71-The Mystics

01/11/15 • 0 min

This episode is titled The Mystics and looks at the Mysticism of the Western Church during the Late Middle Ages.Alongside the Scholastics we spent a couple episodes on, was another movement within Medieval Christianity in Europe led by a group known as “The Mystics.”Don’t let that title mislead you. They weren’t wizards with black, long-sleeved robes and tall pointed hats embellished with moons and stars. Don’t picture Gandalf or some old man bent over a dusty tome reciting an incantation. The Mystics weren’t magicians. They were Christians who thought a vital part of the Faith had been left behind by the academic pursuits of the Scholastics. They aimed to reclaim it.Think of the Medieval Christian mystics this way; if the Scholastics sought to synthesize faith and reason, to give a rational base for the Christian faith, the Mystics wanted such reason to be fervent. If Scholastics emphasized the head, Mystics emphasized the heart. They wanted there to be some heat added to the light the Scholastics shined on the Faith. They added adoration to analysis.The primary message of the Mystics was the call for Christians to maintain a deeply personal and intimate connection to God. For some, that still meant going through the sacraments we looked at in the last episode, but the goal was to experience the divine. This is why they were called Mystics; their movement = Mysticism. That experience of the divine was inexpressible—indescribable. No formula can be given to obtain it, and once felt, to adequately describe it. It’s a mystery, one the mystics thought believers ought to aim for; the essence of the soul’s communion with God.The word which best captures the activity of the mystics is devotion. While the Scholastics looked for evidence of God “out there” the Mystics looked within. Not for some internal divine essence, as the earlier Gnostics had or some later mystics would. Rather, they engaged in an inner quest to discover the presence of the Holy Spirit working to conform them to the image of Christ. Faith wasn’t merely an intellectual pursuit. Mystics wanted to FEEL their faith, or better, what their faith was fixed on. They relied more on experience than definitions.There’s a common misconception about the medieval mystics that they were all hermits; living in seclusion in some esoteric pursuit of the divine. That’s not the case. For the most part, they weren’t recluses. They lived in monastic communities.The Mystics drew a good part of their material from the 5^th C Church Father Augustine, who also furnished the Scholastics with their core ideas. It was Augustine who said, “You have made us for Yourself O God and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”While Mysticism and Scholasticism are often set over against each other as separate movements, the truth is, most of the Scholastics show a flavor of the mystical, just as the Mystics often show a surprising element of the rational. The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Scholastics; Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure.While Scholastic theology was developed in the cathedral schools and new universities, Mysticism grew up in convents and monasteries. Clair Vaux and St. Victor near Paris were the nurseries of medieval Mysticism. It was in the cloistered halls of monasteries that the passionate hymns of the Middle Ages were composed.The leading Mystics of this period were Bernard of Clair Vaux, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Joachim of Fiore. Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schoenau [Sker-naw] belong in a class by themselves.Bernard is considered one of the first medieval mystics, though he lived well before the flowering of Mysticism in the 13^th C. His writings reveal an intimate acquaintance with Scripture. One historian called him the religious genius of the 12^th C, the leader of his age, the greatest preacher Germany ever had. In matters of spiritual contemplation he was a new Augustine.Bernard maintained it was prayer and devotion that led to the knowledge of God rather than doctrinal disputes. It’s the saint rather than the scholar who understands God. Humility and love are the fundamental ethical priorities of theology. In other words, Bernard said, if our learning about God does not bring us nearer His moral makeup, it’s a false knowledge.Bernard reformed the community life of convents and monasteries. But he said the cloistered life, with its vigils and fastings, isn’t an end in itself; it’s but a means to develop the ...

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70-Sacramentalism

In this, the 70^th Episode of CS , we take a look at Sacramentalism; a mindset that dominated the religious landscape of late Medieval Christianity.The question that consumed Europeans of the Middle Ages was, “How can I be saved? What must I believe and do that will preserve my soul from the torments of hell?”Rome answered that with what’s called Sacramentalism.Now, let me be clear; the basic answer was, “Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.” But the Church went on to define what that trust looked like with a set of rules and required practices. Yes, people are saved by grace through faith, but that grace is received by special acts only authorized clergy may conduct. These acts were called “sacraments” from the word “sacred” meaning holy. But there was a specific flavor to the word sacrament that carried the idea of mystery. Precisely HOW the sacraments communicated grace was unknown, while that they did was a certainty. So while salvation was by grace, one had to go to the Church to get that grace. The sacraments were channels of grace and necessary food of the soul. They accompanied human life from the cradle to the grave. An infant was ushered into the world by the sacrament of Baptism while the dying were sent on their way out by the sacrament of Extreme Unction.While all the sacraments were important, the most essential were Baptism and the Eucharist.Baptism was thought to open the door to the Kingdom of Heaven by removing the stain of original sin. But that door to glory was only opened. The baptized needed to follow up their baptism as an infant with later sacraments like Confirmation, Marriage and others. So important was baptism, in an emergency, when an infant appeared to be in distress and a bishop wasn’t close enough to perform the rite, the Church allowed the nearest available pious person to baptize.The Lord’s Table, Communion, or as it’s referred to by some churches, the Eucharist, was the sacrament of grace by which people nourished and nurtured their spirits and progressed in sanctification.Besides these, other rites were called sacraments, but until the time of the Scholastics, there was little agreement as to the proper number. Before the Scholastics, the number of sacraments varied from four to twelve.Bernard of Clairvaux listed ten and including foot-washing and the ordaining or as it was called, “investiture” of bishops and abbots. Abelard named only five. A mystic theologian named Hugo of St. Victor also gave five but went on to suggested thirty possible means by which the Church dispensed special grace. Hugo divided the sacraments into three classes,—First were the sacraments necessary for salvation; Baptism and the Eucharist.Second were those which sanctified the worshipper and made spiritual progress possible. This includes holy water and the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday.A third class prepared the way for the other sacraments.Though Thomas Aquinas listed seven sacraments, he recognized some of the lesser rites as quasi-sacramental in character.The uncertainty concerning the number of the sacraments was a heritage from the Church Fathers. Augustine defined any sacred rite as a sacrament. In 1179, the Third Lateran Council used the term in a wide sense to include the investiture of bishops and burial. The Catholic Church today makes a distinction between certain sacred rites, called sacramentalia, and the seven sacraments. Aquinas gave as the reason for the proper number to be seven—saying that three is the number of Deity, four of creation, and seven represents union of God and man. A rather interesting “reason” for the supreme Scholastic to make since it sounds far more like the work of one of the Mystics.Following the inquisitive nature of the Scholastics however, ingenious and elaborate attempts were made to correlate the seven sacraments to all the areas of mankind’s spiritual need. They were understood as undoing the Fall and its effects.Seven corresponds to the seven classic virtues. Bonaventura allegorized the sacraments to a military career. He said the sacraments furnish grace for the spiritual struggle and strengthened the warrior on the various stages of his/her conflict. Baptism equips him on entering the conflict, confirmation encourages him in its progress, extreme unction helps him at the finish, the Eucharist and penance renew his strength, ordination

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72-Meanwhile, Back in the East

This episode is titled “Meanwhile, Back in the East” because before we dive into the next phase of church history in Europe, we need to catch up on what's happening to the East.The Mongol Empire of the 13^th and 14^th Cs occupied the largest contiguous land empire in history. Rising originally from the steppes of Central Asia and stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan; from Siberia in the north to Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Iranian plateau, and the Middle East. At its greatest extent it spanned 6000 miles and covered about 16% of the planet's total land area.Genghis Khan was a shamanist, but recognizing the need to unite the Mongol clans. He adopted a policy of religious toleration that remained official policy during his reign and that of his son Ogedai. Several of the tribes that formed the core of the Mongol horde were Christians in at least a cultural sense. The Keriats, Onguds and Uighurs owed the Christianization of their culture to the Eastern expansion of Christianity we’ve looked at in earlier episodes.It's important to insert a short parenthetical comment here. Knowing what devastation the Mongols wrought during the 13^th and 14^th Cs and the literal wagon-loads of blood they spilled, we have to be careful when we call these tribes Christian. They certainly weren't evangelical missionaries. Their faith was a highly-distorted Nestorian version of the Gospel that exercised little restraint on the barbaric rapaciousness that marked their conquests. Still, they called themselves ‘’Christians and their claimed allegiance to the Gospel had a huge impact on what happened in the Middle East.Genghis Khan’s son Tolui, married a Christian woman from the Keriat tribe. One of their sons was the Mongol ruler Hulegu. Another was the famous Kublai Khan, founder of the Yaun Dynasty in China. While Hulegu seems to have identified as a Christian, Kublai certainly favored Christians in his court. When Hulegu conquered Baghdad, the Islamic capital of the day, his Christian wife urged him to destroy the city's mosques but protect the churches. Her goal was to dismantle Islam in the region and hand it a permanent setback.The Mongols took control of the Caliph’s palace and gave it to Baghdad's Christian patriarch. It ended up being made into a grand church. With such obvious favor being shown Christians, many Mongols converted.Asian Christians who'd suffered under the tyranny and oppression of Islamic rule for generations began to look to the advancing Mongol army as deliverers. One writer lauded the genocidal Hulegu and his wife as great luminaries and zealous combatants for the Christian religion. Beleaguered Western Crusaders were stoked by reports of allies in the East doing noble battle with the Muslims. Some Crusaders even sent emissaries to try to link up with the Mongols and help them in their conquest of the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1260. The Mameluke victory at Ain Jalut over the Mongols was a major disappointment.Hulegu’s son married a Byzantine princess and he favored Christianity over both Buddhism and Islam. Over the next few decades the Mongols didn't persecute Muslims but they did impose what the Muslims felt was a heavy burden. They were no longer able to treat Christians living among them as a subject people they could extract heavy tolls and fines from. The Mongol attitude was that as long as everyone paid their taxes, they were free to practice whatever religion they wanted. So a huge source of wealth to Muslims was lost.Christians all across the Middle East took advantage of their newfound freedom and hoped things would stay that way indefinitely under a sympathetic Mongol rule. With Hulegu and his heirs in power, Christians began doing things that had been forbidden under Islam; like carrying the cross in public processions, drinking wine, and building churches where none had been permitted.Then, in 1268 in Baghdad, I aks you to pay close attention to. Maybe this will bring a little light to why there's such tremendous hatred on the part of certain elements within Islam towards Christians today; especially in that region of the world. The Christian Catholicos, the title of the archbishop, ordered a man drowned for converting from Christianity to Islam. Muslims were scandalized and rioted. Following Mongol policy, the rioting was brutally crushed. Christians took this as further evidence they were now the favored faith. But that favor was soon to turn against them.The Mongol leaders became increasingly aware that Islam, with its embrace of jihad in the extension of the Faith by the power of the sword, was much more compatible with their values than either Christianity or Buddhism. They began to drift towards Islam until 1295, when the new Khan, Mahmoud Gazahn, persecu...