"Lutheran mysticism."

One of the things that we've been talking about this week, we've been talking theology and all sorts, is the... concept of mysticism.

And usually as Lutherans, we speak of mysticism and enthusiasm as the same thing.

So enthusiasm is defined by Luther to describe really first off the heavenly prophets, the types who believed that God was speaking directly to them.

And so then they showed up in Wittenberg and said, hey, you need to get rid of all of the statues and all of the paintings because you shouldn't have a graven image.

And they denied that the bodily presence of Christ was in the sacrament, that it was just bread and wine.

And you had very radical ones who would even say, you shouldn't even submit to the government because God told me that you should just rebel.

So you had the Peasants' Revolt.

and so that became known as enthusiasm the german being schwermer schwermer eye uh which would be uh kind of like a buzzy thing and enthusiasm has with it this idea that you find god within yourself so in godness right is what enthusiasm is so instead of finding god and his will in his external word you find him in uh just within some immediate you know connection that you have with him So today, the crassest versions of this would be like these prophets that go on TV and claim that they know when the end of the world is going to come and they know how to bless your life.

God, you know, I got a word from the Lord, you know, and they start talking that way.

Pentecostalism, charismatic.

And yet, and so Luther is condemning this as just from the devil.

It's anything that would claim to be the spirit of God that is not from the external word.

is from the devil and his enthusiasm.

And he describes in his small called oracles how Adam and Eve became enthusiasts, that the devil led them away from God's external word and into speculations and spiritualizing of their own in this attempt to be like God.

He also says here, you know, he gives these examples.

Let me just read.

I read the portion I read at the beginning was from the small called articles on the mass where Luther was describing the abuses of the mass.

And we'll get to that.

I want to return to that.

But I want to read this portion right here from his section on absolution, the power of the keys.

He says in issues relating to the spoken outward word, we must firmly hold that God grants his spirit or grace to know and accept through or with the preceding outward word.

This protects us from the enthusiasts, that is souls who boast that they have the spirit without and before the word.

They judge scripture or the spoken word and explain and stretch it at their pleasure as Munzer did.

So Munzer was one of the guys who claimed to be a prophet who led the peasants' revolt.

Yeah, so you don't have to obey the authority.