Session 4:

Lights Amid the Haze

Leader Presentation
Now we come to a serious gap of some 500 years, when evidences of the Holy Spirit at work are few and far between. Why is that, you ask? Well, several factors come to mind: Europe was in turmoil; record-keeping and historywriting were disrupted. (Thats part of why we call them the Dark Ages.) In other words, a lot of things in the spiritual realm could have happened that we simply dont know about. The organized church was growing ever more political, and more corrupt. From the 650s onward, Islam was on the march across North Africa (heretofore Christian) and even up into Spain. There are a couple of bright spots, however: Notes

PETER WALDO (approx. 1140 approx. 1218)

This was a rich merchant in the city of Lyon (France) who experienced something very parallel to the rich young ruler of Jesus day only in Peters case, he accepted the call to sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have Show slide of Peter Waldo statute.

treasure in heaven (Luke 18:22). He sold his assets and split the money three waysone-third to his family (who did not follow him in Christs direction), one-third to the poor of Lyon, and one-third to pay for translating the New Testament into the local language. By the year 1173 he began preaching on the streets, just as his Lord had done. He urged his listeners to return to the simple gospel. Followers began to gather around him; they called themselves the Poor in Spirit. Observers called them the Waldenses. The archbishop of that area was not impressed and ordered Peter Waldo to stop preaching. He, however, appealed to the pope, who said he could continue in whatever areas the bishops would allow. So the Waldenses began to spread out across Europe. They formed traveling teams of preachers. And get this: Some of the teams were female rather than male! That was too much for the pope to swallow. He excommunicated the group in 1184. What was this group like? How did they carry on their lives before God? Well, here are some of their noteworthy characteristics: As I said, they went out preaching two by two. They memorized serious amounts of Scripture. They openly said the Church was corrupt. They also said that praying for the dead was useless; there was no purgatory. They said it was all right to pray outside a church building! They wanted to give everyone the Bible in their own language, rather than requiring people to learn Latin. They opposed war as ungodly; they were pacifists. They prayed for the sick to be healed. Their worship included speaking in tongues. Says noted church historian Kenneth Latourette: Even their enemies described them as dressing simply, industrious, labouring with their hands, chaste, temperate in eating and drinking, refusing to frequent taverns and dances, sober and truthful in speech, avoiding anger, and regarding the accumulation of wealth as evil. Here is a self-description of the Waldenses1:

A. J. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing (Harrisburg, Pa.: Christian Publications, 1888) p. 65

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PowerPoint: We hold it as an article of faith, and profess sincerely from the heart that sick persons, when they ask it, may lawfully be anointed with the anointing oil by one who joins them in praying that it may be efficacious to the healing of the body according to the design and end and effect mentioned by the apostles; and we profess that such an anointing performed according to the apostolic design and practice will be healing and profitable. All of this added up to heresy as far as the Catholic hierarchy was concerned. It tried to stamp out the Waldenses first through a crusade, then through the Inquisition. It is fair to call them, however, the first Reformation, 300 years before Martin Luther. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles north

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BRIDGET OF SWEDEN (1303 1373)

Born into the royal family, this woman was raised to be very devout. As was customary in those times, she was married early (age 14!) to a prince, for whom she bore eight children. Her husband died, however, when Bridgette was around 40. Thereafter, she renounced her rank as a princess and instead became a nun, founding the Order of the Most Holy Savior (informally known as the Brigittines) in 1346. She began to receive special revelations from the Lord, which she was careful to submit to pastoral review before taking action. For example: She felt impressed (like John the Baptist with King Herod) to go warn King Magnus that his sins were going to bring the judgment of God. She didand went further to tell the queen, the nobles, and the bishops. The king repented as a

Show slide of Bridget.

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result. He also gave her a large sum of money to build her monastery, which became Swedens literary center. She prophesied that the pope and the emperor (of the Holy Roman Empire) would soon meet peaceably in Rome. This came true in 1368, when Pope Urban V sat down with Emperor Charles IV. Her balance of spiritual gifts and mature character shows in the following summary from Alban Butlers 1756 book Lives of the Saints. His choice of words echoes the familiar language of 1 Corinthians 13:1. PowerPoint: To have the knowledge of angels without charity is to be only a tinkling cymbal; both to have charity and to speak the language of angels was the happy privilege of St. Bridget. Show this slide.

VINCENT FERRER (approx. 1350 1419)

This Dominican monk has been called the greatest of Spanish preachers. He traveled throughout his home country and neighboring ones as well, speaking two and three times a day. He was especially effective with Jews and Muslims who came to hear him. He held an earned doctorate degree. Here is what church historian Philip Schaff wrote about him2:

Show slide of Vincent Ferrer.

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church: The Middle Ages, chap. 26 Popular Preachers

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PowerPoint: Able to speak only Spanish, his sermons, though they were not interpreted, are reported to have been understood in France and Italy. The gift of tongues was ascribed to him by his contemporaries as well as the gift of miracles.

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By now we are getting close to the 1500s, when the Protestant Reformation broke like a tidal wave across Europe. What can we say about the activity of the Holy Spirit during this period? First of all, we must thank God for the truth that was lifted high: salvation in Christ alone, through grace alone, by faith alone. Martin Luther will forever be honored, along with Zwingli, Calvin and the others, for showing that God accepts us not on the basis of our works, or buying indulgences, or any other human effort to win his favor. This was a definite case of what Jesus said: When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth (John 16:13). The world of the 16th century desperately needed this truth. But second, we must add that any demonstration of the Spirit was apparently put off for some later day. In fact, the Reformers were fearful that anything emotional would play into the mysticism of the Catholic church which by then was quite superstitious, with alleged relics of the cross of Christ and even body parts of various saints making the rounds to effect miraculous cures, etc. They wanted no part of this. And you and I would probably have agreed, given the context. We can hardly fault them for their focus on correct doctrine. (There is at least one report, from Luthers close friend Melancthon, that the Reformer did pray for the sick in a few cases. But this was hardly a major aspect of his ministry.) Third, there were undeniable excesses in various corners of the Protestant movement, which no doubt made the leaders shy away from manifestations. The Zwickau Prophets of 1521, for example, claimed visions, dreams, direct communication with Godand rejected the written Word. In order to bring in the Millennium, they were quite willing to resort to violence. Luther had to step in and calm down the situation. Starting in 1523, the movement of Anabaptists (the rebaptized) picked up steamand they, too, were not beyond violence as persecution mounted. After all, Felix Manz, one of their early Swiss preachers, was drowned for his convictions; some Anabaptists wanted to strike back.
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In their worship, they experienced both healings and tongues. Luther called them the Schwrmer (enthusiasts; fanatics). Catholic critics of the Reformation, however, expected miracles. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, an Italian Jesuit, taunted the Protestants with this question: If you teach the truth, where are your miracles? Where, indeed! (Dr. Vinson Synan, dean of the divinity school at Regent University in Virginia and an ordained minister of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, observes somewhat playfully, Catholics make great Pentecostals and charismatics, because they dont have to change their paradigm. Theyunlike liberal Protestantshave always embraced the supernatural.) DISCUSSION: In todays church, which way do you see us tiltingtoward the intellectual side, or toward the experiential side? Do we need to re-balance? Speaking of 16th-century Catholics

IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA (1491 1556)

(These dates, by the way, are roughly the same lifespan as Luther.) The youngest of 13 children in a wealthy family, Ignatius became a soldier in the Spanish army, which was fighting France at the time. One day in battle, he was hit by a cannonball. While recuperating, he read a book on Christs life and decided he should instead become a soldier for Christ. Out of this grew the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), which is one of the largest Catholic orders to this day. Major Jesuit universities in the United States include Boston College, Holy Cross, Show slide of Ignatius of Loyola.

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Georgetown, Marquette, and all the Loyolas. In Ignatiuss Spiritual Exercises, he makes no bones about the need to give the Holy Spirit latitude: The Spirit of God breathes where he will; he does not ask our permission; he meets us on his own terms and distributes his charisms [grace-gifts] as He pleases. Therefore, we must always be awake and ready; we must be pliable so that he can use us in new enterprises. We cannot lay down the law to the Spirit of God! He is only present with his gifts where he knows that they are joined with the multiplicity of charisms in the one Church. All the gifts of this church stem from one sourceGod. What Paul says in the twelfth chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians is still true today! This should give us the strength to overcome every form of clerical jealousy, mutual suspicion, power-grabbing, and the refusal to let otherswho have their own gifts of the Spiritgo on their own way. That is what the Spirit wants from us! He is not so narrow-minded as we sometimes are with our recipes! He can lead to himself in different ways, and He wants to direct the church through a multiplicity of functions, offices, and gifts. The church is not supposed to be a military academy in which everything is uniform, but she is supposed to be the body of Christ in which he, the one Spirit, exerts his power in all the members. Each one of these members proves that he really is a member of this body by letting the other members be.3 DISCUSSION TIME What are you hearing in this passage? Are you surprised to hear this kind of thinking coming from a Catholicand a Jesuit at that? How should we go about implementing this openness to the work of the Spirit? Show slide, which gives excerpts from this.

TERESA OF AVILA (1515 1582)

Another Spaniard she was such a high-spirited teenager that her father put her into a convent at age 16 to try to control her. She hated it at firstbut then decided it was a good place for somebody as prone to sin as she was!
3

Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, translated by Karl Rahner (London: Herder & Herder, 1962) pp. 254-

255

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She ended up founding the Carmelite order of nuns. She was a reformer and something of a mystic. She is said to have raised someone from the dead at least once. Her writings are still in print today. (In 1970, the Vatican named her a Doctor of the Church for her books on prayerone of only two women to get this honor.) In describing her own prayer life, Teresa wrote: What I say about not ascending to God unless he raises one up is language of the Spirit. He who has had some experience will understand me, for I dont know how to describe this being raised up if it isnt understood through experience. Nor does the soul then know what to do because it doesnt know whether to speak or to be silent, whether to laugh or to weep. This prayer is a glorious foolishness, a heavenly madness where the true wisdom is learned; and it is for the soul a most delightful way of enjoying. In fact five or even six years ago the Lord often gave me this prayer of abundance, and I didnt understand it; nor did I know how to speak of it. Notice her innocence in relating how she prays. She is utterly disarming; she isnt trying to argue a point or convince anyone else that they should pray in an unknown tongue. She is simply telling what its like when she lifts her heart and soul to God. The fullness of her glorious foolishness bubbles over in words too exalted for the rational mind to process. Such was the spiritual potency of those people in the middle centuries whom we call lights amid the haze. Before dismissing this session, be sure to hand out the Whispers sheet of essential quotes.

Show slide of Teresa of Avila.

Show slide, which gives excerpts from this passage.

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