Jared Lovell is a deacon in the Reformed Episcopal Church serving Grace RE Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Jared is a classical educator, teaching European and American history at Memoria Press Online Academy, and is a teaching fellow at the Wayside School.
There may be no greater issue plaguing the church and impeding its witness today than its inconsistent and unclear teaching on the issue of divorce and remarriage. At first glance this might seem like an overstatement. However, if one considers the theological roots of this issue and how they branch out and underlie many other…
Beginning with the scientific revolution in the sixteenth century and continuing through the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that which was deemed knowable or worthy of being known, was limited to that which was empirically verifiable or rationally deducible from certain premises about the laws of nature. Outside of this narrow definition of…
In the previous post, we looked at the context in which Constantine ruled by highlighting the significant events of his rise and reign. Constantine’s Reforms Having set out the events that shaped Constantine’s historical context, the reforms and policies of his reign must be considered in this light. First, Constantine made reforms in the law…
Constantine, Augustine, and the Legacy of Western Christendom The streets of Rome thronged with celebrants awaiting the advent of the victorious new emperor. Though it was typical for emperors or kings upon their ascension to be contrasted with their predecessors and praised as the ushers of a new era of peace and prosperity, on this…
One of the fundamental theological convictions to emanate from the Protestant Reformation was the doctrine of sola scriptura. As defined and defended by the magisterial Reformers and several generations of their ideological heirs, this term affirmed that Holy Scripture was the only infallible authority for life and doctrine. Roman Catholics rejected this doctrine completely, affirming…
It is generally much easier to identify discontinuities resulting from an epochal event in a historical narrative than the continuities existing prior to, and remaining subsequent to, that event. This being the case, it is common to make the mistake of attributing subsequent historical developments back to the epoch-making event. Arguments about the increasing power…
One of the most remarkable institutions to develop in the Middle Ages was Monasticism. After the Edict of Milan issued by Constantine in 314 A.D., Christianity was recognized as a legal religion in the Roman Empire. By 380 A.D., Christianity became the official religion of the empire due to the Edict of Thessalonica issued by…
Legitimate discourse on the role of the civil magistrate in modern life is range bound between classical liberalism on the political right and progressive liberalism on the political left. The two sides of the liberal coin hold to different perspectives on the role of government in society but share a common telos in what they…
In his classic 1987 book Crisis and Leviathan, economic historian Robert Higgs convincingly argued that the vast growth in the size and scope of the American government over the course of the twentieth century was due primarily to government actions taken in response to national emergencies. Higgs identifies critical events such as the Great Depression,…
Reforming the Bright Ages Social historian R.W. Southern defined the Middle Ages as “the period in Western European history when the church could reasonably claim to be the one true state, and when men acted on the assumption that the church had an overriding political authority.”[1] For most moderns, the Middle Ages provide a…
