July 20, 2016

Ambrose of Milan

Stephen Nichols
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Ambrose of Milan

Transcript

In the city of Milan, Italy, there once lived a man named Ambrose. He was born around A.D. 340 and died in 397. He was the bishop of Milan, but he did not start off being a bishop. He came from a political family and initially was a political figure.

Ambrose came from a very established family. He was born in Trier, in the Rhineland region of Germany. In fact, Trier might have been one of the earliest cities in Germany; it was an established Roman city. Ambrose's father was a Praetorian prefect. He oversaw a number of cohorts of that elite force in the Roman army, the Praetorian Guard.

When Ambrose was a young man, he was sent back to study at Rome, and after his studies, he began his political career. By the age of 34, he was governor of northern Italy and was seated at Milan. The bishop at Milan at the time was an Arian—he rejected the deity of Christ and the Nicene Creed. When this bishop died, there was a dispute between the Arians in the city and the non-Arians, and both groups came together and started chanting for Ambrose.

This is probably one of the most unique elections of a bishop in the early church. Ambrose was elected bishop by popular acclaim, as both sides wanted him. The non-Arians liked that Ambrose was not an Arian and the Arians thought that he was a good ruler and a fair governor and that he would treat them fairly. Ambrose didn't want the position, however, and he went and hid out in someone's house. Finally, the pope sent that person a letter and told him to turn over Ambrose. So, Ambrose reluctantly ascended to the bishopric of Milan.

Ambrose made three marks as bishop. First, he strongly stood against Arianism. The Arian party had miscalculated; they did not realize how crucial the doctrine of the deity of Christ was to Ambrose. He rejected Arianism as a heresy and devoted his energies to routing it.

The other influence of Ambrose comes in terms of hymnody. Before Ambrose, hymns tended to be unmetered and were more in a prose style. They didn't necessarily rhyme, sort of like the Gloria Patri. Ambrose and a few others contributed to the development of rhymed, metrical hymns. One of Ambrose's hymns is titled "The Eternal Gifts of Christ the King."

But the third mark of Ambrose has to do with his influence over Augustine. At this point, I'll step aside and let Augustine tell us about Ambrose's influence. In his Confessions, Augustine says:

In Milan, I found your devoted servant, the bishop Ambrose, who was known throughout the world as a man whom there were few to equal in his goodness. At that time his gifted tongue never tired of dispensing the richness of your word and the joy of your word. . . . Unknown to me, it was you, God, who led me to Ambrose so that I might knowingly be led by Ambrose to you. This man of God received me like a father, and as a bishop told me how glad he was that I had come. My heart warmed to him, not at first, as a teacher of the truth, which I had quite despaired of finding in your church, but simply as a man who showed me kindness.
And as Augustine was impressed by his kindness and by his ability in the pulpit, eventually God used Ambrose to lead Augustine to the truth.