Lecture 7.docx

Roughly about where I hope to be on schedule. It\'s looking like most of the week will be, certainly today and tomorrow will be Luther. So we may get two days on other stuff, we may get a day and a half on other stuff. But I think Luther\'s worth spending the time on because he is so fundamental,...

Roughly about where I hope to be on schedule. It\'s looking like most of the week will be, certainly today and tomorrow will be Luther. So we may get two days on other stuff, we may get a day and a half on other stuff. But I think Luther\'s worth spending the time on because he is so fundamental, and also because he\'s actually different to the way most people imagine him. But his thinking is not quite modern evangelicalism in the 16th century, but is significantly different. So we\'re talking then about the three great treaties of 1520. Luther\'s really setting forth here a comprehensive vision for the church that he has not done thus far. The first work I want to look at is the Babylonian captivity of the church. Babylonian captivity was his attempt to offer an alternative or view of the sacraments. Given that the church, medieval church was highly sacramental and its authority was really constituted by and articulated through its sacramental ministry, revision of the sacraments is fundamental to any reformation project. Remind ourselves of course that the medieval church, there were seven sacraments. Let\'s remind ourselves of what they were. Baptism, Confirmation, Lord\'s Supper, the Mass, let\'s call it the Mass, Marriage, Penance, Holy Orders. And the last one, our final unction. I always mention this whenever I give this lecture. It used to be that I would challenge the students to name the seven sacraments and if they couldn\'t name the seven sacraments, they would then have to name the actors who played the Magnificent Seven. Brad Dexter being the one that nobody knew. There was always that seventh one. Of course, I think it was just two weeks ago, the last of the seven died. Robert Vaughan died I think two weeks ago. It was the last surviving act of the Magnificent Seven, which is I think one of the great westerns. Another of my passions is cowboy movies, not modern rubbish, but generally between about 1950 and 1970. I like to include the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westons, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Wild Bunch, but the two greatest westons of them all are\... Sorry? No, I\'m thinking, I would certainly include this. I\'m thinking of two from the 50s actually. Shane and the Searchers. Searchers is an amazing movie. Shane of course has a godfather connection actually. Jack Palance, who plays the Man in Black in Shane, should have got best supporting actor in 1952, but it went to whom? Frank Sinatra for the role he played in From Here to Eternity. And that was allegedly fixed by the Mafia, which provides the background for the Johnny Fontaine strand of the story in Godfather. Remember the horse\'s head in the guy\'s bed? That was to sort of fix the part for Johnny Fontaine. Well apparently, Frank Sinatra\'s lawyers threatened to sue Mario Butzo over the Johnny Fontaine character because it was obviously a take off of Frank Sinatra, who played\... I think Maggio was the character. From Here to Eternity is not a bad film, but it\'s nothing like Jack Palance. My youngest son who was not your archetypal child in stories, he didn\'t like soft toys. He liked little plastic cowboy figures. And he had one of them with a black hat that he called Jack Palance after the character in Shane. And he would sleep at night, not with a teddy bear, but he would have his head on his pillow and Jack Palance on the pillow beside him. And I always remember one night he knocked this figure off, and I was woken about 2 o\'clock in the morning with my son screaming, where\'s Jack Palance? Where\'s Jack Palance? So anyway, I used to ask the actors of The Magnificent Seven, but I was humbled one year when a student that I\'d ritually humiliated in that way emailed me some years later and said, I can now name The Magnificent Seven. I want you to name the actors who played the Dirty Dozen. And that sort of took it to the next level. I got as far as I think John Cassavetes and then drew out a bit of a blank. But those are your seven sacraments of the medieval church. Of the seven of them, Thomas Aquinas, if you read, and I do recommend you read Aquinas, agree with him or differ from him. He writes incredibly clearly. So many theologians write in a way designed to stop you actually understanding what they are really saying so that you think they are brilliant. Thomas Aquinas had this crazy idea that teachers are meant to teach and to do it clearly in a way that people understand and helps them to learn stuff. If you want to know how to communicate clearly, read a great teacher. Thomas Aquinas is a great teacher. He\'s worth reading on the sacraments because he makes the point that of all the seven sacraments, the single greatest is the mass because the mass actually contains Christ. The other sacraments sort of point to Christ in some way, but the mass actually contains Christ. The mass is the point in medieval piety, contemporary Catholic piety, where God comes to earth and meets with his people. Let\'s say if you go into a classic medieval cathedral, or I\'ve never been here, but I\'m guessing, you know, St. Patrick\'s Cathedral in New York or the cathedral, the Catholic Cathedral in Philadelphia, if you go into a well-designed Catholic church, your eyes will automatically be drawn to the altar because that\'s the most important thing that happens there. And the architect knew his theology. In my church, we meet in a converted bowling alley. I don\'t have a lot of choice about the architectural aesthetics of my church. It\'s the one building that I was able to lease in the town where my church is where there\'s a car park and we can actually meet for worship. So I\'m very grateful for it, but it\'s not the church I would design if somebody came along and said, here\'s \$100 million, buy yourself a plot land and build the church of your own What I would do is I would want to get an architect who understood Protestant theology because I would want him to build me a church where your eyes are drawn by the lines of the building to focus on what? The pulpit, because the pulpit in Protestantism is where God meets with his people. I\'m going to talk about this with the D. Minh class this afternoon, but preaching is not communication and information in Protestantism. Preaching is God meeting with his people through the proclamation of the word. Oops-a-daisy. Oh, do you want to grab some cloths? I kind of watched that happen in slow motion. But it was good to be so excited about God meeting with his people and the preached word that it all just went everywhere. Architecture is important, by the way, in churches. I think if you have the choice, it\'s good to have architecture done well. There was a very interesting dissertation when church became theater. It\'s a published PhD dissertation, which is not necessarily to commend it because often those books are quite boring. This is actually quite interesting. It\'s published by the University Press, and it\'s a study of American church architecture in the 19th century. And it shows how churches slowly came to look like music halls. The music hall was there first, and then slowly but surely, churches came to look like music halls. And today, when you think about the megachurches, what do they look like? They look like concert venues. They look like big concert venues. It reflects something. The aesthetics reflect something. It\'s not an absolute way, but when you choose to design your church building in a certain way, it is going to say something about your theology and your priorities, or lack thereof, one might say. But anyway, to go back, the mass is the most important sacrament in the church. And to be cut off from the mass would have been catastrophic. Again, we\'re Protestants, so the threat of excommunication from the Roman Catholic church doesn\'t frighten us particularly. I was invited to attend a gathering talking about transhumanism a couple of years ago, and every other person in the room was a Roman Catholic. And at some point, the subject of the current papacy came up. And they were all pretty conservative Catholics. It was interesting hearing the despair about the papacy. My only contribution that day was to start with, say, well, I am a schismatic, kind of under excommunication, and I can heartily recommend it. That was the comment I made to them. But excommunication is not something to be taken lightly in the Middle Ages. When Luther\'s threatened with excommunication, it is a serious thing because in theory, it cuts him off from Christ. And Luther\'s got to be absolutely certain that he\'s right in order to run that risk. So there\'s your seven sacraments. What Luther will do in the Babylonian captivity of the church, which is in many ways a reflection of how much of his theology is being made up on the go, is that in the main body of the text, Luther will reduce the sacraments to three, baptism, mass, and penance. And then in the conclusion, he\'ll say, well, actually, I don\'t think penance is a sacrament after all. The conclusion of the work pretty much contradicts the body of the work on that point. How do we make sense of that? I think we make sense of it by saying Luther is a work in progress. He\'s having to think fast. And he\'s having to build things from the ground up in a way that may have never been done before. Just as an aside, one of the common criticisms of Luther is people say, he\'s not a systematic theologian. That\'s typically people when they say things like that, it\'s because they want to get out from under systematic theology. That\'s a different story. I\'m going to go there. Luther\'s not a systematic theologian in that he doesn\'t write a systematic theology. Though I would argue that Calvin doesn\'t write a systematic theology either. He writes a handbook to help exegete scripture. But Luther is a remarkably consistent theologian. His development is consistent and his thought is pretty consistent. Does he contradict himself? Of course. It\'s like 120 volumes of Luther in German and Latin. If you write that much, you\'re probably going to contradict yourself at some point. But is the core of his thinking consistently worked out? Yes it is. Yes it is. Okay, back to this. He reduces the sacraments in the body of the text to three, in the conclusion to two. Let\'s see how he deals then. Look at his argument for this reduction. Well he\'s addressed the sacraments before. In 1519 he wrote a fairly cautious treatise on the mass. And then in 1520, in July, shortly before he will write and then publish the Babylonian captivity, he writes a treatise, a treatise of the New Testament that is the Holy Mass. And it represents a distinct change. Luther is really breaking with medieval sacramental thinking on the mass at this point. So you know 1519 he\'s hedging his bets. 1520 he\'s crossed over. It\'s a reminder of how dramatic these years are in his thinking. I\'m not a Tariq, I don\'t think the Tariq experience happened quite as Luther said it happened. But there\'s no doubt that his thinking changes rapidly between 1517 and 1521. And dramatically between 1519 and 1520. The Babylonian captivity is precipitated by a work by a Catholic theologian called Alveld. And Alveld wrote a treatise defending what was at that point standard church practice, which was that communion was only to be received in one kind. The cup was withheld from the laity. The priest could partake of the wine. The laity simply received the bread. Now why is this the case? Who develops a practice in the late Middle Ages? I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all, I made a comment yesterday in the D. Minh class that I wrote an article with a slightly tongue-in-cheek title some years ago called Why I Like Teaching Heresy. And the point was that I would actually often looking at errors in church history is very instructive. Not only instructive for seeing where they went wrong, but typically behind every bad heresy there is a good question and a legitimate concern. And we have to address, you know, it\'s not enough to say this is heretical, we have to come up with an alternative that addresses the good question. One in one kind, in part, I think had a good motivation. If you think about it, if you believe in transubstantiation, we talked about this yesterday, if you really believe in transubstantiation, then you believe that the bread and the wine become the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that means that you really would want to respect the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I\'m not sure, many of you are probably familiar with the Jack Chick tracts, they\'re great, you know, the cookie guard, you know, bow down to the cookie guard and the priest is waving the wafer around and demanding that people bow down and worship it. I myself am not entirely sure that it\'s fair to say that this is simple idolatry. Because if you genuinely believe Catholic theology, you really believe that that bread and wine has become the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So you\'re not, in your mind, worshiping bread and wine as if it\'s God. You think you\'re worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you think about that, that would certainly lead you to have a certain respect for the elements, wouldn\'t it? You\'d be distressed if at the end of the mass there were some wafers left and the priest just went and flushed them down the toilet, for example. Given the framework of piety within which you\'re operating, that would seem to be a somewhat profane and disrespectful act. The withholding of the cup from the laity was in part motivated by the fact that, well, you gave us a superb example of it. It\'s almost as if I\'d set you up to do this. Liquids get spilled. Even if that had been consecrated wine, you\'ve just spilled Jesus all over the floor. If you\'re a medieval Catholic priest, you\'d have been even more distressed than you were about that. So one of the reasons why this becomes a practice, I think we would have to say, you know, to grant it, at least to try to take it sympathetically at face value. There is a pious motivation in part behind this. Now you might respond critically and say, oh yeah, but then you\'re depriving people of the blood of Christ. Well, no, you\'re not. Because according to transubstantiation, the whole Christ is present in both. So when you eat the bread, you\'re eating the whole Christ\'s body and blood. When you drink the wine, you\'re drinking the whole Christ\'s body and blood. This may not be how, you know, the Roman Catholic who lives next door to you understands it. But this is how the church officially understands it. I\'d have to say, I always want Christianity, my Christianity, to be judged by the confessional documents of my church and not what I or any individual congregant believe, because I\'m pretty sure we believe some crazy stuff that my church has never held. But this is official dogma, so you can see how it kind of makes sense. I do think there\'s a darker side to this as well, though. I think it also helps reinforce the elite nature of the priesthood, that it is also a way of the priesthood making the point we\'re better than you. Human depravity being what it is, you know that whatever the motivation for this act might have been in the first place, it\'s going to morph into a kind of elitism at some point. So bear all that in mind. I\'ve tried to give a sympathetic account of it, and as I\'ve said, one of the tasks of this story is always to try to come at a thing and to try to think your way into how the people who were doing this were thinking. Alvell writes a defense of this. For Luther, this is problematic. And it\'s really problematic because exegetical reasons. For Luther, Christ does not withhold the cup, and therefore we should not withhold the cup. And one of the things that Luther is pointing to there, and I\'m not even sure he\'s thinking of it in these terms, but one of the things that I\'ve appreciated in reading about Luther is Luther has an incipient understanding of the limits of church authority. The church is not there to exert power beyond that which is given to it by scripture. And if scripture does not give you the right to withhold the cup, then the church has no right to withhold the cup. That\'s a useful thing to remember. One of the things I think that stops churches becoming cults is a self-conscious understanding of the limits of church power. So Luther objects to this on exegetical grounds, and secondly, he objects to it on ethical grounds. One of the things that emerges in 1520 is Luther\'s new model for understanding the priesthood. The priest is to be understood in terms of the theology of the cross. The theology of the cross has ethical implications. And one of the implications is, well, remember, how is power demonstrated, manifested by Christ in serving others? To say that a priest is invested with ecclesiastical power is to say that a priest should serve his people. And for Luther, the withholding of the cup is a contradiction of the servant nature of the priesthood and of the pastoral office. Incidentally, Luther would be comfortable talking about priests, and Lutherans typically are comfortable talking about priests. Again, as with the language of mass, they\'ve transformed the meaning somewhat, but they\'re comfortable using that kind of language. Luther says this, I do not urge that both kinds be seized upon by force, as if we were bound to this form by a rigorous command. But I instruct men\'s consciences so that they may endure the Roman tyranny, knowing well that they have been forcibly deprived of their rightful share in the sacraments because of their own sin. This only do I desire, that no one should justify the tyranny of Rome as if it were doing right and forbidding one kind to the laity. That\'s quite a nuanced statement by Luther there. Notice what he\'s saying. He\'s saying, I\'m not calling on congregations to rise up and rip the cup from the priest\'s hand during communion. I merely want to educate them to know that in depriving them of the cup, the church is acting as a tyrant and is not acting in accordance with God\'s word. And I\'m sending a warning to the Roman church to not to try to justify this practice on the basis of scripture because it cannot be done. It\'s essentially what Luther is saying there. And he will go on to reflect upon priests are not lords but servants, he says. And the model for ministry is therefore to be that of servanthood, which is to receive its basic dynamic from his soteriology. I think that\'s, I mentioned this last night at dinner to the Diemen people. I think that ministers remembering that they exist for the sake of their congregations, that their congregations do not exist for the sake of them, is very important. It\'s very important indeed. I remember a few years ago I was at a big conference and was asked to sit on a panel. And I was very nervous when I got up on the panel. It was in a big sports stadium and I was with all these guys who do this stuff regularly. The first thing I did was I made a joke to sort of cover my nervousness. And 6,000 people laughed. And I remember at the time thinking as I can say that, man, I could get used to that. And I really don\'t want to get used to that because that kind of stuff kills souls. I worry for guys who have that kind of adulation on a weekly or monthly basis. I don\'t know that any human being can withstand that and not ultimately end up thinking that their audience exists for the sake of them and not the other way around. I used the example last night. And my wife and I went to Birdland in New York a couple of weeks ago to hear one of our favorite jazz singers, Stacey Kent. She\'s an American lady, but she\'s based in the UK. We heard her 19 years ago before she became big at a small venue in Aberdeen. And at the break, we went to the bar. And I find myself at the bar standing next to Stacey Kent and her husband. So we have this nice chat. And I remember thinking afterwards, wasn\'t it nice that here we have this lady who\'s becoming really famous, but she\'s like hanging around with ordinary people in Charington at the bar. Well, we went to Birdland, which is not a big venue, but it\'s a very elite sort of jazz venue. And at the end of her concert, she\'s got another concert in an hour and a half\'s time. She says, oh, I\'m just going to hang around at the back now. If any of you want to come up and chat, come and hang out for 10 minutes. My wife and I said, wow, we\'re going to go and hang out. And we went hanging out with this lady who\'s played big venues in Paris. And we\'re just chatting. We mentioned we\'d seen her in Aberdeen. She remembered us, of course. But as we left that night, I thought, wow, there\'s a sermon illustration there. This is a lady who realizes that she exists for the sake of her audience. She understands who pays her wages. She\'s not one of these artists who, after they\'re done, disappears in regards to the audience as scum or idiots. She really values people turning up to hear her. And she gives her, you know, the last thing I would think I\'d want to do after an hour and a half concert when I\'ve got another one to do that night is go and hang out with the people who\'ve just been there and don\'t mean anything to me. But she did. And I thought 20 years of growing fame have not changed or spoiled her in any way. That\'s kind of the ideal for the pastor that I think Luther points towards when he talks about the pastor\'s servant. And I think it doesn\'t matter whether you\'re pastor of a church of a thousand or the pastor of a church of 25. You can get spoiled by adulation, I think. You really can. Just because you\'re not on that big stage doesn\'t mean you\'re not getting the same buzz from speaking to the small group on a Sunday. You hang on every word you say. And I think what Luther says here that the minister should always remember that he\'s the servant of his people, not the lord of his people. It\'s very important. And he draws that out of this debate about communion in two kinds, one kind or two kinds. Second thing that Luther goes after in the Babylonian captivity is transubstantiation. He does this in quite an interesting way in that if I were to say to you, you know, transubstantiation, you\'d probably say, oh, it\'s a heresy. Luther doesn\'t say that. Luther regards it as an error. And I do think that that\'s, I think I may have mentioned this, I can\'t remember if it was the trouble with teaching two different classes when your brain is fried is I can\'t remember what I said to the guys in the afternoon, what I said to the guys in the morning. But I hope I, maybe I said it before, but it\'s worth saying again. The distinction between an error and a heresy is an important one because it actually allows us to deal charitably with people we disagree with. Just because you disagree with me, say on baptism, doesn\'t mean that we can\'t respect each other as Christian brothers and be affectionate and express our unity in certain ways in the Lord. It\'s an important distinction. Luther uses this distinction really relative to transubstantiation. First of all, he says the real problem for Luther with transubstantiation is counterintuitive to us. If I were to say to you, if I explain transubstantiation to you and then say, what\'s the problem with transubstantiation? You\'d probably say to me that Jesus is really there. The whole Jesus is really there. And he isn\'t. He\'s only symbolically or spiritually there. That\'s not Luther\'s problem at all. Luther\'s problem with transubstantiation is that the bread isn\'t there anymore. That\'s his problem. It\'s the absence of the bread, not the presence of Christ that is the problem for Luther. Let\'s sort of unpack this. Well first of all, Luther thinks that transubstantiation is one of those examples of the illegitimate intrusion of Aristotle into Christian theology. It isn\'t. It\'s a use of a distinction Aristotle drew between accidents and substance, but in a way that contradicts Aristotle\'s metaphysics. For Aristotle, the only way you can know something is the fact that substances are manifested in their accidents. Imagine then a world where you could have a substance that isn\'t manifested in its accidents or where the substance is one thing and the accidents are another. That\'s a world where you can\'t know anything. This was John Wycliffe\'s criticism of transubstantiation actually. He\'s a very clever criticism in the 14th century. He says, if transubstantiation is true, we can know nothing. I seem to be sitting in front of a class of students at the master seminary because you each represent the kind of conglomeration of accidents that I expect from the master seminary. I know it\'s the master seminary because some students are actually wearing ties. It\'s a sort of cognitive dissonance when I see students in ties coming from Westminster. But my only knowledge that this is where I am and this is what I\'m doing is accidents. If we allow a universe where substance, that which a substance is, and accidents, those things that manifest the substance in a way that they can be known, are entirely separable, I can know nothing. You might just be a bunch of accidents. Maybe no substance there at all. Some of your essays may purely be accidents. Maybe no substance in them, just a pile of accidents. Some accidents more catastrophic than others, no doubt. I used to use the example of my hair. And then I said, you know, I used to have, my substance hasn\'t changed, but my accidents have. I used to have hair, now I have less hair. And then a clever wag of a student put up his hand and said, but wouldn\'t it be true to say that your hair loss has been substantial? I thought it was a very clever answer to it. But Aristotle would have looked to transubstantiation and said, no, no, no, this can\'t possibly work. Because if Jesus\' body and blood are there, there\'d have to be some accidental quality to allow us to know it. It would have to taste a bit like blood. The bread would have to bleed a bit. There\'d have to be a fleshy quality there. So Luther\'s wrong, I think, in saying it\'s an Aristotelian fudge. That\'s not correct. Aristotle would not have agreed with it. I think Wycliffe put that to death in the 15th century. But Luther does believe that the flesh and blood is present. Jesus says, this bread is my body. And for Luther, that demands that both bread and body are present. So Luther\'s position is that when the bread is consecrated, the body and blood of Christ truly join with the elements. Later, Lutheranism will talk about the body and blood of Christ being in, with, and under the elements in order to cut off all escape routes for the Reformed, essentially. But Luther genuinely believes that Christ is objectively present in the bread and wine. Now that\'s kind of weird to us. Does Luther therefore believe that unbelievers eat the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? You betcha he does. You betcha. In fact, that will ultimately be, that\'s the real practical point of difference between the Reformed and the Lutherans. The big question is, do unbelievers actually eat the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? I\'ve done this Reformed Lutheran dialogue book with my friend Bob Kolb, the Lutheran, and on the Lord\'s Supper chapter, that\'s where we come down and say we just disagree at this point. I don\'t believe that unbelievers actually eat the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Lord\'s Supper. And he does. That\'s the big difference between Lutheran and Reformed. This will not be a big issue for Luther at this point. But as we see when we come to talk about Luther\'s developing understanding of the Lord\'s Supper, the presence of Christ is important to him. But in 1520, because nobody\'s denying it, he doesn\'t spend a lot of time focusing on it and its significance. In 1520, he\'s much more interested in the word of promise that accompanies the Lord\'s Supper. For Luther, much more deadly in the mass than transubstantiation is the idea of the mass as sacrifice. Transubstantiation -- it\'s an error but you can live with it. Ultimately, Luther will regard transubstantiation as less of an error than Zwingli\'s view, which he regards as an abomination and excluding Zwingli from being a Christian. The real problem with the mass for Luther is the direction of action. The priest turns his back to the congregation. He doesn\'t do that anymore post-Vatican II, but in Luther\'s time the priest would turn his back to the congregation and raise the elements heavenward. He\'s making an offering to God the Father. For Luther, that\'s the problem because that has taken the sacrament of the Lord\'s Supper and made it into a work. The sacrament is no longer something God gives to us. It becomes something we give back to God. That\'s why preaching is so critically important for Luther. The word of promise -- how do you get benefit from the sacrament? Not simply by eating it, but by eating it and believing the promise that is attached to it. Eating Christ where he has given himself to you in the blood and the wine and doing that by faith in the word. By the way, one analogy Luther will use when he\'s talking about Christ being objectively offered in the sacraments to all. Think about preaching. Is Christ objectively offered to all in the preaching? You betcha. Does Christ come to all with benefit to their soul in the preaching? The unbeliever genuinely receives Christ in his ears when he hears the word preached. But if he doesn\'t believe the words, he receives no benefit from that act of preaching. For Luther, that\'s like the sacraments. Yes, Christ really comes in baptism. Really comes in the Lord\'s Supper. He\'s really offered to the recipients of baptism in the Lord\'s Supper. But only if the sacrament is grasped by faith is it of benefit. Otherwise it works to condemnation. Yes, the unbeliever eats Jesus and drinks Jesus\' blood. Really. And he does so, as Paul says, 1 Corinthians 11, to his own damnation. Luther puts it this way. He talks about the, by the way, I should have said that the, he talks about the shackles binding the mass. The first shackle that binds the mass. I think visual kind of dramatic language is communion in one kind. The second shackle is transubstantiation. And the third shackle is the sacrificial dimension of it. He says this, the third captivity of this sacrament is by far the most wicked abuse of all, in consequence of which there is no opinion more generally held or more firmly believed in the church today than this, that the mass is a good work and a sacrifice. And this abuse has brought an endless host of other abuses in its train. So that the faith of this sacrament has become utterly extinct and the holy sacrament has been turned into mere merchandise, a market, a profit-making business. Hence, participants, participations, brotherhoods, intercessions, merits, anniversaries, memorial days and the like-wares are bought and sold, traded and bartered in the church. On these the priests and monks depend for their entire livelihood. Luther there is sitting at the fact that because the mass has become a work, something we do, it\'s become something now that\'s traded on the open market. Have a mass said for yourself. Have a mass said for somebody who\'s died and gone before you. But you pay the priest to do it. Becomes a kind of marketing opportunity. There\'s a wonderful Graham Greene story, I\'ve forgotten the title of it, but about\... Greene, of course, was a sort of very liberal Catholic, but a lot of his books and stories address issues of real theological interest. And there\'s a short story about a businessman who\'s conducting an affair during the lunch hour and what he does is he pays his secretary to go and do penance for him each lunch time so that he\'s sinning. Penance is being done to cover his sin for him. And then at the end of the story, he just wants to know, make sure that the secretary\'s been doing what she\'s supposed to do. So he follows her one lunch time instead of going off for a liaison with his mistress. And he finds that his secretary has been conducting an affair with her boyfriend for all these years. And he has all of these years of penance to do in order to clear his own sin. It\'s this great sort of story of Catholic guilt and penance. And it\'s that kind of thing that Luther\'s trying to get at here, that in making the mass a work, the grace of God has become a sort of object that can be traded on the open market and the gospel is being denied. For Luther, the biggest sin, the most fundamental theological area you can ever make is to confuse the law and the gospel, to take that which is God has done for us, to take the promise of God and make it into a command or make it into an action that we do for God. And for Luther, the mass is gospel. It\'s something that God does for us. What the church has done is turned it into something that we do for God. So that\'s his polemic against the mass and his proposal instead that the mass be replaced. We need a vernacular liturgy because for the mass to be performed legitimately, it has to be connected to promise. And to be connected to promise, the word of promise has to be proclaimed. So here we see really very much the beginning of the Reformation emphasis on the fact that sacraments are not valid unless they are accompanied by the preaching of the word. You can have the preaching of the word without a sacrament, but you can never have a valid sacrament without the preaching of the word accompanying it. Yeah? Was he also concerned about Christ being offered more than once or was it just given the word? Was he also concerned about Christ being offered more than once? I\'d have to go back and look for that specific objection. Of course there\'s some debate, you know, in Catholicism itself it\'s not entirely clear to me if the mass is a re-offering of Christ or a reapplication of the one offering of Christ. That\'s the kind of distinction that some Catholic theologians try to make. I\'d have to go back and look at the Babylonian captivity to see if Luther addresses that kind of thing. I mean, it\'s one of the objections that Zingley has to Luther\'s view of the Lord\'s Supper is that Christ has to keep returning. Christ doesn\'t return until the end of time, Luther. Every time you consecrate the bread and the wine, Jesus has to return again. You know, it\'s not a particularly strong argument I don\'t think, but it will form part of the polemical litany in the clash with Zingley. Baptism. Baptism, the problem is different for Luther. There\'s no obvious money-grubbing problem here. Everybody gets baptized, the church is not selling baptisms, it\'s not a marketing opportunity. The problem for Luther is that baptism has been trivialized. Again, that\'s odd to us. We tend to think of the Roman Catholic Church as having a rather exalted view of baptism. In actual fact, Luther, counterintuitive rebel as always, comes in from the other side and says the problem with Roman view of baptism, it\'s been trivialized. What does he mean by that? Well, of course, Luther thinks that baptism has been trivialized because it\'s simply part of healing the wound that is sin. It\'s not part of resurrecting that which is dead. Luther would say, you know, look at baptism. I can\'t do this in this class because none of you are Presbyterians, but typically in my class at Westminster I\'ll say, okay, any of you had your children baptized, a few hands will go up. Sometimes I baptize them myself and I\'ll say, what time do I baptize your child? And I say, well, I can\'t remember, probably around about 11.45 on a Sunday morning. Yeah. So, okay, 2 a.m. Monday morning, is the baptism still working? And the answer is, well, actually the baby was awake and screaming at 2 a.m. in the morning. He said, oh, man. You know, baptism didn\'t work too well at dampening down sin then, did it? You know, the sin was resurgence by 2 a.m. in the morning. There are no Pelagians who are new parents at 2 a.m. in the morning. It is impossible to believe in Pelagian theology as a new parent at 2 a.m. in the morning. In a similar way, I think it\'s impossible to believe in Pelagian theology as a parent of teenagers. If you are a parent who is a Pelagian, that is the triumph of hope against experience, I feel. But that was how Luther felt baptism was being treated in the medieval church. It was being used simply to sort of quench the power of sin and not doing a very good job of it. For Luther, baptism was not about quenching the power of sin. Baptism was about dying and rising again. Every moment of every day, Luther says, is baptism. Baptism is performed once with water but is the whole of the Christian life. What is the Christian? The Christian is the person who is constantly dying and constantly rising to newness of life. Baptism is a mere outward act but for Luther, the agent in baptism is God. Thus you see, Luther says, you see how rich a Christian is. That is one who has been baptized. Even if he would, he could not lose his salvation, however much he sinned, unless he refused to believe. For no sin can condemn him save unbelief alone. All other sins, so long as the faith in God\'s promise made in baptism returns or remains, are immediately blotted out through that same faith or rather through the truth of God because he cannot deny himself if you confess him and faithfully cling to him in his promise. It is not baptism that justifies or benefits anyone. It is faith in that word of promise to which baptism is added. This faith justifies and fulfills that which baptism signifies. So baptism, it\'s almost in there some ways pointing towards the reformed understanding of baptism as being a seal on the gospel. That which baptism signifies, that which baptism offers is the promise in Christ and that is all powerful for Luther. He says, Satan, though he could not quench the power of baptism in little children, nevertheless succeeded in quenching it in all adults so that now there are scarcely any who call to mind their own baptism and still fewer who glory in it. So many other ways have been discovered for emitting sins and getting to heaven. Luther looks at what\'s going on in the church and says, this is all a result of the fact that people have forgotten their baptisms. Yeah? So you didn\'t call the baptism gave you salvation, it was through faith, but why would the constant looking back at it, like wouldn\'t he say that if you weren\'t baptized that you could be saved? Could you be saved without being baptized? I\'m not sure I\'ve ever asked that question of Luther. I think he would certainly have held minimally he would have been a good medieval on that and would have regarded the desire for baptism for a child stillborn or something to be, to have been sufficient. Baptism does save to the extent that baptism is when you are offered Christ first and brought into the church, but it\'s trust in the promise. It\'s not the water in and of itself, it\'s the promise attached to the water. Another objection sometimes would be made and Luther actually deals with this one is, but all this talk about remembering baptism, you\'re in a baptism, how can you remember being baptized as an infant? Well Luther\'s response to that is, is your mother important to you? Yes she is. Does she shape the way you live your life? Yes. Why is she your mother? She gave birth to me. You see where this is going. So what was it like to be given birth to? Well I don\'t remember. So you don\'t need to actually remember the act. You just need to know that it was done and remember what the act signified. That would be Luther\'s response. But baptism again, it\'s one of these areas where I think the Reformed and even more so evangelicals find Luther difficult because he does have a very high view of baptism. He\'s an infant Baptist and his language of, you know, when did you become a Christian? When I was baptized. When the devil tempts me, what do I say to him? I don\'t say, well I signed a decision card on such a day, nor do I say, even say, you know, I believed on a certain day. He said, I\'ve been baptized. The Lord placed his mark on me. And that baptism, what was offered to me in that baptism, I now grasp by faith and therefore you cannot have me. Again as with a lot of these things, I think chatting to some friends who were brought up as Lutherans and who later became evangelicals or Reformed, again, and I already hinted at this when I was talking about, you know, your Catholic neighbors next door. Often what a church teaches and what people and even some of its priests or pastors believe are different things. And certainly I have known Lutherans who\'ve left the Lutheran Church because they were taught that they were regenerated baptism and there was never any existential urgency to believe pressed upon them. That\'s not Luther\'s position. But it is the position of certain of those within the Lutheran Church, I think. I don\'t think it should be, but that\'s what it has become. So what emerges in all this, as I say, is the importance of the Word. The promise is vital to the importance of the sacraments. They don\'t operate in and of themselves. The Mass could be said in Latin and it didn\'t matter because it wasn\'t important for the congregation to understand the words of the Mass. It was important for the priest to say the words of the Mass in order that the bread and wine would become the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. For Luther, the congregation need to understand the words because as they eat the bread and drink the wine, they need to grasp the promise. Just as another element of this, note here, the emphasis in Luther at this point is on promise. That will change. By the time he gets to 1529 with Zwingli, all the emphasis will be on presence because that\'s the issue they\'re debating. At this point in time, Luther\'s really accenting the promise as the important and vital thing. Final thing today and then I\'ll throw it open for questions. Penance. For Luther, penance has been evacuated of meaning by the Papists. They take the words about loosing and binding and have lost sight of the promise and have used these now as a way of lording it over congregations. You don\'t do as I say, I will bind you. For Luther, the purpose of penance, of hearing someone\'s confession is twofold. One, to preach the law to them in order to convict them of their sin and then to proclaim the gospel to them and offer them Christ, proclaim salvation to them when they despair of themselves and want to turn to God. And it\'s been changed into something that is kind of institutional that the church can decide to use the power of the keys to bully and cajole. There\'s a comment, Luther maintained the practice of one-on-one private confession for himself until the day he died. It was never made a rule in the Lutheran Church because Luther felt that if you made it compulsory, you\'re making it a law. And the Bible doesn\'t say that you have to confess your sins one-on-one like that. But Luther found it personally and pastorally very, very useful to do that and found it very, very useful to have somebody press the law on him and then press the gospel on him. And I think it connects to his understanding of the word that comes from outside. Luther understood that the word spoken to you by another is always more powerful than the word you speak to yourself. Incidentally, it\'s one of the reasons why I don\'t like multi-site campus ministries. There are many reasons I don\'t like that, but one of them is I actually think it is different being preached through via a screen than it is to being preached to by somebody who\'s actually in the same room. I can\'t quite articulate why, but there is something confrontational and personal about bodily presence that is difficult to communicate through a screen. I don\'t know, but I\'m sure you guys out there at the far corners of the universe, you are experiencing this class in a different way to the people who are here. You are kind of one step removed in some ways from what\'s going on. You don\'t have the direct bodily confrontational aspect to it. I think Luther understood that having somebody look you in the eye and see into your soul made a powerful difference. That\'s not to say that if you can\'t get out on church on a Sunday that watching a church service online isn\'t better than nothing. It\'s certainly better than nothing, but I might want to say it\'s not a lot better than nothing. It is better than nothing, but not by much. So much better is actually being there, rubbing your shoulders against somebody in the pew next to you and seeing the guy in the pulpit looking directly at you as he makes some biting application of his sermon. And I think Luther, obviously Luther didn\'t have to wrestle with the issue of satellite campuses. What he did to an extent, they called them pluralities and the Reformers were against them because they thought ministers having more than one parish was led to inept pastoring. So he would have had an opinion. It was not electronically mediated, but it amounted to functionally the same thing. But I think Luther did grasp the importance of personal interaction in that way. By the way, just in time, you notice they never pipe the band in. Typically the band\'s always on site. For some reason, the bodily presence of the band is significant in a way that the bodily presence of the minister is not. I wonder why that is. So penance then, Luther really replaces it with, I suppose the modern day equivalent we might say, if we were to find an analog today, perhaps counseling touches on this. I\'m a big believer that if people listen more carefully to what\'s preached, more pastoral problems would be solved routinely just by hearing what\'s preached from the pulpit. I think to some extent, emphasis on counseling derives on the fact that we live in a world where from the moment we\'re born, we\'re told we\'re special and unique. And therefore, of course, our problems must be special and unique and need one-to-one treatment. No, we\'re all pretty much the same. And most of our problems could actually be sorted out if we listen to what\'s preached in the pulpit week by week. I remember a few years ago giving some money to my alma mater, University of Aberdeen. And the following year, they telephoned me and I gave them money, but I gave them some more. And I read some report that said, typically if people are asked to give one year, they\'ll give an amount. And then if you phone them back and ask them again, they\'ll give 25% more or something. I\'d given exactly 25% more. And I thought, wow, I\'m not unique. I behave just the same as everybody else behaves in these situations. Most of my problems are probably pretty routine and not unique and can be solved by listening to what\'s preached in the pulpit. That\'s not to say that there aren\'t people who\'ve been unique in extreme circumstances who need one-on-one help, but by and large, not as much of it, I think, as is offered today. But if we have an analog, that was my rant of the day out of the way. If we have an analog, perhaps it\'s kind of like one-to-one counseling that Luther\'s talking about here. But for him, the one-to-one thing was always, he always maintained it for himself. It was not at the same level of preaching because preaching was, you know, preaching, yes, ministers had to preach in the Lutheran church, but they didn\'t have to take one-on-one confessions. That would have made something that the Bible didn\'t require into something that was required. And for Luther, any believer can pronounce forgiveness to anybody else. You come up to me at lunchtime and say, I\'ve committed this terrible sin and you outline it to me and I say, well, brother, you know, I can see your repentance, but don\'t worry, Christ has covered your sins, you are forgiven. Any believer can do that. And notice as well, Luther would argue that what you do when you do that, like when you preach, it\'s not simply declarative, it changes things. When the Word is preached for Luther, the Word changes things. When I say to you, you are forgiven, you are at that point made forgiven. When Luther preaches, yes, there\'s a sense in which everybody is justified when he preaches, but they also become justified as they preach and grasp the Word by faith. Remember what Paul says in 2 Corinthians, be reconciled to God, be being reconciled to God. He\'s writing to Christians who are reconciled to God and are commanded to be reconciled to God. When the Word is proclaimed, something changes. Those who are reconciled to God are reconciled to God again. The Word is not merely declarative or descriptive. I don\'t know if you\'re a pastor and you\'ve performed a wedding, but one of the---there are a number of powerful things that occur in a wedding service. One of the most powerful to me is when you say, you know, who gives this man to be---who gives this woman to be given to this---sorry, I don\'t do gay weddings. I imply that by saying, who gives this man---nope, never done a gay wedding, never intend to do one. Who gives this woman to this man? Don\'t tweet that, it would look absolutely terrible. Who gives this woman to this man? And the father of the bride says, I do. And then he passes his daughter forward and he steps back. And something\'s happened. He\'s got less and the new guy suddenly got greater. It\'s a powerful moment in the service. Liturgy is powerful. Sometimes prioritized the word, but sometimes actions are powerful as well. And then at some point in the service, I will say, I now pronounce you man and wife. When I do that, am I describing something? No. I\'m actually bringing into existence a state of affairs. Every time I preach the gospel, every time you preach the gospel, you\'re bringing something into a state of affairs. You are bringing those who refuse Christ under condemnation and you are bringing those who grasp the word by faith through the gates of paradise. That\'s what you\'re doing. It\'s powerful. Preaching is not declarative. Worst introduction I ever had, I find I don\'t like introductions. They may be very self-conscious, but when somebody introduced me and said, Dr. Truman will now come and explain the Bible to us, I remember thinking, I\'m not going to explain the Bible to you. You want the Bible explained, go home and read a commentary. It will do it a whole lot better than I do. I\'m going to proclaim the word of God to you. And that is not simply explaining the Bible. That is bringing into existence a spiritual state of affairs. Okay, throw it open for some questions then. We\'ve got 10, 15 minutes. Not enough time to begin the new section, but time to take some questions. Yes, sir? When Luther speaks of the word of God, the member who argues that he primarily means to say Christ himself, not so much the Word of God. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, the word of God, the term has historically always been somewhat ambiguous because of course theologians use it both for the second person of the Trinity with biblical sanction and for the oracles of God with biblical sanction. I think it would depend on which passage of scripture you are looking at and which passage Luther was referring to. I think when he talks about proclaiming the word of God, yes, he means proclaiming Christ and him crucified. But I also think that that does not exclude him, meaning that of course, how do you proclaim Christ and him crucified? By expounding scripture. So I\'m not sure that one could draw a really neat and sharp distinction there. I think in Luther\'s mind, the two are somewhat inseparable when it comes to the act of preaching. To preach the word is to expound scripture and it is to proclaim Christ and him crucified. So I\'d want to go and look at that. One of the things about a lot of, certain amount of scholarship that surrounds the Reformation and I would, and this is not to use the Lutheran term, I don\'t want to impute this to Lindbergh, I\'d have to go back to Lindbergh, I\'d have to go back and look at it. But there has been a tendency in some circles to minimize the extent to which language of the word of God refers to scripture. And that attempt has often been driven by a desire to articulate an understanding of scripture which separates the reformer\'s understanding of scripture from that which is clearly articulated in the 17th century by the reformed and Lutheran orthodox and to make it more amenable to the kind of articulation of the doctrine of scripture that we find in say, Karl Barth in the 20th century. It may be that Lindbergh is playing off that a little bit. I don\'t know. I\'d have to go and look at exactly the passage and see exactly what he\'s saying. One thing I would say is that typically when the 16th century guys talk about inspiration, they are referring it to the act of preaching and not to the writing down of scripture. But that is not to say they didn\'t believe in the inspiration of scripture at all. But they had a powerful understanding of the inspiration of preaching as well. Most dramatically expressed in the second Helvetica confession of 1566 when in the very first chapter Heinrich Büllinger says here, we believe that when the word of God is proclaimed by those legitimately called, i.e. ordained pastors, it is the very word of God. The Latin there is very strong. The word of God itself is what the Latin says. And that\'s interesting. When the word of God is proclaimed, it is the very word of God. What does Büllinger mean by that? He doesn\'t mean by that that you should record Truman\'s sermons and then stick them into the biblical canon. Clearly he\'s using the word of God somewhat flexibly there. But I think what he means to say is we believe that it comes with the full authority of God. This is that the agent, the agent of the effectiveness of the word that is proclaimed from the pulpit is ultimately not the preacher but is the God who speaks through the preacher. That\'s what I think Büllinger is saying there. A very highly exalted, the Reformers had a very highly exalted view of preaching. Incidentally I think that a good theology of preaching is foundational to preaching well. I think that seminaries generally teach the technology of preaching, the technical aspects are well, but don\'t spend a lot of time reflecting on the theology of preaching. And I think that\'s just as important because understanding the task of performing always enables you to perform the task better. Although he does high criticism all over the show in it, I would recommend that everybody read P.T. Forsyth\'s Positive Preaching in the Modern Mind. It is I think the best book I\'ve read on the theology of preaching. Forsyth was pretty liberal himself in terms of his view of Scripture, but his theology of preaching is absolutely spot on. Yeah. As we think about the Reformation, a lot of times we think about the recovery of the doctrine of justification. And I\'m just wondering before the Reformation in the Middle Ages, the average person, would they have known the Gospel or who would have known the Gospel? Who could have been saved? Does that make sense? I think, well, first of all, a distinction that we can be somewhat uncomfortable with, the point which is nonetheless true, is that an awful lot of people are Christians, believe a lot of nonsense. It\'s interesting you say the recovery of justification by grace through faith. I\'m betting not one in ten evangelical pastors can probably give you a thoroughly accurate account of the doctrine. Well, if that\'s true for pastors, what about lay people? It\'s amazing you preach a sermon on justification and you think that you\'ve absolutely aided out clearly and somebody will come up to you afterwards and obviously have completely misunderstood what you said. All that is to say, I ultimately don\'t think that we\'re saved by our belief in justification by grace through faith. We\'re ultimately saved by our belief that Christ is our Savior and has worked and achieved salvation on our behalf. And I think within that framework, it\'s a sliding scale of knowledge. To some extent, it depends on an individual\'s ability. In our session when we interview new members, it\'s never happened, but I could imagine when if somebody with Down\'s syndrome or great learning difficulties came before our session for interview for membership, we would set the bar for membership somewhat lower than we would for somebody who\'d grown up in the church and for a wonderful way should know better. So I do think there are all kinds of variables that play into the question you\'re asking. How many people would have known the gospel in the Middle Ages? Well, I think the medieval church has quite a lot going for it. I think the medieval church is Trinitarian, has good grasp of the identity of who God is. The medieval church is incarnational. It understands who Jesus is. The medieval church has a rich understanding of atonement of Christ\'s work on the cross to the extent that the Reformers by and large are merely riffing off or modifying slightly models of atonement that we find throughout the Middle Ages. It really comes down to justification. The Middle Ages, do they have a good understanding of grace as it relates to predestination? I would say yes, Thomas Aquinas clearly understands that God\'s love is prior and active and not reactive. Aquinas would have no problem with Luther, the final thesis of the Heidelberg Disputation. So it really comes down to that point of justification by grace through faith. And that really is a doctrine that is articulated with singular clarity at the Reformation and not I think beforehand. You can find traces of it. Each element of it is precedented to some extent, but you don\'t find anyone who expresses it with quite the same precision. And on that level I\'m inclined to say, well, I would want to say the church is an institution in the Middle Ages that she was defective on that point. Would I want to say that the church was not a Christian church? No, I wouldn\'t want to go that far. And does that mean therefore that I\'m committed to believing that there were many Christians in the medieval church? Yes. And when I look at Foxe\'s Book of Martyrs and I see some of the people that are being heralded as the precedents of Protestantism because they\'re being persecuted by the medieval church, some of them aren\'t Trinitarians. Some of them don\'t really believe in the Incarnation. If anything, they\'re worse than the official church there is. So that\'s a very long-winded way of saying I would want to answer that question in a nuanced way, in a charitable way. And ultimately I\'ve got to leave it to God as to whether any individual is a Christian or not. But I wouldn\'t see being born in the Middle Ages as meaning one could not possibly come to love Jesus as your savior because so much truth is contained in amongst a lot of garbage. And that\'s where I would go on the modern-day Catholic Church. I\'m really with Jay Gresser, Maitran, and Christianity and liberalism. In Christianity and liberalism, Maitran makes a distinction between liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. And he says liberal Protestantism, it isn\'t Christianity in any shape or form. Denies supernaturalism, denies the Incarnation. Then he comes to Catholicism. What do you mean about Catholicism? And he basically says, I think Catholicism contains enough of the truth to be Christian, buried under a whole heap of unchristian garbage. And I think that\'s where I would be on the Catholic Church. He would ask me, is the Catholic Church a safe guide to the gospel? Not at all. Do I have individual Catholic friends? And I would say in conversations with them, wow, they genuinely do seem to rest on Christ as their savior. I\'m not quite sure how they do it in amongst all this other stuff. But they genuinely seem to do that. I\'m prepared to be sort of charitable and to say, yeah, knowing what some Protestants believe that I\'m prepared to accept as Christian brothers, I have to be charitable. I have to be charitable and leave it to God to make the ultimate decision on these things. Yeah? I want to put that one intensity of the church. Do you think that Luther\'s lectures on Galatians and Romans played a big role in it, in his understanding of sacraments? Yeah, I think so. The sacraments and more so in Galatians, the emergence of the law, gospel, opposition or dialectic that is so fundamental, not only to Lutheranism but to Protestantism. I mentioned to somebody earlier, Zacharias Assinus, the author of the Heidelberg Catechism, also writes a commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. So we can assume that he knows what he\'s talking about when he writes a commentary on something he himself has written. And in the preface to that, the law and the gospel, it\'s one of the first things he goes through, as Ezra says, the law and the gospel. It\'s absolutely fundamental to get this distinction right in order to truly understand the Bible. And of course, that plays directly into his understanding of the sacraments because if the sacraments are connected to the gospel, they have to be attached to promise. And you see, that\'s why he\'ll rule out marriage. There\'s no Christological promise involved in marriage. Yes, he would absolutely agree that marriage is a powerful and profound analog of Christ and the church. But it\'s not a sacrament because there\'s no promise attached to it. Penancy goes back and forth because really with penance, what\'s the sign? Penance is just the word in a smaller form for it. Holy orders, it\'s not a gift. It\'s not a gift. It\'s not giving Christ. The relunction isn\'t giving Christ. Confirmation. Lutherans do get confirmed, but it\'s not a sacrament. So yes, I think we have to say that the law gospel opposition he develops in Galatians shapes how he understands the sacraments because it brings to the fore the need for anything to do with the gospel to be tracked back to promise. If it\'s gospel, it has to connect to promise. And what the sacraments are are signs that connect to promise. Now how they are signs is where he will come to disagree with the Reformed in that for the Reformed, certainly for Zwingli, they are purely symbolic. Luther would say, no, they\'re not symbolic signs. They\'re signs that bring that which they promise. So what I love, you know, the great thing about Luther is he writes so much and he changes his mind in these years that you can really, you can trace out how, yes, this is a great mind in action. He\'s facing these issues and he\'s constantly revising his theology to account for, you know, think about the Reformation writ large. The Reformation is constantly changing the rules of the game. What does the Reformation do? Completely transforms pastoral care. And having transformed pastoral care changes the kind of questions that Christians are asking which demands further theological revision and further change of pastoral care. Think about it. Nobody in the Middle Ages, the church taught that you weren\'t supposed to be assured of salvation. So guess what? Nobody really struggles with lack of assurance because they\'re not meant to have it anyway. So nobody ever has to develop pastoral care of those who struggle from lack of assurance. Luther and more so Calvin come along and say, assurance, knowing that God is gracious to you, that is the foundation of the whole thing. Guess what happens? People start struggling with lack of assurance at that point because it\'s what they\'re supposed to have but some of them don\'t have. So what then has to happen is there has to be reflection on, well, how do we adapt pastoral care to deal with this new category of pastoral problem with all this new theology and practice we\'ve got? How does our new understanding of the sacraments connect to this new pastoral problem? Some pastoral problems, perennials, adultery, etc., etc., you know, the hardy perennials. But some are new problems generated precisely by the Reformation. And it\'s the same in every age. Every age, yes, sin\'s the problem but sin manifests itself in different ways in different ages and we have to understand the pathologies of our day. So the church has to constantly be rethinking how it does things, not in a way that means we throw out the gospel and just adapt it because society\'s changed but constantly thinking, how do you deal with, you know, I remember sitting in a session meeting talking about a congruent, former congruent who was addicted to pornography and not just to pornography but to a particularly weird kind of pornography. And I remember turning to the oldest man in my session, a man in his late 70s, and saying to him, did you ever believe when you became a minister in the church that you\'d ever have to have a discussion about how to deal pastorally with this problem? He said, no. New pastoral problems. And the Reformation, because it\'s changing the theology, is generating new problems that in some ways that theology in the form that was not immediately capable of answering. That\'s why, for example, on the issue of assurance, by the time you get to the 17th century, the Westminster Assembly are making nuanced distinctions in faith that, yes, you can have true faith but lack assurance. That was something that, you know, certainly Calvin didn\'t emphasize. For Calvin, overwhelming emphasis is upon assurance as the essence of faith. That\'s changed by the 17th century, partly, I think, because Calvin\'s answer is shown to be experientially and pastorally a little bit inadequate and not to handle the normal experience of Christians sitting under Reformation preaching.