Lecture 3.docx

I\'m getting texts and emails from people watching online, not the legitimate people on the screen, but people just out there. One of my former members of my church actually texted to say, if Martin Luther is the Jimi Hendricks of the Reformation, then who is the Jim Morrison of the Reformation?...

I\'m getting texts and emails from people watching online, not the legitimate people on the screen, but people just out there. One of my former members of my church actually texted to say, if Martin Luther is the Jimi Hendricks of the Reformation, then who is the Jim Morrison of the Reformation? To which my answer is, it\'s obviously Zwingli, because like the doors, Zwingli is massively overrated. So there you go. Led Zeppelin, I restrict Led Zeppelin to the ancient church. The Led Zeppelin of church history are Athanasius and the three Cappadocian Fathers. Because one of the things everybody knows about great rock bands is there\'s always a weak link. There\'s always a weak link, but not in Led Zeppelin. Everyone was essential so that when one of them died, it was all over. Well, there are no weak links. Athanasius and the Cappadocians, no weak links. So they are the Led Zeppelin of church history. My associate pastor pointed out to me about a year ago how interesting it was that the radio channel we both listen to in Philadelphia, which is the classic rock channel, now has advertisements for assisted living facilities and hip replacements between the music. I\'m sure they\'re not thinking of him and me at all when they do that. So yeah, it took me about two minutes to find Rush on the radio last night when I got in. It was a long, long drought, really. So that\'s the background to Luther. Luther\'s also preached, he\'s having to preach each week, and he\'s also working his way through a book of Psalms and Romans. And his thinking starts to shift in a couple of ways that will be fatal for some of the medieval theology he\'s learned. Essentially, drawing out of this, what he\'s been taught about getting oneself into a state of grace is this. His question is, where can I find a gracious God? We might translate that into, how can I put myself, how can I get into a state of grace? Well, Luther\'s medieval masters taught him this, that if he did what was in him, that\'s a literal translation of the Latin phrase they use, if he did what was in him, the Lord would not deny him grace. I give you the literal translation because that little phrase, doing what is in them or doing what is in him, will occur in some of the Luther texts you read when he\'s sort of polemicizing against positions. That is a particular position that he hates because it was the position he was taught. This idea, we might translate it as, if you do your best, God will not deny you the first infusion of grace, which will then allow you to do works that truly merit God\'s grace. So this approach, I think as we can make a number of observations about it, one, notice that it is potentially lethal to the sacraments. And this is why people like Yosef Lortz and more recently a man like Brad Gregory in his unintended reformation book, which is a book of outstanding scholarship, but I think fundamentally flawed in its basic thesis, we can talk about that later if you like, they zero in on the late Middle Ages as weakening the place of the sacraments. Because if you can get God\'s grace without the sacraments, then the sacraments are made somewhat less important than they were previously. So the first thing to note is that this is a potentially non-sacramental or anti-sacramental view of salvation. Secondly, notice that it\'s ultimately self-defeating, particularly for the introspective psychologizer like Luther, because knowing that you\'ve done your best is a fool\'s errand. We know that Luther was insanely committed to confessing all of his sins, that he would spend hours in the confessional trying to catalogue every single sin he\'d committed. This was part of him trying to do his best, but always at the back of his mind was the fear that he\'d forgotten some, and that if he\'d been more diligent, he wouldn\'t have forgotten them. So there\'s a sense in which this is also self-defeating, and that\'s what it becomes for Luther. This doesn\'t become a means of assuring him of God\'s grace, it becomes a way of exacerbating his fear about being in a state of grace. It becomes a wheel that breaks him. While he\'s undergoing these personal struggles, he\'s also working through the Book of Romans. And the Book of Romans is very important to us in understanding Luther\'s development, because it shows us that a couple of fundamental shifts had taken place in Luther\'s thinking in 1515, 1516 that paved the way for the destruction or the implosion of that medieval understanding of how to get into a state of grace, upon which he will have to build something new. The most important shifts are relative to sin and baptism. Again it\'s striking, perhaps we think about it, that Luther\'s reformation breakthrough will come as part of his general overhaul of the sacramental scheme of the medieval church. Luther has been taught that sin is the equivalent of a kind of tinder. We might say that sin is a weakness, or maybe a wound that makes human beings less than they should be, and is likely to burst into flame when exposed to temptation. It makes us weak. Sin is akin to dirt that sullies our souls. Well the model with which you think about sin is very important, because it will really fundamentally shape how you think about the Christian life. If you think that the human problem is that we are dirty, then the solution is that we should be cleaned. If you think that we are weak, then the solution is that we should be made strong. If you think our problem is that we are wounded, then the solution is that we are healed. Luther comes from reading the book of Romans to the conclusion that the language Paul typically uses about sin is the language of death. That to be a sinner is to be dead. And the interesting thing about death of course if you think about it is, it\'s a status. It\'s not a condition so much as it is a status. I love the line, in Wittgenstein\'s Tractatus, Luther Wittgenstein\'s first great philosophical work, it\'s full of, you know, opaque mysterious sayings, and one of them is this, death is not an event in life. Think about it, that\'s fascinating. It\'s one of those statements you could go away and think about for years and never really grasp. Death is not an event in life and you think about it, that\'s true isn\'t it? Freud says a similar thing. Freud says it\'s impossible to imagine one\'s own death because even in the imagining of it, you\'re a spectator of it and therefore it can\'t really be what your death is like. Death is a status. When you think about it, there\'s no halfway point between life and death. You\'re either alive or you\'re dead. It\'s like being pregnant. You can\'t be a little bit pregnant. You\'re either pregnant or you\'re not. You know, at the end of nine months, you\'re no more pregnant than you were when the child was first conceived. It\'s a status. Luther comes to think of sin as a status and it\'s a status of death and this will have a twofold impact on his understanding of salvation. Justification too will become a status and not a process. And the idea of doing your best, doing what is in you, has to be radically revised if you\'re dead. What can a dead man do? Dead men tell no tales. Isn\'t that a great line from cowboy movies? Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead. That\'s another great line, isn\'t it? Death is not part of life. If you\'re dead, there\'s nothing you can do. If you\'re dirty, you need cleaning. If you\'re injured, you need healing. If you\'re dead, you need resurrecting. And resurrection comes from the outside. I know there\'s that moment in the first of the new Daniel Craig, James Bond movies, Casino Royale, where he has a heart attack and he sets himself up for defibrillation. He\'s dead, but he brings himself back to life with the exception of James Bond. Nobody has ever resurrected themselves. And he only did it in the movies. He didn\'t do it in real life. If you\'re dead, you need to be resurrected. That\'s key to understanding all of Luther\'s later thinking in some ways. It\'s going to be one of the key elements of Luther\'s thinking, that human beings are dead and life is therefore something that must come from outside. Freedom is something that\'s done to you. The Lord\'s Supper is something that\'s given to you. This is why, I know you like Zwingli, but one of the problems Luther will have with Zwingli is, it sounds too much like something we do. If we are remembering, if we are binding ourselves together with those around us, where does the gift aspect go? When the Word is preached, the Word comes from the outside. The Word has to come from outside us to bring us to life. So this is a very important breakthrough for Luther. And it causes him to transform his understanding of what it is, what is doing our best. Well for Luther, in Romans, it becomes this. We call it, scholars call it the theology of humility. What is the condition one has to meet in order for God to be gracious to you? It\'s a kind of paradoxical one. One has to despair that one can do anything in order for God to do something for you. Call it the theology of humility. The thing doing what is in you is despairing of yourself. It\'s realizing that there\'s nothing in you that you can do. Is it justification by faith? But it\'s halfway there because humility and faith, humility ultimately morphs into faith for Luther. What is faith? In part, it is a despairing of oneself and a trusting only in God. So Luther is moving this way in 1515, 1516. So one of the fascinating things about the history of Luther studies is we didn\'t have access to his lectures on Romans, this key document on a key New Testament text, at a key moment in Luther\'s development. We didn\'t have it. We knew he\'d lectured on Romans, but nobody got any idea about what it said till the late 19th century when these documents turn up. And a man called Carl Holl, one of the great Luther scholars, becomes a man who really sort of revolutionizes Luther studies in Europe, in Germany. The time is just right. If you go to Germany today, a lot of statues of Luther roundabout. Now I\'ve stood at Luther\'s grave. He was a tiny dude, as you would say, or a little chap, as we would say in England. I\'m guessing he was 5\'2\", 5\'3\". He\'s pretty minute. The statues of him were about seven or eight foot tall. They\'re huge. And they all date from the late 19th century. Why? German nationalism, Bismarck and post-Bismarck in Germany. Luther becomes a figure of the German people. Larger than life, he becomes this Herculean figure again. And it\'s amazing that just as there was this cultural interest in Luther developing, they discover these important texts of Luther as well that trigger a century of new revolutionary Luther scholarship. And another man, next generation after Hillary, Paul Althaus. Here\'s Theology of Martin Luther and the Ethics of Martin Luther. All books well worth getting hold of. I think they\'re very good. I was somewhat distressed a couple of years ago when I read a very good book written by an RTS, a Reform Theological Seminary graduate actually, who went to King\'s College London to do a PhD on Luther and the Jews. And he studied the use of Luther\'s works in 1920s, 1930s Germany. So very depressing tale. I was somewhat depressed to find out that Althaus was deeply immersed in the sort of the theology of the Volk and the German people, how quickly Luther had become appropriated to this sort of Volkish theology, which of course helped ideologically prepare the way for the final solution. But his works, yeah, sometimes it\'s hard to read books by guys that you know were weak or were scumbags in real life. But I would say that Althaus is still worth reading, even though I was sort of, when I read the chapter on Althaus, I thought, oh no, really? Please no. Surely that wasn\'t true because I\'ve learned so much from him. They find out, well yeah, it was. But you know, like I said earlier, sometimes a man\'s brilliance is also his undoing at certain points. So that\'s the background. But now we have to pan back a bit. We\'ve looked at Luther\'s life. Let\'s step back and think about the broader European context. What is it that brings Luther to prominence? Even today, when you look back at the crisis of 1517, there\'s a sense in which it\'s amazing it ever happened. Luther\'s an obscure professor in a new, like a community college almost, in terms of its status in this part of the Holy Roman Empire. What is it that brings him to prominence? Well, a little bit of background, a little bit of medieval background. There are a couple of papal bulls that you need to be aware of. First papal bull comes under the reign of Clement VI, who was Pope in the 14th century and promulgated the papal bull, Unigenitus, only begotten in 1343. Oh sorry, is that not? That\'s it? It\'s too big, isn\'t it? I don\'t know how to shrink this thing. Is that better? And I\'ll try to remember to\... The date is 1343, I\'ll try to remember to write smaller. Clement VI establishes the treasury of merits, purgatory. We\'ve all heard about it in, of course, the Divine Comedy by Dante. Purgatory provides the context for some of the most, some of the greatest poetry that the Western world has ever seen. If you\'ve not read Dante\'s Divine Comedy, I confess I\'ve never managed to get a lot all the way through the Paradiso. It\'s interesting, I always thought that the happier it gets, the less interesting it becomes. Everyone\'s interested in the Inferno, it\'s fascinating. Purgatory, people are still suffering, it\'s kind of good to read. Paradise, it\'s hard to write in an interesting way about everybody having a good time. I don\'t know why that is, but when you think about it, there\'s not a lot of good writing on heaven, because heaven, when you try to conceptualize it, so much of our lives, interest comes from struggle and drama, and we know that\'s not going to be in heaven. We just don\'t know much about what heaven\'s going to be like. But anyway, Purgatorio by Dante, well worth, well worth reading. Purgatory emerges in the early church, really just as a part of eschatology. You find it in Augustine. It\'s a place where people go in order to be cleaned up before they go to heaven, to put it sort of crudely. And I have to say, you know, I don\'t agree with Purgatory, but in the early church, it doesn\'t seem to me to be too egregious as a doctrine. What happens though in the Middle Ages is it becomes linked to the penitential system, so that penance done here on earth can have an impact on Purgatory in the hereafter. Treasury of Merits is established by Clement VI. What is the Treasury of Merits? Well, the theory is basically this. Certain individuals, the greatest of the church, the saints, not only did enough works in their lives through grace to merit their own salvation, albeit, they would say, this is the merit of Christ being worked out through them, they also produced a surplus. And that surplus could be held by the church in the equivalent of a sort of cosmic bank account, to put it rather crudely, the Treasury of Merits. It\'s followed by a second bull, comes under Sixtus IV. Sixtus IV. This is Salvator Nostra, our savior. Paper balls taking their names from the first few Latin words of the Latin script. I think paper balls still, strictly speaking, written in Latin. The latest encyclical, Laetitia Amoris, downloaded it last week. It\'s like 260 pages. And I emailed a Catholic friend to say, I\'m always suspicious when somebody writing on something that\'s patently obvious takes 260 pages to do it. And he emailed back and he said, oh yes, he said, it\'s sort of 261 pages of nothing that anyone would take exception to, and one really sneaky page smuggled in the middle, which is absolutely devastating. So I said, send me the page reference, I don\'t wade through the whole thing. Send me the sneaky page that I need to look at. But it was in English, but I\'m sure you\'ll find it in Latin, and its title is Laetitia Amoris, the joy of love, the pleasure of love. I\'m sure you\'ll find that in Latin text if you look on the Vatican website. Salvator Nostra links the treasury of merits to purgatory and allows for the transference of merits from the treasury to the account of the souls in purgatory. This provides the constitutional basis for indulgences. So really, towards the end of the 15th century, we\'re seeing putting into place the constitutional basis for indulgences. What is an indulgence? An indulgence is a piece of paper, it\'s a certificate, that gives either the bearer of the certificate or a chosen loved one a certain period of purgatory ostensibly, and I say ostensibly because there\'s some debate within the church in the early 16th century about this, ostensibly for a cash transaction. Now the papacy at the beginning of the 16th century is in a lot of financial difficulty. It\'s been exhausting itself with wars within the Holy Roman Empire, and I put it facetiously sometimes, it\'s building the Vatican, and it\'s hired the most expensive set of interior decorators the church has ever known, the world has ever known, Michelangelo and his mates, and they don\'t come cheap for a reason. They are the greatest artists of their generation, maybe of any generation, who knows. When you look at the roof of the Sistine Chapel, it\'s like listening to, when you listen to say Mozart\'s Requiem, and it\'s one thing to listen to the beauty of the music, but then to try to think about thinking that up. What must it have been like to have had that music flowing through your head the very first time? And nobody had ever heard it, and there it was in your head, you were actually putting this together inside your mind. What an amazing creature man is in many ways. If ever you want an argument for human exceptionality over against the kingdom of the animals, just look at an artistic creation, not the garbage produced today, you know, not some guy who\'s vomited on a piece of canvas and sold it some idiot for half a million dollars. Look at the stuff that\'s actually worth looking at. Look at the amazingly creative, not destructive stuff that\'s out there. The church and indulgences provide one income stream. We do it today, you know. You want to give Westminster \$10 million, I\'m sure we\'ll build a building in your name. Again, I think as Protestants we have to be a little careful before we sit on our high horses and look at the medieval church. We have our own forms of indulgences that we have sanctified and from which we profit quite happily. Hopefully our indulgences aren\'t quite as soul-damning as the ones were in the early 16th century, but we certainly have our versions of them. I had this idea, if you\'ve ever been to Westminster, the teaching block of Westminster, it\'s the most ghastly abomination on the face of the earth. It is the anti-Sistine Chapel. It was built by, I don\'t know, some architect with no talent whatsoever. And the centrepiece is the big lecture theatre. It doesn\'t even have windows. And I quote Anthony Esselen\'s translation of Dante\'s Inferno. There\'s that bit at the beginning of the Inferno, is it Book II, where Charon, the man who takes you over to hell, arrives across the river Styx, and he\'s sort of blind and he\'s naked and he\'s wild, and you\'re standing freezing and naked on the shore, and this crazy guy draws up in this boat and you know that it\'s not going to be your day, it\'s just going downhill, and he beckons them to come onto the boat, and he says, woe to you twisted souls, for I take you to a land where you will never see the sky. And I say, the centrepiece of Westminster, this room with no windows, it is a land where you never see the sky. It is the closest thing to Dante\'s Inferno on God\'s good earth. I can\'t even remember what I got into. Oh yes. Well, I had this scheme when I was vice president that as a money-making scheme, we could demolish it and sell the bricks to benighted alumni, buy a piece of history, you know, a piece of the original Van Til building for like \$300, and we could use the money raised to build something with a bit of architecture and pedagogical merit. You know, that was the idea behind it. It would have been my own form of indulgence. Anyway, they need money. This is where events near Luther come into play. There is a young man, a young bishop, Albrecht of Mainz. Who wants a bishopric. The problem is he\'s already got two bishoprics. And church law prevents you from owning three bishoprics. Owning, that was a slip there. Prevents you from having three bishoprics. Why would Albrecht want a bishopric? It comes with tax raising powers. There are financial benefits to being a bishop. You have tax raising powers. Canon law limits bishops to two bishoprics. Unless you buy a special license from the pope. The pope needs money. So the pope sells Albrecht a license for a third bishopric. Albrecht now needs to pay the pope back. And these are expensive, these licenses. So the pope now allows Albrecht to raise an indulgence on his territory, which will generate money. Half of which will go to the pope. And half of which will go to paying off the interest on the loan that Albrecht has taken out from the Fugger\'s bank to buy the license. So you get the idea. Albrecht borrows money from the bank, pays it to the pope to be allowed to raise an indulgence on his territory. The indulgence will raise money. The proceeds of the indulgence will be split between paying off the loan to the Fugger\'s bank and giving half to the papacy. It\'s a brilliant deal for the papacy. Because the papacy kind of double-dipped on this one. The papacy get the money for the license and they get half the money for the indulgence. And Albrecht gets to pay off the loan relatively painlessly to the Fugger\'s bank. So it\'s a perfect sort of\... it\'s a brilliant business deal. I mean one thing I would really criticize the papacy for is bad business deals. By and large the papacy is as strong as it is because it cut very good deals throughout history. It bought land when it was cheap. Key land when it was cheap. So that\'s the sort of the setup. I\'m being buzzed here by people\... I can\'t answer questions from people tweeting me or whatever. I need to\... A man called Tetzel, a Dominican member of the order of preachers, Aquinas\' old order, founded in the 13th century by Saint Dominic. A man called Tetzel is charged with selling the indulgence. And he starts to make his way up through the German-speaking lands. Sometimes I\'ll refer to Germany in these classes. There really isn\'t a Germany. What we\'re really talking about is the Holy Roman Empire at this point, which is essentially a confederation of the German-speaking lands under the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor. Tetzel starts to make his way up. He will not be allowed\... He is not given permission to enter electoral Saxony. Electoral Saxony is where Luther is based in Wittenberg. He\'s not allowed to enter electoral Saxony for a very interesting reason. The prince of electoral Saxony, Frederick the Wise, has one of the greatest collection of holy relics in Western Europe, in the castle. And he\'s worried that the trade in indulgences will cut into his own little trade in displaying his relics. So it\'s not a very Protestant reason for Tetzel to be excluded from electoral Saxony. It introduces us to Frederick the Wise. Frederick the Wise is a very interesting figure. He\'s key to the Luther narrative. He\'ll die in 1525. But more than anybody else, he is important for the success of Luther. How many of you have seen the Luther movie? There\'s a scene at the end of the Luther movie, isn\'t there, where Frederick meets Tetzel. And\... Oh, sorry, Frederick meets Luther. I mustn\'t get those confused. Frederick meets Luther in his relics room. And sort of says to Luther, you know, thanks to you all my relics are worth nothing now. Never happened. We know it never happened because Luther and Frederick the Wise never meet each other. Frederick the Wise never has any direct contact with Luther. And I think the reason is he wants plausible deniability. For some reason best known to himself, he is Luther\'s strongest backer. But he never meets Luther. And I think it\'s because\... We have a phrase in England, if it all goes pear-shaped, if it all goes wrong, if it all goes pear-shaped, Frederick the Wise wants to be able to walk away and say, never knew the man. Reformation was nothing to do with me. But he will be absolutely critical to Luther\'s success. Luther would have died probably in 1519, if not 1520, if it hadn\'t been for Frederick the Wise. So Frederick the Wise doesn\'t grant Tetzel a right to come into electoral Saxony. But we know that from Easter 1517, Wittenbergers are heading over the river into the neighboring parishes of Zepst and Jutteborg. To buy indulgences. Great practical lesson I think for pastors there. And that is, even if it isn\'t going on, even if you\'re not promoting it in your church, it doesn\'t mean that people in the congregation aren\'t getting hold of it. Just because you don\'t like tele-evangelists, doesn\'t mean that certain people in your congregation aren\'t going home and watching you and believing what they say on the television. I remember making\... I don\'t know if any of you have ever come across this terrible book by Sarah Young, Jesus Calling. It\'s this devotional book, particularly appealing to women for some reason, where Jesus sort of whispers sweet nothings in Sarah Young\'s ear and she writes them down and they become devotions for other people. Tim Keller\'s wife, Kathy Keller, did an absolute takedown review on the Redeemer site. And she\'s a very nice gentle lady. When she does a takedown review on something, it has to be really, really bad, I think. But I just made a comment about that, negative comment about that in a sermon once, not thinking that anybody in my congregation would be using this as a devotional book. And I had two ladies afterwards come up to me and say, wow, we love that book, what\'s wrong with it? So I had to explain the problems I had with it. But it was a salutary lesson that don\'t assume there\'s an awful lot of garbage out there on the internet, in bookstores, etc., etc. Luther doesn\'t have to deal with Tetzel selling indulgences in the high streets in Wittenberg. But his congregants are crossing over the river and buying indulgences. And so we know from Luther\'s own sermons that he\'s critiquing indulgences already. Now, again, we need to think carefully about this. One of the things that I think a lot of today, certainly modern evangelicals find surprising about the church in the early 16th century is how theologically chaotic it was. We tend to think that Catholicism is pretty clearly defined and Luther comes out and takes a stand against it. It\'s not actually the case. One of my favorite comedies is an Irish comedy, Father Ted, about three Catholic priests in southern Ireland. And there\'s a great line in it where one of the priests says, yeah, that\'s a great thing about Catholicism. Nobody\'s quite sure what it really stands for. Well, that really is the case in the early 16th century. Luther is not heretical on justification, for example, because the church has no position on justification, no dogmatically defined position. The thing about indulgences, nobody\'s quite sure what they mean. Not even the pope. When the whole thing explodes in late 1517, one of the first things the pope will do is convene a committee to look at the issue of indulgences so they can actually find out what the church really thinks indulgences are. And it makes kind of sense when you think about it. Europe is pretty big, communication is pretty poor, the church is spread all over Europe. There\'s great potential for chaos. And yet, you know, the church trundles on quite happily. The chaos doesn\'t really do much damage. It only starts to do huge damage when somebody like Luther raises a question that starts to hit the pocketbook in a really serious way. And starts to give voice to what we might call ethnic tensions that have been bubbling below the surface for some while. So when Luther starts raising questions about indulgences, don\'t think that what he\'s doing is saying, indulgences are wrong. Even I think the disputation, the 95 Theses Against Indulgences, it\'s an attempt to try to get a debate going about what indulgences mean. He\'s not knee-jerk ruling indulgences out. We\'ll talk about that a little bit later. One thing we do know though, is that the way Tetzel is selling these things crashes right up against Luther\'s theology of humility. Tetzel, we know from the 95 Theses, it appears that Tetzel had a couple of jingles that he would use to sell the indulgence to his. Every time a coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory springs. We might laugh at that, but that\'s a tweetable comment, isn\'t it? It catches the imagination. And your grandma died and you loved her because she was your grandma. But she was a nasty piece of work. You love her because she\'s your grandma, but man, she was rough at the edges. She got a tongue on her. And you know she\'s doing a long stretch in purgatory. She\'s doing a long stretch. And some guy comes along and says, you know, for the sake of a few shillings, you could get 10,000 years off Granny\'s sentence. That\'s gonna, if you really believe that, that\'s gonna have a powerful impact upon you. It\'s gonna pull at the heartstrings. So we shouldn\'t belittle this. Again, try to think back. Think back in a world where this was real. In a world where that was real, that jingle is persuasive. A more profane one that he appears to have used was that even if you had sexually assaulted the Virgin Mary, one of Tetzel\'s indulgences would be able to sort it all out for you. Now think about Luther. Why is this gonna crash up against Luther\'s thinking? Because it does away with repentance. The first of the 95 Theses is what? When our Lord said repent, he meant that the whole of life should be one of repentance. For Luther, the whole of life, you know, repentance is not a moment to be captured in time and then moved on from. Repentance is a continual turning of the mind away from sin. It is an ongoing thing. What these indulgences do is take away the need for that existential repentance. Grace is cheapened. And for Luther, that of course is pastorally devastating. Because what he thinks Tetzel is doing is tricking his congregants into thinking that they or their loved ones are okay when they are not. There is a scene in the movie, I don\'t know whether it ever happened, but a little bit like the drunken Perkins crack. Maybe movies are our equivalent of 19th century hagiographers. There is that scene in the movie when Luther is walking along and the young girl comes up to him with a baby strapped to her back or her front. It\'s not clear if it\'s her baby or if it\'s a younger sister or something. And Luther makes some commentary, have you used the money to buy food or was it by shoes for the child? And the girl says, no, no, I bought something much better. And she waves this indulgence at him. I\'ve got this indulgence in all these days off purgatory. And Luther has this kind of thunder across the face. Wow, the Reformation is about to go down. It\'s going to be big. Luther sort of turns around and walks away. Something\'s got to be done. That may not have happened in exactly that way, but I think that captures something of what would have been Luther\'s pastoral concern. So on October 31st, 1517, Luther nails to the castle door 95 theses against indulgences. Again, we need to step back and sort of decode this a little. First of all, one thing which we will come back to, I want you to notice, Luther said far more radical things in September and nobody paid a blind bit of attention. The disputation against scholastic theology of September 1517 is absolutely explosive in its intellectual implications. And nobody pays a blind bit of attention to it. In that disputation, Luther calls for nothing less than turning medieval theology entirely on its head. People shrug their shoulders. So the first thing to notice is this isn\'t Luther\'s most radical moment of 1517. Ironically, it will become his most explosive moment of 1517. Secondly, if you read the 95 theses, they have their moments. There is powerful rhetoric there. But there are also great sections of it that would be relatively incomprehensible to you if you didn\'t have a reasonable grounding in late medieval theology. It\'s dealing with some fairly technical points. Which makes it amazing that this thing, it\'s translated into German, becomes a popular tract within days or weeks. It\'s stunning. Again, like Karl Marx, I don\'t often quote Karl Barth positively, but Karl Barth talking about his Romans commentary and the way that his Romans commentary sort of exploded onto the theological scene. He talks about, I was like a man stumbling along in the dark and I tripped and fell over and I put out my hand to stop myself from falling. And I caught hold of a rope and I pulled down on it to stop myself hitting the ground. And high above me, I heard the sound of a church bell ringing. It\'s an amazing image. And I think it\'s like that for Luther. He\'s not expecting to blow the world apart with these 95 theses against indulgences. That\'s what happens. Thirdly, there\'s a lot about the Pope in that, in these 95 theses. I don\'t actually think it\'s that anti-Pope a document. I think what he\'s doing is rhetorical in the 95 theses. If what Tetzel is saying is true, then the Pope would let everybody out of purgatory. But the Pope, the unspoken bit is, but the Pope isn\'t doing that. Therefore, what Tetzel is saying cannot be true. I don\'t think that Luther is particularly attacking the Pope in the 95 theses. I think in retrospect it reads that way because we know how it ends. We know how it ends. But I think it\'s, what it is, the 95 theses is it\'s a conventional way of advertising a debate. 19th century, a lot of 19th century artwork with 95 theses, you know, angry faced Luther nailing these things to the castle church door and it\'s presented if he\'s driving a stake through the coffin of a vampire church, or he\'s nailing down the lid of the church, or he\'s splitting the church in two. No, he was angry I\'m sure, but he\'s an angry guy advertising a debate. It\'s a debate that will never actually take place, but putting something up on the castle door would be the equivalent of putting something up on the church notice board. You know, well not much, you know, maybe not quite as bland as that, but not much more than that. How did you advertise public events? You stuck stuff up on the doors of public buildings. That\'s what Luther\'s doing. He wants a debate on indulgences because he\'s worried about the pastoral impact these things are having. He\'s not intending to have a reformation at this point. In his own words from 1545, the same text that gives us the autobiographical fragments, Luther says this about 1517, above all things I beseech the Christian reader and beg him for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ to read my earliest books very circumspectly and with much pity, knowing that before now I too was a monk and one of the right frantic and raving papists. When I took up this matter against indulgences, I was so full and drunken, yea so besotted in papal doctrine, that out of my great zeal I would have been ready to do murder. Or at least I would have been glad to see in help that murder should be done on all that would not be obedient and subject to the Pope, even to his smallest word. So even Luther, and caveat, it\'s 30 years later etc etc, but I think it\'s credible. Luther does not see October 31st 1517 as an attempt to overthrow the papacy. I think Luther\'s opposition to the papacy grows through the papacy\'s opposition to him over the next few years. And it\'s really not until 1520 that the final blow comes with the bull of excommunication. I think Luther has hopes. I mean again, go back to that point I made earlier. Inconceivable that the church would be divided, and just as inconceivable is that the Pope wouldn\'t in some way be head of that church. Earthly head of that church. Yes, there are various models of papal government, some more conciliar than others, but the idea that the Bishop of Rome wouldn\'t be a very significant figure in the running of the one church, would not have crossed Luther\'s mind at this point. He\'s a nobody. He has a lot of things to say in Christian Liberty. Sorry? The reading that we have to do. He has very high things to say about the Pope. Yeah, the letter to Leo X, there\'s some debate about is he being sarcastic, is he being conventional, but I used to think that he was just being conventional. I\'m coming more and more to thinking, no I think maybe there is genuine hope there for reconciliation at this point. Again, because we know how the story ends, there is a great temptation to read our history backwards. We have to realize that the split was far from a foregone conclusion at this point, and was not desired by any side. There\'s a great paper, it\'s coming out in a book being published by IVP. It\'s the proceedings of a conference that was held at Wheaton College last year on the Reformation and the Bible. There\'s a great paper by Chris Castaldo coming out in that on the Council of Reagan\'s book in 1539, I think, where a genuine attempt was made to reconcile Protestants and Catholics on the issue of justification. And Chris has done some tremendous work. Chris is a Catholic convert. He was Catholic, he\'s now a pastor of an evangelical church near Chicago, but he\'s done tremendous work there on showing how certainly some elements of both Protestants and Catholic Church were striving for genuine agreement with integrity. It\'s ultimately all trumped by, you know, once the Council of Trent\'s come down, once the dogma\'s been defined, it\'s all over. But really, up until the early 1540s, the Protestants and what I would describe as the reformist Catholics genuinely wanted to hear what each other was saying and to see if there was some common ground for agreement. The big break, I think, comes in the 1540s with the Council of Trent. That\'s when the ecumenical issue is really, it really is busted at that point and continues to be pretty busted right down to the present day. So, Luther then, 1517, nails the 95 theses to the castle door to say, let\'s not overestimate what\'s going on here. It\'s not particularly radical action on his part and he said more important things before. Question might be, so does Luther think that indulgences could have a legitimate purpose? I think the answer, we can construct something of an answer to that and say, yes, I think in a qualified sense he could do. Not sure about the purgatory aspect. Luther has not, he\'s not really reflecting on purgatory at this point. He doesn\'t reject purgatory in 1517, but I think indulgences could function in this way, legitimately for Martin Luther. The problem is, the way he sees Tetzel selling them, is it detaches forgiveness from personal repentance. The theology of humility, the despairing of oneself because one realizes, you know, you\'re just so buried in sin that you\'re dead. I think, you know, take an example if, this is the example I typically use in class. What my son, I\'m away this week and let\'s say my son comes home and without my permission he borrows my car and he goes off racing around in his car, in my car and he totals it. And I have to say, cars, one of my, I\'ve never bought an expensive car, but if I was really wealthy that would be my sin. If I could buy a Ferrari, I would buy a Ferrari, I have to say. You know, people say if you won the lottery, if you entered, what would you do? Would you eliminate world poverty? And I say, well first of all I\'d buy a Ferrari, then I\'d eliminate world poverty. That would be the order of priorities. So my son borrows my very low budget entry-level sports car and he drives it fast and he trashes it somewhere. And he comes to me and he says, Dad I know I didn\'t have permission to borrow your car, but frankly it\'s an old piece of junk anyway. I totaled it, here you are, I\'ll give you a thousand bucks to replace it. And let\'s say nothing more about it. That\'s the Tetzel indulgence he\'s trying to buy. What he\'s trying to do there is square away his sin and his offense against me by a mere cash transaction that involves no existential change or transformation on his part. Another scenario, I go away, exactly the same thing happens, but I come back, my son comes to me and says, Dad I\'ve totaled your car, Mum skinned me alive in your absence, I now realize how badly I\'ve behaved, I am truly truly sorry. And I say to him, how much money have you got in your bank account? And he says, I got a thousand dollars. And I say, okay, you give me every last cent and I\'ll believe that you\'re truly repentant. And he says, sure, here\'s a check for a thousand dollars. I go, obviously I would cash it with my son, I\'d want to make sure that it cashed first. But having cashed it I would then turn around and say, yeah I forgive you. Because you have demonstrated in your action the genuineness of the transformation in your heart. That\'s the key. That\'s the key for Luther, I think. I think Luther 1517 could see a legitimate basis for indulgences. If the cash transaction was a means of the person demonstrating to the church true transformation of heart. The way that Tetzel\'s selling on this, hey give me a coin and we\'ll spring a soul from purgatory, rate the Virgin Mary but don\'t worry about it. Cash will sort the problem out. That\'s the problem for Luther. It\'s not the cash transaction. It\'s the detachment of absolution, we might say, from existential change and transformation. That\'s the problem for Luther. I think reading Luther that way has a number of, well again, because it\'s my interpretation, of course it\'s correct. It\'s my interpretation. But it has the advantage I think of not overestimating how Protestant Luther is at this point. He doesn\'t believe in justification by grace through faith as we believe it at this point in time. He doesn\'t. There\'s no evidence of that. There\'s no evidence that justification by grace through faith motivates the protest of 1517. There\'s no evidence that the protest is much of a protest. He\'s confused about what\'s going on in the church and he wants a debate to clarify it. Yeah, he\'s angry about what Tetzel\'s doing and he\'s pretty confident when the church authorities discover what Tetzel\'s doing, Tetzel will be for the high jump. But it means also I think we understand Luther is very much a medieval Catholic at this point. We have no reason not to understand him in that way. He\'s working, consciously working, within the bounds of what he sees as the legitimate orthodoxy of his day. So again, don\'t overestimate the Protestantism of Luther at this point. Protestantism will grow in some ways in reaction to the resistance of the Catholic Church. There\'s a sense in which the indulgence crisis could have been squared away very easily indeed. And the church actually exacerbates the situation by deciding to make an example of Luther.