Medieval Methods Making A Comeback

The Middle Ages was a visual age. Most people understood their faith, culture, and society through images, symbols, and stories. The Medieval People knew about Christ's sacrifice for sin through images, Crucifixes, stories told by clergy, told by Bards, and through paintings that depicted the entire passion, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Medievalists understood their world through images, take the banners, coat of arms, flags, tapestries, and tunics that had symbols of faith like the cross, symbols of feudalism or nationality such as the lion for England, Fleur de lis of the France, the Red dragon on green and white being Scotland. For the Middle Aged person, symbols were everything. Theology, doctrine, and beliefs were not conveyed in sermons, but through symbolic acts of piety, bowing before a saint or the Savior, holding a rosary and praying the Our Father Prayer (if they could recite it). Faith was expressed often in public forms to convey the inner life, because the illiteracy in those times was high in common class.

We are returning to Medieval Methods. In today's world visualizations are becoming as important a words. We are seeing a shift from Greco-Roman thought, argument, and ideas to more tangible, temporal, and touchable parts of a message. Our new technological age has reinforced this, with apps that have pictorial elements that convey more in one image than long spreadsheets. From political campaigns to motion pictures in Hollywood, advertising is everything and sometimes a single image, color, or picture can shift wither a candidate is elected, or an audience is drawn to the cinema. Our world is becoming more Medieval, and that raises the question, how does that effect sharing the Gospel? Perhaps we would do well to go back and learn what evangelistic monks did, what patrons of the arts requested to be painted for pious reasons, and how a single image can sometimes say more than a plethora of penned words.

The Byzantines knew the power of imagery or iconography. Today, Eastern Orthodox Churches still use icons, images of Christ Pantocrator, Theotokios, and saints with things connected to the message. An icon of Jesus holding a scepter, and open New Testament in one hand tells a viewer, that Christ is king (scepter) and teacher (open book). These subtle, but profound changes to the same image of Jesus over and over help reinforce to Orthodox Christians the message contained in Scripture. We can do this with modern mediums, through artwork on the Internet, through videos, through plays, through movies, video games and more. There is untapped part of sharing the Gospel, called story telling. There are several ways to tell the Gospel, through a story about yourself or another, called a Testimony, or through an experience, metaphors, illustrations, allegories, and parables. Jesus Christ often spoke in parables, "Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable." (Matthew 13:34). Parables are stories that tell the message with symbols, images, and even experiences that people know. For example Jesus compared sharing gospel and discipleship to sowing seed, "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13:3-9). Jesus is using agricultural imagery to explain the following: those who sow seed on hard hearts gets eaten by birds (demons, and evil people), those who sow seed (message, gospel) on hard ground have shallow roots in the Lord and eventually give up, then there is those who sow the seed in someone among thorns, and the wicked thorns tear out the seed (Gospel), and finally the seed falls on firtler ground (a person's heart) without bad influences or bad heart and it grows and produces fruit. The ground in its many forms represents the heart, the seed Christ's Message (Gospel), and the other factors are what hinders the message.

Our world is dramatically changing. Once the West was predominately people of European descent and so using certain methods of teaching, particularly Aristotelian, Platonic, and Greco-Roman thought prevailed. Now with cultures like India, the Middle East, Asia, African, and more have come to settle in the West, and many of these cultures do have pictorial, visual, and symbolic way of understanding things. For example, if you cannot speak a language, you can understand symbols, pictures, and more. If you are teach newly arrived immigrants the Gospel who know not only the Church jargon, but English for that matter, you can use images. This is how Power Point can be used successful when preaching, you may have some people in audience who do not speak your language,e they are there to assimilate, and build their language through immersion, but if you use images, they can follow your words and start associating things like Sacrifice with an image of Jesus on Cross and Lamb on an altar with a knife.

Take this Crucifix. It has Jesus on the cross, with Mary his Mother and John. The cross is made of vine, because it is alluding to, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing," (John 15:5) and "If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, But you must not brag about being grafted in to replace the branches that were broken off. You are just a branch, not the root." (Romans 11:17-18). The there circles with an eagles, a man, an ox, and a lion is to represent the Cherubim, "Also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle," (Revelation 4:6-7) and "Each of them had four faces and four wings. Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle." (Ezekiel 1:6,10).


The fact Jesus is surrounded by the Cherubim is the painter saying Jesus is God, because "The Cherubim surround God and His Throne (Ezekiel 10:1). The choice of colors are important, red or pink is symbolic of spirituality, Blue the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what I mean, we can use this, probably a Irish Crucifix that Incorporated things familiar to all people, like lions and eagles, ox, and men. In the Middle Ages lions were still common and symbols for Kingdoms like England and Scotland, the eagle was symbol of Roman Empire, Rus (Russian) Empire, Medieval Germania, and more. The Man being among them could have said to viewer that you are to be a ruler like the eagle of great territory (subdue: rule, put to order the earth Genesis 1:28), a leader of pride like the lion have kinsmen (love one another), bear your burdens and be responsible like an ox (bear one another's burdens Galatians 6:2), and remember you are still man, frail, capable of weakness, and sin; so seek your Savior's pardon.

We can do what the Medievalists did, only we can replicate it, and create is faster. Artwork with 3D printing, Photo Shop, and more allows us to create pieces of art at such speed, that the people of Middle Ages would marvel and probably call it magic. That being said, we need to find out how to convey the visuals of the Gospel as they are contained in The Bible, and even use modern similarities, if we talk about the Vine of God, we can use the illustration of wine making and how Jesus uses symbols of wine, grapes are fruit, Jesus says we should have fruit, we must be connected to the Vine who is Jesus and branch out to reach more people who are withering vines in need of the Life giving wine of Jesus Christ. You start using what is familiar now, that exists in Bible, and make similar point, if Paul talks about a being athlete for God, we can translate it in a story, Paul is saying we must be like those who getting ready for Olympics, which is whatever God is calling you to. But to be in Olympics you have to train, and build your body, in the same way the Body of Christ needs to build up the muscles of righteousness, mercy, love, and truth." This is how you can convey an image that leaves a lasting impression in people's minds long after the message has been give; the sermon has been shared.

There are two kinds of writers, visual and vintage. An example of visual is popular historians, who can share history, with some generalizations and emphasis on what happened. In popular historians you get a sense of the people who lived back then, you get to know the Elizabeth I oppose to knowing about her. The vintage or academic historians have an emphasis on politics, facts, dates, and accuracy. Their goals have merit, but they often fail to write anything that stays with a reader, because everything is dry, oppose to deeply revealing. The goal would be to actually master being visual and vintage writer; popular and academic historian, where you blend memorable visuals and message with the accuracy. This is our goal as Christians sharing the Gospel, to leave a lasting image and impression, while not compromising the accuracy and Truth as it is written in the Bible. A difficult balance, but one we must master in this return to visual based learning.

A great example of how our culture has shifting is cinemas, Netflix, Hulu, and more. People are spending time watching more than reading a writing. I learned more about Elizabeth I of England from "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" then from history in High School. The film starring Cate Blanchett began my love for Elizabethan England, and lead me to finally start reading the academic and popular historians of this great Queen of England. Many academics condemn adaptations, because of the changes made to make it more appealing for viewers, but often a film or series can spark in the viewer a desire to actually delve into those moth-ball books; and what helps is they have a frame of reference like images of Elizabeth in her incredible gowns, the Spanish Armada, and Sir Walter Raleigh.

The Medievalists appreciated imagery, in fact it informed them the most. A great example is Darth Vader. Vader is universally known and recognized around world as Star Wars. Vader is an image and character, who conveys the story. People of different languages, cultures, and ideas all know Vader because of how he looks. We need to do this with the Gospel. People when they see Jesus on Crucifix or a cross should not associate it with egotistical rappers, only the Catholic Church, and creepy Exorcist movies. We need to take back the images of our faith and use them as Medievalists did, to educate, teach, and help people understand how to believe in Jesus Christ, how be a disciple, and more. Lets take advantage as Christians in this return to the Medieval, while maintaining a depth of the written for when they are ready to go beyond icons and images to the words of Life.