"Q" is for the Questioning of Christian Philosophers in Whom the Holy Spirit Has Planted Its Most Excellent Epistemology

     For most of the history of Western Civilization (until relatively recent times) the concept of "natural law" was inextricably intertwined with practical worldview, ethics, and common law.  The penalty for violation of the natural law was not just the condemnation of society, but even more significant, the natural penalty of unhappiness.  Unhappiness was understood to be the inevitable result of living a life that was not disciplined, not habituated to the principles of natural law.  People strove, therefore, to understand and practice what was favorable to achieving true happiness.  This they referred to as "virtue".  The primary question asked by both secular and Christian philosophers dealt with identifying and  understanding the natural law.  This fact was taken for granted by practical theologians, preachers and teachers in the American Colonies and later in Early America.
     The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (384-322 BC) had a particularly important impact upon the Christian Church during the Middle Ages.  it therefore indirectly became important in the development of all modern philosophy, as well as European and Early American law and theology.  The Nicomachean Ethics examine in detail the relationship between virtue and true happiiness.  A systhesis between Aristotelian ethics and Christian theology became widespread during the Middle Ages in Europe.  The most important version of this synthesis was that of Thomas Aquinas.  The practical nature of this synthesis has influenced western civilization ever since (until, perhaps, relatively recent times when common sense has been thrown to the wind).  In many respects, Aristotelian Ethics and Christianity became, and deserve to be regarded as, complementary and inextricably intertwined--just as the "general" and the "special" revelations themselves are complementary and inextricably intertwined.  Below, facing pages from H. Rackham's traslation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (click for larger view).

     Below, the OCHF Library's copy of Thomas Aquinas' Works of Aristotle Translated into Latin, published by Apud Scotum in 1551 (click for larger image).

 

 

     Below one further example of a most significant work by a Christian Philosopher, a page from Sententiarum Quatuor Libri (the Four Books of Sentences) by Peter Lombard.  Click image for larger view.

 



     "The Four Books of Opinions" or "The Four Books of Judgments" were compiled by Peter Lombard, a scholastic theologian (c. 1100--July 20, 1160).  This work, also known as "The Book of Sentences", sets forth biblical texts, together with relevant passages from the Church Fathers and many medieval thinkers, on virtually the entire field of Christian theology.  Lombard left many questions open, giving later scholars an opportunity to provide their own answers.  From the 1200s until the 16th century, no work of Christian literature, except for the Bible itself, was commented upon more frequently.  All the major medieval thinkers, from Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel, were influenced by it.  Even the young Martin Luther till wrote "glosses" on Lombard's Sentences, and, John Calvin quoted from it over 100 times in his Institutes. 
     Peter Lombard's most famous and controversial opinion was his indentification of charity with the Holy Spirit.  When the Christian loves God and neighbor, Lombard felt that this love literally is God, and, the one who so loves becomes one with the divine and is taken up into the life of the Trinity.  This idea was never declared unorthodox, but few theologians have been prepared to follow Peter Lomgard in this particular teaching.  Compare Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, 2006.

"P" is for Preacher Peter Cartwright

     The United Methodist Church and the many other offshoots of the Methodist movement comprise one of the largest groupinigs of Protestant Denominations in the world today.  The Methodist movement was started in the 18th Century by John and Charles Wesley, in large part to minister to the needs of the poorer classes of England and in reaction to the apathy shown them by the upper socio-economic classes who controlled the Church of England.  The movement quickly spread to the American colonies.  Though John Wesley intended the Methodists to remain a reform movement within the Chruch of England, the American Revolution decisively separated the Methodists in America from the life and sacraments of the Church of England.
     In 1784, after unsuccessful attempts to have the Church of England send a bishop to start a new church in the colonies, Wesley appointed fellow priest Thomas Coke to organize an independent Methodist group in America.  This new American church was destined to make a distinctive contribution to our American Christian heritage, largely because of its willingness and desire to serve those whom others ignored. This philosophy led to the ministry of the circuit rider, many of whom were laymen who traveled the backwoods of what was then a mostly rural nation by horseback to preach the Gospel and to establish churches in settlements in which the larger established churches had little interest.  Hundreds of such preachers worked tirelessly until there was scarcely any village in the new nation without a Methodist presence.
     Methodist preachers made a point of taking the message to anyone left outside organized religion at that time.  This included laborers and even criminals as well as those people living in the backwoods frontier.  In the United States, Methodism became the religion of many slaves who later formed "black churches" in the Methodist tradition.
     Because of the Circuit Riders religion changed in America.  But it was not only religion that was affected, the culture as a whole was shaped by the efforts of these circuit riding preachers.  Because these traveling preachers visited people whom others discounted, a new understanding of religion developed in the hearts and minds of the common classes in America.  As a result, this new religion in which laity had an equal voice helped shape the ideals of democracy in America.
     Peter Cartwright was among the greatest of these early Circuit Riders.  In his autobiography, Cartwright writes, "Many nights, in early times, the itinerant had to camp out, without fire or food for man or beast.  Our pocket Bible, Hymn Book, and Discipline constituted our library.  It is true we could not, many of us, conjugate a verb or parse a sentence, and murdered the King's English almost every lick.  But there was a Divine unction that attended the word preached, and thousands fell under the mighty power of God, and thus the Methodist Episcopal Church was planted firmly in the Western Wilderness, and many glorious signs have followed, and will follow, to the end of time....  From the time I had joined the traveling ranks in 1804 to 1820-21, a period of sixteen years, from thirty-two traveling preachers, we had increased to two hundered and eighty... and there was not a single literary man among the preachers."

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     While it may not have been an intentiaonal result, people living on the American frontier soon learned from observation that they didn't particularly need the educated elite, either in politics or religion.  They learned to hold their heads high and to think of themselves as entitled to the same protection of law the wealthy enjoyed.  Methodists offered the common people, especially the poor, a compelling vision of individual self-worth and collective self-confidence.  Methodism in America gave voice to passions that the common person had previously been unable to express.  This amounted to a social revolution which is as important to our nation's history as the political revolution that won our independence.

     The Methodist camp meeting and tent revivals were a natural bi-product of this American social revolution.  During the early years of the Republic, camp meetings and traveling tent revivals reached out to an involved the lower socio-economic classes of America contributing immeasurably to the democratization of our nation.  Here, in these tent meetings, everyone was equal.  Those who got there first were able to sit up front, unlike the many churches controlled by the upper classes whose front pew was reserved for those individuals who had financed the construction of the church.

     It is safe to say that the revivalism movement mightily contributed to by the Methodists during these early years of our American Republic not only helped shape the democratic ideals we cherish, but rescued the infant nation from the brink of moral disaster.  At a time of moral chaos on the frontier due to the lack of church influence amont the people living on the frontier, Methodism helped to set the standard for the return of morals to the frontier, and more importantly, took the religious power from the few and gave it to the many.

     The Methodist movement in America rediscovered revival and forged it into a heroic weapon.... revivalism swept in at the right time to bring the nation back from that brink.  It is the hope of Our Christian Heritage Foundation that concerned Christians will do the same today.  Join us in mounting a new offensive in the Methodist tradition.  And perhaps someday history will record that this offensive to restore Christian America began here, at this time, with your help.

(Historic comments above from Wikepedia Free Content Online Encyclopedia.  All photos are of books held by the OCHF Library.)

 

Below, a typical Circuit Rider's Bible with Wesley's Commentary Notes

 

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Below, a typical Hymnbook used by many frontier Methodists

 

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Circuit Riders might also carry with them a copy of Wesley's Primitive Physic, a book of herbal medicine for the poor who could not afford or did not have access to a physician--see below.

 

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     Post Script:  John Wesley Hill, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, writes in his book Abraham Lincoln - Man of God,, p. 77:  "In August 1837, Mr. Lincoln, with six other lawyers and two doctors, went in a wagon from Springfield to Salem to attend a camp-meeting.  On the way Lincoln cracked jokes about the horses, the wagon, the lawyers, the doctors--indeed about nearly everything.  At the camp-meeting, Dr. Peter Akers, like Peter Cartwright, a great Bible preacher of his day, then in the fullness of his powers, preached a sermon on 'The Dominion of Jesus Christ.'  The object of the sermon was to show that the dominion of Christ could not come in America until American slavery was wiped out, and that the institution of slavery would at last be destroyed by civil war.  For three hours the preacher enrolled his argument and even gave graphic pictures of the war that was to come.  'I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet,' said he, 'but a student of the prophets.  As I read propehcy, American slavery will come to an end in some near decade, I think in the sixties."  Like Lincoln, Cartwright had moved westward to illinois after a childhood in Kentucky.  In addition to his preaching activities, Cartwright served two terms in the Illinois State Legislature, having defeated Lincoln who had also stood for the office.  Cartwright stood in opposition to Lincoln for the office of U. S. Congress in 1846.  This time Lincoln prevailed, and the rest is history.  

 







"O" is for Orthodox Christianity

     The Eastern Orthodox Church, mainly concentrated in Russia, Eastern Europe and Greece, is the second largest Christian communion in the world (after Roman Catholicism).  Among the holdings of the OCHF Library is a unique hand-painted scholar's rendition of an important Orthodox manuscript, (click for larger image).

     The Tetraevangelia of Ivan Alexander, or "The Four Gospels of Ivan Alexander", is a 14th century illuminated manuscript in Middle Bulgarian, prepared and illustrated during the rule of Tsar Ivan Alexander (1331-71) in the Second Bulgarian Empire.  the manuscript is regarded as one of the most important literary treasures of the medieval Bulgarian culture and agreeably the one with the greatest artistic value.
     The original manuscript, currently housed in the British Library (Add. MS 396270), contains the text of the Four Gospels illustrated with 366 (or 252, depending on the grouping) miniatures (hand-painted illustrations) and consists of 286 parchment folios, 33 by 24.3 cm in size, later paginated with pencil.  Folio 74, most likely the one where the miniature illustrating the Judgment Day scene was, has been cut out and stolen in modern times (no, we don't have it!).
     The page displayed above has been identified by Milan Graba, Lead Curator of Southeast European Studies at the British Libray, and by his colleagues at the Bulgarian Academy, as a scholar's manuscript copy of unknown age of one of the hand-painted illustrations (f.84) from the Gospels of Tsar Alexander, with text in a different Gospel redaction from Matthew 27:33-38.  No one has yet identified that redaction (if you know, please let us know).

     Also of interest, among the OCHF Library holdings is this leaf from an old liturical chant book.  Notice that the musical notes are written without lines, as were the notes in music in the Roman Catholic Church at ab early time.  The technical name is Znamenny Notation with Shaidurov Symbols, late 17th Century Russian.  Znamenny chant was the principal music of the Russian Orthodox Church from the time Christianity was imported from Byzantium to the late 17th century.  In the mid-17th century the Novgorod master Ivan Shaidurov invented a system of auxiliary red letters to be placed alongside the znamenny notation above the text of the chant.  Each of these letters corresponded to a particular note in the church scale, increasing accuracy of the musical score.  By the late 18th century znamenny chant had retreated into obscurity, the only keepers of it being the "Old Believers" sect.  (For larger image, click the photo.)

 

 

     The OCHF Library also has a fine copy of a Russian Orthodox New Testament, printed in Moscow, dated 1767, image below (click for larger image).

 

 

     The dedicatory page of this Bible, as translated by Inna Pikulenko, reads as follows:  "In honor of the single and inseparable Trinity--Father, Son and Holy Spirit--with the permission of the Imperial Empress Catherine of all Russia in the presence of her heir, the faithful prince and great count Paul Petrovitch with the blessing of the ancient ruling synod.  This holy book of the New Testament is being printed in the great city of Moscow in the year of cration of the world by the Word of God (1767)...."

     Notice that the order of the books in this New Testament is not the same as in the Bibles of the western tradition:

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts

James

I Peter

II Peter

I John

II John

III John

Jude

Romans

I Corinthians

II Corinthians

Galatians

Ephesians

Philippians

Colossians

I Thessalonians

II Thessalonians

I Timothy

2 Timothy

Titus

Philemon

Hebrews

Calendar of Saints (Sept.-Aug.)

Lectionary Readings

Saturday and Sunday liturgies

Special prayers to saints

Prayer for the dead (and readings for funeral services)

Prayers for the needy

Prayer for the Empress

The Apocalypse

 

     There is a hand-written notation inside the back cover that states "from Smolensk".  There are many churches and monasteries in Smolensk.





"N" is for New England Primer and New England Psalter

     The New England Primer was the first reading primer designed for the American Colonies.  It became the most successful educational textbook published in 18th century America and it became the foundation of most schooling before the 1790's.  While the selections in the New England Primer varied somewhat across time, there was standard content for beginning reading instruction, including the alphabet, catechisms and moral lessons.

 

Below, the ABC's as taught in the New England Primer. 

(OCHF Library copy, click photo for larger image)

 

 

 

     The New England Psalter was an early reading textbook for children first published in the late 17th century.  It was thought not only appropriate but advantageous to teach reading with this Psalm book which also included stories of the Old and New Testament, rules for reading, lessons in spelling, instructions for printing letters, reading verse and the use of capitals.  Below, photos of OCHF Library's copy of The New England Psalter printed in 1770 in Boston by William M'Alpine.



 

 

Your support for the OCHF Library project strengthening the restoration of Christian America would be greatly appreciated.  Donations may be left at "Go Fund Me" accessed through our home page at www.OurChristianHeritageFoundation.org  Open the link titled "Help Us Build.." located at the upper right hand corner of the home page.  Thanking you in advance, we remain very sincerely yours, OCHF.

"M" is for Missions, Moody, and Money

    
     America has had many great evangelists, Christian educators, and missionaries.  The most successful of these, from John Eliot on, have been great organizers and fund-raisers as well as spirit-filled Christians.  Typical among them is D. L. Moody (1837-1899), one of America's great evangelistic preachers and Christian educators.  His great enterprises were funded through tireless and skilled solicitation of donations (or, "subscriptions", as referred to in his letter shown below). Click image for larger view.

Document from the archieves of OCHF Library

 

     We would like to see Our Christian Heritage Foundation grow so that this wonderful organization might more effectively achieve success in its mission to restore Christian America.  The response of each reader and friend of Christ is the key to success.  You are the key to success.  Please consider making a donation to OCHF today.   We are, as D. L. Moody writes, awaiting your reply.  To donate, plase return to the OCHF home page www.OurChristianHeritageFoundation.org and click "Help Us Build the Permanent Display" at the upper right corner of the home page.  Thanking you in advance, Dr. Byron Perrine, Executive Director, OCHF.



   

"L" is for Luther

     For Luther, getting the Reformation on solid footing was a necessity, and probably influenced his handling of scripture.  He departs from the "received text" in his translation of Romans 3:28 where he doesn't hesitate to add "alone" to the phrase "justified by faith", perhaps in the belief that if the Apostle Paul had been writing during Luther's day that is the way Paul would have written it.  Certainly Luther understood the Apostle Paul as few if any others did at this time.  Below, Romans 3:27-28 excerpted from one of the OCHF Library's Luther Bibles:  (Click image for larger view.)

     In addition, Luther does not hesitate to allow his Reformation agenda to influence his estimation of the merit of the Epistle of James which he "demotes" from 20th position in the order of the New Testament books to 25th position.  Of the Epistle of James, Luther writes, "I cannot put it among the chief books, though I would not thereby prevent anyone from putting it where he pleases and estimating it as he pleases...."  Compare the order below, excerpted from a Luther Bible, with that of any other version of the New Testament:  (Click image for larger view.)

     Also, whle in his first Preface (1522) to The Revelation of St. John Luther writes, "... let everyone think of it (The Revelation of St. John) as his own spirit gives him to think...", it wasn't long before he offers an interpretation of this book that is pro-Reformation in nature (see his preface of 1534).

The 1534 Luther Bible

     From the OCHF Library collection, below are several beautiful woodcut prints extracted from the first complete Luther Bible published in 1534.  Sadly, in centuries past collectors were inclined to cut illustrations and illuminated letters from priceless Bibles.  Happily, some of these cuttings have survived including these from Luther's first complete Bible.  These woodcut illustrations were done by Melchoir Schwarzenberg in 1532, and, appeared as part of the 1534 Luther Bible printed in Wittenberg.  They were hand-colored after printing.  (Click images for larger view.)