God, thank you for bringing everyone together, at least digitally, and we thank you for the things that you've done over the centuries in your church. First of all, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of his death and resurrection for us and salvation for all who believe. And God, we thank you for the way that you have built a people and preserved a people throughout all these centuries around this truth. And though there have so often been failures in doctrine, failures in practice, so much sin and so much unfaithfulness, yet you've been faithful and you've continued to to march on with your work of saving men and women for the glory of your son. And so we pray that you'd give us a fresh appreciation for that and for the recovery of the biblical gospel that happened in the 16th century to make us zealous for that truth and grateful for the work you've done in saving us. Make us good stewards of the gospel in our own generation, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. So if I were to ask you, what was the Protestant Reformation about? What would you say? What are some ideas? You don't have to give like the broad, comprehensive answer, but just any thoughts that come to mind. I have no clue. Okay. Refutation of the Pope. Okay, so refutation of the Pope. So we've got an issue of on papal authority, maybe, or the Roman Catholic Pope. What else? Paulette, I hear you. I see you answering, but you're muted. Oh, paying money for your sins, to forgive your sins. OK, so yes, so paying money. Yeah, we're going to talk about this idea of indulgences. And so there's both kind of a financial corruption aspect, as well as a theological corruption aspect there. Yeah. I think Smokey kind of mentioned it, but the authority of scripture seems to underpin most of the Reformation. Right. Authority, right. Authority of scripture versus the church, the popes, the councils of the church. Exactly. Any other ideas? Certainly just the clarity of the gospel and the whole matter, of course, of justification by faith. Yeah, so justification by faith. So this issue of, on what basis does man stand right before God? On what basis is man made right with God? Which is the issue of justification. you're right standing with God. And that really is one of the issues really at the very heart of it. So these are all right answers. What was that? I'm hearing another one. No, no mumblings, but okay. So yeah, those are some really good and helpful answers. And we're going to see actually all those things are a big part of it. So I also want to ask you, what are some big names that you know of that are associated with the Protestant reformation? Luther and Zwingli. Okay, Luther and Zwingli, yeah. Good. Any other ideas? Mr. Calvin. John Calvin is another big one. John Knox. John Knox is a big one, yeah. what was that that's all the act that was going to come up that's good uh... there's a henry the eighth in english king who's a big deal in the reformation mostly in a moment sarah someone else answering hello the matthew henry but i don't know that there no Right, later, yeah. He's a good one to know about. Yeah, those are some good names. Sorry if I missed any. There was a, can you guys hear me? Can you all hear me? Okay. I see there's only about an eight second delay, so I think we can roll with that. So, in prior weeks, As we've come closer and closer to this point in church history, we've seen that the Roman Catholic Church has developed a system that really runs against the gospel, both in terms of doctrine and practice. So you have in your outline there, or your handout, I'm sorry, some of the big issues that are going to be problems in the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformation will address. The first one is semi-Pelagianism. You see that there in your handout. Can anyone remind us? This has come up a few times already. Can anyone remind us what that is? Without looking at it, I'm trying to bring it up, but it would sound right off the bat like using God's Word and manipulating it and putting your own words on top of it. Well, it certainly was based on an abusive scripture, yeah. It's a little more than that, but it was based on an abusive scripture. Isn't it the view where man has free will and then he cooperates with God for his salvation? Exactly. So grace, we're saved by God's grace, his kindness to us. But then there's a sense in which we also kind of do our best and cooperate with grace. So in some way or another, our salvation is gonna be a collaborative effort where God's grace is working to change us. And by that means we do our best and we end up being saved. So that was a big deal by this point in the Roman Catholic Church. And then we might ask, well, what kind of works? What kind of good works are we talking about? And in particular, That leads us to the second problem, which is sacramentalism. Sacramentalism. And that is that people earned merit, which would be like saving merit, with God through their participation in the sacraments. These are holy rites, holy Activities that you would do with the church. So that would be like mass which is like the the Lord's Supper Penance, which is when you're you do acts to kind of make up for your sins And confession to a priest all these things where you're you're doing the right things to get divine grace through the God-ordained channel of the church the priests So the church is holy, the priests are holy, and you go to them and you do the sacraments to get grace from God. That's kind of how it worked. So if grace is found in the priests in the institutional church, that also you can see a link where that leads us to papal and church authority. So the church itself, the institutional church, is the vehicle for salvation. And by the same token, it is of supreme authority. So scripture was upheld as authoritative, but the thing is that the church would say, we have authority to give a binding interpretation. We have this tradition that runs alongside scripture. With popes and councils and things like that. And so we we provide the authoritative interpretation of scripture and in practice. This just ended up overshadowing The authority of the Bible. The final issue and problem that was that had arisen was financial and moral corruption, you have there in your outline to so We've seen this for a few centuries now. The church is too tied up with the world. You have popes that are amassing great wealth and political power and earthly glory. And they look nothing like the humble days of the early church. So somebody mentioned earlier this issue of indulgences. Can anyone remind us what indulgences were? This is part of the financial corruption. I'm Dave, I'm an alcoholic. Absolute definition of that. Of an indulgence? You mean, oh, say like indulging in something? Overindulgence. Yeah, yeah. So indulgence, yeah, is like permissiveness, right? So yeah, we say we indulge in something that is like over, you know, over permissive. But specifically what the church was doing is they were providing time out of purgatory where you're supposed to keep paying for your sins after death to be ready for heaven through financial gifts so you could give financial gifts for yourself or loved ones to to like fund the church that would actually help get people, speed people through purgatory faster. So that would be indulgences, which, you know, it wasn't technically a purchase. That wasn't the idea, but it kind of down on the street when it was being in a sort of among the masses, it kind of just ended up as a financial transaction. You give the church money and then the church will give you time out of purgatory. So that's part of the corruption that was happening. And finally, uh... will remember that even in in previous centuries we've seen uh... reform movements in the church that were aimed at this kind of financial corruption so last century so i guess of honor a lot who's italian heap he can appreciate that a lot of movement against this this kind of corruption in the church so all throughout the church more and more uh... people are becoming there's a sense of discontent over the uh... at least uh... the corruption in the church and all for these areas that we've seen are going to become targets and kind of triggers of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. I also want to remind you about something Ken Wade told us about last week, which is humanism. So in the Renaissance, which is kind of the age leading up to the Reformation, It was becoming more popular to go back to the original ancient sources, both the Bible and also other ancient literature, and not just to rely on traditional interpretations that had accrued over the centuries. So one of the big things there was, you remember, we learned about a guy named Erasmus. In 1519, Erasmus, he published a, not translated, he published a Greek New Testament, the original language. And that was a big new thing for Europe. Before that, they only had the Latin, which had been translated in the fifth century. And it really allowed people to look at the original text and see ways that kind of bad translations in the Latin Vulgate had kind of propped up some of this bad theology at the Roman Catholic Church. So it's kind of allowed people to see beyond that and go, hey, actually, the original text tells us a different story with some of these things. So with all that in the backdrop, the Protestant Reformation comes along in the 16th century as one of the big watershed events of church history, and I think arguably one of the watershed events of all human history, no matter how you look at it. It was very deeply impactful in recovering the biblical gospel and biblical authority. So before we go ahead and launch into that, are there any thoughts or questions about the things that we've covered up to this point? I had a question. Yes, Smokey. Who was Luther contending with when he wrote Bondage of the Will? I don't remember. It was Erasmus. Yeah. Because they were having a nice, gracious, I'm kidding, Yeah. Back and forth debate. Right, right. Nice German, sweet, loving way. And I've only read some of it, but it's incredibly sarcastic to one another. Yeah, very caustic. Yeah, so later on, yeah, Erasmus is a good point. I mean, he was a humanist, and he helped, in a way, spark the Reformation. But he was not a reformer. So he and Luther later would kind of go at it with some of these things. Yeah, it's fun reading. It's very colorful. So yeah, so there's some of the, yeah, that was Erasmus too. So there's some of the backdrop of what leads us into the Reformation. So let's go ahead and talk about, you have in your handout, A New Hope, the Protestant Reformations. Now, you may notice that I'm using the plural there. And we often talk about the Reformation as a singular event. And there's one way of looking at it, that it is a singular event. There's a lot of commonality and overlap between all these things that happened. But they did really start, there's really a few different strands that kind of started from different concerns and proceeded in different ways. So it's somewhat helpful to speak of it really in terms of Protestant Reformations in the plural. So we're actually going to look at four of them. Again, there's a lot of similarities, but then there's also some very key differences. So first, let's look at the one that kind of got the whole thing going, which is the Lutheran Reformation in Germany. Martin Luther, I'm certain you've heard of. Somebody mentioned him at the very beginning when we asked about key figures. He was a German monk who became a professor in the university at Wittenberg, which is W as the letter that would And in his early years, he went through some really rough experiences that kind of burned him on the church. One of the things was that in 1510 he visited Rome on behalf of his order, the Augustinians. And in Rome, he had these high hopes that it would be this very meaningful, weighty spiritual experience. But when he got there, what he saw instead was all that corruption that we've been talking about. It was really a corrupt, morally corrupt place. And there was just some very crass kind of financial corruption, as well as even sexual corruption. And it really burned him. It really left him disillusioned. It was not at all what he had expected. Another thing that burned Luther on the church was that he had an exceptionally sensitive conscience. And I want you to consider for a moment, just as we've talked about kind of the semi-Pelagian system, what would that do? Again, thinking about you get your grace by doing your best and by participating in the sacraments, what would that system do to somebody who's just hyper aware of God's holiness and God's righteous standard and his own utter unrighteousness. What do you think that might do in a guy? Absolute despair and insanity. Yeah. So despair, even insanity, like it would, it would be deeply disturbing. And, uh, that is exactly what Luther's experience was. Uh, Sinclair Ferguson tells us, Quote, in a nutshell, the Roman Catholic Church taught that infused grace makes us inwardly righteous so that God can justify us. So it's basically like grace is this zap that God gives you in your soul that makes you do righteous things. And now we do acknowledge biblically, we even talked about it this morning, the new covenant, right? Part of what we get in God's grace is we do get a new heart and we do get the inner ability to obey him. But it's very important that we recognize that's not what the basis of our justification is. But under this system, what it means is that you can have no assurance of salvation. You can't really know that you're saved. God saves those who trust him, do the sacraments, and really do their best. But Luther was uniquely aware of the fact that my best is still light years short of God's holy standard. And so it really tormented his soul. He even says at a certain point, he came to not love God, but hate him. He was so resentful of, how can I measure up? uh... to the standard so he was wrecked internally intel at one point uh... a huge breakthrough happened as he was wrestling with romans he was actually a professor he's a lecturer in there at the polly epistles there at the university so he's wrestling with uh... romans one verses one to sixteen and i wonder if someone could read that for us the romans one verses romans one verses sixteen through seventeen romance chapter one 16 through 17. I gotcha. Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans. Romans, what was that again? Chapter 1, verses 16 and 17. Gotcha. The just live by faith, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation. for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. Thank you. Praise be to God. Yeah. Amen. Because there in verse 17, you have this phrase, the righteousness of God. And up to this point, Luther had always read, especially in the book of Romans, when you have references to God's righteousness, he always just thought of it as, well, God is righteous. It's his attribute of righteousness and his standard of righteousness that he requires of us. But at some point the light bulb finally went off for Luther that in verse 17 what God is saying is, what Paul is saying, and God through him, is that The righteousness of God here is being referred to as a gift. Okay, so it's not something that we do. He's talking about righteousness that is imputed or counted to us on the basis of Christ alone. And we receive that by faith alone. So when he says the righteous shall live by faith, he's not saying primarily that those who believe will act righteously. He's saying those who believe will be counted righteous and Paul really spends a few chapters here in the beginning of Romans kind of expositing that statement and better explaining what he means and he says very clearly in chapter four that the righteousness is counted not to the one who does works but to the one who Believes like abraham believed and so this was a huge moment of breakthrough for luther it's a moment of great joy and assurance and relief because And he said it was like he was born again and the gates of paradise opened to him Because for the first time he had real peace and he had real assurance with god that he could stand right before a holy god not again in the semi-pelagian sense of someone who does his best and uses the sacraments and and does good but as someone entirely dependent on righteousness given through Jesus Christ by faith. And so this is a recovery of really the heart of the biblical gospel. And it was a revolutionary moment for Luther. Now then, it was another matter though for that to become a public matter. So this is kind of Luther's own personal reformation, but what happened to make it go public? Well, in a short, In short, we'll give you kind of a timeline here. So you have this guy named Tetzel, T-E-T-Z-E-L. I think Laurie mentioned him earlier. And around this time, he's touring Europe and he's selling, or we could say selling, quote unquote, indulgences. He's offering indulgences from the church for those who will give financial contributions for the church. And he's really laying it on thick. I think Chinwe mentioned last week that he had this slogan that whenever a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs. So just really almost, I mean, we could even say like prosperity gospel teachers, right, that really manipulate people for financial gifts and pray on those who are suffering, those who are distressed. It was really infuriating to Luther, both in terms of financial corruption, but also because of theological corruption. Again, it's this whole idea of indulgences that's related to the view of the church as a dispenser of sacramental grace. And Luther goes, hey, we're righteous on the basis of Christ's righteousness through faith, and so there's everything wrong with this kind of peddling of indulgences. So in October 31st of 1517, he posts to the door of the Wittenberg church, I believe, his 95 theses. And this wasn't Luther trying to take down the church or anything. This is Luther posting a list of Basically debate topic that he wanted to have there at the university. This is just what you did. You want to sort of stimulate an academic debate over these issues, but they really went at the heart of this sacramental system in the heart of this use of indulgences. And it kind of took off and turned into something much bigger than Luther ever intended. It was translated into German. You see, he wrote it in Latin. You could tell it was kind of for the university community. But someone translated it into German and it went viral. It spread like wildfire. And it really resonated with the people. The people really were, you could see there was a mass kind of discontent with the way the church was operating. So then, fast forwarding a little bit, in 1520, three years later, he publishes three very important pamphlets that kind of keep spelling out his views. One of them is the Address to the Nobility of the German Nation. And that's really just him addressing the German nobles, as you can see by the title, the nobility of the German nation. And he's just attacking the corruption and the abuses of the church. And trying to basically challenge the magistrates in his land to bring the church's corruption under, kind of to rein it in and bring it under control. The other pamphlet, the second one is the Babylonian captivity of the church. where you know it's trying on the issue the babylonian captive captivity of israel from the old testament and there he's attacking the sacramental system any saying look the church uh... the the role is basically held the church captive with the sacramental system with his babylonian captivity he's arguing instead for the priesthood of the believer you may have heard of that phrase before it's a reformation concept the priesthood of the believer Essentially the idea is that all Christians have access to God through faith in Christ, not through participating in sacraments, not through the human priesthood, not through the institutional church. Now in all this, Luther and all the other reformers, they're not undermining the importance of the church per se, but they're just saying it's not the institutional church that dispenses grace sacramentally. Every believer is a priest. Every believer has access to God through faith in Jesus. Finally, the freedom of a Christian man was the third pamphlet. And that just teaches that faith alone, he kind of deals with the issue of faith alone saves, but then faith produces good works. So there's this kind of inner freedom that the believer has. He's not justified by work, but as one who believes, he's kind of motivated to do good works. So these are three very important pamphlets that kind of further define and provide a framework for the Lutheran Reformation. Then in 1521 he's so he's getting into hotter and hotter water with the church. There's debate. happen and there's more and more uh... there's people pronouncements against him finally in fifteen twenty one he's called to defend himself at an imperial diet which is a funny word but it it's the diet of worms w-o-r-m-s so it's it looks like the diet of worms has nothing to do with eating worms it's just uh... an imperial council that was called together in the city of worms and um... and there there's this famous moment where He's really being pushed to recant his writings. And eventually he says, here I stand, I can do no other. He takes a stand on the authority of scripture above even popes and councils saying they're all fallible, but not scripture. When he's trying to show that in fact scripture was teaching something contrary to what the church had taught. So he's pronounced a heretic, he's excommunicated. He is in danger of actually being persecuted, being martyred, but he's Kept safe by a German noble named Frederick the Wise eventually in 1522 he he's returned to Wittenberg and he from then on kind of leads the German Reformation over the next few decades. Later in life, he married. So he'd been a monk. But of course, the celibacy of monks was something that he and the other reformers were realizing was not biblical. And so he married a woman named Catherine Von Bora. She was an immense blessing to him. Sadly, though, Luther, like all of our heroes we can find in church history, he's a very limited and sinful man. Actually, there's a lot there that's not pretty in terms of how he engaged in debate, how he addressed people in his writings, very much at times to the contrary of you may recall last week, Greg preached on 1 Peter 3, and we saw in 1 Peter 3, 8, this call to, let me read it, to how we're to live as believers in Christ in this world. And we're told, finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. Sadly, Luther is all too quick to return reviling for reviling. So Definitely feet of clay there. And even in later years, he ended up becoming very, there's some really disturbing kind of anti-Semitism that came out of his writings. So certainly, certainly a lot there that isn't good. Yet God used him greatly to recover the truths of the apostolic gospel from Rome's distortions. And for that, we all ought to be Deeply grateful that the truth of justification by faith the truth of biblical authority was was being recovered The priesthood of the believers. So these are our precious truths So that's Luther in a nutshell and any any questions or thoughts about about Luther up to this point Luther in the Reformation there in Germany Hey Tim, can I just hear a quick personal story? Yeah I had the privilege of visiting Wittenberg a number of years ago in 2006 and got to tour the house where Luther lived, saw the castle church where he nailed the theses to the door, and there's a library in the house that he lives in where a lot of his works are preserved and I actually got to see and even hold the Bible that he used to study from. And it was just, and it's an overwhelming experience, but just a little personal story there to get to brush with history in that way. I think I think that overwhelmed Tim. So what happened on y'all's end? Because I just got dropped out of that call. That's what happened. I told my story and you were gone. So yeah, sorry. I was overcome by emotion. No, you were talking about, you got to see Luther's home and his library in Wittenberg? That was the last I heard. Yeah, at home, one of the Bibles that he studied from and had written notes in and all. Oh, that's awesome. That's really cool. That'd be a really neat experience, yeah. So definitely used of God and a huge figure in church history. Yeah, Willie's apologizing because she hopped on. Yeah. It was so powerful. It dropped your internet connection. Yeah. Yeah. That was the power of that story. Was it, it, it overwhelmed my internet connection. So there was Luther and oh yeah, David, we're going to say something. Just that, um, uh, with the, um, and I'm sorry, I don't have the handout, so I'm just kind of picking up what's been put down, um, in this Bible study. But, uh, I find it funny that, um, the Lutheran church during that timeframe, I can't tell you how many like TV shows or movies that use that timeframe, you know, the 15, 18 hundreds or whatever to like, you know, Oh, this is why the church is evil. And it's like, Yeah, well, they weren't doing that great during that time period, apparently, except for one guy. So I just think it's funny. So I'll leave it at that. Yeah, it's always good to compare. You know, there can be a lot of bad examples of the church doing poorly. It's always good to hold us to a biblical standard, right? And realize that we've often fallen far short of what Christ has called the church to be. So, yeah. So that's it with Luther. Let's talk about the Swiss Reformation. This is kind of another branch, another stream that... B-U-I-N-G-L-I. I think we're freezing up here. You're really breaking up there, Tim. Y'all hear me? Hello, hello? Yep, yep, you're clear now. And he's gone. you're muted. Sorry everyone for that disturbance. I'm back. Anyway, we're back in the Swiss Reformation. Zwingli was a big figure there. Z-W-I-N-G-L-I. And he was agreed with luther on justification and biblical authority he kinda went farther to in uh... distancing they were more distance from uh... transubstantiation we've learned about that in the past right that the body and blood that uh... the bread the wine in the mass become the body and bread and blood of christ Luther didn't really distance himself enough from that. We'll just put it that way. They have kind of a, Lutherans have kind of a strange semi transubstantiation view, but Zwingli kind of took it further and said, this is a remembrance, a lot more of a biblical recovery of that. A much more prominent though, reformation was taking place over, so Zwingli was in Zurich, Switzerland, But then over in Geneva, Switzerland, there is even a bigger name there. And that would be John Calvin, a Frenchman. Calvin came from a humanist background. So he was actually trained in the classics, the ancient Greeks and Romans. Looks like he was converted to the Protestant faith while at the university in Paris. He was exposed to Reformation theology there and converted and believed. He was a little bit younger than Luther, so he kind of comes a little bit on the tail end of that. He's kind of a half generation beyond Luther. One of his big things was he published, in 1536, the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. and this is a book where he really systematized kind of the reformed faith the reformed christianity and and and laid out in a systematic in orderly way really for the first time he was one of the great as one is great contributions was that he helped laid out a very systematic way it was really kind of as an apologetic so it was actually addressed to the king of france is sort of show the key for us like look where uh... We're not an enemy to the state. We really have a good cause. We have a good argument here. We want to show you our faith. So it really is an apologetic to the king and others. In that same year, 1536, he leaves France to avoid persecution. And he's on his way through to Germany. And he ends up in Geneva, Switzerland. And a guy there named William Farrell there grabs hold of Luther and goes, I'm sorry, grabs hold of Calvin and says, you got to stay here and lead our reformation here. We need you. I guess Calvin had already had a bit of a reputation for his writings. So he actually convinced Calvin to stay there in Geneva, where he was just passing through. And he ended up spending his whole ministry there, other than a couple of years when he was actually exiled. That's another story. But he did stay and had a very fruitful ministry in Geneva. Over the years there, many Protestant refugees from other countries gladly flocked to Geneva. And really, under Calvin's ministry of the word, they were discipled. And it really had a huge influence on many other lands. You think of people from places like the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and France. There was a lot of influence that kind of radiated out from Geneva to a lot of Europe. So Zach, a while ago, mentioned John Knox. Knox was a Scottish reformer who I believe personally had spent time in Geneva under Calvin and was really trained there and went back to lead the Reformation in Scotland. Calvin was a rare combination of being both an exceptionally gifted biblical exegete. So he's very good in terms of interpreting and expositing scripture, but also a very good theologian. And those are definitely overlapping, but two kind of slightly different disciplines. And Calvin is kind of exceptionally strong in both. So if you go and read the Institutes of the Christian Religion, it's really good reading in theology. And if you go check out his commentaries, he has commentaries of most books of the Bible, many at least, and they're pretty good commentaries. So it's pretty cool the way he excelled in both of those. It was a rare gift. terms of theology calvin agreed with again with luther on justification and biblical authority uh... beyond that he he was again i i said more of a system a tizer so he did a lot to kind of bring together pull together reformed theology and uh... he had a very strong and i was a very biblical strong emphasis on the sovereignty of god in all things including in salvation So, major contributions there. So, any questions or thoughts there about the Swiss Reformation? Yeah, Greg. I was just going to say, I think you can find most, if not all, of Calvin's works online. I know that's the case with his commentaries. I'm pretty sure you can find the institutes as well. just do a search for those if you're interested at all, just massive resources. Yeah, so I think CCEL, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library is one place, I'm sure there's a lot of places where I think you can find, yeah, all those things. That's a good word there, Greg. Cool, any other thoughts? Alright, well let's go ahead and talk then about the Anabaptists. This is our third stream in the Reformation. and uh... anna baptist is kind of a catch-all term it's not really proper to speak of them as kind of one unified stream but it's kind of a catch-all for a diverse set of groups throughout europe uh... and what down them together though is that they all contended in one way or another that the reformation was not going far enough away from rome and in particular they were convinced that the new testament pot that baptism was for people who converted, people who are believers only, not for babies who are born in a Christian society to Christian parents. But in fact, baptism signaled a conversion, a turn to discipleship to Christ on an individual basis. And so the prefix Anna there refers to against baptism. This is kind of a smear label. It's so funny how many throughout church history, how many groups end up with the label that their opponents gave them. So the Anabaptist is one of them. It was kind of a smear because it was said that they were against baptism. It wasn't that they were against baptism, it was that they were against the infant baptism that all of Europe was practicing. They re-baptized people who had converted. Can someone remind us what Christendom means? This concept has come up before. All right, we had a big delay there. Did anyone hear me ask what Christendom means? Yeah. Did anyone give an answer? No. OK. So it's this idea of a unified Christian state, this idea of a Christian society that's integrated, where everybody is a Christian by virtue of just being a citizen, essentially, of that people. So it's more of a national identity than a matter of choice and individual discipleship. And most of the reformers didn't challenge that notion. Most of the reformers were really, their project was to bring gospel purity to the state church. And that's why they go by the name of, like Luther and Calvin and these others, they go by the name of the magisterial reformers because they sought to reform the magistrate, right? They wanted civil government to be in lockstep with the church. But the Anabaptists looked at texts like Matthew 28, 19. Could someone read that actually for us, please? Matthew 28, 19. Got it. Matthew 28, 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Actually, verse 20, sorry, Josh, can we read verse 20 as well, please? Sorry. Okay, sorry, verse 20. Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. Enlo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Thanks, Josh. What does this passage tell us about the nature of baptism? It's a commandment? It's a commandment, yeah. What else? Who are the people that are to be disciples, or who are to be baptized? It's the disciples that you make that you're supposed to baptize. Exactly. So it's... There's this idea of disciples are people who are brought to learn Christ, right? Who are brought to hear the message of Christ and to trust Him and to obey Him. And it's those people who are baptized right on the front end of that as they become believers. So they looked at texts like this and said, hey, this doesn't gel with Christendom, this idea that everyone is born Christian and you get baptized that way. It's actually more of an individual discipleship. So there's a much stronger emphasis on that. And it really was, It really first cropped up in Switzerland as an offshoot of Zwingli's Reformation in Zurich. It was more of a back-to-the-Bible movement, and the Anabaptists were kind of going even farther back to the Bible. They ended up being persecuted there. And sadly, the Anabaptists ended up being persecuted by both the Roman Catholics and the magisterial reformers, people like Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther. So in fact, that first group of Swiss Anabaptists that sprung out of Zwingli's Reformation, there's actually some that were martyred by the city of Zurich. The first of those was in 1527. A man named Felix Mons was executed by drowning, really, under the auspices of Zwingli. So certainly disturbing, right? Even within the Reformation, there's a lot of conflict there over the nature of the church. Over the next few decades, Roman Catholic and Protestant authorities would severely persecute the Anabaptists almost all over Europe. Why such a strong reaction? We talked about this idea of Christendom, this idea of a unified society that's all Christian. What the Anabaptists were doing in kind of recovering this biblical picture of discipleship and baptism was that they were pulling at the threads. They were kind of pulling apart this notion of the Christian society. So it was viewed as a very subversive thing really to all of society and undermining the basis of national unity. In fact, there's even kind of a patriotic angle where everyone was really scared of the Ottoman Turks at this point, the Muslims nearby that were getting farther into Europe. And so this idea of now you want to undermine baptism, it was kind of seen as being unpatriotic. So they were persecuted very badly during the Reformation. we can be grateful that their stand really helped sow the seeds for religious freedom in Christian lands over the next couple of centuries, that this argument kind of helped give way to notions of religious freedom. And I did say Anabaptists were a Catholic category, and they were all over the map in terms of their beliefs. Some were orthodox, but others were just blatantly heretical. There were some groups that denied the trinity of the really core doctrines of the emphasize practice over doctrine. Hello, can you hear me? Got a bit of a delay there. So they did tend to emphasize practice over doctrine. And I think their example kind of helps challenge us with this question of, Between those two, it's very easy to neglect one at the expense of the other. In 1 Timothy chapter 6 verses 3 and 4, Paul warns Timothy and he says, he talks about the doctrine that accords with godliness. He says in 1 Timothy 3, I'm sorry, 6, 3 to 4, He says, if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up and conceited. And so this idea that Christian doctrine, which is deep and rich and very, there's a lot of theology there, but it always is to accord with godliness. And it seems that while some other groups may Stress doctrine at the expense of practice. The Anabaptists may have tended to stress practice at the expense of doctrine. Again, some were radical, others kind of maybe a little bit more open to false teaching that would creep in over the years. So it's always good to be aware of that danger to really not fall off the donkey one side or the other with doctrine and practice. So any questions or thoughts there about the Anabaptists? I had a question. Yeah. Oftentimes in talking with other people, especially like Lutheran or Presbyterian or people like that, they'll kind of make the argument that the first time you see like believers baptism or not, or I get, yeah, believers baptism is like with the Anabaptists and they'll kind of be like, you know, that's where it started. Yeah. It was, you know, baptizing infants, like all the way, you know, throughout history. Is there any like well-known groups that you know off the top of your head that could be like, oh, in these prior centuries, here are these groups that are practicing it? Because we would affirm that's biblical. In terms of the baptism, what the Anabaptists were doing, we would affirm that's biblical and that's going on throughout all of history, probably. Yeah, that's a good question. My understanding, at least in the first few centuries of the Church, maybe like the first two or three centuries, I'll say, is that you don't really- what they're kind of theological priors would lead them to. So some, I think the best reason for that is because it was to baptize believers and baptism began and that's when you start hearing about it. I think I lost you guys a bit. Did you hear that? Was that clear? Okay. There may have been groups, I think there may have been some groups kind of here and there throughout, you know, once, Once the church started doing infant baptism, and of course the Roman Catholic Church was doing it for a good millennium or so before the Reformation, I think there would be groups here and they're doing it. I don't know of any I could name, but I do think there were, but see, it's kind of tricky because we don't know a lot about them. And again, as I said, a few centuries earlier, you have some groups that all we hear about them is that like some really disturbing heretical things. And it's kind of hard to know, like we're hearing it from the Catholic church, their enemies. So it's kind of hard to know like how credible are those. Characterizations, so there may have been some groups that were doing it. It's hard to know how Orthodox they were. It'll be my answer and But but yeah, it's a good question. I think the earliest centuries of the church are probably the best place to go to to see that. Yeah Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, you're great question Greg. I Yeah, just you highlighted the fact that the Anabaptists were viewed by the governing authorities and even others that weren't Anabaptists as being subversive. And it's just a good reminder. They sadly stand as an example that oftentimes Christians with the best intentions can be grossly misunderstood and grossly misrepresented in ways that provoke persecution. Yeah, just so often the case, you know, that representation is just what happens. Yeah, it's a good point. Jesus even said in Matthew 5, blessed are you and others, revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil things against you. All kinds of, falsely on my account, all kinds of evil things against you, falsely on my account. So that often persecution is based on misrepresentation. Yeah, so great, great point. Let's talk a little bit about the Anglican. I was just highlighting your point. You made that point. Okay, yeah. Thanks, Greg. The Anglican Reformation in England. We'll have to be brief here, but the Reformation in England was, I would say, of a pretty different character than the three we've seen up to this point. All those other ones, Lutherans, Swiss Reformed, Anabaptists, they were all mostly theologically motivated. There was probably kind of a secondary political energy there as part of what made it so popular with the masses. But it was mostly a theologically motivated reformation. In England, though, it was actually first a politically motivated reformation. So it's kind of a different situation. King Henry VIII, who was a king at that time, wanted to divorce his wife because She hadn't born him any sons and she was kind of past the childbearing age and no sons. So he wanted an annulment from the Pope so he could marry a new wife. The Pope declined, mostly for political reasons, and Henry then decided to go to an English court and get his marriage annulled in 1533. He got an annulment, he got his new wife, Anne Boleyn, and he had what he wanted. In 1534, soon after that, there was an act of supremacy in England that made the king the head of the English church. So essentially all this precipitated this and there had been a few centuries back really of England starting to sort of develop more of an independent identity, the English church. But really at this point was when it really split off and broke free from Rome and it was this whole new national church under the King of England. So it was really the same. It was not a theological change It was the same bad theology, but it just had a new chief. It wasn't the Pope anymore It was the king of England and kind of the more religious side of the leadership of the church Belonged to the the Archbishop of Canterbury you may have heard of that title that office That's really the the priest who's the head of the English Church kind of on the religious side whereas the king is the head on this on the political side and But following Henry, the church took some wide pendulum swings over the next couple of sovereigns, we could say, because his frail son, Edward VI, became king in 1547 at the age of 10. Poor Edward did not live very long. He only lived six years. Very frail health. And as such a young guy, he really But his advisors had a lot of influence. And he had a very Protestant core of advisors. Very reformed Protestant folks. So they really helped push things in a more theologically Protestant direction. You may have heard of Thomas Cranmer. He instituted, he wrote what's called a book of common prayer. that has gone through some revisions, but it is still the kind of the liturgy book of the Church of England. It was a very reformed document, a very Protestant document. And so that went into effect. But then when Edward died at age 16, his half-sister Mary became the queen. Now, Mary was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, who had been Henry's first wife. This whole thing was so that he could get an annulment with Catherine. Mary was her daughter. Now given how that had all gone down, you can imagine that Mary wasn't a big fan of Protestantism. She was deeply Catholic and actually very embittered toward Protestants. Probably you can imagine it had a lot to do with what happened to her mother. uh... so she was uh... i'd an aggressive opponent of prostitutes and so everything that ever the six head had brought into effect i mean mary just when the exact opposite direction uh... she tried aggressively to lead england back to rome marrying about three hundred protestants and she goes by uh... the name bloody mary you've probably heard that phrase before that was her i'd just a horrific time for the protestants there in in in her i think it was five-year reign She was politically unpopular, as you can well imagine, and even Protestantism in her own land, so that was viewed very negatively by her people. When she died in 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth I came to the throne, and you've probably heard of Queen Elizabeth. She was one of the most well-known Sovereigns in England and she had a very stable very long reign from 1558 to 1603 And she was a moderate Protestant so you can see you can see how the the pendulum and swung so why? clear over the last Decade or so when Mary came to the throne she saw a middle way between Rome and reformed England the Roman and reformed paths. And she really tried to develop sort of a moderate via media in English Protestantism. And that's really what gave the Anglican Church, the distinctive character that it has today. It's really kind of a half Protestant, half Catholic organization. Of course, there have been sort of streams within Anglicanism that kind of pull in those different directions. There are some Anglicans that are much more evangelical and Protestant and others that are much more You may have heard the term Anglo-Catholic that are basically a lot more like the Roman Catholic Church in terms of worship and theology. But there were some Protestants who had sheltered in Geneva and had been sitting under Calvin's ministry and really drinking those waters, who came back once the danger was gone under Mary's reign. And under Elizabeth, they returned, and they were unsatisfied with the lukewarmness of this compromise situation. Does anyone know the name we give for that group? The ones that came back and said, Hey, you know what? The Reformation kind of went halfway, but now they wanted to make it their project to kind of complete the Reformation in England under Elizabeth. Does anyone know what we call those guys? I'm sure you've... Puritans? Yeah, the Puritans. Exactly. You've probably heard that term. That's really what the Puritan movement came out of. It was this, uh, kind of more, uh, purely reformed group within the church of England that said, Hey, look, we've gone halfway under Elizabeth, which is cool, but we want a more Protestant, more biblical, more pure, uh, reformed church. And so that was, uh, that was a Puritan movement really calling, the church and the nation back to biblical doctrine and righteousness. So that was the Puritan movement. And that really spans well into the next century. We'll probably hear more about them next week. So there we have it, four reformations in Europe. Some were more theologically motivated. Others were more political. Some sought to redefine discipleship more radically, while others were just really trying to reform the state churches. But all of them, in one way or another, were revolts from Rome. So in a moment, we're going to see here about what did the eternal city do in response to all this reformation. before we do that we're going to be question the thoughts about the anglican church of england anglican reformation so it's anyone know what the denomination in the u.s. how did someone have to be certainly you're asking a question at the gate and i was asking there's a lot of half sister things going on so it's always a bit the sister edward then Okay, so yeah, good question. Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth were all children of Henry VIII by different wives. So Henry VIII ended up with, I think, five wives. Once you get started, I guess, you know, he kind of kept going. So there were five wives. So yeah, they were all half siblings, the children of Henry VIII, yeah. So yeah, we're a wholesome family situation there. Let's talk about Rome, the Counter-Reformation. We'll call this the Empire Strikes Back. So Rome wasn't going to take this all sitting down. They did have a response in the 16th century. The first thing we're going to hear about is Loyola and the Jesuits. So there was a man named Ignatius of Loyola. He was a Spaniard. He was a monk, a mystic. He had a mystical rebirth experience. And he ended up writing a book about it called Spiritual Exercises. And it became a manual for others to have the same kind of spiritual experience that he did. It was a very ascetic, we've learned about asceticism, right? Very severe, extreme self-denial. And that movement ended up becoming in 1540, a religious order that we call the Jesuits, J-E-S-U-I-T-S. You've probably heard of Jesuits. Isn't there a Jesuit high school in New York? in Carmichael, I believe. So you have the legacy continuing there. Does anyone know what Jesuit means, what that term means? I believe it means a society of Jesus. So there you have it. They're the society of Jesus. But the Jesuits were zealous. To halt the advance of Protestantism in European land. So there are a lot of places that were solidly Protestant, but then there were a few other lands are kind of flirting or dabbling with Reformation and the Jesuits mission was to kind of turned back the tides. And there were actually some places where that happened. I think of Hungary, Poland, Italy, that really did flirt with Reformation and were kind of brought back from the brink. And I think the Jesuits were a big part of that. Also, we don't really have time to talk about this, but this was an era starting in around 1500 of massive global colonial expansion. especially by kingdoms like Portugal and Spain, which were both Catholic. So in all these lands that were being colonized, like Latin America and Asia, the Jesuits were kind of the point men on spearheading Catholic missions in those lands. So Jesuits were also a big part of Rome's global expansion at this point. But the church's response went beyond them. And we'll see in sub point B there about the churchwide response and the Council of Trent. So the corruption that we've heard about, we kind of let off everything with talking about corruption, sale of indulgences, financial, moral corruption in the church. Luther and the Protestants weren't the only people bothered by that. There were many that stayed within the church that still recognized uh... this is a bad situation there's a lot of hypocrisy a lot of of filthiness going on here uh... there's a pope paul the third who is reformation minded although i do have to point out uh... that not unlike uh... some of the other popes paul the third had four illegitimate children uh... so there's a lot of uh... checkered past year with a lot of the pope's here uh... but paul the third uh... he did when he came to office he uh... he wanted to to deal with this issue of reformation within the church. So he pulled together a committee of cardinals to study, like, what are the reforms that we need to do? What's wrong? Sort of a committee to study what's wrong with the church. And they came back in 1537 with a report, essentially, what do we need to do to reform the church? They talk about things like, look, we need to pull back from getting involved with secular politics, be more involved in spiritual matters. We need to address the financial corruption, things like indulgences. This is getting out of hand. Even moral corruption, prostitution in the city of Rome, things like that. So there was a lot of this kind of cleanup that was being recommended and really did end up being pursued there by Rome. And meanwhile, there's a growing chorus of voices in the church calling for a churchwide council to deal with some of these issues as well as to respond to the Reformation. And the result of that was the Council of Trent, which met in a city called Trent in Italy from 1545 through, I think, 1564. Now, the Council of Trent is very important for us as Protestants. I wonder if anyone Does anyone know why Trent is kind of a key thing for us as Protestants as we think about the Roman Catholic Church? Well, let's find out. So Trent is something good for all of us as Protestants to know about, especially as you interact with Roman Catholics, maybe loved ones, people in your life, or Roman Catholics. See, at the Council of Trent, they took a militant stance against Protestant distinctives. The Protestant Reformation had recovered doctrines of salvation through faith alone. We talked about the things that Luther was discovering in scriptures and others. We're saved by grace alone. There's no contribution of our works. We're saved through faith alone, not by any sacramental participation, but only clinging to Christ by faith. And the scripture alone is our supreme authority. All of those matters, in all those matters at Trent, the Catholic Church doubled down and rejected those things and hardened themselves against it. In fact, Trent anathematized anyone who would teach that salvation is through faith alone, and anathematized meaning pronounced damnation and curse on the teaching that anyone, the teaching that were saved through faith alone, that anyone who would teach that doctrine So it's important to understand that Rome doesn't just disagree with our biblical gospel. Rome has taken the hardest stance it could against the biblical gospel. And so you can see Rome taking a hard swerve against these precious truths of the Protestant Reformation. And it's good for us all to know that this is still Rome's position on the matter. They may talk a little bit differently and they may sound friendly, but this is still their official position on these matters. Sometimes we get talking with Roman Catholics in our lives, and we might notice that they sound a lot like us. They might talk about faith in Jesus Christ. They may talk about the grace of God. They may talk about having a personal relationship with God. And all these things are good, but it's important to realize that And I want to say on the one hand, there are there are I would say doubtless some individuals in the Roman Catholic Church who do trust Christ and are saved, but it's not because of their churches teaching it's contrary to their churches teaching. Trent is still the church's official position on the matter and the biblical gospel according to the Council of Trent is condemned. is a teaching of Satan. It is condemned in the strongest terms to hell. So it's just important for us to realize that. And if you want to read a little bit more about that, R.C. Sproul wrote a wonderful book called Faith Alone, the Evangelical Doctrine of Justification. Faith Alone, the Evangelical Doctrine of Justification by R.C. Sproul. And he really just documents, first of all, documents the historical issue of justification and Trent, as much as evangelicals might might want to build bridges with rural and has not been solved. So always good for us to understand that issue. So any questions or thoughts about that? Yeah, Greg, I see a hand up. You know what, Tim, I was just gonna say that book by R.C. Sproul is excellent, and if anybody's interested in it, just know there's another book by the same title, Faith Alone, by Thomas Schreiner, who is a contemporary theologian that I actually quoted from this morning. I haven't read Thomas Schreiner's book, but I'm sure it's excellent, but if you look for that book, just know that there's the same title with different authors, different books, so. Yeah. I like that. I agree with you. That's thanks for the distinction there. But I, yeah, that one versus rules the one I've read, I haven't read Shriner either. But like you, I would, I think you probably could probably endorse that one too. But But yeah, scrolls work is very helpful on that. So it's good. So we have a busy century, don't we, in the 1600s, I mean 1500s. We have an explosion of, as I said, a really plurality of reformations throughout Europe, and all four branches we've studied were To be honest, deeply flawed because they were inhabited by sinful men and women like us, whose theology was imperfect, whose lives were imperfect and still had indwelling sin. But we can be grateful and should be deeply grateful for major gains. There was a recovery of the unrivaled authority of the Bible over the church. And though even though we're deeply grateful for some of the findings of those early church councils, we still have to recognize biblical authority is supreme over the church. There was a recovery of biblical justification that we're right with God entirely based on the righteousness granted to us as a gift through faith in Christ. It's his work alone that makes us right with God and is our hope and righteousness. Finally, a recovery of each believer's priestly access to God through faith in Christ, not through the institutional church, not through human priests, not through sacraments, only through Jesus by faith. So as we close, are there any other questions or thoughts? And of course, if you want to dialogue with me about any of these things in a more extended way, I'd be glad to do that. In order to close, would someone turn to Philippians 3 and be willing to read Philippians 3, verses 8 through 11? Just to kind of reflect on the glory of the gift of righteousness we have in Christ. I'm happy to read it. Let somebody else go for it. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, Zach, please. Much better. It was three, eight through 11. Zach, Zach. We need you to, yeah. Three, eight through 11. Okay. Okay. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Amen.