all right I'm starting without you okay we'll start while he's ready I'm gonna go uh... the peanut gallery okay here they go Getting ready to fire rockets. into no man's land. Okay, let's begin the class with prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we are grateful for the Sabbath day. We thank you for the rest that it affords us, and hearing your word and worshiping together with fellowship, we thank you for all these good things. We ask your blessing upon this class, in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we're gonna work on John Knox today some more. I gave you an introduction to him last time we met. I might mention in passing that John Knox wrote History of the Reformation in Scotland. The title is The Reformation in Scotland by John Knox himself and it's a tremendous book. It is the basic source for the Scottish Reformation. As far as I know, it's never been out of print. This is one of the Banner of Truth editions. I don't know what year it was published, but they still have it in stock, I think. It's called The Reformation in Scotland by John Knox and it reads very well. He's a good writer. It's a first-person account of the Reformation in Scotland, it's an amazing book. Not many reformers sat down and self-consciously wrote a history of their own time. Ironically, I picked up a couple books at auction this week and one of them turned out to be a master's thesis on John Knox as a historian. And it's really a good autobiographical account of the Scottish Reformation. It's hard to overemphasize the influence of John Knox. He was one of many men who were converted and became preachers of the Reformation. There are a goodly number of scholars, particularly monks, who were converted and well-trained. All of them in what's called medieval scholastic method. Scholastics kind of define the middle ages, the monks and the scholars of the church. And what they What they studied were the church fathers. They studied, they're the ones who studied and interpreted Tertullian and Augustine and the post-apostolic fathers of the church. And that's what the scholars of the Middle Ages studied them, what they said and their interpretations because the post-apostolic fathers laid the groundwork for what became the medieval church. The Reformers themselves were trained in what's called scholasticism. And there's a big, long list of brilliant scholars of the Church during the Middle Ages. I wrote a piece this past week, which should be posted tomorrow on our blog, on Anselm of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And the Protestant Reformers really respected Anselm. Some of his writings were very useful to the reformers, because Anselm looked back to Augustine, and a lot of the reformers loved Augustine, too, in the 4th century and 5th century. And so some of those post-apostolic fathers, you have to pick and choose various doctrines that they promulgated, but there was a lot of heresy mixed in, really wherever you look. And so the scholastics of the Reformation, men like John Calvin and Theodore Beza and Martin Luther himself, what they did is, in Latin, was go to ad fontes. They went back to the source. They didn't go back to the post-apostolic fathers. They went back to the apostles. They went back to Christ himself. They went back to the Old Testament. And they studied the scriptures. in the original languages. And that's how the Reformation got going. They were not interpreting Tertullian and St. Chrysostom and those guys. They were studying Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the Apostle Paul. And that brought about the Reformation of the church and eventually the independence from the Papist church to the church of the Reformation. That's where John Knox fits in between roughly 1540 and 1572, something like that. So John Knox is like 30 years of that Reformation century. And mostly, he spent more years in England than he did in Scotland. But the impact he had on Scotland was greater. And he had, you might say, greater freedom in Scotland, although. and at the end of the class I'm going to talk a little bit about the monarchy of Scotland because the Reformation and its relationship with the kings and queens are inseparable. The context, the political context of the Reformation is important. It's important for Presbyterianism because of the contrast between rule by elder and rule by bishops. It was a huge difference, a fundamental difference when it came to the spiritual oversight of the church. I'm going to talk a little bit about the Reformation in Scotland. I want to bring up some of the doctrines, some of the distinctive contributions of John Knox. Remember, he was trained in Geneva. He sat at the feet of Calvin and Pierre Verret and others, and he was instrumental in the composition of the Psalter. and the confessions, the Geneva Confessions that came out of there, and the training of the pastors, the training of the men who came there to learn the scriptures and then be sent out as missionaries to their own countries. Now in France, those missionaries, we don't have time to study the Huguenots, that would be fun, and it would be very Presbyterian of us. But they're not the specific heritage of Presbyterianism in America, only tangentially. A few Huguenots came to America and their form of church government was Presbyterian, and they were reformed in their theology. And their impact was significant, but not like the Scottish influence, the Scots-Irish influence, not like the Puritan influence in England. Much more powerful in America than the Huguenots. But if you were a Frenchman trained in Geneva, sitting under John Calvin, and you went back to France to start a church or to become the pastor of a church, you were probably going to become a martyr. There were six or seven men that were sent out all at once, and all of them were killed as soon as they got to France. So the Catholic Church broached no competition when it came to the political control of a country. And Protestantism was a threat to the civil authorities. It was considered treasonous. So it wasn't just heretical. If you could get somebody declared a heretic, then you could get rid of them. and that that was the church's job to declare heretics. But the state are the ones who executed people. And if you could get somebody declared a heretic, then they automatically became a traitor. They were automatically subversive of the Catholic ruler. And that comes into play in Scotland, but it has a very different outcome than it does in France. Now France and Scotland are joined at the hip throughout the Middle Ages and into the early Reformation period. The French viewed Scotland as kind of one of their provinces. And we'll see that Mary, Queen of Scots, who is going to be on the throne in Scotland during the high points of Knox's influence, is raised in France. Her mother's French. French troops are the ones who are called to capture John Knox, to capture the castle at St. Andrews, and Knox is put in a French galley as a galley slave in his early days, if you remember from before. So there's always this special relationship between Scotland and France. Covenanters in the next century are going to break that tradition significantly, but so is John Knox. John Knox is going to separate Scotland from France in a very permanent way, really semi-permanent way. There are three great documents that came out of the Scottish Reformation and thanks to, again, thanks to Knox. The Scots Confession Confession of Faith was ratified and approved by Parliament and eventually Scots called their Parliament the Lords of the Congregation. Most of the ruling elders in the churches in Scotland, the Reformation churches in Scotland, most of the ruling elders were noblemen, or a lot of them were. Maybe I shouldn't say most of them were, we don't know. But a significant proportion of elders were nobles, part of the nobility of Scotland. So they were also the guys who ruled. And their parliament was called the Lords of the Congregation because These were men who believed that the church could hold the state accountable for their laws and actions and not vice versa. So the lords of the congregation, many of them, had a dual role in both church and civil government. And no, Ryan didn't ask me if we'd call him and Paul lords of the congregation. Well, actually, Jonathan. It was Jonathan's idea, not theirs. But they don't hold office. They don't hold civil office. So we'll have to lay that aside for the time being. Anyway, the Scots Confession was ratified and approved by Parliament. It was translated into Latin. It was transmitted in the name of the Lords of the Congregation or the Estates of Scotland. And it was composed literally in four days. And as one historian said, I quote, it witnesses to a living faith confronted with a real not academic situation. That is, it's a very practical document for the Christians in the pews to understand the implications of Presbyterianism, but the implications of the Christian faith in very practical measures. There are 25 articles in it. 12 basic doctrines, none of which were out of accord with the Catholic Church. None of those would have gotten you burned at the stake whatsoever. because it was sort of the majority view. And of course, it's the doctrine of God and the Trinity and creation and the fall, the necessity of sacraments, passion of Christ, the resurrection, the ascension, the return of Christ, the atonement, sanctification. The way all of these are defined in the Scots Confession, those who are transitioning from the Catholic Church to becoming Protestant really didn't notice a radical change there. But it's the other 13 articles. that when you come to faith, it's faith alone, through God's grace, not through works. Are we saved? And things like that. And of course, Presbyterian church government, spiritual oversight of the congregation being in the hands of elders instead of king, royally appointed bishops. Although that is going to happen in the Scottish Kirk on several occasions. But good works, as meritorious for salvation, are ruled out. And the teaching that sanctification and good works comes after faith, or comes as a result, I should say, of one's personal faith in Christ. separating the doctrine of justification and sanctification was made clear. And that was distinctively different from the formal Roman, the scholastic doctrine that had been sort of imprinted on the Catholic Church. And the sacraments, of course, were different also. And a great emphasis on local congregations. and it was The Confession taught that the Papist Kirk was not the true Church, their priests are not ministers, and that the magistrates needed to abandon the Catholic Church altogether and get with the new Scottish program of Protestant biblical orthodoxy. The Book of Common Order around 1556 is the date of that, shows that all over Scotland the Scottish Kirk had been organized. They were organized into very specific congregations. They now had a confession of faith. And this is the Book of Common Order, the way we, what we call it today is the Book of Church Order. Most Presbyterians have a Book of Church Order, which Orders in a practical way, various aspects of the church. They're not covered in the Confession of Faith, but are necessary to the functioning of the church. With Knox's leadership, they began the rudimentary selection of elders. And the reading of scriptures, old and new, in the service, confession of sin. They published a Book of Common Prayer for Edward VI of England and it was also used in Scotland. The Book of Common Prayer is going to be approved by the Presbyterians over time. They're going to at least in Scotland, they're going to leave behind the written prayers of the liturgy and go to extemporaneous praying, which is going to be very, very different because that formal prayer and worship should not be read, should not be absolutely prepared for. Now, today that's still a divisive issue because a lot of Presbyterians have used written prayers, and I think there's a very strong argument in favor of that, but I don't think it's preferable, personally. The Kirk of John Knox kept that aspect of worship, that it was something that everybody could look at and expect and hear prayed from the pulpit. And then the Book of Common Order, which was sometimes called the Book of Geneva, was printed in Edinburgh for the first time in 1662. It had been brought from Geneva first. And the Psalms in 1564. Eventually, the Book of Common Order is going to be replaced by the Westminster Directory that came with the Westminster Confession of Faith. They're going to replace the Scottish Book of Common Order when Scotland, as a nation, adopts the Westminster Confession. Isn't that fun? Wouldn't it be great for Congress to get up and formally adopt the Westminster Confession of Faith as a statement of what the United States holds to. The Confession of Faith, the Geneva Confession of Faith, is part of the Book of Common Order. The forms for election of church officers and the aspects of public worship, the sacraments, marriage, burial, visiting the sick, church discipline, becomes a key part. Now eventually, the Scottish Kirk is going to narrow down to a few key points the marks of a true church. And it's what Presbyterians in America have held to since their beginning, and that is faithful preaching of the gospel, the right use of the sacraments, and church discipline. Now those three have always been elemental since the days of John Knox, since the days of the Reformation. The six Johns, which is funny. John Winram, John Spock, Gone to the university in Rome. Oppressed by the papacy and come back to Scotland. He was involved in the writing of the Book of Discipline as well. John, the tall guy. and left me. It is the book that he translated into Gaelic, thus creating the Gaelic language. 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It takes place in the the Commonwealth of and furthering its moral religious and educational comfort and commodity. That's how Knox stated it. In the society and one is it's going to Times the finality of biblical authority No longer will they be consulted No longer will the Scholastics be telling you what you have to do because st. Jerome so From here on out. It's going to be chapter and verse for the Scottish Kirk. The key to all of Knox's actions and beliefs was a strict adherence to what is called the revealed will of God in the Bible. His transcendent principle, as one historian has said, was steadfast loyalty to the word of God, not Scotland. Scotland was the beneficiary of his loyalty to the word of God. Knox may have been clearer on the sufficiency of the Bible as a standard of law for civil governments than any other reformer in the Reformation. His emphasis on the application of Scripture to all of life and faith and practice for the nation of Scotland was thoroughly and centrally biblical. Another piece that he wrote in 1559, he entitled, A Brief Exhortation to England. Knox emphasized the necessity of Christian education in order to preserve Protestantism. It was obvious that that's how the Catholic Church had done it, or that's how the Church had done it down through the centuries, that is, each generation. But it turned out that it was just each generation of new monks and scholars were passed on to faith. And then it was up to them to pass on whatever aspects of it they needed to perform the Mass on Sunday. And that's what it had sort of devolved to in Scotland. One of the aspects I'm not going to say much about in terms of the Reformation in Scotland is the depravity and debauchery of the clergy. they were so depraved, almost as much as today, actually more so, and the people knew it. The priests announced one standard that the people were to live by, thus saith the Lord, and they had mistresses and illegitimate children all over the landscape. All they had to do was pay a small fine to the church for their indiscretions, and indiscretion, letting something become known or public. And the monks were just notorious. men who ate too much, drank too much, and spent life in the most convivial form as they could, fathering children across the landscape. So, that plays into the rebellion against the church. Because in different parts of England, and in Europe too, in other parts of Europe, it was the peasantry, the working men, who saw this hypocrisy and double standard and drove them away from Catholic Church when they were given an option. But the option was based on the Gospel, and people were converted, and it just changed everything. As you know, when a person comes to Christ, everything changes. And John Knox realized that if the Reformation was to continue, the children needed to be able to read the Scriptures. And that becomes a hallmark of Presbyterianism. for all of history henceforth. wherever, when they came to America via Ireland or directly from Scotland and established Reformed Presbyterian churches in America, wherever they went, as one historian has often said, they established schools, churches, and distilleries, not necessarily in that order. And the Scots made their mark wherever they went. And they, wherever they went, up popped what we would call common schools and colleges. When we see the march of Presbyterianism across America in the 18th and 19th century, particularly in the 19th century, you can look at a place like Ohio. And every 20 miles, there's a Presbyterian college starting on the borders of Pennsylvania. That whole area between, say, Ligonier, Pennsylvania, and the middle of Indiana is called the Ohio Valley. historically and geographically. The Ohio Valley was the road taken by the Scots-Irish as they came into the Midwest. And so wherever they settled, mostly farmers, up went a college, up went a school, up went the church, etc. they can be traced across America, but it all began in Scotland. I wish I could find a piece by a historian who's, I don't think a Christian, but And churches are established everywhere now the Catholic Church a couple more centuries, primarily, almost exclusively, in the Highlands of Scotland. The Highlands of Scotland remained in pockets of the Catholic community. Another book I picked up was Spanish to the American Plantations. And that includes Cromwell. It includes the Japanese. And you go to the section in here Colonies And you've got ten pages of McDonald's They were they were Roman Catholic that way Reformation period In the final battles against the English, well into the 18th century, well the McDonald's got transported, the entire clan got shipped to Jamaica and Barbados and South Carolina and different places. the English government. Yes. When they get to America, they get converted, see? So a lot with Catholic Irish. There were American missionaries on the docks of New York when the docked from Ireland. And the Catholic Irish The Catholic Irish surnames in America today are majority Protestant, if they're anything, still today. That's a quote from 20, 30 years ago. Whenever it was, I read it. So anyway, getting off track here. And another aspect of his teaching, of Knox's teaching, is legitimate resistance against tyranny. and it includes the use of armed force by the citizenry, but if you were resisting tyranny, It had to be led by a lesser magistrate, in other words, an elected official. Somebody who was standing between the people and higher authorities if the higher authorities are being tyrannical. And they defined what they meant by tyrannical. Christian citizens and lesser magistrates have the duty to remove tyrants from office. Now that is pretty radical and that was what John Knox said and he's going to be followed in the next century by Samuel Rutherford who's another great leader of the Scottish Kirk and a forerunner of John Witherspoon, who's going to be a signer of the American Constitution. However, armed resistance is justifiable only if two preconditions have been met. And this is what Knox preached. The first of which was the trying of all other means, including prayer and patience. And the second condition was that armed resistance must be led by a legitimate lesser magistrate. and John C. Calhoun, of certainly Scottish Presbyterian ancestry, but Unitarian convictions, when he was the great senator from South Carolina, wrote a book on the doctrine of interposition, and that's what Knox taught, that the Bible taught. And that idea is that the lesser magistrate sometimes has to interpose himself between a tyrant and the people. And since tyranny should be expunged, and he leads a rebellion against tyranny, better make sure it's tyranny, that it's biblically legitimate. Now that's a revolutionary thought and a revolutionary position that Knox took on that. And he was followed in the following century by the Covenanters and by others, certainly by Parliament in England, who interposed themselves between the people of England and the king. who was doing all sorts of unconstitutional, tyrannical measures, and Parliament interposed themselves between him and the people, and eventually he was accused of treason and beheaded. It's often been said that Charles I did not like his severance package. Okay. Another aspect of Knox's preaching and teaching was the responsibility of the church to take care of the poor, providing for its own poor with primary aid going to widows, orphans, the elderly, the disabled, and those suffering from severe financial distress. So Presbyterians have always been known for taking care of their own, who have run into difficulty, especially widows and orphans. And we know from the New Testament that that was definitely something that was given to the early church to do. And the option was that they died of starvation, typically, because the state didn't step in. And it was just assumed by everyone that that's one of the purposes of the church, to band together as brethren and take care of the widows and orphans. And beggars were accepted, that is, EXC. Beggars are not included in this, being recommended for punishment to the civil magistrate. So people that were able-bodied workers, if they were found begging, they could be transported to the colonies. They could be incarcerated. They could suffer physical punishment. There were all kinds of things that the state did to the indigent. But the church had a well-defined and a keen eye for those among their congregations. And everybody, by the way, belonged to a church. There's no such thing as Christians who are not members of a church. in the Scottish Kirk, and Presbyterians have held that view since the beginning, that every Christian is a member, or ought to be a member of the visible church, and independent people deciding on their own what they're going to do and be was never a part of Presbyterianism, and in fact it was not allowed in Scotland. And then the covenantal basis of civil government. The civil magistrates and covenant with God promising to rule, quoting here, according to his revealed law and to oppose idolatry. 2 Kings 23, 1-3. 2. The civil magistrate is in covenant with the people, promising to rule over them righteously and protect them. 2 Chronicles 15. 3. The people are in covenant with the civil magistrate, promising to submit to his righteous government. And four, the people are in covenant with God, promising to be His faithful people. So they had a covenantal view of the relationship between people and their civil authority and people in the church and the church and the civil government. It was all covenantal. And at the top, was God and His law, which ruled over all. And so the church's responsibility was to hold the civil authorities accountable for what they did, compared to the Constitution, which for the church was the scriptures and typically for the civil government another constitution to which they adhered to which was not contradictory to the scriptures. That's the way it worked in Scotland and that's the way it worked actually in America to a certain extent. If the civil authorities were negligent or tyrannical, this is from Mr. Greaves, church historian, the people were obliged to provide and defend preachers against any, including the civil authorities, who would persecute them. In 1564, Knox reasserted this principle in his debate with William Maitland in the General Assembly. Referring to the commandment to the Hebrews in Exodus 34 not to make a league with the Canaanites, Knox declared that, quote, the people assembled together in one body of a commonwealth unto whom God has given sufficient force, not only to resist, but also to suppress all kinds of open idolatry. And so, Just the idea that Christians do have a right to resist tyranny if the civil authorities are violating the known will of God, that is the law of God. Christians are to resist, but they are to do everything in their power possible short of taking up arms, which were not legitimate unless called upon by a lesser magistrate. It's interesting. Yeah. Okay, thanks. All right.