Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Nicolas Miller
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000353A
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00:25 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:27 This is your program 00:29 that brings up-to-date news, views, discussion, 00:31 and analysis on religious liberty events in the US 00:35 and around the world. 00:36 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine 00:39 and my guest on the program Dr. Nick Miller, a lawyer, 00:43 author, what else do we want to put there? 00:46 Professor of church history. Professor of church history? 00:48 Yes. And I could go on and on. 00:50 Andrews University. At Andrews University. 00:55 I know this is pretty big with you envy at the moment 00:58 but we can't miss too many opportunities 01:01 to remind our viewers 01:02 that 2017 is the 500th anniversary of what? 01:07 The Protestant Reformation. 01:09 As defined by Martin Luther's role in that. 01:11 That's right. 01:12 Many reformers or many historians date 01:16 the beginnings of the reformation 01:18 to the 95 Theses, October 31, 2017. 01:22 You know, and I've wondered about that, in my view, I mean, 01:25 Luther is massively central figure, 01:28 but I think the reason 01:30 why was he started the political ramifications 01:34 of his objection to the theology 01:39 and the church manners of that time. 01:41 That was huge whereas Wycliffe and others... 01:44 Wycliffe, he used to roam... 01:46 Yeah, I'm very passel to Wycliffe, 01:48 the Morningstar of the reformation. 01:49 'Cause he was British. 01:51 Yeah, well, I... 01:52 And he started the Lollard Movement, 01:54 he translated the Bible and so on, 01:57 he did many of the same things that Luther did earlier 01:59 and had a huge long term influence, 02:02 but Martin Luther changed 02:04 the political landscape, there's no question. 02:05 Most historians would agree 02:07 that Martin Luther's theological views 02:09 were not unique or original with him, 02:12 perhaps he put them together in a, 02:14 in a somewhat unique way, 02:16 but really he came to prominence 02:17 because he saw the implications of his spiritual beliefs 02:21 for practical and financial things 02:24 that were happening in the church 02:25 and society of his day. 02:27 And I think the events were much more dynamic 02:30 when he came along 'cause remember he got sucked 02:32 into the prisons for rebellion. 02:33 So there was social dislocations, 02:36 then the Europe, 02:38 well, it was a long term process. 02:40 They were really at the high point 02:42 of their mortal peril from the... 02:46 Islam was knocking on the Turks, 02:48 were knocking on the gates of Europe. 02:50 And so that we will know 02:52 that meant that the survival was pretty much assured 02:56 because of the political infighting, 02:57 otherwise the Holy Roman Emperor 03:00 forget the Pope of Rome 03:01 would probably would have clamped down on it. 03:03 He may well have been squashed and, but it is, 03:07 I think it is instructive that as Christians we can, 03:11 we believe in the separation 03:12 of church and state and that's a good thing, 03:14 but that doesn't mean the separation 03:16 of morality in the state, 03:18 and Luther was willing to use his spiritual beliefs 03:21 about Sola Scriptura, 03:23 about our need to access the Bible, 03:26 the priesthood of believers. 03:28 And the need to attack what he viewed as an unjust 03:33 and even blasphemous combination 03:34 of church and state. 03:36 The 95 Theses weren't really about righteousness 03:39 by faith or even Sola Scriptura, 03:42 though they were predicated on those... 03:43 It was the whole waterfront. It was the attack... 03:45 I have read through them and they're... 03:46 It was an attack on the indulgences, right? 03:48 That's what started it. 03:50 That's what all the 95 Theses are step by step refutation 03:55 of the ability of humans 03:56 to give forgiveness to other humans. 03:58 Right, it seems to me 03:59 it's been a while since I've looked at him, 04:01 but he starts with that immediate thing 04:02 and then moves on out and then suddenly 04:04 he's dealing with the authority of the church... 04:05 Of the pope and the church 04:07 and, no, it did covers a wide number of things, 04:10 but it is this attack on an abusive power 04:14 by those in power. 04:16 And if we are going to be true 04:18 to the spirit of the Protestant Reformation, 04:21 we have to be willing to take 04:22 our religious scriptural beliefs 04:25 and follow their logical conclusions 04:27 even if they interfere with the power structures 04:29 of our church and state. 04:31 I think of Martin Luther every time I get rhymed 04:33 because Saint Peters was built primarily 04:37 from the sale of indulgences. 04:38 The indulgences that were being raised 04:41 that Luther attacked, 04:42 and so you can see why the church viewed this 04:45 with such unhappiness, its main building project. 04:47 This was the very big project. 04:48 That this monk off in the hinterlands of Germany 04:51 was calling into question and so, of course, 04:54 they had to call him to account and it's these, 04:58 these 95 Theses, you know, 05:00 you can speak all sorts of truth, 05:02 but if you aren't really speaking truth 05:04 to the corruptions of your day, 05:06 you're gonna be largely ignored. 05:09 Whereas Luther was willing to step out 05:12 and receive the criticism, the pushback that he did, 05:16 but it changed the world, 05:17 even secular historians view the beginnings 05:19 of the modern west 05:21 as at least partially wrapped up 05:23 with the Protestant Reformation 05:24 and the release of the individual 05:27 from the shackles of the church and the state. 05:30 You've given me an angle on something that I hold. 05:34 The view that Martin Luther epitomized 05:38 of the individual challenging the... 05:41 In his case, the body of the church 05:43 and then in some ways he challenged 05:44 the whole political established order, 05:46 that wasn't the mindset that preceded him. 05:51 People would defer to authority, 05:53 they didn't think so much on an individual basis, 05:56 you thought about your responsibility 05:57 to your community and so on and... 06:00 And you wouldn't rattle any cages, 06:03 but the whole enlightenment 06:05 for one of the better term, movement. 06:07 I'm not so sure that, 06:08 that directly owes its origin to the Bible study. 06:14 Well, the Bible study certainly, 06:18 the study of the book of nature 06:20 and the book of scripture went together, 06:22 but the way I like to think about this 06:24 and I've got a chart... 06:26 If you think of a baseball diamond 06:29 and you think of the catcher being the individual 06:33 and then the two first base 06:35 and third base are the church and the state 06:38 which are mediating the truth of God down to the individual 06:42 in the medieval world, this individual, 06:45 you couldn't speak of rights or conscience 06:47 because that only exists 06:48 if you know information from God that is contrary 06:51 to what the church or state is telling you, 06:53 but if you receive all that information, 06:55 if God only speaks to the church 06:58 and the state who then tell you what to do. 07:00 Well, there's no concept of rights 07:03 or conscience there, 07:04 and so in the Middle Ages there weren't, 07:05 but Luther said no, 07:07 he inverted the bottom half of this diamond, 07:09 and the individual now was responsible directly to God, 07:13 and the church and the state becomes supporting institutions 07:17 and now you have the idea of conscience and rights. 07:20 I remember one of the first editorials 07:22 I wrote for Liberty Magazine was on the great Man Theories, 07:25 I called it. 07:26 Great man theory of history? Yeah. 07:29 And you can define history that way 07:30 and on the Reformation. 07:34 There's no wrong done in defining it 07:38 by Martin Luther, but I think 07:41 it's from a historians' point of view, 07:45 it's sort of simplistic to think it depended 07:47 upon this one individual. 07:48 I believe the reformation would have happened, 07:50 as we know there were others, it was bubbling up, 07:53 there were attitudes that were changing. 07:55 And I think a good support for your point is Zwingli, 08:00 who at the same time Luther was discovering these things. 08:03 He was doing the same up in Switzerland and thereabouts, 08:09 and coming to the same points of view 08:12 and conclusions about the indulgences, 08:14 about the authority of scripture. 08:15 And then you get further back in Bohemia, 08:17 John Huss and others. 08:18 And you have earlier roots, 08:20 so I view the Great Man view of history works 08:23 if you think of the great man as a surfer in terms of... 08:26 Yeah, I like that. 08:28 There are underlying social movements 08:31 that are massive and large and no single person controls, 08:35 but the great man 08:36 and we should speak about great women as well, 08:38 are the ones 08:39 who are particularly attuned to the circumstances. 08:41 Right and they accelerate that... 08:43 They do extraordinary things and they can actually help 08:46 shape the way of their surfing perhaps, 08:48 but I think that God wasn't dependent on one man. 08:51 Luther was faithful 08:53 and so God used him in that way, 08:55 but if he hadn't been 08:56 there would have been other avenues. 08:57 So what I'm getting at is what lay behind it. 09:00 It seems to me part of what lay behind 09:02 this developing individual consciousness 09:07 was what was already self-evident 09:09 with the Holy Roman Empire 09:12 which was derivative from the Roman Empire 09:14 was a breakdown in the old order. 09:16 The controls of society were disappearing, 09:19 the education level was increasing. 09:23 I read the other day, I hadn't realized, 09:24 there was already eight million books in Europe 09:29 at the time of Martin Luther. 09:31 Well... 09:33 And I don't know the population at the time, but not that big. 09:36 And most of them were Bibles, so people were reading, 09:38 knowledge was increasing. 09:40 And Luther's books and writings were read intensively 09:45 in these centers of humanist learning. 09:48 You threw in the word that I'm fishing. 09:50 Humanist, you know, 09:51 and we think humanist is sometimes a bad thing, 09:53 but there was a Northern humanism 09:55 that was a Christian based humanism, 09:57 emphasizing learning and history. 10:00 And I don't think we have to pit secular learning 10:04 versus biblical learning. 10:05 God has two books, right? 10:07 The book of nature and the book of the Bible 10:09 and as there was increased learning in the book of nature, 10:13 it went in tandem with 10:15 and the two sorts of learning reinforced each other. 10:18 And it's just historical fact 10:20 that these centers of humanistic learning 10:22 were the ones 10:24 that imbibed Luther's writings most strongly. 10:28 Luther didn't invent the printing press. 10:29 It was invented about 70 years before he started. 10:32 That's what I'm saying. But he did... 10:34 All by his time, there were many books 10:36 around this to support it. 10:37 But he did almost single-handedly invent 10:39 the printing industry in that before he... 10:42 Wrote pamphlet. 10:44 He wrote pamphlets that were printed so widely 10:47 and they were in such demand 10:49 that the printing industry took off. 10:52 So Luther did take advantage of some things 10:54 but like the surfer on the wave, his carving, 10:57 and power surfing actually changed the shape of the wave. 11:00 Yeah, you know, the Bible says the number of times 11:04 in the fullness of time or on the appropriate time 11:07 and this is what I see with the Reformation. 11:09 There were many forces that were underway already 11:12 that was an inevitability I think about. 11:15 People rediscovering the Bible, 11:17 but it leaded them to have rediscovered themselves 11:21 and to realize that they had a certain right 11:23 and obligation as an individual. 11:25 And these historical forces came to bear on this man 11:28 who was willing to work. 11:30 And in a strange sort of a way, 11:32 I think we're at another one of those points today 11:34 with the Internet, the knowledge, 11:38 you know, can devolve, as we were discussing 11:40 even before our program. 11:41 It can devolve easily into conspiracy theories 11:43 when you got unfiltered information, 11:46 but it's all out there. 11:47 As Jesus said, 11:48 "Everything that is hidden will come to light." 11:51 And so there's much knowledge around, 11:53 and I think in its own way 11:55 that stimulating religious activity 11:57 including radical Islam, it's feeding on this too. 12:02 I think activist Christianity also can feed on it. 12:06 Political religion is feeding on it, 12:08 but we're on steroids now, on the same sort of processes 12:12 that I think created the Reformation. 12:14 I think you're right. I think you're right. 12:16 And after we come back from our break, 12:19 we're going to talk... 12:20 Oh, you're good now, don't ask the break? 12:22 Well, it's coming up here in a few seconds. 12:23 Yeah, you've jumped the gun. 12:25 Have I jumped the gun? Let's take a break now. 12:26 We'll be back shortly to continue this discussion 12:29 of the Reformation 12:31 and all of its ramifications for us today 12:33 because it is not a 500 year ago 12:36 standalone event, 12:37 it's something that is influencing us today. |
Revised 2017-04-06