“But the fact is these folks are saying the Crusades did not go “far enough.” Far enough in what? Blaspheming Christ? Disparaging the gospel? Promoting hatred? What would you like to see more of, exactly? What would be “far enough?”
James White
1.) First, we have to distinguish between Crusades. Some of them were noble ventures. Some of them (like the 4th crusade) were Banker inspired and disastrous, finding Christians fighting against Christians. Notice though, that James doesn’t distinguish.
2.) One can only hold that the Crusades blasphemed Christ if one does not believe in Just War Theory, or in defensive war. White seems to not know that the initial Crusades were fought in response to Mooselimb conquering of Christian lands and the abuse of those Christians on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The initial Crusades fall under “Just War Theory,” and were honoring to the Lord Christ as the weak and judicially innocent Christians were being protected by the Knights of Europe.
2.) White complains about “promoting hatred,” seeming not to realize that there is not a thing unbiblical about hatred that is Biblical. All Biblical hatred is, is the response to someone that is attacking and seeking to destroy what the Christian loves. Hatred then of evil, is the necessary and corresponding mindset to loving what is good. As such, there is nothing wrong in the least with promoting hatred if the hatred we are promoting is wrapped up in our love for the good, praiseworthy and beautiful. The simple example is found in our loving God. If we love God we will “hate that which is evil,” as Romans 13 explicitly teaches.
In the Crusades the Mooselimbs were seeking to snuff out the Christian presence in lands that had been for centuries previously Christian. It was good to hate those who intended to destroy Christendom.
3.) Exactly, I would have liked to see more Islamic lands conquered by the sword for Christ. I would have liked to see the Mooselimb threat extinguished.
4.) Far enough would be seeing the nations covered with the Kingdom of Christ as the waters cover the sea.
5.) When the Crusader Knight Godfrey of Bouillon captured Jerusalem in the First Crusade they offered to make him king. He refused and said. “I will not wear a crown of gold in the city where Our Lord Jesus Christ wore a crown of thorns.” James White considers this blasphemous? In the Dr. James White quote above White puts on display is Anabaptist credentials. Either that or Dr. White has been educated and marinated in the soup of Enlightenment humanism and so his worldview is what it is.
James White and I really hold to two vastly different Christianities.
The most genuine objection against medieval crusades was the way they became a way for the Roman papacy to aggrandize itself, so that it eventually was even able to call “crusades” to crush the Czech Reformers (the Hussites).
The Eastern Orthodox civilization never knew any official “crusade” ideology, as understood by medieval Latins, but that did not mean that they would not be able to find enough motivation to fight the Muslims.
… Yes … that is why we must distinguish.
I see the deservedly infamous Fourth Crusade as the nearest historical equivalent to the way the German Nazis squandered the goodwill they had earned from Western right-wingers with their anti-Bolshevik struggle, by making the fight against Judaic Communism a PRETEXT for brazenly immoral land-grab from Christian Slavic peoples (the Lebensraum project).
Like the crusaders in 1204 were meant to be on their way to fight the Muslims, but ended up stealing the lands of Eastern Orthodox people instead, the “crusaders” of Operation Barbarossa did not merely intend to fight Communism, but also to steal the lands of Eastern Orthodox people.
“Britain falsely claims that Hitler’s Germany was intent on world domination. This is a bit rich coming from a country that had invaded over 202 of the world’s 221 nations. p. 20. Because Hitler’s many peace offers were vetoed by the Allies, Poland ended up occupied by the Soviets, as were 20 nations ceded to the USSR in February 1945. The argument that the war was started to guarantee the independence of Poland is clearly seen for the falsity it is. Poland merely provided the excuse for the destruction of the German trade competitor, the enrichment of shareholders who had invested in the banking and armaments industries, and the biggest land grab since ‘the golden horde’ of Genghis Khan had swept through Russia and much of Europe. … Such was the catastrophe that fell upon Europe because in October 1939 Westminster refused to negotiate a solution that required only the frontier security of the Reich. p. 21. Upon the defeat of Hitler’s democratic Germany, 21 European nations were surrendered to the murderous and unelected Soviet regime. The signatures on the Yalta agreement … were those of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Britain’s unelected half-American premier Winston Churchill, and the ill and near to death U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Clearly, the Allied claim to have fought the war in defense of democracy [or the rights of self-determination] doesn’t hold water.” p. 46.
Mike Walsh, ‘Life in the Reich: Hitler’s Germany 1933-1945’
Spare me from this cult of innocently martyred St. Adolf.