This Week in Christian History

451 - 1st Meeting of the Council of Chalcedon
The early Christians had many different ideas of exactly what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ. What was Jesus' real nature and person like? How was he related to God and to the Father? To what degree was he truly human? There were many debates over these issues in the fourth through the sixth centuries of the church. On October 8, 451, the largest of all church councils opened at Chalcedon, near Constantinople (modern Istanbul). After much debate, Jesus was affirmed as being... (Read more)
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1536 - Translator William Tyndale Strangled and Burned
How many Bibles do you have in your house? For most of us, Bibles are easily accessible, and many of us have several. That we have the Bible in English owes much to William Tyndale, sometimes called the Father of the English Bible. 90% of the King James Version of the Bible and 75% of the Revised Standard Version are from the translation of the Bible into English made by William Tyndale, yet Tyndale himself was burned at the stake for his work on October 6, 1536.
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1585 - Heinrich Schutz Fulfilled Luther's Dream
Martin Luther, the best-known Protestant reformer, wanted the German language to be the language of German religious life. That is one reason he translated the Bible into it. On October 8, 1585, thirty-nine years after Luther's death, Heinrich Schutz was born. Luther would have been proud of what Heinrich accomplished. The greatest Protestant German composer before Bach, most of what Schutz wrote was... (Read more)
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1864 - "Impossible" Jerry McAuley Opened Rescue Mission
Jerry McAuley was a bad lot through and through, the kind of person we call "impossible." Born in Ireland in 1839 he was raised by a grandma because his mother could not or would not care for him. Who his father was, he did not know. The grandma cursed him when he threw clods at her while she prayed.... (Read more)
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