Holy Envy

How can contemporary Protestants best appreciate their medieval brethren?

Medieval Christianity is almost always a tough sell to our mostly evangelical undergraduates at Bethel. By this time next week in our January session of Christianity and Western Culture, we’ll have gone through the Renaissance, Reformations, and Scientific Revolution, and I suspect our students will be feeling much more at home than they did last week, when they heard us talk about the Middle Ages. “I don’t deny that the terrain of the medieval church seems alien to most of us,” admits former Bethel Seminary professor Chris Armstrong:

Before us, relics peer out from within gilded boxes, and the devout approach them as conduits to divine power. Above us, saints hover supernaturally, and the earthbound plead for their intercession. At the high altar, the priest, with his back to the congregation, performs an elaborate sacred drama, elevating the bread and wine and speaking the Words of Institution while the devout await the ringing of the bell, gazing at those elements and seeing the literal body and blood of Christ. Within the confessional, the penitent kneels, receives absolution, and hears the works of satisfaction she must perform for her soul’s sake. And in cathedrals, cloisters, and cow pastures, mitered bishops pronounce on doctrine, tonsured monks sing psalms, and ragged peasants supplicate Mary with weeping.

Undoubtedly, we’re far removed from contemporary worship spaces; there’s not an electric guitar, pre-packaged self-serve communion cup, fashionably dressed preacher, or coffee bar to be seen. Yet that quotation comes a book entitled Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians. Chris goes on to suggest that if we’re wary of medieval Christianity, it may say more about us than it does about those sisters and brothers in Christ.

So last week I tried to encourage students to keep an open mind. In a course whose theme verses are Hebrews 12:1-2, they should prepare themselves to be surrounded by a cloud of medieval witnesses who can point them to Jesus. A vision from the German mystic Hildegard of Bingen features Jesus as a figure in “a serene light… blazing with a glowing fire,” stripping sin away from humans as he exhorts them to “cast off the old injustice, and put on the new sanctity.” One of the Arthur legends reminds us that even the most virtuous followers of Jesus fall short, receive undeserved forgiveness, and can grow in holiness through struggle. Duccio’s Maestà Altarpiece places Mary at its center and surrounds her with saints… almost all of whom gaze reverently at the Christ child seated on the Madonna’s lap.

If nojt inspiration, the kind of study we do in CWC at least hones empathy, a skill that my students will need throughout our lives, as they interact with people who come from different cultures and hold different beliefs, values, and assumptions.

That shouldn’t be so hard in a class where mostly Western Christians study other Western Christians. But there’s enough of a cultural, social, and religious divide between the Middle Ages and today that I shared some advice from the 20th century Swedish theologian Kristen Stendahl: Don’t compare the best of your religion to the worst of another.