Christian Heroes # 2

Christian Heroes # 2

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Continuing the Christian heroes’ series, I’m indebted to Dr. Rick Cornish’s excellent book 5 Minute Church Historian. I also highly recommend his 5 Minute Theologian and 5 Minute Apologist especially for college students needing quick answers.

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The Lord Jesus said “He who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it (Matt. 10:38-39).

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Patrick (c. 389-461). Surprisingly, the patron saint of Ireland was neither Irish nor Roman Catholic. He was born into a Christian home in Britain but at sixteen slave traders captured and sold him to an Irish pig farmer. For six years of captivity, his Christian faith grew but he yearned to be free. Dreaming that a ship was waiting for him, he escaped to the coast to board a vessel carrying dogs. Tending them gave him free passage to France where he joined a monastery. Returning to Britain and family, he received another dream similar to Paul’s Macedonian man (Acts 16:9-10) of the Irish begging him to bring them the gospel. Returning to Ireland, he worked among the Celts trusting God’s power to enable him to prevail against the death treats of Druid priests. Patrick focused on winning tribal kings to Christ hoping to gain the people also. Three years later he died. Historians estimate he planted two hundred churches and baptized thousands. He is credited with preserving civilization and ancient texts throughout the Dark Ages and of ending the Irish slave trade. During the two centuries following hundreds of Celtic monks took the gospel to Western Europe. Patrick’s faith, forgiveness and sacrifice should inspire us.

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Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274). Great intellects are needed in crises times. Thomas, a quiet, serious, thinking person was the greatest theologian since Augustine. He sought to reconcile faith and reason with the secular discoveries of his day. He believed God is known by general revelation in nature and conscience as well as by special revelation in Jesus Christ and Scripture. God’s world and God’s Word don’t contradict. He applied reason to understand God’s truth and wrote prolifically. He summarized Christian beliefs in Summa theologiae and defended the faith in Summa contra Gentiles. His writings were standard texts throughout the Middle Ages. He died at age forty-nine. Because he wrote more about angels, he’s called the Angelic Doctor and due to his big size is known as the Dumb Ox although he was anything but dumb. Both Catholics and Protestants refer to his  works. He taught us to grapple with intellectual challenges for the glory of God and faith of people.

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John Wycliffe (c. 1330-1384). John gained the title the Morning Star of the Reformation because his views preceded Martin Luther’s by 150 years. He believed the Bible, not the church or the pope, was God’s authority and should be translated into the language of common people. Priests should preach Scripture not intermediate between man and the people. A person’s relationship with God was supremely important and not Rome’s religious system. Christ’s cross work merited salvation not our own. Teachings not found in the Bible were not true. He translated the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English. He was the leading theologian at Oxford University. But the pope condemned his radical views, caused him to lose his professorship and had parliament pass a law making his ideas a crime punishable by death. Wycliffe Bible Translators carry on his work today putting the Bible into the heart language of common people.

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Martin Luther (1483-1546). Luther believed the ideas of Wycliffe and that priests could marry. His father wanted him to go into law but when nearly struck by lightning, he vowed to become a monk and joined an Augustinian monastery. Feeling God’s wrath, he felt overwhelmed by his sin. Reading Romans 1:17 he realized that righteousness comes through faith in Christ and not by our good deeds. He was reborn and the reformation began. He posted his ninety-five theses stating his beliefs on the door of the Roman Catholic Church at Wittenberg, Germany. The newly invented printing press enabled his ideas to spread rapidly throughout Europe. He broke Rome’s stronghold exposing its corruption and false theology. The emperor responsible to defend the faith ordered Luther to the city of Worms to justify his writings. Luther refused to recant his writings unless someone could prove them wrong by Scripture or reason. He even offered to burn his books. His conscience was captive to God’s Word and he declared, “Here I stand, so help me God.” He escaped capture and execution when Fredrick the Wise, prince of Saxony, kidnapped him and hid him in his Wartburg Castle. Martin translated the New Testament into the common language of the German people. His courageous stand laid the foundation of Protestantism. One man’s courage changed the world.

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William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536). Since God revealed his Word to us in Hebrew and Greek, each generation must translate it from those original languages into their own language. Being a wiz at languages, William mastered French, German, Italian, Greek, Hebrew and Latin. He knew the Roman Church kept the people captive interpreting the Bible with the allegorical method and through languages, they didn’t know. Stunned by ignorance of priests, he vowed to translate the Bible in the language that a boy behind a plow could read. When the English king prohibited Bible translation into English, William went to Germany and translated the New Testament from Erasmus’s Greek New Testament. Sympathetic merchants smuggled it into England but opponents bought and burned all they could find. The king’s men caught him and burned him at the stake. He died praying, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.” Within a year, King Henry V111 approved an English Bible that was 70% Tyndale’s work. God’s enemies hate his word and kill to keep it from the people.     

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John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin was a lawyer-scholar, genius at logical argument, deep thinker and cool organizer of theology. At age fourteen, he enrolled at the University of Paris to become a lawyer but became more interested in Protestant ideas and theology. At twenty-seven, he wrote his first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Being forced out of France for his Protestant ideas, he became the leading citizen in Geneva Switzerland that became known as “the Protestant Rome.” Calvin wrote Bible commentaries, preached verse by verse and applied the Bible to all of life. He is known for his emphasis on God’s sovereignty and predestination. He showed that the Bible teaches a worldview with instructions about politics, law, economics, art and every part of life. While some Christians don’t agree with all he taught, his influence spread throughout Europe and early America and in Reformed minded protestant denominations.

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I can only touch on a few of these great heroes of Christian faith in these three articles. They came from every kind of background and all loved and trusted the Lord. They gave of themselves to make a better world. They often endured rejection, persecution and martyrdom. Let us pray, trust, love and work to use what God has given us to become his heroes.

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