02 - The Inquisition And Slavery By Pastor Jeff Wickwire Notes

KNOW THE TRUTH

Part 2

The Inquisition and Slavery

The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy. It started in 12th-century France to combat cultic teaching.

Now, before we go further let's go back a bit to the birth of the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic tradition holds that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ. They point to the New Testament records which document Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the twelve Apostles, and his instructions to them to continue his work.

The Catholic Church teaches that the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the Day of Pentecost signaled the beginning of the public ministry of the Church. They further teach that Peter was Rome's first bishop and the consecrator of a man named Linus as its next bishop, thus starting the line which includes the current pontiff, Pope Francis.

They use the Scripture where Jesus said to Peter, "Upon this rock I will build my church..." (Matthew 16:18). The Catholic Church contends that "the rock" Jesus referred to was Peter, while we know that it was actually Peter's revelation that Jesus was the Christ.

Their belief in Peter as the rock is called the Petrine succession. The Catholic Church considers the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, to be the successor to Saint Peter.

Now, the New Testament church structure consisting of plural presbyters/bishops persisted in Rome until the mid-2nd century, when the structure of a SINGLE BISHOP with plural presbyters was adopted.

The power and influence of one single pope grew over time. When Leo III crowned Charlemagne in the year 800 A.D., he established the precedent that, in the West, no man would be emperor without being crowned by a pope.

Even as late as 1870, the proclamation of papal infallibility for rare occasions when the pope speaks ex cathedra was made—literally "from the chair (of Saint Peter)" the pope can issue a formal definition of faith or morals. In other words, he can be inerrant.

This level of power was NEVER INTENDED by The Lord! And this is how things reached the place that the Roman pope could issue orders that "heretics" could be arrested, confined, tortured, or even killed in order to preserve Catholic doctrine!

Beginning in the 1250s INQUISITORS were chosen, generally from members of the Dominican Order (a branch of the Roman Catholic Church). It was the inquisitor's job to question and punish possible heretics.

In the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the concept and scope of the Inquisition was significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation. The Inquisition's geographical scope was eventually expanded to other European countries, resulting in the worst of them all--the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.

When a suspect was convicted of unrepentant heresy, the inquisitorial tribunal was required by law to hand the person over to the secular authorities for final sentencing, at which point the penalty would be determined by a magistrate.

The possible punishments included death by burning, although imprisonment for life or banishment would usually be used. By 1256 inquisitors were given absolution if they used instruments of torture.

Amazingly, most inquisitors were friars who taught theology and/or law in the universities! They judged heresy along with church bishops, and used the local secular authorities to establish a tribunal to prosecute heretics.

After 1200, a Grand Inquisitor headed each Inquisition. Grand Inquisitions persisted until the mid 19th century. The Grand Inquisitor was one of the most feared men on the planet in those days!

For the record, there were "witch trials" the church involved itself in. The prosecution of witchcraft generally become more prominent throughout the late medieval and Renaissance era.

The witch trials were perhaps driven partly by the upheavals of the era, like the Black Death, Hundred Years War, and a gradual cooling of the climate which modern scientists call the Little Ice Age (between about the 15th and 19th centuries).

Witches were sometimes blamed for these things. In the year 1484, one Pope, Innocent VIII, called for drastic measures against magicians and witches in Germany.

For a bit of humor, one piece of historical writing from a religious leader of that time is entitled, "How they (witches) Raise and Stir up Hailstorms and Tempests, and Cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts."

It reads, "Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that, just as easily as they raise hailstorms, so can they cause lightning and storms at sea; and so no doubt at all remains on these points."

As already stated, the worst of all the Inquisitions were the Portugese and Spanish Inquisitions of the late Middle Ages. In some parts of Spain towards the end of the 14th century, a wave of violent anti-Semitism broke out, encouraged by the preaching of a man named Ferrand Martinez.

Hundreds of Jews were killed as a result, and the local synagogue was completely destroyed. The number of Jews killed was also high in other cities, such as Córdoba, Valencia and Barcelona.

One of the consequences of these widespread killings was the mass conversion of thousands of surviving Jews to Catholicism in order to save their own lives.

During this time, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I (the same duo that blessed and financed Christopher Columbus) established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478.

In contrast to the previous inquisitions, it operated completely under royal Christian authority, and was staffed by clergy. It operated in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories.

It primarily targeted forced converts from Islam and from Judaism. Both groups came under suspicion of either continuing to adhere to their old religion or of having fallen back into it.

In 1492, the same year as the discovery of America, all Jews who had not converted were expelled from Spain, and those who remained became subject to the dreaded Inquisition.

Now, was the Inquisition wrong? Yes! Jesus never called the church to force people into converting through violence or physical threat of any kind. So the Inquisition was a total departure from the clear teaching of Scripture!

But let's look at some numbers and see if President Obama's moral equivalency of Christianity to Islamic Jihad holds true.

Beginning in the 19th century, historians have gradually compiled statistics drawn from the surviving court records, from which estimates have been calculated by adjusting the recorded number of convictions by the average rate of document loss for each time period.

One estimate is that the total number of people put on trial by inquisitorial courts throughout their entire history was approximately 150,000, of which about 3,000 were executed---about two percent of the number of people put on trial.

Another group studied the records of the Spanish Inquisition, which list 44,674 cases of which 826 resulted in executions in person and 778 in effigy (a straw dummy was burned in place of the person). One more historian estimated there were 1000 executions between 1530–1630 and 250 between 1630–1730.

While even one death over the issue of heresy is tragic, these numbers clearly reveal that they don't come even remotely close to the massive number of deaths perpetrated in the name of Islamic Jihad.

Furthermore, both the Crusades and the Inquisitions came and went as unfortunate interludes in an otherwise noble and beneficial Christian history.

And most importantly of all, any violence perpetrated by someone claiming to act in the name of Christ went directly against the teachings of the Founder of Christianity--Jesus Christ. Jesus was a peace-loving, compassionate, non-violent man who commanded His disciples to put down their swords and love their enemies.

On the other hand, the followers of Islam who persecuted, threatened, maimed and killed, leaving a trail of violence and bloodshed across the face of history up to this very day, could easily place the blame for their violence on the teachings of the founder of Islam, Muhammad, who commanded such things!

When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then perhaps Stalin, or Mao. Historians credit these 20th-century totalitarians as being the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. Yet, the stark truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and likely surpasses all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.

Mike Konrad writes in the American Thinker: "The enormity of the slaughters of the "religion of peace" are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none."

Enough said! Now, onto slavery.

What is mostly absent whenever the Crusades, the Inquisition, and slavery are used as indictments of Christianity is any reference to the way Christianity also ultimately brought about the dissolution of these very things.

Slavery, for example, was outlawed in the U.S. in 1865, largely due to the influence of the Christian gospel. British politician and Christian William Wilberforce virtually single-handedly led the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

The Jim Crow laws forcing segregation in the south (also mentioned by President Obama) ended officially over a half-century ago due to the influence of Christian leaders.

Yet, indentured servitude continues unabated, almost exclusively among some Islamic groups in the Middle East and Africa! Muslim women remain the most enslaved in Islam. Christian countries, in contrast, were the first to legally end the sin of the slave trade, and the first to outlaw slavery’s continuance.

So despite its worst and most damning sins, Christianity has proven to be an indisputable, beneficial force throughout history that has brought about unquestioned improvement of the human condition.

In closing, two questions come to mind: one, should your life be defined by your very worst moments? And two: do you think the world would be a better place had Christianity never existed?

I’ll even add a third: given that neither you as an individual nor the church as an institution is perfect, does that mean we or it are rendered ineligible to fight for just causes?

Are we morally disqualified to get “on our high horse” in the face of children being buried alive or gays being thrown off roofs or women being beheaded after having been raped?

LET'S PRAY