Turning Points in church history - Part 1

That is church history.

Um, it's something I've loved since I was a kid.

Uh, probably loved it before I became a Christian, to be honest, just reading st- reading stories about Constantine and other people.

So, um, you know, I've been fortunate to be able to study multiple, uh, courses in church history over the last few years.

And as I say, the, you know...

We probably don't have, uh, uh, much time for questions t- tonight, but happy to chat directly afterwards.

And, um, Cam and I decided we'll make the second session one w- with, for a lot more questions.

But certainly I'm-- you're welcome to, to ask me what I can-- what you can, um, at the end of this.

So, uh, it's always good to tell you where we're going.

Um, I've picked what I think are four critical turning points, sliding doors moments, whatever you wanna call them, that have seen the church move in a particular direction.

And secular historians will tell you,"Oh, this is, this is just, uh, you know, luck or chance." But we believe that God is building his church, and in the face of some of these events, it's God who is at work.

And those four events that, that we're gonna consider in this first thousand years of the church are the destruction of the temple, which happened in AD seventy, the Edict of Milan in AD three thirteen, the fall of Rome and what that meant for the church in four seventy-six, and then the crowning of Charlemagne in eight hundred.

Now, some of these might be names of people you've never heard of before, maybe you do know them very well.

And as I say, it's gonna be a v-- pretty much an introduction to them.

So I, I, I'd, I'd hope I don't leave you disappointed, but rather more interested to find out a lot more about them.

So- Where, where did it all begin?

You know this part because Acts has told you this.

This is the ch- the Pentecost and the Council of Jerusalem.

The church is still essentially a Jewish religion.

Christianity is a sect, and the gospel is going out, um, out towards Rome.

Now, first disclaimer I must make, I t- said I'm talking about church history, but I'm really only talking about the history of the Western Church because we know that Paul went off towards Rome, but there's other histories that tell us Thomas went to India and Philip went south to Ethiopia.

And those are stories that I just don't even know, to tell you the truth, and, um, and would be stories I'd love to know.

So this is really the story of the Western Church.

And the reason, though, it's important because we're all the successors of the Western Church.

Most of us are.

I mean, there-- maybe there's a few exceptions here.

Sorry, Sebastian, your, your forebears might have slightly different, um, forebears, and Josh too.

But for most of us, we've come where we, where we are today, how did we get here, is through the story of the Western Church Okay.

Um, and, and that story, as we've seen in Acts, is a story that starts in Jerusalem.

I believe that, that the whole s- Acts is, is, is really the, um, fulfillment of verse eight, one verse eight.

Uh, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then to all the ends of the earth, and that's the story of the church So first major event is the destruction of the temple in AD70.

Now, this was a terrible event.

Um, it's the event that, um, as we would have picked up, um, in-- Not directly when we were studying, um, Revelation, but it was mentioned about the Olivet Discourse where Matthew twenty-four and others say-- where Jesus talks about what's going to happen and the destruction of the temple, which really is the end of, um, Judaism as we know it in the Old Testament.

And what happened was there had been in AD66 a, a bit of a rebellion by the Jews who were just tired of Roman, uh, oppression, and the r- the Roman response was brutal.

Titus comes in, he burns Jerus- and, and just razes the temple.

Um, and, and it was an existential nightmare for J-Judaism because the altar, the altar of sacrifice and the dwelling place of God's presence had gone.

And so, um, remembering that up until now, for the Roman authorities, they considered Christianity as just another Jewish sect.

So, um, you know, what was the implications?

It was, um, something that would ultimately sever Christianity as we know it from its Jewish roots, and we would see a shift towards a Gentile majority.

Now, this shift will take a, a couple of hundred years to be finally, um, you know, solidified, but the, the, the, the turning point in this is what happens at, um, at, uh, Jerusalem And interestingly, in the story of the, um, of the destruction of Jerusalem is an event called the Flight to Pella.

And early church historians say that people like Eusebius actually say that the Christians took to heart that warning of Christ where he said,"Flee to the mountains," and they actually fled to a place called Pella.

So they avoided the destruction of Jerusalem and, and the d- and the incredible deaths that the Jewish community suffered.

I mean, stories tell you of about literally a, a cross every hundred meters or so as the Romans just put the Jewish, the Jewish, um, uh, you know, opponents to death Yeah.

And one of the consequences of that flight was that the Jews saw the Christians' refusal to fight against the Romans as a cowardly betrayal, um, and almost national treason.

And that probably as much as anything else drove the wedge that would see Christianity and Judaism, uh, separate.

There were also some other implications of that is until AD seventy, Christianity was pr- Jewish religion was protected from...

Because they had a, were regarded as a special case, they didn't have to worship the emperor, and Christians avoided that as well.

But of course, um, once, once the, the, the suppression of the Jews had happened, uh, the Christians now needed a s- a different, um, uh, what would-- I'm trying to think what you call it.

Um, a-- They needed, they needed a different dispensation so that they weren't, um, weren't, uh, affected by what was called the Fiscus Judaicus, which was like a punitive tax on all Jews.

And so, um, to avoid that persecution, the church actively differentiated its identity.

They-- It was, it was like often comes down to money.

Um, you know, I mean, we know that this is, this is God at work.

He's growing his church, but he uses human, uh, dynamics in, in doing that.

The other thing that happens in this, in this period, of course, is that, and this is a, this is a comment that, that I've, I've made often in discussions with, um, Jewish colleagues that I've, that I've had, is that Judaism is actually...

Modern Judaism is actually technically a younger religion than Christianity by about forty years.

Because one of the other things that happened to Judaism is what we call rabbinical Judaism.

Without the temple, Judaism moved from animal sacrifice and the likes to the study of the Torah, to, um, prayer in local synagogues.

And, um, I mean, this is a whole, uh, study in itself.

Um, I'm sure, uh, James can tell you a lot more.

I know he's been reading up about it.

But one of the other things that, that came out of this was a curse they added to their synagogue prayers Um, and it was really about the Christians.

It said,"For the apostates, let there be no hope, and let the Nazarenes," that's Christians,"and the heretics perish in a moment." That's how hostile Judaism had come to be towards Christianity Um, I'm, I'm aware of time, so the next slide, let me just...

Sorry, let me go there.

Um, this was actually as what I've really been telling you about, um, you know, distinguishing them to avoid persecution.

Uh, there are so many people I'd love to tell you about, and at some time it's worth coming back and thinking about these people because these are just a bunch of people in that first part, part of the, of the early church that, uh, uh, you know, that are worth, worth knowing about So what happened in, um, in this period?

Let me just move on to...

Uh, uh, one of the things I would like to, to really tell you about is in each, in each phase that we're gonna discuss is some of the, the stories of that time, and this is one of, one of my heroes.

I've- I first read about him many years ago, but Polycarp was a apostle of John himself, so he was a, he was-- He had been taught by John, um, Saint John or, or the Apostle John.

Um, and he became the Bishop of, of Smyrna, which is in Turkey.

Um, and he was also the, the teacher of very important later teachers like Irenaeus, who, who wrote a, a treatise against heresy.

He's probably one of the greatest, um, fighters against heresy in the church.

But- Polycarp by this time is very old.

He's about eighty-four years old when, um, the local persecution has fl- you know, flared up in Smyrna, and his friends persuade him to run off to a farm, uh, to avoid, to avoid what's coming.

But unfortunately, um, the Roman authorities tortured some of his sla- sl- um, slaves or servants, and they revealed where he was.

And he could have fled'cause he had enough warning, but he chose to stay, stating God's will be done.

And when the authorities arrived to, to arrest him, he actually welcomed them.

He made food for them, and then he asked for an hour of prayer, and he prayed, in fact, for two hours with such grace that his captors regretted coming for him.

Um, he was then taken into the stadium, um, and the Roman proconsul was so moved by him that he actually begged him to curse Christ and swear on Caesar.

And Polycarp delivered this famous declaration.

He said,"Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He has done me no wrong.

How can I blaspheme my King and Savior?" And he defied threats to wild animals, being burnt alive, and he said,"I'm, I'm ready to stand for the truth." So the local officials b- set up a pyre to, um, burn him alive.

Um, and he undressed himself for it, and he refused the, the offer to be nailed to the stake'cause obviously when the fire starts.

Um, and then he just prayed, thanking God for counting him worthy to share in Christ's cup.

And when the fire was lit...

Now, I mean, this is maybe apocryphal, but the story is that the flames arched around him like a sail and didn't burn him, and that the executioner was so frustrated that he pierced him with a dagger to end his life.

But this is typical.

This was the perse-- The, the thing about this early church is that with it- with the, um, movement away from Jerusalem into the, into the Roman world came many periods of very distinct persecution, and Polycarp is just one of many who were affected by this Another important development in, in this time was the, the development of or the closing of the canon.

You know, you-- We are fortunate today.

We've got the Bible, sixty-six books.

But do you know...

And this is a, this is a story all of its own.

It, it-- I could take an hour just telling you the details of, of this story.

But the Bible that we have today, particularly the New Testament, the twenty-seven books that we have, actually took a while to be consolidated into, um, into the, into the book we have.

But not as long as you might hear liberals and others telling you and, and modern historians will tell you.

We know that from about, uh, the middle of, of, of the h- first-- the second hundred years, by one hundred and forty-four, there was already, um, a, a, a comprehensive list of Bible, of documents.

By, by one hundred and seventy, we have what's called the Muratorian Fragment, which has been found, um, where there were twenty-two books already being used by the church.

Um, the four Gospels, if I remember, the Acts and all of Paul's letters, um, and they'd been established as being in, in use By the th- by the third century, so within the 200s, there were...

The, the Bible was divided into three categories by the church.

There were the accepted, they were called the, uh, my Greek's not very good, the Homologoumena.

Um, the four Gospels, Acts, Paul's Epistles, Hebrews, 1 John, and 1 Peter.

They were accepted, and we've got very good, um, architecture, or I mean, archaeological evidence of these.

Then there were the, what were called the s- disputed books.

Um, these were books like James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation.

Um, and it was because either their apostolic authorship or their localized circulation that they'd been circulating only in a small part of the church that put them in under dispute.

And then there were what were called the rejected or the spurious.

Now, those were two kinds of books.

They were either what were plainly forged Gnostic books, like the Gospel of Thomas, that you might have heard of from, uh, Dan Brown, or highly regarded works, but that were not considered canon or apostolic, like The Shepherd of Hermas.

Useful for devotions and other things, but not considered canonical.

It actually takes quite a while before the Bible is final.

The, the first time we get any historical re- um, evidence of the twenty-seven books is in a letter written by Athanasius in 367, where he names the twenty-seven books that we have.

But I think what this lets us know is that we can be entirely confident that this Bible that we have, in spite of all the, the evidence apparently to the contrary, this Bible was being used as scripture very, very early on in the age of the church So that comes to our next turning point, the Edict of Milan.

Um, the, and the reason I think this is critical c- is that the Edict of Milan is the event whereby the Emperor Constantine legalized the church.

The church moves from a persecuted, a oppressed body to suddenly being effectively the institution that holds power.

Not immediately, but very quickly it becomes that.

Um, and, and, and of course, there were great benefits.

W- I mean, we discussed a couple of years ago, um, Cam ran a session on, on those different councils which defined orthodoxy, Nicaea, Constantinop- Constantinople, Chalcedon.

All of these were...

Because the church was a legal entity now and the emperors were concerned about stability, the doctrines were formalized to avoid heresy, to avoid fighting.

I mean, churches were different in those days.

People went to the streets and stabbed each other over theology.

Uh, fortunately, we don't do this now.

I mean, you read stories about, you know, the, the contesting parties at, um, at Nicaea or Chalcedon who didn't like what other people were saying.

Um, but y- y- so there, there were some really, really positive, you know...

Uh, Nicaea people, you know, I, I know Nicaea sometimes gets a, a, a bad rap these days because of a- um, particularly that it was quite antisemitic that, and, and r- r- I, I, I r- raised the hostility of Judaism towards Christianity.

You need to understand the context why sometimes some of these councils might have seemed so antisemitic as they were.

But the thing about Ni- Nicaea, the critical thing that happens at the Council of Nicaea is that it affirms that the full divinity of Christ.

So without Nicaea, if Nicaea doesn't happen, we're all Jehovah's Witnesses.

That's, that's the bottom line, guys.

You, you can't be anything else because Jesus is, you know, not...

He is a god, not God as John one tells us Um, just we've I've been me- mentioning a few places, so unfortunately that slide's a bit small, I think, for all of you.

But just seeing where Nicea is, where Constantinople is, where Rome is, that's That Eastern Mediterranean is, is really the crucible of Christianity But legalis- legalization came with some benefits, as we've mentioned.

The church could worship, persecution was ended, the doctrines were clarified, and, and we had the church fathers emerge to really take the lead.

But there were some serious downsides.

Um Of course, corruption.

What happens when the church gets legalized and is close to power?

People who aren't really believers start to, to take, you know, to wanna be part of it.

Um, you know, the emperors began meddling in theology.

Um, faith was a political tool.

Um, it was-- The emperors used it to enforce social, uh, unity, to, to enforce peace and control.

So, um, with every good thing, there comes a downside.

Uh, of course, it meant, you know, instead of persecution,'cause I think persecution, um, you know, there's that great saying,"The seed of the, the, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," and that's why the church, until this point, grew so fast.

But now, of course, you get nominalism, people joining the church for every other, um, reason, um, to get rich.

So health, wealth, and prosperity has a long history, just appearing in different ways.

Um, there was also, unfortunately, the coercion and persecution of those who dissented.

Sometimes, rightfully so, there were heresies that needed to be, um, you know, kept out of the church.

But there was also a lot of forced conversions.

Especially pagans were systematically, um, forced into conversion.

Um, you know, their rituals were outlawed, and they were pressured into baptism,'cause for this church, baptism is seen as the entry point into the church.

And, um, either they were forced at, at threat of physical harm, or if not physical harm, certainly social and economic ruin.

And then, of course, the worst of it all is the church became incredibly rich.

It's a, it's a wealth that you still see today when we look at the Catholic Church and other...

But with, with, uh, legalization, with the support of emperors, as the bishops became more and more important, they just gathered wealth and gathered, um, ostentation as well into their services and into, um, every part of church life.

And of course, that would ultimately rise to a turning point we'll see in the next part of the series next week to the need of the Reformation.

But at this point, um, you know, it's, it-- the church can grow because it has, it has the support of the emperor, but with it comes, comes all kinds of, uh, downsides as well.

One of my heroes of this period is Athanasius, who was very critical at what happened at Nicaea.

Um, he's my hero'cause I'm, I'm a contrarian, and like A-Athanasius, Athanasius is, in history, he's ca- it's known as Athanasius Contra Mundum, Athanasius against the world.

Because at Nicaea, there was a bishop called Arius who actually was very popular, and he was the one who said Jesus is a god, not, not the God.

And Athanasius was this young deacon, um, and he came to Nicaea and almost single-handedly turned over three hundred bishops over a period, it was about three years, um, uh, to, to the, the truth that we hold to today.

But it was-- He was this fierce voice, um, you know, when, when Arius-- people were quite content to, to find a compromise, he kept fighting for the, and champion-championing the cause of Jesus being of the same substance as God.

Um, as a result...

Oh, what's happening there?

Are we back?

Okay.

Um, one of the things that happened to him, well, five of the things that happened to him, this win didn't, uh, come easily.

He was exiled five times by various emperors or archbishops and others for his stance, um, and, uh, he was...

and systematically targeted by his opponents.

Um, he spent over seventeen years in hiding.

So, um, if you think, uh, you've standing up for, for your faith has been hard, think about Athanasius.

But his legacy is worth, was worth it.

You know, he left a permanent mark on the Bible because, as I mentioned, that letter he wrote, um, in three sixty-seven, it's the first time we know that the twenty-seven books are the, are the books of the Bible.

And he lived long enough to see his position vindicated and become, uh, the, you know, true gospel.

Okay.

How are we doing for time?

Okay.

I'll, I'll try and speed up a little.

Um The third critical turning point that we come to, and, and this one was- this one's difficult because there's, there's a few of- few things we could pick.

But the end of what was the Western Church, the, the Imperial Church, comes with the fall of Rome.

For a couple of hundred years, Rome has become increasingly corrupt.

Um, you know, you'll, you'll have heard of various, uh, um, the Vandals and the Visigoths and others keep sacking Rome, and eventually by four hundred and seventy-six you get the final sacking of Rome.

But by this time, it's the, the Romans have become, uh, rich, they've become, uh, really ineffectual, and their armies are largely mercenaries, these, these very barbarians that will eventually sack Rome.

And what it does, though, it leaves a massive power vacuum.

The church, um, also, as I said, has, has begun to lose its spiritual compass, um, because of the things, because of the wealth and because of the, um, the secularization that is happening.

And so y-you've got this crisis.

You've got a c- a church, a collapsing church, both in terms of moral as well as political leadership, and then the disappearance of the emperor.

Because once the, the final barbarian, uh, um, takes over Rome, there is a, there is a gap.

But into this gap steps ultimately the Pope.

Because there's no-- The Bishop of Rome Before the collapse of, of, of Rome, there were, we could say equal, equally important bishops in Jerusalem, l-less so Jerusalem, but certainly Constantinople, Alexandria, um, there was one other.

Um, Antioch, thanks Josh, and Rome.

They're almost the peers, four peers.

And in this-- into this collapse, Rome, the Bishop of Rome emerges as the, the force in the western part of the, of Europe.

And that's why the Pope is the head of the Catholic Church.

It's he-- You know, they then said he was the, you know, the, the, the, the...

He was an apos-apostolic succession from Ro- from Peter and all of that.

That was all, in this period, was, was, wa-wa-was used to, uh, increase his power because it was the way that he would be able to dominate the Western political scene and, and given, um, scriptural warrant as it were.

And the empi- the secular empire actually fades away very quickly.

Rome, Rome, um, from this point onwards is essentially a Christian city.

It's, it-- more than a imperial city And that vacuum, um, into that vacuum came, in the Lord's providence again, I believe, two incredibly important popes.

Leo, um, he was the one who articulated the Petrine authority, but he was the one who also negotiated with Attila the Hun and some of the other, um, uh, you know, opponents and who sacked, who sacked Rome and convinced them not to destroy the city, rather to, to, um, not, not, not always convert, but certainly, um, to allow the city to continue as a religious, uh, rather than political entity.

Um, the other great pope was Gregory.

Um, he emerges, as it says there, really w- at a time of, of, of immense crisis.

There was famine, there was plague, um, and he did a lot in terms of feeding the population.

Um, so, so even though we might sit here as Protestants with a maybe a jaundiced view of, of, of popes, particularly if you look with a Reformation eye, certainly in this period, um, God raised up godly, able men to, to maintain his church.

And probably the most important thing Gregory is known for is he began to fund the army.

And why do you think that's important at this point?

What was going on in the world?

What happens in this period?

This is around, uh, Gregory is, Gregory's around 600.

Islam.

Yep.

There's this massive threat emerging called Islam.

Islam is going to s- what, what were the great ch- churches of, of Jerusalem and Antioch and Alexandria are going to be subsumed into the Islamic, uh, world But as I said, I love stories in, in this, in, in each of these periods.

And one of the, one of the greatest stories is the story of Benedict.

Um, Benedict is important because what really saves the church in this time isn't the popes, even though I mentioned that there were some good ones.

What really worked was the likes of Benedict, who came...

He was this young aristocrat who fled society and went to live in a cave.

He was disgusted by the moral decay, um, that he witnessed, and he abandoned his wealth and his education.

Um, and he lived in a, he lived as a hermit.

Um- And his radical holiness actually began to attract disciples.

And he created this, um, network of, of small monasteries, about 12 of them.

And, um, and it was in one of these at Monte Cassino, um, which was the great monastery, which would actually become the cradle of Western mo-monasticism.

Um, and he also penned something, a book or a work called The Rule of Saint Benedict.

Um, it was very short, but it would ultimately-- it was a work that would transform, uh, Western Europe.

Um, and it was, it was based on three pillars.

It was what was in the Latin, the ora et labora, which means prayer and work.

And he balanced a monk, the monks who came, he called them monks who came to, to, to, uh, be his disciples, that a monk's day was b-was balanced between rigi-rigorous communal prayer, eight times a day they had to pray, um, and hard physical labor.

So he wasn't taking easy disciples.

Um, and work was no longer viewed as a curse, interestingly.

It was elevated to a form of prayer.

So when you go to work tomorrow, think of it as your prayer.

Um, you know, the-- But his monks actually cleared the forests.

They were clearing the swamps.

They cultivated advanced agriculture.

I mean, some of the great developments of agriculture in that period are in the Benedictine monasteries.

Um, and he built these self-sustaining empires, and self-sus- not empires, communities.

And, and there's another reason this is all important, these monastic, um, uh, enterprises that emerge, is that if you know your history, with-in within the next couple of hundred years, we're going to see the world goes through the Little Ice Age.

And in this time, it becomes harder and harder, um, for agriculture and other things to prevail.

Uh, so, so the, the lead-- Benedict's influence is immense The other things he did w-w-was, um, was a vow of stability.

That he took- all, all his monks had to take this vow.

Um, it meant that they bound themselves to one specific community for life.

So th-there was-- it was highly disciplined.

This was not a-- this was not an easy call he put on people.

And each monastery was governed very strictly by an abbot, which means father, who wielded absolute authority.

Um, and while that sounds really sort of crazy to our modern ears, in that time, it was something that was absolutely necessary because in a world that was actually quite chaotic, you had these, um, places of stable, functioning society.

And many people would argue that monasticism actually...

Not moving Monasticism saves the West Uh, okay, maybe I don't have it as a slide.

Um, because some of the other things that these monasteries did was they were the place that kept preserved knowledge.

Knowledge-- W-when you start coming to the Renaissance and the Reformation, it's in these monasteries that they find all this old documentation, all these old records, all, um, things that they had were-- had l-- forgotten how to even read because they were written in Greek, uh, uh, Ancient Greek or in, in, in Hebrew and other things.

And so if it wasn't for that preservation, we wouldn't actually have had the Reformation and the, and the Renaissance, for that matter.

Um, but it wasn't only that preservation of the scriptures and other knowledge, because it wasn't just the scriptures.

They preserved a lot of the classical stuff from Greek.

You know, the-- whether it be, um, Plato and Socrates and Archimedes and Aristotle, it was th-- it was those works that were preserved there as well.

These monasteries were also the economic engines of, of their time.

It's where you made beer, very important, uh, wine making, metallurgy, um, animal husbandry.

All of those things became-- They were almost effectively like modern universities.

And in fact, out, out of th-- some of these places did come the universities.

Well, that's a story for next week.

Um, and last but not least, they were the launchpad for missions.

These monasteries sent out missionaries to all over, um, at great risk.

They went to the, the Vikings, they went to the Saxons, they went to, to the Irish, they went all over.

And, um, so that by the time we get to the, the last of our turning points, which is Charlemagne, this idea of the Benedictine rule was the standard across Western Europe.

That's how effective Benedict was.

And it would-- It provided a bulwark for faith and literacy in the ancient world that we talk about the Dark Ages, but that was the light.

These monasteries were the light in the Dark Ages.

And again, this is the, the providence of God.

He protects His Word, He protects the faith, He protects His church through what were incredibly, uh, difficult times.

There are a bunch of key figures I'd love to talk about, like Clovis and Justinian and others, but that would be for another time.

Just before we get to the last, uh, turning point, we do need to think a little bit about what's going on in the world at this time.

Uh, you know, from four ninety-six, Clovis was a Frank, um, which meant he was the, a successor to the Vikings and, and he converts, and his conversion is sometimes regarded as even more important than the fall of Rome as a turning point.

Uh, we mentioned the rise of, of Islam and, and, and what w- that will do to the world.

Tours in seven thirty-two is a battle where Charles Martel or Charlemagne actually stops.

He checks the advance of the Umayyad were...

That were, um, Muslim forces and, and basically prevents Islam from moving into Western Europe.

Um, there were the Viking raids and that all leads up.

The whole Mediterranean is ch-- is, is changing in many, many ways at this point.

And the Western, the Western church needs something as a bulwark against what is happening, particularly from Islam in the south and the Vik-- well, the, the, the successors to the Vikings in the north, um, pagan, pagans who are attacking them So that fourth turning point of these first thousand years is Pope Leo III, um, crowns Charles Martel, his nickname is Charlemagne, as the Holy Roman Emperor.

So for the first time again, you see the emergence of a political force tied closely to the church There had been, as I said, all these pressures and because the Western Church needed protection, it needed a s-- it needed a unifying force to protect the church, um, and to protect politically the entities there.

Um, this was an alliance between state and church.

Pope Leo III was effectively ceding what was his power to the Holy Roman Emperor.

Um, what Charlemagne does actually, he, he, he's, he forcibly converts the pagan tribes, the Saxons.

Um, he launched what was called the Carolingian.

Carolingian just means of Charlemagne, the Carolingian Renaissance, um, which revitalizes education, Christian education, liturgy, and he permanently links the fortunes of Western Europe with the Catholic Church.

That also, unfortunately, and this will be something we'll see next, next time, it also marks the beginning of the end of East-West Christian unity.

And that's where we'll see the emergence of what's called the Orthodox, because what it'll lead to what will be our next, uh, turning point, which is the Great Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

But as I say, a story for next time.

Um, there, as I mentioned, the Carolingian West and the Byzantine East, because the Roman Empire actually in the East remains for another-- till, till the 1400s.

Um, the Byzantine, uh, Empire is really the successor, the eastern successor to the Roman Empire.

Constantine's father had split two capitals in three hundred, Diocletian, his name was, um, one in Rome and one in Constantinople.

And the Constantinople stays strong for at least another four hundred years.

But the separation, um, is a separation, unfortunately, which, uh, um, still basically prevails to this day.

And, um, we need to, we need to know a lot more about our Orthodox brethren,'cause I think in many ways they are closer to, to what we believe than we realize.

But we'll, we'll get to that One of the important things that, that really happens in under, uh, Constantine, I mean under Charlemagne is missionary expansion.

Um, he really accelerates, takes what the Benedictine and, and, and other movements start emerging, other, the Franciscans and others.

But they build the monasteries, build local churches, they translate the scriptures into, into local languages.

Not, not necessarily the whole book Bible, but, but elements of it, and certainly liturgy in a way that, um, that, uh, the, the, the people could understand.

Um, and, and they, and they really move into what is essentially pagan territory.

Parts of the world that you would today know as Poland, as the Ukraine, as, um, parts of Eastern Russia, um, up into Finland, all those parts of the world which were, had remained largely pagan until this point.

And s- and, and, and a lot of these missionaries, um, really put their life at risk as they went into these, um, into these countries.

And one of the stories I love the most out of this is the conversion of Kiev or the Ukraine.

Um, and it's the story of Vladimir the Great.

He was the crown prince of Kiev.

Um, he converts to Christianity in nine hundred and eighty-eight, um, and the mass baptism of his people permanently aligns that Eastern Slavic people with, with the, with ultimately what will be the Byzantine church, but for this period, he, he aligns it with, with Christianity.

Um, and- He had a problem.

He, uh, his territory was the sprawling territory, uh, as I say, Poland, Ukraine, parts of Russia.

And he wanted to unify his subjects, but the pagan pantheon that he, that had, was just wasn't working.

You know, human sacrifice, localized tribal worship, all of these things failed to create any kind of cohesive national identity.

Um, and also he saw these mon-monotheistic neighbors to the south and southwest that you had, you know, the Byzantines and the Carolingian church.

And so he decides he's going to examine the world religions.

He realizes he needs a religion.

So he sends out envoys, um, to, uh, examine the faith.

You know, he invites the, the G- Islam's representatives, but he rejects them because of their prohibition on alcohol and pork.

Um, he famously remarked,"Drinking is the joy of the Rus.

We cannot exist without that pleasure." So Islam was, was out.

Um, then he invites people from Rome, the Western Christianity.

Their envoys, um, uh, came along, but he f- and his people w- found their services drab, dark, and lacking grandeur.

This is, this is before the great cathedrals of, of Catholicism And then he questioned Jew, the Jews as well.

Um, but when he lear-learned that they had lost Jerusalem and were scattered across the earth, he rejected them because he felt God must have abandoned them.

But it was when his envoys went to Constantinople, and they went to the Hagia Sophia, is the, the, the s- the church that Constantine's mother built, the So-- um, which is unfortunately today a, a mosque.

But it was one, the first great church built, um, first great cathedral in, around the early three hundreds.

And these, his envoys were so utterly overwhelmed by the liturgy, the choirs, and the soaring architecture that they retur-they returned and they reported to him,"We know not whether we were in heaven or on earth.

For on earth, there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it.

We only know that God dwells there among men." And, um, so he was so swayed by, by this that, um, his final conversion was, um, it was sealed really by, by some political leverage, though.

Um, you know, because the Byzantine emperor, um, was a guy called Basil the Second.

He was facing an internal rebellion, so he begged Vladimir for some help.

So Vladimir sent some, uh, some, um, troops to help him.

But, but Basil had a bit of a, um, he was a bit concerned about this, that he was u-using pagans, so he needed them to be baptized.

So they all got baptized.

So, so while the, you know, this, this was a, this was a conversion, um, um, that, that had other implications, political and economic But, um, Vladimir, after this, after the, um, the deal he had done with Basil, he...

It's- history says he returned a changed man, and he immediately ordered the destruction of all the pagan idols in, in, in Kyiv and, and in his state.

And there was one great statue to a god called Perun that they dragged through the mud and beat with iron rods, um, and then threw it in the Dnieper River.

Um, and then he issued a royal decree that every citizen had to be baptized.

Anyone who didn't come to the river would be declared the enemy of the prince.

So, um, thousands of, uh, Kyivans, and that's the, what the picture there is, is showing, they had to wade into the freezing river,'cause this was about middle of winter, um, to be officially baptized.

And his baptism though, and, and the conversion, um, fundamentally changed Eastern Europe.

To this day, you have the whole Eastern Orthodox Church, which as opposed to the Greek Orthodox Church of the Byzantines, the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Russians and the Slavs So what happened?

There was royal po-power, again protected, protecting the church.

We do have revival, we have renaissance, we have great missionary endeavors, but we also have a rift between East and West, which will become much more, uh, difficult and, and, and to this day has never been, uh, there's n-n-- has never been united.

Um, there were continuing Viking raids, there were continuing, um, Islamic incursions.

Um, unfortunately a lot of, of our forebears,'cause most of us in this would probably be Anglo-Saxons, um, most of our forebears were converted by force.

And, um, the, the, the problem as well, and this is something that will become much more apparent as part of the medieval, one of the, one of the outcomes of Charlemagne and his successes is the rise of feudalism, where it really was the impoverishment of so many people under a single noble.

And these, um, feudal developments would, would have long-term implications, um, which we'll see at more next week.

So this is where we are.

It's a thousand years of, of Christianity.

We're in the period called Christendom.

Uh, sometimes it seems that, you know, modern Christians think the idea of Christendom is really great, you know, the, the unity of church and state and, and the enforcement of the things we believe.

But there are enough bad things for us to take pause and to learn from, from these periods about what we really want.

We'll see schism, we'll see crusades, but we'll also see reformation and revival next week.

So this is where we are.

God is building His church.

The gates of hell have not prevailed against it.

He's made some incursions, and there are a few fellow travelers that we might not consider truly our, our Christian, uh, um, forebears.

But we also have to acknowledge as we look at ch-church history, that the way we see things and the way we interpret things in our modern age is not the way it always was.

How people have believed and worshipped and understood the gospel has been very different to ours.

Our, our understanding is actually very modern, and we'll see that.

So I hope this has kept you interested, and I hope there's lots of things you'd like to know more about.

And, uh, you know, and, and I hope Cam stays.

Let's have session two.

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