Okay, I want to review just a little bit here as we get started, just to kind of, again, set what we've been talking about in context. So we talked about the ancient church from 5 BC to AD 590. Approximately 5 BC Christ was born. In 590, Gregory I, Gregory the Great, is elected as the Bishop of Rome. Now we'll just break this down. We're essentially taking three sections per major period. We talked about Jesus and the Apostles, the Church is born, Christ is born, and then the Church is born in the day of Pentecost. And that really lasts till about the destruction of the temple in AD 70. And at that time, we see the church being forced out on their own and being forced out to kind of survive on their own. And we really see the church take off in AD 70 in this time period called the Catholic Church. Now, this is not Catholic as we would understand the Roman Catholic Church. This is Catholic as in universal. So at this time, the church was They were coming together as one body. And that's what marks this period really up until the time of Constantine in 313. Constantine becomes the emperor, and that really starts this time we call the Christian Roman Empire from 313 to 590. Constantine made Christianity legal. Prior to him, in this time period, Christians were being persecuted for their faith. Constantine comes along, he makes Christianity legal. Another Roman emperor in about 390 comes along and he actually makes Christianity the state religion. And that's why we call this time period the Christian Roman Empire. That should strike you as strange language because really the whole empire was considered Christian. That was the religion of the empire. That leads us up to 590. In 590, I've said, Gregory I is elected. And with his election, it really brings in a new era of the church, this medieval church period. The first kind of subset of the medieval church is this age of darkness. And we often refer to this time period as the Dark Ages. There are reasons for that, cultural, political reasons. I call this the age of darkness for religious reasons, because of what the church is starting, what's starting to happen in the church at this time. So that's Gregory from 590 to about 1054. In 1054, the church splits, the East and the West. They finally split in 1054. From 1054 to 1294, we see this age of papal power. We talked about this last week, but we see the rise of the church, really the papacy during this time period with Innocent III. You remember him from last time? How he has all this power and is exerting all this power. And Innocent III says, Not only do I have power over the whole church, which is what Gregory was asserting in 590, Innocent comes along about in the middle of this time period, and he says, I have power over the whole world. So we really see the church acquire all this pale power. We see the Crusades, the military power of the church. We saw the intellectual power with scholasticism. Today, we get to the age of decline and reform, 1294 to 1517. Next week, we're going to pick up with the Reformation Church, 1517. Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door, the castle door, to 1648. What happened in 1648? Does anyone remember? 1648 is the end of the Thirty Years' War. I heard someone mumbling that. It's the end of the Thirty Years' War, the war between Protestants and Catholics. And then, that really ushers in the modern period from 1648 to the present. So, today we're covering Church History Lesson 7 from the Medieval Church, Part 3. And again, this is called the age of decline and reform. And we're going to see why that's the case here throughout the lesson. Now, just to remind you, just to put this in perspective, this is a little over 200 years of history we're covering today. That's essentially the time period that our country has been a nation, that we've been independent from our friends across the pond. So this is a long period of time. We're covering highlights here. to give you an overview of what's happening in the church. One historian calls this period Medieval Sunset and Modern Sunrise. Medieval Sunset and Modern Sunrise. I think it's a good description because it marks, in 1294, is the beginning of the papacy of a guy named Boniface VIII in 1294. And with Boniface, we start to see the papacy decline. pretty drastically. And we start to see all this reform happening in the church, all the way up until finally Martin Luther comes and really starts what we know as Protestantism in 1517. So last time you remember, the papacy was at its height in papal power. And one historian I read says this, he says, quote, human systems rise and thrive and then fall because the process of time have their own built-in judgment." I thought that was a really insightful comment. Of course, he leaves out God in that equation. We would say God is orchestrating and providentially guiding history. But that's what happened to the church during this time. It starts to decline. Four areas I want to look at today that show the decline and reform of the church. Four areas, political, ecclesiastical, intellectual, and cultural. So number one, political. I think it's number 19 on your handout. Is it 19? Okay, 19, number one. Political. So, Christendom, which was the harmony of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church. It's what we call Christendom, which really started back with Constantine in 313. That political atmosphere and climate really came under attack starting in roughly 1294. What started to happen is People started to think in terms of church and state as separate entities, not as one in Christendom. And so people started to distinguish between secular power, or worldly power, and religious power, and the rights that each power has and each authority has in their own domain. Because what started to happen, letter B, is you started to see the rise of nation-states. We would know today, when we think of Europe today, we think of France and Spain and Germany, those nations. This time period is when those nations are starting to be formed as what we know them today. So they're not just city-states no longer. but they encompass more, they encompass a nation, a larger area of people. And how the nation states arose, if you think about it, is what would happen is a king and his military would come in and they'd say, I'm going to protect you people in exchange for money to help me protect you. So the king would come in and say, you're going to be protected to carry out business and to live peaceably in exchange for taxes, to support the government, to protect you. Basically, a lot of what we do today in the United States. So with the rise of nation-states and with the separation of power between state and church in people's minds, we start to see the church declining from its height of power. The church, we're going to start to see here, can no longer rule over the world, as it did back in the prior period. So that just gives you a glimpse of what's happening politically during this time period, this approximately 200 years. But this is a church history class, not a world history class. We want to spend the bulk of our time here on what is happening within the church. What is happening ecclesiastically? Two significant events mark the decline of the papacy. Look on your handout. Number one, or letter A, is what we call the Babylonian captivity of the church. The Babylonian captivity of the papacy refers to a 72-year period in which The Pope was in a town in Southeast France, what is today Southeast France, called Avignon. Avignon, France. And that's where the Pope resided. That's why this is called the Babylonian captivity, because the Pope didn't reside in Rome, which he had for a thousand years. He resided now in Avignon. And in Avignon, seven consecutive Popes reside there, and they are all French. They're all French popes. And why this is significant, why this is important is because this wasn't just a geographical change. It wasn't just, okay, we're going to now have the pope reside in Avignon. This really signaled a huge change for the church because the church had resided in Rome. And what was so significant about Rome? Well, it was where Peter was buried. And it was where Leo I, back in the 5th century, said, I have authority based on apostolic succession from Peter. So Rome was significant religiously and also politically. It was basically the symbolic seat of the Holy Roman Empire. So this was a huge shift to Avignon. That's why we call it the Babylonian captivity of the papacy. What happened? How did this happen? Well, what happened was a power play broke out between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair of France. Remember, we've talked about when the church starts to get all this power, there becomes a power play between the church and the state, right? And they're both jockeying for power. And up until this time, the church had more power. Innocent was asserting all the power. And Philip the fair comes along and he starts saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. No, you Boniface have power over the church, not the state. And so there's power play that happened. And what happened is Philip wanted to tax the clergy at a state level. And Philip didn't like that. Or he wanted to tax the clergy. And Boniface said, no, you can't do that. I want the money from the clergy. You can't have it. I want the money. And so Boniface eventually, through a lot of discussions, we're getting high level here, he eventually issued a papal bull, which is an official papal document, the Unum Sanctum. It's a really important document in the church that asserted this. Look at your handout. He said, quote, the true faith compels us to believe that there is one, holy, universal, apostolic church. Outside of her, there is no salvation. Both swords, the spiritual and the temporal, are in the church's power." So Boniface is trying to capture on what Innocent was saying and reassert his power over the world. And Philip obviously said no. Finally, people are starting to stand up to the church, to the papacy, because of this idea of nation-states, right? They're starting to stand up to the church. And he said, no, that's not right. He said, I want you to come to a council and we're going to talk about this. Well, Boniface didn't want to come, and so he got ready to excommunicate Philip. You remember? We saw this last time. Innocent having this power of excommunication and to interdict. He was going to excommunicate him. Philip got word of it and he sent a crew and they actually captured Boniface and they imprisoned him. Okay, so the Pope is now imprisoned by Philip. And he's actually in prison. He's an old guy. He's in his 80s, and he's dying. He doesn't know it at the time he's dying. Finally, some allies rescued Boniface from prison, but he died a month later. So we've got this problem of this power play between the state and the church. Well, the College of Cardinals eventually elected a Frenchman. There was a guy that came after Boniface. He only lasted eight months. And then they eventually elected a Frenchman, Clement V in 1305. And what Clement did is he never set foot in Rome. He resided in Avignon. So he was the first Pope to stay in Avignon. He was a Frenchman and he resided there. So that's how it happened. That's how the church, the Pope, got to Avignon. Okay? That history of what I told you. And the reason why Clement stayed in Avignon is because he wanted to be at the bidding of the French. He didn't want to mess with them. Right? Philip had all this power and he said, I can't, I'm not going to win against him. I might as well be on his team. And so he stayed in Avignon and he's the first Pope to reside in Avignon. And then seven consecutive Popes come after that. So what are the results of the papacy being an avenue on this Babylonian captivity? Well, you have to understand a little about what is happening here economically, especially with the church. And I want to talk here just briefly about papal taxation. The church received income in a number of ways. A lot of ways. They received income from the papal estates. that they had, they had land. The church actually owned land. The church received tithes and offerings, which is how we receive income today. The only way the church received income today. Third, they had something called annates. So if you became a pastor, your first year salary went to the Pope. Fourthly, letter D, they had the right of purveyance, which was the payment of the pope's traveling expenses while in a certain area. So if the pope came to your town, you had to pay for his traveling expenses. But you got the pope to come, but you had to pay for his traveling expenses. They also had the right of spoil. Personal property of the upper clergy went to the pope upon death. So upper clergy, they died. Their property went to the papacy. Then you had something called Peter's Pence. If you heard of Peter's Pence, basically it was money paid by the laity to the Pope. There was basically a penny, Peter's Pence, taxed upon people owning land and it went to the Pope. Next, they received income from vacant offices. A priest isn't in an office. The income's coming to the papacy. And then they had numerous fees that they gave. So OK, so you can see here, with all these ways that the church is receiving money, people are starting to, they're starting, they don't like it. They're starting to react against the growing accumulation of wealth. Boniface, man, when he came in, when he was elected as Pope, he had this crown on his head that had more jewels than you would know what to do with. And so the papacy really was acquiring a lot of power, had a lot of wealth. So people started reacting against that. And with the rise of nationalism, with the rise of nation states, and with this idea of Babylonian captivity, the Pope residing in Avignon, people didn't like their money going to the papacy. Especially when their money went to the papacy, and then the papacy helped the French, who were fighting against the English. The English didn't want their money to go to the papacy than to get their money back at them in terms of bloodshed. So the English certainly didn't want their money going to the papacy because they would get it back in the form of death from the French. So there was that happening. The second kind of major thing that we see the papacy declining is this idea of papal schism or the Western schism. Not to be confused with the great schism in 1054. This is the schism in the West only. So what happened in the West is there was a schism where there were actually two or three popes residing at one time. What happened? How did this happen? Well, in 1377, Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome, but he died a year later. So there were seven consecutive popes in Avignon. And in 1377, Gregory said, fine, I'm going back to Rome. He got pressure to go back to Rome. He said, I'm going to do it. He went back to Rome. He died a year later. So the cardinals, the College of Cardinals, who were heavily weighted with French representatives, they elected a guy named Urban VI. only to appease a Roman mob that wanted an Italian to be Pope. Shortly after his election, though, what happened is that the College of Cardinals said, wait, wait a minute. We got the wrong guy here. This guy is lousy. And so they said, they told the people, they said, we made a mistake. We need to elect a new Pope. And so the College of Cardinals elected a new pope. They elected Clement VII. And Clement moved his papacy back to Avignon. So Urban Now, rules from Rome, he said, no, I'm still the pope. So he rules from Rome. Clement rules from Avignon, which forced the people of Europe to choose sides. So we have a pope in Rome. We have a pope in Avignon, France. That's how we got to this great schism. In 1409, the College of Cardinals, they met to resolve this issue. The Council of Pisa, they elected a new guy named Alexander V. They said, Clement, you're done. Urban, you're done. We elect Alexander. Do you think Urban and Clement wanted to resign? No, they didn't. They didn't resign. And so they said, we're the pope. I'm the pope, Clement said. Urban said, I'm the pope. And Alexander said, no, I'm the pope. So now you have three popes. So there was a lot of confusion and it was forcing the people to choose sides. It really was. And there's a lot of politics involved in this, as you can probably tell. Finally, the Council of Constance met. And the council, what's interesting about the council is it represented not just bishops, but it represented laity as well. And so essentially what happened is one nation cast a vote for who is the rightful pope. And that's how they determined who the rightful pope was. And they eventually elected a guy named Martin V, and he ended the schism. So the other three popes, Alexander, Clement, and Urban, they eventually resigned, or they just gave up fighting that they're still the rightful pope. So the Council of Constance kind of ends this schism of the papacy. So this council elected a pope. In 1460, Pope Pius II issued a papal bull condemning any future councils. No, I don't like councils electing popes. I want the College of Cardinals to elect popes. I'll get to why this is important in a minute. Now, this was not the first time there were two popes in Rome. We haven't talked, two popes in the church, we haven't talked about it. But in the 11th century, there was actually two popes. But the difference here is that in the 11th century, the pope was elected by the church and the state. What caused the election of Clement and Urban was the College of Cardinals. The church elected two popes. That's the major difference here. That's why it's called the schism, rather than before in the 11th century when there were two popes elected by the church and the state. So the church, they get together at the Council of Constance. As a representative of each nation, they elect Martin V. The schism has ended. So what are the results of the papal schism? Well, the papal schism obviously brought serious question about authority in the church. Authority in the church was huge. Who has more power, the pope or the council? That was the essential question being asked. Who has more power? And this idea of conciliarism, this conciliar movement, conciliar is the word for council. It was the idea that we need to get a council that elects a pope. Because otherwise, it's just going to be the pope's going to elect the College of Cardinals who elect the pope. There's going to be no checks and balances on the power. And so conciliarism, they wanted to say that, hey, the pope has executive power, but the council is what elects the pope. So think about it in terms of the United States. The president has executive power only, but not judicial or legislative power. That's kind of what the church was going for until the pope said, with Pope Pius VII in 416, no, we're not doing councils. No, we're going to keep up the College of Cardinals. So it didn't work. Eventually, the Pope, again, gained more and more power, and this lasted until the 16th century, and this is why the Reformation comes, the Protestant Reformation. It's why it's so huge. So, number four on your handout there. With the corruption of power, people began to think in terms of national churches, churches located in a nation, not a worldwide church residing in one man, but national churches, churches governed by representative bodies. And really, the Reformation became inevitable after these two events, the decline of the church. That's what's happening. Now, there are also guys coming along and trying to reform. We mentioned a couple groups last time, the Cathars and the Waldensians. Those weren't really Protestant reformers because they didn't believe. They still were holding a Roman's view of salvation, a Roman Catholic view, which wasn't around at that time, but they were holding to that view of salvation, the church's view of salvation. So these reformers come along, and these guys are, we could call them internal reformers. They weren't external, they were in the church, and they're trying to reform the church from inside. And this is what we see the reformers doing, Luther and Calvin, later on. They're from within the church, and they're trying to bring change from within, not from without. The first guy was John Wycliffe. You heard of John Wycliffe? Everyone heard of Wycliffe? Wycliffe Bible translators? Wycliffe, now if you look at his dates there, 1329 to 1384, he is living right smack in the time period of the Babylonian captivity and the end of the Papal Schism. And he's basically, he gets fed up with what's going on. John Wycliffe. He was a professor at Oxford University in England. Wycliffe, as you probably know, translated most of the Latin Vulgate into English. Again, that was unheard of. To translate the Bible into the common tongue? That was a radical idea during this time. Hugely radical idea. Eventually, the church forced him to retire because of his heretical views. He started a group of lay preachers known as the Lollards, which actually means murmurs. So if your kid is ever mumbling, you can say, hey, stop lollarding. No, just kidding. They have no clue what you're talking about. But it would be a good time to bring in church history. That's the Lollards. So they carry on Wycliffe's ideas. And they really last until the Anglican Reformation in the 17th century. The Lollards do. What happened with Wycliffe is in 1428, about 30 years after he died, his body was exhumed and burned, and his ashes were thrown into the sea. What were his beliefs? Well, Christ, not the Pope, was the head of the church. The scriptures are the sole authority for believers. Thus the reason to translate it into the common tongue. He opposed the church on their accumulation of wealth and property and the sale of indulgences. And he denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. And that was a big deal because if you were to withhold communion from someone, that would be to withhold salvation from someone. because that's the way the church believed that you were saved by receiving the sacraments that your sins were atoned for, by receiving baptism and the ongoing rite of communion. And so it was huge to deny the doctrine of transubstantiation. Next, there's John Huss. John Huss, he picks up Wycliffe's ideas. He's a priest in Bohemia. He's a professor at the University of Prague. He lived in what is today modern-day the Czech Republic. That's where John was, it's Bohemia. Eventually he was burned at the stake by the Council of Constance. So the same council that elected Martin V also said that Haas is a heretic and they burned him. Part of the belief, similar to Wycliffe, he defined the church by Christ-like living rather than the sacraments. He opposed the sale of indulgences and the veneration of images. The scriptures are the sole authority for the believer. So we start to see here the beginnings of reformation in the church. So we see the political decline and reform. We see the ecclesiastical decline and reform. Thirdly, let's look at the intellectual decline and reform. We could also call this theological or philosophical. And we want to look here at this idea of mysticism. Now, scholasticism, which we looked at last time, it began to decline in this period. And something took its place. What took its place is mysticism. So what we see here is we see the pendulum swinging. Do you remember scholasticism placed a huge emphasis on reasoning? They wanted to provide rational arguments for the Christian faith. And some of them maybe even elevated reason too far. Of course, what do we see? We see the pendulum swing. And I would argue too far, but it swings all the way to the other side. So it goes from head to heart. This isn't anything new. We see it in our day. The pendulum swinging between head, the intellect, and heart, the emotions. That's what happened with mysticism. Mysticism, we could define a lot of ways. It's a confusing topic because it's a movement. It's not a defined group. It's a movement. It was a movement, and today it's a movement. If you know anything about the church today, mysticism is in the church today as well. So what mysticism does is it seeks a direct contact with God through extra rational ways rather than through religious practices. And so this desire to became strong during this time with, you know, the church was so external. There was all this pomp and circumstance. And people said, no, no, true religion is not in that. True religion is in the heart. It's in my personal communion with God. You see, that's what the mystics were saying. What are the causes of mysticism? Scholasticism contributed to mysticism because it emphasized reason over the emotions. So it was a reaction. And secondly, the movement was a reaction to protest against the troubling times of the church. So we see prominent mystics. Number one, Bernard of Clairvaux. He lived during the last period, but I want to mention him here. He's a mystic. He is so important in the church. He was a noted opponent of Peter Abelard. Now, Peter Abelard would say, he would say, nothing is to be believed until it is understood. Nothing is to be believed until it is understood. Do you see the scholastic mindset there? Bernard would say, God is known so far as He is loved. That's the mystic mindset. Bernard actually encouraged the Second Crusade, which we talked about last week. And he was an influential hymn writer. We sing one of his hymns today, O Sacred Head Not Wounded. It's one of Bernard's hymns. And an entire breed of canines is named after him. St. Bernard's. So Bernard is a big character in the church. Look what he says. This will give you a flavor for Bernard. Number four. Some seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge. That is curiosity. Some seek knowledge to be known by others. That is vanity. Some seek knowledge to serve. That is love." That's Bernard. There's a guy named Meister Eckhart. He sought union with God through mystical experiences. He's really credited with the founding of German mysticism. Mysticism was really predominant in what we would today call Germany, southern Germany. And he was so concerned with having this mystical experience with God that the church condemned him as a pantheist. Because it was almost like he wanted to become God. He wanted to experience God so much that he was himself God, or God in him was one. And that's kind of why the church thought he was pantheistic. That can be debated, whether he was or whether he was not. But that's what the church said. Thirdly, Catherine of Siena. She was a Dominican nun at age 18. She ministered to the victims of Black Death. The Black Death happened during this time. We were talking about that a couple of weeks ago. This is what we call the bubonic plague that really wiped out tons, millions and millions of people during this time. Catherine ministered to the people of Black Death. And she actually convinced Pope Gregory IX to end the Babylonian captivity. So you remember, Gregory IX, he's the last pope to reside in Avignon, and I'm going to go back to Rome. Guess who convinced him? Catherine. Catherine was one influence to convince him to return to Rome. Thomas Ocampus. You heard of him? Probably. He's famous for writing The Imitation of Christ. He's a member of the Brethren of the Common Life. Then there's Joan of Arc. You heard of her? Not to be confused with Joan of Arcadia, which is a TV show from 10 years ago, which is loosely based on Joan of Arc. But Joan of Arc helped in the Battle of Orleans during the Hundred Years War. At age 13, she claimed she heard voices from God. She was eventually condemned for witchcraft and burned at the stake. So during this time, we're not going to get into this, but we can spend a whole lesson on this, but the Inquisition was happening during this time, and many hundreds of thousands of people were condemned as witches during this time period of the church. And she was one of them that was condemned as a witch, burned at the stake. I've included for you some more prominent mystics, and here's the reason why. Mysticism did not start with Oral Roberts in the 20th century. This idea of hearing voices from God, it's been going on a long time. A long time. And so I've included that for you here. And I mentioned to you earlier, mysticism is in the church today, the church at large. We need to know how to interact with these people. Some of what they say is good. We're going to get to that in a minute, but some of it's not. I actually have a family member who's involved in forms of mysticism, and she pointed me to a book one time called Conversations with God. Have any of you heard that book? It's a series of books. I think the guy's name is John Neal. Is it John Neal? So he writes, but I said that to say that the book is widely popular, just in the broad cultural. So that's why I included those things, the chart for you, so you can look up those people if you're interested in further pursuing this. Oh man, we're running out of time here. We'll get through this. Evaluation of mysticism, positive. It brought a needed correction to the imbalance of scholasticism. But I would argue it probably went too far. But it did bring some balance. What are the negatives to mysticism? Well, number one, what happens is that you get these feelings, you get these personal encounters with God, and that's what trumps revelation. Or it's what trumps authority, either the church or the Bible or whatever you consider as authority. But that was a huge problem with these mystics. And that's even what's happening today. And then it also minimized doctrine, right? It's all personal. I have this personal experience with God. And we've talked about in evangelism class, how can you argue with a person's personal experience? It's extremely hard to argue with that. But usually, they will minimize doctrine. external truth. So we've seen political change and decline, reform and decline. We've seen ecclesiastical reform and decline, intellectual reform and decline, decline and reform. Now let's look at cultural. Now if you're familiar with world history, you know that there's a huge movement happening during this time period called the Renaissance. And the Renaissance really brings external reform to the church. We've talked about this a lot, external-internal reform. Wycliffe and Huss were internal reformers. They were of the church. The Renaissance puts pressure on the church from outside. The Renaissance marks the transition from the medieval world to the modern world. In fact, I was looking at my daughter's history book. Some of you used the story of the world by Susan Bower. Is that right? Am I getting that right? Anyway, some of you used that history book, and she marks the Middle Ages from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, okay? So the Renaissance is really kind of culturally the bringing in of the modern era. One historian defines the Renaissance, quote, as that era of cultural reorientation in which people substituted a modern, secular, individualistic view of life for the medieval, religious, and corporate approach to life. So we start to see an emphasis on the glory of man. Rather than the glory of God, we start to see a division between man's religious life and man's daily life. Have you ever wondered why people, even today, they can profess Christianity, but it's only a Sunday thing. It doesn't affect their whole life. I think some of that stems from the Renaissance. And it's what we are living in today, in a sense, in our culture. And also, the Renaissance produced really an interest in the world, an interest to explore. And during this time, obviously, what happens? Columbus sails the ocean blue and discovers the new world. A lot more we could say there, but this is really a church history class, so we don't want to spend too much time. This will put it in the framework of what's happening culturally. Second thing that's more relevant is Part of a subset of the Renaissance is humanism. And this is not secular humanism that we would say as emphasizing man and man being at the center of the universe. This is the study of humanities, or what we would call today the liberal arts. So Christians, theologians, started to rediscover the ancient past. They started to go back to the classics. We call this ad fontes, back to the sources. And this is what started to happen during this time. They would, for instance, they would read the Bible in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek. People weren't doing that before this time. They were reading it in Latin. So they went back to the original sources. And I think most of you know movable type. was invented in 1439, so during this time period, which made the distribution of these classic works very widespread. Two prominent advocates of humanism, of this humanistic outlook and worldview is John Roiklin. John, what he's famous for is promoting the study of Hebrew. He wrote a Hebrew grammar. Again, huge. Huge to do that during this time. And then finally Erasmus. You might think of Erasmus in a negative light if you know about church history, because you know Erasmus and Luther had a huge battle over the bondage of the will. Right? Thanks, Ethan. So Erasmus and Luther had this fight over the bondage of the will, but Erasmus actually did a lot of good. He did a lot of good. What did he do? Well, he attacked the church using satire. There's a guy that's doing that today. He's not attacking the church. He's attacking the world that he uses satire. I'm not going to mention his name, but pretty brilliant guy, Christian. But that's what Erasmus was doing. And he also published a Greek New Testament, which actually Luther ended up using in his studies of the Bible and when he translated the Bible. And Erasmus' version, you know a little about the King James Version? Erasmus' version can be called the Texas Receptus, which is what the King James Version is from. So that's a little about the cultural things happening. Decline and reform is what is happening in the church. And, you know, I was thinking about this. I missed a couple weeks ago. I was out of town. It would have been great to start the Reformation today just because yesterday was the 31st. But actually, I think today is a good day to end on the medieval period because it really leaves you wanting. If you see all the corruption in the church, there's got to be something that happens. And we see that. From hindsight, we see that it's called the Reformation. We're going to start that next week. That's why the Reformation is so important, so important for what's happening. All right, we're at about time.