Justinian and Gregory
Renewing Your Mind
Ligonier Ministries
4.8 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Centuries before the Reformation, Augustine taught that salvation is by grace alone. But how did the medieval church understand grace? Today, W. Robert Godfrey explores problematic theological shifts in the early medieval era.
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Meet Today's Teacher:
W. Robert Godfrey is a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow and chairman of Ligonier Ministries. He is president emeritus and professor emeritus of church history at Westminster Seminary California.
Meet the Host:
Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of media for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.
Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the 6th century, the Roman Empire began to lose some of its influence. |
| 0:05.0 | As some in the West felt, well, the empire seems to be disappearing. |
| 0:09.6 | There seems to be a decentralization of civilization occurring. |
| 0:14.1 | There does seem to be a loss of some of the old Roman structures of society. |
| 0:18.9 | Where can we look for continuity? |
| 0:23.2 | Who will provide assurance that things are continuing? And it was to the papacy that they look. |
| 0:33.5 | Studying history helps to inform our understanding of the present. As King Solomon noted, there is nothing new under the sun. |
| 0:42.3 | This is the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind. |
| 0:45.3 | I'm Nathan W. Bingham. |
| 0:47.3 | In order to understand the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy, |
| 0:52.3 | we need to see it in its historical context. |
| 0:55.4 | Today, Ligonier's chairman W. Robert Godfrey takes us to the Middle Ages when the |
| 1:00.0 | papacy first began to rise in power. Here's Dr. Godfrey. |
| 1:07.0 | In our first lecture, we were looking at the sort of backgrounds of the Middle Ages, the character, |
| 1:12.9 | the broad character, the Middle Ages. We tried to set the stage for what we were going to look at |
| 1:17.1 | in our period that I'm calling the warm up. In this lecture, I want to look at two really |
| 1:24.2 | critically foundational figures for the development of the early Middle Ages, and indeed, |
| 1:31.8 | in a sense, the whole Middle Ages, one an emperor and one a Pope. And that's sort of appropriate |
| 1:37.6 | because much of the tension throughout the history of the Middle Ages is tension between |
| 1:43.4 | Pope and Emperor. |
| 1:45.6 | The Emperor is a fellow we already probably talked about a little bit at the end of the ancient |
| 1:51.0 | church course. Emperor Justinian. Emperor Justinian reigned from 527 to 565, so he had a relatively long rain, a quite important rain. A rain conducted almost |
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