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1:18Can you go back a little more? Yeah. All right. So last time we covered Ambrose, and we also talked about Jerome. And I'm sorry if you're just here today. You're going, there's tons you've already missed, in fact, but uh, but anyway, we're going to just have to start somewhere today, and that's going to be with Augustine. And, of course, Augustine, well, I really would love to spend a lot of time on him, but I need to get to the medieval period, so I'm going to kind of rush through Augustine today, just warn you. Augustine, sometimes known as the Doctor of Grace, he is actually, in many ways, sort of the fount of Reformed theology. He, of course, starts off not so well, though. His father is, well, I loved his father's name, Patricus. Okay, that's his father's name, Patrickus. And his mother, but he was a pagan. His mother was named Monica, and she's one of these mamas that just would not let go. I mean, she was, of course, a good mother, and she was a Christian, and she wanted her son to be a Christian. But Augustine had other ideas. He, of course, goes, the mother and father were able to provide him an excellent education. He rejects Christianity. He sort of goes through a whole series of different isms, one of which was Manichaeism, which is another one of these spin-offs from sort of like Zoastrianism, good God, bad God.

3:00And used some of the Christian scriptures, but in ways totally different from what the Christians would intend. And also, towards the end, there, before he became a Christian, he got into Neoplatonism. But very intellectual. Of course, he taught rhetoric, really knew how to speak well. And first, he taught there in Carthage, North Africa. He is African, North African. And, of course, he later is going to go to Italy, to Rome first, which, of course, much bigger city. And he was famous for his rhetoric and became one of the teachers there. And then he's going to go up to Milan. Now, there's some debate over this, but some say he went there to debate ultimately Ambrose, who is, you know, we previously have covered him, just this incredible, powerful preacher, bishop of Milan. And Augustine apparently would sneak into the church to listen to him because, you know, you want to hear what your opposition is, so to speak. At this stage, you know, he's a skeptic critic of Christianity, but he also knows that none of these isms he's gone through has really. Satisfied him, you know, spiritually, intellectually, every other way. And as he listens to the sermons of Ambrose, he is convicted. And so he begins to go back and review Christianity, which he had previously spurned and rejected as not satisfactory intellectually and all this. And you have this famous conversion scene where he's there in a garden there where his house was. And he has a Bible there.

5:05And as he's reading that Bible, well, the Bible's laying there. He's not reading it yet. But he's real convicted. He's at this point of breaking down. And he says he heard a voice like that of a child, and it may have been a child, kind of sing-song voice saying, Take and read, take and read. And so he opens that Bible. And this is horrible and terrible. I just forgot to put the scripture down. It's from Romans. And oh, doggone it, that's terrible. But the verse just totally convicts him, and he breaks down and right there prays to accept the Lord. And then he starts going to church. Ambrose immediately recognizes his extraordinary abilities and talents.

6:01He, of course, had previously been in an illicit relationship, had had a son in that relationship, and of course, he decides to break off that relationship and becomes a monk there for briefly. Goes back to North Africa, and there at Hippo, I know it's the same strange name for a city. You know, we have Hutto here in Texas, but this was Hippo. The folks there pretty much just grabs him and makes him their bishop. He was a reluctant bishop. But once he's installed as bishop, Augustine takes up his pen and he begins to start writing. He who had once attacked and criticized Christianity becomes one of his greatest apologists. He was to his age what C.S. Lewis was to ours. He becomes one of the great apologists of his day. And you've got to remember in 410, Rome itself is sacked, the first sacking, which isn't too bad of a sacking, causes by the Visigoths. They came in, stole a bunch of stuff, tore down a few buildings, but Rome was pretty much left intact. But this was such a shock that Rome had fallen to barbarians. Of course, they pulled back out. The real, true, disastrous sacking. And wrong, he's going to come with the vandals, you know, the much later Germanic group. And that's where we get the word vandalized from because they really destroy the city. But this is 1 Sacking 4:10. And so he is going to have to take up the pen to defend Christianity because the pagans at the time said that this is all because Rome abandoned paganism. And the gods are punishing Rome because they abandoned paganism. And it's those, you know, those Christians have angered the gods. And so he's going to take up his pen and, of course, come forth with his greatest classic of all time, The City of God, which is horrible and terrible. I can't digress and discuss that with you very much, but it is a classic defense for Christianity. He talks about the city of God, the city of man, and all of that. He also writes his Confessions. And we just do not realize how a huge impact Augustine has had upon literature. The Confessions is the first autobiography in which he tells intimate details about his life. I mean, when he says this, when it says Confessions, it's very well named. He is confessing.

8:52But it's a very interesting testimony, you know, and it had huge impact. There's no telling. How many people came to the Lord just by reading his confessions? They had a huge impact many, many years forward, in the early 1500s, when a little German monk is going to not only read them, but memorize them. And that would be, guess who? Martin Luther. All right. So he had a, and of course, probably in terms of Reformed theology, he is going to combat and pretty much put down yet another Christian heresy at that time called Pelagianism. Pelagian, actually British monk, had been teaching that basically you have to make yourself good enough for God, you know, work for your salvation. And of course, you know, he's going to come back and say, no, there's no way we can make ourselves good enough. It is only through the grace of God that we can be saved. And so very, very powerful person. And, of course, he's contemporaneous with Ambrose and Jerome. He's the one that persuaded Jerome to translate the Apocrypha we've talked about last time, which Jerome was reluctant to do, fearful that people would think it's scripture. But anyway, Augustine will die of natural causes, but the time of his death, the huge changes are. Occurring. He's really at a transition point in both church and Western civilization because the vandals were literally at the gates of Hippo besieging the city when he dies. And of course, they will take and destroy the city. So, of course, with well, stopped on me again there.

10:57All right, no. I have it on. Must be a dead battery again. Okay. All right. So you got that's Augustine. That's working. Okay. And oh, darn. I thought it was further than this. Let's see. Okay, well, let's back up. We've already covered the Petrine doctrine, pretty much. You know, thou art Petros and Pomus Petra, I build my church. And of course, Pope Leo the Great is going to put forth that doctrine. And this is going to be one of the major things that will lead to a split, the first big division in Christianity between the Greek Orthodox and also the Western Roman Catholic Church. And on top of this, other reasons for this split is going to be the iconoclastic controversy. And what's so ironic about this one is it starts off with an emperor.

12:00Byzantine Emperor Leo III, don't confuse him with Leo the Pope. This is a Byzantine emperor. He decreed that icons should no longer be used in worship. In other words, he felt that people were worshiping these icons and it was idolatry. And the funny thing about this is the Western Church, when he ordered all these icons to be destroyed, the Western church refused to destroy their images. You know, the Roman Catholic Church has its images and statues and stuff like that. And, of course, there's going to be waves of this controversy.

12:43And, you know, you see a little bit of this in Protestantism. You notice a lot of Protestant churches, if they have stained glass windows, they're usually not going to be images, you know. And part of that goes back to the Protestant Reformation. There's this fear of worshiping images. This is an early, you know, the church has gone through waves of this throughout its time period historically. The funny thing about it is, though, after this emperor dies, the Eastern Church is going to return back to icons. If you know anything about the Eastern Orthodox Church today, they go way further in their sacramentation of icons than the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church does, really.

13:28They really take icons. Iconography to extremes, I would argue. And the Western Church continues on, but I would say Roman Catholicism, while they have their veneration of saints and relics and all this, it was never to the extreme that you have in the Eastern Orthodox Church. But that's another reason for the break, this over icons controversy. And then, of course, we discussed last time the filoque, the filoque, you know, and from the Son. That was a huge dispute between the Eastern and Western churches as well. And the West, you know, wanting to maintain the equality of the Trinity, insisted that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son. The Byzantines, for other whatever reason that we don't have time to get into, they rejected that additional phrase and from the Son. So that was a huge controversy, which we don't need to get into. And there's another reason for a split. Remember, the Eastern churches, with the exception of Constantinople and then ultimately even it too, 1453, the Eastern church is conquered. All these churches come under the domination of Islam. And that means the Eastern churches loses a lot of its influence. Now, the big thing you also need to remember, too, is that. That language was a reason.

15:04Miscommunication can cause a lot of problems in a church. And the Greek Orthodox spoke Greek. The Western Church spoke Latin. And that too led to a split. So, and of course, you have also, I think, part of this the fight between the Patriarch of Constantinople, who wanted to claim he should have supreme authority over the church, and then you got the Roman Catholic Church saying, no, it's the Pope. And so that's yet another reason for the split. Although I might remind you that the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch was under the emperor. You know, that's where they have this terminology, Caesaropapism. Okay, so ultimately, of course, the two churches divide. You have the Western Church, Eastern Church, but the Eastern Church also subdivides. And you got today 13 self-governing, independent Eastern Orthodox branches. Probably one of the biggest splits will be in the Russian Orthodox Church. And let's see, do I have that here? Yeah. The Russian Orthodox, remember, Russia is going to be very isolated. It's behind these huge plains that make the Great Plains look small in comparison, the steeps of Russia. And then you have these. Penetrable forest. And so the Russians have always, well, there's sort of Europeans, but sort of weird Europeans because they're so far to the east. And they, in some ways, you know, the Eastern Orthodox Church is a more oriental form of Christianity in its Eastern looking at things. And also, you've got to remember, ultimately, the Russians are going to be conquered by the Mongols. And they're under Mongol subjugation for some time. But when Constantinople falls, 1453, the Russian Orthodox come up with this idea that, you know, the head of the church then becomes Moscow. And Russia, well, actually, originally was Kiev, then they move it to Moscow. And they have this third Rome idea that Rome was corrupt, and therefore God sent the barbarians to destroy it. Constantinople, which was then the seat of Christianity, it is going to be destroyed or captured by the Muslims. And so only in Mother Russia do you have this pristine, undefiled church, which is certainly not the case. It's not very pristine. But anyway, and so now I just mentioned this because this is a big thing in Russian psyche. They see themselves as the fount of prayer. Preserving Christianity, and they considered all other forms of Christianity to be heretical. I don't know, as late as Peter the Great, one of the big problems he had when he brought these Westerners in to modernize Russia was keeping locals when these Westerners would pass through a Russian village of the peasants not rising up and attacking them and killing them because they weren't Russian Orthodox.

18:27I mean, it was very extreme, this idea of the Third Rome, and part of this goes to this isolationism and paranoia of outsiders. So, you know, which we usually think of that being caused by the communists, but it was even before the communists. All right, so with that little aside, meantime, back in the West, as it falls to the barbarian hordes, you've got the Franks being converted to Christianity. And by the way, part of this is because one of these Frankish kings had a concubine, a slave, who he liked her so much he marries her. And she was a Christian. And she's Roman Catholic. And so the Franks convert to Roman Catholicism. Now, what barbarians they were Christians, they were usually Aryan Christians. Which remember is a heresy that we've already covered. But the Franks converting to Christianity is going to become very, very important and significant to the Western Church because ultimately they're going to decide to ally with the Pope and sort of be the Pope's protectors, right? And so you're going to have the Frankish king Pepin making a donation of land in central Italy to the papacy. And this is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it guaranteed revenue and security for the pope. It's a curse because the church becomes more and more worldly, the pope becomes more and more of a politician, and is going to involve the pope in all kinds of future wars as well. Now, I guess the climax of this alliance between the Franks and the Papacy is going to be achieved under Charlemagne the Great. Charlemagne, of course, basically conquers a huge empire, all of modern-day France, most of Holland, Burgundy, I mean, Belgium, Germany, just humongous empire. And Charlemagne has to go down there in Italy to help the Pope, who's having trouble with some local barbarians. And he secures the Pope. And in return, the Pope on Christmas Day, 1880. 800 crowns Charlemagne the Holy Roman Emperor. And thus begins this Holy Roman Empire, which is going to be so incredibly important throughout the feudal age. And of course, Voltaire famously said it was not really holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire. It's actually more of a confederation, but it's still going to be very, very important and also helps to explain why the Western Church goes a different direction than the Eastern Church. And meantime, just taking a look at the development of the church, you have, of course, at this time, the beginnings of Western monasticism. Of course, it started in the East. We don't have time to get into that. But you have basically two types of clergy developing. You have regular clergy, and that doesn't mean what it sounds like, though. This comes from the word regula, which means rule. And so the regular clergy were actually the monks and the nuns. You have monasteries and convents springing up all over Europe. And part of this is due to the fact that things are bad. They are really bad. There's a lot of corruption. And so some of the early Christians of this time period decide to do something that's such a temptation that we need to resist. And that is, they decide to go off, join a convent or a monastery. Of course, they'll take vows of celibacy. And then they would totally devote themselves to live the Christian life behind cloister walls. Or as they try to wall themselves off from the rest of the world. Now, as Brother Clyde has for ages said, the Lord can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. And even though I think their idea of shutting themselves off from the rest of the world was the wrong way to go, they do have some benefits. And one, of course, is they help to preserve scripture. They help to preserve learning, education. The monasteries have monastery schools. They've become basically experimental farms, horticulture.

23:22A lot of good things do come out of the monastic movement. And they are constantly keeping an eye a check on the church itself. And it's often through the monastic movements that reform comes to the church. But the first monastic movement is founded at 4th century St. Basel. And then you have, of course, in Western Europe, St. Benedict is going to found Monte Cassino, which was tragically destroyed in World War II because the Nazis up on top of this mountain were using it as a fortress. But St. Benedict is founded in a monastery, Italy, 520. And this is one of the first big Western monastic moves, Benedictinism. And where you're going to see in medieval monasticism, you have this group form. They want to live a very ascetic, totally devoted life. They give up all their possessions. They adopt celibacy. and they live by this very strict rule. So they're called regular clergy because that again. And that's a regular clergy. And but as time goes on, though, what happens is, since the monasteries provide free health care, what little source of education there is, all these other things, people would give them things. And while they start off owning nothing, as time goes on, the monastic order becomes increasingly wealthy. And pretty soon, people want to become a monk, not because it's such a hard and tough, you know, strenuous life to live, but because it's better, you know, it's easier, cushier, all this kind of stuff. And at that point, corruption would set in, and then yet a newer monastic movement would arrive. We're going to see the Cistercians, the Clinaics, on and on. Finally, you get to the, you have an order that decides to leave these cloister walls, the Franciscans. And the Dominicans, but all that's in the future. Okay, so we're going to skip over this. That's just, you know, calls for obedience to the abbot, poverty, chastity, hard labor. By the way, while this are the regular clergy, those clergy that live by a strict rule, in the world, the priests, the bishops, archbishops, the deacons, all this, they are called secular clergy. They're called secular clergy because they live in the world. So you have regular based upon this idea they have a regular they live by, and then you have the secular, and they live and minister upon with ordinary people. Okay, so with that, we're going to conclude the early rise of Christianity. Now we're going to look at medieval Christianity.

26:20Just start at the beginning, medieval Christianity. I have it minimized down there. Should start with St. Patrick, my namesake. Okay. All right. Now, you know, throughout history, human history, we have a lot of ups and downs, don't we? Politically, militarily, socially, everything. And St. Patrick is living at one of those down times. You know, I mean, stop and think. About the world that he had known as a young boy was literally collapsing all about him. Britain, of course, he was in Wales, had been abandoned by the Roman legions. The Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes come in, and Christianity is virtually wiped out. Now, St. Patrick there on the coast of Wales was raised a Christian, made a mistake of going too close to the coast, and he is bushwhacked, captured, and enslaved by Irish raiders.

27:47He's taken to Ireland, where most of his teenage years and on into young manhood, he is a slave in Ireland. He escapes back to Wales, apparently has a genuine, what we would call, born-again experience, and decides to go back to Ireland to win the pagan Irish to Christianity. And it just is remarkable to me to think that God always has his remnant and he will rebuild from the ashes. And I mean, stop and think about it. Here he is, he's going to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, win an entire pagan, you can't even say nation, Ireland was split up in warring factions. I mean, the fact of the matter is the Irish would be fighting even without the British. You know, they always had the British to be the enemy. But the fact of the matter is the Irish are fighting each other long before the Brits ever showed up. And he is going to witness to this fractious, divided kingdom of Ireland and win the entire nation to Christ, which is just absolutely remarkable. And the Irish will then go back and they start off with Scotland. You've got pics up there in Scotland. I mean, even the Romans left the pics alone, and they go and they start Christianizing Scotland. Then they start moving down into northern England, and finally they meet up with Augustine, which is spelled the same way as Augustine, but the way the historians at my school handle it. Augustine is the guy in North Africa, and Augustine is the missionary sent by the Pope to Britain. And then they're going to have that famous Council Whitby. And these Irish Christians who had lost all contact with the continent of Europe, I mean, they were up there in isolation, totally separate. They weren't even aware that Christians existed. Elsewhere. But they're going to make a deal, which I think is kind of bad, and that they decide to link back up with the Pope again. You know, they become Roman Catholics. By the way, the church in Ireland under St. Patrick was probably in some ways closer to the original Greek Orthodox than it was Roman Catholicism.

30:22And it's also amazing to think that here they were, this little group of Christians out there in Ireland, they had lost all contact with other Christians, and yet the faith, even in medieval times, which is so easily corruptible as we're going to see at this time, talk about a pristine jewel here with Augustine. And so we got that mic. Why don't you have, let's see, Zadams and Arob and then you and Zach and anyone else we need. I want y'all to see. Now, this is early, early medieval period, and there's a lot of things wrong with the medieval church, needless to say. But here, God preserves some pristine theology here. This is the famous breastplate of St. Augustine. We're going to read the full thing.

31:25Oh, yeah, excuse me. St. Patrick, thank you. Breastplate of St. Patrick. In fact, you know. Kalin sometimes will sing a song, and at the end of it we recite some beautiful poetry. Well, that's just a piece of the breastplate. And so, would you start it here? I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, to three and one, and one and three. Okay. Next person. Everybody gets a different color.

31:58I bind this day to me forever by power of faith, Christ's incarnation, his baptism in the Jordan River, his death on the cross for my salvation, his bursting from the spiced tomb, his riding up the heavenly way, his coming at the day of doom, I bind unto myself today. I mean, look at this poetry. Bursting from the spiced tomb, his riding up the heavenly way, his coming at the day of doom, I bind unto myself today.

32:26This is great poetry here. All right, here's going next. I bind unto myself the power of the great love of the cherubim, the sweet well done in judgment hour, the service of the seraphim, confessor's faith, apostles' word, the patriarch's prayers, the prophets' scrolls, all good deeds done unto the Lord, and purity of virgin souls. I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven, the glorious sun's life giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind's temptuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks.

33:22I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead, his eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to hearken to my need, the wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward, the word of God to give me speech, his heavenly hosts to be my guard. Just do it in reverse order now. Mike Oh, heard somebody else. It doesn't matter. Against the demon snares of sin, the vice that gives temptation force, the natural lust that war within, the hostile men that mar my course, or few or many, far or nigh, in every place and in all hours, against their fierce hostility, I bind to me these holy powers.

34:13Against all Satan's spells and wiles, against false words of heresy, against the knowledge that defiles, against the heart's idolatry, against the wizard's evil craft, against the death wound and the burning, the choking wave and the poisonous and the poisoned shaft, protect me Christ till thou. Returning Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

34:57I bind unto myself the name, the strong name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the three in one and one in three, of whom all nature hath creation, eternal Father, Spirit, Word. Praise to the Lord of my salvation. Salvation is of Christ the Lord. Okay. Now, isn't that pretty remarkable? You know, I mean, that to me is just as fresh and applicable to our lives today as the day he wrote that. And you know, if you have your Bible study and you memorize that as a recitation, you should go forth that day much stronger. You know, it's just a great poem, huh?

35:38The breathplate in quotation marks. Yeah. Is it figurative breastplate? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it comes from taking up the armor. Yeah, yeah. Okay, and so that's that's this little recitation he'd go through every day to remind him. You know, sometimes we need to be reminded of our position in Christ, right? And I thought. That's pretty neat. So, we're now to, now, unfortunately, though, in the rest of Europe, we've got big problems, and let's start talking about those. Medieval Roman Catholicism is now the dominant religion of Western Europe. The barbarian hordes have now settled down, and all of Western Europe has fallen to these barbarians. And Roman Catholicism, in part due to the Franks, are the ones who conquer so much of Western Europe, Roman Catholicism becomes the state church of all of Europe. And now the attitude is: if you're born in Western Europe, you are a Roman Catholic. And in other words, their view is you're born a Christian, right? And we're going to see some major departures now from first-century Christianity during the medieval period. Now, just as a backdrop, in medieval Christianity, it is, you know, supposedly this is the most Christian period in Western European history. I'm not so sure if I'm convinced of that. You know, it is very definitely, there's this veneer of Christianity covering all of Europe, but it's veneer thin. Y'all know about veneer? You know, I worked in an antique shop, woodworking, all that. And, you know, we were always very worried about stripping furniture with a Stripping vats because you put a piece of furniture in a stripping vat, dunk it in that, you know, what's it in effect acid, and pull it out. If it's veneer, that veneer just pops off, you know, come off in sheets and shreds. Veneer, very thin. You know, this is solid wood here, by the way. Well, that's glass there on top of it, but this is solid. Veneer, you know, you have this sometimes usually as chipboard nowadays. And in fact, some veneer nowadays is not even wood. It is photo-finished paper that they put down with a finish on top of the paper, and it just crumbles if water gets in it. You know, but well, that's the problem with medieval Christianity. It's veneer thin and a lot of corruption up under it. Okay, so, but let's talk about the church. On one sense, it's parochial, and by that I mean local. On the other sense, it's international.

38:24Now, for most Roman Catholics, all they know of the Roman Catholic Church is their local church that they go to. And they really don't know much about that because they just go for Mass. And a lot of times, the priests don't even really know the Latin very well themselves. And, of course, since they're the only person in the entire building speaking Latin, they could get away with faking it. And a lot of them did, apparently. And you have, of course, most medieval people never tried. Traveled further than 20 miles from where they were born.

39:04Can you imagine that? You got to remember, this is a time period when the average lifespan is 32 if you're a guy. I'm supposed to be dead twice over now. And 25 if you're a woman. Of course, with women, it's childbearing. Many men had three or four different wives, but they only had one at a time. It's just wives died from having babies. And you got to remember, feudal life, 90% of you would be peasants. No, excuse me, worse than that, serfs. Later medieval period might work your way up to being a peasant. But a serf, you are tied to the land, probably live in a one-room shack with extended family, which makes things interesting for mom and daddy, you know, in terms of intimate situations.

40:07You know, and dirt floor, you know, some cases didn't have chimneys, because in the early medieval period, they hadn't invented chimneys yet. And of course, lice, bed bugs, all kinds of vermin live with you, on you. There are, you can't imagine what you look at like when you get up in the morning. But that's okay because there's no mirrors. And you don't know what a toothbrush is. You go to a doctor, you're more likely to die than if you didn't go to him.

40:42And it just is a horrible, terrible time. Actually, things were better during the Roman period in terms of quality of life. At least the Romans had baths. And by the way, you'll do those made twice a year. Okay, so anyway, it is not a good time to live. Nationalism really doesn't exist. When I say medieval France, medieval England, that's really not quite correct. All those countries were subdivided. In fact, there's no such thing as a Frenchman, really. He may be a Norman or he may be a Burgundian.

41:23Nationality is a very weak idea. Everything's broken down in a feudal order. And this is one of the big problems for the church. I'm getting ahead of myself that that's okay. All right. You got to understand, medieval Christianity is amazing that it existed as imperfect as it did because you got to understand with the barbarians and the setting of feudalism, feudalism is totally anthetical to Christianity. All right? Anybody know what I'm talking about? What did the Apostle Paul say?

42:01There's neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. All right, that would imply what in terms of your standing with one another as well as to God. Yeah, God is no respecter of persons. That's one of the basic tenets of both Judaism and Christianity, really. And so, what about feudalism? Everybody has a ranking, right? Everybody is very unequal. And so, besides that, stop and think about it. The fact that the Christians Christianized the barbarians to any extent is truly miraculous. Now, imagine yourself, a Christian, walking up to a barbarian, slapping him in the face, and saying, Now turn the other cheek.

42:50You try that. It'll be the last time you tried it, okay? All right, so I mean, just basic teachings of Christianity was very, very difficult to get across. And the other thing, of course, is the total, complete collapse of literacy. The church is the only place that people are still literate, that they can still read and write. And so this is a big problem. Plus, with the barbarian invasions comes this incredible variety of languages. Sort of like imagine the Tower of Babel all over again. You know, prior to this, they had been unified with. One language, Latin. Now you got all kinds of variations of German, you know, what's going to become French and Spanish and Portuguese and English, all these different languages. And so this is a huge problem. Now, out of this chaos, the Western church is going to bring some order and some civilization because Latin continues in the Roman Catholic Church as the language of the clergy. It also becomes the language of the educated and the language of diplomacy, the language of government contracts. And so one of the sort of neat things about this bad situation is that if you're in the church, you can be a Polish priest, you can go to England and you can conduct a Mass in England and no problem. Or you can go to Italy, conduct a Mass. Or Italian can go to England or go to Poland and you can talk to each other. The clergy there can talk to each other, no problem. Now, talking to common ordinary people, that may be a problem, you know. But these different educated people can get along just fine no matter what country they're in, what language is spoken there, because they all speak Latin. And by the way, if you're in Poland and you're going to write a book, somebody in Italy or France or Spain can read that book because where are you going to write that book in? Latin. Yeah, Latin was the language of the educated, and this is going to be one of the unifying features of the Roman Catholic Church. And so, on one level, the church is an international organization. In fact, it's the biggest bureaucracy in Europe. It is one of the wealthiest ones, too, by the way. But for the local medieval person, all they know about is that local church they go to, and they have this mass that's given. They can't even understand the language that's being spoken to them. And the rituals, however, is almost, they probably looked upon almost like magical incantations that bring them salvation. So, a big, big problem with that. Now, of course, you know, they're going to preserve the scriptures, preserve learning, these beautiful, illumined manuscripts. And so, that's another important purpose for the church as well. Okay, I'm going to skip over some of this because I'm running out of time very, very fast. Now, how do you communicate the ideas of Christianity, the teachings of Christianity, to a population that's 90% illiterate? Why is this a big problem?

46:30Christianity is a religion that is all of its teachings, all its precepts are contained in what? A written document. A written document. Okay? And so the Roman Catholic Church had huge problems. And there's another big problem, too. The Roman Church, even if it could have educated everyone, and by the way, the powers that be really don't want the serfs educated. Why? Exactly. You know, education is powerful. You educate a serf, he's not going to want to be a serf anymore, is he? Okay? All right. And so the powers that be really aren't interested in the people being educated.

47:18And there's all other, it's not just political reasons, there's a bunch of other reasons as well. So we've got to try to communicate Christianity to them. So the church had a huge problem. They're really not going to even, you know, the idea of educating everyone to read the Bible just wasn't in the cards. So how are you going to get it out there to these illiterate people? Illiterate, ignorant. Now, ignorant doesn't mean dumb, it just means they lack education. Well, the church is going to do it two ways. One way is visual depiction of biblical stories, which will be used as devices to tell Bible stories, orally. Communicate items of scripture to the people. And they did a great job doing this. In fact, I would argue they did a better job of it back then than we do today in that respect. But when it comes to doctrinal books, oh my gosh, we don't want to teach people that because that will get us in trouble with the governing authorities. You know, we start teaching people what Paul said: there's no male or female, Jude, nor Greek, for we're all one in Christ Jesus. That is political dynamite, right? And so they tended to shy away from the epistles. They tend to shy away from doctrine, but they're really big on telling Bible stories. Kind of more, more or less, kind of like vacation Bible school. And how did they do it? Well, I'm going to jump, I'm going to come back to the seven sacraments.

48:52Boy. Here's how they did it, folks. They go in these churches, and by the way, they put a lot of emphasis on the church buildings back then. You know, first century Christianity, the church was what? The people, the body of Christ. And you say, you go to church, you know, you're probably going to a house church, first century. There weren't enough Christians to have a gathering even this size. Then in the medieval period, the church becomes the clergy, right? And the laity, you know, that's. Fancy word for all of us, ordinary folks.

49:35They weren't really considered to be the church. They come and watch the clergy put on the show. Nowadays, I would argue it's even worse. Most folks, when they say, I'm going to church, what are they talking about? I'm going to a location, a building, right? Just remember, the church is the body of Christ. But anyway, getting back to this education, everything in these medieval churches was intended to teach the truths of the Bible. Okay? Well, I shouldn't say everything because they had a whole bunch of extraneous stuff as well. But the majority of it. And so here we got, and you just look at that and tell me what's that? What story do they tell there?

50:22Yeah, they're talking about Adam Eve being cast out of the garden there. See, they bring the little kitties in, the priest would, sit them down. And you got to remember, for that day and age, they've never been to a movie theater in their life. They've never, they don't even know how to read or write. They've never traveled further than 20 miles from where they're at. And therefore, to go inside church with stained glass, this is century overload. You know, and he pointed that picture and our kitties, today we're going to talk about Adam and Eve.

50:57And every time they're walking at church for the rest of their life, The day they die, they're going to remember that story. You know, and then what's this one? Yeah. Noah and the Ark. Yeah, today, kiddies, we're going to learn about Noah. All right. And see, what you got here? Got two. Can you identify them? Just see how good you are at your Bible stories, huh? Abraham and the Sacrifice. Yeah, and what's the next one? Moses striking the rock. Moses striking the rock. More than you should have. Okay. All right. So, yeah. So that's how they did it. And so the medieval people, they actually, I would say, their biblical literacy is higher than we have today in terms of Bible stories. And folks, let me tell you, it is so sad. I saw, they went out on the streets, this real high, upper-income place in California, which really surprised you, I guess. And they're asking these kids basic things like, who is Jesus? And they couldn't answer. They didn't know. I mean, we got Americans who are more biblically illiterate than a medieval person was. All right, we got time. Two minutes is what we have. So we'll finish up on medieval. Well, actually, we'll finish up on the early medieval period. Then we'll do the end of the medieval ages. And hopefully, we'll get. Uh uh get finally get to Wycliffe and Hoose and some of these other famous uh Western church leaders.