Hey everyone, Jared Luchobore here. Before we get into today's episode, I want to invite you to MidAmerica Reformed Seminary's Center for Missions and Evangelism 2025 conference, Gossiping the Gospel, Everyday Evangelism, taking place on October 3 and 4 at Bethel Church in Lansing, Illinois. This year's theme explores how sharing the good news of Jesus can be as natural and relational as chatting with a close friend. And through keynote sessions and panel discussions, you'll gain practical tools and theological insight into conversational evangelism, hospitality, testimony sharing, and more. So whether you're a pastor, a ministry leader, or just someone who wants to speak about Christ more confidently in everyday life, this conference is for you. This is an in-person only event, so head on over to midamerica.edu slash CME slash conference to register today. Hope to see you there. And now, back to Marscast. Welcome to Marscast, the official podcast of Mid-America Reform Seminary, where faculty and friends explore the depths of faith, unpack biblical truth, and engage with the critical issues of our time. I'm Jared Luchaboard, Director of Marketing. Thank you for tuning in. In this episode, I'm joined once again by Dr. Alan Strange, President and Professor of Church History here at Mid-America Reform Seminary, as we continue our discussion on Martin Luther. Thank you for joining me once again. Good to be here with you, Jared, and greetings to all of our listeners. We're happy to have you. In this episode, we're going to examine Martin Luther's criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, the accusation that it resembled legalistic Judaism, and his lasting impact on Protestant theology. Dr. Strange, one of Luther's striking claims was that Rome had come to resemble the legalism of the Pharisees. Was that a fair comparison that he made there? Short answer, Jared, I believe that it was a fair comparison. And this is an important question, particularly because while a lot of people over the course of time since Luther, let's say in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, tended rather much to think that Luther's assessment of late medieval Rome was fairly correct, that a priestly legalism had come in that was a betrayal, in a sense, of the scriptures and what the earlier church understood and thought and taught. And of course, let me just say this, we do understand that the Pharisees, I trust that we do, the Pharisees themselves, back in their day, were betraying what actually was taught in the Old Testament. J. Grassam Machen gets this very nicely in his Origin of Paul's Religion, where he says that either Jesus and Paul were wrong about the Jews of their day, or the Jews of their day were wrong about the Old Testament. Now, I can assure you that Machen didn't think that Jesus and Paul were wrong. Correct. So, what does that mean to say that the Jews of their day were wrong about the Old Testament? Well, the Old Testament is not As a lot of people may think in some fashion, it does not teach a religion of law, so to speak, that one is saved by law keeping. It is the case. that in the garden, under the covenant of works, Adam would have been declared righteous and glorified had he obeyed and not sinned in the probation, right? But once Adam fell, the availability of being justified or declared righteous because you're keeping covenant with God, that ship had sailed. We're all born in the sin into which he fell. And so it is the case then that right there in Genesis 3, right, the first promise is made, the so-called Protoevangelium, that one will come who will crush the head of the seed of the serpent. And so there's the promise that Jesus will come and do. He will live the life that Adam and we haven't. He will die the death that we deserve. That will be imputed to us. Our sin, Luther called this the glorious exchange. Our sin imputed to Christ. His righteousness imputed to us. And so what Luther saw rightly was what had happened in the church was something similar, that even as the Pharisees and others made Judaism of old, made the faith of old to be legalistic, that's what had happened in the church. Now there's a movement that comes in the 20th century called the New Perspective on Paul. And what the New Perspective says is this, among other things. It says Luther was wrong in his assessment of not only Rome being like Judaism at the time of Jesus and Paul, legalistic, but Judaism at the time of Jesus and Paul was in fact not legalistic. So that's where they go back to. They say it was not legalistic. It was never legalistic. It was a religion of grace. Well, I would say, yes, it was a religion of grace presented in the Old Testament, but it wasn't rightly apprehended. It wasn't understood to be that. That's why, I mean, you know, they sought to fence in the law to make the law keepable. That's why when Jesus comes, he preaches the Sermon on the Mount, which shows you why you thought you could keep the law No, you know, murder is hatred in your heart. Adultery is lust in your heart. So we're all under condemnation because of our lawlessness, our violation of the law. So Luther understood that. Luther understood, I believe, precisely what Jesus and Paul were doing, and I think he was correct. But you do have this thing called New Perspective that arises with Montefiore earlier on, a kind of form of this after the Second World War, and then particularly in 77, Christer Stendhal, and you have James D.G. Dunn, and Tom Wright, and all of these folks writing this. And we need to understand that that arises in no small part, the new perspective, and even going back and saying, no, the Pharisees were not, or Judaism was not, Second Temple Judaism was not legalistic. I think there's a certain, particularly you see this in somebody like Montefiore, there was a particular pressure to say this because especially after what happened with Hitler and the Jews, there was a great concern that the church stop being anti-semitic. Now it is true that the church unfortunately had over time, especially beginning in the ancient church in the fourth and fifth centuries and on, had taken to persecute the Jews. That was never a position that the church should have taken. They should not have been putting the Jews to the sword. They should have been preaching the gospel to the Jews. Now, there's a lot to talk about there, and we're not gonna get into all of that now, but it's just to say we can understand why the New Perspective arose, because the New Perspective had a conviction that the church had read the Bible in a way that ultimately was anti-Semitic, and that that had furnished the basis for the pogroms in all sorts of places, and particularly what eventuated in the Holocaust with Hitler, which we abhor and condemn. And I would say we should abhor and condemn all the violence that was ever brought against the Jews. I think you and I have talked about this before. The city of Amsterdam, which became kind of a beacon for the Reformed faith in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries and on, was the place that was the most friendly, if you will, and tolerant towards the Jews. And so, at any rate, you can kind of understand that. So a lot of that, there's been a lot of this with respect to Luther, you know, reading Luther this way and saying, no, no, Luther had it wrong. Because, of course, Luther earlier on himself When he has these reformational sensibilities, let's say pre-1525, Luther himself is very open towards the Jews and believes that the Jews will, with his message, his message of free grace, his message of faith alone, that this will be impactful for the Jews and that they will convert. But when many Jews do not convert, they don't. It's interesting. It's sort of like, you know, Muhammad wanted the Jews particularly to convert, and when they didn't, he turned very violent against them. Sadly, there's some of that in Luther. He turns against them because Luther makes, I think, several clear mistakes. And Luther is so concerned after the peasants revolt of 1525 that his movement is causing anarchy, ecclesiastical anarchy, and civil anarchy. And he wants to draw everything back in and he so fears that anarchy that he clamps down in a way that is ill-advised, and part of that whole clampdown is on the Jews. It's not just the Jews, but certainly they fall under his opprobrium. So that's a kind of weakness there for Luther. What were some of Luther's major writings post-1517 that really shaped the Reformation movement? Well, there's a lot we could talk about there. He's going to go on to comment on Scripture. As I noted there in the last segment, the last podcast, I noted that he had studied particularly in not only the Psalms, but Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. And Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews are really interesting because Habakkuk 2-4 is the place where it says, the just shall live by faith. And Luther takes that as a real theme. You might say that's probably the theme of his life and work. And each of those books take this up. And a preacher of the mid-20th century observed that the book of Romans really focuses on the just, and the book of Galatians on shall live, and the book of Hebrews by faith. And that really, those books, those early on works really do shape him and of course all of that is going to come to be published in some fashion. But in 1520, he publishes three great works, shorter works. an address to the Christian nation, to the German nation. He calls on Christian princes to take reform of the church into their hands if the church is not doing it. The captivity of, the Babylonian captivity of the church, calling for communion in both kinds, that is, the cup should not be denied to the laity, they should have the bread and the cup. and he rejects the Roman sacerdotal system, that whole priestly intervention system of that. And then von der Freiheit, the Christian is freed by faith, the freedom of the Christian man. And I would just say this, if our listeners are saying, well, we're somewhere where I could just start and read something short of Luther, read The Freedom of the Christian Man. It's a great place to start. And there's a lot more that he did I could talk about, but let's just leave it there for now. Think about Luther's legacy today. What aspects of his theology and personality continue to shape Protestant thought? Give our listeners something to chew on here. Well, I think when we think of his theology particularly, one of the things that is very clear in terms of his doctrine of Scripture is the centrality of Christ in the preached Word. He was very keen on that and insisted on that. Now, he does believe that faith, as he conceives it, is so prismatic and controlling that he can almost look for a canon within a canon. So, for example, he looks at the book of James and it's not clear to him that James, he calls a right straw a prophet, it's not clear to him that James is properly, as he would conceive it, giving testimony to faith. Now, I think James is, if we rightly understand, James is really, I think, talking about the fruits of faith, the consequences of faith, Whereas Paul, for example, in Romans is talking about the basis of faith, the foundation of faith. And it's entirely a gracious act, a gracious act which does produce good fruit. And I think you can take those things together. But I think Luther had a little bit of a problem there. Also, law and gospel. He would say, the law accuses and judges while the gospel awakens faith in the heart and raises man up and recreates him so he can begin to love God and his neighbor. Um, so, um, yes, Luther, I think, had a right understanding, uh, of, I think he sometimes developed, he developed sort of a hermeneutic of law and gospel, uh, where everything is read as, is that, and I think that has some, some liabilities, but I think he's right to properly distinguish law and gospel, the demand of the law, and the fact that we can't fulfill it, that Christ fulfills it for us, and that it's by faith in him. As Paul says, having a righteousness, I mean, Luther is very keen on this Pauline notion that is in Philippians 3, 9. Having a righteousness, Paul says, that comes not by my law-keeping, but comes through faith in Christ. And Luther is very clear about that. And on that point, this is not something that the Reformers disagree on. Calvin very much, he called Luther my father. He identified with him on that. John Knox was as virulent and as fierce as a Reformer as there was. And he was asked several times, what's the heart of this whole thing? And he said, justification by faith alone. as Luther taught that. So it isn't the case that these reformers were differing on this principle. Calvin calls it the main hinge upon which true religion turns, this doctrine of justification. So just I repeat what I did at the end of the last episode, the righteousness that God requires of us, He gives to us. So righteousness is alien and imputed And it's according to God's glorious exchange, right? And now the fuller notion of forensic justification is developed by Melanchthon, his co-worker and co-laborer. But Luther's view of this, I think, is something that has been a gift to us all. This notion that the righteousness that God requires, he gives as a gift. And it's available to any who will abandon all hope in themselves and all that they are and have and do and trust in Christ and Christ alone. As we wrap up our exploration of Martin Luther's theological revolution, we've seen how his insights into justification by faith alone transformed not just his own understanding, but the entire landscape of Christianity. But Luther wasn't the only reformer shaking the foundations of medieval Christianity. While he battled in Germany, another man was leading his own reformation movement in the Swiss cantons, a movement that would take some surprisingly different turns. Next time on Marscast, we'll journey to Zurich to meet Ulrich Zwingli. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or colleague who might find it helpful or interesting. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And if you have a moment, consider leaving a rating or review. I'm Jared Luchibor, and this has been another episode of Marscast. Thank you for listening. I'll catch you next time.