The Renaissance and Reformation with Paul Williams (2022-08-07) #

0:00:03 okay folks um perhaps we'll make a start um today i'm just gonna give a very brief uh 0:00:10 overview of where we've come from and where we are today and what we're gonna look at 0:00:14 so this course is an introduction to the western tradition and uh we've already looked 0:00:20 at um hellenism the spread of greek culture and civilization by alexandra the great militarily 0:00:27 this great man as he's called in the west as a military conqueror we looked at plato aristotle 0:00:34 who was alexander's teacher and we looked at some aspects of judaism that was on tuesday and 0:00:40 thursday we looked at the jewish bible and the uh the talmud the mishnah and the uh the gemara 0:00:47 we looked at the four gospels and the historical jesus and we looked at the uh the early church 0:00:54 up to the emperor constantine and i stress my view that christianity is a religion about jesus the 0:01:00 gospel about jesus whereas the historical jesus preached an injury which is not about himself 0:01:07 really but about god and other things so there's a change from the gospel about jesus to the gospel 0:01:13 of jesus um so the gospel of jesus to the gospel about jesus in the later church 0:01:19 and today we're we're going to look at the renaissance and indeed you have a right 0:01:27 how timely and uh the reformation and why the renaissance and reformation are are such 0:01:34 influential forces in the world today we're going to look at some examples of the difference the 0:01:39 renaissance made to our understanding of the world and we're going to be looking at a guy called 0:01:44 erasmus you might have heard of actually there's the erasmus programme in europe for students 0:01:49 martin luther who is a pioneer or the initiator or the instigator of the reformation calvin john 0:01:56 calvin and a poor man called michael servitus who was burnt at the stake for his crimes and 0:02:01 we'll come to that at the end so today is about the renaissance and the reformation 0:02:08 now i showed you this picture i think right at the beginning of our conversation and it is 0:02:14 officially called the school of athens and this is a fresco as it's called and it's painted on 0:02:20 a wall in the vatican in rome and the reason i'm showing it to you again is this 0:02:25 painting um is often seen to summarize the very best in renaissance ideals the renaissance 0:02:32 um concept and as i said before at the the very center the epicenter of this huge picture 0:02:38 which by the way is vast it's much much bigger reality is plato and uh aristotle 0:02:45 plato is looking up you just about make out his hand pointing to the transcendent and aristotle 0:02:52 has his hand out here looking at the world because he founded basically zoology biology and all these 0:02:57 terrestrial sciences and here you have many other famous figures in the ancient uh world 0:03:03 including ibn rushd i think i misled you before i said it was ibn sinha it's actually ibn rushd 0:03:08 um who is featured here i think that might be him there actually with a turban 0:03:13 and um plato is modeled on leonardo da vinci from life so this is actually what he looked like 0:03:18 so that this uh was painted in about 1509 by raphael the great renaissance painter 0:03:25 and as i say it sums up what the renaissance is actually about so what is the renaissance 0:03:30 about so the renaissance i'll give you my summary here by the way if you've got the glossary i'll 0:03:35 give a brief definition under the word renaissance of what the renaissance is and all i'm going to 0:03:42 say by the way is very simple it's simplistic it's a summary just scratching the surface there's no 0:03:46 way is this a an in-depth analysis really so i say the renaissance is the literary and artistic 0:03:54 revival which took place in italy during the 14th and 15th centuries it's spread all over europe to 0:04:01 germany france even england and it's basically a return to the classical glories of ancient greece 0:04:09 and rome the glories in in writings in people like cicero and uh and the uh the great uh greek 0:04:16 writers like plato and aristotle hence there in the center there and the slogan uh one of the 0:04:23 big slogans of the renaissance in latin is ad fontes which means back to the original sources 0:04:30 that's a good summary i think of the movement's aims so what does adventist mean well it means you 0:04:37 know cutting through all this medieval stuff and and and scholasticism which doesn't make any sense 0:04:44 going back to the glories of the the people of ancient greece and rome who brought us such 0:04:50 enlightenment and uh learning so it was cutting through centuries 0:04:54 of church tradition and back to the glories of the ancient world now i want to tell you a story 0:05:02 of this guy he's erasmus of course i like his he's got very nice tasting cloves actually very very 0:05:10 very nicely dressed out um and he's a dutch he was the dutch renaissance scholar erasmus born in 1466 0:05:20 and he was probably the greatest european renaissance scholar arguably of his day 0:05:27 and he did many things i want to focus on one thing that he did that made a big difference 0:05:33 and he published he was the first to publish an edition of the greek new testament in 1515 0:05:41 and all english translations of the bible have been based on his greek translation up 0:05:47 to probably the 20th century hugely influential but there's an interesting story about him 0:05:53 um i want to share with you the story about these verses 0:05:58 so this is from the bible the king james bible obviously it's an english translation and this is 0:06:03 from the the first letter of john chapter 5 verse 7 to 8 and it reads for there are three that bear 0:06:10 witness that bear record in heaven the father the word and the holy ghost or the holy spirit 0:06:16 these three are one and these are three that bear witness in earth the spirit and the water 0:06:24 and so it goes on now the point about this is this is the trinity verse clearly states in 0:06:30 the bible christian theologians that in one john we have the doctrine of the trinity amazing but 0:06:39 the big but back to erasmus because he was a renaissance scholar he wants to cut through church 0:06:45 tradition and go back to the original sources the greek manuscripts of the bible the new testament 0:06:51 so um in in in holland he gathered together the best new testament manuscripts he could find in 0:06:56 greek not the latin ones produced by you know the vulgate the vulgate translation produced by jerome 0:07:03 but as far as he could the oldest greek manuscripts because the new testament 0:07:06 was written in greek wasn't written in latin or in english or anything else 0:07:11 so and he produced as i say the first critical edition in in a scholarly sense with careful 0:07:16 attention to the exact wording the original wording as far as we could ascertain but there 0:07:21 was a problem the problem is he couldn't find any greek manuscripts with this verse in it 0:07:27 where was the trinity verse it's missing and indeed it is missing it's not in any of our 0:07:35 early manuscripts for example there's the famous codex sinaiticus in the british library in london 0:07:41 and that's probably the mid fourth century the earliest complete copy in the world 0:07:45 there's also the codex vaticanus in the vatican similar kind of date they don't have that on in 0:07:51 there no early father no early churchman quotes this verse as being in the bible 0:07:57 so there's a problem so so erasmus bless him as a good scholar a relational scholar produced his 0:08:02 critical edition of the greek new testament minus this verse there was an outcry the catholic church 0:08:09 went ballistic how could you take out the only clear trinity verse in the bible i mean this is 0:08:16 serious serious it's like you know sir i have fatiho is not i mean there's no comparison 0:08:22 so what he said was and i'm not making this up you can look at he said to these the church 0:08:28 okay it's not in my greek manuscripts if you could produce for me a greek manuscript give 0:08:32 me a greek manuscript with this verse in i'll pop it back in to my critical edition 0:08:38 and lo and behold the church produced a greek manuscript with that version 0:08:43 they literally made a greek manuscript with that verse in and true to his word he put it back in 0:08:51 now the church manufactured a greek manuscript they didn't actually find one this is the point so 0:08:57 he put it back in and that's why even in the king james version centuries later it's in the bible 0:09:05 not because anyone thinks it was in the original that because erasmus agreed to pop it back in 0:09:11 if the church could give them a greek manuscript which they which they did so it was only really 0:09:16 in the beginning of the 20th century when biblical scholars moved away from erasmus 0:09:23 critical text and they went back to far far earlier manuscripts than erasmus ever knew 0:09:28 about he didn't know about the codex sinaiticus by the way that modern translations nearly all modern 0:09:35 translations don't include this verse because it's not original the question is where does it 0:09:39 come from well um the idea it appears i i'm told to have originated as a comment in the margins 0:09:48 of a latin manuscript around the end of the fourth century what's called a gloss 0:09:53 so someone in the fourth century in the latin translation added these words in like a comment or 0:09:59 an explanation or a bit of detail and then later people when they copied that manuscript decided it 0:10:05 belonged in the bible and that seems to be how it snuck in but so but king james version people in 0:10:12 the particular united states is a big movement they love the king james version it's a very 0:10:16 popular translation they still keep that in there even though virtually all scholars in the world 0:10:20 now know that it's not original even i'm told the niv which is the most one of the most popular the 0:10:26 new international version evangelical translations when they have the bible put in hotel rooms and 0:10:32 bed and breakfast they actually keep that verse in as well but not all the other translations 0:10:38 don't have it in so this is in a sense a fruit of um renaissance scholarship going back to 0:10:44 the sources checking them out is later tradition accurate sometimes it's not and the most important 0:10:52 trinity verse in the whole bible is a casualty of that and gets removed because it's not original 0:10:59 now i want to show you another example of the fruit what i'm calling the fruit of renaissance 0:11:07 scholarship and this is called the donation of constantine i'll explain what this means in a sec 0:11:14 so the donation of constantine is a forged roman imperial decree by which the fourth century 0:11:22 emperor constantine the great supposedly transferred all his authority over the roman 0:11:28 empire to the pope he basically said pope pope sylvester in this case the first have all my 0:11:35 authority can you imagine the roman emperor saying that now what happened was a renaissance scholar 0:11:43 happened to be a catholic priest funnily enough demonstrated that this donation is a document 0:11:49 by the way called the donation of constantine and throughout the medieval period particularly 0:11:52 in the 13th century popes used to refer to it and tell tell their opponents particularly in 0:11:57 the east the orthodox church look constantine the great emperor gave us gave us the papacy 0:12:04 authority over everything in the roman empire can you imagine and it was quoted by many popes 0:12:10 to to justify legitimize their authority so it's really serious but there were doubts 0:12:17 about its authenticity and a renaissance scholar demonstrated that it was a fake it's a forgery 0:12:25 how did he do this well he used renaissance scholarship so he detected that the style 0:12:30 of writing in this alleged donation of constantine was dated to the 8th century 0:12:36 and also that constantine couldn't have legally given pope sylvester the powers anyway 0:12:41 that the donation claimed and also the document has numerous anachronisms so this is a fruit of 0:12:48 renaissance scholarship and here we have uh the pope uh here we have pope sylvester actually 0:12:54 allegedly and constantine bowing down and giving him uh all his authority a caesar to the church 0:13:02 and the church took this very seriously for what a thousand years or more to justify their rule over 0:13:09 over the roman empire can you believe it so that's another example of um renaissance scholarship 0:13:16 making a huge difference to the catholic church's authority now i'm going to move on oh by the 0:13:22 way if you've got any questions by the way any comments please interrupt me because i don't yes
0:13:29 yes yes
0:13:32 are now brothers and yes those who live in the walls of the fortifications of constantinople 0:13:37 well there we go thank you very much very much for that and there's actually a little bit of a story 0:13:41 why why was constantine so grateful to the pope anyway was a story there that sylvester 0:13:46 cured him of leprosy or something by some miracle and he's so grateful 0:13:50 constantine is so grateful have my kingdom have the roman empire as you do you know when 0:13:55 you're grateful so that's apparently what's happening there but it's all fake i'm afraid
0:14:11 what was the reason yeah the reason yes the question is the reason why did 0:14:15 erasmus allow the trinity verse to go into his critical edition of the new testament as i say 0:14:22 it's a very sad story actually because he he was heavily criticized by the church of his day for 0:14:27 removing this precious trinity verse because it's the catholic faith so he said look give me a greek 0:14:34 manuscript because he's a relation scholar back to the original languages back to the original 0:14:39 give me a greek manuscript that has it in and i'll put it back in again and the church actually 0:14:43 produced one and gave it to him and he was good as his word and he put it in he put it back in that's 0:14:50 the story and if you read it this is actually true this is what happened um whether or not he 0:14:55 believed it was genuine who knows but he said he would put it back in if he was given the evidence 0:15:01 the evidence was manufactured in that day it wasn't an ancient manuscript very sad
0:15:08 i don't know i don't know actually it's a good question whether he knew that it was fake or not 0:15:12 or just manufactured on the spot i don't know i i would i would suspect that he knew in those days 0:15:18 you could be executed if you were cause trouble by the way this is not like just an academic thing 0:15:22 you could suffer great pain and we'll come to an example of someone who did challenge the church 0:15:27 michael service in a minute who was burnt at the stake for challenging the church so it was 0:15:32 seriously high stakes it wasn't just an academic thing so did you have um um yeah i'm just gonna 0:15:38 just clarify so my understanding is because it makes us a lot um just because you're here like 0:15:44 very similar um it was basically uh the kind of europe was kind of tired of christianity and they 0:15:50 felt it was keeping them down and stopping it from progressing so they kind of wanted to move back 0:15:56 to like sort of the glory days of greek rule which is their only like their major western ancestry um
0:16:08 okay um yeah yeah this is some truth in that um in answer to that i want to come to and it is it 0:16:15 relates to what you're saying to this this guy um here and we're just going to move on again 0:16:20 we're skirting over so many issues here we don't have time to go into the merry depth but this 0:16:24 man is a colossal guy on the stage of western of europe and now the world his name is martin luther 0:16:32 you've probably heard of martin luther king the civil rights leader in the 60s not the same guy 0:16:37 but martin luther king was named after him in the end of the word king on the end anyway so 0:16:42 this guy was a german of course martin luther and he was um he's famous i was born in 1483 0:16:51 1483 so roughly the same time as erasmus and we're going to look at the reformation 0:16:57 the protestant reformation why it came about and why it's so important today 0:17:02 so martin luther started his career and this is the younger martin luther um this is a picture 0:17:10 of him posting his 95 theses on the church door in wittenberg in germany this is in 1571. 0:17:20 and this is a key moment in european history uh many would say well virtually everyone 0:17:26 says that this symbolically this act symbolically started the reformation 0:17:32 now what is the reformation now martin luther as all the reformers were like john calvin others 0:17:38 were all catholics they were good roman catholic people priests monks but they left the church or 0:17:44 were forced out the church because they disagreed with the catholic church in the medieval period 0:17:49 they argued for martin luther argued for a return to the bible alone as authoritative for christians 0:17:57 he argued for justification by faith alone and i'll define what these mean in a second 0:18:05 he argued for the rejection of the pope for nuns and monks he called the pope the antichrist he was 0:18:11 so anti-pope he actually called him the antichrist and the pope returned the compliment and kicked 0:18:17 him out the church he excommunicated him which at that time was a risk meant his life was at risk 0:18:23 they also reformers like martin luther believed in the individual before god we see in the 0:18:28 renaissance in many ways the beginning of individualism in europe this is why it's 0:18:32 so important before the medieval period you had a much more organic collectivist understanding 0:18:37 of faith you're a member of the church the body of christ the catholic church on earth it's not 0:18:42 really you as an individual that matters so much it's the church the communion of saints the papacy 0:18:48 but with martin luther you see the beginning of this idea of the individual person before 0:18:53 god unmediated by the church by priests or saints so you stand directly before what's 0:18:59 that what religion does that remind you of it's quite quite similar to islam of course 0:19:05 he was against purgatory and the selling of indulgences so let me unpack that a little bit 0:19:12 so the idea of justification by faith alone is the idea that we are made right before god how how are 0:19:18 we as sinners because we're terrible sinners as martin luther how can god accept how can a holy 0:19:24 god accept us so he argued and that's based on some of the writings of paul in the new testament 0:19:29 that simply by having faith in christ that we are made right with god not through good works not by 0:19:37 behaving well this is a really important point justification by faith alone this is called 0:19:42 solafide in latin that's the slogan that was used this was very much against catholic teaching which 0:19:48 emphasized faith and works islam does the same i think faith and works he said no no works don't 0:19:55 count at all worth works are like filthy rags he said it's faith alone that justifies that makes 0:20:00 you right with god he said so he rejected the pope and nuns and mung and nuns and monks why because 0:20:08 where does it mention in the bible anything about the pope or about nuns or monks so out with them 0:20:15 he ended up marrying a nun by the way well an ex-nun she left the church obviously she left 0:20:19 the convent they got married um purgatory the idea that um in the medieval period anyway that 0:20:27 unless you were really super duper saint you went to purgatory where you were purged of 0:20:32 your sins usually quite painfully for a long time he said where is that in the bible kick that out 0:20:38 and the most famous thing of all is the sale of indulgences and this is really 0:20:43 what upset martin luther because there were people in from the catholic church who went 0:20:47 around selling indulgences the idea you get time off in purgatory uh if you 0:20:54 bought these indulgences and say these prayers you actually give money and this caused huge scandal 0:21:01 and martin luther one of the 195 thesis says indulgences are haraam shall we say 0:21:07 completely wrong and indeed later the church did reform its practices in the counter reformation 0:21:12 at the council of trent it did actually take some of his criticisms on board not many and tried to 0:21:18 reform itself in reaction to the reformation so the word reformation is reform reformation 0:21:25 he tried to reform the church failed got kicked out the church and the protestant movement began 0:21:32 protestant is the word for protest if you protest against something you're a protestant a protestant 0:21:40 and so many churches today are directly descended from that protest evangelicals for example are all 0:21:48 protestants even the church of england is supposed to be protestant that's a different story but 0:21:54 pentecostalists are protestants jehovah's witnesses are protestants in fact anyone who's 0:21:58 not a catholic is a protestant basically um and he started the uh the reformation interestingly 0:22:05 actually i came across this quote on a website an academic website about his views martin luther's 0:22:10 views when it came to muslims and islam i just want to share with you what he said now 0:22:16 he lived at the time when the ottoman empire hey was at its well arguably at its zenith 0:22:23 so what did he have to say about that and muslims and islam because maybe he hated the pope as the 0:22:30 antichrist and maybe he say something even worse about muslims surely and he said this and i quote 0:22:38 we see that the religion of the turks i muslims is far more splendid in ceremonies and i might 0:22:45 almost say in customs than ours even including that of the religious that's monks and nuns 0:22:52 and or all the clerics the modesty and simplicity of their food clothing dwellings and everything 0:23:00 else as well as the fasts prayers and the common gatherings of the people that this book reveals 0:23:06 that's his book that he wrote are nowhere seen among us or rather it is impossible for our people 0:23:14 to be persuaded to them in other words no matter how much luther exhorts people to 0:23:18 be more like this can't do it furthermore he writes which of our monks be it a carthusian 0:23:26 they who wish to appear the best or a benedictine is not put to shame by the miraculous and wondrous 0:23:33 abstinence and discipline discipline among their religious our religions are mere shadows when 0:23:41 compared to them and our people clearly profane when compared to theirs not even true christians 0:23:50 not christ himself nor the apostles or prophets ever exhibited so great a display 0:23:58 now i think he's being ambiguous here there's an ambiguous compliment there's a little bit 0:24:05 of an element of tongue-in-cheek because if you know luther he didn't like ostentatious display 0:24:10 the gospels were against that he didn't like abstinence for the sake of abstinence 0:24:15 so he's being is an ambiguous compliment but nevertheless i'll just read the rest of it 0:24:21 this is the reason he writes rewrites why many persons so easily depart from faith in christ 0:24:27 for mohammedanism as he calls it and adhere to it so tenaciously i sincerely believe 0:24:34 he says that no papist monk cleric or their equal in faith would be able to remain in their faith if 0:24:42 they should spend three days among the turks just three days amongst muslims in in um the ottoman 0:24:49 empire here i mean those who seriously desire the faith of the pope and who are the best among them 0:24:56 now i think i think i'd say there are various levels of sincerity in what he's saying here but 0:25:02 but even so he's clearly impressed he's clearly impressed by the ottoman the turks as he calls as 0:25:09 he calls them he doesn't call them the antichrist he doesn't call them of the devil sorry there is 0:25:14 a line there that that's interesting for us as converts which is where he talks about um which 0:25:22 is what which is sorry sorry he says it's really easy for uh so many of the christians to convert 0:25:30 to mohammedism which means that in his time they must have been seeing a lot of conversions yes 0:25:35 exactly right i think there's a really good point clearly it's a problem this clearly is a problem 0:25:40 that western christians catholics are becoming muslims and in those days of course you couldn't 0:25:45 just become a muslim like in london and just carry on living you had to leave because you'd have been 0:25:49 killed uh that there was no tolerance for muslims in the christian world unlike in the muslim world 0:25:55 where of course the sharia requires you requires us to show respect for christians so they can 0:26:01 practice their faith very differently in medieval europe and renaissance europe 0:26:05 she's a very good point here here we see not only i think is slight 0:26:09 ambiguous complement but also his anxiety about uh western christians converting to islam 0:26:16 because in many ways it's a superior faith and he bears witness to that ironically
0:26:33 so how did the western christians and what countries were they converting i think that's a 0:26:38 good a really good question so the gentleman's asking you know what kind of interaction was 0:26:42 there in this world uh in that world between uh the christian world and the muslim world and i 0:26:47 think part of the answer may be found in in the coins i shared a couple of days ago i don't have 0:26:53 them with me king offer in the seventh the eighth century england the king of england or the king of 0:27:00 mercer to be technical a christian king issued gold coinage with the shahada on it in arabic 0:27:07 okay with king offer on it why did he do that well historians say is because 0:27:12 of the the dominance of uh the dinar the islamic currency in the medieval world and so england 0:27:19 was getting in on the act producing coinage that could be used in international trade in the media 0:27:25 in the mediterranean world because the center of gravity then wasn't england 0:27:29 or northern europe it was the muslim world so i think there was a great deal of trade 0:27:35 a great deal of connection between traders and people and travelers and businessmen and others 0:27:39 itinerant whatever between these civilizations and and also of course um the crusades happened 0:27:46 as well a lot of the um you know the pope sent armies uh into the middle east but often they 0:27:52 came with their families and other people there must have been conversions there too 0:27:55 i would think so there was interaction i think between the uh particularly on the commercial 0:28:00 level between the two civilizations um and also for luther i'm not quoting him here but the 0:28:07 turks interestingly were the rod of god's anger towards the lukewarm christianity uh propagated 0:28:15 by the catholic church based in rome so he saw the turk the turks as the rod of god's anger 0:28:23 and he argued that fighting against the turks would be the same as fighting against god's 0:28:28 judgment for their sins okay i'm not making this stuff up it's rather controversial rather than 0:28:35 fight with swords luther called for spiritual transformation through repentance and prayer 0:28:41 sounds very anglican isn't it when you've got a crisis then you no i shouldn't say that 0:28:45 no if so it's a very kind of spiritual reaction rather than a military one or a competitive one 0:28:51 fascinating and he even accuses the popes of perpetuating the problem with the turks by 0:28:58 choosing to crusade against them instead when they should have been sending missionaries with 0:29:04 the gospel instead so he's saying don't fight the turks they've been used by god to judge us but to 0:29:12 send missionaries convert the the muslims but he's kind of already conceded that doesn't work anyway 0:29:18 because they tend to get converted to islam so i'm not sure that was a great strategy 0:29:23 um so that's martin luther but so he's very very influential today his ideas about 0:29:28 justification by faith uh reformed christianity moving away from the the alleged kind of 0:29:34 um uh uh accretions to the christian faith that the catholic church brought in worship 0:29:40 of saints the role of mary very controversial you know mary is the mother of god theotokos 0:29:46 was rejected by many of the reformers and back to what they saw as the early christianity of the new 0:29:53 testament that's the faith advantage remember the renaissance slogan so it's kind of the same idea 0:29:59 about going back to the original sources purifying the faith moving away from the catholic tradition 0:30:04 which had added so many man-made doctrines to the faith they argued so that's kind of that beating 0:30:10 heart you see all over the internet there are lots of websites now still by evangelicals in america 0:30:15 particularly they're criticizing the catholic church even today for the same reasons that martin 0:30:20 martin luther did but this but also i think on a more general way this emphasis on the individual 0:30:26 standing before god without any mediation by the church mary saints pope priests whatever this is a 0:30:33 you can see this modern idea the individual me i stand before god 0:30:40 without any kind of corporate catholic institution so yeah it's a familiar idea there
0:30:48 before we come to that last one i just want to introduce briefly another guy 0:30:52 called john calvin um who came a little bit after martin luther he was a french guy jean calvin a 0:31:02 catholic priest initially uh he left the church he wrote a very famous book called the institutes of 0:31:10 christian religion which are hugely influential in terms of christian theology but the reason 0:31:16 i mention him is not only because he's almost if not as equal in influence as martin luther today 0:31:24 is there's an interesting story about him which i wanted to share with you and it concerns this chap 0:31:31 michael service very interesting man um john calvin was a very influential theologian he 0:31:40 ended up in geneva he had to leave france he was persecuted france was catholic of course before 0:31:45 the french revolution so he ended up in geneva which is in switzerland and he and others formed a 0:31:53 i suppose you could call it a theocracy basically a city-state ruled by his ideas by what he would 0:32:00 say was the bible it was actually illegal to commit adultery it was illegal to to commit to all 0:32:06 sorts of christian sins it was like a an iranian theocracy but in geneva it was like you know and 0:32:13 very rigid and quite harsh and i mentioned this because it attracted a lot of attention and this 0:32:21 guy michael servitus was a polymath he was like a brilliant man who uh was a doctor he was a scholar 0:32:28 a biblical scholar spoke many languages he'd met muslims in spain uh he'd met jews and he 0:32:36 he was just a brilliant man and his own learning led him to question some doctrines particularly 0:32:43 the doctrine of the trinity which he felt actually because he felt that he felt the not the ridicule 0:32:49 but the scorn the polemics of muslims particularly and jews he said look how can you believe god is 0:32:54 three god is one how can you believe jesus is god and he came up with these points he's a 0:33:00 christian by the way he's not a muslim but you could see the influence of islam he met muslims 0:33:06 um and he was an outspoken guy as well i mean that was his downfall he was outspoken um so he he went 0:33:13 to geneva to meet calvin he said look i want to talk to you we didn't quite put it that way 0:33:18 he wrote to him and he he actually physically went to geneva and of course what did john calvin do he 0:33:23 had him arrested and it was agreed by the council with calvin's support that he should be executed 0:33:32 why well because he didn't agree with the trinity i mean seriously that was his crime 0:33:38 and the poor guy was burnt to death for his crime and there's a whole bit of detail which i'll just 0:33:44 quickly mention because it kind of is real usually when you burn people to death in in that time 0:33:50 you kind of strangle them first as a kind of humane thing he wasn't strangled he was burnt 0:33:55 to death literally and at the top left you can see this little representation of him being a 0:34:01 martyr in a way and many unitarian christians those who believe that god is one in the 0:34:06 tau heed sense still look to him as a great inspiration and what's sad is other not just 0:34:15 calvinists people who follow john calvin but martin luther agreed with this execution and 0:34:19 did the catholic church all of christian europe officially supported his execution 0:34:26 no one was against him so he was executed purely because of his ideas on the trinity
0:34:36 there's something that it's really hard for us to get hold on why was the catholic church 0:34:42 so committed to this invention of the trinity what did it give to their church and what what 0:34:49 would not having it have taken away why do you have any thoughts or overview or knowledge on 0:34:56 how would the catholic church have been different had it been monotheist 0:35:01 that's a good question very good question i think one historical answer is if we wind the 0:35:07 clock back um so i think it's the fifth century there was a an emperor who succeeded constantine 0:35:13 called theodosius i think it was theodosius ii uh he was a christian and what he did was 0:35:21 um which constantine didn't do theodosius made it he banned all non-christian faith but he made it a 0:35:29 crime a capital crime to deny the trinity publicly i mean you know just to deny it if you were known 0:35:36 to deny the trinity you could be executed it was a capital offense in the roman empire and 0:35:41 i think then we see the beginning arguably of a medieval world where there was a totalitarian 0:35:48 rigid one-dimensional understanding any plurality we see much plurality in the early church 0:35:53 we see arius and athanasius we see people who say well jesus isn't god in that sense that the 0:35:59 father is he he's he might be a divine figure but he's not really god in that absolute set 0:36:04 you see much more nuance and debate and exchange of ideas for many centuries but beginning i think 0:36:11 with theodosius you see what we would call a medieval world when all that was shut down by 0:36:16 edict of rome by the roman emperor and the pope and so for a thousand years or more there was 0:36:21 no debate you couldn't have a debate because you would have been killed you would have been killed 0:36:27 and even the reformers who left the catholic church because of its you know man-made doctrines 0:36:32 about purgatory and saints and all that jazz they still believed in the trinity they didn't 0:36:37 go i would argue they didn't go back far enough ad fontes go back to the sources if you look at 0:36:42 the early gospels you don't see the trinity tour anywhere jesus says apparently in mark chapter 10 0:36:48 a man comes to jesus i said the other day good teacher what must i do to inherit eternal life 0:36:54 jesus says why do you call me good there's no one good but god alone i said yes says that in mark's 0:37:00 gospel the earliest gospel chapter 10 verse 17 18 and 19. how does that fit into trinitarianism 0:37:08 you tell me it's not there but later church tradition obviously uh i mean that's another 0:37:14 long story how trinitarianism evolved it took many centuries but ultimately it was backed up 0:37:21 with military state power and it was enforced on people for over a thousand years and when people 0:37:27 started to protest because the renaissance back to the sources they were initially persecuted 0:37:33 and even executed um so that's that that's that's the the real politic of it unfortunately
0:37:43 actually happened yeah i just want to add that most of the crusades actually happened 0:37:49 in europe and a lot of them towards other fellow christians true oh this is very true
0:37:56 at the inquisition uh the the inquisition in france and spain
0:38:01 yes oh this is very true no this is very true yeah this is a good point actually in 0:38:10 uh in in this in southern france um there were a group of they call the cathars a group of 0:38:17 christians um who were very popular particularly in south west france where i kind of live as well 0:38:23 and um and they were i say christians and they were systematically exterminated or persecuted 0:38:29 and exterminated by the catholic church in the inquisition it's not just a spanish inquisition 0:38:33 there was a french inquisition and there are conditions all over the place 0:38:36 and there are stories of them you know whole families being holed up in their 0:38:39 churches and burnt alive and so i mean it's really happened so there was systematic 0:38:45 use modern latitude use our own language today the church was involved in systematic terrorism 0:38:51 which sought to exterminate through terrorism and this is a modern language uh its opponents and it 0:38:57 did so ruthlessly without any sense of the rule of law and this was the norm and you compare that 0:39:03 with the the ottoman ethos which some people know much better than i do of of tolerance of civility 0:39:13 of letting differences you know exist between people letting christians be christians and 0:39:18 jews be jews within the islamic world it's a completely different planet i can't stress 0:39:23 how different that was and if you were a jew in europe you know uh you know martin luther not him 0:39:30 the other guy uh was so rabidly anti-jewish that his works were quoted by the nazis in the 1930s 0:39:38 um to justify their doctrines and and during the nuremberg trials i forget the 0:39:42 name of the guy who's the editor of the most notorious nazi newspaper his defense was i was 0:39:49 just quoting martin luther these ideas are german they go back to this great reformer 0:39:55 because many of the nazis the rhetoric uh that that martin luther and interesting compare that 0:40:01 with the turks some region didn't like the jews but he um was very extreme and i say picked up by 0:40:06 the national socialists in germany so they were part of a long anti-semitic tradition 0:40:12 the german german nazis it wasn't just hitler who's invented all this sadly he had a history 0:40:18 that went back many many centuries um and that's a legacy that uh coming back to calvin by the way so 0:40:26 what i find interesting about calvin the modern followers of calvin are called calvinists 0:40:31 um and they're very very popular particularly in the united states they're called evangelicals i 0:40:35 mean most evangelicals i think are calvinists they look to not him but to calvin as um 0:40:41 for their inspiration i mentioned his great work the institutes of christian religion 0:40:46 and so he's a very respected figure this noble uh reformer from geneva who brought god's word 0:40:53 back you know a fresh a fresh preaching of god's word 0:40:57 to europe after centuries of catholic darkness but i mention this is because you know imagine 0:41:05 muhammad upon him be peace had burnt to death his opponents i mean how that would have been used by 0:41:11 by his opponents and christians to rubbish him and criticize him and damn him but calvin had 0:41:17 a man burnt to death and yet where is the program about him where uh how could you support a man who 0:41:26 did such terrible things do people just disagree with him on theology
0:41:32 exactly exactly the rhetoric would be yeah yeah the accusations as a sister was saying 0:41:37 the accusations would be made to calculus do you believe a you know you you can really poke them 0:41:42 and say do you believe in burning people that say well you're john calvin this is your religion how 0:41:46 can you support a religion that terrorized other people and had them burnt to death you see what 0:41:52 i mean but it doesn't happen and i think it's odd isn't it that you get this double standard 0:41:56 this inconsistency where this is kind of impact is overlooked let's just overlook this embarrassing 0:42:01 episode but it was a fruit of his mindset of his theology of his outlook it was totally 0:42:07 intolerant that's putting it mildly and yet he is a very respected figure amongst any evangelical 0:42:14 circles so that's the the the sad story of uh michael services so do you anyone have yes sister
0:42:29 no absolutely not that's a good point um just to give a little bit of more academic or scholarly 0:42:35 depth to it then um what scholars scholars today when they look at the reformation they talk about 0:42:40 the magisterial reformation the reformation including calvin luther zwingli and others 0:42:46 and then was called the radical reformation which also existed at the time the radical reformers 0:42:52 didn't like luther or calvin know that they rejected them because many of the 0:42:57 reformers believed in infant baptism for example that babies could be baptized the radical said no 0:43:03 you don't baptize babies it's believers baptism so you get the baptists who come from that tradition 0:43:08 the quakers associated with people like george fox the famous american quaker had a much more um they 0:43:17 believed it in the inner light so it's much less fundamentalist and based on bible in a very strict 0:43:23 way it was more interior more spiritual the inner light and they were called quakers not they didn't 0:43:29 call themselves quakers but it's because they used to quake in their meetings they used to kind of 0:43:34 shake and their enemies called them quakers um but they were persecuted um the radical reformers by 0:43:42 the lutherans and the calvin uh the calvinists not surprisingly that's kind of what they did 0:43:47 so in germany those stories in munster i think it is of the radical reformers 0:43:51 taking over the city basically and the lutherans and others going in and 0:43:57 suppressing their radical reform faith and they drowned they executed by drowning in the river 0:44:04 many of their leaders for their reform their radical reformed ideas so um the radical 0:44:11 reformation today you'll find it as i mentioned in baptists quakers but these ideas are kind of 0:44:18 i don't know that they're that they're not that divisive anymore in the modern world 0:44:23 i mean people may disagree with that but i don't think lutherans are persecuting the 0:44:27 radical reformers anymore and i i i think that's kind of ye old idea not so much to say sorry
0:44:41 um most i don't think most i've heard of him it's a bit it's a bit of a white-washed history 0:44:47 those that have um and i've read a couple of i've read a couple of responses from calvinists and 0:44:54 they will they tend to major on the idea oh well that was that's what they did in those days at 0:45:00 that time you look in the historical context that's how people behaved you know everyone 0:45:04 burnt everyone else you know so as you do um so it's kind of but they don't see any organic 0:45:10 intrinsic link with the mentality of calvin and what he did it wasn't just calvin butler i'd only 0:45:15 kind of stigmatized him exclusively because all christians agree people like him agreed 0:45:21 so um i think they make their excuses and they say well that was that that was time but 0:45:26 his ideas are you know about the gospel and what matter so they'll make excuses basically 0:45:32 but most cubs have no idea about michael services i'm sure any other questions yes
0:45:57 you mentioned the historical reason but maybe one of the political reasons would be that 0:46:02 if the trinity was dropped out of the picture it would open the door to
0:46:12 the easiness okay or the ease and converting to accepting muhammad because if you're 0:46:20 a christian unitarian your clothes are one step to accepting them and this would entail 0:46:29 that you know politically you'd have to if the public would accept the majority of the public 0:46:35 would accept muhammad's message and perhaps this is going to change the demographics yeah yeah and 0:46:43 the brothers are saying yes if we acknowledge the truth about the trinity then it might have led to 0:46:48 a closer engagement understanding with islam the muslim yeah i can see that you know i mean the 0:46:55 medieval ideas about islam were completely bizarre and wrong i mean uh muslims are 0:47:00 often regarded as polytheists i i know it you wouldn't believe what was said about 0:47:06 muslims just complete inventions there was no real understanding of what was going on 0:47:11 amongst like 99 percent of people you think today is bad it was much worse then um sorry sister 0:47:18 so it's just a comment on sister lawrence so do you want to query
0:47:37 and um in a way that that's what we're trying to do but also they have like mediators 0:47:44 to like take away your sins or absolve yourselves or sins and if you don't have the mediators um the 0:47:51 mediators were like had the power and if um and through through that you had power land wealth 0:47:58 wherever because you were a mediator in that and um obviously the royal catholic church was quite 0:48:04 well known for that as i believe and obviously if you had to give up the trinity you'd have to give 0:48:09 up the mediators aspect of it and so you'd have to give up their power and it will like undermine 0:48:15 the power of wealth and what have you yeah i think that's no i think that's that's that's very true 0:48:20 and and also i want to stress that the idea of the individual before god the individual conscience 0:48:26 um deciding but just reading the bible alone this feeds into a very kind of individualist mentality 0:48:33 that rose in europe and we still see that today particularly in america um as opposed to the 0:48:38 more corporate idea of you know we're part of a collective the church and others mediate our own 0:48:44 faith priests the papacy so um this led to and also it led to what's called the protestant 0:48:51 work ethic as well the idea that in in the medieval world if you really want to be holy 0:48:57 you become a um a monk or a nun you give up worldly life and you become celibate 0:49:04 and you live in a monastery or a convent if you if you saw what i mean or a priest 0:49:08 but with with the reformers martin luther and calvin again it was some of it was quite good the 0:49:14 reformation was an emphasis on the the sanctity of work the ordinary man the ploughman for example 0:49:20 who could read his the bible for himself without the church and his work is holy and sanctified 0:49:28 because work has dignity before god and you can do something for the glory of god you can do your 0:49:33 work for the glory of god so this sense of the sanctity of the the laborer of the of a common man 0:49:39 was a really important theme i think in the reformation going against the catholic idea 0:49:44 of you you're a super holy you become a nun that you are okay um a a come come 0:49:50 a more otherworldly understanding of holiness so the reformation brought and you get this sense of 0:49:57 um again in certain parts of europe and the united states that making a lot of money like making a 0:50:03 lot of wealth is good because god's blessing you yeah if you're if you're prosperous that 0:50:09 means god likes you he's blessing you giving you lots of wealth and there are passages in 0:50:14 the bible particularly in the jewish bible which kind of suggests that is true if you believe that 0:50:20 not in so much in jesus teaching of course so that's another another long-term impact 0:50:27 of the reformation the sanctity of work the individual conscience before god 0:50:32 apart from the church um the dignity of the individual um but it led to wars in the 30 years 0:50:40 war i mean for a long long time catholics and protestants fought this out militarily in europe 0:50:46 and millions of people died um before we had the treaty of westphalia which was a famous treaty 0:50:52 in the 16th century which basically said if you've got a catholic prince a catholic king 0:50:58 that's what the religion would be of that country if you've got a protestant ruler that would be his 0:51:03 religion and each one can have his own faith in his own dominion but this was the breakdown the 0:51:09 destruction of christendom the idea of one faith one people you know throughout entire europe 0:51:15 wherever you were you were catholic basically um and that completely was destroyed with the 0:51:22 reformation and europe broke up and that you get the beginning of nation states in the beginning 0:51:27 of britain for example or england i should say um where you have the birth of the church of england 0:51:32 so you have henry viii uh in england in the early 16th century who famously wanted a divorce once a 0:51:38 divorce catherine of aragon wouldn't give him any children poor love and she was spanish arrogant 0:51:44 and uh the pope said no you can't divorce goes against teaching of the church so um henry viii 0:51:51 who really really really wanted an heir because it mattered then by the way he wasn't just being 0:51:55 equal to he needed an heir to ensure stability and continuity of the country um he basically 0:52:01 declared himself henry head of the church in england he was still a catholic by the way people 0:52:07 often get this wrong you think oh he rejected he didn't reject catholicism he rejected the pope 0:52:12 and you know he still believed in the seven sacraments of the church and all the rest of it 0:52:16 initially um so he declared himself henry viii as head of the church and still today 0:52:21 queen elizabeth ii is the head of the church she's not we don't live in a secular society officially 0:52:26 in england um so this was again a reforming and sorry because of that he um gave more space in 0:52:36 england for more reformed ideas so you see the reformation happening in england particularly with 0:52:40 elizabeth his daughter when she succeeded and uh and others uh edward vi i think it was you see a 0:52:48 much stronger protestant religion being introduced into england and the catholic church was banned 0:52:55 uh funnily enough and uh england who had been catholic being catholic became protestant 0:53:02 um and you know we see similar developments in germany and in the scandinavian countries 0:53:07 particularly the northern europe which became more or less protestant and southern europe remain 0:53:12 more or less catholic you know italy spain portugal and so on so it was a geopolitical 0:53:20 massive disruption it affected uh millions and millions of people and if you are part of a 0:53:27 minority like in england if you were the wrong sect you could be persecuted under elizabeth 0:53:32 and some of these guys left england and they went to a place called america on the mayflower 0:53:40 and these were refugees from you know religious refugees and they were protestants seriously 0:53:46 committed protestants many of them were calvinists cowardice so they went to america which of course 0:53:52 was not inhabited by any other oh hang on it was it was already inhabited by many other nations 0:53:58 uh the indigenous uh what we call the indigenous uh americans so anyway so that was the beginning 0:54:04 of famously the mayflower which americans all know about a bunch of english people 0:54:08 left plymouth which is a city in southern england a seaport went off to america and 0:54:14 the rest is history as they say so america became a protestant country um if officially a republic 0:54:22 but nevertheless it was predominantly and then they persecuted catholics when the italians went 0:54:27 to new york wherever they were persecuted by the protestants of course because that's what you do 0:54:33 so but you get this sense of i would argue the protestant individualism uh the sanctity of making 0:54:39 a lot of money you see these and the sectarianism there's a kind of binary worldview that calvinists 0:54:45 have you know good and evil you know we're good bad you know you get a sense of the othering the 0:54:51 demonization of the other in calvinism i think you still see that psychology operating politically in 0:54:57 places like the us it's much more complicated than that but i think there is an element of that in 0:55:01 america and it has its roots in the reformation i think so is this relevant today you bet it is 0:55:09 and in america millions and millions of americans are passionately christian and most of them 0:55:15 support calvin or luther and their ideas matter because they end up influencing the globe through 0:55:23 the hegemony of the west these days that's all my opinion by the way feel free to disagree do 0:55:30 you want to have any comments he wants to make about that more questions no just one quick yeah 0:55:36 i think i should probably know this but just clarify so uh being a catholic king in england
0:55:45 and you weren't allowed to divorce that's right divorce was completely yeah no a 0:55:51 young individual no you couldn't do a divorce is still not permitted in the catholic church today 0:55:58 you can get an annulment which is something slightly different basically says there never 0:56:01 was a marriage in the first place really and you have to get a judge from the catholic church to 0:56:06 make that ruling um like in worm from in london the westminster have a tribunal of catholic 0:56:12 priests and you if i'm a catholic i'm married and i believe the marriage is just not working i say 0:56:17 oh i don't really the reasons why the marriage doesn't never really exist in the first place 0:56:21 and they can let you off that way but there's no divorce for catholics 0:56:26 officially absolutely not what's the difference between orthodox christianity catholicism
0:56:35 no i mean it's extremely i've ignored the orthodox because it's like a whole other 0:56:38 uh subject no but it's a very good point uh the the the roman empire as we know 0:56:44 covered most of the all of the mediterranean area went to the east uh what we call syria 0:56:49 far as you know it covered a massive area of of the west and when um the roman empire in the west 0:56:58 in the fourth fifth and sixth centuries came under a lot of attack from the visigoths and others from 0:57:04 the north the western part of the roman empire basically collapsed but the eastern part of the 0:57:09 roman empire continued uh for a thousand years or more and that was called came to be called 0:57:15 byzantium and constantine as some people here know far better than i founded the new romes 0:57:21 you've got the old rome in italy the new rome was called um constantinople where we're literally 0:57:27 standing now in istanbul so um the eastern part of the roman empire continued uh with its center 0:57:35 of gravity uh in constantinople and there was a big split i mean there'd been a split 0:57:42 unofficially for a long long time before the 10th century but in the 10th century i forget the exact 0:57:47 date 10 something the 11th century there was an official split between the catholic west and the 0:57:52 orthodox east and that schism that split has never been healed ever since and one of the contributors 0:57:59 to that was the donation of constantine which i mentioned earlier because the papacy would say 0:58:04 look constantine gave us rulership for this why you're not submitting you orthodox and they're 0:58:10 saying it's a fake well it is a fake um so that contributed to this split between east and west 0:58:16 so now we have lots of orthodox churches and just one you get the orthodox church in greece 0:58:21 the orthodox church in egypt the coptic church in russia the russian orthodox 0:58:25 church and so on and so on and then many kind of splinters off from that um and many of them 0:58:31 have their own popes they're actually called popes there's a pope in egypt for example 0:58:36 just a quick comment about that schism it's okay uh that schism was that um before the muslims 0:58:43 came in of the 1450s and conquered constantinople there had been crusades against the eastern church 0:58:52 that had almost completely destroyed where higher sophia so when the muslims came and you know 0:59:00 rahim allah came to constantinople higher sophia was in a state of disrepair so actually it was the 0:59:08 muslims who saved higher sophia otherwise arguably and this is the greek orthodox church today 0:59:14 even they admit that without the muslims caring fire sofia it would have gone uh 0:59:21 now this is very true and there's another story which i've not mentioned um is is the story of 0:59:26 the jews in in west in western europe um there's a famous article by an american historian jewish 0:59:32 historian saying that islam saved jewry islam saved jury if you google that expression you'll 0:59:38 be able to read the article it's in the jerusalem chronicle it was originally a lecture given at 0:59:43 psoas in london and and he said literally islam saved the jews if it hadn't been for the jews 0:59:49 islam or muslims jews would be would have been wiped out because 0:59:54 when for example the muslims entered into the iberian peninsula in the 8th century 0:59:59 the jews were about to be exterminated there the children were taken away from jewish parents and 1:00:04 forced to be christian and it was it was horrible horrible but when muslims entered into that 1:00:10 area that they jews were allowed to in fact the argument is that many jews allow muslims in 1:00:16 through the back door because they knew they would be given rights that we didn't have 1:00:20 under christian rule um so many uh because of persecution in the west many jews went to muslim 1:00:28 lands where they thrived commercially culturally you saw their own renaissance of learning 1:00:35 and you also see that in baghdad where you had 1:00:38 the translation movement in the eighth and ninth centuries where jews christians and muslims 1:00:44 uh translated a lot of greek works into arabic and you saw this incredible civilization developing 1:00:51 also in andalusia as well in muslim spain but um if it hadn't been for the muslim world uh 1:00:57 he argued uh jews would have been uh exterminated basically um and that's often an embarrassing 1:01:04 fact for people in the west they don't want to acknowledge that because it doesn't fit into 1:01:08 their narrative so much and he says this in the article which i recommend it's called what uh 1:01:14 islam saved jury j-e-w-r-y if you just google that article it's freely available online he's 1:01:20 a very distinguished american professor of islamic history and it's quite an eye-opener 1:01:27 actually that the facts are often very different from what we've been told so oh yeah brother
1:01:44 oh yes good point yeah the brother's asking about 1:01:45 the theological differences between the orthodox churches in the east 1:01:50 and the catholic church i guess the biggest one would have to be the papacy the role of the pope 1:01:55 uh the the um the orthodox church have always said look the bishop of rome who is the pope yeah he's 1:02:02 the first amongst equals he's maybe has the first place because if you look at the gospels peter 1:02:08 is the first of the apostles but there are other apostles but yeah he has first rank 1:02:14 but we don't accord the pope the the title the vicar of christ which he had in the west we still 1:02:19 call that now the idea that he is supremo over the whole of the church he has universal jurisdiction 1:02:26 that he has an immediate relationship with every catholic spiritually i mean his role his status 1:02:32 is so exalted in the catholic church mainly because of developments in the medieval world 1:02:37 that this is totally unacceptable to the orthodox they were willing to give the the bishop of rome 1:02:42 some seniority or the first place but not the exalted role that he came to have 1:02:48 i mean example he can issue infallible statements called ex-cathedra statements and he has the popes 1:02:54 have done so um about mary for example and the authors say the pope can't do that this is not 1:03:01 the pope's you know no way can a man do that so they have this big problem with the papacy 1:03:06 i mean our current pontiff um francis pope francis in rome has tried to reach out has reached out to 1:03:13 many orthodox church leaders with some success but many orthodox just don't recognize him they 1:03:19 just think he's not a good dude not because he's francis but because he's the pope you know 1:03:24 so there is a fundamental fracture in christendom i don't see it ever splitting up and either quran 1:03:29 speaks about this actually doesn't it talks about how the divisions amongst christians will last 1:03:35 until the day of judgment this is this is almost like the judgment of god it's it's part of the 1:03:41 the reality of the christian world is fractured and deeply divided and it will 1:03:46 always be like that until the end um do you know i don't if you know the ayah in the quran 1:03:52 i'm kind of paraphrasing it off top of my head
1:04:10 so i think that's uh that's it and we're supposed to finish at quarter past there's half an hour's 1:04:15 uh break before hamza thoughtsis uh continues so thank you very much