Then we have the Apologist Fathers and they were known as Apologists because they began really defending the faith against many of the heresies and errors that were beginning to spring up. Up until this point, the apostolic fathers were writing very edifying letters to the churches, things of this nature. They weren't yet getting into any kind of a systematic theology or anything like that. And the apologist fathers began to really make a defense for the faith against the pagans, against the Jews, against the heresies within the church. Then we have the African fathers who were called that because they lived in Africa. Surprise, surprise. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus were the apologist fathers that we talked about. Tertullian, Cyprian, and Athanasius were the three fathers that we talked about who hailed from Africa. Then we talked about the Cappadocian Fathers. They were called Cappadocian Fathers because they lived in the region known as Cappadocia. They were Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus. And then we talked about the Latin Fathers and they were called Latin Fathers not because they lived in Latin America. or liked Latin music, but because they wrote in Latin, whereas many of those other men before them wrote mostly in Greek, they began to write in Latin, which became very influential in the Western Church. And we talked about Ambrose, and then spent two weeks on Augustine because of the oversized influence that he had on history. And so this evening we begin a new group, which is known as the Early Monastic. fathers, the early monastic fathers. These are those that the monastic period was very lengthy and so that's why it split up into the early, middle, later monastic period because basically after Augustine, once we get into about the 500s, the monastic period starts and it stretches all the way until the time of the Renaissance in the 1400s. almost a thousand year span of time there when we talk about the monastic period. So this is the early monastic period. We're moving from Augustine, who was living in the 400s, and trying to keep along our timeline. Up until this point, we've gone through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. We've gone through 11 men and spanned 400 years. The next three men we talk about are going to span 600 years. So we have a lot less influence over this period that's coming up, what's known as the monastic period. When we're talking about religion, we're talking about the church. In more historical context, you've probably heard it called the Middle Ages. Basically, the medieval period is known basically everywhere from 500 all the way up to the 1400s. In between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance is known as the medieval period. And the beginning part of that, from about the 600s through the 11 or 1200s, is known as the Dark Ages. And it's known as the Dark Ages because of the lack of communication, the lack of transportation, the lack of education that was going on in the world at that point. And there was a myriad of reasons for that. What was it I was reading? I think from the 800s to the 1300s, there was a period of global cooling, and this was causing all kinds of freezes, and the crops weren't growing as well. With the Roman Empire falling, the roads weren't being kept up as well, and therefore, as people would learn something new, they couldn't necessarily transport it as easily to the other towns, so communication was breaking down. People weren't able to learn as much as these freezes and famines were causing people's bodies to become weaker and their immune systems were weaker. The bubonic plague ended up coming into Europe and killing out tens of millions of people. Wolves were coming down from the north as this mini ice age, almost as it were, was stretching down into Europe. The habitat for wolves was getting larger. I mean, there's just a million reasons for it. But really what it came down to was Illiteracy was the norm. Your average Joe couldn't read. There really wasn't any middle class. There was the ruling class of rich landowners and then everybody else who basically worked for them in one way or another across Europe. So this became known as the Dark Ages. There was a darkness of learning and specifically in religion in the church, the way that we see this manifested, is that as people couldn't read the scriptures for themselves, the elite ruling class began to exercise authorities and take advantage of the situation in ways that simply weren't biblical, but there wasn't, until the Renaissance and the age of the printing press and the age of the Bible being translated into the vulgar tongues, the ability for the people at large to know the truth. And this was true in every field, but we're specifically focusing on the religious field, the Christian field in particular. So that's a really broad picture of the next thousand years almost that we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks. But now to hone it back down to the day immediately after Augustine's life. Remember we left off talking a couple of weeks ago, for those of you who are here, that although Augustine in large part, in the council that came shortly after his life, defeated pure Pelagianism. And remember what Pelagianism was. It says Adam's fall didn't affect humans. Jesus was mostly just a good example. He didn't die on our behalf. He didn't die for our sins. Man was perfectly capable of always choosing the right thing. People could live perfect, sinless lives if they wanted to. They just had to follow Jesus' example. And Augustine put an end to that largely within the church at large, the universal church. However, there came up a compromise behind that and it's been called semi-Pelagianism. And it said, yes, Adam's fall did affect everybody. But it didn't affect us in the way that we're spiritually dead now because of him. It just wounded us. We fell along with him and now we're at a disadvantage. Sinners can't believe in Christ without God's grace, but God's grace is just put out there and man has to choose to take hold of God's grace and to use it to their advantage. So it sought to find a middle ground between what Augustine was teaching and what Pelagian was teaching. Pelagius was teaching. And it wanted to take a little bit of both and find some middle ground that said, maybe these two extremes are too extreme. And we need to kind of walk the narrow way between the two. And really at its core, semi-Pelagianism was the belief that man can resist the effectual call of God. And that predestination is nothing more than the passive foresight or foreknowledge of God. That's all predestination is. God looked down the tunnel of time, He saw who would choose Him, and so He chose them. And so this was an attempt at marrying these two groups that were at odds with each other. Pelagius was saying, there's no such thing as predestination. Man chooses whatever man wants to choose. Augustine was saying, no, God chooses. He's saying, well, maybe there's a middle ground between the two. So in 529, a synod of 14 bishops was called. It was called the Council of Orange in Spain, to once again address the schism in Christianity, the schism between the followers of Augustine and this semi-Pelagian middle ground. And the result of this council, it's called a council, but it wasn't a universal council, it wasn't an ecumenical council, it was a local council of 14 bishops, but they affirmed Augustine's teaching on original sin and sovereign grace. They said, no, in Adam's fall we all really died, and it's God's sovereign grace which predestines or elects those who will be his. Moreover, they condemned the idea that any are ordained to evil by God. So, similar to what our Reformed Confessions say. Man doesn't sin because God predestined him to sin. God isn't the cause or isn't the one who has predestined or elected some to evil. And they said anyone who teaches or believes that is anathema. It's condemned. It's not part of the Orthodox Church. So that was the Council of Orange there in 529. It basically reaffirmed Augustine's teachings. Then in my notes, this is where I put in everything that I already told you about the Middle Ages. So from there in the 600s until the 1400s, these dominoes began to fall. Trade dwindled. Education dwindled. The middle class disappeared. Illiteracy was the norm. Fable and superstition became accepted more widely than objective truth. both medically, spiritually, economically, and yet amidst all of this turmoil, God was still preserving His Word and His Church. I wanted to read you this quote directly from this book by Stephen Lawson. He says this about this period in which God was preserving the truth amidst all these fables and superstitions. He says, as the dark ages began, however, there were a few lights that shined forth with the doctrines of grace. J. V. Fesco writes, as the sun began to set on the patristic age, this was that age of all knowledge and writing and advancements in the first 400 years of the church where there was still a whole lot of learning and schools and scholarly activity, as the sun began to set on the patristic age, the theology of Augustine was not eclipsed by the night. A few isolated figures found their places in history as teachers of sovereign grace, for even amid dark times, God always has men who remain committed to the doctrines of grace. Many of these men were monks, or more formally, monastics. Now, the lifestyle of a monk or a monastic from the earliest time that we find it happening in Christianity all the way through today, I don't find to be a biblical concept. This idea of holding oneself up, isolated away from culture at large and submitting yourself to physical pains and disciplines. However, God used it, in this time in history, in large part in preservation of His Word. Many of the extant copies of the scriptures that we still have came from monasteries and from these men who were continuing to copy them. To a large degree, the heart and soul of the medieval church was found within the monasteries. In these insular communities, monks from the Greek monos, meaning alone, they were isolating themselves away, gave themselves to the disciplines of the Christian life. They purposefully cut themselves off from the world so that they might dedicate themselves to prayer and praise to God throughout the day and night. Monks participated each day in various worship services. They also pursued personal sanctification, in their mind. To this end, some took vows of poverty and chastity. In addition to their spiritual pursuits, monks performed physical labor, provided charitable services, and kept learning alive. They cleared forests, cultivated fields, built roads, raised buildings, and taught students. Also, they studied and copied the scriptures and the writings of the church fathers, as well as classical works of philosophy and literature. Thus, the monasteries were the center of education until the evolution of the cathedral schools and the university." So basically, between the fall of Rome and the end of the patristic age, when you had all of these learning centers and universities and seminaries, and the rise of the Renaissance in the 1400s, in between those two, The only people basically who could read or who had any education were those who were sent by the church to these monasteries or to learn. in these church schools. For all these reasons, monks often were the leading figures of Christendom during the medieval centuries, and that's using Christendom in a very general, broad sense. Chief teachers, promoters of the Crusades, and builders of cathedrals. In a period that was enveloped by darkness, these men upheld the light of Scripture, advancing understanding and comprehension of the Scripture, and with it the doctrines of grace. Among them were Isidore of Seville, Watts Chalk of Orbay, and Bernard of Clairvaux. And Isidore was in 560 to 630, that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. Dostoch was in the 800s, and Bernard was from 1090 to 1153. So there's big gaps of time between these men, as opposed to what we've been going on, where it's been almost an unbroken line chronologically. But that was because of the Dark Ages and all that was going on in these monasteries. These men who were actually holding to true biblical theology were few and far between. And I find it ironic, looking back now through history, that it was in large part these monks and monasteries that kept the teaching of these early men on the doctrines of grace alive for a man who was a monk like Martin Luther to eventually reform the church in a way that shined the error on the monks and the monasteries. And yet God does in fact move in mysterious ways, and this seems to be the way that he was working in this time. So the man we're talking about tonight is Isidore of Seville. I-S-I-D-O-R-E. Isidore. And he was a bishop. You may have heard of Figaro the barber of Seville. This is Isidore the bishop of Seville. Quite a different man. He was born the youngest child of a Christian Roman family who was part of the nobility in Cartagena, Spain around 560 AD. So, like so many of these other early church fathers, he came from a very prominent, affluent, well-to-do family. They were part of the nobility there in Spain, but they were Orthodox Christians. They held to the Trinitarian Augustinian Christian teaching. And he was the youngest child. In fact, his oldest brother was over 20 years older than him. So there was a big gap between the two of them. And while he was still a young child, his family fled to Seville. So he wasn't born in Seville. He was born in Cartagena, but that's where his family fled because there was fighting going on between the Goths, who was this Germanic tribe, and the Byzantine Empire. This is those who were in Constantinople, who were still kind of the ruling class from the East. These two forces were clashing and they met there in Cartagena and therefore Isidore's family fled to Seville to get away from the fighting. Isidor's parents both died when he was a young man. And his eldest brother, who as I mentioned was 20 years his senior, oversaw his education after his parents both died at a young age. His elder brother's name was Leander. And Leander went on to become the Archbishop of Seville. And in that role as the bishop, as the chief presbyter, of that region, he became the face and the spearhead of the struggle against Arianism. So Arianism still hadn't died. There were still those who were proponents of the idea that Jesus wasn't fully God, that he was really just a man, or that he either wasn't fully man, maybe he was just a spirit. There were these different strains of Arianism. And this was still particularly being held among these Germanic tribes. that early Arian missionaries had come, and early bishops who held to Arianism had come into this region and had spread this false gospel of Arianism. And many of the Goths and the tribes there, the barbarians, were holding to this Arian view, whereas those who were coming from the East, those who were coming from Constantinople, those who still had a lot of Latin influence, were holding more to Augustinian teaching. But Leander was leading the charge, the fight against Arianism, and he was so influential, it was said that he converted many of the Goths to true Christianity from their Arian heresy. He was appointed to preside over the Council of Toledo in 587, which was another local council there to deal particularly with the topic of Arianism. And some have said that while Isidore had more influence long term, in their day, Leander was actually more spiritually influential than Isidore was himself. So he came from a family that was not only influential in that they were Roman nobility, but his brother actually was very influential within the church and within Christianity. Not much else is known about Isidore's early life, but his elder brother died around 600 AD. So at this point, his elder brother, he died somewhere around the age of 60 years old, and Isidore at this point is about 40 years old. And there was all of this fighting going on all across the world. Islam was just beginning to grow in strength and was about to start moving into South Asia and Europe from the South. You had all the Goths and the Vandals and those barbaric tribes coming from the West and the North. You had the Byzantine Empire who's trying to hold up some of the vestiges of crumbling Rome. And amidst all of this turmoil, Isidore is appointed as Archbishop there in Seville in Spain. And he's kind of right there in the geopolitical, maybe not political, but the geographical center of all this other fighting and turmoil that's going on around him in the world. And then spiritually he has Arianism and Semi-Pelagianism to fight against Tabu. And when he was appointed as the Archbishop, one of his primary goals, one of his priorities, was to establish schools for the education of the young people in Spain. He thought it was important that these young men particularly get a proper education, which seemed to be coming harder and harder to come by. And also, one of his claims to fame is that he was the first to explicitly promote the doctrine of double predestination. So double predestination is the teaching that God ordained those who will be saved to heaven, and He's ordained those who are condemned to hell. That He's ordained all of it. There are many who hold simply to an idea of single predestination, which is that God has ordained whom He will save, but He didn't necessarily ordain the others to hell. He just left them in their position. I'll give away which side I'm on by... saying, I find it strange that we say he left them there, but how did they get there when the scriptures tell us they were condemned already? So that's my commentary on that. But he was the first one to explicitly promote this doctrine of double predestination. Up until this point, even Augustine himself hadn't really dealt with whether predestination and election went both ways. But Isidore did. He taught that everything that happens in eternity happens by God's electing sovereign control. As Archbishop of Seville, he presided over the Second Council of Seville, which was another council dealing with the Aryan controversy, and particularly there was a strain that was fighting against the hypostatic union, which is the doctrine that the nature of God and the nature of man were both fully in Christ and merged in one person. And the Second Council of Seville once again reaffirmed that, that Jesus Christ had two natures in one person. He was fully divine and fully man. And he also presided over the Fourth Council of Toledo. Now the Fourth Council of Toledo was the largest official religious gathering ever held in Spain. It was attended where these other councils, you have 14 bishops and 20 bishops coming, over 69 church leaders and the King of Spain all attended this gathering. Fourth Council of Toledo. And the King of Spain urged the council to address the abuses that were going on in the church by the clergy, people already, I say already, we're in the 500s, we're in the 600s by now. But already there was preferential treatment being given to who would hold positions of power in the church, who would be appointed to bishoprics and to the presbytery and things of this nature. So the king called this council to address these abuses with prayer and solemnity. And this council, under Isidore's direction, he was the one presiding over it, issued 75 canons, 75 directives for the church, including the directive for each bishop to establish a seminary in their cathedral city for the training of God's servants in the church. So Isidore said, one of the ways we're going to the abuses that are going on in the church, is that there needs to be a seminary that each bishop has under his watch care, so that those who are coming into the church to be leaders or servants in the church aren't just uneducated or educated only in secular ways, but that they would have a true training in theology and in the scriptures. Eventually the canons from these two councils that he presided over, the Second Council of Seville and the Fourth Council of Toledo, the canons combined of those two is what was used for the constitutional law in Spain. When they went to draw up a constitution, it in large part came from these canons, from these two councils and that form of Spanish constitutional law endured until the 15th century. And so Isidore truly had an incredible influence on Spain in particular. He's the religious hero of Spain. So literally a thousand years of influence. Beyond those canons, we're about to start talking about his writings. I don't think I've been more impressed with anyone, maybe Augustine, but besides I don't know that anyone has written more broadly than Isidore did, and his writings were used for the next thousand years as well. Toward the end of Isidore's life, not a whole lot is known about the end of his life, just like not a whole lot is known about the beginning of his life. Apparently his doctors told him toward the end of his life that he was dying and that he was sure to die within the next few months. And he is said to have taken the news with grace, to have dedicated the last days of his life to the giving of alms to the poor. Four days before his death, he was carried to the church where he confessed his sins to the congregation, and prayed with them, and four days later he passed away. So, not a whole lot is known particularly about his life, and yet his teachings, his theology, his writings were astronomical in comparison. He wrote theological works. He wrote apologetic or dogmatic works, which is a defense of the faith. He wrote educational works. He wrote historical works. He was Many believe the most learned man in the world at his time. And when you begin to hear some of the books that he wrote and compiled, you'll understand why he was called that. Theologically, here's a few of his books. You don't have to write all these down because it's a pretty lengthy list. He wrote one called Scripture Allegories. It was a book that gave 340 Bible names and passages and gave an explanation for them. He wrote a book called Lives and Deaths of Biblical Saints, which was 85 biographical sketches of various biblical characters. He edited a book called Introductions in the Old and New Testaments, which was a compilation of many other authors' general introduction to the entire Bible. He wrote a book called Scripture Numbers, which was a look at numbers and their meanings in the Bible. He wrote a book called Questions on the Old and New Testaments, which was a catechism of 41 questions and answers about the Bible. He compiled another book, edited a book called Expositions of Holy Mysteries, which was a compilation of writings from many of the early church fathers. So those were a few of his most notable theological books. Then he wrote in the realm of apologetics or dogmatics. He wrote a book called Sentences, or he, I'm sorry, once again edited a book called Sentences, which was a compilation of Augustine and Gregory the Great's writings. This is largely considered the first manual of Christian doctrine in the Western Church. So we kind of take for granted that we have all kinds of manuals of Christian doctrine. Some of the more famous ones, obviously, are John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian religion, we have John Gill's Manual of Theology. You have a lot of these men, but up until this point, this was really the first one, and it was called Sentences. He wrote a book called The Catholic Faith Defended Against the Jews, which again, Catholic there meaning universal, not so much Roman Catholicism as we think of it today. This was a presentation of biblical prophecies and teachings about Jesus intended for a Jewish audience. And this was republished in several different languages and remained popular for the next several hundred years in evangelizing Jews and actually giving a defense and an evangelistic presentation to the Jews for why Jesus was the Christ. He wrote a book called Synonyms, which was an imaginary dialogue in which the Logos counseled a sinful man in the way of God. It was another apologetic book, a defense of the faith. And he wrote a book called The Order of Creation, which was a defense of basic biblical doctrines. Now, if we stop there, that's pretty impressive, that this man could write. But his writings went beyond the theological and apologetic. Remember, he wanted to have schools and seminaries built in each of these cathedral cities, and so he wrote books from an educational perspective. He wrote a book called The Difference. which was a dictionary of synonyms explaining their differences and served to many as a dictionary of theological terms. He wrote a book called On the Nature of Things, which was a natural philosophy which addressed the division of time and the earth. He wrote a book called A Chronicle, which was a timeline of the primary world events from creation up until his day, 615. So some of you all may be familiar with James Usher's The Annals of Time. And he did it first, Isidore wrote a timeline of the world from creation until his time. He wrote a book called The History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi? Suevi? S-U-E-V-I? I know Goths and Vandals, I don't know who they are. But this book, which chronicled the history of the Goths and Vandals, these Germanic tribes, contains some historical information that is found nowhere else, that we wouldn't know anything about the history of these tribes if it weren't for Isidore's book about their history. He wrote a book called Famous Men, which was biographical sketches of 46 key men throughout history. And perhaps most impressive of all, if you're not impressed yet, he wrote what was called Etymologies, and it was a 21-volume encyclopedia of a wide variety of subjects And rather than copy them all down, I figured I would just read you what the subjects included. That work is available. Etymologies? Yeah, and they're like $35 or $40 a volume. Wow. I think you can get them digitally a lot cheaper, but I can't imagine. Etymologies was a 20-volume encyclopedia that distilled knowledge in many fields. Grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy, medicine, jurisprudence, history, theology, geography, geology, architecture, agriculture, anthropology, and other subjects. It's basically Encyclopedia Britannica written by one man. home school curriculum. That's exactly what I was sitting there thinking about. Take off a lot of boxes. Yeah. Etymologies has been hailed as nothing less than astonishing. It was a virtual encyclopedia of everything that was known at that time. In it, Isidore summarizes all the knowledge of his times in what has been called the basic book of the entire Middle Ages. Written at the request of King Seispelt, Etymologies reveals Isidore's wide range of research and reading. This work was widely used, copied, and spread through Europe for centuries. Its popularity is attested by the fact, this is how you can know how popular it was, that there are a thousand extant manuscripts, second only to the number of extant manuscripts of the Bible from this time. So the two most published books that we still have copies from from that time was number one, the Bible, and number two, Isidore's Etymologies. So that's how widely used and spread it was. So his influence We said Leander, his older brother, may have had a stronger influence in his day, but when you think about this man who presided over the councils that gave the basis for Spain's constitutional law for the next thousand years, who wrote the encyclopedia that was secondly popular only to the Bible, encourage these other bishops to build seminaries, the Dark Ages undoubtedly would have been much darker if it were not for Isidore's efforts and accomplishments in his day. So those are some of his works. When someone writes a 20 volume encyclopedia and that's not the majority of what he wrote, that just baffles me. But this man was certainly diligent in his day and seems to have served his generation and the generations that followed well. So what do we learn from Isidore of Seville? Let's take his life or what we've talked about tonight and kind of break it down into three kind of take away, take home points. Remember in the beginning we were talking about Augustinianism and Pelagianism and these semi-Pelagians were trying to take the middle ground and he was trying to battle that in his life. I think what we learned from Isidore, what I learned perhaps, maybe more than some of you do, is that the middle ground is not always the right position. A lot of times we think, well there's an extreme on this side, an extreme on this side, the correct answer is probably somewhere in the middle. And I think in general terminology a lot of times that's so, but not always. Sometimes what is right is viewed as extreme. by the rest of the world, or by those who hate Christianity, or by those who are seeking to undermine biblical truth. The scriptures are always right, whether they're viewed as an extreme position or not. And certainly much of what you and I believe would be called an extreme belief by many people in the world. And we can't be swayed by that. We can't allow people to use terminology like an extremist or a fundamentalist or something like that to cause us to say, well, maybe I do need to compromise a little bit. Maybe I am being a little bit too extreme. Isidore didn't seem to be swayed by that. The semi-Pelagians, I'm sure, were playing on the fact that we're the ones who are really trying to be peacemakers here, who are really trying to bring the two sides together, really trying to find a good compromise, and sometimes compromise isn't the right answer, and Isidore stood for what was biblical, regardless of whether it was the middle ground or not. Secondly, with Isidore's incredible contribution to education and learning and writing, we need to remember, as Isidore seemed to, from the little that we know of his life, we need to remember that the chief end of education is always that we may know God better. We learn to read so that we can read the scriptures. We learn mathematics so that we can understand the God of order. We learn science so we can see God's creative genius and the way that He's ordered the world. Everything that we learn, we learn history so we can see the providence of God in caring for His creation. We want to be educated, but we never want to be educated for education's sake. We never want to be educated for carnal, material purposes. What we learn and what we put into our minds and what we apply our minds to needs to always be with the end goal of knowing God better, knowing His Word better, being more obedient to Him. And with all of Isidore's accomplishments educationally and as a teacher or as an educator, it's amazing that he did it as an archbishop. He did it as the leader of the church there in that part of the world, the one who wanted to distill these things in people at scenes so that they would pursue it in the right direction. As we look back through history, we see we use the Arabic numbering system, the numbers that we use. Much of our math comes from Arabs. So much of science and much of what we know from the world comes from China. It's not that Christianity or Europe has had some corner on education. It's not the case at all. And yet when those things, when anything like, when anything that we learn or are educated in at all isn't used to the chief end of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever, we take away the very purpose, the very foundation for which God has given it to us. And thirdly, don't allow the culture to dictate your effort or goals. We're talking about a man who was living as we were beginning to move into the Dark Ages. We're talking about a man who was living in a time period where communication was becoming more difficult, where the roads were falling into disrepair, where the invasion of the barbaric tribes were keeping people more isolated. And yet, the amount of writing that he did He didn't take a defeatist view of it. He didn't take a view that said, well, what my generation really needs is someone who can tell a neat story or anything like that. I think of our generation, and I think of the dumbing down of our society, and so many are succumbing to these cultural norms and this cultural message It needs to all be emojis and video and dumbed down. People don't understand the King James Version. We need to dumb it down so that we can have a version that people understand it. Don't allow culture to dictate those things. God gave us minds to use and think like Isidore seems to be thinking. What are you going to do for the next generation, for ten generations from now, for a thousand years from now, are people still going to be helped by what you've done and what you've contributed to the world, and to your family, and to your church, and to your community? I was reading about Isidore last night, or I got home from church, and I was reading over this chapter, and I was thinking, so often I think about What can I do to set Titus up and put him in the best position to succeed? What can I do for him financially, educationally, spiritually most importantly? What can I do to make sure that Titus is able to really succeed in the biblical terminology? But while that's obviously closest to home to me, It goes beyond that. What can I do to help Titus' children and their children? And the Scriptures tell us that a good man lays up for his son's sons, but I think that has an even broader application that we need to be thinking not just to our generation, not just to the next generation, but for years and decades and centuries to come is what we're doing going to have a long-lasting effect. We look at so much of what came out of the medieval periods, and we look at these castles, and maybe not even castles, but cathedrals, and the edifices that were built up in the time of the Reformation and the Renaissance, and they were built to last. Centuries, not years. And that was simply a reflection of a mindset that looked beyond just what this immediate culture says is best, or necessary, or most helpful. But rather, when we think about the church triumphant, when we think about God's goals being accomplished throughout history, what can we do that would affect that? And Isidore seemed to be a able tool in God's hands in that way, that he didn't simply serve his own generation well, but through his writings and his teachings and his other efforts he influenced certainly the country of Spain, in many ways all of Europe. And then when we think about what has come from Europe since the time of the Reformation, truly I don't think it's too large a statement to say that Isidore's life affected the world. for centuries to come after that. So don't be molded by the culture, but be molded by God's Word in your efforts or goals. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. And whatsoever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. And if we can really truly think that way, I think we'd have a lot more influence in the years to come. So that's what I have on the life and works of Isidore of Seville, an early monastic father. Have any questions or comments on any of that? Yes, sir. before that, that there was this contention that they dealt with, with God ordaining to evil. Right. And I was curious, the definition there, because depending on how that's worded, it seems like the same thing. It does. And I was trying to figure out, because I read several different men on it, and some of them took it to mean that. They took it to mean when they condemned anyone who believed God predestined to evil, they took it to mean double predestination. Evil in the sense of an evil end. A hard, difficult end. Hell, to speak bluntly. And then others took it to mean more the reformed view that God isn't the one who's predestined man to sin, but rather that man has fallen and he's driven by his, what does James say, he's drawn away by his own lusts. So yeah, you can, I'm not going to stand up here and say, that I know definitively exactly what they meant. I haven't done enough study into the wording or anything like that. There are some who have taken it both ways. I became a double predestinationist when I read the Bible and discovered that you've got Pharaoh who was raised up for the specific purpose, that Judas was born and raised with the sole purpose of betraying Christ. I mean, you start looking at all these things and say, well, those are exceptions. Well, then is Paul an exception? Is Peter an exception? Because either of these are just examples that were brought out of the Scripture. Because we also know that Assyria was raised up as a rod of God. The entire nation itself was predestined to whip the stew out of Israel. You know, so that's kind of an interesting thought. As you start looking at it that way, that God would predestine a nation to do something like that? Well yeah, because He's God. It says in Psalm, He raises nations and He brings them down. And that really just kind of squishes all of that ideology that somebody we know loves this new country western singer that's out. He's like, my theology is that Jesus loves everybody no matter what. And I thought, well, that's the charismatic theology. You know, that says God would never judge someone and condemn them. Wasn't that a billboard up in Huntsville? God's not mad at you no matter what. Another, just to go back to your original question, the Council of Orange in 529 is the council that said anyone who would believe that there are those who are ordained evil by God are anathema. That was in 529. And 70 years later, Isidore becomes Archbishop of Seville. Now we know all throughout history, councils and synods are going one way and then the other. But it would seem a little bit strange to me that if Isidore was explicitly teaching double predestination 70 years after that council had declared any who believed it to be anathema, it wouldn't seem to to go together, it would seem like he'd be booted out of the church or something of that nature. So that's another reason that leads me to believe that maybe that's not what they meant by that. It's so hard, like reading the Confession. I've done so many historical readings, and there are several books on the history of the Confession, just to figure out, what do they mean by that? Because today it means something completely different. And then you find out historically, Right. You read the men who put these confessions together, you read their other works, and their other sermons, and you try to flesh out what did they mean when they said, because sometimes it's the passing of time, that today it means something different than it meant then. But even today, we can use terms and phrases and words that you can say, well, that could be taken one of two ways. Which way do you mean? And you've got to try to flesh some of that out. The first paragraph is definitely high Calvinist. I mean, it's definitely strong. But then the third one uses some passive language. Others being left, which a low Calvinist would agree to, but a high Calvinist would not. You would say, but it's all true. But how did God distinguish that? And there's a phrase we're going to look at tonight about the necessity. And the way we use that today is not the way they used it then. The definition is completely different. In fact, well anyway.