Lessons from the Middle Ages

Surprisingly, things happened before the Reformation

I've just finished volume 2 of Nick Needham's magnum opus 2000 Years of Christ's Power. If you’re not familiar with the set, these books are a wonderfully clear and impressively wide-ranging overview of church history (albeit a male-dominated one), with primary source extracts at the end of each chapter as an added bonus.

Volume 2 covers that bit of history we don’t talk about much, i.e. the bit that wasn’t the early church or the Reformation. As a Reformed evangelical, I’ve been implicitly taught to ignore these 900 years. But I shouldn’t. And I’m thankful for Needham’s encouragement not to.

The reality is that there are powerful lessons to learn from all periods of church history. As we look to the past, we see visible demonstrations of the Lord's work - stories to encourage us, teach us, guide us, challenge us and inspire us.

And I've come to appreciate the Middle Ages as a period where we see some of those lessons really clearly. Here are just three examples.

1) Christ’s church is safe

There are loads of kings and popes in this book. Sometimes, there are three popes at once (which isn’t ideal). I couldn’t keep track of all the names, let alone all of the political machinations, changing alliances and mutual excommunications. Kings attempted to manipulate popes for political gain, and vice versa. Then there’s the Crusades, the East-West bitterness and miscellaneous theological nonsense.

Yet here’s the glorious truth: Christ's church survived. And ultimately grew! He will build his church. Nothing can stop that. 

And that means we don’t need to panic now, when we see concerning developments in our culture or in our churches. Of course, there are things we need to take seriously. But when we remember what the church has faced in the past, we can press on with confidence. And we can be free to make disciples in our own generation, without being immobilised by fear.

He will build his church. We don’t need to panic.

2) Human history is complicated

Needham helpfully summarises the Reformation as “the best elements of Western medieval Christianity trying to correct the worst elements.” So as we look back from Luther, we see centuries of goodness and rubbish mingled together. Things aren’t black-and-white. They’re messy and complicated.

Of course, history is never black-and-white. It’s always complicated, because humans are complicated. But we prefer history when it’s straightforward, and it’s easier to pretend things are straightforward when you’re dealing with the early church battles for orthodoxy or the triumphs of the Reformation movement. You know who’s on which side. Simple.

But it’s not so easy to draw neat distinctions when you’re working through the awkward centuries of the Middle Ages.

And that’s an important reminder for us. Because if history is complicated, maybe the present is as well? It’s all too easy in our instant consumer age to rush into simplistic analysis and assessments, and to construct superficial narratives. But Christ’s power working through human weakness will always be messy and complex. And yet, gloriously, we can trust him to still build his church (see point 1 above).

3) Other people are Christians too

This volume covers an admirable range of history, both temporally and geographically. Christ has been at work at many times, in many places and in many ways. And that’s a humbling thing to remember.

If we close our eyes and think of a Christian, we probably think of someone like us. We think of someone who shares our theology and our churchmanship and our culture, and possibly our pork pie preferences.

But 21st-century Reformed Anglo-Welsh pro-pie evangelicalism is just a small mark on the timeline of Christ’s power. His work is much bigger than us. And a journey to the Middle Ages is a wonderful way of stepping outside our parochialism and seeing this bigger picture.

And in this way, church history teaches us humility, as we remember many have gone before us and as we realise that we (probably) haven’t got everything right. And it teaches us a deeper Christ-centred generosity, as we learn to be excited about how the Lord is working in other places, at other times, through other people.

For these reasons and others, I’m thankful for Nick Needham’s whistle-stop, pope-filled guided tour of the Middle Ages. And I’d encourage you to book a place on this tour (i.e. buy the book) to experience it for yourself.

Shopping list

The four-volume set of 2000 Years of Christ’s Power is currently half price at 10ofThose. Volume 2 is available individually from all good Christian bookshops, and various bad bookshops too.