Lecture 19.docx

Ask me any questions either on the course or on the administrative way forward at this point relative to your papers etc. Yeah? I\'ve got a question about Erasmus because he was an African person. Absolutely, yeah. At least he was plain and he was translating the New Testament into\... European stat...

Ask me any questions either on the course or on the administrative way forward at this point relative to your papers etc. Yeah? I\'ve got a question about Erasmus because he was an African person. Absolutely, yeah. At least he was plain and he was translating the New Testament into\... European stature, yeah. But at the same time, we always think that the Green Willing was kind of re-instrumental also in Greening heresy in a sense. But he was not part of the reformers because he remained Catholic. So how do we\... The question for those that are distance, the question about Erasmus given the way that much of his work was necessary as a foundation for the reformation and yet he didn\'t break with Catholicism, how do we assess him? I think we assess him as a balance sheet. In some ways, the answer to your question is in the way you\'ve expressed the question. There are positives to Erasmus. The Greek New Testament, undoubtedly that was important. Well I think we can go beyond that and say his critique of the administrative corruption in the church is an important part of what\'s going on in the early 16th century. His undoubted importance in helping develop centers of higher education all over Western Europe in Paris, the Collegium Trilingui, the College of the Three Languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, vitally important for people like Calvin and the developments of the French reformation. So I think we\'d have to say about Erasmus, devin a balance sheet. Not personality wise, I said he\'s a bit like a Saturday Night Live person. He\'s going to mock the establishment but he\'s also, he\'s never going to break with the establishment. So how does he stand before God? Well I prefer to leave those questions to, that\'s between Erasmus and God. I never met the man, can\'t see into his heart, etc. etc. But I would say we certainly have to acknowledge his usefulness as did most of the reformers. Zwingli was an admirer of Erasmus. Calvin in a qualified way was an admirer of Erasmus. They understood Erasmus\' intellectual importance to what they were doing. Yeah? Any books on Zwingli\'s views of baptism and how they changed? Yeah, you can read his, well the best thing to do is read his work against the Catabaptists. It\'s translated into English. But I would say as a good start on Zwingli\'s theology, get hold of the book by my own doctoral supervisor, W.P. Stevens. It\'s got the imaginative title of The Theology of Holdrick Zwingli. Peter wrote another one, The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Martin Butzer. Imaginative titles was not his strong suit, one would have to say. But the books do exactly what they say on the cover. So that would be a place to start. Stevens, S-T-E-P-H-E-N-S. Or still I think a pretty standard biography of Zwingli, G.R. Potter\'s biography of Zwingli with the even more imaginative title, Zwingli. That will give you the chronological outline of Zwingli\'s dalliance with the radicals. Yeah, Phil. Forgive me if you\'ve answered this, but I pretty recommend Roland Maitin and Michael Obermann. What would your third favorite biography on Luther be? That\'s a good question. Because there are a number of them coming out at the moment. Scott Hendricks\'s new biography came out late last year. I thoroughly enjoyed that. There\'s a book by a feminist, of all things a feminist historian at Oxford, Lindell Roper. Not sure if it\'s published in the U.S. yet. I got it through the Book Depository UK. Her new biography of Luther is very good as well. I think if I was teaching a Sunday school class and wanted a book that wasn\'t going to intimidate or take up too much time, I think Martin Marty\'s Brief Life, in I think the Penguin Brief Life series, that\'s good as well. But I suspect this coming year we\'re going to see the arrival of three or four really good Luther biographies. The sort of the granddaddy of them all in terms of size, Martin Brecht, three volumes, must be about twelve, thirteen hundred pages all in at least. Looks very daunting because they\'re big fat volumes, but is actually very readable. That probably contains more information about Luther\'s life than you\'ll ever need. And they are relatively inexpensively available as paperbacks. So Martin Brecht. On the theology side, my friend Bob Kolb, the book I recommended on the bibliography here, Martin Luther Confessor of the Faith. Anything by Bob is wonderful. He and I have just finished this Lutheran reform dialogue book that\'s coming out. We are shamelessly cashing in on 2017. The way our books sell, I\'m sure we\'ll both be able to buy a stuffed crust pizza, not just an ordinary pizza at the end of the year. But Bob Kolb\'s book, Martin Luther Confessor of the Faith, is great. He also wrote a book that came out from Baker. Martin Luther, priest, prophet and hero, or pastor, prophet and hero. It\'s a fascinating book. What Bob does there is he studies how Luther\'s image changes in Lutheranism. And it sounds like a kind of tedious book, but nothing Bob writes is tedious. And this is a great book about how Luther really becomes a kind of superhero in Lutheranism. I mean, reform theology has nobody quite like him. And Bob traces out how Luther becomes this, to use the modern term, becomes an iconic figure in Lutheranism. And he\'s also written a recent book, came out from Baker maybe six weeks ago, on Luther\'s theology in the context of Wittenberg, showing how Luther is really part of a team at Wittenberg. We know Luther as the man, but actually he\'s part of a team. The faculty are all moving in this direction and working with each other on forging reformation theology. That\'s a good book as well. So if you really want to get into Luther, then Bob Kolb\'s books. And Bob is such a sweet fellow as well. He spends half his year teaching at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Look at the conservative Lutheran Seminary there. And half his year teaching at a mission station in Germany, teaching Lutheran pastors in Germany. He\'s just the archetypal churchman, pastor, scholar. And one of the things we hope that this book that we co-authored does is, I just think there\'s so much good stuff written by Lutherans that Reformed and evangelicals don\'t read because they\'re not our tradition. Like I mentioned, Carl Beckwith\'s new book on the Trinity, published by some obscure, almost on-demand Lutheran press. It\'s a really good book on the Trinity. And it should be read widely by Protestants. But nobody will ever hear of it because it\'s published by an obscure Lutheran press by an obscure Lutheran guide. So, yeah? Are Lutherans today, I guess specifically conservative Lutherans, still split between Melanchton and the other camper that one of them won? Really, the Genesio Lutherans win. The formula of Concord, 1570, really represents the triumph of the Genesio Lutherans. And the issue, the issues, there are a number of issues between the Philippists and the Genesio Lutherans. One of them is the bondage of the will. And the Genesios want to maintain Luther\'s emphasis on the bondage of the will. You know, interesting enough, Luther doesn\'t say much about the bondage of the will after 1525, which has led some to speculate that he backs off that position. My view is, why would he say anything if he feels he\'s said everything he needs to say about it? The stuff I don\'t write about anymore, I don\'t write about anymore because I have nothing else to say. You know, we live in an era where certain people build their careers, even in our circles, on publishing the same book a dozen times. That\'s, you know, that\'s a waste of time. You know, write a book once and then move on to something else more interesting. And that\'s my read of Luther on the bondage of the will. And I think the Genesios get him right on that. And also the Lord\'s Supper where Melanchthon was seen to be compromised. And really the formula of Concord asserts the Genesio understanding of the bondage of the will and the Lord\'s Supper. So the Genesios win. So the Lutherans today, not really followers of Luther. Having said that, Lutheranism is as diverse as evangelicalism or Presbyterianism. There are Lutherans who are way out to the left. There are Lutherans who would not regard me as a Christian because I don\'t believe in the communication of attributes the way they do. The Wisconsin Synod. They are the sort of the Sturmabteilung of the Lutherans. And all points in between. I mean, I was invited, my friend Tim Wengert is a great Lutheran Melanchthon scholar, very liberal person in terms of his theology and asked me if I would go and give a presentation to his church on J. Gressa Matron, which I happily did. And the week before the lecture had been given by somebody from the local Theravada Buddhist organization. So that shows you how wide their church was. So Lutheranism as a phenomenon today is often an institutional label as much as anything. And it doesn\'t necessarily tell you anything theologically. Missouri Synods would Lutherans would be like the PCA of Lutheranism. They\'d be the broadly conservative, orthodox guys, though even they have their crazy people. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. So in the Bonj of the Will, Luther addressed the issue of the perspicuity of scripture. And obviously he had certain cultural factors and many factors in there to address that. But in American culture, what do you think are some key factors that gives us an obscured view, a view that scripture is obscured and it\'s not clear? OK. Well, I think there are historical reasons now for that because one of the more powerful Roman Catholic objections to the doctrine of scriptural perspicuity is, well, it leads to total chaos. It\'s hard to argue with that historically. There is total chaos a lot of the time in the Protestant world broadly conceived. So I think there is a cultural implausibility, one might say, that one could latch on to. If scripture is perspicuous, how come everybody disagrees about what it says? And the Lutheran Svingli can\'t even agree on this is my body, this is my blood. So I think that\'s one reason why it might be seen as problematic today. I think there are academic reasons. I think the whole idea of the perspicaciousness of language has come under heavy assault in the last 40, 50 years. Particularly, French deconstructionism and post-structuralism, which flooded into literary theory in the English-speaking world, made texts fundamentally obscure and difficult. And therefore, claims to scriptural perspicuity would look, one, implausible, and two, simply like a short-circuit way of saying, my interpretation is the authoritative one and yours is wrong. So I think there\'s an intellectual reason why perspicuity looks problematic. I\'d want to say, to step back and take a Christian perspective, I think deconstructionism and post-structuralism, where do they originate? I\'d say with the serpent in the garden. Did God really say, Adam and Eve, you\'ve got this text from the Lord. He\'s given you this verbal formula, and now I\'m going to raise questions about the clarity of that verbal formula and what it really says. So when we talked about perspicuity yesterday, I think what I want you guys to take away is this is, A, a very important doctrine, but B, in our day and generation, it will take significantly more hard work to defend it than it did in the 16th century. Luther\'s articulation of perspicuity and the bondage of the will won\'t work in that form today because there are questions that Luther was unaware of that have since been raised that now need to be addressed, but we mustn\'t lose fact that what is really at stake here is the clarity of divine speech. Does that answer the question? Yes, sir, it does. Thank you. For me, you\'re down at the bottom. Yep, gotcha. Can you recommend any comprehensive work on how the reformers understood evil and suffering and what their response was to it? Or even if there\'s no work, just kind of generally where I might go, work for something like that. I think you should look in the Psalms. My immediate reaction is Calvin on the Psalms or Calvin\'s sermons on Job. Job is a key, obviously a key text, it\'s almost a truism to say that. Calvin on Job, I think, would be a place I would want to go. I think one needs to remember though, I quoted this in one of my, I\'m working on a book at the moment, I\'m taking a completely changing track completely at the moment in terms of what I\'m thinking and writing about. I\'m thinking about the 20th century and the psychologizing of the human person. Why is that significant to this? Because it\'s got me reading a lot of a certain Jewish guy called Philip Reif. He was an atheist Jew. He was the editor of Freud\'s papers in America. He wrote an amazing book in 1966, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, in which he traces out the psychologizing of the human personality. Why is that important? Well, there\'s a statement he makes in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that absolutely gripped my imagination. He makes the comment that in previous times, men went to church to have their misery explained to them, not to be made happy. In earlier times, when men went to church to have their misery explained to them, not to be made happy. All of that is to say that I think the problem of evil and suffering is, if it\'s not exactly a modern invention, it is something that\'s much more acute for us today than it would have been in the 16th century. For them, they expected life to be miserable, painful, and short. And it didn\'t surprise them that that was generally how it was. I think for us, for a variety of reasons, suffering has become much more of an acute problem. Some of that, I think, relates to the Holocaust. I think Auschwitz raised the old problem of suffering and theodicy in a rather dramatic and powerful form that had not been seen before, when we saw man\'s capacity for evil against man. But I also think other factors play into it. For example, the marginalization of death in our society. Good health care now means that death, by and large, occurs among the elderly. And when it occurs among those who are younger, it\'s that much more traumatic and devastating, because we kind of accept it for the elderly. We don\'t expect it to intrude on territory before the age of 60 or 65. That\'s a very different situation to the 16th century, where most families would have been touched directly by infant mortality. Luther loses two of his children before they become adults. John Owen loses ten of his eleven children before they become adults. And he buries the eleventh one. He still outlives the eleventh one. Death, I think, was a much more present reality. Even now, churches were built with graveyards next to them. I\'ve often thought, what would the experience of worship be like if I had to walk past the grave of my father to go and worship every Sunday? It would be kind of, you know, my dad\'s been dead eight years, and it\'s almost unbearable for me to think of that now, to be reminded of that every Sunday before I went into worship. So when you say, where do I go in the reform for the problem of evil and suffering, there\'s a sense in which it wasn\'t as big a problem for them as it is for us now, for a variety of reasons. So I would say, book a job, look at what the reformers, the Puritans, say on that, but don\'t expect them to be engaging in quite the same agonies that we are engaging in today, because I think they expected evil and suffering in their lives in a way that it is an offence to us, or an unexpected intrusion. Yes? Has anyone done significant work on the relationship between, I think you referred to, volunteerism and nominalism? Oh, yes, that has been part of the Luther revolution. I think the place to start would be Heiko Obermann\'s work, The Harvest of Medieval Theology. It\'s a tough book to grind through. Obermann was a great scholar, but his greatness and his brilliance did not always translate into limpid prose, if I could put it that way. I would look up the works. William J. Courtney is somebody to look at. But there is a whole industry on the relationship between the late medieval period and the Reformation. Richard Muller\'s work, Post-Reformation Reform Dogmatics. I have deep hesitations about the arguments of a scholar called Anthony Voss relative to the relationship between the late medieval theologian, Duns Scotus, and Reformed Theology. But Anthony Voss, again, is somebody worth reading. If you send me an email, I can send you some of these names on email. But, yes, one of the key questions of the last 40, 50 years has been, what is the relationship between Luther and the late medieval era? Let\'s get rid of the good guys, bad guys model, and let\'s try to explore what did he learn, what did he take, what did he reject, what did he adapt, those kind of things. And the question also flows over into exegesis. What did Luther take from medieval exegesis? What did he change? What did he modify? So it\'s a huge question. And, yeah, there\'s a vast body of literature, vast body of literature on that. Yeah? Are there any theological differences between the Catholic Church and Luther\'s Day and the Catholic Church today? Are there any theological differences between the Catholic Church of Luther\'s Day and the Catholic Church of today? Yes. I mean, on one level, the Council of Trent, right, when we started the talk about Luther, I said, you want to remember, of course, is that Catholicism has not defined a whole heap of stuff when Luther starts. So justification, for example, it\'s really pretty impossible for Luther to be heretical on justification in 1520 because the church doesn\'t have an official position on it. You know, I\'m using heresy here in the technical sense of contravening a stated position of the church. So the Council of Trent is clearly central. Secondly, you have the First Vatican Council defining papal infallibility. Secondly, you have Vatican II. You also have a number of other developments, for example, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Certainly there were theologians in the late Middle Ages, such as Duns Scotus, who believed in the Immaculate Conception, which, you know, just want to patronize, of course, that\'s not the Virgin Birth. It\'s not the Virgin Birth. It\'s the fact that Mary herself is conceived without the taint of original sin. Well, Thomas Aquinas rejected the Immaculate Conception. Well, that\'s been defined since. That was defined as dogma in the 20th century. So there are significant differences. Vatican II, of course, is interesting because the struggles in Francis\'s papacy and in some ways struggles over what exactly did Vatican II do. My conservative Catholic friends don\'t see Vatican II as doing very much at all, and they think it was essentially a conservative thing. Liberal Catholics like Hans Kung see it as ultimately a missed opportunity, but really trying to set things in a much more liberal direction. Of those two interpretations, I\'m inclined perhaps to sympathize more with the conservative interpretation because humani vitae, very conservative statements on contraception, comes in the late 60s, has to come out of somewhere. That doesn\'t look to me as if the liberals, as we can see in Catholicism, are really rampant in the late 60s. But Vatican II is complex. And I think the whole relationship between Catholic theology and Protestant theology is an interesting and complicated one, because it\'s very clear to me that the Reformed Orthodox of the 17th century are heavily dependent upon Thomas Aquinas, some of theologi, particularly the prima pars, the first part, for their doctrine of God, and also for some of their articulation of the Trinity as well. So when you come down to the present day, one of the odd things I find in the present day, if you were to say to me, can you recommend for me a good book on the Trinity or on the doctrine of God, I\'m going to recommend a book by a Catholic author. I\'m going to say Gilles Emory. Gilles Emory\'s book on the Trinity is the best introduction to the subject, even though there\'s some Catholic stuff there we\'re going to disagree with. But Gilles Emory is very good on the doctrine of the Trinity. I can\'t think of a Protestant writer who gets the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity at quite the same level that Emory does and expresses it in quite the same easygoing way. So even today, to me, the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism theologically is a vexed issue. And one of the things that\'s been most interesting to me over the recent controversy over the Trinity is I\'m trying to get my head around the significance of what does it mean to agree with somebody on justification but to disagree with them on the Trinity? Why is it okay to agree on salvation but to disagree on the God who saves? The reformers would not have been acceptable for them. An error on the doctrine of God would have been in some ways the foundational error upon which everything else ended up as deviant. So one of the interesting things for me in our current flux in evangelical Protestantism is I think the debates about the Trinity have implications which we can only just start thinking about at this point. Matt Levering is a very talented young, I say young, he\'s in his forties, Catholic theologian. When he writes on Catholic themes, I just don\'t like it at all. When he writes on the doctrine of God, I think this is great stuff. That\'s interesting. And in some ways it pushes us back to the Reformation where I think it\'s the kind of thing the reformers were having to wrestle with. They\'d got this church and there was some stuff that the church articulated like the Trinity that they absolutely want to affirm. And there\'s other stuff that they have to get rid of. And the servitors trial is a classic. When servitors are first arrested by the Catholics, they send to Geneva to get information to help them prosecute him. And as I said, there\'s nothing like an Anabaptist or an anti-Trinitarian heretic in the 16th century to make the Lutherans the Reformed and the Catholics ecumenical all over again. But to go back to your original question, yes, there are significant differences, but that\'s in part a historical thing. I would recommend, I\'ve been saying that one of the things all pastors should do is collect confessions, get hold of the Catholic Catechism. If you want to know where the Catholic Church stands, get hold of the Catholic Catechism because that really allows you to, when a Catholic friend says, oh, but our church doesn\'t believe that, you can point them to chapter and verse and say, oh, yes, you do. Here it is. The Pope thinks it\'s a little bit different than it has been historically because he\'s hard to understand. But before this current Pope, once something goes into dogma in the Catholic Church, is it ever reversed or changed? Interesting question. I think officially no. I think what can happen is it can be interpreted. Things can be interpreted. My most interesting moment for me with the Catholic was my first job at the University of Nottingham. One of my colleagues was a Roman Catholic nun. She was very much on the left of things. But something came up. I think it was, are they going to try to define Mary as co-redemptrict or something? And I asked her about this and I said, do you believe this? And she said, no, I don\'t. It\'s nonsense. I said, well, what happens if the Pope decides to define it as dogma? And she said, oh, I\'d have to believe it then. I\'d believe it then. I remember coming away thinking, that\'s interesting because that\'s, that\'s a reminder that Roman Catholicism, it\'s not simply Protestantism with different doctrines. It\'s actually a different way of thinking about the Church and authority. And that\'s the fascinating thing. You know, I think if you said to a Roman, if you talked in the language, we talk about choosing churches. That would be alien language to a Roman Catholic. That\'s what Protestants do. They choose churches. Roman Catholics go to the parish church, if we don\'t have a parish they\'re living in. So I think there\'s a, we can\'t simply engage Roman Catholicism at the level of doctrine. I think it\'s also, for want of a better word, a way of life. For good or for ill, it\'s a way of life, which also makes it complicated. Having said that, I was chatting to a number of people here who\'ve introduced themselves to me as lay elders, which from a Presbyterian perspective, that\'s weird because there are lay people and there are ordained people. And if you\'re an elder, you\'re an ordained person. You\'re not a lay elder. Of course, I think what it means in Baptist circles is an elder who isn\'t full time and paid. That\'s what I\'m guessing. But it\'s interesting terminology that for me it\'s kind of, wow, lay elder. That\'s a bit like saying, you know, I\'m a, you know, I\'m a Jewish Protestant or there\'s a sort of clash of categories there in my own mind. So, further questions? Yeah. Any books on Luther\'s politics? W.D.J. Cargill Thompson wrote a book on Luther and church and state, I think that\'s worth looking at. Gustav Aulen, I think, what was it, Vingran, I was getting confused, wrote a book on Luther on calling. It\'s not so much politics for Luther as the notion of calling that\'s significant. And of course, we talked about this yesterday, a lot of stuff has been written about Luther and resistance. And again, not a bad thing to read is Bethke\'s account of Bonhoeffer\'s wrestling with resistance to Hitler, given that he was a Lutheran pastor. Not that I would point to Bonhoeffer as a great example of orthodox Lutheranism, but I think on that issue he\'s wrestling with the Lutheran framework for doing politics. On that note, did Luther, what was Luther\'s human ability? Were you born into being a king or queen? Luther\'s definitely aristocratic in his thinking about society. I think, yes, there\'s a hierarchy there, a God-given hierarchy, and the princes are at the top. He does lament, he said it\'s a shame that so few Christian princes are really Christian. He sees the problems, I think he sees the princes as having, because they\'re greater, they have a greater responsibility that they have to fulfill. Luther\'s thinking socially, I think it\'s generally we\'d say now, pretty conservative in the sense of people should accept their position in the hierarchy and live according to it. Yeah, if you connect him to the Reformation. Obviously the brief of the course is Lutheran Reformation, so time into Luther somehow. Don\'t just give, you know, the Huss is really a late, he\'s a medieval figure. So at Westminster I cover him in the medieval course. But if you could tie him in, I mean there are ways of tying him in with Luther. He is the precedent of a man going to an imperial diet and not coming away alive. You know, he haunts Luther\'s early years. It\'s all going to end as it ended for Huss. Any good book recommendations for you? I would start with Spinka\'s works on Huss, Matthew Spinka. Be aware that Spinka was writing as a Czechoslovakian patriot. I mean Czechoslovakia is effectively under Soviet occupation. So the same kind of things that I\'ve said are often tinge Luther and Zwingli books will tinge Spinka on Huss as well. Huss is the great Czech hero in the face of foreign aggression and oppression. Yeah? He works on Melanchthon. Yeah, I would recommend Tim Wengert\'s book, Law and Gospel. That\'s a good place to start. He\'s looking at Melanchthon\'s role there in the formulation of the Lutheran catechisms in the context of the antinomian controversy. Which as I\'ve said is, you know, it\'s the failure of the Tullian Chavidian and their followers to read Luther after about 1521, 1522, if indeed they read him at all, to fully understand the law in Luther\'s theology. Because Luther realizes by 1527, 1528 that just preaching the gospel isn\'t having the effect. You preach the gospel and the people live like pigs. That\'s his phrase from the preface to the small catechism. So Tim Wengert\'s book, good place to start. Not a huge amount on Melanchthon in English. He\'s not caught the imagination of the English audience in the way that Luther does because he\'s a boring scholarly type, really. But that would be a good place to start. Yeah? What about on Karastan? Do we have any primary sources on him? Oh yeah, yeah. And look him up in a library catalogue, his work on the Lord\'s Supper. There is an Oxford dissertation that\'s an Oxford book published on his view of the Lord\'s Supper recently. And I mentioned there\'s Ron Sider\'s doctoral dissertation. Sider\'s own political activism resonated with Karlstadt. I think that\'s why. Whether Karlstadt created Sider or Sider chose Karlstadt because he was heading it, I don\'t know. But clearly there\'s a resonance between their visions of what Reformation Christianity should have looked like. Yeah? Two questions. The first one, you gave the principle of conventional. The job doesn\'t need to be explained by putting down conventional. When you were writing these papers, do you have other principles that you think should keep in mind? I think, I mean my little walk on histories and fallacies outlines my thinking a lot of this stuff. I think be wary of anachronism. The first task of the historian is to understand the person in the times in which they live. I think the temptation often of theological students is to, some pastoral students, is to jump naively to the present. Be careful. This is four, five hundred years ago. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge so it\'s difficult to jump from the past to the present. A lot of things have changed. But I think if you just bear in mind the need first and foremost to understand the person in context, you won\'t go far wrong. Anachronism can sometimes manifest itself in the questions we ask. A good example is that. Did Luther cause the Holocaust? Well, you really, you know, that\'s asking you to read Luther in light of the Holocaust. What I\'ve tried to do today was read the Holocaust in the light of Luther. To flip it chronologically. Where would Luther have stood on Joel Osteen? You can answer that question, but I don\'t want to make that question the first thing I go to in answering that question. I want to lay out Luther\'s understanding of the cross and the Christian life. And then at the very end bring Joel Osteen in. On the other question I was going to ask you for now, we didn\'t talk much about the English Reformation. But I\'m assuming the reputation of the Anglican Church today is very liberal. Where would you say the more Catholic lean, Protestant lean, surrounding middle? The English Reformation. Yeah. The English Reformation is interesting in part because it\'s a lot of it\'s driven top down by the needs of the crown. And it plays out on the ground in a fairly variegated way, depending which part of the country you\'re in. I think England doesn\'t produce a theologian of international stature until William Perkins towards the end of the century. Part of the reason for that is that Henry VIII is Roman Catholic, then he breaks with the Pope but remains broadly Catholic. Then he becomes sympathetic to Protestantism. Then he swings viciously back in a Catholic direction. He succeeded by the boy King Edward VI. But Edward VI, even though he\'s Protestant, is very young and he is having to handle a predominantly Catholic parliament to legislate Reformation. Then Edward VI dies relatively young. Mary I takes over. She\'s very Catholic. She turns the screws on the Protestants. Then she dies and Elizabeth, her sister, takes over who\'s Protestant but wants to be very much in control of the church and is not going to allow the more radical reform types to have their way. So the English Reformation is profoundly shaped by parliamentary and crown politics in a way that other reformations aren\'t. It doesn\'t really produce a Lutheran of stature. Lutheranism doesn\'t have a lot of impact on the English Reformation other than ironically among some of the high churchmen who adopt Luther\'s understanding of the Lord\'s Supper. The more sort of Catholic leaning in some ways are Lutherans. The English Reformation does produce a liturgist of genius in Thomas Crown. So where Calvin\'s Reformation produces the institutes and the commentaries, Luther\'s Reformation produces bondage of the will and the catechisms, the English Reformation produces the Book of Common Prayer, which is a remarkable piece of liturgy. Compared to the liturgy of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the OPC have got great theology and I say no poetry in our souls whatsoever. We use bits of the Book of Common Prayer in my church because it\'s just so great. It\'s just great. And I think as our music should have a certain quality to it, and the praise of God, so should our language. I said this to the D-Ming guys, one of the lacks I think in theological education today is we don\'t teach people to pray in public because I think there\'s somehow a feeling that if we do that it\'s inauthentic. I don\'t believe so. I think that ministers should lead people in prayer and do that dramatically. Avoid the phrase we just if at all possible. And, you know, we should teach people to do that. We don\'t scat sing, we sing hymns. We don\'t, you know, we don\'t improvise our songs of worship. I\'m not convinced that an improvised prayer is necessarily better than a written prayer. And I do pray extemporaneously myself, but I think try to think quite a lot. You know, it\'s not just off the cuff. I have phrases and formulas and things that I use. And I think that the Book of Common Prayer is great in shaping the way people pray. I recommend everybody, every pastor, buy a book, a copy of the Book of the Common Prayer and a copy of that liturgies of the Western Church. I can\'t remember who edited it, but all of the great liturgies, Protestant and Catholic, of the Church contained in one volume. It\'s a great book, a great book for seeing how people have thought about approaching God in worship over the centuries. Yeah. When we look at history we see that, I guess, even before the Reformation, we have the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church now split. And then when we think of the Reformation, all we pretty much discuss is the Catholic Church. So is the Eastern Orthodox Church just so removed that it just falls into an abyss and nothing ever happens? The Eastern Orthodox Church has a very different history. I don\'t know a huge amount about it, but obviously the Ottoman Empire has a significant impact on the Eastern Orthodox Church, as does the Russian Empire, Holy Russia. Very, very significant and has a very different history. What\'s interesting at the moment, of course, is that Vladimir Putin is, it seems to be very self- \... There\'s all this thing about is he trying to recreate the Soviet Union. I think he\'s actually trying to recreate Holy Russia. I think Putin\'s precedents are not so much the Soviet Union as the power and glory of Russia in the Middle Ages and then for us during the Reformation period when there was this powerful alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Tsar. So it has a very, very different history. There is, I mentioned Cyril Lucaris, the Archbishop of Constantinople, who in the 17th century produces a Calvinist confession of faith as an Eastern Orthodox Archbishop, but he\'s executed. He\'s executed, I think, by the \... He\'s stitched up by his own side relative to the Turks and they execute him. But Eastern Orthodoxy is generally a separate story. Having said that, there are things I think we can learn from Eastern Orthodoxy, particularly the early patristic fathers, the Cappadocians, for example, should be very important to us as well. So Eastern Orthodoxy is an interesting topic, but by and large \... You know, the most interesting modern Eastern Orthodox theologians for me are the ones from Romania because they\'re the ones \... that\'s where East meets West. And there you have Eastern Orthodox theologians wrestling with, for want of a better term, Western Augustinianism. But on the whole, Eastern Orthodoxy is a world to itself. And its own view of theology where really it ceases \... Theological development really ceases after the seven ecumenical councils. Makes it quite different to both Protestantism and Catholicism on the theological front. So they wouldn\'t have explained anything for a long time to us? No, no. And the Eastern Orthodox Church is not one church anyway as the Western churches. It\'s a series of what they call autocephalous churches, self-governing churches that all hold the same theology. I took a \... in my first year at Westminster, there were a number of students dallying with Eastern Orthodoxy. I think they were so fed up of megachurch evangelicalism, they were thinking of becoming Eastern Orthodox. So I thought one way to stop them, I could give them a lecture on it, or I could take them to an Eastern Orthodox service. So we all trotted off to the local Eastern Orthodox Church. The priest kindly allowed us to go in and gave an hour of his time afterwards actually to talk to us. And there\'s nothing like standing up for an hour and a half during a liturgy in ancient Greek to really put you off Eastern Orthodoxy. It had exactly the effect that I hoped. But what was interesting afterwards was the priest opened up for Q&A. He\'s very gracious. In fact, he\'s since gone off to become the kind of the head honcho of whatever the Antiochian, whatever it is that he was involved in. And it was fun watching the students react. They were asking him questions. We went out to like, took the students out for lunch afterwards and did the, okay, what was good? What did you appreciate about this service and about the conversation with the priest? And what did you find problematic? The thing they said was good was they all said, wow, it was so Trinitarian. You know, even his benediction at the end was go in peace for the Trinity has saved you. They said, you know, you couldn\'t, there was no, you couldn\'t have got away with being a Unitarian there. The stuff they didn\'t like though was the, at some point one of the students, well, one of the students asked what he thought about Cyril Lucaris. And the guy said, never heard of him. Well, yeah, he was the headbrushed out of history pretty early on. And the other one was somebody said, how long the church been here? And he said, of course, well, we used to meet for Bible study and services on the site. And then we had the relics brought. And we had the relics brought and that consecrated. And that\'s when we became a church. And it was the relics aspect that really blew the students\' minds. Wow. You know, there was stuff we loved, the reverence, et cetera, et cetera, about the service. But then he starts talking about what we would regard as kind of superstitious stuff. And Eastern Orthodoxy is fascinating. It is fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. In our reading in the European Reformations, the author talks briefly about the Italian Sputiguale. So the brief lived reformation within the church. So were they somewhat like, I guess, as we go to the British or the English Reformations, so the Puritans who wanted to stay within the church, help them reform it from within? Yeah, I think the Sputiguale is an example of what one of the things that, again, and it goes to the question of anachronism, we know how the story ends. So often when we talk about the reformation, we\'re thinking of the guys who were pushed out and became Protestant. That\'s one of the reasons why I like the Lindbergh book. Even the title is great. The European Reformations makes you realize that actually when we talk about the reformation, it\'s a bit of a misnomer. What you have in Europe is a whole series of reformations. And I want to make the situation a little bit more complicated by saying some of those reformations end up outside the Roman Catholic Church. Some of them end up being accommodated within it. So I would say, for example, the Jesuits, I do a cloud, one of the terms I try to avoid in my class on the reformation is the counter-reformation, because that term implies that Catholicism is reforming itself simply as a response to Protestantism. So actually what\'s going on is there are streams within Catholicism that want to reform the church. And I would say the Jesuits, they\'re a Catholic reformation movement. Now where I want to nuance this, I would say the fundamental difference though between, say, the Jesuits and a guy like Luther is this. The Jesuits think the problem is a moral one. What we need to do is clean up the administration and clean up morality. Start taking our baptismal vows seriously, these kind of things. That kind of reformation goes on within the church, culminates at the Council of Trent and beyond. And leads to a significant clean-up of the moral status of the Roman Catholic Church. But that\'s not enough. Luther, Calvin and company, their issue really is that the problem is a theological one. It\'s the theology that needs to be cleaned up. So the spiritual are there, they\'re kind of a piety group. A lot of decent people in the Catholic Church, they see there\'s a problem. Erasmus sees there\'s a problem. He doesn\'t like the fact the Pope\'s a sleazebag, they\'re not comfortable with that. But they inspire movements, some of which are theological, another which we might call moral, procedural and administrative. And spiritually are sort of in that. Though they connect to people like Peter Marta of Emilia. One of the more tragic stories of the Reformation is the friendship between Peter Marta of Emilia and Reginald Pol. As young men, they\'re close friends, committed to the idea that the church needs to be reformed. And Pol ends up digging up Emilia\'s wife\'s body to have it burnt. I mean, desecrating his wife\'s grave when their reforms go in different directions. Pol is a moral procedural reformer and Emilia moves in a Calvinist theological reform direction. Thomas More would be another, in an English context, Thomas More. Is Thomas More, does he take his faith seriously in a way that many Catholics didn\'t? Absolutely. Ultimately, he\'s going to be executed because he can\'t sign off on what the King of England is doing relative to his divorce. It\'s that important to him. But he\'s not a Protestant reformer. The doctrine, as far as he sees it, is pretty much okay. And the unity of the church is important. And therefore, he turns his guns on William Tyndale. And they engage in a violent war of words. But More, I would certainly, when I think of Catholicism in the Reformation, I don\'t want to say it\'s not a battle between the Protestants and the Catholics. It\'s a battle between all kinds of different factions. All of which have different views of what the church needs to look like. Is Leo X a corrupt sleazebag? Absolutely. But Cardinal Casutown isn\'t. He\'s not sleazebag. He\'s reigned against Luther ultimately and he\'s on the other side. But there\'s no moral issue, as far as I know, with Casutown. It\'s a theological issue with him. Do you have any books on that that you can recommend? No, I don\'t. But I recommend there\'s a book coming out from the last year\'s Wheaton Theology Conference. Chris Castaldo did a paper on the spirituality there, which will be published. And on Regensburg. And I would recommend reading that. It was a great paper. That\'s where I got the Cardinal Poll anecdote and Peter Martyr anecdote from. Chris is a converted Catholic. He\'s now a Baptist pastor somewhere near Wheaton. But who still writes with some sensitivity on Catholic theology and Catholic issues. So he\'s not a red in tooth and claw polemicist. He\'s trying to be careful in how he parses the issues. And I think he\'d be a good guide on that. He\'s got a great\...I think at Regensburg, one Cardinal pulls the beard of another one there, falling out of a justification. He\'s dug up all the dirt. He\'s got some great anecdotes there. Any other questions? Yeah. I have a pastoral question related to church history. Given that obviously knowing church history gives us a degree of objectivity in looking at ethical and theological issues today. And evangelicalism today is pretty divorced self-consciously from church history. To what degree do pastors have a responsibility to church history and how do you do that? Good question. I think one of the great strengths of the American Evangelical Church is Sunday school. Adult Sunday school, which gives you the opportunity for doing reading groups. I think history is important. It\'s not the most important thing. Preaching the word is the most important thing. But it\'s important for people to know they\'re part of an ongoing tradition of people that stretch back to the early church. That builds confidence apart from anything else. It builds identity. The Bible itself highlights the importance of history by the very fact that it contains so much history. How do you teach it? Well, I think as with so many pastoral questions, the answer is it depends on the situation. If your congregation is full of history buffs, then it\'s not so urgent for you to teach it. I think we do live in a day when there are stacks of good history books out there. A good book table never does any harm. Encouraging reading groups in your church never does any harm. Pointing people to iTunes U and YouTube and this sort of stuff never does any harm. Sprinkling stuff into your sermons is helpful. The thing that kills history. Well, I think culturally America is a forward-looking country. So history is not deeply ingrained in the American psyche anyway. America is a country that looks forward to the frontier. It doesn\'t look backwards on the whole. So the cultural issue may be more severe here than elsewhere. But the thing that really kills history by and large is that it\'s often badly taught at school. It\'s just one thing after another. What I\'ve tried to do this week and what I\'ve tried to do in my history is, it\'s what Niall Ferguson calls applied history. My term for it is critical history. And that\'s understanding the world of the past in a way that actually gives me some skills for understanding the world of the present, for relativizing my world of the present, for understanding that when somebody says something in the present, there might be a really complicated reason that they say that at that point. I find that past really helpful when I\'m faced with somebody raising an issue, a pastoral issue with me, there\'s always a question, okay, well we need to get to the backstory of this. That person didn\'t just suddenly abandon the faith. That person didn\'t just wake up one morning and go out and commit adultery. It can happen, but generally speaking it doesn\'t. There\'s a micro-history there that explains that person. And the same with churches. It\'s why I\'m a big believer that each church or denomination should teach its own history. Not because my denomination is better, any better than anybody else\'s, but actually help people coming into my denomination to understand a bit of why we have the weirdnesses we do. How do you get at that? I think you can do some of that in the pulpit. Sermon illustrations, how do you combat this? History\'s been badly taught, teach it well. Use the pulpit to teach it, give anecdotes from history. I\'m always, I guess because I\'m a historian, a lot of my sermons contain a sort of, you know, this makes me think of that moment when Augustine\'s friend was dragged off to the gladiatorial combat. And although he closed his eyes, he heard the roar of the crowd and he opened them. And Augustine uses that wonderful language. He said, the blow that was struck to the gladiator was not as lethal as the blow that was then struck to that man\'s soul. That\'s a reminder for us that what we see can have terrible effects on how we live and who we are. That\'s a subliminal way, a subtle way of getting the usefulness of history. And I\'ve said before in this class, best way to become interested in history is to read good history. It doesn\'t have to be church history. It sounds awful to put it, but I rarely read church history now. The church history I read tends to be church history I read for book reviews. By and large, it doesn\'t matter how many books I read on Luther, he still died in 1546. He still nailed the 95 Theses to the castle door in 1517. When I read books on Luther now, maybe there are nuances to the interpretation I already have of him, but it is the law of diminishing returns. There\'s other history I want to learn about. So I spend a lot of time reading other history and that too. I think it\'s helpful for Christians because history helps explain the world in which we have to live on a daily basis. So I\'d want to expand the interest of my congregation history beyond church history to history in general. And the best way to do that is to get people to read history that\'s written well or to listen to history that\'s taught well. I mean, how is the enemy using history at the moment? All of the social justice stuff going on on campuses connects back to a crisis in the historical discipline. That colleges have hired now for a generation people who think that history is ultimately about oppression and politics. And this is therefore about the present, not the past. Very powerful history. And I think even down to the removal of statues now, what is it about the erasure of history? So I think history is coming to its own as one of the critical disciplines for Christians to have a handle on in order to understand what is going on politically in the world in which we now live. Go to YouTube and type in Niall Ferguson and listen to his 25 minute acceptance speech recently in Washington. He was given an award by a conservative think tank and he talks about the problem in history. He\'s a great lecturer and in 25 minutes you will learn everything you need to know about the problems in contemporary history. It\'s a bit of beginning where he says something as a gasp from the audience and he says, I\'ve only just begun. And you think, wow, this is going to be really good. He wipes the floor with the Ivy Leagues. Actually wipes the floor with the Ivy Leagues. Okay, last question and then we\'ll close in prayer. This is probably a question that\'s kind of like, you know, did Luther cause the Holocaust? I\'ve heard somebody say before that the Reformation is the seeds of revolution. You know, talking about the French Revolution or the English Revolution. Yeah, the Reformation is the seeds of revolution. It\'s a simple question with a very complicated answer. In some ways it\'s shaped by theological commitments. Charles Taylor, the philosopher, and Brad Gregory, the historian at Notre Dame, both of whose work I appreciate on many levels, would argue that the Reformation, by breaking the church state link as it existed in medieval Europe, and by secularizing the sacred, paved the way for secularization in the present, of which revolution would be part. You know, what is the great secular revolution? It\'s the French Revolution. Quite remarkable. And of course then that goes down to questions of why was the American Revolution not so bloody? Why did it not devour its own children in the way that the French Revolution did? And some have argued that it\'s because of the influence of Protestantism, things like that, on the American Revolution. So your conclusions on that debate are often driven by your own church commitments. Gregory and Taylor are both Catholics and therefore predisposed, I guess, to view Protestantism in a more negative light. I think what Protestantism does, and at this point I certainly would follow Taylor, I think what Protestantism does ultimately is introduce choice into people\'s lives. Whereas, you know, in Mansfield in 1450, there is just one church. By 1650, you\'re going to have a choice. And that\'s very significant, because once people are able to choose at significant levels, I think it leads to a change in self-consciousness and a change in relation to your surroundings. I might also add this, there was a lot of work done in the 1960s in South America looking at the impact of literacy on people. And one of the interesting things about literacy is, as a society becomes more literate, it becomes more politically radical. The Reformation, as a movement of the book, certainly pushed forward and fueled the revolution which the printing press had already started, and that is rising literacy rates in Europe. As Europe becomes literate, one would expect the status quo to become more unstable, because people are, I hate to use the trendy terminology, but people are empowered by being able to read. It\'s one of the ironies that there\'s been this sort of scholarly backlash in some quarters against the Reformation because it was a movement of the book. And I want to say, but so much good has flowed, not just Christian good, not just that people have access to the Word of God, but so much good has flowed in terms of, people are more self-conscious. Think of some of the great political reforms that are good things that have taken place as a result of the fact that people have become more radical. So there may be a connection as well between the Reformation and the rise of literacy and a growing political self-consciousness that tends to manifest itself in politically radical ways. South American revolutions tended to happen in societies not where the social conditions were worse than other societies, but where people could read and write. That seemed to be the discriminating factor. And it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. It makes me wonder now, given the fact that we\'re moving to what T. David Gordon, I think, calls an a-literate society. It\'s not that we can\'t read, it\'s just that we don\'t read. We look at pictures and screens all the time. We can\'t concentrate. It makes me wonder what the political, cultural political implications of that are. Maybe we\'ll all just become more passive. That would seem to be the implication. Keep reading. Off paper occasionally as well. I take my Kindle with me when I travel because it\'s great to have so many books and stuff with me, but you can\'t beat holding a book. There is something about turning a page and understanding where the words are in kind of geographical relation to each other that I think makes a difference. Can\'t articulate it, but there\'s just something about the touch, the smell, the look of a book. Okay, let\'s close with a word of prayer. I just want to personally say thanks very much for being a great class. You\'re the only class I\'ve ever taught that broadly speaking respected my request that the brakes were for me, not for you, so I could kind of chill for a few seconds between my rambling monologue. So I very much appreciate that. Thoroughly enjoy the offline conversations I\'ve had with you all. Sorry that I\'ve not been able to have those with you guys out there all over the place, but I\'ve really appreciated this week. One of the things I most enjoy about teaching at other locations is I think it\'s really good to come into contact with brothers, Christian brothers, who aren\'t quite from my world because the kind of questions you ask me and the way that you make me think about my material is slightly different than the way that students at Westminster would make me think about the material. So it\'s a great help to me to always teach in other environments because not only do I make some new friends, you also, I don\'t want to go around the trendy, you know, I\'ve learned as much from you as you\'ve learned from me. If you\'ve only learned from me as much as I\'ve learned from you, they shouldn\'t pay me for this course. But I have learned stuff from you in the way that your questions have made me think about my material in different ways, which is very, very helpful from a teacher\'s perspective. So thanks very much for keeping me entertained and for the conversations this week. Let\'s close with a word of prayer. Lord God and loving Heavenly Father, we thank you for this week. We\'ve been able to spend together. We thank you for the issues we have discussed, the rabbit holes we\'ve gone down on occasion, for the reflections that we have had upon the great movements of the Reformation and for the great good and for some of the ill that it did in this world. We thank you for your servant Martin Luther, whose thought and life we have reflected on in some detail. We pray, O Lord, that we might learn, especially from his strengths, but also from his weaknesses, that we might be better theologians, better articulators of your gospel to our day and generation, better pastors and churchmen. Now, Lord, as we part and we return to our homes, we pray you would keep us safe upon our journeys. But above all, we ask that you keep our hearts and minds focused on the Lord Jesus Christ and that though, Lord, we are often tempted to fall and that we stumble many times, yet your Holy Spirit would bind us to Christ and thereby keep us close to you as our loving Heavenly Father. For we pray these things in the name of Jesus, for it is in his name that our sins are forgiven. Amen.