Theological Term of the Week: The Venerable Bede
Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 3:30AM 
The Venerable Bede
A presbyter-monk who wrote a complete history of the Church in England up to his own time. He lived from 673–735.1
- From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power by N. H. Needham, page 320:
[Bede’s Church History of the English People] … is our main source of information about the Christian faith in England from its origins until the 8th Century. Bede was on of the most highly educated Western Europeans of his day. He knew all three of the Church’s great languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrews (a rare achievement for any Westerner at that time). A dedicated follower of Augustine of Hippo, Bede was also well-versed in the writings of other early Church fathers, especially Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, and in the ancient pagan literature of Greece and Rome.As well as his English Church history, Bede wrote many sermons, biographies (including a life of Cuthbert), letters, poems, and commentaries on books of the Bible, and translated John’s Gospel into English.
- From Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England:
CHAP. X. How, in the reign of Arcadius, Pelagius, a Briton, insolently impugned the Grace of God. [395 AD]
In the year of our Lord 394, Arcadius, the son of Theodosius, the forty-third from Augustus, succeeding to the empire, with his brother Honorius, held it thirteen years. In his time, Pelagius, [Pelagius, the founder of the heresy known as Pelagianism, was probably born in 370 A.D., and is said to have been a Briton. His great opponent, St. Augustine, speaks of him as a good and holy man; later slanders are to be attributed to Jerome’s abusive language. The cardinal point in his doctrine is his denial of original sin, involving a too great reliance on the human will in achieving holiness, and a limitation of the action of the grace of God] a Briton, spread far and near the infection of his perfidious doctrine, denying the assistance of the Divine grace, being seconded therein by his associate Julianus of Campania, who was impelled by an uncontrolled desire to recover his bishopric, of which he had been deprived. St . Augustine, and the other orthodox fathers, quoted many thousand catholic authorities against them, but failed to amend their folly; nay, more, their madness being rebuked was rather increased by contradiction than suffered by them to be purified through adherence to the truth … .
Learn more:
- Christian History: The Venerable Bede
- 5 Minutes in Church History: The Venerable Bede
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library: The Venerable Bede
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England
Related terms:
- Ambrose of Milan
- Apollinarius
- Athanasius
- Augustine of Hippo
- Basil of Caesarea
- Cappadocian fathers
- Columba
- Cyril of Alexandria
- Gregory of Nanzianzus
- Gregory of Nyssa
- Gregory the Great
- Hilary of Poitiers
- Irenaeus of Lyons
- Jerome
- John Chrysostom
- Justin Martyr
- Monica
- Nestorius
- Origen
- Patrick
- Pelagius
- Sabellius
- Tertullian
1From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power by N. R. Needham.
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