Thank you again for the kind invitation to be here. Five occasions over these last, these three days, I've gotten to know the roads a lot better in this part of the world. I've hardly ever driven this, even though it's only 30 some miles from Beaver Falls, I've hardly ever come this way. So here I am, and I'm grateful for the invitation and grateful to be able to get to know some of you over this weekend. Mark and I have never had a lengthy conversation until this weekend. So we'd had lunch together with some other people about a year or so ago, and that was our first acquaintance, so I'm grateful for the hospitality and the kindness and the attentiveness. So one fellow says he has not yet fallen asleep in these lectures, so dare I say who that was? Okay, thank you. My wife was having surgery some years ago, and the anesthesiologist showed up about the time that I showed up before the surgery, and then the pastor arrived. And I made the joke that, you know, all three of us have the same job. We put people to sleep for a living. The anesthesiologist had never heard that joke before. All right, well, is God good? Yes. And the gospel is the greatest display of the goodness and the love of God. Last night I was paraphrasing from memory part of Luther's most extended bit of autobiography. And it was in my briefcase, I just didn't dig it out in time. So I wanted to read about a page or so of that document from near the end of Luther's life. It's the preface to his Latin writings. Remember referring to this last night? And that preface written in the last year of his life. And he's reflecting back upon the events that that began this Protestant adventure that he had never anticipated. And I mentioned Romans 1 verse 17, the righteousness of God. Remember that discussion from last night briefly? And so here is that page reflecting upon that puzzle. And I'll refer to that again in the sermon this morning, which will be on justification by faith. And he says that, meanwhile, in that same year, I began interpreting the Psalms once again, and I felt confident that I was now more experienced, since I had dealt with university courses in St. Paul's letters to the Romans and the Galatians and the letter to the Hebrews. And I had conceived a burning desire to understand what St. Paul meant in his letter to the Romans, but thus far there had stood in my way not the cold blood around my heart, but that one phrase, In chapter 1, the righteousness of God is revealed in it. I hated that phrase, which by the use and custom of all my teachers I've been taught to understand philosophically as referring to the formal or the active justice, the justice by which God Himself is just and by which He punishes sinners and the unjust. Blameless monk that I was, I felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn't be sure that God was appeased by my satisfactions. Now remember the definition of satisfaction from our discussion this weekend? What's meant by satisfaction? It's not Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. What is meant by satisfaction in late medieval piety? Who can tell us? It's the deeds prescribed by the priest in what ritual. in penance. Okay, so the deeds of prayer and alms and vigils and fastings, deeds of virtue and piety that make up for the evil of your sins. Okay, they're called satisfactions. Is God satisfied with these acts of virtue called penances or satisfactions? Luther says, I couldn't be sure. And I did not love, no, rather I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners. And in silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God and said, isn't it enough that we miserable sinners lost for all eternity because of original sin or oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? And why does God add sorrow to sorrow through the gospel? And through the gospel threaten us with more righteousness and wrath. All right, so if in the gospel a righteousness of God is revealed, Romans 1.17, is it a righteousness that is the righteousness of wrath? Luther's afraid that it was. And this is how I raged with a wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered St. Paul, knocking at that spot, the door of St. Paul in Romans 1, anxiously wanting to know what the apostle wanted. At last, meditating day and night on those words, by the mercy of God, I paid attention to their context. You know the rule, right? A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text. I'll try that one again. A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text. That means you're only pretending. At last I paid attention to the context. As it is written, the just shall live by... Does anyone know the next word? All right. I began to understand that in this verse the righteousness of God is that by which a righteous person lives by the gift of God, that is by faith. Okay, now that'll be the substance of the sermon later on this morning. And then Luther says, at once I felt that I'd been altogether born again and entered into paradise through open gates. So that's the substance of that particular page from 1545. And with one more page, that story ends in Luther's ten pages of Spiritual Autobiography, maybe the most important text ever penned by Luther, those ten pages. So I wanted you to hear that from the horse's mouth and not just from my paraphrase. So today we're looking now at our third theme then, Luther and the 95 Theses. Our first theme was late medieval piety, because unless we understand the context, the spiritual ethos within which Luther grew up and with which he was trained as a young monk, we will not understand Reformation. After all, Reformation is reforming something that is awry. So what was awry? We need to learn that, and our first night we worked on that. And what's the metaphor that I used? Something about a sun? The eclipse of grace in late medieval Catholicism. The eclipse of grace, not the absence of grace, but the eclipse of grace. So last night, then, Martin Luther and the quest for a gracious God, and today, then, Martin Luther and the 95 Theses. So here he is at the Wittenberg door, October 31st, 1517, the Eve of All Saints. And the handout that you have is a one-page sampling of the 95 Theses, the document posted on that day, there is some controversy among some historians as to whether he actually nailed it to the church door. In my own studies, yeah, I think he did. I think he did. So, the document begins like this. Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, The following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that same place. Wherefore, he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us may do so by letter in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. That's an invitation to academic debate in good medieval style. The medieval university thrived upon the cut and thrust of academic argument in a form called the disputation. A disputation is something like a thesis defense today in the academic world. And I know you had to write a thesis and defend it, and so did I. And so master's degrees often have a thesis, doctoral degrees always do a thesis or a dissertation. And what Luther is doing here, he's already Dr. Luther, but what Luther is doing here is asking fellow theologians, that is qualified academics, to reply in defense of the sale of indulgences, because his theses are against the sale of indulgences. 95 sentences. A thesis is a sentence. 95 sentences against the sale of indulgences. And so this is not a likely document to make world fame, is it? I mean, Dean, how many people read your dissertation? Yeah, okay, so your committee read it, and maybe it got put on the shelf, and some dissertations get published. Mine got published. I suppose I've had maybe, maybe, maybe 300 people read my dissertation. At first, it was only three. Yeah, so my dissertation committee read it. Well, you know, some fields add up better than others. My dissertation is the terrible title, a title that put off any enthusiastic reader at all. Up the Steep and Stony Road, the Book of Zechariah in Social Location Trajectory Analysis. What in the world does that mean? I know what it means, but does anybody else know what it means? Yeah, it's a terrible title. My editor should have slapped me across the face. Okay, so this document that Luther posts on the church door is not the friendly thing that invites you to your best life now. It's not a Joel Osteen-type document. It's not soft and friendly and roosy and about to reach out and hug you. It's a brittle academic summary of theological objections to something happening right then. right then in the German states. So the fact that it got taken down by some unknown person and published astonished Luther. So he's hoping for some academic colleague to take up the other side, even if only for the sake of argument, and have a fine day of theological dispute within the academy. That's what he hopes. We have no record, by the way, that the theses were ever actually debated at Wittenberg. No academic seems to have answered the challenge. It's like that scene out of Monty Python, where they bravely ran away. It seems to be that. But within 10 days, the document is in Spain. Wow. That's about the best mail service in Europe, to get a document to Spain in 10 days. Who sent it? I don't know. But it ends up in Spain within 10 days. By November 10th, it's in Spain. By March the following year, it's at Cambridge. Sent by no less a person than Erasmus, Europe's most famous scholar. He rather likes it. Wow. All right, so let's get into the substance of it then. And my leading question for all these talks has been this. How does God grant grace? Grace, of course, is the undeserved favor by which we are loved into God's holy kingdom. It is the spiritual power that renews our heart and redirects our love, so we're no longer enslaved to the idol of self, to what St. Augustine called concupiscence, the idolatrous self-love that enslaves us. God's grace breaks it. And God's grace leads us then to a reordered love so we at last begin to love God first and best. At last, at last. Not yet perfectly, but nonetheless first and best. How does God grant this grace? Well, two competing systems in the history of Christianity. Evangelicalism, salvation, grace, ministered by the power of faith in the evangel, that is the gospel. Or sacerdotalism, the word sacerdotus is Latin for a sacrificing priest. It was the word for old pagan Roman priests. Julius Caesar actually had this title in one of his imperial offices. But sacerdotus also becomes the word for a Roman Catholic priest in Latin. And so salvation, grace, ministered by the power of the sacraments, ministered through the bishops and the priesthood of the church. Is the church the vessel that distributes salvation? sacraments, or is grace the gift of God to faith? So there is the issue that will split the church in the 16th century. You've seen this screen once before if you've been attending. There is Luther gaunt with fasting because he's been an ardent monk in the Augustinian order, leaving law school in terror with that lightning strike, CNN, help me, I'll become a monk. And by 1512, professor of Bible at Wittenberg and the founder of the 95, I'm sorry, and the founder of the Protestant Reformation. the first Reformation document, these 95 theses. So we'll go now to the indulgence controversy. And Friar Johann Tetzel, not a very nice fellow. Jolly, affable, and a great wit. And he could have been hired by Madison Avenue to make advertising jingles for Ivory Soap. It floats, right? Ivory soap, it floats. As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul into heaven springs. What in the world does this mean? It means that when you buy the document authorized by the Pope called the indulgence, if you buy it on behalf of some dead relative, your mother, your grandfather, all right, buy the document on their behalf, and as soon as the coin drops into the box, the soul flies to heaven. That was the advertising jingle by Tetzel and other similar salesmen. Look at, on your page, number 28. I'm sorry, number 27. They preach man, who say that so soon as the penny jingles in the money box, the soul flies out of purgatory. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money box, gain and avarice can be increased. But the result of the intercession of the church is in the power of God alone. Can money bring a soul to heaven? Who alone can bring a soul to heaven? God. In His grace, does money control God? No. Does the earthly church control God? No. No. Not even the Pope. Not even the Pope controls God. Not even the Pope controls the entry to heaven. That's the substance of the 95 right there. And so negatively stated, the church does not do this, the church cannot. What does instead? The gospel. the Gospel of Christ. And so there is Tetzel in an imprint from the 16th century. He is a Dominican priest, and there he is in his robes. Dominicans wore white in the under robe and brown as the over robe, and with a cowl, a hood, and so that's the sign of the Dominican order. There's the money box, and there's the keyhole, because you want to keep that money safe. And in fact, in Luther's house today in Wittenberg, you can see a similar box on display. Whether it was Tetzel's own box might be disputed, but some of the internet photos of that say it was Tetzel's own box. I don't know. But it was a money box from the sale of indulgences. Here is an example of an indulgence that is signed by Johann Tetzel. Do you see his name there? Johannes Tetzel. Tetzel, I joked yesterday, rhymes with pretzel and was equally twisted. And the translation here says, in the authority of all the saints and in compassion towards you, I absolve you from all sins and misdeeds and remit all punishment for 10 days. Ten days, okay, ten days, do whatever you like. All right, so what's an indulgence? I made the claim yesterday that an indulgence was created during the first crusade in the 1090s A.D. because Christian knights going into battle against the Islamic foe for the reclaiming of the holy lands, the holy sites for Christian pilgrimage, these knights were afraid that if they died in the wrath of battle, in the service of Christ, they might nonetheless receive punishments for the wrath of war. Okay, they've killed some poor Muslim 17-year-old, and they're on the battlefield. Okay, so in my wrath, I've shed blood. If I'm killed in battle, will I be punished by God? And so the Pope devised what's called an indulgence, a document that granted to the Christian knight who died in battle release from the punishments of sin in the midst of crusade. All right, so if you die in the service of Christ in crusade, you will not be punished for the sins of war. That's how they began. So eventually by the late 1400s, they're doing things like this. And John Huss, already a century before, protested them vehemently. That's one of the reasons he was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1415. He died singing. Hus died singing. The name Hus means goose, and he joked that they were going to cook his goose. They did. But here's a Hussite document on the colored photo on the left side there. That's the Pope selling indulgences, but it's the Pope as Antichrist. The Seven Horns of the Beast of Revelation. The documents are indulgences promising forgiveness. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. That's the offer of Satan. Pope as Antichrist. A Hussite tract published around the year 1490 or 1510 in Prague, the center of Hussite protest. 1521, a similar kind of claim in this drawing. Here's the Pope signing indulgences. Here's the money table, and there are the documents to be bought, and here are the peasants. See these impoverished people here? Okay, there they are putting down their coins. to receive the document, the promise of forgiveness. There are the cardinals and the bishops over here, and a monk, and meanwhile the faithful dog is in grief. Often dogs in Renaissance art denote fidelity. Okay, so fido. Okay, faithful in Latin, fido. The dog is in grief. over the apostasy of the Pope. That is a Luther tract published in 1521. The tract is called something about Christ and Antichrist. Well, guess who Antichrist is? The Pope, Leo X. That tract is published the year after Luther was excommunicated by that Pope. So the controversy falls out like this, and I said a little bit of this story last night. A 26-year-old nobleman named Albrecht of Brandenburg. How many know of the Brandenburg Concerti by J.S. Bach? Okay, they were They were given to the same noble family but, you know, many, many years later. They were written at a commission by one of the Brandenburg nobles. That was in the 17... 20s, I guess, something like that, for the Bach 6 Brandenburg Concertos. So the same family. So now we're in the 15 teens, and Albrecht is something like the third son in that family. He will not inherit the royal title, and he's not military, so he goes to the church. And he wants to be the archbishop of the most important German The most important German bishopric, the Archbishopric at Menz, which means that all the other German bishops answer to him, and he will be under the Pope alone. in churchly authority. Okay, pretty highly exalted rank. He'll become a cardinal very soon after this. The Pope will give him the red hat of the cardinal, and here he is in the painting depicted as cardinal. So if you were of the Pope's closest ecclesiastical advisors, you were called cardinal, and you wore the red hat. Okay, so go to St. Louis and watch them play baseball. Oh, I'm sorry, that's a different idea. I apologize. Okay, so Albrecht then is only 26, and in canon law says that you can be archbishop only at age 30. It's a bit like the U.S. Constitution. What's the age limit for presidency? You've got to be 35. Okay. So somebody asked me when I was 34, why aren't you president, Byron? No, they never asked me that. Okay. They never asked me that. I've got a niece who might be president, but she's not 35 yet. Okay, so Pope Leo's price was 21,000 gold ducats, and there we see that a ducat is 3.5 grams of gold, 35 pounds of gold, roughly $3 million. Okay, I'll stretch the ecclesiastical rules if you pay me $3 million. And Albert does not have $3 million. He borrows it from the richest banker in the world, and he's got to pay it back. And so the Pope and Albrecht and the banker devise a plan then, that half the money from the sale of indulgences will go to pay Albrecht's loan to Jacob Fuggers of the Fuggers Bank, and the other half will go to pay for the greatest, largest building in the world, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. I described it last night. Has anyone been there to St. Peter's? Okay, it truly is immense. It took about 90 years to build the place. So I think it was not finished until about the year 1590. So Luther and the pulpit, all these guys are dead by then. But these great buildings, you know, it took a hundred years. It's like St. John's Cathedral in New York City. More than a hundred years to build that building and only recently completed. So these massive, massive cathedral buildings. The Cathedral at Chartres in central France, I think it was more than 200 years to complete the building. And the style of Gothic had changed, so the one tower, the later tower, does not match the early tower. Two different architectural designs because they're 200 years apart in history. Okay, so these buildings took immense amounts of time. They're so immense. So, you know, what can you buy for three million dollars? St. Peter's and pay back a vast loan. So Albrecht as Archbishop of the German territories can authorize the sale of indulgences only within his own territories. So the German Christians are having this sale in their territories. What is the poorest zone in Europe at this time? Germany. Northern and Eastern Europe are the poorer portions of Europe. Italy is the wealthiest. The Renaissance begins in Italy. By 1320 or so, the Renaissance had started in the Italian cities such as Venice and Florence. They had developed vast mercantile empires. They had shipping all over the Mediterranean and a bit beyond. Venice controlled the trade route to China and the Silk Road and the Spice Road, and they had become immensely wealthy, and there was now a large middle class. And it's the rise of the middle class that really defines Renaissance, because now people have discretionary income for education, for books, for art. The nobility had always had that. But now it spreads to a far greater portion of the population. That's why it's the Renaissance. There's a rebirth of the love of learning and the love of culture and the love of art. And even middle-class folk can do it, and there are so many more of them. They are the merchants of Florence and of Venice and elsewhere. The German states will get their own Hanseatic League. a mercantile alliance of cities with a northern trade route that will prosper them too, but not as much and not as soon. So the Germans are then being, so to speak, taxed to pay for Italian glory. And that means that a lot of the German nobility is offended. Frederick is the prince of Saxony. Frederick is Luther's prince. Frederick is so deeply offended by the sale of indulgences in his own world that he forbids the salesman even to enter Saxony. That's even before Luther writes a word about this. So various German princes are already up in, not arms, but in protest against this imposition of sales that's going to impact the peasantry of their lands and impoverish the peasants even more. So Frederick says, okay, no indulgent salesmen in Saxody. I'm sorry, you can't come in. So Tetzel sets up on the end of the bridge across the river from Wittenberg. The river is the boundary of Saxony. So just across the boundary, there's Tetzel with his sales booth. And good Saxons are crossing the bridge from Wittenberg to the other side and buying their indulgences. People from the congregation where Luther often preaches are doing this. And both Luther and his prince are angry. So, So the 95 Theses get written. Tetzel will reach that bridge in early fall, and by October 31st, we have this well-measured but passionate document. It is carefully written theology. It is very Roman Catholic theology. It limits the Pope to what earlier church councils had said about the sale of an indulgence. What might an indulgence truly do, earlier councils had said? They could release the sinner from the penalties imposed by the earthly church. Okay, so 10 Hail Marys, a night of vigil and fasting, various alms of the poor. Okay, the earthly punishments of sin. Indulgences, said the church councils, could relieve the sinner of the earthly punishments. But what does the Pope now claim? That the indulgence will relieve the sinner of the heavenly punishments. And no Pope had ever claimed that. not even Urban II, who declared the first crusade. So Luther is concerned about this innovation in Catholic practice, and he calls the church back to its earlier stance in a limited use of the indulgence. He does not reject the indulgence, but he says that the indulgence cannot substitute for repentance. And those who have the grace of repentance do not need an indulgence, because you have the grace of Christ. So here's a photograph of one of the German printers, one-page broadside of the 95 Theses. All of them are on that very long sheet. It's about this big. And these were sold for like half a penny or something all over Europe. So about 20 different publishers got hold of this thing and then made more and more publishings of it. Basil had a book form. You could buy it in book form in many pages and a rather nice edition of it that was published not long after. So here's one of the earliest that exists still today. This is not the sort of thing that you would stop to read on your way in the church, is it? So if I'd come here and nailed a document like this to your church door, would you have read it? Okay, so it's not really addressed to the congregation, is it? But the entryway where this was posted on the castle church door is opposite the door of the dormitory of the university. So the foot traffic going in and out of classrooms and coming out of the dormitory goes right by this church door. This church door was the university bulletin board. That's where you posted academic notices. So you've got a bulletin board out here, I see. Okay, so that's the sort of thing that would be posted. Now here is the opening couple of lines of the Basel printing, Basel, Switzerland, the one that published it in nice book form, and there you see some elaborate, an illuminated letter. Okay, the letter, that's actually a D, oddly enough, and the opening lines, Dominis et Magista Nosta Jesus Christus, our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. Dominis Magister Iesus Christus. All right, so notice the second line, decendo, he said, penitentia agita. Can you see the Latin letters there? Penitentium agita. That is a quotation from the Latin Bible called the Vulgate, which was published in about the year 400 by Saint Jerome. He'd been commissioned by the Pope in that day to make a fine Latin Bible for all the Western Church. There had been all these competing versions of the Bible in Latin, some good, some poor, some in the middle, but all these competing versions. Sounds like our own time, right? Competing versions of the Bible. The Pope said, the Church needs one standard Bible. Jerome, can you make it? And Jerome was the one man the Pope knew who was skilled in three languages. He was reer trilingualis. Reer is man, trilingualis is trilingual. Jerome was the trilingual man. He knew Latin, he knew Greek, and he knew Hebrew. I like St. Jerome. He knew Hebrew. Okay, my own discipline is not actually church history, it's Hebrew Bible. But the Hebrew Bible guy at Geneva has taught church history for about 60 years. So when I entered that professorship in 91, they gave me the church history courses. I gulped and said, okay. So I've been teaching church history for 27 years now. I got to like it. Can you tell? Okay, I got to like it. I occasionally publish in this field now, though it's not my principal academic training. So I'm better in 500 B.C. than I am in 1500 A.D. So I think I got all right in 1500 A.D., though. I think I get a B+. Okay, so when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, well, penitentium agita. In Jerome's version, penitentium agita probably meant in 400 AD, repent. Agita is the word to act. It sounds like agitation, right? Something that's active and dynamic is agitated. Agita is do or act. Do what? Penitentium. Repentance is probably what Jerome meant when he penned that line in 390 AD or whatever year it was. Jerome's version was immensely successful, by the way, and it got named the Vulgate, which doesn't mean vulgar in the nasty sense, but common. That is, it was the common Bible. Vulgate means the common book. So the book that everyone could understand, because all of Western Europe spoke Latin in those days. When languages diversify later in Europe, Latin becomes unknown to many. But in 400, Latin was the major language of the West, the Latin of Rome. All right. So the Common Bible was in Latin and should have been. And it was immensely successful. It became the dominant Bible of the Western Church forever. It still is the official version of the Roman Catholic Church. And some even claim that it was just as inspired as the Greek and Hebrew. Jerome even moved to Bethlehem to learn Hebrew better. And he wrote a lot of it in a cave in Bethlehem next to the nativity cave of Jesus' birth. He's buried in that cave. I've been to that cave. Have you been there? So, St. Jerome, the patron saint of biblical scholars. All right, so the Vulgate was immensely successful. But over a thousand years, words wander. Okay, so for instance, I'm texting my daughter. Yeah, I actually have learned how to text. It's amazing. I said, okay, the letter C, the letter U, the circle A, and the numeral 5. Four symbols. C, U, add 5. If I'd written that 50 years ago, would I have known what I meant? No, no. OK, so text speak has arisen because of those little tiny screens that only hold as many characters as a Tolstoy novel, 140 characters. OK, so you have a limited amount of space in what you can write. Tolstoy didn't quite do it that way. He had 140 other kind of characters. So OK, so text speak arises and new language forms. So imagine the word go. What did it mean in 1900? And some of you are gray enough to remember NASA and the early space flights, and we heard on television for the first time in public broadcasts such things as, all systems go. Okay, that didn't happen before NASA started that kind of stuff, I guess. And suddenly, okay, we have another meaning of the word go in the dictionary. Well, okay, so words wander. Meanings wander. What's the meaning of meh? A word I never heard until maybe eight years ago. What's meh? It's a shrug, M-E-H, meh. Students say it now, meh, M-E-H. How many have heard meh? Oh, well, yeah, okay. So maybe you're in touch with adolescents. Yeah, yeah, okay, are you a teacher? Oh, intimate, okay, all right. Yeah, okay, so meh, meh is the new word for who cares? But how did they get it? I have no idea. Okay, so new words. So what happens is that the phrase, penitentium agita, changes meaning. It's not Jerome's fault. But by 1300 or so AD, Europeans in general think the word means, do penance. That is, go to your priest, confess your sins, receive absolution, and receive the commands then for the deeds that are called satisfactions. The alms, the prayers, the vigils, etc. So they read the Bible then as having Jesus say, the time has come, the kingdom of God is at hand, do penance, and believe the good news. Did Jesus say do penance? Well, no he didn't. And how does Luther know this? because of this man in this painting. This is Hans Holbein, probably Europe's greatest portrait artist. doing a portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Europe's most famous scholar. And there he is with one of his books, and there he is with his scholar's cap on, which is now the basis for some doctoral caps in various universities. And there he is with his fur robe, because there is no central heat, not even in Erasmus' offices. And here is the first page, the cover page, of his Greek New Testament. the first printed Greek New Testament ever, ever, ever, ever, ever in public sale. March 1516, printed in Basel, edited out of about seven Greek manuscripts, none older than 1100 A.D. But nonetheless, Greek manuscripts, which had before been available, say, in monasteries or university libraries or on some shelf in a noble's palace somewhere, but not available to the reading public. And Erasmus is a scholar of Greek and a superb Latinist, and he publishes the Greek New Testament in print for the first time. There had been a printing in Spain, but it hadn't been authorized for sales. It was still in crates. So Froben, the Basel publishers thought, maybe we can get our edition out and get a corner on the market and scoop those Spaniards. and get a Greek New Testament in print. So Erasmus is commissioned to do the job and within seven months this edition is thrown together. He says literally, it was almost literally thrown together, says Erasmus. It had more typos than any book Erasmus had ever seen. So he's embarrassed by it, but it existed. He didn't even have a Greek page for the last page of the Bible. he had to take a Latin version of Revelation 22 and put it in his own invented Greek to have a complete Greek New Testament. The second edition, he finally found a manuscript of all of the book of Revelation in Greek, so he printed that in the second edition. But the first edition has a whole page of invented Greek, and he tells you that in the footnotes. So there's no scandal going on. But in this Greek New Testament, Erasmus reads the words of Jesus in Matthew 4, verse 17. The time has come. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Metanoeta. Repent and believe the good news. Metanoeta. Metanoeta is the verb to change your mind, or rather to change your inner orientation. Nous is the word for mind. Metta is change. Metta noieta, okay, change your mind. That is, change the orientation of your life. We translate, repent. Repent. Erasmus sees the difference between that and how the Church understood benedentia magita. And in an eloquent footnote in his annotations line, he points out that the current understanding of that word is wrong. Jesus did not say, do penance. Jesus said, repent. Europe's greatest scholar makes the discovery. Erasmus remains Roman Catholic the rest of his life. Luther reads a little Greek. The Greek was about this tall. No, I'm sorry. Luther reads a little bit of Greek. He doesn't read Greek really well, but he reads some Greek. And he reads Erasmus' Greek New Testament. And he reads the Latin annotations where we have this footnote about penitentium agita. And Luther knows that Jesus said. How did Luther know what Jesus meant? Because Erasmus went behind the Latin to the Greek source of the original New Testament. And there Jesus says, repent. So, the first of our 95 theses is this. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he called for the entire life of the Christian to be one of, notice the next word, not penance, going to the priest, Penitence. And what is the definition of penitence in Luther's Latin? It's this. It is contrition in the heart that is sorrow for sin, not sorrow because of punishment, not sorrow because of fear, not sorrow because of the harm you've done to other people or yourself. It is sorrow for sin because of the love of God. Penitence requires contrition. Sorrow for sin because of the love of God. That's the ancient medieval definition of contrition. That's what the priests were supposed to require in penance. But if you have true contrition, will you turn from your sin? Yeah. Because the love of God is the motive. You are sorry for your sin for the excellent reason that you love God. And so what is repentance? It's turning from evil and turning to God. By the way, what's faith? It's turning to God, and therefore turning away from evil. So here we have the essence of the evangelical gospel. We find it in the words of Jesus in Matthew 4.17. The time has come. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. How do we enter God's holy kingdom? By sacramental grace or by repentance and faith? Jesus commands us to have repentance and faith. The time has come. The kingdom of heaven is near. Repent and believe the good news. Luther's 95 Theses then, while remaining very Roman Catholic and while maintaining the authority of Pope and church and councils, and even the limited legitimacy of indulgences, nonetheless takes this massive step toward what we now call, and you know the word, evangelicalism. That is, salvation is grace ministered through faith in the good news of the gospel. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he called for the entire life of the Christian to be one of penitence. How much time do I have, Mark? Ten minutes, okay. Now, Luther does not expect the Pope to resist this. He thinks the Pope is going to be on his side. This is Leo X in a painting. He sat for this portrait. So this is a life portrait of Leo X from the Medici family, the richest family in Italy. And there he is in his papal robes. Okay, so what does Santa Claus wear? Okay, the red with the white fur. So Santa Claus dresses in the robes of a bishop, and the Pope is the greatest of all bishops. Okay, so the red and white of Santa Claus' clothing is actually bishop's garb, medieval style. How many knew that? Okay, so Saint Nicholas is actually Nicholas of Myra, a bishop of the fourth century. in Central Turkey. All right, so here is Leo X, and Leo does not approve. Luther thinks he will, because Luther is a naive scholar. A lot of scholars are really wise in their subject, but naive regarding political and relational stuff. So Luther just thinks the principles will be perfectly clear, so of course the Pope is going to be on my side. He says that in several of the theses, that the Pope doesn't really want this indulgent sale. This is done by nefarious underlings, and the Pope should become aware of it and stamp it out, like a good pastor of all the pastors should do. The theses say this. But Leo, after sending at least two emissaries to force Luther to recant, then issues a document. It's 1520. It's July. The document is called a bull. The word bull does not mean the thing with horns that might gore you in some village in Spain on a certain day when you're imitating Ernest Hemingway. Bull is the Latin word for seal that is the wax imprint on a document that guarantees its authority. So a document under the Pope's own seal is called a bulla in Latin. So the papal bulla is written, and it's called exurgia domini, arise, O Lord. That's the opening line of Psalm 68. Arise, O Lord, and let Your enemies be scattered. Who is the enemy? Luther. Luther. A raging bull has, I'm sorry, a raging sow of the woods has taken to destroy the vineyard of the Lord. And there he is quoting Psalm 80 in his decree. And he threatens excommunication if Luther will not recant of this protest over indulgences. And he will quote Luther's Heidelberg disputation thesis, the thesis of the following year, in which Luther denies free will. You know, those who rely upon free will are damned, says Luther in the Heidelberg thesis. So the Pope will quote that. And the document arrives in Wittenberg on October 10th. Hey, that's Tuesday. October 10, 1520. It was written in Rome in July 1520, but that takes the mail service a long—there's no U.S. Post Office, there's no FedEx. So off it goes, wandering through Europe by various couriers, at last arrives in remote Siberia called Wittenberg, and Luther receives it, and it's like subpoena, where you have to touch the person with the document. Okay, you are served. That was already the tradition for such a document. So Luther is touched by the document and is officially served notice that he is under the threat of excommunication, and he has 60 days to reply. And to refuse to recant means the decree automatically goes into force. All right, so December 10th now, 1520. The 60 days are up. And Luther brings the document out into the courtyard of the main quad of the University of Wittenberg. There his students have gathered and they build a bonfire. and their Luther's colleagues are, and some of the townspeople, and his friends. And they've been burning the books of the medieval nominalists. That is, the teachers who said that God's righteousness is the act of righteousness by which God judges the unrighteous. And those who said that you cannot know that you'll receive grace unless you do your best, unless you do what lies within you, quoting Gabriel Beale and William of Ockham. Those are the books that are chosen to be burned. Now, I'm rather sure that Luther made sure that the final copies in the library of these books were not burned. Okay, but multiple copies. Okay, let's burn copy three. He didn't want the actual text to be lost, but it was a symbolic book burning of the nasty theologians of the late medieval time that had shaded and eclipsed grace. And there the students are cheering, and his faculty colleagues. Not a single professor in Wittenberg opposes it. And so there's this vast party on the main quad with a bonfire, and Luther takes the bull, the document, and to the cheers of his colleagues, casts it into the flames. He has defied the Pope. Now, in those days, if you defy the Pope, What might happen to you in regard to the flames of a fire? Okay, Jan Hus was burnt. 1415, the last such protester was burnt. So when the Pope gets wind that Luther has refused to retract his protest, he is excommunicated. The official decree is enacted in Rome, I think January 6, 1521. And that means then that Luther is now beyond the protection of the grace of the church, and in a state system where church and state are allies, so the sword of the spirit and the sword of the state as allied powers under God's kingship. If you were out of the grace of the church, are you under the protection of the law of the state? That was a question that had to be adjudicated. And so Luther is summoned to the imperial assembly that that year will meet at a city called Worms. It's oddly called a Diet. That means the assembly of the nobles and those who have political power, the various princes, the archbishops are there, the cardinals are there, the bishops of the empire are there. This is the Holy Roman Empire. And the newly crowned 20 year old Charles V is on his throne. He doesn't like Germany. He was raised in Spain. He speaks Latin and he speaks Spanish. He doesn't like this German stuff. He's a Spaniard from the Habsburg dynasty who is now the crown emperor of the German territories. And within the first year of his reign, there was this Luther problem. So, April 17th, Luther has been granted safe passage to come to Worms. They have guaranteed that they will not kill him at Worms. He walks into the city and there are at least 2,000 people that cheer him. And the cheers for Luther are louder than the cheers for the emperor. About 90% of the city is in Luther's corner cheering for him. The emperor is jealous. The emperor is worried. He wants Luther dead. But to kill Luther would start a war. And Charles cannot afford a war. After all, he's already fighting a war. The war is with the Turks, the Muslims out of Constantinople, out of Istanbul. The Muslims are invading Eastern Europe, and Charles is the bastion. that keeps Central Europe safe. Can he afford a war over Luther? He can't. So here's one of the weirdest things in Christian history. Luther survives courtesy of an Islamic empire run by Turks. Isn't that weird? If it had not been for the Turkish invasions of Eastern Europe, Luther would probably have been burnt. In Luther's day the Turks even get as far as Vienna and they besiege Vienna and are banging on the gates of Vienna with the hilts of their swords and are driven away by the Holy Roman Empire. The last assault of Istanbul upon Vienna came in 1683. That's not all that long ago. a Muslim invasion that reached Central Europe. This is real stuff. So at the Diet of Worms, Luther is asked once again to recant. He is astonished that there's no debate. He thinks he's coming to Worms to present his case to the emperor. He walks into the room expecting to meet theologians and to have a discussion in front of the emperor. There instead, on a table like this one, in the middle of the room as a stack of his writings. Are these books yours? Well, yes they are. Do you recant of these books? Luther's shocked. Well, in these books I write many things that you also believe. How can I recant that? And in these books I denounce some evil sinners that you also would denounce. How can I recant that? And in these books there are various propositions that you dispute. But in my conscience, I believe them to be true. So how can I recount that? The emperor requires a simple answer. Luther can't get it. He requests a day to think about it. Is this the bold Luther that you hear about in the popular press of Luther storming in and storming out and shouting? No, this isn't it. So Luther asks for a day. And he's afraid. He believes that he might be burned. The next day he comes in with trembling. Are these your books, Dr. Luther? Yes, I wrote these books. You recant of these books. And here is the speech. And I'll end with this. Since your most serene majesty and your high mightinesses require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this. I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the Council, because it is as clear as noonday that they have fallen into error and even into glaring inconsistency with themselves. If then I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by clear and evident reason. If I am not satisfied by the very text that I have cited, if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's word, I neither can nor will retract anything. For it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. This is not the fish shaking defiance of the movies. This is a man in fear of his life, but a man who fears God more than he fears the emperor. Luther is allowed to leave, but the emperor will want him dead. And I need to stop right there, don't I? Because it's now, what, 10.36. And do I have time for a question or two, or should we? OK. So I will pick up a bit of this story tonight, but my main burden tonight will be on Calvin. But I'll pick up a little bit of the story tonight. So any particular question before we, OK, tell me your name, please? Quora. Quora. Go ahead, Quora. the spreading of the 95 pieces of the miracle of God as some kind of God's hand in this. Do you feel that? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, people go, oh, look at this. It looks like it's going to be obscure, you know, stuff to ignore. But no, it's fire. And publishers knew they had a bestseller, you know? And this obscure, I mean, this unknown Bible prop from this unknown university writes this thing, and wow! It's the remarkable providence of God. People were concerned about the thing that Luther was concerned about, but Luther said it so well, and God spread the flame of it, yeah. It's a remarkable providence by God. So I believe that the Protestant Reformation is, in principle, God's great gift, one of the greatest gifts that God ever gave the Church. It is tragic that the Roman authorities resisted what was so clear. So the splitting of the church becomes a necessity. But it is a tragic necessity. And Luther did not choose it. It was chosen for him by those who refused the gospel. So this is God's work. Marty, you had your hand up? Matthew 4 verse 17. Yeah, and the word, the Latin penitentia magita appears twice in Matthew's gospel. It's John the Baptist's sermon in Matthew 3, 2, and it's Jesus' sermon in Matthew 4, 17. Both of those sentences are identical in Greek. And they're meant to say that what John preached, Jesus also preached. And here's the summary core. The time has come. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. So Penitentia Magita is in both Matthew 3.2 and Matthew 4.17. And Erasmus noted that in his annotations. And that's the source of the 95. Is it Bill? Being that Jerome was a scholar Transmission, you mean translation errors? Okay, translation errors. Okay, the Vulgate in general is pretty good. Okay, pretty good, all right. Some of the translation errors are because of how the text came to be understood. by the late medieval times, such as Benetention Magitta. Some of the errors are because there were Latin verses that were so well loved by the bishops, by the laity, that Jerome was not allowed to change them. So he proposed something else, but nope, Pope says no, can't do that on that text. You gotta preserve this wording that is so well-beloved. Imagine trying to change the wording of the 23rd Psalm, for instance, or John 3.16. So Jerome is constrained in some respects by popular traditions that are enforced by the Pope. Thirdly, Jerome is not entirely wedded to the Hebrew original of the Bible. He's got Subtuage in Greek, and often Volgate will follow Subtuage in Greek rather than Hebrew text. And this too is constrained upon him a bit by the Pope, who resists using the Hebrew alone. So in the book of Psalms, for instance, Jerome was able to make another translation of the Psalms, which we now find in something called the Gallican Psalter, a copy of which are in France from the 6th century AD. The Gallican Psalter is from what Jerome says, the true Hebrew, but Vulgate is not. So those are some of the reasons. Now also, biblical scholarship and the meaning of words is far better today than it was in 400 A.D. So was there great Hebrew scholarship by Christians in 400 A.D.? No! Jerome was the pioneer. Jerome was one of the only Christians to know Hebrew in 400 A.D. Okay, so when the pioneer gets a few things wrong, are you surprised? Well, no. Okay, so he's not the paver of roads. He's the guy who's blazing the trail over the mountains. He's Daniel Boone crossing the Appalachians into Kentucky. It's not the Cumberland Gap and the National Highway of the 19th century. It's not that. It's with your axe, and you're carving your way, your machete, going your way through the jungle. Jerome is that kind of guy. So, yes, there are errors. But given the circumstance, the Vulgate does pretty well. And among biblical scholars, specialists in the languages of the Bible, the Vulgate is considered a responsible version. Not the best, but a responsible version. Tell me your name, sir? Al. Okay, am I quoting the Mark version or the Matthew version? Maybe I quoted the Mark version, that's possible. So let me look at, this is my Greek New Testament. Mark 115 is a similar saying, but let me look now at Matthew 4 in my Greek Testament and I'll tell you what it says. Okay, and then Jesus began to preach saying, repent, the kingdom of heaven is near. Okay, so that's the Matthew version. Okay, I gave you Mark 115 by mistake. No, no, I was quoting the wrong gospel. Thank you for that. Okay, my last question, I guess. Is that right, Mark? My last question? Okay, Dean, go ahead. You deserve better than a B+. Well, I quoted the wrong gospel. So the kingdom of heaven is at near. Repent. All right. Well, you asked me whether I thought this was the work of God. Do I? Absolutely. So God sometimes puts the church through immense difficulty, but out of it comes a clarification, a great clarification of the gospel. The clarification of the gospel often comes amidst the deepest controversy. So what are the two greatest controversies to rack the church in its first 1900 years? Well, the Arian controversy of the fourth century, as to whether Jesus was fully divine and the Reformation of the 16th century over justification by faith and the rule of scripture. These are the two greatest controversies to rack the church in its first 1900 years. We are in the midst of a third over whether Christianity is wicked because the powers that rule the culture think that. that Christianity is a wicked, oppressive power in the world and must be suppressed. University elites, governmental elites, media elites persistently think that. That Christianity is a wicked superstition that enslaves people and is a power of oppression. That is now a dominant cultural idea. It took deep root in the 60s. And the generation that came of age in the 60s is now the ruling power, right? And we are the minority objectors against it. What will God do in our time? I don't know. But the PCA is one such protest movement against a tyranny of apostasy within a larger denomination. All right. That's one little episode within the current struggle as to whether Christianity is wicked. This is the third great struggle in the history of Christianity. The author of that heretical, that she told. Oh, Dan Brown. Yeah, yeah. Is that his new thing? He's got a brand new book. Yeah, Dan Brown, oh my, what a piece of work. Okay, well, God is good and Mark is impatient. So I will cease right there. At 6.30 tonight, I'll resume the story and we'll move quickly into the Calvin story. And the title there is Calvin and the Sum of Christian Piety. That's probably not the word that you expected with Calvin's name, but it is the right word. Calvin and the sum of Christian piety. Blessings upon you all.