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.
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
are not his last word
on it.
His own position
is more nuanced.
And then I think
you're getting down
to debates of,
well,
are the Westminster Divines
more open to lack
of assurance
on the whole
than Calvin is?
Is it more exceptional
for Calvin?
But I myself would say
part of the problem
is guys who write
books on Calvin
and all they do
is read the Institutes
and essentially present
with the Institutes
as Calvin's
complete theology,
which emphatically
is not.
I mean,
the Institutes
is very important,
but his preaching,
his commentaries,
his letters,
his tracts,
all I think
have to be taken
into account
in order to understand
how he saw
Protestant preaching
impacting the laity.
You know,
Rene of France,
his correspondence
with Rene of France,
this poor lady
who's swinging backwards
and forwards
between Catholicism
and Protestantism
because of the persecution
that her husband
is heaping on her.
I'd want to look
at that correspondence
and take that
into account.
So,
it was a sweeping
aside.
I think the situation
is more nuanced.
Would you agree?
I mean,
you know Calvin
better than I do.
Well,
yes,
I don't actually think
there is a divide
between the
but it's just a way
that you put it
in terms of
the rest of it.
Yeah.
It was more a swipe
at the scholars
who don't take
into account
the concrete
pastoral context
in which this stuff
is being worked out
than it was
a definitive statement
on Calvin.
I wondered
if you could just
clarify
the swing
of Luther
from
philo-semitism
to anti-semitism.
It didn't seem
to me convincing
to have an explanation
that it was just
the end of the world
didn't come
or something.
It's a bit of
blame for the Jews.
Well,
I think your problem
actually,
well,
first of all,
the language of
philo and anti-semitism
I think is problematic
because it's strongly racial.
And I am,
although I've been,
I read a book recently
that's making me
go back to this
and rethink it,
I'm pretty persuaded
that Luther's problem
with the Jews
is a religious one
not a racial one.
I'm not sure
that Luther really
has racial categories.
Compare Luther
to the Nuremberg laws
in Nazi Germany.
The Nuremberg laws
are very clear
that if you convert
to Christianity
it doesn't make
any difference
because the blood
is polluted.
I think for Luther
if a Jew converts
to Christianity
that's fine,
you know,
problem solved.
So there's a,
that's the first point
I would want to make.
Secondly,
I would say
we often come at
Luther 1543
from the wrong end.
It's not the treatise
of 1543
that's a surprise.
Everybody hates Jews
in the,
well,
not everybody,
most people hate Jews
in the 16th century.
There is a strong tradition
of anti-Jewish writing
in the late Middle Ages.
The 1543 treatise
that Luther writes
uses a lot of the clichés
of that tradition.
The blood libel,
you know,
the idea that Jews
are kidnapping Christian babies
and crucifying them.
That occurs.
So Luther's 1543 treatise
is very much part
of a much larger
and wider genre
of anti-Jewish writing.
He's jumping on the bandwagon.
Well,
he's part and parcel
of the cultural flow
of the times.
The problem for Luther
on the Jews
is 1523.
Why does he write
positively about the Jews
in 1523?
So the problem is not
why he's anti-Jewish
in 1543.
That's easy to explain.
That was the way
the culture was going.
The problem is,
why does he like
the Jews in 1523?
And that's where
the eschatological argument
comes in.
Because he expects
them to be converted
and the end of the world
to come.
And when that hope dies,
he reverts to time.
And then I would play
the classic historian's
ploy at this point.
That's speculation.
Give me a better
explanation for it
and I'll abandon it.
You know,
so that's...
So that's...
Calvin,
are you?
I've not looked at
Calvin on the Jews
enough to know.
But certainly,
you see,
Luther is a late medieval man.
Calvin is a trained humanist.
He's a man of the modern world,
we would say.
Luther's entire education
operates within the boundaries
of late medieval Catholicism,
really.
So,
I would say,
Luther is the exceptional
reformer for a number
of reasons,
not least the fact that
he doesn't like Erasmus.
There's little time
for Erasmus.
He's not really influenced
by Erasmus
beyond the text
of the Greek New Testament.
But I'd have to go
and look at...
Have you looked at
Calvin on the Jews
at all, David?
A little bit, yeah.
Calvin's much more...
It's easier to refer
to Calvin as being
anti-Jewish
rather than anti-Semitic.
So he has a much more
clearer theological position
of why,
particularly in Romans 9-11,
why the way that Paul reads
Old Testament Jews
is not believing the gospel
and so having Paul
in favor of Calvin
reads that
in a way that's
a lot more acceptable
because he doesn't seem
to slip into racist language.
Luther is a bombast.
I mean,
Luther is a powerful rhetorician
and it's both
his strength at times
and it completely
undoes him at others.
Peasants' war,
dreadful writings
against the peasants,
against the Jews.
You know,
we should lock them
in their synagogues
and burn their synagogues down.
That is A,
powerful rhetoric at the time
and B,
from a post-Holocaust perspective,
that's exactly
what was done in some...
It looks like a prophecy
or a policy.
But I think what Luther's...
Luther's just being Luther
and bombastic at that point.
He doesn't expect
anybody to do it.
Well,
unfortunately,
our words live
beyond the grave.
I'd go over
and argue
that the reform
come off better
from the...
And this is a question
because there are
the experience of much.
The Jewish experience
of dispersion
and exile
and that's a way
that was the reformer
of the person
who didn't fight them
so much.
I saw a conservative
and the Jews
in a way that
prevented them
from using
the language
of the Jews.
There is a superb book...
Sorry.
There's a superb book
just being published
maybe in the last year
by...
I think it's the Institute
for Holocaust Studies
in Washington.
I can't remember
the gentleman's name.
His father-in-law
is actually a Westminster grad
and the gentleman
is a...
The scholar who wrote it
is an RTS grad,
a Form Theological Seminary grad,
who did his PhD
I think at King's College London.
And it's called
Demonising the Jews.
And it's a fascinating study
of the use of Luther's writings
in Germany
between
1900 and 1945.
It's a fascinating study
of how Luther is appropriate.
I think you'd...
you would find
a more sophisticated treatment
of Luther and the Jews
there than I can give you now.
Thank you very much.
It's...
Send me an email
if you lose the title
or need to know
the name of the author.
I've got it on my bookshelf
at home.
It's a very, very good book.
In fact, I did an article
on the website
Reformation 21
just a week or two ago
on part two
of a sort of book
on how to read Luther
and I list the book there
in the last section
and say
Luther on the Jews
and I give
three or four titles
and that's one of them.
It's really a very
excellent treatment.
Right.
We need to wind it up there.
Maybe, just thinking
about the
astrological connection,
it's interesting
in the 19th century
when there was the explosion
in missionary
out of the UK
there was an expectation
both of the Lord's return
the world was going
to be evangelized
and that went hand in hand
with an increasing concern
for evangelization
of the Jews.
Just an interesting...
Yeah, the 19th century
Scotland of course.
Yeah, yeah.
He's got McShane and company.
I think we need to...
Maybe we'll want
a quick question.
Bob or that
by Christopher Brooks.
Christopher Brooks.
That's the name.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Oh, right.
Because he was based
in London for a while.
Go back to the US.
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Brooks.
It's an excellent book.
And that's the book
that's making me...
He makes the argument
that there is a racial component
even to Luther.
And I've got to think
about that.
I've really been
an Oberman man
until now
but his arguments
are not insubstantial.
It's a very good book.
Yeah, it's a very,
very good book.
Fortunately,
I like Paul Althaus's
writings on Luther.
Paul Althaus doesn't
come out too well.
A bit too close
to the Nazi party,
unfortunately.
Thank you very much,
Carl.
Paul, what...