Where Jesus' tolerant ideas came from
In some ways, Jesus was a tolerant thinker. But he didn't have all his views of his own. About Jesus' simple origins, the halakhic tradition and Hellenic influences.
Opposed to the "zero tolerance" of the God of the Old Testament are the seemingly much milder views of Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant Jewish teacher who proclaimed disturbing ideas, and ultimately made himself so impossible that he ended up on the cross.
This newsletter is about the views of Jesus that would influence the Christian view of toleration. I try to walk around Jesus' theological ideas; I am particularly concerned with views that would influence Christian doctrines regarding toleration. These are mainly ethical instructions attributed to Jesus. They include the interpretation of religious laws, sin and forgiveness, love and compassion, dealing with enemies, egalitarianism and redistribution, free will, individualism, the golden rule, and the use of coercion in faith.
We will look at where he got his views from. The main source was Jewish religious law. There was a lot of bickering about the explanation of it in his time. But there were also other influences: cultural influences from his native Galilee and Hellenic influences. I wrote earlier that Paul and the evangelists in particular were strongly influenced by Hellenic culture. Jesus himself at most indirectly: he was probably illiterate, let alone able to read Greek. But Greek views, including Stoicism, probably trickled down from the intellectual upper class to the common people as well. Jesus also had some views that cannot be traced back to any other source, and which are therefore probably attributable to himself or to his mentors.
A warning in advance. I have nothing against religion. But I'm writing here based on scholarly sources. Good science is sceptical, does not take biased positions. Anyone who just wants to be confirmed in their faith has come to the wrong place.
Few facts are established about the historical Jesus (actually he was called Yeshua, a common Aramaic name). Presumably no one who wrote about Jesus ever met him himself. Possibly with the exception of the oldest parts of Matthew and Luke, which they took from an unknown source known as Q. That source Q dates from the first half of the first century, and thus may have been written by someone who personally experienced Jesus. Q and the Gospel of Mark are considered the oldest and least unreliable. The Gospel of John is the youngest and is taken less seriously by historians.
That doesn't really matter here though. I’m mainly looking for views that were accepted as true in the early Christian church. I'm not going to be too critical about the plausibility of statements and adventures of Jesus here, even if there is historical reason to do so. This is not so much about the historical Jesus, but mainly about the influence of Jesus on Christianity, and where his ideas came from.
The context
What preceded, I told in the previous newsletter. The Jews were an ethnic group with an enigmatic origin, possibly from the higher regions on both sides of the Jordan River. Circumcision, a ban on eating pork and a rather egalitarian culture would have characterised them at first. The Biblical stories do not become somewhat verifiable until the eighth century BCE.
The Jews rarely formed a state of their own; usually their territory was a colony or vassal state of successively the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, post-Hellenic empires, and the Romans. Religiously, the Jews were largely left untouched by their rulers. From the Babylonian rule onwards, the religion of the Jews gradually became monotheistic.
From the second century BCE, the area came heavily under the influence of Hellenic culture. The elite liked it, but for the common people, Greek influences equated to decadence. Traditionally, the Jewish high priests were theologically dominant. Since the second century BCE, that influence was waning. Especially because of corruption and alleged decadence of the high priests, more and more believers shrugged off those hotshots. Partly under Greek influence, the believers started to think for themselves. Religious-philosophical movements such as Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes arose. And there were charismatic rabbis, often wandering the country, with their own followers.
Traditionally, the Jews lived mainly in two kingdoms: Judea (around Jerusalem) and Israel (the area north of it, west of the Jordan River). There were mainly Jews living in Judea; Israel was more ethnically divided. In addition to Jews, many Samaritans also lived there. Viewed from Jerusalem, the Israeli region of Galilee was a backwater. Jesus came from there, from a Jewish family. The village of Nazareth had only a few hundred souls.
Jesus was probably the cause of a shotgun wedding: his mother had gotten pregnant before her marriage. There was a big stigma attached to that at the time: socially such a child was an outcast, a mamzer. Unsurprisingly, he left his rural village and went wandering. He joined the faith community of John the Baptist at a young age.
Clean and unclean
Why was John such a zealous baptist? Baptism was a Jewish ritual. You did that before you were allowed to enter the temple. Even if you had been in contact with something unclean (menstruation and all), you had to ritually cleanse yourself. Baptism was also done for spiritual purification. It symbolises a new beginning, the washing away of spiritual impurities, allowing individuals to approach God with a clear conscience.
John baptised to wash away sins. The point was not so much that every human being is sinful by nature; that idea didn't come into Christianity until centuries later. A sin in Jewish tradition was rather something like a mistake or an accident. John sold baptism mainly as a 'reset'; with the necessary remorse, you could try again afterwards.
Normally, Jews used a mikveh, a kind of miniature swimming pool, for ritual cleansing. But not every believer could afford such a ritual bath; it was quite a construction. A simple day labourer or shepherd simply did not have the means to have one. John democratised baptism by simply using the Jordan River. An additional advantage was that he could make a whole show of it, a group meeting, with preaching, singing, prayer and whatever.
Tempers ran high about clean and unclean in first century Palestine. The Torah makes a big point of it, and it led to heated discussions amongst believers. Apart from his teaching years with John the Baptist, Jesus had no demonstrable education in that field, but that did not prevent him from taking a firm stand. The crux of his argument seems to have been that cleanliness can come from within:
Nothing that goes into a person from outside can defile him.
But the things that come out of a person are what defile him.— Mark 7:15
A good Jew does not have to bathe himself constantly, he said. People are already pure in themselves, Jesus said. Even about physical contact with the very horrible Samaritans, where you normally steered a wide birth, or contact with people with a skin disease, Jesus did not bother.
The Jewish dietary laws also revolved around clean and unclean. According to Mark, Jesus' didn't bother either. Although it is quite possible that that was a later addition; later Christians were constantly working to make Jesus' message palatable to Gentiles. But the essence is clear: as a believer, do not worry too much about side issues such as clean or unclean.
Beauty is on the inside.
God's Kingdom
Another great theme was the kingdom of God. For understanding Jesus' vision of tolerance, the theme is less important, but we cannot ignore it.
Jesus expected a soon end of times. "The time has come, the Kingdom of God is at hand," Mark summed up the message, "repent and believe this good news." In doing so, he connected with a hallucinatory prophecy of Zechariah. First, foreign nations would invade the land of Israel. After a battle between good and evil forces, the good would prevail. And there will be a new king of Israel, a kind, humble fellow, who will ensure peace among all nations after Israel's enemies are defeated. According to the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, this is the Jewish messiah, a descendant of King David's ancient dynasty. Everyone will worship God, who commands people to be kind to each other and live in peace with each other. Everyone would come to Jerusalem, where the temple would be "a house of all nations."
According to Jesus, in God's kingdom the roles would be reversed: in the kingdom, the poor would rule the roost. It was a kingdom for the losers and the outcasts. There was no place for rich people in the kingdom: they would burn in hell. A good listener would also understand that rulers such as the Romans, Herod's dynasty and the high priests had no place in the kingdom of God. Therefore, overly detailed predictions about God's kingdom were politically risky.
That a great upheaval would follow was widely believed among the Jews in Palestine. The crumbling authority of the Jewish high priests played a role in this, the religious polarisation among the faithful, the misrule by the sons of King Herod and the incapable Roman administrators. Anyone who hinted at the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies about the end of time could generally count on approval. But you had better remain abstract: if you put yourself on a par with a prophet or a messiah, you could count on fierce opposition.
Gradually, Jesus encountered more resistance from the establishment, but his following grew. The regent of Galilee, Antipas, saw in Jesus a threat. He had already made his teacher John the Baptist a cup smaller, and a similar fate lay ahead for Jesus if he wasn’t careful. He was careful, but the opposition and his growing following rose to Jesus' sphere: he began to position himself as a Jewish prophet and perhaps also as a messiah. He caused a riot in the temple complex, and he openly thought about a revolution. Eventually he was arrested and tried: he died by crucifixion, a punishment that the Romans reserved for outlaws.
The Spirit of the Law
Palestine at that time was a fiercely polarised society. Just as people now almost fight each other over political differences, it was then about the interpretation of Jewish law, and of course also about those pesky Romans.
Daily life in Galilee must have been quite boring. And as is known, Netflix had not yet been launched there. The arrival of an itinerant rabbi with his entourage would attract attention, especially if it involved some spectacle, such as baptismal rituals, spirit exorcisms or miraculous healings.
Jesus had gradually left baptismal rituals behind, but he did not miss a healing here and there. Later, he also started exorcising spirits. Instead of the baptismal rituals, Jesus began with meals. Don't imagine decadent scrapes, Jesus liked it simple, but he liked to join this or that person to discuss matters of faith while enjoying a bite and a drink. Metaphors about food and meals were frequent in his repertoire.
According to the evangelists, he regularly clashed with the Pharisees, who represented the religious establishment and were the rules-and-regulations guys. That may well be the case, but theologically Jesus' halakhic approach to the law was not that far removed from the Pharisees.
You Pharisees and teachers are show-offs, and you're in for trouble!
You give God a tenth of the spices from your garden, such as mint, dill, and cumin.
Yet you neglect the more important matters of the Law, such as justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These are the important things you should have done, though you should not have left the others undone either.
You blind leaders! You strain out a small fly but swallow a camel.— Matthew 23:23
To be clear, Jesus didn't mean that those little rules had no meaning. The law is the law. But there are important, big rules and there are nit-picks. Above all, stick to the major rules, Jesus said.
According to the oldest passages from the Gospels, Jesus was clearly in the tradition of law-interpreters according to the halakha. The halakha is essentially a binding theological and legal elaboration of the Torah. The law was indeed taken very seriously, also by Jesus. For example, he took radical positions on the admissibility of the oath, and of divorces. On these themes, Jesus appears to be not very long-suffering, even though it is hard to identify them as main issues. We must therefore take Jesus' asserted distinction between main and secondary issues of the law with a grain of salt. The early Christian community wanted to make Jesus' instructions palatable to Gentiles, and then halakhic nitpicking doesn't come in handy.
Love and compassion
So, what were the great rules according to Jesus? A fairly reliable statement can be found in Mark:
One of the teachers of the Law of Moses came up. (…)
He asked him, “What is the most important commandment?”
Jesus answered, “The most important one says: ‘People of Israel, you have only one Lord and God. You must love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.’
The second most important commandment says: ‘Love others as much as you love yourself.’
Those are the two most important rules.'
The law teacher said, "Indeed, master, you are right."— Mark 12:28-34
The law teacher agreed with Jesus' statement because it referred directly to texts in the Torah.
In addition, Jesus advised in Q:
You have heard people say, “Love your neighbours and hate your enemies.”
But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you.— Matthew 5:43-44 / Luke 6:26-27
That sentence also seems authentic. The advice not to hate your enemies has similarities with stoic advice from Seneca and Epiktetos. But they focused mainly on a lack of emotion about the enemy, and sometimes perhaps the renunciation of retaliation. Jesus' intention seems to have gone further. Not only should you not hate them, you should love them as much as everyone else around you. In this, Jesus really deviated from Jewish tradition.
Earlier I wrote that Jesus made another essential contribution: the duty of forgiveness. Jewish tradition sees norm violations primarily as a debt. Not to the victim, but to God. If you railroaded someone, you had to make sure that you came to terms with God. Forgiveness by the victim was an afterthought.
But Jesus countered: forgiveness by the victim did matter, in fact, it was a moral duty. If there was repentance, the perpetrator did not have to worry about forgiveness by God. That was God's grace (which Paul in particular would emphasise). But only those who were forgiving could count on that divine grace. It is overconfident to say that Jesus invented forgiveness. Aristoteles already wrote about it, and Buddha preached about it. But Jesus made it a moral duty, and placed it in a theological system.
Peaceful resistance
Jesus often hung out in the Jordan Valley. That area was not harmless in Jesus' day. There were jackals, leopards and lions walking around. Highwaymen had targeted pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. And the Roman garrisons could also be nasty: at will, they could take away travellers' belongings or even imprison them for forced labour. There was no public resistance against the Romans in Palestine yet, but discontent grew.
How to respond to this kind of injustice? Jewish law is clear: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Jesus thought that would lead nowhere, at least not if the other person is stronger.
I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you.
When someone slaps your right cheek, turn and let that person slap your other cheek.
If someone sues you for your shirt, give up your coat as well.
If a soldier forces you to carry his pack one kilometre, carry it two kilometres.
When people ask you for something, give it to them.— Matthew 5:39-42
The text is not about nonviolence per se, nor does it reject retaliation. It is about the most convenient way to deal with unjust supremacy. If you know that you're no match for a bully anyway, don't even try to resist. Put him in his shirt instead. Show him that not everyone is like him. As far as can be ascertained, this is authentically Jesus.
Egalitarianism and redistribution
Jesus grew up in a small village in the sparsely populated countryside of Galilee. Excavations show that communities there were highly egalitarian. One did not have much, and what one had was usually shared with the rest of the community. A simple lifestyle was what Jesus would propagate throughout his life. You don't need much:
I tell you not to worry about your life!
Don't worry about having something to eat or wear. Life is more than food or clothing.
Look at the crows! They don't plant or harvest, and they don't have storehouses or barns. But God takes care of them.
You are much more important than any birds.— Luke 12:22-24
This simple lifestyle is compatible with stoic and cynical views from Hellenic culture. We have talked about the stoa before, but not yet about the cynics.
Cynics wanted to live in accordance with nature and reason. They rejected social conventions and material possessions. They promoted a life of simplicity and independence. Cynics criticised the pursuit of wealth, power and fame. They advocated self-sufficiency, living in accordance with basic needs and embracing poverty as a means of liberation. They rejected social hierarchies and lived a frugal lifestyle, often begging for their livelihood.
Jesus' plea for a simple life is very reminiscent of cynical views. But that doesn't necessarily mean Jesus didn't have them of his own. As mentioned, it may also have been due to his Galilean upbringing. Or a combination of both.
Not only did Jesus propagate a simple lifestyle; like the cynics, he went a step further. Money was called by him the mammon, a foreign god (and therefore an idol), identified with wealth. Where Jesus grew up, no one had money: the economy ran on barter. Those who had money could hoard it, keep it hidden and not share it with the community. That went against Jesus' principles. Wealth is a character flaw, because then you have shared too little. Jesus, by the way, also liked to be feted. The cynics did too.
Redistribution was not a typical Jewish custom. Charity was: the Torah (Deuteronomy 15:11) commanded the believer to take good care of the poor. Jesus agreed with John the Baptist that believers should go one step further:
Let's say you have two shirts. Then give one to someone who doesn't have a shirt at all.
— Luke 3:11
Did that Jesus make a socialist? That's an anachronistic question. For starters, Jesus was not a political thinker. Certainly, he probably would have liked the Romans to scram. (Although he won't have said that publicly — the regime had spies everywhere.) And until the Kingdom of God arrived, he envisioned an Israel as led by Old Testament prophets, a theocracy. But for concrete ideas about polity or economics, don’t ask Jesus.
Jesus had grown up in a collectivist community in which there were no major differences between the rich and the poor. But the concepts of value and debt did play a role in that society. He hated money because it allowed you to escape the collectivist system. Money could be hoarded and hidden. He saw that as foul play. He thought we should share our wealth with poor schlubs. He liked to stand up for the outcasts, the losers. But he thought about all this in terms of moral duties. That there should be a collective organisation that would take money from the rich and distribute it to the poor would not have occurred to him. Certainly not when it involved coercion. In anachronistic terms, he was an anarchist rather than a socialist.
Free will
In Mark 10:17-27, a man accosted Jesus. He wanted to live forever, and he wanted to know how to do that. Jesus patiently replied that he should just follow Jewish law, you know: don't kill anyone, don't cheat, don't steal, don't lie, respect your parents. Yeah sure, I already do all that, the man said. What else can I do? Well, Jesus said, there is one more thing: sell all your things and give everything you have to the poor. Then you can come with me. The man's face grew gloomy. Because he was really very rich.
Leaving aside the question of whether it is true, the anecdote fits perfectly into Jesus' narrative. The prospect of salvation, the aversion to money, generosity to the poor. But there is another perspective, namely the fact that the man had a choice. Do you follow the law, do you give away your stuff? No one is forced, you don't have to do it, but the consequences are yours.
Coercion did not appear in Jesus' dictionary. Fundamentally, he did not differ from Jewish teachings. In Judaism, too, the belief in the freedom of the will is fundamental. People have the ability to choose between good and evil, to obey or disobey God's commandments, and to shape their own moral character. You are responsible for your own choices and for the consequences. God's law is clear, but no one will force you to live it. God's punishment will come.
Later, the doctrine of free will in Christianity would be deeply elaborated. But Christianity adopted the doctrine from Jesus, which did not differ from the Jewish tradition in which it was formed.
Compulsion in faith
Despite Jesus' aversion to coercion, and his preference for free will, coercion soon came to play a major role in Christianity once a church was formed.
Intolerance in Christianity has been based on one parable for centuries, from Augustinus to Calvin. The parable is about a feast. The parable is described in Matthew 22 and Luke 14. It is generally assumed that the parable was actually told by Jesus, and was not later fabulised by an evangelist. According to Luke, the story goes like this:
A rich man throws a big party. He has the guests picked up, but they don't want to come. They're too busy with other stuff. Rich man gets angry. Now he has his staff go to the city to take the poor people, the tramps and the beggars to the party. No sooner said than done, but there are still seats available. The host says to his servants: ‘Go out along the back roads and make people come in, so my house will be full.’
It is mainly about the degree of coercion in the last sentence. Christian theologians have clung to a mistranslation for centuries. The 17th-century King James version still read: ‘compel them to come in'. But both in context and linguistically, that was not the intention. After all, the first group could refuse to come; compulsion to appear as a guest is not plausible. Jesus meant: 'Bring them in'. Turning down the invitation remains possible. No one will drag you to a feast.
Jesus' intention is clear: invite everyone to join. Bummer to those who don't want to come.
Another dimension of the story is about the groups of guests. A historical-critical approach to the text indicates that the story is originally about two groups: the invitees and — if they don't show up — anyone who can find the servants. The fact that the poor slobs are brought in first, and then the rest, is probably a figment by Lucas. Luke liked to emphasise the special position of poverty in Jesus' legacy. The first group was clearly the Jewish people. By the second group, did Jesus mean the Gentiles? Maybe, but it's also possible that the evangelists came up with that. Very early after Jesus' death, the apostles felt that the church should also be open to Gentiles. On the question of whether that was also Jesus' intention (probably not), another article will follow later in this series.
Jewish attitudes toward foreigners were ambiguous. Conversions to Judaism were (and are) generally not encouraged. At the same time, the ancient prophets mention that all peoples will eventually join the Jews celebrating in the temple.
The golden rule
Treat others the way you want to be treated. That simple rule of thumb is known as the Golden Rule. My mother inculcated me that early on, and Kant based his categorical imperative on it. In his famous sermon on the mount, Jesus also preached the rule:
Treat other people just the way you want to be treated. That is what the law and the other holy books are about.
— Matthew 7:12 / Luke 6:31
But Jesus didn't have that golden rule of his own. Actually, it was already rather a cliché in his time. Herodotos wrote it down as early as the 5th century BC. In the Talmud there is a passage in which the rabbis Shammai and Hillel, a generation older than Jesus, are asked if they can briefly summarise the law. Shammai gets angry because of the laziness of that question. Hillel replies with a little more patience:
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.
That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation of this — go and study it!— Rabbi Hillel, in: Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a (5th century)
Individualism and equality
Monty Python's film Life of Brian (1979) is irreverent, educational, and very funny. If you've never seen it, you really need to check it out tonight. It's on Netflix. Here's one of my favourite scenes:
This scene never happened in real life. Jesus never said that we are all individuals who should think for ourselves. Yet our Western individualism is partly to Jesus' credit.
In part, we have already discussed the causes. Free will is an individual will. Those who are not forced by others are responsible for their own behaviour. With the golden rule you do not determine your own choice, but you also adjust that choice to the autonomy of the other person.
But there's more. God created man in his own image, the Torah says. This means that every human being, regardless of gender, origin, social position or anything else, has a resemblance to God. Everyone is thus at an equal distance from God. Just don't imagine being more than anyone else. And anyone can contact God directly. We don't need anyone's intervention.
Jesus did not actually play a significant role in the development of that individualism. He simply passed on what he had grown up with: Jewish theology is individualistic, egalitarian theology. Everyone is equal before the Law.
Conclusion
As mentioned, Jesus' hobbyhorses were the kingdom of God, and a more relaxed approach to the obsessive Jewish purity culture. Furthermore, his compassion for the less fortunate is particularly striking.
His ethical insights were more incidental. He mainly articulated conventional Jewish theology about this. He also derived his preference for a simple, collectivist life from his experiences of community life in a remote hamlet in the Galilee.
The command to love God and those around you comes directly from the Torah. So is the doctrine of free will and theological individualism and egalitarianism. An aversion to the use of coercion was also well compatible with Jewish theology. The golden rule of the sermon on the mount was a well-known statement that also appeared in the Talmud.
Hellenic culture influenced Jesus mainly indirectly. Given his ancestry, Jesus was probably illiterate. Direct contact with Greek literature is unlikely. But his country had been under Hellenic cultural influence for centuries: Hellenic ideas could also have reached an illiterate handyman from Galilee.
The depiction of Jesus' vicissitudes must be viewed with scepticism. Everything evangelists wrote about him was hearsay, and it would be a miracle if they hadn’t put their own spin on it. The evangelists were literate gentlemen and probably well acquainted with the Greek philosophical movements. Hellenic philosophical influences may also have crept into Christianity along the way.
Jesus' preference for a simple, collectivist life is compatible with Greek influences from the cynics and the Stoics.
The command to forgive offenders is not typical of Judaism. Jesus may have developed it himself, perhaps under the influence of Hellenistic tendencies.
The same goes for the command to love your enemies. Perhaps that was a combination of the Judaic command to love those around you and the stoic instruction not to get upset about people who do something nasty to you.
The instruction to turn the other cheek in the event of violence was a find. I have not been able to trace it back to previous ideas; perhaps Jesus invented it himself. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King later successfully promoted the strategy.
His aversion to money and wealth, his commission of radical charity and his preferential treatment of scrubs and outcasts also seem authentically Jesus.
For further reading
John P. Meier, A marginal Jew. Rethinking the historical Jesus:
Volume 1: The roots of the problem and the person (1991)
Volume 2: Mentor, message and miracles (1994)
Volume 3: Companions and competitors (2001)
Volume 4: Law and love (2009)
Volume 5: Probing the authenticity of the parables (2016)
Ian McDonald, The crucible of Christian morality (1998)
Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus (2000)
Andrew Fiala, What would Jesus really do? The power and limits of Jesus' moral teachings (2007)
Anthony Bash, Did Jesus discover forgiveness?, Journal of Religious Ethics (2013)
Jona Lendering, Israël verdeeld (2014)
Rúnar Már Þorsteinsson, Jesus as philosopher: the moral sage in the synoptic gospels (2018)
Keysel Besa, Was Jesus a socialist? An analysis of the Lucan message concerning charity for the poor, Crossings (2022)
This was the second newsletter in a long series on toleration and Christianity. So far, the other episodes are:
Before Christ
Jesus of Nazareth had some exceptionally tolerant ideas. In order to understand them, we need to know more about Jesus's Jewish background: the history of the Jewish people, their god and their law.Where Jesus' tolerant ideas came from
In some ways, Jesus was a tolerant thinker. But he didn't have all his views of his own. About Jesus' simple origins, the halakhic tradition and Hellenic influences.How this contrarian apostle accidentally founded a world religion
About the tragic life and the miraculous survival of Paulos of Tarsos, the orphaned Jesus community in Jerusalem, the mission in the pagan West and the irrelevance of the Jewish Law.No Jewish law for Christians, but what then?
Why Christian law is not in the Bible. About Paulos's selective application of Jesus' instructions, and his remarkable views on sex, women, and men with long hair.With blood on their hands and tears in their eyes
In the 4th century, the Church of Rome gained power and lost its innocence. The unity of the church became the main thing, and heresy a sin. After Augustinus’ struggle, the church got a killer instinct.Christianity, slavery and the conversion of pagans
On conversion of pagans without compulsion. And Christian approval of slavery. About sex slaves, the conversion of a tourist paradise, and exploitation by the village priest.The clean hands of the Church, the dirty hands of the State
How the popes let the Christian monarchs do the dirty work. But separation of church and state later came to mean something else: a secular government.The just war against Islam
A clash between Christianity and Islam was inevitable. Not only because they got into each other's way, but also because they used different justifications for warfare.