Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program
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that brings up-to-date
news, views, discussion,
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and analysis on religious
liberty events in the US
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and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine
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and my guest on the program
Dr. Nick Miller, a lawyer,
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author, what else do
we want to put there?
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Professor of church history.
Professor of church history?
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Yes. And I could go on and on.
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Andrews University.
At Andrews University.
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I know this is pretty big
with you envy at the moment
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but we can't miss
too many opportunities
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to remind our viewers
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that 2017 is the
500th anniversary of what?
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The Protestant Reformation.
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As defined by Martin
Luther's role in that.
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That's right.
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Many reformers or
many historians date
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the beginnings
of the reformation
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to the 95
Theses, October 31, 2017.
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You know, and I've wondered
about that, in my view, I mean,
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Luther is
massively central figure,
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but I think the reason
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why was he started the
political ramifications
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of his objection to the theology
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and the church
manners of that time.
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That was huge whereas
Wycliffe and others...
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Wycliffe, he used to roam...
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Yeah, I'm very
passel to Wycliffe,
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the Morningstar
of the reformation.
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'Cause he was British.
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Yeah, well, I...
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And he started
the Lollard Movement,
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he translated
the Bible and so on,
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he did many of the same
things that Luther did earlier
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and had a huge
long term influence,
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but Martin Luther changed
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the political
landscape, there's no question.
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Most historians would agree
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that Martin
Luther's theological views
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were not unique
or original with him,
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perhaps he put
them together in a,
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in a somewhat unique way,
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but really he came to prominence
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because he saw the implications
of his spiritual beliefs
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for practical
and financial things
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that were
happening in the church
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and society of his day.
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And I think the
events were much more dynamic
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when he came along
'cause remember he got sucked
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into the prisons for rebellion.
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So there was
social dislocations,
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then the Europe,
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well, it was a
long term process.
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They were really
at the high point
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of their mortal
peril from the...
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Islam was knocking on the Turks,
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were knocking on
the gates of Europe.
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And so that we will know
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that meant that the
survival was pretty much assured
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because of the
political infighting,
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otherwise the Holy Roman Emperor
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forget the Pope of Rome
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would probably would
have clamped down on it.
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He may well have been
squashed and, but it is,
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I think it is instructive
that as Christians we can,
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we believe in the separation
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of church and state
and that's a good thing,
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but that doesn't
mean the separation
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of morality in the state,
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and Luther was willing
to use his spiritual beliefs
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about Sola Scriptura,
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about our need
to access the Bible,
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the priesthood of believers.
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And the need to attack
what he viewed as an unjust
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and even blasphemous combination
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of church and state.
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The 95 Theses weren't
really about righteousness
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by faith or even Sola Scriptura,
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though they were
predicated on those...
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It was the whole
waterfront. It was the attack...
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I have read
through them and they're...
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It was an attack on
the indulgences, right?
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That's what started it.
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That's what all the 95 Theses
are step by step refutation
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of the ability of humans
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to give
forgiveness to other humans.
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Right, it seems to me
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it's been a while
since I've looked at him,
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but he starts with
that immediate thing
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and then moves on
out and then suddenly
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he's dealing with the
authority of the church...
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Of the pope and the church
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and, no, it did covers
a wide number of things,
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but it is this
attack on an abusive power
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by those in power.
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And if we are going to be true
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to the spirit of the
Protestant Reformation,
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we have to be willing to take
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our religious scriptural beliefs
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and follow their
logical conclusions
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even if they interfere
with the power structures
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of our church and state.
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I think of Martin
Luther every time I get rhymed
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because Saint
Peters was built primarily
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from the sale of indulgences.
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The indulgences
that were being raised
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that Luther attacked,
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and so you can see
why the church viewed this
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with such unhappiness,
its main building project.
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This was the very big project.
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That this monk off in
the hinterlands of Germany
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was calling into
question and so, of course,
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they had to call him
to account and it's these,
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these 95 Theses, you know,
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you can speak
all sorts of truth,
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but if you aren't
really speaking truth
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to the corruptions of your day,
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you're gonna be largely ignored.
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Whereas Luther was
willing to step out
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and receive the criticism,
the pushback that he did,
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but it changed the world,
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even secular
historians view the beginnings
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of the modern west
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as at least partially wrapped up
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with the Protestant Reformation
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and the release
of the individual
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from the shackles of
the church and the state.
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You've given me an angle
on something that I hold.
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The view that
Martin Luther epitomized
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of the individual
challenging the...
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In his case, the
body of the church
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and then in some
ways he challenged
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the whole
political established order,
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that wasn't the
mindset that preceded him.
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People would defer to authority,
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they didn't think so
much on an individual basis,
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you thought about
your responsibility
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to your
community and so on and...
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And you wouldn't
rattle any cages,
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but the whole enlightenment
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for one of the
better term, movement.
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I'm not so sure that,
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that directly owes its
origin to the Bible study.
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Well, the Bible study certainly,
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the study of the book of nature
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and the book of
scripture went together,
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but the way I like
to think about this
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and I've got a chart...
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If you think of
a baseball diamond
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and you think of the
catcher being the individual
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and then the two first base
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and third base are
the church and the state
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which are mediating the truth
of God down to the individual
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in the medieval
world, this individual,
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you couldn't speak
of rights or conscience
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because that only exists
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if you know information
from God that is contrary
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to what the church
or state is telling you,
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but if you receive
all that information,
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if God only speaks to the church
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and the state who
then tell you what to do.
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Well, there's no
concept of rights
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or conscience there,
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and so in the
Middle Ages there weren't,
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but Luther said no,
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he inverted the
bottom half of this diamond,
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and the individual now was
responsible directly to God,
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and the church and the state
becomes supporting institutions
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and now you have the
idea of conscience and rights.
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I remember one of
the first editorials
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I wrote for Liberty Magazine
was on the great Man Theories,
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I called it.
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Great man theory
of history? Yeah.
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And you can
define history that way
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and on the Reformation.
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There's no wrong
done in defining it
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by Martin Luther, but I think
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it's from a
historians' point of view,
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it's sort of
simplistic to think it depended
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upon this one individual.
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I believe the
reformation would have happened,
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as we know there were
others, it was bubbling up,
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there were
attitudes that were changing.
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And I think a good support
for your point is Zwingli,
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who at the same time Luther
was discovering these things.
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He was doing the same up in
Switzerland and thereabouts,
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and coming to the
same points of view
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and conclusions
about the indulgences,
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about the
authority of scripture.
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And then you get
further back in Bohemia,
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John Huss and others.
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And you have earlier roots,
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so I view the Great
Man view of history works
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if you think of the great
man as a surfer in terms of...
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Yeah, I like that.
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There are
underlying social movements
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that are massive and large
and no single person controls,
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but the great man
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and we should speak
about great women as well,
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are the ones
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who are particularly
attuned to the circumstances.
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Right and they
accelerate that...
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They do extraordinary things
and they can actually help
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shape the way of
their surfing perhaps,
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but I think that God
wasn't dependent on one man.
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Luther was faithful
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and so God used him in that way,
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but if he hadn't been
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there would have
been other avenues.
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So what I'm getting
at is what lay behind it.
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It seems to me
part of what lay behind
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this developing
individual consciousness
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was what was
already self-evident
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with the Holy Roman Empire
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which was derivative
from the Roman Empire
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was a breakdown
in the old order.
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The controls of
society were disappearing,
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the education
level was increasing.
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I read the other
day, I hadn't realized,
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there was already
eight million books in Europe
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at the time of Martin Luther.
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Well...
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And I don't know the population
at the time, but not that big.
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And most of them were
Bibles, so people were reading,
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knowledge was increasing.
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And Luther's books and
writings were read intensively
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in these centers
of humanist learning.
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You threw in the
word that I'm fishing.
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Humanist, you know,
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and we think humanist
is sometimes a bad thing,
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but there was a
Northern humanism
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that was a
Christian based humanism,
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emphasizing
learning and history.
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And I don't think we
have to pit secular learning
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versus biblical learning.
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God has two books, right?
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The book of nature
and the book of the Bible
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and as there was increased
learning in the book of nature,
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it went in tandem with
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and the two sorts of
learning reinforced each other.
00:10:15.18\00:10:18.28
And it's just historical fact
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that these centers
of humanistic learning
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were the ones
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that imbibed Luther's
writings most strongly.
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Luther didn't
invent the printing press.
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It was invented about
70 years before he started.
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That's what I'm
saying. But he did...
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All by his time,
there were many books
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around this to support it.
00:10:36.13\00:10:37.47
But he did almost
single-handedly invent
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the printing
industry in that before he...
00:10:39.70\00:10:42.70
Wrote pamphlet.
00:10:42.74\00:10:44.07
He wrote pamphlets
that were printed so widely
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and they were in such demand
00:10:47.24\00:10:49.48
that the printing
industry took off.
00:10:49.51\00:10:52.15
So Luther did take
advantage of some things
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but like the surfer
on the wave, his carving,
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and power surfing actually
changed the shape of the wave.
00:10:57.39\00:11:00.86
Yeah, you know, the
Bible says the number of times
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in the fullness of time
or on the appropriate time
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and this is what I
see with the Reformation.
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There were many forces
that were underway already
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that was an
inevitability I think about.
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People rediscovering the Bible,
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but it leaded them to
have rediscovered themselves
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and to realize that
they had a certain right
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and obligation as an individual.
00:11:23.65\00:11:25.71
And these historical
forces came to bear on this man
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who was willing to work.
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And in a strange sort of a way,
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I think we're at another
one of those points today
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with the
Internet, the knowledge,
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you know, can
devolve, as we were discussing
00:11:38.39\00:11:40.20
even before our program.
00:11:40.23\00:11:41.56
It can devolve easily
into conspiracy theories
00:11:41.60\00:11:43.63
when you got
unfiltered information,
00:11:43.67\00:11:46.17
but it's all out there.
00:11:46.20\00:11:47.54
As Jesus said,
00:11:47.57\00:11:48.90
"Everything that is
hidden will come to light."
00:11:48.94\00:11:51.47
And so there's
much knowledge around,
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and I think in its own way
00:11:53.84\00:11:55.18
that stimulating
religious activity
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including radical Islam,
it's feeding on this too.
00:11:57.81\00:12:02.18
I think activist Christianity
also can feed on it.
00:12:02.22\00:12:05.99
Political
religion is feeding on it,
00:12:06.02\00:12:08.82
but we're on steroids now,
on the same sort of processes
00:12:08.86\00:12:12.86
that I think
created the Reformation.
00:12:12.89\00:12:14.73
I think you're
right. I think you're right.
00:12:14.76\00:12:16.77
And after we come
back from our break,
00:12:16.80\00:12:19.53
we're going to talk...
00:12:19.57\00:12:20.90
Oh, you're good
now, don't ask the break?
00:12:20.94\00:12:22.27
Well, it's coming up
here in a few seconds.
00:12:22.30\00:12:23.74
Yeah, you've jumped the gun.
00:12:23.77\00:12:25.11
Have I jumped the gun?
Let's take a break now.
00:12:25.14\00:12:26.88
We'll be back shortly
to continue this discussion
00:12:26.91\00:12:29.28
of the Reformation
00:12:29.31\00:12:31.05
and all of its
ramifications for us today
00:12:31.08\00:12:33.42
because it is not a 500 year ago
00:12:33.45\00:12:36.18
standalone event,
00:12:36.22\00:12:37.55
it's something that
is influencing us today.
00:12:37.59\00:12:41.32