The Toxic Fruit Of Reformed Theology: Part Three

THEOLOGICAL BUTCHERS

AMBROSE, CHRYSOSTOM AND AUGUSTINE

One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Abba Eban

As I go around Israel, I see a country that has taken every curse thrown against it and turned it into a blessing, by leading the fight against terror, by becoming world experts in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, by bringing disaster relief wherever it’s needed. I see a country and a people that have shown the world what it is to choose life.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks speech at ‘Closer to Israel’ at Trafalgar Square, 2013

Anti-Semitism has no business infiltrating American politics, it has no business infiltrating our college campuses, and it has no business in the halls of Congress. Lee Zeldin

The church has been led into error time and time again by letting men’s doctrines become the final authority of Scripture rather than allowing Scripture to be the final authority of man’s doctrine.

Using philosophical arguments, unbiblical allegory, and highly charged anti-Semitic reasoning, these “fathers” of the church were determined to sever the covenants that forever bind the Jewish people to the God of Israel.

Their system was simple: reinterpret the Hebrew Scriptures in favor of the church and condemn the despised deicide race to God’s irreversible judgment by every tactic they could manufacture to make God’s people undesirable.  This is the crumbling bedrock upon which the seemingly impregnable lies of replacement theology are forged.  The bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries wielded supreme power over the church. The impact of their caustic sermons lingers on in the writings of both protestant and Catholic amillennialists.

Because the term “replacement theology” has become so foul in the mouths of those who promote it, they’ve changed the terms to “fulfillment theology,” “enlargement theology,” or even “Messianic fulfillment.”  But the leopard hasn’t changed its spots.  They are still and always will be Jew haters and under the judgment of the Lord, who stated, “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”  These words, found in Genesis 12:1-3, are a part of the unconditional and forever Abrahamic Covenant with the Lord’s people, Israel.

As we continue to look at the early fathers of the Christian church and their literal hatred of the Jewish people, three men of the fourth century come to mind: Ambrose, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.

Ambrose

Ambrose of Milan was born Augusta Treverorum in 339 AD and died in 397 AD in Milan, Italy.  Ambrose is also remembered as the teacher who converted and baptized Augustine of Hippo, another replacement theologian, and as a model bishop who viewed the church as rising above the ruins of the Roman Empire.  He is a patron saint of Milan.  Like those before him, Ambrose followed Philo’s zero-tolerance philosophy toward literal interpretation of the Old and New Testaments.  Philo had adopted a policy of zero tolerance towards the literal interpreters of Scripture, and why he branded them “slow-witted,” “obstinate,” and “rigid.”  These sentiments litter the sermons and writings of many of Philo’s modern-day cousins. Thus, like Origen before him, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and others were convinced there was no future for the Jewish nation in the purposes of God.

They have long ago been proven wrong.  The State of Israel may be in a war against those who swear to destroy her, but the Lord, in his mercy and love, is with them.  These early church fathers flatly denied belief in the restoration of Israel as a nation or that the Jewish people would again occupy the land the Lord gave them.

Surprise, surprise! Wrong again!

Ambrose had strong anti-Semitic leanings and was instrumental in fomenting persecution through his preaching.  Augustine, who was baptized by Ambrose gave him a gushing eulogy, but what he didn’t say was that Ambrose “manifested a violent anti-Judaism, both in practice…and on the theological level, by several polemical epistles.”  (Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1971), 553.

What Spirit is this?

What spirit animates these people?  If you believe the Jews are the problem, then, of course, that is a genocidal spirit.  Don’t lie to yourself about the agenda of these early church fathers.  If Jews are the problem, and you are Jewish, then you are the target according to these people’s goals.  Chuck Schumer needs to understand this.  It is grotesque and ungodly, but it is also a demonic spirit.  Any spirit that seeks to hurt, kill, divide, or demoralize the Jewish people is a demonic spirit by definition.  That is what animated these early church fathers, and it is a lie from the very pit of hell.  Demonic entities controlled these men, and jealousy was the core.

Transferring blessings, covenants, and promises to the church when those promises were only made to God’s chosen people is anathema to the truth of His Word.  The Church is the bride of Messiah, grafted into the olive tree, and can just as easily be cut out.  Our blessings come because of faith.  And what were the Old Testament prophets saved by?  Faith alone!

Many years ago, I received newsletters from Voice of the Martyrs, founded by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand.  This Jewish man had been tortured for over 13 years by the Romanian Marxists under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s rule.  He testified to the American Senate years later regarding the Marxists’ hatred of God and what he and others had been through.  His book, Marx and Satan, tells the story of the horrors perpetrated upon church shepherds.

One of the Voice of the Martyrs’ newsletters claimed John Chrysostom as a martyr.  Had Wurmbrand still been alive, he would have been horrified.  I wrote them a letter quoting several of the vile and disgusting anti-Semitic statements by Chrysostom.  His “Eight Homilies Against the Jews” stand as a stark hatred of the Jewish people, much like Luther’s “On the Jews and Their Lies,” which was used by Hitler to validate Jewish genocide.

John Chrysostom

Chrysostom was born in Antioch, Syria, in 347 A.D. and died in 407. He was called the “Golden Mouth” because of his “pulpit eloquence.” He sought to prevent his Christian flock from observing Jewish customs and attacked the teachings of Judaism and the Jewish way of life.

In addition to accusing the “morally degenerate” Jews of having viciously assassinated Christ, he also accused contemporary Jews of missionary activity that threatened Christian efforts, establishing them as an active force against the church.

His sermons underscore the potential for violence as an outflow of the early church’s need to establish its theological and social authority.  A venture into his homilies is “like entering a firing range with the reader bombarded on every side by a torrent of explosive anti-Jewish invective.”  (Page 53, Israel Betrayed: Volume One).

Chrysostom used his pulpit to denigrate and abuse the Jewish people and to castigate them for their way of life in the most shameful of terms.  Out of his own mouth, he condemns himself.  He hated the Jewish people and did his best to make the whole world hate them, too.  Here is just one of his statements within those vile homilies:

“The synagogue is worse than a brothel…It is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults…the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and the cavern of devils…a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ…a house worse than a drinking shop…a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, a gulf of and abyss of perdition…The Jews sacrifice their children to Satan…they are worse than wild beasts…they have fallen into a condition lower to the level of the lusty goat and the pig…they know but one thing: to fill their bellies and be drunk…This is why I hate the Jews.”  (Quoted in Michael L. Brown’s Our Hands Are Stained with Blood: The Tragic Story of the “Church” and the Jewish People.)

Chrysostom was the master of anti-Jewish invective and later became John Calvin’s “lifelong favorite in matters of biblical exegesis.”

Augustine of Hippo

Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis was born in 354 AD and died in 430 AD.  Amillennialism was systematized by Augustine, one of the church’s most influential theologians, whom Roman Catholics and Protestants alike revere.  He was strongly influenced by the Greek philosophical doctrines of Plato (427-347 BC) and the allegorical methods of Origen, which helped shape his theological model.  Surprisingly enough, Augustine had once been a premillennialist and walked in the footsteps of those righteous fathers.

He came to this belief system through Ambrose and was actually baptized by him.  Augustine recorded his debt to Ambrose and left no doubt he was infatuated with his theological teacher.  Although Augustine had no contact with Jewish people, his own reputation for violent anti-Judaism, both in practice and on the theological level, is obvious, especially in his “Tract Against the Jews.”  (Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 5).

He was the pioneer of a mutant system of evolutionary theology, the Darwin of the church, who combined biblical literalism with allegorical interpretation. His system was destined to lay the foundation for Western theology. He drew copiously from the writings of Neo-Platonist Origen, who was immersed in Greek philosophy.

Augustine taught that God’s purposes for Israel as a territorial nation ended with the cross and that all unfulfilled Old Testament prophecies were to be reinterpreted spiritually or allegorically in favor of the church.  Therefore, references to Israel, Zion, and Jacob with all the promises no longer apply to the Jewish nation. Augustine’s system of biblical interpretation became the dominant model for future generations.  A colossus in the field, he wielded enormous influence and power.

This is a “Doctrine of Demons” that has led generations of unsuspecting Christians astray.

The great ninetieth-century Anglican bishop of Liverpool, J.C. Ryle (1816-1900), protested the Bible’s allegorizing when he declared: “I believe the habit to be unwarranted by anything in Scripture, and to draw after it a long train of evil consequences.”

The sacking of Rome by the Goths in A.D. 410 signaled the beginning of the end for the empire and was the decisive turning point in history for the bishop of Hippo. The demise of Roman supremacy signaled the inspiration for Augustine’s monumental treatise, The City of God, a twenty-two-volume work that took him 13 years to complete.  It is the greatest assault on the doctrine of Israel’s restoration.  Augustine was the first person to teach that the organized catholic (universal) church is the Messianic Kingdom and that the Millennium began with the First Coming of Christ. He had established the spurious doctrine of “spiritual millennialism,” upon which the monolithic Roman Catholic Church would rule the nations and which would provide the template from which all the major Protestant creedal statements would be patterned.

The foundation stones Augustine built his City of God upon were not from the Scriptures as he claims, but quarried from the allegorical hills of those before him.  He had once held to a literal “Christian” millennium but rejected the idea on the basis of its earthly, carnal nature and, following Origen favored an allegorical, “Christian” interpretation of the Scriptures instead.

The church’s blindness to Israel’s biblical, historical, political, and spiritual relevance can be traced directly back to the writings of the early church fathers, who resolutely believed that the Jews, who through their rejection and crucifixion of Jesus, had forfeited all territorial rights to their ancient homeland forever.  They Christianized the Old Testament land promises with terrestrial Jerusalem, morphing into a poetic metaphor!  Augustine stated, “With a heart raised up towards it, Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem, my mother.”

The symbolization of the Lord’s Word leaves it without what our Creator intended for us to know.  How can anyone accept this teaching outside of what the plain Words say to us from Genesis to Revelation?  These so-called Church Fathers have made the glorious Word of God into a hodgepodge of lies.

Only the Lord knows the full impact that such avaricious doctrines have had on Christian-Jewish relations.  Only the Lord knows the damage these theological butchers have inflicted upon His flock and how much Jewish blood is on their hands as a result of their teaching.  Augustine’s belief system, in which the church has evolved into the “new Israel,” is deadly enough, but when combined with Chrysostom’s rabid anti-Semitism, it is absolutely lethal.

Anyone continuing to uphold and promote fact replacement theory needs to consider their position before the Lord and would do well to heed the words of Arthur Skevington Wood, a former vice president of Prophetic Witness Movement International:

“Now, there are many today, even among professing Christians, who imagine that God will have no further dealings whatsoever with the Jews.  They regard his relationship with His chosen people as a closed chapter.  They think that when the Jews rejected their Messiah, they forfeited any further place in God’s purpose.  We have seen how unscriptural such a viewpoint is from Paul’s rhetorical question in Romans 11:1, ‘I say then, Hath God cast away His people?  God forbid.’  That is a monstrous thought to the apostle, and he meets it with an emphatic and indeed solemn oath negative.  Then, in V2, he repeats that ‘God hath not cast away His people which he foreknew.’  He has laid them aside, but He has not put them away.  He has further dealings in store for them.  There is a huge future for the Jew in the designs of the Almighty.  God has a program, and moreover, it is being carried out before our very eyes today.”

Israel represents the centerpiece of divine, prophetic activity (Ezekiel 5:5; 38:12).  Thus, to love God and His Word also involves naturally loving Israel.  Unfortunately, this has not been the reigning sentiment throughout most of church history.  Even today, Satan continues to use many within the church to obscure, marginalize, and even deny the future significance of national Israel.

Next up, Luther, Calvin and Constantine