Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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I hope you're finding
this a good discussion
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with author Nick Miller.
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And this is as good
a chance as any to...
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You have to hold
up in front of us
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'cause the green screen isn't...
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Yes, that's a good point.
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Yeah, so it's The
Reformation and the Remnant.
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So tell about this book
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that you've
recently put together.
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So it's the 500th years
as we've been discussing
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of the Protestant Reformation
and so I wrote a book here
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called The
Reformation and the Remnant
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which gives an overview
of the Protestant Reformers
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and especially how
some of their central ideas
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relate to issues
in our church today.
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The Seventh-day
Adventist Church.
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Well, the
Seventh-day Adventist Church,
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but many Christian churches.
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I just thought you
want to particularize it
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'cause not all of our viewers
know the point of reference
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that we have for
Seventh-day Adventist.
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Sure, but really
any Christian church
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appreciates the
lessons of the Reformers,
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The Reformation and the Remnant,
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you can get it on
Amazon or on Kindle.
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But it informs
some of the discussions
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we're having today,
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particularly about wanting
to talk about the relevance
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of some of
Martin Luther's beliefs
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to our world and country today,
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and I mentioned
earlier in his 95 Theses,
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he's talking about
the authority of scripture
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and that leads to the duty
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and right of each
individual to read
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and interpret
scripture for themselves.
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We call this the
priesthood of believers.
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Which is
something that even today
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the Roman Catholic
Church post Vatican II
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and other modernizations,
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it's still uncomfortable
with the average person
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being there using the
Bible as its own interpreter.
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Well, it becomes
a democratization
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of the church, doesn't it?
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That everybody
is expected to read
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and understand for themselves
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and it's not that we each
become our own little pope,
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but that we are
part of a community
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and all of us
need to read and study
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and decide together as a body
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what it is we
think the Bible teaches.
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Now this was,
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sounds like a
revolutionary spiritual idea,
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but this becomes a
revolutionary political idea
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because you can
see the implications.
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Martin Luther saw
some of them in his day,
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but backed away from them,
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you mentioned
the Peasants' Revolt.
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He became concerned
about civics stability,
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but he originally taught
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and some of his
followers picked up on the idea
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that the civil
magistrate should not decide
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what was heresy
and what was truth
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in religious matters,
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that this was for the
church and believers to decide.
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And you can see the
logic involved in saying,
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if the state
passes religious laws,
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it must take the
Bible and interpret it
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and apply it to your life.
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Well, that
interrupts this relationship
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that you're
meant to have with God
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and the Bible yourself.
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But he needed to
continue that argument
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because that
would only strengthen
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the prerogatives of the papacy
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that was set
against him at that point.
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The papacy was wanting to use
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the civil state to
enforce spiritualism.
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No, but they would
use them and that was the,
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you know, the
marriage of church and state
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that made that the
persecution even worse,
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but the church itself absent
the state would still have gone
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for Martin Luther, of course,
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they had inside
church discipline and...
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But there was a
very clear teaching
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that the church itself
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could not use the
swords civil force
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and so, in a sense
the medieval church
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believed in a
separation of church and state.
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It's just that the
priest couldn't wield the sword
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what would
happen is the priest...
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I know they would
stick the state on to them.
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They would pass the
ruling, "This man is a heretic."
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And then they
would turn them over...
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But they had no hesitancy
to excommunicate someone,
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but in medieval society
meant, you couldn't function,
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you couldn't buy, sell or...
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Because the civil,
there were civil penalties
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that went with that
because today, we still,
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we don't call excommunication,
we call it disfellowship,
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but we'll do that today
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but it doesn't have a
civil ramifications function.
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In Roman Catholicism
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and even in the
early Protestant era,
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when you were cut
off from the community,
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no church member
could deal with you
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or they would be excommunicate,
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so since it was a
uniform body of believers,
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you would be cast
into utter darkness.
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Well, this was...
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Didn't depend on
civil power directly.
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Well, but the reason you could
be cast into utter darkness
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is because the civil authorities
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were carrying along
with it, I mean that's...
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Once you get contemporary,
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the local baker
wouldn't sell you a cake
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because he would be cast
off and when he was cast off,
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the church members
wouldn't buy his other ways.
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Well, this could really only
happen in very controlled...
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Which they lived in.
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Mono-religious cultures
which Geneva happened to be
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and so I'll give
you that was the case,
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and indeed at what
you're pointing out is that,
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in Protestantism
itself, there was a split,
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and for many years the
magisterial Protestants,
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the Lutherans and the Calvinists
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continued essentially
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a medieval church
state arrangement.
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It was the
Anabaptists who picked that up.
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Thank you, I'm glad
you're picking on to that.
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On Luther's...
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The Anabaptists were
the real revolutionaries
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of the Reformation.
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Right, yes.
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And many of them
ended up as refugees
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into the United States.
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They were persecuted
by both the Catholics,
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the Lutherans,
and the Calvinists.
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Yeah.
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And how did their
ideas come to America?
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A few of them actually came...
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Well, even the...
Most of them didn't...
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Even the Amish
and the Mennonites.
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Amish and the Mennonites...
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They're Anabaptists.
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Are inheritors of
the Anabaptist tradition,
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but also the
English Baptists, the pure,
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some Puritans
came over to Holland
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at the end of the 16th
century and met some Anabaptists
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and took on some of their views,
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not all of them,
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but freedom of the
will at all baptism
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and the separation
of church and state.
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And they returned to England
and began writing these things,
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they didn't
actually have direct impact
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in England themselves,
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they were always
a sideline minority,
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but they influence
some very important people,
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some names you recognize
John Milton, John Locke...
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My literate hero.
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And Roger Williams. Yeah.
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And so, in
through those vehicles,
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these ideas about the separation
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of church and state
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and the state only
having jurisdiction
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over the physical outward
manifestations of conduct
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and not religious
belief or conduct.
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You know, what's coming
out of this is the Reformation
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was an incredibly
rich, blossoming of religion,
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and political destinies.
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Religious thought
impacted philosophical thought.
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I'll bounce of you, you know,
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I really got to recommend
this again, this is wonderful...
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One with your chest
because they don't say it
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in the front of
the green screen,
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apparently it doesn't work.
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Not as good.
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It needs to be contrasted,
the real author is concerned
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about the integrity of the book,
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but, you know, I can't
recommend this too highly.
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We need to talk about
and restudy the Reformation
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and this is a
very pertinent study,
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but, you know,
the Reformation goes
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many different ways and
I'll bounce this off you.
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I believe our whole
modern political order
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basically derives from something
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that the Reformation produced.
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A bad thing of the Reformation
apart from German nationalism
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were the
religious wars in Europe,
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30 years of war, but
they were religious wars
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between the old
Roman Catholic order
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and the countries
that supported it...
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And the new Protestants.
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And the new
Protestant civil states
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or emerging states.
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The Treaty of Westphalia
settled the 30 years war
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which was devastating to Europe
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and established the
modern nation state,
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which we still
live under that concept.
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1648. Yeah.
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If you remember from
your high school history.
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And I picked up on
this from Henry Kissinger,
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I mean I've studied this before,
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but it really resonated with me
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when Henry
Kissinger recently pointed out
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that the zone, not
zone, drone strikes,
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and other things
like that and wars of,
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where we just march
in and change the rulers
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because we don't like them.
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All of that
threatens the order established
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at the Treaty of Westphalia,
and as we pulled down
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the nation state
and the integrity
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that the state has
even to do bad things.
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We're actually going back...
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To the medieval
period. To the medieval period.
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And many other things
might reemerge along with that.
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Well, that's really an
interesting observation,
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that, and I think,
we see a reinjection
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of religious identity
into some of these wars.
00:09:10.38\00:09:13.48
Now you're
getting into my thinking.
00:09:13.52\00:09:14.88
I think, I wrote on it recently,
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it's like we're going backwards.
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It's we're devolving,
not in the exact same order,
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but many of the
same, the main elements
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of being devolved
back to a pre-Luther era.
00:09:25.93\00:09:29.50
And even Luther, as you know,
you were mentioning him before
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and his key role
and importance today,
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but there's been an agreement
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between Rome and
the main Lutheran body,
00:09:38.67\00:09:41.18
saying it was all a mistake.
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Well, I think
that what's happened,
00:09:42.88\00:09:44.25
especially in the last 150 years
00:09:44.28\00:09:45.98
has been the rise of secularism,
00:09:46.01\00:09:48.05
and the rise of secularism
00:09:48.08\00:09:49.42
has caused many religious people
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to overlook the differences
they have with other religions
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and say our common
enemy is secularism,
00:09:54.26\00:09:57.66
and unfortunately,
what that's causing is
00:09:57.69\00:10:01.26
for some people to choose a
medieval outlook of the world
00:10:01.30\00:10:05.37
over against
secular French Revolution
00:10:05.40\00:10:08.57
outlook of the
world and this doesn't,
00:10:08.60\00:10:11.47
I think give fair
credence to the difference
00:10:11.51\00:10:14.04
in the medieval view
and the Protestant view.
00:10:14.08\00:10:17.68
The Protestant view saying
00:10:17.71\00:10:19.05
we shouldn't create political
divides along religious lines
00:10:19.08\00:10:22.82
that we shouldn't infuse
a us versus them in the war
00:10:22.85\00:10:26.55
on terror based on
religious identities,
00:10:26.59\00:10:30.29
and this sort of
clash of civilizations class
00:10:30.33\00:10:33.50
of religions is taking
us back as you're suggesting
00:10:33.53\00:10:37.20
this earlier
more dangerous period.
00:10:37.23\00:10:38.93
And we don't want
to get back to that.
00:10:38.97\00:10:40.67
I think part of their
security is in at reinventing
00:10:40.70\00:10:44.87
the Reformation if you like.
00:10:44.91\00:10:47.21
In an earlier program,
00:10:47.24\00:10:48.58
I mentioned el-Sisi
saying it to Islam, good advice,
00:10:48.61\00:10:52.55
but we can say it
to Christianity too.
00:10:52.58\00:10:54.58
We need to
reinvent the Reformation.
00:10:54.62\00:10:56.69
If the separation
of church and state
00:10:56.72\00:10:58.82
was originally a religious idea,
00:10:58.85\00:11:01.49
not a secular
or a communist idea
00:11:01.52\00:11:04.06
as some people
propose, but it was based
00:11:04.09\00:11:06.70
not on hostility
towards religion,
00:11:06.73\00:11:09.06
but on the importance of
religion between man and God
00:11:09.10\00:11:13.20
and it didn't mean
00:11:13.23\00:11:14.57
that there couldn't be a
moral concern for the state.
00:11:14.60\00:11:17.41
And this is where the separation
00:11:17.44\00:11:18.81
of church and
state goes too far,
00:11:18.84\00:11:20.41
where it becomes a
separation of morality
00:11:20.44\00:11:22.21
and the state.
00:11:22.24\00:11:23.58
And in our next program,
we're gonna talk more about
00:11:23.61\00:11:25.45
what is this
morality going to look like
00:11:25.48\00:11:27.38
when we separate
church and state.
00:11:27.42\00:11:29.28
But we have to
learn the first lesson
00:11:29.32\00:11:31.15
which is that the
priesthood of believers,
00:11:31.19\00:11:33.92
the right of private judgment
00:11:33.96\00:11:36.02
in matters of
Bible study and religion
00:11:36.06\00:11:38.53
is a key foundational
pillar of Protestants.
00:11:38.56\00:11:41.36
Well, the
priesthood of all believers
00:11:41.40\00:11:42.90
is thoroughly biblical
idea, not a Luther's idea.
00:11:42.93\00:11:45.47
Well, not just Luther's idea,
00:11:45.50\00:11:47.64
it's one he
founded from the Bible.
00:11:47.67\00:11:49.00
He got it from the Bible.
00:11:49.04\00:11:50.37
And absent the Old Testament
priesthood which was literal.
00:11:50.41\00:11:54.94
As Paul says,
00:11:54.98\00:11:56.31
"Now that you know the
gentile male or the female,
00:11:56.34\00:11:58.95
and we all come to
the Father through Jesus,
00:11:58.98\00:12:02.92
but we do it individually."
00:12:02.95\00:12:04.72
So the central thrust
of the Protestant message
00:12:04.75\00:12:07.82
was one that laid the principles
00:12:07.86\00:12:10.89
for religious
freedom and pluralism,
00:12:10.93\00:12:13.66
it's in a religious idea
00:12:13.70\00:12:15.10
which we need to
embrace and not discard.
00:12:15.13\00:12:19.23
I've been to Rome
and seen pilot staircase
00:12:19.27\00:12:22.57
where a little
over 500 years ago,
00:12:22.60\00:12:25.57
a Roman Catholic
monk named Martin Luther,
00:12:25.61\00:12:29.58
suddenly had a
blinding inspiration
00:12:29.61\00:12:32.61
that this was a futile activity
00:12:32.65\00:12:34.75
and that the just
shall live by faith.
00:12:34.78\00:12:38.32
In reality, that
guiding call of the Reformation
00:12:38.35\00:12:42.72
has continued all
of those 500 years
00:12:42.76\00:12:44.99
since he nailed
the Theses 95 of them,
00:12:45.03\00:12:49.56
to the door of
Wittenberg, Cathedral.
00:12:49.60\00:12:52.30
But in reality, beyond
that, it was the growing,
00:12:52.33\00:12:56.81
learning of the time,
it was the 80,000 books,
00:12:56.84\00:13:00.44
mostly Bibles,
that was surrounding him
00:13:00.48\00:13:03.38
as he moved out
and made his stand.
00:13:03.41\00:13:06.35
It was in his day, the
equivalent of the internet
00:13:06.38\00:13:10.32
and the widespread
dissemination of information
00:13:10.35\00:13:13.12
that today we must
make sure continues
00:13:13.15\00:13:16.89
our sense of reformation.
00:13:16.93\00:13:20.13
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:13:20.16\00:13:23.10