Martin Luther

Part one was the Enlightenment, and you have the likes of Edward Gibbon and Voltaire, who claim the...

Sorry, actually, part one was the Reformation, sorry, with Martin Luther, who... said anything to do with the Catholic Church was evil.

So he put the Crusades in that camp, although he did slightly change his tune on the Siege of Vienna, rather ironically.

Then part two is the Enlightenment with the likes of Edward Gibbon and Voltaire, who, because they become sort of more materialist, they find it harder and harder to understand how anyone could do anything for spiritual reasons, because they themselves, I think, could relate to that less.

He very appropriately did this deliberately on Halloween, on October 31st.

His name, of course, was Martin Luther.

Now the leadership at that time didn't like the implications of his views and ultimately the Diet of Worms, the Diet is a council and Worms is a location, don't get the wrong idea.

They excommunicated him as a heretic.

and they picked the four best plays and we haven't, I think we have them all somewhere, but the point is the four best are packaged for anyone that would like to promote that within their group somewhere.

It's available as an alternative diversion.

Another thing that's also worth doing, we haven't packaged a play for this, but it wouldn't be hard for an alert high school group to do their own research and write a play about Martin Luther and tie it to October 31st.

That's another possibility.

Now, one thing that stops the proliferation of books isn't censorship as you explained, but they're still very expensive well into the 18th century.

It's not as if Martin Luther invents the printing press and books are as cheap as anything we buy at Tesco or Walgreens today.

Because paper is still expensive into the 18th century.

You're relying on linen and cotton rags.

This has been a big topic, and we have had to break it up into multiple episodes in order to really do a deep dive.

And so up to this point, just to kind of give you guys a recap, we've hit Luther, we've hit Zwingli, we've hit Calvin, and we kind of ended the last episode talking about a little bit of a side conversation on baptism.

So Mike, why don't you just segue us in to a quick recap on the baptism? Because I know that's going to lead into our next topic, which is going to continue us down the path of the Reformation.

So I wanted to just bring this up because it's been a little bit of a while since we talked about this, but I think the next conversation we're having, this is a related topic because baptism and the upcoming topic has always been a very divisive issue within the church broadly, at least in Western Christianity, which is ironic.

And that was the main point of kind of tension between these branches that you explained in previous episodes.

So my curiosity and my question to you is, if baptism was a point of contention, were some of the other key sacraments a point of contention, things like the Lord's Supper or other things like that, knowing that baptism was definitely an issue? Yeah.

Yeah, so as a reminder as well for folks is that the three major Reformation fathers, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, they all agreed about the concept of baptism.

They did not think that believers' baptism, for example, was necessarily something that people should do.

Right.

So, you know, Luther will say it's the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls.

Calvin says it's the hinge upon which religion turns.

And so it's, The reformers really zeroed in on the doctrine of justification, I think, because they saw that there was – I'm trying to think how to answer this without – getting too broad in the question, which I'm trying to answer in the book itself.

When you read through the New Testament, you have to be able to reckon with the fact that Paul uses the term a little bit differently than how James uses the term a little bit.

And trying to just force every author to use it in exactly the same way is not going to get you good readings.

I would take that same principle and I would apply it to Paul, because I think that Paul has a way of using the language of justification that fits very comfortably with the Protestant kind of reformed or Lutheran account of justification.

But he also has a way of using justification that frankly doesn't fit very well, that does very much imply ontological renewal and regeneration.

Outside of Israel, probably one of the best trips we've ever been on.

Because you're at the epicenter of Protestantism with Martin Luther.

We went to the church where Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses.

I got to preach in the actual church Martin Luther preached in more than any other church in the world.

Did you

preach to our people or like everybody? No, our

Pause here for a second.

This is what the Reformation was all about.

So I'm thinking back to the Protestant Reformation.

You get guys who are coming out of the Roman Catholic church and you get like Ulrich Zwingli, who's a Swiss reformer, and he has a disagreement with John Calvin, who has a disagreement with Martin Luther.

So Luther, Germany, Calvin, French.

And they have their unique kind of takes on certain things.

Like Menno Simons.

Mm-hmm.

was why they call them Mennonites and Martin Luther's, why they call them Lutherans.

LNG White.

Only two did, and they lived to tell about it.

Martin Luther said, with God, one is always a majority.

And that's how David lived his life.

David saw a giant named Goliath.

And folks, the biggest part of our proclaiming his praises is joining together in the church's liturgy and hymns, Joining the generations that have come before us in singing the new song, even though it's been sounding for centuries, it remains new because it makes of us new men and women.

Martin Luther, the foremost reformer of Christ's church in the 16th century, wrote, This is the new song about the new kingdom, new creatures, new men, born not of law or of works, but of God and of the Spirit, who themselves are miracles and who work miracles in Jesus Christ our Lord.

And because the Holy Ghost commands us all to sing, it is certain that he also commands us to believe in the miracles.

Listen, says the Spirit, for you, for you, for you, it was done.