Dissent Before the Gregorian Reform and the Placement of Celtic Christianity

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (V)

The growing apostasy at work in the post-Constantinian period was challenged and it seems clear there was a lasting testimony of extra-Roman and anti-Roman resistance well into the Dark Ages. A dissenting geographic belt (deemed heretical by Rome) would appear cutting across the Pyrenees through Southern France and across the Alps into Northern Italy. With Switzerland serving as a knot, another branch roughly followed the course of the Rhine through Germany and the Low Countries.  

The Oracular Mark and Historiography

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (IV)

The following is by no means exhaustive but it is my hope that it provides an alternative (or at least a working alternative) basis for a metanarrative to Church History. While I've been critical of the aforementioned narratives the concept of a metanarrative itself is not invalid – even while it has its dangers. Painting with a fairly broad brush I hope to establish some principles that will (in the most general of terms) provide a framework for an alternative view that some will identify as a kind of Third Way – a positive narrative that avoids the traps and pitfalls of both Roman Catholicism (and by implication Eastern Orthodoxy) and Magisterial Protestantism.

Metanarratives of Church History: Mercersburg, Confessionalism, and Landmarkism

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (III)

Nevin imposes a theological paradigm and metanarrative on his reading of Church History but ignores the fact that the New Testament repeatedly and forcefully warns of apostasy and appeals to the Old Testament as a pattern which is replete with examples of corruption, defection and compromise. In other words the Scriptures all but told us to expect this course in terms of the history of the Church and yet Nevin's progression paradigm has no room for it.

Testimonies of Early Dissent

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (II)

In his Early Christianity series, Nevin goes on to attack figures like Aerius, Jovinian and Vigilantius – all 4^th century dissenters treated by his colleague Philip Schaff in vol. 3 of his History of the Christian Church.

Nevin argues these figures and groups were aberrations and represented no serious opposition to the post-Constantinian changes – but we cannot accept this verdict.

Nevin's Early Christianity

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (I)

The study of Church History is one dominated by narratives. For some it's a question of progress, a narrative of the application of principles, the expansion of the Kingdom in the form of Christendom and for others it's a story of remnant groups persevering in the face of apostasy and relentless persecution. Needless to say variations of the former model have proven to be far more popular and marketable.