The Great Schism, The Rise of Islam & The Beginning of the Crusades

Moore's Corner Church

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Let's turn to 2 Timothy 3. We'll look at a few verses in 2

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Timothy 3, but this is lesson number 8 in the book Forerunners of the

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Faith. And this lesson is titled, Schisms, Scholars, and Soldiers.

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So we're going to be looking at certain men. We're getting into the Middle Ages here.

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And then the Crusades. So a lot to get to, but first let's read this passage from 2

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Timothy 3. This will be verses 13 through 15. The Apostle Paul to Timothy, he says,

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But evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them.

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And that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

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So the men that we're going to be looking at, some of them Anselm, another man,

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Bernard. And then there is the first crusade, second crusade, third and fourth.

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So the first crusade was in 1095. The final or fourth crusade was in 1204.

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I'm not sure if we'll get to the Crusades or not, but most of this is in my book.

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It starts out with this sentence in yours, so just follow along and then bear with me as I have some reading to do to begin the class.

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So number one, setting the stage, the early Middle Ages in the fifth century.

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So remember, the fifth century is the 400s. A lot of people kind of get that mixed up.

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But in the 400s, things changed dramatically for the western half of the

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Roman Empire, which was overrun by Germanic tribal groups like the

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Vandals, the Goths, the Huns, and the Saxons. By 476, the

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Western Roman Empire had fallen. So remember, the Roman Empire was divided into two, so the west now has fallen, but the eastern part of the empire continued on much longer.

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Over the subsequent centuries, those tribal groups eventually formed the nations of Europe.

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But this process of social transformation took a long time. As a result, there was less theological development and scholarship in the

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West during the Middle Ages. From the 6th through the 10th centuries, theological scholarship was largely preserved in monasteries.

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In the 6th century, so the 6th century is what? 500s, good.

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In the 6th century, the Eastern Roman Empire, also called the

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Byzantine Empire, attempted to regain the territories in the West that had been lost.

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For example, the military exploits of the Emperor Justinian the Great were initially successful.

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So that's 483 to 565 AD. In the 7th century, that's the 600s, an unexpected religious movement arose in Arabia.

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And we know this religion as what? Islam, right. So this movement arose in Arabia under the leadership of Muhammad, who lived from 570 to 632.

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Islamic armies quickly conquered lands in North Africa and the Middle East, which were under Byzantine control.

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Jerusalem fell in the year 637. Within a hundred years after Muhammad's death, large portions of the former

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Roman Empire were under Muslim control. So you see that Jerusalem was under, you know, we say, you know,

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Christian control, quote unquote, up until this point. Despite significant losses to Muslim areas, the

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Byzantine Empire would survive until Constantinople was finally defeated by the

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Turks in the 15th century. During the early Middle Ages, the Western Church sent missionaries to the

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Germanic tribal groups, and many of them were converted to Christianity. For example, in the 600s, a missionary named

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Augustine of Canterbury was sent to Britain to evangelize the Angles and the

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Saxons. For some years before this, a powerful tribe known as the

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Franks had converted to Christianity. These tribal groups gave their allegiance to the

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Bishop of Rome. The city of Rome was the most important Christian center in the

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West. Other important centers were Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, and they were located in the

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East. Because no other city in the West rivaled the religious authority of Rome, the prestige and power of the papacy was continually elevated.

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And of course, the Pope is also called what? What's his connection to Rome?

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He is the Bishop of the

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Church in Rome. And of course, Rome's the center, so that's just kind of the way it worked out, that over time, as the

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Emperor, you know, his power started to decline, the Pope's power started to rise, or the

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Bishop of Rome's power started to rise, and that's when he became, you know, the Pope as we know him today, where he just claims authority over.

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And actually, we know he claims authority over the Catholic Church. What is not talked about today, he actually claims authority over all the earth.

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Like, he claims to be the king of kings. He claims to be, to have authority over every nation.

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Now, the current Pope doesn't talk like that, because that's not a good strategy at the moment, because they don't really have that power.

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But back in the day, the Popes, yeah, they're kingmakers. They decided who was going to be king.

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So that title, king of kings, that we know belongs to Christ, the Pope usurped for himself, and technically, in Roman theology, the

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Pope claims to be basically the king of the world, in effect.

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But anyways, this is how it happened over time. In the late 1700s, a document known as the

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Donation of Constantine surfaced. Now, does anyone remember that we talked about this a couple months ago, the

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Donation of Constantine? Anyone remember this? Okay.

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This is what the Pope claimed. Well, let me just read it. This document was later proven to be a forgery, but it claimed that prior to his death in 337, the

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Emperor Constantine bequeathed, not a term we use much, he bequeathed the city of Rome to the

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Bishop of Rome. In other words, he passed along authority, because Constantine moved east to his new capital, which he named after himself,

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Constantinople. And according to this document, he left Rome in charge.

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He left the Pope, or the Bishop of Rome, in charge of the city of Rome. So that's one of the reasons why the

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Pope claims to have that power. Well, it was given to us by Constantine.

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Well, again, but that document later was shown to be false. Any questions so far?

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We were just talking about church history, how things developed, how things evolved from the 8th to the 13th century.

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Popes used the donation of Constantine to assert both their religious and political authority over Rome and the surrounding areas.

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Militarily, the Popes maintained good relationships with tribal groups like the

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Franks. This led to the creation of the Holy Roman Empire, when Charlemagne, King of the

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Franks, was crowned Emperor of the

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Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day in the year 800. The 9th and 10th centuries were a period of significant corruption for the

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Popes of Rome. The papacy was fought over by rival groups in Rome who recognized it as a position of great political power.

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Okay, so the discussion question for this section, it says, look at that key passage, so 2

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Timothy 3, 13 through 15. Let's just read it one more time with all those things in mind.

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Paul says, but evil men and imposters will grow, what? Worse and worse, or bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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But you, you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known, what?

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The Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

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So if you just knew the Scriptures and followed the Scriptures, you should have known that this is not right.

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Of course, back then, not everyone had a Bible. Most people didn't know what the Bible taught, and as the

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Catholic Church obtained more power, they wanted to make sure that the average person didn't see the

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Bible, didn't read the Bible, didn't know what was in there. So here's the discussion question.

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Look at that passage. Okay, we did that. Church history provides a record of corrupt leaders going from bad to worse.

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What antidote did Paul give Timothy to avoid that kind of corruption?

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And the hint is to read verses 16 and 17. And let's read that.

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All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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So you put that in your own words. How is that an antidote for all of this corruption?

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How would that work? Stacy? I guess I would say just very simply stay in the Scripture, stay in the word.

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That gives you your road map, if you will. Yeah, we agree with that.

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The Scripture would be like a road map. If you follow the Bible, you wouldn't have all of these abuses.

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You certainly wouldn't have one man usurping the authority that only Christ has.

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Yes, Erin? Well, it's like what you talked about on Wednesday with the lady that quoted something in Scripture that wasn't even in the

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Bible. If you know your Scriptures, nobody's going to be able to tell you that the

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Bible says this because you already know your Scriptures. So you can look at them and say, no, actually it doesn't say that.

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Yeah, she brought up something that I mentioned on Friday where a woman was on the radio.

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She was making an argument that churches should do this because, and she actually made an appeal to Scripture, but what she said totally wasn't in the

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Bible at all. But if people know the word of God, that's going to prevent you from going astray, hopefully.

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We have an environment here at Morris Corner Church where if somebody, whether it's the pastor, a deacon, someone in the church, let's say somebody wanted to bring the church in an unbiblical direction, like it's just ingrained in everybody.

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Wait a minute. What does the Bible say? That's not right because the Bible says this, like it's just second nature to us or first nature.

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But when that's not the environment of a church or, you know, or an empire or whatever, yeah, it's like anything goes.

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And I think, unfortunately, when you have somebody of a certain authority, and I don't know who this woman was or what kind of authority she had, if you were a baby with the

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Scriptures or, you know, just living on the milk or what you hear, unfortunately you're not going to be able to distinguish and that's part of what leads people astray.

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Right. Yeah, a lot of people, they know just enough to be dangerous, as people say.

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They know a little bit about the Bible, but you need to continue to study it. Yeah, a new convert who's been reading the

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Bible for two months, it's easy to kind of, you know, pull the wool over their eyes.

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I mean, maybe not, but that's why we need to be learned in the Scriptures and continue in that, yes.

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And it's not just new converts, I know. Right. I was teaching five day clubs and my pastor's son said, well, you know,

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Hezekiah 4 .16 says. Totally got me. You know, if you look at the dictionary of the word go, my name's right there.

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But I was teaching the Bible and he was able to claim something from Scripture.

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He was doing it to make a point. But he was, you know, he was the pastor's son, so of course I had to listen to him.

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This is why the Bible says that teachers are held to a higher standard. People will look at somebody with that authoritative title and say, well, they must know more than I do.

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I'm just a layman. And so it's so important to read for yourself and find it for yourself.

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And when the pastor speaks or anybody speaks, to go look it up in the Bible for yourself. You see that, yes, in fact, it is there.

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Yeah, and it's not just the new convert, right. Listen, I could, I can be deceived.

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Well, I, you know, I know enough to, I, this couldn't happen to me. It could happen to anybody. And this is one of the reasons why it's important who you listen to.

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Let's say there's some guy on TV or whatever. And you know that you really shouldn't listen to him.

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Like you've heard the pastor talk about. You've heard other Christians talk about that. But I don't know.

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You just kind of like it. Well, every day, every time you're listening to this, it's getting stuck in your mind.

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And so if I were to listen to a bad source again and again and over and over, that would start to affect me.

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It could lead me astray, at least in one doctrinal area.

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The point is it can happen to anybody. And that's why you need to be very careful who you listen to.

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And if you do listen to somebody who you know is a little iffy, you have to test what they say against scripture.

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So I do listen to a lot of people that would probably surprise you who I listen to. Not because I enjoy it necessarily, but I, I want to know what's going on out there.

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I want to be informed, but yeah, everything I hear goes through that grid of scripture.

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So I'm constantly, it might seem like I'm scrutinizing or being critical.

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Of every little thing, but I feel like I have to be, I have to test everything against the word of God or else that can happen to me.

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And if it happens to a pastor or a Bible teacher, if he's led astray, then that affects can affect everyone being taught by him.

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So it's a, it's a dangerous thing. Another point I would make is this is why it's important to go verse by verse through the scripture, because any pastor can get up and quote a verse from that quote, a verse from here, quote, a verse from there.

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And if it's out of its proper context, it's easy to quote verses and make the

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Bible sound like it's teaching something that it really isn't. I mean, we all quote verses and that's fine.

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And if you're only stating that one verse, technically you have removed it from its context.

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But I'm just saying when that's the way preaching is all the time, it's very easy to get.

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It's, it's easy to twist the scripture. When you're going verse by verse, it kind of guards against that.

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All right. Any other questions before we move on? All right. So that's the antidote.

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And now we move on to the second part. So schism, this is number two.

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Number one, we looked at setting the stage. Number two, schism, the division between the east and the west.

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Okay. As we enter the high middle ages, that's the 11th through the 13th centuries, tensions continued to escalate between the eastern and western halves of Roman Christendom until they reached a breaking point.

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A number of factors contributed to the strained relationship, including first cultural and political differences.

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Part of the distancing between the east and west was due to political, cultural, and language differences.

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The eastern church spoke Greek and was part of the Byzantine Empire. The western church spoke

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Latin and was connected politically with Europe or with the European powers like the

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Franks. So you see that one problem, one thing that led to division was everyone speaking a different language.

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They have different cultures, different traditions. Okay. Now, I don't want to get sidetracked on a whole thing here, but you do realize that's what our leaders are trying to do in this country.

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They're trying to divide the nations by bringing in just... And I think it's great, immigrate when people come here, because we all know like we immigrated from Europe, right?

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If people want to immigrate here legally and assimilate to American culture,

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I think that's terrific. Again, we all came from Europe. But what are they doing?

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They're letting them come in illegally and they're bringing... And there's no assimilation. So just to throw that out there, when everyone's speaking a different language and everyone has a different culture, they say, this makes us stronger.

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No, it makes us weaker and it's meant to divide. But anyways, that was just... You probably already knew that, but if you can't speak the same language as somebody, it's hard to have fellowship with someone that you don't know what they're saying.

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So it's just the reality of it. But this was part of the problem with the Eastern and Western Church, totally different language, different cultures, and they started to feel like we don't have that much in common with these people.

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We're supposed to be one unified church, but if I traveled over there, it's like I wouldn't fit in at all.

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So that's one problem that started to divide East and West. The second issue, the

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Filoque Clause. So this is in the year 1014.

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The Western Church inserted the phrase, quote, and the sun into the

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Latin version of the expanded Nicene Creed, dating back to the Council of Constantinople in 381.

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Can someone look up the Nicene Creed in the back of the hymnal? Mark, you want to do that? It goes on to say,

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The edited Latin Creed taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the

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Father and the Son. In Latin, this phrase is

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Filoque. The Eastern Church balked at the idea that the

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Western Church could unilaterally change one of the historic creeds. So this was sort of like the final straw that broke the camel's back of why the

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Eastern and Western Church divided. Because of this issue, did the Holy Spirit come from the

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Father, or did the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son? Now to you this morning, this probably doesn't seem like the most serious doctoral point to be made, does it?

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You probably never even really thought about that, have you? But this is what divided

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Roman Catholicism from what we call today Eastern Orthodoxy. Mark, you want to just read that relevant section of the

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Creed? It should say something about the Spirit proceeding from the

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Father and the Son. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeded from the

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Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified.

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Okay. So, I don't know, just pick your brain for a moment.

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Have you ever thought about this at all? Does the

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Holy Spirit proceed from the Father only, or from the Father and the

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Son? Okay. To me,

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I'm thinking of a verse, right, testing everything with what I know about Scripture. I remember

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Jesus talking about giving the Holy Spirit, right? I don't have the chapter and verse right on the tip of my tongue, but I remember

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Jesus talking about giving the Spirit, but then he said from the Father. Okay, but in my mind, yeah, it's from the

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Father and the Son. To me, this seems accurate. So, what's the problem? Why split over it? And obviously, it would be important to look at Scripture more closely, which we will in a moment.

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But what's the real issue? It's the idea that the Pope or the Western Church can change a historic creed without even consulting the

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East. Like, we're just going to unilaterally change a historic creed. That was the real issue, an issue of authority.

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Larry? Well, in the past few weeks, we've also looked at the division of different people in regards to the deity of Christ.

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And so, if somebody didn't really consider Jesus as God, then the

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Holy Spirit would only come from the Father. Right. So, they're having

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Jesus as lesser than the Father. Good, good.

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Okay, anyone else? Yes, Tanya? I have the verses, John 14, 26.

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I don't know if this is on here. Okay. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

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Okay, so we have a verse that says the Spirit is being sent initially from the

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Father, right? Okay, it just took me 10 seconds to find it. John 16, verse 7.

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Jesus says, For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you, but if I depart,

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I will send him to you. So, in Scripture, the

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Father is sending the Spirit and the Son is sending the Spirit. So, adding and the Son, I think, is right.

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It's biblical. But the Eastern Church didn't like the fact that they can just do it unilaterally.

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So, it really is an issue of authority. Okay. So, that's the Falloch way clause in the

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Creed. The next thing, papal primacy. This is another dividing point. In the

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East, the Church viewed the bishops of Rome and Constantinople as equals.

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However, Pope Leo IX saw the bishop of Rome as having primacy over the bishops of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.

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Leo IX sent a delegation led by Cardinal Humbert to Constantinople in the year 1054.

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When the Patriarch of Constantinople refused to grant an audience to the delegation, guess what he did?

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Humbert issued a papal bull excommunicating the Patriarch.

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In response, guess what they did? The Patriarch excommunicated the papal delegation.

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Okay. So, now they're excommunicating each other. Okay. So, these events culminated in a split between the two halves of Roman Christendom.

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The Eastern Church became Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Western Church today we know as Roman Catholicism.

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So, if you look at the two, I don't know where the closest Eastern Orthodox Church is.

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I think there's one in Holyoke, around the Holyoke area. None around our area that I know of.

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But if you look at Eastern Orthodox Churches, or Russian Orthodox, or there's different nations that have this

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Orthodox tradition. But you look at them and the Catholic Church, on the surface they seem very, very similar.

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But there are things that divide them. Purgatory. Catholic Church believes in purgatory.

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The Orthodox Church doesn't. But the real issue is what? One guy. What? Well, it's power.

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Yeah, it's authority, but it really comes down to the papacy. This claim that the

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Pope makes that I am head over the whole church. So, later events, including the

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Fourth Crusade in 1204, would deepen the rift between the Greek, or Eastern, and Latin, or Western Churches.

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Alright. Any questions about that? Questions, comments, short stories, or remarks?

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No. Okay. Here's the discussion question. Look up several of the following passages.

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So, I need some volunteers who will speak loudly these verses.

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Who will look up Acts 2 .33? Aaron? Romans 8 .9?

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Lance? Galatians 4 .6? Linda? Philippians 1 .19?

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You guys are doing so good, too. Dad? And then 1 Peter 1 .11?

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Jordan? Okay, good. Okay, so we're going to look up these verses, and then the question is, what do these passages teach about the

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Holy Spirit's relationship to Christ? And how do these verses relate to the filioque controversy discussed above?

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And like I said before, today the big arguments in the church, well actually right now, how churches are going to respond to the whole

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LGBT stuff, that's one big thing. I don't know why churches are debating and arguing over it, but that's the big issue right now.

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But before that, we would argue over the timing of the rapture, and the millennium, we have the mode of baptism, those things churches would argue about.

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In the early days, they kept the person and work of Christ, the person of the

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Holy Spirit, like this was the most important thing originally in the early days.

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And rightfully so. But, let's read these verses. Acts 2 .33.

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Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the

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Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see in here. Okay, Romans 8 .9.

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But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.

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Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. Okay, so the

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Holy Spirit's called the Spirit of Christ, I think that's relevant. Galatians 4 .6. And because you are sons,

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God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying out, Father, Father.

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Okay, the Spirit of his Son, we're seeing a theme here I think. Philippians 1 .19.

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For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayers, and the supply of the

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Spirit of Jesus Christ. Okay, the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And finally, 1 Peter 1 .11.

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Searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified before the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

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Okay, good. So you heard Mark read from the creed earlier. You know, whatever your opinion is of the

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Nicene Creed, some people are big on creeds. Typically, if you maybe grew up in a

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Baptist church, Baptists are not big on creeds. But as far as the accuracy of that statement that the

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Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, what do you think? Is that biblical?

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I believe it is. Okay. So if there's no other comments on that or questions, we'll move on to number three skirmishes.

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So now we're getting into the Crusades. When you hear the

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Crusades, what do you think of? Christians killing people, everyone.

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What? Muslims. I mean, that originally was the point of the

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Crusades. As Islam started to spread, a lot of Christians wanted to travel to Jerusalem to see, you know, the

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Holy Land and these holy sites. But Christians were going to Jerusalem and they were being attacked and killed by Muslims.

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And of course, that still happens today that sometimes a person from the

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West or a Christian will go to the Middle East and they are singled out because they are a

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Christian. You remember when ISIS was a thing, they're probably still a thing.

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But when they were in the news, they would kidnap Christians and then behead them on video.

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And it's still happening. But anyways, that's sort of like what was going on.

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It's actually in the Koran. It is in the Koran to pluck off the heads of the infidels.

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OK, so, you know, it's like Christianity. Every religion has the progressive wing of their religion where they kind of move so far away from what their holy book teaches that it's not even fairly connected anymore.

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And then there's like the fundamentalists who are kind of sticking to literal interpretation.

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Well, in Islam, the problem with being a fundamentalist is that they still believe that, as Mohammed said, you should kill the infidel.

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Well, we should still be doing that. So, yeah, it is in the Koran. Obviously, depending on whether you talk to a liberal

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Muslim scholar, a conservative or a fundamentalist, they'll give you different interpretations.

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But yes, that is in their holy book. But people are traveling to Jerusalem to visit the

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Holy Land and they're being killed. So the church decided because they had military power, we're going to fight this crusade or the crusades.

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And you could say that because crusades, this is typically one of those things that's used really to kind of smear

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Christianity as why Christianity is bad. Look at the Inquisition and the Crusades.

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The Inquisition was bad. The Crusades, I would at least say this, that there was some,

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I don't know, just reason why you would want to defend people. But I don't think the

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Crusades are as bad as people make them out to be. But a lot of terrible things did happen.

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There were abuses. Yes. When you study the history of the Crusades and the Inquisition, what you're really looking at is their seat of power.

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These were not religious wars. They were couched in religious terms in order to make it okay.

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But a lot, when you really look into the history of it, they were attacking people for land, for riches, for wealth, and to have power.

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And if that's the true motivator of the Crusades, then there wasn't a legitimate cause.

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And this is true for any war you can point to. Here's what happened. We need to do something about it to protect innocent people.

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But anyways, not to get into the whole justification of it, but that's what provoked it originally.

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That's the official line. So five decades after the East -West

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Schism, when Muslim armies again threatened the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Emperor asked the

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West for military help. And of course, remember, church and state is totally linked together as one.

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I mean, this is one of the problems of that. In response, Pope Urban II called for a crusade.

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In all, there would be seven major crusades fought over the next two centuries.

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For the next 200 years, Christian, and it's in quotation marks or scare quotes,

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Christian armies from Europe engaged in what they claimed was, again, in quotation marks,

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Holy War. Okay, so the Crusades, they called it Holy War.

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So how do they justify this with Scripture? Of course, a lot of the things they did, they didn't even attempt to really justify it with Scripture.

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But they actually did have their arguments. And what did they do?

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Open up to the Gospel of John? No, where do you think they went? Well, they went to the

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Old Testament, right. So Old Testament passages instructing Israel to fight their enemies were reinterpreted for the church.

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New Testament passages, which were military metaphors, or where military metaphors are used, like Ephesians 6, like spiritual warfare.

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So Ephesians 6, 10 through 18 were reimagined in literalistic terms.

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This misguided approach to interpretation twisted the meaning of Scripture for political purposes.

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Okay, so, I mean, God commanded Israel in the Old Testament to fight against the enemies of God.

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We should still be doing that today because the church, remember, this is a key part in all of this.

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The Catholic Church, and even Reformed churches today, they say that the church is what?

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The church is Israel. Well, they say the church is the body of Christ, but they say the church is

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Israel, or we are the new Israel. So if Israel was commanded to do this back then, we're

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Israel, so we can do this today. I mean, that's an overly simplistic way of arguing it.

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But God's people did it back then, we can still do it, right? Now, what would you say about that?

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Elijah killed the prophets of Baal. Yeah, Elijah killed the prophets of Baal, so they could use that.

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Well, right, amen to that, but does that give a church the authority to go over and kill prophets of another religion in 2023?

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Here's where we would say it's so important to rightly divide the scriptures, right?

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This term, 2 Timothy, was it 215? Rightly divide the scriptures.

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You need to look at who is this written to? When was it written?

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Why was it written? How does it apply to us today? Does it apply to us today?

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There is no New Testament command for Christians to be going, you know,

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Elijah and the prophets of Baal part two, you know, today. It's just, no, that's not a proper way to interpret the

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Bible. Okay, so that's how they did it, partly. Second, the theory of, quote unquote, just war.

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So this is the just war theory dates back to Augustine. It argued that military conflict was justifiable when it was authorized by a legitimate authority.

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And when it had a just cause, such as self -defense or defending others against evil.

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For those who promoted them, the Crusades were justified because they were sanctioned by the

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Pope and were fought to defend both the Christian pilgrims who traveled to the Holy Land and the people of the

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Byzantine Empire who had asked for help. Okay, so this is, I already said that that's the wrong way to interpret the

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Bible because Elijah did it, we can today. Wrong, that's not the case. What about this just war theory?

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And I know you're going to have differing opinions. I know there are some Christians who are pacifists.

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They don't believe war is ever justified. But this says that war can be justified when you're acting in self -defense or you're defending innocent people from evil tyrants.

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But that's a Christian doctrine that came from Augustine. So you're going to say, a Christian doctrine, quote -unquote, because that's a debatable point.

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I mean, I could give you my opinion. I think some wars are justified. I don't believe the

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Bible teaches pacifism, but you will get some disagreement. The problem is when the government tells you something, hey, here's what's taking place, are they actually giving you all the full and correct information?

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I mean, that's kind of the sticking point. When you look at it, it's written in the scriptures, and there are people actually practicing it.

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We can, you know, collect taxes on you, and if you don't convert or pay the tribute, then we can take it in.

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That's what our scriptures tell us. That's what the

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Koran says. Yeah. That's what our scriptures tell us, right?

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Yeah, their scriptures. And so the whole justification for the, quote, holy war is, their book tells them that this is what they're supposed to do.

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We need to fight against that because we don't want to be beheaded. We don't need to pay tribute to support this other faith.

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So it was a justification for securing the path for pilgrims to take to Jerusalem.

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But then once you establish a military, and once that gets established, then what happens?

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You know, they're not in constant contact with the, you know, getting updates every day. Sure.

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Yeah, I mean, terrible things happen in warfare. There's going to be not just casualties.

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There's going to be, okay, let's turn to Romans 13 just for a moment. You know,

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I mean, if you wanted to ask a question or weigh in on the just war theory, let me just read this last point because we got to pick up next week.

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We don't have time to finish it. But sadly, the Crusades included barbaric atrocities that were decidedly unchristian.

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These atrocities tarnished the reputation of medieval Christendom and created long -standing tensions between Western nations and people groups in the

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Middle East. Now, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember when George W. Bush was talking about the invasion of Iraq, I think he used the word crusade just kind of off the cuff.

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And people kind of went crazy about it. And I think he apologized because the argument was that people in the

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Middle East still remember the Crusades. So he's talking about warfare and he used the word, you know, maybe a lot to do about nothing.

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But that word crusade still, it's still in people's minds and memory. And it still affects, well, you know, whether it's a college classroom or the professors trying to paint all of Christianity in a negative light because of this, or people living in the

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Middle East, still an issue today. All right. Just look at Romans 13. As far as just war theory goes, does the government have, here's the key.

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The church should not be waging war. The church is a spiritual organism is sometimes how it's put.

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It's not the church's job to wage war, is it? It's whose job?

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The governing authorities. Now, I would love it if Christians were in government.

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Like if the rulers of a certain country were all true believers, that would be good.

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I mean, there's problems, but the point is, it's not the church's job. It's the government's job.

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Look at Romans 13. The apostle Paul says, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.

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For there is no authority except from God. And the authorities that exist are what? The authorities that exist are appointed by God.

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Therefore, whoever resists the authority, resist the ordinance of God. And those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.

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And my real point in reading this is verse 4. That he, the governing authority, is

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God's minister to you for good. For he does not bear the sword in vain.

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He is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. So the point being, the governing authorities do have the right to put murderers to death.

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They do have the right to fight war, but it has to be a just war.

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So I think Augustine was correct to whatever degree. I do not believe the Bible teaches pacifism.

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But if you want to make a case that it does, you'll have to do that next week. Because we're out of time. Okay, thank you.