Lecture 5.docx

Returning to Luther, we had got to the point yesterday where Luther had outlined at the Heidelberg Disputation what was really an explosive new theology. As we were talking in some of the breaks, you know, it\'s almost a sense in which the 95 Theses, although it\'s the spark that triggers the exp...

Returning to Luther, we had got to the point yesterday where Luther had outlined at the Heidelberg Disputation what was really an explosive new theology. As we were talking in some of the breaks, you know, it\'s almost a sense in which the 95 Theses, although it\'s the spark that triggers the explosion, it\'s almost a sideshow to the overall theological trajectory. We can go straight from the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, September 1517, to the Heidelberg Disputation in April 1518, and we can see there the development of Luther\'s theology that he\'s come to the conclusion, or he\'s coming to the conclusion, that the issue with the medieval church is primarily one of theological method. Now, I\'d say that\'s overstated, but that\'s how he thought of it. Luther was coming to the conclusion that really what the church needed to do was rethink its entire theological method, and to do that in terms of the reality of the Incarnation, specifically Christ crucified. It\'s an explosive, an explosive way of thinking about things, and in many ways the whole of Luther\'s later theology is sort of embryonic-y there in April 15, what we have, 1518, what we have over the next nearly 30 years is the outworking, the elaboration of some of the fundamental insights that have occurred at this particular point. Yeah? Can you explain in a little bit more detail the issue of scholasticism that Luther, like issues he had with that. What is scholasticism, maybe in a brief nutshell? Yeah, that\'s like, can you explain briefly the theory of relativity? Give me the 30-second sound bites. Scholasticism. Well there\'s a whole wealth of scholarship surrounding this issue. First of all I want to say that really strictly speaking, if we\'re talking about scholasticism, we are talking about the theology of the schools. The term scholasticism was coined to refer to the way theology was taught in the medieval university, and as such scholasticism is really a method, not a metaphysic if I could put it that way. One of the problems today is that we tend to use, a lot of people who don\'t know what they\'re talking about, if I can put it really offensively, tend to use the term scholasticism to refer to what they see as a kind of rationalistic tendency within theology. All kinds of problems with defining rationalism in theology of course. Strictly speaking though, scholasticism merely means theology of the schools. It\'s very similar for example to how we might use the term academic today. When you think about the sort of semantic field of the term academic, I might say to you in talking to you about your papers this morning, your papers have got to be academic. I want them to be of an academic standard, academically written. You understand what I mean there, but what I\'m saying is they have to be written in a way that is consistent with what higher education requires. I might also use the term academic in a discussion with you about something and say, oh, that\'s an academic point or are you just a pointy headed academic. In that context, I\'m using the term pejoratively to say that you live in a world of abstractions, you\'re up there in the clouds or it\'s all ideas to you and it\'s not grounded in real life. So academic can be both, we might say, a neutral descriptive term pointing towards basic criteria for understanding what a paper or piece of work done in the academy should look like. We can also use it as a way of dismissing somebody\'s thoughts or ideas that we don\'t like. And you see this in politics all the time when people say, a bunch of academics came up with that. It\'s abstract, it\'s of no use. The name of scholasticism. Samuel Rutherford, for example, in the 17th century, in some of his writings, will attack the scholastics, the scholasticy. But he also writes a scholastic, the title is A Scholastic Disputation on Providence. He\'s happy to use the term disputatio scholastica to refer to his own work on Providence, making the point that this is a work written according to the canons and criteria of the academic school environment. Now, when Luther is attacking scholasticism, for him, he\'s thinking of the way late medieval school theology appropriated Aristotle in a way that he regards as having perverted Christian theology. So he is using the general term scholasticism and dismissing the whole of medieval theology in many ways based on his own narrow knowledge of a certain strand of late medieval theology. Luther does not know Thomas Aquinas very well, for example. Calvin does the same thing. What\'s interesting though in Calvin is that in his institutes, he\'ll often attack the scholastics. What\'s interesting though is if you track the Latin edition of the institutes over to the French edition of the institutes, because in the French edition of the institutes, Calvin doesn\'t typically attack the scholastics. He attacks the theologians of the Sorbonne. That\'s the term he uses. So Calvin\'s real target is much narrower than the whole of medieval theology. Now Luther certainly thought he was attacking the whole of medieval theology. And what he\'s really getting at is not the scholastic method. If I was a scholastic, if I was a medieval scholastic, the way we would be teaching is, well, first of all, we\'d have started much earlier. I mean, eight o\'clock strikes me. It\'s very early anyway to have my brain in gear, particularly after an hour of Carmageddon on the way over here through, is it, we\'re north of Los Angeles, aren\'t we? Yeah, we\'re north of Los Angeles. It\'s terrible. Is the south any better or is it just as bad coming in from the other side? I imagine it\'s uniformly awful. You want to be heading out, not in. I went home last night. Was it quarter past seven when I went home last night? The roads were blocked, seven lane highways blocked after seven o\'clock at night. That\'s not civilization. That\'s not, that\'s, ah, that\'s incredible. If I was teaching scholastically, what I\'d have done is I\'d have come in this morning and I said, okay, guys, today\'s question, does God exist? And I\'d have pointed to one of you guys over there and I\'d say, okay, give me three reasons why God does not exist. And then I\'d have pointed to somebody over here and I\'d have said, give me an authority. Give me a statement from an authority. The Bible, one of the great philosophers demonstrating that God does exist. And then after those two, the two of you had your go, I would then give the resolution of the issue. Well, actually, God does exist. And the reasons why the arguments against his existence were incorrect are as follows. That\'s the scholastic method. If you look at Thomas Aquinas\' Summa Theologiae, that\'s how Thomas teaches. He asks a question. He gets pro, arguments pro or con and then an opposite case made by a statement from an authority, typically from scripture. And then he resolves the issue. It\'s actually a great way of teaching. You can imagine being in Thomas Aquinas\' class, you\'d have a very thorough grasp of the arguments by the end of a course of theology with Thomas Aquinas. It does not in and of itself though carry any theological conclusions with it. An atheist could use scholasticism in that way. Muslim thinkers would use scholasticism in that way. So we have to be careful that when, and in modern days, Francis Schaeffer does this, Cornelius van Til does this, use the term scholasticism as this general way of referring to a type of theology with a certain view of faith and reason and a certain metaphysic behind it. They\'re writing at a time, I think, when they did not have access to the scholarship that has corrected that use of the term. So we shouldn\'t be too hard on them. But nor should we continue to use the term the way they do. Scholasticism refers to a method, not a metaphysic. So when Luther\'s hitting the scholastics, he\'s really hitting the professors who taught him and the tradition of theology that they come from, which would just be one particular manifestation of scholasticism in the late Middle Ages. The problem that Luther\'s addressing in Disputation Against Scholastic Theology and then in the Heidelberg Disputation is what are your criteria for theological language? Is it the way the world is or is it how God has revealed himself to be? As I said yesterday, the two sort of radical things Luther does there, where he\'s picking up on that revelation emphasis from the late Middle Ages but focusing it upon the incarnation of Christ crucified and he\'s making it a moral issue that the theologian of glory isn\'t a theologian of glory because he just doesn\'t get it. He\'s a theologian of glory because he wants to justify himself by his good works before God and therefore he invents a God who will be pleased with his good works. The cross for Luther is a contradiction to that. The cross of Christ, God reveals himself as the one who gives himself to us in the broken flesh of the Lord Jesus, not the one whose favor can be earned, the one whose favor merely has to be passively received. So yeah. Yesterday you gave a pretty insightful definition and explanation of Luther\'s distinction of glory and the cross. How much of that do you think, and maybe you can expand on this a little bit, it seemed like that was really based on Luther\'s view of this transcendent God who actually was the covenant in the person of Jesus Christ on the cross, right? Yeah. The question for those at a distance is just to elaborate a little bit on the theologian of the cross and is it really based or does it appears to be on Luther\'s understanding of the sort of the imminence of God. I think yes, what drives Luther is the very profound and personal question. Where can I find a gracious God? That\'s the question that drives him as a young monk. And the answer ultimately is I find God as gracious in the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ and only in the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ. This plays into, very much plays into Luther\'s understanding of the Lord\'s Supper. Why does the humanity of Christ have to be there? Because the flesh has to be there. Because it\'s only in the flesh that I find God has made himself, if you like, small and weak and has come to me in a gracious and merciful manner. Outside of the flesh, it\'s the God, it\'s the wild God of judgment. Listen, the God who rides on the wings of the storm and you do not want to fall into the hands of that God. You know, Christ places before you a choice. Do you want to deal with God revealed in the flesh or God as he rides on the wings of the storm? And the choice, Luther, that\'s not, for Luther, that\'s not a choice. You know, your theologian of glory is an idiot because ultimately he\'s choosing to deal with God as he is in himself. He\'s choosing to deal with the naked God, not the God clothed in flesh and will therefore fall into judgment. So yeah, it\'s very much connected to Luther\'s own personal history. More than any of the other reformers, Luther\'s theology is profoundly shaped by his own autobiography. We don\'t know much about Calvin\'s inner spiritual struggles. He doesn\'t care to tell us about them. We don\'t know when he was converted. He doesn\'t care to tell us. He simply, we simply hear, I think it\'s in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, we hear that his conversion was subito, sudden or unexpected. The Latin term is ambiguous. Calvin could be telling us there that I became a Protestant and I never expected to. Or he could be telling us that I had this, you know, lightning bolt moment when I suddenly became a Protestant. We don\'t know. He doesn\'t care to elaborate on it. Luther, though, his theology is profoundly tied up with his personal experience. That\'s why I think he\'s proved such a fruitful topic for psychoanalysts. Eric Erickson writes about Luther because Luther tells us a lot about himself and wow, he\'s a pretty weird guy in some ways. He\'s got all sorts of strange hang-ups and ultimately his theology is answering his personal existential questions, which may not be a bad thing. If his personal existential questions are actually a sample of universal questions facing all of humanity, that\'s not a bad thing. They\'re just in a rather intense form. Okay, on with the narrative. April 1518, Luther\'s at Heidelberg. Summer of 1518, I mentioned the indulgence crisis is spreading beyond the bounds of electro-Saxony. That summer we also have the strange incidents at the Dresden Augustinian Monastery where Luther is sort of plied with drink and then made to speak eloquently about his real views of Thomas and Aristotle. On the 7th of August 1518, he receives a summons to Rome. Albrecht of Mainz, remember him, the man who\'d asked for the extra bishopric and had got the indulgence going? Albrecht of Mainz had lodged a complaint with Rome the previous December about Luther\'s protest and the summons to Rome is probably an automatic procedure thing. Once a serious complaint has been lodged by prince of the church in Rome, summons to Rome is automatic. The Pope is also getting things rolling there on the issue of indulgences. A man called Silvesta Mazzolini. Latin, Latinized name, Prierias, I have to say. Italian, probably the most beautiful language in the world to hear spoken. My wife and I love European crime dramas. The Finnish crime dramas are at one end of the spectrum. The language sounds just terrible. English and German are bad enough. I cannot imagine anybody being romantic in Finnish. It\'s just not going to work. In Italian, I think ordering a cup of soup would probably sound romantic. You can confirm this, but Italians, they also, it\'s amazing when you look at translations of works into Italian, how big they become. I once asked an Italian friend when I was in Rome, I said, how do I ask if this is cheap? He said, oh, we don\'t have a word for cheap. We say this is not very expensive. Then you think, how does that expand? Italian, very expansive, beautiful language. I think probably something to do with ending so many words in crisp vowels. If my Latin name was Prierias, I think I\'d prefer to go by the name Mazzolini. It sounds just a whole lot cooler by and large. He\'s charged with forming a theological opinion on Luther. Here we get a little hint of the general, one might say joyful chaos within the Catholic Church at the beginning of the 16th century. I\'m using joyful in a fairly attenuated way there, but the Catholic Church was pretty much doctrinal chaos on a lot of issues, but still worked pretty well. We\'ll put it that way. But now it\'s starting to be faced with serious theological questions that it doesn\'t know how to answer directly because it has no direct answer to them. So Mazzolini is charged to prepare a theological opinion on Luther. And as a result of that, Luther is to be charged with suspected heresy, lack of respect for the church, and contempt for the power of the keys, contempt for the power of the pope. And must appear in Rome, according to the summons, within 60 days. Rome\'s a long way from Wittenberg, would have been a long dangerous journey, so it would have had to have set out fairly rapidly. Prierias also writes a book, the first real polemical book against Luther, I think, the first of many, entitled The Dialogue Against the Presumptuous Conclusions of Martin Luther. And the book is interesting. Not so much for its content as for Luther\'s response. Prierias in the book declares that Luther is such an idiot that he was able to write this refutation of his opinions in a mere three days. Luther now does something rather clever, and it\'s one of those things that, you know, when I read it, I thought, wow, this is really, this shows an instinctive grasp of the new medium. One of the reasons why Luther will succeed is he understands how print operates. I\'ve said yesterday, he\'s very much a man of the Middle Ages. He is. Perhaps with this one exception, he understands the power of the printing press. Perhaps he understands it first and better than anybody else. What Luther does is he does not have Prierias\' book banned or burned. He has it reprinted with his own response to Prierias included. And in his response to Prierias, he comments that Prierias may have written his refutation of Luther in three days, but Luther has written his refutation of Prierias in two days. It\'s a very clever response. And I think on two levels, it\'s interesting. One, it points to the fact that Luther has an instinctive grasp of the print medium, that banning books and burning books, typically speaking, is counterproductive. Remember growing up in the 1980s and the BBC, BBC Radio 1 was the pop music channel. The quickest way to get a number one hit in Britain was to produce a song with the F-word in it because it was immediately banned by the BBC. And everybody under the age of 17 went out and bought it because they wanted to know what the fuss was about. It\'s amazing to think, isn\'t it, that records would be banned for the F-word. Now it seems almost compulsory, it seems to me, listening to some of the stuff. It was just 30 years ago. But it\'s an example of how censorship, while censorship can at times have a noble intention, generally speaking, it utterly defeats itself in the long run. And one of the things I think that will run in Luther\'s favour is his works are transgressive and they get banned. And that makes them immensely attractive to people because people want to know what they\'re being stopped from looking at. So Prierias then starts the long tradition of anti-Luther polemics and Luther outflanks him from the word go. Nevertheless, the summons, the summons, distresses Luther. You know, bottom line is, you know, if you\'re\... Well, it won\'t apply to any of you gentlemen, but, you know, if you smoke a pipe once every six months in the United States, it\'s almost impossible to get life insurance, you know that. If you\'re a reformer in the 16th century, but the equivalent of smoking a pipe in Los Angeles, you know, you\'re just not going to get life insurance. Being a reformer is a very dangerous business. There are no precedents really for reformers or attempted reformers dying happily in their beds prior to Luther. Wycliffe may be, but Wycliffe had the immense advantage of living on an island. He was English. Well, there are many immense advantages to being English, obviously, but one of them in the Middle Ages is you are extremely hard to get at by authorities that are based on the continent. Luther doesn\'t have the island advantage. When you summon to Rome, that\'s a very serious thing, and it\'s very clear that the summons deeply disturbs Luther. And so he writes a letter to a man who will feature in our story numerous times. George Spallatin. George Spallatin is the secretary of Frederick the Wise. He\'s Frederick the Wise\'s personal assistant, if you like. He and Luther will become firm friends. One of Luther\'s\... Luther had\... There were some very funny letters written by Martin Luther. I think when Spallatin gets married, Luther can\'t make it to the wedding, so he writes to Spallatin and tells him that he intends to make love to his wife on Spallatin\'s wedding night, so that he and Spallatin will be united in the act of lovemaking on Spallatin\'s wedding. Well, can only imagine how off-putting that must have been to Spallatin. One hopes that he didn\'t mention it to his bride, because it would have been ten times more off-putting to her, I\'m sure. But Luther\... Luther was a man of the soil. Luther was a peasant, but he came very close to George Spallatin. Spallatin will be the go-between between Luther and Frederick the Wise. As I mentioned yesterday, Frederick the Wise is the key figure in the Luther story. He is the man who prevents Luther being executed or assassinated. And yet he never meets Luther. They never have any direct contact. Frederick the Wise, as his name suggests, was a very wise man and kept his personal distance from Luther, so I think he would always have plausible deniability, so that if the whole thing blew up, Frederick the Wise would be able to walk away and say, nothing to do with me, guv, never heard of the man. But Luther writes to Spallatin and strikes a note that again will be struck again and again in the Reformation. He tells Spallatin that the honor of Wittenberg is at stake and that if he is to be tried, he must be tried on German soil. Luther will make the German note a resounding one in the Reformation. The German-ness of what Luther\'s doing is critical to his way of thinking. It\'s very easy to see how Luther was sort of resurrected as a hero of German nationalism in post-Bismarck in Germany in the late 19th century, because he is the man who carries the flag, flies the flag, for a kind of German nationhood, kind of German nationhood in the 16th century. The letter\'s indicative of how vulnerable Luther is. He is completely dependent at this point upon the favor of the civil magistrate. If the civil magistrate, if Frederick the Wise, decides to hand him over to the authorities, it\'s done at that point. But actually, for some reason, Frederick the Wise decides that, yeah, he\'s going to make a stand on this and that Luther, if he\'s to be tried, will be tried on German soil. And an opportunity is presenting itself later in 1518 at the Diet of Augsburg, one of the great German cities, where a papal legate, a papal representative, Thomas de Villeau, better known to the world by his Latinized name, Cajetan, Cardinal Cajetan, will be present. Cajetan is\... Okay, well, let\'s take a sidebar for a second. The Reformation. The reason I mentioned yesterday, I mentioned the reason why I recommend Carter Lindbergh\'s book, is I like the title, apart from anything else, The European Reformation. What\'s going on in Europe in the 16th century is there are a whole host of different people who see there are problems with the Church and are pressing for reformation of the Church. But each one of them has a different model. And there are those within the Catholic Church who will never leave the Catholic Church, who yet still want to see some kind of reformation within the Church, and Cajetan is one of those. Cajetan is not a\... He doesn\'t favour the corrupt status quo. Cajetan is a man who knows there are significant issues in the Church that have to be dealt with. He\'s what we might call a gentleman of the Catholic Church. But he\'s also opposed to the kind of theological reform that\'s going to come through from the Lutherans. He\'s famous, perhaps most famous today, for being the man who debates Luther at the Diet of Augsburg. His major significance, though, intellectually, is he was probably the most significant commentator on Thomas Aquinas prior to the modern age. Cajetan\'s works on Thomas from the 16th century really set up the way that Thomas was understood in the modern era. And I think there is a consensus emerging now among scholars of Thomas Aquinas that Cajetan gets him wrong in some fundamental ways and therefore sets up a trajectory of incorrect interpretations of Thomas. So he\'s a very clever man. He\'s the man charged with taking Luther into custody in Augsburg. Frederick the Wise is in a peculiarly strong position at this point. Couple of things play into strengthening Frederick\'s position in 1518. One, problems in Eastern Europe. The Ottomans, the Turkish Empire, is pressing in from the East, banging on the gates of Budapest. The Ottoman Empire now poses a real threat to the Holy Roman Empire. And the emperor needs to mount some kind of military response to the Ottomans. Military responses require money and they require support. Frederick the Wise is one of the electors. If you\'re gonna raise money, if you\'re gonna raise tax money within the empire, you\'re gonna need the support of the electors because the electors are the people responsible for collecting it for you. If the electors aren\'t on side, you\'re not gonna be able to raise your tax money. So you need to get the electors on side. Secondly, Maximilian wants to get his son, Charles, elected, appointed, king of the Romans. Why is that important? I mentioned yesterday that, this is the emperor Maximilian by the way. I mentioned yesterday that the Holy Roman Empire is governed by an elected emperor. You\'re elected for life, but you have to be elected by the seven electors of the empire. But, typically speaking, the emperor is elected after being king of the Romans. So king of the Romans, this title, this position, puts you in pole position for becoming emperor. So if you want to get your son in line for the succession, what you wanna do at some point is get him elected king of the Romans. So he\'s slotted in for election to the top job when you die. And to do that, you need the support of the electors. So when we go to Augsburg in October, 1518, on the one hand, the church want Luther handed over. They wanna take custody of Luther at this point and take him down to Rome to face charges of suspected heresy, disrespect of the power of the keys. On the other hand, Frederick is in a relatively strong position. The last thing that the emperor wants is some kind of civil war in the empire at this point, because that will dramatically weaken his position relative to the Turks. With the Turks pressing in from the east, the emperor wants a united empire. And secondly, the emperor wants support for his son being slotted into this pole position. It\'s amazing, and why have I gone into this detail? Because if this stuff hadn\'t been in play, Luther might have been handed over in October, 1518. And while it\'s always nice to read history in a sort of, well, it\'s just a bunch of good Christian guys doing the right thing for the right reasons all the time, that is not what happened. Church history, like all history, is very messy. And humanly speaking, the confluence of events at this point is critical in keeping Luther alive. Luther would not be alive if the Turks weren\'t pressing in from the east, and the emperor didn\'t need support for his son to become king of the Romans. That\'s the long and the short of it. The hearing Luther\'s trial takes place on the 12th to the 14th of October. The debate focuses on the bull Unigenitus, treasury of merits. And Luther states that he\'s ultimately unable to reconcile this papal bull with the scriptures. We get the first hints here, what\'s emerging in Luther\'s mind is the issue of scriptural authority. Again, I think Luther sort of stumbles on that. Remember the situation he\'s in. He\'s kind of making this stuff up as he goes along. He has no idea in 1517 of where his thinking must inevitably lead. Kazhatan is pressing him and he\'s responding with scriptures. Finally, Luther returns to Wittenberg and Frederick the Wise at the beginning of December informs Kazhatan that he has no intention of handing Luther over to the Catholic authorities at this point because crucially, the Saxons do not consider him to be a heretic. The German notes being struck again. The Saxons, we in Germany, we who speak the German language do not consider Luther to be a heretic. I think we can read Frederick the Wise as motivated by a couple of things. One, we don\'t have to read him totally cynically. I think he\'s probably concerned for justice and he knows that Luther will not get a fair hearing if he goes to Rome. I think Frederick the Wise also being totally depraved like the rest of us probably knows he\'s got a good thing going in his university. Frederick the Wise founded the University of Wittenberg and he\'s got a professor who\'s making huge waves now. The potential I think of boosting the name and the stature of his university is tremendous. And this actually takes us back to the university. All the while this thing is playing out on the sort of imperial stage. The university too is starting to be reformed. Luther is only one of a faculty at Wittenberg. A faculty that has become interested in the writings of St. Augustine, has become interested. Luther, again one of the things that our way of doing history where Luther becomes the main focus, one of the things that that can blind us to is the fact that theology is always done in a group really. No individual ever thinks it up for themselves. Well they do occasionally, we call them heretics. By and large when somebody thinks up theology of themselves it\'s typically bad theology. The best theologians are always those who work as part of a community. Both a diachronic community, they\'re working in relation to what\'s happened in the past and a synchronic community. They\'re engaged with their colleagues and minds in the present. And the University of Wittenberg has become a kind of, what\'s it called, like a think tank of Augustinian theology at this point. Of which Luther is simply one of the more famous representatives in 1518. But the university itself is undergoing reforms in the light of the breakthroughs that Luther and his colleagues are making. For example in 1518, the Thomistic lectures, the lectures done in accordance with the thought of Thomas Aquinas on physics and logic are stopped. The late medieval traditions, Scotism, Voluntarism, the Scotist tradition and the nominalist tradition, they\'re allowed to continue. But Thomas is now run out of the, run off the curriculum. The key thing is that a campaign is undertaken to fill two new chairs at the university. One of them in Hebrew, one of them in Greek. That is a decisive move. The theological direction of Luther and his colleagues at this point is making study of the scriptures in the original languages a key thing. One of the things we should note about this is the arrival of languages on the curriculum in the 16th century, Greek and Hebrew, particularly Hebrew, is a theological move. It\'s driven by theological needs, the needs to access the Old Testament. Greek was interesting because Greek was a classical language and humanists loved Greek for its beauty. Hebrew was regarded as an ugly language and the only reason to study Hebrew was to read the Old Testament and the rabbinical commentary traditions on the Old Testament. So the introduction of Greek and Hebrew into the syllabus at the University of Wittenberg is a theological move. That has an interesting flip side today. I think it means that the removal of the original languages from curricula may not have a theological motive, could be done for financial reasons, but does have theological implications, does have theological implications. The two chairs are filled, one by a man who\'s, hardly anybody\'s heard of these days, Matthias Goldhahn. He fills the chair of Hebrew. The more significant appointment is the appointment of the New Testament Greek chair, Philip Melanchthon. In German, Schwarzehrd, Black Earth, Melanchthon. Melanchthon is a mere 21 years old when he\'s appointed professor of Greek at Wittenberg, but he\'s already a humanist linguistic scholar of international reputation. Melanchthon really is the brains of the outfit in Wittenberg. Luther is the volcano, Luther is the leader of men. Melanchthon is the gentle scholar. Melanchthon\'s not gonna lead anybody out of the paperback, but he has a brilliant mind, and he will become the brains of Lutheranism. And through his work, he will be the guy who we might say, sort of starts to systematize Lutheran theology. And we\'ll talk about this later in the course, but Lutheranism splits in two after the death of Luther between the followers of Melanchthon and those who call themselves the Ganesio Lutherans, the real Lutherans, but we\'ll talk about that later. Melanchthon will become a close, very close colleague of Luther. One of the mysteries of Melanchthon is that Melanchthon will hold positions that Luther abominates when they\'re held by others. Melanchthon is decidedly concessive on the Lord\'s Supper and leans decidedly in Erasmus\'s direction on the bondage of the will, and yet Luther will never speak against him. Why? Nobody knows. I think the answer probably is friendship. As a historian, I like to be able to explain everything I come across in the past. I wanna know why. Friendship is a phenomenon that is somewhat unquantifiable. There\'s a thing that motivates somebody. There are certain positions out there, theologically, that I abominate, and some of my close friends hold them, and I\'m never gonna attack my close friends, but I\'ll attack those positions, but I\'ll always attack them as held by somebody else, because I\'m not in the game of attacking my friends. Why? Because they\'re friends. It\'s not a rational thing, and I think it\'s the same with Luther and Melanchthon. Luther and Melanchthon, there is a close friendship, which is frustrating for historians, because it\'s hard for us to pass how friendship affects behavior, how it shapes how people think. Luther also had an immense impact on Melanchthon. You can imagine, Melanchthon\'s coming in as a 21-year-old. Yes, he\'s of international scholarly reputation, but here he is as the junior colleague of this volcano of a man, Martin Luther, bigger, larger-than-life personality, who in the next two or three years will become the most notorious figure on the European continent. Luther has a huge impact on Melanchthon as well. During this time, Luther undertakes some of his own theological work. He had gone through Galatians. He\'d lectured through Galatians in 1516, 1517. He now revises those lectures. Wonderful book of the Bible for Luther to lecture on in order to sharpen his understanding of the law and the gospel. No doubt that Luther\'s revision of his commentary on Galatians is in part a self-conscious decision, because the way his thinking is going with these dramatic opposites, glory and cross, law and gospel, faith and works, these are antitheses that track nicely with the kind of things that Paul is trying to say in the letter to the Galatians. So Luther works at revising his commentary on Galatians. He also engages from 1518 onwards on a new series of lectures on the Psalms. He\'d lectured on the Psalms earlier. 1513, 1514. Now he lectures on them again, 1518. And these are interesting, because what we have from a scholarly perspective, although the second series only goes up to Psalm 21, we actually have Luther engaging with two, with the same biblical texts from either side of the Reformation beginning. So this has proved a goldmine for scholars in terms of comparing how he understood the Psalms earlier to how he understood the Psalms in 1518. And we know these were the Psalms lectures, the second series of Psalms lectures were printed in 1519, dedicated to Frederick the Wise and became a bestseller. Erasmus, greatest intellect of his day, comes across Luther, perhaps for the first time in his second set of lectures on the Psalms. So Luther\'s own work is developing, his own theological work, his approach to the Scriptures is developing at this point. Technically, he moves from commenting on longer passages of the Psalms to a verse-by-verse analysis. That\'s one of the moves he makes. Secondly, he comes to identify, identify the Psalms very closely with the experience of the believer and the experience of Christ as well.