Welcome to Episode 79 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 30 minutes we will go back in history to talk about a very significant event which, unfortunately, has never been covered by your history textbooks. It was certainly not covered by mine when I studied world history. My history textbooks, of course, were all written from a Marxist perspective, based on the Marxist view of history. Your history textbooks, most probably, were written from a Western secular perspective, based on the Western secular view of history . . . if there is such a thing in the first place, of course. All secular views of history are always forced to ignore certain significant historical facts, for a very simple reason: their view of history doesn’t allow for the existence of such facts. To be precise, their presuppositions about reality do not allow for such facts. All secular views of history are materialistic and naturalistic; that is, they presuppose that the only valid causes for historical trends and developments are those causes that are material and “natural.” Secular philosophy and historiology (historiology or historiography is the philosophy and method by which we study history), so, secular philosophy and historiology reject all interpretations of history that would involve any supernatural acts of God that would direct history. Of course, our listeners would know that, given the presuppositions of the secular thought. But there is another presupposition of secular thought that many Christians are not aware of: Secular historiology rejects not only all interpretations that presuppose a divine, supernatural agent, it also rejects all interpretations that presuppose any covenantal frame for history. And remember what “covenantal” means? It means “ethical/judicial,” that is conditioned upon and revolving around issues of good and evil. Thus, whatever happens in history can never be allowed to be the product of the self-conscious ethical and judicial decisions of men, based on some standard of ethics. Whatever ethics men have, and however consistently they apply it, has no bearing on the course of history. (As a side note, this view is not peculiar to secular historians; it is also shared by the majority of modern pastors and theologians. Yes, even your pastor in your church; odds are, if you examine him, you will find out he has the same philosophy of history as secular historians. But more about it in a different episode.)

Such anti-covenantal view of history is so prevalent that with all the books on history we have today, we have almost none that employ a covenantal philosophy of interpreting history. I have been asked hundreds of times, “Do you have a good Christian book on the history of this or that historical event or period?” And I never have one that I can recommend; because, even Christian historians have fallen prey to the same secular interpretation of history where history is the product of impersonal, natural forces, and the ethics and the worldview of a culture have no bearing on the history of that culture. Marxists see the determining factor of history in economic forces (or, more precisely, in the developing tools of production), racists and nationalists see the determining factor of history in the genetics of men (and we will see in a future episode why modern secular libertarians like Lew Rockwell and Stephan Molineux also adopt racism as their frame of interpretation), modern liberals see the determining factors of history in the environment (climate, geography, etc.), and modern theologians just adopt any of these secular philosophies when they try to interpret history, if they ever do.

It is for this reason I have always said that R.J. Rushdoony’s book, The Foundations of Social Order, is the most unique book ever written in the history of Christendom. If there has ever been a book that completely, unapologetically, and uncompromisingly interprets history covenantally, it is that book. It is not just a supernatural interpretation (“God moves history”), it is also a covenantal interpretation, namely, “God moves history through the worldview and the self-conscious action of men who were redeemed by His Gospel and influenced by His Word.” Of course, there are other books that touch somewhat on a covenantal approach to interpreting history: for example, Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, or Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity, and a few others, but nothing has ever been close to Rushdoony’s consistency in applying it.

Either way, to make a long story short, secular historians don’t like mentioning some important historical events exactly because these events, and the consequences of them in history, have no explanation in terms of secular historiology. And once we look into these historical facts, we may find out that they only fit a covenantal frame of interpretation of history.

And the historical event we are going to cover this week is one of them. It was not something insignificant. It continued for 5 centuries. It had very abrupt, disastrous, and profound effect on the Christian civilization in Europe. It is well-documented; we have hundreds of thousands of historical documents that inform us about it. But it is seldom mentioned, except in marginal books and theses that don’t make it into the official textbooks and lesson plans. And there is a reason for it.

That historical event is the Little Ice Age, a historical period of unusually cold climate that can be loosely dated from the early 14^th century and continued until the last decades of the 19^th century. But let’s start from some earlier dates, to have some context.

Do you remember those ancient Greek paintings and engravings of several centuries before Christ, and the clothes worn by the men depicted in them? If you have seen them, you probably remember them, because they are all either naked or almost naked. I won’t go into the philosophy of nakedness here, but I will ask another relevant question: What climate did they have to have to be comfortable with such fashion? Modern Greece’s climate is Mediterranean, but it is certainly not tropical, and the winters can be quite cold. And yet, the Spartan society was known for the fact that their boys trained in military schools and were naked all year round. By the way, the girls, too. How did they survive the winters? Meanwhile, a number of Greek authors mention lions living in Europe at the time, not only in Greece but also as far north as Thrace (modern Bulgaria and Romania), Pannonia (modern Hungary) and Sarmatia (modern Ukraine). There is also evidence that other tropical and subtropical animal species – as well as plant species – lived in those areas as well. But how could they survive? I grew up on the Balkans and I can tell you, winters to the north of the Balkan Mountains can be quite harsh, and the climate is certainly not conducive for having lions, or antelopes, or anything that in modern times live south of the Mediterranean.

The conclusion of all historians, therefore, is that the ancient world enjoyed a much warmer climate than we have today. Or, at best, its coldest period – between the 5^th and the 4^th centuries BC – was similar to our modern times. What is sure is that starting in the early 3^rd century BC, the Mediterranean – and the whole world, in fact – experienced a period of unusually warm climate which lasted for about 7 centuries. Remember the Punic Wars and Hannibal’s crossing the Alps with his elephants in the late fall of 218 BC? The reason he could do it was because of the mild climate in that period. Every time you read the history of the Roman Empire, remember that all of the expansion of the Empire – as far north as Scotland – happened in a period of very warm weather. The growth of the population of the Mediterranean was all due to that warm weather: the Roman Empire is estimated to have had between 50 and 60 million population, an approximate one-third of the world’s population at the time.

This warm period ended in AD 4^th century when temperatures worldwide went down by a little, causing rivers in Europe to freeze in the winter (not recorded before AD 300), which made it easier for Germanic tribes to cross the borders of the Empire (the Rhein and the Danube rivers) and invade its richer provinces. The cooler period that started in the 4^th century was most probably the reason for the great migration of the 4^th through the 7^th centuries, forcing many tribes out of their homelands in Northern Europe and Central and North Asia. (Think Goths, Slavs, Huns, Khazars, etc.) The same cooling off of the climate must have weakened the health of the population of the Mediterranean, for during that period, the Roman Empire experienced several outbreaks of different diseases, most of which were probably different strands of the flu. This weakened the Empire – in addition to its political and moral decay – and led to its ultimate demise in the West and retreat in the East. The Goths and the Germans who settled the west proved to be more resilient physically – and also, spiritually, after their conversion to Christianity.

The cooler period continued for about 400 years. Warm weather came back in the early 800s, this time with a vengeance. The so-called “Medieval Warm Period” turned out to be the most productive period in the history of Europe and the Mediterranean. The population of Christian Europe – which would exclude Spain – reached 70-80 million, more than the Roman Empire was at the height of its glory. More notably, this growth happened mostly north of the Alps, unlike the Roman Empire where most of the growth was in w...