Welcome to Breakpoint, daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of Unchanging Truth.

The Colson Center, I'm John Stomstree.

Recently, my colleague, Casey Leander, sat down with Dr. Andrew Nuel, of Wickliffe Hall,

Oxford, to discuss the popular Christmas hymn, Park the Herald Angel Sing.

Originally published in 1739, the song's a treasure of Orthodox Christology, whose message

is needed just as badly today as when it was written in the 18th century.

As Nuel explains in this bonus episode of the Breakpoint podcast, 18th century England

was beset with theological challenges.

After a profound cultural upheaval during the previous century, the Church of England had

replaced much of its theological vigor with a more stagnant faith, one that de-emphasized

doctrine in favor of reasonable religion, outward works, and enlightenment thinking.

Largely missing was a commitment to the notion that Christianity was actually true, and thus

required of Christians' personal conviction, repentance, and transformation.

Likewise, heresies like Aryanism, the false religion, centered around the idea that Jesus

was not God incarnate but merely a created being, had gained new traction.

In fact, Charles Wesley thought Aryanism a big enough threat to directly counter it when

he compared it to the wormwood of Revelation 8.10.

Quote, how has he shed his baleful power, wasted the earth and people's hell, while millions

drank the Aryan lie?

And yet in the midst of this bleak cultural scene, revival was stirring, which could be seen

in central Europe among the Moravian Christians, across the Atlantic with Jonathan Edwards, and

Adoxford University and the Holy Club founded by George Whitfield, John and Charles Wesley

...