Lecture 2.docx

Well, I want to start looking now at Luther\'s biography. One of the great things about, you know, another of the things that I love about history is I love telling stories. And you know, if you love telling stories, there are two options. You can be a novelist, or if you don\'t have the imagina...

Well, I want to start looking now at Luther\'s biography. One of the great things about, you know, another of the things that I love about history is I love telling stories. And you know, if you love telling stories, there are two options. You can be a novelist, or if you don\'t have the imagination to be a novelist, you can be a historian. Because the stories are all kind of written for you, or the frameworks there. And Luther has a great story. One of the interesting things, I suppose, about Luther is that he does talk about himself rather a lot, which is an obnoxious personal trait, but is extremely helpful to historians coming afterwards, trying to reconstruct your life. It\'s also, Luther is, he lives an exciting life. There\'s a sense in which Calvin too has an exciting life, but he doesn\'t have quite the same drama that Luther does. Calvin doesn\'t talk about himself quite as much. And Calvin, I think, was a more humorless character by and large. My first, the first job I ever got in academia was at the University of Nottingham, and at the interview process I was asked in one of the interviews, if you\'re on a desert island, who would you rather be with, Calvin or Luther? And I said, well, probably bottom line is I\'d have to go with Luther. He\'d be more unbearable in some ways, but he\'d certainly be a more entertaining raconteur and more fun company. Calvin I\'ve never, it sounds awful, it feels awful to say this, I guess, from a Presbyterian perspective, but I\'ve never really liked Calvin as a person. I\'ve never been able to connect with him. Now, to put the Calvin side of that, the poor guy suffered from so many illnesses. So one of the things we need to remember is that the, for the average person in the 16th century, they never felt well in the way that we feel well. When you chat to missionaries from some of the parts of the world where they don\'t have access to particularly great healthcare, they\'ll tell you that their best days, they feel as if they\'re running a low-level fever because their blood always contains a certain level of microbe activity or whatever. Well, it would have been like that in the 16th century. So I think we need to remember that if Calvin was at times a miserable beggar, he probably had good reason to be so. If you\'ve had a day off work for a sore throat and felt pretty out of sorts, that day you had off might have been the best day that Calvin experienced in his adult life health-wise. There is a terrifying book, The Medical History of the Reformation, written by a Scottish evangelical surgeon. If ever you struggle, if ever you find it just too easy to fall asleep at night, you want to do one of two things. You want to read that book or you want to get hold of some 16th century medical manual. I guarantee you, if you\'ve ever read Shirley Jackson or M.R. James\' ghost stories, it takes me about a week to recover from them when I read them. If you read a medieval or reformation medical manual, it will damage you for life. It\'s just, oh goodness. When students say, you know, you\'re a historian, which period of time would you like to live in? I say, well, it\'s got to be the present day or sometime in the future. You know, I do not want to live at a time when there were no flush toilets, there were no analgesics, there were no antibiotics. That does not appeal in the slightest. I\'m a historian. I love reading about the past. I have no particular desire to live in the past, if I could put it that way. So Luther then, who is he? Well, again, I\'m going to give some general context here before we move to the details of his life. I want to say this first of all. Luther is a medieval figure. Of all of the reformers, I would say you could make a case for saying that all of the reformers are men of the early modern era, except for Luther. What do I mean by that? You look at Calvin, you look at Zwingli, you look at Melanchthon, you look at the other great men who forged the intellectual movement of the Reformation, and they were all men who were trained in the rising modern ways of education, but not Luther. Luther is a medieval man. He\'s born just a few weeks before Zwingli, and yet there is a vast cultural gap that exists between the two of them. Zwingli trains as a humanist. Don\'t get worried about that term. Humanism is a perfectly legitimate, non-theological term when we apply it to 16th century figures. It doesn\'t imply any particular theological views, one way or the other, at all. It implies men who are interested in going back to the classical era to reform society by the study of what we call humane letters. Humanists were what we would today perhaps call men of letters or public intellectuals. Luther was trained as a monk in a very medieval university context. There is a vast cultural break between Luther and Zwingli. I said in the first class, if you\'ve never walked through the woods late at night, and I grew up in the countryside, I remember walking back to my parents\' house as a kid sometimes along lanes where there were no lights and it was so dark that you\'d walk into trees and you\'d walk into ditches because you couldn\'t see. We live far from the city. There wasn\'t that glow in the air that cities give off. It was genuinely pitch black. If you\'ve never walked through a dark night and been worried that the goblins are going to get you, then you\'ve never really understood Luther\'s way of life. Luther was a rural, medieval man in many ways. My wife is from the western isles of Scotland. She is definitely a Scottish mystic. I\'ve applied for a grant for some research once and we were driving along and she saw a signpost and the name of the grant-making agency was on the signpost. It was a hotel or something. She immediately saw that as a sign that I was going to get the grant. I said, absolute rubbish, absolute rubbish. I won\'t tell you whether I was successful or not. It works in her favor, shall we say. I\'m a man of the Enlightenment. I\'m a modern rationalist kind of guy. Much as I\'m a Christian, I don\'t expect to bump into demons. I don\'t expect to run into goblins when I\'m walking through the woods. Luther did. When Luther was to say, when he was confronted by the devil, we should not think that he\'s speaking metaphorically. I think that would be a mistake. Luther may not see him with his eyes, but he\'s there. He\'s a presence for Luther. I make no comment on whether Luther is right or wrong. I mean, who knows? But certainly in Luther\'s mind, the devil comes to him. The devil whispers in his ear. The devil stands in the room. I\'ve been in the study in the Wartburg where Luther was translating the New Testament, where he\'s supposed to have thrown his inkwell at the head of the devil. Couldn\'t find the stain on the walls. I believe there\'s no reference to that prior to the 19th century, which is always\... Yeah, 19th century is very interesting, where a lot of Christian legends develop. You know William Perkins, the famous story of him being sort of convicted of sin when he\'s reeling drunk through the streets of Cambridge and some old lady says to a naughty little child they\'re with, you know, if you don\'t behave yourself, I\'ll give you to drunken Perkins over there. Early 19th century is the earliest account of that. Probably never happened, but it should have happened. Should have happened because it has this great moral purpose to it. But for Luther, the devil was a physical presence, I think. And that reminds us of how different our world is to his. It takes an effort to read Luther because we have to think ourselves back into a world that we want to think is our world because so much of the theological language is the same and so much of our theological language comes from that world. But it\'s very, very different in a lot of ways. He was born in 1483 in a place called Eisleben. He will die there in 1546, humanly speaking coincidentally, because he doesn\'t really have much to do with Eisleben during his life. He\'s actually visiting Eisleben in 1546 to try to sort out a political dispute between two of the local camps. And he\'s taken ill while he\'s there and he dies. He preaches his last sermon in Eisleben Church. It\'s interesting the last sermon he preaches, though some scholars think it may be the penultimate sermon he preaches. At the end of it, it was typical in the 16th century, at the end of a sermon, you would often include a sort of appendix where you had to go about some contemporary matter. Sermons in a largely illiterate world, sermons were often the way in which people got their knowledge of current affairs. You couldn\'t read a newspaper. There were no newspapers, but you couldn\'t read anyway. So the way you came to understand how the world was and what was going on was that the preacher would often throw an appendix in at the end. And the last sermon that Luther preaches, there\'s an appendix that is just a fulmination against the evil and the wickedness of the Jews. It\'s a terrible thing. A couple of years ago, there was something online, people were asked to recommend their favorite historical sermon, and I noticed that R.C. Sproul recommended Luther\'s last sermon. I thought, oh, gosh, I hope it doesn\'t mean the appendix. That would be really bad. It was interesting for me when I visited Eisleben to stand up there. I actually got up and sneaked up into the pulpit. I shouldn\'t have done it. It was against the rules. But, man, it\'s Luther\'s pulpit. I\'ve got to get up there. I don\'t believe in saints\' relics except when they attach to the saints that I happen to regard highly myself, of course. So I went up in the pulpit, and I remember praying and reflecting. I will never do a thousandth for the kingdom of God that Martin Luther did. Nobody, nobody in 500 years\' time will be sitting in a seminar or anything I\'ve written or thought. I\'m just a footnote to a footnote to a footnote to a footnote. Luther is huge. I remember praying that I knew I would never do anything like Luther did, but I did pray that the last sermon I ever preached would be more God-honoring than the last sermon Luther preached. I mean, there\'s a lesson there that even the great men can go into glory in having really blotted their copybook at the last minute. So Luther\'s born in Eisleben. In 1484, he moves, his family moved to Mansfeld. His father, according to German inheritance law at the time, the oldest son could not inherit the family land. I think it\'s probably a way of protecting younger sons, essentially. The oldest son had to leave and make his own way in the world. So somebody\'s having much more fun. Obviously, a much better class out there. It\'s a lot more amusing. That\'s the class I want to be in. So his father became a miner and worked his way up to becoming the manager of a mine. Now, that\'s interesting. I want us to stop and reflect for a moment on that. I\'ve said that Luther\'s not a man of the modern age, but in some ways, his family were, did epitomize something of the times, the social mobility that\'s beginning to kick in with the rise of cities, the rise of trade and commerce that starts to dissolve some of the fixed relations of late medieval Europe. Don\'t often quote Karl Marx positively, but Karl Marx, we often think of him today as a great critic of capitalism, but there\'s a sense in which some of Marx\'s writings is actually a great hymn to the glories of capitalism, because Marx realized that capitalism was one of the most creative and transformative forces that had ever been unleashed on the face of the earth. All that is solid melts into air, to quote the communist manifesto. And we\'re beginning to see the beginning of that in the 15th and 16th centuries. And Luther\'s family are beneficiaries of this. Luther\'s father has risen from being, you might say, from being a worker to being a manager. He\'s moved from the working class or the peasant class to being part of the middle class. Why is that significant? Ambition, ambition. One of the striking things about those who enjoy class mobility is that they frequently have great ambitions for their children. Think of the immigrant experience in America. I think it\'s kind of run its course now with what we see happening around us, but certainly what was the dynamic of America in the early 20th century? It was immigration. And that wasn\'t simply a workforce thing, that you\'re able to bring in a massive new workforce. The psychology of an immigrant is different. And I know I\'m an immigrant myself. My situation is not the same as somebody who came over in the early 20th century. But when you arrive in a foreign country as an immigrant, you know you\'re an outsider. And you know you have to work that much harder to establish yourself. Imagine how intense that was in the early 20th century in America. Immigrants arriving with nothing. One of my favorite movies, Godfather II. You know, second only to Godfather I, possibly I think, as a movie. I love those two movies. I watch them every 18 months or so. My wife rolls her eyes and I say, okay, we\'ve got to have a Godfather fest this weekend. I learned everything I needed to know about being vice president at Westminster from watching the Godfather movies. I had a colleague once said to me, I bet you sit and you watch those movies. Week after week, don\'t you? And I kind of said, I can\'t comment on that. But Godfather II, you have the little Vito Corleone arrives, doesn\'t he? Arrives on Ellis Island and you get something of the feel of wow. You understand something of the immigrant experience, why the Italians stuck together in these almost ghetto-like situations. And how they worked hard and they protected each other. And you see the rising ambition. I think it\'s often, I\'ve noticed this at Westminster, many of the second generation Asian students we have really feel the pressure from their parents to succeed well in their adopted homeland. Luther, Luther\'s father is a man of ambition. That his son will not work with his hands as he had to. His son will go to college. I was the first person in my family ever to go to college. My father left school at 16. And the moment I was able to understand English, I knew one thing was going to be true about my life. I was going to go to college. I was not going to have any choice in that. And I was going to go to as good a college as I could possibly get into. Because my father, as he would say to me, I didn\'t have your opportunities. You need to use all the opportunities that you\'ve been given. Same with Luther. So Luther in 1501 matriculates at the University of Erfurt in Germany. The curriculum at the University of Erfurt has proved remarkably resistant to the Renaissance. The Renaissance, the Renaissance really starts in Italy about the 13th, 14th century. The rise of Italian city-states. When you\'re part of a new political project, what do you do? You look back. If you\'re an Italian and you want a model to build your city-state on, where are you going to look? You\'re going to look back to Rome. So you\'re going to develop an interest in classical studies. The Renaissance really starts as an attempt to recover classical heritage for political purposes. But ultimately takes on a life of its own. It becomes something that intellectuals are interested in this because it\'s interesting. And it transforms education. But not at the University of Erfurt. University of Erfurt is pretty much still standard medieval education. They\'re not learning, they\'re not spending much time on rhetoric, which is the great Renaissance discipline. They\'re looking at logic and grammar. Luther is set by his father on a course for law. He\'s going to end up in the higher faculty of law training to be a lawyer. Any lawyers here? Any repentant lawyers here? It\'s good that even if you are here, you\'re too ashamed to admit it. That\'s a good sign. I think law is a despicable calling by and large. If you want to make money and you have absolutely no integrity whatsoever, the legal profession is the obvious place to go. Luther is destined for law. Law is going to be prestigious and law will bring money. Cut to 1505. Luther has been visiting his parents and he is walking back to Erfurt. And he\'s narrowly missed by a bolt of lightning. And he throws himself to his knees and cries out, St. Anne, save me and I will become a monk. A couple of things we might comment on this event. First of all, the calling out to St. Anne. For some years I wondered, why St. Anne? Two possible reasons or it could just be a two for one. St. Anne is the patron saint of miners. And therefore, Luther is acting in accordance presumably with the piety of the household in which he grew up. You can imagine when his dad was a miner, mining is a dangerous profession now. I would not want to go down, I don\'t know anything, rather than go down the mines almost. The idea of working underground 8 to 12 hours a day, far from anywhere. Job 28, the description of men down the mines is a sign of how great and courageous men are that they\'re able to force the earth to give up its gold. Mining is a terrible profession, I think, in terms of the risks involved. Someone could imagine that when dad went out to the mines, there would have been many prayers said to St. Anne to protect Hans Luther. Hans Luderus, he\'s down the mine. The other thing is, St. Anne is also the patron saint of those caught in thunderstorms. So it\'s a nice sort of two for one combination Luther has here. The significance of it is that within 10 days, he will present himself at the Augustinian cloister in effort to become a monk. Think about it, of course, think about that bolt of lightning. I was twice, my wife disputes this. I think being within 50 feet of a lightning bolt entitles me to say I\'ve nearly been hit by lightning twice. I don\'t think my wife will be satisfied until there\'s nothing left but my smoldering shoes. I think I\'ve been nearly hit by lightning twice and it\'s pretty scary. But when I\'m nearly hit by lightning, my initial reaction is total panic. But as things settle down, I sort of think, wow, those ice crystals smashing around in the high atmosphere, creating a massive ionic imbalance that earths itself just 50 feet away from me. Isn\'t that awesome? But this is where I\'m a man of the modern age. I think scientifically, I don\'t know much about lightning, but I know enough to know that lightning is a sort of natural phenomenon. For Luther though, it\'s an act of God, direct act of God. I don\'t know if it\'s the case in the United States, but certainly in Britain on insurance policies, there\'s still a type of disaster that happens referred to as an act of God. It\'s not due to negligence or incompetence, it\'s just a flood or it\'s a bolt of lightning. And our language still echoes the original sort of theological interpretation of those events that it\'s actually a direct act of God\'s judgment. Luther\'s a medieval man, when he\'s nearly hit by lightning, that\'s not just an almost catastrophic meteorological occurrence. For Luther, that\'s a warning from God. His father is furious. His father is furious for two reasons. First of all, his father is furious for the obvious general reason that his son is giving up a very prestigious and potentially lucrative career to become a monk. And secondly, he has chosen a not particularly prestigious order to join. If you\'re around at the beginning of the 16th century, the two big orders are the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The orders who\'s really theologically, they dominated the later Middle Ages. The Dominicans are the order of preachers. The Franciscans were the lesser brethren. The Dominicans\' greatest theologian was Thomas Aquinas, who for my money I regard him as one of the three or four greatest theologians of the Western Church. Thomas Aquinas was their great intellect. I don\'t know about you, but I always sort of mark each year I\'m aware of who died at the age I\'m now at and how much they\'d achieved compared to me. Thomas Aquinas, I\'m 49, Thomas Aquinas died at 49, and it\'s kind of, oh man. Another one that I still haven\'t reshaped the entirety of Western thought, you know. I\'m nearly 50. I remember when I think of Pascal died at 39, when I hit 40 thinking, man, I still haven\'t reshaped the whole existential frame for theology. Pascal had done that and made massive scientific breakthroughs by the time he was 39. You know there\'s that bit in Wayne\'s World where they meet Alice Cooper, and he asks them to hang around with him, and they say, sure, we\'ll hang around with Alice Cooper. And then they fall onto the ground, we are not worthy, we\'re scum. That\'s how I feel when I look at these guys. I think, man, I\'m not worthy. I\'m absolute scum compared to these people. Thomas Aquinas was the Alice Cooper, if you like, of medieval theology. I\'m sure he would not have appreciated the analogy. But Martin Luther, I\'ve always regarded by the way, as the Jimi Hendrix of Reformation theology. Amazingly creative. Anyway, that\'s by the by. Where was I? What was I talking about? I joined the Augustinian order, hadn\'t I? That was the last thing we spoke of. The other thing, it\'s not a prestigious order, nor is it significant that it\'s called the Augustinian order. There is a fair amount of truth. Like a lot of simple sayings, it\'s kind of 90% true, which is good enough most of the time. You know, Newton\'s laws of gravity are 90% true, I think. The statement of B.B. Warfield, that the Reformation marks the triumph of Augustine\'s understanding of grace over his understanding of the church. Augustine is vitally important for the Reformation, on both sides. Calvin will use that phrase, Augustinus totus nostere. Augustine is completely ours, and the Catholics will fire back. The Reformation, you could write the history of the Reformation as an ongoing debate about the interpretation of Augustine\'s theology in the 16th century. And one has to say that both Catholics and Protestants draw positively from Augustine. He doesn\'t belong completely to either side. I\'ve just read a book, I think this will be one of the best books coming out in the next 12 months on the relationship between religious bodies and the state in North America. It\'s by Archbishop Charles Chaput, the Archbishop of Philadelphia. It\'s called Strangers in a Strange Land. Although in parts it\'s a very Catholic book, I would recommend that Protestant pastors should read it. What is brilliant about that book is that Archbishop Chaput draws upon Augustine and his city of God, and that perennial struggle between the city of man and the city of God, in a way that, you know, 80% of what he writes a Protestant can say amen to, and this is very insightful for what we\'re doing. Augustine is huge. Augustine is probably the single most important theologian since the Apostle Paul, because everybody who\'s anybody has to be in dialogue with him at some point. But the Augustinian order is not particularly Augustinian. What will happen is that Luther, when he moves to Wittenberg will become part of an intriguing group at Wittenberg of men who are committed to studying the theology of Augustine. And it\'s this that will bring Luther to question, to modify, to appropriate, to extend certain aspects of his medieval education in a way that will lead to the reformation. But we\'re not there yet, and he doesn\'t get it simply by joining the Augustinian order. So he joins the Augustinian order in 1505. His father\'s very distressed and upset. He\'s ordained in 1507, very important point. One of the great problems, I think, with systematic theologians is they tend to study theology in the abstract. Theology, theology as we have it, was never thought in the abstract. Theology is always thought by real people in real situations. That\'s not to reduce theology to praxis. It\'s not to be purely pragmatic, but it\'s to say that the lives we live, the bodies we inhabit, the people we mix with shape how we think and shape how we react. The demands made on us in everyday life shape how we think and shape how we react. By being ordained, Luther places himself in a pastoral position. Luther is not just going to be a university professor. He\'s not just going to be a monk. Luther\'s going to be a parish priest. That means he\'s going to be taking confession. It means he\'s going to be helping, helping people. One of the most moving parts, and I\'m not a big Catholic sacramental confession person, but one of the most moving parts of Archbishop Chaput\'s book is when he talks about the confession. He says, you know, people talk about the sexual revolution. They need to sit and hear the confessions of ordinary people whose lives have been ruined by the sexual licentiousness which is demanded of people today. That\'s the world Luther lives in. He\'s having to deal with real people. This is where the indulgence controversy will come from. Luther says a lot more radical things before the indulgence controversy. Nobody pays a blind bit of attention. What forces him into the real public open is the needs of his congregation relative to the indulgence sales that are going on in the neighboring parishes. Luther is, in some ways, another of my heroes from history, Lawrence of Arabia. Love, I read all the books I can on Lawrence of Arabia. The Intellectual Man of Action, David Lean\'s movie. One of the greatest movies ever made. Lawrence of Arabia, probably the great, he\'s the English, it\'s a bit, you know, the Irish, he was British. One of the greatest British men who ever lived. The Intellectual Man of Action. That\'s Luther. The Intellectual Man of Action. He\'s not just an academic, he\'s doing stuff. Again, I don\'t often quote Karl Marx, but I\'m gonna quote him again. You know, the purpose of philosophy, the philosophers have tried to describe the world. The purpose of philosophy is to change the world. Theology terminates always. It starts in real situations and it terminates in real situations. Can\'t be reduced to those situations, but Luther as pastor places him in a world that makes demands of him that wouldn\'t have been made of him if he was just an Augustinian monk. One of the first demands it makes of him is he has to celebrate mass. And his father\'s there. And Luther has a kind of breakdown at mass. It\'s a traumatic moment for him. Think about the theology. Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, defines transubstantiation. Now again, we all know transubstantiation is wrong, but let\'s step back and let\'s understand what it says in order to understand how Luther thinks about what he\'s doing in 1507, in order to understand the pressure that weighs on him at this point. Transubstantiation is an attempt to sort of explain the presence of Christ in the Lord\'s Supper by saying the substance of bread and wine changes into the substance of Christ\'s body and blood while the accidents remain the same. Substance and accidents, it\'s a kind of Aristotelian distinction that the church is borrowing and using in a very non-Aristotelian way. Aristotle believed the way we know the world is we know the accidents of things. I know that this lectern is a lectern because it looks like a lectern, it feels like a lectern. If I care to take a bite of it, it probably tastes like a lectern, behaves like a lectern. I know that the substance of the wood, et cetera, et cetera, that goes to make it up because I know the accidents. For Aristotle, accidents tell you about the underlying thing that\'s really there that makes a thing what it is. Church took this distinction between substance and accidents and used it in a way that Aristotle would never have recognized. What the church did, they said, well, the substance of the bread and the wine changes into, it doesn\'t get vanished and get replaced by, it changes into the substance of the whole Christ\'s body and blood. And incidentally, that doesn\'t mean that the blood is somehow extruded from the flesh so that the bread is flesh and the wine is blood. The whole Christ is present in both. And that\'ll be quite important for a medieval development we\'ll talk about probably in the next couple of classes. The whole Christ is present in both. Think about what that means for a priest celebrating the mass. Again, step back, let\'s not criticize the doctrine at this point, but let\'s just think about the impact that has. The priest genuinely believes that he is making Christ be present and is touching and handling Christ. That\'s powerful, that\'s powerful. If you believe it, that\'s very powerful. You know, and if you\'ve got friends who are serious Catholics, they take the mass very seriously because they genuinely believe that\'s what\'s taking place. It\'s not a trivial thing for them. That\'s why if you go into a medieval cathedral, often the design of the cathedral will focus your attention on the altar because that\'s where God comes to earth. For Luther, this is traumatic because he knows he\'s not worthy to touch and to handle God. One of the things I think that Protestants have to grasp first and foremost about Luther is how sacramental his agonies of soul are. That actually they\'re precipitated initially by sacramental duties, touching and handling God at the altar. We all know the sort of phrase, you know, how can I stand before a righteous God? Well, we could translate that into more Lutheran terms of saying, how can I touch and handle a righteous God? One of the reasons why the sacrament of the Lord\'s Supper remains so important for Luther is his initial crisis is precipitated by the Lord\'s Supper. It\'s not a casual thing for him. The Lord\'s Supper so often is a casual thing for Protestants, but it\'s not for Luther. It never will be throughout his entire career, even after he breaks with transubstantiation. Incidentally, he will always regard transubstantiation as less problematic than Zwinglianism. For Luther, transubstantiation is an error, not a heresy. Zwinglianism is a heresy. Heresy is damn your souls. Transubstantiation simply muck your theology around a bit. That\'s an important distinction, by the way. I think error and heresy, important to hold that in mind. Obviously, I think you\'re all in error on the doctrine of baptism, but I still respect you as Christian brothers, if I could put it that way. And I trust that you\'ll reciprocate the respect, because I trust that you will think I am in error on baptism, because if you don\'t, then you\'re not a true Baptist, and you\'re not worth arguing with at that particular point. So, Luther has a kind of breakdown, kind of breakdown. 1508, he\'s transferred, just temporarily at this point in time, to the University of Wittenberg. University of Wittenberg is a new foundation. And again, let\'s think materially about this. New foundations. When I was dean, the worst thing you have on faculty is the controversial maverick professor. That\'s the worst thing you can have. It\'s what I\'ve always aspired to be myself. But once you\'re dean, you realize, no, that\'s not a bad thing. That\'s a bad thing to aspire to. When somebody\'s dean, you don\'t want those guys. But if you\'re a new foundation, and you want to make a name for your foundation, the quickest way of doing it is to have the controversial maverick professor. When Luther emerges as a controversial maverick professor, that\'s not an entirely bad thing for the authorities of Wittenberg, because guess what? By 1525, Wittenberg is one of the most popular universities on the European continent, because Luther\'s there. It\'s attracting students from all over the place. So the fact it\'s a new foundation, it was founded, was it, 1501, I think. Bear that in mind. It\'s a young foundation wanting to recruit talent, and it\'s not gonna be particularly worried when that new talent starts to create big waves. Luther will have some strange friends in very high places that will keep him alive, essentially. 1510, he\'s part of a small delegation. There\'s a struggle within the Augustinian order at this point between those who want a more strict observation of the order\'s laws and rules, and those who are more kind of open and relaxed about it. And in order to try to put this controversy to bed, a group go to Rome. How many of you here have been to Rome? Any of you been to Rome? Isn\'t it an amazing city? I don\'t wanna be a Roman Catholic, but when I walked into St. Peter\'s Square, man, if it wasn\'t wrong, I\'d love to belong to this. There is a massive weight about Rome. I turn 50 next year, and as a treat, I\'m taking my wife to Italy for 10 days, and we\'re gonna spend as long as we can in Rome because it\'s just a wonderful city. I\'ve got my, again, you won\'t fully approve of this, and I won\'t tell you if I\'ve ever used it or not, but I have my Pope Benedict XVI shot glass in my glass cabinet at home. You can buy shot glasses with the Pope\'s face on them, a little blessing on them, how cool is that? Though I notice you have the master shop here or something. You can buy, you probably can\'t buy John MacArthur shot glass, I\'m guessing, but you can probably buy a kind of caffeine-based equivalent or something, I\'m sure. I have a feeling somebody out there watching on the internet is gonna email me to complain about that comment. I really do, I say that out of affection for Dr. MacArthur, not to criticize him. Rome is, it\'s an amazing city because there\'s so much history there. There is a tour you can take in Philadelphia, the Independence Tour, and on the bus at some point in a hushed tone, the tour guide will say to you, and there\'s a building in this street that\'s been continually occupied since 1742 or something like that. And if you\'re British, you\'re sitting there thinking, man, well, I was sitting there thinking, when I taught at the University of Aberdeen, my office was built in 1496. I used to tell that until somebody in class, I had an Egyptian student once who put his hand and said, I come from Cairo and we have streets in Cairo that have been continually occupied since 3000 BC, which point I realized, yeah, Britain is kind of fairly new on the block as well in the grand scheme of things. But Rome has a huge amount of history, and history really does carry a lot of weight with it. And I found going to Rome quite a, it\'s why I wanna go back with my wife. I visited a lot of cities. The only city I\'ve ever visited where I thought I must take my wife is Rome. And there\'s just everywhere you go. You go through the Vatican Museum. Every corner you turn, there\'s a painting that you recognize because you saw it in a book when you were at school or you\'ve seen it on some documentary. There is more history concentrated into a few square miles in Vatican City than I think you find almost anywhere else on the face of the earth. Luther goes there in 1510. And although of course the Renaissance, St. Peter\'s being built at that point, the Sistine Chapel\'s being built. By the way, you walk into St. Peter\'s and the first thing that hits you is the Pietà by Michelangelo, one of his Pietà. Christ come down from the cross, being cradled in the arms of his mother Mary. And set aside whatever you think about images of Christ. And for one, I do think the incarnation has to change some way our understanding of the second commandment. But whatever you think about images of Christ, that is a work of outstanding artistic beauty. And then you look at the dates. And Michelangelo, I think, was 23 when he carved it. And he lived till he was in his late 70s or early 80s. Try to think about what were you doing when you were 23? You probably weren\'t carving the equivalent of the Pietà. That is humbling. That is humbling when you see what these, I listen to the classic rock station in Philadelphia and they\'ll say, oh George Harrison or John Lennon was only 25 when he wrote Eleanor Rigby or something. Well, it\'s a great tune, but frankly, it\'s not like what Mozart was doing at 25. It\'s not the Pietà. We live in an era of really small things, I think, artistically and culturally. Luther is overwhelmed by Rome. And he\'s overwhelmed by it on two fronts. He\'s overwhelmed, one, on the piety front. This is a man deeply embedded in medieval piety. And he\'s overwhelmed at the relics that are available in Rome. The steps going up to the upper room, these kind of things, pieces of the real cross. The bones of martyrs. And the indulgence, the days of purgatory attached to these things. The opportunities for personal devotion, given the framework within which Luther is operating, is quite stunning and overwhelming. And we\'ll never leave him. We\'ll never leave him. Secondly, he is absolutely stunned by the corruption of the Roman court. And I think many of the later images of Rome that Luther has are of the corruption, fixed in his mind in 1510 when he\'s there. He writes eloquently about the corruption of the Roman court later. Now, we need to be fair here. So one of the reasons why I recommend Carter Lindbergh\'s book is the title, The European Reformations. We need to understand that there were many people who never broke with the Catholic church in the 16th century who were just as unhappy with the corruption. The corruption, it was the Reformation does not divide down along Protestants who hated the corruption and Catholics who didn\'t mind it. It really breaks down along Protestants who went for a different theology and Catholics who stuck basically with the theology there was. Protestantism could be just as corrupt as Catholicism could be. We\'ll talk about that a little bit later in the course, but Protestants have no, we have no high horse upon which to look at the Renaissance papacy and complain about corruption. Other Catholics were doing it, and many of the guys that we put into place and enabled were no better, were no better. The real problem for Luther will be the theological one. But that image of the corrupt Roman court sticks with him. Some years later, he will be writing one of these most powerful images of 1520. He writes about the Roman court, and he says, I see them there in Rome now, drinking their fine Italian wines and laughing about the stupid beer-drinking Germans whose tax money has paid for it all. It\'s a very, very powerful image, this idea. And again, of course, well, it reverberates today. If you come from Europe, you know the complaints about money flowing from an industrious and industrial north to a non-industrious south. I\'m not sure how accurate they are, but certainly resonate deeply. If you\'re born north of Paris in Europe, you tend to have a sneaking suspicion that everybody born south of Paris knocks off work at about noon and then just sits outside a cafe, philosophizing and watching the girls go by for the next eight or 10 hours until you go to sleep and then wake up and repeat it the day after. Luther has those kind of images way back in the 16th century, and it\'s what he sees in Rome in 1510 that fixes that in his mind. The years after 1510, before the crisis of 1517, intellectually interesting for Luther. Obviously, he\'ll be engaged in his regular pastoral work. But he\'s also engaged, and again, one of the myths that Protestants tell about the Middle Ages is that the theologians didn\'t do biblical exegesis. Actually, to qualify as a teacher of theology at a medieval university, you would have to have preached and taught through more of the Bible than anybody would have to in order to get a job at a Protestant assembly in North America today. The Middle Ages were definitely marked by an interest in biblical exegesis. Now, access to the Greek text was minimal. Access to the Hebrew text was minimal. But the Latin translation, the Vulgate, was considered to be divinely inspired, and you were expected as a teacher of theology to preach and teach through it. If you look Thomas Aquinas up on any decent university library catalog, you will find quite a number of commentaries there written by him. His commentary on Romans is actually pretty good. When I was working on this Grace book, I looked up his commentary on Romans, and man, it\'s some pretty good stuff there, and he anticipates Luther. Oh, I wouldn\'t say he anticipates Luther. He maintains a tradition on God\'s love which Luther himself participates in, and that is that God\'s love arises out of God\'s being and not as a reaction to human merit. Pretty good stuff. Luther is required to teach through books of the Bible. And in 1515, 1516, he lectures on the book of Romans. It\'s intriguing that for many centuries we knew Luther had done this, but nobody had any copies of his lectures on Romans until two copies show up in the late 19th century. One in the Vatican Library of all places, presumably the Vatican when it was gathering information, it had a note sent down, and one in the University of Berlin completely transforms Luther\'s studies. I\'d say one of the reasons why we now know that the autobiographical fragments which dates Luther\'s breakthrough to 1519 can\'t be right because we know that in 1515, 1516, he\'s already moving in the direction of understanding God\'s righteousness, not as that by which he judges us, but that by which he makes us righteous. Luther\'s theology has been going through a transformation at this time. We know that Luther struggled then, as he was to struggle throughout his career, with what he called Anfechtungen. Anfechtungen is a wonderful German word that is essentially untranslatable into English. The best we can come up with, angst. Well, angst isn\'t much good because it\'s just another German word. It\'s a bit like me when I was doing classics. There were certain words in Greek and Latin that were kind of rude and naughty, and I was using a Victorian Latin dictionary, and you\'d look up a word in Latin, and it would give you the meaning in Greek. So you\'d go and look up the word in your Greek dictionary, and it would give you the word in Latin, and it wouldn\'t actually tell you what it meant, which of course had the effect of making you very intrigued about what the word must mean. Anfechtungen is, it really means a sort of, a feeling of dread, a feeling of anxiety, precipitated by a fear that something bad is gonna happen. And for Luther, it\'s intimately connected, as Anfechtungen, we\'re always intimately connected to whether God would pardon him, would God be gracious to him because of all of his sin? Luther had learned his theology in the tradition of a man called Gabriel Beale. Gabriel Beale was a 15th century theologian. He wrote a major work called The Canon of the Mass, which those in Luther\'s tradition were required to study and to lecture upon. Beale belonged to two late medieval traditions, which will be significant for understanding Luther. Tradition of nominalism and the tradition of voluntarism. We\'ll do with voluntarism first. Voluntarism argued that when we think and talk about God, we need to give priority to God\'s will over God\'s intellect. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, issue a small caveat. When we make distinctions in God, the distinctions are not real distinctions in God because God is simple. What we\'re doing is we\'re trying to talk about God in a way that makes him somehow apprehensible by us. The real way that voluntarism comes down to bite, we could say is this, what makes something good? Is something good because God wills it to be good? Or does God will it because it is good? Is something good because God wills it? Or does God will it because it is good? Take an extreme example, murder. Is murder wrong because it is an absolute contradiction of God\'s nature for his creatures to take life? Or is murder wrong because God has decided that\'s the way the world will be? Now we tend to read that distinction, I guess, as implying something about God. Well, it\'s actually what the late medievals are trying to do is emphasize the mysteriousness of God. What\'s really at stake here is the late medieval saying you can\'t simply look at the world around you and decide things about how God must be because God is, in a fundamental way, unknowable. We can only know him as he\'s chosen to make himself known to us. And we don\'t know if he could have chosen to make himself known in another way. So it\'s a way of protecting, if you like, the mysteriousness of God. It has what I would call a good theological motive behind it. It\'s not really making God arbitrary, it\'s making God mysterious. Calvin will go, Calvin, in one of the more embarrassing sections of Calvin\'s Institutes, Calvin will go after the distinction in God, the sort of voluntarist distinction in God, and say this makes God arbitrary, and we can\'t abide by it, and we\'ll then say exactly the same as the distinction is trying to say. Calvin was not a very good late medieval theologian, he didn\'t really know his late medieval theology very well, much as he was a brilliant theologian, it was not his strong suit. What the late medieval voluntarists are trying to do is emphasize the mysteriousness of God. And this plays over into their understanding of justification. Does somebody actually have to be righteous in order to be declared just? If you\'re Thomas Aquinas, for example, you have to be in a state of grace, being transformed by God\'s grace, you don\'t have to be perfect, but you have to be in a state of grace, being transformed by grace, for God to be able to declare you to be righteous. For God not to do that would be unbecoming of God. But for the voluntarists, no. If that\'s the way it is, that\'s the way it is, because that\'s how God has set it up to be. God could have set it up another way. This is why Lortz, remember Joseph Lortz, we talked about him last class, why Lortz hated late medieval theology, because one of the implications of this is the sacraments become less than vitally necessary. The sacraments are there because God\'s chosen that they should be used, not because they have a necessary existence. The other side of it, nominalism, Luther really, well, Luther remains in many ways a voluntarist and a nominalist until the day he dies. Normalism is all about words. I used to have a dog at home, called my dog a dog and I relate him to other dogs in the area. Is there some kind of ideal dog out there in which my dog participates, that allows me to call him a dog? Or does the word dog simply, if you like, create a link between my dog and other dogs out there? It all comes down to the power of language. Does language, we might say, create reality? Some ways it\'s very, there are a lot of connections between late medieval nominalism and postmodern theories of language. Does language create reality? And for Luther, yes it does. Think about justification. We\'re not there yet in Luther, but think about justification. Justification, God declares you to be righteous. What\'s God doing there? You are righteous because God says you are righteous. God does not say you are righteous because you are righteous. You see how voluntarism and nominalism both lie in the background of what Luther say, of Luther\'s theology there. When I talk about Luther, I\'m gonna do this with the D Min guys tomorrow, but I\'ll probably do it with you as well. Talk about Luther\'s theology of preaching, and one of the great things about Luther\'s theology of preaching is Luther\'s understanding of preaching is it\'s a creative activity. It\'s not describing, it\'s creating. When the preacher preaches, he\'s analogous to the Old Testament prophet. And in fact, he\'s analogous to God himself in his actions of creation, when God creates out of nothing, and then creates birds out of the sea and things like this. The power of words becomes important. So Luther, in the background of Luther, the role of nominalism and voluntarism is gonna be very, very significant in his understanding of salvation.