Luther's changing attitude on the Church

Paul asked if I would give a couple of historical lectures today. He sort of left the topics open to me.

! What I want to talk on is in the first lecture, I'm going to speak about Martin Luther, but rather than just do a sort of standard, you know, this was Martin Luther and this was the kind of stuff he did, I want to look particularly, I want to trace his biography, particularly relative to how his understanding of the church changes.

So, hopefully this lecture will tie in a little bit with yesterday. It will give some historical examples, if you like, of the kind of things that I was pointing towards yesterday.

In the second lecture, I want to give a, it's a lecture I've given a couple of times before, but I want to talk about B.B. Warfield.

Some biographs, some reflections on B.B. Warfield's life and theological contribution.

But first then, Martin Luther. I've called the title, I titled this lecture, Seven Marks of a Healthy Church.

Really as a whack against Mark Deber.

At least, Luther remembers that prayer is a mark of the church.

Just as a facetious jab there.

I think it was Paul Levy who said to me, he said, I wondered if Mark Deber woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat,

realising there were actually ten marks of the church and he had forgotten completely to mention prayer,

but the books had already gone to the press and it was too late.

Anyway, seven marks of a healthy church because in Luther's great treatise of 1538-1539,

on the councils of the church, he gives his most thorough exposition of the nature of the church and church authority.

One of the peculiarities of, well, not Luther, but of knowledge about Luther,

is that we tend, on the whole, to focus on Luther in early, mid-career.

It's the Luther between sort of 1516 and 1525, or maybe 1529, the Marburg Colloquy,

that has tended to capture the popular imagination about Luther.

One of the problems with looking at Luther, just through that lens, however,

is that Luther is a work in progress.

He dies in 1546, and there's quite a lot that goes on in the 1520s and 1530s

that causes him not to change his mind on things that he said earlier,

but certainly to supplement and to add to what he has said earlier.

And I really want today to trace, broad strokes, his early career, through that mid-career phase

and up to the late 1530s, in order to show how Luther's own thinking on the church changed.

A couple of preliminary comments first.

Just a few comments about the Reformation as a whole.

I think this probably goes without saying in this company, but I'm going to say it anyway.

The Reformation was, of course, not a rejection of church tradition.

No Reformer rejected church tradition.

The Anabaptists rejected church tradition.

The Sassinians, of a slightly later date, rejected church tradition.

The Reformation did not reject church tradition.

What the Reformation sought to do was to correct or to norm church tradition

in light of the scripture.

It would never have crossed Calvin's mind to get rid of all that had gone before

and build the church from the ground up.

He assumes that the church has been right on a whole swathe of things

for the previous 1500 years.

His interest is in norming that tradition by the standards of scripture.

Reminds, of course, that the Reformation is not a clean break with the past.

Martin Luther no more comes out of nowhere than anybody else does.

Certainly there is a dramatic break, institutional break, at the time of the Reformation.

But intellectually, we can see that Luther's roots, his intellectual roots,

lie in the late medieval period.

And much of the scholarly work of the last 60, 70 years of the Reformation

has been involved in tracing out the points of dependence and continuity

between Luther and the Catholic teachers he had at the University of Erfurt and beyond.

And that brings me to a point that is sometimes missed about Martin Luther,

but is crucial, I think, to understanding him on a number of levels.

And that is, Luther comes onto the scene in the early 16th century at a time

and there is great eschatological expectation among numerous churchmen

that the world is coming to an end.

Late Middle Ages is a difficult time.

We're at plague of the 14th century that wipes out, is it, a third of Europe's population.

Casts a long, dark shadow over Europe.

And by the time we get to the end of the 15th, beginning of the 16th century,

we have various of end-time figures popping up.

Savonarola in Florence would be an obvious example.

Martin Luther is another.

Martin Luther thinks he's living at the end of time.

1521, after the Diet of Worms, popular tracts start to identify Martin Luther

with figures in the Book of Revelation, both good figures and bad figures.

And Luther, while he never takes the identifications himself,

he never distances himself.

One of the good ones, anyway.

That there is a sense in Luther that things are coming to an end.

And that's very important for understanding the development of his theology.

As I'm sorry, it's very important for understanding his approach to the Jews as well.

1523 is quite a remarkable treatise that Jesus Christ was born a Jew.

Argues that Christians should really treat Jews very well

in order to open the door for evangelism.

1543, of course, just three years before his death,

he writes his famous treatise on the Jews and their lives.

A few years ago, I did a bit of research on Holocaust denial

for a small book on historical method I was writing.

And it amazed me how many Holocaust denial sites

have links to Martin Luther's 1543 treatise on the Jews.

Luther turns from being a philo-semite, we might say,

to being an anti-semite, a slightly anachronistic terminology there.

Why does he do that?

Because in 1523, he thinks the world is coming to an end.

The Reformation will carry on before it.

The Jews will be converted and Christ will return.

By 1543, it's patently obvious that isn't going to happen.

And he's looking around for people to blame.

And he blames the Turks.

He blames the Anabaptists.

He blames the Papists.

And he blames the Jews.

So Luther thinks he's living at the end of time.

And that's important because that helps us to understand

what looks in retrospect like rather naive confidence

that Luther has in the early days of the Reformation.

How long are we going for this morning, Paul?

If you go to quarter to 11.

Okay.

Because I could talk for hours on Luther,

so I really do need to remember myself.

Luther's eschatological expectation will profoundly shape

the early years of the Reformation.

It gives him this tremendous confidence.

When he returns to Wittenberg in 1520 and preaches a famous sermon,

and riots broken out in Wittenberg in his absence,

he returns and he preaches a famous sermon

that brings the riot into an end.

And he has this great statement in it where he says,

you know, people ask me,

why has the Reformation succeeded?

And I say, I don't know.

I've sat around in the pub with my friend,

Philip and Amsdorf,

drinking beer,

and the Word of God was out there doing it all.

Supremely confident statement

about the power of the Word of God

to carry all before him.

As we shall see as we work through his biography.

After 1525,

things really start to change for Luther.

And he begins to realise

that the Word of God won't do it all,

but actually you need to think more thoroughly

at a grassroots level about Christian holiness,

and at an institutional level,

about structures,

and what the Church looks like.

Just as an aside,

it interests me that the,

I don't know if you followed some of the debates

about holiness that are going on

in the United States,

and Luther's quoted a lot,

and it is always the Luther before 1525.

It is always the Luther before 1525.

After 1525,

you have a different Luther,

because he realises there's more to it

than just preaching the Gospel.

Luther then,

protest of 1517,

is when he first hits the popular imagination.

It's often thought of

as the start of the Reformation.

A myriad Victorian paintings

and book illustrations

have the scowling,

angry,

determined-looking Luther

driving a nail

into the castle door in Wittenberg,

nailing up his 95 Theses,

symbolically driving a stake

through the heart of the Catholic Church,

or a nail into the coffin

of the Catholic Church.

Of course,

it wasn't that radical.

What he was doing

was simply advertising debate.

And if you read the 95 Theses,

by and large,

you will probably find them

relatively incomprehensible.

They are deeply rooted

in late medieval debates

about penance

and indulgences and merit.

There is very little there

that one would describe

as distinctively Protestant

other than it appears

to be a protest

of some kind.

For some reason,

frankly,

this remains a mystery to me.

This tract is

translated and printed

and becomes a bestseller.

It seems that the time

is just right

for people to have

some kind of protest

about the Church.

It doesn't matter

that people don't understand it.

It captures the popular imagination.

It appears to be saying

rude things about the Pope.

It seizes the popular imagination

in electoral Saxony

and beyond.

It's actually not that radical,

as I said.

He's, in some ways,

if you go and pin up a notice

on the Church Notice Board here,

saying that you're going to be

debating something

on a certain day.

What Luther's doing

is not a whole lot

more radical than that.

And I think he has

every reason

to believe

that the Pope

will be on his side

when he says things

if indulgences do

what you say,

then surely the Pope

would let everybody

out of purgatory.

I think what Luther's saying

is,

if the Pope knew

what Texel was saying

in this indulgence,

he'd close him down.

Texel can't possibly be right

because the Pope

wouldn't let this happen.

So Luther's protest

for 1517

is not such a radical protest.

It's really a demand

for clarification

on the practice

of the sale of indulgences

that is taking place

across the Holy Roman Empire.

at that particular point

in time.

And of course,

Texel is not allowed

to go into electoral saxony

to sell indulgences

because Frederick the Wise,

Luther's princely protector,

has his own

set of relics.

An enviable collection

of relics.

Luther and Frederick the Wise

never meet, actually.

If you've seen the movie,

the movie's pretty good.

It kaleidoscopes,

it compresses a bit

of the history.

But there is that

Hollywood moment

at the end.

If you've seen the movie

when Luther's

and Frederick the Wise

meet in the relic room

in the castle

in Wittenberg,

and Frederick the Wise

is sort of saying,

you know,

I've had this wonderful

collection and you've

rendered it worthless.

Never happened.

Frederick the Wise

never meets Luther.

They must have passed

in the streets at times.

Frederick the Wise,

a very clever politician,

he always maintained

distance,

so that if ever

it went wrong,

Frederick the Wise

would be able to say,

nothing to do with me,

and walk away

from the situation.

The relationship

between them

was mediated by

a man called

Spalatin.

If you go into

the chapel of the

castle church

in Wittenberg,

it's interesting,

Zwingli is up in the

stained glass windows

as well,

I'm not sure that

Luther would have

approved of that,

but Spalatin is there,

and who was Spalatin?

Spalatin was the man

who made it all possible

by connecting Luther

and Frederick the Wise,

but allowing for

political distance

between them.

Luther's protest,

though,

brings him to

attention,

certainly within

electoral and

ducal Saxony.

More radical,

of course,

is what takes place

in April 1518.

Luther goes to

a regular chapter

meeting

of the Saxon

chapter of the

Augustinian order

to which he belongs.

He goes to the

city of Heidelberg

and presides there

over a disputation

where he has

prepared a series

of theses that

are actually debated

by a man called

Leonard Bayer.

And it's the

Heidelberg disputation

of 1518 that I

think really marks

in some ways the

proper beginning of

the theological

reformation.

It either starts in

September 1517

when Luther has a

disputation on

scholastic theology

or April 1518

when Luther engages

at Heidelberg

and articulates his

notion of the

theologian,

of the cross

and the theologian

of glory,

arguing that there

are two ways of

doing theology.

We could boil it

down into very

simple terms and

say either theology

is done by making

God in the image

of man or it's

done by understanding

that man is in the

image of God.

Either we take our

cue from the world

around and we

assume that what we

do is we simply

expand that and

that human notion

of power,

extend it to the

nth degree and

that's something

akin or analogous

and divine power

or we look at

the cross and

see how God has

revealed his power

to be,

power through

weakness.

It's real 1st

Corinthians kind

of stuff.

We also see at

Heidelberg an

increasing emphasis

upon humility

as the key.

Late medieval

theologians of the

tradition to which

Luther belonged

were always looking

at what is that

thing that one has

to do in order to

access the grace of

God.

And what is the

requirement if you

like triggering

God's arrangement

with human beings

that will bring you

into that first

initial state of

grace.

And Luther really by

March of 1518 has

come to identify,

April of 1518 has

come to identify

that with humility.

Absolute despair of

oneself before God.

Will very quickly of

course morph into

his later understanding

of faith.

Scholars debate about

when Luther makes

his breakthrough on

justification by faith.

Some date it as

early as 1515.

Some push it to

1521, 1522.

I think we're all

slightly misled by

comments Luther

makes in 1545 in

the so-called

autobiographical

fragment when he

talks about this

moment where

everything snapped

into focus relative

to Romans 1.17.

probably it never

happened that way.

And certainly I

think we can trace

a more steady

development in

Luther's thinking

that brings him

to his mature

understanding of

justification by

faith.

One of the

important things

though about

Luther coming to

understand humility

as that which

if you like

triggers the grace

of God, that's

which brings one

into a state of

grace, is the

impact this has on

his understanding

of the sacraments.

Catholic Church,

even today this is

the case, the

Catholic Church's

authority is primarily

a sacramental

authority.

It's rooted in the

administration of

the sacraments.

Late medieval

theologians really

weakened that

dramatically by making

the first condition

for salvation, if you

like, a non-sacramental

one.

How does humility

fit with the

sacraments?

Well it doesn't

really.

despairing of

oneself before

God.

That doesn't

really fit with

the sacraments.

Of course as

Luther's theology

matures and he

starts to talk in

terms of justification

by grace through

faith.

Sacraments again,

their position,

their role is

fundamentally

restructured.

What is taking

place in Heidelberg,

though Luther

himself I think

doesn't fully

appreciate this at

the time, he

sees actually

knocking away the

foundations of

authority in the

medieval church.

What gets Luther

into trouble in

the Reformation is

not justification by

faith directly, if

you like, it's the

implications that his

emerging understanding

of salvation has for

late medieval

Catholicism.

And if you read a

book that was

published last year by

the Roman Catholic

historian Brad

Gregory called The

Unintended

Reformation, it's an

amazing book, it's

this sort of brilliant

mix of amazing

learning and

scholarship and

I think an

utterly wrong

headed thesis.

But one of the

things that comes

through in that

book is how much

conservative Catholics

today hate late

medieval Catholicism

because they see a

clear connection

between late medieval

Catholicism and

Luther.

And what is that

connection?

Late medieval

Catholicism is

eroding the

importance of the

sacraments for

salvation.

And they see

Luther as, if you

like, the end

term of that

development.

So Luther's

articulating a

theology of

Heidelberg then

that is implicitly

corroding, eroding,

chipping away at the

authority of the

church.

This becomes explicit

in 1519.

The early years of the

Reformation, as is

always the way,

education institutions,

individual scholars,

are all jockeying

for position, are

all trying to put

one over on each

other.

And a figure,

John Eck, challenges

Luther and Luther's

colleague, a man

called Andreas

Bodenstein von

Karlstadt, who is

arguably equal, if

not senior to

Luther at this point

at Wittenberg,

challenges them to

debate at the

University of

Leipzig.

It's the Leipzig

disputation.

And I think the

Leipzig disputation

in 1519 is the

moment at which the

real issue becomes

obvious, both to the

Lutherans and to the

Catholic Church.

At Leipzig,

Huss is, not

Huss, Eck is a

very, very clever

debater and very

quickly zeros in on

the issue of

authority.

And Eck is actually

a better debater than

Luther and tricks

him into making a

number of mistakes.

most significantly,

well, Luther,

Luther preaches

before the debate

takes place.

And he preaches on

the power of the

keys, Matthew 16.

And Eck goes to

hear him.

And as Eck leaves

the church, in fact,

it may have been a

lecture, it may have

been a lecture

theatre, they may

have had to move it

because so many

showed up.

As Eck leaves the

service that day,

he says in a loud

voice to those

gathered around him,

that sermon was

completely bohemian.

What Eck is doing is

setting up his

strategy for the

subsequent debates.

Bohemian to us,

we think bohemian,

we think of the rock

group Queen, I guess,

Bohemian Rhapsody.

We think of people

who, you know, we

think of nightlife in

London, sort of weird,

way out, trendy, cool

kind of people.

Yeah, a bit like my

brother down in the

front row here.

In 1519, bohemian in

this context only means

one thing.

It means John Huss.

A hundred years

previously, John

Huss, a Czech

reformer, had, in

fact, much of Huss's

story is actually

important to the

Luther story.

Huss travelled to the

Council of Constance,

which had been called

to try to sort out the

crisis in the papacy,

got three popes, got

to try to establish

which one the

legitimate one is.

Huss travelled under

safe conduct from

Prague to the

Council of Constance.

His safe conduct is

removed and Huss is

tried for heresy and

burned at the stake.

Key thing is, he's

been tried for heresy,

found guilty and

burned at the stake.

If you can tie Luther

in with Huss, then it's

game over.

He's a heretic and he

should pay the ultimate

price.

So Eck is setting up his

strategy for the

following day.

And in the debate with

Luther, he very quickly

starts to push Luther to

say, you know, you're

agreeing with Huss, you're

agreeing with Huss, you're

agreeing with Huss.

And at some point, Luther

almost in exasperation

says, you know, many of

the articles that were

condemned at the Council

of Constance are actually

thoroughly orthodox and

consistent with the

position of Augustine.

Bad move.

Because what you're

essentially saying there

is, I'm identifying

myself with a heretic.

More than that, of course,

you know, you have, Eck is

able to say, so, so, Luther,

you think the papacy is

erring?

You think councils erring?

What's left, man?

What kind of authority is

left?

You've taken away the

papacy, you've taken away

conciliarism, what's left?

What does the nature of

authority look like to you?

So the Leipzig

disputation brings clear to

the fore the implications,

the implicit things that

have been going on all

the time.

From the moment Luther

nails his 95 Theses to the

Castle in Wittburg, he

doesn't know it, but he's

actually challenging the

church's authority.

That becomes more explicit

at Heidelberg, and it

becomes absolutely explicit

in the Leipzig

disputation.

We then come to the great

year of 1520 for Martin

Luther.

1520 is the year in which

I think in some ways Luther

is never more optimistic

than he is in 1520.

He's survived thus far.

That in itself is quite an

achievement.

It's becoming clear to him

that he thought the Pope

would answer to his rallying

cry and reform the church.

It's becoming clear that

that's not going to happen.

And I think it's also

becoming clear to him that

his vision of reform is

somewhat different from

some of the other visions

of reform out there.

There are a lot of people

in the beginning of the

16th century who want to

reform the church.

Many of them think the

problem is a bureaucratic

one.

Clean up the bureaucracy,

clean up the moral sleaze in

the church and everything

will be okay.

Luther's reformation is

heading in a very different

direction.

That the fundamental

reformation has to be a

theological or a doctrinal

one.

And 1520 is the year of

the three great treaties.

If you've never read

Luther then 1520 is a good

place to start.

It's much more accessible

in many ways than 1517.

Much more accessible even

than the Heidelberg

disputation.

Luther writes three great

treaties among numerous

other things in this year.

The freedom of the Christian

man, the Babylonian

captivity of the church,

and the appeal to the

German nobility.

Freedom of the Christian

man is essentially his

reconstruction of Christian

ethics in the light of his

developing new understanding

of justification by grace

through faith.

Good works are necessary,

but they flow as a response

to God's action in Christ.

Knowing that God has freed us

through Christ from the need

to work for our own

justification, we can work

for our neighbour freely.

The freedom of the Christian

man, if you like, is freedom

from the curse of the law,

and freedom to be a slave to

our neighbour, to give of

ourselves to our neighbour.

Babylonian captivity of the

church is his reconstruction

of the sacramental system

of the Catholic church.

The Catholic church has

seven sacraments, Luther

reduces them.

Well, the treatise is

somewhat ambiguous.

The treatise itself says

that penance is a sacrament,

and in the conclusion he

says, you know, I'm not

sure that penance is a

sacrament after all.

So, he reduces it either

to three or to two

sacraments, depending

which part of the treatise

you prioritise.

But Luther gets rid of

marriage, holy orders,

final unction, and

confirmation as sacraments,

retains the Mass,

retains baptism,

and possibly retains

penance.

Reconstructs the meaning

of baptism and the Mass,

though.

Baptism ceases to be a

washing or a healing,

and comes to be death

and resurrection.

It's connected with

Luther's new understanding

of sin.

Sin isn't a wound,

sin isn't a weakness,

sin is the status of

death.

If you're dead, you don't

need to be healed.

You don't need to be

cleaned, you need to be

resurrected.

You need to bring your

understanding of baptism

into line with your

understanding of sin.

And often, as

evangelicals, we can

tend to forget that

Luther's pathway to

justification by faith

is intimately connected

to his reflections on

baptism.

It's actually quite a

sacramental pathway

when you trace it out.

He changes his

understanding of the

Lord's Supper from being,

well, interestingly enough,

his criticism of

transubstantiation is not

that the body and blood

of Christ are present.

His criticism of

transubstantiation is that

the bread and wine are

absent.

Luther wants both.

You have the bread and

wine, and you have the

body and blood of Christ.

Later, he will talk about

the body and blood of

Christ in, with, and under

the elements of bread and

wine.

And penance is really,

penance is effectively,

it's sort of, almost,

you might say, kind of

cancelling now.

It's sort of speaking the

gospel, the law and the

gospel to each other,

almost on a one-to-one

basis.

You know, you come across

a friend sinning, it's

your responsibility to

rebuke him for his sin,

and then he repents to

speak to him words of

comfort through the

gospel.

So the sacramental system

is reconfigured.

And finally, the appeal

to the German nobility.

It's becoming obvious

the church authorities

aren't going to reform

themselves.

So to whom does one

look for a reformation

at this point?

To the princes.

It's a brilliant

political move.

You know, no prince is

going to object to

having more power,

and potentially more

money.

So it's a, you know,

it's a pretty easy

sale to the princes.

It's one of the

reasons why it's so

difficult for Mary,

the first of England,

to get Catholicism

back to England.

You know, when Edward

VI, the young boy

king, died, his

older sister, Mary I,

was a very reactionary

Catholic, succeeded

to the throne.

Amidst cheers, you know,

the English people are

just so glad that

Catholicism has come

back, because the

Protestants, they

seem, are so corrupt.

Mary does two brilliant

things for the

Protestants.

One, she burns them.

That doesn't sound too

brilliant, but actually,

what it does is it

creates public sympathy

for Protestantism that

was never there before.

It allows Protestantism

to rehabilitate itself

in the public eyes.

And secondly, the other

thing she can't do is

that I think she

underestimates how much

money the Catholic

nobility have made out

of the English

Reformation.

When Henry VIII

appropriates church land

and sells it, who's

making money?

Who's getting land

cheap?

The nobility.

The nobility, are they

Protestant or Catholic?

They're predominantly

Catholic.

And so, the Catholic

nobility of England, I

think, are heavily

invested in the

Protestantisation of

England.

I mean, there's nothing

like money to really

appeal where somebody,

you know, theological

conviction, making money,

it's always a bit of a,

an even balance, isn't

it?

Appeal to the German

nobility, then.

The appeal to the

German nobility

essentially says to the

nobles, take back what

is rightfully yours.

The church has expanded

its sphere of power into

what we would now call

the secular realm.

And it is time for you

to take back that power.

And so, if you like,

there could be a sort of

negative reform of the

church by stripping it

of its worldly and

earthly pretensions.

Underlying all of these

three books is Luther's

great confidence that

just preaching the word

of God will bring about

the Reformation in

Germany.

We just, we're at the

end of time, we preach

the word, the word goes

out, it does not return

empty, all will fall

before it.

Think of that line in

A Mighty Fortress,

one little word shall

fell him.

Great confidence in the

preaching of the word

rooted against the

background of this

eschatological hope,

this expectation which

is, you know, not

unprecedented in the

late medieval period and

another one of those

things that makes

Luther in some ways a

man of the middle ages

rather than a man of

the early modern age.

It never gets better than

1520.

The end of 1520, the

papal bull of excommunication,

ex-Sergé Domine, arrives

in Wittenberg.

Sixty days after its

arrival, the faculty and

the high hedions of

Wittenberg process into the

Terram Square and they have

a mass bonfire.

By and large, the

Lutherans didn't burn books

to suppress them.

It's a bad move.

Burning books to suppress

them just makes them more

interesting.

It would be like banning,

ban the Rolling Stones

from the radio in the

60s and you guarantee

they get to number one.

But there is a book

burning this day and the

books that are burned are,

it's the papal bull is

burned.

And that's the one in

some ways that often

captures our imagination.

Luther's received the

papal bull and he throws

it in the fire.

How cool is that?

But just as significant is

the burning of the books

of canon law.

In some ways the burning

of the books of canon law

is more powerful as a

gesture because it's not

only saying we defy your

authority on the issue

of Luther.

Burning of the books of

canon law says we defy

your authority.

End of story.

Everything that represents

who and what you are,

we're throwing on the

bonfire today and getting

rid of it.

1520 then is in some

ways Luther's most

glorious year.

It never gets better than

1520.

Luther is never more

optimistic I think than he

is in 1520.

We then come to a series

of crises that will change

Luther's thinking forever.

First crisis is the crisis

of late 1521-1522.

Bit of a back story.

Luther has been summoned to

the Diet of Worms.

It's a bit of a legal

problem because once you're

excommunicated you have no

legal status and there is

some debate.

It reminds me of a sort of

classic OPC kind of debate

takes place in Rome.

How do you summons Luther to

an imperial diet when he's

already been excommunicated?

Is there any procedural way

we can do this?

And finally they decide

well probably there isn't

but we're going to do it

anyway.

So they summons Luther to

meet before the emperor

at the Diet of Worms.

And it's a magnificent

moment.

Here you have this man

who three years earlier

four years earlier he was

just an unknown professional

academic and pastor in

Wittenberg.

Now he's the most famous

man in Europe.

And he's taken place and he

has to stand before the

emperor and answer for his

opinions.

You can only imagine how

terrified he must have been.

Famously of course on the

first day when Luther is

asked are these your books

and do you recount them?

Luther says I need time to

think about my answer.

You know as if he wasn't

expecting that question.

Scholars have always

debated why does he delay?

Is it part of some sneaky

strategy to wrong foot the

opposition?

Or is it just that he was

scared?

Possible that he was just

scared and at that moment

his nerves started to go and

he needed time to gather his

thoughts.

Worms, the Diet of Worms

really ends fairly inconclusively.

And as Luther is riding away

from Worms, he's kidnapped.

Frederick the Wise sends out a

sort of a SWAT team if you

like to seize Luther on his

way back to Wittenberg and

whisk him up to the Wartburg

castle which stands high over

the town of Eisenach.

If you ever do a Reformation

tour, Eisenach is one of those

great two for one towns.

You've got the castle on the

hill and then down in the town,

who was born in Eisenach?

Which other famous person was

born in Eisenach?

Johann Sebastian Bach.

You've got the Bach birth

house and the great museum

there.

So it's a wonderful place to

go on a sort of tourist visit.

You get two for one.

Luther is closeted away in this

castle up on the hill.

He lives under the pseudonym of

Sir George.

He does do some little expeditions

out into the hinterland at

points.

There's a famous story of a

group of students arriving in a

pub late one night and they

notice in the corner there's a

knight sitting there with a big

sword and bushy beard and this

knight is reading the Psalms in

Hebrew.

And that's not a normal scene in

a medieval German tavern.

So the students go there on their

way to Wittenberg to start their

theological studies and they go

over and sit with this knight and

this knight expands the Psalms in

Hebrew to them showing them how

Christ is in the Psalms.

And at the end of the evening when

they get up together the knight's

going they find that the knight has

paid their bill.

I mean that's the nicest part of

the story in some ways.

And then some months later at

Wittenberg they're waiting their

first class with Martin Luther who

walks through the door but the man

they recognize as this knight they

met in this tavern.

So Luther does some quiet incognito

visits to Saxony.

Saxony while he is sequestered at the

castle.

But this is where the Wittenberg

Reformation takes a turn for the

worst.

The leadership of Wittenberg falls to

Karstadt who we've met.

Philip Melanchthon the brilliant young

Greek scholar who becomes professor of

Greek at Wittenberg age 21 if you can

imagine that.

And a man called Conrad Zwilling.

And not Melanchthon but Karstadt and

Zwilling really want to push the

Reformation in a radical direction and

so they stir up iconoclastic riots.

Luther returns to Wittenberg in December

1521 just to see what's going on and

it's bad.

There's rioting.

And then finally in 1522 Frederick the

Wise brings Luther back and it's this

point he preaches that sermon where he

talks about sitting in the pub and

drinking beer.

1522 is actually the point I think in

Luther's career where he's most

vulnerable.

We tend to think of diet of worms.

Actually I think it's the riots of

1522.

Because if Luther can't bring the people

back under control Frederick the Wise

will certainly pull his support from it.

Frederick the Wise will have to engage in

what we call military intervention and

Luther will be finished.

And Luther by sheer force of

personality is able to bring the riots

under control.

But what this does is it brings to

Luther's attention that preaching the

word may not be enough.

That bad stuff is starting to happen in

the Reformation.

It becomes intensified in 1525.

1525 is a fascinating year in Luther's

life.

He engages in his brutal polemic with

Erasmus over the perspicuity of

scripture and the bondage of the will.

He marries Catherine von Bora.

If you go to Wittenberg you go to the

he was given by Frederick the Wise he

was given the

the old monastery as a gift as a

wedding gift and because being a

reformer doesn't bring in much money

Luther and his wife would have

students to lodge at the house and

at the doorway there's these two

little chairs

cut in stone and the door of the

Augustinian the former Augustinian

monastery.

And that was a birthday present that

Katie bought for Luther because she

didn't think they spent enough time

talking to each other.

So she bought this door frame this

stone door frame with these two

chairs so that on sunny days they

could spend time sitting on either

side of the door and talking to each

other.

And if you go inside upstairs there's a

room where the same thing occurs in a

window as well.

And so if it was raining outside they

could go up and they could actually

spend some time sitting and talking

together.

So the marriage is very sweet.

It's a PR disaster at the time

though because Luther gets married at

the height of what historians call

the Peasants' Rebellion or the

Peasants' War.

Really from the beginning of the

16th century a series of peasant

rebellions, peasant unrest have been

sort of popping up over the Holy

Roman Empire.

And they come to a sort of climax in

1525, a major explosion of unrest.

And the imperial armies made up of

Protestants and Catholics march against

the peasants to put them down.

Many of these peasants are using the

rhetoric of Luther to justify their

cause.

Luther's freedom rhetoric strikes a

deep chord with the peasants.

And they're claiming to be with

Luther.

Luther first of all is sympathetic to

some of their claims, some of their

calls, but ultimately has to radically

distance himself from them because it's

like 1522 all over again.

If the Reformation becomes identified

with revolution, social revolution, the

nobility, do we want social stability or

do we want Protestantism?

We've got to go for social stability.

The nobles will cut Luther adrift.

So Luther comes out swinging against the

peasants and again it sets in his mind the

idea that maybe the preaching of the word is

not going to be enough after all.

1529, just very briefly of course, he falls

out with Holger Zwingli over the Lord's

Supper.

That's often very difficult for us to think

why is Luther prepared to break over the

Lord's Supper?

Why is he prepared to break Protestantism

over the Lord's Supper?

Why does he say to Zwingli we're of a

different spirit on this issue?

Persists strongly in Lutheranism.

At the end of the 16th century, Theodore

Beza, Calvin's successor at Geneva, is

involved in an ecumenical dialogue with the

Lutherans and at the end he offers the

Lutheran theologian the hand of Christian

fellowship.

And the Lutheran theologian says, I won't

shake your hand out of Christian fellowship,

but I will shake it out of civic fellowship.

In other words, you're not a Christian.

Runs very deep.

Disillusioning to Luther that Protestantism

has split, even though really he is, I

think he has to take the lion's share of

the blame for that.

And then in 1530, Philip Melanchthon,

Luther's right-hand man, puts together the

Augsburg Confession.

If you have the Book of Concord, the

Lutheran confessional documents, the

Augsburg Confession is sort of the

centerpiece of Lutheran confessional

identity.

It's written by Philip Melanchthon in 1530

in an attempt to provide a Protestant

confessional basis for the Holy Roman

Empire.

And the emperor refuses to subscribe it.

And only a handful of the princes

subscribe the confession.

And it's at that point that Luther, I

think, realizes it's done.

We're never going to see a united

Protestant Europe under the banner of

the Reformation.

Interestingly enough, at that point,

Luther actually shifts his view of

rebellion.

Everybody knows that Luther teaches, you

know, that you should always submit to

the civil authorities.

Well, actually, the later Luther is

slightly different.

After 1530, Luther thinks that the

electors, the princes in the empire,

can resist the emperor.

Because, of course, it's the electors who

elect the emperor, and therefore power

kind of flows from them to the emperor

before the emperor has it, and therefore

they're able to resist him.

It's very convenient for Luther, of course,

because it means that the elector of

Saxony can maintain Lutheranism in

opposition to imperial policy.

So, there's that that kicks in.

And then also, in the late 1520s,

Melanchthon and Luther head up a

visitation of, you know, what's going on

in Saxony relative to Protestant churches.

Let's find out what life's like on the

ground.

And they are horrified by what they

discover.

Not only have we got these political

crises that are shattering Luther's

confidence in the mere, simple

preaching of the gospel to effect

big political change,

at grassroots level, they find that

preaching of the gospel, people are

using it as an excuse to do whatever

they want.

And Luther, of course, at that point,

puts together some catechisms.

We've got to start getting people

taught properly.

We've got to realize that it isn't

just enough to preach the gospel.

The law has to be preached

appropriately as well.

And that's why I say, you know, in

the debates about Luther and holiness

and justification, you've got to take

the later Luther into account as well.

The Reformation is a work in progress.

These men are opening up new

theological territory, which will

generate its own new problems and

require a response.

An example, perhaps closer to home for

us is the Westminster Assembly's

teaching on assurance of faith.

Some people get worried that Calvin

seems to identify faith and

assurance by the time you get to

Westminster, so they're making a

distinction that one can have true

faith but not be assured for

periods of time.

People say, this is disturbing.

Maybe it's a retrogression to late

medieval Catholicism.

I think, no.

It's the result of a hundred years of

pastoral reflection like that

Protestant preaching does in the pew.

These men are aware that it's not quite

as simple as the first generation of

reformers thought it was.

And that's not a criticism of the

first generation of reformers.

They're doing something new and they

don't know what the long-term impact

of it's going to be.

They're not going to see their imbalances

until they've worked out someone.

So by the time we get to the 1530s,

Luther is really, I think, beginning to

think, it's not enough just to preach

the gospel.

It's not enough.

We need to give ethical guidelines for

behaviour.

We need to think about structure in the

church.

And that leads me, and this will be a

fairly brief summary now, to the

Treatise of 1538-1539 on the councils

of the church.

Luther, like all reformers, has to

wrestle with what is the identity of

the church.

Once you've got rid of what we call

sacramental apostolic succession,

how do you identify the true church?

Where do you look around and find the

true church?

And Luther comes up with seven marks.

And there's just one or two of them

that I want to sort of zero in on.

The most fundamental mark for Luther,

as it was for all reformers, was the

word.

The apostolicity of the church was

established by the conformity of the

teaching of the church with apostolic

teaching.

So when the reformers confessed their

belief in one holy catholic and

apostolic church, they were not thinking

of a succession of laying on of hands

that somehow gets traced back to Peter

in the first century.

They were thinking of those who taught

as those before them had taught, going

all the way back to the apostles.

And the word remains the most fundamental

mark of the church for Protestantism.

There can be no sacramental practice

without a preaching of the word.

It's why, it doesn't work here, it

doesn't work in my church, but if you're

in a church that was really designed,

properly, if I could put it that way,

you have the pulpit and then you have

the table underneath it.

Making a clear point, a symbolic point,

if you like, that the pulpit, the word,

stands above the sacraments.

Sacraments are important, they're there

at the front, but they're clearly

subordinated to the word.

Such that one cannot practice the

sacraments without first preaching

the word.

The sacramental significance is grasped

by faith and that requires the preaching

of the word.

Just as an aside, I read a great book

recently called When Church Became

Theatre.

Not really into architecture, but this

book is a study of American church

architecture in the 19th century.

And how the Second Great Awakening

really led people to start designing

churches that were like theatres.

And it opened my eyes, so yes, churches

today, they design like sort of conference

halls and rock concert arenas.

And that's not incidental.

And it says something about how one

visualises the church.

In the Reformation, St. Giles Cathedral,

Edinburgh, I suspect the word is not as

central at St. Giles these days as it

should be.

Some of you will have more direct

experience of that, I'm sure.

But one of the great things is you go in

there and all roads lead to the pulpit.

The pulpit's in the centre, at least

geographically, if not metaphysically,

anymore.

The word is central.

Baptism too, the initiation rite,

that has to be there as a mark of the

church.

The Lord's Supper for Luther.

The office of the keys.

It's a church discipline.

Luther says that's one of the seven

non-negotiables of the church.

The office of the keys is there.

And then he comes to something that

really one would not find in the early

Luther.

And I think it shows how his thinking

has shifted.

The calling and ordination of ministers.

It's interesting in 1520 when Luther

sort of asks, you know, why do we,

why do we have a, you know, minister?

Luther's sort of shoulder shrugging.

Well, you know, if we didn't have one

guy to do it, it would just be total chaos.

It's a pure, pragmatic, practical move.

By 1539, he's saying,

ordination, you've got to make sure that

the right, competent men are set aside

to do the task.

If you like, go back to my first lecture

yesterday.

Luther is grasping that point that Paul is

making in the pastoral epistles.

Paul doesn't say to Timothy, oh, just read

the Bible on a Sunday and keep preaching it

and everything will be okay.

He doesn't say that.

He says, appoint men.

You know, make sure the right men are in

charge and run in the show.

That's where Luther is in 1539.

Luther's starting to think very structurally

about the church at this point.

Even though Protestantism roots its

authority ultimately in the word of God.

That does not mean, you know, the

sufficiency of scripture does not mean

if you like, that scripture is sufficient

for all things.

You still need a structure.

Then, of course, he improves on Mark

Deva by saying that prayer, praise and

thanksgiving are an important mark of

the church.

By the way, I have to say, I'm not saying

anything here that I haven't said to

Mark's face and wound him up and down.

He refuses to back down.

He gave me some waffle about it.

Well, of course, I didn't mean that they

were the only nine marks of the church.

They were just the ones I wanted to

focus on.

I was like, yeah, yeah.

If that helps you sleep at night.

And then finally, the cross.

And I think this is where Luther is

most magnificent in some ways.

The church, the true church, will suffer.

And that, I think, is a very useful

lesson for us today.

I know that religious freedom plays

out differently in the United States

than it does here.

But everybody, I think, in the West

is starting to feel the cold blast of

legal changes that are beginning to

squeeze the church.

I read something recently in America

about somebody saying, you know,

freedom of speech is not really an

absolute right.

That's kind of interesting.

I've seen law shifting where freedom

of religion is becoming to be understood

as, well, the freedom to own your own

building and do what you want within the

bounds of your building and not

anywhere else.

My church last year did, we did an

outreach in a park, a local park,

and we got permission to do it.

It was a pretty low-key and offensive

thing.

I just read The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe, and we handed out tracts

afterwards, and I got a note from the

church secretary yesterday saying that

we contacted the township for permission

to do it this year.

We got a letter back from the township

saying that they'll be in touch with us

in a couple of weeks because they're

reviewing and revising their policy on

the use of public parks.

You know, you can just guess the way

that's going down.

That's not much suffering, of course,

compared to what Luther said.

But for Luther, the final mark of the

church is the cross.

Not only is the cross of Christ, if you

like, the axiom on which theology is

built for Luther, not only is it the

critical thing that all theology has to

be refracted through the cross, that has

a practical experiential aspect as well.

If you're doing theology right, if you're

doing church right, then one can expect

to suffer for it, for that cross-shaped

theology to manifest itself in the life,

not only of individual believers, but also

of the church as a whole.

So that then is a brief trolley bus tour,

if you like, of Luther's thinking on the

church, and the main point is, Luther in

some ways is a bit like a sort of modern,

non-ecclesiastical, evangelical in his

early days.

All we've got to do is preach the gospel,

and everything will fall into place.

By 1539, no, no.

Actually, we need to prepare.

Think of Thomas Chalmers, you know, from

1530 onwards, what's Thomas Chalmers doing

in Scotland?

He's preparing.

Preparation, preparation, preparation.

Organization, organization, organization.

We need to remember as a church, as churches,

it's not just, it isn't even primarily

those who preach the gospel who win, if

you like, it's those who preach the gospel

and organize effectively.

Lesson Luther learned the hard way.

Brings me up to time, I'll throw it open for

questions, comments, pushback.

Anything else you want me to say about

Luther?

I know the answer, I'll try to give it.

Thank you very much, Kyra, for that.

Any questions?

Mark?

I wrote it back.

And, Kyra, that last one, I'm very interested.

When you all think the difficulty between

Luther and the reform, it's that the reform

wants you to reform everything out of the world.

Luther needs to distract us from the church,

because we sort that out ourselves.

Can you expand on why that is?

If Luther started to think this,

why does the Lutheran Reformation so

so different from the ancient

of the church?

Wow, that's, the question,

everybody's probably heard it, because

you're all closer to Matthew than I am,

but the question is, why does the

Lutheran Reformation look very different

to the reformed Reformation?

You know, there are a whole host of

reasons for that.

One reason is to do with the

personality of Luther.

I don't think there's anybody in the

reformed Reformation who has quite the

dominant influence that Luther has.

So, for example, there's no doubt in my mind

that the Lord's Supper issue is a huge issue,

initially at least, because of Luther's

autobiography.

So much of his own development is wrapped up

with the Lord's Supper.

So much of his reaction to Zwingli is

determined by the fact that he's heard

these views before, in 1522, from Karstadt.

And Karstadt was a rioting lunatic.

And Zwingli may look polite, but it's like

Sinn Féin IRA, if you like.

Everybody knows it's the same guys, basically.

Zwingli looks polite, but man, he's

undermining the basis of the church and of

society.

So there's a strong personal impact.

There's also a very different political

context.

Luther's operating in really a, what is

essentially a slowly modernizing, but

basically medieval, feudal environment.

Zwingli and the Reformed are by and large

operating in cities, where there's a

certain level of popular representation

within towns, where it's more feasible

in some ways for preachers to have a much

more profound and transformative impact

on the culture around them.

So that's an aspect to it.

I think Luther doesn't, you know, with the

exception of Luther, most of the other

Reformers come from a background in

Renaissance Humanism.

And Renaissance Humanism is a program of

cultural change.

And people like Zwingli become Reformers, I

think, because they realize that the

cultural change they want to achieve is

not possible simply on the basis of what

Erasmus has taught them.

They need something more radical.

Luther is a medieval man.

He's a man of the monastic cloister.

He doesn't have this vision of cultural change

that Zwingli and even Calvin bring to their

ministries.

So there's a whole variety of reasons why

Lutheranism and the Reformed look different

in the 16th, 17th century.

Is that what you're getting at?

Yeah, so it's technically the only issue of

church structures, exactly.

Okay, yeah.

If Luther starts to realize that church structures

need to be placed in order to preserve or

to enable Reformation to be able to take.

I guess my question is, when does it get

the end of the position of thinking, well,

then we need to reform church structures

for it to work, so in the same way as we

reformed after it to work.

I think that then you come to the difference,

the different ethos in the Lutheran.

The Lutheran Reformation is much less

iconoclastic in all senses of the word

than the Reformed regime.

A great example would be that there's a

strong conservative temper to Luther's

Reformation.

A good example would be the debates over

the catechisms in the 15th century.

The debate goes on in Lutheranism about,

you know, should we still call the mass

the mass?

Or should we use different terminology?

And it's a great debate because it's one

of those discussions where you think,

well, both sides have got good arguments.

And it's not obvious whether one is right

and the other is wrong.

One side of the Lutheran church wants to say,

you know, we have a new radical theology.

We need a new vocabulary to express it.

Luther is more on the side of, you know,

we're disturbing people by what we're doing.

The big change in the church,

things coming into the vernacular,

the shifts in the liturgical action

of the mass.

This is very disturbing for ordinary people.

So we should keep in place

as much as we possibly can

from the old regime.

So people are minimally disturbed.

What we do, if you like,

is we subvert the old forms.

We don't get rid of them.

And that, I think, speaks to a conservative

temper in Luther.

Where, when it comes to church structures,

you see this a bit in the Anglican

Reformation as well.

Now, we don't see the details

of church government in the New Testament,

so we will adopt, adapt,

transform the structures

that we already have.

Because the structures,

they're not bad.

We just need to make sure

it's the right way of manning them.

So, and underlying that, of course,

ultimately, I think,

is a different view of

what we call the regulative principle,

I suppose.

A different view of how and what

scripture can and must regulate.

So the Lutheran Reformation

is much more conservative.

You go to Sweden and wander into

a Lutheran church in Sweden,

it could look more ornate

than the Catholic church

in this country.

You know, they didn't get rid of images.

They didn't get rid of

the guilt-edged stuff.

It's all retained.

Luther had this strong,

conservative element.

He was in great fear of unrest,

rioting, out-of-control,

popular opinion.

Does that?

Yeah.

Okay.

So you heard it here,

first, Swingley was a member

of the IRA.

Any other questions?

David.

It's not very clear on Luther,

but your side-point

about assurance

in Westminster.

A way that you

explained that

in terms of

the divides were

effectively coming

in terms of

a hundred years

or Protestant

and the speech.

Yeah.

Do you think,

I couldn't tell from the way,

but do you think

there is actually

a difference between

those Calvin and

whether assurances

of the essence

of faith or...

That's a really good question

and I don't think

there's any consensus

on this.

I would say

there's a difference

in degree,

not in kind.

I think if you look

at Calvin's sermons,

I mean, you'll know

this better than I do,

if you look at Calvin's sermons,

you find a more nuanced

view of faith

than you do

if you just read

the Institutes

and some of the commentaries.

So I would say

Calvin's statements

on faith assurance,

certain knowledge,

etc., etc.,

set in the context

of Calvin's

whole pastoral ministry