Lecture 11.docx

So, Luther then is brought back in. He\'s asked the same questions. He answers first in German and then in Latin, making, I suppose, what we might now call an ethnic point, certainly a political point. And his response is interesting. First he pleads that he\'s inexperienced and that he\'s to b...

So, Luther then is brought back in. He\'s asked the same questions. He answers first in German and then in Latin, making, I suppose, what we might now call an ethnic point, certainly a political point. And his response is interesting. First he pleads that he\'s inexperienced and that he\'s to be forgiven for the fact that his manners are not those of a courtier. Luther\'s peasant background was very important to him, even though he was never really a peasant. His dad was a relatively okay manager of a mine. But Luther\'s peasant background is important to his sort of identity and to his schtick. And the older he gets, the more important it is. His language degenerates and becomes cruder as he gets older and is always excused by the fact, well, I\'m a peasant. And that\'s how peasants speak. Then he divides his works into three. He says that if my works fall into three categories, there are works that deal with piety and morals. And even my opponents have liked these. So if I\'m going to retract them, my Catholic opponents have expressed approval for these need to retract them as well. Secondly, he says some of my writings have been against the papacy. But the papacy has destroyed and tortured so many souls that I cannot in good conscience retract these. And then he rather cleverly points back to his idea, the fact that this diet has been convened. One of the reasons for the convening of the diet is we know that the papacy is in something of a crisis at the moment, and reform is in some ways necessary. So the very existence of this diet kind of confirms what I\'ve been pressing in these books that I\'ve been writing against the papacy. He sort of presents himself almost there as, you know, I\'m part of the official scheme here. What are you picking on me for? And thirdly, he says I\'ve written against individuals who defended tyrannical aspects of Rome. And these are fundamentally sound, he says, though I confess sometimes I\'ve been a little over the top in my rhetoric and my criticism of others. I\'m not endangering the unity of the church. I\'m trying to save the unity of the church at this point. Johannes von der Eckern refuses to accept the divisions and demands that Luther recants. And it\'s at that point, of course, that Luther makes his famous speech that culminates in Austin socks that he\'s not actually wearing today but was wearing yesterday. All may not have culminated in Austin socks. We\'re not quite sure, but we\'ll come to that in just a moment. Luther says, unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone. Since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen. And he may or may not have said, here I stand, I can do no other. Here I stand being the legend that is on Austin\'s favorite pair of socks. Who produces them? Did you say it was a---Luter sock. Luter sock. There you are. You can actually buy them, I believe. Here I stand socks. Who says that Protestants don\'t have equivalents of indulgences and relics? You know, there you go. May or may not have said it. If he didn\'t say it, he should have done because it\'s kind of cool. But certainly we might say that his spirit was there even if his words didn\'t quite reach that climactic moment at the time. Luther is immediately whisked out of the room by two imperial escorts as the whole place descends into chaos. The Spanish in particular calling for him to be taken outside and immediately burned at the stake. Just as a sidebar, one of the points I\'ve made about Catholicism a couple of times in this class is when we\'re dealing with the early 16th century, by and large it\'s a bit chaotic and one might say there isn\'t much of what you call a Catholic identity. The one exception to that might be Spanish Catholicism because in Spain there were alternatives. By and large a clear understanding of who you are derives from the fact that you\'re able to define yourself against those that you are not. And you know, in Wittenberg it\'s Catholicism. That\'s the only show in town. In Spain of course you have significant Jewish and to some extent Islamic populations. So there are several centuries in Spain of defining yourself over against other religious communities. Which does mean that in the 16th century Spanish Catholicism has a strong self-conscious identity and therefore in the Reformation something of a militancy about it. It\'s not insignificant that the Jesuit order though founded at the University of Paris drew its strength from, initially from Spanish Catholics. Because the new, the sort of the storm troopers of the Catholic Reformation were those, you know, if you\'re coming from Spain you\'ve got a head start on Catholics elsewhere in Europe in terms of knowing who you are. You know, to borrow the Mike Horton\'s White Horse in Phrase, you know, knowing what you believe and why you believe it is a whole lot easier when there are other alternatives out there. So the Spanish, it\'s not insignificant I think that it\'s the Spanish calling for him to be burned at the stake because they\'re the ones who knew what they were talking about more than others. The Emperor expresses the wish that he had moved against Luther earlier. It\'s a bit of rhetoric, I mean the Emperor could not really have moved against Luther earlier short of plunging the Empire into civil war. But it expresses the strength of his feelings. An Elector Joachim Brandenburg now presses for the Electors for an imperial ban and for the Electors to comply with an imperial ban on Luther, effectively to make him an outlaw of the Empire. Basically kill him on sight with impunity. Yeah, sorry, is that it? Can you read that? Is that Joachim? Can you read that? Yeah, read it, yeah. The Edict of Worms calling for this banning of Luther is presented on the 25th of May. What is interesting about the Edict is that Charles V grants Frederick the Wise a dispensation such that Frederick the Wise does not have to impose the Edict of Worms in electoral Saxony. When you think about it, that sort of defeats the whole object but definitely points to the fact that the Emperor has decided upon a policy of containment, not a policy of wiping Lutheran and Lutheranism off the face of the earth. If you can get the Edict of Worms imposed upon the Empire with the exception of electoral Saxony and you can contain it in electoral Saxony, that\'s a good result. That\'s a good result. Unfortunately, that\'s not how it will work out for the Emperor. The Diet itself, Luther leaves the Diet of Worms, the Diet itself sort of peters out fairly shortly afterwards. Peters out in somewhat odd circumstances. Around Worms, a series of posters are published, are put up on the wall. The posters depict a leather boot, a peasant shoe. The significance of that is that this leather boot is the symbol of a group called the Bund Shoe. We might call it the Fellowship of the Shoe. The Bund Shoe is what today we would call, I suppose, a terrorist organization. It was founded in the 1490s in Alsace. Alsace is currently part of France but Alsace and Lorraine are those two border territories between France, modern France and modern Germany that in history have sort of switched sides over the years. Strasbourg is a city in Alsace, Lorraine. The Bund Shoe was founded by a man called Jos Fritz in the 1490s and it is a peasant paramilitary organization. When these posters appear in Worms in April, May 1521, it is an indication that the Bund Shoe has people on the ground in Worms. You know, it would be the equivalent of discovering, you know, walking around the master\'s seminary and finding that somebody had started to put up ISIS flags or something like that. It would have a rather sinister quality to it. So the Diet of Worms actually breaks up fairly ineffectively because it becomes just too scary to know who knows what\'s going on. These sleepers somewhere in Worms. Luther heads away from the Diet of Worms and on his way back to Wittenberg is surrounded by armed men and kidnapped and vanishes. It\'s actually a scheme put together by Electro Saxony. It was obviously being decided that after Worms, Luther would be effectively airlifted out of the public eye for a while. These are, you know, the special forces of Electro Saxony kidnapping their own man in order to hide him. Luther is whisked away to the Wartburg Castle which sits high on a hill above the town of Eisenach. If you get a chance to do a Luther tour, Eisenach is one of the must-see places. The Wartburg, you\'ve probably seen the pictures of the castle, it\'s a sort of Tudor-style beams castle on the top of a hill. Luther will be sequestered there incognito. He\'ll be known as Juncker George, Sir George, or Knight George, Juncker Georg. He\'ll grow a beard, dress it as a knight, and effectively operates incognito for the best part of 12 months in the Wartburg. If you visit Eisenach, it\'s a two for one. Why is it a two for one? You\'ve got the Wartburg, but what else is significant about the town of Eisenach historically? Who else is a famous person, is associated in some ways just as great and influential as Luther in a good way? Don\'t think of Hitler here in a good way. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in the town of Eisenach. I first got switched on to Bach\'s music when I did the birthplace museum tour and listened to the music with the headphones and that kind of thing. Bach was an Eisenach native. Later we did a concert at my church, a Bach concert where we had a Bach guy come in, a guy who had actually been converted to Christianity doing his PhD on Bach because he felt to understand Bach he needed to understand Luther\'s theology. So he started to read Luther\'s theology and then started to read the Bible and was converted and he came and did a Bach concert for the Piccolo cello. It\'s like a giant violin that you stick under your chin. There are very few of them in existence and I think there are only four or five Bach pieces left for the Piccolo cello. In my little spiel introducing him, I referred to the fact that I\'d visited Bach\'s birth house. Then after the concert, he grabbed me and in typical sort of guy who\'s done a PhD on a subject always will be able to correct the guy who hasn\'t. He pointed out to me that actually they got the birthplace wrong and the house I\'d gone around was actually two doors down from where Bach was actually really born. But even so, it was pretty cool to me. I still felt the magic when I was walking around. So Eisenach\'s a great place to visit. There\'s also a wonderful German restaurant in a sort of cavern in the town square where the best potato pancakes I\'ve ever tasted were served. So if you visit Eisenach, go to the town square, find this restaurant that\'s built in almost into sort of the side of the hill, the potato pancakes are to die for. Very bad for you I\'m sure, but quite fantastic to eat. Luther goes to the castle. The time of the castle will be significant. It\'s there that he starts work on the translation of the Bible into German, starts work on the New Testament. He starts to suffer from insomnia when he\'s there. I\'ve touched on that a little bit this week myself. You know, knowing I\'ve got to get up at six in order to get here for eight and knowing I\'ve got an hour of LA traffic, that\'s enough to make you an insomniac. You lie awake at night wishing you could go to sleep so you\'d be refreshed to deal with the nightmare that\'s coming at seven o\'clock in the morning. Starts to develop insomnia. Also develops issues that will haunt him forever relative to his bowels. Luther\'s language, not only is it sometimes eschatological, it\'s often scatological as well. Luther suffers terribly from constipation. Why do I mention it? One, I mention it for cheap laughs. Two, I mention it because Luther mentions it a lot. Again, as I said earlier in the week, I think, remember that the physical, physical life in the 16th century meant you felt ill a lot of the time. Luther struggled with constipation terribly. That would have affected his attitude somewhat. The last letter, I think he writes to his wife. My wife would kill me if I ever wrote or emailed her in these kind of ways, but he writes to his wife. His wife was, now remember in the 16th century, the safest way to drink was to drink something alcoholic. If you drink the water from the river or from the well, you\'re likely to die of typhoid or something. So brewing and wine and beer were the fundamental drinks for everybody from childhood onwards in the 16th century. Luther\'s wife was a very accomplished home brewer. He actually wrote, I think it\'s his final love letter to her, he writes to her and encourages her to brew some of his favorite beer because the last time he drank it, he says he had four bowel movements before noon. I can\'t imagine, my advice to you, particularly if you\'re not married, you will not likely to get married if you write to your future intended and refer to bowel movements. It\'s not a good thing to do. That\'s why the Germans and the English are right at the bottom of the annual poll of the most romantic men in Europe. It\'s not something that any Italian or Spanish guy would ever dream of doing. That\'s why they\'re more successful in the romance stakes than the English and the Germans are. Bowel problems do shape how Luther thinks. Do shape how Luther thinks. The Wittenberg leadership, of course at this time, passes into the hands of three men, two whom we\'ve met before. Philip Melanchthon, well he\'s just 22, 23. He may be a brilliant scholar but he\'s a lightweight on the political administrative front. Karl Stadt, Luther\'s colleague. Indeed, in the early years of the Reformation, I think Luther\'s equal, if not senior to Luther, he was certainly senior to Luther on faculty. And he was part of that renaissance in Wittenberg of studying Augustine\'s thought and starting to correct and refract the theology through the works of Augustine. And a third man, Zwilling, Conrad Zwilling. And the Reformation, now that the game is over to some extent, now that the excommunication has taken place, now that it\'s very clear that the chances of ever going back to the way that it was relative to church unity are diminishing, Reformation precedes a pace. The marriage of clergy is introduced. Also, the mass is reformed. Private masses are abolished. The words in the liturgy are revised to remove references to the mass as a sacrifice. Luther is still sort of controlling the Reformation or getting reports from the castle. It\'s these three men that are starting to implement it on the ground. Remember, we don\'t get a full vernacular liturgy in Wittenberg until 1525, but the reforms that lead there are beginning now in 1521. 1st of November, 1521, man called Justus Jonas, good friend of Luther, will go on to be a notable Lutheran theologian and pastor. Justus Jonas gets a bit excited and declares that the relics being displayed in Wittenberg are rubbish. And the students go on the rampage, smashing up stained glass windows. Sidebar. People usually think I\'m being facetious at this point. One of the reasons why the Reformation is successful is it involves smashing stuff up. And smashing stuff up is always attractive to young men. You give young men radical reason for smashing stuff up and for iconoclasm, you\'re on to a winner. You\'re on to a winner. There\'s something dark and depraved, particularly about young men, that likes destroying stuff. So you can imagine how the fiery rhetoric of these reformers is capturing the imagination of the young students. And it\'s sort of 1968, but in Wittenberg in 1521 at this point. The students go on the rampage. This is going to be a problem because this is starting to push the Reformation into the mode of looking like social chaos. Now remember what I\'ve said a number of occasions. The emperor and the other electors, I think they\'re constantly having to play the percentage game with regard to the Reformation. What is the best way of making sure we have minimal damage? Containment seems to be the answer. But if rioting breaks out, if Frederick the Wise starts to lose control in Wittenberg and the Reformation starts to look like radical political revolution, the balance is going to tip in favor of civil war. Containment\'s going to look less and less plausible and the need for a decisive military solution is going to appear more and more obvious. So when the rioting breaks out in Wittenberg in November, this plunges the Wittenberg Reformation really into crisis. And Luther returns anonymously in December 1521 to see firsthand what\'s going on. Frederick the Wise, the Wartburg Castle is one of Frederick the Wise\'s residences. Frederick the Wise is the man who\'s put in there. Frederick the Wise has Luther brought back to Wittenberg anonymously so that he can see what\'s going on. He can come into Wittenberg without people knowing he\'s there, just observe firsthand what\'s going on. And he likes some of what he sees. He likes the fact that the Reformation is moving forward, that it\'s not simply a status quo thing. The liturgy is being revised. The need for moving forward is clear. But he is very, very disturbed by the increased levels of violence now being associated with the Reformation. Luther\'s model of the Reformation will be a, is a much more, I won\'t say passive or creatistic one, but is a much more slow and steady one as evidenced by his delay in bringing in the vernacular liturgy. He doesn\'t want to disturb people. He wants to bring as many people along as he can as peacefully as he can. So interesting, there are some one or two nice anecdotes of Luther\'s sort of roaming around Electro-Saxony, was it the Wartburgs, a story of two students who are on their way to Wittenberg arrive at a tavern late one evening to get food. And they notice a rather fierce looking knight sitting in the corner, bearded knight with a sword sitting in the corner. But unusual for a knight, this is not I believe typical knight behavior in 1521, he\'s reading a Psalter in Hebrew. And because they\'re on their way to Wittenberg to study theology, they go and sit with him and join him. And he proceeds to explain to them how Christ is in the Psalms based on the Hebrew text. And then at some point in the evening he has to get up and leave. And I believe they find that he has paid for their food and their drink when they get up to go. And then some months later when they\'re at Wittenberg University and they\'re attending their first lecture with Martin Luther, they recognize Martin Luther, the lecturer, now clean shaven, but was this knight that they spent an evening with in the pub looking at the Psalms in Hebrew. So it\'s just almost a sort of Tolkien-like moment, you know, Strider sitting in the prancing pony or something and not being recognized by the hobbits initially. There are some nice stories. The Reformation, even after Luther has returned to the Wartburg, the radical side of the Reformation continues. Karlstadt, on Christmas Day, officiates at mass, dressed only in a plain robe. If any of you have been to a Lutheran church service, the aesthetics of Lutheran church services are often quite Catholic. Lutheran churches have stained glass windows. Often their priests wear robes. The Reformation did not really disrupt the aesthetics of Christianity from a Lutheran perspective, but Karlstadt officiates in a plain robe and he starts walking around town dressed as a peasant. He\'s a sort of professional working class man, one might say. Zwilling, the third member we mentioned of the Triumvirate, Zwilling becomes Karlstadt\'s sort of gopher or hitman. He starts to orchestrate iconoclastic rioting and the smashing up of religious art. And into this mix, late 1521, early 1522, come three men from the town of Zwickau called the Zwickau prophets. These were three lay people who claimed to have a direct leading of the Holy Spirit. In fact, they got to the point where they didn\'t feel they needed the Bible any longer. They would directly rely on the Spirit. And this, Melanchthon, finally this is a move too far for Melanchthon. Melanchthon writes to Luther in the Wartburg to inform him of the arrival of the Zwickau prophets. Now, Luther will inevitably have objections to the theology of the Zwickau prophets. For Luther, you can never talk about the Holy Spirit acting without talking about the word. There was a little discussion yesterday in the D. Min class when I referred to Lloyd Jones\'s view of the Holy Spirit and unction in preaching as complete lunacy. I\'m absolutely certain that Luther would be with me on that. The Holy Spirit for Luther works through the word. I was like the, it\'s a great, I find a really helpful illustration that J.I. Packer uses somewhere when he talks about the Holy Spirit as being to Christ as floodlights are to a sporting game. You go to an evening game, a couple of years ago I went to see the All Blacks rugby team, play the U.S. rugby team in Philadelphia. The All Blacks, let\'s put it, rugby is not the American game and the All Blacks are consistently the best in the world. So the second half was not pretty from an American perspective. Though I, oddly I found myself as a man who grew up hating the All Blacks, kind of rooting for the All Blacks. It was good to see you guys lose at something, I have to say. The enemy of my enemy is ultimately my friend when it comes to sporting fixtures. But if I\'d gone to that game that night and I come away and what have I just done? I talked about the game. But I can only talk about the game because the floodlights worked. If the floodlights hadn\'t been working, the anecdote that I would have given you would have been something about the floodlights. Wouldn\'t have talked about the game, I\'d have been talking about the terrible incompetent people who ran the floodlights. J.I. Packer has this really nice analogy when he sort of says, you know, the role of the Holy Spirit is to point to Christ, to focus on Christ. So if the Spirit\'s present, people talk about Christ. If the Spirit isn\'t present, they talk about the Spirit. It\'s interesting, isn\'t it? The Spirit isn\'t there, you talk about the Spirit. And I think that that applies to the Zvika prophets. For Luther, for Luther, all of this talk about Spirit is a sign that this isn\'t really Christianity. For Luther, remember, where do I find a gracious God? Only in the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the task of the Holy Spirit is to point me to the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ. As soon as you\'ve got, and how do I know about that, how do I norm that? The words of Scripture. As soon as you\'ve got people talking about being directly led by the Spirit, as far as Luther\'s concerned, you\'re dealing with lunatics. He has a word for them, schwama, swarms. For Luther, these people are like swarms of bees. They\'re crazy and dangerous. So when Luther gets word that the Zvika prophets are in town, this is it. He has to come back. And interestingly enough, just as an aside here, this is why Luther will, you know, one of the reasons why Luther will be so strong against Zwingli, because Zwingli talks about spiritual presence. Luther doesn\'t like that talk, because the people he\'s heard talk about the Spirit before are the crazy people. And you know, Zwingli may look very polite and sophisticated, but to use a British analogy, maybe you\'ll understand this, maybe not, it\'s a bit like Sinn Fein IRA. We assume it\'s the same guys, but sometimes they wear balaclavas and shoot people. Sometimes they wear Armani suits and stand for the British parliament, you know. But they\'re the same crazy people. And for Luther, Zwingli is just the polite face of the schwama, the swarms. Luther has to return. Frederick the Wise is under huge pressure to bring things under control. When you\'ve got people being directly led by the Spirit, it always ends in tears. It just does. Historically, it is always a disaster. Luther has to come back. He arrives late January 1522. This I think is the most dangerous moment in Luther\'s career. We often think of the Dieter Worms as the point where Luther\'s most vulnerable. And he\'s certainly vulnerable there. But we also know in retrospect that Frederick the Wise was in a relatively strong position. The young emperor did not want to plunge into civil war. He gives Frederick the Wise a dispensation to get Luther off the hook. Secondly, we know that the special forces were somewhere in the background. They were watching Luther and they were ready that as soon as he rode out of Worms, they were ready to swoop and kidnap him. So he\'s obviously being kept under observation by men who are capable of looking after themselves and capable of looking after him. Yes, Luther was tremendously courageous at the Dieter Worms, but he was going to get away safely. 1522 is different. I really think in 1522 when Luther returns to Wittenberg, he\'s in serious trouble at this point. He\'s in trouble because if he cannot bring the Reformation under control, it\'s over. Frederick the Wise will have no choice but to close the Reformation down and throw Luther to the wolves. And the only person who can bring the Reformation under control is Luther. He doesn\'t have the backing of the secular authorities at this point because they\'ve told him, fix the problem. They can\'t fix the problem. He\'s got to do it. And I think it\'s a measure of Luther\'s stature that he\'s able to go back to Wittenberg in 1522 and basically reassert his authority. Once again, seize control of the Reformation. He preaches a series of remarkable sermons which we know as the Invokawit sermons in one of which he makes this famous statement about, I won\'t compel people. I preached the word or I sat in the pub and drank beer with my pals. The word of God was out there doing everything. Well yes, to a certain extent that\'s true, but it\'s also the case that Luther was a powerful preacher and the power of his personality and his preaching is nowhere demonstrated more effectively than February 1522 in Wittenberg when he seizes control of the Reformation. Zwilling and Karlstadt are expelled from Wittenberg at this point. Melanchthon of course, he\'s onside. But Luther, this is the moment if you like where we might say Luther purges the hierarchy. There was that moment in Mrs. Thatcher\'s term as Prime Minister where when she\'s first appointed Prime Minister, she has a number of people around her who aren\'t really fully on board with what she wants to do. And then at some point, the Falklands War, she becomes unassailable and she\'s able to sort of pop the people who are rivals and threats to her. It\'s not quite a cynical I think in Luther, but at this point, the one man who could have been a rival to him for the leadership of the Wittenberg Reformation, Andreas Bodenstien von Karlstadt, you know, is destroyed politically in Wittenberg at this point. He\'s overplayed his hand. Luther reasserts his control. Frederick the Wise once again swings in behind Luther, whereas Luther reasserts control over the Reformation. And from now on, the Reformation in Wittenberg really will be driven by Luther and shaped by Luther\'s own concerns and priorities. There is one more meeting between Karlstadt and Luther in rather strange circumstances. In 1525, when the Peasants\' Rebellion collapses and Karlstadt was sort of scooped up in some of the chaos of that, fleeing from the fallout chaos of that, Karlstadt arrives at the newly married Luther\'s house and stays with Luther for a number of weeks, effectively hides out with Luther. And again, it\'s another Hollywood moment. Two men who at one point were such great friends and had stood shoulder to shoulder, facing down the might of the empire and the church, had then become deadly enemies because of what had gone on at Wittenberg, were for just a short period reunited. That would have been amazing to have been able to tape record the conversations that took place. For Luther, Karlstadt will forever symbolize the rebellious spirit of the Reformation. And because Karlstadt\'s view of the Lord\'s Supper is not dissimilar to Zwingli\'s, it will always mean that Luther regards Zwingli as the kind of the heir to Karlstadt and therefore the promoter of the problems that Karlstadt epitomized. Yeah? So was Karlstadt, was he driving this revolt and rebellion or was it more he was kind of allowing it to take place? I think he was driving it. Karlstadt was very influenced, was far more influenced by Erasmus than Luther. Now, that might sound odd for making him a radical because we tend to think of Erasmus as the guy who ultimately didn\'t have the backbone to break with the church. But think about it. Erasmus\'s humanism is ultimately a call for social reformation, that he wants to see society reformed. So it is, ironically, humanism is politically more radical than Lutheranism. Erasmianism is more politically potentially more radical than Lutheranism. And Karlstadt always had a vision of the Reformation that was going to involve a more root and branch reformation of society than that which Luther comes to embrace. Many of you may know the name Ron Sider. When I became a Christian in the 1980s, you know, the one book that every Christian had to read was Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Very influential book written in the 1980s by Ron Sider. Ron Sider was a kind of Anabaptist leaning evangelical theologian. The interesting thing about Sider is he did his PhD on Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. And that\'s not insignificant because Karlstadt\'s theology as Ringling\'s was more about a thoroughgoing reformation of society than Luther\'s was. Luther\'s appeal to the German nobility and then his 1523 treatise, secular authority to what extent should it be obeyed, are in some ways quite socially conservative treatise. The reform of society, that\'s for the secular guys to do. The church is to concentrate on the reform of the sacraments and the reform of the preaching of the word. Society is the secular prince\'s responsibility. So and even when you think about Luther\'s secular religious distinction, there\'s a conservative dimension to that as well. If sweeping the streets can be a God-glorifying occupation, why would you ever want to change your occupation? Are you not happy with the calling that God has given you? There could be a social conservatism there in Luther\'s thinking. So there are many ways I think that not even Luther hasn\'t even thought this through, but there are many ways in which Luther\'s thinking is socially and politically quite conservative compared to Karshtadt who says, yes, we are looking here at a fundamental transformation of society. Frederick Wise, of course, and his ally, they just see social chaos. The last thing you want as a feudal prince is some kind of popular peasant\'s uprising that will force you out of power and turn the world upside down. Nothing is more conducive to ecumenical relations in the 16th century than peasant\'s uprisings and Anabaptism. You want to get the Protestants and the Catholics together to beat somebody up? The peasants or the Anabaptists, something on which all magisterial Protestants and Catholics can agree on. These are bad people and they need to be crushed by any means necessary. So Luther\'s reformation is socially conservative. And that\'s when you think about Calvin. Calvin is more of a humanist than Luther, but certainly when you read his address, his letter to King Francis, when you read the preface to the institutes, that\'s a pretty politically conservative treatise. And thinking about Calvin and the institutes, we tend to read it now as a book of systematic theology. It was never intended to be systematic theology. We tend to read it as a theological treatise. There\'s an argument for reading it as a political treatise as well. Why? Because it begins with a letter to King Francis and it ends with a discussion of the relationship of the church to the civil magistrate. Talk about civil obedience. It\'s bookended by discussion of civil obedience. And it\'s really quite, for our day, quite a conservative treatise. Calvin is more radical than Luther. In fact, Luther himself becomes more radical after 1530 on one or two points. But really the magisterial reformers were on the whole not politically radical. Calvin was definitely an aristocrat in terms of his view of politics. You didn\'t want everybody involved in running the country because most people are idiots and they can\'t rule competently. Rules should be given to those who are the best, the aristocrats. So that brings us to certainly a fairly decent break lecturing wise. Tomorrow we\'ll talk about Luther\'s views of secular authority which are important because of course, you know, one of the things that\'s often said about Luther was, you know, there\'s no way of resisting the civil magistrates. One of the reasons why the Holocaust was so easy to execute in Germany was that a lot of good Lutherans were completely hamstrung because they didn\'t know what to do when the authorities said, go away and do this really evil thing. They\'re the civil authorities put in place by God and you have to obey them. Isn\'t that what Luther taught? So we\'ll look at Luther tomorrow on the question of secular authority. But now check it out for questions on anything we\'ve said this morning. We now are officially, I think, over halfway. Yeah. So from your opinion then, you mentioned how at some point, you know, nine-tenths of the people were for Luther and the other ten-tenths didn\'t like the people authorities. Is that, do you see that as this history for that to be more of a German thing, people supporting Luther because of his kind of almost nationalistic views or is it more reform or is that something that comes later? I think public opinion as then as now varies. I mean, I remember Robert, I mentioned Robert Wilkins comment to me yesterday when I\'d said to him, you know, I can\'t understand why France didn\'t go Protestant, which his response was maybe the people were happy being Catholics. That\'s a plausible explanation. There\'s a huge debate in English Reformation circles as to whether the English Reformation was a popular thing, you know, whether it came from up from the people or whether it was imposed by the crown. And England provides an interesting test case for that because there are parts of England where Catholicism seems to be very vibrant. People are going on pilgrimages. People seem very happy with the church. And there are parts of England where there does seem to be significant popular resistance. Again, think of the recent elections in America or in England on Brexit vote. If you live in London, you\'re pretty happy with the EU. You do well out of the EU. You do well out of immigration. You live in the provinces in the rural areas. You may not be doing so well out of it. So I think with the Reformation, we have to, when Aliander saying that obviously allow for some hyperbole, this is a guy who\'s worried that we could be opening a can of worms here, pardon the terrible pun, in inviting Luther to worms to speak, to air his views. The other thing to remember, of course, is that people didn\'t like the church for a whole variety of reasons. Just because somebody is shouting down with the papacy doesn\'t mean they have well thought out biblical objections to transubstantiation. It may mean they just don\'t like the Pope. More likely it means they don\'t like the local priest. One of the things that Protestants tend to do is when we find somebody in England who was burned as a Protestant in the 16th century, we\'ll say, well, there\'s a Protestant martyr. Well, maybe, or maybe it was somebody who just fell out with a local priest and the local priest fitted him up and said, oh, he\'s going around disrespecting the mass. Maybe he wasn\'t a Protestant at all. Maybe it was just an idiot who happened to insult the mass as a way of poking the priest in the metaphorical eye. So the answer to this is we just don\'t know in detail, but we do know that it was a huge popular appeal of Luther because the pamphlets, the pro-Luther pamphlets, sold like hotcakes and these posters of Luther were being produced. And when the ban is, when the excommunication is making its way up through Germany, there are places they won\'t take it because they know they\'re likely to be beaten up and sent on their way. So don\'t romanticize the Reformation, but let us not underestimate its popular appeal either. Yeah? The ban is or the will is a response to Erasmus\' attack on Luther. What was Erasmus\' or what were Luther\'s works that Erasmus was going off of to get that response? Well, I think there are a number of, we\'ll touch on this more tomorrow, but I think the underlying issue is that Erasmus has got to declare himself over against Luther. He is, Erasmus has been saying the church needs to be reformed for a lot longer than Luther. Erasmus was writing satires years before Luther came on the scene poking fun at the church. You know, Erasmus to me is, he\'s your Saturday Night Live comedian. You know, Saturday Night Live ultimately neutralizes itself by having politicians on, and that makes it safe. They\'ll take the mickey out of politicians just so far, but they like to hang out with them. And that\'s Erasmus. He will poke fun at the church just so far, but he won\'t do anything that ultimately forces him out of the church or puts him in any position of danger. So that\'s the broad background. Secondly, Erasmus is a very clever fellow, and he clearly understands that Luther\'s writings, you know, the Heidelberg Disputation, the lectures on Galatians, Luther clearly understands, Erasmus clearly understands that these things are predicated on the impotence of the human will. Thirdly, he clearly understands that Luther\'s reconstruction of authority requires the perspicuity of scripture. Because if you\'re going to say you don\'t need the pope to interpret the scriptures, you\'ve got to replace that with something. What has Luther replaced it with? Well, the fact that if you translate the scriptures and put it into people\'s hands, you will come up with the truth. So that\'s why Luther compliments him. You and you alone, Erasmus, have zeroed in on the issues that really matter. You haven\'t bothered with sideshows like indulgences. You\'ve zeroed in on the issues that really matter. So I don\'t think it\'s any particular work of Luther, but I think Erasmus understands Luther. I mean, that\'s the great thing about Erasmus as an opponent is he understands him. The most frustrating opponents are those who don\'t understand you. The most frustrating friends are those who don\'t understand you. It\'s always much, I think it was Bertrand Russell who said, I would much rather have my views presented by a competent enemy than an incompetent friend. And Erasmus is a competent enemy and really allows Luther to dramatically showcase his work in a remarkably crystallized fashion. Other questions? Yeah? The Diet of War briefly talked about the unity of the church and the unity of the church. Theologically, is there other things that are being discussed? Well, the big theological issue is Luther and the big issue is authority. So I think when Luther\'s calling for the unity of the church, he\'s really raising the issue of authority. What does authority look like now? If the papacy isn\'t authoritative and if councils aren\'t authoritative, my works have been devoted to trying to find or to demonstrate a new foundation for authority. That\'s really the issue there. Diet of worms is not so much, it\'s not really a theological gathering. It\'s an imperial diet designed to find, well, I think from the church\'s perspective to impress upon the emperor the need to realize that this situation is very serious and what we\'d like you to do is declare Luther an outlaw of the empire, which means, you know, it could be shot on sight because they didn\'t have guns, but the equivalence of, you know, wanted dead or alive by imperial edict Martin Luther. That\'s what they want. If they can get that, they might even be able to nail him at worms, take him outside and burn him. The church has failed in its task of containing him and now it has to turn to the empire to ask for help in that regard.