Lecture 4.docx

One of the, as I say, the surprise is that it\'s the disputation on indulgences and not the month before disputation on scholastic theology that triggers the Reformation. And in some ways it\'s the disputation on scholastic theology which will be theologically more important because themes that a...

One of the, as I say, the surprise is that it\'s the disputation on indulgences and not the month before disputation on scholastic theology that triggers the Reformation. And in some ways it\'s the disputation on scholastic theology which will be theologically more important because themes that are adumbrated there will be expanded and elaborated in the coming years. Scholastic theology is already taking form there but his most radical statements are not touching on the issues of the indulgence controversy. I think the indulgence is it just happens to strike a chord. It happens to strike a chord and of course it\'s dealing with money and without wanting to reduce everything to cash. I think money is something that speaks, it speaks eloquently to people. You know if you start mucking around with my money you\'re going to hear from me pretty quick. So I think that financial aspect to it and that\'s part of the, you know, why is the Reformation happening? There is at this point I think a growing disillusionment with the church, the established church, and a growing disillusionment with the way money seems to be flowing from north to south in Europe. I don\'t want to use the language really of nationalism. I think nationalism is better reserved for post-Napoleonic Europe when we really do have nation states emerging. But there is some kind of national ethnic identity that\'s playing into this. Luther will very quickly present himself as a German problem and a German figure and he will mock, for example, he will mock Zwingli for the way he speaks German. Zwingli speaks Swiss German and Luther will mock the Swiss for their poor German. There is an ethnic dimension to this and I think the 95 Theses Against Indulgences is quickly picked up and appropriated by that. Again it\'s an opportunity for a quick reflection on the role of the printing press. Printing press is vitally important. One of the most entertaining and informative books I\'ve read on Luther in the last three or four years came out last year, Brand Luther by Andrew Pettigrew. Andrew is professor of modern history at the University of St Andrews and Brand Luther is a study of how Luther used the media of his day to make himself into a brand. It\'s fascinating how there were numerous printers in Wittenberg that Luther effectively kept in business giving different printers different works that he\'d done. Luther was very interested in the fonts that were used. It\'s fascinating that he was aware that the aesthetics of the page had an impact on how the page was appropriated. A lot of you here are probably too young to remember doing studies in an era before computers, but I started my PhD at a time when I would hand write my papers. And I still remember the day I first did a paper on a computer and used a dot matrix printer to print the thing off and how much more compelling it looked because it had been printed off on a grotty old dot matrix printer than it did when I\'d written it by hand. Luther and his followers will very quickly have a grasp of the nature and the power of the print medium that his opponents don\'t have. Luther and Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther has his sort of own personal artist in Wittenberg who will paint the Reformation. There\'s another great book, The Serpent and the Lamb, written by Stephen Osmond. And in The Serpent and the Lamb, Osmond, it\'s a kind of dual biography of Luther and Lucas Cranach the Elder, looking at how they worked hand in glove to create the Reformation in a way. And the 95 Theses are the first example of that. This very quickly becomes what we would now call a popular pamphlet. A lot of people couldn\'t read, but it still became a popular pamphlet. It becomes a rallying cry for opposition, first of all to the Roman Catholic Church, and then later to some extent for opposition towards the Holy Roman Empire as well. Church\'s biggest mistake I think is not realizing, and perhaps it was understandable at the time, not realizing the extent of the problem. They should probably, my wife hates it when I talk like this, they should probably have seized Luther and had him executed straight away. If we get to the English Reformation in this course, I talk about Lady Jane Grey, the problem was that they should have had Princess Mary executed. Mary should have had Elizabeth executed. It\'s just politics. The Lady Jane Grey story of course was made into a movie with Helena Bonham Carter. As soon as I start talking about executing Helena Bonham Carter, my wife gets sort of distressed about it. I say, now this is politics, this is the way it should be. If the church had seized Luther straight away, if it understood what was happening and it seized him, they could probably contain the problem at least for a while. In actual fact, Luther is left relatively free to operate while the church comes to understand the nature of what it\'s facing and starts to get its act together. The next big event takes place in April 1518. It\'s the Heidelberg Disputation. And in the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther really returns to and elaborates themes that he\'d laid out in his Disputation against Scholastic Theology. City of Heidelberg, if you get a chance to go to Germany, Heidelberg is one of the little cities you really ought to visit. It\'s a city that was not destroyed by Allied bombing in the Second World War. It retains its medieval charm and beauty. Up on the hill you have the castle of the Elector of Heidelberg, the Prince of Heidelberg. And then down in the city you have the Holy Ghost Church, which was an important church in the Reformation. Heidelberg, of course, is the town which gave birth to the Heidelberg Catechism, which is one of the, if you haven\'t got a copy or read the Heidelberg Catechism, you should. It\'s one of the most beautiful catechitical productions in the history of the church. It was also the site of the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518. Sadly the building, the Augustinian monastery, the cloister where it took place has been demolished. But there is a sort of star in the pavement where it says, this is where the Disputation took place. So I stood on it and felt this sort of Luther psychic energy powering through me as I stood there, kind of glowed I think in the dark after it. It\'s great, it\'s often great to go and visit these places. It makes it more real. The city of Heidelberg will be the place of a remarkable event. It\'s the regular chapter meeting of the Augustinian, of the Reform congregations. Those are the more strictly observant congregations of the Augustinian order. So it\'s a regular meeting, equivalent to, I know none of you, maybe none of you are Presbyterians, but my presbytery meets four times a year. The local ministers in the presbytery and our elders, we get together to deal with the administrative business of the local church in terms of denomination, to examine candidates and often one of us will preach or something like that. It\'s a gathering not only for business but also for edification and learning. It\'s a theory anyway, more often it\'s generally just business. But at this gathering of the Saxon order Reform, of the Augustinian order, there\'s to be a disputation and as is the way, Luther is nominated to put together for the thesis for disputation, the series of points for debate. And he will preside over the disputation and another one, another member of the order, another Augustinian, a man called Leonard Bayer. Leonard Bayer will be the man who actually presents and expounds the points or defends the points that Luther lays out. Luther is regarded in this disputation as having done well. The immediate reaction is that the points for disputation are very thought-provoking. And when he returns home in May after the meeting, it\'s in some triumph that Luther is emerging at this point as a significant player theologically within the Augustinian order. The disputation consisted of two sets of theses, a set of theological theses and a set of philosophical theses. It is with the theological theses that we\'ll be most concerned today. But the philosophical theses were essentially a critique of the use of Aristotle in theology. I don\'t have much time to spend on this, but really from the 13th century onwards, Christian theology had been engaged in a significant dialogue with Aristotle\'s works. For historical reasons, Aristotle\'s logical treatise had been available to the church really since the 5th, 6th century. His metaphysical treatise had only been translated in the late 12th, 13th centuries. That\'s why Thomas Aquinas becomes so significant because he is the theologian who wrestles most deeply with the implications of Aristotle for theology. Luther sees that as where theology went wrong, the intrusion of this secular, this non-Christian philosophy into Christian theology, fundamentally corrupted Christian theology. In actual fact, it\'s far more complicated than that. What Luther is really reacting against is the specific theology that he was taught at Erfurt University. The relationship of Aristotle to Christian theology is more complicated and frankly I think a lot more positive than Luther makes it out to be. One of the big things that Luther has against Aristotle, however, is he sees the idea of justification by works as lying in an Aristotelian anthropology. The virtuous man is the man who acts virtuously. So the righteous man is the man who acts righteously, who possesses righteous habits, not the man who is declared to be righteous by God. So that\'s to cut a really long story quite short, but the second half, the objection to Aristotle is theologically significant because he sees many of the theological problems of the church as rooted in its use of Aristotle. I think it\'s a whole lot more complicated than that, but that was certainly Luther\'s take on it. The theological theses are the ones that are very interesting and these are what really capture the imagination of the audience. And there are some significant people in the audience, not least a young Dominican who is a sort of guest there. A man called Martin Butzer. Martin Butzer will go on to be one of the great reformers. A man who has significance not only for Lutherans but also for the reformed. He will reform the city of Strasbourg. He will be the man who fixes Calvin up with his wife. He will be, I think, the single greatest influence, Reformation influence after Luther on Calvin, particularly on his understanding of the church. Butzer will die in England in exile as professor of divinity at the University of Cambridge and a friend of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and therefore an influence on the Book of Common Prayer. If you don\'t own a Book of Common Prayer, I think all pastors should own the Book of Common Prayer because the liturgy, if you don\'t use the liturgy, the beauty of the prayers will help shape and inform the beauty of your own prayers. My denomination, we have a liturgy which we have to use for part of the Lord\'s Supper. And I say to students that liturgy was written by men with great theology and no poetry in their souls. Liturgy has to have poetry in it. And the Book of Common Prayer is a beautiful example of language being used in an exalted way to lead the congregation in its worship of God. Martin Butzer is one of the influences on the Book of Common Prayer. He was buried in Great St. Mary\'s, in Cambridge, but he isn\'t buried there anymore because when the Catholic reaction sets in under Mary, they have him dug up and burned at the stake. That was what you did to your enemies when you couldn\'t get them when they were alive. You got them after they were dead. They burned him at the stake and threw what was left of him into the river, cam. So there is a little placard which says sort of Martin Butzer was buried here, but he isn\'t buried there anymore. They did the same to Wycliffe. They dug Wycliffe up and burned him and threw what was left of him in the river Swift, I believe. The way to avoid it being done was to mix up Protestant bones with Roman Catholic bones because then they wouldn\'t burn in case they were burning saints\' bones. That was the way bones were. There\'s the rather sad story of Cardinal Paul was in his early days close friends with Peter Marta Vermigli. Paul went on to become one of the great men of the Catholic Reformation and very opposed to Protestants. Vermigli went on to become one of the giants of the Protestant Reformation, spent some time in England. His wife died in England. And when Paul became the sort of Queen Mary\'s right hand church man, the Pope\'s man in England, Paul had the grave of Peter Marta\'s widow desecrated. You can imagine the bitterness where two close friends end up so bitter. And with the Protestants then to protect the remain, what was left of her after that, mixed her bones in with Catholic bones to prevent it from ever happening again. But often wondered about the tragedy of a friendship. That\'s the human cost of Reformation. When friends are so, friendships are so torn apart by these things that these men do such bestial things to each other. Am I doing anything wrong or is it a technical issue? Okay. So, I\'ve destroyed the sound system. I do apologize. You\'re still hearing us at a distance? Great. So you guys should all be away somewhere and you\'d hear me perfectly. The theological theses then, Martin Butzer was there. The interesting thing is Butzer\'s reaction. In that Butzer comes away from Heidelberg enthused by Luther thinking that Luther is calling for this dramatic moral overhaul of the church. What Butzer has done is he\'s not understood what Luther was trying to say at all. Luther wasn\'t calling for a moral overhaul of the church. Luther was calling for nothing less than a complete rebuilding of theology as he saw it from the ground up. And again it\'s an example I think that reception is often important. How we receive ideas, how we read things can be important. Good example occurred in the last election. It sort of brings up how history works. I think I\'m not a big fan of Donald Trump. I have to say, you know, the fall of the House of Clinton, money can\'t buy you that kind of entertainment. But you know, a wish that had been somebody better. Although if he\'s delayed a U2 album, that\'s definitely a plus as far as I\'m concerned. I\'m just upset that he wasn\'t quite bad enough for Amy Schumer to emigrate to Canada or wherever she was going. But anyway, at some point in the election Donald Trump referred to two Corinthians and was mocked mercilessly, not only by the left-wing press but also by the Christian press as well for demonstrating his ignorance of the Bible. Well let me tell you something about Donald Trump. Donald Trump\'s mother comes from the same Hebridean island that my wife comes from. And given that it\'s a pretty small gene pool, I\'m almost certainly related by marriage to Donald Trump. His mother came over as a very young age. She was 16 or something when she left the Isle of Lewis and came to America. And she would have had, as all girls on Lewis would have had, a very conservative, Calvinistic Presbyterian upbringing. And guess what? In Britain it\'s called two Corinthians. So the interesting thing about Trump\'s statement is it could mean one of two things. Could mean that he\'s completely ignorant of the Bible. Or it could mean he was very well schooled in the Bible as a child by his mother. Bottom line is we don\'t know which unless we have more information. But the reception of that statement was interesting. If Trump was catechized by his Lewis mother, as most children of Lewis\' mothers were, then the use of two Corinthians indicates his knowledge of the Bible, not his ignorance of it. And to interpret him as ignorant of the Bible, it\'s ironic, you know, when the sort of politically correct on the Huffington Post go after him for ignorance of the Bible because they themselves are culturally insensitive. I love that. Absolutely love that. Butzer does a kind of similar thing with Luther at Heidelberg. Butzer thinks Luther is advocating for your standard humanist reformation of the church. Lot of humanists want the church to clean up its moral act. But Luther ain\'t no humanist. Luther\'s calling for something much more radical than the moral reformation of the church. Luther\'s calling the church to completely undo and redo its theology. The theses are interesting, the first set, theses 1 to 12, lay out an opposition between law and works and true righteousness. That distinction which will be so fundamental in Luther\'s mature theology, between the law and the gospel, between the law demanding that which yet can never be done, and the gospel promising because the law has already been fulfilled already in Christ, it\'s emerging in these first 12 theses. In the second set of theses, 13 to 18, the impotence of the human will is articulated. He\'s bringing out the implications of this understanding of humanity as dead. The law is there to reveal that we are dead. It is not there to reveal our capabilities. It\'s there to reveal our responsibilities, if you like, and the fact that we can never fulfill them. It\'s the third set, it\'s theses 19 to 22 that are so well, which have become a standard part of reflection on Luther\'s theology. It\'s here that he develops his distinction between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross. And this I think is one of the bits of Luther that, as I say, theologians have found most fascinating over the years. It\'s been picked up by some liberal theologians. Jurgen Moltmann, for example, wrote a book in the late 1960s, The Crucified God, which takes its point of departure, Luther\'s Heidelberg Disputation. He\'s trying to make sense of Christianity after Auschwitz in that book. As closer to home, Gerhard Forder, a great Lutheran theologian, saw it as lying right at the heart of Luther\'s thinking. Sorry, sure, yeah, sorry, I should be looking here at my\... I mean, Forder wrote a little book, it\'s well worth getting. I disagree with Forder in ways that will become clear as we move through the course, I think, but his little book on being a theologian of the cross, it\'s an excellent little book, published by Erdmans, I think. It\'s a really excellent treatment of Luther\'s Heidelberg Disputation. Read Thesis, Thesis 19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. Question there, what is Luther getting at there? That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God. I\'m hearing myself echoing there, sounds like we\'re there. I didn\'t. Okay, I\'ll try to avoid that. So it\'s just a question of turning the volume up. Wow, sorry about that. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. What\'s Luther saying there? Well, he\'s really hitting out on, I suppose, what we would now call natural theology, the idea that one can easily move from seeing the way the world is to assuming how God is. For example, power. Let\'s take a term, power. What do we mean when we talk about power? Well, you know, you think of the most powerful person on earth, the President of the United States, for example, the man with his finger on the nuclear button. We think about a great general or a field marshal. Power is generally understood by us when we look at the world around us. We might say in coercive terms. The great thing about the power of the President is he\'s able to face down foreign enemies and say, you know, if you don\'t leave us alone or if you don\'t do this, there will be sanctions by which we will coerce you into doing the appropriate thing. So we think of power as a way of outflanking other people, a way of coercing other people. Luther\'s saying here, that\'s not worthy of being called, that\'s when you think about God, you\'re not worthy of being called a theologian. That\'s not doing theology. Why not? Well, thesis 20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. Luther here is saying, so who does deserve to be called a theologian? Well a theologian is somebody, Luther would say, who looks to where and how God has revealed himself in order to give content to his theology and his theological vocabulary. And for Luther, that\'s the cross and the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we\'re going to talk a lot about Christology in later classes on Luther. The incarnation is absolutely central to Luther because the incarnation is not similar. We often tend to think today, well the incarnation is about Christ substituting for us on the cross and that\'s an appropriate emphasis, particularly given the way that has been denied in many circles. Luther would not deny that, but he would make it so much more. The cross is also for Luther a revelation of how God has chosen to be towards us. And so you start your theological reflection by looking at how God has revealed himself to be towards us in Christ, specifically Christ crucified. You might say here what Luther I think is doing is building very positively on Paul\'s teaching in 1 and 2 Corinthians, if I could use the Donald Trump English way of referring to it, or 1 and 2 Corinthians, translating for the American audience here. What he\'s doing is he\'s looking at the stuff that Paul talks about suffering. Remember in 2 Corinthians, Paul makes the form of suffering of his ministry part of the essence of his ministry. The critics who\'ve been going at him that he can\'t be a true apostle because of all this suffering, Paul turns that argument on his head and says, no it\'s because I suffer that you can see that I\'m a true apostle in these situations. Paul doesn\'t say that every minister\'s going to suffer, but he does say that when you do suffer it could easily arise precisely out of the fact that you are a true minister. It certainly doesn\'t belie the fact you\'re a true minister. And even more so, 1 Corinthians chapter 1 where Luther talks about Paul. I often make that substitution, Luther and Paul tend to blend into each other in my mind, particularly on the issues where they agree, which is most issues I have to say. But Paul says the cross is foolishness. Well think about that conception of power that I laid out earlier. If you take the world as your cue for understanding what power is, the cross will appear as foolishness. You cannot talk about the cross as power because it contradicts your understanding of what power is, which is precisely what makes it power according to Paul. The real power is the cross and the real weakness and foolishness lies in those who cannot see it. So Luther here is calling for a complete turnaround and he sort of draws this up in Thesis 21. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it really is. The theologian looks at reality refracted through the cross, sees reality as it really is. Now this in some ways arises out of Luther\'s late medieval background. Remember what I said earlier about voluntarism. The thing about voluntarism is that it does press theologians towards thinking about revelation. Late medieval voluntarists were very strong on constructing their picture of God out of how God has revealed himself to be towards us. But Luther brings two new dimensions to that, that both we might say extend it and blow it apart at the same time. The first thing he does is he focuses this upon Christ incarnate in the cross. Many late medieval theologians, it tended to move them towards looking at the church\'s decrees. The church as the organ of telling you about God\'s revelation for Luther, no, focuses him very much on the cross. And the second thing is that when the late medieval voluntarists are talking about this, it\'s really an epistemological problem for them. They\'re pointing to the limitations of the human mind faced with the mystery of God. Luther is building this against the background of his new anthropology where human beings are dead. Epistemology for Luther connects to a moral status before God. The theologian of glory isn\'t a theologian of glory because he\'s just finite and isn\'t looking to revelation. The theologian of glory has a vested interest in making God in his own image. Why? Because it feeds his self-righteousness. Luther then goes on from these theses in the last theses to talk about the opposition of righteousness and the gospel. Because the theologian of glory is not a theologian of glory because he doesn\'t know any better. A theologian of glory is a theologian of glory because he likes to think of God in human terms. Why? Well, I want you to like me. I\'m going to do nice stuff for you. I\'m going to make myself in some way attractive or appealing to you by doing stuff for you. As a theologian of glory, I\'m going to think about God in the same way. If I want God to like me, what am I going to do? I\'m going to do nice stuff for God that will make God approve of me. That\'s why theologians of glory are theologians of glory. Ultimately, they\'re bringing glory to themselves because they are reducing the distance between themselves and God. And actually, they\'re making God in their own image. That\'s the problem. It\'s a moral problem, not just a problem of the mysteriousness of God. It\'s a problem of the morality of human beings who think about God as well. That\'s why I don\'t like to talk particularly about a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. I think Luther uses the language of theologian of glory and theologian of the cross very self-consciously because he\'s not talking here about an abstract system that can be mastered and applied. He\'s talking about a real flesh and blood theologian thinking theologically. That\'s why in the whole, I know it\'s really gone with it. Well, it ended far more terribly than even I\'d ever thought it would end, but the whole Tullian-Tuvidion debacle in the Baptist circles, that made much of an impact. But he was very high on the theology of glory and the theology of the cross as a way of justifying what was fundamentally a theology that denied the need for obedience among Christians and the need for sanctification. And I was always, one of the points I made and one of the little things I wrote about that was, but the theology of the cross is not an abstract system. It cannot be separated. It\'s not something that can be learned. It\'s not something that can be rejoiced in objectively. The theologian is involved in the theology of the cross because it is ultimately a moral thing that speaks to the depths of our being because it is reflective of our attitude. And Luther, the Heidelberg Disputation culminates in a statement that I actually find a precedent for in Thomas Aquinas\' commentary on Romans. It\'s not unprecedented, but Luther does set it forth rather dramatically. He says this, thesis 28, I quoted this in sermons more often than I care to remember. If ever there was a sentence that exists outside of the canon of Scripture that I wouldn\'t mind seeing stuck into the canon of Scripture, this is probably it. A lot of Luther\'s theology is in a nutshell in that particular thesis. He\'s drawing a contrast there between the love of God and the love of human beings. Think about his basic rule of the difference between the theology of glory and the theologian of the cross. The theologian of glory looks at the way the world is and extrapolates back to God. Let\'s do that with love. Why did my wife, why did I fall in love with my wife? Our eyes met across a crowded room and I saw something intrinsically beautiful in her. One of the things I love to do in class is, I won\'t do it to any of you because I don\'t know you, I usually pick on somebody that I know is capable of being picked on. I\'ll drop on somebody in class and say, why do you fall in love with your wife? And if they hesitate, they\'re dead really, particularly if their wife\'s in the class with them. You know, if ever anybody asks you that, just say, because she was lovely, that works, it\'s a great answer. Don\'t hesitate. Well, you\'re finished, you really are. That\'s why I like asking the question, you know, of terminating and damaging marriages since I started teaching. But anyway, the point of the answer is of course that human love is reactive. There is something intrinsically beautiful in the objects of our love that causes our love. My love for my wife is caused by her beauty. And I hope if you\'re married that your love for your wife is caused by her beauty and drawn out from you by her beauty. That\'s human love. Luther though here nicely juxtaposes that to divine love and says, divine love is the opposite. Divine love is not reactive. Divine love is creative. The love of God does not find but creates that which is lovely to it. There in a nutshell is Luther\'s theology. People are not justified because God looks at them and says, wow, they\'re kind of righteous, I think I\'ll declare them to be so. Luther says, no, God looks out and he sees there is no one righteous, not one. And therefore I will take a delight in declaring them to be righteous, into making them objects of my love. The love of God does not find but creates that which is lovely to it. That is the foundation of anti-Pelagian, predestinarian theology. That the love of God is creative, that it arises within God and moves out. It is not something that is caused by something outside of itself. Yeah, you have the honor of asking the first question from the floor. Would he still say that there\'s a moment where he, that God created that love or the faith, or would he still tie that to baptism? The question of baptism and salvation in Luther is an interesting one. Just give the sort of the 30 second answer at this point. Luther believes that Christ is objectively offered in baptism. To the recipient of baptism. That Christ is not active for that person, to make that person righteous unless grasped by faith. Can a baby do that? Luther would say yes, yes he can. Can a baby reject Christ? Luther would say yes he can, or she can. Luther would draw an analogy with preaching. Christ is objectively offered in preaching. But he has to be grasped by faith in order for it to be, for Christ to be effective to them. So then you would get back to, well why do some people grasp Christ and others not? Why is the baptism of some effective and the others not? Well that\'s when Luther presses back and said, well then, you know, we move back to the Augustinian distinction between God\'s hiddenness and God\'s revelation. For some reason in God\'s hidden will, he has decided not to free the will of that particular person to grasp Christ by faith. That\'s why I say here we find it\'s the heart of anti-Pelagian theology. Because the only way of making sense of this, if you\'re not a universalist, is to have some kind of particularist predestinarianism lying behind it. And Luther, like Augustine, works that position out in the heat of controversy. And we\'ll do it in a much more dramatic and I think flawed way than Augustine actually. But we\'ll come to that when we talk about the bondage of the will. So is this the short answer? Is he created at baptism? He creates his love at baptism. No, I think he executes the pattern of his love at baptism. I think that does he not love that person before baptism? I think that\'s a speculative question. I think if he\'s predestined from all eternity, which is the implication of Luther\'s bondage of the will, then clearly there\'s a sense in which he must have loved the baby before the baby is baptized, before the baby is even conceived. Questions? We\'re reaching a sort of break point here. But maybe I\'ll press on. We\'ve got a few minutes left. I\'ll press on because I\'m never quite sure how far we will get in these week-long courses. So that was Luther at Heidelberg. And if any of you have read my little book, Luther and the Christian Life, one of the bad typos that I missed is that I have Luther at Heidelberg in 1517. That\'s weird because it means that he would have gone back in time. He did not time travel. It was a typo. It should be 1518. Summer of 1518, the controversy over indulgences is spreading. Even as Luther is pressing forward with his theological developments, the controversy over indulgences is beginning to spread like wildfire. It\'s now broken the bounds of electoral Saxony and is in the territories of Duchal Saxony and Brandenburg. Just a quick word here on the word electoral relative to Saxony. The German-speaking lands are ruled by the Holy Roman Empire. Empires are ruled by emperors. The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire does not automatically pass along blow lines. Just because you\'re the oldest son of the emperor doesn\'t mean that you too will become emperor. The emperor is elected. But the electoral college is very small, very small. Seven. The seven princes of the so-called electoral areas of the empire. One of which is Saxony, electoral Saxony. Another which will be Heidelberg, so-called the Palatinate. The Elector of Heidelberg was often known as the Elector Palatine and was often the most important of the Electors. Luther\'s location in an electoral province is important because it means that Frederick the Wise, although Frederick the Wise does not have tremendous economic or military power, he has huge constitutional influence. And when an Elector is at odds with the emperor, the emperor always has to make, I don\'t know what we call it when you play rugby, you call it has to make a percentage decision. You\'ve got to look at the percentage of chance of gain over against the percentage of negatives. And as is always the case I think in history, if you can contain a problem it\'s better than civil war. It\'s a big thing for the emperor to declare war on an Elector. Plunges the empire into civil war. Luther will enjoy disproportionate protection because Frederick the Wise is an Elector of Saxony. Anyway, controversy is starting to spread, rumors start to circulate that the church is going to ban Luther. Ban, a ban is one level down from an excommunication. Don\'t know if you have this in your churches, but in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church we have a level of church discipline below excommunication. Excommunication means we don\'t think you\'re a Christian anymore and therefore you\'re not entitled to any of the privileges of membership, including you\'re expelled from church membership. Below that though we have a category of discipline where you are indefinitely suspended from communion. And what that means is that your behavior has been such that we suspend you from taking the Lord\'s Supper indefinitely. We have to actually review it according to our books every 12 months. We\'re not sure that you\'re not a Christian. We think you\'ve fallen into terrible sin, but we\'re not quite prepared to say you\'re not a Christian as yet, but you\'re not allowed to take the Lord\'s Supper, you\'re not allowed to vote in membership meetings. The ban effectively in the, this is the equivalent to the ban, the ban in medieval Christianity suspends you from the Lord\'s Supper, suspends you from mass, but doesn\'t quite kick you out of the church. You\'re still regarded as being a member, part of the church. Excommunication casts you into outer darkness. And of course there is a big difference between medieval Catholicism and the orthodox Presbyterian church. Well there are two differences in fact. One, medieval Catholicism was really rather important and the orthodox Presbyterian church is 30,000 people, not really that important at all. And the second difference is Presbyterians only regard church power as being ministerial. When we excommunicate you, we are excommunicating you ministerially. What that boils down to is, as far as we can tell, you\'re not a Christian and therefore we are declaring you to be outside the church. We could be wrong. We could be wrong. Medieval Catholicism, if you\'re excommunicated, you\'re put outside the church. The church has sacramental power and magisterial power to actually place you outside the bounds of salvation. No Presbyterian who knows this theology would claim that their power runs that far. Many of us wish we could in certain circumstances, but we cannot. There\'s also a strange incident, and with this I\'ll close, a strange incident in the Augustinian monastery in Dresden. Luther, who always enjoyed a drink and you know alcoholic drinks were the safe way of drinking in the 16th century. Fermented drinks were safe in a way that water from the well might kill you. Luther was invited to a party at the Augustinian monastery in Dresden and the wine and the beer flow like wine and beer and Luther liked to drink and of course the more he drank the more elaborate his theological propagations became and he was asked, he was invited there by a man called Emcee. Emcee, a bit of a dodgy character, Dominican. Emcee he will go on to, he will later refer to Emcee as the goat of Leipzig, goat being a very offensive term to call another theologian by in the 16th century. Emcee, the later goat of Leipzig, asks him about his views, his real views on Thomas, Aquinas and Aristotle and of course as Luther gets more and more merry with his drink, so his views become more and more extreme and outspoken. The twist in the tale is this, I often think of this as kind of Dresden Gate. You had a president who sort of 40 years ago was undone by voice-activated software that I think he, not software, voice-activated recording equipment that he himself had installed in the Oval Office. They didn\'t have that in the 16th century but what they could have was a monk sitting behind a door listening in on what\'s going on and writing everything down and this formed the basis for a scurrilous report to Rome of what Luther\'s real opinions were on some of Rome\'s great theologians and theological positions. So the storm clouds are gathering and Luther, you know, Luther always undone by his own ability to talk himself into trouble. I do hope Donald Trump closes his Twitter account down if for no other reason that I don\'t want the competent people he\'s surrounding himself with having to occupy their time putting out fires all the time, you know, but Luther would have been, you know, Luther would have been like that. Goodness me if the man had had a Twitter account the Reformation might have been a total disaster, you never know, you never know. He would certainly, he was certainly very tweetable and quotable and very outspoken in the way he dealt with his enemies. The evangelical tone police would have been very uncomfortable with him. I have to say I can\'t imagine him being employed by anybody in the evangelical Christian world today but that\'s why he was able to achieve what he was able to achieve. He hit people who needed to be hit hard as hard as they needed to be hit. Sometimes he hit them too hard, knocked a few teeth out, but on the whole his targets were the right ones and he did the right kind of damage in the right kind of places.