Lecture 6.docx

Part 2, the Leipzig debate. Leipzig, one of the great cities of medieval Germany. Leipzig was a big, there was a university at Leipzig, and as with, there are other aspects to the Luther story that I haven\'t really touched on, but are nonetheless very much there. And one of the things that emerg...

Part 2, the Leipzig debate. Leipzig, one of the great cities of medieval Germany. Leipzig was a big, there was a university at Leipzig, and as with, there are other aspects to the Luther story that I haven\'t really touched on, but are nonetheless very much there. And one of the things that emerges early in the Luther story is how many of his enemies were Dominicans. And there\'s clearly a Augustinian versus Dominican rivalry playing into some of this. There\'s also institutional university rivalry. Leipzig had a university, and there were people in Leipzig interested in having a pop at Martin Luther in order to boost their own university and slap down the upstarts in Wittenberg. Preeminent in the Leipzig firmament was a man called John Eck. Now, one of the things you need to say about John Eck before we actually get into his significance at Leipzig is this. There are two John Ecks in the Luther story, but they must not be confused. Some historians have confused them, much to their embarrassment. John Eck of Leipzig is the man who debates Luther at the Leipzig Disputation. John Eck, otherwise known as Johannes von der Ecken, is an employee of the Archbishop of Trier who is involved in prosecuting Luther at the Diet of Worms. But they\'re two different people. So we will be talking about a John Eck at the Diet of Worms, but just bear in mind, not the same John Eck. Don\'t confuse them. This John Eck had originally been relatively friendly towards the Wittenbergers. But after Luther had launched his attack on indulgences, Eck had become increasingly hostile and was looking for an opportunity to engage Luther in a confrontation, the Wittenberg faculty in a confrontation, publicly. And in 1518, he\'d published a work entitled Obelisks, which was a series of critiques, criticisms of Martin Luther. Obelisks, those of us of a certain generation, Obelisk was the strong man, friend of Asterix the Gaul in those great French cartoon books. Anybody read them? Obelisk and Asterisk, great stories. If you wanted to be intellectual, you could get them in Latin translation, of course. Very clever set way back in the Roman times. These cartoons are about this small Gaulish village that was resisting the Roman tyranny. Written in the 20th century, so nothing to do with what Eck is doing at all. I just like to cite Asterix comics when I get the chance. This work was an attack on Luther. Luther responded in a privately produced work, Asterisks. Obelisks and Asterisks are printer\'s marks. To mark a note, an Obelisk would be like a little elongated splash, an asterisk is a star. Then a colleague of Luther that we haven\'t spoken of yet, but was certainly a man of the same stature and intellectual eminence of Luther on the Wittenberg faculty at this point, and indeed senior to Luther on the Wittenberg faculty enters the picture. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. By the way, somebody was asking yesterday about notes for these classes. At the end of the course, what I\'m going to do is I\'m going to send the class and the handouts that I usually produce for Westminster students to the seminary and they\'ll be distributed on the class list. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. Karlstadt is one of the Augustinian scholars at Wittenberg interested in re-prestonating Augustin\'s theology as a way of reforming the church. His fatal flaw, I think that one of the things that ultimately makes him less effective than Luther is that he is incredibly long-winded. Luther has the ability, Luther has a rhetorical ability that makes him remarkably effective. Luther has the ability to express himself in a way that captures the imagination. Karlstadt is a bit of a windbag and whatever punch some of his writings may carry tends to be dissipated by the long and convoluted way he expresses himself. Karlstadt enters the fray by publishing 380 theses against Eck. 380\. Massive overkill. 95 was quite a lot. 95 theses against indulgences. 380. Massive overkill. But it gets under Eck\'s skin and Eck now challenges Karlstadt and Luther to an intellectual duel to come to the University of Leipzig and debate their new theology in front of an audience. The faculty at Leipzig are unsure about this. They fear that this might be too controversial. But the Duke of Saxony, Duke George agrees to allow the debate to take place. It\'s funny, this is an era where sort of intellectuals carried huge weight. I\'m reading a little book, I forgot what the title is, I think it\'s called that, The Existentialist Cafe, which is this popular account of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I read the chapter this morning when in 1945, I think it is, Sartre gives a lecture somewhere. And it\'s at this moment that he realizes he\'s become a huge figure because this is a lecture on existentialism. And the crowd just break through. Most of them get in for free because there are too many to fill in the room. They just pour into this lecture theater or this small, I think it\'s in a cafe or somewhere it takes place. And Sartre becomes this sort of celebrity philosopher figure. Only in France, I think, could that happen in the 20th century. Intellectuals predispised everywhere else. Only in France could an intellectual become a kind of access Hollywood like celebrity. But back in the 16th century, these men are becoming like that. They were the most exciting figures in some ways of their time and of their culture. And the thought of having Luther and Karlsstatt debate Eck in Leipzig worries the faculty because they know it could lead to chaos, but attracts Duke George because he knows it could enhance the prestige of his town and institution. Both sides prior to the debate submit theses for discussion. Luther in the theses that he submits for debate makes the most radical move he\'s made so far in the Reformation in public. In that he presents a thesis in which he argues or wants to argue that papal supremacy had only been ratified in law 400 years previously. That papal supremacy was a relatively new innovation. It\'s a radical move to make. So radical that even Karlsstatt, who generally speaking outflanks Luther on the radical front, is nervous about having that debated. So Luther, you can see, Luther\'s mind is moving forward inexorably, becoming more and more radical at this particular point in time. Karlsstatt writes to Spalatin to effectively say, you know, Luther\'s going too far. He\'s, you know, now that he\'s starting to push on papal supremacy, we\'re entering into very, very dangerous waters at this point. The debate will be of tremendous interest in the Empire. The Archbishop of Brandenburg will have an envoy present. There\'ll be a young man there who a few years later will become a notorious figure on the European scene. Thomas Münzer. Thomas Münzer will be present at Leipzig and initially be very impressed by Luther. He will later become one of Luther\'s deadliest enemies. But Münzer will be present at Leipzig and be very impressed by what he sees. The Leipzig Disputation, I think, is the first evidence we have of Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, hearing of Luther. That he hears of Luther\'s performance at Leipzig and is very, very impressed. 1519, June the 22nd, the Wittenbergers arrive in Leipzig. Luther and Karlsstatt are accompanied by an armed cortege of students. So they arrive in the city, accompanied by a group of armed students. I think it\'s another example of church history as theatre. Did they need an armed protection? Probably not. Who knows? But certainly they would have enjoyed the drama. Turning up with armed protection makes you look like a big shot. Makes you look important and controversial. The Leipzig, the citizens of Leipzig, according to Luther\'s later account, who wrote shortly after the debate, were not sympathetic to him and the Wittenbergers. He said this in his account of the debate. The citizens of Leipzig neither greeted nor called upon us, but treated us as though we were their bitterest enemies. So in Luther, in writing about the Leipzig Disputation afterwards, does his best to present themselves as a kind of beleaguered, brave faction operating in this wider, hostile city. Luther will preach before the debate. He preaches a sermon on the 29th of June. It was originally scheduled to be preached in the Castle Church, but like Sartre in his lecture on existentialism and humanism in 1945, the place is mobbed and they have to move the venue from the Castle Church to the lecture hall at the university to accommodate everybody. And Luther chooses as his text, well he chooses perhaps the most incendiary text that he could have chosen in the context to preach on. He preaches on Matthew 16, 13 to 19, Peter\'s confession and Christ\'s giving the keys to Peter. And he argues in this sermon, this of course was a text upon which a whole, the whole ideological edifice of papal supremacy had been built. Luther argues that in this text, Christ is saying that anybody who humbles himself before God will receive grace. That Peter represents not the sea of Rome or the papacy, but the church as a whole and that the keys, the keys of the church are given to the church as a whole and that absolution there belongs to the church as a whole and is not the tool of the church hierarchy by which it can cajole or coerce members of the church to do its bidding. Eck who is present walks out declaring in a loud voice that what he\'s heard is completely Bohemian. What does he mean by that? Well Bohemian to us like Greenwich Village in New York or something like this or maybe Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Eck, what Eck is doing is he\'s setting up his strategy for the debate. Bohemia of course, modern-day Czech Republic was the location of John Huss. John Huss had been a kind of proto reformer just about a hundred years previously and had argued of Huss borrowing ideas from Wycliffe had come up with a theology of predestination that fundamentally undermined the authority of the papacy. Essentially what Huss argued was that the church is the totality of the predestined. We lost our friends. Can you see us at a distance? We lost you. I was looking at a mountain for a second there. We\'ve got you back. Great. Huss argued that the church was the totality of the predestined. Huss was in many ways a medieval theologian. He didn\'t believe that anybody could really have assurance of faith so nobody could actually know that they were truly and properly a member of the church. And if nobody could know that they were truly and properly a member of the church, the Pope could not know he was truly and properly a member of the church and therefore the Pope could not came to be the authoritative earthly head of the church. So Huss\'s theology completely undermined papal authority. Huss burned. Huss burned in 1416 at the Council of Constance for his faith. Interestingly enough, as Huss was burned, legend has it that he declared that today you burn a goose. Apparently the surname Huss is very similar to the Czech word for goose. I don\'t know Czech so I can\'t confirm that. He said today you burn a goose but a hundred years from now a swan will arise that you won\'t be able to get rid of so easily. And if you go into Lutheran churches, the lectern on which the Bible is placed and from which scripture is read is typically in the shape of a swan. And that\'s because Luther, modest chap that he was, considered Huss to have prophesied him a hundred years previously. So this has become part of sort of Lutheran folklore. And the reason why the lectern is shaped like a swan, it\'s actually an allusion to John Huss\'s prophecy when he was burned at the stake in the early 15th century. The key thing about Huss is that he was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance. Now one of the things I\'ve been saying so far is the church is struggling with Luther because hey it\'s kind of happy chaos in the church. The church doesn\'t have a huge amount defined. But if it\'s condemned somebody in a certain view as heretical already, then you have the legal precedent in place. If Luther speaks in terms whereby he agrees with Huss\'s position that was condemned, then Luther stands condemned already. So when Eck leaves the lecture theater that night and declares what I\'ve heard is completely Bohemian, he\'s setting up his strategy for the coming debate. He\'s already, if you like, sprung his trap. Or the trap is being sprung at that point. One of the things one has to say about Luther is he was not the best debater. Luther, a very clever guy, debate takes a certain, there\'s a certain skill set involved in debating. And Luther was a bit of a hostage to fortune man. And I think Luther was an easy man to bait. One has to say that Luther can\'t possibly have chosen Matthew 16, 13 to 19 as his text by accident. He self-consciously chose a very dangerous text to preach on. Thereby sort of set himself up for a bit of a beating in the debate that is to come. During the debate Eck tries his best to prove Roman primacy from scripture and the fathers. Luther consistently pushes back to Christ as the head of the church. And when Eck cites a father, Luther wants to go back and look at the quotation in context. Luther is working with texts in context to understand them. Eck then goes on to hint that Luther is moving towards Hussitism and Wycliffeism. Positions already condemned as heretical by the church in his view of Rome. Luther denies this but makes an error in the debate. In that he says that among the articles condemned at Constance were many that were altogether Christian. That is an interesting move for a number of reasons. One, it\'s clearly a dangerous move judicially for Luther. Because it potentially places him under a position of condemnation. More, more significantly is the kind of the theological implication of what he\'s saying there. What Luther is doing is undermining church authority in a way that he\'s never done before. The Council of Constance was called really because of a deep crisis within late medieval Catholicism. By the time you get to the early 15th century, there has been a point in the late 14th century where you had not one, not two, but three popes. And the Council of Constance is called to sort out the rival claims of two popes at that point. Think about that. When I\'ve talked about with Roman Catholic friends about this. Now, obviously, one of my big problems with papal supremacy is the late 14th, early 15th centuries. Because you have two popes. And what the church has to do at that point is call a council to adjudicate the rival claimants to the papacy. What the church does when it does that is essentially acknowledge the superiority of conciliar authority to papal authority. And I\'ve never been able to understand why that isn\'t historically fatal for understandings of papal authority. And I\'ve got some dear friends who are Roman Catholics whose friendship I really value. Very bright and sharp friends. But I can\'t understand how you can gloss over the late 14th, early 15th century. Cardinal Newman, one of my guilty pleasures. I love reading Newman because he just writes so well and he\'s always thought-provoking. He has a statement that is emblazoned on a coffee, my coffee mug, so I\'m reminded of every morning. It\'s in his, an essay on the development of Christian doctrine. He has a statement there, to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. To which my response is, well to be deep in certain kinds of history would be to cease to be Catholic as well. Late 14th, early 15th century. Very, very significant period of history I think for conciliar authority. Chatting to one friend about this just about a year ago. I asked him about it and he said, well, he said yeah, he said, but it\'s good that the church got it right in the end. The historical process was there. I said yeah, but it\'s not the end yet. It\'s not the end yet. How do you know the church has got it right? How do you know we\'re not going to head back to another conciliar crisis? Interestingly enough, did you know that Cardinal Manning, 19th century, he was the other leading English churchman, famous English churchman who converted to Catholicism from Anglicanism. Cardinal Manning, he wrote a book in the 19th century on why the Antichrist would be a pope. He wrote it as a cardinal I think. That he was convinced that sooner or later the pope would be the Antichrist. Fascinating. I think you can find it online. Look at Cardinal Manning Antichrist and you\'ll find his work somewhere online I\'m sure. But now think about it from Luther\'s perspective. I think at the Leipzig Disputation, a penny drops for Luther. I think what happens is that it becomes clear that the real issue of the Reformation is the issue of authority. Everything else, not exactly a sideshow, but everything else connects back to authority. In some ways it\'s Luther\'s view of authority, not so much his view of justification that does him in from the church\'s perspective. It\'s that which gets him condemned in 1520. We can look back and we know that the Reformation was a debate about authority from the word go, but I don\'t think it was so clear to Luther at the time. When you think about it, when Luther hits out against indulgences, we can look back now and realize, at the very least, Luther is calling into question the interpretation and application of some papal bulls. So there is a questioning of authority going on there right at the word go. Secondly and more subtly, I think as we look at the development of Luther\'s thinking in the second decade of the 16th century, his development of a theology of humility and later his development of his theology of faith, and I think in 1519 he\'s in transition, he\'s not yet at justification by grace through faith. He\'s still at the theology of humility phase, but think about the theology of humility. What the theology of humility has done is it\'s picked up on that late medieval, do what is in you, and it\'s taken it to the nth degree. To do what is in you is to realize that there\'s nothing one can do and therefore throw oneself humbly before God. Think of what that does to the medieval conception of church authority. Medieval conception of the church authority is a magisterial sacramental one. Where does the church\'s authority lie? It\'s in the administration of the sacraments. The administration of the sacraments. It\'s a sacramental authority. That\'s how the church, that\'s how you get into a state of grace, that\'s how you\'re kept in a state of grace. What does late medieval theology do and then Luther do to the nth degree? Undermines the notion of sacramental authority. If you can get grace through humility, then you don\'t need the sacrament. And if you don\'t need the sacraments, then church authority is fatally wounded at that point. Sacramental authority is fatally wounded. I don\'t think Luther knows that that\'s what he\'s doing as he\'s doing it. But that\'s what is happening. And thirdly, I think the third strand is, as Luther\'s 95 theses, Augsburg, and as his writings meet with more and more resistance from the church, the issue of the authority becomes more and more sharply defined in everybody\'s mind. Because Luther is having to more and more explicitly take on the authority of the church. Okay, now let\'s track this through to Leipzig and think about the significance of it. When Luther says, yeah well, many things were condemned. You\'re saying Amohussite and a Wycliffeite and they were condemned at Constance. Well, yeah, but many of the things they were condemned for are actually true. Think about what Luther\'s doing there. He\'s actually taking the debate about authority in some ways to a place it\'s never been taken before. Because there were men in the 16th century who would say, as there are Catholics today in fact, who would say yes, there are problems with a very, very high view of the papacy. Therefore we look to church councils in order to guide the church. What Luther\'s doing though is pulling that option away as well. An ex-response of course is, okay Luther, let me get this clear. You\'re saying the Pope is no safe guide. Now you\'re saying that councils are no safe guide. What\'s left? What\'s left? In some ways that remains the Catholic challenge to Protestantism. And I think it\'s at Leipzig in 1519 that the issue of authority comes into sharp focus for Luther. Up to this point, yes, he\'s been popping off at this particular issue, that position. He\'s been calling for a major overhaul of theological method. But now the full ecclesiological implications of what he\'s doing are laid out for all to see. Luther, you\'re going to have to completely rebuild everything from the ground up on some principle that you have not yet articulated. It\'s a powerful point, a powerful point I think that\'s being made there. So Leipzig then is key moment in Luther\'s development because it\'s at Leipzig that the issue of authority is brought into the open in a way that it has not been before. After Luther\'s clash with Eckert Leipzig, the rest of the discussion is something of an anticlimax. There\'s a debate about purgatory. But really after the debate about authority, this is a sideshow. And after the debate, I guess as many people who\'ve been involved in debates since, Luther did not feel that he\'d been able to give a full, an adequate account of what he actually wanted to say. So Luther writes up an account of the debate afterwards. You can find it in Luther\'s works. By the way, you can get the translation, the major English translation of Luther\'s works, which is now roughly around 60 volumes, is available on Logos. If you have Logos Bible software, you can get by individual volumes or you can buy Luther\'s complete works. It\'s Leipzig. In my mind, Leipzig is a watershed moment for Luther. I think it\'s the moment when he starts to eclipse Karlstadt. So in Wittenberg, Luther is starting to really be the sort of the alpha male in many ways. There isn\'t room in Wittenberg ultimately for Karlstadt and Luther. One of them will have to lose and it will be Karlstadt. It\'s also the moment when the real issue of the Reformation, the issue of authority, comes to the fore. People are often perplexed when Luther comments in the bondage of the will and says to Erasmus, I congratulate you, Erasmus, that you and you alone have put your finger on the point on which everything turns. You\'ve not bothered me with sideshows like purgatory and indulgences. You\'re the one guy who\'s focused on the big issue. Well, the big issue in the bondage of the will is really the perspicuity of Scripture. The bondage of the will is a text that I think is really about the perspicuity of Scripture. The bondage of the will is the immediate doctrine that\'s being discussed, but the real concern in the bondage of the will is the perspicuity of Scripture. And that\'s why Luther is able to say, well, I\'m able to say it\'s the main issue because the bondage of the will is the foundation of justification by grace through faith, but it also presses us to think about the perspicuity of Scripture. And Leipzig, I think, is the moment when this snaps into focus for Luther. Yeah? Would you say that this debate is more important than the high-pitched disputation? Okay, for those listening at a distance, the question is, would I say that the Leipzig disputation is more important than the Heidelberg disputation, the Leipzig debate and the Heidelberg disputation? Again, it would depend on exactly what you\'re asking. I think in terms of implications for theological method and understanding Luther\'s theology as a whole, the Heidelberg disputation is more important. In terms of clarifying Luther\'s thinking and bringing out into the open in an explicit way the issue of authority in a manner that is really a manner of something of crisis. You know, you can imagine X and say, okay, Luther, the Pope gets it wrong, the councils get it wrong. Are you telling me that you\'re the only man in the history of the church who got it right? That\'s a powerful argument. It\'s a powerful argument. I think Leipzig disputation on that front is more important. Yeah? At Leipzig, when Luther brings up authority, do you think he\'s been in separation from the church yet? Or is he still thinking just\... No, the question of separation is interesting. I don\'t think that Luther ever really thinks\... I mean, they throw him out. He doesn\'t separate from the church. And I think that\'s an important distinction. You know, matron was kicked out of the church. Luther would never think of separating from the church because then the danger is you\'re excluding yourself from salvation. Outside of the church, there is no salvation. They kick Luther out. He has no choice but to regard the church as highly, you know, as an instrument of the Antichrist ultimately. So no, I don\'t think he\'s thinking of separation. And I think if we take his\... And I\'ve changed my mind on this over the years, mainly because people who know more about it have persuaded me that I was wrong. You know, if you look at the writings of 1520 and look at the letter to Leo X, the style of the freedom of the Christian man, I think there is genuine hope there for some kind of way through the impasse that will preserve the unity of the church. And I think that continues. The Protestants as a whole continue really to engage in efforts at ecumen\... And to be fair, the Catholics too. It\'s not a one-sided thing. Protestants and Catholics continue to engage in ecumenical attempts at reunion really up until the Council of Trent. Trent is the great watershed that means that, you know, it\'s done at this point. Of course, the Protestants were invited to the Council of Trent. They turn up late. They arrive late. By the time they arrive, the issue of justification has already been dealt with. So the big issue, you know, it\'s finished for the Protestants as far as they can say at that point. But I don\'t think separation\... Luther would not have had that concept in his mind, you know, to separate from the church. You know, the Roman body ultimately would separate from him, but he will not separate from the church. Certainly in his mind he\'s redefining the church, redefining the church as that body in which the Holy Spirit dwells rather than that body which derives its magisterial and sacramental power from Rome by apostolic succession and by the laying on of hands. That will not be how Luther comes to understand the church. So perhaps I could\... The way to phrase your question is, do you think Luther is thinking at this point of redefining the church? And there the answer is yes, most definitely, because in his write-up of the Leipzig Disputation, he does redefine the church. And he does that really in the Castle Sermon when he says that Christ here is giving the keys to the church as a whole, that every believer holds the keys. He\'s redefined the church there, which Eck, being a sharp, clever fellow, sees immediately and makes the necessary connections back in history. Yeah? What about Eastern Orthodoxy? What is the play that they\'re having in\... Yeah, Eastern Orthodoxy is not, you know, yes, there is a church that exists that is not Roman Catholicism at this point, but it\'s a long way away, and it\'s irrelevant as far as Luther\'s concerned to him. The church is the Roman Church of the West that he\'s looking at. He\'s not engaging with Eastern Orthodoxy. There is the interesting case of the 17th century Metropolitan of Constantinople, whose name is Cyril Lucaris, who an Eastern Orthodox archbishop who writes a Calvinistic confession of faith and is executed for his troubles and written out of Eastern Orthodox history. But by and large, Orthodox is not an issue. And if it is, it\'s the church that exists over there as one. In the West, it\'s the Roman Catholic Church, or we now call the Roman Catholic Church. Roman would have been an unnecessary qualification in Luther\'s day because it was the Catholic Church. Okay, we now move to the year 1520. There is a sense in which Luther never has a more positive year of theological construction than 1520. Luther, like many, there\'s a British politician, Enoch Powell, who had a statement, I think I\'m misquoting it slightly, but the statement was, all political careers end in failure. It doesn\'t apply in America because you have term limits on things. But in areas where you don\'t have term limits, politicians tend to go on too long and ultimately come to crash and burn. Enoch Powell, I love being sort of pessimistic myself, love Enoch Powell. He was a sort of the prophet of doom of politics. Luther, in some sense, his life is a bit like that. Really, from 1525 onwards, Luther\'s career will, I wouldn\'t say take a nosedive because he remains the top man in Lutheranism, but he will live to see the Reformation peak and then start to degenerate. That actually reminds me of something I haven\'t mentioned but I should do at this point. Luther is a man of the medieval period. Another aspect of Luther\'s medievalism is this. He really thought that Jesus was about to return. There is a lot of imminent eschatological expectation in the late Middle Ages. And Luther is part of that. And Luther, certainly the early Luther, or the middle Luther, the Luther of the early 1520s, thinks that the Reformation is the great revival at the end of time, and that Jesus is coming and he\'s coming soon. And that helps us understand some aspects. It will help us to understand Luther\'s attitude to the Jews, actually, but it also helps us to understand some of the teaching that Luther puts forward in the early 1520s. One of the problems with evangelical appropriations of Luther, and there are many problems with the evangelical appropriation of Luther, not least the fact that evangelicals tend not to appropriate the things that Luther himself thought were most important. His views of the Lord, Supper, and Baptism, for example. One of the other problems with evangelical appropriations of Luther is the tendency only to appropriate a fairly narrow range of Luther\'s writings. We start with the 95 Theses against Indulgences. We don\'t really understand them because there\'s still a lot of medieval theology there, but it\'s a pretty cool kind of, you know, shaking your fist at the Pope sort of manifesto, or has become that. And we tend to end with the Bondage of the Will in 1525, because we can get predestination. And we also love the stuff of 1520. The problem is, all of this stuff, with possible exception of the Bondage of the Will, was written when Luther thought Christ was just about to come back. And there are certain things you don\'t do when you think Jesus is about to come back. When I woke up this morning, and, you know, if I thought Jesus was coming back by noon, I probably wouldn\'t have elected to spend an hour of my time on I-5 South, stuck in traffic. I did that because Jesus may return at noon, but I\'m working on the basis that that\'s unlikely, and therefore I need to be here to fulfill my earthly obligations in teaching you guys. Other things I wouldn\'t do if I thought Jesus was coming back pretty soon is, I wouldn\'t plan too much for the future. I\'d probably take out all my savings and buy the best sports car I could possibly afford, buy it and then drive it until Jesus did return and I could drive no more. You don\'t plan for the future. Luther doesn\'t do a lot of planning for the future, a whole lot of planning for the future, in terms of structures in the early 1520s. Thirdly, and most significantly, Luther doesn\'t do a whole lot of reflecting upon the complexity of the Christian life. We\'ll see this. Luther really does think that if you just preach the gospel, everything will be okay. Luther actually changes his mind on that in 1527, 1528, when it becomes patently obvious that just preaching the gospel isn\'t making all things okay. His exact phraseology is, we preach the gospel and the people lived like pigs. So it\'s just a sort of caveat as we come to look at the Luther of the early 1520s. A lot of great stuff here, but we need to remember Luther lived another 26 years and he wrote a whole heap more stuff and some of the stuff that he wrote later, he kind of scaled back on some of his statements that he wrote earlier because he realized that pastorally it was more complicated than he thought it was. When he thought Jesus was about to return, he didn\'t think you really needed to teach people ethics in any kind of positive way. Once he realizes that life is going to go on and maybe go on for a long time, the need for ethical teaching becomes more imperative. That\'s why it was so frustrating, you know, the whole recent debates about sanctification and the use of Luther by Tully and Travidion and his various allies. What was so frustrating was the way these men presented themselves as the heirs of Luther. Whereas in fact they were ignorant people who hadn\'t really read very much Luther. They\'d read the Heidelberg Disputation, they\'d read the freedom of the Christian man and that was about it. They didn\'t seem to have read the catechisms or if they had, had not actually reflected on the significance of the catechisms. And incidentally when Luther dies, surely before Luther dies, he says, the only works by him that are worth reprinting after he dies are the bondage of the will and the two catechisms. Nothing else he\'s written, he says, is worth preserving. So the catechisms are the key things. Back to 1520. Luther is growing in confidence at this point. He survived longer than anyone would have expected. He\'s not gone to Rome. He has political backing in high places, at least for the time being. But he\'s also seeing that the reform of the church is not going to happen quite as he thought. And what Luther does in 1520 is he writes three major treaties that in a sense lay out his manifesto for the reform of the church. And those three treaties are the Babylonian captivity of the church, the freedom of the Christian man, or sometimes translated in a more politically correct times I suppose, on Christian freedom or on Christian liberty, and his appeal to the German nobility. And broadly speaking, what these three works do is this. The Babylonian captivity is his manifesto for the sacramental reform of the church. He\'s thinking through the implications of his theology for the understanding of the sacraments. And the church in the Middle Ages, and Luther, Luther is saturated with the sacraments. The church is sacramental. The church he grew up with is sacramental. So if you\'re going to reform it, you have to address the reformation of the sacraments. The freedom of the Christian man is his trying to work out the implications for preaching and for Christian ethics of the way his mind has been moving along that soteriological line. If sin is death, if salvation is about a translation of status from death to life, not about a process, what does that mean for preaching? What does that mean for ethics, for good works? That\'s the question he\'s addressing there. And the third, the appeal to the German nobility is, well, if the church isn\'t going to reform itself, how do we get church reformation going? Well, one of the ways is that what we would call the secular authorities, the civil magistrate should take back to himself areas of power that the church has encroached upon, force the church to be the church by taking back those areas of the political sphere in which the church has become, ineradicably and from Luther\'s perspective, corruptingly involved. So Luther\'s writings of 1520, very, very ambitious in many ways. Very ambitious. Yeah? The appeal to the German nobility. We\'ll talk about that in more detail. What he\'s essentially saying there is one way to get the church reformed is for the princes to take back that which belongs to them. Tear it from the hands of the church. Well, weaken the church politically. Well, so what? The church is not for Luther meant to be a political body. It is a spiritual body whose weapons, whose tools are word and sacrament. And that\'s critical for Luther. The Babylonian captivity of the church then, just a few comments before we take our second break. Even the title is quintessential Luther. It grabs the mind, doesn\'t it? When I first came across Luther, I read Roland Bainton\'s wonderful little biography, Here I Stand, that to me I think is still perhaps the best introductory biography to Luther. Maybe Martin, Marty\'s little one for Penguin is as good, but Bainton, it\'s the first book he ever read on the Reformation. He always retained a soft spot for the book, that ignites your interest in something that becomes a passion. By the way, Bainton is an interesting figure. He\'s a Unitarian. He wrote two great biographies, one of Luther and one of Michael Servitus. The question is, why did he write such great biographies of Luther and Servitus when he was such a radical himself? And the answer I think is, well, it\'s easy for Servitus. He was a radical. But Bainton was an outsider. And I think it takes an outsider to capture the ethos of an outsider. Remember Dermot McCulloch, who\'s to my mind one of the greatest living Reformation historians, love his work, read anything I can by him. Dermot is an outspoken gay guy. And I remember him being asked, why, given the fact that you really abominate the sort of ideology that men you write about represents, how can you write so sympathetically about them? And his answer was, because I know what it\'s like to be an outsider. And these men were the outsiders in their day. And Luther\'s an outsider. He\'s having to remake the world. He\'s an outsider in the world in which he finds himself. But as I read Bainton\'s work, I came across this type, Babylonian captivity, and it just captures the imagination, doesn\'t it? It has that, you know, it throws your mind back to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews and all of the heartache that that involved in the Old Testament here. Psalm 138, you know, read that Psalm, that\'s a terrible Psalm in many ways, but that speaks of the agony and the frustration of being a people in exile. But it also throws your mind forward to the dramatic images of Babylon the Great in the Book of Revelation. So it\'s an image title. It plays to a pictorial imagination in many ways. It also plays upon the language of freedom, which Luther will do in On the Freedom of the Christian Man. And one of the interesting things we know is that Luther was part of a linguistic revolution that is taking place politically in the German-speaking lands at that point. If you\'d been around at the end of the 15th century, if you and I had been sitting in a tavern in Germany at the end of the 15th century and you were, we were poor peasants, and I had said to you, you know, what is it you want out of life? You\'d probably have said, I want justice. I want justice. That your political hopes, your existential aspirations would have been captured by the term justice. If we\'d been sitting in that same tavern in 1520 and I\'d said to you, what do you want out of life? You\'d have said to me, I want freedom. I want freedom. The language of liberty and freedom emerges in the year sort of round about 1520 as speaking powerfully to the way that ordinary people thought. I had a friend who\'d planted a church, PCA church, African-American church in Philadelphia. And the name of the church was Christ Liberation Fellowship. I remember asking him, why did you choose the name? And he basically said, if you\'re going to speak to the African-American community, you have to use the language of freedom because it resonates so deeply. It has such deep roots that we\'ve got to talk about freedom, freedom, and that resonates. Well, I think Luther, in using the language of captivity and the language of freedom, he\'s striking a deep emotional chord with his audience. This is language that speaks to ordinary people. They may not be able to read, but when they say to somebody, what is this Luther book on the Babylonian captivity about? Well, it\'s about the captivity of the church by wicked people and the need to free it or to liberate it from that. They\'re immediately going to be sympathetic, immediately going to be sympathetic. It will have a terrible consequence in 1525 because what happens is so many of the ordinary peasants assume that when Luther\'s talking about freedom, he means what they mean when they talk about freedom. And actually he doesn\'t. He\'s talking about something more subtle, more spiritual, something more sophisticated in many ways. And he will be seen as betraying them bitterly in 1525. But the choice of the language is significant. Here is a man using language that speaks to ordinary people. And I have to say one of the most remarkable things about Luther is his concern for ordinary people. He calls for a vernacular liturgy in 1520. He does not implement a vernacular liturgy until 1525, five years. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One reason is he says he wants to get the music right. A German mass needs German music. It\'s very interesting. But the other reason is he doesn\'t want to disturb people. He knows that change disturbs people. Now the 16th century is a time of remarkable social transformations anyway. The rise of cities, the decline of rural populations. The world is being transformed by trade and commerce in remarkable ways. It\'s a very uncertain world. And the one place where you could find some certainty and stability was the church. Now we tend to look on the Reformation romantically and think, well, you know, it must have been great when the Reformation rolled into town. All these people who were desperate, desperate to become Protestants, laboring under, you know, Catholicism, must have been so glad when the Reformation arrived. I don\'t think so. I think most people like the church. Guess what? Because it was the same as it was when they were younger. It\'s like watching those terrible programs from your childhood on the television. They\'re awful. And you almost hesitate. I love the Rockford Files. It was the greatest TV series I ever saw as a kid. I haven\'t watched it since because I\'m sure it\'s not as great as I remember it. I don\'t want it to be, I don\'t want the myth to be destroyed. But if you\'ve ever been involved in a church where they\'ve tried to change the Bible translation, then you\'ll understand. People don\'t necessarily want something that helps them intellectually. They want something that comforts them. And what comforts people is things remaining the same, generally speaking. And I think Luther is very concerned about disturbing ordinary people through too much change. It\'s interesting. Robert Wilkin is a leading Roman Catholic historian. He\'s writing a book on the development of religious liberty. And he was emailing me and asking me about the Reformation in France. I don\'t know too much about it, but in our first exchange I said to him, one of the great mysteries of France is that all of the social and economic conditions are there for the Reformation. France is consistently a nation that doesn\'t act predictably. It is the nation where the Holocaust should have happened. Germany is not the nation where the Holocaust should have happened, but France avoids it and Germany falls right into it. Same at the Reformation. France should have gone with the Reformation. It has a strong monarchy with every vested interest in breaking from the church. And yet the monarchy ultimately sides with the church totally unpredictably. And I made a comment to Robert in this email exchange. He said, you know, it\'s a great mystery to me why France didn\'t go Protestant. And he emailed back and he said, but perhaps the people were happy to be Catholic. And I thought that. And I thought, yeah, maybe that\'s the case. Here am I as a sort of a macro historian looking at the big things and saying, well, it should have gone Protestant, but actually maybe the people were quite happy being Catholics. Seems a sufficient explanation for the result. Don\'t assume that the people in Wittenberg want to become Lutherans. Another example of this with Luther is the debate over the catechisms of 1528. Big debate takes place about whether they should use the language of mass. Should the Lord\'s Supper be called the mass? And I like this discussion because it\'s one of these discussions where I think both sides have good arguments. Neither side is wrong. Ultimately you\'ve got to make a judgment call on it. The one side argue we need to drop the language of mass because we have a new theology of what\'s going on at the Lord\'s Supper. And that needs to be reflected in the language we use. The other side say, no, we\'ve disturbing people enough already. We need to use the old language of mass, but teach people now that it means something different. Let\'s give them the form of words and then put new content into it. I like it as a debate because it seems to me it\'s a good example of how in some pastoral discussions there is no obviously right or wrong answer. There are good arguments on both sides. Ultimately you can\'t do both. You\'ve got to come down on one side or the other. And your decision may well be determined by local conditions. It\'s Luther, Luther actually, who backs keep the language of the mass. That\'s why Lutherans will still talk about the mass. It\'s why Bach has a number of pieces, Lutheran Masses. Now here\'s Mass in B Minor. That\'s more of a Catholic piece. But Bach wrote a number of smaller pieces for Masses that were Lutheran Masses, Catholic language, Protestant content. But it\'s a good example I think of how seeing how the Reformers operated in church history is a reminder that not every pastoral question or question of church practice that comes up is necessarily the Reformation all over again. Not every question that comes up means that in taking one position you have to damn the position of the opposition and argue that it has no merit. In actual fact, I think that\'s an argument where, yeah, both sides have strong arguments. Neither side has a complete knockdown argument. Ultimately the decision has to be made on consideration of local pastoral conditions. You had your hand up. Take one question and then we\'ll take a break. Yeah, but quickly, so in the year 1520 he hasn\'t been excommunicated yet. He\'s not. 1520 is the year when the excommunication, the bull of excommunication is promulgated and will arrive in Wittenberg at the end of the year. But in 1520, at this precise moment in time, everything\'s up for grabs. Everything\'s up for grabs. So he\'s still teaching in the Catholic Church up until the time that he\'s\... He\'s part of the Catholic Church at this point. He won\'t be by the end of the year, but he is, as he writes these three great treatise, he writes them as a Catholic, strictly speaking, in good standing. He\'s not been found guilty of anything at this point. He\'s Catholic in good standing, writing as a member of the Catholic Church.