Ambition born of human zeal burns fast. No heavenly wrought ambition manifests merely of human zeal. Rather, as John Piper indicates of Romans 15:20 (to preach the Gospel where it has not been named), a holy ambition is required. Piper describes ambition as “Something you really want to do so much that doing it keeps you from doing other things that you also really like to do… And we call it a holy ambition when it is something God wants you to do too”[1]Thereby, a holy ambition is not earthborn. The Spirit of God fuels and sustains (John 15:5), whereas human wrought ambition burns out. This is the portrait which grace has preserved for us the memory of Raymond Lull. The Mediaeval Christian Church sought to subdue Islam by the sword, Lull sought to win Islam by the love of Christ.
Biographical Sketch
Early Life. Raymond Lull was born between 1234-1236[2] (biographers such as Samuel Zwemer date Lull’s birth in 1235[3]) in Palma, Majorca (Spain). Lull came from an affluent Catalonian family which had procured land and wealth as a reward for his father’s military role in James I, King of Aragon’ conquest of Majorca. Much of Raymond’s childhood is unknown. Barber notes, writing, “He was accustomed to mediaeval luxury from his birth…found of the pleasures of court life… [and] He was early addicted to music and played the cithern with skill. But he was yet more celebrated as a court poet.”[4] Lull’s education is astonishingly self-taught; however, it is clear he was not without formal education in his youth. He married young to a daughter of an affluent family becoming a father to two sons and one daughter. Raymond quickly rose in distinguishment. In the vicinity of 1262, he was made “Seneschal and Master of the Royal Household” under King James II of Aragon.[5] The Dark Ages were a time of loose piety. The mediaeval church was rampant with indulging in luxurious pleasures. Lull’s love affair with the pleasures of his age were not out of the ordinary. His experience of Christianity was as many would today call, religious. Barber writes of this prince, conveying, “All the enthusiasm and warmth of his character found exercise only in the pleasures of the court, and, by his own testimony, he lived a life of utter immorality in this corrupt age. Wine, women, and song were…the chief pleasure of kings and princes.”[6] Nevertheless, Lull awoke to the dissatisfaction of empty, fleeting pleasures.[7] It would not be long after that Lull and his family returned to Palma, where the course of God’s providential revelation of Himself would illuminate godly, holy ambition within the man.
Conversion. Legend holds two conversion stories; one appeals to the “natural,” and the other to the supernatural. Nevertheless, salvation is a miracle of grace regardless of the nature of its arrival (Eph. 2:1-10). Lull’s conversion stories revolve around his lust after a married woman not his own; Signora Ambrosia di Castello of Genoa.[8] The corruption of this age of priest was anything but pious. Lull, burning with “violent passion,” wrote Lady Ambrosia sonnets. On one occasion Lull wrote her a poem concerning her bosom, after consulting her husband she replied to Lull, “in which she implored him not to degrade to the adoration of a mere creature the soul that was meant for God alone.”[9] Lull paid no mind to her letter and continued. Lull’s improper and adulterous passion ended abruptly when on one occasion Ambrosia revealed to him the cancer eating away at her breast. The “folly of his carnal”[10] made known. She left him with these words: “’The longing you have shown to me with such folly,’ said his deliverer, ‘now turn towards Christ. You may from Him gain a heavenly kingdom.’”[11] Lull apparently went home entering a state of lament, which ultimately led to his true conversion. Zwemer tells us a different story in which Lull, while writing a sonnet to Ambrosia encountered Jesus’ bloody frame in a series of visions which led him to true conversion.[12] Our goal is not to stay hung up on which conversion story suits one’s own personal benefit; rather, only in the mercy of God to reveal Himself to a wretch on the path of destruction may we all rejoice at the salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ. In 1266[13] Raymond Lull surrendered his life to faith and service in Christ to the glory of God. Whether we are to assert Raymond’s visions as an illumination or grant such visions as supernatural, two things are certain: (1) the story of his visions earned him the lore, “Doctor Illuminatus,”[14] and (2) it birthed a holy ambition to reach Muslims with the Gospel instead of the crusading sword; a perpetual fire which would never burn out.[15]
Holy Ambition and Legacy
It would do grave injustice to omit the foundation of Lull’s holy ambition, love for God and love for people. Zwemer elaborates, writing, “Lull’s faith was not sacramental, but personal and vital…The inner life of Lull finds its key in the story of his conversion. Incarnate love overcame carnal love, and all the passion and the poetry of Lull’s genius bowed in submission to the cross…Love for the personal Christ filled his heart, molded his mind, inspired his pen, and made his soul long for the crown of martyrdom.”[16] Union with Christ motivated Lull’s effectual passion to love God and people, leading us to his most famous saying, “’He who loves not lives not; he who lives by the Life cannot die.’”[17]His legacy spurs from his holy ambition, namely, his writing and evangelical method; Lifelong vision for language acquisition schools; and his desire for martyrdom.
Writing and Evangelist Method. Lore tells us Lull wrote thousands of books; an endeavor which unfortunately cannot be proven or disproven. However, between 1276-1314 (two years prior his martyrdom) he wrote 400-500 books.[18] Lull was a man on a mission, before the mission. He sought not only to learn Arabic, then to go die and be forgotten. He wrote extensively and grew as a famed lecturer in Paris (which he spent several seasons there at colleges) and Europe (Biographers have given entire chapters to the detail of his written works).[19] Barber notes, “Lull’s eagerness to give a God-sent message caused him to appeal to the people…[with] red-hot zeal…”[20] His writing and holy ambition came from deep spiritual contemplation, during which Lull believed God gave him an illumination, a method to reach the Islamic world.[21] His Ars Magna would be the methodological tool which he wrote and taught on for the remainder of his life. He believed with such certainty God had given him this method that he knew God was with him, and God would lead him; God’s illumination engrained in Lull a confidence that he “was called as truly as Abraham or Paul.”[22] Though space does not permit an examination of Lull’s method here, in short, it was a missiological-hermeneutic, per se, which tied both the supernatural faith of Christ with humankind faculty of reason. He wished to reach the Muslim by faith and reason in the love of Christ; not the sword. His written works and lectures were met with delight to many and approved orthodox. In the years to come Lullist Schools would continue for a few hundred-years. In the end, Lull’s interest in chemistry, including volumes he may or may not have written, prevented the Roman Catholic Church from canonizing his works.[23] Praise the Lord, with Barber we may also rejoice, “it is not for his logic or his alchemy that we remember Lull, but for his undying enthusiasm, his unfailing faith, his deep mystic devotion, his joyous love for Christ and the world.”[24]
Language Acquisition. With no uncertainty, the acquisition of Arabic for the Gospel’s sake was the opposite of vogue. Mediaeval Roman Catholicism was more interested in conquering Islam by sword than by love. Islam, contemporary to Lull was on the backside of its own renaissance, one which preceded our own European Renaissance.[25] He was born into a century of deep animosity and bitterness between Western Europeans and Moslems. Barber writes, “It was a Christian thing to hate; the love of the cross meant the scorn of the Crescent.”[26] However, Jesus had provided for Lull’s darkened soul a love which burned beyond himself. A love which he considered must penetrate the hearts under the Crescent. To do so meant laying down the sword; laying down one’s own life in the love of Christ was better. Lull wrote, conveying, “I see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas and thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms…Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought not be attempted except in the way in which Thou and Thine apostles acquired it, namely, by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tears…”[27]This is in the spirit of one’s like Petrus Venerabilis, who a century before Lull commented, “Not with arms but with words, not by force but by reason, not in hatred but in love.”[28] In 1276 he set out to promote his Ars Magna and to seek papal support to fund schools[29] concerning the acquisition of Arabic in purpose with training missionaries for Muslim engagement with the Gospel of Christ. Nine-years of language acquisition and visions for writing with heavenly wrought methods unto to the glory of God would prove foundational and fruitful for years to come [See Appendix 1 for Lull’s nine-year language acquisition story].
The Crown of Martyrdom: By illumination God gave Lull a holy ambition to lay his life down in love for Muslims to know the love of Christ. For Lull, “Martyrdom is an expression of our joy in God and the overflow of our love for God, it is furthermore a gift from God. The sacrifice of martyrdom is a gift of grace.”[30] Raymond Lull went on several Missionary journey’s: Tunis 1291-1292; Majorca 1300; Cyprus 1300, 1301, 1302; Armenia 1301; Bugia 1306, 1315-1316. His life reflected a missionary-martyr in every way; a life submitted to the will of God in the purpose of his lifelong holy ambition, and faithful even unto to death with his physical body. In 1291 Lull was eager “to meet the bald monotheism of Islam face to face with the revelation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,”[31]only fear subdued him from boarding the boat.[32] Notwithstanding the lack of papal support, Lull was truly alone in his endeavor, and would accomplish every journey ahead on his own.[33] His depression and fear of imprisonment soon faded with Lull boarding a ship to Tunis in late 1291 or early 1292 with renewed confidence to go forth-even if imprisonment and death await him: “The doom of Islam was sealed; to him was given the glory of bringing back to the Savior’s crown those fair realms…His disciples had acclaimed him the Illuminated Doctor; God’s illumination could not be in vain”[34] [See Appendix 2 for further details]. After two years in his birthplace of Majorca, a seventy-nine-year-old Lull, with holy ambition for martyrdom, set sail to Bugia in 1315. Upon arrival, Lull spent more than ten-months in private, discipling converts from his previous visit; however, “His ambition was to die as a missionary and not as a teacher of philosophy.”[35] Pioneer missions leader in the Middle East, Dalton Thomas, wrote, “Lull showed himself in the public market and began preaching. It was there that he gained the crown for which he yearned. Among a frenzied crowd he was silenced as embittered Muslims stoned him to death.”[36] Lull’s body was secured and shipped to Marjorca, where the “prophet” from his own land was honored. The center of his life’s message of love for Muslims was now sealed; his labor of love solidified.
Conclusion: Considering the Current State of Christian Missions Compared to the Legacy of Lull’s Holy Ambition
The Current State of Global Missions. Samuel Zwemer wrote Raymond Lull: The First Missionary to the Moslems in effort to promote the idea that “the twentieth century is to be preeminently a century of mission to Moslems…”[37]Indeed, “The twentieth century has come and gone. And the majority of the Islamic world remains unreached and unengaged.”[38]According to The Traveling Team, Islam consist of “1.898 billion people worldwide, 4,039 total people groups, 3,470 unreached people groups, and 24.2% of the world population.”[39] Of the 600+ million Protestant Christians worldwide “there are 4.19+ million full-time Christian workers and 95% are working within the Christian world.”[40] There are more than “54,000 Evangelical Christians for every one unreached people group.”[41] Bible translation needed is staggering: “1.51 billion people, speaking 6,661 languages, do not have a full Bible in their first language. 145+ million people, speaking 1,892 languages, still need translation work to begin.”[42] According to Wycliffe Bible Translators, there are “2,217 languages in 147 countries with active translation or preparatory work begun-1.1 billion people.”[43] According to Gordon Conwell’s Status of global Christianity, “$896 billion is given to Christian causes: $52 billion is given to missions, which is only 5.78% of the money given to Christian causes of any kind; pastoral ministries of local churches, $734 billion (82%); home missions, $107 billion (12%); un-evangelized/non-Christian, $51.7 billion (5.7%); and unreached peoples, estimated $880 million (1.7%)-For every $100,000 that Christians make, they give $1.70 to the unreached.”[44] Hypothetically, “Evangelical Christians could provide all of the funds needed to plant a church in each of the 7,400 unreached people groups with only 0.03% of their income,”[45] and, “The Church has roughly 3,000 times the financial resources and 9,000 times the manpower needed to finish the Great Commission.”[46]There are approximately 435,000 missionaries in the world: of this, “77.3% in the reached world; 19.4% in the unevangelized world; and 2.7% in the unreached world.”[47] There are “1 missionary for every 405,500 Muslims; only 1 of every 209,086 Christians goes as a missionary to the unreached.”[48] In observational reflection The Traveling Teamwrites, “If everyone is obeying God’s “calling” to be a missionary wherever they are then God is apparently calling 99.9995% of people to work among the half of the world population that already has the Gospel, and virtually no one (.0005%) to relocate among the other half of the world population that are not Christian.”[49]
Final Encouragement. One might think the tenacity of Raymond Lull would have sparked a great mission front to the Muslim world. Unfortunately, the Lull’s, Zwemer’s, and Martyn’s are far too few. How is it that the Christian Church lay unmoved in bed with its self-preserved comfort and luxury? This is not to say needlessly aspire martyrdom, it is to say, let not fear sooth to sleep by lullaby its self-preserving comfort. Let not the worldly ambition of self-prerogative go, for the sake of Christ being named among those who have never heard Jesus’ glorious Gospel. Here is one small appeal, from George Eldon Ladd, to encourage the reader’s heart of the Church’s mission:
“The one great mission of the Church is to evangelize the world. This is not a theory, it is a fact. Jesus gave the Church its marching orders to go and make disciples of all nations; and in carrying out the task, He promised to be with them even unto the end of the age (Matt. 28:19, 20). The Church is not to save the world; it is not to Christianize the world; it is not to transform the world so that it becomes the kingdom of God. This will be accomplished only by the glorious second coming of Christ…Only when this commission has been completed will Christ return. Those who “love His appearing” are those who should have the greatest concern for the evangelization of the world. There is no more notable “sign of the times” than the fact that the greatest impetus in world-wide evangelism since apostolic times has taken place in the preceding century. The world is nearly evangelized; any generation which is really dedicated to the task can complete the mission…Let every believer who cherishes the Blessed Hope give himself in unstinted measure to the prosecution of world-wide evangelization; for then Christ will come.”[50]
[1]John Piper. A Holy Ambition: To Preach Where Christ Has Not Been Named. Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2019. P. 9. Print.
[2]William Theodore Aquila Barber. Raymond Lull, the Illuminated Doctor: A Study in Mediaeval Missions. London, England: Charles H. Kelly Publishing, 1903. P. 19. Print. W.T.A. Barber dates Lull’s birth 1236 (Ibid., p. 19).
[3]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. P. 19. Print.
[4]Ibid., Barber. Pp. 25-26, 27.
[5]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. P. 20. Print.
[6]Ibid., Zwemer. P. 26.
[7]Ibid., Zwemer. P. 30. Here Swemer notes Lull’s poem, “Lo Desconort” (Despair). “there arose within him a mighty struggle between the spirit and the flesh. Sensual pleasures never satisfy, and his lower and higher natures strove one with the other.”
[8]William Theodore Aquila Barber. Raymond Lull, the Illuminated Doctor: A Study in Mediaeval Missions. London, England: Charles H. Kelly Publishing, 1903. P. 21. Print.
[9]William Theodore Aquila Barber. Raymond Lull, the Illuminated Doctor: A Study in Mediaeval Missions. London, England: Charles H. Kelly Publishing, 1903. P. 21.
[10]Ibid., Barber. P. 22.
[11]Ibid., Barber. P. 22.
[12]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. Pp. 34-36. Print. “Christians of the thirteenth century believed in visions and saw visions…We may doubt the vision, but we can not doubt its result in the lives of those who profess to have seen it. Call it religious hallucination or pious imagination if you will, but even then it has power” (Ibid., Zwemer. P. 33).
[13]Ibid., Zwemer. P. 38.
[14]Ibid., Zwemer. P. 38.
[15]Ibid., Zwemer. P. 39.
[16]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. Pp. 45, 46.
[17]Ibid., Zwemer. P. 45.
[18]William Theodore Aquila Barber. Raymond Lull, the Illuminated Doctor: A Study in Mediaeval Missions. London, England: Charles H. Kelly Publishing, 1903. P. 81. Print. Here Barber notes, “His faithful Perroquet gives a list of 488 separate works, and evidently takes pride in their multitude.”
[19]Ibid., Barber. P. 41. “Lull’s vogue increased, and he gained admiring followers, who considered themselves as forming a Lullist School…the records of his lectures are kept in numerous volumes on Philosophy, Theology, Medicine, Astronomy, Chemistry, etc., published in Paris” (Ibid., Barber. P. 42).
[20]Ibid., Barber. P. 43. My emphasis added.
[21]William Theodore Aquila Barber. Raymond Lull, the Illuminated Doctor: A Study in Mediaeval Missions. London, England: Charles H. Kelly Publishing, 1903. P. 30. Print. While we will not deal at length here, this divine illumination, this method for writing and teaching plays a pivotal role in Lull’s confidence in the Lord for the many daunting task ahead. Barber writes, “Suddenly, he tells us, there came a complete illumination from God, ‘giving him the form and method of making the books…supernaturally imbued with the principles of all sciences, human and divine, and to have learnt the whole truth at the same time from the Holy Spirit” (Ibid., Barber. P. 30).
[22]Ibid., Barber. P. 32.
[23]Ibid., Barber. P. 86. The church in the mediaeval ages viewed chemistry with “grave suspicion” and “After Lull’s death Eymeric, the Inquisitor-General of Aragon, fiercely impinged his orthodoxy and prevented his canonization because of his works of alchemy” (Ibid., Barber. Pp. 77, 86).
[24]Ibid., Barber. P. 88. Print.
[25]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. Pp. 52, 53. Print.
[26]William Theodore Aquila Barber. Raymond Lull, the Illuminated Doctor: A Study in Mediaeval Missions. London, England: Charles H. Kelly Publishing, 1903. P. 14. Print. “To the majority of the rulers in Church and State the only missionary activity possible was that which destroyed so many of the unbelievers that the rest would fear and submit…The sense of the practical failure of Christianity lay heavy on the hearts of men” (Ibid., Barber. P. 5).
[27]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. Pp. 52, 53.
[28]Ibid., Swemer. P. 52.
[29]Lull’s first school of Arabic language acquisition came not from the support of the Pope, rather it was King James II of Aragon came to support Lull’s idea. However, even with a king giving annual support, Lull’s students grew weary and quit (1276). Lull’s vision for the prominence of such a school would be repetitively rejected from the religious sector throughout his life. It wasn’t until the Council of Vienne in 1311-1312 (3-4 years prior his martyrdom which his lifelong vision would see success (Ibid., Barber. Pp. 39, 115).
[30]Dalton Thomas. Unto Death: Martyrdom, Missions, and the Maturity of the Church. Tauranga, New Zealand: Maskilim Publishing, 2012. P. 47. Print. Furthermore, “By not suffering to declare the Gospel to them, our silence screams that our Gospel is not worth dying for. A Gospel that isn’t worth Christians dying for is a Gospel that isn’t worth Muslims living for” (Ibid., Thomas. P. 81).
[31]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. P. 82. Print.
[32]Ibid., Zwemer. P. 83.
[33]“Lull returned in 1291 to Genoa, convinced that if the great Powers of the Church would not stir in the work, God meant to do the work himself. They would not train men; then he would himself go to the African shores, and try by word of mouth and logical discussion to bring the Moslem to Christ” (Ibid., Barber. P. 45).
[34]William Theodore Aquila Barber. Raymond Lull, the Illuminated Doctor: A Study in Mediaeval Missions. London, England: Charles H. Kelly Publishing, 1903. P. 54. Print.
[35]Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1902. P. 134. Print.
[36]Dalton Thomas. Unto Death: Martyrdom, Missions, and the Maturity of the Church. Tauranga, New Zealand: Maskilim Publishing, 2012. P. 86. Print.
[37]Ibid., Zwemer. P. xxi.
[38]Ibid., Thomas. P.77.
[39]“Mission Stats.” The Traveling Team, November 2021. Web. 20 March 2022. http://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats
[40]Ibid., The Traveling Team.
[41]Ibid., The Traveling Team.
[42]Mission Stats.” The Traveling Team, November 2021. Web. 20 March 2022. http://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats
[43]Ibid., The Traveling Team.
[44]Ibid., The Traveling Team. Claude Hickman observes, “Americans have recently spent more money buying Halloween costumes for their pets than the amount given to reach the unreached” (Ibid., The Traveling team).
[45]Ibid., The Traveling Team.
[46]Ibid., The Traveling Team.
[47]Ibid., The Traveling Team.
[48]Ibid., The Traveling Team.
[49]Mission Stats.” The Traveling Team, November 2021. Web. 20 March 2022. http://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats “You have a better chance being in a plane crash than being one of the few missionaries to the unreached” (Ibid., The Traveling Team).
[50]George Eldon Ladd. The Blessed Hope: A Biblical Study of the Second Advent and the Rapture. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1956. Pp. 147, 148. Print.