As the debate rages on the Crusades, Allan Ruhl joined the Evangelical Dark Web to discuss the Crusades in what the primary sources had to say on the matter. Humorously, Ruhl states that much of the perception of the Crusades has been warped by the Ridley Scott movie Kingdom of Heaven. Ruhl notes that James White has been influenced by secondary sources.
In detail, we recap the major events of the First Crusade. The claim that Pope Urban II was offering salvation for crusading knights embellished the plenary indulgences he actually offered. While this is also an offense to Protestant sensibilities, this doesn’t threaten the gospel beyond the doctrine of purgatory already did. Moreover, a primary source known for embellishing numbers up to ten times has been used to overstate the dead at Jerusalem. That source claims only 10000 were killed.
On the Fourth Crusade, Ruhl walks through the process of how it happened and where things went wrong, noting that it was the Byzantines who attacked the Crusaders which initiated the sacking of Constantinople. But that sacking was more for plunder than it was murderous. Interestingly, Ruhl optimistically argues that the Eastern Romans recovered from 1204 enough for it to be independent of their eventual downfall in 1453.
These are some of the highlights of a rather in-depth conversation about Crusading.
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