@@philippbrogli779 well he had to use a popular reference to make a point and so picked Marvel films 🤣 tbh quite understandable, if you’re thinking only of Marvel Phase 1-3. Only good thing about Phase 4 might have been No Way Home, and from what we know, Phase 5 is going to be a tad bit worse. But comparing Church History to Marvel is honestly like comparing apples to dust.
Hey Gavin, I’m a Chinese college student, saved by our gracious Lord two years ago. I’ve always struggled to appreciate church history because I can’t help but think, “look at me, a Chinese, I’m such an outsider.” But I kept watching your videos anyways, drawn in by the excellent quality and educational nature of your content :) And the more I hear you share your insights as a doctor, the more it stirs me to want to worship our Lord for the works he has done and continues to do in our world. I can call church history my own Christian heritage! When you said in this video that “church history is our family album”, it moved me deeply, and your conclusion on how to apply this knowledge-evangelism-encouraged me all the more to keep sharing the gospel to my non-believing family. Thank you for your ministry!
The history of Christianity in China and Taiwan is exceedingly fascinating. Read about the Assyrian Church of the East, who actually founded many Churches in ancient China. Read about the aborigines who became Christian even before one Chinese person ever set foot in Taiwan. Unless, you intend to return to China. Then, ignorance is bliss. Stay safe! Don't read or think dangerous things.
Be assured you are not an outsider, Antonina. I have my own reasons for feeling that way, too, but I take comfort in my identity and belonging in Christ. Doesn't matter where you live or when you live, we are all one in Him! 💛
If your identity is primarily rooted in Christ, you are not an outsider. You are a member of the body of Christ. You are part of the largest and most successful movement in history.
Antonina, you are NOT an outsider. . . we are all outsiders from God, at the start. And East Asia is now the center of gravity for the gospel of Christ, with the many committed disciples of Jesus who live there or are from there. God is great!
As a Norwegian who has moved to Slovakia - an extra big thanks for this video! We have so many giants that has gone before us for the cause of Christ. It should inspire us. And the history should never be forgotten. Scandinavia needs prayers and more biblical voices to stand up, because its getting pretty bad in this part of Europe.
I am Egyptian sadly my land were a christian land that slowly loses it's faith in jesus. It turned to different religion and false gospel of works. I can't listen to this episode without feeling the passion those martyrs had and my prayer is this I want be a missionary in my country or wherever I live. Thanks brother for this episode.
Hey Dr. Ortlund. I am a huge fan of your content and am a missionary in Norway! Thank you for covering this seemingly forgotten area in church history. Please pray that God sends more biblically faithful missionaries to Norway. God knows we need it.
What can be done to help Norway? I've been praying for some good documentaries for youtube, but I don't have the talent for that kind of thing. Just prayer.
"There are no unimportant times" - really great reminder. I'm currently listening to this and eager to gain some context for the novel Kristin Lavransdatter which takes place in medieval Norway.
This, in my opinion, is what makes your channel stand out. You don't regurgitate narratives from other sources, you actually look at sources and develop insightful content that isn't found anywhere else. Thank you for the great work!
Thanks for your hard work! I'm from Finland. This has relevance to our church history also because it was from Sweden the gospel spread here. I love your point about how much God has done in church history and will be fascinating to know about it in the coming Kingdom.
Very educational. Being of Swedish descent I really enjoyed the lesson. I am the proud owner of our family Swedish Bible. It is a good reminder of those who have their lives so the Word is made available.
Hi from Sweden! Ortlund is a very Swedish name! Thanks for the video! There are major movements that have started by missionaries from Scandinavia all over the world since then. The ratio missionary per church members have been way higher here then in the US for example (don't recall the numbers) and at the same time we are the one of the most secularized nations today.
As a child in Africa, (my dads job took us there,) we had freinds who were Swedish missionaries, they had just been kicked out of Afghanistan! My brothers and i were freinds with their kids.
Watched the whole video. 100% worth your efforts to make this. I clicked your video after digging through RU-vid trying to find a video that didn’t just blame politics. Was very glad to find it
How I enjoy your love for history and listening to you tell the great stories! A few years ago my very old Aunt Faith showed me a genealogy she had done for her as a gift from her grandchildren. It showed our earliest recorded ancestor found in the baptism records of a church in what is now Norway in the 6th century. Later the Norwegians came to Orkney and thence to Scotland, and on down to my near ancestors who became Methodists. What I love is the lineage of faith, from the very first apostles sowing the holy seed across the Mediterranean, African, ancient Europe and Britain, and how the family of God in my heritage has persisted to my present day. Yesterday marked my 40th year as a Christian. And I have grandchildren who, though little, believe that God is good and that He is almighty. I pray Isaiah 59:21 upon them. What a delight and honor to serve the living, loving God Thank you, Gavin, for your work.
Thanks brother for your presentation! I´m a native Swede and live in Sweden. This was really encouragiing. May we pray to the one and living God that he will have mercy on Scandinavia ones again, because hedonism is running wild and it`s geting worse every year.
I am from TX but live in northern Wisconsin where most people have Scandinavian roots. Though my roots are British, I really think this subject would be great to teach to the ladies in our church to inspire them to appreciate church history and their spiritual forebears.
Great video. True story: studying the history of pagan Scandinavia and reading the Norse sagas was one of the things that led me to Christ. That being said, I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason so many missionaries were martyred is thanks to their cultural arrogance and desecration of sites and images sacred to the pagan Norse-maybe not so different from how missionaries often behaved in the Americas, for example. What missionaries interpreted as idols and demons and sorcery may just have been the earth-based and animistic aspects of Norse religion and culture.
Thank you so much for reading, researching, and posting about this! My husband has Scandinavian roots and we watched this together tonight. Thank you for telling the stories of the martyrs who brought the light into such dark places. Those stories move me too. We're excited to check out some more videos. God bless you, your family and ministry - Adam&Anne Hage ❤️🙏
Watched it till the end! thank you for bringing this story to light! I also recently read a book about William Gibson Sloan, a missionary to the Feroe Islands! He faced a lot of hardship and opposition and work was slow, but the Feroe Islands send out missionaries to many countries today, it's amazing what a blessing came through one person that was willing to go!
This Swedish Bapticostal really liked your video on this interesting topic!🇸🇪 I watched all of it, and I appreciate that you manage to both be nuanced and argue in a compelling way for what you believe.
Fantastic! I love learning church history. I’ve always been a history nerd and never really learned much about Scandinavia besides the obligatory Viking unit in school. I think the emotional response is understandable. The zeal of these missionaries and the courage of the martyrs is so moving and inspiring.
Well done, Gavin! Watched the whole thing. I'm currently reading Snorri Sturluson's "Prose Edda" which is just fascinating. The opening section is essentially a condensed version of Genesis 1-10 with, surprisingly, little deviation. It makes you wonder just how powerful of an apologetic and evangelical tool Genesis truly was for conversion, considering it reportedly still aids in missions and tribal conversions today.
Watched to the end. I'm a Lutheran of Swedish-American extract, so very much my family and cultural heritage in terms of Christianity, appreciate you taking the time to unpack all of this Dr. Ortlund!
Thanks for this interesting video, I found it after your interview with the Remnant Radio. As a missionary to Finland I would love to see a video summarising how the gospel originally spread here from Sweden. I wonder if there are many sources in English.
I always return to this video. I think its because I love history and love how you break down the witness to Christ that the historical record provides
Also, I consider posting a brief overview on how the Danes became Christians. There's a bunch of Danish literature about it that I'm reading for my theology degree here.
As an Orthodox Christian living in Sweden I found this video very interesting since many of the martyrs and missionaries you mentioned are considered saints in Orthodoxy as well.
Thanks a lot for this very interesting and encouraging video Gavin! Sweden need to hear the Gospel preached and sound Bible-believing/gospel-centered churches. Help us praying for this. By the way, I’m a pastor on Tjörn, Sweden's 7th largest island, and as far I have seen people are not blue 😁
Please write a book on this Gavin. I know it might not fit your plans, but if anyone could do this subject justice it would be you. After doing a paper on Japan and its martyrs this has been a special interest of mine and I hope (God willing) to write on Christian martyrdom for my Masters.
This came at a perfect time for me. I did an in-depth study of Norse myth this year and got a copy of Adam's book from watching your video. Thank you for putting this out there; it's a wonderful story and well worth telling.
I appreciated your bringing this history to life! I am also grateful for your pastoral heart and willingness to explore what lessons we can glean from the spread of the gospel in Scandinavia.
Very well-researched, fascinating account of the sacrifices made to bring the Gospel to Scandinavia. Heavily convicted me and nearly brought a tear to my eye several times-- awesome work, Gavin!
....Our old Norse beliefs quite clearly suggested the only way to sit at Odin's table involved your noble end facing your opponents in battle till death; no two arrows in your butt - dragged off half a mile from the battlefield... No - an axe between your eyes. They'd laugh at death and that sort of mentality, I think, lead straight to Christ as Jesus gave Himself to total destruction in a Roman crucifixion to render death obsolete... Only His bones were to remain intact Jesus Christ is always portrayed triumphantly on the cross in the archeology in Scandinavia; just taking the savage torture of the cross like a man - almost laughing. Olav Tryggvasson served in the military elite of the Byzantine empire - a sort of guard composed exclusively of northerners - a fair share of these vikings, as it is, included in it's ranks. Coming back to Norway he mercilessly spread the gospel by the sword - the habitual way to teach his countrymen, themselves mockers of death Our old medieval churches are empty now on Sundays... Everyone sits at home fearing their approaching end... Lord almighty, Jesus Christ stay with us! Lord... Help us. Teach us to treasure life - to treasure you, Jesus, and hate death, while laughing at it. Heartedly, to be sure... Kind regards Kim
Thanks Gavin. Fascinating and inspiring. Small geeky point: Slavic peoples were much further west than modern day Poland in the early middle ages. The Wikipedia article ' Drang nach Osten' covers the historic eastern movement of German speakers including the horrible consequences of the idea in recent centuries. God bless.
This is probably the only Christian channel I watch consistently (followed by Red Pen Logic I suppose). Your videos are absolutely interesting and I truly feel you reflect Christ in your behaviour online. I hope God uses this channel to edify and uplift more souls in the days to come. I would love it if you can do a video about the reformation in southern India or just how Christianity came to India in general. For starters, most Indian Christians believe the Apostle Thomas did missionary work here and died a martyr here as well.
This was amazing! However much time you spent researching this it was time well spent, I personally would love more content around the worldwide spread of Christianity. Maybe a series? 😁
I love these more obscure story-time videos you put out. They help me learn a lot about history in a way that is different than more academic perspectives. The Jan Huss one was similarly great for really understanding the context in which Luther and the Reformation grew out of.
This was so cool Gavin! Thank you for digging into this neglected area of church history. As someone with heritage from this area, it is cool to think of the possible family connections that came as a result of these things 🤔. Also, someone should write some books/make a TV show about missionaries in this area, no shortage of drama!
Thank you for this video. I think it’s important given the rise of neo-paganism and these recent “Viking” shows that largely treat the Church unfairly.
Dr. Ortlund, really loved this video (listened to it on Spotify)! Church history is so fascinating. I'm currently studying for my M. Div and thought Church history might be boring lol - it's turned out to be one of my favorite courses. Thanks so much for your work and ministry. Blessings!
Thanks for this! This is literally your family history, Dr. Ortlund. Someday visit the Cathedral in Uppsala. Also, if you ever visit Sweden, make sure you visit the Blue Church and the Bridgittine sisters in Vadstena.
Loved this! You could turn this into an entire series. With “forgotten” histories like this, I would never have been exposed unless someone like yourself digs into it. However niche it may be, if you cover enough niches, you could bring to light many areas of neglect. Very edifying.
Thank you so much for this video, Dr. Ortlund. The content of your channel never fails to surprise me and I like almost everything. Listening to this video I realised that I had unquestioningly accepted the popular story of the christianization of Scandinavia. Thanks for the new perspective!
This came at an interesting time for me. I've been doing research on germanic culture for a art project of mine. A surprise but a welcome one. Thanks Gavin!
As a Norwegian with a M.A. in History who studied Norwegian and Norse history at university and continues to do so privately, I would like to add a bit about the Norwegian perspective on the conversion. One interesting thing to note is that archeology does confirm Christian grave patterns in the 9th century. We also have a 10th century site believed to be a Church that is suspected to be built by King Håkon. The Sagas are the sources that talk about the conversion the most, and when they speak, such as Snorri's Heimskringla, they like to detail the violence of the Christians towards the pagan population in the conversion effort. Interestingly, there is very little scholarly scepticism towards these brutal accounts and they never truly question them, but there is every reason to be sceptical. You see, the Norse mindset during the Viking and Medieval age was one that held a high value of honour and shame. Being able to crush your opponents, brutally killing them and humiliating them was a sign that you were a strong and honourable man. Nobody could mess with you. You therefore gained honour (respect, fame) for being able to crush your enemies. If you were persecuted, tortured, killed etc. it was a sign that you were weak, which was shameful. Nobody would listen to a shameful man. Thus, for the Norsemen, when they portray the Christianisation, they liked to portray it in terms that would be seen as honourable to their culture. A powerful king crushing the great opposition from the pagan peasantry was a demonstration that Christianity was not only manly and honourable, but true. You can also see this in how the persecution of Christians in Norway is almost glossed over. When King Håkon Adalsteinfostre tried to convert Norway to Christianity in the 10th century, he met opposition from powerful pagan jarls. In Ågrip and Heimskringla it says that the churches Håkon had built were burned and the priests were killed. It is very brief and it does not mention it in great detail, but this is an account of persecution of Christians in Norway during pagan times. Remember, this is embarrassing for the Christian Norsemen to admit because it is a shameful portrayal of Christians as they didn't manage to fight back but were killed and the pagans got their way (which would be honourable in the minds of the Norsemen). Since this is an embarrassing account, it is a good reason to take it as authentic and to believe it to be true. The persecution of Christians in Norway probably was not that different than persecution in Sweden or Denmark. I know it's a bit of a wall of text, but I hope you found this helpful.
Great job, Dr. G-Dog! I was fascinated the whole time, and I agree that it is super important to learn the truth about all facets of church history and to honor the many martyrs who have gone before us. So encouraging!
Excellent video, thanks for the hard work. Thank God for faithful missionaries. I'm a current seminary student (mature-aged), in a Reformed(ish) college, and I am developing an interest in church history & historical theology. I really appreciate your ability to help protestants connect to historical Christianity beyond the Reformation. Thankyou.
I am so glad you did this - I look forward to watching it. What a coincidence! I've recently been doing a lot of research on Norway and have definitely been feeling the urge in my heart to pray for it lately. What's weird is that it's not the first time I've felt some small stirring to pray for Norway (which is a completely random choice of country for me, I don't have any connections to it at all). I pray God is moving there.
Thank you so much for making this video! I love church history and have always been fascinated by how God has worked in different generations and places. I'm particularly interested in this region as this is where my wife's side of the family is from. Thanks for some of the resource suggestions.
Dr. Ortlund, what a gift is your sharing of these stories. I appreciate the time and talent you've poured into this. Yes, probably a niche study and not the 'hottest' thing on RU-vid lol but man it stirs up my heart. I love the way you ended up with prospect of recounting in Heaven the otherwise-hidden/unknown segments of God's redemptive history. Amen! Great work, keep it up brother.
Awesome! So helpful and encouraging Gavin, thank you. This crystallises how I feel when reading early medieval people writing about missions: deep thankfulness for the faith and courage of the missionaries, coupled with unease about the close relationship between violent state power and the church. I feel like much of the literature about it just focuses on one or the other but you treated it in a very balanced way, as well as warming the heart.
Gosh, maybe someone else mentioned this in the comments, and I missed it, but great books to read on this topic are Sigrid Undset's works. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 and was a convert to Catholicism--a real genuine Christian for sure. Her father, I believe, was an archeologist specializing in Norwegian medieval history, and the books are lavish in their depiction of medieval Norway. She clearly shows the violence and cruelty of pagan Scandinavian culture and how Christianity changed that, but also the beauties of the culture as well. For a short read, Gunnar's Daughter is a novella. The Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy (on Audible) and the Master of Hestvicken series are intense, gripping, deep.
Thank you very much for this. I've always been very curious about how my ancestors were brought into the knowledge of Christ. This was amazing to hear although gut wrenching at times. Praise be to God that he raised up these missionaries to go and spread the Gospel knowing it may likely cost they're lives. It makes me a little ashamed (as it should) that I am not more bold than I am.
Thanks for this video, Dr. Ortlund! I appreciate your feedback for my Ancient Church History Paper on Augustine and councils. I may need to do a paper on this subject for my upcoming Medieval Church History course 🤔 thanks for giving me a whole host of ideas for personal research!
Great Stuff. Knew nothing about this region's conversion despite study and love for the early middle ages in my undergrad years (especially 10-12th centuries). In recent years, have been fascinated by the history of Christianity in Japan and China. China remains a strong interest but looking at a dark period the last 5 years and not clear for how long.
I came across some of this stuff in a 'Great Courses' series on the history of the Vikings. It's cool to see the church itself get zeroed in on, though!
I watched to the end, thanks for your hard work in doing the historical research here Dr Ortlund. I am very touched by stories like these as well and cant wait to hear even more about them in heaven.
I watched it all! I’m now interested in getting Adam Bremen’s book to learn if he mentions an area called Probstei on the North Sea. Did you know there is a town in Iowa called St. Ansgar? I went to a tea house there once, many moons ago.
Thank you for doing all that research and sharing it, I think it was worth the time invested, not just because I have some Norwegian and Danish heritage. Our culture in the West does take for granted the benefits that Christianity brought. This kind of historical account has been forgotten as the pagan past is glamorized through media.
Watched the whole thing and enjoyed it. I love information like this about church history and I have a lot of appreciation for the bold and Spirit led Christians who risked their lives for the gospel to the nations.
Love the way you teach church history, as for the kingdom of heaven, the more I look at what is going on out there, the more I wonder what happened to the gospel message spreading. Thank you!!
Watched this video through to the end while wrapping Christmas presents. Thanks for taking the time to summarize the story! I know very little of that time period, but God knows it all. I love your delving into Church history!
Hey Dr, Ortlend, you may never see this, but I wondered if you could do kind of a summary sketch, or deep dive on the ancient Irish Christian church,l and their early patristic Metropolitans.
17:01 I knew of St. Ansgar since my Protestant days. Lutherans tend to honour him, sometimes (High Church) more even than Reformers. He's called "the Apostle of the North"
I for one love your long format videos and am never disappointed when there is a longer one. In fact I could easily listen to you talk for much longer and go into greater detail. Cheers form PA!
Dr. Ortlund, will you consider turning this (and the article) into a book to publish? This stuff fascinates me. P.S. I could be wrong on this, but I read Dr. Nick Needham’s vol. 2 of “2,000 Years of Christ’s Power” a while back (on the Middle Ages), and I think he touched on Scandinavia a bit. I’ll have to check my volume. Grace to you 🙏🏻
I would love to hear more of the individual stories of the missionaries and martyrs-this felt like a great overview, like an intro to what could be more deeply explored.
Hi Gavin. I watched this all the way through. I love your heart and your thoughtful engagement with this neglected topic, but I have some critiques. I studied the Christianization of Scandinavia for a few years as an undergrad, and I almost went on to do a PhD in this topic (I got rejected by the programs I applied to). You're already deeper than me in the literature here in some ways. I never read through all of Adam of Bremen, and bless your heart for taking that on! But as I studied this more and more, I came to realize that the mechanism behind top-down conversion of kings is so utterly unique and unrepeatable in any modern context that this period is pretty bankrupt in terms of applications for modern missiology. Which makes me very sad. I wish we could study Poppo and Thangbrandr and learn how we can evangelize better today. But I think there are much more fruitful periods to compare with our own, like antiquity. And the conclusion I came to is that 1) the conversion of the kings was so momentous in furthering Christianization (for twenty different reasons) that it basically washes away the agency we can give to the missionaries or any segment of Norse society. Most of these missionaries failed. Anskar in particular strikes me as the best-documented failed missionary in church history, whose tiny church that may or may not have continued through the tenth century pales in comparison to the successes of the convert-kings, who we should see as missionaries in their own right. 2) The dominant reason why any king converted (amidst many lesser sub-reasons) was the perception that the Christian God is powerful because all of Europe's powerful southern kings who the Norse were raiding and experiencing the superior wealth of were Christian. And those kingdoms in turn converted because they saw the same thing with other kings (Irish kings converting because 5th century Brittonic kings were powerful, Anglo-Saxon kings converting because the Merovingian kings were powerful, Clovis converting because Romans were powerful, etc.). In my opinion, Constantine's conversion is the only momentous top-down conversion in European history, because he alone raises Christianity to a summit of cultural prestige that then commands the emulation of all subsequent European kings like a kind of domino system. It's not quite the pure politics narrative, because perceiving Christian kings as more powerful flows into the religious perception that their power is attributable to the powerful God they worship. My main concern with your video is you seem to take your desire for us to honor the courage of these martyrs (a desire I share) and let that dominate your analysis of who was most responsible for these areas to become Christian. It wasn't the missionaries. It looks to me like we need to fight hard as evangelicals especially to not let the book of Acts and its triumphalism color our perceptions of Christianity spreading during less triumphal moments. If you want a nice monograph that has heavy overlap with my thesis, I think you would be challenged to read Anders Winroth's "The Conversion of Scandinavia."
Hey Jonathan! Thanks for watching and engaging. I hear what you are saying, but I'd pushback in a few ways. First, bear in mind I did not deny the reality of political factors, only that the focus on this to the neglect of other factors mischaracterizes the situation. Again, many argue it was ONLY politics. Second, I cannot at all agree that Ansgar and the other missionaries were "failures." For one thing, even if their efforts did not immediately result in a permanent entrance of Christianity to the region, they still reached some people. Those people matter. For another, I'd argue that the centuries of contact with Christianity through missions created conditions that made the conversions of kings more likely. So I don't think we can seperate the missionaries like Ansgar from the later political climate. Sometimes culture is downstream from politics, but many other times politics is downstream from culture. I don't think we know all the motives of kings, but from reading Adam the idea that they ALWAYS accepted Christianity just to grab power seems misleading and simplistic. Surely sometimes they did. But other times it seems like there were other factors. Plus, even when their motives were for power, its difficult to disentangle that from the missions work that influenced the broader preceding climate. So, it's complicated. A third point I'd emphasize is that missions in other contexts, like antiquity, was also very complicated and had lots of SEEMING failures. The advance of the gospel is often a "two steps forward, one step backward" kind of thing. Honestly even the book of Acts is like this to some degree. We don't always know how God is at work through the entire process. I'm not trying to discount your comment, but just explain why I think the story of these missionaries is worth celebrating. One final thought: I think the idea that God is using courage + faith, even when we cannot see how, is a reasonable presupposition to bring to the table. I recognize that is a presupposition I have for other reasons.
I'm going to add on the fact that there was probably enough conversions among the women that it was tilting the society away from paganism towards the kingdom of God. In short, speaking as a woman, there comes a time when you get sick of what paganism does to families. The violence, the loss, the endless revenge. Eventually you say enough and you choose the better way. I would suggest that we take women's perspective much more seriously than we currently do when it comes to what happened in Scandanavia.
@@TruthUnites Thanks for the reply! I think I can agree with all of that. I particularly appreciate you stressing how even the few converts that men like Anskar led to the faith matter. I've spent time thinking of this in academic terms and not always filtering that through prayerful contemplation and scripture. My eyes were focused on the historical question of where we should assign the agency for the result of Christianization, but your pushback is showing me there is a lot of God's work that I breeze past when that's the only question I'm asking. I guess I need to fear the Lord more before I diagnose a mission as a "failure." I think you're spot-on in rejecting the narrative that it was only politics. I don't remember many scholars arguing that, but maybe you're reading monographs I haven't. My position is that there is a really significant difference in mindset between premodern illiterate Scandinavian polytheists and the contexts in which we encounter conversion as modern people. And really getting that distinction was the most rewarding part of studying this topic for me. I think it was truly exceptional in the Middle Ages for converts to have an encounter with an articulation of the Gospel and to submit to Jesus as Lord to the exclusion of commitments to other deities. The sacrament of baptism helped them understand a bit what that meant, but even that could be ambiguous. The idea of "conversion" is a Judeo-Christian invention in world history, and it often took generations for cultures to wrap their heads around it. The evidence for continuing idolatry alongside the first generation of Christianization (or even later) is very strong. It's pretty close to the scroll of Kings in that regard. It seems to me that these converts, whether they were kings or any other class of society, were primarily attracted to the power of the Christian God as inferred from the prosperity of Christian kings and peoples. Daniel of Winchester's advice to Boniface comes to mind: tell those pagans that it's no coincidence that Christians have all the good agricultural land! That was the level of religious discourse that was public for illiterate farmers to participate in together, and there's a lot of evidence from skaldic poetry that that issue of Christ's capacity to deliver grain was a significant point on the minds of pagans. They're seeking power, but it isn't power merely in a political sense. It's a religious perception that has political implications. It isn't only the king's desire to "look good" in the way we think of politicians today making decisions to benefit their public image. It's also his desire to have a supernatural ally that he knows can deliver victory on the battlefield and good harvests in the summer, and all classes of society were really oriented at those two goals and the systems of deities that ensured that. When a missionary would smash idols and prove the superior power of the Christian God, he impressed people that their gods were not as powerful as they thought, but that is far from them knowing how to submit their hearts to Jesus and receiving the Holy Spirit. There were surely some genuine conversions mixed in, but by and large I think the idolatry was unlearned within a few generations because of social pressures when sacrificing to Thor was now something that could make your neighbors think ill of you. I also think the medieval sacramental system didn't help, and the missiological implications of that meant that baptisms and mass attendance and bishoprics being erected were more the goal rather than intentional discipleship. There was preaching of the Gospel happening as well, but I see a lot of weeds that cluttered it. I love this period, and I agree with you there is a lot to celebrate! I think there's also many reasons to stay cynical.
@@jonathanhayes3607 Thanks Jonathan. Sounds like we have a lot of agreement here. I think you are certainly right that many people continued in idolatry while becoming Christians, but we have lots of testimonies from Adam of people smashing their idols when coming to Christ, or burning their magic books. And while surely many converted for power, we also have these testimonies of Adam of people repenting and suffering persecution. I definitely agree there are lots of weeds mixed in; but I don't want the genuine conversions to be lost in the narrative, which I think often happens. At any rate thanks for the interaction.
