As the centuries progressed, some people began to think it was legitimate to use physical force to advance the church. Today, W. Robert Godfrey offers insights on the Crusades, one of church history’s most dramatic periods. With your donation of any amount, request A Survey of Church History, Part 2 A.D. 500–1500. You’ll receive W. Robert Godfrey’s teaching series on DVD, plus lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3782/survey-of-church-history Meet Today’s Teacher: W. Robert Godfrey is a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow and chairman of Ligonier Ministries. He is president emeritus and professor emeritus of church history at Westminster Seminary California. He is the featured teacher for many Ligonier teaching series, including the six-part series A Survey of Church History. He is author of many books, including God’s Pattern for Creation, Reformation Sketches, and An Unexpected Journey. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Full Episode
Crusade was a French word that meant the way of the cross. They saw themselves sacrificing themselves as Jesus had, taking up a cross, taking up self-denial to recapture the holy city for an eschatological purpose.
The Crusades. If you have had in-depth conversations with an atheist, you've likely had this topic come up as a reason why the church, the Christian faith, cannot be trusted. So what should we think about the Crusades? How do we respond? And what really happened? This is the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham.
Last week, you heard a message from part one of W. Robert Godfrey's six-part study series on church history. Today, we fast-forward to the Middle Ages, the era that part two of his series covers. And you can add part two to your collection when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. You'll receive the DVD, plus have lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide.
So what motivated the Crusaders? What gave rise to this violent time in church history? Well, here's Dr. Godfrey with an overview of the Crusades.
We come now to our second lecture on the wondrous century, the amazing time of sort of high point culmination of many themes that were leading to the height of the Middle Ages. We're looking at the broad theme of church and society, and we come to one of the most well-known and controversial elements of medieval experience, and that is the Crusades. What were the Crusades?
What was the importance of the Crusades? Why were there Crusades? It's interesting that as famous as the episode of the Crusades is in medieval history, there's still a fair level of controversy as to exactly How it happened. How did this come about? Why did it happen? What did it really mean? What were the driving motives behind it?
So we'll try to look at what happened and think a little bit about how this could have happened in this lecture today. The Crusades are a radical break with anything that had happened in Christian history up until that point. Up until that point, Christians had gone to war, but Christians had always gone to war in support of the state to pursue some political objective.
They may have felt that their state was a Christian state and that therefore in going to war for the state, they were doing something that was good in the eyes of God, but they had never gone to war for the church.
They had always, in fact, believed that part of the separation of church and state was that the state was given power by God to protect the nation and to promote peace, whereas the church had a spiritual mission on earth. But with the coming of the crusading ideal in Europe, that idea began to change.
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